How still Lincoln became after his nomination for President in 1860!
A note of acceptance, just twenty-three lines long, and then unbroken
silence till the end of the campaign.
He had thundered throughout the country against the Christless creed
of slavery until men forgot his crude manners, preposterous figure and
shrill, piping voice in admiration and reverence of his noble qualities.
Now the crooked mouth was set hard. He retired to his modest home in
Springfield, Illinois. Nor could threats or persuasions induce him to
address a word to the public during that terrific campaign which was
the prelude to the horrors of civil war.
In the upward reachings of Lincoln’s life there was a singular
mysticism that sometimes startles one who contemplates the imperishable
grandeur of his place in history.
He saw omens in dreams; experimented with the ghostly world of
spiritualism; half-surrendered to madness, when his personal affections
were attacked; predicted a violent death for himself; dreamed of
his own assassination, and discussed the matter seriously; and gave
evidence many times of a strange, aberrant emotional exaltation,
alternated with brooding sadness or hilarious, uncontrollable merriment.
But behind these mere eccentricities were sanity, conscience, strength
and far-seeing penetrativeness.
In the midst of his heroic debate on slavery with Douglas in 1858,
while the whole nation watched the exciting struggle, he showed his
statesmanlike appreciation of the situation when he said: “I am after
larger game; the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this.”
And when he was nominated in the roaring Chicago Convention, where the
foremost politicians of the East actually shed tears over the defeat
of William H. Seward, he let his party do the shouting, promising,
denouncing and hurrahing, while he--wiser, cooler, abler than
all--stood squarely on his record and his party’s platform, without
apology, explanation or mitigation.
To his mind the issue was simple. It could not be misunderstood.
Slavery was immoral. It must be confined to the slave States, where it
had a constitutional sanction, but uncompromisingly kept out of the
free territories.
Yet the country rang with threats that the slave States would break
up the Union if Lincoln was elected. He had declared that the nation
could not endure half slave and half free. That, they insisted, was a
declaration of war against the slave States.
Lincoln drew the short gray shawl about his stooped shoulders, and his
face grew more sorrowful. But he said nothing.
Not many months before he had written a letter to a Jefferson birthday
festival in Boston, in which he flung the name of Jefferson against
the Democrats as Douglas hurled the heart of Bruce into the ranks of
the heathen:
“The Democracy of to-day holds the _liberty_ of one man to be
absolutely nothing when in conflict with another man’s right of
_property_.
Republicans, on the contrary, are for both the man and the dollar;
but in cases of conflict, the man _before_ the dollar.
I remember being once amused much at seeing two partially
intoxicated men engage in a fight with their great coats on, which
fight, after a long and rather harmless contest, ended in each
having fought himself out of his own coat and into that of the
other. If the two leading parties of this day are really identical
with the two in the days of Jefferson and Adams, they have
performed the same feat as the two drunken men....
The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free
society, and yet they are denied and evaded, with no small show
of success. One dashingly calls them ‘glittering generalities.’
Another bluntly calls them ‘self-evident lies.’ And others
insidiously argue that they apply to ‘superior races.’...
This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave
must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others
deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long
retain it. All honor to Jefferson--to the man who, in the concrete
pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single
people, had the coolness, forecast, and the capacity to introduce
into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable
to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there that to-day and
in all coming days it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to
the very harbingers of reappearing tyranny and oppression.
Your obedient servant,
A. LINCOLN.”
After that no man might claim that he had not bared his soul.
Editors, political leaders, personal friends, vainly attempted during
the Presidential campaign to draw from him some public expression of
opinion, some hint of what was going on in his mind while the national
horizon flamed with passion and threats of war were openly made by the
slaveholders.
But he knew that it would not pay to say a word that might complicate
a question so clear. The American people were sound at heart. If the
issue could be confined to the question of whether slavery was morally
right or wrong, the common people could be depended upon to vote
against spreading it to the free territories.
