***** 
 
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 RAHAM 
 
 LN*
 
 LINCOLN ROOM 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER
 
 "The True Story of a Great Life." 
 
 " Mr. LINCOLN'S whole career from earliest childhood is full 
 of instruction and romantic interest. ... It is so out of the common, 
 so picturesque, so unlike anything possible anywhere within the bound- 
 aries of civilization, except in some portions of the Mississippi 
 Valley seventy years ago, that to multitudes the story must seem more 
 a romance than reality. And if in that earlier period, from childhood 
 nearly to middle age, the interest in it is captivating and intense, such 
 a career becomes in its final outgrowth, in the ripe fruitage of such 
 seed, hardly less than marvelous. 
 
 " To the earlier life of Lincoln Mr. Stoddard devotes about 200 of 
 his 500 pages. Of those years hidden in the obscurity of humble 
 parentage, the hard and unnoted struggle with poverty, the gloom of 
 the uneventful solitude of the woods and prairie, little more, probably, 
 if anything, will ever be known than Mr. Stoddard has gathered. 
 The wonder is that he has gathered so much, and it is not one of the 
 least merits of his book that he has told it so well. 
 
 " It is as entertaining as any story of hardy and adventurous life in 
 a new country. So picturesque is it that one can hardly avoid the reflec- 
 tion while reading that if put into the hands of the dime-novel reader 
 even he would be moved to an excitement and incitement quite as pleas- 
 ant and almost as intense as that which his darkened intelligence and 
 perverted taste receive from the unwholesome fiction his mind is accus- 
 tomed to feed on. And perhaps no better test than this could be 
 applied to a story of actual frontier-life more than half a century ago, 
 some survival of which may yet be found in the Territories of the far 
 West. That a youth brought up amid such surroundings should 
 develop a character that should lead him to be the chosen ruler of a 
 
 5reat nation is a marvel the dullest imagination can apprehend. . . . 
 t is not invidious to say that as yet no other that has been written 
 can be compared to this, were it only because no other biographer has 
 seen Mr. Lincoln so near and so completely. There is not much in 
 the book of politics, in the party sense, and still less of the pomp and 
 circumstance of war, of campaigns, and of battles, but of what the 
 war meant ; of what was aimed at on one side and on the other was 
 to be prevented ; of what was at stake for the American people, for 
 the cause of popular government, and for mankind in all this we are 
 led to see what Mr. Lincoln saw, and what impartial history will have 
 to tell when it turns back to that period after its living representatives 
 have passed away." New York Times. 
 
 " Has strong claims upon the interest and attention of every 
 American. ... A graphic and entertaining biography, as rich in 
 incident as any romance, and sparkling with wise wit and racy anec- 
 dote. It comprises a large mass of valuable and judiciously epitomized 
 information. ... A popular and strictly personal biography, it is so 
 simply and tersely written as to be adapted to readers of every age 
 and degree of intelligence. ... If any considerable portion of the 
 youth of America can be persuaded to make themselves familiar with 
 his iife, . , . as delineated by Mr. Stoddard's suggestive biography, it 
 will be better for them and the republic." Harper's Monthly. 
 
 B^- POSTPAID TO ANY ADDRESS on receipt of price, or sent 
 C. O. D. with privilege to open and examine. See over. 
 
 FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, 
 
 27 Park Place, New York.
 
 *' Decidedly the best life of Lincoln ever written." 
 
 " He has succeeded so well that this lif e 
 not only supersedes, in its main purpose, 
 any that has preceded it, but is not likely 
 to be displaced by any that may follow. 
 . . . Mr. Stoddard's relations to Mr. Lin- 
 coln were exceptional. . . If Mr. Lincoln 
 was born to be written about, Mr. Stoddard 
 was, so to speak, born to write about him. 
 . . . The book is singularly honest and 
 candid. ... To the younger readers who 
 seek to know something more of the Re- 
 bellion than its four years of battles, of 
 suffering, of sorrow, and of waste, Mr. 
 Stoddard's book will bring new light." 
 The Critic, New York. 
 
 "Such a life of Lincoln has not before 
 been written. His individuality is hap- 
 pily portrayed by the author." New York 
 School Journal. 
 
 " Of gpodly proportions, of typograph- 
 ical merit, and of surprising excellence, 
 whether considered as a literary produc- 
 tion, in the manner of the narrative or in 
 philosophical presentation of character. 
 ... Of permanent value and . . . will be 
 a prize to the future historian." Roches- 
 ter Herald. 
 
 " Mr. Stoddard has succeeded in show- 
 ing us Lincoln the man, if not Lincoln the 
 statesman, and in this lies the distinctive 
 merit of the work. ... In the selection of 
 anecdotes Mr. Stoddard has been judicious, 
 and he has shown commendable industry 
 in collecting and sifting his facts." New 
 York Herald. 
 
 "American readers will welcome a 
 painstaking, sober, conscientious study of 
 the man as he was estimated by those who 
 knew him well before events had clothed 
 him with national importance and tragical 
 dignity. The author has some special 
 qualifications for his task." New York 
 Sun. 
 
 " His account of Mr. Lincoln's youth is 
 very striking, and he gives a minute and 
 interesting narrative of the slow and care- 
 ful steps by which he fitted himself for 
 political life. He brings out distinctly Mr. 
 Lincoln's sagacity and patience in critical 
 periods of great enterprises ; he explains 
 admirably his intimate acquaintance with 
 the popular sentiment and disposition, and 
 shows what shrewd use was made of that 
 knowledge; and he sets in strong light the 
 President's patriotism, iinselfisbness, ten- 
 derness, and religious spirit." New York 
 Tribune. 
 
 " Well fitted by his personal acquaint- 
 ance and sympathy with his subject, the 
 mass of material at his disposal, and a lit- 
 erary style incisive, lucid, and comprehen- 
 sive. Almost in spite of himself, the 
 record in which Mr. Stoddard has traced 
 the evolution of Lincoln's remarkable 
 though essentially American character, 
 describing in detail the progression of his 
 career from stage to stage between a 
 backwoods cabin and the White House-^- 
 becomes a study of the political and mili- 
 tary history of Lincoln's tune. Remark- 
 ably complete, accurate, and well writ- 
 ten." New York World. 
 
 "... We at once were fascinated. Has 
 in it elements that few biographies pos- 
 sess, and an interest that few romances 
 can surpass." American Reformer. 
 
 " Presents all the contrasts of a vivid and 
 almost incredible novel." N. Y. Church 
 Union. 
 
 " Far superior to any single attempt that 
 has yet appeared. There is a vivid fresh- 
 ness a strange fascination about the 
 narrative which enchains the reader's at- 
 tention from beginning to end. There is 
 nothing in romance more deeply interest- 
 ing to thoughtful Americans than this 
 'true story of a great life- 1 and it will 
 doubtless take permanent rank hereafter 
 as the standard biography of the illustrious 
 patriot, liberator, and martyr." Philadel- 
 phia Lutheran Observer. 
 
 " Admirably has Mr. Stoddard succeeded 
 in the accomplishment of his designed pur- 
 pose. Whether for present enjoyment or 
 as a work of reference for its wealth of 
 details, will be acceptable everywhere." 
 New York Star. 
 
 "Abounds in interesting and character- 
 istic incidents pleasantly told, and every 
 page of the volume has its special bright- 
 ness. The work will be found entirely 
 satisfactory and vastly popular." In- 
 terior, Chicago. 
 
 " Contains much new and valuable infor- 
 mation in regard to Lincoln's life and 
 pers9nal character from it we get a defi- 
 nite impression of lif eat the White House 
 during the first four years of the war, as 
 well as some idea of Executive methods 
 during those troublous times. The author 
 has been very judicious in the selection of 
 anecdotes and has compressed within 
 reasonable limits the great mass of ma- 
 terial at his command. His book is very 
 readable and deserving a wide circula- 
 tion." Evening Journal, Chicago. 
 
 "Mr. Stoddard's is the best because it 
 faithfully relates the facts and attempts 
 no fulsome eulogies. Abounds in senti- 
 ment so happily blended with history as 
 to make it as attractive as any romance. 
 There is no better book to place in the 
 hands of boys and girls." Chicago Inter- 
 Ocean. 
 
 " From it may be gathered a clearer and. 
 in general, a more just appreciation of 
 what the man Abraham Lincoln was and 
 how he became so, otherwise than he was 
 born so, than has ever been given to the 
 public before." Chicago Times. 
 
 " It is in truth the story of Abraham 
 Lincoln's life, rather than his mere bio- 
 graphy. Mr. Stoddard has told his ' story ' 
 in the most entertaining way. It is a book 
 to lie on the family table and to be often 
 and enjoyably perused." Christian Stan- 
 dard, Chicago. 
 
 ' As a popular presentment of the career 
 of Lincoln, and for family reading, it is 
 one of the most satisfactory lives that has 
 appeared." Christian Union, N. Y. 
 
 "Careful and exact in detail, where details are accessible ; expressing at every 
 point a profound admiration, nay reverence, for the individuality of its subject, yet 
 glossing over no defect, no uncouthness of manner, no fault of temper ; keeping always 
 to the true historical perspective and setting forth the person of Lincoln in high relief 
 against the dark background of the times ; summing up the evolution of political 
 parties, the history of a military campaign, in a page or a paragraph ; written in 
 terse, clear-cut English ; and intensely readable from beginning to end. this, in our 
 opinion, approaches closely to the ideal popular biography " Literary World, Boston. 
 
 N. B. Many intelligent persons who appreciate this book are successfully 
 taking orders for it.
 
 Front Photograph by Brady, Washington^ 1865.
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN; 
 
 THE TRUE STORY OF A GREAT LIFE. 
 
 SHOWING THE INNER GROWTH, SPECIAL TRAINING, AND PECULIAR 
 FITNESS OF THE MAN FOR HIS WORK. 
 
 BY WILLIAM O. STODDARD, 
 
 ONE OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S SECRETARIES DURING THE WAR OF THE 
 
 REBELLION. 
 
 KUustratfons. 
 
 "The public life of Hampden .... resembles a regular drama which 
 can be criticised as a whole, and every scene of which is to be viewed in connection 
 with the main action." MACAULAY'S Essay on Pitt. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT, 
 
 1885.
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1884, BT 
 FOKDS, HOWARD, & HtJLBERT.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 A STRICTLY personal life of ABRAHAM LINCOLN has long been 
 regarded by many as a literary necessity. 
 
 There can be no question but that the popular idea of Mr. 
 LINCOLN'S character is vague, fragmentary, and incomplete. 
 His origin, growth, and development, his education and his ser- 
 vices, rightly presented and understood, offer one of the noblest 
 lessons to be found in the world's history. To present such a 
 biography is the single aim of this book. It is a record of 
 political and military events only as these in some manner be- 
 came a part of, or set forth, or illustrated the character and 
 services of the great President. The writer knew Mr. LIN- 
 COLN well, and had many opportunities of preparation for such 
 a work as this. These were obtained during a residence of 
 several years, before the war, in Mr. LINCOLN'S own district in 
 Illinois, and as one of his assistant private secretaries at Wash- 
 ington, from the beginning of his administration, in 1861, to 
 about the end of September, 1864. Every effort possible has 
 been made to put away partisan feeling and the blindnesses 
 of personal affection, and to produce and present a faithful 
 portrait of the man as he was. 
 
 The mass of material offering required the exclusion of much 
 that was interesting but not necessary, and the most rigid con- 
 densation, in order to keep the book within reasonable limits 
 as to size. Much will be found that is not contained in any 
 other biography of Mr. LINCOLN, but nothing which is not be- 
 lieved to be entirely trustworthy. In the records of his earlier 
 lif e, the work of Messrs. WARD H. LAMON and WILLIAM H.
 
 4 PEEFACE. 
 
 HERNDON has been trusted wherever the testimonies of other 
 writers have seemed to clash with it. 
 
 No apology is made for not inserting at any point brief 
 biographies of other distinguished men and collateral accounts 
 of important matters of history, even though they may have a 
 distinct relation to Mr. LINCOLN'S labors and the great events of 
 his day. It is proper, however, to express the author's gratifi- 
 cation at knowing that a work is now preparing, by his former 
 office-associates, Messrs. JOHN G. NICOLAY and JOHN HAT, 
 which is to be an exhaustive historical record of " the life and 
 times" of Mr. LINCOLN. He does not even enter the field they 
 have preempted, but is glad that so good a work is in such 
 capable and devoted hands as theirs. 
 
 The time is fully ripe for the study of Mr. LINCOLN'S individu- 
 ality. This book is simply intended to set that forth in such a 
 form that it can be studied, and in the hope that a new genera- 
 tion of Americans may learn to love and honor and imitate a 
 man who seems to have been in himself an embodiment and 
 personification of all that is best in American national life. 
 
 W. O. S.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN, Frontispiece. 
 
 From Photograph by Brady, Washington, 1865. 
 
 THE LINCOLN HOMESTEAD, 20 
 
 Where Abe Spent his First Seven Years, Hardin County, Kentucky. 
 
 PORTRAIT OF LINCOLN, . . . . . . . .145 
 
 Just after his Nomination in 1860. From Photograph taken in Springfield, 111. 
 
 LIFE-MASK OF LINCOLN, . . 201 
 
 Taken by the Sculptor YOKES, in Chicago, 1860. 
 
 A COUNCIL OF WAR, 297 
 
 On the U. S. War Steamer Miami, in 1862; Lincoln, Stanton, Chase, 
 and Gen. Viele. Drawn by C. S. RKINHART. 
 
 MR. LINCOLN'S WORK-ROOM, 343 
 
 His private office in the White House, where he studied, wrote, received his 
 Cabinet, etc. Drawn by BENJ. LANDER, after original sketch by F. B. CAR- 
 PENTER, whose painting of the " Emancipation Proclamation" has made the 
 historic old work-table familiar. 
 
 THE GETTYSBURG SPEECH, 414 
 
 Fac-simile of Mr. LINCOLN'S manuscript of the speech, copied out for 
 engraving, after its delivery. 
 
 "THE PRESIDENT'S LAST, SHORTEST, AND BEST SPEECH," . 408 
 
 Fac-simile of a newspaper paragraph, written out by Mr. LINCOLN. 
 
 LINCOLN AND SUMNER IN RICHMOND, 452 
 
 Saluted by a Detachment of Gen. Weitzel's Colored Troops passing to 
 occupy Garrison Quarters.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A CHAOTIC BEGINNING, 13 
 
 The Birthplace The Family The Homestead 1809 to 1816. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 HAPHAZARD MIGRATION, 17 
 
 Tom Lincoln's Venture Little Abe The Trip through the Woods From one 
 Hut to another 1816. 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 CHILD-LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS, 24 
 
 Pole-shelter Log Cabin and Clearing Pestilence and Suffering A Forest 
 Funeral 1818. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 A NEW ELEMENT, 31 
 
 Utter Desolation Arrival of a Good Angel A Ray of Civilization 1819. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 A GENUINE START, 35 
 
 Growth Schooling Beginnings of Human Society in the Backwoods. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 BORROWED TREASURES, 40 
 
 The Art of Story-Telling The Wonders in Books The Uses of Written 
 Words. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 FRONTIER TRAINING, 47 
 
 Oratorical Beginnings -Frontier Politics Hiring Out A Wedding and a Fu- 
 neral Studies among Plain People A Glimpse into Law.
 
 6 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER Vin. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 BOY-OF-ALL-WORK, 53 
 
 Toil, Fun and Frolic Books and Speaking Matches A Severe Lesson in 
 Caste Practical Teachings on Temperance 1885. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 THE FLATBOAT, 60 
 
 A Trading Voyage Life in the Southern States First View of Human 
 Slavery 1828. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 " OF ILLINOIS," 65 
 
 Another Migration Of full Age and Free Farmhand and Flatboatman 
 More Southern Studies 1830. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 A STEP UPWARD, 73 
 
 Stranded in New Salem First Public Employment Miller, Clerk, and Peace- 
 keeperA Wrestling Match 1831. 
 
 CHAPTER XH. 
 THE BLACKHAWK WAR, 81 
 
 Lincoln a Volunteer Army discipline Captain Lincoln under Punishment- 
 Going to a New School Regulars and Volunteers 1838. 
 
 CHAPTER XIH. 
 POLITICS, ..." 90 
 
 Lincoln a Candidate Stumping the District Defeat The Credit System- 
 Lincoln a Merchant. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 FIRST LOVE, 99- 
 
 A True Romance Elected to the State Legislature A New Suit Free 
 Thinking. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 IN THE LEGISLATURE, 105 
 
 Practical Politics Lessons in Public Finance Blowing Bubbles A Great 
 Darkness 1834-86. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 BUBBLE LEGISLATION, Ill 
 
 An Episode The Lightning-rod The Long Nine State Improvements 
 Anti-Slavery Declarations 1836.
 
 CONTENTS. 7 
 
 CHAPTEE XVH. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE YOUNG LAWYER, 118 
 
 Admitted to the Bar Honest Poverty The Panic of 1887 Politics again- 
 Matrimonial Tendencies Another Darkness. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 MANHOOD, 127 
 
 An Honest Lawyer A Storm The Henry Clay Campaign The Old Cabin- 
 Partnerships Coarse and Fine Elected Congressman The Mexican War- 
 President Making The Pro-Slavery Formula Southern Friendships. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 THE COMING CONFLICT, 138 
 
 Office Refused The Missouri Compromise A Sure Prophecy Inner Life- 
 Ripening Death of Tom Lincoln A Written Confession of Faith. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 A GREAT AWAKENING, 145 
 
 Colonization The Kansas-Nebraska Act The Barriers Broken Down Lin- 
 coln's First Great Speech Stephen A. Douglas Growth of a New Party Dis- 
 covering a Leader An Oratorical Match. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 THE NEW PARTY, . . 154 
 
 Bleeding Kansas A Watchful Friend Trapping a Trapper The Blooming- 
 ton Convention General Apathy The Voice of Faith. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 THE COMING MAN, 159 
 
 The Fr6mont Campaign Lincoln f or Vice-President The Southern Threat- 
 Days of Preparation Buchanan's Term One Story Higher A Murder Case. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIH. 
 POLITICAL PROPHECY, 167 
 
 A Rejected Leader A Great Convention An Historical Speech Nominated 
 for United States Senator The Joint Debates with Douglas The Splitting of 
 the Democratic Party Beginnings of a Presidential Nomination Spring 1858 
 to Spring 1859. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 THE RISING TIDE, 177 
 
 National Fame The Cooper Institute Speech Sectionalism Illinois State 
 Convention at Decatur The Rail-splitter The Republican National Convention 
 at Chicago The Presidential Nomination 1859.
 
 CONTENTS, 
 i 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ELECTED PRESIDENT, . . . . . . - . isft 
 
 The Great Canvass of 1860 The Critical Election Southern Threats of Civil 
 War Office-seekers Early A Wise Decision Cabinet-making Preparing for 
 the Trouble to Come A Nation without a Ruler. 
 
 i 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 CASUS BELLI, 190 
 
 Secession Activities Lincoln's Policy In a Trying Position South Carolina 
 Takes the Lead The Confederate States of America Traitors in Congress- 
 Capture of United States Forts and Forces A Campaign of Statesmanship- 
 Vain Premonitions A Last Meeting. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 PRESIDENT, 201 
 
 Speaking to the Nation Diplomacy Journey to Washington In the Ene- 
 my's Country The District of Columbia Militia The Flood of Office-seekers 
 The Inauguration The Address The True Meaning of Secession March, 1861. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVHI. 
 WAR, 213 
 
 The New Era Unification of the South Free Speech Copperheads The 
 Cabinet The White House Confederate Ambassadors Traitors in Office 
 The Border States The Sumpter Gun The President's Call to Arms April, 
 1861. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 THE GREAT UPRISING, 227 
 
 A Steady Hand The Rebellion Extending The Loyal North The Baltimore 
 Mob Rebellion in Maryland Confederate Hopes and Failures Peril of Wash- 
 ingtonArrival of Troops from the North The Gateway to the North Arrival 
 of the New York Seventh Capture of Baltimore Case of Col. Robert E. Lee- 
 Secession of Virginia Call for Three Years' Volunteers Crushing of Secession 
 in Maryland. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 OVER THE LONG BRIDGE, 239 
 
 Respect for State Rights Secession of Virginia Union Advance across the 
 Potomac Death of Ellsworth The Beginning in West Virginia The Old Flag 
 disappears from the South White House Life War-time Illusions Studies of 
 Future Battle-grounds A Funeral in the East Room.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE EUROPEAN QUESTION, 248 
 
 The Secretary of State England and France Privateers and Piracy The 
 New Navy Whaling Schooners as War Vessels. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 BULL RUN, 253 
 
 Checker-board Campaign Plans On to Richmond The Two Armies Dis- 
 solved Militia Congressional Legislation under Sudden Pressure The Presi- 
 dent's Message Five Hundred Thousand Men. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 THE BLOCKADE, 261 
 
 Recognition Accepting the Situation The Neutrality Mask Rejected In- 
 formationWar Correspondence not History The Fetters of Etiquette not 
 Worn. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 WORK WITH RAW MATERIALS, 267 
 
 The New Army Hunting for Brigadiers Finances Preparations of the 
 South Old Guns and New Presidential Target Practice Selection of General 
 McClellan. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 NEW NATIONAL LIFE, 275 
 
 A Shattered Idol A New State Contraband of War Transitions and Pro- 
 cessesLincoln a Dictator The Law of Revolution. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 PRESIDENT AND GENERAL, 281 
 
 The Army of the Potomac Newspaper Acrobats The President's Mail- 
 Work of the Private Secretaries Army Organization An Advance which was 
 not Made Off ensive and Defensive War. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 DICTATOR AND CONGRESS, 289 
 
 The Legislative Branch The Committee on the Conduct of the War Useful 
 Interference Councils and Umpires Political Complications Beginning Ci- 
 vilian and Soldier.
 
 10 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX VI 1 1. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN, 297 
 
 Monitor and Merrimac The Story of a Great Invention Waiting before 
 Yorktown Civil Supremacy in Danger A Retreat in Good Order A Perilous 
 Dilemma The Army of Virginia Gen. Pope's Campaign A New Political 
 Party One Army Swallowed by Another. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXTX 
 MILITARY POLITICS, . 307 
 
 Reconstruction Jarring Counsels Gen. John C. Fr6mont A Premature 
 Proclamation A Modification Another Subordinate laying down the Law to 
 the President A New Secretary of War A Human Library. 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 DRAWN BATTLES, 321 
 
 The Fighting under Pope News from the Army The Changes of Comman- 
 dersLee in Maryland The Antietam Exhausted Patience Removal of Mc- 
 Clellan A Great Misunderstanding. 
 
 CHAPTER XLL 
 EMANCIPATION, 328 
 
 The War-Power and the Constitution A Struggle of Life and Death The 
 Hour and the Man The Proclamation Waiting for the Victory An Unpre- 
 pared People Suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus Visiting the Army 
 The Reply of the Opposition. 
 
 CHAPTER "XTJT 
 THE HARDEST BLOW, 343 
 
 Home-Life in the White House Death of Little Willie Proclamation of 
 Thanksgiving and Prayer Circular Letter to the Army on Sabbath-keeping 
 Spiritual Growth. 
 
 CHAPTER XTJTL 
 THE TRENT AFFAIR, 349 
 
 Two Frontier Posts Western Successes A Slice at a Time Trouble with 
 England Shortsighted Patriotism A Message to the English People Captain 
 Wilkes Promoted Border State Unionism. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 A DARK WINTER 356 
 
 Fredericksburg A Lost Opportunity Burnside and Hooker The Burdens 
 of a Military Establishment Congressional Counselors The Heart of the Na- 
 tionAn Extraordinary Ambassador The Birth of the Union League.
 
 CONTENTS. 11 
 
 CHAPTEE XLV. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 EXECUTION, 365 
 
 Efforts for Compensation to Owners of Slaves Dreams of Colonization 
 The Future of the African in America The Final Proclamation The Slave- 
 Owner a Southern Sympathizer. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 DARK DAYS, 371 
 
 A Tax Payable in Men The New Financial System The States and the Na- 
 tionReconstruction Begun A Flood of Calumny Freedom of Speech and of 
 the Press A Sarcastic Present to the Confederacy Opposition Taking Form 
 at the North. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVH. 
 NIGHT 382 
 
 Preparing for a Great Struggle Popular Discontent Murmurs of Sedition- 
 European Hostilities Chancellorsville Bitter Hours for the President Dark- 
 ness at the .South Statesmen under an Hallucination The Second Invasion of 
 the North Hooker Succeeded by Meade. 
 
 CHAPTER XLVHI. 
 THE TURNING POINT, . .392 
 
 The Eve of Battle The Surrender of Vicksburg The Mississippi River set 
 Free The Three Days' Fight at Gettysburg Lee's Retreat^-The Situation 
 Changed The Draft Riots The New York Mob The President's Reply to the 
 Unpatriotic Elements. 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 THORNS, 402 
 
 Poisoned Arrows The Ways of a Workingman Western Bickerings An 
 Extraordinary Congress Presenting the President's Case Preparing the Po- 
 litical Future Visitors at the White House Wearing Away Unconditional 
 Unionism Portrayed Voices of Good-will from Europe The Gettysburg Speech. 
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END, ....... 416 
 
 Keeping Good Workmen Absence of Favoritism A Political Revolution- 
 A National Prayer-Meeting The Coming General Helpless Intrigues. 
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 THE SECOND NOMINATION, 423 
 
 Lieutenant-General Grant The First Great Relief Dealing with Guerillas- 
 Condensation of the Confederacy The Double National Convention The Ad- 
 ministration formally Approved.
 
 12 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER LII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ON TRIAL, 433 
 
 The Campaign of Calumny The Reconstruction Proclamation Traps which 
 Captured Nothing Skirmishing Diplomacy The Blunders of the Opposition 
 A Union General in Bad Company. 
 
 CHAPTER LIII. 
 THE NATION'S VERDICT, . . 440 
 
 The Rebellion Bleeding to Death Half a Million More The Results of the 
 Election Sherman's March to the Sea The Last Great Battle in the West- 
 Changes in the Cabinet Grant on " Executive Interference." 
 
 CHAPTER LIV. 
 A VALEDICTORY, 445 
 
 Putting Emancipation into the Constitution Sherman in South Carolina 
 The Peace Conference in Hampton Roads Useless Bloodshed The Second In- 
 augural. 
 
 CHAPTER LV. 
 AT LAST, 452 
 
 A Proclamation of Pardon Going to the Army The Death-Struggle of the 
 Rebellion Hemmed in by the Hunters The President in Richmond Surrend- 
 ers of Lee and Johnson Cessation of the Civil War. 
 
 CHAPTER LVI. 
 PEACE, 457 
 
 A Rejoicing People Vanity and Revenge conspire to Commit Murder The 
 Assassination The Mourning of a Mighty Multitude Voices from Distant 
 Lands The Teachings of a Great Life. 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 LINCOLN'S SPEECH, 465 
 
 At Springfield, HI., June 17, 1858 (Ch. TYTTT.). 
 
 LINCOLN'S SPEECH, 473 
 
 At Cooper Institute, New York, February, 1860 (Ch. XXTV.). 
 
 LINCOLN'S LETTER, . . . 493 
 
 To Unconditional Union Men, April, 1864 (Ch. XLIX.). 
 
 LINCOLN'S LETTER 498 
 
 To Governor Bramlette of Kentucky, Washington, April 4, 1864. 
 
 TRIBUTE OF LONDON "PUNCH" to ABRAHAM LINCOLN, . . 500 
 
 After his assassination, May, 1865.
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTEK I. 
 
 A CHAOTIC BEGINNING. 
 The Birthplace The Family The Homestead 1809 to 1816. 
 
 " THAT'S the place, Abe. You was born thar." 
 
 " 'Tain't much of a place to be born in. It's a heap meaner'n 
 the place we're a-livin' in now." 
 
 A man of little over the middle height, broad-shouldered, 
 powerfully built, and somewhat rough-looking, leaned upon a 
 long rifle and gazed at a forlorn log-house, not far from the 
 roadside, in a wretched, ill-tended corn-field. At his side was 
 a slim, overgrown boy of seven years, who might easily have 
 passed for three years older. The growth which had come to 
 him so fast was indicated not only by his size, but by the 
 queer, thoughtful expression of his strongly marked, sunburned 
 face. It was full of boyish fun, to recklessness ; and yet it 
 wore an unchildlike sadness also, as if the kind of human life 
 into which he had been born were already teaching him its les- 
 sons and leaving upon him its forever indelible marks. 
 
 " They call it Eock Spring Farm," remarked his father. 
 
 " Do they ? Wall, I remember the spring well enough, and 
 the rocks too ; but, pop, whar's the farm ?" 
 
 " All around, hereaway. It was the first piece of land I ever 
 owned, sech as it was. I didn't own it very much, nuther." 
 
 He did not look like a man who had ever owned much of 
 land or of anything else. He was barefooted, and his patched 
 homespun trowsers barely reached his ankles : but that was
 
 14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 more than could be said of Abe's. On his head, too, was a 
 coonskin cap, while his odd-looking son wore nothing above 
 his uncombed shock of dark hair. A greasy buckskin shirt 
 completed the outer garments of Tom Lincoln, with a powder- 
 horn and bullet-pouch slung over his shoulders in lieu of all 
 ornament. His leathern waist-belt marked yet one more dif- 
 ference in the apparel of the two, as Abe's left shoulder was 
 crossed by the one suspender with which his trowsers were tied 
 up, and it met no buttons at its lower ends. 
 
 "Pop, do you reckon you'll find anything meaner'n that 
 over in Injianny ?" 
 
 " I'll tell ye when I git back. We'd best be movin' now. 
 I want to git out of Kaintucky ; I jest do." 
 
 " Wall, pop, I don't know as I keer much whar we go to." 
 
 Tom strode away down the road, but it was marvelous how 
 easily the light-footed youngster kept up with him. Mile after 
 mile they went on together, along roads which were only here 
 and there bordered by anything which would nowadays be con- 
 sidered cultivation. The State of Kentucky was a very young 
 one in the fall of the year 1816, and was barely beginning to 
 work its way out of the backwoods into the long, toilsome path 
 towards civilization. Still, if Abe Lincoln and his father had 
 been on the lookout for a poorer piece of "improvement" 
 than " Rock Spring Farm," they would probably have failed 
 to find it during that day's walking. 
 
 A poor place indeed, both land and dwelling. There Abra- 
 ham Lincoln was born, on the 12th day of February, 1809. He 
 spent there the first four years of his life, and it was such lif e 
 as was possible in such a hut as he had now been taken back 
 to look at. Its hardening, narrowing, stunting conditions, 
 creating barriers and fetters to be afterwards burst or broken, 
 are worth a careful recognition and study. 
 
 The end of Abe's tramp gave him a chance to compare with 
 the place of his birth the cabin he was now at home in. It was 
 just a trifle better, and the land around presented less of an ap-
 
 A CHAOTIC BEGINNING. 15 
 
 pearance of utter poverty. He laughed a little when lie saw 
 it, not knowing, yet, how much to make any human being 
 somber-faced there was in a prospect of being shut up to the 
 necessity of spending his days in such a home as that. 
 
 A dark-featured, handsome, but sad-faced woman, of middle 
 height, stood in the doorway of the log-cabin as her husband 
 and son drew near. 
 
 " Now, Tom, you haven't fetched home any game this time." 
 
 " "Wall, no, Nancy. Abe and I kinder wandered off to Hod- 
 gensville, and I met some of the fellers, and we had a talk, and 
 then we took a circuit round and looked at the old place. It's 
 wuss'n it ever was, Nancy." 
 
 " Meanest kind," grumbled Abe ; but his mother looked sad- 
 der than before, and his father went on : 
 
 " Then we struck for home. I reckon I'll take water to- 
 morrer. You never seen a deader place'n town is, jest now. 
 Nothin' doin'. No kind of fun. No chances. I'm gwine to 
 quit Kaintuck, Nancy ; I'm set on that/' 
 
 " I don't keer whar we go. We can't make a poorer out 
 than we've made yer." 
 
 Not without an effort. It needed but a glance at the sur- 
 roundings of the homestead to perceive the justice of Nancy's 
 despairing criticism. The hands of lazy improvidence and of 
 the poverty that comes with it had fallen upon and withered 
 everything but the weeds. There were a few acres of plowed 
 ground between the house and the forest. A crop of corn had 
 been harvested from the patch, but such fall plowing as had 
 followed had been done by the noses of the hogs and not by 
 human labor. It was a place to move away from, surely ; but 
 the people who had made it what it was were likely to carry 
 with them all its real disadvantages. 
 
 Nancy turned wearily into the house, and Tom did not fol- 
 low her. He walked away upon another errand, and Abe went 
 with him. Half a mile, not at all hurried, brought them to 
 the bank of a good stream of water. A rude flatboat lay
 
 16 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 moored against the shore, and Tom looked at it with pride in his 
 eyes as he said, 
 
 " I made her myself, I did." 
 
 She looked like the work of some such man. A good 
 enough craft in which to float down stream ; but no sensible 
 navigator would have undertaken to urge her blunt nose and 
 ill-balanced bulk in any other direction. Still, she could carry 
 weight, and had a cargo already on board. There were a dozen 
 or so of barrels, and these, with some boxes and bags and other 
 matters, were stowed unevenly around, in such a way as to 
 render the clumsy craft yet more unmanageable. 
 
 " Pop," said Abe, " do you reckon you'll ever git her back ?" 
 
 " Wai, no. That ain't what she's made for. Reckon I'll 
 make enough outen the trip to start us in Injianny." 
 
 The flatboat was looked at and admired, and the father and 
 son went home to the slender supper of milk and corn-bread 
 provided for them by Nancy, Tom but dimly knew how. The 
 evening was consumed in varying calculations of the sure 
 profits of the voyage of the flatboat and the sale of her cargo. 
 About all the comment his wife could muster courage to make 
 was, 
 
 "Hope ye will. You've traded yer last hog for it, and 
 x ty much everything else thar was left." 
 
 % w don't you be skeered, Nancy. I'm bound to make a 
 new b, , I am. Abe and Sally mought as well keep on gwine 
 to school whilst I'm gone. Reckon they won't light onto any 
 schoolin' around in the woods arter we git squatted over into 
 Injianny." 
 
 The one fact which came out more plainly than any other 
 was that, come what might of the trading expedition and the 
 cargo of the flatboat, Tom Lincoln had made an end of his 
 prospects in Kentucky, and that a new start somewhere else 
 had now become a financial necessity.
 
 HAPHAZARD MIGRATION. 17 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HAPHAZAED MIGRATION. 
 
 Tom Lincoln's Venture Little Abe The Trip through the Woods 
 From one Hut to another 1816. 
 
 AT an early hour the next morning, the Lincoln family were 
 gathered on the bank of the Rolling Fork to see the precious 
 flatboat pushed away. She had been built and launched at 
 the mouth of Knob Creek, a stream that ran past their own 
 cabin, but with too little depth of water to float so ambitious a, 
 craft as Tom had now constructed. 
 
 " She'll do, Nancy. This 'ere's the biggest venter ever I 
 made." 
 
 " Tom, do you reckon three weeks'll fetch ye home ?" 
 
 " Sure as shootin'. It's only a float down Rollin' Fork to 
 Salt River, and down that to the Ohio. Once I git thar, I kin 
 sell out the cargo, all along shore. I'll make a location on the 
 Injianny side, and then I'll come back a-kitin'. Good-by, 
 Nancy. 'By, Sally. Abe, jest you look sharp, now, while 
 I'm gone." 
 
 A chorus of Good-bys answered him, and then his wife 
 stood on the bank, silently watching the drift of his awkward 
 boat down the rapid current of the Rolling Fork. 
 
 " Abe," said his sister, " don't you wish he'd let you go ?" 
 
 " Reckon I do. I'd jest like to be thar when she lops over." 
 
 " She can't upset." 
 
 " Can't she ? Wall, all I know is, pop can swim." 
 
 Sally Lincoln was two years older than Abe and a good deal 
 better-looking, but she was hardly as tall, and he was sure to 
 keep ahead of her in mere size. She looked at him, too, as if
 
 18 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 she were already beginning to regard him in the light of a 
 "big brother." She had been originally named after her 
 mother, but then, and in later years, there were too many 
 " Nancies" under the Lincoln roof, and she is remembered 
 only as Sally. 
 
 "I do hope he'll git through all right," muttered Tom's 
 wife, as she turned moodily away. Then she added, in a 
 louder key : 
 
 " Now you, Abe, Sally, jest you git for the Friend Farm. 
 Tell Caleb Hazel he's only to hev three weeks more of ye." 
 
 " Reckon 'twon't take more'n that to learn what he knows," 
 chuckled Abe ; but Sally answered him, a little sharply : 
 
 " Ef you don't take in more from him than you did from 
 Zach Einey, it won't do you any sort o' good." 
 
 " Git each of ye a chunk of corn-bread," said Nancy, " and 
 then you make yer tracks. It's only four mile to go, and you 
 needn't be late ef you don't 1'iter. He ain't pertikler 'bout 
 bein' late, no how." 
 
 Whether that were true or not, Sally had a sad report to 
 .make of her brother on her return from school that evening. 
 
 "Licked again!" exclaimed his mother. "Ef yer father 
 'was home, you know what 'd come to ye." 
 
 " Mom," added Sally, gravely, " that ain't all. He said he 
 wished old Caleb and the entire school was onto pop's flatboat 
 a-goin' down Kollin' Fork." 
 
 " Did you say that, Abe ?" 
 
 " It'd be more'n three weeks 'fore they'd git back," chuckled 
 the young rebel. But it may be that Nancy Lincoln's heart was 
 a little full that night, for she took no further notice of her 
 son's misconduct. It was nothing new to find that he was 
 more than seven years old in all manner of mischief. And yet 
 his childish eyes were now following her own, sadly enough, 
 as she looked around the one room inclosed by the log walls of 
 the cabin. It had always been poorly furnished, even for such 
 a home, and now Tom Lincoln's great venture had stripped it
 
 HAPHAZARD MIGRATION. 19 
 
 almost bare. He had traded nearly everything tradable to 
 obtain the cargo of his flatboat, and the place looked dread- 
 fully desolate. For some reason he had even taken with him 
 his kit of carpenter's tools, for Tom was a jack-of-all-trades, 
 and the now empty corner where it once had stood spoke 
 eloquently of the sure changes to come. 
 
 The going or remaining of the Lincoln family would make 
 no changes in the little farm. There was a good deal of wild, 
 rough beauty in the neighborhood. Knob Creek could not 
 float a flatboat, and was only moderately good for fishing; 
 but its banks, up and down through the heavy timber, had a 
 reputation of their own for woodchucks, or " ground-hogs," 
 and little Abe had long since discovered that there was more 
 fun to be had in digging out one of these than in hunting for 
 the right way to spell a word. He had learned to hunt wood- 
 chucks even before leaving Rock Spring Farm, along Nolin 
 Creek, and on Knob Creek he had the company of his cousin, 
 Dennis Hanks, in that and in the higher art of catching fish. 
 
 There was almost as much to be learned in the woods, and 
 on the water and under it, as from Caleb Hazel ; and yet Abe 
 had prospered notably under both his present schoolmaster and 
 Zachariah Riney, considering how very few months in all he 
 received the benefit of their instructions. 
 
 He was yet to be a hard student, indeed, but without pro- 
 fessional masters ; so that in his ripe manhood he should be 
 forced to say that all the " schooling" given him from the first 
 had amounted to less than one year of regular tuition. 
 
 It was not likely that studious tendencies would be increased 
 in a Kentucky boy of less than eight years by the prospect of 
 a great journey into the mysterious wilderness of Indiana. 
 
 At that precise date this was still a " territory," and remained 
 so until early in the following winter. The possession of its 
 forests, and of the fertile prairies beyond them to the west- 
 ward, was still sullenly disputed by the red Indians, and the 
 tide of immigration was but beginning to set in that direction.
 
 20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 For more than a generation Kentucky itself had been, in the 
 strife between the savages and the settlers, the same " dark and 
 bloody ground" which it had been for ages before the white men 
 came, in endless struggles for its hunting-grounds, between the 
 warring tribes of the red men. It was yet to become the scene 
 of bloodier battles, the causes and magnitude of which could 
 not then have been imagined by any man. The especial cause 
 existed and was fast increasing ; but it is worthy of note that 
 there were but a few score of negro slaves in the broad reach 
 of country then known as Hardin County, and which con- 
 tained the several temporary residences of Tom Lincoln ; also 
 that the emigrants from Kentucky and other slave States into 
 Illinois and Indiana did not go to escape contact with human ser- 
 vitude, and did not even become antislavery men, to any ex- 
 tent, in their new homes. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was in no sense whatever born or reared 
 as an abolitionist, and such prejudices as his father may have 
 had were not opposed to any one particular kind of labor. 
 
 Tom Lincoln came back, and he came by land and on foot, 
 and he had a tale to tell when Nancy asked him how well he 
 had sold his cargo. 
 
 "Sold it? "Wai, ye-es, I sold what thar was left of it. 
 The best part on it went off down the Ohio, 'bout the time 
 that thar flatboat of mine got twisted into an eddy and up- 
 
 BOt." 
 
 " So ye kem back afoot, an' nothin' to show for it." 
 
 " Not quite so bad as that. I saved my kit of tools, and my 
 rifle, and some of the barr'ls. I got the boat righted too, 
 and I sold her, and I fished up some of the other things and 
 I sold 'em. B-ut Nancy, I tell ye, I've located !" 
 
 " Found a place ?" 
 
 " Best kind ; and not a soul to interfere. It's jest about six- 
 teen mile back from the Ohio River, and a sweeter spot you 
 never seen. We'll light outen this to-morrer." 
 
 " I don't keer how soon we go."
 
 HAPHAZARD MIGRATION. 21 
 
 It was not in Tom's nature to really move so promptly, and 
 some days went by before the departure took place. 
 
 Transportation of some sort was a necessity, and horses were 
 of small price in Kentucky in those days, except for the higher 
 grades. Somehow or other, and by whatever help, Tom man- 
 aged to obtain the services of two, such as they were. They 
 were at all events good enough to carry what property he now 
 had remaining, and there was little need of any wagon to roll 
 behind them. That, too, was just as well, considering the na- 
 ture of the roads to be traveled and the seasoned toughness of 
 the bare feet of Tom Lincoln and his sad-faced wife, and of 
 their boy and girl. There was no thought of tempting again 
 the perils of Rolling Fork and Salt River and the Ohio on any 
 kind of boat or float. Tom had had all the water he wanted. 
 
 Over in the graveyard, near Hodgensville, there was a very 
 email green hillock, to which Mrs. Lincoln paid a visit, taking 
 Abe with her, during those days of waiting. All she said to him 
 about it was that if the little boy lying there had lived, he and 
 Sally would now have a brother to travel to Indiana with them. 
 
 The day for departure came at last, and the route to be trav- 
 eled had been determined beforehand. Towns and villages 
 were scarce enough in all that region, and the few wayside 
 taverns were on the lines of the more frequented highways. 
 Little, however, did Tom Lincoln or his wife care for that, and 
 the children did not know enough to give such things a 
 thought. The whole forest, from Knob Creek to the Ohio, 
 and as far beyond that river as any one might choose to go, 
 was one grand hotel, open by night and day, and wherein there 
 was no danger of being elbowed by other guests. "Whenever 
 a day's journey should be completed it would only be necessary 
 to unpack the tired horses and turn them loose to pick their own 
 supper. A fire could be kindled with flint and steel, and Mrs. 
 Lincoln and Sally could fry a little bacon or cook such game 
 as Tom's rifle might provide. They were almost sure to fall in 
 with eatable wild creatures in the course of each day's march.
 
 22 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 The burdens of the horses were not so heavy that they could 
 not now and then take on also a human weight, and there was 
 no special demand for haste. 
 
 It would be a mistake to describe the Lincoln family as un- 
 dergoing hardships or privations in such a journey as they were 
 now making. It was more like a prolonged " picnic" than any- 
 thing else. At night, a bed of boughs with a blanket thrown 
 over them was as soft and comfortable a resting-place as they 
 had ever known. There was plenty to eat and drink ; the au- 
 tumn weather was fine ; there was no shadow of peril ; and as 
 for any other matter, it was as Nancy had said, and any kind 
 of change offered a reasonable hope of bettering their condition. 
 So they went on through the woods and opens until they came 
 out in sight of the Ohio River. 
 
 " Yonder's Thompson's Ferry," exclaimed Tom. " I knowed 
 we was on the right track. We'll git across afore sundown. I 
 left all the truck I didn't sell right over thar, with a feller 
 named Posey. Now, Nancy, hurrah for Injianny ! "What does 
 it look like to ye ?" 
 
 " Most like any other piece of woods ever I seen." 
 
 So it did ; and so did all the country north, and the country 
 west of it, to the great prairies ; and so did the Northwest, all 
 the vast region which has since been carved into States and oc- 
 cupied by so many millions of happy and unhappy human be- 
 ings. 
 
 A mere piece of woods, to look at ; but in among the trees and 
 thickets, between the Ohio River and the lakes and the British 
 boundary-line, there were worse than wild beasts for a settler to 
 contend with. These, too, were there in great abundance : buf- 
 alo, elk, deer, panthers, bears, catamounts, wild turkeys, small 
 animals innumerable ; these might even be regarded as a resource 
 and a perpetual harvest. There, however, wandering in hunting 
 and war parties or gathered in their villages, were the Sioux, Sacs, 
 Foxes, Pawnees, and a score of other terrible tribes. Among 
 the many chiefs and leaders of these was the mighty Black-
 
 HAPHAZARD MIGRATION. 23 
 
 hawk, even then a middle-aged warrior of high renown, and 
 little Abe was to know many valuable things hereafter with 
 the help of that particular Indian. He was, in a manner, to 
 go to a school of his keeping, and learn in it great practical les- 
 sons for the benefit of his country. 
 
 Abe knew nothing of Blackhawk then, however, and his 
 deepest interest for the moment was centred upon the flat-bot- 
 tomed ferry-boat which was to convey them across the swift 
 and muddy water of the Ohio. It bore a remarkable likeness 
 to the hapless craft his father had launched at the mouth of 
 Knob Creek. The passage was made in safety, nevertheless, 
 and so was the rest of the march to the Posey homestead ; and 
 here the Lincoln family passed their first night in the Territory 
 of Indiana. 
 
 The next morning a lumber-wagon was obtained, and laden 
 with the packs from the two horses and the poor relics of the 
 cargo of Tom's flatboat. To these were added a few sacks of 
 corn, and then all would have been very well if there had been 
 any road before them by which to travel. 
 
 " I've been thar," said Tom. " I kin find the spot, and the 
 trail's been blazed pretty much all the way." 
 
 True enough ; but when he made his choice of a location he 
 had been unincumbered, except by the rifle on his shoulder 
 and the axe with which he " blazed " the trees to mark his path. 
 Now he had a team and a loaded wagon behind him, and these 
 required a wider path than that by which a hunter's feet might 
 pass. There was no help for it, and a road had to be cut by 
 good hard ax-work wherever the trees stood too closely to- 
 gether for the wagon to squeeze between. The distance was 
 but sixteen miles in a straight line, but it was much more by 
 the winding road Tom Lincoln made. By the time he reached 
 the land he was to settle on, he may be said to have fairly 
 earned it. He did reach it ; and the autumn of Abraham Lin- 
 coln's seventh year found him a very new settler in one of the 
 very newest of all new countries.
 
 24 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 CHILD-LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS. 
 I 
 
 Pole- shelter Log Cabin and Clearing Pestilence and Suffering A Forest 
 Funeral 1818. 
 
 A GKASSY hillock in the middle of a primeval forest is a very 
 pretty thing to look upon. It will serve well, too, as a place 
 for a temporary camp, in the perfect weather of an American 
 autumn. Storms are sure to come, however, and storms bring 
 rain, and the winter follows the autumn. 
 
 " Nancy," said Tom, " we can't stop to put up a house jest 
 now ; thar ain't time. "We'll hev to start with a pole-shelter." 
 
 " That'll do first rate ; but I do wish we was nigher to a 
 spring. That thar water-hole looks as if it mought go clean 
 dry in summer," remarked his wife. 
 
 " Reckon not. Leastwise it'll do till summer comes. "We 
 don't call for much water, no how." 
 
 There was some truth in that ; but in after-time Tom was to 
 spend many a weary day's work sinking unproductive holes 
 in that neighborhood in a vain search for a well. He had 
 done better if he had camped nearer a spring in the first place. 
 
 As he said, the building of a log-house was no small affair, 
 while a large-sized " hunter's camp" could be put up in a hur- 
 ry. Four fork-tipped uprights at the corners, those in the rear 
 a little the longer, with strong " poles," or trunks of young 
 trees, laid upon them, answered for the frame. Against these 
 an abundance of other " poles" could be leaned and fastened, 
 and the roof could be put on in corresponding style, with slabs 
 of bark to shed the rain until shingles could be cut. For 
 housekeeping purposes a fireplace and chimney of tempered
 
 CHILD-LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS. 25 
 
 clay and sticks was all any settler expected ; and cracks between 
 the poles could also be " chinked " with mud, whether they 
 were perpendicular or horizontal. The earth inclosed was 
 pounded hard to make a floor of it. The household goods 
 were brought in and scattered around the humble dwelling, 
 and little Abe's first home in Indiana was as comfortable as it 
 would ever be. There are many patterns of " pole-shelters," 
 but Tom Lincoln was not the man to waste upon his own any 
 labor not absolutely and immediately demanded by stern neces- 
 sity. 
 
 Thus much having been provided against wind and rain, 
 there was " clearing" to be done before there would be any 
 farm, and Tom took to his ax. The woods around the cabin 
 rang with the strokes of his chopping through what was left 
 of the autumn and all through the winter, except when he was 
 hunting the game required to keep his family from starving, 
 or was absent on some errand to the shore of the Ohio. 
 
 There was plenty of fun for little Abe, and with it no small 
 amount of work for him and his mother and sister, as the 
 clearing went on. There were quantities of brushwood, and 
 the like, to be heaped upon the fallen tree-trunks and set on fire. 
 There were rabbits and even wild turkeys to be trapped and 
 brought home in triumph, and the supply of woodchucks was 
 all any boy could ask for. Then, too, he could sometimes go 
 out with his father for deer by day, and by night for the plen- 
 tiful harvest of raccoons. The latter were not " game," but 
 their skins had a sure market, and were as good as money in 
 payment for anything that was to be bought at the " store" by 
 the river, sixteen miles away. 
 
 The winters of Southern Indiana are rarely severe. Old 
 settlers say now that the climate was much milder in the old 
 days, before the forests were cleared away. The " half-faced 
 camp," as people used to call the kind of shelter Tom Lincoln 
 had made, so long as it remained open on one side, answered 
 its purpose very well. It was as good a place to live in, during
 
 26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 most weather, as the old cabin on Knob Creek or the older 
 one on Rock Spring Farm. There was " settler's comfort" to 
 be had even when it rained, in watching the leaks in the roof, 
 to know just where to put on another slab of bark or basswood 
 shingle when the weather should clear. 
 
 Before spring came again there was enough of land around 
 the cabin, chopped clear of trees, to admit the planting of a 
 patch of corn and potatoes between the stumps. There was 
 no use in spending hard work on any kind of fence for that 
 many-sided field. The deer would have jumped over it, if 
 made ; the 'coons and squirrels would have climbed it ; and the 
 few pigs Tom had been able to gather preferred to hunt a bet- 
 ter living in the woods. 
 
 Except for the company of his sister, little Abe's first year 
 in the wilderness was a lonely one. There was no neighbor 
 for miles and miles. In one direction lay Big Pigeon Creek, 
 and in another Little Pigeon Creek, afterwards called "Prairie 
 Fork." Abe knew there were other settlements off there 
 somewhere, and other boys and girls ; but all of them had their 
 own woodchucks to dig out, and none came near enough to 
 help him with his. Even berry-picking, in the season of it, 
 was a solitary and monotonous business, unless a bear chose 
 to show himself among the bushes, or a gang of deer came out 
 through the trees to be looked at. 
 
 Abe's legs grew longer and longer that year, just from hav- 
 ing to travel so far for everything ; and all the while the gloom 
 and silence and awe of the great, solemn forest was settling 
 upon his childish heart, and teaching him deep lessons, too 
 deep for Mm then to understand. He had no other teachers 
 that year. 
 
 As soon as hoeing time was over and the growing crops 
 could be left to take care of themselves, there was a great work 
 on hand. Nothing less than the building of a solid, full- 
 grown, heavy-log house. 
 
 Tom Lincoln's natural aversion to needless work forbade
 
 CHILD-LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS. 27 
 
 him doing more for his logs than to cut them to right lengths 
 and notch them for placing, before, with such help as he could 
 get, they were rolled and hoisted into their places. They wore 
 all their bark after they were in the walls, and that was no 
 more than was customary. Then, too, the holes left for the 
 window-sashes, which might some day be put in, were just as 
 well without for the present, in Tom's opinion. Light and air 
 would enter the cabin through them unhindered. So they 
 would through the open doorway, in which no door was made 
 to swing. The earth on which the house was built, when 
 pounded hard, would once more, as in the pole-shelter, answer 
 all the known purposes of a floor, so long as no pigs should be 
 permitted to tear it up with their noses. 
 
 The log-house was a great improvement on the " camp," and 
 it was hardly ready to move into before there were new-comers 
 ready to occupy the hovel the Lincoln family moved out of. 
 
 Indiana had now become a State, with a population of about 
 65,000, and a great tide of immigration was beginning to pour 
 in. On the very first wave of it, in the autumn of the year 
 1817, came relatives of the Lincolns, for Mrs. Betsy Sparrow 
 was an aunt of Tom's wife, Nancy, and had cared for her in 
 her childhood. With her came her husband, Thomas Sparrow, 
 and a nephew of hers, the same little Dennis Hanks who had 
 been Abe's playmate on Knob Creek. 
 
 The Lincoln settlement was sadly in need of neighbors, and 
 the new settlers were welcomed. The Sparrows made their 
 nest in the deserted pole-shelter, and now Abe and his sister 
 had somebody to keep them company in the woods, and an- 
 other house near enough to go to. Dennis was as fond of all 
 manner of fun as was Abe himself, but there was no other 
 resemblance between them. 
 
 The Sparrows were every shade as poor as the Lincolns ; and 
 as for the latter, it is matter of record that their new log-house 
 contained neither chair, nor table, nor bedstead, other than 
 such rough affairs as could be made by Tom himself from the
 
 28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 trees lie cut down in the woods around him. The cooking, 
 such as it was, was done before the open fireplace, with the 
 help of one tin oven " with a lid ;" one skillet, which also had 
 a lid ; a few tin dishes, and an earthen pot or so. But then 
 hot coals could be raked out to broil steaks of venison or bear- 
 meat ; in the ashes potatoes could be roasted, or chestnuts ; and 
 in the season of green corn as many roasting-ears could be 
 eaten as the children should choose to gather. 
 
 There was no hardship in all that part of frontier house- 
 keeping, and little Abe did not feel the absence of knives and 
 forks and table-cloths and a host of other luxuries which as yet 
 he did not know by name. The earthen floor grew dry and 
 hard and did not require any carpet. It would never fade or 
 wear out. Truly it is wonderful how few are the things which 
 cannot be dispensed with, and the red Indians, time out of 
 mind, had managed very much after the manner of the white 
 settlers who were now so steadily driving them out of their 
 ancient hunting-grounds. 
 
 When the month of February came again, in the following 
 winter, Abraham Lincoln was nine years old, and as tall as 
 most boys of eleven or twelve. He could outrun any boy of 
 his size among the old settlers or among the new families that 
 were now coming in and scattering their cabins, here and there, 
 through all the woods. He could handle an ax pretty well, 
 and was a fair shot with a rifle, although that was the one 
 backwoods art in which he never made himself perfect. He 
 could hit a mark, living or otherwise, but there was no great 
 accuracy in his marksmanship. 
 
 It was well for him and his sister that they were now old 
 and strong enough to take some care of themselves, for they 
 were very soon to have that to do. The spring of 1818 went 
 by without anything especial to mark it, but trouble came with 
 the heats of summer. 
 
 From that day to this, the scourge known among the people 
 as " the milk-sick" has appeared locally, at longer or shorter
 
 CHILD-LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS. 29 
 
 intervals, and its cause and nature are said to be almost as 
 much a mystery now as they were then. Learned men have 
 even declared that there is no such disease, and they may be 
 right ; but cattle die of it, and so do human beings, in their 
 helpless ignorance. It came that summer, creeping around 
 among the cabins of the settlers, and nobody knew where it 
 came from or how to deal with it. There were no physicians 
 to be had ; and perhaps it was as well, since the strange dis- 
 order was to baffle science for half a century afterwards. 
 Farms were stripped of their cattle, and men and women lay 
 down to suffer tediously and waste away and die, and small 
 help could be obtained in any form. 
 
 Among those who were taken that season were Thomas and 
 Betsy Sparrow, and they and Dennis Hanks had to come over 
 to the log-house to be cared for. 
 
 Then Mrs. Nancy Lincoln was taken, and the house became 
 a sort of hospital, with Tom Lincoln to provide for it, and the 
 children to do the cooking and the nursing. 
 
 Through the hot, still days of the remaining summer, and 
 through September, the watching and the suffering went on in 
 the lonely log-hut, and not in all that time was there a single 
 visit there of any physician. 
 
 There was no possible thing to be done in that or any other 
 cabin through all that region to make matters any easier for 
 the sick or for the well. It was a necessary part of the fron- 
 tier-life through which Abraham Lincoln was receiving his 
 education and development. He and his sister and their father 
 and little Dennis did what they could, but Tom was often 
 called upon to leave his home for a while. He was the only 
 man in the settlement who knew how to saw logs into rough 
 planks and make them up into coffins, and there was need of 
 a coffin every now and then. 
 
 Thomas and Betsy Sparrow died about the first of October, 
 and they Were both buried in a knoll in the woods about half 
 a mile northeast of their cabin. On the 5th of October Mrs.
 
 30 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Nancy Lincoln died, and she too was buried on the knoll under 
 the shadows of the forest. About a score of people attended 
 the funeral, but there was no minister present to conduct the 
 simple ceremonies. A few months later a traveling preacher 
 named David Elkin preached a funeral sermon, but to this day- 
 there is no stone to mark the last resting-place of the body of 
 Nancy Lincoln. The simple fact requires no word of com- 
 ment or interpretation. 
 
 The log-house was now no longer a hospital ; it was only a 
 desolate and lonely place where Tom Lincoln and his two chil- 
 dren and Dennis Hanks could stay and learn all the remaining 
 lessons of utter poverty in the backwoods. 
 
 Abe was learning lessons very fast, and more shadows were 
 gathering upon his boyish face. 
 
 The change in the manner of housekeeping or in the amount 
 of it was not so great as it might have been in another home 
 than that, and the children could get along after a fashion 
 without any mother. Poor Nancy Lincoln had followed her 
 shiftless husband into the woods, only to die of the mysterious 
 pestilence and to be buried, and soon and altogether forgotten.
 
 A NEW ELEMENT. 31 
 
 CHAPTER IY. 
 
 A NEW ELEMENT. 
 
 Utter Desolation Arrival of a Good Angel A Ray of Civilization 1819. 
 
 THERE are many things which cannot be done by a ten- 
 year-old boy, a girl of twelve, and a middle-aged backwoods- 
 man. There were no new clothes made that winter for Nancy 
 Lincoln's motherless children, and Tom shifted for his own 
 apparel as best he could. 
 
 The spring, the summer, and the autumn of the year 1819 
 went slowly by. The log-house grew more dirty and more 
 desolate, and Abe and his sister and Dennis Hanks became 
 more and more like a trio of unwashed, uncared-for, and half- 
 naked young savages. It did not seem so much of a hardship 
 during the warmer weather, and there was only now and then 
 a passer-by to make unkind remarks upon the condition of 
 things ; but the storms and frosts of winter were surely com- 
 ing. 
 
 Even Tom Lincoln at last awoke to a consciousness that 
 something must be done, and about the first of November the 
 young folk had the cabin all to themselves. Whether or not 
 they knew the nature of Tom's errand to Kentucky, they were 
 left to do their own housekeeping. 
 
 There was corn enough and bacon, and some kinds of small 
 fresh meat could be obtained from the woods by a fair degree 
 of boyish industry. "Wood was to be had for the chopping, 
 and they need not freeze ; and there were the cabins of neigh- 
 bors to go to now in any dire extremity. Still the hunting of 
 game over frozen ground, and the chopping of logs in the snow, 
 was chilly work for barefooted boys ; and the next four weeks
 
 32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 were hard ones, in the course of training through which little 
 Abe was preparing for the unknown trials before him. 
 
 The weeks went by, and the snow fell, and the storms whis- 
 tled through the woods and blew drearily in through the open 
 door and windows of the cabin ; but the children made the best 
 of it. 
 
 There came an afternoon in December when a great shout 
 reached their ears from the edge of the clearing. It was Tom 
 Lincoln's voice, and the young housekeepers went out to see. 
 
 He had returned, and he had come with a team of four 
 horses and a lumber- wagon laden with some kind of property. 
 There had plainly been a miracle of some sort. It was very 
 nearly one, for Tom had persuaded a respectable widow 
 woman, Mrs. Sally Johnston, of Elizabethtown, Kentucky, to 
 marry him and come to live in his Indiana "home." Her 
 maiden name had been Bush, and before her first marriage 
 Tom had admired her and proposed and been rejected. Hi& 
 present suit had been more successful, and she had only waited 
 so long in order to close up her affairs in Kentucky. The 
 four-horse team was the property of Tom's brother-in-law, 
 Ralph Krume, who had been hired to convey the bride and 
 her household goods to their new abiding-place. 
 
 Their new mother was no stranger to Abe and his sister. 
 She had even exhibited an especial liking for Abe in days gone 
 by, and she had now been sent into the wilderness for his bene- 
 fit as much as for that of his father. 
 
 She brought with her a son and two daughters of her own, 
 John, Sarah, and Matilda, and with them what to the eyes of 
 her step-children was something like splendor. The wagon 
 contained a fine bureau, a table, a set of chairs, a large clothes- 
 chest, cooking-utensils, knives, forks, bedding, and other 
 articles, the like of which had never before been carried under 
 any roof of Tom Lincoln's. 
 
 Mrs. Sally Johnston had been a woman of respectable family 
 and much personal pride, and had been led to expect some-
 
 A NEW ELEMENT. 33 
 
 thing very different from the manifest poverty and squalor now 
 before her eyes. She had been told of a house and a farm, and 
 here they were indeed ; but she was Mrs. Lincoln now, and 
 she did not flinch for a moment from the new duties she had 
 undertaken. It was a good deal to the comfortless little ones 
 of poor !Nancy Hanks Lincoln that her place should be taken 
 by an old neighbor and a kind one, but they little knew what a 
 blessing had really come to them. Shy, awkward, conscious of 
 the shocking contrast between their own personal appearance and 
 that of the neatly clad children of their new mother, Abe and 
 Sally could hardly offer the new-comers much of a welcome. 
 
 It may well be Mrs. Lincoln was aided by the sight of those 
 forlorn little folk in smothering any expression of her disap- 
 pointment and indignation. 
 
 The mute appeal of their misery went to her kind heart 
 overpoweringly. She saw at once that she had a work to do,, 
 but there was no prophet to tell her how vast were to be the= 
 consequences of that work that is, of the part of it which stood 
 there in the snow, upheld by the bare, frost-cracked feet of that 
 dirty, ragged ten-years boy with so shy, sad, sensitive a face, 
 trying to smile at her from under his shaggy mop of tangled 
 hair. She told the story of her feelings, years afterwards, with 
 her own lips. 
 
 " The poor things \" she exclaimed, as she looked at them. 
 " I'll make 'em look a little more human." 
 
 The contents of the wagon were transferred to the one room 
 of the cabin, and Mrs. Lincoln's good work began. She had 
 been a stirring, energetic, self-helpful woman all her life, and 
 she took hold of Tom's house after a fashion that gave him 
 plenty of work to do. She made him lay a substantial wooden 
 floor over the old one of pounded dirt. She insisted upon 
 having a good door that swung on hinges, and sashes with 
 glass in the hitherto vacant window-holes. Tom was forced to 
 trim up every corner of the house, inside and out, into some- 
 thing like order and decency ; and when this was done and the
 
 34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 new furniture was put in place, there was an air of home about 
 it all that had never been there before. 
 
 Mrs. Lincoln had brought with her a good store of clothing 
 for her own children, and now she showed no sign of par- 
 tiality in its distribution. As soon as Abe and Dennis and 
 Sally had undergone the novel sensation of a thorough wash- 
 ing, they were made to know the greater strangeness of being 
 well and warmly clad, and of wearing shoes and stockings in 
 cold weather. No backwoods children, in those days, would 
 have dreamed of any such luxury without a hard frost for an 
 excuse. 
 
 It was yet another novelty to have good beds under them, 
 and to lie warm through all the bitter nights, and to feel that 
 the winter was forcibly shut out from pinching them. That 
 was the first shut door they had slept behind for many a long 
 cold night and day. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln had received a new mother, and wonder- 
 ful matters with her. He had suddenly stepped out of misery 
 into a new life. He was clean and clothed and comfortable 
 ;and well fed, with such a home as he had never known before. 
 Another and a greater thing came dawning in upon the dark- 
 ness of his stunted life, for he had found some one whom he 
 could love with all his heart, and love her he did, and he was 
 well assured of her love for him. To the end of his life, she 
 was the " mother" to whom his memories went back, although 
 beyond her, in an earlier and darker hour of his morning-time, 
 was the form of his first, his own mother. God is very merci- 
 ful to children as to all their early troubles and bereavements ; 
 and little Abe had been without any mother at all for nearly a 
 year and a half when his father returned from that most profit- 
 able trip to Kentucky. 
 
 Dennis Hanks and Sally Lincoln shared fairly in all the 
 benefits bestowed. But the latter was never called Nancy any 
 more. Although now there were three of the same name in 
 the united family, Sally she remained to the day of her death.
 
 A GENUINE START. 36 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 A GENUINE START. 
 Growth Schooling Beginnings of Human Society in the Backwoods. 
 
 THERE was a surprise in store for the new mother, and it was 
 by no means an unpleasant one. 
 
 As soon as her step-son's bodily wants had been attended to 
 and the house was in order for comfortable living, she set her- 
 self at work to discover how much Abe knew, and what. He 
 was willing enough to be " examined ; " but who would have 
 expected to find that he had picked up, from the teachings of 
 Nancy Lincoln or during his few weeks of rough schooling in 
 Kentucky, both reading and writing ? Not that he could show 
 any marked proficiency in either, but enough to mark him at 
 once as a learner of more than common capacity. 
 
 He had learned and he had not forgotten, and he had even 
 made some use of his acquirements ; and his new mother deter- 
 mined that it was time he should begin to add to them. 
 
 Over on Little Pigeon Creek, a mile and a half from the 
 Lincoln farm, a log schoolhouse had been built by the settlers, 
 near the grand new " meeting-house," also mainly of logs, and 
 the two were witnesses that civilization was breaking through 
 the darkness of the Indiana woods. A man named Hazel Dor- 
 sey had been secured as schoolmaster, and it was said of him 
 that he could teach reading and writing and arithmetic. What 
 more could be asked for in the way of scholarship ? Little in- 
 deed by the bevy of boys and girls who were sent to him by 
 Mrs. Lincoln, with such irregularity as was made compulsory 
 by their many home duties. 
 
 The news of their new educational prospects did not bring
 
 36 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the same meaning to all of them, but it was the opening of a 
 wide gate to little Abe. He was growing faster than e"ver 
 now. Since the new arrivals, filling the log-house to overflow- 
 ing, he and Dennis had slept in the loft, climbing to it by a 
 Ladder of wooden pegs driven into the logs. The bed was a 
 coarse bag filled with corn-husks, and was a narrow one for 
 two such boys. If one turned over, the other had to. And 
 yet there were now three boys in that bed every night, and 
 two of them were beginning to crowd each other in a terrible 
 manner. 
 
 Tirst, there was Dennis Hanks, only counting for one boy, 
 then or afterwards ; there beside him lay Abraham Lincoln, 
 an uncommonly tall, vigorous body of a boy for his age : and 
 that seemed to be all the bed contained. But inside of Abe 
 was another boy, taller, larger every way, to whom there had 
 now arrived a beginning of almost unlimited " growth." 
 
 Nobody could guess how tall that inner boy might yet be- 
 come, with space to grow in. He had but a vague idea of it, 
 as yet, himself ; but it was much that he had any idea at all. 
 
 Quickly, silently, night by night and day by day, he deter- 
 mined that he would grow, and his new mother continually 
 and lovingly encouraged him. The two were building better 
 than they knew, and the whole world, for ever and ever, had an 
 interest in Mrs. Lincoln's womanly perception of her step-son's 
 capacity and her unselfish efforts to afford him such opportu- 
 nities as her narrow means permitted. 
 
 The settlement was now a growing one, and the farms were 
 no longer so far apart. A man named Gentry was about to 
 open a country store only a mile and a half, or so, from the 
 Lincolns, and a village would surely gather around it ; and the 
 store and village were also to be a school for Abe, but he was 
 to go to Hazel Dorsey's first. His schoolhouse was a queer 
 enough affair. It was just high enough inside for a man to 
 stand up straight in, and the windows were fitted with greased 
 paper instead of glass.
 
 A GENUINE START. 37 
 
 A mile and a half is no great distance to walk to such a school 
 as that, if children have shoes and the snow is not too deep. 
 Reading and writing and the art of " ciphering " were to be 
 walked after, and these were treasures none too common in the 
 cabins of the earlier settlers of Indiana. It is possible that Abe 
 did his walking more easily than the rest ; but it is matter of 
 record that before long he could " spell down" all the other 
 scholars of Hazel Dorsey, and could read anything he could lay 
 his hands on. 
 
 The first term of study was a short one, for the winter 
 melted rapidly away, and with the coming of settled spring 
 weather the school had to be closed, that teacher and pupils 
 alike might turn their attention to planting corn and potatoes. 
 
 The school at the log schoolhouse on Little Pigeon Creek 
 was closed indeed, and would not open again until another win- 
 ter ; but the one which Abraham Lincoln was really attending 
 could not shut its door at all, and the lessons went on at all 
 hours. 
 
 In the first place, the body which contained him was grow- 
 ing at such a tremendous rate that he was a man in height be- 
 fore he was fifteen years old, and by the time he passed his 
 seventeenth birthday he was as tall as he ever would be. That 
 is, he stood, barefooted, six feet and four inches of thin and 
 bony awkwardness. It was just such a body, doubtless, as was 
 required for the residence of such a boy as he was. There 
 would never be any great amount of mere polish or elegance 
 about either it or him ; but vast stores of natural strength were 
 forming in both, capable of undergoing severe training for the 
 work before them. 
 
 Good Mrs. Lincoln very soon despaired of keeping Abraham 
 in clothes that would fit him. It was not so much that he 
 wore things out too rapidly, as that he grew out of and away 
 from whatever she could put upon him. There was yet an- 
 other difficulty. Cloth of any kind was scarce and dear, and a 
 great part of any boy's apparel had to be made of buckskin,
 
 38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 and that is a material which can hardly cease to shrink and 
 shrivel. So, while Abe's long legs were continually lengthen- 
 ing, his buckskin trowsers were continually diminishing, from 
 day to day, in their capacity for holding or covering the legs 
 they were provided for. However loose they might be when 
 made, a few wettings in dewy corn-fields and rainy woods, or 
 in fording the creeks and sloughs, would surely produce a 
 tighter fit than any tailor could plan. 
 
 Stockings were out of the question at any time ; and when, 
 on special occasions or in cold weather, the luxury of shoes was 
 to be indulged in, these were always of a low-quartered leather- 
 saving pattern. All shoemaking among the settlers was done 
 at home or by some neighbor who had picked up enough of 
 the cobbler's art to put together such materials as might be 
 brought to him. 
 
 There was apt to be an ample length of bare blue ankles be- 
 tween the lower border of Abe's tight buckskins and the tops 
 of his home-made shoes ; and this was a peculiarity of his ward- 
 robe which clung to him for years and years. Nevertheless, 
 except for growing out of it so fast and so far, he did not dif- 
 fer much in his apparel from any other boy among the settlers 
 near Little Pigeon Creek. Some of the very latest arrivals 
 might wear for a season the garments they came in, but in due 
 course of wear and tear these were sure to be replaced by the 
 regular backwoods uniform. 
 
 The boys were somewhat worse off than the girls with refer- 
 ence to clothing, for a gown of linsey-woolsey or of homespun 
 jeans, no matter how skimp its pattern or how high its waist 
 might be, could be provided with "tucks" to let out, from 
 time to time, like the reefs of a sail. The forest maidens, how- 
 ever, were as independent as their brothers in the matter of 
 shoes and stockings. Strict economy required that, in all good 
 weather and in some that was a little bad, a young lady going 
 to meeting or to an evening party should carry her shoes in 
 her hand until near her destination. It was even expected that
 
 A GENUINE START. 39 
 
 if, in the course of an evening, there should be over-much danc- 
 ing performed, she should take them off again, lest a good pair 
 of shoes should be wasted frivolously. 
 
 Social features were steadily increasing in number and im- 
 portance, now there were so many neighbors within a few 
 miles of Mr. Gentry's store. The beginning of a village had 
 been fairly made, and religious meetings of several kinds, and 
 parties and merry-makings of a great many kinds, broke rapidly 
 in upon the old-time monotony of frontier life. The woods 
 had ceased to be a wilderness.
 
 40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 BORROWED TREASURES. 
 
 The Art of Story-Telling The Wonders in Books The Uses of Written 
 Words. 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN was just the kind of boy to speedily 
 make the acquaintance of every new family as soon as he 
 heard of its arrival. 
 
 It was not only that he was of an eminently sociable disposi- 
 tion. His few weeks of training under Hazel Dorsey had once 
 more brought to his mind a great and mysterious fact of 
 human life, and its meaning was taking feverish possession of 
 him. There were books ! 
 
 He had seen a very few, and knew but little about the man- 
 ner of their making ; and even less definite were his ideas of 
 what might be in them. There was something weird and 
 wonderful in their very existence, and there was no telling 
 what wonder of a book a new family might own and bring 
 with them. He already knew of men who had brought whole 
 libraries ; two, three, four, perhaps half a dozen books gath- 
 ered under one roof. It was worth while to walk a few miles, 
 and then to talk around and bear a helping hand at chopping or 
 something, to make acquaintance with human beings from 
 whom such a treasure as a bound volume might perhaps be 
 afterwards borrowed. 
 
 The imprinted learning of the backwoods, fact and fiction, 
 history and humor, travels from memory to memory by word 
 of mouth. Abe already knew and could tell more stories of 
 all sorts than any other scholar of Hazel Dorsey ; but he came 
 home one day from a borrowing expedition with a book that 
 could beat him completely. He had found a copy of ^Esops >
 
 SORROWED TREASURES. 41 
 
 Fables, and he was to learn from it how to put sharp points to 
 his stories, at need, and make invaluable weapons of them. 
 Before he had read that book through more than a score of times, 
 he could make over into an arrowy " fable," with a moral of 
 some kind or a sting at the end of it, almost any anecdote or 
 incident with which his memory was stored, and JEsop had 
 been his schoolmaster in the subtle art of doing it well. 
 
 A good story-teller was an important public acquisition, and 
 Abe's popularity was assured in all the wide and growing 
 circle of his acquaintances. 
 
 The Fables were a borrowed book, and had to be returned in 
 time ; but before long their place was filled by a story-teller of 
 a very different kind, sure to leave behind him an equally in- 
 delible mark on the mind of his young reader. 
 
 Abe's new prize came near getting him into disgrace for 
 neglecting his share of the growing corn. How could a boy 
 do justice to a corn-field with such a treat awaiting him in his 
 mother's cupboard at the house ? 
 
 An English tinker had written it : a low fellow who spent 
 many years of his life in jail for using his tongue too freely. 
 His name was John Bunyan, and he could hardly have been 
 poorer if he had settled in Indiana before it became a State. 
 Still, he had written the " Pilgrim's Progress," and Abe Lincoln 
 had now borrowed a stray copy of it. Before that book went 
 home, Abe knew it almost by heart. It was impossible to do 
 that without learning a great deal, even if a dull and unim- 
 pressible boy had been the learner ; and the lessons taught by 
 Bunyan through that marvelous pilgrimage were the very 
 lessons Abe Lincoln's education thus far had left him in need 
 of. All the life around him, from his cradle, had been and 
 still was coarse, rude, earthy, sensuous, to the last degree sor- 
 did and unspiritual. 
 
 Other books turned up here and there, and the family 
 Bible at home was an unfailing resource to Abe for every- 
 thing but theology.
 
 42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 The summer and fall went by and winter came, but no 
 school came with it. For some reason Hazel Dorsey failed to 
 gather again his scattered pupils, and it was a full year more 
 before the little log seminary could renew its usefulness. 
 Then came a new teacher with many new ways. Mr. Andrew 
 Crawford saw at once that the young people who came troop- 
 ing around him were in need of other things as well as reading 
 and writing, or even arithmetic. His own scholarship was 
 equal to reasonable demands, and he could carry them as far as 
 the " rule of three," but he could appease no hunger for any 
 higher mathematics. Such merely ornamental branches as 
 grammar and geography were not insisted on by the parents 
 who employed him, but he was willing to add, of his own free 
 gift, other and valuable instruction. From the outset he be- 
 gan to teach them " manners," and no such thing had been 
 heard of before in all that settlement. Every pupil was taught 
 and drilled in the proper method of getting into a room and 
 getting out of it, with all the kindred niceties of making intro- 
 ductions and acquaintanceships. There was abundant fun in 
 it for the boys and girls ; and the next best thing to that was 
 Mr. Crawford's great attention to the correctness of their 
 spelling. 
 
 It was not long before Abe's book-training began to show 
 its fruits. He was acknowledged to be the leader of the school 
 in the matter of putting together the right letters to make up 
 a word. He became, in fact, a sort of good-natured walking 
 dictionary for the rest, and it was at times needful to turn so 
 willing a prompter out of doors during contested matches or 
 perplexing recitations. 
 
 One day the spelling-class embraced nearly the entire school, 
 and Abe had been duly turned out, after a terrific threat from Mr. 
 Crawford that he would keep his victims there all night if they 
 failed to give the correct spelling of the hard word " defied." 
 There was indeed work before a mob of young people every 
 soul of whom was possessed with a conviction that the verbal
 
 BORROWED TREASURES. 43 
 
 stumbling-block had a " y" in it. All around the class it went, 
 and half-way around again but just as it reached a favorite 
 of his named Polly Roby, there was Abe's head at the open 
 window behind the master, with a finger in one eye and a sug- 
 gestive wink in the other. 
 
 Polly's quick wits caught the hint ; the awful word was con- 
 quered in a second, and Andrew Crawford was sure there had 
 been no unfair assistance given by Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 There was one other department of that primitive schooling 
 in which Abe stood all alone. He was the only scholar who 
 insisted on turning his 'writing-lessons into any kind of " com- 
 positions." It was altogether out of Andrew Crawford's line 
 and beyond him. He would not have done any such thing 
 himself, and he would not encourage in wild literary extrava- 
 gance a lot of children whose lif e-business was to be the raising 
 of corn and the making of pork. Perhaps even Abe might 
 not have undertaken it so very early if he had not found a 
 work of common humanity calling for the use of his pen. 
 
 There was not an animal in the woods for which he had not 
 a kindly feeling. Even the woodchucks he dug out of their 
 holes were in a manner his neighbors, and the land-turtles got 
 out of his way, so far as any danger to them was concerned, 
 mainly because he might carelessly step on them with his im- 
 mense feet. The other boys were not by any means so tender- 
 hearted, and a terrapin marching away from some of them 
 with a live coal on his back offered a fine subject to Abe for 
 an essay upon " Cruelty to Animals." 
 
 It was first given orally to the young savages who were mal- 
 treating the helpless terrapin. Then it came out in slowly 
 written sentences in Abe's copy-book. Then it grew and wid- 
 ened into a full-sized " composition," and Abe's career as a 
 writer had fairly begun. He had learned to spell words, and 
 now he had discovered for himself the great art of making 
 them stand in effective order upon paper. Still, paper was 
 scarce, and it was necessary to be exceedingly economical in
 
 44 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the use of it. No word could go down upon such precious 
 material until the writer felt very sure it was the best one he 
 could use in that place, and no more could be employed than 
 were needed to do the work in hand and express the exact 
 meaning intended. The scarcity of paper, therefore, was itself 
 an excellent teacher, continually forcing the young essayist to 
 avoid the most common fault of all writers, trained and un- 
 trained. 
 
 There were ways to be invented, however, of overcoming 
 the paper difficulty, in part, and of still obtaining an idea of 
 how any given sentence would look in written characters. 
 There was the great wooden shovel in the chimney-corner 
 every night. The surface of it could be shaved clean with his 
 father's "drawing-knife," and then, by the light of the fire, 
 aided by that of a small torch of hickory or birch bark, the 
 whole face of the shovel could be covered with figures and let- 
 ters. By day and out of doors a basswood shingle would an- 
 swer the same purpose, with a piece of charcoal for a crayon. 
 A matter could be written and rewritten, and anything pro- 
 nounced worthy of preservation could be carefully transferred 
 with pen and ink to the pages of an old blank-book which was 
 one of Abe's choicest treasures. Not all the contents of that 
 miscellaneous collection were original, for it contained also 
 copious quotations from every volume its owner managed to 
 borrow. 
 
 More of these were now coming within reach, from time to 
 time. Some of the books themselves were a kind of human 
 being. No other settler came into that neighborhood in all 
 those days who was more a real man, come to a real new coun- 
 try, than was Robinson Crusoe, and Abe learned most 
 thoroughly all the ingenious methods of that wonderful cast- 
 away in dealing with dangers and difficulties. 
 
 Blackhawk and his warriors were only a few days' march 
 northwestward, and, although there was no " man Friday" to be 
 obtained among them, the print of a moccasined foot in the
 
 BORROWED TREASURES. 45 
 
 mud would still have been a thing to cause alarm and astonish- 
 ment, if found. 
 
 Yet another good arrival brought with him a " History of the 
 United States," and this afforded abundant employment for the 
 fire-shovel and the scrap-book. 
 
 There were other wonders of literature which were not to be 
 borrowed, but to be read by the friendly light of the fireplaces 
 from which they could not be carried away. Among these 
 was a small book which told of more wonderful achievements 
 than even the History, for it was Sindbad the Sailor's own ac- 
 count of his perilous voyages. 
 
 There was teaching in that book of a specially important 
 nature, for it told of lands and peoples heretofore not so much 
 as dreamed of by the overgrown stepson of Mrs. Sally Lincoln. 
 It helped Robinson Crusoe to make the world wider for him ; 
 and when spring came and there were grass and dry leaves in 
 the woods to lie down upon, he could loaf under the trees and 
 dream of ships and oceans and far-away countries where all 
 things were so different from the life he had known in Ken- 
 tucky and Indiana. 
 
 He was now fifteen years old, and of course he had heard of 
 George Washington. He knew by oral traditions, vague and 
 fragmentary, that the Father of his Country had at one time 
 lived in the backwoods and had fought hard battles with the 
 Indians. His delight was great, therefore, when one day old 
 Josiah Crawford, the crustiest of his neighbors, consented to 
 let him carry home a copy of Weems's " life of "Washington." 
 It was a small, thin book in a sheepskin cover, but no other or 
 greater biographer has ever dealt with the deeds of any hero 
 in a spirit of more exuberant enthusiasm. It was slow, intense, 
 instructive reading. Each page had to be dwelt upon and gone 
 over and over, and there were copious notes to be made on 
 wood and copied into the scrap-book. Bedtime was a hateful 
 intruder upon such delight as that, and it was hard to be forced 
 away from it and compelled to lift himself, peg by peg, into
 
 46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the dark loft above, and separated even from the very paper 
 and binding. 
 
 Night after night, with special care, the book was deposited 
 upon a little shelf against the wall of the room below. There 
 were two stout pegs in the log, and a shingle laid across them 
 made the shelf. The book should have been in safety there, if 
 anywhere. It was a pity, however, that Abe should have 
 failed to examine the mud " chinking" of those logs, for it had 
 fallen out just above the shelf, leaving a crack which was full 
 of peril to literature. There came a night, when he and 
 Dennis Hanks were sound asleep, that was full of wind and 
 rain. Gust after gust drove in the flying water through the 
 cranny in the wall, and the shelf was flooded and the precious 
 book was drowned. 
 
 When morning came, there lay the soaked and ruined relics 
 of the only " Life of Washington" in all that part of Indiana, 
 It was of little use to dry the leaves in the sun. Abe did so 
 with sorrowful care, and then he bore them home to their owner ; 
 but old Josiah refused to receive them. 
 
 " Keckon I'll have to make it good somehow," said Abe, 
 mournfully. " What's it wuth ? " 
 
 " Seventy-five cents ; and I don't know whar I'll git another." 
 
 He might as well have said seventy-five thousand, and Abe 
 very frankly told him so. 
 
 " Well, Abe," said old Josiah, at last, " seein' it's you, I tell 
 ye what I'll do. You pull fodder for me three days, at twenty- 
 five cents a day, and I'll call it squar." 
 
 " I'll do it, and I'll jest keep what thar is left of the book." 
 
 It had been a well-thumbed, dog's-eared affair, and Crawford 
 had sold it to Abe, after this fashion, at a remarkably high 
 price. So high, in fact, that Abe's remorse did not prevent 
 his sense of justice from rebelling even while he consented to 
 come and pull the fodder. He and Josiah Crawford were never 
 more good friends, and more than a little good-tempered " get- 
 ting even" had to be performed for a long time afterwards.
 
 FRONTIER TRAINING. 47 
 
 CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 FRONTIER TRAINING-. 
 
 Oratorical Beginnings Frontier Politics Hiring Out A Wedding and a 
 Funeral Studies among Plain People A Glimpse into Law. 
 
 Now that there were so many settlers, the religious gather- 
 ings at the Little Pigeon Creek meeting-house became more 
 frequent. Whenever there was preaching of any kind, Mrs. 
 Sally Lincoln was sure to go, and to insist on taking her hus- 
 band with her. It made small difference to Tom, indeed, to 
 what sect the preacher of the day might belong. He himself 
 had been, in his day, a member of several sects, and not a very 
 shining ornament to either of them. No change whatever was 
 required when he moved from one into another. 
 
 The young people were frequently left at home ; but they 
 had preaching among them nevertheless, albeit with more of 
 rough fun than profitable doctrine in the sermons. No sooner 
 were their elders out of sight among the trees than the family 
 Bible would come down from its shelf, and Abe knew its con- 
 tents quite well enough to find any text he wanted. 
 
 " Now, girls," he would say, " you and John and Dennis do 
 the cryin'. I'll do the preachin'." 
 
 A hymn or so was given out and sung, and the sermon was 
 only too likely to be a taking off of the style and eccentricities 
 of some traveling exhorter they had heard at the meeting- 
 house. Not always, indeed ; for Abe once preached a sermon, 
 on his favorite theme of " cruelty to animals," which was re- 
 membered for many years by one little girl, a neighbor, who 
 was that day a member of his childish congregation. 
 
 The born orator within him was coming to the surface, and
 
 48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 preaching in the house on Sundays led very naturally to stump- 
 speaking in the fields on other days in times of political ex- 
 citement. Abe began his training in that school before he was 
 sixteen years old. He advanced so rapidly that before long he 
 could draw the hands in a corn-field away from their husking 
 at any moment by the droll originality of his boyish addresses. 
 
 It was a positive relief to a young fellow who was thinking 
 so much and so hard to talk out some part of his internal fer- 
 mentation. Political affairs occupied a large share of the 
 thoughts and conversations of the Pigeon Creek people, and 
 were attended to from house to house as the best possible ex- 
 cuse for a visit and chat. 
 
 A whole family could go over and make a call upon another 
 family, and visitors were always welcome. There was the 
 freest hospitality. If there were not chairs and benches 
 enough, the floor was an excellent place for man or woman to 
 sit down upon. If apples were scarce, or if the supply had 
 given out, a plate of raw potatoes or turnips, nicely washed, 
 could be offered instead, with a bottle of whisky : and there 
 was the very soul of liberality in the offering. 
 
 There was one feature of frontier hospitality, indeed, to 
 which Abraham Lincoln never at any time took kindly. He 
 could not bring himself to the use of any description of intoxi- 
 cating liquor, and in due time he both spoke and wrote against 
 what he perceived to be a social curse and scourge. Such a 
 body as his might perhaps have been persuaded to accept the 
 common custom, but the clear common-sense of his inner boy 
 rebelled and prevented him from acquiring a taste for any- 
 thing containing alcohol. 
 
 Body and mind, he was now growing with tremendous 
 rapidity ; but the lessons he was receiving did not come by way 
 of any professional school-teacher after he triumphed over 
 " manners" and the spelling-book under Andrew Crawford. 
 
 One lesson of life began with a wedding in the old log- 
 house, when Nancy, or rather Sally, Hanks Lincoln reached her
 
 FRONTIER TRAINING. 49 
 
 eighteenth year. It was the merriest day the place had seen 
 since Tom Lincoln halted his tired horses on the knoll and 
 planned his first " pole-shelter." Sally became Mrs. Grigsby, 
 and left her father's cabin to live in that of her husband. 
 
 It was not too far away for Abe to make frequent visits to 
 his married sister ; but within the year the young bride was 
 removed to a more distant country, and Aaron Grigsby was a 
 widower. 
 
 Abraham was now the sole remaining child of Mrs. Nancy 
 Hanks Lincoln, but he was as a favorite son to his loving step- 
 mother. The shadows grew deeper upon his queer, strongly 
 marked face whenever it was in repose, but there was some- 
 what less of that than formerly. The great sociability of his, 
 nature was called into more frequent activity as time went on.. 
 His love of fun and his peculiar capacity for making it ren- 
 dered him a welcome visitor throughout the scattered settle- 
 ment. He was liked by all women old and young for his kind- 
 liness, and he was the most popular of all the idlers who strolled 
 from their cabins and corn-fields into what had now become the 
 village of Gentryville. Idling, in fact, at all seasons when no 
 work is pressing, is one of the fixed institutions of a new coun- 
 try, and this may in part be owing to the amount and nature 
 of the compulsory hard work. 
 
 As for Tom Lincoln, the older he grew the stronger became 
 his tendency to shift the drudgeries of his farm upon Abe and 
 John Johnston and Dennis Hanks, but his thrifty and stirring 
 wife insisted that the work should be done by some one. Abe 
 did his duty by her, as she affectionately boasted in after-years, 
 but he was now developing a strong preference for working 
 upon any other piece of ground than the Lincoln farm. He 
 chose to hire himself out to other farmers for any kind of 
 labor, even if his father got most of the benefit by receiving 
 his wages for him. His services were always in request. He 
 could chop more wood, handle more hay, husk more corn, and 
 lift a heavier weight than any other young fellow to be had
 
 50 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 for the hiring, and he was perpetually good-humored and 
 obliging. He was a favorite with all children, and their 
 mothers liked to have around the house a " hand" who, after 
 his field-work was over, was equally ready to 'tend baby, go for 
 a bucket of water, tell a story, or recite any required amount 
 of poetry. His memory held everything tenaciously and in 
 condition for instant use. It was stored not only with the 
 miscellaneous contents of his scrap-book and with such pas- 
 sages of prose or verse as had impressed him in his reading, 
 but also with every telling jingle he had heard. If he went 
 to meeting, he could afterwards repeat the sermon almost word 
 for word. The very narrowness of his singular course of study 
 had put his naturally good memory into excellent training, and 
 he did not as yet know so many things, acquired either by sight 
 or hearing, that his mind had not ample space and elbow-room 
 for all of them. 
 
 From house to house and from farm to farm the tall strip- 
 ling went the rounds as he might be hired, little thinking or 
 caring how thorough a knowledge he was by that means ob- 
 taining of the character of the different classes of people who 
 -were filling up the great West. He could but study them un- 
 consciously as he went and came, and he was learning more 
 about them than some of them knew about themselves. He 
 knew from whence they had emigrated, and how people lived 
 in those distant communities. He became familiar with habits, 
 prejudices, superstitions, religious beliefs, political ideas, social 
 distinctions, varied hopes and fears, and aspirations and disap- 
 pointments. He learned, too, somewhat of different national- 
 ities and the races of which these settlers were born or had 
 descended, and to what extent they had become intelligent 
 members of a self-governing community. 
 
 He could not know at the time through what a school he 
 was passing, but every step of his after-life proved that not 
 any of those hard lessons-by-the-way, so useless to another man, 
 had been wasted upon him. There was no manner of miracle
 
 FRONTIER TRAINING. 51 
 
 in his intimate knowledge of the thoughts and ways and feel- 
 ings of " the plain people." 
 
 He began now to seek and find drier and more difficult 
 studies. A friend of his named David Turnham had been 
 made " acting constable" of the settlement, and had purchased 
 a copy of the " Revised Statutes of Indiana" to guide him in 
 the duties of his office. David was firm in the idea that a con- 
 stable should always have his printed instructions at hand for 
 reference, and the book was not to be borrowed, but Abe was 
 welcome to come to the owner's house and read the laws. It 
 was very different reading from Robinson Crusoe or "Weems's 
 "Washington, but it was pored over none the less persistently. 
 Abraham Lincoln was beginning his legal studies, but with 
 only a faint conception of what a lawyer might be. Getting 
 law from such a book as that was something like getting 
 wheat-flour or corn-meal from a horse-mill, such as they all 
 resorted to on Pigeon Creek. There was but one within 
 reach ; and when a farmer went to it with a load of grain, he 
 set his own horses at the work of turning the mill when his 
 turn came. A full day's hard toil turned out about fifteen 
 bushels, without any "bolting." All that kind of finishing 
 was to be done at home. Still, it was better than a mere 
 hand-mill, as that had been an improvement on the primitive 
 mortar and pestle. Some of Abe's law-study, indeed, must 
 more have resembled the work of the mortar and pestle, and 
 all results were much like the flour from the horse-mill. A 
 kind of learning was in them, but all unsifted, and his strong 
 memory retained the veriest " bran" of the statutes of Indiana. 
 
 Abe was less and less at home nowadays, but his loving 
 stepmother by no means lost sight of him. She had strong 
 hopes and convictions concerning his future, and she encour- 
 aged him continually. She well deserved the hearty affection 
 with which he accepted her entirely as his " mother." He 
 gave her so much and so steadily, through all that time, that 
 when, many long years afterwards, her great, gloomy, fun-lov- 
 
 UBRARV
 
 52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 ing boy had lived out his useful life, and a whole people stood 
 in tears around his coffin, she was able to say, between her 
 own sobs, that he never gave her an unkind word or look or 
 one solitary act of disobedience. 
 
 So it was a woman, and a " mother," who gave him his most 
 important help during those his earlier school-days, and to 
 whom he was most largely indebted for the good use of all the 
 rest. His development could not have been the same with her 
 good work omitted.
 
 SO Y-OF-ALL- WORK, 53 
 
 CHAPTEE VIIL 
 
 BOY-OF-ALL-WORK. 
 
 Toil, Fun and Frolic Books and Speaking Matches A Severe Lesson in 
 Caste Practical Teachings on Temperance 1825. 
 
 THE Lincoln cabin was a small one. So large a family could 
 hardly make themselves comfortable in one room and a loft, 
 now that its younger members were so fast growing towards 
 maturity. The farm, too, was limited in its capacity, and so 
 there were reasons why Abe was permitted to have his own 
 way in the matter of " working out." His longest hiring at 
 any one place began in the year 1825, when he went to work 
 for James Taylor, who owned the ferry across the Ohio Kiver, 
 at the mouth of Anderson's Creek. There were books to be 
 had at Taylor's, and new ideas were to be picked up from the 
 people of all sorts who from time to time were passengers in 
 the rude ferryboat. 
 
 There were duties for Abe in great abundance, for he was 
 man-of-all-work about the house and farm. Perhaps the most 
 distasteful of all was grinding corn in a hand-mill, or grating 
 the green ears for Mrs. Taylor's cookery. His hatred of 
 cruelty to animals did not at all stand in the way of his being 
 a good hand at butchering hogs in " killing time." His feel- 
 ings, however, or his books, or his many industries, or all com- 
 bined, prevented him from forming any taste for hunting. 
 Game was so plentiful that the smaller varieties were a pest 
 to the farmers. They were slaughtered to get rid of them, 
 rather than for the table. Deer, bears, wild turkeys, were 
 made to be eaten, and formed an important part of any man's 
 calculations for his supply of provisions for the year. Wild-
 
 54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 cats and even panthers were still sufficiently numerous to 
 render uncomfortable at times the idea of lonely walks after 
 nightfall. 
 
 It was a wild country if judged by standards accepted in 
 older communities, but a change was creeping over the ways 
 and manners of the Gentryville and Pigeon Creek settlers. 
 They were becoming somewhat crowded by each other. Here 
 and there were farms whose borders actually touched, and 
 there was much more fencing required than in former days. 
 There was greater sociability, of course, and there were larger 
 gatherings at the meeting-house on Sundays. Eight along 
 with these, in growing size and frequency, came the corn- 
 shuckings, log-rollings, chopping-bees, shooting-matches, dances, 
 and other contrivances for getting the neighbors together for 
 a frolic. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln was not the boy to willingly miss a frolic 
 of any kind, and as a general thing he was pretty sure of in- 
 vitations, for he had faculties and accomplishments which were 
 in demand. To his old-time capacity as a story-teller he was now 
 adding a turn for satire and travesty, which now and then got 
 him into difficulties, for his love of fun forbade him to spare 
 anything worth taking off, and his reverence was as yet an un- 
 developed part of his character. Even in carefully listening 
 to a sermon, he was too apt to remember with it every oddity 
 and eccentricity of the preacher, and the whole would soon be 
 reproduced, with ludicrous precision of gesture and intonation, 
 before the uproarious congregations at the merry-makings. 
 There was only too much that was odd and even grotesque in 
 the frontier preaching of that day, good and useful as were 
 some of the preachers, and the irreverent mimic had ample 
 matter for his performances. 
 
 From reciting the poetry of others there was but a step to 
 an attempt at manufacturing verses on his own account. It 
 was not long before the ambitious boy of all work and de- 
 vourer of all books made for himself a local reputation as a
 
 BO Y- OF- ALL- WORE. 65 
 
 rhymster. Almost any story, or any satirical attack upon an 
 obnoxious neighbor, could be given a better point or a sharper 
 sting by being thrown into the shape of a rude but jingling bal- 
 lad. It was easy enough, moreover, to secure an attentive 
 audience for that kind of " border minstrelsy." 
 
 Excepting religious services and funerals, there could hardly 
 be a gathering of such a population without a part of the en- 
 tertainment consisting of trials of bodily strength and skill 
 among the younger and even the middle-aged men. Into 
 these Abe entered with enthusiasm. There were many who 
 could beat him with the rifle, but it began to be discovered 
 that as he attained his full size, and his tough muscles filled 
 out a little upon his bony frame, the rivals were fewer and 
 fewer who could hope to excel him at wrestling, jumping, throw- 
 ing the " maul " or heavy hammer, or in lifting a dead weight. 
 
 Physical power was of value for many reasons. The men 
 upon whom his wit turned the laugh were not always con- 
 tented to let the matter pass as a joke ; but even the readiest 
 of rough-and-tumble fighters was less prompt to quarrel with a 
 young fellow who could laughingly pick up three or four 
 times his weight and walk off with it. Nevertheless, every 
 now and then, and even when trying to act as a peacemaker, 
 Abe was sure to find a fight on his hands. The cheapness and 
 abundance of whisky was generally at the bottom of such 
 troubles ; and they served him a good turn, by impressing him 
 more and more deeply with the fact, then generally ignored, 
 that a drinking or drunken man has little prospect of success 
 in any competition with one who is wise enough to let drink 
 alone. Frolic as much as he might, and be never so popular at 
 all merry-makings, his somber and serious " inner man" was 
 master always, and sure to keep him steady. As for mere 
 trials of strength, even if forced upon him by the anger of 
 others, they did but help him to acquire an exhaustless fund of 
 confidence in his ability to pull himself and his friends safely 
 through any difficulty which might be brought upon them.
 
 56 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 More books were coming now. A man named Jones opened 
 an opposition store at Gentryville, and he took a personal lik- 
 ing to Abe Lincoln. Apart from mere friendship, he saw that 
 so popular a youngster could not fail to attract customers, and 
 so, for a time that sufficed for reading every book owned by 
 Mr. Jones, Abe acted as a sort of clerk and salesman for him. 
 He kept no books of account and did not acquire the finer 
 mysteries of merchandise ; but he could pack and unpack 
 goods, attend to customers, crack jokes with idlers, keep the 
 place looking busy, and increase his peculiar knowledge of the 
 world he was to live in. It was every way as valuable to him, 
 as a piece of schooling, as would have been another winter 
 term under Andrew Crawford. 
 
 During this part of his motley education Abe made himself 
 the star orator of the Gentryville " speaking-matches." These 
 were carried on in a rude kind of debating club, and the range 
 of topics discussed was a wide one. Both the consciousness 
 and the love of oratorical power began to grow strong within 
 him. At the same time he was thirsting for a deeper knowl- 
 edge of law and justice than could be sifted from the Revised 
 Statutes of Indiana. 
 
 The county-seat of "Warrick County was but fifteen miles 
 from Gentryville. Courts were held there at certain seasons 
 of the year, and judges sat to hear causes, and juries listened 
 to testimony and arguments and rendered verdicts. 
 
 There, too, men were tried for crimes, and some received 
 the penalty of their evil deeds. Others, again, came forth free 
 and in a manner distinguished, with the thrilling story of their 
 trial and escape to tell ever afterwards, as the choicest bit of 
 frontier history known to them. It was no small thing for 
 any man that he had been actually tried and acquitted of some- 
 thing serious, and he took a kind of rank proportioned to the 
 magnitude and peril of his ordeal. 
 
 A little walk of fifteen miles in the early morning, and with 
 no more to walk in returning after nightfall, could hardly in-
 
 BO Y- OF-ALL- WORK. 57 
 
 terfere with the attendance at court of a student combining 
 Abe's length of limb with his eagerness for law. He was sure 
 to be among the audience in the court-room whenever he 
 could escape from other duties. Not the judge himself, nor 
 any jury, attended more zealously the fortunes of every case 
 he heard. 
 
 One day a man was on trial for murder, and had secured 
 for his defence a lawyer of more than common ability named 
 John Breckinridge. Abraham Lincoln had been exceedingly 
 interested in the case from the beginning; but when the 
 time came for the prisoner's counsel to speak in his defence, 
 there was a surprise prepared for the young Gentryville de- 
 bater. He had never, until that day, listened to a really 
 good argument, delivered by a man of learning and eloquence, 
 but he had prepared himself to know and profit by such an ex- 
 perience when it came to him. He listened as if he had him- 
 self been the prisoner whose life depended upon the success of 
 Mr. Breckinridge in persuading the jury of his innocence. 
 
 Other juries, long afterwards, were to learn how profound 
 and successful had been the study the rough backwoods boy 
 was then giving to the great art of persuading the minds of 
 men. Millions of his fellow-citizens were to bear witness to 
 the capacity he was then developing of so uttering a thought 
 that those who heard or read the utterance could never after- 
 wards tear that thought out of their memories. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln learned much from the great speech ; but 
 he had yet a deep and bitter lesson to receive that day. The 
 lines of social caste were somewhat rigidly drawn at that time. 
 A leading lawyer of good family like Mr. Breckinridge was a 
 " gentleman," and a species of great man not to be carelessly 
 addressed by half-clad boors from the new settlements. 
 
 Abe forgot all that ; perhaps not knowing it very well. He 
 could not repress his enthusiasm over that magnificent appeal 
 to the judge and jury. The last sentence of the speech had 
 hardly died away before he was pushing through the throng
 
 58 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 towards the gifted orator. Mr. Breckinridge was walking 
 grandly out of the court-room, when there stood in his path a 
 gigantic, solemn-visaged, beardless clodhopper, reaching out a 
 long coatless arm, with an immense hard hand at the end of 
 it, while an agitated voice expressed the heartiest commenda- 
 tion of the ability and eloquence of his plea for his client. 
 
 Breckinridge was a small-souled man in spite of his mental 
 power and his training, for he did but glance in proud amaze- 
 ment at the shabby, presumptuous boy, and then pass stupidly 
 on without speaking. He had imparted priceless instruction 
 to a fellow who had yet but a faint perception of the artificial 
 barriers before him. 
 
 The two met again, at the city of Washington, in the year 
 1862, under other circumstances, and then the President of the 
 United States again complimented Mr. Breckinridge upon the 
 excellence of his speech in the Indiana murder-case. 
 
 The precise information conveyed to Abe, whether or not 
 he mentally put it into form, was that he was a "poor white" 
 and of no account; a species of human trash to whom the 
 respect due to all recognized manhood did not belong. He 
 forgave the man who told him what he was, but he never ceased 
 to profit by the stinging, wholesome information. 
 
 It was but a little while afterwards, while he was tempora- 
 rily employed by old Josiah Crawford, and when he had wor- 
 ried good Mrs. Crawford overmuch by the fun and uproar he 
 created in her kitchen, that she asked him, 
 
 " Now, Abe, what on earth do you s'pose'll ever become of 
 ye ? What'll you be good for if you keep a-goin' on in this 
 way?" 
 
 ""Well," slowly responded Abe, "I reckon I'm goin' to be 
 President of the United States one of these days." 
 
 He said it soberly enough. And that was not the only occasion 
 upon which there fell from his lips some strange, extravagant 
 expression of his inner thought that there was a great work 
 for him to do somewhere in the future. He could plow, chop
 
 BOY-OF-ALL-WORK 59 
 
 wood, 'tend store, do errands, make fun, now ; but he could all 
 the while feel that he was growing, growing, and that this 
 would not last forever. He could feel that the change continu- 
 ally going forward within him could not be with reference to 
 such a life as he was leading, or to such as he saw led by the 
 full-grown and elderly men around him. For him there was, 
 there must be, something more and higher, and he was blindly 
 reaching out after it, day by day ; but all the others deemed 
 him as one of themselves ; better than some, it might be, but 
 very much below any young man whose father could give him 
 a good farm and some hogs and a little ready money.
 
 60 ABBAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTEK IX. 
 
 THE FLATBOAT. 
 
 A Trading Voyage Life in the Southern States First View of Human 
 Slavery 1828. 
 
 ABE LINCOLN had made himself the best known and most 
 popular young fellow in all the region round about Gentryville ; 
 but although the whole country liked him, he did not at all like 
 the country. He was now nineteen years of age, but was still 
 subject to his father's authority, and Tom Lincoln was not the 
 man to surrender his legal right to the wages of his stalwart 
 son. All rates for farm-labor were low, however, and there was 
 none too much of it to be sold, at any price, in a community 
 where most men could do all their own work and have ample 
 time left for lounging at neighboring cabins or around the 
 village grocery. 
 
