Lincoln (102 page)

With little debate the delegates in Cleveland adopted a radical platform demanding a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery and guaranteeing “to all men absolute equality before the law.” It also called for direct election of the President, who should serve only one term, preservation of the rights of free speech, a free press, and habeas corpus, and the confiscation of the lands of rebels. The convention, styling itself the Radical Democracy, then proceeded unanimously to nominate John C. Frémont for President.

One of Lincoln’s agents on the spot reported that the convention was a “most magnificent fizzle,” and administration organs like the
New York Times
agreed that it was “a congregation of malcontents ... representing no constituencies, and controlling no votes.” It was, as John Hay remarked, “rather a small affair every way.” Lincoln was amused by the proceedings. When a friend gave him a detailed report on the convention and the small number of delegates, he quietly picked up the Bible, which customarily lay on his desk, and read a passage from I Samuel: “And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men.”

During the week before the National Union Convention in Baltimore many of the delegates came first to Washington, some to confer with their congressmen, but most, as Hay remarked, “to pay their respects and engrave on the expectant mind of the Tycoon, their images, in view of future contingencies.” Most of the delegations were legitimate, but some were bogus and irregular. Lincoln cordially welcomed them all. Warned that the delegation from South Carolina was a swindle, consisting of a few sutlers, cotton dealers, and Negroes, the President grandly remarked, “They won’t swindle me.”

With Lincoln’s renomination already assured, many of the delegates tried to learn the President’s wishes about the vice presidential nominee. He took pains to be noncommittal, remarking that he did not want to take sides since all the men mentioned for that office—the incumbent, Hannibal Hamlin, Benjamin F. Butler, Andrew Johnson, and others—were all personal and professional friends of his. One of his private secretaries was convinced that he favored renominating Hamlin; the other, that he wanted Johnson. When anyone interrogated him on the subject, he would say something vague, like
“Mr. Hamlin is a very good man.” As a result of Lincoln’s evasiveness, more than one self-important delegate went on to Baltimore confident that he, and he alone, was the repository of the President’s secret preference for a running mate.

The Baltimore convention, which met on June 7–8, was a fairly tame affair. Count Gurowski, who witnessed the proceedings in the Front Street Theater, found the convention “a crowd of sharp-faced, keen, greedy politicians,” and he saw “everywhere shoddy, contractors, schemers, pap-journalists, expectants.” Nicolay, whom Lincoln permitted to attend, thought it “almost too passive to be interesting—certainly... not at all exciting as it was at Chicago” in 1860. With the presidential nomination already decided, there was little suspense, and what little enthusiasm the delegates had was quieted by the news that 7,000 men in the Army of the Potomac had just been killed or wounded in Grant’s ill-conceived charge on the Confederate lines at Cold Harbor. “This Convention hasn’t the enthusiasm of a decent town meeting,” one Illinois delegate grumbled.

The retiring chairman of the National Union Executive Committee, Senator E. D. Morgan of New York, opened the proceedings by urging, at Lincoln’s suggestion, that the convention “declare for such an amendment of the Constitution as will positively prohibit African slavery in the United States.” The prolonged applause that greeted this recommendation indicated that from the very outset the Republicans were prepared to seize a central plank of the platform of the Radical Democracy and claim it for their own.

Speeches frequently emphasized that this was not just the third national convention of the Republican party but the first convention of the National Union party. In his opening address, Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge of Kentucky, the temporary president of the convention, sounded the key note: “As a Union party I will follow you to the ends of the. . . . earth But as an Abolition party—as a Republican party—as a Whig party—as a Democratic party—as an American party, I will not follow you one foot.” The permanent president of the convention, former Governor William Dennison of Ohio, echoed this sentiment. The delegates, he said, were not “representatives of either of the old political parties”; the only test of membership in the Union party—“if party it can be called”—was “an unreserved, unconditional loyalty to the Government and the Union.” Clearly the strategy was to avoid divisive factional issues among Republicans and to woo the support of the War Democrats. Naming Lincoln for a second term was the best way of doing that.

