IX
At noon on March 4, James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln entered an open barouche at Willard’s Hotel to begin the drive down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol. Determined to prevent any attempt on Lincoln’s life, General Scott had stationed sharpshooters on the roofs of buildings along the avenue, and companies of soldiers blocked off the cross streets. He stationed himself with one battery of light artillery on Capitol Hill; General John E. Wool, commander of the army’s Department of the East, was with another. The presidential procession was short and businesslike, more like a military operation than a political parade.
Entering the Capitol from the north through a passageway boarded so as to prevent any possible assassination attempt, Buchanan and Lincoln attended the swearing in of Vice President Hannibal Hamlin and then emerged to a smattering of applause on the platform erected at the east portico. Introduced by his old friend, the silver-tongued E. D. Baker, Lincoln rose but was obviously troubled by what to do with his tall stovepipe hat. Noting his perplexity, Douglas said, “Permit me, sir,” took the hat, and held it during the ceremony. Lincoln read his inaugural, an eyewitness recalled, in a voice “though not very strong or full-toned” that “rang out over the acres of people before him with surprising distinctness, and was heard in the remotest parts of his audience.” When he finished, the cadaverous Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, now nearly eighty-four years old, tottered forth to administer the oath of office to the sixteenth President of the United States.
The audience could not be quite sure what the new President’s policy toward secession would be because his inaugural address, like his cabinet, was an imperfectly blended mixture of opposites. The draft that he completed before leaving Springfield was a no-nonsense document; it declared that the Union was indestructible, that secession was illegal, and that he intended to enforce the laws. “All the power at my disposal will be used to reclaim the public property and places which have fallen,” he pledged, “to hold, occupy and possess these, and all other property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties on imports.” Promising that “there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none unless forced upon the national authority,” Lincoln urged secessionists to pause for reflection: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.... With you, and not with me, is the solemn question of ‘Shall it be peace, or a sword?’”
Lincoln showed this warlike draft to several of his associates. David Davis’s comments were not recorded. Francis P. Blair, Sr., remembering his glory days when Andrew Jackson stared down the South Carolina nullifiers, approved it and urged that no change be made. Browning found it “able, well considered, and appropriate” but strongly advised Lincoln to delete the pledge to reclaim federal forts that had fallen into Confederate hands because this would be “construed into a threat or menace” in the Deep South and would be “irritating” in the border states. Lincoln accepted the suggestion.
More significant were the changes that Seward advised. Granting that Lincoln’s basic argument was “strong and conclusive, and ought not to be in any way abridged or modified,” Seward thought the speech much too provocative. If Lincoln delivered it without alterations, he warned, Virginia and Maryland would secede and within sixty days the Union would be obliged to fight the Confederacy for possession of the capital at Washington. Dozens of verbal changes should be made, deleting words and phrases that could appear to threaten “the defeated, irritated, angered, frenzied” people of the South. Something more than argument was needed “to meet and remove prejudice and passion in the South, and despondency and fear in the East.” Entreating Lincoln to include “some words of affection,” some “of calm and cheerful confidence,” he proposed a less martial concluding paragraph: “I close. We are not we must not be aliens or enemies but fellow countrymen and brethren The mystic chords which proceeding from so many battle fields and so many patriot graves pass through all the hearts and all the hearths in this broad continent of ours will yet again harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the nation.” Lincoln made many of the changes Seward proposed. Seward’s suggested final paragraph was too ornate for his taste, but he incorporated its ideas in language distinctively his own:
I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.... The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Reaction to the address was largely predictable. In the Confederacy it was generally taken to mean that war was inevitable. A correspondent of the Charleston Mercury viewed this pronouncement from “the Ourang-Outang at the White House” as “the tocsin of battle” that was also “the signal of our freedom.” In the upper South the Richmond Dispatch said the message “inaugurates civil war,” and the Richmond Enquirer said it meant that Virginia must choose between invasion by Lincoln’s army or Jefferson Davis’s. In the North, Republican papers generally praised the address. The Indianapolis Daily Journal called it “strong, straightforward and manly,” and the Detroit Daily Tribune found it “able, firm, conciliatory, true to principle and of transparent honesty.” But the Albany Atlas and Argus, a Douglas paper, dismissed this “rambling, discursive, questioning, loose-jointed stump speech,” and the pro-Breckinridge Columbus Daily Capital City Fact predicted that Lincoln’s policy meant that “blood will stain the soil and color the waters of the entire continent—brother will be arrayed in hostile front against brother.”
The most thoughtful verdict was offered by the Providence Daily Post, a Democratic paper, which seemed to sense the differences between Lincoln’s original draft and the address that he actually delivered: “If the President selected his words with the view of making clear his views, he was, partially at least, unsuccessful. There is some plain talk in the address; but... it is immediately followed by obscurely stated qualifications.”
