LINCOLN
Abraham Lincoln,
An Account of His Personal Life,
Especially
of Its Springs of Action as
Revealed and Deepened by the Ordeal of
War
By Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
Authority for all important statements of facts in the following pages may
be found in the notes; the condensed references are expanded in the
bibliography. A few controversial matters are discussed in the notes.
I am very grateful to Mr. William Roscoe Thayer for enabling me to use the
manuscript diary of John Hay. Miss Helen Nicolay has graciously confirmed
some of the implications of the official biography. Lincoln’s only
surviving secretary, Colonel W. O. Stoddard, has given considerate aid.
The curious incident of Lincoln as counsel in an action to recover slaves
was mentioned to me by Professor Henry Johnson, through whose good offices
it was confirmed and amplified by Judge John H. Marshall. Mr. Henry W.
Raymond has been very tolerant of a stranger’s inquiries with regard to
his distinguished father. A futile attempt to discover documentary remains
of the Republican National Committee of 1864 has made it possible, through
the courtesy of Mr. Clarence B. Miller, at least to assert that there is
nothing of importance in possession of the present Committee. A search for
new light on Chandler drew forth generous assistance from Professor Ulrich
B. Phillips, Mr. Floyd B. Streeter and Mr. G. B. Krum. The latter caused
to be examined, for this particular purpose, the Blair manuscripts in the
Burton Historical Collection. Much illumination arose out of a systematic
resurvey of the Congressional Globe, for the war period, in which I had
the stimulating companionship of Professor John L. Hill, reinforced by
many conversations with Professor Dixon Ryan Fox and Professor David
Saville Muzzey. At the heart of the matter is the resolute criticism of
Mrs. Stephenson and of a long enduring friend, President Harrison
Randolph. The temper of the historical fraternity is such that any worker
in any field is always under a host of incidental obligations. There is
especial propriety in my acknowledging the kindness of Professor Albert
Bushnell Hart, Professor James A. Woodburn, Professor Herman V. Ames,
Professor St. George L. Sioussat and Professor Allen Johnson.
CONTENTS
I. THE CHILD OF THE
FORESTII. THE
MYSTERIOUS YOUTHIII. A
VILLAGE LEADERIV. REVELATIONS
V. PROSPERITY
VI. UNSATISFYING RECOGNITION
VII. THE SECOND
STARTVIII. A
RETURN TO POLITICSIX. THE
LITERARY STATESMANX. THE
DARK HORSEXI. SECESSION
XII. THE CRISIS
XIII. ECLIPSE
XIV. THE STRANGE NEW MAN
XV. PRESIDENT AND PREMIER
XVI. “ON TO
RICHMOND!”XVII. DEFINING
THE ISSUEXVIII. THE
JACOBIN CLUBXIX. THE
JACOBINS BECOME INQUISITORSXX.
IS CONGRESS THE PRESIDENT’S MASTER?XXI. THE STRUGGLE TO CONTROL THE
ARMYXXII. LINCOLN
EMERGESXXIII. THE
MYSTICAL STATESMANXXIV. GAMBLING
IN GENERALSXXV. A
WAR BEHIND THE SCENESXXVI. THE
DICTATOR, THE MARPLOT AND THE LITTLE MENXXVII. THE TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE
XXVIII. APPARENT
ASCENDENCYXXIX. CATASTROPHE
XXX. THE PRESIDENT
VERSUS THE VINDICTIVESXXXI. A
MENACING PAUSEXXXII. THE
AUGUST CONSPIRACYXXXIII. THE
RALLY TO THE PRESIDENTXXXIV. “FATHER
ABRAHAM”XXXV. THE
MASTER OF THE MOMENTXXXVI. PREPARING
A DIFFERENT WARXXXVII. FATE
INTERPOSES
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author and publisher make grateful acknowledgement to Ginn and
Company, Boston, for the photograph of St. Gaudens’ Statue; to The
Century Company of New York for the Earliest Portrait of Lincoln, which
is from an engraving by Johnson after a daguerreotype in the
possession
of the Honorable Robert T. Lincoln; and for Lincoln and
Tad, which is
from the famous photograph by Brady; to The
Macmillan Company of New
York for the portrait of Mrs. Lincoln and
also for The Review of the
Army of the Potomac, both of which were
originally reproduced in Ida M.
Tarbell’s Life of Abraham Lincoln.
For the rare and interesting portrait
entitled The Last Phase of
Lincoln acknowledgment is made to Robert
Bruce, Esquire, Clinton,
Oneida County, New York. This photograph was
taken by Alexander
Gardner, April 9, 1865, the glass plate of which is
now in Mr.
Bruce’s collection.
I. THE CHILD OF THE FOREST
Of first importance in the making of the American people is that great
forest which once extended its mysterious labyrinth from tide-water to the
prairies when the earliest colonists entered warily its sea-worn edges a
portion of the European race came again under a spell it had forgotten
centuries before, the spell of that untamed nature which created primitive
man. All the dim memories that lay deep in subconsciousness; all the vague
shadows hovering at the back of the civilized mind; the sense of
encompassing natural power, the need to struggle single-handed against it;
the danger lurking in the darkness of the forest; the brilliant treachery
of the forest sunshine glinted through leafy secrecies; the Strange voices
in its illimitable murmur; the ghostly shimmer of its glades at night; the
lovely beauty of the great gold moon; all the thousand wondering dreams
that evolved the elder gods, Pan, Cybele, Thor; all this waked again in
the soul of the Anglo-Saxon penetrating the great forest. And it was
intensified by the way he came,—singly, or with but wife and child,
or at best in very small company, a mere handful. And the surrounding
presences were not only of the spiritual world. Human enemies who were
soon as well armed as he, quicker of foot and eye, more perfectly
noiseless in their tread even than the wild beasts of the shadowy coverts,
the ruthless Indians whom he came to expel, these invisible presences were
watching him, in a fierce silence he knew not whence. Like as not the
first signs of that menace which was everywhere would be the hiss of the
Indian arrow, or the crack of the Indian rifle, and sharp and sudden
death.
Under these conditions he learned much and forgot much. His deadly need
made him both more and less individual than he had been, released him from
the dictation of his fellows in daily life while it enforced relentlessly
a uniform method of self-preservation. Though the unseen world became more
and more real, the understanding of it faded. It became chiefly a matter
of emotional perception, scarcely at all a matter of philosophy. The
morals of the forest Americans were those of audacious, visionary beings
loosely hound together by a comradeship in peril. Courage, cautiousness,
swiftness, endurance, faithfulness, secrecy,—these were the forest
virtues. Dreaming, companionship, humor,—these were the forest
luxuries.
From the first, all sorts and conditions were ensnared by that silent
land, where the trails they followed, their rifles in their hands, had
been trodden hard generation after generation by the feet of the Indian
warriors. The best and the worst of England went into that illimitable
resolvent, lost themselves, found themselves, and issued from its shadows,
or their children did, changed both for good and ill, Americans. Meanwhile
the great forest, during two hundred years, was slowly vanishing. This
parent of a new people gave its life to its offspring and passed away. In
the early nineteenth century it had withered backward far from the coast;
had lost its identity all along the north end of the eastern mountains;
had frayed out toward the sunset into lingering tentacles, into broken
minor forests, into shreds and patches.
Curiously, by a queer sort of natural selection, its people had
congregated into life communities not all of one pattern. There were
places as early as the beginning of the century where distinction had
appeared. At other places life was as rude and rough as could be imagined.
There were innumerable farms that were still mere “clearings,” walled by
the forest. But there were other regions where for many a mile the timber
had been hewn away, had given place to a ragged continuity of farmland. In
such regions especially if the poorer elements of the forest, spiritually
speaking, had drifted thither—the straggling villages which had
appeared were but groups of log cabins huddled along a few neglected
lanes. In central Kentucky, a poor new village was Elizabethtown, unkempt,
chokingly dusty in the dry weather, with muddy streams instead of streets
during the rains, a stench of pig-sties at the back of its cabins, but
everywhere looking outward glimpses of a lovely meadow land.
At Elizabethtown in 1806 lived Joseph Hanks, a carpenter, also his niece
Nancy Hanks. Poor people they were, of the sort that had been sucked into
the forest in their weakness, or had been pushed into it by a social
pressure they could not resist; not the sort that had grimly adventured
its perils or gaily courted its lure. Their source was Virginia. They were
of a thriftless, unstable class; that vagrant peasantry which had drifted
westward to avoid competition with slave labor. The niece, Nancy, has been
reputed illegitimate. And though tradition derives her from the predatory
amour of an aristocrat, there is nothing to sustain the tale except her
own appearance. She had a bearing, a cast of feature, a tone, that seemed
to hint at higher social origins than those of her Hanks relatives. She
had a little schooling; was of a pious and emotional turn of mind; enjoyed
those amazing “revivals” which now and then gave an outlet to the pent-up
religiosity of the village; and she was almost handsome.(1)
History has preserved no clue why this girl who was rather the best of her
sort chose to marry an illiterate apprentice of her uncle’s, Thomas
Lincoln, whose name in the forest was spelled “Linkhorn.” He was a
shiftless fellow, never succeeding at anything, who could neither read nor
write. At the time of his birth, twenty-eight years before, his parents—drifting,
roaming people, struggling with poverty—were dwellers in the
Virginia mountains. As a mere lad, he had shot an Indian—one of the
few positive acts attributed to him—and his father had been killed
by Indians. There was a “vague tradition” that his grandfather had been a
Pennsylvania Quaker who had wandered southward through the forest
mountains. The tradition angered him. Though he appears to have had little
enough—at least in later years—of the fierce independence of
the forest, he resented a Quaker ancestry as an insult. He had no
suspicion that in after years the zeal of genealogists would track his
descent until they had linked him with a lost member of a distinguished
Puritan family, a certain Mordecai Lincoln who removed to New Jersey,
whose descendants became wanderers of the forest and sank speedily to the
bottom of the social scale, retaining not the slightest memory of their
New England origin.(2) Even in the worst of the forest villages, few
couples started married life in less auspicious circumstances than did
Nancy and Thomas. Their home in one of the alleys of Elizabethtown was a
shanty fourteen feet square.(3) Very soon after marriage, shiftless Thomas
gave up carpentering and took to farming. Land could be had almost
anywhere for almost nothing those days, and Thomas got a farm on credit
near where now stands Hodgenville. Today, it is a famous place, for there,
February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln, second child, but first son of Nancy
and Thomas, was born.(4)
During most of eight years, Abraham lived in Kentucky. His father, always
adrift in heart, tried two farms before abandoning Kentucky altogether. A
shadowy figure, this Thomas; the few memories of him suggest a
superstitious nature in a superstitious community. He used to see visions
in the forest. Once, it is said, he came home, all excitement, to tell his
wife he had seen a giant riding on a lion, tearing up trees by the roots;
and thereupon, he took to his bed and kept it for several days.
His son Abraham told this story of the giant on the lion to a playmate of
his, and the two boys gravely discussed the existence of ghosts. Abraham
thought his father “didn’t exactly believe in them,” and seems to have
been in about the same state of mind himself. He was quite sure he was
“not much” afraid of the dark. This was due chiefly to the simple wisdom
of a good woman, a neighbor, who had taught him to think of the night as a
great room that God had darkened even as his friend darkened a room in her
house by hanging something over the window.(5)
The eight years of his childhood in Kentucky had few incidents. A hard,
patient, uncomplaining life both for old and young. The men found their
one deep joy in the hunt. In lesser degree, they enjoyed the revivals
which gave to the women their one escape out of themselves. A strange,
almost terrible recovery of the primitive, were those religious furies of
the days before the great forest had disappeared. What other figures in
our history are quite so remarkable as the itinerant frontier priests, the
circuit-riders as they are now called, who lived as Elijah did, whose
temper was very much the temper of Elijah, in whose exalted narrowness of
devotion, all that was stern, dark, foreboding—the very brood of the
forest’s innermost heart—had found a voice. Their religion was
ecstasy in homespun, a glory of violent singing, the release of a frantic
emotion, formless but immeasurable, which at all other times, in the
severity of the forest routine, gave no sign of its existence.
A visitor remembered long afterward a handsome young woman who he thought
was Nancy Hanks, singing wildly, whirling about as may once have done the
ecstatic women of the woods of Thrace, making her way among equally
passionate worshipers, to the foot of the rude altar, and there casting
herself into the arms of the man she was to marry.(6) So did thousands of
forest women in those seasons when their communion with a mystic
loneliness was confessed, when they gave tongue as simply as wild
creatures to the nameless stirrings and promptings of that secret woodland
where Pan was still the lord. And the day following the revival, they were
again the silent, expressionless, much enduring, long-suffering forest
wives, mothers of many children, toilers of the cabins, who cooked and
swept and carried fuel by sunlight, and by firelight sewed and spun.
It can easily be understood how these women, as a rule, exerted little
influence on their sons. Their imaginative side was too deeply hidden, the
nature of their pleasures too secret, too mysterious. Male youth,
following its obvious pleasure, went with the men to the hunt. The women
remained outsiders. The boy who chose to do likewise, was the incredible
exception. In him had come to a head the deepest things in the forest
life: the darkly feminine things, its silence, its mysticism, its
secretiveness, its tragic patience. Abraham was such a boy. It is said
that he astounded his father by refusing to own a gun. He earned terrible
whippings by releasing animals caught in traps. Though he had in fullest
measure the forest passion for listening to stories, the ever-popular
tales of Indian warfare disgusted him. But let the tale take on any glint
of the mystery of the human soul—as of Robinson Crusoe alone on his
island, or of the lordliness of action, as in Columbus or Washington—and
he was quick with interest. The stories of talking animals out of Aesop
fascinated him.
In this thrilled curiosity about the animals was the side of him least
intelligible to men like his father. It lives in many anecdotes: of his
friendship with a poor dog he had which he called “Honey”; of pursuing a
snake through difficult thickets to prevent its swallowing a frog; of
loitering on errands at the risk of whippings to watch the squirrels in
the tree-tops; of the crowning offense of his childhood, which earned him
a mighty beating, the saving of a fawn’s life by scaring it off just as a
hunter’s gun was leveled. And by way of comment on all this, there is the
remark preserved in the memory of another boy to whom at the time it
appeared most singular, “God might think as much of that little fawn as of
some people.” Of him as of another gentle soul it might have been said
that all the animals were his brothers and sisters.(7)
One might easily imagine this peculiar boy who chose to remain at home
while the men went out to slay, as the mere translation into masculinity
of his mother, and of her mothers, of all the converging processions of
forest women, who had passed from one to another the secret of their
mysticism, coloring it many ways in the dark vessels of their suppressed
lives, till it reached at last their concluding child. But this would only
in part explain him. Their mysticism, as after-time was to show, he had
undoubtedly inherited. So, too, from them, it may be, came another
characteristic—that instinct to endure, to wait, to abide the issue
of circumstance, which in the days of his power made him to the
politicians as unintelligible as once he had been to the forest huntsmen.
Nevertheless, the most distinctive part of those primitive women, the
sealed passionateness of their spirits, he never from childhood to the end
revealed. In the grown man appeared a quietude, a sort of tranced calm,
that was appalling. From what part of his heredity did this derive? Was it
the male gift of the forest? Did progenitors worthier than Thomas somehow
cast through him to his alien son that peace they had found in the utter
heart of danger, that apparent selflessness which is born of being ever
unfailingly on guard?
It is plain that from the first he was a natural stoic, taking his
whippings, of which there appear to have been plenty, in silence, without
anger. It was all in the day’s round. Whippings, like other things, came
and went. What did it matter? And the daily round, though monotonous, had
even for the child a complement of labor. Especially there was much
patient journeying back and forth with meal bags between his father’s
cabin and the local mill. There was a little schooling, very little,
partly from Nancy Lincoln, partly from another good woman, the miller’s
kind old mother, partly at the crudest of wayside schools maintained very
briefly by a wandering teacher who soon wandered on; but out of this
schooling very little result beyond the mastery of the A B C.(8) And even
at this age, a pathetic eagerness to learn, to invade the wonder of the
printed book! Also a marked keenness of observation. He observed things
which his elders overlooked. He had a better sense of direction, as when
he corrected his father and others who were taking the wrong short-cut to
a burning house. Cool, unexcitable, he was capable of presence of mind.
Once at night when the door of the cabin was suddenly thrown open and a
monster appeared on the threshold, a spectral thing in the darkness,
furry, with the head of an ox, Thomas Lincoln shrank back aghast; little
Abraham, quicker-sighted and quicker-witted, slipped behind the creature,
pulled at its furry mantle, and revealed a forest Diana, a bold girl who
amused herself playing demon among the shadows of the moon.
Seven years passed and his eighth birthday approached. All this while
Thomas Lincoln had somehow kept his family in food, but never had he money
in his pocket. His successive farms, bought on credit, were never paid
for. An incurable vagrant, he came at last to the psychological moment
when he could no longer impose himself on his community. He must take to
the road in a hazard of new fortune. Indiana appeared to him the land of
promise. Most of his property—such as it was—except his
carpenter’s tools, he traded for whisky, four hundred gallons. Somehow he
obtained a rattletrap wagon and two horses.
The family appear to have been loath to go. Nancy Lincoln had long been
ailing and in low spirits, thinking much of what might happen to her
children after her death. Abraham loved the country-side, and he had good
friends in the miller and his kind old mother. But the vagrant Thomas
would have his way. In the brilliancy of the Western autumn, with the
ruined woods flaming scarlet and gold, these poor people took their last
look at the cabin that had been their wretched shelter, and set forth into
the world.(9)
II THE MYSTERIOUS YOUTH
Vagrants, or little better than vagrants, were Thomas Lincoln and his
family making their way to Indiana. For a year after they arrived they
were squatters, their home an “open-faced camp,” that is, a shanty with
one wall missing, and instead of chimney, a fire built on the open side.
In that mere pretense of a house, Nancy Lincoln and her children spent the
winter of 1816-1817. Then Thomas resorted to his familiar practice of
taking land on credit. The Lincolns were now part of a “settlement” of
seven or eight families strung along a little stream known as Pigeon
Creek. Here Thomas entered a quarter-section of fair land, and in the
course of the next eleven years succeeded—wonderful to relate—in
paying down sufficient money to give him title to about half.
Meanwhile, poor fading Nancy went to her place. Pigeon Creek was an
out-of-the-way nook in the still unsettled West, and Nancy during the two
years she lived there could not have enjoyed much of the consolation of
her religion. Perhaps now and then she had ghostly council of some stray
circuit-rider. But for her the days of the ecstasies had gone by; no great
revival broke the seals of the spirit, stirred its deep waters, along
Pigeon Creek. There was no religious service when she was laid to rest in
a coffin made of green lumber and fashioned by her husband. Months passed,
the snow lay deep, before a passing circuit-rider held a burial service
over her grave. Tradition has it that the boy Abraham brought this about
very likely, at ten years old, he felt that her troubled spirit could not
have peace till this was done. Shadowy as she is, ghostlike across the
page of history, it is plain that she was a reality to her son. He not
only loved her but revered her. He believed that from her he had inherited
the better part of his genius. Many years after her death he said, “God
bless my mother; all that I am or ever hope to be I owe to her.”
Nancy was not long without a successor. Thomas Lincoln, the next year,
journeyed back to Kentucky and returned in triumph to Indiana, bringing as
his wife, an old flame of his who had married, had been widowed, and was
of a mind for further adventures. This Sarah Bush Lincoln, of less
distinction than Nancy, appears to have been steadier-minded and
stronger-willed. Even before this, Thomas had left the half-faced camp and
moved into a cabin. But such a cabin! It had neither door, nor window, nor
floor. Sally Lincoln required her husband to make of it a proper house—by
the standards of Pigeon Creek. She had brought with her as her dowry a
wagonload of furniture. These comforts together with her strong will began
a new era of relative comfort in the Lincoln cabin.(1)
Sally Lincoln was a kind stepmother to Abraham who became strongly
attached to her. In the rough and nondescript community of Pigeon Creek, a
world of weedy farms, of miserable mud roads, of log farm-houses, the
family life that was at least tolerable. The sordid misery described
during her regime emerged from wretchedness to a state of by all the
recorders of Lincoln’s early days seems to have ended about his twelfth
year. At least, the vagrant suggestion disappeared. Though the life that
succeeded was void of luxury, though it was rough, even brutal, dominated
by a coarse, peasant-like view of things, it was scarcely by peasant
standards a life of hardship. There was food sufficient, if not very good;
protection from wind and weather; fire in the winter time; steady labor;
and social acceptance by the community of the creekside. That the labor
was hard and long, went without saying. But as to that—as of the
whippings in Kentucky—what else, from the peasant point of view,
would you expect? Abraham took it all with the same stoicism with which he
had once taken the whippings. By the unwritten law of the creekside he was
his father’s property, and so was his labor, until he came of age. Thomas
used him as a servant or hired him out to other farmers. Stray
recollections show us young Abraham working as a farm-hand for twenty-five
cents the day, probably with “keep” in addition; we glimpse him
slaughtering hogs skilfully at thirty-one cents a day, for this was “rough
work.” He became noted as an axman.
In the crevices, so to speak, of his career as a farm-hand, Abraham got a
few months of schooling, less than a year in all. A story that has been
repeated a thousand times shows the raw youth by the cabin fire at night
doing sums on the back of a wooden shovel, and shaving off its surface
repeatedly to get a fresh page. He devoured every book that came his way,
only a few to be sure, but generally great ones—the Bible, of
course, and Aesop, Crusoe, Pilgrim’s Progress, and a few histories, these
last unfortunately of the poorer sort. He early displayed a bent for
composition, scribbling verses that were very poor, and writing burlesque
tales about his acquaintances in what passed for a Biblical style.(2)
One great experience broke the monotony of the life on Pigeon Creek. He
made a trip to New Orleans as a “hand” on a flatboat. Of this trip little
is known though much may be surmised. To his deeply poetic nature what an
experience it must have been: the majesty of the vast river; the pageant
of its immense travel; the steamers heavily laden; the fleets of barges;
the many towns; the nights of stars over wide sweeps of water; the stately
plantation houses along the banks; the old French city with its crowds,
its bells, the shipping, the strange faces and the foreign speech; all the
bewildering evidence that there were other worlds besides Pigeon Creek!
What seed of new thinking was sown in his imagination by this Odyssey we
shall never know. The obvious effect in the ten years of his life in
Indiana was produced at Pigeon Creek. The “settlement” was within fifteen
miles of the Ohio. It lay in that southerly fringe of Indiana which
received early in the century many families of much the same estate,
character and origin as the Lincolns,—poor whites of the edges of
the great forest working outward toward the prairies. Located on good land
not far from a great highway, the Ohio, it illustrated in its rude
prosperity a transformation that went on unobserved in many such
settlements, the transformation of the wandering forester of the lower
class into a peasant farmer. Its life was of the earth, earthy; though it
retained the religious traditions of the forest, their significance was
evaporating; mysticism was fading into emotionalism; the camp-meeting was
degenerating into a picnic. The supreme social event, the wedding, was
attended by festivities that filled twenty-four hours: a race of male
guests in the forenoon with a bottle of whisky for a prize; an Homeric
dinner at midday; “an afternoon of rough games and outrageous practical
jokes; a supper and dance at night interrupted by the successive
withdrawals of the bride and groom, attended by ceremonies and jests of
more than Rabelaisian crudeness; and a noisy dispersal next day.”(3) The
intensities of the forest survived in hard drinking, in the fury of the
fun-making, and in the hunt. The forest passion for storytelling had in no
way decreased.
In this atmosphere, about eighteen and nineteen, Abraham shot up suddenly
from a slender boy to a huge, raw-honed, ungainly man, six feet four
inches tall, of unusual muscular strength. His strength was one of the
fixed conditions of his development. It delivered him from all fear of his
fellows. He had plenty of peculiarities. He was ugly, awkward; he lacked
the wanton appetites of the average sensual man. And these peculiarities
without his great strength as his warrant might have brought him into
ridicule. As it was, whatever his peculiarities, in a society like that of
Pigeon Creek, the man who could beat all competitors, wrestling or boxing,
was free from molestation. But Lincoln instinctively had another aim in
life than mere freedom to be himself. Two characteristics that were so
significant in his childhood continued with growing vitality in his young
manhood: his placidity and his intense sense of comradeship. The latter,
however, had undergone a change. It was no longer the comradeship of the
wild creatures. That spurt of physical expansion, the swift rank growth to
his tremendous stature, swept him apparently across a dim dividing line,
out of the world of birds and beasts and into the world of men. He took
the new world with the same unfailing but also unexcitable curiosity with
which he had taken the other, the world of squirrels, flowers, fawns.
Here as there, the difference from his mother, deep though their
similarities may have been, was sharply evident. Had he been wholly at one
with her religiously, the gift of telling speech which he now began to
display might have led him into a course that would have rejoiced her
heart, might have made him a boy preacher, and later, a great revivalist.
His father and elder sister while on Pigeon Creek joined the local Baptist
Church. But Abraham did not follow them. Nor is there a single anecdote
linking him in any way with the fervors of camp meeting. On the contrary,
what little is remembered, is of a cool aloofness.(4) The inscrutability
of the forest was his—what it gave to the stealthy, cautious men who
were too intent on observing, too suspiciously watchful, to give vent to
their feelings. Therefore, in Lincoln there was always a double life,
outer and inner, the outer quietly companionable, the inner, solitary,
mysterious.
It was the outer life that assumed its first definite phase in the years
on Pigeon Creek. During those years, Lincoln discovered his gift of
story-telling. He also discovered humor. In the employment of both
talents, he accepted as a matter of course the tone of the young ruffians
among whom he dwelt. Very soon this powerful fellow, who could throw any
of them in a wrestle, won the central position among them by a surer
title, by the power to delight. And any one who knows how peasant schools
of art arise—for that matter, all schools of art that are vital—knows
how he did it. In this connection, his famous biographers, Nicolay and
Hay, reveal a certain externality by objecting that a story attributed to
him is ancient. All stories are ancient. Not the tale, but the telling, as
the proverb says, is the thing. In later years, Lincoln wrote down every
good story that he heard, and filed it.(5) When it reappeared it had
become his own. Who can doubt that this deliberate assimilation, the
typical artistic process, began on Pigeon Creek? Lincoln never would have
captured as he did his plowboy audience, set them roaring with laughter in
the intervals of labor, had he not given them back their own tales done
over into new forms brilliantly beyond their powers of conception. That
these tales were gross, even ribald, might have been taken for granted,
even had we not positive evidence of the fact. Otherwise none of that
uproarious laughter which we may be sure sounded often across shimmering
harvest fields while stalwart young pagans, ever ready to pause, leaned,
bellowing, on the handles of their scythes, Abe Lincoln having just then
finished a story.
Though the humor of these stories was Falstaffian, to say the least,
though Lincoln was cock of the walk among the plowboys of Pigeon Creek, a
significant fact with regard to him here comes into view. Not an anecdote
survives that in any way suggests personal licentiousness. Scrupulous men
who in after-time were offended by his coarseness of speech—for more
or less of the artist of Pigeon Creek stuck to him almost to the end; he
talked in fables, often in gross fables—these men, despite their
annoyance, felt no impulse to attribute to him personal habits in harmony
with his tales. On the other hand, they were puzzled by their own
impression, never wavering, that he was “pureminded.” The clue which they
did not have lay in the nature of his double life. That part of him which,
in our modern jargon, we call his “reactions” obeyed a curious law. They
dwelt in his outer life without penetrating to the inner; but all his
impulses of personal action were securely seated deep within. Even at
nineteen, for any one attuned to spiritual meaning, he would have struck
the note of mystery, faintly, perhaps, but certainly. To be sure, no hint
of this reached the minds of his rollicking comrades of the harvest field.
It was not for such as they to perceive the problem of his character, to
suspect that he was a genius, or to guess that a time would come when
sincere men would form impressions of him as dissimilar as black and
white. And so far as it went the observation of the plowboys was correct.
The man they saw was indeed a reflection of themselves. But it was a
reflection only. Their influence entered into the real man no more than
the image in a mirror has entered into the glass.
III. A VILLAGE LEADER
Though placid, this early Lincoln was not resigned. He differed from the
boors of Pigeon Creek in wanting some other sort of life. What it was he
wanted, he did not know. His reading had not as yet given him definite
ambitions. It may well be that New Orleans was the clue to such stirring
in him as there was of that discontent which fanciful people have called
divine. Remembering New Orleans, could any imaginative youth be content
with Pigeon Creek?
In the spring of 1830, shortly after he came of age, he agreed for once
with his father whose chronic vagrancy had reasserted itself. The whole
family set out again on their wanderings and made their way in an oxcart
to a new halting place on the Sangamon River in Illinois. There Abraham
helped his father clear another piece of land for another illusive “start”
in life. The following spring he parted with his family and struck out for
himself.(1) His next adventure was a second trip as a boatman to New
Orleans. Can one help suspecting there was vague hope in his heart that he
might be adventuring to the land of hearts’ desire? If there was, the
yokels who were his fellow boatmen never suspected it. One of them long
afterward asserted that Lincoln returned from New Orleans fiercely
rebellious against its central institution, slavery, and determined to
“hit that thing” whenever he could.
The legend centers in his witnessing a slave auction and giving voice to
his horror in a style quite unlike any of his authentic utterances. The
authority for all this is doubtful.(2) Furthermore, the Lincoln of 1831
was not yet awakened. That inner life in which such a reaction might take
place was still largely dormant. The outer life, the life of the harvest
clown, was still a thick insulation. Apparently, the waking of the inner
life, the termination of its dormant stage, was reserved for an incident
far more personal that fell upon him in desolating force a few years
later.
Following the New Orleans venture, came a period as storekeeper for a man
named Denton Offut, in perhaps the least desirable town in Illinois—a
dreary little huddle of houses gathered around Rutledge’s Mill on the
Sangamon River and called New Salem.(3) Though a few of its people were of
a better sort than any Lincoln had yet known except, perhaps, the miller’s
family in the old days in Kentucky—and still a smaller few were of
fine quality, the community for the most part was hopeless. A fatality for
unpromising neighborhoods overhangs like a doom the early part of this
strange life. All accounts of New Salem represent it as predominantly a
congregation of the worthless, flung together by unaccountable accident at
a spot where there was no genuine reason for a town’s existence. A casual
town, created by drifters, and void of settled purpose. Small wonder that
ere long it vanished from the map; that after a few years its drifting
congregation dispersed to every corner of the horizon, and was no more.
But during its brief existence it staged an episode in the development of
Lincoln’s character. However, this did not take place at once. And before
it happened, came another turn of his soul’s highway scarcely less
important. He discovered, or thought he discovered, what he wanted. His
vague ambition took shape. He decided to try to be a politician. At
twenty-three, after living in New Salem less than a year, this audacious,
not to say impertinent, young man offered himself to the voters of
Sangamon County as a candidate for the Legislature. At this time that
humility which was eventually his characteristic had not appeared. It may
be dated as subsequent to New Salem—a further evidence that the deep
spiritual experience which closed this chapter formed a crisis. Before
then, at New Salem as at Pigeon Creek, he was but a variant, singularly
decent, of the boisterous, frolicking, impertinent type that instinctively
sought the laxer neighborhoods of the frontier. An echo of Pigeon Creek
informed the young storekeeper’s first state paper, the announcement of
his candidacy, in the year 1832. His first political speech was in a
curious vein, glib, intimate and fantastic: “Fellow citizens, I presume
you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I have been solicited
by many friends to become a candidate for the Legislature. My politics are
short and sweet like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national
bank. I am in favor of the internal improvement system and a high
protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles. If
elected, I shall be thankful; if not it will be all the same.”(4)
However, this bold throw of the dice of fortune was not quite so
impertinent as it seems. During the months when he was in charge of
Offut’s grocery store he had made a conquest of New Salem. The village
grocery in those days was the village club. It had its constant gathering
of loafers all of whom were endowed with votes. It was the one place
through which passed the whole population, in and out, one time or
another. To a clever storekeeper it gave a chance to establish a
following. Had he, as Lincoln had, the gift of story-telling, the gift of
humor, he was a made man. Pigeon Creek over again! Lincoln’s wealth of
funny stories gave Offut’s grocery somewhat the role of a vaudeville
theater and made the storekeeper as popular a man as there was in New
Salem.
In another way he repeated his conquest of Pigeon Creek. New Salem had its
local Alsatia known as Clary’s Grove whose insolent young toughs led by
their chief, Jack Armstrong, were the terror of the neighborhood. The
groceries paid them tribute in free drinks. Any luckless storekeeper who
incurred their displeasure found his store some fine morning a total
wreck. Lincoln challenged Jack Armstrong to a duel with fists. It was
formally arranged. A ring was formed; the whole village was audience; and
Lincoln thrashed him to a finish. But this was only a small part of his
triumph. His physical prowess, joined with his humor and his
companionableness; entirely captivated Clary’s Grove. Thereafter, it was
storekeeper Lincoln’s pocket borough; its ruffians were his body-guard.
Woe to any one who made trouble for their hero.
There were still other causes for his quick rise to the position of
village leader. His unfailing kindness was one; his honesty was another.
Tales were related of his scrupulous dealings, such as walking a distance
of miles in order to correct a trifling error he had made, in selling a
poor woman less than the proper weight of tea. Then, too, by New Salem
standards, he was educated. Long practice on the shovel at Pigeon Creek
had given him a good handwriting, and one of the first things he did at
New Salem was to volunteer to be clerk of elections. And there was a
distinct moral superiority. Little as this would have signified unbacked
by his giant strength since it had that authority behind it his morality
set him apart from his followers, different, imposing. He seldom, if ever,
drank whisky. Sobriety was already the rule of his life, both outward and
inward. At the same time he was not censorious. He accepted the devotion
of Clary’s Grove without the slightest attempt to make over its bravoes in
his own image. He sympathized with its ideas of sport. For all his
kindliness to humans of every sort much of his sensitiveness for animals
had passed away. He was not averse to cock fighting; he enjoyed a horse
race.(5) Altogether, in his outer life, before the catastrophe that
revealed him to himself, he was quite as much in the tone of New Salem as
ever in that of Pigeon Creek. When the election came he got every vote in
New Salem except three.(6)
But the village was a small part of Sangamon County. Though Lincoln
received a respectable number of votes elsewhere, his total was well down
in the running. He remained an inconspicuous minority candidate.
Meanwhile Offut’s grocery had failed. In the midst of the legislative
campaign, Offut’s farmer storekeeper volunteered for the Indian War with
Black Hawk, but returned to New Salem shortly before the election without
having once smelled powder. Since his peers were not of a mind to give him
immediate occupation in governing, he turned again to business. He formed
a partnership with a man named Berry. They bought on credit the wreck of a
grocery that had been sacked by Lincoln’s friends of Clary’s Grove, and
started business as “General Merchants,” under the style of Berry &
Lincoln. There followed a year of complete unsuccess. Lincoln demonstrated
that he was far more inclined to read any chance book that came his way
than to attend to business, and that he had “no money sense.” The new firm
went the way of Offut’s grocery, leaving nothing behind it but debt. The
debts did not trouble Berry; Lincoln assumed them all. They formed a
dreadful load which he bore with his usual patience and little by little
discharged. Fifteen years passed before again he was a free man
financially.
A new and powerful influence came into his life during the half idleness
of his unsuccessful storekeeping. It is worth repeating in his own words,
or what seems to be the fairly accurate recollection of his words: “One
day a man who was migrating to the West, drove up in front of my store
with a wagon which contained his family and household plunder. He asked me
if I would buy an old barrel for which he had no room in his wagon, and
which he said contained nothing of special value. I did not want it but to
oblige him I bought it and paid him, I think, a half a dollar for it.
Without further examination I put it away in the store and forgot all
about it Sometime after, in overhauling things, I came upon the barrel and
emptying it upon the floor to see what it contained, I found at the bottom
of the rubbish a complete edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries. I began to
read those famous works, and I had plenty of time; for during the long
summer days when the farmers were busy with their crops, my customers were
few and far between. The more I read, the more intensely interested I
became. Never in my whole life was my mind so thoroughly absorbed. I read
until I devoured them.”(7)
The majesty of the law at the bottom of a barrel of trash discovered at a
venture and taking instant possession of the discoverer’s mind! Like the
genius issuing grandly in the smoke cloud from the vase drawn up out of
the sea by the fisher in the Arabian tale! But this great book was not the
only magic casket discovered by the idle store-keeper, the broken seals of
which released mighty presences. Both Shakespeare and Burns were revealed
to him in this period. Never after did either for a moment cease to be his
companion. These literary treasures were found at Springfield twenty miles
from New Salem, whither Lincoln went on foot many a time to borrow books.
His subsistence, after the failure of Berry & Lincoln, was derived
from the friendliness of the County Surveyor Calhoun, who was a Democrat,
while Lincoln called himself a Whig. Calhoun offered him the post of
assistant. In accepting, Lincoln again displayed the honesty that was
beginning to be known as his characteristic. He stipulated that he should
be perfectly free to express his opinions, that the office should not be
in any respect, a bribe. This being conceded, he went to work furiously on
a treatise upon surveying, and astonishingly soon, with the generous help
of the schoolmaster of New Salem, was able to take up his duties. His
first fee was “two buckskins which Hannah Armstrong ‘fixed’ on his pants
so the briers would not wear them out.”(8)
Thus time passed until 1834 when he staked his only wealth, his
popularity, in the gamble of an election. This time he was successful.
During the following winter he sat in the Legislature of Illinois; a huge,
uncouth, mainly silent member, making apparently no impression whatever,
very probably striking the educated members as a nonentity in homespun.(9)
In the spring of 1835, he was back in New Salem, busy again with his
surveying. Kind friends had secured him the office of local postmaster.
The delivery of letters was now combined with going to and fro as a
surveyor. As the mail came but once a week, and as whatever he had to
deliver could generally be carried in his hat, and as payment was in
proportion to business done, his revenues continued small. Nevertheless,
in the view of New Salem, he was getting on.
And then suddenly misfortune overtook him. His great adventure, the first
of those spiritual agonies of which he was destined to endure so many,
approached. Hitherto, since childhood, women had played no part in his
story. All the recollections of his youth are vague in their references to
the feminine. As a boy at Pigeon Creek when old Thomas was hiring him out,
the women of the settlement liked to have him around, apparently because
he was kindly and ever ready to do odd jobs in addition to his regular
work. However, until 1835, his story is that of a man’s man, possibly
because there was so much of the feminine in his own make-up. In 1835 came
a change. A girl of New Salem, a pretty village maiden, the best the poor
place could produce, revealed him to himself. Sweet Ann Rutledge, the
daughter of the tavern-keeper, was his first love. But destiny was against
them. A brief engagement was terminated by her sudden death late in the
summer of 1835. Of this shadowy love-affair very little is known,—though
much romantic fancy has been woven about it. Its significance for
after-time is in Lincoln’s “reaction.” There had been much sickness in New
Salem the summer in which Ann died. Lincoln had given himself freely as
nurse—the depth of his companionableness thus being proved—and
was in an overwrought condition when his sorrow struck him. A last
interview with the dying girl, at which no one was present, left him quite
unmanned. A period of violent agitation followed. For a time he seemed
completely transformed. The sunny Lincoln, the delight of Clary’s Grove,
had vanished. In his place was a desolated soul—a brother to
dragons, in the terrible imagery of Job—a dweller in the dark places
of affliction. It was his mother reborn in him. It was all the shadowiness
of his mother’s world; all that frantic reveling in the mysteries of woe
to which, hitherto, her son had been an alien. To the simple minds of the
villagers with their hard-headed, practical way of keeping all things,
especially love and grief, in the outer layer of consciousness, this
revelation of an emotional terror was past understanding. Some of them,
true to their type, pronounced him insane. He was watched with especial
vigilance during storms, fogs, damp gloomy weather, “for fear of an
accident.” Surely, it was only a crazy man, in New Salem psychology, who
was heard to say, “I can never be reconciled to have the snow, rains and
storms beat upon her grave.”(10)
In this crucial moment when the real base of his character had been
suddenly revealed—all the passionateness of the forest shadow, the
unfathomable gloom laid so deep at the bottom of his soul—he was
carried through his spiritual eclipse by the loving comprehension of two
fine friends. New Salem was not all of the sort of Clary’s Grove. Near by
on a farm, in a lovely, restful landscape, lived two people who deserve to
be remembered, Bowlin Green and his wife. They drew Lincoln into the
seclusion of their home, and there in the gleaming days of autumn, when
everywhere in the near woods flickered downward, slowly, idly, the falling
leaves golden and scarlet, Lincoln recovered his equanimity.(11) But the
hero of Pigeon Creek, of Clary’s Grove, did not quite come hack. In the
outward life, to be sure, a day came when the sunny story-teller, the
victor of Jack Armstrong, was once more what Jack would have called his
real self. In the inner life where alone was his reality, the temper which
affliction had revealed to him was established. Ever after, at heart, he
was to dwell alone, facing, silent, those inscrutable things which to the
primitive mind are things of every day. Always, he was to have for his
portion in his real self, the dimness of twilight, or at best, the night
with its stars, “never glad, confident morning again.”
IV. REVELATIONS
From this time during many years almost all the men who saw beyond the
surface in Lincoln have indicated, in one way or another, their vision of
a constant quality. The observers of the surface did not see it. That is
to say, Lincoln did not at once cast off any of his previous
characteristics. It is doubtful if he ever did. His experience was
tenaciously cumulative. Everything he once acquired, he retained, both in
the outer life and the inner; and therefore, to those who did not have the
clue to him, he appeared increasingly contradictory, one thing on the
surface, another within. Clary’s Grove and the evolutions from Clary’s
Grove, continued to think of him as their leader. On the other hand, men
who had parted with the mere humanism of Clary’s Grove, who were a bit
analytical, who thought themselves still more analytical, seeing somewhat
beneath the surface, reached conclusions similar to those of a shrewd
Congressman who long afterward said that Lincoln was not a leader of men
but a manager of men.(1) This astute distinction was not true of the
Lincoln the Congressman confronted; nevertheless, it betrays much both of
the observer and of the man he tried to observe. In the Congressman’s day,
what he thought he saw was in reality the shadow of a Lincoln that had
passed away, passed so slowly, so imperceptibly that few people knew it
had passed. During many years following 1835, the distinction in the main
applied. So thought the men who, like Lincoln’s latest law partner,
William H. Herndon, were not derivatives of Clary’s Grove. The Lincoln of
these days was the only one Herndon knew. How deeply he understood Lincoln
is justly a matter of debate; but this, at least, he understood—that
Clary’s Grove, in attributing to Lincoln its own idea of leadership, was
definitely wrong. He saw in Lincoln, in all the larger matters, a tendency
to wait on events, to take the lead indicated by events, to do what
shallow people would have called mere drifting. To explain this, he
labeled him a fatalist.(2) The label was only approximate, as most labels
are. But Herndon’s effort to find one is significant. In these years,
Lincoln took the initiative—when he took it at all—in a way
that most people did not recognize. His spirit was ever aloof. It was only
the every-day, the external Lincoln that came into practical contact with
his fellows.
This is especially true of the growing politician. He served four
consecutive terms in the Legislature without doing anything that had the
stamp of true leadership. He was not like either of the two types of
politicians that generally made up the legislatures of those days—the
men who dealt in ideas as political counters, and the men who were
grafters without in their naive way knowing that they were grafters. As a
member of the Legislature, Lincoln did not deal in ideas. He was
instinctively incapable of graft A curiously routine politician, one who
had none of the earmarks familiar in such a person. Aloof, and yet, more
than ever companionable, the power he had in the Legislature—for he
had acquired a measure of power—was wholly personal. Though called a
Whig, it was not as a party man but as a personal friend that he was able
to carry through his legislative triumphs. His most signal achievement was
wholly a matter of personal politics. There was a general demand for the
removal of the capital from its early seat at Vandalia, and rivalry among
other towns was keen. Sangamon County was bent on winning the prize for
its own Springfield. Lincoln was put in charge of the Springfield
strategy. How he played his cards may be judged from the recollections of
another member who seems to have anticipated that noble political maxim,
“What’s the Constitution between friends?” “Lincoln,” he says, “made Webb
and me vote for the removal, though we belonged to the southern end of the
state. We defended our vote before our constituents by saying that
necessity would ultimately force the seat of government to a central
position; but in reality, we gave the vote to Lincoln because we liked
him, because we wanted to oblige our friend, and because we recognized him
as our leader.”(3)
And yet on the great issues of the day he could not lead them. In 1837,
the movement of the militant abolitionists, still but a few years old, was
beginning to set the Union by the ears. The illegitimate child of
Calvinism and the rights of man, it damned with one anathema every holder
of slaves and also every opponent of slavery except its own uncompromising
adherents. Its animosity was trained particularly on every suggestion that
designed to uproot slavery without creating an economic crisis, that would
follow England’s example, and terminate the “peculiar institution” by
purchase. The religious side of abolition came out in its fury against
such ideas. Slave-holders were Canaanites. The new cult were God’s own
people who were appointed to feel anew the joy of Israel hewing Agag
asunder. Fanatics, terrible, heroic, unashamed, they made two sorts of
enemies—not only the partisans of slavery, but all those sane
reformers who, while hating slavery, hated also the blood-lust that would
make the hewing of Agag a respectable device of political science. Among
the partisans of slavery were the majority of the Illinois Legislature.
Early in 1837, they passed resolutions condemning abolitionism. Whereupon
it was revealed—not that anybody at the time cared to know the fact,
or took it to heart—that among the other sort of the enemies of
abolition was our good young friend, everybody’s good friend, Abe Lincoln.
He drew up a protest against the Legislature’s action; but for all his
personal influence in other affairs, he could persuade only one member to
sign with him. Not his to command at will those who “recognized him as
their leader” in the orthodox political game—so discreet, in that it
left principles for some one else to be troubled about! Lincoln’s protest
was quite too far out of the ordinary for personal politics to endure it.
The signers were asked to proclaim their belief “that the institution of
slavery is founded on both injustice and bad policy; but that the
promulgation of abolition doctrines tends rather to promote than to abate
its evils.”(4)
The singular originality of this position, sweeping aside as vain both
participants in the new political duel, was quite lost on the little world
in which Lincoln lived. For after-time it has the interest of a bombshell
that failed to explode. It is the dawn of Lincoln’s intellect. In his
lonely inner life, this crude youth, this lover of books in a village
where books were curiosities, had begun to think. The stages of his
transition from mere story-telling yokel—intellectual only as the
artist is intellectual, in his methods of handling—to the man of
ideas, are wholly lost. And in this fact we have a prophecy of all the
years to come. Always we shall seek in vain for the early stages of
Lincoln’s ideas. His mind will never reveal itself until the moment at
which it engages the world. No wonder, in later times, his close
associates pronounced him the most secretive of men; that one of the
keenest of his observers said that the more you knew of Lincoln, the less
you knew of him.(5)
Except for the handicap of his surroundings, his intellectual start would
seem belated; even allowing for his handicap, it was certainly slow. He
was now twenty-eight. Pretty well on to reveal for the first time
intellectual power! Another characteristic here. His mind worked slowly.
But it is worth observing that the ideas of the protest were never
abandoned. Still a third characteristic, mental tenacity. To the end of
his days, he looked askance at the temper of abolitionism, regarded it
ever as one of the chief evils of political science. And quite as
significant was another idea of the protest which also had developed from
within, which also he never abandoned.
On the question of the power of the national government with regard to
slavery, he took a position not in accord with either of the political
creeds of his day. The Democrats had already formulated their doctrine
that the national government was a thing of extremely limited powers, the
“glorified policeman” of a certain school of publicists reduced almost to
a minus quantity. The Whigs, though amiably vague on most things except
money-making by state aid, were supposed to stand for a “strong central
government”. Abolitionism had forced on both parties a troublesome
question, “What about slavery in the District of Columbia, where the
national government was supreme?” The Democrats were prompt in their
reply: Let the glorified policeman keep the peace and leave private
interests, such as slave-holding, alone. The Whigs evaded, tried not to
apply their theory of “strong” government; they were fearful lest they
offend one part of their membership if they asserted that the nation had
no right to abolish slavery in the District, fearful of offending others
if they did not. Lincoln’s protest asserted that “the Congress of the
United States has the power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in
the District of Columbia but the power ought not to be exercised, unless
at the request of the District.” In other words, Lincoln, when suddenly
out of the storm and stress that followed Ann’s death his mentality
flashes forth, has an attitude toward political power that was not a
consequence of his environment, that sets him apart as a type of man rare
in the history of statesmanship. What other American politician of his day—indeed,
very few politicians of any day—would have dared to assert at once
the existence of a power and the moral obligation not to use it? The
instinctive American mode of limiting power is to deny its existence. Our
politicians so deeply distrust our temperament that whatever they may say
for rhetorical effect, they will not, whenever there is any danger of
their being taken at their word, trust anything to moral law. Their minds
are normally mechanical. The specific, statutory limitation is the only
one that for them has reality. The truth that temper in politics is as
great a factor as law was no more comprehensible to the politicians of
1837 than, say Hamlet or The Last Judgment. But just this is what the
crude young Lincoln understood. Somehow he had found it in the depths of
his own nature. The explanation, if any, is to be found in his heredity.
Out of the shadowy parts of him, beyond the limits of his or any man’s
conscious vision, dim, unexplored, but real and insistent as those forest
recesses from which his people came, arise the two ideas: the faith in a
mighty governing power; the equal faith that it should use its might with
infinite tenderness, that it should be slow to compel results, even the
result of righteousness, that it should be tolerant of human errors, that
it should transform them slowly, gradually, as do the gradual forces of
nature, as do the sun and the rain.
And such was to be the real Lincoln whenever he spoke out, to the end. His
tonic was struck by his first significant utterance at the age of
twenty-eight. How inevitable that it should have no significance to the
congregation of good fellows who thought of him merely as one of their own
sort, who put up with their friend’s vagary, and speedily forgot it.
The moment was a dreary one in Lincoln’s fortunes. By dint of much reading
of borrowed books, he had succeeded in obtaining from the easy-going
powers that were in those days, a license to practise law. In the spring
of 1837 he removed to Springfield. He had scarcely a dollar in his pocket.
Riding into Springfield on a borrowed horse, with all the property he
owned, including his law books, in two saddlebags, he went to the only
cabinet-maker in the town and ordered a single bedstead. He then went to
the store of Joshua F. Speed. The meeting, an immensely eventful one for
Lincoln, as well as a classic in the history of genius in poverty, is best
told in Speed’s words: “He came into my store, set his saddle-bags on the
counter and inquired what the furnishings for a single bedstead would
cost. I took slate and pencil, made a calculation and found the sum for
furnishings complete, would amount to seventeen dollars in all. Said he:
‘It is probably cheap enough, but I want to say that, cheap as it is, I
have not the money to pay; but if you will credit me until Christmas, and
my experiment here as a lawyer is a success, I will pay you then. If I
fail in that I will probably never pay you at all.’ The tone of his voice
was so melancholy that I felt for him. I looked up at him and I thought
then as I think now that I never saw so gloomy and melancholy a face in my
life. I said to him: ‘So small a debt seems to affect you so deeply, I
think I can suggest a plan by which you will be able to attain your end
without incurring any debt. I have a very large room and a very large
double bed in it, which you are perfectly welcome to share with me if you
choose.’ ‘Where is your room?’ he asked. ‘Up-stairs,’ said I, pointing to
the stairs leading from the store to my room. Without saying a word, he
took his saddle-bags on his arm, went upstairs, set them down on the
floor, came down again, and with a face beaming with pleasure and smiles
exclaimed, ‘Well, Speed, I’m moved.'”(6)
This was the beginning of a friendship which appears to have been the only
one of its kind Lincoln ever had. Late in life, with his gifted private
secretaries, with one or two brilliant men whom he did not meet until
middle age, he had something like intimate comradeship. But even they did
not break the prevailing solitude of his inner life. His aloofness of soul
became a fixed condition. The one intruder in that lonely inner world was
Speed. In the great collection of Lincoln’s letters none have the intimate
note except the letters to Speed. And even these are not truly intimate
with the exception of a single group inspired all by the same train of
events. The deep, instinctive reserve of Lincoln’s nature was incurable.
The exceptional group of letters involve his final love-affair. Four years
after his removal to Springfield, Lincoln became engaged to Miss Mary
Todd. By that time he had got a start at the law and was no longer in
grinding poverty. If not yet prosperous, he had acquired “prospects”—the
strong likelihood of better things to come so dear to the buoyant heart of
the early West.
Hospitable Springfield, some of whose best men had known him in the
Legislature, opened its doors to him. His humble origin, his poor
condition, were forgiven. In true Western fashion, he was frankly put on
trial to show what was in him. If he could “make good” no further
questions would be asked. And in every-day matters, his companionableness
rose to the occasion. Male Springfield was captivated almost as easily as
New Salem.
But all this was of the outer life. If the ferment within was constant
between 1835 and 1840, the fact is lost in his taciturnity. But there is
some evidence of a restless emotional life.
In the rebound after the woe following Ann’s death, he had gone questing
after happiness—such a real thing to him, now that he had discovered
the terror of unhappiness—in a foolish half-hearted courtship of a
bouncing, sensible girl named Mary Owens, who saw that he was not really
in earnest, decided that he was deficient in those “little links that make
up a woman’s happiness,” and sent him about his business—rather, on
the whole, to his relief.(7) The affair with Miss Todd had a different
tone from the other. The lady was of another world socially. The West in
those days swarmed with younger sons, or the equivalents of younger sons,
seeking their fortunes, whom sisters and cousins were frequently visiting.
Mary Todd was sister-in-law to a leading citizen of Springfield. Her
origin was of Kentucky and Virginia, with definite claims to distinction.
Though a family genealogy mounts as high as the sixth century, sober
history is content with a grandfather and great grandfather who were
military men of some repute, two great uncles who were governors, and
another who was a cabinet minister. Rather imposing contrasted with the
family tree of the child of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks! Even more
significant was the lady’s education. She had been to a school where young
ladies of similar social pretensions were allowed to speak only the French
language. She was keenly aware of the role marked out for her by destiny,
and quite convinced that she would always in every way live up to it.
The course of her affair with Lincoln did not run smooth. There were wide
differences of temperament; quarrels of some sort—just what, gossip
to this day has busied itself trying to discover—and on January 1,
1841, the engagement was broken. Before the end of the month he wrote to
his law partner apologizing for his inability to be coherent on business
matters. “For not giving you a general summary of news, you must pardon
me; it is not in my power to do so. I am now the most miserable man
living. If what I feel were distributed to the whole human family, there
would not be one cheerful face on earth. Whether I shall ever be better, I
can not tell. I awfully forebode I shall not. To remain as I am is
impossible. I must die or be better, it appears to me . . . a change of
scene might help me.”
His friend Speed became his salvation. Speed closed out his business and
carried Lincoln off to visit his own relations in Kentucky. It was the
devotion of Bowlin Green and his wife over again. But the psychology of
the event was much more singular. Lincoln, in the inner life, had
progressed a long way since the death of Ann, and the progress was mainly
in the way of introspection, of self-analysis. He had begun to brood. As
always, the change did not reveal itself until an event in the outward
life called it forth like a rising ghost from the abyss of his silences.
His friends had no suspicion that in his real self, beneath the thick
disguise of his external sunniness, he was forever brooding, questioning,
analyzing, searching after the hearts of things both within and without..
“In the winter of 1840 and 1841,” writes Speed, “he was unhappy about the
engagement to his wife—not being entirely satisfied that his heart
was going with his hand. How much he suffered then on that account, none
knew so well as myself; he disclosed his whole heart to me. In the summer
of 1841 I became engaged to my wife. He was here on a visit when I courted
her; and strange to say, something of the same feeling which I regarded as
so foolish in him took possession of me, and kept me very unhappy from the
time of my engagement until I was married. This will explain the deep
interest he manifested in his letters on my account…. One thing is
plainly discernible; if I had not been married and happy, far more happy
than I ever expected to be, he would not have married.”
Whether or not Speed was entirely right in his final conclusion, it is
plain that he and Lincoln were remarkably alike in temperament; that
whatever had caused the break in Lincoln’s engagement was repeated in his
friend’s experience when the latter reached a certain degree of emotional
tension; that this paralleling of Lincoln’s own experience in the
experience of the friend so like himself, broke tip for once the solitude
of his inner life and delivered him from some dire inward terror. Both men
were deeply introspective. Each had that overpowering sense of the
emotional responsibilities of marriage, which is bred in the bone of
certain hyper-sensitive types—at least in the Anglo-Saxon race. But
neither realized this trait in himself until, having blithely pursued his
impulse to the point of committal, his spiritual conscience suddenly
awakened and he asked of his heart, “Do I truly love her? Am I perfectly
sure the emotion is permanent?”
It is on this speculation that the unique group of the intimate letters to
Speed are developed. They were written after Lincoln’s return to
Springfield, while Speed was wrestling with the demon of self-analysis. In
the period which they cover, Lincoln delivered himself from that same
demon and recovered Serenity. Before long he was writing: “I know what the
painful point with you is at all times when you are unhappy; it is an
apprehension that you do not love her as you should. What nonsense! How
came you to court her? Was it because you thought she deserved it and that
you had given her reason to expect it? If it was for that, why did not the
same reason make you court Ann Todd, and at least twenty others of whom
you can think, to whom it would apply with greater force than to her? Did
you court her for her wealth? Why, you said she had none. But you say you
reasoned yourself into it. What do you mean by that? Was it not that you
found yourself unable to reason yourself out of it?” And much more of the
same shrewd sensible sort,—a picture unintentionally of his own
state of mind no less than of his friend’s.
This strange episode reveals also that amid Lincoln’s silences, while the
outward man appeared engrossed in everyday matters, the inward man had
been seeking religion. His failure to accept the forms of his mother’s
creed did not rest on any lack of the spiritual need. Though undefined,
his religion glimmers at intervals through the Speed letters. When Speed’s
fiancee fell ill and her tortured lover was in a paroxysm of remorse and
grief, Lincoln wrote: “I hope and believe that your present anxiety and
distress about her health and her life must and will forever banish those
horrid doubts which I know you sometimes felt as to the truth of your
affection for her. If they can once and forever be removed (and I feel a
presentment that the Almighty has sent your present affliction expressly
for that object) surely nothing can come in their stead to fill their
immeasurable measure of misery. . . Should she, as you fear, be destined
to an early grave, it is indeed a great consolation to know she is so well
prepared to meet it.”
Again he wrote: “I was always superstitious. I believe God made me one of
the instruments of bringing you and your Fanny together, which union I
have no doubt lie had foreordained. Whatever He designs He will do for me
yet. ‘Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord’ is my text now.”
The duality in self-torture of these spiritual brethren endured in all
about a year and a half, and closed with Speed’s marriage. Lincoln was now
entirely delivered from his demon. He wrote Speed a charming letter,
serene, affectionate, touched with gentle banter, valiant though with a
hint of disillusion as to their common type. “I tell you, Speed, our
forebodings (for which you and I are peculiar) are all the worst sort of
nonsense. . You say you much fear that that elysium of which you have
dreamed so much is never to be realized. Well, if it shall not, I dare
swear it will not be the fault of her who is now your wife. I have no
doubt that it is the peculiar misfortune of both you and me to dream
dreams of elysium far exceeding all that anything earthly can realize.”(8)
V. PROSPERITY
How Lincoln’s engagement was patched up is as delicious an uncertainty,
from gossip’s point of view, as how it had been broken off. Possibly, as
many people have asserted, it was brought about by an event of which, in
the irony of fate, Lincoln ever after felt ashamed.(1) An impulsive, not
overwise politician, James Shields, a man of many peculiarities, was
saucily lampooned in a Springfield paper by some jaunty girls, one of whom
was Miss Todd.
Somehow,—the whole affair is very dim,—Lincoln acted as their
literary adviser. Shields demanded the name of his detractor; Lincoln
assumed the responsibility; a challenge followed. Lincoln was in a
ridiculous position. He extricated himself by a device which he used more
than once thereafter; he gravely proposed the impossible. He demanded
conditions which would have made the duel a burlesque—a butcher’s
match with cavalry broadswords. But Shields, who was flawlessly literal,
insisted. The two met and only on the dueling ground was the quarrel at
last talked into oblivion by the seconds. Whether this was the cause of
the reconciliation with Miss Todd, or a consequence, or had nothing to do
with it, remains for the lovers of the unimportant to decide. The only
sure fact in this connection is the marriage which took place November 4,
1842.(2)
Mrs. Lincoln’s character has been much discussed. Gossip, though with very
little to go on, has built up a tradition that the marriage was unhappy.
If one were to believe the half of what has been put in print, one would
have to conclude that the whole business was a wretched mistake; that
Lincoln found married life intolerable because of the fussily dictatorial
self-importance of his wife. But the authority for all these tales is
meager. Not one is traceable to the parties themselves. Probably it will
never be known till the end of time what is false in them, what true.
About all that can be disengaged from this cloud of illusive witnesses is
that Springfield wondered why Mary Todd married Lincoln. He was still
poor; so poor that after marriage they lived at the Globe Tavern on four
dollars a week. And the lady had been sought by prosperous men! The
lowliness of Lincoln’s origin went ill with her high notions of her
family’s importance. She was downright, high-tempered, dogmatic, but
social; he was devious, slow to wrath, tentative, solitary; his very
appearance, then as afterward, was against him. Though not the hideous man
he was later made out to be—the “gorilla” of enemy caricaturists—he
was rugged of feature, with a lower lip that tended to protrude. His
immense frame was thin and angular; his arms were inordinately long;
hands, feet and eyebrows were large; skin swarthy; hair coarse, black and
generally unkempt. Only the amazing, dreamful eyes, and a fineness in the
texture of the skin, redeemed the face and gave it distinction.(3) Why did
precise, complacent Miss Todd pick out so strange a man for her mate? The
story that she married him for ambition, divining what he was to be—like
Jane Welsh in the conventional story of Carlyle—argues too much of
the gift of prophecy. Whatever her motive, it is more than likely that she
was what the commercialism of to-day would call an “asset.” She had
certain qualities that her husband lacked. For one, she had that intuition
for the main chance which shallow people confound with practical judgment.
Her soul inhabited the obvious; but within the horizon of the obvious she
was shrewd, courageous and stubborn. Not any danger that Mary Lincoln
would go wandering after dreams, visions, presences, such as were drifting
ever in a ghostly procession at the back of her husband’s mind. There was
a danger in him that was to grow with the years, a danger that the outer
life might be swamped by the inner, that the ghosts within might carry him
away with them, away from fact—seeking-seeking. That this never
occurred may be fairly credited, or at least very plausibly credited, to
the firm-willed, the utterly matter-of-fact little person he had married.
How far he enjoyed the mode of his safe-guarding is a fruitless
speculation.
Another result that may, perhaps, be due to Mary Lincoln was the
improvement in his fortunes. However, this may have had no other source
than a distinguished lawyer whose keen eyes had been observing him since
his first appearance in politics. Stephen T. Logan “had that
old-fashioned, lawyer-like morality which was keenly intolerant of any
laxity or slovenliness of mind or character.” He had, “as he deserved, the
reputation of being the best nisi prius lawyer in the state.”(4) After
watching the gifted but ill-prepared young attorney during several years,
observing the power he had of simplification and convincingness in
statement, taking the measure of his scrupulous honesty—these were
ever Lincoln’s strong cards as a lawyer—Logan made him the
surprising offer of a junior partnership, which was instantly accepted.
That was when his inner horizon was brightening, shortly before his
marriage. A period of great mental energy followed, about the years 1842
and 1843. Lincoln threw himself into the task of becoming a real lawyer
under Logan’s direction. However, his zeal flagged after a time, and when
the partnership ended four years later he had to some extent fallen back
into earlier, less strenuous habits. “He permitted his partner to do all
the studying in the preparation of cases, while he himself trusted to his
general knowledge of the law and the inspiration of the surroundings to
overcome the judge or the jury.”(5) Though Lincoln was to undergo still
another stimulation of the scholarly conscience before finding himself as
a lawyer, the four years with Logan were his true student period. If the
enthusiasm of the first year did not hold out, none the less he issued
from that severe course of study a changed man, one who knew the
difference between the learned lawyer and the unlearned. His own methods,
to be sure, remained what they always continued to be, unsystematic, not
to say slipshod. Even after he became president his lack of system was at
times the despair of his secretaries.(6) Herndon, who succeeded Logan as
his partner, and who admired both men, has a broad hint that Logan and
Lincoln were not always an harmonious firm. A clash of political ambitions
is part explanation; business methods another. “Logan was scrupulously
exact and used extraordinary care in the preparation of papers. His words
were well chosen, and his style of composition was stately and formal.”(7)
He was industrious and very thrifty, while Lincoln had “no money sense.”
It must have annoyed, if it did not exasperate his learned and formal
partner, when Lincoln signed the firm name to such letters as this: “As to
real estate, we can not attend to it. We are not real estate agents, we
are lawyers. We recommend that you give the charge of it to Mr. Isaac S.
Britton, a trust-worthy man and one whom the Lord made on purpose for such
business.”(8)
Superficial observers, then and afterward, drew the conclusion that
Lincoln was an idler. Long before, as a farm-hand, he had been called
“bone idle.”(9) And of the outer Lincoln, except under stress of need, or
in spurts of enthusiasm, as in the earlier years with Logan, this reckless
comment had its base of fact. The mighty energy that was in Lincoln, a
tireless, inexhaustible energy, was inward, of the spirit; it did not
always ramify into the sensibilities and inform his outer life. The
connecting link of the two, his mere intelligence, though constantly
obedient to demands of the outer life, was not susceptible of great strain
except on demand of the spiritual vision. Hence his attitude toward the
study of the law. It thrilled and entranced him, called into play all his
powers—observation, reflection, intelligence—just so long as
it appeared in his imagination a vast creative effort of the spiritual
powers, of humanity struggling perilously to see justice done upon earth,
to let reason and the will of God prevail. It lost its hold upon him the
instant it became a thing of technicalities, of mere learning, of
statutory dialectics.
The restless, inward Lincoln, dwelling deep among spiritual shadows, found
other outlets for his energy during these years when he was establishing
himself at the bar. He continued to be a voracious reader. And his reading
had taken a skeptical turn. Volney and Paine were now his intimates. The
wave of ultra-rationalism that went over America in the ‘forties did not
spare many corners of the land. In Springfield, as in so many small towns,
it had two effects: those who were not touched by it hardened into jealous
watchfulness, and their religion naturally enough became fiercely
combative; those who responded to the new influence became a little
affected philosophically, a bit effervescent. The young men, when of
serious mind, and all those who were reformers by temperament, tended to
exalt the new, to patronize, if not to ridicule the old. At Springfield,
as at many another frontier town wracked by its growing pains, a Young
Men’s Lyceum confessed the world to be out of joint, and went to work
glibly to set it right. Lincoln had contributed to its achievements. An
oration of his on “Perpetuation of Our Free Institutions,”(10) a mere
rhetorical “stunt” in his worst vein now deservedly forgotten, so
delighted the young men that they asked to have it printed—quite as
the same sort of young men to-day print essays on cubism, or examples of
free verse read to poetry societies. Just what views he expressed on
things in general among the young men and others; how far he aired his
acquaintance with the skeptics, is imperfectly known.(11) However, a rumor
got abroad that he was an “unbeliever,” which was the easy label for any
one who disagreed in religion with the person who applied it. The rumor
was based in part on a passage in an address on temperance. In 1842,
Lincoln, who had always been abstemious, joined that Washington Society
which aimed at a reformation in the use of alcohol. His address was
delivered at the request of the society. It contained this passage, very
illuminating in its light upon the generosity, the real humility of the
speaker, but scarcely tactful, considering the religious susceptibility of
the hour: “If they (the Christians) believe as they profess, that
Omnipotence condescended to take on himself the form of sinful man, and as
such die an ignominious death, surely they will not refuse submission to
the infinitely lesser condescension for the temporal and perhaps eternal
salvation of a large, erring and unfortunate class of their fellow
creatures! Nor is the condescension very great. In my judgment such of us
as have never fallen victims have been spared more from the absence of
appetite than from any mental or moral superiority over those who have.
Indeed, I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads
and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any
other class.”(12) How like that remark attributed to another great genius,
one whom Lincoln in some respects resembled, the founder of Methodism,
when he said of a passing drunkard: “There goes John Wesley, except for
the Grace of God.” But the frontier zealots of the ‘forties were not of
the Wesley type. The stories of Lincoln’s skeptical interests, the
insinuations which were promptly read into this temperance address, the
fact that he was not a church-member, all these were seized upon by a good
but very narrow man, a devoted, illiterate evangelist, Peter Cartwright.
In 1846, this religious issue became a political issue. The Whigs
nominated Lincoln for Congress. It was another instance of personal
politics. The local Whig leaders had made some sort of private agreement,
the details of which appear to be lost, but according to which Lincoln now
became the inevitable candidate.(13) He was nominated without opposition.
The Democrats nominated Cartwright.
Two charges were brought against Lincoln: that he was an infidel, and that
he was—of all things in the world!—an aristocrat. On these
charges the campaign was fought. The small matter of what he would do at
Washington, or would not do, was brushed aside. Personal politics with a
vengeance! The second charge Lincoln humorously and abundantly disproved;
the first, he met with silence.
Remembering Lincoln’s unfailing truthfulness, remembering also his
restless ambition, only one conclusion can be drawn from this silence. He
could not categorically deny Cartwright’s accusation and at the same time
satisfy his own unsparing conception of honesty. That there was no real
truth in the charge of irreligion, the allusions in the Speed letters
abundantly prove. The tone is too sincere to be doubted; nevertheless,
they give no clue to his theology. And for men like Cartwright, religion
was tied up hand and foot in theology. Here was where Lincoln had parted
company from his mother’s world, and from its derivatives. Though he held
tenaciously to all that was mystical in her bequest to him, he rejected
early its formulations. The evidence of later years reaffirms this double
fact. The sense of a spiritual world behind, beyond the world of
phenomena, grew on him with the years; the power to explain, to formulate
that world was denied him. He had no bent for dogma. Ethically,
mystically, he was always a Christian; dogmatically he knew not what he
was. Therefore, to the challenge to prove himself a Christian on purely
dogmatic grounds, he had no reply. To attempt to explain what separated
him from his accusers, to show how from his point of view they were all
Christian—although, remembering their point of view, he hesitated to
say so—to draw the line between mysticism and emotionalism, would
have resulted only in a worse confusion. Lincoln, the tentative mystic,
the child of the starlit forest, was as inexplicable to Cartwright with
his perfectly downright religion, his creed of heaven or hell—take
your choice and be quick about it!—as was Lincoln the spiritual
sufferer to New Salem, or Lincoln the political scientist to his friends
in the Legislature.
But he was not injured by his silence. The faith in him held by too many
people was too well established. Then, as always thereafter, whatever he
said or left unsaid, most thoughtful persons who came close to him sensed
him as a religious man. That was enough for healthy, generous young
Springfield. He and Cartwright might fight out their religious issues when
they pleased, Abe should have his term in Congress. He was elected by a
good majority.(14)
VI. UNSATISFYING RECOGNITION
Lincoln’s career as a Congressman, 1847-1849, was just what might have
been expected—his career in the Illinois Legislature on a larger
scale. It was a pleasant, companionable, unfruitful episode, with no
political significance. The leaders of the party did not take him
seriously as a possible initiate to their ranks. His course was that of a
loyal member of the Whig mass. In the party strategy, during the debates
over the Mexican War and the Wilmot Proviso, he did his full party duty,
voting just as the others did. Only once did he attempt anything original—a
bill to emancipate the slaves of the District, which was little more than
a restatement of his protest of ten years before—and on this point
Congress was as indifferent as the Legislature had been. The bill was
denied a hearing and never came to a vote before the House.(1)
And yet Lincoln did not fail entirely to make an impression at Washington.
And again it was the Springfield experience repeated. His
companionableness was recognized, his modesty, his good nature; above all,
his story-telling. Men liked him. Plainly it was his humor, his droll
ways, that won them; together with instant recognition of his sterling
integrity.
“During the Christmas holidays,” says Ben Perley Poore, “Mr. Lincoln found
his way into the small room used as the Post Office of the House, where a
few genial reconteurs used to meet almost every morning after the mail had
been distributed into the members’ boxes, to exchange such new stories as
any of them might have acquired since they had last met. After modestly
standing at the door for several days, Mr. Lincoln was reminded of a
story, and by New Year’s he was recognized as the champion story-teller of
the Capital. His favorite seat was at the left of the open fireplace,
tilted back in his chair with his long legs reaching over to the chimney
jamb.”(2)
In the words of another contemporary, “Congressman Lincoln was very fond
of howling and would frequently. . . meet other members in a match game at
the alley of James Casparus. . . . He was an awkward bowler, but played
the game with great zest and spirit solely for exercise and amusement, and
greatly to the enjoyment and entertainment of the other players, and by
reason of his criticisms and funny illustrations. . . . When it was known
that he was in the alley, there would assemble numbers of people to
witness the fun which was anticipated by those who knew of his fund of
anecdotes and jokes. When in the alley, surrounded by a crowd of eager
listeners, he indulged with great freedom in the sport of narrative, some
of which were very broad.”(3)
Once, at least, he entertained Congress with an exhibition of his humor,
and this, oddly enough, is almost the only display of it that has come
down to us, first hand. Lincoln’s humor has become a tradition. Like
everything else in his outward life, it changed gradually with his slow
devious evolution from the story-teller of Pigeon Creek to the author of
the Gettysburg Oration. It is known chiefly through translation. The
“Lincoln Stories” are stories someone else has told who may or may not
have heard them told by Lincoln. They are like all translations, they
express the translator not the original—final evidence that
Lincoln’s appeal as a humorist was in his manner, his method, not in his
substance. “His laugh was striking. Such awkward gestures belonged to no
other man. They attracted universal attention from the old sedate down to
the schoolboy.”(4) He was a famous mimic.
Lincoln is himself the authority that he did not invent his stories. He
picked them up wherever he found them, and clothed them with the peculiar
drollery of his telling. He was a wag rather than a wit. All that lives in
the second-hand repetitions of his stories is the mere core, the original
appropriated thing from which the inimitable decoration has fallen off.
