which in effect was only another name for the right of secession, was
the reason advanced to justify the rebellion which broke out with such
fury in later years; but the demand for the right to introduce slavery
into new territory was, in my opinion, the impelling reason that
finally made the Civil War inevitable.
In the free States the division of the popular vote was chiefly
between Lincoln and Douglas, while the slave States were largely
for Breckenridge, with a minority for Bell, the “Silver-gray Whig”
candidate.
The totals in the two sections are interesting as matters of record:
LINCOLN DOUGLAS BRECKENRIDGE BELL
Free States 1,831,180 1,128,049 279,211 130,151
Slave States 26,430 163,574 570,871 515,973
--------- --------- ------------ -------
Total 1,857,610 1,291,623 850,082 646,124
Mr. Lincoln had 180 electoral votes to 123 for all the other
candidates. Every free State, with the exception of New Jersey, went
for him, and even New Jersey gave him four votes, the three remaining
going to the “Little Giant.” Breckenridge, with a much smaller popular
vote than Douglas, had 72 electoral votes, while Douglas, with a larger
popular vote, had only 12 in all.
As Mr. Greeley accurately summed it up: “A united North succeeded over
a divided South; while in 1856 a united South triumphed over a divided
North.”
Let us remember that a majority of the members of the Supreme Court
had shown strong Southern proclivities; the Senate was also largely
anti-Republican, and the House of Representatives had a very mixed
political complexion, owing to the fact that many of its members had
been chosen in the October election preceding the Presidential election.
Such was the national situation after the popular verdict had been
declared in favor of Lincoln and Hamlin. The South could not reconcile
itself to the result. Trouble was in the air, but the North did not yet
realize the inevitability of civil war.
It was a long, anxious winter for the President-elect, and the strain
upon him then was even more noticeable than after he assumed the burden
of his great office.
He delivered his pathetic farewell address to his neighbors and friends
in Springfield on February 11, 1861, and the following extract is
entitled to a place in this record:
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 here one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when or whether
I ever 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 cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot
fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and yet 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.
Many of Mr. Lincoln’s neighbors were in tears. I was not at Springfield
on that day, but I heard directly from men who were present that the
pain of separation was keenly felt by all classes of society.
Mr. Lincoln left Springfield not to return.
V
THE JOURNEY TO THE CAPITAL
The trip from Springfield to Washington was one of continuous
enthusiasm, the President-elect receiving an ovation at every city en
route. The first halt was made at Indianapolis, where he addressed a
meeting, at which the famous War-Governor Morton presided. On this
occasion he declared that “the preservation of the Union rests entirely
with the people.”
On the same day he spoke before a joint meeting of the Indiana
Legislature, choosing for his theme: “The Union, is it a marriage bond
or a free-love arrangement?”
When about to cross the Ohio River into Virginia, a slave State, he
gave it as his opinion that devotion to the Constitution was equally
great on both sides of the stream, and he went on to emphasize the
right of the majority to rule.
Arriving at Cleveland, he made an address in which he referred to the
apprehended trouble as “altogether artificial, due only to differences
in political opinion.” “Nothing,” he declared, “is going to hurt the
South; they are citizens of this common country and we have no power to
change their conditions. What, then, is the matter with them? Why all
these complaints? Doesn’t this show how artificial is the crisis? It
has no foundation in fact. It can’t be argued up and it can’t be argued
down. Let it alone, and it will go down of itself.”
This would seem to show that Mr. Lincoln really believed that the
trouble in the South would blow over. How sadly he was mistaken! It was
not until he arrived in the East and learned from trustworthy sources
of the danger confronting him between New York and Washington that he
accepted the situation as it actually existed.
Buffalo was the next stopping-place, and the mayor and a large
assemblage welcomed the President-elect. The stability of the Union was
the speaker’s theme, but he reiterated that he relied more upon divine
assistance than help from human hands and hearts.
At Albany Governor Morgan presided over a public meeting, at which
Lincoln again declared that he would be “President not of a party,
but of a nation.” Later in the day he delivered another address, in
which he said that “the mightiest of tasks confronted the humblest of
Presidents.”
He remained two days in New York City, where he delivered two
addresses. To a large audience, over which the unsympathetic Democratic
mayor, Fernando Wood, presided, Mr. Lincoln expressed his doubts as to
the situation in quaint language. He likened the Union to a ship and
its traditions to the cargo, saying that he was willing and anxious to
save both the ship and cargo, but if not both, the cargo would have to
go overboard for the safety of the ship.
I heard that address and it gave me the impression that Mr. Lincoln had
become bolder in the expression of his feeling against the continuance
of slavery in the South. To-day it recalls itself to me as being the
first gleam of emancipation.
