A Political History of the State of New York Volume II Part 24

But the New Yorker whom the Republican ma.s.ses most desired to hear and see was William H. Seward. Accordingly, in the latter part of August he started on a five weeks' tour through the Western States, beginning at Detroit and closing at Cleveland. At every point where train or steamboat stopped, if only for fifteen minutes, thousands of people awaited his coming. The day he spoke in Chicago, it was estimated that two hundred thousand visitors came to that city. Rhodes suggests that "it was then he reached the climax of his career."[584]

[Footnote 584: "Seward filled the minds of Republicans, attracting such attention and honour, and arousing such enthusiasm, that the closing months of the campaign were the most brilliant epoch of his life. It was then he reached the climax of his career."--James F.

Rhodes, _History of the United States_, Vol. 2, p. 493.]

Seward's speeches contained nothing new, and in substance they resembled one another. But in freshness of thought and kaleidoscopic phraseology, they were attractive, full of eloquence, and of statesmanlike comment, lifting the campaign, then just opening, upon a high plane of political and moral patriotism. He avoided all personalities; he indicated no disappointment;[585] his praise of Lincoln was in excellent taste; and without evasion or concealment, but with a ripeness of experience that had mellowed and enlightened him, he talked of "higher law" and the "irrepressible conflict" in terms that made men welcome rather than fear their discussion. "Let this battle be decided in favour of freedom in the territories," he declared, "and not one slave will ever be carried into the territories of the United States, and that will end the irrepressible conflict."[586]

[Footnote 585: "Seward charged his defeat chiefly to Greeley. He felt toward that influential editor as much vindictiveness as was possible in a man of so amiable a nature. But he did not retire to his tent."--James F. Rhodes, _History of the United States_, Vol. 2, p.

494.

"The magnanimity of Mr. Seward, since the result of the convention was known," wrote James Russell Lowell, "has been a greater ornament to him and a greater honour to his party than his election to the Presidency would have been."--_Atlantic Monthly_, October, 1860; _Lowell's Political Essays_, p. 34.]

[Footnote 586: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, pp.

462-66.]

The growth and resources of the great Northwest, whose development he attributed to the exclusion of slave labour, seemed to inspire him with the hope and faith of youth, and he spoke of its reservation for freedom and its settlement and upbuilding in the critical moment of the country's history as providential, since it must rally the free States of the Atlantic coast to call back the ancient principles which had been abandoned by the government to slavery. "We resign to you,"

he said, "the banner of human rights and human liberty on this continent, and we bid you be firm, bold, and onward, and then you may hope that we will be able to follow you." It was in one of these moments of exaltation when he seemed to be lifted into the higher domain of prophecy that he made the prediction afterward realised by the Alaska treaty. "Standing here and looking far off into the Northwest," he said, "I see the Russian as he busily occupies himself in establishing seaports and towns and fortifications on the verge of this continent as the outposts of St. Petersburg, and I can say, 'Go on, and build up your outposts all along the coast, up even to the Arctic Ocean, for they will yet become the outposts of my own country--monuments of the civilisation of the United States in the Northwest."[587]

[Footnote 587: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 464.]

At the beginning of the canva.s.s, Republican confidence and enthusiasm contrasted strangely with the apathy of the Democratic party, caused by its two tickets, two organisations, and two incompatible platforms.

It was recognised early in the campaign that Douglas could carry no slave State unless it be Missouri; and, although the Douglas and Bell fusion awaked some hope, it was not until the fusion electoral ticket included supporters of Breckenridge that the struggle became vehement and energetic. New York's thirty-five votes were essential to the election of Lincoln, and early in September a determined effort began to unite the three parties against him. The Hards resisted the movement, but many merchants and capitalists of New York City, apprehensive of the dissolution of the Union if Lincoln were elected, and promising large sums of money to the campaign, forced the subst.i.tution of seven Breckenridge electors in place of as many Douglas supporters, giving Bell ten, Breckenridge seven, and Douglas eighteen. "It is understood," said the _Tribune_, "that four nabobs have already subscribed twenty-five thousand dollars each, and that one million is to be raised."[588]

[Footnote 588: New York _Tribune_, October 19, 1860.]

All this disturbed Lincoln. "I think there will be the most extraordinary effort ever made to carry New York for Douglas," he wrote Weed on August 17. "You and all others who write me from your State think the effort cannot succeed, and I hope you are right.

