the first requisite,--an intuitive comprehension of its nature. While
he did not indulge in the delusion that the Union could be maintained or
restored without a conflict of arms, he could indeed not foresee all the
problems he would have to solve. He instinctively understood, however,
by what means that conflict would have to be conducted by the government
of a democracy. He knew that the impending war, whether great or small,
would not be like a foreign war, exciting a united national enthusiasm,
but a civil war, likely to fan to uncommon heat the animosities of party
even in the localities controlled by the government; that this war would
have to be carried on not by means of a ready-made machinery, ruled
by an undisputed, absolute will, but by means to be furnished by the
voluntary action of the people:--armies to be formed by voluntary
enlistments; large sums of money to be raised by the people, through
representatives, voluntarily taxing themselves; trust of extraordinary
power to be voluntarily granted; and war measures, not seldom
restricting the rights and liberties to which the citizen was
accustomed, to be voluntarily accepted and submitted to by the people,
or at least a large majority of them; and that this would have to be
kept up not merely during a short period of enthusiastic excitement; but
possibly through weary years of alternating success and disaster, hope
and despondency. He knew that in order to steer this government by
public opinion successfully through all the confusion created by the
prejudices and doubts and differences of sentiment distracting the
popular mind, and so to propitiate, inspire, mould, organize, unite, and
guide the popular will that it might give forth all the means required
for the performance of his great task, he would have to take into
account all the influences strongly affecting the current of popular
thought and feeling, and to direct while appearing to obey.
This was the kind of leadership he intuitively conceived to be needed
when a free people were to be led forward en masse to overcome a
great common danger under circumstances of appalling difficulty, the
leadership which does not dash ahead with brilliant daring, no matter
who follows, but which is intent upon rallying all the available forces,
gathering in the stragglers, closing up the column, so that the front
may advance well supported. For this leadership Abraham Lincoln was
admirably fitted, better than any other American statesman of his day;
for he understood the plain people, with all their loves and hates,
their prejudices and their noble impulses, their weaknesses and their
strength, as he understood himself, and his sympathetic nature was apt
to draw their sympathy to him.
His inaugural address foreshadowed his official course in characteristic
manner. Although yielding nothing in point of principle, it was by no
means a flaming antislavery manifesto, such as would have pleased the
more ardent Republicans. It was rather the entreaty of a sorrowing
father speaking to his wayward children. In the kindliest language
he pointed out to the secessionists how ill advised their attempt at
disunion was, and why, for their own sakes, they should desist. Almost
plaintively, he told them that, while it was not their duty to destroy
the Union, it was his sworn duty to preserve it; that the least he
could do, under the obligations of his oath, was to possess and hold the
property of the United States; that he hoped to do this peaceably; that
he abhorred war for any purpose, and that they would have none
unless they themselves were the aggressors. It was a masterpiece of
persuasiveness, and while Lincoln had accepted many valuable amendments
suggested by Seward, it was essentially his own. Probably Lincoln
himself did not expect his inaugural address to have any effect upon the
secessionists, for he must have known them to be resolved upon disunion
at any cost. But it was an appeal to the wavering minds in the North,
and upon them it made a profound impression. Every candid man, however
timid and halting, had to admit that the President was bound by his oath
to do his duty; that under that oath he could do no less than he said
he would do; that if the secessionists resisted such an appeal as
the President had made, they were bent upon mischief, and that the
government must be supported against them. The partisan sympathy with
the Southern insurrection which still existed in the North did indeed
not disappear, but it diminished perceptibly under the influence of such
reasoning. Those who still resisted it did so at the risk of appearing
unpatriotic.
It must not be supposed, however, that Lincoln at once succeeded in
pleasing everybody, even among his friends,--even among those nearest to
him. In selecting his cabinet, which he did substantially before he left
Springfield for Washington, he thought it wise to call to his assistance
the strong men of his party, especially those who had given evidence of
the support they commanded as his competitors in the Chicago convention.
In them he found at the same time representatives of the
different shades of opinion within the party, and of the different
elements--former Whigs and former Democrats--from which the party had
recruited itself. This was sound policy under the circumstances. It
might indeed have been foreseen that among the members of a cabinet so
composed, troublesome disagreements and rivalries would break out. But
it was better for the President to have these strong and ambitious
men near him as his co-operators than to have them as his critics in
Congress, where their differences might have been composed in a common
opposition to him. As members of his cabinet he could hope to control
them, and to keep them busily employed in the service of a common
purpose, if he had the strength to do so. Whether he did possess this
strength was soon tested by a singularly rude trial.
There can be no doubt that the foremost members of his cabinet, Seward
and Chase, the most eminent Republican statesmen, had felt themselves
wronged by their party when in its national convention it preferred
to them for the Presidency a man whom, not unnaturally, they thought
greatly their inferior in ability and experience as well as in service.
