Abraham Lincoln: a History Volume Ii Part 20

_Scattering_.--Rhode Island, Chase 1, McLean 1; Connecticut, Bates 4, Chase 2, Clay 1; New Jersey, Dayton 1; Pennsylvania, McLean 2; Kentucky, Chase 4; Ohio, Chase 15, McLean 2; Missouri, Bates 18; Iowa, Chase 1/2; Nebraska, Chase 2.--Total, for Bates, 22; for Chase, 24-1/2; for McLean, 5; for Dayton, 1; for Clay, 1.

CHAPTER XVI

LINCOLN ELECTED

Thus the Presidential canva.s.s in the United States for the year 1860 began with the very unusual condition of four considerable parties, and four different tickets for President and Vice-President. In the order of popular strength, as afterwards shown, they were:

_First_. The Republican party, which at the Chicago Convention had nominated as its candidate for President, Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and for Vice-President, Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine. Its animating spirit was a belief and declaration that the inst.i.tution of slavery was wrong in morals and detrimental to society; its avowed policy was to restrict slavery to its present limits in the States where it existed by virtue of local const.i.tutions and laws.

_Second_. The Douglas wing of the Democratic party, which at Baltimore nominated Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, for President, and whose candidate for Vice-President was Herschel V. Johnson, of Georgia.[1]

It declared indifference as to the moral right or wrong of slavery, and indifference to its restriction or extension. Its avowed policy was to permit the people of a Territory to decide whether they would prevent or establish slavery, and it further proposed to abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court on all questions of const.i.tutional law growing out of it.

_Third_. The Buchanan wing of the Democratic party, which at Baltimore nominated John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, for President, and Joseph Lane, of Oregon, for Vice-President. Its animating spirit was a belief and declaration that slavery was morally right and politically beneficial; its avowed policy was the extension of slavery into the Territories, and the creation of new slave States, whereby it might protect and perpetuate itself by a preponderance, or at least a constant equality, of political power, especially in the Senate of the United States. As one means to this end, it proposed the immediate acquisition of the island of Cuba.

_Fourth_. The Const.i.tutional Union party, which in its convention at Baltimore nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, for President, and Edward Everett, of Ma.s.sachusetts, for Vice-President. It professed to ignore the question of slavery, and declared that it would recognize no political principle other than "the Const.i.tution of the Country, the Union of the States, and the enforcement of the Laws."

[Sidenote] Curtis, "Life of Buchanan," Vol. II., p. 294.

The first, most striking feature of the four-sided Presidential canva.s.s which now began, was the personal pledge by every one of the candidates of devotion to the Union. Each of the factions was in some form charging disunion motives or tendencies upon part or all of the others; but each indignantly denied the allegation as to itself. To leave no possible doubt, the written letters of acceptance of each of the candidates emphasized the point. Lincoln invoked "the inviolability of the Const.i.tution, and the perpetual union, harmony, and prosperity of all." Douglas made his pledge broad and full. "The Federal Union," wrote he, "must be preserved. The Const.i.tution must be maintained inviolate in all its parts. Every right guaranteed by the Const.i.tution must be protected by law in all cases where legislation is necessary to its enjoyment. The judicial authority, as provided in the Const.i.tution, must be sustained, and its decisions implicitly obeyed and faithfully executed. The laws must be administered, and the const.i.tuted authorities upheld, and all unlawful resistance to these things must be put down with firmness, impartiality, and fidelity."

"The Const.i.tution and the equality of the States," wrote Breckinridge, "these are symbols of everlasting union. Let these be the rallying cries of the people." Bell declared that, if elected, all his ability, strength of will, and official influence should be employed "for the maintenance of the Const.i.tution and the Union against all opposing influences and tendencies." Even President Buchanan, in a little campaign speech from the portico of the Executive mansion, hastened to purge himself of the imputation of suspicion or fear on this point. He declared that neither of the Democratic conventions was "regular," and that therefore every Democrat was at liberty to vote as he thought proper. For himself, he preferred Breckinridge. The Democratic party, when divided for the moment, "has always closed up its ranks, and become more powerful even from defeat. It will never die whilst the Const.i.tution and the Union survive. It will live to protect and defend both."

