"How, in God's name, do you let such paragraphs into the Tribune?"

[David Lockmiller]

I believe that tomorrow (Sunday, June 9, 2019) my former hometown newspaper, the Decatur Herald & Review, will print a story with this thread's title as a quote from Abraham Lincoln, who then was running for U. S. Senator from Illinois.

'Poisonous thorns': The times Abraham Lincoln got mad — like, really mad — at the Chicago Tribune

According to the article:

Abraham Lincoln was mad. Really mad.

"How, in God's name, do you let such paragraphs into the Tribune?" he furiously scribbled in Springfield on June 27, 1858, firing off a gruff note to Charles H. Ray, the editor-in-chief of the Chicago Press & Tribune, then in business for only 11 years.

"Does Sheahan write them?" Lincoln sneered, a sarcastic reference to James Sheahan, editor of the Chicago Times, a Democratic Party paper and the Tribune's chief rival. . . .

In his far angrier June 27 letter, Lincoln is enraged the paper had allowed a column that encouraged Republicans to vote for an independent Democrat for Congress in Indiana (over his "doughface" opponent) because of the Democrat's opposition to a constitution for Kansas that protected slavery.

Lincoln would have been "absolutely furious" over the idea appearing in his Republican Tribune, according to Dr. Christian McWhirter, a historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield. His famed Democratic rival, Stephen A. Douglas, had also broken with his party against what was known as the Lecompton Constitution. As Lincoln figured it, if it were all right for Republicans to vote for incumbent Democrats who opposed the pro-slavery constitution in Indiana, might they vote for the incumbent Douglas _ and not him _ in the 1858 election in Illinois?

[RJNorton]

Very interesting, David. Here is the entire text of Lincoln's letter:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My dear Sir,

How in God’s name do you let such paragraphs into the Tribune, as the enclosed cut from that paper of yesterday? Does Sheahan write them? How can you have failed to perceive that in this short paragraph you have completely answered all your own well put complaints of Greely [Greeley] and Sister Burlingame? What right have you to interfere in Indiana, more than they in Illinois? And what possible argument can be made why all Republicans shall stand out of Hon. John G. Davis’s way in his district in Indiana that can not be made why all Republicans in Illinois shall stand out of Hon. S.A. Douglas’s way? The part in larger type is plainly editorial, and your editorial at that, as you do not credit it to any other paper. I confess it astonishes me.

Yours truly, A. Lincoln.

[Anita]

Holtzer's comment on this letter.

“Through authoritative communications like these, Lincoln had by July strong-armed the Republican press into full conformity and allegiance, at least in Illinois. Independent-minded, out-of-state renegades like Greely, primarily eager to injure the Buchanan administration by encouraging dissident Democrats like Douglas, proved harder to tame. Their unpredictable behavior convinced stalwart David Davis that the Republican Party remained merely ‘confederated,’ not ‘consolidated,’ and unless brought into line would be powerless to battle ‘the infernal South, that prolific monster of ruin, *****, and disunion.’ Bring the statewide party and press into line Lincoln did. Now it was time to take the Senate battle to the people.”

—Harold Holzer, Lincoln and the Power of the Press (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2015), 174-175.

[Christine]

He makes an interesting and and valid point that continues to baffle me. What right do out of state people have to interfere with politics in a state they are not a resident of?