(Lincoln had repeatedly denounced slavery as organized, systematized robbery which perverted the word of God, who had decreed that men should eat bread in the sweat of their own brows. A few weeks earlier he had made this point yet again when two women from Tennessee urged him to release their soldier-husbands from prison. One petitioner emphasized that her spouse was religious. Upon granting their request, the president observed: “You say your husband is a religious man; tell him when you meet him, that I say I am not much of a judge of religion, but that, in my opinion, the religion that sets men to rebel and fight against their government, because, as they think, that government does not sufficiently help some men to eat their bread on the sweat of other men’s faces, is not the sort of religion upon which people can get to heaven!” After the women left, Lincoln wrote out these remarks and asked Noah Brooks to have them published in the Washington Chronicle with a headline reading: “THE PRESIDENT’S LAST, SHORTEST, AND BEST SPEECH.”)192
At this point the inaugural took an abrupt turn as Lincoln analyzed why the war dragged on and on and on: “The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.” He then quoted Jesus’ words as reported in the Gospel of Saint Matthew: “Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!” Lincoln somewhat inaccurately applied that scriptural passage to the war (subsequent scholarship has interpreted the word translated in the King James Bible as offences to mean temptations or stumbling blocks, which in context is a condemnation of those who tempt small children): “If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope—fervently do we pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’ ”
This pronouncement might not have sounded out of place in the mouth of a pious abolitionist or a Christian minister preaching a sermon, but for a president to utter it on such an important occasion was astonishing. It rested on a proposition that he had articulated before: that both North and South were complicit in the sin of slavery. But never had he suggested that whites of both sections must suffer death and destruction on a vast scale in order to atone for that sin, and that the war would not end until the scales were evenly balanced. Lincoln offered this as a hypothesis, not a firm conclusion, but if it were true, then the words of the 19th Psalm would have to be recalled: “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.”
A curious feature of this extraordinary analysis, which resembled late-seventeenth-century Puritan election-day jeremiads, was the reference to “the believers in a Living God.” It might be inferred that Lincoln did not count himself among those believers, for he did not say “we believers in a Living God.” But the impersonal manner of presenting his argument recalls the impersonal way in which he wrote his autobiographical sketch in 1860, alluding to himself in the third person. He probably did mean to include himself among the believers, but his instinctive modesty and reserve led him to use such impersonal language. Lincoln blamed white Americans for the war, not God; the Almighty was merely enforcing the elementary rules of righteous justice. After this stunning revelation of his understanding of the war’s cause and the reason for its bloody continuation, Lincoln closed by shifting the emphasis from justice to mercy. His final paragraph was not the most remarkable one, but it became the most revered and beloved. In it he honored the men who had served in the army and navy and expressed his hope for the future: “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”193
Once Chief Justice Chase had administered the oath of office, Lincoln kissed the Bible and bowed to the audience, whose many cheers were punctuated by thunderous artillery salvos. During the speech, the crowd had listened intently but had for the most part remained silent, save for the many blacks who murmured “bress de Lord” at the close of most sentences.194 Applause interrupted Lincoln after he said: “Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.” A long cheer made Lincoln pause before saying, “and the war came.”195 The final paragraph brought tears to many eyes.
Frederick Douglass, who thought the address “sounded more like a sermon than like a state paper,” admired above all its final two paragraphs. After hearing them, he applauded “in gladness and thanksgiving,” for to him they seemed “to contain more vital substance than I have ever seen compressed into a space so narrow.” Afterward Douglass joined the crowd moving toward the White House to attend the traditional post-inaugural reception. When two policemen rudely blocked his way at the door, he told them that he was sure the president had issued no order banning blacks. (In fact, four black men “of genteel exterior and with the manners of gentlemen” had attended the White House reception on New Year’s Day 1864 and were presented to Lincoln. A Democratic newspaper asked: “Are not such scenes at the White House disgusting? When will the white people of this country awake to the sense of shame that the dominant party is bringing upon us by the practical establishment of the social equality of the negro?”)196 After his appeal failed to persuade the officers, Douglass asked a passerby whom he recognized: “Be so kind as to say to Mr. Lincoln that Frederick Douglass is detained by officers at the door.” That message was swiftly conveyed, and in less than a minute Douglass was admitted. As he later recalled, “I could not have been more than ten feet from him when Mr. Lincoln saw me; his countenance lighted up, and he said in a voice which was heard all around: ‘Here comes my friend Douglass.’ As I approached him he reached out his hand, gave me a cordial shake, and said: ‘Douglass, I saw you in the crowd to-day listening to my inaugural address. There is no man’s opinion that I value more than yours: what do you think of it?’ I said: ‘Mr. Lincoln, I cannot stop here to talk with you, as there are thousands waiting to shake you by the hand;’ but he said again: ‘What did you think of it?’ I said: ‘Mr. Lincoln, it was a sacred effort,’ and then I walked off. ‘I am glad you liked it,’ he said.”197 According to Elizabeth Keckly, Douglass “was very proud of the manner in which Mr. Lincoln received him. On leaving the White House he came to a friend’s house where a reception was being held, and he related the incident with great pleasure to myself and others.”198
James Shepherd Pike, U.S. minister to the Netherlands, also thought the inaugural resembled “the tail of an old sermon.” It seemed to him “a most curious production,” written as if Lincoln “did not exactly know what to say and so he abandoned himself to musing and took down what first came uppermost and printed it.” But there was no harm done, because “even his imperfections do not weaken him in the public estimation. His nature is so good and his heart is so sound, that no exhibition he can make of himself discovers any flaw in his moral composition, and none in his tenacity of purpose.”199
The inauguration had “passed off well,” as General Halleck put it. “Thanks to abundant preventions we had no disturbances, no fires, no raids, or robberies,” he noted. “I was on the qui vive
all day and night and consequently did not join in the proceedings. There were a large number of rebel deserters here who excited some suspicion of wrong intentions, but they were closely watched. New York and Philadelphia also sent their quotas of roughs and rowdies, but they were completely overawed.”200 One of the more sinister onlookers was a rising young actor, John Wilkes Booth, seething with hatred for blacks and for the man they called the Great Emancipator.