No progress was made, however, towards a reunion of the Democratic party. The Buchanan faction everywhere waged unrelenting war on Douglas, both in public discussion and in the use of official patronage. The contest was made with equal obstinacy and bitterness in the Northern and the Southern States. Douglas, on his part, was not slow to retaliate. He immediately entered on an extensive campaign tour, and made speeches at many of the princ.i.p.al cities of the Northern States, and a few in the slave-States. Everywhere he stigmatized the Breckinridge wing of the Democracy as an extremist and disunion faction,[2] charging that it was as obnoxious and dangerous as the Republicans. Whatever be his errors, it must be recorded to his lasting renown that he boldly declared for maintaining the Union by force. At Norfolk, Virginia, the question was put to him in writing.

"I answer emphatically," replied Douglas, "that it is the duty of the President of the United States, and all others in authority under him, to enforce the laws of the United States pa.s.sed by Congress, and as the courts expound them, and I, as in duty bound by my oath of fidelity to the Const.i.tution, would do all in my power to aid the Government of the United States in maintaining the supremacy of the laws against all resistance to them, come from what quarter it might.

In other words, I think the President, whoever he may be, should treat all attempts Douglas, to break up the Union by resistance to the laws, as Old Hickory treated the nullifiers in 1832."

[Sidenote] Douglas, Norfolk Speech, August 25, 1860.

All parties entered upon the political canva.s.s with considerable spirit; but the chances of the Republicans were so manifestly superior that their enthusiasm easily outran that of all their compet.i.tors. The character and antecedents of Mr. Lincoln appealed directly to the sympathy and favor of the popular ma.s.ses of the Northern States. As pioneer, farm-laborer, flat-boatman, and frontier politician, they saw in him a true representative of their early if not their present condition. As the successful lawyer, legislator, and public debater in questions of high statesmans.h.i.+p, he was the admired ideal of their own aspirations.

While the Illinois State Republican Convention was in session at Decatur (May 10), about a week before the Chicago Convention, the balloting for State officers was interrupted by the announcement, made with much mystery, that "an old citizen of Macon County" had something to present to the convention. When curiosity had been sufficiently aroused, John Hanks, Lincoln's fellow-pioneer, and a neighbor of Hanks, were suddenly marched into the convention, each bearing upright an old fence-rail, and displaying a banner with an inscription to the effect that these were two rails from the identical lot of three thousand which, when a pioneer boy, Lincoln had helped to cut and split to inclose his father's first farm in Illinois, in 1830. These emblems of his handiwork were received by the convention with deafening shouts, as a prelude to a unanimous resolution recommending him for President. Later, these rails were sent to Chicago; there, during the sittings of the National Republican Convention, they stood in the hotel parlor at the Illinois headquarters, lighted up by tapers, and trimmed with flowers by enthusiastic ladies. Their history and campaign incidents were duly paraded in the newspapers; and throughout the Union Lincoln's ancient and local _sobriquet_ of "Honest Old Abe" was supplemented by the national epithet of "The Illinois Bail-splitter." Of the many peculiarities of the campaign, one feature deserves special mention. Political clubs, for parades and personal campaign work, were no novelty; now, however, the expedients of a cheap yet striking uniform and a half-military organization were tried with marked success. When Lincoln made his New England trip, immediately after the Cooper Inst.i.tute speech, a score or two of active Republicans in the city of Hartford appeared in close and orderly ranks, wearing each a cap and large cape of oil-cloth, and bearing over their shoulders a long staff, on the end of which blazed a brilliant torch-light. This first "Wide Awake" [3] Club, as it called itself, marching with soldierly step, and military music, escorted Mr. Lincoln, on the evening of March 5, from the hall where he addressed the people, to his hotel. The device was so simple and yet so strikingly effective that it immediately became the pattern for other cities. After the campaign opened, there was scarcely a county or village in the North without its organized and drilled a.s.sociation of "Wide Awakes," immensely captivating to the popular eye, and forming everywhere a vigilant corps to spread the fame of, and solicit votes for, the Republican Presidential candidate. On several occasions twenty to thirty thousand "Wide Awakes" met in the larger cities and marched in monster torch-light processions through the princ.i.p.al streets.

