Volume III Part 9 (1/2)

437-439.]

In conversation Weed was the most persuasive of men. To a quiet, gentle, deferential manner, he added a giant's grasp of the subject, presenting its strong points and marshalling with extraordinary skill all the details. Nevertheless, the proposition now laid before the President, leaving slavery as it was, could not be accepted. ”The emanc.i.p.ation proclamation could not be retracted,” he had said in his famous letter to the New York convention, ”any more than the dead could be brought to life.” However, Lincoln did not let the famous editor depart empty-handed. Barney should be removed, and Weed, satisfied with such a scalp, returned home to enter the campaign for the President's renomination.[938]

[Footnote 938: New York _Herald_, May 24, 1864.]

Something seemed to be wrong in New York. Other States through conventions and legislatures had early favored the President's renomination, while the Empire State moved slowly. Party machinery worked well. The Union Central Committee, holding a special meeting on January 4, 1864 at the residence of Edwin D. Morgan, recommended Lincoln's nomination. ”It is going to be difficult to restrain the boys,” said Morgan in a letter to the President, ”and there is not much use in trying to do so.”[939] On February 23 the Republican State Committee also endorsed him, and several Union League clubs spoke earnestly of his ”prudence, sagacity, comprehension, and perseverance.” But the absence of an early State convention, the tardy selection of delegates to Baltimore, and the failure of the Legislature to act, did not reveal the enthusiasm evinced in other Commonwealths. Following the rule adopted elsewhere, resolutions favourable to the President's renomination were duly presented to the a.s.sembly, where they remained unacted upon. Suddenly on January 25 a circular, signed by Simeon Draper and issued by the Conference Committee of the Union Lincoln a.s.sociation of New York, proposed that all citizens of every town and county who favoured Lincoln's nomination meet in some appropriate place on February 22 and make public expression to that fact. Among the twenty-five names attached appeared those of Moses Taylor and Moses H. Grinnell. This was a new system of tactics. But the legislative resolutions did not advance because of it.

[Footnote 939: _Ibid._, February 7.]

A month later a letter addressed by several New Yorkers to the National Republican Executive Committee requested the postponement of the Baltimore convention.[940] ”The country is not now in a position to enter into a presidential contest,” it said. ”All parties friendly to the Government should be united in support of a single candidate.

Such unanimity cannot at present be obtained. Upon the result of measures adopted to finish the war during the present spring and summer will depend the wish of the people to continue their present leaders, or to exchange them for others. Besides, whatever will tend to lessen the duration of an acrimonious Presidential campaign will be an advantage to the country.”[941] If the sentiment of this letter was not new, the number and character of its signers produced a profound sensation. William Cullen Bryant headed the list, and of the twenty-three names, seventeen were leading State senators, among them Charles J. Folger and James M. Cook. ”This list,” said the _Tribune_, ”contains the names of two-thirds of the Unionists chosen to our present State Senate, the absence of others preventing their signing.

We understand that but two senators declined to affix their name.”[942] Greeley did not sign this letter, but in an earlier communication to the _Independent_ he had urged a postponement of the convention.[943] Moreover, he had indicated in the _Tribune_ that Chase, Fremont, Butler, or Grant would make as good a President as Lincoln, while the nomination of either would preserve ”the salutary one-term principle.”[944]

[Footnote 940: It was called to meet on June 7.]

[Footnote 941: Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1864, p. 785.]

[Footnote 942: New York _Tribune_, April 25, 1864.]

[Footnote 943: New York _Independent_, February 25, 1864.]

[Footnote 944: New York _Tribune_, February 23, 1864.]

It is not easy to determine the cause or the full extent of the dissatisfaction with Lincoln among New York Republicans. Seward's influence and Weed's relations seriously weakened him. After the election of 1862 Radicals openly charged them with Wadsworth's defeat.

For the same reason the feeling against Edwin D. Morgan had become intensely bitter. Seeing a newspaper paragraph that these men had been in consultation with the President about his message, Senator Chandler of Michigan, the prince of Radicals, wrote a vehement letter to Lincoln, telling him of a ”patriotic organisation in all the free and border States, containing to-day over one million of voters, every man of whom is your friend upon radical measures of your administration; but there is not a Seward or a Weed man among them all. These men are a millstone about your neck. You drop them and they are politically ended forever.... Conservatives and traitors are buried together. For G.o.d's sake don't exhume their remains in your message. They will smell worse than Lazarus did after he had been buried three days.”[945]

[Footnote 945: Nicolay-Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 7, p. 389.]

Although Weed had left the President with the promise of aiding him, he could accomplish nothing. The Legislature refused to act, demands for the postponement of the national convention continued to appear, and men everywhere resented conservative leaders.h.i.+p. This was especially true of Greeley and the _Tribune_, Bryant and the _Evening Post_, and Beecher and the _Independent_, not to mention other Radicals and radical papers throughout the State, whose opposition represented a formidable combination. Except for this discontent the Cleveland convention would scarcely have been summoned into existence.

