Lincoln and the Power of the Press The War for Public Opinion

by Harold Holzer

  Theodore Tilton experienced marital difficulties in the early 1870s and sent his wife, Libby, for counseling with his longtime friend and onetime fellow New York Independent editor, Reverend Henry Ward Beecher. Apparently the charismatic minister’s “counseling” went too far. In 1874, Tilton brought criminal charges against the famous minister for “criminal intimacy” with Libby, resulting in a sensational trial that drove America’s Reconstruction battles off the front pages. When a jury failed to convict Beecher, and Brooklyn’s Plymouth Church excommunicated his accuser, Tilton went into exile in Paris. He died there at the age of seventy-one in 1907.

  Perhaps the state’s most famous newspaper editor, Frederick Douglass had in August 1863 discontinued publication of his Douglass’ Monthly after sixteen consecutive years in print to devote himself to recruiting black troops, and in anticipation of a military commission for himself that never arrived. “With a heart full and warm with gratitude to you for all you have done in furtherance of the cause of these to whom I devoted my life,” Douglass closed his valedictory editorial by echoing the final words Lincoln had imparted to his neighbors when he left Springfield for the presidency: “I bid you an affectionate farewell.”15 When the Civil War ended two years later, Douglass became president of the Freedman’s Savings Bank and, later, American chargé d’affaires in the Dominican Republic. Although he supported Grant’s two bids for the presidency, Douglass in 1872 became the first African American to run (albeit symbolically, and without his consent) for national office (against the Grant reelection ticket) as the vice presidential candidate of the Equal Rights Party.

  Four years later, on the eleventh anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination, Douglass delivered a justly famous dedicatory address at the unveiling of Thomas Ball’s Lincoln statue in Washington. Again paraphrasing Lincoln’s words—this time the sentiments of his 1862 Annual Message to Congress—Douglass told the nation’s African Americans, “In doing honor to the memory of our friend and liberator, we have been doing highest honors to ourselves.”16 Those who remembered that Lincoln had once adapted Douglass’s “right makes might” phrase for his career-altering 1860 Cooper Union address no doubt believed that the rhetorical debt had finally been collected. Frederick Douglass died in 1895 at around seventy-seven years of age. Since he had been born a slave, no one, not even the great black leader himself, was ever sure of his precise birth date.

  • • •

  In the nation’s capital, years before Ball’s controversial “Emancipator” statue was unveiled, John Wein Forney, who had tried without success to win a cabinet post after Lincoln’s reelection, sold the Washington Chronicle in 1870. He then returned to the city where he had launched his career in journalism, armed with a new federal patronage post: collector of the Port of Philadelphia. Ever searching for the next chance, Forney later rejoined the political party he had abandoned during Lincoln’s presidency, again becoming a Democrat. He published two volumes of memoirs, which boasted a trove of firsthand reminiscences about Lincoln, and died in 1881 at age sixty-one.17

  Forney’s Washington rival for access to Lincoln administration news, James Welling of the National Intelligencer, became president of St. John’s College in Annapolis after the war, then served as a professor of English at the College of New Jersey and finally as president of Columbian College—later known as George Washington University—in Washington. He was sixty-nine when he died in 1894.

  Lawrence Gobright, longtime chief of the capital bureau of the Associated Press, testified before the military tribunal hearing the case of alleged Lincoln assassination conspirator Dr. Samuel Mudd. Later he covered Andrew Johnson’s national get-acquainted tour for the AP. His memoirs appeared in 1869, but eight years later, Gobright ran afoul of the bureau and retired.18 He died in 1881 at age sixty-five.

  Noah Brooks, who might well have gone on to serve as Abraham Lincoln’s White House secretary had the president lived for a second term, published his highly useful biography of Lincoln thirty years later, and began the new century with a book about the Lewis and Clark Expedition.19 He was seventy-two years old when he died in Pasadena, California, in 1903.

  • • •

  Then there was the case of Theodore Canisius, the German-born editor who had entered into a discreet publishing partnership with Lincoln back in 1859 in Springfield, and who continued his career in government and diplomacy long after his benefactor’s assassination.

