Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  Lincoln also used journalists to broadcast his views. From November to February, Henry Villard of the New York Herald and Cincinnati Commercial reported almost daily from Springfield, often describing the opinion of “Springfield” or “the men at the capitol,” which doubtless reflected the president-elect’s thinking. Villard’s dispatches were extensively reprinted. In addition, Lincoln continued his decades-long habit of writing for the Springfield Illinois State Journal, widely regarded as his mouthpiece. Major newspapers like the New York Tribune quoted the Journal’s editorials as an indicator of Lincoln’s intentions. Lincoln occasionally granted formal interviews in which he discussed public affairs. His assistant personal secretary, John Hay, wrote anonymous dispatches for the Missouri Democrat reporting Lincoln’s views.

  As he followed events in the South, Lincoln conscientiously searched for precedents to guide him in shaping his response. According to Villard, Lincoln “is at all times surrounded by piles of standard works, to which constant reference is made. His strong desire for full and reliable information on all current topics renders it especially regretful to him, that circumstances debar him from obtaining anything but ex parte statements as to the progress of events in the South.”137

  Lincoln’s imperfect sources of information about South Carolina cheered him up shortly before the state’s secession convention met on December 17. He told a visitor he thought that “things have reached their worst point in the South, and they are likely to mend in the future. If it be true, as reported, that the South Carolinians do not intend to resist the collection of the revenue, after they ordain secession, there need be no collision with the federal government. The Union may still be maintained. The greatest inconvenience will arise from the want of federal courts; as with the present feeling, judges, marshals, and other officers could not be obtained.” With moderation and good humor, he added that the charges the South made against the North “were so indefinite that they could not be regarded as sound. If they were well-defined, they could be fairly and successfully met. But they are so vague, that they cannot be long maintained by reasoning men even in the Southern States.” He expressed some irritation with the New York Tribune and other newspapers which recommended that the erring sisters be allowed to depart in peace; such advice, said he, “was having a bad effect in some of the border States, especially in Missouri, where there was danger that it might alienate some of the best friends of the cause.” There and in “some other States, where Republicanism has just begun to grow, and where there is still a strong pro-slavery party to contend with, there can be no advantage in taunting and bantering the South.” Republican leaders in such areas “had urged him to use his influence with the journals referred to, and induce them to desist from their present tone towards the South.” His caller reported that Lincoln “did not say he had promised to do this, and I only gathered from his manner and language that he would prefer to see the bantering tone abandoned.” He had formed his opinion of the situation at the South, he cautioned, “after much study and thought; they were his views at the present time but were of course liable to be modified by his more mature judgment, after further information and further study of the progress of events.”138

  When news reached Springfield that South Carolina had officially seceded on December 20, it profoundly shook nearly everyone with the notable exception of Lincoln, who rather coolly quipped that “he would henceforth look for ‘foreign inland news’ in his dailies.” Henry Villard concluded that “[t]imidity is evidently no element of his moral composition” and that “there are dormant qualities in ‘Old Abe’ which occasion will draw forth, develope and remind people to a certain degree of the characteristics of ‘Old Hickory.’ ”139 Herman Kreismann also thought Lincoln had “the notion of playing General Jackson.”140

  That fateful December day the Illinois State Journal ran a bellicose editorial that was thought to reflect Lincoln’s views. South Carolina, it declared, “cannot get out of this Union until she conquers the Government. The revenues must be collected at her ports, and any resistance on her part will lead to war.” A violation of the laws would compel the president to act. “The laws of the United States must be executed—the President has no discretionary power on the subject—his duty is emphatically pronounced in the Constitution. Mr. Lincoln will perform that duty. Disunion, by armed force, is TREASON, and treason must and will be put down at all hazards.” Secessionists should understand that “the Republican party, that the great North, aided by hundreds of thousands of patriotic men in the slave States, have determined to preserve the Union—peaceably if they can, forcibly if they must.”141 The Journal ran equally strong editorials in the following weeks.

