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

Page 79

by Harold Holzer


  6 Speech in the House of Representatives, CW, 1:490.

  7 New York Tribune, June 22, 1848.

  8 National Intelligencer, June 22, 1848.

  9 Lincoln to William H. Herndon, June 22, 1848, CW, 1:491–92. Lincoln was undoubtedly referring to the hometown Sangamo Journal, the Beardstown Gazette, the (Lacon) Illinois Gazette, the (Jacksonville) Morgan Journal, and the recently defunct Hennepin Herald.

  10 J. H. Buckingham, Illinois as Lincoln Knew It: A Boston Reporter’s Record of a Trip in 1847, ed. Harry E. Pratt., reprinted from Papers in Illinois History and Transactions for the Year 1937 (Springfield, Ill.: Abraham Lincoln Association, 1938), 13. Observer Buckingham, who further described the “happy” delegates as “uproariously orderly,” was the son of the publisher of the Boston Courier.

  11 New York Tribune, July 17, 1847.

  12 Elihu B. Washurne, in Allen Thorndike Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time (New York: North American Publishing Co., 1886), 16.

  13 Lincoln to Horace Greeley, June 27, 1848, CW, 1:493–94.

  14 New York Tribune, June 29, 1848.

  15 Lincoln to William H. Herndon, July 10, 1848, CW, 1:497.

  16 Wilson and Davis, eds., Herndon’s Lincoln, 179.

  17 Lincoln called Henry Clay his “beau ideal of a statesman”—or a “great man” (accounts differed) at his first senatorial debate with Stephen Douglas at Ottawa, Illinois, on August 21, 1858; see CW, 3:29; Lincoln declared himself for Taylor in a letter to a Taylor committee on February 9, 1848; see CW, 1:449.

  18 New York Herald, February 24, 1848.

  19 New York Herald, June 10, 1848.

  20 Oliver Dyer, Great Senators of the United States Forty Years Ago (1848 and 1849) . . . (New York: Robert Bonner’s Sons, 1889), 81–83.

  21 New York Herald, September 25, 1848.

  22 New York Tribune, September 29, November 6, 1848.

  23 Speech in the House of Representatives, July 27, 1848, CW, 1:509

  24 New York Herald, March 31, 1848.

  25 Baltimore Journal, August 16, 1848.

  26 Lincoln to Stephen A. Hurlbut, July 10, 1848, CW, 1:498.

  27 National Intelligencer, quoted in Paul Findley, A. Lincoln: The Crucible of Congress (New York: Crown, 1979), 189; Baltimore Clipper, September 2, 1848, cited in Earl Schenck Miers, Lincoln Day by Day: A Chronology, 1809–1865, 3 vols. (Washington, D.C.: Lincoln Sesquicentennial Commission, 1960), 1:319.

  28 Press reviews quoted in Miers, ed., Lincoln Day by Day, 1:320–21.

  29 Boston Daily Atlas, November 17, 1848.

  30 Quoted in Walter Stahr, Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 110.

  31 Frederick Seward, Autobiography of William H. Seward . . . (New York: D. Appleton, 1883), 80.

  32 Stahr, Seward: Lincoln’s Indispensable Man, 110–11. The story of this allegedly fateful meeting was first printed by artist Francis B. Carpenter, who collected many Lincoln anecdotes during the six months he worked in the White House in 1864 painting Lincoln, Seward, and other members of the cabinet at the first reading of the Emancipation Proclamation.

  33 Boston Atlas, September 23, 1848, reported in Robert S. Harper, Lincoln and the Press (McGraw-Hill, 1951), 11; Boston Daily Advertiser, September 14, 1848, in Herbert Mitgang, ed., Lincoln as They Saw Him (New York: Rinehart, 1956), 61, 64.

  34 Boston Daily Atlas, September 25, 1848.

  35 Illinois State Register, October 13, 1848.

  36 The final vote in Illinois was: Cass, 56,300; Taylor, 53,047; and Van Buren, 15,774. Nationwide, Taylor won 1,360,099 votes to Cass’s 1,220,544, winning the electoral votes 163–127.

  37 Greeley replaced Congressman David S. Jackson after his opponent, James Monroe, nephew of the former president, contested the election, and the House decided to seat neither.

  38 Adam Tuchinsky, Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune: Civil War-Era Socialism and the Crisis of Free Labor (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009).

