Chapter 10

This first official mistake of Lincoln's was in giving way to the fears of his retinue for his safety. The time had become hysterical. The wildest sort of stories filled the air. Even before he left Springfield there were rumors of plots to assassinate him.(6) On his arrival at Philadelphia information was submitted to his companions which convinced them that his life was in danger--an attempt would be made to kill him as he passed through Baltimore. Seward at Washington had heard the same story and had sent his son to Philadelphia to advise caution. Lincoln's friends insisted that he leave his special train and proceed to Washington with only one companion, on an ordinary night train. Railway officials were called in. Elaborate precautions were arranged. The telegraph lines were all to be disconnected for a number of hours so that even if the conspirators--assuming there were any--should discover his change of plan, they would be unable to communicate with Baltimore. The one soldier in the party, Colonel Sumner, vehemently protested that these changes were all "a damned piece of cowardice." But Lincoln acquiesced in the views of the majority of his advisers. He passed through Baltimore virtually in disguise; nothing happened; no certain evidence of a conspiracy was discovered. And all his enemies took up the cry of cowardice and rang the changes upon it.(7)

Meanwhile, despite all this semblance of indecision, of feebleness, there were signs that the real inner Lincoln, however clouded, was still alive. By way of offset to his fatuous utterances, there might have been set, had the Country been in a mood to weigh with care, several strong and clear pronouncements. And these were not merely telling phrases like that characteristic one about the bookkeeping of the front door. His mind was struggling out of its shadow. And the mode of its reappearance was significant. His reasoning upon the true meaning of the struggle he was about to enter, reached a significant stage in the speech he made at Harrisburg.(8)

"I have often inquired of myself," he said, "what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy (the United States) so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the motherland, but that sentiment in the Declaration of Independence which gave liberty not alone to the people of the country but hope to all the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men and that all should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved on that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world, if I can help to save it. If it can not be saved upon that principle, it will be truly awful. But if this country can not be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it. Now, in my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance that there will be no bloodshed unless it is forced upon the government. The government will not use force unless force is used against it."

The two ideas underlying this utterance had grown in his thought steadily, consistently, ever since their first appearance in the Protest twenty-four years previous. The great issue to which all else--slavery, "dominion status," everything--was subservient, was the preservation of democratic institutions; the means to that end was the preservation of the Federal government. Now, as in 1852, his paramount object was not to "disappoint the Liberal party throughout the world," to prove that Democracy, when applied on a great scale, had yet sufficient coherence to remain intact, no matter how powerful, nor how plausible, were the forces of disintegration.

Dominated by this purpose he came to Washington. There he met Seward. It was the stroke of fate for both men. Seward, indeed, did not know that it was. He was still firmly based in the delusion that he, not Lincoln, was the genius of the hour. And he had this excuse, that it was also the country's delusion. There was pretty general belief both among friends and foes that Lincoln would be ruled by his Cabinet. In a council that was certain to include leaders of accepted influence--Seward, Chase, Cameron--what chance for this untried newcomer, whose prestige had been reared not on managing men, but on uttering words? In Seward's thoughts the answer was as inevitable as the table of addition. Equally mathematical was the conclusion that only one unit gave value to the combination. And, of course, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate was the unit. A severe experience had to be lived through before Seward made his peace with destiny. Lincoln was the quicker to perceive when they came together that something had happened. Almost from the minute of their meeting, he began to lean upon Seward; but only in a certain way. This was not the same thing as that yielding to the practical advisers which began at Philadelphia, which was subsequently to be the cause of so much confusion. His response to Seward was intellectual. It was of the inner man and revealed itself in his style of writing.