  This should have come as no surprise, for the Journal had been publishing similar commentary for over a month and quoting the anti-secession speeches that Lincoln had delivered in Kansas a year earlier, including his statement that “if constitutionally we elect a President, and therefore you undertake to destroy the Union, it will be our duty to deal with you as old John Brown was dealt with. We can only do our duty.”142 One of the most prescient and hard-hitting editorials appeared on December 18 (probably by Lincoln), arguing that the Cotton States girded for war because “they know that the friends of Union and this Government will not yield up everything to an insolent, treasonable slave power without a struggle.” Once the secessionists have defied the law, “the work of death will begin” and the North will be united against the South’s rule-or-ruin stance. “We do not like to contemplate the results of civil war, but if the secessionists are determined to bring it about, it may be well enough to look it in the face.” The first result would be “the total overthrow of slavery.” Fugitive slaves from the Border States, which probably would not secede, will escape in droves to the North. Slaves in the Gulf States would rise up against their masters. “Who will say that an African Garibaldi may not even now be awaiting, with plan and arms prepared, the approaching hour? Burning dwellings—outraged, murdered wives and children, is a horrible, heart-rending picture. Yet to it we would direct the gaze of the madmen who are leading the Cotton States into rebellion against the best Government the world has ever witnessed.” Through secession, Southerners would achieve nothing “but war and all the evils resulting from it.” They “cannot gain peace nor security—they cannot gain territory—they cannot recover fugitives—they cannot blow out the moral lights that guide the Northern mind, and repress all sympathy for struggling bondsmen.” Europe would not aid the secessionists. Territories would not be opened to them. The Fugitive Slave Act would not be enforced. “The North may lose much in life and property, but she will preserve the Government, and win the applause and admiration of the world.”143

  Events in Georgia strengthened Lincoln’s hope that South Carolina’s example would not be imitated. The disunionist governor of the Peach State, Joseph E. Brown, met stiff resistance from prominent leaders like Alexander H. Stephens, Herschel V. Johnson, and Benjamin H. Hill. Lincoln read Stephens’s November 14 pro-Union speech before the Georgia Legislature with pleasure and requested a copy from its author. Stephens, who had been a friend and ally of Lincoln during his term in the House over a decade earlier, argued that since the Democrats would control Congress, Lincoln could do little harm; that his mere election was no justification for rash action; and that secession should not be undertaken unless the federal government committed an aggressive act. Lincoln commented that “Mr. Stephens is a great man—he’s a man that can get up a blaze whenever he’s a mind to—his speech has got up a great blaze in Georgia—I never could get up a blaze more than once or twice in my life.”144 Privately, Stephens expressed admiration for Lincoln: “In point of merit as a man I have no doubt Lincoln is just as good, safe and sound a man as Mr. Buchanan, and would administer the Government so far as he is individually concerned just as safely for the South and as honestly and faithfully in every particular. I know the man well. He is not a bad man. He will make as good a President as Fillm
ore did and better too in my opinion. He has a great deal more practical common sense.”145 On November 30, Lincoln was “reported to have said that the best item of news he had received since the 6th of November was that of Mr. Stephens’ election as delegate to the Georgia State Convention.”146 If that convention were to reject secession, the disunionist movement might collapse elsewhere. In December, Lincoln asked Stephens: “Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would, directly, or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears. The South would be in no more danger in this respect, than it was in the days of Washington. I suppose, however, this does not meet the case. You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.”147

  Secessionists agreed, for they denounced the doctrines of the Republican Party rather than Lincoln himself. “There are no objections to him as a man, or as a citizen of the North,” remarked James Henley Thornwell of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary in South Carolina. “He is probably entitled, in the private relations of life, to all the commendations which his friends have bestowed upon him.”148 Similarly, a leading North Carolina Unionist wrote: “It is not Lincoln—so far as he is concerned, he is taken but little in the account. There is but little bitterness of feeling against him individually. So far from it, he is regarded as neither a dangerous or a bad man. We have no fears, that he is going to attempt any great outrage upon us. We rather suppose his purpose will be to conciliate. But it is … the fundamental idea, that underlies the whole movement of his nomination, the canvass, & his election. It is the declaration of unceasing warfare against slavery as an institution, as enunciated by the Representative men of the party—the Sewards, & Wades, & Wilsons & Chases, & Sumners &c. &c. We Southern people, being warm-hearted, and candid, & impetuous if you please, are also confiding & credulous. When men of high position assert any thing seriously, we believe they are in earnest. And when the men who lead & direct the Republican party tell us, that they do not intend to pause in their work, till they have driven slavery off the American Continent—when Wilson tells us that the election of Lincoln has placed our necks under their heels—& Sumner tells us that Lincoln’s election involves a change in the policy of the government—when we are thus notified beforehand, that we may expect a still more relentless war upon our property—I say when we see this, our people think it is time to have this dispute settled.”149