  39 New York Tribune, December 25, 1848.

  40 Congressional Globe, December 17, 1848, 428.

  41 “Greeley’s Estimate of Lincoln. An Unpublished Address by Horace Greeley,” The Century Magazine, 42 (July 1891), 371–382. Greeley’s lecture remained undelivered and unpublished during the editor’s lifetime. Joel Benton, ed., Greeley on Lincoln . . . (New York: The Baker & Taylor Co., 1893), 19–20.

  42 Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (New York: J. B. Ford & Co., 1868), 226.

  43 Ibid.

  44 Nathan Sargent, quoted in Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:260.

  45 Horace Greeley to Margaret Fuller, March (?) 1847, quoted in Gregory Alan Borchard, “The Firm of Greeley, Weed, & Seward: New York Partisanship and the Press, 1840–1860” (Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 2003), Chapter 7.

  46 See Harlan Hoyt Horner, Lincoln and Greeley, esp. epiloque, 393–94. Gregory A. Borchard summed up their relationship well in an excellent short book about the two men: see Borchard, Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011).

  47 Lincoln to Gales & Seaton, January 22, 1849, CW, 2:24.

  48 Merry, A Country of Vast Designs, 459–60.

  49 Lincoln to Albert G. Hodges, April 4, 1864, CW, 7:281; Lincoln to Joshua F. Speed, August 24, 1855, 2:320.

  50 Kenneth J. Winkle, Lincoln’s Citadel: The Civil War in Washington, DC (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013), 32–34.

  51 From Lincoln’s Peoria Address, October 16, 1854, CW, 2:253.

  52 Isaac N. Arnold, The History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery (Chicago: Clarke & Co., 1866), 37.

  53 “Greeley’s Estimate of Lincoln: An Unpublished Address by Horace Greeley,” Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine 62 (July 1891): 374.

  54 Resolution banning slavery, January 6, 1849, in CW, 2:20–22; his recollection of being “abandoned by my former backers” is in Lincoln’s letter to James M. McLean, January 11, 1849, ibid., 22.

  55 Much has been made of Lincoln’s role in the so-called Matson Slave Case in Coles County, Illinois, in which the congressman-elect represented one Robert Matson in his effort to recover his slave Jane Bryant and her four children. The case was not a slavery vs. freedom watershed, but rather a narrow test of whether owners like Matson who took their human property into free states could still consider them “sojourned” there if they stayed permanently. Lincoln took the case principally because Matson’s side approached him for representation first, not because he believed in recovering runaways. Nonetheless, his participation—which was successful—has haunted his reputation, particularly among African-American critics. For the full transcript and period reminiscences about the case, see Daniel W. Stowell, ed., The Papers of Abraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases, 4 vols. (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2008), 2:1–43. For a sound recent analysis, see Richard Striner, An Honest Calling: The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006), Chapter 5, “In the Matter of Jane, a Woman of Color,” 103–36. Striner notes the tradition requiring lawyers to take up “unjust causes.” For sharp criticism of Lincoln’s “discreditable” role in the case, see Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream (Chicago: Johnson, 2000), 278–82.

  56 Descriptions of the Intelligencer office from Mary J. Windle, 1857, in Allen C. Clark, “Joseph Gales, Junior, Editor and Mayor,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society 23 (1920): 128. See also notes for an interview with Lincoln by James Quay Howard, May 1860, reported in Burlingame, Lincoln, 293. Seaton later scoffed that he had personally freed “more slaves” at his “own cost” than “all the abolitionists put together . . . including the zealous emancipationist, the editor of the Tribune.” See [Josephine Seaton], William Seaton of the “National Intelligencer” . . . , 262.

  57 New York Tribune, September 22, 1849.

/>   58 Prospectus for The Liberator, quoted in Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879: The Story of His Life, Told by His Children, 2 vols. (New York: The Century Company, 1885–89), 1:224–26.

  59 John C. Nerone, Violence Against the Press: Policing the Public Sphere in U.S. History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 101–2.

  60 Oliver Johnson quoted in William Lloyd Garrison, 1805–1879: The Story of His Life, Told by His Children, 1:220.

  61 Ibid., 1:221, frontispiece; R. J. M. Blackett, ed., Thomas Morris Chester: Black Civil War Correspondent—His Dispatches from the Virginia Front, orig. pub. 1989 (New York: Da Capo, 1991), 5.

  62 Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Frederick Douglass Written by Himself (Hartford Conn.: Park Publishing, 1881), 267.

  63 Ibid., 320–21, 327.

  64 Ibid., 327.

  65 Frederick Douglass to Thomas Van Rensselaer, May 18, 1847, in Philip S. Foner and Yuval Taylor, eds., Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings (Chicago: Lawrence Hill, 1999), 83–84. The Tribune at least reprinted Douglass’s speech May 13, 1847.

