Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  • “I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it where will it stop. If one man says it does not mean a negro, why not another say it does not mean some other man? If that declaration is not the truth, let us get the Statute book, in which we find it and tear it out!”

  • “Let us discard all this quibbling about this man and the other man—this race and that race and the other race being inferior, and therefore they must be placed in an inferior position—discarding our standard that we have left us. Let us discard all these things, and unite as one people throughout this land, until we shall once more stand up declaring that all men are created equal.”

  • “I thank you for this most extensive audience you have furnished me to-night. I leave you, hoping that the lamp of liberty will burn in your bosoms until there shall no longer be a doubt that all men are created free and equal.”30

  Democrats also cited passages from Lincoln’s 1854 Peoria address:

  • “What I do say is, that no man is good enough to govern another man without the other’s consent. I say this is the leading principle, the sheet anchor of republicanism.”

  • “I have quoted so much at this time merely to show that according to our ancient faith the just powers of governments are derived from the consent of the governed. Now the relation of slave and master is pro rata a total violation of this principle. The master not only governs the slave without his consent, but he governs him by a set of rules altogether different from those which he prescribes for himself. Allow all the governed an equal voice in the government, and that, and that only, is self-government.”31

  “In what speech of Seward are such violent sentiments as these set forth?” asked a correspondent of the New York Herald. “Where can anything be found to exceed them in the ferocious abolitionism of Phillips or Garrison?”32 Democratic papers repeatedly cited Lincoln’s “House Divided” speech and his 1854 Peoria address to prove that he was as devoted to the extermination of slavery as any abolitionist. They even falsely ascribed to him an 1856 speech calling for black suffrage in Illinois. As further proof of Lincoln’s radicalism, it was alleged that he had subscribed funds to help John Brown in Kansas. (Lincoln had signed a document pledging financial aid to the “peaceful inhabitants of Kansas” who were being attacked by Missouri border-ruffians; the money was never collected.)33

  The bitterest denunciations of Lincoln were flagrantly racist. John Cochrane of New York declared that the Republican standard-bearer and his party engrafted “negrology” onto “their political stock,” producing thereby “its natural fruit—nigger—the eternal nigger. They ate nigger—they drank nigger—they (at least the amalgamationists) slept nigger. They saw him in their dreams—they saw him in their waking hours—all over, everywhere, they saw the sable gentleman.” As for the choice of Lincoln, “When nominating a rail splitter for the Presidency they were really resolved that they saw a nigger in the fence.”34 The Illinois State Register claimed that if Lincoln won, “we shall have the nigger at the polls, the nigger on our juries, the nigger in the legislature.”35 The Cleveland Campaign Plain Dealer agreed: “Give black Republicanism the power, and they will leave no effort spared to reach that ‘practical equality of all men,’ which Mr. Lincoln tells us is the great ‘central idea’ to be ‘labored for.’ Successful, we shall have the nigger at the polls, the nigger on our juries, the nigger in the Legislature, in our public offices, and, with political power, it is but one step, with those who think with them, to concede them that social position which will realize the ‘central idea’ of a common mulattodom.”36

  In an attempt to undermine Lincoln’s reputation for integrity, the Chicago Times accused him of illegally billing the federal government for three pairs of boots while he served in Congress. The charge was refuted by Josiah M. Lucas, Lincoln’s friend who was serving as the postmaster of the U.S. House and had access to the expense records of the Thirtieth Congress.