  Responses to Secession in Washington—Buchanan and Seward

  In December, the nation turned its eyes toward Washington where Buchanan and Congress would confront the gathering storm. Lincoln felt quite anxious as he awaited the president’s annual message. The weak, vacillating Old Public Functionary, as Buchanan was called, disappointed Lincoln and most other Northerners by proclaiming that, although secession was unconstitutional, the federal government could do nothing legally to stop it. The lame-duck president denounced the antislavery movement and blamed the crisis on the “long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States.”150

  Lincoln was incensed at Buchanan’s ascription of blame for the crisis to the antislavery forces rather than to the Southern fire-eaters. The Illinois State Journal denounced “the weak and delusive argument of Mr. Buchanan and his Attorney-General, that to execute the laws within a State is to ‘coerce a State,’ and that to protect the property of the United States from plunder and preserve the national flag from dishonor, is to ‘make war on a sovereign State.’ We would restore words to their honest use, and have the truth shine out that a State cannot secede, nor by any act of its Legislature or Convention, oust the Government of its jurisdiction; nor change its own relation or the relation of its citizens to the Government one jot or tittle; but if aggrieved must seek the remedy in the manner prescribed by the Constitution for its own amendment.”151

  When Buchanan’s message was referred to a special House committee consisting of one member from each of the thirty-three states, Lincoln’s fear of a split between radical and conservative Republicans grew. Such a committee, he thought, was too big and comprised of too many diverse elements. He was right; the committee, which wrangled throughout the winter, failed to reach a consensus. On December 13, its Republican members divided eight to eight on a motion acknowledging that the South’s complaints were justified. The next day, Illinois Congressman William Kellogg assured the committee that Lincoln had no desire to touch slavery where it existed by law; that he supported the repeal of unconstitutional Personal Liberty Laws; and that he favored a just enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. To the delight of Democrats, Kellogg promised to introduce a measure providing that territories would be admitted to the Union with or without slavery in accordance with the wishes of their inhabitants. Along with Committee Chairman Thomas Corwin and Iowa Representative Samuel R. Curtis, Kellogg—but not Lincoln—had become an appeaser willing to abandon the Chicago Platform and adopt Stephen A. Douglas’s popular sovereignty nostrum.

  Dominating Congress that winter, Seward maneuvered desperately to keep the Union from breaking apart before Lincoln’s inauguration. The senator viewed himself as a well-informed realist who must somehow save the nation from fire-eaters in the Deep South and naïve stiff-back Republicans like Lincoln who failed to understand the gravity of the crisis. He paid lip service to upholding the party’s principles while urging his colleagues “to practice reticence and kindness.”152 Meanwhile, behind the scenes, he maneuvered to win concessions that might placate the South even if they violated the Chicago Platform. Privately (but not publicly), he supported the Crittenden Compromise. When James Barbour, a prominent Virginia Unionist, told him “frankly that nothing materially less than the Crittenden compromise” would satisfy the Old Dominion, Seward replied: “I am of your opinion that nothing short of that will allay the excitement, and therefore I will favor it substantially.”153 Seward was delighted to learn that the House Committee of Thirty-Three would contain pro-compromise Representatives, including his chief ally in the lower chamber, Charles Francis Adams. On December 18, the U.S. senate established a Committee of Thirteen, akin to the House Committee of Thirty-Three, and named Seward a member.