  66 The protest was ignited by the seizure of runaway slaves from a ship attempting to flee the District. There was no evidence that the society or its newspaper played a role in the plot.

  67 David Grimsted, American Mobbing, 1828–1861: Toward Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 267.

  68 Rufus Rockwell Wilson, Washington: The Capital City and Its Part in the History of the Nation, 2 vols. (Philadephia: J. B. Lippincott, 1901), 2:45; Milton, The Eve of Conflict, 38–39.

  69 A Memorial of Horace Greeley (New York: The Tribune Association, 1873), 258.

  70 Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, 227.

  71 Joseph S. Myers, “The Genius of Horace Greeley,” Journalism Series, No. 6 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1919): 20–21; Congressional Globe, 30th Congress, 2nd Session, January 25, 1849, 370; January 23, 1849, 336.

  72 Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, 228.

  73 Ibid., 219.

  74 Miers, ed., Lincoln Day by Day, 1: 321; Fragment on Niagara Falls, ca. late September 1848, in CW, 2:10.

  75 New York Tribune, December 22, 1848. Although the figures remain unclear, Lincoln may have earned more in travel reimbursements during his congressional career than he did in salary. See Clerk’s ledger, signed by Lincoln, in the National Archives, reprinted in Findley, A. Lincoln, 162.

  76 Congressional Globe, 30th Congress, 2nd Session, January 11, 1849, 229–30.

  77 New York Tribune, January 27, 1849.

  78 A Memorial of Horace Greeley, 257–58; “Greeley’s Estimate of Lincoln,” 374.

  79 New York Herald, January 29, 1849.

  80 Poore, “Abraham Lincoln.”

  81 Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, 223.

  82 New York Tribune, December 15, 1848.

  83 “Greeley’s Estimate of Lincoln,” 374.

  84 Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, 233.

  85 Congressional Globe, February 26, 1849.

  86 Parton, Life of Horace Greeley, 284.

  87 Ibid., 286.

  88 Reprinted in the National Union, June 21, 1849, quoted in Merry, A Country of Vast Designs 471–72.

  89 Quoted in Lincoln Day by Day, 2:15.

  90 There are several sources for this Lincoln story. For one, see Edward Dicey, “Washington During The War,” Macmillan’s Magazine 6 (May 1862): 24.

  91 William E. Ames, “The National Intelligencer: Washington’s Leading Political Newspaper,” Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C., 66 (1966–1968): 81.

  92 Anson G. Henry et al. to Lincoln, April 6, 1849; Josiah M. Lucas to Lincoln, April 12, 1849, all in ALPLC.

  93 New York Tribune, September 22, 1849.

  94 Lincoln to John M. Clayton, September 16, 1849, CW, 2:64.

  95 Allen Francis to Lincoln, June 12, 1849, ALPLC.

  96 John McCauley Palmer, The Bench and Bar of Illinois, Historical and Reminiscent, 2 vols. (Chicago: Lewis Publishing, 1899), 2:673.

  97 For example, Lincoln outraged Simeon Francis and other local Whigs by promoting his brother-in-law, Dr. William Wallace, for a post as pension agent, even though the editor and others claimed they had “incurred [his] . . . hatred & malice on your account.” See Anson G. Henry to Lincoln, June 15, 1849, ALPLC.

  98 Stephen Douglas asked Lanphier to examine the poll books that year “with a view to the detection of errors.” See Douglas to Lewis A. Ross, October 14, 1839, in Robert W. Johannsen, ed., The Letters of Stephen A. Douglas (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1961), 73.

  99 Stephen Douglas to Charles Lanphier, October 25, 1845, ibid., 119.

  100 Ibid., 150–51.

  101 Andy Van Meter, Always My Friend: A History of the State Journal-Register and Springfield (Springfield, Ill.: The Copley Press, 1981), 115.

  102 Statement to Nathaniel Wilcox, quoted in Joseph H. Barrett, Abraham Lincoln and His Presidency, 2 vols. (Cincinnati: Robert Clarke, 1904), 1:108.

  FIVE: A MEAN BETWEEN TWO EXTREMES

  1 Horace Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life (New York: J. B. Ford & Co., 1868), 138–39.

  2 Quoted in Henry Luther Stoddard, Horace Greeley: Printer, Editor, Crusader (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1946), 86. Greeley referred to the newspaper debate as “a series of controversial letters between Mr. Henry J. Raymond and myself.” See Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, 151.

