Sold – Abraham Lincoln and the Press: “Private and Confidential”

After the debacle at Bull Run in July 1861, and the realization that a long and bloody war was in the footing, Lincoln saw one of his primary goals as shoring up public support for the war effort. This required the cooperation of the press, and the press was often very critical of Lincoln and disdainful of his military appointees. Of the newspapers of the day, the two most influential nationally were Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune and James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald. Greeley was disappointed with the administration’s failure to advocate abolition, but stood behind Lincoln and the war. Bennett, whose paper maintained a staff of 63 war correspondents and covered the conflict like no other publication, provided at best lukewarm support and lurked as a potential obstacle to Lincoln in every important measure the administration took.

Bennett had supported President Buchanan as the slavery crisis escalated and then backed southerner John C. Breckinridge in the 1860 election. He was not favorably disposed to Lincoln nor impressed by his first inaugural address, which his paper characterized by saying, “It would have been almost as instructive if President Lincoln had contented himself with telling his audience yesterday a funny story and let them go. His inaugural is but a paraphrase of the vague generalities contained in his pilgrimage speeches…” The Herald was particularly caustic in assessing the first month of the new administration, declaring that the Lincoln government was interested only in spoils and in pursuing an antagonistic attitude toward the South. In the anxious days before Fort Sumter was fired upon, Bennett’s newspaper wrote, “Our only hope now against civil war…seems to lie in the overthrow of the demoralizing, disorganizing, and destructive sectional party, of which Honest Abe Lincoln” is the pliant instrument.”

The firing on Fort Sumter, as well as angry charges in New York that he sympathized with treason, changed the attitude of Bennett to an extent, and he sent a representative to assure Lincoln of his loyalty to the Union. The message was that the Herald would support all measures that the President and the Congress might deem necessary to put down the rebellion. However, Bennett was still not a friend of the administration and his paper’s actual policy proved inconsistent. For example, just before Bull Run, The Herald floated a diversionary if not delusional trial balloon suggesting that the northern and southern armies should combine and together conquer Canada or Mexico.

In August 1861, the Herald supported Lincoln’s appointment of Gen. George C. McClellan to organize and lead the Army of the Potomac. In the wake of this important endorsement, in early September, Bennett approved of Lincoln’s decision to dismiss Maj. Gen. John C. Fremont after Fremont proclaimed on his own authority that all slaves owned by Confederates in Missouri were free. This was an unprecedented degree of support from Bennett, and Lincoln very much wanted to encourage this continued positive press from the nation’s most important newspaper.

One of the Herald’s most industrious correspondents in Washington was Henry Wikoff, a man widely disliked because of his reputation as a globe-trotting rogue and professional gossip. Perhaps because of this reputation, on September 28, 1861, when Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles issued passes for several reporters to accompany a Union warship down the Potomac River, he refused to provide a pass for Wikoff to accompany them. Wikoff went right to the President, who saw him that night but was unable to provide relief at that late hour. Lincoln feared that Bennett would perceive this incident as a slight to himself and the Herald and wanted to avoid damaging his precarious relationship with the man and his paper. But he also had to contend with the potential greater harm this denial of a press pass could work: reporters generally might see it as a form of censorship and make a significant story out of it, and an outcry on that subject might develop that would provide the opposition papers with a club with which to beat him. So Lincoln rushed to minimize the damage the incident would cause to both the war effort and himself as the nation’s leader. In doing so, he was prepared both to apologize to Bennett and to flatter him by complimenting the valuable services Bennett had performed for the country.

Autograph Letter Signed marked “Private & confidential,” Washington, September 29, 1861, to Bennett. “Last evening Mr. Wickoff solicited me for a pass, or permission to a gentleman whose name I forget, to accompany one of our vessels down the Potomac to-day, as a reporter of the Herald, saying the Sec. of the Navy had refused, while he had given the privilege to reporters of other papers. It was too late at night for me to see the Secretary, and I had to decline giving the permission, because he the Sec, might have a sufficient reason unknown to me. I write this to assure you that the administration will not discriminate against the Herald, especially while it sustains us so generously, and the cause of the country so ably as it has been doing.” This letter is included in Basler’s “The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln” and is quoted in the authoritative book, “War of Words: Abraham Lincoln & the Civil War Press.”

Perhaps no president was more vilified by the press than Lincoln, yet none better appreciated the value of the press’s access to the public and the benefits that would flow from obtaining its support. In this letter we see the effects of that realization – the politician/strategist Lincoln at work, swallowing his personal pride to promote his goal of building support for the Union cause. It is one of the most significant letters Lincoln ever wrote illuminating the importance he placed on the press and the extent he would go to maintain favorable press relations. A search of auction records for the past 35 years reveals no other letter of Lincoln on this subject having appeared.