The Inauguration of Lincoln—I Quit Washington and Return to Tennessee—A
Run-a-bout with Forest—Through the Federal Lines and a Dangerous
Adventure—Good Luck at Memphis
I
It may have been Louis the Fifteenth, or it may have been Madame de
Pompadour, who said, “After me the deluge;” but whichever it was, very
much that thought was in Mr. Buchanan’s mind in 1861 as the time for
his exit from the White House approached. At the North there had been a
political ground-swell; at the South, secession, half accomplished by
the Gulf States, yawned in the Border States. Curiously enough, very
few believed that war was imminent.
As a reporter for the States I met Mr. Lincoln immediately on his
arrival in Washington. He came in unexpectedly ahead of the hour
announced, to escape, as was given out, a well-laid plan to assassinate
him as he passed through Baltimore. I did not believe at the time, and
I do not believe now, that there was any real ground for this
apprehension.
All through that winter there had been a deal of wild talk. One story
had it that Mr. Buchanan was to be kidnapped and made off with so that
Vice President Breckenridge might succeed and, acting as _de facto_
President, throw the country into confusion and revolution, defeating
the inauguration of Lincoln and the coming in of the Republicans. It
was a figment of drink and fancy. There was never any such scheme. If
there had been Breckenridge would not have consented to be party to it.
He was a man of unusual mental as well as personal dignity and both
temperamentally and intellectually a thorough conservative.
I had been engaged by Mr. L.A. Gobright, the agent of what became later
the Associated Press, to help with the report of the inauguration
ceremonies the 4th of March, 1861, and in the discharge of this duty I
kept as close to Mr. Lincoln as I could get, following after him from
the senate chamber to the east portico of the capitol and standing by
his side whilst he delivered his inaugural address.
Perhaps I shall not be deemed prolix if I dwell with some particularity
upon an occasion so historic. I had first encountered the newly elected
President the afternoon of the day in the early morning of which he had
arrived in Washington. It was a Saturday, I think. He came to the
capitol under the escort of Mr. Seward, and among the rest I was
presented to him. His appearance did not impress me as fantastically as
it had impressed some others. I was familiar with the Western type, and
whilst Mr. Lincoln was not an Adonis, even after prairie ideals, there
was about him a dignity that commanded respect.
I met him again the next Monday forenoon in his apartment at Willard’s
Hotel as he was preparing to start to his inauguration, and was struck
by his unaffected kindness, for I came with a matter requiring his
attention. This was, in point of fact, to get from him a copy of the
inauguration speech for the Associated Press. I turned it over to Ben
Perley Poore, who, like myself, was assisting Mr. Gobright. The
President that was about to be seemed entirely self-possessed; not a
sign of nervousness, and very obliging. As I have said, I accompanied
the cortège that passed from the senate chamber to the east portico.
When Mr. Lincoln removed his hat to face the vast throng in front and
below, I extended my hand to take it, but Judge Douglas, just behind
me, reached over my outstretched arm and received it, holding it during
the delivery of the address. I stood just near enough the speaker’s
elbow not to obstruct any gestures he might make, though he made but
few; and then I began to get a suspicion of the power of the man.
He delivered that inaugural address as if he had been delivering
inaugural addresses all his life. Firm, resonant, earnest, it announced
the coming of a man, of a leader of men; and in its tone and style the
gentlemen whom he had invited to become members of his political
family—each of whom thought himself a bigger man than his chief—might
have heard the voice and seen the hand of one born to rule. Whether
they did or not, they very soon ascertained the fact. From the hour
Abraham Lincoln crossed the threshold of the White House to the hour he
went thence to his death, there was not a moment when he did not
dominate the political and military situation and his official
subordinates. The idea that he was overtopped at any time by anybody is
contradicted by all that actually happened.
I was a young Democrat and of course not in sympathy with Mr. Lincoln
or his opinions. Judge Douglas, however, had taken the edge off my
hostility. He had said to me upon his return in triumph to Washington
after the famous Illinois campaign of 1868: “Lincoln is a good man; in
fact, a great man, and by far the ablest debater I have ever met,” and
now the newcomer began to verify this opinion both in his private
conversation and in his public attitude.