How we elected Lincoln

by Abram J. Dittenhoefer

Yours,
Horace Greeley.

Mark Howard, Esq.,
Hartford, Conn.

Horace Greeley gave open expression to his opposition in the New York Tribune, Friday, April 29, 1864.

In this issue Mr. Greeley, referring to the statement of the President, “I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me,” declared that “had he been a little more docile to their teaching and prompt to apprehend their bearing we should have been saved many disasters and rivers of precious blood. May we hope that with regard to the murder of our soldiers who have surrendered, and other questions of the hour, he will have learned something from the sore experience of the past?”

Other newspapers joined the Tribune in opposing Lincoln’s renomination, as witness these excerpts from the New York Herald, August 6, 1864:

Senator Wade, of Ohio, and Representative Davis, of Maryland, Chairman of the Senate and House Committees on the rebellious States prepared and presented in their official capacity an indictment against Abraham Lincoln, the executive head of the nation, and the nominee of his party for another term of office, charging him with arrogance, ignorance, usurpation, knavery, and a host of other deadly sins including that of hostility to the rights of humanity and to the principles of republican government.

Mr. Lincoln has been frequently represented as entertaining and expressing an ardent wish that he could slip off his shoulders the anxieties and labors belonging to his present position and place upon them the musket and knapsack of a Union volunteer. The opportunity of realizing that wish now presents itself. The country would be overjoyed to see it realized, and all the people would say “Amen” to it. Let him make up his mind to join the quota which his town of Springfield, Ill., will next be called on to furnish. He is said to have done well as railsplitter, and we have no doubt that he will do equally well as a soldier. As a President of the United States he must have sense enough to see and acknowledge he has been an egregious failure. The best thing he can do now for himself, his party, and his country is to retire from the high position to which, in an evil hour, he was exalted.

One thing must be self-evident to him, and that is that under no circumstances can he hope to be the next President of the United States, and if he will only make a virtue of necessity and withdraw from the Presidential campaign....

In the New York Tribune, August 24, 1864, under the heading, “Copperhead Treason,” the Daily News is quoted as referring to President Lincoln as “our intriguing chief magistrate.”

Finally, there was general disaffection, centering largely in New York and St. Louis, and a so-called convention of opponents of Lincoln gathered at Cleveland in May, and indulged in denunciation of Lincoln, which included a bitter letter from Wendell Phillips. This self-styled “radical Democracy” adopted a platform, nominated Fremont, and practically disappeared.