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CHAPTER FOUR
ABOLITIONISTS AND THE 1864 U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
At a Fourth of July celebration in 1863, Wendell Phillips uttered another of his
predictions with regard to the outcome of the war. “The next year,” he said, “is, as I
believe, to be the climax of the struggle. Not that we are to conquer yet: a longer battle
than that is before us; but the next year is to decide whether this is to remain a
revolution….”1 By “revolution,” Phillips probably meant to refer to the opportunity he
recognized, created by the Southern rebellion, for the federal government to abolish
slavery and help to reshape black-white relations in the South. Yet his use of the term is
both poignant and revealing. From the outbreak of the war in 1861, Garrisonian
abolitionists in particular had effectively abandoned their former stance of valuing liberty
above country. As between the Union and the Confederacy, the vast majority of
abolitionists sided with the Union. On the one hand, that move appears logical given
that, as Garrison often pointed out, the federal government that they had formerly
criticized so harshly was now at war with the Slave Power. On the other hand, however,
their having so hastily yielded their critical posture to declare their support for the
government served to muffle and cloud the grounds on which they might then urge the
government to strike decisively against slavery. The government’s strikes against slavery
up to that point were still not as decisive as abolitionists wished, while the latter
cautiously confined their criticism of the Union government within limits. Thus
Phillips’s hearers might well have asked themselves, ‘whose revolution?’
1
“Speech of Wendell Phillips, Esq., At Framingham, July 4, 1863,” Liberator Jul. 10, 1863, p.111.
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The anti-abolition Boston Post likened Phillips to Danton in the Reign of Terror
during the French Revolution. A few months earlier, Phillips himself had expressed his
fear of a military coup by Union generals opposed to the Emancipation Proclamation.
For Garrison, nothing fulfilled fears of a Reign of Terror so much as the New York City
draft riot that followed shortly after Phillips’s speech. Hence, a number of Phillips’s
contemporaries, unsurprisingly, were using the word ‘revolution’ to describe some or
other of the changes taking place around them. And, like just about everything else in the
midst of the Civil War, the word was used at one and the same time to refer to
conflicting, or opposite, things.2
But in at least one sense, Phillips’s prediction proved true. When Garrisonian
abolitionists abandoned their revolutionary doctrine of disunionism, they did so because
the Union government now had motive, means, and opportunity to abolish slavery.
Inevitably however, the war notwithstanding, the government’s course would be shaped
and directed by the very truck and barter of party politics from which Garrisonians had
long claimed to hold themselves aloof. As Phillips spoke that Fourth of July in 1863, he
had already begun contemplating his next bold move as the country’s best-known agitator
(second only to Garrison): he and a number of other reformers would attempt to
revolutionize electoral politics.
The effort to elect John Frémont president was less about actually trying to install
Frémont himself in the White House, and rather more of an attempt to define a new role
for self-described radical reformers vis-à-vis the political process. Certainly by the start
Boston Post, “The Lesson of a Night,” reprinted in Liberator Feb. 6, 1863, front page; “Speech of
Wendell Phillips At the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society,” Liberator Feb. 13,
1863, p.26; “The Reign of Terror Inaugurated,” Liberator July 17, 1863, p.114. President Lincoln’s
Postmaster General, Montgomery Blair, also likened Phillips to the French revolutionaries, Liberator Jun.
26, 1863, p.102.
2
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of the war, if not before, Wendell Phillips had become one of the most sought-after
speakers on the lyceum circuit. Frequently proclaiming his faith in “the people,” he had
come to believe he possessed considerable power to shape public opinion.3 The people,
Phillips believed, could be brought to demand universal emancipation and equal rights
for black Americans, and overwhelm the petty horse-trading of the party functionaries
(the traditional means to presidential nomination) to elect to the presidency someone of
their choice.
Nor was this some wild idea of Phillips’s alone. A good many Republicans, both
in and outside Congress, were growing increasingly dissatisfied with Lincoln’s conduct
of the war. At the same time, a small but vocal body of German immigrants had rallied
to Frémont’s cause against critics in both the Union army and the Republican party; the
Germans nurtured similar aspirations about circumventing entrenched party hacks and
structures to elect a president who would represent their interests. The well-known
woman’s rights reformer Elizabeth Cady Stanton, long allied with abolitionists, shared
Phillips’s assessment of the possibilities for social change offered by the war.
Determined that such change should benefit women, Cady Stanton too joined the
Frémont movement. For much of the election year, their movement gained momentum.
Garrison, however, did not join this movement, nor did many of his followers.
Yet Garrison in his own way perceived that events had ushered in a new order. His
efforts to integrate Garrisonian abolitionism into the mainstream of Northern public
3
Phillips frequently remarked on his growing influence in letters written from the lecturing circuit to his
wife Ann, Crawford Blagden Collection, Wendell Phillips Papers, Series IV, Folders 7-9 (1854-1874),
Houghton Library, Harvard University. [All subsequent citations of Phillips' papers at Houghton are to this
collection.] On his lecturing, see e.g., Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men
Who Made It (New York: Knopf, 1948), p.140; Oscar Sherwin, Prophet of Liberty: The Life and Times of
Wendell Phillips (New York: Bookman Associates, 1958), esp. ch. 12, “King of the Lyceum.” At the 1864
New England Anti-Slavery Convention, during the height of the election controversy, Phillips referred to
himself as "a creator of public opinion," Liberator June 10, 1864, front page.
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opinion represented no less a departure from abolitionists’ former nonpartisanship than
Phillips’s third-party activity. In the end, everyone emerged from the election
disillusioned, and many of these constituencies stood divided. Among Garrisonian
abolitionists, the divisions would prove bitter and long-lasting, despite a shared
determination to downplay them. The election year had indeed decided “whether this is
to remain a revolution,” and the answer—as regards a united effort to achieve universal
emancipation, equal rights for all, and a more inclusive participatory democracy—was
no.
Abolitionists had disagreed before 1864. Around Garrison's and Phillips's
differing views on Lincoln's re-election, however, converged all the issues that had been
simmering since the emergence of the Republican party ten years earlier: the centrality of
equal rights for black Americans to abolitionists' mission; the related questions of when
the antislavery societies might safely disband and the place of freedmen's aid in that
mission; abolitionists' relationship with and posture toward the Republican party—all of
which challenged white abolitionists' understanding of themselves as disinterested as well
as their sense of what "radicalism" signified in an era of shifting loyalties.
The 1864 election dispute thus constitutes a fulcrum in the divisions and disputes
that rocked the self-described radical reformers between 1854 and 1870. The differences
over the election grew very bitter; it is clear from the sources that abolitionists' passions
ran so high because all of them believed that decisions made now would shape the
freedmen's status for years to come. As a result of their dispute, so-called radical
reformers no longer recognized one another as fellow radicals or trusted their judgment;
they even accused one another of appropriating the radical label in order to disguise and
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advance conservative ends. Nonetheless, in many respects the dispute remains puzzling
as to what precisely the grounds of difference were; who took which stance and why;
what so upset other erstwhile comrades; and most of all as the passions ran so high, why
there was not more direct, forthright engagement with the substantive differences that
underlay them. Despite this reticence in the sources, however, there is no doubt that the
dispute over the 1864 election severely weakened the reformers' effort to achieve
universal emancipation, equal rights for all, and a more inclusive participatory
democracy.
Emergence of the 1864 Election Controversy
Up through 1863, Garrison and Phillips had not seemed to disagree significantly.
But in December of that year, in his message to Congress, President Lincoln had sketched
a preliminary basis for the re-admission of conquered Southern states: where 10 per cent
of those eligible to vote under the state’s 1860 constitution could be found to be loyal to
the Union and accept emancipation, they could assemble and begin re-constituting civil
government in that state.4 At the annual meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
Society the following January, the two abolitionist leaders differed openly in their
assessments of Lincoln's course. Garrison objected to a resolution proposed by Phillips
which began, “Resolved, That in our opinion, the government in its haste is ready to
sacrifice the interests and honor of the North to a sham peace….” Garrison objected that
the resolution represented “an impeachment of motives.” He moved to amend the
resolution to read, “Resolved, That in our opinion, the government, in its haste, is in
4
James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Ballantine, 1988), pp.
698-702; Eric Foner, Reconstruction, 1863-1877: America’s Unfinished Revolution (New York: Harper &
Row, 1988), pp.46-47. The president's message appeared in the Liberator of Dec. 18, 1863, front page.
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danger of sacrificing, etc.” Phillips rejected Garrison’s amendment. In the ensuing
discussion, both men had praise for Lincoln as well as for Frémont. But Garrison
declared that President Lincoln stood more publicly and firmly committed to
emancipation than Frémont or the other well-known Union generals whom Phillips had
praised in his speech (and who were already being spoken of as possible presidential
candidates), Grant and Butler. Whereas Garrison formerly criticized Republicans for any
compromises on slavery, here he offered as one reason for his support of Lincoln, that
"No other candidate would probably carry so strong a vote in opposition to copperhead
democracy." Some of Garrison's other comments also show how it can be difficult to
discern when the two men's views diverged. He brought up Phillips’s earlier speeches in
support of Lincoln (including, he said, a speech given only the night before), and noted
that Phillips “had also eulogized Frémont.” Acknowledging that he himself had formerly
praised Frémont, Garrison explained that Frémont’s failure to say a single word in favor
of the Emancipation Proclamation had “lessened [his] interest” in the General.5
Phillips acknowledged “some hope lies in the fact that Lincoln’s obstinacy is not
so long as the course of events." But, he protested, "I cannot trust him in reconstruction."
The central theme both in resolutions he presented to the meeting as well as in his
exchange with Garrison, turned on the president's evident willingness to leave the freed
disfranchised, in a "technical liberty which…is no better than apprenticeship." Pointing
out that the Massachusetts Society stood committed to securing equal rights for black
Americans, Phillips concluded of the president, "If he is our pilot, I shall criticize his
capacity to carry us into port." At the same time, Phillips seemed to shrink from framing
“Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society,” National Anti-Slavery Standard
[hereafter: Standard], Feb. 6, 1864.
5
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the discussion in electoral terms. "To mention the contingencies which are possible
under such a policy is not to impeach motives…. I am not here,” he insisted, “to oppose
the re-nomination of Abraham Lincoln.”6
If Garrison and Phillips' differences thus seem plain, here Garrison's position
appears strange. Pointing out that Lincoln could beat any candidate of the anti-abolition
Democrats seems consistent enough. But questions turn on what was not said. Toward
Phillips's speech, remarks, and resolutions all insisting on equality for black Americans,
Garrison appears from the papers to have offered only silence. Nor, it seems, did anyone
ask him about it. He acknowledged that Lincoln moved more slowly than he, Garrison,
would have wished toward emancipation, but declared his belief that Lincoln's steps in
that direction were sure and would never be reversed. But on any aspect of freedmen's or
other blacks' rights and freedoms after emancipation—nothing.
The fact of abolitionists’ differences about the administration was picked up by
the Associated Press and subsequently appeared in newspapers all over the country.7
In
the weeks following the meeting the antislavery press hastened to deny reports that
Phillips and Garrison had entered the campaign as partisans respectively for Frémont and
Lincoln.8 Of perhaps more significance than the tenor of the men’s exchange was the
Society’s vote on the resolutions. The Standard reported it thus: “[Garrison’s]
amendment was declared to be lost, but the number of those voting on either side (quite
6
"Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society."
Garrison to Horace Greeley [editor of New York Tribune] Feb. 5, 1864, in Letters of William Lloyd
Garrison, ed. Walter M. Merrill and Louis Ruchames (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard
Univ. Press, 1979, six volumes) V:185; Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison, William
Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879: The Story of His Life As Told By His Children, 4 vols. (New York: Century,
1889) IV:97; James M. McPherson, The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War
and Reconstruction (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1964), p.261.
8
See “Phillips and Garrison,” Independent Feb. 4, 1864; “Garrison and Phillips” Standard, Feb. 13,
1864; Garrison, “Misrepresentations of Our Views,” Liberator, n.d., as reprinted in Standard, Mar. 5, 1864.
7
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large) was not given. The original [Phillips’s] resolution was then adopted, by almost the
same majority….”9
Phillips subsequently claimed that this vote, along with later ones,
demonstrated the Society’s support for his position as against Garrison’s.
Perhaps a sign that the atmosphere had become charged with suspicion and
distrust, more than Garrison and Phillips’s discussion at the January meeting, was the
paper’s insistence that their difference of opinion was being misrepresented to serve base
ends. A Standard editorial appeared the very next week, titled “Garrison and Phillips.”
It began, “The open and concealed enemies of Emancipation—the genuine Copperheads
and the counterfeit Republicans—have made as much as they could out of the very
moderate capital afforded them by the difference of opinion at the late meeting of the
Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society between Messrs. Garrison and Phillips.” In contrast
to earlier editorials, which acknowledged “great division of opinion among
Abolitionists,” the editorial on the election dispute went on to affirm that “Enemies and
friends may be assured that no schism exists in, or impends over, the Anti-Slavery
body.”10
This perceived danger of “open and concealed enemies of Emancipation” is key
to understanding the election controversy. Before the war, abolitionists found it fairly
easy to distinguish between those who favored or supported emancipation and equal
rights, and those who opposed them. Even with regard to Republicans, they understood
that the party’s pledge in 1860 was confined to opposing slavery’s extension into newly
forming settlements in the western territories; and they further appreciated that
9
"Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society"; the report given in the Liberator is
identical to that in the Standard, see Liberator, Feb. 5, 1864, p.23.
10
“Garrison and Phillips,” Standard, Feb. 13, 1864; compare “When Are the Anti-Slavery Societies to
Disband?” ibid., Feb. 6, 1864.
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compromise formed an inherent feature of electoral politics. As there are always
naysayers in any war, however, following the attack on Fort Sumter it was feared that not
all Northerners supported a war to force the Confederate states back into the Union, much
less a war to end slavery.11
Northerners believed to sympathize with the South were
referred to by the epithet “Copperheads.” Supporters of the war, particularly
Republicans, also frequently voiced the belief that the Democratic party harbored
substantial numbers of such Northerners whose loyalty to the Union, as well as support
for the extinction of slavery, was highly dubious. Whether or not efforts to undermine
the Union government from within were ever substantial, and whether or not
Copperheads wielded influence in and received support from the Democratic party,
plenty of abolitionists as well as Republicans spoke and wrote as though they believed
both were true.12
Once emancipation emerged as a war aim and a Republican party measure, as
well as a goal of the presidential administration, abolitionists began to articulate the
perception that some ambitious persons merely sought to appear to endorse emancipation,
as a means of courting favor with those in power in order to advance aims unrelated or
even hostile to emancipation and equal rights. For instance, abolitionists perceived
Copperhead sentiments and the attendant opposition to emancipation in Lincoln’s
commander General George B. McClellan, and already by 1862 expressed the fear that
11
See, e.g., Basil Leo Lee, Discontent in New York City, 1861-1865 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic
University of America Press, 1943).
