The Devil's Own Work Page 11

  The message was consistent with the predictions and perhaps the hopes of certain southern fire-eaters, especially Edmund Ruffin, but it also bore the hallmarks of a fake, as the Irish-American warned. The condescending circular addressed Irish workers as an ignorant and gullible rabble, urging them to use "method, caution," and "double secrecy," while also telling them to ask the foremen at their jobs for specific instructions on carrying out these acts of sabotage. Whoever authored the notice, the idea of deliberate rioting on behalf of the South by immigrant mobs was in the air—a glimmer in the eyes of southern extremists and the nightmare of northern nativists.45

  A more immediate threat to the country was the collapse of traditional two-party politics. Illinois Democratic senator Stephen Douglas by this time had fallen out with President Buchanan, who insisted on the validity of the infamous Lecompton Constitution for Kansas, a document drawn up by proslavery representatives in the territory who had been elected fraudulently and were bent on excluding free-soil advocates from the government. These strong-arm tactics made a mockery of Douglas's plan for true "popular sovereignty," and he could not abide them. His denunciation of the Lecompton Constitution split the Democratic party, with the slaveholding states damning Douglas as a traitor. Horace Greeley's praise of Douglas for his principled stand intensified the South's anger and rejection of the senator. The Democrats' North-South rupture set the stage for a Republican victory in the presidential election of 1860, which in turn would lead the entire country to break apart along that same sectional divide.46

  Onetime Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln had lost the race for the U.S. Senate in 1855 and again in 1859.* However, his political career flourished because of a strong performance in the debates with Douglas in 1858 and because he stayed busy behind the scenes in the nonelection years helping to turn the Republican party of Illinois into a formidable organization. Part of that work was excluding the radical abolitionist elements from the state party in order to preserve a broad coalition, including moderates and conservatives who opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories but stopped short of calling for the immediate emancipation of slaves in the South. Lincoln had ceased to be a Whig, but he had also toned down his message on slavery since 1854.47

  In his acceptance speech for the U.S. Senate nomination in 1858, Lincoln had used a familiar biblical quotation: " CA house divided against itself cannot stand' . . . I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free . . . It will become all one thing, or all the other." While Lincoln opposed the spread of slavery and hoped it would gradually disappear in the South, the speech was interpreted around the country as a radical declaration, "an implied pledge on behalf of the Republican party to make war upon the institution in the states where it now exists," according to one of his advisers. Lincoln tried to backpedal, denying any such intent.48

  Lincoln did assert that slavery was morally wrong, but he focused his attacks on Douglas, claiming he was part of a conspiracy to spread slavery throughout the United States, a plot coordinated with President Buchanan and the Supreme Court, which had ruled in the Dred Scott case of 1857 that blacks were not citizens, and slaves could be transported by their owners anywhere in the country, including free states. Chief Justice Roger Taney declared that blacks had "no rights which the white man was bound to respect."49

  After losing to Douglas in 1859, Lincoln looked ahead to the presidential election of 1860, and while New York's Senator William Seward declared that an "irrepressible conflict" was brewing between the North and South over slavery, Lincoln continued to back away from his "house divided" speech for the sake of party unity. He advised Ohio Republicans not to oppose the infamous fugitive slave law of 1850 lest the party be seen as too radical. Lincoln also admonished Massachusetts Republicans to refrain from nativist legislation in order to secure the Irish and German vote.50

  In a series of speeches across the Midwest in the second half of 1859 on behalf of candidates in statewide races, Lincoln again went on the attack against Douglas while appealing to the broadest possible constituency of white voters. Lincoln denounced Douglas for claiming that the Declaration of Independence did not include blacks in its statement that all men are created equal. At the same time, Lincoln deflected inflammatory accusations from Democrats that Republicans wanted to intermarry with blacks: The races were equal, Lincoln insisted, only in their right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The evil of slavery spreading into the territories, Lincoln told whites, was its tendency to compete with free labor. The great expanses of the West should be open to homesteaders fleeing the overcrowded cities to make new lives for themselves and their children.51

  Ironically, while Lincoln cultivated a populist image on the campaign trail, referring to his backwoods roots in Kentucky and his rise by dint of hard work, the reality of his personal story was at odds with free-labor ideology. Lincoln had not simply pulled himself up by his bootstraps but had the help of influential friends in becoming a prominent attorney. His exceptional intellect had enabled him to leave manual labor behind and become an advocate for mammoth railroad corporations; his political sponsors included wealthy farmers and land speculators—individuals owning tens of thousands of acres. In denouncing the world of chattel slavery and idealizing the free-labor economy, Lincoln, like many Republicans, largely ignored the plight of the urban factory worker, whose potential to save, invest, and become an employer himself was almost nonexistent.52

  Lincoln's tour through Iowa, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Kansas prompted newspapers across the country to start mentioning him as a possible presidential candidate. He boosted his chances for the Republican nomination with a brilliant speech at Cooper Union in Manhattan on February 27, 1860. His hosts were Horace Greeley, William Cullen Bryant, and other local Republicans united by their opposition to William Seward, the front-runner. After decades together in the arena of New York politics, each had a particular grudge against the senator. Lincoln spoke before a packed house, surprising many in the audience, who had assumed he was an unsophisticated backwoodsman. Using impressive historical research, Lincoln argued that the intent of the founding fathers in the Constitution was to preserve federal control over slavery in the territories.