That is why the collections of his stories are such dreary reading,—like
Carey’s Dante, or Bryant’s Homer. And strange to say, there is no humor in
his letters. This man who was famous as a wag writes to his friends almost
always in perfect seriousness, often sadly. The bit of humor that has been
preserved in his one comic speech in Congress,—a burlesque of the
Democratic candidate of 1848, Lewis Cass,—shorn as it is of his
manner, his tricks of speech and gesture, is hardly worth repeating.(5)
Lincoln was deeply humiliated by his failure to make a serious impression
at Washington.(6) His eyes opened in a startled realization that there
were worlds he could not conquer. The Washington of the ‘forties was far
indeed from a great capital; it was as friendly to conventional types of
politician as was Springfield or Vandalia. The man who could deal in ideas
as political counters, the other man who knew the subtleties of the art of
graft, both these were national as well as local figures. Personal
politics were also as vicious at Washington as anywhere; nevertheless,
there was a difference, and in that difference lay the secret of Lincoln’s
failure. He was keen enough to grasp the difference, to perceive the clue
to his failure. In a thousand ways, large and small, the difference came
home to him. It may all be symbolized by a closing detail of his stay. An
odd bit of incongruity was the inclusion of his name in the list of
managers of the Inaugural Ball of 1849. Nothing of the sort had hitherto
entered into his experience. As Mrs. Lincoln was not with him he joined “a
small party of mutual friends” who attended the ball together. As one of
them relates, “he was greatly interested in all that was to be seen and we
did not take our departure until three or four o’clock in the morning.”(7)
What an ironic picture—this worthy provincial, the last word for
awkwardness, socially as strange to such a scene as a little child,
spending the whole night gazing intently at everything he could see, at
the barbaric display of wealth, the sumptuous gowns, the brilliant
uniforms, the distinguished foreigners, and the leaders of America, men
like Webster and Clay, with their air of assured power, the men he had
failed to impress. This was his valedictory at Washington. He went home
and told Herndon that he had committed political suicide.(8) He had met
the world and the world was too strong for him.
And yet, what was wrong? He had been popular at Washington, in the same
way in which he had been popular at Springfield. Why had the same sort of
success inspired him at Springfield and humiliated him at Washington? The
answer was in the difference between the two worlds. Companionableness,
story-telling, at Springfield, led to influence; at Washington it led only
to applause. At Springfield it was a means; at Washington it was an end.
The narrow circle gave the good fellow an opportunity to reveal at his
leisure everything else that was in him; the larger circle ruthlessly put
him in his place as a good fellow and nothing more. The truth was that in
the Washington of the ‘forties, neither the inner nor the outer Lincoln
could by itself find lodgment. Neither the lonely mystical thinker nor the
captivating buffoon could do more than ripple its surface. As superficial
as Springfield, it lacked Springfield’s impulsive generosity. To the long
record of its obtuseness it had added another item. The gods had sent it a
great man and it had no eyes to see. It was destined to repeat the
performance.
And so Lincoln came home, disappointed, disillusioned. He had not
succeeded in establishing the slightest claim, either upon the country or
his party. Without such claim he had no ground for attempting reelection.
The frivolity of the Whig machine in the Sangamon region was evinced by
their rotation agreement. Out of such grossly personal politics Lincoln
had gone to Washington; into this essentially corrupt system he relapsed.
He faced, politically, a blank wall. And he had within him as yet, no
consciousness of any power that might cleave the wall asunder. What was he
to do next?
At this dangerous moment—so plainly the end of a chapter—he
was offered the governorship of the new Territory of Oregon. For the first
time he found himself at a definite parting of the ways, where a sheer act
of will was to decide things; where the pressure of circumstance was of
secondary importance.
In response to this crisis, an overlooked part of him appeared. The
inheritance from his mother, from the forest, had always been obvious.
But, after all, he was the son not only of Nancy and of the lonely stars,
but also of shifty, drifty Thomas the unstable. If it was not his paternal
inheritance that revived in him at this moment of confessed failure, it
was something of the same sort. Just as Thomas had always by way of
extricating himself from a failure taken to the road, now Abraham, at a
psychological crisis, felt the same wanderlust, and he threatened to go
adrift. Some of his friends urged him to accept. “You will capture the new
community,” said they, “and when Oregon becomes a State, you will go to
Washington as its first Senator.” What a glorified application of the true
Thomasian line of thought. Lincoln hesitated—hesitated—
And then the forcible little lady who had married him put her foot down.
Go out to that far-away backwoods, just when they were beginning to get on
in the world; when real prosperity at Springfield was surely within their
grasp; when they were at last becoming people of importance, who should be
able to keep their own carriage? Not much!
Her husband declined the appointment and resumed the practice of law in
Springfield.(9)
VII. THE SECOND START
Stung by his failure at Washington, Lincoln for a time put his whole soul
into the study of the law. He explained his failure to himself as a lack
of mental training.(1) There followed a repetition of his early years with
Logan, but with very much more determination, and with more abiding
result.
In those days in Illinois, as once in England, the judges held court in a
succession of towns which formed a circuit. Judge and lawyers moved from
town to town, “rode the circuit” in company,—sometimes on horseback,
sometimes in their own vehicles, sometimes by stage. Among the
reminiscences of Lincoln on the circuit, are his “poky” old horse and his
“ramshackle” old buggy. Many and many a mile, round and round the Eighth
Judicial Circuit, he traveled in that humble style. What thoughts he
brooded on in his lonely drives, he seldom told. During this period the
cloud over his inner life is especially dense. The outer life, in a
multitude of reminiscences, is well known. One of its salient details was
the large proportion of time he devoted to study.
“Frequently, I would go out on the circuit with him,” writes Herndon. “We,
usually, at the little country inn, occupied the same bed. In most cases,
the beds were too short for him and his feet would hang over the
footboard, thus exposing a limited expanse of shin bone. Placing his
candle at the head of his bed he would read and study for hours. I have
known him to stay in this position until two o’clock in the morning.
Meanwhile, I and others who chanced to occupy the same room would be
safely and soundly asleep. On the circuit, in this way, he studied Euclid
until he could with ease demonstrate all the propositions in the six
books. How he could maintain his equilibrium or concentrate his thoughts
on an abstract mathematical problem, while Davis, Logan, Swett, Edwards
and I, so industriously and volubly filled the air with our interminable
snoring, was a problem none of, us—could ever solve.”(2)
A well-worn copy of Shakespeare was also his constant companion.
He rose rapidly in the profession; and this in spite of his incorrigible
lack of system. The mechanical side of the lawyer’s task, now, as in the
days with Logan, annoyed him; he left the preparation of papers to his
junior partner, as formerly he left it to his senior partner. But the
situation had changed in a very important way. In Herndon, Lincoln had for
a partner a talented young man who looked up to him, almost adored him,
who was quite willing to be his man Friday. Fortunately, for all his
adoration, Herndon had no desire to idealize his hero. He was not
disturbed by his grotesque or absurd sides.
“He was proverbially careless as to his habits,” Herndon writes. “In a
letter to a fellow lawyer in another town, apologizing for his failure to
answer sooner, he explains: ‘First, I have been very busy in the United
States Court; second, when I received the letter, I put it in my old hat,
and buying a new one the next day, the old one was set aside, so the
letter was lost sight of for the time.’ This hat of Lincoln’s—a silk
plug—was an extraordinary receptacle. It was his desk and his
memorandum book. In it he carried his bank-book and the bulk of his
letters. Whenever in his reading or researches, he wished to preserve an
idea, he jotted it down on an envelope or stray piece of paper and placed
it inside the lining; afterwards, when the memorandum was needed, there
was only one place to look for it.” Herndon makes no bones about
confessing that their office was very dirty. So neglected was it that a
young man of neat habits who entered the office as a law student under
Lincoln could not refrain from cleaning it up, and the next visitor
exclaimed in astonishment, “What’s happened here!”(3)
“The office,” says that same law student, “was on the second floor of a
brick building on the public square opposite the courthouse. You went up a
flight of stairs and then passed along a hallway to the rear office which
was a medium sized room. There was one long table in the center of the
room, and a shorter one running in the opposite direction forming a T and
both were covered with green baize. There were two windows which looked
into the back yard. In one corner was an old-fashioned secretary with
pigeonholes and a drawer; and here Mr. Lincoln and his partner kept their
law papers. There was also a bookcase containing about two hundred volumes
of law and miscellaneous books.” The same authority adds, “There was no
order in the office at all.” Lincoln left all the money matters to
Herndon. “He never entered an item on the account book. If a fee was paid
to him and Herndon was not there, he would divide the money, wrap up one
part in paper and place it in his partner’s desk with the inscription,
‘Case of Roe versus Doe, Herndon’s half.’ He had an odd habit of reading
aloud much to his partner’s annoyance. He talked incessantly; a whole
forenoon would sometimes go by while Lincoln occupied the whole time
telling stories.”(4)
On the circuit, his story-telling was an institution. Two other men, long
since forgotten, vied with him as rival artists in humorous narrative.
These three used to hold veritable tournaments. Herndon has seen “the
little country tavern where these three were wont to meet after an
adjournment of court, crowded almost to suffocation, with an audience of
men who had gathered to witness the contest among the members of the
strange triumvirate. The physicians of the town, all the lawyers, and not
infrequently a preacher, could be found in the crowd that filled the doors
and windows. The yarns they spun and the stories they told would not bear
repetition here, but many of them had morals which, while exposing the
weakness of mankind, stung like a whiplash. Some were, no doubt, a
thousand years old, with just enough of verbal varnish and alterations of
names and date to make them new and crisp. By virtue of the last named
application, Lincoln was enabled to draw from Balzac a ‘droll story’ and
locating it ‘in Egypt’ (Southern Illinois) or in Indiana, pass it off for
a purely original conception. . . I have seen Judge Treat, who was the
very impersonation of gravity itself, sit up till the last and laugh
until, as he often expressed it, ‘he almost shook his ribs loose.’ The
next day he would ascend the bench and listen to Lincoln in a murder trial
with all the seeming severity of an English judge in wig and gown.”(5)
Lincoln enjoyed the life on the circuit. It was not that he was always in
a gale of spirits; a great deal of the time he brooded. His Homeric
nonsense alternated with fits of gloom. In spite of his late hours,
whether of study or of story-telling, he was an early riser. “He would sit
by the fire having uncovered the coals, and muse and ponder and
soliloquize.”(6) Besides his favorite Shakespeare, he had a fondness for
poetry of a very different sort—Byron, for example. And he never
tired of a set of stanzas in the minor key beginning: “Oh, why should the
spirit of mortal be proud?”(7)
The hilarity of the circuit was not by any means the whole of its charm
for him. Part of that charm must have been the contrast with his recent
failure at Washington. This world he could master. Here his humor
increased his influence; and his influence grew rapidly. He was a favorite
of judges, jury and the bar. Then, too, it was a man’s world. Though
Lincoln had a profound respect for women, he seems generally to have been
ill at ease in their company. In what his friends would have called
“general society” he did not shine. He was too awkward, too downright, too
lacking in the niceties. At home, though he now owned a house and was
making what seemed to him plenty of money, he was undoubtedly a trial to
Mrs. Lincoln’s sense of propriety. He could not rise with his wife,
socially. He was still what he had become so long before, the favorite of
all the men—good old Abe Lincoln that you could tie to though it
rained cats and dogs. But as to the ladies! Fashionable people calling on
Mrs. Lincoln, had been received by her husband in his shirt-sleeves, and
he totally unabashed, as oblivious of discrepancy as if he were a nobleman
and not a nobody.(8) The dreadful tradition persists that he had been
known at table to put his own knife into the butter.
How safe to assume that many things were said commiserating poor Mrs.
Lincoln who had a bear for a husband. And some people noticed that Lincoln
did not come home at week-ends during term-time as often as he might.
Perhaps it meant something; perhaps it did not. But there could be no
doubt that the jovial itinerant life of the circuit was the life for him—at
least in the early ‘fifties. That it was, and also that he was becoming
known as a lawyer, is evinced by his refusal of a flattering invitation to
enter a prosperous firm in Chicago.
Out of all this came a deepening of his power to reach and impress men
through words. The tournament of the story-tellers was a lawyers’
tournament. The central figure was reading, studying, thinking, as never
in his life before. Though his fables remained as broad as ever, the
merely boisterous character ceased to predominate. The ethical bent of his
mind came to the surface. His friends were agreed that what they
remembered chiefly of his stories was not the broad part of them, but the
moral that was in them.(9) And they had no squeamishness as critics of the
art of fable-making.
His ethical sense of things, his companionableness, the utterly
non-censorious cast of his mind, his power to evolve yarns into parables—all
these made him irresistible with a jury. It was a saying of his: “If I can
divest this case of technicalities and swing it to the jury, I’ll win
it.”(10)
But there was not a trace in him of that unscrupulousness usually
attributed to the “jury lawyer.” Few things show more plainly the central
unmovableness of his character than his immunity to the lures of jury
speaking. To use his power over an audience for his own enjoyment, for an
interested purpose, for any purpose except to afford pleasure, or to see
justice done, was for him constitutionally impossible. Such a performance
was beyond the reach of his will. In a way, his nature, mysterious as it
was, was also the last word for simplicity, a terrible simplicity. The
exercise of his singular powers was irrevocably conditioned on his own
faith in the moral justification of what he was doing. He had no patience
with any conception of the lawyer’s function that did not make him the
devoted instrument of justice. For the law as a game, for legal strategy,
he felt contempt. Never under any conditions would he attempt to get for a
client more than he was convinced the client in justice ought to have. The
first step in securing his services was always to persuade him that one’s
cause was just He sometimes threw up a case in open court because the
course of it had revealed deception on the part of the client. At times he
expressed his disdain of the law’s mere commercialism in a stinging irony.
“In a closely contested civil suit,” writes his associate, Ward Hill
Lamon, “Lincoln proved an account for his client, who was, though he did
not know it at the time, a very slippery fellow. The opposing attorney
then proved a receipt clearly covering the entire cause of action. By the
time he was through Lincoln was missing. The court sent for him to the
hotel. ‘Tell the Judge,’ said he, ‘that I can’t come; my hands are dirty
and I came over to clean them.'”(11)
“Discourage litigation,” he wrote. “Persuade your neighbors to compromise
whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real
loser, in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker, the lawyer
has a Superior Opportunity of being a good man. There will still be
business enough.”(12)
He held his moral and professional views with the same inflexibility with
which he held his political views. Once he had settled upon a conviction
or an opinion, nothing could move him. He was singularly stubborn, and
yet, in all the minor matters of life, in all his merely personal
concerns, in everything except his basal ideas, he was pliable to a
degree. He could be talked into almost any concession of interest. He once
told Herndon he thanked God that he had not been born a woman because he
found it so hard to refuse any request made of him. His outer easiness,
his lack of self-assertion,—as most people understand
self-assertion,—persist in an amusing group of anecdotes of the
circuit. Though he was a favorite with the company at every tavern, those
little demagogues, the tavern-keepers, quickly found out that he could be
safely put upon. In the minute but important favoritism of tavern life, in
the choice of rooms, in the assignment of seats at table, in the
distribution of delicacies, easy-going Lincoln was ever the first one to
be ignored. “He never complained of the food, bed, or lodgings,” says a
judge of the circuit, David Davis. “If every other fellow grumbled at the
bill of fare which greeted us at many of the dingy taverns, Lincoln said
nothing.”(13)
But his complacency was of the surface only. His ideas were his own. He
held to them with dogged tenacity. Herndon was merely the first of several
who discerned on close familiarity Lincoln’s inward inflexibility. “I was
never conscious,” he writes, “of having made much of an impression on Mr.
Lincoln, nor do I believe I ever changed his views. I will go further and
say that from the profound nature of his conclusions and the labored
method by which he arrived at them, no man is entitled to the credit of
having either changed or greatly modified them.”(14)
In these years of the early ‘fifties, Herndon had much occasion to test
his partner’s indifference to other men’s views, his tenacious adherence
to his own. Herndon had become an Abolitionist. He labored to convert
Lincoln; but it was a lost labor. The Sphinx in a glimmer of sunshine was
as unassailable as the cheery, fable-loving, inflexible Lincoln. The
younger man would work himself up, and, flushed with ardor, warn Lincoln
against his apparent conservatism when the needs of the hour were so
great; but his only answer would be, “Billy, you are too rampant and
spontaneous.”(15)
Nothing could move him from his fixed conviction that the temper of
Abolitionism made it pernicious. He persisted in classifying it with
slavery,—both of equal danger to free institutions. He took occasion
to reassert this belief in the one important utterance of a political
nature that commemorates this period. An oration on the death of Henry
Clay, contains the sentence: “Cast into life when slavery was already
widely spread and deeply sealed, he did not perceive, as I think no wise
man has perceived, how it could be at once eradicated without producing a
greater evil even to the cause of human liberty itself.”(16)
It will be remembered that the Abolitionists were never strongly national
in sentiment. In certain respects they remind one of the extreme
“internationals” of to-day. Their allegiance was not first of all to
Society, nor to governments, but to abstract ideas. For all such attitudes
in political science, Lincoln had an instinctive aversion. He was
permeated always, by his sense of the community, of the obligation to work
in terms of the community. Even the prejudices, the shortsightedness of
the community were things to be considered, to be dealt with tenderly.
Hence his unwillingness to force reforms upon a community not ripe to
receive them. In one of his greatest speeches occurs the dictum: “A
universal feeling whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely
disregarded.”(17) Anticipating such ideas, he made in his Clay oration, a
startling denunciation of both the extreme factions of
“Those (Abolitionists) who would shiver into fragments the union of these
States, tear to tatters its now ‘venerated Constitution, and even burn the
last copy of the Bible rather than slavery should continue a single hour;
together with all their more halting sympathizers, have received and are
receiving their just execration; and the name and opinion and influence of
Mr. Clay are fully and, as I trust, effectually and enduringly arrayed
against them. But I would also if I could, array his name, opinion and
influence against the opposite extreme, against a few, but increasing
number of men who, for the sake of perpetuating slavery, are beginning to
assail and ridicule the white man’s charter of freedom, the declaration
that ‘all men are created free and equal.'”(18)
In another passage he stated what he conceived to be the central
inspiration of Clay. Had he been thinking of himself, he could not have
foreshadowed more exactly the basal drift of all his future as a
statesman:
“He loved his country partly because it was his own country, and mostly
because it was a free country; and he burned with a zeal for its
advancement, prosperity, and glory, because he saw in such the
advancement, prosperity and glory of human liberty, human right and human
nature.”(19)
VIII. A RETURN TO POLITICS
Meanwhile, great things were coming forward at Washington. They centered
about a remarkable man with whom Lincoln had hitherto formed a curious
parallel, by whom hitherto he had been completely overshadowed. Stephen
Arnold Douglas was prosecuting attorney at Springfield when Lincoln began
the practice of law. They were in the Legislature together. Both courted
Mary Todd. Soon afterward, Douglas had distanced his rival. When Lincoln
went to the House of Representatives as a Whig, Douglas went to the Senate
as a Democrat. While Lincoln was failing at Washington, Douglas was
building a national reputation. In the hubbub that followed the Compromise
of 1850, while Lincoln, abandoning politics, immersed himself in the law,
Douglas rendered a service to the country by defeating a movement in
Illinois to reject the Compromise. When the Democratic National Convention
assembled in 1852, he was sufficiently prominent to obtain a considerable
vote for the presidential nomination.
The dramatic contrast of these two began with their physical appearance.
Douglas was so small that he had been known to sit on a friend’s knee
while arguing politics. But his energy of mind, his indomitable force of
character, made up for his tiny proportions. “The Little Giant” was a term
of endearment applied to him by his followers. The mental contrast was
equally marked. Scarcely a quality in Lincoln that was not reversed in
Douglas—deliberation, gradualness, introspection, tenacity, were the
characteristics of Lincoln’s mind. The mind of Douglas was first of all
facile. He was extraordinarily quick. In political Strategy he could sense
a new situation, wheel to meet it, throw overboard well-established plans,
devise new ones, all in the twinkle of an eye. People who could not
understand such rapidity of judgment pronounced him insincere, or at
least, an opportunist. That he did not have the deep inflexibility of
Lincoln may be assumed; that his convictions, such as they were, did not
have an ethical cast may be safely asserted. Nevertheless, he was a great
force, an immense human power, that did not change its course without good
reason of its own sort. Far more than a mere opportunist. Politically, he
summed up a change that was coming over the Democratic party. Janus-like,
he had two faces, one for his constituents, one for his colleagues. To the
voter he was still a Jeffersonian, with whom the old phraseology of the
party, liberty, equality, and fraternity, were still the catch-words. To
his associates in the Senate he was essentially an aristocrat, laboring to
advance interests that were careless of the rights of man. A later age has
accused the Senate of the United States of being the citadel of Big
Business. Waiving the latter view, the historian may assert that something
suggestive of Big Business appeared in our politics in the ‘fifties, and
was promptly made at home in the Senate. Perhaps its first definite
manifestation was a new activity on the part of the great slave-holders.
To invoke again the classifications of later points of view, certain of
our historians to-day think they can see in the ‘fifties a virtual slavery
trust, a combine of slave interests controlled by the magnates of the
institution, and having as real, though informal, an existence as has the
Steel Trust or the Beef Trust in our own time. This powerful interest
allied itself with the capitalists of the Northeast. In modern
phraseology, they aimed to “finance” the slave interest from New York. And
for a time the alliance succeeded in doing this. The South went entirely
upon credit. It bought and borrowed heavily in the East New York furnished
the money.
Had there been nothing further to consider, the invasion of the Senate by
Big Business in the ‘fifties might not have taken place. But there was
something else. Slavery’s system of agriculture was excessively wasteful.
To be highly profitable it required virgin soil, and the financial
alliance demanded high profits. Early in the ‘fifties, the problem of Big
Business was the acquisition of fresh soil for slavery. The problem
entered politics with the question how could this be brought about without
appearing to contradict democracy? The West also had its incipient Big
Business. It hinged upon railways. Now that California had been acquired,
with a steady stream of migration westward, with all America dazzled more
or less by gold-mines and Pacific trade, a transcontinental railway was a
Western dream. But what course should it take, what favored regions were
to become its immediate beneficiaries? Here was a chance for great
jockeying among business interests in Congress, for slave-holders,
money-lenders, railway promoters to manipulate deals to their hearts’
content. They had been doing so amid a high complication of squabbling,
while Douglas was traveling in Europe during 1853. When he returned late
in the year, the unity of the Democratic machine in Congress was
endangered by these disputes. Douglas at once attacked the problem of
party harmony. He threw himself into the task with all his characteristic
quickness, all his energy and resourcefulness.
By this time the problem contained five distinct factors: The upper
Northeast wanted a railroad starting at Chicago. The Central West wanted a
road from St. Louis. The Southwest wanted a road from New Orleans, or at
least, the frustration of the two Northern schemes. Big Business wanted
new soil for slavery. The Compromise of 1850 stood in the way of the
extension of slave territory.
If Douglas had had any serious convictions opposed to slavery the last of
the five factors would have brought him to a standstill. Fortunately for
him as a party strategist, he was indifferent. Then, too, he firmly
believed that slavery could never thrive in the West because of climatic
conditions. “Man might propose, but physical geography would dispose.”(1)
On both counts it seemed to him immaterial what concessions be made to
slavery extension northwestward. Therefore, he dismissed this
consideration and applied himself to the harmonization of the four
business factors involved. The result was a famous compromise inside a
party. His Kansas-Nebraska Bill created two new territories, one lying
westward from Chicago; one lying westward from St. Louis. It also repealed
the Missouri Compromise and gave the inhabitants of each territory the
right to decide for themselves whether or not slavery should be permitted
in their midst. That is to say, both to the railway promoter and the
slavery financier, it extended equal governmental protection, but it
promised favors to none, and left each faction to rise or fall in the free
competition of private enterprise. Why—was not this, remembering
Douglas’s assumptions, a master-stroke?
He had expected, of course, denunciation by the Abolitionists. He
considered it immaterial. But he was not in the least prepared for what
happened. A storm burst. It was fiercest in his own State. “Traitor,”
“Arnold,” “Judas,” were the pleasant epithets fired at him in a
bewildering fusillade. He could not understand it. Something other than
mere Abolitionism had been aroused by his great stroke. But what was it?
Why did men who were not Abolitionists raise a hue and cry? Especially,
why did many Democrats do so? Amazed, puzzled, but as always furiously
valiant, Douglas hurried home to join battle with his assailants. He
entered on a campaign of speech-making. On October 3, 1854, he spoke at
Springfield. His enemies, looking about for the strongest popular speaker
they could find, chose Lincoln. The next day he replied to Douglas.
The Kansas-Nebraska Bill had not affected any change in Lincoln’s
thinking. His steady, consistent development as a political thinker had
gone on chiefly in silence ever since his Protest seventeen years before.
He was still intolerant of Abolitionism, still resolved to leave slavery
to die a natural death in the States where it was established. He defended
the measure which most offended the Abolitionists, the Fugitive Slave Law.
He had appeared as counsel for a man who claimed a runaway slave as his
property.(2) None the less, the Kansas-Nebraska Bill had brought him to
his feet, wheeled him back from law into politics, begun a new chapter.
The springs of action in is case were the factor which Douglas had
overlooked, which in all his calculations he had failed to take into
account, which was destined to destroy him.
Lincoln, no less than Douglas, had sensed the fact that money was becoming
a power in American politics. He saw that money and slavery tended to
become allies with the inevitable result of a shift of gravity in the
American social system. “Humanity” had once been the American shibboleth;
it was giving place to a new shibboleth-“prosperity.” And the people who
were to control and administer prosperity were the rich. The rights of man
were being superseded by the rights of wealth. Because of its place in
this new coalition of non-democratic influences, slavery, to Lincoln’s
mind, was assuming a new role, “beginning,” as he had said, in the Clay
oration, “to assail and ridicule the white man’s charter of freedom, the
declaration that ‘all men are created free and equal.'”
That phrase, “the white man’s charter of freedom,” had become Lincoln’s
shibboleth. Various utterances and written fragments of the summer of
1854, reveal the intensity of his preoccupation.
“Equality in society beats inequality, whether the latter be of the
British aristocratic sort or of the domestic slavery sort”(3)
“If A can prove, however conclusively, that he may of right enslave B, why
may not B snatch the same argument and prove equally that he may enslave
A? You say A is white and B is black. It is color then; the lighter having
the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule you are to be
slave to the first man you meet with a fairer skin than your own. You do
not mean color exactly? You mean the whites are intellectually the
superiors of the blacks, and therefore have the right to enslave them?
Take care again. By this rule you are to be slave to the first man you
meet with an intellect superior to your own. But, you say, it is a
question of interest, and if you make it your interest, you have the right
to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has
the right to enslave you.”(4)
Speaking of slavery to a fellow lawyer, he said: “It is the most
glittering, ostentatious, and displaying property in the world; and now,
if a young man goes courting, the only inquiry is how many negroes he or
his lady love owns. The love of slave property is swallowing up every
other mercenary possession. Its ownership betokened not only the
possession of wealth, but indicated the gentleman of leisure who was above
and scorned labor.”(5)
It was because of these views, because he saw slavery allying itself with
the spread of plutocratic ideals, that Lincoln entered the battle to
prevent its extension. He did so in his usual cool, determined way.
Though his first reply to Douglas was not recorded, his second, made at
Peoria twelve days later, still exists.(6) It is a landmark in his career.
It sums up all his long, slow development in political science, lays the
abiding foundation of everything he thought thereafter. In this great
speech, the end of his novitiate, he rings the changes on the white man’s
charter of freedom. He argues that the extension of slavery tends to
discredit republican institutions, and to disappoint “the Liberal party
throughout the world.” The heart of his argument is:
“Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska or other new Territories is not a
matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole
nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these Territories.
We want them for homes for free white people. This they can not be to any
considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within them. Slave States
are places for poor white people to remove from, not remove to. New Free
States are the places for poor people to go to and better their condition.
For this use the nation needs these Territories.”
The speech was a masterpiece of simplicity, of lucidity. It showed the
great jury; lawyer at his best. Its temper was as admirable as its logic;
not a touch of anger nor of vituperation.
“I have no prejudice against the Southern people,” said he. “They are just
what we would be in their situation. If slavery did not exist among them,
they would not introduce it. If it did now exist among us, we should not
instantly give it up. This I believe of the masses North and South.
“When Southern people tell us that they are no more responsible for the
origin of slavery than we are, I acknowledge the fact. When it is said
that the institution exists and that it is very difficult to get rid of in
any satisfactory way, I can understand and appreciate the saying. I surely
will not blame them for not doing what I should not know how to do myself.
If all earthly power were given me, I should not know what to do as to the
existing institution.”
His instinctive aversion to fanaticism found expression in a plea for the
golden mean in politics.
“Some men, mostly Whigs, who condemn the repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, nevertheless hesitate to go for its restoration lest they be
thrown in company with the Abolitionists. Will they allow me as an old
Whig, to tell them good-humoredly that I think this is very silly. Stand
with anybody that stands right. Stand with him while he is right and part
with him when he goes wrong. Stand with the Abolitionist in restoring the
Missouri Compromise, and stand against him when he attempts to repeal the
Fugitive Slave Law. In the latter case you stand with the Southern
dis-unionist. What of that? You are still right. In both cases you are
right. In both cases you expose the dangerous extremes. In both you stand
on middle ground and hold the ship level and steady. In both you are
national, and nothing less than national. This is the good old Whig
ground. To desert such ground because of any company is to be less than a
Whig-less than a man-less than an American.”
These two speeches against Douglas made an immense impression Byron-like,
Lincoln waked up and found himself famous. Thereupon, his ambition
revived. A Senator was to be chosen that autumn. Why might not this be the
opportunity to retrieve his failure in Congress? Shortly after the Peoria
speech, he was sending out notes like this to prominent politicians:
“Dear Sir: You used to express a good deal of partiality for me, and if
you are still so, now is the time. Some friends here are really for me for
the United States Senate, and I should be very grateful if you could make
a mark for me among your members (of the Legislature).”(7)
When the Legislature assembled, it was found to comprise four groups: the
out-and-out Democrats who would stand by Douglas through thick and thin,
and vote only for his nominee; the bolting Democrats who would not vote
for a Douglas man, but whose party rancor was so great that they would
throw their votes away rather than give them to a Whig; such enemies of
Douglas as were willing to vote for a Whig; the remainder.
The Democrats supported Governor Matteson; the candidate of the second
group was Lyman Trumbull; the Whigs supported Lincoln. After nine exciting
ballots, Matteson had forty-seven votes, Trumbull thirty-five, Lincoln
fifteen. As the bolting Democrats were beyond compromise, Lincoln
determined to sacrifice himself in order to defeat Matteson. Though the
fifteen protested against deserting him, he required them to do so. On the
tenth ballot, they transferred their votes to Trumbull and he was
elected.(8)
Douglas had met his first important defeat. His policy had been repudiated
in his own State. And it was Lincoln who had formulated the argument
against him, who had held the balance of power, and had turned the scale.
IX. THE LITERARY STATESMAN
Lincoln had found at last a mode and an opportunity for concentrating all
his powers in a way that could have results. He had discovered himself as
a man of letters. The great speeches of 1854 were not different in a way
from the previous speeches that were without results. And yet they were
wholly different. Just as Lincoln’s version of an old tale made of that
tale a new thing, so Lincoln’s version of an argument made of it a
different thing from other men’s versions. The oratory of 1854 was not
state-craft in any ordinary sense. It was art Lincoln the artist, who had
slowly developed a great literary faculty, had chanced after so many
rebuffs on good fortune. His cause stood in urgent need of just what he
could give. It was one of those moments when a new political force, having
not as yet any opening for action, finds salvation in the phrase-maker, in
the literary artist who can embody it in words.
During the next five years and more, Lincoln was the recognized offset to
Douglas. His fame spread from Illinois in both directions. He was called
to Iowa and to Ohio as the advocate of all advocates who could undo the
effect of Douglas. His fame traveled eastward. The culmination of the
period of literary leadership was his famous speech at Cooper Union in
February, 1860.
It was inevitable that he should go along with the antislavery coalition
which adopted the name of the Republican party. But his natural
deliberation kept him from being one of its founders. An attempt of its
founders to appropriate him after the triumph at Springfield, in October,
1854, met with a rebuff.(1) Nearly a year and a half went by before he
affiliated himself with the new party. But once having made up his mind,
he went forward wholeheartedly. At the State Convention of Illinois
Republicans in 1856 he made a speech that has not been recorded but which
is a tradition for moving oratory. That same year a considerable number of
votes were cast for Lincoln for Vice-President in the Republican National
Convention.
But all these were mere details. The great event of the years between 1854
and 1860 was his contest with Douglas. It was a battle of wits, a great
literary duel. Fortunately for Lincoln, his part was played altogether on
his own soil, under conditions in which he was entirely at his ease, where
nothing conspired with his enemy to embarrass him.
Douglas had a far more difficult task. Unforeseen complications rapidly
forced him to change his policy, to meet desertion and betrayal in his own
ranks. These were terrible years when fierce events followed one another
in quick succession—the rush of both slave-holders and abolitionists
into Kansas; the cruel war along the Wakarusa River; the sack of Lawrence
by the pro-slavery party; the massacre by John Brown at Pottawatomie; the
diatribes of Sumner in the Senate; the assault on Sumner by Brooks. In the
midst of this carnival of ferocity came the Dred Scott decision, cutting
under the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, denying to the people of a Territory the
right to legislate on slavery, and giving to all slave-holders the right
to settle with their slaves anywhere they pleased outside a Free State.
This famous decision repudiated Douglas’s policy of leaving all such
questions to local autonomy and to private enterprise. For a time Douglas
made no move to save his policy. But when President Buchanan decided to
throw the influence of the Administration on the side of the pro-slavery
party in Kansas, Douglas was up in arms. When it was proposed to admit
Kansas with a constitution favoring slavery, but which had not received
the votes of a majority of the inhabitants, Douglas voted with the
Republicans to defeat admission. Whereupon the Democratic party machine
and the Administration turned upon him without mercy. He stood alone in a
circle of enemies. At no other time did he show so many of the qualities
of a great leader. Battling with Lincoln in the popular forum on the one
hand, he was meeting daily on the other assaults by a crowd of brilliant
opponents in Congress. At the same time he was playing a consummate game
of political strategy, struggling against immense odds to recover his hold
on Illinois. The crisis would come in 1858 when he would have to go before
the Legislature for reelection. He knew well enough who his opponent would
be. At every turn there fell across his path the shadow of a cool sinister
figure, his relentless enemy. It was Lincoln. On the struggle with Lincoln
his whole battle turned.
Abandoned by his former allies, his one hope was the retention of his
constituency. To discredit Lincoln, to twist and discredit all his
arguments, was for Douglas a matter of life and death. He struck
frequently with great force, but sometimes with more fury than wisdom.
Many a time the unruffled coolness of Lincoln brought to nothing what was
meant for a deadly thrust. Douglas took counsel of despair and tried to
show that Lincoln was preaching the amalgamation of the white and black
races. “I protest,” Lincoln replied, “against the counterfeit logic which
says that because I do not want a black woman for a slave, I must
necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either. I can
just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but
in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without
asking leave of any one else, she is my equal and the equal of all
others.”(2) Any false move made by Douglas, any rash assertion, was sure
to be seized upon by that watchful enemy in Illinois. In attempting to
defend himself on two fronts at once, defying both the Republicans and the
Democratic machine, Douglas made his reckless declaration that all he
wanted was a fair vote by the people of Kansas; that for himself he did
not care how they settled the matter, whether slavery was voted up or
voted down. With relentless skill, Lincoln developed the implications of
this admission, drawing forth from its confessed indifference to the
existence of slavery, a chain of conclusions that extended link by link to
a belief in reopening the African slave trade. This was done in his speech
accepting the Republican nomination for the Senate. In the same speech he
restated his general position in half a dozen sentences that became at
once a classic statement for the whole Republican party: “A house divided
against itself can not stand. I believe this government can not endure
permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be
dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will
cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. Either
the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it
where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of
ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till it shall
become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well
as South.”(3)
The great duel was rapidly approaching its climax. What was in reality no
more than the last round has appropriated a label that ought to have a
wider meaning and is known as the Lincoln-Douglas Debates. The two
candidates made a joint tour of the State, debating their policies in
public at various places during the summer and autumn of 1858.
Properly considered, these famous speeches closed Lincoln’s life as an
orator. The Cooper Union speech was an isolated aftermath in alien
conditions, a set performance not quite in his true vein. His brief
addresses of the later years were incidental; they had no combative
element. Never again was he to attempt to sway an audience for an
immediate stake through the use of the spoken word. “A brief description
of Mr. Lincoln’s appearance on the stump and of his manner when speaking,”
as Herndon aptly remarks, “may not be without interest. When standing
erect, he was six feet four inches high. He was lean in flesh and ungainly
in figure. Aside from his sad, pained look, due to habitual melancholy,
his face had no characteristic or fixed expression. He was thin through
the chest and hence slightly stoop-shouldered. . . . At first he was very
awkward and it seemed a real labor to adjust himself to his surroundings.
He struggled for a time under a feeling of apparent diffidence and
sensitiveness, and these only added to his awkwardness…. When he began
speaking his voice was shrill, piping and unpleasant. His manner, his
attitude, his dark yellow face, wrinkled and dry, his oddity of pose, his
diffident movements; everything seemed to be against him, but only for a
short time. . . . As he proceeded, he became somewhat more animated. . . .
He did not gesticulate as much with his hands as with his head. He used
the latter frequently, throwing it with him, this way and that. . . . He
never sawed the air nor rent space into tatters and rags, as some orators
do. He never acted for stage effect. He was cool, considerate, reflective—in
time, self-possessed and self-reliant. . . . As he moved along in his
speech he became freer and less uneasy in his movements; to that extent he
was graceful. He had a perfect naturalness, a strong individuality, and to
that extent he was dignified. . . . He spoke with effectiveness—and
to move the judgment as well as the emotion of men. There was a world of
meaning and emphasis in the long, bony finger of the right hand as he
dotted the ideas on the minds of his hearers. . . . He always stood
squarely on his feet. . . . He neither touched nor leaned on anything for
support. He never ranted, never walked backward and forward on the
platform. . . . As he proceeded with his speech, the exercise of his vocal
organs altered somewhat the pitch of his voice. It lost in a measure its
former acute and shrilling pitch and mellowed into a more harmonious and
pleasant sound. His form expanded, and notwithstanding the sunken breast,
he rose up a splendid and imposing figure. . . . His little gray eyes
flashed in a face aglow with the fire of his profound thoughts; and his
uneasy movements and diffident manner sunk themselves beneath the wave of
righteous indignation that came sweeping over him.”(4)
A wonderful dramatic contrast were these two men, each in his way so
masterful, as they appeared in the famous debates. By good fortune we have
a portrait of Douglas the orator, from the pen of Mrs. Stowe, who had
observed him with reluctant admiration from the gallery of the Senate.
“This Douglas is the very ideal of vitality. Short, broad, thick-set,
every inch of him has its own alertness and motion. He has a good head,
thick black hair, heavy black brows, and a keen face. His figure would be
an unfortunate one were it not for the animation that constantly pervades
it. As it is it rather gives poignancy to his peculiar appearance; he has
a small handsome hand, moreover, and a graceful as well as forcible mode
of using it. . . . He has two requisites of a debater, a melodious voice
and clear, sharply defined enunciation. His forte in debating is his power
of mystifying the point. With the most offhand assured airs in the world,
and a certain appearance of honest superiority, like one who has a regard
for you and wishes to set you right on one or two little matters, he
proceeds to set up some point which is not that in question, but only a
family connection of it, and this point he attacks with the very best of
logic and language; he charges upon it, horse and foot, runs it down,
tramples it in the dust, and then turns upon you with ‘See, there is your
argument. Did I not tell you so? You see it is all stuff.’ And if you have
allowed yourself to be so dazzled by his quickness as to forget that the
routed point is not, after all, the one in question, you suppose all is
over with it. Moreover, he contrives to mingle up so many stinging
allusions, so many piquant personalities, that by the time he has done his
mystification, a dozen others are ready and burning to spring on their
feet to repel some direct or indirect attack all equally wide of the
point.”
The mode of travel of the two contestants heightened the contrast. George
B. McClellan, a young engineer officer who had recently resigned from the
army and was now general superintendent of the Illinois Central Railroad,
gave Douglas his private car and a special train. Lincoln traveled any way
he could-in ordinary passenger trains, or even in the caboose of a freight
train. A curious symbolization of Lincoln’s belief that the real conflict
was between the plain people and organized money!
The debates did not develop new ideas. It was a literary duel, each leader
aiming to restate himself in the most telling, popular way. For once that
superficial definition of art applied: “What oft was thought but ne’er so
well expressed.” Nevertheless the debates contained an incident that
helped to make history. Though Douglas was at war with the Administration,
it was not certain that the quarrel might not be made up. There was no
other leader who would be so formidable at the head of a reunited
Democratic party. Lincoln pondered the question, how could the rift
between Douglas and the Democratic machine be made irrevocable? And now a
new phase of Lincoln appeared. It was the political strategist He saw that
if he would disregard his own chance of election-as he had done from a
simpler motive four years before—he could drive Douglas into a
dilemma from which there was no real escape. He confided his purpose to
his friends; they urged him not to do it. But he had made up his mind as
he generally did, without consultation, in the silence of his own
thoughts, and once having made it up, he was inflexible.
At Freeport, Lincoln made the move which probably lost him the
Senatorship. He asked a question which if Douglas answered it one way
would enable him to recover the favor of Illinois but would lose him
forever the favor of the slave-holders; but which, if he answered it
another way might enable him to make his peace at Washington but would
certainly lose him Illinois. The question was: “Can the people of a United
States Territory in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the
United States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a
State Constitution?”(5) In other words, is the Dred Scott decision good
law? Is it true that a slave-holder can take his slaves into Kansas if the
people of Kansas want to keep him out?
Douglas saw the trap. With his instantaneous facility he tried to cloud
the issue and extricate himself through evasion in the very manner Mrs.
Stowe has described. While dodging a denial of the court’s authority, he
insisted that his doctrine of local autonomy was still secure because
through police regulation the local legislature could foster or strangle
slavery, just as they pleased, no matter “what way the Supreme Court may
hereafter decide as to the abstract question whether slavery may or may
not go into a Territory under the Constitution.”
As Lincoln’s friends had foreseen, this matchless performance of carrying
water on both shoulders caught the popular fancy; Douglas was reelected to
the Senate. As Lincoln had foreseen, it killed him as a Democratic leader;
it prevented the reunion of the Democratic party. The result appeared in
1860 when the Republicans, though still a minority party, carried the day
because of the bitter divisions among the Democrats. That was what Lincoln
foresaw when he said to his fearful friends while they argued in vain to
prevent his asking the question at Free-port. “I am killing larger game;
the great battle of 1860 is worth a thousand of this senatorial race.”(6)
X. THE DARK HORSE
One of the most curious things in Lincoln is the way his confidence in
himself came and went. He had none of Douglas’s unwavering self-reliance.
Before the end, to be sure, he attained a type of self-reliance, higher
and more imperturbable. But this was not the fruit of a steadfast
unfolding. Rather, he was like a tree with its alternating periods of
growth and pause, now richly in leaf, now dormant. Equally applicable is
the other familiar image of the successive waves.
The clue seems to have been, in part at least, a matter of vitality. Just
as Douglas emanated vitality—so much so that his aura filled the
whole Senate chamber and forced an unwilling response in the gifted but
hostile woman who watched him from the gallery—Lincoln, conversely,
made no such overpowering impression. His observers, however much they
have to say about his humor, his seasons of Shakespearian mirth, never
forget their impression that at heart he is sad. His fondness for poetry
in the minor key has become a byword, especially the line “Oh, why should
the spirit of mortal be proud.”
It is impossible to discover any law governing the succession of his
lapses in self-reliance. But they may be related very plausibly to his
sense of failure or at least to his sense of futility. He was one of those
intensely sensitive natures to whom the futilities of this world are its
most discouraging feature. Whenever such ideas were brought home to him
his energy flagged; his vitality, never high, sank. He was prone to turn
away from the outward life to lose himself in the inner. All this is part
of the phenomena which Herndon perceived more clearly than he comprehended
it, which led him to call Lincoln a fatalist.
A humbler but perhaps more accurate explanation is the reminder that he
was son to Thomas the unstable. What happened in Lincoln’s mind when he
returned defeated from Washington, that ghost-like rising of the impulses
of old Thomas, recurred more than once thereafter. In fact there is a
period well-defined, a span of thirteen years terminating suddenly on a
day in 1862, during which the ghost of old Thomas is a thing to be
reckoned with in his son’s life. It came and went, most of the time
fortunately far on the horizon. But now and then it drew near. Always it
was lurking somewhere, waiting to seize upon him in those moments when his
vitality sank, when his energies were in the ebb, when his thoughts were
possessed by a sense of futility.
The year 1859 was one of his ebb tides. In the previous year the rising
tide, which had mounted high during his success on the circuit, reached
its crest The memory of his failure at Washington was effaced. At Freeport
he was a more powerful genius, a more dominant personality, than he had
ever been. Gradually, in the months following, the high wave subsided.
During 1859 he gave most of his attention to his practice. Though
political speech-making continued, and though he did not impair his
reputation, he did nothing of a remarkable sort. The one literary fragment
of any value is a letter to a Boston committee that had invited him to
attend a “festival” in Boston on Jefferson’s birthday. He avowed himself a
thoroughgoing disciple of Jefferson and pronounced the principles of
Jefferson “the definitions and axioms of free society.” Without conditions
he identified his own cause with the cause of Jefferson, “the man who in
the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single
people, had the coolness, forecast and capacity to introduce into a merely
revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all
times, and so to embalm it there that today and in all coming days, it
shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers of
reappearing tyranny and oppression.”(1)
While the Boston committee were turning their eyes toward this great new
phrase-maker of the West, several politicians in Illinois had formed a
bold resolve. They would try to make him President. The movement had two
sources—the personal loyalty of his devoted friends of the circuit,
the shrewdness of the political managers who saw that his duel with
Douglas had made him a national figure. As one of them said to him,
“Douglas being so widely known, you are getting a national reputation
through him.” Lincoln replied that he did not lack the ambition but lacked
altogether the confidence in the possibility of success.(2)
This was his attitude during most of 1859. The glow, the enthusiasm, of
the previous year was gone. “I must in candor say that I do not think
myself fit for the Presidency,” he wrote to a newspaper editor in April.
He used the same words to another correspondent in July. As late as
November first, he wrote, “For my single self, I have enlisted for the
permanent success of the Republican cause, and for this object I shall
labor faithfully in the ranks, unless, as I think not probable, the
judgment of the party shall assign me a different position.”(3)
Meanwhile, both groups of supporters had labored unceasingly, regardless
of his approval. In his personal following, the companionableness of
twenty years had deepened into an almost romantic loyalty. The leaders of
this enthusiastic attachment, most of them lawyers, had no superiors for
influence in Illinois. The man who had such a following was a power in
politics whether he would or no. This the mere politicians saw. They also
saw that the next Republican nomination would rest on a delicate
calculation of probabilities. There were other Republicans more
conspicuous than Lincoln—Seward in New York, Sumner in
Massachusetts, Chase in Ohio—but all these had inveterate enemies.
Despite their importance would it be safe to nominate them? Would not the
party be compelled to take some relatively minor figure, some essentially
new man? In a word, what we know as a “dark horse.” Believing that this
would happen, they built hopefully on their faith in Lincoln.
Toward the end of the year he was at last persuaded to take his candidacy
seriously. The local campaign for his nomination had gone so far that a
failure to go further would have the look of being discarded as the local
Republican leader. This argument decided him. Before the year’s end he had
agreed to become a candidate before the convention. In his own words, “I
am not in a position where it would hurt much for me to not be nominated
on the national ticket; but I am where it would hurt some for me to not
get the Illinois delegates.”(4)
It was shortly after this momentous decision that he went to New York by
invitation and made his most celebrated, though not in any respect his
greatest, oration.(5) A large audience filled Cooper Union, February 27,
1860. William Cullen Bryant presided. David Dudley Field escorted Lincoln
to the platform. Horace Greeley was in the audience. Again, the
performance was purely literary. No formulation of new policies, no appeal
for any new departure. It was a masterly restatement of his position; of
the essence of the debates with Douglas. It cleansed the Republican
platform of all accidental accretions, as if a ship’s hull were being
scraped of barnacles preparatory to a voyage; it gave the underlying
issues such inflexible definition that they could not be juggled with.
Again he showed a power of lucid statement not possessed by any of his
rivals. An incident of the speech was his unsparing condemnation of John
Brown whose raid and death were on every tongue. “You charge that we stir
up insurrections among your slaves,” said he, apostrophizing the
slave-holders. “We deny it, and what is your proof? ‘Harper’s Ferry; John
Brown!’ John Brown was no Republican; and you have failed to implicate a
single Republican in this Harper’s Ferry enterprise. . .
“John Brown’s effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection. It was
an attempt by white men to get up a revolt among slaves, in which the
slaves refused to participate. In fact, it was so absurd that the slaves
with all their ignorance saw plainly enough that it could not succeed.
That affair in its philosophy corresponds with the many attempts related
in history at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast
broods over the oppression of the people until he fancies himself
commissioned by heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt which
ends in little else than his own execution. Orsini’s attempt on Louis
Napoleon, and John Brown’s attempt at Harper’s Ferry were, in their
philosophy, precisely the same. The eagerness to cast blame on old England
in the one case and on New England in the other, does not disprove the
sameness of the two things.”
The Cooper Union speech received extravagant praise from all the
Republican newspapers. Lincoln’s ardent partisans assert that it took New
York “by storm.” Rather too violent a way of putting it! But there can be
no doubt that the speech made a deep impression. Thereafter, many of the
Eastern managers were willing to consider Lincoln as a candidate, should
factional jealousies prove uncompromising. Any port in a storm, you know.
Obviously, there could be ports far more dangerous than this “favorite
son” of Illinois.
Many national conventions in the United States have decided upon a
compromise candidate, “a dark horse,” through just such reasoning. The
most noted instance is the Republican Convention of 1860. When it
assembled at Chicago in June, the most imposing candidate was the
brilliant leader of the New York Republicans, Seward. But no man in the
country had more bitter enemies. Horace Greeley whose paper The Tribune
was by far the most influential Republican organ, went to Chicago obsessed
by one purpose: because of irreconcilable personal quarrels he would have
revenge upon Seward. Others who did not hate Seward were afraid of what
Greeley symbolized. And all of them knew that whatever else happened, the
West must be secured.
The Lincoln managers played upon the Eastern jealousies and the Eastern
fears with great skill. There was little sleep among the delegates the
night previous to the balloting. At just the right moment, the Lincoln
managers, though their chief had forbidden them to do so, offered promises
with regard to Cabinet appointments.(6) And they succeeded in packing the
galleries of the Convention Hall with a perfectly organized
claque-“rooters,” the modern American would say.
The result on the third ballot was a rush to Lincoln of all the enemies of
Seward, and Lincoln’s nomination amid a roaring frenzy of applause.
XI. SECESSION
After twenty-three years of successive defeats, Lincoln, almost
fortuitously, was at the center of the political maelstrom. The clue to
what follows is in the way he had developed during that long discouraging
apprenticeship to greatness. Mentally, he had always been in isolation.
Socially, he had lived in a near horizon. The real tragedy of his failure
at Washington was in the closing against him of the opportunity to know
his country as a whole. Had it been Lincoln instead of Douglas to whom
destiny had given a residence at Washington during the ‘fifties, it is
conceivable that things might have been different in the ‘sixties. On the
other hand, America would have lost its greatest example of the artist in
politics.
And without that artist, without his extraordinary literary gift, his
party might not have consolidated in 1860. A very curious party it was. It
had sprung to life as a denial, as a device for halting Douglas. Lincoln’s
doctrine of the golden mean, became for once a political power. Men of the
most diverse views on other issues accepted in their need the axiom:
“Stand with anybody so long as he stands right.” And standing right, for
that moment in the minds of them all, meant keeping slavery and the money
power from devouring the territories.
The artist of the movement expressed them all in his declaration that the
nation needed the Territories to give home and opportunity to free white
people. Even the Abolitionists, who hitherto had refused to make common
cause with any other faction, entered the negative coalition of the new
party. So did Whigs, and anti-slavery Democrats, as well as other factions
then obscure which we should now label Socialists and Labormen.
However, this coalition, which in origin was purely negative, revealed,
the moment it coalesced, two positive features. To the man of the near
horizon in 1860 neither of these features seemed of first importance. To
the man outside that horizon, seeing them in perspective as related to the
sum total of American life, they had a significance he did not entirely
appreciate.
The first of these was the temper of the Abolitionists. Lincoln ignored
it. He was content with his ringing assertion of the golden mean. But
there spoke the man of letters rather than the statesman. Of temper in
politics as an abstract idea, he had been keenly conscious from the first;
but his lack of familiarity with political organizations kept him from
assigning full value to the temper of any one factor as affecting the
joint temper of the whole group. It was appointed for him to learn this in
a supremely hard way and to apply the lesson with wonderful audacity. But
in 1860 that stern experience still slept in the future. He had no
suspicion as yet that he might find it difficult to carry out his own
promise to stand with the Abolitionists in excluding slavery from the
Territories, and to stand against them in enforcing the Fugitive Slave
Law. He did not yet see why any one should doubt the validity of this
promise; why any one should be afraid to go along with him, afraid that
the temper of one element would infect the whole coalition.
But this fear that Lincoln did not allow for, possessed already a great
many minds. Thousands of Southerners, of the sort whom Lincoln credited
with good intentions about slavery, feared the Abolitionists Not because
the Abolitionists wanted to destroy slavery, but because they wanted to do
so fiercely, cruelly. Like Lincoln, these Southerners who were liberals in
thought and moderates in action, did not know what to do about slavery.
Like Lincoln, they had but one fixed idea with regard to it,—slavery
must not be terminated violently. Lincoln, despite his near horizon,
sensed them correctly as not being at one with the great plutocrats who
wished to exploit slavery. But when the Abolitionist poured out the same
fury of vituperation on every sort of slave-holder; when he promised his
soul that it should yet have the joy of exulting in the ruin of all such,
the moderate Southerners became as flint. When the Abolitionists
proclaimed their affiliation with the new party, the first step was taken
toward a general Southern coalition to stop the Republican advance.
There was another positive element blended into the negative coalition. In
1857, the Republicans overruling the traditions of those members who had
once been Democrats, set their faces toward protection. To most of the
Northerners the fatefulness of the step was not obvious. Twenty years had
passed since a serious tariff controversy had shaken the North. Financial
difficulties in the ‘fifties were more prevalent in the North than in the
South. Business was in a quandary. Labor was demanding better
opportunities. Protection as a solution, or at least as a palliative,
seemed to the mass of the Republican coalition, even to the former
Democrats for all their free trade traditions, not outrageous. To the
Southerners it was an alarm bell. The Southern world was agricultural; its
staple was cotton; the bulk of its market was in England. Ever since 1828,
the Southern mind had been constantly on guard with regard to tariff,
unceasingly fearful that protection would be imposed on it by Northern and
Western votes. To have to sell its cotton in England at free trade values,
but at the same time to have to buy its commodities at protected values
fixed by Northern manufacturers—what did that mean but the despotism
of one section over another? When the Republicans took up protection as
part of their creed, a general Southern coalition was rendered almost
inevitable.
This, Lincoln {Missing text}. Again it is to be accounted for in part by
his near horizon. Had he lived at Washington, had he met, frequently,
Southern men; had he passed those crucial years of the ‘fifties in debates
with political leaders rather than in story-telling tournaments on the
circuit; perhaps all this would have been otherwise. But one can not be
quite sure. Finance never appealed to him. A wide application may be given
to Herndon’s remark that “he had no money sense.” All the rest of the
Republican doctrine finds its best statement in Lincoln. On the one
subject of its economic policy he is silent. Apparently it is to be
classified with the routine side of the law. To neither was he ever able
to give more than a perfunctory attention. As an artist in politics he had
the defect of his qualities.
What his qualities showed him were two things: the alliance of the
plutocratic slave power with the plutocratic money power, and the
essential rightness in impulse of the bulk of the Southern people. Hence
his conclusion which became his party’s conclusion: that, in the South, a
political-financial ring was dominating a leaderless people, This was not
the truth. Lincoln’s defects in 1860 limited his vision. Nevertheless, to
the solitary distant thinker, shut in by the near horizon of political
Springfield, there was every excuse for the error. The palpable evidence
all confirmed it. What might have contradicted it was a cloud of
witnesses, floating, incidental, casual, tacit. Just what a nature like
Lincoln’s, if only he could have met them, would have perceived and
comprehended; what a nature like Douglas’s, no matter how plainly they
were presented to him, could neither perceive nor comprehend. It was the
irony of fate that an opportunity to fathom his time was squandered upon
the unseeing Douglas, while to the seeing Lincoln it was denied. In a
word, the Southern reaction against the Republicans, like the Republican
movement itself, had both a positive and a negative side. It was the
positive side that could be seen and judged at long range. And this was
what Lincoln saw, which appeared to him to have created the dominant issue
in 1860.
The negative side of the Southern movement he did not see. He was too far
away to make out the details of the picture. Though he may have known from
the census of 1850 that only one-third of the Southern whites were members
of slave-holding families, he could scarcely have known that only a small
minority of the Southern families owned as many as five slaves; that those
who had fortunes in slaves were a mere handful—just as today those
who have fortunes in steel or beef are mere handfuls. But still less did
he know how entirely this vast majority which had so little, if any,
interest in slavery, had grown to fear and distrust the North. They, like
him, were suffering from a near horizon. They, too, were applying the
principle “Stand with anybody so long as he stands right” But for them,
standing right meant preventing a violent revolution in Southern life.
Indifferent as they were to slavery, they were willing to go along with
the “slave-barons” in the attempt to consolidate the South in a movement
of denial—a denial of the right of the North, either through
Abolitionism or through tariff, to dominate the South.
If only Lincoln with his subtle mind could have come into touch with the
negative side of the Southern agitation! It was the other side, the
positive side, that was vocal. With immense shrewdness the profiteers of
slavery saw and developed their opportunity. They organized the South.
They preached on all occasions, in all connections, the need of all
Southerners to stand together, no matter how great their disagreements, in
order to prevent the impoverishment of the South by hostile economic
legislation. During the late ‘fifties their propaganda for an all-Southern
policy, made slow but constant headway. But even in 1859 these ideas were
still far from controlling the South.
And then came John Brown. The dread of slave insurrection was laid deep in
Southern recollection. Thirty years before, the Nat Turner Rebellion had
filled a portion of Virginia with burned plantation houses amid whose
ruins lay the dead bodies of white women. A little earlier, a negro
conspiracy at Charleston planned the murder of white men and the parceling
out of white women among the conspirators. And John Brown had come into
Virginia at the head of a band of strangers calling upon the slaves to
rise and arm.
Here was a supreme opportunity. The positive Southern force, the slave
profiteers, seized at once the attitude of champions of the South. It was
easy enough to enlist the negative force in a shocked and outraged
denunciation of everything Northern. And the Northern extremists did all
that was in their power to add fuel to the flame. Emerson called Brown
“this new saint who had made the gallows glorious as the cross.” The
Southerners, hearing that, thought of the conspiracy to parcel out the
white women of Charleston. Early in 1860 it seemed as if the whole South
had but one idea-to part company with the North.
No wonder Lincoln threw all his influence into the scale to discredit the
memory of Brown. No wonder the Republicans in their platform carefully
repudiated him. They could not undo the impression made on the Southern
mind by two facts: the men who lauded Brown as a new saint were voting the
Republican ticket; the Republicans had committed themselves to the
anti-Southern policy of protection.
And yet, in spite of all the labors of pro-slavery extremists, the
movement for a breach with the North lost ground during 1860. When the
election came, the vote for President revealed a singular and unforeseen
situation. Four candidates were in the field. The Democrats, split into
two by the issue of slavery expansion, formed two parties. The slave
profiteers secured the nomination by one faction of John C. Breckinridge.
The moderate Democrats who would neither fight nor favor slavery,
nominated Douglas. The most peculiar group was the fourth. They included
all those who would not join the Republicans for fear of the temper of the
Abolition-members, but who were not promoters of slavery, and who
distrusted Douglas. They had no program but to restore the condition of
things that existed before the Nebraska Bill. About four million five
hundred thousand votes were cast. Lincoln had less than two million, and
all but about twenty-four thousand of these were in the Free States.
However, the disposition of Lincoln’s vote gave him the electoral college.
He was chosen President by the votes of a minority of the nation. But
there was another minority vote which as events turned out, proved equally
significant. Breckinridge, the symbol of the slave profiteers, and of all
those whom they had persuaded to follow them, had not been able to carry
the popular vote of the South. They were definitely in the minority in
their own section. The majority of the Southerners had so far reacted from
the wild alarms of the beginning of the year that they refused to go along
with the candidates of the extremists. They were for giving the Union
another trial. The South itself had repudiated the slave profiteers.
This was the immensely significant fact of November, 1860. It made a great
impression on the whole country. For the moment it made the fierce talk of
the Southern extremists inconsequential. Buoyant Northerners, such as
Seward, felt that the crisis was over; that the South had voted for a
reconciliation; that only tact was needed to make everybody happy. When, a
few weeks after the election, Seward said that all would be merry again
inside of ninety days, his illusion had for its foundation the Southern
rejection of the slave profiteers.
Unfortunately, Seward did not understand the precise significance of the
thought of the moderate South. He did not understand that while the South
had voted to send Breckinridge and his sort about their business, it was
still deeply alarmed, deeply fearful that after all it might at any minute
be forced to call them back, to make common cause with them against what
it regarded as an alien and destructive political power, the Republicans.
This was the Southern reservation, the unspoken condition of the vote
which Seward—and for that matter, Lincoln, also,—failed to
comprehend. Because of these cross-purposes, because the Southern alarm
was based on another thing than the standing or falling of slavery, the
situation called for much more than tact, for profound psychological
statesmanship.
And now emerges out of the complexities of the Southern situation a
powerful personality whose ideas and point of view Lincoln did not
understand. Robert Barnwell Rhett had once been a man of might in
politics. Twice he had very nearly rent the Union asunder. In 1844, again
in 1851, he had come to the very edge of persuading South Carolina to
secede. In each case he sought to organize the general discontent of the
South,—its dread of a tariff, and of Northern domination. After his
second failure, his haughty nature took offense at fortune. He resigned
his seat in the Senate and withdrew to private life. But he was too large
and too bold a character to attain obscurity. Nor would his restless
genius permit him to rust in ease. During the troubled ‘fifties, he
watched from a distance, but with ever increasing interest, that negative
Southern force which he, in the midst of it, comprehended, while it
drifted under the wing of the extremists. As he did so, the old arguments,
the old ambitions, the old hopes revived. In 1851 his cry to the South was
to assert itself as a Separate nation—not for any one reason, but
for many reasons—and to lead its own life apart from the North. It
was an age of brilliant though ill-fated revolutionary movements in
Europe. Kossuth and the gallant Hungarian attempt at independence had
captivated the American imagination. Rhett dreamed of seeing the South do
what Hungary had failed to do. He thought of the problem as a medieval
knight would have thought, in terms of individual prowess, with the modern
factors, economics and all their sort, left on one side. “Smaller nations
(than South Carolina),” he said in 1851, “have striven for freedom against
greater odds.”
In 1860 he had concluded that his third chance had come. He would try once
more to bring about secession. To split the Union, he would play into the
hands of the slave-barons. He would aim to combine with their movement the
negative Southern movement and use the resulting coalition to crown with
success his third attempt. Issuing from his seclusion, he became at once
the overshadowing figure in South Carolina. Around him all the elements of
revolution crystallized. He was sixty years old; seasoned and
uncompromising in the pursuit of his one ideal, the independence of the
South. His arguments were the same which he had used in 1844, in 1851: the
North would impoverish the South; it threatens to impose a crushing
tribute in the shape of protection; it seeks to destroy slavery; it aims
to bring about economic collapse; in the wreck thus produced, everything
that is beautiful, charming, distinctive in Southern life will be lost;
let us fight! With such a leader, the forces of discontent were quickly,
effectively, organized. Even before the election of Lincoln, the
revolutionary leaders in South Carolina were corresponding with men of
like mind in other Southern States, especially Alabama, where was another
leader, Yancey, only second in intensity to Rhett.
The word from these Alabama revolutionists to South Carolina was to dare
all, to risk seceding alone, confident that the other States of the South
would follow. Rhett and his new associates took this perilous advice. The
election was followed by the call of a convention of delegates of the
people of South Carolina. This convention, on the twentieth of December,
1860, repealed the laws which united South Carolina with the other States
and proclaimed their own independent.
XII. THE CRISIS
Though Seward and other buoyant natures felt that the crisis had passed
with the election, less volatile people held the opposite view. Men who
had never before taken seriously the Southern threats of disunion had
waked suddenly to a terrified consciousness that they were in for it. In
their blindness to realities earlier in the year, they were like that
brilliant host of camp followers which, as Thackeray puts it, led the army
of Wellington dancing and feasting to the very brink of Waterloo. And now
the day of reckoning had come. An emotional reaction carried them from one
extreme to the other; from self-sufficient disregard of their adversaries
to an almost self-abasing regard.
The very type of these people and of their reaction was Horace Greeley. He
was destined many times to make plain that he lived mainly in his
sensibilities; that, in his kaleidoscopic vision, the pattern of the world
could be red and yellow and green today, and orange and purple and blue
tomorrow. To descend from a pinnacle of self-complacency into a desolating
abyss of panic, was as easy for Greeley as it is—in the vulgar but
pointed American phrase—to roll off a log. A few days after the
election, Greeley had rolled off his log. He was wallowing in panic. He
began to scream editorially. The Southern extremists were terribly in
earnest; if they wanted to go, go they would, and go they should. But
foolish Northerners would be sure to talk war and the retaining of the
South in the Union by force: it must not be; what was the Union compared
with bloodshed? There must be no war—no war. Such was Greeley’s
terrified—appeal to the North. A few weeks after the election he
printed his famous editorial denouncing the idea of a Union pinned
together by bayonets. He followed up with another startling concession to
his fears: the South had as good cause for leaving the Union as the
colonies had for leaving the British Empire. A little later, he formulated
his ultimate conclusion,—which like many of his ultimates proved to
be transitory,—and declared that if any group of Southern States
“choose to form an independent nation, they have a clear moral right to do
so,” and pledging himself and his followers to do “our best to forward
their views.”
Greeley wielded through The Tribune more influence, perhaps, than was
possessed by any other Republican with the single exception of Lincoln.
His newspaper constituency was enormous, and the relation between the
leader and the led was unusually close. He was both oracle and barometer.
As a symptom of the Republican panic, as a cause increasing that panic, he
was of first importance.
Meanwhile Congress had met. And at once, the most characteristic
peculiarity of the moment was again made emphatic. The popular majorities
and the political machines did not coincide. Both in the North and in the
South a minority held the situation in the hollow of its hand. The
Breckinridge Democrats, despite their repudiation in the presidential
vote, included so many of the Southern politicians, they were so well
organized, they had scored such a menacing victory with the aid of Rhett
in South Carolina, they had played so skilfully on the fears of the South
at large, their leaders were such skilled managers, that they were able to
continue for the moment the recognized spokesmen of the South at
Washington. They lost no time defining their position. If the Union were
not to be sundered, the Republicans must pledge themselves to a new and
extensive compromise; it must be far different from those historic
compromises that had preceded it. Three features must characterize any new
agreement: The South must be dealt with as a unit; it must be given a
“sphere of influence”—to use our modern term—which would fully
satisfy all its impulses of expansion; and in that sphere, every question
of slavery must be left entirely, forever, to local action. In a word,
they demanded for the South what today would be described as a “dominion”
status. Therefore, they insisted that the party which had captured the
Northern political machine should formulate its reply to these demands.
They gave notice that they would not discuss individual schemes, but only
such as the victorious Republicans might officially present. Thus the
national crisis became a party crisis. What could the Republicans among
themselves agree to propose?
The central figure of the crisis seemed at first to be the brilliant
Republican Senator from New York. Seward thought he understood the South,
and what was still more important, human nature. Though he echoed
Greeley’s cry for peace—translating his passionate hysteria into the
polished cynicism of a diplomat who had been known to deny that he was
ever entirely serious—he scoffed at Greeley’s fears. If the South
had not voted lack of confidence in the Breckinridge crowd, what had it
voted? If the Breckinridge leaders weren’t maneuvering to save their
faces, what could they be accused of doing? If Seward, the Republican man
of genius, couldn’t see through all that, couldn’t devise a way to help
them save their faces, what was the use in being a brilliant politician?
Jauntily self-complacent, as confident of himself as if Rome were burning
and he the garlanded fiddler, Seward braced himself for the task of
recreating the Union.
But there was an obstacle in his path. It was Lincoln. Of course, it was
folly to propose a scheme which the incoming President would not sustain.
Lincoln and Seward must come to an understanding. To bring that about
Seward despatched a personal legate to Springfield. Thurlow Weed, editor,
man of the world, political wire-puller beyond compare, Seward’s devoted
henchman, was the legate. One of the great events of American history was
the conversation between Weed and Lincoln in December, 1860. By a rare
propriety of dramatic effect, it occurred probably, on the very day South
Carolina brought to an end its campaign of menace and adopted its
Ordinance of Secession, December twentieth.(1)
Weed had brought to Springfield a definite proposal. The Crittenden
compromise was being hotly discussed in Congress and throughout the
country. All the Northern advocates of conciliation were eager to put it
through. There was some ground to believe that the Southern machine at
Washington would accept it. If Lincoln would agree, Seward would make it
the basis of his policy.
This Compromise would have restored the old line of the Missouri
Compromise and would have placed it under the protection of a
constitutional amendment. This, together with a guarantee against
congressional interference with slavery in the States where it existed, a
guarantee the Republicans had already offered, seemed to Seward, to Weed,
to Greeley, to the bulk of the party, a satisfactory means of preserving
the Union. What was it but a falling back on the original policy of the
party, the undoing of those measures of 1854 which had called the party
into being? Was it conceivable that Lincoln would balk the wishes of the
party by obstructing such a natural mode of extrication? But that was what
Lincoln did. His views had advanced since 1854. Then, he was merely for
restoring the old duality of the country, the two “dominions,” Northern
and Southern, each with its own social order. He had advanced to the
belief that this duality could not permanently continue. Just how far
Lincoln realized what he was doing in refusing to compromise will never be
known. Three months afterward, he took a course which seems to imply that
his vision during the interim had expanded, had opened before him a new
revelation of the nature of his problem. At the earlier date Lincoln and
the Southern people—not the Southern machine—were looking at
the one problem from opposite points of view, and were locating the
significance of the problem in different features. To Lincoln, the heart
of the matter was slavery. To the Southerners, including the men who had
voted lack of confidence in Breckinridge, the heart of the matter was the
sphere of influence. What the Southern majority wanted was not the policy
of the slave profiteers but a secure future for expansion, a guarantee
that Southern life, social, economic, cultural, would not be merged with
the life of the opposite section: in a word, preservation of “dominion”
status. In Lincoln’s mind, slavery being the main issue, this “dominion”
issue was incidental—a mere outgrowth of slavery that should begin
to pass away with slavery’s restriction. In the Southern mind, a community
consciousness, the determination to be a people by themselves, nation
within the nation, was the issue, and slavery was the incident. To repeat,
it is impossible to say what Lincoln would have done had he comprehended
the Southern attitude. His near horizon which had kept him all along from
grasping the negative side of the Southern movement prevented his
perception of this tragic instance of cross-purposes.
Lacking this perception, his thoughts had centered themselves on a recent
activity of the slave profiteers. They had clamored for the annexation of
new territory to the south of us. Various attempts had been made to create
an international crisis looking toward the seizure of Cuba. Then, too,
bold adventurers had staked their heads, seeking to found slave-holding
communities in Central America. Why might not such attempts succeed? Why
might not new Slave States be created outside the Union, eventually to be
drawn in? Why not? said the slave profiteer, and gave money and assistance
to the filibusters in Nicaragua. Why not? said Lincoln, also. What
protection against such an extension of boundaries? Was the limitation of
slave area to be on one side only, the Northern side? And here at last,
for Lincoln, was what appeared to be the true issue of the moment. To
dualize the Union, assuming its boundaries to be fixed, was one thing. To
dualize the Union in the face of a movement for extension of boundaries
was another. Hence it was now vital, as Lincoln reasoned, to give slavery
a fixed boundary on all sides. Silently, while others fulminated, or
rhapsodized, or wailed, he had moved inexorably to a new position which
was nothing but a logical development of the old. The old position was—no
extension of slave territory; the new position was—no more Slave
States.(2) Because Crittenden’s Compromise left it possible to have a new
Slave State in Cuba, a new Slave State in Nicaragua, perhaps a dozen such
new States, Lincoln refused to compromise.(3)
It was a terrible decision, carrying within it the possibility of civil
war. But Lincoln could not be moved. This was the first acquaintance of
the established political leaders with his inflexible side. In the
recesses of his own thoughts the decision had been reached. It was useless
to argue with him. Weed carried back his ultimatum. Seward abandoned
Crittenden’s scheme. The only chance for compromise passed away. The
Southern leaders set about their plans for organizing a Southern
Confederacy.
XIII. ECLIPSE
Lincoln’s ultimatum of December twentieth contained three proposals that
might be made to the Southern leaders:
That the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law which hitherto had been
left to State authorities should be taken over by Congress and supported
by the Republicans.
That the Republicans to the extent of their power should work for the
repeal of all those “Personal Liberty Laws” which had been established in
certain Northern States to defeat the operation of the Fugitive Slave Law.
