Lincoln and the Power of the Press Read online

  The three were also remarkable individuals. They loved their profession as passionately as they loathed each other, and each believed, in his own way, that he was all but ordained to chart the course for the future of civilization. As surely as did the principal political advocates of the day, the Times, Tribune, and Herald vigorously defined and debated public issues. As overtly as candidates, they sought and corralled votes. As aggressively as armies in the field, they fought battles. Although they differed enormously in personality—Bennett was an audacious showman, sly and given to the grandiose; Greeley a self-righteous reformer, passionate but easily dismayed, diverted, and bruised; and Raymond a civic-minded moderate, progressive but sometimes maddeningly practical—each believed without question that he best understood the pulse of the country, and offered the only worthwhile advice to keep it beating.

  No one in their own time doubted the preeminence of the New York editors—not even their counterparts in other cities. One contemporary, editor John Russell Young, put it simply: “When the war came, journalism in the East was governed by Horace Greeley, James Gordon Bennett, and Henry J. Raymond.”34 And journalism in the East in turn seeded, influenced, and dominated journalism throughout the nation. When improved rail service began linking cities more closely, the Philadelphia Inquirer admitted that trains carried “New York over every railway, sets it down at every station, and extends it everywhere.”35 Describing New York’s dailies as the nation’s only “true newspapers,” a onetime Herald correspondent agreed that its widely circulated papers “penetrate everywhere.” But it was “very rare that a daily paper, published East, South, or West, is sold in New York. . . . A curious law is observed . . . all papers go from east to west, with the sun, and scarcely ever in the opposite direction.”36

  According to another period observer, the New York papers reached “the controlling minds of the country . . . in all reading-rooms, exchanges, bank parlors, insurance offices, counting-rooms, hotels, and wherever else the ruling men of the country congregate.” But above all, the “grand reason why the New York papers” enjoyed unparalleled “national importance” came through “the scissors”: for out-of-town journalists routinely clipped and reprinted what the New York editors originated. Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond effectively created “daily copies for all editors to follow.”37 Of at least equal importance, the Tribune, Times, and Herald also circulated nationally in their own extraordinarily popular weekly editions—the equivalent of Time and Newsweek magazines a century later.

  For all these reasons, no three editors became more famous, feared, controversial, or assiduously courted than “The Old Philosopher” Greeley, “The Little Villain” Raymond, and “His Satanic Majesty” Bennett—derogatory sobriquets that haunted them for much of their careers. None better represented the confluence of press and politics. None aspired to more power. None more exhaustively covered the battles, leaders, and politics of the antebellum and Civil War periods, or sought more audaciously to direct the war’s outcome and either guide or impede its leaders, Lincoln included. And none was surpassed as source material for the political and military events of that bloody struggle. Greeley, Raymond, and Bennett became national celebrities by inventing different styles of partisan journalism—templates that endure to this day—and despite their endless squabbling, they brought newspapers to the summit of their power over American life. Among them, for better or for worse, they invented modern journalism.

  Along the way, the Times, Tribune, and Herald did nothing less than produce what is often, and justifiably, called the first draft of nineteenth-century American history. Certainly, historians still scour their pages for reliable contemporary information about slavery, secession, and the rebellion. This data their archives undoubtedly contain—though a reader examining each of the three for accounts of specific wartime events may still come away with entirely different impressions and opinions. As this book hopes to demonstrate, the products of nineteenth-century journalism—and their leading producers—cry out for a reappraisal that takes into account the filter through which their landmark work was originally accomplished: that of unbridled political partisanship, and a desire to influence, and in some cases, participate in government. Hopefully, this study will provide a fresh way to reexamine that first draft of history in light of the undisguised philosophies and raw politics that inspired so much of what not only informed, but also divided, those who read and lived through it.

  “Public sentiment is everything,” Abraham Lincoln declared during his 1858 senatorial debates with Stephen Douglas. “With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently,” he added in a remarkably frank admission, “he who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.”38 It is time we took Lincoln at his word and examined his extraordinary focus on—and mastery of—political journalism as a means to earn and sustain voter support.

  For the most part, history has always focused on “statutes” and “decisions.” Yet in their own time and for several generations, Lincoln and his political contemporaries devoted a remarkable portion of their energies to mould public sentiment through the press: not just by appealing to journalists but in influencing the press directly and in some cases managing the press themselves. A fresh exploration of these alloyed historical currents, with the press not merely reporting the momentous events, but functioning as an integral part of the forces that shaped them, may hopefully shift, or at least balance, the historical emphasis. It will shed new light on a crucial but neglected aspect of Lincoln’s leadership.

  What follows is the story of an epic partnership involving politicians who rose and fell on the currents of American journalism and newspapermen who labored to abet, or impede, their political aspirations. It is a story of both unexpected alliances and brutal wars—uncivil wars.