His nomination also made necessary some slight changes in Mr. Lincoln's daily life. His law practice was transferred entirely to his partner, and instead of the small dingy office so long occupied by him, he was now given the use of the Governor's room in the State-house, which was not needed for official business during the absence of the Legislature.

This also was a room of modest proportions, with scanty and plain furniture. Here Mr. Lincoln, attended only by his private secretary, Mr. Nicolay, pa.s.sed the long summer days of the campaign, receiving the constant stream of visitors anxious to look upon a real Presidential candidate. There was free access to him; not even an usher stood at the door; any one might knock and enter. His immediate personal friends from Sangamon County and central Illinois availed themselves largely of this opportunity. With men who had known him in field and forest he talked over the incidents of their common pioneer experience with unaffected sympathy and interest, as though he were yet the flat-boatman, surveyor, or village lawyer of the early days. The letters which came to him by hundreds, the newspapers, and the conversation of friends, kept him sufficiently informed of the progress of the campaign, in which personally he took a very slight part. He made no addresses, wrote no public letters, held no conferences. Political leaders several times came to make campaign speeches at the Republican wigwam in Springfield. But beyond a few casual interviews on such occasions, the great Presidential canva.s.s went on with scarcely a private suggestion or touch of actual direction from the Republican candidate.

It is perhaps worth while to record Lincoln's expression on one point, which adds testimony to his general consistency in political action.

The rise of the Know-Nothing or the American party, in 1854-5 (which was only a renewal of the Native-American party of 1844), has been elsewhere mentioned. As a national organization, the new faction ceased with the defeat of Fillmore and Donelson in 1856; its fragments nevertheless held together in many places in the form of local minorities, which sometimes made themselves felt in contests for members of the Legislature and county officers; and citizens of foreign birth continued to be justly apprehensive of its avowed jealousy and secret machinery. It was easy to allege that any prominent candidate belonged to the Know-Nothing party, and attended the secret Know-Nothing lodges; and Lincoln, in the late Senatorial, and now again in the Presidential, campaign, suffered his full share of these newspaper accusations.

[Sidenote] Lincoln to Edward Lusk, October 30, 1858. MS.

We have already mentioned that in the campaign of 1844 he put on record, by public resolutions in Springfield, his disapprobation of, and opposition to, Native-Americanism. In the later campaigns, while he did not allow his attention to be diverted from the slavery discussion, his disapproval of Know-Nothingism was quite as decided and as public. Thus he wrote in a private letter, dated October 30, 1858: "I understand the story is still being told and insisted upon that I have been a Know-Nothing. I repeat what I stated in a public speech at Meredosia, that I am not, nor ever have been, connected with the party called the Know-Nothing party, or party calling themselves the American party. Certainly no man of truth, and I believe no man of good character for truth, can be found to say on his own knowledge that I ever was connected with that party."

[Sidenote] Lincoln to Hon. A. Jonas, July 21, 1860. MS.

So also in the summer of 1860, when his candidacy for President did not permit his writing public letters, he wrote in a confidential note to a friend: "Yours of the 20th is received. I suppose as good or even better men than I may have been in American or Know-Nothing lodges; but, in point of fact, I never was in one, at Quincy or elsewhere....

And now a word of caution. Our adversaries think they can gain a point if they could force me to openly deny the charge, by which some degree of offense would be given to the Americans. For this reason it must not publicly appear that I am paying any attention to the charge."

[Sidenote] Lincoln to Dr. Theodore Canisius, May 17, 1859.

His position on the main question involved was already sufficiently understood; for in his elsewhere quoted letter of May 17, 1859, he had declared himself against the adoption by Illinois, or any other place where he had a right to oppose it, of the recent Ma.s.sachusetts const.i.tutional provision restricting foreign-born citizens in the right of suffrage. It is well to repeat the broad philosophical principle which guided him to this conclusion: "Understanding the spirit of our inst.i.tutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them."

