All the Powers of Earth

by Sidney Blumenthal

  The Richmond Enquirer: “Fremont and Disunion,” Richmond Enquirer, August 29, 1856.

  John Minor Botts: “Botts’ Hegira,” Richmond Enquirer, September 23, 1856.

  Several days after Botts: James A. Hamilton, Reminiscences of James A. Hamilton: Or, Men and Events, at Home and Abroad (New York: Charles Scribner, 1869), 449; Chaffin, Pathfinder, 447.

  Throughout the North: Denton, Passion and Principle, 247; Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:426–28; New York Tribune, November 1, 1856.

  Walt Whitman: Walt Whitman, Complete Poetry and Collected Prose, ed., Justin Kaplan (New York: Library of America, 1982), 1307–25.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE GREAT AWAKENING

  Judge David Davis: Browning, Diary, 245; Willard L. King, Lincoln’s Manager David Davis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), 72.

  Davis was used: King, Lincoln’s Manager David Davis, 72, 51.

  Davis believed: Magdol, Owen Lovejoy, 154–55.

  “We learned yesterday”: King, Lincoln’s Manager David Davis, 113.

  The split over Lovejoy: CW, 2:346–47; Clark E. Carr, My Day and My Generation (Chicago: A.C. McClurg, 1908), 275–81.

  Upon his return after sharing the podium: Bill Kemp, “Gridleys Obscured in Local Legend and Lore,” Daily Pantagraph, September 28, 2014; Magdol, Owen Lovejoy, 156; Isabel Wallace, Life and Letters of General W.H.L. Wallace (Chicago: R.R. Donnelly, 1909), 73.

  Lincoln wasted little time: King, Lincoln’s Manager David Davis, 112–13; CW, 2:347; Whitney, Life on the Circuit with Lincoln, 62–63.

  Lincoln’s attitude: “Don’t Like It,” Illinois State Journal, July 7, 1856.

  Another friend of Lincoln: King, Lincoln’s Manager David Davis, 21.

  The bolters’ convention: Ezra M. Prince and John H. Burnham, eds., Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of McLean County (Chicago: Munsell, 1908), 2:1029; William F. Moore and Jane Ann Moore, eds., His Brother’s Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64: Owen Lovejoy (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 130–31; Frances Milton I. Morehouse, The Life of Jesse W. Fell (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1916), 55.

  Two days later a ratification meeting: Magdol, Owen Lovejoy, 157–59.

  Dickey’s candidacy cratered: Ibid., 159–65; King, Lincoln’s Manager David Davis, 113–14.

  Throughout the drama: CW, 2:347–48; Stephen Hansen and Paul Nygard, “Stephen A. Douglas, the Know-Nothings, and the Democratic Party in Illinois, 1854–1858,” Illinois State Historical Journal 87, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 118.

  Lincoln was aware of the rumors: Emanuel Hertz, The Hidden Lincoln: From the Letters and Papers of William H. Herndon (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1940), 265.

  Lincoln, however, kept devising: CW, 2:374; Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:437.

  The diehard Whigs: Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:385.

  The Germans: Frederic Bancroft and William A. Dunning, eds., The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (New York: McClure, 1908), 2:91.

  After the Bloomington convention: Gustave Koerner, Memoirs of Gustave Koerner, 1809–1896 (Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Torch Press, 1909), 1:531; Sabine Freitag, Friedrich Hecker: Two Lives for Liberty, trans., Steven Rohan (St. Louis: University of Missouri Press, 2006), 181, 167–69, 173–77; CW, 2:376.

  Lincoln launched himself: CW, 2:367–68; Rankin, Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 207–9.

  “Do you think we shall”: CW, 2:367–68; Rankin, Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 207–9.

  Then Lincoln grabbed: CW, 2:361–66; Blumenthal, Wrestling with His Angel, 373–75.

  Douglas, too, was out: Paul M. Angle, “Here I Have Lived,” A History of Lincoln’s Springfield, 1821–1865 (Chicago: Abraham Lincoln Book Shop, 1971), 219; Octavius Brooks Frothingham, Theodore Parker: A Biography (New York: Putnam’s, 1880), 447.

  The results of the Electoral College vote: Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:441.

  Fillmore, who had railed: William W. Freehling, The Road to Disunion, Volume 2, Secessionists Triumphant, 1854–1861 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 95.

  The fire-eating Charleston Mercury: Holst, The Constitutional and Political History of the United States, 464–65.

