Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  Some visitors annoyed him, particularly office seekers, who flocked to Springfield from all parts of the country. Simon Hanscom observed wryly: “If these gentlemen do not get an opportunity of serving their country for the next four years, in positions where there is little work and much pay, you may depend upon it that it will not be for any want of blowing their own trumpets nor from any modesty in magnifying their own achievements.”210 Lincoln was keenly aware that many federal officials needed to be replaced. Hanscom noted that anyone “by conversing with Mr. Lincoln for a short time on national politics, will see that he is firm in the opinion that the whole government wants overhauling and cleaning out; that he is posted to an astonishing degree in the details of our government in all its departments.”211 When asked about the men he wanted to head those departments, he replied that “after his election he would form his own Cabinet.”212

  To escape patronage hounds, Lincoln occasionally carved out time to play with his children, Willie and Tad. While doing so one day that summer, he told a friend that “he was having a little season of relaxation with the boys, which he could not always enjoy now, as so many callers and so much correspondence occupied his time.”213

  In October, William Henry Seward, on a campaign swing through the Northwest, stopped briefly in Springfield. His trip was a curious one, for he spent most of his time in safe Republican states. Back in July, Lincoln had urged Seward to speak in Springfield, saying: “I shall be personally much gratified to meet him here.”214 But the Republican State Committee reportedly tried to keep the senator from visiting central and southern Illinois, where his reputation as an antislavery extremist made him unpopular. The Illinois State Register, which denounced the radicalism of Seward’s speeches, claimed that the New Yorker spoke for Lincoln. But caution about inviting him was overcome by concern that Seward’s failure to visit Springfield might be interpreted as evidence of hostility to Lincoln. So, at the last minute, the senator made a detour to see the man who had bested him for the Republican nomination. The Republicans of Springfield had only a two-hour notice of Seward’s arrival but managed to turn out 1,500 people to greet him.

  Instead of calling on Lincoln at his house or office, the haughty New Yorker allowed the candidate to come to the depot, make his way through the crowd, and climb aboard the train. The meeting was brief and awkward, for Lincoln seemed ill at ease and Seward was almost rude. A journalist noted that Lincoln’s “manner to Mr. Seward was marked rather by deference and respect than cordiality, and Mr. Seward himself seemed to avoid friendly advances—a little unusual for him.”215 After introducing his traveling party to the candidate, Seward sat back down without speaking further with Lincoln. No sooner had he resumed his seat than he was summoned to address the crowd. Seemingly glad to have an excuse not to talk with Lincoln, he immediately repaired to the rear platform, where he told his audience: “The State of New York will give a generous and cheerful and effective support to your neighbor.”

  Afterward, Lincoln spoke briefly with his visitor, suggesting a point for him to incorporate into his upcoming Chicago address. Seward ignored the advice, later observing that he had already made that point in a previous speech. Lincoln then reminisced: “Twelve years ago you told me that this cause would be successful, and ever since I have believed that it would be. Even if it did not succeed now, my faith would not be shaken.”216 Seward’s entire stopover in Springfield lasted no more than a quarter of an hour, during most of which he addressed the crowd. A mere five minutes were consumed in introductions and conversation.

  Simon P. Hanscom, who witnessed this scene, was struck by “Seward’s ill concealed dislike of Lincoln.” After the senator left Springfield, he continued to snub Lincoln in his speeches. As Hanscom noted, “throughout Mr. Seward’s grand ovation in the Northwest, he very rarely, and then only in the curtest manner, spoke of the republican candidate for the Presidency.” Obviously, the senator’s “heart was not in the cause of Lincoln and Hamlin. And so, while he talked of the irrepressible conflict, of the backwardness of slave communities, and of the present and prospective grandeur of the great West, he never attempted to inspire his hearers with any elevated idea of the talents or abilities of Mr. Lincoln.”217

  After Seward’s opening address in Detroit, the New York Journal of Commerce remarked that he “is forced by circumstances to go forth on a speech-making mission, ostensibly in favor of his successful rival.” But, as the paper observed of Seward’s addresses, “Mr. Lincoln will get cold comfort from them, if that made at Detroit last evening, is to be the standard.” Save for one paragraph, Seward’s remarks contained “not the slightest allusion to the contest for the Presidency, or the most remote reference to Mr. Lincoln or the importance of his election.”218 In Chicago, Seward referred positively to John Brown and Elijah Lovejoy, but only mentioned Lincoln’s name once. In the other fifteen speeches he delivered on his western tour, Seward ignored Lincoln in seven and only briefly alluded to him in the rest.

