UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 MEMORIAL 
 
 the Class of 1901 
 
 founded by 
 
 HARLAN HOYT HORNER 
 
 and 
 
 HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/johntylerabrahamOOtyle 
 
JOHN TYLER 
 
 'enth President of the United States 
 
 1841-1845 
 
 Painted by Healy. 
 
JOHN TYLER 
 
 and 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 WHO WAS THE DWARF? 
 
 A REPLY TO A CHALLENGE 
 
 BY 
 
 LYON GARDINER TYLER 
 
 1929 
 
 Richmond Press, Inc., Printers 
 
 Richmond. Va. 
 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Sixteenth President of the United States 
 
 1861-1865 
 
 With permission of Oliver R. Barrett. 
 
'7Wr 
 
 y 
 
 Tyler versus Lincoln 1 
 
 A Letter Replying to an Attack of Time, 
 a New York Periodical. 
 
 By Lyon Gardiner Tyler. 
 
 To the Editors of Time : 
 Sirs: 
 
 In your article "Tyler versus Lincoln" (April 9) you seek 
 to discredit certain criticisms made by me on Lincoln by attack- 
 ing and underrating another President, who died long ago and of 
 course had nothing to do with my remarks. Your sarcastic com- 
 ments on "Son Tyler's" father show that you have not kept up 
 with the historical advance, for had you cared to read "The Whig 
 Party in the South" by A. C. Cole, and the "Origins of the Whig 
 Party", by E. Malcolm Carroll, scholars who have made special 
 investigations in contemporary history, you would have learned 
 that the Whig party was a party made up of many distinct ele- 
 ments (1834-1841) united for different reasons in opposition to 
 Jackson and Jacksonian Democracy; that Tyler was not a Demo- 
 crat adopted by the Whigs, but that he had as good standing in 
 the Whig party as any other Whig; that his nomination in 1839 
 was a natural conseauence of his distinction as a statesman, and 
 of his nomination as vice-president in 1835; and that the meas- 
 ures which he vetoed as President were not Whig measures at all. 
 
 The measures he vetoed were the Bank bills and the protective- 
 
 iThe above letter contains the substance of another published in 
 Time, a New York weekly periodical, (June 4, 1928) under the same 
 title. The Editors were generous in allowing space, but the limita- 
 tions of their paper would not permit the extended article which ap- 
 pears here. 
 
tariff bills, and neither of these kinds of bills was advocated by 
 the Whigs in the canvass of 1839-40. Indeed, they adopted no 
 platform, and were predominantly for States-Rights as against 
 the Democratic party, which under Jackson had been predomi- 
 nantly for a centralized government. Moreover, Tyler's efforts 
 for peace in 1861 exclude the idea that he could have had any 
 "embitterment" against the government, on account of any party 
 quarrel twenty years before. His published letters show how genu- 
 ine was his distress over the condition of the country previous to 
 secession. 
 
 But you say that compared with Abraham Lincoln, John Tyler 
 was "historically a dwarf". By this you challenge a comparison, 
 and the comparison, which would not otherwise be made, is not de- 
 clined. Language is only relative, and it depends entirely upon 
 what you choose to consider a dwarf, whether Mr. Tyler was one 
 or not. David appeared in stature a dwarf compared with Goliath 
 of Gath, but otherwise he proved himself Goliath's superior. If 
 we take mere reputation, Gene Tunney, the prize fighter, is prob- 
 ably better known than even Abraham Lincoln. Certainly many 
 circumstances independent of himself conspired in favor of Lin- 
 coln to make him better known than any other president. He was 
 a man forced into the centre of a storm which beat about him. 
 His unfortunate death excited immense sympathy. He represented 
 a party that was responsible for the cataclysm of war, and was 
 victorious. He represented a section that had all the wealth and 
 power, and so the enormous propaganda which rose in his favor 
 made Lincoln out to be a saint for Christianity, a Solomon for 
 wisdom, and a Julius Caesar for war, when he was no one of the 
 three. On the other hand, John Tyler was unfortunate in three 
 ways — first, in incurring the enmity of his party; second, in enter- 
 taining views of the nature of the government not at all accept- 
 able to Republican writers, who have done nearly all the writing; 
 and third, in being identified with a country which was bruised 
 and maimed and silenced by a dreadful war. The propagandist 
 with his trumpet was conspicuously absent in Tyler's affairs. 
 
