All the Powers of Earth

by Sidney Blumenthal

  Lincoln heard from Sargent at once. “How do you do? my worthy & esteemed old friend. You are having an easy time compared with what you had last year. Well, that year has gone, & this is going: but another is coming full of importance; & what are to be its results? Shall we, like a parcel of fools quarrel & lose all? or shall we, like men of common sense, let minor matters go, & unite to whip the enemy?” Sargent confessed he was not a Republican, still an “Old Whig” and “an American,” in other words, a Know Nothing, and wanted to co-opt Lincoln to his politics. He proposed a bare-bones program of opposition to reopening the slave trade and corruption as the way to gain Southern support.

  Lincoln’s response on June 23 was scathingly dismissive. He had no intention of abandoning the Republican Party or his opposition to the extension of slavery to chase the chimera of Old Whiggery.

  You state a platform for such union in these words “Opposition to the opening of the Slave-trade; & eternal hostility to the rotten democracy.” You add, by way of comment “I say, if the republicans would be content with this, there will be no obstacle to a union of the opposition. But this should be distinctly understood, before Southern men are asked to join them in a National convention.” Well, I say such a platform, unanimously adopted by a National convention, with two of the best men living placed upon it as candidates, would probably carry Maryland, and would certainly not carry a single other state. It would gain nothing in the South, and lose everything in the North. . . . Last year the Republicans of Illinois cast 125,000 votes; on such a platform as yours they cannot cast as many by 50,000. You could not help perceiving this, if you would but reflect that the republican party is utterly pow[er]less everywhere, if it will, by any means, drive from it all those who came to it from the democracy for the sole object of preventing the spread, and nationalization of slavery. Whenever this object is waived by the organization, they will drop the organization; and the organization itself will dissolve into thin air. Your platform proposes to allow the spread, and nationalization of slavery to proceed without let or hindrance, save only that it shall not receive supplies directly from Africa. Surely you do not seriously believe the Republicans can come to any such terms.

  Lincoln had crafted much of his rhetoric in his debates with Douglas and charted his travels around the state to winning over the Old Whigs. He still worried about alienating them as his letters to Chase showed. But there were red lines he would not cross. In his letter to Sargent, he cut off his overture for Republicanism to collapse into the American Party of Fillmore or now the Opposition Party of Crittenden. Bitter about Crittenden’s intervention against him in the Senate race, Lincoln had not the slightest intention of suddenly abandoning everything he had done to create the Republican Party for his betrayer’s new mock party. He had never before been so explicit about the uselessness of the Old Whig position. Lincoln had given it up long ago, but his letter put into words goodbye to all that. He could not know his conflict with Old Whiggery and its various posthumous incarnations was in its early stages and would last until he signed the yet unimagined Emancipation Proclamation.

  On the Fourth of July Congressman Schuyler Colfax of Indiana came to Springfield to meet with other Republican leaders and coordinate for the coming national campaign but missed seeing Lincoln. Lincoln wrote him a letter on July 6 communicating his main thought, which explained the coherence of his actions over the past few months. “My main object in such conversation would be to hedge against divisions in the Republican ranks generally, and particularly for the contest of 1860,” he wrote. “The point of danger is the temptation in different localities to ‘platform’ for something which will be popular just there, but which, nevertheless, will be a firebrand elsewhere, and especially in a National convention. As instances, the movement against foreigners in Massachusetts; in New-Hampshire, to make obedience to the Fugitive Slave law, punishable as a crime; in Ohio, to repeal the Fugitive Slave law; and squatter sovereignty in Kansas. In these things there is explosive matter enough to blow up half a dozen national conventions, if it gets into them; and what gets very rife outside of conventions is very likely to find its way into them. What is desirable, if possible, is that in every local convocation of Republicans, a point should be made to avoid everything which will distract republicans elsewhere. . . . In a word, in every locality we should look beyond our noses; and at least say nothing on points where it is probable we shall disagree.”

  Colfax wrote back to Lincoln on July 14 to acknowledge the difficulty of the political task ahead in combining conservatives and radicals. “How this mass of mind shall be consolidated into a victorious phalanx in 1860 is the great problem—I think of our eventful times. And he who can could accomplish it, is worthier of fame than Napoleon or Emanuel.” He concluded, “And I can assure you if you will lead in this work, you will find me a faithful follower of your counsel.”

