Lincoln joined Governor Seward, as he liked to be called, who had hurried to the hotel for breakfast. Seward’s appearance was both unusual, with his slender build and beaklike nose, and impressive, with his vigorous personality conveyed through his animated eyes. Lincoln had met Seward only twice, once in September 1848, when they both campaigned in New England on behalf of presidential candidate Zachary Taylor, and five months earlier, when Seward traveled through Springfield in the midst of a campaign tour in the West. Now Seward informed Lincoln of up-to-the-minute occurrences in the frenzied capital.
Lincoln’s secret arrival created a sensation. George Templeton Strong, reading the “Extras” published by noon in New York, recognized the problems the early morning arrival could create for the president-elect. He wrote in his diary, “This surreptitious nocturnal dodging or sneaking of the President-elect into his capital city, under cloud of night, will be used to damage his moral position and throw ridicule on his Administration.”
Frederick Douglass, capturing the poignancy of Lincoln’s arrival from the vantage point of black Americans, wrote,
He reached the Capital as the poor, hunted fugitive slave reaches the North, in disguise, seeking concealment, evading persuers, by the underground railroad, between two days, not during the sunlight, but crawling and dodging under the sable wing of night. He changed his programme, took another route, started at another hour, traveled in other company, and arrived at another time in Washington.
In the end, Douglass declared, “We have no censure for the President at this point. He only did what braver men have done.”
ON HIS FIRST MORNING IN WASHINGTON, Lincoln called on President Buchanan and his cabinet at the Executive Mansion. Buchanan’s manner suggested that he could not wait for the inauguration of the new president.
Lincoln requested that the Illinois delegation meet with him at the Willard at 4 p.m. He especially wanted to speak with Senator Stephen Douglas. Their relationship in recent years had been as opposing candidates for the Senate and for the presidency. Although attention has often focused on Lincoln reaching out to his Republican rivals, Lincoln’s rapprochement with Douglas, his Democratic rival, in whose shadow he had lived his whole political life, was even more remarkable. Lincoln was shocked at Douglas’s appearance. He did not look well. Lincoln surmised the strain of constant campaigning had taken its toll. He had heard that Douglas was drinking too much. On this afternoon, Lincoln expressed his delight to see his old Illinois competitor. The two men shared more in common than the casual observer might have thought. They both believed in the indivisibility of the Union. A newspaper correspondent reported a “peculiarly pleasant” meeting between the two leaders. Later in the day, Adele Douglas, “with graceful courtesy,” called on Mary Lincoln.
Lincoln went to Seward’s home at 7 p.m. for a private dinner with Seward and Vice President–elect Hamlin. Seward, pleased with his initial day with Lincoln, wrote that evening to his wife, Frances, of his first impressions. “He is very cordial and kind toward me … simple, natural, and agreeable.”
The next day, Sunday, Lincoln joined Seward for worship at St. John’s Episcopal Church on Lafayette Square. Upon their return to his hotel, Lincoln asked Seward if he would read his inaugural address and suggest any changes. Lincoln had earlier asked David Davis and Orville Browning, longtime friends, for their suggestions. When Lincoln requested Seward to scrutinize his speech, he approached a new colleague: a former rival who was not yet a friend.
Lincoln must have been surprised when Seward responded with a seven-page letter containing forty-nine suggestions, as well as two options for a new final paragraph. Working with the final version printed in Springfield, Seward had carefully numbered every line on the seven pages as the template for his editorial effort. He told Lincoln, “Your case is quite like that of Jefferson.” Thomas Jefferson won a contentious election not finally decided until thirty-six ballots were cast in the House of Representatives in February 1801. At Jefferson’s inauguration on March 4, 1801, the resentment of the defeated Federalists could be felt almost everywhere, especially in the visible absence of Federalist John Adams, defeated for a second term as president. Seward reminded Lincoln that Jefferson “sank the partisan in the patriot in his inaugural address, and propitiated his adversaries by declaring: ‘We are all Federalists, all Republicans.’ ” Seward advised, “Be sure that while all your administrative conduct will be in harmony with Republican principles and policy, you cannot lose the Republican Party by practicing in your advent to office the magnanimity of a victor.” Lincoln integrated, if sometimes recast, twenty-seven of Seward’s forty-nine suggestions.
THE NINE DAYS BETWEEN Lincoln’s arrival in Washington and his inauguration were both exhilarating and exhausting. On Monday afternoon, Seward, who had acquired the nickname “the premier” because of the lead role he hoped to play in the new administration, squired Lincoln to the Capitol. Lincoln walked into the Senate chamber and shook hands with senators from both sides of the aisle. In the House of Representatives, where he had served one term more than a decade before, he accepted congratulations from Republicans as well as a few—but not all—of the remaining Southern members. Finally, Lincoln called upon the Supreme Court, conversing with Chief Justice Roger Taney and the other justices responsible for the Dred Scott decision of 1857.