  The 1856 results: John Moses, Illinois, Historical and Statistical (Chicago: Fergus Printing, 1892), 2:602–3; Angle, “Here I Have Lived,” 223; Senning, “The Know-Nothing Movement in Illinois,” 24.

  After the election: “next Senator”: Ian Hand, research director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield, Illinois.

  For the Republicans: CW, 2:385–86.

  “Upon those men”: CW, 2:391.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE WHITE MAN

  Pennsylvania was the reason: Curtis, Life of James Buchanan, 185.

  Buchanan had always been: Klein, President James Buchanan, 141.

  John W. Forney: Ibid., 265; John F. Coleman, The Disruption of Pennsylvania Democracy, 1848–1860 (Harrisburg: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, 1975), 103.

  An enraged and alcohol fueled Forney: Alexander K. McClure, Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: John C. Winston, 1905), 1:254–62; Kenneth Stampp, America in 1857 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 52–55.

  Simon Cameron: Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln: Douglas, Buchanan, and Party Chaos, 1857–1859 (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1950), 1: 79–81.

  Thaddeus Stevens: Trefousse, Thaddeus Stevens, 89–90, 94–95; Klein, President James Buchanan, 265.

  The Democratic caucus: Coleman, The Disruption of Pennsylvania Democracy, 105; Klein, President James Buchanan, 266; “Cabinet Struggles in Pennsylvania,” New York Tribune, February 11, 1857; McClure, Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania, 262.

  Buchanan cast around: John W. Forney, Anecdotes of Public Men, Volume 2 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1881), 237, 421; Forney, Anecdotes, 1:146.

  Washington still seethed: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:79; Nichols, The Disruption of Pennsylvania Democracy, 80.

  Virginia Clay: Clay-Clopton, A Belle of the Fifties, 58–61.

  The Southerners’ sense: Lydia Maria Child, Letters of Lydia Maria Child (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1882), 88.

  One man appeared: James F. Simon, Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney: Slavery, Secession, and the President’s War Powers (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 91, 99.

  Taney was yet another breathing relic: Paul Finkelman, “Hooted Down the Pages of History: Reconsidering the Greatness of Chief Justice Taney,” Journal of Supreme Court History 18 (1994): 83–102.

  Taney was the first Catholic: Paul Finkelman, Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2018), 179; Samuel Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, LL.D.: Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1872), 359.

  Eighty years old: Clay-Clopton, A Belle of the Fifties, 74.

  With the advent of 1857: James Shepherd Pike, First Blows of the Civil War (New York: American News, 1879), 355.

  The man in the vise: Walter Ehrlich, They Have No Rights: Dred Scott’s Struggle for Freedom (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1979), 7–35; Simon, Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney, 100–101; Brooks Simpson, Ulysses S. Grant: Triumph over Adversity, 1822–1865 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 71–72; Lea VanderVelde, Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery’s Frontier (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 205–7.

  The Dred Scott case: Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 709; Ehrlich, They Have No Rights, 36–37; William Cathcart, The Baptist Encyclopedia (Philadelphia: Louis H. Everts, 1881), 33.

  By the time the Missouri Supreme Court ruled: Melvin I. Urofsky, Supreme Decisions: Great Constitutional Cases and Their Impact (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2012), 81.

  Mrs. Emerson transferred control: Ehrlich, They Have No Rights, 86–89.

  Montgomery Blair: Urofsky, Supreme Decisions, 83–84.

  The justices descended into confused colloquy: Ehrlich, They Have No Rights, 102–4.

  The court r
econvened: Ibid., 114–18.

  The next day Senator Geyer: Ibid., 1180–20; Pike, First Blows of the Civil War, 353.

  The Southern justices: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:107–9; Richard Malcolm Johnston and William Hand Browne, Life of Alexander H. Stephens (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1884), 318.

  President-elect James Buchanan: Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy, 75–76; Smith, The Presidency of James Buchanan, 23.

  Catron was among the cadres: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 103; Loren Schweninger, ed., From Tennessee Slave to St. Louis Entrepreneur: The Autobiography of James Thomas (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1984), 2, 7, 60.

  On February 3: Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy, 76–77; Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:108–10; Simon, Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney, 117–18.

  Catron asked Buchanan: United States v. Hanway, No. 15,299 Fed. Cas., 174.

  If Grier as a Northerner: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:110–11; Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy, 77–78.

  Buchanan was anxious: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:111.

