A Suspected Conspiracy--Lincoln’s Departure for Washington--His
Speeches at Springfield and on the road to the National
Capital--Breaking out of the Rebellion--Treachery of
President Buchanan--Treason in the Cabinet--Jefferson Davis’s
Message--Threats of Massacre and Ruin to the North--Southern
Sympathisers--Lincoln’s Inaugural Address--The Cabinet--The
Days of Doubt and of Darkness.
It was unfortunate for Lincoln that he listened to the predictions of
his alarmed friends. So generally did the idea prevail that an effort
would be made to kill him on his way to Washington, that a few fellows
of the lower class in Baltimore, headed by a barber named Ferrandina,
thinking to gain a little notoriety--as they actually did get some
money from Southern sympathisers--gave out that they intended to
murder Mr. Lincoln on his journey to Washington. Immediately a number
of detectives was set to work; and as everybody seemed to wish to
find a plot, a plot was found, or imagined, and Lincoln was persuaded
to pass privately and disguised on a special train from Harrisburg,
Pennsylvania, to Washington, where he arrived February 23rd, 1861.
Before leaving Springfield, he addressed his friends at the moment of
parting, at the railway station, in a speech of impressive simplicity.
“FRIENDS,--No one who has never been placed in a
like position can understand my feelings at this hour, nor
the oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. For more than
a quarter of a century I have lived among you, and during
all that time I have received nothing but kindness at your
hands. Here I have lived from youth until now I am an old man;
here the most sacred ties of earth were assumed; here all
my children were born, and here one of them lies buried. To
you, dear friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am. All
the strange, chequered past seems now to crowd upon my mind.
To-day I leave you. I go to assume a task more difficult than
that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God who
assisted him shall be with me and aid me, I must fail; but if
the same omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed and
protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail--I
shall succeed. Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may
not forsake us now. To Him I commend you all. Permit me to ask
that with equal sincerity and faith you will invoke His wisdom
and guidance for me. With these few words I must leave you, for
how long I know not. Friends, one and all, I must now bid you
an affectionate farewell.”
It may be observed that in this speech Lincoln, notwithstanding his
conciliatory offers to the South, apprehended a terrible war, and that
when speaking from the heart he showed himself a religious man. If he
ever spoke in earnest it was on this occasion. One who had heard him a
hundred times declared that he never saw him so profoundly affected,
nor did he ever utter an address which seemed so full of simple and
touching eloquence as this. It left his audience deeply affected;
but the same people were more deeply moved at his return. “At eight
o’clock,” says Lamon, “the train rolled out of Springfield amid the
cheers of the populace. Four years later, a funeral train, covered with
the emblems of splendid mourning, rolled into the same city, bearing
a corpse, whose obsequies were being celebrated in every part of the
civilised world.”
Lincoln made several speeches at different places along his route
from Springfield to Philadelphia, and in all he freely discussed the
difficulties of the political crisis, expressing himself to the effect
that there was really no danger or no crisis, since he was resolved,
with all the Union-loving men of the North, to grant the South all
its rights. But these addresses were not all sugar and rose-water. At
Philadelphia he said--
“Now, in my view of the present aspect of affairs, there
need be no bloodshed or war. There is no necessity for it I
am not in favour of such a course; and I may say in advance,
that there will be no blood shed, unless it be forced upon
the Government, and then it will be compelled to act in
self-defence.”
Lincoln had declared that the duties which would devolve upon him
would be greater than those which had devolved upon any American since
Washington. During this journey, the wisdom, firmness, and ready tact
of his speeches already indicated that he would perform these duties
of statesmanship in a masterly manner. He was received courteously by
immense multitudes; but at this time so very little was known of him
beyond the fact that he was called Honest Old Abe the Rail-splitter,
and that he had sprung from that most illiterate source, a poor
Southern backwoods family, that even his political friends went to hear
him with misgivings or with shame. There was a general impression that
the Republican party had gained a victory by truckling to the mob, and
by elevating one of its roughest types to leadership. And the gaunt,
uncouth appearance of the President-elect fully confirmed this opinion.
