Lincoln and the Union Governors

Bibliographical Essay

151 Bibliogr aphical Essay The student of the Civil War will be surprised to learn that there is no modern study of the relationship of Lincoln and the Union governors . William B. Hesseltine’s Lincoln and the War Governors (1948, 1972), though dated, has generally been accepted as the standard account of the subject. Hesseltine’s book reflected the consensus view of mid-twentieth-century historians that the Civil War president, in addition to beating back a radical challenge in his party to his leadership , by late 1862 had taken the measure of the Union governors and had found them inferior and unable to meet the unified demands of the war. By the time the governors met on September 24, 1862, at Altoona, Pennsylvania, in an important conference on the war, Lincoln, according to Hesseltine, had triumphed over them and was now the complete master of Union war policies, including the raising of troops and emancipation. Historians have generally followed Hesseltine’s view of the Union governors. They have virtually ignored the Altoona conference, which was followed by the governors’ meeting with the president in Washington . Allan Nevins, in War Becomes Revolution (1960), volume 2 of his magisterial history, The War for the Union, provides a brief account of the Altoona conference, which he concludes was “an innocuous farce” (239–40). James G. Randall, in volume 2 of another classic study, Lincoln the President: Springfield to Gettysburg (1945), asserts that the president by the time of the Altoona conference “had clipped the gubernatorial wings,” and the governors had “nothing to do but to endorse the President’s policy” (231). Several decades later, Eric Foner, in his prize-winning The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2010), devotes only two sentences to the conference and ignores the role of the governors in emancipation (230). Allen C. Guelzo, in his fine book, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (2004), mentions the Altoona conference in passing (160). Russell Weigley, in A Great Civil War: A Military and Political History, 1861–1865 (2000), gives little attention to the activities of the governors in the war and writes that the Altoona meeting 152 | Bibliographical Essay “proved to be perfectly timed not to embarrass the President but to be obliged to praise his proclamation” (191–92). Except for accounts of Lincoln’s call for troops early in the war, general histories of the Civil War have neglected the governors’ role in the war and their relationship to Lincoln. On the other hand, several state histories of the war, biographies, and articles describe the activities of specific governors (for example, John A. Andrew of Massachusetts and Oliver P. Morton of Indiana), their interactions with Lincoln, and the prosecution of the war. For a good understanding of the tensions and complexities that the governors faced at home, the Civil War student and reader should consult the following superb state studies: Kenneth M. Stampp, Indiana Politics during the Civil War (1949, 1978); John Nevin, Connecticut for the Union: The Role of the State in the Civil War (1965); and William Gillette, Jersey Blue: Civil War Politics in New Jersey, 1854–1865 (1995). Richard H. Abbott’s Ohio’s War Governors (1962) is an informative brief account of this state’s three governors during the Civil War. Robert H. Jones’s The Civil War in the Northwest (1960) is a fine study that focuses on the Indian conflict in today’s upper Midwest, which spilled over into the Great Plains. Also, Alvin M. Josephy Jr.’s The Civil War in the American West (1991) is a well-written account that should be consulted by anyone interested in California, Oregon, Nevada, and the western territories during the war. The relationship of Lincoln with the governors of Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky figures prominently in my book Lincoln and the Border States: Preserving the Union (2011). For Lincoln during the Civil War, Michael Burlingame’s two-volume biography of the sixteenth president, Abraham Lincoln: A Life (2008), is indispensable. These old biographies of five Union governors contain a wealth of materials and important information: William Dudley Foulke, Life of Oliver P. Morton, Including His Important Speeches (1889); William H. Egle, Life and Times of Andrew Gregg Curtin (1896); Henry Greenleaf Pearson, The Life of John A. Andrew, Governor of Massachusetts, 1861–1865 (1904); Henry Warren Lathrop, The Life and Times of Samuel J. Kirkwood, Iowa’s Civil War Governor (1893); and Stewart Mitchell, Horatio Seymour of New York...