  Southern Democrats were even more contemptuous than their Northern counterparts, calling Lincoln the nominee of a “free-filth and wool-gathering Convention,” a “recreant son of the South—a traitor to the mother that bore him,” a “nigger in principle,” “coarse, vulgar and uneducated,” a “mere politician, of small calibre,” and a “third rate Western lawyer.”37 A former governor of South Carolina told his wife that the Republicans “have selected a wretched backwoodsman, who have [sic] cleverness indeed but no cultivation; who is a fanatic in his policy and an agrarian in his practice. Nothing but ruin can follow in his trail.”38 The Missouri Republican asserted that Lincoln’s nomination meant that “the ‘irrepressible conflict’ between the free and the slave States [is] to be kept up until the free States drive slavery out of all the slave States.”39 A letter in that paper charged that Lincoln “appears to think the only mission of the white man is to rescue, by any means, the negro from bondage.” The doctrine of “the entire and complete ‘equality of races’ ” has been “believed and proclaimed by him long, long before the rise of the Republican party.” Although members of that party hesitated to commit themselves to racial equality openly, Lincoln understood that they “must and would, whenever they deemed they had sufficient strength, not only proclaim, but put into practical action” that radical doctrine. Lincoln was “a much more dangerous man than Mr. Seward,” for he lacked “the sense and intellect of Mr. Seward; nor yet is he as wily or as politic as Seward; he is not such a statesman as Seward, nor has he Seward’s suavity of manners nor breeding; nor is he as well versed in the practical working of our complex government; nor does he know just as well how far to go with safety, nor when to relax, lest their tension becoming too great, the cord should snap; but he has all of Seward’s sectional ideas, and even more, and if in power would inevitably press them to their utmost.”40

  Southerners made dire predictions about the future under a Republican regime. “As soon as Lincoln is installed into office … he will wave his black plume Southward,” speculated a Texas newspaper. “With the army and navy, and the fanatical North, he will invade us. He will issue his ukase, enfranchising the negroes, and arming them; he will confiscate property, and commend us to the mercy of torch and steel.” The Richmond Enquirer accused Lincoln of wanting “to sink the proud Anglo-Saxon and other European races into one common level with the lowest races of mankind.” The Montgomery, Alabama, Mail also emphasized the miscegenation theme: “If the North chooses to mullatoize itself, that is all right.… Let the North … be the home of the mixed race; and let the South be the home of the white man, proud of his race, and proud of his race’s superiority! … If Lincoln and his free nigger outrider are elected, we must not submit. We must leave the North with its vile free-negroism, to shift for itself.… Southern men are white men and intend to continue such!”41

  A few realistic Democrats understood that the Republicans had chosen well. A Georgia journalist, J. Henly Smith, thought that the Lincoln-Hamlin “ticket is a strong one” which “will get up such an amount of courage and effort on their part as will be hard to overcome.”42 A New Yorker sensibly pointed out to Stephen A. Douglas that Lincoln had an advantage because he “is little known except by the notoriety you gave him, & there are few prejudices against him.”43 The New Orleans Crescent praised Lincoln for having conducted the 1858 campaign “with distinguished ability” and said “no other man in the State was so capable as himself of encountering the intellectual ‘giant’ of the North-West. We regard this nomination as perhaps the strongest the Republican party could have made.”44 A Kentucky newspaper accurately predicted that there were “some things in the personal character and career of Mr. Lincoln, which will give him great popularity.… Born of humble parentage, and passing the years of his childhood, youth and early manhood amid the hardships of the backwoods of Kentucky, Indiana and Illinois, acquiring an education by his own labors as best he could, and gradually working his way to distinctio
n, his life has been one well calculated to excite the admiration and sympathy of voters, most of whom are themselves working men. When to this is added the purity of his private life, the general recognition of which has given him, in his own State, the sobriquet of ‘Honest Old Abe,’ we are compelled to admit that the Chicago Convention has nominated the very hardest man to beat it could possibly have given us.”45

  Other Democrats agreed that Lincoln was the most formidable opponent the Republicans might have chosen. Douglas certainly thought so. When the results of the Chicago Convention reached Washington, he “repeatedly said … that the nomination of Mr. Lincoln was the strongest the republicans could have made.”46

  But some rejoiced at Lincoln’s nomination because they thought he could be defeated. “Next to Seward, we have all earnestly desired Lincoln’s nomination,” a correspondent told Douglas. “You have beaten him once & will beat him more surely again.” The editor of the Chicago Times considered Lincoln “weaker than any other candidate” before the Chicago Convention.47