 If this were all, Tyler would have no case, but the appeal is to 
 history, and real history cares nothing for the blare of trumpets 
 
 [4] 
 
and the shouts of the propagandists — it cares only for facts. Its 
 rules are those of the law courts; and the only testimony it re- 
 gards is concrete measures, the good words of the enemy, one's 
 own confessions, the confessions of one's friends and the evidence 
 of completely disinterested persons — all contemporaries. What an 
 enemy says in detraction, or a friend says in praise, is of no par- 
 ticular value in the forum of history unless supported by other 
 and disinterested evidence. Tested by these rules Lincoln's figure 
 dwindles till he becomes the most vulnerable of all the presidents, 
 one with whom John Tyler needs fear no comparison. 
 
 Taking democracy as an element in the comparison, it is too 
 often supposed that lowliness of birth is evidence of greater de- 
 mocracy. But as has been aptly remarked by an able writer,* 
 "the man of lowly birth can be no more than a democrat, and it 
 is no particular credit to him that he is. But the man of aristo- 
 cratic birth, who has the privilege and opportunity to be more 
 than a democrat, and yet who remains such, not only in simula- 
 tion but at heart, can truly claim the title of being a great demo- 
 crat". In conducting the war Lincoln talked about "democracy" 
 and "the plain people", but adopted the rules of despotism and 
 autocracy, and under the fiction of war powers virtually suspended 
 the Constitution. This surely cannot be said of John Tyler, as 
 president, who, though of parentage much higher in the social 
 scale than Lincoln, was a much greater democrat, since he pro- 
 fessed faith in the Constitution and would not violate it, even at 
 the dictation of his party. 
 
 Some things are so plain that even an enemy's characterization 
 of tEem may be accepted. Old Ben Wade condemned Lincoln's 
 amnesty proclamation of December 8, 1863, offering to take back 
 into the Union any State, when one-tenth of its people swore 
 loyalty and petitioned for admission: "Talk not to me of your 
 ten per cent principle," he exclaimed. "A more absurd monar- 
 chical and anti-American principle was never announced on God's 
 
 sPaul S. Whitcomb in Lincoln and Democracy in Tyler's Quar- 
 terly for July, 1927, and in Minor, The Real Lincoln, Appendix. 
 
 [5 
 
earth." To ignore nine-tenths of the people of a State and to 
 except from the benefits of his pardon all persons in the South 
 who had any reputation for ability or intelligence was certainly 
 not democracy, nor even clemency. 
 
 Both Tyler and Lincoln were lawyers, but their ways were far 
 apart. His enemies filled the newspapers with abuse and detrac- 
 tion, but they were never able to advance any imputation against 
 Tyler of shady or tricky conduct as a lawyer. Had there been 
 any such thing, it would assuredly have come to light. Indeed 
 nobody ever put the true philosophy of life in better words than 
 Mr. Tyler did when he wrote 3 to his daughter in 1831 : "Morality 
 is true wisdom and the foundation of true happiness, and its foun- 
 tain flows from the Creator himself and is manifested on earth by 
 the practice of all the virtues." Such a creed hardly agrees with 
 the story accredited to Lincoln by an intimate friend 4 that in a 
 murder case he rebutted the testimony and discredited a witness 
 (who said he saw the killing in the light of the moon,) by waiv- 
 ing in the face of the jury — not too close however — an almanac 
 of the year before showing that on that particular night there 
 was no moon. Apologists for Lincoln have questioned this story, 
 but its popular circulation at all shows that he was not believed 
 to be particularly scrupulous. 
 
 Nor as politicians were their courses very similar. Mr. Tyler 
 appreciated political advancement, but there is no evidence that 
 he ever engaged in any low deal or intrigue to procure it. He 
 had been brought up in the school of his father when the office 
 sought the man, not the man the office, as was illustrated 5 when a 
 messenger in 1808 rode 30 miles from Richmond to "Greenway", 
 the parental residence in Charles City County, Virginia, and 
 roused Judge Tyler from his sleep at midnight to announce to 
 him that he had been elected Governor of Virginia. His son 
 spoke the language of truth, when in one of his letters he said 
 that "he had never reached out his hand for any office", and all 
 
 ^Letters and Times of the Tylers, I. p. 429. 
 