  3 New York Times, June 21, 1869.

  4 Augustus Maverick, Henry J. Raymond and the New York Press, for Thirty Years . . . (Hartford, Conn.: A. S. Hale & Co., 1870), 17, 19, 20–22, 26–27. Raymond returned to the university three years later to serve as commencement orator. See University of Vermont. Commencement. August 2, 1843. Original program in the Henry J. Raymond Papers, New York Public Library.

  5 Raymond, “Autobiographical Sketch in Maverick, Henry J. Raymond,” 362.

  6 Henry J. Raymond to Horace Greeley, June 8, 1840, Horace Greeley Papers, New York Public Library.

  7 Horace Greeley to Henry J. Raymond, June 20, 1840, George Jones and Henry J. Raymond Papers, New York Public Library. Millerism was a belief in the second coming of Jesus Christ.

  8 Maverick, Henry J. Raymond, 29, 363 (“Autobiographical Fragment”).

  9 Ibid., 59–60, 363–64.

  10 Raymond, “Autobiographical Sketch,” in Maverick, Henry J. Raymond, 364.

  11 Greeley, Recollections of a Busy Life, 138–39.

  12 Henry J. Raymond, “Autobiographical Sketch,” in Maverick, Henry J. Raymond, 361.

  13 Raymond, “Autobiographical Sketch,” ibid., 364.

  14 Ibid., 33–34.

  15 Francis Brown, Raymond of the Times (New York: W. W. Norton, 1951), 24, 40–41.

  16 Maverick, Henry J. Raymond, 34–35.

  17 Brown, Raymond of the Times, 34.

  18 James L. Crouthamel, “The Newspaper Revolution in New York, 1830–1860,” New York History 45 (April 1964): 99; Frederic Hudson, Journalism in the United States, from 1690 to 1872 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), 360.

  19 New York Courier and Enquirer, January 27, 1844; reprinted in Maverick, Henry J. Raymond, 42.

  20 New York Tribune, January 28, 1844.

  21 Dorothy Dodd, Henry J. Raymond and the New York Times During Reconstruction (Chicago: University of Chicago Libraries), 109. For another excellent account of the beginning of the Greeley-Raymond feud, see Gregory Alan Borchard, “The Firm of Greeley, Weed, & Seward: New York Partisanship and the Press, 1840–1860” (Ph.D. diss., University of Florida, 2003).

  22 Horace Greeley and H. J. Raymond, Association Discussed; or, The Socialism of the Tribune Examined. Being a Controversy Between the New York Tribune and the Courier and Enquirer (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1847), 82–83.

  23 New York Courier and Enquirer, December 16, 1846. An excellent account of this newspaper debate can be found in Adam Tuchinsky, Horace Greeley’s
New York Tribune: Civil War–Era Socialism and the Crisis of Free Labor (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009), 52–57.

  24 Horace Greeley to Henry J. Raymond, April 14, 1853, George Jones and Henry J. Raymond Papers, New York Public Library.

  25 Henry J. Raymond, Reminiscences of Public Life, autograph manuscript for a memoir in the George Jones and Henry J. Raymond Papers, New York Public Library, 23.

  26 Ibid., 24.

  27 Ibid., 26.

  28 Ibid., 31.

  29 Reprinted in New York Times, June 21, 1869.

  30 John Russell Young, “Men Who Reigned: Bennett, Greeley, Raymond, Prentice, Forney,” Lippincott’s Monthly 5 (February 1893): 192.

  31 Typescript version of Raymond reminiscences, George Jones and Henry J. Raymond Papers, New York Public Library, 1.

  32 See Culver H. Smith, The Press, Politics, and Patronage: The American Government’s Use of Newspapers, 1789–1875 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1977), 109.

  33 Raymond, Reminiscences of Public Life, 36.

  34 Maverick, Henry J. Raymond, 87.

  35 Elmer Davis, History of the New York Times, 1851–1921 (New York: New York Times, 1921), 4.

  36 This and subsequent quotes from “New York Daily Times.” A New Morning and Evening Daily Newspaper. Edited by Henry J. Raymond. Price One Cent. Circular, August 30, 1851, copy in the New-York Historical Society.

  37 Figures provided in Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 677.

  38 Lorman A. Ratner and Dwight L. Teeter, Jr., Fanatics and Fire-Eaters: Newspapers and the Coming of the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003), 9, 12–13, 17.

  39 Meyer Berger, The Story of the New York Times, 1851–1951 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1951), 5.

  40 Maverick, Henry J. Raymond, 92–93.

  41 New York Times, September 18, 1851.

  42 Maverick, Henry J. Raymond, 99–100.

  43 New York Times, September 17, 1851.

 

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