Interregnum: Jefferson Davis (1808-1888)

“He saw himself as a faithful American, even though he tried to destroy the Union that to him had become subverted. He always identified himself as a constitutional patriot and true son of the American Revolution and the Founding Fathers” (p. 655).

I know, I know—I must be mentally sick to add—actually add—another book onto my already incomprehensibly long reading list. But this chance is literally too good to miss. Let’s set the record straight though: I do not class Jefferson Davis up there with the rest of the legitimate, whether we like them or not, Presidents of the United States, however a perverse sense of justice forces me to add his biography to all the others. Let’s just say that after reading all about Lincoln and the Civil War, I want to see the other side of the coin and judge accordingly. So here I am, pausing on the inevitable path to Andrew Johnson, to take in a little information on the brief history of the President of the Confederate States of America.

Now when I say “brief history” I am being facetious because the biography that I chose for Jefferson is over 600 pages long! Since I’m not merely interested in Davis’ CSA-years, I had to find a book that would give me a thorough account of the man who aided in breaking the Union so I read Jefferson Davis, American by William J. Cooper Jr
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000).

Jefferson Davis was born the last of ten children on June 3, 1808 in Kentucky. However, his father, on the eternal quest for means, soon moved the family to Louisiana and then onto Mississippi. As the baby of the family, Jefferson would be educated to the highest degree possible beginning at the age of 7, when he was sent into Kentucky to a catholic school. Two years later he was moved to a prep school closer to his family in Mississippi and finally, in 1823, he was sent back to Kentucky to Transylvania College. This small college was not good enough for his baby boy, so Mr Davis Sr worked it so Jefferson was invited to learn at West Point Academy. Even though Jefferson was not good at math or science he managed to scrape by at West Point, graduating four years later in the middle to his class.

He immediately was placed into the army’s infantry as an officer, but since there was nothing much to do, he seriously questioned this career path. “Quarrelsomeness, drinking, even violence became endemic in an officer corps that could anticipate no continuing military education, few chances for promotion, and limited social outlets. Resignations were common” (p. 42). At one point he was stationed at Fort Crawford in the Wisconsin Territory under Colonel Zachary Taylor, the future President of the United States. There he met and fell in love with Taylor’s daughter, Sarah Knox. Taylor disliked having his daughter marry a military man so he refused to countenance the match. Jefferson and Sarah continued to meet often in secret.

The biggest military event in these years between the War of 1812 and the Mexican War was the Black Hawk War, which took place on the Mississippi River around Missouri and Illinois. Davis missed this opportunity to gain some military laurels for himself because he was on leave pretty much through the whole thing. However, he reported for duty at the end of the engagement and was actually put in charge of escorting Black Hawk to Jefferson Barracks in Missouri. During the trip, the two men grew to respect and admire each other.

Another military opportunity popped up around this time for Davis. Recently the US government had established a new military unit to patrol the burgeoning southwest around the Mississippi River, called the Dragoons and Taylor promptly promoted Davis into this group. As nice as this new promotion was, Jefferson found himself in the middle of nowhere and forced to work for inferior men. In December 1834, he was court-martialed due to his missing roll call in the middle of a rainstorm. He defended himself and was eventually acquitted but Jefferson had had enough. He sent in his resignation and immediately married Sarah Taylor (with Zachary’s eventual permission) in June 1835.

For their honeymoon, they headed south to New Orleans where, tragically, they both fell ill with malaria. Davis would eventually recover, even though he would experience intermittent malarial symptoms the rest of his life, while Sarah, after only 3 months of marriage, died. Her grieving, sick widower was sent to Cuba to recover and eventually he returned to Mississippi where his brother gave him a cotton plantation. Jefferson spent the next feverish years making this plantation, Brierfield, into a successful venture. He did what he set out to do, while also beginning to dabble in Mississippi politics as a Democrat. In 1843, he lost his very first election to the state Congress, but it was a start.

Even though he was, for the most part, a successful planter and budding politician, Jefferson’s private life merely encompassed his own immediate family members. Soon, while he was on a visit to his brother, Joseph, he met Varina Howells, who though only seventeen to Jefferson’s thirty, captured his fancy. They were married in February of 1845, which also marked Jefferson’s explosion onto the political scene when he was voted into the US House of Representatives.

In Washington, he was a fervent supporter of the Polk administration and voted for the Mexican War. He enjoyed politics but being a military man himself, he realized that the war would need his services. Besides, he had become quite close to Zachary Taylor, now a general, who could use his help. He was voted in as the colonel for the First Mississippi militia and in 1846 joined Taylor in Mexico. Davis acquitted himself very well in the war, earning high honors for himself and for the First Mississippi in the battles of Monterrey and Buena Vista. The war then turned its attention to General Scott’s invasion of Mexico City and so Davis went back to Mississippi on leave.

Once home again, he was no longer a Congressman. He had had to resign his position while in Mexico, but the people of Mississippi loved their war hero so much that they instantly appointed him to the vacant seat in the Senate. While there he was a strong antagonist of the Compromise of 1850, voting against every single piece of legislation that came through in regards to it. It passed anyways but he would forever be critical of that bill and its effect and treatment of the southern states.