12
On the Copperhead threat, see e.g., Jennifer L. Weber, Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln's
Opponents in the North (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2006); Frank Klement, The Limits of Dissent:
Clement L. Vallandigham and the Civil War (Lexington, KY, 1998); Richard O. Curry, “Copperheadism
and Continuity: The Anatomy of a Stereotype,” Journal of Negro History, vol. LVII, no. 1 (Jan., 1972):
29-36. On the Democratic party, see, e.g., Joel Silbey, A Respectable Minority: The Democratic Party in
the Civil War Era (New York: Norton, 1977), pp. 48, 59, 67; and Jean H. Baker, The Affairs of Party: The
Political Culture of Northern Democrats in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press,
1983), p.11.
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the Democrats would nominate him as their candidate and pursue a peace that left slavery
intact, and perhaps recognized Confederate independence as well. Significantly,
however, abolitionists also expressed the belief that opposition to emancipation was
growing within the Republican party—led, abolitionists suspected, by Secretary of State
Seward.13
Thus abolitionists’ disagreements over which of the presidential candidates
was the more committed to emancipation and equal rights were overshadowed by this
knowledge that ambitious persons were now claiming to endorse emancipation merely to
secure power in the pursuit of contrary aims. Before the election was over, abolitionists
had begun suspecting this of one another as well.
At that January meeting, one of the points Garrison raised about Frémont
concerned Frémont’s having failed publicly to express support for the Emancipation
Proclamation. Nonetheless in March, when the English abolitionist George Thompson
visited the United States, the Young Men’s Republican Union of New York City hosted a
reception in his honor, and Frémont was chosen to preside. Garrison’s letters suggest not
only that he had played a part in arranging it, but that he had done so jointly with Phillips.
To Oliver Johnson, he wrote, “Phillips will tell you what our desires are. We wish a
reception to be given to G. T. in New York, similar in character to the one that is to be
given to him here—i.e., under the auspices of loyal men of standing and character, such
as [Republican mayor of New York George] Opdyke…."14
Early in his remarks, Frémont expressed humility that he had been chosen to
preside, rather than “some one of older date in the anti-slavery struggle.” Interestingly,
13
Garrison to Johnson, Sept. 9, 1862, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, V:112; Lydia Maria Child to
Charles Sumner, June 22, 1862, Charles Sumner Correspondence; Garrison to Helen Benson Garrison,
Oct. 10, 1862, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, V:123. See also the letters cited in note 7 above.
14
Garrison to Johnson, Feb. 16, 1864, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, V:186.
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however, Frémont suggested that his selection might be apt as an illustration of the
changes which had occurred since Thompson’s last visit some twenty-odd years earlier.
He referred to himself as “one belonging to the body of the people to whom conviction
has been brought by the logic of events which forced their consideration upon every
man,” and suggested that his selection might “ai[d] our guest to realize the unanimity
with which the nation is moving to the accomplishment of its object….” Frémont
seemed to wish to imply that he had not been anti-slavery always, and even perhaps not
for very long; one wonders if this remark surprised any abolitionists. Frémont himself
was apparently confident that abolitionists would approve of his performance, for shortly
afterward he wrote to Garrison, “It is very agreeable to me that you
approve…emphatically my part in the reception of Mr. Thompson”; and he enclosed
reports of the meeting from the New York papers, adding that they had reported his own
words accurately.15
Moreover, at the conclusion of his own speech, Thompson told
Frémont that his name had become “a household word among all friends of liberty and
humanity in England,” and that millions there would rejoice to see him elected president
of the United States.16
The Frémont Movement
The origins of a coordinated movement to elect Frémont president remain
somewhat obscure. Certainly by March of 1864, abolitionists were working with German
émigrés and woman's rights activists on the campaign. Their collaboration may have
“Reception of George Thompson in New York….The Pathfinder Welcomes the Philanthropist,”
Standard Mar. 5, 1864; Frémont to Garrison, Mar. 4, 1864, Antislavery Collection, Ms.A.1.2, v.33, p.22A,
Boston Public Library.
16
“Reception of George Thompson…”
15
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marked a first in nineteenth-century U.S. presidential politics. Curiously, however, there
is very little surviving documentation—and, correspondingly, little discussion in the
scholarship—of the nature, depth, and extent of, or the reasons for, the collaboration.
This paucity extends to the interaction among these groups as well as to that of each of
them with General Frémont himself.17 Below we consider first how the German and
woman suffragist activists, respectively, understood and positioned themselves before the
start of the electoral campaign, and then proceed to their combined efforts with those of
the abolitionists. For each of the groups, what constituted radicalism seemed shifting and
unstable, in some instances appearing as the very opposite of what they had heretofore
understood as radical.
In particular, the constituencies that supported Frémont in 1864 had all been
disappointed by the Republican party. Though it had constituted a somewhat
revolutionary challenge to the party system when it emerged in the mid-1850s, reformers
now found the ruling party temporizing and hesitant. Certainly, Democrats had been well
represented in the Free Soil movement that gave rise to the Republican party. However,
with the emergence of the Republican party, Democrats before the war generally took a
softer line on slavery. Thus, antislavery people after 1854 commonly viewed the
Democracy as a pro-slavery reactionary party.18 Ironically, Frémont's candidacy, though
17
Works that mention the convergence of German émigrés, woman suffragists, and Garrisonian
abolitionists in the Frémont movement include McPherson, The Struggle for Equality; Wendy Hamand
Venet, Neither Ballots Nor Bullets: Women Abolitionists and the Civil War (Charlottesville: Univ. Press of
Virginia, 1991); Jörg Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln: Die Deutsche-Amerikanische Opposition in der
Republikanischen Partei während des amerikanischen Bürgerkrieges (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang,
1984).
18
See, e.g., Frederick J. Blue, The Free Soilers: Third-Party Politics, 1848-1854 (Urbana: Univ. of
Illinois Press, 1973); William Gienapp, The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856 (New York:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1977); Richard H. Sewell, Ballots for Freedom: Antislavery Politics in the United
States, 1837-1860 (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1976). Garrison especially termed it "the satanic
Democracy," see e.g., Garrison to Oliver Johnson, Sept. 9, 1862, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison V: 112;
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originating in a bolder antislavery stand than that of the Lincoln administration,
eventually blurred the seemingly distinct line between antislavery and Democrat. This
led to something of an identity crisis among antislavery reformers. As the Lincoln
administration had initially declared it a war to preserve the Union, not to challenge
slavery, many Democrats offered to subordinate their partisanship to a joint effort with
the ruling party to save the Union. Thus increasingly after 1862, the ruling party of the
North called itself the National Union party, and its supporters from across the aisle were
known as "Union Democrats" or "War Democrats." By implication, this left only
Copperheads to represent the rival party as a distinct identity during the war—hence
Garrison's "satanic" epithet. Such a reflexive clinging as Garrison's to the Republican
party in opposition to the Copperhead Democracy, however, was not shared by Frémont's
supporters. But the lack of an independently pro-Union, antislavery identity for the
Democratic party during the war left Frémont's supporters vulnerable both to charges of
collaborating with Copperheads and to electoral-party homelessness for the remainder of
the war and Reconstruction years. This ideological confusion, more than anything else,
appears to have defeated the reformers' attempts to transcend the Republicans' cautious
approach to Reconstruction.19
GERMANS
The German activists with whom this study is concerned were as few, factious, and
unrepresentative of German immigrants to the U.S. overall as the Garrisonians were of
unsigned editorial, Liberator, Sept. 11, 1863, front page; for similar remarks by other abolitionists see e.g.,
Liberator Jan. 25, 1861, p.15.
19
On the wartime Democracy see e.g., Silbey, A Respectable Minority; Baker, Affairs of Party. Neither
study fully pursues the implications of the Union-Copperhead cleavage's depriving the party of an
independent wartime identity. See also Weber, Copperheads.
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14
the Northern population as a whole. Both the similarities and differences of their goals
relative to those of the abolitionists suggest questions about radicalism in the war and
Reconstruction years that historians have yet fully to answer. A small group of political
exiles from the 1848 Revolution ("forty-eighters") sought to revolutionize American
politics as well, and aspired (unsuccessfully, in the end) to influence and speak for the
entire population of Germans in the United States.20 From their experiences in the
abortive revolution in Germany these forty-eighters brought an aversion to disunion and
to institutions of established, state-supported privilege (such as the Slave Power).
While German immigrants settled in all parts of the country, their numbers gave
them the potential electoral balance of power in a few key states in the Midwest—among
them Wisconsin, Illinois, and especially Missouri. In Missouri, from the time secession
began in earnest, a number of them had been singled out for attacks by Southern
sympathizers, as Germans were known to be pro-Union. In addition, the state’s thengovernor, Claiborne Jackson, sympathized with the Confederacy. A contemplated
attempt by his forces on the federal arsenal in St. Louis in the first weeks of the Civil War
might have won Missouri for the Confederacy, had it not been successfully repulsed by a
pro-Union force in which German immigrants figured prominently. Leading fortyeighters, many of whom edited or published newspapers, helped publicize the loyalty of
Missouri's Germans to the Union despite the violence it brought upon them, and their
contribution to the victory at Camp Jackson. Thus Missouri came to be seen—by native-
20
The most comprehensive study of Frémont's German constituency remains Nagler, Fremont contra
Lincoln.
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15
born Americans and German immigrants alike—as a center for leadership of the German
community in the U.S.21
The forty-eighters had several reasons to favor John Frémont. For one, he was the
son-in-law of Democratic Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton, who had challenged the
slaveholders' power in the 1840s and '50s. Like many native-born Americans, Germans
found Frémont a figure of dash and romance, derived from his geographical surveying
expeditions through the Rocky Mountains in the 1840s and his marriage to the spirited
(and much younger) Jessie Benton. The forty-eighters knew Frémont to have traveled in
Europe before the war, which lent him a relative cosmopolitanism in their eyes. In
addition, regular army officers generally came out of West Point—which Germans (in
common with many native-born volunteers) regarded as a bastion of privilege and
prejudice against both enlistees and foreigners. But not Frémont, one of a number of socalled "political generals." Upon his appointment as Commander of the Department of
the West, Frémont selected a number of Europeans—Germans, Hungarians, Poles, and
Czechs—to serve on his staff.22 His decree of martial law in St. Louis in August, 1861,
which declared free all the slaves of rebels, ensconced him in the forty-eighters' hearts as
a man of bold, decisive action.23
21
Germans for a Free Missouri: Translations from the St. Louis Radical Press, 1857-1862, ed. and trans.
by Steven Rowan, with introduction and commentary by James Neal Primm (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri
Press, 1983), pp.16-22, 205-232; Nagler, Frémont contra Lincoln, p.47n.
22
In early August, 1861, Frémont wrote to William Dorscheimer, a German with whom he was evidently
previously acquainted, and asked, "Are there any experienced artillerists…German, Prussian or
French…who can be enlisted gotten immediately & sent to me here without any loss of time. I am
distressed for want of men to man my guns," St. Louis, August 5, 1861, Frémont Letters, Frederick
Dearborn Collection, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
23
On his marriage, see e.g., Tom Chaffin, Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of
American Empire (New York: Hill & Wang 2002); Robin Winks, Frederick Billings: A Life (Berkeley:
Univ. of California Press, 1991); "Jessie Benton Frémont: An Overview," in The Letters of Jessie Benton
Frémont ed. Pamela Herr and Mary Lee Spence (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1993), xvii-xxix. Writer
Theodore Winthrop vividly evoked the appeal that Frémont held for young men during his first presidential
campaign in 1856, see Winthrop to Henry Hitchcock, July 1, 1856, Hitchcock Family Papers, Missouri
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But actions by the Lincoln administration progressively alienated Missouri
Germans—already feeling beleaguered by the guerrilla warfare in their state. They had
supported Frank Blair Jr.'s political aspirations since the time he had helped Benton build
a free-soil Democratic movement in Missouri. As President Lincoln had appointed
Blair's brother, Montgomery, to serve in his Cabinet as Postmaster-General, both Blairs
were believed to have considerable influence with the president. Frank Blair had lobbied
for Frémont's commission as commanding General; and German votes in particular had
recently secured Blair's election to Congress. But then Blair and Frémont fell out. Blair
had grown increasingly critical of the General's conduct of his Department, and Frémont
in his turn had Blair jailed twice in St. Louis for insubordination. As Frémont's
emancipation proclamation brought him the loyalty and devotion of Missouri's Germans,
Blair alienated them by his intrigues against Frémont and his own increasingly equivocal
stance on emancipation. Then, only weeks after Lincoln relieved Frémont of command,
the German General and forty-eighter hero Franz Sigel resigned his commission. Fortyeighters claimed he had been driven to it by West Point nativism in the person especially
of Commander Henry W. Halleck. The German-language press reported on similar
insults and ill treatment of other German officers.24 Thus, in more ways than one,
German immigrants, those in Missouri especially, felt abandoned during the war by the
Lincoln administration.
Historical Society. For the forty-eighters' idealization of Frémont, see Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln,
pp.22, 160, 253, 260. For more on Frémont's emancipation proclamation, see Chapter Three above.
24
Germans for a Free Missouri; Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, p.46; Emil Preetorius, "Missouri,"
Deutsche-Amerikanische Monatshefte vol. 1, number 1 (Jan. 1864); [Caspar Butz], "Abraham Lincoln,"
ibid.; Friedrich Münch, "Zur Geschichte der Emancipation in Missouri," Deutsche-Amerikanische
Monatshefte vol. 1, no. 2 (Feb. 1864).
Aiséirithe
Ch. 4
17
Forty-eighters in the U.S., led by those in Missouri, constituted Frémont's chief
constituency in his 1864 presidential bid. While the support of some of the Garrisonian
abolitionists and woman suffragists was not without significance, and political observers
took note of it, it was "the German element" that promised to lend electoral numbers—
and thus potential power—to Frémont's candidacy.25 Despite this fact, noted then and
since, almost no correspondence survives between Frémont and his German supporters
about the electoral campaign. Why this should be remains only one of many mysteries
surrounding the trajectory of radical reform during this period, but the same phenomenon
—signs of sustained engagement coupled with very scanty correspondence—characterrizes both the abolitionists' and woman suffragists' activity in the Frémont campaign as
well.26 And yet the story is worth pursuing, as a number of self-described radicals who
got involved in the Frémont campaign seem to have dramatically redefined their
radicalism thereafter.
Like the abolitionists, the forty-eighters described themselves as radical
antislavery men. They saw themselves as helping to keep the nation faithful to its highest
25
On the Germans' support making Frémont's candidacy worthy of consideration see e.g., Ruhl Jacob
Bartlett, John C. Fremont and the Republican Party (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1930); Arthur C.
