Abraham Lincoln's Path to Reelection in 1864: Our Greatest Victory - Softcover

Martin Jr., Fred J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1491835311 ISBN 13: 9781491835319

Publisher: AuthorHouse, 2013

Synopsis

PRAISE FOR
ABRAHAM LINCOLNS PATH TO REELECTION IN 1864
OUR GREATEST VICTORY

Political polls consistently record a substantial lack of confidence in national political leaders of both major parties and a disturbing sentiment that the United States is on the wrong track in current policy developments.. These sentiments lead to unfortunate summaries of alleged failures of our democratic institutions and proposals.. Fortunately, at this moment in our history, Fred J. Martin Jr. has stepped forward with a comprehensive analysis of politics in 1860s and most importantly, the political genius Abraham Lincoln as he led our country through a series of perilous crises into new paths of confidence and greatness. I admire, especially, Fred Martin's mastery of political detail and the large variety of motivations, strategies, and actions of a wide assortment of political players.
-Former Senator Richard Lugar

Arguably the most consequential election in American history, the presidential contest of 1864 has cried out for a more sophisticated analysis than it has heretofore received. Fortunately, Fred Martins background in political journalism and in banking has enabled him to provide such an analysis in this book, which is a welcome addition to the Lincoln literature.
--Michael Burlingame, Author, Abraham Lincoln: A Life; Distinguished Chair in Lincoln Studies, History Department, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences University of Illinois, Springfield IL

Fred Martin has written an illuminating account of the roots of Lincolns success as president, culminating in his victory in the critical election of 1864. Effectively using Lincolns words as well as those of his contemporaries, Martin demonstrates how it became possible for Lincoln to overcome his early background and become a skillful and ethical political leader who saved the Union and ended slavery. The book clearly is a labor of love for Martin, a long-time student of Abraham Lincoln. Every person interested in Lincoln and his presidency should have this well researched and well-written book in his/her library.
-- William C. Harris, author of Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union (2011) and Lincoln and the Union Governors (2013)

About this title

About the Author

Fred J. Martin, Jr., a 3rd generation Montanan, lives in San Francisco and is a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies in Berkeley, CA. Martin worked as a night-side reporter on The Denver Post while earning a BA in History at the University of Denver. His career included work for the Associated Press, The San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America, retiring in 1993 as Senior Vice President & Director of Government Relations. His lifelong interest in Abraham Lincoln was fueled by the study of history, government and politics, and working experience in journalism, political campaigns, politics, and governmental activities. His great-great uncle, General Thomas Ogden Osborn, with a bullet-shattered elbow, took leave from the Union army and campaigned for Lincoln's reelection, returning to active duty, he was awarded a brevet major general rank at thirty-two. Martin devoted the last twenty years to Lincoln research at the Library of Congress, the National Archives, state historical societies, archives, and libraries across the nation. He acquired an extensive library of Lincoln and Civil War books and history. He served two terms as President of The Abraham Lincoln Institute, Washington, DC.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Abraham Lincoln's Path to Reelection in 1864

OUR GREATEST VICTORY

By Fred J. Martin Jr.

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2013 MARTIN 1988 REVOCABLE TRUST 12/23/88
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4918-3531-9

