The Coming Fury

by Bruce Catton

  Early in February Lincoln closed his home, selling or storing his household furnishings, moving to Springfield's Chenery House for his last days in Illinois. Shortly after daybreak on February 11 he drove to the Great Western railroad station through a cold drizzle, and in the waiting room there he spent half an hour bidding farewell to friends. There was a crush of people all about, and Lincoln was pale, apparently gripped by deep emotion. He said little as men and women pumped his hand, and when he spoke, his voice seemed almost ready to break. After half an hour of it the train was ready, and the President-elect and his party went out to go aboard.

  There were three cars—baggage car, smoker, and coach, with "a powerful Rogers locomotive" in front; the railroad time card warned that "it is very important that this train should pass over the road in safety." With Lincoln there was his son Robert, already dubbed "the Prince of Rails" by newspaper correspondents; his youthful secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay; and Elmer Ellsworth, the slightly unreal amateur soldier who had drilled gaily dressed militia units and who had somehow won a place in the older man's heart; he would be killed in three months, and his body would lie in state in the White House. Also present were four professional soldiers, detailed by the War Department to be an escort and to look out for the safety of the President-elect. One of these was Colonel Edwin Vose Sumner, gruff and white-haired, who became an army officer before Lincoln entered his teens, an old-timer who would not survive the war. Others were Major David Hunter, Captain George Hazard, and energetic Captain John Pope, who would live to meet responsibilities too heavy for him. There were reporters, and political characters, and the New York Herald man noted that the cars were well stocked with "refreshments for the thirsty." Mrs. Lincoln, with the younger sons, Willie and Tad, would board the train at Indianapolis.

  The crowd surged out of the waiting room as the party got on the train. Lincoln went to the rear platform, his tall hat in his fingers, and his fellow townsmen fell silent. He faced them, a somber, brooding figure, seemingly as reluctant as Davis had been to meet the incomprehensible burdens of the presidency. He spoke, finally, the last words he would ever speak in Springfield, not so much making a speech as thinking out loud.

  "No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting," he said. 'To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century, and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being, who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him, Who can go with me and remain with you and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all yet will be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell."1

  In this simple impromptu speech Lincoln was at his best. He would be at his worst in the speeches he would give between Springfield and Washington, and a thoughtful American who troubled to listen could have been excused for believing that a woefully unfit man was about to become President. As the special train moved eastward, it began to seem that all of the North was watching it, and whenever the train stopped, Lincoln had to show himself—precisely as Davis had to show himself on another train, far to the southward. Showing himself, he had to say something, and the art of saying nothing in an impressive way was one that he had not yet learned. Not having learned it, he fumbled badly, giving the impression at times of a man who simply did not understand the crisis or know what his own part in it ought to be. Few chapters in Lincoln's whole career are as melancholy to read about as the one that tells how he went from Illinois to Washington.

  There were trackside crowds all along the route, but most of these expected little more than a bow and a waved hand from the train's rear platform. The first real test came at Indianapolis, where Lincoln had to leave the train and attend a reception at the Bates House. There was a dense, uncontrolled crowd here, and the New York Herald reporter noted disapprovingly that Lincoln had to force his way through the crush unaided: "no precautions had been taken to protect him from insolent and rough curiosity," and when he reached the supper room he had to wait half an hour for a sketchy meal. Having eaten, at last, Lincoln had to make a speech. For the first time since the election, he was addressing his fellow countrymen, and a carefully considered policy pronouncement might have been expected. What actually came out was nothing much better than the rambling spur-of-the-moment remarks of a politician who, finding himself in the presence of an enthusiastic crowd, feels obliged to "say a few words" without much regard to what the words mean or the echoes they may strike—one trouble, perhaps, being that he simply did not yet realize how far his lightest words now must echo.

  The people of the South, Lincoln now said, seemed to be worried about coercion. But what was coercion? "Would the marching of an army into South Carolina, for instance, without the consent of her people, and in hostility against them, be coercion or invasion? I very frankly say, I think it would be invasion, and it would be coercion too, if the people of that country were forced to submit. But if the Government, for instance, simply insists on holding its own forts, or retaking those forts which belong to it"—just here he was interrupted by cheers—"or the enforcement of the laws of the United States in the collection of duties upon foreign importations, or even the withdrawal of the mails from those portions of the country where the mails themselves are habitually violated; would any or all of these things be coercion? Do the lovers of the Union contend that they will resist coercion or invasion of any state, understanding that any or all of these would be coercing or invading a state? If they do, then it occurs to me that the means for the preservation of the Union they so greatly love, in their own estimation, is of a very thin and airy character."

