Diary of George Templeton Strong, September 14, 1860

Went with George Anthon and Walter Cutting to the opera. Heard three acts of Martha in the Cutting box. Patti and Brignoli did fairly. House full, but strangers mostly. Music is pretty, but not very strong.

Last night’s Republican turnout is the town talk. Everyone speaks of the good order and the earnest aspect of the “Wide-Awakes,” and likens this to the “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” gatherings of 1840. Certainly, all the vigor and enthusiasm of this campaign are thus far confined to the Republicans. Their adversaries are disorganized, divided, and discouraged. In this state, there is a fusion (worse confounded) of the Union Party (Bell and Everett) with the Squatter Sovereignty Democrats (Douglas and Johnson), and a sort of feebly coherent composite electoral ticket. . . . They are trying to coalesce with the Breckinridge people so as to include in one ticket all the anti-Lincoln elements. But that seems as yet beyond the powers of political synthesis.

So we have three parties in this state, videlicet:

1. “Honest Abe” Lincoln’s party.

2. The Fusionists, whose ticket is twenty-five Douglas and Johnson, and ten Bell and Everett, and who are engineered by Washington Hunt and the New York Express and patronized as well-meaning people, but soon to fail, by die New York Herald.

3. Breckinridge and Lane’s party, consisting mainly of federal office-holders.

4. No. 4, "Sham” Houston’s party, has dissolved, that hero having magnanimously withdrawn.

I don’t know clearly on which side to count myself in. I’ve a leaning toward the Republicans. But I shall be sorry to see Seward and Thurlow Weed with their tail of profligate lobby men promoted from Albany to Washington. I do not like the tone of the Republican papers and party in regard to the John Brown business of last fall, and I do not think rail-splitting in early life a guarantee of fitness for the presidency.

I could vote for Bell and Mr. Orator Everett. But I can’t support them in their partnership with Douglas, the little giant, for I hold the little giant to be a mere demagogue. As to Breckinridge, the ultra Southern candidate, I renounce and abhor him and his party. He represents the most cruel, blind, unreasoning, cowardly, absolute despotism that now disgraces the earth, Garibaldi having probably squelched poor little Neapolitan Bomba before this date. Freedom of speech and of thought is extinct south of the Potomac. Life and property are as insecure there as in Paris in 1793 or in the Kingdom of Dahomey. Witness the atrocities daily perpetrated, for example, in Texas, where white men are being hanged and niggers burned by terrified Vigilance Committees, self-appointed and irresponsible, on the strength of legends about “one hundred bottles of strychnine” to be used by some nigger toxicologist to “poison the wells” of a whole county. These grisly antics of insane Southern mobs and the idiotic sanguinary babblings of Southern editors and orators tempt me to become a disunion man. Alliance with com-munities so lawless—more than semi-barbarous—seems degrading to the comparatively civilized North.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 41-2

Diary of George Templeton Strong, Tuesday, October 9, 1860

Tomorrow we shall hear of today’s state election in Pennsylvania. Its result, if favorable to the Republicans, will be decisive, and one may in that case predict Lincoln’s election by the people with entire confidence. What will little South Carolina do then? If she doesn’t secede, she will be utterly ridiculous. She will have to make her choice between the guilt of treason and the contempt of mankind. . . .

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 44-5

Diary of George Templeton Strong, October 10, 1860

Republicanism triumphant in Pennsylvania and by majorities that transcend the wildest prophesyings of the Tribune. So the question is settled and Honest Abe will be our next President. Amen. We may as well ask the question at once whether the existence of the Union depends on the submission to the South.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 45

Diary of George Templeton Strong, October 19, 1860

Play-going with Ellie tonight at the Winter Garden; Guy Mannering. A dramatic distortion of the novel. Miss Charlotte Cushman was the Meg Merrilies, supported by the worst sticks I ever saw on any stage. She is called very great in this role, and the discriminating Dr. Carroll thinks it equal to any of Rachel's. She certainly makes up as the grisliest of hags. Her performance is intense and carefully studied. A few points in which Scott’s words were preserved were effective and beautiful. Her attitudes are remarkably grotesque and striking. But it was almost all overdone and untrue. She was a Hecate, or Waldfrau, perhaps, but not Walter Scott’s Meg, nor any other possible woman. . . .