Contents

Introduction, xi, 
Chapter I The Maturing Lincoln: A Kentucky Heritage, 1, 
Chapter II The Ambitious Mary Todd, Marriage, and Congress, 22, 
Chapter III The 1850s—A Resurgent Politician Fighting the Kansas-Nebraska Act, 36, 
Chapter IV The Election of 1860: Republicans Nominate and Elect Lincoln, 67, 
Chapter V Journey to Washington and the Inauguration, 76, 
Chapter VI Commander in Chief: Governing, Mobilizing, Funding, and Fighting, 109, 
Chapter VII The Undercurrent of Elections; Politics and McClellan's Politics; the Press and the Army, 149, 
Chapter VIII A National Currency; We Cannot Escape History, 184, 
Chapter IX Lincoln Turns a Mid-Term Crisis to Advantage; Lee's Invasion Aim to Impact Union Politics, 220, 
Chapter X Coping with New York; Governor Seymour, Weed, and Greeley; Challenge at Chattanooga, 255, 
Chapter XI The Gettysburg Address: The Reelection Campaign Opens, 274, 
Chapter XII Amnesty and Reconstruction, 303, 
Chapter XIII Corralling Renomination; Congressional Voices, 318, 
Chapter XIV The Baltimore Convention; Chase Resigns; Grant's Relentless Offensive, 352, 
Chapter XV Wade-Davis Act Veto; Confederate Peace Ploys; Confederate Thrust from Shenandoah Valley into Maryland, 374, 
Chapter XVI Coping with Greeley, the Herald's Bennett, and Weed; War Democrats, 393, 
Chapter XVII August Gloom and the Blind Memorandum; Politics Escalates, 406, 
Chapter XVIII Democrats: A War Candidate on a Peace Platform, 417, 
Chapter XIX Atlanta, the Shenandoah Valley, and Mobile Victories; Election Victories in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania; Radicals Reconciled, 425, 
Chapter XX The Reelection Campaign, 442, 
Chapter XXI Lincoln's Decisive Victory; The Union Saved, 447, 
Appreciation, 457, 
Bibliography, 463, 
About the Book, 487, 
About the Author, 489, 
Endnotes, 491, 

CHAPTER 1

The Maturing Lincoln: A Kentucky Heritage

"I am naturally anti-slavery," Abraham Lincoln wrote. "If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think, and feel."

The Revolutionary War gave birth to the United States, the world's first functioning democracy. When the war ended, many, especially veterans, headed west to expand this new democracy in a challenging frontier. Armed with their long rifles, the men and hardy pioneer women and children first moved on horseback or on foot. A trickle reached a crescendo and then became a flood as settlers swept over the Appalachian Mountains and down the Ohio River to the rich western lands.

The principles of freedom and equality were a paradigm based upon the conviction that people could govern themselves. President Abraham Lincoln would declare the Union perpetual and would fight to renew the basic principles of equality and the rights of man. Abraham Lincoln as president would overturn an unjust slave system in which one man could own another. His election as president—and, most important, his reelection in 1864—would renew this legacy of equality and freedom.

The future president was named for his grandfather, Abraham, a Revolutionary War captain shot by an Indian in 1786 while taming Kentucky land. The Indian attempted to grab Abraham's young son, Thomas. But Thomas's older brother, Mordecai, raced to the cabin, took up a rifle, and shot the Indian, saving Thomas. This left Abraham's widow, Bathsheba, a niece of Daniel Boone, her sons, Mordecai, Josiah, and Thomas, and her daughters, Mary and Nancy, to make their way.

Speaking of his grandfather, the future president wrote in 1854, "The story of his death by the Indians, and of Uncle Mordecai, then fourteen years old, killing one of the Indians, is the legend more strongly than all others imprinted upon my mind and memory." Yet he was neither anti-Indian nor vindictive. The English law of descents had been repealed, but Mordecai, by common consent, managed the bulk of his father's property, although inheritances went equally to each of the children.

President Lincoln's father, Thomas, was a wandering labor boy, working at times in harness with slaves rented out by their masters. Tom Lincoln, unlike the slaves, kept his earnings, and likely came to see the slaves as fellow creatures. He apprenticed as a carpenter and at age twenty-six married Nancy Hanks. She had come to Kentucky in the arms of her single mother. The intensity and fervor of Nancy Hanks—often called Nancy Sparrow at cabin religious meetings—caught the eye of Tom Lincoln.