  Colfax was not the only Republican leader from another state drawn to Lincoln. On July 23, he received a long letter from Samuel Galloway, a former Republican congressman from Ohio. The state party was wracked with division over a case in which Judge Joseph Swan, chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, a Republican, felt compelled to uphold the ruling of a federal court that found an abolitionist guilty under the Fugitive Slave Act. Swan was not renominated for his position, which was elective. Galloway laid out the treacherous politics to Lincoln:

  We made a great blunder in Ohio, at our recent Convention, in dishonoring Judge Swan by not renominating him for the Sup. Judgeship—He is very capable, honest & popular. . . . He would have been pleased to decide otherwise—but could not do so, conscientiously, with his intelligence of decisions of our Courts upon that subject—Our radicals clamored for a repudiation of all existing adjudications . . . and hence they resolved upon his defeat and presented the degrading alternative—reject Swan or we will repudiate & defeat the ticket—Our trading politicians and political prostitutes for the sake of harmony (falsely so called) alarmed at the threat, agreed to sacrifice Swan & propitiate the fanatics—The result will be, I am apprehensive that our Republican ticket will be beaten in Ohio—Many of us who despise the Fugitive Slave Law, and who would labor and have labored to have it modified or repealed, equally despise all attempts to overthrow it by lawless & revolutionary measures.—We cannot consistently denounce the efforts to reopen the slave trade, by overriding the Constitution & laws—and yet act similarly in regard to a plain provision of the Constitution as to the recapture of “fugitives from labor”—unless we in Ohio can purge ourselves from this stain upon our Republicanism; and we cannot engage in the battle for 1860, with hope of success—To be brief, and to jump to my conclusion—we cannot have Salmon P Chase, or any man representing his ultra ideas as our Candidate for 1860. Chase and I are personally friendly—and in this matter I have no one friend to reward nor enemies to punish—The object is too great to be sacrificed either to partialities or prejudices—

  Galloway observed that other hopeful candidates also carried similar burdens. “The Objections to Seward and [Nathaniel] Banks are quite as formidable as those which may be noted against Chase I will not at present specify or discuss them—The truth and my idea upon this point are not to be disguised—We must take some man not hitherto corrupted with the discussion upon Candidates.” Galloway raised two more names as possibly acceptable, Trumbull and Senator William P. Fessenden of Maine, but confessed, “I would cheerfully adopt any one of you but I am candid to say you are my choice—and that preference is well known by many of my intimate friends—Your programme of principles as set forth in your discussions with Judge Douglass—will suit all Republicans—and especially those of the old Whig stamp—”

  Lincoln replied on July 28 to Galloway’s “flattering” letter. He agreed with Galloway’s reflections on the political situation in Ohio but added a warning against Douglas: “another thing our friends are doing which gives me some uneasiness. It is their leaning towards ‘popular sovereignty.’ ” Lincoln did n
ot mention to Galloway his own correspondence with Chase. “As to Gov. Chase, I have a kind side for him. He was one of the few distinguished men of the nation who gave us, in Illinois, their sympathy last year. I never saw him, suppose him to be able, and right-minded; but still he may not be the most suitable as a candidate for the Presidency.” He finished with his usual demurral. “I must say I do not think myself fit for the Presidency.” Yet he urged Galloway to keep writing. “I shall look for your letters anxiously.”

  Abraham Lincoln, 1859

  Jesse Fell, who had first raised the idea of Lincoln’s presidential candidacy to him, meanwhile quietly traveled the state as secretary of the Illinois State Central Committee organizing Republicans for his “big idea.” “He found occasion, moreover, in perfecting the state organization, to visit most of the counties, where the people as a rule were eager to see ‘Abe’ Lincoln a presidential candidate,” wrote Fell’s biographer. “There was no need, apparently, to urge Lincoln’s name to Illinoisans. It was in other states that the Lincoln propaganda must be pushed.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  ICARUS

  James Buchanan had accepted the devastating losses of the Democrats in the 1858 midterm elections with “much philosophy.” “Well! we have met the enemy . . . & we are theirs,” he wrote his niece Harriet Lane. “This I have anticipated for three months, and was not taken by surprise, except as to the extent of our defeat. . . . Yesterday . . . we had a merry time of it, laughing among other things over our crushing defeat. It is so great that it is almost absurd.”

