Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  Placating the Losers

  Lincoln’s first task after his nomination was to placate the disgruntled losers at Chicago. Chase presented no problem; he quickly assured the candidate of his support. Lincoln graciously replied to the Ohio governor: “Holding myself the humblest of all whose names were before the convention, I feel in especial need of the assistance of all; and I am glad—very glad—of the indication that you stand ready. It is a great consolation that so nearly all … of those distinguished and able men, are already in high position to do service in the common cause.”120 Chase and his supporters thought Lincoln “honest & will no doubt be true to our principles,” and that his nomination was “perhaps as good as under all the circumstances could have been expected & will no doubt succeed,” for “he had the elements of popularity in him that would make him successful in the Campaign.”121 A pro-Chase congressman was relieved that “the Convention gave us men so unexceptionable.”122 Ex-Governor Chauncey F. Cleveland of Connecticut, however, did not go along; he told Chase that he was “disgusted with this Whig ingratitude,” which led to the nomination of “the man who has done the least for the Party & the cause.”123

  Edward Bates and his followers were also happy to support Lincoln. Bates said the candidate was “[p]ersonally unexceptionable; his integrity unimpeached; his talents known and acknowledged; and his industry and moral courage fully proven. Politically, (aside from the negro question) all his antecedents are right—square up to the old Whig standard. And as to the negro question (which ought not to overrid[e] and subordinate all others) his doctrines, as laid down for use, are, in my judgment, substantially right.”124 From St. Louis, a Bates enthusiast wrote that “[o]ur friends accept the ticket cordially and will give it an earnest support.”125 On May 22, Frank Blair, who had served as Bates’s campaign manager, heartily endorsed Lincoln.

  To secure Bates’s formal endorsement, Lincoln turned to Orville Browning. On May 21, David Davis and other Illinois Republican leaders urged the Quincy attorney to enlist Bates for active campaigning. When Browning visited St. Louis, Bates rejected as undignified the suggestion that he take the stump for Lincoln, although he admired the candidate’s character and esteemed him highly. While he said he would “warmly and zealously support Mr Lincoln,” he “wanted a little time for reflection.” Three weeks later, Bates publicly lauded the candidate as “a sound, safe, national man” who “could not be sectional if he tried,” and who “has earned a high reputation for truth, courage, candor, morals, and amiability.”126 In October, Bates wrote that he and Lincoln “are old acquaintances and friends.… We know each other very well, and I take pleasure in believing that our mutual confidence, which is of long standing, is not disturbed by any serious doubt.”127 Support from Bates and his followers helped offset Millard Fillmore’s decision to endorse Bell, which disappointed Lincoln.

  Cassius Clay of Kentucky, a very dark horse at the Chicago Convention, rejoiced that the delegates chose “two very good and available candidates” who would “make us an honest administration.”128

  Cameron, however, stayed aloof. At a ratification meeting in Harrisburg a week after the Chicago Convention, he praised Seward and rather perfunctorily endorsed Lincoln as a Republican who, “when demands have been made upon his zeal and patriotism, has borne himself bravely and honorably.” But unlike Chase, he delayed a long while before congratulating the nominee personally. On August 1, he finally did so in a letter predicting that the Keystone State would go Republican in November. “We need no help here of any kind,” he assured the candidate. Cameron’s tardiness may have reflected his contempt for a man he considered his inferior. His letter was mailed only after he had met with David Davis and Thurlow Weed at Saratoga, New York, to discuss cabinet appointments under Lincoln. They agreed that Seward would be secretary of state (a foregone conclusion) and Cameron secretary of the treasury.129

