Tyler v. Lincoln

Sirs:

In your article TYLER VERSUS LINCOLN, [April 9, you seek to discredit certain criticisms made by me on Abraham Lincoln by attacking and underrating another President, John Tyler, who had, of course, nothing to do with the case. Your comment shows that you have not kept up with the historical advance, for scholars are now agreed that the Bank was never an issue in 1840 and that Tyler was not a Democrat adopted by the Whigs but that he had as good a standing in the Whig party as any other man — the Whig party being a composite party. Moreover, Tyler's efforts for peace in 1861 exclude the idea that he had any "embitterment" against the government on account of any party quarrel in 1841. Your article challenges a comparison. Both Tyler and Lincoln were confronted with war when they took office. In 1841 the menacing factor was Great Britain, supported by France and Mexico. Had war ensued, the Union would have been "encircled with a wall of fire." From this threatening situation the country emerged, by Tyler's skillful diplomacy, a world power, and without any bloodshed whatever. The factors in this result were the great Treaty of Washington (1842), negotiated, as Daniel Web ster, Tyler's Secretary of State, declared, "from step to step and from day to day under the President's own immediate supervision and di rection," the virtual protectorate established over the Hawaiian Islands, the annexation of Texas which made possible the acquisition of California and New Mexico, and the opening of the Orient through the first treaty with China.

There was no war, and Tyler's patient negotiation contrasted with Lincoln's conduct, who with the dissolution of the Union staring him in the face made no attempt, as President-elect, to aid Tyler's peace efforts as Virginia Commissioner to Buchanan and as President of the Peace Convention. After Lincoln's inauguration his mind appeared in a kind of maze. He signed important papers without reading them, and while refusing to see the Confederate Commissioners, suffered them to tarry in Washington, where they were fed with all sorts of promises by Seward, his Secretary of State. What does James Schouler, a friendly historian say? It is that Lincoln's behavior through the month of March, 1861 was as "though he had no policy and was waiting for his Cabinet to form one for him." And yet this month was the crucial period of his administration, for the issue of peace or war was then decided!

His resolve after weeks of vacillation to reinforce Fort Sumter was a confession of bankruptcy in statesmanship, which is concerned with the preservation of human values and not the destruction of them. After that decision, force of the mass, and not skill of the individual, was called to the settlement of questions, and the North having the superior power won the war, as it would doubtless have done under any President. But how near Lincoln came to losing the war is shown by his saying that without the aid of the Negro troops taken from the South's own population "he would have had to give up the war in three weeks."