Abraham Lincoln

by Clara Ingram Judson

  The high, clear voice stopped. Chief Justice Taney opened the Bible. Lincoln raised his right hand and repeated after the justice the solemn oath, “I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

  Guns boomed. The crowd stirred. In this crucial moment of the country’s existence, Abraham Lincoln was now the President of the United States.

  That evening the Lincolns attended the “Union Ball,” and the next morning Mr. Lincoln began his enormous task as chief executive. He held cabinet meetings at which he tried to get his new “team” working. He saw hundreds of office seekers. They flocked to the White House, entered unquestioned, and stood in line on the stairs leading to his office. The Lincolns had no privacy at all!

  Washington ladies gossiped about Mrs. Lincoln, her high-handed ways of starting housekeeping, and her gowns; Robert Lincoln went back to college; and Willie and Tad got sick. This time it was the measles.

  Mrs. Lincoln was eager to take her proper place as “First Lady” and also to show that her native Kentucky was not the backwoods that many called it; so when the boys were well she began official entertaining. This, considering her husband’s casual ideas, presented difficulties.

  There was even the matter of dress, especially gloves. By the third reception she had got him into a pair of white gloves—quite an achievement as his hands were large and muscular from grasping an ax most of his growing years. But all went well—until the President spied an old friend from Sangamon County coming down the line. He reached out and grasped the neighbor’s hand and—pop! That glove burst like an inflated paper bag.

  Elegant guests stared. Mr. Lincoln inspected the shattered glove and remarked, “Well, my friend, that was quite a bustification.” And the party went on.

  As it turned out, fate did not allow time for the calm thinking that Mr. Lincoln had begged for in his speech. On March 5th, the day after he was inaugurated, Lincoln was shown a letter from Major Anderson, the commander of Fort Sumter, in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina. The major wrote that his provisions would soon be gone and that twenty thousand men were needed to hold that fort. He had less than a hundred and asked if he should withdraw. The new cabinet disagreed about what to do.

  Before any action was decided on, three agents of the new Confederate government arrived in Washington to ask for recognition of their independence, and to settle the matter of forts and property in the South.

  Secretary Seward wangled delay and tried to conciliate everyone. The agents thought Sumter was going to be evacuated, so they stayed on in Washington. While Seward bustled about, Lincoln decided that now was the time to show the authority of the Union. Against the advice of members of his cabinet, he ordered help sent to the fort. He thought that delay would allow the Confederacy to grow stronger, perhaps so strong that it could not be overthrown. And as for the North, delay might cool union sentiment so that the country could never be brought together.

  The Southern agents went home and on April 12, Confederate guns fired on Fort Sumter.

  Three days later President Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers and three weeks later for 42,000 more. By the first of July he had 310,000 under arms. The ships of the Navy were called home and Southern ports were blockaded.

  The South, too, acted quickly. Jefferson Davis called for 100,000 volunteers; and four more states, Arkansas, Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee joined the Confederacy. Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri hesitated.

  And so began a civil war, the most dreadful of all wars because it sets family against family. Lincoln’s own people were divided as were many others; he had relatives who chose to fight for the South; three of Mrs. Lincoln’s brothers enlisted in the Confederate Army. Many hardly knew which side to support; Robert E. Lee and George H. Thomas were both West Point graduates and citizens of Virginia and were torn between conflicting loyalties. Lee decided he could not fight against his home and family; Thomas decided to fight for the Union and served with distinction under General Grant.

  On the surface the war was to settle two questions: Should slavery be extended? Did states that had entered the Union have the right to withdraw from it? But Mr. Lincoln and other thoughtful men knew that deep down under those questions lay another, even more important: Could a government founded on the principles of the Declaration of Independence survive?

  Soon the line of office seekers was replaced by a longer line of men who wanted commissions in the army or the chance to tell the President how to run the country. Everyone thought he knew just what should be done. Few, even in his own cabinet, had faith in Lincoln’s ability. Seward thought of Lincoln as a mere puppet and of himself as the real leader of the government. The cabinet debated the merits of various generals; the shocking defeat at the Battle of Bull Run in July showed they needed competent men, but who were they?

  Mr. Lincoln had little time for rest or recreation except stolen moments with his family. Willie and Tad got up a show in the attic, had a menagerie back of the house, and gave circus performances with goats, birds, ponies, and other creatures given to them. Wide-eyed youngsters peered through the fence and were invited in for the fun. The Lincoln boys (Willie was eleven and Tad eight) were used to picking friends as they pleased; they cared nothing whether a lad was a son of wealth or poverty; if he wanted to come, he was invited in. When work piled up, the President liked to leave his desk and see what his boys were doing. A laugh at their antics refreshed him.

  Mrs. Lincoln was a devoted mother and was never too busy to make sure her boys were well and happy. She had reluctantly consented that Willie be allowed to ride his pony. This pretty animal was Willie’s most prized gift, and he rode daily.