Cole, “Lincoln and the Presidential Election of 1864,” Transactions of the Illinois State Historical Society,
no. 23 (1914):130-138; Harold M. Dudley, “The Election of 1864,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review
(1932): 500-518; Harold M. Hyman, “The Election of 1864,” in Arthur Schlesinger Jr., ed., History of
American Presidential Elections, 4 vols. (1971), II: 1155-1244; Edward C. Kirkland, The Peacemakers of
1864 (New York: Macmillan, 1927); David E. Long, The Jewel of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln’s Re-Election
and the End of Slavery (Mechanicsburg: Stackpole Books, 1994); McPherson, Struggle for Equality;
Leonard Newman, “Opposition to Lincoln in the Elections of 1864,” Science & Society, vol. VIII, no. 3
(Summer, 1944):305-327; Brian H. Reid, “Historians and the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War,
1861-1865,” Civil War History, vol. XXXVIII, no. 4 (Dec., 1992):319-341; Bruce Tap, Over Lincoln’s
Shoulder: The Committee on the Conduct of the War (Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press, 1998); Hans L.
Trefousse, The Radical Republicans: Lincoln’s Vanguard for Racial Justice (New York: Knopf, 1969); T.
Harry Williams, Lincoln and the Radicals (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1941); William Frank
Zornow, Lincoln and the Party Divided (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1954).
26
For the nonexistence of "political communication" between Frémont and the forty-eighters, see Nagler,
Fremont contra Lincoln, p.183: "Welche Art politischer Verbindungen von ihm zu den DeutschAmerikanern existierten, läßt sich aufgrund der Quellensituation nicht beurteilen….für fehlendes
Briefmaterial…."
Aiséirithe
Ch. 4
18
ideals, and as willing to make sacrifices for the sake of principle. Unlike the
Garrisonians however, the forty-eighters had no problem appealing to personal or
collective self-interest in their lobbying against slavery. They also built on an inclination
among German immigrants since the 1830s, toward independence from the two major
political parties. But they did not share the Garrisonians' objections to voting; on the
contrary, German immigrants saw the ballot as a crucial means for participating in and
helping to shape and influence American politics. Their backgrounds in the German
revolution perhaps inclined them to adopt the label, 'radical.' But its meaning, its
content, for their outlook was shaped most of all by conditions on the ground in
Missouri.27
In describing their antislavery as radical, Frémont's supporters in Missouri in one
sense spoke accurately, for Missouri was still a slave state, and to publicly oppose the
institution on any grounds brought one opprobrium and hostility. But Garrisonian
abolitionism this was not. When B. Gratz Brown told a mostly German "radical
emancipation" convention in September, 1862 that "we are the revolution," he referred to
their demand merely for a gradual emancipation. Brown himself, then emerging as a
leader of Missouri radicals, first recommended immediate emancipation in late
December; forty-eighters as a bloc appear not to have come round to immediatism before
President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in January, 1863.
Moreover, those radicals (mostly Germans) who organized the General Emancipation
27
On German immigrants' tendency toward electoral independence, see Heinrich H. Maurer, "The Earlier
German Nationalism in America," American Journal of Sociology 22 (1917), p.529; Nagler, Fremont
contra Lincoln, pp. 78, 90, 197 (radical), and pp. 42, 61, 178, 48, 72, 79 (for principle's sake versus selfinterest).
Aiséirithe
Ch. 4
19
Society of Missouri in June, 1862, stipulated that only whites could join.28 Some fortyeighters supported equal rights for black Americans to a greater extent than others among
them; while that much was true also of Garrisonians, the latter's grounding of their
antislavery in Christianity and the Declaration of Independence required them at least to
pay lip service more consistently to equal rights. Forty-eighters on the other hand
opposed slavery in part as a bastion of aristocratic power and privilege, but even more
from the conviction that slavery in Missouri retarded the state's development while
limiting economic opportunity for immigrants. Thus for forty-eighters the question of the
status of black Americans after the war remained largely an afterthought. Granted,
"radical" Germans were some of the earliest supporters of confiscation of rebel estates,
for sale or lease to humbler folk. Sometimes in their resolutions, black Americans or
freed slaves were expressly named to be included among such beneficiaries, other times
they left the matter of who should benefit from confiscation more vague. Notably, fortyeighters also advocated free public education to be extended across the country, without
regard to race or color. On the question of equal rights, however, Germans tended to
favor limitations for black Americans. At one point a German organization proposed that
blacks be subject to a ten-year naturalization period. Significantly, on the question of
suffrage, the forty-eighters' stance resembled that of the Stanton wing of the woman
suffragists: black Americans might eventually vote, but not without restrictions, and not
before we ourselves are enfranchised.29
28
For Brown see Norma L. Peterson, Freedom and Franchise: The Political Career of B. Gratz Brown
(Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 1965), esp. ch.8, "We Are the Revolution"; also Münch, "Zur
Geschichte der Emancipation in Missouri," pp.195-96; Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, pp.79-80, 104-05,
111.
29
Germans for a Free Missouri, p.45; Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, pp.80, 100, 197, 167; Maurer,
"Earlier German Nationalism," p.530.
Aiséirithe
Ch. 4
20
Among forty-eighters themselves, the term 'radical' had begun to acquire multiple,
even conflicting, meanings. The St. Louisians Henry T. Blow, Frank Blair, and Heinrich
Börnstein, all once regarded as radicals for favoring emancipation in Missouri, by 1862
sought to retain that label while distinguishing themselves from Frémont's supporters,
who in Blow's view "incline to the most extreme abolitionism." These three would have
pursued gradual emancipation while urging Missouri Germans to support the Lincoln
administration, fearing the consequences of a split among Missouri emancipationists.
But they could not prevent it. Börnstein returned to Germany in late 1862, but later
blamed that split among Missouri Germans in 1861-62 for the longterm defeat of
antislavery Republican influence in postwar St. Louis.30 During the 1864 campaign, the
Missouri Republican called those supporting Frémont's third-party candidacy the "ultra
radicals" as opposed to the "conservative radicals" who planned to nominate a candidate
other than Lincoln at the Republican convention.31 At the height of the campaign, in
other words, "radical" designated both those who favored Frémont's candidacy and those
who opposed it--just as it would among Garrisonian abolitionists.
STANTON, ANTHONY, AND THE WOMAN’S LOYAL NATIONAL LEAGUE
30
In discussing Blow's and Börnstein's efforts to aid Blair's election to Congress in 1862, Nagler
describes Blow as a moderate Republican who like other Republican politicians in the face of Lincoln's
cautious manner of action, underwent a change from moderate to radical, Fremont contra Lincoln, p.88.
"…Henry T. Blow, damals noch gemäßigter Republikaner…. Wie auch andere republikanische Politiker
machte Henry T. Blow angesichts der vorsichtigen Vorgehensweise Lincolns eine politische Wandlung
vom gemäßigten zum radikalen Republikaner durch…" [translated by A J Aiséirithe]. See also Henry
Boernstein, Memoirs of a Nobody: The Missouri Years of an Austrian Radical, 1849-1866, trans. Steven
Rowan (St. Louis: Missouri Historical Society Press, 1997), pp.370-379.
31
"Diese Delegierten… wurden von dem demokratischen Missouri Republican als 'ultra radicals'
bezeichnet, die nicht wie die 'conservative radicals' vorhätten, am Konvent in Baltimore teilzunehmen, um
dort einen anderen Kandidaten als Lincoln zu nominieren," Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, p.198.
Aiséirithe
Ch. 4
21
At around the time of George Thompson's reception, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and
Susan B. Anthony offered support to Frémont’s campaign. The year before, in 1863,
Stanton and Anthony, both prominent organizers of annual woman’s rights conventions
since the 1850s, formed a new organization called the Woman’s Loyal National League.
Its aim, as Stanton announced to the press, was to provide a forum for women’s views on
the political issues raised by the war.32 The first objective that it pursued was a
campaign to secure a million signatures on a petition for a law to abolish slavery.33 The
day after the George Thompson reception, at which Frémont had presided, Anthony
wrote to Senator Charles Sumner, informing him that the WLNL had revised its petitions
to demand a Constitutional amendment rather than a federal law, to abolish slavery. She
then exulted, “George Thompson’s reception last evening was a glorious triumph – not to
him alone – but to freedom & Frémont.” A few days later, she wrote Sumner again,
informing him that the WLNL would host “a meeting of Young Working Men of this
City to organize the first “Freedom & Frémont Club."34
While the papers of Stanton and Anthony comprise an extensive corpus, as with
the forty-eighters very little documentation survives about the extent of the women's
engagement in Frémont's campaign, or their motivations for it. Nonetheless, their
involvement helps illuminate the trajectory of radical reform during this period. The
organization they formed in the midst of the war, the Women's Loyal National League,
puzzled other abolitionists and woman's rights activists as to its primary aims and
32
See Call to WLNL Founding Convention, National Anti-Slavery Standard, Apr. 18, 1863, in The
Papers of Stanton and Anthony, ed. Ann D. Gordon and Patricia Holland (Wilmington: Scholarly
Resources, 1991), microfilm, Series 3.
33
Standard June 6, 1863.
34
Anthony to Sumner, Mar. 1, 1864; same to same, Mar. 6, 1864, Charles Sumner Papers, Houghton
Library, Harvard University, in Papers of Stanton and Anthony. Emphasis in original.
Aiséirithe
Ch. 4
22
purposes. The women's correspondence indicates some resistance to the organization, on
the part of Garrisonian abolitionists. Moreover, even while we have little from the
women themselves on their labors for Frémont, we know that the election controversy
precipitated a split within the American Anti-Slavery Society. Not only were Anthony
and Stanton parties to this split, but only a few years later, they themselves severed their
ties to the AASS, in almost an exact inversion of that previous division—which suggests
that the Frémont campaign may shed helpful light on the postwar course of radical
reform.
Stanton and Anthony occupied complicated, and differing, relationships to the
abolitionist movement. Stanton had never been an active abolitionist. Yet from an early
age, she was closely acquainted with them. One of her cousins was Gerrit Smith, long an
ardent abolitionist. It was through him that she met her future husband, Henry Brewster
Stanton, in the late 1830s. Henry had also been an active abolitionist, serving the
American Anti-Slavery Society as a lecturing agent from its early days. In 1840,
however, the AASS split. The central issue concerned whether to pursue “political
action,” including electoral pressure, versus the Garrisonians’ preference for “moral
suasion,” by which abolitionists would lecture, write, and petition, but not engage in
bargaining with the political parties. But the “woman question” also figured in the split.
Some of the earliest and most energetic workers in the antislavery movement were
women—they raised funds, circulated petitions, and had begun giving lectures
themselves. Most of those abolitionists favoring political action also believed women
should maintain a low public profile in the movement, while the Garrisonians largely
defended their right to participate on equal terms, including to hold offices in the
Aiséirithe
Ch. 4
23
societies. The political action group withdrew from the AASS in 1840; they formed a
rival organization which survived only to the mid-1850s, but many of them continued to
work in various efforts at making abolition an electoral issue.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton often claimed to have been inspired and deeply
influenced by the Garrisonian women who had stood up for women’s rights. It was with
them, especially Lucretia Mott, that she planned the 1848 woman’s rights convention at
which Stanton articulated the demand for woman suffrage. In this respect, her affinities
lay with the Garrisonians. On the other hand, however, her husband Henry had sided
with the political action group (and thus, even if only indirectly, against women’s equal
participation in the movement). Moreover, Stanton had early rejected the millennial,
perfectionist religious views that animated so many Garrisonians; she also never agreed
with those who rejected political action. Whatever her reasons may have been, Stanton
never actively participated in the antislavery movement. She may have made an
occasional financial donation, but it appears she never joined the Society, nor did she
serve as a lecturing agent. She first addressed an antislavery meeting in 1860; and the
following winter, Susan Anthony induced her to participate briefly in an antislavery
group lecture tour through New York State.35 Nonetheless, she maintained close
association with many Garrisonians, as they represented an active and increasingly
influential constituency in favor of woman’s rights. Moreover, she frequently expressed
35
In mid-January, 1861, Anthony wrote to Stanton, "I will only rejoice that you and the cause have had
the little you have of this Winters experience," [1861 Jan. ca. 16], Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Scrapbook 1, Vassar College Library, in Papers of Stanton and Anthony.
Aiséirithe
Ch. 4
24
herself as being in favor of immediate emancipation and equal rights for all, on the
grounds of natural rights.36
Susan Anthony, in contrast, came from a family of antislavery Quakers. She did
not become a lecturing agent for the AASS until 1857, but from the late 1830s her diaries
and letters indicate the same defense of black Americans’ equal rights on moral and
religious grounds, that characterized the Garrisonians. Like them also, Anthony engaged
in acts of protest and resistance against racial proscription within her social and church
circles. Her views on political action are less clear; through the 1850s she had become an
effective and energetic organizer in the woman’s rights movement. As Garrisonians
frequently did regarding issues related to slavery, Anthony helped coordinate efforts to
influence state legislatures to support bills favorable to woman’s rights. But like them
also, she frequently derided reformers' efforts to seek electoral leverage.37
Throughout its existence, the WLNL remained equivocal about its objectives.
The League did not explicitly propose joint pursuit of woman’s rights and freedmen’s
rights (as its leaders would in fact propose after the war under the rubric of a new
36
This sketch of Stanton is drawn from the following sources (among others): Ellen Carol DuBois,
Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848-1869
(Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1978); Elisabeth Griffith, In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady
Stanton (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984); Lori D. Ginzberg, Women and the Work of Benevolence:
Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press,
1990); and her own letters from 1836 through 1870 in Papers of Stanton and Anthony. On Henry Stanton,
the above works and Gilbert H. Barnes, The Anti-Slavery Impulse, 1830-1844 (New York: American
Historical Association, 1933); Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight L. Dumond, The Letters of Theodore Dwight
Weld, Angelina Grimké Weld, and Sarah Grimké, 1822-1844 (New York: AHA, 1934); and Arthur Harry
Rice, “Henry B. Stanton as a Political Abolitionist” (EdD dissertation, Teacher’s College, Columbia
University, 1968). On the 1840 split see Chapter Two, above. On the relation between woman's rights and
abolitionism generally, see Nancy Hewitt, Women’s Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York,
1822-1872 (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1984); Blanche Glassman Hersh, The Slavery of Sex: FeministAbolitionists in America (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1978); and Hamand Venet, Neither Ballots Nor
Bullets.
37
Susan B. Anthony diary, 1839, and correspondence 1836-1850 passim in Papers of Stanton and
Anthony; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony: Correspondence, Writings, Speeches, edited and with
critical commentary by Ellen C. DuBois (New York: Schocken, 1981), pp. 18-21; see esp. Anthony to
Martha Wright, May 28, 1861, Garrison Family Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, in Papers
of Stanton and Anthony.
