The disproportion would have discouraged the fathers of the new nation, if they had anticipated that the North would be resolute in using its overwhelming resources. But how could they believe that this would be the case when they read the New York "Tribune" and the reports of Mr. Phillips's harangues?
On February 13 the electoral vote was to be counted in Congress. Rumors were abroad that the Secessionists intended to interfere with this by tumults and violence; but the evidence is insufficient to prove that any such scheme was definitely matured; it was talked of, but ultimately it seems to have been laid aside with a view to action at a later date. Naturally enough, however, the country was disquieted. In the emergency the action of General Scott was watched with deep anxiety. A Southerner by birth and by social sympathies, he had been expected by the Secessionists to join their movement. But the old soldier—though broken by age and infirmities, and though he had proposed the folly of voluntarily quartering the country, like the corpse of a traitor—had his patriotism and his temper at once aroused when violence was threatened. On and after October 29 he had repeatedly advised reinforcement of the Southern garrisons; though it must be admitted, in Buchanan's behalf, that the general made no suggestion as to how or where the troops could be obtained for this purpose. In the same spirit he now said, with stern resolution, that there should be ample military preparations to insure both the count and the inauguration; and he told some of the Southerners that he would blow traitors to pieces at the cannon's mouth without hesitation. Disturbed at his vehemence, they denounced him bitterly, and sent him frequent notices of assassination. Floyd distributed orders concerning troops and munitions directly from the War Department, and carefully concealed them from the general who was the head of the army. But secrecy and intimidation were in vain. The aged warrior was fiercely in earnest; if there was going to be any outbreak in Washington he was going to put it down with bullets and bayonets, and he gathered his soldiers and instructed his officers accordingly. But happily the preparation of these things was sufficient to render the use of them unnecessary. When the day came Vice-President Breckenridge performed his duty, however unwelcome, without flinching. He presided over the joint session and conducted the count with the air of a man determined to enforce law and order, and at the close declared the election of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin.
Still only the smaller crisis had been passed. Much more alarming stories now flew from mouth to mouth,—of plots to seize the capital and to prevent the inauguration, even to assassinate Lincoln on his journey to Washington. How much foundation there was for these is not accurately known. That the idea of capturing Washington had fascinated the Southern fancy is certain. "I see no reason," said Senator Iverson, "why Washington city should not be continued the capital of the Southern Confederacy." The Richmond "Examiner" railed grossly: "That filthy cage of unclean birds must and will assuredly be purified by fire.... Our people can take it,—they will take it.... Scott, the arch-traitor, and Lincoln, the beast, combined, cannot prevent it. The 'Illinois Ape' must retrace his journey more rapidly than he came." The abundant talk of this sort created uneasiness; and Judge Holt said that there was cause for alarm. But a committee of Congress reported that, though it was difficult to speak positively, yet they found no evidence sufficient to prove "the existence of a secret organization." Alexander H. Stephens has denied that there was any intention to attack the city, and probably the notion of seizure did not pass beyond the stage of talk.
But the alleged plot to assassinate Mr. Lincoln was more definite. He had been spending the winter quietly in Springfield, where he had been overrun by visitors, who wished to look at him, to advise him, and to secure promises of office; fortunately the tedious procession had lost part of its offensiveness by touching his sense of humor. Anxious people made well-meaning but useless efforts to induce him to say something for effect upon the popular mind; but he resolutely and wisely maintained silence. His position and opinions, he said, had already been declared in his speeches with all the clearness he could give to them, and the people had appeared to understand and approve them. He could not improve and did not desire to change these utterances. Occasionally he privately expressed his dislike to the conceding and compromising temper which threatened to undo, for an indefinite future, all which the long and weary struggle of anti-slavery men had accomplished. In this line he wrote a letter of protest to Greeley, which inspired that gentleman to a singular expression of sympathy; let the Union go to pieces, exclaimed the emotional editor, let presidents be assassinated, let the Republican party suffer crushing defeat, but let there not be "another nasty compromise." To Mr. Kellogg, the Illinoisian on the House Committee of Thirty-three, Lincoln wrote: "Entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery. The instant you do, they have us under again; all our labor is lost, and sooner or later must be done over again." He repeated almost the same words to E.B. Washburne, a member of the House. Duff Green tried hard to get something out of him for the comfort of Mr. Buchanan, but failed to extort more than commonplace generalities. To Seward he wrote that he did not wish to interfere with the present status, or to meddle with slavery as it now lawfully existed. To like purport he wrote to Alexander H. Stephens, induced thereto by the famous Union speech of that gentleman. He eschewed hostile feeling, saying: "I never have been, am not now, and probably never shall be, in a mood of harassing the people, either North or South." Nevertheless, while he said that all were "brothers of a common country," he was perfectly resolved that the country should remain "common," even if the bond of brotherhood had to be riveted by force. He admitted that this necessity would be "an ugly point;" but he was perfectly clear that "the right of a State to secede is not an open or debatable question." He desired that General Scott should be prepared either to "hold or retake" the Southern forts, if need should be, at or after the inauguration; but on his journey to Washington he said to many audiences that he wished no war and no bloodshed, and that these evils could be avoided if people would only "keep cool" and "keep their temper, on both sides of the line."