X
On the morning after the inauguration Lincoln found on his desk a report from Major Robert Anderson that the provisions for his garrison at Fort Sumter would be exhausted in about six weeks. Unless he was resupplied within that time, he would have to surrender. He warned that it would take a force of 20,000 well-disciplined men to make the fort secure.
Lincoln was not prepared for this emergency. As yet there was no executive branch of the government. The Senate had yet to confirm even his private secretary, John G. Nicolay. None of his cabinet officers had been approved. His Secretary of State-designate had not yet agreed to serve, and Salmon P. Chase had not even been informed of his nomination.
Lincoln needed all the help he could get because, as he freely admitted later, when he became President “he was entirely ignorant not only of the duties, but of the manner of doing the business” in the executive office. He tried to do everything himself. There was no one to teach him rules and procedures, and he made egregious mistakes. For example, he thought he could issue orders directly to officers in the navy, without even informing Secretary Welles, and he attempted, without congressional authorization, to create a new Bureau of Militia in the War Department headed by his young friend Elmer Ellsworth. “The difficulty with Mr Lincoln is that he has no conception of his situation,” Senator Charles Sumner concluded. “And having no system in his composition he has undertaken to manage the whole thing as if he knew all about it.”
The new President allowed office-seekers to take up most of his time. From nine o’clock in the morning until late at night, his White House office was open to all comers, and sometimes the petitioners were so numerous that it was impossible to climb the stairs. As Maine Senator William Pitt Fessenden said, they made up an “ill-bred, ravenous crowd,” and Lincoln lamented that he was considered “fair game for everybody of that hungry lot.” The pressure was so great, Nicolay wrot
e, that “we have scarcely had time to eat sleep or even breathe.” Browning scolded the President: “You should not permit your time to be consumed, and your energies exhausted by personal applications for office.” But Lincoln was incorrigible. With a sad smile he explained to Henry Wilson, the Massachusetts senator, that these people “dont want much and dont get but little, and I must see them.”
The news from Fort Sumter forced this inexperienced and overworked administrator to make a hard choice: he must either reinforce Anderson’s garrison or evacuate it. Lincoln’s options were sharply limited by two principles firmly enunciated in his inaugural address. One promised to avoid “bloodshed or violence ... unless it be forced upon the national authority.” The other pledged to “hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government.” That included Fort Sumter.
In the days after receiving the news from Anderson, Lincoln wrestled with his problem. He did not come to conclusions quickly, and he was temperamentally averse to making bold moves. It was his style to react to decisions made by others rather than to take the initiative himself. In these troubled hours he made no public pronouncements and did not even discuss the Sumter crisis at the first formal meeting of the cabinet on March 6, which Attorney General Bates characterized as “introductory” and “uninteresting.” In subsequent informal conversations the President told Gideon Welles that he wanted to avoid hasty action so as to gain “time for the Administration to get in working order and its policy to be understood.” Before taking any action, Lincoln, with his usual caution, tried to verify the facts. He asked General Scott to answer a set of interrogatories similar to ones that he used in the courtroom: How long could Anderson maintain his position? Was Scott now able to reinforce Fort Sumter? If not, what additional resources did he need? He received the disheartening response that it would require a naval expedition, 5,000 regular army troops, and 20,000 volunteer soldiers to reinforce the fort. Since these could not be produced, surrender was “merely a question of time.”
The Sumter crisis was the principal topic of discussion at a cabinet meeting on March 9, when the secretaries learned for the first time how grave the situation was. If relieving Anderson required an expeditionary force of at least 25,000 men—at a time when the entire United States army numbered only 16,000, mostly scattered in outposts along the Indian frontier—the inescapable conclusion was that the fort must be surrendered.
Lincoln was not yet willing to accept that conclusion. Perhaps his reluctance was increased when Francis P. Blair, Sr., forced his way into the President’s office and warned that evacuation of the fort was “virtually a surrender of the union” amounting to treason. The next day the old gentleman apologized for having said “things that were impertinent,” but Lincoln got the message.
He also learned that all military experts were not as pessimistic as General Scott. Former Navy Lieutenant Gustavus Vasa Fox, Mrs. Montgomery Blair’s brother-in-law, who was knowledgeable about coastal defenses, had for some time been advocating a plan to reinforce or resupply Sumter from the sea. He would use powerful light-draft New York tugboats under the cover of night to run men and supplies from an offshore naval expedition to the fort. His plan got nowhere under the Buchanan administration, and Scott, with the traditional scorn that army men showed for navy planners, thought it was impracticable. Now Montgomery Blair, who was a West Point graduate, endorsed it and Lincoln began to give it serious consideration.
