Part 5

“Now, my friends,” he cried, his shrill voice ringing to the outer edge of the excited multitude, “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.... But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say that I would rather be assassinated on this spot.... I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by.”

With assassins waiting in Baltimore to save the cause of slavery and disunion by striking down the President-elect, Lincoln, by a secret change of plan, managed to reach Washington in safety.

XI

All the way from Springfield Lincoln carried a small handbag containing the manuscript of his inaugural address, upon which it was believed that the issue of peace or war would depend. The whole country waited anxiously to hear what the rail-splitter had to say, now that he had command of the army, navy and treasury.

Would he dare to send troops to the rescue of Major Anderson and his men, besieged in Charleston harbor by rebellious South Carolina?

Would he relieve the loyal garrisons hemmed in by insurgent Florida?

To use force meant instant civil war. To refrain from using force meant the destruction of the Union.

Only three months before, Mr. Holt, Buchanan’s loyal Postmaster General, had written to one of Lincoln’s partners:

“I doubt not, from the temper of the public mind, that the Southern States will be allowed to withdraw peacefully; but when the work of dismemberment begins, we shall break up the fragments from month to month, with the nonchalance with which we break the bread upon our breakfast table.... We shall soon grow up a race of chieftains who will rival the political bandits of South America and Mexico, who will carve out to us our miserable heritage with their bloody swords. The masses of the people dream not of these things. They suppose the Republic can be destroyed to-day, and that peace will smile over its ruins to-morrow.”

Away out in his Illinois home Lincoln had written these words in his inaugural address:

“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.’”

This was the spirit in which he made that journey from the West, knowing that the question of war or peace hung as upon a hair trigger. Backwoodsman and provincial though he might be, he knew the underlying American character well enough to hope, in his own heart, in spite of the secession of so many States, what was bluntly said to Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet: “Unless you sprinkle blood in the face of the people of Alabama, they will be back in the old Union in less than ten days.”

But when Lincoln went through the guarded streets of Washington to the bayonet-girt Capitol, to have the pro-slavery Chief Justice administer the oath of office, the speech he carried in his pocket had been greatly altered. He had even been persuaded by Mr. Seward, his new Secretary of State, to modify this brave sentence:

“All the power at my disposal will be used to reclaim the public property and places which have fallen; to hold, occupy and possess these, and all other property and places belonging to the government.”

They thought he might be murdered before he could take the oath. There was artillery in the streets and ominous swarms of soldiers. Even on the roofs sharpshooters were to be seen.

Grizzled old General Scott had sent this word from his sick bed to the President-elect: “I’ll plant cannon at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and if any of them show their heads or raise a finger I’ll blow them to hell.”

Yet when Lincoln’s long body reared itself before the hushed crowd, and when he laid aside his new ebony, gold-headed cane, set his iron-bound spectacles on his nose and removed his hat--there was Douglas, his old rival for Mary Todd’s hand, his competitor for the Senate and the Presidency, his antagonist in the struggle against slavery; but a new Douglas, loyal to the Union, who was content to reach out his hand in the presence of that high-strung multitude and hold Lincoln’s hat.

President Buchanan was there, withered, bent, slow, insignificant, in flowing white cravat and swallowtail coat. Beside him towered the homely rail-splitter--also in an unaccustomed and distressing swallowtail coat and wearing a stubby new beard, grown to please a little girl--who dared at last to give the national authority a voice and to say that “No State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union,” that “resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void,” and that “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.”

How hard it is for us now to realize the appalling strain of responsibilities that could persuade a valiant frontiersman like Lincoln--knowing that Fort Sumter was already besieged; that the Florida forts were threatened and that an organized Confederate government, with drilled troops, was actually in possession of many States--to say so softly to the armed and defiant South:

“I trust that this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally maintain and defend itself.”

Just before he closed his speech Lincoln looked up from his manuscript, and his gray eyes--those eyes that could be so tender as to make his gaunt face beautiful--sought the silent, listening crowd. There were dark circles under his eyes. His whole bearing was that of a man in pain. Then he raised his splendid head and made that last sublime appeal against war:

“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield 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.”

As Lincoln kissed the open Bible in the hands of Chief Justice Taney--who wrote the Dred Scott opinion supporting slavery--the thunder of artillery announced his vow to defend the Union.