On Monday, February 11, 1861, Mr. Lincoln spoke to his fellow citizens of Springfield a very brief farewell, so solemn as to sound ominous in the ears of those who know what afterward occurred. It was arranged that he should stop at various points upon the somewhat circuitous route which had been laid out, and that he should arrive in Washington on Saturday, February 23. The programme, was pursued accurately till near the close; he made, of course, many speeches, but none added anything to what was already known as to his views.
Meantime the thick rumors of violence were bringing much uneasiness to persons who were under responsibilities. Baltimore was the place where, and its villainous "Plug Uglies" were the persons by whom, the plot, if there was one, was to be executed. Mr. Felton, president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad Company, engaged Allan Pinkerton to explore the matter, and the report of this skillful detective indicated a probability of an attack with the purpose of assassination. At that time the cars were drawn by horses across town from the northern to the southern station, and during the passage an assault could be made with ease and with great chance of success. As yet there was no indication that the authorities intended to make, even if they could make,[124] any adequate arrangements for the protection of the traveler. At Philadelphia Mr. Lincoln was told of the fears of his friends, and talked with Mr. Pinkerton, but he refused to change his plan. On February 22 he was to assist at a flag-raising in Philadelphia, and was then to go on to Harrisburg, and on the following day he was to go from there to Baltimore. He declined to alter either route or hours.
But other persons besides Mr. Felton had been busy with independent detective investigations, the result of which was in full accord with the report of Mr. Pinkerton. On February 22 Mr. Frederick W. Seward, sent by his father and General Scott, both then at Washington, delivered to Mr. Lincoln, at Philadelphia, the message that there was "serious danger" to his life if the time of his passage through Baltimore should be known. Yet Lincoln still remained obdurate. He declared that if an escorting delegation from Baltimore should meet him at Harrisburg, he would go on with it. But at Harrisburg no such escort presented itself. Then the few who knew the situation discussed further as to what should be done, Norman B. Judd being chief spokesman for evading the danger by a change of programme. Naturally the objection of seeming timid and of exciting ridicule was present in the minds of all, and it was put somewhat emphatically by Colonel Sumner. Mr. Lincoln at last settled the dispute; he said: "I have thought over this matter considerably since I went over the ground with Pinkerton last night. The appearance of Mr. Frederick Seward, with warning from another source, confirms Mr. Pinkerton's belief. Unless there are some other reasons besides fear of ridicule, I am disposed to carry out Judd's plan."
This plan was accordingly carried out with the success which its simplicity insured. Mr. Lincoln and his stalwart friend, Colonel Lamon, slipped out of a side door to a hackney carriage, were driven to the railway station, and returned by the train to Philadelphia. Their departure was not noticed, but had it been, news of it could not have been sent away, for Mr. Felton had had the telegraph wires secretly cut outside the town. He also ordered, upon a plausible pretext, that the southward-bound night train on his road should be held back until the arrival of this train from Harrisburg. Mr. Lincoln and Colonel Lamon passed from the one train to the other without recognition, and rolled into Washington early on the following morning. Mr. Seward and Mr. Washburne met Lincoln at the station and went with him to Willard's Hotel. Soon afterward the country was astonished, and perhaps some persons were discomfited, as the telegraph carried abroad the news of his arrival.