Lincoln’s confidence in the plain people grew with years. In spite
of his shrewd experience in politics he was free from cynicism.
There was a childlike simplicity in his character, a central purity
and earnestness, that enabled him to see under the broadcloth and
ruffles of the East the same elemental humanity he had known under the
deerhide, jeans and coonskins of the West.
Up to the hour of his death he gave no evidence of class consciousness.
The rich citizen was no better and no worse than the poor citizen.
The college professor was no better and no worse than the field
hand. At the bottom of each was the original man, with almost divine
possibilities of justice, love and compassion in him.
It was this supreme faith in the better natures of men, and their
ability to reach sound conclusions on simple moral issues, that
persuaded Lincoln to remain mute throughout the struggle.
How many political leaders are there in the United States to-day who
disclose their minds and hearts so unreservedly to the people that they
could dare to stand for office with closed lips, relying solely on
their record and on the general public intelligence?
Even in his career as a lawyer Lincoln made fun of himself. His
small fees were the jest of his companions. It is probable that he
did not earn an average of more than three thousand dollars a year,
notwithstanding his eloquence and logic. When he went to the White
House, all his possessions, including his residence, were worth only
about seven thousand dollars.
So he laughed at and made light of his personal appearance. The change
from deerhide breeches and coonskin cap to black cloth and a high silk
hat simply emphasized the clumsy enormity of his figure. His skin was
yellow and his face seamed and puckered. The gray eyes looked out of
hollow sockets. The high cheek-bones protruded sharply above sunken
cheeks. The mouth was awry and the neck long, lean and scraggy. His
immensely long arms swung loosely from stooped shoulders, his trousers
were always “hitched up too high,” and his ill-kept hat was set at a
grotesque tilt from his lugubrious countenance. His great height, the
lank, swinging slouchiness of his immense frame, his somber, saggy
clothing and sorrowful expression, added to unconventional manners,
made him a target for his political opponents.
“Old ape,” “ignorant baboon”--these were the favorite flings of the
Southern Democrats. He was pictured as a raw, coarse, brutal and
reckless “nigger lover,” filled with hatred of the slave States, eager
to rob them of their legitimate property, a half-horse-half-alligator,
unfit to enter a polite house or associate with gentlemen, and almost
insane with the murderous fanaticism of the New England abolitionists.
If Lincoln felt the sting of this cruel satire he gave no sign of it.
So humble was his nature that, after his election, he grew a beard at
the suggestion of a little girl, who wrote to say that it might make
him look better. He wrote this during the Presidential campaign:
“If any personal description of me is thought desirable, it may
be said, I am, in height, six feet, four inches, nearly; lean in
flesh, weighing on an average, one hundred and eighty pounds; dark
complexion, with coarse black hair and gray eyes--No other marks or
brands recollected. A. LINCOLN.”
He was silent in the face of pitiless abuse and carricature, yet he
sent many confidential letters, advising, encouraging, admonishing
the Republican leaders. While his supporters carried fence-rails in
processions and shouted hosannahs, he quietly directed matters from his
home.
And, although he would sometimes laugh with a pure humor that bubbled
up unconsciously from his blameless nature, as the strain of the
political campaign increased, the tragic sadness of his countenance
deepened, for his keen eyes began to see the awful significance of the
eminence to which he was to be lifted.
A year ago the rebellion of John Brown at Harper’s Ferry had
dramatically revealed the irreconcilable temperaments of North and
South. While Virginia enthusiastically hanged the man who tried to
create an armed negro revolution, the North tolled her bells, lowered
her flags to half-mast and glorified him as a holy martyr.
X
A month before the first vote for President was cast, Governor Gist, of
South Carolina, addressed a secret circular to the other slave State
governors saying, that if Lincoln were elected, which seemed almost
certain, South Carolina would secede from the Union. The whole South
was urged to join in this dismemberment of the republic.
The answers of the governors, even before the election had occurred,
showed that it was not the intention of the slave States to submit to
the rule of the majority, and that, already, armed resistance to the
national authority was acceptable as the alternative to “the yoke of a
black Republican President.”