  Hanscom’s paper, the New York Herald, asserted that everybody “knows, and he [Seward] has never attempted to disguise it, that he is no admirer of the country lawyer of Illinois.… It is not unnatural that he would regard with disfavor, if not with some degree of contempt, a man who, without any special merit of his own, was taken from the subordinate ranks of the party and promoted over his head.”219 George G. Fogg assured Lincoln that the senator “has no more doubt of his measureless superiority to you, than of his existence.… He either hates you for being nominated over him at Chicago, or he contemptuously expects to make you ‘play second fiddle’ to all his schemes.”220 (Alluding to Seward’s “enormous self-conceit,” Horace Greeley once asked Schuyler Colfax, “Do you happen to know of his ever consulting and counseling with any body on terms of equality?”)221

  Seward long harbored resentment against Lincoln for defeating him at Chicago. In March 1861, when told that German-Americans would be disappointed if he, as secretary of state, did not have Carl Schurz appointed to a first-class foreign mission, Seward exploded in rage: “Disappointment! You speak to me of disappointment. To me, who was justly entitled to the Republican nomination for the presidency, and who had to stand aside and see it given to a little Illinois lawyer! You speak to me of disappointment!” He found it humiliating to be “simply a clerk of the President!”222 (Two months later, Seward told his wife bitterly that he felt like “a chief reduced to a subordinate position, and surrounded with a guard, to see that I do not do too much for my country, lest some advantage may revert indirectly to my own fame.” Seward worried a lot about his fame. With immense self-pity, he added that the “country so largely relying on my poor efforts to save it, had refused me the full measure of its confidence, needful to that end.”)223

  Lincoln had been advised not to accompany Seward to Chicago, lest he seem to be deferring to the senator or to be violating the rule that presidential candidates eschew overt campaigning. Fogg warned that “Seward is evidently making a sort of triumphal march through the Country, with a large army of retainers. I trust that he will help the Republican cause. But there is one man [i.e., Lincoln] who must not be seen at his chariot wheels.”224 Lincoln’s Chicago friends opposed his visiting that city when Seward appeared there. Norman B. Judd, who in July had invited Seward to speak in Chicago, later criticized the Sage of Auburn’s appearance there as a ploy to enhance John Wentworth’s standing rather than to help Lincoln and Trumbull win their elections.

  Democrats charged that “Mr. Seward was Captain and Lincoln was only Lieutenant” and that the senator “would keep [the rank of] Captain after Lincoln was elected.”225 The Illinois State Register argued that in a Lincoln administration, Seward “will be, de facto, President of the United States.—Mr. Lincoln will be but an automaton in the White House.”226

  Illinois was the only battleground state Seward visited, in part because some Republican leaders had strenuously objected to the senator’s plans to campaign in their states, lest he frighten
off moderate voters. His ally Henry J. Raymond had warned shortly after the Chicago Convention that New Yorkers believed “Pennsylvania, New-Jersey, Illinois and Indiana have taken upon themselves the main burden of the canvass, and New-York will feel that she has done her part if she succeeds in casting her electoral vote for the nominees of the Convention.”227 (In the immediate aftermath of Lincoln’s nomination, Raymond had ordered the New York Times not to commit to the Rail-splitter.)