Those who were disappointed at this safe conclusion of his journey, if in fact there were any such, together with many who would have contemned assassination, at once showered upon him sneers and ridicule. They said that Lincoln had put on a disguise and had shown the white feather, when there had been no real danger. But this was not just. Whether or not there was the completed machinery of a definite, organized plot for assault and assassination is uncertain; that is to say, this is not proved; yet the evidence is so strong that the majority of investigators seem to agree in the opinion that probably there was a plan thoroughly concerted and ready for execution. Even if there was not, it was very likely that a riot might be suddenly started, which would be as fatal in its consequences as a premeditated scheme. But, after all, the question of the plot is one of mere curiosity and quite aside from the true issue. That issue, so far as it presented itself for determination by Mr. Lincoln, was simply whether a case of such probability of danger was made out that as a prudent man he should overrule the only real objection,—that of exciting ridicule,—and avoid a peril which the best judges believed to exist, and which, if it did exist, involved consequences of immeasurable seriousness not only to himself but to the nation. For a wise man only one conclusion was possible. The story of the disguise was a silly slander, based upon the trifling fact that for this night journey Lincoln wore a traveling cap instead of his hat.
Lincoln's own opinion as to the danger is not quite clear.[125] He said to Mr. Lossing that, after hearing Mr. Seward, he believed "such a plot to be in existence." But he also said: "I did not then, nor do I now, believe I should have been assassinated, had I gone through Baltimore as first contemplated; but I thought it wise to run no risk, where no risk was necessary."
The reflection can hardly fail to occur, how grossly unfair it was that Mr. Lincoln should be put into the position in which he was put at this time, and then that fault should be found with him even if his prudence was overstrained. Many millions of people in the country hated him with a hatred unutterable; among them might well be many fanatics, to whom assassination would seem a noble act, many desperadoes who would regard it as a pleasing excitement; and he was to go through a city which men of this stamp could at any time dominate. The custom of the country compelled this man, whom it had long since selected as its ruler, to make a journey of extreme danger without any species of protection whatsoever. So far as peril went, no other individual in the United States had ever, presumably, been in a peril like that which beset him; so far as safeguards went, he had no more than any other traveler. A few friends volunteered to make the journey with him, but they were useless as guardians; and he and they were so hustled and jammed in the railway stations that one of them actually had his arm broken. This extraordinary spectacle may have indicated folly on the part of the nation which permitted it, but certainly it did not involve the disgrace of the individual who had no choice about it. The people put Mr. Lincoln in a position in which he was subjected to the most appalling, as it is the most vague, of all dangers, and then left him to take care of himself as best he could. It was ungenerous afterward to criticise him for exercising prudence in the performance of that duty which he ought never to have been called upon to perform at all.[126]
Immediately after his arrival in Washington Mr. Lincoln received a visit from the members of the Peace Congress. Grotesque and ridiculous descriptions of him, as if he had been a Caliban in education, manners, and aspect, had been rife among Southerners, and the story goes that the Southern delegates expected to be at once amused and shocked by the sight of a clodhopper whose conversation would be redolent of the barnyard, not to say of the pigsty. Those of them who had any skill in reading character were surprised,— as the tradition is,—discomfited, even a little alarmed, at what in fact they beheld; for Mr. Lincoln appeared before them a self-possessed man, expressing to them such clear convictions and such a distinct and firm purpose as compelled them into new notions of his capacity and told them of much trouble ahead. His remark to Mr. Rives, coming from one who spoke accurately, had an ominous sound in rebellious ears: "My course is as plain as a turnpike road. It is marked out by the Constitution. I am in no doubt which way to go." The wiser Southerners withdrew from this reception quite sober and thoughtful, with some new ideas about the man with whom their relationship seemed on the verge of becoming hostile. After abundant allowance is made for the enthusiasm of Northern admirers, it remains certain that Lincoln bore well this severe ordeal of criticism on the part of those who would have been glad to despise him. Ungainly they saw him, but not undignified, and the strange impressive sadness seldom dwelt so strikingly upon his face as at this time, as though all the weight of misery, which the millions of his fellow citizens were to endure throughout the coming years, already burdened the soul of the ruler who had been chosen to play the most responsible part in the crisis and the anguish.