Tom was fresh back from one of his trips to New Orleans when he and Nancy were wed on June 6, 1806. As a married man assuming new responsibilities, Tom settled into the carpentry trade in Elizabethtown. When a daughter was born in 1807, Nancy christened her Sarah after her cousin, who became like a sister to Nancy when rescued from Indian captivity. Dennis Hanks praised the mind and heart of his maternal cousin, with whom he had been brought up in the Sparrow sanctuary.

Former senator turned historian, Alfred J. Beveridge, said of Nancy Hanks, "But the qualities of her mind and character were impressed more distinctly than was her physical appearance. All remember that she was uncommonly intelligent; had 'Remarkable Keen perception,' as Dennis Hanks put it [to Herndon]. Dennis waxed enthusiastic about the mind and heart of his maternal cousin with whom he had been brought up in the Sparrow sanctuary calling her shrewd and smart."

Hanks described both Nancy and Tom: "Her memory was strong ... her judgment was acute almost. She was spiritually & ideally inclined —not dull—not material—not heavy in thought—feeling or action. Thomas Lincoln ... could beat his son telling a story—cracking a joke ... a good, clean, social, truthful & honest man, loving like his wife everything and everybody. He was a man who took the world easy—did not possess much envy. He never thought that gold was God."

As 1807 ended, Thomas moved fourteen miles to a three-hundred-acre spread in the "Barrens" on the south fork of Nolin Creek, known as the Sinking Spring Farm. In 1808 Tom, Nancy, and Sarah moved to Nolin Creek. Tom cut logs from the forest and built a modest cabin with only a hard-packed dirt floor. Abe was born in 1809 in this Nolin cabin and named for the slain Grandpa Abraham. As he grew, Abe would trail his father in the fields and hear Nancy sing Bible verses while doing chores.

Tom and Nancy attended Long Run Baptist Church, where Ben Lynn preached. He had a long association with the antislavery Baptists associations that adopted resolutions condemning slavery as an evil. The slave patroller, Christopher Bush, was a neighbor. Bush's duties becoming demanding, Tom Lincoln was drafted to assist, but stayed only one term, suggesting an inclination against slavery. Abe wrestled with all and likely developed his conviction that slavery was wrong.

Tom often recounted the story of the death of Grandfather Abraham, the resulting hardship, and his trips to New Orleans. When strangers and neighbors stopped, Abe often too boldly took hold of the conversation, and Tom sometimes cuffed him for his brashness. Abe fetched water or tools for his father and absorbed the talk as he trailed Thomas doing his chores. After three years on this rugged, stony clay soil, Lincoln moved on to their Knob Creek farm, where they stayed until Abe was seven.

The Kentucky years were good years for young Abe. Even when in the White House, he could recall every detail of the land and the farms. He delighted in recounting events and places when a visitor would bring up early life in Kentucky. Abe grew up on the Knob Creek farm and spent time in the blab schools run by Zachariah Riney and Caleb Hazel, learning to read and write. On nearby Louisville and Nashville Pike, Lincoln met peddlers, politicians, and even soldiers from the Battle of New Orleans.

A clergyman recalled Lincoln saying:

I remember how, when a mere child, I used to get irritated when anybody talked to me in a way that I could not understand. I don't think I ever got angry at anything else in my life. But that always disturbed my temper.... I can remember going to my little bedroom, after hearing the neighbors talk ... with my father, and spending ... the night walking up and down, and trying to make out ... the exact meaning of some of their, to me, dark sayings.

I could not sleep, though I often tried to, when I got on such a hunt after an idea, until I had caught it; and when I thought I had got it, I was not satisfied until I had repeated it over and over, until I had put it in language plain enough, as I thought, for any boy I knew to comprehend. This was a kind of passion ... and it has stuck by me, for I am never easy now, when I am handling a thought, till I have bounded it north and bounded it south and bounded it east and bounded it west.

