A Political History of the State of New York Volume III Part 9

437-439.]

In conversation Weed was the most persuasive of men. To a quiet, gentle, deferential manner, he added a giant's grasp of the subject, presenting its strong points and marshalling with extraordinary skill all the details. Nevertheless, the proposition now laid before the President, leaving slavery as it was, could not be accepted. "The emanc.i.p.ation proclamation could not be retracted," he had said in his famous letter to the New York convention, "any more than the dead could be brought to life." However, Lincoln did not let the famous editor depart empty-handed. Barney should be removed, and Weed, satisfied with such a scalp, returned home to enter the campaign for the President's renomination.[938]

[Footnote 938: New York _Herald_, May 24, 1864.]

Something seemed to be wrong in New York. Other States through conventions and legislatures had early favored the President's renomination, while the Empire State moved slowly. Party machinery worked well. The Union Central Committee, holding a special meeting on January 4, 1864 at the residence of Edwin D. Morgan, recommended Lincoln's nomination. "It is going to be difficult to restrain the boys," said Morgan in a letter to the President, "and there is not much use in trying to do so."[939] On February 23 the Republican State Committee also endorsed him, and several Union League clubs spoke earnestly of his "prudence, sagacity, comprehension, and perseverance." But the absence of an early State convention, the tardy selection of delegates to Baltimore, and the failure of the Legislature to act, did not reveal the enthusiasm evinced in other Commonwealths. Following the rule adopted elsewhere, resolutions favourable to the President's renomination were duly presented to the a.s.sembly, where they remained unacted upon. Suddenly on January 25 a circular, signed by Simeon Draper and issued by the Conference Committee of the Union Lincoln a.s.sociation of New York, proposed that all citizens of every town and county who favoured Lincoln's nomination meet in some appropriate place on February 22 and make public expression to that fact. Among the twenty-five names attached appeared those of Moses Taylor and Moses H. Grinnell. This was a new system of tactics. But the legislative resolutions did not advance because of it.

[Footnote 939: _Ibid._, February 7.]

A month later a letter addressed by several New Yorkers to the National Republican Executive Committee requested the postponement of the Baltimore convention.[940] "The country is not now in a position to enter into a presidential contest," it said. "All parties friendly to the Government should be united in support of a single candidate.

Such unanimity cannot at present be obtained. Upon the result of measures adopted to finish the war during the present spring and summer will depend the wish of the people to continue their present leaders, or to exchange them for others. Besides, whatever will tend to lessen the duration of an acrimonious Presidential campaign will be an advantage to the country."[941] If the sentiment of this letter was not new, the number and character of its signers produced a profound sensation. William Cullen Bryant headed the list, and of the twenty-three names, seventeen were leading State senators, among them Charles J. Folger and James M. Cook. "This list," said the _Tribune_, "contains the names of two-thirds of the Unionists chosen to our present State Senate, the absence of others preventing their signing.

We understand that but two senators declined to affix their name."[942] Greeley did not sign this letter, but in an earlier communication to the _Independent_ he had urged a postponement of the convention.[943] Moreover, he had indicated in the _Tribune_ that Chase, Fremont, Butler, or Grant would make as good a President as Lincoln, while the nomination of either would preserve "the salutary one-term principle."[944]

[Footnote 940: It was called to meet on June 7.]

[Footnote 941: Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1864, p. 785.]

[Footnote 942: New York _Tribune_, April 25, 1864.]

[Footnote 943: New York _Independent_, February 25, 1864.]

[Footnote 944: New York _Tribune_, February 23, 1864.]

It is not easy to determine the cause or the full extent of the dissatisfaction with Lincoln among New York Republicans. Seward's influence and Weed's relations seriously weakened him. After the election of 1862 Radicals openly charged them with Wadsworth's defeat.

For the same reason the feeling against Edwin D. Morgan had become intensely bitter. Seeing a newspaper paragraph that these men had been in consultation with the President about his message, Senator Chandler of Michigan, the prince of Radicals, wrote a vehement letter to Lincoln, telling him of a "patriotic organisation in all the free and border States, containing to-day over one million of voters, every man of whom is your friend upon radical measures of your administration; but there is not a Seward or a Weed man among them all. These men are a millstone about your neck. You drop them and they are politically ended forever.... Conservatives and traitors are buried together. For G.o.d's sake don't exhume their remains in your message. They will smell worse than Lazarus did after he had been buried three days."[945]

[Footnote 945: Nicolay-Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 7, p. 389.]

