Part 6

The life of the nation was more important than party lines. Besides, Stanton and McClellan had the confidence of the Democrats, and it was essential, not only that the whole North should be held together, but that the loyal Democrats in the wavering border States should feel that there was no sectional or party prejudice in the government.

Stanton tried to bully Lincoln and called him “the original gorilla,” and McClellan treated him with disdainful indifference. Neither could exhaust his patience. He mastered his lion-headed Secretary of War by gentle persistence. He endured McClellan’s months of inactivity after the Army of the Potomac had grown into a fighting force of nearly a hundred and seventy thousand magnificently trained men, and when the government was being openly sneered at for its hesitation to give battle.

Great-hearted, patient Lincoln! He even consented to sit uncomplainingly in the waiting room of McClellan’s residence while the arrogant young general talked to others.

“I will hold McClellan’s stirrup if he will only bring success,” he said.

But, in the end, he wrote the orders which forced McClellan’s army against Richmond; and when Frémont, in the West, ignored the President’s orders to fight, Lincoln promptly removed him from command.

To the newly assembled Congress he said:

“This is essentially a people’s contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men--to lift artificial weights from all shoulders.... It is now for them [the people] to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal except to ballots themselves at succeeding elections.”

To one of the many committees that went to the White House to complain that the war was not being pressed rapidly enough, he suggested a question and answer that were repeated all over the country.

He was tired, pale, almost worn out. The ceaseless grind of work, the frightful and increasing responsibilities imposed by the war, the cruel jibes of critics all over the country, had deepened the furrows in his brow and wasted his homely face. Every mail brought threats of assassination. The far-away, rapt look in his eyes, the pitiful droop of his strong mouth, the pathetic sloping of his tall, black-clad figure, gave evidence of the strain upon him.

“Gentlemen,” he said, with a smile that lit up his wonderful face, “suppose all the property you were worth was in gold, and you had put it in the hands of Blondin [the famous tight-rope walker] to carry across the Niagara River on a rope. Would you shake the cable, or keep shouting at him, ‘Blondin, stand up a little straighter--Blondin, stoop a little more--go a little faster--lean a little more to the north--lean a little more to the south’? No, you would hold your breath, as well as your tongue, and keep your hands off until he was safe over. The Government’s carrying an enormous weight. Untold treasures are in their hands. They are doing the best they can. Don’t badger them. Keep silence, and we will get you safe across.”

Lincoln did not fight battles himself, but he searched patiently for generals who could, and then he trusted them, and kept the public off their backs. As he said to General Grant, “If a man can’t skin, he must hold a leg while somebody else does.”

Imagine Lincoln, in his black frock coat and high hat, stealing out of the White House in the morning to kneel in the grass on the Mall and practice at a sheet of note paper with newly-invented rifles till the indignant sentries dash up shouting, to see the long figure unfold itself upward and recognize in the disturber the President of the United States!

Imagine him playing with his children on the White House lawn, “his coat-tails standing out straight and his black hair tousled this way and that” as he dashes about, chased by his shrieking playmates!

Imagine him again and again asking little girls to kiss him, snatching them to his thin breast, fondling them with tears in his eyes!

Imagine him watching through weary nights by his son’s deathbed, standing stricken beside the little coffin, and then, for the first time, turning to the Bible for consolation!

Imagine him entertaining his log-cabin cousin, Dennis Hanks, in the White House, and, when that simple soul disapproves of Secretary Stanton’s arrogance and urges him to “kick the frisky little Yankee out,” patiently answering, “It would be difficult to find another man to fill his place”!

Imagine him sitting in his nightshirt on the edge of young John Hay’s bed, night after night, reading doggerel verses from the newspapers, cracking jokes or reciting from Shakespeare!

Imagine him signing a pardon for a young soldier sentenced to be shot and hearing the sobs of that mother waiting outside, “Thank God! Thank Lincoln! Pardoned! Oh, my boy! my boy!”

Imagine him facing the gray-haired father of another doomed soldier and saying, “If your son lives until I order him shot, he will live longer than ever Methuselah did”!

Imagine him sitting at the table day after day, his face cold, abstracted, his gray eyes “seeing something in the air” and hardly touching his food!

