Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  Their arguments were aptly summarized by Charles H. Ray, who told a pro-Chase delegate from Massachusetts: “We must win to extend ourselves into the border slave states, and to have in our hands the power to fill the places of the four judges of the Supreme Court who will die … before the next Presidential term expires. We can win with Lincoln, with Judge [John M.] Read, possibly with [William L.] Dayton or [Jacob] Collamer; but not with Seward.” To be sure, Ray conceded, the New Yorker had “earned and now deserves the place.” But, he asked rhetorically, “why on a point of gratitude, throw away a victory now within our grasp?” Of the electable men he listed, “Lincoln is the best,” for he “is intensely radical on fundamental principles; but has never said an intemperate word,” was sound on the tariff and homestead legislation, supported sensible internal improvements, was “a Southern man by birth and education,” a “people[’]s man,” and “as true and as honest a man as ever lived.” Nothing more could be asked of a candidate. “Why not go for him and make victory certain? Depend upon it, … we have no votes to throw away. We shall want every man.” If Seward must be passed over, so be it.7

  The only serious objection some delegates made to Lincoln was that he was as radical, and thus unelectable, as Seward. To combat that impression, Lincoln notified his operatives, “I agree with Seward in his ‘Irrepressible Conflict,’ but I do not endorse his ‘Higher Law’ doctrine.”8

  Davis and his allies worked doggedly to stop the Seward bandwagon. The challenge was daunting, for, as Ray noted, the senator had long been regarded as the leader of the party, richly deserving the nomination for his many contributions to the cause. He himself thought the nomination was his due. “Clamorous as crows,” his operatives “went to Chicago with the joy, pride and self confidence of a bridegroom marching to his wedding feast,” remarked the New York Herald.9 They were led by the shrewd, calculating Thurlow Weed, known variously as “the Wizard of the Lobby,” “Lord Thurlow,” “the Richelieu of his party,” and “the Dictator.” An observer at the convention noted that Weed’s “motions are as rapid as a rope-dancer’s; his eye heretofore dull lights up with an expression both powerful and charming; he speaks quick and short and always in a low tone, smiling you into acquiescence, and looking you into conviction with his sincerity; he calls with his finger, and changes proceedings with a word. Marvellous is his power over man—indescribable it is felt, not seen; you act upon his convictions, not your own, and know not when or how the substitution was made.”10 Flush with money, accompanied by bands and celebrities (like the prizefighter Tom Hyer, whose presence caused some wags to jest about Seward’s “Hyer law doctrine”), Weed and his allies sought to lend an air of inevitability to their candidate’s nomination.

  Some Seward backers were imposingly sophisticated, dressed in trim business suits. Others were more brash; the Cincinnati journalist Murat Halstead noted that they “can drink as much whiskey, swear as loud and long, sing as bad songs, and ‘get up and howl’ as ferociously as any crowd of Democrats. They are opposed as they say to being ‘too d–d virtuous.’ … They slap each other on the back with the emphasis of delight when they meet, and rip out ‘How are you?’ with a ‘How are you hoss?’ style, that would do honor to Old Kaintuck on a bust.”11 They had little use for Lincoln; Weed’s assistant editor on the Albany Evening Journal acknowledged that Seward’s friends “labored earnestly to prevent his [Lincoln’s] nomination,” for they “deemed him greatly the inferior, in every way, of their candidate. And they said so, kindly but with emphasis.”12 They were also imperious, insisting that their man had earned the nomination and threatening to bolt the party if he were passed over.