Hitherto, Lincoln's progress in literature had been marked by the development of two characteristics and by the lack of a third. The two that he possessed were taste and rhythm. At the start he was free from the prevalent vice of his time, rhetoricality. His "Address to the Voters of Sangamon County" which was his first state paper, was as direct, as free from bombast, as the greatest of his later achievements. Almost any other youth who had as much of the sense of language as was there exhibited, would have been led astray by the standards of the hour, would have mounted the spread-eagle and flapped its wings in rhetorical clamor. But Lincoln was not precocious. In art, as in everything else, he progressed slowly; the literary part of him worked its way into the matter-of-fact part of him with the gradualness of the daylight through a shadowy wood. It was not constant in its development. For many years it was little more than an irregular deepening of his two original characteristics, taste and rhythm. His taste, fed on Blackstone, Shakespeare, and the Bible, led him more and more exactingly to say just what he meant, to eschew the wiles of decoration, to be utterly non-rhetorical. His sense of rhythm, beginning simply, no more at first than a good ear for the sound of words, deepened into keen perception of the character of the word-march, of that extra significance which is added to an idea by the way it conducts itself, moving grandly or feebly as the case may be, from the unknown into the known, and thence across a perilous horizon, into memory. On the basis of these two characteristics he had acquired a style that was a rich blend of simplicity, directness, candor, joined with a clearness beyond praise, with a delightful cadence, having always a splendidly ordered march of ideas.

But there was the third thing in which the earlier style of Lincoln's was wanting. Marvelously apt for the purpose of the moment, his writings previous to 1861 are vanishing from the world's memory. The more notable writings of his later years have become classics. And the difference does not turn on subject-matter. All the ideas of his late writings had been formulated in the earlier. The difference is purely literary. The earlier writings were keen, powerful, full of character, melodious, impressive. The later writings have all these qualities, and in addition, that constant power to awaken the imagination, to carry an idea beyond its own horizon into a boundless world of imperishable literary significance, which power in argumentative prose is beauty. And how did Lincoln attain this? That he had been maturing from within the power to do this, one is compelled by the analogy of his other mental experiences to believe. At the same time, there can be no doubt who taught him the trick, who touched the secret spring and opened the new door to his mind. It was Seward. Long since it had been agreed between them that Seward was to be Secretary of State.(9) Lincoln asked him to criticize his inaugural. Seward did so, and Lincoln, in the main, accepted his criticism. But Seward went further. He proposed a new paragraph. He was not a great writer and yet he had something of that third thing which Lincoln hitherto had not exhibited. However, in pursuing beauty of statement, he often came dangerously near to mere rhetoric; his taste was never sure; his sense of rhythm was inferior; the defects of his qualities were evident. None the less, Lincoln saw at a glance that if he could infuse into Seward's words his own more robust qualities, the result--'would be a richer product than had ever issued from his own qualities as hitherto he had known them. He effected this transmutation and in doing so raised his style to a new range of effectiveness. The great Lincoln of literature appeared in the first inaugural and particularly in that noble passage which was the work of Lincoln and Seward together. In a way it said only what Lincoln had already said--especially in the speech at Harrisburg--but with what a difference!

"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.

"I am loath to close. We are not enemies but friends. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."*

*Lincoln VI, 184; N. & H., III, 343. Seward advised the omission of part of the original draft of the first of these two paragraphs. After "defend it," Lincoln had written, "You can forbear the assault upon it. I can not shrink from the defense of it. With you and not with me is the solemn question 'Shall it be peace or a sword?'" Having struck this out, he accepted Seward's advice to add "some words of affection--some of calm and cheerful confidence."

The original version of the concluding paragraph was prepared by Seward and read as follows: "I close. We are not, we must not he aliens or enemies, but fellow-countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly, they must not, I am sure, they will not, be broken. The mystic chords which, proceeding from so many battlefields and so many patriot graves, pass through all the hearts and all hearths in this broad continent of ours, will yet again harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the nation."

