On the day following the inauguration, commissioners of the newly formed
Confederacy appeared at Washington and applied to the Secretary of State
for recognition as envoys of a foreign power. Seward refused them such
recognition. But he entered into a private negotiation with them which
is nearly, if not quite, the strangest thing in our history. Virtually,
Seward intrigued against Lincoln for control of the Administration. The
events of the next five weeks have an importance out of all proportion
to the brevity of the time. This was Lincoln's period of final
probation. The psychological intensity of this episode grew from the
consciousness in every mind that now, irretrievably, destiny was to be
determined. War or peace, happiness or adversity, one nation or two--all
these were in the balance. Lincoln entered the episode a doubtful
quantity, not with certainty the master even in his own Cabinet. He
emerged dominating the situation, but committed to the terrible course
of war.
One cannot enter upon this great episode, truly the turning point in
American history, without pausing for a glance at the character of
Seward. The subject is elusive. His ablest biographer* plainly is so
constantly on guard not to appear an apologist that he ends by reducing
his portrait to a mere outline, wavering across a background of
political details. The most recent study of Seward** surely reveals
between the lines the doubtfulness of the author about pushing his
points home. The different sides of the man are hard to reconcile. Now
he seemed frank and honest; again subtle and insincere. As an active
politician in the narrow sense, he should have been sagacious and
astute, yet he displayed at the crisis of his life the most absolute
fatuity. At times he had a buoyant and puerile way of disregarding
fact and enveloping himself in a world of his own imagining. He could
bluster, when he wished, like any demagogue; and yet he could be
persuasive, agreeable, and even personally charming.
*Frederic Bancroft, "Life of William H. Seward".
** Gamaliel Bradford, "Union Portraits".
But of one thing with regard to Seward, in the first week of March,
1861, there can be no doubt: he thought himself a great statesman--and
he thought Lincoln "a Simple Susan." He conceived his role in the new
administration to involve a subtle and patient manipulation of his
childlike superior. That Lincoln would gradually yield to his spell
and insensibly become his figurehead; that he, Seward, could save the
country and would go down to history a statesman above compare, he took
for granted. Nor can he fairly be called conceited, either; that is part
of his singularity.
Lincoln's Cabinet was, as Seward said, a compound body. With a view to
strengthening his position, Lincoln had appointed to cabinet positions
all his former rivals for the Republican nomination. Besides Seward,
there was Chase as Secretary of the Treasury; Simon Cameron of
Pennsylvania as Secretary of War; Edward Bates of Missouri as
Attorney-General. The appointment of Montgomery Blair of Maryland as
Postmaster-General was intended to placate the border Slave States. The
same motive dictated the later inclusion of James Speed of Kentucky in
the Cabinet. The Black-Stanton wing of the Democrats was represented in
the Navy Department by Gideon Welles, and in course of time in the War
Department also, when Cameron resigned and Stanton succeeded him. The
West of that day was represented by Caleb B. Smith of Indiana.
Seward disapproved of the composition of the Cabinet so much that,
almost at the last moment, he withdrew his acceptance of the State
Department. It was Lincoln's gentleness of argument which overcame his
reluctance to serve. We may be sure, however, that Seward failed to
observe that Lincoln's tactlessness in social matters did not extend to
his management of men in politics; we may feel sure that what remained
in his mind was Lincoln's unwillingness to enter office without William
Henry Seward as Secretary of State.
The promptness with which Seward assumed the role of prime minister
bears out this inference. The same fact also reveals a puzzling detail
of Seward's character which amounted to obtuseness--his forgetfulness
that appointment to cabinet offices had not transformed his old
political rivals Chase and Cameron, nor softened the feelings of an
inveterate political enemy, Welles, the Secretary of the Navy. The
impression which Seward made on his colleagues in the first days of the
new Government has been thus sharply recorded by Welles: "The Secretary
of State was, of course, apprised of every meeting [of ministers] and
never failed in his attendance, whatever was the subject-matter,
and though entirely out of his official province. He was vigilantly
attentive to every measure and movement in other Departments, however
trivial--as much so as to his own--watched and scrutinized every
appointment that was made, or proposed to be made, but was not
communicative in regard to the transaction of the State Department."
So eager was Seward to keep all the threads of affairs in his own hands
that he tried to persuade Lincoln not to hold cabinet meetings but
merely to consult with particular ministers, and with the Secretary
of State, as occasion might demand. A combined protest from the other
Secretaries, however, caused the regular holding of Cabinet meetings.
