Lincoln in the World Read Free Page A

Slippers
. George Herring, in his magisterial history of American foreign policy,
From Colony to Superpower
, also admires Lincoln’s “uniquely American brand of practical idealism.” See Herring, pp. 5, 228, and 963.
    8 . Lincoln visited Canada on a trip to Niagara Falls. See Mary Lincoln to Emilie Todd Helm, Sept. 20, [1857,] in Turner and Turner,
Mary Todd Lincoln
, pp. 49–50. See also
Lincoln Lore
, No. 319, May 20, 1935 (copy in Ruth Painter Randall Papers, LOC); Herring, p. 228; Monaghan, p. 13. On Lincoln’s lack of European friends, see Lincoln to Forney, July 28, 1864, in
CWL
, v. 7, p. 468. See also Lincoln to Jesse W. Fell, Dec. 20, 1859,
CWL
, v. 3, p. 511 (“wizzard”); Barlow A. Ulrich to William Henry Herndon, Sept. 21, 1866, in HI, p. 352 (immigrant voters);
ALAL
, v. 1, p. 584 (“Beans”). For the Colombian diplomatic post see Bullard, “When John F. Stuart Sought to Send Lincoln to South America,” p. 21. See also Ninian W. Edwards interview with William Henry Herndon, Sept. 22, 1865, in HI, p. 133 (“crazy”).
    9 . Russell,
My Diary North and South
, p. 36, entry for Mar. 27, 1861 (“effect of a smack”); Hay,
Diary
, p. 14, entry for Apr. 30, 1861 (“When go back Iowa?”); Nordholt, “The Civil War Letters of the Dutch Ambassador,” p. 361 (“laughs uproariously”); Bayne,
Tad Lincoln’s Father
, pp. 168–69 (“glittered grand”); Lutz, “Rudolph Schleiden and the Visit to Richmond, April 25, 1861,” p. 210 (“apt to make blunders”).
    10 . On the character of Lincoln’s diplomatic corps, see Jones,
Blue and Gray Diplomacy
, p. 29;
ALAL
, v. 2,pp. 93–95; Monaghan, p. 68. Both Monaghan and Jones point out that there was also a logic in appointing abolitionists to foreign posts: it sent a message to European countries that the U.S shared their antislavery sympathies. See also Foner,
Fiery Trial
, p. 193. The “sot/rake/swindler” quote is from the
New York World
, Mar. 12, 1861. See also Adams Jr.,
Autobiography
, p. 62 (“wagged”). Adams adds, however, that despite Seward’s loose lips, he never saw the New Yorker “approaching drunkenness.”
    11 . Hay,
Missouri Republican
, Nov. 17, 1861, in Burlingame, ed.,
Lincoln’s Journalist
, p. 140 (“Hottentot” etc.); Perkins,
History of the Monroe Doctrine
, pp. 125–26 (“public business”); Sandburg,
Abraham Lincoln
, p. 637 (“not his wife”); Bigelow,
Retrospections
, v. 2, pp. 234–35; Hay,
Diary
, p. 8, entry for Apr. 22, 1861, and p. 116, entry for Nov. 22, 1863 (“wonderful ass”); Pease and Randall, eds.,
Diary of Orville Hickman Browning
, v. 1, p. 595, entry for Dec. 12, 1862 (“little sense”).
    12 . For a nuanced, if slightly dated, treatment of European attitudes toward the war, see Nevins,
The War for the Union
, v. 2, pp. 242–74. Nevins notes that “the danger of Anglo-French involvement did not arise from Machiavellianism in high places. It arose, fundamentally, from the fact that when the supposedly short war of 1861 was converted into the patently long war of 1862, without any grand moral purpose to justify it, without any prospect that either side could rationally impose its will on the other, and with steadily increasing hardship to other lands, impatience inevitably seized foreign peoples and leaders.” Nevins,
The War for the Union
, v. 2, p. 272. See also Lord Palmerston to Lord John Russell, Jan. 19, 1862, Russell Papers, BNA. The London
Times
, Norman Ferris suggests, offered “echoes of English aristocratic thought” in its editorials, arguing, “Instead of a great, united, irresistible nation, they [the North and South] will be two jealous States watching each other.” (London
Times
, Sept. 18 and 19, 1861, quoted in Ferris,
Desperate Diplomacy
, p. 132.) Still, there’s a subtle nuance between simple Schadenfreude and actively working toward the dismemberment of the republic. As D. P. Crook and others have noted, it is a “cliché” and speculative to conclude that