Shortly before Christmas, Horace Greeley wrote a long policy letter of his own in an attempt to clarify his maddening insistence that while no state “can secede at pleasure from the Union, any more than a stave may secede from a cask of which it is a component part,” if “seven or eight contiguous States (not one small one) were to come to Washington saying: ‘We are tired of the Union—let us out!’ I should say, ‘There’s the door—go!’ ” Worried about Lincoln’s safety on his upcoming inaugural journey, Greeley also urged the president-elect to travel south via pro-Union Wheeling, and “with a very strong force.”8 Lincoln held his tongue. Writing to his sweetheart, a New York reader named George Peckham observed: “Lincoln seems quite conservative in his views which I am glad to see—but Greeley is doing his best to make trouble—your Wide Awake friends will find him out some day.”9
Just before South Carolinians met for their secession convention in December 1860, the president-elect did, however, write to Greeley’s newspaper rival Thurlow Weed to share his views on the constitutionality of secession—or lack of it—remarkably enough marking the first time Lincoln ever commented on the inflammatory but crucial subject. As Lincoln put it, “no state can, in any way lawfully, get out of the Union.” Lincoln sent another note to the Courier and Enquirer’s James Watson Webb to assure him that he also opposed abandoning federal installations in the hostile South. “I think we should hold the forts, or take them,” he confided in a letter marked as private, “as the case may be.” And when William Cullen Bryant advised Lincoln to resist Weed’s efforts to promote Seward for the cabinet, the president-elect ambiguously replied: “I promise you that I shall unselfishly try to deal fairly with all men and all shades of opinion among our friends.” The strain showing, he added: “I can only say I shall have a great deal of trouble, [and] do the best I can.”10
More newspaper advice arrived when Nathaniel Paschall, editor of the pro-Democratic Missouri Republican, implored Lincoln anew to make a conciliatory statement to Southerners. In response, the president-elect reminded Paschall that the Southern press already had access to all the assurances they needed: “I could say nothing which I have not already said, and which is in print and accessible to the public,” Lincoln insisted. “Please pardon me for suggesting that if the papers, like yours, which heretofore have persistently garbled, and misrepresented what I have said, will now fully and fairly place it before their readers, there can be no further misunderstanding.”11
Lincoln reacted even more indignantly when during the same mid-December period, Henry Raymond forwarded a letter he had received from Colonel William C. Smedes, whom he described as “an able, wealthy, influential gentleman of Mississippi.” Smedes regarded Lincoln as “disastrous” for Southern Unionists like himself, believing “he is pledged to the extinction of slavery, holds the black man to be the equal of the white, & stigmatizes our whole people as immoral & unchristian.” The allegedly moderate Smedes did not mince words. “I would regard death by a stroke of lightning to Mr Lincoln as but a just punishment from an offended Deity,” he fumed, particularly because of “his infamous & unpatriotic avowals . . . made on the presentation of a pitcher by some free negroes to Gov. [Salmon] Chase.” According to the Mississippian, Lincoln had committed the egregious sin of appearing at a racially integrated public event honoring the Ohio politician. A baffled Raymond hoped that Lincoln would at least “find time to say a word about the silver pitcher speech” to help the editor craft his own “comments on these matters” should a response become necessary. In Raymond’s opinion, “Union men at the South stand in need of backing . . . and it seems to me important that we should open the door for them as wide as the hinges will let it swing.”12
Instead, Lincoln, who had never attended any event like the one Smedes described, exploded in rage over the charge. “What a very mad-man your correspondent, Smedes is,” he fumed in an attempt to kill the story before it gained traction. Assuming the third person to provide Raymond with the text of a formal denial if required, he added stiffly: “Mr. Lincoln is not pledged to the ultimate extinctinction [sic] of slavery; does not hold the black man to be the equal of the white, unqualifiedly as Mr. S. states it; and never did stigmatize their white people as immoral & unchristian; and Mr. S. can not prove one of his assertions true.” Moreover, as Lincoln added for good measure, he was “never in a meeting of negroes in my life; and never saw a pitcher presented by anybody to anybody.” A few weeks later, after Mississippi seceded, Smedes justified Lincoln’s outrage by writing him directly to gloat: “The union of these American States is actually dissolved. . . . You will be installed President over a part only of the ‘United States.’ ”13
Despite this troubling exchange, which exposed the perils inherent in either replying to or ignoring newspaper comments, Lincoln continued to share his thoughts with newspapermen only rarely, and almost always confidentially. On the other hand, he occasionally met in person with the prominent editors who journeyed to Springfield in the teeth of winter determined to see and influence him. Thurlow Weed was the first to invite himself, two weeks after the Herald prematurely declared: “Poor Weed. His glory is departed—his metal is broken—his pride is humbled—his self reliance is gone—the air of conscious superiority no longer graces him.” In fact, Lincoln not only welcomed but encouraged the visit of the “prince of the New York lobbyists.” As one of Lincoln’s closest confidants had alerted Weed in advance: “Mr. Lincoln would be very glad to see you. . . . Your coming to Springfield may make newspaper talk, but he says he don’t care for that, if you don’t.”14 Weed used his visit to press Seward’s claim to a cabinet post, and also urged the president-elect to nominate Southerners to fill other high positions—in addition to Greeley’s onetime convention choice, Edward Bates, whom Lincoln had already resolved to appoint.