Lincoln’s election seems to be conceded. Fusionism has lost all heart. What will happen when this result is announced? There is much stir and swagger and note of preparation among the fire-eaters. Can they overcome the conservative feeling and the common sense that doubtless exist at the South, even in South Carolina itself, and carry on an overt act of secession and treason? There is ground for anxiety. Republicans laugh at the vaporings of our Southern friends. I devoutly hope the result will justify their unconcern. It is easy to show that secession would be an act of madness and folly, but we know there are fools and madmen south of the Potomac, and they may do sore and irremediable mischief to us, their wise brethren at the North. . . .

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 51-2

Diary of George Templeton Strong, October 22, 1860

Our little Prince sailed . . . Saturday, and got safely out of our hands. Inferences from the phenomena that accompanied his visit are:

(1) No community worships hereditary rank and station like a democracy.

(2) The biggest and finest specimens of flunkeyism occur in the most recently-elevated strata of society, as for example. Cooper: the “self-made millionaire glue-boiler,’’ Leary: the fashionable hatter’s son, and others.

(3) Under all this folly and tuft-hunting there is a deep and almost universal feeling of respect and regard for Great Britain and for Her Britannic Majesty. The old anti-British patriotism of twenty years ago is nearly extinct. . . .

I’ve nearly made up my mind to deposit a lukewarm Republican vote next month. It is a choice of evils, but we may as well settle the question whether a President can or cannot be chosen without the advice and approval of the slaveholding interests; whether 300,000 owners of niggers have or have not a veto on the popular choice. The question must be settled sooner or later, and we may as well dispose of it now. It is impossible for me to vote the Fusion ticket and thereby strengthen the show of the mischief-making demagogue Douglas, or of Breckinridge, the ultra-nigger-driver and demisecessionist. But I may vote for the ten Bell and Everett electors on that ticket, scratching off the rest.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 52

Diary of George Templeton Strong, October 23, 1860

Fine day. Tonight’s anti-Lincoln or Fusion Torchlight procession was “a big thing.’’ It was more numerous than any political demonstration I have ever witnessed. It began to pass No. 24 Union Square (where I joined Ellie) a little before ten. We got tired of lanterns, Roman candles, red shirts, and the like by a little after eleven, and came home. The rear-guard had not then reached Union Square. We could see the distant line of lights still flowing down Fourteenth Street. It's now a quarter past twelve, and band after band is still audible as the procession goes down Fourth Avenue. Its route was up Broadway, through Fourteenth Street to Fifth Avenue, through Fifth Avenue to Twenty-sixth Street, and then down Fourth Avenue and the Bowery. The Fusionists have certainly turned out in great force. (There goes “Dixie’s Land”; another band is passing the corner.) There were delegations from Brooklyn, Newark, Paterson, and other cities, but this city furnished the great majority, and this certainly looks as if the Fusionists’ boast of 40,000 majority in the city and county of New York might be justified. Here come more drums.

Talked with Mr. Ruggles about this crisis. He is constitutionally timid when people are angry and excited and Southern bluster has somewhat impressed him. Perhaps his anxiety is well grounded, for blusterers may be mischievous. Both North and South seem to him deeply diseased with sectional animosity, and he thinks the Cotton States may probably commit some overt act of treason and secession when Lincoln’s election is announced. Stocks have fallen heavily today.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 52

Diary of George Templeton Strong, Wednesday, October 24, 1860

The Board of Brokers is in decided panic. Stocks are going down. Cause, the anticipation of trouble growing out of Lincoln’s election. The government loan, just taken at a premium, is a strong indication the other way, especially as Southern bankers bid for it; but a few timid capitalists here are unquestionably converting their securities, and Kearny tells me the deposits in the Trust Company are unusually heavy. There is heavy money-pressure at the South. But that is one of the ordinary fluctuations of trade, due to causes outside of politics, and has not yet reacted on us here.