 Abe had long since given up the idea of earning a living be- 
 hind the counter of Jones's store, or any other that he knew of. 
 He was under bonds to his father, but he made an attempt to 
 obtain employment as a boat-hand on the river. His age was 
 against him in his first effort, but his opportunity was coming 
 to him. In the month of March, 1828, he hired himself to Mr. 
 Gentry, the great man of Gentryville. His duties were to be 
 mainly performed at Gentry's Landing, near Rockport, on the 
 Ohio River. There was a great enterprise on foot, or rather in 
 the water, at Gentry's Landing, for a natboat belonging to the 
 proprietor was loading with bacon and other produce for a 
 trading trip down the Mississippi to New Orleans. She was to 
 be under the command of young Allen Gentry, but would never 
 return to the Ohio, for flatboats are built to go down with the 
 stream and not for pulling against it.
 
 THE FLATBOAT. 61 
 
 Abe's hour for travel and adventure had at last arrived. He 
 was given the position of " bow-hand," at eight dollars a month 
 and rations, with a paid return-passage home on a steamboat. 
 It was a golden vision indeed, yet not so much for the money 
 as for the grand trip itself. 
 
 There was society at the " Landing ;" and while the boat was 
 taking on her cargo, her tall bow-hand improved his oppor- 
 tunities. 
 
 Miss Roby, whom he had known at Crawford's school, and 
 through whom he had saved the spelling-class from disaster, 
 was deeply interested in the success of that flatboat. Not a 
 great while after the completion of its one voyage she became 
 Mrs. Allen Gentry, and even now she found excuses and occa- 
 sions for coming on board to chat with the captain and with 
 his queer, fun-loving " crew." 
 
 "Abe," she said, late one afternoon, "the sun's going down." 
 
 "Reckon not," said Abe. ""We're coming up, that's all." 
 
 "Don't you s'pose I've got eyes?" 
 
 " Reckon so ; but it's the earth that goes round. The sun 
 keeps as still as a tree. "When we're swung around so we can't 
 see him any more, all the shine's cut off and we call it night." 
 
 " Abe, what a fool you are !" 
 
 It was all in vain to explain the matter any further. The 
 science of astronomy had not been taught at Crawford's, and 
 was not at all popular in Indiana. "Whatever sprinkling of it 
 Abe had found among his books, there was no use in trying 
 to spread its wild vagaries along the banks of the Ohio River. 
 He knew altogether too much for his time, and a mere flat- 
 boatman had no business to dispute the visible truth concern- 
 ing the daily habits of a contrivance so well known as the sun. 
 
 The flatboat was cast loose from her moorings in April, and 
 swept away down the river, with Abraham Lincoln as manager 
 of the forward oars. No such craft ever had a longer or 
 stronger pair of arms pledged to keep her blunt nose well di- 
 rected.
 
 62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 They drifted down the Ohio into the Mississippi, and on 
 down for hundreds of crooked miles, borne swiftly by the 
 muddy, irresistible current. It was a matter both of skill and 
 toil to effect a stoppage at a landing for trading purposes ; but 
 the required visits were made from place to place, and the 
 young merchants met with very encouraging success. The 
 worst enemy they had to contend with was counterfeit money, 
 for they were no experts in detecting the quality of either coin 
 or paper. In fact, there was so much more bad money than 
 good in circulation up and down the Mississippi that a with- 
 drawal of all the spurious stuff at any one time would have 
 caused a disastrous contraction of the currency. The all but 
 universal custom was to take what came and to pass it again 
 without inquiry, unless it were too hopelessly defective in its 
 external appearance. 
 
 It was a trip full of life-long consequences to Abraham Lin- 
 coln. Now again, for the first time since, a mere child, he 
 had emigrated from Kentucky, the budding statesman came 
 in contact with human slavery. He had seen much of what 
 could be done with white men in their degradation by poverty, 
 ignorance, and intemperance. He was now to observe the ef- 
 fect of all these upon black human 'beings held as property 
 and not regarded as men and women. He was in a fair state 
 of preparation for such a study. Already, with patient care, 
 he had written an essay on Temperance, the publication of 
 which in a country newspaper at a distance had stirred his 
 young ambition to fever heat. He had followed that with an- 
 other, the leading idea of which was the necessity of general 
 popular education ; and this too had been printed. In these he 
 had worked out and presented the results of his studies of hu- 
 man life among his neighbors. He was now to begin his 
 training and preparation for yet other essays which he was to 
 print, and for speeches which he was to deliver, in the great 
 and terrible years that were to come. 
 
 He was not to see the sunny side of plantation-life, such as
 
 TEE FLATBOAT. 63 
 
 it was. Slavery came before him in the shape of negroes under 
 the whip, engaged in loading and unloading river craft, or toil- 
 ing in unpaid drudgery among the hot fields along the banks. 
 He saw negroes chained in coffles, on their way to and from 
 the market, and he saw them bought and sold like cattle in the 
 slave-mart at 'New Orleans. Only the unpleasant, the brutally 
 offensive features of the black curse were permitted to make 
 their impression upon him, and the brand they left was an in- 
 effaceable scar. 
 
 All that was upon his inner boy, indeed, but it was to be in 
 a manner supplemented and represented by a mark in the body 
 he occupied. At the plantation of Madame Bushane, six miles 
 below Baton Rouge, the flatboat was moored for the night 
 against the landing, and the keepers were sound asleep in their 
 little kennel of a cabin. They slept until the sound of stealthy 
 footsteps on the deck aroused Allen Gentry, and he sprang to 
 his feet. There could be no doubt as to the cause of the dis- 
 turbance. A gang of negroes had boarded the boat for 
 plunder, and they would think lightly enough, now they were 
 discovered, of knocking the two traders on the head and throw- 
 ing them into the river. 
 
 " Bring the guns, Abe !" shouted Allen. " Shoot them 1" 
 
 The intruders were not to be scared away by even so alarm- 
 ing an outcry ; and in an instant more Abe Lincoln was among 
 them, not with a gun but with a serviceable club. They 
 fought well, and one of them gave their tall enemy a wound, 
 the scar of which he carried with him to his grave ; but his 
 strength and agility were too much for them. He beat them 
 all off the boat, not killing any one man, but convincing the 
 entire party that they had boarded the wrong " broad-horn." 
 
 The trip lasted about three months, going and coming, and 
 in June the two adventurers were at home again, well satisfied 
 with their success. Allen Gentry had profited the more 
 largely in the mere matter of money, but his bow-hand had 
 brought back with him treasures of information ; of experience
 
 64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 and education, gathered all the way from the month of Ander- 
 son's Creek, on the Ohio, to the very borders of the Gulf of 
 Mexico. The whole country and the world itself was yet to 
 be the better and the wiser for Abraham Lincoln's schooling 
 in his slow summer voyage down the Mississippi and up again. 
 Little he then dreamed that he was yet to direct the course of 
 fleets on that same water, of armies along the winding shores, 
 and the sieges of strong forts upon the bluffs and headlands. 
 
 His lessons were not all dark ones, doubtless, but the shad- 
 ows upon his face were deepening with so much to think of, 
 and there was small probability that he would again settle 
 cheerfully down to the dufl and empty life of the Little Pigeon 
 Creek neighborhood.
 
 "OF ILLINOIS: 
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 
 "OF ILLINOIS." 
 
 Another Migration Of full Age and Free Farmhand and Flatboatman 
 More Southern Studies 1830. 
 
 RAPIDLY as the young State of Indiana was filling up with 
 sturdy farmers from the older settlements, it was still a very 
 new country: And yet there was a newer and a more wonder- 
 ful region spread out beyond it. The vast expanse of prairie- 
 and forest between the Indiana line and the Mississippi River 
 had been formed into the State of Illinois. Men told marvel- 
 ous tales of its fertility, and of the ease with which farms, 
 could be opened on land where so much and so perfect a 
 clearing had been made by the hand of Nature. 
 
 John Hanks, a cousin of the Lincolns, had settled near Deca- 
 tur, in central Illinois, in 1828, and his letters fired the ima- 
 gination of Dennis Hanks to such a degree that he talked of 
 little else than prairie-farming. He even made a visit to 
 Illinois, and after his return the question of emigrating or not 
 was as good as settled for the whole family. Dennis had now 
 married the oldest daughter of Abe's good stepmother, and 
 had made a sort of start in lif e for himself, so that he was in 
 some degree an independent person ; but Abe had yet a few 
 short months to wait for manhood and freedom. 
 
 There were agencies at work to drive as well as to attract, 
 for the " milk-sick" had appeared again, and was at work with 
 terrible energy upon both beasts and human beings. In spite 
 of that, however, a whole year was consumed in the process of 
 getting away from the old place. 
 
 Another daughter of Mrs. Lincoln had married Levi Hall,
 
 66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 and the young couple joined the westward movement. Yet, 
 when land and corn and stock had been sold, one large wagon 
 held all the household stuff of the three families of Hanks, 
 Hall, and Lincoln. They waited until the latter part of the 
 winter of 1830, and Abraham Lincoln became of age but a 
 few days before they set out for Illinois. 
 
 A worse time of the year could hardly have been selected for 
 wagoning over western roads, but the choice of it was charac- 
 teristic of Tom Lincoln. The four yoke of oxen over which 
 Abe held the " gad " were barely sufficient to overcome the 
 unending succession of mudholes, sloughs, and rivers through 
 which the clumsy vehicle had to be hauled. It was an un- 
 usually good wagon for those days, although it was the very 
 first Tom Lincoln ever owned, and it held together well. 
 
 On the first day of March, 1830, after two weeks of slow 
 and laborious travel, the journey ended at the house of John 
 .Hanks near Decatur. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln had reached the scenes of his further edu- 
 cation, his trials and his triumphs for the thirty years which 
 then lay between him and his highest uses. He would need 
 all the time, and a good use of all his opportunities : and these 
 could hardly be fewer or poorer, nor could the obstacles to be 
 overcome confront him with more insurmountable stubborn- 
 ness, than those he had left behind him in the fever-haunted 
 woods of Indiana. 
 
 Some oppressions, indeed, were now removed. He was 
 twenty-one, and was a free man and a voter. He could come 
 and go as he pleased, and such wages as he might earn would 
 be all his own. Beyond that, however, there was little to be 
 said for him. Trade, profession, manual skill of any special 
 kind, he had none except the coarse arts of the wood-chopper, 
 the boatman, and rough farmer. 
 
 He was free, but his first work in Illinois was given to his 
 father, or rather to his well-beloved stepmother ; for he joined 
 the other males of the family in building a house on a high
 
 " OF ILLINOIS." 67 
 
 bank of the north fork of the Sangamon River, out of some 
 logs already cut there, and given them for the purpose by 
 John Hanks. 
 
 After the new homestead was completed and the family had 
 moved into it, Abe and Dennis plowed up fifteen acres of 
 prairie-land for corn, and split rails enough to fence it in. He 
 had done what he could to leave matters in good shape behind 
 him as he went out to toil for himself. But he severed no tie 
 of affection in his going. To his dying day he never ceased 
 to care for his " mother" and her comfort, and there was no 
 interruption of the full current of her love for him. 
 
 It was a great day for Abraham Lincoln when, all present 
 filial duty well performed, he once for all cut himself loose 
 from the heaviest part of the load he had carried for twenty- 
 one long years. The crushing weight of that oppression no 
 man can estimate. Not even if he has studied never so care- 
 fully what it is, and then was, to be a " poor white" in a new 
 settlement ; for different men take up different weights in the 
 same pack. Young Lincoln himself had but dim and formless 
 perceptions of the truth. Neither he nor any one else could 
 know or comprehend, moreover, the wonderful manner and 
 degree of the gain he had won from his very disadvantages. 
 No one could discern or measure the internal growth, as all 
 could the physical and external ; but a giant had been trained 
 and was still in training for a life-long wrestle with opposing 
 forces of every name and nature. 
 
 It was about the middle of spring before a beginning could 
 be made in the new career, but from that time forward Abe 
 ceased to make his father's house his home. Except that it 
 contained his mother, it could not be a home for him in any 
 true sense. He never had had one : only a log-shelter to eat 
 and sleep in ; while the cattle he drove were better provided 
 for, considering their natures and requirements. The life he 
 had led had shown him the insides of many homes, and the 
 life before him was to do the same : but none of these had been,
 
 68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 and none was to be, his own. There was that in his organism, 
 both as to its plan and size, which almost forbade the idea of 
 his fitting perfectly into any one house or family circle, so that 
 it should be to him much more than a sort of "boarding- 
 house." 
 
 He was now not only homeless but penniless, and it was 
 needful that he should make a start somewhere ; also that he 
 should begin in the line to which his previous life had accus- 
 tomed him. His capacity and willingness for hard work at 
 once secured him pretty steady employment. He did not love 
 such drudgery, but he did it faithfully, earning his daily bread 
 under a sort of perpetual protest, and all the while he was win- 
 ning for himself a local popularity similar to that which he had 
 enjoyed in Indiana. His friends, and even some of his rela- 
 tives, had a certain amount of faith in him, and were disposed 
 to force him into activity when an occasion offered. 
 
 There was a little political excitement in the fall of that 
 year, and the question of the improvement of the Sangamon 
 River for purposes of navigation was a leading topic of debate. 
 There was the usual stump-speaking, of course, and among the 
 orators who traveled through the prairie country on that 
 errand was a man named Posey. He came to Decatur, and he 
 made a speech which so much disgusted John Hanks as to 
 bring from him the remark, 
 
 " Mister, I tell ye what : Abe Lincoln can beat that all hol- 
 low. Abe, try him on." 
 
 A box was turned over for Abe to stand upon, and his career 
 as an Illinois political stump-speaker fairly began. Not only 
 did he beat the speech of Mr. Posey, but he so completely con- 
 quered that gentleman that, after the debate was over and 
 when the opponents came together, the vanquished campaigner 
 frankly asked his rough antagonist " where he learned to do 
 it." 
 
 Abe replied freely, and even told the nature and extent of 
 his reading, as if he owed his power as an orator in great
 
 " OF ILLINOIS." 69 
 
 measure to his books. A host of mere bookworms could have 
 undeceived him on that point if he could have tested them in 
 attempts to address crowds of miscellaneous hearers. Mr. 
 Posey honestly and earnestly encouraged his queer acquaint- 
 ance to persevere ; but he was quite likely to do that. 
 
 The year went by and Abraham Lincoln was still a mere 
 farm-hand, jobbing his strong body to one employer after 
 another. It did not seem that he had climbed a single round 
 of the long ladder of worldly success. But the return of his 
 birthday brought him something new. A man named Denton 
 Offutt hired John Hanks and John Johnston and Abe Lincoln 
 to take a flatboat for him down the Sangamon Eiver all the way 
 from Springfield to New Orleans. He promised them fifty 
 cents a day for the entire trip, with an additional sixty dollars 
 to be divided among them at the end of it. For those times 
 such wages were extraordinary. 
 
 The bargain was made in February, and in March the three 
 friends went down the Sangamon from Decatur in a canoe. 
 For some reason they left their boat five miles above the town 
 and walked the rest of the way. They found their employer 
 easily enough, but they also found that he had failed to procure 
 for himself a flatboat for the proposed voyage. If, therefore, 
 they were to go down the river that season they must provide 
 their own shipping. The construction of a flatboat was no 
 formidable affair to men who had been brought up as they 
 had. 
 
 They went to the mouth of Spring Creek, five miles north 
 of Springfield, and set to work. 
 
 The land they were on and the trees they cut down were 
 still the property of the United States Government, although so 
 near the future capital of the State of Illinois. The logs when 
 cut were rafted down the river, to be sawed into planks at the 
 Sangamontown saw-mill. That work was done in a fortnight, 
 and in two weeks more the industrious trio had their flatboat 
 in the water. All the while they lived in a shanty of their
 
 70 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 own making and "boarded themselves." There had been 
 fun along with the hard work, for Abe was the life of the 
 shanty. 
 
 There had also been evening strolls into all there was of 
 Sangamontown, and talks, and yarn-spinning, and cracking of 
 jokes with the inhabitants. 
 
 Mr. Offutt joined them now, and his cargo was ready for 
 shipment when the flatboat was launched. The State of 
 Illinois at that time raised but little of any other crop than 
 Indian corn, and sent this to market mainly in the shape of 
 pork. The cargo therefore consisted of the favorite grain in 
 both its customary forms, and Mr. Offutt took charge of its 
 management and sale. Yery little of it would have reached a 
 southern market, however, if it had not been for the curious 
 ingenuity of the tallest of his three boatmen. 
 
 On the 19th of April the boat arrived at New Salem, and at 
 that point there was a mill-dam upon the ridge of which the 
 rude craft floated and stuck fast. Her destruction seemed in- 
 evitable, for her stern was sinking, the water was pouring in, 
 and her loose lading was sliding back as the slope of her awk- 
 ward position increased. 
 
 Abe Lincoln at once took command, as if in any time of 
 special trouble the leadership belonged to him. An empty 
 boat was floated alongside, and the cargo was hoisted into it 
 by main strength, until the grounded craft was sufficiently 
 lightened to be set afloat again. Just how he managed to keep 
 her from sinking during that brief period of desperate exer- 
 tion does not clearly appear. 
 
 Before he pulled her off from the dam he rigged some gear- 
 ing under her stern by means of which she was steadily raised, 
 while the water ran out of her through auger-holes bored in 
 the bottom of the part which hung over the dam. It was 
 Abe's first effort as an inventor, but it set his mind at work in 
 a new direction. Just eight years afterward he sent to the 
 Patent Office at Washington a wooden model, made by him-
 
 " OF ILLINOIS." 71 
 
 self, of a contrivance for floating steamers over bars and other 
 obstructions in the western rivers. 
 
 New Salem was a small place on a low bluff, and all its in- 
 habitants came out to watch the fate of the stuck flatboat. 
 Great was the admiration expressed for the skill and energy of 
 the man who saved it. Neither he nor they, however, had any 
 idea that for seven long years that very man would himself 
 be " stuck" and stranded in the odd, grotesque, chance-medley 
 existence of New Salem. 
 
 Mr. Offutt's gratitude made him enthusiastic ; for he vowed 
 that on his return he would build a steamboat to run on the 
 Sangamon. He would provide her with runners for ice and 
 rollers for shoals and dams ; and then, " with Abe Lincoln in 
 command of her, by thunder, she would have to go !" 
 
 The remainder of the trip was much like any other flatboat 
 voyage down the Mississippi ; but at New Orleans and else- 
 ivhere Abe received a repetition of his first lessons on slavery. 
 He again saw negroes manacled for sale, maltreated, beaten, 
 and felt that it was neither safe nor useful to enter any pro- 
 test. No word could be spoken against an iniquity which all 
 men declared to be a great good, and a necessity of Southern 
 life ; but a memory could be recorded and put away in the 
 secret treasure-house of the young flatboatman's heart. The 
 day was to come when he should take it out and put it into 
 words so plain, so clear, so strong, that the minds of a minion 
 and a half of voters should receive them as a sort of Gospel. 
 
 After that was to come yet another day, when his own hands 
 should be laid upon the manacles, in power, and should shatter 
 them, putting an end forever to the buying and selling of men 
 and women in the United States. 
 
 The steamboat passage homewards terminated at St. Louis. 
 From that point, all the way up and across the great State of 
 Illinois, to Coles County, Abe Lincoln and John Johnston 
 traveled on foot, leaving Hanks on the road to make his way 
 to Springfield.
 
 72 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 The Lincoln family Lad moved again during Abe's brief ab- 
 sence, but their Coles County settlement proved a permanent 
 one. 
 
 This second experience of river life in the South left the 
 young giant little better off than before in worldly goods, 
 whatever else he may have gained by it. But while he was 
 away his talkative friends had taken good care of his reputa- 
 tion as a man of muscle. They had said so much, indeed, that 
 the champion wrestler of that region, one Daniel JSTeedham, 
 sent him a challenge to a public trial of strength and skill. It 
 was accepted, as a matter of course, and the meeting took place 
 with all the customary prairie formalities ; but rarely has a 
 " champion" been more astonished than was Daniel Needham. 
 It was not so much that he was thrown twice in quick succes- 
 sion, but that the thing was done for him with so much appar- 
 ent ease ; and his wrath rose hotly to the fighting point. 
 
 " Lincoln," he shouted, " you've thrown me twice, but you 
 can't whip me." 
 
 " !Needham," said Abe, " are you satisfied I can throw you ? 
 Well, if you ain't, and I've got to satisfy you by thrashing 
 you, I'll do that too, for your own good." 
 
 The crowd laughed ; but the champion gave the matter a 
 sober second thought, and concluded that his own good did 
 not require a mauling from that man. He was entirely satis- 
 fied already.
 
 A. STEP UPWARD. 73 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 A STEP TJPWABD. 
 
 Stranded in New Salem First Public Employment Miller, Clerk, and 
 Peace-keeper A Wrestling Match 1831. 
 
 THE mill-dam across the Sangamon River, upon the perilous 
 edge of which Mr. Offutt's flatboat stuck, to be rescued by 
 Abraham Lincoln, is still in existence ; but the little hamlet of 
 New Salem has long since disappeared. The hand of time re- 
 quires but little human aid in the destruction of a score or two 
 of houses built of logs or of pine boards, the best of them at 
 a cost of less than a hundred dollars. 
 
 New Salem, however, was something of a business place in 
 the summer of the year 1831. The mill was a great help to 
 it, and it was separated by twenty miles of prairie road from 
 the crushing rivalry of Springfield. That city already con- 
 tained at least a thousand inhabitants, and no neighboring set- 
 tlement could hope to compete with it successfully. 
 
 The whole population of the prairie country was in a condi- 
 tion of continual drift and change, yet hardly any man could 
 offer a good reason for his restlessness. Whole families floated 
 hither and thither, they knew not why and scarcely how, 
 drawing friends and connections after them. 
 
 A solitary, loose-footed laborer, without an ounce of prop- 
 erty beyond the shabby clothes he stood in, was a fragment of 
 human driftwood which might be cast ashore almost any- 
 where by the aimless eddies of such a social state. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln, hiring from job to job of uncertain work, 
 was stranded at New Salem about midsummer of the year 1831. 
 He had no definite business there, no settled occupation, no
 
 74 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 home, no special friends, although there were some who knew 
 him by name. His first employment grew out of the fact 
 that he could write ; for that accomplishment was by no means 
 general in New Salem. The "election" was held in August ; 
 but when the polls were opened the reception of votes was 
 checked by the sad fact that but one " clerk" was present to 
 record them, while the inexorable law demanded two. Worse 
 than that, a search of the known residents of New Salem failed 
 to discover a second candidate duly educated for the perform- 
 ance of his duties. There was the very tall stranger loitering 
 around. It was not likely that he could use a pen, but they 
 could ask him ; and one of the " judges of election" approached 
 him with, 
 
 " Mister, kin you write ?" 
 " Well, yes, I reckon I can, a little." 
 " Will you take a hand as clerk of 'lection to-day P 
 " Well, yes, if you want me. I'll try it on. Do the best I 
 can." 
 
 It was a curious experience for the stranded stranger. He 
 was performing the first act of his life as a public functionary, 
 and the power and office came to him because he was the one 
 and only man who had the necessary education. 
 
 Mr. Denton Offutt had it in his mind to start a country store 
 at New Salem, and Abe was in some hope of employment 
 from him if the intention should be fulfilled : but it was not. 
 Mr. Offutt's plans, like his flatboat enterprise, were a little un- 
 certain in their beginnings. Meantime, however, a job turned 
 up in the piloting of a flatboat down the Sangamon River in a 
 flood. It was a task which called for nerve and skill as well as 
 strength, for there were places where the swollen current car- 
 ried the boat across prairie, two or three miles away from 
 the regular channel, and all knowledge of the latter was of no 
 account. There was a whole family on board with their 
 household goods, bound for Texas, and their tall pilot steered 
 them safely down the freshet, as far as his contract called for.
 
 A STEP UPWARD. 75 
 
 Then he left them in other hands and walked back to New 
 Salem. 
 
 More loitering and waiting followed, with a process of get- 
 ting acquainted with everybody, and at last Mr. Offutt's goods 
 arrived. He added to them by purchasing the stock on hand 
 of what would otherwise have been the rival establishment. 
 He had kept his liking for his flatboat hero, and Abe was en- 
 gaged as clerk and salesman of the new concern. It was a rise 
 in life for him ; one more round of the ladder he was climbing 
 out of the miry bog in which he had been born. 
 
 Mr. Offutt was an enterprising man, and he now rented the 
 mill itself from its owners, and put it under the especial 
 charge of Abe, while a clerk named Green was assigned to 
 duty at the store. Lincoln had tried his hand at many things, 
 and now he was a miller, as if no point of life should be found 
 at which he had not come into contact with the people he lived 
 among. He mingled with them everywhere, being thoroughly 
 one of them. He soon discovered that not even the woods of 
 Indiana had developed a rougher, coarser, and in some respects 
 a more vicious and degraded community. Fighting, drinking, 
 gambling, riotous dissipation of all the ruder varieties, were 
 the order of the day, and of almost every day. Abe's physical 
 prowess once more stood him in good stead. It enabled him 
 in' time to set up as a sort of heavy-handed keeper of the 
 peace : but this could not be, of course, until he had been tested 
 against the local bully. 
 
 The boasts of his friends, headed by Mr. Offutt, shortly 
 brought that matter about. The latter freely declared that 
 Abe could outrun, throw, or whip any man in Sangamon 
 County, and that he knew more than any other man alive, and 
 would be President of the United States some day. He had 
 reasons of his own for the faith that was in him ; but over at 
 Clary's Grove there was another man who imagined a large 
 share at least of all that praise his own peculiar due. He too 
 had enthusiastic admirers ready to do his boasting for him.
 
 76 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 The " Clary's Grove Boys" were a set of unmitigated ruffians, 
 and Jack Armstrong was their best man. From all accounts 
 it is hard to guess who or what could have been their worst, 
 and all peaceable people stood in dread of them. 
 
 There came one day a kind of boasting match between 
 Offutt and Bill Clary, of Clary's Grove, and it could have but 
 one result. Abe Lincoln and Jack Armstrong were pitted 
 against each other for a wrestle, in spite of all the strong ob- 
 jections made by the former. That was not the sort of com- 
 petition or success that Mr. OfFutt's foreman was studying for, 
 and he did his best to avoid it ; but it was too late to escape, 
 for the match had been definitely made. 
 
 The confidence of the Clary's Grove Boys in their cham- 
 pion was unbounded, and so was that of the public generally, 
 so that the tide of betting and talk ran all in favor of Jack Arm- 
 strong, until the two antagonists were fairly clinched in the 
 ring. 
 
 The struggle which followed was no common one, for the 
 men were well matched, and, so long as the rules of fair 
 wrestling were observed, neither succeeded in gaining any ad- 
 vantage. At last, both out of breath, they separated and stood 
 looking at each other. 
 
 " Jack," said Lincoln, " let's quit. You can't throw me and 
 I can't throw you." 
 
 The champion had been deeply stung by his unexpected 
 failure, and now a chorus of biting remarks arose among his 
 own friends and followers. He made no verbal reply, but 
 rushed right in again in the hope of suddenly securing a 
 " foul hold " and an unfair advantage. But he had already 
 tried too far even the steady temper of his antagonist : in an- 
 other instant, caught by the throat in a pair of iron hands, he 
 was held out at arm's length, and shaken as if he had been a 
 child. 
 
 Then the cry was, " A fight ! A fight !" and the supporters of 
 Mr. Offutt were by no means equal, in either numbers or bru-
 
 A STEP UPWARD. 77 
 
 talit y, to those of Bill Clary. The latter claimed the stakes, and 
 they would perhaps have been surrendered to him but for 
 the aroused condition of Abe Lincoln's temper. He had an 
 abundance of it if any one would take the trouble to stir it 
 up, and it refused always to go down rapidly. He now de- 
 clared himself ready and willing to fight Armstrong or any -of 
 his fellows. The consequences might have been serious but 
 for the arrival of Mr. Rutledge, the owner of the mill and the 
 great man of New Salem. The noisy mob had all a mob's 
 respect for well-clad wealth. The mill-owner was able to 
 restore the broken peace, and there was no fighting done. 
 
 The episode was full of important consequences to Abraham 
 Lincoln. His courage and prowess had been thoroughly 
 tested and had made a deep impression upon the minds of his 
 rough neighbors. He was in no danger of further challenges 
 from any of them, and Jack Armstrong avowed himself the 
 fast friend of the man who had given him so good a shaking. 
 The further results were only a question of time, for the wrest- 
 ling match which was not won by either of the contestants 
 gained for Abe Lincoln a strong and devoted, if somewhat tur- 
 bulent, constituency. Every member of the Clary's Grove 
 gang had a vote, and with it a strong admiration for a man who 
 could not only read and write, but could hold a bully at arm's 
 length. The story of the " match" went far and wide, and its 
 hero was thenceforth a man of note and influence in that com- 
 munity. 
 
 Thenceforward, moreover, the immediate neighborhood had 
 a recognized and respected peacemaker, and became a more 
 pleasant place of residence for men of quiet tastes. Not to 
 such a degree, however, that an utter stranger would be wise 
 in loitering here and there too much unless he were prepared 
 to look out for his personal safety somewhat as Lincoln had 
 done. 
 
 The new foreman of Offutt's mill found that his duties left 
 him with time on his hands, and he did not propose to waste it.
 
 78 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 He could already read and write and " cipher." He could 
 make speeches. He could even compose essays and get them 
 printed. He knew that he had a fair capacity for the use of 
 words. But he had latterly made an important discovery. It 
 was that human language, his own in particular, had its laws, 
 and these had been ferreted out and formulated by men of 
 learning, and that no man could be called " educated " while 
 ignorant of them. He went at once to Mr. Graham, the school- 
 master of New Salem, and asked him questions about grammar. 
 
 " I have a notion to study it." 
 
 " If you ever expect to go before the public in any capacity, 
 I think it's the best thing you can do." 
 
 " If I had a grammar I'd begin on it right away." 
 
 The schoolmaster knew of one that could be had of a man 
 named Yaner, only six miles away, and the rare book was pur- 
 chased and brought back to town with all the speed in the long 
 limbs of its new owner. "Whether or not it would better fit 
 him to come before such a public as that of Clary's Grove, or 
 even New Salem, Abe gave all his spare time to the mastery 
 of it. 
 
 There were other books now within reach, and these also 
 were doggedly conquered, one by one. The dayh'ght was 
 burned over them, while the student lay at full length on his 
 counter in the store, waiting for customers, or stretched upon 
 the grass outside in dull seasons, or sitting on a sack of corn, 
 " between grists," at the mill. When evening came, he would 
 go over to the cooper-shop and read there, burning shaving 
 after shaving, one kindled from another, in place of unattain- 
 able candles. These were not only scarce but costly, and Abe's 
 wages permitted him no vain extravagances. He was fighting 
 his upward way, inch by inch, with iron resolution. Even the 
 New Salem community could plainly discern how fast his 
 inner man was growing. They were all but proud of him, 
 and the fame, of his knowledge spread far and wide, keeping 
 even pace with his reputation for story-telling and for shaking
 
 A STEP UPWARD. 79 
 
 Jack Armstrong. He could not fail to be popular among 
 those who knew him well, and every fresh arrival from the 
 outside world was sure to be seized upon and made a friend of. 
 Yes, and then subjected to a pumping process, which drew 
 from him, for Abe's benefit, whatever he might know. There 
 is hardly a human being from whom such an inquirer could 
 not learn something, and the power to so gather wisdom grows 
 continually with its use. 
 
 Lincoln's first political speech in Illinois had dealt with the 
 problem of the future navigation of the Sangamon River, and 
 now, early in the spring of 1832, a company of gentlemen 
 went so far, in attempting a practical solution, as to charter a 
 small steamboat named the "Talisman," and decide to send 
 her up the stream as high as she could go. Quite a number of 
 questions could be answered by the results of such an experi- 
 ment : but it was not tried in flood-time or they might have 
 found and reported much more water in the channel. They 
 were wise enough to secure Abe Lincoln's services as pilot, 
 "from Beardstown, up and back." He steered the boat in 
 safety around the many crooks and windings, avoiding all snags 
 and bars and similar perils, until she found her further progress 
 barred by the New Salem mill-dam. If she could not pass 
 that barrier the Sangamon could not be truthfully set down on 
 any map as a navigable stream. 
 
 There was but one way of overcoming the difficulty, and 
 enough of the dam was promptly torn away to permit the 
 steamboat to pass. On she went. But there were perils before 
 her even then ; for she reached the shallow water above, only 
 to find that it was hourly getting shallower, and that the river 
 was rapidly falling. The experiment had been faithfully tried. 
 The inquirers knew just how far they could take just such a 
 craft up the Sangamon at somewhat low water. 
 
 The problem now remaining was how to get her down the 
 river again, and it seemed a serious one ; but their pilot man- 
 aged it for them. He is said to have been paid forty dollars
 
 80 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 for that part of Ms achievement ; but he economically walked 
 all the way home from Beardstown to New Salem. 
 
 Feat after feat of self-denial, skill, strength, ingenuity, and 
 perseverance were telling fast upon the character and educa- 
 tion of Mr. Offutt's brawny " clerk." It was especially well for 
 him, indeed, that he should learn to be a good pilot in danger- 
 ous and " falling" waters.
 
 THE BLACKHAWK WAR. 81 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 THE BLACKHAWK WAR. 
 
 Lincoln a Volunteer Army Discipline Captain Lincoln under Punish- 
 ment Going to a New School Regulars aiid Volunteers 1832, A.D. 
 
 ONE reason why Mr. Offutt could spare his foreman for a 
 steamboat trip up and down the Sangamon was that his various 
 mercantile and milling enterprises were coming to a disastrous, 
 end. One after another he was compelled to give them up. 
 Hardly was the " Talisman" safe in the lower river, before her 
 pilot found his occupation as a clerk gone from him ; his em- 
 ployer had departed, no man knew whither, and the store was. 
 closed. 
 
 The mill returned to the management of its owners, and Abe 
 Lincoln was once more utterly adrift. 
 
 Those, however, were stirring times in Illinois, for the great 
 war-chief of the Sacs, the terrible Blackhawk, was over the 
 northwestern border with the full strength of his tribe. He was 
 said, also, to have f ormed a great confederacy, after the man- 
 ner of King Philip, Pontiac, and Tecumseh, of the Winneba- 
 goes, Foxes, Sioux, Kickapoos, and other tribes. This was true 
 enough; but the whites did not as yet know how completely 
 the savage league had fallen to pieces. 
 
 The Governor of Illinois was calling loudly for volunteers 
 to act with the regular forces of the United States in checking 
 the raid of the red men. 
 
 There had been a good deal of desultory border warfare dur- 
 ing the previous year, and some Illinois troops had taken part in 
 it. It had been of a somewhat bloody nature at several points, 
 but the Indians had finally retreated, and had promised, at the
 
 82 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 end of the campaign, to behave themselves more peaceably 
 in future. Their promises were not made to be kept any 
 longer than until presents could be received and spring should 
 come again. They had broken them now, and it was necessary 
 that they should have a sharp lesson administered to them. 
 
 The military experience of Abraham Lincoln had been be- 
 gun for him in the fall of 1831, when, at a militia-muster at 
 Clary's Grove, the " boys" had chosen him captain of the com- 
 pany. He was not present when elected, but accepted the 
 honor thrust upon him, made a speech of thanks, and served 
 during the muster. He afterwards said that if he had not 
 been down the river in Offutt's flatboat in the spring of 1831, 
 he should have surely then enlisted among the volunteers then 
 called out, and gone to the frontier instead of into the store and 
 mill. 
 
 Now there was something on hand more serious than a mere 
 *' muster," for nearly the same men were organizing a company 
 for active service. The choice of a captain became a question of 
 importance. There were but two candidates, Lincoln and a man 
 :named Kirkpatrick, owner of the sawmill at which the logs had 
 been made into planks for Mr. Offutt's flatboat. There was an 
 old grudge between them, beginning in that connection, and the 
 rivalry ran high until the votes were counted, when it was found 
 that Lincoln had beaten his competitor " out of sight." It was 
 no wonder, for the men who had voted were mostly the same 
 who had stood around the ring and seen him shake Jack Arm- 
 strong, and they had clear notions of the qualities required by 
 a man whose duty it would be to keep order in their camp. 
 He must have the necessary muscles and fighting pluck to 
 whip any rough in his company, or he was no captain for them. 
 No doubt it was a good escape for Mr. Kirkpatrick, the Clary's 
 Grove boys themselves being judges. 
 
 Neither the young captain nor his mutinous, disorderly re- 
 cruits had the slightest prophetic idea how needful it was that 
 Abraham Lincoln should be taught by practical experience the
 
 THE BLACKIIAWK WAR. S3 
 
 difficulties in the way of turning raw volunteers into soldiers. 
 He had great lessons to learn in the few short weeks of the 
 Blackhawk War. 
 
 The volunteers from that part of the State gathered at 
 Beardstown and Rushville to be organized into regiments. 
 Captain Lincoln's company was made part of a regiment com- 
 manded by Colonel Samuel Thompson. On the 27th of April 
 the whole force marched for the Black River country, where 
 Blackhawk and his warriors lay, going by way of Oquaka, on 
 the Mississippi. 
 
 There had been no time for the drill or discipline of that 
 array of free frontiersmen, and no company among them all 
 stood in greater need of both than did the one which had mus- 
 tered at Clary's Grove. 
 
 What could men know of the first duty of a soldier, when 
 in all their lives they had never been taught to obey anything? 
 Even their captain required immediate instruction. While 
 encamped at Henderson Eiver over which the soldiers had 
 built a bridge, so rude that many horses were lost in trying to 
 get a foothold upon it, down the steep bank an order was 
 issued by Gen. Whiteside, in command of the forces, forbid- 
 ding the discharge of firearms within fifty paces of the camp 
 limits. 
 
 A military order was nothing but the word of one man, and 
 the prohibition must mean " fifty paces, more or less," thought 
 Captain Lincoln, and so he discharged his pistol recklessly, 
 within a dozen steps of the given line. It was a bad mistake, 
 since the forty paces he had failed to walk measured the entire 
 question of army discipline and of military success or failure, 
 and it was eminently needful that he, of all men, should be 
 made to understand that vital matter. 
 
 His sword was taken from him, and he was put under arrest 
 for an entire day; the very lightness of the punishment show- 
 ing how much in need of further instruction were the officers 
 and men of General Whiteside's volunteer army.
 
 84 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 No more was said about the affair after that, and Captain 
 Lincoln returned to duty. He had in this case suffered some- 
 what for a fault of his own; but he was shortly to incur a more 
 severe disgrace for a sin of which he was innocent. So he 
 was to learn how easily any commander may be ruined by un- 
 faithful subordinates. 
 
 From Henderson River the army marched to Yellow Banks, 
 on the Mississippi, where they were visited by a band of 
 Cherokees from the Iowa shore, and were treated to a war- 
 dance. Thence a sharp push forward for a few days brought 
 them to the mouth of Rock River and near the field of their 
 expected campaign. From that place they were to advance up 
 the river about fifty miles to Prophetstown, and await the arri- 
 val of the United States regular troops who were to act with 
 them. But when the order to " fall in" reached the company 
 commanded by Captain Lincoln, it could not be complied wifh. 
 
 Aided by a scapegrace from another company, and without 
 the knowledge of their strictly temperate commander, the men 
 had supplied themselves with liquor stolen from the officers' 
 quarters, and most of them were still under the effects of it. 
 It was all in vain for Captain Lincoln and his orderly sergeant 
 to urge the wretched drunkards to form company. Even if 
 they consented to try, they could not keep their ranks, and too 
 many of them only mocked at all the orders given them. 
 
 The army moved that day without the disgraced, besotted 
 squad, and it was ten o'clock before Captain Lincoln could 
 march at all. Even then he was compelled to halt by the way, 
 that his mutinous ruffians might sleep off the vile stupor they 
 had brought upon themselves. He pushed them onward after 
 that, and rejoined the main body in the night, only to find 
 himself once more put under arrest and compelled to wear a 
 wooden sword for two whole days. These were not precisely 
 the military honors he had thirsted for, but he was not likely 
 to forget either their causes or any of the lessons which came 
 with them.
 
 THE BLACKHAWK WAR. 85 
 
 Instead of waiting at Prophetstown for the regular troops to 
 arrive, General Whiteside determined to push on towards 
 Dixon, forty miles further. He left his baggage-train by the 
 way, in his blind haste to meet an enemy. The men caught 
 the infection of his inexperienced recklessness and threw away 
 their rations, so that their forced march brought them to Dixon 
 better prepared for a famine than a fight. They were joined 
 there by two battalions of mounted men as rash as themselves, 
 and General Whiteside yielded to the clamor of these unwise 
 horsemen that they should at once be sent forward in search 
 of Blackhawk and his warriors. 
 
 Alas for them! Their search was only too successful. 
 They found an ambuscade of seven hundred chosen braves, 
 commanded by the chief in person. In a few hours more all 
 that were left of the two battalions came straggling back to 
 Dixon with the bloody story of "Stillman's defeat." The 
 next day the main body of the whites moved forward to the 
 ghastly scene of the disaster ; but they were destitute of pro- 
 visions, the men were hungry and mutinous, and the only thing 
 that army was fit to do was to march back and wait for sup- 
 plies and for better leaders. 
 
 There was much fatigue and suffering in all this marching 
 and counter-marching, and Captain Lincoln shared it all with 
 his men. Their personal attachment to him had increased 
 daily, for they had found but one man in the whole army who 
 could match him as a wrestler. Even then there was a dispute 
 as to whether Lincoln was fairly thrown. His men would not 
 admit the fact, even after he himself frankly acknowledged it. 
 
 He had need of all his popularity one day. An old Indian 
 came rashly into camp, trusting to the protection of a written 
 passport signed by General Cass, and professing to be a friend 
 of the white men. The soldiery was smarting under defeats 
 and privations, and they refused to believe that a red man 
 could be other than a sort of human wild beast, whose life was 
 forfeit whenever and wherever he might be found.
 
 86 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 The poor old savage had come in alone, hungry, helpless, in 
 search of food, and now an angry mob was rushing upon him, 
 seeking to murder him. His last moment seemed to have 
 arrived, when a tall man in the uniform of a captain dashed 
 through the crowd and stood erect in front of him. 
 
 " Men ! this must not be done ! He must not be shot and 
 killed by us." 
 
 His very body seemed to be growing, as the righteous anger 
 swelled hotly within him. But one of the armed mob, after 
 a moment of amazed silence, found voice to whine, 
 
 " But, Captain, that there Indian is a damned spy." 
 
 There were swarms of brutal and thoughtless men around 
 ready to catch the word, and for a few moments Lincoln's own 
 life was worth but little more than that of the old red man 
 who was cowering behind him. He spoke again, passionately, 
 powerfully, waving them back with his long arms, and they 
 were beginning to grow calmer and hear reason, when another 
 whine arose : 
 
 " This is cowardly on your part, Lincoln." 
 
 The Captain's temper was already at white heat, but it 
 blazed yet higher as he fiercely responded : 
 
 " If any man thinks I am a coward, let him test it." 
 
 There was still another despicable snarl : 
 
 " "Well, Lincoln, you're a larger and heavier man than any 
 of us." 
 
 " You can guard against that. Choose your own weapons." 
 
 Every line of his dark face told them he was ready, and not 
 a coward of them all stepped out to apply the test. The life 
 of the vagrant Indian was saved, and the young captain who 
 protected him had won the brightest laurel gathered by any 
 hero of the Blackhawk War, although he was never actually 
 under fire in any of its recorded battles. 
 
 All this shows how miserable was the discipline and soldier- 
 ship of the Illinois volunteers of all grades. But they were not 
 without cause for their constant complaints and insubordination.
 
 THE BLACKHAWK WAR. 87 
 
 The regular-army officers despised the volunteers then, as 
 they did for a while at a later day and on a larger scale ; and 
 their prejudices led them to discriminate in the issue of rations 
 and pay, and in assignments to duty, whenever possible, in 
 favor of United States troops. An improper order came 
 to Captain Lincoln and he obeyed it, but went immediately 
 afterwards to protest in person against the injustice done his 
 men and to their volunteer comrades. He said to the official 
 concerned, in plain words : 
 
 " Sir, you forget that we are not under the rules and regula- 
 tions of the War Department at Washington ; are only volun- 
 teers under the orders and regulations of Illinois. Keep in 
 your own sphere and there will be no difficulty ; but resistance 
 will hereafter be made to your unjust orders. And further, my 
 men must be equal in all particulars, in rations, arms, camps, 
 etc., to the regular army." 
 
 He carried his point, and there was an immediate improve- 
 ment in the management of affairs. But he had done a very 
 extraordinary thing. Long years afterwards it was to become 
 a matter of national importance that he should thoroughly un- 
 derstand the nature and extent of the perpetual jealousy be- 
 tween the Regular Army and the Volunteers ; and now he had 
 mastered the entire subject once for all, and had learned pre- 
 cisely how the resulting difficulties were to be overcome. 
 
 Here was a change indeed. The inner man of the bare- 
 footed Indiana plowboy who had been snubbed by John 
 Breckinridge for daring to speak to him had already grown 
 amazingly. He had reached the mental and moral stature of a 
 hero, who could control a mob of ruffians one day, and force 
 justice from the astonished insolence of epauleted authority 
 another. 
 
 Every man, moreover, who found himself better fed and 
 cared for in consequence of that bold protest was likely to re- 
 turn to the banks of the Sangamon with a high opinion and a 
 good report to make to his neighbors of Abraham Lincoln.
 
 88 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 The discontent of the volunteers was just ; but it rendered 
 them of little further use as an army. At their own request, 
 they were marched from Dixon to Ottawa, Illinois, by way of 
 Pawpaw Grove, and there disbanded on the 28th of May. The 
 best material for soldiers hi the whole world had been rendered 
 worthless in four weeks by incompetent commanders and an 
 inefficient commissariat, at a heavy expense to the public ; but 
 a great- deal had been accomplished, nevertheless, in the need- 
 ful instruction given to one young captain. 
 
 The Governor of the State called for two thousand men to 
 take the places of the disbanded regiments, and a large number 
 of the discharged men re-enlisted at once. Officers became 
 privates rather than go home in such an inglorious fashion. 
 General "Whiteside himself entered the ranks as a common sol- 
 dier, and so, among the rest, did Captain Lincoln, as a member 
 of the " Independent Spy Company." 
 
 By the middle of June the new forces were ready, and they 
 again marched up the banks of Rock River. In the mean 
 time Blackhawk and his warriors overran the country they 
 had come to conquer and intended to keep. 
 
 The troops were fairly well-handled now, and the campaign 
 which followed was a vigorous one, resulting in the utter de- 
 feat and almost the destruction of the savage invaders. But the 
 work of the Independent Spy Company included little fight- 
 ing. There was a great deal of hard work done by them in- 
 deed. There was much perilous scouting, with fast traveling 
 as messengers, on horseback and on foot, and their exposure 
 to danger was of a sort that they did not need to be ashamed 
 of. The company was finally disbanded, and the men 
 were discharged at White Water, Wisconsin, just as the war 
 was drawing to a close. Lincoln prepared to set out for 
 home, in company with a friend and comrade named George 
 W. Harrison. Their horses were stolen from them the night 
 before their intended start, and they were compelled to reach 
 Peoria, Illinois, on foot, with some help of borrowed rides
 
 THE BLACKHAWK WAR. 89 
 
 on the horses of other soldiers who were going in the same 
 direction. 
 
 Here they bought a canoe and paddled down the Illinois 
 Biver until, just below Pekin, they overtook a timber-raft. It 
 was easy to make friends with the raftsmen, in whose com- 
 pany they floated lazily down stream as far as the town of 
 Havana. 
 
 The rest of the homeward way was a hot and tedious* tramp 
 across country. It was ended in due time, and the man who 
 went out as a captain and came home as a private had returned 
 to discover, through a slow and painful progress, what and 
 how much his army career had done for
 
 90 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTEK 
 
 POLITICS. 
 
 Lincoln a Candidate Stumping the District Defeat The Credit Sjstem 
 Lincoln a Merchant.' 
 
 THE politics of the United States were in a noteworthy con- 
 dition in the year 1832. There were parties, and party-spirit 
 ran high ; but party organization, such as now controls the 
 country, did not then exist. In the West generally, and in Il- 
 linois in particular, the complicated machinery which was al- 
 ready in process of formation among the older States was 
 wholly unknown. Instead of it there was a species of political 
 chaos, although the State was nominally Democratic in its ma- 
 jorities, and for many years continued to be so. The old Fed- 
 eral party was dead and buried, the Whig party was yet un- 
 formed, and men wandered hither and thither among the great 
 questions of the day, vainly striving to discover what these 
 were and whither the country was drifting. 
 
 In the absence of nominating conventions large or small, 
 it was the custom for candidates for office to nominate them- 
 selves, if they could persuade a few friends to urge them to do 
 so. One consequence of this was that, for almost any elective 
 honor, high or low, there were frequently as many men in the 
 field as candidates as could combine their ambition with the 
 energy and means to make the required canvass. For the lat- 
 ter some kind of personal popularity was of much more im- 
 portance than any other qualification. 
 
 The volunteers who went from Sangamon County to the 
 Blackhawk War returned to their homes in squads or singly, 
 the greater number bringing little with them besides their very
 
 POLITICS. 91 
 
 moderate allowances of military glory. Abe Lincoln succeeded 
 in adding to Ms own share of this, and it was as large as any- 
 body's, an intense but somewhat local popularity. He great- 
 ly increased his fame as an orator, also, by a speech he made 
 in the New Salem debating club shortly after his return. 
 It was the first regular "speech" he had delivered in that 
 community, and his neighbors were ignorant of his powers 
 until that hour. When he arose to begin, the audience ex- 
 pected no more than a well-told story and a good joke or so, 
 and prepared itself accordingly for an appreciative laugh. 
 
 Abe's hands were in his pockets at the first, and his words 
 came to him slowly ; but he was not there for the purpose of 
 making fun. To the astonishment of his hearers, he seriously 
 took hold of the subject before them, warmed with it as he 
 went on, argued, reasoned, declaimed, with a force and an 
 awkward eloquence which took them all by storm. 
 
 Mr. James Rutledge, the owner of the mill, was president 
 of the club, and he for some reason felt a deep interest in the 
 coming election for members of the State Legislature. He 
 was very strongly impressed by that speech, and a few days 
 afterwards he urged the young orator to offer himself as a can- 
 didate. 
 
 Lincoln at first refused, on the ground that he was little 
 known in the greater part of the county, which was a large 
 one, and that he should surely be defeated. 
 
 "Perhaps not," said Mr. Rutledge. "They'll know you 
 better after you've stumped the county. Anyhow, it'll do 
 you good to try." 
 
 Other friends added their solicitations, and Lincoln's modesty 
 gave way under the pressure. 
 
 It seemed a tremendous undertaking for a mere boy who the 
 year before had drifted into New Salem as a farm-hand and flat- 
 boatman. That it was not altogether absurd offers a window 
 through which a remarkably good view can be obtained of the 
 then social and political condition of things in Illinois.
 
 92 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 The general canvass that fall was hot and spirited, for it was 
 the year of General Jackson's election to the Presidency. 
 Lincoln had from boyhood admired " Old Hickory." He was 
 still nominally a " Jackson man," although the principles he 
 advocated in his speeches were almost identical with those 
 upon which the Whig party was afterwards built up. 
 
 The politics of the State of Illinois, however, were agitated 
 by other questions besides those upon which the nation as a 
 whole was divided. Candidates for the Legislature, even more 
 than for other public positions, were required to meet their 
 constituents upon numerous topics of strictly local importance. 
 The State was fast going crazy upon the subject of " internal 
 improvement." Roads of all kinds, and navigable rivers of 
 designated sizes and patterns, were wanted in all directions. 
 There was a vague idea abroad, daily obtaining a strong hold 
 upon the minds of men, that all these could be provided by a 
 majority vote of the State Legislature in the enacting of a 
 "law." 
 
 Lincoln believed that a great deal could be done for the 
 Sangamon River, and he was ready to prove it upon stump 
 after stump. He was also earnestly in favor of laws providing 
 for popular education. An address which he issued to his con- 
 stituents two years later dealt freely with this and other topics, 
 and was a very creditable document for a youth of twenty-five 
 with barely a year of aggregated schooling to look back upon. 
 He now issued no address, but he had had some training for 
 the task set before him, and he took hold of it vigorously. 
 
 A canvass of Sangamon County was not in those days a 
 matter for a man of weak body or sensitive nerves to think of 
 lightly. It meant a going from place to place wherever a 
 crowd could be gathered, and a readiness to face boldly not 
 only any assembly of proposed hearers, but also such other 
 assemblages as might propose to interfere with both speaking 
 and hearing. There were fair copies of Clary's Grove and its 
 gang of roughs in almost every precinct, and all this element
 
 POLITICS. 93 
 
 was sure to make itself heard and felt in election-time. At 
 one place, while Lincoln was speaking, a friend of his became 
 engaged in a fight and was getting the worst of it. So was the 
 speech, by reason of the divided interest and attention of the 
 crowd. The orator left the " stump" to interfere, but one of 
 the men in his way refused to let him pass. There could be 
 no hesitation on the part of the " candidate." The impeding 
 person was promptly seized by the nape of the neck and the 
 seat of his trowsers, was pitched away many feet into the grass, 
 the friend in trouble was rescued, and then the interrupted 
 speech was resumed under better auspices. 
 
 There were other candidates traversing Sangamon County 
 upon the selfsame errand ; men who were better known and 
 whose political strength had been previously developed. It 
 was no disgrace to Lincoln that he failed of an election by four 
 hundred and seventy votes. New Salem precinct stood by 
 him manfully. There were two hundred and eighty votes 
 cast there, and he got all but three of them. The shaking of 
 Jack Armstrong, the Blackhawk War, with all the other 
 brilliant exploits of Mr. Offutt's clerk, had bound his neighbors 
 to him for life and death. If there had been voters enough in 
 New Salem, he could have been elected to anything. 
 
 Now that he was beaten at the polls for his good it be- 
 came necessary for Lincoln to look around him for some other 
 occupation than that of making laws for the State. 
 
 He was fond of playing with the children of his friends, and 
 he was always ready to chop wood or do any other kindly act 
 for the utterly poor around New Salem. His hand was out to 
 every man. But all this would not buy clothes or law-books, 
 or pay for board. 
 
 He was living at the time with an intimate friend named 
 Herndon, one of two brothers who kept a store in the village. 
 Besides theirs, another was carried on by a man named Rad- 
 ford, and still another, a smaller one, by Mr. Kutledge, the 
 owner of the mill.
 
 94 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 The course of these three establishments at this time was 
 somewhat remarkable. 
 
 " Jim" Herndon became dissatisfied and sold his interest to 
 a loose character named Berry. "Row" Herndon quarreled 
 with his new partner in six weeks, and sold his share to Abe 
 Lincoln. The Clary's Grove roughs had a grudge against 
 Radford, and one night they came to town and took it out by 
 smashing his windows. They scared him so badly that he sold 
 the wreck of his establishment at once to Bill Green on credit 
 for four hundred dollars. The firm of Lincoln & Berry the 
 next day bought out Bill Green, also " on time," giving him 
 their note of hand for two hundred and fifty dollars profit on 
 his sudden bargain. Then Mr. Rutledge sold Lincoln & Berry 
 his own little grocery, and the new concern united the three 
 " stores" in one, naving given little for them all besides their 
 own "notes of hand." Their rivals in business, destined to 
 survive them, were the firm of Hill & McNeil. 
 
 Almost all business was done upon the credit cystem in those 
 days. It continued so to be until a long succession of financial 
 disasters had taught men the value of hard cash and short set- 
 tlements. 
 
 Lincoln was now a merchant ; beginning his career under a 
 load of debt, and with the yet heavier burden of an idle, dis- 
 solute, extravagant, uttterly worthless partner. 
 
 It required no longer time than the vinter months of 1832- 
 1833 to determine the fate of such an undertaking, and the 
 firm of Lincoln & Berry sold out in their turn, and " on time," 
 to a couple of brothers named Trent. 
 
 The store was lifted from Lincoln's shoulders, if the debts 
 were not. These could not begin to press him for some months 
 to come, and he could turn his attention, meantime, to some 
 other means of earning a livelihood. He was still boarding 
 with " Row" Herndon, and he was working hard at all the law- 
 books he could lay his hands on. He gave to these every hour 
 he could spare for them. But something else had now to be 
 done if he would live to study.
 
 POLITICS. 95 
 
 Once more the pathway to success seemed for a moment to 
 be barred before him, and once more an altogether unlooked- 
 for opening appeared. 
 
 Mr. Calhoun, surveyor of Sangamon County, was overrun 
 with business, and needed an assistant. Immigrants and land- 
 buyers were pouring into the prairie country in a constantly 
 increasing stream. It was necessary that their demands should 
 be met, and that the surveying called for should be honestly 
 and faithfully done. The temptations to carelessness and cor- 
 ruption were many. Mr. Calhoun knew Abe Lincoln and 
 trusted him thoroughly. He also knew him to be ignorant of 
 surveying, but he went to see him about it. He took with him 
 a book of instruction in the art, and told Abe that as soon as 
 he should be ready to go to work he should have as much as 
 he could do. 
 
 That was enough for the man of iron perseverance. He 
 took the book on surveying and went out into the country to 
 board with Minter Graham, the same schoolmaster with whom 
 he had consulted about English grammar. In six weeks he 
 was ready to report to Mr. Calhoun for service. They had 
 been weeks of precisely such unflinching mental toil as he had 
 for so long a time trained himself to endure. 
 
 Thenceforward there was no danger but what he could pay 
 his board-bills. His work was found to stand all tests of ac- 
 curacy, and Mr. Calhoun kept his word about giving him 
 enough of it. In all the intervals of that employment he strug- 
 gled on with his law-books. He even walked all the way to 
 Springfield and back to borrow of a friend there a volume he 
 could not afford to buy. 
 
 Once more a public employment came to him, though a mar- 
 velously small one, for on the 7th of May, 1833, he was ap- 
 pointed postmaster of New Salem. There is no record of 
 where he kept that " post-office," but there is a legend that he 
 kept it in his hat. The people of New Salem had few corres- 
 pondents, and the mail did not arrive every day. Indeed, one
 
 96 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 of the special and important duties of the postmaster was to 
 read and even to write letters for those whose lack of educa- 
 tion forbade their doing either for themselves. Here was a 
 curious mixture of occupations, truly ; but there was life for 
 the present and hope for the future. The prospect would 
 not have been at all gloomy if it had not been for the store 
 and the cloud of debts which hung over it. 
 
 The Trent brothers kept the business going for a few months, 
 and then they gave it up and ran away, never again to be heard 
 of in New Salem. Berry also departed from the scene of his 
 misbehavior. He did not live long afterwards. Even before 
 he went away, the accumulated load of debt for all those rash 
 purchases " on time" came drifting back upon the shoulders of 
 the one honest and hard-working man whose name was signed 
 to the notes of hand. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln could not run away. Still less could he 
 pay the notes. He was able to make arrangement for the fu- 
 ture payment of such of them as were held by his friends, for 
 every man of them trusted his honesty entirely and never 
 dreamed of pressing him. In their eyes he was an ill-used 
 man, and his misfortunes in business made them more his 
 friends than ever. One only of the notes had drifted away 
 through the hands of successive holders beyond all friendly 
 control. It was the one for four hundred dollars given to Mr. 
 Kadf ord for the wreck of his store and stock the night before 
 the day on which Bill Green's good bargain had been taken off 
 his hands. This piece of paper was now held by a Mr. Yan 
 Bergen, and he sued upon it, and of course obtained an imme- 
 diate judgment against Lincoln. An execution was issued, and 
 the iron hand of the sheriff was held out for all the debtor's 
 personal property. His few books could not be touched, under 
 the exemption law, but his horse, saddle, bridle, surveyor's in- 
 struments of all kinds, the tools of his new trade, were seized 
 upon without pity. Their loss might take away his means of 
 livelihood and break up his growing business, but it could not
 
 POLITICS. 97 
 
 really set him back one step behind the point to which he had 
 so steadily worked his way. Among the many friends he had 
 made was a well-to-do farmer named Short, and this man, un- 
 solicited, joined Lincoln in giving to the sheriff the needful 
 bond that the goods should be delivered on the day of sale, so 
 that their owner could use them meantime. 
 
 Lincoln did not attend the sale of his property, but Mr. 
 Short was there with another of his friends named Greene. 
 Between them they bought back all that the sheriff had 
 seized, at the sum of two hundred and forty-five dollars. They 
 divided their outlay nearly equally between them, and at once 
 turned over their purchases to the man they had come to help, 
 waiting for repayment until he should be able to earn the. 
 money. 
 
 The remainder of that summer was a busy time for the post- 
 master, the deputy county surveyor, and the one law-student, 
 of New Salem. To all his other work was now added the con- 
 tinual reference to him of small legal matters, such as the: 
 drawing up of deeds and other papers. He even "petti- 
 fogged" small cases before justices of the peace, but for all 
 these acts of neighborly kindness he never thought of charg- 
 ing a fee. Nor was this all the duty forced upon him by the 
 unbounded confidence men had acquired in his fairness and 
 integrity. 
 
 The one great sport of that region was horse-racing. There 
 were many horses of many kinds, and there was a continual 
 succession of " matches" between them, but the human beings 
 were few indeed by whose decisions, as judges of the result, 
 all contestants were willing to abide. Much against his will, 
 therefore, Abe was frequently compelled to yield to the unani- 
 mous popular demand, and sit in " the judges' stand " while 
 the horses were running. He had plenty of disputes to settle, 
 but it was of no use for any disappointed or quarrelsome jockey 
 to appeal from or severely criticise a decision made by Abe 
 Lincoln. Once uttered, it had all the force of law.
 
 98 ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 
 
 In spite of his hard study and his lack of any bodily toil to 
 maintain the hardness of his muscles, his strength seemed to 
 increase rather than diminish. Harnessed by shoulder-straps 
 to a box of stones weighing half a ton, he lifted it repeatedly 
 and with ease. This and other feats of a similar nature enabled 
 him to maintain his place as a keeper of the peace and a recog- 
 nized disturber of all ruffianism. No fight could be fought 
 out in the old-time way if Lincoln were at hand to interfere 
 with it. It was so easy for him to take an angry man in each 
 hand and hold two foolish fellows wide apart, until they should 
 agree with him to let the matter drop and make the quarrel up. 
 As a rule, moreover, at least one of the two men was likely to 
 think more highly than ever of the rough peacemaker.
 
 FIRST LOVE. 99 
 
 CHAPTEK XIV. 
 
 FIRST LOVE. 
 
 A true Romance Elected to the State Legislature A new Suit Free 
 thinking. 
 
 THE honest and upright ambition of Abraham Lincoln to 
 make a man of himself had needed no spurring. There were 
 within him springs of life and thought as yet unopened and of 
 whose existence he was hitherto ignorant. These were now to 
 be discovered to him, and a new and strong incentive to exer- 
 tion was to add its power to the other forces which were urg- 
 ing him upward. 
 
 The third child of Mr. James Rutledge, Lincoln's devoted 
 friend and admirer, was a girl of high principle and uncom- 
 mon beauty. In all the country around there was no maiden 
 to be compared with fair Ann Butledge. Her mental accom- 
 plishments were only such as could then be obtained in Illinois 
 by the daughter of a country merchant of intelligence and 
 property, but they were sufficient. She could not fail to have 
 admirers ; and when, in the second year of Lincoln's New Salem 
 life, he came to board for a while with her father, she was al- 
 ready promised in marriage to his friend McNeil, a young and 
 thriving trader and farmer of New Salem. There came to her 
 soon afterwards a strange, romantic history. Her betrothed 
 revealed to her the fact that his name was not McNeil but 
 McNamar, and that he had so concealed his identity in coming 
 West that he might build a fortune unknown to his family 
 and then return to care for his father in his old age. He was 
 now closing up his business, turning his property into money,
 
 100 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 and would go to New York, perform his purpose there, and 
 come back to wed the girl who had given him her heart. 
 
 She heard and she believed him, and he went but he did not 
 come again. He wrote to her of his father's sickness and 
 death. Then other letters came, at longer and longer intervals, 
 always promising to return and holding her to her engagement, 
 until at last their coming ceased entirely. 
 
 It was a cruel, a terrible thing to fall upon a girl of nine- 
 teen, for she had loved him well until she had found him false. 
 The one bitterer drop was added to her cup of trouble when 
 she found that, during all that time, she had been winning the 
 heart of a man whose faith could not be broken and whose in- 
 tegrity and manly Vorth all other men acknowledged. 
 
 More and more frequent grew the visits of the young law- 
 student as the prospect of McNamar's return diminished, but 
 with little encouragement from Ann until the summer of 1834. 
 Her father's farm was but a small distance from that of Lin- 
 coln's friend Short, and Abe found many occasions for spend- 
 ing whole days together at the house of the man who so timely 
 aided him. 
 
 Ann was as true as she was beautiful, and she at last was 
 compelled to tell her urgent suitor frankly what bond it was 
 that bade her not to love him. She refused, in her sensitive 
 good faith, to see that she could be set free from her promise- 
 to McNamar without a formal spoken or written release. She 
 could no longer love a man who had broken his word, had 
 slighted her, had treated her with a neglect so heartless, but 
 she was slow to admit her right to take another in his place. 
 And yet she had already taken him, and Lincoln knew it, and 
 he gave to her all the unmeasured strength of his first, whole- 
 hearted love. 
 
 It was a loyal and manly thing to do. No other thing of 
 which he had yet shown himself capable told half so much for 
 the growth of his inner life or promised half so well. 
 
 He had something to li ve for now. He had a hope more
 
 FIRST LOVE. 101 
 
 bright and beautiful than any dream he had dreamed, whether 
 among the forests of Indiana, the rivers and bayous of the 
 South, or the wealth-promising prairies where he had chosen 
 his home. He worked as he had never worked before, toiling at 
 his law-books as he rode or walked about the country. On one 
 hot march, from Springfield home, with a volume of Black- 
 stone's Commentaries he had borrowed, he mastered forty pages 
 of it before he reached New Salem. With him to " master" a 
 book was to seal its contents, as to their spirit and meaning, and 
 largely as to their letter, in his memory forever, ready for all 
 subsequent uses. 
 
 There was no need for any urgent friend to prompt his po- 
 litical ambition now. He was thirsting for such honors as 
 would mark him as a man fitted to court and win Ann Rut- 
 ledge. He well knew she would be pleased to see him win 
 them for her, even while she reluctantly adhered to her roman- 
 tic scruple concerning her broken bond. 
 
 Since the previous campaign the political world had under- 
 gone apparent changes, and the Whig party was taking form. 
 Its principles were nearly those which Lincoln had already 
 avowed, and he readily floated into it. Still, all party lines 
 were as yet so loosely drawn that his Democratic personal 
 friends were under no necessity of refusing him their votes, 
 whatever they might do with other names upon their tickets. 
 He announced himself as a candidate for election to the State 
 Legislature, issued a printed address to the people of the 
 county, and made a thorough stumping tour from neighborhood 
 to neighborhood. He spoke as he had never before spoken, 
 and was triumphantly elected although there were other strong 
 candidates in the field. 
 
 In the summer of the year 1831 he had landed in Sangamon 
 County, a penniless, friendless boy of twenty-two. -Only three 
 years later there were 1376 men in the same county ready to 
 say by their votes that he was a suitable person to represent 
 them at the State capital.
 
 102 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 He had been growing fast in other ways than in the good- 
 will of his fellow-citizens ; but he had not outgrown his hon- 
 esty nor his debts. These had joined hands to keep him poor 
 in purse, and a proper sense of personal dignity forbade him to 
 go to the Capitol at Yandalia in the shabby clothing which 
 was good enough for his daily round of life and work in New 
 Salem. Money would also be required for other immediate 
 expenses, and there was nothing in his hands that he could 
 honestly se*ll to obtain it. He was already deeply in debt to 
 his best friends, and his salary as a legislator could not be col- 
 lected in advance. He had resources, however, and they did 
 not fail him. 
 
 Among his older acquaintances was a man named Smoot, as 
 dry a joker as himself, but better supplied with ready money. 
 To him Lincoln went one day, in company with another friend, 
 Hugh Armstrong. 
 
 " Smoot, did you vote for me P 
 
 " I did that very thing." 
 
 " Well, that makes you responsible* You must lend me the 
 money to buy suitable clothing, for I want to make a decent 
 appearance in the Legislature." 
 
 " How much do you want?" 
 
 " About two hundred dollars, I reckon." 
 
 The honor of Sangamon County, and of New Salem in par- 
 ticular, was at stake, and the new representative received his 
 two hundred dollars on the spot. 
 
 It is not difficult to guess whose eyes were among the first 
 to discover how great a difference good clothing could make in 
 the outer man of Ann Kutledge's tall lover. The new gar- 
 ments and the body under them were but a shell, however, 
 inclosing the man to whom she was really surrendering her 
 heart. 
 
 There were long weeks yet before Lincoln's new public 
 duties were to begin, and not an hour of one of them could he 
 afford to waste. He read as desperately as ever, and he was
 
 FIRST LOVE. 103 
 
 also thinking deeply upon other subjects besides law. There 
 was but little religion of any kind in and about New Salem, or 
 through all the prairie country, in those rude days. Such as 
 there was would hardly stand any exhaustive analysis. Few 
 men gave any especial care to matters of faith or doctrine. 
 There were many more horse-races and wrestling-matches than 
 Gospel gatherings. The exceptional preaching was of a nature 
 little calculated to impress a mind like that of Abraham Lin- 
 coln. Moreover, there was a jarring of sects and creeds, here 
 and there, as in 'other communities always, and out of this 
 came vastly more of contention than Christianity. If what he 
 saw around him were all there was of religion, it required less 
 effort to reject than to accept it ; but the searching mind of 
 the young thinker compelled him to make some sort of personal 
 inquiry. His first teachers were about as bad as could have 
 been given him, and he was not yet prepared to penetrate the 
 shallow reasoning of Volney and Tom Paine. He even tried 
 to follow out their lines of thought in an elaborate manuscript, 
 and when this was finished he read it to a little circle in the 
 store of Mr. Samuel Hill. There were those present who 
 thought well of it, but a son of Mr. Hill expressed his own 
 opinion in the plain word " infamous," took the paper in his 
 hand and thrust it into the fire. There was nearly enough of 
 it for a small book, but it burned well and Lincoln very sen- 
 sibly let it burn. 
 
 He did not know how closely he was following in the foot- 
 steps of the great majority of those who honestly seek for the 
 Truth. Still less could he then foresee the day when he should 
 himself kneel down and lead a whole nation in prayer and 
 fasting and thanksgiving and confession of sin, and that in 
 their darkest hour of trial he should rise before them to en- 
 courage them to trust in the very God whose existence he was 
 now in callow fashion persuading himself to deny. 
 
 All true thinkers are necessarily " free thinkers" until they 
 enter into some description of bonds to their own self-conceit
 
 104 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 and surrender their freedom to^ that miserable taskmaster. 
 Lincoln began as a free inquirer, and never fell in with the 
 mob of bondmen, but went on learning more and more until 
 the very end. That at such a time he exercised himself so 
 deeply on such a subject is an invaluable index to the formative 
 processes of his inner life. 
 
 The time at last arrived for his journey to the Capitol of the 
 State, then at Vandalia, in the southern part of the long, huge 
 area of Illinois. Thanks to Mr. Smoot's friendly loan, he was 
 well prepared to go with proper dignity, and to make a pre- 
 sentable appearance among his fellow-legislators. He had but 
 a hundred miles or so to travel, but that short journey carried 
 him on into a new sphere of lif e and action.
 
 IN THE LEGISLATURE. 1Q5 
 
 CHAPTEK XV. 
 
 IN THE LEGISLATURE. 
 
 Practical Politics Lessons in Public Finance Blowing Bubbles A great 
 Darkness 1834-36. 
 
 ME. LINCOLN had now attained a position which was full of 
 promise. The power of binding men to him by ties of strong 
 personal attachment had been born with him. The capacity 
 for influencing and controlling them when assembled as citi- 
 zens for the discussion of political questions had been devel- 
 oped in him remarkably and almost without his knowledge. 
 He was now to study and acquire the art or trade of managing 
 a drove of selfish politicians. The material for such a training 
 was gathered for him in perfection at Yandalia. He found 
 himself surrounded by narrow-minded, ignorant embodiments 
 of party prejudice, local jealousy, self-seeking, and self-conceit. 
 In such a mob he could not help becoming a man of some 
 mark, but during the greater part of that first " session" of 
 1834-1835 he neither sought nor attained especial prominence. 
 He was as yet a student of politics, not ready to be an active 
 worker and still less a leader. Of many things he knew as 
 much as did the majority of his fellow-legislators, and of 
 some things he knew a great deal more, but he was slow to tell 
 them so. Few of them, at all events, could equal him in tell- 
 ing a story with a keen point to it, and none surpassed him in 
 personal height or in the peculiar heartiness of manner which 
 made him so speedily at home amid his new surroundings. 
 
 At the beginning of his education as a political manager, he 
 was also at the beginning of a long course of experimental in- 
 struction as to what could and what could not safely be done
 
 106 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 with public credit. He was to be taught fundamental truths 
 of finance concerning a State or a nation, that he might not, 
 in after-days, come ignorantly and without experience to the 
 discussion and arbitrary decision of precisely such questions, 
 relating to a wider field than that of the very young and now 
 half -crazy State of Illinois. 
 
 Lincoln believed in a general system of public improvements, 
 and so did almost everybody else ; but the common accord 
 ceased at that point. Beyond it lay a tangled mass of problems 
 as to methods of procuring money wherewith to improve, and 
 right along with these came a chaos of discord and contention 
 as to how and where it should be spent, and which of the out- 
 reaching, grasping local interests should first be served. The 
 State was out of debt and its credit stood well in the money 
 markets. It could readily borrow whatever it might need. It 
 had sovereign power to create banks, and, through these, an 
 unlimited capacity for the issue of paper money. The whole 
 population was gambling in town-lots, lands, and almost every 
 other kind of property. 
 
 Illinois was by no means alone in her gambling fever. A 
 somewhat similar condition of affairs existed elsewhere, North, 
 South, East, and West. 
 
 As for the Legislature, not a soul in Yandalia knew the first 
 principles of finance or political economy. There had been as 
 yet no teaching given to the New Salem member of a sort to 
 open his eyes to the fragility of the bubbles he and his asso- 
 ciates were about to inflate. All looked well, and nothing 
 seemed requisite except the soapsuds of the State credit and the 
 creative breath of the Legislature. 
 
 The speculative mania did not rise to fever-heat during that 
 first winter, but some very fine bubbles were blown. A State 
 bank was chartered, with a " capital " of a million and a half. 
 A broken-down money-mill of a bank in the wretched village 
 of Shawneetown, in the southern part of the State, was set 
 running again by a law which declared that it had three hun-
 
 IN THE LEGISLATURE. 107 
 
 dred thousand dollars to run with. The State borrowed half a 
 million of actual dollars, and began to spend them on the 
 western end of the Illinois and Michigan Canal. Nothing was 
 done for the Sangamon River, and that and other incomplete 
 streams were compelled to postpone for a while, at least, their 
 ambition of becoming " navigable." Their, friends, however, 
 were firmly determined that the State credit and statute law 
 should yet supply them with deep, well-made channels and an 
 abundance of river-water, and thus everybody living along the 
 banks of them would be rich at once. Mr. Lincoln was as- 
 signed a place upon the Committee on Public Accounts and 
 Expenditures. It was a good enough corner in which to study 
 and acquire the information he stood most in need of, but he 
 did not bring an ounce of practical preparation to the legisla- 
 tive work set before him. He toiled away at his task, never- 
 theless, and at the end of the session he returned to his New 
 Salem home and his law-books. 
 
 The year 1835 seemed to open brightly enough,' but its com- 
 ing weeks and months were bringing Lincoln deeper and sad- 
 der lessons than any which had yet been given him. He had 
 already discovered in himself the germs of remarkable facul- 
 ties. He had cultivated all industriously and with success, 
 under the most adverse circumstances. There was in his grow- 
 ing soul yet one more power of whose very existence he was 
 but dimly conscious. It was the power of suffering ; the fa- 
 culty of feeling inward pain more deeply, more keenly, than 
 other men, and of keeping and carrying it longer. The related 
 capacity for concealment did not come at the same time, but 
 was to be developed later, when there should be greater need 
 of it, that he might not fail in doing the duties whose needful 
 performance should entail the suffering. 
 
 It is not known precisely when Ann Rutledge told her sui- 
 tor that her heart was his, but early in 1835 it was publicly 
 known that they were solemnly betrothed. Even then the 
 scrupulous maiden waited for the return of the absent MoNa-
 
 108 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 mar, that she might be formally released from the obligation 
 to him which he had so recklessly forfeited. Her friends ar- 
 gued with her that she was carrying her scruples too far, and 
 at last, as neither man nor letter came, she permitted it to be 
 understood that she would marry Abraham Lincoln as soon as 
 his legal studies should be completed. 
 
 That was a glorious summer for him ; the brightest, sweet- 
 est, hopefullest he yet had known. It was also the fairest 
 time he was ever to see ; for even now, as the golden days came 
 and went, they brought an increasing shadow on their wings. 
 It was a shadow that was not to pass away. Little by little 
 came indications that the health of Ann Rutledge had suffered 
 under the prolonged strain to which she had been subjected. 
 Her sensitive nature had been strung to too high a tension, and 
 the chords of her life were beginning to give way. 
 
 There were those of her friends who said that she died of a 
 broken heart, but the doctors called it " brain-fever." 
 
 On the 25th of August, just before the summer died, she 
 passed away from earth. But she never faded from the heart 
 of Abraham Lincoln. She lived there in love and memory to 
 the very last. In her early grave was buried the best hope he 
 ever knew, and the shadow of that great darkness was never 
 entirely lifted from him. 
 
 A few days before Ann's death, a message from her brought 
 her betrothed to her bedside, and they were left alone. No 
 one ever knew what passed between them in the endless mo- 
 ments of that last sad farewell; but Lincoln left the house 
 with inexpressible agony written upon his face. He had been 
 to that hour a man of marvelous poise and self-control, but the 
 pain he now struggled with grew deeper and more deep, until, 
 when they came and told him she was dead, his heart and will, 
 and even his brain itself, gave way. He was utterly without 
 help or the knowledge of possible help in this world or beyond 
 it. He was frantic for the time, seeming even to lose the sense 
 of his own identity, and all New Salem said that he was insane.
 
 IN THE LEGISLATURE. 1Q9 
 
 He piteously moaned and raved, " I can never be reconciled to 
 have the snow, rains, and storms beat upon her grave !" 
 
 The very earth her body slept in gathered to its grassy cover- 
 ing somewhat of the unutterable tenderness the strong man felt 
 for his first love. His best friends seemed to have lost their 
 influence over him, and he resisted their kindly efforts at com- 
 fort or control with all the gloomy peevishness and even the 
 cunning of a madman. 
 
 All but one ; for the same Bowlin Greene who had helped 
 Short save his property for him at the sheriff's sale came now 
 again to the rescue. He managed to entice the poor fellow to 
 his own home a short distance from the village, there to keep 
 watch and ward over him until the fury of his sorrow should 
 wear away. There were well-grounded fears lest he might do 
 himself some injury, and the watch was vigilantly kept. In a 
 few weeks reason again obtained the mastery, and it was safe 
 to let him return to his studies and his work. He could indeed 
 work again, and he could once more study law, for there was a 
 kind of relief in steady occupation and absorbing toil ; but he 
 was not, could not ever be, the same man. In time even the 
 joke and the laugh would come to his lips, but they would 
 never cease to have the appearance and character of brief sun- 
 shine breaking through a cloud, and there was always a great 
 storm of rain resolutely held back in the inner darkness of that 
 cloud. 
 
 Lincoln had been fond of poetry from boyhood, and had 
 gradually made himself familiar with large parts of Shake- 
 speare's plays and the works of other great writers. He now 
 discovered in a strange collection of crude verses, by an un- 
 known hand, the one poem which seemed best to express the 
 morbid, troubled, sore condition of his 1 mind. Those who then 
 or afterwards heard him repeat the lines by William Knox, 
 beginning 
 
 " Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?"
 
 HO ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 discovered what a wealth of pathetic expression could be 
 poured forth through them. Uttered by him as the voice of 
 his suffering, they took into their mournful cadences a power 
 and a majesty borrowed from the grief which drove Abraham 
 Lincoln from the grave of Ann Kutledge broken-hearted and 
 all but insane. 
 
 All men in that vicinity well knew the sad, romantic story, 
 and there were no hearts on the Sangamon prairies so hard 
 that they were not touched by the sorrow of their friend and 
 neighbor. His popularity increased daily as he went about 
 among them, thin, haggard, gloomy, and he was more than 
 ever the idol of New Salem. The winter passed away, and 
 then the spring, and another summer brought with it a renewal 
 of political excitement. There was no longer any question as 
 to whether Mr. Lincoln should be elected to the Legislature. 
 Thenceforward his place upon the Whig ticket was a matter 
 of course so long as he should consent to such a use of his 
 name. There was nothing, therefore, to mark for him espe- 
 cially the campaign of 1836, except the fact that he stumped 
 the county and received a greater number of votes than was 
 given to any other candidate who ran for the Legislature that 
 year. In fact, among a population so shifting, changing, grow- 
 ing, he was already becoming one of the older and earlier set- 
 tlers, and the majority of his fellow-citizens were new men 
 compared to him.
 
 BUBBLE LEGISLATION. HI 
 
 CHAPTEE XYI. 
 
 BUBBLE LEGISLATION. 
 
 An Episode The Lightning-rod The Long Nine State Improvements 
 Anti-slavery Declarations 1836. 
 
 THERE is nothing else on earth so easily to be taken posses- 
 sion of as an empty house, whether or not the new occupant 
 may be or become the owner. 
 
 "When Lincoln returned to work and to political excitement 
 he also necessarily returned to the society of women. He 
 sorely needed all three, and every other attainable help, to keep 
 his mind in order. It could hardly be called well regulated as 
 yet, and his emotional nature was entirely out of gear. Kind 
 and busy friends, moreover, came to the rescue, and, by their 
 management, in the autumn of 1836 he found himself corre- 
 sponding with an attractive young lady named Mary Owens. 
 He had not at all forgotten Ann Rutledge, and the matter 
 would be hard to understand if so many of the letters which 
 passed between the two had not been preserved and actually 
 printed. They offer a sufficient explanation, for they make 
 very plain the fact that there was no feeling aroused on either 
 side at all worthy to be spoken of as " love." She was hand- 
 some, well educated, intelligent, with enough of good sense to 
 admire a strong and rising man. He was restless, feverish, 
 unsettled, hungry at heart he did not know for what ; and so 
 there grew up an intimacy, a friendship, a protracted, strug- 
 gling imitation of a courtship and engagement. From the 
 latter they were both finally glad to release each other. 
 
 It is entirely just to say of Mr. Lincoln that during that 
 brief period of his life he knew very little of himself. The
 
 112 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 continual developments of his nature and its powers must now 
 and then have brought surprises to him, but it is a curious fact 
 that nobody eke seems ever to have been greatly surprised. 
 He was a man from whom uncommon performances were ex- 
 pected. 
 
 In joke or in earnest, or in somewhat of both, one of the first 
 public utterances in behalf of female suffrage came from his 
 pen. In a printed declaration of his principles, issued during 
 the canvass for that year's election, he said among other things : 
 
 " I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who 
 assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently I go for admitting 
 all whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms 
 by no means excluding females." 
 
 The subject was not then under discussion in Illinois, but 
 Mr. Lincoln's after-course proved how prompt and decided was 
 sure to be his response to any appeal to his sense of justice. 
 
 The style of his oratory was now rapidly improving, and his 
 speeches became occasional surprises even to those who knew 
 him best and expected most of him. He wasted nothing upon 
 mere display, but then, as afterwards, he exhibited a marvelous 
 capacity for using to advantage the smallest available fact or 
 circumstance within his reach at the moment. The smaller 
 and sharper might be the point of any thrust, the deeper he 
 was apt to drive it home. 
 
 A good illustration of this faculty is found in a speech of 
 his, in the campaign of 1836, in reply to a Mr. Forquer. This 
 gentleman had deeply offended all notions of political morality 
 by a recent desertion of the Whigs, and the feeling against him 
 was very bitter. He was a man of wealth and standing, Reg- 
 ister of the United States Land Office at Springfield, owning 
 the best " frame house" in that town. From the roof of this 
 residence arose the one solitary lightning-rod in all that part 
 of the State, and it had attracted more than a little popular at- 
 tention. 
 
 At a political meeting Mr. Lincoln made a speech of more
 
 BUBBLE LEGISLATION. 113 
 
 than common power, to Mr. Forquer's especial disgust and 
 astonishment. He replied ably but superciliously, beginning 
 with the rash assertion that " the young man would have to be 
 taken down." Throughout his remarks he asserted and 
 claimed his personal superiority. Lincoln listened attentively, 
 and at the end of Mr. Forquer's speech he took the stand 
 again. He replied with force and dignity to whatever of 
 argument he had to deal with, but at the conclusion of his 
 remarks he turned upon his lofty opponent with, 
 
 " You began your speech by announcing that ' this young 
 man would have to be taken down.' " 
 
 Turning again to the crowd, he added : 
 
 " It is for you, not for me, to say whether I am up or dowiu 
 The gentleman has alluded to my being a young man. I am- 
 older in years than I am in the tricks and trades of politicians. 
 I desire to live, and I desire place and distinction as a politi- 
 cian ; but I would rather die now than, like the gentleman,, 
 live to see the day when I would have to erect a lightning-rod, 
 to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God." 
 
 Nevertheless that solitary lightning-rod led Mr. Lincoln to 
 a study and knowledge of the laws of electricity. Right there 
 was a difference between him and the other men who stared at 
 the novel iron ornament upon Mr. Forquer's roof. He alone 
 could make a spear of it, in a speech, wherewith to transfix its 
 owner, and then accept it as a directing finger pointing Tn'rq 
 the way to a new field of scientific inquiry. 
 
 He had made such good use of his first term in the Legisla- 
 ture that on his return he at once took rank as an able debater 
 and parliamentarian. He was also skilled in the tactics re- 
 quired in securing majorities for his favorite schemes. 
 
 The politics of the State had now become more closely con- 
 nected with those of the country at large. 
 
 The subject of State banks, carrying with it all questions of 
 local finance, was interwoven with the management of the 
 United States Treasury and the fate of the United States
 
 114 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Bank. At the same time, the policy of the general govern- 
 ment with reference to its sales of public lands was nowhere 
 of more importance than in Illinois. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's brain was teeming more fruitfully than ever 
 with projects for public improvements. The example of New 
 York was continually before him, and he had formed, with 
 reference to the canals of his own State, the high ambition of 
 becoming "the De Witt Clinton of Illinois." There was 
 nothing mean or low in such an aspiration in the mind of a 
 young man who was only separated by five short years from 
 the deck of a flatboat and by less than three from bankruptcy, 
 poverty, and the sheriff's hammer. 
 
 He served upon the Committee on Finance. The ideas 
 of State credit entertained by that committee may be gathered 
 from the facts, among many, that for the furtherance of canal 
 and other enterprises laws were passed authorizing loans to 
 the amount of twelve millions of dollars. The money was to 
 be obtained by the sale of State bonds, and was then to be 
 employed in quite a variety of ways. It was fully believed 
 that into the State, improved by that expenditure, a flood of 
 immigration would surely and swiftly roll, to open farms, 
 pay taxes, and so to make the bonds good property in the 
 hands of the imaginary capitalists who were now to buy them. 
 
 The passage of a " law" creating capitalists for the occasion 
 does not seem to have been thought of, but the nominal capital 
 of the State Bank and of other banks was largely increased, 
 that they might issue abundant notes, and so that " money" 
 might be plentiful. 
 
 Small blame rightly attaches to any of the untutored legis- 
 lators who proposed or voted for all these wonderful schemes 
 for making all men rich at railway speed. They knew no 
 better until, at last, the bursting of their own pretty bubbles, 
 with all the other bubbles the whole nation had been blowing, 
 sent them back to their constituencies sadder and wiser men. 
 
 One other project was kept continually in the foreground
 
 BUBBLE LEGISLATION. 115 
 
 by that Legislature. The seat of the State government, at 
 Yandalia, was too far from the geographical center. It was 
 inconvenient, unpopular, and there were several other towns, 
 some of them even more badly situated, whose citizens were 
 eager to have the advantages of a " capital " within their cor- 
 porate limits. 
 
 For many reasons the young city of Springfield, in Lincoln's 
 own county of Sangamon, seemed entitled to the preference. 
 Every man of the county representatives could discern those 
 reasons clearly and argue them convincingly. There were nine 
 of these gentlemen, two in the Senate and seven in the lower 
 house, and their bodily size had acquired for them the title of 
 " the Long Nine." Taken together, they were fifty-four feet 
 long ; Mr. Lincoln himself having a surplus of four inches to 
 contribute in making up the average of six feet. They were 
 tireless workers and well skilled in the art of influencing their 
 associates. They so arranged the removal of the capital to 
 Springfield that it was firmly wedged into a combination of all 
 the other schemes, and the bill for it was passed in the last 
 hours of the session. It was an enduring piece of work, and 
 the State is governed from that town at the present time. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln could now return to Sangamon County and 
 New Salem with a consciousness that he had done for his en- 
 thusiastic constituents at least as much as they could reasonably 
 expect of him. He had, however, done one thing more, and a 
 greater and worthier thing than any success he had won as an 
 advocate of internal improvement or the removal of the State 
 capital. He had made a bold, clear record of his views upon 
 the subject of human slavery. 
 
 The Legislature adjourned upon the 4th of March, and on 
 the previous day, the 3d, with but one solitary comrade, 
 Daniel Stone, Abraham Lincoln presented to the House, and 
 had read and spread upon the journals of record, the follow- 
 ing protest : 
 
 " Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having
 
 116 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 passed both branches of the General Assembly at its present 
 session, the undersigned hereby protest against the passage of 
 the same. 
 
 " They believe that the institution of slavery is founded on 
 both injustice and bad policy ; but that the promulgation of 
 abolition doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate its 
 evils. 
 
 " They believe that the Congress of the United States has 
 no power, under the Constitution, to interfere with the insti- 
 tution of slavery in the different States. 
 
 " They believe that the Congress of the United States has 
 the power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the 
 District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exer- 
 cised unless at the request of the people of the District. 
 
 " The difference between these opinions and those contained 
 in the said resolutions is their reason for entering this protest. 
 
 " DAN. STONE, 
 "A. LINCOLN, 
 " Representatives from the county of Sangamon." 
 
 Only two men in that numerous body climbed high enough, 
 at that time, or had the courage to declare that human slavery 
 was " founded on injustice and bad policy," whatever might be 
 their opinion of the force of the existing laws by which it was 
 protected. It was a bold thing to do, in a day when to be an 
 antislavery man, even at the North, was to be a sort of social 
 outcast and political pariah. Twenty years were to roll away 
 before a great party was to adopt, as its platform of principles, 
 declarations nearly equivalent and but little more advanced 
 than the brave protest in which Abraham Lincoln induced his 
 friend Dan Stone to join him. 
 
 That was the first public fruit of the flatboat studies of hu- 
 man slavery away down the Mississippi River, and other views 
 of it obtained in the slave-market at New Orleans. The neces- 
 sary moral education for persisting in making such a record
 
 BUBBLE LEGISLATION. 117 
 
 had been received through "object-lessons," and the actual 
 sight of slave and whip, and brand and fetters, and the barter 
 and sale of human flesh and blood. 
 
 Lincoln had struck his first blow in the great warfare, and it 
 was as hard a stroke as the occasion permitted. It was a regis- 
 tered prophecy that he would strike again in the fullness of 
 time and when another opportunity should be given him.
 
 118 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTER XYH. 
 
 THE YOUNG LAWYER. 
 
 Admitted to the Bar Honest Poverty The Panic of 1837 Politics again 
 Matrimonial tendencies Another Darkness. 
 
 UNDER every disadvantage and in spite of all manner of in- 
 terruptions and Mndrances, Mr. Lincoln steadily pursued the 
 study of the law. Early in the year 1837 he was admitted to 
 practice. He could not hope to build up a law business at "New 
 Salem, and at once removed to Springfield. 
 
 Here he sooned formed a partnership with John P. Stuart, 
 the same kind friend from whom he had borrowed law-books 
 in the by-gone years, when he was glad to walk to Springfield 
 for them and read them all the long walk home. 
 
 The young lawyer was still poor. He took his meals at the 
 very respectable residence of Hon. "William Butler, a political 
 friend, but he slept on a narrow lounge in the law-office of 
 Stuart & Lincoln, in the second story of the court-house build- 
 ing. He had debts to pay, and he was steadily, honestly pay- 
 ing them ; not in any way wasting a dollar of other people's 
 money. He was dealing with vast sums as a legislator, and the 
 expenditure of these and the management of the many bubble 
 schemes of the day were mixed and tainted with fraud, corrup- 
 tion, and bribery. Everybody knew this; but it was also 
 known that the most active advocate of public improvement 
 among the Illinois legislators could not afford to hire himself a 
 small room in a Springfield boarding-house. The bitterest 
 tongue of political detraction never ventured to assail his per- 
 sonal honor. Had any man been so silly as to question Lin-
 
 TEE YOUNG LAWYER. 119 
 
 coin's integrity, at that or any subsequent time, he would but 
 have covered himself with derision. 
 
 The Springfield bar, in those days, numbered among its 
 members many men of more than common ability. There 
 were some, indeed, whose names were soon to be familiar to 
 the whole country. It was not, therefore, because his com- 
 petitors were few or weak that Lincoln rapidly advanced to a 
 foremost position as a sound and able lawyer. From the out- 
 set he was compelled to fight his way against men every way 
 capable of testing his powers to the uttermost, and there was 
 none of them whose apparent educational advantages had not 
 been greater than his own. 
 
 The year 1837 was marked in the history of the United 
 States by the severest financial crisis the country had experi- 
 enced since the close of the Revolutionary War. On the 10th 
 of May the banks of New York suspended specie payments ; 
 and on the 12th the Bank of the United States and those of 
 Philadelphia followed the example so set them. Fast and far 
 the ruin spread in all directions. In July the Governor of Il- 
 linois called a special session of the State Legislature, to see if 
 something could not be done for the epidemic bankruptcy by 
 the passage of medicinal laws. 
 
 The first act which was passed had the effect of permitting 
 all the banks in the State to suspend specie payments. Noth- 
 ing was done, however, to prevent them issuing further paper 
 promises to pay the money they did not have and could not 
 hope to obtain. Neither was any step taken towards dimin- 
 ishing the current outlay for internal improvements. More 
 loans were actually authorized, and the State went on flounder- 
 ing deeper and deeper into the Dismal Swamp of disaster pre- 
 pared for it by its crazy people as represented by young Lin- 
 coln and all the other " De "Witt Clintons of Illinois." 
 
 When all had been done that could be devised, the legislators 
 from a distance went home to their constituents. There was 
 no more mischief to be feared from them until another election
 
 120 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 should call them together. Mr. Lincoln remained in Spring- 
 field, resuming what there was of his law practice and the slow 
 process of wiping* out his debts. 
 
 All idea of marrying Mary Owens seems to have left him 
 early in 1838. Nothing more would ever have been heard of 
 that affair if, in after-years, its futile record had not been disin- 
 terred too zealously from old letter-boxes and doubtful mem- 
 ories. One value of it now is the testimony so borne to the 
 fact that not even his admitted abilities were as yet considered 
 by many a social set-off to his gaunt, ungainly person, his 
 awkward, unpolished manners, and the serious deficiencies of 
 his early training and family connections. He had broken 
 through every barrier but that of "caste." That, too, was 
 yet to go down before him, and he was one day to take his 
 seat, uncrowned indeed, but throned, among the kings of the 
 earth. 
 
 It was nearly a matter of course that Mr. Lincoln should be 
 again elected to the Legislature in 1838 ; and when that body 
 came together he was the candidate of the Whig party for 
 Speaker of the House. The Democratic nominee, Mr. Ewing, 
 was elected by a small majority ; but the unquestioned leader- 
 ship won by Lincoln at so early a day is worthy of especial 
 notice. The same honorable nomination was given him by his 
 party in the succeeding Legislature, and with the same foregone 
 result, for the Democrats were in power. 
 
 In that year, 1840, occurred one of the most remarkable of 
 American political campaigns, resulting in the election of 
 General Harrison as President of the United States. Mr. Lin- 
 coln was a candidate for Presidential Elector on the Whig 
 ticket, and he " stumped " a large part of the State in company 
 and contest with the leading orators of the opposite party. 
 
 For the first time his reputation became other than some- 
 what local, and his tall form began to be familiar .to the eyes 
 of the general public of Illinois. Once seen, once heard, there 
 was no danger that he would ever be forgotten. Prior to that
 
 THE TOUN& LAWYER. 121 
 
 date he had done something as a lecturer, but only within a 
 narrow circle of small audiences. 
 
 He was now approaching a second crisis of his moral and 
 emotional nature, and one which proved to be terribly severe. 
 
 Among his especial friends in Springfield were Mr. Ninian 
 Edwards and his family. Mrs. Edwards was a daughter of 
 Hon. Eobert S. Todd of Lexington, Kentucky, and her sister 
 Mary, a bright, witty, and handsome young woman, came to 
 reside with her at about the time of the removal of the State 
 capital to Springfield, in the year 1839. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln found himself constantly thrown into the society 
 of a well-educated, cheerful, and in some respects fascinating 
 young lady. It was not long before he began to listen to the 
 suggestions of her friends and his own that he had better 
 marry Mary Todd. He deeply felt his utter loneliness. The 
 idea of a home had a charm that was all its own, for that was a 
 gift which had hitherto been denied him. Miss Todd herself, 
 though from a family of much pretension to " position," had a 
 keen perception of the ability and worth of the rising young 
 lawyer. He was poor ; he was fettered and clogged by many 
 disadvantages of person, manner, education, history ; but she 
 was a young woman of more than ordinary penetration and 
 good sense. She saw that here was a man worthy of any 
 woman, and her mind speedily settled itself in his favor with a 
 firmness which was afterwards proof against all trials. It was 
 not long before a formal betrothal resulted. He was by no 
 means her only suitor, but had rivals for her favor whose 
 worldly prospects, as compared with his own, relieve Miss Todd 
 of any imputation that she was influenced in her choice by 
 mere ambition. It is said that at one time, being asked which 
 of her admirers, Lincoln or Douglas, she preferred, she laugh- 
 ingly replied, "The one that has the best chance of being 
 President." It is amusing enough now to note how some men 
 look back gravely to that merry conversation and accuse the 
 lively Kentucky girl of exercising the gift of prophecy, instead
 
 122 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 of consulting her own heart, in deciding between two active 
 young politicians in a new-born Western State. 
 
 Lincoln was now engaged to be married, and his purpose 
 might have drifted smoothly onward to fulfillment if it had 
 not been for the arrival of yet another member of the Edwards 
 family. This was a Miss Matilda Edwards, the sister of his 
 friend. She was very fair, and quickly became the reigning 
 belle of Springfield. Mr. Lincoln saw much of her and felt 
 drawn towards her irresistibly. She had a secret to unfold to 
 him ; an unveiling of his inner life to perform for him. 
 What might be her mission he did not know or understand for 
 a while. He even imagined the emotion now stirring within 
 him to be a love for Miss Edwards, although he never told her 
 so. Looking upon her face, however, he discovered that he 
 was not in love with Miss Todd, and that his engagement with 
 the latter was based upon no better foundation than respect, 
 admiration, and a keen sense of his own need of a wife and 
 home. Upon that discovery followed another like an electric 
 shock, and he went at once to Miss Todd to offer her a release 
 from her engagement. Had her heart been as lightly bound 
 as his, there could have been but one result ; but the interview 
 did not end in a release. The young man's keen sense of honor 
 was in the way of that, and this was reinforced by a deeper, 
 stronger, sadder consideration. He could not confide to her 
 the real reason of his apparent change, although he could freely 
 disavow any intention or hope of obtaining Miss Edwards. 
 But for this, indeed, jealousy would have come to the quick 
 and somewhat fiery spirit of Miss Todd, and Lincoln would 
 have been spared a part, at least, of the sharp agony in store 
 for him. He went away, carrying his secret with him, and 
 the wedding-day was set. All things were made ready, even 
 to the setting forth of the marriage-feast ; but when the hour 
 appointed came, it did not bring the bridegroom. 
 
 The brain whose steady strength had already found a place 
 among the best-trained intellects of the West sustained as was
 
 THE YOUNG LAWYER. 123 
 
 that brain by a bodily frame of the most extraordinary power 
 and by a will of iron had once more been swept into tempo- 
 rary ruin as by a hurricane of passionate sorrow. His discovery 
 was that all the heart and love he had, or ever could have, lay 
 buried on the bank of the Sangamon, in the grave of Ann 
 Kutledge. 
 
 Lincoln was positively demented morbidly, gloomily insane. 
 He was equally unfit for marriage, for society, for business. 
 Once more he was indebted to a faithful friend for the care 
 and watching he stood in need of. He never had one wiser 
 and more true than Mr. J. F. Speed. This gentleman, then a 
 resident and merchant of Springfield, was closing up his busi- 
 ness there, and early in January, 1841, he removed to a new 
 home in Kentucky, carrying Lincoln with him. 
 
 Complete cessation of mental toil ; severance from too sug- 
 gestive surroundings of places and persons; with the firm, 
 judicious management of friends in whom he put utter confi- 
 dence, gave the disordered intellect of the smitten man its 
 best opportunity for restoration to health. Month after month 
 went by, however, before it was deemed safe to trust him back 
 among his dangers. Spring and summer and part of the au- 
 tumn passed away, and with them a whole session of the Legis- 
 lature to which he had been elected. Then he returned. But 
 he was not yet altogether himself. He kept the secret of the 
 agony which had overpowered him, but his mind still vacillated 
 strangely concerning his matrimonial engagement. Miss Todd's 
 friends at one time urged her to give him up. At another 
 they seem to have given her directly opposite counsel. So did 
 the friends of Lincoln and of both for him. The two met and 
 met again, but there is no record that at any time there was a 
 sign of a change of purpose in Mary Todd. It is not well to 
 speak or think lightly of such womanly faith and constancy as 
 this. She loved him, trusted him, and she continually drew 
 him to her more and more nearly and irrevocably. 
 
 On his return to Springfield, Mr. Lincoln at once resumed
 
 124 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 his law-practice and plunged again into politics. Habitually 
 gloomy as his face had grown to be, he did not wear his heart 
 upon his sleeve. He took his part with energy in all the affairs 
 of the day. It was well, too, for his mental health, to be 
 brought so continually in contact with a high-spirited and fun- 
 loving girl like Mary Todd. 
 
 In the course of the following year a merry prank of hers 
 ended in a serious scrape for him. 
 
 Miss Todd was mistress of a somewhat biting style of satire, 
 and enjoyed the application of it highly. It even led her to 
 the occasional contribution of political lampoons to the Spring- 
 field newspapers. As a matter of course, Mr. Lincoln was ad- 
 mitted to the secret of the authorship of these " Letters from 
 the Lost Townships," and he may have aided in the prepara- 
 tion of one or more of them. 
 
 Among the rising politicians of Illinois, at that time, was a 
 young Irish gentleman, James Shields, afterwards to be famous 
 as a soldier and political leader, but whose quick temper and 
 sensitiveness to ridicule rendered him a dangerous target for 
 the mischievous archery of Mary Todd. 
 
 Letter after letter appeared in " The Sangamon Journal," 
 hitting harder and harder, until Mr. Shields could endure no 
 longer, and sent a friend to the editor demanding the author's 
 name. 
 
 The editor, placed in a somewhat awkward position, revealed 
 a half-truth by giving to the messenger, General Whiteside, 
 the name of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 A peppery and offensive communication was at once written 
 by Mr. Shields to Mr. Lincoln, eliciting a dignified but unsatis- 
 factory reply, and a challenge to fight a duel speedily followed. 
 The " code of honor," as it was the absurd fashion to describe 
 the system of fantastic rules regulating that form of deliberate 
 murder, was then in full force in the "West. Even those who 
 perceived its insanity and hated its brutality had not yet learned 
 to repudiate its hellish authority.
 
 THE TO UNO LAWYER. 125 
 
 It seemed therefore necessary for Mr. Lincoln to accept the 
 challenge. Then it was needful that the friends of both par- 
 ties should solemnly ruffle through the customary correspon- 
 dence, public and private. There were the usual interviews, 
 misunderstandings, delicate points of honor, and all the other 
 doings and undoings which make the duelist ridiculous. At 
 last the very place of meeting was agreed upon, three miles 
 from Alton, Illinois, but on the Missouri shore of the Missis- 
 sippi River. The weapons selected were " cavalry broadswords 
 of the largest size," and the idea of being hacked at with such 
 a cleaver by a man of Lincoln's size and strength could hardly 
 have been a pleasant one for Mr. James Shields. 
 
 It was very much a matter of course that the seconds, sur- 
 geons, mutual friends, and other members of the customary 
 mob of assistants at such an affair managed to patch the mat- 
 ter up in time to prevent the use of the broadswords, and after- 
 wards the truth gradually leaked out as to the authorship of 
 the " Letters from the Lost Townships." Mr. Lincoln did not 
 fight the duel, and the larger share of the ridicule attached to 
 Mr. Shields, but it remained a sore subject to the former ever 
 afterwards. 
 
 The arrangements for not fighting had been somewhat elabo- 
 rate, and had dragged on through all the latter part of Septem- 
 ber and into October. Eight along with them, and, as it 
 seemed, somewhat hand-in-hand, a more important result had 
 been preparing. 
 
 On the 4:th of November Mr. Lincoln was married to Mary 
 Todd. 
 
 The young couple went into very respectable quarters, board- 
 ing at the Globe Tavern, where they were compelled to pay 
 the then good price of four dollars a week. The bridegroom 
 was finally out of debt, but he was still poor and had never 
 cultivated the faculty of making money. He was henceforth 
 to have a helpmeet who would see to it that his finances were 
 kept in better order ; but even Mrs. Lincoln perpetually failed
 
 126 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 in her efforts to induce him to make a proper use of his busi- 
 ness advantages. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's mind had now recovered health and tone and 
 the calm strength which it never again lost. He was as hard 
 a student as ever, both of books and men, and his professional 
 reputation was increasing. He was once more the lif e and 
 soul of political movements and party organizations. There 
 was no danger that his ambition would be permitted to slum- 
 ber, with a wife at his elbow who fully believed in his capacity 
 for almost any earthly achievement, and whose own political 
 faculties were much more than ordinary.
 