  One cold winter afternoon he came in wet and chilled. His mother put him to bed, but he did not sleep off the illness as she had hoped; so a doctor was called.

  The next evening there was to be a formal reception at the White House; but Dr. Stone thought Willie would be all right, so the party was not cancelled. Both the President and Mrs. Lincoln came upstairs often that evening to make sure the sick child was sleeping. Alas! Willie got steadily worse, and he died a few days later.

  Mr. Lincoln was crushed with grief. “My poor boy! God has called him home,” he cried. Mrs. Lincoln was so overcome that Mr. Lincoln feared for her health. Little Tad was lost without his brother. He often ran into his father’s office and threw his arms about the man, hugging tight. Then he ran back to lonely play or stayed by his father to nap. Visitors saw the President leave his office and carry a sleeping little boy to bed. The White House seemed different after Willie died.

  Perhaps because war began at once, the President and Mrs. Lincoln who had made few intimate friends in Washington. Now their greatest help came from Mrs. Elizabeth Keckley, a kindly dressmaker to Mrs. Lincoln who had become a friend. In these sad days the President came to depend on her. He loved all his boys, but Willie was “the Lincoln,” the one most like his father. Mrs. Lincoln grieved for many months when her husband needed her gaiety and her faith in him.

  The war was going badly in that year 1862. The President began to wonder if the Union could possibly be saved while slaves were still in bondage. Years before he had proposed that the government purchase and free slaves but the suggestion was talked down as “too expensive.” (Years later historians figured that the Civil War cost more than twice as much as buying and freeing the slaves.) At the time he made the suggestion he could not enforce it. Now with war powers given to the President he could free slaves in rebellious states. How should it be done? For months he studied this problem.

  In the summer of 1862, when General McClellan was building a fine army but not winning battles, the President went to the telegraph office and sat at a desk to write. Here, in the midst of tapping instruments, he was free from seekers and complainers. Presently he wrote a few words, locked the paper in a drawer, and
went away. But he came again, and again. Sometimes he wrote half a page; sometimes he only changed what he had written before. Men watched him and said nothing. They saw he was trying to put deep thoughts into words.

  In July, Lincoln talked with Seward and Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy, about the emancipation of the slaves. They were astonished at the change in his thinking and begged for time to consider before giving an opinion.

  Early in August the President called a cabinet meeting and laid the matter before them. Many objections were made but as he had foreseen most of these, Lincoln had an answer ready for each one. Seward alone had an idea that Lincoln had not considered. He suggested that the matter wait until a Union victory put the country in a mood favorable for change. To this Lincoln agreed.

  Meanwhile Abolitionists prodded the President to take a decisive stand and free the slaves. Delegations came to the White House to plead; many wrote vigorous letters. On the 19th of August, Horace Greeley of the New York Tribune published an open letter to Lincoln in which he reproved the President for delay and demanded that he confiscate and free the slaves at once. Greeley claimed that he expressed the views of twenty million people.

  Lincoln’s answer to Greeley’s criticism of his policy was prompt and clear. “… I would save the Union the shortest way under the Constitution… . If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is 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.”

  And he continued to wait for the right moment.

  But after the Union victory at Antietam, Lincoln could wait no longer. That inward force that often guided him made him sure that the time had come to speak. He called a cabinet meeting on the 22nd of September.

  “I made a promise to myself,” he told the assembled secretaries, “and to my Maker. I am going to fulfill that promise now.” And he read to them the fateful words he had written in the proclamation to free the slaves.

  The message warned the states and parts of states that were “in rebellion against the United States” and said that “unless they ceased war against the government … persons held as slaves within … such states … are henceforth and forever free … and the government of the United States … will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.”

  He asked “freed persons” to refrain from violence and to work for fair wages, and he promised them work in forts and on ships. This, he read, was an act of justice and was legal, and he begged the considerate judgment of men and the favor of God. If signed, the proclamation was to be effective January 1, 1863.

  Many times Lincoln’s cabinet had disagreed with him. That day they approved the proclamation and it was promptly signed.

  This famous document declared free only the slaves in states which had withdrawn from the Union, so it actually had relatively little effect upon the total number of slaves. But its moral value was enormous. Northerners saw in it a sign that Lincoln truly did hope to free the slaves. While Abolitionists thought it far too mild, they admitted it was a good first step toward the right goal.

  In Europe, and especially in England, sentiment for the South had been growing; now, when they saw Lincoln’s stand, plans for intervention were laid aside and liberals turned to Lincoln’s support.

  Many regarded Emancipation, limited as it was, as the most important step in man’s march for freedom since the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

  But its effect on the war was to intensify feeling. The North now had a moral crusade; the South, a fight for life.

