Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  Two months later, in a widely reprinted editorial, Garrison called Lincoln’s reelection essential for “the suppression of the rebellion, and the abolition of slavery.” The editor acknowledged that the president was “open to criticism and censure” but added that there “is also much to rejoice over and to be thankful for; and a thousand incidental errors and blunders are easily to be borne with on the part of one who, at one blow, severed the chains of three millions three hundred thousand slaves,—thus virtually abolishing the whole slave system … as an act dictated alike by patriotism, justice and humanity.”321 Garrison counseled abolitionists to understand the political and constitutional constraints which Lincoln had to deal with: “His freedom to follow his convictions of duty as an individual is one thing—as the President of the United States, it is limited by the functions of his office; for the people do not elect a President to play the part of reformer or philanthropist, nor to enforce upon the nation his own peculiar ethical or humanitarian ideas, without regard to his oath or their will. His primary and all-comprehensive duty is to maintain the Union and execute the Constitution, in good faith, according to the best of his ability, without reference to the views of any clique or party in the land.” Emphatically Garrison expressed his “firm conviction” that “no man has occupied the chair of the Chief Magistracy in America, who has more assiduously or more honestly endeavored to discharge all its duties with a single eye to the welfare of the country, than Mr. Lincoln.”322 In September, Garrison told a guest: “I have every confidence in Mr. Lincoln’s honesty; his honor is involved in his fidelity to the Emancipation Proclamation.”323 He voiced the same sentiments to the president: “God save you, and bless you abundantly! As an instrument in his hands, you have done a mighty work for the freedom of the millions who have so long pined in bondage in our land—nay, for the freedom of all mankind. I have the utmost faith in the benevolence of your heart, the purity of your motives, and the integrity of your spirit. This I do not hesitate to avow at all times.”324

  When a longtime reader of The Liberator angrily canceled his subscription and denounced the editor for abandoning the abolitionist cause, Garrison replied that if supporting the candidacy of Lincoln “makes us recreant to anti-slavery principles,” then Owen Lovejoy, Joshua Giddings, Gerrit Smith “and a host of others long conspicuous for their consecration to the abolitionist cause are recreant.” If the president had also been recreant, Garrison asked, “how does it happen that not a rebel in all the South, nor a Copperhead in all the North, is aware of the fact?—that their malignant hatred of him, avowedly for no other reason than that he is determined upon the extermination of slavery, and is ‘a black-hearted abolitionist’?—that the one great issue to be met at the ballot-box in November is, whether the President’s emancipation policy shall stand or be repudiated?”325

  To an English critic who denounced Lincoln as a hopeless bigot laboring under the delusion “that he has sworn to support slavery for the rebels,” Garrison conceded that the president “might have done more and gone further, if he had had greater resolution and larger foresight; that is an open question, and opinions are not facts. Possibly he could not have gone one hair’s breadth beyond the point he has reached by a slow and painful process, without inciting civil war at the North, and overturning the government.” Such speculation, Garrison rightly noted, was “idle.” Instead he listed what could be known, not guessed: “that his Emancipation proclamation of January 1, 1863, liberated more than three-fourths of the entire slave population; that since that period, emancipation has followed in Maryland, Western Virginia, Missouri, and the District of Columbia, and is being rapidly consummated in Kentucky and Tennessee, thus terminating the holding of property in man everywhere under the American flag; that all the vast Territories have been consecrated to freedom and free labor; that all Fugitive Slave laws have been repealed, so that slave-hunting is at an end in all the free States; that no rebel State can be admitted to the Union, except on the basis of complete emancipation; that national justice (refused under every other Administration) has been done to the republics of Hayti and Liberia, by the full recognition of their independence; that an equitable treaty has been made with Great Britain for the effectual suppression of the foreign slave trade, through right of search; that a large portion of the army is made up of those who, until now, have been prohibited bearing arms, and refused enrolment in the militia of every State in the Union [i.e., blacks]; … that free negro schools are following wherever the army penetrates, and multitudes of young and old, who, under the old slave system, were prohibited learning the alphabet, are now rapidly acquiring that knowledge which is power, and which makes slavery and serfdom alike impracticable; and that on numerous plantations free labor is ‘in the full tide of successful experiment.’ ”326 Garrison’s endorsement, as the Philadelphia Press remarked, proved conclusively “that the President is not the candidate of the weak, semi-pro-slavery conservative faction.”327

