July 9, 2009 - The following book reviews are courtesy of Michael Wolf, a retired dentist residing in Manhattan, who has had a life-long interest in American history with a particular focus, since 1995, on the Civil War. He serves as a docent at the New York Historical Society.
The Great Comeback by Gary Ecelbarger This book is subtitled,
"How Abraham Lincoln Beat the Odds to Win the 1860 Republican
Nomination." Lincoln's nomination certainly was against
all odds. After his loss to Stephen Douglas in the 1858 Illinois election
to the U.S. Senate, he was politically dead. Instead of holding a press
conference to say, "You won't have Lincoln to kick around any more,"
he picked himself up, dusted himself off, and started all over again.
This book tells the story of Abraham Lincoln's ambitious, carefully planned,
improbable march to the Republican nomination in May, 1860. Mr. Ecelbarger writes,
"Looking at it in hindsight, it is difficult to imagine that this sequence
of events was purely a coincidence." He begins his story in late
1858, with Lincoln's strategy of becoming "visible in the East and the
West...and concealing (his) candidacy until ‘the proper time.'" If ever there was a stealth
candidacy, this was it. The front-runner was New York Senator William H.
Seward, one of the eventual "team of rivals." Lincoln's task
was to make himself widely known as a moderate with no enemies within the
party, to whom the delegates could turn if and when Seward failed to be
nominated. Gary Ecelbarger has written
excellent biographies of two Union generals, Frederick Lander, not well known
today due to his death from osteomyelitis early in 1862, and John A. Logan, an Illinois politician who rose to be a corps commander in Sherman's Army of the Tennessee. Mr. Ecelbarger has also published a book on Stonewall Jackson's Valley
Campaign, and conducts Civil War tours in the Valley, West Virginia, and Lincoln tours in Springfield, Illinois. Throughout 1859, Lincoln gave speeches throughout the west. At first, "The Lincoln boom had made
such a small groundswell that no one paying attention to it would have noticed
it. That is the way Lincoln preferred it for the present". But
soon "he was racking up impressive presidential endorsements from
Republican newspapers both in and outside of Illinois." By January,
only six months before the national convention, Lincoln was "a growing
snowball rolling down a hill, the center of which was the rock – Lincoln's ambition..." Mr. Ecelbarger describes
how Lincoln dodged bullets along the way. He had to silence suggestions
that he run for vice-president. It seems odd now, but Lincoln was
afraid Stephen Douglas, "the best-known politician in the land,"
would alienate southern Democrats (he sure did!), and moderate Republicans would
vote for him (they didn't). Most of all, Lincoln had to avoid alienating
Republican candidates and delegates so the convention would turn to him.
But "making Lincoln's chance to upend Seward an even longer shot was that
he was still not the second choice...nor the third or even the fourth-ranked
Republican candidate." Salmon Chase of Ohio, Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania, and Edward Bates of Missouri, all of whom eventually joined the
"team of rivals," were all serious candidates behind Senator Seward. Eventually,
however, it became a two-man race between Seward and Lincoln, whose goal was
merely to get one hundred of the 465 convention votes on the first ballot. Lincoln benefited from brilliant campaign managers, Norman
Judd and David Davis. Mr. Ecelbarger is especially good in describing their
manipulations in securing the nomination for their man. Today we don't
realize how important the choice of a convention city was in 1860. St. Louis – the home city of Edward Bates – was the favorite. Ironically, "Chicago made the short list primarily because Lincoln's name had not resonated as a
serious candidate." If St. Louis had been chosen, Norman Judd could
not have arranged for Illinois railroads to reduce train fares, allowing Lincoln supporters to descend on the convention hall in huge numbers. Bates
supporters would predominate. As we shall see, in a pre-electronic
age this was important. "If St. Louis was chosen as a host city...it
would be inconceivable for Lincoln to win the nomination...Judd achieved an
incredible coup by placing Chicago at center stage for national party politics
in 1860." Another Judd stroke of genius
was the seemingly unimportant placing of state delegations in the
convention hall, known as "The Wigwam." By surrounding Seward's
New York delegation with delegations pledged to Lincoln, "the Seward
delegation was locked in, an island within a raging sea of Lincoln. The delegations of Ohio, Missouri, and New Jersey were seated too far away
from the New Yorkers for them to negotiate...between the second and third
ballots...The crescendo and cacophony emanating from ten thousand throats above
them and in front of them in the galleries rendered useless any attempt to get
the 42 Chase votes, the 35 Bates votes, the 10 Dayton (of New Jersey) votes, or
even the 8 McLean (also of Ohio) votes that had committed to these also-rans on
the first and second ballots." Lincoln's brilliant Cooper Union speech on Feb. 27, 1860, and its importance in establishing his reputation in the east,
is thoroughly recounted by Mr. Ecelbarger. But another aspect of
this speech is amusing, especially with today's political fund-raisers and the
obscene amounts of money sloshing through political campaigns.