One visitor immediately gained access to the president-elect. Francis Preston Blair, patriarch of a distinguished Kentucky Democratic family, had supported Edward Bates at the Republican convention, but he quickly offered his support and advice to Lincoln. Blair first came to Washington in 1830 when President Andrew Jackson asked him to become the founding editor of the Congressional Globe. Approaching his seventieth birthday, Blair, with his sons Montgomery and Francis, Jr., had become prominent in the politics of two critical border states, Maryland and Missouri.
Blair had gained Lincoln’s confidence with a long, incisive letter in January wherein he offered useful evaluations of the various personalities in Washington. He warned Lincoln about the political efforts in Washington to compromise with the South. “You are about to assume a position of greater responsibility than Washington ever occupied.” Why? Because the states had grown far more powerful than the colonies. However, Blair stated, there existed a crucial difference between then and now. “Washington had to assist him in administration the genius and virtue of Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton,” whereas Lincoln was surrounding himself with cabinet members, such as Seward and Simon Cameron, of “greedy & unscrupulous ambition that really rejoices in the principle that ‘every man has his price.’ ” Blair counseled Lincoln that “neither you, nor they can change their natures.” Blair did offer a word of encouragement. “You need not depend on clerks or Cabinets if your own sound & honest sense is known to preside in the administration.”
Throughout the week, Lincoln found himself honored and feted at celebrations, dinners, and receptions. Gideon Welles, whom Lincoln had met in Connecticut after his Cooper Union address and would now appoint as secretary of the navy, reported, “A host of ravenous partisans from Maine to California” including “a large proportion of those Whigs long excluded from office,” descended upon Washington and “besieged the White House.” Lincoln told reporter Henry Villard, “It was bad enough in Springfield, but it was child’s play compared with this tussle here. I hardly have a chance to eat or sleep. I am fair game for that hungry lot.”
IN THE MIDST OF innumerable requests for meetings, Lincoln worked to complete his cabinet—or so he thought. At each social gathering Lincoln found himself under immense pressure as Republican leaders pressed the credentials of their friends and colleagues. Newspaper editors, especially Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune and James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald, were enjoying publishing continually shifting lists of who would or should join the cabinet.
On Tuesday afternoon, February 26, 1861, Lincoln returned to the Senate to carry out a plan he had decided upon in Springfield. He r
equested to see each Republican senator in alphabetical order. He asked only one question: Who was their choice for secretary of the treasury? Lincoln did not ask what they thought of Cameron or Chase. Lincoln surprised the senators and cabinet watchers by his open posture.
Although seeking counsel from many persons, Lincoln carried with him in his right vest pocket the small piece of paper in which he first listed his choices for the cabinet. The final list would not differ much from the original list jotted down on the evening of his election. He did invite Senator Simon Cameron of Pennsylvania to join the cabinet. He met with Ohio senator Salmon Chase in Springfield, and again in his first days in Washington, but had not yet tendered him a formal invitation for a cabinet position. Lincoln had settled on the tall Marylander Montgomery Blair, son of Francis Preston Blair, for postmaster general, which allowed him to say he had included Southerners in his cabinet. Blair spoke of secessionists with disdain, which helped explain the growing dislike between Blair and Seward. Indiana believed it had been promised an appointment by David Davis. Lincoln had decided on fifty-two-year-old Caleb Smith, whom he knew from his term in Congress, when several from the Hoosier state suggested Schuyler Colfax, thirty-seven-year-old congressman from South Bend. In the end, Lincoln settled on the person he knew, the bland Smith, for the Interior Department. Lincoln, concerned that Colfax believed he was passed over because of his alleged pro-Douglas activity in 1858, wrote to him, “When you were brought forward I said ‘Colfax is a young man—is already in position—is running a brilliant career, and is sure of a bright future in any event’—With Smith, it is now or never.’ ” Lincoln concluded, “I now have to beg that you will not do me the injustice to suppose, for a moment, that I remember any thing against you in malice.”
Just when everything seemed settled with the cabinet, Seward resigned on the eve of the inauguration in a terse letter. “Circumstances which have occurred since I expressed to you in December last my willingness to accept the office of Secretary of State seem to me to render it my duty to ask leave to withdraw that consent.” What circumstances? Seward did not say, but Lincoln knew he had objected strenuously to the prospect of the appointment of Salmon P. Chase to the cabinet.
What could Lincoln do? On the morning of his inauguration, while the inaugural parade lined up in the street below, Lincoln wrote out a reply and gave it to John Nicolay to copy. He told his secretary, “I can’t afford to let Seward take the first trick.” Having only a day to consider Seward’s request, Lincoln wrote that the reception of the note was extremely “painful” but “I feel constrained to beg that you will countermand the withdrawal.” Lincoln had heard and seen that Seward had many opponents in Washington, but Lincoln had come to value his abilities. “The public interest, I think, demands that you should; and my personal feelings are deeply enlisted in the same direction.” He asked Seward to answer by 9 a.m. on March 5, 1861, the first working day of the new administration. On the evening of March 4, Seward called on Lincoln at the Executive Mansion and the two “had a long and confidential talk.” Seward withdrew his letter and agreed to “remain.”
