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 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, 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