  Placating Seward’s followers presented the most difficult challenge. They were “very much disappointed, & very cross” at the defeat of the man they considered “the greatest living statesman on the footstool of God.”130 An angry Seward backer spoke for many others when he announced that he would rather “the Republican party should be beaten with him [Seward] for [its] leader, than win with any other man.”131 A New Yorker reported that the “nominations have fallen like an iceberg upon us here, & some have already said in my hearing, that they will not support them.”132 Varying the image, another wrote that Lincoln’s victory “comes over N. Y. and New England like a driving March storm over the rising July of our hopes. We may huzza to the nomination, but our hearts reproach us with the emptiness of the sound—a bride pronouncing the nuptial vow, while her heart is far away with another.”133 A similar feeling welled up in a devastated Rochester Republican, who said of himself and his friends, “If we vote for Lincoln, it will be purely a mechanical act.… Our zeal is quenched, our enthusiasm dead, our hearts are broken.”134 In the grudging support from Sewardites, one of them predicted, “there will be a lack of that spontaneous free spirit & consequently less of exertion & labor.”135 More bitterly, an Albany resident told Seward: “Let those who nominated Lincoln Elect Him. We are against him here.”136

  Lincoln’s skimpy resumé caused a Philadelphian to ask Seward rhetorically: “What are the acquirements of Mr. Lincoln? Is he a man of varied accomplishments and long tried public experience? Is he what the President of the United States should be without exception—a pure, upright, firm, learned, classical, accomplished, dignified, and respected man? Where in the records of our National history is there one act to warrant, or by which he may claim, a Presidential nomination?” Scornfully, he predicted: “If we descend to nominate such men as Lincoln, we will have before long 5000 upstarts claiming the nomination.”137

  From the West a friend wrote Seward: “When I got the news, I felt as if I didn’t want to have any thing more to do with white man’s politics, and about ready to go out and live among the Potawattomies.”138 A Baltimore Republican denounced the “timidity” of the “ ‘negrophobic’ politicians” in the swing states who determined the outcome at Chicago.139 The junior editor of Thurlow Weed’s Albany Evening Journal sourly remarked that the outcome of the convention “is less a defeat of William H. Seward than a triumph of his personal enemies.”140 When Lincoln men lobbied Seward’s supporters immediately after the convention, they were told: “Let us alone awhile; we will come into line after a little, but you must not crowd the mourners.”141

  At Chicago, as Lincoln’s managers were discussing ways to deal with disgruntled Sewardites, the humorous James W. Nye of New York, a Seward delegate, dropped by and jocularly asked them to “please send an Illinois school-master to Albany to teach Thurlow Weed his political alphabet.”142 Similarly, when New York Congressman John B. Haskin was told that the Lincoln managers had spent no money to secure the nomination, he exclaimed: “You had better come down to Albany and teach us fellows something!”143 Weed himself sent a Seward backer to suggest that Lincoln’s men should visit him. Davis and Swett immediately hastened to Lord Thurlow’s hotel, where he told them earnestly: “I hoped to make my friend, Mr. Seward, President, and I thought I could serve my country in so doing.” Weed did not grow angry or complain about any person. Swett and Davis urged him to call on Lincoln before returning home.144 The Dictator, as Weed was known in some circles, agreed to do so but thought it decorous to wait until the effects of the convention cooled. (Weed claimed that he accepted the invitation “very reluctantly.”)145 So he killed time by inspecting land he owned in Iowa and did some sightseeing on the prairies of Illinois where, he remarked sarcastically, “candidates for president grew, expanded and developed without the polishing aid of eastern refinement, and the aid of the educating influence of her colleges.”146

  On May 24, Weed finally met with Lincoln, who reported that his visitor “asked nothing of me, at all. He merely seemed to desire a chance of looking at me, keeping up a show of talk while he was at it. I believ
e he went away satisfied.”147 Seward’s champion, he wrote, “showed no signs whatever of the intriguer” and assured the candidate that “N.Y. is safe, without condition.”148 He also let it be known that there was plenty of money to help fund the campaign.

  During their five-hour conversation, Weed found Lincoln “sagacious and practical,” with “so much good sense, such intuitive knowledge of human nature, and such familiarity with the virtues and infirmities of politicians,” that he “became impressed very favorably with his fitness” for the presidency.149 Two days after the meeting in Springfield, Weed’s newspaper praised Lincoln warmly: “There is no more thorough or bolder Republican on the continent—not one of more sturdy integrity, or of more unflinching purpose.” It predicted that backers of other candidates would soon “forget their disappointment” and added that “whoever holds to the extremest doctrines of undiluted Republicanism can find in Mr. Lincoln a fearless and an uncompromising exponent.”150