XII

Those who in peaceful times like these wonder why so strong and direct a man as Lincoln should have been so eager to conciliate the haughty and rebellious Confederacy, to assure the rebels that there would be no “coercion” or “invasion,” and to appeal to their historic national consciousness, rather than to tell them in so many words that they would be scourged into obedience, must consider that he at last realized the Southern misunderstanding of his purpose and temperament which caused the Governor of Florida to write to the Governor of South Carolina:

“If there is sufficient manliness at the South to strike for our rights, honor and safety, in God’s name let it be done before the inauguration of Lincoln.”

Not only that, but Mr. Seward, the great Republican leader of the East, now Secretary of State, and one of the deadliest foes of slavery, within three weeks wrote this advice:

“_Change the question before the public from one upon slavery, or about slavery_, for a question upon _union or disunion._”

No man knew or loved Lincoln better than Leonard Sweet, who made this deliberate analysis of him:

“In dealing with men he was a trimmer, and such a trimmer the world has never seen. Halifax, who was great in his day as a trimmer, would blush by the side of Lincoln; _yet Lincoln never trimmed in principles_, it was only in his conduct with men.”

Besides, Lincoln was incapable of mere hatred. All through the Civil War he showed that his love for the whole American people was tidal. It was his belief in the goodness of human nature and the justice of the Union cause that made him grieve like a defied and deserted father over the erring Southern insurgents, and to hope, with an intensity that drew prayer from his lips, that the ties of race, continental pride and common national memory would reunite the nation without the sacrifice and seal of bloodshed.

It was not for love of the negro that he waged war upon slavery, but for the sake of justice and humanity, and to save the nation from increasing degradation and demoralization. True, he had challenged the South when he said, “a house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.” But he had also said:

“There is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

Lincoln’s private letters and conversations, from his nomination to his election, prove that there was one point only on which he would permit no compromise--slavery must not be extended to the free territories.

But as President his one supreme duty was to save the Union, to prevent the destruction of the nation. He was yet to write amid the roar of a conflict in which half a million lives were lost, that agonized but unflinching letter to Horace Greeley:

“I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be ‘the Union as it was.’ If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”

Those who did not recognize the greatness of Lincoln under his simple manners and kindly, humble disposition, assumed that he would be dominated by Mr. Seward, his scholarly and distinguished Secretary of State. The homespun, picturesque orator of Illinois was all very well to catch votes. But Mr. Seward would be the real President.

Mrs. Lincoln heard the talk and mentioned it to her husband.

“I may not rule myself, but certainly Seward shall not,” said Lincoln. “The only ruler I have is my conscience--following God in it--and these men will have to learn that yet.”

John Hay, his secretary and bosom friend, who called Lincoln “the greatest character since Christ,” wrote to Mr. Herndon: “It is absurd to call him a modest man. No great man was ever modest. It was his intellectual arrogance and unconscious assumption of superiority that men like Chase and Sumner could never forgive.”

Still, even though he stood rocklike where his mind and conscience told him that he was right, a humbler, simpler, more unaffected man never walked the earth; and there are libraries of books teeming with tales of his tenderness to women, his love of little children, his compassion for the unfortunate.

The first sign of the strong, sure Lincoln in the White House came when the new President on the day after his inauguration received a dispatch from Major Anderson declaring that he was short of provisions, that Fort Sumter must be abandoned to the Confederacy in a few weeks, and that it would take at least twenty thousand soldiers to relieve Charleston harbor from the Confederate siege. The whole Federal army numbered only sixteen thousand men.

Washington was filled with clamorous office-seekers who crowded the White House. The President was distracted. Even his carriage was stopped by a greedy applicant, and he was compelled to cry, “I won’t open shop in the street.”

With the secret news from Fort Sumter stirring his soul--for no one knew better that immediate war depended on his action--Lincoln told stories, cracked jokes and dealt with the thronging politicians in his old shrewd, homely way. None of the place-hunters was permitted to suspect the impending tragedy that made him bow his head when he was alone.

Meanwhile he ordered General Scott to report what could be done; but the old hero advised him that the abandonment of Sumter was “almost inevitable.” He had also ordered troops to be sent to relieve Fort Pickens, in Florida, which was also menaced. General Scott reported that both Pickens and Sumter should be evacuated.

