Abraham Lincoln, a History — Volume 02 · Chapter 18Table of Contents Vol. II (17)
This chapter is not translated yet. You are reading the original.
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."
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."
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 Massachusetts constitutional 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 institutions to aim at the elevation of men, I am opposed to whatever tends to degrade them."
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.
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 constituted 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]
Greeley, "American Conflict," Vol. I., p. 328.
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 canvass 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 pronounced 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 assurance 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 Hampshire, Massachusetts, 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 assured 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 canvass, 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 constitutional majorities, in orderly, legal, and unquestioned proceedings, chose the candidate whose platform pronounced 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 substituted 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 principal 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. Cassius 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 title to their own special organization, which almost immediately, there as elsewhere, swallowed up the names and the memberships 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 Constitution, 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 banishing 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.
CHAPTER XVII BEGINNINGS OF REBELLION
Disunion was not a fungus of recent growth in American politics. Talk of disunion, threats of disunion, accusations of intentions of disunion, lie scattered rather plentifully through the political literature of the country from the very formation of the Government. In fact, the present Constitution of the United States was strenuously opposed by large political factions, and, it may almost be said, succeeded by only a hair's-breadth. That original opposition perpetuated itself in some degree in the form of doubts of its duration and prophecies of its failure. The same dissatisfaction and restlessness resulted in early and important amendments, but these did not satisfy all dissenters and doubters. Immediate and profound conflict of opinion sprang up over the administration and policy of the new Government; active political parties and hot discussion arose, the one side proclaiming that it was too strong, the other asserting that it was too weak, to endure.
Before public opinion was well consolidated, the war of 1812 produced new complaints and new opposition, out of which grew the famous Hartford Convention. It has been charged and denied that this was a movement of disunion and rebellion. The exact fact is not important in our day; it is enough that it was a sign of deep political unrest and of shallow public faith. Passing by lesser manifestations of the same character, we come to the eventful nullification proceeding in South Carolina in the year 1832. Here was a formal legislative repudiation of Federal authority with a reserved threat of forcible resistance. At this point disunion was in full flower, and the terms nullification, secession, treason, rebellion, revolution, coercion, constitute the current political vocabulary. Take up a political speech of that period, change the names and dates, and the reader can easily imagine himself among the angry controversies of the winter of 1860.
Nullification was half-throttled by Jackson's proclamation, half-quieted by Clay's compromise. But from that time forward the phraseology and the spirit of disunion became constant factors in Congressional debate and legislation. In 1850, it broke out to an extent and with an intensity never before reached. This time it enveloped the whole country, and many of the wisest and best statesmen believed civil war at hand. The compromise measures of 1850 finally subdued the storm; but not till the serious beginning of a secession movement had been developed and put down, both by the general condemnation of the whole country, and the direct vote of a union majority in the localities where it took its rise.
Among these compromise acts of 1850 was the admission of California as a free-State. The gold discoveries had suddenly filled it with population, making the usual probation as a Territory altogether needless. A considerable part of the State lay south of the line of 36º, 30', and the pro-slavery extremists had demanded that it should be divided into two States—one to be a free and the other to be a slave-State—in order to preserve the political balance between the sections, in the United States Senate. This being refused, they not only violently opposed the compromise measures, but organized a movement for resistance in South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi, demanding redress, and threatening secession if it were not accorded. A popular contest on this issue followed in 1851 in these States, in which the ultra-secession party was signally overthrown. It submitted sullenly to its defeat; leaving, as always before, a considerable faction unsatisfied and implacable, only awaiting a new opportunity to start a new disturbance. This new opportunity arose in the slavery agitation, beginning with the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854, and ending with the election of Lincoln. Daring this six years' controversy, disunion was kept in the background because the pro-slavery party had continual and sanguine hope of ultimate triumph. It did not despair of success until the actual election of Lincoln, on the 6th of November, 1860; consequently, even in the Southern States, as a rule, disunion was frowned upon till near the end of the Presidential campaign, and only paraded as an evil to be feared, not as a thing to be desired.
This aspect, however, was superficial. Under the surface, a small but determined disunion conspiracy was actively at work. It has left few historical traces; but in 1856 distinct evidence begins to crop out. There was a possibility, though not a probability, that Frémont might be elected President; and this contingency the conspirators proposed to utilize by beginning a rebellion. A letter from the Governor of Virginia to the Governors of Maryland and other States is sufficient proof of such an intent, even without the evidence of later history.
RICHMOND, VA., Sept. 15, 1856.
DEAR SIR: Events are approaching which address themselves to your responsibilities and to mine as chief Executives of slave-holding States. Contingencies may soon happen which would require preparation for the worst of evils to the people. Ought we not to admonish ourselves by joint council of the extraordinary duties which may devolve upon us from the dangers which so palpably threaten our common peace and safety? When, how, or to what extent may we act, separately or unitedly, to ward off dangers if we can, to meet them most effectually if we must?
I propose that, as early as convenient, the Governors of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee shall assemble at Raleigh, N.C., for the purpose generally of consultation upon the state of the country, upon the best means of preserving its peace, and especially of protecting the honor and interests of the slave-holding States. I have addressed the States only having Democratic Executives, for obvious reasons.
This should be done as early as possible before the Presidential election, and I would suggest Monday, the 13th of October next. Will you please give me an early answer, and oblige,
Yours most truly and respectfully,
HENRY A. WISE.
His Excellency Thomas W. Ligon, Governor of Maryland.
If any explanation were needed of the evident purpose of this letter, or of the proposed meeting, it may be found in the following from Senator Mason, of Virginia, to Jefferson Davis, of Mississippi, who was at the time Secretary of War under President Pierce:
O.J. Victor, "American Conspiracies," p. 520.