Aiséirithe
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25
organization, the American Equal Rights Association—more on this in Chapter Six,
below). Instead, it alternated—in its public actions and messages as well as its leaders’
private correspondence—regarding the primary cause which it sought to advance as an
organization, between that of women’s right to an equal voice in political affairs and that
of emancipation and equal rights for black Americans.
Significantly, however, abolitionists also alternated, between expressing concern
and confusion about the League’s aims, and embracing it as a fellow body of activists
that offered cooperation in the effort to secure emancipation and equal rights for black
Americans. A few illustrations of this ambivalence will help establish the context for the
League’s part in the election controversy.
The “Call for a Meeting of the Loyal Women of the Nation,” the League’s
founding convention in May, 1863, emphasized women’s role in affairs, and women’s
rights:
The policy of the war, our whole future life, depends on a universal,
clearly defined idea of the end proposed…. What is woman’s legitimate
work [in the war effort], and how she may best accomplish it, is worthy
our earnest counsel one with another. …. Woman is equally interested
and responsible with man in the final settlement of this problem of selfgovernment…. It is high time for the daughters of the revolution…to
lay hold of their birthright of freedom….38
From the start, however, abolitionists and woman’s rights activists alike expressed
confusion as to the League’s objectives. Abby Kelley Foster, upon receiving the call,
wrote to Anthony seeking clarification on the League’s stance toward Lincoln’s
administration: “Will you let me know distinctly if you propose to commit yourselves to
the idea of loyalty to the present Government? I can not believe you do. But to me there
38
Call to WLNL Convention, Standard, April 18, 1863. Writing to Anna Dickinson inviting her to
address the convention, Anthony restated its aims in these same terms, Anthony to Anna E. Dickinson, Apr.
3, 1863, Anna Dickinson Papers, Library of Congress—both in Papers of Stanton and Anthony.
Aiséirithe
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26
is something equivocal in the call if it does not mean that. I am sorry it is not explicit on
this point. You and I believe if the present Administration had done its duty, the
rebellion would have been put down long ago. …. It needs strong rebuke instead of
unqualified sympathy and support.”39 Kelley's query highlighted the ambiguous,
anomalous stance of the League: it seemed the women wished to claim the mantle of
promoting loyalty to the government as a means of legitimizing women's publicly
expressing their political views. But the community of "radical" reformers--which
Stanton had heretofore found her most reliable base of support for woman's rights--at that
very moment was struggling to reconcile its habitual posture of criticism toward the
powers that be with its conviction that advocates of emancipation must sustain the
government in its war with the Confederacy.
In the founding convention itself, there appeared to be widespread differences in
understanding regarding the extent to which the League aimed to promote woman’s
rights and in what relation to the aims of emancipation and equal rights for black
Americans. In the convention’s opening session, Stanton’s speech emphasized
government by consent of the governed as the central principle at stake in the war, and
declared that in coming together in this convention, the “women of the republic” were
“unitedly demanding freedom for all.” However, when Anthony took the floor, she
appeared willing to subordinate women’s issues to questions of the status of black
Americans: “there is great fear expressed on all sides lest this war shall be made a war
39
Abby Kelley Foster to Anthony, Apr. 20, 1863, History of Woman Suffrage, ed. Stanton, Anthony, and
Matilda Joslyn Gage, vol. 2 (Rochester: 1881), p.877, in Papers of Stanton and Anthony.
Aiséirithe
Ch. 4
27
for the negro. I am willing that it shall be; I am ready to admit that it is a war for the
negro.”40
The convention passed seven resolutions, all but one of which demanded
emancipation and equal rights for black Americans, and declared women’s loyalty to and
willingness to sacrifice for the cause. And all were passed unanimously, except the fifth.
It declared that “There can never be a true peace in this Republic until the civil and
political equality of every subject of the Government shall be practically established.”
Several women understood this as a demand for women’s equal rights, and protested it as
out of place in a convention called to mobilize loyal women in support of the war. This
resolution was ultimately passed as well, but only after a rather heated debate.41
Garrison had attended this first session, and was not impressed. He wrote to his
wife, “Speeches were made by…Mrs. Stanton, &c., but hardly any of the speakers were
heard for lack of voice, and, on the whole, the meeting was almost a dead failure—
resolving itself, in fact, into a Woman’s Rights Convention. It has not been wisely got
up. It will hold another session…this evening.” Apparently, however, his misgivings
did not interfere with his friendly regard toward Mrs. Stanton, for in the same letter, he
told his wife that the day before, he had joined several other "friends" in a breakfast at
Mrs. Stanton’s home, and found it “a very pleasant occasion.”42
In that evening session, as the tone turned more toward the prospects for
emancipation in the current political climate, the discussion revealed further differences
among the delegates. In the morning session a number of abolitionist women had
40
Proceedings of the Meeting of the Loyal Women of the Republic, Held in New York, May 14, 1863 (New
York: Phair & Co., 1863), in Papers of Stanton and Anthony, pp. 4, 10.
41
Ibid., p.15.
42
Garrison to Helen Garrison, May 14, 1863, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison, V:153-54.
Aiséirithe
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28
defended the fifth resolution (linking woman’s rights with freedmen’s rights) in typical
Garrisonian fashion, on the grounds of universal human rights. When abolitionist
Antoinette Brown Blackwell addressed the evening meeting, however, she declared,
“We, as women, are even content to wait, if need be, for our own enfranchisement; but
we know that this will come also!”43
Ernestine Rose, in her speech, raised the question of what the League meant by
the word “loyal.” “Let the Administration give evidence that they too are for justice to
all, without exception, without distinction…. But without this certainty, I am not
unconditionally loyal to the Administration. We women need not be, for the law has
never yet recognized us.” This drew a reaction from Lucy Stone, president of the
convention. She stated that where they find “willful departure from what is just and
true,” or treason, they ought to denounce it, but so long as the government shows
“evident intentions…to do right,” it deserves “cheer and encouragement.” Indeed, the
threat of disloyal groups within the Union reflected a central theme of the WLNL
convention. The appendix to the proceedings printed some 40 letters of support from
women in various parts of the Union; about half of these commented that such signs of
disloyalty gave added purpose and urgency to the new League’s existence. The speakers
in particular addressed the possibility that Copperhead sentiment might triumph in the
1864 election.44
In other words, the convention had not reflected the same level of interest in
pursuing woman’s rights as that indicated, for example, in the call. Indeed, despite
43
Proceedings, pp. 38, 40, 42, in Papers of Stanton and Anthony.
Ibid., Rose p. 44; Stone p. 48; Letters pp. 56-78; on Copperheads: speech of Angelina Weld, p.13;
speech of A. B. Blackwell, p. 37; speech of E. Rose—fearing Copperhead success in 1864 election, p.46; F.
Willard and S. Anthony express same, p.50; and the League’s address to President Lincoln, prepared by
Stanton, pp.34-35.
44
Aiséirithe
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29
Garrison’s private opinion, a report on the convention in the Standard did not present the
League as a woman’s rights organization. On the contrary, it reported that “the work of
the League is to ‘educate the nation into the idea of a true, Christian Republic.’”45
Not
until a few weeks after the convention did the League—to which Stanton and Anthony
had been elected president and secretary respectively—announce its campaign to collect
one million signatures on a petition to Congress for a federal law abolishing slavery.
The idea of a law that would put emancipation on a firmer basis than the
Emancipation Proclamation certainly made sense, and the goal of one million signatures
was ambitious. Nonetheless, even in contrast to the WLNL convention’s own
resolutions, the text of its emancipation petition sounds oddly mild:
WOMEN’S EMANCIPATION PETITION
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:
The undersigned, women of the United States above the age of 18
years, earnestly pray that your Honorable Body will pass, at the earliest
practicable day, an Act emancipating all persons of African descent
held to involuntary service or labor in the United States.46
In any case, it seems that many activists either did not approve of, or did not understand,
the League’s objectives. In September, Anthony wrote to Samuel May, Jr., asking his
help in convening a meeting to discuss joint cooperation between the AASS and the
WLNL in circulating the petition. She closed by saying, “All this seems presuming in me
– but surely our Leagues aim and purpose can not be understood or it would be more
heartily responded to by the true and the tried. I am not after money, settle that point, but
to secure cooperation.” A few weeks later, she wrote to Mrs. Stanton of her despair in
securing any help from “the A.S. Committees & old lecturers,” although Stephen Foster
“Loyal Women’s Convention,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, May 23, 1863.
WLNL, Text of Petitions to U.S. Congress, June [after 12th] 1863, Matilda Joslyn Gage Scrapbooks,
Library of Congress, in Papers of Stanton and Anthony.
45
46
Aiséirithe
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30
had offered to approach Garrison and Phillips on her behalf. Stanton and Anthony may
not have been altogether confident that League members shared their vision either; for,
after noting that she had had no word from the WLNL office for over a week, Anthony
cautioned Stanton, “don’t allow us to be turned wholly into a prayer machine.”47
The Standard had endorsed the WLNL’s petition campaign within weeks of its
launch. And in December, it further urged that the AASS cooperate with the League in
the securing of signatures. Notwithstanding this announcement, however, the Society at
its Third Decade meeting resolved to launch a petition campaign of its own to secure not
a federal law, but a Constitutional amendment to abolish slavery.48 This drew a protest
from Mrs. Stanton, on behalf of the WLNL. Given that the Standard had only just
announced that the Society would formally cooperate with the WLNL on its petition
campaign, it is understandable that Stanton would object to its having taken this decision
without consulting her. Slightly more puzzling, however, is her argument that
circumstances did not require a Constitutional amendment. Published in the Liberator,
her letter, addressed to Garrison, said:
47
Anthony to Samuel May, Jr., Sept. 21, 1863, Papers of Susan B. Anthony, Vassar College Library;
Anthony to Stanton, Oct. 10, 1863, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, Library of Congress—both in Papers of
Stanton and Anthony.
48
“The Women’s Loyal League. Mammoth Petition to Congress,” National Anti-Slavery Standard June 6,
1863. In a curious turn, this article noted with approval that the League had just revised its member pledge
to affirm its loyalty to the government. The original, declared at the founding convention, had read: “We,
the undersigned, women of the nation, do hereby pledge ourselves loyal to justice and humanity, and to the
Government in so far as it makes the war a war for freedom,” see Proceedings, p.49. The Standard
reprinted the new pledge thus: “We the undersigned, women of the United States, agree to become
members of the ‘Women’s Loyal National League,’ hereby pledging our most earnest influence in support
of the government in its prosecution of the war for freedom and for the restoration of the national unity,”
and then added, “This, it strikes us, is a much happier wording than that of the former pledge.” On the call
for the AASS to join the League’s campaign, see “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land,” Standard,
Dec. 5, 1863; on the Third Decade meeting’s resolution, Standard, Dec. 12, 1863; Merrill and Ruchames
note that resolutions seeking a Constitutional amendment had been introduced in Congress also in
December, and likely provided the inspiration for the AASS initiative, Letters of William Lloyd Garrison,
V:173n.
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31
I hope, on consideration, you will see the bad policy of all specific
petitioning….The petition for universal emancipation covers
all…specific abuses. Slavery abolished, no one will pass behind the
fair face of the Constitution for a heart of blackness and villainy.
When not a slave breathes in this republic, we care not for the
decisions of Judge Taney…and when black men have a chance to show
themselves the heroes they are, they will soon settle the question of
equality. Our work is to secure them freedom at the earliest possible
day. …. Do not let us distrust the public, or weaken our action, by
changing the form of our petition.49
Here again, Stanton’s intended meaning is not clear. She may have believed that upon
abolition, black Americans need not fear any further attempts to proscribe their rights, or
that whatever proscriptions may follow are none of her concern. Or perhaps Stanton
figured that as long as she urged claims for emancipation and rights in universal terms,
she might thereby lay the groundwork for asserting the rights of white women. The most
surprising aspect is the faith it proclaims that once passed, an abolition law could not or
would not be successfully repealed.50
It is worth noting, however, that in suggesting
black men, once freed, should and could fight and win their own battles, Stanton
appeared merely to sum up vague references, already being voiced among abolitionists,
to a more qualified role for their movement in securing black Americans’ equal civil
rights.51
Whatever the meaning of her letter, within weeks Stanton issued a public notice
about the WLNL petition campaign, in which she described its purpose as being to
49
Stanton to Garrison [dated Dec. 13, 1863], Liberator, Jan. 1, 1864, in Papers of Stanton and Anthony.
For instance, Anthony had objected to the decision not to hold an annual woman’s rights convention in
1861, when others on its national committee believed the public would be too distracted by the war. When
in 1862 the New York state legislature repealed a woman’s rights bill that it had passed only shortly before
the war, Anthony sardonically considered this women’s just desserts for having acquiesced to dominant
public sentiment by not holding its convention, see Anthony to Lydia Mott [dated by Stanton & Anthony
Papers editors as after] April 10, 1862, History of Woman Suffrage, ed. Stanton, Anthony, and Gage
(Rochester: 1881), I:748-749—in Papers of Stanton and Anthony.
51
In fact, abolitionists had recently debated the future of the antislavery societies at the Third Decade
celebration; the Standard reported some of these exchanges, but indicated further discussion at the meeting
which it nonetheless did not print, see “Third Decade…” Standard, Dec. 19, 1863.
50
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32
increase women’s political influence, and specifically in the upcoming presidential
election. To “the Women of the Nation,” urging them not to doubt the value of the
League’s own campaign, Stanton declared:
This is not a movement of a day or an hour, to end with the circulation
of this petition. It is the inauguration of the moral power of woman to
be recognized in the politics of the nation. Our influence must be felt
in the reconstruction of the Government in the next presidential
campaign. Remember, “the Right of Petition” is the only political right
we have under the Constitution. By our zeal and earnestness in the use
of that, in this crisis of our nation’s destiny, let us prove ourselves
worthy of more enlarged privileges and immunities in the new
Republic.52
To be sure, Stanton had hinted before this that these might have been her ambitions all
along. Nonetheless, this appeal is striking in so frankly declaring that the League was
pursuing the abolition law primarily as a means to win expanded rights for women who
were presently free.
The Election Campaign
Early in March, 1864, abolitionist Edward M. Davis, who had served on
Frémont's staff in Missouri, wrote to Wendell Phillips. He reported that Emil Preetorius,
a leader of the forty-eighters in St. Louis, had asked Frémont to have Davis book an
abolitionist to address a German assembly there. Knowing that Phillips was unavailable,
Davis wrote, he "left it [Preetorius's note] with Mrs. Stanton and [Frémont aide] Major
Haskill."53 Thus we know that these three groups not only each endorsed Frémont's
candidacy, but also worked with one another. But German sources generally made little
Stanton, Appeal, “To the Women of the Nation,” New York Daily Tribune, Jan. 7, 1864, in Papers of
Stanton and Anthony. Compare the language of this appeal to that issued at the start of the petition
campaign and published in the Standard, June 6, 1863.