Although Weed had left the President with the promise of aiding him, he could accomplish nothing. The Legislature refused to act, demands for the postponement of the national convention continued to appear, and men everywhere resented conservative leadership. This was especially true of Greeley and the _Tribune_, Bryant and the _Evening Post_, and Beecher and the _Independent_, not to mention other Radicals and radical papers throughout the State, whose opposition represented a formidable combination. Except for this discontent the Cleveland convention would scarcely have been summoned into existence.

Of the three calls issued for its a.s.sembling two had their birth in New York, one headed by George B. Cheever, the eminent divine, who had recently toured England in behalf of the Union,--the other by Lucius Robinson, State comptroller, and John Cochrane, attorney-general.

Cheever's call denounced "the imbecile and vacillating policy of the present Administration in the conduct of the war,"[946] while Robinson and Cochrane emphasised the need of a President who "can suppress rebellion without infringing the rights of individual or State."[947]

[Footnote 946: Nicolay-Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 9, p. 20.]

[Footnote 947: Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1864, p. 786.]

That Weed no longer possessed the wand of a Warwick was clearly demonstrated at the Republican State convention, held at Syracuse on May 26, to select delegates to Baltimore. Each faction, led in person by Greeley and Weed, professed to favour the President's renomination, but the fierce and bitter contest over the admission of delegates from New York City widened the breach. The Weed machine, following the custom of previous years, selected an equal number of delegates from each ward. The Radicals, who denounced this system as an arbitrary expression of bossism, chose a delegation representing each ward in proportion to the number of its Republican voters. The delegation accepted would control the convention, and although the Radicals consented to the admission of both on equal terms, the Weed forces, confident of their strength, refused the compromise. This set the Radicals to work, and at the morning session, amidst the wildest confusion and disorder, they elected Lyman Tremaine temporary chairman by a majority of six over Chauncey M. Depew, the young secretary of state, whose popularity had given the Conservatives an abnormal strength.

In his speech the Chairman commented upon the death of James S.

Wadsworth, killed in the battle of the Wilderness on May 6, from whose obsequies, held at Geneseo on the 21st, many delegates had just returned. Tremaine believed that the soldier's blood would "lie heavy on the souls of those pretended supporters of the government in its hour of trial, whose cowardice and treachery contributed to his defeat for governor."[948] In such a spirit he eulogised Wadsworth's character and patriotism, declaring that if justice had been done him by the Conservatives, he would now, instead of sleeping in his grave, be governor of New York. Although spoken gently and with emotions of sadness, these intolerably aggressive sentences, loudly applauded by the Radicals, stirred the Weed delegates into whispered threats.[949]

But Tremaine did not rely upon words alone. He packed the committee on contested seats, whose report, admitting both city delegations on equal terms, was accepted by the enormous majority of 192 to 98, revealing the fact that the great body of up-State Republicans distrusted Thurlow Weed, whose proposition for peace did not include the abolition of slavery. Other reasons, however, accounted for the large majority. Tremaine, no longer trusting to the leadership of Greeley,[950] marshalled the Radical forces with a skill learned in the school of Seymour and Dean Richmond, and when his drilled cohorts went into action the tumultuous and belligerent character of the scene resembled the uproar familiar to one who had trained with Tammany and fought with Mozart Hall. In concluding its work the convention endorsed the President and selected sixty-six delegates, headed by Raymond, d.i.c.kinson, Tremaine, and Preston King as delegates-at-large.

[Footnote 948: New York _Tribune_, May 10, 1864.]

[Footnote 949: New York _Herald_, May 29.]

[Footnote 950: "Greeley received an almost unanimous call to lead the party in the State and the first convention which he attended (1862) bowed absolutely to his will. He thought he was a great political leader, and he might have been if he had ever been sure of himself; but he was one of the poorest judges of men, and in that way was often deceived, often misled, and often led to change his opinions.... In less than two years his power was gone."--From speech of Chauncey M.

Depew, April 4, 1902. _Addresses of_, November, 1896, to April, 1902, pp. 238-239.]