Walter Cutting was very atrabilious—his prophesyings were full of woe. Joseph Lawrence of the United States Trust Company says that they have been refusing Southern stocks as collaterals for several days. He and other leading financiers say that, though secession would produce a general fall in values here of twenty-five per cent, at least, it is better for us to test the question at once and submit to that fall, if so it must be, than continue exposed to these panics and fluctuations, which must occur at short intervals while the question remains open.

People begin to look grave and talk anxiously about our prospects. Will this have any serious effect on the vote of New York and Pennsylvania? Panic and pressure in New York and Philadelphia will not have made themselves felt throughout the country in time to influence the elections. Had they occurred earlier, they might have determined the result, for comparatively few Republicans love niggers enough to sacrifice investments for their sweet sake.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 52-4

Diary of George Templeton Strong, October 25, 1860

We have reason to be unsettled and alarmed. A large and influential Southern party is working hard for disunion, and in South Carolina, at least, is strong enough to overawe and silence the sensible and conservative minority. Lincoln’s election will certainly be followed by a revolutionary movement there. Then we shall see. If no other state join her in secession and if she have time to cool down and recover her senses before any actual collision, and if no accident complicate the situation, this dangerous point may be weathered. But if things take another turn, the black year of 1860 will long be remembered. At best, we must expect an ugly shock and an anxious time before this year is ended.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 54

Diary of George Templeton Strong, October 28, 1860

The talk today is that Fusionism may carry this state after all. Then the election goes into the House and would be long contested before a majority could unite on any one of the three. Excitement would be prolonged and sectional fury intensified. I don’t feel like voting for Lincoln, but I should be sorry to see New York frightened into voting for anybody else, even if the inevitable crisis were thereby postponed to 1864. It may as well be met now; and were Lincoln to be beat, I believe the Southern states would go into convention, nevertheless, so scared and angry are they.

Old Mrs. Hayward of South Carolina is at the New York Hotel in deep affliction and alarm because it is well known that “the abolitionists” have consigned large invoices of strychnine and arsenic to the slaves of her neighborhood. So Mrs. S. B. Ruggles reports, who saw her yesterday.

Mrs. Sally Hampton spoke the other evening at Mrs. Peters’s of Dr. Lieber’s having lately presided at a German Republican meeting at Cooper Institute. “So unfortunate for his son” (in business at Columbia or Charleston), “he was doing so well, and, of course, this ruins all his prospects at the South”!!! This is tyranny beyond King Bomba. If severance come, we must console ourselves for its calamity by remembering that we are freed from a most disreputable partner.

The Hon. Cobb, at Duncan, Sherman & Co.’s office, has been openly damning the blindness and stupidity of the capitalists who have taken the United States ten million loan at a premium, and declaring it is not worth fifty cents on the dollar. (So Charley Strong reported on respectable authority.) Pretty talk for a Secretary of the Treasury! I guess he put this loan into the market just at this time in the expectation it would not be taken, and hoping to make capital out of its failure for his own clique of traitors.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 55

Diary of George Templeton Strong, October 29, 1860

No new features in today’s political talk. Perhaps the Fusionists are rather more confident, though the Herald gave the latter up for lost a week ago. I hear it said today that New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania will vote anti-Republican, which I doubt most omnipotently. There is at least an even chance that we are now on the eve of a great public disaster, a calamity to the whole civilized world. Submission by the North would not avert it long if the Southerners are as unanimously in folly as they seem to be, and I’m not sure the North can submit to be rough-ridden any longer without disgrace.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 55-6

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 2, 1860

Sent Ellie to the opera in charge of her brother Jem and sallied out for a debilitated stroll. Found a great Wide-Awake demonstration in progress; inspected them in Fourteenth Street. Seward was making a speech in “Palace Gardens,’’ and the crowd there was dense, the Gardens packed full and impenetrable. The show in the street was brilliant—rockets, Roman candles with many colored fire balls, Bengal lights, the Wide-Awakes with their lanterns and torches, and “I wish I was in Dixie.” I adjourned to Broadway in front of the New York Hotel to see the procession pass. The Southerners of the hotel groaned and hissed, and the Republican mob in and about the Lincoln and Hamlin headquarters across the street cheered and roared, and the din was deafening. But there was no breach of peace. . . .