  Stephen A. Douglas

  “There is no such entity as a democratic party,” concluded the Washington States, a Democratic newspaper in the capital, in an editorial after the elections. “Have we a Democratic Party among us?” asked the pro-administration Washington Union, answering that the party would certainly “achieve victory” in 1860 under “the banner of its time-honored principles.” In another article, the newspaper assailed Douglas as a heretic for his Freeport Doctrine in his debates with Lincoln.

  There was, at least, not much left of the Northern wing of the Democratic Party. Hardly any supporters of the Buchanan administration survived in Northern state legislatures. Of the remaining Democrats, most were anti-Lecompton Douglas Democrats. Barely any Democrats remained in New England. Republicans were ascendant in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and New York; Democrats were routed throughout the upper Midwest. Yet the elections ratified the Democrats’ hold across the South as universal with no Republicans and a few pockets of latter-day Know Nothings. The greater the Republican gains in the North, the more precarious Southerners felt their hold on federal power.

  In the House of Representatives, the Democrats lost 35 seats; the Republicans gained 26. They declined from a 133 to 90 majority to a Republican near majority of 116 to 98 Democrats, with 5 seats held by Know Nothings and 8 by Democrats aligned with Douglas. Only 33 Northern Democrats remained; only 25 supported the administration. Every Democratic seat in the North that was lost—27—was lost to the Republicans. Every loss in the South was to the Opposition Party. The Know Nothings melted down from 9 seats to 5, but the Opposition Party, Know Nothings by another name, gained 19. In the Senate, the Democrats’ majority shrank from 42 to 20 majority to 39 to 25, all the Republican gains in Northern states.

  Douglas believed his victory had put him on a sound footing for going forward to the nomination. His sense of security rested on illusion. In Illinois he had won only through gerrymandered districts and lost the popular vote. The Northern Democratic Party was hollowed out. His enemies in the Northwest such as Jesse Bright were waiting to ambush him. But Douglas took his reelection as a victory over Buchanan, who had done all he could to sabotage him. His bravado gave him a false belief he had the upper hand. “I have nothing to ask for or grant in that quarter,” he told Charles Ray of the Chicago Tribune. “He made the war; and by God! He shall make peace if peace is to be made at all.” Douglas thought his supposedly inherent strength would force Buchanan to sue for peace, the Southerners to fall in line, and his march to the nomination proceed as a stately affair.

  In late November 1858, Douglas and his wife left Chicago for a grand triumphal political tour. He headed down the Mississippi River “to try the pulse of the Southern people,” landing at St. Louis, Memphis, and New Orleans, where he regaled crowds with reprises of highlights of his campaign against Lincoln—extolling popular sovereignty and assailing the “house divided.” Douglas in New Orleans on December 6 called Lincoln “unscrupulous” for “declaring the doctrine that the Union cannot continue to exist half slave and half free.” He attacked Lincoln’s upholding the Declaration of Independence’s statement that “all men are created equal” as the “Abolition Catechism.” “By this specious, but sophistical argument, they have succeeded in imposing on some weak-minded men, and some old women and children, until they have educated a generation who really believe that the negro is their brother.” He repeated his refrain from the debates that “this Government was made by white men, for the benefit of white men and their posterity forever, to be administered by white men, and none others,” and that “the negro race” should be regarded like “the deaf and dumb, or the insane.”

  Douglas appealed to the “glorious destiny which the Almighty has marked out,” pointing to the acquisition of Cuba, which Southerners, if not the Almighty, had marked out for the expansion of slavery. “It is our destiny to have Cuba, and it is folly to debate the question,” Douglas proclaimed. With that flourish, his steamer headed for Havana, where he delivered a rousing speech envisioning the manifest destiny of gaining Cuba and bought a stockpile of two thousand cigars. In Baltimore, on January 5, 1859, he declared, “It is none of our business whether you have slaves or not. . . . When you get into those hot climates, it is not a struggle between the negro and the white man, but a struggle between the negro and the crocodile.” He pushed on to New York, welcomed as a conquering hero by thousands at City Hall, then to Philadelphia, where he was greeted with a two-hundred-gun salute and feted with a dinner at Independence Hall, before arriving for the reopening of the Congress in December.

