Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  Lincoln’s anger was widely shared in the North, where the secessionists’ takeover of U.S. government facilities was regarded as outrageous theft on a massive scale. Such wholesale robbery undermined support for compromise measures. Even before the Gulf States had seceded, the North was, according to a New Yorker, “fast being consolidated in opposition to the rumored attempts of the South to take possession of public property.”220 The secession of South Carolina was offensive enough to Northerners; but when the Palmetto State then seized federal property, it caused even greater indignation. In referring to this “sad blunder” by the disunionists, John Pendleton Kennedy of Maryland observed on February 10: “It is treason, and an indignity to the Sovereignty of the United States. That incident alone has changed the temper of the whole North. It has done very much the same thing here [in Maryland]. The hauling down of our glorious Stars and Stripes … has awakened a volume of ardor in favor of the Union which might otherwise have slept.”221 In New York, John A. Dix observed the same phenomenon. If the secessionists had behaved peaceably, the North probably would have acquiesced, but, recalled Dix, “the forcible seizure of arsenals, mints, revenue-cutters, and other property of the common government, … aroused a feeling of exasperation which nothing but the arbitrament of arms could overcome.”222

  Worried about Southern forts, Lincoln turned to Winfield Scott, the highest ranking officer in the U.S. Army. In late October, the general had recommended to him that all unmanned or undermanned U.S. forts be garrisoned, and he expressed the hope that a moderate but firm policy would thwart the secessionists. Lincoln thanked Scott and instructed E. B. Washburne to tell him “to be as well prepared as he can to either hold, or retake, the forts, as the case may require, at, and after the inaugeration.”223 On December 21, he wrote Francis P. Blair Sr. that “if the forts shall be given up before the inaugeration, the General must retake them afterwards.”224 Five days later, Major Robert Anderson caused a sensation when he abandoned Fort Moultrie, which he rightly feared the secessionists would overrun, and moved his troops to Fort Sumter in the middle of Charleston harbor, a site far less vulnerable to attack. Hard-liners in the North cheered this bold action. Assessing events in the Palmetto State, Lincoln allegedly said “that the laws must be enforced, that the general government can do nothing else till the people consent to release that State from her allegiance to the government.” He approved Anderson’s conduct “in the most emphatic terms” and indicated that if “Buchanan should dismiss Major Anderson he would be reinstated the moment Mr. Lincoln comes into power, and probably promoted; and if not dismissed [by Buchanan], he would be cordially sustained by the incoming administration.”225

  Anticipating that violence might disrupt his inauguration, Lincoln asked Simon Cameron to consult with General Scott about assuring a safe inauguration. The Chief replied that “I have seen Genl. Scott, who bids me say he will be glad to act under your orders, in all ways to preserve the Union. He says Mr Buchanan, at last, has called on him to see that order shall be preserved at the inauguration in this District. That, for this purpose, he has ordered here 2 companies of flying artillery; and that he will organize the militia—and have himself sworn in as a constable. The old warrior is roused, and he will be equal to the occasion.”226 On January 4, Scott assured Lincoln that all would be well: “The President elect may rely, with confidence, on Genl. S’s utmost exertions in the service of his country (the Union) both before & after the approaching inauguration.”227

  Perhaps because the general hailed from Virginia, Lincoln felt the need for further reassurance of his trustworthiness and loyalty. So the president-elect dispatched Thomas S. Mather, adjutant general of Illinois, to consult with him. In the capital, Old Fuss and Feathers urged Mather to tell Lincoln that “I shall expect him to come on to Washington as soon as he is ready. Say to him also that, when once here, I shall consider myself responsible for his safety. If necessary, I shall plant cannon at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and if any of the Maryland or Virginia gentlemen who have become so threatening and troublesome of late show their heads or even venture to raise a finger, I shall blow them to hell!”228 This report ended Lincoln’s doubts about Scott, whose arrangements for the inauguration enjoyed the president-elect’s full confidence.

  Composing the Inaugural Address

  By late January, Lincoln was devoting much time to his inaugural address and to the speeches he would deliver en route to Washington. To concentrate on that task and avoid distracting visits, he squirreled himself away in a small, little-used room in the store owned by his brother-in-law, Clark M. Smith, who provided a table and chair, the only furniture available to Lincoln there. He also took refuge in the hotel room of Thomas D. Jones, a Cincinnati sculptor who was executing a bust of the president-elect.

