Lincoln and the Election of 1860 by Michael S. Green, and: Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley by Gregory A. Borchard (review)

It is fortuitous that Southern Illinois University Press has inaugurated its Concise Lincoln Library series in the sesquicentennial year of the American Civil War, for the histories of the war and those of Abraham Lincoln have been inextricably linked for the last 150 years. As the first two books to be published in this series, the works under review fulfill the objective of providing short, readable accounts of different facets of Lincoln’s life and career. Attractively packaged and well illustrated, both are skillfully written syntheses that competently cover their subjects in about one hundred pages. Gregory A. Borchard pursues two goals in his book: to present parallel biographies of Horace Greeley and Abraham Lincoln and to recount the oft-troubled political relationship between the two men during the Civil War. Borchard delineates the obvious yet still instructive parallels in the public lives of Greeley and Lincoln. At the heart of these similarities was their attachment to antebellum American Whiggery. As fierce adherents of Henry Clay’s “American System,” Greeley and Lincoln were steadfast supporters of internal improvements and tariffs.

Rising through modest circumstances, each embraced an ethic of free labor, self-improvement, and social mobility that was at the core of the Republican persuasion in the 1850s. Both served on the Whig campaigns of 1840 and 1844 and were members of the Thirtieth Congress when they arrived in Washington in December 1848. Borchard insists that Lincoln and Greeley sought the eventual end of slavery, even if their opposition to slavery extension did not really surface until the mid-1840s.

Borchard recognizes that sound comparative biography needs to acknowledge differences as well as similarities between his subjects. Greeley was more willing to entertain radical challenges to the American social and economic order. For example, the Tribune was perhaps the most vocal supporter of Fourierism in the United States. Greeley and Lincoln also hailed from very distinctive geographical localities, a significant difference that Borchard does not pursue. Throughout his life, Greeley was embedded in the web of urban social relations of New York. It is thus surprising that Borchard does not discuss the New York City draft riots of 1863. During this July revolution, the office of the Tribune was attacked and Greeley’s own life was in real danger.

Most Civil War historians are probably most interested in the political relationship between Lincoln and Greeley. Even though only about a third of the book deals with the war years, Borchard covers this subject adequately. Tensions between the two began during Lincoln’s senate race in 1858, when Greeley and other eastern Republicans tried to push their partisans in Illinois to support Stephen A. Douglas as a reward for repudiating the Lecompton Constitution. In the opening months of Lincoln’s presidency, Greeley was disappointed about not getting a cabinet post. Yet as Borchard explains, this was a practical decision based on William Seward’s powerful position in the administration (Greeley worked to prevent Seward’s nomination in the 1860 Republican convention). During the Civil War, Greeley supported the Union war effort, though he often used the columns of the Tribune to “hector the president personally” (72). At various times, Greeley would inexplicably push the Union armies toward battle yet urge Lincoln to surrender. The president and the editor became further alienated over Greeley’s role in the abortive Niagara Peace Conference of 1864.

Borchard suggests that the differences between Greeley and Lincoln were over means to the same goal. Here he is clearly more generous to the Tribune editor than the many historians who have seen Greeley’s behavior as erratic and irresponsible. Yet it seems quite possible that differences over principles can explain the wartime conflicts between Greeley and Lincoln. In particular, Greeley...