Posted on 02/25/2020 5:09:52 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
Free Republic University, Department of History presents U.S. History, 1855-1860: Seminar and Discussion Forum
Bleeding Kansas, Dred Scott, Lincoln-Douglas, Harper’s Ferry, the election of 1860, secession – all the events leading up to the Civil War, as seen through news reports of the time and later historical accounts
First session: November 21, 2015. Last date to add: Sometime in the future.
Reading: Self-assigned. Recommendations made and welcomed.
Posting history, in reverse order
To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by reply or freepmail.
BURLINGTON, IOWA, February 25,1860.
ESTEEMED INDIVIDUAL: I am charged to the muzzle with quinine pills, but mind asserts its supremacy over matter. I thank you for your letter of 22d ; but I am more cheered and consoled by other events of that same day. Pennsylvania knocked Baits; and Indiana, where Martin Colfax has been cross-ploughing and harrowing in the good seed, has died (in convention) and made no sign. I agree with you; take apartments for me in the Pitti Palace. My acquaintance with him is slight, but all in his favor. I revere, admire, worship, adore pluck; a stiff backbone is worth all the rest of the human anatomy. Let us have an order of knighthood established whose cognizance shall be a spinal vertebra on a field gules. Brain is nothing compared to the dorsal column. Let no man be eligible to the nomination who can take a kick behind with no change of countenance perceptible to the spectator in front. I hope that will not rule out any of your New York candidates. Will it?
I join hands with you on Pitt; and now, come out and “fight the beasts at Ephesus” (Chicago) with me.
And now, once more. Will you keep me in a stock of speeches! I want Mr. Corwin's, who is a splendid talker; Winter Davis, also, and John P. Hale. Never mind; if you are weak and cannot go to the capital on foot, take a carriage; it only costs fifty cents.
I am glad the Speaker is just what he is when it is necessary to take a candidate to please Geo. Briggs and Adrain, when the responsibility of having the control of the House is one which ought to have been dodged if it could be. I am happy that justice is more nimble-footed than usual.
I saw Pennington and Bates at Washington about the same time, and came to an early conclusion that neither of their anxious mothers knew they were out. As superb an ass as old P. is, I would rather take my chances with him for President than the Missouri pre-Adamite. You can understand my horror, then, of such a possible result as making a Republican President. Horace is kinky, but what has obfuscated Dana? My suspicion is that Weed does not want Seward, and does not intend he shall be nominated, but does want Bates? He is one of Weed's style of men. W. has been a correspondent of his for a long time, and Mister Weed could turn the crank and grind out any tune he wished. Weed made Fillmore, Fish, and Wash. Hunt. That's my theory, and it has to me great plausibility. There would be glorious picking at the Treasury for the New York banditti.
But this is private and very confidential. Use your eyes and your nose, and see if there is not something in it. Let me hear from you when the fascinations of the. federal city can be thrown off.
I suppose you dine frequently with Mr. Buchanan. Please assure him of my tender and abiding affection. With compliments to Mrs. P.,
SOURCE: James Shepherd Pike, First Blows of the Civil War: The Ten Years of Preliminary Conflict in the United States from 1850 to 1860, p. 496-7
State of Iowa
Senate Chamber,
Des Moines, Iowa, Feb 25, 1860.
Dear Sir
I wrote you immediately after the Convention. As near as I can tell, I wrote you that our Delegates were not instructed but left free to act as they might think best when in Conventions at Chicago. I am not a Delegate but I probably had as much to do with making them as them any one else and am Satisfied that a large Maj of them would vote for Seward if their vote would elect him not that personally he is their special choice but because of the locofoco abuse of him but I do not think that any of the Delegate think that he ought to be the nominee of the Chicago Convention. If a vote had been taken by the Delegates when appointed, a large Maj of them with the lights then before them a large Maj would have voted for Cameron for President and Your Self for Vice President This vote would have been given under the impression that Cameron Could Carry Pa and that probably no other Person could. Now I hope in this we are Mistaken. And I hope that before the Convention Comes off Such will be Made Manifest. Our Delegates I am sure would rather vote for you than any other Man in the U. S. especially if the Arch Demagogue Douglass should be the Nominee of the South.