  Unlike the imperious Seward, Carl Schurz called on Lincoln at his house during a swing through Illinois. As they discussed the campaign and laughed at some of its twists and turns, Lincoln’s manner was so unpretentious that Schurz could scarcely realize that he was in the presence of a man likely to become president in a few months. Afterward Lincoln escorted his guest to the site where he was scheduled to speak. Because the July day was exceedingly hot, Lincoln shed his waistcoat and donned a linen duster, the back of which had large perspiration stains, making it resemble a map of the western hemisphere. He also wore an ancient, beat-up stovepipe hat. As the two men marched behind a brass band to the meeting place, Lincoln showed no signs of inflated ego but rather behaved as if nothing special had happened to him in the past few months. His neighbors waved and cheered, and he greeted them unself-consciously with his usual cordiality. He declined to sit on the platform where Schurz spoke, but instead took a seat in the front row. After listening to the impassioned young orator hold forth, Lincoln told him: “You are an awful fellow! I understand your power now!”228 Like many others, Lincoln regarded Schurz as one of the foremost speakers in the country.

  A prominent visitor to Springfield who did not call on Lincoln was the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII of England. Lincoln told Simon P. Hanscom that “he would like very much” to have met the heir-apparent to the British throne when he quietly passed through town on September 29. Lincoln stayed away as Springfielders welcomed the royal traveler because he worried about “having his motive misrepresented and a charge of immodesty brought against him.” He explained: “Being thus situated and not able to take any lead in the matter, I remained here at the State House, where I met so many sovereigns [i.e., fellow citizens] during the day that really the Prince had come and gone before I knew it.”229

  None of Lincoln’s many visitors was a client, because he had stopped practicing law, save for a handful of cases which he attended to in June. He said that he had pity for those clients because “the demands of his position made him an indifferent lawyer.”230

  Some callers were journalists, including an interviewer from the Missouri Democrat, who reported that the candidate’s “health and spirits are excellent; and though not quite so embrowned as when canvassing the State with Mr. Douglas, he is less lean than usual, and certainly looks as though he would not easily wither and die, even in the hot bed of the President’s house.”231 To another reporter, Lincoln expressed skepticism about the popularity of slavery among white Southerners. “Public opinion is not always private opinion,” he noted, citing “Lamartine’s account of the execution of Louis XVI., wherein it appeared that, although the leading revolutionists were publicly obliged to declare in favor of that deed, they were privately opposed to it. He said that it was the same with many people in the South; they were obliged to sustain slavery, although they secretly abhorred the institution.” He regretted that Southerners misunderstood the Republicans’ stand on slavery and expressed a wish to enlighten them.232

  In addition to visitors, Lincoln sometimes chatted with Newton Bateman, state superintendent of education, whose office was adjacent to the one the candidate was using. One day Lincoln complained to Bateman about the politics of Springfield’s clergymen. Informed that twenty of the town’s twenty-three ministers opposed his election, he pointed to a Bible and remarked sadly: “These men well know that I am for freedom … and that my opponents are for slavery. They know this, and yet, with this book in their hands, in the light of which human bondage cannot live a moment, they are going to vote against me. I do not understand it at all.”233 It was rumored that Lincoln seldom attended his wife’s church because its minister, John Howe Brown, favored Douglas.

  Many years later, Nicolay explained that the “opposition of the Springfield clergy to his election was chiefly due to remarks about them. One careless remark I remember was widely quoted. An eminent clergyman was delivering a series of doctrinal discourses which had attracted considerable local attention. Although Lincoln was frequently invited, he would not be induced to attend them. He remarked that he wouldn’t trust Brother———to construe the statutes of Illinois and much less the laws of God; that people who knew him wouldn’t trust his advice on an ordinary business transaction because they didn’t consider him competent; hence he didn’t see why they did so in the most important of all human affairs, the salvation of their souls. These remarks were quoted widely and misrepresented, to Lincoln’s injury. In those days people were not so liberal as now and anyone who criticized a parson was considered a skeptic.”234

  Following his nomination, Lincoln spoke to a journalist about his mail and callers, saying that “he liked to see his friends, and as to the letters, he took good care not to answer them.” His most serious grievance, he declared, was with “the artists; he tried in vain to recognize himself in some ‘Abraham Lincolns’ ” that were sent to him.235