  • CHAPTER SEVENTEEN •

  THE MIDDLE WAR YEARS

  In the fall of 1862, the President made a visit to the Army of the Potomac. He wanted to see this army and to talk personally with its general. McClellan had won at Antietam with a terrible cost in men, but he was not following up this advantage. Perhaps the general was better fitted for organizing than for fighting. Alas! A war is not won by soldiers sitting in a well-run camp.

  Lincoln made his inspection on horseback. He was an easy rider and rode more gracefully than he walked. He had the conference with McClellan, who was determined to follow his own plans.

  President Lincoln and General McClellan.

  “Are you not overcautious when you assume that you cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing?” Lincoln asked him. But McClellan had excuses for postponing battle.

  So, after he returned to Washington, the President gave McClellan other work and appointed Major General Burnside in charge of the Army of the Potomac. Now, he hoped, he would get action.

  But Burnside disappointed his chief. After one battle Lincoln replaced him with “Fighting Joe” Hooker, and in the spring of ’63 went again to visit the army.

  This time Mrs. Lincoln and Tad went with the President. Mrs. Lincoln was not well, and Lincoln thought this trip would divert her. Tad loved it, and the men liked him. They gave him a horse, and an orderly rode with him. At the official review Tad galloped alongside the cavalry, his gray cloak flying, his eyes sparkling.

  After the review the President visited with men in the hospital tents. He strolled from cot to cot, taking time to talk with each man.

  “Did you hear what’s said about the review,” a whisper followed the tall visitor. “The President touched his hat to the officers, correctly, but he took it clear off to the men!”

  “There’s a man for me!” men said, and they cheered him when he left for headquarters.

  This visit encouraged the President. Mighty guns, great cavalry troops, thousands of trained men should bring the war to an end soon. But Hooker was overconfident, Lincoln thought. The Commander in Chief was still uneasy about his general.

  Other important matters were on his mind, too. He sponsored many changes that were for the country’s welfare—changes that people engrossed in war hardly noticed or credited to him.

  He proclaimed the last Thursday in November as a day of national Thanksgiving, and through the Treasury Department, he had the words, “In God We Trust,” put on coins. These words were first used on a two-cent piece and then on many coins. (The first time the phrase was used on a penny was the “Lincoln Penny” of 1909.)

  Perhaps Lincoln remembered the confusion in postage rates back in New Salem when he signed the order for a uniform rate of postage in the United States. In July, 1863, free delivery of mail in forty-nine cities was begun. During the war years the first post-office cars were used on railroads and the first railway labor union was organized.

  The Civil War was the first “railroad war” and army men were astonished to find they could not use all the roads. Each different railroad company had its own width of track, and cars could not be switched from one road to the other. Early railroad builders had adopted George Stephenson’s English gauge, with the tracks four feet and eight and a half inches apart. Newer roads chose other widths, independent of each other, four feet to five feet wide.

  When the Union Pacific Railroad was charted in 1862, the company asked Mr. Lincoln to choose a point where the line should begin in Nebraska (he picked Omaha) and to select a gauge. In the midst of war duties he took time to study gauges and decided on the four-foot, eight-and-a-half-inch width. Other railroads noticing that he gave the gauge so much attention, adopted the width he selected; and so, for the first time, cars and engines could be switched from road to road and transcontinental travel became possible.

  The opening up of the West turned people’s thinking to agriculture and a Department of Agriculture was started in Lincoln’s second year of office.

  Foreign affairs were not neglected either. The President recognized the governments of Haiti and Liberia and developed the friendship with
Russia which made it possible for the United States to buy Alaska five years later.

  He took time to write a tactful letter to the King of Siam. The King had sent gifts of elephants’ tusks and pictures of himself and his daughter and had offered to send pairs of elephants for setting up herds in the United States. The intent was appreciated and Lincoln’s refusal must surely be the most diplomatic “No!” ever written. These are, in part, his words:

  “I appreciate most highly your Majesty’s tender of good offices. Our political jurisdiction, however, does not reach a latitude so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant, and steam on land as well as on the water has been our best and most efficient agent of transportation in internal commerce… .”

  Inventors of war weapons heard that the President would receive and study new ideas; so many came to the White House. Some of their ideas and claims were ridiculous. But the President had kindly ways of managing them.

  One man came away chuckling. “You should hear the riddle the President told me,” he remarked to a friend.

  “ ‘Suppose I call a sheep’s tail a leg,’ he said to me; ‘then how many legs has a sheep?’

  “ ‘Five,’ I said.

  “ ‘Not so,’ the President corrected. ‘A sheep has four legs. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.’ You have to really show that man—telling isn’t enough.”

  Time spent with inventors got results. Lincoln approved experimental use of several kinds of weapons. Use of balloons for observation was begun in the summer of 1861. He ordered three “ironclads” after he saw the plans for Ericsson’s Monitor, a new type of ship with an iron-covered hull.

  There were other “firsts” too. The first draft law was passed, the first Congressional Medal of Honor was awarded, and for the first time soldiers on duty away from home were allowed to vote. Both military police and army medical care were started.