Coming Fury, Volume 1 (16 page)

The marching was done by the Wide-Awakes, faintly military organizations of young Republican enthusiasts whose formation was simply a revival of an old device for generating political enthusiasm. The business first came to view in the winter of 1860, when Abraham Lincoln went to New England to speak after his performance at New York’s Cooper Institute. In Hartford he was met by a formation of a few dozen of the faithful, togged out in oil-cloth capes and bearing torches, and they marched behind a band to escort him from his hotel to the place where he was to speak. The performance seemed effective, and after the Wigwam convention had made its nominations and the party leaders began to get the campaign under way, the idea was picked up and expanded.
¹

Before long there were many Wide-Awake clubs, parading at party rallies, parading sometimes simply for the sake of parading, putting thousands of men in line, conveying an increasing feeling that this new party carried immense popular support. A Chicago newspaper remarked that a stranger, seeing the Wide-Awakes for the first time, “is strongly impressed with the peculiar spectacle they present,” and it commended the precision of the rudimentary drill which the marchers had practiced. Lincoln was the Railsplitter—a fact of no apparent significance, but somehow a fine talking point—and so the marchers took to carrying long rails, each with a swinging lamp at the top, or an American flag bearing the names of the Republican nominees. “The uniform of the privates,” said the Chicago paper, “is a black enamelled circular cape, quite full and of good length, and a glazed military fatigue cap with a brass or silver eagle in front. Some companies are uniformed with blue, red, drab and gray silver caps and capes and relieve the monotony of the darker uniforms. The captains and non-commissioned officers are distinguished by an Inverness overcoat, with black cape and undress military caps … The measured tread, steady front and unbroken lines speak of strict attention to drill, and the effective manner in which the various bodies are managed by their officers shows conclusively that men of military experience control their movements.”
²

This came to its brightest flowering on August 8, in a great ceremony at Springfield, Illinois, where there was to be a grand “ratification meeting” to endorse, underline, and celebrate the nomination of Lincoln. Into Springfield came the Wide-Awakes from, apparently, all parts of Illinois. The young men in oil-cloth capes got off trains by the scores and hundreds, came trundling in from near-by towns by wagons, or made the hike on foot, camping by the roadside at night, presenting the appearance (as the stoutly Republican Illinois
State Journal
remarked) of “a veritable political earthquake.” Springfield was all bannered and beflagged, and the
State Journal
reporter, confessing that “we have no adequate words to describe what our eyes beheld,” asserted that the country had never seen a larger or more magnificent political demonstration. With much effort and confusion, parade marshals importantly vocal, company commanders barking orders, teamsters cursing their mounted floats into line, the parade began to move by mid-morning. At the head of the procession a wagon carried an immense ball, with the placard: “The Republican ball is in motion.” (Another banner proclaimed, in handy doggerel: “The people mourn insulted laws, And curse Steve Douglas as the cause.”) It was followed by a score or more of Wide-Awake companies, each with its own band, all the bands playing at once to produce a marvelous discord and an unceasing thump of bass drums; and there were floats, delegations of true believers from neighboring towns and counties, each delegation riding in wagons. The men who had devised the floats had let themselves go; one float, harking back to the wild campaign of old Tippecanoe’s day, mounted a log cabin with a stout pioneer splitting rails in front of it; another, a huge dray hauled by twenty-three yoke of oxen, had a whole gang of railsplitters at work; on still another wagon a small steam engine worked a power loom which was visibly producing yards and yards of jeans cloth, which a tailor immediately fabricated into a pair of pants for the fortunate nominee, while a banner overhead proclaimed the party’s devotion to “Protection to Home Industry.” There were speakers’ stands all over town, and at times a dozen orators were in action simultaneously.