  Alarmed by the ferocity of Deep South secessionists, many Republicans joined Seward in favoring conciliation. On December 5, North Carolina Representative John A. Gilmer reported that “the anxiety here from all quarters (except the Southern fire eaters) to preserve the Union, is intense. In fact the North seems inclined to yield everything to preserve the Union.”154 Gilmer exaggerated. To be sure, moves to introduce a Force Bill were squelched, but it remained unclear what further gestures the North was willing to make. Many appealed for sectional calm in vague terms. A constituent told John Sherman of Ohio that “the great mass desire the preservation of the Union, if that be possible without too great a sacrifice of principles.”155 How should “too great a sacrifice of principles” be defined? The Moderates looked to Lincoln for guidance. Congressman Elbridge G. Spaulding told Weed that if the president-elect would “lead off on some reasonable and practicable plan it would have great weight and decide the course of many who are now passive and in doubt as what should be done.”156 A Democratic member of the House Committee of Thirty-Three who favored Weed’s proposal to extend the Missouri Compromise line to California (allowing slavery to expand below the latitude of 36° 30’) said, “Lincoln must soar above party ties & party fealty.”157

  Pressure by Lincoln to Resist Appeasement

  In mid-December, the House committee almost adopted Weed’s scheme, but it failed thanks largely to Lincoln’s behind-the-scenes intervention. Believing Weed’s plan contained “too great a sacrifice of principles,” Lincoln adamantly opposed it. Slavery, he insisted, must
not be allowed to expand. Twelve years earlier, he, along with the overwhelming majority of Northern congressmen, had voted against extending the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific coast. In 1859, he had told Republicans: “Never forget that we have before us this whole matter of the right or wrong of slavery in this Union, though the immediate question is as to its spreading out into new Territories and States.”158 The symbolic significance of the issue of slavery in the territories as well as its practical implications dominated Lincoln’s thinking in the winter of 1860–1861. On December 6, he wrote to Congressman Kellogg, Illinois’s representative on the Committee of Thirty-Three, who had asked him for guidance: “Entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery. The instant you do, they have us under again; all our labor is lost, and sooner or later must be done over. Douglas is sure to be again trying to bring in his ‘Pop. Sov.’ Have none of it. The tug has to come & better now than later. You know I think the fugitive slave clause of the constitution ought to be enforced—to put it on the mildest form, ought not to be resisted.”159 (He assured a Kentucky Democrat that the Fugitive Slave Law “will be better administered under my Administration than it ever has been under that of my predecessors.”)160 Two days thereafter Lincoln urged Congressman E. B. Washburne to “[p]revent, as far as possible, any of our friends from demoralizing themselves, and our cause, by entertaining propositions for compromise of any sort, on ‘slavery extention.’ There is no possible compromise upon it, but which puts us under again, and leaves all our work to do over again. Whether it be a Mo. line, or Eli Thayer’s Pop. Sov. it is all the same. Let either be done, & immediately filibustering and extending slavery recommences. On that point hold firm, as with a chain of steel.”161 On December 10, Lincoln wrote Trumbull in the same vein: “Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again. The dangerous ground—that into which some of our friends have a hankering to run—is Pop. Sov. Have none of it. Stand firm. The tug has to come, & better now, than any time hereafter.”162 A week later he reiterated to Trumbull his firm stance: “If any of our friends do prove false, and fix up a compromise on the territorial question, I am for fighting again.”163 The following day he told John D. Defrees of Indiana: “I am sorry any republican inclines to dally with Pop. Sov. of any sort. It acknowledges that slavery has equal rights with liberty, and surrenders all we have contended for. Once fastened on us as a settled policy, filibustering for all South of us, and making slave states of it, follows in spite of us, with an early Supreme court decision, holding our free-state constitutions to be unconstitutional.”164 When Pennsylvania Governor-elect Andrew G. Curtin asked his advice about what to say in his inaugural address, Lincoln counseled that he should make clear “without passion, threat, or appearance of boasting, but nevertheless, with firmness, the purpose of yourself, and your State to maintain the Union at all hazzards.”165