Lincoln was pleased with his inaugural address. A week before delivering it, he said there was “[l]ots of wisdom in that document, I suspect.”201 A woman who admired the religious tone of the speech asked a friend in Congress to obtain for her a presidential autograph written with the pen used to compose it. With emotion he replied to the request: “She shall have my signature, and with it she shall have that paragraph. It comforts me to know that my sentiments are supported by the Christian ladies of our country.”202 When Thurlow Weed praised the inaugural, Lincoln replied: “Every one likes a compliment. Thank you for yours on my little notification speech, and on the recent Inaugeral Address. I expect the latter to wear as well as—perhaps better than—any thing I have produced; but I believe it is not immediately popular. Men are not flattered by being shown that there has been a difference of purpose between the Almighty and them. To deny it, however, in this case, is to deny that there is a God governing the world. It is a truth which I thought needed to be told; and as whatever of humiliation there is in it, falls most directly on myself, I thought others might afford for me to tell it.”203
Among those with whom the address was not popular was a Pennsylvanian who complained that “while the sentiments are noble,” it was “one of the most awkwardly expressed documents I ever read—if it be correctly printed. When he knew it would be read by millions all over the world, why under the heavens did he not make it a little more creditable to American scholarship? … Jackson was not too proud to get Van Buren to slick up his state papers. Why could not Mr Seward have prepared the Inaugural so as to save it from the ridicule of a Sophomore in a British University? However, Lincoln[’]s prototype was Oliver Cromwell who was just as able, as true, and as awkward in his scholarship as he.”204 A Connecticut Democrat sneered: “The inaugural is a mixture of Bible quotations made blasphemous in a degree by his use of them and bloody anathemas well suited to the times of corruption and lunacy in which we live.”205
Some Northern newspapers were also critical. The New York Herald complained that Lincoln did not mention the Hampton Roads conference, Mexico, or the Baltimore platform. It dismissed the address as “a little speech of ‘glittering generalities’ used only to fill in the program” and “an effort to avoid any commitment regarding our domestic or foreign affairs.”206 The Chicago Times contemptuously observed: “We did not conceive it possible that even Mr. Lincoln could produce a paper so slip-shod, so loose-jointed, so puerile, not alone in literary construction, but in its ideas, its sentiments, its grasp.”207 A leading Democratic paper in the East, the New York World, compared Lincoln to the pope: “The President’s theology smacks as strong of the dark ages as does Pope Pius IX’s politics.” Its editors expressed regret “that a divided nation should neither be sustained in this crisis of agony by words of wisdom nor cheered with words of hope” and criticized the president for “abandoning all pretense of statesmanship … in this strange inaugural” by taking “refuge in piety.”208 The address, said the World, was little more than a “prose parody of John Brown’s Hymn.”209
Republican papers found more to admire. Henry J. Raymond’s New York Times was impressed by the simplicity of the inaugural and its notable lack of platitudes: “He makes no boasts of what he has done, or promises of what he will do. He does not reexpound the principles of the war; does not redeclare the worth of the Union; does not reproclaim that absolute submission to the Constitution is the only peace.” Instead all “that he does is simply to advert to the cause of the war; and its amazing development; to recognize in the solemn language the righteous judgment of Heaven; and to drop an earnest exhortation that all will now stand by the right and strive for a peace that shall be just and lasting.”210 The Boston Evening Transcript called the inaugural “a singular State Paper—made so by the times. No similar document has ever been published to the world. … The President was lifted above the level upon which political rulers usually stand, and felt himself ‘in the very presence of the very mystery of Providence.’ ” Other New Englanders shared this view, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, who allegedly “said he thought it was likely to outlive anything now in print in the English language.”211 Charles Francis Adams, Jr., told his father: “That rail-splitting lawyer is one of the wonders of the day. … This inaugural strikes me in its grand simplicity and directness as being for all time the historical keynote of this war; in it a people seemed to speak in the sublimely simple utterance of ruder times. … Not a prince or minister in all Europe could have risen to such an equality with the occasion.”212 Another son bearing the name of his politically prominent father, James R. Doolittle, told his brother that Lincoln “rivals the greatest statesmen of our country; he is surpassed by none, not even by Washington.” The president “is possessed of great dignity,” but not the “selfish, conceited, proud, imperial dignity which Mr. Chase assumes, but is kind, approachable and winning.” Moreover, “he is great mentally, and no less morally.”213
