President Lincoln asked a friend, a senator, immediately on his taking
office, upon an embarrassed condition of affairs:
"Have you seen that prophecy about my administration in the papers? A
prophet foretells that my rule will be one of steel! To which the wags
retort: 'Well, Buchanan's was one of _steal_.'"
The Georgian slave-holder, late secretary of the treasury, was accused
of "diverting" some millions to the South, as that for the war office
similarly "diverted" ordnance and munitions to the same quarter; the
head of the navy, with what "looked" like collusion, had scattered the
war-vessels so as to be long delayed in concentrating.
* * * * *
"THAT'S WHAT'S THE MATTER."
In a Spiritualist performance at the White House, which seemed to have
been "edited" by the President himself--as often royalty revises
plays--for his special entertainment, the Cabinet being invited, after
a rigmarole of stilted phrases purporting to be by Washington,
Franklin, Napoleon, and other past celebrities, Mr. Welles, secretary
of the navy, remarked: "I will think this matter over, and see what
conclusion to arrive at!" (His set phrase.)
There was a smile at this, as the aged minister's prolonged meditations
were the laughing-stock of the country, he being the clog on the wheels
of the car of state. Instantly raps were heard in the spirit-cabinet,
and, the alphabet being consulted, the result was spelled out as:
"That's what's the matter!"
This hit at Mr. Welles' stereotyped fault aroused more mirth, and the
crowd at the back of the room, domestics, petty officials, and
sub-officers, laughed prodigiously, while the secretary stroked his
long white beard musingly.
To this cant term hangs a tale apropos of the President. Its origin was
low, but humorous. A benevolent gentleman pierced a crowd to its center
to see there, on the pavement under a lamp-post, a poor woman, curled
in a heap, with a satisfied grin on her flushed face, breathing
brokenly. "What's the matter?" eagerly inquired the compassionate man.
A bystander removed his pipe from his mouth, and with it pointed to a
flattened pocket-flask sticking out of her smashed reticule, half-under
her, and sententiously explained:
"That's what's the matter with Hannah!" The sentence took growth and
spread all over the Union. It has settled down, as we know, to a fixed
form at political meetings, where the audience beguile the waiting time
with demanding "What is the matter?" with this or that favorite
demagogue. In the sixties, it patly answered any problem. At the
presidential election-time of Lincoln's success, a negro minstrel,
Unsworth, was a "star" at "444" Broadway, dressing up the daily news
drolly under this title--that is, ending each paragraph with that line.
On the 22d of February, 1861, Abraham Lincoln, scheduled to pass on
from Harrisburg, where he made a speech as arranged, instead of waiting
to depart by the morning train, sped to Philadelphia and thence by a
special train detained for "a military messenger with a parcel," to
Washington, by the regular midnight train. The news of his arrival at
the capital by this unexpected and clandestine route, and in
disguise--this was denied--of a Scotch cap and plaid shawl, startled
everybody. Rumors of an attempt to make mischief, as he called it, were
rife. But the public still took things as quake-proof, and Mr. Lincoln
assured his audiences, as he spoke at every city on his way, that "the
crisis was artificial." On the evening of the twenty-third, the writer
dropped into the Broadway negro minstrel hall. Newspaper men knew that
Unsworth introduced the latest skimming of the press into his burlesque
lecture and liked to hear his funny versions and perversions. The comic
sheet of the metropolis, _Vanity Fair_, enframing the witty
scintillations of "Artemus Ward," George Arnold, and a brilliant band,
complained that this "nigger comedian" used or anticipated their best
effusions. On the whole the public saw in the surreptitious flight of
the ruler into his due seat only a farce, in keeping with his jesting
humor--he was regarded as a Don Quixote in figure, but a Sancho Panza,
for his philosophic proverbs, widely retailed and considered opportune.
So the indignation proper toward the forced escapade was absent;
everybody still mocked at the "terrible plots," as so much stale quail,
and when the blackened-face orator, coming to a pause after enunciation
of his "That's what's the matter" looked around wistfully, the audience
were agog. Suddenly out of the wing an attendant darted with alarmed
manner and face. He carried on his arm a shawl, gray and
travel-stained, and in one shaking hand a Scotch bonnet. Unsworth
snatched them in hot haste and fright, clapped on the cap, and, draping
himself in the plaid, rushed off at the side, forgetting his own high
silk hat. This, with the black suit, the orthodox lecturer's, now gave
him a resemblance to Mr. Lincoln, not previously perceived, for they
were men of opposite shapes. The eclipse brought home to the spectators
the ludicrousness of the President entering his capital in secret, but,
I repeat, no one felt any shame, and the audience went forth to relate
the excellent finish to the parody, at home or in the saloons, to
hearers as obtuse as themselves, to the seriousness of the episode.
Somehow, so far, the elect from Illinois was ever the Western buffoon.
But when, in his inaugural address, Lincoln thundered the new keynote,
the veil fell:
"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, is the momentous
issue of the Civil War."
War! The crisis was no longer "artificial"--he admitted that! What
impended, what had fallen? Jest and earnest were still coupled, but
earnest took the lead from that hour. Said the Chief Magistrate, in his
first official speech: "Physically speaking, we cannot separate--that's
what's the matter."
* * * * *
"THE SHIP OF STATE" SIMILE.
On the morning of Lincoln's arrival in Washington, General Logan and
Mr. Lovejoy called on him at Willard's Hotel, to urge a firm and
vigorous policy. He replied:
"As the country has placed me at the helm of the ship, I'll try to
steer her through." The Sangamon River pilot spoke there.
"I understand the ship to be made for the carrying and the preservation
of the cargo, and so long as the ship can be saved with the cargo, it
should never be abandoned, unless it fails in the probability of its
preservation, and shall cease to exist, except at the risk of throwing
overboard both freight and passengers."--(Speech, New York reception,
1861.)
"I trust that I may have the assistance of the members of this
legislature in piloting the ship of state through this voyage,
surrounded by perils as it is; for, if it should suffer shipwreck now,
there will be no pilot ever needed for another voyage."--(Speech,
Trenton, New Jersey, 1861.)
* * * * *