Still, it will require close watching and great efforts on the other side."[589] After fusion did succeed, the Republican managers found encouragement in the fact that a majority of the Americans in the western part of the State,[590] following the lead of Putnam, belonged to the party of Lincoln, while the Germans gave comforting evidence of their support. On his return from the West Seward a.s.sured Lincoln "that this State will redeem all the pledges we have made."[591] Then came the October verdict from Pennsylvania and Indiana. "Emanc.i.p.ation or revolution is now upon us," said the Charleston _Mercury_.[592] Yet the hope of the New York fusionists, encouraged by a stock panic in Wall Street and by the unconcealed statement of Howell Cobb of Georgia, then secretary of the treasury, that Lincoln's election would be followed by disunion and a serious derangement of the financial interests of the country, kept the Empire State violently excited. It was reported in Southern newspapers that William B. Astor had contributed one million of dollars in aid of the fusion ticket.[593] It was a formidable combination of elements.

Heretofore the Republican party had defeated them separately--now it met them as a united whole, when antagonisms, ceasing to be those of rational debate, had become those of fierce and furious pa.s.sion.

Greeley p.r.o.nounced it "a struggle as intense, as vehement, and as energetic, as had ever been known," in New York.[594] Yet Thurlow Weed's confidence never wavered. "The fusion leaders have largely increased their fund," he wrote Lincoln, three days before the election, "and they are now using money lavishly. This stimulates and to some extent inspires confidence, and all the confederates are at work. Some of our friends are nervous. But I have no fear of the result in this State."[595]

[Footnote 589: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

297.]

[Footnote 590: "The names of eighty-one thousand New York men who voted for Fillmore in 1856 are inscribed on Republican poll-lists."--New York _Tribune_, September 11, 1860.]

[Footnote 591: F.W. Seward, _Life of W.H. Seward_, Vol. 2, p. 471.]

[Footnote 592: October 18, 1860.]

[Footnote 593: Charleston _Mercury_, cited by _National Intelligencer_, November 1, 1860; Richmond _Enquirer_, November 2.]

[Footnote 594: Horace Greeley, _American Conflict_, Vol. 1, p. 300.]

[Footnote 595: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

300.]

After the election, returns came in rapidly. Before midnight they foreshadowed Lincoln's success, and the next morning's _Tribune_ estimated that the Republicans had carried the electoral and state tickets by 30,000 to 50,000, with both branches of the Legislature and twenty-three out of thirty-three congressmen. The official figures did not change this prophecy, except to fix Lincoln's majority at 50,136 and Morgan's plurality at 63,460. Lincoln received 4374 votes more than Morgan, but Kelley ran 27,698 behind the fusion electoral ticket, showing that the Bell and Everett men declined to vote for the Softs'

candidate for governor. Brady's total vote, 19,841, marked the pro-slavery candidate's small support, leaving Morgan a clear majority of 43,619.[596] "Mr. d.i.c.kinson and myself," said James T. Brady, six years later, in his tribute to the former's memory, "belonged to the small, despairing band in this State who carried into the political contest of the North, for the last time, the flag of the South, contending that the South should enjoy to the utmost, and with liberal recognition, all the rights she could fairly claim under the Const.i.tution of the United States. How small that band was all familiar with the political history of this State can tell."[597]

[Footnote 596: Edwin D. Morgan, 358,272; William Kelley, 294,812; James T. Brady, 19,841.--_Civil List, State of New York_ (1887), p.

166.]

[Footnote 597: Address at Bar meeting in New York City upon death of Daniel S. d.i.c.kinson.]

CHAPTER XXV

GREELEY, WEED, AND SECESSION

1860-1861

Upon the election of Lincoln in November, 1860, South Carolina almost immediately gave evidence of its purpose to secede from the Union.

Democrats generally, and many supporters of Bell and Everett, had deemed secession probable in the event of Republican success--a belief so fully shared by the authorities at Washington, who understood the Southern people, that General Scott, then at the head of the army, wrote to President Buchanan before the end of October, advising that forts in all important Southern seaports be strengthened to avoid capture by surprise. On the other hand, the Republicans had regarded Southern threats as largely buncombe. They had been heard in 1820, in 1850, and so frequently in debate leading up to the contest in 1860, that William H. Seward, the most powerful leader of opinion in his party, had declared: "These hasty threats of disunion are so unnatural that they will find no hand to execute them."[598]

[Footnote 598: Speech of February 29, 1860: _Seward's Works_, Vol. 4, p. 619.]

Nevertheless, when, on November 16, the South Carolina Legislature pa.s.sed an act calling a convention to meet on December 17, the Republicans, still enthusiastic over their success, began seriously to consider the question of disunion. "Do you think the South will secede?" became as common a salutation as "Good-morning;" and, although a few New Yorkers, perhaps, gave the indifferent reply of Henry Ward Beecher--"I don't believe they will; and I don't care if they do"[599]--the gloom and uncertainty which hung over business circles made all anxious to hear from the leaders of their party.

Heretofore, Horace Greeley, Thurlow Weed, and William H. Seward, backed by Henry J. Raymond of the New York _Times_ and James Watson Webb of the _Courier_, had been quick to meet any emergency, and their followers now looked to them for direction.

[Footnote 599: New York _Tribune_, November 30, 1860. The quotation is from an address delivered in Boston.]

