A Political History of the State of New York Volume II Part 18

CHAPTER XIX

SEWARD'S BID FOR THE PRESIDENCY

1859-1860

The elections in 1858 simplified the political situation. With the exception of Pennsylvania, where the tariff question played a conspicuous part, all the Northern States had disapproved President Buchanan's Lecompton policy, and the people, save the old-line Whigs, the Abolitionists, and the Americans, had placed themselves under the leadership of Seward, Lincoln, and Douglas, who now clearly represented the political sentiments of the North. If any hope still lingered among the Democrats of New York, that the sectional division of their party might be healed, it must have been quickly shattered by the fierce debates over popular sovereignty and the African slave-trade which occurred in the United States Senate in February, 1859, between Jefferson Davis, representing the slave power of the South, and Stephen A. Douglas, the recognised champion of his party in the free States.

Under these circ.u.mstances, the Democratic national convention, called to meet in Charleston, South Carolina, on April 23, 1860, became the centre of interest in the state convention, which met at Syracuse on the 14th of September, 1859. Each faction desired to control the national delegation. As usual, Daniel S. d.i.c.kinson was a candidate for the Presidency. He believed his friends in the South would prefer him to Douglas if he could command an unbroken New York delegation, and, with the hope of having the delegates selected by districts as the surer road to success, he flirted with Fernando Wood until the latter's perfidy turned his ear to the siren song of the Softs, who promised him a solid delegation whenever it could secure his nomination. d.i.c.kinson listened with distrust. He was the last of the old leaders of the Hards. Seymour and Marcy had left them; but "Scripture d.i.c.k," as he was called, because of his many Bible quotations, stood resolutely and arrogantly at his post, defying the machinations of his opponents with merciless criticism. The Binghamton Stalwart did not belong in the first rank of statesmen. He was neither an orator nor a tactful party leader. It cannot be said of him that he was a quick-witted, incisive, and successful debater;[504] but, on critical days, when the fate of his faction hung in the balance, he was a valiant fighter, absolutely without fear, who took blows as bravely as he gave them, and was loyal to all the interests which he espoused. He now dreaded the Softs bearing gifts. But their evident frankness and his supreme need melted the estrangement that had long existed between them.

[Footnote 504: "'Scripture d.i.c.k,' whom we used to consider the sorriest of slow jokers, has really brightened up."--New York _Tribune_, March 17, 1859.]

In the selection of delegates to the state convention Fernando Wood and Tammany had a severe struggle. Tammany won, but Wood appeared at Syracuse with a full delegation, and for half an hour before the convention convened Wood endeavoured to do by force what he knew could not be accomplished by votes. He had brought with him a company of roughs, headed by John C. Heenan, "the Benicia Boy," and fifteen minutes before the appointed hour, in the absence of a majority of the delegates, he organised the convention, electing his own chairman and appointing his own committees. When the bulk of the Softs arrived they proceeded to elect their chairman. This was the signal for a riot, in the course of which the chairman of the regulars was knocked down and an intimidating display of pistols exhibited. Finally the regulars adjourned, leaving the hall to the Wood contestants, who completed their organisation, and, after renominating the Democratic state officers elected in 1857, adjourned without day.

Immediately, the regulars reappeared; and as the Hards from the up-state counties answered to the roll call, the Softs vociferously applauded. Then d.i.c.kinson made a characteristic speech. He did not fully decide to join the Softs until Fernando Wood had sacrificed the only chance of overthrowing them; but when he did go over, he burned the bridges behind him. The Softs were delighted with d.i.c.kinson's bearing and d.i.c.kinson's speech. It united the party throughout the State and put Tammany in easy control of New York City.

With harmony restored there was little for the convention to do except to renominate the state officers, appoint delegates to the Charleston convention who were instructed to vote as a unit, and adopt the platform. These resolutions indorsed the administration of President Buchanan; approved popular sovereignty; condemned the "irrepressible conflict" speech of Seward as a "revolutionary threat" aimed at republican inst.i.tutions; and opposed the enlargement of the Erie ca.n.a.l to a depth of seven feet.