 MANHOOD. 127 
 
 CHAPTER XYIIL 
 
 MANHOOD. 
 
 An Honest Lawyer A Storm The Henry Clay Campaign The Old Cabin 
 Partnerships Coarse and Fine Elected Congressman The Mexi- 
 can War President Making The Pro- Slavery Formula Southern 
 Friendships. 
 
 NEITHER politics nor social nor domestic interests prevented 
 Mr. Lincoln from giving careful and laborious attention to Ms 
 professional duties. On the 3d of December, 1839, he was 
 admitted to practice in the Circuit Court of the United States. 
 His presentation of his first case in that court stands all alone 
 in the annals of the law. He arose and addressed the bench 
 as follows: 
 
 " This is the first case I have ever had in this court, and I 
 have therefore examined it with great care. As the Court will 
 perceive by looking at the abstract of the record, the only ques- 
 tion in this case is one of authority. I have not been able to 
 find any authority sustaining my side of the case, but I have 
 found several cases directly in point on the other side. I will 
 now give these cases and then submit the case." 
 
 The courage, candor, simple honor, required for such an 
 utterance, working out afterwards in all he said or did, before 
 judges and juries, gave him a power with them which was pe- 
 culiarly his own. Men cannot fail to be influenced by the 
 truth-seeking argument of an advocate in whose integrity 
 they are compelled by him to repose unquestioning confidence. 
 
 There were cases brought to him which he could not and 
 would not touch. No possible fee would induce him to be-
 
 128 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 come the instrument of injustice under cover of legal form 
 and merely technical right. 
 
 A few months after Mr. Lincoln's marriage an active can- 
 vass began within the limits of the "Whig party as to who 
 should be its candidate for Congressman from the Sangamon 
 district. The prospect for an election by the people was very 
 good, and there were several gentlemen whose friends were 
 hotly urging their respective claims. Mr. Lincoln earnestly 
 desired the nomination, but now, for the first time in his poli- 
 tical career, he found himself assailed upon purely personal 
 grounds. It would hardly have answered the purposes of his 
 rivals to attack him for his low origin before a community 
 among whom such an assault would but have added to his popu- 
 larity. He could, on the other hand, be accused of having de- 
 serted the cause of the common people by marrying an " aristo- 
 cratic" wife. All good men who believed the Bible could be 
 told that he was a deist or an infidel. At the same time, mem- 
 bers of the mqre numerous sects could be assured that he was 
 an Episcopalian or a Presbyterian, with equal recklessness of 
 the fact that he was neither. Nothing was forgotten or neg- 
 lected which could be remembered or invented against him, 
 and he was compelled to bend before the storm. He withdrew 
 his name at last in favor of Mr. E. D. Baker, and that gentle- 
 man was both nominated and elected to the Twenty-ninth 
 Congress. He received, throughout the canvass, the active 
 support of the defeated aspirant. 
 
 In the year 1844, Mr. Lincoln's political idol, Henry Clay, 
 was nominated by the Whigs for the Presidency, and Lincoln 
 was once more named as a candidate for Presidential Elector. 
 He threw himself into the campaign with all his energy, and 
 was bitterly disappointed by the defeat of his party and its 
 great representative. He made many speeches in Illinois, but 
 the most notable part of his work, that year, came to him in 
 Indiana. The course of his campaign appointments carried 
 him to Gentryville and its neighborhood. He made three
 
 MANHOOD. 129 
 
 speeches within a few miles, one of them within two miles, of 
 the log-cabin his father had built so many years before. The 
 country had vastly changed, and so had its inhabitants, but not 
 so much as had the barefooted boy who shivered under the 
 " pole-shelter" that first winter. 
 
 While in the middle of his speech at Gentry ville, he espied 
 an old boy-friend and neighbor, Eat Grigsby, far back among 
 his hearers. The argument suddenly stopped and the orator 
 sprang down from the platform, urging his way through the 
 crowd and exclaiming, " There's Nat !" Not till after a good 
 shake of the hand and a hearty word about old times with Nat 
 did the gathered voters hear the rest of Lincoln's plea on be- 
 half of Henry Clay. 
 
 Nat and nearly all the rest of the children of the early set- 
 tlers of the Pigeon Creek forests were still, except for the 
 lapse of time, living at the earthy level upon which they had 
 been born. Their original advantages had been at least us 
 good, and in many instances had been much better, than those 
 of Abraham Lincoln. He, however, had so grown and so de- 
 parted from that level of human life, during the thirteen years 
 since he toiled on foot from the woods of Indiana to the prai- 
 ries of Illinois, that now there was a great gulf between him 
 and them. 
 
 Other eyes could discern the abyss of separation more clearly 
 than could those of " the orator of the day." He insisted on 
 going with Nat Grigsby to pay a visit to the same Mr. Jones, 
 in Gentryville, for whom he had performed his earliest service 
 as clerk. He made it a merry time, apparently, and he met 
 all old and new acquaintances with the heartiest cordiality. 
 The uses of fun and humor as a mask of his inner man were 
 already only too familiar to him. It was well for him, then 
 and afterwards, that he possessed so excellent a shield. 
 
 In the shadows of the woods near Gentryville there were 
 many graves. Among them were those of Lincoln's own 
 mother and sister. The very woods themselves were a sort of
 
 130 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 burial-ground for the strange, hard, unchildlike childhood out 
 of whose hunger and thirst and nakedness of soul and body he 
 had grown to his present stature. He could not look upon the 
 log-cabin of his earlier days without understanding that some 
 of the precious treasures of human life had been denied him. 
 His very capacity for reading and so for leading the coarse and 
 sordid men and women around him told of a side of his being 
 that was born and bred with him and that never could or 
 would be polished away. The capacity was needful, was in- 
 valuable, but it had cost something. If it had been possible, 
 and if he had chiseled his character away to a finer model, 
 more in accord with conventional standards of human per- 
 fection, all these important elements of American life would 
 have missed finding their own image in him. Failing that, the 
 people would have refused him the strong, instinctive con- 
 fidence and love which finally flowed to him and enabled him 
 to bind the hearts of a nation together as one man, and in one 
 man, in the hour of the nation's trial. 
 
 It is a curious fact that, now, it is among the same people, 
 educated or uneducated, whether nominally high or low, 
 rich or poor, but who personally knew Lincoln so very well in 
 those old days, we hear the one faint and grumbling negation 
 of his greatness. In the language of one prairie-farmer, un- 
 consciously speaking for many : " Wai, no. Linkern wasn't 
 so much of a man. I knowed him. He lived out this away. 
 I've seen him a heap o' times. His folks was torn-down poor. 
 Reckon they wouldn't ha' made sech a fuss about him ef he 
 hadn't been shot. That helped him powerful. I knowed him." 
 
 After the defeat of Henry Clay there was little to be done 
 in politics until another campaign, and the life Mr. Lincoln 
 led was necessarily a quiet one. He followed the movements 
 of the courts from place to place, establishing his hard-earned 
 reputation more and more firmly, and beginning to reap a har- 
 vest of fees which was wealth to a man of his simple tastes 
 and inexpensive habits. He was now able to do something for
 
 MANHOOD. 131 
 
 his beloved " mother," for his shiftless, improvident father, 
 and for quite a long list of his early friends. He had, how- 
 ever, the good sense not to go too far in this direction, and he 
 then and afterwards refused to take upon his own shoulders 
 the burden of carrying sundry altogether too willing depend- 
 ents. Such of his communications to these and others as have 
 been preserved exhibit a praiseworthy disposition to help even 
 chronic indolence to help itself, but not to go much beyond 
 that line. It was a matter of course that the persons aided, 
 always excepting his sound-minded stepmother, entertained 
 wider and more liberal views of what should be done for them 
 by a man upon whom they held the strong claim that they 
 had known him when he was as poor as themselves. In their 
 minds, justice required that what they called his " luck" should 
 be divided around among the easy-going mob who had sat so 
 very still while he was toiling for it. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's first law-partnership, with John T. Stuart, 
 which began in 1837, was dissolved in 1841, in consequence of 
 Mr. Stuart's election to Congress. His second partnership, 
 with Stephen T. Logan, began in 1841 and lasted until 1845. 
 Shortly afterwards he associated with him Mr. William H. 
 Herndon, with whom his relations continued to the very end. 
 These were, from the beginning, more near than those of mere 
 business partners. The greater part of all that the world 
 knows of Mr. Lincoln's early life has been gathered and pre- 
 served by the affectionate diligence of his devoted friend. It 
 goes almost without saying that Mr. Herndon stood too near 
 the man he loved to form a just estimate of him as compared 
 with other men, or to correctly discern some features of his 
 character which required to be studied from a greater distance. 
 
 It was not until some time after Mr. Lincoln began to " ride 
 the circuit" that he was able to do so on a horse or in a buggy 
 of his own; but whatever borrowed beast or vehicle brought 
 him to any county-seat, he was sure to be welcomed by court 
 and bar as the life of all social gatherings. Among his prof es-
 
 132 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 eional associates, more freely and completely than elsewhere, 
 he could come out from his clouds and vapors and give vent to 
 the keen but quiet humor which might have made a cheerful 
 man of him but that so heavy a load was laid upon him con- 
 tinually. 
 
 There was little refinement of thought or speech among 
 those Western lawyers or their clients. There had been none 
 at all of either in the rough schools through which Mr. Lincoln 
 had received his education. He had his finer side ; fine even 
 to sensitiveness, and tender to an extreme capacity for suffer- 
 ing ; but he did not cast the pearls of this before the swine of 
 a miscellaneous " court-house crowd." As they were, so was 
 he, for the hour; exhibiting to them, in careless freedom and 
 good-fellowship, only such stores of wisdom, wit, or anecdote 
 as were suited to the average taste, morality, and brain of those 
 who listened. It was a way in life by no means peculiar to 
 him, and it was gradually worn from him in the sharp and 
 hard attrition of his later days. It is a very feeble-minded 
 error to suppose that even the richest vein of gold is naturally 
 free from dross, or that its treasure is fitted for the mint before 
 it has passed through the crushing-mill, the furnace, and been 
 subjected to the subtle and searching arts of the refiner. There 
 was much dross in the mind and in the speech of Abraham 
 Lincoln in those days of close contact with the crime, mean- 
 ness, fraud, chicanery, and pollution of a mixed law-practice 
 among the new settlements of Illinois ; but there was very little 
 dross of any kind in his heart, and out of this his mouth was 
 sure to speak more and more as time went on. 
 
 In the year 1846 there was again a sharp contest over the 
 nomination of a candidate for Congressman by the Whig party 
 in the Sangamon district. It was speedily reduced to a com- 
 petition between the sitting member, General Hardin, and Mr. 
 Lincoln, and, as early as February 26th, the former withdrew 
 in favor of the new aspirant. The regular nomination was 
 made in the following May, and both before it and afterwards
 
 MANHOOD. 133 
 
 the personal record of the candidate was searched for all its 
 vulnerable points. His supposed religions convictions were 
 assailed all the more bitterly because his political opponent in 
 the campaign was Peter Cartwright, an eccentric but popular 
 preacher of the Methodist persuasion. The effort to make the 
 contest one between saint and sinner broke down altogether, 
 and Mr. Lincoln was elected by an uncommonly large majority. 
 
 He had thus attained a long-sought object of his ambition, 
 and there were great reasons, not in any man's mind then, why 
 a term of service in Congress was especially needful to him. 
 The honor cost him a high price. His law-practice must suffer 
 seriously, in spite of all that could be done in his absence by 
 Mr. Herndon. Separation from home was inevitable, for his 
 circumstances did not permit that he should take his young 
 and growing family with him to Washington. Robert, his 
 first-born child, was beginning to talk and run around the 
 house; but his second, Willy, was still a babe in arms, having 
 been born on the 10th of March in that year. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's position in that Congress, the Thirtieth, as the 
 only Whig member from the State of Illinois, had its peculiar 
 difficulties and responsibilities. It had its unpleasant features 
 as well as its honors. It gave him a certain exceptional influ- 
 ence and weight with Whig statesmen from other parts of the 
 country, and in a manner vastly widened his constituency at 
 home. At the same time it was obvious that no other man 
 could be more sure of careful watching by political opponents. 
 The least misstep was certain to be made the most of against 
 him. He understood it all, and then, so understanding, he de- 
 liberately went forward to make, one after the other, the pre- 
 cise missteps his most bitter critics would have asked of him. 
 He was a politician, truly, but he was a great deal more ; and it 
 was no wonder, at the end of the Thirtieth Congress, that he 
 should be looked upon as a ruined man, in whose face the gates 
 of further advancement had been closed by his own reckless 
 hand.
 
 134 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 The House was organized on the 6th of December, 1847, 
 Mr. Lincoln being given a place on the Committee on Post 
 Offices and Post Roads. His first speech, a short one, was 
 made in connection with the business of that committee, and 
 he wrote to Mr. Herndon that he found it as easy to speak in 
 Congress as elsewhere. 
 
 The great topics of the hour were the Mexican "War and the 
 extension of Slavery, the two being interwoven, and both call- 
 ing for constant discussion in many forms. 
 
 From his own convictions and as a representative of the 
 Whig party, Mr. Lincoln was opposed to the war with Mexico. 
 As early as the 22d of December he offered a preamble and 
 resolutions setting forth his views of the varied wrongs in- 
 volved in the course pursued by the administration of Presi- 
 dent Polk in the current dispute with the weak, chaotic re- 
 public beyond the Rio Grande. The war was soon to become 
 popular by reason of the military glory won by the army, and 
 Mr. Lincoln's advocacy of the weak against the strong lost to 
 him and to his party the greater portion of his political strength 
 in Illinois. He made a somewhat elaborate speech in behalf 
 of his resolutions on the 12th of January, 1848, but it was all 
 too late to stem the tide of war. All that any politician could 
 do, in or out of Congress, was to put himself in such a position 
 that he would surely be swept away by the flood of popular 
 passion. Like other Whigs, Mr. Lincoln voted for requisite 
 supplies for the army in the field. It is even noteworthy how 
 close is the analogy between his position with reference to the 
 Mexican war and that afterwards held by many conscientious 
 Democrats with reference to the war for the Union. It goes 
 far to explain the mutual confidence which existed, at the lat- 
 ter period, between him and them ; and the country was the 
 gainer. 
 
 While the war lasted it was exceedingly popular, but the 
 sure reaction from its fierce excitement temporarily crippled 
 the party which was responsible for it. Nevertheless, the
 
 MANHOOD. 135 
 
 political chief 8 who had most actively opposed it were not at 
 once available candidates for political honors. Mr. Lincoln 
 saw clearly that not himself only but such men as Henry Clay, 
 Daniel Webster, and all the old-time Whig giants must be set 
 aside. That men accustomed to control should fail to appre- 
 ciate a necessity so disagreeable was every way natural, and 
 their friends with keener perceptions were compelled to bestir 
 themselves in time. It was needful that a Whig Presidential 
 candidate should be fixed upon in advance of the Whig Na- 
 tional Convention if one was to be offered with any prospect 
 of an election by the people. There did not really seem to be 
 more than one man who met the requirements of the political 
 situation. General Zachary Taylor was the hero of some of 
 the hardest-fought battles of the war, and he probably pos- 
 sessed as much statesmanship as falls to the lot of most good 
 military commanders. A respectable lawyer from Western 
 New York, Millard Fillmore, was given the second place on 
 the ticket. Nobody knew enough about either of these gentle- 
 men to say a word against them, and Taylor's war-record was 
 full of political campaign material. Mr. Lincoln took an active 
 part in arranging its business beforehand for the National Con- 
 vention. He attended its formal meeting at Philadelphia on 
 the 1st of June, assisted in placing the candidates upon the 
 platform of principles constructed for them, and then returned 
 to Washington to finish his work as a member of Congress. 
 
 On the 20th of June he delivered in the House a speech 
 upon his favorite subject of internal improvement. On the 
 27th of July following he again spoke in an argument which 
 embraced the entire field of the Presidential election and the 
 leading political issues of the day. The most interesting fea- 
 ture of this speech is the plainness with which it sets forth 
 Mr. Lincoln's unalterable opposition to slavery. He could not 
 and did not offensively formulate it then and there. If his 
 opinions were at all in advance of those held at the time by a 
 large part of the Whig party in the Northern States, a wise
 
 136 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 care for the results of the pending election forbade their utter- 
 ance. He was cautious, but proslaver j men were by no means 
 either blinded or satisfied by such moderation in him or in 
 others. They well understood that all opposition to the " ex- 
 tension of slavery" had for its source and foundation a hatred 
 of human bondage for its own sake. It was easy for them, in 
 their heated imaginations, to transfer that rooted hatred to 
 themselves and to assume that it could not but be personal. 
 They promptly adjusted themselves to that interpretation of 
 all such utterances as those of Mr. Lincoln. They were men 
 whose habits of life, of thought and action, forbade them to 
 flinch from any issue presented. They were both able and 
 courageous, and they ruled the country thereafter for twenty 
 years by the mere presentation of the bold formula : " If you 
 hate slavery, you hate us. If you desire to kill it, your real 
 purpose is to murder the people of the South." 
 
 Congress adjourned on the 14th of August, and Mr. Lincoln 
 went to New England on a brief tour of political speech-mak- 
 ing. This was his first opportunity for acquiring any personal 
 acquaintance with modes of life in the Eastern States. Except 
 for what study he had made of Yankee settlers in the West, he 
 was entirely ignorant concerning a population which was yet 
 to give him its very heart. He was, however, a student accus- 
 tomed to learn rapidly the contents of the human pages brought 
 before him. He could not possibly fail to profit by such an 
 experience of contact and observation. 
 
 The second session of the Thirtieth Congress did little or 
 nothing for the reputation of Mr. Lincoln. He voted with his 
 party, now in brief control of the House. He even offered a 
 bill for compensated emancipation of slaves held in the District 
 of Columbia, but it died the natural death of all such proposi- 
 tions in those days. Somewhat curiously, he made more and 
 more lasting new friendships among Southern representative 
 men than Northern. It was as if some subtle instinct bade 
 him seek and study them, telling him the importance of his
 
 MANHOOD. 137 
 
 acquiring a knowledge of them and an understanding through 
 them of the people who sent them to Congress. Some of these 
 friendships, as that with Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, came to the 
 surface as political factors and powers in subsequent emergen- 
 cies. His correspondence with Mr. Herndon during all this 
 period exhibits his undiminished interest in his home affairs. 
 It also shows that he was subject to all the minor annoyances 
 and perplexities of a member of Congress, including the per- 
 tinacities of office-seekers and the carping criticism of personal 
 friends. There was really no reason why he should be anxious 
 for a re-election, and there were many good reasons why he 
 should not openly seek for one. Of these, perhaps the best, in 
 his judgment, was the absolute certainty of defeat at the polls 
 if he should be nominated.
 
 138 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 THE COMING CONFLICT. 
 
 Office Refused The Missouri Compromise A Sure Prophecy Inner Life 
 Ripening Death of Tom Lincoln A Written Confession of Faith. 
 
 MR. LINCOLN would willingly have continued in Congress 
 if such a thing had been politically possible ; but it was not. 
 Among other obstacles appears to have been some sort of an 
 informal understanding between him and other Whig leaders 
 of central Illinois aiming at a rotation among them of the 
 honor of representing the Sangamon district. The nomination 
 fell to Lincoln's friend, Judge Logan, but he received it only 
 to meet the sure defeat prepared for him by the anti-war and 
 antislavery record of his predecessor. The latter at this junc- 
 ture of his affairs made an effort to obtain from the new Whig 
 administration the appointment of Commissioner of the Gen- 
 eral Land Office at Washington. It was probably at that time 
 the one public employment which would have offered him op- 
 portunities for furthering his internal-improvement schemes. 
 The national landed property, always large, had been greatly 
 increased by the results of the war with Mexico. It was im- 
 possible that Lincoln's mind should not turn with ideas and 
 projects relating to the future use and occupation of areas so 
 vast and so full of all the prophecies of empire. 
 
 The coveted post was given to another citizen of Illinois, 
 and Mr. Lincoln was offered in its stead the governorship of 
 Oregon Territory. He was urged by his friends to take the 
 appointment, on the ground that Oregon would soon be a 
 State and would thus send him to the United States Senate. 
 It was a tempting bait, but all the reply he made was that he
 
 THE COMING CONFLICT. 139 
 
 would accept if Mrs. Lincoln approved. The question was 
 duly submitted to her, and' her refusal was equally absolute 
 and prompt. She would not let her husband bury himself 
 again in the wilds of another new country, and he acted upon 
 her wifely advice, returning with all his accustomed vigor to 
 his sadly run-down and neglected legal practice. 
 
 The Eighth Judicial District was territorially large, includ- 
 ing fourteen prairie counties. To each of the several county- 
 seats Mr. Lincoln traveled twice in each year. Each circuit 
 required nearly three months, and not much more than half of 
 any year could be spent quietly at home by an active prac- 
 titioner. In the intervals of these unavoidable absences 
 Lincoln's home grew very dear to him. His habits were 
 simple and domestic to the last degree, and his fondness for 
 his children was one of his most deeply marked characteristics. 
 His wife was utterly devoted to him. His widening circle of 
 friends grew more and more attached and trusting, and his 
 affairs were eminently prosperous. His position was hardly 
 second to that of any other man in the State, and it seemed 
 that he had already won every success in life which could rea- 
 sonably be aspired to by the son of an Indiana settler, a " poor 
 white" from Kentucky. 
 
 He himself was anything but satisfied. He was still aspir- 
 ing, studying, preparing, growing. He carried with him upon 
 the circuit other books than those which treated of the law. 
 Copies of Shakespeare, historical works, mathematical school 
 text-books, were his frequent companions. He was still pur- 
 suing in his ripe manhood the tireless process of education 
 which he had begun with a piece of charcoal and a wooden 
 fire-shovel. 
 
 He was much sought after as a " counsel for the defendant" 
 in criminal cases, although his noted power over a jury passed 
 away from him at once if he himself believed his client to be 
 guilty. In one such case that is recorded he remarked to his 
 associate counsel :
 
 140 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 " If you can say anything for the man, do it. I can't. If 
 I attempt, the jury will see that I think he is guilty and con- 
 vict him of course." 
 
 The other lawyers followed their chiefs example ; the case 
 was submitted without argument ; and the jury, unassisted by 
 any " confession" from Abraham Lincoln, failed to agree upon 
 a verdict. 
 
 In a similar case, years later, in Champaign County, a man 
 was on trial for murder. Mr. Lincoln was employed to defend 
 him, assisted by Leonard Swett. The prosecution was con- 
 ducted by Ward H. Lamon and Judge Ficklin ; and when they 
 had done their duty, the prisoner's leading counsel was con- 
 vinced of his guilt. 
 
 " Swett," said he, " the man is guilty. You defend him. I 
 can't." 
 
 Mr. Swett, only less effective before a jury than Mr. Lincoln 
 himself, made the remaining fight so well that his client was 
 acquitted ; but his associate refused to take any part of the fee 
 that was paid for the work he had refused to do. 
 
 There are many anecdotes told of Lincoln's professional 
 readiness, wit, learning, capacity, eloquence, but few afford 
 any better knowledge of the real life of the man. He was in- 
 wardly advancing to a higher stature of mind and soul than 
 was required for the winning of a succession of court-room 
 victories over the arts of opposing counsel and over the minds 
 of petty juries. Kot as a mere lawyer, of what rank and 
 power soever, was his name to go down to future generations. 
 Still it is well to be assured that in these duties as in all others 
 he was notably capable and faithful. 
 
 Questions of national importance were now beginning to 
 stir more and more powerfully in his conscience and in his 
 heart as the fruits of his Congressional experience slowly 
 ripened. Long before going to Washington, he had been sent 
 to look with open eyes upon some aspects of the slave-life of 
 the Southern States. While in Congress he had studied and
 
 THE COMING CONFLICT. 141 
 
 understood the men who excused, defended, or glorified the 
 laws and institutions by which that life was created and con- 
 tinued in existence. 
 
 It was not difficult for any thoughtful man to comprehend, 
 in part at least, the purposes and plans of the advocates of 
 slavery, for they were even brutally frank in many of their 
 public declarations. They had to the uttermost the courage 
 of their convictions, and they shrank from no part or issue or 
 consequence of the work to which they had set themselves. 
 Mr. Lincoln understood fully now their courage, their activity, 
 their great intellectual ability. He saw with equal clearness 
 the sluggish cowardice of all the opposition to their will, which 
 had as yet a position to make itself effective. He knew men, 
 and had analyzed the processes through which their slow 
 thoughts and feelings are developed into purposes and pass on 
 into express action. He was watching these processes with 
 intense interest. In the year 1850, in a conversation with his 
 friend and former law-partner, Mr. Stuart, he said : 
 
 " The time will come when we must all be Democrats or 
 Abolitionists. When that time comes my mind is made up. 
 The slavery question can't be compromised." 
 
 " So is my mind made up," replied Mr. Stuart ; but it was 
 that he would be no Abolitionist. 
 
 The very thing Mr. Lincoln said could not be done was now 
 attempted. Shallow thinkers said it had been done, by the so- 
 called "Compromise Measures of 1850," whether regarded 
 merely as laws or as a species of social contract. These, it may 
 be well to recall, admitted Missouri without restriction as to 
 Slavery, and at the same time prohibited Slavery forever in the 
 new territory west of Missouri and north of the latitude 36 30' 
 the southern boundary line of that State. This " Missouri 
 Compromise" did indeed arise to the dignity of a hollow and 
 fraudulent political truce. So long as the fetters it sought to 
 impose retained their fictitious' binding power there was no 
 fitting place in politics for men like Abraham Lincoln. The
 
 142 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 condition of his mind with reference to all this matter is 
 admirably set forth by Mr. Herndon : 
 
 " Mr. Lincoln and I were going to Petersburg, in 1850, I 
 think. The political world was dead: the compromises of 
 1850 seemed to have settled the negro's fate. Things were 
 stagnant, and all hope for progress in the line of freedom 
 seemed to be crushed out. Lincoln was speculating with me 
 about the deadness of things and the despair which arose out 
 of it, and deeply regretting that his human strength and power 
 were limited by his nature to rouse and stir up the world. He 
 said gloomily, despairingly, sadly : ' How hard, oh, how hard 
 it is to die and leave one's country no better than if one had 
 never lived for it ! The world is dead to hope, deaf to its own 
 death-struggle, made known by a universal cry. What is to 
 be done ? Is anything to be done ? Who can do anything ? 
 And how is it to be done? Did you ever think of these 
 things?'" 
 
 It was a grand utterance ; and the world can understand it 
 now, and can also understand by help of it what forces were at 
 work behind the sad face of the man who was yet to answer 
 effectively the fierce questionings of his own despairing cry. 
 The world of 1850 was not the world of to-day. There have 
 been vast convulsions and wonderful changes in every part of 
 it since then, and every change and every convulsion which 
 has taken place began in the hearts of men who had in some 
 measure received, like Lincoln, the priceless gifts of thinking 
 and seeing and suffering. 
 
 Men who heard him at times men like Herndon, who was 
 a sincere Abolitionist could and did wonder why the man 
 who felt so deeply and spoke so strongly did not at once break 
 out into some species of agitation. Other men were so doing 
 here and there, and were bravely performing the work of 
 pioneers in the cause of freedom. Lincoln also was doing the 
 work allotted him, and his zealous friends were unable to see 
 that his time for something different had not yet come. He
 
 THE COMING CONFLICT. 143 
 
 understood, rather than saw, the unadvisability of present ac- 
 tivity on his part. It was nothing to him that other men, such 
 as in after-time mistook themselves and their frantic outcries 
 for causes instead of effervescent effects, were all the while 
 hurling anathemas at any who might dare await the coming 
 fullness of time. It had not come, and he would bravely wait. 
 
 The great mass of American citizens went somewhat stolidly 
 on with their plowing and planting, their merchandise, their 
 "politics, such as they thought they could understand, and 
 their religions, such as they had. 
 
 The fullness of time came, and with it the man who had 
 ripened with it for the work of the great harvest ; but even 
 now, after the work is done and he has passed on out of the 
 field, there still remain those who look back to the year 1850, 
 and even later, and try to persuade themselves and others: 
 " At that time Mr. Lincoln's mind was not made up. He was 
 no further advanced then than we ourselves were." 
 
 By others somewhat this sort of comment has been freely 
 made : " He and the other politicians were ready enough to reap 
 the harvest we had sown and tilled for them. The new politi- 
 cal world was created by us and we put into it the men, like 
 Lincoln, whom we manufactured out of the dust of the earth. 
 "We blew into them all the life they ever had." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's determination to abstain from current politics 
 was so firm, that when in that very year the nomination for 
 Congress was again offered him, he positively and publicly de- 
 clined it. It is very possible that he could have been elected, 
 as all personal opposition to him had ebbed away. But there 
 was little to be then accomplished at Washington which could 
 not just as well be done by other men. Moreover, the sacri- 
 fice of professional and domestic interests and ties would then 
 have been greater than before. 
 
 His father's health began to fail towards the close of 1850, 
 and Mr. Lincoln took care that his last days should be provided 
 for in every needful way. It was also just before the birth of
 
 144 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 little " Tad," and there were other reasons which forbade a 
 prolonged absence from Springfield. 
 
 As for Thomas Lincoln, it is pleasant to know how tenderly 
 and kindly the poor old shiftless Kentucky ne'er-do-well was 
 cared for upon his death-bed by his faithful son. Mr. Lincoln 
 wrote to his step-brother, John Johnston, a letter which closes 
 with the following sentences : 
 
 " I sincerely hope father may yet recover his health ; but at 
 all events tell him to remember to call upon and confide in our 
 great and good and merciful Maker, who will not turn away 
 from him in any extremity. He notes the fall of the sparrow 
 and numbers the hairs of our heads ; and He will not forget 
 the dying man who puts his trust in Him. Say to him that, 
 if we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be 
 more painful than pleasant ; but that if it be his lot to go now, 
 he will soon have a joyful meeting with loved ones gone be- 
 fore, and where the rest of us, through the mercy of God, hope 
 ere long to join them." 
 
 These utterances, too, may well stand as an answer to those 
 who tried to make the thoughtful man responsible for the raw 
 infidelity of the thinking youth. This faith in the fatherhood 
 of God, and his later manifestations of positive belief in the 
 brotherhood of man, are not far from obedience to the great 
 commandments on which, said Jesus, "hang all the law and 
 the prophets." 
 
 After his father's death, as before, Mr. Lincoln continued 
 his kind offices to his step-mother, and to other members of 
 the family, although some of the latter took a course in life 
 which reflected small credit upon her or him. He probably 
 did as much for all of them as was in any manner well or 
 worth while.
 
 From Photograph taken immediately after Nomination, 1860.
 
 A GREAT AWAKENING, 145 
 
 CHAPTEK XX. 
 
 A GREAT AWAKENING. 
 
 Colonization The Kansas-Nebraska Act The Barriers Broken Down 
 Lincoln's First Great Speech Stephen A. Douglas Growth of a New 
 Party Discovering a Leader An Oratorical Match. 
 
 IN July, 1852, Mr. Lincoln was selected by the citizens of 
 Springfield to deliver a funeral oration upon Henry Clay. He- 
 performed the public duty allotted him, but with an absence 
 of enthusiasm for his old political idol which occasioned re- 
 mark. It need not have surprised any who knew him welL 
 He had that upon his mind which forbade his rising to any un- 
 usual height of eloquence in dealing with the memory of a 
 statesman whose sun had set behind the clouds of " compro- 
 mise" of the slavery question. The only noteworthy feature 
 of the address is its bewildered agreement with Mr. Clay's 
 idea of the colonization of the black people in Africa as a pos- 
 sible remedy for existing evils. Clearly foreseeing the awful 
 perils into which the country was drifting ; discovering no 
 possibility of emancipation upon the soil of the United States ; 
 regarding the continued presence of such a population as a 
 danger to the future welfare of the whites, both of the North 
 and South all the threatening images with which his inner 
 thought was turning goaded him on in a search which seemed 
 hopeless. In such a state of mind, the vain chimera of a 
 wholesale transportation of the apparent cause of the coming 
 strife and misery to other lands took hold of him with a 
 power which would have been impossible had any alternative 
 proposition been presented. It clung to him for years with a 
 pertinacity which is not at all wonderful, but which is not easy
 
 146 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 of explanation to minds which have not had the same problems 
 to deal with. 
 
 During the same year Mr. Lincoln made a speech at Spring- 
 field, in commentary upon one delivered by Stephen A. Doug- 
 las at Kichmond, Virginia. Like other ephemeral utterances 
 it has little interest now. 
 
 The minor features of the slow movement of national poli- 
 tics in the years preceding the great collision have passed out 
 of sight. It was regarded by some, at that time, as an act of pre- 
 sumption for Mr. Lincoln to assume such an attitude of equal- 
 ity with "the little giant of Illinois." 
 
 To Mr. Douglas, however, the whole country was soon to be 
 indebted for an act of servility to the slave-power which set 
 free the forces for a time bound down by the compromises of 
 1850. The bill afterwards known in history as " The Kansas- 
 Nebraska Act," in its complete form, was reported to the Sen- 
 ate of the United States on the 23d of January, 1854, by Mr. 
 .Douglas, as Chairman of the Committee on Territories. 
 
 The Act provided for the creation of the Territories of Kan- 
 sas and Nebraska out of the immense area then bearing the 
 latter name. It removed the safeguards and ignored the 
 solemn compact provided by the Missouri Compromise, and 
 left the people of these or any other Territories, or a tempo- 
 rary majority vote of them, empowered to admit or reject 
 human slavery, subject only to the Constitution of the United 
 States, in which there was then no specific barrier. In no other 
 way could the impending peril have been placed before the 
 public in a shape so easily understood. All mere theories were 
 out of date in an instant, when the propagandists of bondage 
 said to the nation : " Here are two new States to be organized. 
 They must be Slave-States. We have broken down the fence 
 agreed upon between you and us. You shall not put up any 
 more." 
 
 The people as a whole were slow in dividing upon the new 
 issue so presented. The Democratic party, North and South,
 
 A GREAT AWAKENING. 147 
 
 was wonderfully vigorous and in perfect discipline, and it held 
 the Federal government, with all its machinery of administra- 
 tion, in a grasp of iron. The Whig party was in process of 
 disintegration ; dying because it had nothing to live for. 
 There was no existing political organization capable of taking 
 up the challenge of the South. The chiefs of the latter were 
 utterly astounded by the roar of surprise, fury, dismay, of 
 helpless, aimless, moblike wrath which swept the North like a 
 tidal wave from the Atlantic westward. 
 
 Mr. Douglas was as much astonished as were his Southern 
 colleagues. He finished his Senatorial work in Washington, 
 and hurried to Illinois to try and persuade the people that his 
 bill did not mean what they all said it did. At Chicago the 
 angry multitude refused to listen to him, and he went on to 
 Springfield. 
 
 The State Fair was held in that city in October, drawing to- 
 gether a vast throng from all parts of the State, thoroughly 
 representing its best population ; and before that assembly the 
 Senator pleaded in his own defense. 
 
 There was one man in Springfield to whom the Kansas-Ne- 
 braska bill, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the re-open- 
 ing of the slavery question, had come as a new lease of life. 
 As by one voice the duty of answering Douglas was assigned 
 to Mr. Lincoln, and he may be truly said to have made his 
 first great political speech that day. All the smothered fire of 
 his brooding days and nights and years burst forth in a power 
 and with an eloquence which even those who knew him best 
 had not so much as hoped for. 
 
 There was no report made of that speech. Not a sentence 
 of it had been reduced to writing beforehand. He spoke all 
 that was in his heart to speak, and when he sat down there 
 had been a new party born in the State of Illinois, and he was 
 its father, its head, its unquestioned and unquestionable repre- 
 sentative and leader. 
 
 Mr. Douglas briefly and vainly attempted a reply, ending b,y
 
 148 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 a promise of another speech in the evening ; but his defeat had 
 been altogether too complete. He made no second appearance 
 before the assembly which had listened while Mr. Lincoln tore 
 his. fallacies to shreds and held his personal political record up 
 to their scorn and ridicule. The evening was occupied instead 
 by a number of the best orators in the State, both Whigs and 
 Democrats, enforcing the great lesson of the day and carrying 
 forward the work which Lincoln had so well begun. 
 
 The elements for the formation of a new party were abun- 
 dant in every Northern State, and they were aggregating ra- 
 pidly, but they were yet confused, unorganized, chaotic. There 
 was great intensity of feeling among all the varied and discon- 
 nected constituencies, but no formulated expression had been 
 agreed upon. So far as men were able to typify the ideas and 
 purposes to which they were opposed, these were temporarily 
 embodied in Stephen A. Douglas rather than in any Southern 
 leader. It was a distinction of which he afterwards laboriously 
 and painfully divested himself. But he wore it long enough 
 to serve the purpose for which it was given him. 
 
 A part of this had been already well served. Publicly, be- 
 fore a vast jury of his fellow-citizens, as the champion of his 
 cause he had met and been vanquished by the man who thence- 
 forward was to express in his own voice and personality, and 
 at last to officially represent and direct, the national will and 
 soul, aroused by proslavery aggression. The service was not 
 fully performed that day, for afterwards Mr. Douglas was to 
 act as a pointing hand, concentrating the eyes of men upon 
 Mr. Lincoln, so that they might know their leader and form 
 column behind him as he went forward. 
 
 Much good work for freedom had already been done upon 
 the floors of Congress, in House and Senate ; much in the press 
 and in the pulpit ; more in talks by firesides and in neighbor- 
 hood gatherings. The fire passed swiftly from man to man. 
 Had it not been so there would have been no party to organize. 
 It is, nevertheless, a matter of historical record that the exist-
 
 A GREAT AWAKENING. 149 
 
 ence of the Republican party, unnamed but living, dates from 
 the first collision at Springfield of Stephen A. Douglas with the 
 man who for forty-seven years of toilsome development had 
 unwittingly prepared himself for that hour and for the long 
 struggle which was to follow. 
 
 The other orators of the day, the crowd that sympathized, 
 admired, applauded, saw little more than the fact that " Old 
 Abe has made a splendid speech. We did not know it was in 
 him." 
 
 Some of them also perceived the evident fact that whenever 
 Mr. Douglas or any other champion of the cause he repre- 
 sented should require to be met again, there could be no doubt 
 as to the popular choice of a man to meet him. Not that Mr. 
 Lincoln was a great man or the equal of Mr. Douglas. He 
 was too near a neighbor for that, and not known much outside 
 of the State. Nothing great about him. They knew him. 
 Had heard him tell stories. Still, he was a sort of growing 
 man, and he could make a right down good speech. A man 
 with a sadly defective education. 
 
 There was a reason why Mr. Lincoln did not attend the 
 gathering of the people in the evening after his great Spring- 
 field speech. The extreme Abolitionists, blind to the meaning 
 of that which was passing before their eyes, had announced a 
 separate meeting of their own. They had planned, moreover, 
 that the triumphant orator of the day should be there present 
 and be forced to identify himself with their faction. He was 
 plainly an Abolitionist in heart and why should he not become 
 one in name ? 
 
 It was a thoroughly sincere and honest piece of unwisdom. 
 But even so ardent an antislavery man as Mr. Herndon saw 
 the danger to his friend and to all the interests at stake, and he 
 hastened to give warning. He himself says : 
 
 " I rushed to Lincoln and said, ' Lincoln, go home ; take Bob 
 and the buggy and leave the county ; go quickly ; right off ; 
 and never mind the order of your going.' He stayed away till 
 all conventions and fairs were over."
 
 150 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 It was the announced purpose of Mr. Douglas to speak be- 
 tween that time and the election at various large towns 
 throughout the State, and Mr. Lincoln was requested to follow 
 and reply to him, according to the prevailing Western custom. 
 The request was united in by prominent men of the three fac- 
 tions, Whigs, Abolitionists, and Anti-Nebraska Democrats, 
 which were already coalescing to form the new party and did 
 not know it. The duty was promptly accepted by Mr. Lincoln, 
 and the two leaders met at Peoria in a second encounter. The 
 results of this destroyed all willingness on the part of Douglas 
 for any further trial of strength. An agreement, afterwards 
 somewhat departed from, was entered into, by the terms of 
 which both combatants retired from the canvass. It was a 
 political capitulation. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's Peoria speech was printed and widely read. 
 By it his followers were supplied with forcible verbal formulas 
 for the expression of their thoughts and feelings, and all the 
 local speakers of the fall campaign were given a magazine of 
 fresh material to draw upon. 
 
 Mr. Douglas, prior to his arrangement for withdrawal, had 
 made an appointment to speak at Lacon, and Mr. Lincoln went 
 to meet him there, but refrained from speaking when he found 
 his opponent disabled by illness. On his return home he 
 learned that his friends, represented by Mr. William Jayne, 
 had announced him in the Journal as a candidate for the 
 State Legislature, and that Mrs. Lincoln, well knowing her 
 husband's views and wishes, had called upon the editor, Mr. 
 Francis, and procured the removal of the announcement from 
 the paper. Of course Mr. Jayne went to see Mr. Lincoln on 
 his arrival, and he thus relates the story of it : 
 
 " I went to see him in order to get his consent to run. This 
 was at his house. He was then the saddest man I ever saw ; 
 the gloomiest. He walked up and down the floor, almost 
 crying, and to all my persuasions to let his name stand in the 
 paper he said, * No, I can't. You don't know all. I say you
 
 A ORE AT AWAKENING. 151 
 
 don't begin to know one half, and that's enough.' I did, how- 
 ever, go and have his name reinstated, and there it stood. He 
 and Logan were elected by about six hundred majority." 
 
 There is a wonderful simplicity about this whole transaction 
 of wife and husband and devoted friends. Little enough the 
 others knew, unless it may have been to some extent known 
 to his wife, the awful struggle of which the external symp- 
 toms so puzzled them. 
 
 They seem to have sagely decided, although with some won- 
 der that Lincoln should feel so badly about it, that he had 
 serious doubts of the advisability of going to the Legislature 
 just then. His very soul was wrung to agony ; they could see 
 that ; but he never took the small trouble to have his candidacy 
 denied. He was elected; and then, as soon as the Legislature 
 came together, he resigned. 
 
 There was an obvious reason for the latter step. Mr. Lin- 
 coln was well known to be a candidate for United States Sena- 
 tor, in place of James Shields, whose term was expiring. The 
 latter had voted for the Kansas-Nebraska Bill with Mr. Doug- 
 las, and the opponents of the hated law were in the majority if 
 their several factions could be induced to act in concert. Some 
 other man than Shields would surely be chosen by the Legis- 
 lature, and Mr. Lincoln's sense of propriety forbade him to sit 
 as a member of the body which was to act upon his claims as a 
 candidate. 
 
 He had a strong desire to go to the Senate, there to continue 
 the war he had so well begun. He was no prophet, and had 
 none to tell him that, for a time at least, private life was a bet- 
 ter place for him than the dignified assembly which has been 
 shrewdly described as " the graveyard of Presidential candi- 
 dates." It was necessary that he should remain a man of the 
 people, among the people ; studying the course of events bet- 
 ter than that could be done in the heated atmosphere of the 
 Capitol. It was equally needful that he should keep himself 
 untrammeled by the fetters of official responsibility, and that
 
 152 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 he should avoid the sure peril of injudicious utterances in the 
 fierce debates that were soon to come, and to which the country 
 was to listen as it had never listened before. 
 
 More than all was it needful that the forces preparing and 
 growing within him should have two years of accumulation, 
 rather than exhaustion. 
 
 On the 8th of February, 1855, the Legislature took in hand 
 the election of a United States Senator. It was found that 
 Gen. Shields, and after him ex-Governor Mattison, to whom 
 the Democrats transferred their strength, had forty-one votes ; 
 while the anti-Democratic majority were divided, giving to 
 Mr. Lincoln forty-five, Mr. Trumbull five, and Mr. Koerner 
 two. Forty-seven were required to elect, and repeated ballotings 
 brought no change in favor of either of the leading candidates. 
 Then came signs of danger that some of Mr. Trumbull's sup- 
 porters, who were opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska measure, but 
 were Democrats all, and old political opponents of Mr. Lin- 
 coln, might relapse into their former party allegiance. Mr. 
 Lincoln's advice was asked and given. He said without a mo- 
 ment's hesitation : " You ought to drop me and go for Trum- 
 bull. That is the only way you can defeat Mattison." 
 
 His friend, Judge Logan, urged that he should continue to 
 be a candidate, but was firmly answered : 
 
 " If I do, you will lose both Trumbull and myself, and I 
 think the cause, in this case, is to be preferred to men." 
 
 The Whigs obeyed, in bitterness of spirit, and Lyman Trum- 
 bull was chosen Senator instead of Abraham Lincoln. The act 
 of the latter did more than send an able and patriotic man to 
 the Senate. It retained the anti-Nebraska Democratic element 
 in the new party, in that and in other States. It kept Lincoln 
 at home in Illinois, but in charge of all further consolidation of 
 jarring elements, and with the threads of all control more 
 firmly in his hands than ever. His neighbors had trusted his 
 integrity and recognized his capacity. They were now com- 
 pelled to acknowledge and to honor his rare unselfishness.
 
 A GREAT AWAKENING. 153 
 
 The sacrifice had cost him something, but the unexpected re- 
 ward was promptly and loyally paid him. 
 
 It was an additional recompense, shortly afterwards, to find 
 how bravely and how well Senator Tmmbull was performing 
 the high duty so magnanimously surrendered to him. His 
 very presence in the Senate-chamber was a visible warning to 
 the slavery propagandists that their long control of the Demo- 
 cratic party of the North had been broken forever.
 
 154 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXI. 
 
 THE NEW PARTY. 
 
 Bleeding Kansas A Watchful Friend Trapping a Trapper The Bloom- 
 ington Convention General Apathy The Voice of Faith. 
 
 OF the two Territories created by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 
 the former was manifestly the more nearly ready for admis- 
 sion into the Union as a State. Upon the soil of Kansas, 
 therefore, the contending political forces had already begun to 
 pour themselves, in a tide of extraordinary immigration from 
 the older States. The lawless and often bloody scenes enacting 
 there were doing much to convince the nation that the days of 
 mere argument, and even of mere balloting, were passing away. 
 A most peaceful generation, born and nurtured in the hatred 
 of all violence, was undergoing a process of habituation to the 
 idea of brute force as a tribunal of final appeal. 
 
 The sympathies of the anti-slavery men of Illinois were 
 strongly appealed to on behalf of their downtrodden brethren 
 of Kansas. In 1856, not long after the Senatorial election, an 
 association was formed of the more zealous Abolitionists, with 
 the view of emigrating, armed and equipped, to what was prac- 
 tically the seat of civil war. Among these was Mr. Hern- 
 don, and his purpose could not long be concealed from his 
 wiser, cooler, more far-seeing law-partner. By some means 
 Mr. Lincoln got the hot-heads together, and addressed them in 
 the name of peace, law, order, and sound common-sense. He 
 not only convinced them that their purpose was wrong, but 
 that it was foolish, and persuaded them to stay at home. He 
 joined them, however, in sending pecuniary and other contri-
 
 THE NEW PARTY. 155 
 
 butions to the assistance of the actual Kansas settlers who were 
 suffering in consequence of the political disorders. 
 
 He himself had been too wise, in his most earnest utter- 
 ances, to avow himself an extreme Abolitionist. In his mind, 
 the country had other interests than those of the black man. 
 The future of the white race was also entitled to some consid- 
 eration. The best good of all forbade indifference to the wel- 
 fare of any part. 
 
 The several factions into which the opposition to the con- 
 trolling party was still divided in Illinois were in a state of 
 seeming blindness to their approaching consolidation ; but Mr. 
 Lincoln was not. Each coterie put forth eager but vain efforts 
 to secure the adhesion to their number of the man who con- 
 tained in himself more power than any or all of them. They 
 compelled him to exercise great care. So reticent was he, so 
 cautious not to make any answer which should seem to identify 
 his name with any clique or segment, that even Mr. Herndon 
 felt himself called upon to labor with his friend in the interest 
 of the cause of freedom. He lent him antislavery books and 
 papers ; read him extracts from speeches and lectures ; strove 
 in every way to arouse in him a more aggressive hatred of 
 slavery and a disposition to fight against it. Mr. Lincoln might 
 well have said to him, as he had said to Mr. Jayne : " You 
 don't begin to know the half of it, and that's enough." 
 
 He said very little, however, and his friend persisted in con- 
 sidering him unsettled in his political mind. 
 
 The radicals of every name were shortly summoned to a 
 State convention to be held at Bloomington, and a " call " was 
 circulated in Springfield for a county convention for the selec- 
 tion of delegates. There still remained a curious doubt as to 
 the course Mr. Lincoln would pursue. He was absent when 
 the " call " was passed around for signatures, but Mr. Herndon, 
 zealously determined to make him commit himself, signed his 
 name to it for him. Nothing could add to Mr. Herndon's own 
 account of the transaction and its consequences. He says :
 
 156 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 " I determined to make him take a stand, if he would not do 
 it willingly, as he might have done, as he was naturally in- 
 clined Abolitionward. Lincoln was absent when the call was 
 signed and circulated here. I signed Mr. Lincoln's name with- 
 out authority ; had it published in the Journal. John T. 
 Stuart was keeping his eye on Lincoln, with the view of keep- 
 ing him on his side the totally dead conservative side. Mr. 
 Stuart saw the published call and grew mad ; rushed into my 
 office. Seemed mad and horrified, and said to me, * Sir, did 
 Mr. Lincoln sign that Abolition call which is published this 
 morning ? ' I answered, ' Mr. Lincoln did not sign that call.' 
 ' Did Mr. Lincoln authorize you to sign it ? ' said Mr. Stuart. 
 * !Nb, he never authorized me to sign it.' ' Then do you know 
 that you have ruined Mr. Lincoln 2 ' 'I did not know that I 
 had ruined Mr. Lincoln ; did not intend to do so ; thought he 
 was a made man by it ; that the time had come when conser- 
 vatism was a crime and a blunder.' ' You, then, take the re- 
 sponsibility of your acts, do you ? ' ( I do, most emphatically.' 
 However, I sat down and wrote to Mr. Lincoln, who was then 
 in Pekin or Tremont, possibly at court. He received my let- 
 ter and instantly replied, either by letter or telegraph, most 
 likely by letter, that he adopted in toto what I had done, and 
 promised to meet the radicals Lovejoy and such-like men 
 among us." 
 
 All this is as much as to say that they thought it was need- 
 ful to entrap Mr. Lincoln, and this is the way in which the 
 large game was caught and caged. 
 
 There was, however, something of a surprise in store for the 
 successful trappers. When the State convention came together 
 at Bloomington, it was found to comprise strong conservative 
 as well as ultra-progressive elements. It was precisely the 
 conclave for which Mr. Lincoln had long been waiting, and the 
 opportunity had come for him to deliver another decisive 
 speech. He was undeniably the man of the occasion, and 
 others were waiting to hear from him.
 
 THE NEW PARTY. 157 
 
 It was pretty well understood that his utterance would be 
 regarded as the voice of the convention, and would be, to all 
 intents and purposes, the " platform" upon which it would be 
 compelled to stand. So to speak, he had taken possession of 
 the trap wherein his wise friends had caged him and was 
 calmly proceeding to capture the trappers. 
 
 The speech he made has been declared the ablest of his 
 strictly political addresses. In many respects it is certainlythe 
 most interesting of all. He was able, for the first time, to 
 free his arguments from many of the meshes formerly cast 
 around them by existing laws, by " compromises," and by ex- 
 pressed or implied social contracts. Mr. Douglas and his 
 friends in Congress had done this much for him and for free- 
 dom. 
 
 The new party, thus beginning to assume organic existence, 
 first assumed the name of " Republican" at this particular Con- 
 vention at Bloomington, Illinois, and it has been common to 
 say that it was " born" then and there. This is simply a con- 
 fusion of ideas, for the young political organism had already 
 left its cradle and was advanced far along the line of prepara- 
 tion for the severe work of early manhood. There is a differ- 
 ence between mere ceremonies of christening and other vital- 
 izing processes of creation. 
 
 Apart from the more glowing paragraphs of Mr. Lincoln's 
 speech, the proceedings at Bloomington were apparently con- 
 servative, and the extremists were but little pleased with them. 
 
 The " platform" actually adopted did not go far enough, and 
 yet it went to the limit of what Mr. Lincoln believed the peo- 
 ple were ready to accept. It went so much further than that 
 in fact, and the whole undertaking had in it so much of au- 
 dacity, of presumptuous rebellion against the existing order 
 of things, of an advance into unknown and perilous ground, 
 that the report of it was received with general apathy and was 
 followed by a mysteriously deep and timid reaction. So strong 
 in the minds of men was the doubt as to what course they
 
 158 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 should pursue, that the entire voting population may be said 
 to have held its political breath. About five days after the 
 adjournment of the convention, a public meeting was called in 
 Springfield to " ratify" the action taken. The county court- 
 house, where the meeting was to be held, was well lighted ; 
 the usual posters on all the fences had announced the meeting 
 and the name of the distinguished orator who was to address 
 it ; a band of music paraded the streets to drum up enthusiasm, 
 and the bells were rung. The net result of all these praise- 
 worthy efforts is reported by Mr. Herndon, who, with Mr. Lin- 
 coln and a man named John Pain, were all the multitude the 
 occasion brought together : 
 
 " When Mr. Lincoln came into the court-house, he came 
 with a sadness and a sense of the ludicrous on his face. He 
 walked to the stand, mounted it with a kind of mocking, 
 mirth and sadness all combined, and said : ' Gentlemen, this 
 meeting is larger than I knew it would be. I knew that 
 Herndon and myself would come, but I did not know that 
 any one else would be here ; and yet another has come, you, 
 John Pain. These are sad times and seem out of joint. All 
 seems dead, dead, dead ; but the age is not yet dead : it liveth 
 as sure as our Maker liveth. Under all this seeming want of 
 life and motion the world does move, nevertheless. Be hope- 
 ful. And now let us adjourn, and appeal to the people.' " 
 
 He made many longer speeches in the course of his life, but 
 not one that was braver or better. He well understood the 
 true nature of the temporary paralysis of the new political 
 movement, and had measured the forces whose irrepressible 
 activities forbade its long continuance. Nevertheless, it re- 
 quired a good deal of faith to stand up in an empty hall and so 
 address Mr. Herndon and John Pain.
 
 THE COMIX G MAN. 159 
 
 CHAPTEE XXH. 
 
 THE COMING MAN. 
 
 The Fremont Campaign Lincoln for Vice-President The Southern Threat 
 Days of Preparation Buchanan's Term One Story Higher A 
 Murder Case. 
 
 THE varied elements of the new party, in all those parts of 
 the country wherein it could be permitted to exist, were now 
 rapidly coalescing, but did not yet call themselves Eepublicans. 
 A " national convention" was held at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, 
 in February, 1856, but adjourned without making nominations. 
 A second convention met at Philadelphia, on the 17th of June, 
 and nominated John C. Fremont for President and William 
 L. Dayton for Yice-President. The supporters of these candi- 
 dates very generally concealed their hesitation as to their future 
 political course by styling themselves vaguely " The People's 
 Party." 
 
 At the Philadelphia convention, when the Illinois delega- 
 tion, in its turn, was called upon to present a nomination for 
 the office of Yice-President of the United States, its chairman 
 announced the name of Abraham Lincoln. When the ballots 
 were counted, he was found to be the second on the list of 
 candidates, having received 110 votes. Mr. Dayton, had 289 
 votes, and 180 ballots were distributed among many other 
 names. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had not yet had time to think much of his own 
 political prospects in connection with the new party. Position 
 and power had come to him more rapidly than he was aware. 
 So little did he know how strong a hold he was taking upon 
 the minds of men that the honor thus given him came as a
 
 160 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 complete surprise. He was attending court in Urbana, Cham- 
 paign County, when the telegraph brought the news that Day- 
 ton had been nominated, but that " Mr. Lincoln received 110 
 votes." 
 
 " That must be our Lincoln," half doubtfully remarked some 
 of his friends in his hearing ; but he said, " No, it could not 
 be : it must have been the great Lincoln from Massachusetts." 
 There was, indeed, a prominent citizen of- that State who 
 bore the same name. 
 
 All that was left of the old "Whig party nominated " Fill- 
 more and Donelson." The Democrats nominated " Buchanan 
 and Breckinridge," with a positive assurance of success. The 
 campaign began at once, and Mr. Lincoln went into it with all 
 his energy, as a candidate for Fresidential Elector of the State 
 of Illinois, on the Fremont and Dayton ticket. In so doing, 
 he was, of necessity, brought before the entire country as the 
 immediate antagonist and, as it proved, intellectual superior of 
 of the Democratic champion, Stephen A. Douglas, a man of 
 national reputation. Mr. Lincoln's closest friends and warmest 
 admirers in Illinois had but inadequate ideas of the extent to 
 which, in part or in whole, the speeches of the man whom they 
 regarded as their excellent and, in some things, very capable 
 neighbor were read by the people of other States. They little 
 guessed how widely and deeply the foundations of his repute 
 and power were building through all the busy days of that 
 great though seemingly unsuccessful campaign. 
 
 Any discussing of pending questions, as then formulated, 
 may be set aside as belonging to the political history of the 
 times rather than to the biography of Abraham Lincoln. Not 
 so, however, with the fact that the Democratic press and ora- 
 tors, North and South, from beginning to end of the campaign 
 of 1856, held up before the people the red specters of dis- 
 union and civil war, to deter all timid men from opposing the 
 onward march of slavery. It was not a mere threat, and Mr. 
 Lincoln at no time treated it as such, but discussed it seriously.
 
 THE COMING MAN. 161 
 
 He repeatedly argued the wicked unreason of regarding the 
 election of the anti-slavery candidates as an excuse for the 
 commission of the proposed crime. 
 
 He clearly perceived the reality of the coming peril, even 
 while he publicly declared its devilish folly. His fits of de- 
 spondency came upon him more frequently than ever, and 
 more darkly. There was no suddenness whatever in this ripen- 
 ing of his understanding and the appreciation of the forces in 
 collision. It had come with the growth of his personal convic- 
 tions of duty and with his painfully labored study of the 
 measures wisely to be taken or avoided, the words well to be= 
 uttered or left unspoken, and of the slow processes through 
 which the general popular mind was unwittingly preparing to- 
 meet the wrath to come. 
 
 It has been only too common a stupidity for men to look upon 
 Mr. Lincoln as a species of political miracle; a prodigy of 
 sudden sagacity and power ; blindly selected from among an 
 unknown multitude by the chance-medley results of a political 
 lottery at a convention ; swiftly expanding to colossal knowl- 
 edge and wisdom under the furnace-heat of circumstances. 
 Sound common-sense and healthy human reason have no faith 
 in such irrational marvels. 
 
 Every day of his life, prior to the Fremont campaign, had 
 been a preparation for it. Every hour of that intense excite- 
 ment was surcharged with the same close, penetrating, unf or- 
 getting study that he had given to the charcoal scores on his 
 Indiana shingle ; to the law-books he devoured during his hot 
 walks from Springfield to New Salem ; or to the Euclid or 
 Shakespeare he carried with him in his borrowed buggy around 
 the Sangamon three-months' circuit. 
 
 Every corner of his soul was a busy workshop, with no open 
 windows through which other men could look in and see what 
 was going on. While others were discontentedly waiting and 
 wondering what would be the end of it all, he was aiding them 
 to wait with better patience. At the same time he was saga-
 
 162 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 ciously aiding them in getting ready for such action as might 
 be required when the hour should come to wait no longer. 
 When that hour came, it was only because of their own sur- 
 prise at what he said and did that they dimly imagined he 
 must also be astonishing himself. 
 
 The results of the November voting were precisely what all 
 but a few over-sanguine and inexperienced politicians had ex- 
 pected. Mr. Buchanan was elected President of the United 
 States, and the Democratic party seemed to be settled more 
 firmly than ever in its long-held place of power. True, there 
 was a strong and persistent minority of Republicans in each 
 House of Congress. Their numbers were growing, and they 
 were soon to be in control of the Lower House. They had al- 
 ready carried one of their number to the Speaker's chair, but 
 with an ill-disciplined and somewhat uncertain support for him 
 after he was put there. The assumption of the name " Repub- 
 licans" by the new party was progressive, as the several ele- 
 ments and factions were from day to day absorbed by it. 
 The newspaper reporters and editors aided the process by a 
 continual application of the term. 
 
 The hot debates of the sessions now to follow would weld 
 that fragmentary mass upon the floor of the House into the 
 compactness of hammered iron. Already the watchful eyes of 
 the Southern leaders were noting the menacing fact that the 
 new party lost no inch of vantage-ground once fairly won. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's law-practice was now larger than ever before, 
 and was fairly lucrative, although his fees were never such as 
 prominent Eastern counsel were in the habit of receiving. His 
 first really heavy fee, of five thousand dollars for services ren- 
 dered the Illinois Central Railroad Company, was actually dis- 
 puted by that corporation as extortionate, although they would 
 have paid it instantly to any leader of the New York bar. Mr. 
 Lincoln brought suit for his claim, and a " jury of lawyers" 
 affirmed its justice before it was paid him. He was living in 
 a good but very unobtrusive style. His house had grown to a
 
 THE COMING MAN. 163 
 
 sufficient size under the hands of his wife rather than his own. 
 During one of his long professional absences, she procured the 
 building of a larger and handsomer second story, with a new 
 roof and a coat of fresh paint over all. On her husband's re- 
 turn, he is said to have paused for a moment in front of the 
 unexpected transformation, and then to have jocosely hailed a 
 passer-by : 
 
 " Stranger, can you tell me where Lincoln lives ? He used 
 to live here." 
 
 It was entirely impossible for even a busy lawyer to keep 
 out of politics altogether during the year and a half immedi- 
 ately following the inauguration of President Buchanan. The 
 course of events in Kansas and in Congress was such as daily 
 to fan the popular excitement. All men were beginning to 
 discern for themselves the exact nature and direction of their 
 moral and intellectual leanings. The greater number were 
 rising toward the high rank of persons having convictions, 
 purposes, and some knowledge of public affairs. Below these 
 was the swarming mob of those who can feel but who cannot 
 think. These latter, like their betters, were waiting for a 
 leader and a plainly uttered " order of the day." Both were 
 to come in due time, for the one was formulating the other 
 and was patiently awaiting the right time for its utterance. 
 
 During the summer of the year 1857 a man named Metzgar 
 was murdered at a camp-meeting in Mason County, Illinois, 
 and two men, named James H. Norris and William D. Arm- 
 strong, were accused of the crime. The former was tried in 
 Mason County, convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to 
 eight years of prison-life. The popular feeling against Arm- 
 strong was so bitter that it was doubted if a fair trial could be 
 given him near the scene of the murder. A " change of 
 venue" was therefore taken to Beardstown, in Cass County, 
 where he was tried for murder, in the spring of 1858. 
 
 Armstrong was a mere " rough" and wretchedly poor ; but 
 he had not committed the murder he was accused of. He
 
 164 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 was a son of that Jack Armstrong of Clary's Grove, near New 
 Salem, whose affection Lincoln had gained by shaking him at 
 arm's length. "When a baby he had been rocked in his cradle 
 by his father's tall friend, while his mother, Hannah Arm- 
 strong, attended to other household duties. At one time Lin- 
 coln had been almost a member of the family. 
 
 Hannah was old now, and she had no money to pay lawyers, 
 but she had faith in her friend, and wrote him an account of 
 her trouble. Mr. Lincoln at once replied that he would under- 
 take the defense, but the heartbroken old woman managed to 
 travel to Springfield that she might tell him all she knew 
 about the matter, and win his honest help as well as his 
 sympathy. 
 
 It seemed a hopeless case, for the evidence against Arm- 
 strong was clear and positive and not at all circumstantial. It 
 appeared to be inevitable that he would be convicted not of 
 manslaughter but of murder, and that he would surely be 
 hanged for his crime, and as the principal offender. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln appeared in court on the day of trial, but gave 
 over the verbal management of the witnesses to his colleague 
 in the case, Mr. Walker, who had already made a study of it. 
 He himself did little more than to suggest questions and 
 keenly watch for the way of escape which no other man in the 
 court-room believed could be discovered. 
 
 The proof of murder was complete. Good witnesses testi- 
 fied to having seen Armstrong commit the deed, by the light 
 of a nearly full moon shining high in a cloudless heaven. Until 
 Mr. Lincoln arose to speak, the prisoner at the bar stood prac- 
 tically convicted, and the jury could have given against him a 
 verdict of " guilty" without leaving their seats. 
 
 The evidence, however, was only too perfect. It was too 
 nicely fitted and adjusted, and when taken up in the hands of 
 a master it came to pieces and could be put together again in 
 another shape so as to show that the murder was not commit- 
 ted then and there by that man, but elsewhere, afterwards, and
 
 THE COMING MAN. 165 
 
 by other hands. The speaker went on step by step until he 
 was ready to call upon the clerk of the court for an almanac 
 which he had previously placed in his hands for the purpose. 
 Then he asked the jury to note the fact that at the alleged 
 hour of the murder, instead of the splendor of moonlight 
 sworn to by the prosecuting witnesses, there was no moon at 
 all and darkness reigned. 
 
 Court, jury, lawyers, burst into a roar of astonished laughter ; 
 but the moment it died away Mr. Lincoln launched out into a 
 speech which has been described by all who heard it as won- 
 derfully eloquent. All said that it saved the life of Arm- 
 strong, without reference to the testimony so skillfully pulled 
 to pieces, by its touching description of his own early struggles 
 and the kindness then shown him by the now widowed mother 
 of the prisoner at the bar. He believed the young man inno- 
 cent, and he made the jury believe so with him. There were 
 tears in his voice and in his eyes, however, while he talked of 
 those old days of hardship and toil and privation, and of the 
 simple, rough, kindly-hearted prairie people with whom he had 
 shared them. It was a noble appeal, full of pathos, argument, 
 genius, eloquence, persuasive power. More than all this is 
 such an utterance of value in the study of his life and char- 
 acter, by the revelation it affords of his own perpetual con- 
 sciousness of the level from which he had climbed and of the 
 inner forces by whose operation he had arisen. In this is to 
 be found one secret of his influence over men who remained 
 at or near that first low level, for it is more than likely that 
 the jury before him was largely composed of such men. More 
 than one of his most important public utterances, as President 
 of the United States, will be found on analysis to have been 
 framed and worded that it might reach the understandings and 
 the hearts of that vast popular jury which is but a multiplica- 
 tion of country juries and the " boys" of Clary's Grove. In 
 order that he might have and retain this power, he faithfully 
 carried with him to the very end, half mournfully, half lov-
 
 166 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 ingly, a minute memory and understanding of all the events of 
 Ms early life, and of all the persons, types of character, experi- 
 ences, which thereby had been made his instructors. 
 
 When the hour came for the uses of this peculiar gift, all 
 the Hannah Armstrongs in the country felt free to go to him 
 about their boys, and all the Bill Armstrongs north of the 
 Ohio River came marching at his call in serried masses of 
 " three hundred thousand more." 
 
 Polished incapacity shuts its blind eyes unnecessarily to this 
 very day, and sneers at the unseen lesson it might learn from 
 the great lawyer and politician weeping genuine tears before 
 a Cass County jury while he told them about the baby and the 
 cradle in Jack Armstrong's log-cabin. 
 
 Poor old Hannah came back to the congratulations of the 
 crowded court-room, from which she had fled, after the speech, 
 "down to Thompson's pasture," remaining there until in- 
 formed of the acquittal of her son. The judge shook hands 
 with her ; so did the jury ; so did Abraham Lincoln, with the 
 hot tears pouring down his face. He said a few kind words 
 to her then, and afterwards, when she asked him how much 
 he was going to charge her and told him she was poor, he 
 said : " Why, Hannah, I sha'n't charge you a cent. Never. 
 Anything I can do for you I will do for you willingly and 
 freely without charges."
 
 POLITICAL PROPHECY. 167 
 
 CHAPTER XXIH. 
 
 POLITICAL PROPHECY. 
 
 A Rejected Leader A Great Convention An Historical Speech Nomin- 
 ated for United States Senator The Joint Debates with Douglas The 
 Splitting of the Democratic Party Beginnings of a Presidential 
 Nomination Spring 1858 to Spring 1859. 
 
 THE term for which Stephen A. Douglas had been elected 
 to the Senate of the United States was now drawing to a close. 
 He was, as a matter of course, a candidate for re-election ; but 
 there had been a great change in his political relations since 
 the beginning of the Buchanan Administration. He had sev- 
 ered his previous connection with the Southern chiefs of the 
 Democracy and their more subservient tools at the North. 
 The tremendous lessons of the Fremont campaign had not 
 been lost upon him. He saw that a large and much the more 
 intelligent section of the Northern Democracy would go no 
 further in submission to the arrogant demands of the slave 
 power. He boldly and ably put himself at their head and 
 forced them to acknowledge him as their representative. 
 When that was accomplished, he would willingly have led 
 them bodily into the Eepublican camp could he have been 
 assured as a reward a re-election to the Senate. 
 
 Many sincere Republicans earnestly advocated the proposed 
 coalition, but the greater number distrusted Mr. Douglas. 
 They were willing to receive him as a recruit but not as a 
 commanding officer. Headed by Senator Trumbull, who had 
 now become fully identified with the new party, the Illi- 
 nois Republicans determined to stand or fall by their existing 
 organization. Having so determined, there could be but one
 
 168 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 voice as to who should be their standard-bearer in the battle 
 before them. When, however, in April, 1858, the Democratic 
 State Convention met, and, after making the usual nominations 
 for State officers, added thereto an indorsement of Mr. Doug- 
 las, it was again strongly urged by some Republicans that the 
 great Democratic Senator was not only himself advancing in 
 the right direction but was skillfully taking his whole party 
 with him. It was declared to be the part of wisdom for the 
 Republicans to name no candidate against him. They should 
 rather accept and even triumphantly claim him as their own. 
 
 The proposition was not at all unreasonable. At that day, 
 Mr. Douglas was quite enough of an anti-slavery man to satisfy 
 the great majority of those who called themselves Republicans 
 and deemed it a kind of " radicalism" to stand upon the plat- 
 form of principles they had vaguely adopted for the uses of 
 the Fremont campaign. They were somewhat in ignorance 
 of their own immediate future. The old battle-field, with 
 which they had grown fairly familiar, was not at all the one to 
 which they were now to be led, neither was it in the heart or 
 brain of Mr. Douglas to marshal them for the ground upon 
 which they were shortly to be arrayed. If they had accepted 
 him, as proposed, he would have led them to a sure victory 
 over nothing whatever. Rejecting him, they were to be led 
 to a sure defeat, followed by a surer victory, under the orders 
 of a captain able to see beyond the narrow consequences of the 
 present emergency. 
 
 The Republican State Convention was called to meet at 
 Springfield on the 16th of June. When gathered, the dele- 
 gates, with their alternates, actually present numbered nearly a 
 thousand men. They represented nearly all the old parties and 
 fractions of parties, and were of all shades of political opinion 
 and social standing. Owing to the peculiar composition of the 
 population of the State of Illinois, the entire country was per- 
 sonally represented in that assembly. There were men there 
 from every Northern State and from many States of the
 
 POLITICAL PROPHECY. 169 
 
 South. An unusually large proportion were young men 
 never before active in politics. It was to such a conclave as 
 this that Mr. Lincoln deliberately prepared to present the issue 
 before the country. He decided that it must be so presented 
 that no man among them could fail to understand it. 
 
 That he would be the orator of the occasion was a matter of 
 course, and the preparation of the speech he was to make was 
 a task the performance of which is worthy of careful noting. 
 It was not the work of a mere politician ; it was the thought- 
 ful expression of a human life. It came from his mind in 
 scraps and small pieces, a sentence at a time, jotted down on 
 fragments and slips of paper. Then at last these were gathered 
 and put into form for delivery and for printing. All those 
 detached segments had been growing in the speaker's thought 
 through gloomy, toilsome years. 
 
 On the 16th of June the Convention unanimously adopted 
 the following resolution : 
 
 "That Abraham Lincoln is our first and only choice for 
 United States Senator, to fill the vacancy about to be created 
 by the expiration of Mr. Douglas's term of office." 
 
 They were now pledged to their chosen chief beyond recall, 
 and must abide by his leadership. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had taken neither advice nor counsel in the pre- 
 paration of his speech, but he saw the necessity of also prepar- 
 ing some of his nearer friends for what it was to be. He read 
 it first to Mr. Herndon, the most extreme Abolitionist of his 
 intimates, and that excellent gentleman timidly asked him : 
 
 " It is true ; but is it entirely politic to speak it or read it as 
 it is written ?" 
 
 The question referred particularly to the key-note of the 
 speech, and Mr. Lincoln replied : 
 
 " That makes no difference. That expression is a truth of 
 all human experience, ' a house divided against itself cannot 
 stand,' and ' he that runs may read.' The proposition is indis- 
 putably true and has been true for more than six thousand
 
 170 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 years ; and I will deliver it as it is written. I want to use 
 some universally known figure, expressed in simple language 
 as universally known, that may strike home to the minds of 
 men in order to rouse them to the peril of the times. I would 
 rather be defeated with this expression in the speech, and it 
 held up and discussed before the people, than to be victorious 
 without it." 
 
 Having sounded the depths of Abolition courage through 
 his friend Herndon, Mr. Lincoln proceeded to consult others, 
 and finally gathered a dozen leading men in the Library Boom 
 of the State House, not to ask their guidance, but to assure 
 them of his purpose by reading the speech to them, and, if 
 possible, to form a small nucleus of favorable public opinion 
 in advance. He read and they listened, and every man present 
 except Mr. Herndon, who had already caught fire and was be- 
 ginning to burn pretty well, condemned the bold utterance as 
 an utter destruction of the party at the hands of its captain. 
 It was in advance of the time. It was unwise. It was im- 
 politic if not, indeed, untrue. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln heard them all thoughtfully. He walked up 
 and down the room ; then stood still and said to them : 
 
 " Friends, I have thought about this matter a great deal ; 
 have surveyed the question well from all corners; and am 
 thoroughly convinced the time has come when it should be 
 uttered: and if it must be that I go down because of this 
 speech, then let me go down linked to truth, die in the advo- 
 cacy of what is right and just. This nation cannot live on in- 
 justice. ' A house divided against itself cannot stand/ I say 
 again and again." 
 
 The results of his long years of study, internal strife, brood- 
 ing thought, agonized wrestlings with doubt on the one side 
 and ambition on the other, was that he planted his faith deep 
 in a word of Jesus the Christ, and was ready to live or die by it. 
 He saw that this was the way, the truth, and the life for him 
 and for the nation, and all expostulation failed to move him.
 
 POLITICAL PROPHECY. 171 
 
 The speech was delivered without modification, on the lYth 
 of June, to the Convention and a dense throng of other citizens 
 from all parts of the State. With the entire, colossal argument 
 we have little to do here, but the " key-note" which startled the 
 nation is as follows : 
 
 "Gentlemen of the Convention: If we could first know 
 where we are and whither we are tending, we could then better 
 judge what to do and how to do it. We are now far on into 
 the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the avowed ob- 
 ject and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agita- 
 tion. Under the operation of that policy, that agitation has 
 not only not ceased but has continually augmented. In my 
 opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have been reached 
 and passed. ' A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I 
 believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave 
 and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved ; I do 
 not expect the house to fall ; but I do expect that it will cease 
 to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. 
 Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread 
 of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief 
 that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will 
 push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the 
 States, old as well as new, North as well as South." 
 
 No words so daring, no such unequivocal statement of the 
 great problem, had yet been uttered by any man of political 
 prominence and power. 
 
 Mr. Seward had been visited with vast abuse for declaring 
 " the irrepressible conflict" between freedom and slavery, but 
 his boldest utterance had been philosophical feebleness com- 
 pared to this. 
 
 His work, of inestimable value, had been in the nature of a 
 preparation of the public mind for the forced reception of a 
 great and gloomy fact to which it had hitherto shut its ears 
 and blinded its eyes. Such words as Lincoln uttered can never 
 be recalled, for, being truth, they are spirit and they are life,
 
 172 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 and they cannot die, but live forever. In other forms and 
 adaptations, they apply and will be applied to any and every 
 question of human right and wrong upon which, in all the 
 world, a people or nation shall henceforth be divided. They 
 will help all men to see and know that, in any such division, 
 the fighting cannot cease but must go on to an end, whether 
 men choose for themselves that they will fight for hell or 
 for heaven. 
 
 Nevertheless, as Lincoln himself said, in the sublimely cour- 
 ageous words with which the great speech ended : 
 
 " The result is not doubtful. "We shall not fail, if we stand 
 firm we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate or mis- 
 takes delay it, but, sooner or later, the victory is sure to come." 
 
 From the Kentucky hut and the Indiana "pole-shelter;" 
 from ignorance, vice, filth, darkness, poverty; through toil 
 and sorrow and suffering ; through storms of heart and soul 
 which drove him mad, the germ of a great life and noble man- 
 hood had expanded slowly, until this was the voice it could 
 send forth to a tumultuous time, to a doubting, hesitating 
 party, and to a bewildered, faint-hearted people. 
 
 The immediate result of the speech was precisely what his 
 friends had feared and prophesied. All the more conservative 
 elements were horrified, and the very radicals murmured at an 
 impolitic frankness which openly invited defeat at the polls. 
 There is no question that it prevented Mr. Lincoln's election 
 to the Senate and sent Mr. Douglas there in his stead, at the 
 end of the most remarkable personal canvass on record. They 
 met in debates at prominent points all over the State. Every- 
 where Mr. Lincoln proved his superiority both in intellectual 
 power and in soundness of moral position, but the people were 
 not yet quite ready to follow him. He had gone on too far in 
 advance of them, and they required time in which they might 
 open their new-born political eyes and learn to look at realities 
 and grow and think a little. 
 
 Mr. Lamon relates that, a day or two after the delivery of
 
 POLITICAL PROPHECY. 173 
 
 the speech, a Dr. Long, unconsciously representing a great 
 multitude, came into Lincoln's law-office to free his mind. He 
 said: 
 
 " Well, Lincoln, that foolish speech of yours will kill you 
 will defeat you in this contest, and probably for all offices for 
 all time to come. I am sorry, sorry, very sorry. I wish it 
 was wiped out of existence. Don't you wish it, now ?" 
 
 Mr. Lincoln dropped the pen he had been busy with, and 
 turned his sad, earnest, half-contemptuous smile upon the 
 mourner : 
 
 " Well, Doctor, if I had to draw a pen across and erase my 
 whole life from existence, and I had one poor gift or choice 
 left as to what I should save from the wreck, I should choose 
 that speech and leave it to the world unerased." 
 
 With others he afterwards argued earnestly the wisdom and 
 policy as well as the truth of that speech, both as to time and 
 place, and most men of the party were shortly able to agree 
 with him. 
 
 An important result of the joint debates between Lincoln and 
 Douglas was that the latter was forced into such explanations 
 and to take such ground before his own constituents that he 
 thereby lost all hope of regaining his broken hold upon the 
 South. He was driven to the alternative of abandoning his 
 ambitious design upon the Presidency or of splitting his own 
 party in sunder. His subsequent choice of the latter course 
 made possible the Republican triumph of 1860, and his tem- 
 porary success in 1858 encouraged him to that determina- 
 tion. 
 
 The popular vote in November, 1858, showed a numerical 
 majority of over four thousand for the Republican ticket, but 
 that did not carry with it a majority of members of the Legis- 
 lature. The friends of Douglas controlled both Houses. If, 
 in the heat of the struggle, Mr. Lincoln permitted himself to 
 hope for a different result, he took his defeat with equanimity. 
 He could not have more than dimly dreamed of the immediate
 
 174 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 reward in store for him, but he had done his duty. He had 
 been placed before the whole country in a strong light. He 
 had fairly won a national reputation. He had proved himself 
 such a leader as anxious men were waiting for. Nevertheless, 
 those who saw him daily and believed that they knew him best 
 had but a faint and fragmentary idea of the impression he had 
 made, and was still making, upon others than themselves. They 
 talked about him, more or less, during the winter of 1858-9, 
 and they severely criticised two or three attempts he made at 
 "lecturing" on unimportant topics. Like other men, the 
 country over, they were beginning to discuss the coming Presi- 
 dential campaign and its possible candidates. It does not ap- 
 pear, however, that a man among them all took occasion to 
 mention among these latter the defeated antagonist of Douglas 
 in the recent State election. 
 
 At the county-seat of Champaign County, in the Eighth Ju- 
 dicial District, there was printed at that time a weekly news- 
 paper, of good standing and circulation, called the Central Il- 
 linois Gazette. It was owned and nominally managed by an 
 eccentric and illiterate country doctor, who never wrote for it. 
 Its sole editor and real manager was a young man from New 
 York who had barely a speaking acquaintance with Mr. Lin- 
 coln, though, like most of his neighbors, profoundly respecting 
 and even enthusiastically admiring him. 
 
 In April, 1859, Mr. Lincoln was at the Doane House, in 
 Champaign, the " railway half " of the county-seat, in attend- 
 ance on business before the court. He had been to the post- 
 office quite early one morning, returning, with a hat half full 
 of letters, to a chair in the hotel office. He came in, absorbed, 
 gloomy, neither speaking to or even noticing any one as he en- 
 tered. He rested his feet on the big stove in the middle of the 
 room and began to open and read his letters. 
 
 There had been a sharp dispute in the Gazette office the 
 previous day, between the doctor and the editor, as to the pre- 
 cise political course to be pursued by that journal. As the
 
 POLITICAL PROPHECY. 175 
 
 young man now came out from his breakfast in the hotel 
 dining-room with his mind yet full of the subject of the quar- 
 rel, he saw the well-known face and form of Mr. Lincoln, and 
 suddenly resolved to address him and ask his advice. But 
 something in the dark, strong face arrested him, and he waited. 
 It was worth any man's while to study such a face as that. 
 Mr. Lincoln tore open a letter of more than ordinary length 
 and began to read. It was closely written in a crabbed, black 
 handwriting, but it must have contained matter for thought. 
 He read it half through, dropped it in his hat and sat there as 
 if looking at something a thousand miles away. His heavy 
 features, deeply furrowed with wrinkles and sallow with fa- 
 tigue of heart and brain, seemed flabby and lifeless for a few 
 moments. Then, and swiftly, as if the keeper of the light- 
 house had kindled the great fire within, the eyes and the whole 
 face began to light up and glow with all the radiance of the 
 hidden life that had so long been living there. The young 
 watcher had never before seen anything like that upon any 
 face of living being, and he reverently forbore to speak. He 
 was thrilled and spell-bound by something of the force of a per- 
 sonality which had so often swayed multitudes to the will of 
 the orator. 
 
 " The greatest man I ever saw or heard of !" he exclaimed 
 to himself, as he quietly slipped out of the hotel. In a few 
 moments he was in his own office and the doctor was there be- 
 fore him. 
 
 " Doctor," he shouted, " I've made up my mind for whom 
 we are going for President." 
 
 " You don't say ! Who is it ?" 
 
 " Abraham Lincoln of Illinois !" 
 
 " What ? Old Abe ? Nonsense ! We might go for him 
 for Yice-President. He'd never do for any more'n that. 
 Seward and Lincoln wouldn't be a bad ticket. But Old Abe ! 
 Who put that into your head ?" 
 
 " He did. It's no use, doctor. He's the man. You've
 
 176 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 got to tend office to-day. I'm off for Springfield, the next 
 train, to get material for a campaign-life editorial." 
 
 The doctor yielded, as usual. The young editor went to 
 Springfield and returned with his material. The article was 
 written, and early in May it was printed. Hundreds of copies 
 were industriously sent out, all over the State, to be quoted, 
 commented upon, approved, and ridiculed, and the work of 
 nominating a President, so far as Illinois was concerned, had 
 been well begun before the nominee had been spoken to upon 
 the subject. At the same time, a letter from the same hand, 
 and to the same general effect, was printed in a journal pub- 
 lished in the city of New York, but of course without attract- 
 ing especial attention there. 
 
 The fact here related is a full refutation of the baseless as- 
 sertion that Mr. Lincoln had anything whatever to do with the 
 inception of what was strictly a popular movement. But the 
 discussion and comments of people and press of course at- 
 tracted the attention of those most interested, and from that time 
 forth, naturally, both Mr. Lincoln and his friends watched 
 closely and discussed freely all indications of the drift of pub- 
 lic opinion with reference to the coming choice. Echoes 
 came speedily, from every direction, repeating the enthusiastic 
 outburst of the Champaign County editor. It looked as if 
 some kind of a tide might be rising ; but it was too early yet 
 for reasonable calculation. There were many other distin- 
 guished names continually upon the lips of men. Hardly a 
 State failed of putting forward one or more of its respected 
 names in connection with the honorable competition. Plainly, 
 a vast amount of careful work was before the party, in the na- 
 ture of judicious sorting and sifting. Ordinarily, early " men- 
 tion" is sure death to nomination ; but it was well for Mr. 
 Lincoln that his candidacy began at so early a day, for even 
 his enemies and the crisis itself worked steadily in his behalf.
 
 TEE RISING TIDE. 177 
 
 CHAPTEK XXIV. 
 
 THE RISING TIDE. 
 
 National Fame The Cooper Institute Speech Sectionalism Illinois State 
 Convention at Decatur The Rail-splitter The Republican National 
 Convention at Chicago The Presidential Nomination 1859. 
 
 ALL over the country, and in every part of every section, pop- 
 ular preparations for the Presidential campaign of 1860 began 
 earlier than usual. Men of all parties perceived, more or less 
 clearly, that an unprecedented crisis was at hand in public af- 
 fairs. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln began to receive letters from various persons 
 who inquired as to his views of different questions. These 
 were not all sent him with a friendly purpose, but his replies 
 were at once frank and judicious. During the autumn of the 
 year 1859 he made a number of political speeches in Ohio, 
 and early in the winter he did the same in Kansas. Every- 
 where he gave renewed evidences of the ripening of his powers 
 as a statesman and orator. His fame was growing so fast that 
 even his best friends were compelled to recognize it. At last, 
 a self-appointed committee of them arranged a conference with 
 him, in a room of the State House at Springfield, to urge upon 
 him the propriety of formally permitting the use of his name 
 as a Presidential candidate. He heard them. He took one 
 night to consider the matter, and the next day gave his consent. 
 His demeanor throughout the conference was quiet, modest, 
 thoughtful, and he expressed strong doubt of success in obtain- 
 ing the nomination. 
 
 Meantime an unintended movement in his favor was made 
 by men who had no thought of him as a rival of their own pre-
 
 178 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 ferred candidates. In October he had received an invitation 
 to deliver a lecture at the Cooper Institute, in New York City. 
 After consulting with Mr. Herndon, he consented, on condi- 
 tion that he should be 'permitted to speak upon political ques- 
 tions, setting a day in the following February. This was 
 readily agreed to, and he at once set himself diligently to the 
 work of preparation. 
 
 The people of the United States were wonderfully " sec- 
 tional" in the year 1859. The North knew little of the South, 
 and the South knew almost nothing of the North. The "West 
 was the very symbol of vagueness and uncertainty to the people 
 of the East. The people of the West, other than immigrants 
 from the seaboard States, did but dimly bear in mind their re- 
 lations to the older settlements between their homes and the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 There were therefore few men in Illinois who could com- 
 prehend the significance of the invitation to Mr. Lincoln to 
 speak in New York, or see how high, how very rare a compli- 
 ment was thereby offered him. The great East teemed with 
 eloquent men, lawyers, scholars, statesmen, theologians, and 
 yet its chief city asked to hear a man who as yet had won no 
 tangible eminence in either of these characters. Except as a 
 local celebrity, made such in recent political campaigns, it was 
 supposed that he had never been heard of. This was in a 
 measure true, for he had been felt rather than heard, and all 
 the more did men desire to see and hear him. 
 
 No previous effort of his life cost him so much hard work 
 as did that Cooper Institute speech. When finished, it was a 
 masterly review of the history of the slavery question from 
 the foundation of the government, with a clear, bold, states- 
 manlike presentation of the then present attitude of parties and 
 of sections. It exhibited a careful research, a thorough knowl- 
 edge and understanding of political movements and develop- 
 ments, that staggered even the most laborious and painstaking 
 students. It showed a grasp, a breadth, a mental training, and
 
 TEE RISING TIDE. 179 
 
 a depth of penetration which compelled the admiration of 
 critical scholars. Those who heard and those who afterwards 
 read it in print alike filed it away as an historical document. 
 Those who listened to its delivery acknowledged with one voice 
 that the country possessed and had now discovered one more 
 great man and great orator. 
 
 Nothing like this had been at all expected, although enough' 
 was already known of Mr. Lincoln to call together in Cooper 
 Institute an audience which astonished him. The great hall 
 was crowded with the best citizens of New York. The mem- 
 bers of that throng had all of them listened to many celebrated 
 speakers and to what they deemed great speeches. They were 
 cultivated, intelligent, critical, but they were willing to be 
 amused, or even interested, by a first-class specimen of Western 
 " stump oratory." They knew sufficiently well that the tall, 
 ungainly, awkward man in black who arose upon the platform 
 to be introduced by William Cullen Bryant had had no edu- 
 cational advantages. He was a coarse fellow, of low origin, 
 who had never been to college or moved in polished society. 
 He had n'ot so much as distinguished himself as a soldier, office- 
 holder, editor, nor had he ever written a book. It was said of 
 him that he told funny stories well, and that he had a strange 
 faculty for holding the attention of a Western gathering of 
 rude, illiterate people. 
 
 Yery vague indeed were the notions and expectations of the 
 multitude when the speaker began, but it was not long before 
 an unlooked-for light began to dawn upon them. Slowly the 
 minds of all took in the idea that this was an address, not to 
 them only, but to the entire American people. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had toilfully prepared, and was now uttering, 
 a declaration of the causes, principles, and purposes which 
 underlay the existence and action, past, present, and to come, 
 of the Republican party. He had also fallen but little short of 
 combining a political platform with an " Inaugural Address." 
 
 The effect may be well expressed in the words with which
 
 180 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the next day's issue of the New York Tribune, February 28, 
 1860, prefaced its report of the speech : " No man ever before 
 made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York 
 audience." 
 
 Neither has any other man since then approached it, for that 
 speech stands alone in the oratorical annals of the great city. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's further errand in the East had been to visit 
 his son Robert, then a student at Harvard; but invitations 
 to speak at other points poured in upon him, and he had no 
 thought of refusing. Everywhere, as he went, he took the 
 minds of men and women captive, and left behind him an im- 
 pression which could not pass away. Everywhere, also, he was 
 himself taking careful notes of men and things and perfecting 
 his knowledge of the people and the country he was so soon 
 to rule. He returned to his home a man better and more 
 widely known than nine out of every ten who sit out a long 
 term in the United States Senate, or than ninety-nine out of 
 every hundred who are elected governors of States. 
 
 The Republican National Convention had been called to 
 meet at Chicago on the 16th of May, 1860, and the Republican 
 State Convention of Illinois was held at Decatur on the 9th 
 and 10th of the same month. The friends of Mr. Lincoln re- 
 solved that the one should prepare their candidate for the 
 other. They did not reveal their plans to him, but they laid 
 them well and they carried them out to perfection. 
 
 When the State Convention assembled for business, an 
 enormous crowd of delegates and other citizens packed the 
 large temporary structure erected for the occasion, but Mr. 
 Lincoln was not upon the platform. 
 
 Governor Oglesby arose and said : 
 
 " I am informed that a distinguished citizen of Illinois, and 
 one whom Illinois will ever be delighted to honor, is present ; 
 and I wish to move that this body invite him to a seat upon 
 the stand." He paused a moment, and then he added, in a 
 loud, clear voice :
 
 THE BISING TIDE. 181 
 
 " Abraham Lincoln !" 
 
 The scene which followed is indescribable for its tumultuous 
 enthusiasm. No way could be made through the dense, ex- 
 cited, shouting throng, and Mr. Lincoln was borne bodily, over 
 their heads and shoulders, to the place of honor. The order of 
 business went on for a while, and then Governor Oglesby arose 
 again : 
 
 " There is an old Democrat outside who has something he 
 wishes to present to this convention." 
 
 There was a roar of assent from every direction, mingled 
 with some few doubts and objections. Then the door of the 
 " wigwam" swung open, and a strong old man marched in, 
 shouldering two fence-rails of moderate size surmounted by a 
 banner inscribed, in large letters : 
 
 "TWO EAILS 
 
 FROM A LOT MADE BY ABRAHAM LlNCOLN AND JoHN HANKS, 
 IN THE SANGAMON BOTTOM, IN THE TEAR 1830." 
 
 The hearty-looking, sunburned bearer was old John Hanks 
 himself, and he had come to do his part in making his old 
 friend President of the United States. He and his burden 
 were fitting representatives of the old days of toil, darkness, 
 and privation, and the vast throng arose as one man to do 
 honor to the striking testimony they brought with them. In 
 an instant Abraham Lincoln, " the rail-splitter," wae accepted 
 as the representative of the working man and the type and 
 embodiment of the American idea of human freedom and 
 possible human elevation. The applause was deafening. But 
 it was something more than mere applause : it was the tem- 
 pestuous outburst of a tidal wave of strange and irresistible 
 enthusiasm which swept from Decatur to Chicago and thence 
 over the whole country. 
 
 Silence came as Mr. Lincoln rose to respond to the vocifer- 
 ous demand for a "speech." It was not yet, however, the
 
 182 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 right time for him to speak, and he made no blunder. He 
 said: 
 
 " Gentlemen : I suppose you want to know something about 
 those things. Well, the truth is, in the year 1830 John Hanks 
 and I did make some rails, in the Sangamon bottom, to fence 
 a piece of land. I don't know whether these are some of 
 those rails or not. The fact is, I don't think they are a 
 credit to the makers. But I do know this : I made rails then 
 and I think I could make better rails than these now." 
 
 Shouts and laughter accompanied and followed the few re- 
 marks of the " Illinois Rail-splitter," but the work of capturing 
 that convention was accomplished. There was not a breath of 
 opposition, afterwards, to a resolution that 
 
 "Abraham Lincoln is the first choice of the Republican 
 party of Illinois for the Presidency, and its' delegates to the 
 Chicago Convention are hereby instructed to use all honorable 
 means to secure his nomination, and to cast the vote of the 
 State as a unit for him." 
 
 On the 16th of the month the National Convention of the 
 party assembled at Chicago. "With it came swarms of the 
 eager friends of many Presidential aspirants. The city was 
 crowded as it never had been before, and the excitement was 
 at fever-heat even before the appointed day. 
 
 Two days were consumed in agreeing upon a party platform 
 and in a vigorous canvass of delegates with reference to the 
 coming ballots for nominations. 
 
 The third day came and the balloting began. It was well 
 known beforehand that on the first ballot the highest vote 
 would be given to William H. Seward of New York, but no 
 man could form a valuable opinion as to what might or might 
 not take place afterwards. Mr. Seward's actual vote was 173, 
 but it was a surprise to many that Mr. Lincoln should at once 
 come next in rank with 102. The surprise increased upon the 
 announcement of the second ballot, when Mr. Seward's vote 
 arose to 184 and Mr. Lincoln followed him with 181. It was
 
 THE RISING TIDE. 183 
 
 manifest that the friends of minor candidates were breaking 
 away from their men under the tremendous pressure and ex- 
 citement of the hour, and that the issue lay between the lead- 
 ing representatives of the East and the West. It is worthy 
 of note that Mr. Lincoln himself had remarked, some days 
 before the Convention, that Seward or he would get the nomi- 
 nation. 
 
 The call of States began upon the third ballot. As it pro- 
 ceeded votes flew fast from every quarter, until it was known 
 that Mr. Lincoln had 231^, only a vote and a half less than the 
 required number. The Convention held its breath for a mo- 
 ment, and then Mr. Cartter of Ohio arose to change four of 
 the votes of that State delegation from Mr. Chase to Mr. Lin- 
 coln. 
 
 The nomination was sealed, and the great " wigwam" shook 
 with the excited outburst that followed. No such enthusiasm 
 could have greeted any other result, for the fire kindled at 
 Decatur had been burning hotter and hotter every hour, and it 
 must be said that the men of Illinois had scattered the brands 
 of it well and zealously,, Hannibal Hamlin of Maine was 
 named for Yice-President, and the Convention shortly ad- 
 journed. 
 
 All through these proceedings Mr. Lincoln remained at 
 Springfield. He was continually advised by his friends as to 
 the course of events, and took a deep though undemonstrative 
 interest in the news they sent him. He was not at all indif- 
 ferent, and made no vain and weak pretense of being so ; but he 
 exhibited excellent self-control. This was not the kind of ex- 
 citement which could disturb a mind so disciplined as his had 
 been. On the great third day, when all was seemingly trem- 
 bling in the balance, he chatted with friends, read dispatches, 
 commented freely on the prospects of other candidates, but 
 gave utterance to no opinion as to his own, until the telegraphic 
 announcement of the result of the second ballot was handed 
 him. A single flash of personal feeling and human ambition
 
 184 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 escaped him then, for, with familiar reference to his powerful 
 rival, he exclaimed : 
 
 " I've got him !" 
 
 He was not thinking of himself too much, however. 
 Shortly afterwards came another message informing him of 
 his nomination. 
 
 While the streets of Springfield rang with " cheers for Lin- 
 coln" from men of all parties, proud of their friend and neigh- 
 bor, he turned quietly away from their plaudits and congratu- 
 lations, remarking : 
 
 " Well, gentlemen, there's a little short woman at our house 
 who is probably more interested in this dispatch than I am ; 
 and, if you will excuse me, I will take it up and let her see it." 
 
 On the following day the appointed Committee of the Con- 
 vention, headed by its president, arrived in Springfield with 
 the formal announcement of its action. They found the man 
 of their choice, contrary to their expectation, sad, gloomy, 
 already depressed by the crushing burden they had come to 
 lay upon him. He received their address with great dignity, 
 replying in a few well-chosen sentences full of deep f eeling. 
 He promised to answer them in writing after a more careful 
 consideration of the resolutions adopted by the Convention. 
 The formal acceptance, made the following day, was very brief, 
 but left nothing to be asked for in its manner or its substance. 
 
 The several forces which were to contend for mastery in the 
 political campaign of 1860 were marshaled in a manner sig- 
 nificant of the chaotic state to which all the old party organiza- 
 tions had been reduced. After a vain effort to retain its long- 
 accustomed solidity, the Democratic party had angrily split in 
 twain. What may be called its Northern division nomi- 
 nated Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois for President and Hers- 
 chel Y. Johnson of Georgia for Yice-President. The other 
 division the pro-slavery, or Southern nominated John C. 
 Breckinridge of Kentucky for President and Joseph Lane of 
 Oregon for Vice-President. The persistent remainder of the
 
 THE RISING TIDE. 185 
 
 old Whig party, after passing through several mutations of 
 name and searching out vain excuses for continuance, now ap- 
 peared for the last time, as the " Constitutional Union Party," 
 under the nominal leadership of John Bell of Tennessee, as its 
 candidate for the Presidency, and of Edward Everett of Mas- 
 sachusetts as a possible Vice-President. The voting popula- 
 tion of the country had therefore an uncommonly wide discre- 
 tion offered them.
 
 186 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 ELECTED PRESIDENT. 
 
 The Great Canvass of 1860 The Critical Election Southern Threats of 
 Civil War Office-seekers Early A Wise Decision Cabinet-making 
 Preparing for the Trouble to Come A Nation Without a Ruler. 
 
 DURING the political canvass which followed the Chicago 
 Convention Mr. Lincoln remained at Springfield. It was a 
 matter of manifest propriety that he should maintain as much 
 reserve as was consistent with his customary frankness. He 
 continued to meet all men freely and avoided none who desired 
 to see or speak with him. 
 
 Those few short months were a time of feverish and hourly 
 increasing excitement to the entire people, and most of all to 
 the man whom the clearest-minded politicians, North and 
 South, himself included, knew they were about to elect as their 
 Chief Magistrate. He passed the dense and burdened days, 
 therefore, as an intense student of all the present symptoms 
 and probable results of that fierce fermentation. 
 
 The collision he had foreseen and prophesied twenty years 
 before was at hand. The crisis he had more publicly formu- 
 lated in his Bloomington speech was hourly drawing nearer. 
 Hundreds of Southern orators and writers plainly declared that 
 the election of Lincoln would precipitate the struggle he had 
 foretold. They were the exponents of a feeling more deep and 
 more willful than careless observers knew or would believe. 
 Their real meaning was that they would regard such an elec- 
 tion as their justification for themselves precipitating the 
 struggle. It was more a threat than a warning. 
 
 Great pains were taken, by enemies as well as friends, to
 
 ELECTED PRESIDENT. 187 
 
 keep Mr. Lincoln well advised of these hostile utterances and 
 of all known preparations for such action as would fulfill 
 threats. Enough of such preparation showed itself, almost 
 publicly, to indicate its extent. Even the methods of its 
 veiled and secret operations were from time to time suggested. 
 
 For none of this treasonable agitation, or its consequences, 
 could Mr. Lincoln hold himself in any manner responsible. It 
 forced upon his mind, however, the necessity he was under of 
 speedily establishing his own relations to public affairs and to 
 the future of the country. 
 
 The popular vote was given on the 6th of November, with 
 a result which showed that if the adversaries of the Kepublican 
 party could have united upon any one candidate they would 
 have elected him ; but the same was also true of each of the 
 four parties. The Lincoln electoral tickets received an aggre- 
 gate of 1,857,610 votes; those of Mr. Douglas, 1,291,574; 
 those of Mr. Bell, 646,124 ; those of Mr. Breckinridge, 850,082. 
 The popular majority against Mr. Lincoln, if it could have 
 been so counted, was 930,170 ; but would, by a like reckoning, 
 have been much larger against either of the others. 
 
 When the Electoral Colleges of the several States came 
 together and performed their official duties, Mr. Lincoln re- 
 ceived 180 votes; Mr. Breckinridge, 72; Mr. Bell, 30; Mr. 
 Douglas, 12. That, however, was but the formal declaration 
 of a result which was already known to the whole country. 
 
 Hardly was the popular vote counted, on the 6th of Novem- 
 ber, before the current of office-seekers and other political 
 pilgrims to Springfield swelled rapidly to a sort of flood, and 
 an important part of Mr. Lincoln's Presidential powers and 
 perplexities at once demanded his attention. 
 
 It was popularly taken for granted, at the first, that the in- 
 cumbents of all federal offices would presently be removed 
 and that their places would be filled by new men, selected 
 from the victorious party. Mr. Lincoln had been thinking of 
 this. He understood the situation and the strength it brought
 
 188 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 to Mm. No other President ever had at Ms disposal more 
 than a fraction of the appointing power, for good or evil, 
 which would be his. He could hardly have had a vision, how- 
 ever, of the multitudinous offices afterwards to be created and 
 added. 
 
 Here was, therefore, the opportunity for an exhibition of 
 broad and courageous statesmanship. He plainly saw that the 
 administration soon to fall into his hands would need all the 
 support it could by any means obtain. He saw that he could 
 not assume the position of the paymaster of a greedy party if 
 he would long remain the ruler of a nation. It was not many 
 days before he was reported, and truly, to have declared his 
 intention of appointing to official positions Democrats as well 
 .as Republicans, and of retaining faithful and capable public 
 servants wherever possible. There was a groan of dismay and 
 wrath among the office-seekers, but subsequent developments 
 proved that the President-elect was prepared to stand firmly 
 by his wise and just decision. 
 
 As a sort of corollary of this, it was also made to be under- 
 stood that Mr. Lincoln regarded the federal appointments at his 
 disposal as in the nature of a public trust, and not at all as his 
 private property or to be apportioned among his friends, rela- 
 tives, or personal adherents. There was to be little advantage 
 to any man in the fact that he had known Mr. Lincoln for 
 many years ; or had exchanged small favors with him ; or em- 
 ployed him in law-business ; or said " Good-morning" to him, 
 daily. 
 
 This was terribly unexpected, and there were some hundreds 
 who could never afterwards see that he had not been ungrate- 
 ful, they could hardly say for what. Not a few declared him 
 unmindful of his most sacred obligations to themselves. 
 
 The great mass of tax-payers and other citizens, for whose 
 uses the offices were created and their duties performed, were 
 all the better satisfied. At the same time, the sting of defeat 
 rankled less dangerously in the hearts of some hundreds of
 
 ELECTED PRESIDENT. 189 
 
 thousands of people, whose good will was essential to the sta- 
 bility of what was, to all intents and purposes, a new govern- 
 ment. 
 
 It was from the first manifest that Mr. Lincoln would have 
 peculiar difficulty in the formation of his Cabinet. He was 
 busy with that duty even before election-day. He would 
 gladly have obtained the services of some well-known repre- 
 sentative of the declared Union-loving element at the South, 
 but no such man could be found. There was not one of suffi- 
 cient prominence who loved the Union well enough to help an 
 Abolition President to preserve it. Every day that came 
 brought with it something to render the search more hopeless. 
 It was therefore necessary to confine the selections made at 
 first to the narrow circle of the chiefs of the Republican party. 
 A majority of the Cabinet, when at last it was completed, were 
 men who had received votes as candidates for nomination in 
 the Chicago Convention. The man who called them around 
 him had risen above all jealousies, all rivalries, all selfish con- 
 siderations. The settlement of this important matter was not 
 finished until after Mr. Lincoln's arrival in Washington, but 
 enough had been done to assure him of the active co-operation 
 of the strong men of his own political faith. 
 
 Perceiving how rapid was and would be the unification of 
 the elements with which the nation was to struggle for its 
 lif e, it was the part of a sound and wise statesmanship to con- 
 solidate, with all possible speed, the power which was to meet 
 the now inevitable shock of battle. The difficulties of Mr. 
 Lincoln's position at that time have been but little understood. 
 The majority of those who have written about them have 
 strangely taken it for granted that he was in a manner ignor- 
 ant of the course of events. They have regarded him as being 
 as much taken by surprise by each successive development as 
 might be any private citizen who puzzled over the news 
 brought to him, correctly or incorrectly, by his favorite news- 
 paper.
 
 190 ABRAHAM LTNCOLN. 
 
 On the contrary, Mr. Lincoln's preparatory education from 
 childhood, supplemented now through a thousand channels of 
 information, public and private, placed him beyond and above 
 the possibility of a surprise. 
 
