Read Online Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction by Allen C. Guelzo - Free Book Online
Authors: Allen C. Guelzo
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to be frightened out of their principles simply because the South held the pistol of political disruption of the Union to their heads. Republican opposition to slavery was a matter of moral judgment, not just political expediency. “All they ask, we could readily grant, if we thought slavery right; all we ask, they could as readily grant, if they thought it wrong,” Lincoln explained, “Their thinking it right, and our thinking it wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole controversy.” 63
Yet Lincoln tempered his utterances with a large dash of caution. He insisted that he only wanted to contain slavery where it was, not to abolish it outright. “Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation.” And he distanced himself from John Brown by referring to the Harpers Ferry raid as “peculiar” and “absurd.” In short, Lincoln said everything he needed to say to make clear his moral opposition to the extension of slavery, while at the same time professing no personal animosity toward the South. Gone was the provocative rhetoric of the “House Divided” and the talk of conspiracy between Buchanan, Pierce,Douglas, and Taney—Lincoln as much as conceded that the house could remain divided so long as one of the divisions could not expand, and in so doing he positioned himself as a firm but not radical anti-slavery man, the perfect Republican. The Cooper Institute audience roared its approval, and so did the major Republican newspapers. 64
The greatest impact of the Cooper Institute speech would be felt in Illinois. On May 9, 1860, the Illinois Republican state convention at Decatur riotously pledged its national convention delegates to Lincoln for the presidential nomination, and at the height of a tremendous outburst of enthusiasm, Lincoln’s cousin, John Hanks, paraded into the convention, bearing two weather-beaten fence rails bedecked with a banner reading: “Abraham Lincoln. The Rail Candidate for President in 1860. Two Rails from a Lot of 3,000 Made in 1830 by Thos. Hanks and Abe Lincoln.” Though Lincoln had struggled all his adult life to put his crude origins out of sight and deeply resented anyone’s attempt to address him informally as “Abe,” the state convention saw at once the value of identifying him as a man “fresh from the people,” especially the people of the pioneering West, and so he became not Mr. Lincoln the railroad lawyer or the Honorable Abraham Lincoln, Esq., of Springfield, but Abe Lincoln the Rail Splitter.
When the Republican national convention convened one week later in Chicago, most of the delegates arrived at the convention hall assuming that either Seward or some other party stalwart would be handed the presidential nomination. But Seward’s reputation as a radical, unelectable in the West and anathema to anti-slavery Democrats, crippled him. The first ballot had Seward only sixty delegates shy of the nomination, but from that point on, the Illinois contingent (which already had been agitating and bargaining for their favorite son for weeks) now began wheeling and dealing in earnest while Lincoln remained in Springfield so as to be able to turn a blind eye to the politicking the Illinois Republicans were waging in his behalf. On the third ballot Lincoln landslided into the nomination, and the convention exploded into a pandemonium of jubilation. For a running mate, the Republicans cast a careful eye toward disheartened Northern Democrats and drafted a former Democrat from Maine, Hannibal Hamlin. “We are full of enthusiasm over Old Abe,” exulted Indiana Republican Schuyler Colfax. “We feel that the battle is half won already.” 65
Southern Democrats were not nearly so jubilant. The Charleston newspapers began denouncing Lincoln as soon as he was nominated for the presidency in 1860, calling him a “horrid-looking wretch… sooty and
Yet Lincoln tempered his utterances with a large dash of caution. He insisted that he only wanted to contain slavery where it was, not to abolish it outright. “Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising from its actual presence in the nation.” And he distanced himself from John Brown by referring to the Harpers Ferry raid as “peculiar” and “absurd.” In short, Lincoln said everything he needed to say to make clear his moral opposition to the extension of slavery, while at the same time professing no personal animosity toward the South. Gone was the provocative rhetoric of the “House Divided” and the talk of conspiracy between Buchanan, Pierce,Douglas, and Taney—Lincoln as much as conceded that the house could remain divided so long as one of the divisions could not expand, and in so doing he positioned himself as a firm but not radical anti-slavery man, the perfect Republican. The Cooper Institute audience roared its approval, and so did the major Republican newspapers. 64
The greatest impact of the Cooper Institute speech would be felt in Illinois. On May 9, 1860, the Illinois Republican state convention at Decatur riotously pledged its national convention delegates to Lincoln for the presidential nomination, and at the height of a tremendous outburst of enthusiasm, Lincoln’s cousin, John Hanks, paraded into the convention, bearing two weather-beaten fence rails bedecked with a banner reading: “Abraham Lincoln. The Rail Candidate for President in 1860. Two Rails from a Lot of 3,000 Made in 1830 by Thos. Hanks and Abe Lincoln.” Though Lincoln had struggled all his adult life to put his crude origins out of sight and deeply resented anyone’s attempt to address him informally as “Abe,” the state convention saw at once the value of identifying him as a man “fresh from the people,” especially the people of the pioneering West, and so he became not Mr. Lincoln the railroad lawyer or the Honorable Abraham Lincoln, Esq., of Springfield, but Abe Lincoln the Rail Splitter.
When the Republican national convention convened one week later in Chicago, most of the delegates arrived at the convention hall assuming that either Seward or some other party stalwart would be handed the presidential nomination. But Seward’s reputation as a radical, unelectable in the West and anathema to anti-slavery Democrats, crippled him. The first ballot had Seward only sixty delegates shy of the nomination, but from that point on, the Illinois contingent (which already had been agitating and bargaining for their favorite son for weeks) now began wheeling and dealing in earnest while Lincoln remained in Springfield so as to be able to turn a blind eye to the politicking the Illinois Republicans were waging in his behalf. On the third ballot Lincoln landslided into the nomination, and the convention exploded into a pandemonium of jubilation. For a running mate, the Republicans cast a careful eye toward disheartened Northern Democrats and drafted a former Democrat from Maine, Hannibal Hamlin. “We are full of enthusiasm over Old Abe,” exulted Indiana Republican Schuyler Colfax. “We feel that the battle is half won already.” 65
Southern Democrats were not nearly so jubilant. The Charleston newspapers began denouncing Lincoln as soon as he was nominated for the presidency in 1860, calling him a “horrid-looking wretch… sooty and
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