All the Powers of Earth

by Sidney Blumenthal

  A gathering of Republicans in Boston invited him to attend a commemoration of Thomas Jefferson’s birthday on April 13. Lincoln had been appropriating the founder of the Democratic Party, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and the prime mover behind the Ordinance of 1787 prohibiting slavery in the Northwest Territory, for his own cause since he spoke against Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. Lincoln intended to remove the heart of Jefferson from the Democrats, to separate Jefferson from slavery, to expose the Democrats’ betrayal of their true heritage, and to wrap the Republicans in the legitimacy of Jefferson. He sought to wrest Jefferson from his distorted reduction into a doctrine of pro-slavery states’ rights defined as liberty.

  Lincoln could not attend the Boston event, but instead sent a message, noting that “it is both curious and interesting that those supposed to descend politically from the party opposed to Jefferson, should now be celebrating his birth-day in their own original seat of empire, while those claiming political descent from him have nearly ceased to breathe his name everywhere. Remembering too, that the Jefferson party were formed upon their supposed superior devotion to the personal rights of men, holding the rights of property to be secondary only, and greatly inferior, and then assuming that the so-called democracy of to-day, are the Jefferson, and their opponents, the anti-Jefferson parties, it will be equally interesting to note how completely the two have changed hands as to the principle upon which they were originally supposed to be divided. The democracy of to-day hold the liberty of one man to be absolutely nothing, when in conflict with another man’s right of property. Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar; but in cases of conflict, the man before the dollar.”

  Lincoln offered a humorous anecdote to describe the realignment of parties in which the core principles of democracy had been transferred from their original source. “I remember once being much amused at seeing two partially intoxicated men engage in a fight with their great-coats on, which fight, after a long, and rather harmless contest, ended in each having fought himself out of his own coat, and into that of the other. If the two leading parties of this day are really identical with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have performed about the same feat as the two drunken men. But soberly, it is now no child’s play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation.”

  Lincoln had long been upset by the contempt shown by proslavery advocates and the contemptuous indifference of Douglas to the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal.” “The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society,” said Lincoln. “And yet they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them ‘glittering generalities’; another bluntly calls them ‘self evident lies’; and still others insidiously argue that they apply only to ‘superior races.’ These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect—the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the vanguard—the miners, and sappers—of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us. This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.”

  Lincoln ended by claiming Jefferson’s first principle and the very cause of the American Revolution for his party. “All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyranny and oppression.”

  Lincoln’s stupendous ideological reinvention of the Jeffersonian tradition was not the idle work of someone who expected to be spending the years ahead in small claims courts. In turning down the invitation of Thomas J. Pickett, editor of the Rock Island Register, to speak at Rock Island, Lincoln observed on April 16, “As to the other matter you kindly mention, I must, in candor, say I do not think myself fit for the Presidency. I certainly am flattered, and gratified, that some partial friends think of me in that connection; but I really think it best for our cause that no concerted effort, such as you suggest, should be made.” Whether someone who confidently challenged Douglas, who was the leading Democratic candidate for president, truly thought himself as just “a sucker” was at least a deflection. His advice not to wage a “concerted effort” was at least a matter of strategy.

  The Republican State Central Committee had met in Bloomington on April 7 to discuss Lincoln’s presidential candidacy among other matters. According to Gustave Koerner, “it was agreed that the best policy for the party in our State was to keep Lincoln in the background for the present, or at least not to push his claims to any extent. The friends of Seward, Bates, Cameron and Chase, would fight against each other, and necessarily damage the candidates they upheld. Lincoln, being out of the struggle in a measure, would be let alone, and, when brought forward at the proper time, would meet with no embittered enemies.” Lincoln was almost certainly a proponent of this approach. None of it leaked publicly.

  On April 20, William Osborn Stoddard, the youthful writer for the Central Illinois Gazette, published in Champaign, wrote an editorial entitled “Party Principles,” in which he dismissed as Republican presidential candidates “second rate men, ‘compromise men’ and sapless political sticks,” suggesting instead “the man who for years stood alone on the floor of the United States Senate, the only champion of free labor against the encroachments of the slave oligarchy, to the gallant son of Illinois who won so proud a wreath of laurels I the last senatorial campaign”—Seward and Lincoln. A week later, on April 27, Lincoln, in town representing clients, happened to drop by Stoddard’s office. “We had the pleasure of introducing to the hospitalities of our sanctum a few days since,” he wrote, “the Hon. Abraham Lincoln. Few men can make an hour pass away more agreeably. We do not pretend to know whether Mr. Lincoln will ever condescend to occupy the White House or not. . . . No man in the west at the present time occupies a more enviable position before the people or stands a better chance of obtaining a high position among those to whose guidance our ship of state is to be entrusted.” (Stoddard would become one of Lincoln’s private secretaries in the White House.)

