Chapter 12

His purpose, he said, was to change the question before the public, from one upon slavery, or about slavery, for a question upon Union or Disunion. Sumter was to be evacuated "as a safe means for changing the issue," but at the same time, preparations were to be made for a blockade of the Southern coast.(20) This extraordinary document administered mild but firm correction to the President. He was told that he had no policy, although under the circumstances, this was "not culpable"; that there must be a single head to the government; that the President, if not equal to the task, should devolve it upon some member of the Cabinet. The Thoughts closed with these words, "I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility."

Like Seward's previous move, when he sent Weed to Springfield, this other brought Lincoln to a point of crisis. For the second time he must render a decision that would turn the scale, that would have for his country the force of destiny. In one respect he did not hesitate. The most essential part of the Thoughts was the predatory spirit. This clashed with Lincoln's character. Serene unscrupulousness met unwavering integrity. Here was one of those subjects on which Lincoln was not asking advice. As to ways and means, he was pliable to a degree in the hands of richer and wider experience; as to principles, he was a rock. Seward's whole scheme of aggrandizement, his magnificent piracy, was calmly waved aside as a thing of no concern. The most striking characteristic of Lincoln's reply was its dignity. He did not, indeed, lay bare his purposes. He was content to point out certain inconsistencies in Seward's argument; to protest that whatever action might be taken with regard to the single fortress, Sumter, the question before the public could not be changed by that one event; and to say that while he expected advice from all his Cabinet, he was none the less President, and in last resort he would himself direct the policy of the government.(21)

Only a strong man could have put up with the patronizing condescension of the Thoughts and betrayed no irritation. Not a word in Lincoln's reply gives the least hint that condescension had been displayed. He is wholly unruffled, distant, objective. There is also a quiet tone of finality, almost the tone one might use in gently but firmly correcting a child. The Olympian impertinence of the Thoughts had struck out of Lincoln the first flash of that approaching masterfulness by means of which he was to ride out successfully such furious storms. Seward was too much the man of the world not to see what had happened. He never touched upon the Thoughts again. Nor did Lincoln. The incident was secret until Lincoln's secretaries twenty-five years afterward published it to the world.

But Lincoln's lofty dignity on the first of April was of a moment only. When the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, that same day called on him in his offices, he was the easy-going, jovial Lincoln who was always ready half-humorously to take reproof from subordinates--as was evinced by his greeting to the Secretary. Looking up from his writing, he said cheerfully, "What have I done wrong?"(22) Gideon Welles was a pugnacious man, and at that moment an angry man. There can be little doubt that his lips were tightly shut, that a stern frown darkened his brows. Grimly conscientious was Gideon Welles, likewise prosaic; a masterpiece of literalness, the very opposite in almost every respect of the Secretary of State whom he cordially detested. That he had already found occasion to protest against the President's careless mode of conducting business may be guessed--correctly--from the way he was received. Doubtless the very cordiality, the whimsical admission of loose methods, irritated the austere Secretary. Welles had in his hand a communication dated that same day and signed by the President, making radical changes in the program of the Navy Department. He had come to protest.

"The President," said Welles, "expressed as much surprise as I felt, that he had sent me such a document. He said that Mr. Seward with two or three young men had been there during the day on a subject which he (Seward) had in hand and which he had been some time maturing; that it was Seward's specialty, to which he, the President, had yielded, but as it involved considerable details, he had left Mr. Seward to prepare the necessary papers. These papers he had signed, many of them without reading, for he had not time, and if he could not trust the Secretary of State, he knew not whom he could trust. I asked who were associated with Mr. Seward. 'No one,' said the President, 'but these young men who were here as clerks to write down his plans and orders.' Most of the work was done, he said, in the other room.

"The President reiterated that they (the changes in the Navy) were not his instructions, though signed by him; that the paper was an improper one; that he wished me to give it no more consideration than I thought proper; to treat it as cancelled, or as if it had never been written. I could get no satisfactory explanation from the President of the origin of this strange interference which mystified him and which he censured and condemned more severely than myself. . . . Although very much disturbed by the disclosure, he was anxious to avoid difficulty, and to shield Mr. Seward, took to himself the whole blame."

Thus Lincoln began a role that he never afterward abandoned. It was the role of scapegoat Whatever went wrong anywhere could always be loaded upon the President. He appeared to consider it a part of his duty to be the scapegoat for the whole Administration. It was his way of maintaining trust, courage, efficiency, among his subordinates.

