As I've mentioned in various other articles — Lincoln was very unpopular. Not just in the South, but very, very, unpopular in the North and the Midwest.
In this article, rather than simply allude to his unpopularity, I review the evidence for that claim.
My hope is to demonstrate not simply that Lincoln had a low "approval rating," but that he was vehemently and universally despised.
The hatred of Lincoln in his own time is so obvious and so apparent that it comes as close to a historical fact as virtually anything could be, so it’s curious why no one knows about it.
Assuming I succeed in convincing you of the severity of the public opinion against Lincoln, then the significance of this fact becomes immediate:
If our common impression of history can be so wrong about something so historically evident, what else might we be taking for granted about our history?
That is a question I hope you will ask, and possibly answer, for yourself.
But first, let's take a leisurely look at Lincoln's hate mail...
Lincoln's Election
"The Illustrious Honest Old Abe has continued during the last week to make a fool of himself and to mortify and shame the intelligent people of this great nation. His speeches have demonstrated the fact that ... he is no more capable of becoming a statesman, nay, even a moderate one, than the braying ass can become a noble lion. People now marvel how it came to pass that Mr. Lincoln should have been selected as the representative man of any party. His weak, wishy-washy, namby-pamby efforts, imbecile in matter, disgusting in manner, have made us the laughing stock of the whole world. The European powers will despise us because we have no better material out of which to make a President. The truth is, Lincoln is only a moderate lawyer and in the larger cities of the Union could pass for no more than a facetious pettifogger. Take him from his vocation and he loses even these small characteristics and indulges in simple twaddle which would disgrace a well bred school boy."
No, despite remarkable similarities, this isn't some tirade against Joe Biden that I manufactured to fit Lincoln.
Nor is this quote written by some racist Southern news journal. This was printed on the eve of Lincoln's 1861 inauguration, by the Salem Advocate, a newspaper published in Lincoln's own neighborhood of central Illinois.
This quote, far from being the lone-voice of an isolated dissenter, represents the spirit of the North at the time just before Lincoln's presidency began.
The Springfield Republican, a very influential newspaper of Massachusetts, published vicious criticisms of Lincoln both before and throughout his presidency.
America's most famous public speaker of the day, Edward Everett, wrote of Lincoln in his diary:
He is evidently a person of very inferior cast of character, wholly unequal to the crisis.
Congressman Francis Adams wrote of the mood in Washington ahead of Lincoln's inauguration:
His speeches have fallen like a wet blanket here. They put to flight all notions of greatness.
Lincoln actually secretly snuck into Washington on a midnight train in order to avoid assassination. That’s how unpopular he was before he ever got started.
This undignified entry into the capital city sparked an even greater sense of resentment for the new president-elect.
The Brooklyn Eagle suggested that the president deserved,
The deepest disgrace that the crushing indignation of a whole people can inflict.
The New York Tribune commented that "Mr, Lincoln may live a hundred years without having so good a chance to die." Dark stuff.
The obvious question is — if Lincoln was so unpopular, then why was he elected in the first place? Let’s take a look.
He had won the 1860 election with an extremely low amount of the popular vote — just 39 percent.
How did he pull off the election? Most historians attribute his win to the fact that three other candidates split the vote.
So though he won by a plurality of votes, it was the poorest win of any presidential candidate in history.
Indeed, he won a smaller percentage of the popular vote than even most losers of two-party elections.
Henry Adams stated that at the time of Lincoln's inauguration. "not a third of the House" supported the president. (This would only get worse).
The New York Herald estimated that only 25 percent of the people who had voted for him in November still supported him by February.
The “Great Proclamator”
Many Lincoln-sympathizers suggest that Lincoln struggled in the first 18 months of office due to his lack of experience “administrating” anything.
Remember, Lincoln's only real management experience was his two-person law office.
The time of the fumbling "Abe" came to an end, supposedly, at the Emancipation Proclamation. At this point, Lincoln historians contend, Lincoln became the Great Proclamator — the Great Emancipator! *crowds cheer in triumph*
The reality at the time, however, could not have been more different.
It is worth-noting right away that the Midwest was a huge reason Lincoln was first elected at all. On an related note, the Midwest was also very pro-slavery.
Lincoln had won the presidency in large part by his many public assurances to the Midwest states, like Ohio, that he would not abolish slavery.
The South had seceded from the Union on fears that Lincoln was a tax-hungry dictator who would come after their slaves. The Midwest had similar fears, but had stayed in the Union, believing Lincoln’s assurances.
The Midwest states had been fighting the war on the (correct) belief that it was about taxes and government authority, not that it would end slavery.
Now, suddenly, Lincoln had made it about slavery, which risked the Midwest joining the Confederacy.
This was a serious problem for the Union— Troops from the Midwest comprised more than half of Lincoln’s forces.
Yes, the supposedly "Northern" armies were mostly recruited out of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
Ohio alone made up 25% of all of Lincoln's soldiers. Not to mention, he needed these states for re-election, so risking their ire could be disastrous both militarily and politically.
How, then, did the Midwest react to Lincoln's "Great Emancipating"?
The Chicago Times branded it
A monstrous usurpation, a criminal wrong, and an act of national suicide.
Ohio's The Crisis wrote
Is not this a Death Blow to the Hope of Union? ... We have no doubt that this Proclamation seals the fate of this Union as it was and the Constitution as it is.… The time is brief when we shall have a DICTATOR PROCLAIMED, for the Proclamation can never be carried out except under the iron rule of the worst kind of despotism.