  Buchanan’s blithe spirit about the midterm losses in his letter to Miss Lane was pretense. He was bitter, angry, and vengeful, his hostility concentrated on his nemesis. Howell Cobb spoke for the administration: “If Judge Douglas had done as he promised . . . all of us ought to have sustained him. Such has not been his course. Publicly he attacks the administration. . . . Privately he indulges in the coarsest abuse of the President. Under these circumstances to ask our support is in my opinion asking too much. . . . [Douglas is] determined to break up the Democratic party . . . to unite with anybody and everybody to defeat us.”

  Buchanan’s war on Douglas intensified. Having failed to defeat him in Illinois he was determined to destroy him for the nomination. Every federal job and contract was denied to any potential Douglas delegate and dangled before any against him. The entire government was geared into a patronage operation to damage Douglas for the convention. “If Douglas is to be defeated nothing should be left in doubt,” George Plitt, one of Buchanan’s oldest friends, wrote Howell Cobb. “Even a single delegate from New England might turn the scale one way or the other.” Buchanan even made an effort to reconcile with Robert J. Walker to entice him to enter as a candidate to save the party from both Douglas and the Southern Ultras. No secondary hatred was allowed to deter from the principal hatred.

  While Douglas was steaming to Cuba, the Democrats on the Senate Committee on Committees, directed by Slidell, stripped him of his chairmanship of the Committee on Territories. In a stroke his power base in the Senate was destroyed and he was for all intents and purposes excommunicated from the Democratic caucus. One after another Southern senator urged that Douglas be read out of the Democratic Party for his Freeport “heresy,” as Senator Clement C. Clay of Alabama put it. “How can any true state rights Southern man maintain that he should have been retained as an exp
onent of the Democratic party?” Douglas’s key ally on the committee, Senator David C. Broderick of California, was excluded from the kangaroo court that evicted him.

  The Chicago Press and Tribune reported, “the political remains of Mr. Douglas were formally interred by the Senate . . . the Douglas party in the Senate is brought down to the accumulation of zeros. . . . The brethren had divided Joseph’s coat among them, the administrators had distributed the assets of the defunct’s estate. It seems more Douglas men have been detected in office. They must go out, and it is now confidentially announced that execution will be immediately done. . . . As regards the approaching Presidential contest, Mr. Douglas might as well never have been a member of the Democratic party; and . . . he might as well leap into a cauldron of living fire, as to submit his fortune to the Charleston Convention.”

  Upon returning to Washington, Douglas withheld comment about the deprivation of his lost chairmanship. He stepped back onto the Senate floor on January 12. “The demeanor of his colleagues generally was studiously cold and distant,” reported the New York Times. “A few of them approached to welcome him back to the Chamber—but many more avoided him altogether.” In early February 1859, he and Adele opened the social season with a “grand ball” at their mansion, inviting 1,200 notables, asserting his status as the future leader of the party and the next president. Every member of the Buchanan cabinet sent regrets.

  Douglas was cut by more than coldness. Several apparent attempts were made in January to ensnare him in quarrels that would provoke duels to kill him. “There are men here who will not spare him . . . are keen for his blood,” said Senator Hammond. When Douglas protested against Slidell over planting the story about Douglas’s Mississippi plantation in the Chicago Tribune during the Senate campaign it seemed to Douglas’s people that Slidell wanted to push him into a duel. Harper’s Weekly warned, “Senator Slidell is a well known fire-eater, to whom personal encounters and duels are matters of course. He is doubtless highly skilled in the use of dueling weapons. Senator Douglas is not likely to know any thing about pistols. If Senator Slidell persuades his colleague to ‘go out’ with him, the chances are that the latter will be killed.” “Soon it was whispered that it had been determined at a caucus at Cobb’s home that John Slidell should insult Douglas in the Senate bar, force the quarrel and shoot him down,” wrote Douglas’s biographer, George Fort Milton. A sympathetic newspaper reporter, George Alfred Townsend, sent Douglas a note, “If you are pushed to the wall send for Tom Hawkins, of Louisville.” Hawkins was a famous gunslinger and duelist. There may or may not have been a plot to pull Douglas into a duel, but Douglas felt himself under physical threat. He had witnessed what had happened to Sumner. He hired Tom Hawkins as a personal bodyguard to accompany him around Washington. Dealing with Slidell, Douglas stopped his surrogates from responding and the matter died out.