By December, however, following several unsuccessful overtures to Upper South ex-Whigs, Lincoln concluded that he could not invite other Southerners into the cabinet after all. Not surprisingly, he provided his explanation in his long-accustomed manner: through a thinly disguised anonymous editorial in the Illinois State Journal. There is no doubt of its authorship; a surviving draft in Lincoln’s hand proves that the president-elect crafted the opinion himself:
We see such frequent allusion to a supposed purpose on the part of Mr. Lincoln to call into his cabinet two or three Southern gentlemen, from the parties opposed to him politically, that we are prompted to ask a few questions.
1st. Is it known that any such gentlemen of character, would accept a place in the cabinet?
2—If yea, on what terms? Does he surrender to Mr. Lincoln, or Mr. Lincoln to him, on the political difference between them? Or do they enter upon the administration in open opposition to each other?
What is the understanding on these questions?15
The editorial—“known to have emanated directly from the President elect,” the New York Herald reported, and published for the first time in his “recognized organ”—had its desired effect. It ended all talk of further Southern representation in the cabinet, though it left vexingly open the unanswered calls for compromise.16 That issue came to the forefront again at the end of the year, when Lincoln agreed to sit down with yet another journalistic powerhouse, his old acquaintance, sixty-nine-year-old Duff Green. At outgoing president James Buchanan’s behest, the onetime Jacksonian—Lincoln’s old Washington “landlord” from back in his congressional days—showed up in Springfield determined to convince his fellow Kentuckian (and distant relative by marriage) to reconsider his resistance to further conciliation.17 The famously blunt Green quickly got down to business: he wanted Lincoln to put something in writing to endorse a constitutional amendment that would guarantee the survival—and potentially the expansion—of slavery in return for an end to the secession movement. What was more, Green proposed dramatically carrying such a letter to Washington himself. This put Lincoln in a bind. Although Duff Green was past his prime as a power broker, he was a hard
man to refuse; besides, he still counted many admirers, particularly in the Border Slave States whose Union loyalties Lincoln wanted to ensure, Kentucky first among them. So the president-elect complied with the request—after a fashion.
Two key Western editors who unsuccessfully urged Lincoln to clarify his policies before the inauguration: Indiana’s John Defrees (left), who received a plum patronage job in the administration; and Kentuckian Duff Green (right), who abandoned the Union and supported the Confederacy.