That the Federal Union must be preserved.(1)
In presenting these proposals along with a refusal to consider the
Crittenden Compromise, Seward tampered with their clear-cut form. Fearful
of the effect on the extremists of the Republican group, he withheld
Lincoln’s unconditional promise to maintain the Fugitive Slave Law and
instead of pledging his party to the repeal of Personal Liberty Laws he
promised only to have Congress request the States to repeal them. He
suppressed altogether the assertion that the Union must be preserved.(2)
About the same time, in a public speech, he said he was not going to be
“humbugged” by the bogy of secession, and gave his fatuous promise that
all the trouble would be ended inside ninety days. For all his brilliancy
of a sort, he was spiritually obtuse. On him, as on Douglas, Fate had
lavished opportunities to see life as it is, to understand the motives of
men; but it could not make him use them. He was incorrigibly cynical. He
could not divest himself of the idea that all this confusion was hubbub,
was but an ordinary political game, that his only cue was to assist his
adversaries in saving their faces. In spite of his rich experience,—in
spite of being an accomplished man of the world,—at least in his own
estimation—he was as blind to the real motives of that Southern
majority which had rejected Breckinridge as was the inexperienced Lincoln.
The coolness with which he modified Lincoln’s proposals was evidence that
he considered himself the great Republican and Lincoln an accident. He was
to do the same again—to his own regret.
When Lincoln issued his ultimatum, he was approaching the summit, if not
at the very summit, of another of his successive waves of vitality, of
self-confidence. That depression which came upon him about the end of
1858, which kept him undecided, in a mood of excessive caution during most
of 1859, had passed away. The presidential campaign with its thrilling
tension, its excitement, had charged him anew with confidence. Although
one more eclipse was in store for him—the darkest eclipse of all—he
was very nearly the definitive Lincoln of history. At least, he had the
courage which that Lincoln was to show.
He was now the target for a besieging army of politicians clamoring for
“spoils” in the shape of promises of preferment. It was a miserable and
disgraceful assault which profoundly offended him.(3) To his mind this was
not the same thing as the simple-hearted personal politics of his younger
days—friends standing together and helping one another along—but
a gross and monstrous rapacity. It was the first chill shadow that
followed the election day.
There were difficult intrigues over the Cabinet. Promises made by his
managers at Chicago were presented for redemption. Rival candidates
bidding for his favor, tried to cut each other’s throats. For example,
there was the intrigue of the War Department. The Lincoln managers had
promised a Cabinet appointment to Pennsylvania; the followers of Simon
Cameron were a power; it had been necessary to win them over in order to
nominate Lincoln; they insisted that their leader was now entitled to the
Pennsylvania seat in the Cabinet; but there was an anti-Cameron faction
almost as potent in Pennsylvania as the Cameron faction. Both sent their
agents to Springfield to lay siege to Lincoln. In this duel, the Cameron
forces won the first round. Lincoln offered him the Secretaryship.
Subsequently, his enemies made so good a case that Lincoln was convinced
of the unwisdom of his decision and withdrew the offer. But Cameron had
not kept the offer confidential. The withdrawal would discredit him
politically and put a trump card into the hands of his enemies. A long
dispute followed. Not until Lincoln had reached Washington, immediately
before the inauguration, was the dispute ended, the withdrawal withdrawn,
and Cameron appointed.(4)
It was a dreary winter for the President-elect. It was also a brand-new
experience. For the first time he was a dispenser of favor on a grand
scale. Innumerable men showed their meanest side, either to advance
themselves or to injure others. As the weeks passed and the spectacle grew
in shamelessness, his friends became more and more conscious of his
peculiar melancholy. The elation of the campaign subsided into a deep
unhappiness over the vanity of this world. Other phases of the shadowy
side of his character also asserted themselves. Conspicuous was a certain
trend in his thinking that was part of Herndon’s warrant for calling him a
fatalist. Lincoln’s mysticism very early had taken a turn toward
predestination, coupled with a belief in dreams.(5) He did not in any way
believe in magic; he never had any faith in divinations, in the occult, in
any secret mode of alluring the unseen powers to take one’s side.
Nevertheless, he made no bones about being superstitious. And he thought
that coming events cast their shadows before, that something, at least, of
the future was sometimes revealed through dreams. “Nature,” he would say,
“is the workshop of the Almighty, and we form but links in the chain of
intellectual and material life.”(6) Byron’s Dream was one of his favorite
poems. He pondered those ancient, historical tales which make free use of
portents. There was a fascination for him in the story of Caracalla—how
his murder of Geta was foretold, how he was upbraided by the ghosts of his
father and brother. This dream-faith of his was as real as was a similar
faith held by the authors of the Old Testament. He had his theory of the
interpretation of dreams. Because they were a universal experience—as
he believed, the universal mode of communication between the unseen and
the seen—his beloved “plain people,” the “children of Nature,” the
most universal types of humanity, were their best interpreters. He also
believed in presentiment. As faithfully as the simplest of the brood of
the forest—those recreated primitives who regulated their farming by
the brightness or the darkness of the moon, who planted corn or
slaughtered hogs as Artemis directed—he trusted a presentiment if
once it really took possession of him. A presentiment which had been
formed before this time, we know not when, was clothed with authority by a
dream, or rather a vision, that came to him in the days of melancholy
disillusion during the last winter at Springfield. Looking into a mirror,
he saw two Lincolns,—one alive, the other dead. It was this vision
which clenched his pre-sentiment that he was born to a great career and to
a tragic end. He interpreted the vision that his administration would be
successful, but that it would close with his death.(7)
The record of his inner life during the last winter at Springfield is very
dim. But there can be no doubt that a desolating change attacked his
spirit. As late as the day of his ultimatum he was still in comparative
sunshine, or, at least his clouds were not close about him. His will was
steel, that day. Nevertheless, a friend who visited him in January, to
talk over their days together, found not only that “the old-time zest” was
lacking, but that it was replaced by “gloom and despondency.”(8) The
ghosts that hovered so frequently at the back of his mind, the brooding
tendencies which fed upon his melancholy and made him at times irresolute,
were issuing from the shadows, trooping forward, to encompass him
roundabout.
In the midst of this spiritual reaction, he was further depressed by the
stern news from the South and from Washington. His refusal to compromise
was beginning to bear fruit. The Gulf States seceded. A Southern
Confederacy was formed. There is no evidence that he lost faith in his
course, but abundant evidence that he was terribly unhappy. He was preyed
upon by his sense of helplessness, while Buchanan through his weakness and
vacillation was “giving away the case.” “Secession is being fostered,”
said he, “rather than repressed, and if the doctrine meets with general
acceptance in the Border States, it will be a great blow to the
government.”(9) He did not deceive himself upon the possible effect of his
ultimatum, and sent word to General Scott to be prepared to hold or to
“retake” the forts garrisoned by Federal troops in the Southern
States.(10)
All the while his premonition of the approach of doom grew more darkly
oppressive. The trail of the artist is discernible across his thoughts. In
his troubled imagination he identified his own situation with that of the
protagonist in tragedies on the theme of fate. He did not withhold his
thoughts from the supreme instance. That same friend who found him
possessed of gloom preserved these words of his: “I have read on my knees
the story of Gethsemane, when the Son of God prayed in vain that the cup
of bitterness might pass from him. I am in the Garden of Gethsemane now
and my cup of bitterness is full and overflowing now.”(11)
he faced toward Washington, toward the glorious terror promised him by his
superstitions.
The last days before the departure were days of mingled gloom,
desperation, and the attempt to recover hope. He visited his old
stepmother and made a pilgrimage to his father’s grave. His thoughts
fondly renewed the details of his past life, lingered upon this and that,
as if fearful that it was all slipping away from him forever. And then he
roused himself as if in sudden revolt against the Fates. The day before he
left Springfield forever Lincoln met his partner for the last time at
their law office to wind up the last of their unsettled business. “After
those things were all disposed of,” says Herndon, “he crossed to the
opposite side of the room and threw himself down on the old office sofa. .
. . He lay there for some moments his face to the ceiling without either
of us speaking. Presently, he inquired: ‘Billy’—he always called me
by that name—’how long have we been together?’ ‘Over sixteen years,’
I answered. ‘We’ve never had a cross word during all that time, have we?’
. . . He gathered a bundle of papers and books he wished to take with him
and started to go, but before leaving, he made the strange request that
the sign board which swung on its rusty hinges at the foot of the stairway
would remain. ‘Let it hang there undisturbed,’ he said, with a significant
lowering of the voice. ‘Give our clients to understand that the election
of a President makes no change in the firm of Lincoln & Herndon. If I
live, I am coming back some time, and then we’ll go right on practising
law as if nothing had happened.’ He lingered for a moment as if to take a
last look at the old quarters, and then passed through the door into the
narrow hallway.”(12)
On a dreary day with a cold rain falling, he set forth. The railway
station was packed with friends. He made his way through the crowd slowly,
shaking hands. “Having finally reached the train, he ascended the rear
platform, and, facing about to the throng which had closed about him, drew
himself up to his full height, removed his hat and stood for several
seconds in profound silence. His eyes roved sadly over that sea of
upturned faces. . . There was an unusual quiver on his lips and a still
more unusual tear on his shriveled cheek. His solemn manner, his long
silence, were as full of melancholy eloquence as any words he could have
uttered.”(13) At length, he spoke: “My friends, no one not in my situation
can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place and
the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a
quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my
children have been born and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when
or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that
which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being
who ever attended him, I can not succeed. With that assistance, I can not
fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me and remain with you, and be
everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To
His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I
bid you an affectionate farewell.”(14)
XIV. THE STRANGE NEW MAN
There is a period of sixteen months—from February, 1861, to a day in
June, 1862,—when Lincoln is the most singular, the most problematic
of statesmen. Out of this period he issues with apparent abruptness, the
final Lincoln, with a place among the few consummate masters of
state-craft. During the sixteen months, his genius comes and goes. His
confidence, whether in himself or in others, is an uncertain quantity. At
times he is bold, even rash; at others, irresolute. The constant factor in
his mood all this while is his amazing humility. He seems to have
forgotten his own existence. As a person with likes and dislikes, with
personal hopes and fears, he has vanished. He is but an afflicted and
perplexed mind, struggling desperately to save his country. A selfless
man, he may be truly called through months of torment which made him over
from a theoretical to a practical statesman. He entered this period a
literary man who had been elevated almost by accident to the position of a
leader in politics. After many blunders, after doubt, hesitation and pain,
he came forth from this stern ordeal a powerful man of action.
The impression which he made on the country at the opening of this period
was unfortunate. The very power that had hitherto been the making of him—the
literary power, revealing to men in wonderfully convincing form the ideas
which they felt within them but could not utter—this had deserted
him. Explain the psychology of it any way you will, there is the fact! The
speeches Lincoln made on the way to Washington during the latter part of
February were appallingly unlike himself. His mind had suddenly fallen
dumb. He had nothing to say. The gloom, the desolation that had penetrated
his soul, somehow, for the moment, made him commonplace. When he talked—as
convention required him to do at all his stopping places—his words
were but faint echoes of the great political exponent he once had been.
His utterances were fatuous; mere exhortations to the country not to
worry. “There is no crisis but an artificial one,” he said.(1) And the
country stood aghast! Amazement, bewilderment, indignation, was the course
of the reaction in many minds of his own party. Their verdict was
expressed in the angry language of Samuel Bowles, “Lincoln is a Simple
Susan.”(2)
In private talk, Lincoln admitted that he was “more troubled about the
outlook than he thought it discreet to show.” This remark was made to a
“Public Man,” whose diary has been published but whose identity is still
secret. Though keenly alert for any touch of weakness or absurdity in the
new President, calling him “the most ill-favored son of Adam I ever saw,”
the Public Man found him “crafty and sensible.” In conversation, the old
Lincoln, the matchless phrase-maker, could still express himself. At New
York he was told of a wild scheme that was on foot to separate the city
from the North, form a city state such as Hamburg then was, and set up a
commercial alliance with the Confederacy. “As to the free city business,”
said Lincoln, “well, I reckon it will be some time before the front door
sets up bookkeeping on its own account.”(3) The formal round of
entertainment on his way to Washington wearied Lincoln intensely. Harassed
and preoccupied, he was generally ill at ease. And he was totally unused
to sumptuous living. Failures in social usage were inevitable. New York
was convulsed with amusement because at the opera he wore a pair of huge
black kid gloves which attracted the attention of the whole house,
“hanging as they did over the red velvet box front.” At an informal
reception, between acts in the director’s room, he looked terribly bored
and sat on the sofa at the end of the room with his hat pushed back on his
head. Caricatures filled the opposition papers. He was spoken of as the
“Illinois ape” and the “gorilla.” Every rash remark, every “break” in
social form, every gaucherie was seized upon and ridiculed with-out mercy.
There is no denying that the oddities of Lincoln’s manner though quickly
dismissed from thought by men of genius, seriously troubled even generous
men who lacked the intuitions of genius. And he never overcame these
oddities. During the period of his novitiate as a ruler, the critical
sixteen months, they were carried awkwardly, with embarrassment. Later
when he had found himself as a ruler, when his self-confidence had reached
its ultimate form and he knew what he really was, he forgot their
existence. None the less, they were always a part of him, his indelible
envelope. At the height of his power, he received visitors with his feet
in leather slippers.(4) He discussed great affairs of state with one of
those slippered feet flung up on to a corner of his desk. A favorite
attitude, even when debating vital matters with the great ones of the
nation, is described by his secretaries as “sitting on his shoulders”—he
would slide far down into his chair and stick up both slippers so high
above his head that they could rest with ease upon his mantelpiece.(5) No
wonder that his enemies made unlimited fun. And they professed to believe
that there was an issue here. When the elegant McClellan was moving heaven
and earth, as he fancied, to get the army out of its shirt-sleeves, the
President’s manner was a cause of endless irritation. Still more serious
was the effect of his manner on many men who agreed with him otherwise.
Such a high-minded leader as Governor Andrew of Massachusetts never got
over the feeling that Lincoln was a rowdy. How could a rowdy be the
salvation of the country? In the dark days of 1864, when a rebellion
against his leadership was attempted, this merely accidental side of him
was an element of danger. The barrier it had created between himself and
the more formal types, made it hard for the men who finally saved him to
overcome their prejudice and nail his colors to the mast. Andrew’s
biographer shows himself a shrewd observer when he insists on the
unexpressed but inexorable scale by which Andrew and his following
measured Lincoln. They had grown up in the faith that you could tell a
statesman by certain external signs, chiefly by a grandiose and commanding
aspect such as made overpowering the presence of Webster. And this idea
was not confined to any one locality. Everywhere, more or less, the
conservative portion in every party held this view. It was the view of
Washington in 1848 when Washington had failed to see the real Lincoln
through his surface peculiarities. It was again the view of Washington
when Lincoln returned to it.
Furthermore, his free way of talking, the broad stories he continued to
tell, were made counts in his indictment. One of the bequests of
Puritanism in America is the ideal, at least, of extreme scrupulousness in
talk. To many sincere men Lincoln’s choice of fables was often a deadly
offense. Charles Francis Adams never got over the shock of their first
interview. Lincoln clenched a point with a broad story. Many professional
politicians who had no objection to such talk in itself, glared and
sneered when the President used it—because forsooth, it might
estrange a vote.
Then, too, Lincoln had none of the social finesse that might have adapted
his manner to various classes. He was always incorrigibly the democrat
pure and simple. He would have laughed uproariously over that
undergraduate humor, the joy of a famous American University, supposedly
strong on Democracy:
Though Lincoln’s queer aplomb, his good-humored familiarity on first
acquaintance, delighted most of his visitors, it offended many. It was
lacking in tact. Often it was a clumsy attempt to be jovial too soon, as
when he addressed Greeley by the name of “Horace” almost on first sight.
His devices for putting men on the familiar footing lacked originality.
The frequency with which he called upon a tall visitor to measure up
against him reveals the poverty of his social invention. He applied this
device with equal thoughtlessness to the stately Sumner, who protested,
and to a nobody who grinned and was delighted.
It was this mere envelope of the genius that was deplorably evident on the
journey from Springfield to Washington. There was one detail of the
journey that gave his enemies a more definite ground for sneering. By the
irony of fate, the first clear instance of Lincoln’s humility, his
reluctance to set up his own judgment against his advisers, was also his
first serious mistake. There is a distinction here that is vital. Lincoln
was entering on a new role, the role of the man of action. Hitherto all
the great decisions of his life had been speculative; they had developed
from within; they dealt with ideas. The inflexible side of him was
intellectual. Now, without any adequate apprenticeship, he was called upon
to make practical decisions, to decide on courses of action, at one step
to pass from the dream of statecraft to its application. Inevitably, for a
considerable time, he was two people; he passed back and forth from one to
the other; only by degrees did he bring the two together. Meanwhile, he
appeared contradictory. Inwardly, as a thinker, his development was
unbroken; he was still cool, inflexible, drawing all his conclusions out
of the depths of himself. Outwardly, in action, he was learning the new
task, hesitatingly, with vacillation, with excessive regard to the
advisers whom he treated as experts in action. It was no slight matter for
an extraordinarily sensitive man to take up a new role at fifty-two.
This first official mistake of Lincoln’s was in giving way to the fears of
his retinue for his safety. The time had become hysterical. The wildest
sort of stories filled the air. Even before he left Springfield there were
rumors of plots to assassinate him.(6) On his arrival at Philadelphia
information was submitted to his companions which convinced them that his
life was in danger—an attempt would be made to kill him as he passed
through Baltimore. Seward at Washington had heard the same story and had
sent his son to Philadelphia to advise caution. Lincoln’s friends insisted
that he leave his special train and proceed to Washington with only one
companion, on an ordinary night train. Railway officials were called in.
Elaborate precautions were arranged. The telegraph lines were all to be
disconnected for a number of hours so that even if the conspirators—assuming
there were any—should discover his change of plan, they would be
unable to communicate with Baltimore. The one soldier in the party,
Colonel Sumner, vehemently protested that these changes were all “a damned
piece of cowardice.” But Lincoln acquiesced in the views of the majority
of his advisers. He passed through Baltimore virtually in disguise;
nothing happened; no certain evidence of a conspiracy was discovered. And
all his enemies took up the cry of cowardice and rang the changes upon
it.(7)
Meanwhile, despite all this semblance of indecision, of feebleness, there
were signs that the real inner Lincoln, however clouded, was still alive.
By way of offset to his fatuous utterances, there might have been set, had
the Country been in a mood to weigh with care, several strong and clear
pronouncements. And these were not merely telling phrases like that
characteristic one about the bookkeeping of the front door. His mind was
struggling out of its shadow. And the mode of its reappearance was
significant. His reasoning upon the true meaning of the struggle he was
about to enter, reached a significant stage in the speech he made at
Harrisburg.(8)
“I have often inquired of myself,” he said, “what great principle or idea
it was that kept this Confederacy (the United States) so long together. It
was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the
motherland, but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which
gave liberty not alone to the people of the country but hope to all the
world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time
the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men and that all
should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the
Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved on
that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in
the world, if I can help to save it. If it can not be saved upon that
principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country can not be saved
without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be
assassinated on this spot than surrender it. Now, in my view of the
present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is
no necessity for it I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in
advance that there will be no bloodshed unless it is forced upon the
government. The government will not use force unless force is used against
it.”
The two ideas underlying this utterance had grown in his thought steadily,
consistently, ever since their first appearance in the Protest twenty-four
years previous. The great issue to which all else—slavery, “dominion
status,” everything—was subservient, was the preservation of
democratic institutions; the means to that end was the preservation of the
Federal government. Now, as in 1852, his paramount object was not to
“disappoint the Liberal party throughout the world,” to prove that
Democracy, when applied on a great scale, had yet sufficient coherence to
remain intact, no matter how powerful, nor how plausible, were the forces
of disintegration.
Dominated by this purpose he came to Washington. There he met Seward. It
was the stroke of fate for both men. Seward, indeed, did not know that it
was. He was still firmly based in the delusion that he, not Lincoln, was
the genius of the hour. And he had this excuse, that it was also the
country’s delusion. There was pretty general belief both among friends and
foes that Lincoln would be ruled by his Cabinet. In a council that was
certain to include leaders of accepted influence—Seward, Chase,
Cameron—what chance for this untried newcomer, whose prestige had
been reared not on managing men, but on uttering words? In Seward’s
thoughts the answer was as inevitable as the table of addition. Equally
mathematical was the conclusion that only one unit gave value to the
combination. And, of course, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate
was the unit. A severe experience had to be lived through before Seward
made his peace with destiny. Lincoln was the quicker to perceive when they
came together that something had happened. Almost from the minute of their
meeting, he began to lean upon Seward; but only in a certain way. This was
not the same thing as that yielding to the practical advisers which began
at Philadelphia, which was subsequently to be the cause of so much
confusion. His response to Seward was intellectual. It was of the inner
man and revealed itself in his style of writing.
Hitherto, Lincoln’s progress in literature had been marked by the
development of two characteristics and by the lack of a third. The two
that he possessed were taste and rhythm. At the start he was free from the
prevalent vice of his time, rhetoricality. His “Address to the Voters of
Sangamon County” which was his first state paper, was as direct, as free
from bombast, as the greatest of his later achievements. Almost any other
youth who had as much of the sense of language as was there exhibited,
would have been led astray by the standards of the hour, would have
mounted the spread-eagle and flapped its wings in rhetorical clamor. But
Lincoln was not precocious. In art, as in everything else, he progressed
slowly; the literary part of him worked its way into the matter-of-fact
part of him with the gradualness of the daylight through a shadowy wood.
It was not constant in its development. For many years it was little more
than an irregular deepening of his two original characteristics, taste and
rhythm. His taste, fed on Blackstone, Shakespeare, and the Bible, led him
more and more exactingly to say just what he meant, to eschew the wiles of
decoration, to be utterly non-rhetorical. His sense of rhythm, beginning
simply, no more at first than a good ear for the sound of words, deepened
into keen perception of the character of the word-march, of that extra
significance which is added to an idea by the way it conducts itself,
moving grandly or feebly as the case may be, from the unknown into the
known, and thence across a perilous horizon, into memory. On the basis of
these two characteristics he had acquired a style that was a rich blend of
simplicity, directness, candor, joined with a clearness beyond praise,
with a delightful cadence, having always a splendidly ordered march of
ideas.
But there was the third thing in which the earlier style of Lincoln’s was
wanting. Marvelously apt for the purpose of the moment, his writings
previous to 1861 are vanishing from the world’s memory. The more notable
writings of his later years have become classics. And the difference does
not turn on subject-matter. All the ideas of his late writings had been
formulated in the earlier. The difference is purely literary. The earlier
writings were keen, powerful, full of character, melodious, impressive.
The later writings have all these qualities, and in addition, that
constant power to awaken the imagination, to carry an idea beyond its own
horizon into a boundless world of imperishable literary significance,
which power in argumentative prose is beauty. And how did Lincoln attain
this? That he had been maturing from within the power to do this, one is
compelled by the analogy of his other mental experiences to believe. At
the same time, there can be no doubt who taught him the trick, who touched
the secret spring and opened the new door to his mind. It was Seward. Long
since it had been agreed between them that Seward was to be Secretary of
State.(9) Lincoln asked him to criticize his inaugural. Seward did so, and
Lincoln, in the main, accepted his criticism. But Seward went further. He
proposed a new paragraph. He was not a great writer and yet he had
something of that third thing which Lincoln hitherto had not exhibited.
However, in pursuing beauty of statement, he often came dangerously near
to mere rhetoric; his taste was never sure; his sense of rhythm was
inferior; the defects of his qualities were evident. None the less,
Lincoln saw at a glance that if he could infuse into Seward’s words his
own more robust qualities, the result—’would be a richer product
than had ever issued from his own qualities as hitherto he had known them.
He effected this transmutation and in doing so raised his style to a new
range of effectiveness. The great Lincoln of literature appeared in the
first inaugural and particularly in that noble passage which was the work
of Lincoln and Seward together. In a way it said only what Lincoln had
already said—especially in the speech at Harrisburg—but with
what a difference!
“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the
momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can
have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath
registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the
most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.
“I am loath to close. We are not enemies but friends. Though passion may
have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords
of memory stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave, to every
living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the
chorus of the Union when again touched as surely they will be, by the
better angels of our nature.”*
The original version of the concluding paragraph was prepared by Seward
and read as follows: “I close. We are not, we must not he aliens or
enemies, but fellow-countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained
our bonds of affection too hardly, they must not, I am sure, they will
not, be broken. The mystic chords which, proceeding from so many
battlefields and so many patriot graves, pass through all the hearts and
all hearths in this broad continent of ours, will yet again harmonize in
their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the
nation.”
These words, now so famous, were spoken in the east portico of the Capitol
on “one of our disagreeable, clear, windy, Washington spring days.”(10)
Most of the participants were agitated; many were alarmed. Chief Justice
Taney who administered the oath could hardly speak, so near to
uncontrollable was his emotion. General Scott anxiously kept his eye upon
the crowd which was commanded by cannon. Cavalry were in readiness to
clear the streets in case of riot. Lincoln’s carriage on the way to the
Capitol had been closely guarded. He made his way to the portico between
files of soldiers. So intent—overintent—were his guardians
upon his safety that they had been careless of the smaller matter of his
comfort. There was insufficient room for the large company that had been
invited to attend. The new President stood beside a rickety little table
and saw no place on which to put his hat. Senator Douglas stepped forward
and relieved him of the burden. Lincoln was “pale and very nervous,” and
toward the close of his speech, visibly affected. Observers differ
point-blank as to the way the inaugural was received. The “Public Man”
says that there was little enthusiasm. The opposite version makes the
event an oratorical triumph, with the crowd, at the close, completely
under his spell.(11)
On the whole, the inauguration and the festivities that followed appear to
have formed a dismal event. While Lincoln spoke, the topmost peak of the
Capitol, far above his head, was an idle derrick; the present dome was in
process of construction; work on it had been arrested, and who could say
when, if ever, the work would be resumed? The day closed with an inaugural
ball that was anything but brilliant. “The great tawdry ballroom . . . not
half full—and such an assemblage of strange costumes, male and
female. Very few people of any consideration were there. The President
looked exhausted and uncomfortable, and most ungainly in his dress; and
Mrs. Lincoln all in blue, with a feather in her hair and a highly flushed
face.”(12)
XV. PRESIDENT AND PREMIER
The brilliant Secretary, who so promptly began to influence the President
had very sure foundations for that influence. He was inured to the role of
great man; he had a rich experience of public life; while Lincoln,
painfully conscious of his inexperience, was perhaps the humblest-minded
ruler that ever took the helm of a ship of state in perilous times.
Furthermore, Seward had some priceless qualities which, for Lincoln, were
still to seek. First of all, he had audacity—personally,
artistically, politically. Seward’s instantaneous gift to Lincoln was by
way of throwing wide the door of his gathering literary audacity. There is
every reason to think that Seward’s personal audacity went to Lincoln’s
heart at once. To be sure, he was not yet capable of going along with it.
The basal contrast of the first month of his administration lies between
the President’s caution and the boldness of the Secretary. Nevertheless,
to a sensitive mind, seeking guidance, surrounded by less original types
of politicians, the splendid fearlessness of Seward, whether wise or
foolish, must have rung like a trumpet peal soaring over the heads of a
crowd whose teeth were chattering. While the rest of the Cabinet pressed
their ears to the ground, Seward thought out a policy, made a forecast of
the future, and offered to stake his head on the correctness of his
reasoning. This may have been rashness; it may have been folly; but,
intellectually at least, it was valor. Among Lincoln’s other advisers,
valor at that moment was lacking. Contrast, however, was not the sole, nor
the surest basis of Seward’s appeal to Lincoln. Their characters had a
common factor. For all their immeasurable difference in externals, both at
bottom were void of malice. It was this characteristic above all others
that gave them spiritually common ground. In Seward, this quality had been
under fire for a long while. The political furies of “that iron time” had
failed to rouse echoes in his serene and smiling soul. Therefore, many men
who accepted him as leader because, indeed, they could not do without him—because
none other in their camp had his genius for management, for the
glorification of political intrigue—these same men followed him
doubtfully, with bad grace, willing to shift to some other leader whenever
he might arise. The clue to their distrust was Seward’s amusement at the
furious. Could a man who laughed when you preached on the beauty of the
hewing of Agag, could such a man be sincere? And that Seward in some
respects was not sincere, history generally admits. He loved to poke fun
at his opponents by appearing to sneer at himself, by ridiculing the idea
that he was ever serious. His scale of political values was different from
that of most of his followers. Nineteen times out of twenty, he would
treat what they termed “principles” as mere political counters, as
legitimate subjects of bargain. If by any deal he could trade off any or
all of these nineteen in order to secure the twentieth, which for him was
the only vital one, he never scrupled to do so. Against a lurid background
of political ferocity, this amused, ironic figure came to be rated by the
extremists, both in his own and in the enemy camp as Mephistopheles.
No quality could have endeared him more certainly to Lincoln than the very
one which the bigots misunderstood. From his earliest youth Lincoln had
been governed by this same quality. With his non-censorious mind, which
accepted so much of life as he found it, which was forever stripping
principles of their accretions, what could be more inevitable than his
warming to the one great man at Washington who like him held that such a
point of view was the only rational one. Seward’s ironic peacefulness in
the midst of the storm gained in luster because all about him raged a
tempest of ferocity, mitigated, at least so far as the distracted
President could see, only by self-interest or pacifism.
As Lincoln came into office, he could see and hear many signs of a rising
fierceness of sectional hatred. His secretary records with disgust a
proposal to conquer the Gulf States, expel their white population, and
reduce the region to a gigantic state preserve, where negroes should grow
cotton under national supervision.(1) “We of the North,” said Senator
Baker of Oregon, “are a majority of the Union, and we will govern our
Union in our own way.”(2) At the other extreme was the hysterical pacifism
of the Abolitionists. Part of Lincoln’s abiding quarrel with the
Abolitionists was their lack of national feeling. Their peculiar form of
introspection had injected into politics the idea of personal sin. Their
personal responsibility for slavery—they being part of a country
that tolerated it—was their basal inspiration. Consequently, the
most distinctive Abolitionists welcomed this opportunity to cast off their
responsibility. If war had been proposed as a crusade to abolish slavery,
their attitude might have been different But in March, 1860, no one but
the few ultra-extremists, whom scarcely anybody heeded, dreamed of such a
war. A war to restore the Union was the only sort that was considered
seriously. Such a war, the Abolitionists bitterly condemned. They seized
upon pacifism as their defense. Said Whittier of the Seceding States:
The fury and the fear offended Lincoln in equal measure. After long years
opposing the political temper of the extremists, he was not the man now to
change front. To one who believed himself marked out for a tragic end, the
cowardice at the heart of the pacifism of his time was revolting. It was
fortunate for his own peace of mind that he could here count on the
Secretary of State. No argument based on fear of pain would meet in Seward
with anything but derision. “They tell us,” he had once said, and the
words expressed his constant attitude, “that we are to encounter
opposition. Why, bless my soul, did anybody ever expect to reach a
fortune, or fame, or happiness on earth or a crown in heaven, without
encountering resistance and opposition? What are we made men for but to
encounter and overcome opposition arrayed against us in the line of our
duty?”(3)
But if the ferocity and the cowardice were offensive and disheartening,
there was something else that was beneath contempt. Never was
self-interest more shockingly displayed. It was revealed in many ways, but
impinged upon the new President in only one. A horde of office-seekers
besieged him in the White House. The parallel to this amazing picture can
hardly be found in history. It was taken for granted that the new party
would make a clean sweep of the whole civil list, that every government
employee down to the humblest messenger boy too young to have political
ideas was to bear the label of the victorious party. Every Congressman who
had made promises to his constituents, every politician of every grade who
thought he had the party in his debt, every adventurer who on any pretext
could make a showing of party service rendered, poured into Washington. It
was a motley horde.
They converted the White House into a leaguer. They swarmed into the
corridors and even the private passages. So dense was the swarm that it
was difficult to make one’s way either in or out. Lincoln described
himself by the image of a man renting rooms at one end of his house while
the other end was on fire.(4) And all this while the existence of the
Republic was at stake! It did not occur to him that it was safe to defy
the horde, to send it about its business. Here again, the figure of Seward
stood out in brilliant light against the somber background. One of
Seward’s faculties was his power to form devoted lieutenants. He had that
sure and nimble judgment which enables some men to inspire their
lieutenants rather than categorically to instruct them. All the sordid
side of his political games he managed in this way. He did not appear
himself as the bargainer. In the shameful eagerness of most of the
politicians to find offices for their retainers, Seward was conspicuous by
contrast. Even the Cabinet was not free from this vice of catering to the
thirsty horde.(5) Alone, at this juncture, Seward detached himself from
the petty affairs of the hour and gave his whole attention to statecraft.
He had a definite policy. Another point of contact with Lincoln was the
attitude of both toward the Union, supplemented as it was by their views
of the place of slavery in the problem they confronted. Both were
nationalists ready to make any sacrifices for the national idea. Both
regarded slavery as an issue of second importance. Both were prepared for
great concessions if convinced that, ultimately, their concessions would
strengthen the trend of American life toward a general exaltation of
nationality.
On the other hand, their differences—
Seward approached the problem in the same temper, with the same
assumptions, that were his in the previous December. He still believed
that his main purpose was to enable a group of politicians to save their
faces by effecting a strategic retreat. Imputing to the Southern leaders
an attitude of pure self-interest, he believed that if allowed to play the
game as they desired, they would mark time until circumstances revealed to
them whether there was more profit for them in the Union or out; he also
believed that if sufficient time could be given, and if no armed clash
took place, it would be demonstrated first, that they did not have so
strong a hold on the South as they had thought they had; and second, that
on the whole, it was to their interests to patch up the quarrel and come
back into the Union. But he also saw that they had a serious problem of
leadership, which, if rudely handled, might make it impossible for them to
stand still. They had inflamed the sentiment of state-patriotism. In South
Carolina, particularly, the popular demand was for independence. With this
went the demand that Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, garrisoned by
Federal troops, should be surrendered, or if not surrendered, taken
forcibly from the United States. A few cannon shots at Sumter would mean
war. An article in Seward’s creed of statecraft asserted that the populace
will always go wild over a war. To prevent a war fever in the North was
the first condition of his policy at home. Therefore, in order to prevent
it, the first step in saving his enemies’ faces was to safeguard them
against the same danger in their own calm. He must help them to prevent a
war fever in the South. He saw but one way to do this. The conclusion
which became the bed rock of his policy was inevitable. Sumter must be
evacuated.
Even before the inauguration, he had broached this idea to Lincoln. He had
tried to keep Lincoln from inserting in the inaugural the words, “The
power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy and possess the property
and places belonging to the government.” He had proposed instead, “The
power confided in me shall be used indeed with efficacy, but also with
discretion, in every case and exigency, according to the circumstances
actually existing, and with a view and a hope of a peaceful solution of
the national troubles, and the restoration of fraternal sympathies and
affections.”(6) With the rejection of Seward’s proffered revision, a
difference between them in policy began to develop. Lincoln, says one of
his secretaries, accepted Seward’s main purpose but did not share his
“optimism.”(7) It would be truer to say that in this stage of his
development, he was lacking in audacity. In his eager search for advice,
he had to strike a balance between the daring Seward who at this moment
built entirely on his own power of political devination, and the cautious
remainder of the Cabinet who had their ears to the ground trying their
best to catch the note of authority in the rumblings of vox populi. For
his own part, Lincoln began with two resolves: to go very cautiously,—and
not give something for nothing. Far from him, as yet, was that plunging
mood which in Seward pushed audacity to the verge of a gamble. However,
just previous to the inauguration, he took a cautious step in Seward’s
direction. Virginia, like all the other States of the upper South, was
torn by the question which side to take. There was a “Union” party in
Virginia, and a “Secession” party. A committee of leading Unionists
conferred with Lincoln. They saw the immediate problem very much as Seward
did. They believed that if time were allowed, the crisis could be tided
over and the Union restored; but the first breath of war would wreck their
hopes. The condition of bringing about an adjustment was the evacuation of
Sumter. Lincoln told them that if Virginia could be kept in the Union by
the evacuation of Sumter, he would not hesitate to recall the garrison.(8)
A few days later, despite what he had said in the inaugural, he repeated
this offer. A convention was then sitting at Richmond in debate upon the
relations of Virginia to the Union. If it would drop the matter and
dissolve—so Lincoln told another committee—he would evacuate
Sumter and trust the recovery of the lower South to negotiation.(9) No
results, so far as is known, came of either of those offers.
During the first half of March, the Washington government marked time. The
office-seekers continued to besiege the President. South Carolina
continued to clamor for possession of Sumter. The Confederacy sent
commissioners to Washington whom Lincoln refused to recognize. The
Virginia Convention swayed this way and that.
Seward went serenely about his business, confident that everything was
certain to come his way soon or late. He went so far as to advise an
intermediary to tell the Confederate Commissioners that all they had to do
to get possession of Sumter was to wait. The rest of the Cabinet pressed
their ears more tightly than ever to the ground. The rumblings of vox
populi were hard to interpret. The North appeared to be in two minds. This
was revealed the day following the inauguration, when a Republican Club in
New York held a high debate upon the condition of the country. One faction
wanted Lincoln to declare for a war-policy; another wished the Club to
content itself with a vote of confidence in the Administration. Each
faction put its views into a resolution and as a happy device for
maintaining harmony, both resolutions were passed.(10) The fragmentary,
miscellaneous evidence of newspapers, political meetings, the talk of
leaders, local elections, formed a confused clamor which each listener
interpreted according to his predisposition. The members of the Cabinet in
their relative isolation at Washington found it exceedingly difficult to
make up their minds what the people were really saying. Of but one thing
they were certain, and that was that they represented a minority party.
Before committing themselves any way, it was life and death to know what
portion of the North would stand by them.(11)
At this point began a perplexity that was to torment the President almost
to the verge of distraction. How far could he trust his military advisers?
Old General Scott was at the head of the army. He had once been a
striking, if not a great figure. Should his military advice be accepted as
final? Scott informed Lincoln that Sumter was short of food and that any
attempt to relieve it would call for a much larger force than the
government could muster. Scott urged him to withdraw the garrison. Lincoln
submitted the matter to the Cabinet. He asked for their opinions in
writing.(12) Five advised taking Scott at his word and giving up all
thought of relieving Sumter. There were two dissenters. The Secretary of
the Treasury, Salmon Portland Chase, struck the key-note of his later
political career by an elaborate argument on expediency. If relieving
Sumter would lead to civil war, Chase was not in favor of relief; but on
the whole he did not think that civil war would result, and therefore, on
the whole, he favored a relief expedition. One member of the Cabinet,
Montgomery Blair, the Postmaster General, an impetuous, fierce man, was
vehement for relief at all costs. Lincoln wanted to agree with Chase and
Blair. He reasoned that if the fort was given up, the necessity under
which it was done would not be fully understood; that by many it would be
construed as part of a voluntary policy, that at home it would discourage
the friends of the Union, embolden its adversaries, and go far to insure
to the matter a recognition abroad.
Nevertheless, with the Cabinet five to two against him, with his military
adviser against him, Lincoln put aside his own views. The government went
on marking time and considering the credentials of applicants for country
post-offices.
By this time, Lincoln had thrown off the overpowering gloom which
possessed him in the latter days at Springfield. It is possible he had
reacted to a mood in which there was something of levity. His oscillation
of mood from a gloom that nothing penetrated to a sort of desperate mirth,
has been noted by various observers. And in 1861 he had not reached his
final poise, that firm holding of the middle way,—-which afterward
fused his moods and made of him, at least in action, a sustained
personality.
About the middle of the month he had a famous interview with Colonel W. T.
Sherman who had been President of the University of Louisiana and had
recently resigned. Senator John Sherman called at the White House with
regard to “some minor appointments in Ohio.” The Colonel went with him.
When Colonel Sherman spoke of the seriousness of the Secession movement,
Lincoln replied, “Oh, we’ll manage to keep house.” The Colonel was so
offended by what seemed to him the flippancy of the President that he
abandoned his intention to resume the military life and withdrew from
Washington in disgust.(13)
Not yet had Lincoln attained a true appreciation of the real difficulty
before him. He had not got rid of the idea that a dispute over slavery had
widened accidentally into a needless sectional quarrel, and that as soon
as the South had time to think things over, it would see that it did not
really want the quarrel. He had a queer idea that meanwhile he could hold
a few points on the margin of the Seceded States, open custom houses on
ships at the mouths of harbors, but leave vacant all Federal appointments
within the Seceded States and ignore the absence of their representatives
from Washington.(14) This marginal policy did not seem to him a policy of
coercion; and though he was beginning to see that the situation from the
Southern point of view turned on the right of a State to resist coercion,
he was yet to learn that idealistic elements of emotion and of political
dogma were the larger part of his difficulty.
Meanwhile, the upper South had been proclaiming its idealism. Its attitude
was creating a problem for the lower South as well as for the North. The
pro-slavery leaders had been startled out of a dream. The belief in a
Southern economic solidarity so complete that the secession of any one
Slave State would compel the secession of all the others, that belief had
been proved fallacious. It had been made plain that on the economic issue,
even as on the issue of sectional distrust, the upper South would not
follow the lower South into secession. When delegates from the Georgia
Secessionists visited the legislature of North Carolina, every courtesy
was shown to them; the Speaker of the House assured them of North
Carolina’s sympathy and of her enduring friendliness; but he was careful
not to suggest an intention to secede, unless (the condition that was
destiny!) an attempt should be made to violate the sovereignty of the
State by marching troops across her soil to attack the Confederates. Then,
on the one issue of State sovereignty, North Carolina would leave the
Union.(15) The Unionists in Virginia took similar ground. They wished to
stay in the Union, and they were determined not to go out on the issue of
slavery. Therefore they laid their heads together to get that issue out of
the way. Their problem was to devise a compromise that would do three
things: lay the Southern dread of an inundation of sectional Northern
influence; silence the slave profiteers; meet the objections that had
induced Lincoln to wreck the Crittenden Compromise. They felt that the
first and second objectives would be reached easily enough by reviving the
line of the Missouri Compromise. But something more was needed, or again,
Lincoln would refuse to negotiate. They met their crucial difficulty by
boldly appealing to the South to be satisfied with the conservation of its
present life and renounce the dream of unlimited Southern expansion. Their
Compromise proposed a death blow to the filibuster and all he stood for.
It provided that no new territory other than naval stations should be
acquired by the United States on either side the Missouri Line without
consent of a majority of the Senators from the States on the opposite side
of that line.(16)
As a solution of the sectional quarrel, to the extent that it had been
definitely put into words, what could have been more astute? Lincoln
himself had said in the inaugural, “One section of our country believes
slavery is right and ought to be extended; while the other believes it is
wrong and ought not to be extended. That is the only substantial dispute.”
In the same inaugural, he had pledged himself not to “interfere with the
institution of slavery in the States where it now exists;” and also had
urged a vigorous enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. He never had
approved of any sort of emancipation other than purchase or the gradual
operation of economic conditions. It was well known that slavery could
flourish only on fresh land amid prodigal agricultural methods suited to
the most ignorant labor. The Virginia Compromise, by giving to slavery a
fixed area and abolishing its hopes of continual extensions into fresh
land, was the virtual fulfillment of Lincoln’s demand.
The failure of the Virginia Compromise is one more proof that a great deal
of vital history never gets into words until after it is over. During the
second half of March, Unionists and Secessionists in the Virginia
Convention debated with deep emotion this searching new proposal. The
Unionists had a fatal weakness in their position. This was the feature of
the situation that had not hitherto been put into words. Lincoln had not
been accurate when he said that the slavery question was “the only
substantial dispute.” He had taken for granted that the Southern
opposition to nationalism was not a real thing,—a mere device of the
politicians to work up excitement. All the compromises he was ready to
offer were addressed to that part of the South which was seeking to make
an issue on slavery. They had little meaning for that other and more
numerous part in whose thinking slavery was an incident. For this other
South, the ideas which Lincoln as late as the middle of March did not
bring into play were the whole story. Lincoln, willing to give all sorts
of guarantees for the noninterference with slavery, would not give a
single guarantee supporting the idea of State sovereignty against the idea
of the sovereign power of the national Union. The Virginians, willing to
go great lengths in making concessions with regard to slavery, would not
go one inch in the way of admitting that their State was not a sovereign
power included in the American Union of its own free will, and not the
legitimate subject of any sort of coercion.
The Virginia Compromise was really a profound new complication. The very
care with which it divided the issue of nationality from the issue of
slavery was a storm signal. For a thoroughgoing nationalist like Lincoln,
deep perplexities lay hidden in this full disclosure of the issue that was
vital to the moderate South. Lincoln’s shifting of his mental ground, his
perception that hitherto he had been oblivious of his most formidable
opponent, the one with whom compromise was impossible, occurred in the
second half of the month.
As always, Lincoln kept his own counsel upon the maturing of a purpose in
his own mind. He listened to every adviser—opening his office doors
without reserve to all sorts and conditions—and silently, anxiously,
struggled with himself for a decision. He watched Virginia; he watched the
North; he listened—and waited. General Scott continued hopeless,
though minor military men gave encouragement. And whom should the
President trust-the tired old General who disagreed with him, or the eager
young men who held views he would like to hold? Many a time he was to ask
himself that question during the years to come.
On March twenty-ninth, he again consulted the Cabinet.(17) A great deal of
water had run under the mill since they gave their opinions on March
sixteenth. The voice of the people was still a bewildering roar, but out
of that roar most of the Cabinet seemed to hear definite words. They were
convinced that the North was veering toward a warlike mood. The phrase
“masterly inactivity,” which had been applied to the government’s course
admiringly a few weeks before, was now being applied satirically.
Republican extremists were demanding action. A subtle barometer was the
Secretary of the Treasury. Now, as on the sixteenth, he craftily said
something without saying it. After juggling the word “if,” he assumed his
“if” to be a fact and concluded, “If war is to be the result, I perceive
no reason why it may not best be begun in consequence of military
resistance to the efforts of the Administration to sustain troops of the
Union, stationed under authority of the government in a fort of the Union,
in the ordinary course of service.”
This elaborate equivocation, which had all the force of an assertion, was
Chase all over! Three other ministers agreed with him except that they did
not equivocate. One evaded. Of all those who had stood with Seward on the
sixteenth, only one was still in favor of evacuation. Seward stood fast.
This reversal of the Cabinet’s position, jumping as it did with Lincoln’s
desires, encouraged him to prepare for action. But just as he was about to
act his diffidence asserted itself. He authorized the preparation of a
relief expedition but withheld sailing orders until further notice.(18)
Oh, for Seward’s audacity; for the ability to do one thing or another and
take the consequences!
Seward had not foreseen this turn of events. He had little respect for the
rest of the Cabinet, and had still to discover that the President, for all
his semblance of vacillation, was a great man. Seward was undeniably vain.
That the President with such a Secretary of State should judge the
strength of a Cabinet vote by counting noses—preposterous! But that
was just what this curiously simple-minded President had done. If he went
on in his weak, amiable way listening to the time-servers who were
listening to the bigots, what would become of the country? And of the
Secretary of State and his deep policies? The President must be pulled up
short—brought to his senses—taught a lesson or two.
Seward saw that new difficulties had arisen in the course of that fateful
March which those colleagues of his in the Cabinet—well-meaning,
inferior men, to be sure—had not the subtlety to comprehend. Of
course the matter of evacuation remained what it always had been, the
plain open road to an ultimate diplomatic triumph. Who but a president out
of the West, or a minor member of the Cabinet, would fail to see that! But
there were two other considerations which, also, his well-meaning
colleagues were failing to allow for. While all this talk about the
Virginia Unionists had been going on, while Washington and Richmond had
been trying to negotiate, neither really had any control of its own game.
They were card players with all the trumps out of their hands. Montgomery,
the Confederate Congress, held the trumps. At any minute it could
terminate all this make-believe of diplomatic independence, both at
Washington and at Richmond. A few cannon shots aimed at Sumter, the cry
for revenge in the North, the inevitable protest against coercion in
Virginia, the convention blown into the air, and there you are—War!
And after all that, who knows what next? And yet, Blair and Chase and the
rest would not consent to slip Montgomery’s trumps out of her hands—the
easiest thing in the world to do!—by throwing Sumter into her lap
and thus destroying the pretext for the cannon shots. More than ever
before, Seward would insist firmly on the evacuation of Sumter.
But there was the other consideration, the really new turn of events.
Suppose Sumter is evacuated; suppose Montgomery has lost her chance to
force Virginia into war by precipitating the issue of coercion, what
follows? All along Seward had advocated a national convention to readjust
all the matters “in dispute between the sections.” But what would such a
convention discuss? In his inaugural, Lincoln had advised an amendment to
the Constitution “to the effect that the Federal government shall never
interfere with the domestic institutions of the State, including that of
persons held to service.” Very good! The convention might be expected to
accept this, and after this, of course, there would come up the Virginia
Compromise. Was it a practical scheme? Did it form a basis for drawing
back into the Union the lower South?
Seward’s whole thought upon this subject has never been disclosed. It must
be inferred from the conclusion which he reached, which he put into a
paper entitled, Thoughts for the President’s Consideration, and submitted
to Lincoln, April first.
The Thoughts outlined a scheme of policy, the most startling feature of
which was an instant, predatory, foreign war. There are two clues to this
astounding proposal. One was a political maxim in which Seward had
unwavering faith. “A fundamental principle of politics,” he said, “is
always to be on the side of your country in a war. It kills any party to
oppose a war. When Mr. Buchanan got up his Mormon War, our people, Wade
and Fremont, and The Tribune, led off furiously against it. I supported it
to the immense disgust of enemies and friends. If you want to sicken your
opponents with their own war, go in for it till they give it up.”(19) He
was not alone among the politicians of his time, and some other times, in
these cynical views. Lincoln has a story of a politician who was asked to
oppose the Mexican War, and who replied, “I opposed one war; that was
enough for me. I am now perpetually in favor of war, pestilence and
famine.”
The second clue to Seward’s new policy of international brigandage was the
need, as he conceived it, to propitiate those Southern expansionists who
in the lower South at least formed so large a part of the political
machine, who must somehow be lured back into the Union; to whom the
Virginia Compromise, as well as every other scheme of readjustment yet
suggested, offered no allurement. Like Lincoln defeating the Crittenden
Compromise, like the Virginians planning the last compromise, Seward
remembered the filibusters and the dreams of the expansionists, annexation
of Cuba, annexation of Nicaragua and all the rest, and he looked about for
a way to reach them along that line. Chance had played into his hands.
Already Napoleon III had begun his ill-fated interference with the affairs
of Mexico. A rebellion had just taken place in San Domingo and Spain was
supposed to have designs on the island. Here, for any one who believed in
predatory war as an infallible last recourse to rouse the patriotism of a
country, were pretexts enough. Along with these would go a raging
assertion of the Monroe Doctrine and a bellicose attitude toward other
European powers on less substantial grounds. And amid it all, between the
lines of it all, could not any one glimpse a scheme for the expansion of
the United States southward? War with Spain over San Domingo! And who,
pray, held the Island of Cuba! And what might not a defeated Spain be
willing to do with Cuba? And if France were driven out of Mexico by our
conquering arms, did not the shadows of the future veil but dimly a
grateful Mexico where American capital should find great opportunities?
And would not Southern capital in the nature of things, have a large share
in all that was to come? Surely, granting Seward’s political creed,
remembering the problem he wished to solve, there is nothing to be
wondered at in his proposal to Lincoln: “I would demand explanations from
Spain and France, categorically, at once.” . . . And if satisfactory
explanations were not received from Spain and France, “would convene
Congress and declare war against them.”
His purpose, he said, was to change the question before the public, from
one upon slavery, or about slavery, for a question upon Union or Disunion.
Sumter was to be evacuated “as a safe means for changing the issue,” but
at the same time, preparations were to be made for a blockade of the
Southern coast.(20) This extraordinary document administered mild but firm
correction to the President. He was told that he had no policy, although
under the circumstances, this was “not culpable”; that there must be a
single head to the government; that the President, if not equal to the
task, should devolve it upon some member of the Cabinet. The Thoughts
closed with these words, “I neither seek to evade nor assume
responsibility.”
Like Seward’s previous move, when he sent Weed to Springfield, this other
brought Lincoln to a point of crisis. For the second time he must render a
decision that would turn the scale, that would have for his country the
force of destiny. In one respect he did not hesitate. The most essential
part of the Thoughts was the predatory spirit. This clashed with Lincoln’s
character. Serene unscrupulousness met unwavering integrity. Here was one
of those subjects on which Lincoln was not asking advice. As to ways and
means, he was pliable to a degree in the hands of richer and wider
experience; as to principles, he was a rock. Seward’s whole scheme of
aggrandizement, his magnificent piracy, was calmly waved aside as a thing
of no concern. The most striking characteristic of Lincoln’s reply was its
dignity. He did not, indeed, lay bare his purposes. He was content to
point out certain inconsistencies in Seward’s argument; to protest that
whatever action might be taken with regard to the single fortress, Sumter,
the question before the public could not be changed by that one event; and
to say that while he expected advice from all his Cabinet, he was none the
less President, and in last resort he would himself direct the policy of
the government.(21)
Only a strong man could have put up with the patronizing condescension of
the Thoughts and betrayed no irritation. Not a word in Lincoln’s reply
gives the least hint that condescension had been displayed. He is wholly
unruffled, distant, objective. There is also a quiet tone of finality,
almost the tone one might use in gently but firmly correcting a child. The
Olympian impertinence of the Thoughts had struck out of Lincoln the first
flash of that approaching masterfulness by means of which he was to ride
out successfully such furious storms. Seward was too much the man of the
world not to see what had happened. He never touched upon the Thoughts
again. Nor did Lincoln. The incident was secret until Lincoln’s
secretaries twenty-five years afterward published it to the world.
But Lincoln’s lofty dignity on the first of April was of a moment only.
When the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, that same day called on him
in his offices, he was the easy-going, jovial Lincoln who was always ready
half-humorously to take reproof from subordinates—as was evinced by
his greeting to the Secretary. Looking up from his writing, he said
cheerfully, “What have I done wrong?”(22) Gideon Welles was a pugnacious
man, and at that moment an angry man. There can be little doubt that his
lips were tightly shut, that a stern frown darkened his brows. Grimly
conscientious was Gideon Welles, likewise prosaic; a masterpiece of
literalness, the very opposite in almost every respect of the Secretary of
State whom he cordially detested. That he had already found occasion to
protest against the President’s careless mode of conducting business may
be guessed—correctly—from the way he was received. Doubtless
the very cordiality, the whimsical admission of loose methods, irritated
the austere Secretary. Welles had in his hand a communication dated that
same day and signed by the President, making radical changes in the
program of the Navy Department. He had come to protest.
“The President,” said Welles, “expressed as much surprise as I felt, that
he had sent me such a document. He said that Mr. Seward with two or three
young men had been there during the day on a subject which he (Seward) had
in hand and which he had been some time maturing; that it was Seward’s
specialty, to which he, the President, had yielded, but as it involved
considerable details, he had left Mr. Seward to prepare the necessary
papers. These papers he had signed, many of them without reading, for he
had not time, and if he could not trust the Secretary of State, he knew
not whom he could trust. I asked who were associated with Mr. Seward. ‘No
one,’ said the President, ‘but these young men who were here as clerks to
write down his plans and orders.’ Most of the work was done, he said, in
the other room.
“The President reiterated that they (the changes in the Navy) were not his
instructions, though signed by him; that the paper was an improper one;
that he wished me to give it no more consideration than I thought proper;
to treat it as cancelled, or as if it had never been written. I could get
no satisfactory explanation from the President of the origin of this
strange interference which mystified him and which he censured and
condemned more severely than myself. . . . Although very much disturbed by
the disclosure, he was anxious to avoid difficulty, and to shield Mr.
Seward, took to himself the whole blame.”
Thus Lincoln began a role that he never afterward abandoned. It was the
role of scapegoat Whatever went wrong anywhere could always be loaded upon
the President. He appeared to consider it a part of his duty to be the
scapegoat for the whole Administration. It was his way of maintaining
trust, courage, efficiency, among his subordinates.
Of those papers which he had signed without reading on April first,
Lincoln was to hear again in still more surprising fashion six days
thereafter.
He was now at the very edge of his second crucial decision. Though the
naval expedition was in preparation, he still hesitated over issuing
orders to sail. The reply to the Thoughts had not committed him to any
specific line of conduct. What was it that kept him wavering at this
eleventh hour? Again, that impenetrable taciturnity which always shrouded
his progress toward a conclusion, forbids dogmatic assertion. But two
things are obvious: his position as a minority president, of which he was
perhaps unduly conscious, caused him to delay, and to delay again and
again, seeking definite evidence how much support he could command in the
North; the change in his comprehension of the problem before him-his
perception that it was not an “artificial crisis” involving slavery alone,
but an irreconcilable clash of social-political idealism—this
disturbed his spirit, distressed, even appalled him. Having a truer
insight into human nature than Seward had, he saw that here was an issue
immeasurably less susceptible of compromise than was slavery. Whether, the
moment he perceived this, he at once lost hope of any peaceable solution,
we do not know. Just what he thought about the Virginia Compromise is
still to seek. However, the nature of his mind, the way it went straight
to the human element in a problem once his eyes were opened to the
problem’s reality, forbid us to conclude that he took hope from Virginia.
He now saw what, had it not been for his near horizon, he would have seen
so long before, that, in vulgar parlance, he had been “barking up the
wrong tree.” Now that he had located the right tree, had the knowledge
come too late?
It is known that Seward, possibly at Lincoln’s request, made an attempt to
bring together the Virginia Unionists and the Administration. He sent a
special representative to Richmond urging the despatch of a committee to
confer with the President.
The strength of the party in the Convention was shown on April fourth when
a proposed Ordinance of Secession was voted down, eighty-nine to
forty-five. On the same day, the Convention by a still larger majority
formally denied the right of the Federal government to coerce a State. Two
days later, John B. Baldwin, representing the Virginia Unionists, had a
confidential talk with Lincoln. Only fragments of their talk, drawn forth
out of memory long afterward—some of the reporting being at second
hand, the recollections of the recollections of the participants—are
known to exist. The one fact clearly discernible is that Baldwin stated
fully the Virginia position: that her Unionists were not nationalists;
that the coercion of any State, by impugning the sovereignty of all, would
automatically drive Virginia out of the Union.(23)
Lincoln had now reached his decision. The fear that had dogged him all
along—the fear that in evacuating Sumter he would be giving
something for nothing, that “it would discourage the friends of the Union,
embolden its adversaries”—was in possession of his will. One may
hazard the guess that this fear would have determined Lincoln sooner than
it did, except for the fact that the Secretary of State, despite his
faults, was so incomparably the strongest personality in the Cabinet. We
have Lincoln’s own word for the moment and the detail that formed the very
end of his period of vacillation. All along he had intended to relieve and
hold Fort Pickens, off the coast of Florida. To this, Seward saw no
objection. In fact, he urged the relief of Pickens, hoping, as
compensation, to get his way about Sumter. Assuming as he did that the
Southern leaders were opportunists, he believed that they would not make
an issue over Pickens, merely because it had not in the public eye become
a political symbol. Orders had been sent to a squadron in Southern waters
to relieve Pickens. Early in April news was received at Washington that
the attempt had failed due to misunderstandings among the Federal
commanders. Fearful that Pickens was about to fall, reasoning that
whatever happened he dared not lose both forts, Lincoln became peremptory
on the subject of the Sumter expedition. This was on April sixth. On the
night of April sixth, Lincoln’s signatures to the unread despatches of the
first of April, came home to roost. And at last, Welles found out what
Seward was doing on the day of All Fools.(24)
While the Sumter expedition was being got ready, still without sailing
orders, a supplemental expedition was also preparing for the relief of
Pickens. This was the business that Seward was contriving, that Lincoln
would not explain, on April first. The order interfering with the Navy
Department was designed to checkmate the titular head of the department.
Furthermore, Seward had had the amazing coolness to assume that Lincoln
would certainly accept his Thoughts and that the simple President need not
hereinafter be consulted about details. He aimed to circumvent Welles and
to make sure that the Sumter expedition, whether sailing orders were
issued or not, should be rendered innocuous. The warship Powhatan, which
was being got ready for sea at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, was intended by
Welles for the Sumter expedition. One of those unread despatches signed by
Lincoln, assigned it to the Pickens expedition. When the sailing orders
from Welles were received, the commander of the Sumter fleet claimed the
Powhatan. The Pickens commander refused to give it up. The latter
telegraphed Seward that his expedition was “being retarded and
embarrassed” by “conflicting” orders from Welles. The result was a stormy
conference between Seward and Welles which was adjourned to the White
House and became a conference with Lincoln. And then the whole story came
out. Lincoln played the scapegoat, “took the whole blame upon himself,
said it was carelessness, heedlessness on his part; he ought to have been
more careful and attentive.” But he insisted on immediate correction of
his error, on the restoration of the Powhatan to the Sumter fleet. Seward
struggled hard for his plan. Lincoln was inflexible. As Seward had
directed the preparation of the Pickens expedition, Lincoln required him
to telegraph to Brooklyn the change in orders. Seward, beaten by his enemy
Welles, was deeply chagrined. In his agitation he forgot to be formal,
forgot that the previous order had gone out in the President’s name, and
wired curtly, “Give up the Powhatan. Seward.”
This despatch was received just as the Pickens expedition was sailing. The
commander of the Powhatan had now before him, three orders. Naturally, he
held that the one signed by the President took precedence over the others.
He went on his way, with his great warship, to Florida. The Sumter
expedition sailed without any powerful ship of war. In this strange
fashion, chance executed Seward’s design.
Lincoln had previously informed the Governor of South Carolina that due
notice would be given, should he decide to relieve Sumter. Word was now
sent that “an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions
only; and that if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men,
arms or ammunition will be made without further notice, or in case of an
attack upon the fort.”(25) Though the fleet was not intended to offer
battle, it was supposed to be strong enough to force its way into the
harbor, should the relief of Sumter be opposed. But the power to do so was
wholly conditioned on the presence in its midst of the Powhatan. And the
Powhatan was far out to sea on its way to Florida.
And now it was the turn of the Confederate government to confront a
crisis. It, no less than Washington, had passed through a period of
disillusion. The assumption upon which its chief politicians had built so
confidently had collapsed. The South was not really a unit. It was not
true that the secession of any one State, on any sort of issue, would
compel automatically the secession of all the Southern States. North
Carolina had exploded this illusion. Virginia had exploded it. The South
could not be united on the issue of slavery; it could not be united on the
issue of sectional dread. It could be united on but one issue-State
sovereignty, the denial of the right of the Federal Government to coerce a
State. The time had come to decide whether the cannon at Charleston should
fire. As Seward had foreseen, Montgomery held the trumps; but had
Montgomery the courage to play them? There was a momentous debate in the
Confederate Cabinet. Robert Toombs, the Secretary of State, whose rapid
growth in comprehension since December formed a parallel to Lincoln’s
growth, threw his influence on the side of further delay. He would not
invoke that “final argument of kings,” the shotted cannon. “Mr.
President,” he exclaimed, “at this time, it is suicide, murder, and will
lose us every friend at the North. You will instantly strike a hornet’s
nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will
swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the
wrong; it is fatal.” But Toombs stood alone in the Cabinet. Orders were
sent to Charleston to reduce Fort Sumter. Before dawn, April twelfth, the
first shot was fired. The flag of the United States was hauled down on the
afternoon of the thirteenth. Meanwhile the relieving fleet had arrived—without
the Powhatan. Bereft of its great ship, it could not pass the harbor
batteries and assist the fort. Its only service was to take off the
garrison which by the terms of surrender was allowed to withdraw. On the
fourteenth, Sumter was evacuated and the inglorious fleet sailed back to
the northward.
Lincoln at once accepted the gage of battle. On the fifteenth appeared his
proclamation calling for an army of seventy-five thousand volunteers.
Automatically, the upper South fulfilled its unhappy destiny. Challenged
at last, on the irreconcilable issue, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee,
Arkansas, seceded. The final argument of kings was the only one remaining.
XVI “ON TO RICHMOND!”
It has been truly said that the Americans are an unmilitary but an
intensely warlike nation. Seward’s belief that a war fury would sweep the
country at the first cannon shot was amply justified. Both North and South
appeared to rise as one man, crying fiercely to be led to battle.
The immediate effect on Washington had not been foreseen. That historic
clash at Baltimore between the city’s mob and the Sixth Massachusetts en
route to the capital, was followed by an outburst of secession feeling in
Maryland; by an attempt to isolate Washington from the North. Railway
tracks were torn up; telegraph wires were cut. During several days Lincoln
was entirely ignorant of what the North was doing. Was there an efficient
general response to his call for troops? Or was precious time being
squandered in preparation? Was it conceivable that the war fury was only
talk? Looking forth from the White House, he was a prisoner of the
horizon; an impenetrable mystery, it shut the capital in a ring of silence
all but intolerable. Washington assumed the air of a beleaguered city.
General Scott hastily drew in the small forces which the government had
maintained in Maryland and Virginia. Government employees and loyal
Washingtonians were armed and began to drill. The White House became a
barracks. “Jim Lane,” writes delightful John Hay in his diary, which is
always cool, rippling, sunny, no matter how acute the crisis, “Jim Lane
marshalled his Kansas warriors today at Williard’s; tonight (they are in)
the East Room.”(1) Hay’s humor brightens the tragic hour. He felt it his
duty to report to Lincoln a “yarn” that had been told to him by some
charming women who had insisted on an interview; they had heard from “a
dashing Virginian” that inside forty-eight hours something would happen
which would ring through the world. The ladies thought this meant the
capture or assassination of the President. “Lincoln quietly grinned.” But
Hay who plainly enjoyed the episode, charming women and all, had got
himself into trouble. He had to do “some very dexterous lying to calm the
awakened fears of Mrs. Lincoln in regard to the assassination suspicion.”
Militia were quartered in the Capitol, and Pennsylvania Avenue was a drill
ground. At the President’s reception, the distinguished politician C. C.
Clay, “wore with a sublimely unconscious air three pistols and an
‘Arkansas toothpick,’ and looked like an admirable vignette to twenty-five
cents’ worth of yellow covered romance.”
But Hay’s levity was all of the surface. Beneath it was intense anxiety.
General Scott reported that the Virginia militia, concentrating about
Washington, were a formidable menace, though he thought he was strong
enough to hold out until relief should come. As the days passed and
nothing appeared upon that inscrutable horizon while the telegraph
remained silent, Lincoln became moodily distressed. One afternoon, “the
business of the day being over, the executive office deserted, after
walking the floor alone in silent thought for nearly a half-hour, he
stopped and gazed long and wistfully out of the window down the Potomac in
the direction of the expected ships (bringing soldiers from New York); and
unconscious of other presence in the room, at length broke out with
irrepressible anguish in the repeated exclamation, ‘Why don’t they come!
Why don’t they come!'”(2)
His unhappiness flashed into words while he was visiting those
Massachusetts soldiers who had been wounded on their way to Washington. “I
don’t believe there is any North. . . ” he exclaimed. “You are the only
Northern realities.”(3) But even then relief was at hand. The Seventh New
York, which had marched down Broadway amid such an ovation as never before
was given any regiment in America, had come by sea to Annapolis. At noon
on April twenty-fifth, it reached Washington bringing, along with the
welcome sight of its own bayonets, the news that the North had risen, that
thousands more were on the march.
Hay who met them at the depot went at once to report to Lincoln. Already
the President had reacted to a “pleasant, hopeful mood.” He began
outlining a tentative plan of action: blockade, maintenance of the safety
of Washington, holding Fortress Monroe, and then to “go down to Charleston
and pay her the little debt we are owing there.”(4) But this was an
undigested plan. It had little resemblance to any of his later plans. And
immediately the chief difficulties that were to embarrass all his plans
appeared. He was a minority President; and he was the Executive of a
democracy. Many things were to happen; many mistakes were to be made; many
times the piper was to be paid, ere Lincoln felt sufficiently sure of his
support to enforce a policy of his own, defiant of opposition. Throughout
the spring of 1861 his imperative need was to secure the favor of the
Northern mass, to shape his policy with that end in view. At least, in his
own mind, this seemed to be his paramount obligation. And so it was in the
minds of his advisers. Lincoln was still in the pliable mood which was his
when he entered office, which continued to be in evidence, except for
sudden momentary disappearances when a different Lincoln flashed an
instant into view, until another year and more had gone by. Still he felt
himself the apprentice hand painfully learning the trade of man of action.
Still he was deeply sensitive to advice.
And what advice did the country give him? There was one roaring shout
dinning into his ears all round the Northern horizon-“On to Richmond!”
Following Virginia’s secession, Richmond had become the Confederate
capital. It was expected that a session of the Confederate Congress would
open at Richmond in July. “On to Richmond! Forward to Richmond!” screamed
The Tribune. “The Rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet there on the
20th of July. By that date the place must be held by the national army.”
The Times advised the resignation of the Cabinet; it warned the President
that if he did not give prompt satisfaction he would be superseded. Though
Lincoln laughed at the threat of The Times to “depose” him, he took very
seriously all the swiftly accumulating evidence that the North was
becoming rashly impatient Newspaper correspondents at Washington talked to
his secretaries “impertinently.”(5) Members of Congress, either carried
away by the excitement of the hour or with slavish regard to the hysteria
of their constituents, thronged to Washington clamoring for action. On
purely political grounds, if on no other, they demanded an immediate
advance into Virginia. Military men looked with irritation, if not with
contempt, on all this intemperate popular fury. That grim Sherman, who had
been offended by Lincoln’s tone the month previous, put their feeling into
words. Declining the offer of a position in the War Department, he wrote
that he wished “the Administration all success in its almost impossible
task of governing this distracted and anarchial people.”(6)
In the President’s councils, General Scott urged delay, and the gathering
of the volunteers into camps of instruction, their deliberate
transformation into a genuine army. So inadequate were the resources of
the government; so loose and uncertain were the militia organizations
which were attempting to combine into an army; such discrepancies appeared
between the nominal and actual strength of commands, between the places
where men were supposed to be and the places where they actually were;
that Lincoln in his droll way compared the process of mobilization to
shoveling a bushel of fleas across a barn floor.(7) From the military
point of view it was no time to attempt an advance. Against the military
argument, three political arguments loomed dark in the minds of the
Cabinet; there was the clamor of the Northern majority; there were the
threats of the politicians who were to assemble in Congress, July fourth;
there was the term of service of the volunteers which had been limited by
the proclamation to three months. Late in June, the Cabinet decided upon
the political course, overruled the military advisers, and gave its voice
for an immediate advance into Virginia. Lincoln accepted this rash advice.
Scott yielded. General Irwin McDowell was ordered to strike a Confederate
force that had assembled at Manassas.(8) On the fourth of July, the day
Congress met, the government made use of a coup de theatre. It held a
review of what was then considered a “grand army” of twenty-five thousand
men. A few days later, the sensibilities of the Congressmen were further
exploited. Impressionable members were “deeply moved,” when the same host
in marching order passed again through the city and wheeled southward
toward Virginia. Confident of victory, the Congressmen spent these days in
high debate upon anything that took their fancy. When, a fortnight later,
it was known that a battle was imminent, many of them treated the Occasion
as a picnic. They took horses, or hired vehicles, and away they went
southward for a jolly outing on the day the Confederacy was to collapse.
In the mind of the unfortunate General who commanded the expedition a
different mood prevailed. In depression, he said to a friend, “This is not
an army. It will take a long time to make an army. But his duty as a
soldier forbade him to oppose his superiors; the poor fellow could not
proclaim his distrust of his army in public.”(9) Thoughtful observers at
Washington felt danger in the air, both military and political.
Sunday, July twenty-first, dawned clear. It was the day of the expected
battle. A noted Englishman, setting out for the front as war correspondent
of the London Times, observed “the calmness and silence of the streets of
Washington, this early morning.” After crossing the Potomac, he felt that
“the promise of a lovely day given by the early dawn was likely to be
realized to the fullest”; and “the placid beauty of the scenery as we
drove through the woods below Arlington” delighted him. And then about
nine o’clock his thoughts abandoned the scenery. Through those beautiful
Virginia woods came the distant roar of cannon.
At the White House that day there was little if any alarm. Reports
received at various times were construed by military men as favorable.
These, with the rooted preconception that the army had to be successful,
established confidence in a victory before nightfall. Late in the
afternoon, the President relieved his tension by taking a drive. He had
not returned when, about six o’clock, Seward appeared and asked hoarsely
where he was. The secretaries told him. He begged them to find the
President as quickly as possible. “Tell no one,” said he, “but the battle
is lost. The army is in full retreat.”
The news of the rout at Bull Run did not spread through Washington until
close to midnight. It caused an instantaneous panic. In the small hours,
the space before the Treasury was “a moving mass of humanity. Every man
seemed to be asking every man he met for the latest news, while all sorts
of rumors filled the air. A feeling of mingled horror and despair appeared
to possess everybody. . . . Our soldiers came straggling into the city
covered with dust and many of them wounded, while the panic that led to
the disaster spread like a contagion through all classes.” The President
did not share the panic. He “received the news quietly and without any
visible sign of perturbation or excitement”‘(10) Now appeared in him the
quality which led Herndon to call him a fatalist. All night long he sat
unruffled in his office, while refugees from the stricken field—especially
those overconfident Senators and Representatives who had gone out to watch
the overthrow of the Confederates—poured into his ears their various
and conflicting accounts of the catastrophe. During that long night
Lincoln said almost nothing. Meanwhile, fragments of the routed army
continued to stream into the city. At dawn the next day Washington was
possessed by a swarm of demoralized soldiers while a dreary rain settled
over it.
The silent man in the White House had forgotten for the moment his
dependence upon his advisers. While the runaway Senators were talking
themselves out, while the rain was sheeting up the city, he had reached
two conclusions. Early in the morning, he formulated both. One conclusion
was a general outline for the conduct of a long war in which the first
move should be a call for volunteers to serve three years.(11) The other
conclusion was the choice of a conducting general. Scott was too old.