  Seconding Garrison, Owen Lovejoy wrote to him that Lincoln, if not “the best conceivable President,” was nonetheless “the best possible. I have known something of the facts inside during his administration, and I know that he has been just as radical as any of his Cabinet. And although he does not do everything that you or I would like, the question recurs, whether it is likely we can elect a man who would.”328 Lovejoy thought it “impolitic, not to say cruel, to sharply criticize even the mistakes of an executive weighed down and surrounded with cares and perplexities, such as have fallen to but few of those upon whom have been laid the affairs of Government.”329 Publicly he pleaded with his fellow Radicals: “Do not let any power from earth or from beneath the earth alienate your attachment or weaken your confidence in the President. He has given us the Proclamation of Freedom. He has solemnly declared he will not revoke it. And although he may seem to lead the Isaac of freedom bound to the altar, you may rest assured that it is done from a conviction of duty, and that the sacrificial knife will never fall on the lad.”330 In February 1864, Lovejoy warned that attempts to divide the Republican Party were “criminal in the last degree.” Radical critics of Lincoln should realize that he “is at heart as strong an anti-slavery man as any of them,” but he “has a responsibility in this matter which many men do not seem to be able to comprehend.” Lovejoy conceded that the president’s “mind acts slowly,” but added that “when he moves, it is forward.” The congressman indignantly told a friend, “I have no sympathy or patience with those who are trying to manufacture issues against him; but they will not succeed; he is too strong with the masses. For my part, I am not only willing to take Mr. Lincoln for another term, but the same cabinet, right straight through.”331 The Washington correspondent of the National Anti-Slavery Standard judged that Lincoln’s antislavery policy “has been a wise one, for he has drawn many conservatives after him who would have been shocked by any sudden radical action upon his part.”332 Lydia Maria Child acknowledged that Lincoln was “a man of slow mind, apparently incapable of large, comprehensive views,” and that he was inclined “to potter about details” and thus waste “valuable time and golden opportunities.” Still, the president “is an honest man, and conscientiously hates Slavery.” Besides, she asked rhetorically: “Who is there that would be better except Charles Sumner and he would not be available as a candidate?”333

  Other female abolitionists agreed with Child. Lucy Stone had “expected the largest antislavery utterance” from Frémont but was disappointed to get only a simple “announcement that slavery is dead.” She objected strenuously to the Cleveland Convention’s selection of Cochrane for vice-president, wondering how a man who voted for Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and John C. Breckinridge could possibly be considered a true abolitionist. She told Susan B. Anthony, “bad as Mr. Lincoln is, a union with him and his supporters, seems to me less bad than a union with peace Democrats.”334 (Stone failed to convince Anthony, who enthusiastically backed Frémont.) Elizabeth Buffum Chace confessed that “impatie
nt as I have been with Lincoln for his slowness of perception as to the needs of the hour; yet, since the best sentiment of the people is carrying him with it toward freedom and justice and peace, I had certainly as lief trust him as another man who has not been tried.”335 Lucretia Mott observed that “we must admit that Lincoln has done well, for him,” and doubted “if one could have been elected, who wd. have done more.”336 Abby Hopper Gibbons called the president “a just and cautious man” who was “slow to move, but when ready, [was] sure to take the right direction.”337 Maria Weston Chapman preferred Lincoln to any other likely candidate “because, to a progressive domestic policy, he adds a friendly foreign one.”338

  In response to his numerous critics, Wendell Phillips maintained that the Cleveland Convention’s platform, with its demand for black citizenship rights including suffrage, was infinitely preferable to what the Republicans offered. Acknowledging that Lincoln would be renominated, he argued that Radicals should press him to change his policies. Though reluctant to criticize Phillips, Theodore Tilton called such arguments naïve: “Now, we would be glad if a great political party could go before the country on the high issue of giving every black man a vote. But the country is not ready for such an issue.”339 Agreeing was a Chase enthusiast in Ohio, who warned that “[h]atred to rebels has made thousands eager to abolish slavery, but no one is the less prejudiced against negro social equality. On any such issue, the party advocating it would be crushed out for years.” The “love and zeal for the nigger may be carried too far.”340 Oliver Johnson was “deeply pained” that Phillips had “become the partizan of Fremont in his efforts to win support from the Copperhead Democracy.” He predicted that the “consequences to himself will be fearful.”341 Lydia Maria Child was also “exceedingly sorry” that Phillips supported the general. “Since Fremont has written a letter, so obviously courting the Copperheads, I don’t see how he can stand by him,” she remarked.342 Maria Weston Chapman predicted that “Wendell’s labor against Lincoln will procure more votes for him than it will deprive him of.”343

  The Baltimore Convention (June 7–8)

  To undercut Frémont’s appeal, Lincoln bolstered the Republican Party’s antislavery bona fides by endorsing a constitutional amendment outlawing slavery throughout the nation. He told Noah Brooks that he hoped the delegates to the Republican national convention would support such an amendment “as one of the articles of the party faith.”344 A few days before the convention met, party chairman Edwin D. Morgan called at the White House, where the president urged him to make an antislavery amendment the keynote of his opening speech at the convention.

