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FHE REAL LINCOLN, 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES L. C MINOR, 
 
 WITH ARTICLE 
 BY 
 
 LYdN a TYLpR 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 KATE MASON ROWLAND, 
 
 \uthor of "Life of George Mason," "Life of Charles Carroll of Carrollton," etc 
 
 RICHMOND, VA.: 
 
 EVERETT WADDEY COMPANY. 
 1901. 
 
THE REAL LINCOLN, 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES L, C, MINOR, 
 
 WITH ARTICLE 
 BY 
 
 LYON a TYLER, 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 KATE MASON ROWLAND, 
 
 Author of " Life of George Mason," " Life of Charles Carroll of CarroUton," etc. 
 
 RICHMOND, VA.: 
 
 EVERETT WADDEY COMPANY. 
 1901. 
 

 THE LrSRARY OF 
 CONGRESS, 
 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 MAY. 13 1901 
 
 COPYBIOHT ENTRY 
 
 CLASS ^XXc. No 
 COP^^ 
 
 COPYRIGHTED, 1901, 
 BY CHARLES L. C. MINOR. 
 
PRKKACB. 
 
 BY THE EDITOR. 
 
 " Whosoever in writing a modern history, shall follow 
 truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out his teeth. 
 There is no mistress or guide that hath led her followers and 
 servants into greater miseries. He that goes after her too 
 far, loseth her sight, and loseth himself; and he that walks 
 after her at a middle distance, I know not whether I should 
 call that kind of course temper or Ijaseness." 
 
 " No man can long continue masked in a counterfeit 
 behavior: the things that are forced for pretences, having no 
 ground of truth, cannot long dissemble their own natures." — 
 Sir Walter Raleigh. 
 
 The Genius of History will surely vindicate her right to 
 truth, though a whole people conspire against her. So the 
 man behind the mask, whether it be placed there by himself 
 or others, must at length come forth in his own true character. 
 " We have seen," as has been well said, " the ' Lincoln legend ' 
 in actual process of evolution, and cannot again be surprised 
 at the historical myths that have come down to us from more 
 uncritical ages." But legend and myth must give way before 
 conscientious investigation, an investigation which brings out 
 suppressed facts and points an unerring finger at fallacies and 
 fabrications. 
 
 While the private character of Lincoln has been made by 
 his eulogists to appear the thing it was not, his public career 
 has been described by them as meriting unqualified approbation. 
 It is of the latter alone I would speak here. What was he 
 then? — the " liberator" who set free slaves that did not belong 
 to him in order to injure a people over whom he had no sort of 
 
The Real Lincoln. 
 
 jurisdiction; the " saviour of the Union" who called armies 
 into action to force a confederacy of States back into a federa- 
 tion they had abjured? He was in truth the Constitution- 
 breaker, the violator of solemn political obligations, and the 
 prime agent in a gigantic act of robbery and confiscation. To 
 justify themselves, the Northern people glorify Lincoln, set a 
 nimbus about his head, crown him with bays as their pro- 
 tagonist in the drama by which the great crime of the century 
 was consummated — the suppression of Southern independence. 
 With unconscious irony Lincoln is compared by these illogical 
 idolaters with Washington. To liken the oppressor of whole 
 communities to the arch "rebel" who achieved the independ- 
 ence of these communities is surely the veriest climax of incon- 
 sequentness. Washington led thirteen colonies to independ- 
 ence; Lincoln deprived thirteen States of the rights secured 
 to them by the arms of Washington. The one fought for 
 the principle that governments derive their just powers from 
 the consent of the governed; the other upheld the doctrine 
 that governments should rest on force and not on consent. 
 Lincoln's true peer and prototype is found in George III. In the 
 eighteenth century it was Washington who represented the 
 rights of communities in a so-called " indissoluble" empire; 
 in the nineteenth century it was Lincoln who opposed this 
 principle and maintained the supremacy of a so-called " indis- 
 soluble " federal republic. Jefferson Davis exemplified the 
 creed of Thomas Jefferson in opposition to the George III. 
 and Lincoln dogma — the creed that a community (and if a 
 colony, much more certainly a State), has a reserved sovereign 
 power in its " people," giving them a right to ordain and alter 
 their own form of government, whether these communities 
 are in an empire under a king or in a "union" of States under 
 a president. 
 
 " When, in 1861," says a distinguished Virginia writer, 
 " moved by her sovereign pleasure, but acting in accordance 
 with her old principles and traditions, she [Virginia] threw 
 off a grievous Federal yoke, she found an American President, 
 whose power was but the rank and unhealthy growth of those 
 principles, as prompt to stifle them with force as King George 
 had been, who denied the school of politics out of which they 
 
Preface. 5 
 
 sprang, nor in petition, nor remonstrance, had ever heard of 
 these extravagant pretensions of his American subjects. Mr. 
 Lincoln, by his armed powers, produced far greater results 
 than the loss of independence by the Southern States, for he 
 destroyed the head-spring from which had been derived the 
 right, which the majority claimed to govern the State. It is 
 evident the only authority for that theorem of politics was 
 the assertions of those charters of popular rights which the 
 late General Grant overthrew with his myrmidons. If at this 
 day, the majority governs anywhere, within the extended 
 limits of political society, it is by the reverence which men 
 pay to positive law. The moral ground has been broken up 
 and swept away. The party of 'moral ideas,' as the Republican 
 party arrogantly and insolently call themselves, has remitted 
 society, in every land, to the government of force, and we 
 stand now in this advanced era where Caesar and Genseric 
 stood. From that time [the date of the war -upon the Con- 
 federate States] the Republic of the United States, regarded 
 as a model for imitation, ceased, by its own act, to be a 
 government of consent, as in two famous Charters and in the 
 Constitution which created it, it had been with exultation 
 proclaimed to be, and under the control of Abraham Lincoln 
 and the Republican party, became a government of force, 
 according to the American classification, as much as the 
 sternest military monarchy in king-governed Asia."* 
 
 Facilis deoensus Averni. Secretary Root justifies the latest 
 American war of subjugation by the precedent of 1861. 
 " Nothing can be more mischievous," he tells us, " than a prin- 
 ciple misapplied. The doctrine that government derives its 
 just powers from the consent of the governed was applicable 
 to the conditions for which Jefferson wrote it and to the people 
 to whom he applied it. * * * Lincoln did not apply it to 
 the South, and the great struggle of the Civil War was a 
 solemn assertion by the American people that there are other 
 principles of law and liberty [?] which limit the application 
 of the doctrine of consent. Government does not depend upon 
 
 *" The Republic as a Form of Government; or, The Evolution of Democ- 
 racy in America," pp. 11, 12, 7,S, by .John Scott (of Fauquier), London, Chap- 
 man and Hall, 1890. 
 
The Real Lincoln. 
 
 consent." * The Northern Democrat to-day differs only from 
 the Republican in being more shamelessly inconsistent. It will 
 be seen that this party opposed in 1861 the coercion of the 
 Southern Confederacy, and was dragged into the war by Lin- 
 coln. But who among them now raises his voice to confess 
 the wrong of which the United States were then guilty? In 
 the late presidential campaign, William Jennings Bryan, who, 
 if elected, would have owed his elevation to the vote of the 
 " Solid South," equally with Mr. Root, declared the " doctrine 
 of consent" totally inapplicable to the sovereign States of the 
 late Confederacy. " Republicans tell us," he says, " that the 
 Philippine war is the same as was the War between the States. 
 A man does not need to have much intelligence to see the 
 difference between the principles involved. In the Civil War 
 the North was holding the people of the South in the Union, 
 but the people were not to be subjects; they were to be 
 citizens. They were not held in the Union to be denied the 
 privileges of citizenship." Neither did George III. intend to 
 deprive the people of the American colonies of the privileges 
 of British citizens! But here is Mr. Bryan's conclusion, in 
 pleading for the Filipinos: " There are but -two theories of 
 government. One is that governments come up from the 
 people. The other is that governments rest upon force. If this 
 nation rejects the idea that governments derive their just 
 powers from the consent of the governed, then civilization 
 starts backward toward the Dark Ages." -f- 
 
 Is it not, then, v/ithin the bounds of truth to say that the 
 man who first " rejected " this idea, the man who first spurned 
 and trampled under foot the principles of '76, leading to the 
 conditions of 1865 and 1901, was even more the enemy of 
 America and of liberty than George III. and Lord North? 
 
 *Speech of Elihu Root, Secretary of War, Canton, Ohio, October 24.1900. 
 Mr. March, of Illinois, in a debate in the House of Representatives. January 26, 
 1899, said " he was in favor of annexation of the Philippines whether the 
 natives were willing; or not. For four years we had fought in tliis country 
 to force the Southern people to submit to the Constitution against their 
 will. It was absurd to say that we could not employ force to talfe and liold 
 the Philippines." So Puck, in a cartoon of the 25th of January, inscribes on 
 the wall of '• Uncle Sam's " schoolhouse: " The Confederate States refused 
 their consent to be governed; but the Union was preserved without their 
 consent." 
 
 + Speech of Hon. Wm. J. Bryan, Shepherdstown, W. Va., September 5, 1900. 
 
The Real Lincoln, 
 
 INTRODUCTION * * 
 
 A mistaken estimate of Abraliam Lincoln has been spread 
 abroad very widely, and even in the South an editorial in a 
 very respectable religious paper lately said as follows: " Our 
 country has more than once been singularly fortunate in the 
 moral character and the admirable personality of its popular 
 heroes. Washington, Lincoln and Lee have been the type 
 of character that it was safe to hold up to the admiration 
 of their own age and the imitation of succeeding generations." 
 In the North the psean of praise that began with his death has 
 grown to such extravagance that he has been called by one 
 eminent popular speaker "a servant and follower of Jesus 
 Christ," and by another "first of all that have walked the 
 earth after the Nazarene," and on his late birthday a eulogist 
 asked us to give up aspirations for a heaven where Lincoln's 
 presence is not assured. 
 
 To try to reawaken or to foster ill will between the North 
 and the South would be a useless, mischievous and most cen- 
 surable task, and it will be seen that this sketch has an 
 exactly opposite purpose, but it is a duty to correct such 
 misrepresentations, for the reason that they make claims for 
 Lincoln entirely inconsistent with the concessions of grave 
 defects in him that are made by the closest associates of his 
 private life, and by his most respectable and most eulogistic 
 biographers, and equally inconsistent with the estimates of 
 him expressed by the greatest and closest associates of his 
 
 *A part of the historical material used in this sketch has been used before 
 in letters over the author's name in daily papers, as follows: In the Rich- 
 mond (Va.) Times, of December .31st, 1898: of September 3d, 1899. and of May 
 11th, 1900; in the Baltimore Sun, of April 3d, 1899, of August 25th, 1900, of 
 October 12th, 1900, and of March 4th, 1901 ; in the Richmond (Va.) Dispatch, 
 January 14th, 1900, and of March 13th, 1900. The last two appeared in the 
 Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. XXVII., as Articles XXI. and 
 XLIII., pp. 165, 365. 
 
The Real Lincoln. 
 
 public life, and by a very large part of the great Northern 
 and Western Republican leaders of his own day. This sketch 
 is based on the testimony of such witnesses only. 
 
 In the Appendix will be found, in alphabetical order, the 
 names of all the witnesses whose evidence is submitted in this 
 sketch. Referfence is invited to that Appendix, as each witness 
 is reached by the reader, and it will be found that each is 
 included in one of the above indicated classes. Only old 
 and exceptionally well-informed men of this day are likely 
 to know the ample authority with which these witnesses speak. 
 See Horace Greeley, whose lofty integrity extorted admiration 
 from thousands on whose nearest and dearest interests his 
 Tribune newspaper waged a war as deadly as it was honest; 
 see Lincoln's greatest Cabinet Ministers — Seward, Chase and 
 Stanton; see two among the foremost leaders of thought 
 and action of their day, John Sherman and Ben Wade; see 
 representatives of the highest standards, intellectual and 
 moral, Richard Dana and Edward Everett; see the most ardent 
 and prominent of Abolitionists, Wendell Phillips; and see 
 the correspondent of the London Times, Russell; see the most 
 up-to-date historians of our own day, Ida Tarbell, A. K. 
 McClure, Schouler, Ropes and Rhodes; and see the most inti- 
 mate associates of Lincoln's lifetime, Lamon and Herndon, 
 who give such reasons for telling not the good only, but all 
 they know about their great friend, as win commendation from 
 the latest biographers of all, Morse and Hapgood, whose books 
 have received only praise from the American reading public. 
 
 Was Lincoln Heroic ? 
 
 Among the heroic traits claimed for Lincoln is personal 
 courage. This claim is hard to reconcile with his carefully- 
 concealed midnight ride into Washington a day or two before 
 his inauguration. McClure and others have been at no small 
 pains to apologize for it, but Greeley likened him* to "a 
 hunted fugitive," and Lamon, the intimate friend of his life- 
 time, who was selected by himself as the one heavily armed 
 companion of the midnight journey, expressly declares that 
 
 * American Conflict, Vol. I., p. 421. 
 
Was Lincoln Heroic f 9 
 
 the apprehensions of violence were without the slightest 
 foundation then or on the inauguration day, described below. 
 Nicolay and Hay devote a chapter (XX. of Vol. III.) to it, but 
 do not claim that there was any danger. Morse, as jealous to 
 defend Lincoln as any other, concedes there was no danger, 
 and that " Lamon's account of it * * * is doubtless the 
 most trustworthy." 
 
 Ida Tarbell describes Lincoln's progress through the city to 
 his Inaugural ceremony — the strong military force, including 
 artillery, assembled to protect him under command of General 
 Winfield Scott — " platoons of soldiers" at the street corners, 
 " groups of riflemen on the housetops," and shows how he 
 passed through a board tunnel into the Capitol building " with 
 fifty or sixty soldiers under the platform." The titory of the 
 journey and of the Inauguration makes quite comprehensible 
 what Lamon and Vice-President Hamlin record, that Lincoln 
 was bitterly ashamed ever afterward of what he had done in 
 this matter.* 
 
 When Baltimore had stopped the Massachusetts soldiers 
 and Maryland had stopped all soldiers going to Washington, 
 so that the capital seemed to be left at the mercy of the South, 
 Ida Tarbell, Nicolay and Hay, Schouler and Rhodes, give singu- 
 lar accounts of Lincoln's state of apprehension. Rhodes and 
 Tarbell quote his words: "Why don't they come? Why don't 
 they come? I begin to believe there is no North. The Seventh 
 Regiment is a myth." * * * * -j- 
 
 Russell wrote to the London Tiiiirs (My Diary, North and 
 South, page 43) that when Washington city was in panic after 
 
 * McClare's Our Presidents and his Lincolni.p.46 etseq.); Lamon's Lincoln {p. 
 16 et seq., SS-et seq., 513 et seq.) ; Ida Tarbell, in McClure's Magazine for January 
 and February, 1900; Greeley's American Conflict (Vol. I., p. 421 et seq,) ; Morse's 
 Lincoln (p. 197 etseq); Hamlin's Life of Hamlin (p. 389), and Rhodes' Hifrtory 
 of the United States (Vol. III., p. 304). The Hon. Henry L. Dawes says, in 
 Tribiitcs from, his A.isociates (p. 4) : " He never altogether lost to me the look 
 with which he met the curious and, for the moment, not very kind gaze of 
 the House of Representatives on that first morning after what they deemed 
 a pusillaminous creep into Washington." 
 
 ilda Tarbell. in McClure's Magazine for February, 1899 (p. 325); Rhodes" 
 History of the United States (Vol. III., p. 368) ; Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln (Vol. 
 IV., p. 152 et seq.); Schouler's History of tlie United States (Vol. VI., p. 45). 
 
10 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 the defeat at Bull Run* Lincoln "sat listening in fear and 
 trembling for the sound of the enemy's cannon." 
 
 In the second great panic in Washington, when the Union 
 army under General Pope was utterly routed and close on 
 Washington in retreat, Gorham and Rhodes f describe Lincoln 
 in such doubt and apprehension as to say to Chase and Stan- 
 ton, of his Cabinet, that " he would gladly resign his place." 
 General B. F. Butler censures the account of Lincoln's condi- 
 tion given by Nicolay and Hay, as follows: "A careful reading 
 of that description would lead one to infer that Lincoln was 
 in a state of abject fear." 
 
 The Life of Charles Francis Adams describes (page 120 ct seq.) 
 Adams' visit to the new President to get his instructions as 
 Minister to England. He got none whatever, was " half 
 amused, half mortified, altogether shocked," and got an im- 
 pression of "dismay" at Lincoln's behavior and his uncon- 
 sciousness of " the gravity of the crisis," or his insensibility 
 to it, and perceived that Lincoln was only " intent on the 
 distribution of offices." The biographer, his son, says that this 
 impression had not faded from the mind of Mr. Adams twelve 
 years later, when he made a Memorial Address on the death 
 of Seward, as indeed plainly appears in that address. 
 