In 1851, he quit the Senate to run for governor of Mississippi under the new States’ Rights party. He lost but remained a successful plantation owner and Mississippi politician over the next few years. He was soon called out of retirement however when Franklin Pierce, the New Hampshire Democratic President, asked him to fill the Secretary of War’s cabinet position. Davis accepted and the whole family moved back to Washington. “Davis started out and remained a hands-on secretary, seeking involvement in all aspects of his department’s operations. A man as dedicated and as ambitious as Davis, who also had a vision of what he wanted to accomplish, could master the small domain of the antebellum US Army” (p. 249). Under Davis’ time as secretary, he increased the regular army and its pay while also increasing military technology (he is the one that moved the army into using new rifles with minie ball bullets, which would be so devastating a few years later during the civil war).

When Pierce did not win re-nomination for president, Davis was voted right back into the Senate in 1857. There he was almost powerless to stop the slide toward secession, even though he did not approve of it, and was forced in January 1861 to resign because his own state had seceded. Immediately he was made a Brigadier General in the CSA army but his own election as President of the Confederate States of America superseded it.

In February of 1861 in Montgomery, AL he took the oath of office as President and went about making a government. Soon they had written their own constitution and Davis even had his own cabinet, almost a mirror image of Lincoln’s government. An early problem cropped up when the state governors wanted to keep most of their enlisted men to guard the state instead of the new nation. Davis would have to contend against this attitude the entire existence of the Confederate States. Not only that but there were many significant differences between the North and the South that would dictate policy for Davis and his cabinet. “In 1860 the total population off the Confederate States was just over 9 million, while the Union total exceeded 22 million. In the most crucial category, white males aged eighteen to forty-five, the North enjoyed an advantage of around three to one. As it began its struggle for independence, the Confederacy commanded but 10 percent of the industrial capacity of the Union. In 1860, the North had produced over 90 percent of the country’s firearms, pig iron, locomotives, cloth, boots, and shoes. The Union also had twice the density of railroads per square mile, as well as considerably more mileage of canals and macadamized roads” (p. 350-51).

In 1861, Davis saw the purpose of his new government to be garnering foreign aid, multiplying military successes, and abolishing the Union blockade. While the South began the war quite well with many battlefield wins, the CSA would be plagued with incompetent generals throughout. Also with Great Britain ruling that the North’s blockade of the South was legal, the South began to run out of many essentials vital for life and war. Finally foreign backing became virtually non-existent as the South began to lose more battles, culminating in Gettysburg and Vicksburg, and the Emancipation Proclamation really sealed the deal. “’We commenced this war without preparation,’ Davis concluded, ‘and we must do the best we can with what we have’” (p. 376).

In 1863, the rampant inflation of the Confederate dollar along with the blockade caused Richmond’s ladies to riot for food. The Richmond Bread Riot ended after a few hours but it showed that the war effected everyone, on or off the battlefield. Through 1864 and into 1865, the North slowly demolished the Southern armies. Sherman took Atlanta and moved on to the Atlantic ocean, cutting Georgia, then South and North Carolina in two. Grant persisted in moving south to Richmond and while losing thousands of men, he also inflicted irreparable damage on Lee’s army. With Davis and the government evacuated from Richmond, Lee surrendered to Grant in April 1865. Davis then went on the lam, intending to ride to Florida to then take a boat to Texas where he would continue the fight. He and his family was apprehended by Northern troops in northern Florida though and taken back north near Washington DC and placed in Fortress Monroe.

Jefferson Davis, the once proud President of a doomed people, was then imprisoned for two years. President Johnson had issued several amnesties for the confederates but in all of them Jefferson was not pardoned. However, on May 11, 1867, Davis was released on bail where he and his wife, Varina, headed to Canada to see their children and then on to live in England. They would remain overseas for several years while the charges against Jefferson were eventually dropped. The US government realized that if they prosecuted Davis in court for treason and he was acquitted, they would lose face over the whole matter and people would ask what the purpose of the war had been.

Davis now had to take a good long look at his current life. Unfortunately, he and his family had absolutely no money and no prospects. The Union troops, after Vicksburg, had found Davis’ home, Brierfield, and torched it. Also the entire South was hurting so much that Davis found himself just one of many with no money and no job. He would spend the rest of his life trying to provide for his family through various means. Initially he took the job as president of the Carolina Life Insurance Company out of Memphis but he resigned in 1873 when he disagreed with them over their policies in merging with another company. He then wrote two hefty volumes detailing The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government and though popular, he never earned enough from their sale.

He remained a popular figure for the rest of his life and did speaking engagements every so often. Unfortunately he became increasingly prone to malarial attacks and with all the vagaries of his life, he felt unsettled and unhappy. Finally, a middle-aged lady, Sarah Dorsey, gave him her plantation house, Beauvoir, in which to retire and write his memoirs. He stayed there the rest of his life with Varina in a semi-happy retirement. On December 6, 1888, he died of acute bronchitis with malarial symptoms. He was 80 years old.

#16 Abraham Lincoln Part 2

“Out of the smoke and stench, out of the music and violet dreams of the war, Lincoln stood perhaps taller than any other of the many great heroes. This was in the mind of many. None threw a longer shadow than he. And to him the great hero was The People. He could not say too often that he was merely their instrument” (p. 735).

