April, 1863–The North Star Takes a Shot at Thurlow Weed and Laments the Firing of Gen. George McClellan

By Gary Far­row, Danville His­tor­i­cal Society

Des­per­a­tion over the war effort con­tin­ued to be one of main themes in the North Star’s report­ing and opin­ion columns. The paper’s com­men­tary also brings its polit­i­cal stripes into clear­er focus.

April 4, 1863 North Star, Government Expenses

The New­bury­port Her­ald says our nation­al expens­es since this war com­menced have been greater than from the ori­gin of the Gov­ern­ment down to 1861, a peri­od of sev­en­ty-two years. Our whole nation expens­es to the time of the rebel­lion, includ­ing the war with Eng­land, the Mex­i­can war, and our many Indi­an wars, were $1,353,785,000: and were the war to cease now no one imag­ines that our debt would be less than $2,009,000,000 cre­at­ed in less than two years…

Every day since the war began our expens­es have increased. Mil­lions are vot­ed by Con­gress for eman­ci­pa­tion pur­pos­es, Pacif­ic Rail­roads, and any­thing, and every­thing, and where the lim­it might be reached, or what will be the end, Heav­en only knows.

This, how­ev­er, is evi­dent, blind our­selves as we may, no nation can long endure such expen­di­ture as we are now incur­ring, and if long con­tin­ued, we must land in hope­less bank­rupt­cy. (NOTE, by the Ed. Staff – And yet, we ought to do all in our pow­er to sus­tain and not depre­ci­ate the Nation­al Cred­it.) Great as the war expens­es are, and large as The Nation­al debt will be, we must not go into bank­rupt­cy. If we do, we are a fall­en, doomed nation, and our his­to­ry will be that of the Mex­i­can States.

By all means, sus­tain the Gov­ern­ment cred­it – sub­mit to all rea­son­able, nec­es­sary tax­a­tion – but at the same time, con­demn waste less expen­di­ture, profli­ga­cy and cor­rup­tion in the pub­lic ser­vice. The Her­ald clos­es by say­ing: “Nec­es­sar­i­ly our expen­di­tures must now be large, but, Con­gress should not vote a dol­lar where it was not absolute­ly nec­es­sary to sus­tain the Gov­ern­ment and car­ry on the war. It is now no time for schemes of improve­ments and reforms. Nor should the Gov­ern­ment allow waste ….Spec­u­la­tors should be dealt with as pub­lic ene­mies and trai­tors to the coun­try, and laws should be passed for their sum­ma­ry pun­ish­ment by the hal­ter, the bul­let, or the headman’s axe, what­ev­er be their posi­tion, from the cab­i­net to the low­est con­trac­tor, or from a Major Gen­er­al to the scav­engers of the army.

April 4, 1863 North Star, The Draft

We have con­flict­ing state­ments about the draft, the time when it is to occur, the num­ber of men to be called out etc. We don’t believe much is yet known about it with cer­tain­ty. The last dis­patch says that imme­di­ate­ly after the Con­necti­cut elec­tion orders will be issued to con­script 300,000. Anoth­er report is that those States which have failed to fill their quo­tas will be first called upon.

April 4 1863 North Star, War News of the Week

In his last epis­tle, Thur­low Weed says: “But for the teach­ings of the N.Y. Tri­bune in utter con­flict with itself, and now repu­di­at­ed our coun­try would have been spared half the hor­rors of this war.” Thurlow’s own teach­ings before the war he seems to be utter­ly obliv­i­ous of.

It is thought four negro reg­i­ments will be raised in Philadel­phia. Two thou­sand men already enlist­ed, and the col­ored peo­ple of the city have offered $60,000 toward com­plet­ing the organization.

The Albany States­man, exces­sive­ly loy­al and rav­ing­ly patri­ot­ic assails the Con­script law dai­ly, as oppres­sive on the poor, favor­ing the rich, who can read­i­ly pay the $300 tax. Sat­ur­day it said it was unnec­es­sary as a war time mea­sure, and an immense blun­der as a par­ty move­ment. And yet this States­man tells sto­ries about schemes argu­ing the Democ­rats to defeat the draft in New York and bring the State and Nation­al author­i­ties into collision!

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Thur­low Weed was the prick­ly par­ty boss of the Whigs and then Repub­li­cans in New York state. Con­fi­dant and advi­sor to Sen­a­tor Hen­ry Seward (N‑Y), Weed man­aged Seward’s nation­al cam­paign to win the Repub­li­can nom­i­na­tion for Pres­i­dent in 1859. The Sen­a­tor was an out­spo­ken advo­cate of putting an end to slav­ery cit­ing a “high­er law” than the Con­sti­tu­tion. This moral appeal was extreme­ly provoca­tive in its day and the Tweed’s elec­tion strat­e­gy for Seward was to have him take a more tem­pered stance with­out dis­avow­ing his pre­vi­ous comments.

Going into the Chica­go con­ven­tion, Seward was heav­i­ly favored in the race to cap­ture the nom­i­na­tion; how­ev­er, when he failed to win on the first bal­lot, the die for him was cast. He had a long, dis­tin­guished high pro­file career on the nation­al stage as Gov­er­nor and Sen­a­tor for his state, but this noto­ri­ety was a dou­ble-edged sword. Both Tweed and Seward had made a lot of polit­i­cal ene­mies dur­ing the Senator’s career and it came home to roost that night in Chicago.