The Republican state convention had previously a.s.sembled on September 7 and selected a ticket, equally divided between men of Democratic and Whig antecedents, headed by Elias W. Leavenworth for secretary of state. Great confidence was felt in its election until the Americans met in convention on September 22 and indorsed five of its candidates and four Democrats. This, however, did not abate Republican activity, and, in the end, six of the nine Republican nominees were elected. The weight of the combined opposition, directed against Leavenworth, caused his defeat by less than fifteen hundred, showing that Republicans were gradually absorbing all the anti-slavery elements.

Upon what theory the American party nominated an eclectic ticket did not appear, although the belief obtained that it hoped to cloud Seward's presidential prospects by creating the impression that the Senator was unable, without a.s.sistance, to carry his own State on the eve of a great national contest. But whatever the reason, the result deeply humiliated the party, since its voting strength, reduced to less than 21,000, proved insufficient to do more than expose the weakness. This was the last appearance of the American party. It had endeavoured to extend its life and increase its influence; but after its refusal to interdict slavery in the territories it rapidly melted away. Henry Wilson, senator and Vice President, declared that he would give ten years of his life if he could blot out his membership in the Know-Nothing party, since it a.s.sociated him throughout his long and attractive public career with proscriptive principles of which he was ashamed.

In the midst of the campaign the country was startled by John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry. For two years Brown had lived an uneventful life in New York on land in the Adirondack region given him by Gerrit Smith. In 1851, he moved to Ohio, and from thence to Kansas, where he became known as John Brown of Osawatomie. He had been a consistent enemy of slavery, working the underground railroad and sympathising with every scheme for the rescue of slaves; but once in Kansas, he readily learned the use of a Sharpe's rifle. In revenge for the destruction of Lawrence, he deliberately ma.s.sacred the pro-slavery settlers living along Pottawatomie creek. "Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins," was a favourite text. His activity made him a national character. The President offered $250 for his arrest and the governor of Missouri added $3000 more. In 1858, he returned East, collected money to aid an insurrection among the slaves of Virginia, and on October 17, 1859, with eighteen men, began his quixotic campaign by cutting telegraph wires, stopping trains, and seizing the national armory at Harper's Ferry. At one time he had taken sixty prisoners.

The affair was soon over, but not until the entire band was killed or captured. Brown, severely hurt, stood between two of his sons, one dead and the other mortally wounded, refusing to surrender so long as he could fight. After his capture, he said, coolly, in reply to a question: "We are Abolitionists from the North, come to release and take your slaves."

The trial, conviction, and execution of Brown and his captured companions ended the episode, but its influence was destined to be far-reaching. John Brown became idealised. His bearing as he stood between his dead and dying sons, his truth-telling answers, and the evidence of his absolute unselfishness filled many people in the North with a profound respect for the pa.s.sion that had driven him on, while his bold invasion of a slave State and his reckless disregard of life and property alarmed the South into the sincere belief that his methods differed only in degree from the teachings of those who talked of an irrepressible conflict and a higher law. To aid him in regaining his lost position in the South, Stephen A. Douglas proclaimed it as his "firm and deliberate belief that the Harper Ferry crime was the natural, logical, and inevitable result of the doctrine and teachings of the Republican party."[505]

[Footnote 505: _Congressional Globe_, 36th Cong., 1st Sess., pp. 553-4 (January 23, 1860).]

The sentimentalists of the North generally sympathised with Brown.

Emerson spoke of him as "that new saint awaiting his martyrdom, and who, if he shall suffer, will make the gallows glorious like the cross."[506] In the same spirit Th.o.r.eau called him "an angel of light," and Longfellow wrote in his diary on the day of the execution: "The date of a new revolution, quite as much needed as the old one."[507] But the Republican leaders deprecated the affair, characterising it as "among the gravest of crimes," and denying that it had any relation to their party except as it influenced the minds of all men for or against slavery.

[Footnote 506: James E. Cabot, _Life of Emerson_, p. 597.]

[Footnote 507: Samuel Longfellow, _Life of Longfellow_, Vol. 2, p.

347.]