 There was an absorbing problem constantly before him now, 
 and his every act and word had to be weighed with reference 
 to the danger of an adverse, because premature, solution. It 
 was, simply stated, whether the surely coming storm could 
 be delayed until the new government should be placed in 
 possession of the national capital, and that also with the 
 nominal acquiescence of the government which was passing 
 away; for four months had yet to elapse between Novem- 
 ber of the election and March of the inauguration, and in 
 four months what might not happen ! Considering what 
 the former government had been in its nature, plans, pur- 
 poses, and subserviencies, the best interests of the whole 
 country were served by the fact that for the time being 
 there was no President at Washington, and that the Disunion 
 leaders were acting for themselves upon that well-understood 
 hypothesis. Mr. Buchanan, the nominal President, weak, va- 
 cillating, out of date, groped blindly around among the jarring 
 factions of his kaleidoscopic Cabinet, while its traitors and per- 
 jured conspirators were begging their more hot-headed confed- 
 erates in the cotton States not to spoil their vile work for them 
 by over-haste. At the same time, the loyal members of the 
 same remarkable junto of " constitutional advisers" were strug- 
 gling manfully to keep in hand something in the outward sem- 
 blance of a " TJnion" to hand over to the man whom the people 
 had selected to take the control of it. How nearly they came 
 to an utter failure was well known to Mr. Lincoln, from day 
 to day. The gloom deepened around him and within him, un- 
 til his best friends could but see the shadows on his face, the 
 circles under his eyes, the intensity of the sadness in which he 
 had been called to make his dwelling-place. He himself was 
 aware of this external effect and saw a danger in it. Lest it
 
 ELECTED PRESIDENT. 191 
 
 should influence unfavorably the spirits and courage of those 
 about him, and go out through them in widening ripples of 
 despondency, he more frequently than ever now assumed an out- 
 ward air of cheerful jocularity. It served both for a convenient 
 and useful mask and for a genuine relief. Behind it he studied 
 the chaotic Unionism slowly forming and moving into activity 
 at the North, and the much more rapidly developing Kebellion 
 at the South. ~No other fact of necessary statesmanship was 
 plainer than this : for the creation of a strong, steady, and per- 
 manently trustworthy public opinion at the North, the South 
 must be permitted to put itself openly, manifestly, outrage- 
 ously in the wrong with reference to the central government. 
 There was no doubt that it would shortly do so under the fos- 
 tering care of Mr. Buchanan and his Cabinet. A strong-minded 
 man in the executive chair would surely have given the plot- 
 ters of secession some ghostly shadow of an excuse for violent 
 measures. As it was and as it continued to be, the savage 
 brutality of their successive acts remains to be recorded as with- 
 out any other palliation than the presumption of their fellow- 
 citizens in electing a President openly hostile to the purchase 
 and sale of human beings.
 
 192 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTEK XXYI. 
 
 CASUS BELLI. 
 
 Secession Activities Lincoln's Policy In a Trying Position South Carol- 
 ina Takes the Lead The Confederate States of America Traitors in 
 Congress Capture of United States Forts and Forces A Campaign 
 of Statesmanship Vain Premonitions A Last Meeting. 
 
 THAT the more advanced and determined secessionists were 
 prepared to regard the triumph of the Republican party and 
 the election of Abraham Lincoln as an ample justification of 
 anything they might choose to do, had already been openly de- 
 clared in numberless unofficial utterances. 
 
 The extreme view held by so many found a more effective 
 if not a more definite expression in a circular letter sent by 
 Governor Gist of South Carolina to the governors of the other 
 " cotton States" on the 5th of October, 1860. The governors 
 of the slave States subsequently known as "border States" 
 were not supposed to be yet prepared to return a favorable re- 
 sponse, and were therefore not appealed to. The letter was an 
 invitation to concerted and allied action in case the November 
 election should result as was expected, and its language requires 
 no explanation : 
 
 " If a single State secedes, we will follow her. If no other 
 State takes the lead, South Carolina will secede (in my opinion) 
 alone, if she has any assurance that she will soon be followed 
 by another or other States ; otherwise it is doubtful." 
 
 The answers, of different dates, varied in character and not 
 all favorable, were probably all in Governor Gist's hands on or 
 before election-day. That of the Governor of Georgia con- 
 tained a very significant and important declaration. He said 
 that, in his opinion, the people of Georgia would " wait for
 
 CA8U8 BELLI. 193 
 
 some overt act" from the Lincoln government. It was not at 
 all necessary to inform the secession conspirators that an 
 " overt act" of their own would answer their purposes equally 
 as well. If they had awaited a sufficient provocation from the 
 wise, watchful, patriotic statesman who was then studying 
 their course so carefully at Springfield, their conspiracy would 
 have died of old age upon their hands. Mr. Lincoln had made 
 up his mind and determined his policy as to that point, and 
 he afterwards took every opportunity of publicly so saying. 
 
 The circular letter was "secret," but the "message'' of 
 Governor Gist to the Legislature of South Carolina, Novem- 
 ber 5, 1860 (published on the day preceding the general election- 
 day), was an all-sufficient public warning. He advised the 
 assembling of a State Convention and the purchase of arms, 
 and other war-material. From this date, if not from an. 
 earlier day, Mr. Lincoln was entitled to consider a war as actu- 
 ally begun, and to guide himself accordingly. Upon what he 
 might say or do, or leave unsaid and undone, would manifestly 
 depend, in great measure, the character and results of the now- 
 inevitable hostilities. He was already burdened with the deli- 
 cate task of so directing the moral forces he represented, and 
 over which he exercised an increasing control, that they should 
 not too soon assume an aggressive attitude at any point. It is 
 hardly possible to overestimate the tact and patience with 
 which he successfully accomplished this first duty and victory 
 of his administration. 
 
 The war-spirit of the South was most intense in South 
 Carolina, but was there focalized rather than localized. The 
 daily energy displayed by the people of that State in their 
 open preparations for bloodshed presented an " object-lesson" 
 which Mr. Lincoln and a few other men comprehended per- 
 fectly. At the same time, the conservative element at the 
 South very sincerely underestimated the determination of their 
 neighbors, and the great mass of the Northern people refused 
 to regard the matter as anything more serious than an uncom-
 
 194 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 monly absurd outburst of bluster and parade. The election 
 took place, and resulted as has been stated, in the election of 
 Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 The State Convention of South Carolina, summoned by the 
 Act of the Legislature called for in the message of Governor 
 Gist, was chosen on the 6th of December. It met at Columbia, 
 the capital of the State, adjourned to Charleston, and almost 
 immediately, December 20, adopted an " Ordinance of Seces- 
 sion," whereby it pretended to sever the bond between South 
 Carolina and the Union, and to terminate all right, power, and 
 authority of the general government within the limits of the 
 State. 
 
 With sundry variations in the manner, form, and declared 
 causes and purposes of their alleged going out, the other " cot- 
 ton States" followed. Mississippi " seceded " January 9, 1861 ; 
 Florida, January 10 ; Alabama, January 11 ; Georgia, Janu- 
 ary 19 ; Louisiana, January 26 ; and Texas on the 1st of Feb- 
 ruary. 
 
 It was sure to follow that these States would league them- 
 selves together in a bond of some kind, as suggested in the 
 secret circular letter of Governor Gist. 
 
 Their representatives at Washington, in House and Senate, 
 in a paper signed by about half their number, advised that 
 such action should be taken promptly. These and other gen- 
 tlemen afterwards held seats and exercised Federal legislative 
 functions, to hold and exercise which was ludicrously as well 
 as criminally illegal if the several secession ordinances were of 
 any binding or effective power. The document itself was ac- 
 tually made public, as a preparatory step, some days prior to 
 the secession of South Carolina. It did but embody, for speci- 
 fic uses, the matter and manner of a vast correspondence both 
 public and private. 
 
 Pursuing the plan laid down for them, the several seceded 
 States appointed delegates to a species of inter-State conven- 
 tion, to be held at Montgomery, Alabama. These delegates
 
 CAS US BELLI. 195 
 
 met in that city on the 4th of February. So well were they 
 drilled beforehand in the task allotted them, that on the 8th 
 of that month they announced to the world a provisional 
 government, under the name of " The Confederate States of 
 America." 
 
 Before that joint and formal action could be taken, much 
 and very important separate and local rebellion had been vigor- 
 ously transacted. Even before adopting her own Ordinance of 
 Secession, the disunionists who acted as the State of South 
 Carolina had determined upon the early capture of the forts in 
 Charleston harbor, which were the specific property of the 
 United States Government. These were Castle Pinckney, a 
 small affair near the city and of no importance ; Fort Moultrie, 
 a larger structure, on Sullivan's Island, occupied by about one 
 company of United States regular troops ; and, the most im- 
 portant of all, as commanding the approaches from the sea, 
 Fort Sumter, a well-built and, if properly manned and pro- 
 visioned, all but impregnable fortress on a natural shoal raised 
 to an artificial island, near the harbor-mouth. 
 
 So rapid and so public were the preparations for the seizure 
 of these forts that Major Anderson, the officer in command of 
 Fort Moultrie, found himself compelled to transfer his small 
 force, with such stores as he could easily move, to Fort Sumter, 
 this being his sole tenable defense. He did so secretly, on the 
 night of December 26, only six days after the formal act of 
 secession of the State. From that day forward Fort Sumter 
 was as regularly and actively besieged as was ever any other 
 fortification in any other war. 
 
 On the morning of January 9, the steamer "Star of the 
 West," carrying the national flag and bearing needed supplies 
 to Fort Sumter, was fired upon and driven back to sea by the 
 rebel batteries besieging Major Anderson and his forlorn squad. 
 
 Nearly similar was the subsequent course of events at Pen- 
 sacola, Florida. Armed forces of the incipient rebellion com- 
 pelled the surrender of the Pensacola Navy Yard. Lieutenant
 
 196 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Slemmer, with forty-six men of the regular army and thirty 
 seamen from the Navy Yard, was obliged to abandon Forts 
 Barrancas and McRee, on the mainland, and occupy Fort Pick- 
 ens, on Santa Rosa Island, at the harbor-entrance. 
 
 On February 18, General Twiggs, commanding the United 
 States troops in Texas but himself a traitor surrendered to 
 an armed force of rebels the national forts, military posts, and 
 property in that State, and made preparations for an evacua- 
 tion. 
 
 There were numberless minor acts of open hostility, but the 
 recital of these is enough to show that the War of the Rebel- 
 lion had been in active prosecution on the part of the South, 
 with continual and important military successes won for them, 
 during three full months before Mr. Lincoln could, on the 4th 
 of March, assume the nominal direction of public affairs. 
 
 Through all that time nothing whatever of a warlike nature 
 was done by the Federal government, beyond some dilatory 
 and faint-hearted attempts to send to its servants, shut up in 
 Southern forts, reasonable supplies of food. 
 
 The War Office, under the charge of the traitor Floyd, up 
 to the day of his resignation, December 31, was administered 
 wholly in the interests of the conspiracy. The appointment 
 of Mr. Holt as his successor secured as great a change as was 
 possible, with President Buchanan limply sitting in the way 
 of all patriotic and especially in the way of all manly and cour- 
 ageous action. 
 
 The services of the outgoing President were indeed uninten- 
 tionally great, for they prevented the doing of any act to mar 
 or interfere with the effect of the policy of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 The latter fully grasped the situation from hour to hour. 
 He well understood that an unwise word or act of his, particu- 
 larly any utterance which could be construed as a threat of 
 coercion or an expression of bitter feeling or even of just in- 
 dignation, would be equivalent to a fatal military disaster. 
 There was a vast mass of human tinder in existence, so situated
 
 CAS US BELLI. 197 
 
 as to be pretty sure to burn for the side which should succeed 
 in setting it on fire. It was yet an open question how far the 
 conspirators would succeed in carrying with them the non-cot- 
 ton-growing slave States. 
 
 An error of judgment on the part of Mr. Lincoln ; an out- 
 burst of passion, of impatience, or of partisanship during the 
 gloomy days of that long watchfulness and self-restraint, or 
 even during the first few weeks of his legal term of office, 
 would have lost to the Union at the outset the States of Mis- 
 souri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, the area which soon 
 afterwards became "West Virginia ; and with these as depend- 
 encies would also have been lost, at least temporarily, Kansas, 
 Southern Illinois, the control of the Mississippi River, and the 
 military frontier of the Ohio and the Potomac. 
 
 This was the first campaign of the civil war, and its vast re- 
 sults were won by a wise, firm statesmanship. They were won 
 before the reorganized nation had a regiment in the field, and 
 while its real Commander-in-Chief was living in a two-story 
 frame-house at Springfield, in the State of Illinois. 
 
 There was a constant and at times a vehement pressure 
 brought to bear upon Mr. Lincoln by some of his more fiery- 
 spirited political associates. He was urged to abandon his reti- 
 cence and to make some public appeal that should " fire the 
 Northern heart" as the heart of the South was firing, but he 
 was deaf to all such urgency. He was not unready, indeed, 
 with some apt and telling story with which to turn the subject 
 and blind and cover his actual perception and purpose. 
 
 In the month of February, 1861, as a last preparation for his 
 departure from Illinois, Mr. Lincoln paid a visit to his relatives 
 in Coles County. He talked with old friends and neighbors ; 
 visited familiar scenes ; stood for a moment by the grave of 
 his father. More than all, he paid a visit of respect and affec- 
 tion to his now aged step-mother to whom he was so deeply 
 indebted. He spoke of her to friends who were with him in 
 terms of strong and tender f eeling. He treated her with aH
 
 198 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the devoted kindness of a son. The parting between them, 
 writes Mr. Lamon, on the authority of persons present, was 
 very touching. She embraced him with deep emotion, and 
 said she was sure she should never see him again, for she felt 
 sure that his enemies would assassinate him. He replied : 
 
 "No, no, mamma, they will not do that. Trust in the 
 Lord and all will be well. We shall see each other again." 
 
 He himself was deeply affected, but he was sincere in his 
 rejection of her motherly warning. Only a few days later he 
 could with difficulty be brought to acquiesce in the precautions 
 insisted upon by Mr. Seward and other friends to avoid a well- 
 authenticated plot for his murder on the way to Washington. 
 Later still, when threatening letters were almost daily arriving 
 at the Executive Mansion, the private secretary in charge of 
 the President's mail was instructed to destroy all such missives 
 at once and never to show them to Mr. Lincoln or to mention 
 to others the fact of their reception. 
 
 He was justified in this, for the assassins, who at last added 
 brute courage to their senseless hatred, did not send their in- 
 tended victim any written warning. The threatening letters 
 were but the cowardly expression of a bitterness which had no 
 heart to go further. 
 
 Among the crowds who flocked to see Mr. Lincoln during 
 this brief visit to the scene of some of his early experiences 
 was old Hannah Armstrong. She also said to him that she 
 should never see him again ; that something told her so. They 
 would kill him. He only smiled and said to her : 
 
 " Hannah, if they do kill me, I shall never die another death." 
 
 The forebodings which were really weighing upon him did 
 not relate to himself, nor could any merely personal considera- 
 tion have induced him to postpone for an hour the perform- 
 ance of a known duty. 
 
 The time was drawing near for his departure from the home 
 he was never to see again. It was a plain, respectable-looking 
 wooden dwelling, of two stories, and he had made no attempt
 
 CASU8 BELLI. 199 
 
 to beautify it. His law-office was a dusty, littered, carelessly 
 kept place. Yet in the home and in the office he had thought 
 and suffered much, and his heart and brain, in all their patience 
 and growth, were linked to every commonplace feature of 
 either. He asked Mr. Herndon as a favor, after settling their 
 partnership affairs, not to take down the old sign of " Lincoln 
 & Herndon" for at least four years. He had a hope or thought, 
 however faint, that perhaps the days of its usefulness might 
 return. They seemed almost happy days, in comparison with 
 those to which he well knew he was going forward. His per- 
 ception of the true nature of these has many witnesses. Men 
 who remember how he looked during those last few weeks be- 
 fore his departure for Washington invariably dwell upon his 
 weary, sad, haggard, woe-struck face and his bent and burdened 
 form. There were darker circles under his eyes, and the far- 
 away, indwelling look, so noticeable in some of his portraits, 
 had grown deeper, gloomier than ever. 
 
 What is known as " happiness" had been denied him in his 
 home relations faithful, devoted, loving as his wife assuredly 
 was, and utterly true to her as was he himself. The one love 
 which can insure the highest married happiness had come 
 to him once, and it had been buried, years and years ago, in 
 a grave on the bank of the Sangamon. No breath of scandal 
 ever assailed the purity of his domestic life. ~No smallest 
 stain blotted the clear record of his integrity. Of all the 
 citizens of Springfield, he was the best known, most highly 
 honored, best beloved. But those treasures of human life 
 which were as daily bread to the men and women who loved 
 and honored him were impossible possessions to the man 
 whose merry jokes they were so fond of repeating, and for 
 whom they and others invented such a wealth of varied humor 
 over and above all that he ever uttered. 
 
 Much has been said and written to prove that, at this partic- 
 ular time, he permitted himself to entertain forebodings and 
 f oreshadowings of the violent death which was to come to him.
 
 200 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 It is as if a vague effort were made to account in some such 
 stupid way for his access of sadness. Such premonitions come, 
 as all men know, whether or not they are afterwards fulfilled. 
 If verified, then superstition recalls them and points theatri- 
 cally to the grim fulfillment. If not, then skepticism, with 
 equal pertinence, forgets them, or gleefully mocks at a false 
 prophecy. The shadow upon Lincoln's life was not cast before 
 any such inadequate specter as the wonder-seekers have de- 
 scribed, but by the coming agony of a great people. For long- 
 years he had been reading the signs of the times. He under- 
 stood better than other men the meaning of the black portents 
 on the political sky. They were to him full of blood, and they 
 were dark with the horrible suffering of millions. Under and 
 in face of all, the responsibility had been laid upon him of 
 leading his people forward into the day of their trial and into 
 the measureless woe before them. He had been carefully 
 trained and developed in the providence of God for the as- 
 sumption and bearing of that very burden ; but all his training, 
 while giving him the power to bear it, gave him no power to 
 cast off any ounce of its crushing weight.
 
 LIFE MASK OF LINCOLN. 
 Taken by the Sculptor, Vokes, in the year 1860.
 
 PRESIDENT. 201 
 
 CHAPTEE XXYII. 
 
 PRESIDENT. 
 
 Speaking to the Nation Diplomacy Journey to Washington In the 
 Enemy's Country The District of Columbia Militia The Flood of 
 Office-seekers The Inauguration The Address The True Meaning 
 of Secession March, 1861. 
 
 MR. LINCOLN'S term of office as President of the United 
 States was to begin on the 4th of March, 1861, but he deter- 
 mined to leave Springfield on the llth of February. 
 
 The policy he was pursuing required that he should be seen 
 and heard and more perfectly understood by the people. It 
 was needful that his proceeding to Washington should be made 
 under the concentrated watching of both friends and enemies. 
 
 So he decided and so he went. The feverish anxieties of 
 millions attended every step of his journey, and the hearts of 
 men grew hourly better prepared to sustain him after his ar- 
 rival at the seat of government. 
 
 Such preparations for war as had yet been made at the 
 North bore no comparison to those of the South. It was the 
 18th of February before even such a State as Massachusetts 
 passed an Act to increase the State militia, and tendering men 
 and money to the general government for the maintenance of 
 the national authority. The great State of Pennsylvania did 
 not take similar action until April 9th, and the State Legisla- 
 ture of New York passed its dilatory " war bill " on the lYth 
 of that month. A great deal was doing, in a desultory and ill- 
 directed way, by patriotic individuals, but it was not well that 
 the zeal of even these should be so stimulated that their ac- 
 tivity should endanger the diplomatic campaign for the mill-
 
 202 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tary possession of the border slave-States, or injuriously affect 
 the sluggish and bewildered " public opinion" of important 
 elements all over the North. 
 
 At different places on his road to Washington Mr. Lincoln 
 made brief offhand speeches to the crowds which gathered to 
 meet him, and to reply to various addresses more or less patri- 
 otic. Every one of these, however informal and apparently 
 devoid of special effort, will bear a careful analysis with refer- 
 ence to their intended effect, as that can now be understood. 
 
 The manner of Mr. Lincoln's departure from Springfield 
 expressed with honest unreserve his thoughts, feelings, and the 
 simple purity of his aspirations. None the less did it clearly 
 sound the key-note of all his subsequent official conduct and 
 utterances. Seldom, indeed, have words so few and homely 
 appealed so powerfully to the hearts of such a mighty multi- 
 tude as in reality listened to his farewell speech to his neigh- 
 bors. 
 
 The railway-train was nearly ready to bear him away, and a 
 crowd had gathered to see it start. The rain was falling fast 
 from a darkened sky, and the misty atmosphere suited well the 
 gloomy feeling which replaced enthusiasm in the minds of the 
 waiting assembly. Mr. Lincoln came out upon the platform 
 of the rear car, standing in silence for a moment, bareheaded, 
 in the rain. There were tears in his voice when he began to 
 speak, but the husMness departed as he went on and his tones 
 grew clear and strong, though tremulous with emotion. He 
 said: 
 
 " Friends : No one who has never been placed in a like posi- 
 tion can understand my feelings at this hour, nor the oppres- 
 sive sadness I feel at this parting. For more than a quarter of 
 a century I have lived among you, and during all that time I 
 have received nothing but kindness at your hands. Here I 
 have lived from my youth, until now I am an old man. Here 
 the most sacred ties of earth were assumed. Here all my chil- 
 dren were born, and here one of them lies buried. To you,
 
 PRESIDENT. 203 
 
 dear friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am. All the 
 strange, checkered past seems to crowd now upon my mind. 
 To-day I leave you. I go to assume a task more difficult than 
 that which devolved upon "Washington. Unless the great God 
 who assisted him shall be with and aid me, I shall fail ; but if 
 the same omniscient Mind and almighty Arm that directed 
 and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail. 
 I shall succeed. Let us pray that the God of our fathers may 
 not forsake us now. To him I commend you all. Permit 
 me to ask that, with equal security and faith, you will invoke 
 his wisdom and guidance for me. 
 
 " "With these few words I must leave you, for how long I 
 know not. Friends, one and all, I must now bid you an affec- 
 tionate farewell." 
 
 The railway-train bore him away and they saw his face no 
 more. 
 
 It is worthy of note, at this point, how entirely every trace 
 of skepticism concerning God and his active providence in 
 human affairs had vanished from the mind of Mr. Lincoln. 
 The fact should also be noted that he had not enrolled himself as 
 a member of any one sect, or declared his unquestioning accept- 
 ance of any one creed, selected from among the many formu- 
 las presented by professional theologians. The first fact be- 
 comes of greater importance and the second of less and less, 
 henceforward. The man who could not lie and did not know 
 how to be a hypocrite, publicly and before the world declared 
 his simple faith, both then and afterwards. So doing, he con 
 tinually called upon his countrymen to join him in acts of re- 
 pentance, forgiveness, prayer, thanksgiving, hope, trust ; reas- 
 suring them in God's name when their own hearts sank and 
 their own faith failed. He waded through deep waters and 
 found God with him there, and he reverently said so. It is 
 too late now for any man rationally to accuse Abraham Lin- 
 coln of having acted and uttered a solemn lie. 
 
 There was nothing in the journey to Washington which put
 
 204 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 upon it the appearance of a triumphal procession, in spite of 
 several ill-advised local efforts in that direction. Crowds gath- 
 ered to see and hear him, and there was much patriotic enthu- 
 siasm manifested, although there were many expressions of 
 dissatisfaction at the moderate, pacific, and conciliatory nature 
 of all the speeches made by Mr. Lincoln. He could see and 
 understand that the hot-heads were in a small minority. To 
 his ears, under and through all the multitudinous cheering, 
 there plainly spoke the hoarse and boding monotone of the 
 doubt and dread with which the hearts of men were filling. 
 
 It would seem, from current expressions in the daily press, 
 that one great fact escaped every audience of all that heard 
 him. Not one seemed to comprehend that the President-elect, 
 in addressing it, was also speaking to a multitude of other 
 audiences, North and South. Still less could some understand 
 that the expressions they would have been glad to hear would 
 have fallen from his lips with the effect of lost battles. It should 
 have been, but was not, obvious to all that the one remaining 
 hope for the speedy restoration of peace lay in such a restric- 
 tion of the area and resources of the rebellion as should dis- 
 hearten its leaders by convincing them of foregone failure. 
 It was indeed a faint hope, but it was honest and merciful, 
 and it was carefully encouraged by Mr. Lincoln in the hearts 
 of the yet undecided masses of the disputable Southern areas, 
 until they were made ready to turn in their wrath against the 
 conspirators whose violence disappointed them. 
 
 On his arrival at Philadelphia, Mr. Lincoln received a grim 
 warning that he had reached the borders of the doubtful terri- 
 tory for the control of which the rebel leaders were intriguing. 
 
 The State of Maryland was in a condition of fierce but some- 
 what vague fermentation, and the city of Baltimore was hardly 
 less bitter against Abolitionism than was Richmond itself. On 
 the other hand, it is equally true that if, at as early a day, Rich- 
 mond could have been forcibly occupied and controlled as was 
 Baltimore soon after this date, quite as much and as genuine a
 
 PRESIDENT. 205 
 
 "Union sentiment" would have been found there, or surely 
 would have been developed by similar processes. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's responsible advisers were warned of what 
 seemed to be a desperate plot for his murder while on the road 
 to Washington. Whether or not their conclusions were well 
 sustained by the evidence in their possession is of no impor- 
 tance whatever. They were convinced of the reality of the 
 impending peril, and every consideration forbade to them or 
 him the crime of running a needless risk of such a disaster. 
 No question of mere vanity of individual courage could be en- 
 tertained for a moment. The trip across Maryland was there- 
 fore made suddenly and in private, and the Chief Magistrate- 
 elect of the United States entered the Capital unexpectedly to 
 all, and without so much as a group of waiting officials to wel- 
 come hmi. There had been no attempt at personal disguise, 
 nor any really undignified concealment on the part of Mr. Lin- 
 coln or the personal friends who accompanied him. Neverthe- 
 less, the whole affair was a sad commentary upon the well- 
 understood attitude of pro-slavery feeling and purpose. All 
 men knew that slavery had frequently committed murder on a 
 small scale ; that it was deliberately preparing to do murder 
 on a large scale ; and that its fiercer fanatics could not sanely 
 be trusted to withhold their hands from any particular brutality. 
 
 The city of Washington itself, so far as its genuine popular 
 feeling went, was hardly a part of the disputed territory. 
 There was a strong and faithful Union element among its citi- 
 zens, but this was in a sad minority both as to number and 
 power. When the new Commander-in-Chief and President 
 reached his hotel, he was, in a manner, within the enemy's lines. 
 He had stolen a march, however, and his very presence gar- 
 risoned the city for the Union. 
 
 There was very little indeed of any other garrison as yet, 
 except a few marines at the Navy Yard, and a handful of artil- 
 lerymen at the arsenal, not 500 in all. Regular organizations 
 of Secessionists, some of them armed and equipped, existed,
 
 206 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 met, drilled, within the city limits, and even in the offices and 
 halls of more than one of the public buildings. 
 
 An attempt had been made to reorganize the local militia, 
 for defense only, and not for service beyond the District of 
 Columbia, but the results had been more instructive than en- 
 couraging. As early as January 2d, 1861, the War Depart- 
 ment, advised by General Scott, assigned to this duty Captain 
 Charles P. Stone of the regular army, as Inspector-General of 
 the District of Columbia. General Stone's services were in- 
 valuable and were rendered under peculiar difficulties. He 
 quickly made the discovery that the greater part of the official 
 civilians of the District, and of the Capital in particular, like 
 their friends and exemplars the Southern officers of the army 
 and navy, were meditating if not actually preparing for a 
 speedy exchange into the rebel service. The several militia 
 organizations of the city were able to present but one well 
 drilled and uniformed " crack" company, the National Rifles. 
 This company, which afterwards rated in the new organization 
 as " Company A, Third Battalion, District of Columbia Rifles," 
 was composed of young gentlemen of good social standing and 
 fairly represented the better classes of the municipality, and it 
 placed on record a striking illustration of the situation. It 
 speedily became so depleted by desertions Southward, including 
 its captain, that it was necessary to fill its ranks anew with loyal 
 clerks from the departments and with young men recently 
 arrived from the North. When so filled up, it contained still a 
 trace and remnant of the local militia, but its body was com- 
 posed of representatives of nearly every loyal State, Virginia, 
 Kentucky, and Missouri not excepted. The second company of 
 the same battalion was composed almost entirely of Germans, 
 and the third of a general mixture of native and foreign ele- 
 ments. Several other " battalions" were formed under Gen. 
 Stone's management, but a well-grounded distrust of their fidel- 
 ity prevented any very active use of them as a whole. After 
 the first company named was made over and became truly
 
 PRESIDENT. 207 
 
 " national" it rendered good service. It was employed on guard- 
 duty at the Long Bridge over the Potomac and elsewhere ; to 
 seize a river-steamer threatened with capture by the rebels ; to 
 occupy the railway-station at Annapolis Junction, and so hold 
 open the gate for the New York Seventh to come safely in ; 
 and on the final invasion of Virginia it was the first to enter 
 that State, across the Potomac. Still its history describes, more 
 perfectly than it could in any other manner be described, the 
 kind of loyalty Mr. Lincoln found waiting for him in Wash- 
 ington : the one military company the District owned broke 
 ranks and went South. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln took rooms at Willard's Hotel on his arrival. 
 He had yet a week of hard work between him and the 4th 
 of March. He put himself at once in communication with the 
 loyal members of Buchanan's Cabinet, and with that true- 
 hearted and unswerving old patriot, Lieutenant-General Win- 
 field Scott, of Virginia. The commonwealth possessed in the 
 latter a pillar of honor that could not be and was not for a 
 moment shaken. 
 
 The formal counting of the electoral votes in the presence 
 of Congress had been duly performed on the 13th of February, 
 and even before that date the tide of new men set in from the 
 North. The city soon became crowded as it had never been 
 before, although so large a percentage of its customary popula- 
 tion, official and otherwise, was daily leaving it for more South- 
 erly and congenial atmospheres. 
 
 There was something almost phenomenal in the crowd of 
 hungry office-seekers. They filled the hotels and boarding- 
 houses. They thronged the passages and anterooms of the 
 public buildings. Hundreds of anxious politicians, large and 
 small, came pouring in by every train, so ignorant of public af- 
 fairs that they hardly knew what to apply for, and still less 
 for what duties they were prepared. They came from every 
 nook and corner of the country, and they brought at least one 
 unmistakable comfort to Mr. Lincoln. Their very coming as-
 
 208 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 sured him that the people they represented had an undisturbed 
 confidence in the stability of the government. The masses 
 failed to realize any danger of its overthrow. Men could not 
 and did not see how nearly new was the fabric about to take 
 shape in Mr. Lincoln's hands, or how completely the old order 
 of things had passed away. 
 
 The tone of "Washington "society" was intensely "seces- 
 sion," but, for the first time in its history, it found itself utterly 
 bereft of political influence. Its feeble cry was quickly 
 drowned in the flood of unreasoning loyalty from the North. 
 It was all in vain that the unanimous pianos of the lady-rebels 
 wore themselves out with pouring through spitefully open 
 windows the " patriotic music" of the South. They kept it 
 up until the day when the Twelfth New York regiment 
 marched down Pennsylvania Avenue with its full brass band 
 playing " Dixie" for dear life. Then the piano-players yielded 
 in disgust, declaring that " the Yankees had robbed them of 
 even their national airs." 
 
 The preparations made for the "inauguration ceremonies" 
 on the 4th of March were somewhat as usual, but precautions 
 were taken, of a police and military nature, against possible 
 mob-action or any attempt at assassination. 
 
 For the first time in American history was any part of the 
 people of the United States deemed unworthy to be trusted to 
 keep the peace while a chosen President should take the oath 
 of office. 
 
 A vast throng gathered in front of the eastern portico of the 
 Capitol, upon the steps of which a temporary structure of wood 
 had been erected for the occasion. At twelve o'clock, noon, 
 the Buchanan Administration expired by limitation. Up to 
 that hour Mr. Buchanan himself remained at the Capitol, en- 
 gaged in signing bills. He then went to Willard's Hotel, to 
 accompany Mr. Lincoln, and both Houses of Congress ad- 
 journed. 
 
 All remaining preparations were quickly completed, and the
 
 PRESIDENT. 209 
 
 Presidential procession formed upon Pennsylvania Avenue. It 
 moved along with a slow dignity, undisturbed in any manner, 
 yet bearing a heavy and somber air which seemed to be fully 
 in sympathy with that of the crowds which stared at or accom- 
 panied it. 
 
 At about a quarter past one o'clock Mr. Lincoln reached the 
 Senate Chamber, where the members of the two Houses, of 
 the Supreme Court, of the Diplomatic Corps, the heads of ex- 
 ecutive departments, and other privileged persons, were already 
 assembled. From thence, a few moments later, all passed on, 
 in stately progress, to the platform from which Mr. Lincoln 
 was to announce his purposes as President, not to that throng 
 only, but to the country and to the world. 
 
 He had given the finishing touches to his address that very 
 morning. None knew so well as he what consequences would 
 surely follow any blunder in tone or mistake in declaration. 
 He looked worn and pale and anxious, but from the first to the? 
 last his voice rang out clear, firm, unhesitating, resonant with 
 faith and courage, while its every tremor and modulation 
 seemed to vouch for his sincerity. He was making his last 
 appeal for peace and his last solemn protest against needless 
 bloodshed. The address may be epitomized as an argumenta- 
 tive attempt to convince all whom it might concern that there 
 was nothing in the past or present attitude or purposes of the 
 Republican party, nor any possible action by the national gov- 
 ernment as it would be administered by himself, which could 
 sanely be construed as a justification of revolution and civil 
 war. There was in it, however, no expression which could be 
 interpreted as an admission of the right of peaceable secession 
 on the part of any State. On the contrary, it contained one 
 clause which closed the door upon any hope which the con- 
 spirators may have entertained that the threatening aspect of 
 affairs had affected his steady firmness. He said : 
 
 " The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and 
 possess the property and places belonging to the government
 
 210 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 and to collect the duties and imposts ; but beyond what may 
 be necessary for these objects there will be no invasion, no 
 using of force among the people anywhere." 
 
 He kept his word carefully afterwards, for he thus described 
 the precise result obtained when, four years later, the last rebel 
 army laid down its arms and surrendered. In these few words 
 he condensed the most important visible expressions of Ameri- 
 can national sovereignty. 
 
 Towards the close of his argument Mr. Lincoln addressed 
 himself altogether to the people of the seceded States and such 
 other communities as seemed likely to follow their leading. 
 He said : 
 
 " In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not 
 in mine is the momentous issue of civil war. The govern- 
 ment will not assail you. You can have no conflict without 
 being yourselves the aggressors." 
 
 This was but a plain reiteration of his frequently declared 
 ^position, and it was now more than ever perfectly understood 
 and comprehended. The rebellion had already taken him at 
 his word. It had made itself the aggressor at a hundred dif- 
 ferent places, and it was hourly preparing to strike such addi- 
 tional blows as should assume for it the full responsibility he 
 so forcibly presented. 
 
 There is one other sentence in the address which is full of 
 meaning. It tells in a few words a fundamental truth of the 
 American national organism. 
 
 Of politics, in 1850, he had said to his friend Mr. Stuart : 
 "The time will come when we must all be Democrats or 
 Abolitionists." 
 
 Of the government and its constitution he had said, in 1858, 
 in his Bloomington speech : " I believe this government can- 
 not endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not ex- 
 pect the Union to be dissolved. It will become all one thing 
 or all the other."
 
 PRESIDENT. 211 
 
 Of the territorial area involved lie now said with equal 
 clearness : " Physically speaking we cannot separate." 
 
 The leaders of the rebellion perfectly understood the axiom 
 so enunciated, and they had laid their plans accordingly. 
 
 For more than a generation they had ruled the whole coun- 
 try through the clumsy machinery provided for them at "Wash- 
 ington. Their " secession" now was but a first step in a design 
 which proposed a more absolute, more sweeping, and more 
 arbitrary domination. 
 
 They looked forward to the control of the entire territory of 
 the United States, then to that of the whole continent to the 
 Isthmus, and with that the absorption of the "West Indies. 
 
 Slavery was aggressive as a necessity of its existence. Its 
 rebuff in its attempt upon Kansas and Nebraska had but pre- 
 cipitated the more desperate undertakings of its bloody cam- 
 paign for its life. At the hour when Mr. Lincoln was speak- 
 ing, armed rebel forces were already preparing to seize New 
 Mexico and the adjacent Territories. A well-devised conspir- 
 acy was at work in the free State of California. There was a 
 strong pro-slavery element in the city of New York, hardly 
 deigning to disguise itself under what now seems the wild pro- 
 ject for slicing off that commercial metropolis by itself as " a 
 free city." 
 
 In every place, and in whatever form, the true intent and 
 meaning of every suggestion of dismemberment was the event- 
 ual unification of the United States as a Slave Empire. 
 
 The issue thus created was met squarely by Mr. Lincoln then 
 and afterwards, but the hour was not ripe for its elaborate pre- 
 sentation. He was a ruler about to assume the direction of a 
 war in which his opponents had had nearly their own way for 
 three months. He was a commander-in-chief with a bank- 
 rupt treasury and without either army or navy. He was 
 himself then standing upon a platform on the steps of a build- 
 ing some days' march within the enemy's lines. He was ad- 
 dressing himself to populations listening to his words as if
 
 212 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 almost in search of causes of offence. He was compelled to 
 clothe his plainest enunciations in such forms of speech as 
 should not throw away communities and States by arraying 
 angrily against him the very elements whereof he hoped and 
 intended to make immediate use. 
 
 Read in the light of subsequent deeds and events, Mr. Lin- 
 coln's inaugural address must be given the high praise that it 
 was a State paper equal to the demands of an unparalleled oc- 
 casion.
 
 WAR. 213 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 WAR. 
 
 The New Era Unification of the South Free Speech Copperheads The 
 Cabinet The White House Confederate Ambassadors Traitors in 
 Office The Border States The Sumter Gun The President's Call to 
 Arms April, 1861. 
 
 MK. JEFFEKSON DAVIS was installed as President of the 
 Southern Confederacy on the 18th of February, 1861, and the 
 flag of rebellion, afterwards so well known as the " Stars and 
 Bars," was formally adopted, on the 4th of March, as the em- 
 blem of organized pro-slavery war. Around the flag and its 
 chosen bearer were rapidly grouped and solidified the ready 
 elements of the great peril with which Mr. Lincoln had thus 
 far dealt with such skillful and courageous conservatism. 
 
 The forces he was thenceforth to direct were ample, but 
 were as yet chaotic and tumultuous, and his first duties were 
 mainly those of organization. 
 
 The last Congress of the Buchanan Administration had 
 steadily drifted out of pro-slavery control. The consecutive 
 departures of its ultra-Southern membership left it more and 
 more a " Republican" body, politically speaking, but its Union- 
 loving elements were irregularly stratified and were not yet 
 prepared to work in unison. Its closing hours were signalized 
 by the rejection of the weak work of the so-called "Peace 
 Congress" and of what was known as the " Crittenden Com- 
 promise." 
 
 The timely death of these twin-children of legislative timid- 
 ity relieved Mr. Lincoln of any annoying guardianship of what 
 must have proved a perpetual minority.
 
 214 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 On the adjournment of Congress and the unobstructed in- 
 auguration, the North as a whole and the Union men of the 
 border States breathed more freely for a few days, but the war 
 went steadily onward. The chosen chief of the rebellion, a 
 man of intense individuality, despotic will, and much executive 
 ability, was rapidly invested with powers which were only in 
 name and form less than autocratic. He and his fellow-con- 
 spirators clearly perceived the necessity of forbidding and pre- 
 venting any open division of popular sentiment in the districts 
 under their control. 
 
 The structure of Southern society gave them all facilities, 
 and they began at once a work of suppression, continued to the 
 end of the war, which did not hesitate in the employment "of 
 needful methods and agencies. The most searching espionage 
 was supplemented by the most pitiless cruelty, and in due time 
 the rebellious region was effectively unified. 
 
 No similar assault upon or destruction of personal liberty of 
 thought or speech or action was at all possible at the North. 
 No such tyranny was called for, nor was it ever undertaken. 
 It would have been as foreign to the nature of Mr. Lincoln as 
 to the genius of the free people who sustained him. Both he 
 and they were afterwards slow to adopt the simplest and most 
 necessary repressive measures. From the first to the last the 
 critics of the Administration used their tongues and pens with 
 a freedom which was by no means altogether due to the gen- 
 eral faith in their impotence for serious mischief. Doubtless 
 contempt had its share, however, in the leniency extended at 
 the North to the large class of politicians of traitorous ten- 
 dencies who shortly came to be known as " Copperheads," from 
 the venomous reptile of that name. 
 
 The selection of Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet was nearly completed 
 when he took the oath of office. The group of men he now 
 gathered around him was eminently representative, politically 
 and geographically. "William H. Seward, of New York, was 
 appointed Secretary of State; Simon Cameron, of Pennsyl-
 
 WAR. 215 
 
 vania, Secretary of War; Gideon Welles, of Connecticut, 
 Secretary of the Navy ; Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, Secretary 
 of the Treasury ; Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana, Secretary of the 
 Interior ; Edward Bates, of Missouri, Attorney-General ; and 
 Montgomery Blair, of Maryland, Postmaster-General. 
 
 Subsequent changes need not now be noted, but it was evi- 
 dent from the first that it would require a man of marked in- 
 tellectual and moral superiority to be the actual guiding mind, 
 governing will, and recognized chief among such men as these 
 whose success as leaders was already notable. Many, indeed, 
 were ready to offer an opinion that Mr. Lincoln would either 
 be a puppet in their hands, tossed to and fro between opposing 
 cabals as Mr. Buchanan had been, or that, for peace and quiet, 
 he would soon drift under the sole management of some one 
 strong mind and subtle purpose among his constitutional ad- 
 visers. That there was never the slightest peril or sign of 
 either disaster is a testimonial of the completeness with which 
 he had already mapped out the course he meant to pursue. At 
 the same time it speaks for the acuteness and patriotic readiness 
 with which the Cabinet at once stepped out upon the path upon 
 which they were to co-operate but not to lead. 
 
 The Executive Mansion was a curious study during many 
 days and weeks following the inauguration. Its halls and 
 offices were literally packed with human beings. There were 
 days when the throng of eager applicants for office filled the 
 broad staircase to its lower steps; the corridors of the first 
 floor ; the famous East Room ; the private parlors ; while anx- 
 ious groups and individuals paraded up and down the outer 
 porch, the walks, and the Avenue. 
 
 The entrance of the Cabinet officers upon their duties and 
 appointing powers drew away much of this pressure after a 
 while, and Mr. Lincoln was at once accused of transferring too 
 much of his prerogative to his subordinates. That he should 
 have relief would have been a physical necessity under any 
 circumstances, but he now had more important matters on his
 
 216 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 hands than the apportionment of partisan rewards of services. 
 His kindly nature led him to surrender only too much of his 
 time and strength to private hopes and ambitions. He had 
 hardly time left him to eat and sleep. 
 
 The clerical work of the executive office under previous ad- 
 ministrations had been comparatively small, and there was no 
 existing law under which the force for its performance could 
 be increased. The President of the United States was allowed 
 but one " private secretary," on a very moderate stipend. To 
 this office he appointed Mr. John G. Nicolay, who had already 
 served him in that capacity. Now that the sheer need of work 
 in hand called for a second private secretary, and Mr. John 
 Hay was in fact made such, it was necessary to have him ap- 
 pointed a clerk in a department and " assigned to duty" at the 
 White House. A few weeks later, when a third was needed, 
 it was easy to summon to Mr. ISTicolay's assistance Mr. Wil- 
 liam O. Stoddard, who had been already appointed the Presi- 
 dent's secretary to sign land-patents. 
 
 These three young men, with occasional help from depart- 
 ment clerks detailed, were all the force with which Mr. Lincoln 
 performed the ceaseless labors of the executive office during 
 the earlier and stormier days of his administration. 
 
 That there was much transfer of "bureau work" to the 
 several departments where it belonged requires no other ex- 
 planation. 
 
 It was contrary to Mr. Lincoln's nature to meddle with petty 
 details unnecessarily, but he was frequently drawn into what 
 looked like meddling by his eager desire for exact informa- 
 tion ; by the real or apparent application of a principle ; by the 
 expression of personal good will or under the influence of some 
 strong emotion. Those who accused him of listening too easily 
 to the importunities of friends and the pressure of interested 
 politicians knew very little of the tidal waves which daily 
 broke at his door to recede in a grumbling " undertow" of bit- 
 ter dissatisfaction.
 
 WAS. 217 
 
 The days of the first week were expended in making the 
 more important official appointments to office ; in strengthen- 
 ing somewhat the shadowy military force at command; but 
 more than all in gaining time for the sure operation of the less 
 visible forces which were steadily depriving the conspirators 
 of the advantages so nearly within their reach. 
 
 On the 12th of March there arrived in "Washington three 
 very extraordinary ambassadors. Mr. Roman, of Louisiana, 
 Mr. Forsyth, of Alabama, and Mr. Crawford, of Georgia, were 
 empowered by the Confederate Government to open diplo- 
 matic relations with the Government of the United States. 
 They were not private adventurers, but commissioners duly 
 nominated by the Confederate President, and confirmed Feb- 
 ruary 25 by the Confederate Senate. Their errand, to ex- 
 press it concisely and correctly, was to demand and accept the 
 pusillanimous surrender, by Mr. Lincoln, to the Rebellion in 
 arms, of all it had already seized and as much more as it could 
 lay its hands upon. It was their business to invite him to 
 imitate stupidly the intelligent treachery of General Twiggs 
 when the latter surrendered the troops and forts in Texas. 
 
 The three commissioners were not arrested for treason. 
 They came unnoticed and departed unhindered. Mr. Lincoln 
 was bitterly blamed for this by over-zealous patriots, who 
 could not discern that the brazen impudence of such an em- 
 bassy was also a plain expression of the dullness behind it 
 which could be guilty of such a blunder. 
 
 The North was now at last beginning to wake up and arm 
 itself. The new government at Washington was rapidly com- 
 pleting its organization. Swift search and inquiry was making 
 among army and navy officers and civil employees of the de- 
 partments as to what might be expected of them. It was pre- 
 eminently needful that the government should know something 
 of the probable capacity and fidelity of its agents before en- 
 trusting them with the execution of war measures. The absence 
 or def ectiveness of such knowledge, in the outset, and the se-
 
 218 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 lection and assignment of new men to varied duties, and not 
 at all any imaginable vacillation or uncertainty of the Presi- 
 dent's purposes, operated as a kind of partial paralysis for a 
 time. 
 
 A complete illustration of this peculiar difficulty of Mr. Lin- 
 coln's position during those long, weary weeks of March is 
 offered by the subsequent destruction of the Norfolk Navy 
 Yard, in Virginia, instead of its retention as a military post. 
 "With all its vast uses, it was lost to the nation by the base 
 treachery of the very officers in charge of it ; its loyal com- 
 mander, Commodore McCauley, being powerless among his 
 rebel subordinates. Mr. Lincoln might well act cautiously un- 
 til a species of weeding-out process had performed itself more 
 thoroughly by the actual personal seceding of the Secessionists 
 in Federal offices. 
 
 On the 6th of the month the Confederate Government is- 
 sued its first formal call for troops. Only one hundred thou- 
 sand were summoned, but it had at least that number already, 
 more or less perfectly organized and armed, under competent 
 officers. 
 
 The South contained much more than its proportion of 
 West Point graduates, retired from military service. To these 
 were rapidly added no less than 269 officers whose secession 
 proclivities led them to resign their positions in the United 
 States army. How large a power of courage, dash, genius, and 
 military science these men carried with them the course of 
 the war was yet to show ; but the army was an untrustworthy 
 machine until they were all out of it. 
 
 The Confederate statesmen were providing their proposed 
 campaign with materials as well as men. Their emissaries in 
 New York and elsewhere were buying and shipping to them 
 all obtainable arms and munitions of war. Larger purchases 
 than ever before were making in the West of provisions of all 
 sorts, and the cargoes were hastening down the Mississippi. 
 
 The energy, foresight, and ability displayed in this direction
 
 WAR. 219 
 
 were undeniable ; but in spite of all this and their relentless 
 determination, they were wasting time which Mr. Lincoln was 
 using. 
 
 He was in sore need of every hour. The secession element 
 in all the doubtful regions was in a state of fermentation, 
 nearly ready for an explosion. Should this be unduly hastened, 
 no human wisdom could forecast the consequences. As early 
 as December 24, 1860, the Richmond, Ya., Enquirer newspaper 
 had editorially recommended that Virginia and Maryland 
 should unite in resuming possession of the District of Colum- 
 bia and the city of Washington. The seizure could then have 
 been made irresistibly, or at any date thereafter up to the first 
 day of May. Both States contained organized military bodies 
 of sufficient strength, composed of men who merely waited an 
 apparent pretext and some sort of lawful authority for active 
 operations. 
 
 Delay was their defeat. The national capital and the territory 
 north of it, to the free-State lines, which lay at the mercy of 
 the rebellion all through the month of March, grew less and 
 less so from the first of April onward. That its danger then 
 became more apparent to all men was but because all men 1 be- 
 gan to see more plainly. By that time the new national gov- 
 ernment was organized very nearly as thoroughly as was its 
 somewhat older antagonist at Montgomery. It had at its com- 
 mand no troops to speak of, but the States of Yirginia and 
 North Carolina were still left as a neutral belt between the 
 bare and undefended lines of the Potomac and that part of the 
 rebel forces which was prepared for immediate battle. 
 
 It was impossible that this state of things should continue 
 much longer. The Confederacy was suffering too much from 
 it and found at last a pretext for its forcible termination. 
 
 The siege of Fort Sumter had thus far been confined to a 
 rigid blockade, and the unmilitary millions of the American 
 people were unable to realize that this was as distinct and posi- 
 tive an act of war as the resonant use of gunpowder. The gar-
 
 220 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 rison was now running short of provisions, and it was both the 
 right and duty of the government at "Washington to supply 
 them. The performance of this duty was delayed to the last 
 moment consistent with honor or humanity, in order that the 
 inevitable consequences might also be postponed as long as 
 possible. 
 
 On the 8th of April a government messenger read to Gov- 
 ernor Pickens, of South Carolina, at Charleston, the following 
 brief message : 
 
 " I am directed by the President of the "United States to no- 
 tify you to expect an attempt will be made to supply Fort 
 Sumter with provisions only, and that if such attempt be not 
 resisted no effort to throw in provisions, arms, or ammunition 
 will be made without further notice or in case of an attack on 
 the fort." 
 
 The relieving expedition did not sail from New York until 
 the morning of the 9th, and it never performed its mission. 
 There was something of confusion and delay in its official 
 management, and a rough sea helped to defeat the zeal of its 
 brave commander ; but it had already been denied a landing. 
 
 After some preliminary exchanges of threats and responses 
 between the besiegers and the besieged, the political mine had 
 been fired, and the explosion had blown away all remaining 
 uncertainties. The rebel authorities gravely decided that Mr. 
 Lincoln's notification of his intention to prevent starvation in 
 Fort Sumter was " a declaration of war." Only the grim and 
 ghastly consequences of their decision conceal the humorous 
 absurdity of it. At half -past four o'clock, on the morning of 
 April 12, the first gun, "the Sumter gun," was fired, and 
 the first shell struck the fort. It was a well-aimed shot. No 
 harm was done to the fortress, but Mr. Lincoln's most serious 
 perplexities were knocked away for him. The " policy of de- 
 lay" was shattered forever, at the very moment when Mr. Lin- 
 coln had himself decided that he could not continue it with 
 advantage nor abandon it without peril. He knew that every
 
 WAR. 221 
 
 man in the country could hear that cannon and understand the 
 meaning of that bursting shell. 
 
 For the Kebellion, also, that shot and those which followed 
 it were apparently well aimed. The garrison of Fort Sumter 
 was compelled to haul down the Stars and Stripes and surren- 
 der, on Sunday morning, April 14 ; but the capture of the 
 fortress was only a part of the seeming Secession victory. Al- 
 ready the war-fever had spread with electric swiftness through 
 North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas, Maryland, and the news 
 of such a victory augmented it with a sudden power. 
 
 The war for such the state of hostilities must be called 
 had now continued for four full months with fluctuating 
 fortunes, and the rebels had many good reasons for rejoicing 
 over their present advantage. With it came the port of 
 Charleston, afterwards so useful to them, and which would 
 have been so dangerous to them in the hands of a Federal 
 army. 
 
 In a few days, and practically captured at the same hour, 
 came all the States above named except Maryland. They 
 would have obtained that also, and with it what is now "West 
 Virginia, and Kentucky and Missouri, if it had not been for 
 yet another and to them an entirely unlooked-for consequence 
 of their victory in Charleston harbor. 
 
 It is very difficult now to understand, difficult even to be- 
 lieve, the nature, degree, extent, of the delusions then preva- 
 lent at the South concerning the resources and character of 
 the people of the North. Even the nominally educated and 
 intelligent classes shared in these delusions, remarkably. That 
 the population of the free States was utterly unwarlike, and 
 would shrink from the ordeal of actual bloodshed, was so 
 deeply ingrained in the Southern mind that it was impossible, 
 years afterwards, for even official statistics to convince them 
 that the national armies were not mainly composed of hired 
 foreigners. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln knew his countrymen better, and his entire
 
 222 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 demeanor changed, in his utter confidence as to the response 
 which would be made to the Sumter gun. 
 
 Yet he had reasons for proceeding with caution even now. 
 
 Clearly perceiving the near and open coming to himself of 
 dictatorial power and responsibility, and feeling that he must 
 at once, but unobtrusively, assume and exercise both, his first 
 action evinced neither alarm nor haste. 
 
 The news of the fall of Sumter reached Washington on Sun- 
 day morning, April 14, but it was already well known by the 
 President that such news must come and that its arrival was a 
 question of a few hours only. The news of the bombardment 
 had arrived but one day earlier, but its foreordained results did 
 not take him by surprise. The Cabinet had already been sum- 
 moned, and had assembled to discuss the situation. There is 
 good evidence that Mr. Lincoln had been opposed by the 
 majority of his constitutional advisers, first, in his determina- 
 tion to hold Fort Sumter to the last, and then in his decision to 
 re-provision it. He was now to show them that the result was 
 no more a disappointment to him than to Mr. Jefferson Davis 
 himself. That gentleman, in the month of February, 1861, 
 when on his way to Montgomery to assume the Presidency of 
 the Confederacy, remarked to ex-Chief Justice Sharkey, of 
 Mississippi, "There will be war, long and bloody." In his 
 inaugural address he said, "It is deemed advisable in the 
 present condition of affairs that there should be a well in- 
 structed and disciplined army, more numerous than would 
 usually be required on a peace establishment." 
 
 How vigorously he and his supporters acted upon their sound 
 convictions is matter of history. They did what they could, but 
 they had thus far been unable to break through the " border- 
 State barrier" maintained against them by Mr. Lincoln's pru- 
 dence. It had been the only defense he could safely employ 
 until they themselves, by the capture of Fort Sumter, set his 
 hands free. So many things were then living that are now
 
 WAR 223 
 
 dead, or live only in other forms, that it is not easy to explain 
 or understand what mere questions of " statute law" and con- 
 stitutional interpretation had, up to this moment, been felt by 
 Mr. Lincoln as fetters upon his conduct. There was a war 
 upon his hands, but nothing as yet had visibly conferred the 
 war power upon him. Huge " anti-coercion meetings" in the 
 great cities of the North, and the utterances of the most loyal 
 journals, kept him well advised of the prevalent conservatism 
 of public opinion. 
 
 Able lawyers openly expressed professional doubts as to 
 whether Mr. Lincoln had any power to Call for troops or to 
 make use of them if he should call and get them. He had no 
 constitutional right or authority to raise or appropriate money. 
 The lawyers were almost unanimous in declaring that he 
 must at least await the assembling and action of Congress. 
 It would not do for him to tyrannically usurp anything 
 beyond what was set down in the books and expounded by 
 learned counsel. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was himself a lawyer, but he was something 
 more. He was a statesman and a ruler, born, educated, 
 trained, and prepared for the precise emergency in which he 
 now found himself. He possessed a thorough knowledge of 
 and an unfaltering confidence in a people who would be ready 
 to sustain him in almost any imaginable course of action which 
 should express and accomplish their vehement but altogether 
 intelligent and righteous will. 
 
 So complete was Mr. Lincoln's moral and mental prepara- 
 tion that the famous "first proclamation calling for troops" 
 was written by his own hand and was on its way over the 
 country by mail and telegraph before that Sunday was over. 
 It bore date of Monday, the 15th of April, 1861, and is a sort 
 of crystallization in words of the President's exact mind and 
 purpose. It was as follows :
 
 224 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 "PROCLAMATION 
 " By the President of the United States. 
 
 "Whereas, The laws of the United States have been for 
 some time past and now are opposed, and the execution thereof 
 obstructed, in the States of South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, 
 Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too 
 powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial 
 proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals by law : 
 Now therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United 
 States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution 
 and the laws, have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call 
 forth, the militia of the several States of the Union, to the 
 aggregate number of seventy-five thousand, in order to sup- 
 press said combinations and to cause the laws to be duly ex- 
 ecuted. 
 
 " The details for this object will be immediately communi- 
 cated to the State authorities through the War Department. 
 I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this 
 effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and existence of our 
 National Union and the perpetuity of popular government, 
 and to redress wrongs already long enough endured. I deem 
 it proper to say that the first service assigned to the forces 
 hereby called forth will probably be to repossess the forts, 
 places, and property which have been seized from the Union, 
 and in every event the utmost care will be observed consist- 
 ently with the objects aforesaid to avoid any devastation, any 
 destruction of or interference with property, or any disturb- 
 ance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country ; and I 
 hereby command the persons composing the combinations 
 aforesaid to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective 
 abodes within twenty days from this date. 
 
 " Deeming that the present condition of public affairs pre- 
 sents an extraordinary occasion, I do hereby, in virtue of the
 
 WAR. 225 
 
 power in me vested by the Constitution, convene both Houses 
 of Congress. Senators and Representatives are therefore sum- 
 moned to assemble at their respective chambers at twelve 
 o'clock noon on Thursday, the fourth day of July next, then 
 and there to consider and determine such measures as in 
 their wisdom the public safety and interest may seem to 
 demand. 
 
 "In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and 
 caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. 
 
 "Done at the city of Washington, this fifteenth day of 
 April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and 
 sixty-one, and of the independence of tjie United States the 
 eighty-fifth. ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 " By the President, 
 
 " WILLIAM H. SEWAED, Secretary of State.'* 
 
 The actual writing of this extraordinary document was done 
 in the few hours which followed the arrival of the news of the 
 fall of Fort Sumter, but it presents no marks of sudden or 
 hasty work. It was the result of thoughtful preparation, and 
 is the condensed expression of deliberate statesmanship. 
 
 At that very hour nothing could be more sure than that 
 Virginia and North Carolina would at once join the Confeder- 
 acy, and that the national capital, with all that it contained, 
 would speedily require armed defenders. That these were 
 ready to come at the call of the President was also instantly 
 known. 
 
 The first effect of the Sumter gun was felt in the Cabinet of 
 Mr. Lincoln, which was unified by the same event which made 
 it otherwise possible for him to go forward in utter disregard 
 of legal technicalities. He was at once endowed with all the 
 powers latent in his responsibilities or implied by the necessi- 
 ties of the case ; and he was in mind and will fully prepared to 
 employ them. 
 
 It was needful for him to assume dictatorial authority, and
 
 226 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the people tacitly expected of him that he should do so. He 
 did it, but did it so strictly in accordance with the plain logic 
 of the situation that neither he nor the popular masses who 
 obeyed him perceived that he had done so. This, too, although 
 the portentous fact of his dictatorship was urged upon them 
 both, from that time forward, by a host of busy tongues and 
 pens, in the press, in legislative bodies, in courts of law, and in 
 the hi^lls of the national Congress.
 
 TEE GREAT AWAKEXISG. 227 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 TILE GREAT AWAKESTS G. 
 
 A Steady Hand The Rebellion extending The Loyal North The Bal- 
 timore Mob Rebellion in Maryland Confederate Hopes and Failures 
 Peril of Washington Arrival of Troops from the North The 
 Gateway to the North Arrival of the New York Seventh Capture 
 of Baltimore Case of CoL Robert . Lee Secession of Virginia 
 Call for Three Years' Volunteers Crushing of Secession in Maryland. 
 
 ON the 6th of March, 1861, the Confederate Congress had 
 passed a law for the establishment of " The Army of the Con- 
 federate States of America." From that time forward the 
 armed forces of the Rebellion ceased to be "State troops," 
 defending State rights or the boundary lines or the territorial 
 integrities of States. 
 
 The proclamation of Mr. Lincoln, therefore, did not at all 
 refer to or deal with commonwealths or communities, or even 
 the doctrine of secession, but with unlawful combinations of 
 individuals banded for an assault upon the national life and 
 the plunder of national property. 
 
 While the States of the Jsorth, as such, were called upon to 
 furnish their quotas of militia^ the same summons was ad- 
 dressed in set terms to such of the border and Southern States 
 as could be reached, and to all " loyal citizens," for it was to 
 the people as a mass that the President looked for support. A 
 feeble cry arose in some quarters that the judiciary should in 
 some manner have been appealed to, but the cumbrous machi- 
 nery of the courts was set aside by the obvious fact of its in- 
 sufficiency, and the cries died into silence. There were many 
 who, with greater appearance of sound reason, were eager for 
 an immediate assembling of Congress ; but, in Mr. Lincoln's 
 knowledge and perception, a large part of the membership of 
 that body had need of special education through the sure course
 
 228 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 of coming events before they could safely be trusted to help or 
 hinder. The wisest heads in either House were probably the 
 least in haste to meet these others in council. The day for 
 their gathering was judiciously and firmly postponed accord- 
 ingly. 
 
 The Executive would certainly require eighty days to cut 
 out for Congress such work as it would need to do when it 
 should assemble. 
 
 The proclamation contains but one breath of the suppressed 
 indignation to which Mr. Lincoln had given no utterance dur- 
 ing those long and patient days, weeks, months of waiting and 
 endurance. The forces were to be used for purposes set forth 
 " and to redress wrongs already long enough endured." 
 
 He could not wisely have then said more ; but the words 
 meant a great deal coming from him. 
 
 The call for State militia was nominally based upon the Act 
 of 1795, and was promptly responded to by the governors of 
 all the free States. Yirginia answered by " seceding" on the 
 17th of April, in secret session of her State Convention, and in 
 open session on the 22d, adding an empty and yet to Mr. Lin- 
 coln's military plans a very useful provision for submitting the 
 question to a popular vote on the 23d of May. North Caro- 
 lina, Arkansas, and Tennessee rapidly sent back similar replies 
 and cast their fortunes with the Rebellion. The governor of 
 Kentucky returned only a contemptuous refusal to furnish the 
 quota of troops called for by the President, and Maryland 
 almost immediately blazed out into open and dangerous revolt. 
 
 All this was hardly more than had been expected, and caused 
 no pang of disappointment ; but the dark and threatening pic- 
 ture had its brighter side. The people of the North had heard 
 the Sumter gun, and its full meaning was interpreted to them 
 by the President's proclamation. Long months of refusal to 
 believe that the Secessionists were in earnest, months of 
 anxious suspense and benumbing doubt were terminated fitly
 
 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 229 
 
 "by a few short hours of bewilderment. Sunday passed under 
 that cloud, but on Monday morning, April 15th, the Nation 
 awoke, and accepted the war for the Union with a burst of 
 enthusiastic patriotism which astonished the world. Party 
 lines seemed to melt away in the fierce heat of the sudden ex- 
 citement. In every nook and corner of the loyal areas, as well 
 as in the larger towns and cities, men nocked together by a 
 common impulse, eagerly offering themselves to defend their 
 country in what to them was its suddenly discovered peril. 
 Mothers gave their sons ; wives hastened the steps of their 
 husbands. The recruiting offices were thronged as if by mobs. 
 The very pulpits and prayer-meetings were all on fire with de- 
 votion to a cause which at once took upon itself sacredness, as 
 the cause of the whole human race for all time to come, sure to 
 have the blessing of Almighty God. If armed men could 
 have telegraphed themselves to Washington, the city would 
 have been garrisoned instantaneously. 
 
 The first visible help arrived on the 18th, in the shape of one 
 hastily gathered regiment of Pennsylvania militia, unarmed and 
 half equipped. They had been hurried off on the spur of the 
 moment, and passed through Baltimore so unexpectedly as to 
 meet no open opposition. The passions whose expression their 
 unarmed ranks barely escaped rose hotly behind them and were 
 only too well prepared for the next-comers. 
 
 These were very near. On the morning of the 16th of 
 April the Massachusetts Sixth Regiment mustered upon Bos- 
 ton Common, perfectly equipped for action. It was on the 
 cars for Washington by Wednesday evening, the 17th. It 
 passed through New York on the 18th, marching down Broad- 
 way between excited thousands on either hand, and singing as 
 it swung along that strange refrain which had arisen, no one 
 knew whence, 
 
 " John Brown's body lies a-mould'ring in the grave, 
 His soul goes marching on !"
 
 230 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Their passage through the great commercial center of the 
 country gave a sort of rallying-point for the city's loyalty, 
 which was to be intensified the day following by the starting of 
 the ISTew York Seventh Regiment for the beleaguered national 
 capital. Meantime the Massachusetts regiment passed on, and 
 on the morning of the 19th, the anniversary of the battle of Lex- 
 ington, it entered the city of Baltimore, Maryland. A misun- 
 derstanding between the railway officials and the regimental 
 commander resulted in an attempt to convey the troops through 
 the city in the cars they occupied, so dividing their strength 
 and caging them instead of giving them fair play as a solid body. 
 
 The Baltimore mob was braver against imprisoned and sepa- 
 rated squads than it would have been against a strong column 
 of marching men. A murderous assault was made upon these 
 citizens of Massachusetts, whose only offense, even against a 
 proslavery mob, was the obvious fact of their ready patriotism. 
 No resistance was made by the troops until self-preservation 
 rendered the use of arms compulsory. There was some firing 
 done ; a few were killed and more were wounded on both sides ; 
 the city police came to the rescue and did their duty admirably, 
 headed by the mayor and the city marshal. The self-control 
 and disciplined good conduct of the troops is emphasized by the 
 fact that the mayor himself, marching at their head, took a rule 
 from a soldier and shot down one of the rioters whose intem- 
 perate zeal was prematurely endangering the deep-laid plot of 
 the conspirators for the secession of Maryland. The subse- 
 quent course of both mayor and marshal threw much light 
 upon the disaster sustained that day by the Confederacy at the 
 hands of the over-hasty Baltimore mob. 
 
 The regiment made its way through and reached Washing- 
 ton ; and the Baltimore gateway to the North was shut behind 
 them : but this was before the men who closed it were at all 
 prepared to keep it so. 
 
 Still, they did their very best to repair their error. There 
 had been many public secession-meetings already in Balti-
 
 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 231 
 
 more and at other places throughout the State. That very 
 evening a monster gathering was held in the city, and the evil 
 spirit of the mob entered into and took possession of the au- 
 thorities. Even the governor of the State, hitherto regarded as 
 unswervingly " loyal," openly announced his readiness to " bow 
 to the will of the people," and declared that " he would rather 
 lose his right arm than raise it to strike a sister-State," mean- 
 ing, of course, a rebellious, slave-holding State. The militia of 
 Maryland seemed, therefore, likely indeed to be called out, but 
 not to be put under the command of Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Hardly an hour after the adjournment of the meeting, at 
 midnight of the 19th, secret orders went out, with men for 
 their execution, headed by the Baltimore city marshal, to 
 burn the nearest bridges leading from the free States into 
 Maryland. Before daylight half a dozen of the more important 
 bridges had been destroyed ; telegraph-wires were severed ; 
 armed patrols were riding hither and thither ; the rebel element 
 throughout the State was notified that the hour to strike had 
 come ; and the city of Washington was placed in a state of 
 semi-siege between an organized rebellion and a bloodthirsty 
 mob in swift process of organization. Had there been one 
 man among the Maryland rebels fit to lead a battalion, the peril 
 to Washington would have been extreme. They had a surplus 
 of demagogues but no leader. 
 
 Such were some of the first-fruits of the proclamation. 
 Precisely similar events, large and small, were occurring in the 
 West and Center, but their recital would add nothing to this 
 illustration of Mr. Lincoln's position, and it required no prophet 
 to predict the nature of those which now must shortly follow. 
 
 It did not even require the mind of a statesman or a mili- 
 tary leader to understand that promptness and energy on the 
 part of the rebel leaders, coupled with a moderate degree of 
 the unscrupulous daring they had already exhibited, would 
 surely result in the capture of Washington. They had formed 
 the purpose so definitely and indulged the hope so strongly
 
 232 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 that the Rebel Secretary of War publicly asserted that the Con- 
 federate Stars and Bars would float from the national Capitol 
 before the first of May. He could not have set forth more 
 plainly the fact that the war waged by himself and his associates 
 was essentially a war of aggression and conquest and not at all 
 for the mere defense of imperiled State lines. He did but 
 underrate his ability to move troops to North Carolina and Vir- 
 ginia, forget the only half-seceded position of the latter State, 
 and overestimate the capacity and courage of the Maryland con- 
 spirators. The latter, indeed, were frightened and disconcerted 
 unreasonably by the premature explosion of their own mob. 
 
 Virginia, still nominally acting as an independent State, re- 
 sponded to the supposed necessities of Maryland by sending 
 on at once two thousand muskets and promising twenty heavy 
 guns. She was urged to this by Mr. Jefferson Davis even be- 
 fore the adoption by the people of her formal act of secession. 
 
 In spite of Mr. Lincoln's confidence and courage, and the 
 unflinching patriotism of those around him, these were anxious 
 days in the capital of the Republic. The very office-seekers 
 called for arms and formed temporary military organizations. 
 They encamped in the halls of public buildings, in the legisla- 
 tive chambers at the Capitol, and in the reception-rooms of the 
 Executive Mansion. It is quite possible that the numbers and 
 military efficiency of these brave and willing but entirely un- 
 disciplined mobs were happily exaggerated in the minds of the 
 rebel authorities. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln went on steadily, unswervingly, with the tre- 
 mendous work he had on hand. His faith in the patriotism of 
 the loyal people was absolutely unbounded, and he framed all 
 measures accordingly. Every hour that passed saw the vast 
 machinery of the new government he was creating take form 
 and order under his diligent direction, and the preparations 
 made for the days to come were on a plan both broad and deep. 
 Man after man was chosen, appointed, and ordered to duty. 
 The several departments were alive with busy and trustworthy
 
 THE ORE AT AWAKENING. 233 
 
 toilers, while in almost every room of every civic bureau there 
 appeared some ominous token, such as a rifle and a cartridge- 
 box, that its occupant was prepared to defend his right to be 
 there. There was at least no opportunity left for the arising 
 of a pro-slavery mob in Washington, or for the success of any 
 other than a well-led attack by a competent and disciplined 
 force of the public enemy. Mere militia and guerrillas would 
 indeed have been out of the question, but the Confederate 
 leaders must have strangely miscalculated their resources in not 
 being ready to avail themselves of an opportunity so golden. 
 
 It was rapidly slipping away from them, never to return. 
 The Eighth Massachusetts Regiment arrived in Philadelphia 
 April 19th, under command of General Butler, and the New 
 York Seventh, under Colonel Lefferts, on the 20th. 
 
 These troops were thoroughly drilled and equipped, and 
 quite capable of facing and scattering any mob ; but it would 
 have been a foolish deed to waste one life among them in the 
 streets of Baltimore. It would also have been a political and 
 military blunder. Mr. Lincoln was bitterly blamed at the time 
 for " not forcing a passage and teaching the rebels a lesson ;" 
 but he had not lost an atom of his calm, wise courage. He 
 knew how much of the current feeling in Baltimore and 
 throughout Maryland was mere excitement and temporary 
 effervescence. He knew it would cool and subside unless some- 
 thing hot and hasty should be done to keep it stirred up. He 
 is said to have " yielded to the urgent request of the governor" 
 that no more troops should be forwarded through Maryland 
 and especially through Baltimore. He did nothing of the kind. 
 He did but follow the dictates of the plainest common-sense 
 and refuse to be influenced by resentment or passion, or by the 
 counsels of angry patriots who were not as he was directly 
 responsible for consequences. 
 
 The two Union commanders were promptly informed of the 
 bridge-burning and of the fact that another road could be 
 opened to Washington by way of Annapolis and Chesapeake
 
 234 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Bay. They set out at once by different routes, Gen. Butler 
 arriving at Annapolis on the 21st, and Colonel Lefferts on the 
 22d. As a matter of course they were met by a protest from 
 the governor of Maryland warning them not to land ; but the 
 protest had no troops behind it and .occasioned no delay in get- 
 ting the two regiments on shore. The governor also at once 
 adolressed a letter to the President, asking that the troops 
 should be promptly removed. He also betrayed his bewil- 
 dered state of mind by suggesting that the British Minister 
 should be requested to " mediate" between the national gov- 
 ernment and its rebels in arms. 
 
 Through windows like this insane suggestion it is possible to 
 obtain a view of the existing vagueness of ideas, in the minds 
 of even educated men, as to the very first principles of national 
 entity and human government. An answer was sent through 
 the Secretary of State, and the troops were not removed. 
 
 The New York Seventh was ordered to "Washington, and 
 General Butler remained to keep open the gateway to the 
 North. He made it much wider in a few days. So small was 
 the disposable force at Washington that Mr. Lincoln had few 
 men to spare to hold the road by which the Seventh was to 
 come. There was a serious doubt if the District militia, now 
 sworn in as three-months volunteers, could be depended upon 
 for service outside of the narrow area they supposed them- 
 selves sworn to defend. Two companies only, " A" and " B," 
 of the third battalion, the National Rifles and the German 
 company before mentioned, volunteered their services, and 
 those who saw them march away looked upon their undertak- 
 ing as a sort of " forlorn hope." They did their duty without 
 discovering any danger, and the Seventh arrived in safety on the 
 25th. The exuberant hopes of the "Washington secessionists 
 went down somewhat as those faultless lines of bayonets came 
 glittering down the avenue to pass in review before the Presi- 
 dent. Still, as before, so then and afterwards, the secessionists 
 were freely permitted to speak treason and write it, and to
 
 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 235 
 
 come and go unhindered. Nothing else really galled some of 
 them quite so much as this feature of indifference in Mr. Lin- 
 coln's policy. 
 
 During all this time the rebel flag floated from the roof of 
 Arlington House, the family mansion of General Lee, just 
 across the Potomac, in full view of the city. The proposal of 
 a squad of the District militia to go and take it down was in- 
 stantly negatived as an unwise irritation of the people of Vir- 
 ginia. The "guard" for the defense of the Long Bridge 
 over the Potomac never numbered more than twenty men at a 
 time, prior to the 25th of April. 
 
 On the 20th, with or without good reason, the great navy- 
 yard at Gosport, Virginia, was burned and abandoned by the 
 small national force in charge of it, with all its costly appli- 
 ances and a number of ships upon which the rebel government 
 had securely counted as the commencement of its " navy." A 
 similar fate had overtaken the United States arsenal at Har- 
 per's Ferry, Virginia, on the 18th. In the West a state of af- 
 fairs existed which imitated remarkably the local chaos at the 
 corresponding points in the East. Everywhere Mr. Lincoln 
 was appealed to by both friends and enemies, and at every 
 point he exhibited the same steadiness, good temper, and sound 
 judgment. It was a task of extraordinary difficulty, and the 
 results obtained bear striking witness of its wise and faithful 
 performance. 
 
 The Annapolis route to Washington continued open, nor 
 could there now be any successful effort on the part of the 
 Maryland secessionists to prevent further reinforcements of all 
 sorts from pouring into the city they had so narrowly failed to 
 win. They still retained undisputed control of Baltimore and 
 of the greater part of the State, but were not able to receive 
 further supplies of military material from the South. At the 
 same time, numbers of their most active and dangerous spirits 
 were continually leaving them to seek employment in the army 
 under Jefferson Davis. The State Legislature was in session
 
 236 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 at Frederick, but contained just enough of loyal leaven, acting 
 with and upon its " conservative" and timid elements, to induce 
 delay and irresolution in all its action until the hour for suc- 
 cessful treason had gone by. 
 
 President Lincoln authorized General Butler to suspend the 
 writ of habeas corpus in certain districts, but no strictly mili- 
 tary movement was attempted until May 13. Then, under 
 cover of a storm and the approach of night, General Butler, 
 with less than a thousand men, suddenly entered Baltimore, 
 seized a position from which his guns commanded the city, and 
 effected a complete capture of it without the loss of a man. 
 It was a deed the success of which justified its apparently reck- 
 less daring. 
 
 The " siege of "Washington" was raised, the State of Mary- 
 land was forever lost to the Confederacy, and its population 
 generally, if slowly, ranged themselves among the assured sup- 
 porters of the national authority. The possible line of subse- 
 quent conflict at once drifted Southward from the banks of 
 the Chesapeake to those of the Potomac, and the entire aspect 
 of affairs changed. 
 
 A striking illustration of the difficulty under which Mr. Lin- 
 coln began his work and the darkness he was in as to whom he 
 could employ and trust as servants of the new government is 
 afforded by the case of Colonel Robert E. Lee, of the regular 
 army. So complete had been the confidence reposed in this 
 man's honor and patriotism, and so carefully had he abstained 
 from giving any token of disloyalty, that, as late as April 20, 
 he was informally offered the command of the Union forces 
 about to take the field. His response was a resignation of his 
 commission in the army, dated the same day. Three days later 
 he was formally installed as commander of the State forces of 
 Virginia. These were turned over to the " Army of the Con- 
 federacy" on the 24th of May, and he with them, to receive at 
 once a commission as full " general" under the Rebel flag. No 
 doubt he acted in accordance with his ideas of his duty to the
 
 THE GREAT AWAKENING. 237 
 
 State in which he had happened to be born and which was 
 more sacred in his eyes than was the government to which he 
 had sworn allegiance ; but his course throws a lurid light upon 
 the harassing perils of Mr. Lincoln's position. "While such 
 lessons of caution as this were daily given and received in the 
 most surprising manner, a wise reticence kept most of them 
 from the immediate knowledge of the nation at large. 
 
 The President's proclamation called for State militia, in 
 nominal accordance with laws which were considered by many 
 jurists to be severely strained by the summons. The troops 
 were rapidly coming forward, but the force they would consti- 
 tute could be but little better than a temporary expedient, as 
 their term of service was but ninety days. The entire atten- 
 tion of the public mind was concentrated upon and absorbed 
 by the several State contingents, and small notice was bestowed 
 upon a much more important exercise of the latent powers of 
 the national executive. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's experience in the Blackhawk War, brief as it 
 was, had taught him a vitally important lesson as to the nature, 
 value, and melting-away tendencies of all such extemporized 
 armies. Neither had he read the history of the Revolutionary 
 War so carefully in his boyhood, without storing his mind with 
 its most important military Isssons. Precisely the difficulties 
 which at times so paralyzed the genius of Washington were 
 right before him now, and he prepared for them in advance. 
 
 Volunteers were freely offering, all over the North, and it 
 was but ten days after issuing the proclamation, or on April 
 26, that Mr. Lincoln sent out official notifications through 
 the War Department that a certain number of these, 44,034, 
 would be accepted "for three years or during the war." He 
 had no warrant of law, apparently, for any increase of the reg- 
 ular army or navy, but he had at the same time called for 
 22,714 " regulars" and 18,000 seamen. 
 
 All this was somewhat quietly done ; but the Northern allies 
 of the rebels in arms did not fail to express their opinion of it
 
 238 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 openly and very freely. In their eyes, and as expressed by 
 their tongues and pens, it was the unscrupulous deed of a 
 tyrant, a dictator, a would-be autocrat. There was in it, in- 
 deed, a good deal of that patriotic autocracy which refused to 
 let the nation lie still and be murdered while thousands of 
 willing hearts were offering strong hands to defend it. 
 
 The acceptances of men were by no means rigidly limited to 
 the terms of the first War Office orders, and it was soon safe 
 to say that there would be an army in the field after the militia 
 regiments should serve their time and go home. 
 
 After all, one of the most important matters was that noth- 
 ing should be done too audaciously startling and suggestive of 
 " aggression and invasion." 
 
 The incipient rebellion in Maryland was now completely 
 crushed. The dangerous elements were weeded out of the 
 State Legislature, a little, by a few salutary arrests. There 
 was no longer any peril threatening the city of Washington in 
 the rear. Nevertheless, the Confederate flag still flaunted in 
 the face of the national capital from the roof of Arlington 
 House as late as May 23, eighty days after President Lincoln's 
 inauguration. There was nothing except the date of the Vir- 
 ginia election to prevent the planting of a rebel battery in 
 General Lee's front yard. Such a battery would have been 
 within easy range of all the government buildings, and would 
 have commanded the Long Bridge over the Potomac, with all 
 its northern approaches. The range of low elevations on the 
 Virginia shore of the Potomac was evidently calling loudly for 
 occupation. Advices from the South added strength to all 
 considerations based upon military science, but not one step 
 was visibly taken which could appear to threaten, much less to 
 assail, " the rights of a sovereign State," until she should for- 
 mally divest herself of them. No solitary Virginia voter was 
 afforded a fresh pretext for casting his misguided ballot in favor 
 of the " Ordinance of Secession."
 
 OVER THE LONG- BRIDGE. 239 
 
 CHAPTEE XXX. 
 
 OVEK THE LONG BKIDGE. 
 
 Kespects for State Rights Secession of Virginia Union Advance across 
 the Potomac Death of Ellsworth The Beginning in West Virginia 
 The Old Flag disappears from the South White House Life War- 
 time Illusions Studies of future Battle-grounds A Funeral in the East 
 Koom. 
 
 could well exceed the closeness with which Mr. 
 Lincoln watched the course of events at the South, or the logical 
 sequence of the steps which he took in pursuance of each 
 and every movement made by his adversaries. Up to this last 
 hour, he had neither done nor authorized any proceeding, as to 
 Yirginia, which the most fanatical expounder of " State rights" 
 could reasonably call in question. 
 
 There was a small guard kept, to be sure, at the Long Bridge 
 over the Potomac, to prevent its very possible destruction, but 
 there was no vexatious interference with travel and traffic or 
 even with the passage of Maryland stray volunteers for the 
 rebel army. More than once, after nightfall, the squad of 
 Union soldiers in charge at that point went hilariously over and 
 hobnobbed with the Virginia State militia similarly posted at 
 the old tavern on the other shore, and were hardly reprimanded 
 by their officers for so doing. Even in the serious matters of 
 the Gosport navy-yard and the Harper's Ferry arsenal, all 
 pains were taken to avoid any open collision with the forces 
 sent by the governor of Yirginia for their seizure. Forbear- 
 ance was carried to the utmost limit of endurance, but there it 
 expired, strictly by limitation. 
 
 In accordance with the action of the Yirginia State Conven-
 
 240 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 tion, the question of the secession of the State was submitted 
 to a popular vote on the 23d of May. Except in what now 
 constitutes the State of "West Virginia, no such thing as a fair 
 and free expression of the popular will was possible, for mili- 
 tary movements had begun and military domination rendered 
 the so-called " vote" a mere matter of form. There was little 
 use in counting such a preordained collection as were those 
 heaps of ballots. 
 
 Nevertheless, although General Lee assumed command of 
 the State troops on the 23d of April, and all men knew the use 
 he would surely make of them, they could not be and were not 
 turned over to the Confederate army, so losing their character 
 as " State" troops, until the 24th of May. The Confederate 
 leaders were therefore yet in some degree hindered by the con- 
 stitutional and legal technicalities whose spirit and letter had 
 been so much more carefully regarded by Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 They were themselves seemingly prompt enough in their 
 operations, so soon as their hands were untied, but they were 
 not at all prepared for the electric suddenness and energy of 
 his final action. 
 
 The Yirginia Convention's Act of Secession was duly con- 
 firmed by the formal election-returns, not yet made up but 
 perfectly well known, at the setting of the sun on May 23, 
 1861. Within one hour afterwards there were columns of 
 United States troops in motion towards the Northern shore of 
 the Potomac and the "Washington end of the Long Bridge. 
 Before midnight a light force of scouts and skirmishers crossed 
 the bridge and began to feel their way down towards Alexan- 
 dria. This advance consisted of but one company, barely sixty 
 men all told, and all the armed opposition they met or saw was 
 a mere squad of mounted Yirginia militia who rode hurriedly 
 away without firing a shot. By two o'clock A.M., the same 
 night, three full regiments had crossed the Potomac at George- 
 town, D. C.; four more by the Long Bridge ; and one, Ells- 
 worth's Zouaves, had gone directly to Alexandria by steamer,
 
 OVER THE LONG BRIDGE. 241 
 
 with one war-vessel as a convoy. By daylight every position 
 aimed at had been occupied without hindrance. The stupid 
 murder of the brave and lamented Ellsworth by a tavern- 
 keeper in Alexandria was merely an expression of individual 
 ferocity, such as afterwards made severe measures necessary at 
 times in dealing with certain elements of the population of the 
 South. 
 
 Forty-eight hours later two regiments from General Mc- 
 Clellan's command crossed into Western Virginia at Wheeling, 
 to support the Union men who were rising throughout that 
 region to defend themselves against Secession tyranny. 
 
 The soldiers of the Union had come to stay, for the first 
 duty imposed upon those who had crossed the Potomac at 
 Washington was the construction of strong earthworks upon, 
 the heights commanding the approaches to the city. Even the- 
 New York Seventh, the kid-gloved favorites of the great me- 
 tropolis, were at work with pick and spade on the " sacred soil 
 of Virginia," in the early morning of the day after the old, 
 commonwealth surrendered its immunities as such and became; 
 a part of the new organism which styled itself the " Confeder- 
 ate States of America." 
 
 A similar comparison of dates with acts and occurrences of 
 varied nature and locality would present a similar teaching, 
 but here is quite enough to illustrate clearly the sagacious pre- 
 vision and careful preparation which were concealed under 
 what was then considered by many " Mr. Lincoln's unaccount- 
 able dilatoriness." 
 
 He was forbidden the luxury of explaining his plans and 
 purposes to the general public, including the public enemy. 
 His immediate advisers were not talking men, then or after- 
 wards. He was compelled to steer carefully between the con- 
 tinuous perils of over-haste and loss of time. In those all-im- 
 portant first days of the long struggle, while paying no undue 
 regard to legal technicalities of any kind, the twin-perils re- 
 ferred to contained in themselves the necessity that no com-
 
 242 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 munity or population should be treated as in rebellion until it 
 had formally become so by its own express act and word. 
 
 So far as State Conventions and Legislatures and their sup- 
 plementary actions were concerned, the work of Secession was 
 now complete. It is worthy of note that on the first day of 
 June, 1861, the flag of the United States floated over only 
 these few spots throughout all the vast territory ruled by 
 President Jefferson Davis : the camps opposite Washington ; 
 Fortress Monroe, Virginia ; Fort Pickens, Key West, and Gar- 
 den Key, in the State of Florida. (West Virginia and East 
 Tennessee can hardly be counted as having been at any time or 
 by their own will part and parcel of the Confederacy, and are 
 therefore excepted.) From every other place, fort, navy-yard, 
 arsenal, public building, private house, it had disappeared, and 
 the vast majority of the people of the civilized world believed 
 that it had so disappeared forever. What is sometimes de- 
 scribed by politicians as "a good working majority and no 
 more" of the people of the free States were utterly deter- 
 :mined that it should one day go back again. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had now been in Washington three full months, 
 :and the routine movement of his daily life had become well 
 established. He, had not materially changed his personal habits. 
 He was as careless as ever concerning his dress, and retained 
 Ms free, familiar ways with his nearer friends. His distaste 
 was as strong as ever for mere ceremonial, social formalities, 
 etiquette of rank, outward insignia of place and power. He 
 increased with iron endurance his steady, tireless industry, his 
 patient investigation of all subjects which his duties, present or 
 to come, might bring before him. It was needful that he 
 should not be too easy of access ; but if he had business at any 
 bureau of any Department, he was not at all unlikely to attend 
 to it in person. He more than once did so, somewhat to the 
 discomfiture of inattentive subordinates. 
 
 He labored under one disadvantage, perhaps, as a ruler. If 
 he met a governor, a general, a foreign diplomat, a visitor of
 
 OVER THE LONG BRIDGE. 243 
 
 especial distinction, it was out of his power to look upon the 
 great personage before him as other or more or less than a 
 human being like himself or any other man so to be met and 
 spoken to. Some of the dissatisfaction caused in this way has 
 been duly recorded by the sufferers. 
 
 He retained in all its freshness his love for children. If a 
 child was led past him at a public " reception," he was apt to 
 take it up and kiss it and give it a kind word as simply and even 
 a little more eagerly than if he had met the child of some old 
 neighbor on the sidewalk of his own street in Springfield. 
 
 The business offices of the Executive Mansion were in the 
 second story, and were but three in number, with ante-rooms 
 for the accommodation of visitors in waiting. One very large 
 room, fronting southward, had been " the President's room" 
 ever since the house was built. Next to this, on the east, was 
 a narrow room in which the Private Secretary performed his 
 double duty of defending the President from needless intrusion 
 and of acting almost as a second President in a host of minor 
 matters. Across the hall was another room of like dimensions, 
 occupied by the two assistant secretaries and such clerical help 
 as was sometimes given them. To this latter room, indeed, 
 Mr. Lincoln sometimes fled for refuge from the pressure he 
 could not escape in his own. Adjoining this was a large sleep- 
 ing-room, also sometimes temporarily applied to more strictly 
 official uses. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had shown his usual wisdom in selecting the 
 confidential servants of his own office. They were all young 
 men of sufficient capacity and education for their duties, but 
 were without other associations or ambitions than such as 
 bound them to himself. He could and did put utter con- 
 fidence in them, and there was in the feeling with which they 
 all regarded him something quite as strong as any tie of blood 
 could possibly have been. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's old friend Colonel Ward H. Lamon, and after- 
 wards other officials, had at first somewhat of the external man-
 
 244 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 agement of social " state affairs" in the White House, but they 
 were not actual members of Mr. Lincoln's small and unpre- 
 tending household. Only his family and its guests took their 
 meals in the house. 
 
 From the very beginning Mrs. Lincoln assumed and held her 
 rightful position as lady of the mansion ; nor was it always easy 
 to designate the precise limit of her authority. It was never 
 in the world easy to do this as to the wife of any private citi- 
 zen, the lady having a will of her own. An understanding of 
 the fact that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Lincoln for a long time fully 
 grasped the idea that they were no longer " private citizens" 
 furnishes a complete key to the solution of much which then 
 and afterwards excited curious comment. 
 
 Much more than most of those around him, Mr. Lincoln had 
 internally formulated his clear comprehension of the intense 
 and stern realities with which he was dealing. Crowds of eager 
 applicants begged and pleaded and all but fought with one 
 another for the offices in his gift. Deputations called upon 
 him to express in various ways the exuberance of their patriot- 
 ism. Regiment after regiment came marching gayly down 
 Pennsylvania Avenue and passed in glittering review before 
 him with a sort of " picnic and Fourth of July" expression 
 upon their bright and brave young faces. Those about to die 
 saluted him as if he had summoned them to some grand holi- 
 day excursion. 
 
 Upon one and all he looked sadly, kindly, earnestly, through 
 eyes that were dim with seeing, far beyond their serried ranks 
 and silken flags, the torn and bloody turf, the scattered corpses, 
 the lifting powder-smoke of the inevitable battle-fields to come. 
 
 In the large room where he worked through all the days 
 and half through all the nights there was but little furniture. 
 What there was had an old-time and half-faded look, and no 
 great part of it had been added or altered since the days of 
 President Jackson. The marks of the feet of that strong- 
 headed enemy of treason and secession were plainly visible
 
 OVER THE LONG BRIDGE. 345 
 
 upon the bricks above the fireplace until these were removed. 
 The favorite chair of the old hero, an easy, oddly shaped affair 
 of Mexican manufacture, was one of the heirlooms of the office 
 from -which he had bearded the South Carolina " nullifiers" of 
 his own time. 
 
 In one corner of the room was an upright frame of wood, 
 upon which were many maps, conveniently mounted on spring- 
 rollers. To this were afterwards added others of similar pat- 
 tern. Folios of maps leaned against the walls or hid behind 
 the sofas. Volumes of military history and kindred literature 
 came and went from various libraries and had their days of 
 lying around the room or on the President's table. He was an 
 early riser and was apt to be at his toil before the humblest 
 clerk on the national pay-rolls had eaten his breakfast. That 
 of the Chief Magistrate was very frequently brought to him in 
 his office that he might lose no time, for now, as always, from 
 his log-house cradle, he was a hard student. He knew every 
 river, mountain-range, creek, hill, valley, on the broad areas 
 through which the tides of the war were to ebb and flow. 
 More than that, he made himself better than ever acquainted 
 with the constituent elements of the local populations, their 
 industries, tendencies, origins, wealths or poverties. No man 
 living was endowed with a better capacity to digest, assimilate, 
 and employ the multiform information he sought out so per- 
 severingly. How important all this laborious study was to the 
 nation can only be approximately estimated by means of an 
 attempt to grasp and imagine the possible consequences of its 
 neglect and absence. The ruin, disgrace, misery, which would 
 surely have resulted from ignorance-in-power striving to per- 
 form the functions devolved upon Mr. Lincoln, form a picture 
 from which the coldest critic might be glad to turn away. 
 
 About one year later, in a private note to General McClellan, 
 Mr. Lincoln was able to say of an order he had given and was 
 defending: "I ordered ... on the unanimous opinion of 
 every military man I could get an opinion from, and every
 
 246 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 modern rmlita/ry J00&, yourself only excepted." How many 
 hours of intense, absorbed, brain-wearying application are im- 
 plied in that simple but pregnant sentence ! 
 
 There was something almost dreamlike and unreal about life 
 in Washington for most men during those first three months 
 of the new government. The very excitement and the tense- 
 ness of the strain in which men's minds were held removed 
 the life they were living so far away from any life which any 
 of them had ever before lived or thought of living. 
 
 The hazy atmosphere of semi-tragic unreality pervaded at 
 last even the White House itself. The bright spring weather 
 aided the effect of the increasing glitter of uniforms and flutter 
 of flags and the all but ceaseless flow and crash of martial 
 music from the noisy bands of the arriving regiments. 
 
 There had been no battle fought since Fort Sumter was 
 bombarded, and there were not wanting false prophets of 
 peace to chirrup gayly that there would be no actual blood- 
 shed. 
 
 Through all this over-strained, unnatural, feverish, misty 
 state of things came suddenly the tramp of the movement 
 across the Potomac on the 24th of May. Virginia threw 
 open her gates by a vote of her people, and the Union troops 
 marched in : but precious blood was spilled upon the threshold. 
 
 The shot fired murderously by the Alexandria tavern-keeper 
 struck a mark in the very household of the President. Colonel 
 Ellsworth was but a boy of twenty-four, but he had won the 
 admiration of the entire country by his genius and energy. 
 He had journeyed to Washington with Mr. Lincoln, who had 
 become warmly attached to him, and shortly afterwards ap- 
 pointed him a second-lieutenant in the regular army. The 
 regiment he raised among the firemen of New York, under 
 the call for volunteers, was considered second to none in its 
 promise of usefulness under such a commander. He was a 
 type and personal embodiment of the young manhood which 
 was springing forward at the call of their country's peril. He
 
 OVER THE LONG BRIDGE. 247 
 
 was, as such type and representative, to offer a bloody illustra- 
 tion of the true meaning of the summons. 
 
 The Sunday before the eventful day, Ellsworth was at the 
 "White House, less as a guest than as a well-loved member of 
 the household. To the same place his body was borne after 
 the murder, and the funeral ceremonies were held in the 
 gaudy " East Koom," sadly dressed and draped for the occa- 
 sion. 
 
 That Mr. Lincoln grieved for his bright, genial, gifted young 
 friend ; that all the sorrow he expressed for him was real, re- 
 quires no saying. Nevertheless, to him as to the people gen- 
 erally, the death of Ellsworth marked the end of a worn-out 
 policy and the beginning of a new order of thoughts and feel- 
 ings. 
 
 A splendid regiment of "Ellsworth Avengers," the 44th 
 ~New York Volunteers, was speedily formed, but the blood 
 upon the Virginia threshold did not call for human vengeance. 
 It did but witness before God and men that the day of com- 
 promise, negotiation, dallying, delay, had passed, and that the 
 day of wrath had come, the day for which Mr. Lincoln had 
 been buying ships and enlisting men without due form and 
 warrant of statute law.
 
 248 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXI. 
 
 THE EUROPEAN QUESTION. 
 
 The Secretary of State England and France Privateers and Piracy The 
 New Navy Whaling Schooners as War Vessels. 
 
 ME. LINCOLN'S education for the duties he was now per- 
 forming had been given him through long and painful pro- 
 cesses by all of which he had faithfully profited, but his attain- 
 ments were all in a peculiar manner limited by the boundaries 
 of his own country. He spoke no other than the English 
 tongue. He knew little of other nations beyond a moderate 
 acquaintance with their geography and history and some stray 
 ideas conveyed to him by such representatives as they had sent 
 to America as emigrants. From these latter, indeed, he had 
 learned all they had to teach, and such acquisitions were of 
 value to him now ; but all the emigrants had been men and 
 women of " the people." 
 
 Of the governing castes and classes of Europe, and of Euro- 
 pean politics, the cesspool in which kings and their ministers 
 dabbled and fished and groped for the prizes of war and diplo- 
 macy, he knew almost nothing and cared but little more. 
 
 He could but be aware that the great maritime nations of the 
 Old World were watching with jealous eyes the growth of the 
 new power in the West over which he had been called to rule, 
 but he had great faith in the Atlantic Ocean and the supposa- 
 ble common-sense of European statesmen. So great was this 
 faith of his that it came perilously near to leading him into an 
 error. It would surely have done so but for the simple direct- 
 ness of the doctrine he at once formulated for the government 
 of the foreign policy of the United States.
 
 THE EUROPEAN QUESTION. 249 
 
 " This is our own affair," he said, in effect. " It is a family 
 quarrel with which foreign nations have nothing to do, and 
 they must let it alone." 
 
 The practical details of the processes by which that doctrine 
 was to be communicated to European powers were left almost 
 altogether to the care of Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State. 
 They could not have been intrusted to a brain more capable or to 
 a heart more utterly worthy of the momentous trust. There was 
 little need for Mr. Lincoln to add the State Department to hi& 
 other burdens while its management was under such an eye and 
 hand as those of the practised New York statesman. Here, at 
 least, there was something in the nature of complete relief, 
 and the weary ruler accepted it as frankly as it was given. 
 The friendship between him and his " minister of foreign af- 
 fairs," from the very first, assumed a warm and personal char- 
 acter. The gossips who strove to give it any other significance, 
 then or afterwards, did but testify their incapacity to under- 
 stand the broad patriotism and generous mutual confidence of 
 these two men. 
 
 In training, as in natural gifts, Mr. Seward was as unlike 
 Mr. Lincoln as he well could be ; but they had one thing in 
 common and one tie of measureless brotherhood in their unsel- 
 fish devotion to the performance of the great work which God 
 had laid upon them. If, at first, they were a little slow, Mr. 
 Seward somewhat the slower, in coming to a mutual under- 
 standing of each other's character, aim, and purpose, that was 
 all the more surely attained in the course of joint toil and 
 counsel and anxiety. Together, each in his appointed place, 
 they labored in harmony to the end. 
 
 It was well known that one of the first acts of Mr. Davis, on 
 assuming the reins of power, had been to dispatch emissaries 
 to the more important courts of Europe, notably to those of 
 England and France. Much preliminary work, of a prepara- 
 tory kind, had before that time been accomplished by the un- 
 official agents of the intended rebellion. A strong feeling of
 
 250 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 sympathy for the South, had been most skillfully created. In 
 Europe, as in America, the " War" had been in progress for 
 months before Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. Up to the close 
 of the Buchanan Administration the cause of the South had 
 been vigorously served abroad, in not a few instances, by the 
 official and accredited representatives of the National Govern- 
 ment at "Washington. 
 
 It was difficult, at first, for foreign diplomacy to find a place 
 for the insertion of an entering wedge of interference. The 
 stern directness of Mr. Lincoln's own policy was shortly to 
 offer one, hi such a shape as should present the most tempting 
 bait and with it the most trying problem. As early as the 
 17th of April, 1861, three days after the surrender of Fort 
 Sumter, Mr. Davis issued a proclamation offering " letters of 
 marque and reprisal," under the seal of the Confederate States, 
 to armed privateers of all nations. 
 
 It was truly a tempting offer to the supposable pirates of 
 Europe, but it was rendered somewhat less so, in about forty- 
 eight hours, by the counter-proclamation of President Lincoln. 
 This document contained a deal of salutary warning and had a 
 most beneficial effect. It notified the " privateers" invited by 
 Mr. Davis that they would be " held amenable to the laws of 
 the United States for the prevention and punishment of piracy." 
 
 This declaration was in strict accordance with the more re- 
 cent utterances of the great commercial powers and with the 
 treaties they had mutually entered into. At the same time a 
 rigid blockade was declared of all the ports of the States then 
 included in the Confederacy. Those of Virginia and North 
 Carolina were added in due time. 
 
 The most vigorous efforts were made to render the blockade 
 effective. Ships were fitted out and put to sea even more 
 rapidly than regiments on land were raised and equipped. 
 The new navy of the United States was in the active perform- 
 ance of its sudden duties before the first company of skirmish- 
 ers marched across the Long Bridge.
 
 THE EUROPEAN QUESTION. 251 
 
 Of naval affairs, as such, Mr. Lincoln knew but little. He 
 had never been upon salt water nor examined a vessel of war. 
 He had, however, studied with care and acquired an intimate, 
 practical knowledge of the navigation of the great rivers of the 
 West. These latter and their flotilla, present and prospective, 
 were judiciously loosened somewhat from the control of the 
 Navy Department. They remained to the end under the es- 
 pecial care of the man who had himself been a " river-pilot," 
 who had made and managed flatboats, and who had mastered 
 problems of fresh-water navigation which would have been 
 new and strange to the most accomplished seaman in the At- 
 lantic squadron. 
 
 There was little difficulty in obtaining the services of all de- 
 sirable sea-going vessels, owing to the panic created among the 
 commercial classes by the Confederate threat of privateering. 
 Owners were eager to place their ships and steamers under the 
 national flag, whether by sale or charter. There were notable 
 instances of patriotic liberality in this direction, but there were 
 more of a kind hardly so creditable to human nature. These 
 latter may be fairly illustrated by the case of a Connecticut 
 merchant who urged Mr. Lincoln to purchase " for war pur- 
 poses" a batch of worn-out whaling-schooners. No longer fit 
 to deal with a whale, they were just the thing in which a crew 
 of brave men under government pay could pursue, fight, cap- 
 ture, a fleet of French or English armed steamers under the 
 rebel flag. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln preferred to look on the ludicrous side of such 
 incidents as this and a hundred other manifestations of stupid 
 greed which daily came before him. He was genuinely glad 
 to be able to do so. He freely declared, to more than one who 
 conversed with him, that the most important relief to his 
 heavy load of care and anxiety was that which he found in his 
 capacity for enjoying fun for its own sake. He could still tell 
 a story or laugh at a joke, and he could still use either as a 
 weapon or a shield. In any form of employment they per-
 
 252 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 formed invaluable uses. Those whose solemn shallowness ena- 
 bles them to disregard the structure of the human mind and 
 brain, or to confound the one with the other, will probably con- 
 tinue to wonder at the trustworthy anecdotes of the President's 
 unaccountable frivolity in those days of overstrain. 
 
 The beetle sees a giant laugh while he is lifting a rock, and 
 indignantly remarks to the glow-worm at his side : " The fel- 
 low is indecent. You or I would have done it with due sol- 
 emnity."
 
 BULL RUN. 253 
 
 CHAPTEK XXXH. 
 
 BULL RUN. 
 
 Checker-board Campaign Plans On to Richmond The Two Armies 
 Dissolved Militia Congressional Legislation Under Sudden Pressure 
 The President's Message Five Hundred Thousand Men. 
 
 THE growth and development of the people of the United 
 States up to the outbreak of the Rebellion had been attained 
 through processes peculiarly peaceful. On the first day of 
 June, 1861, it could have been said of them all, both North 
 and South of the Potomac and Ohio rivers, that no one of 
 their characteristics was more distinctly marked than their ig- 
 norance of war. The living generation had no memory or 
 knowledge of its effects, and the idea that it might be or that 
 it involved a distinct science had dawned upon but few minds 
 among them. 
 
 The next most important fact, politically, was the stone- 
 blindness of the masses to the fact of their own ignorance. 
 
 The South believed itself essentially martial, and a great 
 deal had latterly been done to make it so. It was in vastly 
 better condition for warlike purposes than was the North, and 
 the people of the latter section were ignorant of this fact also. 
 
 All over the free States the newspaper editors and local ora- 
 tors, great and small, dabbled fiercely in patriotic statesman- 
 ship. They united in assuring the President that they had 
 supplied him with "an army," and that he was in duty bound 
 to crush the Rebellion with it. The prevalent idea of army- 
 movements appears to have been borrowed from the black and 
 white squares of a checker-board and their easily transferable 
 " buttons." Substitute the seceded territory for the checker-
 
 254 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 board, and the President's obvious business was to win the 
 game at once, while so many eager people were looking on and 
 were waiting impatiently to see him do it. 
 
 The cry of " On to Richmond !" now began to rise, with a 
 full-throated volume which threatened to drown the explana- 
 tory reply that there were many brave men, with rifles in their 
 hands, standing right in the way. 
 
 A badly managed skirmish at Big Bethel, Virginia, on the 
 10th of June, costing several valuable lives, did but whet the 
 popular appetite for military activity. Little affairs of even 
 less bloodshed, but with more important results, took place in 
 "West Virginia. The "battle of Boonville," Missouri, wa& 
 faintly fought and fled from by the Rebel militia on the lYth 
 of June, and it was urged that the Confederate forces between 
 "Washington and Richmond would scatter as promptly as their 
 "Western brethren, if advanced upon in a similar manner. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln did not share in this delusion, but both he and 
 his military counselors were aware that there were positions 
 of great strategic importance which might well be seized and 
 occupied, with a view to further operations. The most im- 
 portant of these, as was afterwards proved, was the one upon 
 which the first movement was planned by the generals on both 
 sides. 
 
 Manassas Junction was the point where the railroad from 
 Alexandria, on the Potomac, met the railway connecting the 
 rest of Virginia with the Shenandoah Valley. It had been 
 feebly occupied by the State militia of Virginia, even before 
 the secession of that commonwealth, and it was made a rallying- 
 point for subsequent levies. About the first of June, 1861, 
 General Beauregard, of the Confederate army, was sent to take 
 command of the forces assembled for the protection of the 
 Manassas lines. These were, therefore, the first obstruction in 
 the way of any direct movement " on to Richmond." 
 