Lincoln’s supporters completely dominated the convention. Their control was so assured that Justice David Davis, again one of Lincoln’s principal managers, did not even bother to attend. “The opposition is so utterly beaten,” he wrote the President, “that the fight is not even interesting.” There were few issues, and all were decided as the President wished. Despite the growling of Radicals like Thaddeus Stevens against representation from “damned secessionist provinces,” the convention admitted delegations
from Tennessee, Louisiana, and Arkansas, states that were undergoing reconstruction under Lincoln’s 10 percent plan. A contest arose over the representation of Missouri, because both the Claybanks (Conservatives) and the Charcoals (Radicals) sent delegations, but a fight was averted when Lincoln’s men agreed to seat the Radicals and they, in turn, promised not to bolt but to abide by the action of the convention.

The platform endorsed Lincoln for “the practical wisdom, the unselfish patriotism and unswerving fidelity to the Constitution” he had exhibited. Masterminded by Henry J. Raymond, editor of the
New York Times,
it was throughout a strongly proadministration document. It insisted on the integrity of the United States, demanded an unconditional surrender of the Confederates, and endorsed a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery. An effort on the part of “all the malignants and malcontents” to include a plank censuring Seward, Blair, and other Conservative members in the cabinet was watered down to an ambiguous resolution deeming it “essential to the general welfare that harmony should prevail in the National Councils” and that “those only who cordially endorse the principles proclaimed in these resolutions” were worthy of public trust.

The only real excitement at the convention came from an unseemly squabble over who should have the privilege of placing the President’s name in nomination. Once the roll call began, state after state unanimously cast its votes for Lincoln, but Missouri, acting on instructions from its state convention, gave 22 votes for Grant. After the chair announced that Lincoln had received 484 of the 506 votes, the chairman of the Missouri delegation moved to change the vote of his state and Lincoln was unanimously renominated.

When the convention next turned to selecting a running mate, the President’s advisers gave no guidance. Initially it was generally assumed that Hamlin would be renominated, though there had been some talk about selecting a War Democrat, like Johnson, Butler, or Daniel S. Dickinson, a former United States senator from New York, whose loyal support of the Lincoln administration had led to his election as attorney general of that state in 1861. Delegates pressed Nicolay so hard to learn the President’s preference that he wrote John Hay at the White House for instruction. Lincoln endorsed his letter: “Wish not to interfere about V.P. Can not interfere about platform. Convention must judge for itself.” Hay passed the message on to Baltimore.

Left to make their own selection, the delegates floundered in a sea of politics. Quite early Whitelaw Reid, correspondent of the
Cincinnati Gazette,
judged that “Hamlin had lost his hold. Men seemed to consider it their duty to support him; but there was no enthusiasm about it.” The New England delegations failed to give him unanimous support and cast many votes for Johnson and Dickinson. New Yorkers realized that Seward would probably have to resign as Secretary of State if Dickinson was nominated, because one state could not claim two of the highest offices in the administration,
and they threw their weight behind Johnson, who was already strong in the Southern and Western states. After much last-minute shifting of ballots, Johnson was nominated.

Lincoln never explained his stand on the vice presidential nomination. Years later Alexander K. McClure, a prominent Pennsylvania Republican, claimed that just before the Baltimore convention the President had urged him to work for the selection of Johnson, and he rounded up a number of other contemporaries who claimed they had received the same instructions. These charges outraged both Nicolay, who believed the President incapable of deceit, and Charles E. Hamlin, who thought his grandfather’s defeat resulted from machinations of Charles Sumner; and they collected a large number of statements to prove that the President had really preferred Hamlin. The evidence was evenly balanced and inconclusive.