With regard to the Confederacy, Seward's policy was one of
non-resistance. For this he had two reasons. The first of these was
his rooted delusion that the bulk of the Southerners were opposed to
secession and, if let alone, would force their leaders to reconsider
their action. He might have quoted the nursery rhyme, "Let them alone
and they'll come home"; it would have been like him and in tune with
a frivolous side of his nature. He was quite as irresponsible when he
complacently assured the North that the trouble would all blow over
within ninety days. He also believed that any display of force would
convert these hypothetical Unionists of the South from friends to
enemies and would consolidate opinion in the Confederacy to produce
war. In justice to Seward it must be remembered that on this point time
justified his fears.
His dealings with the Confederate commissioners show that he was playing
to gain time, not with intent to deceive the Southerners but to acquire
that domination over Lincoln which he felt was his by natural right.
Intending to institute a peace policy the moment he gained this
ascendency, he felt perfectly safe in making promises to the
commissioners through mutual friends. He virtually told them that Sumter
would eventually be given up and that all they need do was to wait.
Seward brought to bear upon the President the opinions of various
military men who thought the time had passed when any expedition for the
relief of Sumter could succeed. For some time Lincoln seemed about
to consent, though reluctantly, to Seward's lead in the matter of the
forts. He was pulled up standing, however, by the threatened resignation
of the Postmaster-General, Blair. After a conference with leading
Republican politicians the President announced to his Cabinet that
his policy would include the relief of Sumter. "Seward," says Welles,
"...was evidently displeased."
Seward now took a new tack. Fort Pickens, at Pensacola, was a problem
similar to that of Sumter at Charleston. Both were demanded by the
Confederates, and both were in need of supplies. But Fort Pickens lay
to one side, so to speak, of the public mind, and there was not
conspicuously in the world's eye the square issue over it that there
was over Sumter. Seward conceived the idea that, if the President's
attention were diverted from Sumter to Pickens and a relief expedition
were sent to the latter but none to the former, his private negotiations
with the Confederates might still be kept going; Lincoln might yet be
hypnotized; and at last all would be well.
On All-Fools' Day, 1861, in the midst of a press of business, he
obtained Lincoln's signature to some dispatches, which Lincoln, it
seems, discussed with him hurriedly and without detailed consideration.
There were now in preparation two relief expeditions, one to carry
supplies to Pensacola, the other to Charleston. Neither was to fight
if it was not molested. Both were to be strong enough to fight if
their commanders deemed it necessary. As flagship of the Charleston
expedition, Welles had detailed the powerful warship Powhatan, which
was rapidly being made ready at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Such was the
situation as Welles understood it when he was thinking of bed late on
the night of the 6th of April. Until then he had not suspected that
there was doubt and bewilderment about the Powhatan at Brooklyn. One
of those dispatches which Lincoln had so hastily signed provided for
detaching the Powhatan from the Charleston expedition and sending it
safe out of harm's way to Pensacola. The commander of the ship had
before him the conflicting orders, one from the President, one from the
Secretary of the Navy. He was about to sail under the President's
orders for Pensacola; but wishing to make sure of his authority, he
had telegraphed to Washington. Gideon Welles was a pugnacious man. His
dislike for Seward was deepseated. Imagine his state of mind when it was
accidently revealed to him that Seward had gone behind his back and had
issued to naval officers orders which were contradictory to his own!
The immediate result was an interview that same night between Seward and
Welles in which, as Welles coldly admitted in after days, the Secretary
of the Navy showed "some excitement." Together they went, about
midnight, to the White House. Lincoln had some difficulty recalling the
incident of the dispatch on the 1st of April; but when he did remember,
he took the responsibility entirely upon himself, saying he had had
no purpose but to strengthen the Pickens expedition, and no thought of
weakening the expedition to Charleston. He directed Seward to telegraph
immediately cancelling the order detaching the Powhatan. Seward made a
desperate attempt to put him off, protesting, it was too late to send
a telegram that night. "But the President was imperative," writes
Secretary Welles, in describing the incident, and a dispatch was sent.
Seward then, doubtless in his agitation, did a strange thing. Instead
of telegraphing in the President's name, the dispatch which he sent read
merely, "Give up the Powhatan...Seward." When this dispatch was received
at Brooklyn, the Powhatan was already under way and had to be overtaken
by a fast tug. In the eyes of her commander, however, a personal
telegram from the Secretary of State appeared as of no weight against
the official orders of the President, and he continued his voyage to
Pensacola.
The mercurial temper of Seward comes out even in the caustic narrative
written afterwards by Welles. Evidently Seward was deeply mortified and
depressed by the incident. He remarked, says Welles, that old as he was
he had learned a lesson, and that was that he had better attend to his
own business. "To this," commented his enemy, "I cordially assented."