[Ill.u.s.tration: JOHN BELL.]

As the campaign progressed the chances of the result underwent an important fluctuation, involving some degree of uncertainty. The Democratic disruption, and the presence of four tickets in the field, rendered it possible that some very narrow plurality in one or more of the States might turn the scale of victory. Calculating politicians, especially those belonging to the party hitherto in power, and who had enjoyed the benefits of its extensive Federal patronage, seized eagerly upon this possibility as a means of prolonging their official tenure, and showed themselves not unwilling to sacrifice the principles of the general contest to the mere material and local advantage which success would bring them.

[Sidenote] Greeley, "American Conflict," Vol. I., p. 324.

Accordingly, in several States, and more notably in the great State of New York, there was begun a quiet but unremitting effort to bring about a coalition or "fusion," as it was termed, of the warring Democratic factions, on the basis of a division of the spoils which such a combination might hope to secure. Nor did the efforts stop there. If the union of the two factions created the probability, the union of three seemed to insure certainty, and the negotiations for a coalition, therefore, extended to the adherents of Bell and Everett.

Amid the sharp contest of ideas and principles which divided the country, such an arrangement was by no means easy; yet in a large voting population there is always a percentage of party followers on whom the obligations of party creeds sit lightly. Gradually, from talk of individuals and speculations of newspapers, the intrigue proceeded to a coquetting between rival conventions. Here the formal proceedings encountered too much protest and indignation, and the scheme was handed over to standing committees, who could deliberate and bargain in secret. It must be stated to the credit of Douglas, that he publicly rejected any alliance not based on his principle of "non-intervention";[4] but the committees and managers cared little for the disavowal. In due time they perfected their agreement that the New York electoral ticket (numbering thirty-five) should be made up of adherents of the three different factions in the following proportion: Douglas, eighteen; Bell, ten; Breckinridge, seven. This agreement was carried out, and the fusion ticket thus const.i.tuted was voted for at the Presidential election by the combined opponents of Lincoln.

In Pennsylvania, notwithstanding that Douglas disapproved the scheme, an agreement or movement of fusion also took place; but in this case it did not become complete, and was not altogether carried out by the parties to it, as in New York. The electoral ticket had been nominated by the usual Democratic State Convention (March 1) prior to the Charleston disruption, and, as it turned out, about one-third of these nominees were favorable to Douglas. After the disruption, the Douglas men also formed a straight, or Douglas, electoral ticket. In order to unite the two wings at the October State election, the Executive Committee of the original convention recommended (July 2) that the electors first nominated should vote for Douglas if his election were possible; if not, should vote for Breckinridge. A subsequent resolution (August 9) recommended that the electors should vote for either Douglas or Breckinridge, as the preponderance of Douglas or Breckinridge votes in the State might indicate. On some implied agreement of this character, not clearly defined or made public, the Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell factions voted together for governor in October. Being beaten by a considerable majority at that election, the impulse to fusion was greatly weakened. Finally, the original Democratic State Committee rescinded (October 12) all its resolutions of fusion, and the Douglas State Committee withdrew (October 18) its straight Douglas ticket. This action left in the field the original electoral ticket nominated by the Democratic State Convention at Reading, prior to the Charleston Convention, untrammeled by any instructions or agreements. It was nevertheless a fusion ticket in part, because nine of the candidates (one-third of the whole number) were pledged to Douglas. What share or promise the Bell faction had in it was not made public. At the Presidential election it was voted for by a large number of fusionists; but a portion of the Douglas men voted straight for Douglas, and a portion of the Bell men straight for Bell.[5]

[Sidenote] Greeley, "American Conflict," Vol. I., p. 328.

[Sidenote] Ibid., p. 328.