 Rhodes records contempt for Lincoln expressed by his 
 Secretary, Salmon P. Chase, afterwards made by Lincoln Chief 
 Justice of the Supreme Court, and says that Chase " was by no 
 means alone in his judgment," and that " in many Senators 
 and Representatives existed a distrust of his ability and force 
 of character," and he further quotes so high an authority as 
 Richard H. Dana, who said in one letter, when on a visit to 
 Washington, " the lack of respect for the President in all 
 parties is unconcealed," and wrote, in March, 1863, to Charles 
 Francis Adams, Minister to England, that Lincoln " has no 
 admirers * * * ^nd does not act, talk, or feel like the 
 ruler of a great empire in a great crisis, * * * he is an 
 unspeakable calamity to us where he is." J General Donn Piatt, 
 
 * Russell's Ml/ Dianj 
 
 + Gorham's Life of Stanton (Vol. II., p. 44 et seq ); Rhodes' Histwy of the 
 United States (Vol. IV , p. 137 et seq.) ; Butler's Book (p. 219). 
 
 t Rhodes' History of the United States (Vol. IV., pp. 205 to 210 el seq. and a note 
 on p. 210). 
 
Was Lincoln Heroic ? .11 
 
 in Reminiscences of Lincoln (page 286) denies the claim made 
 for Lincoln that he was of a kind or forgiving nature or of 
 any gentle impulses, and shows (page 493) his extraordinary 
 insensibility to the ills of his fellow-citizens and soldiers when 
 the miseries of the war were at their worst, and sets forth 
 (page 481 to 500) his entire indifference to the condition of the 
 negroes or their future fate. Whitney, too, says " he had no 
 intention to make voters of the negroes — in fact their welfare 
 did not enter into his policy at all."* 
 
 What Lincoln was capable of in his dealings with women 
 is conclusively illustrated by his letter to Mrs. Browning about 
 Miss Owens. Lamon copies it and so do Herndon and Hapgood. 
 Nicolay and Hay concede its authenticity in trying to make 
 light of it; Hapgood copies besides another letter in which 
 Lincoln asks Miss Owens to marry him. Morse calls the letter 
 to Mistress Browning " one of the most unfortunate epistles 
 ever penned," and elsewhere calls it " that most abominable 
 epistle."t Acknowledging that he had lately asked Miss Owens 
 to marry him and had been refused by her, Lincoln writes to 
 Mrs. Browning that one of his reasons for asking her to marry 
 him was the conviction that no other man would ever do so. 
 Lamon speaks (page 181) of " its coarse exaggeration in de- 
 scribing a person whom the writer was willing to marry, its 
 imputation of toothless and weather-beaten old age to a woman 
 young and handsome." 
 
 Evidence of the marriage of Lincoln's parents has been 
 found since Lamon's Lincoln was published in 1872 (see page 
 10), and like evidence of his mother's legitimate birth since 
 Hapgood's Lincoln was published in 1900 (see page 5). But 
 Lincoln himself was capable of bringing shame upon the birth 
 of his mother to escape the reproach of being of the unmixed 
 " poor white " blood of the Hanks family. Herndon's Lincoln 
 (Vol. I., page 3) says: " It was about 1850, when he and I were 
 driving in his one-horse buggy to the court in Minard county, 
 Illinois. * * * He said of his mother * * * that she 
 was the illegitimate daughter of Lucy Hanks and of a well- 
 
 * On Circuit with Lincoln, p 364. 
 
 fSee Lamon's Lincoln, -p. \^\ et seq.,&n6. Herndon's Lincoln, yo\. I., p. 55, 
 and Hapgood's Lincoln, p. 64 to 71, and Nicolay & Hay's Lincoln. Vol. 1., p. 192 
 
12 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 bred Virginia farmer or planter, and he argued that from this 
 last source came his power of analysis, his mental activity, 
 his ambition, and all the qualities that distinguished him from 
 the other members of the Hanks family, * * * and he 
 believed that his better nature and finer qualities came from 
 this broad-minded, unknown Vifginian." 
 
 Was Lincoln a Christian ? 
 
 As to Lincoln's attitude towards religion, Holland in his 
 Lincoln, says (page 286), that twenty out of the twenty-three 
 ministers of the different denominations of Christians, and a 
 very large majority of the prominent members of the churches 
 in his home (Springfield, Illinois) opposed him for President. 
 He says (page 241) : * * * " jyjgn ^jjq knew him through- 
 out all his professional and political life," have said " that, 
 so far from being a religious man, or a Christian, the less 
 said about that the better." He says of Lincoln's first recorded 
 religious utterance, used in closing his farewell address to 
 Springfield, that it " was regarded by many as an evidence 
 both of his weakness and of his hypocrisy * * * and was 
 tossed about as a joke — ' old Abe's Last.' " 
 
 Hapgood's Lincoln (page 291 et scq.) records that the pious 
 words with which the Emancipation Proclamation closes were 
 added at the suggestion of Secretary Chase, and so do Rhodes 
 and Usher, and Rhodes shows him plainly an infidel if not an 
 atheist.* Of his words that savor of religion, Lamon says, in 
 his Lincoln (page 503) : " If he did not believe in it, the masses 
 of 'the plain people' did, and no one was ever more anxious to 
 do what was of good report among men." Lamon further says 
 (page 197), that after Mr. Lincoln " appreciated * * * the 
 violence and extent of the religious prejudices which freedom 
 of discussion from his standpoint would be sure to rouse 
 against him," and " the immense and augmenting power of the 
 churches," * * * (page 502) " he indulged freely in indefi-; 
 nite expressions about ' Divine Providence,' 'the justice of God,' 
 
 ♦Rhodes' History nf the United States (Vol. II., p. 312) ; and he adds : "When 
 Lincoln entered political life he became reticent upon his religious opin- 
 ions." Usher in Reminiscences of Lincoln (p. 91). 
 
W^as Lincoln a Christian? 13 
 
 the "favor of the Most High,' in his published documents, but 
 he nowhere ever professed the slightest faith in Jesus as the 
 Son of God and the Saviour of men." (Page 501 et seq.) " He 
 never told any one that he accepted Jesus as the Christ, or 
 performed one of the acts which necessarily followed upon 
 such a conviction (page 487)." "When he went to church at 
 all, he went to mock, and came away to mimic." On page 157 
 and thereafter Lamon tells minutely of the writing and the 
 burning of a " little book," written by Lincoln with the purpose 
 to disprove the truth of the Bible and the divinity of Christ, 
 and tells how it was burned without his consent by his friend 
 Hill, lest it should ruin his political career before a Christian 
 people. He says that Hill's son called the book " infamous," 
 and that " the book was burnt, but he never denied or regretted 
 its composition; on the contrary, he made it the subject of 
 free and frequent conversations with his friends at Springfield, 
 and stated with much particularity and precision the origin, 
 arguments and object of the work." 
 
 Herndon describes the "essay" or " book " as " an argument 
 against Christianity, striving to prove that the Bible was not 
 inspired, and therefore not God's revelation, and that Jesus 
 Christ was not the Son of God." Herndon says that Lincoln 
 intended to have the "essay" published, and further says that 
 Lincoln " would come into the clerk's office where I and some 
 young men were writing, * * * ^mj would bring a Bible 
 with him; would read a chapter and argue against it."* 
 
 A letter of Herndon's, published in Lamon's Lincoln (page 
 492 et scq.), says of Lincoln's contest with the Rev. Peter Cart- 
 wright for Congress in 1848 (page 404): "In that contest he 
 was accused of being an infidel, if not an atheist; he never 
 denied the charge; would not; 'would die first,' because he 
 knew it could be and would be proved." 
 
 On pages 487 to 514 Lamon's Lincoln records numerous 
 letters from Lincoln's intimate associates, and one from his 
 wife, that fully confirm the above testimony as to his attitude 
 of hostility to religion. 
 
 * Herndon's Lincoln (Vol. III., p. 39 et seq. and 439 et seq.),ji,nd Lamon's Lin- 
 coln (p. 492). 
 
14 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 Lincoln's Jokes and Stories, 
 
 Holland's Lincoln says of the indecency of his jokes and 
 stories: " It is useless for Mr. Lincoln's biographers to ignore 
 this habit; the whole West, if not the whole country (he is 
 writing in 1866) is full of these stories, and there is no doubt 
 at all that he indulged in them with the same freedom that he 
 did in those of a less objectionable character." 
 
 Again he says (page 251): * * * "Men who knew him 
 throughout all his professional and political life * * * have 
 said that he was the foulest in his jests and stories of any man 
 in the country." 
 
 Comprehensive as this indictment is, it is fully sustained 
 by testimony submitted below from Morse, Hapgood, Piatt, 
 Rhodes, Lamon and — most shocking testimony of all — from 
 Herndon. 
 
 Norman Hapgood, the latest biographer of Lincoln (of 1900), 
 and Morse, the next latest (of 1892), confirm the "revelations" 
 and the "ghastly ejcposures" about Lincoln that will be de- 
 scribed below as recorded by Lamon and by Herndon. Morse 
 says that a necessity and duty rested on those biographers to 
 record these truths, as they both claim, and Hapgood says, 
 " Herndon has told the President's early life with refreshing 
 honesty and with more information than any one else."* Gen- 
 eral Donn Piatt records an occasion when he heard Lincoln 
 tell stories, "no one of which will bear printing." Lamon adds 
 to all this his testimony that this habit of Lincoln "was re- 
 strained by no presence and no occasion," and Piatt refers to 
 him as "the man who could open a Cabinet meeting called to 
 discuss the Emancipation Proclamation by reading aloud Arte- 
 mus "Ward," and refers to Gettysburg as "the field that he 
 shamed with a ribald song," making reference to a song that 
 Lincoln asked for and got sung on the Gettysburg battlefield, 
 the day he made his celebrated address there. This behavior 
 has been much discussed by his eulogists, and defended as a 
 relief necessary for a nature so sensitive and high-wrought.f 
 
 *Morse's Lincoln {Vol. I., pp. 13 and 192 et seq.); B.a,pgooA's Lincoln (Pre- 
 face p. 8). 
 
 + Lamon's Lincoln (p. 430), and Reminiscenees of Lincoln (p. 486 et seq., and p. 
 481 et seq., and p. 455). 
 
Lincoln^ s Jokes and Stories. 15 
 
 " Was ever so sublime a thing ushered in by the ridiculous?" 
 says Rhodes. (Vol. IV., page 161.) 
 
 Herndon gives in his first volume (at page 55 and there- 
 after) a copy of a satire written by Lincoln,- The First Chronicle 
 of Rcuhcn, and an account of the very slight provocation under 
 which Lincoln wrote it, and in two foot notes describes the 
 exceedingly base and indecent device by which Lincoln brought 
 about the events which gave opportunity for this satire; and 
 Herndon adds some verses written and circulated by Lincoln 
 which he considers even more vile than the "Chronicle." Of 
 these verses Lamon says, " It is impossible to transcribe them," 
 in his Liiicohi (pages 63 and 64). Decency does not permit The 
 publication of the Chronicle or the verses here. 
 
 In neither of A. K. McClure's books, Lincoln and Men of the 
 War Time, published in 1892, or Our Presidents, Etc., published 
 in 1900, does he offer any contradiction of the " revelations," 
 and " ghastly disclosures " that Lamon and Herndon had pub- 
 lished to the world so long before, but McClure does say in the 
 earlier of the books, in the preface (page 2), " The closest men 
 to Lincoln, before and after his election to the presidency, were 
 David Davis, Leonard Swett, Ward H. Lamon and William H. 
 Herndon." Letters of the two first named are among the 
 letters referred to above, published by Lamon as evidence of 
 Lincoln's attitude toward religion. 
 
 If any would take refuge in the hope that the responsibili- 
 ties of his high office raised Lincoln above these habits of 
 indecency and godlessness, they are met by authentic stories 
 of his grossly unseemly behavior as President, by the evidence 
 of Lamon, the chosen associate of his lifetime, that his indul- 
 gence in gross jokes and stories was " restrained by no presence 
 and no occasion," and by a letter of Nicolay, his senior private 
 secretary throughout his administration, which states that he 
 perceived no change in Lincoln's attitude toward religion after 
 his entrance on the presidency.* 
 
 * Lamon's Lnico/n (p. 4S0 and pp. 4S7 to 504). The Cosmopolitan, of Marcli, 
 1901, says that Nicolay "probably was closer to the martyred President than 
 any other man. * * * xhat he knew Lincoln as President and as man 
 more intimately than any other man." * * Rhodes is everywhere zealous 
 
16 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 Estimates of Lincoln Entertained by the Greatest Repub- 
 licans of his Day and by the Greatest of his Associates 
 in his Public Careen 
 
 The evidence thus far submitted concerns chiefly the per- 
 sonal character of Lincoln, and his private career. Let us 
 proceed to consider evidence to show that his character and 
 conduct of public affairs provoked the bitterest censure from 
 a very great number of his co-workers in his achievements, 
 among whom may be named Greeley, Thaddeus Stevens, Sum- 
 ner, Trumbull, Zach. Chandler, Fred. Douglas, Beecher, 
 Wendell Phillips, Wilson, Hamlin and Seward; while the most 
 bitter and contemptuous and persistent of all Lincoln's critics 
 were Chase, Secretary of the Treasury and Chief Justice, and 
 Stanton, known ever since as his great War Secretary. 
 
 Ben Perley Poore, in Reminiscences of Lincoln (page 248), 
 shows Beecher's censures of Lincoln, and so do Beecher's 
 editorials in the Independent of 1862, and Rhodes' History of 
 the United States (page 462), which shows, too (page 463), 
 that Senator Wilson, of Massachusetts, was among Lincoln's 
 opponents for re-election in 1864. 
 
 Hapgood quotes Wendell Phillips about Lincoln: "Who is 
 this huckster in politics? Who is this County Court lawyer?" 
 Morse gives severe censures of Lincoln by Wendell Phillips. 
 McClure records bitter reprobation of him by Thaddeus 
 Stevens. Ida Tarbell calls Sumner, Wade, Winter Davis and 
 Chase " malicious foes of Lincoln," on the authority of one 
 
 to defend Lincoln, but he thinks fit to record the foUowing (History of the 
 United .Stages, Vol. IV., p. 471, note and p. 518), prefacing it with the state- 
 ment that the World was then the organ of the best element of the Demo- 
 cratic party ; that the Neiv York World, of June 19th. 1864. called Lincoln "an 
 ignorant, boorish, third-rate, backwoods lawyer," and reported that the 
 spokesman of a delegation sent to carry the resolutions of a great religious 
 organization to the President, publicly denounced him as •' disgracefully 
 unfit for the high office"; and tliat a Republican Senator from New York 
 was reported to have left tlie President's presence because his self-respect 
 would not permit him to stay and listen to tlie language he employed. 
 Rhodes further sets down "a tradition" tliat Andrews, tlie great WarGover- 
 nor of Massacliusetts, when pressing a matter he had at lieart, went away 
 in disgust at being put off by the President with " a smutty story." 
 
Estimates of Lincoln. 17 
 
 of Lincoln's closest intimates, Leonard Swett, and makes the 
 remarkable and comprehensive concession that " about all the 
 most prominent leaders * * * were actively opposed to 
 Lincoln," and mentions Greeley as their chief. McClure's 
 Lincoln shows the hostility to Lincoln of Sumner, Trumbull and 
 Chandler, and of his Vice-President, Hamlin. 
 
 Fremont, who eight years before had received every Repub- 
 lican vote for President, charged Lincoln with " incapacity 
 and selfishness," with "disregard of personal rights," with 
 " violation of personal liberty and liberty of the press," with 
 " feebleness and want of principle," and says: " The ordinary 
 rights under the Constitution and laws of the country have 
 been violated"; and he further accuses Lincoln of " managing 
 the war for personal ends." 
 
 Holland shows Fremont, Wendell Phillips, Fred Douglas 
 and Greeley as leaders in the very nearly successful effort to 
 defeat Lincoln's second election. The call for the convention 
 for that purpose, held in Cleveland May 31, 1864, said that " the 
 public liberty was in danger"; that its object was to arouse 
 the people, " and bring them to realize that, while we are 
 saturating Southern soil with the best blood of the country 
 in the name of liberty, we have really parted with it at home."* 
 
 McClure's Lincohi, recording the hostile attitude toward 
 Lincoln of the leading members of the Cabinet, makes a con- 
 cession (page 54) comprehensive as Miss Tarbell's above: 
 " Outside of the Cabinet the leaders were equally discordant 
 and quite as distrustful of the ability of Lincoln to fill his 
 great office. Sumner, Trumbull, Chandler, Wade, Winter Davis 
 and the men to whom the nation then turned as the great 
 representative men of the new political power, did not conceal 
 their distrust of Lincoln, and he had little support from them 
 at any time during his administration," and McClure says 
 again (page 289 et scq.): "Greeley was a perpetual thorn in 
 Lincoln's side * * * ^nd almost constantly criticised him 
 boldly and often bitterly. * * * Greeley labored (page 296) 
 
 * Hapgood's Lincoln (\>. 164 j; Morse's Lincoln (Vol. I., p. 177); McClure's 
 Lincoln (p. 117 and p. 259 and p. 54 et scq. and p. 104) ; Ida Tarbell, in McClure's 
 Magazine for 1899 (p. 277) and for July, 1899 (p. 218 cl scq.), and Holland's Lin- 
 coln (p . 259 et seq. ) 
 
18 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 most faithfully to accomplish Lincoln's overthrow in his great 
 struggle for re-election in 1864." See Morse's Lincoln (Vol. II., 
 page 193). And Edward Everett Hale's new book, Lowell, Etc. 
 (page 178 ct seq.) shows that even the circumstances of Lin- 
 coln's death did not for a day abate Greeley's reprobation. 
 