  Interrupted again by applause, Lincoln went on to develop this offhand study of the value of a secessionist's love for the Union; a study that would have benefited greatly by deeper thought and more careful phrasing. ". . . In their view, the Union, as a family relation, would not be anything like a regular marriage at all, but only a sort of free-love arrangement to be maintained on what that sect calls passionate attraction." This was greeted by laughter, and Lincoln presently continued: "Can a change of name change the right? By what principle of original right is it that one-fiftieth or one-ninetieth of a great nation, by calling themselves a State, have the right to break up and ruin that nation as a matter of original principle? . . . Where is the mysterious, original right, from principle, for a certain district of the country, with inhabitants, by merely being called a State, to play tyrant over all its own citizens and deny the authority of everything greater than itself?"2

  The best that can be said for the Indianapolis interlude is that at last it ended and the journey was resumed. That Lincoln or any other man should be asking himself questions of that sort, in the baffling February of 1861, is not surprising, but that these questions, unedited and unanswered, should find their way into a serious speech is staggering. (It was on this day that the Southern Confederacy served formal notice of its existence by inaugurating its Vice-President.) On succeeding days there were other crowds to be addressed, and the result was not always more fortunate.

  At Lawrenceburg, Indiana, on February 12, Lincoln was on a different tack: "I have been selected to fill an important office for a brief period, and am now, in your eyes, invested with an influence which will soon pass away; but should my administration prove to be a very wicked one, or what is more probable, a very foolish one, if you, the PEOPLE, are but true to yourselves and to the Constitution, there is little harm I can do, thank God!" The next day he had more cheerful words for the Ohio legislature, at Columbus: "I have not maintained silence from any want of real anxiety. It is a good thing that there is no more than anxiety, for there is nothing going wrong. It is a
consoling circumstance that when we look out there is nothing that really hurts anybody. We entertain different views upon political questions, but nobody is suffering anything."

  He developed this notion further, as his train continued in its oddly zigzag course across the Middle West. At Rochester, Pennsylvania, someone called out to ask what he would do about the secessionists when he reached Washington and became President, and he replied: "My friend, that is a matter which I have under very great consideration." But the next day, at Pittsburgh, he told an audience: "Notwithstanding the troubles across the river, there is really no crisis springing from anything in the government itself. In plain words, there is really no crisis except an artificial one. . . . If the great American people will only keep their temper, on both sides of the line, the troubles will come to an end." His itinerary doubled back to Cleveland, where there was a long parade through slush and snow, leading to a speech in which this Pittsburgh theme was carried further:

  "I think that there is no occasion for any excitement. The crisis, as it is called, is altogether an artificial crisis. ... It has no foundation in facts. It was not argued up, as the saying is, and cannot, therefore, be argued down. Let it alone and it will go down of itself."8

  ... It was not going down very fast. On February 18 Jefferson Davis took the oath of office as President of the Southern Confederacy, and Lincoln told the New York State legislature: "It is true that while I hold myself without mock modesty the humblest of all individuals that have ever been elected to the Presidency, I have a more difficult task to perform than any one of them." In New York City on February 20 he paid his respects, obliquely, to Mayor Fernando Wood's suggestion that the metropolis set itself up as a free ctiy, declaring that "there is nothing that can ever bring me willingly to consent to the destruction of this Union, under which not only the commercial city of New York but the whole country has acquired its greatness"; and a day later, in Philadelphia, he returned to the notion that there was something artificial about the national crisis. He qualified this, however, by adding: "I do not mean to say that this artificial panic has not done harm. That it has done much harm I do not deny."

  At least partial redemption from all of this came on Washington's Birthday when Lincoln spoke at Independence Hall, and reached above the say-a-few-words routine to touch the edges of genuine eloquence.

  "I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence," he said. "I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the motherland; but something in the Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all men should have an equal chance. This is the sentiment embodied in the Declaration of Independence. Now, my friends, can this country be saved upon that basis? If it can, I would consider myself one of the happiest men in the world if I can help to save it. . . . If this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle1—I was about to say I would rather be assassinated on this spot than to surrender it."

  Lincoln was eleven days away from Springfield, and he had not yet got to Washington. If the purpose of this excessively roundabout trip had been to let the people of the North look at him, something of value had perhaps been accomplished; otherwise it would have been a good deal better if the trip had been made as short as possible, adorned by no speeches or rear-platform appearances. The physical strain had been immense; Newspaperman Henry Villard estimated that Lincoln had spoken at least fifty times during one week, and said that the man was almost exhausted by the time he got to Buffalo. The New York Herald's man said that Lincoln seemed too "unwell and fatigued" to take part in conversation when his train left Albany, and he paid him a condescending tribute: Lincoln seemed "so sincere, so conscientious, so earnest, so simple hearted, that one cannot help liking him," but the only answer to the unending speculation about what he was going to do, as President, had to be the simple statement: "Lincoln does not know himself yet." In the capital of the Southern Confederacy the Montgomery Post made propaganda out of its summing-up of Lincoln's trip:

