Douglas, at Willard’s, wrote out a dispatch which next day went to the country through the Associated Press. He had called on the President and had “an interesting conversation on the present condition of the country,” the substance of which was, on the part of Mr. Douglas, “that while he was unalterably opposed to the administration in all political issues, he was prepared to fully sustain the President in the exercise of all his constitutional functions, to preserve the Union, maintain the Government, and defend the capital. A firm policy and prompt action was necessary. The capital was in danger, and must be defended at all hazards, and at any expense of men and money.” He added that he and the President “spoke of the present and future without any reference to the past.” Douglas was a hoarse and worn man of dwindling vitality, but he struck with decisive words that sank deep in every one of his old loyal followers. He knew he had trumpets left, and he blew them to mass his cohorts behind Lincoln’s maintenance of the Union.
Now came the day of April 15, 1861, for years afterward spoken of as “the day Lincoln made his first call for troops.” What happened on that day was referred to as the Uprising of the People; they swarmed onto the streets, into public squares, into meeting halls and churches. The shooting of the Stars and Stripes off the Sumter flagstaff—and the Lincoln proclamation—acted as a vast magnet on a national multitude.
In a thousand cities, towns and villages the fever of hate, exaltation, speech, action, followed a similar course. Telegrams came notifying officers and militiamen to mobilize. Newspapers cried in high or low key the war song. Then came mass meetings, speeches by prominent citizens, lawyers, ministers, priests, military officers, veterans of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War, singing of “The Star-spangled Banner” and “America,” fife-and-drum corps playing “Yankee Doodle.” Funds were subscribed to raise and equip troops, resolutions passed, committees appointed to collect funds, to care for soldiers’ families, to educate or trouble the unpatriotic. Women’s societies were formed to knit and sew, prepare lint and bandages. Women and girls saw their husbands and sweethearts off to camp. Nearly every community had its men and boys marching away to the fifing of “The Girl I Left Behind Me.” In churches and saloons, in city crowds and at country crossroads, the talk was of the War and “What will the President do next?”
From Abraham Lincoln: The War Years
J. G. RANDALL
J. G. Randall (1881–1953) was a distinguished Civil War historian and Lincoln biographer, and professor of history at the University of Illinois from 1920 until 1949. In 1937, he produced a major new interpretation of the Civil War, The Civil War and Reconstruction, which treated theretofore neglected issues such as border problems, antiwar efforts, and propaganda, and challenged the older political and newer economic view that presented the war as inevitable. His four-volume Lincoln biography (1945–1955) received the Bancroft and Loubat prizes.
AMONG THE commonest gibes against the President was the assertion that he had no policy. In a roundabout manner such a taunt came to him from New Orleans through the wealthy Democratic leader, August Belmont. Lincoln must take a decisive course, said this writer. Trying to please everybody would satisfy nobody. Let the North declare officially for restoration of the Union as it was. This complaint, with a motive opposite to that of the religious brethren from Chicago, drew from Lincoln the suggestion that if the objector would but read the President’s speeches he would find “the substance of the very declaration he desires.” In a similar setting Lincoln wrote as to slavery that what was “done and omitted” was on military necessity, and that he was holding antislavery pressure “within bounds.”
With his mind full of anti-abolitionist complaints of a lack of policy, Lincoln now became the target for an editorial blast from the opposite direction. From Greeley’s resounding sanctum there came the reproachful admonition that “attempts to put down the Rebellion and at the same time uphold its … cause … [were] preposterous and futile.” In an editorial “Prayer of Twenty Millions” the Tribune pundit informed the President that an “immense majority of the Loyal Millions” of his countrymen required of him a frank execution of the laws in the antislavery sense. With bland equanimity for Greeley’s fervor and with balanced, noncommittal phrases for his heated rhetoric, Lincoln replied in the famous “paramount object” letter which showed, among other things, that he was not swayed by abolitionist outcries. Calm down, and get off your dictatorial horse, would be an offhand paraphrase of his opening sentences. “I have just read yours of the 19th,” wrote Lincoln to Greeley. “… If there be in it any inferences … falsely drawn, I do not … argue against them. If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend.…” Having thus set the pitch for his even-toned reply, Lincoln wrote:
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.…
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.