McDowell had failed. But there was a young officer, a West Pointer, who
had been put in command of the Ohio militia, who had entered the Virginia
mountains from the West, had engaged a small force there, and had won
several small but rather showy victories. Young as he was, he had served
in the Mexican War and was supposed to be highly accomplished. On the day
following Bull Run, Lincoln ordered McClellan to Washington to take
command.(12)
XVII. DEFINING THE ISSUE
While these startling events were taking place in the months between
Sumter and Bull Run, Lincoln passed through a searching intellectual
experience. The reconception of his problem, which took place in March,
necessitated a readjustment of his political attitude. He had prepared his
arsenal for the use of a strategy now obviously beside the mark. The vital
part of the first inaugural was its attempt to cut the ground from under
the slave profiteers. Its assertion that nothing else was important, the
idea that the crisis was “artificial,” was sincere. Two discoveries had
revolutionized Lincoln’s thought. The discovery that what the South was in
earnest about was not slavery but State sovereignty; the discovery that
the North was far from a unit upon nationalism. To meet the one, to
organize the other, was the double task precipitated by the fall of
Sumter. Not only as a line of attack, but also as a means of defense,
Lincoln had to raise to its highest power the argument for the sovereign
reality of the national government. The effort to do this formed the
silent inner experience behind the surging external events in the stormy
months between April and July. It was governed by a firmness not
paralleled in his outward course. As always, Lincoln the thinker asked no
advice. It was Lincoln the administrator, painfully learning a new trade,
who was timid, wavering, pliable in council. Behind the apprentice in
statecraft, the lonely thinker stood apart, inflexible as ever, impervious
to fear. The thinking which he formulated in the late spring and early
summer of 1861 obeyed his invariable law of mental gradualness. It arose
out of the deep places of his own past. He built up his new conclusion by
drawing together conclusions he had long held, by charging them with his
later experience, by giving to them a new turn, a new significance.
Lincoln’s was one of those natures in which ideas have to become latent
before they can be precipitated by outward circumstance into definite
form. Always with him the idea that was to become powerful at a crisis was
one that he had long held in solution, that had permeated him without his
formulating it, that had entwined itself with his heartstrings; never was
it merely a conscious act of the logical faculty. His characteristics as a
lawyer—preoccupation with basal ideas, with ethical significance,
with those emotions which form the ultimates of life—these always
determined his thought. His idea of nationalism was a typical case. He had
always believed in the reality of the national government as a sovereign
fact. But he had thought little about it; rather he had taken it for
granted. It was so close to his desire that he could not without an effort
acknowledge the sincerity of disbelief in it. That was why he was so slow
in forming a true comprehension of the real force opposing him. Disunion
had appeared to him a mere device of party strategy. That it was grounded
upon a genuine, a passionate conception of government, one irreconcilable
with his own, struck him, when at last he grasped it, as a deep offense.
The literary statesman sprang again to life. He threw all the strength of
his mind, the peculiar strength that had made him president, into a
statement of the case for nationalism.
His vehicle for publishing his case was the first message to Congress.(1)
It forms an amazing contrast with the first inaugural. The argument over
slavery that underlies the whole of the inaugural has vanished. The
message does not mention slavery. From the first word to the last, it is
an argument for the right of the central government to exercise sovereign
power, and for the duty of the American people—to give their lives
for the Union. No hint of compromise; nought of the cautious and
conciliatory tone of the inaugural. It is the blast of a trumpet—a
war trumpet. It is the voice of a stern mind confronting an adversary that
arouses in him no sympathy, no tolerance even, much less any thought of
concession. Needless to insist that this adversary is an idea. Toward
every human adversary, Lincoln was always unbelievably tender. Though
little of a theologian, he appreciated intuitively some metaphysical
ideas; he projected into politics the philosopher’s distinction between
sin and the sinner. For all his hatred of the ideas which he held to be
treason, he never had a vindictive impulse directed toward the men who
accepted those ideas. Destruction for the idea, infinite clemency for the
person—such was his attitude.
It was the idea of disunion, involving as he believed, a misconception of
the American government, and by implication, a misconception of the true
function of all governments everywhere, against which he declared a war
without recourse.
The basis of his argument reaches back to his oration on Clay, to his
assertion that Clay loved his country, partly because it was his country,
even more because it was a free country. This idea ran through Lincoln’s
thinking to the end. There was in him a suggestion of internationalism. At
the full height of his power, in his complete maturity as a political
thinker, he said that the most sacred bond in life should be the
brotherhood of the workers of all nations. No words of his are more
significant than his remarks to passing soldiers in 1863, such as, “There
is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one. There is
involved in this struggle the question whether your children and my
children shall enjoy the privileges we have enjoyed.” And again, “I happen
temporarily to occupy this White House. I am a living witness that any one
of your children may look to come here as my father’s child has.”(2)
This idea, the idea that the “plain people” are the chief concern of
government was the bed rock of all his political thinking. The mature,
historic Lincoln is first of all a leader of the plain people—of the
mass—as truly as was Cleon, or Robespierre, or Andrew Jackson. His
gentleness does not remove him from that stern category. The latent
fanaticism that is in every man, or almost every man, was grounded in
Lincoln, on his faith—so whimsically expressed—that God must
have loved the plain people because he had made so many of them.(3) The
basal appeal of the first message was in the words:
“This is essentially a people’s contest. On the side of the Union it is a
struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of
government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men; to
lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable
pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in
the race of life.”(4) Not a war over slavery, not a war to preserve a
constitutional system, but a war to assert and maintain the sovereignty of—”We,
the People.”
But how was it to be proved that this was, in fact, the true issue of the
moment? Here, between the lines of the first message, Lincoln’s deepest
feelings are to be glimpsed. Out of the discovery that Virginia honestly
believed herself a sovereign power, he had developed in himself a deep,
slow-burning fervor that probably did much toward fusing him into the
great Lincoln of history. But why? What was there in that idea which
should strike so deep? Why was it not merely one view in a permissible
disagreement over the interpretation of the Constitution? Why did the
cause of the people inspire its champion to regard the doctrine of State
sovereignty as anti-christ? Lincoln has not revealed himself on these
points in so many words. But he has revealed himself plainly enough by
implication.
The clue is in that element of internationalism which lay at the back of
his mind. There must be no misunderstanding of this element. It was not
pointing along the way of the modern “international.” Lincoln would have
fought Bolshevism to the death. Side by side with his assertion of the
sanctity of the international bond of labor, stands his assertion of a
sacred right in property and that capital is a necessity.(5) His
internationalism was ethical, not opportunistic. It grew, as all his ideas
grew, not out of a theorem, not from a constitutional interpretation, but
from his overpowering commiseration for the mass of mankind. It was a
practical matter. Here were poor people to be assisted, to be enriched in
their estate, to be enlarged in spirit. The mode of reaching the result
was not the thing. Any mode, all sorts of modes, might be used. What
counted was the purpose to work relief, and the willingness to throw
overboard whatever it might be that tended to defeat the purpose. His
internationalism was but a denial of “my country right or wrong.” There
can be little doubt that, in last resort, he would have repudiated his
country rather than go along with it in opposition to what he regarded as
the true purpose of government. And that was, to advance the welfare of
the mass of mankind.
He thought upon this subject in the same manner in which he thought as a
lawyer, sweeping aside everything but what seemed to him the ethical
reality at the heart of the case. For him the “right” of a State to do
this or that was a constitutional question only so long as it did not
cross that other more universal “right,” the paramount “charter of
liberty,” by which, in his view, all other rights were conditioned. He
would impose on all mankind, as their basic moral obligation, the duty to
sacrifice all personal likes, personal ambitions, when these in their
permanent tendencies ran contrary to the tendency which he rated as
paramount. Such had always been, and was always to continue, his own
attitude toward slavery. No one ever loathed it more. But he never
permitted it to take the first place in his thoughts. If it could be
eradicated without in the process creating dangers for popular government
he would rejoice. But all the schemes of the Abolitionists, hitherto, he
had condemned as dangerous devices because they would strain too severely
the fabric of the popular state, would violate agreements which alone made
it possible. Therefore, being always relentless toward himself, he
required of himself the renunciation of this personal hope whenever, in
whatever way, it threatened to make less effective the great democratic
state which appeared to him the central fact of the world.
The enlargement of his reasoning led him inevitably to an unsparing
condemnation of the Virginian theory. One of his rare flashes of
irritation was an exclamation that Virginia loyalty always had an “if.”(6)
At this point, to make him entirely plain, there is needed another basic
assumption which he has never quite formulated. However, it is so
obviously latent in his thinking that the main lines are to be made out
clearly enough. Building ever on that paramount obligation of all mankind
to consider first the welfare of God’s plain people, he assumed that
whenever by any course of action any congregation of men were thrown
together and led to form any political unit, they were never thereafter
free to disregard in their attitude toward that unit its value in
supporting and advancing the general cause of the welfare of the plain
people. A sweeping, and in some contingencies, a terrible doctrine!
Certainly, as to individuals, classes, communities even, a doctrine that
might easily become destructive. But it formed the basis of all Lincoln’s
thought about the “majority” in America. Upon it would have rested his
reply, had he ever made a reply, to the Virginia contention that while his
theory might apply to each individual State, it could not apply to the
group of States. He would have treated such a reply, whether fairly or
unfairly, as a legal technicality. He would have said in substance: here
is a congregation to be benefited, this great mass of all the inhabitants
of all the States of the Union; accident, or destiny, or what you will,
has brought them together, but here they are; they are moving forward,
haltingly, irregularly, but steadily, toward fuller and fuller democracy;
they are part of the universal democratic movement; their vast experiment
has an international significance; it is the hope of the “Liberal party
throughout the world”; to check that experiment, to break it into Separate
minor experiments; to reduce the imposing promise of its example by making
it seem unsuccessful, would be treason to mankind. Therefore, both on
South and North, both on the Seceders he meant to fight and on those
Northerners of whom he was not entirely sure, he aimed to impose the
supreme immediate duty of proving to the world that democracy on a great
scale could have sufficient vitality to maintain itself against any sort
of attack. Anticipating faintly the Gettysburg oration, the first message
contained these words: “And this issue embraces more than the fate of
these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question
whether a constitutional republic, or democracy—a government of the
people by the same people—can or can not maintain its integrity
against its own domestic foes. . . . Must a government of necessity be too
strong for the liberties of its people or too weak to maintain its own
existence?”(7) He told Hay that “the crucial idea pervading this struggle
is the necessity that is upon us to prove that popular government is not
an absurdity”; “that the basal issue was whether or no the people could
govern themselves.”(8)
But all this elaborate reasoning, if it went no further, lacked authority.
It was political speculation. To clothe itself with authority it had to
discover a foundation in historic fact. The real difficulty was not what
ought to have been established in America in the past, but what actually
had been. Where was the warrant for those bold proposition—who “we,
the people,” really were; in what their sovereign power really consisted;
what was history’s voice in the matter? To state an historic foundation
was the final aim of the message. To hit its mark it had to silence those
Northerners who denied the obligation to fight for the Union; it had to
oppose their “free love” ideas of political unity with the conception of
an established historic government, one which could not be overthrown
except through the nihilistic process of revolution. So much has been
written upon the exact location of sovereignty in the American federal
State that it is difficult to escape the legalistic attitude, and to treat
the matter purely as history. So various, so conflicting, and at times so
tenuous, are the theories, that a flippant person might be forgiven did he
turn from the whole discussion saying impatiently it was blind man’s buff.
But on one thing, at least, we must all agree. Once there was a king over
this country, and now there is no king. Once the British Crown was the
sovereign, and now the Crown has receded into the distance beyond the deep
blue sea. When the Crown renounced its sovereignty in America, what became
of it? Did it break into fragments and pass peacemeal to the various
revolted colonies? Was it transferred somehow to the group collectively?
These are the obvious theories; but there are others. And the others give
rise to subtler speculations. Who was it that did the actual revolting
against the Crown—colonies, parties, individuals, the whole American
people, who?
Troublesome questions these, with which Lincoln and the men of his time
did not deal in the spirit of historical science. Their wishes fathered
their thoughts. Southerners, practically without exception, held the
theory of the disintegration of the Crown’s prerogative, its distribution
among the States. The great leaders of Northern thought repudiated the
idea. Webster and Clay would have none of it. But their own theories were
not always consistent; and they differed among themselves. Lincoln did the
natural thing. He fastened upon the tendencies in Northern thought that
supported his own faith. Chief among these was the idea that sovereignty
passed to the general congregation of the inhabitants of the colonies—”we,
the people”—because we, the people, were the real power that
supported the revolt. He had accepted the idea that the American
Revolution was an uprising of the people, that its victory was in a
transfer of sovereign rights from an English Crown to an American nation;
that a new collective state, the Union, was created by this nation as the
first act of the struggle, and that it was to the Union that the Crown
succumbed, to the Union that its prerogative passed. To put this idea in
its boldest and its simplest terms was the crowning effort of the message.
“The States have their status in the Union and they have no other legal
status. If they break from this, they can only do so against law and by
revolution. The Union, and not themselves separately, procured their
independence and their liberty. By conquest or purchase, the Union gave
each of them whatever of independence and liberty it has. The Union is
older than any of the States, and in fact, it created them as States.
Originally some dependent colonies made the Union, and in turn, the Union
threw off this old dependence for them and made them States, such as they
are.”(9)
This first message completes the evolution of Lincoln as a political
thinker. It is his third, his last great landmark. The Peoria speech,
which drew to a focus all the implications of his early life, laid the
basis of his political significance; the Cooper Union speech, summing up
his conflict with Douglas, applied his thinking to the new issue
precipitated by John Brown; but in both these he was still predominantly a
negative thinker, still the voice of an opposition. With the first
message, he became creative; he drew together what was latent in his
earlier thought; he discarded the negative; he laid the foundation of all
his subsequent policy. The breadth and depth of his thinking is revealed
by the fulness with which the message develops the implications of his
theory. In so doing, he anticipated the main issues that were to follow:
his determination to keep nationalism from being narrowed into mere
“Northernism”; his effort to create an all-parties government; his
stubborn insistence that he was suppressing an insurrection, not waging
external war; his doctrine that the Executive, having been chosen by the
entire people, was the one expression of the sovereignty of the people,
and therefore, the repository of all these exceptional “war powers” that
are dormant in time of peace. Upon each of those issues he was destined to
wage fierce battles with the politicians who controlled Congress, who
sought to make Congress his master, who thwarted, tormented and almost
defeated him. In the light of subsequent history the first message has
another aspect besides its significance as political science. In its clear
understanding of the implications of his attitude, it attains political
second sight. As Lincoln, immovable, gazes far into the future, his power
of vision makes him, yet again though in a widely different sense, the
“seer in a trance, Seeing all his own mischance.”
His troubles with Congress began at once. The message was received on July
fourth, politely, but with scant response to its ideas. During two weeks,
while Congress in its fatuousness thought that the battle impending in
Virginia would settle things, the majority in Congress would not give
assent to Lincoln’s view of what the war was about. And then came Bull
Run. In a flash the situation changed. Fatuousness was puffed out like a
candle in a wind. The rankest extremist saw that Congress must cease from
its debates and show its hand; must say what the war was about; must
inform the nation whether it did or did not agree with the President.
On the day following Bull Run, Crittenden introduced this resolution:
“That the present, deplorable civil war has been forced upon the country
by the Disunionists of the Southern States, now in arms against the
constitutional government, and in arms around the capital; that in this
national emergency, Congress, banishing all feelings of mere passion and
resentment, will recollect only its duty to the whole country; that this
war is not waged on their part in any spirit of oppression or for any
purpose of conquest or subjugation, or purpose of overthrowing or
interfering with the rights or established institutions of these States,
but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to
preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the
several States unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are
accomplished, the war ought to cease.” This Crittenden Resolution was
passed instantly by both Houses, without debate and almost without
opposition. (10)
Paradoxically, Bull Run had saved the day for Lincoln, had enabled him to
win his first victory as a statesman.
XVIII. THE JACOBIN CLUB
The keen Englishman who had observed the beauty of the Virginian woods on
“Bull Run Sunday,” said, after the battle was lost, “I hope Senator Wilson
is satisfied.” He was sneering at the whole group of intemperate Senators
none of whom had ever smelled powder, but who knew it all when it came to
war; who had done their great share in driving the President and the
generals into a premature advance. Senator Wilson was one of those who
went out to Manassas to see the Confederacy overthrown, that fateful
Sunday. He was one of the most precipitate among those who fled back to
Washington. On the way, driving furiously, amid a press of men and
vehicles, he passed a carriage containing four Congressmen who were taking
their time. Perhaps irritated by their coolness, he shouted to them to
make haste. “If we were in as big a hurry as you are,” replied Congressman
Riddle, scornfully, “we would.”
These four Congressmen played a curiously dramatic part before they got
back to Washington. So did a party of Senators with whom they joined
forces. This other party, at the start, also numbered four. They had
planned a jolly picnic—this day that was to prove them right in
hurrying the government into battle!—and being wise men who knew how
to take time by the forelock, they had taken their luncheon with them.
From what is known of Washington and Senators, then as now, one may risk a
good deal that the luncheon was worth while. Part of the tragedy of that
day was the accidental break-up of this party with the result amid the
confusion of a road crowded by pleasure-seekers, that two Senators went
one way carrying off the luncheon, while the other two, making the best of
the disaster, continued southward through those beautiful early hours when
Russell was admiring the scenery, their luncheon all to seek. The lucky
men with the luncheon were the Senators Benjamin Wade and Zachary
Chandler. Senator Trumbull and Senator Grimes, both on horseback, were
left to their own devices. However, fortune was with them. Several hours
later they had succeeded in getting food by the wayside and were resting
in a grove of trees some distance beyond the village of Centerville.
Suddenly, they suffered an appalling surprise; happening to look up, they
beheld emerging out of the distance, a stampede of men and horses which
came thundering down the country road, not a hundred yards from where they
sat. “We immediately mounted our horses,” as Trumbull wrote to his wife
the next day, “and galloped to the road, by which time it was crowded,
hundreds being in advance on the way to Centerville and two guns of
Sherman’s battery having already passed in full retreat. We kept on with
the crowd, not knowing what else to do. We fed our horses at Centerville
and left there at six o’clock…. Came on to Fairfax Court House where we
got supper and, leaving there at ten o’clock reached home at half past two
this morning. . . . I am dreadfully disappointed and mortified.”(1)
Meanwhile, what of those other gay picnickers, Senator Wade and Senator
Chandler? They drove in a carriage. Viewing the obligations of the hour
much as did C. C. Clay at the President’s reception, they were armed. Wade
had “his famous rifle” which he had brought with him to Congress, which at
times in the fury of debate he had threatened to use, which had become a
byword. These Senators seem to have ventured nearer to the front than did
Trumbull and Grimes, and were a little later in the retreat At a
“choke-up,” still on the far side of Centerville, their carriage passed
the carriage of the four Congressmen—who, by the way, were also
armed, having among them “four of the largest navy revolvers.”
All these men, whatever their faults or absurdities, were intrepid. The
Congressmen, at least, were in no good humor, for they had driven through
a regiment of three months men whose time expired that day and who despite
the cannon in the distance were hurrying home.
The race of the fugitives continued. At Centerville, the Congressmen
passed Wade. Soon afterward Wade passed them for the second time. About a
mile out of Fairfax Court House, “at the foot of a long down grade, the
pike on the northerly side was fenced and ran along a farm. On the other
side for a considerable distance was a wood, utterly impenetrable for men
or animals, larger than cats or squirrels.” Here the Wade carriage
stopped. The congressional carriage drove up beside it. The two blocked a
narrow way where as in the case of Horatius at the bridge, “a thousand
might well be stopped by three.” And then “bluff Ben Wade” showed the
mettle that was in him. The “old Senator, his hat well back on his head,”
sprang out of his carriage, his rifle in his hand, and called to the
others, “Boys, we’ll stop this damned runaway.” And they did it. Only six
of them, but they lined up across that narrow road; presented their
weapons and threatened to shoot; seized the bridles of horses and flung
the horses back on their haunches; checked a panic-stricken army; held it
at bay, until just when it seemed they were about to be overwhelmed,
military reserves hurrying out from Fairfax Court House, took command of
the road. Cool, unpretentious Riddle calls the episode “Wade’s exploit,”
and adds “it was much talked of.” The newspapers dealt with it
extravagantly.(2)
Gallant as the incident was, it was all the military service that “Ben”
Wade and “Zach” Chandler—for thus they are known in history-over
saw. But one may believe that it had a lasting effect upon their point of
view and on that of their friend Lyman Trumbull. Certain it is that none
of the three thereafter had any doubts about putting the military men in
their place. All the error of their own view previous to Bull Run was
forgotten. Wade and Chandler, especially, when military questions were in
dispute, felt that no one possibly could know more of the subject than did
the men who stopped the rout in the narrow road beyond Fairfax.
Three of those picnickers who missed their guess on Bull Run Sunday, Wade,
Chandler and Trumbull, were destined to important parts in the stern years
that were to come. Before the close of the year 1861 the three made a
second visit to the army; and this time they kept together. To that second
visit momentous happenings may be traced. How it came about must be fully
understood.
Two of the three, Wade and Chandler, were temperamentally incapable of
understanding Lincoln. Both were men of fierce souls; each had but a very
limited experience. Wade had been a country lawyer in Ohio; Chandler, a
prosperous manufacturer in Michigan. They were party men by instinct,
blind to the faults of their own side, blind to the virtues of their
enemies. They were rabid for the control of the government by their own
organized machine.
Of Chandler, in Michigan, it was said that he “carried the Republican
organization in his breeches pocket”; partly through control of the
Federal patronage, which Lincoln frankly conceded to him, partly through a
“judicious use of money.”(3) Chandler’s first clash with Lincoln was upon
the place that the Republican machine was to hold in the conduct of the
war.
From the beginning Lincoln was resolved that the war should not be merely
a party struggle. Even before he was inaugurated, he said that he meant to
hold the Democrats “close to the Administration on the naked Union
issue.”(4) He had added, “We must make it easy for them” to support the
government “because we can’t live through the case without them.” This was
the foundation of his attempt—so obvious between the lines of the
first message—to create an all-parties government. This, Chandler
violently opposed. Violence was always Chandler’s note, so much so that a
scornful opponent once called him “Xantippe in pants.”
Lincoln had given Chandler a cause of offense in McClellan’s elevation to
the head of the army.* McClellan was a Democrat. There can be little doubt
that Lincoln took the fact into account in selecting him. Shortly before,
Lincoln had aimed to placate the Republicans by showing high honor to
their popular hero, Fremont.
When the catastrophe occurred at Bull Run, Fremont was a major-general
commanding the Western Department with headquarters at St. Louis. He was
one of the same violent root-and-branch wing of the Republicans—the
Radicals of a latter day—of which Chandler was a leader. The temper
of that wing had already been revealed by Senator Baker in his startling
pronouncement: “We of the North control the Union, and we are going to
govern our own Union in our own way.” Chandler was soon to express it
still more exactly, saying, “A rebel has sacrificed all his rights. He has
no right to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness.”(5) Here was that
purpose to narrowing nationalism into Northernism, even to radicalism, and
to make the war an outlet for a sectional ferocity, which Lincoln was so
firmly determined to prevent. All things considered, the fact that on the
day following Bull Run he did not summon the Republican hero to
Washington, that he did summon a Democrat, was significant. It opened his
long duel with the extremists.
The vindictive Spirit of the extremists had been rebuffed by Lincoln in
another way. Shortly after Bull Run, Wade and Chandler appealed to Lincoln
to call out negro soldiers. Chandler said that he did not care whether or
no this would produce a servile insurrection in the South. Lincoln’s
refusal made another count in the score of the extremists against him.(6)
During the late summer of 1861, Chandler, Wade, Trumbull, were all busily
organizing their forces for an attack on the Administration. Trumbull,
indeed, seemed out of place in that terrible company. In time, he found
that he was out of place. At a crucial moment he came over to Lincoln. But
not until he had done yeoman service with Lincoln’s bitterest enemies. The
clue to his earlier course was an honest conviction that Lincoln, though
well-intentioned, was weak.(7) Was this the nemesis of Lincoln’s
pliability in action during the first stage of his Presidency? It may be.
The firm inner Lincoln, the unyielding thinker of the first message, was
not appreciated even by well-meaning men like Trumbull. The inner and the
outer Lincoln were still disconnected. And the outer, in his caution, in
his willingness to be instructed, in his opposition to extreme measures,
made the inevitable impression that temperance makes upon fury, caution
upon rashness.
Throughout the late summer, Lincoln was the target of many attacks,
chiefly from the Abolitionists. Somehow, in the previous spring, they had
got it into their heads that at heart he was one of them, that he waited
only for a victory to declare the war a crusade of abolition.(8) When the
crisis passed and a Democrat was put at the head of the army, while
Fremont was left in the relative obscurity of St. Louis, Abolition
bitterness became voluble. The Crittenden Resolution was scoffed at as an
“ill-timed revival of the policy of conciliation.” Threats against the
Administration revived, taking the old form of demands for a wholly new
Cabinet The keener-sighted Abolitionists had been alarmed by the first
message, by what seemed to them its ominous silence as to slavery. Late in
July, Emerson said in conversation, “If the Union is incapable of securing
universal freedom, its disruption were as the breaking up of a
frog-pond.”(9) An outcry was raised because Federal generals did not
declare free all the slaves who in any way came into their hands. The
Abolitionists found no solace in the First Confiscation Act which provided
that an owner should lose his claim to a slave, had the slave been used to
assist the Confederate government. They were enraged by an order, early in
August, informing generals that it was the President’s desire “that all
existing rights in all the States be fully respected and maintained; in
cases of fugitives from the loyal Slave States, the enforcement of the
Fugitive Slave Law by the ordinary forms of judicial proceedings must be
respected by the military authorities; in the disloyal States the
Confiscation Act of Congress must be your guide.”(10) Especially, the
Abolitionists were angered because of Lincoln’s care for the forms of law
in those Slave States that had not seceded. They vented their bitterness
in a famous sneer—”The President would like to have God on his side,
but he must have Kentucky.”
A new temper was forming throughout the land. It was not merely the old
Abolitionism. It was a blend of all those elements of violent feeling
which war inevitably releases; it was the concentration of all these
elements on the issue of Abolition as upon a terrible weapon; it was the
resurrection of that primitive blood-lust which lies dormant in every
peaceful nation like a sleeping beast. This dreadful power rose out of its
sleep and confronted, menacing, the statesman who of all our statesmen was
most keenly aware of its evil, most determined to put it under or to
perish in the attempt With its appearance, the deepest of all the issues
involved, according to Lincoln’s way of thinking, was brought to a head.
Was the Republic to issue from the war a worthy or an unworthy nation?
That was pretty definitely a question of whether Abraham Lincoln or, say,
Zachary Chandler, was to control its policy.
A vain, weak man precipitated the inevitable struggle between these two.
Fremont had been flattered to the skies. He conceived himself a genius. He
was persuaded that the party of the new temper, the men who may fairly be
called the Vindictives, were lords of the ascendent. He mistook their
volubility for the voice of the nation. He determined to defy Lincoln. He
issued a proclamation freeing the slaves of all who had “taken an active
part” with the enemies of the United States in the field. He set up a
“bureau of abolition.”
Lincoln first heard of Fremont’s proclamation through the newspapers. His
instant action was taken in his own extraordinarily gentle way. “I think
there is great danger,” he wrote, “that the closing paragraph (of
Fremont’s proclamation) in relation to the confiscation of property and
the liberating of slaves of traitorous owners, will alarm our Southern
Union friends and turn them against us; perhaps ruin our rather fair
prospect for Kentucky. Allow me, therefore, to ask that you will, as of
your own motion, modify that paragraph so as to conform” to the
Confiscation Act. He added, “This letter is written in the Spirit of
caution, not of censure.”(11)
Fremont was not the man to understand instruction of this sort. He would
make no compromise with the President. If Lincoln wished to go over his
head and rescind his order let him do so-and take the consequences.
Lincoln quietly did so. His battle with the Vindictives was on. For a
moment it seemed as if he had destroyed his cause. So loud was the outcry
of the voluble people, that any one might have been excused momentarily
for thinking that all the North had risen against him. Great meetings of
protest were held. Eminent men—even such fine natures as Bryant—condemned
his course. In the wake of the incident, when it was impossible to say how
significant the outcry really was, Chandler, who was staunch for Fremont,
began his active interference with the management of the army. McClellan
had insisted on plenty of time in which to drill the new three-year
recruits who were pouring into Washington. He did not propose to repeat
the experience of General McDowell. On the other hand, Chandler was bent
on forcing him into action. He, Wade and Trumbull combined, attempting to
bring things to pass in a way to suit themselves and their faction. To
these men and their followers, clever young Hay gave the apt name of “The
Jacobin Club.”
They began their campaign by their second visit to the army. Wade was
their chief spokesman. He urged McClellan to advance at once; to risk an
unsuccessful battle rather than continue to stand still; the country
wanted something done; a defeat could easily be repaired by the swarming
recruits.(12)
This callous attitude got no response from the Commanding General. The
three Senators turned upon Lincoln. “This evening,” writes Hay in his
diary on October twenty-sixth, “the Jacobin Club represented by Trumbull,
Chandler and Wade, came out to worry the Administration into a battle. The
agitation of the summer is to be renewed. The President defended
McClellan’s deliberateness. The next night we went over to Seward’s and
found Chandler and Wade there.” They repeated their reckless talk; a
battle must be fought; defeat would be no worse than delay; “and a great
deal more trash.”
But Lincoln was not to be moved. He and Hay called upon McClellan. The
President deprecated this new manifestation of popular impatience, but
said it was a reality and should be taken into account. “At the same time,
General,” said he, “you must not fight until you are ready.”(13)
At this moment of extreme tension occurred the famous incident of the
seizure of the Confederate envoys, Mason and Slidell, who were passengers
on the British merchant ship, the Trent. These men had run the blockade
which had now drawn its strangling line along the whole coast of the
Confederacy; they had boarded the Trent at Havana, and under the law of
nations were safe from capture. But Captain Wilkes of the United States
Navy, more zealous than discreet, overhauled the Trent and took off the
two Confederates. Every thoughtless Northerner went wild with joy. At last
the government had done something. Even the Secretary of the Navy so far
forgot himself as to telegraph to Wilkes “Congratulate you on the great
public service you have rendered in the capture of the rebel
emissaries.”(14) Chandler promptly applauded the seizure and when it was
suggested that perhaps the envoys should be released he at once arrayed
himself in opposition.(15) With the truculent Jacobins ready to close
battle should the government do its duty, with the country still echoing
to cheers for Fremont and hisses for the President, with nothing to his
credit in the way of military success, Lincoln faced a crisis. He was
carried through the crisis by two strong men. Sumner, head and front of
Abolitionism but also a great lawyer, came at once to his assistance. And
what could a thinking Abolitionist say after that! Seward skilfully saved
the face of the government by his management of the negotiation. The
envoys were released and sent to England.
It was the only thing to do, but Chandler and all his sort had opposed it.
The Abolition fury against the government was at fever heat. Wendell
Phillips in a speech at New York denounced the Administration as having no
definite purpose in the war, and was interrupted by frantic cheers for
Fremont. McClellan, patiently drilling his army, was, in the eyes of the
Jacobins, doing nothing. Congress had assembled. There was every sign that
troubled waters lay just ahead.
XIX. THE JACOBINS BECOME INQUISITORS
The temper animating Hay’s “Jacobins” formed a new and really formidable
danger which menaced Lincoln at the close of 1861. But had he been
anything of an opportunist, it would have offered him an unrivaled
opportunity. For a leader who sought personal power, this raging savagery,
with its triple alliance of an organized political machine, a devoted
fanaticism, and the war fury, was a chance in ten thousand. It led to his
door the steed of militarism, shod and bridled, champing upon the bit, and
invited him to leap into the saddle. Ten words of acquiescence in the
program of the Jacobins, and the dreaded role of the man on horseback was
his to command.
The fallacy that politics are primarily intellectual decisions upon stated
issues, the going forth of the popular mind to decide between programs
presented to it by circumstances, receives a brilliant refutation in the
course of the powerful minority that was concentrating around the three
great “Jacobins.” The subjective side of politics, also the temperamental
side, here found expression. Statecraft is an art; creative statesmen are
like other artists. Just as the painter or the poet, seizing upon old
subjects, uses them as outlets for his particular temper, his particular
emotion, and as the temper, the emotion are what counts in his work, so
with statesmen, with Lincoln on the one hand, with Chandler at the
opposite extreme.
The Jacobins stood first of all for the sudden reaction of bold fierce
natures from a long political repression. They had fought their way to
leadership as captains of an opposition. They were artists who had been
denied an opportunity of expression. By a sudden turn of fortune, it had
seemed to come within their grasp. Temperamentally they were fighters.
Battle for them was an end in itself. The thought of Conquest sang to them
like the morning stars. Had they been literary men, their favorite poetry
would have been the sacking of Troy town. Furthermore, they were intensely
provincial. Undoubted as was their courage, they had also the valor of
ignorance. They had the provincial’s disdain for the other side of the
horizon, his unbounded confidence in his ability to whip all creation.
Chandler, scornfully brushing aside a possible foreign war, typified their
mood.
And in quiet veto of all their hopes rose against them the apparently
easy-going, the smiling, story-telling, unrevengeful, new man at the White
House. It is not to be wondered that they spent the summer laboring to
build up a party against him, that they turned eagerly to the new session
of Congress, hoping to consolidate a faction opposed to Lincoln.
His second message (1), though without a word of obvious defiance, set him
squarely against them on all their vital contentions. The winter of
1861-1862 is the strangest period of Lincoln’s career. Although the two
phases of him, the outer and the inner, were, in point of fact, moving
rapidly toward their point of fusion, apparently they were further away
than ever before. Outwardly, his most conspicuous vacillations were in
this winter and in the following spring. Never before or after did he
allow himself to be overshadowed so darkly by his advisers in all the
concerns of action. In amazing contrast, in all the concerns of thought,
he was never more entirely himself. The second message, prepared when the
country rang with what seemed to be a general frenzy against him, did not
give ground one inch. This was all the more notable because his Secretary
of War had tried to force his hand. Cameron had the reputation of being
about the most astute politician in America. Few people attributed to him
the embarrassment of principles. And Cameron, in the late autumn, after
closely observing the drift of things, determined that Fremont had hit it
off correctly, that the crafty thing to do was to come out for Abolition
as a war policy. In a word, he decided to go over to the Jacobins. He put
into his annual report a recommendation of Chandler’s plan for organizing
an army of freed slaves and sending it against the Confederacy. Advanced
copies of this report had been sent to the press before Lincoln knew of
it. He peremptorily ordered their recall, and the exclusion of this
suggestion from the text of the report.(2)
On the heels of this refusal to concede to Chandler one of his cherished
schemes, the second message was sent to Congress. The watchful and
exasperated Jacobins found abundant offense in its omissions. On the whole
great subject of possible emancipation it was blankly silent. The nearest
it came to this subject was one suggestion which applied only to those
captured slaves who had been forfeited by the disloyal owners through
being employed to assist the Confederate government Lincoln advised that
after receiving their freedom they be sent out of the country and
colonized “at some place, or places, in a climate congenial to them.”
Beyond this there was nothing bearing on the slavery question except the
admonition—so unsatisfactory to Chandler and all his sort—that
while “the Union must be preserved, and hence all indispensable means must
be employed,” Congress should “not be in haste to determine that radical
and extreme measures, which may reach the loyal as well as the disloyal,
are indispensable.”
Lincoln was entirely clear in his own mind that there was but one way to
head off the passion of destruction that was rioting in the Jacobin
temper. “In considering the policy to be adopted in suppressing the
insurrection, I have been anxious and careful that the inevitable conflict
for this purpose shall not degenerate into a violent and remorseless
revolutionary struggle. I have, therefore, in every case, thought it
proper to keep the integrity of the Union prominent as the primary object
of the contest on our part, leaving all questions which are not of vital
military importance to the more deliberate action of the Legislature.” He
persisted in regarding the war as an insurrection of the “disloyal portion
of the American people,” not as an external struggle between the North and
the South.
Finally, the culmination of the message was a long elaborate argument upon
the significance of the war to the working classes. His aim was to show
that the whole trend of the Confederate movement was toward a conclusion
which would “place capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor,
in the structure of government.” Thus, as so often before, he insisted on
his own view of the significance in American politics of all issues
involving slavery—their bearing on the condition of the free
laborer. In a very striking passage, often overlooked, he ranked himself
once more, as first of all, a statesman of “the people,” in the limited
class sense of the term. “Labor is prior to and independent of capital.
Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor
had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much
the higher consideration.” But so far is he from any revolutionary
purpose, that he adds immediately, “Capital has its rights which are as
worthy of protection as any other rights.” His crowning vision is not
communism. His ideal world is one of universal opportunity, with labor
freed of every hindrance, with all its deserving members acquiring more
and more of the benefits of property.
Such a message had no consolation for Chandler, Wade, or, as he then was,
for Trumbull. They looked about for a way to retaliate. And now two things
became plain. That “agitation of the summer” to which Hay refers, had
borne fruit, but not enough fruit. Many members of Congress who had been
swept along by the President’s policy in July had been won over in the
reaction against him and were ripe for manipulation; but it was not yet
certain that they held the balance of power in Congress. To lock horns
with the Administration, in December, would have been so rash a move that
even such bold men as Chandler and Wade avoided it. Instead, they devised
an astute plan of campaign. Trumbull was Chairman of the Senate Judiciary
Committee, and in that important position would bide his time to bring
pressure to bear on the President through his influence upon legislation.
Wade and Chandler would go in for propaganda. But they would do so in
disguise. What more natural than that Congress should take an active
interest in the army, should wish to do all in its power to “assist” the
President in rendering the army-efficient. For that purpose it was
proposed to establish a joint committee of the two Houses having no
function but to look into military needs and report to Congress. The
proposal was at once accepted and its crafty backers secured a committee
dominated entirely by themselves. Chandler was a member; Wade became
Chairman.(3) This Committee on the Conduct of the War became at once an
inquisition. Though armed with no weapon but publicity, its close
connection with congressional intrigue, its hostility to the President,
the dramatic effect of any revelations it chose to make or any charges it
chose to bring, clothed it indirectly with immense power. Its inner
purpose may be stated in the words of one of its members, “A more vigorous
prosecution of the war and less tenderness toward slavery.”(4) Its mode of
procedure was in constant interrogation of generals, in frequent advice to
the President, and on occasion in threatening to rouse Congress against
him.(5) A session of the Committee was likely to be followed by a call on
the President of either Chandler or Wade.
The Committee began immediately summoning generals before it to explain
what the army was doing. And every general was made to understand that
what the Committee wanted, what Congress wanted, what the country wanted,
was an advance—”something doing” as soon as possible.
And now appeared another characteristic of the mood of these furious men.
They had become suspicious, honestly suspicious. This suspiciousness grew
with their power and was rendered frantic by being crossed. Whoever
disagreed with them was instantly an object of distrust; any plan that
contradicted their views was at once an evidence of treason.
The earliest display of this eagerness to see traitors in every bush
concerned a skirmish that took place at Ball’s Bluff in Virginia. It was
badly managed and the Federal loss, proportionately, was large. The
officer held responsible was General Stone. Unfortunately for him, he was
particularly obnoxious to the Abolitionists; he had returned fugitive
slaves; and when objection was made by such powerful Abolitionists as
Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, Stone gave reign to a sharp tongue. In
the early days of the session, Roscoe Conkling told the story of Ball’s
Bluff for the benefit of Congress in a brilliant, harrowing speech. In a
flash the rumor spread that the dead at Ball’s Bluff were killed by
design, that Stone was a traitor, that—perhaps!—who could say?—there
were bigger traitors higher up. Stone was summoned before the
Inquisition.(6)
While Stone was on the rack, metaphorically, while the Committee was
showing him every brutality in its power, refusing to acquaint him with
the evidence against him, intimating that they were able to convict him of
treason, between the fifth and the eleventh of January a crisis arose in
the War Office. Cameron had failed to ingratiate himself with the rising
powers. Old political enemies in Congress were implacable. Scandals in his
Department gave rise to sweeping charges of peculation.
There is scarcely another moment when Lincoln’s power was so precarious.
In one respect, in their impatience, the Committee reflected faithfully
the country at large. And by the irony of fate McClellan at this crucial
hour, had fallen ill. After waiting for his recovery during several weeks,
Lincoln ventured with much hesitation to call a conference of generals.(7)
They were sitting during the Stone investigation, producing no result
except a distraction in councils, devising plans that were thrown over the
moment the Commanding General arose from his bed. A vote in Congress a few
days previous had amounted to a censure of the Administration. It was
taken upon the Crittenden Resolution which had been introduced a second
time. Of those who had voted for it in July, so many now abandoned the
Administration that this resolution, the clear embodiment of Lincoln’s
policy, was laid on the table, seventy-one to sixty-five.(8) Lincoln’s
hope for an all-parties government was receiving little encouragement The
Democrats were breaking into factions, while the control of their party
organization was falling into the hands of a group of inferior politicians
who were content to “play politics” in the most unscrupulous fashion. Both
the Secretary of War and the Secretary of State had authorized arbitrary
arrests. Men in New York and New England had been thrown into prison. The
privilege of the writ of habeas corpus had been denied them on the mere
belief of the government that they were conspiring with its enemies.
Because of these arrests, sharp criticism was being aimed at the
Administration both within and without Congress.
For all these reasons, the government at Washington appeared to be
tottering. Desperate remedies seemed imperative. Lincoln decided to make
every concession he could make without letting go his central purpose.
First, he threw over Cameron; he compelled him to resign though he saved
his face by appointing him minister to Russia. But who was to take his
place? At this critical moment, the choice of a new Secretary of War was a
political problem of exacting difficulty. Just why Lincoln chose a sullen,
dictatorial lawyer whose experience in no way prepared him for the office,
has never been disclosed. Two facts appear to explain it. Edwin M. Stanton
was temperamentally just the man to become a good brother to Chandler and
Wade. Both of them urged him upon Lincoln as successor to Cameron.(9)
Furthermore, Stanton hitherto had been a Democrat. His services in
Buchanan’s Cabinet as Attorney-General had made him a national figure. Who
else linked the Democrats and the Jacobins?
However, for almost any one but Lincoln, there was an objection that it
would have been hard to overcome. No one has ever charged Stanton with
politeness. A gloomy excitable man, of uncertain health, temperamentally
an over-worker, chronically apprehensive, utterly without the saving grace
of humor, he was capable of insufferable rudeness—one reason,
perhaps, why Chandler liked him. He and Lincoln had met but once. As
associate council in a case at Cincinnati, three years before, Lincoln had
been treated so contemptuously by Stanton that he had returned home in
pained humiliation. Since his inauguration, Stanton had been one of his
most vituperative critics. Was this insolent scold to be invited into the
Cabinet? Had not Lincoln at this juncture been in the full tide of
selflessness, surely some compromise would have been made with the
Committee, a secretary found less offensive personally to the President.
Lincoln disregarded the personal consideration. The candidate of Chandler
and Wade became secretary. It was the beginning of an intimate alliance
between the Committee and the War Office. Lincoln had laid up for himself
much trouble that he did not foresee.
The day the new Secretary took office, he received from the Committee a
report upon General Stone:(10) Subsequently, in the Senate, Wade denied
that the Committee had advised the arrest of Stone.(11) Doubtless the
statement was technically correct. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt
that the inquisitors were wholly in sympathy with the Secretary when,
shortly afterward, Stone was seized upon Stanton’s order, conveyed to a
fortress and imprisoned without trial.
This was the Dreyfus case of the Civil War. Stone was never tried and
never vindicated. He was eventually released upon parole and after many
tantalizing disappointments permitted to rejoin the army. What gives the
event significance is its evidence of the power, at that moment, of the
Committee, and of the relative weakness of the President. Lincoln’s
eagerness to protect condemned soldiers survives in many anecdotes. Hay
confides to his diary that he was sometimes “amused at the eagerness with
which the President caught at any fact which would justify” clemency. And
yet, when Stanton informed him of the arrest of Stone, he gloomily
acquiesced. “I hope you have good reasons for it,” he said. Later he
admitted that he knew very little about the case. But he did not order
Stone’s release.
Lincoln had his own form of ruthlessness. The selfless man, by dealing
with others in the same extraordinary way in which he deals with himself,
may easily under the pressure of extreme conditions become impersonal in
his thinking upon duty. The morality of such a state of mind is a question
for the philosopher. The historian must content himself with pointing out
the only condition that redeems it—if anything redeems it The leader
who thinks impersonally about others and personally about himself-what
need among civilized people to characterize him? Borgia, Louis XIV,
Napoleon. If we are ever to pardon impersonal thinking it is only in the
cases of men who begin by effacing themselves. The Lincoln who accepted
Stanton as a Cabinet officer, who was always more or less overshadowed by
the belief that in saving the government he was himself to perish, is
explicable, at least, when individual men became for him, as at times they
did, impersonal factors in a terrible dream.
There are other considerations in the attempt to give a moral value to his
failure to interfere in behalf of Stone. The first four months of 1862 are
not only his feeblest period as a ruler, the period when he was barely
able to hold his own, but also the period when he was least definite as a
personality, when his courage and his vitality seemed ebbing tides. Again,
his spirit was in eclipse. Singularly enough, this was the darkness before
the dawn. June of 1862 saw the emergence, with a suddenness difficult to
explain, of the historic Lincoln. But in January of that year he was
facing downward into the mystery of his last eclipse. All the dark places
of his heredity must be searched for clues to this strange experience.
There are moments, especially under strain of a personal bereavement that
fell upon him in February, when his will seemed scarcely a reality; when,
as a directing force he may be said momentarily to have vanished; when he
is hardly more than a ghost among his advisers. The far-off existence of
weak old Thomas cast its parting shadow across his son’s career.
However, even our Dreyfus case drew from Lincoln another display of that
settled conviction of his that part of his function was to be scapegoat.
“I serve,” which in a way might be taken as his motto always, was
peculiarly his motto, and likewise his redemption, in this period of his
weakness. The enemies of the Committee in Congress took the matter up and
denounced Stanton. Thereupon, Wade flamed forth, criticizing Lincoln for
his leniency, venting his fury on all those who were tender of their
enemies, storming that “mercy to traitors is cruelty to loyal men.”(12)
Lincoln replied neither to Wade nor to his antagonists; but, without
explaining the case, without a word upon the relation to it of the
Secretary and the Committee, he informed the Senate that the President was
alone responsible for the arrest and imprisonment of General Stone.(13)
XX. IS CONGRESS THE PRESIDENT’S MASTER?
The period of Lincoln’s last eclipse is a period of relative silence. But
his mind was not inactive. He did not cease thinking upon the deep
theoretical distinctions that were separating him by a steadily widening
chasm from the most powerful faction in Congress. In fact, his mental
powers were, if anything, more keen than ever before. Probably, it was the
very clearness of the mental vision that enfeebled him when it came to
action. He saw his difficulties with such crushing certainty. During this
trying period there is in him something of Hamlet.
The reaction to his ideas, to what is either expressed or implied, in the
first and second messages, was prompt to appear. The Jacobins did not
confine their activities within the scope of the terrible Committee. Wade
and Chandler worked assiduously undermining his strength in Congress.
Trumbull, though always less extreme than they, was still the victim of
his delusion that Lincoln was a poor creature, that the only way to save
the country was to go along with those grim men of strength who dominated
the Committee. In January, a formidable addition appeared in the ranks of
Lincoln’s opponents. Thaddeus Stevens made a speech in the House that
marks a chapter. It brought to a head a cloud of floating opposition and
dearly defined an issue involving the central proposition in Lincoln’s
theory of the government. The Constitution of the United States, in its
detailed provisions, is designed chiefly to meet the exigencies of peace.
With regard to the abnormal conditions of war, it is relatively silent.
Certain “war powers” are recognized but not clearly defined; nor is it
made perfectly plain what branch of the government possesses them. The
machinery for their execution is assumed but not described—as when
the Constitution provides that the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus
are to be suspended only in time of war, but does not specify by whom, or
in what way, the suspension is to be effected. Are those undefined “war
powers,” which are the most sovereign functions of our government, vested
in Congress or in the President? Lincoln, from the moment he defined his
policy, held tenaciously to the theory that all these extraordinary powers
are vested in the President. By implication, at least, this idea is in the
first message. Throughout the latter part of 1861, he put the theory into
practice. Whatever seemed to him necessary in a state of war, he did, even
to the arresting of suspected persons, refusing them the privilege-of the
habeas corpus, and retaining them in prison without trial. During 1861, he
left the exercise of this sovereign authority to the discretion of the two
Secretaries of War and of State.
Naturally, the Abolitionists, the Jacobins, the Democratic machine,
conscientious believers in the congressional theory of the government,
every one who for any reason, wanted to hit the Administration, united in
a chorus of wrath over arbitrary arrests. The greatest orator of the time,
Wendell Phillips, the final voice of Abolition, flayed the government in
public speeches for reducing America to an absolute despotism. Trumbull
introduced into the Senate a resolution calling upon the President for a
statement of the facts as to what he had actually done.(1)
But the subject of arrests was but the prelude to the play. The real issue
was the theory of the government. Where in last analysis does the
Constitution place the ultimate powers of sovereignty, the war powers? In
Congress or in the President? Therefore, in concrete terms, is Congress
the President’s master, or is it only one branch of the government with a
definite but united activity of its own, without that sweeping sovereign
authority which in course of time has been acquired by its parent body,
the Parliament of Great Britain?
On this point Lincoln never wavered. From first to last, he was determined
not to admit that Congress had the powers of Parliament. No sooner had the
politicians made out this attitude than their attack on it began. It did
not cease until Lincoln’s death. It added a second constitutional question
to the issues of the war. Not only the issue whether a State had a right
to secede, but also the issue of the President’s possession of the war
powers of the Constitution. Time and again the leaders of disaffection in
his own party, to say nothing of the violent Democrats, exhausted their
rhetoric denouncing Lincoln’s position. They did not deny themselves the
delights of the sneer. Senator Grimes spoke of a call on the President as
an attempt “to approach the footstool of power enthroned at the other end
of the Avenue.”(2) Wade expanded the idea: “We ought to have a committee
to wait on him whenever we send him a bill, to know what his royal
pleasure is with regard to it. . . . We are told that some gentlemen . . .
have been to see the President. Some gentlemen are very fortunate in that
respect. Nobody can see him, it seems, except some privileged gentlemen
who are charged with his constitutional conscience.”(3) As Lincoln kept
his doors open to all the world, as no one came and went with greater
freedom than the Chairman of the Committee, the sneer was-what one might
expect of the Committee. Sumner said: “I claim for Congress all that
belongs to any government in the exercise of the rights of war.”
Disagreement with him, he treated with unspeakable disdain: “Born in
ignorance and pernicious in consequence, it ought to be received with
hissings of contempt, and just in proportion as it obtains acceptance,
with execration.”(4) Henry Wilson declared that, come what might, the
policy of the Administration would be shaped by the two Houses. “I had
rather give a policy to the President of the United States than take a
policy from the President of the United States.”(5) Trumbull thundered
against the President’s theory as the last word in despotism.(6)
Such is the mental perspective in which to regard the speech of Stevens of
January 22, 1862. With masterly clearness, he put his finger on the heart
of the matter: the exceptional problems of a time of war, problems that
can not be foreseen and prepared for by anticipatory legislation, may be
solved in but one way, by the temporary creation of the dictator; this is
as true of modern America as of ancient Rome; so far, most people are
agreed; but this extraordinary function must not be vested in the
Executive; on the contrary, it must be, it is, vested in the Legislature.
Stevens did not hesitate to push his theory to its limit. He was not
afraid of making the Legislature in time of war the irresponsible judge of
its own acts. Congress, said he, has all possible powers of government,
even the dictator’s power; it could declare itself a dictator; under
certain circumstances he was willing that it should do so.(7)
The intellectual boldness of Lincoln was matched by an equal boldness.
Between them, he and Stevens had perfectly defined their issue. Granted
that a dictator was needed, which should it be—the President or
Congress?
In the hesitancy at the White House during the last eclipse, in the public
distress and the personal grief, Lincoln withheld himself from this
debate. No great utterances break the gloom of this period. Nevertheless,
what may be considered his reply to Stevens is to be found. Buried in the
forgotten portions of the Congressional Globe is a speech that surely was
inspired-or, if not directly inspired, so close a reflection of the
President’s thinking that it comes to the same thing at the end.
Its author, or apparent author, was one of the few serene figures in that
Thirty-Seventh Congress which was swept so pitilessly by epidemics of
passion. When Douglas, after coming out valiantly for the Union and
holding up Lincoln’s hands at the hour of crisis, suddenly died, the
Illinois Legislature named as his successor in the Senate, Orville Henry
Browning. The new Senator was Lincoln’s intimate friend. Their points of
view, their temperaments were similar. Browning shared Lincoln’s
magnanimity, his hatred of extremes, his eagerness not to allow the war to
degenerate into revolution. In the early part of 1862 he was Lincoln’s
spokesman in the Senate. Now that the temper of Wade and Chandler, the
ruthlessness that dominated the Committee, had drawn unto itself such a
cohort of allies; now that all their thinking had been organized by a
fearless mind; there was urgent need for a masterly reply. Did Lincoln
feel unequal, at the moment, to this great task? Very probably he did.
Anyhow, it was Browning who made the reply,(8) a reply so exactly in his
friend’s vein, that—there you are!
His aim was to explain the nature of those war powers of the government
“which lie dormant during time of peace,” and therefore he frankly put the
question, “Is Congress the government?” Senator Fessenden, echoing Stevens
had said, “There is no limit on the powers of Congress; everything must
yield to the force of martial law as resolved by Congress.” “There, sir,”
said Browning, “is as broad and deep a foundation for absolute despotism
as was ever laid.” He rang the changes on the need to “protect minorities
from the oppression and tyranny of excited majorities.”
He went on to lay the basis of all Lincoln’s subsequent defense of the
presidential theory as opposed to the congressional theory, by formulating
two propositions which reappear in some of Lincoln’s most famous papers.
Congress is not a safe vessel for extraordinary powers, because in our
system we have difficulty in bringing it definitely to an account under
any sort of plebiscite. On the other hand the President, if he abuses the
war powers “when peace returns, is answerable to the civil power for that
abuse.”
But Browning was not content to reason on generalities. Asserting that
Congress could no more command the army than it could adjudicate a case,
he further asserted that the Supreme Court had settled the matter and had
lodged the war powers in the President. He cited a decision called forth
by the legal question, “Can a Circuit Court of the United States inquire
whether a President had acted rightly in calling out the militia of a
State to suppress an insurrection?” “The elevated office of the
President,” said the Court, “chosen as he is by the People of the United
States, and the high responsibility he could not fail to feel when acting
in a case of such moment, appear to furnish as strong safeguards against
the wilful abuse of power as human prudence and foresight could well
devise. At all events, it is conferred upon him by the Constitution and
the laws of the United States, and therefore, must be respected and
enforced in its judicial tribunals.”(9)
Whether or not constitutional lawyers would agree with Browning in the
conclusion he drew from this decision, it was plainly the bed rock of his
thought. He believed that the President—whatever your mere historian
might have to say—was in point of fact the exponent of the people as
a whole, and therefore the proper vessel for the ultimate rights of a
sovereign, rights that only the people possess, that only the people can
delegate. And this was Lincoln’s theory. Roughly speaking, he-conceived of
the presidential office about as if it were the office of Tribune of the
People.
There was still another reason why both Lincoln and Browning feared to
yield anything to the theory of congressional supremacy. It was, in their
minds, not only the general question of all Congresses but immediately of
this particular Congress. An assembly in which the temper of Wade and
Chandler, of Stevens and Sumner, was entering the ascendent, was an
assembly to be feared; its supremacy was to be denied, its power was to be
fought.
Browning did not close without a startling passage flung square in the
teeth of the apostles of fury. He summed up the opposite temper, Lincoln’s
temper, in his description of “Our brethren of the South—for I am
willing to call them brethren; my heart yet yearns toward them with a
fervency of love which even their treason has not all extinguished, which
tempts me constantly to say in their behalf, ‘Father, forgive them, for
they know not what they do.'” He pleaded with the Senate not to consider
them “as public enemies but as insurgent citizens only,” and advocated an
Act of Amnesty restoring all political and property rights “instantly upon
their return to allegiance and submission to the authority of the
government.”
Had this narrowly constitutional issue arisen in quiet times, who can say
how slight might have been its significance? But Fate had decreed that it
should arise in the stormiest moment of our history. Millions of men and
women who cared nothing for constitutional theories, who were governed by
that passion to see immediate results which the thoughtless ever confuse
with achievement, these were becoming hysterical over delay. Why did not
the government do something? Everywhere voices were raised accusing the
President of cowardice. The mania of suspicion was not confined to the
Committee. The thoughts of a multitude were expressed by Congressman
Hickman in his foolish words, “These are days of irresponsibility and
imbecility, and we are required to perform two offices—the office of
legislator and the office of President.” The better part of a year had
passed since the day of Sumter, and still the government had no military
success to its credit. An impetuous people that lacked experience of war,
that had been accustomed in unusual measure to have its wishes speedily
gratified, must somehow be marshalled behind the government, unless the
alternative was the capture of power by the Congressional Cabal that was
forming against the President.
Entering upon the dark days of the first half of 1862, Lincoln had no
delusions about the task immediately before him. He must win battles;
otherwise, he saw no way of building up that popular support which alone
would enable him to keep the direction of policy in the hands of the
Executive, to keep it out of the hands of Congress. In a word, the
standing or falling of his power appeared to have been committed to the
keeping of the army. What the army would do with it, save his policy or
wreck his policy, was to no small degree a question of the character and
the abilities of the Commanding General.
XXI. THE STRUGGLE TO CONTROL THE ARMY
George Brinton McClellan, when at the age of thirty-four he was raised
suddenly to a dizzying height of fame and power, was generally looked upon
as a prodigy. Though he was not that, he had a real claim to distinction.
Had destiny been considerate, permitting him to rise gradually and to
mature as he rose, he might have earned a stable reputation high among
those who are not quite great. He had done well at West Point, and as a
very young officer in the Mexican War; he had represented his country as a
military observer with the allies in the Crimea; he was a good engineer,
and a capable man of business. His winning personality, until he went
wrong in the terrible days of 1862, inspired “a remarkable affection and
regard in every one from the President to the humblest orderly that waited
at his door.”(1) He was at home among books; he could write to his wife
that Prince Napoleon “speaks English very much as the Frenchmen do in the
old English comedies”;(2) he was able to converse in “French, Spanish,
Italian, German, in two Indian dialects and he knew a little Russian and
Turkish.” Men like Wade and Chandler probably thought of him as a
“highbrow,” and doubtless he irritated them by invariably addressing the
President as “Your Excellency.” He had the impulses as well as the
traditions of an elder day. But he had three insidious defects. At the
back of his mind there was a vein of theatricality, hitherto unrevealed,
that might, under sufficient stimulus, transform him into a poseur. Though
physically brave, he had in his heart, unsuspected by himself or others,
the dread of responsibility. He was void of humor. These damaging
qualities, brought out and exaggerated by too swift a rise to apparent
greatness, eventually worked his ruin. As an organizer he was
unquestionably efficient. His great achievement which secures him a
creditable place in American history was the conversion in the autumn of
1861 of a defeated rabble and a multitude of raw militia into a splendid
fighting machine. The very excellence of this achievement was part of his
undoing. It was so near to magical that it imposed on himself, gave him a
false estimate of himself, hid from him his own limitation. It imposed
also on his enemies. Crude, fierce men like the Vindictive leaders of
Congress, seeing this miracle take place so astoundingly soon, leaped at
once to the conclusion that he could, if he would, follow it by another
miracle. Having forged the thunderbolt, why could he not, if he chose,
instantly smite and destroy? All these hasty inexperienced zealots labored
that winter under the delusion that one great battle might end the war.
When McClellan, instead of rushing to the front, entered his second phase—the
one which he did not understand himself, which his enemies never
understood—when he entered upon his long course of procrastination,
the Jacobins, startled, dumfounded, casting about for reasons, could find
in their unanalytical vision, but one. When Jove did not strike, it must
be because Jove did not wish to strike. McClellan was delaying for a
purpose. Almost instantaneous was the whisper, followed quickly by the
outcry among the Jacobins, “Treachery! We are betrayed. He is in league
with the enemy.”
Their distrust was not allayed by the manner in which he conducted
himself. His views of life and of the office of commanding general were
not those of frontier America. He believed in pomp, in display, in an
ordered routine. The fine weather of the autumn of 1861 was utilized at
Washington for frequent reviews. The flutter of flags, the glint of
marching bayonets, the perfectly ordered rhythm of marching feet, the
blare of trumpets, the silvery notes of the bugles, the stormily rolling
drums, all these filled with martial splendor the golden autumn air when
the woods were falling brown. And everywhere, it seemed, look where one
might, a sumptuously uniformed Commanding General, and a numerous and
sumptuous staff, were galloping past, mounted on beautiful horses. Plain,
blunt men like the Jacobins, caring nothing for this ritual of command,
sneered. They exchanged stories of the elaborate dinners he was said to
give daily, the several courses, the abundance of wine, the numerous
guests; and after these dinners, he and his gorgeous staff, “clattering up
and down the public streets” merely to show themselves off. All this
sneering was wildly exaggerated. The mania of exaggeration, the mania of
suspicion, saturated the mental air breathed by every politician at
Washington, that desperate winter, except the great and lonely President
and the cynical Secretary of State.
McClellan made no concessions to the temper of the hour. With Lincoln, his
relations at first were cordial. Always he was punctiliously respectful to
“His Excellency.” It is plain that at first Lincoln liked him and that his
liking was worn away slowly. It is equally plain that Lincoln did not know
how to deal with him. The tendency to pose was so far from anything in
Lincoln’s make-up that it remained for him, whether in McClellan or
another, unintelligible. That humility which was so conspicuous in this
first period of his rule, led him to assume with his General a modest,
even an appealing tone. The younger man began to ring false by failing to
appreciate it. He even complained of it in a letter to his wife. The
military ritualist would have liked a more Olympian superior. And there is
no denying that his head was getting turned. Perhaps he had excuse. The
newspapers printed nonsensical editorials praising “the young Napoleon.”
His mail was filled with letters urging him to carry things with a high
hand; disregard, if necessary, the pusillanimous civil government, and
boldly “save the country.” He had so little humor that he could take this
stuff seriously. Among all the foolish letters which the executors of
famous men have permitted to see the light of publicity, few outdo a
letter of McClellan’s in which he confided to his wife that he was willing
to become dictator, should that be the only way out, and then, after
saving his country, to perish.(3)
In this lordly mood of the melodramatic, he gradually—probably
without knowing it—became inattentive to the President. Lincoln used
to go to his house to consult him, generally on foot, clad in very
ordinary clothes. He was known to sit in McClellan’s library “rather
unnoticed” awaiting the General’s pleasure.(4)
At last the growing coolness of McClellan went so far that an event
occurred which Hay indignantly set down in his diary: “I wish here to
record what I consider a portent of evil to come. The President, Governor
Seward and I went over to McClellan’s house tonight. The servant at the
door said the General was at the wedding of Colonel Wheaton at General
Buell’s and would soon return. We went in and after we had waited about an
hour, McClellan came in, and without paying particular attention to the
porter who told him the President was waiting to see him, went up-stairs,
passing the door of the room where the President and the Secretary of
State were seated. They waited about half an hour, and sent once more a
servant to tell the General they were there; and the answer came that the
General had gone to bed.
“I merely record this unparalleled insolence of epaulettes without comment
It is the first indication I have yet seen of the threatened supremacy of
the military authorities. Coming home, I spoke to the President about the
matter, but he seemed not to have noticed it specially, saying it were
better at this time not to be making points of etiquette and personal
dignity.”(5)
Did ever a subordinate, even a general, administer to a superior a more
astounding snub? To Lincoln in his selfless temper, it was Only a detail
in his problem of getting the army into action. What room for personal
affronts however gross in a mood like his? To be sure he ceased going to
McClellan’s house, and thereafter summoned McClellan to come to him, but
no change appeared in the tone of his intercourse with the General. “I
will hold McClellan’s horse,” said he, “if he will win me victories.”(6)
All this while, the two were debating plans of campaign and McClellan was
revealing-as we now see, though no one saw it at the time-the deep dread
of responsibility that was destined to paralyze him as an active general.
He was never ready. Always, there must be more preparation, more men, more
this, more that.
In January, 1862, Lincoln, grown desperate because of hope deferred, made
the first move of a sort that was to be lamentably frequent the next six
months. He went over the head of the Commanding General, and, in order to
force a result, evoked a power not recognized in the military scheme of
things. By this time the popular adulation of McClellan was giving place
to a general imitation of the growling of the Jacobins, now well organized
in the terrible Committee and growing each day more and more hostile to
the Administration. Lincoln had besought McClellan to take into account
the seriousness of this rising tide of opposition.(7) His arguments made
no impression. McClellan would not recognize the political side of war. At
last, partly to allay the popular clamor, partly to force McClellan into a
corner, Lincoln published to the country a military program. He publicly
instructed the Commanding General to put all his forces in movement on all
fronts, on Washington’s birthday.(8)
From this moment the debate between the President and the General with
regard to plans of campaign approached the nature of a dispute. McClellan
repeated his demand for more time in which to prepare. He objected to the
course of advance which the President wished him to pursue. Lincoln,
seeing the situation first of all as a political problem, grounded his
thought upon two ideas neither of which was shared by McClellan: the idea
that the supreme consideration was the safety of Washington; the resultant
idea that McClellan should move directly south, keeping his whole army
constantly between Washington and the enemy. McClellan wished to treat
Washington as but one important detail in his strategy; he had a grandiose
scheme for a wide flanking movement, for taking the bulk of his army by
sea to the coast of Virginia, and thus to draw the Confederate army
homeward for a duel to the death under the walls of Richmond. Lincoln,
neither then nor afterward more than an amateur in strategy, was deeply
alarmed by this bold mode of procedure. His political instinct told him
that if there was any slip and Washington was taken, even briefly, by the
Confederates, the game was up. He was still further alarmed when he found
that some of the eider generals held views resembling his own.(9) To his
modest, still groping mind, this was a trying situation. In the President
lay the ultimate responsibility for every move the army should make. And
whose advice should he accept as authoritative? The first time he asked
himself that question, such peace of mind as had survived the harassing
year 1861 left him, not to return for many a day.
At this moment of crises, occurred one of his keenest personal
afflictions. His little son Willie sickened and died. Lincoln’s relation
to his children was very close, very tender. Many anecdotes show this boy
frolicking about the White House, a licensed intruder everywhere. Another
flood of anecdotes preserve the stupefying grief of his father after the
child’s death. Of these latter, the most extreme which portray Lincoln
toward the close of February so unnerved as to be incapable of public
duty, may be dismissed as apocryphal. But there can be no doubt that his
unhappiness was too great for the vain measurement of descriptive words;
that it intensified the nervous mood which had already possessed him; that
anxiety, deepening at times into terrible alarm, became his constant
companion.
In his dread and sorrow, his dilemma grew daily more intolerable.
McClellan had opposed so stoutly the Washington birthday order that
Lincoln had permitted him to ignore it. He was still wavering which advice
to take, McClellan’s or the elder generals’. To remove McClellan, to try
at this critical moment some other general, did not occur to him as a
rational possibility. But somehow he felt he must justify himself to
himself for yielding to McClellan’ s views. In his zeal to secure some
judgment more authoritative than his own, he took a further step along the
dangerous road of going over the Commander’s head, of bringing to bear
upon him influences not strictly included in the military system. He
required McClellan to submit his plan to a council of his general
officers. Lincoln attended this council and told the generals “he was not
a military man and therefore would be governed by the opinion of a
majority.”(10) The council decided in McClellan’s favor by a vote of eight
to four. This was a disappointment to Lincoln. So firm was his addiction
to the overland route that he could not rest content with the council’s
decision. Stanton urged him to disregard it, sneering that the eight who
voted against him were McClellan’s creatures, his “pets.” But Lincoln
would not risk going against the majority of the council. “We are
civilians,” said he, “we should justly be held responsible for any
disaster if we set up our opinions against those of experienced military
men in the practical management of a campaign.”(11)
Nevertheless, from this quandary, in which his reason forced him to do one
thing while all his sensibilities protested, he extricated himself in a
curious way. Throughout the late winter he had been the object of a
concerted attack from Stanton and the Committee. The Committee had tacitly
annexed Stanton. He conferred with them confidentially. At each important
turn of events, he and they always got together in a secret powwow. As
early as February twentieth, when Lincoln seemed to be breaking down with
grief and anxiety, one of those secret conferences of the high
conspirators ended in a determination to employ all their forces, direct
and indirect, to bring about McClellan’s retirement. They were all victims
of that mania of suspicion which was the order of the day. “A majority of
the Committee,” wrote its best member, long afterward when he had come to
see things in a different light, “strongly suspected that General
McClellan was a traitor.” Wade vented his spleen in furious words about
“King McClellan.” Unrestrained by Lincoln’s anguish, the Committee
demanded a conference a few days after his son’s death and threatened an
appeal from President to Congress if he did not quickly force McClellan to
advance.(12)
All this while the Committee was airing another grievance. They clamored
to have the twelve divisions of the army of the Potomac grouped into
corps. They gave as their motive, military efficiency. And perhaps they
thought they meant it. But there was a cat in the bag which they carefully
tried to conceal. The generals of divisions formed two distinct groups,
the elder ones who did not owe their elevation to McClellan and the
younger ones who did. The elder generals, it happened, sympathized
generally with the Committee in politics, or at least did not sympathize
with McClellan. The younger generals reflected the politics of their
patron. And McClellan was a Democrat, a hater of the Vindictives,
unsympathetic with Abolition. Therefore, the mania of suspicion being in
full flood, the Committee would believe no good of McClellan when he
opposed advancing the elder generals to the rank of corps commanders. His
explanation that he “wished to test them in the field,” was poohpoohed.
Could not any good Jacobin see through that! Of course, it was but an
excuse to hold back the plums until he could drop them into the itching
palms of those wicked Democrats, his “pets.” Why should not the good men
and true, elder and therefore better soldiers, whose righteousness was so
well attested by their political leanings, why should not they have the
places of power to which their rank entitled them?
Hitherto, however, Lincoln had held out against the Committee’s demand and
bad refused to compel McClellan to reorganize his army against his will.
He now observed that in the council which cast the die against the
overland route, the division between the two groups of generals, what we
may call the Lincoln generals and the McClellan generals, was sharply
evident. The next day he issued a general order which organized the army
of the Potomac into corps, and promoted to the rank of corps commanders,
those elder generals whose point of view was similar to his own.(13)
Thereafter, any reference of crucial matters to a council of general
officers, would mean submitting it, not to a dozen commanders of divisions
with McClellan men in the majority, but to four or five commanders of
corps none of whom was definitely of the McClellan faction. Thus McClellan
was virtually put under surveillance of an informal war council
scrutinizing his course from the President’s point of view. It was this
reduced council of the subordinates, as will presently appear, that made
the crucial decision of the campaign.
On the same day Lincoln issued another general order accepting McClellan’s
plan for a flanking movement to the Virginia coast.(14) The Confederate
lines at this time ran through Manassas—the point Lincoln wished
McClellan to strike. It was to be known later that the Confederate General
gave to Lincoln’s views the high endorsement of assuming that they were
the inevitable views that the Northern Commander, if he knew his business,
would act upon. Therefore, he had been quietly preparing to withdraw his
army to more defensible positions farther South. By a curious coincidence,
his “strategic retreat” occurred immediately after McClellan had been
given authority to do what he liked. On the ninth of March it was known at
Washington that Manassas had been evacuated. Whereupon, McClellan’s fatal
lack of humor permitted him to make a great blunder. The man who had
refused to go to Manassas while the Confederates were there, marched an
army to Manassas the moment he heard that they were gone—and then
marched back again. This performance was instantly fixed upon for ridicule
as McClellan’s “promenade to Manassas.”
To Lincoln the news of the promenade seemed both a vindication of his own
plan and crushing evidence that if he had insisted on his plan, the
Confederate army would have been annihilated, the war in one cataclysm
brought to an end. He was ridden, as most men were, by the delusion of one
terrific battle that was to end all. In a bitterness of disappointment,
his slowly tortured spirit burst into rage. The Committee was delighted.
For once, they approved of him. The next act of this man, ordinarily so
gentle, seems hardly credible. By a stroke of his pen, he stripped
McClellan of the office of Commanding General, reduced him to the rank of
mere head of a local army, the army of the Potomac; furthermore, he
permitted him to hear of his degradation through the heartless medium of
the daily papers.(15) The functions of Commanding General were added to
the duties of the Secretary of War. Stanton, now utterly merciless toward
McClellan, instantly took possession of his office and seized his papers,
for all the world as if he were pouncing upon the effects of a malefactor.
That McClellan was not yet wholly spoiled was shown by the way he received
this blow. It was the McClellan of the old days, the gallant gentleman of
the year 1860, not the poseur of 1861, who wrote at once to Lincoln making
no complaint, saying that his services belonged to his country in whatever
capacity they might be required.
Again a council of subordinates was invoked to determine the next move.
McClellan called together the newly made corps commanders and obtained
their approval of a variation of his former plan. He now proposed to use
Fortress Monroe as a base, and thence conduct an attack upon Richmond.
Again, though with a touch of sullenness very rare in Lincoln, the
President acquiesced. But he added a condition to McClellan’s plan by
issuing positive orders, March thirteenth, that it should not be carried
out unless sufficient force was left at Washington to render the city
impregnable.