"Seward supporters seethed when they learned that Lincoln was paid $200
for the Cooper Union speech. This could be achieved only through a door
charge, considered indecent for political speeches in the mid-1800s." They
"pummeled Lincoln in print for demanding a fee and his Cooper Union hosts
for charging the audience ‘the regular circus rate of twenty-five cents' to
hear him. The press had a field day with the issue...Lincoln was called
‘the two-shilling candidate.'" Lincoln had addressed a group of children
in New York, and Horace Greeley's Tribune wrote, "The Tribune does not say
how much Mr. Lincoln charged for his speech – as it was delivered to
children. We suppose he asked only half price, say $100." Of course, this blew over. Lincoln considered his Cooper Union address, "The speech that made me
president," but this is just one good example of the 1860 political
atmosphere evoked in Mr. Ecelbarger's story. Back in Chicago, Seward's
people were so confident of victory that they held a pre-victory champagne
supper. Lincoln's men realized that something had to be done, and
fast: LET'S MAKE A DEAL! And they did. Lincoln had wired
instructions, "Make no contracts that bind me." However,
"Davis heeded it not. He was not about to let Lincoln's
accomplishments of the past 18 months and their tireless efforts over the past
six days go to waste just because Lincoln clung to a naive notion...Lincoln was
not in Chicago; he did not understand what needed to be done. Davis was here and knew what to do. He would ‘fight the devil with fire.'" Southern states were
represented at this convention. Virginia gave 14 votes to Lincoln and 8 to Seward. Texas gave all but two votes to Seward. At the end of the
third ballot, Lincoln was one and a half votes shy of a 233 majority. As
the convention prepared for a fourth ballot, Ohio switched four votes to put Lincoln over the top. New York moved to make it unanimous, and that was it. Lincoln had won because he convinced the party that he could
win in November, and that Seward was too radical to win four of the five free states that Fremont had lost in 1856: Illinois, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and California. The Republicans had to win four of them in 1860 to reach
the White House (against one opponent, not three – but this wasn't known in
May), and Lincoln, not Seward, could appeal to these moderate
voters. Mr. Ecelbarger concludes that
"Abraham Lincoln won the Republican nomination because he was a principled
pragmatist, but also because he was the candidate agreed upon in the parlors of
Chicago's hotels before the balloting commenced in the Great Wigwam....As
appropriate as Lincoln was for the Republican Party in 1860, there is little
doubt that he won because of the result of negotiations conducted in
smoke-filled rooms." Considering events of the next five years, this is a significant story, and a well-told tale it is.
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Wade Hampton III by Robert K. Ackerman One measure of Wade Hampton's
standing among his fellow South Carolinians is that he and the sainted John C.
Calhoun are the state's two representatives in Statuary Hall in the U.S.
Capitol. In 1860, Hampton (1818-1902) owned 12,000 acres and a thousand
slaves in Mississippi, the land valued from $50 to $500 an acre.
His 1861 cotton crop brought $1.2 million, and all of it was destroyed in
the war. By 1868, he was bankrupt, with his heavily mortgaged
plantation gone, seized by Federal troops. By 1890, when Hampton was defeated for reelection to his third U.S. Senate term, he had no visible means
of support, and President Cleveland appointed him as Commissioner of Pacific
Railroads. Cleveland had appointed Joseph E. Johnston to this position in
1885, and in 1897, President McKinley appointed James Longstreet. As you
might surmise, "Both Democratic and Republican administrations treated the
position of railroad commissioner as sinecures for former Confederate
generals." Like many wealthy planters, Hampton opposed secession because he feared the loss of his pre-war prosperity.