But when he spoke, it was as if a spell had been removed; the disguise
of Odin fell away, and people knew the Great Man, called to struggle
with and conquer the rebellious giants--a hero coming with the right
strength at the right time.
It was at this time that the conspiracy, which had been preparing in
earnest for thirty years, and which the North for as many years refused
to suspect, had burst forth. South Carolina had declared that if
Lincoln was elected she would secede, and on the 17th December, 1860,
she did so, true to her word if not to her duty. In quick succession
six States followed her, “there being little or no struggle, in those
which lay upon the Gulf, against the wild tornado of excitement in
favour of rebellion.” “In the Border States,” says Arnold--“in
Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri--there
was, however, a terrible contest.” The Union ultimately triumphed in
Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, while the rebels carried Tennessee
with great difficulty. Virginia seceded on April 17th, 1861, and North
Carolina on the 20th of May. Everything had for years been made ready
for them. President Buchanan, who preceded Lincoln--a man of feeble
mind, and entirely devoted to the South--had either suffered the rebels
to do all in their power to facilitate secession, or had directly
aided them. The Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, who became a noted
rebel, had for months been at work to paralyse the Northern army. He
ordered 115,000 muskets to be made in Northern arsenals at the expense
of the Federal Government, and sent them all to the South, with vast
numbers of cannon, mortars, ammunition, and munitions of war. The army,
reduced to 16,000 men, was sent to remote parts of the country, and as
the great majority of its officers were Southern men, they of course
resigned their commissions, and went over to the Southern Confederacy.
Howell Cobb of Georgia, afterwards a rebel general, was Secretary of
the Treasury, and, as his contribution to the Southern cause, did his
utmost, and with great success, to cause ruin in his department, to
injure the national credit, and empty the treasury. In fact, the whole
Cabinet, with the supple President for a willing tool, were busy for
months in doing all in their power to utterly break up the Government,
to support which they had pledged their faith in God and their honour
as gentlemen. Linked with them in disgrace were all those who, after
uniting in holding an election for President, refused to abide by its
results. On the 20th Nov., 1860, the Attorney-General of the United
States, Jer. S. Black, gave, as his aid to treason, the official
opinion that “Congress had no right to carry on war against any State,
either to prevent a threatened violation of the Constitution, or to
enforce an acknowledgment that the Government of the United States was
supreme;” and to use the words of Raymond, “it soon became evident
that the President adopted this theory as the basis and guide of his
executive action.”
On the night of January 5th, 1861, the leading conspirators, Jefferson
Davis, with Senators Toombs, Iverson, Slidell, Benjamin, Wigfall, and
others, held a meeting, at which it was resolved that the South should
secede, but that all the seceding senators and representatives should
retain their seats as long as possible, in order to inflict injury to
the last on the Government which they had officially pledged themselves
to protect. At the suggestion probably of Mr. Benjamin, all who
retired were careful to draw not only their pay, but also to spoil the
Egyptians by taking all the stationery, documents, and “mileage,” or
allowance for travelling expenses, on which they could lay their hands.
Only two of all the Slave State representatives remained true--Mr.
Bouligny from New Orleans, and Andrew J. Hamilton from Texas. When
President Lincoln came to Washington, it was indeed to enter a house
divided against itself, tottering to its fall, its inner chambers a
mass of ruin.
