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

by Harold Holzer

  45 Horace Greeley to Lincoln, January 6, 1862[3], ALPLC.

  46 See, for examples, James S. Wadsworth to Ward Hill Lamon, May 17, 1862, seeking the release of “three colored men” whom the general claimed were under “military protection,” ALPLC.

  47 Presidential proclamation, May 19, 1862, CW, 5:222–23.

  48 New York Herald, May 18, 1862; Lincoln to James Gordon Bennett, May 21, 1862, CW, 5:225.

  49 Bennett’s friend Judge Abraham D. Russell felt emboldened to write Lincoln asking that his brother-in-law be retained at the New York Post Office, now under the charge of Greeley ally Theodore Wakeman. Theodore Taylor was indeed spared the ax. See Russell to Lincoln, March 27, 1862; Wakeman to Seward, April 2, 1862, ALPLC.

  50 Edwin Wright to Lincoln, May 23, 1862; James W. White to Lincoln, July 7, 1862, ALPLC. White later invited Lincoln to a New York Union rally, but Lincoln politely declined. He did receive White and a small New York delegation at the White House.

  51 William Goodell to Lincoln, July 9, 1862 (citing a June 7 New York Herald editorial), ALPLC.

  52 New York Tribune, May 20, 1862.

  53 Townsend, Rustics in Rebellion, 192.

  54 New York Tribune, June 24, 1862.

  55 New York Herald, June 26, 1862.

  56 Winfield Scott to Lincoln, June 24, 1862, ALPLC. It was probably no coincidence that when he returned to Washington, Lincoln summoned General Henry Halleck from the West and installed him as administrative general-in-chief.

  57 Lincoln’s remarks at Jersey City, reported in the New York Times, New York Herald, June 26, 1862, in CW, 5:284.

  58 “Enquirer” to the Editor, New York Tribune, July 28, 1862, and to Sydney Gay, August 13, 1862; Gay to Lincoln, July 30, 1862, and Lincoln to Gay, August 1, 1862, in CW, 5:353.

  59 William O. Stoddard, “The Daily Press of New York,” New York Examiner, July 31, 1862, in Michael Burlingame, ed. Dispatches from Lincoln’s White House: The Anonymous Civil War Journalism of Presidential Secretary William O. Stoddard (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), 90.

  60 New York Times, July 22, 1862; John Hay to Mary Jay (daughter of John Jay), July 20, 1862, in Michael Burlingame, ed., At Lincoln’s Side: John Hay’s Civil War Correspondence and Selected Writings (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), 23.

  61 Lincoln later entitled this draft: “Emancipation Proclamation as first sketched and shown to the Cabinet in July 1862.” See CW, 5:336–37.

  62 F[rancis]. B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln: The Story of a Picture (New York: Hurd & Houghton, 1866), 21.

  63 Ibid.

  64 John Niven, ed., The Salmon P. Chase Papers, volume 1 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1993), 351.

  65 Carpenter, Six Months at the White House, 22.

  66 Philadelphia Press, July 30, 1862, reprinted in Elwyn Burns Robinson, “The Press: President Lincoln’s Philadelphia Organ,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 65 (1941): 169; Robert Harper, Lincoln and the Press (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1951), 175.

  67 Lincoln’s message is in CW, 5:370–75. For a modern interpretation of the meeting and the makeup of the visiting delegation, see Kate Masur, “The African American Delegation to Abraham Lincoln: A Reappraisal,” Civil War History 56 (June 2010): 117–44, esp. 131.

  68 Frederick Douglass, “The Slaveholders’ Rebellion,” speech at Himrods Corner, New York, July 4, 1862, and “The President and His Speeches,” Douglass’ Monthly, September 1862, in Philip S. Foner and Yuval Taylor, eds., Frederick Douglass: Selected Speeches and Writings (Chicago: Lawrence Hill), 506, 511–13. Douglass had also spoken out for immediate emancipation at Boston on February 5.

  69 Orville H. Browning to Lincoln, August 11, 1862, ALPLC.

  70 “The Prayer of Twenty Millions,” New York Tribune, August 20, 1862.

  71 Conversation with Leonard Swett, March 14, 1878, in Michael Burlingame, ed., An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln: John G. Nicolay’s Interviews and Essays (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 58–59.

  72 Lincoln to Horace Greeley, August 22, 1862, CW, 5:388–89.

  73 “James C. Welling,” biographical note in Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time, 643.

  74 [Josephine Seaton], William Winston Seaton of the ‘National Intelligencer’: A Biographical Sketch . . . (Boston: James Osgood, 1871), 360.

  75 Ibid., 525–26.

  76 James C. Welling, “The Emancipation Proclamation,” The North American Review 130 (1880): 165.

  77 James C. Welling, in Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time, 523, 540. Welling reflected the administration’s view by assailing the Greeley editorial for its “truculence.” The clipping from the National Intelligencer in the Lincoln Papers is misidentified as “Clipping from Aug. 23, 1862 New York Tribune”—a natural mistake, since of course the original correspondence had been directed at Horace Greeley.

  78 New York Journal of Commerce, August 27, 1862; Thurlow Weed to Lincoln, August 24, 1862, ALPLC.

  79 Joel Benton, ed., Greeley on Lincoln. (New York: The Baker & Taylor Co., 1893), 62.

  80 New York Tribune, September 25, 1862; letter reprinted in James W. Parton, The Life of Horace Greeley, Editor of “The New-York Tribune,” from His Birth to the Present Time rev. ed., orig. pub. 1872 (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1889), 466–68.

  81 Gilmore, Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 81–83.

  82 Ibid., 82.

  83 Wendell Phillips to “the editor of the New York Tribune,” August 20, 1862, speech at the Abingdon Grove, August 1, 1862, in Wendell Phillips, Speeches, Lectures, and Letters (Boston: Walker, Wise & Co., 1864), 465, 462; Wendell Phillips to Sydney Howard Gay, September 2, 1862, ALPLC, Sydney Howard Gay Papers, Columbia University.

  84 Whitelaw Reid, in James A. Smart, ed., A Radical View: The “Agate” Dispatches of Whitelaw Reid, 1861–1865, 2 vols. (Memphis: Memphis State University Press, 1976), 1:215, dispatch of August 24, 1862.

  85 Benton, ed., Greeley on Lincoln, 84.

  86 Ibid., 63.

  87 For a discussion of reaction in Missouri, for example, along with a fine discussion of the overall matter of the Greeley letter, see James Oakes, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861–1865 (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013), 307–13. See also New York Tribune, August 24, 1862.

  88 Adam Gurowski, Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 2, 1862 (Boston: Lee & Shepard, 1862), 259; Ralph Waldo Emerson, journal entry, autumn 1863, in Stephen E. Whicher, ed., Selections from Ralph Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), 396. Lincoln had earlier welcomed Emerson to the White House, where the president charmed the distinguished visitor with funny stories.

  89 Edgar Cowan to William H. Seward, August 8, 1862, ALPLC.

  90 New York Tribune, August 22, 1862.

  91 The piece predicted, for example, that emancipation would take effect on December 1, 1862, rather than January 1, 1863.

  92 New York Times, August 24, August 25, 1862.

  93 Greeley quoted in Stefan Lorant, Lincoln: A Picture Story of His Life (rev. ed., New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), 159.

  94 New York Times, August 26, 1862.

  95 Chicago Tribune, August 27, 1862.

  96 New York Times, August 26, 1862; New York Evening Post, September 23, 1862; New York World, August 18, 1862.

  97 William W. Patton, President Lincoln and the Chicago Memorial on Emancipation, paper read to the Maryland Historical Society, December 12, 1887 (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 1888), 13.

  98 Lincoln’s reply to the Chicago Ministers, CW, 5:420.

  99 Welling essay in Rice, ed., Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln by Distinguished Men of His Time, 528.

  100 CW, 5:420–21, 425.

  101 Ibid., 419–21.

  102 New York Evening Post, September 15, 1862.

  103 Niven, ed., The Salmon P. Chase Papers, 1:393; Gid
eon Welles, Diary of Gideon Welles, ed. John T. Morse, Jr., 3 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 1:143.

  104 Even White House insider John Hay fared no better than the Chicago delegation in timing his final predictions on emancipation. Knowing McClellan was heading toward a confrontation with Lee, he, too, prepared a report for the Missouri Republican. “Perhaps the time is coming,” it prophesied, “when the President, so long forbearing, so long suffering with the South and the border, will give the word long waited for, which will breathe the life that is needed, the fire that seems extinguished, into the breasts of our men at arms.” Hay added a strong defense of Lincoln’s recent reticence and mixed messages. The president, he argued, simply believed that any official “utterances would instantly form an issue . . . which would divide and fiercely fight those who were now most strongly united in the defense of the Union. While the contest could be better carried out without an executive pronunciamento, the President thought best to keep silent.” Hay’s article appeared on September 22—just as Lincoln was issuing precisely the “executive pronunciamento” Hay believed could be avoided. See Michael Burlingame, ed., Lincoln’s Journalist: John Hay’s Anonymous Writings for the Press, 1860–1864 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998), 307–11.

  105 Douglass’ Monthly, October 1862, in Foner and Taylor, ed., Selected Speeches and Writings, 518, 520.

  106 Pacific Appeal, October 4, 1862, quoted in Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (New York: W. W. Norton, 2010), 245.

  107 Illinois State Journal, September 25, 1862; Lincoln to Hannibal Hamlin, September 28, 1862, CW, 5:444.

  108 New York Herald, September 27, 1862; L. A. Whitely to James Gordon Bennett, September 24, 1862, quoted in Andrews, The North Reports the Civil War, 326; Chicago Times, September 24, 1862; Louisville Journal, reprinted in the National Intelligencer, October 8, 1862; New York Day-Book, quoted in Forrest G. Wood, Black Scare: The Racist Response to Emancipation and Reconstruction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 35; London Times, October 7, 1862; New York World, September 24, 1862; Richmond Dispatch, October 2, 1862, quoted in Mitgang, ed., Lincoln as They Saw Him, 315. Habeas corpus proclamation, September 24, 1862, in CW, 5:436–37.

  109 National Intelligencer, September 26, 1862.

  110 New York World, October 23, 1862.

  111 Theodore Canisius to Lincoln, October 4, 1862, William H. Seward to Lincoln, October 25, 1862, ALPLC; Lincoln to Seward, October 25, 1862, CW, 5:476.

  112 New York Herald, November 4, November 5, 1862.

  113 Lincoln to Carl Schurz, November 10, 1862, CW, 5:494.

  114 New York Times, November 4, November 5, 1862; New York Times, November 19, 1862.

  115 New York Tribune, November 5, November 8, 1862.

  116 Henry J. Raymond to Lincoln, November 25, 1862, ALPLC.

  117 Lincoln to Henry J. Raymond, December 7, 1862, CW, 5:544; Karl Marx, “On Events in North America,” Die Presse (Vienna), October 12, 1862, translated and reprinted in Saul K. Padower, Karl Marx on America and the Civil War (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971), 221–22.

  118 L. A. Gobright, Recollections of Men and Things at Washington, During the Third of a Century (Philadelphia: Claxton, Remson & Haffelfinger, 1869), 339.

  119 Lawrence Gobright to John G. Nicolay, December 1, 1862, John G. Nicolay Papers, Library of Congress.

  120 John Wein Forney to Abraham Lincoln, November 28, 1862, and to John G. Nicolay, December 1, 1862, ALPLC. In another plea, Forney worried that the capital’s afternoon paper would get the scoop, writing to Nicolay: “I hear that the Star is resolved to beat the Chronicle in getting it out.” Forney continued to fret on the eve of its release. “We’ll see.” See Forney to Nicolay, December 1, 1862.

  121 John Wein Forney to John Russell Young, December 11, 1862, John Russell Young Papers, Library of Congress.

  122 Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862, CW, 5:537.

  123 New York Times, December 2, 1862; Weekly Anglo African, December 1862; the Herald quoted in Nevins, The War for the Union, 2:339; New York Tribune, December 2, 1862.

  124 Gobright, Recollections of Men and Things at Washington, 315–18.

  125 Schuyler Colfax to Lincoln, December 31, 1862, ALPLC. See also O. J. Hollister, Life of Schuyler Colfax (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1886), 30. Greeley had sent a thank-you to Colfax in 1842.

  126 Unsigned memorandum by Lincoln, ca. January 1, 1863, ALPLC; John G. Nicolay to Horace Greeley, and to Henry Raymond, December 31, 1862, in Burlingame, ed., With Lincoln in the White House, 98, 225n192. Former journalist John Defrees, the public printer, wanted only for the president to produce a document “to justify the act in all coming time,” urging Nicolay to prevent Lincoln from being so “perplexed by ‘outsiders’ that he will not give it proper thought.” See Defrees to Nicolay, December 17, 1862, ALPLC.

  127 John Wein Forney to Lincoln, December 30, 1862, ALPLC.

  128 Marchant project and the politically motivated engraving it subsequently inspired are covered in Harold Holzer, Gabor Boritt, and Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Lincoln Image: Abraham Lincoln and the Popular Print (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1984), 102–10.

  THIRTEEN: SITTING ON A VOLCANO

  1 New York Times, January 1, 1863.

  2 Ibid.

  3 The story is retold in Daniel R. Biddle and Murray Dubin, “ ‘God Is Settling the Account’: African American Reaction to Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 137 (January 2013): 75.