During the next few days the Committee must have been quite satisfied with
the President. For him, he was savage. The normal Lincoln, the man of
immeasurable mercy, had temporarily vanished. McClellan’s blunder had
touched the one spring that roused the tiger in Lincoln. By letting slip a
chance to terminate the war—as it seemed to that deluded Washington
of March, 1862—McClellan had converted Lincoln from a brooding
gentleness to an incarnation of the last judgment. He told Hay he thought
that in permitting McClellan to retain any command, he had shown him “very
great kindness.”(16) Apparently, he had no consciousness that he had been
harsh in the mode of McClellan’s abatement, no thought of the fine
manliness of McClellan’s reply.
During this period of Lincoln’s brief vengefulness, Stanton thought that
his time for clearing scores with McClellan had come. He even picked out
the man who was to be rushed over other men’s heads to the command of the
army of the Potomac. General Hitchcock, an accomplished soldier of the
regular army, a grandson of Ethan Allen, who had grown old in honorable
service, was summoned to Washington, and was “amazed” by having plumped at
him the question, would he consent to succeed McClellan? Though General
Hitchcock was not without faults—and there is an episode in his
later relations with McClellan which his biographer discreetly omits—he
was a modest man. He refused to consider Stanton’s offer. But he consented
to become the confidential adviser of the War Office. This was done after
an interview with Lincoln who impressed on Hitchcock his sense of a great
responsibility and of the fact that he “had no military knowledge” and
that he must have advice.(17) Out of this congested sense of helplessness
in Lincoln, joined with the new labors of the Secretary of War as
executive head of all the armies, grew quickly another of those
ill-omened, extra-constitutional war councils, one more wheel within the
wheels, that were all doing their part to make the whole machine
unworkable; distributing instead of concentrating power. This new council
which came to be known as the Army Board, was made up of the heads of the
Bureaus of the War Department with the addition of Hitchcock as “Advising
General.” Of the temper of the Army Board, composed as it was entirely of
the satellites of Stanton, a confession in Hitchcock’s diary speaks
volumes. On the evening of the first day of their new relation, Stanton
poured out to him such a quantity of oral evidence of McClellan’s
“incompetency” as to make this new recruit for anti-McClellanism “feel
positively sick.”(18)
By permitting this added source of confusion among his advisers, Lincoln
treated himself much as he had already treated McClellan. By going over
McClellan’s head to take advice from his subordinates he had put the
General on a leash; now, by setting Hitchcock and the experts in the seat
of judgment, he virtually, for a short while, put himself on a leash. Thus
had come into tacit but real power three military councils none of which
was recognized as such by law—the Council of the Subordinates behind
McClellan; the Council of the Experts behind Lincoln; the Council of the
Jacobins, called The Committee, behind them all.
The political pressure on Lincoln now changed its tack. Its unfailing zeal
to discredit McClellan assumed the form of insisting that he had a secret
purpose in waiting to get his army away from Washington, that he was
scheming to leave the city open to the Confederates, to “uncover” it, as
the soldiers said. By way of focussing the matter on a definite issue, his
enemies demanded that he detach from his army and assign to the defense of
Washington, a division which was supposed to be peculiarly efficient
General Blenker had recruited a sort of “foreign legion,” in which were
many daring adventurers who had seen service in European armies. Blenker’s
was the division demanded. So determined was the pressure that Lincoln
yielded. However, his brief anger had blown itself out. To continue
vengeful any length of time was for Lincoln impossible. He was again the
normal Lincoln, passionless, tender, fearful of doing an injustice,
weighed down by the sense of responsibility. He broke the news about
Blenker in a personal note to McClellan that was almost apologetic. “I
write this to assure you that I did so with great pain, understanding that
you would wish it otherwise. If you could know the full pressure of the
case, I am confident you would justify it.”(19) In conversation, he
assured McClellan that no other portion of his army should be taken from
him.(20)
The change in Lincoln’s mood exasperated Stanton. He called on his pals in
the Committee for another of those secret confabulations in which both he
and they delighted. Speaking with scorn of Lincoln’s return to
magnanimity, he told them that the President had “gone back to his first
love,” the traitor McClellan. Probably all those men who wagged their
chins in that conference really believed that McClellan was aiming to
betray them. One indeed, Julian, long afterward had the largeness of mind
to confess his fault and recant. The rest died in their absurd delusion,
maniacs of suspicion to the very end. At the time all of them laid their
heads together—for what purpose? Was it to catch McClellan in a
trap?
Meanwhile, in obedience to Lincoln’s orders of March thirteenth, McClellan
drew up a plan for the defense of Washington. As Hitchcock was now in such
high feather, McClellan sent his plan to the new favorite of the War
Office, for criticism. Hitchcock refused to criticize, and when
McClellan’s chief of staff pressed for “his opinion, as an old and
experienced officer,” Hitchcock replied that McClellan had had ample
opportunity to know what was needed, and persisted in his refusal.(21)
McClellan asked no further advice and made his arrangements to suit
himself. On April first he took boat at Alexandria for the front. Part of
his army had preceded him. The remainder-except the force he had assigned
to the defense of Washington-was speedily to follow.
With McClellan’s departure still another devotee of suspicion moves to the
front of the stage. This was General Wadsworth. Early in March, Stanton
had told McClellan that he wanted Wadsworth as commander of the defenses
of Washington. McClellan had protested. Wadsworth was not a military man.
He was a politician turned soldier who had tried to be senator from New
York and failed; tried to be governor and failed; and was destined to try
again to be governor, and again to fail. Why should such a person be
singled out to become responsible for the safety of the capital? Stanton’s
only argument was that the appointment of Wadsworth was desirable for
political reasons. He added that it would be made whether McClellan liked
it or not. And made it was.(22) Furthermore, Wadsworth, who had previously
professed friendship for McClellan, promptly joined the ranks of his
enemies. Can any one doubt, Stanton being Stanton, mad with distrust of
McClellan, that Wadsworth was fully informed of McClellan’s opposition to
his advancement?
On the second of April Wadsworth threw a bomb after the vanishing
McClellan, then aboard his steamer somewhere between Washington and
Fortress Monroe. Wadsworth informed Stanton that McClellan had not carried
out the orders of March thirteenth, that the force he had left at
Washington was inadequate to its safety, that the capital was “uncovered.”
Here was a chance for Stanton to bring to bear on Lincoln both those
unofficial councils that were meddling so deeply in the control of the
army. He threw this firebrand of a report among his satellites of the Army
Board and into the midst of the Committee.2(3)
It is needless here to go into the furious disputes that ensued-the
accusations, the recriminations, the innuendoes! McClellan stoutly
insisted that he had obeyed both the spirit and the letter of March
thirteenth; that Washington was amply protected. His enemies shrieked that
his statements were based on juggled figures; that even if the number of
soldiers was adequate, the quality and equipment were wretched; in a word
that he lied. It is a shame-less controversy inconceivable were there not
many men in whom politics and prejudice far outweighed patriotism. In all
this, Hitchcock was Stanton’s trump card. He who had refused to advise
McClellan, did not hesitate to denounce him. In response to a request from
Stanton, he made a report sustaining Wadsworth. The Committee summoned
Wadsworth before it; he read them his report to Stanton; reiterated its
charges, and treated them to some innuendoes after their own hearts,
plainly hinting that McClellan could have crushed the Confederates at
Manassas if he had wished to.(24)
A wave of hysteria swept the Committee and the War Office and beat
fiercely upon Lincoln. The Board charged him to save the day by mulcting
the army of the Potomac of an entire corps, retaining it at Washington.
Lincoln met the Board in a long and troubled conference. His anxious
desire to do all he could for McClellan was palpable.(25) But what, under
the circumstances, could he do? Here was this new device for the steadying
of his judgment, this Council of Experts, singing the same old tune,
assuring him that McClellan was not to be trusted. Although in the
reaction from his momentary vengefulness he had undoubtedly swung far back
toward recovering confidence in McClellan, did he dare—painfully
conscious as he was that he “had no military knowledge”—did he dare
go against the Board, disregard its warning that McClellan’s arrangements
made of Washington a dangling plum for Confederate raiders to snatch
whenever they pleased. His bewilderment as to what McClellan was really
driving at came back upon him in full force. He reached at last the dreary
conclusion that there was nothing for it but to let the new wheel within
the wheels take its turn at running the machine. Accepting the view that
McClellan had not kept faith on the basis of the orders of March
thirteenth, Lincoln “after much consideration” set aside his own promise
to McClellan and authorized the Secretary of War to detain a full
corps.(26)
McClellan never forgave this mutilation of his army and in time fixed upon
it as the prime cause of his eventual failure on the Peninsula. It is
doubtful whether relations between him and Lincoln were ever again really
cordial.
In their rather full correspondence during the tense days of April, May
and June, the steady deterioration of McClellan’s judgment bore him down
into amazing depths of fatuousness. In his own way he was as much appalled
by the growth of his responsibility as ever Lincoln had been. He moved
with incredible caution.*
His despatches were a continual wailing for more men. Whatever went wrong
was at once blamed on Washington. His ill-usage had made him bitter. And
he could not escape the fact that his actual performance did not come up
to expectation; that he was constantly out-generaled. His prevailing
temper during these days is shown in a letter to his wife. “I have raised
an awful row about McDowell’s corps. The President very coolly telegraphed
me yesterday that he thought I ought to break the enemy’s lines at once. I
was much tempted to reply that he had better come and do it himself.” A
despatch to Stanton, in a moment of disaster, has become notorious: “If I
save this army now, I tell you plainly I owe no thanks to you or to any
other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this
army.”(27)
Throughout this preposterous correspondence, Lincoln maintained the even
tenor of his usual patient stoicism, “his sad lucidity of soul.” He
explained; he reasoned; he promised, over and over, assistance to the
limit of his power; he never scolded; when complaint became too absurd to
be reasoned with, he passed it over in silence. Again, he was the selfless
man, his sensibilities lost in the purpose he sought to establish.
Once during this period, he acted suddenly, on the spur of the moment, in
a swift upflaring of his unconquerable fear for the safety of Washington.
Previously, he had consented to push the detained corps, McDowell’s,
southward by land to cooperate with McClellan, who adapted his plans to
this arrangement. Scarcely had he done so, than Lincoln threw his plans
into confusion by ordering McDowell back to Washington.(28) Jackson, who
had begun his famous campaign of menace, was sweeping like a whirlwind
down the Shenandoah Valley, and in the eyes of panic-struck Washington
appeared to be a reincarnation of Southey’s Napoleon,—
into Pennsylvania Avenue. As Jackson’s object was to bring McDowell back
to Washington and enable Johnston to deal with McClellan unreinforced,
Lincoln had fallen into a trap. But he had much company. Stanton was
well-nigh out of his head. Though Jackson’s army was less than fifteen
thousand and the Union forces in front of him upward of sixty thousand,
Stanton telegraphed to Northern governors imploring them to hasten forward
militia because “the enemy in great force are marching on Washington.”(29)
The moment Jackson had accomplished his purpose, having drawn a great army
northwestward away from McClellan, most of which should have been marching
southeastward to join McClellan, he slipped away, rushed his own army
across the whole width of Virginia, and joined Lee in the terrible
fighting of the Seven Days before Richmond.
In the midst of this furious confusion, the men surrounding Lincoln may be
excused for not observing a change in him. They have recorded his
appearance of indecision, his solicitude over McClellan, his worn and
haggard look. The changing light in those smoldering fires of his deeply
sunken eyes escaped their notice. Gradually, through profound unhappiness,
and as always in silence, Lincoln was working out of his last eclipse. No
certain record of his inner life during this transition, the most
important of his life, has survived. We can judge of it only by the
results. The outstanding fact with regard to it is a certain change of
attitude, an access of determination, late in June. What desperate
wrestling with the angel had taken place in the months of agony since his
son’s death, even his private secretaries have not felt able to say.
Neither, apparently, did they perceive, until it flashed upon them
full-blown, the change that was coming over his resolution. Nor did the
Cabinet have any warning that the President was turning a corner,
developing a new phase of himself, something sterner, more powerful than
anything they had suspected. This was ever his way. His instinctive
reticence stood firm until the moment of the new birth. Not only the
Cabinet but the country was amazed and startled, when, late in June, the
President suddenly left Washington. He made a flying trip to West Point
where Scott was living in virtual retirement.(30) What passed between the
two, those few hours they spent together, that twenty-fourth of June,
1862, has never been divulged. Did they have any eyes, that day, for the
wonderful prospect from the high terrace of the parade ground; for the
river so far below, flooring the valley with silver; for the mountains
pearl and blue? Did they talk of Stanton, of his waywardness, his furies?
Of the terrible Committee? Of the way Lincoln had tied his own hands,
brought his will to stalemate, through his recognition of the unofficial
councils? Who knows?
Lincoln was back in Washington the next day. Another day, and by a
sweeping order he created a new army for the protection of Washington, and
placed in command of it, a western general who was credited with a
brilliant stroke on the Mississippi.(31) No one will now defend the
military genius of John Pope. But when Lincoln sent for him, all the
evidence to date appeared to be in his favor. His follies were yet to
appear. And it is more than likely that in the development of Lincoln’s
character, his appointment has a deep significance. It appears to mark the
moment when Lincoln broke out of the cocoon of advisement he had spun
unintentionally around his will. In the sorrows of the grim year, new
forces had been generated. New spiritual powers were coming to his
assistance. At last, relatively, he had found peace. Worn and torn as he
was, after his long inward struggle, few bore so calmly as he did the
distracting news from the front in the closing days of June and the
opening days of July, when Lee was driving his whole strength like a
superhuman battering-ram, straight at the heart of the wavering McClellan.
A visitor at the White House, in the midst of the terrible strain of the
Seven Days, found Lincoln “thin and haggard, but cheerful . . . quite as
placid as usual . . . his manner was so kindly and so free from the
ordinary cocksureness of the politician, and the vanity and
self-importance of official position that nothing but good will was
inspired by his presence.”(32)
His serenity was all the more remarkable as his relations with Congress
and the Committee were fast approaching a crisis. If McClellan failed-and
by the showing of his own despatches, there was every reason to expect him
to fail, so besotted was he upon the idea that no one could prevail with
the force allowed him—the Committee who were leaders of the
congressional party against the presidential party might be expected
promptly to measure strength with the Administration. And McClellan
failed. At that moment Chandler, with the consent of the Committee, was
making use of its records preparing a Philippic against the government.
Lincoln, acting on his own initiative, without asking the Secretary of War
to accompany him, went immediately to the front. He passed two days
questioning McClellan and his generals.(33) But there was no council of
war. It was a different Lincoln from that other who, just four months
previous, had called together the general officers and promised them to
abide by their decisions. He returned to Washington without telling them
what he meant to do.
The next day closed a chapter and opened a chapter in the history of the
Federal army. Stanton’s brief and inglorious career as head of the
national forces came to an end. He fell back into his rightful position,
the President’s executive officer in military affairs. Lincoln telegraphed
another Western general, Halleck, ordering him to Washington as
General-in-Chief.(34) He then, for a season, turned his whole attention
from the army to politics. Five days after the telegram to Halleck,
Chandler in the Senate, loosed his insatiable temper in what ostensibly
was a denunciation of McClellan, what in point of fact was a sweeping
arraignment of the military efficiency of the government.(35)
XXII. LINCOLN EMERGES
While Lincoln was slowly struggling out of his last eclipse, giving most
of his attention to the army, the Congressional Cabal was laboring
assiduously to force the issue upon slavery. The keen politicians who
composed it saw with unerring vision where, for the moment, lay their
opportunity. They could not beat the President on any one issue then
before the country. No one faction was strong enough to be their stand-by.
Only by a combination of issues and a coalition of factions could they
build up an anti-Lincoln party, check-mate the Administration, and get
control of the government. They were greatly assisted by the fatuousness
of the Democrats. That party was in a peculiar situation. Its most
positive characters, naturally, had taken sides for or against the
government. The powerful Southerners who had been its chief leaders were
mainly in the Confederacy. Such Northerners as Douglas and Stanton, and
many more, had gone over to the Republicans. Suddenly the control of the
party organization had fallen into the hands of second-rate men. As by the
stroke of an enchanter’s wand, men of small caliber who, had the old
conditions remained, would have lived and died of little consequence saw
opening before them the role of leadership. It was too much for their
mental poise. Again the subjective element in politics! The Democratic
party for the duration of the war became the organization of Little Men.
Had they possessed any great leaders, could they have refused to play
politics and responded to Lincoln’s all-parties policy, history might have
been different. But they were not that sort. Neither did they have the
courage to go to the other extreme and become a resolute opposition party,
wholeheartedly and intelligently against the war. They equivocated, they
obstructed, they professed loyalty and they practised-it would be hard to
say what! So short-sighted was their political game that its effect
continually was to play into the hands of their most relentless enemies,
the grim Jacobins.
Though, for a brief time while the enthusiasm after Sumter was still at
its height they appeared to go along with the all-parties program, they
soon revealed their true course. In the autumn of 1861, Lincoln still had
sufficient hold upon all factions to make it seem likely that his
all-parties program would be given a chance. The Republicans generally
made overtures to the Democratic managers, offering to combine in a
coalition party with no platform but the support of the war and the
restoration of the Union. Here was the test of the organization of the
Little Men. The insignificant new managers, intoxicated by the suddenness
of their opportunity, rang false. They rejected the all-parties program
and insisted on maintaining their separate party formation.(1) This was a
turning point in Lincoln’s career. Though nearly two years were to pass
before he admitted his defeat, the all-parties program was doomed from
that hour. Throughout the winter, the Democrats in Congress, though
steadily ambiguous in their statements of principle, were as steadily
hostile to Lincoln. If they had any settled policy, it was no more than an
attempt to hold the balance of power among the warring factions of the
Republicans. By springtime the game they were playing was obvious; also
its results. They had prevented the President from building up a strong
Administration group wherewith he might have counterbalanced the Jacobins.
Thus they had released the Jacobins from the one possible restraint that
might have kept them from pursuing their own devices.
The spring of 1862 saw a general realignment of factions. It was then that
the Congressional Cabal won its first significant triumph. Hitherto, all
the Republican platforms had been programs of denial. A brilliant new
member of the Senate, john Sherman, bluntly told his colleagues that the
Republican party had always stood on the defensive. That was its weakness.
“I do not know any measure on which it has taken an aggressive
position.”(2) The clue to the psychology of the moment was in the raging
demand of the masses for a program of assertion, for aggressive measures.
The President was trying to meet this demand with his all-parties program,
with his policy of nationalism, exclusive of everything else. And recently
he had added that other assertion, his insistence that the executive in
certain respects was independent of the legislative. Of his three
assertions, one, the all-parties program, was already on the way to defeat
Another, nationalism, as the President interpreted it, had alienated the
Abolitionists. The third, his argument for himself as tribune, was just
what your crafty politician might twist, pervert, load with false meanings
to his heart’s content. Men less astute than Chandler and Wade could not
have failed to see where fortune pointed. Their opportunity lay in a
combination of the two issues. Abolition and the resistance to executive
“usurpation.” Their problem was to create an anti-Lincoln party that
should also be a war party. Their coalition of aggressive forces must
accept the Abolitionists as its backbone, but it must also include all
violent elements of whatever persuasion, and especially all those that
could be wrought into fury on the theme of the President as a despot.
Above all, their coalition must absorb and then express the furious temper
so dear to their own hearts which they fondly believed-mistakenly, they
were destined to discover-was the temper of the country.
It can not be said that this was the Republican program. The President’s
program, fully as positive as that of the Cabal, had as good a right to
appropriate the party label—as events were to show, a better right.
But the power of the Cabal was very great, and the following it was able
to command in the country reached almost the proportions of the terrible.
A factional name is needed. For the Jacobins, their allies in Congress,
their followers in the country, from the time they acquired a positive
program, an accurate label is the Vindictives.
During the remainder of the session, Congress may be thought of as having—what
Congress seldom has—three definite groups, Right, Left and Center.
The Right was the Vindictives; the Left, the irreconcilable Democrats; the
Center was composed chiefly of liberal Republicans but included a few
Democrats, those who rebelled against the political chicanery of the
Little Men.
The policy of the Vindictives was to force upon the Administration the
double issue of emancipation and the supremacy of Congress. Therefore,
their aim was to pass a bill freeing the slaves on the sole authority of a
congressional act. Many resolutions, many bills, all having this end in
view, were introduced. Some were buried in committees; some were remade in
committees and subjected to long debate by the Houses; now and then one
was passed upon. But the spring wore through and the summer came, and
still the Vindictives were not certainly in control of Congress. No bill
to free slaves by congressional action secured a majority vote. At the
same time it was plain that the strength of the Vindictives was slowly,
steadily, growing.
Outside Congress, the Abolitionists took new hope. They had organized a
systematic propaganda. At Washington, weekly meetings were held in the
Smithsonian Institute, where all their most conspicuous leaders, Phillips,
Emerson, Brownson, Garret Smith, made addresses. Every Sunday a service
was held in the chamber of the House of Representatives and the sermon was
almost always a “terrific arrangement of slavery.” Their watch-word was “A
Free Union or Disintegration.” The treatment of fugitive slaves by
commanders in the field produced a clamor. Lincoln insisted on strict
obedience to the two laws, the Fugitive Slave Act and the First
Confiscation Act. Abolitionists sneered at “all this gabble about the
sacredness of the Constitution.”(3) But Lincoln was not to be moved. When
General Hunter, taking a leaf from the book of Fremont, tried to force his
hand, he did not hesitate. Hunter had issued a proclamation by which the
slaves in the region where he commanded were “declared forever free.”
This was in May when Lincoln’s difficulties with McClellan were at their
height; when the Committee was zealously watching to catch him in any sort
of mistake; when the House was within four votes of a majority for
emancipation by act of Congress;(4) when there was no certainty whether
the country was with him or with the Vindictives. Perhaps that new courage
which definitely revealed itself the next month, may be first glimpsed in
the proclamation overruling Hunter:
“I further make known that whether it be competent for me, as
Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, to declare the slaves of any
State or States free, and whether at any time, in any case, it shall have
become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the government to
exercise such supposed power, are questions which, under my
responsibility, I reserve to myself, and which I can not feel justified in
leaving to the decision of commanders in the field.”(5)
The revocation of Hunter’s order infuriated the Abolitionists. It deeply
disappointed the growing number who, careless about slavery, wanted
emancipation as a war measure, as a blow at the South. Few of either of
these groups noticed the implied hint that emancipation might come by
executive action. Here was the matter of the war powers in a surprising
form. However, it was not unknown to Congress. Attempts had been made to
induce Congress to concede the war powers to the President and to ask, not
command, him to use them for the liberation of slaves in the Seceded
States. Long before, in a strangely different connection, such vehement
Abolitionists as Giddings and J. Q. Adams had pictured the freeing of
slaves as a natural incident of military occupation.
What induced Lincoln to throw out this hint of a possible surrender on the
subject of emancipation? Again, as so often, the silence as to his motives
is unbroken. However, there can be no doubt that his thinking on the
subject passed through several successive stages. But all his thinking was
ruled by one idea. Any policy he might accept, or any refusal of policy,
would be judged in his own mind by the degree to which it helped, or
hindered, the national cause. Nothing was more absurd than the sneer of
the Abolitionists that he was “tender” of slavery. Browning spoke for him
faithfully, “If slavery can survive the shock of war and secession, be it
so. If in the conflict for liberty, the Constitution and the Union, it
must necessarily perish, then let it perish.” Browning refused to predict
which alternative would develop. His point was that slaves must be treated
like other property. But, if need be, he would sacrifice slavery as he
would sacrifice anything else, to save the Union. He had no intention to
“protect” slavery.(6)
In the first stage of Lincoln’s thinking on this thorny subject, his chief
anxiety was to avoid scaring off from the national cause those Southern
Unionists who were not prepared to abandon slavery. This was the motive
behind his prompt suppression of Fremont. It was this that inspired the
Abolitionist sneer about his relative attitude toward God and Kentucky. As
a compromise, to cut the ground from under the Vindictives, he had urged
the loyal Slave States to endorse a program of compensated emancipation.
But these States were as unable to see the handwriting on the wall as were
the Little Men. In the same proclamation that overruled Hunter, while
hinting at what the Administration might feel driven to do, Lincoln
appealed again to the loyal Slave States to accept compensated
emancipation. “I do not argue,” said he, “I beseech you to make the
argument for yourselves. You can not, if you would, be blind to the signs
of the times. . . . This proposal makes common cause for a common object,
casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it
contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or
wrecking anything.”(7)
Though Lincoln, at this moment, was anxiously watching the movement in
Congress to force his hand, he was not apparently cast down. He was
emerging from his eclipse. June was approaching and with it the final
dawn. Furthermore, when he issued this proclamation on May nineteenth, he
had not lost faith in McClellan. He was still hoping for news of a
crushing victory; of McClellan’s triumphal entry into Richmond. The next
two months embraced both those transformations which together
revolutionized his position. He emerged from his last eclipse; and
McClellan failed him.
When Lincoln returned to Washington after his two days at the front, he
knew that the fortunes of his Administration were at a low ebb. Never had
he been derided in Congress with more brazen injustice. The Committee,
waiting only for McClellan’s failure, would now unmask their guns-as
Chandler did, seven days later. The line of Vindictive criticism could
easily be foreshadowed: the government had failed; it was responsible for
a colossal military catastrophe; but what could you expect of an
Administration that would not strike its enemies through emancipation;
what a shattering demonstration that the Executive was not a safe
repository of the war powers.
Was there any way to forestall or disarm the Vindictives? His silence
gives us no clue when or how the answer occurred to him—by
separating the two issues; by carrying out the hint in the May
proclamation; by yielding on emancipation while, in the very act, pushing
the war powers of the President to their limit, declaring slaves free by
an executive order.
The importance of preserving the war power of the President had become a
fixed condition of Lincoln’s thought. Already, he was looking forward not
only to victory but to the great task that should come after victory. He
was determined, if it were humanly possible, to keep that task in the
hands of the President, and out of the hands of Congress. A first step had
already been taken. In portions of occupied territory, military governors
had been appointed. Simple as this seemed to the careless observer, it
focussed the whole issue. The powerful, legal mind of Sumner at once
perceived its significance. He denied in the Senate the right of the
President to make such appointments; he besought the Senate to demand the
cancellation of such appointment. He reasserted the absolute sovereignty
of Congress.(8) It would be a far-reaching stroke if Lincoln, in any way,
could extort from Congress acquiescence in his use of the war powers on a
vast scale. Freeing the slaves by executive order would be such a use.
Another train of thought also pointed to the same result. Lincoln’s desire
to further the cause of “the Liberal party throughout the world,” that
desire which dated back to his early life as a politician, had suffered a
disappointment. European Liberals, whose political vision was less
analytical than his, had failed to understand his policy. The Confederate
authorities had been quick to publish in Europe his official
pronouncements that the war had been undertaken not to abolish slavery but
to preserve the Union. As far back as September, 1861, Carl Schurz wrote
from Spain to Seward that the Liberals abroad were disappointed, that “the
impression gained ground that the war as waged by the Federal government,
far from being a war of principle, was merely a war of policy,” and “that
from this point of view much might be said for the South.”(9) In fact,
these hasty Europeans had found a definite ground for complaining that the
American war was a reactionary influence. The concentration of American
cruisers in the Southern blockade gave the African slave trade its last
lease of life. With no American war-ship among the West Indies, the
American flag became the safeguard of the slaver. Englishmen complained
that “the swift ships crammed with their human cargoes” had only to “hoist
the Stars and Stripes and pass under the bows of our cruisers.”(10) Though
Seward scored a point by his treaty giving British cruisers the right to
search any ships carrying the American flag, the distrust of the foreign
Liberals was not removed. They inclined to stand aside and to allow the
commercial classes of France and England to dictate policy toward the
United States. The blockade, by shutting off the European supply of raw
cotton, on both sides the channel, was the cause of measureless
unemployment, of intolerable misery. There was talk in both countries of
intervention. Napoleon, especially, loomed large on the horizon as a
possible ally of the Confederacy. And yet, all this while, Lincoln had it
in his power at any minute to lay the specter of foreign intervention. A
pledge to the “Liberal party throughout the world” that the war would
bring about the destruction of slavery, and great political powers both in
England and in France would at once cross the paths of their governments
should they move toward intervention. Weighty as were all these reasons
for a change of policy—turning the flank of the Vindictives on the
war powers, committing the Abolitionists to the Administration, winning
over the European Liberals—there was a fourth reason which, very
probably, weighed upon Lincoln most powerfully of them all. Profound gloom
had settled upon the country. There was no enthusiasm for military
service. And Stanton, who lacked entirely the psychologic vision of the
statesman, had recently committed an astounding blunder. After a few
months in power he had concluded that the government had enough soldiers
and had closed the recruiting offices.(11) Why Lincoln permitted this
singular proceeding has never been satisfactorily explained.* Now he was
reaping the fruits. A defeated army, a hopeless country, and no prospect
of swift reinforcement! If a shift of ground on the question of
emancipation would arouse new enthusiasm, bring in a new stream of
recruits, Lincoln was prepared to shift.
But even in this dire extremity, he would not give way without a last
attempt to save his earlier policy. On July twelfth, he called together
the Senators and Representatives of the Border States. He read to them a
written argument in favor of compensated emancipation, the Federal
government to assist the States in providing funds for the purpose.
“Let the States that are in rebellion,” said he, “see definitely and
certainly that in no event will the States you represent ever join their
proposed Confederacy, and they can not much longer maintain the contest.
But you can not divest them of their hope to ultimately have you with them
so long as you show a determination to perpetuate the institution within
your own States. . . . If the war continues long, as it must if the object
be not sooner attained, the institution in your States will be
extinguished by mere friction and abrasion—by the mere incidents of
war. . . . Our common country is in great peril, demanding the loftiest
views and boldest action to bring it speedy relief. Once relieved its form
of government is saved to the world, its beloved history and cherished
memories are vindicated, and its happy future fully assured and rendered
inconceivably grand.”(12)
He made no impression. They would commit themselves to nothing. Lincoln
abandoned his earlier policy.
Of what happened next, he said later, “It had got to be. . . . Things had
gone on from bad to worse until I felt that we had reached the end of our
rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about
played our last card and must change our tactics or lose the game. I now
determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy. . . “(13)
The next day he confided his decision and his reasons to Seward and
Welles. Though “this was a new departure for the President,” both these
Ministers agreed with him that the change of policy had become
inevitable.(14)
Lincoln was now entirely himself, astute in action as well as bold in
thought. He would not disclose his change of policy while Congress was in
session. Should he do so, there was no telling what attempt the Cabal
would make to pervert his intention, to twist his course into the
semblance of an acceptance of the congressional theory. He laid the matter
aside until Congress should be temporarily out of the way, until the long
recess between July and December should have begun. In this closing moment
of the second session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress, which is also the
opening moment of the great period of Lincoln, the feeling against him in
Congress was extravagantly bitter. It caught at anything with which to
make a point. A disregard of technicalities of procedure was magnified
into a serious breach of constitutional privilege. Reviving the question
of compensated emancipation, Lincoln had sent a special message to both
Houses, submitting the text of a compensation bill which he urged them to
consider. His enemies raised an uproar. The President had no right to
introduce a bill into Congress! Dictator Lincoln was trying in a new way
to put Congress under his thumb.(15)
In the last week of the session, Lincoln’s new boldness brought the old
relation between himself and Congress to a dramatic close. The Second
Confiscation Bill had long been under discussion. Lincoln believed that
some of its provisions were inconsistent with the spirit at least of our
fundamental law. Though its passage was certain, he prepared a veto
message. He then permitted the congressional leaders to know what he
intended to do when the bill should reach him. Gall and wormwood are weak
terms for the bitterness that may be tasted in the speeches of the
Vindictives. When, in order to save the bill, a resolution was appended
purging it of the interpretation which Lincoln condemned, Trumbull
passionately declared that Congress was being “coerced” by the President.
“No one at a distance,” is the deliberate conclusion of Julian who was
present, “could have formed any adequate conception of the hostility of
the Republican members toward Lincoln at the final adjournment, while it
was the belief of many that our last session of Congress had been held in
Washington. Mr. Wade said the country was going to hell, and that the
scenes witnessed in the French Revolution were nothing in comparison with
what we should see here.”(16)
Lincoln endured the rage of Congress in unwavering serenity. On the last
day of the session, Congress surrendered and sent to him both the
Confiscation Act and the explanatory resolution. Thereupon, he indulged in
what must have seemed to those fierce hysterical enemies of his a wanton
stroke of irony. He sent them along with his approval of the bill the text
of the veto message he would have sent had they refused to do what he
wanted.(17) There could be no concealing the fact that the President had
matched his will against the will of Congress, and that the President had
had his way.
Out of this strange period of intolerable confusion, a gigantic figure had
at last emerged. The outer and the inner Lincoln had fused. He was now a
coherent personality, masterful in spite of his gentleness, with his own
peculiar fashion of self-reliance, having a policy of his own devising,
his colors nailed upon the masthead.
XXIII. THE MYSTICAL STATESMAN
Lincoln’s final emergence was a deeper thing than merely the consolidation
of a character, the transformation of a dreamer into a man of action. The
fusion of the outer and the inner person was the result of a profound
interior change. Those elements of mysticism which were in him from the
first, which had gleamed darkly through such deep overshadowing, were at
last established in their permanent form. The political tension had been
matched by a spiritual tension with personal sorrow as the connecting
link. In a word, he had found his religion.
Lincoln’s instinctive reticence was especially guarded, as any one might
expect, in the matter of his belief. Consequently, the precise nature of
it has been much discussed. As we have seen, the earliest current report
charged him with deism. The devoted Herndon, himself an agnostic, eagerly
claims his hero as a member of the noble army of doubters. Elaborate
arguments have been devised in rebuttal. The fault on both sides is in the
attempt to base an impression on detached remarks and in the further error
of treating all these fragments as of one time, or more truly, as of no
time, as if his soul were a philosopher of the absolute, speaking
oracularly out of a void. It is like the vicious reasoning that tortures
systems of theology out of disconnected texts.
Lincoln’s religious life reveals the same general divisions that are to be
found in his active life: from the beginning to about the time of his
election; from the close of 1860 to the middle of 1862; the remainder.
Of his religious experience in the first period, very little is definitely
known. What glimpses we have of it both fulfill and contradict the forest
religion that was about him in his youth. The superstition, the faith in
dreams, the dim sense of another world surrounding this, the belief in
communion between the two, these are the parts of him that are based
unchangeably in the forest shadows. But those other things, the spiritual
passions, the ecstacies, the vague sensing of the terribleness of the
creative powers,—to them always he made no response. And the crude
philosophizing of the forest theologians, their fiercely simple dualism—God
and Satan, thunder and lightning, the eternal war in the heavens, the
eternal lake of fire—it meant nothing to him. Like all the furious
things of life, evil appeared to him as mere negation, a mysterious
foolishness he could not explain. His aim was to forget it. Goodness and
pity were the active elements that roused him to think of the other world;
especially pity. The burden of men’s tears, falling ever in the shadows at
the backs of things—this was the spiritual horizon from which he
could not escape. Out of the circle of that horizon he had to rise by
spiritual apprehension in order to be consoled. And there is no reason to
doubt that at times, if not invariably, in his early days, he did rise; he
found consolation. But it was all without form. It was a sentiment, a
mood,—philosophically bodiless. This indefinite mysticism was the
real heart of the forest world, closer than hands or feet, but elusive,
incapable of formulation, a presence, not an idea. Before the task of
expressing it, the forest mystic stood helpless. Just what it was that he
felt impinging upon him from every side he did not know. He was like a
sensitive man, neither scientist nor poet, in the midst of a night of
stars. The reality of his experience gave him no power either to explain
or to state it.
There is little reason to suppose that Lincoln’s religious experience
previous to 1860 was more than a recurrent visitor in his daily life. He
has said as much himself. He told his friend Noah Brooks “he did not
remember any precise time when he passed through any special change of
purpose, or of heart, but he would say that his own election to office and
the crisis immediately following, influentially determined him in what he
called ‘a process of crystallization’ then going on in his mind.”(1)
It was the terrible sense of need—the humility, the fear that he
might not be equal to the occasion—that searched his soul, that bred
in him the craving for a spiritual up-holding which should be constant.
And at this crucial moment came the death of his favorite son. “In the
lonely grave of the little one lay buried Mr. Lincoln’s fondest hopes, and
strong as he was in the matter of self-control, he gave way to an
overmastering grief which became at length a serious menace to his
health.”(2) Though firsthand accounts differ as to just how he struggled
forth out of this darkness, all agree that the ordeal was very severe.
Tradition makes the crisis a visit from the Reverend Francis Vinton,
rector of Trinity Church, New York, and his eloquent assertion of the
faith in immortality, his appeal to Lincoln to remember the sorrow of
Jacob over the loss of Joseph, and to rise by faith out of his own sorrow
even as the patriarch rose.(3)
Although Lincoln succeeded in putting his grief behind him, he never
forgot it. Long afterward, he called the attention of Colonel Cannon to
the lines in King John:
“And Father Cardinal, I have heard you say That we shall see and know our
friends in heaven; If that be true, I shall see my boy again.”
“Colonel,” said he, “did you ever dream of a lost friend, and feel that
you were holding sweet communion with that friend, and yet have a sad
consciousness that it was not a reality? Just so, I dream of my boy,
Willie.” And he bent his head and burst into tears.(4)
As he rose in the sphere of statecraft with such apparent suddenness out
of the doubt, hesitation, self-distrust of the spring of 1862 and in the
summer found himself politically, so at the same time he found himself
religiously. During his later life though the evidences are slight, they
are convincing. And again, as always, it is not a violent change that
takes place, but merely a better harmonization of the outer and less
significant part of him with the inner and more significant. His religion
continues to resist intellectual formulation. He never accepted any
definite creed. To the problems of theology, he applied the same sort of
reasoning that he applied to the problems of the law. He made a
distinction, satisfactory to himself at least, between the essential and
the incidental, and rejected everything that did not seem to him
altogether essential.
In another negative way his basal part asserted itself. Just as in all his
official relations he was careless of ritual, so in religion he was not
drawn to its ritualistic forms. Again, the forest temper surviving,
changed, into such different conditions! Real and subtle as is the
ritualistic element, not only in religion but in life generally, one may
doubt whether it counts for much among those who have been formed mainly
by the influences of nature. It implies more distance between the emotion
and its source, more need of stimulus to arouse and organize emotion, than
the children of the forest are apt to be aware of. To invoke a
philosophical distinction, illumination rather than ritualism, the tense
but variable concentration on a result, not the ordered mode of an
approach, is what distinguishes such characters as Lincoln. It was this
that made him careless &f form in all the departments of life. It was
one reason why McClellan, born ritualist of the pomp of war, could never
overcome a certain dislike, or at least a doubt, of him.
Putting together his habit of thinking only in essentials and his
predisposition to neglect form, it is not strange that he said: “I have
never united myself to any church because I have found difficulty in
giving my assent, without mental reservation, to the long, complicated
statements of Christian doctrine which characterize their Articles of
Belief and Confessions of Faith. When any church will inscribe over its
altar, as its sole qualification for membership, the Savior’s condensed
statement of the substance of both Law and Gospel, ‘Thou shalt love the
Lord thy God, with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy
mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,’ that church will I join with all my
heart and with all my soul.”(5)
But it must not be supposed that his religion was mere ethics. It had
three cardinal possessions. The sense of God is through all his later
life. It appears incidentally in his state papers, clothed with language
which, in so deeply sincere a man, must be taken literally. He believed in
prayer, in the reality of communion with the Divine. His third article was
immortality.
At Washington, Lincoln was a regular attendant, though not a communicant,
of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. With the Pastor, the Reverend
P. D. Gurley, he formed a close friendship. Many hours they passed in
intimate talk upon religious subjects, especially upon the question of
immortality.(6) To another pious visitor he said earnestly, “I hope I am a
Christian.”(7) Could anything but the most secure faith have written this
“Meditation on the Divine Will” which he set down in the autumn of 1862
for no eye but his own: “The will of God prevails. In great contests each
party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and
one must be, wrong. God can not be for and against the same thing at the
same time. In the present civil war it is quite possible that God’s
purpose is something different from the purpose of either party; and yet
the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are of the best
adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost ready to say that this is
probably true; that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not
end yet. By His mere great power on the minds of the now contestants, He
could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest.
Yet the contest began. And, having begun, He could give the final victory
to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.”(8)
His religion flowered in his later temper. It did not, to be sure,
overcome his melancholy. That was too deeply laid. Furthermore, we fail to
discover in the surviving evidences any certainty that it was a glad phase
of religion. Neither the ecstatic joy of the wild women, which his mother
had; nor the placid joy of the ritualist, which he did not understand; nor
those other variants of the joy of faith, were included in his portion. It
was a lofty but grave religion that matured in his final stage. Was it due
to far-away Puritan ancestors? Had austere, reticent Iron-sides, sure of
the Lord, but taking no liberties with their souls, at last found out
their descendant? It may be. Cromwell, in some ways, was undeniably his
spiritual kinsman. In both, the same aloofness of soul, the same
indifference to the judgments of the world, the same courage, the same
fatalism, the same encompassment by the shadow of the Most High. Cromwell,
in his best mood, had he been gifted with Lincoln’s literary power, could
have written the Fast Day Proclamation of 1863 which is Lincoln’s most
distinctive religious fragment.
However, Lincoln’s gloom had in it a correcting element which the old
Puritan gloom appears to have lacked. It placed no veto upon mirth.
Rather, it valued mirth as its only redeemer. And Lincoln’s growth in the
religious sense was not the cause of any diminution of his surface
hilarity. He saved himself from what otherwise would have been intolerable
melancholy by seizing, regardless of the connection, anything whatsoever
that savored of the comic.
His religious security did not destroy his superstition. He continued to
believe that he would die violently at the end of his career as President.
But he carried that belief almost with gaiety. He refused to take
precautions for his safety. Long lonely rides in the dead of night; night
walks with a single companion, were constant anxieties to his intimates.
To the President, their fears were childish. Although in the sensibilities
he could suffer all he had ever suffered, and more; in the mind he had
attained that high serenity in which there can be no flagging of effort
because of the conviction that God has decreed one’s work; no failure of
confidence because of the twin conviction that somehow, somewhere, all
things work together for good. “I am glad of this interview,” he said in
reply to a deputation of visitors, in September, 1862, “and glad to know
that I have your sympathy and your prayers. . I happened to be placed,
being a humble instrument in the hands of our Heavenly Father, as I am,
and as we all are, to work out His great purpose. . . . I have sought His
aid; but if after endeavoring to do my best in the light He affords me, I
find my efforts fail, I must believe that for some purpose unknown to me
He wills it otherwise. If I had my way, this war would never have
commenced. If I had been allowed my way, this war would have been ended
before this; but it still continues and we must believe that He permits it
for some wise purpose of His own, mysterious and unknown to us; and though
with our limited understandings we may not be able to comprehend it, yet
we can not but believe that He who made the world still governs it.”(9)
XXIV. GAMBLING IN GENERALS
On July 22, 1862, there was a meeting of the Cabinet. The sessions of
Lincoln’s Council were the last word for informality. The President and
the Ministers interspersed their great affairs with mere talk,
story-telling, gossip. With one exception they were all lovers of their
own voices, especially in the telling of tales. Stanton was the exception.
Gloomy, often in ill-health, innocent of humor, he glowered when the
others laughed. When the President, instead of proceeding at once to
business, would pull out of his pocket the latest volume of Artemus Ward,
the irate War Minister felt that the overthrow of the nation was
impending. But in this respect, the President was incorrigible. He had
been known to stop the line of his guests at a public levee, while he
talked for some five minutes in a whisper to an important personage; and
though all the room thought that jupiter was imparting state secrets, in
point of fact, he was making sure of a good story the great man had told
him a few days previous.(1) His Cabinet meetings were equally careless of
social form. The Reverend Robert Collyer was witness to this fact in a
curious way. Strolling through the White House grounds, “his attention was
suddenly arrested by the apparition of three pairs of feet resting on the
ledge of an open window in one of the apartments of the second story and
plainly visible from below.” He asked a gardener for an explanation. The
brusk reply was: “Why, you old fool, that’s the Cabinet that is a-settin’,
and them thar big feet are ole Abe’s.”(2)
When the Ministers assembled on July twenty-second they had no intimation
that this was to be a record session. Imagine the astonishment when, in
his usual casual way, though with none of that hesitancy to which they had
grown accustomed, Lincoln announced his new policy, adding that he “wished
it understood that the question was settled in his own mind; that he had
decreed emancipation in a certain contingency and the responsibility of
the measure was his.”(3) President and Cabinet talked it over in their
customary offhand way, and Seward made a suggestion that instantly riveted
Lincoln’s attention. Seward thought the moment was ill-chosen. “If the
Proclamation were issued now, it would be received and considered as a
despairing cry—a shriek from and for the Administration, rather than
for freedom.”(4) He added the picturesque phrase, “The government
stretching forth its hands to Ethiopia, instead of Ethiopia stretching
forth her hands to the government.” This idea struck Lincoln with very
great force. It was an aspect of the case “which he had entirely
overlooked.”(5) He accepted Seward’s advice, laid aside the proclamation
he had drafted and turned again with all his energies to the organization
of victory.
The next day Halleck arrived at Washington. He was one of Lincoln’s
mistakes. However, in his new mood, Lincoln was resolved to act on his own
opinion of the evidence before him, especially in estimating men. It is
just possible that this epoch of his audacities began in a reaction; that
after too much self-distrust, he went briefly to the other extreme,
indulging in too much self-confidence. Be that as it may, he had formed
exaggerated opinions of both these Western generals, Halleck and Pope.
Somehow, in the brilliant actions along the Mississippi they had absorbed
far more than their fair share of credit. Particularly, Lincoln went
astray with regard to Pope. Doubtless a main reason why he accepted the
plan of campaign suggested by Halleck was the opportunity which it offered
to Pope. Perhaps, too, the fatality in McClellan’s character turned the
scale. He begged to be left where he was with his base on James River, and
to be allowed to renew the attack on Richmond.1 But he did not take the
initiative. The government must swiftly hurry up reinforcements, and then—the
old, old story! Obviously, it was a question at Washington either of
superseding McClellan and leaving the army where it was, or of shifting
the army to some other commander without in so many words disgracing
McClellan. Halleck’s approval of the latter course jumped with two of
Lincoln’s impulses—his trust in Pope, his reluctance to disgrace
McClellan. Orders were issued transferring the bulk of the army of the
Potomac to the new army of Virginia lying south of Washington under the
command of Pope. McClellan was instructed to withdraw his remaining forces
from the Peninsula and retrace his course up the Potomac.(6)
Lincoln had committed one of his worst blunders. Herndon has a curious,
rather subtle theory that while Lincoln’s judgments of men in the
aggregate were uncannily sure, his judgments of men individually were
unreliable. It suggests the famous remark of Goethe that his views of
women did not derive from experience; that they antedated experience; and
that he corrected experience by them. Of the confessed artist this may be
true. The literary concept which the artist works with is often,
apparently, a more constant, more fundamental, more significant thing,
than is the broken, mixed, inconsequential impression out of which it has
been wrought. Which seems to explain why some of the writers who
understand human nature so well in their books, do not always understand
people similarly well in life. And always it is to be remembered that
Lincoln was made an artist by nature, and made over into a man of action
by circumstance. If Herndon’s theory has any value it is in asserting his
occasional danger—by no means a constant danger—of forming in
his mind images of men that were more significant than it was possible for
the men themselves to be. John Pope was perhaps his worst instance. An
incompetent general, he was capable of things still less excusable. Just
after McClellan had so tragically failed in the Seven Days, when Lincoln
was at the front, Pope was busy with the Committee, assuring them
virtually that the war had been won in the West, and that only McClellan’s
bungling had saved the Confederacy from speedy death.(7) But somehow
Lincoln trusted him, and continued to trust him even after he had proved
his incompetency in the catastrophe at Manassas.
During August, Pope marched gaily southward issuing orders that were shot
through with bad rhetoric, mixing up army routine and such irrelevant
matters as “the first blush of dawn.”
Lincoln was confident of victory. And after victory would come the new
policy, the dissipation of the European storm-cloud, the break-up of the
vindictive coalition of Jacobins and Abolitionists, the new enthusiasm for
the war. But of all this, the incensed Abolitionists received no hint. The
country rang with their denunciations of the President. At length, Greeley
printed in The Tribune an open letter called “The Prayer of Twenty
Millions.” It was an arraignment of what Greeley chose to regard as the
pro-slavery policy of the Administration. This was on August twentieth.
Lincoln, in high hope that a victory was at hand, seized the opportunity
both to hint to the country that he was about to change his policy, and to
state unconditionally his reason for changing. He replied to Greeley
through the newspapers:
“As to the policy I ‘seem to be pursuing,’ as you say, I have meant to
leave no one in doubt.
“I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the
Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored, the
nearer the Union will be ‘the Union as it was’ If there be those who would
not save the Union unless they could at the same time save Slavery, I do
not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union,
unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with
them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is
not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without
freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all
the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some of the
slaves and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about
slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it will help to save
the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would
help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe that what
I am doing hurts the cause; and I shall do more whenever I believe that
doing more will help the cause.”(8) The effect of this on the
Abolitionists was only to increase their rage. The President was compared
to Douglas with his indifference whether slavery was voted “up or
down.”(9) Lincoln, now so firmly hopeful, turned a deaf ear to these
railing accusations. He was intent upon watching the army. It was probably
at this time that he reached an unfortunate conclusion with regard to
McClellan. The transfer of forces from the James River to northern
Virginia had proceeded slowly. It gave rise to a new controversy, a new
crop of charges. McClellan was accused of being dilatory on purpose, of
aiming to cause the failure of Pope. Lincoln accepted, at last, the worst
view of him. He told Hay that “it really seemed that McClellan wanted Pope
defeated. . . . The President seemed to think him a little crazy.”(10)
But still the confidence in Pope, marching so blithely through “the blush
of dawn,” stood fast. If ever an Administration was in a fool’s paradise,
it was Lincoln’s, in the last few days of August, while Jackson was
stealthily carrying out his great flanking movement getting between Pope
and Washington. However, the Suspicious Stanton kept his eyes on
McClellan. He decided that troops were being held back from Pope; and he
appealed to other members of the Cabinet to join with him in a formal
demand upon the President for McClellan’s dismissal from the army. While
the plan was being discussed, came the appalling news of Pope’s downfall.
The meeting of the Cabinet, September second, was another revelation of
the new independence of the President. Three full days had passed since
Pope had telegraphed that the battle was lost and that he no longer had
control of his army. The Ministers, awaiting the arrival of the President,
talked excitedly, speculating what would happen next. “It was stated,”
says Welles in his diary, “that Pope was falling back, intending to
retreat within the Washington entrenchments, Blair, who has known him
intimately, says he is a braggart and a liar, with some courage, perhaps,
but not much capacity. The general conviction is that he is a failure
here, and there is a belief . . . that he has not been seconded and
sustained as he should have been by McClellan . . .” Stanton entered;
terribly agitated. He had news that fell upon the Cabinet like a
bombshell. He said “in a suppressed voice, trembling with excitement, he
was informed that McClellan had been ordered to take command of the forces
in Washington.”
Never was there a more tense moment in the Cabinet room than when Lincoln
entered that day. And all could see that he was in deep distress. But he
confirmed Stanton’s information. That very morning he had gone himself to
McClellan’s house and had asked him to resume command. Lincoln discussed
McClellan with the Cabinet quite simply, admitting all his bad qualities,
but finding two points in his favor—his power of organization, and
his popularity with the men.(11)
He was still more frank with his Secretaries. “‘He has acted badly in this
matter,’ Lincoln said to Hay, ‘but we must use what tools we have. There
is no man in the army who can man these fortifications and lick these
troops of ours into shape half as well as he.’ I spoke of the general
feeling against McClellan as evinced by the President’s mail. He rejoined:
‘Unquestionably, he has acted badly toward Pope; he wanted him to fail.
That is unpardonable, but he is too useful now to sacrifice.'”(12) At
another time, he said: “‘If he can’t fight himself, he excels in making
others ready to fight.'”(13)
McClellan justified Lincoln’s confidence. In this case, Herndon’s theory
of Lincoln’s powers of judgment does not apply. Though probably unfair on
the one point of McClellan’s attitude to Pope, he knew his man otherwise.
Lincoln had also discovered that Halleck, the veriest martinet of a
general, was of little value at a crisis. During the next two months,
McClellan, under the direct oversight of the President, was the organizer
of victory.
Toward the middle of September, when Lee and McClellan were gradually
converging upon the fated line of Antietam Creek, Lincoln’s new firmness
was put to the test. The immediate effect of Manassas was another, a still
more vehement outcry for an anti-slavery policy. A deputation of Chicago
clergymen went to Washington for the purpose of urging him to make an
anti-slavery pronouncement. The journey was a continuous ovation. If at
any time Lincoln was tempted to forget Seward’s worldly wisdom, it was
when these influential zealots demanded of him to do the very thing he
intended to do. But it was one of the characteristics of this final
Lincoln that when once he had fully determined on a course of action,
nothing could deflect him. With consummate coolness he gave them no new
light on his purpose. Instead, he seized the opportunity to “feel” the
country. He played the role of advocate arguing the case against an
emancipation policy.(14) They met his argument with great Spirit and
resolution. Taking them as an index, there could be little question that
the country was ripe for the new policy. At the close of the interview
Lincoln allowed himself to jest. One of the clergymen dramatically charged
him to give heed to their message as to a direct commission from the
Almighty. “Is it not odd,” said Lincoln, “that the only channel he could
send it was that roundabout route by the awfully wicked city of Chicago?”*
Lincoln’s pertinacity, holding fast the program he had accepted, came to
its reward. On the seventeenth occurred that furious carnage along the
Antietam known as the bloodiest single day of the whole war. Military men
have disagreed, calling it sometimes a victory, sometimes a drawn battle.
In Lincoln’s political strategy the dispute is immaterial.
Psychologically, it was a Northern victory. The retreat of Lee was
regarded by the North as the turn of the tide. Lincoln’s opportunity had
arrived.
Again, a unique event occurred in a Cabinet meeting. On the twenty-second
of September, with the cannon of Antietam still ringing in their
imagination, the Ministers were asked by the President whether they had
seen the new volume just published by Artemus Ward. As they had not, he
produced it and read aloud with evident relish one of those bits of
nonsense which, in the age of Dickens, seemed funny enough. Most of the
Cabinet joined in the merriment—Stanton, of course, as always,
excepted. Lincoln closed the book, pulled himself together, and became
serious.
“Gentlemen,” said he, according to the diary of Secretary Chase, “I have,
as you are aware, thought a great deal about the relation of this war to
slavery; and you all remember that several weeks ago I read you an order I
had prepared on this subject, which, on account of objections made by some
of you, was not issued. Ever since, my mind has been much occupied with
this subject, and I have thought all along that the time for acting on it
might probably come. I think the time has come now. I wish it was a better
time. I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army
against the Rebels has not been quite what I should have best liked. But
they have been driven out of Maryland; and Pennsylvania is no longer in
danger of invasion. When the Rebel army was at Frederick, I determined, as
soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a proclamation of
emancipation, such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing
to any one, but I made the promise to myself, and (hesitating a little) to
my Maker. The Rebel army is now driven out and I am going to fulfill that
promise. I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do
not wish your advice about the main matter, for that I have determined for
myself. This, I say without intending anything but respect for any one of
you. But I already know the views of each on this question. They have been
heretofore expressed, and I have considered them as thoroughly and as
carefully as I can. What I have written is that which my reflections have
determined me to say. . . . I must do the best I can, and bear the
responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take.”(15) The
next day the Proclamation was published.
This famous document (16) is as remarkable for the parts of it that are
now forgotten as for the rest. The remembered portion is a warning that on
the first of January, one hundred days subsequent to the date of the
Proclamation—”all persons held as slaves within any State or
designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion
against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever
free.” The forgotten portions include four other declarations of executive
policy. Lincoln promised that “the Executive will in due time recommend
that all citizens of the United States who have remained loyal thereto
shall be compensated for all losses by acts of the United States,
including the loss of slaves.” He announced that he would again urge upon
Congress “the adoption of a practical measure tendering pecuniary aid” to
all the loyal Slave States that would “voluntarily adopt immediate or
gradual abolishment of slavery within their limits.” He would continue to
advise the colonization of free Africans abroad. There is still to be
mentioned a detail of the Proclamation which, except for its historical
setting in the general perspective of Lincoln’s political strategy, would
appear inexplicable. One might expect in the opening statement, where the
author of the Proclamation boldly assumes dictatorial power, an immediate
linking of that assumption with the matter in hand. But this does not
happen. The Proclamation begins with the following paragraph:
“I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America, and
Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy thereof, do hereby proclaim and
declare that hereafter, as heretofore, the war will be prosecuted for the
object of practically restoring the constitutional relation between the
United States and each of the States and the people thereof in which
States that relation is or may be suspended or disturbed.”
XXV. A WAR BEHIND THE SCENES
By the autumn of 1862, Lincoln had acquired the same political method that
Seward had displayed in the spring of 1861. What a chasm separates the two
Lincolns! The cautious, contradictory, almost timid statesman of the
Sumter episode; the confident, unified, quietly masterful statesman of the
Emancipation Proclamation. Now, in action, he was capable of staking his
whole future on the soundness of his own thinking, on his own ability to
forecast the inevitable. Without waiting for the results of the
Proclamation to appear, but in full confidence that he had driven a wedge
between the Jacobins proper and the mere Abolitionists, he threw down the
gage of battle on the issue of a constitutional dictatorship. Two days
after issuing the Proclamation he virtually proclaimed himself dictator.
He did so by means of a proclamation which divested the whole American
people of the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus. The occasion was
the effort of State governments to establish conscription of their
militia. The Proclamation delivered any one impeding that attempt into the
hands of the military authorities without trial.
Here was Lincoln’s final answer to Stevens; here, his audacious challenge
to the Jacobins. And now appeared the wisdom of his political strategy,
holding back emancipation until Congress was out of the way. Had Congress
been in session what a hubbub would have ensued! Chandler, Wade, Trumbull,
Sumner, Stevens, all hurrying to join issue on the dictatorship; to get it
before the country ahead of emancipation. Rather, one can not imagine
Lincoln daring to play this second card, so soon after the first, except
with abundant time for the two issues to disentangle themselves in the
public mind ere Congress met. And that was what happened. When the Houses
met in December, the Jacobins found their position revolutionized. The men
who, in July at the head of the Vindictive coalition, dominated Congress,
were now a minority faction biting their nails at the President amid the
ruins of their coalition.
There were three reasons for this collapse. First of all, the
Abolitionists, for the moment, were a faction by themselves. Six weeks had
sufficed to intoxicate them with their opportunity. The significance of
the Proclamation had had time to arise towering on their spiritual vision,
one of the gates of the New Jerusalem.
Limited as it was in application who could doubt that, with one condition,
it doomed slavery everywhere. The condition was a successful prosecution
of the war, the restoration of the Union. Consequently, at that moment,
nothing that made issue with the President, that threatened any limitation
of his efficiency, had the slightest chance of Abolitionist support. The
one dread that alarmed the whole Abolitionist group was a possible change
in the President’s mood, a possible recantation on January first. In order
to hold him to his word, they were ready to humor him as one might cajole,
or try to cajole, a monster that one was afraid of. No time, this, to talk
to Abolitionists about strictly constitutional issues, or about questions
of party leadership. Away with all your “gabble” about such small things!
The Jacobins saw the moving hand—at least for this moment—in
the crumbling wall of the palace of their delusion.
Many men who were not Abolitionists perceived, before Congress met, that
Lincoln had made a great stroke internationally. The “Liberal party
throughout the world” gave a cry of delight, and rose instantly to his
support. John Bright declared that the Emancipation Proclamation “made it
impossible for England to intervene for the South” and derided “the silly
proposition of the French Emperor looking toward intervention.”(1)
Bright’s closest friend in America was Sumner and Sumner was chairman of
the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He understood the value of
international sentiment, its working importance, as good provincials like
Chandler did not. Furthermore, he was always an Abolitionist first and a
Jacobin second—if at all. From this time forward, the Jacobins were
never able to count on him, not even when they rebuilt the Vindictive
Coalition a year and a half later. In December, 1862, how did they dare—true
blue politicians that they were—how did they dare raise a
constitutional issue involving the right of the President to capture, in
the way he had, international security?
The crowning irony in the new situation of the Jacobins was the revelation
that they had played unwittingly into the hands of the Democrats. Their
short-sighted astuteness in tying up emancipation with the war powers was
matched by an equal astuteness equally short-sighted. The organization of
the Little Men, when it refused to endorse Lincoln’s all-parties program,
had found itself in the absurd position of a party without an issue. It
contained, to be sure, a large proportion of the Northerners who were
opposed to emancipation. But how could it make an issue upon emancipation,
as long as the President, the object of its antagonism, also refused to
support emancipation? The sole argument in the Cabinet against Lincoln’s
new policy was that it would give the Democrats an issue. Shrewd
Montgomery Blair prophesied that on this issue they could carry the autumn
elections for Congress. Lincoln had replied that he would take the risk.
He presented them with the issue. They promptly accepted it But they did
not stop there. They aimed to take over the whole of the position that had
been vacated by the collapse of the Vindictive Coalition. By an adroit bit
of political legerdemain they would steal their enemies’ thunder, reunite
the emancipation issue with the issue of the war powers, reverse the
significance of the conjunction, and, armed with this double club, they
would advance from a new and unexpected angle and win the leadership of
the country by overthrowing the dictator. And this, they came very near
doing. On their double issue they rallied enough support to increase their
number in Congress by thirty-three. Had not the moment been so tragic,
nothing could have been more amusing than the helpless wrath of the
Jacobins caught in their own trap, compelled to gnaw their tongues in
silence, while the Democrats, paraphrasing their own arguments, hurled
defiant at Lincoln.
Men of intellectual courage might have broken their party ranks, daringly
applied Lincoln’s own maxim “stand with any one who stands right,” and
momentarily joined the Democrats in their battle against the two
proclamations. But in American politics, with a few glorious exceptions,
courage of this sort has never been the order of the day. The Jacobins
kept their party line; bowed their heads to the storm; and bided their
time. In the Senate, an indiscreet resolution commending the Emancipation
Proclamation was ordered to be printed, and laid on the table.(2) In the
House, party exigencies were more exacting. Despite the Democratic
successes, the Republicans still had a majority. When the Democrats made
the repudiation of the President a party issue, arguing on those very
grounds that had aroused the eloquence of Stevens and the rest—why,
what’s the Constitution between friends! Or between political enemies? The
Democrats forced all the Republicans into one boat by introducing a
resolution “That the policy of emancipation as indicated in that
Proclamation is an assumption of powers dangerous to the rights of
citizens and to the perpetuity of a free people.” The resolution was
rejected. Among those who voted NO was Stevens.(3) Indeed, the star of the
Jacobins was far down on the horizon.
But the Jacobins were not the men to give up the game until they were
certainly in the last ditch. Though their issues had been slipped out of
their hands; though for the moment at least, it was not good policy to
fight the President on a principle; it might still be possible to recover
their prestige on some other contention. The first of January was
approaching. The final proclamation of emancipation would bring to an end
the temporary alliance of the Administration and the Abolitionists. Who
could say what new pattern of affairs the political kaleidoscope might not
soon reveal? Surely the Jacobin cue was to busy themselves, straightway,
making trouble for the President. Principles being unavailable, practices
might do. And who was satisfied with the way the war was going? To rouse
the party against the Administration on the ground of inefficient
practices, of unsatisfactory military progress, might be the first step
toward regaining their former dominance.
There was a feather in the wind that gave them hope. The ominous first
paragraph of the Emancipation Proclamation was evidence that the President
was still stubbornly for his own policy; that he had not surrendered to
the opposite view. But this was not their only strategic hope. Lincoln’s
dealings with the army between September and December might, especially if
anything in his course proved to be mistaken, deliver him into their
hands.
Following Antietam, Lincoln had urged upon McClellan swift pursuit of Lee.
His despatches were strikingly different from those of the preceding
spring. That half apologetic tone had disappeared. Though they did not
command, they gave advice freely. The tone was at least that of an equal
who, while not an authority in this particular matter, is entitled to
express his views and to have them taken seriously.
“You remember my speaking to you of what I called your overcautiousness?
Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you can not do what the
enemy is constantly doing? Should you not claim to be at least his equal
in prowess and act upon that claim . . . one of the standard maxims of
war, as you know, is to operate upon the enemy’s communications as much as
possible without exposing your own. You seem to act as if this applies
against you, but can not apply in your favor. Change positions with the
enemy and think you not he would break your communications with Richmond
within the next twenty-four hours. . . .
“If he should move northward, I would follow him closely, holding his
communications. If he should prevent your seizing his communications and
move toward Richmond; I would press closely to him, fight him if a
favorable opportunity should present, and at least try to beat him to
Richmond on the inside track. I say ‘try’; if we never try we shall never
succeed. . . . We should not operate so as to merely drive him away. . . .
This letter is in no sense an order.”(4)
But once more the destiny that is in character intervened, and McClellan’s
tragedy reached its climax. His dread of failure hypnotized his will. So
cautious were his movements that Lee regained Virginia with his army
intact. Lincoln was angry. Military amateur though he was, he had filled
his spare time reading books on strategy, Von Clausewitz and the rest, and
he had grasped the idea that war’s aim is not to win technical victories,
nor to take cities, but to destroy armies. He felt that McClellan had
thrown away an opportunity of first magnitude. He removed him from
command.(5)
This was six weeks after the two proclamations. The country was ringing
with Abolition plaudits. The election had given the Democrats a new lease
of life. The anti-Lincoln Republicans were silent while their party
enemies with their stolen thunder rang the changes on the presidential
abuse of the war powers. It was a moment of crisis in party politics.
Where did the President stand? What was the outlook for those men who in
the words of Senator Wilson “would rather give a policy to the President
of the United States than take a policy from the President of the United
States.”
Lincoln’s situation was a close parallel to the situation of July, 1861,
when McDowell failed. Just as in choosing a successor to McDowell, he
revealed a political attitude, now, he would again make a revelation
choosing a successor to McClellan. By passing over Fremont and by
elevating a Democrat, he had spoken to the furious politicians in the
language they understood. Whatever appointment he now made would be
interpreted by those same politicians in the same way. In the atmosphere
of that time, there was but one way for Lincoln to rank himself as a
strict party man, to recant his earlier heresy of presidential
independence, and say to the Jacobins, “I am with you.” He must appoint a
Republican to succeed McClellan. Let him do that and the Congressional
Cabal would forgive him. But he did not do it. He swept political
considerations aside and made a purely military appointment Burnside, on
whom he fixed, was the friend and admirer of McClellan and might fairly be
considered next to him in prestige. He was loved by his troops. In the
eyes of the army, his elevation represented “a legitimate succession
rather than the usurpation of a successful rival.”(6) He was modest. He
did not want promotion. Nevertheless, Lincoln forced him to take
McClellan’s place against his will, in spite of his protest that he had
not the ability to command so large an army.(7)
When Congress assembled and the Committee resumed its inquisition,
Burnside was moving South on his fated march to Fredericksburg. The
Committee watched him like hungry wolves. Woe to Burnside, woe to Lincoln,
if the General failed! Had the Little Men possessed any sort of vision
they would have seized their opportunity to become the President’s
supporters. But they, like the Jacobins, were partisans first and patriots
second. In the division among the Republicans they saw, not a chance to
turn the scale in the President’s favor, but a chance to play politics on
their own account. A picturesque Ohio politician known as “Sunset” Cox
opened the ball of their fatuousness with an elaborate argument in
Congress to the effect that the President was in honor bound to regard the
recent elections as strictly analogous to an appeal to the country in
England; that it was his duty to remodel his policy to suit the Democrats.
Between the Democrats and the Jacobins Lincoln was indeed between the
devil and the deep blue sea with no one certainly on his side except the
volatile Abolitionists whom he did not trust and who did not trust him. A
great victory might carry him over. But a great defeat—what might
not be the consequence!
On the thirteenth of December, through Burnside’s stubborn incompetence,
thousands of American soldiers flung away their lives in a holocaust of
useless valor at Fredericksburg. Promptly the Jacobins acted. They set up
a shriek: the incompetent President, the all-parties dreamer, the man who
persists in coquetting with the Democrats, is blundering into destruction!
Burnside received the dreaded summons from the Committee. So staggering
was the shock of horror that even moderate Republicans were swept away in
a new whirlpool of doubt.
But even thus it was scarcely wise, the Abolitionists being still fearful
over the emancipation policy, to attack the President direct.
Nevertheless, the resourceful Jacobins found a way to begin their new
campaign. Seward, the symbol of moderation, the unforgivable enemy of the
Jacobins, had recently earned anew the hatred of the Abolitionists.
Letters of his to Charles Francis Adams had appeared in print. Some of
their expressions had roused a storm. For example: “extreme advocates of
African slavery and its most vehement exponents are acting in concert
together to precipitate a servile war.”(8) To be sure, the date of this
letter was long since, before he and Lincoln had changed ground on
emancipation, but that did not matter. He had spoken evil of the cause; he
should suffer. All along, the large number that were incapable of
appreciating his lack of malice had wished him out of the Cabinet. As
Lincoln put it: “While they seemed to believe in my honesty, they also
appeared to think that when I had in me any good purpose or intention,
Seward contrived to suck it out of me unperceived.”(9)
The Jacobins were skilful politicians. A caucus of Republican Senators was
stampeded by the cry that Seward was the master of the Administration, the
chief explanation of failure. It was Seward who had brought them to the
verge of despair. A committee was named to demand the reorganization of
the Cabinet Thereupon, Seward, informed of this action, resigned. The
Committee of the Senators called upon Lincoln. He listened; did not commit
himself; asked them to call again; and turned into his own thoughts for a
mode of saving the day.
During twenty months, since their clash in April, 1861, Seward and Lincoln
had become friends; not merely official associates, but genuine comrades.
Seward’s earlier condescension had wholly disappeared. Perhaps his new
respect for Lincoln grew out of the President’s silence after Sumter. A
few words revealing the strange meddling of the Secretary of State would
have turned upon Seward the full fury of suspicion that destroyed
McClellan. But Lincoln never spoke those words. Whatever blame there was
for the failure of the Sumter expedition, he quietly accepted as his own.
Seward, whatever his faults, was too large a nature, too genuinely a lover
of courage, of the nonvindictive temper, not to be struck with admiration.
Watching with keen eyes the unfolding of Lincoln, Seward advanced from
admiration to regard. After a while he could write, “The President is the
best of us.” He warmed to him; he gave out the best of himself. Lincoln
responded. While the other secretaries were useful, Seward became
necessary. Lincoln, in these dark days, found comfort in his society.(10)
Lincoln was not going to allow Seward to be driven out of the Cabinet. But
how could he prevent it? He could not say. He was in a quandary. For the
moment, the Republican leaders were so nearly of one mind in their
antagonism to Seward, that it demanded the greatest courage to oppose
them. But Lincoln does not appear to have given a thought to surrender.
What puzzled him was the mode of resistance.
Now that he was wholly himself, having confidence in whatever mode of
procedure his own thought approved, he had begun using methods that the
politicians found disconcerting. The second conference with the Senators
was an instance. Returning in the same mood in which they had left him,
with no suspicion of a surprise in store, the Senators to their amazement
were confronted by the Cabinet—or most of it, Seward being
absent.(11) The Senators were put out. This simple maneuver by the
President was the beginning of their discomfiture. It changed their role
from the ambassadors of an ultimatum to the participants in a conference.
But even thus, they might have succeeded in dominating the event, though
it is hardly conceivable that they could have carried their point; they
might have driven Lincoln into a corner; had it not been for the make-up
of one man. Again, the destiny that is in character! Lincoln was delivered
from a quandary by the course which the Secretary of the Treasury could
not keep himself from pursuing.
Chase, previous to this hour, may truly be called an imposing figure. As a
leader of the extreme Republicans, he had earned much fame. Lincoln had
given him a free hand in the Treasury and all the financial measures of
the government were his. Hitherto, Vindictives of all sorts had loved him.
He was a critic of the President’s mildness, and a severe critic of
Seward. But Chase was not candid. Though on the surface he scrupulously
avoided any hint of cynicism, any point of resemblance to Seward, he was
in fact far more devious, much more capable of self-deception. He had
little of Seward’s courage, and none of his aplomb. His condemnation of
Seward had been confided privately to Vindictive brethren.
When the Cabinet and the Senators met, Chase was placed in a situation of
which he had an instinctive horror. His caution, his secretiveness, his
adroit confidences, his skilful silences, had created in these two groups
of men, two impressions of his character. The Cabinet knew him as the
faithful, plausible Minister who found the money for the President. The
Senators, or some of them, knew him as the discontented Minister who was
their secret ally. For the two groups to compare notes, to check up their
impressions, meant that Chase was going to be found out. And it was the
central characteristic of Chase that he had a horror of being found out.
The only definite result of the conference was Chase’s realization when
the Senators departed that mischance was his portion. In the presence of
the Cabinet he had not the face to stick to his guns. He feebly defended
Seward. The Senators opened their eyes and stared. The ally they had
counted on had failed them. Chase bit his lips and was miserable.
The night that followed was one of deep anxiety for Lincoln. He was still
unable to see his way out. But all the while the predestination in Chase’s
character was preparing the way of escape. Chase was desperately trying to
discover how to save his face. An element in him that approached the
melodramatic at last pointed the way. He would resign. What an admirable
mode of recapturing the confidence of his disappointed friends, carrying
out their aim to disrupt the Cabinet! But he could not do a bold thing
like this in Seward’s way—at a stroke, without hesitation. When he
called on Lincoln the next day with the resignation in his hand, he
wavered. It happened that Welles was in the room.
“Chase said he had been painfully affected,” is Welles’ account, “by the
meeting last evening, which was a surprise, and after some not very
explicit remarks as to how he was affected, informed the President he had
prepared his resignation of the office of Secretary of the Treasury.
‘Where is it,’ said the President, quickly, his eye lighting up in a
moment. ‘I brought it with me,’ said Chase, taking the paper from his
pocket. ‘I wrote it this morning.’ ‘Let me have it,’ said the President,
reaching his long arm and fingers toward Chase, who held on seemingly
reluctant to part with the letter which was sealed and which he apparently
hesitated to surrender. Something further he wished to say, but the
President was eager and did not perceive it, but took and hastily opened
the letter.