Think I will vote the Republican ticket next Tuesday. One vote is insignificant, but I want to be able to remember that I voted right at this grave crisis. The North must assert its rights, now, and take the consequences.

Think of James J. Roosevelt, United States District Attorney, bringing up certain persons under indictment for piracy as slave-traders to be arraigned the other day, and talking to the Court about the plea the defendants should put in, and saying that “there had been a great change in public sentiment about the slave trade,” and that “of course the President would pardon the defendants if they were capitally convicted.”!!! Is Judge Roosevelt more deficient in common sense or in moral sense? If we accede to Southern exactions, we must re-open the slave trade with all its horrors, establish a Slave Code for the territories, and acquiesce in a decision of the United States Supreme Court in the Lemmon case that will entitle every Southerner to bring his slaves into New York and Massachusetts and keep them there. We must confess that our federal government exists chiefly for the sake of nigger-owners. I can’t do that. Rather let South Carolina and Georgia secede. We will coerce and punish the traitorous seceders if we can; but if we can’t, we are well rid of them.

If I looked remarkably like Kossuth or Mazzini, I could nevertheless travel through Austria with no danger beyond that of a few days' detention, at the end of which, my identity being proven, I should be dismissed with apologies and an indemnity. But I happen to be mistaken for John Jay at least once a week, and it would therefore be utter madness for me to visit that section of our free and happy republic that lies south of Mason and Dixon’s line. Before I had traveled half a day’s journey through that sunny and chivalric region, some gent who had visited New York would spot me as a damned abolitionist emissary. I should be haled forth from my railroad car and hanged on the nearest palmetto tree.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 56-7

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 5, 1860

With William Schermerhorn to Columbia College Board meeting at two o’clock. Unusual amount of business, mostly unimportant. Treasurer’s report. Report from a Committee on Tutorships; we decided to appoint three. . . .

I confidently predict that Lincoln will be elected by the people, and that South Carolina and Texas, and probably Georgia and Mississippi, will thereupon be foolish enough to commit themselves to revolution, which will be a grave calamity. Also that Governor Wise will make several great speeches, and make himself singularly ridiculous. Also, that there will be Northern men enough interested in Southern trade to paralyze our Northern protest against treason and disunion, and that their special organ will be the New York Express¹ Also, that Southern conservatives will be crushed and silenced, though in a majority, and that the Reign of Terror in the Carolinas, Georgia, and other states will be so strengthened that it may become intolerable and be thrown off. I fear the question may have a grim solution in an uprising of the slaves, from Richmond to Galveston, stimulated by their masters’ insane talk about the designs of the Black Republican party.

_______________

¹ James Brooks’s Express, founded in 1836 and now supporting Douglas, was a peace-at-any-price organ, reflecting the views of many merchants; in 1861 its defense of the South almost provoked mob violence.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 58

Diary of George Templeton Strong, Tuesday, November 6, 1860

A memorable day. We do not know yet for what. Perhaps for the disintegration of the country, perhaps for another proof that the North is timid and mercenary, perhaps for demonstration that Southern bluster is worthless. We cannot tell yet what historical lesson the event of November 6, 1860, will teach, but the lesson cannot fail to be weighty.

Clear and cool. Vote very large, probably far beyond that of 1856. Tried to vote this morning and found people in a queue extending a whole block from the polls. Abandoned the effort and went downtown. Life and Trust Company meeting. The magnates of that board showed no sign of fluster and seemed to expect no financial crisis. Uptown again at two, and got in my vote after only an hour's detention. I voted for Lincoln.

After dinner to the Trinity School Board at 762 Broadway. Thence downtown, looking for election returns. Great crowd about the newspapers of Fulton and Nassau Streets and Park Row. It was cold, and I was alone and tired and came home sooner than I intended. City returns are all one way, but they will hardly foot up a Fusion majority of much above 25,000. Brooklyn said to be Fusion by 14,000. An anti-Lincoln majority of 40,000 in New York and Kings, well backed by the river counties, may possibly outweigh the Republican majorities in the western counties, but that is unlikely. The Republicans have gained in the city since 1856, and have no doubt gained still more in the interior.

The only signs of excitement and enthusiasm that I saw were in the crowd about the Bell and Everett headquarters (in Broadway below Pine Street).