Readers in Old as well as New England were appreciative. The Duke of Argyll told Charles Sumner: “It was a noble speech, just, and true, and solemn. I think it has produced a great effect in England.”214 English newspapers offered some of the most thoughtful commentary. A conspicuous example was London’s Saturday Review: “If it had been composed by any other prominent American politician, it would have been boastful, confident, and menacing.” Indeed, one of the striking features of the address was the absence of self-congratulation and braggadocio. “His unshaken purpose of continuing the war until it ends in victory assumes the form of resigned submission to the inscrutable decrees of a superior Power.”215 The London Spectator was equally generous in its praise: “No statesman ever uttered words stamped at once with the seal of so deep a wisdom and so true a simplicity.” The editors also analyzed the president’s growth over the past four years: “Mr. Lincoln has persevered through all, without ever giving way to anger, or despondency, or exultation, or popular arrogance, or sectarian fanaticism, or caste prejudice, visibly growing in force of character, in self-possession, and in magnanimity.” Though he was scorned in 1861 as a rustic attorney, “we can detect no longer the rude and illiterate mould of a village lawyer’s thought, but find it replaced by a grasp of principle, a dignity of manner, and a solemnity of purpose which would have been unworthy neither of Hampden nor of Cromwell, while his gentleness and generosity of feeling towards his foes are almost greater than we should expect from either of them.”216 The English statesman William E. Gladstone reportedly said: “I am taken captive by so striking an utterance as this. I see in it the effect of sharp trial when rightly borne to raise men to a higher level of thought and feeling. It is by cruel suffering that nations are sometimes born to a better life; so it is with individual men. Mr. Lincoln’s words show that upon him anxiety and sorrow had wrought their true effect. The address gives evidence of a moral elevation most rare in a statesman, or indeed in any man.”217
Sumner as Nemesis: Presidential Reconstruction Blocked
When Congress reconvened in December, Lincoln was predisposed to meet it halfway on the contentious subject of Reconstruction. In his annual message, he acknowledged that his power in that area would decline sharply with the end of the war; that his generous amnesty offer might soon end; and that the legislators, not he, had the power to determine who would be seated in Congress. He also appointed two commissioners to investigate conditions in Louisiana and Arkansas, thus signaling his willingness to rethink the Reconstruction policy that had been followed in those states.
Congress was also predisposed to compro
mise with Lincoln. The two branches worked together to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, and a conciliatory House referred measures relating to Reconstruction to the Judiciary Committee rather than to Henry Winter Davis’s Select Committee on the Rebellious States. A Massachusetts Representative who had voted for the Wade–Davis bill now urged recognition of the new Louisiana government as the legitimate authority in that state, which should be readmitted without further delay. In mid-December, James Ashley introduced a bill stipulating that such recognition would be granted if Lincoln would agree that only “loyal male citizens” (presumably including blacks) could vote and serve on juries. (Ashley reportedly accepted recognition of Louisiana only after Lincoln threatened to veto the bill.)
On December 18, the president told Nathaniel P. Banks, who since September had been in Washington lobbying Congress on behalf of the Louisiana government, that he had been reading Ashley’s bill with care and “liked it with the exception of one or two things which he thought rather calculated to conceal a feature which might be objectionable to some.” The first feature “was that under the provisions of that bill negroes would be made jurors & voters under the temporary governments.” Banks, who had evidently discussed the bill with congressmen, said: “Yes, that is to be stricken out and the qualification white male citizens of the U.S. is to be restored. [The Wade–Davis bill had extended suffrage to whites only.] What you refer to would be a fatal objection to the Bill. It would simply throw the Government into the hands of the blacks, as the white people under that arrangement would refuse to vote.” The president was not voicing his own opposition to black voting but expressing fear that it might be so “objectionable to some” that the bill would be defeated.
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