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100  The Role of the Press Hans L. Trefousse 5he importance of the press, the medium during the nineteenth century, is well known. Popular knowledge of major events was disseminated by the newspapers throughout the country, and although they often copied from one another and reported matters in similar language, when friendly to Lincoln and stressing his progressive actions, their contribution to his reputation for giving freedom to African Americans, supporting the antislavery cause, granting emancipation, and promoting the Thirteenth Amendment, is evident. Of course, different papers expressed differing policies. Extreme abolitionist journals, such as the Liberator, the National Anti-Slavery Standard, and Karl Heinzen’s Der Pionier, tended at times to be critical of Lincoln’s allegedly too careful approach and what they considered his tardiness. Democratic journals like the New York World were highly critical, and that Southern organs attacked him incessantly stands to reason. But others, as will be seen, were more friendly.1 The friendly press highlighted Lincoln’s antislavery activities before his nomination and election to the presidency. When in 1856 he received 110 votes at the Republican convention at Philadelphia, the papers naturally did not fail to mention it, but the New York Evening Post reported that he “was a good fellow, a fierce friend of freedom, and an old line whig.” And then came the Illinois senatorial contest in 1858. Although the state legislatures then elected United States senators, at Springfield in June Lincoln was nominated as the sole candidate of the state, and he delivered his famous “House divided against itself” speech, predicting that the nation would eventually be all slave or all free. The New York Times called it “elegant,” while the Chicago Daily Tribune referred to it as a “logical and masterly argument.”2 The subsequent campaign against the famous Illinois Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas received elaborate coverage, with a stress on Lincoln’s pleas the role of the press 101 for freedom and emancipation. As the Chicago Press and Tribune pointed out, he appealed to the Declaration of Independence with its stress on liberty and equality. Concerning a reply to Douglas at Springfield on July 20, the paper considered “the speech of Mr. Lincoln . . . an able vindication of Republicanism ” (meaning opposition to slavery). The ensuing six debates with Douglas received special attention. When on August 17 the two met at Ottawa, the same paper praised his “excellent” answer to Douglas. “He lifted the curtain that hid the conspiracies and conspirators from view, and laid bare before the gaze of ten thousand auditors the work in which the little Catiline [a reference to Lucius Sergius Catalina, the Roman conspirator] was engaged, showed up who were his confreres and associated in the plot to overthrow the Constitution, nationalize slavery, and convert our Union in a negro-breeding despotism.” After the Freeport debate on the twenty-seventh, in which Lincoln showed the inconsistency of Douglas’s idea of “popular sovereignty” with the Dred Scott decision, Justice Roger B. Taney’s refusal of the right of popular choice about slavery in the territories, even the often critical New York Evening Post wrote, “Mr. Lincoln closed the debate in a calm review of Douglas’ speech, charging him with perversion of truth and disingenuous argument. He dwelt briefly on the creed of the Republican Party [the prohibition of slavery in the territories] and urged it upon his audience as the only policy calculated to give peace to the country and to put it again on the right track.” The New York Daily Tribune, equally impressed, commented, “he said . . . the present [fugitive slave] law is objectionable in several important particulars and ought to be modified . . . [and] as to the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, he should be glad to see it done, and believes Congress has the constitutional power to do it.” The succeeding debates gave rise to further praise, pointing out Lincoln’s steadfast opposition to the expansion of slavery.3 After the Cooper Union speech in New York in February 1860, during which Lincoln first came to the favorable attention of the East, and which Harold Holzer has called “the speech that made Abraham Lincoln president,” the New York Daily Tribune was enthusiastic about his condemnation of slavery and his demand that its spread be arrested, with the Evening Post echoing this opinion.4 The 1860 presidential campaign naturally brought forth innumerable praises for the candidate from Illinois. As early as February, the Chicago Press and...

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