In New Jersey also a definite fusion agreement was reached between the Bell, Breckinridge, and Douglas factions. An electoral ticket was formed, composed of two adherents of Bell, two of Breckinridge, and three of Douglas. This was the only State in which the fusion movement produced any result in the election. It turned out that a considerable fraction of the Douglas voters refused to be transferred by the agreement which their local managers had entered into. They would not vote for the two Bell men and the two Breckinridge men on the fusion ticket, but ran a straight Douglas ticket, adopting the three electors on the fusion ticket. By this turn of the canva.s.s the three Douglas electors whose names were on both tickets were chosen, but the remainder of the fusion ticket was defeated, giving Lincoln four electoral votes out of the seven in New Jersey. Some slight efforts towards fusion were made in two or three other States, but accomplished nothing worthy of note, and would have had no influence on the result, even had it been consummated.

All these efforts to avert or postpone the grave political change which was impending were of no avail. In the long six years' agitation popular intelligence had ripened to conviction and determination.

Every voter substantially understood the several phases of the great slavery issue, its abstract morality, its economic influence on society, the intrigue of the Administration and the Senate to make Kansas a slave-State, the judicial status of slavery as expounded in the Dred Scott decision, the validity and the effect of the fugitive-slave law, the question of the balance of political power as involved in the choice between slavery extension and slavery restriction--and, reaching beyond even this, the issue so clearly presented by Lincoln whether the States ultimately should become all slave or all free. In the whole history of American polities the voters of the United States never p.r.o.nounced a more deliberate judgment than that which they recorded upon these grave questions at the Presidential election in November, 1860.

From much doubt and uncertainty at its beginning, the campaign swept onward through the summer months, first to a probability, then to an a.s.surance of Republican success. In September the State of Maine elected a Republican governor by 18,000 majority. In October the pivotal States gave decisive Republican majorities: Pennsylvania 32,000 for governor, Indiana nearly 10,000 for governor, and Ohio 12,000 for State ticket and 27,000 on Congressmen. Politicians generally conceded that the vote in these States clearly foreshadowed Lincoln's election. The prophecy not only proved correct, but the tide of popular conviction and enthusiasm, rising still higher, carried to his support other States which were yet considered uncertain.

The Presidential election occurred on November 6,1860. In seventeen of the free-States--namely, Maine, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Ma.s.sachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Vermont, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, California, and Oregon--all the Lincoln electors were chosen. In one of the free-States (New Jersey) the choice resulted in 4 electors for Lincoln and 3 for Douglas, as already explained. This a.s.sured Lincoln of the votes of 180 Presidential electors, or a majority of 57 in the whole electoral college. The 15 slave-States were divided between the other three candidates. Eleven of them--Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas--chose Breckinridge electors, 72 in all.

Three of them--Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia--chose Bell electors, 39 in all; and one of them--Missouri--Douglas electors, 9 in number, which, together with the 3 he received in the free-State of New Jersey, gave him 12 in all: the aggregate of all the electors opposed to Lincoln being 123.

The will of the people as expressed in this popular vote was in due time carried into execution. As the law prescribes, the Presidential electors met in their several States on the 5th of December, and cast their official votes according to the above enumeration. And on the 13th of February, 1861, the Congress of the United States in joint session made the official count, and declared that Abraham Lincoln, having received a majority of the votes of Presidential electors, was duly elected President of the United States for four years, beginning March 4, 1861.

One feature of the result must not be omitted. Many careless observers felt at the time that the success of Lincoln was due entirely to the fact of there having been three opposing candidates in the field; or, in other words, to the dissensions in the Democratic party, which divided its vote between Breckinridge and Douglas. What merely moral strength the Democratic party would have gained had it remained united, it is impossible to estimate. Such a supposition can only be based on the absence of the extreme Southern doctrines concerning slavery. Given the presence of those doctrines in the canva.s.s, no hypothesis can furnish a result different from that which occurred. In the contest upon the questions as they existed, the victory of Lincoln was certain. If all the votes given to all the opposing candidates had been concentrated and cast for a "fusion ticket," as was wholly or partly done in five States, the result would have been changed nowhere except in New Jersey, California, and Oregon; Lincoln would still have received but 11 fewer, or 169 electoral votes--majority of 35 in the entire electoral college. It was a contest of ideas, not of persons or parties. The choice was not only free, but distinct and definite. The voter was not, as sometimes happens, compelled to an imperfect or partial expression of his will. The four platforms and candidates offered him an unusual variety of modes of political action. Among them the voters by undisputed const.i.tutional majorities, in orderly, legal, and unquestioned proceedings, chose the candidate whose platform p.r.o.nounced the final popular verdict that slavery should not be extended, and whose election unchangeably transferred the balance of power to the free-States.

