“Lincoln never actually explained the delay in his own words, so we don’t know his motivation,” Christian McWhirter, Lincoln Historian at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, told us in an email.
McWhirter continued: “History is, of course, all about interpretation, so historians have mostly relied on context to draw conclusions. The 1864 election is certainly important context, as is the fact that the Senate was out of session until December 5. Things like that can provide clues for what Lincoln might have been thinking, but ultimately we can never know exactly.”
Congress, as McWhirter noted, was
not in session when the vacancy arose — which means the Senate couldn’t have confirmed Lincoln’s selection until after the election, anyway. The Senate ultimately
confirmed Chase a day after returning (and the same day Lincoln formally nominated him) on Dec. 6.
Historian Michael Burlingame in his book, “
Abraham Lincoln: A Life,” wrote that “upon hearing the news” of Taney’s death “Lincoln said he would not nominate a replacement for Taney right away but would remain ‘shut pan’ for a while. Preoccupied with the election and his annual message, he postponed consideration of the matter until Congress met in December. In the meantime, he said that ‘he was waiting to receive expressions of public opinion from the Country.'” Burlingame, however, describes “such expressions” as letters about who to choose — not the results of the election.
In “
Recollections of President Lincoln and His Administration,” Lincoln’s Register of Treasury,
Lucius E. Chittenden, wrote that Lincoln had said earlier that year — in June, when Chase stepped down from Treasury secretary — that, if given the opportunity, “I will make him Chief Justice of the United States.” (Taney
had been ill for some time.) Chittenden also wrote that Lincoln “had never contemplated any other” person for that vacancy.
The Trump campaign rejected Harris’ claim, too, citing historian and novelist Shelby Foote’s suggestion that Lincoln delayed nominating with a political calculation in mind: to ensure Chase’s “fervent support” leading up to the election.
Likewise, the Washington Post wrote: “The overarching effect of the delay is that it held Lincoln’s broad but shaky coalition of conservative and radical Republicans together. And it kept rivals like Chase in line.”
McWhirter said that whether such a political calculation was a factor in “potentially delaying the nomination is … open to interpretation.”