March 4, 1861, inauguration day, was fine and sunny. If there had ever been any real danger of trouble, the fear of it had almost entirely subsided. Northerners and Southerners had found out in good season that General Scott was not in a temporizing mood; he had in the city two batteries, a few companies of regulars,—653 men, exclusive of some marines,—and the corps of picked Washington Volunteers. He said that this force was all he wanted. President Buchanan left the White House in an open carriage, escorted by a company of sappers and miners under Captain Duane. At Willard's Hotel Mr. Lincoln entered the carriage, and the two gentlemen passed along the avenue, through crowds which cheered but made no disturbance, to the Capitol. General Scott with his regulars marched, "flanking the movement, in parallel streets." His two batteries, while not made unpleasantly conspicuous, yet controlled the plateau which extends before the east front of the Capitol. Mr. Lincoln was simply introduced by Senator Baker of Oregon, and delivered his inaugural address. His voice had great carrying capacity, and the vast crowd heard with ease a speech of which every sentence was fraught with an importance and scrutinized with an anxiety far beyond that of any other speech ever delivered in the United States. At its close the venerable Chief Justice Taney administered the oath of office, thereby informally but effectually reversing the most famous opinion delivered by him during his long incumbency in his high office.
The inaugural address was simple, earnest, and direct, unincumbered by that rhetorical ornamentation which the American people have always admired as the highest form of eloquence. Those Northerners who had expected magniloquent periods and exaggerated outbursts of patriotism were disappointed; and as they listened in vain for the scream of the eagle, many grumbled at the absence of what they conceived to be force. Yet the general feeling was of satisfaction, which grew as the address was more thoroughly studied. The Southerners, upon their part, looking anxiously to see whether or not they must fight for their purpose, construed the words of the new President correctly. They heard him say: "The union of these States is perpetual." "No State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union." "I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States." He also declared his purpose "to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts." These sentences made up the issue directly with secession, and the South, reading them, knew that, if the North was ready to back the President, war was inevitable; none the less so because Mr. Lincoln closed with patriotic and generous words: "We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection."
Until after the election of Mr. Lincoln in November, 1860, the sole issue between the North and the South, between Republicans on the one hand and Democrats and Compromisers on the other, had related to slavery. Logically, the position of the Republicans was impregnable. Their platforms and their leaders agreed that the party intended strictly to respect the Constitution, and not to interfere at all with slavery in the States within which it now lawfully existed. They said with truth that they had in no case deprived the slaveholding communities of their rights, and they denied the truth of the charge that they cherished an inchoate design to interfere with those rights; adding very truly that, at worst, a mere design, which did not find expression in an overt act, could give no right of action to the South. Mr. Lincoln had been most explicit in declaring that the opposition to slavery was not to go beyond efforts to prevent its extension, which efforts would be wholly within the Constitution and the law. He repeated these things in his inaugural.