Antislavery folk did not like the calculated restraint of this famous letter. They wanted no such even balance between action and forbearance. They wanted a crusade. One of them sarcastically wrote: “From his policy hitherto, we must infer, that the way he applies it is, to save the Union with Slavery, if he can do it at whatever sacrifice of life & treasure. If that is found impossible … [his policy is] to save the Union without slavery, unless it should be … too late. This is like the duel in which the terms … as prescribed by the challenged party were, that they should have but one sword between them, & that he should use it five minutes, & afterward the challenger should have it five minutes.”
Such complaints, many of them, Lincoln had to endure while all the time he was awaiting the appropriate public opportunity for launching the proclamation on which he had determined. To supply this much-to-be-desired opportunity rested with McClellan and his men. Major Union victories were not so frequent in ’62; if McClellan had not checked Lee at Antietam, Lincoln’s proclamation, withheld in hope of Federal triumph, would have been indefinitely delayed. From the day (July 22, 1862) when Lincoln put the famous paper aside on Seward’s suggestion that it be not a shriek on the retreat, no important triumph for the United States came, except for Antietam, until July 1863. One appreciates the timeliness of this achievement by the much abused McClellan when one tries to speculate just where Lincoln and emancipation would have stood had the story of McClellan in Maryland been of a piece with that of Pope, Burnside, or Hooker.
It was in this very period of waiting for a victory that there came the word of Pope’s disaster at Second Bull Run. “Things looked darker than ever.” McClellan was grudgingly reinstated. Further anxious days passed. On Wednesday, September 17, Antietam was fought. Lincoln, according to his own account, was then staying at the Soldiers’ Home outside Washington. Here, determining to wait no longer, he finished the “second draft of the preliminary proclamation”; coming in on Saturday, he summoned his Cabinet for Monday.
From Lincoln the President: Springfield to Gettysburg, vol. 2, 1946
BENJAMIN P. THOMAS
Benjamin P. Thomas (1902–1956) was an author who dedicated his life to Lincoln. He was the associate editor of the Abraham Lincoln Quarterly from 1940 to 1953, editorial advisor to the Collected Works of Lincoln (1953 to 1955), and director of the Abraham Lincoln Association for twenty years. His 1947 book, Portrait for Posterity: Lincoln and His Biographers, was awarded the Lincoln Book of the Year, and in 1949 he was the recipient of the Lincoln Diploma of Honor from Lincoln M
emorial University. His books include Russo-American Relations, 1815–1867 (1930), Lincoln’s New Salem (1934), Theodore Weld, Crusader for Freedom (1950), and a biography of Lincoln (1952), among others.
WHEN CONGRESS met early in December, the perplexed and venerable Buchanan, fearful of secession but still sympathetic toward his Southern friends and the Southern point of view, asserted in his annual message that while a state could not lawfully secede, neither could the Federal government coerce it. He proposed to quiet Southern fears by calling a constitutional convention to frame amendments guaranteeing slavery in the states and territories, and assuring the recovery of runaway slaves.
Unmindful of the President’s efforts, South Carolina seceded on December 20. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana speedily took similar action. With Texas’s renunciation of the Union on February 1, 1861, revolt had swept the Gulf states. The secessionists took over Federal forts and arsenals. State flags replaced the Stars and Stripes on customhouses.