53
Edward M. Davis to Wendell Phillips, Mar. 10, 1864, Wendell Phillips Papers, Houghton Library,
Harvard University.
52
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33
or no reference to woman suffragists or abolitionists regarding the campaign, and vice
versa. Their reasons for supporting Frémont over Lincoln are not clear in some
particulars, and varied in others. Two themes, however, emerge to link these groups: all
three argued that the Lincoln administration and/or the Republican party had become
unresponsive to what they saw as "the will of the people"; and each had grown
disillusioned with the Republican party as such, leading them to attempt a new party and
even to take a new look at the Democrats. Davis complained about the former in that
March 10 letter to Phillips.
The people, unless they awake are not to have a chance to speak in the
nomination; We must vote for Chase who for a year has compelled all the
Custom House and Revenue employees to work for him, or for Lincoln,
whose great patronage can make a reputation for him whether he deserves
it or not, or not vote at all for any one who has a chance of success, but if
we Abolitionists and radicals do wake up and work, we have it in our
power to name our man at Cleveland early in May, have the nomination
ratified at our National May meeting in New York and other anniversaries
if possible and create such a sentiment that Baltimore in June must also
ratify our candidate. …. I urged Mrs. Stanton to publish the platform that
would suit the true Women of the Land and then nominate the man that
best represents it. She and I think Fremont is this man.
Indeed, Stanton echoed this very point in a letter to Mrs. Frémont: "It is time to
inaugurate an entirely new mode of making Presidents, namely, let the people place men
before the nation and in mass conventions make known their choice."54 This focus on
the democratic nature of the party system was uncharacteristic for these reformers. Note
that Davis assumed the American Anti-Slavery Society as a body would endorse Frémont
for president at its anniversary and thus that it would entirely abandon its former
nonpartisanship. Davis had been active in the Republican party at least since Frémont's
first presidential run in 1856. But Phillips had refused to vote since 1844, and Stanton of
54
Stanton to Jessie B. Frémont [1864 Apr.?], typescript, T. Stanton Collection, E. C. Stanton Papers,
Douglass Library, Rutgers University, in Papers of Stanton and Anthony.
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34
course, as a woman did not have the right to vote. It is true they all regarded Frémont as
more solidly in favor of emancipation than Lincoln, but Phillips had begun insisting in
the antislavery societies' meetings that it was no longer the fate of slavery, but rather the
post-emancipation rights of the freedmen that now concerned him most. 55 Yet it is not at
all clear that the Germans, or Stanton, or even Frémont himself, shared that concern.
Stanton's main interest, as indicated above, lay in winning the vote for women.
While during the war she favored the side of freedom, she had also begun to grow
disillusioned with the Republican party. In early 1863 she wrote to her cousin, Gerrit
Smith, "Seward and [his advisor New York Republican political boss Thurlow] Weed are
in town for the purpose of organizing a new conservative party from the republican and
democratic ranks. A union party - to make Seward President of a free & happy people
with slavery gnawing its vitals. Now is the time to sound the tocsin of alarm." As
Stanton and her husband socialized with the Sewards, she may have known whereof she
spoke. 56
Most abolitioniststs felt as Garrison did about the Democratic party. Not Phillips,
however. In the spring of 1863 he got into a rather heated debate with Senator Henry
Wilson, at a meeting of the Massachusetts Emancipation League about party politics and
the course of the war. Criticizing the administration, and the Republican party as no
55
Ibid. On Davis's financial contributions the Republican party in the 1850s, see Dorothy Sterling,
Ahead of Her Time: Abby Kelley and the Politics of Antislavery (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), p.377.
Also see Davis to Phillips, Jul. 16, 1856, Wendell Phillips Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
On Phillips's non-voting pledge see Chapter Two, above. For Phillips's insistence on freedmen's postwar
status as more perilous than emancipation see e.g., “Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
Society,” Standard, Feb. 6, 1864.
56
Stanton to Gerrit Smith, dated by the editors as "1863? Winter?" Gerrit Smith Papers, George Arents
Research Library, Syracuse University; on Stanton's relationship with Mr. and Mrs. Seward see e.g.,
Stanton to Seward, Sept. 19, 1861, Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Scrapbook 1, Vassar College Library;
Stanton to Mrs. Seward, Feb. 15, 1864, W. H. Seward Collection, University of Rochester—all in Papers
of Stanton and Anthony.
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35
better than the Whigs had been, Phillips is reported to have praised the Democrats, saying
that they "showed a generous confidence in the people….and he had felt arising in
himself a sort of leaning towards them, as he had found…selfish narrowness and
cowardly inaction among the Republicans."57
The forty-eighters frequently echoed Davis's and Stanton's interest in advancing
"the will of the people." The Westliche Post, perhaps the most influential German
newspaper in the country, affirmed that the will of the people is anti-Lincoln.58 Their
position was further complicated, however, by a simultaneous concern to advance the
specific interests of German immigrants. Perhaps the best illustration of this tension lies
in the views of Karl Heinzen. Even among radical reformers, Heinzen stands out as a
career rabble-rouser. As a young man he published an exposé of the Prussian
bureaucracy for which he was threatened with arrest. He emigrated to U.S. in 1850, and
in 1854 launched his newspaper, Der Pionier, in Louisville. In many respects, Heinzen
followed the beat of his own drum; many of the stands he took remained unpopular with
his fellow forty-eighters. Yet in other ways Heinzen remained both influential and
representative. His Pionier was read by Germans all across the country. Perhaps most
important, Heinzen was the chief author behind several of the ideas in what became
Frémont's 1864 platform.
In the late 1850s, Heinzen settled in Boston. There he befriended Garrison and
Phillips. While most forty-eighters preferred emancipation to continuing domination by
the Slave Power, they mistrusted abolitionists in general, and Garrisonians in particular.
57
"Emancipation League," Standard, June 6, 1863.
"…die radikale Convention…eine Anti-Lincoln-Platform angenommen wird. Der Volksgeist ist durch
und durch gesund," Westliche Post, weekly edition, Feb. 24, 1864, quoted in Nagler, Fremont contra
Lincoln, p.169; also see ibid., pp.39-42.
58
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36
Garrisonians favored temperance legislation, which German immigrants saw as an assault
on their culture. Although Garrisonians and forty-eighters shared an anticlerical outlook,
the latter tended much more to associate public professions of piety with clerical
encroachments on the state; this kept them on guard against the Christian rhetoric used so
heavily by Garrisonians. Most of all, German immigrants believed New England
Republicans to be fervent nativists—and not without reason: both Massachusetts
Senators Sumner and Wilson had been elected with considerable Know-Nothing votes.
As a result, Germans in general tended to suspect New England abolitionists of harboring
nativist sympathies.59 More than most forty-eighters, Heinzen consistently insisted on
equal rights for black Americans. And the Liberator frequently reprinted translations of
Heinzen's editorials, often with favorable commentary.60 During the winter of 1861,
when abolitionists were newly beset by mobs, German Turners undertook to guard
Phillips—a fact that Phillips acknowledged in his speeches.61 Both Phillips's public
addresses and articles in the Liberator show that Garrisonians followed developments in
the German community at least as they learned of them through Heinzen; their own ties
to Frémont (such as through Edward M. Davis) may have kept them posted on German
activities as well.62
59
Wittke, Against the Current, pp.86, 90, 124, 158; Maurer, "Earlier German Nationalism," p.528;
Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, pp. 9, 42. On Sumner's and Wilson's debts to Know-Nothingism see e.g.,
Blue, Free-Soilers; Paul Kleppner, The Third Electoral Party System, 1853-1892: Parties, Voters, and
Political Cultures (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1979); Dale Baum, The Civil War Party
System: The Case of Massachusetts, 1848-1876 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1984).
60
See, e.g., Liberator Feb. 22, 1861, p. 31; Jan.16, 1863, p.10.
61
Wittke credits Heinzen with arranging for the Turner guard, and implies it helped cement the two
men's friendship, Against the Current, p.176; for acknowledgment by Phillips of physical protection by
Germans, see e.g., [Speech of Wendell Phillips], Liberator, Apr. 25, 1862, p.66 and, referring to another
threatened mob in 1862, "The Phillips Riot at Cincinnati," Liberator April 11, 1862, p.58.
62
See, e.g., Liberator Sept. 4, pp.142-43, Oct. 30, p.175, and Nov. 4, 1863, p.178, for reports on
German-American political activities; for a representative speech of Phillips's referencing German
activities, interests, and concerns, see e.g., Liberator, April 25, 1862, p.66, and Feb. 5, 1864, p.22.
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37
From his first year in the U.S., Heinzen began advocating that Germans organize
politically. In Louisville in 1854, Heinzen organized a mass meeting of Germans with
the purpose of forming a "reform party." The program proposed became known as the
Louisville Platform. Several of the ideas in it re-appeared in the Frémont platform of
1864. Those ideas included harmonizing of American laws and political forms with the
spirit of the Declaration of Independence; abolition of slavery (though the Louisville
Platform specified gradual abolition); provision of land free to "actual settlers"; and an
end to United States isolation and neutrality.63 Of the "radical" convention for which
Preetorius sought an abolitionist speaker, Nagler suggests that his colleague Caspar
Butz's denial that the group sought to separate themselves from American radicals
nonetheless obfuscated their commitment to pursuing specific German interests as well.
Not unlike the Garrisonians, however, German conventions like this one remained
divided on the question of whether their interests were better served in an independent
organization or in trying to influence the Republican party from within. At a "radical,"
mostly German, convention a month before that March 10, 1864 one in St. Louis, in fact
most of the participants rejected the idea of a third party. Most planned to endorse
Lincoln's re-nomination at the Republican national convention in Baltimore; a smaller
number were willing to help secure the nomination at Baltimore of an alternate candidate,
63
This sketch of Heinzen is drawn from Carl Wittke, Against the Current: The Life of Karl Heinzen,
1809-1880 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945); compare Wittke's discussion of the Louisville
platform (p.94) with that of the German Convention in Cleveland in the autumn of 1863—also composed
by Heinzen, and which became, with few changes, the Frémont platform in 1864—in Nagler, Fremont
contra Lincoln, p.151; see also Maurer, "Earlier German Nationalism," pp.529-531.
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38
but even before the nominating convention for Frémont, many German-Americans had
begun doubting its efficacy.64
Frémont supporters among German-Americans and Garrisonians shared one other
curious tendency as well: while clearly both groups adored Frémont, they felt the need to
insist that their ardent devotion turned not on the man himself, but the principles he
represented, and they would reward with equal devotion any other candidate who adopted
those principles. As examples of such alternative candidates, both groups cited Lincoln's
Secretary of the Treasury and long-time Free Soiler Salmon P. Chase, or the Union
general recently converted from anti-abolition Democrat to pro-emancipation
Republican, Benjamin F. Butler.65 But there was little doubt both groups much preferred
Frémont over Chase or Butler. In 1862, Phillips declared, "Abraham Lincoln simply
rules; John C Fremont governs."66
The Germans in particular, as noted above, early settled upon Frémont as their
special favorite. In general, they gave the same reasons the abolitionists did for why they
preferred Frémont—essentially, his emancipation decree in Missouri and his manner of
issuing it led his supporters to believe he would take a more firm, decisive, bold, and
resolute stand toward the rebels and the conduct of the war, and that he stood more
committed to emancipation as a matter of principle than Lincoln.67 But in addition,
forty-eighters claimed to see Frémont as a living embodiment of Schiller's Wallenstein.
64
Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, pp.169-172.
Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, pp.116, 121, 164, 180, 189; Speech of Wendell Phillips, Fourth of
July Celebration, Liberator, Jul. 10, 1863, p.111; E. M. Davis to Phillips, Philadelphia Mar. 21, 1864,
Wendell Phillips Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
66
Speech of Wendell Phillips, Liberator, May 16, 1862, p.78.
67
Emil Preetorius, "Missouri," p.6; [Caspar Butz], "Abraham Lincoln," p.15; Münch, "Zur Geschichte
der Emancipation in Missouri," Part 2, Deutsche-Amerikanische Monatshefte, vol. 1, no. 3 (March, 1864),
p.196.
65
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39
The analogy is an interesting one. Wallenstein was a soldier in the Thirty Years War.
Initially a Lutheran, sympathetic to the cause of the Protestant princes, he offered to
equip a force out of his private fortune to fight on the side of the Holy Roman Emperor.
Neither the emperor nor the princes ever fully trusted him, however, and the emperor
finally had him assassinated for treason. In the 1790s, poet Friedrich Schiller's play
aimed to rehabilitate Wallenstein's reputation. More than a little fictionalized, it renders
the title character as pure-hearted, but a tragic victim in the end to the ploys of more
designing men. Hence, in invoking Wallenstein in connection with Frémont, fortyeighters always took care to specify they meant Schiller's Wallenstein. Still, Frémont,
more than his rivals for the presidency in 1864, had always labored under a compromised
reputation, dating back at least to his court-martial in the mid-1840s. Even in Schiller's
sanitized version, Wallenstein would seem too unflattering a light in which to cast
Frémont. Not only had Frémont been suspected as a closet Catholic during the 1856
campaign, but Northern conservatives whispered rumors during the war that he was
plotting a military coup. Among forty-eighters, however, the name served as a
touchstone or talisman, which only added to the aura of romance and daring in which
they had long viewed Frémont.68
68
For forty-eighters' comparing Frémont to Wallenstein see, e.g., Maurer, "Earlier German Nationalism,"
p.535; Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, p.260; Preetorius, "Missouri," p.6. Friedrich von Schiller,
Wallenstein, A Historical Drama in Three Parts: Wallenstein's Camp; The Piccolominis; The Death of
Wallenstein. trans. from the German by Charles E. Passage, rev. ed. (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1960).