  Morgan took the president’s advice, admonishing delegates that the party would “fall far short of accomplishing its great mission, unless among its other resolves it shall declare for such an amendment of the Constitution as will positively prohibit African slavery in the United States.”345 In response, the platform committee wrote a plank declaring that “as slavery was the cause and now constitutes the strength of the rebellion, and as it must be, always and everywhere, hostile to the principles of republican government, justice and the national safety demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic; and that, while we uphold and maintain the acts and proclamations by which the Government, in its own defence, has aimed a death-blow at this gigantic evil, we are in favor, furthermore, of such an amendment to the Constitution, to be made by the people in conformity with its provisions, as shall terminate and forever prohibit the existence of slavery within the limits or the jurisdiction of the United States.” When introduced, this plank inspired wild enthusiasm.346 Delegates leapt from their seats, waved their hats, applauded tumultuously, and adopted the resolution without dissent. This move stole some thunder from the Radical Democracy, but Lincoln did not suggest that his party support the Cleveland Convention’s demand that blacks be accorded equal rights, nor did the Republicans adopt such a plank. Indeed, the platform did not directly address the contentious issues of Reconstruction, though by admitting delegates from some Southern states, the party in effect endorsed Lincoln’s approach rather than that of the Radicals, who maintained that the rebellious states were out of the Union.

  At the behest of the Missouri delegation, a plank was adopted indirectly calling for the resignation of conservative cabinet members: “we deem it essential to the general welfare that harmony shall prevail in the national councils, and we regard as worthy of public confidence and official trust those only who cordially endorse the principles proclaimed in these resolutions, and which should characterize the administration of the Government.”347 This was widely viewed as a demand for Montgomery Blair’s dismissal.

  Though willing to intervene to shape the party platform, Lincoln expressed no preference for a running mate. Shortly before Nicolay left to act as the president’s eyes and ears at the convention, Lincoln told him “that all the various candidates and their several supporters being his friends, he deemed it unbecoming in him to advocate the nomination of any one of them; but that privately and personally he would be best pleased if the convention would renominate the old ticket that had been so triumphantly elected in 1860, and which would show an unbroken faith … in the Republican party, and an unbroken and undivided support of that party to the administration and in [the] prosecution of the war.”348 The delegates chose former Democrat Andrew Johnson of Tennessee to enhance the Republicans’ new identity as the “National Union” Party. Nicolay reported the day before the convention opened that the “disposition of all the delegates was to take any war Democrat, provided he would add strength to the ticket.”349 Among those fitting that description were Johnson, John A. Dix, Daniel S. Dickinson, and Joseph Holt, but not the incumbent, Hannibal Hamlin. When Leonard Swett championed Holt for vice-president, the head of the Illinois delegation, Burton C. Cook, asked if the president preferred that Kentuckian. Lincoln wrote in reply that “Mr. Holt is a good man, but I had not heard or thought of him for V.P. Wish not to interfere about V.P. … Convention must judge for itself.”350 Nicolay told Cook that “Lincoln would not wish even to indicate a preference for V. P. as the rival candidates were all friendly to him.”351 Johnson eventually turned out to be a disastrous choice, but Lincoln had nothing to do with his selection.

