All the Powers of Earth

by Sidney Blumenthal

  “His awkwardness of manner”: Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, 212.

  After spending the night: J.O. Cunningham, “The Bloomington Convention of 1856 and Those Who Participated in It,” in Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society for the Year 1905 (Springfield: Illinois State Journal, 1906), 104; Louis A. Warren, Lincoln’s Youth: Indiana Years, 1816–1830 (Indianapolis: Indiana Historical Society, 1991), 208–9; Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 74.

  “Most men forget”: Henry B. Rankin, Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln (New York: G.P Putnam’s Sons, 1916), 31–32.

  With daylight remaining: Cunningham, “The Bloomington Convention of 1856,” 104.

  “I am a Whig”: CW, 2:323.

  Before the Kansas-Nebraska Act: Cunningham, “The Bloomington Convention of 1856,” 101.

  After Lincoln delivered his speech: CW, 2:288.

  “Finding himself drifting”: Herndon, Herndon’s Lincoln, 311.

  But after his failed run: CW, 2:316–17; Mitchell Snay, “Abraham Lincoln, Owen Lovejoy, and the Emergence of the Republican Party in Illinois,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 22, no. 1(Winter 2001): 82–99; Edward Magdol, Owen Lovejoy: Abolitionist in Congress (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1967), 143.

  Since 1854: Blumenthal, Wrestling with His Angel, 386; David Herbert Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), 79.

  Herndon served as Lincoln’s useful agent: Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon, 54–55, 88–89.

  Despite the apparent consensus: Cunningham, “The Bloomington Convention of 1856,” 103.

  While on the one hand Lincoln: Orville Hickman Browning, The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, Volume 1, 1850–1864, eds., Theodore Calvin Pease and James G. Randall (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1927), 237, xvi.

  Lincoln was acutely aware: CW, 1:108–15.

  The Little Giant: CW, 1:108–15; Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln and Douglas (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 30; CW, 3:382–83.

  Douglas had done the work: CW, 4:67.

  Lincoln’s stark naturalness: Henry C. Whitney, “Abraham Lincoln: A Study from Life,” Arena, no. 19 (January–June, 1898), 479.

  Traveling around central Illinois: Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 126.

  Francis Bacon: Francis Bacon, Essay (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1909), 159–61.

  A politician intent: Ibid., 31–34; Whitney, “Abraham Lincoln: A Study from Life,” 474–75. Also see Robert Bray, Reading with Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2010), 194–98.

  Lincoln applied the empirical: Whitney, “Abraham Lincoln: A Study from Life,” 468.

  In drawing up his cases: Douglas L. Wilson, Rodney O. Davis, and Terry Wilson, eds., Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements About Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 167.

  Boarding an early morning train: Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 75.

  The town swarmed with delegates: Cunningham, “The Bloomington Convention of 1856,” 104–5; CW, 2:321; Jay Monaghan, The Man Who Elected Lincoln (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), 77.

  Upon his arrival Lincoln walked: Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 75; Browning, Diary, 237; Joseph Medill, “Lincoln’s Lost Speech: The Circumstances and Effect of Its Delivery,” McClure’s Magazine, no. 7 (June–October 1896), 321.

  As the alpha and omega of unity: Medill, “Lincoln’s Lost Speech,” 321; “Official Record of Convention,” in Transactions of the McLean County Historical Society, ed., Ezra Morton Prince (McLean County, Ill.: McLean County History Society, 1900), 3:161–63.

  That evening Lincoln wandered: Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 75; Whitney, Lincoln as Citizen, 259.

  At Bloomington: Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 177–78.

  “The Southerners are”: James L. Huston, Stephen A. Douglas and the Dilemmas of Democratic Equality (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), 73; Frank M. Elliott, “Biographical Sketch of Governor Bissell,” in Prince, Transactions, 134–3.

  At the editors’ organizing meeting: Ibid., 134–39.

  At first Bissell was receptive: Michael Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 1:415–16.

  Early on the morning of the 29th: Cunningham, “The Bloomington Convention of 1856,” 105.

  The convention opened: Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 76

  Before the chairman proceeded: Cunningham, “The Bloomington Convention of 1856,” 105–6; “Official Record of Convention,” 158.

  Browning was summoned: “Official Record of Convention,” 172; Medill, “Lincoln’s Lost Speech,” 321.