But while these incontrovertible allegations gave the Republicans a logical advantage of which they properly made the most, the South claimed a right to make other collateral and equally undeniable facts the ground of action. The only public matter in connection with which Mr. Lincoln had won any reputation was that of slavery. No one could deny that he had been elected because the Republican party had been pleased with his expression of opinion on this subject. Now his most pointed and frequently reiterated expression of that opinion was that slavery was a "moral, social, and political evil;" and this language was a fair equivalent of the statement of the Republican platform of 1856, classing Slavery and Mormonism together, as "twin relics of barbarism." That the North was willing, or would long be willing, to remain in amicable social and political bonds with a moral, social, and political evil, and a relic of barbarism, was intrinsically improbable, and was made more improbable by the symptoms of the times.[127] Indeed, Mr. Seward had said, in famous words, that his section would not play this unworthy part; he had proclaimed already the existence of an "irrepressible conflict;" and therefore the South had the word of the Republican leader that, in spite of the Republican respect for the law, an anti-slavery crusade was already in existence. The Southern chiefs distinctly recognized and accepted this situation.[128] There was an avowed Northern condemnation of their institution; there was an acknowledged "conflict." Such being the case, it was the opinion of the chief men at the South that the position taken by the North, of strict performance of clear constitutional duties concerning an odious institution, would not suffice for the safe perpetuation of that institution.[129] This, their judgment, appeared to be in a certain way also the judgment of Mr. Lincoln; for he also conceived that to put slavery where the "fathers" had left it was to put it "in the way of ultimate extinction;" and he had, in the most famous utterance of his life, given his forecast of the future to the effect that the country would in time be "all free." The only logical deduction was that he, and the Republican party which had agreed with him sufficiently to make him president, believed that the South had no lawful recourse by which this result, however unwelcome or ruinous, could in the long run and the fullness of time be escaped. Under such circumstances Southern political leaders now decided that the time for separation had come. In speaking of their scheme they called it "secession," and said that secession was a lawful act because the Constitution was a compact revocable by any of the parties. They might have called it "revolution,"[130] and have defended it upon the general right of any large body of people, dissatisfied with the government under which they find themselves, to cast it off. But, if the step was revolution, then the burden of proof was upon them; whereas they said that secession was their lawful right, without any regard whatsoever to the motive which induced them to exercise it.[131] Such was the character of the issue between the North and the South prior to the first ordinance of secession. The action of South Carolina, followed by the other Gulf States, at once changed that issue, shifting it from pro-slavery versus anti-slavery to union versus disunion. This alteration quickly compelled great numbers of men, both at the North and at the South, to reconsider and, upon a new issue, to place themselves also anew.
It has been said by all writers that in the seven seceding States there was, in the four months following the election, a very large proportion of "Union men." The name only signified that these men did not think that the present inducements to disunion were sufficient to render it a wise measure. It did not signify that they thought disunion unlawful, unconstitutional, and treasonable. When, however, state conventions decided the question of advisability against their opinions, and they had to choose between allegiance to the State and allegiance to the Union, they immediately adhered to the State, and this none the less because they feared that she had taken an ill-advised step. That is to say, at the South a "Union man" wished to preserve the Union, whereas at the North a "Union man" recognized a supreme obligation to do so.
While the South, by political alchemy, was becoming solidified and homogeneous, a corresponding change was going on at the North. In that section the great numbers—of whom some would have re-made the Constitution, others would have agreed to peaceable separation, and still others would have made any concession to retain the integrity of the Union—now saw that these were indeed, as Jefferson Davis had said, "quack nostrums," and that the choice lay between permitting a secession accompanied with insulting menaces and some degree of actual violence, and maintaining the Union by coercion. In this dilemma great multitudes of Northern Democrats, whose consciences had never been in the least disturbed by the existence of slavery in the country or even by efforts to extend it, became "Union men" in the Northern sense of the word, which made it about equivalent to coercionists. Their simple creed was the integrity and perpetuity of the nation.
Mr. Lincoln showed in his inaugural his accurate appreciation of the new situation. Owing all that he had become in the world to a few anti-slavery speeches, elevated to the presidency by votes which really meant little else than hostility to slavery, what was more natural than that he should at this moment revert to this great topic and make the old dispute the main part and real substance of his address? But this fatal error he avoided. With unerring judgment he dwelt little on that momentous issue which had only just been displaced, and took his stand fairly upon that still more momentous one which had so newly come up. He spoke for the Union; upon that basis a united North ought to support him; upon that basis the more northern of the slave States might remain loyal. As matter of fact, Union had suddenly become the real issue, but it needed at the hands of the President to be publicly and explicitly announced as such; this recognition was essential; he gave it on this earliest opportunity, and the announcement was the first great service of the new Republican ruler. It seems now as though he could hardly have done otherwise, or have fallen into the error of allying himself with bygone or false issues. It may be admitted that he could not have passed this new one by; but the important matter was that of proportion and relation, and in this it was easy to blunder. In truth it was a crisis when blundering was so easy that nearly all the really able men of the North had been doing it badly for three or four months past, and not a few of them were going to continue it for two or three months to come. Therefore the sound conception of the inaugural deserves to be considered as an indication, one among many, of Lincoln's capacity for seeing with entire distinctness the great main fact, and for recognizing it as such. Other matters, which lay over and around such a fact, side issues, questions of detail, affairs of disguise or deception, never confused or misled him. He knew with unerring accuracy where the biggest fact lay, and he always anchored fast to it and stayed with it. For many years he had been anchored to anti-slavery; now, in the face of the nation, he shifted his anchorage to the Union; and each time he held securely.
