Lincoln and the Power of the Press INTRODUCTION A More Efficient Service "He who moulds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions." -Abraham Lincoln, August 21, 1858 To many of his thriving neighbors, Abraham Lincoln''s hometown of Springfield, Illinois, seemed by the 1850s nothing less than a "paradise in miniature." Abundant with "stores, taverns, and shops," and illuminated by modern, gas-fed lights, even the unpaved, mud-mired streets could not inhibit what Lincoln called "a great deal of flourishing about in carriages."1 Behind its serenely bustling facade, however, the frontier capital also ranked as one of the most contentiously riven political hotbeds in the country-a seething two-party battleground where election campaigns took on the militant urgency of outright war, and combatants deployed newspapers as their most powerful weapons. Such was never more the case than in 1859-the eve of the most potentially divisive presidential election in American history. As a state capital boasting some nine thousand permanent residents-and far greater than that number whenever politicians and lobbyists jammed into town for annual legislative sessions-Springfield served as a year-round stage for partisan speeches, rallies, parades, picnics, barbecues, illuminations, conventions, and outright street brawls over both issues and candidates. Even with its population in perpetual flux owing to the almost daily arrival and departure of new residents, its voting-age men stood equally (some said hopelessly) divided between Democrats and Republicans. Whether the legislature was in or out of session, Springfield''s citizens remained passionate about their politics year-round, ever ready to argue the issues of the day, both in person and in print.

2 Fueling this combustible mix were Springfield''s two major newspapers. Both covered neighborhood news with anodyne charm, but when it came to local, state, and national politics, both stoked the ferment with an overtly partisan style that combined advocacy with almost libelous criticism. One paper was dependably pro-Democratic, the other unfailingly pro-Republican, and each was steadfastly, often maliciously, opposed to the other. Rather than merely reprint what one editor termed the city''s constant "flood of eloquence"3 from politicians on both sides, these irreconcilable journals could be depended on to laud allies and eviscerate opponents. When they were not dishing out equal doses of praise and rage in their regular editions, they engaged their presses to print party pamphlets and political orations. If they were fortunate and well connected, they received rewards for their loyalty in the form of government printing jobs. The mutual interdependence that grew up between the press and politics made for a toxic brew. No politician was above it, no editor beyond it, and no reader immune to it.

Now, with the next national election only a year away, with the contest already being widely touted as the most crucial of the century, and with the issue of slavery roiling the country, local interest in national issues and personalities approached a fever pitch in Springfield, in part for a reason unique to this otherwise typically divided Western city. For by 1859, its residents could boast that their town had incubated two immensely gifted potential aspirants for the White House: United States senator Stephen A. Douglas, and former congressman Abraham Lincoln. Douglas, the "Little Giant," led the pack among his fellow Democrats. And while "Long Abraham" was perhaps not yet widely known enough nationally to rank as a top-tier contender for the Republicans, he remained an intriguing dark-horse possibility for their ticket-perhaps, as some ardent supporters began whispering, for vice president. No one knows precisely when Lincoln began aiming still higher, but to bring the presidency within his sights he certainly knew where he needed first to burnish his political profile: in the Republican Party press, and not just among the usual loyalists who read the newspapers in his hometown. Lincoln had been assiduously courting editors in nearby villages and cities for years. Describing his ambition as "a little engine that knew no rest," his law partner and political confidant, William H.

Herndon, testified that Lincoln "never overlooked a newspaper man who had it in his power to say a good or bad thing of him."4 For now, however, Lincoln still lacked both real political power and routine attention in the press beyond Springfield. And he still thirsted for both. That May, Lincoln made a remarkable move to recalibrate this frustrating political equilibrium. The lifelong and voracious newspaper reader decided to become a newspaper owner as well-by acquiring a weekly journal complete with its own printing press and a politically compatible editor ready to churn out enthusiastic editorials lauding him. It did not seem to matter that he would never be able to read the product himself. For the paper would be printed in German, a language he had only briefly studied but never mastered. Moreover, it would be composed in Gothic-style Fraktur typeface, an elaborate black-letter script no more decipherable to him than Sanskrit.

5 To comprehend what motivated this indelibly American politician to purchase a foreign language newspaper he could never hope to comprehend requires a quantum leap of historical imagination-back to an era when the press and politics were profoundly interconnected, and newspapers themselves became more overtly partisan, more narrowly targeted, yet more deeply influential than at any time before or since. Abraham Lincoln''s emergence as a newspaper publisher constituted but one example of the pervasive and sometimes incestuous relationships that grew up between politicians and journalists in the fierce battles for public opinion and government power in the decades leading up to the Civil War-and beyond. That such affiliations, however common at the time, were still considered vaguely unsavory by some, seems evident in how assiduously Lincoln kept his own newspaper investment quiet. Except for his private banker, his law partner, and but one fellow Illinois Republican politician, he seems to have told no one about the purchase at the time, or, indeed, for the rest of his life. For four score years, his involvement remained largely unknown even to biographers.6 Yet the truth is, the arrangement would likely have surprised, much less scandalized, few of his contemporaries. Lincoln was neither the first nor the last politician of his era to dabble in the newspaper business-ethnic or otherwise, covertly or not. Countless prominent officials of the mid-nineteenth century did so with confident abandon, making partisan journalism an integral cog in their political machines.

This vanished tradition informs the neglected story explored in this book: how in the age of Lincoln the press and politics often functioned in tandem as a single, tightly organized entity in the furious competition to win power and to promote-or, alternatively, resist-political and social change. The financial and popular success that many newspapers enjoyed in pursuit of political goals enabled them to influence both leaders and events, and emboldened them to report on politics with a biased fury unimaginable in previous or subsequent generations. Not until the Civil War would precedent-shattering conflicts arise between government and the press, forcing these traditions into dramatic (and perhaps overdue) change. To explore these complex relationships, and calculate their profound impact on history, this book proposes to reexamine Lincoln''s political life through prominent period newspapers and their editors-focusing not just on how newspapers reported on and influenced his ascent, but how his own struggle for power, and that of most of his political contemporaries, unfolded within a concurrent competition for preeminence among newspapermen to influence politics and politicians. Newspapers of the day occasionally manufactured politicians, just as politicians often manufactured newspapers-but in the end they were of, by, and for the same environment. They became mutually dependent and totally inseparable-weapons in the same arsenal. In some cases, they synchronized their efforts so closely that it was impossible to determine where one organization ended its work and the other began it. Lincoln embraced and thrived in this milieu, yet the story has escaped full scrutiny since.

- - - The emergence of a party press had begun in earnest the century before. In the mid-1790s, the explosive growth of political enthusiasm and the slow but sure development of improved printing technologies coincided to make newspapers more widely available as well as more openly partisan, and served to connect politicians to both editors and their subscribers. In time, readers came to align themselves with party newspapers as routinely as they began aligning themselves with political organizations: both loyalties helped define their identities. In this atmosphere, political parties commenced openly funding and promoting sympathetic newspapers, while new.