I received a letter from Col Curtis who thinks your chance for nomination as good at leat as Any other Man. But all will depend on Pa. New Jersey Ill & Ia At least I think so. Our Delegation will be influenced more by Col Warren than any other man in Iowa. Polatics change – and the influence of Men change. the Cols star is now in the ascendant. I hope that you will correspond with him if you have not already done so. Have you Seen his Article on Edward Bates address to the “Springfield Republican”? If you have not hunt it up. It was copied into the “Hawk Eye” and probably by other papers. If it does not use up Bates’ prospect I am mistaken.
I wish that you could write me the prospects of your Nomination for President. I shall be at the Chicago Convention.
I want you to be sure and correspond with Warren He will contribute a large a large Share towards the nomination of Some one. his acquaintance is extensive & he will take an active part in the canvass He will be one of the State Electors for Iowa
I have confidence to believe that no one in our State has more influence with him than I have. I go to Chicago as his guest And if there is any thing that I can do for you I am ready to do it all that I want is to know how to serve you
Please write to me and you had better direct to Keokuk as I will leave here in a few days
Hawkins Taylor
SOURCE: Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, Washington, D. C.
February 25. Efficient in Wall Street. Pio Nono, “the pope, that pagan full of pride,” is on bad terms with the Eldest Son of the Church, that unprincipled Ghibelline, Louis Napoleon. Unless the Ravaillacs and Jacques elements are extinct, Louis Napoleon may be in danger.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas
NEW YORK, February 26, 1860.
FRIEND P.: Before you say much more about John Bell, will you just take down the volumes of the Congressional Globe for 1853-4 and refresh your recollection of the part he played with regard to the Nebraska bill? Will you look especially at his votes, February 6th, on Chase's amendment; February 15th, on Douglas's amendment (the present slavery proviso); March 2d, on Chase's amendment (allowing the people of the Territories to prohibit slavery); March 2d, against Chase again, etc. It does seem to me that you or I must be mad or strangely forgetful about this business. I venture to say that Bell's record is the most tangled and embarrassing to the party which shall run him for President of any man's in America. And as to his wife's owning the slaves — bosh! We know that Bell has owned slaves — how did he get rid of them? That's an interesting question. We knowhow to answer it respecting Bates.
But I don't care what is done about the nomination. I know what ought to be done, and having set that forth am content. I stand in the position of the rich old fellow, who, having built a church entirely out of his own means, addressed his townsmen thus:
“I've built you a meeting-house,
And bought you a bell;
Now go to meeting,
Or go to h---!”
HORACE GREELEY.
JAMES S. PIKE, Washington City, D. C.
SOURCE: James Shepherd Pike, First Blows of the Civil War: The Ten Years of Preliminary Conflict in the United States from 1850 to 1860, p. 499-500
PETERBORO, February 26th, 1860.
S. L. M. BARLOW, ESQ.:
SIR: I have your letter of 22d inst. Mr. Smith desires me to say that his attention was called at the same time to all the references to himself in your “Manifesto.” That he complained of but one, was by no means because he acquiesced in the others. Compared with that one, the others are of no importance. That one is a sheer fabrication. Of all in it that you attribute to him he had done nothing. But in the other references, your responsibility is only for your opinions of what he confesses he had done.
It is true that Mr. Smith did at the close of his long letter to Mr. Thomas on other subjects, (dated 27th August,) assert the probability of servile insurrections, and the possibility of their success, as reasons why the people should, at the ballot-box, put an end to slavery. But, pray, what responsible connection is there between this and the “Central Association,” or the sad occurrence at Harper's Ferry? The like thing he did in scores of meetings, in his tour through this State in 1858; and never was he more full and faithful at this point than in his speech on the Nebraska Bill. (See pages 200, etc., of the volume of his Congressional Speeches.) In fact, it is for more than a quarter of a century that he has been continually testifying that unless the American people hasten to put away slavery peacefully, it will go out in blood. His only regret in respect to such testimony is, that it has not availed to persuade, or, if you prefer, to frighten the people, both of the North and the South, into his own deep and abiding belief that slavery will die a violent death unless speedily put to a peaceful one. As to Harper's Ferry, Mr. Smith is not aware that he had seen or heard the name of that village, or thought of itself or its name, for years immediately preceding the scene of violence there last October.
