How we elected Lincoln

by Abram J. Dittenhoefer

Led and encouraged by Southern sympathizers, who had retained the feelings they held before the war, the rabble of the city surged through the streets, destroying property, burning a negro orphan-asylum, and killing black men. Nominally a protest against enforced enlistment, the riots were really an uprising of the dangerous element that existed in the city at the time.

I lived in Thirty-fourth Street, near Eighth Avenue, and had been a persistent speaker against the extension of slavery and in favor of the Federal cause. The day before the riots began, an anonymous note was received by my family, stating that our home would be attacked and that we had best leave the city. We did not heed the warning.

On the first day of the riots, July 13, 1863, a crowd gathered in front of my house, shouting: “Down with the abolitionists!” “Death to Dittenhoefer!” I sent a messenger for the police, and a squad arrived as the leaders of the mob were preparing to break in my door. Active club work dispersed the crowd, and by order of the captain of the precinct several policemen were kept on guard until the end of the riots.

It was at this time that I met Mrs. Carson, the daughter of the only Union man in South Carolina, who, with her father, was compelled, after the firing on Fort Sumter, to leave South Carolina, while his property was confiscated. I had been anxious to sell my house in Thirty-fourth Street. Noticing a “For Sale” sign on the property, Mrs. Carson called on me and expressed a willingness to buy the house at the price named, asking me to see Samuel Blatchford, who in later years became a Supreme Court Judge of the United States, and who, she said, was the head of an association raising funds for her support in New York. I saw Judge Blatchford, and a contract was signed for the sale. Later, in consequence of the serious illness of my wife, I was obliged to ask Judge Blatchford to cancel the contract, saying that, by way of making up for the disappointment, I would gladly contribute a sum of money to the fund for Mrs. Carson. The contract was accordingly canceled. I never saw Mrs. Carson afterward. About a year before the close of the rebellion, Mr. Lincoln offered to appoint me judge of the district court of South Carolina, my native State, but my increasing business in the city of New York and the disinclination of my wife to move to South Carolina compelled me to decline the honor.

A little while before the offer of the Carolina judgeship was made me by the President I received a letter signed by Mrs. Carson, in which the writer said that the President had asked her to recommend a man for the position, and, remembering what I had done years before, she had suggested my name to him. For a long time I could not think who Mrs. Carson could be, until my wife reminded me of the incident of the sale of the house.

Patriotic neglect of self-interest in behalf of the salvation of the Union caused thousands of Northerners to lose opportunities for accumulating wealth from the vast sums of money disbursed by the Government; but there was a class at home and in Congress that neglected no chance to enrich itself. Its leaders were more concerned about the commercial phase of the conflict than the triumph of the Federal arms.

They gambled on the destiny of the Republic, and their sources of information reached to the innermost sanctuaries of Government departments.

On advance information of a staggering defeat to the Northern arms, they bought gold for a rise. Early news of a Federal victory caused them to sell the precious metal for a decline. This transaction was described by these gamblers in the nation’s life-blood as “coppering old Lincoln.”

This detestable clan pushed its representatives into the very councils of state, asserting its right to dictate the policy of the country, foreign and domestic. Its members were as intolerably arrogant as if they had amassed their wealth by the strictest integrity.

During a great part of the war President Lincoln, unsuspected by him, was surrounded by a coterie of professional heroes, commercial grafters, and alleged statesmen, every one of whom was in politics for personal profit. Many “shining lights” then lauded for their patriotism have long since been exposed as selfish and corrupt egotists. Close as some of these unworthy persons contrived to get to Mr. Lincoln, they were never able to besmirch him in any way.