Much gasconading from the sunny South, condensed in telegraphic reports fortunately. “Palmetto Flag’’ raised, great speeches, fuss and fury, messages from governors, conventions called. Collector of Charleston resigning, “secession inevitable,’’ and so on. It’s a critical time, but things are not so bad as I expected they would be three days after Lincoln’s election.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 61
No material change in .the complexion of Southern news. Unless writers of telegraph items lie loudly, secession is inevitable. There is uneasiness here, but mainly as to the possibility of a tight money market from the financial crisis Southern folly is bringing upon the South, which must inevitably react on us more or less. People generally treat the political peril with what seems to me unaccountable indifference. This financial crisis is already beginning in Charleston and Mobile. Suspension of specie payments seems close at hand. They have overtraded, and their crops are short, and they would have been hard up had Lincoln been defeated, and obliged to do their uttermost to get the hogs and housing they need to carry them through the winter. But now that Lincoln is elected and their terrorists are roving about confiscating Northern property and repudiating Northern debts, their credit is paralyzed and they are in danger of a general smash. It would injure us, of course; it may bring them to their senses, or it may make them desperate and reckless.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, p. 62
Tonight I heard Lieber’s lecture at the Law School. Matter good and well arranged; manner bad—dreamy, dozy, and maundering. . . .
No material progress in the political crisis. Stocks have rallied a little here. Perhaps the febrile symptoms and cerebral disturbance of the South seem a shade easier. But the reign of terror in South Carolina continues unmitigated. Mrs. Sally Hampton, now in New York, wants to go home to Columbia, S. C., or thereabouts, and requires an escort, of course. Her husband can’t come North without exposing himself to a conviction of “incivisme,” and Mr. George Baxter, her papa, cannot go South without danger of being tarred and feathered as a Northerner and a possible Abolitionist. So Mrs. Sally Hampton and her three pretty babies still abide in Second Avenue. Willie Alston and Pringle meant to spend another month here, but their neighbors write them that they must come home. Their loyalty to the South will be suspected if they keep away. So they return, reluctantly. . . .
We are generally reconciling ourselves to the prospect of secession by South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, little Florida, and perhaps Mississippi, too. We shall be well rid of them. Perhaps the prevalence of this feeling— the cordial consent of the North—will keep them from seceding. I think these porcine communities incline to run out of the Union merely because they think we want to keep them in. One should never pull a pig in the direction one wants it to travel. They have long governed us and controlled our votes by the threat of secession. They naturally think secession will be a crushing calamity to the North and the severest punishment they can inflict on us for electing Lincoln.
SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 62-3
A bright day, pleasantly cool — On going in to the office [I] found on my desk, the card of Wm. G Bates48 of Massts. — He called to see me (with Capt: Bissell) telling Dick that he was a couzen [sic] of my old friend I. C. Bates49 of Northampton, and that he wished to see me, partly on that account, and partly for my politics [.]
. . .
Colfax. Recd, a letter today, from Mr. Colfax50 who expresses himself much pleased with my long letter, amended in its phraseology in some particulars, as suggested by him; and he asks leave to shew the letter to Mr. C. A Dana 51 of the Tribune. Of course, I have no objection; my letter, tho' not written for publication, is not secret.
He also encloses, for my inspection, a letter from Mr. Dana to him, by which I find that D.[ana] prefers Chase52 to Seward — (but does not want either) as a candidate for the Presidency — and enquires, with apparent interest, about the present condition of "the Bates movement." Dana says — "If B.[ates] can be put forward as a representative of the emancipation cause in Missouri he will be the strongest candidate we can have. With any other man we shall have the Fillmore split over again [.] "
<Note this letter from D.[ana] to C.[olfax] is dated July 10[.] > About the same time Colfax wrote to Gibson,53 and sent him, among other things, a letter from Mr. Bowles,54 editor of the Springfield Republican (Massts.) to him, C[olfax]. [ ] Bowles, I believe, is in full concert with the Tribune of N. York, and Colfax, Defrese 55 and other party leaders in the North West, to bring me out as the candidate of the Republicans. They are all afraid of Seward — they have personal objections doubtless, but their main ground is their full conviction that with Mr. S.[eward] for their candidate defeat, is inevitable.56 And they seem to think, that if S.[eward] is not nominated, his friends will take care that neither Bankes57 nor Chase, nor any other Republican shall be. In that event, they think me the most available candidate — the only man in fact, who, getting the Republican vote, can also secure the general support of the Americans and Whigs. Some of them tell me that Mr. Weed58 (who is understood to be Mr. Seward's " master of the horse " in N. Y.) goes for me, second.
Mr. Bowles says in his letter, that my N.[ew] Y.[ork] letter59 "ought not to have been written." As a measure of policy, I differ from him widely.