 The Union troops were mainly composed of State militia, 
 and these were all " three-months men." They included all the
 
 BULL RUN. 255 
 
 well-drilled and disciplined regiments, for the " regulars" were 
 few indeed, and the volunteers were yet hardly fit for use as 
 soldiers. The State-militia term of service was a most impor- 
 tant factor in Mr. Lincoln's military calculations. It was so 
 much so, that their melting away by reason of its expiration 
 began before a blow could be struck. On the very eve of the 
 battle of Bull Run, the Fourth Pennsylvania Eegiment and 
 Yarian's Battery of (New York) Light Artillery were dis- 
 missed and marched away from the field of battle because their 
 time had run out. Others, similarly circumstanced, remained, 
 and took their share of the work in hand. 
 
 The forward movement called for by the country, and per- 
 haps by military as well as political necessity, was ordered, and 
 was made under General McDowell. With a dissolving army 
 of less than twenty-eight thousand men and forty-nine guns, 
 he fought an army of the best soldiers in the Confederacy, 
 thirty-two thousand strong, with fifty-seven guns. Actual 
 fighting began on the 18th of July, and it continued, with 
 varied fluctuations, but with general good conduct of both 
 officers and men on both sides, until the so-called " panic" of 
 the Union troops. This took place on the afternoon of the 
 21st. By that time a large part of the Rebel forces had been 
 so severely handled that they were under a strong impression 
 that they had been defeated. They were only a little less dis- 
 organized for military purposes than were their tired-out and 
 routed antagonists. It afterwards required some investigation 
 to assure the Confederate commanders of their victory. Even 
 when satisfied of the fact, they were in no condition to 
 follow it up. The losses on both sides, officially reported, 
 were : United States 25 guns, 481 men killed, 1011 wounded, 
 1460 prisoners sent to Richmond, including many wounded ; 
 Confederates 387 men killed, 1582 wounded, and a few pri- 
 soners. 
 
 It was a hard-fought action, and the " panic" was simply the 
 disintegration of a number of regiments of raw troops, worn
 
 256 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 out with fatigue from marching, fighting, hunger, thirst, ex- 
 tremely hot weather, and intense excitement. There was quite 
 enough of the Union army left in good form, when all was 
 over, to have checked any forward movement on the part of 
 what was also left in good order of the forces it had been 
 fighting with. The Confederate commanders were men of 
 sense and were contented with reaping the harvest left in their 
 possession in such a manner. 
 
 They did well ; but the entire South went crazy with exulta- 
 tion, after a fashion which, as its rulers afterwards openly 
 stated, sadly interfered with all current plans and operations. 
 
 Southern contempt for all men and things north of " Mason 
 and Dixon's line" received a sudden and enormous inflation, and 
 the impression went abroad that " the Yankees" would never 
 presume to face " the Chivalry" again. 
 
 Washington city, for a number of days, was thronged with 
 a mob of fugitive members of the shattered regiments. Every 
 man of them had a fearful tale to tell and was anxious to get 
 something to eat. To all appearance the cause of the Union 
 had received a severe blow. There had been an undeniable 
 defeat and what to some critics looked like a throwing away 
 of men and guns and military prestige. The disaster was in 
 appearance mainly, however, and Mr. Lincoln so understood it. 
 
 The army beaten at Bull Eun was, for its greater part, an 
 improvised force, on the eve of disbandment. If it had there 
 won never so complete a victory, it could hardly have been held 
 together long enough to reap any other fruit thereof than the 
 occupation of important positions. The majority of its per- 
 sonal membership, stung by the memory of their disaster and 
 as brave as ever, were only the more eager to rush into the 
 permanent organizations of " three-years men." No victory 
 could have done half so much towards suddenly converting 
 them into steady and trusty veterans. The gain right here all 
 but counterbalanced the seeming loss. At the North, through 
 every State, county, town, village, homestead, the effect was
 
 BULL RUN. 257 
 
 instantaneous and most salutary. The editors were given 
 something new to write about for a while, and the men of ac- 
 tion poured in steadier, more angrily determined streams to- 
 wards the Federal recruiting offices. The whole people were 
 taught, as it were in one day, much of the real nature of the 
 gage of battle they had accepted, and they did not flinch for a 
 moment from the grisly truth so presented to them. 
 
 To Mr. Lincoln himself, as a ruler, the fate of the militia 
 army brought a tremendous justification of the steps he had 
 taken for the increase of the regular army and navy and for 
 the almost unlimited enlistment of volunteers. Congress had 
 assembled on the 4th of July, in a most liberal and patriotic 
 state of mind, with the exception of a mere squad of timid 
 temporizers and another of open sympathizers with Seces- 
 sion. Nevertheless there had been much criticism of the 
 Administration in both branches of the legislative body, with 
 some loud-toned " On to Richmond " oratory, and also a gen- 
 eral industry in obtaining the appointment of constituents to 
 office which had interfered sadly with the performance of 
 strictly legislative functions. Yery few men, in either House 
 or Senate, had yet discovered the fact that Mr. Lincoln was, 
 and for some busy months had been, the Dictator of a Republic 
 struggling for its very life. It did not fully dawn upon them 
 until the day when they suddenly awoke to the conviction that 
 they themselves eagerly desired him to be so and were ready 
 to put into his hands all the dictatorial powers they knew how 
 to give him, and then hasten home. 
 
 The message the President sent to Congress upon its assem- 
 bling was a remarkable document. It began with a condensed 
 historical sketch of the rise of the Rebellion and of its progress 
 to that date. It carefully summed up and presented the great 
 fact, so carefully left unshaken by his own course from the 
 beginning, that the Rebels and not the National Government 
 had forced upon the country the one distinct issue, " immediate 
 dissolution or blood." It showed that they had followed this
 
 258 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 forcing by practical dissolution, so far as that was in their 
 power, and by drawing the first blood themselves. 
 
 This issue, so presented, the message then contended, was 
 not all which was at stake in the conflict thus ruthlessly pre- 
 cipitated. It said : " And this issue embraces more than the 
 fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family 
 of man the question whether a constitutional republic or 
 democracy, a government of the people by the same people, 
 can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its 
 own domestic foes. It presents the question whether discon- 
 tented individuals, too few in number to control administra- 
 tion according to organic law in any case, can always, upon 
 the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or 
 arbitrarily without any pretense, break up their government, 
 and thus put an end to free government upon the earth. It 
 forces us to ask, ' Is there in all republics this inherent and 
 fatal weakness ? ' ' Must a government, of necessity, be too 
 strong for the liberties of its own people or too weak to main- 
 tain its own existence ? ' ' 
 
 These questions presented the precise view of the case held 
 by European statesmen, and they had often and openly de- 
 clared their belief that, whenever such a question should be 
 ;asked by the logic of actual events, the answer would be given 
 in the affirmative and the republic or democracy involved 
 would at once go to pieces. As to the American Republic, 
 the issue was now plainly set before the whole world by the 
 man who was more serenely confident than almost any other 
 that such answer would be given as should assure all future 
 thinkers of the stability of all free governments, provided these 
 were bravely maintained by the men in charge of them. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's message dealt briefly but sharply with certain 
 absurd ideas of possible " neutrality" which were employed at 
 the time in Kentucky as a convenient cloak for cowardice and 
 treason. He defended his course in the arbitrary suspension 
 of the writ of habeas corpus. He then advised that Congress,
 
 BULL BUN. 259 
 
 in the hope of making the war a short one, should place at the 
 disposal of the government four hundred thousand men and 
 four hundred millions of dollars. 
 
 These were large figures, and they almost took away the 
 breath of some who heard them ; but the members of the body 
 to whom the message was addressed had been doing the requi- 
 site amount of thinking, during the eighty days which had 
 passed since the President's proclamation summoned them to- 
 gether. They did what they would surely not have done if 
 they had been gathered too hastily. They voted half a mil- 
 lion of men and five hundred millions of dollars, in a burst of 
 eager patriotism. 
 
 Even Mr. Lincoln had almost a hope, at first, that this might 
 prove sufficient. It might well have been so if the half mil- 
 lion of men had at that hour been soldiers, and if these had 
 been under officers, great and small, such as the course of the 
 war, with Mr. Lincoln's watchful help, afterwards selected 
 from among the long list of then untried, unknown, altogether 
 undiscovered and undeveloped heroes. 
 
 The message concluded with an exhaustive analysis of the 
 stupidities and absurdities of the old doctrine of " State rights" 
 as now applied to the war purposes of the Rebellion. Such an 
 argument was timely, both for home and foreign reading. It 
 was intended for both, as was also much of the earlier matter 
 of the message. 
 
 Congress passed the necessary acts to legalize whatever Mr. 
 Lincoln had seen fit to do. Its leadership was in the hands of 
 strong, hard-headed, resolute men, fresh from hearing the 
 voices of their angry constituents, male and female, and not a 
 little very martial music of other descriptions. The protests 
 of the disloyal members were loud and bitter, but small atten- 
 tion was paid them. The minority vote against the measures 
 sustaining the government contained the names of several men 
 who afterwards accepted commissions in the Eebel army, and 
 of one, Yallandigham of Ohio, who was afterwards contemptu-
 
 260 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 ously sent across the lines into the Confederacy, " because he 
 belonged there." 
 
 Into such a body as this Congress, busily engaged in so good 
 a work and in the discussion of its details, the news of the de- 
 feat at Bull Eun fell like a bursting bombshell. It was an ex- 
 plosion which put an end to useless debate and blew to atoms 
 the last vestige of hesitation as to the necessities of the case. 
 All remaining business was finished in exactly two weeks, fur- 
 nishing perhaps the most remarkable instance on record of 
 legislation condensed under pressure. Congress adjourned and 
 went home, leaving Mr. Lincoln at "Washington as sole dic- 
 tator, endowed for the first time with full forms of law for the 
 carrying on of the war.
 
 THE BLOCKADE. 261 
 
 CHAPTEK XXXIH. 
 
 THE BLOCKADE. 
 
 Kecognition Accepting the Situation The Neutrality Mask Rejected 
 Information War Correspondence not History The Fetters of Eti- 
 quette not Worn. 
 
 ME. LINCOLN carefully abstained from coming into open col- 
 lision with any State government acting as such. In public 
 and in private he recognized the assailants of the national in- 
 tegrity only as criminal individuals. He treated the Con- 
 federacy simply as the same men acting together in an organ- 
 ized body for the same essentially criminal purposes. He in- 
 sisted that, as no power existed anywhere for the dissolution 
 of the Union without the assent of all concerned or a majority 
 of them, it had not been dissolved. A different view was con- 
 veniently taken for political purposes on the other side of the 
 Atlantic. England and France did not even wait for the com- 
 plete formation of the Confederacy before they made haste to 
 recognize it as a " belligerent" and to treat it as in some sort 
 one of the nations of the earth. " The South," as they com- 
 monly called it, had yet no navy, but its admirers hoped and 
 believed that the deficiency would soon be supplied. 
 
 The North, they were yet more sure, was unable to send to 
 sea a fleet capable of coping with any one of their cruising 
 squadrons. It had neither ships nor money nor credit, and it 
 was so far disorganized that it was not likely to obtain either 
 at an early day. It was to their minds merely a question of 
 time, indeed, into how many fragments, of what shapes, the 
 offensive republic should fall. 
 
 The motion towards recognition was met by a prompt and
 
 262 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 vigorous protest. The attitude and purpose of the United 
 States, expressed through the courageous and skillful diplomacy 
 of Mr. Seward, induced the most precious hesitation abroad as 
 to what precise step in favor of the South had better next be 
 taken. 
 
 One of Mr. Lincoln's first and most difficult duties, after 
 declaring a blockade of Southern ports, had been to deprive 
 foreign nations of all pretext for denying its practical efficiency. 
 A mere "paper blockade" would have invited certain ruin, 
 and so one was enforced which was quickly found to stand the 
 most expensive tests. The work of shutting up the blockaded 
 ports was performed by a navy of hastily gathered and some- 
 what miscellaneous material, but one that proved amply effi- 
 cient. 
 
 Finding that the Union cruisers were vigilant and numer- 
 ous, and that the blockade could neither be avoided nor denied, 
 the powers most directly interested were compelled to meet 
 the question whether they should forcibly break through or 
 surrender all hope of getting regular supplies of Southern cot- 
 ton till the end of the war. 
 
 They at first very nearly reached the conclusion to break the 
 blockade by force, deliberately calculating that the United 
 States, already struggling under terrible difficulties, would at 
 once be cowed by the prospect of a war with England and 
 France and the open addition of their powers to those of the 
 Confederacy. They were not at all acquainted with Mr. Lin- 
 coln, and but slightly so with the great people who sustained 
 him. Both had been sadly misrepresented to them by inter- 
 ested parties. 
 
 Nothing could well be plainer to the mind of the President 
 than that the United States had little to lose and everything to 
 gain by braving the worst at once. Cowardice was the road to 
 sure and swift destruction. The only hope was in utterly un- 
 flinching courage. Our commerce was already fast disappear- 
 ing from the seas, and there was every reason to believe that
 
 THE BLOCKADE. 263 
 
 in any event it would shortly vanish altogether. It did so 
 vanish, strictly in accordance with this expectation. In more 
 than twenty years following the issue of Mr. Davis's privateer- 
 ing proclamation it has not recovered the ground it that day 
 began to lose. So perceiving and so expecting, Mr. Lincoln 
 declared in good set terms that if France and England should 
 so determine on their own behalf, their commerce also should 
 follow into disaster that which we were inevitably losing. 
 They were to estimate for themselves the relative values of 
 their general commerce, on the one hand, and the prospective 
 cotton-crops and friendship of the Confederacy, on the other. 
 
 For several months the two powers looked the problem in 
 the face without coming to any definite conclusion. The form 
 in which it was laid before them from time to time can best 
 be understood by quotations from the written instructions 
 given by Mr. Seward to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on the 
 latter's departure to his duties as Minister to England. 
 
 " If, as the President does not at all apprehend, you shall 
 find Her Majesty's government tolerating the application of 
 the so-called seceding States or wavering about it, you will not 
 leave them to suppose for a moment that they can grant that 
 application and remain the friends of the United States. You 
 may even assure them promptly, in that case, that if they de- 
 termine to recognize, they may at the- same time prepare to 
 enter into an alliance with the enemies of this republic." 
 
 There was more to the same effect ; and a similar message 
 was carried to France. It was by no means kindly received 
 by either power, but its expression of unflinching determina- 
 tion prevented the threatened disaster. 
 
 Through the following three months the two governments 
 beyond seas continued to wrestle with the difficulty before 
 them. 
 
 There, along the whole Confederate seaboard, was still the 
 effective blockade, and behind it lay stores of cotton with end- 
 less crops yet to come, and with a young nation ready to raise
 
 264 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 them and sell them and at the same time forever to divide 
 and cripple the growing and dangerous power of the United 
 States. Here, all the while before their eyes, was the stern 
 alternative presented by Mr. Seward. 
 
 They decided that they would not exactly "recognize" and 
 so at once bring on hostilities. The government of Great 
 Britain first discovered a sort of solution. It sought to dodge, 
 beg, and circumvent the entire difficulty by solemnly declaring 
 itself "neutral" between two morally equal and belligerent 
 parties, into which it assumed the American Republic to be 
 divided. 
 
 There was something painfully ludicrous about such a posi- 
 tion, but for the tremendous consequences immediately threat- 
 ened by it and the miseries and wastes which were actually re- 
 sultant. The manner in which it was received at Washington 
 reads now singularly like a bit of dry, grim humor, officially 
 perpetrated by Mr. Seward at Mr. Lincoln's suggestion. 
 
 On the 15th of June the representatives of England and 
 France at "Washington asked Mr. Seward for the privilege of 
 reading to him officially certain fresh instructions sent to them 
 by their respective governments. Mr. Seward politely de- 
 clined to listen until he should first " unofficially" have read 
 the proffered papers by himself that he might know what they 
 were. He was permitted to examine the suspicious instruc- 
 tions, therefore, privately. Having done so, and having con- 
 sulted Mr. Lincoln, he refused to know or to be " officially" 
 informed what there was in them. He was two men for that 
 occasion, and Mr. Seward was too wise to let the Secretary of 
 State take official notice of documents which formally set forth 
 the entire doctrine of " neutrality." Fresh instructions, how- 
 ever, were at once forwarded to Mr. Adams and our other rep- 
 resentatives abroad. 
 
 As a result of this mingling of prudence and firmness, Rebel 
 sympathy in Europe was left with no other way of expressing 
 itself but to arm and send out the Alabama, and like piratical
 
 THE BLOCKADE. 265 
 
 craft, and to build swift steamers in which to " run the block- 
 ade" of the Southern Atlantic seaports. The general disposi- 
 tion to do these things received a tremendous impulse from the 
 battle of Bull Eun. 
 
 The true character of this engagement was wildly travestied 
 for foreign consumption by an English " war-correspondent" 
 by the name of Russell, who saw none of the hard fighting 
 and a good deal of the disorganized militia whose mob of fugi- 
 tives interfered with his own panic-stricken race from the sup- 
 posed approach of danger. It is a curious fact that to this 
 day the accounts written by such men on the spur of the 
 moment, in great excitement, without any possible means of 
 obtaining correct information, are accepted widely as "his- 
 tory," while the contrary statements of commanding generals 
 and other competent authorities, on T>oih sides, are unread or 
 disbelieved. 
 
 Conferences between Mr. Seward and Mr. Lincoln were 
 almost of daily occurrence, and the iron hand discernible in 
 the conduct of our foreign affairs was not solely that of the 
 shrewd and able head of the State Department. These con- 
 ferences were generally held at the White House, to and from 
 which Mr. Seward went and came with the easy familiarity of 
 a household intimate rather than with any observance of use- 
 less etiquette. It was not at all uncommon, however, for Mr. 
 Lincoln to walk over to the State Department, in the daytime, 
 or to Mr. Seward's house, in the evening, with or without an 
 attending private secretary to carry papers. On the whole, 
 he generally preferred to go alone, as he would have done 
 formerly in the transaction of private business at Springfield. 
 It was the business itself, and that only, with which he bur- 
 dened his mind. It is to be doubted if either he or Mr. Sew- 
 ard ever wasted a thought upon their purely personal methods 
 of doing their work. 
 
 Then and afterwards a similar freedom marked the inter- 
 course of the President with the other members of his Cabinet,
 
 266 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 and yet a close observer would not have failed to perceive such 
 differences, finely but unconsciously graded and marked, as 
 each man's personal character and uses indicated or de- 
 manded.
 
 WORE WITH RAW MATERIALS. 267 
 
 CHAPTEK XXXIY. 
 
 
 
 WORK WITH EAW MATERIALS. 
 
 The New Army Hunting for Brigadiers Finances Preparations of the 
 South Old Guns and New Presidential Target-Practice Selection 
 of General McClellan. 
 
 WHEN Congress adjourned on the 6th of August, 1861, 
 there was a strong feeling in the minds of its membership, and 
 throughout the country among all men, that to " the Govern- 
 ment," meaning by that word, very distinctly, Abraham Lin- 
 coln, the President, had been given all that it or he could ask 
 for, and that the war ought, in all reason, to be made a short 
 one. 
 
 A great deal had been given, truly. Every day that passed 
 saw some fresh regiment of enthusiastic volunteers marching, 
 with more or less of regularity in their lines, through the 
 streets of "Washington, or into one of the several designated 
 camps of the West and Center. Five hundred thousand men 
 had been voted, and five hundred millions of money. That 
 was a great deal. Men enough to overrun the whole Confed- 
 eracy, and money enough to pay their expenses. Great things 
 were expected of the President, but no other man living knew 
 so well as he did the marvelous differences between the good 
 " voting" done by the national legislature and the long results 
 of it which had been left for him to realize. 
 
 Up to the date of the passage of the Act by which Mr. Lin- 
 coln was authorized to accept the services of volunteers, about 
 three hundred thousand men had offered themselves and had 
 been, for the greater part, promptly accepted. They had also 
 been put into training, as efficiently as might be, in such a
 
 268 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 famine of military teachers, for the purpose of turning them 
 into soldiers. Quite a large force was already in actual service, 
 but the new law was nevertheless a good thing to have and 
 work under, and the business of recruiting new regiments went 
 forward with great energy. 
 
 The organization of such an army presented difficult prob- 
 lems in abundance ; but these were met and seized and solved 
 with a sagacity and patience which appears more wonderful as 
 the years go by. The very organic structure of the country, 
 politically, created peculiar features of the situation, and these 
 were not altogether detrimental. The appointments to offices 
 of every grade in the regular army, in all its branches, were in 
 the sole control of the President. It was not so with the vol- 
 unteers, for these, in a curiously complex way, were still re- 
 garded as "State troops," although in the national service. 
 Their regiments were named and numbered as of the several 
 States wherein they were recruited, and all their regimental 
 officers were chosen and commissioned under the laws of the 
 same States. Mr. Lincoln could not appoint so much as a 
 second-lieutenant in a regiment of volunteer infantry. There 
 is one instance recorded of a cavalry regiment from New York 
 reduced to one half its original strength and having lost all 
 its commissioned officers in one way and another, until it was 
 in command of the orderly sergeant of one of its companies. 
 It was necessary to apply to the Governor of New York for a 
 commission for that sergeant as a second-lieutenant, and he 
 passed the succeeding grades to that of major in a few weeks 
 from the date of his first promotion. With the grade of " col- 
 onel " the State appointing power terminated and that of the 
 Commander-in-Chief began. With it also began the all but in- 
 surmountable difficulties in the way of making even reasonably 
 good selections of " general officers." Much could be done by 
 the employment of graduates of the West Point military school, 
 reappearing now from their long retirements in civil occupa- 
 tions. The regular army itself furnished much good material,
 
 WORK WITH RAW MATERIALS. 269 
 
 of which such liberal use was made as to interfere seriously with 
 the efficiency of that important arm of the service. The re- 
 cords of the Mexican "War were searched to find the names 
 of men who had shown themselves capable of good service. 
 The result may be somewhat illustrated by the career of a 
 well-known officer, a graduate of West Point and of the 
 Mexican "War, who marched down Broadway as a volunteer 
 private in a New York regiment, and in a marvelously short 
 time, with small help of his own, save merit, found himself a 
 major-general, in command of a division in the West. 
 
 It was a matter of course that the pressure for " general " 
 appointments should be tremendous. Politicians of all parties 
 were anxious for the glory of stars upon their shoulders, with 
 little reference to their personal qualifications for the command 
 of men on a field of battle. Such men actually gathered and 
 carried or forwarded to Mr. Lincoln written " recommenda- 
 tions" for their appointment as brigadiers, in precisely the 
 same manner and of the same kind as if they had been apply- 
 ing for clerkships in the Treasury. 
 
 Until the chaos could be reduced to something approaching 
 order, all these papers were kept by Mr. Lincoln in his own 
 office; but they were afterwards transferred to their proper 
 pigeon-holes in the War Department. 
 
 The most serious consideration in the appointment or em- 
 ployment of generals arose from the fact that there was yet 
 almost no possibility of knowing who would and who would 
 not prove able to perform well the work so given. Much was 
 necessarily left to the appointing power of events and to the 
 sure selections of actual service ; but the untried capacities of 
 all commanding officers gave Mr. Lincoln a most anxious 
 reason for hesitation in risking important military operations 
 at too early a day. There were other reasons for the delays 
 which so severely exercised the pens of the newspaper critics 
 of the Administration. 
 
 The details of the processes to be employed in converting
 
 270 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the Congressional grant of " power to raise money" into some 
 specific shape available for the payment of salaries and the 
 purchase of war materials were in the capable hands of Mr. 
 Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. The methods 
 proposed by him were such as, on the whole, secured the warm 
 approval and hearty co-operation of the President. The lead- 
 ing financiers of the great Northern cities were very prompt 
 in reaching a comprehensive view of the situation. At an 
 early meeting of the New York bankers certain timid sugges- 
 tions as to the future value of government bonds were met by 
 an energetic capitalist with the caustic warning : " If you let 
 the government go down, your other securities won't be worth 
 much to speak of. We must let the President have the last 
 cent." The Treasury and its payments became, in a short time, 
 very much an affair of skillful engraving and rapid printing. 
 A similar process was at the same time carried forward, as 
 rapidly but not so skillfully, at the South. * 
 
 The Confederate Congress had voted its President also a 
 nearly unlimited army, and he was fast assembling it. He had 
 a very good start of Mr. Lincoln, as to time at least, in all pre- 
 paration and equipment. Some advantages had also been pro- 
 vided for him by Mr. Floyd, President Buchanan's Secretary 
 of War, in transferring quantities of arms from United States 
 arsenals at the North to similar places of deposit within what 
 were now the Confederate army lines. Purchases of war ma- 
 terials at the North and in Europe had been pushed with in- 
 dustry and success until the Southern ports were closed by the 
 blockade and armed forces were stationed at all the points 
 where highways and railroads crossed the boundaries of seceded 
 territory. In every Southern State the work of organizing 
 and drilling soldiers had been pushed with feverish energy for 
 months before Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated. He knew very 
 well how great a disadvantage his raw levies would be under 
 in any collision with better disciplined troops. 
 
 The obtaining of men and officers, the turning of these into
 
 WORK WITH RAW MATERIALS. 271 
 
 soldiers and leaders, constituted one vast tribulation: but it 
 was only a part of the problem that embarrassed Mr. Lincoln. 
 The entire country did not contain enough of serviceable mus- 
 kets, all patterns counted, to put one in the hands of each man 
 already enlisted. There were not sabers or carbines or pistols 
 for the cavalry ; nor guns or caissons or ammunition or suita- 
 ble harness for the artillery ; neither were there wagons for 
 the quartermaster's service and commissariat, or horses yet col- 
 lected to haul them or to mount the cavalry. Tents were 
 scarce. Clothing was so difficult to obtain that even when the 
 following winter came the system for its full supply had not 
 yet been perfected. The entire machinery and multiform ap- 
 pliances of a brand-new military establishment in camp and 
 field had to be developed from raw materials, and to this task 
 Mr. Lincoln gave his very life. 
 
 There was in the upper circles of the ordnance service of 
 the regular army an all but invincible conservatism. It took 
 the form, especially, of a strange prejudice against the adoption 
 of any new invention in the way of arms and equipments. 
 At the same time there was a sweeping epidemic of invention 
 among all the ingenious patriots of the nation. Many, indeed, 
 who were not at all ingenious, but desired to make a little 
 money, caught it also. 
 
 Between these two opposing forces Mr. Lincoln was com- 
 pelled to establish some kind of equilibrium. The manufac- 
 ture of improved arms went forward with good rapidity and 
 with a constant effort towards the attainment of uniformity. 
 Government agents in Europe made purchases of such mate- 
 rials as they could find. They found a great deal that they did 
 not purchase, indeed ; and every batch of murderous antiquities 
 rejected by an United States inspecting officer was sure to be 
 at once shipped to America on speculative account, to be 
 urged upon the "War Department. There was much " political 
 influence" brought to bear on behalf of those curious collections 
 of condemned weapons. Mr. Lincoln was more than once
 
 272 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 compelled to laugh, indignantly, over the effrontery of men 
 who brought to his own office actual specimens of so-called 
 " rifles," to be offered him by the thousand at high prices, the 
 specimen itself, in more cases than one, being an unfirable 
 tool which would have disgraced a curiosity-shop. 
 
 Other matters, even more curious, were constantly urged 
 upon him: wonderful new forms of cannon; coffee-mill 
 guns ; breastplates and cuirasses, of steel or of complex " pad- 
 ding," which would have been fine loads for men on a forced 
 march in summer ; new pistols, good and bad, and bayonets 
 of many patterns, and devilish contrivances which even the in- 
 ventor found difficulty in explaining the possible use of. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln patiently examined whatever was brought to 
 him. He took an especial interest in improved rifles. He at 
 once accepted the idea, which the old army men rejected, that 
 the breech-loading rifle was the weapon sure of universal adop- 
 tion in the near future ; and whenever one was shown him that 
 seemed to promise well, he did his best to give it a personal 
 trial. On the wide space of open ground between the "White 
 House and the Potomac, in the latter months of 1861, there 
 stood a huge pile of old lumber, nobody knew whence or why. 
 It was just the thing upon which to set up a target ; and there, 
 in the very early morning, the President of the United States 
 might have been seen, accompanied by one of his private secre- 
 taries, diligently firing away with the last new invention, and 
 forming his own opinions of its prospective usefulness. He 
 came as near as was possible to being arrested there, one 
 morning, for using fire-arms within the city limits contrary to 
 existing military regulations. He was in the act of stooping 
 on one knee for a very careful aim, when a " corporal of the 
 guard" with a squad of men came running down upon him to 
 make the seizure called for by their orders. A chorus of an- 
 gry shouts dropped suddenly into silence, however, and the 
 whole squad turned and ran away faster than they came 
 when the stooping culprit stood erect and they had a good
 
 WORK WITH RAW MATERIALS. 273 
 
 look into the smiling face of the President. His only remark 
 was: 
 
 " Well, they might have staid and seen the shooting." 
 
 This, truly, was not very good, considered as marksmanship, 
 for Mr. Lincoln had never acquired accuracy in that accom- 
 plishment, even among the Indiana backwoods. 
 
 After the gathering of armies, the appointment of a small 
 army of generals, and the creation of a war organism, one 
 more question lay heavy on the heart and brain of Mr. Lin- 
 coln. It was one he was to carry for a long time, for it re- 
 lated to the discovery of a great commander. Immediately 
 after the battle of Bull Run it was necessary to relieve Gen- 
 eral McDowell under whose nominal leadership and in spite 
 of whose ability and good conduct that well-fought battle had 
 been thrown away of the command of the forces defending 
 "Washington. He was succeeded, under the advice of Lieu- 
 tenant-General Winfield Scott, by Major-General George B.. 
 McClellan, an accomplished officer, favorably known as a mili- 
 tary scholar and writer, and also, to the country generally, by 
 reason of the successes achieved by the troops under his com- 
 mand in West Virginia, which were then attributed to his 
 generalship. That they occurred without his especial compli- 
 city and almost without his knowledge was not accurately as- 
 certained until a later day. 
 
 General McClellan, in the beginning, was a great and wel- 
 come relief to Mr. Lincoln, and his services were appreciated 
 to the uttermost. He was young, ambitious, overflowing with 
 bodily vigor and high spirits, and he was thoroughly equipped 
 with the technical knowledge and skill required for the present 
 emergency. It is entirely safe to say that a better selection 
 could not have been made at the time, since the chosen gen- 
 eral possessed a peculiar genius for organization. That his 
 genius as a military commander went but little beyond the 
 range of faculties so to be now employed was not discovered 
 until a different set of circumstances called upon him for the
 
 274 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 exercise of powers of whose very absence he was sincerely ig- 
 norant. 
 
 On the resignation and retirement of General Scott, in the 
 following November, General McClellan, as the then senior 
 major-general of the army, was advanced to the chief com- 
 mand. It was his serious misfortune that with his advance- 
 ment he accepted and retained a vague idea that the President, 
 a mere civil and elective functionary, had somehow ceased to 
 be his military superior and actual commander-in-chief . 
 
 Through all the trials and changes which followed, it is well 
 to say here, Mr. Lincoln never materially modified his original 
 estimate of General McClellan and much regretted his inability 
 to add to it. Just before the final act of removing him from 
 command, he at last remarked to a member of his personal 
 staff : 
 
 " For organizing an army, for preparing an army for the 
 :field, for fighting a defensive campaign, I will back General 
 McClellan against any general of modern times. I don't know 
 but of ancient times, either. But I begin to believe that he 
 will never get ready to go forward !". 
 
 It was said with somewhat of sadness but with more than 
 ordinary emphasis, for it implied that the forward movement 
 was of more importance, in the eyes of Mr. Lincoln, than were 
 the personal fortunes of 'any one commander. That was a 
 point overlooked by many people, both then and afterwards. 
 
 McClellan assumed command on July 27, 1861. The work 
 of equipping the army and navy went steadily forward. The 
 Southern statesmen and generals toiled at their similar task 
 on the other side of the now rigidly tightening army lines. 
 Mr. Lincoln saw more and more clearly the magnitude of the 
 struggle before him, while hourly the people began to clamor 
 more loudly for the battles and victories which were not ready 
 and did not come.
 
 NEW NATIONAL LIFE. 375 
 
 CHAPTEK XXXY. 
 
 NEW NATIONAL LIFE. 
 
 A Shattered Idol A New State Contraband of War Transitions and 
 Processes Lincoln a Dictator The Law of Revolution. 
 
 IT is not altogether easy at this day to understand how 
 deeply ingrained in the minds of the American people was 
 once the idea of the legality of human slavery. Only a small 
 percentage of even the men who cast their votes for Abraham 
 Lincoln, in 1860, were thorough-going enemies of slavery for 
 its own sake, or were at all entitled or willing to be classed as 
 " Abolitionists." If, however, those who hated the institution 
 were few at the beginning, every day of the continuance of the 
 war added to their numbers. Every drop of good blood wasted 
 by the slaveholders' rebellion intensified the horror with which 
 human bondage fast grew to be regarded. Nevertheless, the 
 great majority of the people yet required a prolonged and 
 severe course of instruction and of mental and moral awaken- 
 ing to prepare them for the final breaking of the old-time idol. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln knew very well that slavery must perish. He 
 had so declared in public and in private. He was fully 
 convinced, from the first, that the downfall of the Eebellion 
 must carry with it the destruction of the one cause and object 
 of the Rebellion, but his own hands were for the moment tied. 
 He was fettered by the opinions and prejudices of the very 
 people upon whom he was calling and depending for men and 
 money. He was fettered by the prevailing sentiment of the 
 army itself and by that of many of its best commanders. He 
 was fettered by the unforfeited legal rights of slaveholders in
 
 276 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the District of Columbia, Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, 
 Missouri, and that part of Virginia known as "West Virginia, 
 which had loyally repudiated the " ordinance of secession" on 
 the 23d of May. 
 
 In this latter area, indeed, an important political action had 
 followed. The Union men in about forty counties, between 
 the Allegheny Mountains and the Ohio River, strengthened by 
 the presence of Northern troops and by their first successes in 
 arms, held a convention of delegates at Wheeling, as early as 
 June 11, 1861. They provided speedily for a new State gov- 
 ernment, and the Legislature gathered under the direction of 
 the convention met at Wheeling, on the first day of July, to 
 declare its adhesion to the Union and to elect two Senators of 
 the United States. These latter were sworn in as members of 
 the Senate on the 13th of July, but it was not until two years 
 later that the new State of West Virginia was admitted into 
 the Union as a separate commonwealth. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was dealing with a subject of which he had 
 made a life-long study. He was hourly studying it now, and 
 clearly perceived the delicate and dangerous nature of the situ- 
 ation. The deeply rooted prejudices of millions were not to 
 be trifled with. Time must be given for changes to take 
 place, and these would be made at great cost of blood and 
 treasure and untold suffering ; but the price so to be paid for 
 them was unavoidable. 
 
 Nevertheless, at the very threshold of the war, Mr. Lincoln 
 was compelled to meet and deal with the African- American 
 slave, in actual, personal presence. Eager, hopeful, jubilant, 
 the colored men and women, by day and by night, came 
 marching into every camp on the long border. They brought 
 their children with them when they could, and their continual 
 arrival seemed to shout in the ears of the troubled ruler, whom 
 they already regarded as a divinely appointed deliverer : 
 
 " Here we are ! What are you going to do with us ?" 
 
 The whole country heard it, more or less distinctly, and
 
 NEW NATIONAL LIFE. 277 
 
 floods of conflicting counsels as to the matter and manner of 
 the answer poured in upon the President. 
 
 There were men among his newly appointed generals who 
 were ready and willing to answer it for him as to the areas 
 under their direction, oblivious of the need of uniformity in 
 the policy to be pursued and of some other important con- 
 siderations. 
 
 Decidedly the best solution of the difficulty was offered by 
 General B. F. Butler, himself a former pro-slavery Democrat. 
 Accepting in its fullness the idea that slaves were not human 
 beings but mere personal property, they were also " property 
 used for military purposes," of many kinds, and so, when cap- 
 tured or found, were " contraband of war," as much as a loaded 
 musket or a quartermaster's wagon. They could not be sent 
 back to strengthen the military hands of the enemy, and few 
 " Contrabands" were returned to their owners after the slightly 
 grotesque idea became well lodged in the minds of the army 
 and its officers. The practice in this respect varied much for 
 a while, but a fair degree of uniformity came at last in the 
 sure course of human events. All Mr. Lincoln could do was 
 to prevent pernicious haste, and this he managed to accom- 
 plish. His precise action in the most important case arising, 
 that of Fremont in Missouri, was complicated with other con- 
 siderations, and must be treated in another place. There is, 
 however, something not a little absurd in the idea entertained 
 and advocated by many : that for a number of months, at and 
 about this time, Mr. Lincoln ceased to be the earnest foe of 
 slavery he so long had been, and that he was afterwards happily 
 reconverted in time to write and issue the proclamation of 
 emancipation, in 1863. He underwent no such falling away, 
 and he required no such subsequent change of heart and pur- 
 pose. In order to perceive the entire consistency of his course 
 it is but necessary to form an approximately correct idea of the 
 condition of our national affairs and of his relations to them in 
 the remaining months of the year 1861 and during 1862.
 
 278 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 The country was semi-chaotic in all its conditions, foreign 
 relations and domestic affairs alike, political, moral, financial, 
 and industrial. A revolution had arrived and was progressing 
 which affected every citizen in all his relations in life, and the 
 very excitement men were under prevented all but a very few 
 from perceiving, studying, or comprehending the changes they 
 were passing through. There is a sense in which Mr. Lincoln 
 was an embodiment and expression of these changes. He also 
 was developing, learning, advancing, and it is enough for his 
 greatness that he was at all points and continually so much 
 more advanced than other men, and so much better informed, 
 that he was able to lead them wisely and not into ruin. 
 
 The national government at Washington, such as it was 
 prior to the outbreak of the Rebellion, had been the object of 
 varied degrees of patriotic devotion, but the average American 
 voter had but a faint and fragmentary understanding of his 
 duties relating to it or of its rights and powers relating to- 
 him. 
 
 These latter might be exceeded with impunity by Mr. Lin- 
 coln, so far as the masses of the people were concerned, so long 
 as his action accorded at all with their conception of what it 
 was best for him to do. It is therefore not very far from the 
 truth to say that the President assumed and freely used, from 
 time to time, all powers required by any emergency as being 
 conferred upon him by the emergency. If these powers were 
 also conferred upon him by the Constitution and the laws, as 
 previously interpreted, so much the better for those instru- 
 ments and for their previous interpretation. If not, it would 
 answer equally well if Congress afterwards should pass laws 
 covering the matters involved, and if the Constitution should 
 be duly amended at the defective spot so discovered. Such is 
 the fundamental law of all human societies in all revolutionary 
 states and conditions. For Mr. Lincoln to have failed to 
 utilize this would have been idiotically weak and would have 
 involved sure destruction of the interests in his keeping.
 
 NEW NATIONAL LIFE. 279 
 
 From the first, nevertheless, all efforts were made to avoid 
 unnecessary interferences with vested rights or the well-being 
 of individuals. Mr. Lincoln's own personal characteristics 
 came to the front in this connection. A large part of his daily 
 annoyances came to him on account of his kindly inability to 
 turn a deaf ear to a story of suffering or injustice. Any power 
 he at any time assumed or exercised was taken not to himself 
 at all. It was but a means applied to a manifest use, and, so 
 far as he could determine, the best and most righteous means 
 for the best and most righteous use. He toiled patiently and 
 unselfishly. In such a multiplicity of duties his mind knew no 
 rest, turning hourly from one branch of his responsibilities to 
 another. He grappled resolutely with every problem put to 
 him by his needs for action, foreign or domestic. It seems 
 clear to those who knew him best that he himself perceived, 
 as did many of his nearer observers, the swift and steady 
 growth of his own capacities as a ruler of men. His inner life 
 expanded under the intense heat of his trials. The strength of 
 his will, the iron resolution which lay behind his easy-man- 
 nered kindliness, had been manifested day by day from his 
 very childhood ; but the world contains a multitude of strong- 
 willed, resolute, able, successful men not one of whom con- 
 tains the rare material whereof a Revolution may construct for 
 its needs a competent Ruler. 
 
 The times were testing him in many ways. Weaker men, 
 often more brilliant in many expressions of capacity, began to 
 come frequently into what resembled collisions with him. It 
 was all but amusing, now and then, to witness their surprise at 
 their own helplessness in such trials of their strength as had 
 not called upon him for conscious exertion, just as in the early 
 days he had quietly held out at arm's length the burly wrestler 
 from Clary's Grove. 
 
 He was now about to enter upon the most prolonged and 
 perplexing of these collisions, and the only one which at any 
 time seemed to present elements of public peril. His course
 
 280 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 in the management of all minor difficulties may be rationally 
 gathered or imagined after obtaining a fair understanding of 
 the first struggle between "military authority" and "civil 
 
 supremacy."
 
 PRESIDENT AND GENERAL. 281 
 
 CHAPTEK XXXVI. 
 
 PRESIDENT AND GENERAL. 
 
 The Army of the Potomac Newspaper Acrobats The President's Mail 
 Work of the Private Secretaries Army Organization An Advance 
 which was Not Made Offensive and Defensive War. 
 
 THE routine of Mr. Lincoln's office-work, during this first 
 summer and autumn, as afterwards, was varied by occasional 
 visits to the camps and forts, where he was always welcomed 
 with enthusiasm. The personal attachment for him among the 
 rank and file of the army grew faster and became stronger than 
 his critics and enemies were at all willing to believe. 
 
 His evenings at home were also varied now not unf requently 
 by visits at the house of the general in command of the Army 
 of the Potomace, when McClellan happened to be in the city. 
 The President's course and personal relations with him for a 
 time were, as nearly as might be, those of a confiding and 
 familiar friend. The entire mass of the written correspond- 
 ence between them bears witness to such a state of things. In 
 the eyes of Mr. Lincoln's nearest advisers he seemed even too 
 indifferent to all rules of military etiquette, and also to a very 
 apparent assumption and arrogance in act and manner on the 
 part of his brilliant subordinate. These were as yet of minor 
 consequence, and the main thing, after all, was that the work in 
 hand should be done. 
 
 There were great things going on in those days in the "West 
 and elsewhere; and of these we shall take due note farther 
 on. But at the present juncture we have to do with matters 
 which then chiefly engaged Mr. Lincoln's attention, and that
 
 282 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 of the country at large throughout the Atlantic States. To 
 the minds of people at Washington the Army of the Potomac 
 was the Army of the United States. It was very important, 
 certainly ; and its splendid commander with his glittering staff 
 dashing through the streets like a small earthquake-in-new- 
 unif orm were a wonder which must, men thought, dazzle the 
 eyes of all the millions who were not there to see. The coun- 
 try at large was but moderately dazzled, and the President not 
 at all. He knew that the area of the war extended beyond 
 the picket-lines of that one army, for he was watching the 
 swift fluctuations of success and disaster to the farthest 
 frontier. He was also studying the rapid changes of thought 
 and purpose among the people, and knew what a continual 
 battle there was in the souls of men and women all over the 
 North. He grew more and more absorbed in his work and 
 more difficult of approach upon any but needful business. 
 
 Nevertheless it was during these months that he almost en- 
 tirely gave up any attempt at reading the newspapers. He at 
 one time instructed one of his private secretaries to make a 
 daily digest of the attitude of the leading journals as editori- 
 ally expressed. 
 
 It was actually so done for about a week. The President 
 glanced at the digest once or twice, during that time, but he 
 discovered how little he really cared for it all, and told the young 
 man to return to more useful work. There were too many 
 sudden " revolutions," perhaps, in the attitudes assumed by the 
 journalists, while there was really but one with which he or 
 the people had anything to do. 
 
 The mail of the Executive Mansion, always large, had now 
 grown to a volume which was, probably, not afterwards in- 
 creased. Its very size shut out all probability of its examina- 
 tion by Mr. Lincoln himself. Counting packages of docu- 
 ments as one " letter," the number of letters of all kinds varied 
 from two hundred to two hundred and fifty each day. The 
 range of subjects treated by the writers was about as wide as
 
 PRESIDENT AND GENERAL. 283 
 
 the human imagination. It is possible that three per cent of 
 these communications, including subsequent references, were 
 at some time seen by the President. About half were sure to 
 relate to business belonging to bureaus of the several executive 
 departments and were at once forwarded to the proper places. 
 The other half might contain a few which required filing in 
 the President's own office for reference. The secretary's waste- 
 basket received the mass remaining, of advice, abuse, fault-find- 
 ing, insanity, egotism, and threats of personal violence. A 
 careful estimate shows that of all the letters sent by mail to 
 Mr. Lincoln, at this time, he saw and read, at the time of their 
 arrival, about one in a hundred : less rather than more. The 
 fact illustrates forcibly the absorption of his mind and the 
 pressure upon his time and energies, for it had been his life- 
 long habit to examine with care every paper that came to him 
 from any source, however humble. Even when some epistle 
 of uncommon importance prompted the secretary in charge 
 to urge its contents upon him, the response was sure to be, 
 "Well, what is it?" and a digest in brief was expected unless 
 the letter itself were of the briefest. 
 
 With the more persistently intrusive official and legislative 
 multitude it was not possible to deal in a similar way. It 
 was out of the question to put the most selfish of men into 
 a waste-basket, nor was it easy to transfer such a person to his 
 proper bureau. Nevertheless, the secretaries in charge of the 
 matter did succeed in performing, for the throngs of callers, a 
 process analogous in some of its results to that employed upon 
 the mails. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's time and strength were saved for him to the 
 extent of their very good ability, and they protected him from 
 untold annoyances. It was a good while before the President's 
 patience gave way and he came, at last, to their assistance. 
 Embodied pertinacities would succeed in getting in their " cards" 
 and securing interviews to which they were not entitled. 
 
 Very much this state of things continued, to the end. Time
 
 284 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 did but perfect the simple and unostentatious machinery with 
 which the President performed his duties. He did but put 
 himself continually into more complete connection with and 
 relations to the vast and complicated organism of national ad- 
 ministration which was fast assuming shape and efficiency. 
 
 In every corner of the country, all imaginable interests were 
 adjusting their relations to the government, or discovering that 
 they had any, mainly through the varied means by which they 
 were induced to take upon them some share of the public 
 burdens or were able to derive profit from the public expen- 
 ditures. 
 
 Of all the formative processes, in all their ramifications, no 
 other man knew or could know so much as did Mr. Lincoln. 
 ~No better example can be given, perhaps, than the creation of 
 the first Army of the Potomac. The credit of this has been 
 generally accorded to McClellan, and the President is himself 
 a witness that his first commander did zealously and well the 
 part that by nature and assignment belonged to him. There is 
 a sense in which it was the part of a truly great Orderly Ser- 
 geant, and ignorance only can underestimate or despise a work 
 so vitally important. 
 
 The men who were to form that army had been gathered by 
 Mr. Lincoln, as has been seen, and they were now in the 
 service of the United States under due form of law. The 
 selections of regimental officers had been made under State 
 authorities. 
 
 The appointment of brigade, division, and corps commanders 
 was in the hands of the President. So of all appointments in 
 the Ordnance, Commissary, and Quartermaster services ; and 
 the connection of these with the War Office continued to be 
 more or less direct, even after they were ordered to duty. 
 Their efficiency depended largely upon that of their specific 
 official superiors, and these were practically on the staff of the 
 President. The latter had, therefore, not only an intimate 
 knowledge of the conditions of the army, but an especial respon-
 
 PRESIDENT AND GENERAL. 285 
 
 sibility concerning its operations. It was this which gave him 
 the right to complain when after all had been done except 
 the duty of the field-commander, performance failed to follow 
 preparations and so vast and costly a machine remained com- 
 paratively unemployed. 
 
 This, as hinted above, grew to be Mr. Lincoln's chief care 
 during that momentous winter of 1861-2. As is well known, 
 an " advance" of the Army of the Potomac had been planned, 
 and, by an order issued by the President on the 27th of January, 
 it was to take place on the 22d of February. Every effort had 
 been made that there should by that time be at least a show pre- 
 sented to the nation of something to come of all the sacrifices it 
 was making. The President knew but too well the profoundly 
 disturbed and irritated state of public feeling. He knew how 
 much of justice was in the eager popular demand for " action," 
 and had been uttering it continually in every form of speech and 
 writing. He had studied and planned and provided, toiling by 
 day and night that nothing required should be lacking. He 
 was intensely, absorbingly interested, and had been positively 
 assured that the ordered advance would be duly made. He 
 was not in any manner undeceived until a day or two before 
 the date assigned. He was alone in his room when an officer 
 of General McClellan's staff was announced by the door-keeper 
 and was admitted. The President turned in his chair to hear, 
 and was informed, in respectful set terms, that the advance 
 movement could not be made. 
 " Why ?" he curtly demanded. 
 " The pontoon trains are not ready " 
 " Why in hell and damnation ain't they ready ?" 
 The officer could think of no satisfactory reply, but turned 
 very hastily and left the room. Mr. Lincoln also turned to the 
 table and resumed the work before him, but wrote at about 
 double his ordinary speed. 
 
 Little apology is called for by the precise manner of his ex- 
 pression ; entirely at variance from his habit of speech, it was
 
 286 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 extorted from him by the awful pressure of months concen- 
 trated in the intense irritation of an instant. 
 
 While all the records of that period and particularly his own 
 correspondence, official and private, are full of strong commen- 
 taries upon the fidelity with which he labored for the perfec- 
 tion of the Army of the Potomac, he was equally hard at 
 work for and with every other army. He by no means neg- 
 lected the Navy, and he shared with Mr. Seward the pressure 
 of foreign affairs. No commander, of course, could give due 
 weight to all this, or more than a thought or so to the questions 
 of finance and national politics, without a due care of which by 
 the President the armed forces could not be kept in the field. 
 
 There were times when General McClellan seemed even less 
 able than other military men to grasp an idea which conflicted 
 with the fulfilment of his own demands, and his capacity for 
 waiting a little longer was marvelous. 
 
 As early as October 27, 1861, he officially reported, to the 
 Secretary of War, that he had under his command, ready for 
 duty, 147,695 men, of all arms, with additional forces, not yet 
 ready for duty but in course of preparation and soon to become 
 so, that swelled his muster-roll to 168,318. More men were 
 constantly arriving, and the question in the minds of the 
 people and their President was identical : " Why is not some- 
 thing decisive done with such an army ?" 
 
 No sufficient answer was given, then or afterwards ; or ever 
 can be. 
 
 For an advance, leaving the capital well protected, General 
 McClellan officially reported that, at that date, he had at his 
 disposal 76,285 men and 228 pieces of artillery. 
 
 The President felt that his relations to the forces in the 
 field were not altogether conferred upon him by the article in 
 the Constitution which declared him the Commander-in-Chief . 
 Peculiarly was it true of the Army of the Potomac that he had 
 created it. Governors of States, generals, heads of bureaus, 
 all subordinate agencies, had done their duty. The people had
 
 PRESIDENT AND GENERAL. 287 
 
 responded nobly to every call. Still it was true that no such 
 army, or any army at all, would then have been upon the Po- 
 tomac if the President had awaited the action of States and 
 governors and legislators. The organization of both army and 
 navy had, in his mind, preceded the fall of Sumter, and the 
 Army of the Potomac found its nucleus in the regular and 
 volunteer recruits he began to gather in the last weeks of 
 April, 1861. But for this nucleus the subsequent " army" 
 would have formed, if at all, elsewhere than on the line of the 
 Potomac. 
 
 The reports of General McClellan show that 50,000 men 
 were prepared for field-duty during each consecutive thirty 
 days, from July 27 to October 27. The South had been at 
 work longer and had accomplished less, because its equally effi- 
 cient subordinates had a less competent head to direct and sus- 
 tain them. That this was true was made less important from 
 the technically defensive nature of the war to be carried on by 
 them and the character of the areas to be defended. For 
 Southern purposes, except as to the numbers arrayed for any 
 one encounter, every hundred men they could raise and equip 
 at home was an offset to three hundred of the far distant 
 Northern recruits ; for, the value of individual soldiers being 
 equal, the longer the march of a Union army to a battle-field, 
 the more was its likelihood of being outnumbered when it 
 arrived. 
 
 The Confederates, therefore, had men enough. The " Cop- 
 perheads" of the North were useful allies to them at all times. 
 Europe aided them in many ways. Even the stormy zeal of 
 impatient patriots in the free States sometimes fought for them. 
 They found help of some kind at every turn. They found an 
 unintentional but extraordinary co-operation in the prolonged 
 idleness of the Army of the Potomac. It is not too much to 
 say that, in the early fall of 1861, Mr. Lincoln seemed to have 
 a splendid army at his disposal, but was compelled to waste the 
 months until spring in obtaining the adoption of digested
 
 288 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 plans for its employment. The result was that, at the last, the 
 army was in no better condition for actual service ; the plans 
 finally acted upon were fragmentary and incomplete ; time and 
 money and much precious human life had been thrown away ; 
 and the campaign which followed did but crown the mournful 
 record with the fruits of hesitation, in disaster and discourage- 
 ment.
 
 DICTATOR AND CONGRESS. 289 
 
 CHAPTEE XXXVII. 
 
 DICTATOR AND CONGRESS. 
 
 The Legislative Branch The Committee on the Conduct of the War 
 Useful Interference Councils and Umpires Political Complications 
 Beginning Civilian and Soldier. 
 
 THE position of President Lincoln in the year 1862 cannot 
 be studied advantageously without a glance at his relations to* 
 the National Legislature which assembled at Washington in. 
 the winter. 
 
 Congress came together with the majority of its membership 
 in a red heat of patriotism. There was a minority, indeed, and 
 the material for an " opposition," but only a very few ultraists 
 cared to be known as anti-war men. Omitting the extreme 
 Copperheads, every member was under a sort of triple pres- 
 sure : of his own ideas as to the prosecution of the war ; of a 
 knowledge of the feverish eagerness of his constituents for the 
 suppression of the Rebellion ; and of the even greater eager- 
 ness of a persistent fraction of that same constituency to obtain 
 civil or military offices under the general government. 
 
 There were, indeed, a great many offices to be given, and 
 these were all nominally at the disposal of Mr. Lincoln. He 
 had a vast amount of trouble in avoiding the onerous respon- 
 sibility of giving that wide business his personal attention. 
 He succeeded fairly well, but could not escape altogether. He 
 drily remarked of it all that there were twenty applicants for 
 each office, and every time he filled one he made twenty ene- 
 mies. The nineteen were enemies because they were dis- 
 appointed, and the man appointed hated him because he
 
 290 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 thought he ought to have a better place or because he was in- 
 debted for it to some other man. 
 
 As a body, Congress was profoundly ignorant of the Dicta- 
 torship, although a few voices made bold to denounce it. The 
 idea prevailed that the government had traveled thus far by 
 virtue of the work done during the hasty summer session of 
 1861. The President had obeyed and followed very well, but 
 must now be again taken in hand a little. It was not long be- 
 fore the " Legislative Branch" of the government began to in- 
 terfere with the " Executive Branch" in military matters. It 
 was a little more patriotic than constitutional, but Mr. Lincoln 
 had no manner of objection. "When, in December, 1861, Con- 
 gress appointed a strong and capable " Committee on the Con- 
 duct of the War," its members were at once taken into hearty 
 and intimate consultation. What would surely have been a 
 peril or a hindrance to a weak or a selfish ruler was trans- 
 formed at once into an additional and powerful guaranty of 
 Congressional co-operation. It was not so much, thencefor- 
 ward, that Congress had assumed a part of the Executive pro- 
 vince, but that the Executive had deftly provided himself 
 with personal and official representatives upon the floor of 
 JSenate and House. 
 
 This Committee, constantly advised with, cordially invited 
 to investigate, to consider, to come and to go, and to know 
 everything before it happened, became a priceless safety-valve 
 for the growing discontent over inexplicable delays. Without 
 it, there can now be little question that Mr. Lincoln would 
 have been more seriously misunderstood and even antagonized 
 by the body of men nominally represented by the committee. 
 
 The President of the United States is Constitutionally the 
 Commander-in- Chief, and Abraham Lincoln was also actually 
 Dictator ; but he was entirely at ease as to all his rights and 
 dignities when a joint committee of Senators and Representa- 
 tives freely summoned before them his military officers, by the 
 dozen, and called for their views of things in general and their
 
 DICTATOR AND CONGRESS. 291 
 
 professional opinions of battles and campaigns. He knew be- 
 forehand that the sure result would be the strong and unani- 
 mous sympathy of that " jury" of clear-headed men, with him 
 personally, and their approval of the general outlines of his 
 policy, however much they might disagree among themselves 
 or with him as to details of specific operations. In the long 
 run it turned out as he expected. 
 
 Congress had appointed seven of its best men to find fault 
 with the President, and grumble at him, and agree with him, 
 and help him; and to help the nation stand by him more firmly 
 than ever. Changed in its membership somewhat, as time 
 went on, the Committee continued its services to the end of the 
 war. Never at any time were they of greater utility than in 
 their close and searching study of the condition of the army 
 and the causes of its inaction during the long trial of that 
 memorable winter. At the same time, their personal pressure, 
 and that of Congress exerted upon Mr. Lincoln through them, 
 was an additional burden of no insignificant weight. 
 
 It is now very easy to perceive that if the President had at 
 once assumed the full exercise of his nominal powers as Com- 
 mander-in-Chief, forcing a reluctant general and his minor 
 generals to a course of action for which they avowed them- 
 selves unprepared, the results could hardly have been other 
 than disastrous. The President fully understood this feature 
 of his responsibilities, and it was forcibly dwelt upon by his 
 civil and military advisers. It was also true that the latter held 
 erroneous ideas of the Rebel forces opposed to them, and mag- 
 nified less than fifty thousand effective men into a hundred and 
 fifteen thousand in their official estimates ; but Mr. Lincoln had 
 no trustworthy means of refuting the error. He believed it 
 to be one, but was compelled to submit to its effects as pa- 
 tiently as the circumstances permitted. He did so, but even 
 his tough patience wore slowly away, as has been related, and 
 at last became altogether exhausted. 
 
 It has been said and printed that he " disclaimed all military
 
 292 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 ability," and it is true that lie often spoke very modestly of 
 his pretensions ; but the necessity was upon him, and he contin- 
 ually and distinctly and from the beginning exercised the im- 
 portant functions of a military umpire. His decision was final 
 in the selection of plans and in their modifications as campaigns 
 progressed. This was equally true when he yielded his own 
 opinion to that of another. It was unavoidable, in the ab- 
 sence of any one military authority of well-attested value. He 
 never shirked the implied responsibility ; but the records, so 
 far as these are preserved, clearly sustain the conclusion that 
 the announced and adopted decisions and plans attributed 
 solely or mainly to him were in fact the verdicts of a sort of 
 perpetual " council of war" of which he was the conspicuous 
 chairman. This council was of varying membership and size, 
 but he made it include not only his maps and books but the 
 best educated and informed military capacity in the country. 
 To this he added the Committee on the Conduct of the War 
 and judicious selections from his Cabinet. He would gladly 
 have been relieved of a responsibility so heavy. The hour 
 and the man for his relief came at last, but neither had arrived 
 in 1862. 
 
 Now that the veils of the army lines are removed from the 
 then hidden condition of the Confederate armies between 
 Richmond and Washington, and all personal and political con- 
 siderations can be omitted from an analysis of the situation, 
 the attitude and action of Mr. Lincoln, prior to the Peninsular 
 campaign of 1862, is more than justified. 
 
 Beginning in full time, he had summoned an army and had 
 strained all the resources of the country to prepare it for the 
 field. At the earliest day of its apparent readiness he had 
 urged the prompt and vigorous use of that army in a forward 
 movement. His estimate of the opposing forces and their 
 power to resist such an attack is now proved to have been cor- 
 rect. As to specific plans of movements, military critics are 
 yet divided concerning the relative wisdom of such as were
 
 DICTATOR AND CONGRESS. 293 
 
 presented by General McClellan, representing his own council 
 of war, on the one side, and by Mr. Lincoln on the other as 
 the fruit of the joint skill and wisdom of the "council" over 
 which he presided. There is, however, no longer any respect- 
 able authority bold enough to commend the inaction against 
 which the President so earnestly strove and protested. 
 
 The campaign on the Potomac was but a part of the load 
 upon his shoulders, and he was sufficiently wise and self-con- 
 trolled not to exercise the fullness of his authority, even when 
 compelled to say, as he did to General McDowell, in December, 
 1861, " If something is not done soon, the bottom will be out 
 of the whole affair." He was well aware that a yet more cer- 
 tain ruin to the national cause would follow the failure of any 
 great military movement directly ordered by himself, and that 
 no campaign can be more sure of failure than one undertaken 
 contrary to the will of its controlling general and his most 
 trusted lieutenants. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking fact of all is that the apparent 
 repugnance to forward movements never ceased. It was mani- 
 fested, under various forms, to the very end of the Peninsular 
 campaign, and even later. It is in vain now, but it is hardly pos- 
 sible not to ask the question : " What would have been the 
 net results of the campaigns upon the Potomac in 1861 and 
 1862 if President Lincoln had been sustained by a general as 
 eager for action as himself and as correctly estimating the 
 strength of his own army and the enemy ?" 
 
 The natural reply is : " "Why, then, did not Mr. Lincoln re- 
 move McClellan at once and appoint some other commander ?" 
 It was urged upon him more than once or twice, and he 
 answered it by the homely anecdote of the man who declared 
 it " a bad time to swap horses when you are crossing a 
 freshet." 
 
 True, doubtless ; but there was more than a question of mere 
 military expediency in the way, and the President labored 
 under difficulties which are worthy of record.
 
 294 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 In some inscrutable manner, General McClellan had become, 
 and was too well aware of it, the chief and representative of 
 that part of the American people which had not given its heart 
 to Mr. Lincoln, however full it might be of genuine patriot- 
 ism. McClellan was also curiously adopted by that other part 
 of the population which had no patriotism whatever and which 
 hated alike the President and the cause he represented. 
 
 There had not yet been time, nor heat, nor suffering, to 
 hammer and weld the nation into a compact mass with refer- 
 ence to the issues of the war, and the base upon which the 
 government stood was appreciably narrow and infirm. The 
 powers in the hands of Mr. Lincoln, even as Dictator, were 
 mainly executive and directory, rather than creative. He was 
 compelled to meet and deal with all the forces of the hour, 
 whether assistant or opposing, just as they were and not as he 
 might have wished them. There was an indefinite mark at 
 which his power might break in his hands if unwisely over- 
 strained. He well understood the unreasoning enthusiasm 
 with which the greater part of the army regarded their young 
 and, as they deemed him, their " dashing" commander. They 
 had seen him dash, frequently and at full gallop, through camp 
 after camp, accompanied by a brilliant staff which contained 
 sprigs of European royalty. They had, indeed, manipulated 
 the Comte de Paris and the Due de Chartres into " Captain 
 Parry " and " Captain Chatters," but these were still a kind of 
 wandering king, and the great general, the young American 
 Napoleon, had his tent full of that kind of men and was teach- 
 ing them the art of war. He was also teaching it, they half 
 believed, to the rest of the army and to Congress and to Mr. 
 Lincoln, and some day he would give the Confederates a com- 
 plete course of instruction. 
 
 The intensity of the army jealousy of " civilian interference" 
 offers an utterly ludicrous aspect of the situation, considering 
 who and what were the civilians in question and who and 
 what were the " military." Still, it was a power and not to
 
 DICTATOR AND CONGRESS. 395 
 
 be disregarded, and had much to do with the President's long 
 endurance of General McClellan's procrastination. The exist- 
 ence of such an obstacle seems to have been unknown to the 
 country at large at the time, but it was sadly set forth after- 
 wards, in detail, in the testimony given on the trial of Fitz 
 John Porter, after the second battle of Bull Run. 
 
 The Peninsular campaign was an accomplished failure before 
 the removal of McClellan, but that was no hindrance to the 
 persistent declaration, by his partisans, that the failure had 
 been ordained and engineered by " civilians" at Washington, 
 in order that disaster might furnish a pretext for the removal. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's position was one of extreme delicacy, but at 
 last the Confederate authorities came to his deliverance. The 
 final adoption of a plan of campaign for the Union armies was 
 provided for at Eichmond. Early in March, 1862, the rebel 
 generals concluded that their forces at and about Manassas Gap 
 had bea,rded and checked an army three times their strength as 
 long as it was safe to do so. They retreated, without striking 
 a blow, or so much as giving warning, or even saying what 
 they meant to do next. 
 
 So bitter and taunting a comment upon the wisdom of Mr. 
 Lincoln's previous urgency enabled him to compel army action 
 of some kind. At a meeting of the corps commanders of the 
 Army of the Potomac, on the 13th of March, the retreat of the 
 enemy was formally recognized ; a plan of an advance upon 
 Richmond was adopted, approved by General McClellan, and 
 forwarded to the President. It is worthy of note that his 
 official approval and reply, through the Secretary of War, was 
 instantaneous. It bears the same date of March 13, 1862. 
 Whatever default of energy or promptness might be charge- 
 able to others, not an hour of precious time was wasted by the 
 Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 The joint dates of the Army plan and of its approval by 
 Mr. Lincoln once more bring out the fact of his continuous 
 and perfect state of preparation. He did not wait and study,
 
 296 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 because lie did not need to do so. He had carefully digested 
 the whole subject, and no form of its presentation could take 
 him by surprise. As he himself was apt to remark when 
 seemingly new things were laid before him, he had " studied 
 that matter," and his action upon it was a foregone conclusion. 
 It was said that a plan had been adopted, but, after all, it 
 was little more than a determination that the army should sail 
 down the Potomac, land on the Virginia side and hunt for 
 something to do. It was agreed upon with Mr. Lincoln that 
 the hunt should be pushed vigorously in the direction of Rich- 
 mond, and he went down in person to urge and press and aid 
 in every possible way the magnificent " meet " of well-armed 
 hunters.
 
 THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN. 297 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN. 
 
 Monitor and Merrimac The Story of a Great Invention Waiting before 
 Yorktown Civil Supremacy in Danger A Retreat in Good Order 
 A Perilous Dilemma The Army of Virginia Gen. Pope's Campaign 
 A New Political Party One Army Swallowed by Another. 
 
 THE movement of the Army of the Potomac had been pre- 
 ceded by a great naval event. On the 8th of March, 1862, the 
 Confederate armored ram Virginia or Merrimac steamed out 
 into Hampton Roads and destroyed several United States ships- 
 of-war. She demonstrated in a few minutes that any wooden 
 or other war ship known to exist was helpless against her. So 
 far as any eyes could see, the Potomac was open to her, Wash- 
 ington city was at her mercy, and the face of military affairs 
 was changed. A kind of Egyptian darkness came down at 
 once, and, for a few hours, men walked around as if they were 
 feeling their way in it. 
 
 On the following day occurred the world-famous fight be- 
 tween the Merrimac and the Monitor, the latter being 
 described by the Confederates, as looking like a Yankee 
 cheese-box on a raft. The timely arrival of this revolving 
 gun-tower was as little a matter of human foresight as if she 
 had fallen from the sky, and the nation recovered promptly 
 from its fit of shivering dread. The power of the destroyer 
 was at least neutralized and things could go on somewhat as 
 before. Not upon the sea, indeed ; for the naval construction 
 of all the world was revolutionized in a day and all the armed 
 vessels afloat, except the two which fought in Hampton Roads, 
 became antiquated.
 
 298 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had not foreseen the Merrimac, but he had 
 foreseen the Monitor and her construction, and therefore her 
 presence and service were as much due to him as was her plan- 
 ning to her inventor. When Mr. C. S. Bushnell, to whom the 
 Monitor had been intrusted, and to whom lasting honor is due 
 for his management of the matter, arrived in "Washington with 
 the plans and specifications of the proposed vessel, he carried 
 them straightway to the President. Mr. Lincoln comprehend- 
 ed them at once and became deeply interested. He remarked, 
 pleasantly, that he knew but little about ships, but he did un- 
 derstand a flatboat, and this invention was flat enough. He 
 promised to meet Mr. Bushnell at the Navy Department at 
 eleven o'clock the next day and do all he could in securing the 
 adoption of the plan and the construction of a " monitor" for 
 trial. That was precisely what she was built for, no one 
 prophesying what the trial would be. At the hour named he 
 left the White House and walked over to the Navy Depart- 
 ment to fulfill his promise. A number of naval officers and 
 other experts were assembled to sit in judgment, and the 
 President listened patiently and silently to their successive ex- 
 pressions of opinion. These were almost unanimously given 
 adversely to the practicability of the plan of vessel proposed. 
 Finally, Rear-Admiral Smith, chairman of the Naval Board in 
 charge of the matter, turned to the President and asked him 
 what he thought of it. 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Lincoln, " I feel about it a good deal as 
 the fat girl did when she put her foot into her stocking. She 
 thought there was something in it." 
 
 There was a laugh, but everybody present understood that 
 Mr. Lincoln was in earnest. Admiral Smith, who had been one 
 of the few who had understood and favored the invention, was 
 glad enough to be sustained by the President, and took it up 
 with energy. Mr. Bushnell and his associates obtained their 
 contract for a trial-monitor and built it, and after its work in 
 Hampton Roads Mr. Lincoln had a right to express strongly,
 
 THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN. 299 
 
 as lie did, his satisfaction over the fact that he " had given the 
 Monitor a lift" at the time when, without it, she would have 
 remained an inventor's dream. 
 
 The "co-operation of the Navy" was now more than ever a 
 factor in the plans of the Army, and it was given with hearty 
 efficiency. The troops were shipped and landed without any 
 greater number of blunders than mark the records of similar 
 feats of transportation in other wars. The enemy were in a 
 bad condition to withstand the forward push the President 
 continually urged. He was so anxious for action that, early in 
 May, with Secretaries Stanton and Chase and General Yiele of 
 the Engineers, he went down to Hampton Roads on the U. S. 
 steamer Miami, to see for himself how matters were. This 
 happened (May 11) just as Norfolk was abandoned and the 
 Merrimac blown up by the retiring Eebels. It is now well 
 known, too, that McClellan could have marched to the very 
 gates of Richmond with but moderate hindrance if he had 
 not discovered a sort of reproduction of the "Manassas lines," 
 with another imaginary host behind them. These were pro- 
 vided him by the petty defenses at Yorktown, and before these 
 he promptly sat down. Mr. Lincoln wrote and urged in vain. 
 It is not needful to deal with all the details of what may be 
 considered a purely "tactical" controversy. The result was a 
 simple and natural sort of repetition of the previous lesson. 
 The army lay before Yorktown for a month, and the Confed- 
 erate purpose in holding the place had been accomplished. 
 "When it was done, the few obstructing regiments and guns at 
 Yorktown were quietly removed, and the Rebellion had again 
 secured the results of a great victory without fighting a battle. 
 
 The remainder of the Peninsular campaign belongs to the 
 military history of the war and not to the Life of Lincoln. 
 At and before its outset and until it was completed and aban- 
 doned, the President was confronted, for the first and last 
 time, with the peril, common to all human revolutions, that
 
 300 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the personal power and position of a favorite military officer 
 might enable him to predominate over, or at least be practically 
 independent of, the civil authority. 
 
 That General McClellan was, perhaps unintentionally, per- 
 haps almost unconsciously, the exponent of that peril, was but 
 imperfectly discerned by the President, for a time. It was 
 more clearly perceived by others, following the course of events 
 on the spot, and narrowly watching the demeanor of General 
 McClellan in personal interviews with the President or with 
 his own subordinates. It was yet more clear to those who 
 listened to much of the ill-advised talk among some of the 
 latter. It can even more plainly be discerned, at this day, by 
 any student who will take the trouble to examine the official 
 reports and correspondence. ~No man can now pretend to de- 
 clare what might have been the consequences to the country if 
 Mr. Lincoln had been less firm or less wisely forbearing and 
 patient. A weak or hasty man in the President's chair would 
 surely have fallen from it, if not in name, at least to all intents 
 and purposes, and his power would have passed into the hands 
 of the Army Commander. 
 
 As for the latter, all he really required was time to offer the 
 able leaders opposed to him the opportunities of which they 
 continually availed themselves. 
 
 They and not Mr. Lincoln demonstrated to the country the 
 true rank of McClellan in the list of celebrated generals. It 
 is not at all necessary to question his zeal, or patriotism, or un- 
 common capacity. To briefly paraphrase Mr. Lincoln's own 
 words concerning him : " For the organization of an army, or 
 for handling that army in a defensive campaign, second to no 
 other general. For a vigorous advance movement, never 
 ready." And add : " When forced to make such a movement, 
 incapable of so making it as to succeed." 
 
 The last battle on the Virginia peninsula was fought, and 
 well fought, on the first of July, 1862, at Malvern Hill. It 
 was the repulse of a desperate attempt of the Confederates to
 
 THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN. 301 
 
 crush a retreating enemy. It brought out with great clearness 
 the fact that the Army of the Potomac, with experience of 
 such battle-names as Seven Pines, Fair Oaks, Mechanicsville, 
 and Cold Harbor, had become an army of veterans, and that 
 its commander held it well in hand. There was no sign of 
 disorganization or of any lack of discipline or of confidence or 
 patriotism among the men. Their retreat was secured and 
 their assailants were too badly shattered to repeat the attack. 
 Still, the campaign was a mournful failure, and any attempt to 
 renew it, under General McClellan, would have shaken the 
 hold of the government upon the nation. Neither could he, 
 then and there, have been safely replaced by any other gen- 
 eral. The most distinguished of his lieutenants did not hesi- 
 tate to say that they could not and would not step into his 
 place if he should be removed. It was, therefore, inevitable 
 that the army should abandon the effort to reach Richmond by 
 that road, and it was accordingly withdrawn, by Mr. Lincoln's 
 orders, during the month of August, 1862. 
 
 After the withdrawal an increasing importance began to 
 attach to the declarations made by General McClellan as to 
 what he could and would have done had he been permitted to 
 remain and had he been properly supported. That such asser- 
 tions were made, and that they were echoed in many modifica- 
 tions, throughout the country by the growing and organizing 
 opposition to Mr. Lincoln, was altogether a matter of course. 
 The fact of the withdrawal afforded a spurious life to proposi- 
 tions incapable of disproof. A direct issue was created and 
 assumed by what had actually become two jarring factions in 
 all the land. 
 
 If, therefore, it were possible to admit all that was then or 
 is now claimed by General McClellan and his friends, and to 
 advance, on behalf of the Administration, no other fact than 
 this direct issue, that is quite enough. 
 
 The President was compelled to relieve General McClellan 
 of his command at as early a day as was consistent with the
 
 302 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 proper care of the army. To have retained him would have 
 been a public assumption by the President of the responsibility 
 of his failure, and would have rendered all but impossible any 
 further resistance to his demands. So would Mr. Lincoln 
 have put a fatal weapon into the hands of his enemies, at the 
 same time that he severed himself at a blow from the patriotic 
 masses who sustained him and whose view of the whole matter 
 closely coincided with his own. 
 
 A task of unusual delicacy was now before him. He was 
 confronting questions of national politics and statesmanship as 
 well as of war and the selection of military leaders. There 
 were men, even among the friends of the Administration, 
 who so grossly misconceived the feelings of the army as to 
 assert that the soldiers would refuse to fight under any other 
 commander than McClellan. Mr. Lincoln troubled himself 
 very little about the rank and file. He knew them too well 
 to have any doubt as to their choice between a favorite officer 
 and their country. At the same time, he was indifferent to 
 any casual and hasty remarks " the boys" might make about 
 himself. They did not make many which would have been 
 disagreeable for him to hear. The result showed that they 
 understood the campaign they had been fighting better than 
 the politicians gave them credit for, and they were beginning 
 to understand Mr. Lincoln very well. 
 
 The main difficulty now in the mind of the latter was not 
 at all the removal of McClellan, but the choice of his successor. 
 There were reasons for preferring one of the well-known chiefs 
 of the Army of the Potomac, but a brief search among them 
 failed to discover the right man. Quite a number of them had 
 exhibited high qualities and achieved reputation, but no one 
 towered sufficiently above his brethren to be regarded by them 
 as their selection for the first place. Each general felt and said 
 that he could not take the reins of his falling leader without 
 concentrating upon himself such jealousy and resentment as 
 would impair his usefulness. What was worse, each seemed to
 
 THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN. 3Q3 
 
 feel the same thing even more strongly on behalf of any other 
 general whom Mr. Lincoln might choose to name. 
 
 The conclusion was plain. It was necessary that the new 
 commander should be a man as far as possible removed from 
 the operation of corps jealousies and what might almost be re- 
 garded as family contentions and neighborhood rivalries. 
 
 Military operations in the West had thus far been upon a 
 smaller scale as to separate battles and campaigns, however vast 
 in aggregate importance. A number of competent men were 
 rapidly manifesting their abilities and making names for them- 
 selves. Nevertheless there had not been time or opportunity 
 for any man to establish his pre-eminence as a general com- 
 manding large bodies of troops in the field. The course of 
 events had not made a selection; and Mr. Lincoln did not 
 actually make one, but he did the next best thing. He deter- 
 mined to keep on trying till he should find what he wanted. 
 
 "What was called " The Army of Virginia" had been organ- 
 ized from the several commands operating in the western part 
 of that State, and. the troops reserved for the protection of the 
 city of Washington. The organization was nominally effected, 
 on paper, by a general order issued July 26, 1862, and Major- 
 General John Pope, an officer of admitted merit, had been 
 placed in command. 
 
 The Army of Virginia, therefore, was ready to receive and 
 absorb the several detachments of theArmy of the Potomac, as 
 they arrived, on their return from the Peninsula. The two 
 armies became somewhat as one, in that manner, under General 
 Pope, without any formal change of commanders; but he had 
 no time to get them at all well in hand, before he was called 
 upon to meet the forces of the Rebellion upon their old battle- 
 grounds in front of the defences of the national capital. 
 The evacuation of the Peninsula had set them free from their 
 task of defending Richmond. They turned to the northward 
 and broke upon General Pope's army in a series of desperate 
 encounters, whose disastrous results offered a fitting appendix
 
 304 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 to the sad story which had previously concluded at Malvern 
 Hill. 
 
 During nearly the whole course of this fighting, which in- 
 cluded the second battle of Bull Run, General McClellan was 
 at or near Washington. He was not exactly in disgrace or 
 " removed," but he was in the position of a man temporarily 
 out of work, for he was a general without an army. Mr. Lin- 
 coln had carefully avoided open collision with him, and had 
 treated him in a friendly manner, personally, but the general 
 himself and the whole country well understood the situation. 
 
 The all but instantaneous political result justified the fore- 
 cast of Mr. Lincoln's sagacity, for the Democratic party of the 
 North, destitute of great names and leaders, at once took up 
 the cause of McClellan as their own. They had no other, and 
 it offered them a rallying-cry. When, therefore, at the close 
 of General Pope's summer campaign, General McClellan reas- 
 sumed command of the forces in the field, he did so as a " po- 
 litical idol " as well as a military leader. It was two years yet 
 to the next Presidential election, but he was already the Demo- 
 cratic candidate. It was altogether a new Democratic party, 
 and not the old, which was then in process of organization. It 
 was sweeping into its embraces all disappointment, all discon- 
 tent and sourness, and every element hostile to Mr. Lincoln 
 personally and to the manifestly increasing antislavery ten- 
 dencies of the Republican party and the Administration. 
 
 If the results of the hard fighting done by the army under 
 Pope had been less unfavorable, a different course might have 
 been possible, but the close of the month of August left the 
 President with no choice whatever. Loud voices were heard in 
 all the camps and columns of the army. Not those of any con- 
 siderable majority, doubtless, but likely to be joined by others 
 if things should continue to go wrong. It was necessary to 
 heed them and to act at once, for the victorious rebels, in spite 
 of the severe losses they had suffered, were about to pour across 
 the upper Potomac and carry the war into the Northern States.
 
 THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN. 305 
 
 Mr. Lincoln, as has been seen, had no doubt at all of General 
 McClellan's capacity for the kind of work now to be required 
 of him. It was not exactly a forward movement. There was 
 no need to issue any formal order reinstating an officer who 
 had never been publicly or formally removed and who still re- 
 tained his full rank in the army. Indeed, so little had been 
 done to interfere with the personal cordialities existing between 
 all the parties concerned, in spite of the tremendous war of 
 words between their respective admirers and defenders, that 
 Mr. Lincoln himself, accompanied by General Halleck, actually 
 called at McClellan's house, in Washington, on the morning of 
 the 2d of September, 1862, instead of sending for him to come 
 to the War Office or the Executive Mansion. 
 
 The whole affair, as it is related by General McClellan,, 
 sounds wonderfully like Abraham Lincoln's lifelong way of 
 doing things. He had nothing to say about the past and was- 
 in no wise disturbed by any part of his own previous action.. 
 He had, however, a good deal to say about the present state of 
 affairs in the army. He said it briefly, and then, relates ih& 
 general : " He instructed me to take steps at once to stop and 
 collect the stragglers ; to place the works in a proper state of 
 defense, and to go out and meet and take command of the 
 army, when it approached the vicinity of the works, then to 
 place the troops in the best position, committing everything to 
 my hands." 
 
 General Pope was not " removed," any more than General 
 McClellan had been. He was still in command of the Army 
 of Virginia, but was thus subordinated to General McClellan. 
 Within two weeks, the Army of the Potomac had quietly 
 swallowed the very organization by which its own separate 
 corps and divisions and brigades had previously been absorbed, 
 as fast as they arrived from the Peninsula. This result was 
 strictly logical, for the greater must contain the less, but a 
 good half of the troops now under McClellan were men who 
 had not been with him before Richmond and were by no
 
 306 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 means his admirers. They were " his men" only because of 
 orders from headquarters, and the spell of his power had been 
 broken. 
 
 As to the restoration of the old name to the consolidated 
 mass, Mr. Lincoln had no objection. " The boys" would fight 
 as well, or better, and that was the main thing, for they had 
 sharp work cut out for them. 
 
 Only a small part of the army under Pope had been " disor- 
 ganized," in any correct use of that term. The great mass of 
 them was in good condition. The men had fought well and 
 were proud of it, and had not lost confidence in their imme- 
 diate commanders. They had fought so well, indeed, that the 
 forces under General Lee were seriously diminished in num- 
 bers and efficiency. Not all the glory of their barren victories 
 could make up to them the loss of so many of their best sol- 
 diers, both officers and men. 
 
 Had the condition of the troops been at all as some have 
 misrepresented it, active operations at once, with those very 
 men, under McClellan, would have been absurdly impossible. 
 As it really was, he had no manner of difficulty in getting 
 ihem well in hand as he marched. He performed no miracle, 
 and their fighting condition was forcibly exemplified, in a very 
 few days, at the battles of South Mountain and the Antietam.
 
 MILITARY POLITICS. 307 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 MILITARY POLITICS. 
 
 Reconstruction Jarring Counsels Gen. John C. Fremont A Premature 
 Proclamation A Modification Another Subordinate laying down the 
 Law to the President A New Secretary of War A Human Library. 
 
 THE shattered aggregate of rusty political machinery which 
 fell into Mr. Lincoln's hands, at the close of the Buchanan Ad- 
 ministration, was not a " government." 
 
 The tumultuous mass of factions and local organisms under 
 his nominal chief magistracy was not a " nation." 
 
 What he would make of the one and what would become of 
 the other were open questions in the minds of all men, of all 
 parties, in this and other countries, and they were very freely 
 debated in public and in private. 
 
 The post to which Abraham Lincoln was really elected, and 
 the position he proceeded to occupy and fill, was that of an ex- 
 pression of the deeply rooted and tenacious popular will that 
 there should be a government, and a strong one, and that this 
 government should organize and perpetuate a nation. 
 
 His whole life had prepared him for the task. The causes 
 which prepared the task for him had been subjects of his study 
 from boyhood. He met all difficulties, as they arose, in a man- 
 ner which testified what familiar acquaintances they were and 
 how much he had been thinking that they might visit him 
 some day. 
 
 As has been seen, the new government took form rapidly, 
 and the solid ground of the new nation began to arise with a 
 very permanent look, through and above the turbulent political 
 flood.
 
 308 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 It was not as yet easy to designate or limit the powers of the 
 government in " war time," but the ideas of other men jjs to 
 the extent and nature of these powers were more vague than 
 were those of the ruler himself. He saw that he had, as Presi- 
 dent, and acting as Dictator in many relations, the power to do 
 anything which the people could be made to see it was need- 
 ful or best that he should do. He had no more, because that 
 and no other is always the limit of the power of a revolution- 
 ary autocrat. The people had many ways of expressing their 
 approval, and their faithful servant had little need to regard 
 the vagaries of individuals, so long as he was devotedly doing 
 his duty. 
 
 It was essential to the performance of Mr. Lincoln's task 
 that no element of substantial power should be permitted to 
 slip away from him or from either branch of the central gov- 
 ernment which he represented. Congress and the Judiciary 
 and the Executive were bound together as a unit. It was nat- 
 ural, however, and was a difficulty which came early and never 
 departed, that the President should find himself in continual 
 collision with the political views, the aspirations and ambitions, 
 of the able men around him. That these all had views, aspi- 
 rations, and ambitions, is to be mentioned in their praise and 
 not in blame. 
 
 The difficulty arising from this source was aggravated 
 by the fact that every general in the army, whether he would 
 or no, was also in some degree a political general and possible 
 leader. It was of course that many of even the best should 
 be aware of this and should cultivate " doctrinal views" of 
 their own, and by these should at times be influenced, more 
 or less, in their uses of the powers they derived from the cen- 
 tral authority at Washington. Almost the first military officers 
 to whom high commands were assigned at once began to ad- 
 minister those commands in accordance with their political 
 leanings and lootings forward. It was safe to prophesy that 
 the country would select its party idols and rulers, for a gen-
 
 MILITARY POLITICS. 309 
 
 eration or so after the war, from among those who should 
 come out of it in the character of " heroes." Had the South 
 succeeded, the Confederacy would necessarily have become a 
 sort of military despotism, sustained and governed by an 
 epauletted and army-titled aristocracy. Only the firmness and 
 wisdom of Mr. Lincoln prevented the Federal government 
 from drifting, at an early day, under the control of the rank- 
 ing officers of its first military organization. That, too, with 
 these very officers at wide variance among themselves as to 
 vital questions of policy and statesmanship. 
 
 Two instances suffice to illustrate the situation and vindi- 
 cate the course pursued by Mr. Lincoln : and it is not at all 
 necessary to claim for him perfection of wisdom or of conduct 
 in either case. It is necessary to say, however, that Mr. Lin- 
 coln did not act from personal motives in either, and that least 
 of all did he act from jealousy or unkindly feeling. 
 
 On the same day in which General McClellan assumed com- 
 mand of the troops in front of Washington, General John 0. 
 Fremont arrived in St. Louis, Missouri, to take command of 
 the Department of the West. There was as yet very little for 
 him to take command of, and two thirds of the populations of 
 Southern Illinois, Missouri, and Kentucky, including many 
 thousands who afterwards became devoted supporters of the 
 national government, were wavering in almost helpless inde- 
 cision as to which way they should go, to the Confederacy or 
 to the Union. In the city of St. Louis itself leading business 
 men were contributing timidly to the military funds of both 
 Rebel and Union undertakings, and begging the agents of 
 either side not to make public their names or their payments. 
 In the rural districts of Missouri the loyal people were gen- 
 erally overawed by their more violent as well as better pre- 
 pared and organized antagonists. In Southern Illinois the 
 majority of the people were from Southern States, densely ig- 
 norant and strongly pro-slavery in sentiment. Their geo- 
 graphical position and little more, as yet, retained them under
 
 310 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the sway of an " Abolition government." Kentucky was still 
 occupying an attitude of " neutrality" which was repudiated 
 by Mr. Lincoln, but which answered a most important pur- 
 pose in keeping the State out of the first mad rush of the Re- 
 bellion. Its people were having time given them to think the 
 matter over and, in due season, to welcome Federal armies as 
 deliverers and defenders. 
 
 General Fremont was a brave and intelligent officer, doubt- 
 less, although he never at any time established a reputation as 
 a " general." It is fair to say that he never had a good oppor- 
 tunity. He had qualities of mind which prevented him from 
 being a successful " statesman." He was a man of reckless 
 daring, undisguised ambition, strong imagination, and was 
 already prominent as a political leader. He had been the 
 "standard-bearer" selected by the People's party for their 
 hopeless, but earnest and first aggressive campaign of 1856, 
 and a good deal of the popular enthusiasm aroused for him 
 then, as a candidate for the Presidency, still clung to his name 
 in 1861. The romance of his early achievements as an ex- 
 plorer of the Rocky Mountains, and of his dashing military 
 exploits in California, had been made widely known during 
 his presidential campaign. There were many, indeed, who re- 
 garded him as in some inscrutable way the " founder" of the 
 party which had nominated him, and which was so speedily 
 reorganized as the Republican party after its first brilliant 
 struggle. 
 
 General Fremont was a Radical, with an opportunity in his 
 hands for making himself the representative man and leader of 
 all the Radicals of the North. He took the opportunity very 
 sincerely but very humanly. His immediate ambition, be- 
 yond doubt, was patriotic and military; but it naturally, inevi- 
 tably, had a political horizon beyond and all around it. There 
 is no need of flinching a fact so entirely devoid of anything 
 blameworthy. He had, at the outset, several difficulties with 
 the War Office at Washington, and in some of these the record
 
 MILITARY POLITICS. 311 
 
 favors him decidedly. He took hold of his work with charac- 
 teristic promptness and vigor, and, under many disadvantages, 
 began to collect and arm troops. He also began to fortify his 
 base of action, St. Louis, so that it might be safely left in sub- 
 sequent operations. So far all was well ; but before he had 
 forces enough to make sure of any part of his infant depart- 
 ment, on the 31st of August, 1861, he issued a proclamation, 
 altogether on his own account. He declared martial law 
 within specified limits, and threatened instant death to all 
 rebels found within those lines with arms in their hands. He 
 declared all real and personal property of all persons taking up 
 arms against the government confiscated to the public use, and 
 their slaves, if they had any, were declared free. 
 
 It was a curious document, in which a subordinate army 
 officer, in charge of a department under Mr. Lincoln, assumed 
 to exercise the joint and several powers of the President, Con- 
 gress, and the Judiciary. It was doubtless intended as a mili- 
 tary measure, to awe the rebel elements around him and im- 
 prove the morals of his own little army ; but it was, in fact, 
 something more. It was a political firebrand hurled among 
 the combustible populations above described, and the effect 
 threatened to be disastrous, both there and elsewhere. The 
 effect upon General Fremont's personal popularity with the 
 most loyal elements of the populations of the free States was, 
 for the moment, all he could have asked for. He had appealed, 
 in one breath, to patriotism, hatred of slavery, and to the vague, 
 popular lust for more vigorous measures. A great many ex- 
 cellent people were temporarily misled into loud approval of 
 his usurpation of authority over life and property, and failed 
 to see the mad impolicy of his really empty threats. The gen- 
 eral thus presented the President with a problem of more than 
 common difficulty ; but, at the same time, he performed an 
 important service. He at least warned the waverers in the 
 doubtful districts that there might be a wrath to come, and 
 many of them needed such a warning. Even in overstepping
 
 312 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 his own powers he gave the government an opportunity for 
 the better defining its own. He directed the perceptions of 
 all men, in good season, towards the sure result of the Rebel- 
 lion that " abolition of slavery" which so few were yet pre- 
 pared to face and consider. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was disposed to give Fremont an opportunity 
 for correcting, as of his own motion, the more manifest ex- 
 cesses of his proclamation ; but the general received his remon- 
 strances, for such they were, with a plain refusal to recede. 
 Even the President's intimation that Congress then had in hand 
 the subject of the confiscation of rebel property does not seem 
 to have opened the somewhat self-willed commander's eyes to* 
 the fact that the legislative and judicial branches of the gen- 
 eral government had sole power for the making of laws con- 
 cerning the ownership of real and personal property. As to 
 the emancipation of slaves, especially, he requested that, if his 
 proclamation in that regard were to be modified, the President 
 should do it for him, showing that he, the general, had not re- 
 treated from a hasty and ill-considered advanced position, but 
 had been overruled from Washington. He claimed that it was 
 as much his province to initiate such a policy, in the depart- 
 ment for which he was responsible, as to adopt and order any 
 other strategic or tactical movement, as of troops. If the 
 President disagreed with him, he prayed that the President 
 should take the responsibility of publicly saying so. What- 
 ever was Fremont's motive, and no man could question his 
 political sincerity, the effect of this would be to leave to him, 
 untouched and perhaps augmented, the entire benefit of the 
 popularity he had evidently won. Mr. Lincoln was quite will- 
 ing to resign to the general all that part of the " spoils of war," 
 and in a dispatch dated October 6, 1861, he said : " It is there- 
 fore ordered that said clause of said proclamation be so modi- 
 fied, held, and construed as to conform to and not to transcend 
 the provisions on the same subject contained in the Act of 
 Congress entitled ' An Act to confiscate property used for in-
 
 MILITARY POLITICS. 313 
 
 surrectionary purposes,' approved August 6, 1861, and that 
 such Act be published at length, with this order." 
 
 General Fremont yielded externally, but set the seal of his 
 disapprobation upon the order by manumitting, on the follow- 
 ing day, two slaves, the property of a St. Louis rebel. His 
 subsequent management of the affairs of his department dis- 
 played both his abilities and peculiarities ; and before the mid- 
 dle of October in spite of what he had accomplished in rais- 
 ing and equipping troops, in clearing Missouri of guerilla 
 bands, in securing Cairo, an important entrepot for supplies 
 at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, in beginning 
 the afterwards famous fleet of gunboats, and other efficient 
 preparations for good work, Mr. Lincoln felt compelled to 
 replace him by the appointment of an officer less brilliantly 
 erratic and with fewer probabilities of political aspiration. 
 The entire nation better understood its relations to both the 
 President and the general before the arrival of another Presi- 
 dential election. At that time, however, it was not so well 
 comprehended that the President's action was taken on 
 grounds of public policy and sound statesmanship. It was 
 contrasted strongly by many with the retention in power of 
 General McClellan, equally well known to be in training as a 
 candidate for political power, but proposing to reach it by fol- 
 lowing a very different political highway. It is at all events 
 to General Fremont's credit that his instincts were in favor of 
 loyalty and freedom, and his deeds in the direction of military 
 activity and efficiency. 
 
 At the time of General McClellan's appointment to the com- 
 mand of the Army of the Potomac he was still a young man. 
 He had his name yet to win as a commander in the field. He 
 had attained neither experience nor distinction as a politician, 
 much less as a statesman. He had no position whatever, ex- 
 cept as one of Mr. Lincoln's military subordinates. Neverthe- 
 less, so strong were the temptations of the hour and so mani- 
 fest were the openings leading to possible political eminence,
 
 314 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 that we speedily find him undertaking to advise and even to 
 direct the policy of the government. It is almost beyond be- 
 lief at this day, but in less than one year from his appointment, 
 under date of July 7, 1862, we find General McClellan writing 
 to President Lincoln from Harrison's Landing, and that too 
 with his Peninsular campaign just behind him, as follows : 
 
 " Military power should not be allowed to interfere with the 
 relations of servitude, either by supporting or impairing the 
 authority of the master, except for repressing disorder, as in 
 other cases." 
 
 This meant, being interpreted : 
 
 " Whatever else may be the object of this war, it must not 
 disturb Slavery, and any slave accidentally relieved of his fet- 
 ters must have them replaced as soon as the accident can be 
 provided for." 
 
 The tone and matter of that letter, or of any one of several 
 others, supply a window through which can plainly be dis- 
 cerned the writer's estimate of his own position, prerogative, 
 and power, as well as his clear understanding that a large con- 
 stituency in the army and among the people already regarded 
 him as their political representative. 
 
 How nearly correct his estimate was may partly be gathered 
 from the election returns of the year 1864. A study of these, 
 and of events between their date and the date of this letter to 
 Mr. Lincoln, will lead to the conclusion that in July, 1862, he 
 was more strongly fortified as a political leader than he ever 
 was afterwards. He was strong then in every respect but in 
 his lack of the legal authority to retain his military command 
 for one day after Mr. Lincoln should decide that he had held 
 it long enough. If an election could then have been held, its 
 results would have been vastly more in doubt. That was but 
 nine months after the removal of Fremont, and nothing had 
 occurred in the interim, East or West, to encourage the people 
 as to the probable end and outcome of the war. The more ex- 
 posed of the districts endangered by the over-hasty zeal of
 
 MILITARY POLITICS. 315 
 
 Fremont were still being fought over, backwards and forwards, 
 with varying successes, by contending armies. The " successes" 
 had not exhibited quite so much variation on the Potomac, and 
 this, too, was laid at Mr. Lincoln's door. 
 
 It was plainly needful that General McClellan should be in- 
 duced to give up playing President for a little while. It was 
 impossible to give him troops for the renewal of his advance 
 upon Eichmond, even if it had been wise to do so. His urgent 
 demand for them was denied and overruled, but the fact that 
 the President had no troops which could safely be sent him 
 was one which he and his partisans could and did ignore. 
 Nevertheless, his political fortunes culminated when the Army 
 of the Potomac was transferred, even in part and for a few 
 days, from under his immediate command. 
 
 It was but for a few days, apparently. General Pope's sum- 
 mer campaign of hot marches and hard battles, by no means all 
 of which are to be classed as defeats, must be regarded as little 
 more than a campaign to keep the enemy occupied and checked 
 during the removal of the Army of the Potomac from Harri- 
 son's Landing to Acquia Creek and the lines opposite Wash- 
 ington. The fighting covered a retreat. 
 
 At this time the country at large believed itself to be strain- 
 ing its every nerve to carry on the war. It was mistaken, but 
 the time had not come for the safe application of greater pres- 
 sure. The assistance of Congress would be required for that. 
 The President's powers were temporarily restricted to the 
 utilization of such war material as he had on hand or within 
 easy reach. It did not suffice for the creation of new armies 
 to be expended by General McClellan on the wrong road to 
 Richmond. 
 
 Other changes had taken place. The Department of "War 
 had been revolutionized during the first months of 1862. 
 When Mr. Lincoln appointed Simon Cameron his first Secre- 
 tary of War, he unintentionally assigned that very capable gen- 
 tleman to a post at which he was as sure to fall as was the color-
 
 316 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 bearer of a " forlorn hope." Upon him rushed the first and 
 most impudent swarm of contractors, speculators, adventurers, 
 plunderers of every name and kind. Upon him surely fell the 
 hasty anger of the people for the inevitable crudities of the 
 first year of the existence of the army. He was compelled to 
 resign, for the good of the service ; but Mr. Lincoln answered 
 his detractors by appointing him minister to Russia, the best 
 national friend we then had among the larger powers of 
 Europe. Mr. Cameron doubtless had his defects as a Secre- 
 tary of War in such a time, but his career enabled Mr. Lincoln 
 to make up his mind as to the kind of man the place required. 
 He knew just such a man. His name was Edwin M. Stanton, 
 a resident of the District of Columbia, an old-time Democrat 
 in politics, a lawyer of distinction, but without popularity any- 
 where or personal following of any kind. He was absolutely 
 sure never to have either. His sturdy loyalty had been proved 
 as by fire during a brief service as a member of Buchanan's 
 last Cabinet. He had helped to keep the governmental wreck 
 from being entirely swept away before Mr. Lincoln's arrival. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had met Mr. Stanton before that day, and knew 
 him to be the possessor of certain personal qualities which were 
 as rare as they were likely now to become valuable. 'In the 
 summer of the year 1859 Mr. Lincoln went to Cincinnati, 
 Ohio, as one of the associate counsel in the great " McCormick 
 reaper case." The leading counsel on his side was Mr. Stanton, 
 and that gentleman had imbibed a bitter prejudice, political or 
 otherwise, against his ungainly colleague from Illinois. Such 
 was, in consequence, his habitual and pointed rudeness that 
 Mr. Lincoln's self-respect compelled him to retire from the 
 case. When he got home he remarked that he " had never 
 been so brutally treated as by that man Stanton." 
 
 He was with him long enough, however, to discover in him 
 a peculiar executive ability, tirelessness, disregard of obstacles, 
 and a ravenous capacity for the mastery of details, rare indeed 
 among men, while the bluntness, directness, even the harshness
 
 MILITARY POLITICS. 317 
 
 amounting to brutality, were gifts eminently desirable in the 
 Secretary of "War of the United States during the years which 
 were now to follow. It was a certainty that men would have 
 no ground whereon to accuse Mr. Stanton of favoritism or of 
 paltering with treason, and his official chief would never be in 
 effect betrayed by weak-kneed subserviency. The latter con- 
 sideration was almost beyond price in those days. 
 
 The new Secretary would be just the man to stand between 
 the Treasury and the contractors, at the same time that he 
 would relieve the President of some of the most trying respon- 
 sibilities of army management. 
 
 There was much criticism of this appointment among the 
 friends of Mr. Lincoln, and they gave him loads of advice. 
 He was urged to appoint a man from New England, or one 
 who might be considered in some beneficial manner politically 
 or geographically representative. He had done a great deal of 
 that sort of thing in the first organization of his Cabinet, and 
 the net results had not impressed him with its importance as a 
 source of anything he was now in need of. He did not believe 
 that any one segment of the national territory contained a man 
 sufficiently representative of its population to be able to add an 
 ounce of strength to the Administration by his appointment 
 to office. He was well aware, on the other hand, that much 
 strength might easily be lost by the appointment of a man ob- 
 noxious to extremists of any description. 
 
 Mr. Stanton had not as yet made himself offensive to any 
 faction or fraction. To wise friends who expressed a fear of 
 mischief to come from what they called his " impulsiveness," 
 Mr. Lincoln replied : " Well, we may have to treat him as they 
 are sometimes obliged to treat a Methodist minister I know of 
 out West. He gets wrought up to so high a pitch of excite- 
 ment in his prayers and exhortations that they are obliged to 
 put bricks in his pockets to keep him down. We may be 
 obliged to treat Stanton the same way, but I guess we will let 
 him jump awhile first."
 
 318 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 The restraining power hinted at in the anecdote was always 
 at Mr. Stanton's elbow. His superfluous energy consumed 
 itself in such ceaseless toil that, when the war was ended and 
 the duties to which Mr. Lincoln assigned him were all done, 
 the great War Secretary had expended his life for his country 
 and very soon lay down for his long rest. That he would 
 make countless enemies was well understood in the hour of his 
 appointment, and that he continually did so was no surprise at 
 all to Mr. Lincoln. That he should make many mistakes, 
 especially in minor matters rapidly decided and acted upon, 
 was as certain as sunset, but he never once made the cardinal 
 blunders, in such a time, of cowardice, indecision, or inaction. 
 He was, as nearly as might be, the very man Mr. Lincoln re- 
 quired for the hard place he was called to fill. He supplied 
 qualities and training which had not been given to the Presi- 
 dent. Between the two men, so different, so strangely thrown 
 together, there grew to be a bond of mutual reliance which 
 had in it a remarkable thread of personal, human tenderness. 
 
 The constant study of military questions forced upon Mr. 
 Lincoln's mind a perception of certain other defects in his own 
 preparation for the post of Commander-in-Chief. Lack of 
 technical knowledges and of the specific trainings of the mili- 
 tary schools hampered him at every turn, and it was too late for 
 him to take a " West Point course" of education. He could 
 not even give the time required for the full examination of 
 authorities or for miscellaneous consultations with all the gen- 
 erals from all the multiplying commands. It was needful, 
 therefore, that he should have at his elbow some man whose 
 carefully tilled and well-stored brain should be in itself a 
 library of military sciences and knowledges, with all its vol- 
 umes ready to open at the page. Precisely such a man had been 
 made ready for him in the person of Major-General Henry 
 W. Halleck. This officer had already distinguished himself by 
 his management of affairs intrusted to him in the West, but 
 Mr. Lincoln perceived that his best services were not to be
 
 MILITARY POLITICS. 319 
 
 rendered in the field. He was essentially a military scholar, 
 having devoted his life to studies, researches, and writings, of 
 such a nature and quality as to mark him unmistakably as the 
 man of men to supply Mr. Lincoln's technical and other de- 
 ficiencies. On the llth of July, 1862, General Halleck was 
 appointed General-in-Chief of all the armies of the United 
 States, and reached Washington in the latter part of the month 
 to assume control. It was not an unimportant consideration 
 that thenceforth generals of armies in the field would receive 
 their orders from a professional soldier, ranking them, and not 
 from a " civilian" of any grade whatever. 
 
 It is easy to overlook or belittle the practical statesmanship 
 displayed in the creation of such an office as that to which 
 General Halleck was appointed. The " statute laws" of the 
 land made no mention of it, and the appointment carried with 
 it no permanent promotion or increase of pay. The " General- 
 in-Chief " had a thankless task before him : almost as much 
 so as had the Secretary of "War. Victories won would surely 
 give all their glory to the generals in immediate command of 
 the forces winning them. Sore-hearted men in search of scape- 
 goats for the blame of defeats and failures would continually 
 have one prepared and named for them at the right hand of 
 the President at Washington. He would receive small credit 
 for good advice, and his powers for preventing mischief were 
 limited on every side in spite of his sounding title. This was 
 strikingly exemplified by the results of the Fredericksburg 
 campaign, undertaken against his counsel, lost as he expected, 
 and much of the blame of it cast upon his head by a host of 
 uninformed faultfinders. 
 
 It was of the last importance to the stability of the Admin- 
 istration that the tides of sure disappointment and discontent 
 should rise and dash and be dissipated against such breakwaters 
 as Stanton and Halleck and not be permitted to assail injuri- 
 ously the one man whose personal hold upon the popular heart 
 and confidence was vital to the existence of the nation. Stu-
 
 320 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 dents of the Constitution of the British Empire may possibly 
 find an analogy there by looking for it. 
 
 It may fairly be said that the close of the summer of 1862 
 found Mr. Lincoln's official staff, for the first time, fully pre- 
 pared to deal with the work before him and them. Surely a 
 year and a half was no excessive length of time for the accom- 
 plishment of so great a feat of wisdom in selection. He had 
 done well with such materials as he had within his reach in the 
 beginning. It is not easy to see how he could have done bet- 
 ter. Now, at last, he was efficiently provided, but before him 
 opened gloomily " the dark days" of the war. The prospect or 
 hope of a speedy collapse of the Rebellion had disappeared, 
 and, for the moment, the Nation stood upon the defensive.
 
 DRAWN BATTLES. 321 
 
 CHAPTEK XL. 
 
 DRAWN BATTLES. 
 
 The Fighting under Pope News from the Army The Changes of Com- 
 manders Lee in Maryland The Antietam Exhausted Patience 
 Removal of McClellan A Great Misunderstanding. 
 
 THE position of the Army of the Potomac during the last 
 week of August, 1862, and the days next following, called for 
 the exercise of uncommon firmness and discretion. 
 