(Striking parallels might be multiplied: there is a character described as "an intriguer for Wallenstein,"
named Kinsky, which sounds very like Frémont's aide McKinstry, whom some forty-eighters believed an
intriguer against the General's best interests [Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln p.236]; there is also a
commander named Butler who directs Wallenstein's assassination.) On Frémont's laboring under the cloud
of a compromised reputation see, e.g., Andrew Rolle, John C. Fremont: Character as Destiny (Norman:
Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1991). On suspicions of Frémont's Catholicism see, e.g, Jessie Benton Frémont
to Elizabeth Blair Lee, Aug. 12 and Aug. 14, 1856, in Letters of Jessie Benton Frémont, pp.125-29. On the
rumors of a coup see, e.g., George W. Smith, "The National War Committee of the Citizens of New York,"
New York History 28 (1947): 440-457. The Liberator occasionally reprinted, in its Refuge of Oppression
column, some articles from anti-abolition papers about the supposed coup plot—see e.g., "Abolition
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40
Frémont was not formally nominated until the convention of the Radical
Democrats in Cleveland, May 31, 1864. But he had begun to be spoken of for president
long before then. When President Lincoln revoked Frémont's emancipation decree in
early September 1861, and removed him from command some two months later,
abolitionists held up those decisions as indictments of Lincoln's conduct of the war and
his indecision regarding emancipation. Only later did they begin to speak of Frémont as
a possible candidate for the presidency in 1864. Forty-eighters on the other hand,
immediately upon hearing that Lincoln had rescinded the decree, vowed to support
Frémont in the next presidential election. 69
Exactly when the Frémont movement got underway remains unclear. As noted
above, Karl Heinzen had been urging Germans to form an independent political party
since 1854, an idea he urged again upon Lincoln's first election in 1860.70 From
Frémont's removal from his St. Louis command until the 1864 election, German groups
kept up a schedule of rallies and demonstrations.71 In late 1861 through late 1862, they
promoted high-profile commissions for both Frémont and Sigel. From mid-1862
Germans in Missouri stepped up their organizing in behalf of emancipation. They held
one state-level "radical emancipationist" convention in June, 1862, and another in
Sedition Again Rampant," Liberator May 16, 1862, front page; "Treason Growing Bold," Liberator Oct.
17, 1862, front page. Kevin Cramer's The Thirty Years' War and German Memory in the Nineteenth
Century (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 2007) was to be published too late for the present study, but in
a personal communication, Prof. Cramer suggested that as forty-eighters saw Wallenstein as a symbol for a
secular, unified, modern Germany, they may have looked upon Frémont as one who would re-make
American democracy, e-mail Jul. 24, 2007.
69
For Garrisonians' responses to Lincoln's handling of Frémont's emancipation decree, see Chapter Three
above. For their references to the next election see e.g., "Celebration of the First of August," Liberator,
Aug. 8, 1862, p.126; L. Maria Child to Sen. Charles Sumner, Oct. 3, 1862, Charles Sumner
Correspondence: Letters to Charles Sumner from Lydia Maria Child, William Lloyd Garrison, and
Wendell Phillips (Cambridge: Harvard University Library), microfilm, 1971. For forty-eighters' early
endorsement of Frémont's candidacy see Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, pp.22, 39.
70
"The Presidential Election," Liberator, Dec. 31, 1860, p.211.
71
The timeline of forty-eighter activity that follows is drawn from Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln.
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41
September, 1863 in Jefferson City, the state capital. The very next month, the looselyformed "German Organization" met in Cleveland. Despite considerable opposition from
within, the German Organization had begun taking the form of an independent political
party that would pursue not only what it called radical interests, but specifically German
ones as well. Thus the platform of the German Organization convention in Cleveland in
October, 1863, influenced what became Frémont's platform in 1864. In addition to
planks in favor of (now immediate) abolition and opportunities for individuals to acquire
land, the 1863 platform called for easing citizenship and naturalization requirements, and
called on the United States to support democratic revolutions in Europe.72
Following the German Organization convention, perhaps anticipating opposition,
"radical" Missouri Germans next issued a call for what it termed Border State
Emancipationists--inviting those who favored emancipation in Tennessee, Kentucky,
Arkansas and Missouri to meet in Louisville in February 1864. In another striking
parallel to Stanton's WLNL, however, the organizers intended for this meeting a different
purpose: that of nominating Frémont as the preferred presidential candidate of the
organized radical Germans. But the Louisville participants vetoed a separate third party,
and indicated that the majority would endorse a second term for President Lincoln. It
was shortly after this Louisville defeat that Preetorius sought Garrisonian abolitionists to
join Germans in St. Louis to plan a national radical convention for May. Other evidence,
however, suggests their cooperation had begun earlier. A letter written by Frémont to
Heinzen in December of 1863 hints at their joint formation, perhaps with Wendell
Phillips's help, of a third party. More significantly, Frémont here anticipated that a third
72
For the 1863 Cleveland platform in Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, p.151; for more on the 1864
Radical Democratic platform see below.
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42
party would necessitate a fusion with the Democrats in order to win, which would bring
pressure on the Frémonters to compromise their radicalism.
As to other party measures about which we communicated, while I am
persuaded that the congenial elements in the Democratic party should be
brought to act in unison with the Liberty party & that they would do so
from a sort of political necessity, I at the same time agree fully with
yourself in opinion that the friends of liberty must take care not to
compromise any where the clear Predominancy of their distinctive
principles.
From Mr. Wendell Phillips speech here on Tuesday last you see
distinctly his views in regard to Mr. Lincoln. He certainly does not leave
much doubt as to what he thinks.73
Phillips's speech criticized President Lincoln for being willing, in his amnesty
proclamation, to abandon the freedmen. Its one reference to Frémont mentioned Gen.
Butler in tandem and suggested if men like them had been in charge, the war might have
ended after two years. It is not known just when Phillips got involved in Frémont's
presidential bid. In March, 1862, Phillips wrote to his wife that he had only then met the
General for the first time. And a letter from Edward Davis to Phillips from March 21
1864 suggests the two men were just getting acquainted with the campaign, but also that
Phillips evidently did not wish all campaign supporters to know of his involvement.
Davis wrote, "I think that E. Gilbert of Cheevers Church can tell us all what is going on
& what the plan is. but as you not want to use[?] just now those who represent the Gen. I
will not write or speak of your letters. but destroy them or put them in so safe a place that
no one can see them." Similarly, surviving evidence does not link Stanton to the Frémont
73
On the Germans' Louisville convention of early 1864 see Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, pp. 168172. Frémont to Heinzen, December 25, 1863, Clinton H. Haskell Collection, vol. II, William L. Clements
Library, University of Michigan.
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43
campaign before March of 1864, though she had invited Mrs. Frémont to attend the first
convention of the Women's Loyal National League in May of 1863.74
Even after Garrison had sparred with Phillips at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery
Society meeting in January, some of Frémont's supporters hoped he could be persuaded
to back their favorite. Davis wrote to Garrison in disbelief that, in the press, "you are
made to endorse the 'Amnesty' which I know you do not," and asked Garrison to write a
response for publication. A week later, Stanton wrote in the same vein. "Now is it
possible that you after taking an enlightened review of this administration can declare
yourself satisfied with its policy & honesty? …. Put on your armor once more. Put the
name of Fremont at the head of your Liberator sound again the old war cry for freedom.
You must still be a leader of public sentiment & when you find easy sailing with the
majority rest assured your face is downstream." But Garrison would not be moved.
In an editorial in the Liberator on "The Presidency," in mid-March, he made clear his
conviction that only a candidate able to secure as many votes as only Lincoln could,
would have a chance at success. And such success was crucial because Democrats once
in power would acquiesce in a reconstructed Union with slavery or an independent
South.75
And here lay the crux of the election controversy. Without wanting to admit it in
so many words, Garrison had been converted, by the rebellion, into a supporter of the
Union government in its fight against the Confederacy. Now that President Lincoln had
74
Phillips's speech at Cooper Institute, Dec. 22, 1863, is printed in the Liberator, Jan. 1, 1864, p.2. On
his meeting Mr. and Mrs. Frémont for the first time see Phillips to "Darling," Monday Mch 31, 1862.
Across the top of the letter's first page, Phillips wrote, "Don't let Garrison print any of this." Davis to
Phillips, March 21, 1864—both in Wendell Phillips Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University. See
Jessie Frémont to "My dear Madam," [1863] May 4, Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Scrapbook 1,
Vassar College Library, in Papers of Stanton and Anthony.
75
Davis to Garrison, 17 Mar. 1864, Ms. A.1.2 Boston Public Library; Stanton to Garrison, Apr. 22, 1864
ibid., in Papers of Stanton and Anthony; "The Presidency," Liberator, March 18, 1864, p.46.
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committed the Republican party and the Union army to emancipation, Garrison perhaps
regarded abolitionists' upholding the administration as entirely consistent with "the old
antislavery." But as Garrison had taken this stand upon the outbreak of the war, long
before the Union declared for emancipation, some observers suspected he had effectively
abandoned his former role of agitator. Moreover, as the president's December 1863
message to Congress made clear, the administration's approach to Reconstruction
warranted ample criticism from abolitionists on the grounds that it threatened to leave the
freed without rights. Here then is the puzzle of the 1864 election for historians. In the
name of stronger safeguards for the freed, one group of Garrisonian abolitionists
appeared willing to court cooperation with the Democrats and risk the triumph of a proslavery party on the one hand; while on the other hand their colleagues, to guard against a
proslavery triumph at the polls, seemed willing to cease agitating for freedmen's rights
altogether.
Thus, the controversy only deepened. As early as March, Parker Pillsbury, who
had joined the Frémont movement, suggested to Phillips that the antislavery societies had
gone off-course. In particular, Pillsbury questioned whether a bequest left by the late
Charles F. Hovey for the agitation of abolition should continue to "flow too lavishly into
the American and Massachusetts societies' Treasuries. They are not now doing the vital
bottom work to which Hovey consecrated his money & his life. Our papers are not
radical beyond others & most of the agents seem given largely to politics."76 Phillips
would later succeed in withholding from the Liberator monies from the Hovey fund,
which contributed in no small measure to prolonging the bitterness surrounding the
76
Pillsbury to Phillips Mar. 17, 1864, Wendell Phillips Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
Pillsbury himself wrote to Phillips a month later: "I am not the champion yet of any party, or any party's
candidate," Apr. 21, 1864, ibid.
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45
election. Of equal interest is the disdain Pillsbury expressed here for antislavery agents
who did not support Frémont as "given…to politics." In fact, Garrison and Phillips both
(along with Oliver Johnson as editor of the Standard) insisted that the American AntiSlavery Society ought not express a preference, as a society, among the presidential
candidates. Stranger than former non-voting Garrisonian abolitionists' getting actively
and deeply involved in the electoral contest was their continued insistence that it was
only those abolitionists backing the other candidate—not themselves—who had
abandoned their old methods to engage in electoral politicking. Here was yet another
indication that while abolitionists felt compelled by the times to change course, they were
never quite at ease with those accommodations they had made.77
The Cleveland Convention
By the time the Fremont nominating convention had ended, abolitionists had
begun seriously to doubt their candidate. Parker Pillsbury may have seen warning signs
early. In early May he wrote Phillips, "I am in doubt about signing the Call still. …. Will
it be too late to take the back Track, when the Platform is made, if it is too weak to bear
full grown men. I have a feeling, that these new-fledged-fowl, need old birds to teach
them to fly…." He enclosed a letter from Frémont's aide Major Haskell which explained
77
Regarding the upcoming anniversary meeting of the AASS, Garrison wrote to Oliver Johnson,
"However divided the Society may be in judgment concerning Mr. Lincoln and his administration, I hope it
will not enter into the arena of politics, to be the partisan of any presidential candidate," Apr. 28, 1864,
Letters of William Lloyd Garrison V:201. See also Phillips to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, April 25, 1864,
Alma Lutz Collection, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College, in Papers of Stanton and Anthony; [Oliver
Johnson], "The Abolitionists and the Presidency," Standard, Apr. 2, 1864.
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that "the call does not undertake to lay down a platform at all but to be so general in its
impression that none will be able to find objections to it."78
Nor was Pillsbury alone. A few weeks later, Oliver Johnson reported to Samuel
May Jr. (vice president and executive committee member of the AASS) about what was
to become a long quarrel with Phillips over the way the Standard dealt with election
matters. Phillips had requested that Johnson print the call to the Cleveland convention in
the Standard of May 14. 'Let no one have it to say,' he told Johnson, 'that Abolitionists
gave no welcome to an effort for a radical and true politics.' Johnson replied that it
would have appeared but the report of the annual meeting took precedence. He would
print it the next week if space allowed. "In reply to his remark about 'welcoming' the
Cleveland movement," Johnson told May, "I said frankly that I could not do that, because
I had reason to suspect that Copperhead money and influence were at the bottom of it or
giving it aid."79
Nonetheless, the call appeared in the next day's Standard. Addressed, "To the
People of the United States," it mentioned neither Frémont nor Lincoln by name. Instead,
it argued that the prospective Republican National Convention soon to take place at
Baltimore could not possibly reflect the will of the People—due in part to its location on
the seaboard and (so near to Washington) the influence of patronage. As the perilous
state of the Republic required that the People's voice be heard, they were invited to
assemble at Cleveland to discuss the one-term principle and other matters related to the
upcoming election. The list of signers, grouped under the heading "People's Provisional
Committee" included, among Garrisonian abolitionists, Stephen Foster and Edward M.
78
Haskell to Pillsbury, Apr. 28, 1864, enclosed in Pillsbury to Phillips, May 3, 1864 in Wendell Phillips
Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University.
79
Johnson to Samuel May Jr., May 20, 1864, Oliver Johnson Papers, Vermont Historical Society.
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Davis; and among forty-eighters, Karl Heinzen, Emil Preetorius, Caspar Butz, Theodor
Olshausen, Friedrich Kapp, and Friedrich Münch. Pillsbury had not signed. Neither,
surprisingly, had Phillips. Directly beneath the call, however, appeared a letter from
Phillips to the forty-eighter Johann B. Stallo, in which he urged "an unpledged and
independent convention," that will nominate "a statesman and a patriot," and declare for
equal suffrage and against states' making "any distinction among their citizens on account
of color or race."80
The Garrisonians, the forty-eighters, and Stanton all had high hopes for the
convention. But the effort that Haskell mentioned—to appeal to the gamut of Lincoln’s
opponents—ensured that the “radical” goals of the convention would be overridden or
muted. Perhaps anticipating such an outcome, Phillips did not attend the convention. He
did prepare a letter which was read to the convention, however; it reiterated many of the
same points made in his response to the call (above), along with a stated wish to see
Frémont nominated. Of the fourteen-member platform committee, six of the members
were German, thus the platform reflected their influence. Still, a number of their key
planks were dropped from or altered in the final convention platform; the duty of the
United States to support democratic revolutions in Europe was cut from the final version.
More controversial than the planks that were dropped, however, was the rewording of
others which left their specific meaning ambiguous. For example, whereas the fortyeighters in their recent conventions had specified that former slaves should be among
those to receive confiscated rebel lands, the confiscation plank in the 1864 platform
specified their redistribution only among “soldiers and actual settlers.” Those in favor of
freedmen’s inclusion could interpret the plank as allowing for that, while those opposed
80
"To the People of the United States," Standard, May 21, 1864.
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could presume that because their inclusion was not specified, blacks would be excluded.