The speaker was more grave and serious than usual; his voice was harsh
and his manner indicated either fatigue or anxiety regarding the
future. I detected a decided change in Mr. Lincoln since seeing him at
Springfield; he was a man carrying a burden that grew heavier day by
day.
The journey toward Washington was resumed on February 21, a halt being
made at Trenton for the President-elect to address, separately, the
Senate and the Assembly of New Jersey.
Later in the afternoon the train reached Philadelphia, where a
reception presided over by the mayor was tendered to him. In
consequence of reports of danger he was practically smuggled away from
Philadelphia, being hurried in a closed carriage to the old Prince
Street station, on South Broad Street, where an engine and one car
was waiting. This was run through to Baltimore and thence over the
Baltimore and Ohio branch to Washington.
A large number of citizens in Baltimore, not confined by any means
to the mob, were bitterly hostile to “the Yankee President,” as they
derisively described the man from Illinois. That the precautions
taken were justified was proven within two months by the murderous
assault upon the Sixth Massachusetts regiment during its march through
Baltimore.
A little over four years later, when Lincoln’s funeral cortège passed
through Baltimore, a complete change of feeling had taken place. In the
selfsame city which had been considered unsafe for President Lincoln to
pass through, the first great demonstration of grief occurred.
The President-elect arrived in Washington on February 27, and although
no outward evidence of the coming storm was observable, there was an
intense feeling of anxiety among all classes at the national capital;
it must be remembered that most of the office-holders were Southerners
and that the city was filled with residents sympathetic with the
South. In a reply to a serenade at his hotel on the evening of February
28, Mr. Lincoln lamented the misunderstanding that existed between the
people of the North and the South, and reiterated his determination to
enforce equal rights under the Constitution to all citizens. He pledged
an impartial administration of the law.
I was present at the delivery of Lincoln’s inaugural address, a
wonderful piece of English composition which will continue to live when
the monuments of bronze and marble erected to his memory have crumbled
to dust. In it occur these unforgetable words:
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the
right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish
the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him
who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphan--to
do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among
ourselves, and with all nations.
The President impressed me as being very serious in manner. His voice
sounded shrill, but he was talking at high pitch in order that he might
be heard by as many as possible of the immense crowd. The assemblage
was orderly, respectful, and attentive. Little by little his auditors
warmed toward him, until finally the applause became overwhelming,
spontaneous, and enthusiastic. Then, for the first time, it dawned
upon me that Lincoln was not only the strong man needed at this crisis
of our national affairs, but one of the few great men of all time; and
I may say safely that this conviction was shared by all within hearing
of his voice.
Thirty-nine days later the cannon were booming at Fort Moultrie and
Fort Sumter.
VI
STORIES AND INCIDENTS
Apparently the world is never weary of asking what was the true Abraham
Lincoln, and every side-light upon his character is significant.
A man whom I knew well discovered the President at his office counting
greenbacks and inclosing them in an envelope. He asked Mr. Lincoln how
he could spare the time for such a task in the midst of the important
duties that were pressing upon him.
Lincoln replied: “The President of the United States has a multiplicity
of duties not specified in the Constitution or the laws. This is one
of them. It is money which belongs to a negro porter from the Treasury
Department. He is now in the hospital, too sick to sign his name, and
according to his wish I am putting a part of it aside in an envelope,
properly labeled, to save it for him.”
An eye-witness relates that one day while walking along a shaded path
from the Executive Mansion to the War Office, he saw the tall form of
the President seated on the grass. He afterward learned that a wounded
soldier, while on his way to the White House seeking back pay and a
pension, had met the President and had asked his assistance. Whereupon
Mr. Lincoln sat down, looked over the soldier’s papers, and advised him
what to do; he ended by giving him a note directing him to the proper
place to secure attention.
Driving up to a hospital one day he saw one of the patients walking
directly in the path of his team. The horses were checked none too
soon; then Mr. Lincoln saw that he was nothing but a boy and had been
wounded in both eyes. He got out of the carriage and questioned the
poor fellow, asking him his name, his service, and his residence.
“I am Abraham Lincoln,” he said, upon leaving; and the sightless
face lighted at the President’s words of sympathy. The following day
the chief of the hospital delivered to the boy a commission in the
Army of the United States as first lieutenant. The papers bore the
President’s signature and were accompanied by an order retiring him on
three-quarters pay for the years of helplessness that lay before him.
“Some of my generals complain that I impair discipline in the Army by
my pardons and respites,” Lincoln once said. “But it rests me, after a
hard day’s work, if I can find some excuse for saving a man’s life, and
I go to bed happy as I think how joyous the signing of my name will
make him and his family and his friends.”