  Denouncing John Brown's raid, Lincoln called on Republicans to oppose the spread of slavery by every lawful means, while letting it wither gradually in the South. He urged northerners to stand firm in the face of southern threats of secession, triggered by the prospect of a Republican winning the presidency. "Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it."53

  Lincoln went on to make almost a dozen speeches in New England. His passionate, morally engaged, but essentially moderate stance on slavery contrasted sharply with Douglas, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and his doctrine of "popular sovereignty." Lincoln also strengthened his position relative to his competitors for the Republican nomination, particularly Seward, whose embrace of the abolitionists' appeal to "a higher law than the Constitution," and predictions of an "irrepressible conflict," stigmatized him as a radical. Moreover, since Douglas and Lincoln were both from Illinois, Lincoln could be expected to counter the senator's popularity in the Midwest.54

  In April, the Democratic Convention met in Charleston but fell apart after a faction of southern extremists walked out in protest against Douglas, and fifty-seven rounds of voting failed to produce a sufficient majority for any candidate. The Republicans met in Chicago in May, and in a frenzy of excitement, delegates and visitors watched Lincoln come from behind to beat Seward on the third ballot. The Republican platform condemned John Brown's raid but also vowed to oppose the "contemplated treason" of southern secession. The Democrats reconvened in Baltimore in June but split again, the northerners nominating Douglas, and the southerners holding a separate convention to choose Buchanan's vice president, John Breckinridge, as their presidential candidate.

  Conservative Whigs
formed the Constitutional Union party, fielding a fourth ticket in the presidential race, consisting of Tennessee's John Bell and Edward Everett of Massachusetts as his running mate. Professing neutrality on the slavery issue along with allegiance to the Constitution and the Union, this collection of elite elderly gentlemen hoped to avert national disintegration by drawing votes away from Lincoln and throwing the election into the House of Representatives, where a candidate more sympathetic to the South might rise to the top.55

  With Lincoln and Douglas vying for the northern states, while Breckinridge fended off Bell's challenge in the South, the sectional divide turned the election of 1860 into a dual race, unlike any other presidential contest in American history. The Democrats stirred up fears of racial amalgamation, especially in New York, where a Republican-sponsored amendment to the state constitution appeared on the ballot, proposing to do away with the $250 property requirement for black voters.

  Democratic editorials and campaign speeches accused Republicans of believing "a nigger is better than an Irishman." A parade in New York City included a float bearing effigies of Horace Greeley and a "good looking nigger wench, whom he caressed with all the affection of a true Republican." Nearby, a banner warned that "free love and free niggers will certainly elect Old Abe."56 Despite Lincoln's failure to oppose the fugitive slave law or call for immediate abolition in the South, the Wood brothers' Daily News predicted "negroes among us thicker than blackberries swarming everywhere" if he were elected, while Bennett's Herald envisioned labor competition from "four million emancipated negroes."57

  Fear of slave uprisings spread through the South like wildfire, fanned by pro-Breckenridge newspapers. Vigilantes drove northerners out of their communities, and support for secession grew. John Crittenden, a Democratic senator from Kentucky, condemned the Republicans as fanatics who "think it is their duty to destroy . . . the white man, in order that the black might be free." If Lincoln were elected, he declared, the South "could not submit to the consequences, and therefore, to avoid her fate, will secede from the Union."58

  The November election confirmed the country's deep sectional divisions. Lincoln won with more than enough electoral votes and 54 percent of the northern popular vote, but Republicans had not even campaigned in the ten most hostile southern and border states, while receiving only 4 percent of the popular vote in the other five. In the country as a whole, Lincoln had been elected with only 40 percent of the popular vote.59 "A party founded on . . . hatred of African slavery is now the controlling power," seethed the Richmond Examiner. The New Orleans Delta dismissed Lincoln's moderation as a ruse and declared that the true agenda of the "Black Republicans" was a social revolution leading to racial amalgamation.60

  Lincoln won New York State but lost in the Democratic stronghold of New York City, where conservative merchants—dreading a disruption of trade and hoping secession would be temporary—urged that the South be allowed to go peacefully if compromise failed. Horace Greeley, for the moment, joined the conciliatory chorus, much to the consternation of fellow Republicans.61

  "Great distress already reported . . . in the great northern cities," Edmund Ruffin noted at the end of November 1860. Trade with the South had slowed or stopped altogether, and thousands of workers had been laid off. Southern planters repudiated their debts to New York's merchants, taking revenge for charges exacted by them when transferring southern cotton to European buyers. They hated New York's role as middleman, as the country's economic gateway, and predicted the city's demise. A reliable report from New York, Ruffin wrote, estimated "that 25,000 persons in that city have been discharged from employment since the day of the presidential election."62