1. It is satisfactory to the real economists every where[.]
2. It pleases the manufacturers, who need protection, especially in Pa.
3. It is agreeable to all the old whigs.
4. It is not offensive to the Americans at the South, very pleasing to those of the North.
5. It is rank poison to the proslavists of the South, and by resisting their propagandism — and hence, conciliatory to all their enemies.
6. The objection of Mr. Bowles, and other leading Republicans to my denunciation of slavery agitation, is, in my judgment, a positive advantage.
1. It keeps me separated from the Republican party, and yet not so far removed as to prevent their support: 2d. It allays the prejudices of Whigs and Americans farther south, who might not be willing to support any man who was fully identified with the Republican party. 3. It gives to the whole letter an air of courage and sincerity which may tend to beget a general feeling favorable to the writer, and especially among the multitude who are now disgusted with the frauds and mismanagement of all the parties [.]
["The Presidency in I860."60
"In this week's issue we run up the name of Hon. Edward Bates, of Missouri, for President in 1860; subject to the decision of the Union Convention.
"It is useless for us to eulogise Edward Bates ; he is too well and favorably known to the whole nation, for us to attempt to add anything to the lustre of his character. He is the man to lead on to victory the columns of the mighty 'Union Party,' that is daily gathering strength all over the country. With him at our head, we can break up, and disband the two pernicious and sectional parties, the Democratic and the Republican, whose strife and wrangling over mere abstractions, have brought us several times upon the very verge of civil war.
"Edward Bates, is an eminently conservative man, and if elevated to the high position of Chief Magistrate of the Nation, will administer the government upon those truly national principles which actuated the earlier Presidents.
"Should Edward Bates be nominated, we feel assured that the Union men of Missouri will exert themselves to secure his election, as patriots should do when their country is in danger."]
_______________
48 A lawyer of Westfield, Massachusetts; Whig state senator, 1841; member of Governor Briggs's Council, 1844-1845.
49 Isaac C. Bates: anti-Jackson Democratic congressman, 1827-1835 ; Whig U. S. senator from Massachusetts from 1841 until his death in 1845.
50 Supra, April 27, 1S59, note 28.
51 Charles A. Dana: assistant to Greeley on the New York Tribune, 1847-1862; special commissioner of the War Department, 1862-1863; assistant secretary of War, 1863-1865; later, editor of the New York Sun. He was an ardent war-time supporter of Lincoln, then a bitter enemy of Johnsonian restoration, but finally a Liberal Republican seeking reform of Grantisms. In 1859 he was still in complete sympathy with Greeley.
52 Infra, March 5, 1861, note 27. Chase, a perennial aspirant to the Presidency was really in 1859 a leading candidate for the Republican nomination, but lost it. partly because his own state was not united in his support and partly because he. like Seward, was too extreme on slavery to win moderate votes.
53 Supra, April 27, 1859, note 27.
54 Samuel Bowles — anti-slavery leader, strong supporter of Lincoln against the Radical Republicans, advocate of moderation toward the South — made his Springfield Republican one of the most powerful influences in the North.
55 John D. Defrees of Indiana: lawyer and state legislator ; first chairman of the Indiana Republican State Committee, 1856-1860 ; editor of the Indianapolis State Journal. He must, in the end, have supported Lincoln's candidacy, for Lincoln appointed him government printer in 1861.
56 See supra, April 27, 1859, note 30.
57 Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts: Democratic congressman, 1853-1855; American Party congressman and speaker of the House, 1855-1857; Republican congressman, 1857, 1865-1873, 1875-1879, 1889-1891 ; governor of Massachusetts, 1858-1861 ; president of the Illinois Central Railroad, 1861; major-general of volunteers, who served in Maryland, in the Shenandoah, at Vicksburg, in Louisiana, and in Texas, 1861-1865. As a former Know-Nothing, he was more "available " in 1860 than Seward whom the Know-Nothings hated.
58 Thurlow Weed: editor of the Albany Evening Journal; for years the most powerful political figure in New York politics; one of the early managers of the National Republican Party. At this time he was managing Seward's campaign for the Republican nomination.
59 See supra, 1-9.
60 A clipping from the Louisiana (Missouri) Journal of July 25, 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. 36-8
The Presidential votes were counted in Congress today without any disturbance which had been heretofore anticipated, but Genl Scott had all things ready. The Dragoons & Flying Artillery men were standing by their horses all accoutered, ready to mount at a moments warning. The Prest Elect is now on his way to the Capital. I was at the Hotels this evening. Nothing of importance stirring. Saw Mr Lighthall and Mr Lowe of NY at National. Miss Douglass called at my office today and invited myself and wife to a Musical entertainment at her School Rooms tomorrow night. Have read the NY Times an hour, to bed at 12.
SOURCE: Horatio
Nelson Taft, The
Diary of Horatio Nelson Taft, 1861-1865. Volume 1, January 1,1861-April 11,
1862, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington D. C., image 18.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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. . . .
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
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
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
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