On March 15 he asked each member of his cabinet to respond in writing to the question: “Assuming it to be possible to now provision Fort-Sumpter, under all the circumstances, is it wise to attempt it?” Seward took the lead in opposing any such attempt. An expedition to relieve Sumter would “provoke combat, and probably initiate a civil war.” Cameron, Welles, and Smith echoed Seward’s views. Chase took the opposite side of the question. He admitted having some doubts, and he did not advise reinforcing Sumter if it would precipitate a war, with the necessity of enlisting large armies and spending millions of dollars that the Treasury did not have. But on the whole he thought this unlikely and therefore voted in favor of resupplying Major Anderson. Montgomery Blair strongly urged an expedition. Southerners had been led to believe “that the Northern men are deficient in the courage necessary to maintain the Government.” Only prompt reinforcement of Anderson and his garrison could “vindicate the hardy courage of the North and the determination of the people and their President to maintain the authority of the Government.”
With his advisers divided, Lincoln was unable to reach a decision. As he saw it, his duty from a purely military point of view was clear: it was “the mere matter of getting the garrison safely out of the Fort.” But evacuation “would be utterly ruinous” politically. “By many,” he explained to Congress a few months later, “it would be construed as a part of a voluntary policy—that, at home,... would discourage the friends of the Union, embolden its adversaries, and go far to insure to the latter, a recognition abroad—... in fact, it would be our national destruction consummated.”
“This could not be allowed,” he concluded—but he did not know how to avoid it. Like any other administrator facing impossible choices, he postponed action by calling for more information. After several conversations with Fox, to whom he took a great liking, he sent the lieutenant to Charleston ostensibly to bring Anderson messages about possible evacuation but in reality to get a firsthand look at the fort and the Confederate fortifications that threatened it. In an entirely separate move, the President put Seward’s views about Southern Unionism to the test by asking Stephen A. Hurlbut, an old friend from Illinois who had been born in Charleston, to go to South Carolina and ascertain the state of public opinion. Along with Hurlbut went Ward Hill Lamon, whose bibulous habits and open hostility to abolitionism might gain him access to a different class of South Carolinians.
By this time knowledge of the Sumter crisis had become general. From all sides the President heard imperative voices. Neal Dow, the Republican leader from Maine, wrote that evacuation of the fort would be “approved by the entire body of Republicans in this State” because it was “undoubtedly a Military necessity.” Greeley’s powerful New York Tribune spoke of allowing the Southern states to go in peace and opposed the use of any force. In the Senate, which was still in session to confirm presidential appointments, Douglas said that South Carolina was entitled to Fort Sumter and that “Anderson and his gallant band should be instantly withdrawn.” From faraway San Francisco the Daily Alta California predicted that “if Mr. Lincoln does withdraw the troops from Fort Sumter, secession is dead, and every leader in the movement ruined.”
On the other extreme some Republicans had long felt that the time had come for a test of strength with the South. Senator Zachariah Chandler, a blunt, hard-drinking Michigan businessman, held that “without a little bloodletting this Union will not, in my estimation, be worth a rush.” William Butler, Lincoln’s old Springfield friend, grew so angry at the prospect of giving up Fort Sumter without a fight that he lost control of grammar and orthography in a letter to Trumbull: “Is it passiable that Mr Lincoln is getting scared. I know the responsiability is grate; But for god sake tell Mr L to live by it; Or have the credit (If credit it may be termed) Of sinking in a richous cause.” A caucus of Republican congressmen warned the President that failure to reinforce Sumter would bring disaster to the party. Trumbull introduced a resolution in the Senate that “it is the duty of the President to use all the means in his power to hold and protect the public property of the United States.”
Amid these dissonant voices Lincoln heard from his emissaries to South Carolina. Fox returned to Washington more confident than ever that it was possible to resupply Fort Sumter by sea at night. On March 27, Hurlbut offered a bleak picture of public opinion in South Carolina. “Separate Nationality is a fixed fact,” he reported; “there is no attachment to the Union . … positively nothing to appeal to.” He judged that any attempt to reinforce Sumter would be received as an
act of war; even “a ship known to contain only provisions for Sumpter [sic] would be stopped and refused admittance.”
The next day Lincoln received shocking advice from Scott. The general asserted that evacuation of Fort Sumter would not be enough to retain the loyalty of the upper South, including Virginia, Scott’s native state; it was necessary also to surrender Fort Pickens, on the Florida coast, even though that fort was securely in Union hands and could be reinforced at will. Only such liberality would “soothe and give confidence to the eight remaining slave-holding States, and render their cordial adherence to this Union perpetual.”
Appalled, Lincoln managed to get through the first state dinner that he and Mary gave for members of his official family and distinguished guests that evening, but he asked the cabinet to remain after the others took their leave. Then, in a voice choked with emotion, he told them of Scott’s recommendations. Blair erupted that the general was not offering military advice but “playing politician.” Except for Seward, whose views Scott was echoing, the others agreed. Lincoln gave notice that he would hold a formal council the next day. That night he slept not at all, aware that the time had come for decision.
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