These words, now so famous, were spoken in the east portico of the Capitol on "one of our disagreeable, clear, windy, Washington spring days."(10) Most of the participants were agitated; many were alarmed. Chief Justice Taney who administered the oath could hardly speak, so near to uncontrollable was his emotion. General Scott anxiously kept his eye upon the crowd which was commanded by cannon. Cavalry were in readiness to clear the streets in case of riot. Lincoln's carriage on the way to the Capitol had been closely guarded. He made his way to the portico between files of soldiers. So intent--overintent--were his guardians upon his safety that they had been careless of the smaller matter of his comfort. There was insufficient room for the large company that had been invited to attend. The new President stood beside a rickety little table and saw no place on which to put his hat. Senator Douglas stepped forward and relieved him of the burden. Lincoln was "pale and very nervous," and toward the close of his speech, visibly affected. Observers differ point-blank as to the way the inaugural was received. The "Public Man" says that there was little enthusiasm. The opposite version makes the event an oratorical triumph, with the crowd, at the close, completely under his spell.(11)

On the whole, the inauguration and the festivities that followed appear to have formed a dismal event. While Lincoln spoke, the topmost peak of the Capitol, far above his head, was an idle derrick; the present dome was in process of construction; work on it had been arrested, and who could say when, if ever, the work would be resumed? The day closed with an inaugural ball that was anything but brilliant. "The great tawdry ballroom . . . not half full--and such an assemblage of strange costumes, male and female. Very few people of any consideration were there. The President looked exhausted and uncomfortable, and most ungainly in his dress; and Mrs. Lincoln all in blue, with a feather in her hair and a highly flushed face."(12)

XV. PRESIDENT AND PREMIER

The brilliant Secretary, who so promptly began to influence the President had very sure foundations for that influence. He was inured to the role of great man; he had a rich experience of public life; while Lincoln, painfully conscious of his inexperience, was perhaps the humblest-minded ruler that ever took the helm of a ship of state in perilous times. Furthermore, Seward had some priceless qualities which, for Lincoln, were still to seek. First of all, he had audacity--personally, artistically, politically. Seward's instantaneous gift to Lincoln was by way of throwing wide the door of his gathering literary audacity. There is every reason to think that Seward's personal audacity went to Lincoln's heart at once. To be sure, he was not yet capable of going along with it. The basal contrast of the first month of his administration lies between the President's caution and the boldness of the Secretary. Nevertheless, to a sensitive mind, seeking guidance, surrounded by less original types of politicians, the splendid fearlessness of Seward, whether wise or foolish, must have rung like a trumpet peal soaring over the heads of a crowd whose teeth were chattering. While the rest of the Cabinet pressed their ears to the ground, Seward thought out a policy, made a forecast of the future, and offered to stake his head on the correctness of his reasoning. This may have been rashness; it may have been folly; but, intellectually at least, it was valor. Among Lincoln's other advisers, valor at that moment was lacking. Contrast, however, was not the sole, nor the surest basis of Seward's appeal to Lincoln. Their characters had a common factor. For all their immeasurable difference in externals, both at bottom were void of malice. It was this characteristic above all others that gave them spiritually common ground. In Seward, this quality had been under fire for a long while. The political furies of "that iron time" had failed to rouse echoes in his serene and smiling soul. Therefore, many men who accepted him as leader because, indeed, they could not do without him--because none other in their camp had his genius for management, for the glorification of political intrigue--these same men followed him doubtfully, with bad grace, willing to shift to some other leader whenever he might arise. The clue to their distrust was Seward's amusement at the furious. Could a man who laughed when you preached on the beauty of the hewing of Agag, could such a man be sincere? And that Seward in some respects was not sincere, history generally admits. He loved to poke fun at his opponents by appearing to sneer at himself, by ridiculing the idea that he was ever serious. His scale of political values was different from that of most of his followers. Nineteen times out of twenty, he would treat what they termed "principles" as mere political counters, as legitimate subjects of bargain. If by any deal he could trade off any or all of these nineteen in order to secure the twentieth, which for him was the only vital one, he never scrupled to do so. Against a lurid background of political ferocity, this amused, ironic figure came to be rated by the extremists, both in his own and in the enemy camp as Mephistopheles.

No quality could have endeared him more certainly to Lincoln than the very one which the bigots misunderstood. From his earliest youth Lincoln had been governed by this same quality. With his non-censorious mind, which accepted so much of life as he found it, which was forever stripping principles of their accretions, what could be more inevitable than his warming to the one great man at Washington who like him held that such a point of view was the only rational one. Seward's ironic peacefulness in the midst of the storm gained in luster because all about him raged a tempest of ferocity, mitigated, at least so far as the distracted President could see, only by self-interest or pacifism.