  Lincoln’s nomination pleased many, though not all, militant opponents of slavery. Frederick Douglass called him “a man of unblemished private character” with “a cool well balanced head” and “great firmness of will,” who “is perseveringly industrious,” “one of the most frank, honest men in political life,” and a “radical Republican … fully committed to the doctrine of the ‘irrepressible conflict.’ ” During the campaign of 1858, Douglass remarked, Lincoln “came fully up to the highest mark of Republicanism, and he is a man of will and nerve, and will not back down from his own assertions. He is not a compromise candidate by any means.”48 Douglass would eventually support the Radical Abolitionist Party nominee, Gerrit Smith, but he hoped that the Republicans would win. “While I see … that the Republican party is far from an abolition party,” he told an upstate New York audience, “I cannot fail to see also that the Republican party carries with it the anti-slavery sentiment of the North, and that a victory gained by it in the present canvass will be a victory gained by that sentiment over the wickedly aggressive pro-slavery sentiment of the country.… I sincerely hope for the triumph of that party.”49 In his autobiography, the black orator said that “[a]gainst both Douglas and Breckinridge, Abraham Lincoln proposed his grand historic doctrine of the power and duty of the National Government to prevent the spread and perpetuity to slavery. Into this contest I threw myself, with firmer faith and more ardent hope than ever before, and what I could do by pen or voice was done with a will.”50 John S. Rock of Boston, another black abolitionist, also supported Lincoln.

  A week after the Chicago Convention, Joshua Giddings told his militantly antislavery son-in-law: “As to Lincoln I would trust him on the subject of slavery as soon as I would Chase or Seward. I have been well acquainted with him and think I understand his whole character. I know him to be honest and faithful.” Seven months later, Giddings said of Lincoln: “I have no doubt that we did the best thing we could when we nominated him.”51 The New York Independent, which had urged the Republicans to choose a militant opponent of slavery like Seward, Chase, Charles Sumner, or Benjamin Wade, praised Lincoln as “a true man, a man of great ability, who has thoroughly studied the question of the times, a man honored and beloved by his fellow-citizens at home, and one who, if chosen President, will use all his power and official influence to re-establish the Constitution as our fathers made it.”52

  Female abolitionists also applauded Lincoln’s nomination. Jane Grey Swisshelm deemed him “as much of an anti-Slavery man” as Seward and said that the Rail-splitter suited her “admirably.”53 Lydia Maria Child told Charles Sumner, “I don’t place much reliance on any political party; but I am inclined to think this Mr. Lincoln … is an honest, independent man, and sincerely a friend to freedom. One thing makes me strongly inclined to like him and trust him. At a public meeting in Illinois, two years ago, in discussion with Stephen A. Douglass, he said, ‘A negro is my equal; as good as I am.’ Considering that Lincoln came from Kentucky, and that his adopted state, Illinois, is very pro-slavery, I think he was a brave man to entertain such a sentiment and announce it.”54

  Radical Republicans joined the pro-Lincoln chorus. Senator James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin rejoiced that by nominating Lincoln, he and his allies had created “a real Republican party … no old fogy or conservative party, but one that can march to the logic of Events and keep step with the Providence of God.”55 Another Midwestern Radical, Senator James W. Grimes of Iowa, was equally enthusiastic. “The nomination of Lincoln strikes the mass of the people with great favor,” he told his wife. “He is universally regarded as a scrupulously honest man, and a genuine man of the people.”56

  Lincoln assured Wait Talcott, a leading Illinois abolitionist, that he sympathized with him. “I know you Talcotts are all strong abolitionists,” said Lincoln, “and while I have had to be very careful in what I said I want you to understand that your opinions and wishes have produced a much stronger impression on my mind than you may think.”57