[114] Breckenridge was the legitimate representative of the administrationists, and his ticket received only 847,953 votes out of 4,680,193. Douglas and Buchanan were at open war.
[115] See remarks of Mr. Elaine upon use of this word. Twenty Years of Congress, i. 219.
[116] But it should be said that Attorney-General Black supported these views in a very elaborate opinion, which he had furnished to the President, and which was transmitted to Congress at the same time with the message.
[117] Greeley afterwards truly said that his journal had plenty of company in these sentiments, even among the Republican sheets. Amer. Conflict, i. 359. Reference is made in the text to the utterances of the Tribune more because it was so prominent and influential than because it was very peculiar in its position.
[118] Wilson, Rise and Fall of Slave Power, iii. 63-69; N. and H. in. 255. See account of "the Pine Street meeting," New York, in Dix's Memoirs of Dix, i. 347.
[119] For an account of this by General Dix himself, see Memoirs of John A. Dix, by Morgan Dix, i. 370-373.
[120] Arkansas, California, Michigan, Minnesota, Oregon, and Wisconsin
[121] It differed from that of the United States very little, save in containing a distinct recognition of slavery, and in being made by the States instead of by the people.
[122] American Conflict, i. 351.
[123] This includes Delaware, 110,420, and Maryland, 599,846.
[124] Marshal Kane and most of the police were reported to be Secessionists. Pinkerton, Spy of the Rebellion, 50, 61.
[125] Lamon says that Mr. Lincoln afterwards regretted this journey, and became convinced "that he had committed a grave mistake." Lamon, 527. So also McClure, 45, 48.
[126] For accounts of this journey and statements of the evidence of a plot, see Schouler, Hist. of Mass. in Civil War, i. 59-65 (account by Samuel M. Felton, Prest. P.W. & B.R.R. Co.); N. and H. iii. ch. 19 and 20; Chittenden, Recoll. of Lincoln, x.; Holland, 275; Arnold, 183-187; Lamon, ch. xx. (this account ought to be, and doubtless is, the most trustworthy); Herndon, 492 (a bit of gossip which sounds improbable); Pinkerton, Spy of the Rebellion, 45-103. On the anti-plot side of the question the most important evidence is the little volume, Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861, by George William Brown. This witness, whose strict veracity is beyond question, was mayor of the city. One of his statements, especially, is of the greatest importance. It is obvious that, if the plot existed, one of two things ought to occur on the morning of February 23, viz.: either the plotters and the mobsmen should know that Mr. Lincoln had escaped them, or else they should be at the station at the hour set for his arrival. In fact they were not at the station; there was no sudden assault on the cars, nor other indication of assassins and a mob. Had they, then, received knowledge of what had occurred? Those who sustain the plot-theory say that the news had spread through the city, so that all the assassins and the gangs of the "Plug Uglies" knew that their game was up. This was possible, for Mr. Lincoln had arrived in the Washington station a few minutes after six o'clock in the morning, and the train which was expected to bring him to Baltimore did not arrive in Baltimore until half after eleven o'clock. But, on the other hand, the news was not dispatched from Washington immediately upon his arrival; somewhat later, though still early in the morning, the detectives telegraphed to the friends of Mr. Lincoln, but in cipher. Just at what time intelligible telegrams, which would inform the public, were sent out cannot be learned; but upon any arrangement of hours it is obvious that the time was exceedingly short for distributing the news throughout the lower quarters of Baltimore by word of mouth, and there is no pretense of any publication. But while the believers in the plot say, nevertheless, that this had been done and that the story of the journey had spread through the city so that all the assassins and "Plug Uglies" knew it in time to avoid assembling at the railway station about eleven o'clock, yet it appears that Mr. Brown, the mayor, knew nothing about it. On the contrary, he tells us that in anticipation of Mr. Lincoln's arrival he, "as mayor of the city, accompanied by the police commissioners and supported by a strong force of police, was at the Calvert Street station on Saturday morning, February 23, at 11.30 o'clock ... ready to receive with due respect the incoming President. An open carriage was in waiting, in which I was to have the honor of escorting Mr. Lincoln through the city to the Washington station, and of sharing in any danger which he might encounter. It is hardly necessary to say that I apprehended none." To the "great astonishment" of Mr. Brown, however, the train brought only "Mrs. Lincoln and her three sons," and "it was then announced that he had passed through the city incognito in the night train." This is a small bit of evidence to set against the elaborate stories of the believers in the plot, yet to some it will seem like the little obstruction which suffices to throw a whole railway train from the track. I would rather let any reader, who is sufficiently interested to examine the matter, reach his own conclusion, than endeavor to furnish one for him; for I think that a dispute more difficult of really conclusive settlement will not easily be found.