 General McClellan arrived from Harrison's Landing on the 
 24th of August, and reported to General Halleck for orders.. 
 On the 27th he removed his quarters from Acquia Creek to> 
 Alexandria, and was assigned to the duty of forwarding troops, 
 to General Pope. It was a time of universal gloom and deep 
 excitement. The tongues of rumor, detraction, of every kind 
 of bitterness, were so busy with all the questions of the hour 
 that it was impossible to sift the true from the false of even 
 what purported to be "evidence." This difficulty was seri- 
 ously complicated by the practical untrustworthiness of any 
 dispatches. The general in command had done his duty and 
 knew it, and his despatches expressed his indomitable courage 
 and confidence much more accurately than they did the con- 
 dition of the army or the results of recent battles. 
 
 On. the 30th of August was fought the battle of Manassas 
 (commonly called the Second Battle of Bull Kun) ; and the 
 Battle of Chantilly, which followed, may be regarded as part of 
 it so far as the effect upon the army or people is concerned. A 
 part of the army had behaved badly and was demoralized, but 
 only a part. It was unfortunate that the country at large and 
 the soldiers out of the fight obtained a first and lasting impres-
 
 322 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 sion of the fighting under Pope from stragglers of broken regi- 
 ments reporting to newspaper correspondents. More was lost 
 in this way than could easily be remedied. General Pope 
 himself reported of the Bull Run affair : " The troops are in 
 good heart and marched off the field without the least hurry or 
 confusion. Their conduct was very fine. . . . The enemy is 
 badly whipped, and we shall do well enough. I think this 
 army entitled to the gratitude of the country." 
 
 General Halleck was inclined to take the same view of the 
 matter, and said to General Pope, " You have done nobly." 
 
 So he had. And the more carefully the records of that short 
 campaign are searched, the better is the figure cut by its gen- 
 eral, with some reservations as to his use of the pen. He 
 seems to have been unaware of the feeling and opinion exist- 
 ing among some of his subordinates. So was General Halleck, 
 for a few days. But no such blindness troubled Mr. Lincoln. 
 The President had heard from the Army in many ways, and 
 even from an informal council of war of its corps and division 
 commanders. 
 
 There was something almost dramatic about that " council " 
 .and its consequences. Immediately after the Second Battle of 
 Uull Run, a call was made upon the civil employees of the 
 "Washington Departments for volunteers to go over into Vir- 
 ginia and aid in caring for the wounded. Many went ; and 
 among them was a brother of one of the President's secretaries. 
 This young man was met upon the field by a corps commander 
 whom he knew, and was at once taken to the headquarters of 
 another corps commander. Other well-known officers were 
 present or were sent for. They came, they remained a longer 
 or shorter time, they conversed freely and went away. The 
 young man was directed to note down every name and every 
 statement of opinion given, but not to be understood as doing 
 anything of the kind. It was a strictly confidential inter- 
 change of military views of the situation, and some of the ex- 
 pressions were quite strong and marked by individualities. At
 
 DRAWN BATTLES. 323 
 
 the close, the corps commander remarked to his young friend : 
 " We could not send all that in a dispatch to Washington ; but 
 the quicker it is repeated to the President, the better for the 
 army and the country." 
 
 Means of rapid transportation were at once provided, and 
 the next morning the weary, muddy, and, from his services 
 among the wounded, somewhat bloodstained young man was 
 closeted first with Mr. Lincoln and then with General Halleck 
 and Mr. Stanton. The details of his report were never made 
 public : but Mr. Lincoln had heard from the army. He had the 
 unanimous though unofficial and entirely free opinion of a 
 dozen of its best officers, perhaps of a score, that it could no 
 longer be successfully handled by General Pope, with the 
 added assurance that these men spoke for large numbers of 
 their companions of all grades and arms. Of the officers who 
 constituted that informal but important council of war, some 
 knew not at all that they were members of it, but more spoke 
 with a full understanding and spoke directly for the purposes 
 in hand. The greater number of them are dead, and so is their 
 messenger, and so are all the men to whom he delivered his 
 message. The effect was instantaneous, as may be seen by a 
 comparison of dates. The President obviously had but one 
 duty to perform, and he performed it without hesitation. 
 General Pope was not formally removed, but he literally 
 drifted out of the command as General McClellan drifted back 
 into it. The Army of Virginia quietly ceased to be, and the 
 Army of the Potomac set out at once for the battle-fields of 
 South Mountain and the Antietam. Glad enough would 
 Mr. Lincoln have been, and well would it have been for the 
 country, if he could on many another emergency have listened 
 to a full and unreserved expression of the views of men hold- 
 ing corresponding positions in that and other armies ; but the 
 rules of the service, and the rigid requirements of military 
 etiquette, and the impossibility of providing ways of access to 
 himself, were all prohibitory.
 
 324 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 It was true, as General Pope had reported, that the army as 
 a whole was in good heart and good condition. He might well 
 feel personally hurt and injured that it should so drift out from 
 under him. General McClellan was again in command from 
 and after September 2d. On the 3d he had in his hands in- 
 formation which convinced him of General Lee's intention to 
 cross the upper Potomac into Maryland. It was necessary 
 that he should move at once, establishing his relations with the 
 forces under his command while on the march. This is the 
 process commonly spoken of as his reorganization of the army. 
 
 The movement of the Confederate troops across the Potomac 
 began at Leesburg between the 4th and 5th of September. 
 Beyond all question they and their leaders believed that they 
 had come to stay. They had exaggerated ideas of the injuries 
 they had inflicted upon the Army of the Potomac and the 
 forces under Pope. Still more erroneous was their conception 
 of the state of public opinion in Maryland. Wilder and more 
 frantic still were their ideas of the condition of affairs at the 
 North and of the relations of what they called " the Lincoln 
 despotism" to the masses of the people. In one point only 
 were they entirely correct. A series of victories in Maryland 
 over the Union armies would undoubtedly have converted their 
 dreams into something very like realities. The stake was tre- 
 mendous, and it was played for with all the boldness of exult- 
 ing self-confidence, with the full consciousness of courage and 
 ability, with the deliberate purpose of fighting superior num- 
 bers, and the expectation of beating them if those superior 
 numbers could at all be induced to face them upon the field of 
 battle. It is at least apparently true, also, that they were mis- 
 led as to the whereabouts of a considerable part of their old 
 antagonists of the peninsular battle-grounds. 
 
 General McClellan moved very slowly, but the Confederate 
 commanders were pushing their invasion with tremendous 
 vigor. On the 15th of September, without any battle at all, 
 they captured the entire Union force aimlessly permitted to
 
 DEAWN BATTLES. 
 
 remain at Harper's Ferry, of about 11,000 men, with 73 pieces 
 of artillery and with valuable material of small arms and stores. 
 No military critic has ever discovered a good excuse for this 
 blunder, and Mr. Lincoln could find none at the time. Ac- 
 companying the news of the loss at Harper's Ferry were Gen- 
 eral McClellan's reports of a brace of severe engagements at 
 South Mountain, commonly described as the battle of that 
 name. About 30,000 Confederates were driven out of good 
 positions after a hard fight. The nature of the ground pre- 
 vented concentration of the troops on either side or the effec- 
 tive use of superior numbers, but no high degree of " general- 
 ship" was exhibited. As usual, the Rebels claimed a " victory," 
 but it was not of the kind it would be necessary for them to 
 win if they desired to make a long visit in Maryland. It was 
 also claimed by General McClellan as a victory ; and so it was, 
 for he had not been defeated ; but it was not what it should 
 have been, and it prepared the way for the greater failure im- 
 mediately to follow. 
 
 The 15th and 16th of September, after the victory of South 
 Mountain, did not contain much pursuing of the vanquished 
 enemy, but on the 17th was fought the really terrible battle of 
 the Antietam Creek. It was not at all a well-managed fight, 
 but it was splendidly contested by the armies on either side. 
 The Union forces engaged had somewhat the advantage of 
 numbers, as the rebels had of position. The former would 
 have had a greater numerical advantage if their commander 
 had made a proper use of them. That he did not do so enabled 
 General Lee to extract a " drawn battle" from the jaws of what 
 should have been a destructive defeat. He was then permitted 
 to march away into Virginia unmolested. Not all the urgency 
 brought to bear upon General McClellan by Mr. Lincoln could 
 induce him to interfere with the movements of the enemy he 
 had so thoroughly shattered, although he could have done so 
 with troops who had not been under fire and were fresh. 
 
 The patience of Mr. Lincoln was once more exhausted by
 
 326 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the short history of McClellan's new command of the Army of 
 the Potomac. Too much had been wasted of men and mate- 
 rials and precious opportunities. Too many costly advantages 
 had been thrown away, and too many orders recklessly disre- 
 garded. The remaining days of September and the whole of 
 October were indeed consumed in unavailing efforts to drive 
 him forward, while a force of Rebel cavalry under Stuart 
 dashed across the Potomac and derisively rode all around him. 
 
 On the 26th of October he began at last to move his army 
 across the river. It was all over by the 2d of November ; but 
 McClellan was still in doubt as to what he should do with it 
 afterwards, and, on the 7th of November, he was finally re- 
 lieved of his command. General Ambrose E. Burnside was 
 named as his successor. 
 
 It is manifest from the record that the latter general was 
 selected from among a dozen officers of nearly equal fame, be- 
 cause he was in some respects the least objectionable and had 
 already held, with good success, an independent military com- 
 mand in North Carolina. 
 
 It seems hardly necessary to say, but to some it may be so, 
 that Mr. Lincoln would not have removed General McClellan 
 for other than strictly military reasons. In fact, without such 
 reasons, clearly so marked out as to be read by all unprejudiced 
 observers, it would not have been politically safe to do so. 
 Even as it was, the removal was both politically dangerous and 
 politically necessary. 
 
 General McClellan was already the representative of pro- 
 slavery Unionism at the North, and of all the forms of discon- 
 tent which were willing to co-operate with it. His mistakes 
 were his own. If he had obeyed Mr. Lincoln's urgency and 
 consented to win a few more victories, or had made good use 
 of such as were forced upon him, he could not have been set 
 aside without assuring him an overwhelming triumph at the 
 following Presidential election. Had he been left in com- 
 mand, there is reason to doubt if the course of events would
 
 DEA WN BA TTLE8. 327 
 
 not have been such that the destruction of slavery for which 
 Mr. Lincoln was preparing would have been out of the ques- 
 tion. 
 
 There is a sense, not hard to find, in which the removal of 
 General McClellan is a part of the Proclamation of Emancipa- 
 tion which followed later. All antislavery men understood it 
 as a telling blow at their political opponents, as well as a thing 
 done for the good of the army and of the Union cause. It sent 
 a shock even through the minds of Southern leaders, for they 
 well understood the divisions of public sentiment at the North. 
 They were by no means as blind as were their followers to the 
 swift changes of opinion concerning them and their cherished 
 institution. They knew what this meant, and it was as if they 
 had lost a battle. 
 
 It may almost be said that General McClellan deserved the 
 thanks of his country for giving the President good military 
 reasons for making a removal so eminently desirable politi- 
 cally. 
 
 At the North, at the time, multitudes received the news 
 with a storm of angry execrations. As they understood the 
 matter, a great general unjustly put aside had generously come 
 to the rescue at a critical moment. He had rallied and re- 
 organized a ruined army, and with it had won tremendous vic- 
 tories, and had delivered his country from invasion if not from 
 conquest. It is for many to this day impossible to grasp the 
 situation as it was, or to regard such a setting forth as has been 
 made above as other than grossly partisan. They cannot be 
 made to believe that at the battle of the Antietam McClellan 
 had at his disposal at least twice as many men as had Lee, all 
 every inch as good soldiers as his, as well equipped, as full of 
 fight and enthusiasm, and that yet Lee actually fought with 
 about equal numbers, the rest of McClellan's army not fighting 
 at all. They are blind to the simple facts of the drawn battle, 
 and the unhindered escape, and the non-employment of forces 
 in hand.
 
 328 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 EMANCIPATION. 
 
 The War-Power and the Constitution. A Struggle of Life and Death 
 The Hour and the Man The Proclamation Waiting for a Victory 
 An Unprepared People Suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus 
 Visiting the Army The Reply of the Opposition. 
 
 IT is necessary at this point to recall with care the record 
 of Mr. Lincoln as a life-long enemy of human slavery, and to 
 understand fully the position he was forced to occupy regard- 
 ing it. 
 
 In the year 1850 he said to his friend Mr. Stuart : " The 
 time will come when we must all be Democrats or Abolition- 
 ists. When that time comes, my mind is made up." In his 
 great speech at Bloomington, Illinois in 1858, he said : " I 
 believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave 
 and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, I 
 do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will cease 
 to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other." 
 
 In the private conversation, as in the public utterance, he 
 clearly expressed a conviction which had become a part of his 
 lif e. That conviction could not have been taken from him by 
 any possible course of events or power of argument. From 
 the date of the Bloomington speech, and from hour to hour, 
 the course of events did but deepen as they justified the sure 
 processes of his reason and their unchanged conclusion. 
 
 Before the war began, he saw, as did many other men, that 
 a success of the secession conspiracy and a division of the na- 
 tional territory meant more than the triumph and permanence 
 of human slavery in the Southern Confederacy. It meant also
 
 EMANCIPATION. 329 
 
 a perpetual predominance of proslavery influence in the nomi- 
 nally Free North. That influence was already so strong there 
 as to threaten the stability of an openly Abolition Administra- 
 tion. Its power was made to be felt even in strictly military 
 matters from the beginning. Mr. Lincoln found it grappling 
 with him for the mastery and assailing him in every imagina- 
 ble disguise. 
 
 The fact grew plainer to the minds of all men, as the strife 
 went on, that the institution of slavery was the real prize for 
 which the armies were contending. Still, time was required 
 to so fix and confirm the hearts and minds of the great majority 
 that they could endure to have their secret convictions formu- 
 lated and proclaimed. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln understood the people very well. He was a 
 sort of revolutionary dictator. He was ready and willing to 
 use all powers given him by his unwritten commission to 
 " See to it that the Commonwealth suffers no harm." He was 
 also a Constitutional President, under an oath to protect the 
 rights of all citizens of every part of the country. If he were 
 not President of the South, he had no right to send troops 
 there, to restore order and enforce his authority. The people 
 of the seceded States were still his fellow-citizens, or it would 
 have been idle to call them " rebels." Against them he cher- 
 ished no atom of merely personal animosity, and he was desti- 
 tute of mere sectional prejudices. His course cannot be at all 
 understood by any man who narrowly imagines him as think- 
 ing only of his duties to the populations within the Union 
 army lines. 
 
 In his inaugural address, he said : " I have no purpose, 
 directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of 
 slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no law- 
 ful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." And, 
 speaking as if to the people of the South : " You can have no 
 conflict without being yourselves the aggressors : we are not 
 enemies, but friends."
 
 330 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 They insisted on becoming his enemies ; but he continued to 
 be their friend to the end, even while resisting to the utter- 
 most the aggressors who demanded and compelled conflict 
 when he pleaded for peace. 
 
 No change of any consequence was made, or could be made, 
 constitutionally, in the written law of the land respecting 
 slavery. Mr. Lincoln's mind underwent no change as to his 
 view of his " lawful right" thence derived. Any such right 
 must therefore come to him in another way ; but he steadily 
 and thoughtfully prepared himself to exercise it in the hour of 
 its coming. 
 
 At the time of Fremont's premature " proclamation" no law 
 or lawful right had as yet been created. The power to set 
 aside written law was inherent in the " dictatorship," but could 
 come even to the dictator only from the hand of necessity and 
 for the safety of the life of the Commonwealth. It was not 
 personal to Mr. Lincoln, or, through or without him, to any of 
 his subordinate officers. 
 
 That slavery must die or that the Commonwealth must die 
 became gradually but more and more plainly manifest. It was 
 also plain that the death of the public enemy must be by the 
 hands of the war power and as a military execution, without 
 waiting for the slow and doubtful processes of civil procedure. 
 The remaining questions related only to the time and manner of 
 an act so important. On the 13th of March and on the 16th of 
 July, 1862, Mr. Lincoln had approved and signed Acts of 
 Congress the effect of which was to give due form of law to 
 General B. F. Butler's doctrine that all slaves of rebels in arms 
 were " contraband of war." These Acts, with a little help, 
 would have proved fatal to the institution in due time ; but 
 they dealt with individuals and not with geographical areas or 
 entire communities, and were subject to Congressional action 
 in repeal or modification. They did much towards preparing 
 the way for better things, however, and the President wisely 
 embodied them in his first proclamation. He thereby absorbed
 
 EMANCIPATION. 331 
 
 in and united with his own action as Dictator and President 
 the previous action of the legislative branch of the government. 
 Members of Congress were enabled to say to each other, " The 
 Commander-in-Chief has issued a general order embodying and 
 enforcing our legislation." 
 
 The " general order" contained and enforced such amplifica- 
 tions as rendered the Dictatorial Proclamation forever inde- 
 pendent of the Legislative Act. 
 
 That the view here taken may not be deemed strained or 
 overwrought, it is best to condense it into Mr. Lincoln's own 
 words. In a letter dated April 4, 1864, written to Mr. George 
 C. Hodges, of Frankfort, Kentucky, he says : 
 
 " I felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional might be- 
 come lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of 
 the Constitution, through the preservation of the Nation. 
 When, early in the war, General Fremont attempted military 
 emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an 
 indispensable necessity. When, a little later, General Cameron, 
 then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I 
 objected, because I did not yet think the indispensable neces- 
 sity had come." 
 
 Through these few sentences the whole course of his mental 
 operations may be unerringly traced. 
 
 The hour he waited for came at last, and his action came 
 with it. The deed itself, and all the manner of its doing, bring 
 out in striking illustration the inner life of the man. It sets 
 forth once more his lifelong characteristic of foresight and 
 previous preparation, that so delivered him from ruinous sur- 
 prises. Even as he had patiently waited for the Rebellion, 
 knowing that it would surely come, so he now waited for the 
 hour of the Emancipation Proclamation, with faith in God 
 that it also would come. 
 
 In the summer of 1862 he prepared a draft of the impor- 
 tant document. At about the last of July or the first of Au- 
 gust he called a full meeting of his Cabinet. The members
 
 332 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 of it had no information of the reason of their coming together, 
 and Mr. Lincoln seemed in no hurry to give them any. They 
 were eminently representative men, and he knew that by the 
 effect upon them of the paper he was about to read to them he 
 could fairly judge its probable effect upon the nation. He 
 was not yet prepared, mentally, for the struggle before him. 
 He even trifled for a few minutes, internally steadying his own 
 powers and gauging the status of the sober statesmen around 
 him. He read to them a chapter of a book by " Orpheus C. 
 Kerr," and heartily laughed at its drolleries. No man among 
 them was aware of, or could penetrate, the depths of thought 
 and emotion, or discern the gathering strength of will, behind 
 that laugh. The seemingly frivolous delay had unseen uses ; 
 but the members of the Cabinet looked at one another with a 
 growing sense that their personal dignity was in peril. All 
 cause for such nervousness disappeared when that of the Presi- 
 dent himself had been removed and he had adjusted himself 
 to his task. 
 
 His demeanor suddenly underwent a change. The amused 
 humorist vanished. In his place was a man who had reached 
 a new grandeur of moral elevation to which he was pro- 
 foundly anxious to raise each soul among them. He announced 
 his purpose and read the paper which he had prepared. He 
 stated, in good set terms, that he had not called them together 
 to ask their advice, but to lay the subject-matter of a procla- 
 mation before them, suggestions as to which would be in order 
 after they had heard it read. It was not so much for general 
 consultation, therefore, as to finally announce a settled purpose 
 and to receive counsel on minor points. 
 
 There is no accurate report of the debate which followed, 
 but the scene itself is pictorially presented, with an extreme of 
 careful exactness, in the painting by Mr. F. B. Carpenter, pre- 
 served in the Capitol at Washington. Mr. Chase, it is said, 
 wished the language made stronger with reference to the arm- 
 ing of the blacks, not perceiving that the emergency was al-
 
 EMANCIPATION. 333 
 
 ready loaded to the very limits of its power to endure. Mr. 
 Blair opposed the proclamation on the ground that it would 
 cost the Administration the fall elections, not seeing that the 
 gift of freedom to the slave opened a perpetual fountain of 
 popular support. Other remarks were made ; but little seems 
 to have been effectively said until Mr. Seward spoke, as a 
 statesman comprehending the effect of a measure so fully in 
 accord with the tenor of his own life and work : 
 
 " Mr. President, I approve of the proclamation, but I ques- 
 tion the expediency of its issue at this juncture. The depres- 
 sion of the public mind, consequent upon our repeated reverses, 
 is so great that I fear the effect of so important a step. It may 
 be viewed as the last measure of an exhausted government a 
 cry for help the government stretching out its hands to Ethi- 
 opia, instead of Ethiopia stretching out its hands to the gov- 
 ernment." (Mr. Carpenter relates that Mr. Lincoln himself 
 said, " His idea was that it would be considered our last shriek 
 on the retreat.") Mr. Seward added that, in his opinion, the pub- 
 lication of the proclamation should be delayed until it could fol- 
 low some notable military success. The advice of the Secre- 
 tary of State was undeniably sound, and Mr. Lincoln followed 
 it. Quite likely the precise idea expressed by Mr. Seward was 
 already in his mind. 
 
 The Army of Virginia, under Pope, was at that time con- 
 fronting the Rebels under Lee. A victory sufficient for the 
 purpose might come any day. The President patiently waited 
 for one ; but none came. The dark days of August closed with 
 the Second Bull Eun and Chantilly. Then McClellan was 
 once more in command, but he was no emancipationist. 
 
 The condition of Mr. Lincoln's mind, during those terrible 
 days of enforced waiting, may be learned from his subsequent 
 action and from his own account. He stated to Mr. F. B. 
 Carpenter, the artist of the picture of the " First Reading :" 
 
 " When Lee came over the river, I made a resolve that when 
 McClellan should drive him back, and I expected he would
 
 334 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 do it, some time or other, I would send the proclamation 
 after him. I worked upon it and got it pretty much prepared. 
 The battle of Antietam was fought on Wednesday, but I could 
 not find out till Saturday whether we had really won a victory 
 or not. It was too late to issue the proclamation that week, 
 and I dressed it over a little, on Sunday and on Monday I 
 gave it to them. The fact is, I never thought of the meeting 
 of the governors at Altoona, and I can hardly remember that 
 I knew anything about it." 
 
 The latter clause refers to a conference of the "War Gov- 
 ernors, as they were called, of several of the free States, to con- 
 fer as to the condition of public affairs, which by some had 
 been supposed to have influenced the action of the President. 
 
 A Cabinet meeting was held on the Saturday following the 
 battle of the Antietam. There had been no great victory, in 
 one sense ; but there had in another, for the army under Lee 
 was defeated by its hard-earned " drawn battle" so completely 
 that its campaign of invasion was ended and it had leisurely 
 recrossed the Potomac. 
 
 The members of the Cabinet were summoned, as before, not 
 to give advice but to hear a decision. Mr. Lincoln told them 
 that the time for delay or hesitation had gone by, and that 
 Emancipation must now be made the declared policy of the 
 Administration. Public sentiment would now sustain it. A 
 strong and outspoken popular voice openly demanded it, and 
 the demand came from the best friends of the government. 
 
 That was not all. In a low voice, and reverently, Mr. Lin- 
 coln added : " And I have promised my God that I will do it." 
 
 Mr, Chase, who sat nearest him, heard but indistinctly the 
 low-voiced utterance, and inquired : 
 
 " Did I understand you correctly, Mr. President ? " 
 
 Mr. Lincoln replied : 
 
 " I made a solemn vow, before God, that, if General Lee 
 should be driven back from Pennsylvania, I would crown the 
 result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves."
 
 EMANCIPATION. 335 
 
 The proclamation was issued on Monday, September 22, 
 1862, and was as follows : 
 
 " I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of 
 America, and Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy 
 thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter, as here- 
 tofore, the war will be prosecuted for the object of practically 
 restoring the constitutional relation between the United States 
 and each of the States, and the people thereof, in which States 
 that relation is or may be suspended or disturbed. 
 
 " That it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress, 
 to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure ten- 
 dering pecuniary aid to the free acceptance or rejection of all 
 slave-States, so called, the people whereof may not then be in 
 rebellion against the United States, and which States may then 
 have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt, 
 immediate or gradual abolishment of slavery within their re- 
 spective limits ; and that the effort to colonize persons of Afri- 
 can descent, with their consent, upon this continent or else- 
 where, with the previously obtained consent of the govern- 
 ments existing there, will be continued. 
 
 " That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord 
 one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as 
 slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the peo- 
 ple whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, 
 shall be then, thenceforward and forever, free ; and the Execu- 
 tive Government of the United States, including the military 
 and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the 
 freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress 
 such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for 
 their actual freedom. 
 
 " That the Executive will, on the first day of January afore- 
 said, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, 
 if any, in which the people thereof respectively shall then be 
 in rebellion against the United States ; and the fact that any 
 State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith
 
 336 ABRAHAM 
 
 represented in the Congress of the United States, by members 
 chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified 
 voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the ab- 
 sence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive 
 evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then 
 in rebellion against the United States. 
 
 " That attention is hereby called to an Act of Congress, en- 
 titled ' An Act to make an additional Article of "War,' approved 
 March 13, 1862, and which Act is in the words and figures 
 following : 
 
 " ' Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives 
 of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That 
 hereafter the following shall be promulgated as an additional 
 article of war, for the government of the army of the United 
 States, and shall be obeyed and observed as such : 
 
 " ' Article All officers or persons in the military or naval 
 service of the United States are prohibited from employing 
 any of the forces under their respective commands for the pur- 
 pose of returning fugitives from service or labor who may 
 have escaped from any persons to whom service or labor is. 
 claimed to be due ; and any officer who shall be found guilty 
 by a court-martial of violating this article shall be dismissed 
 from the service. 
 
 " ' Sec. 2. And be it further enacted, That this Act shall take 
 effect from and after its passage.' 
 
 " Also to the ninth and tenth sections of an Act entitled ' An 
 Act to suppress insurrection, to punish treason and rebellion,, 
 to seize and confiscate property of rebels, and for other pur- 
 poses,' approved July 16, 1862, and which sections are in the 
 words and figures following : .. 
 
 " * Section 9. And be it further enacted, That all slaves of all 
 persons who shall hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the 
 government of the United States, or who shall in any way give 
 aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking 
 refuge within the lines of the army ; and all slaves captured
 
 EMANCIPATION. 337 
 
 from such persons, or deserted by them, and coming under the 
 control of the government of the United States, and all slaves 
 of such persons found on [or] being within any place occupied 
 by rebel forces, and afterwards occupied by the forces of the 
 United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be 
 forever free of their servitude and not again held as slaves. 
 
 " ' Section 10. And be it further enacted, That no slave es- 
 caping into any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia, 
 from any other State, shall be delivered up, or in any way im- 
 peded or hindered of his liberty, except for crime, or some of- 
 fense against the laws, unless the person claiming said fugitive 
 shall first make oath that the person to whom the labor or 
 service is alleged to be due is his lawful owner, and has not 
 borne arms against the United States in the present rebellion, 
 nor in any way given aid and comfort thereto ; and no person 
 engaged in the military or naval service of the United States 
 shall, under any pretense whatever, assume to decide on the 
 validity of the claim of any person to the service or labor of 
 any other person, or surrender up any such person to the 
 claimant, on pain of being dismissed from the service.' 
 
 " And I do hereby enjoin upon and order all persons en- 
 gaged in the military or naval service of the United States to 
 observe, obey, and enforce, within their respective spheres of 
 service, the Act and sections above recited. 
 
 " And the Executive will in due time recommend that all 
 citizens of the United States who shall have remained loyal 
 thereto throughout the rebellion shall (upon the restoration of 
 the constitutional relation between the United States and their 
 respective States and people, if that relation shall have been 
 suspended or disturbed) be compensated for all losses by acts 
 of the United States, including the loss of slaves. 
 
 "In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and 
 caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. 
 
 " Done at the city of Washington, this twenty-second day of 
 September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred
 
 338 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 and sixty-two, and of the independence of the United States 
 the eighty-seventh. 
 
 [L. s.] " ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 " By the President : 
 
 " WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State." , 
 
 It was true that a day in the future was named as the date 
 npon which the Executive axe would fall, but all men knew 
 that it was as if the intervening time were already past and 
 that the act of emancipation was final. Neither retraction nor 
 modification was among the possibilities of the future. 
 
 It was to be expected that the antislavery elements of the 
 people should welcome with enthusiasm so bold and deadly a 
 stroke at the abomination they hated. They would surely be 
 glad to see the future course of the Administration determined, 
 and they would accept the results as accomplished, for they 
 were generally men of faith. 
 
 Not all, indeed ; for a shiver of dread and doubt swept over 
 .a large mass of them, and made itself audible in foreboding 
 mutters and dark prophecies. 
 
 It was even more a matter of course that the conservative ele- 
 ments would withhold their open approval until the course of 
 events should justify the act. They would require time to re- 
 cover from the shock of a new idea and to accustom their vision 
 to the glare of a new light. 
 
 There were others to be considered in an emergency so tre- 
 mendous. Mr. Lincoln well knew that the proslavery and all 
 other anti-Administration politicians at the North would in- 
 stantly be stirred to a white heat of activity. The fall elec- 
 tions were near, and he had before him a struggle on behalf of 
 the Nation. It was not well to confess openly that it was a 
 struggle of life and death. The men with whom he was to 
 contend were every way as dangerous as the armies under Lee 
 with which they were co-operating. But for them, indeed, and 
 hope and aid and comfort from them, the armies under Lee
 
 EMANCIPATION. 339 
 
 could never have been gathered in the first place, nor so long 
 have been held together. The main confidence of the Con- 
 federacy, at the outset, had been in a divided North. So it re- 
 mained, in greater or less degree, until near the end ; and the 
 fact is recorded in the very localities of the battle-fields of the 
 Antietam and Gettysburg. 
 
 Knowing how all the detrimental activities of Northern 
 treason would be stimulated by the declared and open " Aboli- 
 tionism" of the Administration, it was needful for the latter to 
 put into the hands of its supporters a new and powerful weapon, 
 for prompt use wherever needed. The foe in the rear, as well 
 as the foe in front, must be made to feel the strong grip of the 
 War power. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had prepared yet another proclamation, of tem- 
 porary effect, but that sounded sternly supplementary of the 
 first. It was a proclamation " suspending the Writ of Habeas 
 Corpus" in all cases of persons arrested, confined, or sentenced 
 by court-martial, as accused or convicted of certain specified 
 classes of offenses, all of which might be included under the 
 general head of " giving aid and comfort to the insurrection." 
 Nominally based upon a clause of the written Constitution, it 
 went so far beyond the provisions of that clause that, in the 
 opinion of many lawyers, it gave good reason for the storm of 
 fierce denunciation with which it was received. Not the Pro- 
 clamation of Emancipation itself was made the text of so many 
 angry speeches and editorials. The speakers loudly declared 
 that " freedom of speech is destroyed," and the writers that 
 " the liberty of the press is taken away." It was not so easy 
 to convince the hearers or readers of these philippics that the 
 " Despot at Washington" had actually done the deed, as yet. 
 That part of the storm blew itself over until the following 
 winter. It then broke out again in Congress, and there it ex- 
 hausted itself in speeches and resolutions of a nature which 
 profitably compelled that body to sustain Mr. Lincoln's course 
 most thoroughly, by enacting the necessary and customary
 
 340 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 laws in such cases. Congress always caught up with him 
 before the end of a session. It was yet to be discovered how 
 well he was then providing for future emergencies, and how 
 very needful it was that the required provision should be made 
 a good while beforehand. 
 
 All this was attended to. But Mr. Lincoln had a matter 
 of especial statesmanship very close at hand. If General 
 McClellan had striven to impress upon him one thing more 
 than another, it had been the politically conservative opinions 
 of the commissioned and non-commissioned officers and rank 
 and file of the Army of the Potomac. He had told the Presi- 
 dent, in about so many words, that they could not be relied 
 upon or held together for an " Abolition war." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln did not believe this setting forth implicitly, for 
 a great part of that army consisted of men who had voted for 
 him in 1860. They surely had not changed their opinions 
 greatly under the influences of the camp and battle-field. 
 
 Still it was a matter to be looked into, especially as ominous 
 reports came rapidly in concerning the tone of talk at many 
 representative " mess-tables." 
 
 The President was detained in Washington for a week or so 
 by his other duties ; but by the first week of October he was 
 with the army, on a long and very sociable visit. The victori- 
 ous troops were "resting," under McClellan's care, from the 
 fatigues of the Antietam campaign ; while Lee's defeated army, 
 not needing so much rest, was busily carrying on the war. 
 
 For several days Mr. Lincoln went about among them, 
 freely mingling and conversing with officers and men. Every- 
 where he was received with enthusiasm, and often with tokens 
 of strong affection. At no point or place or in any part of any 
 command could he detect perceptible signs of disaffection. 
 Such moderate ebullitions of prejudices as were now mere 
 "political reminiscences" had pretty nearly subsided by the 
 end of that week. Had the talk among the true-hearted sol- 
 diers, around their camp ; fires, been even louder than it was,
 
 EMANCIPATION. 341 
 
 the President's visit would have sufficed to restore a better 
 state of mind. 
 
 All political and other perils were freely discussed by Mr. 
 Lincoln with McClellan himself, and very effectively. On the 
 6th of October the former returned to "Washington. On the 
 very next day the latter issued a " general order" reminding 
 the officers and men of his command of their duty to the civil 
 authorities. It was also, in effect, a sharp suggestion and re- 
 minder that they were dissatisfied with the political attitude of 
 the government which they were defending. The great ma- 
 jority would never have known it if they had not been told, 
 and doubted it even then. He said : 
 
 " Discussion by officers and soldiers concerning public meas 
 ures determined upon and declared by the government, when 
 carried beyond the ordinary temperate and respectful expres- 
 sion of opinion, tends greatly to impair and destroy the dis- 
 cipline and efficiency of the troops by substituting the spirit of 
 political faction for the firm, steady, and earnest support of the 
 authority of the government, which is the highest duty of the 
 American soldier." 
 
 It was admirable. It was the precise form of words and 
 sound doctrine he should have meditated upon before penning 
 some of his own dispatches to the President. It sounded well 
 now ; but the army and nation somehow perversely paraphrased 
 it so that it did him no good. They made it read : " Fellow- 
 soldiers, you and I are of one mind in this matter. You con- 
 demn this accursed Abolition policy as bitterly as I do ; but it 
 is our duty to say no more about it than we can help, just now. 
 We must keep our opinions to ourselves." 
 
 There was no open fault to be found with such a " general 
 order," but it was really a species of dull reply to the Emanci- 
 pation Proclamation and the Suspension of the Writ of Habeas 
 Corpus, issued by the military representative of the Opposi- 
 tion. 
 
 The disloyal elements in the army were so small that the
 
 342 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 dismissal of one or two subordinate officers who indulged in 
 mutinous talk furnished an ample corrective. In fact, it now 
 began to dawn upon the minds even of politicians that an army 
 is a great machine, and that Mr. Lincoln had done nothing at 
 all to loosen his strong grasp of the controlling mechanism of 
 the Army of the Potomac. 
 
 That of General McClellan had been loosened materially, and 
 a few weeks later it was severed altogether and forever. Not 
 even the soldiers themselves were then aware, at first, how 
 much more close and personal thenceforward would be their 
 relations to the one man whom nobody could remove or trans- 
 fer, and under whom they served continuously, no matter what 
 subordinate officer of his selection might for the time intervene.
 
 THE HARDEST BLOW. 343 
 
 CHAPTEK XLII. 
 
 THE HARDEST BLOW. 
 
 Home-Life in the White House Death of Little Willie Proclamation of 
 Thanksgiving and Prayer Circular Letter to the Army on Sabbath 
 Keeping Spiritual Growth. 
 
 THE year 1862 was a period of rapid growth for Abraham 
 Lincoln. It was a cup filled to overflowing with trials of every 
 kind and nature. 
 
 He was calling upon all the families in the land to send 
 their sons to die upon the many battle-fields of the war, and 
 the responsibility of that sacred but awful duty weighed heavily 
 upon him. He was in the kind of furnace whose fires either 
 harden a man or burn away the dross from the better metal of 
 his composition. It is well to study the process, somewhat, in 
 order to obtain a clearer perception of the result. 
 
 There could be but little of home life at the White House. 
 It was the business centre of a vast and growing web of civil 
 and military offices and operations. Nevertheless, it was all 
 the home the President could have. His wife presided over 
 the few apartments reserved for family uses and hospitalities. 
 There were social features attached to the duties of the Execu- 
 tive, but these, for the greater part, assumed a public and offi- 
 cial character. 
 
 Nearly to the end of the first year of Mr. Lincoln's term, 
 there had been one brightness in and about the rooms and 
 offices which at times gave them almost a home-like look, for 
 his two younger boys came and went, through all of them, at 
 their own childish will. The elder of these children, Willie, 
 was a peculiarly promising boy, and Thomas, or "Tad,"
 
 344 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the younger, was full of merry mischief, the ludicrous 
 effect of which was in no wise lessened by the impediment in 
 his speech whenever he was called to an account. That was 
 not very often, indeed, nor a very serious matter for him or 
 his brother. Tad could explore the garret, discovering the 
 place where all the bell-wires in the house were attached to a 
 central pinion, and could set all bells, and all human answerers 
 of bells, in futile motion. Willie could slit into ribbons the 
 cloth covering of the private secretary's table. Both or either 
 could come and stand by their father's knee, at times, when 
 grave statesmen and pompous generals were presenting to him 
 matters of national or world-wide importance. Such rebukes 
 as might occasionally be administered to them savored very 
 little of " army discipline." They were of more value to their 
 father and to his work than anybody knew, even then. But 
 they were to render a greater and a higher service. 
 
 In February, 1862, while Mr. Lincoln was straining every 
 nerve to obtain from General McClellan the forward movement 
 of the army which a discontented people so loudly demanded, 
 the boys were taken sick and little "Willie died. 
 
 The "White House was a gloomy place during the illness of 
 the children, but it was none the less a busy one-. All work 
 went on as usual. If the President left his office to visit the 
 sick-room, it was only to return again and meet as before the 
 hourly tribulations of his unrelaxing service of his country. 
 Even the presence of death in the house could not privilege 
 him to remit for one moment his supervision of all the multi- 
 tudinous life and death intrusted to his care by the people he 
 was ruling. 
 
 It is impossible for any man or woman who has never passed 
 through some such trial to grasp and comprehend the inner 
 experiences which surely came to Mr. Lincoln at that time. 
 A multitude of those who have endured corresponding ordeals 
 will need no other key to the understanding of some of his 
 subsequent utterances.
 
 TEE HABDEST BLOW. 345 
 
 The good lady who acted as nurse for the little sufferers re- 
 lates that their father came in, at times, to watch by them, and 
 that on one occasion he walked up and down the room, saying 
 sadly : " This is the hardest trial of my life ! Why is it ? 
 Why is it?" 
 
 It was not merely a selfish expression of petulant sorrow. 
 Just so he was accustomed to walk up and down, in his great 
 Executive work-room, alone, at night, after the news had 
 come of some great battle, whether a victory or defeat. It 
 was late, indeed, when the sound of his slow, heavy, grief- 
 laden footsteps ceased, on the nights after Ball's Bluff, Chan- 
 cellorsville, and Fredericksburg, and in each case the agonized 
 question upon his lips must have been the same. 
 
 To all such questions, when honestly asked, there is an an- 
 swer, although it may not always be heard at once. A part of 
 it seems to have been sent to Mr. Lincoln through this very 
 lady. Numbers of kind, good people who knew it did their 
 best to send it to him. Dr. J. G. Holland records of her that, 
 after the worst had come and the stroke had fallen, when she 
 told Mr. Lincoln, in conversation, her own story of trial ; that 
 she was a widow, all alone, her husband and two children being 
 in heaven ; she added that she saw the hand of God in it all, 
 and had never loved Him before her affliction as she had 
 since. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln inquired of her : " How is that brought about ?" 
 
 She replied : " Simply by trusting in God and feeling that 
 He does all things well." 
 
 He asked : " Did you submit fully under the first loss ?" 
 
 Little she may have guessed what memories of suffering 
 were lurking behind the few words of that simple question. 
 She did not know what shattering of the very reason and 
 clouding of the brain of the man before her had resulted from 
 his inability to " submit fully under the first loss." That had 
 been long ago, and she was thinking only of the present. She 
 answered :
 
 346 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 " Not wholly ; but as blow came upon blow, and all was taken, 
 I could and did submit, and was very happy." 
 
 He responded : " I am gkd to hear you say that. Your 
 experience will help me to bear my afflictions." He had de- 
 termined to imitate her and to fully submit, now blow upon 
 blow had come. 
 
 On the morning of the funeral of Willie, he said of the 
 prayers offered for him by the good people all over the land : 
 "I am glad to hear that. I want them to pray for me. I 
 need their prayers." 
 
 That to theirs he added his own is also a matter of record : 
 and yet there have been, and perhaps now are, men and women 
 so grossly ignorant of human nature as to suppose that such an 
 effect, so produced upon such a man, and followed by an in- 
 creasing instead of diminishing attrition of toil and trial, was 
 or could be other than eternally indelible. 
 
 A few weeks later, before the grass grew well upon the 
 grave of little Willie, occurred the terrific fighting and slaughter 
 of Shiloh and Corinth, in which victory was wrested from the 
 jaws of defeat at the cost of the sons of thousands of darkened 
 households. It was an occasion for thankfulness, and Mr. 
 Lincoln issued a proclamation of thanksgiving for that and 
 other victories, asking the people to " render thanks to our 
 Heavenly Father for these inestimable blessings." 
 
 The thanks were sincere, for the gleams of light from the 
 West were greatly needed in those days of national darkness 
 and depression ; but the lesson of the President's personal trial 
 followed in the plain words which directed those who offered 
 thanks also to " implore spiritual consolation in behalf of all 
 those who have been brought into affliction by the casualties 
 and calamities of civil war." 
 
 Not then, perhaps not now, could Southern fathers and 
 mothers accept the idea that he could not possibly have ex- 
 cluded them, in his mental vision of the sufferers who were in 
 need of " spiritual consolation," but they were no more ex-
 
 THE HARDEST BLOW. 347 
 
 eluded from his thought than they were from the express terms 
 of the proclamation. 
 
 There was little occasion for Mr. Lincoln to express himself 
 upon doctrinal points. His early life and subsequent associa- 
 tions had put it out of his power to examine, approve, and ac- 
 cept any one formulated creed of any one church or sect, even 
 if he had set himself at the task of selection ; but his reverence 
 for God and His revealed law continued to increase. 
 
 When a delegation of well-meaning gentlemen called upon 
 him to urge, in effect, that no more battles should be fought 
 on Sunday, as so many already had been fought, he could re- 
 ply, half humorously, that the Rebel commanders would need 
 to be taken into consultation before anything definite could be 
 done in that direction. Nevertheless, on the 16th of Novem- 
 ber, 1862, he sent out to the soldiers a circular letter which 
 gave his views upon the Sunday question very distinctly. He 
 urged upon them that^ " The importance for man and beast of 
 the prescribed weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian sol- 
 diers and sailors, a becoming deference to the best sentiment 
 of a Christian people, and a due regard for the Divine "Will, 
 demand that Sunday labor in the army and navy be reduced 
 to the measure of strict necessity." He added, even more 
 strenuously : " The discipline and character of the national 
 forces should not suffer, nor the cause they defend be imper- 
 iled, by the profanation of the day or the name of the Most 
 High." 
 
 The only escape from the obvious meaning of these and 
 many other similar utterances, as expressions of the operations 
 and condition of Mr. Lincoln's mind at this time, is to roundly 
 charge him with hypocrisy. 
 
 This, too, has been done ; but the absurdity of the allegation 
 comes out in strong relief when the words he spoke are exam- 
 ined in connection with dates and facts, and particularly when 
 collated with the sad event in his own family. 
 
 It is now forever too late to call in question either the fact or
 
 348 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the depth of his religious convictions. It is too late to deny 
 that he again and again made public as well as private profes- 
 sion of his simple faith. Especially is it of no manner of im- 
 portance for the best of witnesses to testify, " he used to talk, 
 sometimes, kind o' half-way infidel, when I knew him, back in 
 Illinois." The testimony may cheerfully be accepted as hon- 
 estly given, but it does not bear at all upon the case before the 
 court.
 
 THE TRENT AFFAIR. 349 
 
 CHAPTEE XLIII. 
 
 THE TRENT AFFAIR. 
 
 Two Frontier Posts Western Successes A Slice at a Time Trouble with 
 England Shortsighted Patriotism A Message to the English People 
 Captain Wilkes Promoted Border State Unionism. 
 
 AT the outset of the Rebellion the District of Columbia was 
 as much within the intended boundaries of the Confederacy as 
 was any similar area on the northern line of the State of Ten- 
 nessee. Maryland was even more nearly ready for secession 
 than Kentucky ; and the difficulty of retaining either State 
 in the Union was about the same, and required the operation 
 of competent armed forces as well as prudent statesmanship. 
 Washington city was therefore, in the beginning, a position 
 occupied by the Union troops well within the enemy's lines. 
 Afterwards it became an all-important frontier post. 
 
 That the city was occupied or held at all was due to Mr. 
 Lincoln's success in carrying on the war for months before the 
 people generally knew there was one going forward. 
 
 A serious aggravation and complication of the difficulties of 
 the situation resulted from this history and locality of the 
 political capital. The minds of men, at home and abroad, be- 
 came absorbed in watching the fluctuations of the struggle for 
 the capture, at one time, of the city of Washington and, at 
 another, of the almost correspondingly situated city of Rich- 
 mond. The interest in these campaigns, their advances and 
 retreats, their many and bloody battles, became so deep that 
 equally important contests in other parts of the great field 
 failed to receive the popular attention they merited. Had the 
 importance of successes in the West been better understood by
 
 350 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the people, their depressions over disasters in the East would 
 have been, at times, advantageously diminished. 
 
 To the mind of Mr. Lincoln, as to many other minds, civil 
 and military, it was an axiom that the Confederacy must needs 
 be taken possession of, as he curtly expressed it, " a slice at a 
 time." That was the way in which it was done ; but it was not 
 always easy to persuade men of the value of the consecutive 
 slices as they were cut off and secured. 
 
 In the early days of the war the great State of Missouri was 
 more in doubt as to its political future than was Maryland. Its 
 loss would have entailed consequences every way as disastrous 
 to the Union cause ; but the rapid series of movements and suc- 
 cesses, beginning with those of General John C. Fremont, 
 which placed it beyond the reach of the Confederate com- 
 manders was but moderately appreciated on the Atlantic sea- 
 board and not at all in Europe. It was won and held by 
 achievements of high merit both in statesmanship and arms ; 
 and in like manner was the State of Kentucky severed from 
 the hopes of the Confederacy. Subsequent operations were 
 transferred from the Ohio River and the Illinois line of the 
 Mississippi River and the Iowa border, away down to the line 
 of the Cumberland River, and the grand result was accepted 
 by the public very much as if a ripe apple had fallen from a 
 tree. The consecutive apples fell, indeed, but the shaking of 
 the tree began very early in the season and cost the lives of 
 many thousands of brave men. 
 
 There was a respectable amount of popular rejoicing when a 
 permanent foothold was won, by the Federal forces under Burn- 
 side, on the sea-coast of North Carolina ; but the grumbling mul- 
 titude refused to see that it was of any great importance to the 
 general result. 
 
 Even when, in April, 1862, the city of New Orleans, and 
 with it the mouth of the Mississippi River, fell into the hands 
 of the national troops and a fair degree of enthusiasm was 
 kindled, for a moment, nine men out of ten would have tossed
 
 TEE TRENT AFFAIR. 351 
 
 their hats more zealously over the news of a much less fruitful 
 victory on the Potomac. 
 
 It was not so with Mr. Lincoln. From first to last he 
 watched the course of events in the West with an int&^st 
 which never flagged. All that country was familiar ground to 
 him, and he made himself thoroughly master of the peculiar 
 campaigning required for its reduction. He knew the rivers 
 and their variations of flood and fall ; the lowlands and the 
 highlands and their roads and lack of roads ; more than all, 
 he knew, better than did the Eastern generals and statesmen 
 around him, the peculiar characteristics of the varied popula- 
 tions and how very far they were from being one people. 
 
 The civil war was a War for the Union in more ways than 
 one. In all its processes it operated as a national unifier, and 
 Mr. Lincoln aided the processes as best he could. He drew 
 Western soldiers to fight in the Army of the Potomac until he 
 changed materially the originally somewhat sectional composi- 
 tion of that organism. He sent Eastern troops to join in the 
 marches and battles in Kentucky and Tennessee. It was not 
 by any manner of accident that volunteers from widely sepa- 
 rated localities found themselves marching up to the guns of 
 the enemy shoulder to shoulder. Even as early as December, 
 1862, the records show that the Army of the Potomac con- 
 tained regiments, batteries, or brigades from Wisconsin, In- 
 diana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Illinois. At a some- 
 what later date, the Army of the Cumberland contained, in 
 like manner, distinct organizations from Pennsylvania, New 
 York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, and 
 Maine. This wise blending of the contingents of the several 
 States continued to the end of the war. 
 
 How closely the President watched the military operations 
 in the West appears from his dispatches and correspondence. 
 It is further illustrated by his recognition of the successive 
 achievements of Pope, Halleck, Sherman, Sheridan, Grant, and 
 a long list of other meritorious officers.
 
 352 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 His eyes were everywhere ; and everywhere the commanders 
 and soldiers, in camp and field, were made conscious of his 
 thoughtful sympathy, and made to feel the eager help with 
 which he urged them to the performance of their duty. He 
 gave them all but his personal presence, and his telegraphic 
 correspondence proves that they almost had that also. Still the 
 records of battles and sieges, in whatever section or locality, 
 belong to the history of the war and not to the " life" of the 
 man. 
 
 The year 1862 contained other than military problems for 
 Mr. Lincoln to meet and solve. Our foreign affairs were suf- 
 ficiently complicated by the almost unconcealed sympathy of 
 England and France with the Jefferson Davis government. 
 Mr. Seward had already established a high reputation as a 
 diplomatist by the skill and vigor with which he had continu- 
 ally parried their expressions of half -angry discontent. The 
 Confederate ruler had it in mind to establish closer relations 
 with these very powers, and with that object sent out two com- 
 missioners, duly accredited. These men, named Mason and 
 Slidell, had both been members of the Senate of the United 
 States. Escaping from Charleston to Cuba, they sailed from 
 Havana, on the Yth of November, on the British mail-steamer 
 Trent, bound for St. Thomas. On the next day the Trent was 
 stopped at sea by the United States war-steamer San Jacinto y 
 Captain Wilkes ; the two commissioners were taken out of her 
 by force, against the protests of her officers, and carried to the 
 United States to be shut up in Fort Warren. 
 
 It was a high-handed proceeding, strongly resembling, in 
 many of its features, the accustomed course of Great Britain in 
 dealing with weaker powers ; and the indignation it aroused in 
 the British mind, official and otherwise, was extreme. It was 
 natural that such should be the case ; but the tone and manner 
 in which the indignation found expression rendered the task of 
 offering reparation a peculiarly hard one. The path to hostili- 
 ties was made easy and the path to peace was half shut up.
 
 THE TRENT AFFAIR. 353 
 
 At the same time Mr. Lincoln's perplexities were multiplied 
 by the state of the public mind at the North. It was exceed- 
 ingly bitter against England, for it was well understood that 
 her ill offices to us in,our hour of trouble had but lamely halted 
 short of open war, and that further evil was sure to come to us 
 from her. Popular patience was nearly exhausted, and, for a 
 moment, the general opinion was plainly and loudly uttered 
 that avowed and regular hostilities could do us little more harm 
 than could the veiled but steady pressure and the secret thrusts 
 of a half -concealed enmity. The capture of the two Rebel emis- 
 saries was hailed with an acclaim as boisterous as if Captain 
 "Wilkes had won a great sea-fight and had not disturbed the 
 shadowy "law of nations" in the least. He became, in fact, the 
 hero of the hour. 
 
 It was necessary, however, that we should have no open 
 quarrel with England, and the law of the matter was sufficiently 
 in her favor to enable the United States to withdraw witht 
 dignity, almost in spite of her. 
 
 At that juncture of the struggle with the South, a new 
 crisis; British fleets upon the coast; British supplies of 
 money and war material pouring into the ports of the Con- 
 federacy without restriction, instead of under serious diffi- 
 culties ; British annoyance of Northern seaports, and the neces- 
 sity for the immediate conquest of the Canadas by the United 
 States, would have added terribly to the burdens of the nation. 
 The result to the United States might have been the same, in 
 the long-run ; but the " run" would have been longer, and the 
 cost vastly greater. England, indeed, might have been badly 
 crippled ; but there would have been loss instead of gain in 
 that, for no sensible American wishes to see her crippled. In 
 fact, it is hard to imagine anything more short-sighted and 
 stupid than the enmity of the then government of England to 
 the cause of the Union. As Mr. Lincoln pointedly remarked 
 to the English people in his next Message to the Congress of 
 the United States, the shortest way out of the commercial diffi-
 
 354 ABRAHAM LINCOLN: 
 
 culties resulting to foreign nations from our civil war was to 
 be found in the prompt suppression rather than in the pro- 
 longed maintenance of the Rebellion. It was strictly true ; 
 and if England and France suffered losses from the continu- 
 ance of the war, the responsibility therefor was largely their 
 own. England was practically and very effectively the ally oJ 
 the South, on land and sea ; while the animus of the French 
 Imperial Government, never more than externally courteous, 
 found its most perfect expression at last in its ill-fated Mexican 
 policy, rendered possible only by the fact that the hands of the 
 United States were tied from interfering. 
 
 The refusal of Mr. Lincoln to be dragged into a war with 
 England was a bitter disappointment to the Confederacy and 
 to all our other national enemies, and not even the truly ad- 
 mirable management of the matter by the Secretary of State 
 could altogether satisfy the angry patriots who had glorified 
 Captain Wilkes. 
 
 The government was roundly and lavishly berated ; but the 
 iwo Rebel commissioners were liberated ; and Captain "Wilkes 
 ^was soon promoted. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was under a perpetual pressure from the most 
 sincere and earnest supporters of the government, for these 
 were mostly men of positive minds and strong convictions. 
 They were the very men to make a great nation out of, and 
 they spoke their minds liberally. They could not see all the 
 obstacles in his way, as he saw them, nor was it always safe to 
 explain too fully and minutely what he was doing. 
 
 The very existence of some of his most serious hindrances 
 had to be kept to himself. The men were by no means numer- 
 ous who could have been made to understand the methods pur- 
 sued with the border-States, and notably with Kentucky. 
 That name and those of Maryland and Missouri and Delaware, 
 and so forth, were but geographical expressions to the great 
 majority. The President, however, was dealing, not with geo- 
 graphy and local boundaries, but with men, and their prejudices
 
 THE TRENT AFFAIR. 355 
 
 and fears and self-interests, and, what was all-important, with 
 their sure changes of opinion. 
 
 In the same Message to the Congress above mentioned, he 
 was able to say : " These three States, of Maryland, Kentucky, 
 and Missouri, neither of which would promise a single soldier 
 at the first, have now an aggregate of not less than forty 
 thousand in the field for the Union ; while, of their citizens, 
 certainly not more than a third of that number, and they of 
 doubtful whereabouts and doubtful existence, are in arms 
 against it."
 
 356 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTEK XLIY. 
 
 A DARK WINTER. 
 
 Fredericksburg A Lost Opportunity Burnside and Hooker The Bur- 
 dens of a Military Establishment Congressional Counselors The 
 Heart of the Nation An Extraordinary Ambassador The Birth of 
 the Union League. 
 
 THE year 1862 closed, both for the country and for Mr. 
 Lincoln, in the great grief of the defeat of the Army of the 
 Potomac at Fredericksburg. It was a blow of peculiar severity 
 to the President, for he was made to seem responsible for the 
 movements which led to it and for the mismanaged battle itself. 
 It affected him very deeply, and yet, now that all the facts 
 have been sought out, it is impossible to charge him with any 
 fault in the premises. 
 
 That he had earnestly insisted upon active operations was 
 true. He had done that daily, from the outset ; but he had 
 not undertaken to direct details ; and the inexcusable blunders 
 of the Fredericksburg fight were committed without his 
 knowledge. 
 
 The history of the affair had deep lessons in it. By an un- 
 derstanding with General Burnside, General McClellan con- 
 tinued in command until the 9th of November, and the orders 
 for the forward movement were issued by him in person. No 
 change, for a number of days, was made in the plans which he 
 had previously approved. General Halleck had at once called 
 upon General Burnside for a " plan of campaign," and the 
 latter prepared and submitted an abstract of his conception of 
 the situation. This did not meet the approval of the General- 
 in-Chief, and he at once went, in person, to General Burnside's 
 headquarters, at "Warrenton, Virginia. Here, on the 12th and
 
 A DARK WINTER. 357 
 
 13th of the month, a long conference was held, which resulted 
 in the submission of their separate plans to the President. On 
 the 14th, General Halleck telegraphed to General Burnside 
 Mr. Lincoln's assent to the views of the latter, but with this 
 vital and unmistakable indication, in the express words of the 
 dispatch : " He thinks it [your plan] will succeed if you move 
 rapidly. Otherwise, not." 
 
 Nothing could be more plain and definite in the rendering 
 of a military decision. Subsequent investigations justify Mr. 
 Lincoln. If General Burnside had moved rapidly, as he did 
 not, his troops would have been in possession of the very posi- 
 tion at Fredericksburg, then unoccupied, from which he after- 
 wards vainly strove to dislodge the iron veterans of General 
 Lee. 
 
 The approval of his plan, as submitted, by no means im- 
 plied that he should permit the best general of the Confederacy, 
 with a recorded force of 78,228 effective men and guns in pro- 
 portion, to deliberately intrench himself on ground of his own 
 choosing, and then, without any definite plan of battle, to hurl 
 against them, in vague incapacity, column after column of 
 doomed volunteers. 
 
 That is about all that can be said of the generalship of the 
 battle of Fredericksburg. The men behaved splendidly. They 
 inflicted sharp losses upon their antagonists. They were sent 
 to do an impossibility, and they failed simply because it was 
 an impossibility ; but, for a hurt and disappointed moment, 
 half the nation believed that they had been ordered to the vain 
 effort by a " civilian" President, interfering with and over- 
 ruling his general in the field. 
 
 General Burnside was under no pressure whatever which 
 need have impelled him to the assault of General Lee's posi- 
 tion ; and there was no good reason, political or military, why 
 the Rebel army should not have been permitted to encamp all 
 winter in those particular intrenchments. If Lee could have 
 been induced to do that very thing, as he surely could not have
 
 358 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 been, being a man of uncommon good sense in such matters, 
 the result would have been a greater advantage to the Union 
 arms than had been won upon the banks of the Antietam 
 Creek. The very maintenance of his army was draining the 
 life-blood of the Confederacy, while the resources of the North 
 had hardly as yet been drawn upon. " Active operations" to 
 keep him there would have been grand generalship. Much 
 hard fighting would have been required for such a feat ; but all 
 the while the Confederacy would have been bleeding to death, 
 and the Army of the Potomac would not have scored another 
 bloody disaster. 
 
 The American people had no experience of what is called 
 " militarism," and had but little actual knowledge of the need- 
 less monstrosities which curse the Old World under the guise 
 of " governments." A consequence of this was that a most 
 erroneous impression prevailed, throughout the free States, as 
 to the nature and extent of the sacrifices they had made and as 
 to their remaining capacity for more of the same kind. 
 
 Every great nation in Europe is compelled, habitually, year 
 by year, to do all that the North had done, up to that time, 
 except as to the cost of what manufacturing establishments de- 
 scribe as " the plant" of their undertakings. That is, the pro- 
 vision of machinery and appliances and the needful outlays 
 involved in beginnings upon new ground. The waste had 
 been considerable, in many directions, but the growth and 
 prosperity of the community, as a whole, had not been danger- 
 ously interfered with. A very different state of things existed 
 at the South, owing to fundamental defects of the Southern 
 social structure. 
 
 The battle of Fredericksburg was fought on the 13th of De- 
 cember, just after the assembling of Congress, while Mr. Lin- 
 coln was preparing to deal with the most dangerous period of 
 his political administration. It rendered a winter campaign 
 in Virginia an impossibility, and made necessary another 
 change in the command of the Army of the Potomac. Gen-
 
 A DARK WINTEE. 359 
 
 eral Burnside was relieved and General Joseph Hooker was 
 named in Ms place. 
 
 " Fighting Joe," as his immediate command had delighted 
 to call him, was a tried soldier, but, regarded as a general in 
 charge of a great army, he was necessarily another experiment. 
 Neither the President, nor the army, nor the country at large, 
 was ready to invest him with unlimited confidence as to his 
 fitness for his new and vast responsibilities. He himself was 
 probably the only man in the nation who never for a moment 
 lacked or lost that very unlimited confidence : and there was 
 both good and evil in that trait of his character. 
 
 Congress assembled in a perplexed and captious frame of 
 mind. Almost every member was filled to the lips with ut- 
 tered, or unuttered and unutterable, criticisms upon the policy 
 of the Administration and the management of the war. A 
 steady stream of Senators and Representatives poured into and 
 out of Mr. Lincoln's office at the White House, and their 
 recommendations of their constituents for appointments and 
 promotions were accompanied by statements, more or less 
 frank and positive, of their individual views upon the ques- 
 tions of the day. It is very interesting, now, to discover how 
 unvarying is the testimony borne by all these intelligent and 
 patriotic men to the kindly and considerate reception they met 
 with at the hands of the President. This, too, even when the 
 strength of their convictions or the warmth of their tempers 
 gave their language the tone and form of severe censure. He 
 could afford to take it from such men, and to present, in return 
 his own understanding of the matter. So it came to pass, be- 
 fore long, that his Congressional censors became bound to him 
 by near ties of mutual understanding and respect. A sort of 
 family feeling grew in the hearts of many, unconsciously re- 
 garding themselves as watching the control of the common 
 household by a man who oddly combined the functions of a 
 father and an elder brother. As for the people generally, they 
 had become well accustomed to talking, half affectionately, about
 
 360 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 " Father Abraham ;" but there were not lacking some statesmen 
 who seemed to look upon him rather as somehow a sort of 
 senior partner and business manager of a firm in which they 
 were at least "junior" partners and entitled to a voice in the 
 direction of all its affairs. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln did not look upon Congress itself as, in any 
 manner or sense, a " junior partner," and these perpetual con- 
 sultations with its individual members enabled him to explain 
 to that body both his past conduct and his future plans quite 
 satisfactorily. The net result was that laws were passed to 
 cover the one and provide for the other, and the proposers of 
 the specific " bills" required for the objects attained continued 
 to their dying days under the impression that the legislation 
 originated with them and not with Mr. Lincoln. This had 
 been the rule from the beginning, and illustrates notably his 
 infallible prescience of the popular will and of its approval or 
 disapproval of any supposable course of action. There was 
 nothing mysterious or magical in this faculty. It is not even 
 difficult to discern its source and the methods of its opera- 
 tion. 
 
 Any purpose which any man may put in form, or any act to 
 which he may give his free assent, must be, to a greater or 
 less extent, an expression of his " will." The will of any man 
 is the resultant of the emotions of what we describe as his 
 heart, guided, although under many interferences, by whatever 
 he may have of reason. If, therefore, Mr. Lincoln had any 
 sufficient gauge or measure of the emotions of the men and 
 women upon whose united wills his power depended, he could 
 then trace with ease the average results of their reasoning pro- 
 cesses. 
 
 That he continually did this very thing is a matter of re- 
 cord, and has been commented upon as a marvel; but it was 
 nothing of the kind. He possessed an unerring "gauge" in 
 the sea-like depth and breadth and power of his own emotional 
 nature, adjusted as it was to the solemn and mournful earnest-
 
 A DARK WINTER. 361 
 
 ness of those days of trial. He suffered with all, and more than 
 each ; and he could therefore understand all and be sure how 
 far the popular heart and will would go with him and sustain 
 him in the exercise of power, at any time or in any direction. 
 He accepted, as frankly and unselfishly as it was offered, the 
 growing reverence and love of multitudes. It was to him per- 
 fectly natural that they should feel as he did, and should most 
 humanly expect him to feel as they did. So he could talk 
 with women about their sons, and not be at all ashamed to weep 
 a little with them when he could not altogether restrain him- 
 self. The tears welled up more and more easily as time went 
 by, and yet they did not often get up further than into the 
 softening tones of his voice or the ever-deepening sadness of 
 his eyes. 
 
 Corresponding processes of unformulated interior thought 
 enabled the President to gauge with accuracy the growing 
 bitterness of the "opposition" leaders. He had little time to 
 spend in reading their printed calumnies and vituperations, or 
 even in hearing the reports of them brought him by his friends. 
 Every now and then his angry assailants forced their views 
 upon him, in one form or another. His mails were fairly 
 overflowing with wrathful communications which he never 
 saw ; but now and then his eye and ear were gained through 
 other channels. 
 
 A representative man of the opposition to the Administra- 
 tion, and peculiarly of that wing of it which had openly sym- 
 pathized with the Eebellion, was Mr. Fernando Wood, of New 
 York. This was the man who, when mayor of that city, at 
 the outbreak of secession, had publicly advised that the muni- 
 cipality should set up for itself as a " free city," so severing its 
 connection with abolitionism and retaining its commercial re- 
 lations with the cotton-producing areas of the South. In the 
 latter part of 1862 he addressed to Mr. Lincoln a letter, in 
 which he set forth that he was trustworthily advised that the 
 Southern States would send representatives to the next Con-
 
 362 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 gress, provided that a full and general amnesty should permit 
 them to do so. 
 
 The trap was neither so well set nor so well baited as it 
 seemed to be, and Mr. Lincoln was not drawn into any blunder. 
 He quietly replied, on the 12th of December, the day before 
 the battle of Fredericksburg, and while he was obviously not 
 superintending, by telegraph or otherwise, the precise move- 
 ments of the Army. He paid but moderate attention to any 
 part of Mr. Wood's letter, except that which declared his 
 ^w^si-diplomatic position and authority. Of this, he said: 
 " I strongly suspect your information will prove to be ground- 
 less ; nevertheless I thank you for communicating it to me. 
 Understanding the phrase in the paragraph above quoted 
 [from Mr. Wood's letter], " the Southern States will send repre- 
 sentatives to the next Congress,' to be substantially the same 
 as tl^at ' the people of the Southern States would cease resist- 
 ance, and would re-inaugurate, submit to, and maintain, the 
 national authority, within the limits of such States ; under the 
 Constitution of the United States,' I say that in such case the 
 war would cease on the part of the United States ; and if, 
 within a reasonable time, a full and general amnesty were 
 necessary to such an end, it would not be withheld." 
 
 Mr. Wood strove hard to carry the matter further, and to 
 obtain some kind of authority from the Administration for 
 acting as a go-between and proslavery-Democratic angel of 
 peace ; but Mr. Lincoln could not be induced to trust him with 
 the honor of the nation in such a delicate matter. Had he 
 done so, neither the rebels in arms, nor the Union armies, 
 nor the people of the South, nor any part of the people of the 
 North, nor any foreign power on earth, would have failed to 
 conclude and say : " The disasters have done their work. His 
 courage has failed him. He is suing for peace. He has even 
 employed a well-known enemy as an ambassador." 
 
 It is true that there was always a large " peace element" at 
 the South ; but at no time was it in even momentary power,
 
 A DAEK WINTER. 363 
 
 and Mr. Lincoln was only too well advised of the increasing 
 rigidity of the military despotism exercised by the Davis gov- 
 ernment at Richmond. He was now watching it with all the 
 greater solicitude for the reason that he foresaw a necessity for 
 tightening the pressure of the governmental machinery under 
 his own hands. 
 
 The disloyal elements in the free States, especially of the 
 populations nearest the army lines, had for some time been 
 taking on a form of which the general public knew but little. 
 Under several names, secret affiliations of "orders," and 
 lodges and memberships, honeycombed the whole country, 
 in communication with corresponding organizations at the 
 South. 
 
 To counteract these agencies in some measure, as well as to 
 afford an effective framework to the political forces which 
 were sustaining the Administration and the armies in the field, 
 Mr. Lincoln had silently favored the creation of what was soon 
 known as " The Union League." Secret associations of Union 
 men, both white and black, already existed at the South ; but 
 no one of these had succeeded in becoming general. The 
 black men are supposed to have attained a common and general 
 method of mutual recognition and confidence, much more 
 nearly than had the whites. Even as to the former, however, 
 and surely as to the latter, the more effective " Union secret 
 societies" of the South were geographically restricted and local- 
 ized. It was needful that those of the JSTorth should be united 
 under one organization, and that the centre of its control should 
 be at the seat of government. 
 
 In the summer of 1862 the nucleus of the League was 
 formed, at Washington, by the selection, rather than the elec- 
 tion, of a " Grand Council " of twelve members. By this 
 committee of control agents were sent out in every direction 
 and with great rapidity. Local " councils" were organized in 
 every city and town and village of the North. The most 
 complete political machine ever known took form in the very
 
 364 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 heat and pressure of the fall elections, and spread its ramifica- 
 tions further and deeper through all the winter months. 
 
 It was not easy for any critic to say that Mr. Lincoln had 
 anything to do with it ; but there were those who remarked 
 upon the suspicious fact that the Grand Council was made up 
 of his personal friends and official subordinates, even to the 
 extent that one of his private secretaries was Grand Corre- 
 sponding Secretary of the entire League. 
 
 In this way, and otherwise, every available measure was 
 taken to organize the patriotism of the nation and to maintain 
 its activity. But the President was learning yet another lesson 
 from the Confederacy. The Southern leaders, almost from 
 the beginning, had made the burden of their pitiless exactions 
 fall most heavily upon the parts of their populations which 
 they believed to be least in sympathy with them. The 
 National Government had touched its disaffected citizens only 
 through the equal bearing of taxes payable in money. The 
 awful tax which was payable in human flesh and blood had 
 been borne by the patriots only, of whatever political name or 
 party affiliation. 
 
 The men who loved their country most unselfishly were in 
 the army to so great an extent that the consequences were al- 
 ready dangerously manifested at the polls. Should the process 
 go on uncorrected, it might yet affect the balance of power in 
 State governments and in Congress. There were large districts 
 in which the upholders of the government were weak, not only 
 from numerical depletion, but because their best and ablest 
 leaders were in the field with their constituents. Day by day 
 their enemies grew more annoying and defiant. The Union 
 League was a strong arm, indeed ; but the situation demanded 
 another weapon, and Mr. Lincoln had planned, and now laid 
 before Congress, a new and strenuously energetic " policy."
 
 EXECUTION. 365 
 
 CHAPTEE XLY. 
 
 EXECUTION. 
 
 Efforts for Compensation to Owners of Slaves Dreams of Colonization 
 The Future of the African in America The Final Proclamation The 
 Slave-Owner a Southern Sympathizer. 
 
 Congress assembled in December, 1862, the issuing 
 of the final Proclamation of Emancipation on the approaching 
 New- Year's Day was an already assured result. 
 
 Its future effect, so far as the nominally seceded States were 
 concerned, would depend much upon the success of current 
 military operations. The people, however, of the border slave- 
 States, occupied in part or in whole by Union armies, were 
 rapidly becoming aware that the " peculiar institution," among 
 themselves, had received its death-blow. All discontent was 
 deepened and all loyal sentiment was weakened in the minds 
 of the slave-owners of Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, Kentucky, 
 and West Virginia, and all in other States that sympathized 
 with them and respected the Constitutional legality of their 
 human property. By no fault of their own they were losing 
 that which had come to them in strict accordance with the 
 laws of their States and country, and these they were still 
 obeying. They had vested rights which even the hand of 
 revolution and reformation was bound to respect as far as 
 possible. It was true that the proclamation did not include 
 them in its sweeping blow, but there now remained no effective 
 or operative power to keep in bondage any slave, anywhere, who 
 should make an effort for freedom. It was a sense of justice, 
 therefore, quite as much as policy, which led Mr. Lincoln to
 
 366 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 urge upon Congress the adoption of a system of compensated 
 emancipation for these areas and for the reimbursement of 
 loyal owners of the prices of slaves set free by the operations 
 of the war. Even at the North such legislation was regarded, 
 very generally, as both wise and just. But the measures pro- 
 posed were permitted to die. 
 
 From an early day, as a follower of Henry Clay, Mr. Lin- 
 coln had vaguely entertained the ideas of that statesman with 
 reference to the colonization of the colored population. So 
 long as the mass of it seemed to be doomed to perpetual servi- 
 tude, the yearly shipment of a few hundreds, or even many 
 thousands, to any other part of the world was little more than 
 a philanthropic experiment, with but moderate possibilities of 
 good or evil. Now, however, in the very act and hour of giv- 
 ing wholesale freedom to millions of the marked race, the 
 problem of their future well-being pressed with increasing 
 force upon the heart and brain of the man who set them free. 
 It was yet a question in his mind whether they could safely be 
 intrusted with the powers and responsibilities of citizenship. 
 He openly stated, even to delegations of black men standing 
 before him in the Executive Mansion, his belief that the black 
 and white races, living in contact, were a mutual detriment to 
 each other. It would not be easy to disprove the correctness 
 of such an opinion from the records of the African in America 
 up to the year 1863, and it could even be fairly well defended 
 from the annals of after-years. In his perplexity, at the time, 
 Mr. Lincoln turned to his old dream of colonization. Fantastic 
 as it was, he clung to it for a while, and until the better con- 
 viction forced itself upon him that the Africans had come to 
 America to stay and must be made men of, here and now. 
 
 His message to Congress, at this session, did little more than 
 set forth the difficulties he had already discovered in the way 
 of his idea. It is not impossible that he learned something 
 from writing and reading his own statement that the black 
 man refused to go to Liberia or to Hayti, and that there seemed
 
 EXECUTION. 367 
 
 to be no other patch of the earth's surface upon which he could 
 be securely landed. 
 
 Less than two years later, still in the same spirit of thought- 
 ful care for the welfare of the freed black men, he was ready 
 to say, and said, to a personal friend whom he had appointed to 
 an important civil post in one of the seceded States which was 
 first to be reconstructed : "I am glad you are so strongly in 
 favor of giving the colored men the ballot. Do all you can to 
 have it done now. I urge you to push the matter. Once the 
 war is over, the ballot will soon be about all the protection 
 they will have. "We must fix it so they can protect themselves. 
 They must have it now, and then it can't be taken away from 
 them." 
 
 That was in September, 1864 ; but he could not have said as 
 much in the winter of 1862-3, even if the belief and purpose 
 had then existed in his mind and will. Emancipation itself, 
 by the act of a " military despotism," was about as heavy a 
 burden as the political fortunes of the Administration were 
 just then able to carry. 
 
 It was staggering a little under its accumulated load, for this 
 included the entire military and diplomatic situation ; the bat- 
 tles in Virginia ; the bad look of the recent fall elections ; the 
 necessity of increasing taxes ; the reorganization of the national 
 finances ; and the imperative need for more men to be expended 
 as soldiers. 
 
 On the first of January, 1863, according to his covenant in 
 September, the President issued the final Proclamation of 
 Emancipation, as follows : 
 
 " Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the 
 year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a 
 proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, 
 containing, among other things, the following, to wit : 
 
 " ' That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord 
 one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as 
 slaves in any State, or designated part of a State, the people
 
 368 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, 
 shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free ; and the Execu- 
 tive Government of the United States, including the military 
 and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the 
 freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress 
 such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for 
 their actual freedom. 
 
 " ' That the Executive will, on the first day of January afore- 
 said, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States, 
 if any, in which the people thereof respectively shall then be 
 in rebellion against the United States ; and the fact that any 
 State or the people thereof shall on that day be in good faith 
 represented in the Congress of the United States, by members 
 chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified 
 voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the ab- 
 sence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive 
 evidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then 
 in rebellion against the United States.' 
 
 "Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the 
 United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Com- 
 mander-in-Chief of the army and navy of the United States in 
 time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and gov- 
 ernment of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war 
 measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of 
 January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred 
 and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do, 
 publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days 
 from the day first above mentioned, order and designate, as the 
 States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respect- 
 ively are this day in rebellion against the United States, the 
 following, to wit : 
 
 " Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Ber- 
 nard, Plaquemine, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James, 
 Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, St. Marci, 
 St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans),
 
 EXECUTION. 369 
 
 Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North 
 Carolina, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties desig- 
 nated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkely, Ac- 
 comae, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne, 
 and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth), 
 and which excepted parts are left precisely as if this proclama- 
 tion were not issued. 
 
 " And, by virtue of the power and for the purposes afore- 
 said, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves 
 within said designated States and parts of States are, and 
 henceforward shall be, free ; and that the Executive Govern- 
 ment of the United States, including the military and naval 
 authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of 
 said persons. 
 
 " And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be 
 free, to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-de- 
 fense ; and I recommend to them that in all cases, when al- 
 lowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages. 
 
 " And I further declare and make known that such persons 
 of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of 
 the United States, to garrison forts, positions, and other places, 
 and to man vessels of all sorts in said service. 
 
 " And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, 
 warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I in- 
 voke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious 
 favor of Almighty God. 
 
 " In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my name, and 
 caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. 
 
 " Done at the city of "Washington, this first day of January, 
 in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty- 
 three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty- 
 seventh. 
 
 ABEAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 " By the President : 
 
 "WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State."
 
 370 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 The last door of possible compromise with Slavery was shut 
 and bolted firmly. All men knew that the institution could 
 not be maintained in a few detached States and parts of States. 
 Legislation might or might not provide remedies for these, but 
 the President had done his whole duty by them. Especially is 
 this true in view of the consideration, which so largely affected 
 the course of Congress, that the " loyal " population of the dis- 
 tricts in question consisted mainly of those who had no slaves 
 to lose. There were exceptions, many and honorable ; but, as 
 a general rule, wherever one found a slaveholder, in those days, 
 he found a person whose heart, if not his open deeds, were 
 with the Southern Confederacy.
 
 DARE DATS. 371 
 
 CHAPTEK XLYI. 
 
 DARK DAYS. 
 
 A Tax Payable in Men The New Financial System The States and the 
 Nation Reconstruction Begun A Flood of Calumny Freedom of 
 Speech and of the Press A Sarcastic Present to the Confederacy 
 Opposition Taking Form at the North. 
 
 THE results of the fall elections had been sufficiently un- 
 favorable to warn so experienced and shrewd a political man- 
 ager as Mr. Lincoln. It was manifestly needful that the North 
 should be reorganized for war purposes as completely as any 
 army at the end of an exhausting campaign. He had already 
 prepared for the work, and a host of busy and eager hands 
 were co-operating with him. The Union League was spread- 
 ing fast and wide. It had already accomplished excellent re- 
 sults, and promised still better things in the future. The sus- 
 pension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus had given a stern and 
 ominous suggestion to the more noisy malcontents ; but a meas- 
 ure was now preparing which was to fall with terrific force 
 upon them and their supporters. 
 
 No other request made by Mr. Lincoln of Congress for any 
 legislation at any time was ever met with so intense and bitter 
 a partisan opposition as that which was overcome in the passage 
 of the " Draft Act." By this law the entire " militia" of the 
 country, up to that time in the several control of the States as 
 such, was placed in the hands of the Federal Government, as a 
 general fund of fighting humanity. It was to be enrolled 
 under rigid provisions that swept in the whole population sup- 
 posed to be capable of carrying arms. It was to be drawn 
 rata, at the will of the Executive, subject only to the
 
 372 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 forms prescribed by the law, and without any reference what- 
 ever to the political opinions of the human beings drawn or to 
 their readiness to die for their country. Those who were 
 thoroughly willing and ready were so nearly all in the field, at 
 that date, that the " draft" was sure to draw upon the luke- 
 warm, the timid, the unwilling, the men bound by home ties 
 and business cares ; and the law contained no clause exempting 
 even the bitterest enemy of the Administration or the most 
 profound admirer of human slavery and of peace-at-any-price. 
 
 That such a law, enforced in such a manner, would work 
 great hardships in multitudes of cases was not to be denied, 
 although the Act had been carefully framed to provide for 
 these as well as might be. The power placed in the hands of 
 the President was enormous, but, in order to make it effective, 
 sundry other measures were necessary, of an entirely different 
 character. 
 
 During Mr. Lincoln's long experience in the Illinois Legis- 
 lature, and as a member of the " Long Nine" in that body and 
 * an ambitious imitator of De Witt Clinton, he had been made 
 to pass a laborious apprenticeship and course of study in all 
 matters of State debt, National debt, banks both State and Na- 
 tional; bank-notes, bankruptcies, credit and losses of credit. 
 He was well trained and prepared to join with the Secretary 
 of the Treasury, Mr. Chase, in devising the ways and means 
 for revolutionizing the finances of the country. 
 
 They were sadly in need of a most sweeping revolution ; and 
 it came. The long Congressional debates could have but one 
 termination so far as the gross amounts of money to be raised 
 were concerned, and the sums tendered to the Administration 
 were imposingly colossal. Nine hundred millions of six-per- 
 cent-interest bonds were authorized to be printed and sold to 
 somebody. Four hundred millions of Treasury notes bearing 
 interest were authorized to be printed and used as money. 
 One hundred and fifty millions of Treasury notes without in- 
 terest were also authorized ; and there is a curious suggestion
 
 DARK DAYS. 373 
 
 of the politician rather than the banker in the simultaneous 
 offering of the two kinds of circulating medium side by side. 
 The first kind remained in circulation until it had earned a few 
 cents' worth of interest, and then it did not circulate any more. 
 Still it helped pay contractors and soldiers, and that was the 
 main thing in those days. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's favorite, of all the financial schemes pushed to 
 conclusion by this Congress, was the National-Bank Act. He 
 advocated it in his message to Congress and in private conver- 
 sations with his friends. It met so strong an opposition on the 
 floors of House and Senate, from the friends of the existing 
 State-bank systems and from what yet remained of the old- 
 time enmity to a National Bank of any kind, that its fate 
 seemed more than doubtful for a time. Its possible failure 
 was regarded by Mr. Lincoln as a greater disaster than a defeat 
 of the Union arms in the field. At the same time a growing 
 jealousy of Executive interference was strong in either House, 
 and there were limits beyond which even Mr. Lincoln could 
 not safely venture. He did venture to the very verge, never- 
 theless, and the narrow margin of a majority by which the Act 
 was finally passed was obtained so directly by his personal 
 efforts, unobtrusively as these were made, that the National- 
 Bank system owes to him individually its existence and its use- 
 fulness. 
 
 This done, a secure market was obtained for a vast mass of 
 the authorized " bonds," and it was not long before every paper 
 dollar in the pocket of every man throughout the country 
 bound him to sustain the credit and solvency of the National 
 Government. The base upon which the Administration stood 
 was suddenly and enormously widened. 
 
 Through the entire course of Mr. Lincoln's public acts and 
 utterances, from a time long before the war, can be clearly 
 traced his personal conviction, slowly growing into definite 
 form and ripeness, that the nation as a whole, and the now 
 seceded States in particular, required an intelligent rebuilding.
 
 374 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 At this day, looking back, the most shallow student of political 
 history has little difficulty in pointing out the manifest differ- 
 ences between the organism now known as " The United 
 States" and the loose, vague, unhooped, uncemented structure 
 which down to the year 1860 bore the same title upon all 
 maps of the world. 
 
 Something analogous to pulling down preceded rebuilding, 
 even at the North. Here, however, the work of renewal had 
 proceeded rapidly. The practical relations of State govern- 
 ments to the central authority had been discovered or created 
 and were daily becoming better and better defined, through 
 processes so sharp and searching that their results were likely 
 to be permanent and unquestionable. The several conditions 
 of the border slave-States had been even more entirely revolu- 
 tionized, and the legislation procured by Mr. Lincoln of this 
 Congress set the seal of perpetuity upon their renewed exist- 
 ence. During this session of it, moreover, the first wedge was 
 driven home into the seemingly solid mass of the Confederacy, 
 and no power could afterwards withdraw it. The old State of 
 Virginia was permanently divided by the admission to the 
 Union, as an independent State, of what is now "West Virginia. 
 Two representatives were also seated in the House from the 
 occupied districts of Louisiana. The Confederate authorities 
 were again duly notified of the fundamental principle upon 
 which the repression of the Eebellion was to be carried on : 
 that every Congressional district securely redeemed from their 
 grasp was to return at once, if it would, to the performance of 
 its functions as a part of the national body, and that the Gov- 
 ernment knew nothing of " States" as members of a foreign 
 confederacy. It acknowledged the existence of a sedition, a 
 riot, a conspiracy, a powerful organization of armed disturbers 
 of the peace of the Commonwealth, but it recognized nothing 
 more respectable. 
 
 There was no other political subject in which Mr. Lincoln 
 took a more active interest, from first to last, than he did in
 
 DARK DATS. 375 
 
 that of " reconstruction." There were many, at a later day, 
 who accused him of even undue haste in his eagerness to obtain 
 the restoration of local civil governments in every part of the 
 territory conquered. 
 
 The natural reaction of public feeling at the North had been 
 plainly indicated even before the fall elections of 1862, and 
 found a stronger expression in them. It was well represented 
 upon the floor of Congress throughout the winter. The com- 
 pletion of the act of Emancipation, on the first day of the new 
 year, the entire course and character of the legislation proposed 
 or accomplished, as well as the outlines and particulars of the 
 military situation, were so successfully misrepresented by the 
 Opposition press, and so mischievously misunderstood by large 
 masses of the people, as to greatly increase the general discon- 
 tent and strengthen the hands of all enemies of the Adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 The spring of 1863 found the President well supplied with 
 financial resources and expedients, and with formulated powers 
 for suppressing sedition and for keeping up the armies in the 
 field. It must be said, however, and it was well understood by 
 himself, that not at any other time, before or afterwards, was 
 Mr. Lincoln's hold upon the popular confidence and affection 
 so weak, so very nearly broken. 
 
 The strongest and most widely read journals of his own 
 political party were freely and even bitterly criticising his 
 management of the war. All blows fell most heavily upon 
 him, but not a member of his Cabinet escaped aspersion. His 
 very family was attacked, in public and in private, by the most 
 vile and cowardly calumny. ~Not a few bitter tongues roundly 
 asserted that Mrs. Lincoln herself was in constant correspond- 
 ence, as a spy, with the chiefs of the Kebellion. Through her 
 they obtained the secrets of the Cabinet and the plans of gen- 
 erals in the field. The insanity of the accusation does not seem 
 to have been considered. It was of no avail that she was as 
 ignorant of Cabinet matters as if she had been in Maine, and
 
 376 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 that she did not see enough of her husband to ask his over- 
 weary brain a question of the war. It was equally unimpor- 
 tant, though strictly true, that she refused to open her own 
 private letters, and insisted that all which came to her through 
 the mails should first be opened by one of the President's private 
 secretaries. The absurd and wicked slander refused to die, and 
 it is barely possible that some obtuse or ignorant people accept 
 it as truth to this very day. It probably annoyed her much 
 more than it did Mr. Lincoln, but it serves now as a gauge of 
 the bitterness and unreason with which both men and women 
 assailed the President. It also indicates the bewildered state 
 of mind with which they sought to account for the continued 
 existence of the Rebellion. They were willing to dig for the 
 secret in dark corners, and to find it in the alleged defects and 
 misconducts of Union statesmen and generals rather than to 
 see it in the very magnitude of the task these men and their 
 leader were so heroically performing. Even patriotic and 
 hopeful men seemed unable to comprehend how large a part 
 of that task had already been performed, or how well ; while the 
 unpatriotic and the desponding openly asserted that nothing 
 had yet been done but to place the nation, bound hand and 
 foot, in the grasping hands of a despotic and blundering Dic- 
 tator. 
 
 The conductors of the loyal press were not any too con- 
 siderate of the effect of such words as they saw fit to pen from 
 day to day. There were few who showed any intelligent ap- 
 preciation of the fact that these persistent attacks upon the 
 Administration were weakening the armies in the field and 
 giving the most valuable aid and comfort to the public enemy. 
 
 No similar state of affairs was permitted to cripple the ener- 
 gies of the Jefferson Davis government. No European autoc- 
 racy holds or ever held its subject populations in the crushing 
 grasp of a more rigid military system than had by this time 
 been perfected at the South. The entire human life within 
 the limits of the Rebellion had been dragooned into an efficient
 
 DARK DATS. 377 
 
 political unit. No careless utterances of individual opinion, 
 opposed to the cause of Secession, were tolerated in public or 
 in private. Such a thing as an organized and formally repre- 
 sented opposition was unknown. The rope, the bullet, or the 
 prison took the places of all other arguments in answering 
 hostile or too-critical tongues and pens. As a consequence, 
 the amount of general information in circulation among the 
 people was regulated and controllable, and the Confederacy 
 was what is called " unanimous" on all questions relating to 
 the war. 
 
 The accomplishment of such an unanimity as that formed 
 no part of Mr. Lincoln's necessities or plans at any time. In 
 the very darkest hours of the year 1863, his severities were of 
 a kind which endangered no lif e and very little liberty. Even 
 atrocious license, masquerading as " liberty," was but slightly 
 and exceptionally interfered with. 
 
 "With reference to this, it was really needful that something 
 should be done, over and above notifying friendly journals not 
 to print, for the information of the enemy, the plans and ar- 
 maments of ships and forts and camps, and the exact disposi- 
 tion and condition and intentions of the forces and commanders. 
 Journalistic enterprise had led them in several instances to do 
 this very thing, and its prohibition was sorely grumbled at, 
 as an invasion of the freedom of the press. A more rigid 
 censorship was rendered unnecessary by the general inaccuracy 
 of most of these reports and a shrewd desire that the Rebel 
 generals might accept them as guides. 
 
 Something had to be done, indeed, with the more noisy 
 politicians, and it was difficult to see what or how, until a curi- 
 ous but sufficient " test case" was supplied by the treasonable 
 folly of one weak man, with prominence enough to make him 
 very useful. A member of Congress from Ohio, named Cle- 
 ment L. Yallandigham, a strong pro-slavery Democrat before 
 the war, had, since its outbreak, earned distinction as the most 
 violent assailant of the Administration and its measures that
 
 378 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 could be pointed out. It was his pride to be somewhat more 
 of a Rebel than if he had been in command of a Confederate 
 regiment. Up to the spring of 1863, he had been permitted 
 to talk as he would, for the good reason that he had no follow- 
 ing worth mentioning, and that he served admirably as a per- 
 petual witness that the Government did not interfere with the 
 freedom of speech. He was now to serve an equally important 
 use of another kind. After doing his best for the Rebellion 
 all the winter, upon the floor of Congress, he went home to 
 Ohio and began a series of public addresses in which he sur- 
 passed all previous exhibitions of partisan malice and vitupera- 
 tive capacity. 
 
 General Burnside was then in command of the Department 
 of the Ohio, and his patriotism was of the most sterling quality. 
 He had issued an order setting forth that all persons found 
 within the Union army lines who should commit acts for the 
 benefit of the enemy would be tried as spies or as traitors, and, 
 if convicted, would be put to death. 
 
 This order plainly included such traitors as Yallandigham ; 
 and he not only publicly denounced it on the stump, but 
 urged the people to forcibly resist its execution. The military 
 " order of arrest," which he in this manner courted and asked 
 for, was issued by General Burnside as a matter of course, and 
 the orator was locked up. The next day, May 5, 1863, an appli- 
 cation for a writ of habeas corpus, in his case, was made to the 
 United States Circuit Court. It was a fine opportunity to test 
 the Constitutionality and effect of the President's suspension 
 of the writ, as well as the authority of the Commander-in-Chief 
 to protect the rear of his army. 
 
 The presiding judge, himself a lifelong Democrat, politically, 
 listened to a long argument from the prisoner's counsel ; but he 
 sternly refused the writ, stating the law of the matter in a 
 form which made his decision invaluable to the Government. 
 He said : " The legality of the arrest depends upon the necessity 
 for making it, and that is to be determined by the military
 
 DARK DATS. 379 
 
 commander." He added a good deal of outspoken patriotism 
 and common-sense to his " law," and the subject of arbitrary 
 arrests was cleared of a great part of the rubbish which had 
 been heaped around it. Yallandigham was tried at once by 
 court-martial, and was sentenced to be confined in some fort- 
 ress. General Burnside approved the finding of the court and 
 named Fort Warren as the place of punishment. But Mr. 
 Lincoln was not disposed to throw away his opportune " ex- 
 ample" in that manner. He could express, through him, his 
 hearty contempt for the class of demagogues Vallandigham so 
 perfectly represented. A broad smile swept across the face of 
 the North, and a subdued chuckle went through the people 
 and the army and was heard even at the South, when the sen- 
 tence of the culprit was read in the newspapers. 
 
 The President modified the imprisonment in Fort Warren 
 to an imprisonment within the Rebel lines, and sent the convict 
 down South, with a warning not to return until after the war. 
 
 There was a touch of humor in it, but it was the most biting 
 sarcasm ever penned by Abraham Lincoln. Well might the 
 South grumble that it was no sort of " Botany Bay," and had 
 no use for that kind of immigration. The sentence worked a 
 world of good at the North. A host of mere talking men felt 
 that the blow was aimed at them. Quarters in Federal prisons 
 could be given to but few. From such places there might be 
 means of possible escape. There would, at least, be food and 
 raiment there, and safe shelter ; but who could guess what hor- 
 rors might await a poor Northern traitor " beyond the army 
 lines" ? The people of the South, themselves, were suspected 
 of having strong notions, here and there, of a man's duty to 
 " go with his State, side with his section, and stand by his own 
 people," and Southern hospitality might curl its haughty lip a 
 little at the Northern renegade sent down to help eat the 
 scanty rations of its soldiery. 
 
 Vallandigham got around into Ohio again, before the end of 
 the war ; but he had served all the uses that could be made of
 
 380 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 him, and no further notoriety was forced upon him by the 
 Government. Even after his expulsion, however, his remarka- 
 ble usefulness continued for a season. His case and conviction, 
 and the shiver of dread caused thereby to all similar offenders, 
 drew the more virulent elements of the Opposition together, 
 forced them to take public action, and so enabled Mr. Lincoln 
 to answer them before the people, as he could not otherwise 
 have done. Public meetings were at once held, in the larger 
 cities, for general purposes of denunciation of the " Lincoln 
 despotism." These meetings answered well as safety-valves, 
 and also to convince the nation that there was really no inter- 
 ference with freedom of speech. Great men and small men, 
 alike, expressed themselves from these platforms very much 
 as the transported Ohio scapegoat had expressed himself from 
 his platforms, and no hand of Executive tyranny was laid upon 
 them. The meetings were largely and noisily attended, and 
 their managers, without any such intention, afforded Mr. Lin- 
 coln the means of measuring, with fair accuracy, the extent, 
 nature, and capacities of the disaffection. 
 
 A month after Yallandigham had been bundled across the 
 army lines and received by " his own," the Democratic State 
 Convention of Ohio, representing the disloyal elements of that 
 State, nominated him for Governor of the State, and his law- 
 counsel for Lieutenant-Governor. They also did Mr. Lincoln 
 the favor to send a delegation to him at Washington, to pre- 
 sent their view of the case. 
 
 They did very rightly. They were by no means bad men. 
 Their action, at that very hour, although they knew it not, 
 was a marvellous expression of their personal confidence in the 
 integrity of the President. They did not know, either, how 
 glad he was of the opportunity they thus gave him to tell the 
 whole country, in his answer to their address : " Your attitude, 
 therefore, encourages desertion, resistance to the Draft, and the 
 like, because it teaches those who incline to desert and to es- 
 cape the draft to believe it is your purpose to protect them."
 
 DARK DATS. 381 
 
 To the utterances of a great meeting held at Albany, New 
 York, Mr. Lincoln made a more elaborate reply. It was a 
 peculiarly representative assemblage, and gave him an oppor- 
 tunity to explain to the whole people why he had pursued so 
 lenient a policy from the beginning, and why he had waited 
 for the commission of actual crime, by any and every indi- 
 vidual, before employing the strong hand of the law. It also 
 enabled him to ask, of both friends and foes, the practical 
 question : 
 
 " Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier-boy who deserts, 
 while I must not tonch a hair of the wily agitator who induces 
 him to desert ? I think that, in such a case, to silence the agi- 
 tator and save the boy is not only constitutional, but withal a 
 great mercy." 
 
 There was wind enough stirring to blow away a great deal 
 of unwholesome fog. By the time all the speeches had been 
 made and all the editorials had been printed, the people had 
 read and digested the President's replies. They had also 
 chuckled grimly over " Yallandigham in Dixie," and had en- 
 joyed the panicky dismay of the demagogues. The beneficial 
 effect was sure and rapid, and a great revulsion of popular 
 . f eeling set strongly in. 
 
 The dark days were by no means shortened. There was 
 more trouble to come. Nevertheless, the President discerned 
 that he could safely employ the exceptional powers placed in 
 his hands, and that all the people would sustain him. The 
 great military events of the year, in due season, completed the 
 work so well begun, and, when her next State election took 
 place, Ohio declared, by the largest majority in her political 
 history, that she preferred a patriot for her governor and had, 
 like Mr. Lincoln, no further use for the kind of men repre- 
 sented by Yallandigham.
 
 382 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTER XLYII. 
 
 NIGHT. 
 
 Preparing for a Great Struggle Popular Discontent Murmurs of Sedi- 
 tion European Hostilities Chancellorsville Bitter Hours for the 
 President Darkness at the South Statesmen under a Hallucination 
 The Second Invasion of the North Hooker Succeeded by Meade. 
 
 ME. LINCOLN did not retain the external equanimity of his 
 earlier days under the galling pressure of the burdens laid upon 
 him in 1863. The goading irritations were too many, and they 
 gave him no rest whatever. The path he was forced to walk 
 in was rugged with lacerating difficulties. To say that he now 
 and then gave way to short-lived fits of petulance is but to 
 admit that he was human. He was keenly conscious of every 
 deficiency, in himself or in his human and other means for 
 performing his vast undertaking, and he could not but worry 
 when things went wrong. More than enough did go wrong, and 
 the few admissions of harassed weariness which escaped him do 
 not deserve especial record. 
 
 It was well understood, through many channels of informa- 
 tion, that the Confederacy was now preparing to put forth its 
 full and uttermost strength : and this was more than the North 
 would or could be induced to do. There was, indeed, a sort 
 of prophetic hope in the obvious fact that such an exhaustive 
 effort could never be made more than once by the South ; but 
 the certainty that it was coming filled the outlook for the mili- 
 tary year with promises of bloodshed, and these were speedily 
 and terribly fulfilled. Mr. Lincoln read all these signs and 
 promises, and knew their meaning perfectly. He saw and he 
 felt that a large proportion of the men he was drawing into the
 
 NIGHT. 383 
 
 army from their homes and workshops were to be sent, by his 
 orders, to certain and sudden death ; and he was not the man 
 to put from him carelessly any of the solemn questions asked 
 of him by such a responsibility. 
 
 The cares heaped upon the President by the demands and 
 perils of the military situation were made heavier by the aspect 
 of affairs in several of the loyal States. The murmurs of the 
 opponents of the Draft grew louder daily, as the machinery for 
 its enforcement assumed forms which men could see. It was 
 something new and strange and horrible, even to the minds of 
 many who were genuinely patriotic ; for it was a sort of re- 
 morseless and unavoidable " direct tax" which could only be 
 paid, in person or by substitute, with the bodies of living men. 
 
 There were yet other omens of possible disaster. More em- 
 phatic than ever came continual assurances from abroad, 
 official, unofficial, and journalistic, that the sympathies of the 
 great commercial powers and controlling aristocracies of Europe 
 were strongly with the Confederacy. The sympathies of the 
 French Imperial Government assumed their most offensive 
 form in the disastrous history of its Mexican expedition, and 
 the foregone failure of this was a significant prophecy of the 
 subsequent events by means of which the French people re- 
 gained self-government. Popular good-will in France for the 
 American Republic was without any means for making itself 
 heard or felt in the year 1863. 
 
 The " Southern" sympathies of that part of the English na- 
 tion affected by such leanings were made to be very deeply 
 felt by the American people. We were assailed by them, and 
 in the most hurtful modes, by land and sea. On the sea, by 
 the continuous and often successful efforts of British blockade- 
 runners to enter or leave the Southern ports, and by the ravages 
 of British cruisers, like the Alabama, under the Confederate 
 flag; on the land, by the presence, on every battle-field, of 
 British arms and ammunition in rapidly increasing supply. 
 That part of the English nation whose heart and hope instinc-
 
 384 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 tively clung to the Free North and its long struggle for Free 
 Labor had attained no other political power than that of suffer- 
 ing patiently, in the year 1863. 
 
 Whatever may have been the caste feeling of a part of the 
 German ruling classes, the Germans as a mass were with the 
 North. They bought our national " bonds" liberally, at war- 
 time prices, and in due season they reaped a golden harvest of 
 rich profits thereby. 
 
 Alone among the great powers of Europe, Russia was firmly 
 bound to America by the ties of a friendship which bore a 
 strict relation to her undying hatred of France and England. 
 Her vivid memories of the Crimean War were sure guaranties 
 of her active alliance, in case her old enemies should offer her 
 an opportunity to obtain satisfaction for Sevastopol. Her 
 position aided largely in checking any too aggressive an expres- 
 sion of the now half -triumphant malice of her rivals who mistak- 
 enly regarded themselves as interested in our political division 
 and destruction. 
 
 The State -Department was in good hands, and Mr. Seward 
 could safely be intrusted with all diplomatic affairs. The con- 
 dition and promise of the revenue and the Treasury seemed 
 all that could be reasonably expected. The Navy grew more 
 and more efficient, at sea and on the Western rivers. Secretary 
 Stanton was accomplishing marvels of genius and of sleepless 
 toil in the War Office, burning out in faithful services the fiery 
 energy which led Mr. Lincoln to select him for that tremendous 
 duty. 
 
 Congress adjourned and its membership went home. The 
 very air grew hot and dense with expectations of a " battle- 
 summer." The army was in fine condition, East and West. 
 The forces on the line of the Potomac were necessarily some- 
 what scattered, but they outnumbered, two to one, the forces 
 opposed to them under Lee. 
 
 The Army of the Potomac was still, to the perceptions of a 
 large majority of the people, the representative army, by the
 
 NIGHT. 385 
 
 successes or failures of which they measured the tides of the 
 war. It was under the command of General Hooker; and 
 the exact condition of the President's mind in relation to this 
 officer cannot be better expressed than by the following letter, 
 on file in the War Department : 
 
 EXECUTIVE MANSION, 
 WASHINGTON, D. C., January 26, 1863. 
 
 Major- General Hooker. 
 
 GENERAL : I have placed you at the head of the Army of 
 the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appear 
 to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you 
 to know that there are some things in regard to which I am 
 not quite satisfied. with you. I believe you to be a brave and 
 skillful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do- 
 not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. 
 You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not an 
 indispensable, quality. You are ambitious, which, within rea- 
 sonable bounds, does good rather than harm. But I think that, 
 during General Burnside's command of the army you have 
 taken counsel of your ambitions, and thwarted him as much as 
 you could, in which you did a great wrong both to the country 
 and a most meritorious and honorable brother-officer. I have 
 heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying 
 that both the Army and the Government needed a dictator. Of 
 course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given 
 you a command. Only those generals who gain success can 
 set up as dictators. "What I ask of you is military success, and 
 I will risk the dictatorship. The Government will support you 
 to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than 
 it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that 
 the spirit you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising 
 their commander and withholding confidence from him, will 
 now turn upon you. I shall assist you, as far as I can, to put 
 it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again,
 
 386 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails 
 in it. 
 
 And now, beware of rashness ! Beware of rashness ! But 
 with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us 
 victories. Yours very truly, 
 
 A. LINCOLN. 
 
 General Hooker had succeeded in winning the good-will and 
 confidence of his men, but that was all he was destined to win. 
 Leaving to professional military critics all discussion of the 
 exact strategic methods employed or omitted, it is enough to 
 state the facts as follows : 
 
 During the first week in May, 1863, General Hooker so 
 handled several of his best army corps, in what is known as the 
 Battle of Chancellorsville, that the net result to them was a 
 severe defeat. The obstinacy of the fighting and the generally 
 good conduct of the forces engaged appears from the official 
 statements of losses on both sides. The Confederate com- 
 mander admits a total loss of 13,019, and the Union general of 
 17,197, and, with these, of the battle-ground. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln might well walk the floor of his room, late into 
 ihe night, after receiving the news of this disaster. One of his 
 private secretaries was detained by unusual pressure of clerical 
 work in an adjoining room. Midnight came ; one o'clock ; two 
 o'clock ; and when, a half -hour later, the young man paused at 
 the head of the stairs, before creeping silently out to go to his 
 own residence, the last sounds he heard were the slow and heavy 
 footfalls of the all but heart-broken ruler. So many more 
 fathers and mothers were looking towards him, reproachfully, 
 between their sobs for their sons. So many more widows were 
 mourning for their husbands and wondering whether their 
 heartache need have come to them if Mr. Lincoln had done, or 
 had not done, something, they knew not what. He knew 
 that the news would stimulate the hatred in Europe and 
 strengthen all the disaffection at the North. Even loyal
 
 NIGHT. 387 
 
 enthusiasts would be deterred from enlisting. The Draft 
 would be denounced more bitterly than ever, as a means of 
 dragging helpless and unwilling men into a shambles of useless 
 butchery. 
 
 Other men, in distant corners of the country, could not under- 
 stand, as did the President, that such a victory as that of Chan- 
 cellorsville, won at so great a cost to the South, was, in its true 
 and final effect, a damaging blow to the Southern cause. They 
 overlooked the simple arithmetic of the matter and refused to 
 see how hardly General Lee could spare the men he had lost, 
 and that a very few such fights would leave the Rebellion with- 
 out an army. If General Lee's own records are to be trusted, 
 nearly a fourth part of his movable strength was temporarily 
 or permanently destroyed, while the Union loss, relatively, was 
 but fifteen per cent, instead of twenty-five. One bitter com- 
 plaint made against General Hooker, indeed, was that he had 
 not employed his men and had kept 37,000 of them out of the 
 fight although they were near enough to have turned the defeat 
 into a victory for him had he but set them free. With excel- 
 lent show of reason could Mr. Lincoln urge, as he speedily did, 
 that another battle should be sought and fought before the 
 enemy should be given time to recuperate. He urged in vain. 
 There was a man then in training for him, in the "West, who had 
 learned that precise lesson of the stern arithmetic of war : but 
 Grant had not arrived, in 1863, and it seemed impossible for the 
 President to enforce his conviction of the truth upon the mind 
 of any commander he had as yet discovered. All the apparent 
 evils of the defeat were therefore permitted to remain, and 
 Secretary Stanton himself is reported to have declared that 
 the darkest hour of the whole war was just after Chancellors-, 
 ville. 
 