If any secret voice of this germinating treason reached Lincoln at
Springfield he kept it to himself.
But when his victory was assured by a majority that made the combined
vote of his opponents seem insignificant, his continued silence in the
midst of general rejoicing and boasting showed that he understood the
gravity of the situation.
South Carolina withdrew from the Union, seizing custom houses, post
offices, arsenals and forts.
[Illustration:
Smith
Stanton Chase President Lincoln Welles Seward Blair Bates
Carpenter’s picture, painted under the personal supervision of Lincoln,
represents the moment when the President told his cabinet that he would
issue the Proclamation of Emancipation in fulfilment of a personal vow
to God.]
President Buchanan, old, weak and cowardly, promised to use no
force against the rebels, but to leave everything to Congress. His
Secretary of War, Mr. Floyd, of Virginia, was a traitor, secretly
helping the slave States to arm against the general government. His
Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Cobb, of Georgia, also conspired with
the disunionists, and finally resigned to take part in the rebellion.
His Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Thompson, of Mississippi, actually
acted as a rebel commissioner to spread the doctrine of secession while
he was still in the Cabinet. The Assistant Secretary of State, Mr.
Trescott, was another member of the great plot.
Within two months, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana
and Texas had followed South Carolina out of the Union. Forts,
arsenals, post offices and custom houses were captured, the Stars and
Stripes lowered, and the rebel flag hoisted.
Before Lincoln could be inaugurated, the seceded States had organized a
Confederate government, with Jefferson Davis for President.
With treason in his Cabinet, and armed rebellion openly preached in
Congress, the bewildered, rabbit-hearted Buchanan did nothing to defend
the national sovereignty. He was no traitor--simply a poltroon, without
character, convictions or courage enough to assert the plain powers of
his office, and willing to shelter his cringing soul and dishonored
responsibilities behind a paramount authority which he pretended to
find in Congress.
Imagine Lincoln, sitting in far-away Springfield, helpless to act,
while Buchanan permitted a foreign government to be set up within the
United States, and promised to use no force against the rebels lest war
might follow.
Think of the newly-chosen leader of the American people compelled to
silence and impotence while the President refused to send relief to
loyal Major Anderson and his handful of soldiers besieged in Fort
Sumter by rebels whose arms had been furnished by the government they
sought to destroy!
The lines in Lincoln’s face deepened. His eyes grew more sorrowful.
The stooping shoulders stooped still lower. There was that in his look
sometimes that compelled mingled awe and pity.
For Lincoln loved his country with the love that a father has for his
child, and the pent-up agony that showed in his lean visage as he
watched the attempt to break up the great republic might not yet find
utterance.
It was useless for him to repeat that he did not hate the South; that
he did not favor the political and social equality of negroes and
whites; that he was not an abolitionist; that, although he considered
slavery wrong and would oppose its extension to Kansas and all other
free soil of the United States, he would do nothing to interfere with
it in the States where it had Constitutional rights.
Yet he waited patiently and silently, believing that he could persuade
the South that he was not an enemy, and in that time of slow anguish
his soul turned to God for help.
The careless, foot-free, waggish woodchopper of New Salem had scoffed
at religion, and written a bitter attack on the Bible, which a wiser
friend had snatched from his hands and burned. The President-elect with
the cares of a mighty nation in its death throes descending upon his
shoulders, stretched his hands child-like to a power greater even than
the “omnipotent and sovereign people.”
[Illustration: Fac-simile of Lincoln’s letter of acceptance]
Mr. Herndon, his law partner, has given us an unforgetable picture of
Lincoln a day before his departure for the White House:
“He crossed to the opposite side of the room and threw himself down on
the old office sofa, which, after many years of service, had been moved
against the wall for support. He lay for some moments, his face towards
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 in 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 should remain. ‘Let it
hang there,’ 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 he passed through the door into the narrow
hallway.”