 The careful reader will not fail to observe that Lincoln's 
 first term of four years was at this time nearly over, so that all 
 this bitter censure from his associates was based on full knowl- 
 edge of him. 
 
 Seward has been much criticised and accused of rare pre- 
 sumption for a letter that he wrote to the President as Secre- 
 tary of State, one month after his first inauguration, because 
 the letter manifested a sense of superiority, and condescend- 
 ingly offered his advice and aid and leadership. It is possible 
 that Seward did feel some of the contempt for Lincoln that 
 Hiis brethren in the Cabinet, Chase and Stanton, never ceased 
 to express freely for Lincoln and very frequently showed to his 
 jface throughout their long terms of office, as will be shown. 
 Like them. Governor Seward was a man of the highest social 
 standing, and of large experience in the highest public func- 
 tions. The Lincoln that so many now call a hero and a saint 
 Is exceedingly different from the Lincoln that the people who 
 came in contact with him knew up to the time of his death, 
 as is frankly avowed further on in this sketch by Adams and 
 Piatt, and reluctantly conceded by Crittenden and Rhodes. 
 "What he was capable of in personal habits, manners and 
 morals has been shown in the account of the " First Chronicle 
 of Reuben," and his submission to humiliations such as have 
 been described is not unaccountable. 
 
 Few were more ardent Abolitionists than Seward, as shown 
 in Bancroft's late Life of him, but he was no tiro in statecraft, 
 and the policy he so authoritatively suggested was to " change 
 the question before the public from one upon slavery for a 
 question upon union or disunion." 
 
 Lincoln at once adopted that policy, and by means of it 
 he precipitated the war. Its astuteness in distracting men's 
 minds from the matter of slavery has been much commended. 
 General Butler says that as late as July, 1861, no one in power 
 
Estimates of Lincoln. 19 
 
 was in favor of emancipation. This letter of Seward's did not 
 come to light for years, and Seward might well say as he did, 
 that Lincoln " had a cunning that was genius." 
 
 McClure's Lincoln (page 150 et seq.) says: " Stanton had been 
 in open and malignant opposition to the administration only 
 a few months before." (This was in January, 1862.) " Stanton 
 often spoke of and to public men, military and civil, with a 
 withering sneer. I have heard him scores of times thus speak 
 of Lincoln and several times thus speak to Lincoln.*" * * * 
 "After Stanton's retirement from the Buchanan Cabinet, when 
 Lincoln was inaugurated, he maintained the closest confi- 
 dential relations with Buchanan, and wrote him many letters 
 expressing the utmost contempt for Lincoln." * * " These 
 letters, * * * given to the public in Curtis' Life of 
 Buchanan, speak freely of the painful imbecility of Lincoln, 
 the venality and corruption which ran riot in the government," 
 and McClure goes on: " It is an open secret that Stanton 
 advised the revolutionary overthrow of the Lincoln govern- 
 ment, to be replaced by General McClellan as Military Dictator. 
 * * * These letters, published by Curtis, bad as they are, 
 are not the worst letters written by Stanton to Buchanan. 
 Some of them are so violent in their expression against Lin- 
 coln * * * that they have been charitably withheld from 
 the public. "t Whitney, in his On Circuit with Lincoln (page 
 424), tells of these suppressed letters. See, too, his pages 422 
 to 424 et sr<]., and Ben Perley Poore, in Reminiscences of Lincoln 
 (page 223) and Kasson in Reminiscences of Lincoln (page 381), 
 all in confirmation of Stanton's estimate and treatment of 
 Lincoln. Hapgood's Lincoln refers (page 164) to Stanton's 
 " brutal absence of decent personal feeling " towards Lincoln, 
 and tells of Stanton's insulting behavior when they met five 
 years earlier, of which meeting Stanton said that he " had 
 
 * McClure's Lincoln (p. 150 etseq. and p. 155). Yet to a man of President 
 Buchanan's character and standing Stanton showed an excess of defer- 
 ence; for Mr. Buchanan complained, in a letter to his niece. Miss Harriet 
 Lane, (See Curtis'si/fe f)/ />'Mr//ajian. Vol. II., p. 533) that Stanton, ^hen In 
 his cabinet. " was always on my side and flattered nie ad nauseam." 
 
 t HapRood's Lincoln (p. 254), Gorham's Life of Stanton (Vol. I , p. 213). 
 
20 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 met him at the bar and found him a low, cunning clown."^ 
 McClure says of Stanton: " He had little respect for Lincoln's 
 fitness for the presidency." 
 
 Of Chase, McClure says, in his Lincoln (page 8) : " Chase 
 was the most irritating fly in the Lincoln ointment." Ida 
 Tarbell says: "But Mr. Chase was never able to realize Mr. 
 Lincoln's greatness." Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln says about 
 Chase: " Even to complete strangers he could not write with- 
 out speaking slightingly about the President. He kept up this 
 habit to the end of Lincoln's lifs." * * * " But his attitude 
 towards the President, it is hardly too much to say, was one 
 which varied between the limits of active hostility and benevo- 
 lent contempt." Yet none rate Chase higher than Nicolay and 
 Hay do for character, talent and patriotism. Ehodes says Chase 
 " dealt censure unrestrained to the President's conduct of the 
 war."t 
 
 How Far Did the North and the West Approve the War 
 and Emancipation ? 
 
 The impression upon the minds of thousands of people 
 about the War between the States may be formulated as fol- 
 lows: That at the firing upon Fort Sumter, the people of the 
 Northern States rose with one mind and for the four years 
 of the war ungrudgingly poured forth their treasure and shed 
 their blood to re-establish the Union and to free the slaves. 
 Let us consider how much foundation there is for this popular 
 impression. 
 
 In order to show the enormous difficulties overcome by their 
 hero, Lincoln, in accomplishing his two notable achievements, 
 his eulogists have furnished much evidence that goes to show 
 
 * Ben Perley Pooreln Heminincences of Lincoln (p. 223). Ida Tarbell in 
 McClure's MagazinetoT March, 1899, tells the story of this earliest manifesta- 
 tion of Stanton's contempt for Lincoln. Morse's Lincoln says (Vol. I., p. 327 
 that Stanton " carried his revilings of the President to the point of coarse 
 personal insults," and refers to his (p. 326) " habitual insults." 
 
 + McClure's Lincoln (p. 156, and besides pp. 180, 151, 155 and p. 9; Ida Tar- 
 bell In McClure's Magazine for January, 1899, Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln (Vol. 
 IX., p. 389, Vol. VI., p. 264), and elsewhere. Rhodes' History of the United 
 States (Vol. IV., p. 205). 
 
War and Emancipation. 21 
 
 that both the coercion of the South and the emancipation of 
 the negroes were accomplished against the will of the Demo- 
 cratic party and of no small part of the Republican party in 
 the North and the West, and their evidence to that effect will 
 now be submitted. 
 
 As Abolition had been talked of long before the coercion 
 of the South was thought of, it seems best to consider, first, 
 the question. How far did the North and the West approve 
 emancipation? 
 
 Let us examine the testimony on this question before and 
 after Lincoln became President. 
 
 If the Fugitive-Slave laws seem to any shameful, Andrews, 
 long president of Brown University, bitterest of Abolitionists, 
 concedes that those laws were passed by a Congress that had 
 a decided majority of Northern men, and Lincoln repeatedly 
 pledged himself to their execution * and put such a pledge into 
 his Inaugural. Andrews records that Abolition was opposed 
 by an overwhelming majority of the Northern people and 
 the Western people, not only down to the war, but during the 
 whole of it, and as long as opposition to it was at all safe. 
 Bitter as his reprobation of thiS public sentiment is, he frankly 
 concedes it, and says that between 1830 and 1840 " there was 
 hardly a place of any size where anyone could advocate emanci- 
 pation," and that " by 1850 there were few places where an 
 Abolitionist might not safely speak his mind "; that in 1841 
 there were but two advocates of it in Congress, f " Charles 
 Francis Adams' Life " records (page 29) that Garrison was 
 mobbed in Boston in 1835 for being an Abolitionist. See, also, 
 page 33 and page 58. Page 105 and thereafter shows how 
 ill-esteemed and shabby the Republican party in Washington 
 was as late as 1859. In Edward Everett Hale's lately published 
 book, "James Russell Lowell, Etc." he names <v>age 22 et 
 seq.) a class-mate who was, he thinks, the only Abolitionist in 
 Harvard College in 1838, and says " Boston as Boston hated 
 
 * Holland's Lincoln (p. 347). 
 
 + Andrews' History of the United States (Vol. II,, p. 15). It describes besides 
 the destruction of charitable scliools for negroes and even of their homes, 
 by people regarded as the most respectable classes of society in Connecticut 
 and elsewhere in New England and the prohibition by law of schools for 
 negro children. See heading of Chapter IX. in John A. Logan's Oreat 
 Conspiracy. 
 
22 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 Abolitionism," and the stevedores and longshoremen * * * 
 hated " a nigger " — that Dr. Palfrey, once of the Divinity 
 Faculty of Harvard, "like most men with whom he lived, had 
 opposed Abolition with all his might, his voice and his pen," 
 and he adds that " the conflict at the outset was not a crusade 
 against slavery." The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher said in an 
 address to the people of Manchester, England,* that in the 
 North "Abolitionists were rejected by society * * * * 
 blighted in political life "; that to be called an Abolitionist 
 caused a merchant to be avoided as if he had the plague; 
 that the "doors of confidence were closed upon him" in the 
 church. Holland's Lincoln (page 67) says that in 1830 the 
 " prevailing sentiment " of Illinois was " in favor of slavery " 
 * * * " the Abolitionist was despised by both parties." And 
 George William Curtis f reproaches his own people as follows: 
 " We betrayed our own principles, and those who would not 
 betray them we reviled as fanatics and traitors; we made 
 the name of Abolitionist more odious than any in our annals 
 (Vol. I., page 28). If a man * * * died for liberty, as 
 Lovejoy did at Alton, he was called a fanatical fool." Of the 
 same death the editor of the book says (Vol. I., page 130), " and 
 the country scowled, and muttered 'Served him right.' " j 
 Curtis goes on, " "The Fugitive-Slave law was vigorously en- 
 forced in Ohio and other States. Volume I. (page 75 et scq.) 
 quotes the declaration of Edward Everett as Governor of 
 Massachusetts, that "discussion that leads to insurrection is 
 an offence against the Commonwealth," and quotes Daniel 
 Webster that " it is an affair of high morals to aid in 
 enforcing the Fugitive-Slave law." He quotes (Vol. I., page 
 88) a speech in 1859 of Stephen A. Douglas that fully justified 
 slavery, and he quotes him as saying (page 51), "If you go 
 over into Virginia to steal her negroes, she will catch you and 
 put you in jail, with other thieves." In the same spirit of 
 scornful denunciation as the above, Curtis sets forth (Vol. I., 
 
 * See a collection of his speeches In the P)-alt Library, Baltimore, ma.r'ked 
 53866-2557. 
 
 + His Orations (Vol. I., p. 146). 
 
 t Lovejoy was an Abolitionist who was killed by a mob in Alton. Illinois, 
 in 1836. 
 
Wa7- and Emancipation. 23 
 
 pages 80 to 82) the purpose the North entertained not to inter- 
 fere with slavery. " In other free States men were flying for 
 their lives; were mobbed, seized, imprisoned, maimed, mur- 
 dered " * * * And all this was as late as 1850. " The 
 Southern policy (Vol. I., page 130 et seq.) seemed to conquer. 
 The church, the college, trade, fashion, the" vast political 
 parties, took Calhoun's side. * * * in Boston, in Philadel- 
 phia, in New York, in Utica, in New Haven, and in a hundred 
 villages, when an American citizen proposed to say what he 
 thought of a great public question, * * * he was insulted, 
 mobbed, chased and maltreated." " The Governor of Ohio 
 (Vol. I., page 131) actually delivered a citizen of that State 
 to the demand of Kentucky to be tried for helping a slave to 
 escape." Volume I. (page 132) gives Seward's picture of the 
 entire unanimity of the Washington government both at home 
 and abroad in supporting the Southern side, and says (page 
 139), " Fernando Wood and the New York Herald were the 
 true spokesmen of the confused public sentiment of the city 
 of New York, when one proposed the secession of the city and 
 the other proposed the adoption of the Montgomery Constitu- 
 tion " — that is, the Constitution of the Confederate States, 
 which was adopted at Montgomery, Alabama. And Curtis 
 goes on: " If the city of New York in February, 1861, had vo|ed 
 upon its acceptance, it would have been adopted." At page 
 174, Curtis says, referring to the enlistment of negro soldiers, 
 * * * " but I remember that four years ago there were good 
 men among us who said, ' If white hands can't win this fight, 
 let it be lost.' " Does not Curtis here concede that " white 
 hands" did not win the fight? Whether he does or not, did 
 not Lincoln in his Emancipation Proclamation concede that 
 " white hands " could not or would not win the fight, and did 
 not Lincoln frequently say afterwards in defence of his auto- 
 cratic action, that but for his emancipating and arming the 
 negroes the fight would not have been won? And — finally — 
 did the " wnite hands " of the great North and West lack 
 numbers or wealth or courage to win the fight, if it had been 
 their tcill? 
 
 The popular will about emancipation was accurately 
 measured by the vote that Fremont got, running as Free-Soil 
 
24 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 candidate, only four years before Lincoln's election. His votes 
 from the whole United States were only 146,149. Schouler's 
 " History of the United States " (pages 214 et seq.) records 
 that General B. F. Butler offered his Massachusetts brigade to 
 put down any negro insurrection, and that " few, North or 
 South, during the first year of the war, sought, or approved 
 emancipation." General B. F. Butler* says: " If we had beaten 
 at Bull Run, I have no doubt the whole contest would have 
 been patched up by concessions to slavery, as no one in power 
 then was ready for its abolition." Lincoln himself said in his 
 famous letter to Greeley in the Tribune, " If I could save the 
 Union without freeing any slave I would do it." 
 
 Hardly any testimony on the question. How the Border 
 States regarded emancipation could be better than Lincoln's 
 own, which we have. When a delegation urged him to emanci- 
 pate the negroes by a proclamation, he expressed the appre- 
 hension t that, if he should do as they wished, fifty thousand 
 rifles from the Border States, then serving in the army of the 
 Union, might go over to the opposing side; and Ida Tarbell 
 tells us in McClitre's Maoazine for May, 1899, that Lincoln said 
 that, if he should enlist negroes in his army, two hundred 
 thousand muskets that he had put into the hands of Border- 
 St*te men would be turned against the Union army. 
 
 The Issue Changed from Slavery to Saving- the Union. 
 
 Following, if not guided by, Seward's advice showed above, 
 Lincoln disclaimed any purpose of emancipation, but most 
 astutely used the firing on Fort Sumter to rouse the war spirit. 
 The word " astutely " is aptly applied, for the flag had been 
 fired on in the same place two months earlier — an exceedingly 
 important fact which has been very strangely ignored, but 
 cannot be denied. The steamer Star of the West had been 
 sent two months earlier with food and two hundred recruits 
 to relieve Fort Sumter, % and while flying the great flag of a 
 
 *Butler\s Book (p. 293), and Phillips Brooks wrote almost exactly the 
 same In a letter, October, 1862, Life and Letters, by Allen. 
 •hNicolay and Hay's Lincoln, 
 t Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln (Vol. VIII., p. 96 et seq.) 
 
The Issue Changed. 2-5 
 
 garrison, was fired on, hit twice, and driven away—" retired 
 a little ignominiously," Morse reports it*— and he adds that 
 Senator Wigfall jeered insolently: "Your flag has been in- 
 sulted, redress it if you dare." George William Curtis f de- 
 plores that they " were unable or unwilling to avenge a mortal 
 insult to our own flag in our own waters upon the Star of the 
 West." Ropes and Channing+ give a like description of the 
 occurrence. Russell writes to the London Times from America: 
 r'lt is absurd to assert * * * that the sudden outburst 
 v/hen Fort Sumter was fired upon was caused by the insult 
 to the flag. Why, the flag had been fired on long before 
 Sumter was attacked * * * ^ jj^d been torn down from 
 the United States arsenals and forts all over the South and 
 fired upon when the Federal fiag was flying from the Star of 
 the West." He says, too, " secession was an accomplished fact 
 months before Lincoln came into ofllce, but we heard no talk 
 of rebels and pirates till Sumter had fallen. * * * The 
 North was perfectly quiescent." Rhodes says that Chase called 
 it " an accomplished revolution," when Lincoln entered on the 
 presidency. || 
 
 This " flring on the flag " on the Star of the West produced 
 no sensation at all, but was accepted by the whole country 
 as an accompaniment of the secession of the States. 
 
 We have learned afresh of late the meaning of the words 
 used above, " to rouse the War .Spirit." A very respectable 
 part of the wisdom and virtue of this country deplore and 
 reprobate the war now waging by the United States, and yet 
 they do make and can make no opposition, but support the 
 war just as those do who approve it most warmly. We know 
 now that a war, once begun, sweeps into its support, not only 
 the regular army, the navy, the Treasury, but volunteer organi- 
 zations and the youth of the country, who think they must 
 respond to any national call for arms. 
 
 * Morse's Lincoln (Vol. I., p. 196;. 
 + Orations (Vol. I., p. 141). 
 