Of those papers which he had signed without reading on April first, Lincoln was to hear again in still more surprising fashion six days thereafter.

He was now at the very edge of his second crucial decision. Though the naval expedition was in preparation, he still hesitated over issuing orders to sail. The reply to the Thoughts had not committed him to any specific line of conduct. What was it that kept him wavering at this eleventh hour? Again, that impenetrable taciturnity which always shrouded his progress toward a conclusion, forbids dogmatic assertion. But two things are obvious: his position as a minority president, of which he was perhaps unduly conscious, caused him to delay, and to delay again and again, seeking definite evidence how much support he could command in the North; the change in his comprehension of the problem before him-his perception that it was not an "artificial crisis" involving slavery alone, but an irreconcilable clash of social-political idealism--this disturbed his spirit, distressed, even appalled him. Having a truer insight into human nature than Seward had, he saw that here was an issue immeasurably less susceptible of compromise than was slavery. Whether, the moment he perceived this, he at once lost hope of any peaceable solution, we do not know. Just what he thought about the Virginia Compromise is still to seek. However, the nature of his mind, the way it went straight to the human element in a problem once his eyes were opened to the problem's reality, forbid us to conclude that he took hope from Virginia. He now saw what, had it not been for his near horizon, he would have seen so long before, that, in vulgar parlance, he had been "barking up the wrong tree." Now that he had located the right tree, had the knowledge come too late?

It is known that Seward, possibly at Lincoln's request, made an attempt to bring together the Virginia Unionists and the Administration. He sent a special representative to Richmond urging the despatch of a committee to confer with the President.

The strength of the party in the Convention was shown on April fourth when a proposed Ordinance of Secession was voted down, eighty-nine to forty-five. On the same day, the Convention by a still larger majority formally denied the right of the Federal government to coerce a State. Two days later, John B. Baldwin, representing the Virginia Unionists, had a confidential talk with Lincoln. Only fragments of their talk, drawn forth out of memory long afterward--some of the reporting being at second hand, the recollections of the recollections of the participants--are known to exist. The one fact clearly discernible is that Baldwin stated fully the Virginia position: that her Unionists were not nationalists; that the coercion of any State, by impugning the sovereignty of all, would automatically drive Virginia out of the Union.(23)

Lincoln had now reached his decision. The fear that had dogged him all along--the fear that in evacuating Sumter he would be giving something for nothing, that "it would discourage the friends of the Union, embolden its adversaries"--was in possession of his will. One may hazard the guess that this fear would have determined Lincoln sooner than it did, except for the fact that the Secretary of State, despite his faults, was so incomparably the strongest personality in the Cabinet. We have Lincoln's own word for the moment and the detail that formed the very end of his period of vacillation. All along he had intended to relieve and hold Fort Pickens, off the coast of Florida. To this, Seward saw no objection. In fact, he urged the relief of Pickens, hoping, as compensation, to get his way about Sumter. Assuming as he did that the Southern leaders were opportunists, he believed that they would not make an issue over Pickens, merely because it had not in the public eye become a political symbol. Orders had been sent to a squadron in Southern waters to relieve Pickens. Early in April news was received at Washington that the attempt had failed due to misunderstandings among the Federal commanders. Fearful that Pickens was about to fall, reasoning that whatever happened he dared not lose both forts, Lincoln became peremptory on the subject of the Sumter expedition. This was on April sixth. On the night of April sixth, Lincoln's signatures to the unread despatches of the first of April, came home to roost. And at last, Welles found out what Seward was doing on the day of All Fools.(24)

While the Sumter expedition was being got ready, still without sailing orders, a supplemental expedition was also preparing for the relief of Pickens. This was the business that Seward was contriving, that Lincoln would not explain, on April first. The order interfering with the Navy Department was designed to checkmate the titular head of the department. Furthermore, Seward had had the amazing coolness to assume that Lincoln would certainly accept his Thoughts and that the simple President need not hereinafter be consulted about details. He aimed to circumvent Welles and to make sure that the Sumter expedition, whether sailing orders were issued or not, should be rendered innocuous. The warship Powhatan, which was being got ready for sea at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, was intended by Welles for the Sumter expedition. One of those unread despatches signed by Lincoln, assigned it to the Pickens expedition. When the sailing orders from Welles were received, the commander of the Sumter fleet claimed the Powhatan. The Pickens commander refused to give it up. The latter telegraphed Seward that his expedition was "being retarded and embarrassed" by "conflicting" orders from Welles. The result was a stormy conference between Seward and Welles which was adjourned to the White House and became a conference with Lincoln. And then the whole story came out. Lincoln played the scapegoat, "took the whole blame upon himself, said it was carelessness, heedlessness on his part; he ought to have been more careful and attentive." But he insisted on immediate correction of his error, on the restoration of the Powhatan to the Sumter fleet. Seward struggled hard for his plan. Lincoln was inflexible. As Seward had directed the preparation of the Pickens expedition, Lincoln required him to telegraph to Brooklyn the change in orders. Seward, beaten by his enemy Welles, was deeply chagrined. In his agitation he forgot to be formal, forgot that the previous order had gone out in the President's name, and wired curtly, "Give up the Powhatan. Seward."

