Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [91]
Nonetheless, fallout from Chase’s Senate election eventually found its way into the widely circulated pages of Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune. Editorializing on the machinations involved, Greeley declared that he did “not see how men who desire to maintain a decent reputation can countenance or profit by it.” Indeed, the suspicions and mistrust engendered by the peculiar circumstances of the Senate election would never be wholly erased. “It lost to him at once and forever the confidence of every Whig of middle age in Ohio,” a fellow politician observed. “Its shadow never wholly dispelled, always fell upon him, and hovered near and darkened his pathway at the critical places in his political after life.” The Whigs, and their later counterparts, the Republicans, would deny Chase the united support of the Ohio delegation so vital to his hopes for the presidential nomination in 1860. And Chase, for his part, would never forgive them.
Showing little intuitive sense of how others might view his maneuvering, Chase failed to appreciate that with each party shift, he betrayed old associates and made lifelong enemies. Certainly, his willingness to sever bonds and forge new alliances, though at times courageous and visionary, was out of step with the political custom of the times.
Though troubled by the criticism attending his election, Chase was thrilled with his victory. So was Charles Sumner, who would join Chase two years later in the Senate by way of a similar alliance between Free-Soilers and independent Democrats in Massachusetts. “I can hardly believe it,” Sumner wrote. “It does seem to me that this is ‘the beginning of the end.’ Your election must influence all the Great West. Still more your presence in the Senate will give an unprecedented impulse to the discussion of our cause.”
When Chase took his seat in the handsome Senate chamber in March 1849, nearly twenty years had elapsed since his early days as a poor teacher living on the margins of the city’s social whirl. Now, as a renowned political organizer, prominent lawyer, and fabled antislavery crusader, Chase could claim a place in the first tier of Washington society. William Wirt would have been proud. For a brief moment, Chase’s relentless need “to be first wherever I may be” was sated.
As the 1840s drew to a close, William Henry Seward and Salmon P. Chase had moved toward the summit of political power in the United States Senate. Edward Bates, though spending most of his days at his country home with his ever-growing family, had become a widely respected national figure, considered a top prospect for a variety of high political posts. Abraham Lincoln, by contrast, was practicing law, regaling his fellow lawyers on the circuit with an endless stream of anecdotes, and reflecting with silent absorption on the great issues of the day.
POLITICAL MAP OF THE UNITED STATES, CIRCA 1856
CHAPTER 5
THE TURBULENT FIFTIES
THE AMERICA OF 1850 was a largely rural nation of about 23 million people in which politics and public issues—at every level of government—were of consuming interest. Citizen participation in public life far exceeded that of later years. Nearly three fourths of those eligible to vote participated in the two presidential elections of the decade.
The principal weapon of political combatants was the speech. A gift for oratory was the key to success in politics. Even as a child, Lincoln had honed his skills by addressing his companions from a tree stump. Speeches on important occasions were exhaustively researched and closely reasoned,