Although he had just lost the 1858 Senatorial election, Lincoln remained philosophical about it and simply moved his sights farther down the road to the 1860 presidential election instead. His team of men made sure that the Republican nomination convention would be held in Chicago and then they packed the place with thousands of Lincoln’s supporters. With many behind-the-scenes deals going on, Lincoln, after several ballots, managed to edge out all the leading Republican giants as the Republican Party’s presidential candidate. Meanwhile the Democratic Party had split; thus Lincoln would be running against Stephen Douglas, John Breckenridge, and John Bell.

Lincoln realized that the Republican Party was non-existent in the South and that the North contained the most electoral votes anyways, so he concentrated all the money and power of the Republican Party in the northern states alone. In the end, his scheme worked because he won every single northern state, except New Jersey but including California and Oregon. He had become the 16th President of the United States but with the sanction of only half the country. “Fifteen states gave him no electoral votes; in ten states of the South he didn’t get a count of one popular vote. He was the most sectionally elected President the nation had ever had and the fact would be dinned into his ears” (p. 183).

The South was horrified and it was all dominoes from there. South Carolina, always the hotbed of radicalism, immediately seceded after Lincoln’s victory, shortly to be followed by Florida, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. At once, they took over all forts, armories, and other governmental buildings for their own use. Lincoln was not even officially president yet and already the country was falling to pieces. He was finally inaugurated on March 4, 1861 and it would still be another month before he would be able to deal with the situation. Or should I say…it was a month later when the situation became too noticeable to ignore. Around the first of April, Lincoln received word that the men at Fort Sumter in South Carolina would starve if help from the North did not arrive soon. On April 12th, when Navy ships did try to aid Fort Sumter, South Carolina fired upon them and the call to war commenced. (Fort Sumter eventually fell to the South.) On April 15th, Lincoln called for troops, while on that same day, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas followed the other seceded states, eventually forming the Confederate States of America with Jefferson Davis as President.

The very first battle of the war took place in Manassas, VA only a few miles from Washington and thus providing the North high expectations of success. “The Battle of Bull Run, Sunday, July 21, 1861, was to a large and eager public a sort of sporting event, the day and place of combat announced beforehand, a crowd of spectators riding to the scene with lunch baskets as though for a picnic” (p. 252). The picnic did not last, however, the South won this battle and the Northern army turned into a rout. It was very rough for the North in the first few months of the war, especially since most Northerners believed that the war would only last a few months at the most.

Amidst the general gloom and disillusionment of the unsuccessful North, Lincoln had to deal with his own personal tragedy. In February of 1862, Willie, Lincoln’s favorite son, caught a fever and died at only eleven years old. “He [Lincoln] lifted the cover from the face of his child, gazed at it long, and murmured, ‘It is hard, hard, hard to have him die!’” (p. 290). “Among letters of condolence that had come was one, softhearted and sincere, from ex-President Pierce, mentioning that he too had once lost a boy he loved and could understand the grief” (p. 291). I have to admit here that my heart also softened towards Pierce by his tremendous show of basic humanity to a grieving Lincoln.

A major effort was underway in the first year of the war to keep the border states, i.e. Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, out of the South’s hands by whatever means available. The North was successful in commandeering these states to their cause but it also helped that Lincoln created another state as a buffer too. In 1862, “Congress passed an act making West Virginia a state, seceding her from Virginia” (p. 339). This was a brilliant move not only because it made Washington safer but also because it gave the North (and took away from the South) men and land.

Things were going poorly for the North and consequently for Lincoln as well. He had been infected with a rash of incompetent major generals, including McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, and Pope, who, although the North had more men and supplies, seemed to lose every encounter with the enemy. It was frustrating—from the Battle of Seven Pines, to the 2nd Battle of Bull Run, to Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville—all Union losses. I think it says something about the fragility of the North’s situation that when Lincoln had to find a victory in which to offer the world the Emancipation Proclamation, he had to settle for Antietam (1862), which was basically a draw. Lincoln finally settled on promoting Ulysses S Grant over the Western army, leading the siege of Vicksburg, and when Robert E Lee made a pass at Pennsylvania, Lincoln appointed George Meade as head of the Army of the Potomac.

It was the summer of 1863 and things were about to change dramatically for the North, although it would take them a while to realize it. At Gettysburg in Pennsylvania on July 1st, Lee stumbled upon a regiment of the Union army and opened fire. Instead of finding a better position, Lee stayed where he was while eleven Union corps came up to defend Missionary Ridge. After 3 days of intense and bloody fighting, Lee realized he could not win this fight and on July 4th, the Union army found their foes gone. On the other side of the country, July 4th heralded another Union victory when Vicksburg, bastion of the Confederate forces on the Mississippi River, surrendered unconditionally to Grant.

It was in late November of that same year when Lincoln would make a most surprising little speech at the dedication ceremony for the new military cemetery at Gettysburg. After sitting through a rousing 2 hour speech by Edward Everett, Lincoln got up and spoke for exactly three minutes.
“Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation—or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated—can long endure.
We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We are met to dedicate a portion of it as the final resting place of those who have given their lives that this nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our power to add or to detract.
The world will very little note nor long remember what we say here; but it can never forget what they did here.
It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated, here, to the unfinished work that they have thus far so nobly carried on. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that the nation all, under God, have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” (p. 444-45).

