How could such a derogatory description be attributed to the man known as the great emancipator? However for one American Civil War veteran their first impressions of the man who would become President were not good.
It was a cold, snowy winter evening when 1500 people packed into The Cooper Union to listen to an address from Abraham Lincoln. He delivered his speech in lower Manhattan, New York on February 27th , 1860. It was an important meeting, and Abraham had been planning what he would say for months. Despite all his preparations for the address. a fifteen-year-old member of the audience was unimpressed by what he saw. The man from the prairies of the west, seemed weird, rough, and uncultivated to George H Putnam.
George was one of the only men among the London Branch of American Civil War veterans who could lay claim to having personally met Abraham Lincoln. In old age, when he stood at Lincoln’s statue in Parliament Square, each memorial day laying a wreath in remembrance, one can only wonder how he felt having once met the man so revered. George was President of the London Branch between 1921 and 1924. His comrade Arthur William Frazier Smith, the Honourable secretary of the London Branch late of the 80th New York, had never met Lincoln in the Civil War, but he always saluted his statue.
George Putnam was born in London on April 2nd, 1844, to American parents, however he grew up in the United States. During the Civil War he served in the 176th New York Infantry and rose to the rank of Major. In his teenage years, George had met the gaunt figure of the man who would become President. He observed that Lincoln’s ill-fitting new suit, betrayed the work of an unskilled tailor. George also noticed that Lincoln had large feet, clumsy hands, and hair which did not seem to have been brushed. His appearance was far from the teenager’s preconceived ideas of what a politician should look like. And, when George heard Lincoln begin to talk, the voice was unpleasant, harsh and high pitched.
However, as Lincoln spoke George observed a growing confidence, and the audience seemed captivated by his skills as an orator. Something shifted that night; the address was so well received and publicised that afterwards Lincoln also spoke in eleven other cities in twelve days. Georges first impressions of Lincoln may not have been good, but fortunately the would-be Presidents fate did not lay solely in the hands of the London-born teenager. As history has shown, the Cooper Union speech played a pivotal role in securing Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 Republican Presidential nomination. In 1914 George Putnam published memories of his youth, and it includes a rare recollections of a teenagers encounter with the man who would become President of the United States;
“In February 1860 it was my good fortune to secure a personal glimpse of Abraham Lincoln, the man who was to have the responsibility as leader in the great contest for the maintenance of the Republic. Lincoln had been invited by certain of the Republican leaders in New York to deliver the first of a series of addresses which had been planned to make clear to the voters the purposes and the principles of the new party. As a result of the series of debates with Douglas in 1858, Lincoln's name had become known to many Republicans in the east. It was recognised that he had shown clear understanding of the principles of which the new party had been organised and that his counsel should prove of distinctive service in the shaping of the policy of the coming presidential campaign. The Committee of invitation included, in addition to a group of the old Whigs (of whom my father was one) representatives of Free-Soil Democrats such as William Cullen Bryant and John King.
Lincoln's methods as a political leader and orator were known to one or two men on the committee, but his name was still unfamiliar to an Eastern audience. It was understood that the new leader from the West was going to talk to New York about the fight against slavery, and it is probable that the larger part of the audience expected something 'wild and woolly'. The West at the time, seemed very far off from New York and was still but little understood or little realised by the communities of the East. New York found it difficult to believe that a man from the prairies could have anything to say that would count with the cultivated citizens of the metropolis. The more optimistic of the hearers were hoping that perhaps new Henry Clay had arisen, and these were looking for utterances of the ornate and grandiloquent kind, such as they had heard from Clay and from other statesmen of the South.
My father had the opportunity as a member of the Committee of smuggling me in upon the platform at Cooper Union, and from the corner where I sat, I had a fair view of the speaker. The meeting was presided over by Bryant, and the contrast between the cultivated chairman and the speaker was marked. Bryant, while short, gave the impression at once of dignity, of control, his magnificent big head with the mass of flowing hair was that of a Bard. Bryant's fame as a poet had possibly eclipsed the importance of his service as an editorial teacher with the highest standards of citizenship and as a wise and patriotic leader of public opinion.
The first impression of the man from the West did nothing to contradict the expectation of something weird, rough and uncultivated. The long, ungainly figure upon which hung clothes that, while newly made for this trip, were evidently the work of an unskilful tailor; the large feet and the clumsy hands of which, at the outset, at least the speaker seemed to be unduly conscious. The long, gaunt beard, capped by a shock of hair that seemed not to have been thoroughly brushed out, made a picture which did not fit in with New York's conception of a finished statesman. The first utterance of the voice was not pleasant to the ear, the tone being harsh and a key too high. As the speech progressed, however, the speaker seemed to come into control of himself. The voice gained a natural, impressive modulation. The gestures were dignified and natural, and the hearers found themselves under the influence of the earnest look from deeply set eyes, and of the absolute integrity of purpose and of devotion to principle, which impressed the thought and the words of the speaker. In place of a 'wild and woolly' talk illuminated by more or less incongruous anecdotes, in place of a high-strung exhortation of general principles or of a fierce protest against Southern arrogance, the New Yorkers had presented to them a calm but forcible series of well-reasoned considerations which was to be based their actions as citizens.
