Two Against Lincoln: Reverdy Johnson and Horatio Seymour, Champions of the Loyal Opposition by William C. Harris (review)

In Two Against Lincoln: Reverdy Johnson and Horatio Seymour, Champions of the Loyal Opposition, William C. Harris recounts the political careers of Maryland senator Reverdy Johnson and New York governor Horatio Seymour, two of Abraham Lincoln's most outspoken critics. Although these Democratic icons never met or corresponded, they formed the bulwark of the North's "loyal opposition" (p. 2). The words loyal and opposition are key. Johnson and Seymour were neither antiwar Copperheads nor antiparty Unionists. Instead, they represented a faction of Democrats "who remained faithful to the old party of Andrew Jackson, to its constitutional tenets, and also to the original Union purpose in the war" (p. 2). Bitterly opposed to the Republican Party but unwilling to go as far as their Copperhead colleagues, Johnson and Seymour charted a middle path, shunning Copperhead appeals for armistice and avoiding collaboration with Republicans' seemingly radical agenda.

In essence, Two Against Lincoln is two conjoined books. Part 1 (chapters 1–4) chronicles Johnson's career, and Part 2 (chapters 5–8) chronicles Seymour's career. Harris engages each politician separately but offers an introduction and conclusion with comparisons and generalizations.

The two political biographies are well researched and soundly written, giving a full description of Johnson and Seymour and their evolving opinions about slavery, secession, and the war. The story of Reverdy Johnson is perhaps the more interesting of the two, as it charts the aging constitutional lawyer's meandering career from conservative, old-line Whig to Douglas Democrat. Initially, Johnson supported Lincoln's wartime policies, even endorsing Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus in Johnson's home state of Maryland. However, several important events caused Johnson to break with the president, including the controversial court-martial of Major General Fitz John Porter and the Emancipation Proclamation. After a fourteen-year absence from the Senate, Johnson regained his seat in 1863 and emerged as one of Lincoln's biggest critics, going so far as to say that Lincoln demonstrated "'utter unfitness for the presidency'" (p. 80).

The key to understanding Johnson, Harris claims, involves recognizing his regret for bipartisan collaboration. For instance, in 1864 Johnson initially supported the Thirteenth Amendment but then regretted endorsing it. In 1867 he endorsed the Fourteenth Amendment but later worried that he had helped create a "Republican despotism" (p. 97). Increasingly paranoid that radicalism was on the march and leaving the Constitution trampled in its wake, Johnson repeatedly claimed that conservatism—adhering to a policy of limited political change—would save the republic. According to Harris, Johnson believed the founding generation had "established a near perfect instrument of government that restrained central authority, emphasized state and individual rights, and balanced executive and legislative authority" (p. 112). Anything that disrupted this balance, in Johnson's mind, amounted to heresy.

The second half of Two Against Lincoln analyzes Seymour's career, and naturally it emphasizes his governorship and 1868 presidential bid. Harris characterizes Seymour as an inveterate conservative, deeply suspicious of radical government. In October 1861 Seymour called for Democrats to unite and quell the ambitions of "'violent and revolutionary'" elements in the North (p. 122). "'In this dark hour,'" he encouraged them to "'keep on with [the] battle against disloyalty in the North and the South alike'" (p. 122). Harris's depiction of Seymour as a single-minded conservative is convincing, but it has its limitations. For instance, when Seymour spoke about race, his policies rarely reflected political principle. At the 1868 New York Democratic State Convention, Seymour derided his opponents by calling their emphasis on black equality an idealistic myth, while characterizing African Americans as "'an ignorant and degraded race'" (p. 195).

Like other members of the loyal opposition, Seymour never stood on the side of political equality, and this issue goes unaddressed in Harris's disappointing conclusion. Harris praises "the two conservative champions of the loyal...