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 58-9

Diary of George Templeton Strong, November 7, 1860

Lincoln elected. Hooray. Everybody seems glad of it. Even Democrats like Isaac Bell say there will be no disturbance, and that this will quiet slavery agitation at the North. DePeyster Ogden’s nerves are a little unstrung, but they are never very steady.

Republicans have carried every state on which they counted, except New Jersey, and it may be they have carried that, too. They have a very fair show in Delaware!!! Wilmington gives them a majority. Kentucky, Virginia, Maryland, and Tennessee are believed to have gone for Bell, a sore discouragement to the extremists.

Telegrams from the South indicate no outbreak there. There is a silly, report from Washington that Governor Wise contemplates "a raid” on that city at the head of a ragged regiment of rakehelly, debauched Virginians. He has few equals in folly, but this story is incredible. I wish It was true and that he would proceed to do it. Nothing could make Southern ultraism more ridiculous. I would not have him hanged for his treasonable attempt, but publicly spanked on the steps of the Capitol.

The next ten days will be a critical time. If no Southern state commit itself to treason within a fortnight or so, the urgent danger will be past. Now that election is over, excitement will cool down rapidly, and even South Carolina will not secede unless under excitement that blinds her to the plain fact that secession is political suicide.

If they were not such a race of braggarts and ruffians, I should be sorry for our fire-eating brethren, weighed down, suffocated, and paralyzed by a nigger incubus 4,000,000 strong, of which no mortal can tell them how they are to get rid, and without a friend in the world except the cotton buyers who make money out of them, and the King of Dahomey. The sense of the civilized world is against them. They know that even the manufacturers and traders who profit by them condemn the institution on which their social system rests. And now their own country decides against their real or imaginary interests, and gives a judgment which they consider (and perhaps correctly on the whole) to be a censure, and which many of them suppose commits the government to a policy hostile to them and endangering their peace and safety.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 60

Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, Tuesday, June 19, 1860

Very warm summer day-Breakfasted at Dr Browns with Mrs Brown alone, he being in the Country     The letter of Hon Edw Bates to me declaring his intention to support Mr Lincoln for the Presidency appeared in St Louis Democrat to day.¹ Our friends are delighted with it. It is a great letter the production of a great man and noble patriot, and will be of immense value to us in the campaign. It is all that I could possibly desire.

_______________

¹ The salient passages in Bates's letter, above referred to, were as follows:

St. Louis, June 11, 1860.

O. H. Browning, Esq., Quincy, Ill.

 

. . . It ought not to have been doubted that I could give Mr. Lincoln's nomination a cordial and hearty support. . . .

 

There was no good ground for supposing that I felt any pique or dissatisfaction because the Chicago convention failed to nominate me. . . . On party grounds I had no right to expect a nomination; I had no claims upon the Republicans as a party for I have never been a member of any party . . . except only the Whig party. . . . Many Republicans honored me with their confidence and desired to make me their candidate. For this favor I was indebted to the fact that between them and me there was a coincidence of opinion upon certain important questions of government. They and I agreed in believing that the national government has sovereign power over the territories, and that it would be impolitic and unwise to use that power for the propagation of negro slavery by planting it in free territory. Some of them believed also that my nomination, while it would tend to soften the tone of the Republican party, without any abandonment of its principles, might tend also to generalize its character and attract the friendship and support of many, especially in the border States, who, like me, had never been members of party, but concurred with them in opinion about the government of the territories. These are . . . I think, the only grounds upon which I was supported at all at Chicago.

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

Mr. Lincoln's nomination took the public by surprise because, until just before the event, it was unexpected. But really it ought not to have excited any surprise, for such unforeseen nominations are common in our political history. . . . As an individual he earned a high reputation for truth, courage, candor, morals, and amiability so that, as a man, he is most trustworthy, and in this particular he is more entitled to our esteem than some other men, his equals, who had far better opportunities and aids in early life.

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

I consider Mr. Lincoln a sound, safe, national man. He could not be sectional if he tried. His birth, his education, the habits of his life, and his geographical position compelled him to be national. All his feelings and interests are identified with the great valley of the Mississippi, near whose center he has spent his whole life. That valley is not a section.