William H. Seward was in Europe at the time of the raid. Early in May, 1859, his friends had celebrated his departure from New York, escorting him to Sandy Hook, and leaving him finally amidst shouts and music, bells and whistles, and the waving of hats and handkerchiefs. Such a scene is common enough nowadays, but then it was unique. His return at the close of December, after an absence of eight months, was the occasion of great rejoicing. A salute of a hundred guns was fired in City Hall Park, the mayor and common council tendered him a public reception, and after hours of speech-making and hand-shaking he proceeded slowly homeward amidst waiting crowds at every station. At Auburn the streets were decorated, and the people, regardless of creed or party, escorted him in procession to his home.

Few Republicans in New York had any doubt at that moment of his nomination and election to the Presidency.

On going to Washington Seward found the United States Senate investigating the Harper's Ferry affair and the House of Representatives deadlocked over the election of a speaker. Bitterness and threats of disunion characterised the proceeding at both ends of the Capitol. "This Union," said one congressman, "great and powerful as it is, can be tumbled down by the act of any one Southern State. If Florida withdraws, the federal government would not dare attack her.

If it did, the bands would dissolve as if melted by lightning."[508]

Referring to the possibility of the election of a Republican President, another declared that "We will never submit to the inauguration of a Black Republican President. You may elect Seward to be President of the North; but of the South, never! Whenever a President is elected by a fanatical majority of the North, those whom I represent are ready, let the consequences be what they may, to fall back on their reserved rights, and say, 'As to this Union we have no longer any lot or part in it.'"[509]

[Footnote 508: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 441.]

[Footnote 509: _Ibid._, p. 442.]

In the midst of these fiery, disunion utterances, on the 21st of February, 1860, Seward introduced a bill for the admission of Kansas into the Union. After the overwhelming defeat of the Lecompton Const.i.tution, the free-state men had controlled the territorial legislature, repealed the slave code of 1855, and, in the summer of 1859, convened a const.i.tutional convention at Wyandotte. A few weeks later the people ratified the result of its work by a large majority.

It was this Wyandotte Const.i.tution under which Seward proposed to admit Kansas, and he fixed the consideration of his measure for the 29th of February. This would be two days after Abraham Lincoln had spoken in New York City.

Lincoln, whose fame had made rapid strides in the West since his debate with Douglas in 1858, had been anxious to visit New York. It was the home of Seward, the centre of Republican strength, and to him practically an unknown land. Through the invitation of the Young Men's Central Republican Union he was now to lecture at Cooper Inst.i.tute on the 27th of February. It was arranged at first that he speak in Henry Ward Beecher's church, but the change, relieving him from too close a.s.sociation with the great apostle of abolition, opened a wider door for his reception. Personally he was known to very few people in the city or State. In 1848, on his way to New England to take the stump, he had called upon Thurlow Weed at Albany, and together they visited Millard Fillmore, then candidate for Vice President; but the meeting made such a slight impression upon the editor of the _Evening Journal_ that he had entirely forgotten it. Thirty years before, in one of his journeys to Illinois, William Cullen Bryant had met him. Lincoln was then a tall, awkward lad, the captain of a militia company in the Black Hawk War, whose racy and original conversation attracted the young poet; but Bryant, too, had forgotten him, and it was long after the famous debate that he identified his prairie acquaintance as the opponent of Douglas. Lincoln, however, did not come as a stranger. His encounter with the great Illinoisan had marked him as a powerful and logical reasoner whose speeches embraced every political issue of the day and cleared up every doubtful point. Well-informed people everywhere knew of him. He was not yet a national character, but he had a national reputation.

Though Lincoln's lecture was one of a course, the admission fee did not restrain an eager audience from filling the commodious hall.

"Since the day of Clay and Webster," said the _Tribune_, "no man has spoken to a larger a.s.semblage of the intellect and mental culture of our city."[510] Bryant acted as chairman of the meeting, and other well-known men of the city occupied the stage. In his _Life of Lincoln_, Herndon suggests that the new suit of clothes which seemed so fine in his Springfield home was in such awkward contrast with the neatly fitting dress of the New Yorkers that it disconcerted him, and the brilliant audience dazzled and embarra.s.sed him; but his hearers thought only of the pregnant matter of the discourse, so calmly and logically discussed that Horace Greeley, years afterward, p.r.o.nounced it "the very best political address to which I ever listened, and I have heard some of Webster's grandest."[511]

[Footnote 510: New York _Tribune_, February 28, 1860.]

