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.