The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [124]
The debates also exposed fissures within the Republican majority. Moderate Republicans—the majority of the party—deplored what they considered Radical “fanaticism.” William P. Fessenden of Maine spoke with annoyance of the “gentlemen on this floor” who seemed to think “that they are the representatives of all righteousness.” What was clear, however, as Senator Timothy O. Howe of Wisconsin advised his nephew, a colonel in the Union army, was that change had become the order of the day: “Don’t hitch yourself to any measure. Don’t anchor yourself to any policy. Don’t tie up to any platform. The very foundations of the government are cracking…. No mere policy or platform can outlast this storm.”58
Recognizing that the war had created a fluid and unpredictable situation, Lincoln tried to keep track of public opinion. He read newspapers and some of the letters that poured into the White House, and inquired about popular sentiment from the innumerable individuals and delegations who waited on him. He resented Radical attacks on his policies, at one point referring to “the Jacobinism in Congress.” But he also did what he could to avoid a split in the party. He used patronage to try to solidify the new and still-fragile Republican coalition, adhering to the motto “justice for all.” Recognizing the importance of winning antislavery opinion abroad to the Union cause, Lincoln appointed veteran Radicals and abolitionists to diplomatic positions. Zebina Eastman, the most prominent Illinois abolitionist, Lincoln told Secretary of State Seward, was “just the man to reach the sympathies of the English people.” Seward named Eastman the U.S. consul at Bristol. Radical Republican appointments included Joshua R. Giddings as consul general in Canada, William Slade as consul at Nice, and ambassadors Charles Francis Adams in Britain, Carl Schurz in Spain, Cassius M. Clay in Russia, George G. Fogg in Switzerland, and Anson Burlingame in China.59
Lincoln appears to have used his conversations with the stream of visitors who came to the White House to hear various points of view without committing himself. Regardless of their position on the political spectrum, most came away persuaded that Lincoln was on their side. George Bancroft reported that Lincoln told him during a conversation in early December 1861 that slavery had already “received a mortal wound.” In January, the abolitionist Moncure D. Conway called on Lincoln along with W. H. Channing, the chaplain of the Senate, to promote compensated emancipation. Four years later, he recalled Lincoln saying that “when the hour comes for dealing with slavery, I trust I shall be willing to act.” But by the same token, the banker and railroad entrepreneur Henry D. Bacon, a far more conservative man than Conway, reported after a conversation with the president, “Lincoln thinks just as I do about the disposition of the slaves of the rebels.” Sometimes, as a member of one delegation that pressed him for action against slavery related, Lincoln simply “told us a lot of stories.” One of his favorites concerned a group of travelers in Illinois who debated for hours how to cross a distant river until one declared, “I never cross a river until I come to it.”60
Despite heated criticisms of the administration (Frederick Douglass’s lead editorial for January 1862 bore the title “The Slave Power Still Omnipotent at Washington”), important parts of the abolitionist press recognized Lincoln as “drifting” toward further action against slavery. One sign was the administration’s reinvigoration of efforts to suppress the illegal slave trade from Africa. On assuming office, Lincoln