Big Apple History . Business and Politics . New Yorkers Against Slavery


	Abraham Lincoln

New York City made Abraham Lincoln nervous; yet he knew he had to come. The ex-congressman was running for president in 1860. He was hardly known outside Illinois, and New York was America's newspaper capital. It could make his name a household word overnight. Or it could destroy his chances of holding presidential office.

Lincoln had good reason to feel nervous. He was a Republican candidate in a very Democratic city. His anti-slavery politics were not popular in New York, which prospered from slavery. The city's elites served the South's "king cotton" interests as bankers and merchants, and working-class New Yorkers feared competition from freed slaves.

Lincoln need not have worried. In a speech at Cooper Union's Great Hall, he insisted slavery must not spread to the West. But, he added, in the South it could remain. This combination of principle mixed with "good business sense" won New Yorkers over.

Lincoln never went unnoticed again. New York made him an overnight celebrity. By 1860, the city was already a media powerhouse and the hub of America's new telegraph system. The Cooper Union speech was read in the next morning's paper from abolitionist Boston to pro-slavery Charleston. The still young-looking and beardless Lincoln also posed for famed New York photographer Mathew Brady. Lithographs taken from the portrait were reprinted in national magazines published in New York. Brady's pictures made the lanky future president's image as famous as his words.

Lincoln would return to New York City only twice again. In 1861, he visited on his way to the White House and in 1865 he passed through on his way to be buried.

Illustration: courtesy of Collection of the New-York Historical Society.