  Herndon recalled that in late January, Lincoln “informed me that he was ready to begin the preparation of his inaugural address. He had, aside from his law books and the few gilded volumes that ornamented the centre-table in his parlor at home, comparatively no library. He never seemed to care to own or collect books. On the other hand I had a very respectable collection, and was adding to it every day. To my library Lincoln very frequently had access. When, therefore, he began on his inaugural speech he told me what works he intended to consult. I looked for a long list, but when he went over it I was greatly surprised. He asked me to furnish him with Henry Clay’s great speech delivered in 1850; Andrew Jackson’s proclamation against Nullification; and a copy of the Constitution.” Herndon also supplied a copy of George Washington’s farewell address. With these few books and documents at his fingertips, Lincoln secluded himself at Smith’s store and drafted his inaugural.229

  An editorial in the Illinois State Journal, perhaps written by Lincoln, quoted President Jackson’s January 16, 1833, message to Congress attacking the nullification doctrine: “The right of the people of a single state to absolve themselves at will, and without the consent of the other States, from their most solemn obligations, and hazard the liberties and happiness of the millions composing this union, cannot be acknowledged. Such authority is believed to be utterly repugnant both to the principles upon which the general government is constituted, and to the objects which it was expressly formed to attain.… While a forbearing spirit may, and I trust will, be exercised toward the errors of our brethren in a particular quarter, duty to the rest of the Union demands that open and organized resistance to the laws should not be executed with impunity.”230

  In late December, Lincoln was reportedly given to quoting Henry Clay’s 1850 speech regarding South Carolina’s threatened secession: “I should deplore as much as any man living or dead that armies should be raised against the authority of the Union, either by individuals or States. But after all that has occurred, if any one State, or a portion of the people of any State, choose to place themselves in military array against the government of the Union, I am for trying the strength of the government. I am for ascertaining whether we have a government or not—practical, efficient, capable of maintaining its authority and upholding the powers and interests which belong to a government. Now, sir, am I to be alarmed or dissuaded from any such course by intimations of spilling blood? If blood is to be spilled, by whose fault will it be? Upon this supposition I maintain it will be the fault of those who raise the standard of disunion and endeavor to prostrate the government. And, sir, when that is done, so long as it pleases God to give me a vote to express my sentiment, and an arm, weak and enfeebled as it may be by age, that voice and that arm will be on the side of my country, for the support of the general authority, and for the maintenance of the powers of this Union.” If “the standard should be raised of open resistance to the union, and constitution and the laws, what is to be done? There can be but one possible answer: the power, the authority and dignity of the government ought to be maintained, and resistance put down at every hazard.… the moment a daring hand is raised to resist, by force, the execution of the laws, the duty of enforci
ng them arises, and if the conflict which may ensue should lead to civil war, the resisting party, having begun it, will be responsible for all the consequences.”231 This stern rejection of secession would characterize Lincoln’s inaugural.

  At Lincoln’s request, William Bailhache of the Illinois State Journal secretly printed a few copies of the inaugural address and kept them under lock and key. Before leaving Springfield, Lincoln showed one copy to a firm opponent of appeasing the South, Carl Schurz, who approved its insistence that the revenues be collected, that federal facilities be retaken, and that the laws be enforced.

  In preparation for his departure, Lincoln “with his characteristic dutifulness” rented out his house, sold his furniture, threw an elaborate farewell party, visited his stepmother, reminisced with old friends, and arranged his itinerary.232 The day he left, after roping the trunks that had been packed by his servant Mariah Vance, he affixed simple identification tags to them: A. Lincoln White House Washington, D.C.

  On January 30 he took affectionate leave of his stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, whom he saw at Farmington near Charleston, where she was living with Augustus H. Chapman. He had asked Lincoln to visit her: “She is getting somewhat childish and is very uneasy about you fearing some of your political opponents will kill you. She is very anxious to see you once more.”233

  Lincoln was also affectionate with Herndon when he said good-bye. “Billy,” he asked on the eve of his departure for Washington, “how long have we been together?”

  “Over sixteen years.”

  “We’ve never had a cross word during all that time, have we?”

  “No, indeed we have not.”

  After reminiscing about various cases, Lincoln pointed to the firm’s signboard outside the office and said, “Let it hang there undisturbed. Give our clients to understand that the election of a President makes no change in the firm of Lincoln and Herndon. If I live I’m coming back some time, and then we’ll go right on practicing law as if nothing had ever happened.”234 (Herndon told Caroline Dall a different version of this farewell: “I will have no other partner while you live Bill, if you keep straight.”)235

  As a parting gift, Lincoln offered Herndon his books. Overhearing him, Mary Lincoln sharply asked: “Abraham, are you going to give away everything we have got?” He replied: “Mary, if you will attend to your business, I will attend to mine.”236

  When Republican legislatures and governors throughout the North urged him to speak in their cities as he made his way to the nation’s capital, Lincoln remarked that if he were accept them all, “he would not get to Washington until the Inauguration was over.”237 He did agree, however, to make addresses in Indiana, Ohio, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

  Eager to take the reins of government, Lincoln looked on with dismay as Buchanan failed to resist the takeover of federal facilities in seceding states, or to try regaining them once they were seized, or to dispatch the navy to collect revenues at Southern ports, or to call for volunteers to uphold the Union. The president-elect lamented to his old friend Joseph Gillespie on New Year’s Day 1861 that “every hour adds to the difficulties I am called upon to meet, and the present Administration does nothing to check the tendency toward dissolution. I, who have been called to meet this awful responsibility, am compelled to remain here, doing nothing to avert it or lessen its force when it comes to me.” Speaking with more bitterness than Gillespie ever heard him express, Lincoln added: “It is not of myself that I complain. But every day adds to the difficulty of the situation and makes the outlook for the country more gloomy. Secession is being fostered, rather than repressed, and if the doctrine meets with general acceptance in the border States it will be a great blow to the Government.” His plight reminded Lincoln of a law case that he and Gillespie had once tried: “I suppose you will never forget that trial down in Montgomery County where the lawyer associated with you gave away the whole case in his opening speech. I saw you signaling to him, but you couldn’t stop him. Now that’s just the way with me and Buchanan. He is giving away the case and I have nothing to say and can’t stop him.”238