  After leaving the post to which Lincoln had named him—that of American consul at Vienna—Canisius held other consular positions in both Germany and England before beginning an extended tour as consul to the Samoan Islands. Canisius also produced a German-language Lincoln biography in 1867, which went through several editions over the years but failed to inspire an English translation. Never a good businessman, Canisius tried launching a sugar refinery, but enjoyed no more success than he had scored in the newspaper business. He returned to Chicago in fragile health in 1885, and died there that December, believed to be around sixty years old. Neither his books nor his obituaries made mention of the German-language weekly he had once co-owned with the leader he outlived by two decades; Canisius took that secret to the grave. His New York Times death notice mentioned only that the late diplomat had once been “acquainted with President Lincoln.”20

  • • •

  Though Greeley and Bennett reconciled symbolically after the latter’s funeral in 1872, both of these feisty old rivals surely would have objected violently had they lived to witness the 1924 merger of their once fiercely competitive newspapers to form the New York Herald Tribune. Later owned by John Hay Whitney, a grandson of Lincoln’s assistant secretary, John Hay, the new paper went on to earn a reputation as one of the most brilliantly written dailies in the city. But in the 1960s, a newspaper era marked by costly labor strikes and intense competition from television news, the paper began suffering unsustainable losses in readership and revenue. In 1966, the struggling Herald Tribune merged once again—this time with the polyglot local dailies the World Telegram and Sun and the Journal American, forever obliterating the individual political traditions that had once informed the founding of each of those seven distinct, original titles. The new, consolidated World Journal Tribune, however, did not long endure. After only eight months, it closed its doors forever in May 1967—thereby putting a “30” on the entire epoch that had witnessed the founding of Ben Day’s Sun, Manton Marble’s World, James Gordon Bennett’s Herald, and Horace Greeley’s Tribune.

  The New York Times, rescued from the brink of extinction in 1896 by onetime Knoxville Chronicle “printer’s devil” Adolph Ochs—and still owned by his descendants (today published by his great-grandson Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr.)—remains the only one of the three major New York dailies founded in the age of Lincoln to survive into the twenty-first century. In the decades since the Ochs family took control, the Times became and remains the most influential daily not only in the city, but in the nation, and one of the leading print and online news platforms in the world.

  Today, just as it did during the Civil War, the Times again occupies the most modern newspaper headquarters in New York, a gleaming 2007 Renzo Piano–designed glass skyscraper on Eighth Avenue at Fortieth Street. There, just outside the paper’s sun-drenched executive boardroom on the tower’s sixteenth floor, in a hallway otherwise dominated by sleek white tables and a modern black leather couch, publisher Sulzberger continues to devote a place of honor to a treasured, but discordant-looking relic from the age of the partisan political press: the quaint wooden lowboy secretary desk once used on Newspaper Row by the Times’s founder, Henry Jarvis Raymond.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A writer launches a new project hoping he can underwrite the cost of pursuing it. So my gratitude goes first to supporters who helped fund this undertaking. Warm thanks go to the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, especially Norman Peck, and to the Lehrman Institute, in particular Lewis Lehrman, for their generosity and faith over nearly a decade.<
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  The most generous and sustained support of all came from Roger Hertog, chairman emeritus of the New-York Historical Society, who asked me to serve as the Society’s first Roger Hertog Fellow, enabling me to conduct research there and at many other places. It is an honor to carry his name in my job description.

  I am much indebted to the scholars who read all or part of the manuscript and offered many ideas for its improvement. Thanks go first to Professor Emeritus Craig L. Symonds of the U. S. Naval Academy with whom I had the pleasure of editing a 2010 collection of New York Times Civil War coverage. Working on that earlier project fueled my enthusiasm for this broader study, which incorporates research we unearthed together. This time around, Craig reviewed every line of text, never faltering in his generous commitment even during periods that would have made postponement understandable.

  In addition, that ninety-year-old wonder, Wayne C. Temple of the Illinois State Archives—born, like Lincoln’s mother and myself on February 5 (somewhere between those two events, we often joke)—applied his encyclopedic knowledge to chapters focusing on Lincoln’s Springfield years. And Civil War scholar John F. Marszalek improved sections relating to William T. Sherman and his volatile relationship with journalists. I also thank the inexhaustible Dr. Jonathan W. White of Christopher Newport University, who read the text and proposed terrific ideas for additions and illustrations. His thoughtfulness even extended through his initial sleepless nights as a first-time father.