  Frederick Douglass’s candidate, Gerrit Smith, publicly criticized Lincoln as too lukewarm an advocate of freedom, but privately he confided to Giddings: “Seward is a very able man. But so also is Lincoln—& he will, I have no doubt, get a greater vote than Seward would have got. I have read in the newspapers what Lincoln said so wisely and sublimely of the Declaration of Independence. I feel confident that he is in his heart an abolitionist.” Though on principle Smith voted for no one who acknowledged the legality of slavery, he told Giddings that Lincoln’s victory at the polls “will be regarded as an Abolition victory—not less so than if you yourself were elected President.”58 The Boston correspondent of the New York Tribune opined that Lincoln was “ahead of the Anti-Slavery sentiment of the Republican party, rather than behind it, and therefore to rally round and defend him will be to improve the political morals of the country.”59

  Some abolitionists were less enthusiastic. One protested that during the 1858 campaign Lincoln’s “ground on the score of humanity towards the oppressed race was too low.”60 Gerrit Smith’s party adopted a resolution proclaiming that “for Abolitionists to vote for a candidate like Abraham Lincoln, who stands ready to execute the accursed Fugitive Slave Law, to suppress insurrections among slaves, to admit new slave States, and to support the ostracism, socially and politically, of the black man of the North, is to give the lie to their professions, to expose their hypocrisy to the world, and to do what they can to put far off the day of the slave’s deliverance.”61 The party’s candidate for governor of New York, William Goodell, condescendingly remarked that if anyone supporting Lincoln called himself an abolitionist, “we know not how to vindicate the sincerity of his professions, except by entertaining a less elevated conception of his intelligence.”62 Goodell sneered that the Republicans had chosen the “most available, because the least known, the least prominent, the least distinguished or distinguishable among those to be selected from.”63 A leading member of the party in Ohio said Lincoln “ignores all the principles of humanity in the colored race, both free and slave; and as abolitionists claim the right to freedom of the one class, and political equality to the other, how can they be consistent, to say nothing of honest, in supporting such a man?”64 Gerrit Smith’s agent at his Oswego colony for free blacks scornfully remarked to those urging him to support the Republican ticket, “I should look beautiful voting for a President, who would be for sending the Marshal after me for helping fugitive slaves to Canada.”65 Equally contemptuous was an Illinois Radical who declared, “I hate the Lincoln party. I would as soon call Hell a paradise as to call the Lincoln Party a Republican Party.”66 Beriah Green, known as “abolition’s axe,” indignantly asked how any self-respecting opponent of slavery could possibly support a “craven wretch” like Lincoln: “He who goes for the Fugitive Slave bill of ’50! Hasn’t made up his mind that the interstate slave trade should be abolished! Is against negro equality! A man is not to be classified with men! … Is against
the abolition of slavery in the District except on conditions which none but a damned cross between a knave and a fool could either impose or endure!”67

  Other abolitionists like Stephen S. Foster denounced the Republican standard-bearer as a man “who declared his willingness to be a slave-driver general.” They also argued that “in voting for a slave-catching President, we do as truly endorse and sanction slave-catching as the non-extension policy which he advocates.” Lincoln not only “stands ready to hunt slaves” but also “supports the ostracism, socially and politically, of the blacks at the North.”68 Parker Pillsbury told his fellow Radicals, “in voting for Abraham Lincoln, you as effectually vote for slavery as you would in voting for Stephen A. Douglas.”69 Swayed by Pillsbury, the Western Anti-Slavery Society denounced Lincoln for being “committed to every constitutional compromise for slavery ever claimed by Calhoun or conceded by Webster.” The Republican party was not fit “to be entrusted with the interests of humanity and liberty.”70

  Oliver Johnson, editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, organ of the American Anti-Slavery Society, criticized attacks on Lincoln by men like Pillsbury and Foster: “Instead of allowing for a fair margin for honest differences of opinion, and thus keeping on good terms with the better portion of the Republicans,” the Western Society “has selected for special denunciation such men as Sumner, and thereby reduced itself needlessly & recklessly to a small faction of growlers, showing their teeth and snapping just where they should have been generous and conciliatory.” Johnson thought it “utterly preposterous to deny that Lincoln’s election will indicate growth in the right direction.”71