Lincoln’s absorption with completing his cabinet left him open to criticism. Charles Francis Adams believed that in Lincoln’s first weeks in Washington he seemed “more intent on the distribution of offices than on the gravity of the crisis” in the South. Gideon Welles, the new secretary of the navy, wrote that Lincoln “was accused of wasting his time in a great emergency on mere party appointments.”
MARCH 4, 1861, dawned windy, cool, and overcast. A crowd of between twenty-five and thirty thousand, including a large number of “Western men,” began arriving in the early hours to find places close enough to hear Lincoln’s address. Riflemen stationed themselves on the rooftops of buildings along Pennsylvania Avenue. Soldiers on horseback patrolled all the major crossroads. Sharpshooters kept the inaugural platform under close watch from windows in the Capitol.
Precisely at twelve o’clock, President-elect Lincoln came out a side door of the Willard. He wore a new black suit, a white shirt, and black boots. He had on a tall black hat and held in his hand an ebony cane with a gold head. While a band played “Hail to the Chief,” Lincoln waved away a closed carriage and took his seat in an open four-seated carriage opposite President Buchanan, where he could be seen by the people. Buchanan “appeared pale and wearied.” As the carriage bounced along the cobblestones of Pennsylvania Avenue, Buchanan said to Lincoln, “If you are as happy in entering the White House as I shall feel on returning to Wheatland you are a happy man.”
In Lincoln’s time, the inaugural parade preceded the inaugural address. One hundred marshals, dressed in blue, orange, and pink, guided their horses at the front of the parade. All along the parade route, between the White House and the Capitol, American flags soared in the breeze from open windows. Soldiers were grouped so closely around the open presidential carriage that it was difficult to see Lincoln. Ahead, rising over the nation’s capital, Lincoln could see the Capitol. The wooden dome that Lincoln saw when he arrived for his single term in Congress in 1847 had been taken down. A decision had been made in 1855 to build a new iron dome. All Lincoln could see on this inaugural day was the arm of a huge crane extending up from the unfinished dome.
No inaugural address had ever been presented in such turbulent times. Rumors raced through the capital of threats to Lincoln and of attacks on Washington. Hundreds of disgruntled Southerners remained in the capital on Inauguration Day.
Lincoln took his place in the front row on the massive platform that had been constructed on the east front of the Capitol. Stephen Douglas sat nearby. Lincoln had asked silver-haired Senator Edward D. Baker of Oregon, who as a young legislator in Illinois had outshone Lincoln as a speaker, to introduce him. As Lincoln stood, he realized there was no place to put his top hat and cane. Douglas stepped forward and asked if he could hold them. Lincoln took out his steel-rimmed spectacles and stepped forward to the small speaker’s table.
Lincoln saw a very different Capitol when he returned to Washington in 1861. The old dome was removed in 1856, and at the time of his inauguration a crane can be seen sticking through the opening of what will become the new dome.
“Fellow citizens of the United States,” he began. After an opening self-reference, Lincoln began a pattern of directing attention away from himself to the larger persona of American political bodies: “a Republican administration … the Union … the American people … the national authority … the Constitution … the people.” He was determined to use nonpartisan language. At a time when the Northern press, and many politicians, were using inflammatory language, Lincoln stayed away from such volatile words as “enemy,” “secessionists,” or even “Confederacy.” His initial rhetorical move was toward conciliation.
Lincoln’s instinct told him to move directly to the real source of tension in his audience: “Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are endangered.” By the time of Lincoln’s inauguration, seven states had seceded, but by saying “Southern States,” he affirmed that they were still part of the Union. He would not use the name “Confederate States of America.”
He sought to allay their anxieties: “There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you.”
Lincoln’s lawyerly reasoning governed the structure and content of most of the address. As a lawyer-politician, he referred the jury-audience to the precedent of his own speeches. He did not present himself as prepared to do something new, but rather to follow the ideas and practices that he had advocated since the middle of the 1850s.
This distant view by an unknown photographer captures the crowd gathering before the east front of the unfinished Capitol for Abraham Lincoln’s
inauguration on March 4, 1861.
Lincoln bowed further toward conciliation when he announced he would continue to support the fugitive slave law. Why did he introduce a discussion of this controversial law so early in his address? He believed he had more to gain from those in favor of the law than to lose from those opposed to it. Introducing the fugitive slave law also offered Lincoln the opportunity to underline his larger point. In taking the oath as president, he intended to uphold the Constitution in all matters. He hoped his language would send a signal that the South had nothing to fear in this new president from the West.
Horace Greeley, sitting behind Lincoln, recalled that as the audience listened quietly he almost expected to hear the crack of rifle fire. But the quiet was broken only by the noise of a spectator crashing down from his perch in the top of a tree.
Lincoln’s high-pitched voice and his Kentucky accent struck many Easterners in the audience as inelegant, but Lincoln’s ideas, to the sympathetic listener, were substantial. “I hold, that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these states is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. It is safe to assert that no government proper, ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.”
Cheers greeted his words about the perpetuity of the Union. He had decided in Springfield to make the central theme of his address the indivisibility of the Union. Lincoln declared that states had the right to uphold their own domestic institutions, not on the basis of state sovereignty, but because of their respective roles within the nation. He reminded his audience that “the Union is much older than the Constitution.”
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