*        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *        *

I give my opinion freely in favor of Mr. Lincoln, and I hope that, for the good of the whole country, he may be elected, but it is not my intention to take active part in the canvass. For many years past, I have had little to do with public affairs, and have acquired no political office; and now, in view of the mad excitement which convulses the country, and the general disruption and disorder of parties, . . . I am more than ever assured that for me, personally, there is no political future, and I accept the condition with cheerful satisfaction. *     *     *     *     *     *     *

Edward Bates

SOURCE: The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, Vol. 1, p. 416-7

Diary of George Templeton Strong, Thursday, May 31, 1860

Seward’s special friends grumble at Lincoln’s nomination, but seem disposed to support it in good faith. It looks to me as if Honest Abe were going to run well. The Democrats must patch up their domestic difficulties, and select a strong and available candidate, or they will be beat.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 30

Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, Thursday, May 31, 1860

Cloudy, cold day, but cleared off, and became more pleasant in the afternoon

There was a large Republican ratification meeting held here to day, which was addressed by Mr Grimshaw and myself in the afternoon, he speaking a half hour, and I an hour and a half. The Court house was packed to its utmost capacity, and then not half the crowd was in. There were a large number of ladies present.

There seems to be a great deal of enthusiasm among the people, and every thing now indicates an ardent and successful campaign.

SOURCE: The Diary of Orville Hickman Browning, Vol. 1, p. 413

Diary of George Templeton Strong, Monday, April 2, 1860

To Trinity Church vestry meeting tonight. As I railroaded homeward at ten, there was much people in and around the Tribune office, waiting, no doubt, for returns of today’s Connecticut election; the first gun fired in the presidential campaign. . . .

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 19

Diary of Edward Bates, April 27, 1859

Dined with F. P. Blair Jr²⁵ — the first [t]ime I was ever in his house — invited specially with Judge Jno. C. Richardson²⁶ and C Gibson,²⁷ to meet Mr. Schuyler Colfax²⁸ M.[ember of] C.[ongress] of Indiana.

The object of Messrs. Blair and Colfax, no doubt, was to have a confidential conference with me and a few of my known friends, so as to approximate the terms upon which the Republican party might adopt me as its candidate for the Presidency, and I and my friends might co-act with them, in federal politics, upon honorable relations.

Both those gentlemen are influential leaders of their party, and both declare that I am their first choice. They both say that Mr. Seward²⁹ cannot get the nomination of his party, perhaps not because he is not the acknowledged head of the party and entitled to the lead, but because the party is not quite strong enough to triumph alone; and his nomination therefore would ensure defeat.³⁰ Mr. Colfax is very anxious to consolidate the whole N.[orth] W.[est] so as to ensure what he considers the main point for which, as he understands it, his party contends — i. e. — that the U. S. shall not extend slavery into any country where they do not find it already established.

< To that I have no objection >

Mr. C.[olfax] is also a very warm friend of Mr. Blair, and is anxious to consolidate in Missouri, so as to put Mr. B.[lair] on a good footing with a majority in the State.

And, working for that end, Mr. Blair is eager to form a combination within the State, upon the precise question of slavery or no slavery in Missouri. This, undoubtedly, would be good policy for Mr. Blair personally, because it would strengthen the local free soil party (of which he is the acknowledged local head) with all the forces that I and my friends could influence. But I doubt whether it would be good policy for us to be come parties to such an organization. Such a course supposes affirmative action, i. e. the passage of a law for the prospective abolition of slavery; and it can hardly be necessary to incur the labor and encounter the prejudice incident to that course now, when it is plain to be seen that, by the irresistable [sic] force of circumstances, without any statute to help on the work, slavery will soon cease to exist in Missouri, for all practical and important purposes. This latter view, I think ought to be constantly inculcated, and kept before the public mind, by the press — It ought to be habitually mixed up (as it properly belongs to the subjects) with all our views and arguments on public economy — [,] Manufactures, mining, Commerce, handicraft-arts, and grain and cattle farming. This line of policy would aid and accelerate the drain of slaves from the State, which is, even now, rapidly going on, to supply the growing demand in the South.