 I Ropes Story of the Civil War (Pt. I., p. 45. Channinq's Short Hi^torn of the 
 United States {p. 3\Z). ' ' 
 
 ^5 Russell's Diary North and South (p. 72 et seq., and p. 131 et seg.) 
 
 II Rhodes' History of the United States (Vol. III., p. .'543). 
 
26 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 How Far Did the North and the "West Approve Forcing 
 Back the South Into the Union ? 
 
 The authorities we quote have put on record ample proof 
 of a widespread conviction in the North and the West in 
 1861 that the use of force to retain States in the Union was 
 not only inadmissible under the Constitution, but abhorrent 
 to the principles on which their political institutions rested. 
 
 Russell in his BUtnj (page 13) quotes Bancroft, the his- 
 torian, afterwards Minister to England, for the opinion in 1860 
 that the United States had no authority to coerce the people 
 of the South; which opinion, Bancroft told Russell, was widely 
 entertained among the most prominent men of all classes in 
 the North; and Russell reports the same opinion as prevailing 
 in March, 1861 (page 14 ct seq.) in New York and in Washing- 
 ton — and that there was " little sympathy with and no respect 
 for (page 15) Lincoln." He found Senator Sumner and Secre- 
 tary Chase disposed to let the Southern States " go out with 
 their slavery." 
 
 The Life of Charles Fnmeis Adams, Lincoln's Minister to 
 England, says (page 49 et seq.) that " up to the very day of 
 the firing on the flag, the attitude of the Northern States, even 
 in case of hostilities, was open to grave question, while that of 
 the Border States did not admit of a doubt " * * * " that 
 Mr. Seward, the member of the President's Cabinet in charge 
 of foreign affairs, both in his official papers and his private 
 talk, repudiated not only the right, but the wish even to use 
 armed force in subjugating the Southern States against the 
 will of a majority of the people, and declared that the President 
 willingly (page 151) accepted as true the cardinal dogma of 
 the seceding States, that the Federal Government had no 
 authority for coercion; * * * ^^(\ ^11 this time (page 150) 
 the Southern sympathizers throughout the ' loyal ' States 
 were earnest and outspoken." 
 
 General B. F. Butler records that Henry Dunning, Mayor 
 of Hartford, called the City Council together " to consult if 
 my troops should be allowed to go through Hartford on the 
 
Forcing Back the South. 27 
 
 way to the war. He was a true, loyal man, but did not believe 
 in having a war. * * * He was a patriot to the core."* 
 
 Morse's Lincoln (Vol. I., p. 231) makes the following re- 
 markable statement: " Greeley and Seward and Wendell 
 Phillips, representative men, were little better than seces- 
 sionists. The statement sounds ridiculous, yet the proof 
 against each comes from his own mouth. The Tribune had 
 retracted none of those disunion sentiments of which examples 
 have been given." f 
 
 Even so late as April 10, 1861, Sev/ard wrote officially to 
 Charles Francis Adams, Minister to England, " Only an im- 
 perial and despotic government could subjugate thoroughly 
 disaffected and insurrectionary members of the State." On 
 April 9th the rumor of a fight at Sumter being spread abroad, 
 Wendell Phillips said, " Here are a series of States girding the 
 Gulf who think that their peculiar institutions require that 
 they should have a separate government; they have a right to 
 decide that question without appealing to you and to me 
 * * * Standing with the principles of '76 behind us, who 
 can deny them the right? * * * Abraham Lincoln has no 
 right to a soldier in Fort Sumter * * * you cannot go 
 through Massachusetts, and recruit men to bombard Charleston 
 and New Orleans." Morse is comprehensive in his statement 
 of the position taken by the Republicans, saying of Lincoln's 
 early days in Washington: * * * " None of the distin- 
 guished men, leaders of his own party whom Lincoln found 
 about him at Washington, were in a frame of mind to assist 
 him efficiently." Andrews deplores the fact that " coolness 
 and absurd prejudice against coercing largely possessed even 
 the loyal masses," and that (Vol. II., page 95) " throughout the 
 North the feeling was strong against all efforts at coercion." 
 McClure says: " Even in Philadelphia * * * nearly the 
 whole commercial and financial interests were arrayed against 
 Lincoln at first.".t Woodrow Wilson's DiviMon and Reunion 
 
 * Butler's Book (p. 29^); Ropes' Slory of the Civil War (Pt. I., p. 14 et seq); 
 Morse's Lincoln (Vol. 1, p. 190). and Greeley's American Confiict (p. 91 et seq.) 
 
 + Morse and others quote, from Greeley's editorials in his Tribune, repeated 
 bitter censures of forcing the seceded States back into the Union. 
 
 t Morse's Lincoln (Vol. I., p. 223 and p. 4) ; 3/cClure's Our Prrside7tts (p. 177). 
 
28 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 says (page 214) that " President Buchanan agreed with his 
 Attorney-General that there was no constitutional means or 
 warrant for coercing a State " (as indeed his last message 
 shows beyond doubt), and adds that " such for the time seemed 
 to be the general opinion of the country." 
 
 For months after the secession of South Carolina, while the 
 other States were successively passing ordinances of secession 
 and seizing the forts, arsenals, etc., within their boundaries, 
 the government at Washington, President, Cabinet, Supreme 
 Court and Congress, took not one step toward coercion, nor 
 did either house of Congress listen to a suggestion of emanci- 
 pation. These Senators and Representatives were from the 
 North and the West only, and we may surely conclude that, 
 at so critical a period they ascertained and carried out the 
 will of their constituents. See the testimony of Butler's Book, 
 that " during the whole War of the Rebellion the government 
 was rarely ever aided, but usually impeded by the decisions 
 of the Supreme Court, so that the President was obliged to 
 suspend the writ of Habeas Corpus in order to relieve himself 
 from the rulings of the court." This is stated by General 
 Butler quite seriously and not, as might possibly be supposed, 
 in any satirical mood. Ropes' Sfori/ of the Cirll War (pt. I., 
 page 19) says: " It is true that during the winter of 1860 
 Congress took no action whatever looking toward preparation 
 for the conquest of the outgoing States." * * * From page 
 355 to 553 of the first volume of Greeley's Aineriean Conflict 
 there is little but a record of the opposition to coercion of the 
 South in the " loyal " States. Pages 357 et seq. and 354 et seq. 
 show the action of the Legislatures of New Jersey and Illinois, 
 both nearly unanimous, in the same direction. See, also (Vol. 
 I., page 380 et seq.) the very strong support given to the amend- 
 ment of the Constitution proposed by one whom Greeley called 
 " the venerable and Union-loving Crittenden of Kentucky," 
 which amendment guaranteed ample protection to slavery, and 
 it could have been passed in Congress but for the fact that 
 they knew the South thought the time for compromise was 
 past. 
 
 Greeley describes (page 387 et seq.) a tremendous demon- 
 stration against the war made by New York State in February, 
 
Forcing Back the South. 29 
 
 1861, in which her leaders promised about all the South could 
 ask. In this, as in the New York State Democratic Conven- 
 tion, which he describes as " probably the strongest and most 
 imposing assembly of delegates ever convened in the State " 
 (page 392 et scq.), Greeley records expressions of the purpose, 
 not only not to coerce, but to aid the South in case of war, 
 which expressions were heard with applause; and in a speech 
 of James S. Thayer, it was alleged that these views had been 
 asserted in the last election by 333,000 votes in New York. 
 Greeley further makes the following very remarkable state- 
 ment: " That thi'oughout the Free States eminent and eager 
 advocates of adhesion to the new Confederacy by those States 
 were widely heard and heeded." For more evidence to the same 
 effect of the feeling of the North and the West, &ee McCall's 
 Life of TJiad. Stcrens (pages 122 to 132 ct scq., page 211 ct scq. 
 and page 219 ct ,scq.). The Life of /liiiiiiibal Hamlin, Lincoln's 
 Vice-President, quotes Hamlin (page 459): "If we had had a 
 common union in the North and a common loyalty to the 
 government, we could have ended this Civil War months ago, 
 but this aid and comfort the rebels had received from the 
 Northern allies * * * " 
 
 The advocacy of views strongly adverse to the war and to 
 emancipation did not cease in the North and the West when 
 the war began, dangerous as it soon became to advocate them. 
 Imprisonment without trial, trials by court-martial, sentences 
 to confinement in prisons or fortresses remote from home and 
 friends, did reduce at last to silence all but the boldest — even 
 Missourians, Kentuckians and Marylanders; and similar 
 methods of repression were used in States remotest from the 
 scenes of the war. Russell's DUny (page 198) mentions the 
 news that * * * " members of the Maryland Legislature 
 have been seized by the Federal authorities." This is of date 
 September 11, 1861. See Dunning's Es.wys on the Ciril War, etc. 
 (Pages 19, 21 ct scq.) 
 
 Rhodes' Eistory of the Tiiitcd l^tatcs (Vol. IV., page 155) 
 describes minutely the imprisonments at different times and 
 places of two men of Indiana (Olds and Walk), who, he says, 
 enjoyed before, then, and thereafter the highest respect and 
 confidence of their neighbors and constituents, and were 
 
30 Tlic Real Lincoln. 
 
 honored by them the more for their sufferings, and Dunning 
 instances these as samples of much other such treatment of 
 those who opposed the war and emancipation. 
 
 Gorham's Life of Stanton quotes a proclamation of Stanton 
 as Secretary of War issued in justification of Lincoln's usurpa- 
 tion of despotic power over liberty and life, which sets forth 
 (Vol. I., page 264 ct scq.) that he found " treason " everywhere — 
 in " Senate, House of Representatives, * * * the Cabinet, 
 the foreign Ministers, * * * land and naval forces, * * * 
 revenue, * * * post office, * * * territorial govern- 
 ments and Indian reserves, judges, governors, legislators, * * 
 even in the most loyal regions; secret societies * * * with 
 perverted sympathies * * * furnishing men and money to 
 the insurgents, * * * fortifications, navy-yards, arsenals 
 betrayed or abandoned to the insurgents, * * * voluntary 
 enlistment ceasing," * * * &c. 
 
 In New York State, Governor Horatio Seymour had enor- 
 mous backing in his open opposition, as partly shown above, 
 to the war before it began, and in opposition to it and emanci- 
 pation, so far as was possible, to the end. Schouler's Ilistori/ 
 of the United ^States (page 417 ct seq.) concedes that the State 
 of New York was " obstructive to the President's wishes " — a 
 mode of expression which is significant — and records that Sey- 
 mour said in his Inaugural as Governor that " the conscription 
 act was believed by one-half the people of the loyal States a 
 violation of the supreme constitutional law." For his view 
 of the purpose for which that act was procured, see Nicolay 
 and Hay's Lincoln (Vol. VI., page 22 et seq.), which alleges that 
 both Governor Seymour and Archbishop Hughes, not only 
 made friendly addresses to the mob that was forcibly stopping 
 the draft in New York city, but manifested a measure of 
 sympathy with its purpose;' that Seymour in his address called 
 the war " the imgodly conflict that is distracting the land," 
 and said that the purpose of the draft was " to stuff ballot 
 boxes with bogus soldier votes." Yet they concede that, in 
 spite of all this, Seymour was (Vol. VI., pages 9 to 26) " then 
 and to his death the most honored Democratic politician in 
 the State." And this is shown beyond all question by the fact 
 that, after the war was over he was selected by the National 
 
Forcing Back the South. 31 
 
 Democratic party as its candidate for the Presidency. They 
 attest also unstintedly Seymour's integrity and patriotism. 
 
 In the State of Ohio, Vallandigham's following in his re- 
 sistance was so strong that he was banished by order of 
 President Lincoln — a penalty not before known to the country, 
 and " not for deeds done, but for words spoken," to use the 
 language in which it was denounced by John Sherman, and 
 these were words that had been spoken in public debate and 
 received with wild applause by thousands of his constituents.* 
 
 In Indiana Governor Morton got from Lincoln, through 
 Stanton, aid by which he usurped every function of the govern- 
 ment of the State, entirely overruling the will of the people; 
 conclusive evidence of which makes up a large part of the first 
 volume of Foulke's Life of (lorcnior Morton, published as late 
 as 1899; nor is it recorded in censure of Morton. Chapter 
 XXII. is headed " I am the State," and begins, " Morton accom- 
 plished what had never before been attempted in American 
 history. For two years he carried on the government of a 
 great State solely by his own personal energy, raising money 
 without taxation on his own responsibility and distributing it 
 through bureaus organized by himself." French's Life of Morton 
 says (page 423) that at the commencement of the year 1863 
 * * * the secret enemies of the government * * * j^^fj 
 succeeded in the election of an Indiana Legislature, which 
 " was principally composed of men sworn to oppose to the 
 bitter end the prosecution of the war, with the purpose of 
 encouraging the enemies of American liberty in their work of 
 rebellion and destruction." Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln^ con- 
 firms the above account of Indiana, and says that, but for 
 Governor Morton the Indiana Legislature would have recog- 
 nized the Confederacy and " dissolved the federal relation with 
 the United States." They givej: a full account of the " dis- 
 
 * Sherman's Recollections (Vol. I., p. 323), and Holland's Lincoln (p. i71 etseq.). 
 who tells, too, of the bitter reprobation this provoked in New York. 
 Nicolay and Hay tell (Vol. VII., p. 328) about the same story of Vallandig- 
 ham and of tlie resentment (p. 341) in New York. 
 
 •h(Vol. Yin. , I,. Set seg.) 
 
 UYol. Yin., p. 29 etseg.) 
 
o2 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 loyalty" in the North and the West, and say, too,* that "in 
 the Western States the words Democrat and Copperhead 
 became after January, 1863, practically synonymous, and a 
 cognomen applied as a reproach was assumed with pride." 
 Professor Channing, of Harvard, says-.f " In the Mississippi 
 Valley hundreds of thousands of men either sympathized with 
 the slave-holders or cared nothing about the slavery dispute." 
 George S. Boutwell says -t " With varying degrees of intensity 
 the Democratic party of the North sympathized with the South, 
 and arraigned Lincoln and the Republican party for all that 
 the country was called to endure. During the entire period 
 of the war New York, Ohio and Illinois were doubtful States, 
 and Indiana was kept in line only by the active and desperate 
 fidelity of Oliver P. Morton." | Secretary Wells, of Lincoln's 
 Cabinet, says {Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XVI., page 266) : " The 
 Democrats were in sympathy with "the rebels * * * and 
 opposed to the war itself." 
 
 Probably few will question that the Border States disap- 
 proved the coercion of the South and emancipation, but see 
 the following: Ropes says, " and though Maryland, Kentucky 
 and Missouri remained in the Union,]] yet the feeling of a con- 
 siderable part of the people in those States in favor of the 
 new movement was so strong — aided as it was by the convic- 
 tion that their States would have seceded but for the active 
 interference of the United States Government — ^that the South- 
 ern cause received substantial aid from each of them." How 
 " considerable a part of the people " it was may be inferred 
 from the fa'ct that a proclamation from the War Department 
 was addressed to Marylanders to declare regret for having to 
 keep so large a number of their fellow citizens in prisons, and 
 that public policy did not admit of their being brought to trial 
 or allowed to know the charges on which they were arrested; 
 
 * (Vol. IV., p. 234). 
 
 f Channing's Short History nf the United States (p. 314). 
 
 t Abraham Lincoln Tributes from his Associates (p. 85 et sefj.) 
 
 ^ See letter of Morton to Stanton reporting a formidable effort of citizens 
 and soldiers of Indiana 'to withdraw from tlie Union. Rhodes' History of 
 the United State? (Vol. IV., p. 223). 
 
 II Missouri seceded, October 31, 1861, and Kentucky seceded, November 20 
 1861.— Note by Editor. 
 
Forcing Back the South. 33 
 
 and the lately published Recollections of Charles A. Dana record 
 with complacency (page 236 et seq.) among his experiences as 
 Assistant Secretary of War, the arrest in one day of ninety- 
 seven of the leading people in Baltimore and their imprison- 
 ment in Washington, " mostly in solitary confinement." 
 
 Everywhere there were men who made more or less bitter 
 protest or resistance against such subversion (by methods 
 known only to the Sultan or the Czar), of what Americans had 
 been taught to call the conditions of freedom — a free press, 
 free speech, the writ of Habeas Corpus, and Trial by Tury. In 
 Cincinnati, in Chicago, in Boston and elsewhere, demonsti'a- 
 tions toward violent resistance very alarming to the Adminis- 
 tration at Washington were suppressed with the strong hand 
 before coming to a head. Gilmore's Personal Recollections of 
 Lincoln, speaks (page 199) of " the wide Western Conspiracy 
 so opportunely strangled in Chicago," and devotes a chapter to 
 it. John A. Logan's Great Conspiracy (page 557) records " a 
 gathering at Springfield, Illinois (Lincoln's home), June 13, 
 1863, of nearly one hundred thousand Vallandigham, Anti-War, 
 Peace, Democrats, which utterly repudiated the war." See, also, 
 page 559 et seq. For account of " avowed hostility to Lincoln " 
 in Philadelphia, New York and Boston, and of opposition in 
 New Jersey that " made the State disgraceful," see Allen's 
 Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks, Vol. I., page 448. Of Massa- 
 chusetts, we learn the following from General B. F. Butler* — 
 " Massachusetts had the disgrace of a draft, intensified by the 
 disgrace of a draft-riot, which had to be put down by force of 
 arms." General Rosecrans reported to Washington the existence 
 in the Western States of secret orders of men bound by oath 
 to co-operate with the Confederates to the number of four 
 hundred thousand men. Nicolay and Hay say that three hun- 
 dred and fifty thousand was an exaggerated estimate of their 
 numbers. 
 