 *Lamon, Life of Lincoln. 
 
 ^Letters and Times of the Tylers, III. p. 22. 
 
 [6 
 
had come to him unsolicited. We know that both the Senatorship 
 and the Vice-presidency had been forced upon him against his 
 own modest opposition 6 . Can anything like this be said of Lin- 
 coln? According to his friends Lincoln had a great passion for 
 office and was indifferent as to how he obtained his ends 7 as a 
 politician. Herndon tells 8 how he and Lincoln tricked a Demo- 
 cratic newspaper in Illinois into publishing an article which was 
 used with telling effect against the editor and the Democratic 
 Party. "Lincoln joined in the popular denunciation, expressing 
 great indignation that such a sentiment could find lodgment in 
 any paper in Illinois, although he knew full well how the whole 
 thing had been carried through." Other serious confessions from 
 his friends are that he bargained for a seat in Congress 9 , that as a 
 legislator, he "log rolled" the capital of Illinois from Vandalia 
 to Springfield, 10 that his nomination as president was secured 11 
 through promises by his managers of cabinet appointments, which 
 Lincoln afterwards fulfilled; that to secure the admission of Ne- 
 vada, he promised, in return for their votes, to three Congress- 
 men lucrative appointments, one worth $20,000.00 a year; 12 and 
 that finally to secure renomination in 1864 he made use of the 
 
 ^Letters and Times of the Tylers, I. pp. 362-371; Leigh's Letter 
 in Tyler's Quarterly, IX. p. 89. 
 
 7Herndon, Life of Lincoln, II. p. 375: "He was always calculat- 
 ing and always planning ahead. His ambition was a little engine that 
 knew no rest." 
 
 sHerndon, Life of Lincoln, II. p. 370. 
 
 »Lamon, Life of Lincoln, I. p. 275; Levy, Lincoln the Politician, p. 
 121. 
 
 i<>Sanburg, Life of Lincoln, I. p 194: "A few members voted for the 
 bill because they liked Lincoln, but most of the votes came through 
 trades, deals, log rolling". 
 
 ii Herndon says that Lincoln knew about these promises at the 
 time. Life of Lincoln, III. p. 471. 
 
 i2Charles A. Dana (assistant Secretary of War), Recollections of 
 the War, pp. 175-178. Lincoln's death occurred soon after, and Dana 
 urged Johnson to carry out Lincoln's promises, but Johnson declared 
 that "such agreements tended to immorality", and did not do so. 
 
 [7] 
 
army and of fictitious states, and other questionable means 13 ; and 
 to get rid of his chief competitor for the presidency, Salmon P. 
 Chase, he promised 14 to appoint him Chief Justice, who though 
 an expert financier had no great reputation at the time as a lawyer. 
 Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy, writes in his Diwy 
 December 15, 1864: "Chase's appointment gives satisfaction to 
 Senator Sumner and a few others; but there is general disappoint- 
 ment. * * * The President told Chandler of New Hampshire, 
 who remonstrated against such selections, that he would rather 
 have swallowed his buckhorn chair than to have nominated 
 Chase." 
 
 Mr. Tyler had back of his accession to the presidency a larger 
 public experience than almost any of the presidents, having served 
 through thirty years as state legislator, state councillor, member 
 of the House of Representatives, Governor of Virginia, twice elected 
 United States Senator, member of the State Convention in 1829- 
 30, president pro tern of the United States Senate, nominated 
 for the vice-presidency in 1835 and nominated and elected vice- 
 president in 1840. Besides these offices he had been the recipient 
 of numerous side offices attesting his prominence — such as Rector 
 oi* William and Mary College, President of the Virginia Branch 
 of the African Colonization Society, &c. Mr. Lincoln's experience 
 in office up to the time he was nominated for President by a deal 
 at Chicago in 1860, was a few terms in the Legislature of Illinois 
 and one term as Congressman. 
 
