Harold Holzer > Quotes

“It is a newspaper's duty to print the news and raise hell. Wilbur Storey”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion

“In March 1861 alone—Lincoln’s first month in office—the U.S. Senate would receive for its advice and consent some sixty pages of names submitted for civilian and military appointments ranging from secretary of state to surveyor-general of Minnesota.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“Samuel FB Morse's SECOND question over the telegraph was, "Have you any news?”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion

“While attending to the customary tasks of assembling a cabinet, rewarding political loyalists with federal appointments, and drafting an inaugural address alone—he employed no speechwriters—Lincoln was uniquely forced to confront the collapse of the country itself, with no power to prevent its disintegration. Bound to loyalty to the Republican party platform on which he had run and won, he could yield little to the majority that had in fact voted against him.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“This was Lincoln’s final version of his Farewell Address: My friends—No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe every thing. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me, and remain with you and be every where for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“Harvard students rallied on campus to offer formal, but “cordial,” congratulations to their fellow student, Robert T. Lincoln, son of the president-elect and newly dubbed—in honor of the Prince of Wales’s recent triumphant American tour—the “Prince of Rails.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“No greater mistake can be made than to assume that newspapers are correct indices of public opinion.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion

“Any journalist who holds the office writes in a straitjacket.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion

“At Mount Holyoke, a band of female Wide-Awakes described as “running hither and thither…laughing and shouting, and drinking lemonade,” marched in a celebratory torchlight procession, unfurling a banner that read: “PRESIDENT—ABRAHAM LINCOLN. Behind a homely exterior, we recognize inward beauty.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“Soon thereafter, Lincoln glimpsed another “mysterious” and, he feared, “ominous” vision in his own bedroom mirror. While reclining on a lounge, he glanced up to notice a “double-image of himself in the looking-glass,” one clear, the other pallid. For a moment, it was vivid; then it vanished—at first, two Lincolns side by side, then none at all.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“Henry Villard took sarcastic note of the sudden “adornment of whiskers” on November 19. “His old friends, who have been used to a great indifference as to the ‘outer man,’ on his part,” the journalist punned, “say that ‘Abe is putting on airs.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“Cabinet-making was a vexingly complicated matter, and the Chicago discussions understandably proceeded slowly. Politicians so frequently “annoyed” Lincoln with diversionary “invitations to dinner and tea,” or pressed minor patronage claims for themselves or their friends, that he found himself “unable to transact the private business for which he came.” The party faithful—prominent leaders and “lesser lights” alike—had flocked into town, some thirsting after cabinet posts, others “looking to take any office that pays well…anything they can get.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“The harried Lincoln made clear to Sumner that he believed compromise would simply open the door for further demands and more concessions: “Give them personal liberty bills, and they will pull in the slack, hold on, and insist on the border-state compromises. Give them that, they’ll again pull in the slack and demand Crittenden’s compromise. That pulled in, they will want all that South Carolina asks.” He “would sooner go out into his backyard and hang himself.” Then Lincoln punctuated his resolve with a down-home pledge: “By no act or complicity of mine shall the Republican party become a mere sucked egg, all shell and no principle in it.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“One paper boasted that its subscription and advertising numbers proved that America did not need the social change it rival paper advocated.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion

“Around the same time, the president-elect opened an equally chilling letter from yet another anonymous enemy in Washington: “Caesar had his Brutus. Charles the First his Cromwell. And the President may profit by their example.” The letter was signed “Vindex”—the name of the first Roman governor to rebel against Nero—“one of a sworn band of 10, who have resolved to shoot you in the inaugural procession on the 4th of March, 1861.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“Historian David M. Potter pointed out in 1942 that as president-elect, Lincoln was no more than “simply a lawyer from Springfield, Illinois—a man of great undeveloped capacities and narrowly limited background. He was more fit to become President than to be President.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“As the endlessly patient husband explained of his volatile wife’s outbursts some years later: “If you knew how little harm it does me, and how much good it does her, you wouldn’t wonder that I am meek.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“Not everyone was laughing. Ascribing “incapacity, stupidity, imbecility, gross ignorance and habitual venality” to the stalemated Congress, the New York Herald angrily concluded that “no remedy whatever is to be looked for from their representatives.” Sounding eerily like President Buchanan in his December annual message, it blamed not Southern extremism but “republican fanaticism” for the current “avalanche of destruction.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“When a grizzled yeoman worker appeared one morning to complain that as a state legislator many years earlier, in hard times, young Lincoln had inexcusably voted to raise his government salary from two to all of four dollars a day,” Lincoln listened to the reproach calmly. “Now, Abe, I want to know what in the world made you do it?” demanded the old Democrat. With deadpan seriousness, Lincoln explained: “I reckon the only reason was that we wanted the money.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“Saying nothing was preferable to saying too much. Well versed in the Bible, Lincoln may also have remembered the lines from Isaiah: “You silence the uproar of foreigners; as heat is reduced by the shadow of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is stilled.”102”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“Reflecting this view—and worse—a small-town Georgia newspaper warned: “Can we suppose, for a moment, that the South will submit to a Black Ruler of our Government?” Vowing never to recognize a so-called “negro President,” the journal labeled Lincoln “a notorious nigger thief” and posted a $10,000 reward for “Hannibal’s and ABE’S heads without their bodies,” hinting that Vice President–elect Hannibal Hamlin was himself of African descent. Lincoln kept the vile clipping in his files.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“As of Election Day, Lincoln had successfully avoided not only his three opponents, but also his own running mate, Hannibal Hamlin. Republicans had nominated the Maine senator for vice president without Lincoln’s knowledge, much less his consent—true to another prevailing political custom that left such choices exclusively to the delegates—in an attempt to balance the Chicago convention’s choice of a Westerner for the presidency.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“And Indiana’s John Defrees expressed his belief that the inclusion of Winfield Scott of Virginia, Alexander Stephens of Georgia, and Edward Bates of Missouri “would do much to bring about a re-action among the people of all the Southern States except S. Carolina, which is insane beyond hope of cure.”134 (Stephens himself later branded as “totally groundless” the “rumor” that he had ever discussed a cabinet appointment with the president-elect.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“It came as no surprise that another visitor to Springfield found Lincoln on November 14 “reading up anew” on the history of Andrew Jackson’s response to the 1832 Nullification Crisis. While he made no effort to conceal “the uneasiness which the contemplated treason gives him,” Lincoln assured his guest that, like Jackson, he would not “yield an inch.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“Newspaper accounts must not only be studied, but, occasionally refuted.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion

“Lincoln’s “campaign” for president ended how and where it began: in adamant silence, and in the same Illinois city to which he had so tenaciously clung since the national convention. Like the solar eclipse that had obscured the Illinois sun in July, Lincoln remained in Springfield, hidden in full view.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“Lincoln received one more painful reminder that he was still a target for criticism. Walking between his home and office, he noticed a group of young boys teasing an agitated stray goat. When the animal hungrily spied the taller target, it turned from the children and tried butting Lincoln instead, until he was forced to seize it by the horns in self-defense. As the youngsters watched in delight, the president-elect of the United States gave his first post-election speech—to an angry goat. He might as well have been speaking to the South when he shouted: “I didn’t bother you. It was the boys. Why don’t you go and butt the boys. I wouldn’t trouble you.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“He not only fumbled badly in his attempts at impromptu oratory en route to the capital, but worst of all, ended his journey in the dead of night, embarrassingly fearful for his safety, after encouraging unseemly partisan demonstrations in friendly Northern cities. He was too conspicuous. He was too sequestered. He was too careless. He was too calculating. He was too conciliatory. He was too coercive. He was too sloppy.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“James M. McPherson spoke for a later generation of scholars when he asserted in 1988 that Lincoln’s entire, public inaugural journey might have been a “mistake,” because in his effort to avoid “a careless remark or slip of the tongue” that might “inflame the crisis further,” the president-elect “indulged in platitudes and trivia,” producing “an unfavorable impression on those who were already disposed to regard the ungainly president-elect as a commonplace prairie lawyer.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861

“Whether applauded or not, the New York Tribune maintained that Lincoln’s bearing remained “deliberate and impressive” at this solemn moment, though Henri Mercier, the elegant French minister, caustically likened this plain American’s appearance amid the “marble and gilt” of the Capital to inaugurating “a Quaker in a Basilica.”
― Harold Holzer, Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter, 1860-1861