It was evident that the man from the west understood thoroughly the constitutional history of the country. He had mastered the issues that had grown up about the slavery question; he realised and was prepared to respect the rights of his political opponents, he realised equally the rights of the men whose views he was helping to shape, and he insisted that there should be no wavering or weakening in regard to the enforcement of those rights. He made it clear that a continued existence of the nation depended upon the equitable adjustment of these issues, and he held such adjustment meant the restriction of slavery within its present boundaries. He maintained that such restriction was just and necessary, as well as on the ground of fairness to the blacks as for the final welfare of the whites. He insisted that the voters in the present states of the Union had upon them the largest possible measure of responsibility in so controlling the great domain of the Republic that the states of the future, the states in which their children and their grandchildren were to grow up as citizens, should be preserved in full liberty and be protected against the invasion and the control of the institution that represented barbarity. Such a contention could interfere in no way with the recognition that was due under the obligations entered into by the grandfathers and confirmed by the fathers to the property rights of the present owners of slaves.
With the New Englanders of the anti-slavery group, the speaker emphasised that the restriction of slavery meant its early extermination; and with this belief, he insisted that the war for the purposes of exterminating slavery from existing slave territory could not be justified. He was prepared, however, for the purpose of protecting against slavery the national territory that was still free, to take the risk of the war, which was threatened from the south, because he believed that the only through such action could the existence of the nation be maintained. He further believed that the maintenance of the great Republic was essential not only for the welfare of his own citizens, but for the interest and the development of free government throughout the world. He spoke with full sympathy of the difficulties and problems resting upon the men of the South, and he insisted that the matter at issue could be adjusted only with a fair recognition of these difficulties. Aggression must be withstood from whichever side of Mason and Dixon's Line it might be threatened.
I was but a boy when I first looked upon the gaunt figure of the man who was to be accepted at the People's leader in the great struggle and listen to the calm but forcible arguments in belief of the principles of the Republican Party. It is not likely that I took in at the time with any adequate appreciation, the weight of the speaker's reasoning. I have read the address since more than once, and it is, of course, impossible to separate my first impressions from my latter knowledge. I do remember that I was at once impressed with the feeling that here was a political leader whose methods differed from those of any politician to whom I had listened, his contentions were based not upon invective or abuse of the other fellow, but purely on considerations of justice, on that everlasting principle that what is just and only what is just, represents the largest and the highest interest of the whole nation. As I learned from the latter history, this Cooper Union speech gave the keynote for the coming campaign, and it also decided the selection of the national leader, not only for the Presidential campaign, But through the coming struggle. It was through the impression made upon New York and later upon the states of the East, by Lincoln speech and by the personality of the man that the votes of New York and of New England were secured for the nomination in Chicago of the man from Illinois....
An edition of Mr. Lincoln's address was brought into print in September 1860 by the Young Men's Republican Union of New York, with notes by Cephas Brainerd and Charles C, Nott, (later Colonel of my own regiment, the 176th New York, and after the war, Chief Justice of the Court of Claims in Washington). The publication of this pamphlet shows that as early as September 1860 the historic importance and permanent value of the speech were fairly realised by the national leaders of the day. In 1909 I brought the speech into print again as an appendix to my biographical study of Lincoln and my good friend Colonel (or Justice,) Nott was sufficiently interested to prepare a new introduction for the text. Justice Nott took the view, which I think is now generally accepted, that the speech is, on the ground not only of its contents, but of its final influence on the history of the country, to be ranked in the first group (and possibly first in the group) of the political addresses of the United States”.
Many years later George Putnam’s observations of President Lincoln where very different to his experiences as a youth. On news of the President’s death, George recalled mass mourning. The London Branch of American Civil War veterans no longer exist. However, we, their descendants, are blessed to have perhaps a deeper understanding of George’s emotions when he stood in London with other American Civil War veteran comrades. In 1909, he wrote, “ I never before had found myself in a mass of men overcome by emotion. Ten thousand soldiers were sobbing together. No survivor of the group can recall the sadness of that morning without again being touched by the wave of emotion which broke down the reserve and control of these war-worn veterans on learning that their great captain was dead”.
References
Finke, G. (no date) The Cooper Union Address: The making of a candidate, National Parks Service. Available at: https://www.nps.gov/liho/learn/historyculture/aboutcooper.htm
Putnam, G.H. (1914) Memories of my youth 1844 - 1865. New York: Putnam’s Sons.
Putnam, G.H. (1909) Abraham Lincoln, the people’s leader in the struggle for National Existence: Advertising Brochure. New York City: G.P. Putnam’s Sons.
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