As Lincoln came into office, he could see and hear many signs of a rising fierceness of sectional hatred. His secretary records with disgust a proposal to conquer the Gulf States, expel their white population, and reduce the region to a gigantic state preserve, where negroes should grow cotton under national supervision.(1) "We of the North," said Senator Baker of Oregon, "are a majority of the Union, and we will govern our Union in our own way."(2) At the other extreme was the hysterical pacifism of the Abolitionists. Part of Lincoln's abiding quarrel with the Abolitionists was their lack of national feeling. Their peculiar form of introspection had injected into politics the idea of personal sin. Their personal responsibility for slavery--they being part of a country that tolerated it--was their basal inspiration. Consequently, the most distinctive Abolitionists welcomed this opportunity to cast off their responsibility. If war had been proposed as a crusade to abolish slavery, their attitude might have been different But in March, 1860, no one but the few ultra-extremists, whom scarcely anybody heeded, dreamed of such a war. A war to restore the Union was the only sort that was considered seriously. Such a war, the Abolitionists bitterly condemned. They seized upon pacifism as their defense. Said Whittier of the Seceding States:

They break the links of Union: shall we light The fires of hell to weld anew the chain, On that red anvil where each blow is pain?

The fury and the fear offended Lincoln in equal measure. After long years opposing the political temper of the extremists, he was not the man now to change front. To one who believed himself marked out for a tragic end, the cowardice at the heart of the pacifism of his time was revolting. It was fortunate for his own peace of mind that he could here count on the Secretary of State. No argument based on fear of pain would meet in Seward with anything but derision. "They tell us," he had once said, and the words expressed his constant attitude, "that we are to encounter opposition. Why, bless my soul, did anybody ever expect to reach a fortune, or fame, or happiness on earth or a crown in heaven, without encountering resistance and opposition? What are we made men for but to encounter and overcome opposition arrayed against us in the line of our duty?"(3)

But if the ferocity and the cowardice were offensive and disheartening, there was something else that was beneath contempt. Never was self-interest more shockingly displayed. It was revealed in many ways, but impinged upon the new President in only one. A horde of office-seekers besieged him in the White House. The parallel to this amazing picture can hardly be found in history. It was taken for granted that the new party would make a clean sweep of the whole civil list, that every government employee down to the humblest messenger boy too young to have political ideas was to bear the label of the victorious party. Every Congressman who had made promises to his constituents, every politician of every grade who thought he had the party in his debt, every adventurer who on any pretext could make a showing of party service rendered, poured into Washington. It was a motley horde.

"Hark, hark, the dogs do bark, The beggars are coming to town."

They converted the White House into a leaguer. They swarmed into the corridors and even the private passages. So dense was the swarm that it was difficult to make one's way either in or out. Lincoln described himself by the image of a man renting rooms at one end of his house while the other end was on fire.(4) And all this while the existence of the Republic was at stake! It did not occur to him that it was safe to defy the horde, to send it about its business. Here again, the figure of Seward stood out in brilliant light against the somber background. One of Seward's faculties was his power to form devoted lieutenants. He had that sure and nimble judgment which enables some men to inspire their lieutenants rather than categorically to instruct them. All the sordid side of his political games he managed in this way. He did not appear himself as the bargainer. In the shameful eagerness of most of the politicians to find offices for their retainers, Seward was conspicuous by contrast. Even the Cabinet was not free from this vice of catering to the thirsty horde.(5) Alone, at this juncture, Seward detached himself from the petty affairs of the hour and gave his whole attention to statecraft.

He had a definite policy. Another point of contact with Lincoln was the attitude of both toward the Union, supplemented as it was by their views of the place of slavery in the problem they confronted. Both were nationalists ready to make any sacrifices for the national idea. Both regarded slavery as an issue of second importance. Both were prepared for great concessions if convinced that, ultimately, their concessions would strengthen the trend of American life toward a general exaltation of nationality.

On the other hand, their differences--