double two-story frame house, having a wide hall running
through the center, with parlors on both sides, neatly but not
ostentatiously furnished. It was just such a dwelling as a majority
of the well-to-do residents of these fine western towns occupy.
Everything about it had a look of comfort and independence. The
library I remarked in passing, particularly, and I was pleased to
see long rows of books, which told of the scholarly tastes and
culture of the family.
Lincoln received us with great, and to me surprising, urbanity. I
had seen him before in New York, and brought with me an impression
of his awkward and ungainly manner; but in his own house, where he
doubtless feels himself freer than in the strange New York circles,
Lincoln had thrown this off, and appeared easy, if not graceful.
He is, as you know, a tall lank man, with a long neck, and his
ordinary movements are unusually angular, even out west. As soon,
however, as he gets interested in conversation, his face lights
up, and his attitudes and gestures assume a certain dignity and
impressiveness. His conversation is fluent, agreeable, and polite.
You see at once from it that he is a man of decided and original
character. His views are all his own; such as he has worked out
from a patient and varied scrutiny of life, and not such as he
has obtained from others. Yet he cannot be called opinionated. He
listens to others like one eager to learn. And his replies evince
at the same time both modesty and self-reliance. I should say that
sound common sense was the principal quality of his mind, although
at times a striking phrase or word reveals a peculiar vein of
thought.
At first, it is interesting to note, the _Evening Post_ was not
only all confidence in Lincoln’s election, but all contempt for the
Southern threats of secession if he won. Until that fall it held to a
short-sighted view that the secession talk was a mere repetition of the
old Southern attempt, made so often since nullification days, to bully
the North as a spoiled child bullies its nurse. This confidence, which
the _Times_ and _Tribune_ fully shared, was not assumed for campaign
reasons. The stock market sustained it, and Bryant pointed to the
midsummer advance in security prices as showing that business was not
alarmed. A correspondent wrote from Newport on Aug. 23 that visitors
from all parts of the South were there, but no fire-eating disunionists
among them; “they deplore the election of Lincoln, while they regard
it as almost a certainty, but scout the idea of secession or rebellion
as a necessary consequence of it.” For years the North had listened to
bullying, blustering, and threats from the South, and it had grown too
much used to menaces.
But in the final fortnight of the campaign the newspaper began to
perceive that there was a sullen reality behind these fulminations. On
Oct. 20 we find the first editorial to treat secession earnestly, one
declaring that no government could parley with men in arms against its
authority, and that like Napoleon dealing with the insurrectionaries
of Paris, the United States “must fire cannon balls and not blank
cartridges.” On Oct. 29 it charged the existence of a definite
secession conspiracy. Its authors were Howell Cobb and other officers
high in the Administration; moreover, it declared, “the eggs of the
conspiracy now hatching were laid four years ago, in the Cincinnati
Convention.” Bigelow at that time, a close observer at Cincinnati of
the scenes amid which Buchanan was nominated, had declared (June 13,
1856) that the nomination was purchased from the South by a promise
from one of Buchanan’s lieutenants, Col. Samuel Black, that if a
radical Republican should be elected his successor in 1860, then
Buchanan would do nothing to interfere with the secession of the
Southern States.
[Illustration: JOHN BIGELOW
Associate Editor 1849–1860.]
A few days before election, Samuel J. Tilden, who was supporting
Douglas, came into the office of the _Evening Post_ in high excitement.
In Bigelow’s room were seated the Collector of the Port, Hiram Barney;
the president of the Illinois Central, William H. Osborn, and one of
the commissioners of Central Park. They were all confident of Lincoln’s
election, and Tilden’s excitement rose as he saw them rejoicing in the
certainty. With a repressed anger and dignity that sobered them, he cut
short their chaffing by saying: “I would not have the responsibility
of William Cullen Bryant and John Bigelow for all the wealth in the
sub-treasury. If you have your way, civil war will divide this country,
and you will see blood running like water in the streets of this city.”