“Gen. Duff Green is out here endeavoring to draw a letter out of me,” Lincoln reported to Senator Lyman Trumbull on December 28. “I have written one.” The text turned out to be almost exactly what Green hoped for. While it expressed Lincoln’s Whiggish aversion toward constitutional amendments of any kind, it conceded that the American people deserved “a fair opportunity of expressing their will” regarding slavery compromise. Lincoln went even further on another volatile issue, renouncing any “lawless invasion, by armed force, of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter under what pretext, as the gravest of crimes” (a pledge he would later forgo). But rather than hand this potentially explosive statement to the volatile Green, Lincoln instead mailed it off to Senator Lyman Trumbull in Washington, instructing him to withhold it from the public if “you conclude that it may do us harm.” The strategy worked. The sentiments remained unpublished, but the mere crafting of them had been enough to get Green out of Springfield before he could communicate any damaging complaints to the press. Only later did the outmaneuvered veteran editor tell Lincoln: “I regret your unwillingness to recommend an amendment to the constitution which will arrest the progress of secession.”18
Since news of his recent visit had already appeared in print, Green now issued a threat: “I have deemed it expedient to publish a statement which will probably appear in the N.Y. Herald of tomorrow . . . framed as to give no offence to you.” Green’s statement appeared as promised, and proved benign, almost admiring. The Herald reported that Green “speaks of Lincoln with much respect, and believes that he sincerely wishes to administer the government in such manner as to satisfy the South.” Green did add that Lincoln believed “secession is rebellion, and is resolved to use force to suppress and punish it.” Only at the end of this long interview did Green assign blame for the crisis squarely on the North, insisting: “All that the South demands is their equal rights within the Union, or independence out of it.” Once again, Lincoln’s deft press manipulation had averted a political catastrophe. As for Green, he ultimately pledged his loyalty to the South and spent most of the war wisely, but futilely, urging the Confederacy to industrialize.19
• • •
Lincoln might not have survived the interregnum with his political power and personal following intact had it not been for a most unlikely source of reassurance: James Gordon Bennett’s always unpredictable New York Herald. In mid-November, his pocketbook as deep as ever, and his eye as always focused on increasing circulation, Bennett assigned his German-born reporter Henry (born Heinrich) Villard, a disappointed onetime Seward backer, to plant himself in Springfield and provide regular dispatches to New York on the president-elect’s activities.
Villard arrived in town expecting to dislike Lincoln. Indeed, he had privately admitted that he did not comprehend how such an “uncouth, common Illinois politician” had triumphed over Seward, a man he believed “the foremost figure” in the nation.20 Over the next three months, however, the young correspondent’s almost daily dispatches grew in warmth and appreciation. Before long, Villard was sympathetically conveying the brave and resolute manner in which Lincoln was bearing the burdens of a challenging period marked by treason and disunion on an unprecedented scale. More than any other journalist of his time, Villard constructed key pillars of what would emerge after the Civil War as part of the Lincoln legend: the beleaguered man of patience, wisdom, and unfailing humor.
Revolted as he was at first by the spectacle of “importunate office-seekers” crowding the hallways outside Lincoln’s office in quest of self-advancement, Villard came to appreciate his ability to “submit to this tribulation.” The journalist marveled at the president-elect’s unique way of pleasing almost all visitors with his sometimes “grotesque joviality,” for as Villard discovered, Lincoln had a funny story for almost every caller, and “it would be hard to find one who tells better jokes, enjoys them better and laughs oftener than Abraham Lincoln.”21 As Villard reported, Lincoln learned to juggle a constant stream of visitors, mail, sittings for artists, and the vexing challenges of building a cabinet and scuttling the secession movement—all without making statements for the public record. “The idea that the President elect takes all visiting scribblers of more or less obscurity into his heart and makes them the repositories of his mind is so preposterous,” Villard wrote on December 8, “that none but the greenest of their readers should be taken in with it. . . . The truth is that Mr. Lincoln has not talked and will not talk with anyone.” Yet after a while, Villard emerged as Lincoln’s voice, or at least the best reflection of his future policies. “I venture to say,” the Herald correspondent accurately predicted in late January, “that one of the first acts of his administration will be to reinforce Fort Sumter should Major Anderson and his gallant band be found still holding out” at the federal garrison in Charleston Harbor.22
Although Villard never earned a byline for his copy, the stories themselves achieved enormous circulation. Because the Herald was contractually obligated to share its reports with other members of the Associated Press, Villard’s dispatches often ended up published—sometimes on the same day as the Herald ran them—on the pages of the rival New York Times, the daily published by a man Bennett still derided as “Little Raymond.”23 For three full months, until February 1861, Villard operated as the only reporter in the nation regularly covering Abraham Lincoln—uniquely privy to exclusives, and well positioned to provide material for many newspapers at once. He was a one-man press pool. As Cincinnati correspondent Murat Halstead testified, “I know that the President regarded him with a warm affection.”24
It is easy to understand why. By mid-December Villard was admitting: “Having closely observed him since the election, and well noted the impressions left upon him by the secession phases of the present imbroglio, I dare say that there are dormant qualities in ‘Old Abe’ which occasion will draw forth, develope [sic] and remind people to a certain degree of the characteristics of ‘Old Hickory.’ ” Villard became convinced that Lincoln “honestly means to sink the man in the public officer, the partisan in the patriot, the republican in the faithful executor and protector of the federal laws in every state of the republic.”25
If Villard never stopped objecting to the amount of time Lincoln was forced to devote to patronage matters, he surely came to the eventual realization that among those reaping the greatest rewards were fellow journalists. John L. Scripps, for example, whose principal qualification for office was the authorship of his 1860 Lincoln campaign biography, secured appointment as postmaster of Chicago at an annual salary of $1,500. Joseph Lewis of the pro-Republican Chester County (Pennsylvania) Times—remembered (at least by Lincoln) as the first newspaperman to publish a campaign life—was named commissioner of internal revenue. And yet another journalist-turned-biographer, Joseph Barrett of the Cincinnati Commercial, became commissioner of pensions.