A neighbor then in Kentucky, and later a friend in New Salem, Mentor Graham significantly influenced Lincoln's life in both places. Graham showed promise as a student, and his father, Jeremiah, had a brother, Robert, a learned doctor. So Mentor's parents sent him to live with the childless Robert and his wife. Mentor would ride behind Robert on his horse and recite his lessons. The more intellectually endowed Robert proved just the right teacher for Mentor.

Mentor told of an incident remembered because it brought an abrupt halt to the drinking of alcohol by his father. Free haying was underway on land called barrens. A knot of hay cutters gathered at the door of a nearby cabin, drawn by childish cries of distress. They found that a man in a drunken rage had killed his wife. Tom and young Abe happened by. The affected Abe took the weeping girls by the hands and begged them not to cry. The men took the husband to town.

The Lincolns left Kentucky in 1816. An 1860 biographical sketch by John Locke Scripps quoted Lincoln as saying the move was "partly on account of slavery; but chiefly on account of the difficulty of land titles in KY." Indiana, unlike Kentucky, had a more transparent system of land titles. Settlers could mark off their homesteads, then go to the federal land office and pay to secure their claims. And they did not have to compete against farmers who had slave labor.

Tom Lincoln loaded family household goods, his tools, and his savings—converted into barrels of whiskey—on a flatboat he had built. His flatboat flipped in the freezing waters of the Rolling Fork River, pitching him and his belongings overboard well before he could reach and cross the Ohio River. Tom salvaged what he could, including whiskey, and crossed over to Indiana. Tom left his goods in the custody of a pioneer after choosing and marking a site on Little Pigeon Creek.

Back in Kentucky, Tom and Nancy, along with young Sarah and Abe, crossed the Ohio with their bagged goods, bringing two horses so father and son could ride one and mother and daughter the other. Tom obtained an ox-pulled wagon to carry the salvaged whiskey and goods to Little Pigeon Creek. There he pitched a pole-shed, common on the frontier. An open-faced dwelling, it was constructed from a combination of poles, limbs, leaves, and mud, and required a fire on the open side, especially in severe weather. It lacked windows and had a mud floor.

Abe, big for his age, was put to work with an ax. Again according to the account by Scripps, Abe remembered that for the next fifteen years he was "most constantly handling that most useful instrument." To clear the land meant chopping down trees, digging up stumps, cutting out brush and roots, and burning much of the detritus. Then there was the planting, weeding, cultivating, harvesting, and care and butchering of the animals. Tom Lincoln eventually built a typical one-room frontier cabin with a loft, where Abe and Dennis Hanks slept.

Hardly had the Lincolns settled into this eighteen-by-twenty-foot structure when the milk sickness struck. First it hit the recent arrivals, Thomas and Betsy Sparrow. Nancy nursed them as they sickened and died. By late September Nancy, at thirty-six, also took sick and soon died as Tom, Sarah, and nine-year-old Abe sadly watched. Gone all too soon was her tender touch. Much has been said of the effect on Abe and Sarah, but nothing of the surely staggering blow the loss of his wife was to Tom.

In her last days, Nancy called her children to her bedside and told them to grow up and be good—and to be good to their father. Surely she knew her love would be missed and how much she meant to Tom, who had in the past wrestled with depression. Tom built a coffin and buried her on the hillside. Lonely months followed for Tom, Sarah, Abe, and Dennis Hanks. Within a year, Tom headed to Kentucky to court Sarah Bush Johnston, a thirty-year-old widow.

Tom told Sarah he now had no wife and she had no husband. Tom said he wanted a marriage now. When she said she had debts, he paid them. They were married on December 2, 1819. Sarah packed her three children, her belongings, and some furniture. Tom loaded everything into a wagon pulled by four horses and they traveled to Little Pigeon Creek. There Sarah, struck by Tom's children's condition, scrubbed them. She prodded Tom to add a floor for a more livable cabin.