  William Russell, a renowned correspondent for the London Times, recalled: "As long as there was a chance the struggle might not take place, the merchants of New York were silent, fearful of offending their Southern friends and connections, but inflicting infinite damage on their own government and misleading both sides. Their sentiments, sympathies, and business found them with the South; and indeed . . . the South believed New York was with them, as might be credited from the tone of some organs of the press, and I remember hearing it said by Southerners in Washington, that it was very likely New York would go out of the Union!"63

  With great fanfare, parades, and mass meetings invoking the spirit of 1776, South Carolina's legislature held a convention to declare its independence and formally secede from the United States on December 20. In the midst of the burgeoning crisis, Mayor Wood used his annual address in January 1861 to sketch a scenario in which New York and other sections of the country would follow South Carolina's example. He suggested that since the state government in Albany deprived New York City of home rule, and since the city had good commercial relationships with all parts of the United States, perhaps it would be best for New York to secede from the Union as well and become a "free city."64

  Encouraged by South Carolina's example, along with the sympathetic pronouncements of New York Democrats, by the end of January six more states had seceded. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas joined South Carolina in drafting a constitution and declaring themselves a separate nation, the Confederate States of America.65

  Some Confederates expounded a vision of the South not merely as a nation but as an empire extending into the tropics of Central America and the Caribbean islands. Through slave labor, the South would control "the two dominant staples of the world's commerce—cotton and sugar," wrote Edward Pollard in his book Black Diamonds, published the previous year. The "noble peculiarities of Southern civilization" would be spread southward across the hemisphere.66

  George Bickley, a Virginian like Pollard, described these dominions as part of a "golden circle" centered on Cuba that would encompass the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The empire would stretch across the Confederate states, through the American Southwest, and down into Mexico and Central America; it would take in the northern edge of South America, and its eastern border would include the West Indies. Several years earlier, Bickley had established a secret society, the Knights of the Golden Circle, whose members were militant defenders of slaveholders' rights and southern imperialism.67

  In New York, Ben Wood's Daily News loudly supported peaceful secession, and Mayor Wood protested that police superintendent John Kennedy lacked a proper search warrant when he seized the Monticello, a steamer headed for Savannah with thirty-eight boxes of muskets and ammunition at the end of January. Wood apologized to Georgia senator Robert Toombs for the "illegal and unjustifiable seizure of public property," but the mayor's conciliatory stance was leaving him increasingly isolated. He was condemned in the New York press for supplying weapons to the "traitors" in the South who were bent on "destroying the unity and peace of the Republic."68*

  *Established in 1686, today called the City Council.

  *At a Tammany Hall meeting in October 1835, conservative Bank Democrats nominated their candidates and then shut the gas to darken the room and prevent dissenters from naming an alternative slate. It was an old trick, and the radicals were ready with "locofocos," slang for friction matches, a new invention, with which they lit fifty candles and finished their business. The conservatives derided the radicals as "Locofocos," and they happily adopted the name.

  *Kleindeutschland, or Little Germany, was the predominantly German neighborhood on Manhattan's Lower East Side, stretching northward from Grand and Division Streets to Sixteenth Street, and westward from the East River to the Bowery.

  *The state elections took place in 1854 and 1858, and the legislatures chose the U.S. senator in January of 1855 and 1859.

  *When the governor of Georgia threatened to retaliate in kind against New York's ships in Savannah harbor, the Monticello was allowed to depart with its cargo of a thousand muskets.

  CHAPTER 5

  "Slavery Must Die That the Nation

  Might Live

  he newly elected president visited New York City on his way to Washington in Feb
ruary 1861. Mayor Wood was a gracious host, at first, even though Lincoln had not carried the city in November 1860, and the atmosphere was tense. Wood confronted the president-elect at a formal City Hall reception, saying that the South's separation "sorely afflicted" New York and threatened its "commercial greatness." New York expected from Lincoln "a restoration of fraternal relations between the states—only to be accomplished by peaceful and conciliatory means—aided by the wisdom of God."1

  The room was aghast at Wood's effrontery, but Lincoln took it in stride, thanking his host and professing to share his feelings. Lincoln said he would work for the good of the city and the country, and then added his own proviso: that the preservation of the Union would overrule all other considerations.2

  Once in Washington, Lincoln again stood by his principles while letting his adversary be the aggressor. When the Confederacy threatened federal installations in the South, Lincoln insisted on resupplying both Fort Pickens in Pensacola, Florida, and Fort Sumter, in Charleston, South Carolina, thereby asserting federal authority and deftly making the Confederacy draw first blood in the conflict. On April 12, 1861, Edmund Ruffin, as a member of the elite Palmetto Guard, was given the honor of firing the first cannon in the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, which unleashed the Civil War.3