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.