Near the end of February, the division between conservatives and radicals within the Republican Party made headlines throughout the North. With a presidential election coming up that fall, conservatives generally supported Abraham Lincoln for a second term, while radicals preferred a candidate who would impose a harsher war policy against the Confederacy. Several radicals believed that this candidate should be Salmon P. Chase, currently serving as Lincoln’s treasury secretary.
Around February 20, a pamphlet that became known as the Pomeroy Circular (for Kansas Senator Samuel Pomeroy) began circulating in northern newspapers. This pamphlet argued that it would be futile to nominate Lincoln for a second term because he was unelectable. Lincoln’s supporters resented this assertion, but they were especially outraged when the circular suggested that Chase replace Lincoln.
The Pomeroy Circular put Chase in an awkward position. He may have secretly wanted to be the next president, but being in Lincoln’s cabinet meant that he had to distance himself from any opposition to his current boss. Chase wrote Lincoln maintaining that he had “no knowledge of the existence of this letter before I saw it in the (Constitutional) Union.” Chase admitted that he had consulted with politicians urging him to run for president, but he never led anyone to believe that he would seriously seek the office. Chase then offered to resign: “I do not wish to administer the Treasury Department one day without your entire confidence.”
Through his contacts, Lincoln was well aware that Chase was working with radicals to conduct an informal campaign to oust him from the presidency. The author of the Pomeroy Circular later alleged that Chase not only had prior knowledge of its contents, but he had approved its publication. Responding to Chase’s letter, Lincoln wrote: “Yours of yesterday in relation to the paper issued by Senator Pomeroy was duly received; and I write this note merely to say I will answer a little more fully when I can find the leisure to do so.”
Partly in response to the Pomeroy Circular, delegates to the Republican conventions in Indiana and Ohio endorsed Lincoln for a second term. Many Republican conventions, committees, legislatures, newspapers, and Union Leagues voiced loud support for Lincoln over Chase. Lincoln also exerted his political influence by seeing that the Government Printing Office suppressed any anti-Lincoln material. And government workers, most of whom had been hired by Lincoln, overwhelmingly supported him.
Members of a National Conference Committee of the Union Lincoln Association, led by influential Republican Simeon Draper, urged Americans to gather throughout the country and voice support for Lincoln seeking a second term. Meanwhile, members of the National Committee of the Republican party assembled in Washington. Navy Secretary Gideon Welles estimated “that four fifths” of the committee members backed Lincoln, and as such they granted his request to hold a national convention at an early date. They selected June 7, with Baltimore as the site.
Francis P. Blair, Jr., member of the politically powerful Blair family and a general-turned-U.S. congressman who backed Lincoln, delivered a scathing speech against Chase in the House of Representatives. He questioned radicals’ claims of Chase’s high character and integrity by accusing Chase of corrupting the Treasury’s practice of issuing licenses to buy and trade cotton from Confederates in areas under Federal occupation. Blair proclaimed:
“It is a matter of surprise that a man having the instincts of a gentleman should remain in the Cabinet after the disclosure of such an intrigue against the one to whom he owes his position. I suppose the President is well content that he should stay; for every hour that he remains sinks him in the contempt of every honorable mind.”
Citing the corruption charges, Blair declared that “a more profligate administration of the Treasury Department never existed under any government… the whole Mississippi Valley is rank and fetid with the frauds and corruptions of its agents… some of (whom) I suppose employ themselves in distributing that ‘strictly private’ circular which came to light the other day.” Democrats kept silent, delighted that the Republican Party seemed to be splitting in half in an election year.
Finally, Lincoln found the time to respond to Chase’s offer to resign in a letter on the 29th:
“On consideration, I find there is really very little to say. My knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy’s letter having been made public came to me only the day you wrote; but I had, in spite of myself, known of its existence several days before. I have not yet read it, and I think I shall not… Whether you shall remain at the head of the Treasury Department… I do not perceive occasion for a change.”
Lincoln stated that he was “not shocked, or surprised” by the circular because his backers informed him about Pomeroy’s committee beforehand. Lincoln explained, “I have known just as little of these things as my own friends have allowed me to know. They bring the documents to me, but I do not read them–they tell me what they think fit to tell me, but I do not inquire for more.” The president then told Chase that he had nothing to do with Blair’s attack on him in Congress.
By refusing Chase’s offer to resign, Lincoln shrewdly kept him at the Treasury Department, where he could keep close tabs on his activities, and where Chase could not openly run for president.
Welles wrote in his diary what many Republicans believed about the Pomeroy Circular: “It will be more dangerous in its recoil than its projectile. That is, it will damage Chase more than Lincoln.” Welles went on:
“The effect on the two men themselves will not be serious. Both of them desire the position, which is not surprising; it certainly is not in the President, who would be gratified with an indorsement. Were I to advise Chase, it would be not to aspire for the position, especially not as a competitor with the man who has given him his, confidence, and with whom he has acted in the administration of the government at a most eventful period. The President well understands Chase’s wish, and is somewhat hurt that he should press forward under the circumstances. Chase tries to have it thought that he is indifferent and scarcely cognizant of what is doing in his behalf, but no one of his partisans is so well posted as Chase himself.”
Ohio Congressman (and future U.S. president) James A. Garfield, a Chase backer, conceded what many other Chase backers would soon realize: “It seems clear to me that the people desire the re-election of Mr. Lincoln.”
Bibliography
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