  Special gratitude goes to Princeton professor emeritus—and premier Civil War authority—James M. McPherson, along with Seward biographer Walter Stahr, for the gift of their unexpected, but truly essential readings and comments.

  At the institutions where I conducted principal research, scholars and administrators alike proved unfailingly generous with their time and guidance. I must single out Michelle Krowl at the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress, who pointed the way to many relevant documents and again made possible my full access to the original documents in the Abraham Lincoln Papers.

  In Springfield, Illinois, my thanks go to Daniel W. Stowell, director of the Papers of Abraham Lincoln, and to research specialist Marilyn Mueller. At the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum, I am grateful to James Cornelius, knowledgeable curator of the Lincoln Collection, and his colleague Jennifer Ericson, as well as to director Eileen Mackevich, library services director Kathryn Harris, archivist Cheryl Schnirring, library associate Debbie S. Hamm, and audio visual specialists Mary Michals and Roberta Fairburn, most of whom have been there for me during many Lincoln endeavors. In another “Lincoln state,” appreciation goes to my frequent collaborator Sara Vaughn Gabbard at the Friends of the Lincoln Collection of Indiana at Fort Wayne; to Ian Rolland, for generously backing the digitization of archives on which I relied for research; and to Jane Gastineau and Adriana Maynard at the Lincoln Financial Foundation Collection. For frequent good advice from the southern seat of the war, my gratitude to John Coski, historian at the Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond.

  At the New-York Historical Society, I thank both president Louise Mirrer and chair Pam Schafler for their always warm welcomes, along with curators, librarians, and research specialists Linda Ferber, Jean Ashton, Jillian Pazereckas, Jeanne Gardner, Eleanor Gillers, and the ever resourceful Valerie Paley (who seems to know where every last document is stored), not to mention Dale Gregory, who creates such accessible public programs. I am similarly grateful to my Albany colleagues: former New York State Archivist Christine Ward, Carla Janowsky at the State Library, Mark Schaming of the State Museum, State Historian Robert Weible, and Robert Bullock, formerly of the State Archives Partnership Trust.

  At the Lehigh Valley Heritage Museum in Allentown, Joseph Garrera showed me original post-assassination newspapers whose mournful headlines inspired the closing lines of this book. At the Lincoln Forum, an organization with which I have been proudly associated for twenty years, encouragement came from chairman Frank J. Williams, co-administrator Betty Anselmo, and treasurer Russell Weidman, who not only administered my research grants, but thoughtfully gave me a Frederick Douglass book once owned by his adored late wife Budge. Good advice and warm collegiality also came from my longtime Lincoln Group of New York friends, including Richard Sloan, Stan King, Henry Ballone, and Steve Koppelman. Additional thanks go to the staffs of the many other institutions where I conducted research: the National Archives, the Newseum, the Pennsylvania Historical Society, the New York Public Library, the Columbia University Libraries, the Richmond Public Library, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Chicago History Museum.

  Private collectors and dealers are important resources as well. My friend Daniel Weinberg, proprietor of Chicago’s Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, helped me find elusive titles crucial to my research and generously gave permission to publish his two photographs and one life sketch showing Lincoln with newspapers. Nathan Raab of the Raab Collection shared recently discovered Horace Greeley correspondence. Book dealer Chuck Hand of Paris, Illinois, remained faithfully on the lookout for rare publications, and Christopher Coover, manuscript specialist at Christie’s, shared relevant catalogue entries. George Buss of Freeport, Illinois, Lincoln enactor and Stephen Douglas collector, provided a perfect early likeness of “The Little Giant.”

  Speaking of resources, the Frank and Virginia Williams Lincolniana Collection in Rhode Island remains one of the best private archives of Civil War–era material in the country, and thanks to Frank, one of the most accessible. My close friend for more than thirty-five years has never refused a plea to transmit an urgently needed document or source. Further opportunities to marvel at original material arrived closer to home. I thought I would never see, much less hold in my hands, Lincoln’s original, handwritten letter in support of beleaguered editor Thomas Pickett, but my friend Tony Kushner allowed me to do so, for which I’m truly grateful.