All that could be stated positively was that if Lincoln had really wanted Hamlin renominated the convention would have followed his wish. His failure to name Hamlin may have reflected his awareness that Hamlin was very radical on questions relating to slavery and the South. Lincoln jokingly remarked that he did not fear the Confederates would assassinate him, because they knew Hamlin would take his place. Lincoln also thought that there was something to be said for choosing a War Democrat to symbolize the broad coalition on which the National Union party hoped to rest and for picking a Southerner to stress that all the states still remained in the Union. He admired Johnson for his courage in sticking to the Union after his state seceded, and he was gratified that, as military governor of Tennessee, Johnson heartily endorsed his reconstruction program. But at bottom he simply did not think much about the office of the Vice President. Like most American presidents, he saw little of his second-in-command and never thought of giving the Vice President duties that would make him a kind of coexecutive. Consequently it did not make a great deal of difference whom the convention selected. And, finally, Lincoln recognized that the delegates to the Baltimore convention, held under strict control by his managers, needed a chance to blow off steam, to assert their independence, and to prove that they were not presidential puppets by choosing their own vice presidential nominee.

At any rate, Lincoln was pleased by the outcome of the convention. When a committee of delegates came to the White House on June 9 to give him official notification of his renomination, he replied: “I will neither conceal my gratification, nor restrain the expression of my gratitude, that the Union people, through their convention ... have deemed me not unworthy to remain in my present position.” Voicing strong approval of the call for a constitutional amendment ending slavery, he nevertheless cautiously declared that he should not definitely accept the nomination “before reading and considering what is called the Platform.” The same day he met with a delegation from the national Union League, which had endorsed the Baltimore
nominations, and he expressed satisfaction that the group found him “not entirely unworthy” of a second term. In this connection he was reminded of “a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that ‘it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.’”

Lincoln’s renomination put him in a better position to assert his leadership both in his administration and in his party. Chase was the first to feel the President’s new strength. His department faced formidable problems in meeting the vast expenditures caused by the war. Despite his urging, the Congress failed to levy taxes adequate to meet minimal needs of the Treasury. He had great difficulty in disposing of a new bond issue after he was not allowed to reappoint Jay Cooke, the banker who had been so successful in promoting earlier bonds. The currency was depreciating, and the premium on gold skyrocketed. At Chase’s demand, Congress passed a law designed to outlaw speculation in gold, but it only hampered honest businessmen while gamblers continued to profit by the constantly climbing premium.

Worn ragged by these pressures, Chase became more prickly in his relations with the President. The two men felt uncomfortable when they were in the same room, and Chase only occasionally attended cabinet meetings. Lincoln no longer needed to keep Chase in his cabinet. He tried to pass along a message to the Secretary through Representative Samuel Hooper of Massachusetts, that he continued to hold Chase in high esteem and intended to appoint him Chief Justice when a vacancy occurred—and with the subtext that his departure from the cabinet would relieve strain. Not fully understanding what he was told, Hooper failed to give the word to Chase.

But toward the end of June, the Secretary precipitated a crisis. The respected John J. Cisco resigned as assistant treasurer of the United States in New York City—a post that was next only to the Secretary of the Treasury in importance. Unaware that anything had changed in his relationship to the President, Chase proposed to replace Cisco with one of his cronies, Maunsell B. Field. It was a politically disastrous move, because Senator E. D. Morgan, former governor of New York and retiring chairman of the National Union Executive Committee, favored other candidates for the job, as did Senator Ira Harris. Lincoln refused to nominate Field and asked the Secretary to reconsider.

When Chase replied by asking for a personal conference with the President, Lincoln declined. “The difficulty does not... lie within the range of a conversation between you and me,” he told the Secretary. “As the proverb goes, no man knows so well where the shoe pinches as he who wears it.” The whole question of the New York patronage was a source of “much embarrassment” to him; he reminded Chase that retaining Barney in the
New York Customs House had been “a great burden” and that the appointment of Judge Hogeboom had brought New York Republicans—he did not mention Thurlow Weed by name—to “the verge of open revolt.”