This despatch was received just as the Pickens expedition was sailing. The commander of the Powhatan had now before him, three orders. Naturally, he held that the one signed by the President took precedence over the others. He went on his way, with his great warship, to Florida. The Sumter expedition sailed without any powerful ship of war. In this strange fashion, chance executed Seward's design.

Lincoln had previously informed the Governor of South Carolina that due notice would be given, should he decide to relieve Sumter. Word was now sent that "an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only; and that if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms or ammunition will be made without further notice, or in case of an attack upon the fort."(25) Though the fleet was not intended to offer battle, it was supposed to be strong enough to force its way into the harbor, should the relief of Sumter be opposed. But the power to do so was wholly conditioned on the presence in its midst of the Powhatan. And the Powhatan was far out to sea on its way to Florida.

And now it was the turn of the Confederate government to confront a crisis. It, no less than Washington, had passed through a period of disillusion. The assumption upon which its chief politicians had built so confidently had collapsed. The South was not really a unit. It was not true that the secession of any one State, on any sort of issue, would compel automatically the secession of all the Southern States. North Carolina had exploded this illusion. Virginia had exploded it. The South could not be united on the issue of slavery; it could not be united on the issue of sectional dread. It could be united on but one issue-State sovereignty, the denial of the right of the Federal Government to coerce a State. The time had come to decide whether the cannon at Charleston should fire. As Seward had foreseen, Montgomery held the trumps; but had Montgomery the courage to play them? There was a momentous debate in the Confederate Cabinet. Robert Toombs, the Secretary of State, whose rapid growth in comprehension since December formed a parallel to Lincoln's growth, threw his influence on the side of further delay. He would not invoke that "final argument of kings," the shotted cannon. "Mr. President," he exclaimed, "at this time, it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will instantly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal." But Toombs stood alone in the Cabinet. Orders were sent to Charleston to reduce Fort Sumter. Before dawn, April twelfth, the first shot was fired. The flag of the United States was hauled down on the afternoon of the thirteenth. Meanwhile the relieving fleet had arrived--without the Powhatan. Bereft of its great ship, it could not pass the harbor batteries and assist the fort. Its only service was to take off the garrison which by the terms of surrender was allowed to withdraw. On the fourteenth, Sumter was evacuated and the inglorious fleet sailed back to the northward.

Lincoln at once accepted the gage of battle. On the fifteenth appeared his proclamation calling for an army of seventy-five thousand volunteers. Automatically, the upper South fulfilled its unhappy destiny. Challenged at last, on the irreconcilable issue, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, seceded. The final argument of kings was the only one remaining.

XVI "ON TO RICHMOND!"

It has been truly said that the Americans are an unmilitary but an intensely warlike nation. Seward's belief that a war fury would sweep the country at the first cannon shot was amply justified. Both North and South appeared to rise as one man, crying fiercely to be led to battle.