SELMA, NEAR WINCHESTER, Va., Sept. 30, 1856.
MY DEAR SIR: I have a letter from Wise, of the 27th, full of spirit. He says the Governors of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Louisiana have already agreed to rendezvous at Raleigh, and others will—this in your most private ear. He says, further, that he had officially requested you to exchange with Virginia, on fair terms of difference, percussion for flint muskets. I don't know the usage or power of the department In such cases, but if it can be done, even by liberal construction, I hope you will accede. Was there not an appropriation at the last session for converting flint into percussion arms? If so, would it not furnish good reason for extending such facilities to the States? Virginia probably has more arms than the other Southern States, and would divide, in case of need. In a letter yesterday to a committee in South Carolina, I give it as my judgment, in the event of Frémont's election, the South should not pause, but proceed at once to "immediate, absolute, and eternal separation." So I am a candidate for the first halter.
Wise says his accounts from Philadelphia are cheering for old Buck in Pennsylvania. I hope they be not delusive. Vale et Salute [sic].
Colonel Davis.
In these letters we have an exact counterpart of the later and successful efforts of these identical conspirators, conjointly with others, to initiate rebellion. When the Senatorial campaign of 1858 between Lincoln and Douglas was at its height, there was printed in the public journals of the Southern States the following extraordinary letter, which at once challenged the attention of the whole reading public of the country, and became known by the universal stigma of "The Scarlet Letter." In the light of after events it was both a revelation and a prophecy:
Quoted in Appendix to "Globe" for 1859-60, p. 313.
MONTGOMERY, June 15, 1858.
DEAR SIR: Your kind favor of the 15th is received. I heartily agree with you that [no] general movement can be made that will clean out the Augean stable. If the Democracy were overthrown, it would result in giving place to a greater and hungrier swarm of flies.
The remedy of the South is not in such a process. It is in a diligent organization of her true men for prompt resistance to the next aggression. It must come in the nature of things. No national party can save us; no sectional party can ever do it. But if we could do as our fathers did—organize "committees of safety" all over the Cotton States (it is only in them that we can hope for any effective movement)—we shall fire the Southern heart, instruct the Southern mind, give courage to each other, and at the proper moment, by one organized concerted action, we can precipitate the Cotton States into a revolution.
The idea has been shadowed forth in the South by Mr. Ruffin; has been taken up and recommended in the "Advertiser" (published at Montgomery, Alabama), under the name of "League of United Southerners," who, keeping up their old party relations on all other questions, will hold the Southern issue paramount, and will influence parties, legislatures, and statesmen. I have no time to enlarge, but to suggest merely.
In haste, yours, etc.,
WM. L. YANCEY
To James Slaughter, Esq.
The writer of this "Scarlet Letter" had long been known to the country as a prominent politician of Alabama, affiliated with the Democratic party, having once represented a district of that State in Congress, and of late years the most active, pronounced, and conspicuous disunionist in the South. In so far as this publication concerned himself, it was no surprise to the public; but the project of an organized conspiracy had never before been broached with such matter-of-fact confidence.[1]
An almost universal condemnation by the public press reassured the startled country that the author of this revolutionary epistle was one of the confirmed "fire-eaters" who were known and admitted to exist in the South, but whose numbers, it was alleged, were too insignificant to excite the most distant apprehension.
The letter was everywhere copied, its author denounced, and his proposal to "precipitate the Cotton States into a revolution" held up to public execration. Mr. Yancey immediately printed a statement deploring the betrayal of personal confidence in its publication, and to modifiy[2] the obnoxious declaration by a long and labored argument. But in the course of this explanation he furnished additional proof of the deep conspiracy disclosed by the "Scarlet Letter." He made mention of "A well-considered Southern policy, a policy which has been digested, and understood, and approved by the ablest men in Virginia, as you yourselves must be aware," to the effect that while the Cotton States should begin rebellion, "Virginia and the other border States should remain in the Union," where, by their position and their counsels, they would form a protecting barrier to the proposed separation. "In the event of the movement being successful," he continued, "in time Virginia and the other border States that desired it could join the Southern Confederacy."
Less than ordinary uncertainty hung over the final issue of the Presidential campaign of 1860. To popular apprehension the election of Lincoln became more and more probable. The active competition for votes by four Presidential tickets greatly increased his chances of success; and the verdict of the October elections appeared to all sagacious politicians to render his choice a practical certainty. Sanguine partisans, however, clung tenaciously to their favorites, and continued to hope against hope, and work against fate. This circumstance produced a deplorable result in the South. Under the shadow of impending defeat the Democrats of the Cotton States made the final months of the canvass quite as much a threat against Lincoln as a plea for Breckinridge. This preaching of secession seemed to shallow minds harmless election buncombe; but when the contingency finally arrived, and the choice of Lincoln became a real event, they found themselves already in a measure pledged to resistance. They had vowed they would never submit; and now, with many, the mere pride of consistency moved them to adhere to an ill-considered declaration. The sting of defeat intensified their resentment, and in this irritated frame of mind the secession demagogues among them lured them on skillfully into the rising tide of revolution.
In proportion to her numbers, the State of South Carolina furnished the largest contingent to the faction of active conspirators; and to her, by a common consent, were accorded the dangers and honors of leadership. Since conspiracies work in secret, only fragmentary proofs of their efforts ever come to light. Though probably only one of the many early agencies in organizing the rebellion, the following circular reveals in a startling light what labor and system were employed to "fire the Southern heart" after the November election: