Lincoln (48 page)

In December 1859, Lincoln made another quiet move to gain broader recognition by preparing an autobiography for campaign purposes. Jesse W. Fell, a Bloomington politician, forwarded a request from Joseph J. Lewis, of the
Chester County
(Pennsylvania)
Times,
for biographical information he could use in preparing an article on Lincoln. Lincoln complied with a terse sketch that reviewed his homespun beginnings, summarized his public career, and ended: “If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in flesh, weighing, on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark complexion, with coarse black hair, and grey eyes—no other marks or brands recollected.” This he sent to Fell, noting, “There is not much of it, for the reason, I suppose, that there is not much of me.” Lewis evidently found the sketch meager, for he embroidered it with remarks on Lincoln’s oratorical gifts and on his long record of support for a protective tariff, so dear to Pennsylvanians. His article, widely copied in other Republican newspapers, was the first published biography of Lincoln.

An even stronger indication of Lincoln’s growing interest in a presidential race was the alacrity with which he accepted an invitation from New York to lecture at Henry Ward Beecher’s Plymouth Church in Brooklyn in February 1860. Knowing that he would appear before a sophisticated Eastern audience, he promptly began more careful research and preparation than for any other speech of his life. He also ordered a brand-new black suit for the occasion, for which he paid the local tailors, Woods & Henckle, $100.

By the time he arrived in the East, sponsorship of the address had been taken over by the Young Men’s Central Republican Union, a body that included sixty-five-year-old William Cullen Bryant, forty-nine-year-old Horace
Greeley, and other such youths, who were organizing a stop-Seward movement. Lincoln’s was the third in a series of lectures—following addresses by Frank Blair, the Missouri antislavery leader, and Cassius M. Clay, the Kentucky abolitionist—designed, according to the sponsors, “to call out our better, but busier citizens, who never attend political meetings.” Without informing Lincoln, the Young Republicans also shifted the lecture from Brooklyn to the Cooper Union in Manhattan. Learning of the change after he arrived and registered at the Astor House, Lincoln spent his first day in New York revising his address, so as to make it more suitable for a general political audience than for a religious congregation.

On Monday, February 27, escorted by several of the Young Republicans, he caught a glimpse of Broadway and had his photograph, which he called his “shaddow,” taken at Mathew B. Brady’s studio, where he exchanged pleasantries with George Bancroft. “I am on my way to Massachusetts,” Lincoln told the historian, “where I have a son at school, who, if report be true, already knows much more than his father.” The portrait Brady produced after this sitting was a work of art; he retouched the negative in order to correct Lincoln’s left eye that seemed to be roving upward and eliminated harsh lines from his face to show an almost handsome, statesmanlike image.

That night, after a warm introduction by Bryant, Lincoln appeared before a capacity audience at the Cooper Union. Many of his listeners expected “something weird, rough, and uncultivated,” George Haven Putnam remembered, and Lincoln’s appearance did nothing to undeceive them. “The long, ungainly figure, upon which hung clothes that, while new for the trip, were evidently the work of an unskilled tailor; the large feet; the clumsy hands, of which... the orator seemed to be unduly conscious; the long, gaunt head capped by a shock of hair that seemed not to have been thoroughly brushed out,” Putnam continued, “made a picture which did not fit in with New York’s conception of a finished statesman.” Equally disconcerting was Lincoln’s voice, for it was high and piercing in tone at the outset.

But the speech that he delivered, reading carefully and soberly from sheets of blue foolscap, quickly erased the impression of a crude frontiersman. It was a masterful exploration of the political paths open to the nation. In the first third of the address Lincoln closely examined Douglas’s contention that popular sovereignty was simply a continuation of a policy initiated by the Founding Fathers. After digging through the records of the Constitutional Convention and the debates in the earliest Congresses, he was able to show that of the thirty-nine signers of the Constitution, at least twenty-one demonstrated by their votes that the federal government had the power to control slavery in the national territories; other noted antislavery men, like Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris, should probably be added to that list, though they were not called to vote on this specific question. This minutely detailed record confirmed a position that Lincoln had been arguing for years: that prior to Douglas’s introduction of the Kansas-Nebraska Act it was impossible “to show that any living man
in the whole world ever did ... declare that... the Constitution forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the federal territories.”

Next Lincoln examined the Southern position, though he had little hope that his arguments would be heard, much less heeded, in that section. Nevertheless, he seized the opportunity to argue that the Republicans were the true conservatives on questions relating to slavery; they adhered “to the old and tried, against the new and untried,” while Southern fire-eaters “with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy.” This gave him a welcome opening to explain the Republican attitude toward the raid that John Brown and a handful of zealous followers had staged in October 1859 on Harpers Ferry, Virginia. At that time Lincoln denounced Brown’s attempt to stir up an insurrection among the slaves as “wrong for two reasons. It was a violation of law and it was, as all such attacks must be, futile as far as any effect it might have on the extinction of a great evil.” Though he had paid tribute to Brown’s “great courage, rare unselfishness” and sympathized with his hatred of slavery, he concluded that the old abolitionist was “insane.” Now he took the offensive, pointing out that Brown’s raid was not a slave insurrection but “an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate”; further, he pointed out, Southerners after an elaborate congressional investigation had failed to implicate a single Republican in it. Southern efforts to capitalize on John Brown’s raid were simply additional evidence of their determination to “rule or ruin in all events.” More recently Southerners had gone so far as to announce that if a Republican was elected President in 1860 the Union would be dissolved and the fault would be the North’s. “That is cool,” Lincoln exclaimed. “A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters through his teeth, ‘Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and then you will be a murderer!’”

What should Northerners do? Avoiding both the moral indifference with which Douglas approached the slavery issue and the proslavery zeal of the Southern radicals, Republicans should fearlessly and effectively persist in excluding slavery from the national territories, confining it to the states where it already existed. “Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves,” Lincoln announced in his spine-tingling peroration. “Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”

As a speech, it was a superb performance. The audience frequently applauded during the delivery of the address, and when Lincoln closed, the crowd cheered and stood, waving handkerchiefs and hats. Noah Brooks, then working for the
New York Tribune,
exclaimed: “He’s the greatest man since St. Paul,” and a student at the Harvard Law School, trained to master his emotions, told his father, “It was the best speech I ever heard.” The next day four New York papers printed the address in full. Bryant in the
New York Evening Post
called it forcible and “most logically and convincingly stated.” Greeley, less restrained, announced: “Mr. Lincoln is one of Nature’s
orators, using his rare powers solely and effectively to elucidate and to convince, though their inevitable effect is to delight and electrify as well.” Immediately published in pamphlet form, the Cooper Union address was issued and reissued as a Republican tract by the
New York Tribune,
the
Chicago Press and Tribune,
the
Detroit Tribune,
and the
Albany Evening Journal

It was also a superb political move for an unannounced presidential aspirant. Appearing in Seward’s home state, sponsored by a group largely loyal to Chase, Lincoln shrewdly made no reference to either of these Republican rivals for the nomination. Recognizing that if the Republicans were going to win in 1860 they needed the support of men who had voted for Fillmore in the previous election, Lincoln in his Cooper Union address stressed his conservatism. He did not mention his house-divided thesis or Seward’s irrepressible-conflict prediction; Republicans were presented as a party of moderates who were simply trying to preserve the legacy of the Founding Fathers against the radical assaults of the proslavery element. Even Lincoln’s language contributed to the effect he sought; the careful structure of the speech, the absence of incendiary rhetoric, even the laborious recital of the voting records of the Founding Fathers, all suggested reasonableness and stability, not wide-eyed fanaticism. In short, it was, as one of the sponsors wrote, an enormous success. Sending Lincoln the agreed-upon fee of $200, he added, “I would that it were $200,000 for you are worthy of it.”

The next day Lincoln moved on to New England, ostensibly to visit Robert, who had enrolled in the Phillips Exeter Academy the previous September. Of course, he was glad to see his son and to chat with his schoolmates. When one of them produced a banjo and gave an informal concert for the visitor, Lincoln was genuinely pleased and said to his stiff, unmusical son, “Robert, you ought to have one.” But it quickly became clear that the real object of his visit was to cement connections with influential Republicans who would be attending the forthcoming national convention. After the success of the Cooper Union address, Lincoln was something of a lion, much in demand at Republican rallies, and during his four days with Robert he made campaign addresses at Concord, Manchester, Dover, and Exeter. On the last of these occasions many of the boys from the academy turned out, and he had an audience of about five hundred people. The students, who knew Bob as “a gentleman in every sense of the word; quiet in manner, with a certain dignity of his own,” were astonished when Lincoln came into the hall, “tall, lank, awkward; dressed in a loose, ill-fitting black frock coat, with black trousers, ill-fitting and somewhat baggy at the knees.” They observed his rumpled hair, his necktie turned awry, and his long legs that seemed to fit neither under or around his chair. “Isn’t it too bad Bob’s father is so homely?” they whispered to each other. “Don’t you feel sorry for him?” But after Lincoln disentangled his legs, rose slowly from his chair, and began speaking, they forgot his appearance; they no longer pitied Bob but felt proud to know his father.

During his two weeks in New England, Lincoln spoke nearly every day, avoiding Massachusetts, which was a Seward stronghold, but attempting to help the Republican candidates in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Connecticut. He found it hard work. So many in his audiences had read the Cooper Union address that he could not simply repeat that speech, and he had to try to think of new ways of presenting his ideas. Perhaps his most telling innovation was his explanation of why Republicans firmly opposed to the extension of slavery were not pledged to eradicate it in the Southern states. If “out in the street, or in the field, or on the prairie I find a rattlesnake,” Lincoln explained, “I take a stake and kill him. Everybody would applaud the act and say I did right.” “But suppose the snake was in a bed where children were sleeping. Would I do right to strike him there? I might hurt the children; or I might not kill, but only arouse and exasperate the snake, and he might bite the children.” The best way to end slavery, he insisted, was firmly to oppose its spread into the national territories. On this issue there could be no compromise. “Let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively,” he urged over and over again, often ending with the peroration of his Cooper Union address: “Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.”

The success of Lincoln’s Eastern trip edged him a step closer to becoming an avowed candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. As recently as January he had been hesitant about making a race. Conferring with Judd, Hatch, Jackson Grimshaw, and a few other prominent Illinois Republicans who pressed him to run, he expressed doubt whether he could get the nomination if he wished it. Only after a night of reflection—and doubtless of conferences with Mary Lincoln, who was even more ambitious than he was—did he authorize the little group to work quietly for his nomination. Even then he did not consider himself a serious candidate but hoped that endorsement as a favorite son would help unite the Illinois Republicans and confirm his party leadership. He explained that he was “not in a position where it would hurt much for me to not be nominated on the national ticket” but that “it would hurt some for me to not get the Illinois delegates” at the Republican convention. But after his return from New York and New England he made no attempt to conceal his desire for the nomination. By April he wrote to Trumbull, who inquired about his intentions: “I will be entirely frank. The taste
is
in my mouth a little.”