  4 H. M. Turner, “Reminiscences of the Proclamation of Emancipation,” The A.M.E. Review 29 (January 1913): 213–14.

  5 Chicago Times, January 3, 1863; New York World, January 5, 1863.

  6 Douglass’ Monthly, January 1863. For a novel discussion of one state’s typical journalistic split over the final proclamation, see Edward Noyes, “Wisconsin’s Reaction to Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation with Especial Reference to Editorial Opinion,” Bulletin of the Lincoln Fellowship of Wisconsin, No. 41 (1986).

  7 New York Times, February 12, 1862.

  8 New York Times, January 3, 1863.

  9 [Henry Norman Hudson], A Chaplain’s Campaign with Gen. Butler (New York: Privately printed for the author, 1865), 14, 16–17.

  10 For New Orleans, see Richmond Daily Dispatch, May 29, 1862; for the Oregon case, OR, series 1, vol. 50, part 1: 895–97; for the West Coast shutdowns, Thomas C. Hanson, Sr., Abraham Lincoln: Press Freedom and War Restraints—How He Suppressed the Los Angeles Star (Greenville, S.C.: Thomas C. Hanson, Sr., 2004), 48.

  11 D[ennis] A. Mahony, The Prisoner of State (New York: Carleton, 1863), 138–39.

  12 A. W. Spies to William H. Seward, September 24, 1862, and forwarded to Lincoln, ALPLC.

  13 Testimony by Benjamin Wood before the House Judiciary Committee, July 11, 1862, transcript in the National Archives.

  14 Jonathan W. White, ed., A Philadelphia Perspective: The Civil War Diary of Sidney George Fisher (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 183.

  15 Philadelphia Evening Journal, January 20, 1863.

  16 Reprinted in the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, January 30, 1863.

  17 Arnold Shankman, “Freedom of the Press During the Civil War: The Case of Albert D. Boileau,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 41 (October 1975): 305–9.

  18 Quoted in ibid., 309.

  19 Richmond Christian Observer and Presbyterian Witness, February 12, 1863.

  20 George Bergner, The Legislative Record: Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the Pennsylvania Legislature for the Session of 1863 (Harrisburg, Penn.: “Telegraph” Steam Book and Job Office, 1863), esp. 96–97.

  21 New York Times, February 3, 1863.

  22 Postmaster General’s Authority over Mailable Matter, House of Representatives, 37th Congress, 3rd Session, Misc. Doc. No. 16, January 20, 1863, 2, 13.

  23 William Whiting, The War Powers of the President, and the Legislat
ive Powers of Congress in Relation to Rebellion, Treason, and Slavery, 7th ed. (Boston: John L. Shorey, 1863), 59–60; For North Carolina outrages, see William C. Harris, William Woods Holden, Firebrand of North Carolina Politics (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987), 138–140. Governor Zebulon Vance vowed to arrest any newspaper editor who committed “treason.” For the governor’s correspondence with President Jefferson Davis and others, see Joe A. Mobley, ed., The Papers of Zebulon Bair Vance, 2 vols. (Raleigh: Division of Archives and History, 1995), 2:272–279. The author is grateful to historian Joe Mobley for drawing his attention to these incidents.

  24 Arthur Charles Cole, The Era of the Civil War, 1848–1870, Centennial History of Illinois, Vol. 3 (Springfield: Illinois Centennial Commission, 1919), 303.

  25 Chicago Times statement of purpose, June 1861, quoted in Justin E. Walsh, To Print the News and Raise Hell: A Biography of Wilbur F. Storey (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 3.

  26 Chicago Times, November 15, 1862.

  27 New York Caucasian, March 28, 1863, from a copy generously provided by Seth Kaller.

  28 See, for example, Major General Charles S. Hamilton to Major General Ulysses S. Grant, February 9, 1863, in John Y. Simon, ed., The Papers of Ulysses S. Grant, 32 vols. to date, now with John F. Marszalek as editor (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1967–2012), 7:307n.

  29 Congressional Globe, 37th Congress, 1st Session, 1861, 57–59. For a general view of the question of loyal opposition, see Frank Klement, The Limits of Dissent, orig. pub. 1970 (New York: Fordham University Press, 1998).

  30 OR, series 2, vol. 5: 480.

  31 For Hascall’s General Orders No. 9 and related history, see Stephen E. Towne, “Killing the Serpent Speedily: Governor Morton, General Hascall, and the Suppression of the Democratic Press in Indiana, 1863,” Civil War History 52 (2006): 50–53, 60.

  32 For the best biography, see David W. Bulla, Lincoln’s Censor: Milo Hascall and Freedom of the Press in Civil War Indiana (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 2008).

  33 The Trial of Hon. Clement Laird Vallandigham, by a Military Commission, and the Proceedings Under His Application for a Writ of Habeas Corpus . . . (Cincinnati: Rickey & Carroll, 1863), 23.