Imagine him on the night after the bloody loss of Chancellorsville--seventeen thousand killed, wounded and missing! Mr. Stoddard, sitting in the deserted White House, underneath Lincoln’s room, has helped our imagination:

“But that sound, the slow, heavy, regular tread of the President’s feet, pacing up and down in his room and thinking of Chancellorsville! A man’s tread may well be heavy when there is such a load upon his shoulders as Lincoln is carrying.... He can hear, in his heart, the thunder of the Union and Confederate guns, and the shrieks and groans that rise on the lost battlefield.... Ten o’clock--and now and then there have been momentary breaks, as if he paused in turning at the wall; but no pause has lasted longer than for a few heart-beats.... Eleven o’clock--and it is as if a more silent kind of silence had been obtained, for the tread can be heard more distinctly, and a sort of thrill comes with it now and then.... There has been no sound from the President’s room for a number of minutes, and he may be resting in his chair or writing. No; there it comes again, that mournfully monotonous tread, with its turnings at the wall.... Two o’clock comes, without another break in the steady tramp of Lincoln’s lonely vigil. Three o’clock arrives, and your task is done, and you pass out almost stealthily ... and the last sound in your ears is the muffled beat of that footfall.

Before eight o’clock of the morning you are once more at the White House ... look in at the President’s room.... He is still there, and there is nothing to indicate that he has been out of it.... There upon the table, beside his cup of coffee, lies the draft of his fresh instructions to General Hooker, bidding him to push forward without any reference to Chancellorsville.”

These are but fragmentary glimpses of the savior of the Union in his many-sided life during the war. But they help us to understand him in that tragic stretch of time when he plodded wearily between the White House and the telegraph room in the War Department to learn, day by day, what his generals at the front had to say.

It would be but vain repetition to picture him in silent, white-faced anguish, or in equally silent transports of joy and thanksgiving, all through the fighting days of Shiloh, Stone River, Fredericksburg, Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chickamauga, the Wilderness, Spottsylvania and Petersburg, when Americans reddened American soil with the blood of Americans, and the ordinary dress of women and children throughout the country turned to black.

They said of him that he sometimes cracked jokes, Nero-like, while the continent shuddered at the slaughter of its bravest and best, and while the fate of the Union hung trembling in the balance.

“I must laugh or I will surely die,” he explained to John Hay.

XIV

To Lincoln the preservation of the Union was of much greater importance than the freedom of the negro race.

No one who has ever glanced through his speeches and writings can have any doubt about that.

When he signed the Proclamation of Emancipation he did it solely to save the Union. It was his mind, rather than his heart, that inspired the deed; for his inclination was to recognize the constitutional property right in slaves and to secure their emancipation by paying for them.

This reverence for the Constitution and defense of all its guarantees and sanctions, even when the argument advantaged those who raised their hands against the government, is not the least of Lincoln’s claim to the love and gratitude of his countrymen. Not even the monstrous emotions of a fratricidal war could shake his determination to recognize slavery as a property right confirmed by the nation, so long as the nation itself could survive. Nor could the alternate appeals and abuse of the New England abolitionist fanatics make him forget that the rebel South was defending what it believed to be its legal rights.

There is not a single note of bitterness or hatred for the South in all that he said or wrote up to the day when a Southern hand struck down the South’s best friend.

The time came, however, when there was no longer any hope that emancipation by compensation would be accepted as a means of restoring peace.

Then, and then only, Lincoln considered unconditional emancipation as an act of war in defence of the Union and as a means of peace.

Thirty-four years afterwards General Longstreet, one of the most distinguished soldiers of the Confederacy, stood before thousands of Union veterans in Atlanta, white-haired and shaking with emotion, and said:

“Your loss would have been our loss and your gain has been our gain.”

The President had held out as long as possible against what he afterwards considered “the central act of his administration and the greatest event of the nineteenth century.” To members of Congress who urged him to free the negroes and muster them into the army he made a military argument:

“Gentlemen, I have put thousands of muskets into the hands of loyal citizens of Tennessee, Kentucky and North Carolina. They have said that they could defend themselves if they had guns. I have given them the guns. Now, these men do not believe in mustering in the negro. If I do it, these thousands of muskets will be turned against us. We should lose more than we should gain.”

On July 22, 1862, Lincoln called his Cabinet together and read to them a draft of a proposed proclamation freeing all the slaves in the United States.

Secretary Seward, however, advised delay, pointing out the fact that the Union arms had sustained repeated defeats, and that a proclamation of emancipation, issued at such a time, might be “viewed as the last measure of an exhausted government.” He advised the President to wait until a victory was won and then “give it to the country supported by military success.” Lincoln consented to wait.

