Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [178]
Recognizing that much of the positive news he received from friends was biased, Lincoln implored his supporters to give straightforward accounts of his prospects in each state. He worried about reports from Maine, New York, and Chicago, and brooded over the lack of solid information from Pennsylvania. His political objectives in the Keystone State were to establish his soundness on the tariff issue and heal the ominous divisions between the followers of Cameron and Curtin, the gubernatorial candidate. Lincoln always understood the importance of what he described as “the dry, and irksome labor” of building organizations to get out the vote, while most politicians preferred “parades, and shows, and monster meetings.”
He enthusiastically supported Carl Schurz’s “excellent plan” for mobilizing the German-American vote, and assured Schurz that “your having supported Gov. Seward, in preference to myself in the convention, is not even remembered by me for any practical purpose…to the extent of our limited acquaintance, no man stands nearer my heart than yourself.” A large part of the German-American vote would go to Lincoln, aiding his victories in the Northwest.
Although concerned with progress in all the Northern states, he focused his attention primarily on the critical West. He urged Caleb Smith to do his utmost in Indiana, believing that nothing would affect the November results in Illinois more strongly than the momentum provided by an Indiana victory in the October state elections. In July, he sent Nicolay to an Indiana supporter who wished to prevent a Bell ticket from being placed on the ballot. “Ascertain what he wants,” Lincoln instructed Nicolay. “On what subjects he would converse with me. And the particulars if he will give them. Is an interview indispensable? Tell him my motto is ‘Fairness to all,’ but commit me to nothing.”
Having pledged to make no new statement on public issues, Lincoln had surrogates present excerpts from his previous speeches to reinforce his positions. He had Judge Davis show Cameron selections of pro-tariff speeches he had made in the 1840s, and then cautioned Cameron: “Before this reaches you, my very good friend, Judge Davis, will have called upon you, and, perhaps, shown you the ‘scraps.’…Nothing about these, must get into the news-papers.” This tone reveals Lincoln’s keen awareness that notes from unpublished thirteen-year-old speeches stretched his vow of silence, but he hoped the assurances they provided would corral Cameron’s powerful influence in Pennsylvania. Cameron replied that he was pleased by the content of Lincoln’s earlier writings.
To a correspondent who sought his intervention in the discord between Cameron and Curtin, Lincoln replied: “I am slow to listen to criminations among friends, and never expouse their quarrels on either side…allow by-gones to be by-gones, and look to the present & future only.” Yet at the same time, he informed Leonard Swett, who was preparing a trip to Pennsylvania, that he was very concerned about former congressman Joseph Casey’s disclosures that the Cameron faction lacked confidence in the Pennsylvania Central Committee, controlled by Curtin. “Write Mr. Casey,” Lincoln urged, “suggest to him that great caution and delicacy of action, is necessary in that matter.” Meanwhile, Republican money flowed into Pennsylvania. “After all,” wrote Republican National Committeeman John Goodrich of Massachusetts, “Pennsylvania is the Sebastopol we must take.”
Lincoln turned his political attention to every state where his campaign experienced difficulty. Hearing that two Republican seats might be