Lincoln himself appeared at last, riding in a carriage, and the cheering crowd dragged him forth and carried him on sweating shoulder tops to one of the platforms, depositing him there and
demanding lustily that he make a speech—a thing which for a full ten minutes he was unable to do because the jostling audience would not stop yelling. When comparative quiet was obtained, Lincoln’s words were few: “It has been my purpose, since I have been placed in my present position, to make no speeches … I appear upon the ground here at this time only for the purpose of affording myself the best opportunity of seeing you and enabling you to see me.… You will kindly let me be silent.” Then he managed to get away, riding from the scene on horseback. That evening there were torchlight parades, and fireworks, and the
State Journal
felt that it was “a magnificent display … the streets were all ablaze with light and enthusiasm.”
³

The significant word, here and elsewhere, was “enthusiasm.” Party leaders had discovered that in Lincoln they had a man they could shout about, and they would offer the electorate fence rails, brass bands, torchlight hurrahs, and the incessant tramp of marching feet. In Cincinnati a campaign newspaper—named, inevitably,
The Railsplitter—
was produced for thirteen issues, bearing in its logotype an unrecognizable wood-cut of Lincoln with the words “An Honest Man’s the Noblest Work of God.” Like most of the rest of the campaign documents the party got out that year, this sheet rarely quoted Lincoln. It devoted most of its space to unceasing attacks on Douglas, suggesting in one issue that Douglas was a Catholic and asserting that while in Europe he had visited the Pope. Its approach to the slavery issue was as down to earth as a village watering trough, and as devoid of reasoned argument: “The Democracy are pretty much bankrupted for arguments but they have one last resource when everything else fails—everlasting ‘nigger equality.’ Of course there will be no ‘nigger equality’ where there are no ‘niggers,’ and as the Republican party proposes to save the Territories for free white men, while the Democracy leave a way open for their introduction, it is difficult to see how the slang phrase here quoted applies to any other party than themselves.”
⁴

As a matter of course there were campaign songs. One of these, set to the tune of the “Star Spangled Banner,” began: “Lo! See the bright scroll of the Future unfold! Broad farms and fair cities shall crown our devotion.” Another one, sung to the tune of “Old Uncle Ned,” aimed derision at Douglas:

The campaign was moving, and there could be no doubt about it; the unresolved question was where it might be moving to, and for this no one had an answer. To be sure, it was moving toward victory, but the trouble was that the victory in November would start more than it would finish, and there did not seem to be in the width and breadth of America anyone, North or South, who cared to look beyond victory. The campaign would go by torchlight, with moving feet drumming out a pulse beat on cobblestones and on dusty main streets; there would be music and bright slogans and songs and cheers and intensive jubilation, America would go along with it, it would be demonstrated that the Northwest at last could name a President—but what would happen after all of this was ratified was a mystery, and if what was being done was good, it was not, unfortunately, quite good enough.

Nobody would say anything that might make trouble: that was understood. And Mr. Lincoln, who was moodily reflecting on all of the promises his managers had made on those hot nights in Chicago, would play it straight. He would stand on the record, which was as clear as any politician’s record need be; the trouble was that the record was incomplete, and now there was no way to extend it. Lincoln had been nominated by men who (having many subsidiary matters on their minds) at least knew where he stood on such problems as slavery in the territories, the homestead act, protection for infant industries, and so on; but nobody knew where anybody stood on the grim, explosive questions which the country might have to face once the election had been completed. Would the election of a Republican cause all or part of the South to secede from the Union? If one or many states seceded, what should the Federal government do about it? Was there any way by which the people of the United States could be induced to pause and take thought and see whether the issues which divided them might somehow be disposed of without the necessity for killing anybody? On such questions as these (which, in the summer of 1860, were the
only questions that really mattered), a silence as of the grave settled down on the country where gay young men in varnished capes paraded under flags with what they supposed to be proper military precision; on that other part of the country where other men, not yet uniformed, were buying muskets and laying plans and stiffening themselves for an impending shock, and resolving to give not an inch to the unspeakable aggression which was being committed by men who did not think slavery an immutable benefit.

