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ANDREW GREGG CURTIN, GOVERNOR of PENNSYLVANIA Rebecca Gifford Albright Chapter 1 Ante-Bellum Years

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ANDREW GREGG CURTIN, GOVERNOR of PENNSYLVANIA Rebecca Gifford Albright Chapter 1 Ante-Bellum Years THE CIVIL WAR CAREER OF ANDREW GREGG CURTIN, GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA Rebecca Gifford Albright Chapter 1 Ante-Bellum Years gregg curtin assumed the governorship of Pennsyl- vania in 1861, as the political forces which had been taking Andrewshape during the preceding decade were rising to a climax. The decade of the 185O's in Pennsylvania was marked by Democratic leadership, financial panic, and a vigorous struggle over the extension of slavery into the new territories. The interrelationship of these three factors gave impetus to the formation of the Republican Party, which elected Abraham Lincoln to the Presidency and Andrew Curtin to the Pennsylvania governorship in 1860. The Curtin inaugural address of 15 January 1861 preceded the inauguration of Lincoln by two months, and Curtin asked the advice of the President-elect in preparing the address. Lincoln advised Curtin to declare his intention of maintaining the Union at all costs and to obtain the co-operation of the State Legislature in support of the Union. The inaugural address which resulted from Lincoln's advice placed Pennsylvania's governor clearly within the Union camp :"No part of the people, no State, nor combination of States, can voluntarily secede from the Union, nor absolve themselves from the obli- gations of it."l The issue to which Curtin referred inhis inaugural had developed Miss Albright, now Mrs. WilliamMcLay, a member of the faculty of the Ellis School, prepared this study as part of a tutorial in history at Chatham College in1963.—Ed. 1 Reed, ed., The Pennsylvania Archives, Ser. 4, VIII(Harrisburg: 1902), 336; A. McClure, Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: 1905), I, 448; The New York Tribune, 16 Jan. 1861, 8; W. H. Russell, "A Biography of Alexander K. McClure" (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, 1954), 221; R. P. Basler, ed., Abraham Lincoln Collected Works (New Brunswick, 1953), IV, 158; Carl Sandburg, Abraham Lincoln, the War Years (New York, 1939), I, 53; W. S. Hesseltine, Lincoln and the War Governors (New York: 1948), 122-123. While the passage quoted appears to be a decisive commitment, at least two historians, WilliamHesseltine and WilliamRussell, have criticized Curtin's address as ambiguous. 324 REBECCA GIFFORD ALBRIGHT OCTOBER into a national controversy during the decade of the 185O's. During this period, Pennsylvania experienced the phenomena which led to the separation of the Union:2 intensification of the slavery issue and the growth of economic sectionalism. Pennsylvania politics in the late 1850's were closely related to national politics, particularly during the administration of Pennsylvania's only President, Democrat James Buchanan. When Buchanan was elected in 1856, he received Pennsylvania's twenty-seven electoral votes and was admired and respected in his home state. 3 Unfortunately for the Democrats, however, the Buchanan administration fellheir to increasing dissatisfaction with the Kansas- Nebraska Act, passed during the administration of Franklin Pierce (1853-1857). The issue of extending slavery into the territories gave rise to a new political movement which was destined to defeat the Democratic Party, not only in Pennsylvania elections, but in national elections as well. The national Republican Party, founded in Jackson, Michigan, in 1854, began as a loose coalition of diverse elements, united only intheir opposition to the extension of slavery into the territories. 4 As strong enemies of disunion, the Republicans did not wish to alienate the South by advocating abolition. Inthe 1850's, loyalty to a national Republican movement was not as pronounced as loyalty to state organizations based on "free principles." In fact, the name "Republican" was not adopted by several of the state groups, including the Pennsylvania Union Party. The Pennsylvanians hesitated throughout the War to assign the name "Republican" to their party and alternated between "Union Party" and "People's Party" when speaking of the Pennsyl- vania Republicans. Like the national Republican Party, the Union Party of Pennsylvania encompassed a number of diverse political elements: Whigs, Anti-Masons, Know-Nothings, Free-Soilers, and dissatisfied Democrats. 5 2 J. G. Randall and D. Donald, Civil War and Reconstruction (Boston, 1961), 79. 3 R. F.Nichols, The Disruption of American Democracy (New York, 1948), 47; W. F.Dunaway, A History of Pennsylvania (New York, 1946), 489. 4 E. B. Cale, "Editorial Sentiment in Pennsylvania in the Campaign of 1860," Pennsylvania History, IV (Oct. 1937), 231; A. C. Cole, The Irrepressible Conflict, 1850-1865 (New York, 1934), 273; C. Rossiter, Parties and Politics in America (Ithaca: 1960), 78, 142; A. K. McClure, Life and Services of Andrew G. Curtin (Harrisburg, 1895), 12. 