With these words, he left. On Oct. 30 the _Evening Post_ devoted more
than six columns to a letter by Tilden, in which he explained why,
though long a free-soiler, he had not supported Lincoln. He declared
that the Republican Party was a sectional party, that if it ruled at
Washington the South would be virtually under foreign domination,
and that the Southerners would never yield to its “impracticable and
intolerable” policy. The _Post_ replied to but one of his arguments.
The Republican Party, it said, was sectional only because it had never
been given a fair hearing at the South. But, it added, “We do not
propose to review Mr. Tilden’s paper at length to-day; a logical and
conclusive answer to all its positions is in the course of preparation,
and will appear in the _Evening Post_ just one week from to-morrow
afternoon.”
On the day announced, the day after election, the _Evening Post_
published a table of the electoral votes, by which it appeared that
Lincoln had a certain majority of thirty-five and a possible majority
of forty-two; heading it, “Reply to the Letter of Samuel J. Tilden,
Continued and Concluded.” But Tilden’s prophecy was to be realized in a
fashion the editors little expected.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE NEW YORK PRESS AND SOUTHERN SECESSION
No other five months in our history under the Constitution have been so
critical as the five between the election of Lincoln and the capture
of Sumter. The anger of the South at the Republican triumph; the
secession of South Carolina before Christmas, followed by the rest of
the lower South; the erection of a Southern Confederacy in February,
with the choice of Davis as provisional President; the complete
paralysis of Buchanan’s government--all this made the months anxious
and uncertain beyond any others in the century. Until New Year’s, many
people in the North believed that the Southern threats were not to be
taken seriously; until February, many believed that the outlook for
a peaceful preservation of the Union was bright. Thereafter a large
part of the population held that, in Gen. Winfield Scott’s phrase,
the erring sisters should be let depart in peace. In this anomalous
period a thousand currents of opinion possessed the land, and no one
could predict what the next day would bring forth. The time tried the
judgment and patriotism of the nation’s newspapers as by fire.
The New York press had at this time asserted a national ascendancy
which it slowly lost after the war as the great West increased in
population. During December, 1860, the _Herald_ averaged a week-day
circulation of 77,107, and a Sunday circulation of 82,656, which
it boasted was the largest in the world. The daily circulation of
the London _Times_ was 25,000 less. The _Tribune_ boasted on April
10, 1861, that while its daily circulation was 55,000, its weekly
circulation was enormous, making the total number of its buyers
287,750. Two-fifths of these were in New York, but it had 26,091
subscribers in Pennsylvania; 24,900 in Ohio; 16,477 in Illinois;
11,968 in Iowa; 11,081 in Indiana, and even in California 5,535. In the
South, on the other hand, there was a mere handful of buyers--21 in
Mississippi, 23 in South Carolina, 35 in Georgia, and 10 in Florida,
against 10,589 in Maine. The _Sun_ had a daily circulation of about
60,000, and the _Times_ of about 35,000. That of the _Evening Post_
was approaching 20,000, while its weekly and semi-weekly issues were
widely read in the West. It was in reference to the influence of the
_Tribune_, _Times_, and _Evening Post_ that the _Herald_ said, “Without
New York journalism there would have been no Republican party.” It had
some excuse for its boast regarding the city’s journals (Nov. 8):
Several of them, possessing revenues equal in amount to those of
some of the sovereign States, are unapproachable by influences
except those of a national policy, and they constitute a congress
of intellect in permanent session assembled. The telegraph and
the locomotive carry their influences to the remotest corners of
the land in a constantly increasing ratio. These, then, are to be
the leading powers which are to range parties, and conduct the
discussions of the great questions of the generation that is before
us. They, and they only, can do it in a catholic and cosmopolitan
spirit.... These affect the affairs and hopes of men everywhere.