“‘This,’ said he, looking towards me with a triumphal laugh, ‘cuts the
Gordian knot.’ An air of satisfaction spread over his countenance such as
I had not seen for some time. ‘I can dispose of this subject now without
difficulty,’ he added, as he turned in his chair; ‘I see my way
clear.'”(12) In Lincoln’s distress during this episode, there was much
besides his anxiety for the fate of a trusted minister. He felt he must
not permit himself to be driven into the arms of the Vindictives by
disgracing Seward. Seward had a following which Lincoln needed. But to
proclaim to the world his confidence in Seward without at the same time
offsetting it by some display of confidence, equally significant in the
enemies of Seward, this would have amounted to committing himself to
Seward’s following alone. And that would not do. Should either faction
appear to dominate him, Lincoln felt that “the whole government must cave
in. It could not stand, could not hold water; the bottom would be
out.”(13)
The incredible stroke of luck, the sheer good fortune that Chase was Chase
and nobody else,—vain, devious, stagey and hypersensitive,—was
salvation. Lincoln promptly rejected both resignations and called upon
both Ministers to resume their portfolios. They did so. The incident was
closed. Neither faction could say that Lincoln had favored the other. He
had saved himself, or rather, Chase’s character had saved him, by the
margin of a hair.
For the moment, a rebuilding of the Vindictive Coalition was impossible.
Nevertheless, the Jacobins, again balked of their prey, had it in their
power, through the terrible Committee, to do immense mischief. The history
of the war contains no other instance of party malice quite so fruitless
and therefore so inexcusable as their next move. After severely
interrogating Burnside, they published an exoneration of his motives and
revealed the fact that Lincoln had forced him into command against his
will. The implication was plain.
January came in. The Emancipation Proclamation was confirmed. The
jubilation of the Abolitionists became, almost at once, a propaganda for
another issue upon slavery. New troubles were gathering close about the
President The overwhelming benefit which had been anticipated from the new
policy had not clearly arrived. Even army enlistments were not
satisfactory. Conscription loomed on the horizon as an eventual necessity.
A bank of returning cloud was covering the political horizon, enshrouding
the White House in another depth of gloom.
However, out of all this gathering darkness, one clear light solaced
Lincoln’s gaze. One of his chief purposes had been attained. In contrast
to the doubtful and factional response to his policy at home, the response
abroad was sweeping and unconditional. He had made himself the hero of the
“Liberal party throughout the world.” Among the few cheery words that
reached him in January, 1863, were New Year greetings of trust and
sympathy sent by English working men, who, because of the blockade, were
on the verge of starvation. It was in response to one of these letters
from the working men of Manchester that Lincoln wrote:
“I have understood well that the duty of self-preservation rests solely
with the American people; but I have at the same time been aware that the
favor or disfavor of foreign nations might have a material influence in
enlarging or prolonging the struggle with disloyal men in which the
country is engaged. A fair examination of history has served to authorize
a belief that the past actions and influences of the United States were
generally regarded as having been beneficial toward mankind. I have
therefore reckoned upon the forbearance of nations. Circumstances—to
some of which you kindly allude—induce me especially to expect that
if justice and good faith should be practised by the United States they
would encounter no hostile influence on the part of Great Britain. It is
now a pleasant duty to acknowledge the demonstration you have given of
your desire that a spirit of amity and peace toward this country may
prevail in the councils of your Queen, who is respected and esteemed in
your own country only more than she is, by the kindred nation which has
its home on this side of the Atlantic.
“I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the working men at
Manchester, and in all Europe, are called on to endure in this crisis. It
has been often and studiously represented that the attempt to overthrow
this government which was built upon the foundation of human rights, and
to substitute for it one which should rest exclusively on the basis of
human slavery, was likely to obtain the favor of Europe. Through the
action of our disloyal citizens, the working men of Europe have been
subjected to severe trials for the purpose of forcing their sanction to
that attempt. Under the circumstances, I can not but regard your decisive
utterances upon the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism
which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed an
energetic and reinspiring assurance of the inherent power of the truth,
and of the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, humanity and
freedom. I do not doubt that the sentiments you have expressed will be
sustained by your great nation; and on the other hand, I have no
hesitation in assuring you that they will excite admiration, esteem, and
the most reciprocal feelings of friendship among the American people. I
hail this interchange of sentiment, therefore, as an augury that whatever
else may happen, whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own,
the peace and friendship which now exist between the two nations, will be,
as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual.”(14)
XXVI. THE DICTATOR, THE MARPLOT AND THE LITTLE MEN
While the Jacobins were endeavoring to reorganize the Republican
antagonism to the President, Lincoln was taking thought how he could
offset still more effectually their influence. In taking up the
emancipation policy he had not abandoned his other policy of an
all-parties Administration, or of something similar to that. By this time
it was plain that a complete union of parties was impossible. In the
autumn of 1862, a movement of liberal Democrats in Michigan for the
purpose of a working agreement with the Republicans was frustrated by the
flinty opposition of Chandler.(1) However, it still seemed possible to
combine portions of parties in an Administration group that should
forswear the savagery of the extreme factions and maintain the war in a
merciful temper. The creation of such a group was Lincoln’s aim at the
close of the year.
The Republicans were not in doubt what he was driving at. Smarting over
their losses in the election, there was angry talk that Lincoln and Seward
had “slaughtered the Republican party.”(2) Even as sane a man as John
Sherman, writing to his brother on the causes of the apparent turn of the
tide could say “the first is that the Republican organization was
voluntarily abandoned by the President and his leading followers, and a
no-party union was formed to run against an old, well-drilled party
organization.”(3) When Julian returned to Washington in December, he found
that the menace to the Republican machine was “generally admitted and
(his) earnest opposition to it fully justified in the opinion of the
Republican members of Congress.”(4) How fully they perceived their danger
had been shown in their attempt to drive Lincoln into a corner on the
issue of a new Cabinet.
Even before that, Lincoln had decided on his next move. As in the
emancipation policy he had driven a wedge between the factions of the
Republicans, so now he would drive a wedge into the organization of the
Democrats. It had two parts which had little to hold them together except
their rooted partisan habit.(5) One branch, soon to receive the label
“Copperhead,” accepted the secession principle and sympathized with the
Confederacy. The other, while rejecting secession and supporting the war,
denounced the emancipation policy as usurped authority, and felt personal
hostility to Lincoln. It was the latter faction that Lincoln still hoped
to win over. Its most important member was Horatio Seymour, who in the
autumn of 1862 was elected governor of New York. Lincoln decided to
operate on him by one of those astounding moves which to the selfless man
seemed natural enough, by which the ordinary politician was always
hopelessly mystified. He called in Thurlow Weed and authorized him to make
this proposal: if Seymour would bring his following into a composite Union
party with no platform but the vigorous prosecution of the war, Lincoln
would pledge all his influence to securing for Seymour the presidential
nomination in 1864. Weed delivered his message. Seymour was noncommittal
and Lincoln had to wait for his answer until the new Governor should show
his hand by his official acts. Meanwhile a new crisis had developed in the
army. Burnside’s character appears to have been shattered by his defeat.
Previous to Fredericksburg, he had seemed to be a generous, high-minded
man. From Fredericksburg onward, he became more and more an impossible. A
reflection of McClellan in his earlier stage, he was somehow transformed
eventually into a reflection of vindictivism. His later character began to
appear in his first conference with the Committee subsequent to his
disaster. They visited him on the field and “his conversation disarmed all
criticism.” This was because he struck their own note to perfection. “Our
soldiers,” he said, “were not sufficiently fired by resentment, and he
exhorted me (Julian) if I could, to breathe into our people at home the
same spirit toward our enemies which inspired them toward us.”(6) What a
transformation in McClellan’s disciple!
But the country was not won over so easily as the Committee. There was
loud and general disapproval and of course, the habitual question, “Who
next?” The publication by the Committee of its insinuation that once more
the stubborn President was the real culprit did not stem the tide.
Burnside himself made his case steadily worse. His judgment, such as it
was, had collapsed. He seemed to be stubbornly bent on a virtual
repetition of his previous folly. Lincoln felt it necessary to command him
to make no forward move without consulting the President.(7)
Burnside’s subordinates freely criticized their commander. General Hooker
was the most outspoken. It was known that a movement was afoot—an
intrigue, if you will-to disgrace Burnside and elevate Hooker. Chafing
under criticism and restraint, Burnside completely lost his sense of
propriety. On the twenty-fourth of January, 1863, when Henry W. Raymond,
the powerful editor of the New York Times, was on a visit to the camp,
Burnside took him into his tent and read him an order removing Hooker
because of his unfitness “to hold a command in a cause where so much
moderation, forbearance, and unselfish patriotism were required.” Raymond,
aghast, inquired what he would do if Hooker resisted, if he raised his
troops in mutiny? “He said he would Swing him before sundown if he
attempted such a thing.”
Raymond, though more than half in sympathy with Burnside, felt that the
situation was startling. He hurried off to Washington. “I immediately,” he
writes, “called upon Secretary Chase and told him the whole story. He was
greatly surprised to hear such reports of Hooker, and said he had looked
upon him as the man best fitted to command the army of the Potomac. But no
man capable of so much and such unprincipled ambition was fit for so great
a trust, and he gave up all thought of him henceforth. He wished me to go
with him to his house and accompany him and his daughter to the
President’s levee. I did so and found a great crowd surrounding President
Lincoln. I managed, however, to tell him in brief terms that I had been
with the army and that many things were occurring there which he ought to
know. I told him of the obstacles thrown in Burnside’s way by his
subordinates and especially General Hooker’s habitual conversation. He put
his hand on my shoulder and said in my ear as if desirous of not being
overheard, ‘That is all true; Hooker talks badly; but the trouble is, he
is stronger with the country today than any other man.’ I ventured to ask
how long he would retain that strength if his real conduct and character
should be understood. ‘The country,’ said he, ‘would not believe it; they
would say it was all a lie.'”(8)
Whether Chase did what he said he would do and ceased to be Hooker’s
advocate, may be questioned. Tradition preserves a deal between the
Secretary and the General—the Secretary to urge his advancement, the
General, if he reached his goal, to content himself with military honors
and to assist the Secretary in succeeding to the Presidency. Hooker was a
public favorite. The dashing, handsome figure of “Fighting Joe” captivated
the popular imagination. The terrible Committee were his friends. Military
men thought him full of promise. On the whole, Lincoln, who saw the wisdom
of following up his clash over the Cabinet by a concession to the
Jacobins, was willing to take his chances with Hooker.
His intimate advisers were not of the same mind. They knew that there was
much talk on the theme of a possible dictator-not the constitutional
dictator of Lincoln and Stevens, but the old-fashioned dictator of
historical melodrama. Hooker was reported to have encouraged such talk.
All this greatly alarmed one of Lincoln’s most devoted henchmen—Lamon,
Marshal of the District of Columbia, who regarded himself as personally
responsible for Lincoln’s safety. “In conversation with Mr. Lincoln,” says
Lamon, “one night about the time General Burnside was relieved, I was
urging upon him the necessity of looking well to the fact that there was a
scheme on foot to depose him, and to appoint a military dictator in his
stead. He laughed and said, ‘I think, for a man of accredited courage, you
are the most panicky person I ever knew; you can see more dangers to me
than all the other friends I have. You are all the time exercised about
somebody taking my life; murdering me; and now you have discovered a new
danger; now you think the people of this great government are likely to
turn me out of office. I do not fear this from the people any more than I
fear assassination from an individual. Now to show my appreciation of what
my French friends would call a coup d’etat, let me read you a letter I
have written to General Hooker whom I have just appointed to the command
of the army of the Potomac.”(9)
Few letters of Lincoln’s are better known, few reveal more exactly the
tone of his final period, than the remarkable communication he addressed
to Hooker two days after that whispered talk with Raymond at the White
House levee:
“General, I have placed you at the head of the army of the Potomac. Of
course I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient reasons,
and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in
regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a
brave and skilful soldier, which of course I like. I also believe you do
not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have
confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not an indispensable
quality. You are ambitious, which within reasonable bounds, does good
rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside’s command of
the army you have taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted him as much
as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country and to a most
meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard in such a way as
to believe it, of your recently Saying that both the army and the
government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite
of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain
successes can set up dictators. What I now ask you is military success,
and I will risk the dictatorship. The government will support you to the
utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and
will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have
aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their commander and
withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist
you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were
alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a Spirit
prevails in it; and now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with
energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.”(10)
The appointment of Hooker had the effect of quieting the Committee for the
time. Lincoln turned again to his political scheme, but not until he had
made another military appointment from which at the moment no one could
have guessed that trouble would ever come. He gave to Burnside what might
be called the sinecure position of Commander of the Department of the Ohio
with headquarters at Cincinnati.(11)
During the early part of 1863 Lincoln’s political scheme received a
serious blow. Seymour ranked himself as an irreconcilable enemy of the
Administration. The anti-Lincoln Republicans struck at the President in
roundabout ways. Heralding a new attack, the best man on the Committee,
Julian, ironically urged his associates in Congress to “rescue” the
President from his false friends—those mere Unionists who were
luring him away from the party that had elected him, enticing him into a
vague new party that should include “Democrats.” It was said that there
were only two Lincoln men in the House.(12) Greeley was coquetting with
Rosecrans, trying to induce him to come forward as Republican presidential
“timber.” The Committee in April published an elaborate report which
portrayed the army of the Potomac as an army of heroes tragically
afflicted in the past by the incompetence of their commanders. The
Democrats continued their abuse of the dictator.
It was a moment of strained pause, everybody waiting upon circumstance.
And in Washington, every eye was turned Southward. How soon would they
glimpse the first messenger from that glorious victory which “Fighting
Joe” had promised them. “The enemy is in my power,” said he, “and God
Almighty can not deprive me of them.”(13)
Something of the difference between Hooker and Lincoln, between all the
Vindictives and Lincoln, may be felt by turning from these ribald words to
that Fast Day Proclamation which this strange statesman issued to his
people, that anxious spring,—that moment of trance as it were—when
all things seemed to tremble toward the last judgment:
“And whereas, it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their
dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and
transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine
repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime
truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that
those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord:
“And insomuch as we know that by His divine law nations, like individuals,
are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this world, may we not
justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which now desolates the
land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins,
to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people. We have
been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been
preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in
numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown; but we have
forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in
peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly
imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings
were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated
with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the
necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to God that
made us:
“It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to
confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
“All this being done in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in
the hope authorized by the divine teachings, that the united cry of the
nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings no less than the
pardon of our national sins and the restoration of our now divided and
suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.”(14)
Alas, for such men as Hooker! What seemed to him in his vainglory beyond
the reach of Omnipotence, was accomplished by Lee and Jackson and a
Confederate army at Chancellorsville. Profound gloom fell upon Washington.
Welles heard the terrible news from Sumner who came into his room “and
raising both hands exclaimed, ‘Lost, lost, all is lost!'”(15)
The aftermath of Manassas was repeated. In the case of Pope, no effort had
been spared to save the friend of the Committee, to find some one else on
whom to load his incompetence. The course was now repeated. Again, the
Jacobins raised the cry, “We are betrayed!” Again, the stir to injure the
President. Very strange are the ironies of history! At this critical
moment, Lincoln’s amiable mistake in sending Burnside to Cincinnati
demanded expiation. Along with the definite news of Hooker’s overthrow,
came the news that Burnside had seized the Copperhead leader,
Vallandigham, and had cast him into prison; that a hubbub had ensued;
that, as the saying goes, the woods were burning in Ohio.
Vallandigham’s offense was a public speech of which no accurate report
survives. However, the fragments recorded by “plain clothes” men in
Burnside’s employ, when set in the perspective of Vallandigham’s thinking
as displayed in Congress, make its tenor plain enough. It was an
out-and-out Copperhead harangue. If he was to be treated as hundreds of
others had been, the case against him was plain. But the Administration’s
policy toward agitators had gradually changed. There was not the same fear
of them that had existed two years before. Now the tendency of the
Administration was to ignore them.
The Cabinet regretted what Burnside had done. Nevertheless, the Ministers
felt that it would not do to repudiate him. Lincoln took that view. He
wrote to Burnside deploring his action and sustaining his authority.(16)
And then, as a sort of grim practical joke, he commuted Vallandigham’s
sentence from imprisonment to banishment. The agitator was sent across the
lines into the Confederacy.
Burnside had effectually played the marplot. Very little chance now of an
understanding between Lincoln and either wing of the Democrats. The
opportunity to make capital out of the war powers was quite too good to be
lost! Vallandigham was nominated for governor by the Ohio Democrats. In
all parts of the country Democratic committees resolved in furious protest
against the dictator. And yet, on the whole, perhaps, the incident played
into Lincoln’s hands. At least, it silenced the Jacobins. With the
Democrats ringing the changes on the former doctrine of the supple
politicians, how certain that their only course for the moment was to lie
low. A time came, to be sure, when they thought it safe to resume their
own creed; but that was not yet.
The hubbub over Vallandigham called forth two letters addressed to
protesting committees, that have their place among Lincoln’s most
important statements of political science. His argument is based on the
proposition which Browning developed a year before. The core of it is:
“You ask in substance whether I really claim that I may override all
guaranteed rights of individuals on the plea of conserving the public
safety, whenever I may choose to say the public safety requires it. This
question, divested of the phraseology calculated to represent me as
struggling for an arbitrary personal prerogative, is either simply a
question who shall decide, or an affirmation that no one shall decide,
what the public safety does require in cases of rebellion or invasion.
“The Constitution contemplates the question as likely to occur for
decision, but it does not expressly declare who is to decide it. By
necessary implication, when rebellion or invasion comes, the decision is
to be made from time to time; and I think the man whom, for the time, the
people have, under the Constitution, made the Commander-in-chief of their
army and navy, is the man who holds the power and bears the responsibility
of making it. If he uses the power justly, the same people will probably
justify him; if he abuses it, he is in their hands to be dealt with by all
the modes they have reserved to themselves in the Constitution.”(17)
Browning’s argument over again-the President can be brought to book by a
plebiscite, while Congress can not. But Lincoln did not rest, as Browning
did, on mere argument. The old-time jury lawyer revived. He was doing more
than arguing a theorem of political science. He was on trial before the
people, the great mass, which he understood so well. He must reach their
imaginations and touch their hearts.
“Mr. Vallandigham avows his hostility to the war on the part of the Union,
and his arrest was made because he was laboring with some effect, to
prevent the raising of troops, to encourage desertions from the army, and
to leave the rebellion without an adequate military force to sup-press it.
He was not arrested because he was damaging the political prospects of the
Administration or the personal interests of the Commanding General, but
because he was damaging the army, upon the existence and vigor of which
the life of the nation depends. He was warring upon the military, and this
gave the military constitutional jurisdiction to lay hands upon him.
“I understand the meeting whose resolutions I am considering, to be in
favor of suppressing the rebellion by military force-by armies. Long
experience has shown that armies can not be maintained unless desertion
shall be punished by the severe penalty of death. The case requires, and
the Law and the Constitution sanction this punishment. Must I shoot a
simple-minded soldier boy who deserts while I must not touch a hair of a
wily agitator who induces him to desert?”(18)
Again, the ironical situation of the previous December; the wrathful
Jacobins, the most dangerous because the most sincere enemies of the
presidential dictatorship, silent, trapped, biding their time. But the
situation had for them a distinct consolation. A hundred to one it had
killed the hope of a Lincoln-Democratic alliance.
However, the President would not give up the Democrats without one last
attempt to get round the Little Men. Again, he could think of no mode of
negotiation except the one he had vainly attempted with Seymour. As
earnest of his own good faith, he would once more renounce his own
prospect of a second term. But since Seymour had failed him, who was there
that could serve his purpose? The popularity of McClellan among those
Democrats who were not Copperheads had grown with his misfortunes. There
had been a wide demand for his restoration after Fredericksburg, and again
after Chancellorsville. Lincoln justified his reputation for political
insight by concluding that McClellan, among the Democrats, was the coming
man. Again Weed was called in. Again he became an ambassador of
renunciation. Apparently he carried a message to the effect that if
McClellan would join forces with the Administration, Lincoln would support
him for president a year later. But McClellan was too inveterate a
partisan. Perhaps he thought that the future was his anyway.(19)
And so Lincoln’s persistent attempt to win over the Democrats came to an
end. The final sealing of their antagonism was effected at a great
Democratic rally in New York on the Fourth of July. The day previous, a
manifesto had been circulated through the city beginning, “Freemen, awake!
In everything, and in most stupendous proportion, is this Administration
abominable!”(20) Seymour reaffirmed his position of out-and-out partisan
hostility to the Administration. Vallandigham’s colleague, Pendleton of
Ohio, formulated the Democratic doctrine: that the Constitution was being
violated by the President’s assumption of war powers. His cry was, “The
Constitution as it is and the Union as it was.” He thundered that
“Congress can not, and no one else shall, interfere with free speech.” The
question was not whether we were to have peace or war, but whether or not
we were to have free government; “if it be necessary to violate the
Constitution in order to carry on the war, the war ought instantly to be
stopped.”(21)
Lincoln’s political program had ended apparently in a wreck. But Fortune
had not entirely deserted him. Hooker in a fit of irritation had offered
his resignation. Lincoln had accepted it. Under a new commander, the army
of the Potomac had moved against Lee. The orators at the Fourth of July
meeting had read in the papers that same day Lincoln’s announcement of the
victory at Gettysburg.(22) Almost coincident with that announcement was
the surrender of Vicksburg. Difficult as was the political problem ahead
of him, the problem of finding some other plan for unifying his support
without participating in a Vindictive Coalition, Lincoln’s mood was
cheerful. On the seventh of July he was serenaded. Serenades for the
President were a feature of war-time in Washington, and Lincoln utilized
the occasions to talk informally to the country. His remarks on the
seventh were not distinctive, except for their tone, quietly, joyfully
confident. His serene mood displayed itself a week later in a note to
Grant which is oddly characteristic. Who else would have had the impulse
to make this quaint little confession? But what, for a general who could
read between the lines, could have been more delightful?(23)
“My dear General: I do not remember that you and I ever met personally. I
write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable
service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When you
first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do what you
finally did-march the troops across the neck, run the batteries with the
transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith except a general
hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass expedition and the
like could succeed. When you got below and took Port Gibson, Grand Gulf
and the vicinity, I thought you should go down the river and join General
Banks, and when you turned Northward, east of the Big Black, I feared it
was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal acknowledgment that you
were right and I was wrong.
“Very truly,
XXVII. THE TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE
Between March and December, 1863, Congress was not in session. Its members
were busy “taking the sense of the country” as they would have said:
“putting their ears to the ground,” as other people would say. A startling
tale the ground told them. It was nothing less than that Lincoln was the
popular hero; that the people believed in him; that the politicians would
do well to shape their ways accordingly. When they reassembled, they were
in a sullen, disappointed frame of mind. They would have liked to ignore
the ground’s mandate; but being politicians, they dared not.
What an ironical turn of events! Lincoln’s well-laid plan for a coalition
of Moderates and Democrats had come to nothing. Logically, he ought now to
be at the mercy of the Republican leaders. But instead, those leaders were
beginning to be afraid of him, were perceiving that he had power whereof
they had not dreamed. Like Saul the son of Kish, who had set out to find
his father’s asses, he had found instead a kingdom. How had he done it?
On a grand scale, it was the same sort of victory that had made him a
power, so long before, on the little stage at Springfield. It was personal
politics. His character had saved him. A multitude who saw nothing in the
fine drawn constitutional issue of the war powers, who sensed the war in
the most simple and elementary way, had formed, somehow, a compelling and
stimulating idea of the President. They were satisfied that “Old Abe,” or
“Father Abraham,” was the man for them. When, after one of his numerous
calls for fresh troops, their hearts went out to him, a new song sprang to
life, a ringing, vigorous, and yet a touching song with the refrain,
“We’re coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more.”
But how has he done it, asked the bewildered politicians, one of another.
How had he created this personal confidence? They, Wade, Chandler,
Stevens, Davis, could not do it; why could he?
Well, for one thing, he was a grand reality. They, relatively, were
shadows. The wind of destiny for him was the convictions arising out of
his own soul; for them it was vox populi. The genuineness of Lincoln, his
spiritual reality, had been perceived early by a class of men whom your
true politician seldom understands. The Intellectuals—”them literary
fellers,” in the famous words of an American Senator—were quick to
see that the President was an extraordinary man; they were not long in
concluding that he was a genius. The subtlest intellect of the time,
Hawthorne, all of whose prejudices were enlisted against him, said in the
Atlantic of July, 1863: “He is evidently a man of keen faculties, and what
is still more to the purpose, of powerful character. As to his integrity,
the people have that intuition of it which is never deceived he has a
flexible mind capable of much expansion.” And this when Trumbull chafed in
spirit because the President was too “weak” for his part and Wade railed
at him as a despot. As far back as 1860, Lowell, destined to become one of
his ablest defenders, had said that Lincoln had “proved both his ability
and his integrity; he . . . had experience enough in public affairs to
make him a statesman, and not enough to make him a politician.” To be
sure, there were some Intellectuals who could not see straight nor think
clear. The world would have more confidence in the caliber of Bryant had
he been able to rank himself in the Lincoln following. But the greater
part of the best intelligence of the North could have subscribed to
Motley’s words, “My respect for the character of the President increases
every day.”(1) The impression he made on men of original mind is shadowed
in the words of Walt Whitman, who saw him often in the streets of
Washington: “None of the artists or pictures have caught the subtle and
indirect expression of this man’s face. One of the great portrait painters
of two or three centuries ago is needed.”(2)
Lincoln’s popular strength lay in a combination of the Intellectuals and
the plain people against the politicians. He reached the masses in three
ways: through his general receptions which any one might attend; through
the open-door policy of his office, to which all the world was permitted
access; through his visits to the army. Many thousand men and women, in
one or another of these ways, met the President face to face, often in the
high susceptibility of intense woe, and carried away an impression which
was immediately circulated among all their acquaintances.
It would be impossible to exaggerate the grotesque miscellany of the
stream of people flowing ever in and out of the President’s open doors.
Patriots eager to serve their country but who could find no place in the
conventional requirements of the War Office; sharpers who wanted to
inveigle him into the traps of profiteers; widows with all their sons in
service, pleading for one to be exempted; other parents struggling with
the red tape that kept them from sons in hospitals; luxurious frauds
prating of their loyalty for the sake of property exemptions; inventors
with every imaginable strange device; politicians seeking to cajole him;
politicians bluntly threatening him; cashiered officers demanding justice;
men with grievances of a myriad sorts; nameless statesmen who sought to
teach him his duty; clergymen in large numbers, generally with the same
purpose; deputations from churches, societies, political organizations,
commissions, trades unions, with every sort of message from flattery to
denunciation; and best of all, simple, confiding people who wanted only to
say, “We trust you—God bless you!”
There was a method in this madness of accessibility. Its deepest
inspiration, to be sure, was kindness. In reply to a protest that he would
wear himself out listening to thousands of requests most of which could
not be granted, he replied with one of those smiles in which there was so
much sadness, “They don’t want much; they get but little, and I must see
them.”(3)
But there was another inspiration. His open doors enabled him to study the
American people, every phase of it, good and bad. “Men moving only in an
official circle,” said he, “are apt to become merely official—not to
say arbitrary—in their ideas, and are apter and apter with each
passing day to forget that they only hold power in a representative
capacity. . . . Many of the matters brought to my notice are utterly
frivolous, but others are of more or less importance, and all serve to
renew in me a clearer and more vivid image of that great popular
assemblage out of which I sprung, and to which at the end of two years I
must return. . . . I call these receptions my public opinion baths; for I
have but little time to read the papers, and gather public opinion that
way; and though they may not be pleasant in all their particulars, the
effect as a whole, is renovating and invigorating to my perceptions of
responsibility and duty.”(4)
He did not allow his patience to be abused with evil intent. He read his
suppliants swiftly. The profiteer, the shirk, the fraud of any sort, was
instantly unmasked. “I’ll have nothing to do with this business,” he burst
out after listening to a gentlemanly profiteer; “nor with any man who
comes to me with such degrading propositions. What! Do you take the
President of the United States to be a commission broker? You have come to
the wrong place, and for you and for every one who comes for the same
purpose, there is the door.”(5)
Lincoln enjoyed this indiscriminate mixing with people. It was his chief
escape from care. He saw no reason why his friends should Commiserate him
because of the endless handshaking. That was a small matter compared with
the interest he took in the ever various stream of human types. Sometimes,
indeed, he would lapse into a brown study in the midst of a reception.
Then he “would shake hands with thousands of people, seemingly unconscious
of what he was doing, murmuring monotonous salutations as they went by,
his eye dim, his thoughts far withdrawn. . . . Suddenly, he would see some
familiar face—his memory for faces was very good-and his eye would
brighten and his whole form grow attentive; he would greet the visitor
with a hearty grasp and a ringing word and dismiss him with a cheery laugh
that filled the Blue Room with infectious good nature.”(6) Carpenter, the
portrait painter, who for a time saw him daily, says that “his laugh stood
by itself. The neigh of a wild horse on his native prairie is not more
undisguised and hearty.” An intimate friend called it his “life
preserver.”(7)
Lincoln’s sense of humor delighted in any detail of an event which
suggested comedy. His genial awkwardness amused himself quite as much as
it amused the world. At his third public reception he wore a pair of white
kid gloves that were too small. An old friend approached. The President
shook hands so heartily that his glove burst with a popping sound. Holding
up his hand, Lincoln gazed at the ruined glove with a droll air while the
arrested procession came to a standstill. “Well, my old friend,” said he,
“this is a general bustification; you and I were never intended to wear
these things. If they were stronger they might do to keep out the cold,
but they are a failure to shake hands with between old friends like us.
Stand aside, Captain, and I’ll see you shortly.”(8)
His complete freedom from pose, and from the sense of place, was glimpsed
by innumerable visitors. He would never allow a friend to address him by a
title. “Call me Lincoln,” he would say; “Mr. President is entirely too
formal for us.”(9)
In a mere politician, all this might have been questioned. But Hawthorne
was right as to the people’s intuition of Lincoln’s honesty. He hated the
parade of eminence. Jefferson was his patron saint, and “simplicity” was
part of his creed. Nothing could induce him to surround himself with pomp,
or even—as his friends thought—with mere security. Rumors of
plots against his life were heard almost from the beginning. His friends
begged long and hard before he consented to permit a cavalry guard at the
gates of the White House. Very soon he countermanded his consent. “It
would never do,” said he, “for a president to have guards with drawn
sabers at his door, as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or
were assuming to be, an emperor.”(10)
A military officer, alarmed for his safety, begged him to consider “the
fact that any assassin or maniac seeking his life, could enter his
presence without the interference of a single armed man to hold him back.
The entrance doors, and all doors on the official side of the building,
were open at all hours of the day and very late into the evening; and I
have many times entered the mansion and walked up to the rooms of the two
private secretaries as late as nine or ten o’clock at night, without
Seeing, or being challenged by a single soul.” But the officer pleaded in
vain. Lincoln laughingly paraphrased Charles II, “Now as to political
assassination, do you think the Richmond people would like to have
Hannibal Hamlin here any more than myself? . . . As to the crazy folks,
Major, why I must only take my chances-the most crazy people at present, I
fear, being some of my own too zealous adherents.”(11) With Carpenter, to
whom he seems to have taken a liking, he would ramble the streets of
Washington, late at night, “without escort or even the company of a
servant.”(12) Though Halleck talked him into accepting an escort when
driving to and fro between Washington and his summer residence at the
Soldiers’ Home, he would frequently give it the slip and make the journey
on horseback alone. In August of 1862 on one of these solitary rides, his
life was attempted. It was about eleven at night; he was “jogging along at
a slow gait immersed in deep thought” when some one fired at him with a
rifle from near at hand. The ball missed its aim and the President’s
horse, as Lincoln confided to his familiars, “gave proof of decided
dissatisfaction at the racket, and with one reckless bound, he
unceremoniously separated me from my eight-dollar plug hat . . . At
break-neck speed we reached a haven of safety. Meanwhile, I was left in
doubt whether death was more desirable from being thrown from a runaway
Federal horse, or as the tragic result of a rifle ball fired by a disloyal
bushwhacker in the middle of the night”(13)
While carrying his life in his hands in this oddly reckless way, he belied
himself, as events were to show, by telling his friends that he fancied
himself “a great coward physically,” that he felt sure he would make a
poor soldier. But he was sufficiently just to himself to add, “Moral
cowardice is something which I think I never had.”(14)
Lincoln’s humor found expression in other ways besides telling stories and
laughing at himself. He seized every opportunity to convert a petition
into a joke, when this could be done without causing pain. One day, there
entered a great man with a long list of favors which he hoped to have
granted. Among these was “the case of Betsy Ann Dougherty, a good woman,”
said the great man. “She lived in my county and did my washing for a long
time. Her husband went off and joined the Rebel army and I wish you would
give her a protection paper.” The pompous gravity of the way the case was
presented struck Lincoln as very funny. His visitor had no humor. He
failed to see jokes while Lincoln quizzed him as to who and what was Betsy
Ann. At length the President wrote a line on a card and handed it to the
great man. “Tell Betsy Ann to put a string in this card and hang it round
her neck,” said he. “When the officers (who may have doubted her
affiliations) see this they will keep their hands off your Betsy Ann.” On
the card was written, “Let Betsy Ann Dougherty alone as long as she
behaves herself. A. Lincoln.”(15)
This eagerness for a joke now and then gave offense. On one occasion, a
noted Congressman called on the President shortly after a disaster.
Lincoln began to tell a story. The Congressman jumped up. “Mr. President,
I did not come here this morning to hear stories. It is too serious a
time.” Lincoln’s face changed. “Ashley,” said he, “sit down! I respect you
as an earnest, sincere man. You can not be more anxious than I have been
constantly since the beginning of the war; and I say to you now, that were
it not for this occasional vent, I should die.”(16) Again he said, “When
the Peninsula Campaign terminated suddenly at Harrison’s Landing, I was as
near inconsolable as I could be and live.”(17)
Lincoln’s imaginative power, the ineradicable artist in him, made of
things unseen true realities to his sensibility. Reports of army suffering
bowed his spirit. “This was especially’ the case when the noble victims
were of his own acquaintance, or of the narrower circle of his familiar
friends; and then he seemed for the moment possessed of a sense of
personal responsibility for their individual fate which was at once most
unreasonable and most pitiful.” On hearing that two sons of an old friend
were desperately wounded and would probably die, he broke out with: “Here,
now, are these dear brave boys killed in this cursed war. My God! My God!
It is too bad! They worked hard to earn money to educate themselves and
this is the end! I loved them as if they were my own.”(18) He was one of
the few who have ever written a beautiful letter of condolence. Several of
his letters attempting this all but impossible task, come as near their
mark as such things can. One has become a classic:
“I have been shown,” he wrote to Mrs. Bixby, “in the files of the War
Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you
are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of
battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which
should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.
But I can not refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be
found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our
heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you
only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that
must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of
freedom.”(19)
All these innumerable instances of his sympathy passed from mouth to
mouth; became part of a floating propaganda that was organizing the people
in his support. To these were added many anecdotes of his mercy. The
American people had not learned that war is a rigorous thing. Discipline
in the army was often hard to maintain. Impulsive young men who tired of
army life, or who quarreled with their officers, sometimes walked away.
There were many condemnations either for mutiny or desertion. In the
stream of suppliants pouring daily through the President’s office, many
were parents imploring mercy for rash sons. As every death-warrant had to
be signed by the President, his generals were frequently enraged by his
refusal to carry out their decisions. “General,” said he to an angry
commander who charged him with destroying discipline, “there are too many
weeping widows in the United States now.-For God’s sake don’t ask me to
add to the number; for I tell you plainly I won’t do it.”(20)
Here again, kindness was blended with statecraft, mercy with shrewdness.
The generals could not grasp the political side of war. Lincoln tried to
make them see it. When they could not, he quietly in the last resort
counteracted their influence. When some of them talked of European
experience, he shook his head; it would not do; they must work with the
tools they had; first of all with an untrained people, intensely sensitive
to the value of human life, impulsive, quick to forget offenses,
ultra-considerate of youth and its rashness. Whatever else the President
did, he must not allow the country to think of the army as an ogre
devouring its sons because of technicalities. The General saw only the
discipline, the morale, of the soldiers; the President saw the far more
difficult, the more roundabout matter, the discipline and the morale of
the citizens. The one believed that he could compel; the other with his
finger on the nation’s pulse, knew that he had to persuade.
However, this flowing army of the propaganda did not always engage him on
the tragic note. One day a large fleshy man, of a stern but homely
countenance and a solemn and dignified carriage, immaculate dress—”swallow-tailed
coat, ruffled shirt of faultless fabric, white cravat and orange-colored
gloves”—entered with the throng. Looking at him Lincoln was somewhat
appalled. He expected some formidable demand. To his relief, the imposing
stranger delivered a brief harangue on the President’s policy, closing
with, “I have watched you narrowly ever since your inauguration. . . . As
one of your constituents, I now say to you, do in future as you damn
please, and I will support you.” “Sit down, my friend,” said Lincoln, “sit
down. I am delighted to see you. Lunch with us today. Yes, you must stay
and lunch with us, my friend, for I have not seen enough of you yet.”(21)
There were many of these informal ambassadors of the people assuring the
President of popular support. And this florid gentleman was not the only
one who lunched with the President on first acquaintance.
This casual way of inviting strangers to lunch with him was typical of his
mode of life, which was exceedingly simple. He slept lightly and rose
early. In summer when he used the Soldiers’ Home as a residence, he was at
his desk in the White House at eight o’clock in the morning. His breakfast
was an egg and a cup of coffee; luncheon was rarely more than a glass of
milk and a biscuit with a plate of fruit in season; his dinner at six
o’clock, was always a light meal. Though he had not continued a total
abstainer, as in the early days at Springfield, he very seldom drank wine.
He never used tobacco. So careless was he with regard to food that when
Mrs. Lincoln was away from home, there was little regularity in his meals.
He described his habits on such occasions as “browsing around.”(22)
Even when Mrs. Lincoln was in command at the White House, he was not
invariably dutiful. An amusing instance was observed by some high
officials. The luncheon hour arrived in the midst of an important
conference. Presently, a servant appeared reminding Mr. Lincoln of the
hour, but he took no notice. Another summons, and again no notice. After a
short interval, the door of the office flew open and the titular “First
Lady” flounced into the room, a ruffled, angry little figure, her eyes
flashing. With deliberate quiet, as if in a dream, Lincoln rose slowly,
took her calmly, firmly by the shoulders, lifted her, carried her through
the doorway, set her down, closed the door, and went on with the
conference as if unconscious of an interruption.(23) Mrs. Lincoln did not
return. The remainder of the incident is unknown.
The burden of many anecdotes that were included in the propaganda was his
kindness to children. It began with his own. His little rascal “Tad,”
after Willie’s death, was the apple of his eye. The boy romped in and out
of his office. Many a time he was perched on his father’s knee while great
affairs of state were under discussion.(24) Lincoln could persuade any
child from the arms of its mother, nurse, or play fellow, there being a
“peculiar fascination in his voice and manner which the little one could
not resist.”(25)
All impressionable, imaginative young people, brought into close
association with him, appear to have felt his spell. His private
secretaries were his sworn henchmen. Hay’s diary rings with admiration—the
keen, discriminating, significant admiration of your real observer. Hay
refers to him by pet name-“The Ancient,” “The Old Man,” “The Tycoon.”
Lincoln’s entire relation with these gifted youngsters may be typified by
one of Hay’s quaintest anecdotes. Lincoln had gone to bed, as so often he
did, with a book. “A little after midnight as I was writing, the President
came into the office laughing, with a volume of Hood’s Works in his hand,
to show Nicolay and me the little caricature, ‘An Unfortunate Being’;
seemingly utterly unconscious that he, with his short shirt hanging about
his long legs, and setting out behind like the tail feathers of an
enormous ostrich, was infinitely funnier than anything in the book he was
laughing at. What a man it is! occupied all day with matters of vast
moment, deeply anxious about the fate of the greatest army of the world,
with his own plans and future hanging on the events of the passing hour,
he yet has such a wealth of simple bonhomie and good fellowship that he
gets out of bed and perambulates the house in his shirt to find us that we
may share with him the fun of poor Hood’s queer little conceits.”(26)
In midsummer, 1863, “The Tycoon is in fine whack. I have rarely seen him
more serene and busy. He is managing this war, the draft, foreign
relations, and planning a reconstruction of the Union, all at once. I
never knew with what a tyrannous authority he rules the Cabinet, until
now. The most important things he decides and there is no cavil. I am
growing more convinced that the good of the country demands that he should
be kept where he is till this thing is over. There is no man in the
country so wise, so gentle, and so firm.”(27)
And again, “You may talk as you please of the Abolition Cabal directing
affairs from Washington; some well-meaning newspapers advise the President
to keep his fingers out of the military pie, and all that sort of thing.
The truth is, if he did, the pie would be a sorry mess. The old man sits
here and wields, like a backwoods Jupiter, the bolts of war and the
machinery of government with a hand especially steady and equally firm. .
I do not know whether the nation is worthy of him for another term. I know
the people want him. There is no mistaking that fact. But the politicians
are strong yet, and he is not their ‘kind of a cat.’ I hope God won’t see
fit to scourge us for our sins by any of the two or three most prominent
candidates on the ground.”(28) This was the conclusion growing everywhere
among the bulk of the people. There is one more cause of it to be reckoned
with. Lincoln had not ceased to be the literary statesman. In fact, he was
that more effectively than ever. His genius for fable-making took a new
turn. Many a visitor who came to find fault, went home to disseminate the
apt fable with which the President had silenced his objections and
captured his agreement. His skill in narration also served him well.
Carpenter repeats a story about Andrew Johnson and his crude but stern
religion which in mere print is not remarkable. “I have elsewhere
insinuated,” comments Carpenter, “that Mr. Lincoln was capable of much
dramatic power. . . . It was shown in his keen appreciation of
Shakespeare, and unrivaled faculty of Storytelling. The incident just
related, for example, was given with a thrilling effect which mentally
placed Johnson, for the time being, alongside Luther and Cromwell.
Profanity or irreverence was lost sight of in a fervid utterance of a
highly wrought and great-souled determination, united with a rare
exhibition of pathos and self-abnegation.”(29)
In formal literature, he had done great things upon a far higher level
than any of his writings previous to that sudden change in his style in
1860. For one, there was the Fast Day Proclamation. There was also a
description of his country, of the heritage of the nation, in the third
message. Its aim was to give imaginative reality to the national idea;
just as the second message had aimed to give argumentative reality.
“There is no line, straight or crooked, suitable for a national boundary
upon which to divide. Trace through from east to west, upon the line
between the free and the slave Country and we shall find a little more
than one-third of its length are rivers, easy to be crossed, and
populated, or soon to be populated, thickly upon both sides; while nearly
all its remaining length are merely surveyors’ lines, over which people
may walk back and forth without any consciousness of their presence. No
part of this line can be made any more difficult to pass by writing it
down on paper or parchment as a national boundary.
“But there is another difficulty. The great interior region, bounded east
by the Alleghanies, north by the British dominions, west by the Rocky
Mountains, and south by the line along which the culture of corn and
cotton meets, and which includes part of Virginia, part of Tennessee, all
of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri,
Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Territories of Dakota, Nebraska, and part
of Colorado, already has above ten millions of people, and will have fifty
millions within fifty years, if not prevented by any political folly or
mistake. It contains more than one-third of the Country owned by the
United States—certainly more than one million square miles. Once
half as populous as Massachusetts already is, it would have more than
seventy-five millions of people. A glance at the map shows that,
territorially speaking, it is the great body of the republic. The other
parts are but marginal borders to it, the magnificent region sloping west
from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific being the deepest and also the
richest in undeveloped resources. In the production of provisions, grains,
grasses, and all which proceed from them, this great interior region is
naturally one of the most important in the world. Ascertain from the
statistics the small proportion of the region which has, as yet, been
brought into cultivation, and also the large and rapidly increasing amount
of its products and we shall be overwhelmed with the magnitude of the
prospect presented; and yet, this region has no seacoast, touches no ocean
anywhere. As part of one nation, its people now find, and may forever
find, their way to Europe by New York, to South America and Africa by New
Orleans, and to Asia by San Francisco. But separate our common country
into two nations as designed by the present rebellion, and every man of
this great interior region is thereby cut off from some one or more of
these outlets-not, perhaps, by a physical barrier, but by embarrassing and
onerous trade regulations.
“And this is true wherever a dividing or boundary line may be fixed. Place
it between the now free and slave country, or place it south of Kentucky
or north of Ohio, and still the truth remains that none south of it can
trade to any port or place north of it, and none north of it can trade to
any port or place south of it, except upon terms dictated by a government
foreign to them. These outlets east, west, and south, are indispensable to
the well-being of the people inhabiting and to inhabit, this vast interior
region. Which of the three may be the best is no proper question. All are
better than either; and all of right belong to that people and to their
Successors forever. True to themselves, they will not ask where a line of
separation shall be, but will vow rather that there shall be no such line.
Nor are the marginal regions less interested in these communications to
and through them to the great outside world. They, too, and each of them,
must have access to this Egypt of the West without paying toll at the
crossing of any national boundary.
“Our national strife springs not from our permanent part, not from the
land we inhabit, not from our national homestead. There is no possible
severing of this but would multiply, and not mitigate, evils among us. In
all its adaptations and aptitudes it demands union and abhors separation.
In fact, it would ere long, force reunion, however much of blood and
treasure the separation might have cost.”(30)
A third time he made a great literary stroke, gave utterance, in yet
another form, to his faith that the national idea was the one constant
issue for which he had asked his countrymen, and would continue to ask
them, to die. It was at Gettysburg, November 19, 1863, in consecration of
a military burying-ground, that he delivered, perhaps, his greatest
utterance:
“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we
can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or
detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here,
but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living,
rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought
here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here
dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave
the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these
dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation under God, shall have a
new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, for the people,
by the people, shall not perish from the earth.”(31)
XXVIII. APPARENT ASCENDENCY
Toward the end of 1863, Lowell prepared an essay on “The President’s
Policy.” It might almost be regarded as a manifesto of the Intellectuals.
That there was now a prospect of winning the war “was mainly due to the
good sense, the good humor, the sagacity, the large-mindedness, and the
unselfish honesty of the unknown man whom a blind fortune, as it seemed,
had lifted from the crowd to the most dangerous and difficult eminence of
modern times.” When the essay appeared in print, Lincoln was greatly
pleased. He wrote to the editors of the North American Review, “I am not
the most impartial judge; yet with due allowance for this, I venture to
hope that the article entitled ‘The President’s Policy’ will be of value
to the country. I fear I am not quite worthy of all which is therein so
kindly said of me personally.”(1)
This very able defense of his previous course appeared as he was
announcing to the country his final course. He was now satisfied that
winning the war was but a question of time. What would come after war was
now in his mind the overshadowing matter. He knew that the vindictive
temper had lost nothing of its violence. Chandler’s savagery—his
belief that the Southerners had forfeited the right to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness—was still the Vindictive creed. ‘Vae
victi’! When war ended, they meant to set their feet on the neck of the
vanquished foe. Furthermore, Lincoln was not deceived as to why they were
lying low at this particular minute. Ears had been flattened to the ground
and they were heeding what the ground had said. The President was too
popular for them to risk attacking him without an obvious issue. Their
former issue had been securely appropriated by the Democrats. Where could
they find another? With consummate boldness Lincoln presented them an
issue. It was reconstruction. When Congress met, he communicated the text
of a “Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction.”(2) This great document
on which all his concluding policy was based, offered “a full pardon” with
“restoration of all rights of property, except as to slaves, or in
property cases, where rights of third persons shall have intervened” upon
subscribing to an oath of allegiance which required only a full acceptance
of the authority of the United States. This amnesty was to be extended to
all persons except a few groups, such as officers above the rank of
colonel and former officials of the United States. The Proclamation also
provided that whenever, in any Seceded State, the new oath should be taken
by ten per cent. of all those who were qualified to vote under the laws of
1860, these ten per cent. should be empowered to set up a new State
government.
From the Vindictive point of view, here was a startling announcement.
Lincoln had declared for a degree of magnanimity that was as a red rag to
a bull. He had also carried to its ultimate his assumption of war powers.
No request was made for congressional cooperation. The message which the
Proclamation accompanied was informative only.
By this time, the Vindictive Coalition of 1861 was gradually coming
together again. Or, more truly, perhaps, various of its elements were
fusing into a sort of descendant of the old coalition. The leaders of the
new Vindictive group were much the same as the leaders of the earlier
group. There was one conspicuous addition. During the next six months,
Henry Winter Davis held for a time the questionable distinction of being
Lincoln’s most inveterate enemy. He was a member of the House. In the
House many young and headstrong politicians rallied about him. The
Democrats at times craftily followed his lead. Despite the older and more
astute Vindictives of the Senate, Chandler, Wade and the rest who knew
that their time had not come, Davis, with his ardent followers, took up
the President’s challenge. Davis brought in a bill designed to complete
the reorganization of the old Vindictive Coalition. It appealed to the
enemies of presidential prerogative, to all those who wanted the road to
reconstruction made as hard as possible, and to the Abolitionists. This
bill, in so many words, transferred the whole matter of reconstruction
from the President to Congress; it required a majority (instead of
one-tenth) of all the male citizens of a Seceded State as the basis of a
new government; it exacted of this majority a pledge never to pay any
State debt contracted during the Confederacy, and also the perpetual
prohibition of slavery in their State constitution.
Davis got his bill through the House, but his allies in the Senate laid it
aside. They understood the country too well not to see that they must wait
for something to happen. If the President made any mistake, if anything
went wrong with the army—they remembered the spring of 1862,
McClellan’s failure, and how Chandler followed it up. And at this moment
no man was chafing more angrily because of what the ground was saying, no
man was watching the President more keenly, than Chandler. History is said
to repeat itself, and all things are supposed to come to him who waits.
While Davis’s bill was before the House, Lincoln accepted battle with the
Vindictives in a way that was entirely unostentatious, but that burned his
bridges. He pressed forward the organization of a new State government in
Louisiana under Federal auspices. He wrote to Michael Hahn, the newly
chosen governor of this somewhat fictitious State: “I congratulate you on
having fixed your name in history as the first Free State governor of
Louisiana.”(3)
Meanwhile, the hotheads of the House again followed Davis’s lead and flung
defiance in Lincoln’s face. Napoleon, who had all along coquetted
alarmingly with the Confederates, had also pushed ahead with his insolent
conquest of Mexico. Lincoln and Seward, determined to have but one war on
their hands at a time, had skilfully evaded committing themselves. The
United States had neither protested against the action of Napoleon, nor in
any way admitted its propriety. Other men besides the Vindictives were
biding their time. But here the hotheads thought they saw an opportunity.
Davis brought in a resolution which amounted to a censure of the
Administration for not demanding the retirement of the French from Mexico.
This was one of those times when the Democrats played politics and
followed Davis. The motion was carried unanimously.(4) It was so much of a
sensation that the ‘American Minister at Paris, calling on the Imperial
Minister of Foreign Affairs, was met by the curt question, “Do you bring
peace or war?”
But it was not in the power of the House to draw Lincoln’s fire until he
chose to be drawn. He ignored its action. The Imperial Government was
informed that the acts of the House of Representatives were not the acts
of the President, and that in relation to France, if the President should
change his policy, the imperial Government would be duly in formed.(5)
It was Lincoln’s fate to see his policy once again at the mercy of his
Commanding General. That was his situation in the spring of 1862 when
everything hung on McClellan who failed him; again in the autumn of the
year when McClellan so narrowly saved him. The spring of 1864 paralleled,
in this respect, that other spring two years earlier. To be sure,
Lincoln’s position was now much stronger; he had a great personal
following on which he relied. But just how strong it was he did not know.
He was taking a great risk forcing a policy high-handed in defiance of
Congress, where all his bitterest enemies were entrenched, glowering. If
his General failed him now—
The man on whom this huge responsibility rested was Grant. Lincoln had
summoned him from the West and placed him at the head of all the armies of
the Republic. As to Halleck who had long since proved himself perfectly
useless, he was allowed to lapse into obscurity.
Grant has preserved in his Memoirs his first confidential talk with
Lincoln: “He told me he did not want to know what I proposed to do. But he
submitted a plan of campaign of his own that he wanted me to hear and then
do as I pleased about. He brought out a map of Virginia on which he had
evidently marked every position occupied by the Federal and Confederate
armies up to that time. He pointed out on the map two streams which empty
into the Potomac, and suggested that an army might be moved on boats and
landed between the mouths of those streams. We would then have the Potomac
to bring our supplies, and the tributaries would protect our flanks while
we moved out. I listened respectfully, but did not suggest that the same
streams would protect Lee’s flanks while he was shutting us up.”(6)
Grant set out for the front in Virginia. Lincoln’s parting words were this
note: “Not expecting to see you again before the spring campaign opens, I
wish to express in this way my entire satisfaction with what you have done
up to this time, so far as I understand it. The particulars of your plans
I neither know nor seek to know. You are vigilant and self-reliant; and,
pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints
upon you. While I am very anxious that any great disaster or capture of
our men in great numbers shall be avoided, I know these points are less
likely to escape your attention than they would be mine. If there is
anything wanting which is within my power to give, do not fail to let me
know it. And now, with a brave army and a just cause, may God sustain
you.”(7)
XXIX. CATASTROPHE
If the politicians needed a definite warning, in addition to what the
ground was saying, it was given by an incident that centered upon Chase. A
few bold men whose sense of the crowd was not so acute as it might have
been, attempted to work up a Chase boom. At the instance of Senator
Pomeroy, a secret paper known to-day as the Pomeroy Circular, was started
on its travels. The Circular aimed to make Chase the Vindictive candidate.
Like all the other anti-Lincoln moves of the early part of 1864, it was
premature. The shrewd old Senators who were silently marshaling the
Vindictive forces, let it alone.
Chase’s ambition was fully understood at the White House. During the
previous year, his irritable self-consciousness had led to quarrels with
the President, generally over patronage, and more than once he had offered
his resignation. On one occasion, Lincoln went to his house and begged him
to reconsider. Alone among the Cabinet, Chase had failed to take the
measure of Lincoln and still considered him a second-rate person, much his
inferior. He rated very high the services to his country of the Secretary
of the Treasury whom he considered the logical successor to the
Presidency.
Lincoln refused to see what Chase was after. “I have determined,” he told
Hay, “to shut my eyes as far as possible to everything of the sort. Mr.
Chase makes a good secretary and I shall keep him where he is.”(1) In
lighter vein, he said that Chase’s presidential ambition was like a “chin
fly” pestering a horse; it led to his putting all the energy he had into
his work.(2)
When a copy of the Circular found its way to the White House, Lincoln
refused to read it.(3) Soon afterward it fell into the hands of an
unsympathetic or indiscreet editor and was printed. There was a hubbub.
Chase offered to resign. Lincoln wrote to him in reply:
“My knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy’s letter having been made public came to me
only the day you wrote but I had, in Spite of myself, known of its
existence several days before. I have not yet read it, and I think I shall
not. I was not shocked or surprised by the appearance of the letter
because I had had knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy’s committee, and of secret
issues which I supposed came from it, and of secret agents who I supposed
were sent out by it, for several weeks. I have known just as little of
these things as my friends have allowed me to know. They bring the
documents to me, but I do not read them; they tell me what they think fit
to tell me, but I do not inquire for more. I fully concur with you that
neither of us can be justly held responsible for what our respective
friends may do without our instigation or countenance; and I assure you,
as you have assured me, that no assault has been made upon you by my
instigation or with my countenance. Whether you shall remain at the head
of the Treasury Department is a question which I will not allow myself to
consider from any standpoint other than my judgment of the public service,
and in that view, I do not perceive occasion for a change.”(4) But this
was not the end of the incident. The country promptly repudiated Chase.
His own state led the way. A caucus of Union members of the Ohio
Legislature resolved that the people and the soldiers of Ohio demanded the
reelection of Lincoln. In a host of similar resolutions, Legislative
caucuses, political conventions, dubs, societies, prominent individuals
not in the political machine, all ringingly declared for Lincoln, the one
proper candidate of the “Union party”-as the movement was labeled in a
last and relatively successful attempt to break party lines.
As the date of the “Union Convention” approached, Lincoln put aside an
opportunity to gratify the Vindictives. Following the Emancipation
Proclamation, the recruiting offices had been opened to negroes. Thereupon
the Confederate government threatened to treat black soldiers as brigands,
and to refuse to their white officers the protection of the laws of war. A
cry went up in the North for reprisal. It was not the first time the cry
had been raised. In 1862 Lincoln’s spokesman in Congress, Browning, had
withstood a proposal for the trial of General Buckner by the civil
authorities of Kentucky. Browning opposed such a course on the ground that
it would lead to a policy of retaliation, and make of the war a
gratification of revenge.(5) The Confederate threat gave a new turn to the
discussion. Frederick Douglas, the most influential negro of the time,
obtained an audience with Lincoln and begged for reprisals. Lincoln would
not consent. So effective was his argument that even the ardent negro,
convinced that his race was about to suffer persecution, was satisfied.
“I shall never forget,” Douglas wrote, “the benignant expression of his
face, the tearful look of his eye, the quiver in his voice, when he
deprecated a resort to retaliatory measures. ‘Once begun,’ said he, ‘I do
not know where such a measure would stop.’ He said he could not take men
out and kill them in cold blood for what was done by others. If he could
get hold of the persons who were guilty of killing the colored prisoners
in cold blood, the case would be different, but he could not kill the
innocent for the guilty.”(6)
In April, 1864, the North was swept by a wild rumor of deliberate massacre
of prisoners at Fort Pillow. Here was an opportunity for Lincoln to
ingratiate himself with the Vindictives. The President was to make a
speech at a fair held in Baltimore, for the benefit of the Sanitary
Commission. The audience was keen to hear him denounce the reputed
massacre, and eager to applaud a promise of reprisal. Instead, he
deprecated hasty judgment; insisting that the rumor had not been verified;
that nothing should be done on the strength of mere report.
“It is a mistake to suppose the government is indifferent in this matter,
or is not doing the best it can in regard to it. We do not to-day know
that a colored soldier or white officer commanding colored soldiers has
been massacred by the Rebels when made a prisoner. We fear it—believe
it, I may say-but we do not know it To take the life of one of their
prisoners on the assumption that they murder ours, when it is short of
certainty that they do murder ours, might be too serious, too cruel a
mistake.”(7)
What a tame, spiritless position in the eyes of the Vindictives! A
different opportunity to lay hold of public opinion he made the most of.
And yet, here also, he spoke in that carefully guarded way, making sure he
was not understood to say more than he meant, which most politicians would
have pronounced over-scrupulous. A deputation of working men from New York
were received at the White House. “The honorary membership in your
association,” said he, “as generously tendered, is gratefully accepted. .
. . You comprehend, as your address shows, that the existing rebellion
means more, and tends to more, than the perpetuation of African
slavery-that it is, in fact, a war upon the rights of all working people.”
After reviewing his own argument on this subject in the second message, he
concluded:
“The views then expressed now remain unchanged, nor have I much to add.
None are so deeply interested to resist the present rebellion as the
working people. Let them beware of prejudices, working division and
hostility among themselves. The most notable feature of a disturbance in
your city last summer was the hanging of some working people by other
working people. It should never be so. The strongest bond of human
sympathy outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all working
people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should this lead to
a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property is the fruit of
labor; property is desirable; is a positive good in the world. That some
should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just
encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless
pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently and build one
for himself, thus by example assuming that his own shall be safe from
violence when built.”(8)
Lincoln was never more anxious than in this fateful spring when so many
issues were hanging in the balance. Nevertheless, in all his relations
with the world, his firm serenity was not broken. Though subject to
depression so deep that his associates could not penetrate it, he kept it
sternly to himself.(9) He showed the world a lighter, more graceful aspect
than ever before. ‘A precious record of his later mood is the account of
him set down by Frank B. Carpenter, the portrait painter, a man of note in
his day, who was an inmate of the White House during the first half of
1864. Carpenter was painting a picture of the “Signing of the Emancipation
Proclamation.” He saw Lincoln informally at all sorts of odd times, under
all sorts of conditions. “All familiar with him,” says Carpenter, “will
remember the weary air which became habitual during his last years. This
was more of the mind than of the body, and no rest and recreation which he
allowed himself could relieve it. As he sometimes expressed it, ‘no remedy
seemed ever to reach the tired spot.”(10)
A great shadow was darkening over him. He was more than ever convinced
that he had not long to live. None the less, his poise became more
conspicuous, his command over himself and others more distinguished, as
the months raced past. In truth he had worked through a slow but profound
transformation. The Lincoln of 1864 was so far removed from the Lincoln of
Pigeon Creek-but logically, naturally removed, through the absorption of
the outer man by the inner—that inevitably one thinks of
Shakespeare’s change “into something rich and strange.”
Along with the weakness, the contradictions of his earlier self, there had
also fallen away from him the mere grossness that had belonged to him as a
peasant. Carpenter is unconditional that in six months of close intimacy,
seeing him in company with all sorts of people, he never heard from
Lincoln an offensive story. He quotes Seward and Lincoln’s family
physician to the same effect.(11)
The painter, like many others, was impressed by the tragic cast of his
expression, despite the surface mirth.
“His complexion, at this time, was inclined to sallowness his eyes were
bluish gray in color—always in deep shadow, however, from the upper
lids which were unusually heavy (reminding me in this respect of Stuart’s
portrait of Washington) and the expression was remarkably pensive and
tender, often inexpressibly sad, as if the reservoir of tears lay very
near the surface—a fact proved not only by the response which
accounts of suffering and sorrow invariably drew forth, but by
circumstances which would ordinarily affect few men in his position.”(12)
As a result of the great strain to which he was subjected “his demeanor
and disposition changed-so gradually that it would be impossible to say
when the change began. . . . He continued always the same kindly, genial,
and cordial spirit he had been at first; but the boisterous laughter
became less frequent, year by year; the eye grew veiled by constant
meditation on momentous subjects; the air of reserve and detachment from
his surroundings increased. He aged with great rapidity.”(13)
Every Saturday afternoon the Marine Band gave an open-air concert in the
grounds of the White House. One afternoon Lincoln appeared upon the
portico. There was instant applause and cries for a speech. “Bowing his
thanks and excusing himself, he stepped back into the retirement of the
circular parlor, remarking (to Carpenter) with a disappointed air, as he
reclined on a sofa, ‘I wish they would let me sit there quietly and enjoy
the music.’ His kindness to others was unfailing. It was this harassed
statesman who came into the studio one day and found (Carpenter’s) little
boy of two summers playing on the floor. A member of the Cabinet was with
him; but laying aside all restraint, he took the little fellow in his arms
and they were soon on the best of terms.” While his younger son “Tad” was
with his mother on a journey, Lincoln telegraphed: “Tell Tad, father and
the goats are well, especially the goats.”(14) He found time one bright
morning in May to review the Sunday-school children of Washington who
filed past “cheering as if their very lives depended upon it,” while
Lincoln stood at a window “enjoying the scene… making pleasant remarks
about a face that now and then struck him.”(15) Carpenter told him that no
other president except Washington had placed himself so securely in the
hearts of the people. “Homely, honest, ungainly Lincoln,” said Asa Gray,
in a letter to Darwin, “is the representative man of the country.”
However, two groups of men in his own party were sullenly opposed to him—the
relentless Vindictives and certain irresponsible free lances who named
themselves the “Radical Democracy.” In the latter group, Fremont was the
hero; Wendell Phillips, the greatest advocate. They were extremists in all
things; many of them Agnostics. Furious against Lincoln, but unwilling to
go along with the waiting policy of the Vindictives, these visionaries
held a convention at Cleveland; voted down a resolution that recognized
God as an ally; and nominated Fremont for the Presidency. A witty comment
on the movement—one that greatly amused Lincoln—was the
citation of a verse in first Samuel: “And every one that was in distress,
and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented,
gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them; and there
were with him about four hundred men.”
If anything was needed to keep the dissatisfied Senators in the party
ranks, it was this rash “bolt.” Though Fremont had been their man in the
past, he had thrown the fat in the fire by setting up an independent
ticket. Silently, the wise opportunists of the Senate and all their
henchmen, stood aside at the “Union convention”—which they called
the Republican Convention—June seventh, and took their medicine.
There was no doubt of the tempest of enthusiasm among the majority of the
delegates. It was a Lincoln ovation.
In responding the next day to a committee of congratulation, Lincoln said:
“I am not insensible at all to the personal compliment there is in this,
and yet I do not allow myself to believe that any but a small portion of
it is to be appropriated as a personal compliment. . . . I do not allow
myself to suppose that either the Convention or the (National Union)
League have concluded to decide that I am the greatest or best man in
America, but rather they have concluded that it is best not to swap horses
while crossing the river, and have further concluded that I am not so poor
a horse that they might not make a botch of it trying to swap.”(16)
Carpenter records another sort of congratulation a few days later that
brought out the graceful side of this man whom most people still supposed
to be hopelessly awkward. It happened on a Saturday. Carpenter had invited
friends to sit in his painting room and oversee the crowd while listening
to the music. “Towards the close of the concert, the door suddenly opened,
and the President came in, as he was in the habit of doing, alone. Mr. and
Mrs. Cropsey had been presented to him in the course of the morning; and
as he came forward, half hesitatingly, Mrs. C., who held a bunch of
beautiful flowers in her hand, tripped forward playfully, and said: ‘Allow
me, Mr. President, to present you with a bouquet!’ The situation was
momentarily embarrassing; and I was puzzled to know how ‘His Excellency’
would get out of it. With no appearance of discomposure, he stooped down,
took the flowers, and, looking from them into the sparkling eyes and
radiant face of the lady, said, with a gallantry I was unprepared for
‘Really, madam, if you give them to me, and they are mine, I think I can
not possibly make so good use of them as to present them to you, in
return!'”(17)
In gaining the nomination, Lincoln had not, as yet, attained security for
his plans. Grant was still to be reckoned with. By a curious irony, the
significance of his struggle with Lee during May, his steady advance by
the left flank, had been misapprehended in the North. Looking at the map,
the country saw that he was pushing southward, and again southward, on
Virginia soil. McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, with them it had been:
But Grant kept on. He struck Lee in the furious battle of the Wilderness,
and moved to the left, farther south. “Victory!” cried the Northern
newspapers, “Lee isn’t able to stop him.” The same delusion was repeated
after Spottsylvania where the soldiers, knowing more of war than did the
newspapers, pinned to their coats slips of paper bearing their names;
identification of the bodies might be difficult. The popular mistake
continued throughout that dreadful campaign. The Convention was still
under the delusion of victory.
Lincoln also appears to have stood firm until the last minute in the
common error. But the report of Grant’s losses, more than the whole of
Lee’s army, filled him with horror. During these days, Carpenter had
complete freedom of the President’s office and “intently studied every
line and shade of expression in that furrowed face. In repose, it was the
saddest face I ever knew. There were days when I could scarcely look into
it without crying. During the first week of the battles of the Wilderness
he scarcely slept at all. Passing through the main hall of the domestic
apartment on one of these days, I met him, clad in a long, morning
wrapper, pacing back and forth a narrow passage leading to one of the
windows, his hands behind him, great black rings under his eyes, his head
bent forward upon his breast-altogether such a picture of the effects of
sorrow, care, and anxiety as would have melted the hearts of the worst of
his adversaries, who so mistakenly applied to him the epithets of tyrant
and usurper.”(18)
Despite these sufferings, Lincoln had not the slightest thought of giving
way. Not in him any likeness to the sentimentalists, Greeley and all his
crew, who were exultant martyrs when things were going right, and
shrieking pacifists the moment anything went wrong. In one of the darkest
moments of the year, he made a brief address at a Sanitary Fair in
Philadelphia.
“Speaking of the present campaign,” said he, “General Grant is reported to
have said, ‘I am going to fight it out on this line if it takes all
summer.’ This war has taken three years; it was begun or accepted upon the
line of restoring the national authority over the whole national domain,
and for the American people, as far as my knowledge enables me to speak, I
say we are going through on this line if it takes three years more.”(19)
He made no attempt to affect Grant’s course. He had put him in supreme
command and would leave everything to his judgment. And then came the
colossal blunder at Cold Harbor. Grant stood again where McClellan had
stood two years before. He stood there defeated. He could think of nothing
to do but just what McClellan had wanted to do—abandon the immediate
enterprise, make a great detour to the Southwest, and start a new campaign
on a different plan. Two years with all their terrible disasters, and this
was all that had come of it! Practically no gain, and a death-roll that
staggered the nation. A wail went over the North. After all, was the war
hopeless? Was Lee invincible? Was the best of the Northern manhood
perishing to no result?
Greeley, perhaps the most hysterical man of genius America has produced,
made his paper the organ of the wail. He wrote frantic appeals to the
government to cease fighting, do what could be done by negotiation, and if
nothing could be done—at least, stop “these rivers of human blood.”
The Vindictives saw their opportunity. They would capitalize the wail. The
President should be dealt with yet.
XXX. THE PRESIDENT VERSUS THE VINDICTIVES
Now that the Vindictives had made up their minds to fight, an occasion was
at their hands. Virtually, they declared war on the President by refusing
to recognize a State government which he had set up in Arkansas. Congress
would not admit Senators or Representatives from the Reconstructed State.
But on this issue, Lincoln was as resolute to fight to a finish as were
any of his detractors. He wrote to General Steele, commanding in Arkansas:
“I understand that Congress declines to admit to seats the persons sent as
Senators and Representatives from Arkansas. These persons apprehend that,
in consequence, you may not support the new State government there as you
otherwise would. My wish is that you give that government and the people
there the same support and protection that you would if the members had
been admitted, because in no event, nor in any view of the case, can this
do harm, while it will be the best you can do toward suppressing the
rebellion.”(1)
The same day Chase resigned. The reason he assigned was, again, the
squabble over patronage. He had insisted on an appointment of which the
President disapproved. Exactly what moved him may be questioned. Chase
never gave his complete confidence, not even to his diary. Whether he
thought that the Vindictives would now take him up as a rival of Lincoln,
continues doubtful. Many men were staggered by his action. Crittenden, the
Registrar of the Treasury, was thrown into a panic. “Mr. President,” said
he, “this is worse than another Bull Run. Pray let me go to Secretary
Chase and see if I can not induce him to withdraw his resignation. Its
acceptance now might cause a financial panic.” But Lincoln was in a
fighting mood. “Chase thinks he has become indispensable to the country,”
he told Chittenden. “He also thinks he ought to be President; he has no
doubt whatever about that. He is an able financier, a great statesman, and
at the bottom a patriot . . he is never perfectly happy unless he is
thoroughly miserable and able to make everybody else just as uncomfortable
as he is himself. . He is either determined to annoy me or that I shall
pat him on the shoulder and coax him to stay. I don’t think I ought to do
it. I will take him at his word.”(2)
He accepted the resignation in a note that was almost curt: “Of all I have
said in commendation of your ability and fidelity, I have nothing to
unsay; and yet you and I have reached a point of mutual embarrassment in
our official relations which it seems can not be overcome or longer
sustained consistently with the public service.”(3)
The selection of a successor to Chase was no easy matter. The Vindictives
were the leaders of the moment. What if they persuaded the Senate not to
confirm Lincoln’s choice of Secretary. “I never saw the President,” says
Carpenter, “under so much excitement as on the day following this event”
On the night of July first, Lincoln lay awake debating with himself the
merits of various candidates. At length, he selected his man and
immediately went to sleep.
“The next morning he went to his office and wrote the nomination. John
Hay, the assistant private secretary, had taken it from the President on
his way to the Capitol, when he encountered Senator Fessenden upon the
threshold of the room. As chairman of the Finance Committee, he also had
passed an anxious night, and called this early to consult with the
President, and offer some suggestions. After a few moments’ conversation,
Mr. Lincoln turned to him with a smile and said: ‘I am obliged to you,
Fessenden, but the fact is, I have just sent your own name to the Senate
for Secretary of the Treasury. Hay had just received the nomination from
my hand as you entered.’ Mr. Fessenden was taken completely by surprise,
and, very much agitated, protested his inability to accept the position.
The state of his health, he said, if no other consideration, made it
impossible. Mr. Lincoln would not accept the refusal as final. He very
justly felt that with Mr. Fessenden’s experience and known ability at the
head of the Finance Committee, his acceptance would go far toward
reestablishing a feeling of security. He said to him, very earnestly,
‘Fessenden, the Lord has not deserted me thus far, and He is not going to
now—you must accept!’
“They separated, the Senator in great anxiety of mind. Throughout the day,
Mr. Lincoln urged almost all who called to go and see Mr. Fessenden, and
press upon him the duty of accepting. Among these, was a delegation of New
York bankers, who, in the name of the banking community, expressed their
satisfaction at the nomination. This was especially gratifying to the
President; and in the strongest manner, he entreated them to ‘see Mr.
Fessenden and assure him of their support.'”(4)
In justification of his choice, Lincoln said to Hay:—”Thinking over
the matter, two or three points occurred to me: first his thorough
acquaintance with the business; as chairman of the Senate Committee of
Finance, he knows as much of this special subject as Mr. Chase; he
possesses a national reputation and the confidence of the country; he is a
Radical without the petulance and fretfulness of many radicals.”(5) In
other words, though he was not at heart one of them, he stood for the
moment so close to the Vindictives that they would not make an issue on
his confirmation.
Lincoln had scored a point in his game with the Vindictives. But the point
was of little value. The game’s real concern was that Reconstruction Bill
which was now before the Senate with Wade as its particular sponsor. The
great twin brethren of the Vindictives were Wade and Chandler. Both were
furious for the passage of the bill. “The Executive,” said Wade angrily,
“ought not to be allowed to handle this great question of his own liking.”