Instantly the President ordered the Navy Department to prepare plans for a relief expedition for Fort Sumter. That night he gave a great state dinner. His humorous stories and quaint sallies of wit kept his guests in high spirits. His lean face was convulsed with laughter, his eyes sparkled and his thin, high voice whipped up the merriment.

But as the night waned and the laughter died down, he called the members of his Cabinet aside and, with haggard face and a voice of deep emotion, he told them the news from General Scott.

That night Lincoln did not close his eyes. The next day, against the advice of five of his Cabinet, including Mr. Seward, all of whom advised the abandonment of Fort Sumter, he ordered the preparation of a naval expedition to relieve Major Anderson. Additional troops and supplies were ordered into the beleaguered Fort Pickens in Florida.

The Confederate commissioners might seek conferences with Secretary Seward in vain. The expedition to rescue Sumter sailed with orders to deliver food to the garrison and, if opposed, to force its way in. Lincoln’s hand had signed the order that precipitated the Civil War.

Although the President had notified Governor Pickens, of South Carolina, that the relief expedition simply contemplated the peaceful delivery of provisions to a garrison threatened by starvation, the Confederates immediately demanded the surrender of Sumter, with a pledge from Major Anderson that he should make no preparations to injure the fort after withdrawing. This demand was refused by Anderson, who added, “if I can only be permitted to leave on the pledge you mention, I shall never, so help me God, leave this fort alive.”

Again and again Anderson was called upon to surrender Sumter. The Confederates were determined to have the place before Lincoln’s supplies arrived. Each time the brave Union officer replied that he would maintain his country’s flag where it flew.

Then came the crash which shook the continent and thrilled the civilized world.

At daybreak on April 12, 1861, in the presence of a great multitude of civilian spectators in Charleston harbor, the rebel batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter and the Union. For two days the fort withstood the terrific bombardment, and then, with all food gone, his quarters set on fire by red hot cannon balls, and his ammunition almost exhausted, Major Anderson lowered the stars and stripes to native-born Americans and hoisted the white flag.

That was on Saturday. On Sunday Lincoln wrote a proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand volunteers to defend the Union.

The same night Douglas called at the White House--Douglas, the Democratic, thundering Douglas, the champion of slavery; Douglas, the antagonist of Lincoln in almost every crisis of his career; Douglas, who in the Senate only a few weeks ago had cried, “War is disunion. War is final, eternal separation”--and Lincoln clasped hands with the brilliant rival from whom he had won his wife and the Presidency, now come to pledge his life to the defence of the Union.

On Monday morning Lincoln’s proclamation and Douglas’s noble and magnanimous declaration that he would support Lincoln in saving the nation were read by the American people.

To the exultant shout that went up from the armed slave States, there came an answering cry of rage and indignation from the free States. The whole country trembled with the war spirit. War! war! war! Every city, town and village in the North answered Lincoln’s call for troops to crush the rebellion. Farms and factories poured out their men. Streets were gay with bunting and noisy with marching feet. Industry was abandoned in the instant and tremendous preparation for the conflict.

Yet Lincoln’s call for seventy-five thousand men was to grow into a call for a half million men and a half billion dollars, and the struggle between the sixteen free States and the seven rebellious slave States, with the border States hesitating between, was to change into a four years’ death-grapple between all the States of the South and all the States of the North, a conflict without parallel in its horror and costliness.

Mr. Stoddard, one of Lincoln’s private secretaries, thus described Lincoln in the White House at the beginning of the war:

“A remarkably tall and forward-bending form is coming through the further folding doors, leaving them carelessly open behind him. He is walking slowly, heavily, like a man in a dream. His strongly marked features have a drawn look, there are dark circles under his deep-set eyes, and these seem to be gazing at something far away, or into the future.”

That countenance of unutterable sadness, fixed gray eyes that seemed to see something in the vacant air; thin, stooped shoulders, bowed head, hands clasped behind the back, slow, halting step and general air of weariness and melancholy abstraction, was known only to those who saw Lincoln when he wrestled alone with the agony of his burdens.

The greedy crowd that pressed for office, the impatient fanatics who thrust their advice upon him, the haughty statesmen who condescended to meddle with his powers, the tricksters and traders, saw only the simple, resolute, vulgar, kindly Lincoln, full of the old allure of anecdote and jest, patient, keen and ready in a flash to avoid an immature decision or soften a refusal by a witty epigram or an illuminating joke.

