Lincoln's Mentors

by Michael J. Gerhardt

  None of these distinctions boded well for Lincoln. Lack of support and lack of experience were hardly a winning combination. He certainly wasn’t overconfident. He admitted to his friend Robert Wilson of Pennsylvania “that, when he first commenced doing [his] duties, he was entirely ignorant not only of the duties, but of the manner of doing business” of the presidency.1

  Where would Lincoln find guidance? He was flooded with advice from everywhere. He listened to much of it but heeded little of it. He declined the proffered services of those hoping to dominate him. He didn’t want to make Taylor’s mistake of letting Seward and Weed dominate him. Responding to the charge that he would just be Andrew Jackson’s puppet, Polk had said, “I intend to be myself the President of the United States.” He also said, “I prefer to supervise the whole operations of government myself rather than entrust the public business to subordinates, and this makes my duties great.”2 Lincoln had been there to see how he had done it. Polk was determined to be at the center of his administration. He seldom took others into his confidence and rarely sought the advice of even his closest friends. That same description fit perfectly Lincoln’s management style. This was apparent in how Lincoln had secured his party’s nomination, by establishing personal bonds with those working for him, emphasizing their loyalty to him and not some greater cause, often tasking more than one person to do a job, while all the while keeping his own counsel. Polk’s model was Jackson. Yet Lincoln knew that the intense four years of Polk’s presidency had killed him.

  Where else, besides the five presidents he had met—Polk, Taylor, and Buchanan while they were president, and Van Buren and Fillmore after each had left office—and the few Illinois men he brought to Washington, would Lincoln turn for guidance and counsel? Where he always did. He looked first to his own experiences and then to the men who had been president before him. Washington was a patrician, both as a general and as president. He rarely consorted with the common man. Adams and his son were both arrogant Harvard graduates. Their arrogance doomed each of them to one term, as it alienated friends and enemies alike. Jefferson, Monroe, and Tyler had all studied at the College of William & Mary; Madison was a graduate of Princeton and had studied abroad; Polk graduated from the University of North Carolina; Pierce, from Bowdoin College in Maine; and Buchanan from Dickinson College, Roger Taney’s alma mater. Lincoln lacked the military experience of Washington, Jackson, Harrison, and Taylor, but of these only Andrew Jackson had professed to champion the common man and opposed secession steadfastly. There was much to learn from all of these, both in what to emulate and what not to do. Yet the one figure Lincoln shared most with was Jackson, a self-made man who earned his nickname Old Hickory because he was tough as hardwood and who opposed secession. Lincoln was prepared to align himself with those qualities and that kind of leader.

  Once he became president-elect, Lincoln still saw himself as a champion of the common man. In Springfield, he left his office door open so friends and neighbors could drop in to speak with him. He patiently mingled with crowds in the street, not just in Springfield but wherever he went. This was Lincoln’s milieu. His philosophy of governance came from Jackson. Jackson had believed his election made him a leader for all Americans, rich and poor, black and white, male and female, free or enslaved. Lincoln believed that to the extent he had authority, it came from the Constitution and “We the People” who had ratified it. Lincoln enjoyed the large crowds as he had in his home state. The people ruled, and he basked in their delegated power. He could joke and tell stories, and he could learn.

  Yet he quickly felt the weight of the great responsibilities of his office. In the nearly four months between Lincoln’s election as president on November 6, 1860, and his inauguration on March 4, 1861, seven Southern states, beginning with South Carolina on December 20, declared their secession from the Union, and reports spread of South Carolina’s intention to capture the two federal forts overlooking Charleston Bay in South Carolina, Sumter and Moultrie, as well as nearby forts in Florida. Browning recalled that, in July 1861, Lincoln “told me that the very first thing placed in his hands,” as he first entered his presidential office, was an urgent report from Major Robert Anderson, the ranking officer in charge of Fort Sumter who was worried they were on the verge of being attacked by South Carolina to remove any federal presence. The soldiers of the two Charleston Bay forts had gathered in Fort Sumter for safety and Major Anderson feared “the impossibility of defending or relieving Sumter” if it were attacked.3 Anderson’s report included a message from Winfield Scott, the Union Army’s commanding general, warning the president that there was “no alternative but a surrender.”4 Lincoln told Browning that “of all the trials I have since I came here, none begin to compare with those I had between the inauguration and the fall of Fort Sumter. They were so great that could I have anticipated them, I would not have believed it possible to survive them.”5 With so much chaos around him and considerable intrigue among those angling for appointments, Lincoln looked to the past for guidance on how to be president.