  Gideon Welles believed that Lord Thurlow “was somewhat presuming and officious” at this interview.151 But Kansas Congressman Martin F. Conway, who met with the candidate on July 21, told Weed that Lincoln “expressed perfect confidence in you, and respect for your character. He attaches no importance whatever to the statements of your enemies.… He admires your caution in requesting him not to answer any letter you may write him.”152

  As for Seward himself, Weed counseled him that “a prompt and cheerful acquiescence in the Nomination … is not only wise, but a duty.”153 Seward’s friend and New York delegate George M. Grier offered similar advice: “It would be best perhaps for your friends to keep their temper, and act wisely.”154 But the embittered, mortified, frustrated senator found it difficult to comply. Along with his neighbors and his aides, he had been poised to uncork champagne and fire off cannon salutes when the fateful telegram arrived at his Auburn home, where crowds of friends and well-wishers had gathered to celebrate. He felt humiliated “in the character of a leader deposed by my own party, in the hour of organization for decisive battle.”155 He said he was glad he did not keep a diary, for if he had done so there would be “recorded all my cursing and swearing on the 19th of May.”156

  Seward even contemplated quitting politics altogether. Before the Chicago Convention, he had heatedly declared to Joseph Medill that “if he was not nominated as the Republican candidate for President … he would shake the dust off his shoes, and retire from the service of an ungrateful party for the remainder of his days.”157 A week after the convention he informed Weed that he would leave public life in March 1861, when his senate term expired. (From Capitol Hill, William P. Fessenden reported a rumor that Seward “will not come back to W[ashington] but I hope he will not make himself ridiculous.” If he “retires in a pet, it will end his political career.”)158 Seward’s peevishness lasted throughout the summer. On June 26, he again wrote to Weed about his retirement plans: “If I can rightly and to the satisfaction of my friends remain at rest I want to do so. I am content to quit with the political world when it proposes to quit with me.”159

  Through the newspapers of both Weed and Henry J. Raymond, Seward indirectly quarreled with Greeley and let it be known that he probably would not actively campaign for the Republican ticket. Many other Sewardites also attacked Greeley, who they thought had single-handedly defeated their man out of spite. But a pro-Seward delegate from California protested that “the outcry against Mr. Greeley seems but a convenient vent for disappointed and selfish malignity.” The Republicans at Chicago wanted to nominate a winner, and Seward simply did not fit that description.160 Actually, Greeley had injured Lincoln’s chances and inadvertently helped Seward; by championing Bates, the eccentric editor had delayed the unification of anti-Seward forces on the Rail-splitter.

  Sewardites also criticized Governor E. D. Morgan, who as chairman of the Republican National Committee felt constrained to be neutral. They argued that if Morgan had warned delegates that New York might go Democratic if Seward were not nominated, then the senator could well have triumphed on the first ballot. It was further alleged that Morgan had joined other anti-Seward New Yorkers in maintaining that “the unfortunate associations which surround Seward will be carried to Washington, and the corruptions of the Albany Legislature and lobby be transferred to Congress.”161

  In late May, the press ran a cool, stiffly formal public letter from the Sage of Auburn, endorsing the party’s platform and candidates without mentioning Lincoln by name. The following month, Seward wrote a similarly frosty reply to an invitation to speak in Michigan. Two months later, he expressed to a reporter little enthusiasm for the Republican standard-bearer: “Governor Seward had very little to say about Lincoln, further than that he should receive his support.”162 Seward did agree, however, to make a campaign speech in Chicago.

  On May 21, a bitter, angry dispatch from the Windy City appeared in Weed’s Albany newspaper complaining of a “spirit of envy and hate,” “ingratitude,” and “malignity” at the convention. “The sentiment which culminated in his [Seward’s] rejection was chiefly manufactured by those whose dislike of the man was infinitely in advance of their love for his principles.”163 A week later that paper scouted reports that the senator lost because he was too radical for the battleground states: “the ready acceptance of Mr. Lincoln, whose Free Soil record is as ultra, and whose principles harmonise, exactly, with those of Gov. Seward, perplexes us. It may be all consistent and right, but we cannot understand it.”164