 This brings us to their service as Presidents. Both were con- 
 fronted with war when they took office. In 1841 the menacing 
 feature was Great Britain, supported by France and Mexico. Had 
 war ensued "the Union" in the language of Hunter, of Virginia, 
 r 'would have been encircled with a wall of fire." The South was 
 exasperated under abolition attacks, and the Cotton States may 
 
 isMinor, The Real Lincoln, Chap. XXVII — "How Lincoln got him- 
 self elected"; Nicolay Life of Lincoln p. 490. 
 
 i^McClure, Lincoln and Men of Wartime, pp. 123 et seq; Warden, 
 Life of Chase, pp. 630 etc; Minor, The Real Lincoln, p. 212; Rhodes 
 Hist. U. S., V., p. 45; Pierce, Sumner IV. p. 207. 
 
 [8] 
 
have struck for independence 15 ; but by successful diplomacy the 
 contest with Great Britain for dominion over this continent and 
 the Pacific Ocean was decided in favor of the United States, and 
 the country emerged from all its difficulties, at the end of Tyler's 
 term, as a world power, without any bloodshed or war whatever. 
 
 One of the important factors in this result was the great treaty 
 of Washington in 1842, which settled the boundary for 2000 miles 
 on the North and closed the trouble with Great Britain over the 
 right of search, the question of impressment and the affairs of the 
 Caroline and Creole. Mr. Webster is a particularly valuable wit- 
 ness, because, being Secretary of State (1841-1843), he knew the 
 facts, and yet was a Northern man and out of sympathy with the 
 States-Rights views of President Tyler. He does not hesitate to 
 say 16 that it was the President's happy tact which prevented the 
 British Ambassador from abandoning the negotiations altogether 
 and that "the negotiations proceeded from step to step and day to 
 day under the President's own immediate supervision and direc- 
 tion". Another important factor was his enforcement of the Mon- 
 roe Doctrine against the interference of Great Britain and France 
 in the affairs of the Hawaiian Islands, and those of Texas, which 
 led to the establishment of a virtual protectorate over the one and 
 the annexation of the other, making possible the acquisition of 
 California and New Mexico. In annexing Texas it was the first 
 time that section of the Constitution permitting Congress to ad- 
 mit new states was applied to territory outside of the Union. Many 
 years later President McKinley used Tyler's method to annex the 
 Hawaiian Islands, whose independence Tyler had assured. 
 
 A third important factor to be mentioned was the dispatch of 
 John Charles Fremont's expedition to the West, making known 
 
 is Judge Abel P. Upshur, then (1842) Secretary of the Navy and 
 afterwards Secretary of State, wrote: "A war at this time would 
 cause the overthrow of the government, the disruption of the Union, 
 and, if England be wise, the establishment of a Southern Confederacy.' 
 — Letters and Times of the Tylers, II. p. 227. 
 
 ^Letters and Times of the Tylers, II. p. 218; Curtis, Webster II. 
 p. 105 note; Niles Register 64, p. 79; Tyler's Quarterly, III. pp. 255, 
 256; William and Mary College Quarterly, XXV. pp. 1-8. 
 
 [9] 
 
the passes of the Rocky mountains, and a fourth the first treaty 
 with China, which opened the Orient to American trade and en- 
 terprise. 
 
 There was no war in 1841-1845, and Tyler's successful nego- 
 tiation contrasted with Lincoln's conduct in 1861, who, with se- 
 cession staring him in the face, made no attempt to aid Tyler's 
 peace efforts as Virginia Commissioner to Buchanan or as Presi- 
 dent of the Peace Convention which met in Washington in Feb- 
 ruary, 1861. Those efforts were to keep the two sections from 
 proceeding to violence and to secure the adoption of the Critten- 
 den Resolutions. 
 
 These Resolutions, offered in Congress by John J. Crittenden, 
 of Kentucky, proposed to keep the Union intact by extending the 
 line of the Missouri Compromise through the territory of the 
 United States, "now held or hereafter acquired". They gave every- 
 thing to the North except New Mexico, and New Mexico was 
 totally unfitted to become a slave holding community by reason of 
 its geographical character, "not ten slaves having been introduced 
 there in ten years". 17 As to any "after acquired territory" that 
 contingency was so remote that no sensible person would have 
 taken the least note of it. 
 