Mr. Smith readily admits that his letter to John Brown in your "Manifesto" does not exaggerate his love and admiration of the man, whom, during the many years of his intimate relations with him, both in business and friendship, he was accustomed to regard as unsurpassed, for truthfulness, disinterestedness, and a noble and sublime spirit. No wonder that, regarding him in this light, Mr. Smith did, from the time Capt. Brown started for Kansas, in the spring of 1855, put money into his hand whenever he opened it for money. No wonder, that during the last four years of Capt. Brown's life, Mr. Smith sent very many bank-drafts to him, and to names which the Captain furnished. Whether his call was for fifty dollars or for two hundred and fifty, was all the same. It was never refused. I scarcely need add that no one feels deeper sorrow than does Mr. Smith, that his precious, nay idolized friend, was led into the mistake of shedding blood in his last attempt to help slaves get free. Indeed, it was that mistake which completed the prostration of the miserable health of Mr. Smith's body and brain. What little strength the most obstinate dyspepsia, following up typhoid fever and dropsy, had left him, was swept away by the horrible news from Virginia. You put your own assumed and entirely unauthorized interpretation upon Mr. Smith's use of the words “Kansas work.” What he meant by these words is what Capt. Brown, in his public meeting, held in this village a few weeks before the date of Mr. Smith's letter, described as his latest “Kansas work,” — namely, the removing of slaves without violence to a land where they can be free.
To return to your letter: I hardly need say that it is unsatisfactory to Mr. Smith. It evidently was not intended to be satisfactory to him. It adds studied insults to the cruel and immeasurable wrongs you had previously done him. You had done what you could to blacken his reputation; and now, when arraigned for it, the whole extent of your concession is, that he shall have the privilege of wiping off the blacking if he can. It is as if you had called your innocent fellow-man a cut-throat, and then, wiping your mouth, had told him that you would retract the bad name, if only he would consent to degrade himself so far as to deny that the bad name fits him. In the depths of your malice — a malice unmitigated, as your own letter shows, by the least semblance, and scarcely by the least pretense, of a particle of evidence to justify your accusation — you did him all the injury you could; and now, when called on to repair it, you send him a letter which but deepens it. I need not characterize that letter. It characterizes itself. There is not a right-minded man, North or South, but would pronounce your treatment of Mr. Smith to be base, infamous, and wicked to the last degree — and this, too, according to your own presentation of the case in your own letter. Let your Committee think of their deliberate and enormous crime against Mr. Smith, and then sleep over it if they can. When he was within forty-eight hours of death, in the judgment of the physicians into whose hands he then passed; and when he knew not one person from another; and when his family were too much afflicted to read the newspapers — that Committee was busy, with Satanic industry and Satanic venom, in circulating over the whole land a falsehood of their own coinage, that could not have failed to fill with the hatred and loathing of him ten thousand hearts, both North and South, that had before loved and honored him.
Mr. Smith is not unmindful that you were moved to defame him by party rather than personal objects; and he confesses that he has no sympathy with the Republican party. He will not greatly deplore the advantages you may gain over it. But he must protest against your gaining them at his expense — especially at so great expense as having the most atrocious and injurious falsehoods told of himself. Mr. Smith is an Abolitionist, and not, as you would have it believed, a Republican. The odium of his principles belongs all to himself; and it is not right that the Republican party should suffer at all from it. But although Mr. Smith is an Abolitionist, he has friends and relatives both at the North and South. Moreover, he thinks quite as highly of Southern as of Northern character. I add, that although he has purchased the freedom of many slaves, and not a few of them within two or three hours’ drive of Harper's Ferry, and that although he is a very willing contributor to “Underground Railroads,” he would nevertheless not have any slave seek his freedom at the expense of killing his master. He has always said that he would rather remain a slave for life than get his liberty by bloodshed.
CHAS. D. MILLER.
