When the National Convention met at Chicago in the June following, to
nominate a candidate for President, while a majority of the delegates
were divided among Messrs. Seward, Chase, Cameron, and Bates, Mr.
Lincoln was the first choice of a large plurality, and the second choice
of all; besides he was personally so popular with the people, his
sobriquet of "Honest old Abe," "The Illinois Rail-splitter," satisfied
the shrewd men who were studying the best means of securing success,
that he was the most available man to head the ticket. These
considerations made his nomination a certainty from the beginning.
The nomination was hailed with enthusiasm throughout the Union. Never
did a party enter upon a canvass with more zeal and energy. With the
usual motives which actuate political parties there were in this canvass
mingled a love of country, a devotion to liberty, a keen sense of the
wrongs and outrages inflicted upon the Free State men of Kansas, which
fired all hearts with enthusiasm. Mr. Lincoln received one hundred and
eighty electoral votes, Douglas twelve, Breckinridge seventy-two, and
John Bell of Tennessee, thirty-nine. Mr. Lincoln received of the popular
vote 1,866,452, a plurality, but not a majority of the whole.
By the election of Mr. Lincoln the executive power of the republic
passed from the slave-holders. Mr. Lincoln and the great party who
elected him contemplated no interference with slavery in the States.
They meant to prevent its further extension, but the slave-holders
instinctively felt that with the government in the hands of those who
believed slavery morally wrong, the end of slavery was a mere question
of time. Rather than yield, the slave aristocracy resolved "to take up
the sword," and hence the terrible civil war.
On the 11th of February, 1861, Mr. Lincoln left his quiet happy home at
Springfield to enter upon that tempestuous political career which was to
lead him through a martyr's grave to a deathless fame among the greatest
and noblest patriots and benefactors of mankind. With a dim, mysterious
foreshadowing of the future, he uttered to his friends and neighbors who
gathered around him to say good-bye, his farewell. He seemed conscious
that he might see the place which had been his home for "a quarter of a
century, and where his children were born, and where one of them lay
buried" no more. Weighed down with the consciousness of the great duties
which devolved upon him, greater than those devolving upon any President
since Washington, he humbly expressed his reliance upon Divine
Providence, and asked his friends to pray that he might receive the
assistance of "Almighty God." As he journeyed toward the capital,
received everywhere with the earnest sympathies of the people, the loyal
men of all parties assuring him of their support, his spirits rose, and
when he passed the State line of his own State his hopefulness found
expression in the words "behind the cloud the sun is shining still." And
on he sped through the great Free States of the North. While on his way
to the capital the people were everywhere deeply impressed by his modest
yet firm reliance upon Providence. He went forth not leaning on his own
strength, but resting on Almighty God.
In the early gray of the morning of the 23d of February, 1861, he came
in sight of the dome of the Capitol, then filled with traitors plotting
his death and the overthrow of the Government. By anticipating the
train, by which it had been publicly announced that he would pass
through Baltimore, and passing through that city at night he escaped a
deeply-laid conspiracy, which would otherwise have anticipated the crime
of Booth. None who witnessed will ever forget the scene of his first
inauguration.
The veteran Scott had gathered a few soldiers of the Regular Army to
preserve order and security; many Northern citizens thronged the
streets, few of them conscious of the volcano of treason and murder
seething beneath them. The departments and public offices were full of
plotting traitors. Many of the rebel generals held commissions under the
Government they were about to desert and betray. The ceremony of
inauguration is always imposing; on this occasion it was especially so.
Buchanan, sad, dejected, bowed with a seeming consciousness of duties
unperformed, rode with the President-elect to the Capitol.
There were gathered the Justices of the Supreme Court, both Houses of
Congress, the representatives of foreign nations, and a vast concourse
of citizens from all sections of the Union. There were Chase, and
Seward, and Sumner, and Breckinridge, and Douglas, who was near the
President, and was observed eagerly looking over the crowd, not
unconscious of the personal danger of his great and successful rival.
Mr. Lincoln was so absorbed with the gravity of the occasion and the
condition of his country, that he utterly forgot himself, and there was
observed a dignity, which sprung from a mind entirely engrossed with
public duties.
He was perfectly cool, and stepping to the eastern colonnade of the
Capitol, that voice, which had been often heard by tens of thousands on
the prairies of the West, now read in clear and ringing tones his
inaugural. On the threshold of war, he made a last appeal for peace. He
declared his fixed resolve, firm as the everlasting rocks: "_I shall
take care that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in every
State_."
Yet his great, kind heart yearned for peace, and as he approached the
close, his voice faltered with emotion. "I am loath to close," said he;
"we are _not_ enemies, but friends; we must not be enemies. Though
passion may have strained, it must not break the bonds of affection. The
mystic cords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot's
grave, to every living heart and hearthstone over all this broad land,
will yet swell with the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as
surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
Alas! these appeals for peace were received by those to whom they were
addressed with coarse ribaldry, with sneers and jeers, and all the
savage and barbarous passions which riot in blood. Lincoln was somewhat
slow to learn that it was to force only--stern, unflinching force--that
treason would yield.
And now opened that terrible civil war which has no parallel in history.
Space will not permit me to follow the President through those long and
terrible days of victory and defeat, to final triumph. Through all,
Lincoln was firm, constant, hopeful, sagacious, wise, confiding always
in God, and in the people.