Diary of George Templeton Strong, September 13, 1860

Dined at New York Club with Charles E. Strong and Henry Fearing. Thereafter we inspected the grand procession of the “Wide-Awakes,” a new notable club organization of the Republicans. It extends through these Northern states, is semi-military, and is intended (as people say) to keep order at Lincoln's inauguration (he will certainly be elected) in case Governor Wise and Mr. Yancey and other foolish Southern demagogues try to make a disturbance. This procession, which we watched in Astor Place and the Bowery, was imposing and splendid. The clubs marched in good order, each man with his torch or lamp of kerosene oil on a pole, with a flag below the light; and the line was further illuminated by the most lavish pyrotechnics. Every file had its rockets and its Roman candles, and the procession moved along under a galaxy of fire balls—white, red, and green. I have never seen so beautiful a spectacle on any political turnout.

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

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, Friday, October 5, 1860

Wednesday night with Ellie, Miss Leavenworth, and Cameron to Tiffany’s shop in Broadway, where I had engaged a second story window. We inspected the grand National Wide-Awake torchlight procession. It was brilliant and successful. It was more than two hours in passing, and its most pleasing feature was the rear-rank of the last division. These demonstrations of the prevailing Republican party are elaborate and splendid, but cold and mechanical. One misses the spontaneous hullabaloo and furor of the Harrison campaign. Even in ’56 there was more enthusiasm. Of course, the corresponding depression on the other side is deeper yet. It is conceded that neither of the opposing candidates stands the smallest chance of election by the people. So Douglas men. Bell men, and Breckinridge men are all equally dumpish, and any excitement about fusion is impracticable. You can get up a hurrah for the gallant Smith or the "ga-lorious” Jones, but not for a mere abstraction for the generalization of Smith and Jones.

Much occupied with divers matters growing out of the expected advent of our "sweet young Prince.” "Long may he wave,” but I wish he were at home again with his royal mamma, and I hope the community won’t utterly disgrace itself before he goes away. The amount of tuft-hunting and Prince-worshiping threatens to be fearful; and, I don’t know how it happens, but I fear my share in the demonstration is to be much larger than I expected or desired. The Reception Committee met today and passed on divers weighty matters. It is proposed that we "wait on the Prince” the evening before the ball, which seems to me a very superfluous work of supererogation. All we can say or do is to express the hope that His Royal Highness finds himself pretty well, considering, and I think His Royal Highness will be inclined to take it for granted that we hope so, whether we call or not.

Maunsell Field’s exertions and labors over the arrangements for the ball are most arduous. He works all day and nearly all night and will break down if he isn’t careful. Honorable Luther Bradish has been sold with a grave suggestion that the Reception Committee wear small-clothes and silk-stockings, and was much exercised thereby. On reflection, he thought it might be, on the whole, highly becoming and proper. It seems a place on this committee is a much coveted place of honor. I was selected after great consideration. Very much obliged.

His Royal Highness is to attend services at Trinity Church on the 14th, "The First Sunday after the Ball” and the 18th after Trinity. The vestry met specially yesterday and a committee of arrangements was appointed: the Rector, Dunscomb, Hyslop, Cisco, and myself. The committee met this afternoon, and I walked up with Cisco, stopping at Mathews’s to arrange about the binding of a special prayerbook for His Royal Highness’s pew, with an inscription alluding to the former munificence of the British Crown to Trinity Church (Berrian suggested "his royal ancestors,” forgetting that His Royal Highness is descended neither from William and Mary nor from Queen Anne), and at Gimbrede’s about printing tickets of admission. We must admit by tickets or let the church be filled up with a mob, but I should much prefer to dispense with them.

SOURCE: Allan Nevins and Milton Halset Thomas, Editors, Diary of George Templeton Strong, Vol. 3, pp. 43-4