  Buchanan left his home: Klein, President James Buchanan, 271.

  At noon on March 4: Ibid., 272.

  After throat clearing: James Buchanan, “Inaugural Address,” March 4, 1857, The American Presidency Project, eds., Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=25817.

  All sides understood Buchanan’s message: Pike, First Blows of the Civil War, 366.

  Two days later, on the morning of March 6: “The Dred Scott, Case,” New York Times, March 9, 1857.

  Taney presented his judgment: Roger Taney, The Dred Scott Decision: Opinion of Chief Justice Taney (New York: Van Evrie, Horton, 1860).

  When Taney finished his reading: “Justice Catron,” American History from Revolution to Reconstruction and Beyond, http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/documents/1826-1850/dred-scott-case/justice-catron.php; Schweninger, ed., From Tennessee Slave to St. Louis Entrepreneur, 80–81, 252; Leon Schweninger, “Thriving Within the Lowest Caste: The Financial Activities of James P. Thomas in the Nineteenth-Century South,” Journal of Negro History 63 (Fall 1978): 353–64.

  Justice McLean read: Ehrlich, They Have No Rights, 161–64.

  Justice Benjamin R. Curtis: “Justice Catron.”

  Curtis’s masterful opinion: Curtis, A Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, 214, 219, 222, 249–50; Simon, Lincoln and Chief Justice Taney, 131.

  “We believe it is settled”: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:118.

  The individuals involved: Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 714.

  The day after Taney read: Ibid., 713; Pike, First Blows of the Civil War, 367; Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:114; Thomas Hart Benton, Historical and Legal Examination of That Part of the Decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred Scott Case (New York: D. Appleton, 1858), 193, 185.

  Among Republicans the sense: CG, 35th Congress, 1st Session, 941.

  Reverdy Johnson: Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, 385–90.

  Southerners embraced Taney’s ruling: Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (New York: D. Appleton, 1881), 1:84–85.

  Years later, after the Civil War: Tyler, Memoir of Roger Brooke Taney, 391.

  CHAPTER TWENTY: ALL THE POWERS OF EARTH

  James Buchanan was renowned: Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 538; Klein, President James Buchanan, 259.

  When Buchanan visited Washington: Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 551–52.

  From Buchanan, Douglas immediately: Milton, The Eve of Conflict, 259.

  Slidell wrote Buchanan: Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 552; Smith, The Presidency of James Buchanan, 21; Milton, The Eve of Conflict, 259.

  “He is a stubborn old gentleman”: Klein, President James Buchanan, 285.

  The clash between Buchanan and Douglas: “Harriet Lane,” National First Ladies Library, http://www.firstladies.org/biographies/firstladies.aspx?biography=16; Smith, The Presidency of James Buchanan, 85; Clay-Clopton, A Belle of the Fifties, 114; Mrs. Roger A. Pryor, Reminiscences of Peace and War (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1904), 53.

  The early years of Adele Cutts: Virginia Tatnall Peacock, Famous American Belles of the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1901), 177–81.

  Adele’s lineage: Pryor, Reminiscences of Peace and War, 68.

  In the three years since the death: Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 541–43; Pryor, Reminiscence of Peace and War, 68–69.

  Douglas commissioned the building: John Ferrari, “Douglas Row,” https://www.popville.com/2018/03/streets-of-washington-presents-douglas-row-the-lost-homes-of-politicians-generals-war-wounded-and-orphans/; Clay-Clopton, A Belle of the Fifties, 36.

  Douglas’ marriage rankled: “Senator Douglas on the Division of the Spoils,” New York Herald, October 18, 1857; Klein, President James Buchanan, 284.

  When the Congress adjourned: Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:500.

  Douglas played a deck: Stephen A. Douglas, Remarks of the Hon. Stephen A. Douglas on Kansas, Utah, and the Dred Scott Decision (Chicago: Daily Times Book and Job Office, 1857).

  “The curtain of 1860”: “The Springfield Speech of Senator Douglas—His Card for 1860,” New York Herald, June 24, 1857.

  The Illinois State Register: Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, 2:517–18.

  The case was a perversely refracted version: Richard Campanella, Lincoln in New Orleans: The 1828–1831 Flatboat Voyages and Their Place in History (Lafayette: University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press, 2010), 187–90.

  Learning of the imminent danger: J.G. Holland, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Springfield, Mass.: Gurdon Bill, 1866), 128; Herndon, Herndon’s Life of Lincoln, 308.