[1] Benjamin Fitzpatrick, of Alabama, had been nominated at Baltimore, but he declined the nomination, and the National Committee subst.i.tuted the name of Herschel V. Johnson.

[2] "In my opinion there is a mature plan throughout the Southern States to break up the Union. I believe the election of a Republican is to be the signal for that attempt, and that the leaders of the scheme desire the election of Lincoln so as to have an excuse for disunion. I do not believe that every Breckinridge man is a disunionist, but I do believe that every disunionist in America is a Breckinridge man."--Douglas, Baltimore Speech, Sept. 6, 1860.

[3] We condense the following account of the origin of the "Wide Awakes" from memoranda kindly furnished us by William P. Fuller, one of the editors of the Hartford "Courant" in 1860, Major J.C. Kinney, at present connected with the paper, and General Joseph R. Hawley, the princ.i.p.al editor, now United States Senator from Connecticut, and who in 1860 marched in the ranks in the first "Wide Awake" parades.

The "Wide Awake" organization grew out of the first campaign meeting in Hartford on February 25, 1860--State election campaign. Hon. Ca.s.sius M. Clay was the speaker, and after the meeting was escorted to the Allyn House by a torch-light parade. Two of the young men who were to carry torches, D.G. Francis and H.P. Blair, being dry goods clerks, in order to protect their clothing from dust and the oil liable to fall from the torches, had prepared capes of black cambric, which they wore in connection, with the glazed caps commonly worn at the time. Colonel George P. Bissell, who was marshal, noticing the uniform, put the wearers in front, where the novelty of the rig and its double advantage of utility and show attracted much attention. It was at once proposed to form a campaign club of fifty torch-bearers with glazed caps and oil-cloth capes instead of cambric; the torch-bearing club to be "auxiliary to the Young Men's Republican Union." A meeting to organize formally was appointed for March 6; but before the new uniforms were all ready, Abraham Lincoln addressed a meeting in Hartford on the evening of March 5. After his speech, the cape-wearers of the previous meeting with a number of others who had secured their uniforms escorted Mr. Lincoln to the hotel.

The club was definitely organized on the following night. William P. Fuller, city editor, had, in noticing this meeting for organization, written in the "Courant" of March 3: "THE WIDE AWAKES.--The Republican club-room last evening was filled as usual with those who are going to partake in the great Republican triumph, in this State in April next,"

etc., etc. The name "Wide Awakes" was here applied to the Republican Young Men's Union, torch-bearers included; but at the meeting of March 6, the torch-bearers appropriated it by making it the distinctive t.i.tle to their own special organization, which almost immediately, there as elsewhere, swallowed up the names and the members.h.i.+ps of other Republican clubs. Just one year after they escorted Mr. Lincoln in their first parade, he was inaugurated President of the United States.

[4] "I will give you my opinion as to fusion. I think that every man [_sic_] who believes that slavery ought to be banished from the halls of Congress, and remanded to the people of the Territories subject to the Const.i.tution, ought to fuse and act together; but that no Democrat can, without dishonor, and forfeiture of self-respect and principle, fuse with anybody who is in favor of intervention, either for slavery or against slavery. Lincoln and Breckinridge might fuse, for they agree in principle. I can never fuse with either of them, because I differ from both. I am in favor of all men acting together who are opposed to this slavery agitation, and in favor of banis.h.i.+ng it from Congress forever; but as Democrats we can never fuse, either with Northern abolitionists, or Southern bolters and secessionists."--Douglas, Speech at Erie, Penn., New York "Tribune," October 3, 1860, p. 4.

[5] The vote in Pennsylvania stood: Lincoln, 268,030; Breckinridge (nominally), 178,871; Douglas, 16,765; Bell, 12,776.