The echo of the Syracuse contest reached the Cleveland convention, which a.s.sembled on May 31. Of all the distinguished New Yorkers whose names had advertised and given character to this movement John Cochrane alone attended. Indeed, the picturesque speech of Cochrane, as chairman, and the vehement letter of Lucius Robinson, advocating the nomination of Grant, const.i.tuted the only attractive feature of the proceedings. Cochrane and Robinson wanted a party in which they could feel at home. To Cochrane the Republican party was "a medley of trading, scurvy politicians, which never represented War Democrats,"[951] while Robinson thought the country "had survived, through three years of war, many bad mistakes of a weak Executive and Cabinet, simply because the popular mind had been intensely fixed upon the single purpose of suppressing rebellion."[952] Both resented the Administration's infringement of individual rights. "Whoever attacks them," said Cochrane, "wounds the vital parts of the Republic. Not even the plea of necessity allows any one to trample upon them."[953]

The Cleveland convention, however, did not help these statesmen any more than the nomination of John C. Fremont and John Cochrane, "the two Johns from New York" as they were called, injured the President.[954] When Lincoln heard that instead of the many thousands expected only three or four hundred attended, he opened his Bible and read: "And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them; and there were with him about four hundred."[955]

[Footnote 951: Cochrane's speech at Cleveland. McPherson's _History of the Rebellion_, p. 411.]

[Footnote 952: _Ibid._, p. 413.]

[Footnote 953: _Ibid._, p. 412.]

[Footnote 954: A singular mistake of the convention was its nomination, contrary to the requirement of the Const.i.tution, of both candidates from the same State.]

[Footnote 955: Nicolay-Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 9, p. 40.]

Lucius Robinson's suggestion that Grant be nominated for President represented the thought of many New Yorkers prominent in political circles. "All eyes and hopes now centre on Grant," wrote Thurlow Weed on April 17. "If he wins in Virginia it will brighten the horizon and make him President."[956] The _Herald_ sounded the praises of the Lieutenant-General in nearly every issue. The _Tribune_ and _Times_ were equally flattering. Even the _World_ admitted that a skilful general handled the army.[957] Other papers throughout the State expressed similar confidence in his victorious leadership, and with the hope of changing the sentiment from Lincoln to Grant a great ma.s.s meeting, called ostensibly to express the country's grat.i.tude to the latter, was held in New York City two days before the meeting of the National Republican convention. Neither at this time, however, nor at any other did the movement receive the slightest encouragement from the hero of Vicksburg, or shake the loyalty of the delegates who a.s.sembled at Baltimore on June 7.

[Footnote 956: T.W. Barnes, _Life of Thurlow Weed_, Vol. 2, p. 443.]

[Footnote 957: See New York _Herald_, April 25, 27, May 7, 9, 14, 16, 18, 23, 26, 28, 29, 31, June 1, 4; New York _Tribune_, May 10, 12, 13, 14; New York _Times_, May 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 19; New York _World_, May 2, 11, 12, 13, 14.]

Henry J. Raymond, evidencing the same wise spirit of compromise exhibited at Syracuse in 1863, reported the platform. It declared the maintenance of the Union and the suppression of rebellion by force of arms to be the highest duty of every citizen; it approved the determination of the government to enter into no compromise with rebels; favoured the abolition of slavery by const.i.tutional amendment; applauded the wisdom, patriotism, and fidelity of the President; thanked the soldiers, and claimed the full protection of the laws of war for coloured troops; encouraged immigration and the early construction of a railroad to the Pacific coast; pledged the national faith to keep inviolate the redemption of the public debt; and opposed the establishment, by foreign military forces, of monarchical governments in the near vicinity of the United States.[958] On the second day every State voted for Lincoln for President.[959]

[Footnote 958: Edward McPherson, _History of the Rebellion_, pp.

406-407.]

[Footnote 959: _Ibid._, p. 407.]