[127] Some of the Southern members of Congress collected and recited sundry noteworthy utterances of Republicans concerning slavery, and certainly there was little in them to induce a sense of security on the part of slaveholders. Wilson, Rise and Fall of Slave Power, iii. 97, 154.
[128] Toombs declared, as Lincoln had said, that what was wanted was that the North should call slavery right. Wilson, Rise and Fall of Slave Power, iii. 76. Stephens declared the "corner-stone" of the new government to be "the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery ... is his natural and normal condition;" and said that it was the first government "in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth." N. and H. iii. 203; and see his letter to Lincoln, ibid. 272, 273. Mississippi, in declaring the causes of her secession, said: "Our position is thoroughly identical with the institution of slavery,—the greatest material interest in the world." N. and H. iii. 201. Senator Mason of Virginia said: "It is a war of sentiment, of opinion; a war of one form of society against another form of society." Wilson, Rise and Fall of Slave Power, iii. 26. Green of Missouri ascribed the trouble to the "vitiated and corrupted state of public sentiment." Ibid. 23. Iverson of Georgia said it was the "public sentiment" at the North, not the "overt acts" of the Republican administration, that was feared; and said that there was ineradicable enmity between the two sections, which had not lived together in peace, were not so living now, and could not be expected to do so in the future. Ibid. 17.
[129] Historians generally seem to admit that the South had to choose between making the fight now, and seeing its favorite institution gradually become extinct.
[130] Sometimes, though very rarely, the word was used.
[131] See Lincoln's message to Congress, July 4, 1861.
From the inaugural ceremonies Lincoln drove quietly back through Pennsylvania Avenue and entered the White House, the President of the United States,—alas, united no longer. Many an anxious citizen breathed more freely when the dreaded hours had passed without disturbance. But burdens a thousand fold heavier than any which were lifted from others descended upon the new ruler. Save, however, that the thoughtful, far-away expression of sadness had of late seemed deeper and more impressive than ever before, Lincoln gave no sign of inward trouble. His singular temperament armed him with a rare and peculiar strength beneath responsibility and in the face of duty. He has been seen, with entire tranquillity, not only seeking, but seeming to assume as his natural due or destiny, positions which appeared preposterously out of accord alike with his early career and with his later opportunities for development. In trying to explain this, it is easier to say what was not the underlying quality than what it was. Certainly there was no taint whatsoever of that vulgar self-confidence which is so apt to lead the "free and equal" citizens of the great republic into grotesque positions. Perhaps it was a grand simplicity of faith; a profound instinctive confidence that by patient, honest thinking it would be possible to know the right road, and by earnest enduring courage to follow it. Perhaps it was that so-called divine inspiration which seems always a part of the highest human fitness. The fact which is distinctly visible is, that a fair, plain and honest method of thinking saved him from the perplexities which beset subtle dialecticians in politics and in constitutional law. He had lately said that his course was "as plain as a turnpike road;" it was, to execute the public laws.