 In refusing to submit to the decision of the Supreme Court 
 in the Dred Scott case, the Republican platform contained a menace 
 against the Court itself, and an adjustment which would stop 
 intemperate agitation along this line and soothe the pride 18 of 
 the slave owners was what weighed most with John Tyler. As 
 early as 1850 he had considered that the territories were lost to 
 slavery; and in 1860 he condemned both factions in the Demo- 
 cratic party for breaking up the Charleston Convention on the 
 
 i^Speech of Hon. William Kellogg, of Illinois. 
 
 isHenry A. Wise wrote August 15, 1856: "Our Southern politicians 
 are not up to our Southern people in distrust of and dislike of the 
 North. . . . There is a wonderful revulsion in the last year since 
 the people have seen the tone of the North to be that of arrogance 
 and the assumption of superiority". Letters and Times of the Tylers, 
 II, pp. 531, 532. 
 
 f 10 1 
 
mere question of Squatter Sovereignty, which though wrong in 
 principle he regarded as abstract and having no practical meaning. 
 
 The Southern senators promised their adhesion to the compro- 
 mise, and a word from Lincoln, the president-elect, would have 
 ensured its success, but that word never came. He had favored 
 the enforcement of the fugitive slave act, and, when denounced 
 by the abolitionists as a "slave hound", had excused himself on the 
 grounds of the Constitution. With the dissolution of the Union 
 imminent he might have plead, on the question of the Crittenden 
 Resolutions, the seriousness of the situation, and the decision of 
 the supreme court in the Dred Scott Case, which gave the South 
 even more extensive rights than the proposed compromise. In- 
 stead of pursuing this course, Lincoln counselled against it, and 
 on March 2, 1861, after the Republican majority had delayed the 
 vote in every way possible, and after the Senators from the Cotton 
 States had withdrawn, the resolutions were voted on and defeated 
 in the Senate by 20 to 19. 
 
 Had the Union been preserved by this means, there would 
 have been no shedding of blood, and slavery would have met its 
 end in a natural and peaceful manner. There was an agency al- 
 ready at work promising to displace slavery. This was McCor- 
 mick's great invention of the reaper, which proved an immense 
 stimulus for the development of all kinds of agricultural imple- 
 ments, calculated in a short time to render hand labor, such as 
 slavery was, useless and expensive. 
 
 In rejecting the Crittenden Resolutions, which, if submitted, 
 would have received the overwhelming approval of the people of 
 the United States, Lincoln a minority President, and the Repub- 
 licans, a minority party 19 , placed themselves on record as virtually 
 preferring the slaughter of 400,000 men of the flower of the land 
 and the sacrifice of billions of dollars of property to a compromise, 
 
 "At the election in 1860, 1,866,352 had been cast in the North 
 for Lincoln, while 1,954,227 had been cast for other candidates. The 
 vote of the seceding states — ten in number — South Carolina voted 
 through its Legislature — was 856,274, so that of a total vote of 4,676,853 
 Lincoln received about two-fifths. 
 
 [Ill 
 
 LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF (' • 
 
involving a mere abstraction. The Union had been founded on 
 compromise why not preserve it through compromise? 
 
 In a letter to Webster March 12, 1846, John Tyler referred 
 with pardonable pride to their mutual labors: "The peace of 
 the Country, when I reached Washington on the 6th of April, 
 1841, was suspended by a thread, but we converted that thread 
 into a chain cable of sufficient strength to render that peace secure, 
 and to enable the country to weather the storms of faction by 
 which it was in every direction assailed." But no doubt had Mr. 
 Tyler chosen, like Lincoln, to reject all compromises and involve 
 the country in war with England, France and Mexico, and, at a 
 vast expenditure of blood and money, won the war by the skin of 
 his teeth, he would have been a much greater favorite with the jin- 
 goists and propagandists. 
 