The contest for Vice-President renewed the fight of the New York factions. An impression had early taken root in the country that a War Democrat should be selected, and the Radicals of New York, under the leadership of Lyman Tremaine, quickly designated Daniel S. d.i.c.kinson as the man. d.i.c.kinson's acceptability in New England and New Jersey strengthened his candidacy, while its approval by three or four border and western States seriously weakened Hamlin. Nevertheless, the New York Conservatives vigorously opposed him. Their antagonism did not at first concentrate upon any one candidate. Weed talked of Hamlin and later of Joseph Holt of Kentucky; Raymond thought Andrew Johnson of Tennessee the stronger; and Preston King, to the great surprise of the Radicals, agreed with him. This brought from George William Curtis the sarcastic remark that a Vice-President from the Empire State would prevent its having a Cabinet officer. Tremaine declared that a change in the Cabinet would not be a serious calamity to the country, and Preston King, who attributed his displacement from the United States Senate to the Seward influence, did not object to the Secretary's removal. Thus Raymond's influence gave the doughty War Governor 32 of New York's 66 votes to 28 for d.i.c.kinson and 6 for Hamlin. This materially aided Johnson's nomination on the first ballot.[960]

[Footnote 960: Johnson received 200 votes to 108 for d.i.c.kinson. After recording all changes, the ballot stood: Johnson, 494; d.i.c.kinson, 17; Hamlin, 9. McPherson, _Hist. of the Rebellion_, p. 407.]

Raymond's power and influence may be said to have climaxed in 1864 at the Baltimore convention. He became chairman of the New York delegation, chairman of the committee on resolutions, chairman of the National Executive Committee, and the princ.i.p.al debater upon the floor, manifesting a tact in the performance of his manifold duties that surprised as much as it charmed. But the reason for his ardent support of Johnson will probably never be certainly known. McClure declared that he acted in accord with the wishes of Lincoln, who discreetly favoured and earnestly desired Johnson's nomination. This view was approved by George Jones, the proprietor of the _Times_ and Raymond's most intimate friend.[961] On the other hand, Nicolay declared that "it was with minds absolutely untrammelled by even any knowledge of the President's wishes that the convention went about its work of selecting his a.s.sociate on the ticket."[962] In his long and bitter controversy with Nicolay, however, McClure furnished testimony indicating that Lincoln whispered his choice and that Raymond understood it.[963]

[Footnote 961: Alex. K. McClure, _Lincoln and Men of War Times_, p.

444.]

[Footnote 962: Nicolay-Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 9, pp. 72-73.]

[Footnote 963: Alex. K. McClure, _Lincoln and Men of War Times_, pp.

425-449.]

While Raymond antagonised the radical supporters of d.i.c.kinson, patronage questions were again threatening trouble for the President.

Serious friction had followed the appointment of a General Appraiser at New York, and when John J. Cisco, the a.s.sistant United States treasurer, tendered his resignation to take effect June 30 (1864), the President desired to appoint one un.o.bjectionable to Senator Morgan; but Secretary Chase, regardless of the preferences of others, insisted upon Maunsell B. Field, then an a.s.sistant secretary of the treasury.

Morgan vigorously protested, regarding him incompetent to fill such a place. Besides, the designation of Field, who had no political backing in New York, would, he said, offend the conservative wing of the party, which had been entirely ignored in the past. As a compromise the Senator begged the President to select Richard M. Blatchford, Dudley S. Gregory, or Thomas Hillhouse, whom he regarded as three of the most eminent citizens of New York.

Lincoln, in a note to the Secretary, submitted these names. "It will really oblige me," he wrote, "if you will make choice among these three, or any other men that Senators Morgan and Harris will be satisfied with."[964] This brief letter was followed on the same day by one presenting the annoyance to which patronage subjects a President. Happily civil service reform has removed much of this evil, but enough remains to keep an Executive, if not members of Congress, in hot water. "As the proverb goes," wrote Lincoln, "no man knows so well where the shoe pinches as he who wears it. I do not think Mr.

Field a very proper man for the place, but I would trust your judgment and forego this were the greater difficulty out of the way. Much as I personally like Mr. Barney it has been a great burden to me to retain him in his place when nearly all our friends in New York were directly or indirectly urging his removal. Then the appointment of Judge Hogeboom to be general appraiser brought me to the verge of open revolt. Now the appointment of Mr. Field would precipitate me in it, unless Senator Morgan and those feeling as he does could be brought to concur in it. Strained as I already am at this point, I do not think I can make this appointment in the direction of still greater strain."[965]

[Footnote 964: Nicolay-Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 9, p. 93.]

[Footnote 965: _Ibid._, pp. 93-94.]