Mr. Colfax, concurring with a good many Republican papers, is much put out by the first paragraph of my N.[ew] Y.[ork] letter,³¹ denouncing the agitation of the negro question. He seemed to think that it was a denunciation of the Rep[ublica]n. party, and would turn many against me.

I think otherwise; and that its effects will be good. It is chiefly the friends of Mr. Seward who make the objection, and they of course, would be astute in finding or making any plausible objection, to get a rival out of the way. If my letter had been universally acceptable to the Republicans, that fact alone might have destroyed my prospects in two frontier slave states, Md. and Mo., and so I would have no streng[t]h at all but the Republican party. As it is, all sensible Republicans know that it is the Southern democracy which was and is the first and chief and constant agitators [sic] of the question. And even now, such men as Blair and Colfax are fully satisfied of my true position, and the true meaning of the paragraph. And such papers as the Tribune³² of N. Y. and the Advertiser³³ of Boston, tho' they might wish it otherwise, are content with it as it is. While the Baltimore papers (Clipper³⁴ and Patriot) warmly accept it. Being true, I of course stand by it, as I must stand by all truth — Moreover, in cool policy, I am satisfied that it is best as it is.

_______________

²⁵ Francis P. Blair, Jr., of Missouri: an ardent Freesoiler, congressman, 1857-1859 and 1861-1862; major-general in the Civil War; U. S. senator, 1871-1873; supporter of Bates for the Republican nomination for the Presidency in 1860; advocate of Johnsonian moderation in Reconstruction.

²⁶ A close personal friend of Bates; judge of the Supreme Court of Missouri; opponent in 1860 of the sectionalism of both Lincoln and Breckinridge and advocate of Bell and Everett.

²⁷ Charles Gibson: a Virginia-born Whig leader of Missouri who had studied law under Bates; an ardent unionist in 1861; solicitor of the U. S. Court of Claims, 1861-1864; a loyal Lincoln man until 1864 when he broke with the President, resigned in a public letter of protest, and supported McClellan; later a Johnson Democrat. At this time he was Bates's political manager.

²⁸ Republican member of the House of Representatives from Indiana, 1855—1869; speaker of the House, 1863-1869; a Radical in Reconstruction politics; vice-president, 1869-1873. At this time he was apparently working for Bates's nomination for the Presidency.

²⁹ Infra, March 5, 1861, note 26.

³⁰ Conservatives who feared extremism on slavery would not have voted for Seward, and he had won the implacable hatred of the large Know-Nothing group, and of Greeley and the Tribune. See infra, Aug. 19, 1859.

³¹ See supra, 1-9.

³² New York Tribune, April 16, 1859.

³³ Boston Daily Advertiser, April 18, 1859.

³⁴ Baltimore Clipper, April 19, 1859.

SOURCE: Howard K. Beale, Editor, Annual Report of The American Historical Association For The Year 1930, Vol. 4, The Diary Of Edward Bates, pp. 11-12

The Baltimoreans.

The stupid absurdity of the professed Union savers, who met at Baltimore the other day to nominate a candidate for President, and another for Vice President, upon a single plan—the Constitution and the Union—will be apparent to the dullest dunce, when he remembers that every man in this country, save only a few ultra Abolitionists of the North and a handful of intense fanatics in the South, can endorse the platform which the Booby Brookeses laid down; because all political parties in the United States are loud in their devotions to the Constitution and the Union, and the vaunts the ultraists of either extreme in this matter, pass for just as much as the outcry of the National Constitutional Union Old Line Whigs and Know Nothings, who ventilated their patriotism at Baltimore. Whenever the Republicans declare their sentiments they will exalt the Constitution and the Union. The seceders from the Charleston Convention will do the same thing; and the Douglasites will follow the example. Here, then, we shall have four parties in the field, with the Constitution and the Union as a basis of each. Wherein the Baltimoreans are entitled to any preferences over either, we have not the wit to see. That in shirking the responsibility of declaring themselves upon the living issues of the day, they exhibit a degree of cowardice which breeds distrust of the purity of their intentions, all can well understand.

SOURCE: “The Baltimoreans,” The Press and Tribune, Chicago, Illinois, Monday, May 14, 1860, p. 2, col. 2