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)
"Like some strong seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance,
With a glassy countenance,"
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:
"Where God speaks to Jones, in the very same tones,
That he uses to Hadley and Dwight."
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."*