The soreness of that disappointment was intensified when they saw this
Western man in the White House, with so much of rustic manner and speech
as still clung to him, meeting his fellow-citizens, high and low, on a
footing of equality, with the simplicity of his good nature unburdened
by any conventional dignity of deportment, and dealing with the great
business of state in an easy-going, unmethodical, and apparently
somewhat irreverent way. They did not understand such a man. Especially
Seward, who, as Secretary of State, considered himself next to the
Chief Executive, and who quickly accustomed himself to giving orders and
making arrangements upon his own motion, thought it necessary that he
should rescue the direction of public affairs from hands so unskilled,
and take full charge of them himself. At the end of the first month of
the administration he submitted a "memorandum" to President Lincoln,
which has been first brought to light by Nicolay and Hay, and is one of
their most valuable contributions to the history of those days. In that
paper Seward actually told the President that at the end of a month's
administration the government was still without a policy, either
domestic or foreign; that the slavery question should be eliminated from
the struggle about the Union; that the matter of the maintenance of the
forts and other possessions in the South should be decided with that
view; that explanations should be demanded categorically from the
governments of Spain and France, which were then preparing, one for the
annexation of San Domingo, and both for the invasion of Mexico; that
if no satisfactory explanations were received war should be declared
against Spain and France by the United States; that explanations should
also be sought from Russia and Great Britain, and a vigorous continental
spirit of independence against European intervention be aroused all over
the American continent; that this policy should be incessantly pursued
and directed by somebody; that either the President should devote
himself entirely to it, or devolve the direction on some member of his
cabinet, whereupon all debate on this policy must end.
This could be understood only as a formal demand that the President
should acknowledge his own incompetency to perform his duties, content
himself with the amusement of distributing post-offices, and resign his
power as to all important affairs into the hands of his Secretary of
State. It seems to-day incomprehensible how a statesman of Seward's
calibre could at that period conceive a plan of policy in which the
slavery question had no place; a policy which rested upon the utterly
delusive assumption that the secessionists, who had already formed their
Southern Confederacy and were with stern resolution preparing to fight
for its independence, could be hoodwinked back into the Union by some
sentimental demonstration against European interference; a policy which,
at that critical moment, would have involved the Union in a foreign war,
thus inviting foreign intervention in favor of the Southern Confederacy,
and increasing tenfold its chances in the struggle for independence. But
it is equally incomprehensible how Seward could fail to see that this
demand of an unconditional surrender was a mortal insult to the head
of the government, and that by putting his proposition on paper he
delivered himself into the hands of the very man he had insulted; for,
had Lincoln, as most Presidents would have done, instantly dismissed
Seward, and published the true reason for that dismissal, it would
inevitably have been the end of Seward's career. But Lincoln did what
not many of the noblest and greatest men in history would have been
noble and great enough to do. He considered that Seward was still
capable of rendering great service to his country in the place in
which he was, if rightly controlled. He ignored the insult, but
firmly established his superiority. In his reply, which he forthwith
despatched, he told Seward that the administration had a domestic policy
as laid down in the inaugural address with Seward's approval; that
it had a foreign policy as traced in Seward's despatches with the
President's approval; that if any policy was to be maintained or
changed, he, the President, was to direct that on his responsibility;
and that in performing that duty the President had a right to the
advice of his secretaries. Seward's fantastic schemes of foreign war
and continental policies Lincoln brushed aside by passing them over in
silence. Nothing more was said. Seward must have felt that he was at
the mercy of a superior man; that his offensive proposition had been
generously pardoned as a temporary aberration of a great mind, and that
he could atone for it only by devoted personal loyalty. This he did.
He was thoroughly subdued, and thenceforth submitted to Lincoln his
despatches for revision and amendment without a murmur. The war with
European nations was no longer thought of; the slavery question found in
due time its proper place in the struggle for the Union; and when, at
a later period, the dismissal of Seward was demanded by dissatisfied
senators, who attributed to him the shortcomings of the administration,
Lincoln stood stoutly by his faithful Secretary of State.
Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, a man of superb presence, of
eminent ability and ardent patriotism, of great natural dignity and a
certain outward coldness of manner, which made him appear more difficult
of approach than he really was, did not permit his disappointment to
burst out in such extravagant demonstrations. But Lincoln's ways were
so essentially different from his that they never became quite
intelligible, and certainly not congenial to him. It might, perhaps,
have been better had there been, at the beginning of the administration,
some decided clash between Lincoln and Chase, as there was between
Lincoln and Seward, to bring on a full mutual explanation, and to make
Chase appreciate the real seriousness of Lincoln's nature. But, as it
was, their relations always remained somewhat formal, and Chase never
felt quite at ease under a chief whom he could not understand, and whose
character and powers he never learned to esteem at their true value.