On the last day of the session, Lincoln was in the President’s room at the
Capitol Signing bills. The Reconstruction Bill, duly passed by both
Houses, was brought to him. Several Senators, friends of the bill and
deeply anxious, had come into the President’s room hoping to see him affix
his signature. To their horror, he merely glanced at the bill and laid it
aside. Chandler, who was watching him, bluntly demanded what he meant to
do. “This bill,” said Lincoln, “has been placed before me a few minutes
before Congress adjourns. It is a matter of too much importance to be
swallowed in that way.”
“If it is vetoed,” said Chandler, whose anger was mounting, “it will
damage us fearfully in the Northwest. The important point is that one
prohibiting slavery in the Reconstructed States.”
“That is the point,” replied the President, “on which I doubt the
authority of Congress to act.”
“It is no more than you have done yourself,” retorted Chandler.
Lincoln turned to him and said quietly but with finality: “I conceive that
I may in an emergency do things on military grounds which can not
constitutionally be done by Congress.”
Chandler angrily left the room. To those who remained, Lincoln added: “I
do not see how any of us now can deny and contradict what we have always
said, that Congress has no constitutional power over slavery in the
States.”(6)
In a way, he was begging the question. The real issue was not how a State
should be constitutionally reconstructed, but which, President or
Congress, had a right to assume dictatorial power. At last the true
Vindictive issue, lured out of their arms by the Democrats, had escaped
like a bird from a snare and was fluttering home. Here was the old issue
of the war powers in a new form that it was safe for them to press. And
the President had squarely defied them. It was civil war inside the Union
party. And for both sides, President and Vindictives, there could now be
nothing but rule or ruin.
In this crisis of factional politics, Lincoln was unmoved, self-contained,
lofty, deliberate. “If they (the Vindictives) choose to make a point on
this, I do not doubt that they can do harm. They have never been friendly
to me. At all events, I must keep some consciousness of being somewhere
near right. I must keep some standard of principle fixed within myself.”
XXXI A MENACING PAUSE
Lincoln had now reached his final stature. In contact with the world his
note was an inscrutable serenity. The jokes which he continued to tell
were but transitory glimmerings. They crossed the surface of his mood like
quick flickers of golden light on a stormy March day,—witnesses that
the sun would yet prevail,—in a forest-among mountain shadows. Or,
they were lightning glimmers in a night sky; they revealed, they did not
dispel, the dark beyond. Over all his close associates his personal
ascendency was complete. Now that Chase was gone, the last callous spot in
the Cabinet had been amputated. Even Stanton, once so domineering, so
difficult to manage, had become as clay in his hands.
But Lincoln never used power for its own sake, never abused his
ascendency. Always he got his end if he could without evoking the note of
command. He would go to surprising lengths to avoid appearing peremptory.
A typical remark was his smiling reply to a Congressman whom he had armed
with a note to the Secretary, who had returned aghast, the Secretary
having refused to comply with the President’s request and having decorated
his refusal with extraordinary language.
“Did Stanton say I was a damned fool?” asked Lincoln. “Then I dare say I
must be one, for Stanton is generally right and he always says what he
means.”
Nevertheless, the time had come when Lincoln had only to say the word and
Stanton, no matter how fierce his temper might’ be, would acknowledge his
master. General Fry, the Provost Marshal, witnessed a scene between them
which is a curious commentary on the transformation of the Stanton of
1862. Lincoln had issued an order relative to the disposition of certain
recruits. Stanton protested that it was unwarranted, that he would not put
it into effect. The Provost Marshal was called in and asked to state at
length all the facts involved. When he had finished Stanton broke out
excitedly—
“‘Now, Mr. President, those are the facts and you must see that your order
can not be executed.’
“Lincoln sat upon a sofa with his legs crossed and did not say a word
until the Secretary’s last remark. Then he said in a somewhat positive
tone, ‘Mr. Secretary, I reckon you’ll have to execute the order.’
“Stanton replied with asperity, ‘Mr. President, I can not do it. The order
is an improper one, and I can not execute it’.”
Lincoln fixed his eye upon Stanton, and in a firm voice with an accent
that clearly showed his determination, he said, “Mr. Secretary, it will
have to be done.”(1)
At this point, General Fry discreetly left the room. A few moments later,
he received instructions from Stanton to execute the President’s order.
In a public matter in the June of 1864 Lincoln gave a demonstration of his
original way of doing things. It displayed his final serenity in such
unexpected fashion that no routine politician, no dealer in the catchwords
of statecraft, could understand it. Since that grim joke, the deportation
of Vallandigham, the Copperhead leader had not had happy time. The
Confederacy did not want him. He had made his way to Canada. Thence, in
the spring of 1864 he served notice on his country that he would perform a
dramatic Part, play the role of a willing martyr—in a word, come
home and defy the government to do its worst. He came. But Lincoln did
nothing. The American sense of humor did the rest. If Vallandigham had not
advertised a theatrical exploit, ignoring him might have been dangerous.
But Lincoln knew his people. When the show did not come off, Vallandigham
was transformed in an instant from a martyr to an anticlimax. Though he
went busily to work, though he lived to attend the Democratic National
Convention and to write the resolution that was the heart of its platform,
his tale was told.
Turning from Vallandigham, partly in amusement, partly in contempt,
Lincoln grappled with the problem of reinforcing the army. Since the
Spring of 1863 the wastage of the army had been replaced by conscription.
But the system had not worked well. It contained a fatal provision. A
drafted man might escape service by paying three hundred dollars. Both the
Secretary of War and the Provost Marshal had urged the abolition of this
detail. Lincoln had communicated their arguments to Congress with his
approval and a new law had been drawn up accordingly. Nevertheless, late
in June, the House amended it by restoring the privilege of commuting
service for money.(2) Lincoln bestirred himself. The next day he called
together the Republican members of the House. “With a sad, mysterious
light in his melancholy eyes, as if they were familiar with things hidden
from mortals” he urged the Congressmen to reconsider their action. The
time of three hundred eighty thousand soldiers would expire in October. He
must have half a million to take their places. A Congressman objected that
elections were approaching; that the rigorous law he proposed would be
intensely unpopular; that it might mean the defeat, at the polls, of many
Republican Representatives; it might even mean the President’s defeat. He
replied that he had thought of all that.
“My election is not necessary; I must put down the rebellion; I must have
five hundred thousand more men.”(3)
He raised the timid politicians to his own level, inspired them with new
courage. Two days later a struggle began in the House for carrying out
Lincoln’s purpose. On the last day of the session along with the offensive
Reconstruction Bill, he received the new Enrollment Act which provided
that “no payment of money shall be accepted or received by the Government
as commutation to release any enrolled or drafted man from personal
obligation to per-form military service.”
Against this inflexible determination to fight to a finish, this
indifference to the political consequences of his determination, Lincoln
beheld arising like a portentous specter, a fury of pacifism. It found
expression in Greeley. Always the swift victim of his own affrighted hope,
Greeley had persuaded himself that both North and South had lost heart for
the war; that there was needed only a moving appeal, and they would throw
down their arms and the millennium would come. Furthermore, on the
flimsiest sort of evidence, he had fallen into a trap designed to place
the Northern government in the attitude of suing for peace. He wrote to
Lincoln demanding that he send an agent to confer with certain Confederate
officials who were reported to be then in Canada; he also suggested terms
of peace.(4) Greeley’s terms were entirely acceptable to Lincoln; but he
had no faith in the Canadian mare’s nest. However, he decided to give
Greeley the utmost benefit of the doubt, and also to teach him a lesson.
He commissioned Greeley himself to proceed to Canada, there to discover
“if there is or is not anything in the affair.” He wrote to him, “I not
only intend a sincere effort for peace, but I intend that you shall be a
personal witness that it is made.”(5)
Greeley, who did not want to have any responsibility for anything that
might ensue, whose joy was to storm and to find fault, accepted the duty
he could not well refuse, and set out in a bad humor.
Meanwhile two other men had conceived an undertaking somewhat analogous
but in a temper widely different. These were Colonel Jaquess, a clergyman
turned soldier, a man of high simplicity of character, and J. R. Gilmore,
a writer, known by the pen name of Edmund Kirke. Jaquess had told Gilmore
of information he had received from friends in the Confederacy; he was
convinced that nothing would induce the Confederate government to consider
any terms of peace that embraced reunion, whether with or without
emancipation. “It at once occurred to me,” says Gilmore, “that if this
declaration could be got in such a manner that it could be given to the
public, it would, if scattered broadcast over the North, destroy the
peace-party and reelect Mr. Lincoln.” Gilmore went to Washington and
obtained an interview with the President. He assured him—and he was
a newspaper correspondent whose experience was worth considering—that
the new pacifism, the incipient “peace party,” was schooling the country
in the belief that an offer of liberal terms would be followed by a
Southern surrender. The masses wanted peace on any terms that would
preserve the Union; and the Democrats were going to tell them in the next
election that Lincoln could save the Union by negotiation, if he would.
Unless the popular mind were disabused of this fictitious hope, the
Democrats would prevail and the Union would collapse. But if an offer to
negotiate should be made, and if “Davis should refuse to negotiate—as
he probably would, except on the basis of Southern independence—that
fact alone would reunite the North, reelect Lincoln, and thus save the
Union.”(6)
“Then,” said Lincoln, “you would fight the devil with fire. You would get
that declaration from Davis and use it against him.”
Gilmore defended himself by proposing to offer extremely liberal terms.
There was a pause in the conversation. Lincoln who was seated at his desk
“leaned slightly forward looking directly into (Gilmore’s) eyes, but with
an absent, far-away gaze as if unconscious of (his) presence.” Suddenly,
relapsing into his usual badinage, he said, “God selects His own
instruments and some times they are queer ones: for instance, He chose me
to see the ship of state through a great crisis.”(7) He went on to say
that Gilmore and Jaquess might be the very men to serve a great purpose at
this moment. Gilmore knew the world; and anybody could see at a glance
that Jaquess never told anything that wasn’t true. If they would go to
Richmond on their own responsibility, make it plain to President Davis
that they were not official agents, even taking the chance of arrest and
imprisonment, they might go. This condition was accepted. Lincoln went on
to say that no advantage should be taken of Mr. Davis; that nothing should
be proposed which if accepted would not be made good. After considerable
further discussion he drew up a memorandum of the terms upon which he
would consent to peace. There were seven items:
1. The immediate dissolution of the armies.
2. The abolition of slavery.
3. A general amnesty.
4. The Seceded States to resume their functions as states in the Union as
if no secession had taken place.
5. Four hundred million dollars to be appropriated by Congress as
compensation for loss of slave property; no slaveholder, however, to
receive more than one-half the former value of his slaves.
6. A national convention to be called for readjustment of all other
difficulties.
7. It to be understood that the purpose of negotiation was a full
restoration of the Union as of old.(8)
Gilmore and Jaquess might say to Davis that they had private but sure
knowledge that the President of the United States would agree to peace on
these terms. Thus provided, they set forth.
Lincoln’s thoughts were speedily claimed by an event which had no
Suggestion of peace. At no time since Jackson threw the government into a
panic in the spring of 1862, had Washington been in danger of capture.
Now, briefly, it appeared to be at the mercy of General Early. In the last
act of a daring raid above the Potomac, he came sweeping down on
Washington from the North. As Grant was now the active commander-in-chief,
responsible for all the Northern armies, Lincoln with a fatalistic calm
made no move to take the capital out of his hands. When Early was known to
be headed toward Washington, Lincoln drove out as usual to spend the night
at the Soldiers’ Home beyond the fortifications. Stanton, in whom there
was a reminiscence at least of the hysterical Secretary of 1862, sent
after him post haste and insisted on his returning. The next day, the
eleventh of July, 1864, Washington was invested by the Confederate forces.
There was sharp firing in front of several forts. Lincoln—and for
that matter, Mrs. Lincoln also—made a tour of the defenses. While
Fort Stevens was under fire, he stood on the parapet, “apparently
unconscious of danger, watching with that grave and passive countenance
the progress of the fight, amid the whizzing bullets of the sharp
shooters, until an officer fell mortally wounded within three feet of him,
and General Wright peremptorily represented to him the needless risk he
was running.” Hay recorded in his diary “the President in good feather
this evening . . . not concerned about Washington’s safety . . . only
thought, can we bag or destroy the force in our front.” He was much
disappointed when Early eluded the forces which Grant hurried to the
Capitol. Mrs. Lincoln was outspoken to the same effect. The doughty little
lady had also been under fire, her temper being every whit as bold as her
husband’s. When Stanton with a monumental playfulness proposed to have her
portrait painted in a commanding attitude on the parapet of Fort Stevens,
she gave him the freedom of her tongue, because of the inadequacy of his
department.(9)
This incident had its aftermath. A country-place belonging to the
Postmaster General had been laid waste. Its owner thought that the
responsibility for permitting Early to come so near to Washington fell
chiefly on General Halleck. He made some sharp criticisms which became
public the General flew into a rage and wrote to the Secretary of War:
“The Postmaster General ought to be dismissed by the President from the
Cabinet.” Stanton handed his letter to the President, from whom the next
day the General received this note: “Whether the remarks were made I do
not know, nor do I suppose such knowledge is necessary to a correct
response. If they were made, I do not approve them; and yet, under the
circumstances, I would not dismiss a member of the Cabinet therefor. I do
not consider what may have been hastily said in a moment of vexation at so
severe a loss is sufficient ground for so grave a step. Besides this,
truth is generally the best vindication against slander. I propose
continuing to be myself the judge as to when a member of the Cabinet shall
be dismissed.” Lincoln spoke of the affair at his next conference with his
Ministers. “I must, myself, be the judge,” said he, “how long to retain in
and when to remove any of you from his position. It would greatly pain me
to discover any of you endeavoring to procure another’s removal, or in any
way to prejudice him before the public. Such an endeavor would be a wrong
to me, and much worse, a wrong to the country. My wish is that on this
subject no remark be made nor question asked by any of you, here or
elsewhere, now or hereafter.”(10)
Not yet had anything resulted either from the Canadian mission of Greeley,
or from the Richmond adventure of Gilmore and Jaquess. There was a
singular ominous pause in events. Lincoln could not be blind to the storm
signals that had attended the close of Congress. What were the Vindictives
about? As yet they had made no Sign. But it was incredible that they could
pass over his defiance without a return blow. When would it come? What
would it be?
He spent his nights at the Soldiers’ Home. As a rule, his family were with
him. Sometimes, however, Mrs. Lincoln and his sons would be absent and his
only companion was one of the ardent young secretaries. Then he would
indulge in reading Shakespeare aloud, it might be with such forgetfulness
of time that only the nodding of the tired young head recalled him to
himself and brought the reading to an end. A visitor has left this
charming picture of Lincoln at the Soldiers’ Home in the sad sweetness of
a summer night:
“The Soldiers’ Home is a few miles out of Washington on the Maryland side.
It is situated on a beautiful wooded hill, which you ascend by a winding
path, shaded on both sides by wide-spread branches, forming a green arcade
above you. When you reach the top you stand between two mansions, large,
handsome and substantial, but with nothing about them to indicate the
character of either. That on the left is the Presidential country house;
that directly before you, is the ‘Rest,’ for soldiers who are too old for
further service . . . In the graveyard near at hand there are numberless
graves—some without a spear of grass to hide their newness—that
hold the bodies of volunteers.
“While we stood in the soft evening air, watching the faint trembling of
the long tendrils of waving willow, and feeling the dewy coolness that was
flung out by the old oaks above us, Mr. Lincoln joined us, and stood
silent, too, taking in the scene.
“‘How sleep the brave who sink to rest, By all their country’s wishes
blest,” he said, softly. . .
“Around the ‘Home’ grows every variety of tree, particularly of the
evergreen class. Their branches brushed into the carriage as we passed
along, and left us with that pleasant woody smell belonging to leaves. One
of the ladies, catching a bit of green from one of these intruding
branches, said it was cedar, and another thought it spruce.
“‘Let me discourse on a theme I understand,’ said the President. ‘I know
all about trees in right of being a backwoodsman. I’ll show you the
difference between spruce, pine and cedar, and this shred of green, which
is neither one nor the other, but a kind of illegitimate cypress. He then
proceeded to gather specimens of each, and explain the distinctive
formation of foliage belonging to each.”(11)
Those summer nights of July, 1864, had many secrets which the tired
President musing in the shadows of the giant trees or finding solace with
the greatest of earthly minds would have given much to know. How were
Gilmore and Jaquess faring? What was really afoot in Canada? And that
unnatural silence of the Vindictives, what did that mean? And the two
great armies, Grant’s in Virginia, Sherman’s in Georgia, was there never
to be stirring news of either of these? The hush of the moment, the
atmosphere of suspense that seemed to envelop him, it was just what had
always for his imagination had such strange charm in the stories of fated
men. He turned again to Macbeth, or to Richard II, or to Hamlet.
Shakespeare, too, understood these mysterious pauses—who better!
The sense of the impending was strengthened by the alarms of some of his
best friends. They besought him to abandon his avowed purpose to call for
a draft of half a million under the new Enrollment Act. Many voices joined
the one chorus: the country is on the verge of despair; you will wreck the
cause by demanding another colossal sacrifice. But he would not listen.
When, in desperation, they struck precisely the wrong note, and hinted at
the ruin of his political prospects, he had his calm reply: “it matters
not what becomes of me. We must have men. If I go down, I intend to go
like the Cumberland, with my colors flying.”(12)
Thus the days passed until the eighteenth of July. Meanwhile the
irresponsible Greeley had made a sad mess of his Canadian adventure.
Though Lincoln had given him definite instructions, requiring him to
negotiate only with agents who could produce written authority from Davis,
and who would treat on the basis of restoration of the Union and
abandonment of slavery, Greeley ignored both these unconditional
requirements.(13) He had found the Confederate agents at Niagara. They had
no credentials. Nevertheless, he invited them to come to Washington and
open negotiations. Of the President’s two conditions, he said not a word.
This was just what the agents wanted. It could easily be twisted into the
semblance of an attempt by Lincoln to sue for peace. They accepted the
invitation. Greeley telegraphed to Lincoln reporting what he had done. Of
course, it was plain that he had misrepresented Lincoln; that he had far
exceeded his authority; and that his perverse unfaithfulness must be
repudiated. On July eighteenth, Hay set out for Niagara with this paper in
Lincoln’s handwriting.(14)
“To whom it may concern: Any proposition which embraces the restoration of
peace, the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery,
and which comes by and with an authority that can control the armies now
at war against the United States, will be received and considered by the
executive government of the United States, and will be met by liberal
terms on other substantial and collateral points and the bearer or bearers
thereof shall have, safe conduct both ways. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.”
This was the end of the negotiation. The agents could not accept these
terms. Immediately, they published a version of what had happened: they
had been invited to come to Washington; subsequently, conditions had been
imposed which made it impossible for them to accept Was not the conclusion
plain? The Washington government was trying to open negotiations but it
was also in the fear of its own supporters playing craftily a double game.
These astute diplomats saw that there was a psychological crisis in the
North. By adding to the confusion of the hour they had well served their
cause. Greeley’s fiasco was susceptible of a double interpretation. To the
pacifists it meant that the government, whatever may have been intended at
the start, had ended by setting impossible conditions of peace. To the
supporters of the war, it meant that whatever were the last thoughts of
the government, it had for a time contemplated peace without any
conditions at all. Lincoln was severely condemned, Greeley was ridiculed,
by both groups of interpreters. Why did not Greeley come out bravely and
tell the truth? Why did he not confess that he had suppressed Lincoln’s
first set of instructions; that it was he, on his own responsibility, who
had led the Confederate agents astray; that he, not Lincoln was solely to
blame for the false impression that was now being used so adroitly to
injure the President? Lincoln proposed to publish their correspondence,
but made a condition that was characteristic. Greeley’s letters rang with
cries of despair. He was by far the most influential Northern editor.
Lincoln asked him to strike out these hopeless passages. Greeley refused.
The correspondence must be published entire or not at all. Lincoln
suppressed it. He let the blame of himself go on; and he said nothing in
extenuation.(15)
He took some consolation in a “card” that appeared in the Boston
Transcript, July 22. It gave a brief account of the adventure of Gilmore
and Jaquess, and stated the answer given to them by the President of the
Confederacy. That answer, as restated by the Confederate Secretary of
State, was: “he had no authority to receive proposals for negotiations
except by virtue of his office as President of an independent Confederacy
and on this basis alone must proposals be made to him.”(16)
There was another circumstance that may well have been Lincoln’s
consolation in this tangle of cross-purposes. Only boldness could
extricate him from the mesh of his difficulties. The mesh was destined to
grow more and more of a snare; his boldness was to grow with his danger.
He struck the note that was to rule his conduct thereafter, when, on the
day he sent the final instructions to Greeley, in defiance of his timid
advisers, he issued a proclamation calling for a new draft of half a
million men.(17)
XXXII. THE AUGUST CONSPIRACY
Though the Vindictives kept a stealthy silence during July, they were
sharpening their claws and preparing for a tiger spring whenever the
psychological moment should arrive. Those two who had had charge of the
Reconstruction Bill prepared a paper, in some ways the most singular paper
of the war period, which has established itself in our history as the
Wade-Davis Manifesto. This was to be the deadly shot that should unmask
the Vindictive batteries, bring their war upon the President out of the
shadows into the open.
Greeley’s fiasco and Greeley’s mortification both played into their hands.
The fiasco contributed to depress still more the despairing North. By this
time, there was general appreciation of the immensity of Grant’s failure,
not only at Cold Harbor, but in the subsequent slaughter of the futile
assault upon Petersburg. We have the word of a member of the Committee
that the despair over Grant translated itself into blame of the
Administration.(1) The Draft Proclamation; the swiftly traveling report
that the government had wilfully brought the peace negotiations to a
stand-still; the continued cry that the war was hopeless; all these
produced, about the first of August, an emotional crisis—just the
sort of occasion for which Lincoln’s enemies were waiting.
Then, too, there was Greeley’s mortification. The Administration papers
made him a target for sarcasm. The Times set the pace with scornful
demands for “No more back door diplomacy.”(2) Greeley answered in a rage.
He permitted himself to imply that the President originated the Niagara
negotiation and that Greeley “reluctantly” became a party to it. That
“reluctantly” was the truth, in a sense, but how falsely true! Wade and
Davis had him where they wanted him. On the fifth of August, The Tribune
printed their manifesto. It was an appeal to “the supporters of the
Administration . . . to check the encroachment of the Executive on the
authority of Congress, and to require it to confine itself to its proper
sphere.” It insinuated the basest motives for the President’s interest in
reconstruction, and for rejecting their own bill. “The President by
preventing this bill from becoming a law, holds the electoral votes of the
Rebel States at the dictation of his personal ambition. . . . If electors
for President be allowed to be chosen in either of those States, a
sinister light will be cast on the motives which induced the President to
‘hold for naught’ the will of Congress rather than his government in
Louisiana and Arkansas.”
After a long discussion of his whole course with regard to reconstruction,
having heaped abuse upon him with shocking liberality, the Manifesto
concluded:
“Such are the fruits of this rash and fatal act of the President—a
blow at the friends of the Administration, at the rights of humanity, and
at the principles of Republican government The President has greatly
presumed on the forbearance which the supporters of his Administration
have so long practised in view of the arduous conflict in which we are
engaged, and the reckless ferocity of our political opponents. But he must
understand that our support is of a ’cause’ and not of a man; that the
authority of Congress is paramount and must be respected; that the whole
body of the Union men in Congress will not submit to be impeached by him
of rash and unconstitutional legislation; and if he wishes our support he
must confine him-self to his executive duties—to obey and execute,
not make the laws—to suppress by arms, armed rebellion, and leave
political reorganization to Congress. If the supporters of the government
fail to insist on this they become responsible for the usurpations they
fail to rebuke and are justly liable to the indignation of the people
whose rights and security, committed to their keeping, they sacrifice. Let
them consider the remedy of these usurpations, and, having found it,
fearlessly execute it.”
To these incredible charges, Lincoln made no reply. He knew, what some
statesmen never appear to know, the times when one should risk all upon
that French proverb, “who excuses, accuses.” However, he made his futile
attempt to bring Greeley to reason, to induce him to tell the truth about
Niagara without confessing to the country the full measure of the despair
that had inspired his course. When Greeley refused to do so, Lincoln
turned to other matters, to preparation for the draft, and grimly left the
politicians to do their worst. They went about it with zest. Their
reliance was chiefly their power to infect the type of party man who is
easily swept from his moorings by the cry that the party is in danger,
that sacrifices must be made to preserve the party unity, that otherwise
the party will go to pieces. By the middle of August, six weeks after
Lincoln’s defiance of them on the fourth of July, they were in high
feather, convinced that most things were coming their way. American
politicians have not always shown an ability to read clearly the American
people. Whether the politicians were in error on August 14, 1864, and
again on August twenty-third, two dates that were turning points, is a
matter of debate to this day. As to August fourteenth, they have this, at
least, in their defense. The country had no political observer more keen
than the Scotch free lance who edited The New York Herald. It was
Bennett’s editorial view that Lincoln would do well to make a virtue of
necessity and withdraw his candidacy because “the dissatisfaction which
had long been felt by the great body of American citizens has spread even
to his own supporters.”(3) Confident that a great reaction against Lincoln
was sweeping the country, that the Manifesto had been launched in the very
nick of time, a meeting of conspirators was held in New York, at the house
of David Dudley Field, August fourteenth. Though Wade was now at his home
in Ohio, Davis was present. So was Greeley. It was decided to ask Lincoln
to withdraw. Four days afterward, a “call” was drawn up and sent out
confidentially near and far to be signed by prominent politicians. The
“call” was craftily worded. It summoned a new Union Convention to meet in
Cincinnati, September twenty-eighth, for the purpose either of rousing the
party to whole-hearted support of Lincoln, or of uniting all factions on
some new candidate. Greeley who could not attend the committee which drew
up the “call” wrote that “Lincoln is already beaten.”(4)
Meanwhile, the infection of dismay had spread fast among the Lincoln
managers. Even before the meeting of the conspirators on the fourteenth,
Weed told the President that he could not be reelected.(5)
One of his bravest supporters, Washburne, came to the dismal conclusion
that “were an election to be held now in Illinois, we should be beaten.”
Cameron, who had returned from Russia and was working hard for Lincoln in
Pennsylvania, was equally discouraging. So was Governor Morton in Indiana.
From all his “stanchest friends,” wrote his chief manager to Lincoln,
“there was but one report. The tide is setting strongly against us.”(6)
Lincoln’s managers believed that the great host of free voters who are the
balance of power in American politics, were going in a drove toward the
camp of the Democrats. It was the business of the managers to determine
which one, or which ones, among the voices of discontent, represented
truly this controlling body of voters. They thought they knew. Two cries,
at least, that rang loud out of the Babel of the hour, should be heeded.
One of these harked back to Niagara. In the anxious ears of the managers
it dinned this charge: “the Administration prevented negotiations for
peace by tying together two demands, the Union must be restored and
slavery must be abolished; if Lincoln had left out slavery, he could have
had peace in a restored Union.” It was ridiculous, as every one who had
not gone off his head knew. But so many had gone off their heads. And some
of Lincoln’s friends were meeting this cry in a way that was raising up
other enemies of a different sort. Even so faithful a friend as Raymond,
editor of The Times and Chairman of the Republican National Executive
Committee, labored hard in print to prove that because Lincoln said he
“would consider terms that embraced the integrity of the Union and the
abandonment of slavery, he did not say that he would not receive them
unless they embraced both these conditions.”(7) What would Sumner and all
the Abolitionists say to that? As party strategy, in the moment when the
old Vindictive Coalition seemed on the highroad to complete revival, was
that exactly the tune to sing? Then too there was the other cry that also
made a fearful ringing in the ears of the much alarmed Executive
Committee. There was wild talk in the air of an armistice. The hysteric
Greeley had put it into a personal letter to Lincoln. “I know that
nine-tenths of the whole American people, North and South, are anxious for
peace—peace on any terms—and are utterly sick of human
slaughter and devastation. I know that, to the general eye, it now seems
that the Rebels are anxious to negotiate and that we repulse their
advances. . . . I beg you, I implore you to inaugurate or invite proposals
for peace forthwith. And in case peace can not now be made, consent to an
armistice for one year, each party to retain all it now holds, but the
Rebel ports to be opened. Meantime, let a national convention be held and
there will surely be no war at all events.”(8)
This armistice movement was industriously advertised in the Democratic
papers. It was helped along by the Washington correspondent of The Herald
who sowed broadcast the most improbable stories with regard to it. Today,
Secretary Fessenden was a convert to the idea; another day, Senator Wilson
had taken it up; again, the President, himself, was for an armistice.(9)
A great many things came swiftly to a head within a few days before or
after the twentieth of August. Every day or two, rumor took a new turn; or
some startling new alignment was glimpsed; and every one reacted to the
news after his kind. And always the feverish question, what is the
strength of the faction that approves this? Or, how far will this go
toward creating a new element in the political kaleidoscope? About the
twentieth of August, Jaquess and Gilmore threw a splashing stone into
these troubled waters. They published in The Atlantic a full account of
their interview with Davis, who, in the clearest, most unfaltering way had
told them that the Southerners were fighting for independence and for
nothing else; that no compromise over slavery; nothing but the recognition
of the Confederacy as a separate nation would induce them to put up their
bright swords. As Lincoln subsequently, in his perfect clarity of speech,
represented Davis: “He would accept nothing short of severance of the
Union—precisely what we will not and can not give…. He does not
attempt to deceive us. He affords us no excuse to deceive ourselves. He
can not voluntarily reaccept the Union; we can not voluntarily yield
it”(10)
Whether without the intrusion of Jaquess and Gilmore, the Executive
Committee would have come to the conclusion they now reached, is a mere
speculation. They thought they were at the point of desperation. They
thought they saw a way out, a way that reminds one of Jaquess and Gilmore.
On the twenty-second, Raymond sent that letter to Lincoln about “the tide
setting strongly against us.” He also proposed the Committee’s way of
escape: nothing but to offer peace to Davis “on the sole condition of
acknowledging the supremacy of the Constitution—all other questions
to be settled in a convention of the people of all the States.”(11) He
assumed the offer would be rejected. Thus the clamor for negotiation would
be met and brought to naught. Having sent off his letter, Raymond got his
committee together and started for Washington for a council of
desperation.
And this brings us to the twenty-third of August. On that day, pondering
Raymond’s letter, Lincoln took thought with himself what he should say to
the Executive Committee. A mere opportunist would have met the situation
with some insincere proposal, by the formulation of terms that would have
certainly been rejected. We have seen how Lincoln reasoned in such a
connection when he drew up the memorandum for Jaquess and Gilmore. His
present problem involved nothing of this sort. What he was thinking out
was how best to induce the committee to accept his own attitude; to become
for the moment believers in destiny; to nail their colors; turn their
backs as he was doing on these devices of diplomacy; and as to the
rest-permit to heaven.
Whatever his managers might think, the serious matter in Lincoln’s mind,
that twenty-third of August, was the draft. And back of the draft, a
tremendous matter which probably none of them at the time appreciated.
Assuming that they were right in their political forecast, assuming that
he was not to be reelected, what did it signify? For him, there was but
one answer: that he had only five months in which to end the war. And with
the tide running strong against him, what could he do? But one thing: use
the war powers while they remained in his hands in every conceivable way
that might force a conclusion on the field of battle. He recorded his
determination. A Cabinet meeting was held on the twenty-third. Lincoln
handed his Ministers a folded paper and asked them to write their initials
on the back. At the time he gave them no intimation what the paper
contained. It was the following memorandum: “This morning, as for some
days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not
be reelected. Then it will be my duty to so cooperate with the President
elect as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration, as
he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly
save it afterward.”(12)
He took into his confidence “the stronger half of the Cabinet, Seward,
Stanton and Fessenden,” and together they assaulted the Committee.(13) It
was a reception amazingly different from what had been expected. Instead
of terrified party diplomats shaking in their shoes, trying to face all
points at once, morbid over possible political defeats in every quarter,
they found what may have seemed to them a man in a dream; one who was
intensely sad, but who gave no suggestion of panic, no solicitude about
his own fate, no doubt of his ultimate victory. Their practical astuteness
was disarmed by that higher astuteness attained only by peculiar minds
which can discern through some sure interior test the rare moment when it
is the part of wisdom not to be astute at all.
Backed by those strong Ministers, all entirely under his influence,
Lincoln fully persuaded the Committee that at this moment, any overture
for peace would be the worst of strategic blunders, “would be worse than
losing the presidential contest—it would be ignominiously
surrendering it in advance.”(14)
Lincoln won a complete spiritual victory over the Committee. These
dispirited men, who had come to Washington to beg for a policy of
negotiation, went away in such a different temper that Bennett’s
Washington correspondent jeered in print at the “silly report” of their
having assembled to discuss peace.(15) Obviously, they had merely held a
meeting of the Executive Committee. The Tribune correspondent telegraphed
that they were confident of Lincoln’s reelection.(16)
On the day following the conference with Lincoln, The Times announced:
“You may rest assured that all reports attributing to the government any
movements looking toward negotiations for peace at present are utterly
without foundation. . . . The government has not entertained or discussed
the project of proposing an armistice with the Rebels nor has it any
intention of sending commissioners to Richmond . . . its sole and
undivided purpose is to prosecute the war until the rebellion is quelled.
. . .” Of equal significance was the announcement by The Times, fairly to
be considered the Administration organ: “The President stands firm against
every solicitation to postpone the draft.”(17)
XXXIII. THE RALLY TO THE PRESIDENT
The question insists upon rising again: were the anti-Lincoln politicians
justified in their exultation, the Lincoln politicians justified in their
panic? Nobody will ever know; but it is worth considering that the shrewd
opportunist who expressed himself through The Herald changed his mind
during a fortnight in August. By one of those odd coincidences of which
history is full, it was on the twenty-third of the month that he warned
the Democrats and jeered at the Republicans in this insolent fashion:
“Many of our leading Republicans are now furious against Lincoln. . . .
Bryant of The Evening Post is very angry with Lincoln because Henderson,
The Post’s publisher, has been arrested for defrauding the government.
“Raymond is a little shaky and has to make frequent journeys to Washington
for instructions. . . .
“Now, to what does all this amount? Our experience of politics convinces
us that it amounts to nothing. The sorehead Republicans complain that
Lincoln gives them either too little shoddy or too little nigger. What
candidate can they find who will give them more of either?
“The Chicago (Democratic) delegates must very emphatically comprehend that
they must beat the whole Re-publican party if they elect their candidate.
It is a strong party even yet and has a heavy army vote to draw upon. The
error of relying too greatly upon the weakness of the Republicans as
developed in the quarrels of the Republican leaders, may prove fatal . . .
the Republican leaders may have their personal quarrels, or their shoddy
quarrels, or their nigger quarrels with Old Abe; but he has the whip hand
of them and they will soon be bobbing back into the Republican fold, like
sheep who have gone astray. The most of the fuss some of them kick up now,
is simply to force Lincoln to give them their terms. .
“We have studied all classes of politicians in our day and we warn the
Chicago Convention to put no trust in the Republican soreheads. Furiously
as some of them denounce Lincoln now, and lukewarm as the rest of them are
in his cause, they will all be shouting for him as the only true Union
candidate as soon as the nominations have all been made and the chances
for bargains have passed.
“Whatever they say now, we venture to predict that Wade and his tail; and
Bryant and his tail; and Wendell Phillips and his tail; and Weed, Barney,
Chase and their tails; and Winter Davis, Raymond, Opdyke and Forney who
have no tails; will all make tracks for Old Abe’s plantation, and will
soon be found crowing and blowing, and vowing and writing, and swearing
and stumping the state on his side, declaring that he and he alone, is the
hope of the nation, the bugaboo of Jeff Davis, the first of Conservatives,
the best of Abolitionists, the purest of patriots, the most gullible of
mankind, the easiest President to manage, and the person especially
predestined and foreordained by Providence to carry on the war, free the
niggers, and give all the faithful a fair share of the spoils. The
spectacle will be ridiculous; but it is inevitable.”(1)
The cynic of The Herald had something to go upon besides his general
knowledge of politicians and elections. The Manifesto had not met with
universal acclaim. In the course of this month of surprises, there were
several things that an apprehensive observer might interpret as the shadow
of that hand of fate which was soon to appear upon the wall. In the
Republican Convention of the Nineteenth Ohio District, which included
Ashtabula County, Wade’s county, there were fierce words and then with few
dissenting votes, a resolution, “That the recent attack upon the President
by Wade and Davis is, in our opinion, ill-timed, ill-tempered, and
ill-advised . . . and inasmuch as one of the authors of said protest is a
citizen of this Congressional District and indebted in no small degree to
our friendship for the position, we deem it a duty no less imperative than
disagreeable, to pronounce upon that disorganizing Manifesto our
unqualified disapproval and condemnation.”(2)
To be sure there were plenty of other voices from Ohio and elsewhere
applauding “The War on the President.” Nevertheless, there were signs of a
reluctance to join the movement, and some of these in quarters where they
had been least expected. Notably, the Abolitionist leaders were slow to
come forward. Sumner was particularly slow. He was ready, indeed, to admit
that a better candidate than Lincoln could be found, and there was a
whisper that the better candidate was himself. However, he was
unconditional that he would not participate in a fight against Lincoln. If
the President could be persuaded to withdraw, that was one thing. But
otherwise—no Sumner in the conspiracy.(3)
Was it possible that Chandler, Wade, Davis and the rest had jumped too
soon? To rebuild the Vindictive Coalition, the group in which Sumner had a
place was essential. This group was composed of Abolitionists, chiefly New
Englanders, and for present purpose their central figure was Andrew, the
Governor of Massachusetts. During the latter half of August, the fate of
the Conspiracy hung on the question, Can Andrew and his group be drawn in?
Andrew did not like the President. He was one of those who never got over
their first impression of the strange new man of 1861. He insisted that
Lincoln lacked the essential qualities of a leader. “To comprehend this
objection,” says his frank biographer, “which to us seems so astoundingly
wide of the mark, we must realize that whenever the New Englander of that
generation uttered the word ‘leader’ his mind’s eye was filled with the
image of Daniel Webster . . . his commanding presence, his lofty tone
about affairs of state, his sonorous profession of an ideal, his whole ex
cathedra attitude. All those characteristics supplied the aristocratic
connotation of the word ‘leader’ as required by a community in which a
considerable measure of aristocratic sympathy still lingered. Andrew and
his friends were like the men of old who having known Saul before time,
and beholding him prophesying, asked ‘Is Saul also among the
prophets?'”(4)
But Andrew stood well outside the party cabals that were hatched at
Washington. He and his gave the conspirators a hearing from a reason
widely different from any of theirs. They distrusted the Executive
Committee. The argument that had swept the Committee for the moment off
its feet filled the stern New Englanders with scorn. They were prompt to
deny any sympathy with the armistice movement.(5) As Andrew put it, the
chief danger of the hour was the influence of the Executive Committee on
the President, whom he persisted in considering a weak man; the chief duty
of the hour was to “rescue” Lincoln, or in some other way to “check the
peace movement of the Republican managers.”(6) if it were fairly certain
that this could be effected only by putting the conspiracy through, Andrew
would come in. But could he be clear in his own mind that this was the
thing to do? While he hesitated, Jaquess and Gilmore did their last small
part in American history and left the stage. They made a tour of the
Northern States explaining to the various governors the purposes of their
mission to Richmond, and reporting in full their audience with Davis and
the impressions they had formed.(7) This was a point in favor of Lincoln—as
Andrew thought. On the other hand, there were the editorials of The Times.
As late as the twenty-fourth of August, the day before the Washington
conference, The Times asserted that the President would waive all the
objects for which the war had been fought, including Abolition, if any
proposition of peace should come that embraced the integrity of the Union.
To be sure, this was not consistent with the report of Jaquess and Gilmore
and their statement of terms actually set down by Lincoln. And yet—it
came from the Administration organ edited by the chairman of the Executive
Committee. Was “rescue” of the President anything more than a dream?
It was just here that Lincoln intervened and revolutionized the whole
situation. With what tense interest Andrew must have waited for reports of
that conference held at Washington on the twenty-fifth. And with what
delight he must have received them! The publication on the twenty-sixth of
the sweeping repudiation of the negotiation policy; the reassertion that
the Administration’s “sole and undivided purpose was to prosecute the
war.” Simultaneous was another announcement, also in the minds of the New
Englanders, of first importance: “So far as there being any probability of
President Lincoln withdrawing from the canvass, as some have suggested,
the gentlemen comprising the Committee express themselves as confident of
his reelection.”(8)
Meanwhile the letters asking for signatures to the pro-posed “call” had
been circulated and the time had come to take stock of the result From
Ohio, Wade had written in a sanguine mood. He was for issuing the call the
moment the Democratic Convention had taken action.(9) On the twenty-ninth
that convention met. On the thirtieth, the conspirators reassembled—again
at the house of David Dudley Field—and Andrew attended. He had not
committed himself either way.
And now Lincoln’s firmness with the Executive Committee had its reward.
The New Englanders had made up their minds. Personally, he was still
obnoxious to them; but in light of his recent pronouncement, they would
take their chances on “rescuing” him from the Committee; and since he
would not withdraw, they would not cooperate in splitting the Union party.
But they could not convince the conspirators. A long debate ended in an
agreement to disagree. The New Englanders withdrew, confessed partisans of
Lincoln.(10) It was the beginning of the end.
Andrew went back to Boston to organize New England for Lincoln. J. M.
Forbes remained to organize New York.(11) All this, ignoring the Executive
Committee. It was a new Lincoln propaganda, not in opposition to the
Committee but in frank rivalry: “Since, or if, we must have Lincoln,” said
Andrew, “men of motive and ideas must get into the lead, must elect him,
get hold of ‘the machine’ and ‘run it’ themselves.”(12)
The bottom was out of the conspiracy; but the leaders at New York were
slow to yield. Despite the New England secession, they thought the
Democratic platform, on which McClellan had been invited to stand as
candidate for the Presidency, gave them another chance, especially the
famous resolution:
“That this Convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of the
American people, after four years of failure to restore the Union by the
experiment of war, during which, under the pretense of a military
necessity, or war power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution
itself has been disregarded in every part, and the public liberty and the
private right alike trodden down and the material prosperity of the
country essentially impaired, justice, humanity, liberty and the public
welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of
hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the States, or other
peaceable means to the end that at the earliest practicable moment peace
may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States.”
Some of the outlying conspirators also suffered a revival of hope. The
Cincinnati Gazette came out flat foot for the withdrawal of Lincoln.(13)
So did The Cincinnati Times, pressing hard for the new convention.(14) On
the second of September, three New York editors, Greeley for The Tribune,
Parke Godwin for The Post, and Tilton for The Independent, were busily
concocting a circular letter to Governors of the States with a view to
saving the conspiracy.(15)
But other men were at work in a different fashion, that same day.
Lincoln’s cause had been wrecked so frequently by his generals that
whenever a general advanced, the event seems boldly dramatic. While the
politicians at New York and Chicago thought they were loading the scales
of fate, long lines of men in blue were moving through broken woodland and
over neglected fields against the gray legions defending Atlanta. Said
General Hood, it was “evident that General Sherman was moving with his
main body to destroy the Macon road, and that the fate of Atlanta depended
on our ability to defeat this movement.” During the fateful pow-pow at the
house of Dudley Field, Sherman’s army like a colossal scythe was swinging
round Atlanta, from the west and south, across Flint River, through the
vital railway, on toward the city. On the second of September, the news
that Atlanta was taken “electrified the people of the North.”(16)
The first thought of every political faction, when, on the third, the
newspapers were ringing with this great news, was either how to capitalize
it for themselves, or how to forestall its capitalization by some one
else. Forbes “dashed off” a letter to Andrew urging an immediate
demonstration for Lincoln.(17) He was sure the Raymond group would somehow
try to use the victory as a basis for recovering their leadership. Davis
was eager to issue the “call” at once.(18) But his fellows hesitated. And
while they hesitated, Andrew and the people acted. On the sixth, a huge
Lincoln rally was held at Faneul Hall. Andrew presided. Sumner spoke.(19)
That same day, Vermont held State elections and went Republican by a
rousing majority. On the day following occurred the Convention of the
Union party of New York. Enthusiastic applause was elicited by a telegram
from Vermont. “The first shell that was thrown by Sherman into Atlanta has
exploded in the Copperhead Camp in this State, and the Unionists have
poured in a salute with shotted guns.”(20) The mixed metaphors did not
reduce the telegram’s effect. The New York Convention formally endorsed
Lincoln as the candidate of the Union party for President.
So much for the serious side of the swiftly changing political
kaleidoscope. There was also a comic side. Only three days sufficed—from
Davis’s eagerness to proceed on the fourth to letters and articles written
or printed on the seventh—only three days, and the leaders of the
conspiracy began turning their coats. A typical letter of the seventh at
Syracuse describes “an interview with Mr. Opdyke this morning, who told me
the result of his efforts to obtain signatures to our call which was by no
means encouraging. I have found the same sentiment prevailing here. A
belief that it is too late to make any effectual demonstration, and
therefore that it is not wise to attempt any. I presume that the new-born
enthusiasm created by the Atlanta news will so encourage Lincoln that he
can not be persuaded to withdraw.”(21) Two days more and the anti-Lincoln
newspapers began to draw in their horns. That Independent, whose editor
had been one of the three in the last ditch but a week before, handsomely
recanted, scuttling across to what now seemed the winning side. “The
prospect of victory is brilliant. If a fortnight ago the prospect of Mr.
Lincoln’s reelection seemed doubtful, the case is now changed. The odious
character of the Chicago platform, the sunshiny effect of the late
victories, have rekindled the old enthusiasm in loyal hearts.”(22) One day
more, and Greeley sullenly took his medicine. The Tribune began printing
“The Union Ticket—for President, Abraham Lincoln.”
There remains the most diverting instance of the haste with which coats
were turned. On the sixth of September, only three days after Atlanta!—the
very day of the great Lincoln rally, the crown of Andrew’s generalship, at
Fanuel Hall—a report was sent out from Washington that “Senator Wade
is to take the stump for Mr. Lincoln.”(23) Less than a week later The
Washington Chronicle had learned “with satisfaction, though not with
surprise, that Senator Wade, notwithstanding his signature to a celebrated
Manifesto, had enrolled himself among the Lincoln forces.”(24) Exactly two
weeks after Atlanta, Wade made his first speech for Lincoln as President.
It was a “terrific assault upon the Copperhead policy.”(25)
The ship of the conspiracy was sinking fast, and on every hand was heard a
scurrying patter of escaping politicians.
XXXIV. “FATHER ABRAHAM”
The key-notes of Lincoln’s course with the Executive Committee, his
refusal to do anything that appeared to him to be futile, his firmness not
to cast about and experiment after a policy, his basing of all his plans
on the vision in his own mind of their sure fruitage—these continued
to be his key-notes throughout the campaign. They ruled his action in a
difficult matter with which he was quickly forced to deal.
Montgomery Blair, the Postmaster General, was widely and bitterly
disliked. Originally a radical Republican, he had quarreled with that wing
of the party. In 1863 the Union League of Philadelphia, which elected all
the rest of the Cabinet honorary members of its organization, omitted
Blair. A reference to the Cabinet in the Union platform of 1864 was
supposed to be a hint that the Postmaster General would serve his country,
if he resigned. During the dark days of the summer of 1864, the
President’s mail was filled with supplications for the dismissal of
Blair.(1) He was described as an incubus that might cause the defeat of
the Administration.
If the President’s secretaries were not prejudiced witnesses, Blair had
worn out his welcome in the Cabinet. He had grown suspicious. He tried to
make Lincoln believe that Seward was plotting with the Copperheads.
Nevertheless, Lincoln turned a deaf ear to the clamor against him. Merely
personal considerations were not compelling. If it was true, as for a
while he believed it was, that his election was already lost, he did not
propose to throw Blair over as a mere experiment. True to his principles
he would not become a juggler with futility.
The turn of the tide in his favor put the matter in a new light. All the
enemies of Blair renewed their attack on a slightly different line. One of
those powerful New Englanders who had come to Lincoln’s aid at such an
opportune moment led off. On the second day following the news of Atlanta,
Henry Wilson wrote to him, “Blair, every one hates. Tens of thousands of
men will be lost to you, or will give you a reluctant vote because of the
Blairs.”(2)
If this was really true, the selfless man would not hesitate to’ require
of Blair the same sort of sacrifice he would, in other conditions, require
of himself. Lincoln debated this in his own mind nearly three weeks.
Meanwhile, various other politicians joined the hue and cry. An old friend
of Lincoln’s, Ebenezer Peck, came east from Illinois to work upon him
against Blair.(3) Chandler, who like Wade was eager to get out of the
wrong ship, appeared at Washington as a friend of the Administration and
an enemy of Blair.(4) But still Lincoln did not respond. After all, was it
certain that one of these votes would change if Blair did not resign?
Would anything be accomplished, should Lincoln require his resignation,
except the humiliation of a friend, the gratification of a pack of
malcontents? And then some one thought of a mode for giving definite
political value to Blair’s removal. Who did it? The anonymous author of
the only biography of Chandler claims this doubtful honor for the great
Jacobin. Lincoln’s secretaries, including Colonel Stoddard who had charge
of his correspondence, are ignorant on the subject.(5) It may well have
been Chandler who negotiated a bargain with Fremont, if the story is to be
trusted, which concerned Blair. A long-standing, relentless quarrel
separated these two. That Fremont as a candidate was nobody had long been
apparent; and yet it was worth while to get rid of him. Chandler, or
another, extracted a promise from Fremont that if Blair were removed, he
would resign. On the strength of this promise, a last appeal was made to
Lincoln. Such is the legend. The known fact is that on September
twenty-second Fremont withdrew his candidacy. The next day Lincoln sent
this note to Blair:
“You have generously said to me more than once that whenever your
resignation could be a relief to me, it was at my disposal. The time has
come. You very well know that this proceeds from no dissatisfaction of
mine, with you personally or officially. Your uniform kindness has been
unsurpassed by that of any friend.”(6)
No incident displays more clearly the hold which Lincoln had acquired on
the confidence and the affection of his immediate associates. Blair at
once tendered his resignation: “I can not take leave of you,” said he,
“without renewing the expression of my gratitude for the uniform kindness
which has marked your course with regard to myself.”(7) That he was not
perfunctory, that his great chief had acquired over him an ascendency
which was superior to any strain, was demonstrated a few days later in New
York. On the twenty-seventh, Cooper Institute was filled with an
enthusiastic Lincoln meeting. Blair was a speaker. He was received with
loud cheers and took occasion to touch upon his relations with the
President. “I retired,” said he, “on the recommendation of my own father.
My father has passed that period of life when its honors or its rewards,
or its glories have any charm for him. He looks backward only, and forward
only, to the grandeur of this nation and the happiness of this great
people who have grown up under the prosperous condition of the Union; and
he would not permit a son of his to stand in the way of the glorious and
patriotic President who leads us on to success and to the final triumph
that is in store for us.”(8)
It was characteristic of this ultimate Lincoln that he offered no
explanations, even in terminating the career of a minister; that he gave
no confidences. Gently inexorable, he imposed his will in apparent
unconsciousness that it might be questioned. Along with his overmastering
kindness, he had something of the objectivity of a natural force. It was
the mood attained by a few extraordinary men who have reached a point
where, without becoming egoists, they no longer distinguish between
themselves and circumstance; the mood of those creative artists who have
lost themselves, in the strange way which the dreamers have, who have also
found themselves.
Even in the new fascination of the probable turn of the tide, Lincoln did
not waver in his fixed purpose to give all his best energies, and the
country’s best energies, to the war. In October, there was a new panic
over the draft. Cameron implored him to suspend it in Pennsylvania until
after the presidential election. An Ohio committee went to Washington with
the same request. Why should not the arguments that had prevailed with
him, or were supposed to have prevailed with him, for the removal of a
minister, prevail also in the way of a brief flagging of military
preparation? But Lincoln would not look upon the two cases in the same
spirit. “What is the Presidency worth to me,” he asked the Ohio committee,
“if I have no country ?”(9)
From the active campaign he held himself aloof. He made no political
speeches. He wrote no political letters. The army received his constant
detailed attention. In his letters to Grant, he besought him to be
unwavering in a relentless persistency.
As Hay records, he was aging rapidly. The immense strain of his labor was
beginning to tell both in his features and his expression. He was moving
in a shadow. But his old habit of merriment had not left him; though it
was now, more often, a surface merriment. On the night of the October
elections, Lincoln sat in the telegraph room of the War Office while the
reports were coming in. “The President in a lull of despatches, took from
his pocket the Naseby Papers and read several chapters of the Saint and
Martyr, Petroleum V. They were immensely amusing. Stanton and Dana enjoyed
them scarcely less than the President, who read on, con amore, until nine
o’clock.”(10)
The presidential election was held on the eighth of November. That night,
Lincoln with his Secretary was again in the War Office. The early returns
showed that the whole North was turning to him in enormous majorities. He
showed no exultation. When the Assistant Secretary of the Navy spoke
sharply of the complete effacement politically of Henry Winter Davis
against whom he had a grudge, Lincoln said, “You have more of that feeling
of personal resentment than I. Perhaps I have too little of it; but I
never thought it paid. A man has no time to spend half his life in
quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me I never remember the past against
him.”(11)
“Towards midnight,” says Hay in his diary, “we had supper. The President
went awkwardly and hospitably to work shovelling out the fried oysters. He
was most agreeable and genial all the evening. . . . Captain Thomas came
up with a band about half-past two and made some music. The President
answered from a window with rather unusual dignity and effect, and we came
home.”(12)
“I am thankful to God,” Lincoln said, in response to the serenade, “for
this approval of the people; but while grateful for this mark of their
confidence in me, if I know my heart, my gratitude is free from any taint
of personal triumph. I do not impugn the motives of any one opposed to me.
It is no pleasure to me to triumph over any one, but I give thanks to the
Almighty for this evidence of the people’s resolution to stand by free
government and the rights of humanity.”(13)
During the next few days a torrent of congratulations came pouring in.
What most impressed the secretaries was his complete freedom from elation.
“He seemed to deprecate his own triumph and sympathize rather with the
beaten than the victorious party.” His formal recognition of the event was
a prepared reply to a serenade on the night of November tenth. A great
crowd filled the space in front of the north portico of the White House.
Lincoln appeared at a window. A secretary stood at his side holding a
lighted candle while he read from a manuscript. The brief address is
justly ranked among his ablest occasional utterances. As to the mode of
the deliverance, he said to Hay, “Not very graceful, but I am growing old
enough not to care much for the manner of doing things.”(14)
XXXV. THE MASTER OF THE MOMENT
In Lincoln’s life there are two great achievements.
One he brought to pass in time for him to behold his own victory. The
other he saw only with the eyes of faith. The first was the drawing
together of all the elements of nationalism in the American people and
consolidating them into a driving force. The second was laying the
foundation of a political temper that made impossible a permanent victory
for the Vindictives. It was the sad fate of this nation, because Lincoln’s
hand was struck from the tiller at the very instant of the crisis, to
suffer the temporary success of that faction he strove so hard to destroy.
The transitoriness of their evil triumph, the eventual rally of the nation
against them, was the final victory of the spirit of Lincoln.
The immediate victory he appreciated more fully and measured more exactly,
than did any one else. He put it into words in the fifth message. While
others were crowing with exaltation over a party triumph, he looked deeper
to the psychological triumph. Scarcely another saw that the most
significant detail of the hour was in the Democratic attitude. Even the
bitterest enemies of nationalism, even those who were believed by all
others to desire the breaking of the Union, had not thought it safe to say
so. They had veiled their intent in specious words. McClellan in accepting
the Democratic nomination had repudiated the idea of disunion. Whether the
Democratic politicians had agreed with him or not, they had not dared to
contradict him. This was what Lincoln put the emphasis on in his message:
“The purpose of the people within the loyal States to maintain the Union
was never more firm nor more nearly unanimous than now. . . . No candidate
for any office, high or low, has ventured to seek votes on the avowal that
he was for giving up the Union. There have been much impugning of motive
and much heated controversy as to the proper means and best mode of
advancing the Union cause; but on the distinct issue of Union or No Union
the politicians have shown their instinctive knowledge that there is no
diversity among the people. In affording the people the fair opportunity
of showing one to another and to the world, this firmness and unanimity of
purpose, the election has been of vast value to the national cause.”(1)
This temper of the final Lincoln, his supreme detachment, the kind
impersonality of his intellectual approach, has no better illustration in
his state papers. He further revealed it in a more intimate way. The day
he sent the message to Congress, he also submitted to the Senate a
nomination to the great office of Chief Justice. When Taney died in the
previous September, there was an eager stir among the friends of Chase.
They had hopes but they felt embarrassed. Could they ask this great honor,
the highest it is in the power of the American President to be-stow, for a
man who had been so lacking in candor as Chase had been? Chase’s course
during the summer had made things worse. He had played the time-server. No
one was more severe upon Lincoln in July; in August, he hesitated, would
not quite commit himself to the conspiracy but would not discourage it;
almost gave it his blessing; in September, but not until it was quite
plain that the conspiracy was failing, he came out for Lincoln. However,
his friends in the Senate overcame their embarrassment—how else
could it be with Senators?—and pressed his case. And when Senator
Wilson, alarmed at the President’s silence, tried to apologize for Chase’s
harsh remarks about the President, Lincoln cut him short. “Oh, as to that,
I care nothing,” said he. The embarrassment of the Chase propaganda amused
him. When Chase himself took a hand and wrote him a letter, Lincoln said
to his secretary, “What is it about?” “Simply a kind and friendly letter,”
replied the secretary. Lincoln smiled. “File it with the other
recommendations,” said he.(2)
He regarded Chase as a great lawyer, Taney’s logical successor. All the
slights the Secretary had put upon the President, the intrigues to
supplant him, the malicious sayings, were as if they had never occurred.
When Congress assembled, it was Chase’s name that he sent to the Senate.
It was Chase who, as Chief Justice, administered the oath at Lincoln’s
second inauguration.
Long since, Lincoln had seen that there had ceased to any half-way house
in the matter of emancipation. His thoughts were chiefly upon the future.
And as mere strategy, he saw that slavery had to be got out of the way. It
was no longer a question, who liked this, who did not. To him, the
ultimate issue was the restoration of harmony among the States. Those
States which had been defeated in the dread arbitrament of battle, would
in any event encounter difficulties, even deadly perils, in the narrow way
which must come after defeat and which might or might not lead to
rehabilitation.
Remembering the Vindictive temper, remembering the force and courage of
the Vindictive leaders, it was imperative to clear the field of the
slavery issue before the reconstruction issue was fairly launched. It was
highly desirable to commit to the support of the governments the whole
range of influences that were in earnest about emancipation. Furthermore,
the South itself was drifting in the same direction. In his interview with
Gilmore and Jaquess, Davis had said: “You have already emancipated nearly
two millions of our slaves; and if you will take care of them, you may
emancipate the rest. I had a few when the war began. I was of some use to
them; they never were of any to me.”(3)
The Southern President had “felt” his constituency on the subject of
enrolling slaves as soldiers with a promise of emancipation as the reward
of military service.
The fifth message urged Congress to submit to the States an amendment to
the Constitution abolishing slavery. Such action had been considered in
the previous session, but nothing had been done. At Lincoln’s suggestion,
it had been recommended in the platform of the Union party. Now, with the
President’s powerful influence behind it, with his prestige at full
circle, the amendment was rapidly pushed forward. Before January ended, it
had been approved by both Houses. Lincoln had used all his personal
influence to strengthen its chances in Congress where, until the last
minute, the vote was still in doubt.(4)
While the amendment was taking its way through Congress, a shrewd old
politician who thought he knew the world better than most men, that
Montgomery Blair, Senior, who was father of the Postmaster General, had
been trying on his own responsibility to open negotiations between
Washington and Richmond. His visionary ideas, which were wholly without
the results he intended, have no place here. And yet this fanciful episode
had a significance of its own. Had it not occurred, the Confederate
government probably would not have appointed commissioners charged with
the hopeless task of approaching the Federal government for the purpose of
negotiating peace between “the two countries.”
Now that Lincoln was entirely in the ascendent at home, and since the
Confederate arms had recently suffered terrible reverses, he was no longer
afraid that negotiation might appear to be the symptom of weakness. He
went so far as to consent to meet the Commissioners himself. On a steamer
in Hampton Roads, Lincoln and Seward had a long conference with three
members of the Confederate government, particularly the Vice-President,
Alexander H. Stephens.
It has become a tradition that Lincoln wrote at the top of a sheet of
paper the one word “Union”; that he pushed it across the table and said,
“Stephens, write under that anything you want” There appears to be no
foundation for the tale in this form. The amendment had committed the
North too definitely to emancipation. Lincoln could not have proposed
Union without requiring emancipation, also. And yet, with this limitation,
the spirit of the tradition is historic. There can be no doubt that he
presented to the commissioners about the terms which the year before he
had drawn up as a memorandum for Gilmore and Jaquess: Union, the
acceptance of emancipation, but also instantaneous restoration of
political autonomy to the Southern States, and all the influence of the
Administration in behalf of liberal compensation for the loss of slave
property. But the commissioners had no authority to consider terms that
did not recognize the existence of “two countries.” However, this Hampton
Roads Conference gave Lincoln a new hope. He divined, if he did not
perceive, that the Confederates were on the verge of despair. If he had
been a Vindictive, this would have borne fruit in ferocious telegrams to
his generals to strike and spare not. What Lincoln did was to lay before
the Cabinet this proposal:—that they advise Congress to offer the
Confederate government the sum of four hundred million dollars, provided
the war end and the States in secession acknowledge the authority of the
Federal government previous to April 1, 1865. But the Cabinet, complete as
was his domination in some respects, were not ripe for such a move as
this. “‘You are all against me,’ said Lincoln sadly and in evident
surprise at the want of statesmanlike liberality on the part of the
executive council,” to quote his Secretary, “folded and laid away the
draft of his message.”(5) Nicolay believes that the idea continued vividly
in his mind and that it may be linked with his last public utterance—”it
may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I
am considering and shall not fail to act when satisfied that action is
proper.”
It was now obvious to every one outside the Confederacy that the war would
end speedily in a Northern victory. To Lincoln, therefore, the duty of the
moment, overshadowing all else, was the preparation for what should come
after. Reconstruction. More than ever it was of first importance to decide
whether the President or Congress should deal with this great matter. And
now occurred an event which bore witness at once to the beginning of
Lincoln’s final struggle with the Vindictives and to that personal
ascendency which was steadily widening. One of those three original
Jacobins agreed to become his spokesman in the Senate. As the third person
of the Jacobin brotherhood, Lyman Trumbull had always been out of place.
He had gone wrong not from perversity of the soul but from a mental
failing, from the lack of inherent light, from intellectual
conventionality. But he was a good man. One might apply to him Mrs.
Browning’s line: “Just a good man made a great man.” And in his case, as
in so many others, sheer goodness had not been sufficient in the midst of
a revolution to save his soul. To quote one of the greatest of the
observers of human life: “More brains, O Lord, more brains.” Though
Trumbull had the making of an Intellectual, politics had very nearly
ruined him. For all his good intentions it took him a long time to see
what Hawthorne saw at first sight-that Lincoln was both a powerful
character and an original mind. Still, because Trumbull was really a good
man, he found a way to recover his soul. What his insight was not equal to
perceiving in 1861, experience slowly made plain to him in the course of
the next three years. Before 1865 he had broken with the Vindictives; he
had come over to Lincoln. Trumbull still held the powerful office of
Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He now undertook to be the
President’s captain in a battle on the floor of the Senate for the
recognition of Louisiana.
The new government in Louisiana had been in actual operation for nearly a
year. Though Congress had denounced it; though the Manifesto had held it
up to scorn as a monarchial outrage; Lincoln had quietly, steadily,
protected and supported it. It was discharging the function of a regular
State government. A governor had been elected and inaugurated-that
Governor Hahn whom Lincoln had congratulated as Louisiana’s first Free
State Governor. He could say this because the new electorate which his
mandate had created had assembled a constitutional convention and had
abolished slavery. And it had also carried out the President’s views with
regard to the political status of freedmen. Lincoln was not a believer in
general negro suffrage. He was as far as ever from the theorizing of the
Abolitionists. The most he would approve was the bestowal of suffrage on a
few Superior negroes, leaving the rest to be gradually educated into
citizenship. The Louisiana Convention had authorized the State Legislature
to make, when it felt prepared to do so, such a limited extension of
suffrage.(6)
In setting up this new government, Lincoln had created a political vessel
in which practically all the old electorate of Louisiana could find their
places the moment they gave up the war and accepted the two requisites,
union and emancipation. That electorate could proceed at once to rebuild
the social-political order of the State without any interval of
“expiation.” All the power of the Administration would be with them in
their labors. That this was the wise as well as the generous way to
proceed, the best minds of the North had come to see. Witness the
conversion of Trumbull. But there were four groups of fanatics who were
dangerous: extreme Abolitionists who clamored for negro equality; men like
Wade and Chandler, still mad with the lust of conquest, raging at the
President who had stood so resolutely between them and their desire; the
machine politicians who could never understand the President’s methods,
who regarded him as an officious amateur; and the Little Men who would
have tried to make political capital of the blowing of the last trump. All
these, each for a separate motive, attacked the President because of
Louisiana.
The new government had chosen Senators. Here was a specific issue over
which the Administration and its multiform opposition might engage in a
trial of strength. The Senate had it in its power to refuse to seat the
Louisiana Senators. Could the Vindictive leaders induce it to go to that
length? The question took its natural course of reference to the Judiciary
Committee. On the eighteenth of February, Trumbull opened what was
destined to be a terrible chapter in American history, the struggle
between light and darkness over reconstruction. Trumbull had ranged behind
Lincoln the majority of his committee. With its authority he moved a joint
resolution recognizing the new government of Louisiana.
And then began a battle royal. Trumbull’s old associates were promptly
joined by Sumner. These three rallied against the resolution all the
malignancy, all the time-serving, all the stupidity, which the Senate
possessed. Bitter language was exchanged by men who had formerly been as
thick as thieves.
“You and I,” thundered Wade, “did not differ formerly on this subject We
considered it a mockery, a miserable mockery, to recognize this Louisiana
organization as a State in the Union.” He sneered fiercely, “Whence comes
this new-born zeal of the Senator from Illinois? . . . Sir, it is the most
miraculous conversion that has taken place since Saint Paul’s time.”(7)
Wade did not spare the President. Metaphorically speaking, he shook a fist
in his face, the fist of a merciless old giant “When the foundation of
this government is sought to be swept away by executive usurpation, it
will not do to turn around to me and say this comes from a President I
helped to elect. . . . If the President of the United States operating
through his major generals can initiate a State government, and can bring
it here and force us, compel us, to receive on this floor these mere
mockeries, these men of straw who represent nobody, your Republic is at an
end . . . talk not to me of your ten per cent. principle. A more absurd,
monarchial and anti-American principle was never announced on God’s
earth.”(8)
Amidst a rain of furious personalities, Lincoln’s spokesman kept his
poise. It was sorely tried by two things: by Sumner’s frank use of every
device of parliamentary obstruction with a view to wearing out the
patience of the Senate, and by the cynical alliance, in order to balk
Lincoln, of the Vindictives with the Democrats. What they would not risk
in 1862 when their principles had to wait upon party needs, they now
considered safe strategy. And if ever the Little Men deserved their label
it was when they played into the hands of the terrible Vindictives, thus
becoming responsible for the rejection of Lincoln’s plan of
reconstruction. Trumbull upbraided Sumner for “associating himself with
those whom he so often denounced, for the purpose of calling the yeas and
nays and making dilatory motions” to postpone action until the press of
other business should compel the Senate to set the resolution aside.
Sumner’s answer was that he would employ against the measure every
instrument he could find “in the arsenal of parliamentary warfare.”
With the aid of the Democrats, the Vindictives carried the day. The
resolution was “dispensed with.”(9)
As events turned out it was a catastrophe. But this was not apparent at
the time. Though Lincoln had been beaten for the moment, the opposition
was made up of so many and such irreconcilable elements that as long as he
could hold together his own following, there was no reason to suppose he
would not in the long run prevail. He was never in a firmer, more
self-contained mood than on the last night of the session.(10) Again, as
on that memorable fourth of July, eight months before, he was in his room
at the Capitol signing the last-minute bills. Stanton was with him. On
receiving a telegram from Grant, the Secretary handed it to the President
Grant reported that Lee had proposed a conference for the purpose of “a
satisfactory adjustment of the present unhappy difficulties by means of a
military convention.” Without asking for the Secretary’s opinion, Lincoln
wrote out a reply which he directed him to sign and despatch immediately.
“The President directs me to say that he wishes you to have no conference
with General Lee, unless it be for the capitulation of General Lee’s army,
or on some minor or purely military matter. He instructs me to say that
you are not to decide, discuss, or confer upon any political questions,
such questions the President holds in his own hands and will submit them
to no military conferences or conventions. Meanwhile, you are to press to
the utmost your military advantages.”(11)
In the second inaugural (12) delivered the next day, there is not the
faintest shadow of anxiety. It breathes a lofty confidence as if his soul
was gazing meditatively downward upon life, and upon his own work, from a
secure height. The world has shown a sound instinct in fixing upon one
expression, “with malice toward none, with charity for all,” as the
key-note of the final Lincoln. These words form the opening line of that
paragraph of unsurpassable prose in which the second inaugural culminates:
“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right
as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we
are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have
borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may
achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all
nations.”
XXXVI. PREPARING A DIFFERENT WAR
During the five weeks which remained to Lincoln on earth, the army was his
most obvious concern. He watched eagerly the closing of the enormous trap
that had been slowly built up surrounding Lee. Toward the end of March he
went to the front, and for two weeks had his quarters on a steamer at City
Point. It was during Lincoln’s visit that Sherman came up from North
Carolina for his flying conference with Grant, in which the President took
part. Lincoln was at City Point when Petersburg fell. Early on the morning
of April third, he joined Grant who gives a strange glimpse in his Memoirs
of their meeting in the deserted city which so recently had been the last
bulwark of the Confederacy.(1) The same day, Richmond fell. Lincoln had
returned to City Point, and on the following day when confusion reigned in
the burning city, he walked through its streets attended only by a few
sailors and by four friends. He visited Libby Prison; and when a member of
his party said that Davis ought to be hanged, Lincoln replied, “Judge not
that ye be not judged.”(2) His deepest thoughts, however, were not with
the army. The time was at hand when his statesmanship was to be put to its
most severe test. He had not forgotten the anxious lesson of that success
of the Vindictives in balking momentarily the recognition of Louisiana. It
was war to the knife between him and them. Could he reconstruct the Union
in a wise and merciful fashion despite their desperate opposition?
He had some strong cards in his hand. First of all, he had time. Congress
was not in session. He had eight months in which to press forward his own
plans. If, when Congress assembled the following December, it should be
confronted by a group of reconciled Southern States, would it venture to
refuse them recognition? No one could have any illusions as to what the
Vindictives would try to do. They would continue the struggle they had
begun over Louisiana; and if their power permitted, they would rouse the
nation to join battle with the President on that old issue of the war
powers, of the dictatorship.
But in Lincoln’s hand there were four other cards, all of which Wade and
Chandler would find it hard to match. He had the army. In the last
election the army had voted for him enthusiastically. And the army was
free from the spirit of revenge, the Spirit which Chandler built upon.
They had the plain people, the great mass whom the machine politicians had
failed to judge correctly in the August Conspiracy. Pretty generally, he
had the Intellectuals. Lastly, he had—or with skilful generalship he
could have—the Abolitionists.
The Thirteenth Amendment was not yet adopted. The question had been
raised, did it require three-fourths of all the States for its adoption,
or only three-fourths of those that were ranked as not in rebellion. Here
was the issue by means of which the Abolitionists might all be brought
into line. It was by no means certain that every Northern State would vote
for the amendment. In the smaller group of States, there was a chance that
the amendment might fail. But if it were submitted to the larger group;
and if every Reconstructed State, before Congress met, should adopt the
amendment; and if it was apparent that with these Southern adoptions the
amendment must prevail, all the great power of the anti-slavery sentiment
would be thrown on the side of the President in favor of recognizing the
new State governments and against the Vindictives. Lincoln held a hand of
trumps. Confidently, but not rashly, he looked forward to his peaceful war
with the Vindictives.
They were enemies not to be despised. To begin with, they were experienced
machine politicians; they had control of well-organized political rings.
They were past masters of the art of working up popular animosities. And
they were going to use this art in that dangerous moment of reaction which
invariably follows the heroic tension of a great war. The alignment in the
Senate revealed by the Louisiana battle had also a significance. The fact
that Sumner, who was not quite one of them, became their general on that
occasion, was something to remember. They had made or thought they had
made other powerful allies. The Vice President, Andrew Johnson-the new
president of the Senate-appeared at this time to be cheek by jowl with the
fiercest Vindictives of them all. It would be interesting to know when the
thought first occurred to them: “If anything should happen to Lincoln, his
successor would be one of us!”
The ninth of April arrived and the news of Lee’s surrender.
“The popular excitement over the victory was such that on Monday, the
tenth, crowds gathered before the Executive Mansion several times during
the day and called out the President for speeches. Twice he responded by
coming to the window and saying a few words which, however, indicated that
his mind was more occupied with work than with exuberant rejoicing. As
briefly as he could he excused himself, but promised that on the following
evening for which a formal demonstration was being arranged, he would be
prepared to say something.”(3)
The paper which he read to the crowd that thronged the grounds of the
White House on the night of April eleventh, was his last public utterance.