  Throughout the spring German Americans organized rallies across the country against a proposed law in the Massachusetts legislature that would deny the vote to foreign-born citizens for two years after their naturalization. Carl Schurz spoke at Faneuil Hall in Boston on April 18, the eve of the anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, against the bill and for “True Americanism,” the “ideal mission of this country,” “the Republic of equal rights.” German language newspapers served as the main advocates of the anti-nativist movement. In Springfield, Republicans held a meeting on May 14 to “protest” the Massachusetts act and uphold “Liberty and Equality to all the American citizens.” Theodore Canisius, an exiled German revolutionary turned Republican, who had lately edited a newspaper called the Freie Presse in Alton that had backed Lincoln for the Senate, was the principal organizer of the assembly. The chief speaker was Herndon, delivering a speech that was undoubtedly edited by Lincoln, which denounced the nativist bill as “impolitic,” “wrong and unjust,” and “cruelly or wickedly despotocratic.”

  Days after the Springfield protest, both the Illinois State Journal and the Chicago Press and Tribune published a letter Lincoln wrote to Canisius opposing the Massachusetts bill. “I am against its adoption in Illinois, or in any other place, where I have a right to oppose it,” he wrote. “Understanding the spirit of our institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degr
ade them. I have some little notoriety for commiserating the oppressed condition of the negro; and I should be strangely inconsistent if I could favor any project for curtailing the existing rights of white men, even though born in different lands, and speaking different languages from myself.”

  Immediately after Lincoln’s letter was widely published, he became the secret owner of a German language newspaper and installed Canisius as editor. Through Canisius, Lincoln bought the title to the Staats-Anzeiger with the proceeds of a $500 legal fee. “Herndon,” he told his partner, “I gave the Germans $250 of yours the other day.” Lincoln also attempted to secure some funding from the Republican State Central Committee, but Norman Judd did not trust Canisius. “I can only say in confidence,” he wrote Lincoln, “. . . that Canisius is a leech. He sucked more blood from you at Springfield and from the “Com[mittee], than the whole establishment was worth.” Yet Lincoln managed to get a small sum. Lincoln handwrote the contract on May 30 with his banker and chief political funder, Jacob Bunn, noting that he “bought the press, types &c . . . with my money,” appending a provision that Canisius as editor would edit the paper “in political sentiment” in line with “Republican platforms,” and not publish “any thing opposed to, or designed to injure the Republican party.” The Illinois Staats-Anzeiger began appearing in July. If any incident marked the beginning of Lincoln’s campaign for the presidency it was his purchase of this newspaper, which advanced him in contrast to the other German paper, the Illinois Staats-Zeitung of Chicago, whose editor, George Schneider, though friendly to Lincoln, was promoting Seward for president. In July, Lincoln sent personal letters to German Republicans asking them, as he wrote one, “I think you could not do a more efficient service than to get it a few subscribers, if possible.” (Lincoln sustained the Staats-Anzeiger until December 6, 1860, after which he appointed Canisius consul to Vienna.)

  During the 1848 campaign, the Whigs had sent Lincoln on a speaking tour in New England to make the case to antislavery voters not to cast ballots for the Free Soil Party. Though he appeared on the same platform as Seward in Boston, he referred to himself as a “hayseed.” He was a little remarked upon curiosity. After his invisible congressional career, until the Whig Party expired, not a single national newspaper solicited his opinion. During the 1856 campaign, the farthest east he traveled to speak and the largest crowd he attracted was at Kalamazoo, Michigan. Until his Senate contest with Douglas he was a minor provincial character without any reason to demand wider attention. Now, anticipating the 1860 race, he felt self-possessed in his reputation to inform influential men in the party where they were in error. He presumed to instruct them on how to frame a Republican center around a winning strategy, which required Illinois. Holding the Illinois party together was paramount to him, but it was a means to a larger end.

  Without personal familiarity, he sent Salmon Chase a letter on June 9 to explain to him the snare the Ohio party had just created for the 1860 campaign. Lincoln knew well that Chase was a leading candidate for president. “Please pardon the liberty I take in addressing you, as I now do,” Lincoln began politely before instantly dropping his deference. “It appears by the papers that the late Republican State convention of Ohio adopted a Platform, of which the following is one plank, ‘A repeal of the atrocious Fugitive Slave Law.’ ” Lincoln himself considered it “ungodly,” as he said privately. But he was speaking to harsh political imperatives. “This is already damaging us here. I have no doubt that if that plank be even introduced into the next Republican National convention, it will explode it. Once introduced, its supporters and its opponents will quarrel irreconcilably. The latter believe the U.S. constitution declares that a fugitive slave ‘shall be delivered up’; and they look upon the above plank as dictated by the spirit which declares a fugitive slave ‘shall not be delivered up.’ I enter upon no argument one way or the other; but I assure you the cause of Republicanism is hopeless in Illinois, if it be in any way made responsible for that plank. I hope you can, and will, contribute something to relieve us from it.”