At the same time, he devoted himself zealously to the duties of his
department, and did the country arduous service under circumstances of
extreme difficulty. Nobody recognized this more heartily than Lincoln
himself, and they managed to work together until near the end of
Lincoln's first Presidential term, when Chase, after some disagreements
concerning appointments to office, resigned from the treasury; and,
after Taney's death, the President made him Chief Justice.
The rest of the cabinet consisted of men of less eminence, who
subordinated themselves more easily. In January, 1862, Lincoln found it
necessary to bow Cameron out of the war office, and to put in his place
Edwin M. Stanton, a man of intensely practical mind, vehement impulses,
fierce positiveness, ruthless energy, immense working power, lofty
patriotism, and severest devotion to duty. He accepted the war office
not as a partisan, for he had never been a Republican, but only to
do all he could in "helping to save the country." The manner in
which Lincoln succeeded in taming this lion to his will, by frankly
recognizing his great qualities, by giving him the most generous
confidence, by aiding him in his work to the full of his power, by
kindly concession or affectionate persuasiveness in cases of differing
opinions, or, when it was necessary, by firm assertions of superior
authority, bears the highest testimony to his skill in the management of
men. Stanton, who had entered the service with rather a mean opinion
of Lincoln's character and capacity, became one of his warmest, most
devoted, and most admiring friends, and with none of his secretaries
was Lincoln's intercourse more intimate. To take advice with candid
readiness, and to weigh it without any pride of his own opinion, was one
of Lincoln's preeminent virtues; but he had not long presided over his
cabinet council when his was felt by all its members to be the ruling
mind.
The cautious policy foreshadowed in his inaugural address, and pursued
during the first period of the civil war, was far from satisfying all
his party friends. The ardent spirits among the Union men thought that
the whole North should at once be called to arms, to crush the rebellion
by one powerful blow. The ardent spirits among the antislavery men
insisted that, slavery having brought forth the rebellion, this powerful
blow should at once be aimed at slavery. Both complained that the
administration was spiritless, undecided, and lamentably slow in its
proceedings. Lincoln reasoned otherwise. The ways of thinking and
feeling of the masses, of the plain people, were constantly present to
his mind. The masses, the plain people, had to furnish the men for the
fighting, if fighting was to be done. He believed that the plain people
would be ready to fight when it clearly appeared necessary, and that
they would feel that necessity when they felt themselves attacked. He
therefore waited until the enemies of the Union struck the first blow.
As soon as, on the 12th of April, 1861, the first gun was fired in
Charleston harbor on the Union flag upon Fort Sumter, the call was
sounded, and the Northern people rushed to arms.
Lincoln knew that the plain people were now indeed ready to fight in
defence of the Union, but not yet ready to fight for the destruction of
slavery. He declared openly that he had a right to summon the people to
fight for the Union, but not to summon them to fight for the abolition
of slavery as a primary object; and this declaration gave him numberless
soldiers for the Union who at that period would have hesitated to do
battle against the institution of slavery. For a time he succeeded
in rendering harmless the cry of the partisan opposition that the
Republican administration were perverting the war for the Union into an
"abolition war." But when he went so far as to countermand the acts of
some generals in the field, looking to the emancipation of the slaves
in the districts covered by their commands, loud complaints arose from
earnest antislavery men, who accused the President of turning his back
upon the antislavery cause. Many of these antislavery men will now,
after a calm retrospect, be willing to admit that it would have been
a hazardous policy to endanger, by precipitating a demonstrative fight
against slavery, the success of the struggle for the Union.
Lincoln's views and feelings concerning slavery had not changed. Those
who conversed with him intimately upon the subject at that period know
that he did not expect slavery long to survive the triumph of the Union,
even if it were not immediately destroyed by the war. In this he was
right. Had the Union armies achieved a decisive victory in an early
period of the conflict, and had the seceded States been received back
with slavery, the "slave power" would then have been a defeated power,
defeated in an attempt to carry out its most effective threat. It would
have lost its prestige. Its menaces would have been hollow sound, and
ceased to make any one afraid. It could no longer have hoped to expand,
to maintain an equilibrium in any branch of Congress, and to control the
government. The victorious free States would have largely overbalanced
it. It would no longer have been able to withstand the onset of a
hostile age. It could no longer have ruled,--and slavery had to rule in
order to live. It would have lingered for a while, but it would surely
have been "in the course of ultimate extinction." A prolonged war
precipitated the destruction of slavery; a short war might only have
prolonged its death struggle. Lincoln saw this clearly; but he saw also
that, in a protracted death struggle, it might still have kept disloyal
sentiments alive, bred distracting commotions, and caused great mischief
to the country. He therefore hoped that slavery would not survive the
war.