However, once the die was cast, Hampton became a loyal supporter of the war,
just as he did when he opposed the war with Spain in 1898. He returned to
South Carolina from his riverside plantation, and recruited and equipped the
Hampton Legion. President Davis commissioned him a colonel, and his men
were signed up for twelve months, longer than Lincoln's three months, but
equally unrealistic, as events would prove. Robert E. Lee appointed Hampton to succeed Jeb Stuart as commander of the Confederate Cavalry Corps in August,
1864, following Stuart's mortal wounding at Yellow Tavern. Hampton received his third star, becoming one of only three Confederate lieutenant
generals who didn't graduate from West Point. (Of course you want to know
who the others were, but you'll have to read this to the end.) Hampton's Civil War exploits occupy about one-third of this
book's 272 pages. If you want to learn about that, I suggest you read
Edward G. Longacre's biography, which focuses on Hampton's military experience
and little of his postwar life. Most of this book describes race and
politics in postwar South Carolina, and I found it interesting and
rewarding. Robert Ackerman is a retired history professor who has written
several books on South Carolina history. This is his most recent,
published in 2008, and his narrative is copiously documented, with a good
index. In 1874, a New York editor
published a book about Reconstruction in South Carolina, "The Prostrate
State." This was an apt description of South Carolina's economic and
political condition, and also of Hampton's financial condition. After a
decade of economic struggle and a presence in South Carolina politics, Hampton was drafted to run against Governor D.H. Chamberlain, the Republican
incumbent. Hampton won a close, endlessly contested election, which paralleled
the Hayes-Tilden cliff-hanger in Washington. Immediately after his
reelection in 1878, the legislature elected him to the U.S. Senate. Hampton was a racial moderate. He was for Negro civil
rights, and favored voting by literate Negroes. He was an advocate of the
Lost Cause, lecturing all over the country, often for $100 a speech. (Lincoln received $200 for his Cooper Union speech.) In 1887, President Cleveland
(who did not serve in the Civil War) ordered captured Confederate
battle flags returned. The Grand Army of the Republic, the American
Legion of its day, led "a highly publicized emotional attack on the
president's patriotism. So effective was the GAR's effort that Cleveland ultimately revoked the order. This event became one of the factors in the
Democratic defeat in 1888." (Cleveland received more popular votes
than Benjamin Harrison, but fewer electoral votes.) The following
year, 1889, Hampton personally returned two Pennsylvania regimental flags in
his possession. He even said, in dedicating a monument to German
Confederate soldiers, "The war, which was a misfortune, may have been
likewise a grave mistake." He spoke from bitter experience ; not only
was he financially ruined by the war, but one son died in his arms on Oct. 27,
1864 at Burgess Mill, and another was severely wounded in the same
battle. There was a constant struggle
in postwar South Carolina between conservative, patrician moderates like Hampton, and racist, populist demagogues like "Pitchfork" Ben
Tillman. The latter eventually prevailed, and the state enacted its Black
Codes in the 1890s, resulting in the rigid segregation that lasted into the
1960s. In 1879-80, South Carolina spent $2.75 per white pupil and $2.57
per black pupil in public schools (in 1870, blacks were 60% of the state's
population). By 1894-95, with the avowed white supremacists in power, the
ratio was 3:1, and by 1927, it was 8:1. Hampton, while favoring racial
segregation, would have deplored this. In 1884, he voted for federal aid
to education, proposed by Senator Henry Blair of New Hampshire, which would
have distributed Federal money to the states based on illiteracy
rates. The bill passed the Senate, but died in the House.
Considering his state's meager support of public education, Hampton wanted to help poor students of both races, but his vote was very unpopular back
home. This started out to be a short review of a book that isn't really about the Civil War, but gave me a lot to write about. This isn't for readers seeking to learn about the war, but students of Reconstruction will find much of interest. Oh, yes, the other two generals were Richard Taylor (President Zachary Taylor's son) and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Mr. Gatling's Terrible
Marvel by Julia Keller Julia Keller won a Pulitzer
Prize in 2005 for feature writing at the Chicago Tribune. This book,
published in 2008, is not only a brief biography of Mr. Gatling and his gun,
but a thoughtful discussion of the United States in the mid-19th century and
the changing nature of warfare during that time. Civil War students will
be especially interested in the practical, inventive, and technological side of
Abraham Lincoln, and in the use (and non-use) of the Gatling gun in the Civil
War. *******************************************************
Escape on the Pearl by Mary Kay Ricks Mary Kay Ricks has written an
absorbing account of the failed attempt of 80 slaves to escape from Washington, DC on a schooner, the Pearl, in 1848. Mrs. Ricks leads tours in Washington, and has lectured on the incident at the Smithsonian. Her book, while serious
history, reads like a novel. She has an exciting and important story to
tell, and weaves a history of slavery in the Chesapeake, the abolition
movement, and electoral politics into her narrative. Prominent – and
lesser-known personalities of pre-war America are depicted: Henry Ward Beecher,
Horace Mann, and Gerrit Smith are part of the story. On April 15, 1848, 80 slaves, mostly household servants, left their lodgings after dark, and met at a
wharf on the Potomac, where the Pearl, captained by two white men, was waiting
to sail down the river into Chesapeake Bay, then to "the northernmost
reach" of the bay, where the Underground Railroad would take over.
In the morning, the slaves' owners realized what had happened, and a fast
pursuit ship was dispatched to overtake the Pearl. The ensuing events
placed slavery, which Congress had kept on a back burner (through gag
rules and other devices), to the forefront of debate and controversy. The
Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 and the tumultuous decade of the 1850s was at hand. Ms. Ricks tells of the trials
of the captains, civil unrest in Washington, the sale of some of the captured
slaves to slave traders, and the eventual fate of some of the
principals. She has done extensive research in diaries, census records,
and the Runaway Slave Book of the DC Department of Corrections (with entries
beginning in 1848), found in a former prison in Lorton, VA in 1991. She has
used these references to trace the slaves, their ancestors, and their
descendants from the early 19th century to the present. The detailed stories of escape and capture, the operations of slave traders, families torn apart and partially – never totally – reunited, put a human face on the Southuth's "peculiar institution." One wonders how a nation founded on liberty and equality allowed slavery to persist as long as it did. Readers will develop a renewed admiration for its victims and for the brave men and women of both races who fought it at great risk to their lives. |