 When the storm was rising there came from the Democratic 
 leaders in the " loyal " States as distinct asseverations of the 
 wrongs the South was enduring, as full assurances that the 
 
 * Butler's Book (p. 306). 
 3 
 
34 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 South had the right to withdraw from the partnership, as full 
 denial of any possible right in the Federal Government to use 
 coercion, as any Southern leader ever set forth; with further 
 assurances that the Democrats of the North and the West 
 would fight on the Southern side in any appeal to arms. 
 
 The extreme Abolitionists also bitterly opposed the war. 
 Theodore Roosevelt's Cronnccll, just from the press, says (page 
 103), that at the close of the war " the Garrison * * * or 
 disunion Abolitionists * * * had seen their cause triumph, 
 not through, but in spite of their efforts." And Gorham's Life 
 of Stanton (page 163 et seq.) says: " The Republicans * * * 
 were divided into two classes, one which desired separation, 
 etc., * * *" and (Vol. I., page 193) tells of "a new element, 
 headed by prominent Republican leaders like Greeley and 
 Chase, who thought that a union of non-slave-holding States 
 would be preferable to any attempt to maintain by force the 
 Union with the slave-holding States." Observe liow exactly 
 these conclusions agreed with the conclusions to which the 
 Southern leaders had come. 
 
 A letter of Chase quoted in his Life by Warden (page 363 
 et seq.) says: " It is precisely because they anticipate abolition 
 as the result that the Garrison Abolitionists desire disunion." 
 Schouler says of Garrison, Phillips and their immediate fol- 
 lowers:*" They were the avowed disunionists on the Northern 
 side." * * * 
 
 In spite of the support of the war forced on the Democracy, 
 as above described, they made a steady struggle in the courts, 
 in Congress, and in the State governments to keep down the 
 war to constitutional limits as far as possible, and to such 
 conditions as might leave room for reconciliation in the future. 
 Vallandigham's and Seymour's conduct furnish examples, and 
 General McClellan's is another example. For years no pains 
 were spared to cry down General McClellan in vindication 
 of Lincoln's dealings with him, but evidence of the truth 
 has been too strong. Even Nicolay and Hay have to 
 concede to McClellan the very highest praise for pure patriot- 
 ism, and the concessions have grown greater with each 
 succeeding historian till Rhodes, one of the ablest, deplores 
 
 *Scliouler"s History of the United States (Vol. VI., p. 225). 
 
Forcing Back the Soiith. 35 
 
 the fact that Lincoln could not see McClellan as we see him, 
 and that Lincoln deferred the capture of Richmond and the 
 downfall of the Confederacy for two years by removing McClel- 
 lan from command of the army.* Ropes passes hardly less 
 severe censure on Lincoln for his dealings with McClellan, f and 
 Rhodes and Ropes are very hostile critics of McClellan. See 
 John Fiske's Elississlppi Talley in the Civil War (page 148 ct 
 seq.), and his quotation of censure of Lincoln to the same 
 effect from the Count of Paris. See Ida Tarbell in McClure's 
 Magazine for May, 1899, pages 192 to 199 et seq. 
 
 In this connection there are some unconscious betrayals of 
 the real estimate of Lincoln that was entertained by a number 
 of his most ardent eulogists. Six of his eulogists have thought 
 it worth while, if not necessary, to declare very expressly their 
 belief that Lincoln did not purposely betray General McClellan 
 and his army in the Seven-Days' battles before Richmond. J 
 McClellan, in his celebrated dispatch after his retreat re- 
 proached Stanton with this atrocious crime, and so worded 
 the dispatch that he imputed the same guilt to Lincoln. 
 McClure's Lincoln, &c. (page 102) and Nicolay and Hay's 
 Lincoln (pages 441, 442 and 451) deplore that McClellan should 
 have believed Lincoln capable of it, both conceding to McClel- 
 lan the most exalted character, ability and patriotism. 
 
 Of Lincoln's dealing with McClellan, McClure says: " Many 
 charged, as did McClellan, that he had been, with his army, 
 deliberately betrayed by the Secretary of War, if not by 
 Lincoln." ?. 
 
 When Lincoln refused to hear at all, or see, the Southern 
 commissioners — Clement Clay and James P. Holcombe — unless 
 they could show " written authority from Jefferson Davis " to 
 
 ♦Rhodes' History of the United States (Vol. IV., p. 109, and p. 106 ctscg., and 
 p. 117). 
 
 i Ropes' Story of the Civ il^ War {T?t. II., p. 132 et seg., p. 442 e? seg., and p 
 41Z etseg.) 
 
 X McClure's Lincoln {p. 207) ; Holland's Lincoln (p. 53 et seg.) ; Ropas' Story of 
 the Civil War (Pt. II., pp.116, 171, and in another place, Rhodes' History of 
 the United Siates (Vol. IV., p. 550 et seg.); Hon. George S. Boutwell, in 
 Tributes from his Associates (p. 69); Schouler's History of the United States (p. 
 193 et seg.) 
 
 5 McClure's Lincoln, etc. (pp. 208, 248), and Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln (Vol. 
 VI., p. ISQetseg.) 
 
>6 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 make unconditional surrender, Greeley, who had procured their 
 coming to negotiate a cessation of the war, protested against 
 Lincoln's action as follows in a letter written him in July, 
 1864:* "Our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country longs 
 for peace, shudders at the prospect of fresh conscriptions, of 
 further wholesale devastations, and new rivers of human blood; 
 and there is a widespread conviction that the Government and 
 its supporters are not anxious for peace and do not improve 
 proffered opportunities to achieve it." 
 
 Greeley further intimates (page 482) the possibility of a 
 Northern insurrection. Charles A. Dana, Lincoln's Secretary 
 of War, says in his h'rcollcvtions of the Cicil War, that in April, 
 1862, Greeley " was for peace." Nicolay and Hay (Vol. IX., 
 pages 184 to 200) describe the transaction above as " Horace 
 Greeley's Peace Mission." The Life of Hamlin (page 437) says 
 Greeley called the above letter " the prayer of twenty millions 
 of people." 
 
 General U. S. Grant, in trying to show that he had not 
 the enormous advantage that he is usually said to have had 
 in the far greater number of people from whom he drew his 
 army, makes serious concessions as to the indifference of the 
 people at large in the " loyal " States to the cause he fought 
 for, and the bitter hostility to it of a vast number of them. 
 He says of the Southern army, in his Memoir (Vol. II., page 
 500 et seq) : " No rear had to be protected. All the troops in the 
 service could be brought to the front to contest every inch 
 of the ground threatened with invasion. The press of the 
 South, like the people who remained at home, was loyal to the 
 Southern cause." Again (page 502): "In the North the press 
 was free to the point of open treason, * * * troops were 
 necessary in the Northern States to prevent prisoners from 
 the Southern army being released by outside force, armed and 
 set at large * * * The copperhead * * * press magni- 
 fied rebel successes and belittled those of the Northern army. 
 It was, with a large following, an auxiliary to the Confederate 
 army. The North would have been much stronger with a 
 hundred thousand of these men in the Confederate ranks and 
 
 ♦Holland's itncoZn (p. 478). 
 
Attitude of Union Soldiers. 37 
 
 the rest of their kind thoroughly* subdued * * * it would 
 have been an offence, directly after the war, and perhaps it 
 would be now (Grant's Memoir is dated 1886) to ask any able- 
 bodied man in the South who was between the ages of fourteen 
 and sixty at any time during the war whether he had been 
 in the Confederate army. He would assert that he was, or 
 account for his absence from the ranks." See, too, page 35. 
 
 Attitude of Union Soldiers Toward Coercion and Eman- 
 cipation. 
 
 On this we get a strange enlightenment in the account 
 given by Russell in his Diary (page 155 et seq.) of his meeting 
 the Fourth Pennsylvania Regiment going home from the Bull 
 Run battlefield to the sound of the cannon that opened the 
 battle. A note on page 553 of Greeley's American Confiiet de- 
 scribes the same from General McDowell's official report of 
 the battle of Bull Run — how on the eve of the battle the Fourth 
 Pennsylvania Regiment of Volunteers and the battery of 
 artillery of the Eighth New York Militia, whose term of ser- 
 vice had expired, insisted on their discharge, though the 
 General and the Secretary of War, both on the spot, tried hard 
 to make them stay five more days * * * ^nd the next 
 morning, when the army moved into battle, these troops moved 
 to the rear to the sound of the enemy's guns. Greeley goes 
 on to say: " It should here be added that a member of the 
 New York Battery aforesaid who was most earnest and active 
 in opposing General McDowell's request and insisting on an 
 immediate discharge, was at the next election, in full view 
 of all the facts, chosen sheriff of the city of New York — 
 probably the most lucrative office filled by popular election in 
 
 *In the debate in the House of the 20th Februarj', 1901, when Mr. Lentz 
 of Ohio, said tliat if soldiers in the Philippines are ordered to kill prisoners, 
 they are justified in deserting, Mr. Cannon, of Illinois, said that in his 
 lifetime lie had heard more eloquent men than tlie gentleman from Ohio 
 encourage desertion. " When the life of the nation was at stake," said he. 
 ^'raen all over the North stood behind the firing line and encouraged deser- 
 tion. * * * * During the Civil War I thought if 8,000 or 10,000 of the 
 copperheads had been shot we would not have been troubled with deser- 
 tion."— iJoiiimore Sun of 21st February, 1901. 
 
38 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 the country-" Russell gives the reason why General Patterson 
 did not bring his army from the upper Potomac to help General 
 McDowell at Bull Run, that* " out of twenty-three regiments 
 composing his force, nineteen refused to stay an hour after 
 their time." Can any explanation be suggested but that these 
 soldiers and their friends at home reprobated the task to 
 which they were ordered? 
 
 McClure's Lincoln says (page 56): "When he (Lincoln) 
 turned to the military arm of the government, he was appalled 
 by the treachery of the men to whom the nation should look 
 for its preservation." Scarcely any were so devoted to the 
 flag; none knew so well the seriousness of the step as the 
 officers of the regular army, but, notwithstanding, three hun- 
 dred and thirteen (nearly one-third) resigned. General Keifer 
 says that about March, 1861, " disloyalty among prominent 
 army officers was for a while the rule." General Scott, com- 
 mander of the army, recommended " that the erring sisters be 
 allowed to depart in peace." Much pity has been spent on 
 Major Anderson, cut off from supplies and bombarded in Fort 
 Sumter, but one of Lincoln's eulogists has to rejoice now that 
 he was spared the pain of reading the reproaches contained in 
 a letter written him by Major Anderson, censuring him for 
 proposing to use force. The letter miscarried. We have other 
 letters of Major Anderson's, showing that he, like Scott and 
 Seward, and the rest, thought coercion out of the question. 
 
 Nicolay and Hay say the Union army showed the strongest 
 sympathy with its always immensely popular general, McClel- 
 lan, in his bold protests against emancipation, and that there 
 was actual danger of revolt in the army against the emancipa- 
 tion proclamation when General Burnside turned over the 
 command of his army of one hundred and twenty thousand 
 men to General Hooker in Virginia, f In Warden's Life of Gluisc 
 (page 485 ct srq.) a letter of September, 1862, from Chase to 
 John Sherman, says: "I hear from all sources that nearly all 
 the officers in Buel's army, and that Buel himself, are pro- 
 slavery in the last degree." 
 
 *My Diary, North and South (p. 179). Channing's Short History of the 
 United States (p. 308 et seg.) 
 
 t Keifer's Slavery and Four Years of War (p. 171) ; Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln 
 (Vol. I., p. 185). 
 
Proclamation of Emancipation. 39 
 
 Grant, in his Memoir (Vol. II., page 323), says tliat during 
 August, 1864, " right in the midst of these embarrassments, 
 Halleck informed me that there was an organized scheme on 
 foot to resist the draft, and suggested that it might become 
 necessary to withdraw troops from the field to put it down." 
 Nicolay and Hay (Vol. VI., page 3) tell of violent resistance to 
 the draft in Pennsylvania. 
 
 How did the North and the West Receive the Proclama- 
 tion of Emancipation ? 
 
 Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln (Vol. II., page 261) records great 
 losses in the elections in consequence of the proclamation, as 
 do Schouler and Holland (page 457). Butler's Book (page 536) 
 quotes Seward's reports in letters to his wife, that ' the results 
 were deplorable," and that " the returns were ominous "; that 
 in all but strong Republican States " the opposition was 
 triumphant and the administration party defeated." Ida Tar- 
 bell, in McGlure's Magazine for January, 1899 (page 165), says: 
 " Many and many a man deserted in the winter of 1862-1863 
 because of the emancipation proclamation. He did not believe 
 the President had the right to issue it, and he refused to fight. 
 Lincoln knew, too, that the Copperhead agitation had reached 
 the army, and that hundreds of them were being urged by 
 parents and friends hostile to the administration to desert." 
 Page 162 shows that Lincoln himself "comprehended the failure 
 to respond to the emancipation or to support the war"; that 
 (page 163) " New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois 
 and Wisconsin reversed their vote, and the House showed gi-eat 
 Democratic gains." McClure's Lincoln, &c. (page 112 et seq.) 
 says: " There was no period from January, 1864, until the 3d 
 of September, when McClellan would not have defeated Lincoln 
 for President." 
 
 Charles A. Dana, in his Recollections of the Ciril War (page 
 180 et seq.) says: " The people of the North might themselves 
 have become half rebels if this proclamation had been issued 
 too soon," and that " two years before, perhaps, the conse- 
 quences of it might have been our entire defeat." How per- 
 sistent the opposition continued to be may be judged con- 
 
40 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 clusively by the fact that Lincoln's emancipation proclamation 
 failed, as late as June, 1864, to get the two-thirds vote neces- 
 sary to fix it in the Constitution, and had to go over to the 
 next session, when the war was practically ended. 
 
 But the crowning proof of the attitude of a very large part 
 of the people of the North and the West is the platform and 
 the nominee adopted by the Democratic party for the presi- 
 dential election of 1864, near the end of the war. It advocated 
 the abandonment of the war,*and the nominee was McClellan, 
 an avowed opponent of emancipation. Such was the issue 
 adopted on which to appeal to the North and the West, and the 
 framers of it were called by Lincoln's Secretary of the Navyf 
 some of the most astute and experienced statesmen of their 
 day. Nor was the appeal a failure, as has been so widely 
 heralded. It is Ida Tarbell, Nicolay and Hay, Butler, Schouler, 
 Holland, McClure, Lincoln himself, who have recorded that 
 three months after his renomination they all despaired of his 
 re-election. 
 
 The Method by which ** Disloyalty ** was Suppressed. 
 
 The testimony above submitted seems ample to show that 
 a vast part of the North and the West was " disloyal " to the 
 war and to emancipation. Let us next consider the methods 
 by which this " disloyalty " was suppressed. 
 
 How fully Lincoln used every method of a military despot 
 is best shown by an examination of a single chapter of a book 
 just from the press — Bancroft's Life of William H. Seward. The 
 following extracts from it need little comment. Lest any reader 
 should suppose that the author of that book means to expose 
 or arraign Lincoln or his agent Seward for the arbitrary arrests 
 and imprisonments that he describes, be it understood that 
 Bancroft does no more than mildly concede that Seward's 
 zeal in a good cause betrayed him into undue severities in the 
 " loyal " States. He says expressly (Vol. II., page 276): " For 
 the general policy as practiced in the Border States, there is 
 
 * McClure's Lincoln (p. 126 ct seg.) 
 
 i Welles' Paper, The Opposition to Lincoln in ISO/,, in the The Atlantic Monthly 
 (Vol. XVI., dated 1878). 
 
Method hy Which '"'^ Disloyalty ^^ Was Suppressed. 41 
 
 no * * * occasion to apologize * * * gut there were 
 some serious abuses of ttiis arbitrary power in the far Northern 
 States." Of Seward as Lincoln's Secretary of State he says 
 (Vol. II., page 264): "Probably the detection of political of- 
 fenders and the control of political prisoners were the most 
 distracting of all his career." After the suspension of the 
 writ of Habeas Corinis, " the Baltimore marshal of police, the 
 police commissioners and other men of prominence were seized 
 and sent to a United States fort. Several members of the 
 Legislature that were expecting to push through an ordinance 
 of secession the next day were arrested in September, 1861, 
 and treated like other political prisoners." 
 
 Seward's system of arrest and confinement of the prisoners 
 is described as follows (Vol. II., page 259) : " Some of the fea- 
 tures bore a striking resemblance to the most odious institu- 
 tions of the ancient regime in France — the BastiJc and the 
 Lcttres de Cachet." 
 