  This threat tended to demoralize Seward’s numerous but scattered opponents as the convention began, but fear that the New Yorker’s backers might abandon the party was overmatched by fear that moderate and conservative Republicans in the Lower North would desert and vote for John Bell, nominee of the newly-formed Constitutional Union Party (composed mainly of conservative ex-Whigs) if Seward, with his Radical antislavery reputation, were named the party’s standard-bearer. Conversely, some strong antislavery men were disenchanted with Seward’s February 29 speech, in which he referred to the Slave States as “capital states” and the Free States as “labor states.” The Sage of Auburn seemed to be backsliding from his earlier strong denunciation of slavery. A New Hampshireman asked, “Did Seward aim to appease the South by the obsequious use of new terms? It struck me so. I think he is overanxious to be President, and may have to ‘wait for the wagon,’ though his consummate abilities are everywhere acknowledged.”13 Seward’s address reminded one critic of the modest Indiana maiden who “wouldn’t swing in the garden any more ’kase ’taters had eyes!”14 Lydia Maria Child warned a fellow abolitionist: “Beware how you endorse William H. Seward. He is no more to be trusted than Daniel Webster was. He is thoroughly unprincipled and selfish.”15 The indignation at all such Republican attempts to mollify Southerners was colorfully expressed by Herndon, who said they made him feel “ashamed that I am a Republican. I am like the little girl who accidentally shot off wind in company—she said ‘I wish I was in “hell” a little while.’ ”16

  Seward faced other objections. Nativists disliked his action as governor of New York twenty years earlier, when he recommended granting state money to Catholic schools. At Chicago, Thaddeus Stevens, a leading Pennsylvania Radical who championed the candidacy of John McLean, intoned repeatedly: “Pennsylvania will never vote for the man who favored the destruction of the common-school system in New York to gain the favor of Catholics and foreigners.”17 From Philadelphia came a warning that nativists “have engendered so thorough a prejudice against him [Seward], that a life-time [of] apologies and explanations of his acts and connexion with Bishop Hughes, of New York, and his favoring a division of the ‘Public School fund with the Catholics’ could not induce them to vote for him,” and hence “it would be suicidal to nominate him for the Presidency.” The nativists would prefer Bates or McLean, but “will not object to Fessenden, or Lincoln, or Dayton.”18 An Illinoisan at the convention reported that the “Americans or old Fillmore men were all opposed to Seward because, it is believed that if he does not work hard to get Catholic votes now, he once did.”19

  Charges of fiscal recklessness also hurt Seward. Some critics complained that he belonged to “the New York school of very expensive rulers” and that his “uniform votes for lavish expenditures” might “embarrass the argument against the extravagance if not the corruption of Pierce and Buchanan.”20 The New York Evening Post observed that no “rogue comes to Washington with a plausible device for spending the money obtained from the people … who does not find a friend and champion in Senator Seward.”21 In the eyes of George G. Fogg, Seward was a man who “has always distinguished himself by his willingness to squander the public moneys on any and every scheme of private emolument with which Congress has been approached.”22

  Republicans who hoped to capitalize on fresh revelations of corruption in the Buchanan administration, as documented by Pennsylvania Congressman John Covode’s investigating committee and by the press, shied away from Seward. Fogg thought that Seward “won’t steal, himself, but he don’t care how much his friends steal.”23 The chief engineer of the Illinois and Michigan Canal noted that “a large number of influential Republicans in all the States opposed nominating Seward because his leading friends in his own State were believed to be awfully corrupt.”24 (Earlier that year, Weed had arranged for the passage of monopolistic legislation by the New York State Legislature offering street-railway builders sweetheart franchises to construct trolley lines in New York City. In turn the contractors provided kickbacks, which Weed planned to use in securing Seward’s nomination and election.) Shortly after the convention, a delegate explained that “however honest and pure Seward may be” personally, the party would “have lost much, if not all the capital we have in this campaign in the extravagance and corruption of the Administration, had Seward bee
n our candidate.”25

  It was perhaps unfair to hold Seward responsible for Weed’s corrupt ways, but they tainted the senator in the eyes of many delegates nonetheless. Connecticut Senator James Dixon, who liked Seward personally, lamented that he was “surrounded by a corrupt set of rascals” and feared that “his administration would be the most corrupt the country has ever witnessed.”26 Even such an enthusiastic Seward supporter as Carl Schurz of Wisconsin was dismayed when he beheld Weed, a “tall man with his cold, impassive face, giving directions to a lot of henchmen, the looks and the talk and the demeanor of many of whom made me feel exceedingly uncomfortable.”27 Several delegates thought Weed “the devil incarnate,” and “the most corrupt and dangerous politician in the United States.”28 A New Yorker declared, “We owe Mr. Seward everything; he founded the party, and built it up to greatness; our debt to him is incalculable; but we won’t pay it in hard cash to Thurlow Weed.”29

