by H. W. Brands
The military escort kept close around Lincoln and Buchanan on the mile’s drive to the Capitol; they guarded the passage by which the two men walked from the carriage into the building. The pair proceeded to the Senate chamber. “Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Lincoln entered, arm in arm, the former pale, sad, nervous; the latter’s face slightly flushed, with compressed lips,” a reporter recounted. They sat and watched while a new senator was sworn in. “Mr. Buchanan sighed audibly and frequently, but whether from reflection upon the failure of his administration, I can’t say,” the reporter remarked. “Mr. Lincoln was grave and impassive as an Indian martyr.”
The group moved outdoors, to a platform erected at the east portico of the Capitol. The tall figure of Lincoln was recognized even by those far from the platform; a cheer rose from the thousands on the grounds and beyond. Several minutes were required for the various dignitaries to take their seats; finally Edward Baker, Lincoln’s friend and now a senator from Oregon, stepped forward. “Fellow citizens!” he said in a booming voice. “I introduce to you Abraham Lincoln, the president-elect of the United States of America.”
Another cheer from the crowd. Lincoln stood, approached the small table that served as a lectern, and acknowledged his audience. A logistical problem emerged. In one hand was his hat, in the other his cane, and in his pocket was his speech. He looked around for a place to put the cane, and settled on balancing it on the table. This freed up one hand to find the speech, but he couldn’t deliver the speech with the hat in his hand. The table being too small to accommodate it and the cane and the speech manuscript, he was about to bend over and put the hat on the floor of the platform when his old foe came to his rescue. Stephen Douglas, who remained a leader of Senate Democrats despite having been abandoned by much of his party, held out a hand and offered to hold Lincoln’s hat. Lincoln gratefully accepted the offer.
The audience fell silent as Lincoln produced his written remarks. They had been waiting months to hear from the man who would guide their country through its greatest crisis. They seemed to hold their breath.
Lincoln wasted no time on formalities. He went straight to the issue at hand. “Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern states that by the accession of a Republican administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered,” he said. He denied this supposition categorically. “There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that ‘I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.’ ”
Nor was this sentiment his alone. “Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read: ‘Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the states, and especially the right of each state to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend.’ ”
Republicans had been charged with abetting John Brown. Lincoln denied this categorically too. Nor would there be any new John Browns, not while Abraham Lincoln was president. “We denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any state or territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.”
Lincoln promised to enforce the constitutional provision mandating the return of fugitive slaves. The same promise would bind others in the government. “All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution—to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause ‘shall be delivered up’ their oaths are unanimous.” He would support new legislation to that effect and would take all appropriate measures to ensure its enforcement.
He realized this might not be enough. It hadn’t been enough for the seven states that had approved ordinances of secession. Lincoln lamented their action for what it portended for the American republic. “It is seventy-two years since the first inauguration of a president under our national Constitution. During that period fifteen different and greatly distinguished citizens have in succession administered the executive branch of the government. They have conducted it through many perils, and generally with great success. Yet, with all this scope of precedent, I now enter upon the same task for the brief constitutional term of four years under great and peculiar difficulty. A disruption of the federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted.”
The disruption was without moral or constitutional basis, Lincoln said. “I hold that in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these states is perpetual.” Perpetuity was the essence of government. “It is safe to assert that no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination. Continue to execute all the express provisions of our national Constitution, and the Union will endure forever, it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself.”
Even supposing the Constitution a contract, or compact, as Southerners did, unilateral secession was illegal. “Can it, as a contract, be peaceably unmade by less than all the parties who made it? One party to a contract may violate it—break it, so to speak—but does it not require all to lawfully rescind it?”
Yet the Constitution wasn’t the final word—or, rather, it wasn’t the original word. “The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the then thirteen states expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was ‘to form a more perfect Union.’ But if destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the states be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.”
Lincoln paused for effect. “It follows from these views that no state upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that ‘resolves’ and ‘ordinances’ to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any state or states against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary.”
Another pause. “I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws the Union is unbroken, and to the extent of my ability, I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the states.”
Lincoln made clear he wasn’t declaring war on the seven states. “There needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.” The mails would be delivered, unless turned back by force. Federal offices would be filled by local residents; if local residents refused the offices, Lincoln said, he would not impose outsiders, though he had a right to do so. “So far as possible the people everywhere shall have that sense of perfect security which is most favorable to calm thought and reflection.”
Lincoln reiterated that secession would not be tolerated. “The central idea of secessio
n is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.”
What was the secessionists’ complaint? “One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute.” Other complaints were matters of detail. “The fugitive-slave clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, cannot be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other.”
The secessionists sought something that could not be. “Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country cannot do this. They cannot but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them. Is it possible, then, to make that intercourse more advantageous or more satisfactory after separation than before? Can aliens make treaties easier than friends can make laws? Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends?” Suppose the two sides went to war. “You cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you.”
Lincoln spoke directly to the secessionists. “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it.”
He looked up from his papers and out across the crowd. “I am loath to close,” he resumed. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. 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.”
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LINCOLN’S VOICE WAS clear and reasonably powerful. But even a stentor would have had difficulty being heard in the open air on that windy day. Not all caught the grace note at the end; many in the sprawling audience didn’t realize he had finished until he turned away from the lectern.