Lincoln’s election was accepted with unmixed pleasure by the _Evening
Post_ and _Tribune_, the _Times_ and the _World_, which saw in it a
long-deferred assurance that the popular majority in favor of freedom
had at last found a dependable leader. It was accepted with resignation
by the three chief opposition newspapers. Bennett’s _Herald_, with a
snort of chagrin, reminded good citizens that they should “settle down
to their occupations and to discharge the duty which they owe to their
families.” The _Journal of Commerce_ remarked that “we have nothing to
do but submit,” adding that the conservative majority in both Houses
“will check any wayward fancies that may seize the executive, under the
influence of his abolition advisers.” The _Express_ deplored, deeply
deplored, the result, but formally acquiesced in it, “as under the
forms if not in the spirit and intent of the Constitution.” But as the
news of the secession movement increased, the differences of opinion
grew marked.
Bryant in the _Evening Post_ was anxious that Lincoln should not talk
of concessions, nor seem to be frightened by the Southern bluster. He
must refuse to parley with disunionists:
If there are any States disposed to question the supremacy of the
Constitution, or to assert the incompatibility of our climatic
influences and social institutions with the form of government
under which we have been hitherto united, now is the time to meet
the question and settle it....
Mr. Lincoln cannot say one word or take one step toward concession
of any kind without in so far striking at the very foundations upon
which our government is based, violating the confidence of his
supporters, and converting our victory into a practical defeat.
When the idea of resisting the will of the majority is abandoned
in responsible quarters; when every sovereign State shows itself
content to abide the issue of a constitutional election, it will be
time enough for Mr. Lincoln to enlighten those who need light as to
what he will do and what he will not do; and we greatly mistake the
man if he will give ear to any proposition designed to convert him
into a President not of the whole Union, nor of those who voted for
him, but of those who did not.
The _Herald_ was equally insistent that Lincoln should promise
concessions; “he should at once give to the world the programme of the
policy he will pursue as President, and that policy should be one of
conciliation,” it said on Nov. 9. But a special correspondent of the
_Post_, interviewing Lincoln in Springfield on Nov. 14, and finding
him reading the history of the nullification movement, obtained an
assurance that he would make no such sign of weakness. “I know,” he
quoted Lincoln as saying, “the justness of my intentions, and the utter
groundlessness of the pretended fears of the men who are filling the
country with their clamor. If I go into the Presidency, they will find
me as I am on record--nothing less, nothing more. My declarations have
been made to the world without reservation. They have been repeated;
and now, self-respect demands of me and the party that has elected me,
that when threatened I should be silent.” The correspondent assured
Lincoln’s Eastern friends that nature had endowed him “with that
sagacity, honesty, and firmness which made Old Hickory’s the most
eminently successful and honorable Administration known to the public.”
When South Carolina carried her threat of secession into execution on
Dec. 20, every New York newspaper had already indicated its attitude
toward that act. Bryant had done so Nov. 12, in an editorial called
“Peaceable Secession an Absurdity.” No government could have a day of
assured existence, he wrote, if it tolerated the doctrine of peaceable
secession, for it could have no credit or future. “No, if a State
secedes it is in rebellion, and the seceders are traitors. Those who
are charged with the executive branch of the government are recreant
to their oaths if they fail to use all lawful means to put down such
rebellion.” The next day he added that “We look to Abraham Lincoln
to restore American unity, and make it perpetual.” No one expected
Buchanan to do anything, and not a week passed without Bryant or
Bigelow calling him a traitor. This insistence that the seceding States
be coerced into returning was shared by the _World_, which was on the
point of absorbing Webb’s _Courier and Enquirer_, and by the _Times_.
A far less sound view was taken by the _Tribune_, so long the most
influential Republican newspaper of the nation. Horace Greeley is
often represented as declaring flatly that the South should be allowed
to depart in peace. His opinion, while not much more defensible, was
decidedly different. Greeley wished to make sure that it was the
will of the Southern majority to secede, and not the mere whim of
fire-eating leaders. “I have said repeatedly, and here repeat,” he
wrote in the _Tribune_ of Jan. 14, “that, if the people of the Slave
States, or of the Cotton States alone, really wish to get out of the
Union, I am in favor of letting them out so soon as that result can
be peacefully and constitutionally attained.... If they will ... take
first deliberately by fair vote a ballot of their own citizens, none
being coerced nor intimidated, and that vote shall indicate a settled
resolve to get out of the Union, I will do all I can to help them out
at an early day. I want no States kept in the Union by coercion; but I
insist that none shall be coerced out of it....”