  On May 16, James G. Blaine wrote that Seward’s men “assume an air of dictation which is at once unwarranted & offensive, & which I think will create a reaction.”30 A delegate protested that “the New Yorkers were there with money to corrupt, with bullies to intimidate and with houries to seduce.”31 (The previous year journalist Simon P. Hanscom had noted that there was “a threatening, bullying disposition, on the part of the Seward men” which, he predicted, “will do their favorite no sort of good.”)32 On May 15, it was reported that Sewardites “have plenty of money and are using it freely” and that the “rumor that money has been freely used to bring about the success of Seward has greatly damaged his prospects.”33 New York operatives asked delegates, “If you don’t nominate Seward, where will you get your money?”34 William Maxwell Evarts, a leading Wall Street lawyer and one of the most eloquent supporters of the Sage of Auburn, assured delegates that Seward could win because his friends in New York would freely spend money to elect their man in the key battleground state of Pennsylvania.

  Such tactics backfired. Joshua Giddings told a fellow Radical that Seward’s operatives “disgusted members by their constant assertions that they had the money to win his election, that they could buy up the doubtful states.”35 A month after the convention, a Boston journalist confided to a friend that “I was a Seward man and am now but.… I do not like Governor Seward[’]s Albany friends. I believe them corrupt and I further believe that it was the fear that the Albany Regency with Weed at its head, and some tool of his at its tail would be the power behind the throne that really defeated Seward.”36

  New Yorkers who had observed the Seward machine in action were especially alarmed. Alluding to Weed’s shady street railway deals, William Cullen Bryant reported from Manhattan that “the best men here—… think it an omen of what we may expect from Seward’s administration.”37 Another New Yorker anticipated the demise of the Republican Party if Seward were nominated, for the public would not abide the “horde of political pirates and plunderers” in the retinue of the senator, who was “embarrassed by his obligations to them and complicities with them.”38 Wall Street lawyer and moderate Republican George Templeton Strong dreaded the prospect of Seward and Weed, “the most adroit of wire-pullers,” with “their tail of profligate lobby men promoted from Albany to Washington.”39

  An Iowa delegate recalled that among “the influential considerations in making many of us fight Seward so hard at Chicago was the feeling that the forces of ‘commercialism’ and corrupt political rule would triumph by his election.” Seward’s men “ ‘talked big’ about the need of money in the approaching election and the sources they would control and tap. It was notorious at that time that Weed manipulated the Albany legislature to secure New York City franchises for coteries or cliques of his personal and political friends. He was regarded as the most potent political manager in the country.… One of the New Yorkers came up to me and said, ‘It is absurd for you westerners to want to nominate an Illinois man or any other man than Seward. No man can carry Pennsylvania or Indiana unless he and his backers have plenty of the sinews of war.’ I asked, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I mean money, of course,’ he rejoined. ‘Just so,’ I retorted, ‘and that is one of the reasons why we from Iowa and the West are afraid of you and are fighting you. You and your kind think you can purchase the election as you buy stocks. But you can’t buy Iowa. We need a little money for ordinary campaign expenses but not to buy votes.… Mr. Seward must not be nominated. Not because we think he is personally bad or wants to do anything unrighteous, but because he could not control the forces that are back of him and that would work through him.’ ”40

  Such objections were widely shared. William Curtis Noyes, a Seward organizer at Chicago, lamented that he and his allies “could not resist the charges made against the last Legislature on the score of corruption, etc., and it was mainly imputed to his [i.e., Seward’s] friends.”41 Journalist James Shepherd Pike told Senator William P. Fessenden that Seward’s votes in the senate formed “part of the hateful plundering policy that mocks & degrades New York politics & which is poisoning those of the federal gov[ernmen]t. We have got to make war on that policy & slay it or it will be the death of the republican party.” To Pike it seemed “as though it was our luck to be cursed with leading men having one damned rascally weakness or [an]other. If he will vote with the thieving party it is deeply to be lamented for we all wish otherwise.”42 The only candidate who appeared to lack a “damned rascally weakness” was Lincoln, whose reputation as “Honest Old Abe” played a vital role in his eventual nomination and election.