  Soon, however, Weed publicly backed Lincoln, explaining that the Sewardites could be reconciled to defeat because their hero had lost to the only competitor who commanded their respect. On June 7, Lord Thurlow told Leonard Swett: “but for the entire confidence reposed in Mr Lincoln, we would have collapsed in this State. Any nomination, other than Mr L’s, instead of Seward, would have been fatal. As it is, we shall ‘harness up the old team’ and drive it through[.]”165 Weed’s newspaper spoke highly of Lincoln, calling him “an honest, devoted, fearless, true-hearted Republican.”166

  Other Sewardites followed Weed’s example. On May 19, delegate George William Curtis confided to his wife that the convention had made “a good nomination. If Seward were impossible Lincoln was the man.”167 In Boston, William Schouler expressed confidence in the Rail-splitter: “The nominations at Chicago take well here and they will receive larger majorities in New England than Governor Seward would have done. I was a Seward man and am now but I think Lincoln and Hamlin are wise nominations.”168 Elsewhere in Massachusetts, William S. Robinson of the Springfield Republican, though deeply grieved by Seward’s defeat, agreed that the “convention did the next best thing.”169 Two weeks after the convention, it was reported from the northwestern corner of the Bay State that people there “fall in with the nomination, and seem as a general thing to think it a good one. Some lamentations are heard for Seward but they grow less and less.”170

  Many New Yorkers held similar views. When word of Lincoln’s nomination first reached Manhattan, the poet-stockbroker Edmund C. Stedman reported that Lincoln’s Cooper Union speech “was quoted by hundreds, and to those who saw the man on the occasion of its delivery, no name could so effectually compensate for the withdrawal of Seward, as that of Abraham Lincoln.”171 John Bigelow regretted Seward’s defeat but thought Lincoln’s nomination “a very wise one, much wiser than I had hoped for.” He explained to an English friend that the candidate “is not precisely the sort of man who would be regarded as entirely a la mode at your splendid European Courts, nor indeed is his general style and appearance beyond the reach of criticism in our Atlantic drawing rooms.” He was “essentially a self made man and of a type to which Europe is as much a stranger as it is to the Mastodon.” Nonetheless “he has a clear and eminently logical mind, a nice sense of truth and justice” as well as a superior “capacity of statement.” Nothing in the candidate’s background or in the way he won the nomination was “calculated to render Mr. S’s friends indifferent to his success.”172 Anot
her Seward supporter, E. G. Brooks, actually felt relief at the nomination: “Lincoln is so much better than I feared we shd. get that I am well satisfied. He is a strong straight out, live man.… I was afraid we shd. get Bates or some purely expediency candidate, resurrectionized and galvanized for the occasion.”173 Ex-governor Washington Hunt, a leader of New York’s Whig Party, found that many Sewardites “feel sore & dissatisfied. But they are all sectional rep[ublican]s & can be nothing else, & will generally support Lincoln, believing that Mr. Seward will have full command of his adm[inistratio]n & will use it to secure the succession.”174

  Lincoln salved a lot of hurt feelings by reassuring New Yorkers that they would occupy honored places at the patronage trough. Congressman Elbridge G. Spaulding, a Weed lieutenant from Buffalo, requested a letter from David Davis containing a pledge to that effect. Lincoln drafted such a document for Davis’s signature: “Since parting with you, I have had full, and frequent conversations with Mr. Lincoln. The substance of what he says is that he neither is nor will be, in advance of the election, committed to any man, clique, or faction; and that, in case the new administration shall devolve upon him, it will be his pleasure, and, in his view, the part of duty, and wisdom, to deal fairly with all. He thinks he will need the assistance of all; and that, even if he had friends to reward, or enemies to punish, as he has not, he could not afford to dispense with the best talent, nor to outrage the popular will in any locality.”175 This letter was emblematic of Lincoln’s inclination to forgive and forget so that he could rally the party and enlist the best talent. To Carl Schurz, an ardent Sewardite at Chicago, Lincoln wrote: “I beg you to be assured that your having supported Gov. Seward, in preference to myself in the convention, is not even remembered by me for any practical purpose, or the slightest u[n]pleasant feeling. I go not back of the convention, to make distinction among its’ members.”176