But James Gordon Bennett’s _Herald_, James Brooks’s _Express_, Gerard
Hallock’s _Journal of Commerce_, and several minor journals, as
the _Daily News_ and _Day Book_, were frankly in favor of letting
the secessionists proceed without any restraint from the Federal
Government. The _Herald_ was much the most important, although the
_World_ sneeringly said that every new subscriber meant two cents and
a little more contempt for Bennett. It was read everywhere about New
York for its full news and its smartness; the caustic observations of
Dickens and William H. Russell upon New York journalism were founded
principally upon it; and Administration leaders at Washington found its
comprehensive dispatches invaluable throughout the war. Maintaining its
old levity of tone, the _Herald_ used at this period to speak of the
_World_, _Tribune_, and _Times_ as the World, the Flesh, and the Devil.
It remarked that Lincoln had once split rails and now he was splitting
the Union. It called Greeley “the Hon. Massa Greeley,” and it probably
refrained only by a supreme effort from nicknaming Bryant. One of its
cardinal tenets was that slavery was really unobjectionable. As the
two sections drew near war, it printed a description of slum life in
Liverpool, remarking that compared with the English laborer, “the slave
lives like a prince.” He had his cabin, neat, clean, and weatherproof;
he had his own garden patch, over which he was lord paramount; he was
well-fed, well-lodged, well-clothed, and rarely overworked; sleek,
happy, contented, enjoying his many holidays with gusto, he lived to
a great age. Before the New Year, the _Herald_ had spoken out plainly
against coercion. It would bring on “a fratricidal conflict, which will
destroy the industrial interests of all sections, and put us back at
least a hundred years in the estimation of the civilized world.”
As one State after another passed out of the Union, therefore, a half
dozen newspapers, the _Herald_, _Daily News_, _Journal of Commerce_,
_Day Book_, _Staats Zeitung_, and _Courrier des États Unis_ were taking
an attitude friendly to the South; one, the _Tribune_, simply wrung
its hands; and the _Evening Post_, _Times_, and _World_ alone urged
severe measures. Jefferson Davis, wrote the _Evening Post_, “knows that
secession is a forcible rupture of an established government; he knows
that it must, if persisted in, lead to war.” “If our Southern brethren
think they can better themselves by going out,” declared Bennett’s
_Herald_ on Jan. 17, “in heaven’s name let them go in peace. We cannot
keep them by force.”
During January nearly all eyes were fastened upon the various plans for
keeping the Union intact by arranging a compromise, and preposterous
some of these plans were. The Crittenden Compromise, which proposed
making the Missouri line of 36′ 30″ the constitutional boundary between
slavery and freedom in the Territories, was brusquely condemned by the
_Evening Post_. “In every respect the ... scheme is objectionable, and
no Republican who understands the principles of his party, or who is
faithful to what he believes the fundamental objects of the Federal
Constitution, can assent to it for one moment,” the journal said
on Jan. 26. The Republican Party had been established and had just
won its great victory upon the principle that slavery should not be
extended into any Territory whatever; how could it give it up without
committing suicide? In the same issue the _Evening Post_ said that
the violent acts of the South, the seizure of forts and arsenals, the
drilling of men to prevent arrests, “are treasonable acts, and amount
to levying war upon the United States,” while it called Senator Toombs
“a blustering and cowardly traitor.” The _Tribune_, which believed that
secession was a mere threatening gesture, and that Northern firmness
might overawe the rebels and bring them back into the Union, was also
against the Crittenden plan. “No compromise, then! No delusive and
deluding concessions! No surrender of principle!” exclaimed Greeley
on Jan. 18. The next day the _Tribune_ evinced its failure to grasp
the situation by remarking that if Major Anderson at Fort Sumter had
fired on the rebels when the _Star of the West_ was turned back from
his relief, “treason would have been stayed. That act alone would have
saved Virginia from plunging into the fatal gulf of rebellion.”
