- Joined
- Jan 7, 2013
- Location
- Long Island, NY
In 1858, Bryant became a champion of the little-known Abraham Lincoln. According to Harold Holzer:
“Two men presenting wider contrasts could hardly be found as the representatives of the two great parties,” William
Cullen Bryant’s antislavery New York Evening Post commented in August when the two combatants launched their joint meetings. Not surprisingly, the Post sneeringly described Democrat Douglas as a “short, thick-set, burly man, with a large, round head, heavy hair, dark complexion, and fierce bull-dog bark”— a Vermont native who had clearly forgotten “the ancestral hatred of slavery to which he was the heir.” Lincoln, portrayed by contrast as “very tall, slender, and angular, awkward even, in gait and attitude,” was admittedly not very “comely” in repose. “But stir him up,” marveled the Post, and “the fire of his genius plays on every feature. . . . The Republicans of Illinois have chosen a champion worthy
of their heartiest support, and fully equipped for the conflict.” Within a month, the Post took the temperature of the growing political excitement in Illinois and declared: “The prairies are on fire.”
Holzer, Harold. Lincoln and the Power of the Press: The War for Public Opinion (Kindle Locations 3891-3899). Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.