 The dark days of the year 1863 were not dark for the North 
 alone. There was trouble in the councils of the Confederacy 
 also ; and with it came at times a sickening consciousness of 
 failing strength. The course of military events had not by any
 
 388 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 means been uniformly favorable to the South. After a series 
 of bloody engagements, one of their best armies was cooped up in 
 Yicksburg by General Grant, and there seemed to be but small 
 hope that his hold upon it could be broken. Throughout the 
 West the Union lines were steadily drifting Southerly. Not a 
 man could the Rebellion spare to its "Western generals from its 
 resources in the East, for here every effort was making to re- 
 enforce General Lee. Unbounded confidence was reposed in 
 him, but it was becoming painfully evident that he must do 
 something much more productive of results than the costly 
 winning of even such victories as that of Chancellorsville. 
 
 General Hooker was still in command of the Army of the 
 Potomac, and the opposing forces watched each other zealous- 
 ly. A fierce battle of mutual interrogation as to position and 
 purposes was fought at Brandy Station in the second week of 
 June, but no general engagement was obtained, for various good 
 reasons. The chief of these was, probably, that General Lee 
 did not desire one. He was making all things ready for a 
 second invasion of the North, and more fighting on Southern 
 ground, just then, would but have wasted his war material. 
 
 That Lee should make such a Northward movement at all 
 was both a dire necessity and a fatal blunder. It is not alto- 
 gether fair to place either of these upon the shoulders of so 
 good a general. The great error of the Confederate statesmen 
 concerning the state of public opinion and feeling, as well as 
 of material prosperity, at the North, is by no means easy to 
 understand when their general shrewdness and ability-are taken 
 into consideration. They should have known their country 
 and countrymen better than they did. The national resources 
 of the North, always vastly greater than those of the South, 
 had not been perceptibly impaired, and no acre of its area had 
 been either devastated or rent away. As to its population, the 
 out-and-out Yallandighams among them were not fighting men, 
 by any means, as Mr. Lincoln contemptuously illustrated when 
 he sent that person through the lines. Lee was quite welcome
 
 NIGHT. 389 
 
 to them all, if lie had any use for them. They were, for the 
 greater part, mere political demagogues, who talked themselves 
 into disreputable notoriety, while all the good and strong men 
 of their own " Democratic" party rallied like heroes around the 
 flag of their country. The demagogues had now, indeed, been 
 able to take advantage of a sore-hearted and weary multitude ; 
 but experienced political leaders, like Jefferson Davis and his 
 counselors, should have understood, without being told, that 
 the multitudes were loyal and true to their government, at the 
 bottom of all their grumbling. The discontented elements at 
 the North could not be handled, even in the accustomed form 
 of a political party, without the name of a favorite Union gen- 
 eral, McClellan, at their head. They must be able to assure 
 themselves and everybody else that they wanted only a more 
 vigorous and successful management of the war and, perhaps, 
 a little less of Abolitionism. All Northern murmurs were 
 heard by Southern political and military managers as conveyed 
 to them by their spies and correspondents, or as expressed in 
 wild exaggeration by " Copperhead " editors of newspapers. 
 The rabid utterances of demagogues, and even the observa- 
 tions of the most cultivated and ignorant foreign tourists, were 
 sent South and interpreted as the sincere expressions of great 
 popular constituencies. The imported riff-raff of great cities 
 was carefully cross-examined, and its mouthings were studied 
 and duly reported as indicating the state of mind of our entire 
 foreign-born citizenship. 
 
 It was a direct result of the hallucination thus created that 
 the ineffable mistake of an invasion of the North was repeated. 
 The best army of the South was sent across the fatal border 
 that it might serve as a nucleus for an anticipated rising of all 
 the friends of Secession according to their varieties. It was a 
 splendid army of nearly ninety thousand men, and was fully 
 competent for the conquest propbsed, so soon as it should be 
 augmented by a few hundred thousands of Northern malcon- 
 tents. It was mainly composed of trained veterans, new levies
 
 390 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 being retained for other duties, and it look forward confi- 
 dently to the career of supposed victories before it. 
 
 It was not difficult for Lee to elude any possible vigilance 
 of Hooker. A rapid dash by a force thrown forward for the 
 purpose cleared the Shenandoah Yalley of Union troops, and 
 then, through the broad highway thus opened, General Lee was 
 pressing on to his mad enterprise before his purpose could be 
 divined. 
 
 This was the culminating point of the whole war. The 
 Draft for men had been ordered to take place in July. Mur- 
 murs of threatened resistance were ominously rising from 
 many localities, and it was not difficult to connect the North- 
 ward march of Lee with possible conspiracies, secretly or- 
 ganized and prepared for co-operative action. That such con- 
 spiracies existed was beyond all doubt, although their extent 
 and power for evil was unknown. It was now also certain 
 that Lee would be in Pennsylvania before a single army corps 
 could be thrown across his path. 
 
 The President called upon the States of New York, West 
 Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania for 120,000 men, for 
 temporary use ; and it is interesting to note the names of these 
 four States combined in such a call by him. In the excitement 
 of the moment the men came fast enough, but it was not so 
 easy to arm and equip and make a practical use of them. In 
 like manner, at the same time, Mr. Jefferson Davis was calling 
 out every able-bodied man 6r boy he could arm, to defend 
 Richmond from a counter-attack the movement for which had 
 been instantly ordered by Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 General Hooker moved his forces somewhat leisurely, and 
 the result of a diversity of views between him and General 
 Halleck was the offer and acceptance of his resignation and the 
 appointment of General George G. Meade to the command of 
 the Army of the Potomac. 
 
 General Meade had previously commanded the Fifth Army 
 Corps and was an officer of tried and acknowledged ability.
 
 NIGHT. 391 
 
 He had not attained then, nor did he afterwards establish, a 
 reputation as an exceptionally great commander, but he was in 
 all respects eminently capable and trustworthy, and he was less 
 of an experiment than any previous chief of that army. It never 
 had had less need of a great commander than at that very hour. 
 The subordinate leaders of the Army of the Potomac were now 
 become experienced generals, familiar with their coTnTna.Tn.ds 
 and duties, while its veteran soldiers were a body of men that 
 had but one equal on earth, and that was its old antagonist, 
 the Army of Northern Virginia, under Lee. No other large 
 armies then in existence had added to their science and their 
 drill the perfecting processes of so many hard marches and 
 fights. There was a curiously high degree of mutual respect 
 and of emulation between those two armies, for which each 
 had many and most excellent reasons.
 
 392 ABBAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTEK XLYHI. 
 
 THE TURNING POINT. 
 
 The Eve of Battle The Surrender of Vicksburg The Mississippi Kiver 
 set Free The Three Days' Fight at Gettysburg Lee's Retreat The 
 Situation Changed The Draft Riots The New York Mob The 
 President's Reply to the Unpatriotic Elements. 
 
 THE month of June was fast slipping away, and it began to 
 look as if the gates of the North were at last open to the Con- 
 federacy. By the 24th the main body of Lee's army was north 
 of the Potomac. On the 27th two of his army corps were at 
 Chambersburg, well up the Cumberland Valley, west of the 
 mountains, while a third occupied Carlisle, within striking 
 distance of Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania. General 
 Hooker had held his old position opposite Washington, with 
 his main body, as late as the 23d ; but all doubt as to the safety 
 of that city, for the time being, was now removed, and on the 
 25th he began to cross the Potomac at Edward's Ferry. From 
 thence he advanced to Frederick, Maryland, and halted, only 
 thirty miles, as the crow flies, from the battle-field of Gettys- 
 burg. Here, on the 28th, the change of commanders took 
 place, and General Meade only carried out a previously ex- 
 pressed purpose of his predecessor in at once moving his 
 forces towards the Susquehanna. Omitting all details of mili- 
 tary movements as out of place here, it is enough to say that 
 on the evening of June 30 the entire Rebel army was concen- 
 trating towards Gettysburg ; the Union army lay within little 
 more than a good day's march, and both commanders were 
 fully aware that a great and decisive battle could not be long 
 delayed.
 
 THE TURNING POINT. 393 
 
 What was only of a little less importance, the entire country 
 was almost equally aware and in waiting. A Kebel force pene- 
 trated within sight of Harrisburg. The citizens of Philadelphia 
 found themselves digging trenches and throwing up earthworks 
 for the possible defence of that city. The Governor of Penn- 
 sylvania called for 60,000 more men. A sudden and fierce 
 excitement spread like wildfire throughout the North, and a 
 spasm of warlike feeling stirred the hearts of men in every 
 community and neighborhood. The effect was not at all what 
 the Eichmond statesmen had counted upon, but it was very 
 much what they should have expected. The presence of Lee 
 in Pennsylvania did all that was necessary to render the Draft 
 endurable and only failed of making it popular. Certain 
 it is that there remained hardly a tithe of the trouble in enforc- 
 ing it that there might have been but for a vague idea which 
 almost every man unconsciously entertained that he could hear 
 the sound of distant cannonading and possibly of drums. 
 
 The President urged forward with all his might the army 
 movement under Meade. He did not neglect the forces in 
 front of Washington nor the insufficient counter-movement 
 towards Richmond. At the same time he stimulated to his 
 uttermost, as his letters and dispatches to the commanding 
 generals testify, the operations he was watching in the West. 
 He pushed forward with increased vigor the now almost com- 
 pletely organized machinery for the enforcement of the Draft. 
 The decisive hour had come, and he proved himself fully equal 
 to all its demands upon him. So did the Army of the Potomac. 
 So did the men in the West, under Grant. 
 
 The first week of July, 1863, was crowned with hard-won 
 triumph. The garrison of Yicksburg surrendered to General 
 Grant on the 4th, and so, a few days later, did that of Port 
 Hudson, further down the river. With these was also surren- 
 dered the Mississippi River to its mouth. The Confederacy 
 was cleft in twain, never more to be the compact and stubbornly 
 resisting mass which it so long had been. In the East, on the
 
 394 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 first day of the month, at Gettysburg, the advanced corps of 
 the armies under Meade and Lee began a struggle as of life 
 and death. At the end of the first day's fighting the advan- 
 tage was with the Confederates ; but all they had won had cost 
 them dearly. All through the hot hours of July 2, and on 
 into the night, the strife continued with a success so varying that 
 the result still trembled in the balance. At night a council of 
 war was held by Meade and his generals, and the corps com- 
 manders unanimously voted to stay and fight it out. It is 
 recorded of General W. S. Hancock, in particular, that when 
 his opinion was called for hp added to it, in strong language, 
 " The Army of the Potomac has retreated too often." It is a 
 sufficient comment upon the aspect of affairs that the usual 
 and prudent precautions for covering the retreat of the army 
 in case of further disaster were made with special care. The 
 fighting on the third day began with the dawn of light ; but 
 before noon its bloody tides were manifestly turning in favor 
 of the Union. It became necessary for Lee to strike a desper- 
 ate, decisive blow, and he prepared for one which, if it could 
 have succeeded against the preparations made to receive it, 
 would have changed the remaining history of the war. It was 
 begun a little after 3 o'clock P.M., the best troops of the Rebel 
 army, hitherto untouched and fresh, being hurled against the 
 Union centre. They have been estimated at about 18,000 men, 
 under General Pickett, sometimes termed the "Ney of the 
 Confederate armies." It was a grand charge, well planned 
 but for a mistaken idea as to what it was to meet, and it was 
 made magnificently ; but it failed in slaughter, rout, and ruin, 
 and its failure terminated the Invasion of the North. The 
 Rebel forces still held the positions to which they had fallen 
 back, but at half past 6 o'clock P.M. they ceased firing. They 
 still held their ground, unassailed, during all the next day; and 
 General Meade's caution in not instantly pressing another 
 general engagement has found able defenders as well as severe 
 critics among military men.
 
 TEE TURNING POINT. 395 
 
 Except on the first day, the actual combatants had not been 
 very unequally matched as to numbers, and then only by the 
 Confederate troops being the more rapidly carried into action. 
 General Meade had under him, first and last, about 82,000 men, 
 not all engaged, while General Lee had about 73,500 actually 
 present for service. The cavalry on either side was about 
 equal in numerical strength, but the Army of the Potomac was 
 largely superior in field-artillery. The severity of the- fighting 
 is grimly illustrated by the losses^ in killed, wounded, and miss- 
 ing. These are trustworthily reported or estimated at 23,186 
 for the Army of the Potomac and 22,728 for the Army of 
 Northern Virginia, a difference of 458 men in apparent favor 
 of the Confederacy. 
 
 Lee's errand in the North was over, at the end of such a fight, 
 even if it were to be considered, what some of the Confederate 
 leaders actually claimed, " a drawn battle." It was, indeed, 
 nothing of the kind, but a distinctly marked and definite defeat 
 of Lee's army, which only escaped destruction because it was 
 not instantly smitten again. 
 
 Fresh troops were pouring forward to re-enforce Meade, and 
 Mr. Lincoln urged him to assume the offensive again at once ; 
 but he failed to do so. General Lee was once more permitted, 
 though with better reason than after the Antietam battle, 
 peaceably and all but unmolested to withdraw a shattered 
 though still stubborn and dangerous army and to retreat into 
 Virginia. 
 
 This second invasion of the North terminated much more 
 disastrously for the Confederacy than did the mad march which 
 ended at the Antietam. When the results of it were summed 
 up and the great events on the banks of the Mississippi were 
 added to them, it was discovered that the entire military situa- 
 tion had undergone a change. Both in the East and in the 
 "West this change was of a nature that was necessarily perma- 
 nent, and the possible future area of the war was narrower than 
 before. Its tide had unmistakably turned and was ebbing
 
 396 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Southward, however any of its waves might thenceforth 
 advance or recede. 
 
 During all the time of the change, nevertheless, and even 
 after its bloody crisis was passed, serious political matters 
 already referred to had demanded the thoughtful attention of 
 the President. The governor, for the time being, of the great 
 State of New York had taken upon himself to be a sort of 
 official mouthpiece for the elements opposed to the enforcement 
 of the Draft of men for the army. He indeed represented 
 them, for by their votes he was in office. It is now impossible 
 to more than guess what might have been the course of such a 
 man, so upheld, if the battle of Gettysburg had ended in a 
 rout of Meade's army, or if Grant, at the same time, had been 
 repulsed before Yicksburg. As it was, and while yet the clouds 
 of uncertainty and dread hung over the battle-fields and hid 
 the coming victories, the many emissaries of the Richmond 
 government, and low demagogues without any other commis- 
 sion than such as their own malice gave them, worked busily 
 and effectively among the more debased and ignorant popula- 
 tions of New York and other great cities. The Draft Act 
 contained an unhappy clause whereby a man could secure 
 exemption through a money payment, and it was easy to 
 represent this as a "rich man's exemption." This provision 
 added materially to the necessarily offensive nature of the law, 
 great as was its real mercy. The promoters of sedition were 
 able so to use it as to touch as with caustic all the sore places 
 of poverty and of class prejudice. 
 
 Military events had now accomplished much in the way of 
 checking the growth and preventing the pernicious effect of 
 all this excitement ; but the path for mischief to come had been 
 prepared in ways unperceived by Mr. Lincoln. "Well as he 
 knew his countrymen generally, he was but little acquainted 
 with the population of New York City. He knew as little of 
 it, in fact, as do nine tenths of its better classes at this day. 
 He was not at all aware how strong, active, and well-armed a
 
 THE TURNING POINT. 397 
 
 " garrison" it constantly requires in time of peace. He there- 
 fore could not estimate how much more numerous and efficient 
 should have been its armed occupancy at such an hour of sure 
 and sore emergency as that of the enforcement of the Draft 
 Act. 
 
 The time was one, for him especially, in the intense excite- 
 ment of whose tremendous events almost any human oversight 
 might well be pardoned ; but the precise error he committed or 
 permitted was full of peril. He allowed the New York State 
 authorities to strip the city of its organized militia in response 
 to his call for temporary troops to check the advance of Lee. 
 They were all sent, but there was little use made of them at 
 Gettysburg. That fighting was hardly the kind of work for 
 militia. 
 
 The additional error was then committed of seeming to for- 
 get their very existence, and so of not hastening their return to 
 the place where they were needed as guardians of peace and 
 law. It is not easy to imagine how precisely such an emergen- 
 cy could occur again, but it might. 
 
 For several generations the city of New York had received 
 from Europe, in addition to all that was good and valuable in 
 human immigration, a steady influx, such as it still receives, of 
 the vilest elements of the worst populations of the Old World. 
 The children of these people do not become Americans, and 
 their very grandchildren, in a large proportion, are still alien 
 in heart and soul to all that distinctively makes and consti- 
 tutes Americanism. 
 
 From these elements had come but few " volunteers" for the 
 army, and nearly as many deserters as volunteers. Upon 
 them, however, the Draft was now about to lay its iron hand ; 
 and the word went around among them that the militia were 
 all gone, they had only the police to deal with, and the city 
 was at their mercy. Their dull brains were slow to grasp the 
 new idea, and the first day of the Draft passed very quietly. 
 This, after several postponements, had been ordered by the
 
 398 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 "War Department at Washington to take place on Saturday, 
 the llth of July. It was to be under the purely imaginary 
 protection of a few squads of the Invalid Corps ; and the Met- 
 ropolitan Police were not notified, nor was any request made 
 of them for assistance or even for especial vigilance. They 
 had no expectation of any disturbance, and made no preparation 
 whatever. It was a full week after the battle of Gettysburg, 
 and every militia regiment might as well have been at home. 
 The Metropolitan Police force was an admirable body of men, 
 well organized, well drilled, efficient, self-reliant, and was 
 officered and handled by men of uncommon courage and capa- 
 city. It was strong enough, even in numbers, to meet any 
 reasonable demand ; but a strain beyond all reason was about to 
 be thrown upon it. 
 
 The next day was Sunday, the 12th, and it is a noteworthy 
 fact that the everywhere-present police did not discover or 
 report a single indication of the coming trouble. There were 
 timid people who feared something ; there were angry men 
 who made many threats in the ears of sympathizers ; the mob 
 was thoroughly ready for it knew not what : but Sunday passed 
 very quietly. 
 
 " The Mob." That was a thing, an existence, a feature of 
 the population of the United States, of which Mr. Lincoln had 
 no definite knowledge. Even his old rough neighbors, the 
 " Clary's Grove Boys," were fit to wear wings in comparison 
 with the wild beasts who were now about to astonish him. If 
 he had any thought of possible trouble in the great city, he 
 doubtless believed, with all its good citizens, that the police 
 would be strong enough to prevent any general disturbance of 
 the peace. So they were, and would have been had they not 
 been permitted to be taken utterly by surprise. 
 
 On Monday, the 13th, the offices for enrollment and selec- 
 tion opened again, but it was only to close in haste. The Mob 
 rose suddenly and grew fast, compelling accessions to its ranks 
 under pain of death, by a fiercely brutal " draft act" of its own.
 
 THE TUENING POINT. 399 
 
 It rapidly discovered and assured itself of its power, and the 
 city learned, for the first time, what a multitude of devilish 
 natures it contained. Four days of riot and lawlessness fol- 
 lowed. There were twenty-four distinct " fires" of importance 
 within twenty-four hours from the outbreak of the riot, and 
 what was then the " Fire Department" was unfit to deal with 
 them. Too many of its " volunteer" membership were among 
 the rioters, and it was one of the things destroyed by the mob 
 and those fires. 
 
 At the first, a pretense was made by the rioters of confining 
 all actual murders committed by them to colored men and 
 women and children, and members of the police force. This, 
 however, was soon abandoned, and any well-dressed or de- 
 cently behaved man was in peril of being pointed out as " a 
 Lincoln man" of some kind, and of being inhumanly butch- 
 ered. Stores and houses were broken into and sacked and 
 fired, and the negro orphan-asylum was devilishly destroyed. 
 Plunder, drunkenness, cruelty, held a sort of carnival. 
 
 The Metropolitan Police did their duty like heroes, fighting 
 magnificently, under every disadvantage. Beaten and mur- 
 dered in small squads or singly, they did not lose a single fight, 
 from first to last, where the odds were not more than ten to 
 one against them, or where they could bring a reasonable force 
 to bear. As it was, they held their assailants at bay, checked 
 their ravages, prevented untellable devastation, and finally suc- 
 ceeded in overpowering the Mob. Private citizens armed 
 themselves and came to help, twelve hundred entering the 
 police force as sworn "specials." The guns of government 
 vessels in the harbor were brought to bear at several localities, 
 but could not well be used. The fragmentary remainders of 
 the organized militia came to the assistance of the Metropoli- 
 tans at the very outset of the riot. The veterans of disbanded 
 "volunteer" regiments rallied promptly at the call of their 
 former commanders and did excellent service. Details of in- 
 fantry and artillery from the forts in the harbor, and of ma-
 
 400 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 rines and sailors from the Navy Yard and from war-vessels in 
 the harbor performed their duty thoroughly. Towards the 
 close, full regiments arrived from the interior of the State, the 
 seat of war and elsewhere, and quiet was at last restored. 
 
 The fighting was continuous and bloody. How many of 
 the Mob were actually killed and wounded before its fury was 
 expended and its power broken was never officially reported. 
 There were reasons for not saying too much about it at the time, 
 but the count probably fell little short of fifteen hundred. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was bitterly but unjustly blamed for the occur- 
 rence of the Draft Riot. Men saw that its apparent cause and 
 opportunity came from his action as Chief Magistrate of the 
 nation, and many did not look much further. They failed to 
 consider that he was as ignorant as they were that the wild 
 beasts of Europe were so numerous in the dens of New York 
 City. 
 
 The good uses of the whole matter were at once developed, 
 and the Draft Riot was of incalculable assistance to the Ad- 
 ministration. The entire country, in its amazed perusal of the 
 newspaper accounts of the horror, could see the glare of the 
 burning buildings and hear the brutal roar of the Mob and 
 the shrieks of its helpless victims. The sacking of the negro 
 orphan-asylum, the murder of colored persons, and the other 
 hideous cruelties of the rioters, turned old pro-slavery Demo- 
 crats, by the thousand, into red-hot Abolitionists. The entire 
 affair, moreover, with all its disgrace and misery, was finally 
 charged over to the account which was to be settled with the 
 Rebellion. Everybody felt that a Draft, or something even 
 more dreadful, ought to be put in operation at once, and that 
 nothing else under heaven was half so bad as a Mob. 
 
 The Governor of New York had not distinguished himself, 
 during the riot, by any effort of his to suppress it, but he con- 
 tinued a demand he had made upon the President for a post- 
 ponement of the Draft, and for sundry modifications of its 
 operation. He even went so far as to ask that the postpone-
 
 THE TURNING POINT. 401 
 
 ment should be until a test of the constitutionality of the Act 
 should be had before the courts. Mr. Lincoln's reply was, in 
 effect, that he had no objection whatever to having the matter 
 brought before the Supreme Court, but that, in the mean time, 
 the Draft must go on and the ranks of the army must be filled 
 up. He said : 
 
 " We are contending with an enemy who, as I understand, 
 drives every able-bodied man he can reach into his ranks, very 
 much as a butcher drives bullocks into a slaughter-pen. No 
 time is wasted, no argument is used. This produces an army 
 which will soon turn upon our now victorious soldiers already 
 in the field, if they shall not be sustained by recruits as they 
 should be." 
 
 The immediate action of the Confederate authorities was 
 precisely as described by the President to Governor Seymour.. 
 The South called for its last man after the defeat at Gettys- 
 burg, and the war went on with a stubbornness of determina- 
 tion unsurpassed in history. 
 
 It was not in Mr. Lincoln's nature to withhold his admiration 
 from the ability and courage of the men with whom he was 
 contending. To him, as to any right-minded man, the record 
 of their fruitless daring and misdirected devotion had in it a 
 sort of mournful fascination. 
 
 "Who can feel other than an emotion of sadness and regret, 
 for instance, in mentally looking down the slope at the Gettys- 
 burg fight and seeing Pickett's magnificent columns and lines 
 march on and melt away in that wonderful charge which was, 
 after all, a blunder? And so of many another charge and 
 rally of our gallant but misguided brethren of the now doomed 
 Confederacy.
 
 402 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTEK XLIX. 
 
 THOKNS. 
 
 Poisoned Arrows The Ways of a Workingman "Western Bickerings 
 An Extraordinary Congress Presenting the President's Case Pre- 
 paring the Political Future Visitors at the "White House Wearing 
 Away Unconditional Unionism Portrayed Voices of Goodwill from 
 Europe The Gettysburg Speech. 
 
 IT is well to keep in sight the fact that the bitter opposition 
 to the policy of the Administration had generally assumed the 
 shape of a personal detestation of the President. Hatred has 
 keen eyes, and it made no error in this, for he was " the Admin- 
 istration." 
 
 No satire was too pointed, no ridicule too coarse, no calumny 
 too vile, no vituperation too profane, to be hurled at the man 
 whom both American and English journalists did not hesitate 
 to describe as a "gorilla" and as "the Illinois ape." "Well 
 might even so respectable an affair as the London Punch^ 
 after his death, in 1865, print with his obituary its versified 
 and thorough contrition for its course towards him as a man 
 and ruler.* It is not possible to rightly measure the strength 
 of any man without taking into account all the weights mak- 
 ing up the burden he is carrying. It is not pleasant, now, to 
 think of such a man exposed to such foul and cowardly abuse ; 
 but he had it all to endure daily, nevertheless. 
 
 His personal manner changed but little, and whatever varia- 
 tions came were not caused by any thought or purpose of his 
 own. Any special reserve, or coldness, or sternness, as well as 
 
 * See Appendix.
 
 THORNS. 403 
 
 any special heartiness in his greetings of, men or women, was 
 an outward expression which took care of itself, for he was no 
 actor. From his childhood to his last days, his kindly nature 
 came to the surface in a smile on reaching out his hand to grasp 
 another. He could not help it. A child could stop him and 
 get a pleasant word from him, even if he were on his way to 
 the State Department or the War Office. Some success had 
 been attained by Mrs. Lincoln in her efforts at securing 
 greater care in matters of dress, but the care was almost 
 entirely her own, he merely submitting to occasional new 
 clothes with more docility, including gloves on state occasions. 
 He was a man of too much good sense to despise the minor 
 social proprieties of all sorts, but his head and heart were too 
 full of the larger interests of his position to spare much thought 
 for its formalities. It had not been easy to make him attend 
 regularly to his meals in Springfield, and the difficulty in- 
 creased in Washington. Towards his immediate subordinates, 
 private secretaries, messengers, and other officials or servants, it 
 may almost be said that he had no manner at all, he took their 
 presence and the performance of their duties so utterly for 
 granted. Not one of them was ever made to feel, unpleasantly, 
 the fact of his inferior position by reason of any look or word of 
 the President. All were well assured that they could not get 
 a word from him unless the business which brought them to 
 his elbow justified them in coming. The number of times that 
 Mrs. Lincoln herself entered his business-room at the White 
 House could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand. 
 It is a misuse of words and a falsification of ideas to say or 
 think that this absorption in duty and simplicity in manner 
 implied or produced any real lack of dignity. True dignity of 
 character can carry well what littleness breaks down under. 
 The most superficial observer, looking in upon Lincoln and his 
 Cabinet of uncommonly strong men, during an hour of trial and 
 its counsels, could have had no difficulty in pointing out their 
 unquestionable chief and leader.
 
 404 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln, in all his public career, invariably left his per- 
 sonal popularity to take care of itself. He never for one 
 moment hesitated to do the most unpopular things that were 
 required of him by the duties of the hour. In the long-run 
 events were pretty sure to justify his judgment, even in cases 
 where it had gone against that of other men or contrary to 
 local public opinion. 
 
 Concerning a multitude of matters, including many of great 
 importance, he was compelled to form his conclusions from 
 such information as he was able to obtain from interested 
 parties, making such allowances as he could for their preju- 
 dices. It was needful to trust largely to representations made 
 by men whose social, political, or military position seemed to 
 render them trustworthy and responsible witnesses. A notable 
 instance of this occurred in the summer and fall of 1863. It 
 had been difficult to steer a straight course among the jarring 
 factions of Missouri and Kansas, especially because they all 
 contained so many able and excellent men. Had each of the 
 more prominent Union men of that section been in fact the 
 being he was described by some equally active patriotic neigh- 
 bor, Mr. Lincoln's task in the premises would have been com- 
 paratively easy. The foreign element in both States was large, 
 and was mainly composed of German immigrants of the better 
 classes. The ISTew England settlers were numerous and were 
 generally of the extreme anti-slavery type. The " old settler" 
 element, on the other hand, was not at all anti-slavery, and a 
 good deal of its " Union" feeling had been developed some- 
 what late in the day, but it was none the less important and en- 
 titled to thoughtful consideration. The " rebel sympathizers" 
 were also numerous, and added to the difficulties of the situa- 
 tion the continual complications of their intrigues and conspira- 
 cies. It was simply impossible for any military commander, 
 however competent as an " army man," to so carry himself in 
 his management of affairs as not to get himself into trouble. 
 Every man Mr. Lincoln sent there got in, if time were given
 
 THORNS. 405 
 
 him. From the day of General Fremont's withdrawal, varie- 
 ties of discontents had exhibited themselves in many annoying 
 ways. There were not many "leading men," Senators, Con- 
 gressmen, governors, generals, or editors, from the western bank 
 of the Mississippi and beyond, who had not at one time or 
 another obtained an interview with the President to explain to 
 him the goodness and wisdom of their own faction and the un- 
 mixed evil of every other. 
 
 Such was the case, in a measure, with several other States 
 and localities ; but nowhere else was the difficulty quite so in- 
 grained and irremediable. Kansas and Missouri had been a 
 sort of battle-ground, even before the war, and they had not 
 yet entirely ceased to be so. The troubles in the Eastern 
 States, in the Center, in the Northwest, were pretty well over- 
 come by the effects of the great victories and of the Draft Riot 
 in New York. Still, the political situation could not be con- 
 sidered at all clear so long as the disturbances in the far "West 
 were so great and were so directly attributed to the acts of 
 " satraps" retained in power by the President's favoritism and 
 incapacity. 
 
 The time drew near for the annual meeting, at Washington, 
 of the Grand Council of the Union League, and the public 
 generally was not at all aware of the fact. The disaffected 
 politicians of Kansas and Missouri were, however, and they 
 were all of them members of the League. The delegations 
 from those States to the Grand Council were composed exclu- 
 sively of the critics of the Administration. They included 
 United States Senators, Representatives, and a Governor or so, 
 and all the way across the country they addressed gatherings 
 of people and rehearsed their story of the blunders and tyran- 
 nies of the Government. They reached the city of Washing- 
 ton in due time, and they attended the Grand Council. 
 
 This was an admirably selected representative body of men, 
 fresh from the people. It was an independent Congress, an 
 important part of whose membership was entitled to seats in
 
 406 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the other " Congress," provided for by the Constitution of the 
 United States. The session was secret, of course, and there was 
 no reason why men should not talk freely. Mr. Lincoln never 
 knew perhaps how thoroughly his Western policy and 
 much of his other policy was pulled in pieces in the course of 
 that verbally stormy evening. His assailants had everything 
 their own way at first. They labored with fiery energy. It 
 was a desperate effort of the personal opposition in his own, 
 party to create a sentiment against him in timely preparation, 
 for the political canvass of 1864. The assault was well planned 
 and was ably and even eloquently made, but it failed some- 
 what ignobly. 
 
 The Kansas military management had been selected as the 
 very worst feature of all that part of the " dictatorship and 
 tyrannical personal despotism," but no proper preparation had 
 been made for the manner and matter of the reply. The 
 Council seemed to be in almost entire sympathy with the op- 
 pressed and downtrodden complainants, and no single voice 
 had been raised in defense of the Administration. 
 
 At last, however, one of the Grand Officers of the League 
 took the stand. He simply offered evidence, written and oral, 
 that the policy of Mr. Lincoln in Kansas, in whole and in part, 
 had been at its outset advised and all but dictated by the very 
 men who now assailed him for it. It was also shown that at 
 no point from the beginning of the war had the President 
 failed to consult with the Senators and members of Congress 
 from both Kansas and Missouri. 
 
 There was very little of what is called eloquence in such a 
 rejoinder ; but no more speeches were made, for none were 
 needed. The Council promptly and all but unanimously, omit- 
 ting the malcontents from the count, adopted a resolution ap- 
 proving and sustaining the Administration. 
 
 It was a vote which meant a great deal at that pecuh'ar junc- 
 ture, and it was followed by yet another which was destined to 
 produce important political fruit. This was the action of the
 
 THORNS. 407 
 
 Grand Council providing that its next Annual Meeting should 
 be held at the same time and in the same locality with the 
 National Convention of the Republican party for the nomina- 
 tion of candidates for President and Yice-President. The 
 Union League of America was fast becoming, to all present 
 intents and purposes, the organized body of the Republican 
 party and the Home Guard and rear-guard of the Union 
 armies in the field. 
 
 The members of the Grand Council went home and reported 
 what things they had heard and seen at Washington. Every 
 man of them had heard and seen Abraham Lincoln, and, with 
 a few exceptions, was proud of the fact and ready to sustain 
 him in anything he might thenceforth see fit to do. It was 
 simply impossible for any unprejudiced man or woman to look 
 him in the face and take his kindly hand and then to not laugh 
 at or be angry with the next lunatic who should speak of him 
 as a " tyrant." 
 
 Even many who came to that gathering loaded with false 
 ideas left their burdens on the steps of the White House when 
 they came away from their interview. If it had been possible 
 and if Mr. Lincoln could have met such a popular representa- 
 tion, newly selected every month in the year and man by man, 
 there would have been small misunderstanding of him by the 
 people. In one manner he was actually so doing, for men and 
 women were continually coming to him with their sorrows 
 and petitions. Now it was a mother asking for her sick or 
 wounded son, that she might take him home with her and 
 nurse him back to health. Then it was another mother, who 
 liad given four of her sons to her country and three had fallen 
 in battle and but one was left, and she wanted him. Then it 
 was a group of anxious men and women pleading for the for- 
 feited life of some deserter, or for the establishment of a hos- 
 pital, or for some other mitigation of the horrors of the war. 
 
 Not infrequently it was even an embassy from " the other 
 side," some mother or wife pleading for a captive son or
 
 408 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 husband. Mr. Noah Brooks, at that time a Washington corre- 
 spondent for one of the New York papers, has given an in- 
 stance of this latter kind which Mr. Lincoln himself, in one of 
 his very few spare minutes, wrote out for Mr. Brooks to print 
 as a newspaper paragraph. On the opposite page appears a 
 fac-simile of the little scrap, entitled by Mr. Lincoln, "The 
 President's Last, Shortest and Best Speech." 
 
 He listened to all, bore with all, sympathized with all ; and 
 he was glad indeed to be offered a fair excuse for extending 
 mercy to an offender. 
 
 All the while, through the heavy shadows and through the 
 brief gleams of broken sunshine, the hearts of the people be- 
 came more and more knit to his, and there came to be less and 
 less need of formal explanations between him and the patriotic 
 masses. 
 
 By forcible draft as by voluntary enlistment, Mr. Lincoln 
 was calling upon men to step forward and die for their coun- 
 try, and he well knew that his own name was among those 
 " enrolled." He verily was dying by slow inches. It has been 
 said, with some show of probability, that before he left Illi- 
 nois he as well as others had a presentiment that he would fall 
 by the hand of violence. There would be small cause for 
 wonder if all that is related of this matter were minutely true. 
 Still smaller occasion would there be to regard so very reason- 
 able an impression as at all prophetic or supernatural. 
 
 The strong impression now spoken of was of another sort, 
 and was equally reasonable. To one friend he said : " The 
 springs of life are wearing away, and I shall not last." To 
 another, in apology for telling a humorous story : " If it were 
 not for this occasional vent, I should die." To another : " I 
 feel a presentiment that I shall not outlast the Rebellion. When 
 it is over, my work will be done." To another : " Whichever 
 way it ends, I have the impression that I shall not last long 
 after it is over." In 1864 Mrs. H. B. Stowe asked him " what 
 policy he proposed to pursue after the war." With a mourn-
 
 C r* * 
 
 - 
 
 Newspaper Paragraph, Penned by Mr. Lincoln.
 
 THORNS. 409 
 
 f ul sort of laugh, he replied : " After the war ? I shall not be 
 troubled about that. The war is killing me." 
 
 Men looked into his face, day by day, and saw there something 
 they could not understand. It gave them the idea of a man 
 in suppressed pain, and they were apt to turn away with little 
 inclination to find fault with him. Some weight should be 
 given to all this, with reference to his " personal ambition" for 
 a second term of office and his asserted desire to perpetuate his 
 political power. 
 
 There was, as there always is and must be, a great deal of self- 
 conceit and stupidity in the country in those days. There were 
 men, in very considerable numbers, who had learned little or 
 nothing in the terrible school of the war. Some of these, pos- 
 ing for the moment as " unconditional Union men," proposed 
 and called an universal mass-meeting, to be held at Springfield, 
 Illinois. That this was Mr. Lincoln's old home was an impor- 
 tant part of the " stage effect " designed to be produced. As 
 a part of the preparations for the announced discussion of the 
 faults and follies of the Government, a written invitation to 
 be present and hear himself discussed was sent to the President 
 of the United States. 
 
 With this invitation, these Unconditional Union men for- 
 warded a statement of some of the conditions upon which they 
 were willing to be unconditional. They thus gave him an ad- 
 mirable opportunity for talking plainly to the elements, the 
 whole country over, which they so well represented, and, at the 
 same time, for setting them up for exhibition in a tolerably 
 clear light before the world. His reply was dated August 23, 
 1863, at a time when he was making extensive preparations for 
 employing colored men as soldiers. It is almost conversational 
 in style and language, but was perfectly adapted to its purpose. 
 
 Among its other pointed, or stirring, or stinging sentences, 
 are these : 
 
 " You say you will not fight to free negroes. Some of them 
 seem willing to fight for you ; but no matter. Fight you, then,
 
 410 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 exclusively to save the Union. I issued the Proclamation on 
 purpose to aid you in saving the Union. ... I thought that, 
 in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes 
 should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the 
 enemy in his resistance to you. But negroes, like other men, 
 act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us if we 
 will do nothing for them ? If they stake their lives for us, they 
 must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the promise 
 of freedom. And the promise, being made, must be kept." 
 
 That was a clear enough setting forth of the mere worldly 
 wisdom of his policy. It offered precisely the kind of self- 
 preservation argument which such men might be supposed to 
 be able to comprehend. He added, " The signs look better," 
 and gave them a brief sketch of the advances already made to- 
 ward the military end. He closed his reply with words which 
 none who read them were likely to forget, and it mattered very 
 little that some would not soon forgive. 
 
 " Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will 
 come soon, and come to stay, and so come as to be worth the 
 keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that 
 among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the 
 ballot to the bullet, and that those who take such appeal are 
 sure to lose their case and pay the cost. And there will be 
 some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue, 
 and clinched teeth, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped 
 mankind on to this great consummation ; while I fear there 
 will be some white ones unable to forget that with malignant 
 heart and deceitful speech they have striven to hinder it." 
 
 Never for one moment, from the beginning to the end, did 
 Mr. Lincoln forget that the war for freedom and the Union 
 was fought on behalf of the oppressed of all nations. There 
 was no cause for wonder that the intelligent aristocracies and 
 higher castes of Europe should desire the success of the Con- 
 federacy. The Rebels in a manner represented them and were 
 curiously proud to say so. On the other hand, that multitudes
 
 THORNS. 411 
 
 of the classes in other lands whose interests were at stake in 
 the struggle the ignorant, the poor, the toilers should receive 
 and hold and act upon a deep conviction of the truth of the 
 matter, constitutes one of the most noteworthy features of the 
 time. The cotton operatives of England suffered more than 
 others from the effects of the war ; but they were wiser than 
 their rulers, and their hearts were with the North. 
 
 In 1863 they sent to the President a letter, from the work- 
 ingmen of Manchester in particular, but well understood to be 
 the voice of a great multitude. They expressed their sympathy 
 and good-will and hope, and he sent them a reply in which he 
 said to them : " It has been often and studiously represented 
 that the attempt to overthrow this government, which was 
 built upon the foundation of human rights, and to substitute 
 for it one which should rest exclusively upon the basis of 
 human slavery, was likely to obtain the favor of Europe. 
 Through the action of our disloyal fellow-citizens, the work- 
 ingmen of Europe have been subjected to severe trial, for the 
 purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt. Under these 
 circumstances I cannot but regard your decisive utterances upon 
 the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism which 
 has not been surpassed in any age or in any country." 
 
 More and more clear, as time went on, became Mr. Lincoln's 
 perception of the Source of all true heroism. More continu- 
 ously and thoughtfully outspoken became his public acknowl- 
 edgments and declarations of his perceptions. In his public 
 dispatch announcing to the nation an assured victory at Gettys- 
 burg, he expressed his desire that, in the customary celebration 
 of " The Fourth of July," the anniversary of national inde- 
 pendence, "He whose will, not ours, should everywhere be 
 done, be everywhere reverenced with profoundest gratitude." 
 
 The country never before had such a keeping of the Fourth ; 
 but it is worth while to note how sudden was the change from 
 utter depression to a capacity for " celebration." In the city 
 of Washington itself the usual preparations had been under
 
 412 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 way for some time and on a somewhat larger scale than usual. 
 Such was the gloomy state of the public mind, however, that 
 several of the most patriotic citizens and even well-known 
 statesmen openly declared their refusal to join in the exercises 
 of the day. The feeling grew to such a strength that a meet- 
 ing of " loyal citizens" was held, and a committee appointed to 
 call upon the Chairman of the Celebration Committee having 
 the matter in charge and urge an abandonment of the whole 
 affair, as inappropriate under the truly awful circumstances. 
 The appointed committee called upon the chairman and stated 
 their errand, receiving for reply : 
 
 " Gentlemen, there will be a celebration of the Fourth of 
 July in "Washington this year, and there will be a big one too, 
 if we can hear Lee's cannon all the time, and if we adjourn 
 from the speaker's stand to the trenches." 
 
 It was made a great day, there and everywhere, in the abid- 
 ing assurance from Mr. Lincoln that the sound of General Lee's 
 cannon was forever receding. Everywhere was read, as a part 
 of the regular proceedings, the dispatch of the President declar- 
 ing his belief in the God who had given to the nation the fruits 
 of that great battle and of the parallel victories in the West. 
 
 He had not, however, completed the great lessons he was to 
 teach from the tremendous text of the Gettysburg fight. The 
 State of Pennsylvania bought a piece of land on the battle-field 
 and gave it to the Government of the United States as a ceme- 
 tery wherein to bury the bodies of the slain heroes. It was 
 land on which many of them had actually fallen, and some were 
 already buried there. On the 19th of November the battle 
 cemetery was dedicated with solemn ceremonies. The Hon. 
 Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, delivered an oration worthy 
 of his high oratorical fame. Mr. Lincoln had been invited 
 to be present, but the stern pressure of his duties pre- 
 vented elaborate preparation. After leaving Washington, while 
 on the way, he wrote a few sentences which have found a 
 lasting place in the hearts and memories of men.
 
 THORNS. 413 
 
 " Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth 
 upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and 
 dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. 
 Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that 
 nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long 
 endure. We are met upon a great battle-field of that war. "We 
 have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting- 
 place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might 
 live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. 
 But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, 
 we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and 
 dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our 
 power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long 
 remember, what we say here ; but it can never forget what 
 they did here. It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated 
 here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have 
 thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here 
 dedicated to the great task remaining for us, that from these 
 honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which 
 they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here 
 highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain ; that 
 this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and 
 that the government of the people, by the people, and for the 
 people shall not perish from the earth." 
 
 Among the vast throng listening there were those who had 
 expected a long speech, full of they knew not what, and so 
 were disappointed, and freely declared as much ; but Mr. Lin- 
 coln had said enough, and all the loyal land responded with a 
 deep-voiced and reverent " Amen !"
 
 414 
 
 FAC-SIMILE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 GETTYSBURG CEMETERY SPEECH, 
 
 AS COPIED OUT FOR ENGRA VING, 
 
 BY THE 
 
 PRESIDENT, AFTER ITS DELIVERY. 
 
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 416 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTEK L. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 
 
 Keeping Good Workmen Absence of Favoritism A Political Revolution 
 A National Prayer-Meeting The Coming General Helpless in- 
 trigues. 
 
 IT would be fair to describe Mr. Lincoln's management of 
 the long list of military commanders under his direction as a 
 persistent effort by him to put each man, as nearly as might 
 be, in the place for which he was best fitted and wherein he 
 could perform the most effective service. 
 
 If, having appointed any man to an especial duty, he found 
 him insufficient for it, he was quite willing to transfer him to 
 another. If a strong man's usefulness were impaired or de- 
 stroyed by local or transitory causes, no undue or continuing 
 weight was ever assigned to these. 
 
 Fine illustrations of this rare element in the President's ca- 
 pacity as a ruler are furnished by the records of Generals 
 Burnside and Hooker, after each in turn had ceased to com- 
 mand the Army of the Potomac. Neither Fredericksburg nor 
 Chancellorsville was permitted to deprive the country of valu- 
 able services. There was no sort of quarrel between either of 
 them and the Commander-in-Chief, and they went on, in new 
 fields and with other armies, to prove the soundness of his 
 judgment concerning them. 
 
 The watchfulness required for the exercise of such a judg- 
 ment was all but sleepless, and called for the constant study of 
 circumstances as well as of men and of apparent results. Mr. 
 Lincoln's hours of hard-won solitude were a perpetual " court 
 of inquiry." He followed every movement of every army
 
 TEE BEGINNING OF THE END. 417 
 
 with the map before him, yet never permitted himself to make 
 the error of meddling with the decision of a competent general 
 in the field. He himself, unintentionally but accurately, sets 
 forth his methods of study and control, in his letter of con- 
 gratulation to General Grant after the Yicksburg triumph. 
 It is dated July 13, 1863. 
 
 " MY DEAR GENERAL : I do not remember that you and I 
 have ever met personally. I write this now as a grateful ac- 
 knowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have 
 done the country. I write to say a word further. When you 
 first reached the vicinity of Yicksburg, I thought you should 
 do what you finally did, march the troops across the neck, 
 run the batteries with the transports, and then go below ; and 
 I never had any faith, except a general hope, that you knew 
 better than I that the Yazoo Pass expedition and the like: 
 could succeed. When you got below and took Port Gibson^ 
 Grand Gulf, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the- 
 river and join General Banks, and when you turned northward,, 
 east of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I wish, now,, 
 to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right 
 and I was wrong." 
 
 Every man who did his duty was sure of precisely such 
 thoughtful and unselfish appreciation, if by any means the 
 facts in the case could be brought to the knowledge of the 
 President. Sometimes, beyond question, the facts were not so 
 brought to his knowledge, and injustice followed ; but it was 
 never by any neglect upon the part of Mr. Lincoln. Even in- 
 jured men came to so understand the matter at last, and few 
 were so unreasonable as to demand from him omniscience as 
 well as justice. As a whole, the record of his assignments to 
 duty will bear a remarkably close scrutiny, and his continual 
 discoveries of the men he was looking for were notably justi- 
 fied by their subsequent careers and achievements. His per- 
 sonal attachments, strong as they admittedly were, never were 
 permitted to come between him and his perception of the re-
 
 418 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 quirements of the public service. His oldest son, Robert Todd 
 Lincoln, was a student at college when the war broke out. 
 His father did but restrain the young man's enthusiastic im- 
 pulse to join the army and kept him at his books until his 
 course of study was completed. A subordinate staff appoint- 
 ment was then given him, just as such appointments were given 
 to hundreds of other bright young men, and there all parental 
 " favoritism" terminated. The President's son served to the 
 end of the war and left the army as a simple captain. It is 
 more than probable that his abilities would have given him 
 a higher grade but that his very birthright was in his way. 
 The record conveys its lesson forcibly. 
 
 The remainder of the summer and autumn of the year 1863 
 was well marked by military activities and successes, and only 
 here and there by any considerable check to the national arms, 
 both in the East and West. Yery much the most important 
 work accomplished, however, was largely in the nature of a 
 clearing up and securing title to the ground already won, and 
 preparing for the final struggle. 
 
 The results of the fall elections were such as might have 
 been expected. The reaction of popular feeling from deep 
 depression to buoyant hope was sufficient to carry every State 
 but one, New Jersey, for the Administration. Even there the 
 combined opposition assumed an attitude of earnest Unionism. 
 A Congress was secured which could be depended on for 
 voting the last man and the last dollar for war purposes. 
 It nevertheless contained a number of active and able men 
 who were anything but well pleased with Mr. Lincoln's per- 
 sonal control of the affairs in his hands. There was little to be 
 wondered at in this. He was no tyrant, indeed, and he was 
 thoughtfully cautious in his respect for all the prerogatives of 
 the legislative branch of the government ; but the fact of his 
 autocracy within his own sphere was often painfully manifest. 
 The United States contained but one President, and he was 
 necessarily dictatorial in war times : and his name was Abraham
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 419 
 
 Lincoln. It was not always pleasant for some other man 
 strong of will and conscious of capacity and of good purposes 
 towards himself and his country, when brought into sudden 
 contact or collision with an unyielding power he had never 
 felt before. 
 
 Yery little public grumbling was done, however, before 
 Congress assembled at Washington, for the people were hardly 
 in a state of mind to listen to it kindly, except from mouth- 
 pieces of the beaten " opposition." The President, without 
 especially laboring for it, was fast rallying to his personal sup- 
 port the great religious element which, in all its diversified 
 forms of doctrinal belief and of semi-repudiation of doctrinal 
 belief, is the positive body and soul of the American people. 
 He was uniting, as one man, the multitude of earnest hearts 
 that believed, absolutely, that the cause of the Union was the 
 cause of the God Almighty. 
 
 On the 15th of July, 1863, he issued a proclamation, imme- 
 diately following up his previous utterances of a similar nature, 
 in which he named the 6th of August as a day of public 
 thanksgiving and prayer. He asked all men and women to 
 " render the homage due to the Divine Majesty for the won- 
 derful things He has done in the nation's behalf ; and invoke 
 the influences of his Holy Spirit to subdue the anger which has 
 produced and so long sustained a needless and cruel rebellion ; 
 to change the hearts of the insurgents ; to guide the counsels 
 of the government with wisdom adequate to so great a national 
 emergency ; and to visit with tender care and consolation, 
 throughout the length and breadth of our land, all those who, 
 through the vicissitudes of marches, voyages, battles, and sieges, 
 have been brought to suffer in mind, body, or estate ; and 
 finally, to lead the whole nation through paths of repentance 
 and submission to the Divine Will, back to the perfect enjoy- 
 ment of union and fraternal peace." 
 
 That was a grand prayer-meeting; and it was led by the 
 President in person. He made the customary " Thanksgiving
 
 420 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Day" in November the occasion of a similar proclamation ; and 
 it is through him, in a very great measure, that that day has 
 ceased to be local and has become general and national in its 
 annual observance. He again summoned the people to prayer 
 and thanksgiving on the 7th of December, after the Union 
 successes in East Tennessee. The conviction grew in the 
 minds of all that the President was fighting this fight out in 
 the name of God and believed that God was helping him. It 
 was easier for the masses to strengthen their own faith after 
 that idea took permanent root. The very few who sneered at 
 the whole thing as an hypocritical formality were not num- 
 bered among those whose hearts were aching over losses or who 
 were meditating further sacrifices for the cause. Men who 
 suffer have a keen instinct which informs them of the suffering 
 of another man, and it was of little use, in those days, to ac- 
 cuse Abraham Lincoln of playing a part. He was well hated, 
 but even his worst enemies were forced to believe in him. 
 
 One of the steps towards the proposed reorganization of the 
 Army was the appointment of General Grant to the command 
 of the Military Department of the Mississippi ; but it was only 
 one of several steps which the President had in view. The 
 rest of them depended very much upon the course and out 
 come of the winter campaigns. 
 
 It was by no means plain that General Meade was the right 
 man, above all others, to lead the Army of the Potomac ; much 
 less to handle the tremendous forces preparing for the last 
 struggle with the Rebellion. It was sure that the Confederacy 
 would die hard, striking terrible blows to its last breath. The 
 situation demanded something more than an accomplished 
 soldier ; something more, even, than a good general. It was 
 time for the war to be closed, and only a hand of iron could 
 be entrusted with the relentless and machine-like processes of 
 its closing. The eyes of the nation as well as of the President 
 were turning with more and more of definite hope and pur- 
 pose towards the man for the hour which was coming.
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 421 
 
 The Message to Congress contained, of necessity, an his- 
 torical review of the events of the year and a setting forth of 
 their justification of the leading features of the policy of the 
 Administration. Emancipation, employment of colored sol- 
 diers, reconstruction, foreign relations, the national finances, a 
 number of minor topics, were presented in proper form, but it 
 was mainly a " report of progress" and an expression of con- 
 fident hope. The territory already rescued from the grasp of 
 the Richmond government was to be restored to relations with 
 the Constitution and the laws as rapidly as possible. No doubt 
 remained that its present reoccupation implied permanent pos- 
 session. No power existed in the now shattered and weakened 
 Confederacy to break the national mastery of the regions so to 
 be reconstructed, and the beginning of. the end had come. 
 
 A conviction of this fact settled firmly in the minds of all 
 the politicians north of the Rebel army-lines, and it produced 
 some curious results. Close upon the announcement by Mr. 
 Lincoln that he regarded his administration as a success and not 
 a failure came the accusation that he was ambitious of a re- 
 election to the Presidency. The suggestion that he was already 
 intriguing for such a result followed as a matter of course, and 
 it came from the lips of the busy men who were already in- 
 triguing to prevent his success. The twin accusations, as such, 
 died a very early and perfectly natural death. The sound- 
 minded people, the country over, took it for granted that Mr. 
 Lincoln desired a second term and thought no whit the worse 
 of him. No man with unclouded brain could have understood 
 or approved a willingness, on the part of the President, to lay 
 down such a work before it was completed. Not many would 
 have held him morally excusable for such a sin against the 
 nation. He would need another term to reap and gather in 
 the great harvest now ripening, and there was no other reaper 
 to whom the task was at all likely to be given unless the " op- 
 position" themselves should succeed in electing their man. 
 As for " intrigue," it was only too obvious that no other form
 
 422 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 of it was called for than might be included in a vigorous and 
 successful prosecution of the war. Everybody saw the point 
 clearly, and not a few were intelligent enough to perceive and 
 say that the politicians had a great deal more time on their 
 hands for that kind of political work than had the over-wearied 
 toiler in the map-strewn room in the White House. They had 
 all the time, indeed, that was used in the premises. Mr. Lin- 
 coln gave the matter no attention whatever, except when some- 
 body forced it upon him. The real intriguers talked much 
 and worked hard and failed for a long time to discover what a 
 mere skeleton of a faction they really were. It consisted al- 
 most altogether of " leading men," and the further they went 
 the greater became the gap between them and the vote-casting 
 masses of the Union.
 
 TEE SECOND NOMINATION. 423 
 
 CHAPTEE LI. 
 
 THE SECOND NOMINATION. 
 
 Lieutenant-General Grant The First Great Relief Dealing with Guerillas 
 Condensation of the Confederacy The Double National Convention 
 The Administration Formally Approved. 
 
 THE military events of the winter of 1863-4, intensely inter- 
 esting as they were, belong exclusively to the history of the 
 war. They were such as enabled Mr. Lincoln to move stead- 
 ily forward along the line he had so distinctly marked out. 
 
 The grade of Lieutenant-General, previously created solely 
 for the purpose of conferring an honor upon General Scott, 
 was revived by Act of Congress, February 29, 1864, and the 
 President fulfilled his own previous purpose concerning it when 
 he complied with the popular acclamation which named Ulys- 
 ses S. Grant as the man for the place. It was equally a matter 
 of course that the President and the Lieutenant-General should 
 instantly agree upon General W. T. Sherman as Grant's succes- 
 sor in the West. 
 
 General Grant received his new commission on the 9th of 
 March, 1864, at the hands of the President in person, at the 
 Executive Mansion, in the presence of the Cabinet and General 
 Halleck. The occasion was made somewhat ceremonial, but 
 the words spoken on either side were few and very much to 
 the point. The appointment of an officer outranking all others 
 was an affair of momentous importance. So far as the Army was 
 concerned, only the President and, through him, the Secretary of 
 War held higher commissions. Still it should be borne in mind 
 that the new rank of General Grant did not necessarily affect
 
 424 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 or change or reduce the rank of any other officer in any of the 
 armies. General Meade remained as before, for instance, in 
 direct command of the Army of the Potomac, which after- 
 wards received Grant's orders through Meade. General Hal- 
 leek did not cease to be the President's military counselor be- 
 cause Mr. Lincoln had at last obtained an arm of iron where- 
 with to deal the blows he had so longed to deal, but in vain. 
 
 General Grant at once entered upon the discharge of his 
 duties, taking up his headquarters with the Army of the Poto- 
 mac, on the 10th of March ; and it was not long before the 
 President began to experience an unwonted feeling of relief. 
 The tremendous burden which he had borne so long and so 
 patiently began to slip away a little. He could with difficulty 
 realize it at first, the situation was so new and so agreeable. 
 A few weeks later, in April, a personal friend came into his 
 office on Sunday forenoon. The President lay upon the sofa, 
 seeming more than usually fatigued but cheerful. He did not 
 rise at first, but chatted freely upon several topics. At last 
 his visitor remarked : 
 
 "Now, Mr. Lincoln, what sort of a man is Grant? Pve 
 never even seen him. He has taken hold here while I have 
 been kid up. What do you think of him ?" 
 
 The President half arose, and laughed silently, as he replied : 
 
 " "Well, , I hardly know what to think of him, alto- 
 gether. He's the quietest little fellow you ever saw." 
 
 "How is that?" 
 
 " Why, he makes the least fuss of any man you ever knew. 
 I believe two or three times he has been in this room a minute 
 or so before I knew he was here. It's about so all around. 
 The only evidence you have that he's in any place is that he 
 makes things git ! Wherever he is, things move !" 
 
 He grew energetic as he talked, and there was almost a glow 
 upon his face. He was describing the man he had been long- 
 ing for. Other questions and answers followed, until the visi- 
 tor inquired :
 
 THE SECOND NOMINATION. 425 
 
 " But how about Grant's generalship ? Is he going to be the 
 man?" 
 
 Mr. Lincoln again half arose, and emphasized his reply with 
 his long forefinger : 
 
 " , Grant is the first general I've had ! He's a general !" 
 
 " How do you mean, Mr. Lincoln ?" 
 
 " Well, I'll tell you what I mean. You know how it's been 
 with all the rest. As soon as I put a man in command of the 
 army, he'd come to me with a plan of a campaign and about as 
 much as say, ' Now, I don't believe I can do it, but if you say 
 so I'll try it on,' and so put the responsibility of success or 
 failure on me. They all wanted me to be the general. Now 
 it isn't so with Grant. He hasn't told me what his plans are. 
 I don't know, and I don't want to know. I'm glad to find a 
 man that can go ahead without me." 
 
 A slightly critical reply brought the President bolt upright. 
 
 " You see, , when any of the rest set out on a campaign, 
 
 they'd look over matters and pick out some one thing they were 
 short of and they knew I couldn't give 'em, and tell me they 
 couldn't hope to win unless they had it, and it was most gene- 
 rally cavalry." He paused for one of his quiet, long, peculiar 
 laughs and went on. " Now, when Grant took hold, I was waiting 
 to see what his pet impossibility would be, and I reckoned it 
 would be cavalry, as a matter of course, for we hadn't horses 
 enough to mount even what men we had. There were fif teejn. 
 thousand, or thereabouts, up near Harper's Ferry, and no horses 
 to put them on. Well, the other day Grant sends to me about 
 those very men, just as I expected ; but what he wanted to 
 know was whether he should make infantry of 'em or disband 
 'em. He doesn't ask impossibilities of me, and he's the first 
 general I've had that didn't." 
 
 Somewhat carelessly and half grotesquely he had sketched 
 some of his most trying responsibilities, such as had pressed upon 
 him from before the firing of the Sumter gun. Men of all other 
 sorts, as well as generals in command of armies, had demanded
 
 426 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 impossibilities of him, and some had hated and denounced him 
 because he performed no miracle. He might well rejoice also, 
 as he did, in the arrival of a man who would require no urging, 
 but who would be sure to strike again, after every battle, with 
 supreme indifference to the semblance which that battle might 
 bear to either victory or defeat. That part of the load could 
 be confidently laid aside : but what remained was still over- 
 heavy for mortal shoulders. 
 
 The work of restoring order in the reoccupied States was 
 going bravely forward, and the severest measures for the sup- 
 pression of guerilla warfare and neighborhood revenges were 
 enforced with the President's full approval. That is to say, 
 with his full approval of as much as he knew of the precise 
 manner of the enforcement, for a good deal of bloody work 
 was done whereof no report went up. The merciful side of his 
 nature inclined him, in this important matter, to extend all pos- 
 sible protection to undefended homes and women and children. 
 The continuous record of atrocities committed was an all-suffi- 
 cient justification. He took all reasonable means, at the same 
 time, for maintaining and defending the rights of colored sol- 
 diers in the ranks of Union armies, East and West. 
 
 Not taking into specific consideration operations on the sea, 
 nor sea-coast defenses, nor detached commands, the military 
 situation in the spring of the year 1864 may be summed up in 
 outline as follows : 
 
 The dimensions and the strength of the Confederacy had 
 been materially reduced, but the latter had been in a manner 
 concentrated for its last despairing struggle. Its armies were 
 composed largely of veterans, and were led by generals of un- 
 questionable capacity. It had massed the greater part of these 
 in two main bodies with their branches. One, under Lee, de- 
 fended its old ground in Virginia. The other, under Johnston, 
 held northwestern Georgia, and with it the railway connections 
 and topographical advantages which made that position the 
 key to all that remained to the Rebellion of the cotton-growing
 
 THE SECOND NOMINATION. 427 
 
 States. Much remained to be done in Louisiana, Texas, Ar- 
 kansas, and elsewhere, but these two armies contained about all 
 that was really left to carry on the war for slavery. Against 
 these, therefore, all the hard fighting of the year 1864 was 
 planned and directed, and all other operations were of minor 
 importance. 
 
 Every now and then half -muffled voices came up from beyond 
 the Eebel army-lines, telling of the weariness of their long- 
 suffering which the masses of the Southern people were not 
 permitted openly to express. They had done all that it was 
 possible for human beings to do, and were beginning to per- 
 ceive that all subsequent battles were to be in the nature of 
 useless bloodshed, bordering horribly close upon the crime of 
 wholesale murder. No voice whatever, nor any small murmur 
 of one, came from the merciless despotism at Richmond or 
 from the men who controlled its armies in the field. They 
 were manifestly determined to continue the strife to the bitter 
 end. 
 
 The machinery of the Federal government was now in 
 almost perfect working order, but its very bulk and its re- 
 morseless efficiency made it an incubus. The people were fast 
 wearying of incessant exactions, in spite of the general appear- 
 ance of prosperity. The President was straining every power 
 given him to maintain the Army and Navy at their utmost 
 activity, and the Opposition was almost hourly supplied with 
 texts, great or small, upon which to preach its crusade against 
 his administration. 
 
 Extravagance, wastefulness, corruption, favoritism, heartless 
 throwing away of human life, a thousand separate accusations 
 swelled steadily into a chorus which was by many men believed 
 to arise from the tax-paying and war-sustaining masses. This 
 idea was altogether a mistake ; but sundry curious political ex- 
 periments were tried before the truth of the matter could be 
 demonstrated. At this day there would be small profit in 
 relating the dull details of the several experiments. One of
 
 428 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 them included an independent and very irregular " Republican 
 Convention" at Cleveland, Ohio, on the 31st of May, for the 
 purpose of declaring that the national liberties were in danger, 
 and that Mr. Lincoln should be set aside in accordance with 
 "the one-term principle," which had never been heard of 
 before to any noteworthy extent. 
 
 What threatened at first to be a more dangerous, because 
 altogether regular, undertaking was made in another way, and 
 produced beneficial results. 
 
 The National Convention of the Republican party was to 
 be held at Baltimore, Maryland, on the 8th of June, 1864, and 
 the National Grand Council of the Union League of America 
 was summoned to meet in the same city on the 7th. Some- 
 thing like two thirds of the delegates to the latter, roughly 
 estimated, were also delegates to the former, and the control- 
 ling spirits of both were largely the same men. The malcon- 
 tent elements of the party secured full and satisfactory repre- 
 sentation in the Grand Council, and there were those among 
 them who confidently expected to there exert a power which 
 would render the renomination of Abraham Lincoln im- 
 possible. Some of his best friends were not without anxiety 
 as to the results obtainable in such a body meeting in secret 
 session. 
 
 The day came, and the city of Baltimore was packed to over- 
 flowing. The session of the Grand Council was to be held in 
 the evening, and it was not easy for the outside world to guess 
 what might be done by men whose lips were closed as to their 
 instructions and their purposes. They came together in perfect 
 order and decorum, but of course without any audience to hear 
 or cheer or interfere. Hardly had the preliminary work of the 
 evening been completed before the prepared assault upon the 
 Administration in general and Mr. Lincoln in particular was 
 vigorously begun and prosecuted. There was a superabun- 
 dance of seemingly good material for such an assault, and it
 
 THE SECOND NOMINATION. 429 
 
 seemed before long as if the Council were about to be swept 
 away by a rising tide. This, however, was mainly because the 
 Kansas and Missouri orators and a few others had been quietly 
 permitted to have their own way unanswered. Besides, almost 
 every man in the whole body of delegates was compelled to 
 admit to himself that mistakes had been committed, by some- 
 body; by a great many persons in authority ; perhaps by Mr. 
 Lincoln ; perhaps even by Congress ; perhaps by the Nation as 
 a whole ; and perhaps by the human race itself. The very bit- 
 terness and eloquence of the successive attacks answered an 
 admirable purpose. They cleared away the mental fogs in the 
 minds of all who heard, and at last all of these that remained 
 required only the strong breeze of one decisive argument. It 
 was given by Senator " Jim" Lane of Kansas, himself formerly 
 for a season anything but a friend of Mr. Lincoln. He de- 
 fended the Administration. His speech was not long, but it 
 was masterly, for it enabled each of his hearers to ask himself 
 and answer the simple question : 
 
 " Will not the country be safer with Abraham Lincoln as 
 President than with any other man I can name ?" 
 
 There was little further debate after Senator Lane's speech. 
 Some voting was done. The difficulty was all over when it 
 was discovered that only a couple of dozens of even the dele- 
 gates to the Grand Council were willing to run the risk of ven- 
 turing before the people with any other nominee than Lincoln. 
 The anticipated storm had come and gone, and the National 
 Convention the next day formally ratified the decision of the 
 Union League without any disturbance whatever. The twenty- 
 two votes of Missouri were cast for General Grant at first, but 
 were then changed to Lincoln, and the nomination was declared 
 to be unanimous. 
 
 The platform of principles adopted left very little to be asked 
 for as an expression of the will and faith and hope of the loyal 
 people of the United States. The very act of dropping the
 
 430 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 name of Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine as a candidate for the 
 Yice-Presidency, and the substitution of that of Andrew John- 
 son of Tennessee, was a strong recognition and approval of the 
 policy of reconstruction. This action is said to have been 
 urged by Mr. Lincoln's personal friends at his own private 
 request. 
 
 According to custom, the Convention appointed its chair- 
 man, Governor Dennison, of Ohio, with a committee, to wait 
 upon the President at Washington with a formal announce- 
 ment of the action thus taken. He received them, listened to 
 their address, and responded as follows : 
 
 " Having served four years in the depths of a great and yet 
 unended national peril, I can view this call to a second term in 
 nowise more flattering to myself than as an expression of the 
 public judgment that I may better finish a difficult work in 
 which I have labored from the first than could any one less 
 severely schooled to the task. In this view, and with assured 
 reliance on the Almighty Ruler who has graciously sustained 
 us thus far, and with increased gratitude to the generous 
 people for their continued confidence, I accept the renewed 
 trust with its yet onerous and perplexing duties and respon- 
 sibilities." 
 
 He was waited upon the same day by a similar committee 
 from the Union League, but no report was made to him by 
 them of the exact nature of the highly interesting session of 
 that body. 
 
 In due time he received the written notification of the 
 action of the Republican Convention, with a copy of the plat- 
 form, and to this he replied, on the 27th of June : 
 
 " GENTLEMEN : Your letter of the 14th inst., formally noti- 
 fying me that I have been nominated by the Convention you 
 represent for the Presidency of the United States for four 
 years from the fourth of March next, has been received. The
 
 THE SECOND NOMINATION. 431 
 
 nomination is gratefully accepted, as the resolutions of the Con- 
 vention called the platform are heartily approved. While the 
 resolution in regard to the supplanting of republican govern- 
 ments on the Western Continent is fully concurred in, there 
 might be misunderstanding were I not to say that the position 
 of the government in relation to the action of France in Mexico, 
 as assumed, through the State Department, and endorsed by the 
 Convention among the measures and acts of the Executive, 
 will be faithfully maintained so long as the state of facts shall 
 leave that position pertinent and applicable. I am especially 
 gratified that the soldier and seaman were not forgotten by the 
 Convention, as they forever must and will be remembered by 
 the grateful country for whose salvation they devoted their 
 lives. 
 
 " Thanking you for the kind and complimentary terms in 
 which you have communicated the nomination and other pro- 
 ceedings of the Convention, I subscribe myself 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 " ABRAHAM LINCOLN." 
 
 The platform and the entire action of the Convention, with 
 the terms of their formal acceptance, combined to express one 
 fact and idea ; and this was, that the Republican party had 
 determined to go before the people upon the record made by 
 Mr. Lincoln as President, and to stand or fall with him. The 
 Opposition, calling itself the Democratic party, took up the 
 challenge so offered. It should not be necessary to remark in 
 this connection, but it may be well to do so for the benefit of 
 careless readers, that the parties of that day are not the parties 
 of this, whatever may be some of the incidental inheritances 
 of our existing political organisms. It is unavoidable to em- 
 ploy here the party names then in use ; but it should be with 
 the understanding that they do not necessarily describe or 
 define anything now in existence.
 
 432 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln himself had long since ceased to be a partisan 
 in any sense of that word. He was the representative and 
 director of the great forces, moral, intellectual, and physical, 
 devoted to the work of developing, shaping, defending, and 
 perpetuating the new Nation, thenceforth to be known as the 
 United States of America. As he himself expressed it in his 
 Gettysburg speech, he had " highly resolved that this nation, 
 under God, shall have a new birth of freedom ;" and that which 
 is born again is no more the same, forever and ever.
 
 ON TRIAL. 433 
 
 CHAPTEK LII. 
 
 ON TRIAL. 
 
 The Campaign of Calumny The Reconstruction Proclamation Traps 
 which Captured Nothing Skirmishing Diplomacy The Blunders of 
 the Opposition A Union General in Bad Company. 
 
 THE National Convention of the Democratic party had been 
 called to meet at Chicago on the 27th of August. There re- 
 mained, therefore, after Mr. Lincoln's second nomination, more 
 than two full months during which his enemies might plot 
 and plan and search for the weak spots in his armor and devise 
 weapons wherewith to stab him. They had in this a great, 
 apparent advantage, with the concurrent privilege of misrepre- 
 senting whatever he or his might do, or fail to do, in the mean 
 time. Their party press could describe every battle as more 
 or less of a defeat and keep its columns open to the virulent 
 expression of every possible form of criticism, discontent, or 
 personal enmity. The Administration was on trial before the 
 country as a tyranny and a failure, and all the witnesses against 
 it were to be called, mostly swearing if not sworn, and they 
 and their able advocates were to have a free, full, unhindered 
 hearing. That which could pass unharmed through such an 
 ordeal must have in it a great preponderance of such pure gold 
 as need not to fear the fire. 
 
 The Opposition was not left altogether to the blundering 
 devices of the second-rate demagogues and new ambitions which 
 nominally controlled its present operations. The brains of the 
 old pro-slavery Democracy had ever been supplied by the 
 South, for the greater part, and the best inspiration and help 
 of its campaign of 1864 came still from Richmond.
 
 434 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 The very directness and simplicity with which the great 
 political question of the day was propounded had in it some- 
 thing appalling to many men. All idea of change for the sake 
 of change, so attractive to the restless and the weary, was shut 
 out. The result was to be something as yet unknown, or else 
 four years more of Abraham Lincoln. ~No man was greatly in 
 doubt as to what the latter alternative included. He had made 
 his purposes clearly understood, and his first public act after 
 his nomination was taken unselfishly, without the slightest 
 reference to its effect upon his personal popularity. Congress 
 passed, in July and just before its adjournment, an Act em- 
 bodying an elaborate plan of reconstruction for the seceded 
 States, recovered and to be recovered. It provided a system 
 of bonds and fetters for the Executive as well as for the re- 
 gained areas, and the President refused his approval. It was 
 necessary for him to explain his position to the country, and 
 he did so, on the 8th of July, in a proclamation. In this he 
 embodied the Act, as one of several admissible plans of recon- 
 struction, but refused to commit himself, in advance, to that 
 or any other specific mode of procedure, or to set aside the 
 State governments already organized in Arkansas and Loui- 
 siana. His action called forth very bitter assaults from men 
 who had been the active promoters of the Act, in the Senate 
 and House of Representatives ; but the acquiescence of the gen- 
 eral public in the views of Mr. Lincoln was so plainly mani- 
 fested that no great harm was done. The unkindly personal 
 nature of some criticisms made by former friends galled him a 
 little, but he was absorbed in watching movements of his polit- 
 cal enemies which were of a much more perilous and threatening 
 character. 
 
 It was manifest to the Richmond managers of the Democratic 
 party that there was little hope of successfully opposing a 
 renewal of power to the Lincoln Administration otherwise 
 than by creating a division among its adherents. For this 
 purpose, therefore, they plotted well and wisely. The trap they
 
 ON TRIAL. 435 
 
 laid was one into which an unwary man might easily have stum- 
 bled. That the Northern people were weary of the war was 
 very obvious. That they would hail with delight any prospect 
 of peace was a matter of course. If, therefore, Mr. Lincoln 
 could be forced or beguiled into presenting an appearance of 
 standing in the way of a restoration of peace, the Democratic 
 Convention at Chicago would be provided with a war-cry and 
 the Opposition could go before the country with new hope of 
 winning the fall elections. 
 
 The country did not contain a purer patriot, with wider in- 
 fluence, nor the Republican party an abler advocate than 
 Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune. He was 
 therefore selected as the gateway through which the insidious 
 attack could best be made. On the 5th of July a letter was 
 sent to Mr. Greeley from a wandering diplomatist named 
 Jewett, at Niagara Falls, setting forth that two commissioners 
 of the Confederate Government were in Canada, with full powers 
 to negotiate a peace. He asked a conference with Mr. Greeley 
 or a safe-conduct for the Eichmond men to come to New York. 
 Very properly, Mr. Greeley sent the letter to the President, 
 with a statement of his own views of the matter and of the 
 perils threatening the party and the Administration. He said, 
 among other things : " A widespread conviction that the 
 government and its supporters are not anxious for peace, and 
 do not improve proffered opportunities to achieve it, is doing 
 great harm now, and is morally certain, unless removed, to do 
 far greater in the approaching election." 
 
 He thus described, with a fair degree of accuracy, the sort 
 of mine which the Democratic managers were digging. Mr. 
 Lincoln replied, on the 9th of July : 
 
 " If you can find any person, anywhere, professing to have 
 any proposition of Jefferson Davis, in writing, embracing the 
 restoration of the Union and abandonment of slavery, whatever 
 else it embraces, say to him that he may come to me with you." 
 
 Mr. Greeley was again induced to write, on the 13th, that
 
 436 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 two persons, duly commissioned and empowered to negotiate 
 for peace, were waiting near Niagara Falls for a conference 
 with the President or his proper representative ; or they and 
 another would come to Washington for such a conference if a 
 safe-conduct were afforded. Their names were given, and 
 were such as to make the affair assume a semblance of plausi- 
 bility. 
 
 Other correspondence followed ; a safe-conduct was freely 
 offered to any " commissioners" duly empowered as stated in 
 the President's first reply ; Major John Hay, one of the Presi- 
 dent's private secretaries, was sent to New York and to Niagara 
 Falls with full power in the premises ; but the " commission- 
 ers" were compelled to acknowledge that they were not accred- 
 ited by the Confederate Government. They were a very 
 attractive political trap and they were not anything more. A 
 very precise statement of the President's position was carried 
 to Niagara Falls by Major Hay and was afterwards printed and 
 read by the nation. It was addressed to many millions of 
 people, when it was written, quite as much as to any pair or 
 trio' of rebel negotiators for party capital. It read : 
 
 " EXECUTIVE MANSION, 
 " WASHINGTON, July 18, 1864. 
 " To whom it ma/y concern : 
 
 " Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace, 
 the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of sla- 
 very, and which comes by and with an authority that can con- 
 trol the armies now at war against the United States, will be 
 received and considered by the Executive Government of the 
 United States, and will be met on liberal terms on substantial 
 and collateral points ; and the bearer or bearers thereof shall 
 have safe-conduct both ways." 
 
 The commissioners were of course indignant, and said so ; 
 and a slight misunderstanding arose between the President and 
 Mr. Greeley as to the details of the correspondence and its
 
 ON TRIAL. 437 
 
 management. Nevertheless the worst of the intended mis- 
 chief was prevented, the subtle plot was made a failure, and all 
 that could be said and done, before or after election-day, could 
 not convince any large number of sound-minded voters that the 
 beginning of an offer of actual peace had been made or intend- 
 ed. That is, of peace on any such terms as those set forth by 
 Mr. Lincoln. The country, as a whole, had finally decided, in 
 its heart of hearts, that it was not willing to have any other 
 kind of peace, live or die. 
 
 The Opposition made only fairly good profit by its two 
 months of preparation, and learned no wisdom at all. When 
 its National Convention came together at Chicago, it made 
 Governor Seymour, of New York, its presiding officer, and 
 Yallandigham, of Ohio, the chairman of its committee on reso- 
 lutions. The latter crept back from his grotesque banishment 
 in the Confederate lines just about in time to frame the plat- 
 form of grievances upon which Mr. Lincoln was to be assailed. 
 
 The platform recited duly all known complaints against the 
 Administration, and demanded a cessation of hostilities. It 
 was a foregone necessity that even such an absurd agglomer- 
 ation of discontent should appeal in some way to loyal senti- 
 ment, and some loyalty was therefore put in. A further at- 
 tempt was made in the nomination of General McClellan as 
 the Democratic candidate for President. George H. Pendleton, 
 of Ohio, was named for Yice-President. It is only bare jus- 
 tice to General McClellan to record that it soon appeared that 
 he felt very strangely about that platform and about his re- 
 markable associates and indorsers. He had had his difficulties 
 with Mr. Lincoln, indeed, and he had views of his own as to 
 the management of the war, but he had never done anything 
 to entitle or condemn him to rank with the kind of men who 
 had been foremost in giving him that nomination. The speedy 
 reports of his personal and honorable discontent sent quite a 
 large number of sensible voters over to Mr. Lincoln's support. 
 
 The Democratic Convention closed its session with a covert
 
 438 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 threat which had a half-way revolutionary sound and scared 
 men away from them. It did not dissolve, as is customary 
 with such bodies, but adjourned, " subject to be called at any 
 time and place that the National Executive Committee may 
 designate." 
 
 Important Union successes in the field aided materially in 
 solidifying the good effect produced by the action of the Demo- 
 cratic Convention. Telegraphic reports of victories were un- 
 pleasant commentaries upon editorial or other assertions that 
 " the conduct of the war by the Lincoln despotism has been and 
 is a disgraceful failure." 
 
 It could but be manifest to all that the President had at his 
 disposal the enormous and ubiquitous machinery of the gov- 
 ernment. The Opposition determined to prop their failing 
 fortunes with the assertion that he was using his power as the 
 national Executive to secure his own re-election. 
 
 In a reply to a delegation of loyal Marylanders, early in Oc- 
 tober, he said : 
 
 " I therefore say that, if I live, I shall remain President un- 
 til the fourth of March, and that whoever shall be constitution- 
 ally elected in November shall be duly installed as President 
 on the fourth of March ; and, in the interval, I shall do my 
 utmost that whoever is to hold the helm for the next voyage 
 shall start with the best chance of saving the ship." 
 
 Now at such a time there might possibly be raised a ques- 
 tion as to who, after the votes were counted, was " constitution- 
 ally elected." Even in advance it might be effectively charged 
 that Mr. Lincoln was already using his power to prevent a con- 
 stitutional election. An excellent opportunity for getting a 
 little mischief ready beforehand was afforded by the course of 
 events in Tennessee. Andrew Johnson, the Republican candi- 
 date for Yice-President, was military governor of that State, 
 in process of reconstruction. The convention called to re- 
 organize the State had been composed of unconditional Union 
 men, and had provided an oath to be taken by all voters at
 
 ON TRIAL. 439 
 
 the elections, which it also provided for. This was an oath 
 of loyalty which could have been truthfully taken by only 
 a small minority of the delegates to the Chicago Convention, 
 although it contained no word which could have troubled the con- 
 science of any loyal citizen of the United States. The cry was 
 loudly raised that this was a trick of the Administration to 
 prevent " the McClellan men" of Tennessee from voting. To 
 strengthen the cry, a committee of such men was chosen to 
 bear a written protest to the President, at "Washington. They 
 came and he received them, but for once his overtasked pa- 
 tience gave way. The committee afterwards reported that 
 he received them " roughly." That he even said to then* 
 chairman : 
 
 " I expect to let the friends of George B. McClellan manage 
 their side of this contest in their own way, and I will manage 
 my side of it in my way." In reply to their demand for an 
 answer in writing, as they reported, he said : 
 
 " IsTot now. Lay those papers down here. I may or may 
 not write something about this hereafter. I know you intend 
 to make a point of this. But go ahead. You have my an- 
 swer." 
 
 If the report be correct, and it may be, Mr. Lincoln betrayed 
 irritation. A pitfall was opened before him and he was asked 
 to tumble into it, and there was a lack of courtesy in the man- 
 ner of his immediate refusal. Critical people declared that he 
 should have rejected the mud-hole with grace and dignity. He 
 rejected it, at all events, and with force, in a written commu- 
 nication, dated the 22d of October, which left the Opposition 
 no profit whatever from that speculation. The McClellan 
 ticket was ostentatiously withdrawn from Tennessee, on the 
 alleged ground that its supporters there could not take the 
 oath.
 
 440 ABEAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTEK LIH. 
 
 THE NATION'S VERDICT. 
 
 The Rebellion Bleeding to Death A Half a Million More The Results of 
 the Election Sherman's March to the Sea The Last Great Battle in 
 the West Changes in the Cabinet Grant on "Executive Interference." 
 
 THE course of the civil war during the summer and early 
 autumn of the year 1864, studded thickly as it was with bloody 
 battles, may be described with fair exactness as a process of at- 
 trition. Both in the East and West, the opposing armies were 
 grinding in almost continuous struggle. 
 
 The military results, viewed strictly as such, were in favor 
 of the Union armies, and, all the while, the conquered districts 
 put behind these in their advances were becoming more and 
 more hopelessly lost forever to the Confederacy. One obvious 
 fact needed no presentation in any army bulletin. The area 
 from which the Eebel forces could draw recruits and supplies 
 was steadily narrowing. Whenever their armies now in the 
 field should be ground away and used up by the ceaseless cam- 
 paigning forced upon them, no others like them could be ob- 
 tained to take their places. The end of all drew nearer with 
 every charge they made, successful or otherwise, upon the wall 
 of steel and fire that was pitilessly closing in around them. 
 
 The resources of the North were not perceptibly diminished. 
 A Rebel officer of Texas cavalry, captured and carried to one of 
 the forts in New York harbor, was paroled late one evening 
 and spent the night at the Astor House, on Broadway, in New 
 York City. He came out upon the steps of the hotel, after 
 breakfast, the next morning, and stood for an hour or so, watch- 
 ing the tide of men flow past him. At first he thought it a
 
 THE NATION'S VERDICT. 441 
 
 " procession" or the result of some uncommon excitement ; but 
 when the truth dawned upon him that this was only the every- 
 day rush of the great city, he sat down and wrote to his friends 
 at the South : 
 
 " How they have lied to us ! It is of no use. I give it up. 
 There are more men in the North than there were before the 
 war. Ours are all gone, and it's about time to stop." 
 
 Mr. Lincoln would gladly have seen the entire South arriv- 
 ing at so sensible a decision ; but every faint sign of promise in 
 any such direction proved instantly illusory. He was now con- 
 tending with the wounded pride, rather than the sane hope or 
 expectation, of a group of men in power at Richmond, whose 
 indomitable obstinacy upheld them until the gallant men whom 
 they forced to fight for them were uselessly crushed upon the 
 last vain battle-fields of the civil war. 
 
 Fully understanding his antagonists, Mr. Lincoln prepared 
 for the worst. On the 18th of July he called for five hundred 
 thousand more men, the number not furnished by voluntary 
 enlistments to be obtained by a draft, after September 5. 
 Even his enemies were unable to describe so unpopular an act 
 as an electioneering operation in behalf of his re election. His 
 friends told him, plainly, that it might insure his defeat at the 
 November polls. 
 
 Perhaps he had more correctly gauged the temper and under- 
 standing of the people. At all events, the summoned men came 
 forward rapidly, a large and valuable percentage of them being 
 veterans who had served their time under previous enlistments. 
 
 One after another, every device of the Opposition utterly 
 broke down. Even before election-day it was evident that no 
 danger of Democratic success remained. When the polls were 
 closed and the votes were counted, it was found that the coun- 
 try contained 4,015,902 voters, the greater part of whom were 
 possible fighters. Mr. Lincoln's enormous majority of 411,428 
 fairly buried the McClellan electoral tickets. Kentucky and 
 Delaware, old slave-States, with New Jersey, feebly testified
 
 442 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 their disgust with Emancipation, but they were of small account 
 in an electoral college of 233 votes, wherein 212 were solidly 
 against them. There could be raised no question of the " con- 
 stitutionality" of such an election. It was the carefully formed 
 and solemnly announced judgment of the nation. Mr. Lin- 
 coln had taken no especial or undue means to secure the politi- 
 cal victory, but it was altogether such as he had confidently 
 looked for. It was no surprise to him, and it justified alike his 
 faith in God and in the general right-mindedness of his fellow- 
 citizens. 
 
 The people breathed more freely after the election, in spite 
 of the exciting nature of current news from the army. 
 
 In the very middle of November began Sherman's " march 
 to the sea," and only one month later, with the tidings that he 
 had reached the coast, came the defeat and demoralization of 
 the last great Rebel army in the "West, at Nashville. The fight- 
 ing in Virginia had been hard and costly, upon both sides, 
 throughout the season. It included the " battles of the Wil- 
 derness," the siege of Petersburg, the victories of Sheridan in 
 the Shenandoah Valley, and many another fierce collision of 
 forces, and it ended with the beginning of the final closing in 
 upon Richmond and Lee's army. 
 
 There had been three changes in the Cabinet during the year. 
 Mr. Montgomery Blair, Postmaster-General, after rendering 
 valuable services, had been succeeded by Governor "William 
 Dennison, of Ohio. Edward Bates, of Missouri, Attorney- 
 General, had been succeeded by Mr. Lincoln's old personal 
 friend, James Speed, of Kentucky. Salmon P. Chase, Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury, had been succeeded by "William Pitt Fes- 
 senden, of Maine. 
 
 Neither of these changes originated in the personal will or 
 feeling of the President, or implied any dissatisfaction on his 
 part with the official conduct of the gentlemen who tendered 
 their resignations. The precise causes, in either case, have 
 ceased to be important or generally interesting. If there were
 
 THE NATION'S VERDICT. 443 
 
 peculiar circumstances attending the withdrawal of Mr. Chase, 
 connected with the course taken by his friends prior to the 
 Baltimore Convention, all cause for remembering them was re- 
 moved by the subsequent action of Mr. Lincoln. Chief-Justice 
 Taney of the Supreme Court died on the 12th of October, and, 
 after giving a full hearing to all who chose to offer advice upon 
 the subject, the President named Mr. Chase as his successor. 
 The possible range of human events could not have offered him 
 a better means for testifying his repudiation of personal ani- 
 mosity and his keen appreciation of patriotic fidelity and capa- 
 city. 
 
 The appointment to the Supreme Court bench of his old and 
 tried friend and adviser, David Davis, of Illinois, was in a 
 somewhat different way a similar testimonial to personal worth, 
 conferred without regard to political or any other influence to 
 the contrary. 
 
 If Mr. Lincoln's utterances and letters, during this period, 
 continually express his increasing religious feeling and his con- 
 fidence in an overruling Providence, his correspondence with 
 army commanders testifies to his belief that the conduct of 
 military affairs was at last in the right hands. He had his 
 doubts, indeed, as to the wisdom of Sherman's march into 
 Georgia, but he refused to interfere. In a letter to General 
 Grant he said : 
 
 " The particulars of your plan I neither know nor seek to 
 know. You are vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleased with 
 this, I wish not to obtrude any restraints or constraints upon 
 yon." 
 
 General Grant's reply contained this comprehensive testi- 
 mony: 
 
 " From my first entrance into the volunteer service of my 
 country to the present day, I have never had cause of com- 
 plaint. . . . Indeed, since the promotion which placed me in 
 command of all the armies, and in view of the great responsi- 
 bility and importance of success, I have been astonished at the
 
 444 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 readiness with which everything asked for has been yielded, 
 without even an explanation being asked." 
 
 How great a relief was thus obtained by the weary Com- 
 mander-in-Chief can hardly be estimated. How much he was 
 in need of such relief could only be guessed, at the time, by 
 those who loved him and narrowly noted the visible signs that 
 his iron constitution was beginning to yield to the ceaseless 
 drain and strain. 
 
 The overthrow of the Rebellion, the return of peace, might 
 possibly bring him easier times. His mind was stronger and 
 clearer than ever, and his education was still going steadily for- 
 ward ; but his bodily frame was bent and at times it drooped a 
 little, for the burdens yet upon him were almost too much for 
 human endurance.
 
 A VALEDICTORY. 445 
 
 CHAPTEK LIT. 
 
 A VALEDICTORY. 
 
 Putting Emancipation into the Constitution Sherman in South Carolina 
 The Peace Conference in Hampton Roads Useless Bloodshed The 
 Second Inaugural. 
 
 CONGRESS assembled on the 5th of December, 1864, and the 
 President sent in his Message the next day. In this he tersely 
 reviewed the military and political position of the country, at 
 home and abroad. He called attention to the manifest gains 
 of the country in wealth and population, with reference to its 
 undiminished ability to continue the war. He urged the adop- 
 tion of an Amendment to the Constitution, forever prohibiting 
 human slavery in the United States. He declared that the 
 Eebels could at any time have peace by simply laying down 
 their arms and submitting to the national authority under the 
 Constitution. 
 
 At the previous session of the same Congress an effort to 
 provide for such a Constitutional Amendment as Mr. Lincoln 
 advised had failed. The time was not then ripe for it. It 
 was now plain to all, however, that the full time had come, 
 and the necessary two-thirds vote of the House of Representa- 
 tives was obtained with moderate difficulty, the Senate being 
 already secure. 
 
 The President publicly declared to a crowd who assembled 
 at the White House, to congratulate him, that the Amendment 
 seemed to him the one thing needful. It completed and con- 
 firmed the work of the Proclamation of Emancipation, if duly 
 ratified by the several States. He urged those who heard him 
 to go home and see that this was done. 
 
 The war was pressed with untiring vigor, at every point,
 
 446 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 through the month of December. In January the army 
 under General Sherman faced northward, sweeping through 
 South Carolina. Charleston fell into its hands like an over- 
 ripe apple. No force remained with any power to stand in its 
 way, and the Richmond rulers began to realize that their hour 
 was coming. Studying well the terms of peace announced in 
 Mr. Lincoln's message to Congress, but not yet comprehending 
 them, they determined upon a last effort to save something 
 from the impending wreck of the Confederacy. 
 
 An informal conference was obtained, February 3, 1865, 
 upon a steamer in Hampton Roads, between the Yice-Presi- 
 dent of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, R. M. T. 
 Hunter and J. A. Campbell, representing the Richmond 
 authorities ; and Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward. The President's 
 assent to this interview was given at the request of General 
 Grant, but with small hope of profitable results. None such 
 were at all possible. No written propositions were made or 
 offered on either side. No formal report of the conversation 
 was permitted, but the substance of it was at once made pub- 
 lic, both at the North and South. 
 
 The Confederate commissioners desired to obtain a tem- 
 porary cessation of hostilities, in the nature of an armistice or 
 truce between two independent powers, each reducing their 
 armaments and postponing the express terms and conditions 
 of a permanent peace and settlement to some future time and 
 after further consideration and negotiation. It was argued 
 that the passions of the two peoples would thus have time to 
 cool, commercial and other relations could at once be resumed, 
 and an end could be reached without further bloodshed. 
 What the commissioners omitted to urge was that the Rebel- 
 lion would thereby gain much more than it could by a sudden 
 destruction of Sherman's army. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln's replies were a substantial reproduction of the 
 doctrines announced in his message to Congress, with the addi- 
 tion of the Constitutional Amendment prohibiting slavery.
 
 A VALEDICTORY. 447 
 
 The commissioners, sincere as might be their desire to ob- 
 tain a season of rest and recuperation for the Confederacy, 
 with a covert acknowledgment of its independent, treaty-mak- 
 ing existence, or earnest as may have been their personal long- 
 ing for peace, were neither prepared nor empowered to nego- 
 tiate for a full surrender. The President neither could nor 
 would discuss any other proposition than precisely that, for he 
 was acting solely as Commander-in-Chief. He really pos- 
 sessed no other than strictly military right and power in the 
 premises, for it was not a case of a treaty with a foreign power. 
 
 A Georgia newspaper, on the supposed authority of Mr. 
 Stephens, reports Mr. Lincoln as declaring that he could not 
 recognize another government inside the one of which he alone 
 was President. "That," he said, "would be doing what you 
 so long asked Europe to do, in vain, and be resigning the only 
 thing the Union armies are fighting for." Mr. Hunter re- 
 plied that the recognition of the power of Mr. Davis to make 
 a treaty was the first and indispensable step to peace. 
 
 This was a mere play upon words, substituting the idea of a 
 " treaty of peace" with the Richmond authorities for the other 
 idea of a restoration of the peace of the whole country. To 
 point his reply, and as offering one precedent of a constitu- 
 tional ruler treating with armed rebels, Mr. Hunter cited the 
 correspondence of Charles the First of England with the Par- 
 liament. The newspaper report says : 
 
 "Mr. Lincoln's face wore that indescribable expression 
 which generally preceded his hardest hits ; and he remarked : 
 ' Upon questions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward, 
 for he is posted in such things, and I don't profess to be ; but 
 my only distinct recollection of the matter is that Charles lost 
 his head.'" 
 
 There was an old personal friendship between Mr. Lincoln 
 and Mr. Stephens, dating from the time when they were mem- 
 bers of Congress together, and the conference assumed there- 
 from a tone of mutual ease and freedom from constraint ; but
 
 448 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the gulf was too wide to be bridged and too deep to be filled 
 up, and the humane desires which led to it suffered their fore- 
 doomed disappointment. 
 
 The Northern people understood the matter perfectly, with 
 remarkably few exceptions, and there was never an opportunity 
 for the Southern people, generally, to know why the awful 
 bloodshed of the next few weeks was uselessly insisted upon 
 by their obstinate rulers. Peace was not at all denied or with- 
 held from them, and there was no attainable object for which 
 so many of them should suffer or die. The United States, 
 through its President, did but continue its steady denial of the 
 existence as a nation, and of the treaty-making independence, 
 of the Confederacy. 
 
 For one month more the war went bitterly on, from day to 
 day. The end of Mr. Lincoln's first term of office, with the 
 beginning of a second term, arrived at 12 o'clock, noon, of the 
 4th of March, 1865. The term of Congress also expired, and 
 the session with it ; but the President convened the Senate, at 
 once, for an " extra session," by proclamation. For a second 
 time Mr. Lincoln took the oath of office as President of the 
 United States. It was a grand and solemn occasion, full of 
 strong and striking contrasts with the same ceremonial, in the 
 same place, four years before. 
 
 The crowd which assembled was even larger, this time ; but 
 it was a different crowd, with changed hearts and with better 
 and higher hopes. The multitude was not the same. The Man 
 was the same and yet he was not, for behind him as behind 
 them was the fire of the sevenfold furnace through which God 
 had led him. No smell of burning was upon his garments of 
 integrity and faith, but his fetters had been largely burned away. 
 He was almost ready to walk out of the furnace and stand 
 before the King. The oath of office was administered by Chief- 
 Justice Chase ; the President looked out for a moment, silently, 
 over the multitude, and then he addressed them, and all other 
 men, as follows :
 
 A VALEDICTORY. 449 
 
 " Fellow-countrymen : At this second appearing to take the 
 oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an ex- 
 tended address than there was at the first. Then, a statement 
 somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and 
 proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which 
 public declarations have been constantly called forth on every 
 point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the 
 attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is 
 new could be presented. 
 
 "The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly 
 depends, is as well known to the public as to myself ; andit*is r 
 I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With 
 high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is 
 ventured. 
 
 " On the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago, all 
 thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. 
 All dreaded it ; all sought to avoid it. "While the inaugural 
 address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether 
 to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the 
 city seeking to destroy it without war seeking to dissolve the 
 Union and divide the effects by negotiation. Both parties 
 deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than 
 let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather 
 than let it perish : and the war came. 
 
 " One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, 
 not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the 
 southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar 
 and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was some- 
 how the cause of the war. To strengthen, extend, and perpet- 
 uate this interest was the object for which the insurgents would 
 rend the Union even by war, while the government claimed 
 no right to do more than restrict the territorial enlargement 
 of it. 
 
 " Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the 
 duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated
 
 450 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, 
 the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier tri- 
 umph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. 
 
 " Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and 
 each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange 
 that any men should ask a just God's assistance in wringing 
 their bread from the sweat of other men's faces ; but let us judge 
 not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be 
 answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The 
 Almighty has His own purposes. ' Woe unto the world because 
 of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come ; but woe 
 unto that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall sup- 
 pose that American slavery is one of these offenses, which in 
 the providence of God must needs come, but which, having 
 continued through his appointed time, he now wills to remove, 
 and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as 
 the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we dis- 
 cern therein any departure from those divine attributes which 
 the believers in a living God always ascribe to him ? Fondly 
 do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of 
 war may soon pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue 
 until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and 
 :fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every 
 .drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid with another 
 drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, 
 so still it must be said, ( The judgments of the Lord are just 
 and righteous altogether.' 
 
 " With malice toward none, with charity for all ; with firm- 
 ness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive 
 on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the nation's wounds ; 
 to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his 
 widow and orphans ; to do all which may achieve and cherish 
 a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations." 
 
 The inaugural address made a deep impression upon the 
 nation. Nothing at all resembling it had ever been heard before.
 
 A VALEDICTORY. 451 
 
 A ruler, publicly receiving the trust of four years more of 
 power, felt called upon to set before the people the result of 
 his profound study and analysis of the Divine Providence, as 
 presented in the Scriptures, and to call upon them to join him 
 in acknowledging the wisdom and justice of God. He also, 
 having many times already called upon them to pray with 
 him, deemed it well to refer to the nature of both prayer and 
 its answers. As for his policy as a ruler, he was able, in talk- 
 ing to such a people, to sum it all up in a condensed paraphrase 
 of the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount. 
 
 It was not exactly a " state paper," and there was in it a 
 strangely solemn and mournful undertone, not so much heard 
 as felt. It was a Farewell Address of a man whose work was 
 nearly done and who, somehow, was dimly aware of that fact. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln's work was indeed done, for all that even 
 then remained was for the hands of others. He had only a few 
 short weeks to wait before turning over all his power and re- 
 sponsibility and toil to those who were to follow. At the same 
 time his education was completed, so far as it could be in this 
 present world. His mind and soul had reached their full 
 development, in a religious life so unconsciously intense and 
 absorbing that it could not otherwise than utter itself in the 
 grand sentences of his last address to the people. The knowl- 
 edge had come, and the faith had come, and the charity had 
 come ; and with all had come the love of God, which put away 
 all thought of rebellious resistance to the will of God, leading 
 as in his earlier days of trial to despair and insanity.
 
 452 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 CHAPTEK LV. 
 
 AT LAST. 
 
 A Proclamation of Pardon Going to the Army The Death Struggle of 
 the Rebellion Hemmed in by the Hunters The President in Rich- 
 mond Surrenders of Lee and Johnson Cessation of the Civil War. 
 
 MB. FESSENDEN retired from the Treasury Department, on 
 account of ill-health, on the 6th of March, and Hugh McCul- 
 loch, of Indiana, was appointed in his stead; but no other 
 changes were made in the Cabinet. The machinery of the gov- 
 ernment was all in good order and worked right on, without a 
 pause or a break. There was no occasion for the presence of 
 anxious crowds of office-seekers, as in 1861. This was not in any 
 wise a new Administration. Nevertheless, for a fortnight, there 
 was an increase in the rush and pressure of official duties. In 
 pursuance of an Act of Congress, a proclamation was issued, on 
 the llth of March, offering pardon to all deserters who should at 
 once return to their posts. A draft for three hundred thousand 
 men more began on the 15th, as if in preparation for possible 
 needs of the army. All matters were settled and adjusted, and 
 then the President, for the first time, indulged himself in what 
 bore a weird and somber likeness to a vacation. On the 22d 
 of the month he went down the Potomac to City Point, to be 
 with the army during the closing struggles of the war. He 
 was very weary, in heart and brain, and he could there escape 
 from many of his daily and hourly tormentors. Not even the 
 very good people who only desired to see him and shake hands 
 with him could all follow him to City Point. 
 
 General Sherman's army reached Goldsborough, North Caro- 
 lina, on the 22d, and the General left it there and came up to 
 consult as to further operations.
 
 AT LAST. 453 
 
 There was to have been a grand review of the troops on the 
 23d, but on that day occurred a desperate battle for the posses- 
 sion of Fort Steadman. The Rebels having once taken it, they 
 were driven out of it with heavy losses, and Mr. Lincoln visited 
 the scene of the combat. The enthusiasm with which he was 
 everywhere received by the soldiers enabled him to say, " This 
 is better than a review." 
 
 General Sherman arrived and attended a council of war, held 
 on the 28th, at which were also present Mr. Lincoln and Gen- 
 erals Grant, Sheridan, Meade, and Ord. He then shortly re- 
 joined his army, and the results of the consultation followed 
 with terrific rapidity. The operations under Grant began in a 
 few hours after the adjournment of the council. There was 
 some sharp fighting on the next day, Wednesday. Thursday 
 was so stormy as somewhat to interfere with activity, but 
 through Friday, Saturday, and Sunday there was a continuous 
 succession of bloody engagements along the entire front. Mr. 
 Lincoln remained at City Point, receiving reports of the pro- 
 gress-making and sending frequent dispatches to the people. 
 On Sunday he was able to announce " the triumphant success 
 of our armies, after three days of hard fighting, in which both 
 sides displayed unsurpassed valor." 
 
 The results were indeed a triumphant success, for the army 
 under Lee had lost one half of its effective men. Twelve 
 thousand of them were prisoners in the hands of the victors, 
 with fifty pieces of artillery. There was no longer any possi- 
 bility of holding Richmond. There had not been any, in 
 reality, for a long time, and the most obstinate courage was com- 
 pelled to admit it now. The evacuation was made by the Rebel 
 authorities, civil and military, at once and in haste. What 
 remained of the Rebel fleet in the James River was blown up 
 before the departure, and as little was left of other war-material 
 as the time and opportunity given for destruction or removal 
 permitted. 
 
 The Union troops nearest the city were those under General
 
 454 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 "Weitzel, lying on the north side of the James River. On the 
 morning of Monday, April 3, the Fifth Massachusetts Cav- 
 alry was sent out by General Weitzel to reconnoiter. They 
 quickly discovered and reported the flight of the enemy, and 
 the city was entered and occupied by a quarter past eight 
 o'clock. The wearied, half-starved people received the Union 
 troops with demonstrations of joy. They had had a good deal 
 more than enough of Secession and its consequences. 
 
 As soon as possible after receiving the news of the evacua- 
 tion of Richmond, and on the same day, Mr. Lincoln made a 
 visit to the captured city. General Grant was pushing on 
 after Lee with all the forces he could move, and Sherman was 
 hurrying up from the South. There remained no imaginable 
 loophole for the escape of the last Rebel army, and the war was 
 practically over. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln was carried by a war-steamer to a point about 
 a mile below Richmond, and the rest of the way in one of the 
 steamer's boats. Senator Sumner was with him ; also little Tad; 
 and the sailors who rowed the boat went ashore too, as a kind 
 of a suggestion of a body-guard. He did not need any. On 
 foot, almost alone, with a dignity of simplicity which became 
 him wonderfully well, he passed on from street to street. It 
 was something like a dream : and yet all the wild dreams of the 
 Confederate leaders had forever vanished in their enforced 
 abandonment of that town. He was at once recognized by 
 some of the colored people, and the news of his presence 
 spread like wildfire. They thronged around him with all the 
 extravagant expressions of joy and devotion of which their ex- 
 citement made them capable. General Weitzel's men had to 
 come and serve as a police force to clear the streets. Men and 
 women wept and danced and shouted and praised God. 
 
 The President took his hat off, reverently, and bowed ; but he 
 could not speak, for the tears were pouring down his cheeks. 
 The Liberator had come suddenly among the people whose 
 bonds he had broken and to whom he had opened a hope of
 
 AT LAST. 455 
 
 free manhood and womanhood in the days that were to be. It 
 was an hour worth living and dying for, and it was given him 
 to see it. He returned to City Point that night, but paid the 
 city another visit two days later with Mrs. Lincoln and Tad, 
 accompanied by Yice-President Johnson and others. Some 
 of the more prominent citizens came to see him, at that time, 
 to discuss the future of the State of Yirginia. Among these 
 was Judge Campbell, whom the President had met in the 
 peace conference in Hampton Roads. This gentleman desired 
 him to authorize the assembling of the State Legislature, that 
 by distinct State action the troops of Yirginia might be with- 
 drawn from Lee's army and the present condition of affairs 
 accepted. The death of the Rebellion hardly required the ver- 
 dict of such a local " coroner's jury" as was thus asked for, 
 and the President refused to issue any proclamation in the 
 premises. He afterwards, however, wrote to General "Weit- 
 zel from City Point, instructing him to permit the assembling 
 of the legislature. He told him to show the note to Judge 
 Campbell, but not to have it made public. The surrender of 
 the army under Lee rendered needless any withdrawal of the 
 Yirginia troops, but, much to Mr. Lincoln's disgust, Judge 
 Campbell made public not only the private conversation but 
 also the contents of the note to the general. It was made to 
 appear as an indication of the President's purposes and policy, 
 and it unduly affected the terms made by General Sherman 
 with General Johnston, in the surrender of the part of the Rebel 
 army commanded by the latter. This made some trouble for 
 General Sherman and stirred Mr. Lincoln to a more than ordi- 
 nary expression of feeling. 
 
