Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [173]
WHILE SEWARD PREPARED for his grand tour, Lincoln remained in Springfield. In deference to political tradition and to his own judgment that further public statements could only damage his prospects, he decided against a personal speaking tour. Recognizing that his cluttered law office could not accommodate the flood of visitors eager to see him, he moved his headquarters to the governor’s reception room at the State House.
Initially, Lincoln’s sole assistant was John Nicolay, a twenty-eight-year-old German-American immigrant who had worked for three years as a clerk in the secretary of state’s office. Lincoln had often visited the serious-minded Nicolay when searching out the latest election figures maintained in the office. After the convention, Lincoln had asked Nicolay to be his private secretary, “a call to service,” Nicolay’s daughter, Helen, later noted, “that lasted until his hair grew white and the powers of life ran down.”
With Nicolay’s help, Lincoln answered letters, received hundreds, perhaps thousands, of visitors from all parts of the North, talked with politicians, and contributed to a short campaign biography that sold more than a million copies. From his impromptu headquarters at the State House, Lincoln would engineer many aspects of his campaign. The telegraph wires allowed for fairly swift communication to political battlegrounds. Confidential messages were sent by mail, carried by personal emissaries, and given to political visitors. Most of these meetings are lost to history, but those that were recorded reveal Lincoln as a skillful politician, formulating and guiding his own campaign strategy.
“He sat down beside me on the sofa,” wrote a correspondent from Utica, New York, “and commenced talking about political affairs in my own State with a knowledge of details which surprised me. I found that he was more conversant with some of our party performances in Oneida County than I could have desired.” He “can not only discuss ably the great democratic principle of our Government,” wrote a newspaperman from Missouri, “but at the same time tell how to navigate a vessel, maul a rail, or even to dress a deer-skin.” Each correspondent’s impression was quickly forwarded to the newspapers, the principal conduits between candidates and the public.
To counter the savage caricatures of Lincoln in Democratic papers as semiliterate, ignorant, an uncultured buffoon, homely, and awkward, Republican journalists were dispatched to Springfield to write positive stories about Lincoln, his educated wife, Mary, and their dignified home. Newspapers that had supported Seward swiftly transferred their allegiance to the new leader of the Republican Party, and utilized every occasion to extol their candidate and attack the opposition.
Lincoln and his team doubtless controlled the “line” out of Springfield that reverberated in Republican papers across the nation. After spending an evening at the Lincoln home, the correspondent from the Utica Morning Herald reported that “an air of quiet refinement pervaded the place. You would have known instantly that she who presided over that modest household was a true type of the American lady.” As for Lincoln, “he has all the marks of a mind that scans closely, canvasses thoroughly, concludes deliberately, and holds to such conclusions unflinchingly.”
“Ten thousand inquiries will be made as to the looks, the habits, tastes and other characteristics of Honest Old Abe,” the Chicago Press and Tribune wrote. “We anticipate a few of them…. Always clean, he is never fashionable; he is careless but not slovenly…. In his personal habits, Mr. Lincoln is as simple as a child…his food is plain and nutritious. He never drinks intoxicating liquors of any sort…. He is not addicted to tobacco…. If Mr. Lincoln is elected President, he will carry but little that is ornamental to the White House. The country must accept his sincerity, his ability and his honesty,