I once heard Mr. Lincoln telling a number of Congressmen in the
anteroom of the White House that in the distribution of patronage care
should be taken of the disabled soldiers and the widows and orphans of
deceased soldiers, and these views were subsequently conveyed to the
Senate in a message which contained the following language:
Yesterday a little endorsement of mine went to you in two cases of
postmasterships sought for widows whose husbands have fallen in the
battles of the war. These cases occurring on the same day brought me
to reflect more attentively than I had before as to what is fairly
due in the dispensing of patronage to the men who, by fighting our
battles, bear the chief burden of saving our country. My conclusion
is that, other claims and qualifications being equal, they have the
better right; and this is especially applicable to the disabled
soldier and the deceased soldier’s family.
It may not be out of place to consider here what would be Mr. Lincoln’s
attitude toward the irrepressible conflict that has been raging with
such fierceness all over the world, between capital and labor, and
which is ever increasing in intensity. I quote the following extracts
from Lincoln’s message to Congress as showing his views on that
question:
It is not needed, not fitting here, that a general argument should be
made in favor of popular institutions, but there is one point not so
hackneyed to which I ask a brief attention--it is an effort to place
capital on an equal footing with, if not above, labor in the structure
of the Government. Capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have
existed if labor had not existed. Labor is the superior of capital,
and deserves much higher consideration.
It will thus be seen that the President’s sympathies were with
struggling labor, and against the powerful capitalists, and that he
would exercise his constitutional powers to promote the welfare of the
laboring class. That attitude is in keeping with the broad humanitarian
principles that always influenced Mr. Lincoln’s actions.
Truly, Lincoln’s great, tender heart was always open to the sufferings
of humanity; certainly his sympathy was never branded by the
limitations of creed or dogma. He never became a member of any church,
but no one could doubt that he was a man of deep religious feeling.
I remember on one occasion hearing him say, “Religion is a matter of
faith; all good men will be saved.” Judging by our standard of to-day,
this utterance would class him with the Unitarians.
Upon one occasion, after he had become our President, he visited the
Five Points Mission in New York, at that time a notorious slum, and
addressed a number of children; while there he gave no intimation that
he was President of the United States. When he was leaving the teacher
thanked him, and asked who he was. He simply answered, “Abraham
Lincoln, of Illinois.”
I have spoken of seeing Lincoln smile, but I never remember hearing
him laugh heartily, even when he was convulsing every one about him
with one of his inimitably told stories. And yet he apparently enjoyed
exciting the mirth of others, and to that extent, at least, he seemed
to enter into the spirit of the comedy. Many of the great humorists of
the world have been men of melancholy mood, and both tears and laughter
are based on the same precious essence.
I was often in Washington in those days, and I recollect frequently
seeing the great President walking on Pennsylvania Avenue, with “Little
Tad” clasping his hand. The fact that he took Tad with him on his
important mission to Richmond, where he attended the conference with
some of the leaders of the Confederacy, shows the companionship and
intense affection between the President and the son of his old age.
Once while Mrs. Lincoln was at Manchester, Vermont, she received a
message from the President, saying, “All is well, including Tad’s pony
and the goats.” A little later he asked her to tell “dear Tad that poor
nanny-goat is lost.”
I often saw the President sitting in the White House in carpet
slippers, and wearing an old bombazine coat out at the elbows. Indeed,
Mr. Lincoln was not created to adorn fashionable society, and did
not care for it. Clothing never troubled him, while Mrs. Lincoln set
much store upon appearances and was concerned over her husband’s
indifference to them.
The severe trials which confronted him, greater than any other
President encountered, and the heavy burden that rested on him, did not
blunt his finer feelings.
In a conversation with Mr. Lincoln, in which his visit to Richmond came
up, I casually inquired what he thought should be done with Jefferson
Davis at the end of the war, which appeared then to be approaching.
After a moment’s deliberation his sad face brightened as he answered
that, if he had his way, he would let him die in peace on his Southern
plantation. I remember well that at that time my interpretation of his
words was that he would not permit any punishment to be inflicted on
Jefferson Davis, unless it were absolutely demanded by the American
people.
During the early part of President Johnson’s administration, after the
collapse of the rebellion, Davis was captured and brought on habeas
corpus proceedings before a Virginia court and released on bail. Horace
Greeley, Gerritt Smith, and other Northern anti-slavery men became
sureties on the bail bond, but no proceedings were ever taken to
bring Davis to trial. He was allowed to die in peace on his Southern
plantation.
Can history show any thought more magnanimous in the life of a ruler
or statesman than this? Lincoln urged Meade, after the battle of
Gettysburg to pursue Lee in retreat and with one bold stroke end the
war. The order was peremptory, but a friendly note was attached, as
follows:
The order I enclose is not of record. If you succeed, you need not
publish the order. If you fail, publish it. Then, if you succeed, you
will have all the credit of the movement. If not, I’ll take care of
the responsibility.
A striking example of the President’s unselfish refusal to use his
official position for the advancement of any member of his family, is
found in his letter to General Grant, asking for a commission for his
son, Robert.