 After Lincoln's inauguration his mind appeared to be in a 
 kind of maze. The Confederate government sent commissioners 
 to Washington to settle on equitable terms all questions of debts 
 and boundaries, and Lincoln snubbed them and refused to see 
 them formally or informally. Why should he not have received 
 them? They represented eight millions of people and a territory 
 greater than all Italy, France and Germany. He might have dis- 
 missed them promptly, but instead he suffered them to remain in 
 Washington for a month, where they were fed with all kinds of 
 assurances by his Secretary of State, William H. Seward, who, 
 through Judge John A. Campbell of the Supreme Court of the 
 United States, told them that the troops would be withdrawn from 
 Fort Sumter and nothing prejudicial to the Confederates attempted 
 at Fort Pickens in Florida. 
 
 It has been denied that Lincoln had any knowledge of these 
 assurances, but the following facts seem to prove the contrary. 
 Thus he states in his message of July 4, 1861, that a letter of 
 Major Anderson who commanded at Fort Sumter, concurred in by 
 General Scott, reduced the question of reinforcing the fort to a 
 "mere matter of getting the garrison safely out of it." That he 
 had accepted the necessity thereof and sought to save the questlem. 
 of policy by seeking to assert the national authority in some other 
 
 [12 1 
 
quarter, and so at once an order was directed to be sent for the 
 landing of troops from the Brooklyn into Fort Pickens. 
 
 We know that this order went through General Scott on March 
 11th to Captain Vogdes, who commanded the troops on the Brook- 
 lyn and to Captain Adams, who commanded the Naval forces at 
 Pensacola. 
 
 We also know that at a cabinet meeting March 15th, Lincoln 
 asked the members whether, as a political measure, it was wise to 
 attempt to "provision Fort Sumter" and all said no except two, 
 one of whom was Blair the Postmaster General, who answered 
 yes, and the other was Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, who 
 gave a conditional affirmative. It was the opinion of Seward, 
 Welles, Cameron, Smith and Bates, that the attempt to reinforce 
 Fort Sumter would begin "a civil war". 
 
 Senator Douglas had said on March 11th, that Lincoln had 
 assured him that Sumter would be evacuated as soon as possible, 
 and Seward on March 21st, had defended his assurance to Camp- 
 bell of March 15th, that the troops would be withdrawn in a few 
 days, by declaring 20 to him on March 21st that the resolution "had 
 been passed and its execution committed to the President". We 
 are also informed that in anticipation of speedy action a paper was 
 prepared for publication defending the government and putting the 
 blame of the withdrawal on Mr. Buchanan 21 . 
 
 Francis P. Blair, indeed, states that the President told him 
 after the Cabinet meeting of March 15th, that it had not been 
 fully determined to withdraw the troops, but he thought that such 
 would be the result. But as Blair was much opposed to the with- 
 drawal we may readily believe that he gave a qualified interpreta- 
 tion to a positive statement. 
 
 It is difficult to understand how the Confederate Commissioners 
 could have remained a whole month in Washington without Lin- 
 coln making some enquiry of Seward as to his communications 
 with them. And on one occasion as Judge Campbell informs us, 
 Seward in the midst of an important interview excused himself 
 
 zoconnor, Life of John A. Campbell, p. 126. 
 siWilliam and Mary Quarterly, XXIV. pp. 75-85. 
 
 [13 1 
 
for the purpose of conferring with the President, before giving n 
 final reply. And James Schouler, a friendly historian, does not 
 hesitate to say that Lincoln must have been privy to all the prom- 
 ises of Seward. 
 
 Lamon, who was Lincoln's confidential friend, had the same 
 view of the situation as Seward, and in an interview with Gov- 
 ernor Pickens of South Carolina, he told him on March 25th, that 
 the President "professed a desire to evacuate Fort Sumter", and 
 upon his return to Washington he wrote Governor Pickens that 
 he hoped to come back in a very few days to withdraw the com- 
 mand. When this was brought to Lincoln's attention on March 
 30th he denied that Lamon had "any power to pledge him by any 
 promise or assurance", but he did not say that Lamon had incor- 
 rectly represented his previous attitude. 
 