The seven States which had seceded sent delegates, which met at
Montgomery, Alabama, February 4th, 1861, and organised a government
and constitution similar to that of the United States, under
which Jefferson Davis was President, and Alexander H. Stephens
Vice-President. No one had threatened the new Southern Government, and
at this stage the North would have suffered it to withdraw in peace
from the Union, so great was the dread of a civil war. But the South
did not want peace. Every Southern newspaper, every rebel orator, was
now furiously demanding of the North the most humiliating concessions,
and threatening bloodshed as the alternative. While President Lincoln,
in his Inaugural Address, spoke with the most Christian forbearance of
the South, Jefferson Davis, in his, assumed all the horrors of civil
war as a foregone conclusion. He said, that if they were permitted
to secede quietly, all would be well. If forced to fight, they could
and would maintain their position by the sword, and would avail
themselves to the utmost of the liberties of war. He expected that
the North would be the theatre of war, but no Northern city ever felt
the rebel sword, while there was not one in the South which did not
suffer terribly from the effects of war. Never in history was the awful
curse _Væ victis_ so freely invoked by those who were destined to be
conquered.
It was characteristic of Lincoln to illustrate his views on all
subjects by anecdotes, which were so aptly put as to present in a few
words the full force of his argument. Immediately after his election,
when the world was vexed with the rumours of war, he was asked what he
intended to do when he got to Washington? “That,” he replied, “puts me
in mind of a little story. There was once a clergyman, who expected
during the course of his next day’s riding to cross the Fox River, at
a time when the stream would be swollen by a spring freshet, making
the passage extremely dangerous. On being asked by anxious friends if
he was not afraid, and what he intended to do, the clergyman calmly
replied, ‘I have travelled this country a great deal, and I can assure
you that I have no intention of trying to cross Fox River _until I get
to it_.’” The dangers of the political river which Mr. Lincoln was to
cross were very great. It is usual in England to regard the struggle
of the North with the South during the Rebellion as that of a great
power with a lesser one, and sympathy was in consequence given to the
so-called weaker side. But the strictest truth shows that the Union
party, what with the Copperheads, or sympathisers with the South, at
home, and with open foes in the field, was never at any time much more
than equal to either branch of the enemy, and that, far from being the
strongest in numbers, it was as one to two. Those in its ranks who
secretly aided the enemy were numerous and powerful. The Union armies
were sometimes led by generals whose hearts were with the foe; and for
months after the war broke out, the entire telegraph service of the
Union was, owing to the treachery of officials, entirely at the service
of the Confederates.
It must be fairly admitted, and distinctly borne in mind, that the
South had at least good apparent reason for believing that the
North would yield to any demands, and was so corrupt that it would
crumble at a touch into numberless petty, warring States, while the
Confederacy, firm and united, would eventually master them all, and
rule the Continent. For years, leaders like President Buchanan had
been their most submissive tools; and the number of men in the North
who were willing to grant them everything very nearly equalled that
of the Republican party. From the beginning they were assured by the
press and leaders of the Democrats, or Copperheads, that they would
soon conquer, and receive material aid from Northern sympathisers. And
there were in all the Northern cities many of these, who were eagerly
awaiting a breaking-up of the Union, in order that they might profit
by its ruin. Thus, immediately after the secession of South Carolina,
Fernando Wood, Mayor of New York, issued a proclamation, in which he
recommended that it should secede, and become a “free city.” All over
the country, Democrats like Wood were looking forward to revolutions
in which something might be picked up, and not a few really spoke of
the revival of titles of nobility. All of these prospective governors
of lordly Baratarias avowed sympathy with the South. It was chiefly by
reliance on these Northern sympathisers that the Confederacy was led to
its ruin. President Lincoln found himself in command of a beleagured
fortress which had been systematically stripped and injured by his
predecessor, a powerful foe storming without, and nearly half his men
doing their utmost to aid the enemy from within.
On the 4th March, 1861, Lincoln took the oath to fulfil his duties as
President, and delivered his inaugural address. In this he began by
asserting that he had no intention of interfering with slavery as it
existed, or of interfering in any way with the rights of the South,
and urged that, by law, fugitive slaves must be restored to their
owners. In reference to the efforts being made to break up the Union,
he maintained that, by universal law and by the Constitution, the union
of the States must be perpetual. “It is safe to assert,” he declared,
“that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for
its own termination.” With great wisdom, and in the most temperate
language, he pointed out the impossibility of any _government_, in the
true sense of the word, being liable to dissolution because a party
wished it. One party to a contract may violate or break it, but it
requires all to lawfully rescind it.