Worried Congressmen, with scant faith in Buchanan, sought for their own formula of settlement. A House Committee of Thirty-three proved ineffectual; but the Senate Committee of Thirteen, composed of capable, intelligent men of the caliber of Seward and Douglas, came up with a number of plans. Douglas again advanced the idea of popular sovereignty. Senator Crittenden of Kentucky, political heir of the famous compromiser, Henry Clay, proposed a series of permanent amendments to the Constitution whereby slavery would be guaranteed forever in the slave states and the District of Columbia, continuance of the domestic slave trade would be assured, and slaveowners would be indemnified for runaways. On the troublesome territorial question, Crittenden favored an extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, slavery to be forever excluded north of it and guaranteed in all territory then owned or thereafter acquired to the south.
Sharing the general anxiety for the safety of the Union, a number of Republican Congressmen were disposed to be conciliatory. Several of them, notably those from Illinois, sought Lincoln’s guidance. The President-elect, worn, torn, harassed by the flood of visitors and office-seekers, knew that his decision might be fateful for the Union, which he was determined to preserve at every cost. But how could this best be done—through such firmness as President Jackson had displayed in the nullification crisis of 1832, or through compromise? And would refusal to compromise mean war?
Lincoln quickly made up his mind. To all inquiries he gave essentially the same response: as to fugitive slaves, slavery in the District of Columbia, the internal slave trade, and “whatever springs of necessity from the fact that the institution is amongst us,” he cared but little. But on the question of slavery in the territories he was immovable. Either popular sovereignty or toleration of slavery south of the Missouri Compromise line would, in his opinion, “put us again on the high road to a slave empire.” In 1854 a restoration of the Missouri Compromise would have satisfied him. Since then, however, he had noted the eagerness of the slave power for expansion into Mexico and Central America, and for the acquisition of Cuba. Allow any sort of territorial compromise to be adopted, he warned Congressman Washburne, and “immediately filibustering and extending slavery recommences.” A year would not pass, he was convinced, “till we shall have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the Union.”
Thus Lincoln took upon himself the grave responsibility of blocking compromise. “Stand firm,” he admonished Senator Trumbull. “The tug has to come, & better, now than any time hereafter.” “Hold firm, as with a chain of steel,” he wrote to Washburne. To Lincoln, compromise did not necessarily mean peace. He had seen too many supposed compromises perverted or renounced.
But neither did Lincoln’s rejection of compromise mean that he either wanted or expected war. He had supreme confidence in the sound common sense of the people. During the entire four months between his election and his assumption of office, he continued to believe that the strong Union sentiment in the Southern states would assert itself if given time. The real test would come in the more northerly slave states. If they remained under the old flag, traditions, self-interest, and inherent loyalties would soon bring the others back.
Nor did Lincoln seem to have misjudged the strength of Southern Unionism. Secession appeared to have run its course. News came from North Carolina: a decisive vote against a secession convention. Similar good tidings came from Tennessee. Arkansas and Missouri showed little disposition toward hasty action. Buchanan and his reconstructed cabinet had stiffened. Douglas was preaching loyalty. Lincoln’s native state of Kentucky was resisting the efforts of her Governor to take her out. Governor Thomas H. Hicks of Maryland, where secession sentiment burned hot, staved off the disunionists by refusing to call the Legislature into session. And, most encouraging of all, Virginia, whose influence was paramount with the slave states, not only selected 122 loyalists against 30 disunionists as delegates to her state convention, but stipulated additionally that any ordinance of secession must be ratified by popular vote. Going even farther, Virginia offered her own plan of reconciliation. All the loyal slave states except Arkansas accepted her invitation to send delegates to a peace convention at Washington. With seven states out of the Union, eight showed unmistakable signs of loyalty. It seemed that the tide had turned.
With the safety of the Union hinging on the attitude of these loyal slave states, Lincoln made it his objective to maintain the national authority while avoiding any rash or provocative action. The Republicans must come to power with the government still respected, and with the slave states in a temperate mood. Tactically such a policy would demand rare skill. Signs of weakness would inspirit the hotheads and forfeit the confidence of the moderates, whereas belligerence would encourage the upper slave states to join their sister commonwealths in revolt.