  But there was someone in New Orleans: Jonathan D. Sarna and Benjamin Shapell, Lincoln and the Jews: A History (New York: St. Martin’s, 2015), 14–27.

  Abraham Jonas’s brother: Charles M. Segal, “Lincoln, Benjamin Jonas and the Black Code,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 46 (Autumn 1853), 277–82; Wilson, Davis, and Wilson, eds., Herndon’s Informants, 376.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: THE WIZARD OF MISSISSIPPI

  Buchanan assumed that the troubles: Curtis, Life of James Buchanan, 2:176.

  The parade of presidentially appointed territorial governors: Robinson, Kansas, 291.

  The next governor, John W. Geary: John H. Gihon, Geary and Kansas: Governor Geary’s Administration in Kansas (Philadelphia: Chas. C. Rhodes, 1857), 104–5.

  Geary’s peace: Holst, The Constitutional and Political History of the United States, 60; Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 2:135.

  On February 15, 1857: Gihon, Geary and Kansas, 260.

  The legislature overrode his veto: Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy, 715; Holloway, History of Kansas, 410; Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:137.

  Calhoun traveled to Washington: Holloway, History of Kansas, 439.

  The free state convention meeting: George Washington Brown, Reminiscences of Gov. R.J. Walker (Rockford, Ill.: Published by the author, 1902); 15–16; Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:140.

  Geary traveled to Washington: “Governor Geary’s Last Interview with Mr. Buchanan,” New York Times, April 26, 1857.

  The New York Times correspondent in Washington: “Hon. R.J. Walker’s Appointment as Governor of Kansas,” New York Times, April 26, 1857.

  After conferring with Walker: Seward, Seward at Washington as Senator and Secretary of State, 299.

  Walker’s initial political mentor: Dunbar Rowland, ed., Encyclopedia of Mississippi History (Madison, Wisc.: Selwyn A. Brant, 1907), 2:443–45, 583, 642; William Edward Dodd, Robert J. Walker, Imperialist (Chicago: Chicago Literary Club, 1914), 7–17.

  Under Walker’s guidance: Dodd, Robert J. Walker, Imperialist, 20–22.

  Walker stridently demanded: Edward P. Crapol, John Tyler, The Accidental President (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 227; Frederick
Merk, Slavery and the Annexation of Texas (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 9–11.

  Walker played kingmaker: Dodd, Robert J. Walker, Imperialist, 23–29.

  After the Polk administration: Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy, 58, 69–70; Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 552; Congressional Serial Set, Thirty-Sixth Congress, First Session, Elections, Etc., No. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Thomas H. Ford, 1860), 473.

  When Buchanan appeared: “The Covode Investigation,” House of Representatives, 36th Congress, 1st Session, Volume V, No. 648 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1860), 105–6.

  Douglas desperately needed: Douglas, Remarks of the Hon. Stephen A. Douglas on Kansas, Utah, and the Dred Scott Decision, 5–6.

  Walker was Douglas’s: Johannsen, Stephen A. Douglas, 315.

  Walker’s condition: “The Covode Investigation,” 106–7; Rowland, Encyclopedia of Mississippi History, 2:893.

  “I should have preferred that”: “The Covode Investigation,” 109.

  Walker said “the only plan”: Ibid., 107–8.

  In a letter to Buchanan: George D. Harmon, “Buchanan’s Betrayal of Governor Walker,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History (1929), 52.

  Frederick P. Stanton: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 148–49.

  On his way west: J. Madison Cutts, A Brief Treatise upon Constitutional and Party Questions (New York: D. Appleton, 1866), 111; Holloway, History of Kansas, 450; Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 152; Alice Nichols, Bleeding Kansas (New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), 146.

  That evening John Calhoun: Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 155.

  The Lecompton legislature: Holst, The Constitutional and Political History of the United States, 64; John Bach McMaster, A History of the People of the United States (New York: D. Appleton, 1913), 8:304; Brown, Reminiscences of Gov. R.J. Walker, 44.

  Congressman Robert Toombs: Phillips, ed., The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H. Stephens, and Howell Cobb, 400–404.

  Senator Jefferson Davis: Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850, 2:275; Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, 1:163–66; Harmon, “Buchanan’s Betrayal of Governor Walker,” 73; “ ‘Kansas,’ Editorial reprinted from the Richmond Enquirer,” Washington Union, June 27, 1857.