Many people, in this summer, were writing to Lincoln, trying to find out what he thought and proposed to do about the dangerous points that were at issue; and for these Lincoln’s secretariat prepared a form letter, which was signed by the right subordinates and sent out by wholesale to the Northerners who had embarrassing questions to ask. It went like this:

“Your letter to Mr. Lincoln, of—, and by which you seek to obtain his opinion on certain political points, has been received by him. He has received others of a similar character; but he also has a greater number of the exactly opposite character. The latter class beseech him to write nothing whatever upon any point of political doctrine. They say his positions were well known when he was nominated, and that he must not now embarrass the canvass by undertaking to shift or modify them. He regrets that he cannot oblige all, but you perceive that it is impossible for him to do so.”
⁶

This letter was sent out to earnest seekers after light. John G. Nicolay, the earnest young man who was Lincoln’s secretary, noted that a caller had urged that Lincoln say something to reassure the Southerners who were sincerely alarmed by the course of the Republican campaign. To this, Lincoln remarked curtly that “there are no such men”; and he went on to explain that this was simply “the trick by which the South breaks down every honest man.” He would go to Washington, if he tried to reassure all alarmed Southerners, “as powerless as a block of buckeye wood”; honest men could look at the Republican platform and at what Lincoln had already said, and find therein everything that he could say now. Musing with his young secretary, Lincoln spoke his mind: “Let us be practical—there are many general terms afloat such as ‘conservatism’—‘enforcement of the irrepressible conflict at the point of the bayonet’—‘hostility to the South,’ and so forth—all of which mean
nothing without definition. What then could I say to allay their fears, if they will not define what particular act or acts they fear from me or my friends?” The candidate felt that he owed something to the men who, feeling that he stood for something, had entrusted him with the candidacy: “If I shall begin to yield to these threats, if I begin dallying with them, the men who have elected me, if I shall be elected, would give me up before my inauguration—and the South, seeing it, would deliberately kick me out.… If I should be elected the first duty to the country would be to stand by the men who elected me.”
⁷

Sound as the word of gospel, indisputably—bearing, however, no word of wisdom for guidance through the hard days that might come after the electoral votes had been cast and tabulated. The Wide-Awakes marched and the bands played and the candidate was very cautious; and as the summer weeks wore away, men in the South, caught up by some reverse reflex from the emotion that was moving across the North, began to see Lincoln as the sign and symbol of what they dreaded most. In South Carolina the Charleston
Mercury
remarked that the hated Seward had, after all, been rejected at Chicago because “he was disposed to temporize the South,” and lacked the iron to move on for subjugation. Lincoln, the
Mercury
believed, was different; he had “the decision of character and the earnestness” needed to beat down the South’s resistance to oppression, and all things considered, he was “the beau ideal of a relentless, dogged free-soil border ruffian … a vulgar mobocrat and a Southern hater in political opinions.” In Richmond, the
Enquirer
began to see Lincoln as “an illiterate partisan … possessed only of his inveterate hatred of slavery and his openly avowed predilections of Negro equality”; he surpassed Seward “in the bitterness of his prejudices and in the insanity of his fanaticism,” and his election would mean “Negro equality.”
⁸
If Lincoln considered that it was useless for him to try to talk sense to the Southern leaders who were whipping up hatred for him, there were Southern voices that would confirm him in his belief.

Seward himself, as a matter of fact, was talking as gently as any cooing dove, this summer. He had adjusted himself with difficulty to the idea that he was not going to be President, to the astounding fact that his party had actually nominated this gawky
frontiersman from Illinois in place of himself; and for a time it had seemed that he might sulk in his tent, revenging himself, by inaction, on the misguided majority. But although the adjustment was hard, Seward had made it, and now he was taking the stump—in Michigan, in Iowa, in Illinois, in Wisconsin, all through the impassioned West—and as he pleaded for a solid Republican vote he minimized the dangers that might lie ahead.