His duty was simple; his understanding of it was unclouded by doubt or sophistry; his resolution to do it was firm; but whether his hands would be strengthened sufficiently to enable him to do it was a question of grave anxiety. The president of a republic can do everything if the people are at his back, and almost nothing if the people are not at his back. Where, then, were now the people of the United States? In seven States they were openly and unitedly against him; in at least seven more they were under a very strong temptation to range themselves against him in case of a conflict; and as for the Republican States of the North, on that fourth day of March, 1861, no man could say to what point they would sustain the administration. There had as yet come slight indications of any change in the conceding, compromising temper of that section. Greeley and Seward and Wendell Phillips, representative men, were little better than Secessionists. The statement sounds ridiculous, yet the proof against each comes from his own mouth. The "Tribune" had retracted none of those disunion sentiments, of which examples have been given. Even so late as April 10, 1861, Mr. Seward wrote officially to Mr. C.F. Adams, minister to England: "Only an imperial and despotic government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of the state. This federal, republican country of ours is, of all forms of government, the very one which is the most unfitted for such a labor." He had been and still was favoring delay and conciliation, in the visionary hope that the seceders would follow the scriptural precedent of the prodigal son. On April 9 the rumor of a fight at Sumter being spread abroad, Mr. Phillips said:[132] "Here are a series of States, girding the Gulf, who think that their peculiar institutions require that they should have a separate government. They have a right to decide that question without appealing to you or me.... Standing with the principles of '76 behind us, who can deny them the right?... Abraham Lincoln has no right to a soldier in Fort Sumter.... There is no longer a Union.... Mr. Jefferson Davis is angry, and Mr. Abraham Lincoln is mad, and they agree to fight.... You cannot go through Massachusetts and recruit men to bombard Charleston or New Orleans.... We are in no condition to fight.... Nothing but madness can provoke war with the Gulf States;"—with much more to the same effect.
If the veterans of the old anti-slavery contest were in this frame of mind in April, Lincoln could hardly place much dependence upon the people at large in March. If he could not "recruit men" in Massachusetts, in what State could he reasonably expect to do so? Against such discouragement it can only be said that he had a singular instinct for the underlying popular feeling, that he could scent it in the distance and in hiding; moreover, that he was always willing to run the chance of any consequences which might follow the performance of a clear duty. Still, as he looked over the dreary Northern field in those chill days of early March, he must have had a marvelous sensitiveness in order to perceive the generative heat and force in the depths beneath the cheerless surface and awaiting only the fullness of the near spring season to burst forth in sudden universal vigor. Yet such was his knowledge and such his faith concerning the people that we may fancy, if we will, that he foresaw the great transformation. But there were still other matters which disturbed him. Before his inauguration, he had heard much of his coming official isolation. One of the arguments reiterated alike by Southern Unionists and by Northerners had been that the Republican President would be powerless, because the Senate, the House, and the Supreme Court were all opposed to him. But the supposed lack of political sympathy on the part of these bodies, however it might beget anxiety for the future, was for the present of much less moment than another fact, viz., that none of the distinguished men, leaders in his own party, whom Lincoln found about him at Washington, were in a frame of mind to assist him efficiently. If all did not actually distrust his capacity and character,—which, doubtless, many honestly did,—at least they were profoundly ignorant concerning both. Therefore they could not yet, and did not, place genuine, implicit confidence in him; they could not yet, and did not, advise and aid him at all in the same spirit and with the same usefulness as later they were able to do. They were not to blame for this; on the contrary, the condition had been brought about distinctly against their will, since certainly few of them had looked with favor upon the selection of an unknown, inexperienced, ill-educated man as the Republican candidate for the presidency. How much Lincoln felt his loneliness will never be known; for, reticent and self-contained at all times, he gave no outward sign. That he felt it less than other men would have done may be regarded as certain; for, as has already appeared to some extent, and as will appear much more in this narrative, he was singularly self-reliant, and, at least in appearance, was strangely indifferent to any counsel or support which could be brought to him by others. Yet, marked as was this trait in him, he could hardly have been human had he not felt oppressed by the personal solitude and political isolation of his position when the responsibility of his great office rested newly upon him. Under all these circumstances, if this lonely man moved slowly and cautiously during the early weeks of his administration, it was not at his door that the people had the right to lay the reproach of weakness or hesitation.
Mr. Buchanan, for the convenience of his successor, had called an extra session of the Senate, and on March 5 President Lincoln sent in the nominations for his cabinet. All were immediately confirmed, as follows:—