[Footnote 511: _Century Magazine_, July, 1891, p. 373. An address of Greeley written in 1868.]

Lincoln had carefully prepared for the occasion. He came East to show what manner of man he was, and while he evidenced deep moral feeling which kept his audience in a glow, he combined with it rare political sagacity, notably in omitting the "house divided against itself"

declaration. He argued that the Republican party was not revolutionary, but conservative, since it maintained the doctrine of the fathers who held and acted upon the opinion that Congress had the power to prohibit slavery in the territories. "Some of you," he said, addressing himself to the Southern people, "are for reviving the foreign slave trade; some for Congress forbidding the territories to prohibit slavery within their limits; some for maintaining slavery in the territories through the judiciary; some for the 'great principle'

that if one man would enslave another, no third man should object, fantastically called popular sovereignty; but never a man among you is in favour of federal prohibition of slavery in federal territories, according to the practice of our fathers who formed the government under which we live. You say we have made the slavery question more prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. We admit that it is more prominent, but we deny that we made it so. It was not we, but you who discarded the old policy of the fathers." Of Southern threats of disunion, he said: "Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the government unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Const.i.tution as you please on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events." Referring to the Harper's Ferry episode, he said: "That affair in its philosophy corresponds with the many attempts related in history at the a.s.sa.s.sination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people, until he fancies himself commissioned by heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt which ends in little else than his own execution."

Lincoln's lecture did not disappoint. He had entertained and interested the vast a.s.semblage, which frequently rang with cheers and shouts of applause as the gestures and the mirth-provoking look emphasised the racy hits that punctuated the address. "No man," said the _Tribune_, "ever before made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York audience. He is one of Nature's orators."[512]

[Footnote 512: New York _Tribune_, March 1, 1860.]

Two days later, Seward addressed the United States Senate. There is no evidence that he fixed this date because of the Cooper Inst.i.tute lecture. The gravity of the political situation demanded some expression from him; but the knowledge of the time of Lincoln's speech gave him ample opportunity to arrange to follow it with one of his own, if he wished to have the last word, or to inst.i.tute a comparison of their respective views on the eve of the national convention.

However this may be, Seward regarded his utterances on this occasion of the utmost importance. He was the special object of Southern vituperation. A "Fire-Eater" of the South publicly advertised that he would be one of one hundred "gentlemen" to give twenty-five dollars each for the heads of Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, and forty other prominent Northern leaders in and out of Congress, but for the head of Seward his proposed subscription was multiplied twenty fold.

It is noticeable that in this long list of "traitors" the name of Abraham Lincoln does not appear. It was Seward whom the South expected the Republican party would nominate for President, and in him it saw the narrow-minded, selfish, obstinate Abolitionist who hated them as intensely as they despised him. To dispossess the Southern mind of this feeling the Auburn statesman now endeavoured to show that if elected President he would not treat the South unfriendly.

Seward's speech bears evidence of careful preparation. It was not only read to friends for criticism, but Henry B. Stanton, in his _Random Recollections_, says that Seward, before the day of its delivery, a.s.sisted him in describing such a scene in the Senate as he desired laid before the public. On his return to Washington, Seward had not been received with a show of friendship by his a.s.sociates from the South. It was remarked that while Republican senators greeted him warmly, "his Southern friends were afraid to be seen talking to him."

On the occasion of his speech, however, he wished the record to show every senator in his place and deeply interested.

Visitors to the Senate on the 29th of February crowded every available spot in the galleries. "But it was on the floor itself," wrote Stanton to the _Tribune_, "that the most interesting spectacle presented itself. Every senator seemed to be in his seat. Hunter, Davis, Toombs, Mason, Slidell, Hammond, Clingman, Brown, and Benjamin paid closest attention to the speaker. Crittenden listened to every word. Douglas affected to be self-possessed; but his nervousness of mien gave token that the truths now uttered awakened memories of the Lecompton contest, when he, Seward, and Crittenden, the famous triumvirate, led the allies in their attack upon the Administration. The members of the House streamed over to the north wing of the Capitol almost in a body, leaving Reagan of Texas to discourse to empty benches, while Seward held his levee in the Senate."[513]

[Footnote 513: New York _Tribune_, March 1, 1860.]