1863 not only saw these exciting Union victories but also draft riots in New York City, the first annual Thanksgiving Day celebration set for the last Thursday of November, the Capitol Building being finished with the statue “Armed Freedom” placed on top of the dome, the Republican Party briefly changing its name to the “National Union” Party to accommodate Democrats, and a host of popular, bestselling Abraham Lincoln joke books!

1864 saw even more changes for the North. It was an election year and in the history of the world, no nation had ever held an election in the midst of a civil war. We, Americans, would change that. Lincoln’s job was by no means a sure thing so it was important that the North keep on winning. With this end in view, he brought Grant over to wage the war against Robert E Lee in the Eastern theater, while Sherman was promoted over the West. Grant then decided on a many-pronged attack against the South that lead Sherman to Atlanta on one end while Grant would engage Lee at the other. Also it was presidential nomination time! The Democrats nominated George McClellan, former general, to head their presidential ticket while Lincoln, although he was not the politicians’ favorite, got the Republican nomination. However, in this year of changes, his previous running mate, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, would be swapped out for Andrew Johnson of Tennessee. Lincoln stated that there were two reasons for this change: 1. Johnson was a powerful War Democrat and would appeal to those voters and 2. He was from the South and that was important for unity.

The war effort though seemed to stall. Grant fought Lee in about six horrendously bloody and costly battles all the way to the gates of Petersburg where he then sat in a siege. Then Sherman who had victoriously marched through as many battles from Chattanooga saw a defeat at Kennesaw Mountain and then sat down in front of Atlanta to wait. But with the ’64 election closing in, Lincoln needed action. Sherman finally defeated Johnston and after accidentally burning much of Atlanta, he lost contact with the world as he headed east to Savannah, destroying all he could find on the way. Almost a month later after totally silence, Lincoln finally had word that Sherman was successful—he had reached the coast! Lincoln was then reelected for a second term.

Lincoln then put forward Amendment #13 that would abolish slavery, while Grant moved forward and threatened Richmond. On Palm Sunday, April 9, 1865, hounded and driven out of Richmond, with Sherman coming up from the south, Lee surrendered to Grant at the Appomattox State Court House. Lincoln was delighted and asked the band to play “Dixie” to the shock of all. “I propose closing up this interview by the band performing a particular tune…I have always thought ‘Dixie’ one of the best tunes I have ever heard” (p. 691).

Even though he was swamped with the new work of capitulation of the South and reconstruction of the Union, Lincoln made time on Good Friday, April 14, 1865 to spend time with his wife, Mary, and another couple, Clara Smith and Henry Rathbone, by going to seeing the play, Our American Cousin. It was a mediocre play and Lincoln did not really want to go but the theater had already published the fact that he would be there. At a certain point in the middle of play while everyone was laughing, John Wilkes Booth slipped into the President’s unguarded box and shot him with a short-range Derringer pistol behind the left ear. “For Abraham Lincoln it is lights out, good night, farewell—and a long farewell to the good earth and its trees, its enjoyable companions, and the Union of States and the world Family of Man he has loved” (p. 709). The President slumped forward, while Henry moved to block Boothe from escaping. Booth, however, also had a knife and he stabbed at Rathbone. After that, he jumped from the box onto the stage, broke his leg, and disappeared out the back entrance on his own horse. He would be caught and killed 12 days later at a farm in Virginia.

Lincoln was not dead though. There were several army doctors in the house that night and they got Lincoln out of the theater to a boardinghouse across the street. All the doctors agreed on one thing though—Lincoln would not survive the bullet to the brain. He never regained consciousness and when the sun arose the next morning, Abraham Lincoln died. “The Pale Horse had come. To a deep river, to a far country, to a by-and-by whence no man returns, had gone the child of Nancy Hanks and Tom Lincoln, the wilderness boy who found far lights and tall rainbows to live by, whose name ever before he died had become a legend inwoven with men’s struggle for freedom the world over” (p. 716).

It was now, after Lincoln had died, that his reputation grew and multiplied into what no one could see while he lived. “Now began the vast epic tale of the authentic Lincoln tradition mingled with legend, myth, folklore. Believers and atheists, those of fixed doctrine or the freethinkers—both were to argue he was theirs…Some had one sweeping claim: ‘He was humanity.’” (p. 732).

#16: Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

“With the thoughts you’d be thinkin’
You could be another Lincoln
If you only had a brain.”—Wizard of Oz

I’ve always been particularly fond of Lincoln. Granted I grew up in the North, but the very vanilla information that I’ve garnered about him over the years has only increased my admiration. In fact, as an art project in 2nd grade, I drew a remarkable likeness of him and the teacher admired it so much that she printed my portrait of Abraham Lincoln in a special art edition of the school bulletin. (As a side note, I’ve never been able to recreate my initial success as a budding artist and perforce, can only produce a nominally decent stick figure.)