Her feather bedding replaced the cornstalk bedding Tom, Sarah, and Abe had been using. She introduced a measure of civilization to their frontier life. Most important, she mothered Abe and Sarah. Tom stated that Abe now had enough "eddicatin"; Sarah stood strong for Abe's bent to read and learn. Abe showed her love and respect, more so than her own son did. As she later said, Abe never gave her a cross word, and, "I never saw another boy get smarter and smarter as Abe did."

Abe wrestled with the fire and brimstone preaching of the frontier evangelists. After hearing a sermon, Lincoln would mount a stump and deliver it to neighborhood youngsters. He would imitate the preacher and his listeners would cry or shout. Abe digested the words, yet he never found in them reason to join any church. He matured from a rawboned youth into a man of great strength who could sink an ax, lift, wrestle, jump, run, and hurl, besting his companions.

Abe read all the books he could get. His mind and body developed in tandem with an intense concentration focused on poetry and prose. At age sixteen, he sculled a couple of lawyers out to a boat on the Ohio River. When he lifted their trunks onto the boat, each threw him a half dollar. This was more than Abe had ever earned, even with one coin lost in the river. A new horizon of enhanced opportunity emerged, well beyond the thirty-one cents a day he earned butchering.

Abe's river taxi offended two Kentucky ferryboat men, who sought judgment. They alleged Abe taking passengers to a mid-river ship violated Kentucky law. Justice of the Peace Samuel Pate dismissed the case outright. Lincoln successfully contended that he took passengers midstream, not to Kentucky. This awakened Abe's interest in the law, and he would often scull over and observe Kentucky trials. Three years later Abe, like his father, would raft down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.

In 1829, Tom Lincoln, ever restless and fearing the milk sickness, pulled out of Indiana. With Dennis Hanks and Levi Hall, both married to stepsisters of Abe, Tom relocated to Macon County on the Sangamon River in Illinois. It was here that young Abe helped build their cabin and plant the first crops. Abe mastered the art of inserting the wedge, striking it, and splitting logs into rails. These rails made Lincoln "the rail splitter" candidate in the election of 1860.

In 1831, Lincoln, John Hanks, and John Johnston, his stepbrother, were bringing a flatboat down the Sangamon River, headed for New Orleans. The boat high-centered on the milldam at New Salem. Lincoln bored a hole in the bow, drained the water, freed the boat, and patched the hole. When Lincoln returned, Denton Offutt, who had contracted for the trip, opened a store and hired Lincoln as the clerk. Lincoln's frontier humor—with a share of vulgarity—made him a celebrity.

The world's largest economies in the year Lincoln settled in New Salem were China and India. An industrial crescendo was driving growth in Europe and sending floods of immigrants to the United States, while opening global trade routes. European nations were moving ahead of the Asian nations and were providing a significant market for raw materials including the South's export-driven cotton crop, which reached $29 million annually. One-third of the South's population was black slaves.

Initially Europeans had introduced slavery in the Americas. But in the early 1800s, New York City emerged as the world's slave trading capital and a national financial center. A ban on slave trading was not enforced. Profitable slave vessels were funded chiefly in New York and launched from New England ports. Sugar, heavily labor intensive, was a magnet. Imported slaves were taken primarily to Cuba and Brazil. Others were brought directly to Charleston or smuggled into New Orleans.

Abe Lincoln studied intensively the nation's politics of this time. Andrew Jackson triumphed over President John Quincy Adams. A frontier soldier, Jackson's victory over the British in the Battle of New Orleans made him a national hero. Yet Abe rejected Jacksonian democracy and chose to follow the famed Kentucky Whig, Senator Henry Clay, whom he idolized. Like Clay, Lincoln favored the national bank, the protective tariff, and federal support for roads, canals, and rivers.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Abraham Lincoln's Path to Reelection in 1864 by Fred J. Martin Jr.. Copyright © 2013 MARTIN 1988 REVOCABLE TRUST 12/23/88. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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Edition details

• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1491835311
• ISBN 13: 9781491835319
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 532