But the question how he could rightfully employ his power to bring on
its speedy destruction was to him not a question of mere sentiment. He
himself set forth his reasoning upon it, at a later period, in one
of his inimitable letters. "I am naturally antislavery," said he. "If
slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember the time when
I did not so think and feel. And yet I have never understood that the
Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act upon that
judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the
best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of
the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath.
Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break
the oath in using that power. I understood, too, that, in ordinary civil
administration, this oath even forbade me practically to indulge my
private abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I did
understand, however, also, that my oath imposed upon me the duty of
preserving, to the best of my ability, by every indispensable means,
that government, that nation, of which the Constitution was the organic
law. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tied
to preserve the Constitution--if, to save slavery, or any minor matter,
I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution
all together." In other words, if the salvation of the government, the
Constitution, and the Union demanded the destruction of slavery, he
felt it to be not only his right, but his sworn duty to destroy it. Its
destruction became a necessity of the war for the Union.
As the war dragged on and disaster followed disaster, the sense of that
necessity steadily grew upon him. Early in 1862, as some of his friends
well remember, he saw, what Seward seemed not to see, that to give
the war for the Union an antislavery character was the surest means to
prevent the recognition of the Southern Confederacy as an independent
nation by European powers; that, slavery being abhorred by the moral
sense of civilized mankind, no European government would dare to offer
so gross an insult to the public opinion of its people as openly to
favor the creation of a state founded upon slavery to the prejudice of
an existing nation fighting against slavery. He saw also that slavery
untouched was to the rebellion an element of power, and that in order
to overcome that power it was necessary to turn it into an element
of weakness. Still, he felt no assurance that the plain people were
prepared for so radical a measure as the emancipation of the slaves by
act of the government, and he anxiously considered that, if they were
not, this great step might, by exciting dissension at the North, injure
the cause of the Union in one quarter more than it would help it in
another. He heartily welcomed an effort made in New York to mould and
stimulate public sentiment on the slavery question by public meetings
boldly pronouncing for emancipation. At the same time he himself
cautiously advanced with a recommendation, expressed in a special
message to Congress, that the United States should co-operate with any
State which might adopt the gradual abolishment of slavery, giving
such State pecuniary aid to compensate the former owners of emancipated
slaves. The discussion was started, and spread rapidly. Congress adopted
the resolution recommended, and soon went a step farther in passing a
bill to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. The plain people
began to look at emancipation on a larger scale as a thing to be
considered seriously by patriotic citizens; and soon Lincoln thought
that the time was ripe, and that the edict of freedom could be ventured
upon without danger of serious confusion in the Union ranks.
The failure of McClellan's movement upon Richmond increased immensely
the prestige of the enemy. The need of some great act to stimulate the
vitality of the Union cause seemed to grow daily more pressing. On
July 21, 1862, Lincoln surprised his cabinet with the draught of a
proclamation declaring free the slaves in all the States that should be
still in rebellion against the United States on the 1st of January,1863.
As to the matter itself he announced that he had fully made up his mind;
he invited advice only concerning the form and the time of publication.
Seward suggested that the proclamation, if then brought out, amidst
disaster and distress, would sound like the last shriek of a perishing
cause. Lincoln accepted the suggestion, and the proclamation was
postponed. Another defeat followed, the second at Bull Run. But when,
after that battle, the Confederate army, under Lee, crossed the Potomac
and invaded Maryland, Lincoln vowed in his heart that, if the Union army
were now blessed with success, the decree of freedom should surely
be issued. The victory of Antietam was won on September 17, and the
preliminary Emancipation Proclamation came forth on the a 22d. It was
Lincoln's own resolution and act; but practically it bound the nation,
and permitted no step backward. In spite of its limitations, it was the
actual abolition of slavery. Thus he wrote his name upon the books of
history with the title dearest to his heart, the liberator of the slave.
It is true, the great proclamation, which stamped the war as one for
"union and freedom," did not at once mark the turning of the tide on the
field of military operations. There were more disasters, Fredericksburg
and Chancellorsville. But with Gettysburg and Vicksburg the whole aspect
of the war changed. Step by step, now more slowly, then more rapidly,
but with increasing steadiness, the flag of the Union advanced from
field to field toward the final consummation. The decree of emancipation
was naturally followed by the enlistment of emancipated negroes in the
Union armies. This measure had a anther reaching effect than merely
giving the Union armies an increased supply of men. The laboring force
of the rebellion was hopelessly disorganized. The war became like a
problem of arithmetic. As the Union armies pushed forward, the area
from which the Southern Confederacy could draw recruits and supplies
constantly grew smaller, while the area from which the Union recruited
its strength constantly grew larger; and everywhere, even within the
Southern lines, the Union had its allies. The fate of the rebellion
was then virtually decided; but it still required much bloody work to
convince the brave warriors who fought for it that they were really
beaten.