5 S. L.Davis, Pennsylvania Politics, 1860-1863 (Cleveland, 1935), 19; Dun- away, 484, 490 ;T. S. Goas, "The Contribution of Andrew Gregg Curtin to the Union Cause inthe CivilWar" (unpublished M.A. thesis, Pennsylvania State College, 1933), 7; R. H. Luthin, "Pennsylvania and Lincoln's Rise 1964 THE CIVIL WAR CAREER OF ANDREW GREGG CURTIN 325 Pennsylvanians officially entered the Republican movement by joining Republicans from most of the Northern states inPittsburgh on 22 February 1856. The Pittsburgh Convention resulted in the organi- zation of a national party and the calling of a nominating convention in June, to be held in Philadelphia. 6 When the Republicans met in Philadelphia, they decided upon John C. Fremont as their presidential candidate. Among those who left the Democratic Party at this time were Pennsylvania's leading congressmen, David Wilmot and Galusha Grow.7 Despite the Republican efforts to winthe votes of Pennsylvania through buying the support of her newspapers, 8 Pennsylvania went for Buchanan in 1856. The defeat of 1856 taught the Republicans a valuable lesson in organization, however, and they approached the 1860 presidential elections withgrowing confidence. 9 An increase in economic sectionalism was apparent in Pennsyl- vania in the period of the 1850's. The state was divided into eastern, central, and western sections on the basis of both social and economic interests. 10 The population of nearly three million included such groups as the Quakers and the Pennsylvania Germans, who opposed the use of coercion almost as much as they objected to slavery. Eco- nomically, Pennsylvania was divided into agricultural, transportation, and manufacturing interests, each of which made demands on the state and national administrations. As the Ante-Bellum period reached its climax, Pennsylvania Democrats split between President James Buchanan and Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas. In 1858, Buchanan submitted to Congress the Lecompton Constitution calling for the admission of Kansas as a slave state. The Act precipitated a feud with Douglas and his sup- porters which was to cost the Democratic Party its unity in the coming presidential election. The split of Pennsylvania Democrats between to the Presidency," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, LXVII(Jan. 1943), 62. 6 Hesseltine, 9; McClure, Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania, I, 247; R. H. Luthin, "Abraham Lincoln Becomes a Republican," Political Science Quarterly, LIX (Sept. 1944), 428. Although there was no regular Republican organization in Pennsylvania before 1856, a local Republican movement had begun in the counties to the west and north of Philadelphia as early as November, 1854. Davis, 18; Dunaway, 483. 7 Dunaway, 483-484. 8 R. F. Nichols, "Some Problems of the First Republican Presidential Cam- paign," American Historical Review, XXVIII(Apr. 1923), 495. 9 Davis, 32;Hesseltine, 10. 10 Nichols, Disruption of American Democracy, 85. 326 REBECCA GIFFORD ALBRIGHT OCTOBER Buchanan and Douglas weakened the force of the Democrats and gave strength to the Republican movement. 11 The breakdown of Democratic Party strength was hastened by the financial panic of 1857, which bore heavily on the Pennsylvania manu- facturers. The Republican Party benefited from the dissatisfaction with the Buchanan administration, which was blamed for the panic by the unemployed iron workers. The owners of the iron and coal in- dustries in Pennsylvania began to look to a protective tariff to bring them out of their troubles and were thus drawn to the high-tariff Republican camp. 12 Although the Democratic Party continued to lose ground in Pennsylvania after 1857, the Republican standard-bearer, David Wilmot, was defeated by William F.Packer in the 1857 gubernatorial election. Wilmot's candidacy in 1857 was regarded as a necessary sacrifice of immediate victory in the hope of winningin 1860. Wilmot's selection clearly indicated the anti-slavery sentiments of his party, as against the pro-slavery position of the Democrats. Itwas not Wilmot's position on slavery, but rather his record in favor of the low tariff of 1846 which lost the election in 1857. But at least the slavery issue had been placed before Pennsylvania voters by the Republican Party.13 The Pennsylvania election results of 1858 and 1859 foreshadowed the downfall of the Democrats in 1860. In 1858, all but a handful of the Democratic candidates for Congress were defeated by the Union Party. In addition, the Union or People's Party elected a Supreme Court judge, a canal commissioner, and a majority of the state House of Representatives. 14 In 1859, the People's Party in Pennsylvania won a sweeping victory after agreeing to postpone their differences in uniting against the Democratic candidates. 15 The climax of the political and economic developments of the 1850's placed Andrew Gregg Curtin at the head of the People's Party inPennsylvania in the election of 1860. As Governor of Pennsylvania, 11 W.H. Egle, ed., Andrew Gregg Curtin :His Life and Services (Philadelphia : 1895), 35; Luthin, "Pennsylvania and Lincoln's Rise to the Presidency," 62 ;Goas, 7 ;Randall and Donald, 102. 12 Hesseltine, 12; Cole, 33, 277; Nichols, Disruption of American Democracy, 204, 345. 13 Hesseltine, loc. cit.; McClure, Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania, I, 301. 14 McClure, Old Time Notes of Pennsylvania, I, 345-346, 352.
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