  As Browning was the safest: Medill, “Lincoln’s Lost Speech,” 321; Cunningham, “The Bloomington Convention of 1856,” 106–7; “Official Record of Convention,” 174.

  “As I stepped aside”: Cunningham, “The Bloomington Convention of 1856,” 106–7.

  “At first”: Medill, “Lincoln’s Lost Speech,” 321–22.

  Several patchy descriptions: Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:418–19.

  But Lincoln’s speech: “The Lost Speech,” in Prince, Transactions, 3:180

  It seems likely though that two: Cunningham, “The Bloomington Convention of 1856,” 108.

  About his closing remark: Ibid.

  Herndon’s reaction: William Henry Herndon, Herndon’s Life of Lincoln (Cleveland: World, 1942), 312–13.

  A number of observers: Medill, “Lincoln’s Lost Speech,” 322.

  Another delegate, Eugene F. Baldwin: Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:420.

  The controversy flared: Blumenthal, Wrestling with His Angel, 451; Wilson, Herndon’s Informants, 163.

  “Your party is so mad”: Don E. Fehrenbacher, Chicago Giant: A Biography of “Long John” Wentworth (Madison, WI: American History Research Center, 1957), 140; Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, 160-1; Whitney, Life, 78.

  But Dubois was finally won over: Don E. Fehrenbacher, Chicago Giant: A Biography of “Long John” Wentworth (Madison, Wisc.: American History Research Center, 1957), 140; Whitney, Lincoln the Citizen, 160–61; Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 78.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: MISS FANCY

  The Democratic Party convention: Halstead, Trimmers, Trucklers & Temporizers, 16; Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 305; John W. Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), 2:254.

  Alexander H. Stephens: Phillips, The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb, 367–68.

  Stephen A. Douglas’s strategy: Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 507, 515, 510.

  Douglas fielded a formidable organization: John Sergeant Wise, The End of an Era (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1901), 71; Milton, The Eve of Conflict, 222; Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, 2:170.

  Douglas convinced himself: Alice Elizabeth Malavasic, The F Street Mess: How Southern Senators Rewrote the Kansas-Nebraska Act (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 88.

  Through a strange political alchemy: Halstead, Trimmers, Trucklers & Temporizers, 17.

  “Mr. Buchanan”: August C. Buell, History of Andrew Jackson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1904), 2:404.

  Henry Clay intensely disliked him: Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men, 1:67, 324, 182; Charles Francis Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848 (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1877), 12:25; Jean H. Baker, James Buchanan (New York: Macmillan, 2004), 58.

  Buchanan was briefly engaged: Philip S. Klein, President James Buchanan (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1962), 30, 129–31; Elbert B. Smith, The Presidency of James Buchanan (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1975),13; Charles Grier Sellers, James K. Polk, Volume 2, Continentalist, 1843–1846 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 34; Robert P. Watson, Affairs of State (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 201
2), 246.

  The highest accolade: Henry S. Foote, Casket of Reminiscences (Washington, D.C.: Chronicle Publishing, 1874), 111–13.

  Buchanan had always been a boilerplate partisan: Baker, James Buchanan, 53–57; Klein, President James Buchanan, 73.

  His head tilted: Klein, President James Buchanan, 21.

  Buchanan was pedantic: Roy F. Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy (New York: Macmillan, 1948), 87–88.

  His tastes were epicurean: Boller, Presidential Anecdotes, 117–19.

  He appeared hale: Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy, 89.

  Senator John Slidell: Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men, 156; Charles Francis Adams, “The Trent Affair: An Historical Retrospective,” Proceedings, Massachusetts Historical Society, Volume 45, 1911 (Boston: Liberty Reprints, 1912), 8.

  In 1853: Albert Lewie Diket, “John Slidell and the Community He Represented in the Senate, 1853–1861,” (PhD diss., Louisiana State University, 1958), 99–100, 107, 119–20.

  In October 1854: Ibid., 157–59.

  At Slidell’s direction: Michael Todd Landis, Northern Men with Southern Loyalties: The Democratic Party and the Sectional Crisis (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2014), 144, 149.

  On the convention’s eve: Benjamin Brown French, Witness to the Young Republic: A Yankee’s Journal, 1828–1870, eds., Donald B. Cole and John J. McDonough (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1989), 269; Milton, The Eve of Conflict, 224.