How the anti-slavery forces bellowed and threatened! How Wendell Phillips lashed the President! How Greeley scored him in the _Tribune_! How the abolitionist committees poured into the White House and raged against delay!

Poor Lincoln! He who had scoffed and blasphemed in his rough, hard youth in New Salem, turned to God for guidance. There is nothing in history more touching than the spectacle of this strong man, struggling between his sense of duty and the pitiless clamor of his country, raising his soul like a child to its father.

And while he communed with God he did not fail to use all the resources of his nature to find a safe, sure way for the Republic he loved so well. He drew strength from God, but he continued to observe, compare and analyze conditions. A Chicago delegation went to him and declared that it was God’s will that he should free the slaves. Lincoln drew himself up and said:

“I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal His will to others on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed He would reveal it directly to me.... These are not, however, the days of miracles, and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation. I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible, and learn what appears to be wise and right.”

The signal that Lincoln waited for came on September 17, 1862, when McClellan defeated Lee’s army at Antietam, inflicting a loss of more than twenty-five thousand men in killed, wounded and missing.

Then came one of the strangest sights in the life of the American government, a spectacle that reveals the profoundly mystic side of Lincoln.

The Cabinet was called together again to consider a proclamation of emancipation.

There was Stanton, the Secretary of War, short, deep-chested, thick-bearded, dogmatic; Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, tall, shaven, dignified, learned, able; Seward, the Secretary of State, slim, erect, hawk-eyed, polished, haughty; white-bearded Welles, the Secretary of the Navy; tall, courtly Blair, the Postmaster General; heavy-faced, ponderous Smith, the Secretary of the Interior; and silent, shrewd, studious Bates, the snowy-headed Attorney General.

When this group of hard-headed and experienced politicians was solemnly gathered around the table in the Cabinet room, Lincoln opened a humorous book by Artemus Ward and began to read a chapter in his shrill, singsongy voice, pausing now and then to join the chuckling of his hearers.

Stanton alone sat with thunder in his eyes and a frown on his brow. The tendency of the President to relieve a strain on the nerves, or clear the mind by a good laugh, exasperated him to the point of fury.

Suddenly the laughter vanished from Lincoln’s voice and there came into his strong face the look that he is remembered by in his greatest moods.

Then he poured out his mind and soul. In a few words he announced that he had decided to emancipate the slaves by proclamation, and explained his reasons. Looking earnestly into the faces of his advisers, he informed them that he had left the decision to God, that he had made a promise to God, and that he would keep that promise.

Think of President Roosevelt making such a statement to Secretary Root, Secretary Cortelyou, Secretary Wright, Attorney General Bonaparte and the other members of his Cabinet!

There was no self-consciousness in Lincoln’s manner as he made this extraordinary avowal. He spoke simply and with an air of intense conviction. His soul was in his eyes. There was peace in his face.

“He remarked,” wrote Secretary Welles that night, “that he had made a vow--a covenant--that if God gave us the victory in the approaching battle [Antietam] he would consider it an indication of Divine will, and that it was duty to move forward in the cause of emancipation. It might be thought strange, he said, that he had in this way submitted the disposal of matters when the way was not clear to his mind what he should do. _God had decided this question in favor of the slaves._ He was satisfied it was right--was confirmed and strengthened in his action by the vow and the results. His mind was fixed, his decision made, but he wished his paper announcing his course as correct in terms as it could be made without any change in his determination.”

What a scene!--the master politician of his times, the ugly rail-splitter and country politician, whose very appearance excited smiles, surrounded by shrewd, calculating, learned, world-hardened men, and telling them gravely that he had left to the decision of God the question of banishing slavery from American soil.

It was so impressive, so extraordinary, that even Secretary Chase wrote it all down as soon as he got home. Here is his statement of Lincoln’s words:

“When the rebel army was at Frederick, I determined, as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a proclamation of emancipation, such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said nothing to any one, but I made the promise to myself, and (hesitating a little) to my Maker. The rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to fulfill that promise. I have got you together to hear what I have written down. I do not wish your advice about the main matter, for that I have determined for myself. This I say without intending anything but respect for any one of you.... There is no way in which I can have any other man put where I am. I am here; I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take.”