The _Times_ was as firmly against a compromise as the _Evening Post_.
Stand by the Union and the Constitution first, wrote Raymond; when
their safety is assured, then only can we talk of guarantees for
the South. “We would yield nothing whatever to exactions pressed by
threats of disunion....” So was the _World_, which said that “It is of
no use to mince matters; this rampant cotton rebellion will haul in
its horns or we shall have civil war.” The _World_ had its own plan
of restoring harmony by extinguishing sectional spirit. It proposed,
first, to divest the Federal executive of its overgrown patronage--the
office-seekers were always pandering to sectional prejudice; second, to
improve the navigation of the Mississippi; third, to construct levees
to prevent Mississippi floods; and fourth, to build a Southern Pacific
railway. It naïvely said that if these public works “could be adopted
as a preventive instead of a remedy, their cost would probably be less
than the cost of a civil war.” The _Tribune_ also had a pacification
scheme. It suggested that the Federal Government begin the purchase of
all the slaves of Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and
Louisiana, about 600,000 in all; to pay not more than $100,000,000, or
less than $200 each, for them; and to complete the transaction in, say,
1876.
A petition for the Crittenden compromise circulated by William B. Astor
found 140 signatures at the _Herald_ office. By now, indeed, Bennett’s
_Herald_ was expressing opinions which seem madness.
After appealing to Lincoln to beg the South to return; after appealing
to the Republican Party to repudiate its Chicago platform; after
appealing to Congress to pass the Crittenden resolution or submit it
to the States, the _Herald_ appealed to the South. On Jan. 4, railing
at the imbecility of Congress and the indifference of President-elect
Lincoln, it proposed that the Southern States arrange a Constitutional
Convention for their own section alone. Let this body adopt amendments
to the Constitution embodying guarantees of the return of fugitive
slaves, of the validity of the Dred Scott decision, and of universal
tolerance of opinion respecting slavery as a social institution. “Let
them submit these different amendments to the different Northern
States, earnestly inviting their acceptance of them, and assigning a
period, similar to that which was appointed for the ratification of the
Constitution of 1787, when all States which should have agreed to their
proposition should be considered as thenceforth forming the future
United States of America.” The whole nation, said the _Herald_, would
join such a Union, save New England. Probably the Yankee States would
stay out. Good riddance to them. The rest of the country is sick and
tired of New England. It has had too much “of the provincial meanness,
bigotry, self-conceit, love for ‘isms,’ hypercritical opposition to
anything and everything, universal fault-finding, hard bargaining, and
systematic home lawlessness ... which are covering their section of the
country with odium.”
This was not a shabby offer to the South--to take any conditions it
made and kick the Yankees out. But the _Herald_ waxed more generous
still. On March 20, a month after the inauguration of Jefferson Davis,
it had found the solution of the great problem: let the new Congress,
when it met at Lincoln’s call, adopt the Confederate Constitution,
and submit it to the nation for ratification by three-fourths of the
States. “This would settle the question and restore peace and harmony
to a troubled nation, while at the same time every statesman and every
man of common sense must admit that the new Constitution is a decided
improvement on the old.” The _Herald_ enumerated its merits: the
restriction of the President to one six-year term, the budget system
of appropriations, the interdiction of internal improvements at the
expense of the national treasury, and so on. “Let Mr. Lincoln call
Congress together for the purpose, and he will have taken the first
step of a statesman since he came to power.” The _Herald_ did not say
who it believed should be President under the new constitution, but it
could hardly avoid concluding that Jefferson Davis ought to be accepted
along with the Confederate system of government. All the while, the
_Journal of Commerce_, _Express_, and _News_ were imperturbably
declaring that the South should be allowed to depart amicably.