  The Buchaneers: Paul R. Cleveland, “The Millionaires of New York, Part II,” Cosmopolitan Magazine (October 1888); “Obituary: Samuel L.M. Barlow,” New York Times, July 11, 1889; Stephen W. Sears, George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1988), 51.

  Breaking down Douglas began with Indiana: Milton, The Eve of Conflict, 226, 106, 96, 223.

  Next came the demolition: George Ticknor Curtis, Life of James Buchanan: Fifteenth President of the United States (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1883), 2:171–72.

  From the first ballot: Halstead, Trimmers, Trucklers & Temporizers, 51–53 Milton, The Eve of Conflict, 227–29.

  In the battle for the vice presidency: Halstead, Trimmers, Trucklers & Temporizers, 61–62.

  Douglas’s withdrawal: Benjamin F. Butler, The Candidature for the Presidency in Eight Years of Stephen A. Douglas (Lowell: Hildreth & Hunt, 1860), 8–9.

  Never leaving the bucolic surroundings: Baker, James Buchanan, 71.

  Buchanan did not bother: Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 433.

  Outwardly, Douglas sustained his enthusiasm: “Douglas Repudiating Buchanan,” Illinois State Journal, October 15, 1856.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE FORBIDDEN WORD

  Five days after: Donald, Lincoln’s Herndon, 90.

  Herndon’s description: Albert J. Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:384; Herndon, Herndon’s Life of Lincoln, 315; CW, 2:344.

  “I don’t sympathize”: Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:385, 172.

  Joseph Gillespie: Arthur Charles Cole, The Centennial History of Illinois, The Era of the Civil War, 1848–1870 (Springfield: Illinois Centennial Commission, 1919), 3:149; Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:282–83.

  James H. Matheny: CW, 3:107–9.

  Matheny swore: Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:401–2.

  John M. Palmer: Burlingame, Abraham Lincoln, 1:425.

  Certain prominent Democrats: Fehrenbacher, Chicago Giant, 140.

  Mary wrote her younger half sister: Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 46.

  Millard Fillmore: Holst, The Constitutional and Political History of the United States, 5:438.

  At the beginning of June: Benjamin W. Dreyfus, “A City Transformed: Railroads and Their Influence on the Growth of Chicago in the 1850s,” 1995, https://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~dreyfus/history.html#footnote.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: VICE PRESIDENT LINCOLN

  Lincoln was fixated: CW, 2:342–43.

  Lincoln had been chosen: Miller, Lincoln and His World, 4:165.

  John McLean: Niven, Salmon P. Chase, 83; John Livingston, Eminent Americans Now Living (New York: Livingston’s Monthly Law Magazine, 1854), 4:75; Thomas E. Carney, “The Political Judge: Justice John McLean’s Pursuit of the Presidency,” Ohio History 111 (Summer–Autumn 2002), 121–44.

  McLean was more than a jurist: Adams, ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, 8:537, 11:352.

  It was more than a little ironic: Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 914.

  McLean’s ambiguity: CW, 1:474; Carney, “The Political Judge”; Wilson, Davis, and Wilson, eds., Herndon’s Informants, 643–44; Miller, Lincoln and His World, 4, 165.

  “The fact is”: Halstead, Trimmers, Trucklers & Temporizers, 89.

  The natural candidate: Thurlow Weed Barnes, Memoir of Thurlow Weed (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1884), 2:245; Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 316.

  The Republican convention: Halstead, Trimmers, Trucklers & Temporizers, 95, 92.

  Frémont carried the aura: James Fenimore Cooper, The Pathfinder: or, The Inland Sea (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1876), 14–15; Tom Chaffin, Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2014), 7.

  Frémont fulfilled the dreams: John Bigelow, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of John Charles Frémont (New York: Derby & Jackson, 1856), 327; Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 321–29; Halstead, Trimmers, Trucklers & Temporizers, 88.

  The platform was the first: “Republican Party Platform of 1856,” June 18, 1856, in The American Presidency Project, eds., Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29619; “Republican National Convention,” New York Herald, June 19, 1856.

  Then suddenly there was dissension: Horace Greeley, Proceedings of the First Three Republican Conventions of 1856, 1860 and 1864 (Minneapolis: C.W. Johnson, 1893), 67.