  The Seward forces tried to derail Lincoln’s candidacy by promoting him for vice-president. On May 15, Lincoln’s friend William Butler was approached by a Mr. Street of New York, along with Senator Preston King, a confidant of Thurlow Weed. Street pledged that if the Illinois delegation would agree to have Lincoln named as Seward’s running mate, they would receive $100,000 for both the Illinois and Indiana campaigns. When David Davis learned that a similar offer was being made to New Jersey men if Dayton would run on a ticket with Seward, he became “greatly agitated” and along with John M. Palmer paid a visit to the Garden State delegation. There a solemn, elderly judge was urging that Lincoln be made Seward’s running mate. Palmer told him: “you may nominate Mr. Lincoln for Vice-President if you please. But I want you to understand that there are 40,000 Democrats in Illinois who will support this ticket if you will give them an opportunity. We are not Whigs, and we never expect to be Whigs. We will never consent to support two old Whigs on this ticket. We are willing to vote for Mr. Lincoln with a Democrat on the ticket, but we will not consent to vote for two Whigs.”

  The judge indignantly asked Davis, “is it possible that party spirit so prevails in Illinois that Judge Palmer properly represents public opinion?”

  “Oh,” said Davis, feigning distress at Palmer’s remarks, “oh, Judge, you can’t account for the conduct of these old Locofocos.”

  “Will they do as Palmer says?”

  “Certainly. There are 40,000 of them, and, as Palmer says, not one of them will vote for two Whigs.”

  When Palmer and Davis left, the New Jersey judge was enraged. Upon returning to the Tremont House, Palmer complained: “Davis, you are an infernal rascal to sit there and hear that man berate me as he did. You really seemed to encourage him.”

  In reply, Davis merely laughed heartily.43

  The most potent stop-Seward activists were in the Indiana and Pennsylvania delegations. Their gubernatorial candidates (Henry S. Lane and Andrew G. Curtin, respectively) protested that if Seward were nominated, they would lose. (When Curtin warned Edward L. Pierce that Massachusetts’s backing of Seward jeopardized the party’s chances, Pierce retorted that the Pennsylvania governor could expect no hearing from the Bay State as long as his state supported Cameron.) The eloquent Lane mounted a table at Tremont House, swung a cane about his head, and in a trumpet-like voice threatened to withdraw his candidacy if Seward became the standard-bearer. The modest, unassuming Hoosier leader had already
spurned an offer of financial assistance from Weed. The New York boss promised to send Lane sufficient money to guarantee his election as governor if he would have the Indiana delegation back the New Yorker. Lane replied indignantly that “there was neither money nor influence enough in their State” to induce him to change his mind.44

  Curtin’s efforts were equally effective, for he was highly persuasive in private conversations. Horace Greeley told a friend, “If you had seen the Pennsylvania delegation, and known how much money Weed had in hand, you would not have believed we could do so well as we did. Give Curtin thanks for that.”45

  Complicating Davis’s task was the ever-troublesome John Wentworth. On the eve of the convention, Wentworth’s paper, the Chicago Democrat, endorsed Seward. In addition, Long John lobbied key delegations on behalf of anyone but Lincoln. Evidently, he aspired to a cabinet post, which would be unattainable if a fellow Illinoisan became president. To counteract his efforts, Lincoln operatives had a critic follow in his wake denouncing him.

  Winning Indiana

  After helping to slow the Seward bandwagon, David Davis and his coterie turned their attention to the Indiana delegation, which at first seemed divided, with some members favoring Bates, others McLean, and still others Lincoln. Strengthening Lincoln’s chances was his personal acquaintance with some Indiana delegates whom he knew from his court circuit practice in Illinois counties bordering the Hoosier State. Two such delegates were George K. Steele, who had visited Lincoln in the early spring and found him impressive, and Greencastle attorney Dillard C. Donnohue, who had no desire “to go to Chicago for the purpose of putting in nomination a man just for the fun of seeing him defeated.”46 Fearful of bucking the strong Bates tide in his part of the state, Steele, along with Donnohue, conferred with Lane; the three men thought it best to divide the delegation evenly between Bates and Lincoln. That represented an important first step in eroding the Missourian’s support in the Hoosier ranks.