 In the ligEt of this and other evidence which might be added, 
 it is much more reasonable to suppose that Lincoln knew and ap- 
 proved the assurances of Seward than that Seward acted on his 
 own authority, misrepresented Lincoln's position and was not dis- 
 missed for the unheard of liberty he had taken. If Seward had 
 the "swellhead", so had Lamon and Douglas. That Lincoln's mind 
 was not in abeyance, but that there was a change from a course 
 positively decided upon cannot be doubted. This change was for 
 sometime lacking in a decided character, and Lincoln played on 
 two strings. 
 
 The turning of the tide was manifested on the 29th when he 
 ordered a squadron for the relief of Fort Sumter to be got in 
 readiness by the 6th of April, "to be used according to circum- 
 stances". Three days later (April 1) Seward, after a conference 
 with Lincoln, modified the conversations he had had with Judge 
 Campbell by declaring to him that the government would not un- 
 dertake to supply Fort Sumter without giving notice to Governor 
 Pickens. The idea of withdrawing the troops was, however, still 
 uppermost, for Seward expressed the belief to Campbell that no 
 attempt at reinforcement would be made, and on April 2, Lincoln, 
 at Seward's behest, set on foot negotiations with the Unionists in 
 the Virginia Convention which contemplated a surrender of the 
 Fort provided the Convention would adjourn sine die. Virginia's 
 influence with the other Border States was supposed to be great. 
 
 [14 1 
 
Lincoln in his message of July 4, 1861, places his final deter- 
 mination to send the expedition to Fort Sumter upon his hearing 
 of the failure of his former order of March 11th respecting Fort 
 Pickens, but information of this did not reach him until April 
 6th, and before that time on April 4th, orders had been issued for 
 the dispatch of the squadron. On that day, the Secretary of War, 
 in an order in which he said that "succor to Fort Sumter" had been 
 determined upon, appointed G. V. Fox who had planned the ex- 
 pedition to head the same. On the next day, still in the absence 
 of information, the Secretary of the Navy appointed Samuel Mer- 
 cer, commander of the Naval Forces and ordered him to be off 
 Charleston bar with the Powhatan by April 11th. To which is 
 added the fact that when Colonel John B. Baldwin, representing 
 the Unionists in the Virginia Convention, presented himself in 
 Washington on April 4th, at Lincoln's request, the latter told 22 
 him that he "came too late" — the orders for the expedition being 
 already issued. 
 
 The excuse made prominent in Lincoln's message of July 4th 
 that his purpose was only to give bread to "the few and hungry 
 men of the garrison", and not to land troops unless necessary for 
 that end, was a political stroke which was entirely absent from his 
 previous action of April 1, in regard to succors for Fort Pickens. 
 There both men and provisions were to be landed at the same time. 
 Moreover, the markets in Charleston were not closed to Anderson 
 till the sailing of the Relief Squadron became known. 
 
 The determining influence on Lincoln appears to have been 
 undoubtedly the tariff. There was a Confederate tariff from 10 
 to 20 per cent and a Federal tariff of from 50 to 80 per cent, and 
 fears of the successful operation of the former excited fears in the 
 bosoms of Lincoln and his Cabinet and the Republicans generally. 
 Considering the enormous interests that centered around the tariff, 
 and the fact that in 1833 the tariff question had actually pushed 
 the country to the verge of war, this explanation is not at all un- 
 reasonable. As early as March 16th, Stanton, not yet aligned with 
 
 22Southern Historical Society Papers, I. p. 443; IX p. 88. 
 
 f 15 1 
 
the Kepublicans, had noted the apprehensions of that party, and 
 the New York Times of March 30th had observed: "With us it 
 is no longer an abstract question, one of Constitutional construc- 
 tion or reserved or delegated power of the States to the Federal 
 Government, but of material existence and moral position both at 
 home and abroad." 
 
 The apprehensions had grown, weakened the opposition in the 
 Cabinet and induced Lincoln to take tentative action in ordering 
 the preparations of a fleet for Fort Sumter. Final action was the 
 result of the concourse at Washington of seven, or as others have 
 it, of nine Governors of high tariff states, who waited upon Lin- 
 coln and offered him troops and supplies*. 
 