  Their leader was a former Know Nothing: Hans L. Trefousse, Thaddeus Stevens: Nineteenth Century Egalitarian (Mechanicsburg, Penn.: Stackpole, 2001), 94; Fergus Bordewich, “Digging Into a Historic Rivalry,” Smithsonian Magazine, February 2004.

  Stevens rose at the convention: “Republican National Convention,” New York Herald, June 19, 1856; Holst, The Constitutional and Political History of the United States, 363–65.

  Stevens’s editing of the resolution: Halstead, Trimmers, Trucklers & Temporizers, 90–94.

  Before the final vote: “Republican National Convention,” New York Herald, June 19, 1856.

  The formal vote: Halstead, Trimmers, Trucklers & Temporizers, 96.

  “On being defeated”: John P. Senning, “The Know-Nothing Movement in Illinois from 1854–1856,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 7 (April 1914): 24; Halstead, Trimmers, Trucklers & Temporizers, 98–99.

  The next day, June 19: “The Peoples’ Convention,” New York Tribune, June 20, 1856.

  When the roll was called: Halstead, Trimmers, Trucklers & Temporizers, 98; Jesse W. Weik, “Lincoln’s Vote for Vice-President: In the Philadelphia Convention of 1856,” The Century Magazine 76, May–October, 1908 (New York: Century Company, 1908), 189.

  But Lincoln brightened: Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 78–81.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: THE BIRTHER CAMPAIGN

  “IMMENSE ENTHUSIASM”: “Republican National Convention,” and “The Flag-Bearer of the Republicans,” New York Times, June 19, 1856.

  “There is no mistake”: “The Effect of Fremont’s Nomination,” New York Herald, June 27, 1856.

  The Republican campaign: Klein, President James Buchanan, 257.

  Fillmore said not a word: Frank H. Severance, ed., Millard Fillmore Papers (Buffalo: Buffalo Historical Society, 1907), 2:2022.

  But the question of illegitimacy: Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 369.

  The nativist pamphlete
ers: “Fremont’s Romanism Established” (No publisher, 1856), https://archive.org/details/fremontsromanism00sl.

  Frémont’s illegitimacy: Chaffin, Pathfinder, 446; Andrew F. Rolle, John Charles Frémont: Character As Destiny (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 168, 172.

  Frémont’s wife: Bigelow, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of John Charles Frémont, 11–22.

  Fremont, in fact, was illegitimate: Rolle, John Charles Frémont, 2–5.

  By creating a personal counter-narrative: Pamela Herr, Jessie Benton Frémont (New York: Franklin Watts, 1987), 263.

  Some years earlier, Benton: Sally Denton, Passion and Principle (New York: Bloomsbury, 2007), 233, 59, xiii.

  Jessie was as much a trailblazer: Ibid., 135.

  Jessie handed the president a letter: Milo Milton Quaife, ed., The Diary of James K. Polk During His Presidency, 1845–1849 (Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1910), 52–53.

  Jessie ran the campaign: Denton, Passion and Principle, 234–48; Herr and Spence, eds., The Letters of Jessie Benton Frémont, 98.

  Jessie called the campaign: Rolle, John Charles Frémont, 173; Elizabeth Benton Frémont, Recollections of Elizabeth Benton Frémont: Daughter of the Pathfinder (New York: Frederick H. Hitchcock, 1912), 77; Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 376–77; Denton, Passion and Principle, 252–57.

  Republican leaders were confounded: “Col. Fremont’s Religion. The Calumnies Against Him Exposed by Indisputable Proofs” (No publisher, 1856), https://books.google.com/books?id=O7xcAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false; Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 369.

  Neither facts nor clerical authority: Seward, Seward at Washington as Senator and Secretary of State, 287; Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 370, 416.

  Wise called for a meeting: Wilson, History of the Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, 2:520; Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:429; Eric H. Walther, The Shattering of the Union: America in the 1850s (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 111; Potter, The Impending Crisis, 263; Barton H. Wise, The Life of Henry A. Wise of Virginia, 1809–1876 (New York: Macmillan, 1899), 209; Horace Greeley and John F. Cleveland, eds., A Political Text-Book for 1860 (New York: Tribune Association, 1860), 170–71.