There was nothing Oriental about Lincoln. He made much of human wisdom. He listened reverently to the voice of the people. He bowed to the Constitution, in spite of the sanctions it gave to slavery, because it represented the deliberate will of the majority.

But that incomparable hour in the White House proves that in the stress of contending human passions, almost crushed by the weight of his office, with heart and mind overwhelmed, Lincoln turned from earth to Heaven, and, like Elijah on Mount Carmel among the priests of Baal, cried to God for a sign. “The God that answereth by fire, let him be God.”

As Secretary Seward put the Proclamation of Emancipation in his pocket and the members of the Cabinet withdrew from the most thrilling council ever known in that place, Lincoln’s countenance was calmer than it had been for many weeks.

The proclamation freeing all slaves in rebellious States, together with a plan for emancipation by compensation, was submitted to Congress. To the very last Lincoln hoped that the South might accept his plan to abolish slavery by paying for the slaves. His appeal to Congress was notable:

“The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows that we do know how to save it. We--even we here--hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free--honorable in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last, best hope of earth.”

On January 1, 1863, Lincoln issued the proclamation that ended slavery forever under the American flag.

XV

Wearying of McClellan’s delays and excuses for not fighting, Lincoln removed him and put Burnside in command of the Army of the Potomac. When Burnside fought at Fredericksburg the President appeared at the War Department telegraph office in carpet slippers and dressing gown, and waited all day without food for the shocking news of defeat that did not come until four o’clock the next morning--ten thousand dead and wounded.

The President calmly endured the general abuse that followed this disaster. Then he removed Burnside and put General Hooker in his place, writing to him these characteristic words:

“I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the army and the government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship.”

Lincoln went to Hooker’s army and reviewed it. As the hundred thousand men marched by they watched him eagerly as he sat on his horse, tall, angular and in black frock coat, among the glittering generals. Seymour Dodd has described the scene:

“None of us to our dying day can forget that countenance! From its presence we marched directly onward toward our camp, and as soon as route step was ordered and the men were free to talk, they spoke thus to each other: ‘Did you ever see such a look on any man’s face?’ ‘He is bearing the burdens of the nation.’ ‘It is an awful load; it is killing him.’ ‘Yes, that is so; he is not long for this world!’

“Concentrated in that one great, strong, yet tender face, the agony of the life or death struggle of the hour was revealed as we had never seen it before. With new understanding we knew why we were soldiers.”

A month later came the dispatch announcing the slaughter and defeat of Chancellorsville. Noah Brooks read it to Lincoln:

“The appearance of the President, as I read aloud these fateful words was piteous. Never, as long as I knew him, did he seem to be so broken up, so dispirited, and so ghostlike. Clasping his hands behind his back, he walked up and down the room saying, ‘My God! My God! What will the country say? What will the country say?’”

Not that Lincoln feared criticism or even denunciation. He does not know the greatest and noblest American who thinks that. No, it was the torturing, intolerable thought that it might be his dreadful fate to be the last President of the United States, the haunting idea which, a generation later, was written by the loyal, iron-souled Grant on his deathbed: “Anything that could have prolonged the war a year beyond the time that it did finally close would probably have exhausted the North to such an extent that they might then have abandoned the contest and agreed to a separation.”

The shedding of blood grieved Lincoln. Even when Grant won Vicksburg, and Lee’s gallant army was defeated in the three days’ battle at Gettysburg, his joy was overcast by the thought of the dead and dying on both sides. All through the bloodiest days of the war he went to the hospitals in Washington. His heart was with the common soldiers. And he was tender to the Confederate wounded. He never could forget that they were his countrymen. Nor could he withstand an appeal to pardon a young soldier sentenced to death. Again and again he left his bed, after a day and evening of exhausting toil, to save the life of some distant wretched youth condemned to die at daybreak.

Is there anything in the whole range of English literature more solemnly beautiful and heart-moving than the note he wrote to the widow Bixby, of Boston?

“DEAR MADAM: I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously in the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Yours very sincerely and respectfully,

A. LINCOLN.”

But in his determination to save the Republic no horror could shake his resolution. It is no small part of his title to the love of the nation to-day that one so merciful and tender-hearted could suffer the frightful shocks of years of slaughter and waste without wavering from his duty.

His sense of nationality, his refusal to consider the American people save as a whole, was expressed in that immortal speech at the dedication of the cemetery on the Gettysburg battlefield in November, 1863.