Henry Villard of the New York Herald filed dispatches on Lincoln from Springfield throughout the 1860–1861 Secession Winter. His respect for the president-elect grew with each report.
New York journalist Henry Bowen, who helped organize Lincoln’s visit to Cooper Union, eventually won appointment as a revenue collector in Brooklyn. New Haven editor James F. Babcock, who had hosted Lincoln during his post–Cooper Union speaking tour through New England, secured the coveted job of collector of the Port of New Haven, and newspaper veteran George Fogg, who had looked after Robert Lincoln during his terms at Exeter, became minister to Switzerland. Other diplomatic p
osts went to Rufus King of the Milwaukee Sentinel (minister to Rome), W. S. Thayer of the New York Evening Post (consul to Alexandria), and Rufus Hosmer of the Michigan Republican (Consul to Frankfort). Postmasters’ jobs went to Peter Foy of the Missouri Democrat, A. W. Campbell of the Wheeling Democrat, George Dawson of the Albany Evening Journal, and to staff members of the Dayton Daily Journal, Cleveland Leader, and Buffalo Times.
At Thurlow Weed’s urging, New York Evening Post assistant editor John Bigelow became American consul in Paris, an appointment enthusiastically welcomed by U.S. Minister-designate William Dayton, who wanted “a gentleman accustomed to the use of the pen.”26 The long-loyal William Bailhache of the Illinois State Journal aspired successfully to an army quartermaster’s post. Another onetime editor, Connecticut’s Gideon Welles (founder of the Hartford Times), got the biggest plum for New England: appointment to the cabinet as secretary of the navy. And despite Lincoln’s qualms about his integrity, Pennsylvania publisher-turned-politician Simon Cameron became secretary of war. And then there was that German first among equals, Theodore Canisius.
Few newspapers produced as many presidential appointees as the New York Tribune. James E. Harvey became minister to Portugal, while James S. Pike won the post of minister to The Hague, and the paper’s former business manager, Thomas McElrath, earned a prestigious place at the Customs House. With rumors continuing to swirl around Horace Greeley’s own ambitions for political reward, the Herald’s Frederic Hudson wickedly observed that “it became the talk in newspaper circles that the Tribune would be depleted of its writers in consequence of the necessity of the new administration for suitable men to send abroad as ministers, chargé d’affaires, and consuls.” Greeley huffily maintained that no “appointment of any correspondent of the Tribune to any ‘clerkship’ or other office at Washington was either sought, desired, or acquiesced in by us, and, if any such infidelity to our service has existed, it must have been very rare.” The numbers argued otherwise. As the Philadelphia Argus smirked in February, “The black-republican papers are quarreling like cats and dogs over the prospective spoils at Washington.”27 Not that such rewards to friendly journalists were unusual or unexpected. In the South, journalist John B. Jones, who had once labored on a John Tyler campaign extra, soon found himself happily recruited to serve as a clerk in the Confederate War Department.28
Lincoln and the Power of the Press The War for Public Opinion Page 37