  Indeed, capturing Lincoln’s image challenged even good artists. He jokingly explained that it was “impossible to get my graceful motions in—that’s the reason why none of the pictures are like me!”236 When told that none of the photographs accurately depicted him, he “laughingly suggested that it might not be desirable to have justice done to such forbidding features as his.”237 He did admire a photograph taken by Alexander Hesler in 1857; that likeness he deemed “a very true one; though my wife, and many others, do not. My impression is that their objection arises from the disordered condition of the hair. My judgment is worth nothing in these matters.”238 (The photographer had mussed Lincoln’s hair to make him look more natural.) When a lithograph of this photo was rushed into print, Lincoln enjoyed telling friends that newsboys hawking it on city streets cried out: “ ‘Ere’s yer last picter of Old Abe! He’ll look better when he gets his hair combed!”239 (One day during the Civil War, while visiting the front, Lincoln asked to borrow a hairbrush. When the request was honored, he said: “I can’t do anything with such a thing as that. It wouldn’t go through my hair. Now, if you have anything you comb your horse’s mane with, that might do.”)240

  Among the artists for whom Lincoln sat during the campaign were George Frederick Wright, Alban Jasper Conant, Thomas M. J. Johnston, J. Henry Brown, Jesse Atwood, Thomas Hicks, George P. A. Healy, and Charles A. Barry. A native of Boston, Barry was commissioned by Nathaniel P. Banks and John A. Andrew to do a crayon portrait of Lincoln. When Barry finished, Lincoln gestured toward the result and said: “Even my enemies must declare that to be a true likeness of Old Abe.”241 Of Hicks’s oil portrait, he remarked: “It will give the people of the East a correct idea how I look at home.… I think the picture has a somewhat pleasanter expression than I usually have, but that, perhaps, is not an objection.”242 Orville Browning called it “an exact, life like likeness” and “a beautiful work of art. It is deeply imbued with the intellectual and spiritual, and I doubt whether any one ever succeeds in getting a better picture of the man.”243

  Lincoln was also pleased by J. Henry Brown’s miniature portrait, which he deemed “an excellent one, so far as I can judge. To my unpracticed eye, it is without fault.”244 Nicolay, too, admired the portrait by Brown, who had been dispatched to Springfield by the wealthy Pennsylvania Republican leader, John M. Read. Brown explained to Nicolay that “the impression prevails East that Mr. Lincoln is very ugly—an impression which the published pictures of him of course all confirm.” Read, however, “had an idea that it could hardly be so—but was bound to have a good-looking picture,” and so ordered Brown “to make it good-looking
whether the original would justify it or not.” Thus, when Brown reached Springfield to carry out his commission, he had some forebodings, but “was very happy when on seeing him [Lincoln] he found that he was not at all such a man as had been represented.”245 Brown thought that there were “so many hard lines in his face that it becomes a mask to the inner man. His true character only shines out when in an animated conversation, or when telling an amusing tale.” Lincoln’s popularity impressed Brown, who was surprised to find that “even those opposed to him in politics speak of him in unqualified terms of praise.”246 Nicolay lauded Brown’s portrait as “strikingly faithful and correct. It is, in my opinion, as perfect a likeness of him as could be made.”247 When he saw the engraving made from it, Nicolay told Brown: “I am highly gratified that Mr. Lincoln’s friends will at length be enabled to obtain a good likeness of him.”248

  Mary Lincoln lauded Alban Jasper Conant’s portrait of her husband: “That is excellent, that is the way he looks when he has his friends about him.”249 Lincoln found it “more satisfactory than any portrait of him that has been painted, probably, he says, because it makes a better-looking man of him than the others do.”250 (In 1864, when he was introduced to the Pennsylvania artist A. B. Sloanaker, who had reportedly painted “a most beautiful portrait” of him, Lincoln replied: “I presume, sir, in painting your beautiful portrait, you took your idea of me from my principles, and not from my person.”)251 Mrs. Lincoln also admired Healy’s painting, though she “remarked that it gave Mr. Lincoln a graver expression than he usually wore.”252