  "The more we see and hear of his outgivings on his way to Washington, the more we are forced to the conclusion that he is not even a man of ordinary capacity. He assumes to be insensible of the difficulties before him—treats the most startling political questions with childish simplicity, and manifests much of the disposition of the mad fanatic who meets his fate—not in the spirit of respectful Christian resignation, but with the insane smile of derision upon his lips, as if unconscious of the destiny that awaits him. We may readily anticipate that such a man will be the pliant tool of ambitious demagogues, and that his adniinistration will be used to subserve their wicked purposes."8

  Yet there had been something extremely impressive about the journey, not because of anything that was said, but because of the intense, almost desperate press of the people who came to listen. David Davis, who traveled with Lincoln, wrote that the whole trip across Indiana and Ohio had been "an ovation such as has never before been witnessed in this country." Wherever the train stopped there was a crowd, tense with excitement, and Davis believed that this was because of the times rather than the man. "I don't think that it is Lincoln's person or character that calls out the enthusiasm," he wrote. "It must be, that the present state of the country calls forth such an enthusiasm as has never been witnessed."6

  The unhappiest part of the whole trip came at the end. Here Lincoln found himself in an episode that wobbled uncertainly between low comedy and outright tragedy, a singular affair which is not entirely clear even now and which proves nothing except that the public mind was in an excessively disturbed condition.

  At Philadelphia, just before the Independence Hall appearance, Lincoln and his closest advisers were warned—solemnly, and apparently on excellent authority—that he would be murdered if he passed through Baltimore as scheduled on the afternoon of Saturday, February 23.

  The first warning was received by Norman B. Judd, the Chicagoan who had been one of the Lincoln headquarters men at the Wigwam convention and who was now a member of the party traveling to Washington. To Judd, in his Philadelphia hotel room, at night, came two men with a tale to tell. One of the two was S. M. Felton, president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railway, a sober man of business; and the other was the rising private detective Allan Pinkerton, who had a peculiar combination of energy and imagination—a combination that was taking him to the top of his chosen profession, but that would prove a decided handicap to the nation's principal army before a year was out. Felton had hired Pinkerton to investigate rumors that secessionist sympathizers in Baltimore planned to break railroad communications with the capital; a matter of concern to Felton, since his own railroad was likely to be involved. Investigating, Pinkerton had unearthed an elaborate assassination plot, which hinged on the related facts that railway interchange facilities in Baltimore were imperfect and that the city was full of turbulent characters whose sympathies were notoriously Southern. A through car from the North bound for Washington must be switched in Baltimore from Felton's railroad to the Baltimore & Ohio, and the transfer usually involved hauling the cars down a city street with horses. As Lincoln's schedule stood, this would take place on a Saturday afternoon: Baltimore authorities had neither gone through the routine of inviting him to visit their city nor had they made any arrangements for police protection, and according to Pinkerton, Lincoln would be mobbed and killed while he was moving from one railroad station to another.

  Judd, Felton, and Pinkerton therefore urged him to cut his trip short, cancel further appearances in Pennsylvania, and go to Washington secretly that very night.

  This Lincoln refused to do. He had commitments to speak in Philadelphia and in Harrisburg the n
ext day, February 22, and he would not try to get out of them. (Apparently he could not quite make himself believe in the reality of this assassination story anyway.) He did agree that after he had spoken in Harrisburg he would give the business further thought.

  Further thought was thrust upon him. At Harrisburg he was visited by young Frederick Seward, son of the Senator from New York from whom Lincoln had taken the Republican nomination and whom he had privately selected to be Secretary of State in his new cabinet. Frederick Seward brought impressive warnings from his father and from General Winfield Scott, both of whom had come upon the conspiracy story from sources independent of Pinkerton and both of whom believed that there definitely was substance to it. Like Judd and Felton, they were urging Lincoln to come down to Washington secretly so as to avoid the Saturday-afternoon transfer in Baltimore.7

  A serious plot to kill Abraham Lincoln may or may not have existed. (Four years later an equally frothy situation did in fact produce a John Wilkes Booth, complete with loaded derringer; it would develop eventually that in a time of civil war the most grotesque improbabilities can be built on ugly facts.) Washington had been full of ominous rumors all winter. The War Department had gone to great lengths to build up a thoroughly loyal home guard in the District of Columbia to prevent a seizure of power by secessionist sympathizers, and Winfield Scott had remarked that the general tension was such that "a dog-fight might cause the gutters of the capital to run with blood." Just before Lincoln left Springfield, a citizen visited the old general to ask whether precautions had been taken to make sure that Congress could formally count the electoral vote; it was being rumored that a mob would rise and prevent it, thus (presumably) making it impossible for Lincoln to take office.