It is an astonishing evidence of Lincoln’s complex character that he could laugh and play like a careless boy, and patiently putter over the small details of office-giving, while the iron of his character was annealing in the furnace of war.

No more sensitive or imaginative man than Lincoln ever lived. His amazing sense of humor stayed him in his trial. It was sometimes Titanic.

“Has anything gone wrong at the front?” asked a friend, seeing him downcast.

“No,” replied the President with a weary smile. “It isn’t the war; it’s the post office at Brownsville, Missouri.”

The deadly, ceaseless, shameless crowding and intriguing of place-hunters--notwithstanding the shock of war that threatened the nation itself--made a profound impression on Lincoln.

“This human struggle and scramble for office, for a way to live without work, will finally test the strength of our institutions,” he said to Mr. Herndon.

That has been the idea of every tormented President of the United States, from Washington to Roosevelt.

“He is an old criminal lawyer,” wrote one of his secretaries, “practiced in observing the ways of rascals, accustomed to reading them and circumventing them, but he does not commonly tell any man precisely what he thinks of him.”

Even so able a man as Secretary Seward did not at first recognize the force, genius and dignity that lay behind the rough, whimsical exterior of Lincoln, and gave himself the airs of a superior; but presently even Seward said: “He is the best of us all.”

While the country was ringing with the sounds of marching men after the fall of Fort Sumter, it was reported that a great force of Confederates was moving against Washington. There were only four or five thousand troops in the capital. A Massachusetts regiment on the way to Washington had been attacked by a mob. The Seventh Regiment of New York was expected, but the Marylanders had torn up the tracks and it did not come. The city was in danger of famine. The Confederate attack was hourly expected. The capital was cut off.

Lincoln’s anguish was unconcealed. Walking up and down his office, with a look of pain on his face, he gave vent to his dread.

“I begin to believe that there is no North. The Seventh Regiment is a myth.”

Again he paced the floor for half an hour.

“Why don’t they come? Why don’t they come?” he groaned.

Presently the New Yorkers, who had rebuilt the tracks and bridges from Annapolis on, marched into Washington, and within a week Lincoln had seventeen thousand soldiers in the city.

It was this terror of losing Washington that persuaded Lincoln to withdraw McDowell’s forty thousand men from McClellan when his army was within sight of Richmond.

XIII

Lincoln’s tenderness of heart was one of his striking traits. The story of his life is full of touching incidents showing his pity for all living things in distress. As a boy he protected frogs and turtles from torture; as a frontiersman he returned young birds to their nests, and once rode back on his tracks over the prairie and dismounted to help a pig stuck in the mud; as President his habit of pardoning soldiers condemned to death excited the wrath of his generals. His heart melted at the sight of tears. It was hard for him to withstand a tale of woe. The shedding of blood stirred horror and grief in him.

This extreme sensitiveness would have been an element of almost fatal weakness in the man upon whom events had so suddenly thrust the command of a great war, particularly a war between his own countrymen, but for the fact that reason and devotion to justice were the anchors of his nature.

He could not be moved on a clear question of principle by either friendship, enmity or compassion.

He appointed Edwin M. Stanton as Secretary of War, in place of the discredited Simon Cameron, in spite of the fact that Stanton had treated him contemptuously in a law case on which they were engaged together, and had described him as a “long, lank creature from Illinois, wearing a dirty linen duster for a coat, on the back of which the perspiration had splotched wide stains that resembled a map of the continent.”

He raised George B. McClellan to command the army, notwithstanding the circumstance that McClellan, as vice-president of the Illinois Central Railway, had once deeply wounded him by declining to pay his lawyer’s bill; and that, in 1858, while the Illinois Central refused Lincoln the most common courtesy, McClellan was accompanying his rival, Douglas, in a private car and special train.

It was not chivalry, but patriotism, that inspired Lincoln to put these two Democrats in control of the armed forces of the nation. His own feelings were nothing; the fate of the Union was everything. Stanton had been an honest and masterful member of Buchanan’s Cabinet. McClellan had made a glorious answer to the Bull Run defeat by driving the Confederate troops out of West Virginia.