Honestly though, one of the many motives for my PRP was to read about Lincoln. Let’s pull a Ghost-of-Christmas-Past act and watch Vanya about a year ago when reading Manhunt: The Twelve Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer by James Swanson. Again this book was a “gift” so to speak. In reality my dad was cleaning house and he sent me about a half dozen books that he had already read and thought that I might like. (Coincidentally, in this package I also received His Excellency, the book on George Washington that I would later use to start my PRP.) Now I did not really care for Manhunt. The author did a good job of recreating John Wilkes Booth’s actions in the days before and after the assassination and his character analyses of the accomplices are interesting and original. But...not only did I find Swanson’s flights of fancy regarding Booth’s thoughts and the godawful length of the book frustrating but I found myself longing to read more about Lincoln while he was still alive. It was then that I discovered how little I really knew about our 16th president. All I knew about Lincoln’s life could probably summed up on one double-spaced sheet of paper and who knows if any of it was even true!

This book really got me thinking. Did I really know that much about any of the presidents? What about the ones in my own lifetime? The truth was scary and yet, I think, a testimony to the perversity of social studies pedagogy in our nation’s school system.

Anyways, now is not the time to soapbox my opinions on how history is so tragically taught to our children in school, but as a proud fan of “history” in general, I was appalled at my lack of knowledge in an area that affects me on a pretty regular basis (every four years, if you must know.) Of course, this was not the only reason I started the PRP (please read my first blog if you wish to know the rest) but since we’ve made it to Lincoln I feel that I must include these extra reasons as well. Now, maybe, you also can fathom the happiness that I felt upon delicately opening Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and the War Years by Carl Sandburg (Harcourt, Inc: San Diego, 1939).

In choosing Carl Sandburg’s famed biography, I did quite a bit of research first. With Lincoln my frustration was due, unlike so many other presidents, to the vast amount of literature to be had on the subject. It seems like everybody and their grandmothers wanted to write their own version of Abraham Lincoln’s life story, culminating in the first ever assassination of an American President. But I wasn’t convinced. I went right to Amazon.Com and began reading review after review and realized that though Carl Sandburg’s book was rather dated and a freakin’ behemoth, it was still rated as one of the top Lincoln biographies ever. Well that was enough for me and best yet, it was at my local library!

The Lincolns originated from the Shenandoah Valley but Thomas Lincoln, Abe’s father, uprooted his wife and small daughter and moved them all to Kentucky. And that, dear folks, is where little Abraham was born. “Whatever the exact particulars, the definite event on that 12th of February, 1809, was the birth of a boy they named Abraham after his grandfather who had been killed by Indians—born in silence and pain from a wilderness mother on a bed of perhaps cornhusks and perhaps hen feathers—with perhaps a laughing child prophecy that he would ‘never come to much’” (p. 8).

In December of 1816, the whole family picked up again and moved to Indiana. Sadly, only 2 years later, Abraham’s mother, Nancy, died of the milk sickness (where the tongue apparently turned white). “So Nancy Hanks Lincoln died, 34 years old, a pioneer sacrifice, with memories of monotonous, endless everyday chores, of mystic Bible verses read over and over for their promises, of blue wistful hills and a summer when the crab-apple blossoms flamed white and she carried a boy child into the world” (p. 12). Only a year later, Thomas Lincoln remarried a widow, Sarah Bush Johnson, who would become a good and kind influence on Abraham. “His stepmother was a rich silent force in his life” (p. 16).

Growing up on a farm in the wilderness, Abraham learned to do everything needful, but he was never known as a great worker; he preferred books. In fact, he once stated “My father taught me to work but he never taught me to love it.” He was never very handsome either. In an age where the average man was 5’8”, Abraham grew to 6’4”. He was tall, gawky and his clothes never, ever fit properly, leaving his ankles and wrists perpetually exposed. On top of all this, Abraham had never any formal schooling. He went to a local school for a time, enough to learn to read, but thereafter was too busy working. In the end, he simply taught himself by books that he borrowed.

In 1828, his sister, Sarah, died in childbirth. Abraham then took a job as a flatboat operator, hauling pigs down the Mississippi River to New Orleans to be sold. When he returned home, he found that his family was getting ready to move to Illinois where he joined them as well. It was in Illinois, that he gave his very first political speech. “He had been delivering speeches to trees, stumps, rows of corn and potatoes, just practicing, by himself. But when two legislative candidates spoke at a campaign meeting in front of Renshaw’s store in Decatur, Abraham stepped up and advocated improvement of the Sangamon River for better navigation” (p. 21).

The very next year, Abe moved away from his family to the town of New Salem, Il. There he was to become a store clerk, gaining a far-reaching reputation as an honest and reliable man. Abraham also had taken to reading legal books and even performing some small legal offices for people, including deeds, wills, and other services. It was only to be expected, then, that his name be discussed as a possible candidate for the Illinois legislature.

Unfortunately though at that very moment in 1832, the Black Hawk War burst upon the scene and the local militia was called up as reinforcements for General Zachary Taylor. A group of men from New Salem banded together to form a regiment and they elected Abraham Lincoln as their captain. He and his regiment did not see much fighting but they walked long weary hours through every kind of weather. Instead of returning home after his enlistment ended, Lincoln reenlisted another two times. “In those days Lincoln had seen deep into the heart of the American volunteer soldier, why men go to war, march in mud, sleep in rain on cold ground, eat pork raw when it can’t be boiled, and kill when the killing is good” (p. 32).