Although the con­ven­tion was held in his home state, Sen­a­tor Abra­ham Lin­coln was a rel­a­tive unknown can­di­date for the Repub­li­can Party’s nom­i­na­tion. Cer­tain­ly, Lincoln’s pro­file was not as great as oth­er con­tenders such as renowned lawyer Edwin Stan­ton, Sen­a­tor Salmon Chase, for­mer Gov­er­nor and Sen­a­tor from Ohio, or Edwin Bates, the first attor­ney gen­er­al of Mis­souri. Seward bare­ly lost the nom­i­na­tion on the first bal­lot. Some spec­u­late that Thur­low Weed’s hard-dri­ving, hard drink­ing New York­ers thor­ough­ly alien­at­ed oth­er del­e­gates at the Con­ven­tion and cost Seward the nom­i­na­tion. On the oth­er hand, Lincoln’s strat­e­gy going into the con­ven­tion was to lie in the weeds and be the “sec­ond love” of all the del­e­gates, which final­ly proved suc­cess­ful on the third ballot.

Weed became a strong Lin­coln sup­port­er and was seen as a some­times petu­lant friend of the Pres­i­dent dur­ing his admin­is­tra­tion. In addi­tion to being a par­ty boss, Tweed was also the own­er and edit­ed the Albany Evening Jour­nal, which he had used to pro­mote his views regard­ing issues such slav­ery and the Union. This brought him into con­flict with Horace Gree­ley, own­er and edi­tor of the New York Tri­bune. Gree­ley used the Tri­bune to advo­cate for the rad­i­cal abo­li­tion of slav­ery, strong­ly advo­cat­ing for it in the years run­ning up to the War.

Once the war start­ed, Gree­ley pressed the Admin­is­tra­tion to go “on to Rich­mond” before the Army was ready. This led to the deba­cle, known as the First Bat­tle of Man­as­sas, which saw rout­ed Union troops flee back to Wash­ing­ton, some com­man­deer­ing buck­boards from civil­ians. On the ques­tion of slav­ery, Tweed saw him­self as much more prag­mat­ic than Gree­ley and came out in oppo­si­tion to the Eman­ci­pa­tion Procla­ma­tion say­ing that free­dom for slaves was hap­pen­ing much too fast. Tweed’s opin­ion reflect­ed the views of many North­ern­ers, includ­ing the North Star, which opined great skep­ti­cism about the wis­dom of free­ing slaves in rebel states.

The North Star’s shot at staunch Repub­li­can Tweed, “Thurlow’s own teach­ings before the war he seems to be utter­ly obliv­i­ous of” is reflec­tive of its sym­pa­thy for the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. As is the newspaper’s fol­low­ing lamen­ta­tion over the fir­ing of Gen. George B McClel­lan, one of the lead­ing lights of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. There were oth­ers in the coun­try, such as Sec­re­tary of War Edwin Stan­ton, who not only want­ed Gen. McClel­lan sacked, they want­ed him hung for treason.

April 11, 1863 North Star, What Progress! – The Difference

It is a well known fact, in the progress of the war, that ever since Gen. McClel­lan was removed from the Army of Potomac , there has not been a sin­gle Fed­er­al vic­to­ry, nei­ther in Vir­ginia, not any oth­er part of the coun­try, of any amount. It is a mat­ter of regret that our arms have met with no success…The win­ter sea­son is an unfa­vor­able time for mil­i­tary oper­a­tions …Every­thing has appar­ent­ly been at a stand­still, although we are all hop­ing for speedy and sig­nal tri­umphs, and at this writ­ing, we have to report that our forces have recent­ly tak­en Charleston. If it is so, it is a great acqui­si­tion, and we shall soon have all the particulars….-while we have full faith in their [cur­rent crop of Gen­er­als] loy­al­ty, their patri­o­tism, and their devo­tion to the mil­i­tary ser­vice – yet who can tell but what grander and far more deci­sive results would have at this time ensued had Gen. McClel­lan been at the head and allowed to have his own way, unem­bar­rassed and untram­meled ?…We believe that Gen. McClel­lan has exhib­it­ed more real mil­i­tary genius, and has shown him­self more tru­ly, the real “mas­ter of the sit­u­a­tion” than any oth­er Gen­er­al in the field – and we wish today he was again in the service. ….

We do not speak of him as a man, a cit­i­zen, or a politi­cian. We refer to his mil­i­tary tact and skill. The coun­try needs his mil­i­tary ser­vices, and ought to have it. … We are fear­ful how­ev­er that McClel­lan is doomed to retire­ment by the rad­i­cal politi­cians who pro­cured his dis­missal, and who seem now to have full con­trol over Washington.

…Rel­a­tive to this whole mat­ter, our con­tem­po­rary at the Burling­ton Sen­tinel, in a brief para­graph, well says, “All through the win­ter of last year the rad­i­cal press­es of the coun­try were filled with com­plaints against Gen McClel­lan and the Army of the Potomac because they did not move against ene­my. This year these same papers find no fault with Gen. Hook­er and the vast sources under him, though near­ly four months have passed away since the bat­tle of Fred­er­icks­burg. But instead, for weeks and months past the pub­lic has been treat­ed by them to reit­er­at­ed assur­ances of the splen­did fight­ing con­di­tions the army is in… the coun­try will not fail to notice the dif­fer­ence in the tone of the rad­i­cal news­pa­pers, between now and then, and the peo­ple will not be slow to their infer­ences from it.”