 " The person 'suspected' of disloyalty (Vol. II., page 261) 
 was often seized at night, borne off to the nearest fort, deprived 
 of his valuables, locked up in a casemate * * * generally 
 crowded with men who had similar experiences * * * if 
 he wished to send for friends or an attorney, he was informed 
 that the rules forbade visitors, that attorneys were entirely 
 excluded, and that the prisoner who sought their aid would 
 greatly prejudice his case. An appeal to Seward was the only 
 recourse — a second, third and fourth, all alike useless. The 
 Secretary was calm in the belief that the man was a plotter and 
 would do no harm while he remained in custody." It was 
 found best (Vol. II., page 262) " to take prominent men far 
 from their homes and sympathizers * * * The suspected 
 men, notably Marylanders, were carried to Fort Warren or 
 other remote places * * * jq most cases from one to three 
 months elapsed before definite action was taken by the depart- 
 ment * * * jf iiiQ arrest had been made without due cause, 
 no oaths or conditions of release were required." * * * go, 
 too, " if the alleged offence had been too highly colored by a 
 revengeful enemy." See particulars of several cases (Vol. II., 
 pages 264 to 276), and especially one in which ex-President 
 Pierce, " who believed the South to be the aggrieved party," 
 
42 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 was aimed at. " Not one of the political prisoners (Vol. II., 
 page 276) was brought to trial. As a rule, they were not even 
 told why they were arrested. When the pressure for judicial 
 procedure or for a candid discussion of the case became too 
 strong to be resisted on plausible grounds, the alleged offender 
 was released." 
 
 Of the well known story that Seward boasted to Lord Lyons 
 that with his little bell he could imprison any citizen in any 
 State, and that no one but the President could release him, 
 Bancroft says (Vol. II., page 280): "If he made this remark, 
 it is of no special importance; it was a fact that he was almost 
 as free from restraint as a dictator or a sultan." 
 
 Holland's Lincoln shows (page 476 et srq.) that when Lincoln 
 killed, by " pocketing " it, a bill for the reconstruction of the 
 Union which Congress had just passed, Ben Wade and Winter 
 Davis, aided by Greeley, published in Greeley's Trihune of 
 August 5th "a bitter manifesto." It charged that the President, 
 by preventing this bill from becoming a law " holds the elec- 
 toral vote of the rebel States at the discretion of his personal 
 ambition," and that " a more studied outrage on the authority 
 of the people has never been perpetrated." McClure's Lincoln 
 gives the same account. See, too, Schouler's Historn of the 
 United States (page 469). 
 
 Usher describes in I\enii)iiscences of Lincoln (page 92 et seq.) 
 how pretended Representatives from Virginia (besides those 
 from West Virginia) and from Louisiana were seated in Con- 
 gress. Schouler says that an address to the people by the 
 opposition in Congress accused Lincoln of the creation already 
 in August, 1864, of bogus* States. Gorham's Stanton (Vol. I., 
 
 * The word '• bogus " is borrowed from Brownson's iJevtew, which said, in 
 October, 1864, of the bill which VV^ade and Davis denounced Lincoln for 
 " pocketing," as follows: ''He suffered the Bill to fail, there is no doubt, 
 because it deprived him of the power to create rotten boroughs or Bogus 
 States, to secure his re-election." The Sevirw reminds its readers of its own 
 stout support of the war and of emancipation, and charges that Lincoln is 
 true to neither but has had from the first no aim but to strengthen himself 
 and secure his re-election. Morse describes in a very interesting way 
 (Vol. II., p. 297) how Lincoln kept open the question whether the votes of 
 his reconstructed States of Arkansas and Tennessee should be counted for 
 him until " the very day of the count," when the result was beyond doubt, 
 but concedes that West Virginia was counted, with no better right than 
 they. Nlcolay and Hay (Vol. IX., p. 436 et scg.) describe apologetically how 
 Virginia was made to figure in Washington as two " loyal " States. 
 
Livcubis Second Election. 43 
 
 page 177) shows how indispensable such fictitious States were 
 for the changes that were made in the Constitution, in the 
 words, " no changes could be made without the assent of three- 
 fourths of the States, and fifteen of the thirty-one States were 
 slave States." 
 
 Nicolay's Outbreak of the EcltclUon (page 475) says: " The 
 evident desire of the people for peace was a subject of deep 
 solicitude to the Administration." Morse (Vol. II., page 274) 
 shows the general despair of electing Lincoln in a letter to 
 Lincoln of Raymond, chairman of the Republican National 
 Executive Committee, August 22, 1864, which says: " I hear 
 but one report — the tide is setting against us," speaking him- 
 self for New York and quoting Cameron for Pennsylvania, 
 Washburne for Illinois and Morton for Indiana, " and so for 
 the rest." 
 
 Nicolay and Hay's Lincoln (Vol. IX., page 249) says that 
 * * * by August, 1864, Weed, Raymond, every one, including 
 Lincoln, despaired of his re-election. McClure's Ovr Presidents 
 says (page 183) : " But in fact three months after his renomi- 
 nation in Baltimore his defeat by General McClelllan was 
 generally apprehended by his friends and frankly conceded 
 by Lincoln himself." Several of his biographers give copies of 
 a memorandum sealed up by Lincoln and committed to one of 
 his Cabinet for safekeeping, in which is recorded his convic- 
 tion that McClellan's election over him was certain, with a 
 statement of his purposes how to act during the interval before 
 McClellan would take the presidency. It is referred to by Welles 
 in his papers in the Atlantic Monthly under the heading, " Oppo- 
 sition to Lincoln in 1864 " (pages 266 and 366 et scq.) as " Lin- 
 coln's despondent note of August 23, 1864." McClure, too, 
 refers to it in his Onr Presidents (page 183 et sc(i.) See, also, 
 Roosevelt's CroniireU (page 208). 
 
 LincoIn^s Second Election and His Majority. 
 
 It was under the conditions above described that Lincoln's 
 second election came on. The management of it was committed 
 in large measure to the State Department, whose workings 
 have been shown above, and to the War Department. The 
 
44 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 canvass for the presidency by Democrats was difficult, for an 
 order of tlie War Department liad made criticism of tlie 
 administration treason, triable by court-martial. Soldiers 
 ruled at the polls. General B. F. Butler* gives full particulars 
 of the large force with which he occupied New York city, and 
 shows how completely he controlled its vote and its opposition 
 to the war that had lately been demonstrated in its great anti- 
 draft riot. McCluret shows how the army vote was found 
 necessary and secured. Chauncey M. Depew % describes how 
 the soldiers' vote was polled * * * " made out by [the 
 soldier] himself, certified by the commanding officer of his 
 company or regiment, and sent to some friend at his last 
 voting place to be deposited on election day." Scores of 
 thousands of soldiers were furloughed to go home to vote. ^. 
 McClure describes how Lincoln was afraid to ask Grant to do 
 him this service, but found Sheridan and other generals ready. 
 Depew says that without the soldier vote so managed, Lincoln 
 would have failed to get the electoral vote of New York. || 
 
 Lincoln's re-election by an exceedingly large majority has 
 been triumphantly alleged and is adduced as proof that what 
 he had done and was doing had the approval of the North and 
 the West. That the vote of the electoral college should be 
 recorded for Lincoln was quite inevitable in view of what the 
 witnesses quoted in this sketch have recorded of the political 
 and military management of affairs, at election-time and long 
 before, in the Border States, in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and 
 New York; in great cities like Chicago, New York and Boston, 
 and in the country at large, as far as Seward's " little bell " 
 could reach. But with all the odds against McClellan that have 
 been shown the actual number of votes gotten by McClellan was 
 more than eighty-one per cent, of the actual number of votes 
 gotten by Lincoln. The figures by which this percentage is 
 
 * Butler's Book (pp. 752 to 773), and Rhodes' History of the United States (Vol. 
 IV., p, 330). 
 
 + Our Presidents, etc. (p. 195 et seq.). 
 
 t Reminiscences of Lincoln (p. 22 et seq.) 
 
 ^ McClure's Lmco/n (p. ISG ft se;/.), and Whitney's On Circuit with Lincoln, 
 (p. 445). 
 
 I| Reminiscences of Lincoln (p. 430). 
 
Conclusions. 45 
 
 ascertained were furnished in answer to a late application to 
 the Peabody Library of Baltimore. 
 
 Conclusions* 
 
 This sketch makes no formulation of the conclusions as to 
 Lincoln's character and conduct that might seem to be de- 
 ducible from the evidence, except so far as some of the testi- 
 mony above given formulates them, but some further formu- 
 lations by the same witnesses will now be submitted. 
 
 The Emancipation Proclamation has been described in song 
 and story, on canvas and in marble, as a joyous and exultant 
 announcement of freedom to the slaves. See how differently 
 Ida Tarbell describes it and its author, and she is almost a 
 worshipper of Lincoln. She says: "At last (page 525 et seq.) 
 the Emancipation Proclamation was a fact, but there was little 
 rejoicing in his heart, * * * no exultation; * * * indeed 
 there was almost a groan in the words in which, the night after 
 he had given it out, he addressed a party of serenaders " * * 
 And she records that Lincoln himself said a few months later: 
 " Hope and fear contended over the new policy in uncertain 
 conflict." And she goes on: "As he had foreseen, dark days 
 followed. There were mutinies in the army * * * tj^g 
 events of the fall brought him little encouragement. Indeed 
 the promise of emancipation seemed to effect nothing but dis- 
 appointment and uneasiness; stocks went down; troops fell 
 off. In five great States — Indiana, Illinois, Ohio Pennsylvania 
 and New York — the elections went against him." 
 
 Rhodes' History of the United ^States is one of the latest 
 records in this matter. While he eulogizes Lincoln as ardently 
 as any, he speaks (Vol. IV., page 234 rf sc(j.) of " the enormity 
 of the acts done under his authority," and says " he stands 
 responsible for the casting into prison of citizens of the United 
 States to be counted by thousands (page 230) on orders as 
 arbitrary as the Lcttres de Cachet of Louis XIV.," when the 
 mode of procedure might have been, " as in Great Britain in 
 her crisis (between 1793 and 1802), on legal warrants," and he 
 pronounces (page 234) this extra-judicial procedure inex- 
 pedient, unnecessary and wrong. See, also, Schouler's History 
 
46 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 of the United States (page 465). Rhodes' Hlstonj of the United 
 States gives unqualified commendation to the patriotic spirit 
 and proper jealousy for his country's liberty that prompted 
 Seymour's opposition to the President, and shows how very 
 far it went. See pages 169 to 172 for proofs of Seymour's 
 resentment toward Lincoln and for Rhodes' justification of it. 
 Page 171 (t seq. calls Lincoln a tyrant. Two letters of Governor 
 Morton of Indiana (Vol. IV., page 223 et scq.) and much other 
 testimony show that Indiana was kept from acknowledging 
 the Southern Confederacy only by force from Washington, and 
 that Illinois was at the same time in nearly the same attitude. 
 
 William A. Denning, president of Columbia University, says 
 in his Essays on the Civil IVV/r, dated 1898 (page 39 et seq.), that 
 President Lincoln's proclamation of September 24, 1862, was " a 
 perfect plat for a military despotism," and that '" the very 
 demonstrative resistance of the people to the government only 
 made the military arrests more frequent," * * * that (page 
 24 et seq.) " Mr. Lincoln asserted the existence of martial law 
 * * * throughout the United States." He says " thousands 
 were so dealt with * * * g^j^j that (page 46) " the records 
 of the War Department contain the reports of hundreds of 
 trials by military commissions with punishments varying from 
 light fines to banishment and death." Lalor's Encyclopedia 
 says the records of the Provost Marshal's office in Washington 
 show thirty-eight thousand political prisoners, but Rhodes 
 (Vol. IV., page 230 et seq.) says the number is exaggerated. 
 
 The ceremony of signing the proclamation is elaborately 
 described by Holland,* and all his ardent admiration cannot 
 hide the President's unseemly behavior. Schoulerf records 
 Secretary Stanton's " disgust," and Hapgood says Lincoln 
 signed " with some half-jocose remarks." 
 
 Stanwood's History of the Presidency concedes (page 299 
 et scq.) Lincoln's usurpations (that he may defend and justify 
 them), by showing the vast opposition to him in the Northern 
 States, and from many men whom Stanwood acknowledges to 
 have been " loyal " in purpose. Holland's Linevln says (page 
 
 * See Holland's Lincoln (p. 329 et seg., and 392 et seg.) 
 
 + SclioulPr's HiMor;/ of the United States (Vol. VI., p. 631); Hapgood's Lincoln 
 (p. 291 et seg.) 
 
Conclusions. 47 
 
 291) : "All these labors Lincoln was performing with the 
 knowledge * * * Hiat seven States were in open revolt, 
 and that a majority throughout the Union had not the slightest 
 sympathy with him." Rhodes, in his History of the United States 
 (pages 407 to 423) records the force put by Lincoln on the 
 unwilling people of the Noi'thern States to go on with the war, 
 and gives yet more abundant proof of their wish to stop it. 
 
 McClure's Lincoln (page 292 et seq.) says: " Nor was Greeley 
 alone in these views. Not only the entire Democratic party, 
 with few exceptions, but a very large proportion of the Repub- 
 lican party, including some of its ablest and most trusted 
 leaders, believed that peaceable secession might reasonably 
 result in early reconstruction." 
 
 Would Jefferson Davis, would Robert Lee have asked more 
 than McClure here says the two great parties of the North and 
 West agreed in believing ought to be done? 
 
 Godkin, of the Nation, said as follows in one of his recent 
 editorials: " The first real breach in the Constitution was made 
 by the invention of the war potver to enable President Lincoln 
 to abolish slavery. No one would now say that this was not 
 at that time necessary, but it made it possible for any Presi- 
 dent practically to suspend the Constitution by getting up a 
 war anywhere." * * * 
 
 Ida Tarbell, in describing the opposition to Lincoln, just 
 after his nomination, in 1864, shows as follows the feeling of 
 the people for him:'' "The awful brutality of the war came 
 upon the country as never before. There was a revulsion of 
 feeling against the sacrifice going on such as had not been 
 experienced since the war began. All the complaints that 
 had been urged against Lincoln * * * broke out afresh; 
 the draft was talked of as if it were the arbitrary freak of a 
 tyrant. It was declared that Lincoln had violated constitu- 
 tional rights, personal liberty, the liberty of the press, * * * 
 that, in short, he had been guilty of all the abuses of a military 
 dictatorship. Much bitter criticism was made of his treatment 
 of peace overtures; it was declared that the Confederates were 
 anxious to make peace and had taken the first steps, but that 
 Lincoln was so blood thirsty that he was unwilling to use any 
 
 * Ida Tarbell, in McClure's Magazine for 1899 (p. 276 et seg.) 
 
48 Tlie Real Lincoln. 
 
 means but force, * * * the despair and indignation of the 
 country in this dreadful time all centered upon Lincoln * * 
 the Democrats argued that the war and all its woes were the 
 result of his tyrannical and unconstitutional policy. The more 
 violent intimated that he should be put out of the way." 
 
 In considering further what his eulogists have called the 
 apotheosis of Lincoln, we have the following as to his place 
 in men's minds before his death: He had been in Congress, 
 and Morse comments on the small achievements that " saved 
 him from being among the nobodies of the House." Adams' 
 Life of Cliarlcs Fiviicis Adaiiis (page 181) says: " Seen in the 
 light of subsequent events, it is assumed that Lincoln in 1865 
 was also the Lincoln of 1861. Historically speaking, there can 
 be no greater error. The President, who has since become a 
 species of legend, was in March, 1861, an absolutely unknown, 
 and by no means promising, political quantity," * * * 
 and Adams goes on, " none the less the fact remains that when 
 he first entered upon his high functions. President Lincoln 
 filled with dismay those brought in contact with him * * * 
 The evidence is sufficient and conclusive, that, in this respect, 
 he impressed others as he impressed Mr. Adams in their one 
 characteristic interview." And as late as 1873, ex-Minister 
 Adams' Mrnioriail Address to the Legislature of Neio York on the 
 occasion of Seward's death, described (page 48 et seq.) Lincoln 
 as displaying when he entered on his duties as President, 
 " moral, intellectual and executive incompetency." 
 
 The Honorable L. E. Crittenden records, in order to express 
 his regret for it, the fact that* " the men whose acquaintance 
 with Lincoln was intimate enough to form any just estimate 
 of his character * * * did not more fully appreciate his 
 statesmanship and other great qualities * * * that they 
 
 *But it was late in his public career that McClure's Lincoln (p. 123) says, 
 " Lincoln's desire for a renomination was tlie one thing uppermost in his 
 mind during the third year of his administration," and McClure's Our 
 Presidents {x>. 184), says, "A more anxious candidate I have never seen" 
 and, after an interview, " I could liardly treat with respect his anxiety 
 about his renomination. Rhodes' (Vol. III., p. 368, in a note) records that 
 R. Fuller, a prominent Baptist preaclier, wrote Chase, " 1 marked the Presi- 
 dent closely. * * * He is wholly inaccessible to Christian appeals, and 
 his egotism will ever prevent his comprehending what patriotism means." 
 