“I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the
laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability, I
shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins
upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in
all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on
my part; and I shall perform it as far as practicable, unless
my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the
requisite means, or in some authoritative manner direct the
contrary.”
He asserted that the power confided to him would be used to hold and
possess all Government property and collect duties; but went so far
in conciliation as to declare, that wherever hostility to the United
States should be so great and universal as to prevent competent
resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there would be no
attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object.
Where the enforcement of such matters, though legally right, might be
irritating and nearly impracticable, he would deem it better to forego
for a time the uses of such offices. He pointed out that the principle
of secession was simply that of anarchy; that to admit the claim of a
minority would be to destroy any government; while he indicated with
great intelligence the precise limits of the functions of the Supreme
Court. And he briefly explained the impossibility of a divided Union
existing, save in a jarring and ruinous manner. “Physically speaking,”
he said, “we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections
from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband
and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence and beyond the
reach of each other, but the different parts of our country cannot
do this. They cannot but remain face to face; and intercourse either
amicable or hostile must continue between them. Why should there not
be,” he added, “a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the
people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world? In our present
differences, is either party without faith of being in the right? If
the Mighty Ruler of Nations, with His eternal truth and justice, be on
your side of the North, or on yours of the South, that truth and that
justice will surely prevail by the judgment of this great tribunal of
the American people.”
It has been well said that this address was the wisest utterance of the
time. Yet it was, with all its gentle and conciliatory feelings, at
once misrepresented through the South as a malignant and tyrannical
threat of war; for to such a pitch of irritability and arrogance had
the entire Southern party been raised, that any words from a Northern
ruler, not expressive of the utmost devotion to their interests, seemed
literally like insult. It was not enough to promise them to be bound by
law, when they held that the only law should be their own will.
To those who lived through the dark and dreadful days which preceded
the outburst of the war, every memory is like that of one who has
passed through the valley of the shadow of death. It was known that
the enemy was coming from abroad; yet there were few who could really
regard him as an enemy, for it was as when a brother advances to slay
a brother, and the victim, not believing in the threat, rises to throw
himself into the murderer’s arms. And vigorous defence was further
paralysed by the feeling that traitors were everywhere at work--in the
army, in the Cabinet, in the family circle.
President Lincoln proceeded at once to form his Cabinet. It consisted
of William H. Seward--who had been his most formidable competitor
at the Chicago Convention--who became Secretary of State; Simon
Cameron--whose appointment proved as discreditable to Mr. Lincoln as
to the country--as Secretary of War; Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of
the Treasury; Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy; Caleb B. Smith,
Secretary of the Interior; Montgomery Blair, Postmaster-General; and
Edward Bates, Attorney-General. It was well for the President that
these were all, except Cameron, wise and honest men, for the situation
of the country was one of doubt, danger, and disorganisation. In
Congress, in every drawing-room, there were people who boldly asserted
and believed in the words of a rebel, expressed to B. F. Butler--that
“the North could not fight; that the South had too many allies there.”
“You have friends,” said Butler, “in the North who will stand by you as
long as you fight your battles in the Union; but the moment you fire
on the flag, the Northern people will be a unit against you. And you
may be assured, if war comes, slavery _ends_.” Orators and editors in
the North proclaimed, in the boldest manner, that the Union must go to
fragments and ruin, and that the only hope of safety lay in suffering
the South to take the lead, and in humbly following her. The number of
these despairing people--or Croakers, as they were called--was very
great; they believed that Republicanism had proved itself a failure,
and that on slavery alone could a firm government be based. Open
treason was unpunished; it was boldly said that Southern armies would
soon be on Northern soil; the New Administration seemed to be without a
basis; in those days, no men except rebels seemed to know what to do.