SOURCE: Gerrit Smith, Gerrit Smith and the Vigilant Association of the City of New-York, p. 7-11
$100 for a suit in 1860? That’s Kiton or Gucci territory.
Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1859-1865, edited by Don E. Fehrenbacher
“Matthew Brady’s first photograph of Lincoln, on the day of the Cooper Union speech. Over the following weeks, newspapers and magazines gave full accounts of the event, noting the high spirits of the crowd and the stirring rhetoric of the speaker. Artists for Harper's Weekly converted Brady's photograph to a full-page woodcut portrait to illustrate their story of Lincoln's triumph, and in October 1860, Leslie's Weekly used the same image to illustrate a story about the election. Brady himself sold many carte-de-visite photographs of the Illinois politician who had captured the eye of the nation. Brady remembered that he drew Lincoln's collar up high to improve his appearance; subsequent versions of this famous portrait also show that artists smoothed Lincoln's hair, smoothed facial lines and straightened his subject's ‘roving’ left eye. After Lincoln secured the Republican nomination and the presidency, he gave credit to his Cooper Union speech and this portrait, saying, ‘Brady and the Cooper Institute made me President.’”
[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 27, 1860]
[Dr. S. G. Howe.]
I am so far on my return from Washington, where I had a good time. The Com. were civil and did not press me at all. I answered freely and they took all I said in good faith.
On reading my testimony, which took an hour and a half, I did not want to change a word, but made some additions; such as, “I have since changed my opinion,” etc. I was before them three hours, from eleven until two.
I saw a good deal of Sumner; he made me free of his room at all hours and was of great use to me. He is preparing a speech and will do justice to this affair, including the Senate Com. He said: I feel now perfectly easy with regard to slavery: it has received its death blow. This is not a quotation, but the spirit of his remarks.
Saw Adams, Burlingame, Wilson; nothing said worth reporting.
Washington, as it is to-day, is the meanest hole in creation, and Congress the meanest part of Washington. The members of both parties are split up into petty cliques, each intent on grinding its own little axe and trying to prevent all the others from using the grindstone. If they are our representatives, we are indeed of a low type.
GEORGE L. STEARNS.
SOURCE: Preston Stearns, The Life and Public Services of George Luther Stearns, p. 213
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
This is a huge, YUGE, day. The Cooper Union Speech created a sensation. This is what put Lincoln on the “radar” as a substantial national candidate for President.
David Herbert Donald, Lincoln
EXECUTIVE OFFICE, February 28, 1860.
Gentlemen of the Senate:
I have received the resolution, passed by your body on yesterday, asking certain information in regard to a demand made upon me by the Governor of Virginia, for the arrest and surrender of one Barclay Coppoc, as a fugitive from justice.
I have examined that resolution with much care, and have very reluctantly arrived at the conclusion, that I ought not to answer it. I readily admit the propriety of giving to the public full information on this subject, and shall promptly communicate all facts within my knowledge, in any way connected therewith, whenever I can do so consistently with my self-respect, and with the respect and consideration which, in my judgment, are due to the department of our government which, for the time being, I have the honor to represent. I cannot, however, do so in response to a resolution which assumes that, in this matter, I have done acts which the common judgment of your body would pronounce to be improper in any person holding my official position.
This assumption, utterly unfounded as it is, I cannot either respond to or deny, without admitting, by implication, that the suggestion thereof was authorized by the facts of the case.
I cannot believe it was the well considered intention of your body, to embrace such assumption in your resolution, but am satisfied that your action in this matter, took its present objectionable form through oversight and inadvertence.
For these reasons, I very respectfully return said resolution, that you may have the opportunity of giving it further consideration.
SAMUEL J. KIRK WOOD.
SOURCE: Benjamin F. Shambaugh, editor, The Messages and Proclamations of the Governors of Iowa, Volume 2, p. 378-9
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas
When one reads about the history of the United States Senate and House of Representatives and then looks at current events, it really doesn’t seem as if things are all that different, except for Twitter.
I can just picture it . . . .
"The Black Republicans are determined to take away our sacred right to property in slaves, abetted by DINO Stephen A. Douglas. Don't fall for it. #NeverDouglas #StatesRights"
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