"Abraham Africanus I": President Lincoln Through the Eyes of a Copperhead Editor

"ABRAHAM AFBICANUS I": PRESIDENT LINCOLN THROUGH THE EYES OF A COPPERHEAD EDITOR Joseph George, Jr. In 1866 a reviewer of E. A. Pollard's The Lost Cause observed that the only fault he could find with the book was its title. "We . . . have not failed to assert die opinion," he said, "that die struggle on the part of die Confederates was a righteous one, and we dislike to admit diat such a cause is ever lost.' " He added diat his own magazine had never doubted the right of a state, "as a last resort, to resume its delegated powers," that ^Lincoln's war was a monstrous crime," and that the South was right during the war in resisting "usurpation and despotism."1 These sentiments sound like die bitter lament of an incorrigible defender of the Lost Cause defying die victors and attempting to comfort his fellow soudiemers. However, the words were not written by a southerner nor did they appear in a southern magazine, aldiough after die war die journal was probably much more popular in the Soudi than above die Mason-Dixon line.2 The magazine was The Old Guard, published in New York, and the writer was its editor, C. Chauncey Burr. From January, 1863, until 1869, when Burr resigned from the magazine , The Old Guard was die most vitriolic and consistent Copperhead periodical, denouncing in bitter terms President Lincoln, die war effort, Negroes, and abolitionists. Although little known today, C. Chauncey Burr was, in die words of his obituary in the New York Times, a "conspicuous figure, known throughout the country" in his own time, or, at least, during die Civil War.3 His magazine had made him famous. Unfortunately, biographical material on Burr is not readily available and much of what is known is obscure and often ? The Old Guard, TV (Nov., 1866), 702. 3 Burr began a Richmond edition of the magazine within the first year after the war. Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines (Cambridge, 1957), 11,545. 3 New York Times, May 3, 1883. 226 contradictory. He was born in Maine, in 1815, but contrary to his obituary, he never attended Bowdoin College.4 He was, however, a Universalist minister in Portland, Maine, in 1840, accused at diat time of abusing in print the reputation of a fellow clergyman. The dispute was apparently settled amicably.5 In die second half of the 1840's Burr appeared in Philadelphia as an "unconventional minister" of die Second Universalist Church.8 Later, during his career as editor of The Old Guard, Burr boldly denied tiiat he was ever a minister or even a member of any church.7 It was during diese few years in Philadelphia tiiat Burr displayed, rather curiously in view of his subsequent career, a strong sympadiy for die anti-slavery movement. As editor of the short-lived magazine, The Nineteenth Century, he denounced soudierners and slavery and even was able to count on his friend, Horace Greeley, to assist him in obtaining articles for his journal.8 In condemning the institution of slavery in The Nineteenth Century, Burr declared diat the relation of master and slave was a "contradiction in civil logic," diat a "man's brain, bis heart, his muscles, are his own." In a later issue he strongly endorsed die Wilmot Proviso: We want no more compromises. We have already made a covenant with evil, which hangs like a millstone around our necks, and weighs like an incubus upon our national prosperity. We once compromised with slavery, and agreed to let it alone within its limits. It overran its borders, and spread its curse over wide and fertile regions, now states. ... It is too late to talk of compromise now. We have too much of that already. The cry now is: no extenskn of skvery. . . .· Although diese sentiments should have proved embarrassing to a Copperhead , they did not bodier Burr, who simply never attempted to explain diem away.10 Burr's movements during the 1850*s, after his editorship of The 4 His obituary appears in ibid. The Bowdoin College archives contain no record that Burr ever attended that school; Robert L. VoIz of Bowdoin College Library to...