Horace Greeley was admittedly the most influential Republican journalist. He had not always agreed with the leaders, and just now an open break existed in the relations of himself and the powerful triumvirate headed by Thurlow Weed; but Greeley had voiced the sentiment of the rank and file of his party more often than he had misstated it, and the _Tribune_ readers naturally turned to their prophet for a solution of the pending trouble. As usual, he had an opinion. The election occurred on November 6, and on the 9th he declared that "if the cotton States shall decide that they can do better out of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists nevertheless.... Whenever a considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep it in. We hope never to live in a republic, whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets."[600] Two weeks later, on November 26, he practically repeated these views. "If the cotton States unitedly and earnestly wish to withdraw peacefully from the Union, we think they should and would be allowed to go. Any attempt to compel them by force to remain would be contrary to the principles enunciated in the immortal Declaration of Independence, contrary to the fundamental ideas on which human liberty is based."[601] As late as December 17, when South Carolina and other Southern States were on the threshold of secession, Greeley declared that "if the Declaration of Independence justified the secession from the British Empire of three millions of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it should not justify the secession of five millions of Southrons from the Union in 1861."[602] In January, he recanted in a measure. Yet, on February 23, he announced that "Whenever it shall be clear that the great body of the Southern people have become conclusively alienated from the Union, and anxious to escape from it, we will do our best to forward their views."[603]

[Footnote 600: New York _Tribune_, November 9, 1860.]

[Footnote 601: _Ibid._, November 26.]

[Footnote 602: New York _Tribune_, December 17.]

[Footnote 603: _Ibid._, February 23.]

Henry Ward Beecher[604] and the Garrison Abolitionists[605] also inclined to this view; and, in November and December, a few Republicans, because of a general repugnance to the coercion of a State, did not despise it. Naturally, however, the Greeley policy did not please the great bulk of Lincoln's intelligent supporters. The belief obtained that, the election having been fair and const.i.tutional, the South ought to submit to the decision as readily as Northern Democrats acquiesced in it. Besides, a spontaneous feeling existed that the United States was a nation, that secession was treason, and seceders were traitors. Such people sighed for "an hour of Andrew Jackson;" and, to supply the popular demand, Jackson's proclamation against the nullifiers, written by Edward Livingston, a native of New York, then secretary of state, was published in a cheap and convenient edition. To the readers of such literature Greeley's peaceable secession seemed like the erratic policy of an eccentric thinker, and its promulgation, especially when it began giving comfort and encouragement to the South, contributed not a little to the defeat of its author for the United States Senate in the following February.

[Footnote 604: _Ibid._, November 30. "In so far as the Free States are concerned," he said, "I hold that it will be an advantage for the South to go off."]

[Footnote 605: _The Liberator_, November and December.]

Thurlow Weed also had a plan, which quickly attracted the attention of people in the South as well as in the North. He held that suggestions of compromise which the South could accept might be proposed without dishonour to the victors in the last election, and, in several carefully written editorials in the _Evening Journal_, he argued in favour of restoring the old line of the Missouri Compromise, and of subst.i.tuting for the fugitive slave act, payment for rescued slaves by the counties in which the violation of law occurred. "When we refer, as we often do, triumphantly to the example of England," he said, "we are p.r.o.ne to forget that emanc.i.p.ation and compensation were provisions of the same act of Parliament."[606]

[Footnote 606: Albany _Evening Journal_, November 26, 1860.]

Weed was now sixty-three years of age--not an old man, and of little less energy than in 1824, when he drove about the State in his first encounter with Martin Van Buren. The success of the views he had fearlessly maintained, in defiance of menacing opponents, had been achieved in full measure, and he had reason to be proud of his conspicuous part in the result; but now, in the presence of secession which threatened the country because of that success, he seemed suddenly to revolt against the policy he himself had fostered. As his biographer expressed it, "he cast aside the weapons which none could wield so well,"[607] and, betraying the influences of his early training under the great Whig leaders, began to show his love for the Union after the manner of Clay and Webster.

[Footnote 607: Thurlow Weed Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p.

306.]

Weed outlined his policy with rare skill, hoping that the discussion provoked by it might result in working out some plan to avoid disunion.[608] Raymond, in the _Times_, and Webb in the _Courier_, gave it cordial support; the leading New York business men of all parties expressed themselves favourable to conciliation and compromise. "I can a.s.sure you," wrote August Belmont to Governor Sprague of Rhode Island, on December 13, "that all the leaders of the Republican party in our State and city, with a few exceptions of the ultra radicals, are in favour of concessions, and that the popular mind of the North is ripe for them." On December 19 he wrote again: "Last evening I was present at an informal meeting of about thirty gentlemen, comprising our leading men, Republicans, Union men, and Democrats, composed of such names as Astor, Aspinwall, Moses H.