  I

  * * *

  Once Lincoln won the presidency, one of his first thoughts was of Andrew Jackson. According to Gideon Welles, a Democrat-turned-Republican newspaper editor who supported him throughout the 1860 campaign, Lincoln told him that on election night he had dreamed of “what his predecessors had done” when faced with crises—especially Jackson.67

  Anyone paying attention to the political clashes preceding the Civil War, as Lincoln did, knew that threats of nullification, secession, and invasion of federal territory were not new. In the Hartford Convention of 1814, members of the soon-to-be defunct Federalist Party endorsed resolutions urging secession of the Northern states, among other things, in response to the continuing war with England and the domination of the federal government by a string of presidents from Virginia—four of the first five American presidents were Virginians. Like most everyone else, Lincoln knew that, as soon as the Fugitive Slave Law had been signed into law, the leaders of Northern states urged its nullification. He knew of William Lloyd Garrison’s call in 1844 (much repeated later) for Northern states’ separation from the Southern states that supported slavery. And he knew that Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore had confronted violent threats of treachery against the federal government, Taylor sending federal troops to the border when the Texas Republic threatened to invade New Mexico, and Fillmore sending even more troops to dissuade Texas forces from entering federal territory. Lincoln was well versed in the arguments made by Fillmore and Webster on the constitutional obligations of Northern states to comply with the supremacy of federal law. South Carolina’s threats to storm two federal forts invited similarly strong responses. Jackson and Taylor had each denounced those threatening disunion as rebels and traitors. Lincoln followed their lead.

  As Lincoln sought to determine what steps to take in order to quiet the brewing insurrection, he struggled to have the time to think and to be alone. He was mobbed throughout the day with people seeking jobs and favors and by journalists. The Democratic-leaning New York Herald sent Henry Villard to cover Lincoln during the 1860 presidential election and ensuing transition. Villard had covered him in the 1858 Senate campaign. A proud, upstanding German American, Villard was as patrician as he looked. After Lincoln lost to Douglas in the 1858 race for the Senate, Villard said he grew to like Lincoln but did not respect him, both because of his “inborn weakness” as a candidate and his penchant for telling off-color stories and jokes.8

  In later years, Villard changed his opinion. He especially delighted recounting the story of how he met Lincoln

  accidentally about nine o’clock on a hot, sultry night, at a flag railroad station about twenty miles west of Springfield, on my return from a great meeting at Petersburg in Menard County. [Lincoln] had been driven to the station in a buggy and left there alone. I was already there. The train that we intended to take to Springfield was about due. After vainly waiting for half an hour for its arrival, a th
understorm compelled us to take refuge in an empty freight car standing on a side track, there being no buildings of any sort at the station. We squatted down on the floor of the car and fell to talking on all sorts of subjects. It was then and there he told me that, when he was clerking in a country store, his highest ambition was to be a member of the state legislature.

  Lincoln paused, then confessed, “Since then, of course, I have grown some, but my friends got me into this BUSINESS [the Senate race]. I did not consider myself qualified for the United States Senate, and it took me a long time to persuade myself that I was.” With a laugh, he told Villard, “Now to be sure I am convinced that I am good enough for it; but, in spite of it all, I am saying to myself every day, ‘It is too big a thing for you; you will never get it. Mary insists, however, that I am going to be Senator and President of the United States, too.” Villard wrote that, at this point, Lincoln “followed with a roar of laughter, with his arms around his knees, and shaking all over with mirth at his wife’s ambition. ‘Just think,’ he exclaimed, ‘of such a sucker as me President!’” Lincoln’s aside—to Villard more of a hedge than an admission of Lincoln’s plans—confirmed the journalist’s suspicion that Lincoln might be using the Senate race as a springboard for a run for the presidency.

  In mid-November 1860, Villard’s opinion of Lincoln was still fixed, though it would eventually yield. “I doubt Mr. Lincoln’s capacity for the task of bringing light and peace out of the chaos that will surround him,”9 he reported. He conceded Lincoln was “a man of good heart and good intention” but concluded that “he is not firm. The times demand a Jackson.”10 Many people worried that Lincoln was too frivolous, and Villard agreed, finding Lincoln’s “phrases are not ceremoniously set, but pervaded with a humorousness and, at times, with a grotesque joviality that will always please. I think it would be hard to find one who tells better jokes, enjoys them better, and laughs oftener than Abraham Lincoln.” Such demeanor might amuse a crowd, but Villard joined the many people who had yet to see any Jackson in him.

  Even so, Lincoln won, forcing further assessment. On December 21, 1860, Villard wrote,

  Mr. Lincoln is known to be an old Henry Clay Whig. He calls the immortal Kentuckian his “beau ideal of a statesman.” That his position in reference to the secession issue . . . is the identical one occupied by Mr. Clay in 1850, with regard to the then threatened nullification by South Carolina of the Compromise Measures of that year, will be seen by the following quotations from a letter and speech written and delivered by his prototype during the same period.11

  Villard excerpted at length from Clay’s final Senate speech, urging his colleagues to endorse the Compromise of 1850. Villard explained at the end of his report, “I have quoted these two passages, for the special reason that Mr. Lincoln has used them within my own hearing, in explanation of his position, to visitors.”12

  Yet as Villard focused on how Clay might influence the priorities of the new president, two days later, on December 23, 1860, he elaborated on his doubts about Lincoln’s capacity to rise to the demands of the presidency, suggesting that,

  although unaccustomed to shape both resolution and execution according to the dictates of [Lincoln’s] own clear judgment—to measure and pass upon the merits of things with the aid of his own moral and intellectual standard—the efficacy of this guide, demonstrated by his success in life, never produced conceit enough to induce him to overlook altogether the ideas, motives, arguments, counsels and remedies of others. On the contrary, a coincidence of his own views with those of the master spirits of his and previous ages is always greeted by him with great satisfaction and consciousness of increased strength. No one can be more anxious to fortify his position by precedents. No one rejoices more in the knowledge of reflecting the sentiments of the statesman and patriots that illuminate the pages of the history of his country.13