It was also one of his most remarkable ones. In a way, it was his
declaration of war against the Vindictives.(4) It is the final statement
of a policy toward helpless opponents—he refused to call them
enemies—which among the conquerors of history is hardly, if at all,
to be paralleled.(5)
“By these recent successes the reinauguration of the national authority—reconstruction—which
has had a large share of thought from the first, is pressed more closely
upon our attention. It is fraught with great difficulty. Unlike a case of
war between independent nations, there is no authorized organ for us to
treat with-no one man has authority to give up the rebellion for any other
man. We simply must begin with, and mould from, disorganized and
discordant elements. Nor is it a small additional embarrassment that we,
the loyal people, differ among ourselves as to the mode, manner and
measure of reconstruction. As a general rule, I abstain from reading the
reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to
which I can not properly offer an answer. In spite of this precaution,
however, it comes to my knowledge that I am much censured for some
supposed agency in setting up and seeking to sustain the new State
government of Louisiana.”
He reviewed in full the history of the Louisiana experiment From that he
passed to the theories put forth by some of his enemies with regard to the
constitutional status of the Seceded States. His own theory that the
States never had been out of the Union because constitutionally they could
not go out, that their governmental functions had merely been temporarily
interrupted; this theory had always been roundly derided by the
Vindictives and even by a few who were not Vindictives. Sumner had
preached the idea that the Southern States by attempting to secede had
committed “State suicide” and should now be treated as Territories.
Stevens and the Vindictives generally, while avoiding Sumner’s subtlety,
called them “conquered provinces.” And all these wanted to take them from
under the protection of the President and place them helpless at the feet
of Congress. To prevent this is the purpose that shines between the lines
in the latter part of Lincoln’s valedictory:
“We all agree that the Seceded States, so called, are out of their proper
practical relation with the Union, and that the sole object of the
government, civil and military, in regard to those States, is to again get
them into that proper practical relation. I believe that it is not only
possible, but in fact easier, to do this without deciding or even
considering whether these States have ever been out of the Union, than
with it Finding themselves safely at home, it would be utterly immaterial
whether they had ever been abroad. Let us all join in doing the acts
necessary to restoring the proper practical relations between these States
and the Union, and each forever after innocently indulge his own opinion
whether in doing the acts he brought the States from without into the
Union, or only gave them proper assistance, they never having been out of
it. The amount of constituency, so to speak, on which the new Louisiana
government rests would be more satisfactory to all if it contained 50,000
or 30,000, or even 20,000 instead of only about 12,000, as it does. It is
also unsatisfactory to some that the elective franchise is not given to
the colored man. I would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the
very intelligent, and on those who served our cause as soldiers.
“Still, the question is not whether the Louisiana government, as it
stands, is quite all that is desirable. The question is, will it be wiser
to take it as it is and help to improve it, or to reject and disperse it?
Can Louisiana be brought into proper practical relation with the Union
sooner by sustaining or by discarding her new State government? Some
twelve thousand voters in the heretofore slave State of Louisiana have
sworn allegiance to the Union, assumed to be the rightful political power
of the State, held elections, organized a State government, adopted a free
State constitution, giving the benefit of public schools equally to black
and white and empowering the Legislature to confer the elective franchise
upon the colored man. Their Legislature has already voted to ratify the
constitutional amendment recently passed by Congress abolishing slavery
throughout the nation. These 12,000 persons are thus fully committed to
the Union and to perpetual freedom in the State—committed to the
very things, and nearly all the things, the nation wants—and they
ask the nation’s recognition and its assistance to make good their
committal.
“Now, if we reject and spurn them, we do our utmost to disorganize and
disperse them. We, in effect, say to the white man: You are worthless or
worse; we will neither help you nor be helped by you. To the blacks we
say: This cup of liberty which these, your old masters, hold to your lips
we will dash from you and leave you to the chances of gathering the
spilled and scattered contents in some vague and undefined when, where and
how. If this course, discouraging and paralyzing both white and black, has
any tendency to bring Louisiana into proper practical relations with the
Union, I have so far been unable to perceive it. If, on the contrary, we
recognize and sustain the new government of Louisiana, the converse of all
this is made true. We encourage the hearts and nerve the arms of 12,000 to
adhere to their work, and argue for it, and proselyte for it, and fight
for it, and feed it, and grow it, and ripen it to a complete success. The
colored man, too, in seeing all united for him, is inspired with vigilance
and energy, and daring, to the same end. Grant that he desires the
elective franchise, will he not attain it sooner by saving the already
advanced steps toward it than by running backward over them? Concede that
the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is
to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by
smashing it.
“Again, if we reject Louisiana, we also reject one vote in favor of the
proposed amendment to the national Constitution. To meet this proposition
it has been argued that no more than three-fourths of those States which
have not attempted secession are necessary to validly ratify the amendment
I do not commit myself against this further than to say that such a
ratification would be questionable, and sure to be persistently
questioned, while a ratification by three-fourths of all the States would
be unquestioned and unquestionable. I repeat the question: Can Louisiana
be brought into proper practical relation with the Union sooner by
sustaining or by discarding her new State government? What has been said
of Louisiana will apply generally to other States. And yet so great
peculiarities pertain to each State, and such important and sudden changes
occur in the same State, and with also new and unprecedented is the whole
case that no exclusive and inflexible plan can safely be prescribed as to
details and collaterals. Such exclusive and inflexible plan would surely
become a new entanglement. Important principles may and must be
inflexible. In the present situation, as the phrase goes, it may be my
duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I am
considering and shall not fail to act when satisfied that action will be
proper.”
XXXVII. FATE INTERPOSES
There was an early spring on the Potomac in 1865. While April was still
young, the Judas trees became spheres of purply, pinkish bloom. The
Washington parks grew softly bright as the lilacs opened. Pendulous
willows veiled with green laces afloat in air the changing brown that was
winter’s final shadow; in the Virginia woods the white blossoms of the
dogwood seemed to float and flicker among the windy trees like enormous
flocks of alighting butterflies. And over head such a glitter of turquoise
blue! As lovely in a different way as on that fateful Sun-day morning when
Russell drove through the same woods toward Bull Run so long, long ago.
Such was the background of the last few days of Lincoln’s life.
Though tranquil, his thoughts dwelt much on death. While at City Point, he
drove one day with Mrs. Lincoln along the banks of the James. They passed
a country graveyard. “It was a retired place,” said Mrs. Lincoln long
afterward, “shaded by trees, and early spring flowers were opening on
nearly every grave. It was so quiet and attractive that we stopped the
carriage and walked through it. Mr. Lincoln seemed thoughtful and
impressed. He said: ‘Mary, you are younger than I; you will survive me.
When I am gone, lay my remains in some quiet place like this.'”(1)
His mood underwent a mysterious change. It was serene and yet charged with
a peculiar grave loftiness not quite like any phase of him his friends had
known hitherto. As always, his thoughts turned for their reflection to
Shakespeare. Sumner who was one of the party at City Point, was deeply
impressed by his reading aloud, a few days before his death, that passage
in Macbeth which describes the ultimate security of Duncan where nothing
evil “can touch him farther.”(2)
There was something a little startling, as if it were not quite of this
world, in the tender lightness that seemed to come into his heart. “His
whole appearance, poise and bearing,” says one of his observers, “had
marvelously changed. He was, in fact, transfigured. That indescribable
sadness which had previously seemed to be an adamantine element of his
very being, had been suddenly changed for an equally indescribable
expression of serene joy, as if conscious that the great purpose of his
life had been achieved.”(3)
It was as if the seer in the trance had finally passed beyond his trance;
and had faced smiling toward his earthly comrades, imagining he was to
return to them; unaware that somehow his emergence was not in the ordinary
course of nature; that in it was an accent of the inexplicable, something
which the others caught and at which they trembled; though they knew not
why. And he, so beautifully at peace, and yet thrilled as never before by
the vision of the murdered Duncan at the end of life’s fitful fever—what
was his real feeling, his real vision of himself? Was it something of what
the great modern poet strove so bravely to express—
Shortly before the end, he had a strange dream. Though he spoke of it
almost with levity, it would not leave his thoughts. He dreamed he was
wandering through the White House at night; all the rooms were brilliantly
lighted; but they were empty. However, through that unreal solitude
floated a sound of weeping. When he came to the East Room, it was
explained; there was a catafalque, the pomp of a military funeral, crowds
of people in tears; and a voice said to him, “The President has been
assassinated.”
He told this dream to Lamon and to Mrs. Lincoln. He added that after it
had occurred, “the first time I opened the Bible, strange as it may
appear, it was at the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis which relates the
wonderful dream Jacob had. I turned to other passages and seemed to
encounter a dream or a vision wherever I looked. I kept on turning the
leaves of the Old Book, and everywhere my eye fell upon passages recording
matters strangely in keeping with my own thoughts—supernatural
visitations, dreams, visions, etc.”
But when Lamon seized upon this as text for his recurrent sermon on
precautions against assassination, Lincoln turned the matter into a joke.
He did not appear to interpret the dream as foreshadowing his own death.
He called Lamon’s alarm “downright foolishness.”(4)
Another dream in the last night of his life was a consolation. He narrated
it to the Cabinet when they met on April fourteenth, which happened to be
Good Friday. There was some anxiety with regard to Sherman’s movements in
North Carolina. Lincoln bade the Cabinet set their minds at rest. His
dream of the night before was one that he had often had. It was a presage
of great events. In this dream he saw himself “in a singular and
indescribable vessel, but always the same… moving with great rapidity
toward a dark and indefinite shore.” This dream had preceded all the great
events of the war. He believed it was a good omen.(5)
At this last Cabinet meeting, he talked freely of the one matter which in
his mind overshadowed all others. He urged his Ministers to put aside all
thoughts of hatred and revenge. “He hoped there would be no persecution,
no bloody work, after the war was over. None need expect him to take any
part in hanging or killing these men, even the worst of them. ‘Frighten
them out of the country, let down the bars, scare them off,’ said he,
throwing up his hands as if scaring sheep. Enough lives have been
sacrificed. We must extinguish our resentment if we expect harmony and
union. There was too much desire on the part of our very good friends to
be masters, to interfere and dictate to those States, to treat the people
not as fellow citizens; there was too little respect for their rights. He
didn’t sympathize in these feelings.”(6)
There was a touch of irony in his phase “our very good friends.” Before
the end of the next day, the men he had in mind, the inner group of the
relentless Vindictives, were to meet in council, scarcely able to conceal
their inspiring conviction that Providence had intervened, had judged
between him and them.(7) And that allusion to the “rights” of the
vanquished! How abominable it was in the ears of the grim Chandler, the
inexorable Wade. Desperate these men and their followers were on the
fourteenth of April, but defiant. To the full measure of their power they
would fight the President to the last ditch. And always in their minds,
the tormenting thought-if only positions could be reversed, if only
Johnson, whom they believed to be one of them at heart, were in the first
instead of the second place!
While these unsparing sons of thunder were growling among themselves, the
lions that were being cheated of their prey, Lincoln was putting his
merciful temper into a playful form. General Creswell applied to him for
pardon for an old friend of his who had joined the Confederate Army.
“Creswell,” said Lincoln, “you make me think of a lot of young folks who
once started out Maying. To reach their destination, they had to cross a
shallow stream and did so by means of an old flat boat when the time came
to return, they found to their dismay that the old scow had disappeared.
They were in sore trouble and thought over all manner of devices for
getting over the water, but without avail. After a time, one of the boys
proposed that each fellow should pick up the girl he liked best and wade
over with her. The masterly proposition was carried out until all that
were left upon the island was a little short chap and a great, long,
gothic-built, elderly lady. Now, Creswell, you are trying to leave me in
the same predicament. You fellows are all getting your own friends out of
this scrape, and you will succeed in carrying off one after another until
nobody but Jeff Davis and myself will be left on the island, and then I
won’t know what to do—How should I feel? How should I look lugging
him over? I guess the way to avoid such an embarrassing situation is to
let all out at once.”(8)
The President refused, this day, to open his doors to the throng of
visitors that sought admission. His eldest son, Robert, an officer in
Grant’s army, had returned from the front unharmed. Lincoln wished to
reserve the day for his family and intimate friends. In the afternoon,
Mrs. Lincoln asked him if he cared to have company on their usual drive.
“No, Mary,” said he, “I prefer that we ride by ourselves to-day.”(9) They
took a long drive. His mood, as it had been all day, was singularly happy
and tender.(10) He talked much of the past and the future. It seemed to
Mrs. Lincoln that he never had appeared happier than during the drive. He
referred to past sorrows, to the anxieties of the war, to Willie’s death,
and spoke of the necessity to be cheerful and happy in the days to come.
As Mrs. Lincoln remembered his words: “We have had a hard time since we
came to Washington; but the war is over, and with God’s blessings, we may
hope for four years of peace and happiness, and then we will go back to
Illinois and pass the rest of our lives in quiet. We have laid by some
money, and during this time, we will save up more, but shall not have
enough to support us. We will go back to Illinois; I will open a law
office at Springfield or Chicago and practise law, and at least do enough
to help give us a livelihood.”(11)
They returned from their drive and prepared for a theatre party which had
been fixed for that night. The management of the Ford’s Theatre, where
Laura Keene was to close her season with a benefit performance of Our
American Cousin, had announced in the afternoon paper that “the President
and his lady” would attend. The President’s box had been draped with
flags. The rest is a twice told tale—a thousandth told tale.
An actor, very handsome, a Byronic sort, both in beauty and temperament,
with a dash perhaps of insanity, John Wilkes Booth, had long meditated
killing the President. A violent secessionist, his morbid imagination had
made of Lincoln another Caesar. The occasion called for a Brutus. While
Lincoln was planning his peaceful war with the Vindictives, scheming how
to keep them from grinding the prostrate South beneath their heels,
devising modes of restoring happiness to the conquered region, Booth, at
an obscure boarding-house in Washington, was gathering about him a band of
adventurers, some of whom at least, like himself, were unbalanced. They
meditated a general assassination of the Cabinet. The unexpected theatre
party on the fourteenth gave Booth a sudden opportunity. He knew every
passage of Ford’s Theatre. He knew, also, that Lincoln seldom surrounded
himself with guards. During the afternoon, he made his way unobserved into
the theatre and bored a hole in the door of the presidential box, so that
he might fire through it should there be any difficulty in getting the
door open.
About ten o’clock that night, the audience was laughing at the absurd
play; the President’s party were as much amused as any. Suddenly, there
was a pistol shot. A moment more and a woman’s voice rang out in a sharp
cry. An instant sense of disaster brought the audience startled to their
feet. Two men were glimpsed struggling toward the front of the President’s
box. One broke away, leaped down on to the stage, flourished a knife and
shouted, “Sic semper tyrannis!” Then he vanished through the flies. It was
Booth, whose plans had been completely successful. He had made his way
without interruption to within a few feet of Lincoln. At point-blank
distance, he had shot him from behind, through the head. In the confusion
which ensued, he escaped from the theatre; fled from the city; was
pursued; and was himself shot and killed a few days later.
The bullet of the assassin had entered the brain, causing instant
unconsciousness. The dying President was removed to a house on Tenth
Street, No. 453, where he was laid on a bed in a small room at the rear of
the hall on the ground floor.(12)
Swift panic took possession of the city. “A crowd of people rushed
instinctively to the White House, and bursting through the doors, shouted
the dreadful news to Robert Lincoln and Major Hay who sat gossiping in an
upper room. . . . They ran down-stairs. Finding a carriage at the door,
they entered it and drove to Tenth Street.”(13)
To right and left eddied whirls of excited figures, men and women
questioning, threatening, crying out for vengeance. Overhead amid driving
clouds, the moon, through successive mantlings of darkness, broke
periodically into sudden blazes of light; among the startled people below,
raced a witches’ dance of the rapidly changing shadows.(14)
Lincoln did not regain consciousness. About dawn his pulse began to fail.
A little later, “a look of unspeakable peace came over his worn
features”(15), and at twenty-two minutes after seven on the morning of the
fifteenth of April, he died.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
It is said that a complete bibliography of Lincoln would include at least
five thousand titles. Therefore, any limited bibliography must appear more
or less arbitrary. The following is but a minimum list in which, with a
few exceptions such as the inescapable interpretative works of Mr. Rhodes
and of Professor Dunning, practically everything has to some extent the
character of a source.
Alexander. A Political History of the State of New York. By De Alva
Stanwood Alexander. 3 vols. 1909.
Arnold. History of Abraham Lincoln and the Overthrow of Slavery. By Isaac
N. Arnold. 1866.
Baldwin. Interview between President Lincoln and Colonel John B. Baldwin.
1866.
Bancroft. Life of William H. Seward. By Frederick Bancroft. 2 vols. 1900.
Barnes. Memoir of Thurlow Weed. By Thurlow Weed Barnes. 1884.
Barton. The Soul of Abraham Lincoln. By William Eleazar Barton. 1920.
Bigelow. Retrospections of an Active Life. By John Bigelow. 2 vols. 1909.
Blaine. Twenty Years of Congress. By James G. Blaine. 2 vols. 1884.
Botts. The Great Rebellion. By John Minor Botts. 1866.
Boutwell. Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs. By George S.
Boutwell 2 vols. 1902.
Bradford. Union Portraits. By Gamaliel Bradford. 1916.
Brooks. Washington in Lincoln’s Time. By Noah Brooks, 1895.
Carpenter. Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln. By F. B.
Carpenter. 1866.
Chandler. Life of Zachary Chandler. By the Detroit Post and Tribune. 1880.
Chapman. Latest Light on Abraham Lincoln. By Ervin Chapman. 1917. The
Charleston Mercury.
Chase. Diary and Correspondence of Salmon Chase. Report, American
Historical Association, 1902, Vol. II.
Chittenden. Recollections of President Lincoln and His Administration. By
L. Chittenden. 1891.
Coleman. Life of John J. Crittenden, with Selections from his
Correspondence and Speeches. By Ann Mary Coleman. 2 vols. 1871.
Conway. Autobiography, Memories and Experiences of Moncure Daniel Conway.
2 vols. 1904.
Correspondence. The Correspondence of Robert Toombs, Alexander H.
Stephens, and Howell Cobb. Edited by U. B. Phillips. Report American
Historical Association, 1913, Vol. II.
Crawford. The Genesis of the Civil War. By Samuel Wylie Crawford. 1887.
C. W. Report of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. 1863.
Dabney. Memoir of a Narrative Received from Colonel John B. Baldwin, of
Staunton, touching the Origin of the War. By Reverend R. L. Dabney, D. D.,
Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. 1. 1876.
Davis. Rise and Fail of the Confederate Government. By Jefferson Davis. 2
vols. 1881.
Dunning. Essays on the Civil War and Reconstruction and Related Topics. By
William A. Dunning. 1898.
Field. Life of David Dudley Field. By Henry M. Field. 1898.
Flower. Edwin McMasters Stanton. By Frank Abial Flower. 1902.
Fry. Military Miscellanies. By James B. Fry. 1889.
Galaxy. The History of Emancipation. By Gideon Welles. The Galaxy, XIV,
838-851.
Gilmore. Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. By
James R. Gilmore. 1899.
Gilmore, Atlantic. A Suppressed Chapter of History. By James R. Gilmore,
Atlantic Monthly, April, 1887.
Globe. Congressional Globe, Containing the Debates and Proceedings.
1834-1873.
Godwin. Biography of William Cullen Bryant. By Parke Godwin.
1883. Gore. The Boyhood of Abraham Lincoln. By J. Rogers Gore. 1921.
Gorham. Life and Public Services of Edwin M. Stanton. By George C. Gorham.
2 vols. 1899.
Grant. Personal Memoirs. By Ulysses S. Grant. 2 vols. 1886.
Greeley. The American Conflict. By Horace Greeley. 2 vols. 1864-1867.
Gurowski. Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862. By Adam
Gurowski. 1862.
Hanks. Nancy Hanks. By Caroline Hanks Hitchcock. 1900.
Harris. Public Life of Zachary Chandler. By W. C. Harris, Michigan
Historical Commission. 1917.
Hart. Salmon Portland Chase. By Albert Bushnell Hart. 1899.
Hay MS. Diary of John Hay. The war period is covered by three volumes of
manuscript. Photostat copies in the library of the Massachusetts
Historical Society, accessible only by special permission.
Hay, Century. Life in the White House in the Time of Lincoln. By John Hay,
Century Magazine, November, 1890.
The New York Herald.
Herndon. Herndon’s Lincoln. The True Story of a Great Life: The History
and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln. By W. H. Herndon and J. W.
Weik. 3 vols. (paged continuously). 1890.
Hill. Lincoln the Lawyer. By Frederick Trevers Hill 1906.
Hitchcock. Fifty Years in Camp and Field. Diary of Major-General Ethan
Allen Hitchcock, U. S. A. Edited by W. Croffut. 1909.
Johnson. Stephen A. Douglas. By Allen Johnson. 1908.
The Journal of the Virginia Convention. 1861.
Julian. Political Recollections 1840-1872. By George W. Julian. 1884.
Kelley. Lincoln and Stanton. By W. D. Kelley. 1885.
Lamon. The Life of Abraham Lincoln. By Ward H. Lamon. 1872.
Letters. Uncollected Letters of Abraham Lincoln. Now first brought
together by Gilbert A. Tracy. 1917.
Lieber. Life and Letters of Francis Lieber. Edited by Thomas S. Perry,
1882.
Lincoln. Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln. Edited by John G. Nicolay and
John Hay. 2 vols. New and enlarged edition. 12 volumes. 1905. (All
references here are to the Colter edition.)
McCarthy. Lincoln’s Plan of Reconstruction. By Charles M. McCarthy, 1901.
McClure. Abraham Lincoln and Men of War Times. By A. K. McClure. 1892.
Merriam. Life and Times of Samuel Bowles. By G. S. Merriam. 2 vols. 1885.
Munford. Virginia’s Attitude toward Slavery and Secession. By Beverley B.
Munford. 1910.
Moore. A Digest of International Law. By John Bassett Moore. 8 vols. 1906.
Newton. Lincoln and Herndon. By Joseph Fort Newton. 1910.
Nicolay. A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln. By John G. Nicolay. 1902.
Nicolay, Cambridge. The Cambridge Modern History: Volume VII.
The United States. By various authors. 1903.
Miss Nicolay. Personal Traits of Abraham Lincoln. By Helen Nicolay. 1912.
N. and H. Abraham Lincoln: A History. By John G. Nicolay and John Hay. 10
vols. 1890.
N. P. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies. First series.
27 vols. 1895-1917.
O. P. Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies. 128 vols.
1880-1901.
Outbreak. The Outbreak of the Rebellion. By John G. Nicolay. 1881.
Own Story. McClellan’s Own Story. By George B. McClellan. 1887.
Paternity. The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln. By William Eleazer Barton.
1920.
Pearson. Life of John A. Andrew. By Henry G. Pearson. 2 vols. 1904.
Pierce. Memoirs and Letters of Charles Sumner. By Edward Lillie Pierce. 4
vols. 1877-1893.
Porter. In Memory of General Charles P. Stone. By Fitz John Porter. 1887.
Public Man. Diary of a Public Man. Anonymous. North American Review. 1879.
Rankin. Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln. By Henry B. Rankin.
1916.
Raymond. Journal of Henry J. Raymond. Edited by Henry W. Raymond.
Scribner’s Magazine. 1879-1880.
Recollections. Recollections of Abraham Lincoln. By Ward Hill Lamon. 1911.
Reminiscences. Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, by Distinguished
Men of his Time. Edited by Allen Thorndyke Rice. 1886.
Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, first session,
Thirty-Ninth Congress.
Rhodes. History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850. By James
Ford Rhodes. 8 vols. 1893-1920.
Riddle. Recollections of War Times. By A. G. Riddle. 1895.
Schrugham. The Peaceful Americans of 1860. By Mary Schrugham. 1922.
Schure. Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schure.
Selected and edited by Frederick Bancroft. 1913.
Scott. Memoirs of Lieutenant General Scott, LL.D. Written by himself. 2
vols. 1864.
Seward. Works of William H. Seward. 5 vols. 1884.
Sherman. Memoirs of William T. Sherman. By himself. 2 vols. 1886. Sherman
Letters.
Letters of John Sherman and W. T. Sherman. Edited by Rachel Sherman
Thorndike. 1894.
Southern Historical Society Papers.
Stephens. Constitutional View of the Late War between the States. By
Alexander H. Stephens. 2 vols. 1869-1870.
Stoddard. Inside the White House in War Times. By William O. Stoddard.
1890.
Stories. “Abe” Lincoln’s Yarns and Stories. With introduction and
anecdotes by Colonel Alexander McClure. 1901.
The New York Sun.
Swinton. Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac. By William Swinton. 1866.
Tarbell. The Life of Abraham Lincoln. By Ida M. Tarbell. New edition. 2
vols. 1917.
Thayer. The Life and Letters of John Hay. By William Roscoe Thayer. 2
vols. 1915.
The New York Times.
The New York Tribune.
Tyler. Letters and Times of the Tylers. By Lyon G. Tyler. 3 vols.
1884-1896.
Van Santvoord. A Reception by President Lincoln. By C. J. Van Santvoord.
Century Magazine, Feb., 1883.
Villard. Memoirs of Henry Villard. 2 vols. 1902.
Wade. Life of Benjamin F. Wade. By A. G. Riddle. 1886.
Warden. Account of the Private Life and Public Services of Salmon Portland
Chase. By R. B. Warden. 1874.
Welles. Diary of Gideon Welles. Edited by J. T. Morse, Jr. 3 vols. 1911.
White. Life of Lyman Trumbull. By Horace White. 1913.
Woodburn. The Life of Thaddeus Stevens. By James Albert Woodburn. 1913.
NOTES
I. THE CHILD OF THE FOREST.
1. Herndon, 1-7, 11-14; 1, anon, 13; N. and H., 1, 23-27. This is the
version of his origin accepted by Lincoln. He believed that his mother was
the illegitimate daughter of a Virginia planter and traced to that
doubtful source “all the qualities that distinguished him from other
members” of his immediate family. Herndon, 3. His secretaries are silent
upon the subject. Recently the story has been challenged. Mrs. Caroline
Hanks Hitchcock, who identifies the Hanks family of Kentucky with a lost
branch of a New England family, has collected evidence which tends to show
that Nancy was the legitimate daughter of a certain Joseph H. Hanks, who
was father of Joseph the carpenter, and that Nancy was not the niece but
the younger sister of the “uncle” who figures in the older version, the
man with whom Thomas Lincoln worked. Nancy and Thomas appear to have been
cousins through their mothers. Mrs. Hitchcock argues the case with care
and ability in a little book entitled Nancy Hanks. However, she is not
altogether sustained by W. E. Barton, The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln.
Scandal has busied itself with the parents of Lincoln in another way. It
has been widely asserted that he was himself illegitimate. A variety of
shameful paternities have been assigned to him, some palpably absurd. The
chief argument of the lovers of this scandal was once the lack of a known
record of the marriage of his parents. Around this fact grew up the story
of a marriage of concealment with Thomas Lincoln as the easy-going
accomplice. The discovery of the marriage record fixing the date and
demonstrating that Abraham must have been the second child gave this
scandal its quietus. N. and H., 1, 23-24; Hanks, 59-67; Herndon, 5-6;
Lincoln and Herndon, 321. The last important book on the subject is
Barton, The Paternity of Abraham Lincoln.
2. N. and H., 1-13.
3. Lamon, 13; N. and H., 1, 25.
4. N. and H., 1, 25.
5. Gore, 221-225.
6. Herndon, 15.
7. Gore, 66, 70-74, 79, 83-84, 116, 151-154, 204, 226-230, for all this
group of anecdotes.
The evidence with regard to all the early part of Lincoln’s life is
peculiar in this, that it is reminiscence not written down until the
subject had become famous. Dogmatic certainty with regard to the details
is scarcely possible. The best one can do in weighing any of the versions
of his early days is to inquire closely as to whether all its parts bang
naturally together, whether they really cohere. There is a body of
anecdotes told by an old mountaineer, Austin Gollaher, who knew Lincoln as
a boy, and these have been collected and recently put into print. Of
course, they are not “documented” evidence. Some students are for brushing
them aside. But there is one important argument in their favor. They are
coherent; the boy they describe is a real person and his personality is
sustained. If he is a fiction and not a memory, the old mountaineer was a
literary artist—far more the artist than one finds it easy to
believe.
8. Gore, 84-95; Lamon, 16; Herndon, 16.
9. Gore, 181-182, 296, 303-316; Lamon, 19-20; N. and H., I, 28-29.
II. THE MYSTERIOUS YOUTH.
1. N. and H., I, 32-34.
2. Lamon, 33-38, 51-52, 61-63; N. and H., 1, 34-36.
3. N. and H., 1, 40.
4. Lamon, 38, 40, 55.
5. Reminiscences, 54, 428.
III. A VILLAGE LEADER.
1. N. and H., 1, 45-46, 70-72; Herndon, 67, 69, 72.
2. Lamon, 81-82; Herndon, 75-76.
3. Lincoln, 1, 1-9.
4. Lamon, 125-126; Herndon, 104.
5. Herndon, 117-118.
6. N. and H., 1, 109.
7. Stories, 94.
8. Herndon, 118-123.
9. Lamon, 159-164; Herndon, 128-138; Rankin, 61-95.
10. Lamon, 164.
11. Lamon, 164-165; Rankin, 95.
IV. REVELATIONS.
1. Riddle, 337.
2. Herndon, 436.
3. N. and H., I, 138.
4. Lincoln, I, 51-52.
5. McClure, 65.
6. Herndon, 184.185.
7. Anon, 172-183; Herndon, 143-150, 161; Lincoln, 1, 87-92.
8. Gossip has preserved a melodramatic tale with regard to Lincoln’s
marriage. It describes the bride to be, waiting, arrayed, in tense
expectation deepening into alarm; the guests assembled, wondering, while
the hour appointed passes by and the ceremony does not begin; the failure
of the prospective bridegroom to appear; the scattering of the company,
amazed, their tongues wagging. The explanation offered is an attack of
insanity. Herndon, 215; I,anon, 239-242. As might be expected Lincoln’s
secretaries who see him always in a halo give no hint of such an event. It
has become a controversial scandal. Is it a fact or a myth? Miss Tarbell
made herself the champion of the mythical explanation and collected a
great deal of evidence that makes it hard to accept the story as a fact
Tarbell, I, Chap. XI. Still later a very sane memoirist, Henry B. Rankin,
who knew Lincoln, and is not at all an apologist, takes the same view. His
most effective argument is that such an event could not have occurred in
the little country town of Springfield without becoming at the time the
common property of all the gossips. The evidence is bewildering. I find
myself unable to accept the disappointed wedding guests as established
facts, even though the latest student of Herndon has no doubts. Lincoln
and Herndon, 321-322. But whether the broken marriage story is true or
false there is no doubt that Lincoln passed through a desolating inward
experience about “the fatal first of January”; that it was related to the
breaking of his engagement; and that for a time his sufferings were
intense. The letters to Speed are the sufficient evidence. Lincoln, I,
175; 182-189; 210-219; 240; 261; 267-269. The prompt explanation of
insanity may be cast aside, one of those foolish delusions of shallow
people to whom all abnormal conditions are of the same nature as all
others. Lincoln wrote to a noted Western physician, Doctor Drake of
Cincinnati, with regard to his “case”—that is, his nervous breakdown—and
Doctor Drake replied but refused to prescribe without an interview. Lamon,
244.
V. PROSPERITY.
1. Carpenter, 304-305.
2. Lamon, 243, 252-269; Herndon, 226-243, 248-251; N. and H., 201, 203-12.
3. A great many recollections of Lincoln attempt to describe him. Except
in a large and general way most of them show that lack of definite
visualization which characterizes the memories of the careless observer.
His height, his bony figure, his awkwardness, the rudely chiseled
features, the mystery in his eyes, the kindliness of his expression, these
are the elements of the popular portrait. Now and then a closer observer
has added a detail. Witness the masterly comment of Walt Whitman.
Herndon’s account of Lincoln speaking has the earmarks of accuracy. The
attempt by the portrait painter, Carpenter, to render him in words is
quoted later in this volume. Carpenter, 217-218. Unfortunately he was
never painted by an artist of great originality, by one who was equal to
his opportunity. My authority for the texture of his skin is a lady of
unusual closeness of observation, the late Mrs. M. T. W. Curwen of
Cincinnati, who saw him in 1861 in the private car of the president of the
Indianapolis and Cincinnati railroad. An exhaustive study of the portraits
of Lincoln is in preparation by Mr. Winfred Porter Truesdell, who has a
valuable paper on the subject in The Print Connoisseur, for March, 1921.
4. Herndon, 264.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 515.
7. A vital question to the biographer of Lincoln is the credibility of
Herndon. He has been accused of capitalizing his relation with Lincoln and
producing a sensational image for commercial purposes. Though his Life did
not appear until 1890 when the official work of Nicolay and Hay was in
print, he had been lecturing and corresponding upon Lincoln for nearly
twenty-five years. The “sensational” first edition of his Life produced a
storm of protest. The book was promptly recalled, worked over, toned down,
and reissued “expurgated” in 1892.
Such biographers as Miss Tarbell appear to regard Herndon as a mere
romancer. The well poised Lincoln and Herndon recently published by Joseph
Fort Newton holds what I feel compelled to regard as a sounder view;
namely, that while Herndon was at times reckless and at times biased,
nevertheless he is in the main to be relied upon.
Three things are to be borne in mind: Herndon was a literary man by
nature; but he was not by training a developed artist; he was a romantic
of the full flood of American romanticism and there are traceable in him
the methods of romantic portraiture. Had he been an Elizabethan one can
imagine him laboring hard with great pride over an inferior “Tamburlane
the Great”—and perhaps not knowing that it was inferior.
Furthermore, he had not, before the storm broke on him, any realization of
the existence in America of another school of portraiture, the heroic—conventual,
that could not understand the romantic. If Herndon strengthened as much as
possible the contrasts of his subject—such as the contrast between
the sordidness of Lincoln’s origin and the loftiness of his thought—he
felt that by so doing he was merely rendering his subject in its most
brilliant aspect, giving to it the largest degree of significance. A third
consideration is Herndon’s enthusiasm for the agnostic deism that was
rampant in America in his day. Perhaps this causes his romanticism to slip
a cog, to run at times on a side-track, to become the servant of his
religious partisanship. In three words the faults of Herndon are
exaggeration, literalness and exploitiveness.
But all these are faults of degree which the careful student can allow
for. By “checking up” all the parts of Herndon that it is possible to
check up one can arrive at a pretty confident belief that one knows how to
divest the image he creates of its occasional unrealities. When one does
so, the strongest argument for relying cautiously, watchfully, upon
Herndon appears. The Lincoln thus revealed, though only a character
sketch, is coherent. And it stands the test of comparison in detail with
the Lincolns of other, less romantic, observers. That is to say, with all
his faults, Herndon has the inner something that will enable the diverse
impressions of Lincoln, always threatening to become irreconcilable, to
hang together and out of their very incongruity to invoke a person that is
not incongruous. And herein, in this touchstone so to speak is Herndon’s
value.
8. Herndon, 265.
9. Lamon, 51.
10. Lincoln, I, 35-SO.
11. The reader who would know the argument against Herndon (436-446) and
Lamon (486-502) on the subject of Lincoln’s early religion is referred to
The Soul of Abraham Lincoln, by William Eleazer Barton. It is to be
observed that the present study is never dogmatic about Lincoln’s religion
in its early phases. And when Herndon and Lamon generalize about his
religious life, it must be remembered that they are thinking of him as
they knew him in Illinois. Herndon had no familiarity with him after he
went to Washington. Lamon could not have seen very much of him—no
one but his secretaries and his wife did. And his taciturnity must be
borne in mind. Nicolay has recorded that he did not know what Lincoln
believed. Lamon, 492. That Lincoln was vaguely a deist in the ‘forties—so
far as he had any theology at all—may be true. But it is a rash leap
to a conclusion to assume that his state of mind even then was the same
thing as the impression it made on so practical, bard-headed, unpoetical a
character as Lamon; or on so combatively imaginative but wholly unmystical
a mind as Herndon’s. Neither of them seems to have any understanding of
those agonies of spirit through which Lincoln subsequently passed which
will appear in the account of the year 1862. See also Miss Nicolay,
384-386. There is a multitude of pronouncements on Lincoln’s religion,
most of them superficial.
12. Lincoln, I, 206.
13. Nicolay, 73-74; N. and H., 1, 242; Lamon, 275-277.
14. Lamon, 277-278; Herndon, 272-273; N. and H., 1, 245-249.
VI. UNSATISFYING RECOGNITION.
1. N. and H., I, 28, 28&
2. Tarbell, 1, 211.
3. Ibid., 210-211.
4. Herndon, 114.
5. Lincoln, II, 28-48.
6. Herndon, 306-308, 319; Newton, 4(141).
7. Tarbell, I, 209-210.
8. Herndon, 306.
9. Lamon, 334; Herndon, 306; N. and H., I, 297.
VII. THE SECOND START.
1. Herndon, 307, 319.
2. Herndon, 319-321.
3. Herndon, 314-317.
4. Herndon, 332-333.
5. Herndon, 311-312.
6. Herndon, 319.
7. Lamon, 165.
8. Herndon, 309.
9. Herndon, 113-114; Stories, 18~
10. Herndon, 338.
11. Lamon, 324.
12. Lincoln, 11, 142.
13. Herndon, 347.
14. Herndon, 363.
15. Herndon, 362.
16. Lincoln, II, 172.
17. Lincoln, II, 207.
18. Lincoln, II, 173.
19. Lincoln, II, 165.
VIII. A RETURN TO POLITICS.
1. Johnson, 234.
2. I have permission to print the following letter from the Honorable John
H. Marshall, Judge Fifth Judicial Circuit, Charleston, Illinois:
“Your letter of the 24th inst. at hand referring to slave trial in which
Lincoln was interested, referred to by Professor Henry Johnson.
Twenty-five years ago, while I was secretary of the Coles County Bar
Association, a paper was read to the Association by the oldest member
concerning the trial referred to, and his paper was filed with rue. Some
years ago I spoke of the matter to Professor Johnson, and at the time was
unable to find the old manuscript, and decided that the same had been
inadvertently destroyed. However, quite recently I found this paper
crumpled up under some old book records. The author of this article is a
reputable member of the bar of this country of very advanced age, and at
that time quoted as his authority well-known and very substantial men of
the county, who had taken an active interest in the litigation. His paper
referred to incidents occurring in 1847, and there is now no living person
with any knowledge of it. The story in brief is as follows:
“In 1845, General Robert Matson, of Kentucky, being hard pressed
financially, in order to keep them from being sold in payment of his
debts, brought Jane Bryant, with her four small children to this county.
Her husband, Anthony Bryant, was a free negro, and a licensed exhorter in
the Methodist Church of Kentucky. But his wife and children were slaves of
Matson. In 1847, Matson, determined to take the Bryants back to Kentucky
as his slaves, caused to be issued by a justice of the peace of the county
a writ directed to Jane Bryant and her children to appear before him
forthwith and answer the claim of Robert Matson that their service was due
to him, etc. This action produced great excitement in this county.
Practically the entire community divided, largely on the lines of
pro-slavery and anti-slavery. Usher F. Linder, the most eloquent lawyer in
this vicinity, appeared for Matson, and Orlando B. Ficklin, twice a member
of Congress, appeared for the negroes. Under the practice the defendant
obtained a hearing from three justices instead of one, and a trial ensued
lasting several days, and attended by great excitement. Armed men made
demonstrations and bloodshed was narrowly averted. Two of the justices
were pro-slavery, and one anti-slavery. The trial was held in Charleston.
The decision of the justice was discreet. It was held that the court had
no jurisdiction to determine the right of property, but that Jane and her
children were of African descent and found in the state of Illinois
without a certificate of freedom, and that they be committed to the county
jail to be advertised and sold to pay the jail fees.
“At the next term of the circuit court, Ficklin obtained an order staying
proceedings until the further order of the court. Finally when the case
was heard in the circuit court Linder and Abraham Lincoln appeared for
Matson, who was insisting upon the execution of the judgment of the three
justices of the peace so that he could buy them at the proposed sale, and
Ficklin and Charles Constable, afterward a circuit judge of this circuit,
appeared for the negroes. The judgment was in favor of the negroes and
they were discharged.
“The above is a much abbreviated account of this occurrence, stripped of
its local coloring, giving however its salient points, and I have no doubt
of its substantial accuracy.”
3. Lincoln, II, 185.
4. Lincoln, II, 186.
5. Lamon, 347.
6. Lincoln, II, 232-233.
7. Lincoln, II, 190-262.
8. Lincoln, 274-277.
IX. THE LITERARY STATESMAN.
1. Herndon, 371-372.
2. Lincoln, II, 329-330.
3. Lincoln, III, 1-2.
4. Herndon, 405-408.
5. Lincoln. II, 279.
6. Lamon, 416.
X. THE DARK HORSE.
1. Lincoln, V, 127.
2. Tarbell, I, 335.
3. Lincoln, V, 127,138, 257-258.
4. Lincoln, V, 290-291. He never entirely shook off his erratic use of
negatives. See, also, Lamon, 424; Tarbell, I, 338.
5. Lincoln, V, 293-32&6. McClure, 23-29; Field, 126,137-138; Tarbell,
I, 342-357.
XII. THE CRISIS
1. Letters, 172.
2. Lincoln, VI, 77, 78, 79, 93.
3. Bancroft, 11,10; Letters, 111.
XIII. ECLIPSE.
1. Bancroft, II, 10; Letters, 172.
2. Bancroft, II, 9-10.
3. Herndon, 484.
4. McClure, 140-145; Lincoln, VI, 91, 97.
5. Recollections, 111.
6. Recollections, 121.
7. Recollections, 112-113; Tarbell, I, 404-415.
8. Tarbell, 1, 406.
9. Tarbell, I, 406.
10. Lincoln, VI, 91.
11. Tarbell, 1, 406.
12. Herndon, 483-484
13. Lamon, 505; see also, Herndon, 485.
14. Lincoln, VI, 110.
XIV. THE STRANGE NEW MAN.
1. Lincoln, VI, 130.
2. Merriam, I, 318.
3. Public Man, 140.
4. Van Santvoord.
5. N. and H., I, 36; McClure, 179.
6. Herndon, 492.
7. Recollections, 39-41.
8. Lincoln, VI, 162-164.
9. Bancroft, II, 38-45.
10. Public Man, 383.
11. Chittenden, 89-90.
12. Public Man, 387.
XV. PRESIDENT AND PREMIER.
1. Hay MS, I, 64.
2. Tyler, II, 565-566.
3. Bradford, 208; Seward, IV, 416.
4. Nicolay, 213.
5. Chase offered to procure a commission for Henry Villard, “by way of
compliment to the Cincinnati Commercial” Villard, 1,177.
6. N. and H., III, 333, note 12.
7. Outbreak, 52.
8. Hay MS, I, 91; Tyler, II, 633; Coleman, 1, 338.
9. Hay MS, I, 91; Riddle, 5; Public Man, 487.
10. Correspondence, 548-549.
11. See Miss Schrugham’s monograph for much important data with regard to
this moment. Valuable as her contribution is, I can not feel that the
conclusions invalidate the assumption of the text.
12. Lincoln, VI, 192-220.
13. Sherman, I, 195-1%.
14. Lincoln, VI, 175-176.
15. 127 0. R., 161.
16. Munford, 274; Journal of the Virginia Convention, 1861.
17. Lincoln, VI, 227-230.
18. N. R., first series, IV, 227.
19. Hay MS, I, 143.
20. The great authority of Mr. Frederick Bancroft is still on the side of
the older interpretation of Seward’s Thoughts, Bancroft, II, Chap. XXIX.
It must be remembered that following the war there was a reaction against
Seward. When Nicolay and Hay published the Thoughts they appeared to give
him the coup de grace. Of late years it has almost been the fashion to
treat him contemptuously. Even Mr. Bancroft has been very cautious in his
defense. This is not the place to discuss his genius or his political
morals. But on one thing I insist, Whatever else he was-unscrupulous or
what you will-he was not a fool. However reckless, at times, his
spread-eagleism there was shrewdness behind it. The idea that he proposed
a ridiculous foreign policy at a moment when all his other actions reveal
coolness and calculation; the idea that he proposed it merely as a
spectacular stroke in party management; this is too much to believe. A
motive must be found better than mere chicanery.
Furthermore, if there was one fixed purpose in Seward, during March and
early April, it was to avoid a domestic conflict; and the only way he
could see to accomplish that was to side-track Montgomery’s expansive
all-Southern policy. Is it not fair, with so astute a politician as
Seward, to demand in explanation of any of his moves ‘he uncovering of
some definite political force he was playing up to? The old interpretation
of the Thoughts offers no force to which they form a response. Especially
it is impossible to find in them any scheme to get around Montgomery. But
the old view looked upon the Virginia compromise with blind eyes. That was
no part of the mental prospect. In accounting for Seward’s purposes it did
not exist. But the moment one’s eyes are opened to its significance,
especially to the menace it had for the Montgomery program, is not the
entire scene transformed? Is not, under these new conditions, the purpose
intimated in the text, the purpose to open a new field of exploitation to
the Southern expansionists in order to reconcile them to the Virginia
scheme, is not this at least plausible? And it escapes making Seward a
fool.
21. Lincoln, VI, 23~237.
22. Welles, 1,17.
23. There is still lacking a complete unriddling of the three-cornered
game of diplomacy played in America in March and April, 1861. Of the three
participants Richmond is the most fully revealed. It was playing
desperately for a compromise, any sort of compromise, that would save the
one principle of state sovereignty. For that, slavery would be sacrificed,
or at least allowed to be put in jeopardy. Munford, Virginia’s Attitude
toward Slavery and Secession; Tyler, Letters and Times of the Tylers;
Journal of the Virginia Convention of 1861. However, practically no
Virginian would put himself in the position of forcing any Southern State
to abandon slavery against its will. Hence the Virginia compromise dealt
only with the expansion of slavery, would go no further than to give the
North a veto on that expansion. And its compensating requirement plainly
would be a virtual demand for the acknowledgment of state sovereignty.
Precisely what passed between Richmond and Washington is still something
of a mystery. John Hay quotes Lincoln as saying that he twice offered to
evacuate Sumter, once before and once after his inauguration, if the
Virginians “would break up their convention without any row or nonsense.”
Hay MS, I, 91; Thayer, I, 118-119. From other sources we have knowledge of
at least two conferences subsequent to the inauguration and probably
three. One of the conferences mentioned by Lincoln seems pretty well
identified. Coleman II, 337-338. It was informal and may be set aside as
having little if any historic significance. When and to whom Lincoln’s
second offer was made is not fully established. Riddle in his
Recollections says that he was present at an informal interview “with
loyal delegates of the Virginia State Convention,” who were wholly
satisfied with Lincoln’s position. Riddle, 25. Possibly, this was the
second conference mentioned by Lincoln. It has scarcely a feature in
common with the conference of April 4, which has become the subject of
acrimonious debate. N. and H., III, 422-428; Boutwell, II, 62-67;
Bancroft, II, 102-104; Munford, 270; Southern Historical Papers, 1, 449;
Botts, 195- 201; Crawford, 311; Report of the Joint Committee on
Reconstruction, first session, Thirty-Ninth Congress; Atlantic, April,
1875. The date of this conference is variously given as the fourth, fifth
and sixth of April. Curiously enough Nicolay and Hay seem to have only an
external knowledge of It; their account is made up from documents and
lacks entirely the authoritative note. They do not refer to the passage in
the Hay MS, already quoted.
There are three versions of the interview between Lincoln and Baldwin. One
was given by Baldwin himself before the Committee on Reconstruction some
five years after; one comprises the recollections of Colonel Dabney, to
whom Baldwin narrated the incident in the latter part of the war; a third
is in the recollections of John Minor Botts of a conversation with Lincoln
April 7, 1862. No two of the versions entirely agree. Baldwin insists that
Lincoln made no offer of any sort; while’ Botts in his testimony before
the Committee on Reconstruction says that Lincoln told him that he had
told Baldwin that he was so anxious “for the preservation of the peace of
this country and to save Virginia and the other Border States from going
out that (he would) take the responsibility of evacuating Fort Sumter, and
take the chances of negotiating with the Cotton States.” Baldwin’s
language before the committee is a little curious and has been thought
disingenuous. Boutwell, I, 66. However, practically no one in this
connection has considered the passage in the Hay MS or the statement in
Riddle. Putting these together and remembering the general situation of
the first week of April there arises a very plausible argument for
accepting the main fact in Baldwin’s version of his conference and
concluding that Botts either misunderstood Lincoln (as Baldwin says he
did) or got the matter twisted in memory. A further bit of plausibility is
the guess that Lincoln talked with Botts not only of the interview with
Baldwin but also of the earlier interview mentioned by Riddle and that the
two became confused in recollection.
To venture on an assumption harmonizing these confusions. When Lincoln
came to Washington, being still in his delusion that slavery was the issue
and therefore that the crisis was “artificial,” he was willing to make
almost any concession, and freely offered to evacuate Sumter if thereby he
could induce Virginia to drop the subject of secession. Even later, when
he was beginning to appreciate the real significance of the moment, he was
still willing to evacuate Sumter if the issue would not be pushed further
in the Border States, that is, if Virginia would not demand a definite
concession of the right of secession. Up to this point I can not think
that he had taken seriously Seward’s proposed convention of the States and
the general discussion of permanent Federal relations that would be bound
to ensue. But now he makes his fateful discovery that the issue is not
slavery but sovereignty. He sees that Virginia is in dead earnest on this
issue and that a general convention will necessarily involve a final
discussion of sovereignty in the United States and that the price of the
Virginia Amendment will be the concession of the right of secession. On
this assumption it is hardly conceivable that he offered to evacuate
Sumter as late as the fourth of April. The significance therefore of the
Baldwin interview would consist in finally convincing Lincoln that he
could not effect any compromise without conceding the principle of state
sovereignty. As this was the one thing he was resolved never to concede
there was nothing left him but to consider what course would most
strategically renounce compromise. Therefore, when it was known at
Washington a day or two later that Port Pickens was in imminent danger of
being taken by the Confederates (see note 24), Lincoln instantly
concentrated all his energies on the relief of Sumter. All along he had
believed that one of the forts must be held for the purpose of “a clear
indication of policy,” even if the other should be given up “as a military
necessity.” Lincoln, VI, 301. His purpose, therefore, in deciding on the
ostentatious demonstration toward Sumter was to give notice to the whole
country that he made no concessions on the matter of sovereignty. In a way
it was his answer to the Virginia compromise.
At last the Union party in Virginia sent a delegation to confer with
Lincoln. It did not arrive until Sumter had been fired upon. Lincoln read
to them a prepared statement of policy which announced his resolution to
make war, if necessary, to assert the national sovereignty. Lincoln, VI,
243-245.
The part of Montgomery in this tangled episode is least understood of the
three. With Washington Montgomery had no official communication. Both
Lincoln and Seward refused to recognize commissioners of the Confederate
government Whether Seward as an individual went behind the back of himself
as an official and personally deceived the commissioners is a problem of
his personal biography and his private morals that has no place in this
discussion. Between Montgomery and Richmond there was intimate and cordial
communication from the start. At first Montgomery appears to have taken
for granted that the Secessionist party at Richmond was so powerful that
there was little need for the new government to do anything but wait But a
surprise was in store for it During February and March its agents reported
a wide-spread desire in the South to compromise on pretty nearly any terms
that would not surrender the central Southern idea of state sovereignty.
Thus an illusion of that day—as of this—was exploded, namely
the irresistibility of economic solidarity. Sentimental and constitutional
forces were proving more powerful than economics. Thereupon Montgomery’s
problem was transformed. Its purpose was to build a Southern nation and it
had believed hitherto that economic forces had put into its hands the
necessary tools. Now it must throw them aside and get possession of
others. It must evoke those sentimental and constitutional forces that so
many rash statesmen have always considered negligible. Consequently, for
the South no less than for the North, the issue was speedily shifted from
slavery to sovereignty. Just how this was brought about we do not yet
know. Whether altogether through foresight and statesmanlike deliberation,
or in part at least through what might almost be called accidental
influences, is still a little uncertain. The question narrows itself to
this: why was Sumter fired upon precisely when it was? There are at least
three possible answers.
(1) That the firing was dictated purely by military necessity. A belief
that Lincoln intended to reinforce as well as to supply Sumter, that if
not taken now it could never be taken, may have been the over-mastering
idea in the Confederate Cabinet. The reports of the Commissioners at
Washington were tinged throughout by the belief that Seward and Lincoln
were both double-dealers. Beauregard, in command at Charleston, reported
that pilots had come in from the sea and told him of Federal war-ships
sighted off the Carolina coast. O. R. 297, 300, 301, 304, 305.
(2) A political motive which to-day is not so generally intelligible as
once it was, had great weight in 1861. This was the sense of honor in
politics. Those historians who brush it aside as a figment lack historical
psychology. It is possible that both Governor Pickens and the Confederate
Cabinet were animated first of all by the belief that the honor of South
Carolina required them to withstand the attempt of what they held to be an
alien power.
(3) And yet, neither of these explanations, however much either or both
may have counted for in many minds, gives a convincing explanation of the
agitation of Toornbs in the Cabinet council which decided to fire upon
Sumter. Neither of these could well be matters of debate. Everybody had to
be either for or against, and that would be an end. The Toombs of that day
was a different man from the Toombs of three months earlier. Some radical
change had taken place in his thought What could it have been if it was
not the perception that the Virginia program had put the whole matter in a
new light, that the issue had indeed been changed from slavery to
sovereignty, and that to join battle on the latter issue was a far more
serious matter than to join battle on the former. And if Toombs reasoned
in this fearful way, it is easy to believe that the more buoyant natures
in that council may well have reasoned in precisely the opposite way.
Virginia had lifted the Southern cause to its highest plane. But there was
danger that the Virginia compromise might prevail. If that should happen
these enthusiasts for a separate Southern nationality might find all their
work undone at the eleventh hour. Virginians who shared Montgomery’s
enthusiasms had seen this before then. That was why Roger Pryor, for
example, had gone to Charleston as a volunteer missionary. In a speech to
a Charleston crowd he besought them, as a way of precipitating Virginia
into the lists, to strike blow. Charleston Mercury, April 11, 1861.
The only way to get any clue to these diplomatic tangles is by discarding
the old notion that there were but two political ideals clashing together
in America in 1861. There were three. The Virginians with their devotion
to the idea of a league of nations in this country were scarcely further
away from Lincoln and his conception of a Federal unit than they were from
those Southerners who from one cause or another were possessed with the
desire to create a separate Southern nation. The Virginia program was as
deadly to one as to the other of these two forces which with the upper
South made up the triangle of the day. The real event of March, 1861, was
the perception both by Washington and Montgomery that the Virginia program
spelled ruin for its own. By the middle of April it would be difficult to
say which had the better reason to desire the defeat of that program,
Washington or Montgomery.
24. Lincoln, VI, 240, 301, 302; N. R., first series, IV, 109, 235, 239;
Welles, I, 16, 22-23, 25; Bancroft, II, 127, 129-130,138,139, 144; N. and
H., III, Chap. XI, IV, Chap. I. Enemies of Lincoln have accused him of bad
faith with regard to the relief of Fort Pickens. The facts appear to be as
follows: In January, 1861, when Fort Pickens was in danger of being seized
by the forces of the State of Florida, Buchanan ordered a naval expedition
to proceed to its relief. Shortly afterward—January 2—Senator
Mallory on behalf of Florida persuaded him to order the relief expedition
not to land any troops so long as the Florida forces refrained from
attacking the fort. This understanding between Buchanan and Mallory is
some-times called “the Pickens truce,” sometimes “the Pickens Armistice.”
N. and H., III, Chap. XI; N. R., first series, 1, 74; Scott, II, 624-625.
The new Administration had no definite knowledge of it. Lincoln, VI, 302.
Lincoln despatched a messenger to the relief expedition, which was still
hovering off the Florida coast, and ordered its troops to be landed. The
commander replied that he felt bound by the previous orders which had been
issued in the name of the Secretary of the Navy while the new orders
issued from the Department of War; he added that relieving Pickens would
produce war and wished to be sure that such was the President’s intention;
he also informed Lincoln’s messenger of the terms of Buchanan’s agreement
with Mallory. The messenger returned to Washington for ampler
instructions. N. and H., IV, Chap. I; N. R., first series, I, 109-110,
110-111.
Two days before his arrival at Washington alarming news from Charleston
brought Lincoln very nearly, if not quite, to the point of issuing sailing
orders to the Sumter expedition. Lincoln, VI, 240. A day later, Welles
issued such orders. N. IL, first series, I, 235; Bancroft, II, 138-139. On
April sixth, the Pickens messenger returned to Washington. N. and H., IV,
7. Lincoln was now in full possession of all the facts. In his own words,
“To now reinforce Fort Pickens before a crisis would be reached at Fort
Sumter was impossible, rendered so by the exhaustion of provisions at the
latter named fort. . . . The strongest anticipated case for using it (the
Sumter expedition) was now presented, and it was resolved to send it
forward.” Lincoln, VI, 302. He also issued peremptory orders for the
Pickens expedition to land its force, which was done April twelfth. N. R.,
first series, I, 110-111, 115. How he reasoned upon the question of a
moral obligation devolving, or not devolving, upon himself as a
consequence of the Buchanan-Mallory agreement, he did not make public. The
fact of the agreement was published in the first message. But when
Congress demanded information on the subject, Lincoln transmitted to it a
report from Welles declining to submit the information on account of the
state of the country. 10. IL, 440-441.
25. Lincoln, VI, 241.
XVI. ON TO RICHMOND.
1. May MS, I, 23.
2. N. and H., IV, 152.
3. Hay MS, I, 45.
4. Hay MS, I, 46.
5. Hay MS, I, 5~56.
6. Sherman, I, 199.
7. Nicolay, 213.
8. N. and H., IV, 322-323, 360.
9. Bigelow, I, 360.
10. Nicolay, 229.
11. Lincoln, VI, 331-333.
12. Own Story, 55, 82.
XVII. DEFINING THE ISSUE.
1. Lincoln, VI, 297-325.
2. Lincoln, X, 199.
3. Lincoln, X, 202-203.
4. Lincoln, VI, 321.
5. Lincoln, VII, 56-57.
6. Bancroft, II, 121; Southern Historical Papers, I, 446.
7. Lincoln, VI, 304.
8. Hay MS, I, 65.
9. Lincoln, VI, 315.
10. 39 Globe, I, 222; N. and H., IV, 379.
XVIII. THE JACOBIN CLUB.
1. White, 171.
2. Riddle, 40-52.
3. Harris, 62.
4. Public Man, 139.
5. 37 Globe, III, 1334.
6. Chandler, 253.
7. White, 171.
8. Conway, II, 336.
9. Conway, II, 329.
10. Rhodes, III, 350.
11. Lincoln, VI, 351.
12. Hay MS, I, 93.
13. Hay MS, 1, 93.
14. Bigelow, I, 400.
15. Chandler, 256.
XIX. THE JACOBINS BECOME INQUISITORS.
1. Lincoln, VII, 28-60.
2. Nicolay, 321.
3. C. W. I 3 66
4. Julian, 201.
5. Chandler, 228.
6. 37 Globe, II, 189-191; Lincoln, VII, 151-152; O. R., 341-346; 114 0.
R., 786, 797; C. W., I, 5, 74, 79; Battles and Leaders, II, 132-134;
Blaine, I, 383-384, 392-393; Pearson, 1, 312-313; Chandler, 222; Porter.
7. Swinton, 79-85, quoting General McDowell’s memoranda of their
proceedings.
8 37 Globe, II, 15.
9 Riddle, 296; Wade, 316; Chandler, 187.
10. C. W., 1, 74.
11. 37 Globe, II, 1667.
12. 37 Globe, II, 1662-1668, 1732-1742.
13. Lincoln, VII, 151-152.
XX. IS CONGRESS THE PRESIDENT’S MASTER.
1. 37 Globe, II, 67.
2. Rhodes, III, 350.
3. 37 Globe, II, 3328.
4. 37 Globe, II, 2764.
5. 37 Globe, II, 2734.
6. 37 Globe II, 2972-2973.
7. 37 Globe, II, 440.
8. 37 Globe, II, 1136-1139.
9. Quoting 7 Howard, 43-46.
XXI. THE STRUGGLE TO CONTROL THE ARMY.
1. N. and H., IV, 444.
2. Own Story, 84.
3. Own Story, 85.
4. Gurowski, 123.
5. Hay MS, 1, 99; Thayer, 1,125.
6. N. and H., IV, 469.
7. Hay MS, I, 93.
8. 5 0. R., 41.
9. Swinton, 79-84; C. W., 1, 270.
10. C. W., I, 270, 360, 387; Hay MS, II, 101.
11. Gorham, I, 347-348; Kelly, 34.
12. Chandler, 228; Julian, 205.
13. Hay MS, I, 101; 5 0. R., 1~
14. 5 0. R., 50.
15. 5 0. R., 54-55; Julian, 205.
16. Hay MS, I, 103.
17. Hitchcock, 439.
18. Hitchcock, 440. The italics are his.
19. 5 0. R., 58. 20. 5 0. R., 59. 21. 5 0. R, 63.
22. Own Story, 226; 5 0. R., 18.
23. C. W., I, 251-252. 24. C. W., 1, 251-253, 317-318.
25. 15 0. R., 220; Hitchcock, 439, note.
26. 14 0. R., 66. 27. 12 0. R., 61. 28. 17 0. R., 219.
29. Rhodes, IV, 19.
30. Nicolay, 306; McClure, 168.
31. 17 0. R., 435.
32. Julian, 218.
33. N. and H., V, 453.
34. Lincoln, VII, 266-267.
35. 37 Globe, II, 3386-3392.
XXII. LINCOLN EMERGES.
1. Alexander, III, 15-17.
2. 37 Globe, II, 1493.
3. Julian, 215; Conway, I, 344.
4. 37 Globe II, 2363.
5. Lincoln, VII, 171-172.
6. 37 Globe, II, 1138.
7. Lincoln, VII, 172-173.
8. Pierce, IV, 78; 37 Globe, II, 25%.
9. Schurz, I, 187.
10. London Times, May 9, 1862, quoted in American papers.
11. 128 0. R., 2-3.
12. Lincoln, VII, 270-274.
13. Carpenter, 2021.
14. Galaxy, XIV, 842-843.
15. Lincoln, VII, 270-277; 37 Globe, II, 3322-3324, 3333.
16. Julian, 220; 37 Globe, II, 3286-3287.
17. Lincoln, VII, 280-286.
XXIII. THE MYSTICAL STATESMAN.
1. Carpenter, 189.
2. Recollections, 161.
3. Recollections, 161-164; Carpenter, 119.
4. Carpenter, 116.
5. Carpenter, 90.
6. Chapman, 449-450.
7. Carpenter, 187.
8. Lincoln, VIII, 52-53.
9. Lincoln, VIII, 50-51.
XXIV. GAMBLING IN GENERALS.
1. Reminiscences, 434.
2. Recollections, 261.
3. Galaxy, 842.
4. Galaxy, 845.
5 Carpenter, 22.
6. O. R., 80-81. 7. C. W., I, 282.
8. Lincoln, VIII, 15.
9. Julian, 221.
10. Thayer, 1, 127.
11. Welles, 1,104; Nicolay, 313.
12. Thayer, 1,129.
13. Thayer, 1, 161.
14. Reminiscences, 334-335, 528; Tarbell, II, 118-120; Lincoln, VIII,
28-33.
15. Chase, 87-88.
16. Lincoln, VII, 40.
XXV. A WAR BEHIND THE SCENES.
1. Bigelow, I, 572.
2. 37 Globe, III, 6.
3. 37 Globe, III, 76.
4. Lincoln, VII, 57-60.
5. Lincoln, VII, 73.
6. Swinton, 231.
7. C. W., 1, 650.
8. Bancroft, II, 365; Welles, 1, ~198.
9. N. and H., VI, 265.
10. Welles, I, 205; Alexander, III, 185.
11. Welles, 1, 196-198.
12. Welles, 1, 201-202.
13. Welles, I, 200.
14. Lincoln, VII, 195-197.
XXVI. THE DICTATOR, THE MARPLOT, AND THE LITTLE MEN.
1. Harris, 64.
2. Gurowski, 312.
3. Sherman Letters, 167.
4. Julian, 223.
5. Recollections, 215; Barnes, 428; Reminiscences, XXXI, XXXI I, XXXVI II.
Nicolay and Hay allude to this story, but apparently doubt its
authenticity. They think that Weed “as is customary with elderly men
exaggerated the definiteness of the proposition.”
6. Jullan, 225.
7. Lincoln, VIII, 154.
8. Raymond, 704.
9. Recollections, 193-194.
10. Lincoln, VII I, 206207.
11. 37 Globe, III, 1068.
12. Riddle, 278.
13. Welles, I, 336.
14. Lincoln, VIII, 235-237.
15. Welles, I, 293.
16. Lincoln, VIII, 527.
17. Lincoln, IX, 3A.
18. Lincoln, VIII, 307-308.
19. Barnes, 428; Reminiscences, XXX, XXXIII-XXXVIII.
This story is told on the authority of Weed with much circumstantial
detail including the full text of a letter written by McClellan. The
letter was produced because McClellan had said that no negotiations took
place. Though the letter plainly alludes to negotiations of some sort, it
does not mention the specific offer attributed to Lincoln. Nicolay and Hay
are silent on the subject. See also note five, above.
20. Tribune, July 7, 1863.
21. Tribune, July 6, 1863.
22. Lincoln, IX, 17.
23. Lincoln, IX, 20-21.
XXVII. THE TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE.
1. Rhodes, III, 461; Motley’s Letters, II, 146.
2. Reminiscences, 470.
3. Hay, Century.?
4. Carpenter, 281-282.
5. Van Santvoord.
6. Hay, Century, 35.
7. Carpenter, 150.
8. Recollections, 97.
9. Recollections, 80.
10. Carpenter, 65.
11. Carpenter, 65-67.
12. Carpenter, 64.
13. Recollections, 267.
14. Carpenter, 64.
15. Recollections, 83-84.
16. Carpenter, 152.
17. Carpenter, 219.
18. Recollections, 103-105.
19. Lincoln, X, 274-275.
20. Recollections, 103.
21. Recollections, 95-96.
22. Hay, Century.
23. Rankin, 177-179.
24. Hay, Century, 35.
25. Carpenter.
26. Thayer, I, 198-190.
27. Thayer, I, 196-197.
28. Thayer, I, 199-200.
29. Carpenter, 104.
30. Lincoln, VIII, 112-115.
31. Lincoln, IX, 210.
XXVIII. APPARENT ASCENDENCY.
1. Lincoln, IX, 284.
2. Lincoln, IX, 219-221.
3. Lincoln, X, 38-39.
4. 38 Globe, I, 1408.
5. Bancroft, II, 429-430; Moore, VI, 497-498
6. Grant, II, 123.
7. Lincoln, X, 90-91.
XXIX. CATASTROPHE.
1. Nicolay, 440.
2. Carpenter, 130; Hay MS.
3. Nicolay, 440.
4. Lincoln, X, 25-26.
5. 37 Globe, II, 2674.
6. Nicolay, 352.
7. Lincoln, X, 49.
8. Lincoln, X, 5~54.
9. Rankin, 381-387; Hay, Century.
10. Carpenter, 217.
11. Carpenter, 81.
12. Carpenter, 218.
13. Hay, Century, 37.
14. Lincoln, X, 89.
15. Carpenter, 131.
16. Lincoln, X, 122-123.
17. Carpenter. 168-169.
18. Carpenter, 30-31.
19. Lincoln, X, 129.
XXX. THE PRESIDENT VERSUS THE VINDICTIVES.
1. Lincoln, X, 139-140.
2. Chittenden, 379.
3. Lincoln, X, 140-141.
4. Carpenter, 181-183.S. N. and H., X, 95-100.
5. Hay MS, I, 1617; N. and H., IX, 120121.
XXXI. A MENACING PAUSE.
1. Reminiscences, 398.
2. Globe, I, 3148.
3. Riddle, 254.
4. Greeley, II, 664-666.
5. N. and H., 186190.
6. Gilmore, 240.
7. Gilmore, Atlantic. & Gilmore, 243-244.
9. Hay MS, I, 7677; N. and H., 167-173; Carpenter, 301-302.
10. N. and H., IX, 338-339.
11. Carpenter, 223-225.
12. Carpenter, 282; also, N. and H., IX, 364.
13. N. and H., IX, 188.
14. N. and H., IX, 192.
15. N. and H., IX, 195.
16. N. and H IX, 212, note.
17. Lincoln, X, 164-166.
XXXII. THE AUGUST CONSPIRACY.
1. Julian, 247.
2. Times, August 1, 1864.
3. Herald, August 6, 1864.
4. Sun, June 30, 1889.
5. N. and H., IX, 250.
6. N. and H., IX, 218.
7. Times, August 18, 1864. & N. and H., IX, 197.
9. Herald, August 18, 1864.
10. Lincoln, X, 308.
11. N. and H., IX, 250.
12. Lincoln, X, 203-204.
13. N. and H., IX, 221.
14. Ibid.
15. Herald, August 26, 1864.
16. Tribune, August 27, 1864.
17. Times, August 26, 1864.
XXXIII. THE RALLY TO THE PRESIDENT.
1. Herald, August 24, 1864.
2. Times, August 26, 1864~
3. Pierce, IV, 197-198.
4. Pearson, 11,150-151.
5. Herald, August 23, 1864.
6. Pearson, II, 168.
7. Ibid. The terms offered Davis were not stated in the Atlantic article.
See Gilmore, 289-290.
8. Tribune, August 27′, 1864.
9. Sun, June 30, 1889.
10. Sun, June 30, 1889; Pearson, II, 160-161.
11. Pearson,, II, 164.
12. Pearson, II, 166.
13. Sun, June 30, 1889.
14. Tribune, August 30, 1864.
15. Pearson, II, 162.
16. Tribune, September 3, 1864.
17. Pearson, 11,165.
18. Sun, June 30, 1889.
19. Pearson, II, 167; Tribune, September 7, 1864.
20. Tribune, September 6, 1864.
21. Sun, June 30, 1889.
22. Tribune, September 9, 1864.
23. Tribune, September 7, 1864.
24. Tribune, September 12, 1864.
25. Tribune, September 22, 1864.
XXXIV. “FATHER ABRAHAM.”
1. N. and H., IX, 339.
2. Ibid.
3. Arnold, 390.
4. Chandler, 274-276.
5. The familiar version of the retirement of affair is contained in the
Life of Chandler issued by the Detroit Post and Tribune without an
author’s name. This book throughout is an apology for Chandler. In
substance its story of this episode is as follows: Chandler beheld with
aching heart the estrangement between Lincoln and Wade; he set to work to
bring them together; at a conference which he had with Wade, in Ohio, a
working understanding was effected; Chandler hurried to Washington; with
infinite pains he accomplished a party deal, the three elements of which
were Lincoln’s removal of Blair, Fremont’s resignation, and Wade’s
appearance in the Administration ranks. Whatever may be said of the
physical facts of this narrative, its mental facts, its tone and
atmosphere, are historical fiction. And I have to protest that the
significance of the episode has been greatly exaggerated. The series of
dates given in the text can not be reconciled with any theory which makes
the turn of the tide toward Lincoln at all dependent on a Blair-Fremont
deal. Speaking of the tradition that Chandler called upon Lincoln and made
a definite agreement with him looking toward the removal of Blair, Colonel
W. O. Stoddard writes me that his “opinion, or half memory, would be that
the tradition is a myth.” See also, Welles, II, 156-158.
6. Lincoln, X, 228-229.
7. Times, September 24, 1864.
8. Times, September 28, 1864.
9. N. and H., IX, 364.
10. Thayer, II, 214; Hay MS.
11. N. and H., IX, 377.
12. Thayer, II, 216; Hay MS, III, 29.
13. Lincoln, X, 261.
14. N. and H., IX, 378-379.
XXXV. THE MASTER OF THE MOMENT.
1. Lincoln, X, 283.
2. N. and H., IX, 392-394.
3. N. and H., IX, 210-211.
4. One of the traditions that has grown up around Lincoln makes the
passage of the Thirteenth Amendment a matter of threats. Two votes were
needed. It was discovered according to this simpleminded bit of art that
two members of the opposition had been guilty of illegal practices, the
precise nature of which is conveniently left vague. Lincoln, even in some
highly reputable biographies, sent for these secret criminals, told them
that the power of the President of the United States was very great, and
that he expected them to vote for the amendment. The authority for the
story appears to be a member of Congress, John B. Aley. Reminiscences,
585-586; Lord Charnwood, Abraham Lincoln, 335-336. To a great many minds
it has always seemed out of key. Fortunately, there is a rival version.
Shrewd, careful Riddle has a vastly different tale in which Lincoln does
not figure at all, in which three necessary votes were bought for the
amendment by Ashley. Riddle is so careful to make plain just what he can
vouch for and just what he has at second hand that his mere mode of
narration creates confidence. Riddle, 324-325. Parts of his version are to
be found in various places.
5. Nicolay, Cambridge, 601.
6. Lincoln, X, 38-39, and note; XI, 89.
7. 38 Globe, II, 903.
8. 38 Globe, II, 1127.
9. 38 Globe, 11,1129; Pierce, IV, 221-227.
10. Recollections, 249.
11. Nicolay, 503-504; Lincoln, XI, 43.
12. Lincoln, XI, 4446.
XXXVI. PREPARING A DIFFERENT WAR.
1. Grant, II, 459.
2. Tarbell, II, 229.
3. N. and H., IX, 457.
4. Pierce, IV, 236.
5. Lincoln, XI, 84-91.
XXXVII. FATE INTERPOSES.
1. Tarbell, II, 231-232.
2. Pierce, IV, 235.
3. Tarbell, II, 232.
4. Recollections, 116.
5. Nicolay, 531.
6. N. and H., X, 283-284.
7. Julian, 255.
8. Recollections, 249.
9. Recollections, 119.
10. Nicolay, 532.
11. Recollections, 119-120; Carpenter, 293; Nicolay, 532; Tarbell, II,
235.
12. Nicolay, 539.
13. Thayer, II, 219; Hay MS,
14. Riddle, 332.
15. Nicolay, 530.