  Some Radicals expressed pleasure at Johnson’s nomination. George Luther Stearns, who had recruited black troops in Tennessee, congratulated the governor: “If anything can reconcile me to the renomination of Abraham Lincoln, it is the association of your name on the same ticket. Indeed I should have been much better pleased if your name had been placed by the Convention before our people, for the Presidency.”352 Lincoln, however, had reservations. When told of the convention’s choice for his running mate, he said: “So they have chosen him—I thought perhaps he would be the man. He is a strong man. I hope he may be the best man. But—.” He did not finish that sentence.353 According to Noah Brooks, Lincoln at first “made an exclamation that emphatically indicated his disappointment,” but shortly thereafter remarked: “Andy Johnson, I think, is a good man.”354

  The Baltimore Convention, which resembled a ratification meeting, was, as Nicolay remarked, “almost too passive to be interesting.”355 It resembled the Connecticut Legislature, which reelected a man to office so regularly that the clerk of the House called for the vote by saying: “Gentlemen will please step up to the desk and deposit their votes for Samuel Wyllis for Secretary of State.”356 Credentials fights did provide some excitement. Of the six Southern delegations, only South Carolina’s was barred. When its members called at the White House en route to Baltimore, Hay told the president: “They are a swindle.” Lincoln replied: “They won[’]t swindle me.”357 The most contentious case was Missouri, which sent two delegations, one Conservative and the other Radical. The credentials committee, acting on Lincoln’s suggestion (which Nicolay conveyed to the Illinois delegation), endorsed the “Radical Unionists,” who supported Grant for president. After the roll call showed Lincol
n with 484 votes and Grant with 22, the Missourians moved to make the nomination unanimous. The decision to seat the Missouri Radicals pleased Lincoln’s critics and helped undermine support for Frémont.

  On their way home, some delegates stopped at the White House to pay their respects. To Ohioans who serenaded him on June 9, he said: “the hardest of all speeches I have to answer is a serenade. I never know what to say on these occasions. I suppose that you have done me this kindness in connection with the action of the Baltimore convention, which has recently taken place, and with which, of course, I am very well satisfied. [Laughter and applause.] What we want, still more than Baltimore conventions or presidential elections, is success under Gen. Grant. [Cries of “Good,’ ” and applause.] I propose that you constantly bear in mind that the support you owe to the brave officers and soldiers in the field is of the very first importance, and we should therefore bend all our energies to that point.”358

  One delegate, William Lloyd Garrison, had his faith in Lincoln strengthened by two White House interviews. “There is no mistake about it in regard to Mr. Lincoln’s desire to do all that he can see it right and possible for him to do to uproot slavery, and give fair play to the emancipated,” he reported to his wife. “I was much pleased with his spirit, and the familiar and candid way in which he unbosomed himself.”359 (According to Garrison’s son William, the abolitionist editor frankly criticized Lincoln’s “shortcomings,—his mistakes in not making the Proclamation universal, the wicked treatment of the colored troops. … Not one word of congratulation did he give the President regarding his renomination.”)360

  Other abolitionists cheered Lincoln’s nomination. J. W. C. Pennington, a black Presbyterian minister, wrote that the prospect of having the incumbent reelected “should awaken in the inmost soul of every American of African descent emotions of the most profound and patriotic enthusiasm.” Lincoln could be considered the black man’s president, Pennington argued, “because he is the only American President who has ever given any attention to colored men as citizens.” To reelect him “will be the best security that the present well-begun work of negro freedom and African redemption will be fully completed.” Pennington, who believed that he voiced “the sentiments of nine-tenths of my colored fellow-citizens,” prayed that God might “grant us four long years more of the judicious administration of that excellent man.”361 Massachusetts Radicals Franklin B. Sanborn and Frank W. Bird, who had opposed Lincoln earlier in the year, now believed that “the contest will be fought on the old issue, with Lincoln representing really the best of the Antislavery men.” They supported his reelection, though deploring “the baseness of the Administration.” Lincoln might be bad, but he was “better than [Fernando] Wood and Vallandigham.” No evil was worse than “throwing power into the hands of the Peace Democrats.”362 Similarly, the New York Evening Post grudgingly acknowledged that the people overlooked Lincoln’s defects, pardoned his mistakes, and were “prone to forgive even his occasional lapses into serious and dangerous abuses of power.” All this they managed to do even though there was “nothing high, generous, [or] heroic in the tone of his administration,” and though he “suffers the best opportunities to pass,” lacks “knowledge of men,” surrounds himself with “unworthy persons like Cameron,” stands by “useless instruments like McClellan, long after their uselessness has been shown,” has no “profound political convictions or a thoroughly digested system of policy,” pays heed “too patiently to mere schemers,” and “either drifts into the right course or assumes it with an embarrassed air, as if he took shelter in it as a final expedient.”363 That paper had earlier chastised the administration for “its arbitrary arrests, its suppression of journals, its surrender of fugitives without judicial warrant, and its practical abandonment of the Monroe Doctrine.”364 (Understandably, Lincoln resented such “newspaper assaults” and gently chided the editor for making them.)365