From Abraham Lincoln: A Biography, 1952
STEFAN LORENT
Stefan Lorent (1901–1997) was a Hungarian-born journalist, editor, and photographer. After a short career in filmmaking, he began reporting and writing for various newspapers in Berlin and then in 1928, he became chief editor of the Müncher Illustrierte Presse (which he turned into the first modern photo journalistic paper in Europe). After having spent a year in prison for criticizing Hitler, he left Germany for Britain, where he embarked on a very successful career launching and editing illustrated magazines. In 1940, he moved to New York, where, after immersing himself in a study of United States history, he began publishing illustrated books in the field.
YES, THERE was the frightful plague of milk sickness that winter in Indiana. Dennis [Hanks] lost four milk cows and eleven calves in one week; how many of Thomas Lincoln’s perished, we do not know. But we do know that his farm was not paying, and as John Hanks sent messages of the wonderful land in Illinois, he was willing to give it a try. By the middle of February, 1830, he had sold his farm for $125—and once more he and his family were on the move.
Thirteen people went with the wagons, drawn by ox teams and filled with bedding, furniture, ovens, skillets, and all the household goods the migrants possessed. Thomas Lincoln, his wife Sarah, his son Abraham, and her son John D. Johnston made four. (Sarah, the elder sister of Abraham was no longer living. Married to Aaron Grigsby, she had died in childbirth two years before.) Dennis Hanks, who nine years before had married Sarah Bush Lincoln’s fifteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth, was with his wife and four children in another wagon; Squire Hall, the husband of Matilda Johnston, Sarah Bush Lincoln’s second daughter, his wife and child were in still another.
It was a tedious journey, “painfully slow and tiresome,” recalled Lincoln later.
Abraham, who around this time had completed his twenty-first year and was lawfully free of his father’s command, drove one of the teams. Before they left, he bought $30 worth of merchandise, investing all his savings in it. There were knives, forks, needles, pins, threads, buttons, and other things which he peddled all the way, making a handsome profit on his investment.
From Lincoln: A Picture Story of His Life, 1957
READING GROUP GUIDE
1. Philip Van Doren Stern writes in his “Life of Abraham Lincoln,” “There is only one way to understand this man as a person and as a force in history. No amount of reading biographical accounts of him will give the whole picture; no study of history will give as complete an understanding of his curiously complex personality as well as his own words do” (this page). After having read both Van Doren Stern’s and the writings of Lincoln himself, do you agree with Van Doren Stern’s claim that Lincoln’s own words provide the most insight into his character?
2. Given that Lincoln was in many ways a conservative man, does the fact that early on his career he endorsed women’s suffrage (this page, Announcement of Political Views, June 13, 1836) surprise you? If not, why?
3. Lincoln historians consider the letters Lincoln wrote to Mary Owens and the one he wrote to Mrs. O. H. Browning describing his failed courtship of Mary Owens to be deeply revealing. Van Doren Stern calls the one to Mrs. Browning a “cruel letter, ridiculing the woman he had once considered worthy of being his wife,” but also “one of the most intimate and self-revelatory documents Lincoln ever wrote. It shows his indecision, his lack of ability to judge others, and, more than any other bit of Lincoln’s writing, it offers a key to the psychological puzzle of his attitude toward women and marriage” (this page). Do you concur with Van Doren Stern’s assessment of what the letter shows about Lincoln?
4. How persuasive do you find the speech considered by many to be Lincoln’s first great address (the reply to Douglas, on the implicit repeal of the Missouri Compromise effected by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act on May 30, 1854, at Peoria, Illinois, on 16 October 1854)? Identify and consider the effectiveness of his rhetorical strategies. He argues at one point, for example, that the claim made by Southerners that they should be permitted to take slaves into Nebraska just like they would be allowed to take hogs “is perfectly logical, if there is no difference between hogs and Negroes.” However, he continues,
The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln Page 88