Nevertheless Seward's loss of faith in himself was only momentary. A
night's sleep was sufficient to restore it. His next communication to
the commissioners shows that he was himself again, sure that destiny
owed him the control of the situation. On the following day the
commissioners had got wind of the relief expedition and pressed him for
information, recalling his assurance that nothing would be done to their
disadvantage. In reply, still through a third person, Seward sent them
the famous message, over the precise meaning of which great debate has
raged: "Faith as to Sumter fully kept; wait and see." If this infatuated
dreamer still believed he could dominate Lincoln, still hoped at the
last moment to arrest the expedition to Charleston, he was doomed to
bitterest disappointment.
On the 9th of April, the expedition to Fort Sumter sailed, but without,
as we have seen, the assistance of the much needed warship, the
Powhatan. As all the world knows, the expedition had been too long
delayed and it accomplished nothing. Before it arrived, the surrender
of Sumter had been demanded and refused--and war had begun. During the
bombardment of Sumter, the relief expedition appeared beyond the bar,
but its commander had no vessels of such a character as to enable him
to carry aid to the fortress. Furthermore, he had not been informed that
the Powhatan had been detached from his squadron, and he expected to
meet her at the mouth of the harbor. There his ships lay idle until the
fort was surrendered, waiting for the Powhatan--for whose detachment
from the squadron Seward was responsible.
To return to the world of intrigue at Washington, however, it must not
be supposed, as is so often done, that Fort Sumter was the one concern
of the new government during its first six weeks. In fact, the subject
occupied but a fraction of Lincoln's time. Scarcely second in importance
was that matter so curiously bound up with the relief of the forts--the
getting in hand of the strangely vain glorious Secretary of State.
Mention has already been made of All-Fools' Day, 1861. Several marvelous
things took place on that day. Strangest of all was the presentation of
a paper by the Secretary of State to his chief, entitled "Thoughts for
the President's Consideration". Whether it be regarded as a state paper
or as a biographical detail in the career of Seward, it proves to be
quite the most astounding thing in the whole episode. The "Thoughts"
outlined a course of policy by which the buoyant Secretary intended to
make good his prophecy of domestic peace within ninety days. Besides
calmly patronizing Lincoln, assuring him that his lack of "a policy
either domestic or foreign" was "not culpable and... even unavoidable,"
the paper warned him that "policies...both domestic and foreign" must
immediately be adopted, and it proceeded to point out what they ought to
be. Briefly stated, the one true policy which he advocated at home was
to evacuate Sumter (though Pickens for some unexplained reason might be
safely retained) and then, in order to bring the Southerners back into
the Union, to pick quarrels with both Spain and France; to proceed as
quickly as possible to war with both powers; and to have the ultimate
satisfaction of beholding the reunion of the country through the general
enthusiasm that was bound to come. Finally, the paper intimated that the
Secretary of State was the man to carry this project through to success.
All this is not opera bouffe, but serious history. It must have taxed
Lincoln's sense of humor and strained his sense of the fitness of things
to treat such nonsense with the tactful forbearance which he showed and
to relegate it to the pigeonhole without making Seward angry. Yet this
he contrived to do; and he also managed, gently but firmly, to make it
plain that the President intended to exercise his authority as the chief
magistrate of the nation. His forbearance was further shown in passing
over without rebuke Seward's part in the affair of Sumter, which might
so easily have been made to appear treacherous, and in shouldering
himself with all responsibility for the failure of the Charleston
expedition. In the wave of excitement following the surrender, even so
debonair a minister as Seward must have realized how fortunate it was
for him that his chief did not tell all he knew. About this time Seward
began to perceive that Lincoln had a will of his own, and that it was
not safe to trifle further with the President. Seward thereupon ceased
his interference.
It was in the dark days preceding the fall of Sumter that a crowd of
office-seekers gathered at Washington, most of them men who had little
interest in anything but the spoils. It is a distressing commentary on
the American party system that, during the most critical month of the
most critical period of American history, much of the President's time
was consumed by these political vampires who would not be put off, even
though a revolution was in progress and nations, perhaps, were dying
and being born. "The scramble for office," wrote Stanton, "is
terrible." Seward noted privately: "Solicitants for office besiege the
President.... My duties call me to the White House two or three times a
day. The grounds, halls, stairways, closets, are filled with applicants
who render ingress and egress difficult."
Secretary Welles has etched the Washington of that time in his coldly
scornful way:
"A strange state of things existed at that time in Washington.