Please read and answer this letter as though I was not President, but
only a friend. My son, now in his twenty-second year, having graduated
at Harvard, wishes to see something of the war before it ends. I do
not wish to put him in the ranks, nor yet give him a commission to
which those who have already served long are better entitled and
better qualified to hold.
Could he, without embarrassment to you or detriment to the service,
go into your military family with some nominal rank; I, and not the
public, furnishing his necessary means? If not, say so without the
least hesitation, because I am as anxious and as deeply interested
that you shall not be encumbered as you can be yourself.
Mr. Lincoln was famous for disposing of office-seekers without leaving
a sting behind. H. C. Whitney told this story to a friend of mine:
“I had business in Washington in 1861 pertaining to the Indian service,
and I remarked to Mr. Lincoln that, ‘Everything is drifting into the
war, and I guess you will have to put me in the Army.’ Lincoln smiled
and said: ‘I’m making generals now. In a few days I’ll be making
quartermasters, then I’ll see to you.’”
Lincoln, referring to the criticisms made upon the administration,
particularly in regard to matters entirely outside of its jurisdiction,
said that he was reminded of a certain Long Island fisherman who
was accustomed to go out eeling every morning. In the old days, he
asserted, he never caught less than a pailful of eels, but since
this administration came into power he had to be content with half a
pailful. Therefore he was going to vote for the Democratic party; he
_wanted a change_.
VII
FOUR YEARS OF STRESS AND STRAIN
Buchanan belonged to the school of American pro-slavery Presidents.
During the last year of his administration he was as completely
dominated by the Southern members of his Cabinet as were the
Merovingian kings by their mayors of the palace. By blackest treachery,
John B. Floyd, Secretary of War, and Isaac Toucey, Secretary of
the Navy, gorged the armories and navy-yards located in the slave
States with arms, ordnance, and all manner of munitions of war, thus
anticipating months ahead what the Southern politicians regarded as
the “inevitable conflict.” The Federal Government, with the spineless
Buchanan at its head, was utterly unprepared for the crisis.
Such was the situation when President Lincoln took the oath of office;
such the already divided nation when the irresolute, truckling Buchanan
handed over the destinies of the Republic to his successor.
No heavier burden ever was imposed upon a ruler of any people.
Mr. Lincoln was only partially fortunate in choosing his Cabinet.
Seward was inevitable. Chase was a lucky guess, because he was without
a record as a financier. Cameron was a mistake, and the error was
not rectified as promptly as it should have been. The other members,
with the possible exception of Gideon Welles, who received the Navy
portfolio, were negligible.
The administration found itself without an army, many of its ablest
officers having left the service to take up arms against the Federal
Government. The rank and file of the army was fairly loyal, but the
troops had been so scattered by Buchanan’s secretary of war that they
could not be mobilized promptly when the hour of danger came. Despite
the plottings of Secretary Toucey, however, the vessels of the Navy
were so dispersed that the Confederacy was unable to seize many of
them. This was most fortunate, since it made possible the prompt
establishment of a Federal blockade over important Atlantic and Gulf
ports.
Legal business took me to Washington about four months after Lincoln’s
first inauguration and I called at the White House, in company with Mr.
Fenton. Although a score of men were present in the different parts of
the large room overlooking the South lot, Mr. Lincoln was walking the
floor in a preoccupied manner, evidently deeply distressed.
The Federal troops had just been defeated at Big Bethel by a much
smaller force under Magruder, a crushing blow for the Union arms.
I suggested to Mr. Fenton that we should retire, as the visit seemed
inopportune, but the President’s grave face showed signs of recognition
when he saw Mr. Fenton. He stopped, and as we approached him, he said:
“The storm is upon us; it will be much worse before it is better.
I suppose there was a divine purpose in thrusting this terrible
responsibility upon me, and I can only hope for more than human
guidance. I am only a mortal in the hands of destiny. I am ready for
the trial and shall do my best, because I know I am acting for the
right.”
He did not mention the defeat that had occurred only two days before,
but it was evident that he comprehended fully the desperate situation
that confronted the Federal Government.
Big Bethel was within ten miles of Fortress Monroe, and I subsequently
learned from a member of the Cabinet that the utmost anxiety existed
regarding the safety of that post. If treachery existed among its
officers, the secret has been kept until this day, but one can
understand the agonizing suspense of that hour. Had the great fortress
at Old Point Comfort fallen into the hands of the Confederacy, the
early part of the war would necessarily have been fought upon entirely
different lines.
Mr. Lincoln possessed no knowledge of the art of war, but he had
sufficient intuitive foresight to comprehend what the loss of control
of the entrance to Chesapeake Bay and the mouth of the James River
would mean. Although he said so little, this meeting and the few words
he used were most impressive, and are stamped deep upon my memory.