The ambiguous quality of the platform has not received much attention in the scholarly
literature, but abolitionists certainly noticed and commented on it. In addition to the
scope of the confiscation plank, abolitionists weighed the explicit avowal of black men’s
right to vote, which ultimately appeared in the Republican platform, against the Frémont
convention’s positive-sounding but vague fifth resolution, “That the Rebellion has
destroyed slavery, and the Federal Constitution should be amended to prohibit its reestablishment, and to secure to all men absolute equality before the law.” They pointed
out that while the war would probably spell the doom of slavery, the resolution might be
used to deflect positive measures to ensure permanent abolition. And if slavery were not
quite dead (the Fugitive Slave Law remained unrepealed for instance), then "equality
before the law" would be taken to apply only to white men, as it had heretofore.81
Despite concessions and compromises having weakened the platform, the activists
remained hopeful until Frémont issued his formal letter of acceptance in June. In the
letter, Frémont specifically repudiated confiscation. He also dwelt at length on the
administration's abrogation of civil liberties, while saying nothing about the fate of the
freedmen. Altogether, the themes in Frémont's letter led a number of abolitionists to fear
he intended to court an alliance with anti-Lincoln Democrats. Signs had earlier indicated
that such a fusion might be contemplated. Pillsbury, who attended the convention, wrote
to Phillips, “We had to work hard for the equality clause, and the confiscation of rebel
81
"Letter from Wendell Phillips," ibid.; Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, p.208; Stanton to Phillips, May
6, 1864, Phillips Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University. William Frank Zornow, “The Cleveland
Convention, 1864, and Radical Democrats,” Mid-America XXXVI (Jan., 1954), p.51; Nagler, Fremont
contra Lincoln, pp.213-217. On the ambiguity of the confiscation plank, and concern for the assertion that
slavery is dead see e.g., "The Two Conventions," Liberator June 3, 1864, p.90; Tilton, Independent,
reprinted in Lib etc..
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lands. But as you will see, we put both in. General Cochrane came himself in to our
room….” John Cochrane, a War Democrat, had recently been elected New York State
attorney-general. When the convention nominated Frémont for president, it also
nominated Cochrane for Vice-President, evidently to appease those participants who
found Frémont too radical. Not least among the signs of fusion with Democrats was the
name for this new independent third party: the Radical Democrats.82
In his study of the forty-eighters who backed Frémont in 1864, Jörg Nagler noted
that the Germans took alarm when a Copperhead paper endorsed Frémont in March. As a
prime mover of the Radical Democratic movement, Emil Preetorius sought to assure
them that the party would welcome all those opposed to Lincoln—except the
(Copperhead) Peace Democrats. Perhaps their success in getting Frémont nominated led
the “radicals” to believe they had triumphed, for in the interval before Frémont’s
acceptance letter appeared, both Stanton and a leading forty-eighter paper declared that
Democrats had now adopted the radicals’ program as their own. Stanton, for instance,
claimed to believe this of Cochrane, who was a cousin of hers and Gerrit Smith’s. As
others were to note, Cochrane had not been known to favor abolition. Nonetheless, she
exulted in a letter to Smith, “Well has not John spoken brave words at Cleveland. how it
does rejoice my heart to see him at last so thoroughly entrenching himself in eternal
principles. ….” Even she, however, implies that such a turn, if true, would be surprising
given Cochrane’s background. “If John stops at Peterboro on his return,” she advised
“Gen. Fremont’s Letter of Acceptance” Liberator June 10, 1864, p.95. Pillsbury to Phillips, June 1,
1864, Phillips Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University. According to the Dictionary of American
Biography, Cochrane, elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a states’ rights Democrat 1857-1861,
always backed the southern viewpoint. In 1860 he voted for Douglas—Dictionary of American Biography,
ed. Allen Johnson and Dumas Malone (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), vol.4:252-53. Nagler
notes that the forty-eighters preferred the name “Liberty party,” Fremont contra Lincoln, p.217. Note that
Frémont himself used this name in his letter to Heinzen of Dec. 25, 1863 quoted above.
82
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50
Smith, “conjure him never again to lower his standard. He occupies the advance ground
now. may he redeem the errors of the past by earnestness & devotion to principle.”
Similarly, the Westliche Post crowed, “War Democrats have made all our fundamental
principles theirs….”83
From the moment Frémont’s letter of acceptance appeared, however, both the
abolitionists and the forty-eighters began to lose confidence in him—they regarded his
repudiation of confiscation as a betrayal, and feared his willingness to let himself be
manipulated by Copperheads and other unsavory influences. In particular, the antislavery
men noticed great enthusiasm for Frémont's candidacy in what they termed the
Copperhead press. In early July, Davis told Phillips that he still had "great confidence" in
Frémont's "instincts and judgment," nonetheless, he continued, "If I write him, will I not
have to say in view of late events, 'what have you done that these men should praise
you?'" Some among the forty-eighters concluded that Frémont no longer wished to
represent the radicals. His questionable company, along with his repudiation of
confiscation, led many among the Germans—both the "radical" and "moderate"—to
reconsider their implicit trust in Frémont. 84
83
Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, pp.179, 184; Stanton to Smith, June 2, 1864, Smith Papers, George
Arents Library, Syracuse University, in Papers of Stanton and Anthony; Westliche Post June 3, 1864
quoted in Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, at p.217: “’Kriegsdemokraten haben sich unserm Aufrute zu der
radikalen Convention angeschlossen, sie haben in der jetzt beschlossenen Platform alle unsere wesentlichen
Grundsätze…’” (emphasis in original). The Liberator of July 1 reprinted a comment from the Boston
Journal noting that the Richmond papers who now scorn Cochrane for joining Frémont's "radical" ticket
"so soon forge[t] the vow he uttered in a speech at Richmond that if the Federal Government should
attempt to coerce the South, he (Cochrane) would be found sword in hand on the side of Old Virginia,"
p.107.
84
An item in the Liberator of June 24 noted "The Chicago Times, the great Copperhead newspaper of the
West, endorses Gen. Fremont's letter of acceptance, and speaks in flattering terms of the General," p.103;
Davis to Phillips, Jul. 7, 1864, Phillips Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University. The Milwaukee
Herald of June 25 declared, "mit Fremont können wir unter diesen Umständen keine Gemeinschaft haben,
denn wir sind radikal und wollen radikal bleiben," quoted in Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, p.219.
Nagler, quoting Wittke (Against the Current, p.194), states that Philllips and Heinzen together met with
Frémont about his reversal on confiscation; but Wittke cited no sources, and I could find no evidence of
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A week after the Cleveland meeting, the Republican National Convention met in
Baltimore. No one even pretended surprise at Lincoln's nomination. The platform,
however, did appear to adopt some points known to be cherished by radicals. One plank
asserted that only those who subscribe to the platform should serve in the administration-this was a gesture to the widely held opinion among antislavery Republicans that
Montgomery Blair and William H. Seward acted as conservative forces which kept the
president from prosecuting the war more decisively. Another plank affirmed both the
value to the country of foreign immigration and the right of asylum--which last had been
specifically mentioned at Cleveland. Perhaps the resolution that sounded most like
Cleveland was the one urging integrity and economy in the public expenditures. Other
planks pledge to preserve the integrity of the Union; call for protection and measures of
redress for abuse of all soldiers regardless of color; insist on slavery's utter and
permanent extirpation, in part through a Constitutional Amendment, and demands the
federal government make no compromise with rebels not based on their unconditional
surrender and return to loyalty. A final plank affirmed the Monroe Doctrine—on which
forty-eighters had continually insisted. Even as they alternately criticized and praised
Frémont for his radicalism vis-à-vis the Democrats on one hand and Republicans on the
other, forty-eighters did acknowledge that apart from confiscation and a single term for
the presidency, the Baltimore platform gave them just about all they could have asked
for. Like their fellow Americans, they waited to see what the Democrats would do at
their convention, and how Frémont might respond. In the meantime, the American AntiSlavery Society cancelled its annual Fourth of July celebration on the grounds, said the
such a meeting in Phillips's papers, Fremont contra Lincoln, p.220, on their growing concern that Frémont
would ally with Democrats, see pp.225, 229.
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Standard, that abolitionists now could join their fellow citizens in celebration and not feel
barred by the Constitution's support for slavery. 85 [Standard July 9]
The Lost Leader
In the 1840s, Robert Browning published a poem critical of his hero William
Wordsworth, whom Browning believed had abandoned his support of radical democratic
movements. In the summer of 1864 a number of self-described radicals invoked the
trope of the lost leader—but some did so to refer to Frémont, others to Garrison, still
others to Phillips, and many to all three. In the Liberator of June 24, for instance, in his
"Refuge of Oppression" column, Garrison reprinted an editorial from the New Nation (a
paper launched to support Frémont's candidacy). Titled "A Lost Leader," the editorial
argued that Garrison had become conservative, a political partisan—and referenced
divisions among abolitionists to the same effect. The same Liberator issue featured the
regular column "Letters from New York" by M. Du Pays. (The identity of this writer has
not been determined, but the name is likely a pseudonym.) Here the writer arraigned
Frémont's presidential bid as motivated by revenge, unpatriotic, and a boon to
Copperheads, and reprinted a poem in French, entitled "Le Chef Perdu"—The Lost
Leader. Rather than quote the Browning, however, this poem appears to have been
originally written for Frémont. It read, in part, "Adieu, Frémont!... or rather, to the devil!
…. The friend of men makes a holy alliance with the enemies of liberty. …. Pathfinder?
Yes! You found it… the open and short path to infamy. …. You speak, and you divide
85
Independent, June 23, 1864; Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, pp.221-22; Standard, July 9, 1864.
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the homeland!"86
The poems are a striking illustration of how the opposing sides in the
1864 election campaign accused one another of betraying radicalism.
Among the most striking facets of the abolitionists' division over the election
campaign is the extent to which many of Garrison and Phillips's colleagues thought the
controversy had tainted them both. At first, abolitionists wondered more at how Phillips
could associate with the Frémont movement now that the platform, his letter, and the
evident delight of the Democrats showed the shallowness of its radicalism. Back in
February, after Garrison and Phillips had first disagreed in public over the election, Lydia
Maria Child wrote to Garrison. Despite its implicit critique of Garrison's complacence,
her letter appeared in both the Standard and the Liberator. "The voice of Wendell
Phillips," she concluded, is needed constantly in rebuke and warning; for the number who
sincerely and heartily acknowledge the equality of the races is still very small." But by
June she thought it clear that Frémont was "playing a game" in courting the Democrats,
and she marveled that Phillips seemed not to realize it. "I hope he will not have much
influence," she wrote to Sarah Shaw; "if he does, I fear he may be the means of giving us
a Copperhead president." For his part, J. Miller McKim of the Pennsylvania AntiSlavery Society, was quick to assume a dark design on the part of Frémont's abolitionist
supporters, and damage to the American Anti-Slavery Society as a result. After referring
to "Jean Baptiste Pillsbury and Jean Paul Foster," McKim continued, "It is plain that the
American Anti-Slavery Society has accomplished its mission. If it continues in active
86
Robert Browning, "The Lost Leader," in "My Last Duchess" and Other Poems [1845] New York:
Dover, 1993, pp.20-21; Liberator June 24, 1864, front page, and p.102. I am indebted to Becky Shipley for
the translation of "Le Chef Perdu." Historian Herman Belz, for instance, also cited M. Du Pays's editorials
under that name, see his A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and Freedom Rights, 1861-1866
(Westport: Greenwood Press, 1976) p.66. A subsequent editorial in Harper's Weekly explicitly invoked
Browning's poem to declare Frémont a "lost leader," reprinted in Liberator, Jul. 1, 1864, front page.
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existence it will be as a political club. …. When a non-resistant turns politician, in time of
revolution--taking his stand for God and the people--look out; Ça ira!"87
Oliver Johnson, editor of the Standard, expressed the same bewilderment as Child
had, directly to Phillips himself, even as the two were locked in an increasingly bitter
dispute over whether the paper had declared for Lincoln, and thus, as the organ of the
American Anti-Slavery Society, violated the society's formal nonpartisanship. In midJune, upon learning that Phillips felt deeply offended by the paper's course, Johnson
wrote him a very respectful letter. In it he said, "from the moment that I saw the
Cleveland platform and read Fremont's letter of acceptance, I felt almost certain that you
would promptly repudiate the whole affair as a transparent swindle." Johnson's tone in
the columns of the paper, however, had recently been less mild and respectful. A report
on the Cleveland Convention reads rather matter-of-factly, except for two disapproving
observations. It summarized Frémont's speech as having been more about "arbitrary
arrests…habeas corpus, etc., than about slavery or the equal rights of the negro." And it
noted that political abolitionist William Goodell attempted to amend the fifth resolution
(the one that begins "That the rebellion has destroyed slavery," quoted in full above) to
read "that the rebellion must be suppressed by the destruction of its motive cause,
slavery, but his motion was defeated. In the editorial column, however, Johnson brought
up a resolution Phillips had proposed to the recent New England Anti-Slavery
Convention, which never got discussed. The resolution noted a comment in the Standard
87
Child to Garrison, Liberator February 19, Standard Feb. 27, 1864; Child to Lucy Osgood, June 19,
1864; Child to J. G. Whittier, June 19, 1864: "I am exceedingly sorry for the course Wendell Phillips is
pursuing. …. Since Fremont has written a letter so obviously courting the copperheads, I don't see how he
can stand by him." Child to Shaw, 1864 [May-June?]—all in Collected Correspondence of Lydia Maria
Child, 1817-1880, ed. Patricia Holland and Milton Meltzer (Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus Microform, 1979)
[microfiche]; McKim to Caroline Weston, June 2, 1864, Weston Papers, Ms. A. 9.2, Boston Public Library.
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that abolitionists who had refrained from voting might now feel that they can, and
protested the remark as a violation of the Society's "principle of action." To this, Johnson
rather acidly replied, "We had supposed that Abolitionists who were active in promoting
the nomination of particular candidates for the Presidency could have no scruple against
voting for them. If they could advise and assist in the making of a President, who must
swear to support the Constitution, we imagine that they must discern some change
worked by the logic of events…."88
Johnson's comment about Phillips's extensive involvement in Frémont's campaign
is revealing as—in all likelihood—a resort to gossip. Although Phillips admits as much
in a very few letters that survive among Stanton's papers, in general, public or printed
sources such as the newspapers depict him as merely adding his voice in support of
Frémont's candidacy in the belief that Frémont favored emancipation and equal rights for
black Americans more than Lincoln did. Apart from those few letters mentioned,
practically no evidence survives to illuminate to what extent and in what ways Phillips
consulted with and advised Frémont during the election campaign. Given that Phillips
affirmed both publicly and privately that he believed in Frémont, one wonders why he
would wish his advisory role not be widely known—recall Davis's reference to this wish
in a letter quoted above. One reason might be that, as suggested by his dispute with
Johnson, despite circumstances making them more passionate about this presidential
contest than any in the movement's history, abolitionists evidently continued to feel some
investment in their antebellum posture as reformers above the fray of, and thus unsullied
by, the truck and barter of electoral politics. Phillips himself had observed in the 1840s
88
Johnson to Phillips, June 22, 1864, Antislavery Collection, Ms. A. 1.2, Boston Public Library; "The
Cleveland Convention," and "The New England Anti-Slavery Convention," both in Standard, June 4, 1864.
