Pittsburgh to Cleveland, Feb. 15, 1861
“Hello Cleveland!” Unfortunately, the historical record does not indicate whether Lincoln spoke the greeting to this fair city, immortalized over a century later in “This is Spinal Tap.” But we can imagine that some version of that thought was expressed on the day that brought Lincoln to the great metropolis of northern Ohio. Some 43,400 people lived there, including John D. Rockefeller and many other Gilded Age figures who would emerge, a little unexpectedly, from the homespun cloth of Lincoln Republicanism.
In retrospect, Cleveland’s nickname, the Forest City, seems imprecise. This was no arboreal burg, but a center of great industry. Rockefeller would found Standard Oil there in 1870; his high school friend, Mark Hanna, would manage vast shipping concerns, and ultimately the campaign that brought William McKinley to the White House in 1896. Lincoln’s short journey on February 15 went through or near the most sacred terrain of the country’s emerging economic heartland: the petroleum fields of western Pennsylvania, the iron deposits of the Great Lakes (which were routed through Cleveland) and the coal of what is now West Virginia (ditto). All of these interests would be utterly transformed by the Civil War and the Iron Horse Lincoln was riding that day: By 1865, Pittsburgh and Cleveland would be two of the top five refining centers in the United States.
Lincoln started the day at the Monongahela House in Pittsburgh, where it was still raining. But some 5,000 people stood outside, under “an ocean of umbrellas,” and at 8:30 a.m. he delivered the speech he had promised to give the night before. It was a strange speech, and brought him little credit. Unlike the scores of remarks he had already delivered in the past three days, this one addressed a specific political topic: tariff policy.
Perhaps, somewhere in his vast memory, Lincoln remembered that tariffs had once been the defining issue of Whig policy. But it was a poorly chosen speech, not especially well delivered, and it revealed some gaps in Lincoln’s grasp of sophisticated economic matters. A little too honestly, he said, “I must confess that I do not understand this subject in all of its multiform bearings, but I promise you that I will give it my closest attention.” Henry Villard, the journalist accompanying Lincoln, was devastating: “What he said was nothing but crude, ignorant twaddle, without point or meaning. It proved him to be the veriest novice in economic matters, and strengthened my doubts as to his capacity for the high office he was to fill.”
Then to the station for a journey to the northwest, although Washington, his ultimate goal, lay in precisely the opposite direction. A stop at Alliance, Ohio, was nearly too festive. Local committees were always straining to show off their hospitality, with parades of handsome young Zouaves, middle-aged politicians and elderly veterans. Unfortunately, the shockwave from a vigorous gun salute smashed the windows near where the Lincolns were eating – shards of glass even landed on Mary Todd Lincoln, though she remained “uncharacteristically composed,” according to her biographer Catherine Clinton.
Lincoln had contracted a bad cold, and spoke less than usual. To make matters worse, it was snowing, and train officials thought he should disembark at a station two miles from the center of town. But if he had quieted, the crowds had not, and the usual tumult was seen and heard as the Special approached Cleveland. People were everywhere – 30,000 lined the streets – and when Lincoln appeared, a huge sound was heard, so loud that Villard took note:
As the president and suite left the cars a universal, deafening shout escaped from tens of thousands … It was an ovation of which Abraham Lincoln could well be proud; nor did he fail to show deep gratitude and emotion. He stood up in his carriage and until the hotel was reached acknowledged the greetings on all sides in his unaffected hearty manner. The expression of his face showed plainly that he meant much more than he could convey by bowing and waving his hat.
Hello Cleveland, indeed.
Lincoln delivered a speech in the evening, from the balcony of his hotel, before a crowd estimated at 10,000. It repeated a theme he had been sounding for several days, that the crisis gripping the nation was “artificial,” and would disappear if people relaxed. It was an unrealistic hope, and mollified neither his supporters on the Republican side, looking for iron, nor those on the side of secession, for whom their separation was rapidly becoming a reality (Jefferson Davis was en route to his inaugural, only three days away).
There were levees in Lincoln’s honor, as usual: he met with all of the committees and dignitaries, including a group of veterans of the War of 1812, some of which was fought on Lake Erie. But this evening, for all of its excitement, represented an uptick from the chaos at Pittsburgh. The police kept order, the crowds behaved and Lincoln was able to move from place to place with reasonable safety. As a contented John Nicolay later wrote, “The whole party has very pleasant recollections of Cleveland.”
Sources: John Hay, private scrapbook, from the collection of Robert and Joan Hoffman; William T. Coggeshall, “The Journeys of Abraham Lincoln”; Victor Searcher, “Lincoln’s Journey to Greatness”; Harold Holzer, “Lincoln, President-Elect”; Michael Burlingame, “Abraham Lincoln: A Life”; John Nicolay (ed. Michael Burlingame), “With Lincoln in the White House”; John Nicolay, “Some Incidents in Lincoln’s Journey from Springfield to Washington”; Henry Villard, “Memoirs of Henry Villard”; Henry Villard, “Lincoln on the Eve of ‘61”; Scott D. Trostel, “The Lincoln Inaugural Train” (forthcoming); “The Ohio Guide”; Catherine Clinton, “Mrs. Lincoln”; Daniel Mark Epstein, “The Lincolns: Portrait of a Marriage”; The Lincoln Log.
Ted Widmer is director and librarian of the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. He was a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and the editor of the Library of America’s two-volume “American Speeches.”