  * * *

  I. Not to be confused with the modern-day tabloid newspaper of the same name.

  A NOTE ON THE NEWSPAPERS—AND THEIR OFFICIAL AND UNOFFICIAL NAMES

  Nineteenth-century newspapers often burdened themselves with long, formal names that reflected not only their cities of origin and publishing frequency, but also their political orientations. This last-named method of identification grew muddled when the Federalist Party passed into oblivion, and especially after the National Republicans morphed into either Democrats (who endured) or Whigs (who subsequently faded away, too). So it happened that some newspapers later affiliated with Lincoln-era Republicanism continued to call themselves “Democrat” as in the old days, while others who remained committed to the Democrats, slavery, and secession still bore the Jeffersonian-era name “Republican.” Whenever such incongruities arise, they are noted for clarity in the text or in the source notes.

  For this book, newspaper names are abbreviated and modernized to save space and stave off ennui. Thus, Springfield’s pro-Republican Illinois Daily State Journal is identified only as the Illinois State Journal, while its rival paper, the Democratic Daily Illinois State Register (no one knows why the word “Daily” appeared in different places on the mastheads of each paper) is redacted to the Illinois State Register. Similarly, the Chicago Daily Times is called the Chicago Times, and the Chicago Daily Press and Tribune, the Press and Tribune—that is, until its owners dropped the word “Press” and it became the Chicago Tribune. Similarly, the New-York Daily Times is referred to here as the New York Times, the New-York Daily Tribune as the New York Tribune—the names they adopted years later, sans their endearing but obsolete hyphens (no disrespect intended to the durable New-York Historical Society).

  It is hoped that these simplified titles will make the text less cumbersome and more coherent.

  Abraham Lincoln holds a newspaper to the camera in an 1854 photograph by Polycarpus von Schneidau taken in Chicago. Although he clutched a different newspaper in the original photo, the Chicago Press and Tribune later added its own masthead.

  PART ONE

  DRUMBEAT OF
THE NATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Types Are in Our Glory

  The two odd-looking young men who ventured off from their respective family homes, half a continent apart, in that same summer of 1831—each determined to find success on his own, and each fated to loom large in the other’s struggles for fame and power—were as yet totally unknown to one another.

  Nothing but coincidence dictated that they launch their adult lives at nearly the identical moment in time, with so few prospects, and in such remarkably coincident circumstances. Yet there were astonishing similarities to their journeys. For one thing, when both boys took leave of their parents, they had accumulated so little in the way of possessions that each was able to squeeze his meager belongings into a single kerchief borne over his shoulder on a stick. Both began their long voyages on foot.

  On the surface, they looked as different as any two pioneers on the continent. To be sure, both were unconventional in appearance. One, however, was almost absurdly tall, deeply bronzed, lean but well muscled, with a face creased and “gnarled” well beyond his years; the other, slight in stature, was moon-faced, spectrally pallid, and “angelically cherubic,” far more youthful in appearance than in age.1 Intellectually and emotionally they were unalike as well, one laconic and shy, the other ebullient and confident. Both of them gifted and curious, the taller one was blessed with a rare power of concentration, the smaller barely able to focus his attention on one subject before lurching to embrace another. Had any of their later admirers somehow managed to encounter both of these wanderers that year they would surely have predicted that the two opposites could never become friends. And in a sense, such observers would have been correct. Yet eventually, Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley came not only to know each other well, but to figure crucially in each other’s future.

  More than fifteen years would pass before Lincoln and Greeley finally met in the whirlwind of mid-century politics. Not for a quarter of a century would they come to affect each other’s lives as well as the destiny of their country—with an enormity that neither could have imagined at the time they began their adult journeys in 1831. These two men would never come fully to know or understand the other. Yet one would become the century’s greatest subject, and the other its most influential observer.

  In a sense, these two contrasting strangers on the move that summer had much more in common than anyone who met them later might have realized. Even in 1831, when no one but friends and relatives knew that these boys existed, much less mattered, the similarities between them would have been marked as extraordinary. Each had been dwelling with his family in a crowded, primitive log cabin. Each had worked the land, but had stolen precious time whenever possible to feed an insatiable hunger for reading. And each was poor—nearly destitute. As one of their contemporaries observed: “Both sprang from obscurity; both were cradled in poverty; both worked their way up by sheer brain work; both were excessively simple, democratic, and homespun in their manners and dress; both were awkward in gait; both abounded in quaint dry humour.”2

  Both Lincoln and Greeley came of age on hardscrabble farms, yearning for education but lacking access to formal schooling. Lincoln long regretted learning only “by littles” from itinerant instructors who knew no more than “ ‘readin, writin, and cipherin’ to the Rule of Three.” Greeley, as a friend recalled, “seldom had a teacher that could teach him anything”—perhaps as much a testament to the future editor’s sometimes galling self-assurance as to the scarcity of competent instructors in the hinterlands.3

  Each boy had nearly died as a result of a childhood accident: Lincoln kicked in the head by a horse and “apparantly [sic] killed for a time,” as he quaintly put it; Greeley “half drowned” after bravely plunging into a river in an attempt to rescue his brother from drowning.4 Most distinctly of all, both boys seemed from the outset oddly different from their friends—more serious, more studious, more distracted—and both painfully awkward with the opposite sex. Of young Lincoln, his stepmother frankly admitted: “He was not very fond of girls.” A New Hampshire acquaintance similarly recalled that where young Greeley was concerned, “For girls, as girls, he never manifested any preference.”5 (As it happened, Greeley married Mary Cheney when he was twenty-five; not until he was thirty-three did Lincoln wed his Mary.)