The immediate effect on Washington had not been foreseen. That historic clash at Baltimore between the city's mob and the Sixth Massachusetts en route to the capital, was followed by an outburst of secession feeling in Maryland; by an attempt to isolate Washington from the North. Railway tracks were torn up; telegraph wires were cut. During several days Lincoln was entirely ignorant of what the North was doing. Was there an efficient general response to his call for troops? Or was precious time being squandered in preparation? Was it conceivable that the war fury was only talk? Looking forth from the White House, he was a prisoner of the horizon; an impenetrable mystery, it shut the capital in a ring of silence all but intolerable. Washington assumed the air of a beleaguered city. General Scott hastily drew in the small forces which the government had maintained in Maryland and Virginia. Government employees and loyal Washingtonians were armed and began to drill. The White House became a barracks. "Jim Lane," writes delightful John Hay in his diary, which is always cool, rippling, sunny, no matter how acute the crisis, "Jim Lane marshalled his Kansas warriors today at Williard's; tonight (they are in) the East Room."(1) Hay's humor brightens the tragic hour. He felt it his duty to report to Lincoln a "yarn" that had been told to him by some charming women who had insisted on an interview; they had heard from "a dashing Virginian" that inside forty-eight hours something would happen which would ring through the world. The ladies thought this meant the capture or assassination of the President. "Lincoln quietly grinned." But Hay who plainly enjoyed the episode, charming women and all, had got himself into trouble. He had to do "some very dexterous lying to calm the awakened fears of Mrs. Lincoln in regard to the assassination suspicion." Militia were quartered in the Capitol, and Pennsylvania Avenue was a drill ground. At the President's reception, the distinguished politician C. C. Clay, "wore with a sublimely unconscious air three pistols and an 'Arkansas toothpick,' and looked like an admirable vignette to twenty-five cents' worth of yellow covered romance."

But Hay's levity was all of the surface. Beneath it was intense anxiety. General Scott reported that the Virginia militia, concentrating about Washington, were a formidable menace, though he thought he was strong enough to hold out until relief should come. As the days passed and nothing appeared upon that inscrutable horizon while the telegraph remained silent, Lincoln became moodily distressed. One afternoon, "the business of the day being over, the executive office deserted, after walking the floor alone in silent thought for nearly a half-hour, he stopped and gazed long and wistfully out of the window down the Potomac in the direction of the expected ships (bringing soldiers from New York); and unconscious of other presence in the room, at length broke out with irrepressible anguish in the repeated exclamation, 'Why don't they come! Why don't they come!'"(2)

His unhappiness flashed into words while he was visiting those Massachusetts soldiers who had been wounded on their way to Washington. "I don't believe there is any North. . . " he exclaimed. "You are the only Northern realities."(3) But even then relief was at hand. The Seventh New York, which had marched down Broadway amid such an ovation as never before was given any regiment in America, had come by sea to Annapolis. At noon on April twenty-fifth, it reached Washington bringing, along with the welcome sight of its own bayonets, the news that the North had risen, that thousands more were on the march.

Hay who met them at the depot went at once to report to Lincoln. Already the President had reacted to a "pleasant, hopeful mood." He began outlining a tentative plan of action: blockade, maintenance of the safety of Washington, holding Fortress Monroe, and then to "go down to Charleston and pay her the little debt we are owing there."(4) But this was an undigested plan. It had little resemblance to any of his later plans. And immediately the chief difficulties that were to embarrass all his plans appeared. He was a minority President; and he was the Executive of a democracy. Many things were to happen; many mistakes were to be made; many times the piper was to be paid, ere Lincoln felt sufficiently sure of his support to enforce a policy of his own, defiant of opposition. Throughout the spring of 1861 his imperative need was to secure the favor of the Northern mass, to shape his policy with that end in view. At least, in his own mind, this seemed to be his paramount obligation. And so it was in the minds of his advisers. Lincoln was still in the pliable mood which was his when he entered office, which continued to be in evidence, except for sudden momentary disappearances when a different Lincoln flashed an instant into view, until another year and more had gone by. Still he felt himself the apprentice hand painfully learning the trade of man of action. Still he was deeply sensitive to advice.

And what advice did the country give him? There was one roaring shout dinning into his ears all round the Northern horizon-"On to Richmond!" Following Virginia's secession, Richmond had become the Confederate capital. It was expected that a session of the Confederate Congress would open at Richmond in July. "On to Richmond! Forward to Richmond!" screamed The Tribune. "The Rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet there on the 20th of July. By that date the place must be held by the national army." The Times advised the resignation of the Cabinet; it warned the President that if he did not give prompt satisfaction he would be superseded. Though Lincoln laughed at the threat of The Times to "depose" him, he took very seriously all the swiftly accumulating evidence that the North was becoming rashly impatient Newspaper correspondents at Washington talked to his secretaries "impertinently."(5) Members of Congress, either carried away by the excitement of the hour or with slavish regard to the hysteria of their constituents, thronged to Washington clamoring for action. On purely political grounds, if on no other, they demanded an immediate advance into Virginia. Military men looked with irritation, if not with contempt, on all this intemperate popular fury. That grim Sherman, who had been offended by Lincoln's tone the month previous, put their feeling into words. Declining the offer of a position in the War Department, he wrote that he wished "the Administration all success in its almost impossible task of governing this distracted and anarchial people."(6)