  A few days thereafter a friend reported that Lincoln “has a world of responsibility & seems to feel it & to be oppressed by it. He looks care worn & more haggard & stooped than I ever saw him.”239 Gustave Koerner, who also noted that Lincoln “looks care worn,” thought that “no man was ever in this country placed in a more perplexing and trying situation, than he is.”240 The sculptor Thomas Jones observed that in late January, “a deep-seated melancholy seemed to take possession of his soul.”241

  Lincoln grew exasperated with congressional Republicans as well as with Buchanan. On February 4, the senate passed a bill organizing the Colorado Territory with no provision excluding slavery. A short while later, similar legislation was adopted for Nevada and Dakota. “It seems to me,” Lincoln told Gillespie, “that Douglas got the best of it at the election last fall. I am left to face an empty treasury and a great rebellion, while my own party endorses his popular sovereignty idea and applies it in legislation.” As he was about to leave for Washington, he said to his old friend: “I only wish I could have got there to lock the door before the horse was stolen.”242

  On February 11, Lincoln boarded a train that would take him to the nation’s capital where he would try to keep other horses—the eight Slave States in the border region and the Upper South—from being stolen. Just before the train pulled out, he delivered a brief farewell to Springfield, one of the most affecting of his prose masterpieces. In the immediately preceding days, he seemed sad at the prospect of leaving old friends. That morning, he spent half an hour at the small, dingy depot shaking hands with innumerable well-wishers. He was so deeply moved that he could hardly speak. The mood was solemn and anxious as he mounted the platform of the train’s rear car. There, a friend noted, his “breast heaved with emotion and he could scarcely command his feelings sufficiently to commence.”243 Briefly he surveyed the large crowd, consisting of Republicans and Democrats alike, as the cold wind blew a combination of snow and rain into their faces. Only the locomotive’s steady hiss broke the silence.

  Trembling with suppressed emotion and radiating profound sadness, he slowly and distinctly delivered his eloquent remarks: “My friends—No one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe every thing. 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 every where for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.”244

  “We will do it; we will do it,” responded many in the crowd, who, like the speaker, had tears in their eyes.245 An editor of the Illinois State Journal called it “a most impressive scene. We have known Mr. Lincoln for many years; we have heard him speak upon a hundred different occasions; but we never saw him so profoundly affected, nor did he ever utter an address which seemed to us so full of simple and touching eloquence, so exactly adapted to the occasion, so worthy of the man and the hour. Although it was raining fast when he began to speak, every hat was lifted, and every head bent forward to catch the last words of the departing chief.”246 The New York World commented that nothing “could have been more appropriate and touching,” while the Chicago Press and Tribune accurately predicted that it “will become a part of the national history.”247 Lincoln’s friend, Chicago Congressman Isaac N. Arnold, told his House colleagues that there was “not a more simple, touching, and beautiful speech in the English language.”248 After Lincoln took leave of his family and entered the car, the cr
owd gave three cheers and then stood silent as the train slowly pulled away.

  NOTES

  List of Abbreviations

  AL MSS DLC: Abraham Lincoln Papers, Library of Congress

  CSmH: Huntington Library, San Marino, California

  DLC: Library of Congress

  HI: Herndon’s Informants

  H-W MSS DLC: Herndon-Weik Papers, Library of Congress

  ICHi: Chicago History Museum

  IHi: Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield

  InU: Indiana University

  LMF: Lincoln Museum, Fort Wayne

  MHi: Massachusetts Historical Society

  RPB: Brown University

  Author’s Note

  1. Nevins to Benjamin P. Thomas, New York, 10 Dec. 1951, Thomas Papers, Lincoln Presidential Library, Springfield.

  2. Sandburg to F. Lauriston Bullard, Herbert, Michigan, 10 May 1940, carbon copy, Barrett-Sandburg Papers, Newberry Library, Chicago. On Bullard’s criticism, see Joseph E. George, Jr., “F. Lauriston Bullard as a Lincoln Scholar” (Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University, 1959), 28–42.

  3. John W. Starr, The Dual Personality of Abraham Lincoln: A Brief Psychological Study (privately printed, 1928), 5.

  4. Morison to Beveridge, Oxford [England], 15 June 1925, Beveridge Papers, Library of Congress.

  5. Nathaniel W. Stephenson to Albert J. Beveridge, New Haven, Connecticut, 23 June 1926, Beveridge Papers, Library of Congress.

  6. Allen G. Bogue, “Historians and Radical Republicans: A Meaning for Today,” Journal of American History 70 (1983): 29.

  7. Speech by Frederick Douglass at New York’s Cooper Union, 1 June 1865, manuscript in the Douglass Papers, Library of Congress.