Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley

Introduction: Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley Remembered

1 Introduction: Abr aham Lincoln and Hor ace Gr eeley R emember ed In an event wrongly relegated to a footnote, Abraham Lincoln and Horace Greeley both visited Chicago for the first time in July 1847, meeting for a political rally that helped secure their careers of national importance in both politics and the press. Organizers had originally promoted the Chicago River and Harbor Convention as a protest of President James K. Polk’s veto of a bill that would have invested federal funds into Chicago, a city of rising importance in the West.1 Although neither Lincoln nor Greeley at the time considered the moment pivotal, it would go on to secure their roles on the national stage, foreshadowing a reconvergence of national leadership in Chicago during the 1860 Republican convention. When the news of Polk’s decision had reached Chicago, ships there lowered flags to half-mast, demonstrating that many in Illinois believed Polk’s action would be a crippling blow against an otherwise developing economy. Responding to the crisis, the convention attracted a veritable “who’s who” of leading Whig and Democratic politicians and editors. Among delegates, Schuyler Colfax, editor of Indiana’s St. Joseph Valley Register, headed the list of secretaries in charge of the event. Other attendees included Lincoln, a rising Whig just beginning a term in the U.S. House; Greeley, the popular editor of the New York Tribune; David Dudley Field, famed reformist lawyer; and Edward Bates, the presiding officer who in 1861 would become attorney general in Lincoln’s cabinet. Leading national 2 | introduction political figures—Henry Clay, Martin Van Buren, and Lewis Cass— read letters, gave addresses, and developed resolutions, adopted unanimously , calling on Congress to fund the construction of canals and railroads. With more than 10,000 conventioneers supporting calls to appropriate money for infrastructural improvements throughout the West, Lincoln spoke briefly, praising the attendees for their unity.2 Greeley, describing for readers the event, noted his roles as both a participant and a reporter, introducing Lincoln to readers as “a tall specimen of an Illinoisan, just elected to Congress from the only Whig district in the State.”3 Although Lincoln’s name had previously appeared in Greeley’s newspaper as a notation of his election to the House, this was apparently the first time the Illinoisan had directly captured the attention of his editorial match in the East. Newspapers in Lincoln’s home state of Illinois described his contributions with even greater attention, assuring readers that they could trust him, their newly elected legislator in the U.S. House. “We expect much from him as a representative in Congress,” reflected the Chicago Journal, “and we have no doubt our expectations will be more than realized, for never was reliance placed in a nobler heart and a sounder judgment.”4 Greeley, who on the day of adjournment, July 7, 1847, served as the committee chair to adopt a resolution calling for the construction of a railroad between Chicago and the Pacific, also showed promise as a politically minded reformer, noting that the “the cause of Internal Improvement, with the subsequent growth of Chicago, received considerable impetus from the Convention.”5 When Ohio Whig Thomas Corwin closed the meeting and addressed the delegates by issuing a call for the Tribune editor, Greeley rose to the occasion. He spoke to an attentive audience about the need for federal investments in the West and was “warmly cheered,” according to Thurlow Weed, Greeley’s mentor also in attendance. For the first time, Greeley emerged for serious consideration as a political candidate.6 The event was one of many in which the careers of Lincoln and Greeley intersected. Their shared belief in the United States united them, personified in their mutual admiration for Henry Clay, who had described his model for the Union as the American System—a collection of regions bound by a government that advanced the interests introduction | 3 of both the regions and the whole. As fellow Whig representatives, one from Illinois and—with Greeley’s election in 1848—the other from New York, the two men formally began working together, in accordance with these shared beliefs, in the Thirtieth Congress. While Lincoln’s outspoken criticism of the Polk administration’s prosecution of the Mexican-American War defined his legislative term and Greeley’s service was remarkable for his advocacy of public rights to lands in the West, both worked...