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.