The secretary responsible for reading the President's mail said of the letters piling up in his office:
"[Dictator] is what the Opposition press and orators of all sizes are calling him. Witness, also, the litter on the floor and the heaped-up wastebaskets. There is no telling how many editors and how many other penmen within these past few days have undertaken to assure him that this is a war for the Union only, and that they never gave him any authority to run it as an Abolition war. They never, never told him that he might set the negroes free, and, now that he has done so, or futilely pretended to do so, he is a more unconstitutional tyrant and a more odious dictator than ever he was before. ... They tell him many other things, and, among them, they tell him that the army will fight no more, and that the hosts of the Union will indignantly disband rather than be sacrificed upon the bloody altar of fanatical Abolitionism."
Hardly the response one expects from the supposedly Abolitionist Union.
In the midterm elections (just 2 months after the Proclamation), amid fears of Union armies disbanding, the states which had won Lincoln the election — Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, New York, and Pennsylvania — all abandoned him.
They sent droves of Democrat congressmen to Washington. Dismayed, Alexander McClure of Pennsylvania wrote
I could not conceive it possible for Lincoln to successfully administer the government and prosecute the war with the six most important loyal States declaring against him at the polls.
By January of 1863 Lincoln had a desertion crisis — thousands of soldiers were leaving the Union armies due to the Emancipation.
As winter approached, Lincoln was alone.
A.G. Riddle of Ohio wrote in February of 1863 that the "criticism, reflection, reproach, and condemnation" of Lincoln was so severe that only two members of congress still defended him.
Richard Henry Dana, a prominent author and lawyer at the time, wrote of Washington that February:
As to the politics of Washington, the most striking thing is the absence of personal loyalty to the President. It does not exist. He has no admirers, no enthusiastic supporters, none to bet on his head. If a Republican convention were to be held to-morrow, he would not get the vote of a State.
His unpopularity culminated in massive riots and insurrection in the rebellious state of — New York?
That's right, next to the Civil War itself, the New York insurrection of 1863 is the largest insurgency in US history. Incredibly, Lincoln would preside over both.
Lincoln's Re-Election
So the now comes the obvious rejoinder:
Well, if Lincoln was so unpopular Eric, then why was he re-elected? Hmmm?
This is probably going to come as a shock, but Lincoln won the nomination.... by cheating.
Oh come on! Not another election denial!
No, seriously. He was actually very open about it.
Lincoln had the means to control the nomination by stacking the conference with appointees. The delegates were essentially all people who worked for Lincoln in Washington.
Virtually every Republican knew he had cheated to secure the nomination, but nobody really cared because it was so obvious that he would lose the election anyways.
Indeed Lincoln was almost overthrown by his own party before the election.
In July of 1864, when the South was supposedly weak and defeated according to conventional history, Washington itself was nearly captured by a Southern army.
(As an interesting side note, even at this point most of the world believed the South would win the war. Gold prices were skyrocketing in the summer of 1864 as speculators bet against a Union victory)
This embarrassment led to the radical Wade-Davis Manifesto. Republicans charged their own nominee with "grave Executive usurpation" and "a studied outrage on the legislative authority."
The Wade-Davis Manifesto is to this day the greatest challenge to any president's authority from the members of their own party. The goal was to overthrow and imprison the president.
The Richmond Examiner reported
The fact begins to shine out clear that Abraham Lincoln is lost; that he will never be President again .… The obscene ape of Illinois is about to be deposed from the Washington purple, and the White House will echo to his little jokes no more.
If all this is true the question remains — how did Lincoln win re-election? In a word, Sherman won.
In August, the democrats pushed General George McClellan as their nominee, who ran on an anti-war platform. “Peace at any cost.”
The Republicans could not abide; and when Sherman announced his "capture" (pronounced annihilation) of Atlanta they finally decided to rally around the President.
The Union was too committed to the war to see a president swept into office and undo four years of fighting. Sherman's victory gave the Union hope that the war might end on their terms.
As one New York Republican put it
No man was ever elected to an important office who will get so many unwilling and indifferent votes as [Lincoln]. The cause takes the man along.
In the end, Lincoln won with virtually the same popular vote, but by an astronomic lead in electoral votes (212 - 21).
Conclusion
Despite his widespread unpopularity, Lincoln won his re-election. He won on the basis of the war, which the Union was not willing to give up on.
Yet, as we all-know, his presidency was at an end in any case. On April 14th, 1865, John Wilkes-Booth assassinated Lincoln while screaming "sic semper Tyrannus!" (thus always to tyrants).
It was only after the death of Lincoln, that his popularity grew. He was killed on Good Friday, and preachers all across the country who had once reviled Lincoln began praising him as an "American Moses."
The Republicans seized on the political opportunity, and paraded Lincoln's body around the country to stir up feelings that Lincoln had died a martyr of the cause of the Union.
Lincoln's funeral parade may well have cemented the Republican electoral dominance that succeeded it for decades to come.
Lincoln was now mythologized, off limits to criticism from Democrat opponents.
Historians, however, have not forgotten the Lincoln of just a few months earlier, if perhaps they have excused him of any wrongdoing.
Just months before he became a saint, Lincoln was being pushed out of office by his own party, and was likely facing serious criminal charges.
How can the historical picture of a president be so different from the one we have of him today? Myth and propaganda go a long way to changing the public opinion, especially in a state-run schooling system.
If something this historically perspicuous can be virtually lost to the general public, then imagine how many critical details of our history are likewise lost.
It's a chilling realization. Thankfully, there are independent bloggers "out there" to help uncover the truth.....
As always, thanks for reading!
Further Reading
The Problem with Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo
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