  The working journalists and editors of the Civil War era boast a number of descendants who still champion their heritage and retain valuable material and family memories. My gratitude goes to Michael Larocco for a peek at the Daniel Butterfield archive; to Brenda Molloy Paley, whose ancestor Joseph I. Gilbert transcribed the Gettysburg Address; and to Beth Colley, descendant of Joseph H. Richards of the New York Independent. Sadly, Eleanor Stoddard, granddaughter of Lincoln’s private secretary William O. Stoddard, died at age ninety-two just days after I handed in the manuscript, reminding me afresh of how generous she had been over the years in sharing materials from the Stoddard archive.

  More inspiration came from publisher J. P. Leventhal, who issued the 2010 Times compendium, and Dwight Zimmerman, who mined the digitized archives on which I continued to rely for this project. I am grateful as well to Times veterans Mitchel Levitas and Alex Ward, who supervised that project together with an earlier one, Lincoln and the Times, for which I had the honor of working with the late, great David Herbert Donald.

  I must also acknowledge the young researchers who aided me in nailing down quotes and finding documents and clippings. Principal gratitude goes to my primary research aide, the relentless Avi Mowshowitz, with additional thanks to Leland Chamlin and Win Rutherfurd. A special shout-out to Kraig Smith and Becky Schear of the Metropolitan Museum’s Public Affairs department for using their off-hours to insert corrections and remind me that no matter how hard I try, I really don’t know how properly to use the Internet.

  My longtime senior colleagues at the Met often tease me about the time I devote to Lincoln, but this never detracts from the encouragement they have always shown me. Thanks again go to President Emily Rafferty and Director and CEO Thomas Campbell, as well as Librarian Ken Soehner and American Wing curators Morrison Heckscher, Thayer Tolles, and Elizabeth Kornhauser. And for being the best instant Latin phrase translator this side of Ancient Rome, I thank Philippe de Montebello as well.

  I have profited enormously from discussions with fellow historians. For the pleasure of their company, conversation, and advice on this p
roject, I thank: Jonathan Alter, Sidney Blumenthal, Gregory Borchard, Robert and Ina Caro, Ron Chernow, Henry Cohen, Alicia Cooper, William C. Davis, Peter Dickson, Paul Finkelman, Amanda Foreman, Guy Fraker, Norton Garfinkle, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Thomas Horrocks, James McPherson, David Mindich, Mark E. Neely, Jr., Matthew Pinsker, Ford Risley, James I. Robertson, Walter Stahr, John Taliaferro, Michael Vorenberg, Thomas Wheeler, Ted Widmer, Sean Wilentz, Douglas L. Wilson, Brenda Wineapple, Kenneth Winkle, and David Woodard.

  Among those who invited me to deliver early talks on aspects of this book, which helped me shape the final study, I thank Jonathan White, who hosted a 2012 Christopher Newport conference on “Lincoln, the Constitution, and the Nation at War;” the Albany Law School and New York State Archives, which included me in its 2012 “Civil War on Trial” conference; and Marilyn Marcus of the Association of the Courts of New York State, who invited me to deliver the annual lecture named for the late husband of the esteemed emerita Chief Judge of the State Court of Appeals, Judith Kaye.

  Hearteningly, over all the years that I worked on and discussed this book, I never encountered a print or broadcast journalist who failed to cheer the project. For their encouragement, thanks go to the following modern heirs to the Civil War “Bohemian Brigade:” Max Frankel, Joyce Purnick, Jill Abramson, Glenn Collins, Eleanor Randolph, James Barron, and Sam Roberts, all of the New York Times; Michael Goodwin of the New York Post; Rex Smith and Paul Grondahl of the Albany Times-Union; Ken Kurson of the New York Observer; Brian Lamb, Susan Swain, Steve Scully, Peter Slen, Russell Logan, and all my friends at C-SPAN; WAMC Radio CEO Alan Chartock, Jeffrey Brown of the PBS News Hour; television lions Charlie Rose and Gabe Pressman; Peter Dunn of CBS, along with his mentor and mentee, respectively, Dennis Swanson and Lew Leone; and the late and much missed Richard Heffner, for more than fifty years the host of PBS’ Open Mind. At the Associated Press, I thank retired editor Richard Pyle, senior editor, vice president, and longtime friend Michael Oreskes; corporate communications officer Chuck Zoeller; writer Allen G. Breed; and director of corporate archives Valerie S. Komor, who asked me to speak during the run of the 2011 exhibition, “Long Remembered: The Associated Press with Lincoln at the First Inaugural and Gettysburg,” and also opened the AP collection for research.