Chief Justice Roger Taney, looking older and more cadaverous than ever, stepped forward to administer the oath of office. Possibly reflecting, doubtless ruefully, that he had done as much as any other person to make Lincoln president, the author of the Dred Scott decision instructed Lincoln that he should repeat the inaugural oath, phrase by phrase. Lincoln did so, laying special stress on the final words: “to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Taney was the first to shake his hand. James Buchanan came next. Stephen Douglas, who had been listening carefully and nodding agreement, followed. Reporters asked Buchanan and Douglas what they made of Lincoln’s remarks. Buchanan begged off, saying he would have to read the address carefully. Douglas answered forthrightly, and with satisfaction: “He does not mean coercion; he says nothing about retaking the forts or federal property—he’s all right.” Subsequently Douglas reconsidered. “I hardly know what he means,” Douglas then said. “Every point in the address is susceptible of a double construction.” Yet he added, “I think he does not mean coercion.”
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FREDERICK DOUGLASS HAD expected more—much more. After all the waiting, after everything Douglass and the other opponents of slavery had done to make it possible for an antislavery man to become president, Lincoln’s words left Douglass disappointed and angry.
Douglass acknowledged the peculiar circumstances under which Lincoln spoke, starting with the assassination plots prepared against him. “The manner in which Mr. Lincoln entered the capital was in keeping with the menacing and troubled state of the times,” Douglass told the readers of his eponymous monthly. “He reached the capital as the poor, hunted fugitive slave reaches the North, in disguise, seeking concealment, evading pursuers.” Douglass didn’t censure Lincoln for this. “He only did what braver men have done.”
But Lincoln had failed to employ the moment to make the moral statement the country required. “The occasion required the utmost frankness and decision,” Douglass said. “Overlooking the whole field of disturbing elements, he should have boldly rebuked them. He saw seven states in open rebellion, the Constitution set at naught, the national flag insulted, and his own life murderously sought by slave-holding assassins. Does he expose and rebuke the enemies of his country, the men who are bent upon ruling or ruining the country? Not a bit of it.”
What did Lincoln do instead? “At the very start he seeks to court their favor, to explain himself where nobody misunderstands him, and to deny intentions of which nobody had accused him,” Douglass wrote. “He knew full well that the grand objection to him and his party respected the one great question of slavery extension. The South wants to extend slavery, and the North wants to confine it where it is, where the public mind shall rest in the belief of its ultimate extinction. This was the question which carried the North and defeated the South in the election which made Mr. Abraham Lincoln president. Mr. Lincoln knew this, and the South has known it all along; and yet this subject only gets the faintest allusion, while others, never seriously in dispute, are dwelt upon at length.”
Lincoln might as well have surrendered to the South, Douglass said. “Mr. Lincoln opens his address by announcing his complete loyalty to slavery in the slave states, and quotes from the Chicago platform a resolution affirming the rights of property in slaves, in the slave states. He is not content with declaring that he has no lawful power to interfere with slavery in the states, but he also denies having the least ‘inclination’ to interfere with slavery in the states. This denial of all feeling against slavery, at such a time and in such circumstances, is wholly discreditable to the head and heart of Mr. Lincoln. Aside from the inhuman coldness of the sentiment, it was a weak and inappropriate utterance to such an audience, since it could neither appease nor check the wild fury of the rebel slave power. Any but a blind man can see that the disunion sentiment of the South does not arise from any misapprehension of the disposition of the party represented by Mr. Lincoln. The very opposite is the fact. The difficulty is, the slaveholders understand the position of the Republican party too well.”
Lincoln had spoken like a lawyer when he should have spoken like a prophet, or at least a man of moral courage. “Weakness, timidity and conciliation towards the tyrants and traitors had emboldened them to a pitch of insolence which demanded an instant check,” Douglass said of the secessionists. “Mr. Lincoln was in a position that enabled him to wither at a single blast their high-blown pride. The occasion was one for honest rebuke, not for palliations and apologies. The slaveholders should have been told that their barbarous system of robbery is co
ntrary to the spirit of the age, and to the principles of liberty in which the federal government was founded.” Lincoln had failed the test utterly. “Some thought we had in Mr. Lincoln the nerve and decision of an Oliver Cromwell; but the result shows that we merely have a continuation of the Pierces and Buchanans, and that the Republican president bends the knee to slavery as readily as any of his infamous predecessors.”
Douglass, after hearing Lincoln, wondered what the government in Washington was good for. “It remains to be seen whether the federal government is really able to do more than hand over some John Brown to be hanged, suppress a slave insurrection, or catch a runaway slave—whether it is powerless for liberty, and only powerful for slavery.”
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WHAT DOUGLASS COMPLAINED of in Lincoln’s response to secession was exactly what Lincoln took pride in. Douglass wanted the conflict between the secessionists and the Union to be about slavery; Lincoln wanted it to be about states’ rights—which, in his view, included the right to permit slavery but not the right to secede. Douglass saw the struggle as essentially moral; Lincoln saw it as political. Douglass was an idealist; Lincoln, a pragmatist.
And the pragmatic issue that pressed on Lincoln during his first weeks in office was what to do about Fort Sumter. The island post in the harbor at Charleston was one of the last federal properties not occupied by local forces in the seceded states. It had little military value, lying under the guns of the South Carolina militia. But it had great symbolic value, as a test of Lincoln’s resolve. Would the new president fight to defend Fort Sumter? The South was watching; the North was watching; the world was watching.