Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [327]
It was money well spent. Voters in both states defeated the Copperhead candidates by clear majorities, ensuring that the great war measures would be sustained in the next House of Representatives. The results were “a stunning blow to the Copperheads,” the New York Times noted. The surprising triumph “puts the Administration safely round the cape, and insures it clear seas to the end.” John Hay reveled in the thought that the elections had “frightened” and “disheartened” the rebels and their sympathizers, who had expected war weariness to depress voter sentiment. “I rejoiced with my whole heart in your loyal victory,” Stanton told an administration supporter in Connecticut. “It was in my judgement the most important election held since the War commenced.”
“The feeling of the country is I think every day becoming more hopeful and buoyant,” Nicolay told his fiancée, “a very healthy reaction against Copperheadism becoming everywhere manifest.” Noah Brooks detected a similar shift in mood. “The glamour which the insidious enemies of the Union had for a while cast over the minds of the people of the North is disappearing,” he noted. The Copperheads “find that they have gone too fast and too far” in talking of a compromise peace, “and they have brought upon themselves the denunciations” of Republicans and loyal “War Democrats” alike.
This was precisely what Lincoln had anticipated in the dark days of January when he told Browning that “the people” would never sustain the Copperheads’ call for peace on any terms. He had let the reaction against the defeatist propositions grow, then worked to mobilize the renewed Union spirit.
AMID THE CLAMOROUS OPPOSITION in Congress, the continued threats of intervention from abroad, and the stalemate in the war, Lincoln remained remarkably calm, good-natured, and self-controlled. While Chase confessed to an unremitting anxiety and Stanton suffered from repeated bouts of exhaustion, Lincoln found numerous ways to sustain his spirits. No matter how brutally trying his days, he still found time in the evenings to call at Seward’s house, where he was assured of good conversation and much-needed relaxation.
Seward appreciated Lincoln’s original mind and his keen wit. Fanny told of an intimate evening in their parlor when Lincoln engaged the entire family with an amusing tale about young women during the War of 1812 who made belts with engraved mottoes to give their lovers departing for battle. When one young girl suggested “Liberty or Death!,” her soldier protested that the phrase was “rather strong.” Couldn’t she make it “Liberty or be crippled” instead? Although Seward laughed as uproariously as Lincoln, it is certain that neither Chase nor the serious-minded Stanton would have enjoyed such broad humor. Nor would either have approved of the grim levity of Lincoln’s response to a gentleman who had waited for weeks to receive a pass to Richmond. “Well,” said Lincoln, “I would be very happy to oblige you, if my passes were respected: but the fact is, sir, I have, within the past two years, given passes to two hundred and fifty thousand men to go to Richmond, and not one has got there yet.”
Like Lincoln, Seward usually possessed a profound self-assurance that enabled him to withstand an endless, savage barrage of criticism. Noah Brooks noted that he was unfailingly cheerful, “smoking cigars always, ruffled or excited never, astute, keen to perceive a joke, appreciative of a good thing, and fond of ‘good victuals.’” Newsmen loved to hear Seward’s stories and he loved to tell them. At one dinner party, he talked nonstop from five-thirty to eleven o’clock. What left the deeper impression upon his listeners, however, was Seward’s unconditional love for Lincoln, whom he praised “without limitation” as “the best