Conclusions. 49 
 
 did not recognize him as tiie greatest patriot, statesman 
 and writer of his time." Rhodes concedes (Vol. IV., page 520 
 et scq.) that " his contemporaries failed to perceive his great- 
 ness." General Donn Piatt presents very effectively his view 
 of how the change of the American world's feeling toward 
 Lincoln, and of its estimate of him, came about. In Reminis- 
 cences of Lincoln, (page 21) he says: " Lincoln was believed by 
 contemporaries secondary in point of talent " and " Lincoln as 
 one of Fame's immortals does not appear in the Lincoln of 1861, 
 whom men * * * likened to 'the original gorilla. ' " He 
 says* in his Biography of General Thomas (preface, page 16): 
 " Fictitious heroes have been embalmed in lies, and monuments 
 are being reared to the memories of men whose real histories, 
 when they come to be known, will make this bronze and 
 marble the monuments of our ignorance and folly." And in 
 Beniiniscenccs of Lincoln he says (page 477) : " With us, when 
 a leader dies, all good men go to lying about him, and, from 
 the monument that covers his remains to the last echo of the 
 rural press, in speeches, sermons, eulogies and reminiscences, 
 we have naught but pious lies." * * * " Poor Garfield 
 * * * * was almost driven to suicide by abuse while he 
 lived. He fell by the hand of an assassin, and passed in an 
 instant to the role of popular saints. * * Popular beliefs, 
 in time, come to be superstitions and create gods and devils. 
 Thus Washington is deified into an impossible man and Aaron 
 Burr has passed into a like impossible monster. Through this 
 same process, Abraham Lincoln, one of our truly great, has 
 almost gone from human knowledge (the Reminiscences are 
 dated 1886). I hear of, him and read of him in eulogies and 
 biographies, and fail to recognize the man I encountered for 
 the first time in the canvass that called him from private life 
 to be President of the United States." ' Piatt then goes on to 
 describe a conference that he and General Schenck had with 
 Lincoln in his home in Springfield. f "I soon discovered that 
 this strange and strangely-gifted man, while not at all cynical, 
 
 *^ 'hutes from his Associates {-p. lil). Schouler's History of the United States, 
 uses without quotation marks the precise words of Piatt above quoted (Vol. 
 VI., p. 21). 
 
 ' Reminiscences of Lincoln (p. 480). 
 
50 TJiC Real Lincoln. 
 
 was a sceptic; his view of human nature was low * * * jjg 
 unconsciously accepted for himself and his party the same low 
 line that he awarded the South. Expressing no sympathy for 
 the slave, he laughed at the Abolitionists* as a disturbing 
 element easily controlled, without showing any dislike to the 
 slave-holders. We were not (page 481) at a loss to get at the 
 fact and the reason for it, in the man before us. Descended 
 from the poor-whites of a slave State, through many genera- 
 tions, he inherited the contempt, if not the hatred, held by 
 that class for the negroes. A self-made man, * * * his 
 strong nature was built on what he inherited, and he could no 
 more feel a sympathy for that wretched race than he could 
 for the horse he worked or the hog he killed, f In this he ex- 
 hibited the marked trait that governed his public life. * * * 
 He knew and saw clearly that the people of the free States 
 not only had no sympathy with the abolition of slavery, but 
 held fanatics, as Abolitionists were called, in utter abhorrence." 
 Then Piatt candidly repudiates the false pretensions that 
 are so often made to lofty, benevolent purpose in those who 
 " conquered the rebellion," and ends as follows: " We are quick 
 to forget the facts and slow to recognize the truths that knock 
 from [under] us our pretentious claims to high philanthropy. 
 As I have said, abolitionism was not only unpopular v/hen the 
 war broke out, but it was detested. * * * i remember when 
 the Hutchinsons were driven from the camps of the Potomac 
 Army by the soldiers, for singing their Abolition songs, and I 
 remember well that for nearly two years of our service as 
 soldiers we were engaged in returning slaves to their masters 
 when the poor creatures sought shelter in our lines." 
 
 * Mrs. Lincoln, wlio was present, said, " The country will find how we 
 regard that abolition sneaky Seward." Rhodes' History of the United States 
 says (Vol. II., p. 325), " Lincoln was not, however, in any sense of the word, 
 an abolitionist." 
 
 fHerndon's Liiicoln (Yol. V.,p. 74 etseq.), tells a story of Lincoln's bar- 
 barous cruelty to a number of hogs that lie was driving. Hapgood's Lin- 
 coln (-p. 2b et so i ) gives the story, without defense or apology, naming the 
 men who helped liim, and specifying that Lincoln devised it and aided in 
 it with liis own hands. 
 
What This Sketch Would Teach. 51 
 
 What this Sketch Would Teach, 
 
 In view of what this sketch presents, those who have 
 
 earned to rate Lincoln highest can hardly refuse to modify 
 
 heir estimate of him, and it was with the purpose to effect 
 
 such a change m men's minds, in the interest of truth, that 
 
 h.t T Zf. undertaken. But the search in Northern records 
 
 has taught the writer another truth, and a more important one, 
 
 of Noi them prejudices by presenting no testimony but that of 
 
 tor hrwf ? """' '^' P'^^ ^^"P^^^ ^^ ^^^1^*^^ ^-terials 
 toi tins sketch. To win more patient hearing from people of 
 Southern prejudices, it had been contemplated to put on the 
 title page as motto Fas est ah hoste docerl. But the search 
 
 loZ T^^^' ''°'*' ^^' '^' ^''' -^- --'• enemies Of the 
 secession T "''"'' ^^^^PP^'^^'^d, deplored, bitterly censured 
 
 of ? t c/T "^"'^ P"^'' disapproved yet more coercion 
 
 IrTJ .^ f/""^ emancipation of the negroes, while a vast 
 Pait thought the South was asking what she had a right to 
 
 So it is to forgetfulness of the sad quarrel-to love, not to 
 
 esentment or hate-that the lessons of this sketch wou d 
 
 lead IS readers. Those who taught that there was "an irre- 
 
 fToJt;?'"V^ '''"''" ^"''^ '^' ^^"^^ --- ^-^ - '^and- 
 the Unued sJ!r ''"' ^^° ''"°""^^^ "^^ Constitution of 
 Ibove hat if T- I '°'''"^' "^'^ ^^"•" '^ it not shown 
 above that it wouki have been nearer the truth to sav that 
 he North and the South were essentially of one aZd o, 
 
 lonl" '"2 ;.?^''"- ^ ^'^'^ -'^^t' -t least as a revolu 
 tionaiy right, withdraw from the Union, and whether the 
 negroes should be emancipated? 
 
 set^orthTh "'^ 'T''''' "^"'^ '° '^^°^' "^^t the facts were as 
 set foith above, rather than go on believing the story that has 
 spread so widely-that one side carried fire and s^o^d into 
 he homes of the other as a punishment they believed The 
 sufferer well deserved? Can those who suffered ^ great 
 Thistoi?"^ '''"''''' '''' ^°-^^ '^'^^^ ---^ are'lo'^rLo'^l 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 ADAMS, CHARLES FRANCIS, was Minister to England 
 during Lincoln's whole administration. He was of the 
 family that had given two Presidents to the United 
 States, and his father and his grandfather had been 
 Ministers to England before him. 
 
 ANDREWS, E. BENJAMIN, once President of Brown Univer- 
 sity, is still prominent in educational work. He 
 shows in his History of the United i^tatcs (Vol. II., pages 
 64, 77, 81 ct scq.) that he is an ardent Abolitionist and an 
 admirer of Lincoln. 
 
 BUTLER, GENERAL B. F., was made by Lincoln Major-Gen- 
 eral and one of General Grant's corps commanders, and 
 was Lincoln's first choice for Vice-President. 
 
 BBECHER, REV. HENRY WARD, was a strong Republican 
 and Abolitionist, and a very prominent supporter of the 
 war. 
 
 BOUT WELL, GEORGE S., was in Congress from Massachu- 
 setts, aided in organizing the Republican party in 1854, 
 and in procuring Lincoln's election, and was made by 
 Lincoln the first Commissioner of the Internal Revenue. 
 (See name of Rice.) 
 
 BROOKS, PHILLIPS, Bishop of Massachusetts. For evidence 
 of his partisanship see a prayer he made in the streets 
 of Philadelphia on the downfall of the Confederacy. In 
 the large page and a half there is not a reference to the 
 miseries of the defeated nor an aspiration for the amend- 
 ment of their condition, physical or spiritual. See his 
 Life and Letters, by Allen, Vol. I., page 531. 
 
 CHANDLER, ZACHARIAH, SENATOR, was one of the or- 
 ganizers of the Republican party in 1854. 
 
 CHANNING, EDWARD, Professor of History in Harvard, 
 shows in his Short History of the United States (page 352) 
 an ardent admiration of Lincoln. 
 
Appendix. 53 
 
 CHASE, SALMON P., was Lincoln's Secretary of the Treasury 
 till made by him Chief Justice. 
 
 CURTIS, GEORGE WILLIAM, lately editor of Harper's Wecldy, 
 was a widely known scholar and author. The quotations 
 show how he stood towards the war and Abolition. 
 
 CRITTENDEN, L. E., was Register of the Treasury. The 
 words quoted show his attitude toward Lincoln. 
 
 DANA, CHARLES A., was long managing editor of the New 
 York Trihuiir, took an important part in procuring Lin- 
 coln's election, and was his Assistant Secretary of War. 
 
 DANA, RICHARD H., was a distinguished author and law- 
 writer, was nominated by President Grant for Minister to 
 England, and was a representative of the best culture of 
 Massachusetts. 
 
 DAVIS, HENRY WINTER, was, though a Marylander, an 
 ardent supporter in Congress of the war and of emanci- 
 pation. 
 
 DAVIS, DAVID, is named by McClure in his Lincoln with 
 Leonard Swett, Ward H. Lamon and William H. Herndon 
 as one of the four men " closest to Lincoln before and 
 after his election." He was made by Lincoln one of the 
 Supreme Court Justices, and finally executor of his estate. 
 
 DAWES, HENRY L., represented Massachusetts in the House 
 for nine sessions, beginning in 1857; succeeded Sumner 
 in the Senate, and continued there till he declined re- 
 election in 1893. 
 
 DOUGLAS, FREDERICK, was one of the most honored and 
 respected colored men during his long life, with every- 
 thing to prejudice him in favor of Lincoln. 
 
 DENNING, WILLIAM ARCHIBALD, in his Essai/si on flu; Ciril 
 War and Rcconstrnction, pictures with merciless exulta- 
 tion (pages 247 to 252) the years of humiliation and tor- 
 ture imposed on the South during the " reconstruction." 
 
 DUNNING, B. O., was chaplain in the Union army. His words 
 quoted show his attitude. 
 
 EVERETT, EDWARD, had been Minister to England, and was 
 such another man as Richard H. Dana, ranking even 
 higher. 
 
 FOULKE, WILLIAM DUDLEY, shows in his words quoted his 
 partisan attitude. 
 
54 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 FREMONT, J. C, ran against Buchanan as candidate for the 
 Presidency. As Major-General he proclaimed freedom 
 to the negroes in his command. 
 
 FRENCH, WILLIAM M., shows in his words quoted his parti- 
 san attitude. 
 
 FISKE, JOHN, was lately shown by a publication of Dr. 
 Hunter McGuire to be a prejudiced partisan of North 
 against South. 
 
 GILMORE, JAMES R. Appleton's Encyclopedia says that a 
 mission to Jefferson Davis made by Gilmore had the 
 effect of assuring the re-election of Lincoln. 
 
 GODKIN, E. L., was long and till lately the able and useful 
 editor of the JSdfioii, but is utterly intolerant as to all 
 that concerns secession and slavery. 
 
 GORHAM, G. C, author of a late life of Stanton, which shows 
 his partisan attitude. 
 
 GRANT, U. S., General and President, is obviously the most 
 trustworthy of all witnesses in the matters about which 
 he is quoted. 
 
 GREELEY, HORACE. McClure, in his Our Prcsidcvts ana How 
 Wr Make Tltrm (page 243) calls Greeley "one of noblest, 
 purest and ablest of the great men of the land," and says 
 in his Lincoln (page 225 ct scq.): " Greeley was in closer 
 touch with the active, loyal sense of the people than even 
 the President (Lincoln) himself," and that " Mr. Gree- 
 ley's TrUiune was the most widely read Republican 
 journal in the country, and it was unquestionably the 
 most potent in modelling Republican sentiment. It 
 reached the intelligent masses of the people in every 
 State in the Union." Gilmore's Recollections of Lincoln 
 has a letter from Lincoln to Robert J. Walker, which 
 says of Horace Greeley: "He is a great power; having 
 him firmly behind me will be as helpful to me as an army 
 of an hundred thousand men." Channing's (>1iort History 
 of the United F!tafes calls Greeley " one of the ablest men 
 of the time." 
 
 HAMLIN, HANNIBAL, was Lincoln's Vice-President. 
 
 HAPGOOD, NORMAN. His Abraham Lincoln is the latest 
 biography, published in 1899. It shows the author's 
 
Appendix. 55 
 
 attitude of admiration in the first page of the preface, 
 declaring that he was " unequalled since Washington in 
 service to the nation," and quoting the verses — 
 He was the North, the South, the East, the West; 
 The thrall, the master, all of us in one. 
 See under names of Herndon and of Lamon his en- 
 dorsement of their '■ revelations." 
 
 HAY, JOHN, now Secretary of State, came from Springfield 
 with Lincoln, and was his private secretary, as Nicolay 
 was, to his death. Their joint work, Abraham Lincoln, 
 in ten large volumes, makes the most favorable presen- 
 tation of Lincoln of all that have been made. 
 
 HERNDON, WILLIAM H. His Abraham Lincoln, dated 1888, 
 sets forth on the title page that Lincoln was for twenty 
 years his friend and law partner, and says in the preface 
 (page 10): "Mr. Lincoln was my warm, devoted friend; 
 I always loved him, and I revere his name to-day." He 
 quotes with approval and reaffirms Lamon's views as to 
 the duty to tell the faults along with the virtues, and 
 says in the preface (page 10) : "At last the truth will 
 come out, and no man need hope to evade it"; and he 
 betrays his sense of the seriousness of the faults he has 
 to record by calling them in the preface (page 9) 
 " ghastly exposures," and by saying in the preface (page 
 8) that to conceal them would be as if the Bible had con- 
 cealed the facts about Uriah in telling the story of King 
 David; and the very latest biographer, Hapgood, writing 
 with all the light yet given to the world, says in his 
 preface (page 8) : " Herndon has told the President's 
 early life with a refreshing honesty and with more in- 
 formation than any one else." Morse, the next latest 
 biographer, also commends Herndon's dealing in this 
 matter. See, in this Appendix under Swell's name how 
 Herndon's extraordinarily close relations with Mr. Lin- 
 coln are shown, and see under Lamon's name how Hern- 
 don's testimony and Lamon's have gone uncontradicted. 
 
 HOLLAND, J. G., was a popular author, and was long editor 
 of Seribner's Magazine. For his ardent admiration of 
 Lincoln, see the last page of his Abraham Lincoln. 
 
56. The Heal Lincoln. 
 
 HUNTER, DAVID, was made Major-General by Lincoln, and 
 was one of the most ardent Abolitionists. 
 
 KASSON, JOHN ADAMS, was a conspicuous Republican in 
 Congress, honored by Lincoln with important assign- 
 ments at home and abroad in the Post-OfRce Department. 
 
 KEIFER, JOSEPH WARREN, was member of Congress from 
 Ohio and Speaker of the House, and wrote Slavery and 
 Fovr Tears of War, which book shows his partisan 
 attitude. 
 
 LAMON, WARD H.; published his Life of Lincoln in 1872. He 
 appears in the accounts of Mr. Lincoln's life in the West 
 as constantly associated in the most friendly relations 
 with him. He accompanied the family in the journey to 
 Washington, and was selected by Lincoln himself (see 
 McClure's Lincoln, page 46) as the one protector to 
 accompany and to guard him from the assassination that 
 he apprehended so causelessly (see Lamon's Lincoln, page 
 513) in his midnight passage through Baltimore to his 
 first inauguration. He was made a United States Mar- 
 shal of the District in order (McClure's Lincoln, page 67) 
 that Lincoln might have him always at hand. Schouler, 
 in his History of the United States (page 614) says that 
 Lamon as Marshal " made himself body-guard to the man 
 he loved." Though Lamon recognizes and sets forth with 
 great clearness (page 181) his duty to tell the whole 
 truth, good and bad, and especially (page 486 ct seq.) 
 to correct the statements of indiscreet admirers who 
 have tried to make Lincoln out a religious man, and, 
 though he indignantly remonstrates against such stories 
 as making his hero a hypocrite, the book shows an ex- 
 ceedingly high estimate of the friend of his lifetime. 
 Both Morse and Hapgood commend Lamon and Herndon 
 for their " revelations." The careful search in many 
 records for the material for this sketch has not found 
 a single attempt to deny the truth of Herndon's testi- 
 mony, or of Lamon's. But the search did find a curious 
 proof of the strait to which some one has been driven 
 to conceal Lamon's testimony. In the Pratt Library in 
 Baltimore, Maryland, is a book with a title as follows: 
 
Appendix. 57 
 
 "RccoUections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847-1865, by Ward Hill 
 Lamon, edited by Dorothy Lamon, Chicago, A. E. 
 McCIurg & Co., 1895." Nowhere in this book of several 
 hundred pages is found an intimation of the lact that the 
 same Ward Hill Lamon published in 1872 the Life of 
 Lincoln quoted frequently in this sketch, or that he had 
 published any book about Lincoln, and although these 
 "Recollections" do contain the avowal that appears in the 
 Life of Lincoln, that Lamon thinks it his duty to conceal 
 none of the faults of his hero, every word is omitted of 
 the " revelations " and " ghastly exposures " about Lin- 
 coln's attitude towards morals and religion that are re- 
 corded in Lamon's genuine book. Bancroft, in his very 
 lately published Life of Seicard, quotes (Vol. H., page 42) 
 Lamon from this late book, making no reference to the 
 genuine book, and a paper in the Baltimore Sun of 
 February 25, 1901, does the same. See in this Appendix 
 what is said under the name of Herndon and Swett. 
 