 Here and there a few remnants of Confederate forces were 
 still in arms, but nowhere was there anything properly to be 
 described as an army. Such as they were, the remnants rap- 
 idly surrendered or disbanded, and even the guerilla bands 
 gave it up. 
 
 Orders were speedily issued from the "War Department for
 
 456 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the cessation of enlistments and for stopping the operation of 
 the draft, with other orders looking to the reduction and even- 
 tual disbandment of the armies. 
 
 Military restrictions upon trade and commerce between the 
 warring sections were removed as fast as was consistent with 
 local requirements. The whole nation awoke to the glad cer- 
 tainty that Peace had come, and that it had come to stay, and 
 that it had so come as to be worth the having. It had come 
 by the forcible and complete restoration of the authority of 
 the United States over every part and parcel of its territory 
 and population. It had come without treaty, or condition, or 
 compromise. All questions of future citizenship, whether of 
 rebels recently in arms or of black men recently in bondage, 
 were left in the unfettered control of Congress and the Presi- 
 dent. There were such questions, truly, and they presented 
 momentous problems for statesmen to consider, but the man- 
 ner of the closing of the war stripped all such problems of 
 artificial complications and left them in shape and condition 
 for swift and sure solution. Mr. Lincoln's views upon the sub- 
 ject of universal suffrage were already well known, and he took 
 specific opportunities for leaving them on record. His desire 
 and hope was that the colored men should become citizens in 
 all respects, without even covert reference to the tint of their 
 skins. He did not remain long enough to see his wishes grati- 
 fied, but there was no doubt in his mind as to the policy to be 
 pursued by the government. He well knew that the processes 
 required for making good citizens, of even white material, de- 
 manded time and opportunity and patient wisdom for the 
 production of tolerable results, and he believed that the require- 
 ments of the enfranchised race were measurably the same. 
 They too would need both time and opportunity and patience 
 and intelligent help. The supervision of all that work was to 
 be put into other hands than his, and already he had done 
 what he could.
 
 PEACE. 457 
 
 CHAPTER LYI. 
 
 PEACE. 
 
 A Rejoicing People Vanity and Revenge conspire to Commit Murder 
 The Assassination The Mourning of a Mighty Multitude Voices 
 from Distant Lands The Teachings of a Great Life. 
 
 THE idea, at times the dread, of Mr. Lincoln's possible assas- 
 sination had floated vaguely in the minds of his friends from 
 the very hour of his election. It was again and again suggested 
 to him in many ways, but he invariably refused to give it a 
 serious consideration. 
 
 Threats were so freely made, as the war went on, and those 
 around him were so reasonably alarmed, that he was almost 
 compelled to justify with argument his utter indifference. Men 
 would need motives, he thought and said, for the doing of such 
 a deed. " If they kill me, the next man will be just as bad for 
 them ; and in a country like this, where our habits are simple, 
 and must be, assassination is always possible, and will come if 
 they are determined upon it." 
 
 He came and went, attended or unattended, as the case might 
 be, with careless freedom, not giving the matter any further 
 consideration. 
 
 With the collapse of the rebellion and the return of peace, it 
 seemed as if all supposable rational motive for assailing the 
 President's life had vanished, and with it all peril of his assas- 
 sination. 
 
 No words can paint the joy of the nation over the fall of 
 Richmond and the surrender of Lee's army. The bells in all 
 the steeples rang like mad ; the cannon boomed ; the people 
 met in the churches to praise God ; men who did not know
 
 458 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 each other stopped in busy streets to shake hands, and turned 
 away with streaming eyes ; mothers and widows quieted their 
 aching hearts in the thought that their sons and husbands had 
 not died in vain ; something of charitable warmth was swelling 
 and reaching out towards the ruined and stricken South. It 
 was an hour of the return of peace on earth and good-will to 
 men, and any previous suggestion of possible murder was for- 
 gotten. 
 
 Rational motives had indeed all passed away ; but men had 
 failed to take account of two of the viler and meaner passions 
 whereby Hell is represented in the hearts of human beings, 
 Revenge and Vanity. A combination of these in the minds of 
 several men led to a conspiracy for the murder of Mr. Lincoln, 
 Mr. Johnson, Mr. Seward, General Grant, and, perhaps, some 
 others. It was a very deliberate affair, although miserably 
 planned and imperfectly executed. 
 
 The Yice-President escaped unassailed ; Mr. Seward received 
 wounds from which he soon recovered ; and the only part of 
 the conspiracy which fully attained its purpose was that which 
 was put into the base hands of mere vanity in the person of an 
 unsuccessful actor named Booth. This man was not a South- 
 erner ; he was not a soldier ; he was but a fair representative 
 of the meaner, because better educated, Northern "copper- 
 head." 
 
 The Confederacy was but recently dead and had not yet 
 been buried. The new order of things was not yet under way. 
 The President was toiling, day and night, in the settlement of 
 numberless important questions. He was not so strong as for- 
 merly, and a breath of recreation was more than ever needful. 
 He was invited by the manager of Ford's Theater, in Washing- 
 ton, to witness the performance of a play known as " Our 
 American Cousin," on the evening of the 14th of April. He 
 assented, for he was somewhat fond of the drama. He had 
 made Shakspeare a study to such an extent that he could sit, 
 throughout the most perfect presentation of Falstaff, without
 
 PEACE. 459 
 
 one smile upon his face, absorbed in the delineation of human 
 nature by the master, through the actor. 
 
 In the present case he was not eager, knowing nothing of 
 the play ; but he yielded to the wifely urgency of Mrs. Lincoln. 
 General Grant was to have been of the party, but had other 
 engagements more imperative which called him out of the city. 
 Mr. Lincoln passed the day as usual. He made an appointment 
 to meet Hon. George Ashmun, of Massachusetts, and Judge 
 Charles P. Daly, of New York, the next morning. He never 
 wasted much time in dressing, and when Mrs. Lincoln came 
 for him he was ready to go with her. They passed on their 
 way to take* with them Miss Harris and Major Rathbone, 
 daughter and stepson of Senator Harris, of New York. It was 
 twenty minutes before nine o'clock when they entered the 
 crowded theater, and the throng rose and cheered enthusiasti- 
 cally as they passed on to the " state box" reserved for them. 
 
 The murder of the President could have been accomplished 
 more safely and easily at almost any other time and place, but 
 the gratification of diseased vanity and morbid hate required 
 publicity. 
 
 John Wilkes Booth, the actor who had selected this for his 
 last tragedy, made his preparations for escape with some care 
 and cunning, as if unaware that the earth contained no cave 
 dark enough to afterwards conceal him. He provided himself 
 with a good horse, in waiting at the rear of the theater, on 
 which to ride away. He entered, looked in upon the stage 
 as if with professional curiosity, and then worked his way 
 around into the outer passage leading towards the box occupied 
 by the President. 
 
 One of the President's " messengers" was at the end of an 
 inner passage, leading to the box-door, for the purpose of pre- 
 venting undue intrusions. To him Booth presented a card, 
 stating that Mr. Lincoln had sent for him. On that lie he was 
 permitted to pass. After overcoming this slight barrier there 
 remained no hindrance to the commission of the murder, for
 
 460 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 the President sat quietly in an arm-chair, entirely absorbed in 
 the play. 
 
 Booth had a two-edged dagger and a single-barreled Der- 
 ringer pistol, carrying a heavy ball. "With the latter he took 
 full aim at the back of the head so near him and pulled the 
 trigger. The bullet entered the brain, so weary with long toil 
 for others : but the President hardly stirred in his chair. The 
 report of the pistol rang through the house, but for several 
 heart-beats no man seems to have guessed what it meant. 
 
 Major Rathbone was the first to comprehend the matter, and 
 he instantly closed with Booth, but was thrown off with a 
 wound in his arm from the dagger. 
 
 Freeing himself from the grasp of Rathbone, Booth sprang 
 to the front of the box and leaped upon the stage below. It 
 was but a step down, but his spurs caught in the American flag 
 with which the box was draped, and he half fell. Regaining 
 his feet, he faced the audience for a moment, dagger in hand, 
 spouting theatrically the State motto of Virginia, " Sic semper 
 tyrannis" and added, " The South is avenged !" 
 
 He was familiar with the exits of the stage. It was easy to 
 dash aside the few bewildered actors and actresses in his way. 
 Only one man, a gentleman named Stewart, was quick-witted 
 enough to spring upon the stage and follow him, and he was too 
 late in doing so. The assassin reached his horse and rode away, 
 escaping for the hour, only to be hunted down and shot in a 
 burning barn in Maryland, some twelve days after the murder. 
 
 It was all the work of a few seconds. The fact that the 
 President had been shot fell upon the audience with awful 
 power. Women screamed incoherently or fainted away. Men 
 stood white-faced with dismay and wrath, or blasphemed, or 
 swore revenge. All was uproar and confusion. 
 
 The leading actress, Laura Keene, stepped to the front of 
 the stage and begged the audience to be calm. Then she en- 
 tered the President's box with the water Miss Harris had been 
 calling for, and with stimulants. Mrs. Lincoln was at once and
 
 PEACE. 461 
 
 entirely overcome. She had never shared her husband's indif- 
 ference to his perpetual peril, but the shock was none the less 
 severe when it now smote upon her so suddenly. 
 
 The evil deed had been completely done. Mr. Lincoln was 
 unconscious from the moment when the bullet struck him. 
 There was little need for the verdict of the medical men who 
 gathered so quickly around him, that the hurt was surely fatal, 
 and the news went out to the country untempered by any de- 
 lusive hope. 
 
 There had been a mutual agreement between the conspira- 
 tors as to the time for striking, and the less successful assault 
 upon Mr. Seward was made at precisely the same hour. Inci- 
 dental circumstances prevented the remainder of the plot from 
 even attempted execution. 
 
 The unconscious President was carried to a private residence, 
 near the theater ; and here, at twenty-two minutes past seven 
 o'clock, April 15, 1865, the last tokens of life disappeared. 
 
 There was bitter grief among the statesmen and generals 
 who sobbed around that death-bed. Bewildering and agonizing 
 was the sorrow of Mrs. Lincoln and her sons, in the room ad- 
 joining. These were of the fallen ruler's flesh and blood and 
 life. Those were the associates and co-workers of his long toil 
 and trial. It was but natural that they should break down, 
 stunned and staggering, under such a blow. The greater mar- 
 vel was in the immediate effect upon the nation. It was as if 
 there had been a death in every house throughout the land. 
 
 The day before the murder, the North had been rejoicing, 
 even beyond the bounds of sober reason. Even the South was 
 drawing long breaths of relief and hope. By both sections 
 alike the awful news was heard with a shudder and with a mo- 
 mentary spasm of unbelief. Then followed one of the most 
 remarkable spectacles in the history of the human race, for 
 there is nothing else at all like it on record. Bells had tolled 
 before at the death of a loved ruler, but never did all bells toll 
 so mournfully as they did that day. Business ceased, except-
 
 462 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 ing the purchase of crape. Men came together in public meet- 
 ings as if by a common impulse, and party lines and sectional 
 hatreds seemed to be obliterated. It is true that here and there 
 an angry voice called aloud for vengeance. It is true that a 
 few bitter-hearted brutes declared their infernal gratification, 
 even at peril of their miserable lives. The former calmed 
 themselves to learn .the holier lessons of the hour, and the lat- 
 ter were too few and insignificant to add a black drop of dis- 
 grace to the cup of the national sorrow. 
 
 The intelligent people of the Southern States felt that their 
 stage-mad " avenger" had inflicted upon them a fresh disaster, 
 and they both publicly and privately expressed their anger and 
 regret. 
 
 Their feeling is well illustrated by the action of the Masonic 
 fraternity in Arkansas, locally known as the " Eeb. Masons." 
 They were the first to call and hold a meeting to declare and 
 emphasize their condemnation and sorrow, and a hall in Little 
 Eock, the State capital, was well filled with those who as- 
 sembled. In large part they were ex-Confederate soldiers, 
 many of whom still wore remnants of their army uniforms, 
 and they listened to a funeral oration upon Abraham Lincoln 
 from the lips of a well-known Union man, of the Masonic fra- 
 ternity. It was but twelve hours after the news of the murder 
 reached Little Eock by telegraph. 
 
 The assassination took place on Friday evening, and on the 
 Sunday following funeral services were held in all the churches 
 in the land, and every church was draped in mourning. The 
 ingenuity of grief seemed to exhaust itself in vain attempts for 
 adequate expression. ^Nowhere was there any visible sign of 
 disorder. 
 
 A vague dread of what might possibly come turned every 
 man into a self-appointed guardian of the public peace, robbed 
 of its Constitutional protector. The feeling in the army was 
 intense ; but the sternest soldier felt that no act of stupid re- 
 venge could honor the memory of a man like Lincoln. ISTot 
 one such act was undertaken or committed, then or afterwards.
 
 PEACE. 463 
 
 The punishment of the conspirators, under due form of law, 
 was ordinary justice and not mere vengeance. These were all 
 captured and received varying sentences, according to their 
 several adjudged degrees of crime. 
 
 After Mr. Lincoln's death, his body was removed to the 
 White House and embalmed. A gathering of Congressmen 
 and other public men, at the Capitol, on Monday, made arrange- 
 ments for funeral services on Wednesday. Pall-bearers were 
 named, and also a Congressional Committee, representing the 
 several States, to accompany the remains to their resting-place 
 in Illinois. 
 
 The funeral services, on Wednesday, were held in the East 
 Room of the Executive Mansion, and from this the coffined 
 body was borne in solemn procession to the catafalque prepared 
 for it in the rotunda of the Capitol. Endless crowds had 
 poured through the East Room, while the body remained 
 there, each passer bending to take a last look at the silent face 
 the nation had loved so well. The same sad stream poured on 
 through the corridors of the Capitol, for none was willing to 
 fail of that final opportunity, and they came from all the region 
 round about. 
 
 On the 21st of the month the funeral-train left Washing- 
 ton ; and, through all the fifteen hundred miles of its route to 
 Illinois, the mournful pageant of its reception by the people 
 surpasses all power of words for its description. Slowly the 
 train proceeded, from city to city, between almost continuous 
 lines of sorrowing multitudes doing last honors to their beloved 
 Chief Magistrate, whose hold upon their hearts they had not 
 known till they had lost him. 
 
 With the remains of Mr. Lincoln were carried those of his 
 beloved son Willie. Father and child had gone Home, for- 
 ever, and their earthly bodies were borne homeward side by 
 side. 
 
 Springfield, Illinois, was reached on the morning of the 3d of 
 May. The grief of Mr. Lincoln's oldest friends and near neigh-
 
 464 ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
 
 bors could hardly exceed that of many who had never heard him 
 utter a word nor at any time had looked upon his living face. 
 A day later, in the presence of a great multitude, the coffin 
 was placed in a tomb prepared for it in Oak Ridge Cemetery, 
 near the city, with appropriate ceremonials and oratory. 
 
 A sort of echo of the National sorrow came back from 
 almost every corner of the world, and many of the tones and 
 expressions were only less surprising than were their sources. 
 America was at once on better terms with Europe, especially, 
 all in a day, when the voices of the trans- Atlantic press were 
 printed in our own newspapers, side by side with the official 
 condolences of foreign potentates. The public uses of the life 
 of Mr. Lincoln did not terminate until this last service had 
 been effected by his death, and the value of it was by no means 
 insignificant. 
 
 This is all. The lessons of such a lif e are very plainly to be 
 read. They should be made familiar to the heart and brain of 
 every American. Every soul born in the United States, or 
 coming to dwell here, should study them well and so learn to 
 understand and love the country wherein alone on earth such 
 a life is possible. It is a land which has been rich in noble men 
 and well-spent lives, both of men and women ; but there has 
 been no other just like this. Among all there is not one re- 
 corded which is so well adapted to teach and enforce these 
 things : that the lowliest may hopefully strive for the highest 
 elevation ; that the most ignorant, under every imaginable dis- 
 advantage, may successfully seek for knowledge and its uses ; 
 that the most skeptical, broken-hearted, hopeless, despairing of 
 all men, may go on to do his duty to himself and others, turn- 
 ing his eyes and lifting his hands to God and drawing surely 
 nearer to Him. 
 
 Whatever were his failings, faults, and flaws, this was the 
 unselfish, truth-seeking and truth-serving life of ABRAHAM 
 LINCOLN.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A FEW PIVOTAL SPEECHES AND LETTERS OF MR. LINCOLN 
 ALLUDED TO IN THIS VOLUME. 
 
 SPEECH, 
 
 Delivered at Springfield, HI., June 17, 1858. 
 
 THE FIEST AFTER ME. LINCOLN'S NOMINATION FOE THE UNITED 
 STATES SENATOESHIP FEOM ILLINOIS. (See Ch. XXIII.) 
 
 ME. PEESIDENT, AND GENTLEMEN OF THE CONVENTION: If 
 we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, 
 we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are 
 now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the 
 avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to 
 slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy that agi- 
 tation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented. 
 In my opinion, it will not cease until a crisis shall have been 
 reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot 
 stand." I believe this Government cannot endure permanently 
 half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dis- 
 solved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will 
 cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the 
 other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further 
 spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the 
 belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advo- 
 cates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all 
 the States, old as well as new, North as well as South. 
 
 Have we no tendency to the latter condition ? 
 
 Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now almost
 
 466 APPENDIX. 
 
 complete legal combination piece of machinery, so to speak 
 compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decis- 
 ion. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is 
 adapted to do, and how well adapted; but also let him study the 
 history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if 
 he can, to trace, the evidences of design and concert of action 
 among its chief architects from the beginning. 
 
 The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than 
 half the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the 
 national territory by Congressional prohibition. Four days 
 later commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that 
 Congressional prohibition. This opened all the national terri- 
 tory to slavery, and was the first point gained. 
 
 But so far Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by 
 the people, real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the point 
 already gained and give chance for more. 
 
 This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided 
 for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of " squatter 
 sovereignty," otherwise called " sacred right of self-government;" 
 which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis 
 of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it 
 .as to amount to just this: That if any one man choose to enslave 
 another ', no third man shall be allowed to object. That argu- 
 ment was incorporated into the Nebraska bill itself, in the lan- 
 guage which follows: " It being the true intent and meaning of 
 this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor 
 to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people thereof perfectly 
 free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own 
 way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States." 
 Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of " squatter 
 sovereignty," and " sacred right of self-government." " But," 
 said opposition members, "let us amend the bill so as to ex- 
 pressly declare that the people of the Territory may exclude 
 slavery." "Not we," said the friends of the measure; and down 
 they voted the amendment. 
 
 While the Nebraska bill was passing through Congress, a law- 
 case, involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of 
 his owner having voluntarily taken him first into a free State and
 
 APPENDIX. 467 
 
 then into a Territory covered by the Congressional prohibition, 
 and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing 
 through the United States Circuit Court for the District of Mis- 
 souri; and both Nebraska bill and lawsuit were brought to a de- 
 cision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was 
 ' 'Dred Scott," which name now designates the decision finally 
 made in the case. Before the then next Presidential election, 
 the law-case came to, and was argued in, the Supreme Court of 
 the United States; but the decision of it was deferred until after 
 the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the 
 floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the Ne- 
 braska bill to state his opinion whether the people of a Territory 
 can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the 
 latter answers: "That is' a question for the Supreme Court." 
 
 The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the in- 
 dorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point 
 gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular 
 majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, per- 
 haps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The 
 outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively 
 as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and author- 
 ity of the indorsement. The Supreme Court met again ; did not 
 announce their decision, but ordered a re-argument. The Presi- 
 dential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but 
 the incoming President, in his inaugural address, fervently ex- 
 horted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, what- 
 ever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the decision. 
 
 The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds an early occasion 
 to make a speech at this capital, indorsing the Dred Scott decis- 
 ion, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new 
 President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to 
 indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his 
 astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained. 
 
 At length a squabble springs up between the President and 
 the author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact, 
 whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not, in any just 
 sense, made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the 
 latter declares that all he wants is a fair vote for the people, and
 
 468 APPENDIX. 
 
 that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. I 
 do not understand his declaration, that he cares not whether 
 slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other 
 than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the 
 public mind the principle for which he declares he has suffered 
 so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he 
 cling to that principle. If he has any parental feeling, well may 
 he cling to it. That principle is the only shred left of his origi- 
 nal Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision " squat- 
 ter sovereignty" squatted out of existence, tumbled down, like 
 temporary scaffolding like the mold at the foundry served 
 through one blast and fell back into loose sand helped to carry 
 an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint 
 struggle with the Republicans, against the Lecompton Constitu- 
 tion, involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That 
 struggle was made on a point the right of a people to make 
 their own constitution upon which he and the Republicans 
 have never differed. 
 
 The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection 
 with Senator Douglas's " care not" policy, constitute the piece 
 of machinery, in its present state of advancement. This was the 
 third point gained. The working points of that machinery are: 
 
 First. That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and 
 no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State, 
 in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United 
 States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in 
 every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the 
 United States Constitution which declares that " The citizens of 
 each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of 
 citizens in the several States." 
 
 Secondly. That, "subject to the Constitution of the United 
 States," neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can ex- 
 clude slavery from any United States Territory. This point is 
 made in order that individual men may fill up the Territories 
 with slaves without danger of losing them as property, and thus 
 to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through 
 all the future. 
 
 Thirdly. That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery
 
 APPENDIX. 469 
 
 in a free State makes him free, as against the holder, the United 
 States courts will not decide, but will leave to be decided by the 
 courts of any slave-State the negro may be forced into by the 
 master. This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but, 
 if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the 
 people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that 
 what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in 
 the free State of Illinois, every other master may lawfully do 
 with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any 
 other free State. 
 
 Auxiliary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the 
 Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mold 
 public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care 
 whether slavery is voted down or voted up. This shows exactly 
 where we now are; and partially, also, whither we are tending. 
 
 It will throw additional light on the latter, to go back, and run 
 the mind over the string of historical facts already stated. 
 Several things will now appear less dark and mysterious than 
 they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be 
 left "perfectly free," "subject only to the Constitution." What 
 the Constitution had to do with it, outsiders could not then see. 
 Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche for the Dred 
 Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect free- 
 dom of the people to be just no freedom at all. Why was the 
 amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people, voted 
 down? Plainly enough now: the adoption of it would have 
 spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the 
 court decision held up ? Why even a Senator's individual opin- 
 ion withheld till after the Presidential election ? Plainly enough 
 now: the speaking out then would have damaged the perfectly 
 free argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why 
 the outgoing President's felicitation on the indorsement? Why 
 the delay of a re-argument ? Why the incoming President's 
 advance exhortation in favor of the decision ? These things 
 look like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse 
 preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may 
 give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after-indorsement of 
 the decision by the President and others ?
 
 470 APPENDIX. 
 
 We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations 
 are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed 
 timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten 
 out at different times and places, and by different workmen 
 Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance and when 
 we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make 
 the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises ex- 
 actly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different 
 pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece 
 too many or too few not omitting even scaffolding or, if a 
 single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly 
 fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in in such a case, 
 we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Frank- 
 lin and Roger and James all understood one another from the 
 beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn 
 up before the first blow was struck. 
 
 It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, the 
 people of a State, as well as Territory, were to be left " perfectly 
 free," "subject only to the Constitution." Why mention a 
 State? They were legislating for Territories, and not for or 
 about States. Certainly, the people of a State are and ought to 
 be subject to the Constitution of the United States; but why is 
 mention of this lugged into this merely territorial law ? Why 
 are the people of a Territory and the people of a State therein 
 lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution therein 
 treated as being precisely the same ? While the opinion of the 
 court, by Chief -Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the 
 separate opinions of all the concurring Judges, expressly declare 
 that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Con- 
 gress nor a Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery from any 
 United States Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not 
 the same Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State, 
 to exclude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can 
 be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the 
 opinion a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a State 
 to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase arid Mace 
 sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the people of a Ter- 
 ritory, into the Nebraska bill ; I ask, who can be quite sure that
 
 APPENDIX. 471 
 
 it would not have been voted down in the one case, as it had 
 been in the other ? The nearest approach to the point of declar- 
 ing the power of a State over slavery is made by Judge Nelson. 
 He approaches it more than once, using the precise idea, and 
 almost the language, too, of the Nebraska act. On one occasion, 
 his exact language is, " Except in cases where the power is re- 
 strained by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the 
 State is supreme over the subject of slavery within its jurisdic- 
 tion." In what cases the power of the States is so restrained by 
 the United States Constitution is left an open question, pre- 
 cisely as the same question as to the restraint on the power of 
 the Territories, was left open in the Nebraska act. Put this 
 and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which 
 we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court de- 
 cision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does 
 not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits. And this 
 may especially be expected, if the doctrine of " care not whether 
 slavery be voted down or voted up" shall gain upon the public 
 mind sufficiently to give promise that such a decision can be 
 maintained when made. 
 
 Such a decision is all that slavery now lacks of being alike 
 lawful in all the States. Welcome or unwelcome, such decision 
 is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power 
 of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown. 
 We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Mis- 
 souri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall 
 awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made 
 Illinois a slave-State. To meet and overthrow the power of 
 that dynasty is the work now before all those who would pre- 
 vent that consummation. That is what we have to do. How 
 can we best do it ? 
 
 There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends, 
 and yet whisper us softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest in- 
 strument there is with which to effect that object. They wish 
 us to infer all, from the fact that he now has a little quarrel 
 with the present head of the dynasty; and that he has regularly 
 voted with us on a single point, upon which he and we have 
 never differed. They remind us that he is a great man, and that
 
 472 APPENDIX. 
 
 the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But 
 " a living dog is better than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if 
 not a dead lion, for this work, is at least a caged and toothless 
 one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery ? He don't 
 care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the 
 " public heart" to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas 
 Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas's superior talent will be 
 needed to resist the revival of the African slave-trade. Does 
 Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching ? 
 He has not said so. Does he really think so ? But if it is, how 
 can he resist it ? For years he has labored to prove it a sacred 
 right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories. 
 Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them 
 where they can be bought cheapest ? And unquestionably they 
 can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done 
 all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one 
 of a mere right of property; and as such, how can he oppose 
 the foreign slave-trade how can he refuse that trade in that 
 "property" shall be "perfectly free" unless he does it as a 
 protection to the home production ? And as the home pro- 
 ducers will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly 
 without a ground of opposition. 
 
 Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully 
 be wiser to-day than he was yesterday that he may rightfully 
 change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that 
 reason, run ahead, and infer that he will make any particular 
 change, of which he himself has given no intimation ? Can we 
 safely base our action upon any such vague inference ? Now, 
 as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position, 
 question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offen- 
 sive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together 
 on principle, so that our cause may have assistance from his 
 great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle. 
 But, clearly, he is not now with us he does not pretend to be 
 he does not promise ever to be. 
 
 Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its 
 own undoubted friends those whose hands are free, whose 
 hearts are in the work who do care for the result. Two years
 
 APPENDIX. 473 
 
 ago, the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hun- 
 dred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of 
 resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance 
 against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, 
 we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the 
 battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined 
 proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then, to falter 
 now? now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered, 
 and belligerent ? The result is not doubtful. We shall not 
 fail if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may 
 accelerate, or mistakes delay it; but, sooner or later, the victory 
 is sure to come. 
 
 n. 
 
 SPEECH, 
 
 Delivered at Cooper Institute, New York, Feb. 27, 1860. (See Ch. XXTV.) 
 
 MB. PRESIDENT, AND FELLOW-CITIZENS OF NEW YOKK: The 
 facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and 
 familiar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shall 
 make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it will be in the 
 mode of presenting the facts, and the inferences and observa- 
 tions following that presentation. 
 
 In his speech last autumn, at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in 
 the New York Times, Senator Douglas said: 
 
 "Our fathers, when they framed the government under which 
 we live, understood this question just as well, and even better 
 than we do now." 
 
 I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse. 
 I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed start- 
 ing-point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of 
 the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves 
 the inquiry: " What was the understanding those fathers had of 
 the question mentioned?" 
 
 What is the frame of government under which we live ?
 
 474 APPENDIX. 
 
 The answer must be: " The Constitution of the United States." 
 That Constitution consists of the original, framed in 1*787 (and 
 under which the present government first went into operation), 
 and twelve subsequently framed amendments, the first ten of 
 which were framed in 1789. 
 
 Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution ? I sup- 
 pose the " thirty-nine" who signed the original instrument may 
 be fairly called our fathers who framed that part of the present 
 government. It is almost exactly true to say they framed it, 
 and it is altogether true to say they fairly represented the 
 opinion and sentiment of the whole nation at that time. 
 
 Their names, being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to 
 quite all, need not now be repeated. 
 
 I take these " thirty-nine," for the present, as being our 
 " fathers who framed the government under which we live." 
 
 What is the question which, according to the text, those 
 fathers understood " just as well, and even, better than we do 
 now" ? 
 
 It is this: Does the proper division of local from Federal 
 authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal 
 Government to control as to slavery in our Federal Territories f 
 
 Upon this Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and Repub- 
 licans the negative. This affirmation and denial form an issue, 
 and this issue this question is precisely what the text declares 
 our fathers understood "better than we." 
 
 Let us now inquire whether the " thirty-nine," or any of them, 
 acted upon this question; and if they did, how they acted upon 
 it how they expressed that better understanding. 
 
 In 1784, three years before the Constitution the United 
 States then owning the Northwestern Territory, and no other 
 the Congress of the Confederation had before them the question 
 of prohibiting slavery in that Territory; and four of the "thirty- 
 nine" who afterward framed the Constitution were in that 
 Congress and voted on that question. Of these, Roger Sher- 
 man, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh Williamson voted for the pro- 
 hibition, thus showing that, in their understanding, no line 
 dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything else, pro- 
 perly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery
 
 APPENDIX. 475 
 
 in Federal territory. The other of the four James M'Henry 
 voted against the prohibition, showing that, for some cause, he 
 thought it improper to vote for it. 
 
 In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the Conven- 
 tion was in session framing it, and while the Northwestern 
 Territory still was the only territory owned by the United 
 States, the same question of prohibiting slavery in the territory 
 again came before the Congress of the Confederation ; and two 
 more of the " thirty-nine" who afterward signed the Constitu- 
 tion were in that Congress, and voted on the question. They 
 were William Blount and William Few ; and they both voted for 
 the prohibition thus showing that, in their understanding, no 
 line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything else, 
 properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to 
 slavery in Federal territory. This time the prohibition became 
 a law, being part of what is now well known as the Ordinance 
 of '87. 
 
 The question of Federal control of slavery in the Territories 
 seems not to have been directly before the Convention which 
 framed the original Constitution; and hence it is not recorded 
 that the " thirty-nine," or any of them, while engaged on that 
 instrument, expressed any opinion on that precise question. 
 
 In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the Constitu- 
 tion, an act was passed to enforce the Ordinance of '87, includ- 
 ing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. 
 The bill for this act was reported by one of the " thirty- nine," 
 Thomas Fitzsimmons, then a member of the House of Repre- 
 sentatives from Pennsylvania. It went through all its stages 
 without a word of opposition, and finally passed both branches 
 without yeas and nays, which is equivalent to a unanimous 
 passage. In this Congress there were sixteen of the thirty-nine 
 fathers who framed the original Constitution. They were John 
 Langdon, Nicholas Gilman, William S. Johnson, Roger Sherman, 
 Robert Morris, Thomas Fitzsimmons, William Few, Abraham 
 Baldwin, Rufus King, William Paterson, George Clymer, Rich- 
 ard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, James 
 Madison. 
 
 This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing local
 
 476 APPENDIX. 
 
 from Federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, pro- 
 perly forbade Congress to prohibit slavery in the Federal terri- 
 tory; else both their fidelity to correct principles, and their oath 
 to support the Constitution, would have constrained them to 
 oppose the prohibition. 
 
 Again: George Washington, another of the" thirty -nine," was 
 then President of the United States, and, as such, approved and 
 signed the bill; thus completing its validity as a law, and thus 
 showing that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from 
 Federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, forbade the 
 Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal terri- 
 tory. 
 
 No great while after the adoption of the original Constitution, 
 North Carolina ceded to the Federal Government the country 
 now constituting the State of Tennessee; and, a few years later, 
 Georgia ceded that which now constitutes the States of Missis- 
 sippi and Alabama. In both deeds of cession it was made a 
 condition by the ceding States that the Federal Government 
 should not prohibit slavery in the ceded country. Besides this, 
 slavery was then actually in the ceded country. Under these 
 circumstances, Congress, on taking charge of these countries, 
 did not absolutely prohibit slavery within them. But they did 
 interfere with it take control of it even there, to a certain 
 extent. In 1798 Congress organized the Territory of Mississippi. 
 In the act of organization, they prohibited the bringing of slaves 
 into the Territory, from any place without the United States, by 
 fine, and giving freedom to slaves so brought. This act passed 
 both branches of Congress without yeas and nays. In that 
 Congress were three of the "thirty-nine" who framed the 
 original Constitution. They were John Langdon, George 
 Read, and Abraham Baldwin. They all, probably, voted for 
 it. Certainly they would have placed their opposition to it 
 upon record, if, in their understanding, any line dividing local 
 from Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, pro- 
 perly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery 
 in Federal territory. 
 
 In 1803 the Federal Government purchased the Louisiana 
 country. Our former territorial acquisitions came from certain
 
 APPENDIX. 477 
 
 of our own States; but this Louisiana country was acquired 
 from a foreign nation. In 1804 Congress gave a territorial 
 organization to that part of it which now constitutes the State 
 of Louisiana. New Orleans, lying within that part, was an old 
 and comparatively large city. There were other considerable 
 towns and settlements, and slavery was extensively and thor- 
 oughly intermingled with the people. Congress did not, in the 
 Territorial Act, prohibit slavery; but they did interfere with it 
 take control of it in a more marked and extensive way than 
 they did in the case of Mississippi. The substance of the pro- 
 vision therein made in relation to slaves was: 
 
 First. That no slave should be imported into the Territory 
 from foreign parts. 
 
 Second. That no slave should be carried into it who had been 
 imported into the United States since the first day of May, 
 1798. 
 
 Third. That no slave should be carried into it except by the 
 owner, and for his own use as a settler; the penalty in all the 
 oases being a fine upon the violator of the law, and freedom to 
 the slave. 
 
 This act also was passed without yeas and nays. In the Con- 
 gress which passed it there were two of the " thirty-nine." They 
 were Abraham Baldwin and Jonathan Dayton. As stated in 
 the case of Mississippi, it is probable they both voted for it. 
 They would not have allowed it to pass without recording their 
 opposition to it, if, in their understanding, it violated either the 
 line properly dividing local from Federal authority, or any 
 provision of the Constitution. 
 
 In 1819-20 came and passed the Missouri question. Many 
 votes were taken, by yeas and nays, in both branches of Con- 
 gress, upon the various phases of the general question. Two of 
 the "thirty-nine" Rufus King and Charles Pinckney were 
 members of that Congress. Mr. King steadily voted for slavery 
 prohibition and against all compromises, while Mr. Pinckney as 
 steadily voted against slavery prohibition and against all com- 
 promises. By this Mr. King showed that, in his understanding, 
 no line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything in 
 the Constitution, was violated by Congress prohibiting slavery
 
 478 APPENDIX. 
 
 in Federal territory; while Mr. Pinckney, by his vote, showed 
 that, in his understanding, there was some sufficient reason for 
 opposing such prohibition in that case. 
 
 The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the " thirty- 
 nine," or of any of them, upon the direct issue, which I have 
 been able to discover. 
 
 To enumerate the persons who thus acted, as being four in 
 1784, two in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 1798, two in 1804, 
 and two in 1819-20, there would be thirty of them. But this 
 would be counting John Langdon, Roger Sherman, William 
 Few, Rufus King, and George Read, each twice, and Abraham 
 Baldwin three times. The true number of those of the " thirty- 
 nine" whom I have shown to have acted upon the question 
 which, by the text, they understood better than we is twenty- 
 three, leaving sixteen not shown to have acted upon it in any 
 way. 
 
 Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty-nine 
 fathers " who framed the government under which we live," 
 who have, upon their official responsibility and their corporal 
 oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they 
 "understood just as well, and even better than we do now;" and 
 twenty-one of them a clear majority of the whole " thirty- 
 nine" so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross 
 political impropriety and willful perjury, if, in their understand- 
 ing, any proper division between local and Federal authority, or 
 anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and 
 sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as 
 to slavery in the Federal Territories. Thus the twenty-one 
 acted; and, as actions speak louder than words, so actions, 
 under such responsibility, speak still louder. 
 
 Two of the twenty-three voted against Congressional prohi- 
 bition of slavery in the Federal Territories, in the instances in 
 which they acted upon the question. But for what reasons they 
 so voted is not known. They may have done so because they 
 thought a proper division of local from Federal authority, or 
 some provision or principle of the Constitution, stood in the 
 way; or they may, without any such question, have voted 
 against the prohibition on what appeared to them to be suffi-
 
 APPENDIX. 479 
 
 cient grounds of expediency. No one who has sworn to sup- 
 port the Constitution can conscientiously vote for what he 
 understands to be an unconstitutional measure, however expedi- 
 ent he may think it; but one may and ought to vote against a 
 measure which he deems constitutional, if, at the same time, 
 he deems it inexpedient. It therefore would be unsafe to set 
 down even the two who voted against the prohibition as having 
 done so because, in their understanding, any proper division of 
 local from Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, 
 forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in 
 Federal territory. 
 
 The remaining sixteen of the " thirty-nine," so far as I have 
 discovered, have left no record of their understanding upon the 
 direct question of Federal control of slavery in the Federal 
 Territories. But there is much reason to believe that their 
 understanding upon that question would not have appeared 
 different from that of their twenty-three compeers, had it been 
 manifested at all. 
 
 For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I have pur- 
 posely omitted whatever understanding may have been mani- 
 fested by any person, however distinguished, other than the 
 thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution; and, 
 for the same reason, I have also omitted whatever understand- 
 ing may have been manifested by any of the " thirty-nine," even, 
 on any other phase of the general question of slavery. If we 
 should look into their acts and declarations on those other 
 phases, as the foreign slave-trade, and the morality and policy 
 of slavery generally, it would appear to us that on the direct 
 question of Federal control of slavery in Federal Territories, 
 the sixteen, if they had acted at all, would probably have acted 
 just as the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were several 
 of the most noted antislavery men of those times, as Dr. 
 Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris, while 
 there was not one now known to have been otherwise, unless it 
 may be John Rutledge, of South Carolina. 
 
 The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who 
 framed the original Constitution, twenty-one a clear majority 
 of the whole certainly understood that no proper division of
 
 480 APPENDIX. 
 
 local from Federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution, 
 forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the Fed- 
 eral Territories; whilst all the rest probably had the same 
 understanding. Such, unquestionably, was the understanding 
 of our fathers who framed the original Constitution; and the 
 text affirms that they understood the question " better than we." 
 
 But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of the 
 question manifested by the framers of the original Constitution. 
 In and by the original instrument, a mode was provided for 
 amending it; and, as I have already stated, the present frame of 
 " the government under which we live" consists of that original, 
 and twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted since. 
 Those who now insist that Federal control of slavery in Federal 
 Territories violates the Constitution, point us to the provisions 
 which they suppose it thus violates; and, as I understand, they 
 all fix upon provisions in these amendatory articles, and not in 
 the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott 
 case, plant themselves upon the fifth amendment, which provides 
 that no person shall be deprived of " life, liberty, or property 
 without due process of law;" while Senator Douglas and his 
 peculiar adherents plant themselves upon the tenth amendment, 
 providing that " the powers not delegated to the United States 
 by the Constitution" " are reserved to the States respectively, 
 or to the people." 
 
 Now, it so happens that these amendments were framed -by 
 the first Congress which sat under the Constitution the identi- 
 cal Congress which passed the act already mentioned, enforcing 
 the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. Not 
 only was it the same Congress, but they were the identical 
 same individual men who, at the same session, and at the same 
 time within the session, had under consideration, and in pro- 
 gress toward maturity, these Constitutional amendments, and 
 this act prohibiting slavery in all the territory the nation then 
 owned. The Constitutional amendments were introduced before, 
 and passed after, the act enforcing the Ordinance of '87; so that,, 
 during the whole pendency of the act to enforce the Ordinance, 
 the Constitutional amendments were also pending. 
 
 The seventy-six members of that Congress, including sixteen
 
 APPENDIX. 481 
 
 of the framers of the original Constitution, as before stated, 
 were pre-eminently our fathers who framed that part of " the 
 government under which we live" which is now claimed as 
 forbidding the Federal Government to control slavery in the 
 Federal Territories. 
 
 Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day to affirm 
 that the two things which that Congress deliberately framed, 
 and carried to maturity at the same time, are absolutely incon- 
 sistent with each other ? And does not such affirmation become 
 impudently absurd when coupled with the other affirmation 
 from the same mouth, that those who did the two things alleged 
 to be inconsistent understood whether they really were incon- 
 sistent better than we better than he who affirms that they are 
 inconsistent ? 
 
 It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the 
 original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Con- 
 gress which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, da 
 certainly include those who may be fairly called " our fathers 
 who framed the government under which we live." And, so 
 assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in 
 his whole life, declared that, in his understanding, any proper 
 division of local from Federal authority, or any part of the 
 Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to 
 slavery in the Federal Territories. I go a step further. I defy 
 any one to show that any living man in the whole world ever 
 did, prior to the beginning of the present century (and I might 
 almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present 
 century), declare that, in his understanding, any proper division 
 of local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, 
 forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the 
 Federal Territories. To those who now so declare, I give not 
 only " our fathers who framed the government under which we 
 live," but with them all other living men within the century in 
 which it was framed, among whom to search, and they shall not 
 be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing with 
 them. 
 
 Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunder- 
 stood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly
 
 482 APPENDIX. 
 
 in whatever our fathers did. To do so would be to discard all 
 the lights of current experience to reject all progress, all im- 
 provement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the 
 opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so 
 upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even 
 their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot 
 stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves 
 declare they understood the question better than we. 
 
 If any man at this day sincerely believes that proper division 
 of local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution, 
 forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the 
 Federal Territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his 
 position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he 
 can. But he has no right to mislead others who have less access 
 to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that 
 " our fathers who framed the government under which we live" 
 were of the same opinion thus substituting falsehood and 
 deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. If any man 
 at this day sincerely believes " our fathers who framed the gov- 
 ernment under which we live" used and applied principles, in 
 other cases, which ought to have led them to understand that a 
 proper division of local from Federal authority, or some part of 
 the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as 
 to slavery in the Federal Territories, he is right to say so. But 
 he should, at the same time, brave the responsibility of declar- 
 ing that, in his opinion, he understands their principles better 
 than they did themselves; and especially should he not shirk 
 that responsibility by asserting that they " understood the ques- 
 tion just as well, and even better than we do now." 
 
 But enough ! Let all who believe that " our fathers icho 
 framed the government under which we live understood this 
 question just as well, and even better than we do now" speak as 
 they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Repub- 
 licans ask all Republicans desire in relation to slavery. As 
 those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil 
 not to be extended, but to be tolerated and protected only because 
 of, and so far as, its actual presence among us makes that tole- 
 ration and protection a necessity. Let all the guaranties those
 
 APPENDIX. 483 
 
 fathers gave it be not grudgingly, but fully and fairly main- 
 tained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as 
 I know or believe, they will be content. 
 
 And now, if they would listen as I suppose they will not I 
 would address a few words to the Southern people. 
 
 I would say to them: You consider yourselves a reasonable 
 and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of 
 reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people. 
 Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to 
 denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws. 
 You will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing 
 like it to "Black Republicans." In all your contentions with 
 one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation 
 of " Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be attended to. 
 Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable 
 prerequisite license, so to speak among you, to be admitted 
 or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed 
 upon to pause, and to consider whether this is quite just to us, 
 or even to yourselves ? Bring forward your charges and speci- 
 fications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or 
 justify. 
 
 You say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue; 
 and the burden of proof is upon you. You produce your proof; 
 and what is it ? Why, that our party has no existence in your 
 section gets no votes in your section. The fact is substantially 
 true ; but does it prove the issue ? If it does, then in case we 
 should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in your 
 section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. You cannot 
 escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it? 
 If you are, you will probably soon find that we have ceased to 
 be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very 
 year. You will then begin to discover, as the truth plainly is, 
 that your proof does not touch the issue. The fact that we get 
 no votes in your section is a fact of your making, and not of 
 ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily 
 yours, and remains so until you show that we repel you by some 
 wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by any wrong 
 principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you to
 
 484 APPENDIX. 
 
 where you ought to have started to a discussion of the right or 
 wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, would 
 wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other 
 object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are 
 justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the 
 question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong 
 your section; and so meet us as if it were possible that some- 
 thing may be said on our side. Do you accept the challenge ? 
 No ! Then you really believe that the principle which " our 
 fathers who framed the government under which we live" 
 thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and 
 again, upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to 
 demand your condemnation without a moment's consideration. 
 
 Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against 
 sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address. 
 Less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he 
 had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an 
 act of Congress enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the 
 Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy of the 
 government upon that subject up to, and at, the very moment 
 he penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it, 
 he wrote La Fayette that he considered that prohibition a wise 
 measure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we 
 should at some time have a confederacy of free States. 
 
 Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since 
 arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your 
 hands against us, or in our hands against you ? Could Wash- 
 ington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectional- 
 ism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you, who repudiate 
 it ? We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend 
 it to you, together with his example pointing to the right appli- 
 cation of it. 
 
 But you say you are conservative eminently conservative 
 while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the 
 sort. What is conservatism ? Is it not adherence to the old 
 and tried, against a new and untried? We stick to, contend 
 for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which 
 was adopted by " our fathers who framed the government under
 
 APPENDIX. 485 
 
 which we live;" while you with one accord reject, and scout, 
 and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting some- 
 thing new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what 
 that substitute shall be. You are divided on new propositions 
 and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing 
 the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the 
 foreign slave-trade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for 
 the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories 
 to prohibit slavery within their limits; some for maintaining 
 slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the 
 " gur-reat pur-rinciple" that " if one man would enslave another, 
 no third man should object," fantastically called " Popular Sov- 
 ereignty;" but never a man among you in favor of Federal pro- 
 hibition of slavery in Federal Territories, according to the 
 practice of "our fathers who framed the government under 
 which we live." Not one of all your various plans can show a 
 precedent or an advocate in the century within which our gov- 
 ernment originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of 
 conservatism for yourselves, and your charge of destructiveness 
 against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations. 
 
 Again: you say we have made the slavery question more 
 prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. We admit that 
 it is more prominent, but we deny that we made it so. It was 
 not we, but you, who discarded the old policy of the fathers. 
 We resisted, and still resist your innovation; and thence comes 
 the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that 
 question reduced to its former proportions ? Go back to that 
 old policy. What has been will be again, under the same con- 
 ditions. If you would have the peace of the old times, readopt 
 the precepts and policy of the old times. 
 
 You charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves. 
 We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper's Ferry! John 
 Brown ! ! John Brown was no Republican ; and you have failed 
 to implicate a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enter- 
 prise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you 
 know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are 
 inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact. 
 If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and
 
 486 APPENDIX. 
 
 especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried 
 and failed to make the proof. You need not be told that per- 
 sisting in a charge which one does not know to be true is simply 
 malicious slander. 
 
 Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or 
 encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair; but still insist that our 
 doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We 
 do not believe it. "We know we hold to no doctrine, and make 
 no declaration, which were not held to and made by " our 
 fathers who framed the government under which we live." 
 You never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it 
 occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and 
 you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the 
 blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elec- 
 tions. The elections came, and your expectations were not 
 quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself 
 at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much 
 inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doc- 
 trines and declarations are accompanied with a continued pro- 
 test against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with 
 you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to 
 revolt. True, we do, in common with " our fathers who framed 
 the government under which we live," declare our belief that 
 slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even 
 this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely 
 know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in 
 fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us in 
 their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves, 
 each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Re- 
 publicanism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines 
 Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood, and 
 thunder among the slaves. 
 
 Slave-insurrections are no more common now than they were 
 before the Republican party was organized. What induced the 
 Southampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which at 
 least three times as many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry ? 
 You can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclu- 
 sion that Southampton was " got up by Black Republicanism."
 
 APPENDIX. 487 
 
 In the present state of things in the United States, I do not 
 think a general or even a very extensive slave-insurrection is 
 possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be 
 attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication; 
 nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The 
 explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither 
 are, nor can be supplied, the indispensable connecting-trains. 
 
 Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves 
 for their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is 
 true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and com- 
 municated to twenty individuals before some one of them, to 
 save the life of a favorite master or mistress, would divulge it. 
 This is the rule; and the slave-revolution in Hayti was not an 
 exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar circum- 
 stances. The gunpowder-plot of British history, though not 
 connected with slaves, was more in point. In that case, only 
 about twenty were admitted to the secret; and yet one of them, 
 in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend, 
 and, by consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poison- 
 ings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in the 
 field, and local revolts, extending to a score or so, will continue 
 to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no general insur- 
 rection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for a 
 long time. Whoever much fears or much hopes for such an 
 event will be alike disappointed. 
 
 In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, " It 
 is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and 
 deportation peaceably, and in such slow degrees as that the evil 
 will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled 
 up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to 
 force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect 
 held up." 
 
 Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power 
 of emancipation is in the Federal Government. He spoke of 
 Virginia; and, as to the power of emancipation, I speak of the 
 slave-holding States only. The Federal Government, however, 
 as we insist, has the power of restraining the extension of the 
 institution the power to insure that a slave-insurrection shall
 
 488 APPENDIX. 
 
 never occur on any American soil which is now free from 
 slavery. 
 
 John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave-insur- 
 rection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt 
 among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In 
 fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, with all their ignorance, 
 saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its 
 philosophy, corresponds with the many attempts related in his- 
 tory at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast 
 broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself 
 commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the 
 attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution. 
 Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon and John Brown's attempt 
 at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the same. 
 The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and 
 on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of 
 the two things. 
 
 And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of 
 John Brown, Helper's Book, and the like, break up the Repub- 
 lican organization ? Human action can be modified to some 
 extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judg- 
 ment and a feeling against slavery in this nation which cast at least 
 a million and a half of votes. You cannot destroy that judgment 
 and feeling that sentiment by breaking up the political organ- 
 ization which rallies around it. You can scarcely scatter and 
 disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face 
 of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you 
 gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peace- 
 ful channel of the ballot-box into some other channel ? What 
 would that other channel probably be ? Would the number of 
 John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation ? 
 
 But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a 
 denial of your Constitutional rights. 
 
 That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palli- 
 ated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force 
 of numbers, to deprive you of some right plainly written down 
 in the Constitution. But we are proposing no such thing. 
 
 When you make these declarations, you have a specific and
 
 APPENDIX. 489 
 
 well-understood allusion to an assumed Constitutional right of 
 yours to take slaves into the Federal Territories, and to hold 
 them there as property. But no such right is specifically writ- 
 ten in the Constitution. That instrument is literally silent 
 about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a 
 right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implica- 
 tion. 
 
 Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is, that you will destroy 
 the government unless you be allowed to construe and enforce 
 the Constitution as you please on all points in dispute between 
 you and us. You will rule or ruin, in all events. 
 
 This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you will say 
 the Supreme Court has decided the disputed Constitutional 
 question in your favor. Not quite so. But, waiving the law- 
 yer's distinction between dictum and decision, the Court have 
 decided the question for you in a sort of way. The Court have 
 substantially said, it is your Constitutional right to take slaves 
 into the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as property. 
 When I say the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it 
 was made in a divided Court, by a bare majority of the judges, 
 and they not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for 
 making it; that it is so made as that its avowed supporters dis- 
 agree with one another about its meaning, and that it was 
 mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact the statement 
 in the opinion that " the right of property in a slave is distinctly 
 and expressly affirmed in the Constitution." 
 
 An inspection of the Constitution will show that the right of 
 property in a slave is not " distinctly and expressly affirmed " in 
 it. Bear in mind, the judges do not pledge their judicial 
 opinion that such right is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution; 
 but they pledge their veracity that it is " distinctly and express- 
 ly" affirmed there " distinctly," that is, not mingled with any- 
 thing else; "expressly," that is, in words meaning just that, 
 without the aid of any inference, and susceptible of no other 
 meaning. 
 
 If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right 
 is affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to 
 others to show that neither the word " slave" nor " slavery" is
 
 490 APPENDIX. 
 
 to be found in the Constitution, nor the word " property," even, 
 in any connection with language alluding to the things slave 
 or slavery; and that wherever in that instrument the slave is 
 alluded to, he is called a "person;" and wherever his master's 
 legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it is spoken of as 
 "service or labor which may be due," as a debt payable in 
 service or labor. Also, it would be open to show, by contempo- 
 raneous history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery, 
 instead of speaking of them, was employed on purpose to exclude 
 from the Constitution the idea that there could be property in 
 man. 
 
 To show all this is easy and certain. 
 
 When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be brought to 
 their notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will with- 
 draw the mistaken statement, and reconsider the conclusion 
 based upon it ? 
 
 And then it is to be remembered that "our fathers who 
 framed the government under which we live" the men who 
 made the Constitution decided this same Constitutional ques- 
 tion in our favor, long ago: decided it without division among 
 themselves when making the decision; without division among 
 themselves about the meaning of it after it was made, and, so 
 far as any evidence is left, without basing it upon any mistaken 
 statement of facts. 
 
 Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves 
 justified to break up this government, unless such a court 
 decision as yours is shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive 
 and final rule of political action ? But you will not abide the 
 election of a Republican President ! In that supposed event, 
 you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the 
 great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us ! That is 
 cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters 
 through his teeth, " Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and 
 then you will be a murderer !" 
 
 To be sure, what the robber demanded of me my money 
 was my own; and I had a clear right to keep it. But it was no 
 more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death 
 to me to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the
 
 APPENDIX. 491 
 
 Union to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in prin- 
 ciple. 
 
 A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirable 
 that all parts of this great confederacy shall be at peace, and 
 in harmony one with another. Let us Republicans do our part 
 to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing 
 through passion and ill-temper. Even though the Southern 
 people will not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider 
 their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate view of 
 our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and 
 by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us 
 determine, if we can, what will satisfy them. 
 
 Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally 
 surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their 
 present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely men- 
 tioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it 
 satisfy them if, in the future, we have nothing to do with 
 invasions and insurrections? We know it will not. We so 
 know, because we know we never had anything to do with in- 
 vasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not 
 exempt us from the charge and the denunciation. 
 
 The question recurs, What will satisfy them? Simply this: 
 We must not only let them alone, but we must, somehow, con- 
 vince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by expe- 
 rience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince 
 them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no 
 success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly 
 protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no 
 tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them 
 is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any 
 attempt to disturb them. 
 
 These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, 
 what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call 
 slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this 
 must be done thoroughly done in acts as well as in words. 
 Silence will not be tolerated: we must place ourselves avow- 
 edly with them. Senator Douglas's new sedition-law must 
 be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that
 
 492 APPENDIX. 
 
 slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, 
 or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves 
 with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our free-State Con- 
 stitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all 
 taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe 
 that all their troubles proceed from us. 
 
 I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this 
 way. Most of them would probably say to us, " Let us alone, 
 do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery." But 
 we do let them alone have never disturbed them; so that, after 
 all, it is what we say which dissatisfies them. They will con- 
 tinue to accuse us of doing until we cease saying. 
 
 I am also aware they have not as yet, in terms, demanded the 
 overthrow of our free-State Constitutions. Yet those Constitu- 
 tions declare the wrong of slavery, with more solemn emphasis 
 than do all other sayings against it; and when all these other 
 sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these Consti- 
 tutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the 
 demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand 
 the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for 
 the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short 
 of this consummation. Holding as they do that slavery is 
 morally right and socially elevating, they cannot cease to 
 demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right and a 
 social blessing. 
 
 Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground save our 
 conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words, 
 acts, laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong, 
 and should be silenced and swept away. If it is right, we can- 
 not justly object to its nationality its universality; if it is 
 wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension its enlarge- 
 ment. All they ask we could readily grant, if we thought 
 slavery right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they 
 thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it 
 wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole con- 
 troversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame 
 for desiring its full recognition, as being right; but, thinking it 
 wrong, as we do, can we yield to them ? Can we cast our votes
 
 APPENDIX. 493 
 
 with their view and against our own ? In view of our moral, 
 oocial, and political responsibilities, can we do this ? 
 
 Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone 
 where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising 
 from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our 
 votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Terri- 
 tories, and to overrun us here in these free States ? If our 
 sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fear- 
 lessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those 
 sophistical contrivances wherewith we are so industriously plied 
 and belabored contrivances such as groping for some middle 
 ground between the right and the wrong, vain as the search for 
 a man who should be neither a living man nor a dead man; such 
 as a policy of " don't care" on a question about which all true 
 men do care; such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men 
 to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling, 
 not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance; such as invoca- 
 tions to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington 
 said, and undo what Washington did. 
 
 Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations 
 against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to 
 the government or of dungeons to ourselves. LET us HAVE 
 
 FAITH THAT RlGHT MAKES MlGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH LET US, 
 TO THE END, DARE TO DO OUE DUTY AS WE UNDERSTAND IT. 
 
 m. 
 
 LETTER, 
 
 TO THE UNCONDITIONAL UNION MEN. 
 
 (See Ch. XLIX.) 
 
 EXECUTIVE MANSION, 
 WASHINGTON, August 26, 1863. 
 Hon. James C. Conkling. 
 
 MY DEAR SIK: Your letter inviting me to attend a mass- 
 meeting of unconditional Union men, to be held at the capital 
 of Illinois, on the 3d day of September, has been received. It
 
 494 APPENDIX. 
 
 would be very agreeable for me thus to meet my old friends at 
 my own home; but I cannot just now be absent from here so 
 long as a visit there would require. 
 
 The meeting is to be of all those who maintain unconditional 
 devotion to the Union; and I am sure that my old political 
 friends will thank me for tendering, as I do, the nation's grati- 
 tude to those other noble men whom no partisan malice or parti- 
 san hope can make false to the nation's life. 
 
 There are those who are dissatisfied with me. To such I 
 would say: You desire peace, and you blame me that we do not 
 have it. But how can we attain it ? There are but three con- 
 ceivable ways. First, to suppress the rebellion by force of 
 arms. This I am trying to do. Are you for it ? If you are, so 
 far we are agreed. If you are not for it, a second way is to give 
 up the Union. I am against this. Are you for it ? If you are, 
 you should say so plainly. If you are not for force, nor yet for 
 dissolution, there only remains some imaginable compromise. 
 
 I do not believe that any compromise embracing the mainte- 
 nance of the Union is now possible. All that I learn leads to a 
 directly opposite belief. The strength of the rebellion is its 
 military, its army. That army dominates all the country, and 
 all the people, within its range. Any offer of terms made by 
 any man or men within that range, in opposition to that army, 
 is simply nothing for the present; because such man or men 
 have no power whatever to enforce their side of a compromise, 
 if one were made with them. 
 
 To illustrate: Suppose refugees from the South and peace 
 men of the North get together in convention, and frame and 
 proclaim a compromise embracing a restoration of the Union. 
 In what way can that compromise be used to keep Lee's army 
 out of Pennsylvania ? Meade's army can keep Lee's army out of 
 Pennsylvania, and, I think, can ultimately drive it out of exist- 
 ence. But no paper compromise to which the controllers of 
 Lee's army are not agreed can at all affect that army. In an 
 effort at such compromise we would waste time, which the 
 enemy would improve to our disadvantage; and that would 
 be all. 
 
 A compromise, to be effective, must be made either with
 
 APPENDIX. 495 
 
 those who control the rebel army, or with the people, first liber- 
 ated from the domination of that army by the success of our 
 own army. Now, allow me to assure you that no word or inti- 
 mation from that rebel army, or from any of the men control- 
 ling it, in relation to any peace compromise, has ever come to 
 my knowledge or belief. All charges and insinuations to the 
 contrary are deceptive and groundless. And I promise you 
 that if any such proposition shall hereafter come, it shall not be 
 rejected and kept a secret from you. I freely acknowledge 
 myself to be the servant of the people, according to the bond of 
 service, the United States Constitution; and that, as such, I am 
 responsible to them. 
 
 But to be plain. You are dissatisfied with me about the 
 negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between 
 you and myself upon that subject. I certainly wish. that all 
 men could be free, while you, I suppose, do not. Yet I have 
 neither adopted nor proposed any measure which is not consist- 
 ent with even your view, provided that you are for the Union. 
 I suggested compensated emancipation; to which you replied 
 you wished not to be taxed to buy negroes. But I had not 
 asked you to be taxed to buy negroes, except in such way as to 
 save you from greater taxation to save the Union exclusively by 
 other means. 
 
 You dislike the Emancipation Proclamation, and perhaps 
 would have it retracted. You say it is unconstitutional. I 
 think differently. I think the Constitution invests its Com- 
 mander-in-Chief with the law of war in time of war. The most 
 that can be said, if so much, is, that slaves are property. Is 
 there, has there ever been, any question that by the law of war, 
 property, both of enemies and friends, may be taken when 
 needed ? And is it not needed whenever it helps us and hurts 
 the enemy ? Armies, the world over, destroy enemies' property 
 when they cannot use it; and even destroy their own to keep it 
 from the enemy. Civilized belligerents do all in their power to 
 help themselves or hurt the enemy, except a few things regarded 
 as barbarous or cruel. Among the exceptions are the massacre 
 of vanquished foes and non-combatants, male and female. 
 
 But the Proclamation, as law, either is valid or is not valid.
 
 496 APPENDIX. 
 
 If it is not valid, it needs no retraction. If it is valid, it cannot 
 be retracted, any more than the dead can be brought to life. 
 Some of you profess to think its retraction would operate favor- 
 ably for the Union. Why better after the retraction than 
 before the issue ? There was more than a year and a half of 
 trial to suppress the rebellion before the Proclamation was 
 issued, the last one hundred days of which passed under an 
 explicit notice that it was coming, unless averted by those in 
 revolt returning to their allegiance. The war has certainly 
 progressed as favorably for us since the issue of the Proclama- 
 tion as before. 
 
 I know, as fully as one can know the opinions of others, that 
 some of the commanders of our armies in the field, who have 
 given us our most important victories, believe the Emancipation 
 policy and the use of colored troops constitute the heaviest 
 blows yet dealt to the rebellion, and that at least one of those 
 important successes could not have been achieved when it was 
 but for the aid of black soldiers. 
 
 Among the commanders who hold these views are some who 
 have never had any affinity with what is called " Abolitionism," 
 or with " Republican party politics," but who hold them purely 
 as military opinions. I submit their opinions as entitled to some 
 weight against the objections often urged that emancipation 
 and arming the blacks are unwise as military measures, and 
 were not adopted as such in good faith. 
 
 You say that you will not fight to free negroes. Some of 
 them seem willing to fight for you; but no matter. Fight you, 
 then, exclusively to save the Union. I issued the Proclamation 
 on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you 
 shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge 
 you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time then for you to 
 declare you will not fight to free negroes. I thought that in 
 your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes 
 should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the 
 enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think differently ? I 
 thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers, 
 leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do in saving the 
 Union. Does it appear otherwise to you ? But negroes, like
 
 APPENDIX. 497 
 
 other people, act upon motives. Why should they do anything 
 for us if we will do nothing for them ? If they stake their lives 
 for us they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the 
 promise of freedom. And the promise, being made, must be kept. 
 
 The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes 
 unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the great Northwest for it; nor 
 yet wholly to them. Three hundred miles up they met New 
 England, Empire, Keystone, and Jersey, hewing their way right 
 and left. The sunny South, too, in more colors than one, also 
 lent a helping hand. On the spot, their part of the history was 
 jotted down in black and white. The job was a great national 
 one, and let none be slighted who bore an honorable part in it. 
 And while those who have cleared the great river may well be 
 proud, even that is not all. It is hard to say that anything has 
 been more bravely and well done than at Antietam, Murfrees- 
 borough, Gettysburg, and on many fields of less note. Nor must 
 Uncle Sam's web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins 
 they have been present, not only on the deep sea, the broad bay, 
 and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy bayou, and 
 wherever the ground was a little damp, they have been and 
 made their tracks. Thanks to all. For the great Republic; 
 for the principle it lives by and keeps alive; for man's vast 
 future thanks to all. 
 
 Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will 
 come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the 
 keeping in all future time. It will then have been proved that 
 among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot 
 to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to 
 lose their case and pay the cost. And there will be some black 
 men who can remember that with silent tongue, and clinched 
 teeth, and steady eye, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped 
 mankind on to this great consummation, while I fear there will 
 be some white ones unable to forget that with malignant heart 
 and deceitful speech they have striven to hinder it. 
 
 Still, let us not be over-sanguine of a speedy, final triumph. 
 Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never 
 doubting that a just God, in His own good time, will give us 
 the rightful result. 
 
 Yours, very truly, A. LINCOLN-.
 
 498 APPENDIX. 
 
 IV. 
 
 LETTER, 
 
 CONCERNING THE GOVERNMENT'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS SLAVERY. 
 
 (See Ch. XLI.) 
 
 GOVERNOR BRAMLETTE and some other Kentucky gentlemen 
 having called upon the President in relation to the draft in 
 Kentucky, the following letter from the President was called 
 forth by the conversation which then ensued: 
 
 EXECUTIVE MANSION, 
 WASHINGTON, April 4, 1864. 
 
 A. r. Hodges, Esq., Frankfort, Ey. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR: You ask me to put in writing the substance of 
 what I verbally said the other day, in your presence, to Gov- 
 ernor Bramlette and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows: 
 
 " I am naturally antislavery. If slavery is not wrong, noth- 
 ing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and 
 feel, and yet I have never understood that the Presidency con- 
 ferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this 
 judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, 
 to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Con- 
 stitution of the United States. I could not take the office with- 
 out taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an 
 oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I 
 understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath 
 even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract 
 judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly 
 declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, 
 to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my 
 abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand, 
 however, that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best 
 of my ability imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by 
 every indispensable means, that government that nation, of 
 which that Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible 
 to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution ? By gen-
 
 APPENDIX. 499 
 
 eral law, life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must 
 be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to 
 save a limb. I felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional 
 might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preserva- 
 tion of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation. 
 Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I 
 could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to 
 preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery or any minor mat- 
 ter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Con- 
 stitutional together. When, early in the war, General Fremont 
 attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not 
 then think it an indispensable necessity. When, a little later, 
 General Cameron, then Secretary of War. suggested the arming 
 of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indis- 
 pensable necessity. When, still later, General Hunter attempted 
 military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet 
 think the indispensable necessity had come. When, in March, 
 and May, and July, 1862, I made earnest and successive appeals 
 to the border-States to favor compensated emancipation, I 
 believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation 
 and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that 
 measure. They declined the proposition, and I was, in my best 
 judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the 
 Union, and with it the Constitution, or of laying strong hand 
 upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it, 
 I hoped for greater gain than loss, but of this I was not entirely 
 confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in 
 our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none 
 in our white military force, no loss by it anyhow or anywhere. 
 Ou the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty 
 thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable 
 facts, about which, as facts, there can be no caviling. We have 
 the men, and we could not have had them without the measure. 
 " And now let any Union man who complains of the measure 
 test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subdi^ng 
 the rebellion by force of arms, and in the next that he is for 
 taking three hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union 
 side and placing them where they would be best for the measure
 
 500 APPENDIX. 
 
 he condemns. If he cannot face his case so stated, it is only 
 because he cannot face the truth." 
 
 I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In 
 telling this tale, I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity, I 
 claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that 
 events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years' strug- 
 gle, the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man, 
 devised or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is 
 tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great 
 wrong, and wills also that we of the North, as well as you of 
 the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, 
 impartial history will find therein new causes to attest and 
 revere the justice and goodness of God. 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 A. LINCOLN. 
 
 V. 
 POEM, 
 
 BY TOM TAYLOR. 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN* 
 FOULLY ASSASSINATED, APRIL 14, 1865. 
 
 You lay a wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier, 
 You, who with mocking pencil wont to trace, 
 
 Broad for the self-complacent British sneer, 
 His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face, 
 
 His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair, 
 
 His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease, 
 His lack of all we prize as debonair, 
 
 Of power or will to shine, of art to please; 
 
 * This tribute appeared in the London Punch, which, up to the time of the assassina- 
 tion of Mr. Lincoln, had ridiculed and maligned him with all its well-known powers 01 
 pen and pencil. It is the poem alluded to on page 402.
 
 APPENDIX. 501 
 
 You, whose smart pen backed up the pencil's laugh, 
 Judging each step as though the way were plain, 
 
 Reckless, so it could point its paragraph 
 Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain: 
 
 Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet 
 The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew, 
 
 Between the mourners at his head and feet, 
 Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you? 
 
 Yes : he had lived to shame me from my sneer, 
 
 To lame my pencil, and confute my pen; 
 To make me own this hind of princes peer, 
 
 This rail-splitter a true-born king of men. 
 
 My shallow judgment I had learned to rue, 
 
 Noting how to occasion's height he rose; 
 How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true; 
 
 How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows. 
 
 How humble, yet how hopeful, he could be; 
 i How, in good fortune and in ill, the same; 
 Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he, 
 Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame. 
 
 He went about his work, such work as few 
 Ever had laid on head and heart and hand, 
 
 As one who knows, where there's a task to do, 
 
 Man's honest will must Heaven's good grace command; 
 
 Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow, 
 That God makes instruments to work his will, 
 
 If but that will we can arrive to know, 
 
 Nor tamper with the weights of good and ill. 
 
 So he went forth to battle, on the side 
 
 That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's, 
 
 As in his peasant boyhood he had plied 
 
 His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights; 
 
 The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil, 
 The iron-bark, that turns the lumberer's ax,
 
 502 APPENDIX. 
 
 The rapid, that o'erbears the boatman's toil, 
 
 The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks, 
 
 The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear, 
 Such were the deeds that helped his youth to train: 
 
 Rough culture, but such trees large fruit may bear, 
 If but their stocks be of right girth and grain. 
 
 So he grew up, a destined work to do, 
 
 And lived to do it: four long-suffering years' 
 
 Hl-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through, 
 And then he heard the hisses change to cheers, 
 
 The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise, 
 
 And took both with the same unwavering mood; 
 
 Till, as he came on light, from darkling days, 
 
 And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood, 
 
 A felon hand, between the goal and him, 
 
 Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest, 
 
 And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim, 
 Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to restl 
 
 The words of mercy were upon his lips, 
 Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen, 
 
 When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse 
 To thoughts of peace on earth, good-will to men. 
 
 The Old World and the New, from sea te sea, 
 Utter one voice of sympathy and shame: 
 
 Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high; 
 Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came! 
 
 A deed accurst! Strokes have been struck before 
 By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt 
 
 If more of horror or disgrace they bore; 
 
 But thy foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly out. 
 
 Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife, 
 
 Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven; 
 
 And with the martyr's crown crown est a life 
 With much to praise, little to be forgiven.-
 
 INDEX. 
 
 ABOLITIONISTS, melting into the new par- 
 ty, 150; trying to convert Mr. Lincoln, 
 155; not yet ready to follow him, 170 
 
 Anderson, Maj. R., in command of Fort 
 Sumter, 195 
 
 Anti-coercion meetings at the North, 223 
 
 Antietam Creek, battle of, 325; President's 
 doubt as to its being a victory, 334 
 
 Armstrong, Jack, of Clary's Grove, wrest- 
 ling match with Lincoln, 76 
 
 Armstrong, Hannah, appealing to Lincoln 
 to defend her son, 164; forebodings of 
 Lincoln's assassination, 198 
 
 Armstrong, William D., son of Jack and 
 Hannah, accused of murder and de- 
 fended by Lincoln, 163 
 
 Arlington House, Lee family mansion, 
 Rebel flag on, 235-238 
 
 Army of the Potomac, representative ar- 
 my, 384 
 
 Army organization, complications of State 
 and National authority, 268; difficul- 
 ties, 271 ; formative processes, 284 
 
 Assassination, conspiracy and prepara- 
 tions for, 458; accomplished, 459; com- 
 ments of European powers and press, 
 464. 
 
 Ashmun, George, Chairman of Chicago 
 Nat. Rep. Convention, 184; appoint- 
 ment to meet President, etc., 459 
 
 BAKER, E. D., Lincoln's withdrawal in his 
 favor as a candidate for Congress, 128 
 
 Baltimore, Secession feeling in, 204; attack 
 upon Massachusetts 6th Reg., 230; city 
 captured by troops under Gen. B. F. 
 Butler, 232-236; National Convention of 
 Rep. party held there, 428 
 
 Bates, Edward, appointed Attorney-Gen- 
 eral, 215; resigned, 442 
 
 Beauregard, Gen. P. G. T., in command of 
 Rebel troops at Manassas Junction, 254 
 
 Berry, business partner of Lincoln in New 
 Salem, 94-96 
 
 Big Bethel, fight, 254 
 
 Blackhawk War, outbreak of, 81; Still- 
 man's defeat, 85; Independent Spy 
 Company, 88 
 
 Blackstone's Commentaries, borrowed of 
 JohnT. Stuart by Lincoln, 101 
 
 Blair, Montgomery, Postmaster-General, 
 215; opposed to Proclamation of Eman- 
 cipation, 333; resigned, 442 
 
 Blockade of Southern seaports, first pro- 
 clamation of, 250; effectiveness of, 262 
 
 Bloomington, 111., State Convention of 
 Anti- Nebraska men held there, 155; 
 speech of Mr. Lincoln, 157 
 
 Booth, John Wilkes, actor and assassin, 
 459; death of, 460 
 
 Border States, saved to the Union, 197, 221, 
 350; furnishing volunteers for the ar- 
 my, 355; disturbed by Emancipation, 
 365; reconstruction of, 374 
 
 Brandy Station, battle of, 388 
 
 Breckmridge, great speech in murder- 
 case and repulse of young Lincoln's 
 compliments, 58 
 
 Breckinridge, John C., Vice-President, 160; 
 nomination for President, 184 
 
 Bryant, William Cullen, presided at 
 Cooper Institute meeting and intro- 
 duced Mr. Lincoln, 179 
 
 Buchanan, James, nominated for Presi- 
 dent, 160; character of his administra- 
 tion, 190-196; accompanies Mr. Lincoln 
 at his inauguration, 208 
 
 Bull Run, battle of, 255; effects of, 257; 
 false accounts of, 265 
 
 Burnside, Gen. Ambrose E., succeeded 
 McClellan in command, 326; successes 
 in North Carolina, a50; plan of cam- 
 paign on Potomac, 356; removal from 
 command, 358; commanded in Ohio, 
 378; further services, 414 
 
 Bushnell C. S., and the construction of the 
 Monitor, 298 
 
 Butler, Gen. B. F., commanding Massachu- 
 setts troops in Maryland, 233; sus- 
 pends writ of Habeas Corpus, 236; cap- 
 ture of Baltimore, 236; declares fugi- 
 tives from slavery contraband, 277 
 
 Butler, William, friend with whom Lincoln 
 boarded, 118 
 
 CABINET, the, formation of, 189, 214; Opin- 
 ions with reference to Fort Sumter, 222 
 
 Calhoun, surveyor of Sangamon County, 95 
 
 Call for troops, first, 224; from four States 
 to repel second invasion, 389 
 
 Cameron, Simon, Secretary of War, 214; 
 resignation of, 316 
 
 Campbell, J. A., at Peace Conference in 
 Hampton Roads, 446; action with ref- 
 erence to Lee's surrender, 455 
 
 Carpenter, Frank B., painting picture of 
 first reading of Emancipation Procla- 
 mation, 332; conversations with Mr. 
 Lincoln, 333 
 
 Cartwright, Rev. Peter, candidate for Con- 
 gress against Lincoln and defeated, 133 
 
 Central Illinois Gazette, newspaper nomi- 
 nation of Lincoln for the Presidency, 
 174 
 
 Civil war, threats of, in case of Lincoln's 
 election, 160; termination of, 455 
 
 Champaign County, 111., Lincoln retires 
 from a murder-case in, 140; received 
 there the news of his votes for Vice- 
 President, 160; nominated first for 
 President in, 174 
 
 Chancellorsville, battle of, etc., 386, 387 
 
 Chantilly, battle of, 231 
 
 Charleston, S. C., forts in and about har- 
 bor of, 195; capture of, by Union troops, 
 446 
 
 Chase, Salmon P., candidacy at Chicago, 
 183; Secretary of the Treasury, 215,
 
 504 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 270; resigned, 442; appointed Chief 
 
 Justice of the Supreme Court, 443 
 Chicago, Republican National Convention 
 
 in 1860, 183 
 Clary's Grove Boys, character of, 76; elect 
 
 Lincoln their captain, 82 
 Clay. Henry, political idol of Lincoln, 128; 
 
 defeat of, for Presidency, 130; put 
 
 aside, 135; funeral oration by Lincoln, 
 
 145 
 Colonization, chimerical ideas entertained, 
 
 etc., 145; recommended in Emancipa- 
 tion Proclamation. 365 
 Commissioners, Confederate, not recog- 
 nized, 217 
 
 Committee on the Conduct of the War, 290 
 Compensation for slaves of loyal owners, 
 
 365 
 Confederacy, Southern, formation of, 195; 
 
 first army of, 225 
 Congress of United States, call for extra 
 
 session, 227; first war-legislation, 259, 
 
 267 
 Constitutional Amendment prohibiting 
 
 slavery, 445 
 
 Cooper Institute speech, 178 
 Copperheads, name given to Northern 
 
 Rebels, 214; useful allies of the South, 
 
 287,389 
 Crawford, Josiah, owner of " Weems' Life 
 
 of Washington" spoiled by Lincoln, 45 
 Crisis, financial, of 18^, 119 
 Crittenden Compromise, failure of, 213 
 Cruelty to Animals, lecture and essay by 
 
 young Lincoln, 48. 
 
 DAVIS, DAVID, appointed to the Supreme 
 Court, etc., & 
 
 Davis, Jefferson, President of the Confede- 
 racy, 213; predicts a bloody war, 222; 
 urges Virginia to hostilities, 232 
 
 Dayton, William L., candidate of People's 
 party for Vice-President, 159 
 
 Debating Club, of Gentryville, Ind., 56; of 
 New Salem, HI., 91 
 
 Decatur, HI., town of, near first settlement 
 of Lincoln family, 65; Lincoln's first 
 stump-speech in Illinois made there, 
 89 
 
 Democratic party, condition of, in 1854, etc., 
 146; division of, in 1S60, 184; conven- 
 tion of, in 1864, 431, 435 
 
 Dennison, Gov. W., of Ohio, Chairman of 
 Republican National Convention, 430; 
 Postmaster-General, 442 
 
 District of Columbia, compensated emanci- 
 pation is advocated oy Lincoln, 136: 
 political condition of, in 1861, 205, 349 
 
 Dorsey, Hazel, one of Lincoln's Indiana 
 school-teachers, 36 
 
 Douglas, Stephen A., rival of Lincoln in 
 courtship, 121; author of Kansas-Ne- 
 braska Act, 146; speech at Springfield, 
 111., replied to by Lincoln, 147; candi- 
 date for re-election to U. S. Senate, 167; 
 elected, 173; nominated for President, 
 184 
 
 Draft Act, recommended to Congress, 371 ; 
 opposition to, increasing, 383,387,396; 
 riot in New York City, 397, 400 
 
 EDWARDS, MATILDA, story of, 122 
 
 Edwards. Ninian, brother-in-law of Mrs. 
 Lincoln, 121 
 
 Eighth Regiment Massachusetts Militia, 
 reach Maryland under Gen. Butler, 233 
 
 Election, results of, in 1860, 187; in 1863, 
 416; in 1864, 441 
 
 Electoral Colleges, report of votes in 1860, 
 187; in 1864, 442 
 
 Ellsworth, Colonel, death of, 246 
 
 Emancipation, right and power, 329, 331 ; 
 Congressional preparation for, 330; 
 reading of, 332, 334; second proclama- 
 tion, 365, 368 
 
 England, sympathy with and support of 
 Confederacy, 249, 261, 383; warned not 
 to interfere, 263; declaration of neu- 
 trality not received, 264; conduct in 
 Trent affair, 852 
 
 Enquirer, Richmond, Va., newspaper de- 
 mand for resumption of ownership of 
 District of Columbia by Virginia and 
 Maryland, 219 
 
 Everett, Edward, candidate of Constitu- 
 tional Union party for Vice-President 
 in 1860, 185 
 
 Executive Mansion, Washington, D. C., 
 packed with office-seekers, 215; busi- 
 ness arrangements of, 243; mails of, 
 282 
 
 FEDERAL PARTY, death of, 90 
 
 Female suffrage, assent to, in Lincoln's 
 address, etc., 112 
 
 Fessenden, William P., appointed Secretary 
 of the Treasury, 442; resigned, 452 
 
 Fillmore, Millard, Vice-President, 135; 
 nominee of Constitutional Union party 
 for President in 1860, 160 
 
 Finances, United States, Lincoln's training 
 for, 106, 113; Congress makes first war- 
 loan, 260; European opinion of, 261; 
 new loans and national banking sys- 
 tem, 372, 373 
 
 Floyd, Secretary of War under Buchanan 
 Administration, 196 
 
 Forebodings concerning assassination, 198 
 
 Fort Sumter, siege of, begins, 195; bom- 
 bardment of, 220; news of capture re- 
 ceived at Washington, 222 
 
 Fourth of July, celebration in Washington 
 in 1863, 411 
 
 France, sympathy with Confederacy, 249, 
 261, 383; warned not to interfere, 263; 
 declaration of neutrality not received, 
 264 
 
 Fredericksburg, battle of, 356, 358 
 
 Fremont, Gen. John C., nominated for 
 President by the People's party in 
 1856, 159; appointed to command De- 
 partment of the West, 309; proclama- 
 tion of confiscation, etc., issued by, 
 311; services, 313, 350; reference to, in 
 letter of President, 331 
 
 GAME and hunting in Indiana, 58 
 
 Gentry, Allen, Lincoln's companion in first 
 flat-boat trip down the Mississippi, 60, 64 
 
 Gentry, Gentryville, store and village in 
 Indiana, 36, 49; Lincoln's clerkship 
 there, 56 ; at Gentry's Landing and on 
 flat-boat owned by Gentry, 60, 64 
 
 Germany, sympathy with Union cause, 383
 
 INDEX. 
 
 505 
 
 Gettysburg, battle of, 392, 394; estimate of 
 forces engaged, 395; dedication of 
 cemetery and speeches, 414 
 
 Gist, Governor of South Carolina in 1860, 
 issued circular letter to other Southern 
 States. 192 
 
 Gosport Navy Yard, Norfolk, Va., burning 
 of, etc., 218, 235 
 
 Graham, Minter, schoolmaster of New Sa- 
 lem, HI., advises Lincoln to study gram- 
 mar, 78; instructs him in surveying, 
 95 
 
 Grant, Gen. Ulysses S., President's letter 
 to him, 415; appointed to Military De- 
 partment or the Wtest, 421 ; Lieutenant- 
 General in command of all armies, 
 423; Lincoln's opinion of him, 424; cor- 
 respondence with Lincoln on army 
 plans, 443; in front of Richmond, 453 
 
 Greeley, Horace, and the Niagara Falls 
 Commissioners, 435 
 
 Greene, Bowlin, helps buy Lincoln's effects 
 at sheriff's sale, 97; took care of him 
 during melancholia, etc., 109 
 
 Grigsby, Aaron, brother-in-law of Lincoln, 
 49 
 
 Grigsby, Nat, Lincoln interrupts a speech 
 to step down and speak to him, 129 
 
 HABEAS CORPUS, Writ of, suspended in 
 certain parts of Maryland, 236; Gen- 
 eral Proclamation, 339, 371 ; test-case in 
 Ohio, 378 
 
 Hall, Levi, married Lincoln's step-sister 
 and emigrated to Illinois with him, 65 
 
 Halleck, Gen. H. W., appointed General- 
 in-Chief, 318; views of Pope's cam- 
 paign, 322 
 
 Hamlin. Hannibal, Vice-President, 183 
 
 Hancock, Gen. W. S., remark in council of 
 war at Gettysburg, 394 
 
 Hanks, Dennis, cousin and playfellow of 
 Lincoln in Kentucky, 19; in Indiana, 
 27; goes to Illinois, 65; works with 
 him, 67 
 
 Hanks, John, settled in Illinois and drew 
 the Lincolns to follow, 65; caused Lin- 
 coln's first speech in Illinois, 68; com- 
 panion in flat-boat voyage, etc., 69; 
 gave him the name and fame of " Rail- 
 splitter," 181 
 
 Hardin, General, Lincoln withdrew to his 
 favor, as candidate for Congress, in 
 18-46, 132 
 
 Harper's Ferry, arsenal burned, 235; sur- 
 render of troops in 1862, 825 
 
 Harris, Miss C., with the President when 
 he was murdered, 459 
 
 Harrison, George W., returned from Black- 
 hawk War in company with Lincoln, 
 88 
 
 Harrison, political campaign, 120 
 
 Hay, Colonel John, Private Secretary to 
 the President, 216; sent to meet Con- 
 federate envoys at Niagara, 436 
 
 Hazel, Caleb, second schoolmaster of Lin- 
 coln in Kentucky, 18 
 
 Herndon, I. and R., brothers, businessmen 
 of New Salem, 111., ultimate friends of 
 Lincoln, 94 
 
 Herndon, William H., law-partner of Lin- 
 coln, 131; corresponded with him in 
 
 Congress, 134; report of Lincoln's de- 
 spair of political affairs, 142: prevented 
 by Lincoln from going to Kansas, 154; 
 signed Lincoln's name to the call for 
 the Bloomington Convention, 156; 
 makes half of his next audience, 158; 
 shrinking consequences a little, 169; the 
 old law-sign not to be taken down, 198 
 
 Hill, Samuel, Lincoln's infidel manuscript 
 read and burned in store of, 103 
 
 Holt, Joseph, Secretary of War at the 
 close of the Buchanan Administration, 
 196 
 
 Hooker, Gen. Joseph, succeeded Burnside 
 in command of Army of the Potomac, 
 359, 385; resigned, 392; further services, 
 414 
 
 House Divided against Itself, preparation 
 and delivery of speech, 169, 172. (See 
 Appendix.) 
 
 Hunter, R. M. T., at Peace Conference in 
 Hampton Roads, 446 
 
 ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD, disputing law- 
 fee demanded by Lincoln, 162 
 
 Illinois, State of, Lincoln's emigration from 
 Indiana to, 65; politics and financial 
 excitement in, 92 
 
 Inauguration, Presidential, features of, in. 
 1861,208; in 1865, 448 
 
 Indiana, Territory and State, 19; Lincoln's: 
 first home there, 25 
 
 Internal Improvements, a hobby of Lin- 
 coin's early political life. 92, 106, 118 
 
 Invalid Corps, on duty in New York dur- 
 ing Draft Riots, 398 
 
 JACKSON, Gen. ANDREW, Lincoln a " Jack- 
 son man," 92 
 
 Jayne, William, nominating Lincoln for 
 the Legislature without authority, 150 
 
 Jewett, W. C., of Colorado, with the Rebel 
 commissioners, 435 
 
 Joint Debates of 1856, 160: of 1858, 173 
 
 Johnson. Andrew, nominated for Vice- 
 President, 430; Military Governor of 
 Tennessee, 438; escapes assassination, 
 etc., 458 
 
 Johnson, Herschel V., Douglas-Democratic 
 candidate for Vice-President, 184 
 
 Johnston family, at time of marriage of 
 Mrs. Johnston with Thomas Lincoln, 32 
 
 Johnston, John, step-brother of Lincoln, 
 32; partner in second flat-boat voyage, 
 69, 71 ; letter to him hi last illness of 
 Thomas Lincoln, 144 
 
 Jones, keeper of country store in Gentry- 
 ville, hired Lincoln as salesman, 56 
 
 Journey to Washington in 1861, speeches 
 and incidents, 201, 204 
 
 KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL, reported to U. S. 
 
 Senate in 1854, 146 
 Kansas Territory and State, troubles in, 
 
 154; stumping tour in, by Lincoln, 177; 
 
 political troubles concerning military 
 
 management, 404, 406, 428 
 Kean, Laura, actress at Ford's Theater at 
 
 assassination of the President, 460 
 Kentucky, neutrality of, 258 
 Kirkpatrick, competitor of Lincoln for 
 
 captaincy in Illinois Volunteers, 82
 
 506 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 LAMON, WARD H., associate counsel with 
 Lincoln, 140; duties at the White 
 House, 243 
 
 Lane, Senator James, of Kansas, speech in 
 defense of Lincoln, 429 
 
 Lane. Joseph, proslavery Democratic can- 
 didate for Vice-President in 1860, 184 
 
 Lee, Gen. Robert E., offered command of 
 Union forces, 236; takes command of 
 Virginia State troops, 240; surrender 
 of, 455 
 
 Letters of marque, Jefferson Davis issued 
 proclamation offering, 250 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, birth and childhood, 
 13-34; brother, 21; schooling, 18, 35, 37, 
 42; bodily strength, 37,55,98; books, 
 40, 44, 46, 78; writing, 43; first stump- 
 speaking. 48, 68; early temperate hab- 
 its, 48; clerk in a country store, 56; 
 first law-studies, 51, 56; sociability, 54; 
 first flat-boat voyage, 60; removal from 
 Indiana to Illinois, 65; second flat-boat 
 voyage, 69; inventor, 70; clerk of elec- 
 tion, 74; miller, 75; wrestler, 72, 76; 
 captain of volunteers in the Blackhawk 
 War, 82; private soldier, 88; candidate 
 for the State Legislature, 91 ; merchant, 
 94; law-student, 94; surveyor, 95; post- 
 master, 95; bankrupt, 96; first love, 99; 
 elected to the State Legislature, 101 ; 
 skeptic, 103; temporary insanity, 108, 
 122; correspondence with Mary Owens, 
 111; antislavery protest in Illinois 
 Legislature, 115; admitted to the bar. 
 118: betrothal to Mary T<pdd, 121; duel 
 with Shields, 124; marriage, 125; ad- 
 mitted to practice in U. S. Circuit 
 Court, 127; elected to Congress, 133; 
 death of his father, 144; first reply to 
 Douglas, 147; defeated candidate for 
 the United States Senate, 152, 169, 173; 
 Bloomington speech. 156; candidate for 
 Vice-President of the United States, 
 159; "House divided against itself" 
 .speech, 170; editorial nomination for 
 President of the United States, 174; 
 'Cooper Institute speech, 178; rail-split- 
 ter, 181; nomination for the Presidency 
 by the Republican National Conven- 
 tion, 183; elected President, 186 : policy 
 before inauguration, 190; farewell 
 speech to citizens of Springfield, 202; 
 inauguration, 209; selection of Cabinet, 
 214; military student, 245; read no let- 
 ters, 282; procures the construction of 
 the Monitor 298; Proclamation of 
 Emancipation, 330, 332, 334; visiting 
 Army of Potomac, 340; loss of little 
 Willie, 345; letter to the armies on Sab- 
 bath-keeping, 347; watching armies in 
 the West, 351, 415; harassed to petu- 
 lance, 382; calumny and abuse of, 402. 
 425; "last, best, and shortest speech," 
 408; consciousness of wearing out, 408; 
 nominated for a second term, 429, 431 ; 
 elected, 441; inaugurated, with ad- 
 dress, etc., 448; last visit to the ar- 
 my, 452; entry of Richmond after 
 evacuation, 454; assassination, 459 
 
 Lincoln, Mrs. Mary Todd, engagement to 
 marry Abraham Lincoln, 121; author 
 of the "Lost Township Letters," 124; 
 
 marriage, 125 ; her husband's business 
 adviser, 139, 150, 162; life at the White 
 House, 244, 403; calumniated, 375, 376; 
 care of the President's personal ap- 
 pearance, 403; prostrated by his assas- 
 sination, 461. 
 
 Lincoln, Mrs. Nancy Hanks, mother of 
 Abraham Lincoln, Chapter I. ; death, 
 30 
 
 Lincoln, Mrs. Sally Johnston, step-mother 
 of Abraham Lincoln, 32; his love for 
 her, 34; care of her in later days, 131, 
 144; visit to her before going to Wash- 
 ington, and her forebodings, 198 
 
 Lincoln, Robert Todd, son of Abraham 
 Lincoln, childhood. 133; at school, 180; 
 serving in the army, 418 
 
 Lincoln, Sally, or Nancy, sister of Abra- 
 ham Lincoln, 17; marriage to Aaron 
 Grigsbv, 48; death, 49 
 
 Lincoln, Thomas, father of Abraham Lin- 
 coln, personal character, etc., Chapter 
 I.; treatment of his son, 60; death, 
 144 
 
 Lincoln, Thomas, son of Abraham Lincoln, 
 "Little Tad," birth of, 144; illness, 344 
 
 Lincoln. Willie, son of Abraham Lincoln, 
 birth, 133; death, 344 
 
 Logan, Stephen T., law-partner of Lin- 
 coln, 131; defeated for Congress, 138; 
 urging Lincoln not to give way for 
 Trumbull, 152 
 
 Long Bridge over Potomac, slenderly 
 guarded, 235; crossed by Union forces, 
 240 
 
 Long, Dr., condoling with Lincoln, etc., 
 172 
 
 Long Nine, the, Sangamon County dele- 
 gation in the Illinois Legislature, 115 
 
 Lost Township Letters, written by Mary 
 Todd, story of, 124 
 
 MACAULEY, Commodore, in command of 
 Gosport Navy Yard, etc., 218 
 
 Manassas, military importance of, 254: Sec- 
 ond Bull Run, battle of, 321 
 
 Manchester, England, letter of working- 
 men to President Lincoln, 412 
 
 Maryland, State of, ready for secession, 
 204, 231, 234, 349 
 
 Massachusetts Sixth Regiment, mustered 
 for service, 229; mobbed in Baltimore, 
 230 
 
 Massachusetts War-bill passed, 201 
 
 Meade, Gen. George G., in command of 
 Army of Potomac, 390, 392, 420, 424 
 
 Metzgar murder-case, 163 
 
 Mexican War, opposed by Lincoln in Con- 
 gress, 134 
 
 McClellan, Gen. Geo. B., appointed to com- 
 mand, 273; systematizing Army of Po- 
 tomac, 284; reports condition of army, 
 autumn of 1861, 286; army idea of him, 
 294; President's opinion of him, 300; 
 return from Peninsula, 304, 321; re-as- 
 eumes command, 305, 324; political as- 
 pirations, 313,315; removed from com- 
 mand, 326; nominated for President by 
 the Opposition, 437 
 
 McCulloch, Hugh, appointed Secretary of 
 the Treasury, 452 
 
 McDowell, Gen. Irwin, in command of
 
 INDEX. 
 
 507 
 
 Union troops at the battle of Bull Run, 
 255 
 
 McNamar. McNeil, desertion of Ann Rut- 
 ledge by, 100 
 
 Milk-sick, nature and ravages of, 38 
 
 Mill-dam at New Salem, on Sangamon 
 River, on which Lincoln's flat-boat 
 stuck, 70; all now left of town, 73 
 
 Mississippi River, control of upper waters 
 retained, 197, 313; of mouth secured, 
 350; entire control secured, 393 
 
 Missouri, State of, saved from seceding, 
 350; political troubles in, 404. 406, 429 
 
 Monitor iron-clad, fight with Merrimac, 
 297; story of her construction, 298 
 
 Montgomery, Ala., first seat of govern- 
 ment of Southern Confederacy, 194 
 
 NATIONAL RIFLES, Washington, D. C., sig- 
 nificance of its history, 206, 236 
 Navy of United States, beginnings of, 350 
 Needham, Daniel, wrestling-match with 
 
 Lincoln, 72 
 
 New Orleans, effect of the capture of, 350 
 New Salem, 111., character and population 
 
 of, 71. 73 
 New York Seventh Regiment, set out for 
 
 Washington, 230; in Virginia, 241 
 New York War-bill, passage of, 201 
 Nicolay, John G., Private Secretary to 
 President Lincoln, 216 
 
 OFFICE-SEEKERS, first disappointment of, 
 by Lincoln, 188; throngs of them at 
 White House, 207, 215 
 
 Offutt, Denton, employs Lincoln, etc., to 
 build flat-boat, 69, 70; ditto as salesman 
 in New Salem, 74; failure, 81; 
 
 Oglesby, Qov. Richard, action at Decatur 
 Convention, 180 
 
 Ohio, political speeches in, by Lincoln, 177 
 
 Ord, Gen. E. O. C., member of President 
 Lincoln's last council of war, 453 
 
 Ordinance of Secession of Virginia, 239 
 
 Oregon Territory, governorship of, refused 
 by Lincoln, 138 
 
 Owens, Mary, correspondence with Lin- 
 coln, 111, 120 
 
 PAIN, JOHN, with W. H. Herndon, Lincoln's 
 audience at State House in Springfield, 
 158 
 
 Peace Commissioners at Niagara Falls, 
 435, et seq 
 
 Peace Conference in Hampton Roads, 446 
 
 Peace Congress, failure of, 213 
 
 Pendleton, George H., Democratic nomi- 
 nee for Vice-President, 437 
 
 Peninsular campaign, plan for, adopted, 
 295; close ofT 300 
 
 Pennsylvania, War-bill passed, 201; 6th 
 Reg't Militia reaches Washington, 239; 
 invasion of, by Lee's army, 890 
 
 Pensacola, Florida, navy-yard surrendered 
 and forts besieged, 195 
 
 People's party, organization and National 
 Convention of, 159 
 
 Peoria, 111. , speech by Lincoln in reply to 
 Douglas, 149 
 
 Pickens, Governor, of South Carolina, 220 
 
 Pickett, Gen., leader of last charge of bat- 
 tle of Gettysburg, 294 
 
 Pirates, Confederate privateers so declared 
 
 by Proclamation, 250 
 Polk, James K., President, course of, on 
 
 Mexican question, 134 
 Pope, Gen. John, hi command of the Army 
 
 of Virginia, 303; drifted out of it, 805 ; 
 
 conduct and reports of, 321, 322 
 Posey, reply to his speech at Decatur, 111., 
 
 by Lincoln, 68 
 
 Press, liberty of, restricted, 376, 377 
 Private secretaries of the President, 216; 
 
 offices and duties of, 243, 282 
 Protest, antislavery, in Legislature of Il- 
 linois, by Lincoln and Stone, 115 
 Punch, London journal, versified obituary 
 
 on Lincoln, 403. (See Appendix.) 
 
 RADFOBD store in New Salem mobbed, etc., 
 93 
 
 Rail-splitter, origin and occasion of title, 
 181 
 
 Rathbone, Major Henry, with the President 
 at Ford's Theater, 459 
 
 Reconstruction, beginnings of, 374, 375; 
 act providing for, passed and vetoed, 
 434 
 
 Regular army, increased at the beginning, 
 etc., 237 
 
 Republican party, elements of, 148; to 
 Congress, 162; first State Convention 
 of, in Illinois, 168; second ditto, 180: 
 first National Convention, 182; second 
 ditto, 426 
 
 Richmond, Virginia, latent Unionism in, 
 204 
 
 Riney, Zachariah, first schoolmaster of 
 Lincoln, 18 
 
 Roby, Polly, anecdotes of, and Lincoln, 
 43,61 
 
 Russia, friendship for United States, 884 
 
 Rutledge, Ann, story of her first betrothal, 
 99; to Lincoln, 107; death, 108 
 
 Rutledge, James, mill-owner at New Sa- 
 lem, prevents fight, etc., 77; urged Lin- 
 coln to run for Legislature, 91 
 
 SANGAMON RTVEB, house built and work 
 done on bank of. by Abraham Lincoln, 
 67; flat-boat built there by him, 69; 
 piloting flat-boat down it in a flood, 74; 
 testing it for steamboat navigation, 79 
 
 Sangamontown, strolls into, 70 
 
 Schoolmasters of Abraham Lincoln, Zach- 
 ariah Riney, 18; Caleb Hazel, 18; Ha- 
 zel Dorsey, 35, 40; Andrew Crawford, 
 42; Minter Graham, 78 
 
 Scott, Gen. Winfleld, directing organiza- 
 tion of District of Columbia militia, 
 206; co-operating with President Lin- 
 coln in 1861, 207; advising appointment 
 of Gen. McClellan, 278; resignation and 
 retirement, 274 
 
 Secession, original purposes, 211 ; ripened 
 by Lincoln's election, 192; cotton-States 
 act, 194; Virginia Act, 240; recognized 
 only as sedition, 224, 227, 874 
 
 Second term, beginning of political cam- 
 paign for, 421, 428 
 
 Seventh Regiment, N. Y. N. G., 230 
 
 Seward, William H., "Irrepressible Con- 
 flict" services, 171; candidate for Presi- 
 dential nomination, 182 ; appointed Sec-
 
 508 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 retary of State, 214; personal relations 
 to Mr. Lincoln, 249; wounded by assas- 
 sins, 458 
 
 Seymour, Horatio, anti-administration 
 Governor of New York, 896, 400; Chair- 
 man of Democratic National Conven- 
 tion, 437 
 
 Shakespeare, read by Lincoln while riding 
 the Judicial District circuit, 139 
 
 Shawneetown, charter of bank at. 106 
 
 Sherman, Gen. W. T., in command of the 
 Western armies, 423; march to the sea, 
 442; President's doubt of its wisdom, 
 443; northward movement begun, 446; 
 at council of war near Richmond, 452; 
 
 Shields, Gen. James, challenging Lincoln 
 to fight a duel, 124; candidate for re- 
 election to U. S. Senate, 150. 151 
 
 Shiloh (Corinth), battle of, and proclama- 
 tion of thanksgiving, 346 
 
 Short, assisting Lincoln in his bankruptcy, 
 97, 100 
 
 Siege of Yorktown, Va., 249 
 
 Slavery, opposition to the extension of, 
 134, 188, 146, 154; Southern ambition 
 of a slave-holder's empire, 211 
 
 Slemmer, Lieutenant, in command of Pen- 
 sacola navy-yard and forts, 196 
 
 Smith, Caleb B., Secretary of the Interior, 
 215 
 
 Smoot, lending Lincoln money to take him 
 to Vandalia, 102 
 
 South Carolina, taking the lead in seced- 
 ing, 192, 194 
 
 Southern Army, its beginning, 218; in- 
 crease, etc., 270 
 
 South Mountain, battle of, 325 
 
 Sparrow, Thomas and Betsy, related to the 
 Lincoln family, follow them to Indi- 
 ana, 27; death of, 29 
 
 Speed, James, appointed Attorney-General, 
 442 
 
 Springfield, Illinois, State Capital removed 
 from Vandalia to Springfield, 118 
 
 Stanton, Edwin M., Secretary of "War, 316; 
 characteristics, etc., 317, 818 
 
 Star of the West, steamer, taking supplies 
 to Fort Sumter, fired upon, 195 
 
 State rights, care taken not to infringe, 239 
 
 Stephens, Alex. H., friendship with Lin- 
 coln begun in Congress, 137; Vice- 
 President of Confederacy and confer- 
 ence in Hampton Roads, 446 
 
 Stewart, Joseph F., pursuing Booth upon 
 the stage. 460 
 
 Stoddard, William O., Secretary to the 
 President to sign land-patents, acting 
 as Assistant Private Secretary, 216 
 
 Stone, Gen. Charles P., important services 
 at outset, 206 
 
 Stuart, John T., first law-partner of Mr. 
 Lincoln, 118; elected to Congress, 131; 
 prophetic conversation with Mr. Lin- 
 coln, 141 ; attempt to keep Mr. Lincoln 
 a conservative, 156 
 
 Suffrage, negro, ideas of President, etc., 
 367 
 
 Swett, Leonard, associate-counsel with 
 Lincoln, 140 
 
 TAYLOR, JAMES, Lincoln employed by, as 
 boy-of-all-work, 53 
 
 Taylor, Gen. Zachary, President, 135 
 
 Texas, surrender of U. S. forts, etc., 196 
 
 Thanksgiving and prayer, proclamations 
 appointing days of, 419, 420 
 
 Thompson, Col. Samuel, commanding reg- 
 iment in which Lincoln served in Black- 
 hawk War, 83 
 
 Trent affair, capture of Mason and Slidell 
 by Captain Wilkes, 352, 354 
 
 Trent Brothers, traders to whom Lincoln 
 sold out and who caused his bank- 
 ruptcy, 94, 96 
 
 Tribune, New York, comment upon the 
 Cooper Institute speech, 180 
 
 Trumbull. Lyman, elected Senator of Uni- 
 ted States, 152; course in Senate, 353; 
 political soundness as an adviser, 
 167 
 
 Turnham, David, lent Lincoln his first law- 
 book, 51 
 
 Twelfth N.Y.Reg't, arrival in Washington, 
 etc., 207 
 
 Twiggs, General, treacherous conduct in 
 Texas, 196 
 
 UNCONDITIONAL UNION MEN, Mass Conven- 
 tion at Springfield, HI., 410 
 
 Union League, origin and organization of, 
 863; spread and value of, 371; first 
 grand council, 405; second ditto, 428 
 
 VALLANDIGHAM, CLEMENT L., course in 
 Congress, 259, 377; convicted of sedi- 
 tion by court-martial, 378, 379; sent 
 across the lines, 379, 881 ; candidate for 
 Governor of Ohio and defeated, 380; at 
 Chicago Democratic Convention, 437 
 
 Vandalia, former capital of State of Illi- 
 nois, Lincoln's first journey there, 
 102, 104 
 
 Vicksburg, surrender of, 393 
 
 Virginia, State of, Act of Secession, 228, 
 240; invasion of, by Union forces, 240, 
 241 
 
 Volunteers, Union, first call for, issued, 237 
 
 WAR, acts of, by South, during Buchanan's 
 Administration, 195, 196 
 
 Washington City, disloyal character of its 
 population in 1861, 205 
 
 Weitzel, Gen., first forces to enter city of 
 Richmond, 454 
 
 Welles, Gideon, Secretary of the Navy, 
 215 
 
 West Point, large number of its graduates 
 in Rebel army, 218 
 
 West Virginia, first action towards separa- 
 tion, 276; admitted to the Union, 374 
 
 Whig party, beginning of, 90, 92, 101; Con- 
 gressional candidates in Sangamon 
 District, 128; Presidential campaign, 
 1850, 135; disintegration, 147; relics of, 
 in 1860, 184 
 
 Whiteside, General, in command of Illinois 
 Volunteers in the Blackhawk War, 83, 
 85; re-enlisted as a private, 88; second 
 to Shields in duel, 124 
 
 Wood, Fernando, amnesty correspondence 
 with the President, 361 
 
 ZOUAVES, Ellsworth's, conveyed to Alexan- 
 dria by steamer, 240
 
 
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