Seward lacked the tones, the kindly eye, and the mirth-provoking look of Lincoln. His voice was husky, his manner didactic, and his physique unimposing, but he had the gift of expression, and the ability to formulate his opinions and marshal his facts in lucid sentences that harmonised with Northern sentiments and became at once the creed and rallying cry of his party; and, on this occasion, he held the Senate spellbound for two hours, the applause at one time becoming so long continued that the presiding officer threatened to clear the galleries. He was always calm and temperate. But it seemed now to be his desire, in language more subdued, perhaps, than he had ever used before, to allay the fears of what would happen should the Republican party succeed in electing a President; and, without the sacrifice of any principle, he endeavoured to outline the views of Republicans and the spirit that animated himself. There was nothing new in his speech.

He avoided the higher law and irrepressible conflict doctrines, and omitted his former declarations that slavery "can and must be abolished, and you and I can and must do it." In like manner he failed to demand, as formerly, that the Supreme Court "recede from its spurious judgment" in the Dred Scott case. But he reviewed with the same logic that had characterised his utterances for twenty years, the relation of the Const.i.tution to slavery; the influence of slavery upon both parties; the history of the Kansas controversy; and the manifest advantages of the Union, dwelling at length and with much originality upon the firm hold it had upon the people, and the certainty that it would survive the rudest shocks of faction. Of the Harper's Ferry affair, Seward spoke with more sympathy than Lincoln. "While generous and charitable natures will probably concede that John Brown acted on earnest, though fatally erroneous convictions," he said, "yet all good citizens will nevertheless agree that this attempt to execute an unlawful purpose in Virginia by invasion, involving servile war, was an act of sedition and treason, and criminal in just the extent that it affected the public peace and was destructive of human happiness and life."

It has been noted with increasing admiration that Lincoln and Seward, without consultation and in the presence of a great impending crisis, paralleled one another's views so closely. Each embodied the convictions and aspirations of his party. The spirit of an unsectarian patriotism that characterised Seward's speech proved highly satisfactory to the great ma.s.s of Republicans. The New York _Times_ rejoiced that its tone indicated "a desire to allay and remove unfounded prejudice from the public mind," and p.r.o.nounced "the whole tenor of it in direct contradiction to the sentiments which have been imputed to him on the strength of declarations which he has. .h.i.therto made."[514] Samuel Bowles of the Springfield _Republican_ wrote Thurlow Weed that the state delegation--so "very marked" is the reaction in Seward's favour--would "be so strong for him as to be against anybody else," and that "I hear of ultra old Whigs in Boston who say they are ready to take him up on his recent speech."[515]

Charles A. Dana, then managing editor of the _Tribune_, declared that "Seward stock is rising," and Salmon P. Chase admitted that "there seems to be at present a considerable set toward Seward." Nathaniel P.

Banks, who was himself spoken of as a candidate, thought Seward's prospects greatly enhanced.

[Footnote 514: New York _Times_, March 2, 1860.]

[Footnote 515: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

260.]

But a growing and influential body of men in the Republican party severely criticised the speech because it lacked the moral earnestness of the "higher law" spirit. To them it seemed as if Seward had made a bid for the Presidency, and that the irrepressible conflict of 1858 was suddenly transformed into the condition of a mild and patient lover who is determined not to quarrel. "Differences of opinion, even on the subject of slavery," he said, "are with us political, not social or personal differences. There is not one disunionist or disloyalist among us all. We are altogether unconscious of any process of dissolution going on among us or around us. We have never been more patient, and never loved the representatives of other sections more than now. We bear the same testimony for the people around us here. We bear the same testimony for all the districts and States we represent."

This did not sound like the terrible "irrepressible conflict" pictured at Rochester. Wendell Phillips' famous epigram that "Seward makes a speech in Washington on the tactics of the Republican party, but phrases it to suit Wall street,"[516] voiced the sentiment of his critics. Garrison was not less severe. "The temptation which proved too powerful for Webster," he wrote, "is seducing Seward to take the same downward course."[517] Greeley did not vigorously combat this idea. "Governor Seward," he said, "has so long been stigmatised as a radical that those who now first study his inculcations carefully will be astonished to find him so eminently pacific and conservative.