  Not that either youth shrank from the grueling physical work farm boys of the day were expected to perform. Both grew accustomed to physical labor, specializing in felling trees and cutting logs, though neither grew to love such work, and only Lincoln emerged from the experience with a physique worthy of his labors. Unknown to each other they may have been, but the two boys shared another attribute destined to define their lives: their unquenchable thirst for the printed word. From an early age, each had turned to reading whenever and wherever afforded the luxuries of leisure and light. And each sought intellectual nourishment in both the permanent and ephemeral publications that so many among even the poorest American families strove to keep in their homes: first and foremost the Bible, of course—but also newspapers.

  With his horizons vastly broadened by what he discovered in his omnivorous reading, Lincoln ultimately decided to enter political life. Greeley determined early that his destiny was to report it. Each would come to believe his respective profession offered not only the best means to improve his own condition, but the best way to wield the power to shape national destiny. From the beginning of their slow rise to national fame, they likely understood that the worlds of politicians and journalists were inextricably bound together.

  • • •

  Lincoln, at twenty-two the older, and certainly the more robust of the two, had for years devoured as much reading material as he could lay his hands on, especially after the teenager’s family migrated from Kentucky to Indiana, where periodicals were readily available. “I think newspapers were had in Indiana as early as 1824,” his stepmother later recalled. “Abe was a constant reader of them—I am sure of this for the years of 1827-28-29-30. The name of the Louisville Journal seems to sound like one.”6 The boy often read them “very late at night” after he completed his chores, testified a cousin, who remembered Abe habitually turning a chair upside down near the hearth, then placing a pillow on the underside of the seat to support his head while he unfolded his newspaper. He would “lie there for hours,” she remembered, “and read” these papers, sometimes out loud.7 Young Lincoln was mad for them. The more political their content the better. As his future law partner once asserted: “Mr. Lincoln’s education was almost entirely a newspaper one.”8 And he pursued it with little encouragement from a stern father who preferred that his son stick exclusively to his responsibilities on the farm.

  Inspiration came from both his empathetic stepmother and from appreciative strangers. At one point, the curious teenager began borrowing a pro-temperance paper to which a neighbor named William Wood subscribed. Lincoln, at most nineteen years old, soon composed an essay of his own on the evils of drink, and proudly shared it with Wood, who found to his astonishment that “the piece excelled for sound sense anything that my paper contained.” Impressed, Wood showed the article to a local preacher, who in turn sent it on to a paper in Ohio, which published it. Once it was in print, Wood read the article “with pleasure over and over again.”

  When Lincoln followed this small triumph by composing yet another essay, this time on political issues, Wood handed it over to a local attorney, who saw this latest treatise into print as well. In it, the young man argued that education “should be fostered all over the Country” in order to nourish “the best form of Government in the world.” As Wood saw it, Lincoln’s eagerness to see such views broadly cast at such a young age showed unusual maturity. Although still not twenty and virtually untaught, Abe had already published two newspaper articles, exploring themes to which he would return many times in years to come: sobriety, education, and American exceptionalism. But from the start, writing for Lincoln was a means, not an end. He wrote about poli
cy issues not only to influence others, but to gain influence for its own sake—for himself. Even when he saw his first newspaper printing press at Vincennes, Indiana, he left no comment about the mechanics of making news.9

  After his solitary 1831 journey from his parents’ cabin, Lincoln moved to a tiny Illinois mill town called New Salem, where his new neighbors noticed at once that his nose was always pointed toward a printed page. “History and poetry & the newspapers constituted the most of his reading,” testified one. A local shoemaker similarly observed that Lincoln read “all kinds of newspapers,” sitting up, lying down, or walking in the streets. Yet a third concurred. “More than he did books,” he said of Lincoln, “he read papers.”10 Always eager to perform, if he found something particularly amusing or instructive on their pages, he would read the item aloud to anyone within earshot. Though the distinctive new arrival “rapidly made acquaintances and friends,” as he proudly put it, he yet considered himself without real direction in life, trying, then abandoning, a succession of jobs: as a blacksmith, surveyor, and storekeeper, in the last of which he ended up owing creditors so much money that he began referring to his crushing obligations as the “national debt.” Although he never considered giving up and returning to his parents’ fold, young Lincoln remained, he lamented, “a piece of floating driftwood.”11

  At least, part-time work as the New Salem village postmaster enabled him to read his neighbors’ newspapers as soon as they arrived, before recipients could claim their subscriptions for themselves. His neighbor, Dr. John Allen, joked that he “Never saw a man better pleased” with a job. As postmaster, Lincoln had “access to all the News papers—never yet being able to get the half that he wanted before.”12 Without complaint, perhaps even sensing with pride that their well-liked, yarn-spinning postmaster was destined for greater things, residents of New Salem patiently grew accustomed to receiving their papers late, badly wrinkled, and carelessly refolded.13