  If there were any doubt who these “master spirits” were, Villard told the world as he recalled Lincoln’s steadfast opposition to secession. Lincoln, he said, would not “content himself with supporting his position by democratic authorities” but persistently quoted Clay at length.14

  Lincoln often wrote to supporters who shared his reverence for Clay. Daniel Ullman, a New York Whig, sent Lincoln a bronze token he had fashioned for the “first citizen of the school of Henry Clay” to be elected president. He praised Lincoln as “a true disciple of our illustrious friend.”15 Lincoln wrote back “to express the extreme gratification I feel in possessing so beautiful a memento of him, whom, during my whole political life, I have loved and revered as a teacher and leader.”16 When the Richmond Dispatch got wind of the medal and Lincoln’s letter praising Clay, its editors wrote, “His teacher! His leader. Henry Clay the teacher of Mr. Lincoln. What lesson of Henry Clay had he learned? Where does he follow his leader’s footsteps?”17

  As Lincoln prepared for the presidency, he thought, too, of Zachary Taylor’s brief presidency marked by a standoff between him and Congress over the administration’s priorities. At the invitation of former president Millard Fillmore, he stopped in Buffalo, New York, for two nights. On the first night, Fillmore made sure people saw them together so that it could be reported around the country that they were united. A Buffalo newspaper got the message: “Mr. Lincoln’s ground, most firmly taken, is that he is to be president of the American people and not of the Republican Party.” (Unfortunately, Fillmore abandoned that stance and his friend Henry Clay’s fierce opposition to secession, when a year later he proclaimed Lincoln, deep into the project of saving the Union, a “tyrant [who] makes my blood boil.” In 1864, he voted for McClellan rather than Lincoln, whom he charged with leading the country to “national bankruptcy and military despotism.”)18

  Less than three weeks before his inauguration, Lincoln reassured an audience in Pittsburgh of “the political education” he had received from Taylor that “strongly inclines me against a very free use of” the veto and any other means of usurping congressional authority.19 “As a rule,” Lincoln explained, “I think it better that congress should originate, as well as perfect its measures, without external bias.”20 He was reassuring his Pittsburgh audience and former Whigs elsewhere that, above all else, he remained, in spirit, a faithful Whig, It was the same message he had repeatedly urged Taylor to make during the 1848 presidential campaign.

  In his next speech on February 22, 1861, in Philadelphia, Lincoln delivered a passionate expression of his vision of the Constitution. Standing in front of Independence Hall, the president-elect declared,

  I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here, and framed and adopted that Declaration of Independence. I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army who achieved that Independence. I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together.

  In substance, these words were another reminder that the Declaration of Independence had, from an early age, made a lasting impression on Lincoln, whose study of the founding and attachment to Clay cemented his belief that it was a founding document that had enduring significance for America. In terms of style, Lincoln’s repetitions and use of the first person to gain momentum was straight out of Clay’s handbook, but now he was going beyond his mentor in his “shooting low,” as he had once encouraged Herndon—speaking without complexity or much detail but using plain and sometimes poetic terms that the crowds listening or reading could understand and remember. (Grappling with the rigor of Euclid’s axioms and theorems, Lincoln might have seen their relevance for speaking to the public, to do so plainly, directly, in a straight line, so to speak.)

  For Lincoln, the principle at stake, he explained further in Philadelphia, was “liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but, I hope, to the world, for all future time.” He asked rhetorically, “
Can this country be saved on that basis,” and answered his own question, “If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world, if I can help to save it. If it cannot be saved without giving up that principle [of the Declaration of Independence], it will be truly awful. But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than surrender it.” He underscored his point at the end: “I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, die by.”21

  The closer Lincoln got to the White House, the more he thought about the troubles ahead. Many of those observing and listening to him were surprised that, even at this juncture, he stubbornly insisted the Southern states were merely bluffing. During Frémont’s campaign in 1856, Lincoln had proclaimed, “All this talk about dissolution of the Union is humbug, nothing but folly. We do not want to dissolve the Union; you shall not.” In 1860, he wrote to a correspondent that he had received “many reassurances [from] the South that in no probable event will there be any formidable effort to break up the Union. The people of the South have too much of good sense, and good temper, to attempt the ruin of the government.”22 Certainly he did not expect a war.

  Upon arriving in Washington, Lincoln met with delegates from the Peace Convention, 131 politicians from fourteen free states and seven Southern states. They had come to the capitol in early February to forge a compromise to avoid the war and had agreed on a plan that included a proposal to amend the Constitution to prevent the extension of slavery in all new federal territories. When the delegation met with Lincoln to share their plan, his face lit up when he was introduced to a Democratic member of the House named James Clay—Henry Clay’s son. Lincoln told him, “Your name is all the endorsement you require. From my boyhood the name of Henry Clay has been an inspiration to me.”