The atmosphere was thick with treason. Party spirit and old party
differences prevailed, however, amidst these accumulated dangers.
Secession was considered by most persons as a political party question,
not as rebellion. Democrats to a large extent sympathized with the
Rebels more than with the Administration, which they opposed, not that
they wished Secession to be successful and the Union divided, but they
hoped that President Lincoln and the Republicans would, overwhelmed by
obstacles and embarrassments, prove failures. The Republicans on the
other hand, were scarcely less partisan and unreasonable. Patriotism was
with them no test, no shield from party malevolence. They demanded
the proscription and exclusion of such Democrats as opposed the Rebel
movement and clung to the Union, with the same vehemence that they
demanded the removal of the worst Rebels who advocated a dissolution of
the Union. Neither party appeared to be apprehensive of, or to realize
the gathering storm."
Seen against such a background, the political and diplomatic frivolity
of the Secretary of State is not so inexplicable as it would otherwise
be. This background, as well as the intrigue of the Secretary, helps
us to understand Lincoln's great task inside his Cabinet. At first the
Cabinet was a group of jealous politicians new to this sort of office,
drawn from different parties, and totally lacking in a cordial sense
of previous action together. None of them, probably, when they first
assembled had any high opinion of their titular head. He was looked upon
as a political makeshift. The best of them had to learn to appreciate
the fact that this strange, ungainly man, sprung from plainest origin,
without formal education, was a great genius. By degrees, however, the
large minds in the Cabinet became his cordial admirers. While Lincoln
was quietly, gradually exercising his strong will upon Seward, he was
doing the same with the other members of his council. Presently they
awoke--the majority of them at least--to the truth that he, for all his
odd ways, was their master.
Meanwhile the gradual readjustment of all factions in the North was
steadily going forward. The Republicans were falling into line behind
the Government; and by degrees the distinction between Seward and
Lincoln, in the popular mind, faded into a sort of composite picture
called "the Administration." Lincoln had the reward of his long
forbearance with his Secretary. For Seward it must be said that, however
he had intrigued against his chief at Washington, he did not intrigue
with the country. Admitting as he had, too, that he had met his master,
he took the defeat as a good sportsman and threw all his vast party
influence into the scale for Lincoln's fortunes. Thus, as April wore on,
the Republican party settled down to the idea that it was to follow the
Government at Washington upon any course that might develop.
The Democrats in the North were anti-Southern in larger proportion,
probably, than at any other time during the struggle of the sections.
We have seen that numbers of them had frankly declared for the Union.
Politics had proved weaker than propinquity. There was a moment when it
seemed--delusively, as events proved--that the North was united as one
man to oppose the South.
There is surely not another day in our history that has witnessed so
much nervous tension as Saturday, April 13, 1861, for on that morning
the newspapers electrified the North with the news that Sumter had been
fired on from Confederate batteries on the shore of Charleston Harbor.
In the South the issue was awaited confidently, but many minds at
least were in that state of awed suspense natural to a moment which the
thoughtful see is the stroke of fate. In the North, the day passed for
the most part in a quiet so breathless that even the most careless could
have foretold the storm which broke on the following day. The account
of this crisis which has been given by Lincoln's private secretary is
interesting:
"That day there was little change in the business routine of the
Executive office. Mr. Lincoln was never liable to sudden excitement
or sudden activity.... So while the Sumter telegrams were on every
tongue...leading men and officials called to learn or impart the news.
The Cabinet, as by common impulse, came together and deliberated. All
talk, however, was brief, sententious, formal. Lincoln said but little
beyond making inquiries about the current reports and criticizing the
probability or accuracy of their details, and went on as usual
receiving visitors, listening to suggestions, and signing routine papers
throughout the day." Meanwhile the cannon were booming at Charleston.
The people came out on the sea-front of the lovely old city and watched
the duel of the cannon far down the harbor, and spoke joyously of the
great event. They saw the shells of the shore batteries ignite
portions of the fortress on the island. They watched the fire of the
defenders--driven by the flames into a restricted area--slacken and
cease. At last the flag of the Union fluttered down from above Fort
Sumter.
When the news flashed over the North, early Sunday morning, April 14th,
the tension broke. For many observers then and afterward, the only North
discernible that fateful Sabbath was an enraged, defiant, impulsive
nation, forgetful for the moment of all its differences, and uniting all
its voices in one hoarse cry for vengeance. There seemed to be no other
thought. Lincoln gave it formal utterance, that same day, by assembling
his Cabinet and drawing up a proclamation which called for 75,000
volunteer troops.
An incident of this day which is as significant historically as any
other was on the surface no more than a friendly talk between two men.