On the day Lincoln left Springfield to take the oath of office at
Washington he stood in a cold rain on the rear end of the train that
was to take him away, and addressed a bareheaded crowd. His face worked
with emotion. His lips trembled and his voice shook. His eyes sought
the faces of his old neighbors with a new sadness.
“To-day I leave you,” he said, bending his tall, ugly figure, as if
in benediction. “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.”
Strong men in the crowd wept.
“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.”
The long arms and bony hands were extended. The crooked mouth quivered,
the gray eyes were moist, and the tall figure seemed to grow taller.
“Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now.”
With that prayer on his lips Lincoln went on his way to Washington
through many a cheering multitude that uncovered as the train passed.
He made speeches at Indianapolis, Columbus, Steubenville, Pittsburg,
Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany and New York. He begged the American
people to be patient. No blood would be shed unless the government
was compelled to act in self-defense. There would be no “coercion”
or “invasion” of the South, but the United States would retake its
own forts and other property and collect duties on importations. In
Cincinnati Lincoln spoke to the South, which was reviling him and
defying the national authority, in terms that prove how eager he was to
avert armed conflict:
“We mean to leave you alone, and in no way interfere with your
institutions; to abide by all and every compromise of the Constitution;
and, in a word, coming back to the original proposition, to treat you,
so far as degenerate men--if we have degenerated--may, according to the
examples of those noble fathers, Washington, Jefferson and Madison.
We mean to remember that you are as good as we are; that there is no
difference between us other than the difference of circumstances. We
mean to recognize and bear in mind always that you have as good hearts
in your bosoms as other people, or as we claim to have, and to treat
you accordingly.”
It took a great soul in a man of Lincoln’s heroic origin, direct
methods, intense patriotism and deep hatred of slavery to speak in such
terms to rebellion.
The time came when he hurled a million armed men against the insurgent
South, when with a stroke of his pen he set free four millions of
slaves, representing a property value of about two and a half billion
dollars; and when, with fire and sword and the expenditure of hundreds
of thousands of lives and billions on billions of treasure, he proved
to the world that democratic institutions were strong enough to resist
the mightiest shocks of civil war.
But as he moved on to the scene of his great ordeal in Washington,
there was nothing but temperate reason, kindness and peace on his lips.
It must not be forgotten that the tall, gawky, sad-faced lawyer in
ill-fitting funereal black, was no limp-limbed product of sedentary
sentimentalism, but a man with muscles of steel, who had thrashed and
cowed the most dreaded desperadoes of the frontier, a self-made son
of the wilderness, who had battled against floods, famines and wild
beasts; and who had in him the stout heart and steady will of the
cabin-born and forest-bred. Lincoln was incapable of fear, save the
fear of folly or injustice. He was not afraid even of ridicule, that
poisoned weapon before which so many strong men tremble.
As the nation prepared to honor the hundredth anniversary of his birth,
well might it remember him, newly separated from his provincial and
rude, but heroic West, advancing between the haggard passions of a
divided country with firm, brotherly hands held out to the whole people.
In Philadelphia he was told by Allan Pinkerton, the detective, that
there was a conspiracy to murder him when he reached Baltimore. Unless
he agreed to make the rest of the journey secretly he could not reach
Washington alive. He was urged not to expose himself again in public,
but to go right on to his destination at once.
With this knowledge of his peril, he assisted in the raising of a new
flag over Independence Hall that day, and delivered a noble address,
in which he recalled the sentiment in the Declaration of Independence
“which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from
the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.”
“Now, my friends,” he cried, his shrill voice ringing to the outer edge
of the excited multitude, “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.... But if this country cannot be saved without
giving up that principle, I was about to say that I would rather be
assassinated on this spot.... I have said nothing but what I am willing
to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by.”
[Illustration: Mrs. Abraham Lincoln]
With assassins waiting in Baltimore to save the cause of slavery and
disunion by striking down the President-elect, Lincoln, by a secret
change of plan, managed to reach Washington in safety.