 LOGAN, JOHN A., Major-General. His book about the war. 
 The Great Conspiracy, shows throughout, as in its title, 
 his partisan attitude. 
 
 McCLURE, A. K. In his Lincoln and Men of the War-rime, 
 and in his Our Presidents and Hoiv We Male Them, the 
 author's intimate association with Lincoln is shown in 
 many places (Lincoln, page 112 et seq.), and his attitude 
 towards his hero may be measured by the following 
 tribute (page 5 et se(j.): " He has written the most illus- 
 trious records of American history, and his name and 
 fame must be immortal while liberty shall have wor- 
 shippers in our land." 
 
 MORSE, JOHN T., published in 1892 by Houghton, Mifflin & 
 Co., his Lincoln, one of the American Statesmen Series. 
 It shows throughout, but notably in the last four pages, 
 as ardent an admiration for Lincoln as any other biogra- 
 phy. It concedes (Vol. I., page 192) the truth of the 
 " revelations of Messrs. Herndon and Lamon " and the 
 duty and necessity that rested on them to record these 
 truths. Morse is next to the latest of the biographers. 
 
58 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 NICOLAY, JOHN G. (like John Hay), came with Lincoln from 
 Springfield, and was his private secretai-y to the end. 
 
 PARIS, THE COUNT OF, was a volunteer in the Union army. 
 See Volume IV., pages 2 to 7, for his partisan attitude. 
 
 PIATT, DONN, GENERAL, in Ix'emuiiscciiccs of Lincohi (page 
 449), refers to Lincoln as "the greatest figure looming 
 up in our history," and as one " who wrought out for us 
 our manhood and our self respect." (See name of Rice.) 
 
 PHILLIPS, WENDELL. Appleton's Encyclopedia says he 
 " began as Abolitionist leader in 1837 * * * made a 
 funeral oration over John Brown * * * had the 
 Aiiti-8lavcry standard for his organ." 
 
 POORE, BEN PERLEY, was a distinguished editor, but best 
 known as Washington correspondent; was major in the 
 Eighth Massachusetts Volunteers. His book. The Gon- 
 sinracy Trial fur the Minder of Ahrahani Lincoln, shows 
 his partisan attitude. (See name of Rice.) 
 
 RICE, ALLEN THORNDIKE, was long editor of the iVo/Y7( 
 American Review, a leading Republican organ. As editor 
 of Reminiscences of Lincoln he became responsible, more 
 or less, for what is quoted in it from Piatt, Usher, Bout- 
 well, Poore and Depew. 
 
 RHODES, JAMES FORD, is author of a six-volume Uistonj of 
 the United States that (Vol. IV., page 50) eulogizes Lin- 
 coln ardently. 
 
 ROPES, JOHN CODMAN, author of the Story of the Civil War, 
 which eulogizes Lincoln. 
 
 ROOSEVELT, THEODORE, now Vice-President. 
 
 RUSSELL, WILLIAM HOWARD. His " My Diary, North and 
 South," published in the London Times, shows a bitter 
 aversion to slavery, and almost everything he saw in 
 the South, and he shows plainly his judgment that it was 
 the right and duty of Lincoln to crush secession. George 
 William Curtis says in his " Orations " (Vol. I., page 
 139) about Russell, that '" Europe sent her ablest corre- 
 spondent to describe the signs of the times, and that 
 Russell saw and gave a fair representation of the public 
 sentiment." Adams' Life of Adams (page 151 et seq.) 
 speaks of Russell's Diary as " the views and conclusions 
 
Appendix. 59 
 
 of an unprejudiced observer through the medium of the 
 most influential journal in the world." 
 SCHOULER, JAMES. His Uistorij of the United States (page 
 631 et seq.) shows that no biographer is more eulogistic 
 of Lincoln. 
 SHERMAN, JOHN, President McKinley's first Secretary of 
 State, was a very prominent Republican leader during 
 the war, and served in the Union army with sword, 
 tongue, pen and purse, raising largely at his own expense 
 a brigade known as Sherman's Brigade. 
 SEWARD, WILLIAM H., was Secretary of State during Lin- 
 coln's whole administration, and accounted one of his 
 ablest and most faithful supporters. 
 STEVENS, THADDEUS, entered Congress in 1858, and from 
 that time until his death was one of the Republican 
 leaders, and the chief advocate for emancipating .and 
 arming the negroes. 
 SUMNER, CHARLES, was long Senator from Massachusetts, 
 and was a leader in support of the war and emancipation. 
 SWETT, LEONARD. See his very close relations to Lincoln, 
 shown under the name of David Davis in this Appendix. 
 STANTON, EDWIN M., was often called Lincoln's " Great War 
 Secretary." Appleton's Encyclopedia says: " None ever 
 questioned his honesty, his patriotism or his capability." 
 STANWOOD, EDWARD. His History of the Presideneij is a 
 
 recognized authority, with no Southern leanings. 
 TARBBLL, IDA, shows constantly in her histories the most 
 
 ardent admiration for Lincoln. 
 TRUMBULL, LYMAN, declined to oppose Lincoln for the 
 nomination in 1860, and was one of the first to propose in 
 the Senate the abolition of slavery. 
 USHER, J. P.. was in Lincoln's Cabinet as Secretary of the 
 
 Interior. 
 WELLES, EDGAR THADDEUS, was Lincoln's Secretary of 
 
 the Navy. 
 WINTHROP, ROBERT H., was eminent as a scholar and 
 statesman, was ten years in the House, and then in the 
 Senate from Massachusetts. 
 
60 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 WHITNEY, HENRY CLAY, shows his exceedingly high esti- 
 mate of Lincoln in the last page of his On Gircuit tvitJi 
 Lincoln. 
 
 WADE, BEN, was one of the most prominent Republican 
 leaders. 
 
 WILSON, WOO'DROW, is a distinguished and popular professor 
 in Princeton. For his admiring attitude towards Lincoln 
 see pages 216 and 217 of his Disunion and Rciuiion. 
 
LINCOLN. 
 
 By President Tyler^ William and Mary College^ Williams- 
 burg:^ Va., Editor William and Mary College Quarterly 
 Historical Magazine ^^'^ 
 
 I have uo disposition to criticise Mr. Lincoln harslily, but I 
 think the Northern people malce a great mistake in trying to 
 make a moral and intellectual hero of him. In doing so 
 they provoke criticism. 
 
 I propose to say a few words about Mr. Lincoln in his aspect 
 as a ruler. Lincoln began the. war in 1861 under circumstances 
 that seem to put his character for honor in question. To 
 Governor Morehead, of Kentucky, he expressed his intention 
 of withdrawing the troops from Fort Sumter (Coleman's Life of 
 Crittenden). Seward, the Secretary of State, invited Judge 
 Campbell to a conference, and with full knowledge that he 
 (Campbell) would communicate the intelligence to the Con- 
 federate commissioners, told him the same thing. There were 
 three of these conversations in March, 1861, between Campbell 
 and Seward, and at each Seward was fully apprised by Camp- 
 bell of his assurances to the Confederate commissioners. On 
 the 1st of April Campbell received from Seward the statement 
 in writing: " I am satisfied the government will not undertake 
 to supply Fort Sumter without giving notice to Governor 
 Pickens." There was a departure here from the pledge of the 
 previous month, but as Seward accompanied the statement 
 with the words that *' he did not believe any such attempt 
 would be made, and that there was no design to reinforce Fort 
 Sumter," Judge Campbell did not complain. On the 7th of 
 April Judge Campbell addressed a letter to Seward on the 
 subject of the rumors of the warlike preparations of the 
 government, and asked him if the assurances he had given 
 
 ♦Reproduced, in part, from Richmond Dispatch, February 11, 1900. 
 
62 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 were " well or ill-founded." In respect to Sumter Seward's 
 reply was: " Faith as to Sumter fully kept — wait and see." 
 
 On the next evening notice was given to Governor Pickens 
 of the intention to supply Fort Sumter, " peaceably, if per- 
 mitted; otherwise, by force"; and on the following day a 
 powerful squadron, with men and arms on board, sailed from 
 New York to South Carolina. Lincoln's message to the Federal 
 Congress in July, 1861, referring to this subject, affords curious 
 reading. He admits that, in a military point of view, the 
 duty of the government had been reduced to the mere matter 
 of getting the garrison safely out of the fort; and yet, from 
 political consideration, it was deemed necessary to hold the 
 fort. Therefore, Mr. Lincoln in his message minimizes the 
 purposes of the government, and makes the military armament 
 a mere errand of relief — " to give bread to a few brave and 
 hungry men " — merely to enable the government to retain 
 visible possession of the fort. 
 
 Who Began the War ? 
 
 Now, if this was all that was intended, why were not the 
 supplies sent by an unarmed vessel, incapable of making an 
 attack? In such a case, the peaceful character of the expedi- 
 tion could not have been mistaken. Firing upon an unarmed 
 vessel might have been retorted by Major Anderson in Fort 
 Sumter, and the responsibility of the first shot might have 
 been, with greater show of reason, laid upon the Confederate 
 Government; but an armed expedition was prepared to accom- 
 pany the supplies, and the facts justify the belief that it was 
 for the object of forcing the Confederates to fire. Mr. Lincoln 
 knew that the Confederate Government did not want to fire 
 on Fort Sumter, and he took deliberate measures to leave no 
 other alternative open to them; and yet he talks in his message 
 as if it were a mere matter of giving " bread to a few brave 
 and hungry men." Notice was given, it is true, that the only 
 intention of the expedition was to supply Fort Sumter with 
 provisions, but in the same breath the Confederates were in- 
 formed that arms and men might be landed after further notice. 
 
 It is idle for Northern writers to say that the Lincoln gov- 
 
Who Began the War? 63 
 
 ernment did not begin the war, for, as tlie great constitutional 
 writer, Hallam, tias well said: " The aggressor in a war — 
 that is, he who begins it — is not the first who uses force, but 
 the first who renders force necessary." "As was intended," 
 says Lincoln in the same mesage, " notice was given." Now, 
 why this intention, unless Lincoln had been fully informed 
 by Seward of his conversations with Judge Campbell? For all 
 honorable purposes the notice might as well have not been 
 given. The fleet was prepared before any notice was given, 
 and the notice that Governor Pickens finally received was 
 anticipated by the newspapers. Mr. John C. Ropes refers to 
 these assurances of Mr. Seward as " semi-ofiicial " only. For 
 one, I fail to see how an official can ever become ' a semi- 
 official," or how Mr. Lincoln, who retained Mr. Seward in 
 office, after all the facts were known, can be considered in any 
 other light than as his backer and indorser. 
 
 In fact, Lincoln's message, to which reference has been 
 made, mirrors his character exactly. He was a man of un- 
 doubted mental power, but the workings of his mind, instead 
 of proceeding upon broad planes of principle, wound in and 
 out in narrow ways, and tortuous lines, and his conclusions 
 have much the effect of the handiwork of a necromancer, which 
 amuses, but never convinces. 
 
 His Subtleties. 
 
 The subtleties of expression to which he resorts in his 
 attempt to justify, under the law, his unconstitutional acts, 
 while carrying on the war against the South, cannot stand 
 serious examination for a moment. When he asks, in his indi- 
 rect way, whether the President is not justified in violating 
 his oath in respect to one law, " if, in so doing, he keeps all the 
 laws from going (unexecuted — by others), and prevents the 
 government from going to pieces," he invites the answer that 
 the President might on the same principle violate all the 
 laws, if, by so doing, he can keep all the laws from going un- 
 executed (by others), and the government from going to pieces! 
 When he says that " if one State may secede, so may another, 
 and when all shall have seceded, none is left to pay the debts " 
 
64 The Real Lincoln. 
 
 of the Union, the answer is that the States were as well able 
 to agree upon an adjustment of debts out of the Union as in 
 the Union. The (Confederate) commissioners made known to 
 Sev/ard their perfect willingness to assume their proper share 
 of all pecuniary responsibilities to creditors. When he says 
 that the word " sovereignty " does not occur in any of the 
 State constitutions he quibbles on a word, for the constitutions 
 of Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts contain the 
 words, " free and independent," and " free, independent, and 
 sovereign," as descriptive of the political character of their 
 people. When he says that the States never existed out of the 
 Union, and were, therefore, not sovereign, the answer is that, 
 if there is anything in this argument, he must first show that 
 there is something in the nature of Union which is contradic- 
 tory to separate State nationality. History records numerous 
 instances of States leagued together for common purposes, and 
 the international law writers have over and over asserted that 
 sovereign States may unite and present one national front to 
 the world, without any of them losing that character of 
 sovereignty as defined by Lincoln — " a political community 
 without a political superior." 
 
 Indeed, one is compelled to think that Lincoln was laughing 
 in his sleeve at his own solemn absurdities, for the same 
 message contains a flat-footed sentence which shows that the 
 honest idea he had in his mind at the time was the suppression 
 of the " rebellion " at any sacrifice. This sentence is as fol- 
 lows: " These measures " (calling out troops, blockading 
 Southern ports, suspending the writ of Hahcas Corpus, etc.), 
 " whether strictly legal or not, were ventured upon under what 
 appeared to be a popular demand and a public necessity, trust- 
 ing, then as now, that Congress would readily ratify them." 
 
 Destruction of Private Property. 
 
 To be plain about it, a man must seek high and low to find 
 anything that is ennobling or refining in Lincoln's adminis- 
 tration. International law sets the finger of condemnation on 
 the burning of towns, colleges, private houses, unnecessary 
 destruction of private property, and the abuse and punishment 
 
Destruction of Private Property. 65 
 
 of nou-combatants. And yet, the generals of Lincoln, without 
 any rebuke from the President, perpetrated everywhere 
 throughout the South the most flagrant violations of interna- 
 tional law\ Major George B. Davis, Judge-Advocate of the 
 United States army, says, in his work on international law, 
 that the policy of the United States " during the rebellion," 
 in the matter of requisitions w'as " far from liberal." I should 
 think so! Private property was taken everywhere without any 
 form of compensation. All non-combatants over sixteen years 
 of both sexes within the Federal lines were required either to 
 take an oath of allegiance to the Federal Government or be 
 sent outside the lines; perhaps, to starve or die in the woods. 
 Lincoln published, under his own proclamation, an act of Con- 
 gress, dated July 25, 1862, which denounced either death, or 
 severe imprisonment, or confiscation, or a fine not exceeding 
 $10,000, on every person in both sections assisting in any way 
 in " the existing rebellion." What would people at this time 
 think of the Queen of Great Britain sanctioning such an 
 anathema against the Boers, or of President McKinley against 
 " the rebel Philippinos "? Much is said of Lincoln's " practical 
 sagacity," but did he show it in the selection of Burnside, 
 McDowell, Pope, and Hooker to lead his army in Virginia? 
 Even his emancipation policy was only a war measure, 
 the example of which had been set a hundred years before 
 by the British Government. At that time " the wicked policy " 
 of freeing the slaves and arming them against their masters 
 had been condemned in the Declaration of Vermont and by the 
 people of the country generally. And now, in 1863, that a 
 servile war did not at once ensue, involving in indiscriminate 
 butchery, men, women, and children in the South and the 
 repetition of the scenes of horror which had once prevailed 
 in Haiti, was not at all due to the humanity of Lincoln.* 
 
 *" Mr. Lincoln's virtual declaration of warand blockade was coupled witli 
 two acts vrhich cast a glaring- light on tiie often-vaunted humanity of the 
 Nortli, and the personal tenderness of nature and freedom from vindictive 
 passion ascribed to the President. The latter ordered that Confederate 
 commissions or letters of marque granted to private or public ships should 
 be disregarded, and their crews treated as pirates. He also declared 
 medicines of all kinds ' contraband of war.' Both acts violated every rule 
 of civilized war, and outraged the conscience of Christendom." History of 
 the United States, (hy Percy Greg, Vol. II., p. 182— American Edition; Rich- 
 mond, Virginia— West, Johnson & Co., 1892).— [JS'ote by the Editor], 
 
6() The Real Lincoln. 
 
 His Humanity* 
 
 Nor can the cold facts of history see any " humanity " in 
 Lincoln's policy as to the prisoners taken on both sides. The 
 story of these poor men was a sad one. For much of their 
 suffering in Confederate prisons the refusal of the Lincoln 
 government to permit the cartel of exchange is undoubtedly 
 responsible. There was, moreover, absolutely no excuse for 
 the government of the Union, in the midst of plenty, for 
 starving and maltreating the unfortunate Confederates who 
 fell into their hands. Governor Morehead, of Kentucky, is a 
 witness to the fact that the horrors of Fort Warren, even in 
 Boston harbor, were such that prisoners were driven mad. 
 
 In concluding, I wish to say that if Northern writers are 
 determined to set up a standard of character and rectitude 
 for the South, let them be wiser in their selection of their 
 ideals. While there can be no doubt that the South has entirely 
 eclipsed the North in the production of moral heroes (witness 
 Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Calhoun, Davis. 
 Jackson and Lee), yet there are many men in the history of the 
 North noted for the singular purity and excellence of their 
 lives, whose example we will be proud to point out to our 
 children. 
 
 t.ofC. 
 
S'I2 
 
 m.