In 1834, he was finally elected to the state legislature, where he proceeded to shine. “One lobbyist noted Lincoln in this legislature as ‘raw-boned, angular, features deeply furrowed, ungraceful, almost uncouth…and yet there was a magnetism and dash about the man that made him a universal favorite” (p. 44). When the legislature was not in session though, Lincoln had been hired as a surveyor for the state. He spent his time between the state legislature and when it was not in session, travelling for his surveying job. His daily existence remained much this way until 1836 when he took and passed the bar examination. Abraham Lincoln had become a lawyer.

After his successful entry into this new profession, Lincoln moved to the state capital of Springfield to become a partner in a law firm. It was here in Springfield that Lincoln met Mary Todd, whom he married on November 4, 1842. His new wife was very ambitious politically but she had to bide her time because Abraham was merely a simple country lawyer. She had her husband keep his hand in the local Whig machinery by having him travel the state electioneering for various other individuals. Through one thing and another, Abraham Lincoln’s name became quite well known among the political elite of Illinois.

As the United States declared war on Mexico, Illinois sent Abraham Lincoln as its representative to the United States Congress. Since he was a Whig and the Whigs liked to rotate representatives every term, Lincoln was only in Washington one term and then he was heading back home to Springfield. In 1849, he was offered a position of Secretary to the Territory of Oregon but he declined the position.

As the Whigs faded into the background of the political spectrum, Lincoln did not immediately jump on the Republican bandwagon. Republicanism began as a direct result of slavery in the states and was, almost from the start, a truly sectional party. However, since he had been a Whig for almost his entire political life and disliked slavery, he found himself a Republican almost without realizing it. In fact, Lincoln became so popular in the newly-created Republican Party that he even received some votes in the Republican National Presidential Convention of 1856.

But Lincoln could no more stay away from politics than a starving man from food. “The political letters of Lincoln early in 1858 showed more and more a rare skill in the management of men” (p. 137). He began to hone his political platform by officially speaking out against the institution of slavery. It is generally accepted that Lincoln’s “House Divided” Speech (where he said that no house can stand against itself, referencing slavery) caught the public interest and got his name out to a more national audience.

The “House Divided” speech, though, was just an appetizer. Lincoln really reached a higher level of national popularity and recognition from a brilliant plan that his team formulated to promulgate his name. The 1858 Senate race was to be contested between Abraham Lincoln, Republican lawyer and backcountry farm boy, and Stephen A. Douglas, political wunderkind and Democratic urbanite. Stephen Douglas had known Lincoln for years (they both practiced law in Springfield) and both held each other in high regard. However, Douglas had been actively engaged in politics for decades before Lincoln was ever elected to any position. For example, Douglas, also known as the “Little Giant,” had penned the controversial Kansas-Nebraska Act when he chaired the Senate committee on Territories.

The daring plan to get their man elected to the Senate essentially had Lincoln ask Douglas if he would be willing to hold a number of debates throughout the state. Douglas agreed and over several weeks, went head-to-head with Abraham Lincoln on the issues of that day. Lincoln was clever though. He used everything that Douglas said against him, without it appearing that way. Slavery was the most hotly contested issue between them and Lincoln used it to trap Douglas into saying that slavery should be ended. This tiny statement by Douglas would severely hurt his chances of being nominated the presidential candidate by the Democratic Party in 1860.

In the end, Lincoln failed to be elected to the US Senate and instead Douglas went on to Washington. However, people took notice of the lanky, intelligent lawyer from Illinois who had beat Douglas in the popular vote but lost with the electors. What no one could have imagined would be the effect of the printed word in these men’s futures. The Lincoln men put together a little booklet of all the debates and through this medium, Lincoln’s name shone across the nation as an up-and-coming political star.

“Lincoln was 51 years old. With each year since he had become a grown man, his name and ways, and stories about him, had been spreading among the plain people and their children. So tall and so bony, with so peculiar a slouch and so easy a saunter, so sad and so haunted-looking, so quizzical and comic, as if hiding a lantern that lighted and went out and then he lighted it again—he was the Strange Friend and the Friendly Stranger. Like something out of a picture book for children—he was. His form of slumping arches and his face of gaunt sockets were a shape a Great Artist had scrawled from careless clay.

“He looked like an original plan for an extra-long horse or a lean tawny buffalo, that a Changer had suddenly whisked into a man-shape. Or he met the eye as a clumsy, mystical giant that had walked out of a Chinese or Russian fairy story, or a bogy who had stumbled out of an ancient Saxon myth with a handkerchief full of presents he wanted to divide among all the children in the world.

“He didn’t wear clothes. Rather, clothes hung upon him as if on a rack to dry, or on a loose ladder up a windswept chimney. His clothes, to keep the chill or the sun off, seemed to whisper ‘He put us on when he was thinking about something else.’

“He dressed any which way at times, in broadcloth, a silk hat, a silk choker, and a flaming red silk handkerchief, so that one court clerk said Lincoln was ‘fashionably dressed, as neatly attired as any lawyer at court, except Ward Lamon.’ Or again, people said Lincoln looked like a huge skeleton with skin over the bones, and clothes covering the skin.