Of the three calls issued for its a.s.sembling two had their birth in New York, one headed by George B. Cheever, the eminent divine, who had recently toured England in behalf of the Union,--the other by Lucius Robinson, State comptroller, and John Cochrane, attorney-general.

Cheever's call denounced ”the imbecile and vacillating policy of the present Administration in the conduct of the war,”[946] while Robinson and Cochrane emphasised the need of a President who ”can suppress rebellion without infringing the rights of individual or State.”[947]

[Footnote 946: Nicolay-Hay, _Abraham Lincoln_, Vol. 9, p. 20.]

[Footnote 947: Appleton's _Cyclopaedia_, 1864, p. 786.]

That Weed no longer possessed the wand of a Warwick was clearly demonstrated at the Republican State convention, held at Syracuse on May 26, to select delegates to Baltimore. Each faction, led in person by Greeley and Weed, professed to favour the President's renomination, but the fierce and bitter contest over the admission of delegates from New York City widened the breach. The Weed machine, following the custom of previous years, selected an equal number of delegates from each ward. The Radicals, who denounced this system as an arbitrary expression of bossism, chose a delegation representing each ward in proportion to the number of its Republican voters. The delegation accepted would control the convention, and although the Radicals consented to the admission of both on equal terms, the Weed forces, confident of their strength, refused the compromise. This set the Radicals to work, and at the morning session, amidst the wildest confusion and disorder, they elected Lyman Tremaine temporary chairman by a majority of six over Chauncey M. Depew, the young secretary of state, whose popularity had given the Conservatives an abnormal strength.

In his speech the Chairman commented upon the death of James S.

Wadsworth, killed in the battle of the Wilderness on May 6, from whose obsequies, held at Geneseo on the 21st, many delegates had just returned. Tremaine believed that the soldier's blood would ”lie heavy on the souls of those pretended supporters of the government in its hour of trial, whose cowardice and treachery contributed to his defeat for governor.”[948] In such a spirit he eulogised Wadsworth's character and patriotism, declaring that if justice had been done him by the Conservatives, he would now, instead of sleeping in his grave, be governor of New York. Although spoken gently and with emotions of sadness, these intolerably aggressive sentences, loudly applauded by the Radicals, stirred the Weed delegates into whispered threats.[949]

But Tremaine did not rely upon words alone. He packed the committee on contested seats, whose report, admitting both city delegations on equal terms, was accepted by the enormous majority of 192 to 98, revealing the fact that the great body of up-State Republicans distrusted Thurlow Weed, whose proposition for peace did not include the abolition of slavery. Other reasons, however, accounted for the large majority. Tremaine, no longer trusting to the leaders.h.i.+p of Greeley,[950] marshalled the Radical forces with a skill learned in the school of Seymour and Dean Richmond, and when his drilled cohorts went into action the tumultuous and belligerent character of the scene resembled the uproar familiar to one who had trained with Tammany and fought with Mozart Hall. In concluding its work the convention endorsed the President and selected sixty-six delegates, headed by Raymond, d.i.c.kinson, Tremaine, and Preston King as delegates-at-large.

[Footnote 948: New York _Tribune_, May 10, 1864.]

[Footnote 949: New York _Herald_, May 29.]

[Footnote 950: ”Greeley received an almost unanimous call to lead the party in the State and the first convention which he attended (1862) bowed absolutely to his will. He thought he was a great political leader, and he might have been if he had ever been sure of himself; but he was one of the poorest judges of men, and in that way was often deceived, often misled, and often led to change his opinions.... In less than two years his power was gone.”--From speech of Chauncey M.

Depew, April 4, 1902. _Addresses of_, November, 1896, to April, 1902, pp. 238-239.]

The echo of the Syracuse contest reached the Cleveland convention, which a.s.sembled on May 31. Of all the distinguished New Yorkers whose names had advertised and given character to this movement John Cochrane alone attended. Indeed, the picturesque speech of Cochrane, as chairman, and the vehement letter of Lucius Robinson, advocating the nomination of Grant, const.i.tuted the only attractive feature of the proceedings. Cochrane and Robinson wanted a party in which they could feel at home. To Cochrane the Republican party was ”a medley of trading, scurvy politicians, which never represented War Democrats,”[951] while Robinson thought the country ”had survived, through three years of war, many bad mistakes of a weak Executive and Cabinet, simply because the popular mind had been intensely fixed upon the single purpose of suppressing rebellion.”[952] Both resented the Administration's infringement of individual rights. ”Whoever attacks them,” said Cochrane, ”wounds the vital parts of the Republic. Not even the plea of necessity allows any one to trample upon them.”[953]