Douglas called at the White House. For nearly two hours he and Lincoln
conferred in private. Hitherto it had been a little uncertain what
course Douglas was going to take. In the Senate, though condemning
disunion, he had opposed war. Few matters can have troubled Lincoln more
deeply than the question which way Douglas's immense influence would be
thrown. The question was answered publicly in the newspapers of Monday,
April 15th. Douglas announced that while he was still "unalterably
opposed to the Administration on all its political issues, he
was prepared to sustain the President in the exercise of all his
constitutional functions to preserve the Union, and maintain the
Government, and defend the federal capital."
There remained of Douglas's life but a few months. The time was filled
with earnest speechmaking in support of the Government. He had started
West directly following his conference with Lincoln. His speeches in
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, were perhaps the greatest single force in
breaking up his own following, putting an end to the principle of doing
nothing, and forcing every Democrat to come out and show his colors.
In Shakespeare's phrase, it was--"Under which king, Bezonian? speak or
die!" In Douglas's own phrase: "There can be no neutrals in this war;
ONLY PATRIOTS--OR TRAITORS."
Side by side with Douglas's manifesto to the Democrats there appeared in
the Monday papers Lincoln's call for volunteers. The militia of several
Northern States at once responded.
On Wednesday, the 17th of April, the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment
entrained for Washington. Two days later it was in Baltimore. There it
was attacked by a mob; the soldiers fired; and a number of civilians
were killed as well as several soldiers.
These shots at Baltimore aroused the Southern party in Maryland. Led
by the Mayor of the city, they resolved to prevent the passage of other
troops across their State to Washington. Railway tracks were torn up
by order of the municipal authorities, and bridges were burnt. The
telegraph was cut. As in a flash, after issuing his proclamation,
Lincoln found himself isolated at Washington with no force but a handful
of troops and the government clerks. And while Maryland rose against him
on one side, Virginia joined his enemies on the other. The day the Sixth
Massachusetts left Boston, Virginia seceded. The Virginia militia were
called to their colors. Preparations were at once set on foot for the
seizure of the great federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry and the Navy Yard
at Norfolk. The next day a handful of federal troops, fearful of being
overpowered at Harper's Ferry, burned the arsenal and withdrew to
Washington. For the same reason the buildings of the great Navy Yard
were blown up or set on fire, and the ships at anchor were sunk. So
desperate and unprepared were the Washington authorities that they took
these extreme measures to keep arms and ammunition out of the hands of
the Virginians. So hastily was the destruction carried out, that it was
only partially successful and at both places large stores of ammunition
were seized by the Virginia troops. While Washington was isolated,
and Lincoln did not know what response the North had made to his
proclamation, Robert E. Lee, having resigned his commission in the
federal army, was placed in command of the Virginia troops.
The secretaries of Lincoln have preserved a picture of his desperate
anxiety, waiting, day after day, for relief from the North which
he hoped would speedily come by sea. Outwardly he maintained his
self-control. But once, on the afternoon of the 23d, the business of
the day being over, the Executive office being deserted, after walking
the floor alone in silent thought for nearly half an hour, he stopped
and gazed long and wistfully out of the window down the Potomac in the
direction of the expected ships; 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!"
During these days of isolation, when Washington, with the telegraph
inoperative, was kept in an appalling uncertainty, the North rose.
There was literally a rush to volunteer. "The heather is on fire," wrote
George Ticknor, "I never before knew what a popular excitement can
be." As fast as possible militia were hurried South. The crack New York
regiment, the famous, dandified Seventh, started for the front amid
probably the most tempestuous ovation which until that time was ever
given to a military organization in America. Of the march of the
regiment down Broadway, one of its members wrote, "Only one who passed
as we did, through the tempest of cheers two miles long, can know the
terrible enthusiasm of the occasion."
To reach Washington by rail was impossible. The Seventh went by boat
to Annapolis. The same course was taken by a regiment of Massachusetts
mechanics, the Eighth. Landing at Annapolis, the two regiments, dandies
and laborers, fraternized at once in the common bond of loyalty to the
Union. A branch railway led from Annapolis to the main line between
Washington and Baltimore. The rails had been torn up. The Massachusetts
mechanics set to work to relay them. The Governor of Maryland protested.
He was disregarded. The two regiments toiled together a long day and
through the night following, between Annapolis and the Washington
junction, bringing on their baggage and cannon over relaid tracks.
There, a train was found which the Seventh appropriated. At noon, on
the 25th of April, that advance guard of the Northern hosts entered
Washington, and Lincoln knew that he had armies behind him.