Johnson's letter indicates that he himself had written the report on the Cleveland convention.
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that such a posture lent the abolitionists more actual influence in politics not less, than
direct engagement, such as marshalling votes would. Nerves were clearly strained as so
much about the fate of both the freedmen and the Union seemed to hang on the outcome.
But an ambivalence or internal conflict about how much to adapt to new circumstances
and how much to retain their former posture added to the tensions within abolitionist
circles.89
Garrisonian abolitionist and woman's rights activist Lucy Stone appealed to Susan
B. Anthony on the same grounds—that the only way to advance genuine reform is to not
get caught up in politics. As such, and for its application to how woman's rights activists
understood themselves and their relation to abolitionism, it is worth excerpting at some
length.
I was unspeakably disappointed in the Cleveland platform. I
expected the largest antislavery utterance instead of the announcement that
slavery is dead. Nor before the Convention could I have believed that
Fremont would consent to a fellowship with such a man as John Cochrane.
It is as true as ever, that we cant touch pitch, and not be defiled. And bad
as Mr. Lincoln is, a union with him, and his supporters, seems to me, less
bad than a union with peace Democrats. …. Pray dont work for that party
Susan. You will be sure to be sorry for it. Radical Anti Slavery is our
work. its weapons are ours- the tools of politicians are dead weights in
our hands.
Isnt it pitiful to see Mr. Garrison who 30 years ago had not a shade
of excuse for any body who had the smallest [word illegible] of proslavery
about him, now vain of a letter from Montgomery Blair, stand pelting
Phillips whose wholesome criticism seems to be all there is of anti-slavery
at that office- It is surely better that one who has battled bravely for the
right, should die before his time of triumph, than live to make himself a
fool- I feel proud of Wendell Phillips but I am sorrier than I can tell that
he touches the Cleveland people. His true place is outside of all parties—
89
See Phillips to Stanton July 20, 1864, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Huntington Library, and Phillips
to Stanton Aug. 22, 1864, E. C. Stanton Papers, Library of Congress—both in Papers of Stanton and
Anthony. For Phillips's estimation of their influence see Lewis Perry, Radical Abolitionism: Anarchy and
the Government of God in Antislavery Thought (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1973), pp.79-80, 84-85, 126,
158.
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an advocate of great principles—a critic of parties and persons—his power
would be at its best without limit. I think Tilton has the better of him in
the correspondence.
I wonder if there is any way to make Mr. Garrison see that his
fulsome laudation of Mr. Lincoln is right against the slave. O if he would
only cry out as in the earlier days! …. How is Mrs. Stanton? …. tell her
not to work for a party that dare not put her name to the call for its
convention for but a single day. ….90
Stone here seems to find Garrison as mired in the pitch of politics as Phillips. Her letter
also serves to highlight that none of Stanton's surviving correspondence about the
convention indicated whether she signed the call and if not, why not. Thus, Stone
indirectly raises the question of what about the Frémont candidacy would lead Stanton to
expect any more or better from him than she might from Lincoln. One possible reason,
admittedly speculative, is the widely held belief that Frémont's wife Jessie had
considerable ambition and also great influence in shaping her husband's public career and
persona. Mrs. Frémont and Stanton had corresponded about the Women's Loyal National
League, to which the former sent a financial contribution. Stanton may have believed
that, during a Frémont administration, she could work with Jessie to advance woman's
rights.91
90
Stone to Anthony, July 12, 1864, Blackwell Family Papers, Library of Congress, in Papers of Stanton
and Anthony. Garrison had reprinted, and commented upon, a letter to him from Montgomery Blair, in his
editorial column of the Liberator, Jul. 1, 1864. In introducing the letter, Garrison acknowledged that Blair,
now claiming to support emancipation, still advocates colonization, "which of course we strongly
reprobate." In his letter, Blair wrote, "I am gratified also to see that you do not consider a difference of
opinion on the question of whether the races must be separated after emancipation a sufficient reason for
division among friends of freedom before we have effected emancipation." By the Tilton correspondence,
Stone refers to an exchange in the New York Independent between Wendell Phillips and its editor, the
abolitionist Theodore Tilton. Tilton argued the case against supporting Frémont's candidacy and Phillips
presented his reasons in favor. See Independent, June 30 and July 7, 1864—portions were reprinted in both
the Standard and the Liberator.
91
On Mrs. Frémont's contribution to the WLNL see Venet, Neither Ballots nor Bullets, p.111. Some of
those who believed Jessie Frémont exercised her ambitions for her husband to his detriment include
Edward Davis and Franz Sigel. In 1856, Davis wrote Phillips that he had told Jessie personally there was
no other woman he would rather see in the White House besides her--except for Mrs. Chapman, Davis to
Phillips, Jul. 16, 1856; but in 1864 he affirmed his confidence in the General's "instincts and
judgment…but not so much in Mrs. F's whose vision is warped by ambition and I fear revenge," Davis to
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The Democratic National Convention met in Chicago in late August. No doubt,
some Republicans who had hoped for a candidate more vigorously antislavery than
Lincoln set out to observe the proceedings, to see whether the Democrats might get
behind some other candidate with whom Republicans could then unite—perhaps Grant or
Butler. But the Democrats nominated General George B. McClellan, on a platform that
declared the war a failure. McClellan vainly tried to distance himself from the platform,
but not before it had tainted him as a candidate for most loyal Union voters. Only days
afterward, Sherman's forces captured Atlanta. Lincoln's prospects at the polls had
brightened considerably. Friends of Frémont began working on convincing him to
withdraw.92
Davis wrote Phillips first, before writing to the General. Interestingly, it was to
the former, not the latter, that Davis warned, "I implore you not to say a word that may be
construed as in favor of Chicago." For Phillips remained among those who, while they
would not support the Democrats, still would not do a thing to aid Lincoln. On
September 19 he wrote to Samuel May, Jr., "As for Lincoln and McClellan, I would cut
off both hands before unnecessarily doing anything to elect McClellan -- & one hand
before doing the same for Lincoln. In that, he was joined by Mrs. Stanton, and a few
Phillips, Jul. 7, 1864—both in Phillips Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University. In a letter to Caspar
Butz in 1861, Sigel praised Frémont's talents and ideas, but criticized his "pomp" and general behavior,
adding "even his wife, like Struvenia of old, meddles in military affairs… You will, however, gather…that
after what I have learned, it will never happen that I will openly come out in favor of Fremont--the General
Fremont." ("Der äußere Pomp, mit dem er aufgetreten ist, …. auch hat sich seine Frau, wie weiland
Struvenia, in militärische Angelegenheiten gemischt ….. Sie werden aber daraus ersehen, daß es mir nach
den gemachten Erfahrungen nicht zukommt, mich öffentlich für Fremont - den General Fremont auszusprechen.")
92
Bartlett, John C. Fremont and the Republican Party; McPherson, Struggle for Equality.
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among the forty-eighters. The majority of both Garrisonians and forty-eighters, however,
ultimately regarded Lincoln as the best candidate possible at the time.93
The Fall-Out
For Garrisonian abolitionists, the election dispute left deep divisions. For the
most part, that internal split seems neither to have drawn in, nor much affected
abolitionists of color. In part this may be due to black activists' organizing their own
political conventions around the election to discuss the issues and their views. Many of
their concerns matched those of which Phillips and others spoke--that the administration
promise protection and redress for captured black soldiers; equal pay for soldiers;
suffrage for the literate, propertied, free black men of New Orleans; and the fate of the
freedmen in general with respect to land, education, and the ballot. But it does seem that
abolitionists of color did not, in any appreciable numbers, give much countenance to the
Frémont movement after the Cleveland convention. Douglass had initially supported
Frémont's bid in 1864--as he had in 1856. But Lincoln appealed directly to Douglass for
counsel, which led Douglass to believe he could work with the president. Douglass did
not campaign actively for Lincoln, but because he was sure Lincoln would fear it would
hurt the campaign more than it could help. Abolitionists of color were more concerned
with how the lingering divisions threatened the antislavery societies, and endeavored to
exert influence over those effects, as discussed at greater length in Chapter Six below.94
93
Davis to Phillips Sept. 1, 1864; Davis to Frémont, Sept. 2, 1864--both in Phillips Papers, Houghton
Library, Harvard University. Stanton to Phillips Sept. 25, 1864, Phillips Papers, Houghton Library,
Harvard University and Phillips to Stanton, Sept. 27, 1864, E. C. Stanton Papers, Library of Congress--both
in Papers of Stanton and Anthony. Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln 233-34, 243-49.
94
See C. Peter Ripley et al., eds., The Black Abolitionist Papers, vol. 5, The United States, 1859-1865,
p.277 for one of the few references to Frémont; LarryE. Nelson, "Black Leaders and the Presidential
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In mid-September, Phillips wrote to Samuel May, Jr., in reply to a query concerning
antislavery activity from some time ago. Phillips took the opportunity to add, "…. I still
remain reformer & not politician--still (as since 1843) prefer justice to the Union - & still
trust the old Antislavery policy that its always safe to do right - deeply regretting that
some of you cannot any longer dare to stand on the old platform." A draft of May's reply
survives in the Boston Public Library. The numerous and heavy cross-outs vividly
convey May's struggle between veneration of Phillips's antislavery leadership and a real
disdain for his refusal to aid Lincoln's re-election. Overall, May crossed out his sharpest
barbs and substituted milder words. The last line read, "But the utter shipwreck of no one
man's fame, and claims to leadership, can bankrupt the Anti-Slavery cause." At the time,
Phillips was pursuing both a complaint to the Executive Committee against Johnson's
conduct of the Standard and an attempt to get the Hovey fund to cut off its subsidy to the
Liberator.
It is clear that the dispute over the election led directly to the resignation of
Garrision and a number of his supporters from the Society the following Spring. That
story is covered in more detail in Chapter Six, below. A striking dimension to the
aftermath, however, is that the controversy seems to have redounded as much against
Garrison as against Phillips, if not more so. In 1866, Samuel May, Jr., undertook to
collect signatures and financial contributions for a "testimonial" to Garrison from among
Election of 1864," Journal of Negro History vol. 63, no.1 (Jan. 1978): 42-58; David W. Blight, Frederick
Douglass’ Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1989), pp.183-84. From just an
eyeball survey, it does seem both the Liberator and the Standard provided much less information to their
readers than formerly about the activities of abolitionists of color during the election year.
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old and tried abolitionists, but found that many still bore him considerable resentment-some directly referenced his conduct during the election.95
Abolitionists' dispute over the election exposed material differences in how
activists who had worked together for decades responded to the tumultuous events around
them, and how they believed their movement should adjust. Rendering that question at
once intriguing and frustrating is the fact that abolitionists wished to minimize both the
evolutions in their own thinking and the fact of their differences with one another. The
evidence which survives, however, raises some compelling possibilities. On Garrison's
side, one comment in particular stands out. Professor F. W. Newman of London, a
longtime British supporter of the American antislavery movement, challenged Garrison's
support for Lincoln. This challenge appeared to have irritated Garrison more than many
others--perhaps because he assumed Moncure Conway, then in England, had undertaken
a campaign of misinformation against himself and succeeded in turning Newman against
Garrison's side. In any event, in one reply to Newman printed in the Liberator, Garrison
addressed the by-then oft-heard charge that he had slackened his efforts on behalf of
black Americans. Garrison declared, "That there are grievances still to be redressed, and
outrages to be protested against, is true; but is it rationally to be expected that, where
slavery and its poisonous influences have ruled the country for centuries, full justice for
the oppressed can be obtained at a single bound—especially in the midst of the
convulsions of an unparalleled civil war."96 This is the closest Garrison came during the
95
May Jr. to McKim, [fill in the specific dates], 1866, McKim-Maloney-Garrison Family Papers, New
York Public Library.
96
In July, 1864, Phillips explained to Conway his anxiety to avoid even the appearance of quarrelling
among radicals, Phillips to Conway, Jul. 16, 1864, in Maloney-McKim-Garrison Family Papers, New York
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war—in public or in private—to admitting he did not think the two objectives could be
won at once, and therefore they ought not be fought at once--of preserving the Union and
agitating for equal rights for black Americans. Nor is such a conclusion necessarily
shocking or unreasonable. More intriguing is that Garrison appeared extremely
reluctant—unable, even—to state the matter plainly. So abolitionists puzzled over what
seemed like a diminished commitment, out of nowhere, on his part. And consequently,
historians have by and large not succeeded in rendering Garrison's evolving views in
clear terms or explaining them well.97
The mystery may well be deeper on the other side. Phillips, Stanton, and some of
the leading forty-eighters cited a common rationale for their support of Frémont's
candidacy. In their turn, they asserted with striking confidence their faith that the
Democratic party had begun to see the writing on the wall that slavery was doomed, and
the Confederacy would fail. Hence, the party was in flux, looking to remake itself. So
far, so good. But they also assumed that thus Democrats, in national convention
assembled, with Lincoln's prospects looking more vulnerable than ever, would suddenly
embrace Frémont, immediate emancipation, and equal rights for blacks. Phillips laid out
his reasoning in letters to Stanton. Stanton affirmed the argument, and in her letters to
Phillips reported on efforts she had made to advance their cause, well into September.
Caspar Butz heralded the remarkable change in the Democracy in his anti-Lincoln
monthly. These three individuals in particular had no change of heart before the election,
Public Library. May Jr. speculated to Richard Webb in Dublin that Conway was to blame for Newman's
challenge, May to Webb Sept. 13, 1864, Antislavery Collection, Ms.B.1.6, BPL. [Garrison], "Letter from
Professor Newman," Liberator Jul. 1, 1864, p.106.
97
To cite just two instances, John Thomas's biography from the mid-1960s (The Liberator, Boston:
Little, Brown, 1965?) remains a standard reference, underpinning subsequent researchers' claims about
Garrison's growing conservatism. Henry Mayer's All on Fire, is much less critical; while noting some of
Garrison's oddities, its celebratory approach cannot adequately explain them. Mayer, All on Fire: William
Lloyd Garrison and the Abolition of Slavery (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998).
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and in fact did not support Lincoln's cause. The Chicago convention established beyond
a doubt that they had been mistaken, but the attitude shared by Phillips and Stanton
especially merely acknowledged that it had not happened the way they hoped; they do not
seem to have re-evaluated what led them to think it could.98 What is more, over the next
few years, after the war, they all would revisit again the issue of some sort of coalition
with Democrats.
98
Phillips to Stanton July 20, 1864, Ida Husted Harper Collection, Huntington Library, and Phillips
to Stanton Aug. 22, 1864, E. C. Stanton Papers, Library of Congress; Stanton to Phillips Aug. 13, and
Stanton to Phillips Sept. 25, 1864, Phillips Papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University —all in Papers
of Stanton and Anthony; Nagler, Fremont contra Lincoln, p.231.