“There could have been times when children and dreamers looked at Abraham Lincoln and lazily drew their eyelids half shut and let their hearts roam about him—and they half-believed him to be a tall horse chestnut tree or a rangy horse or a big wagon or a log barn full of new-mown hay—something else or more than a man, a lawyer, a Republican candidate with principles, a prominent citizen—something spreading, elusive, and mysterious—the Strange Friend and Friendly Stranger” (p. 146-47).

To be continued…

Lincoln for President

Lincoln for President: An Unlikely Candidate, An Audacious Strategy,
And the Victory No One Saw Coming
By Bruce Chadwick
(Sourcebooks, Inc: Naperville, IL, 2009)

This is certainly not the biography for Lincoln that I chose to read, however it was a Christmas/birthday present from my father and so I’ve included it in my PRP (Presidential Reading Project). Besides, Lincoln’s a Biggie, if you know what I mean and so I felt safe including an extra book about him (just like I did with Andrew Jackson. So just deal with it.) After reading so many biographies of unknown presidents, it’s an absolute pleasure to finally get to old Honest Abe. Besides, upon receiving this book, I was curious to see how this historian, any historian, could write an entire book about one single presidential campaign.

Let’s find out, shall we?

What I immediately liked about this book was the detailed and informative picture of Lincoln that is drawn from numerous contemporary sources and friends of his, prior to the election of 1860. I think that most people today know what Lincoln looks like primarily because his image is simply everywhere. The craggy face, the aura of sadness, the stovepipe hat, the rail-thin body. If you haven’t grown up familiar with Mount Rushmore or the Lincoln Memorial or a freaking penny for crissakes then I’m guessing that you’re not from around these parts.

Although we grew up Knowing About Lincoln, we’ve never seen the Lincoln of the 1850s back before he was a national figure or anybody in particular really. Noah Brooks, an audience member for Lincoln’s Cooper Union (NY) speech said “When Lincoln rose to speak, I was greatly disappointed. He was tall—oh, how tall! And so angular and awkward that I had, for an instant, a feeling of pity for so ungainly a man. His clothes were black and ill fitting, badly wrinkled—as if they had been jammed carelessly into a small trunk. His bushy head, with the stiff black hair thrown back, was balanced on a long and lean head stalk, and when he raised his hands in an opening gesture, I noticed that they were very large” (p. 3). Of course, I had to laugh but Lincoln’s appearance made a perfect foil for his public-speaking and politicking, which just happened to be mesmerizing and wonderful. I appreciated getting a good look at the younger Abe Lincoln right from the start of the book, just as the Republican National Convention of 1860 comes into view.

I have to say that I am really impressed with the way Lincoln’s team worked to get their relatively-unheard of politician to eclipse the big wigs of that day—William Seward, Salmon Chase, and Simon Cameron. The election of 1860 was supposed to be the apogee of William Seward's career, who had been a prominent NY politician for decades. (You may remember him for his rivalry with fellow New Yorker, Millard Fillmore). But Lincoln and his team of faithful friends planned in advance for their boy to lead the Republican ticket. For example, they worked to get the Nomination Convention to be held in Chicago, IL for the first time. Chicago was still a little town at this time, but they knew that if Lincoln was to even stand a chance then he needed to have home field advantage. Then on the night before the convention, the Lincoln team had a Good Idea. The tickets for the convention were parceled out evenly between all the candidates and their supporters but Lincoln’s team replicated tickets and handed them out to pro-Lincoln men, telling them to be at the Wigwam (the place where the convention would be held) early the next morning. The Lincoln fans showed up early and were seated. That meant that there was no room for any other candidate’s supporters and the Lincoln fans cheered every time his name was mentioned.

Lincoln, of course, won the nomination. Seward, on the first ballot, won the most votes but he did not have the requisite two-thirds majority. Some men switched to Lincoln on the next ballot, then more on the next, and finally the vote landslided in Lincoln’s favor. There was a lot of behind-the-scenes maneuvering and I find it extremely interesting that most of the men that Lincoln ran against at the convention were later to be found in his Cabinet, allowing us to assume that promises had been made for votes. “”None of Lincoln’s team ever admitted they actually offered cabinet posts to any of the state leaders or, later, to William Seward in the middle of the campaign. But when Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, Simon Cameron became secretary of war, Seward was named secretary of state, Chase secretary of the treasury, Smith secretary of the interior, Bates attorney general, and Montgomery Blair postmaster general” (p. 84).

All the minutiae of the election is included in this book, including bios on all the major candidates, the split of the Democratic party, the campaign strategies for all the parties, and finally the actual electioneering for the candidates. The election of 1860 is unusual for a variety of reasons. First of all, the Democratic Party split and at one time there were 5 men in the race for the presidency, including Sam Houston. The Democrats split along sectional lines with Stephen Douglas garnering the northern vote, John Breckenridge getting the southern vote, and John Bell heading the newly formed Constitutional Union Party, which was compose of “disgruntled Southern Democrats, old-line Whigs, transformed Know-Nothings, and hundreds of former public officials and political figures” (p. 38). Secondly, there was talk of secession if Lincoln was elected president and so Lincoln decided on a bold strategy: he would only campaign in the Northern states.