  Chase wrote back on June 13 telling Lincoln that the Ohio party’s position was of a piece with his “house divided” speech. “The reliance you put in my discretion and in my disposition to avoid all extremes which may endanger the success of the Republican Party gratifies me much, and it will be my study to deserve it. That the avoidance of extremes however, is not at all inconsistent with the boldest & manliest avowal of our great principles & views your own example is that noble speech of yours at Springfield which opened the campaign last year in Illinois makes evidence enough.” He added, like a teacher to a pupil, “I trust that our friends in Illinois will, if not already prepared to take the same ground, soon be educated up to it.”

  Lincoln replied on June 20, “My only object was to impress you with what I believe is true, that the introduction of a proposition for repeal of the Fugitive Slave law, into the next Republican National convention, will explode the convention and the party. Having turned your attention to the point, I wish to do no more.” So ended their first exchange.

  Lincoln was horrified at the Fugitive Slave Act. But he gave it nominal support to show his support for the rule of law. Having done that, he went on to make his overarching argument that the founders were antislavery and the Constitution an antislavery document, despite the federal fugitive slave provision. He also sought to deprive the Democrats of a wedge issue to divide and isolate the Republicans. His immediate political assent did not mean either his personal assent or his intention for slavery’s “ultimate extinction.”

  In July 1857, Frederick Clements, a fugitive slave, was arrested and jailed in Springfield, the first fugitive slave case in Illinois after the Dred Scott decision. Clements was represented at the hearing before the federal commissioner by the law firm of Lincoln and Herndon with Herndon as the acting attorney. On the basis of the Dred Scott ruling, Clements was remanded to his owner in Kentucky. “The poor negro was tried and sent south—could not prevent it,” Herndon wrote Theodore Parker. “You cannot do any good when the iron-chain logic is around the man and fetters are on his limbs.” He pointed out that the commissioner received $10 from the government for declaring Clements a slave, whereas he would have got $5 if he had decided he was free.

  In September 1859, a slave named Jim Gray escaped from his master in Missouri to Illinois, where he was captured. At his hearing in Ottawa, where Lincoln and Douglas had begun their debates a year earlier, local abolitionists physically intervened and whisked Gray away. He fled to Chicago and then to freedom in Canada. John Hossack, the leading industrialist in Ottawa, a prominent Republican who had sat on the platform of the debate as a Lincoln man, and whose mansion was a station in the Underground Railroad, was arrested for blocking police and enabling Gray to escape. He was represented at his trial in 1860 by Isaac Newton Arnold, a Chicago lawyer, founding member of the Republican Party, and legal associate of Lincoln. Hossack delivered a stirring speech to the jury. “Great God! Can these things be? Can it be possible? What country is this?” The Chicago Times, Douglas’s paper, played up the trial to equate Lincoln with lawbreaking. Hossack was sentenced to ten days after which John Wentworth, Chicago’s mayor, held a large banquet in his honor. A.J. Grover, a Springfield lawyer and friend of Lincoln, told him he would have done what Hossack had. “Constitutional or not, I will never obey the Fugitive Slave Law.” Grover recalled Lincoln’s reply, “and I shall never forget his earnestness as he emphasized it by striking his hand on his knee, ‘it is ungodly! it is ungodly! no doubt it is ungodly! but it is the law of the land, and we must obey it as we find it.’ ”

  Out of the blue, on June 13, 1859, Lincoln heard from an old friend, Josiah Lucas, who had once edited a Whig paper in Jacksonville, Illinois, gone to Washington as a clerk in the Land Office, and tried to help Lincoln secure appointment as head of the Land Office in early 1849. Lucas wrote Lincoln on June 13 that he would soon hear from “our old friend,” Nathan Sargent, an Old Whig jour
nalist known as “Oliver Old School” and former clerk of the House of Representatives, who had been one of Lincoln’s boardinghouse mates in Washington, and “with your humble servant as tutor has got to believe that you would not make a bad Candidate for the White House.” Sargent had more recently worked as recorder of the Land Office under Fillmore, joined the Know Nothings, and been a publicist for Fillmore in 1856. “Sargent belongs to the Fillmore school,—in other words, he was a prominent ‘K. N.’ but always a Whig and bears towards the Locos [Democrats] an undying hatred. There are many old Whigs in friend Sargent’s fix who are anxious to have a chance to help in driving the Spoilers from power, if they can get a plank to stand upon.”

  Sargent was at the center of a movement to create a new third party on the ruins of Fillmore’s campaign and the Know Nothings, an attempted Fillmore redux to displace the Republicans, remove the antislavery position from national politics, and edge aside the Southern Ultras. Working with A.H.H. Stuart, Fillmore’s secretary of the interior, a Know Nothing state senator in Virginia, Sargent reached out to border state leaders such as John Bell of Tennessee and Crittenden of Kentucky and held an organizing conference in late 1858, which led to Opposition Party state conventions in Virginia, North Carolina, and Kentucky. Eventually, the Opposition Party would mutate into the Constitutional Union Party in 1860, the recasting of the American or Know Nothing Party and last gasp of Old Whigs who could not give up the ghost.