When I say that Lincoln would campaign, I meant that figuratively. No politician in this age ever campaigned for themselves. In Lincoln’s case, he was completely mute from the moment that he was selected as the Republican nominee until after he was elected president of the United States. His team of men did all the talking, promising and campaigning for him while he sat at home in Springfield, IL awaiting results. However, Lincoln was the principle decision-maker of the group and the sheer number of his letters to his team amply proves it. Lincoln made the decision that he would pour all the Republican money and time into the Northern states alone. Since he knew that he would not win any Southern states, he recognized that to win the 1860 election, he would need every single Northern state. And so he morphed his campaign to take into account the already splintered country.

The Republicans also came up with a diverse party platform that would not merely focus on slavery, like the Democratic one. Instead, the Republicans used the corruption of the Buchanan presidency as a springboard against political corruption across the country. They also focused on promoting the Homestead Act (which aided new farmers on the frontier), a transcontinental railroad, and tariff reform (so important to iron workers in Pennsylvania).

Lincoln’s bold strategy worked but his success was also due to the split Democratic vote. “The Southern Democratic races were marred by endless mudslinging, and managers of both were unable to focus on Lincoln” (p. 221). Amazingly, Lincoln won in every Northern state, including California and Oregon. But the big prize was New York with its 34 electoral votes that sealed the deal. Thus, in November of 1860, Abraham Lincoln of Illinois was elected the 16th President of the United States. He was also the very first Republican president ever and ushered in 24 years of Republican rule.

I enjoyed learning more about the causes of the war and indeed there is a whole chapter worth reading about the secessionist view of slavery. A popular misconception of the time in the minds of Northerners was that if slavery was abolished, the non-slaveholding Southern population would join the North in an uprising, thereby producing some sort of balance in the country. However, Chadwick’s research showed that most Southern people, slaveholding or not, were interested in supporting the institution of slavery. The reasons were varied. For the poorer Southern man, he supported slavery because he did not want the slaves, if they were emancipated, to take his job, plus the prosperity of the plantations would trickle down to him eventually. Plus, men, like doctors or merchants who didn’t own slaves, had patients and customers that did and so they supported slavery as well. I thought this chapter was quite unique on an economic standpoint and as a later cause for war.

Although the book is about Lincoln’s triumph and there were a lot of little things I didn’t know, I can’t say that I would recommend this book as light reading, if you know what I mean. The book is over 360 pages, which I thought was really quite long for the subject, and sometimes I felt like the author was padding the chapters. For instance, Bruce Chadwick includes what I felt was every single letter Lincoln received during the campaign and every single warning about Lincoln’s safety. Some of the chapters got completely bogged down for me because it seemed like Chadwick didn’t have the courage to leave out some information. I know that there was tons of material to work with relating to the election of 1860 and its ramifications but I think a truly good author knows how to edit. Not every source needs to be used, not every piece of information about the subject must be included. I’m just saying.

Also the author repeated himself, which drove me crazy considering the length of the book. He would mention something in the first chapter and then again, the same thing with the same wording in a later chapter. Urgh! It was frustrating because I don’t have that bad a memory! Finally, Chadwick uses rhetorical questions like there was a Rhetorical-Question-Fire-Sale going on and he bought everything at a greatly reduced price. Honestly, he throws those things around as if he were writing a cheap mystery-thriller. Many chapters ended tawdrily with inane rhetorical questions, presumably to hook us into turning the page. Here’s one: “They did everything a shrewd campaign team should have done. But would it be enough” (p. 157)? “Lincoln, they believed, could not win. Or could he” (p. 116)? It makes me want to hear a melodramatic organ dum-dum-duming after the question mark. What about this? “Could they [Republican] keep their fragile alliance with the Know-Nothings as the election turned more and more on slavery? Could they make any dents in the steel belt of southern counties along the Maryland and Virginia borders that repeatedly went Democratic and would be targeted by Breckenridge? Could they beat both Douglas and Breckenridge, plus political history, all the same time” (p. 191)? Dum-Dum-Dum! And I’m pretty sure that’s a run-on question in the middle of all that madness. But the best was yet to come…

“ Would the razor-thin margins of victory Lincoln’s polls predicted hold up throughout the long night? A shift of just a few thousand votes in one or two states could cost him the election, and the vote appeared to be that close in several states, especially in the Northwest. Could he carry New York? The latest telegram from Thurlow Weed, that he had hid from everyone but his wife, indicated he might not. Could the Bell, Douglas, and Breckenridge men carry even just one large Northern state, plus a small one, and in so doing, toss the election into the House of Representatives? Would his massive voter registration drive attract enough new voters to the Republican banner to give him a cushion of brand-new votes needed to carry states where the race was supposed to be very close? Would his North-only strategy backfire on him” (p. 300)?

You have got to be kidding me!?! At each question, I want to scream “No, goddamn it” and then punch the author in the face. Chadwick makes it seem like we don’t know the end of this story when most 3rd graders can tell you that Lincoln won that election. It’s like the Titanic movie, quite beautiful and moving but in reality, we all know how it’s going to end.