 In the" interview with Baldwin on April 4, and in that with 
 the delegates from the Virginia Convention on April 12, and in 
 that with Dr. Fuller and the deputations from each of the five 
 Christian associations of Baltimore, who spoke for peace, on April 
 22nd, Lincoln asked "And what is to become of my revenue, if I 
 let the government at Montgomery, with their ten per cent tariff, 
 go on." 
 
 The Confederate authorities complained of broken faith, and 
 there is much to justify them. Frederick Bancroft, Seward's Biog- 
 rapher, does not try to absolve Seward, and how about Lincoln? 
 He had promised notice to Governor Pickens of any attempt to 
 reinforce Fort Sumter, but notice was not given until all prepara- 
 tions had been made and the first part of the Relief Squadron 
 sailed from New York (April 8). Ten days are considered in law 
 a reasonable notice, but Lincoln gave not one day. 
 
 The facts in regard to Fort Pickens are even more to the point, 
 though they have been overshadowed by the clamor attending Fort 
 Sumter. 
 
 At that place there was a truce existing between the Federal 
 
 ♦For the present of these governors see Richmond Examiner of 
 April 10, New York World and New York Herald of April 5, Bald- 
 win's Pamphlet in reply to Botts 1866, Crawford, Genesis of the Civil 
 War, p. 340; Magruder in Atlantic Monthly XXXV, p. 438. See also 
 Ashe, History of North Carolina, II. pp. 582 and Stephens, War Be- 
 tween the States, II. p. 354. 
 
 [16 1 
 
and Confederate authorities made during Buchanan's administra- 
 tion. Lincoln was aware of this truce, when he sent secret orders 
 to Captain H. A. Adams who commanded the squadron lying off 
 the Fort to land Captain Vogdes' company of soldiers on the Brook- 
 lyn, though he spoke of it in his message (July 4) as "a quasi- 
 truce of the late administration, of which the present administra- 
 tion up to the time the order was dispatched had only vague and 
 uncertain rumors." 
 
 By delays at sea the order which came through General Scott 
 did not reach Captain Adams till March 31, and that officer flatly 
 refused to pay obedience to it. In his letter next day to Welles, 
 the Secretary of the Navy, he described the agreement which had 
 been made, and "which both sides had faithfully observed" and 
 declared that without an order from the Navy Department direct 
 he could not take upon himself "the fearful responsibility of an act 
 which seemed to render civil war inevitable." 23 
 
 Lincoln made no pretense that he was not informed of the 
 armistice at Fort Pickens after March 11, but on March 31 he 
 gave personal orders for an expedition under Col. Harvey Brown 
 from New York to reinforce Fort Pickens, in conformity with a 
 plan contrived by Captain Meigs, and on April 1 he sent the Pow- 
 hatan, under Lt. D. D. Porter, with special orders to establish 
 itself, contrary to the truce, within the harbor of Pensacola. This 
 action was taken at the suggestion of Seward, the Secretary of 
 State, though on March 21 this party had assured Judge Camp- 
 bell that notice would be given of "any design to alter the exist- 
 ing status at Fort Pickens". 
 
 These expeditions were undertaken with great secrecy and on 
 April 6 Captain Meigs wrote to Seward, "This is the beginning of 
 the war, which every statesman and every officer has foreseen", 
 and at sea he wrote that "the despatch and the secrecy with which 
 the expedition has been fitted out will strike terror into the ranks 
 of the rebellion". 
 
 Brown arrived at Pensacola on April 16, when the troops were 
 
 23 See Vol. 4, Naval War Records, Series I, for this, and most other 
 naval matters referred to in this letter. 
 
 [17 1 
 
landed. Porter arrived a few hours later. Porter disguised his 
 6hip and flew the British flag, but at the request of Brown who 
 represented the Fort as in a deplorably weak condition, he refrained 
 from entering the harbor, lest the Confederates, who still observed 
 the truce, might be provoked to attack the Fort in its unprepared 
 stafe. 
 
 On April 6, the letter from Captain Adams to Welles came to 
 the latter's hands, and the same day the Secretary in his letter of 
 reply expressed his regret that he had not acted and told him that 
 it was the wish of the Navy Department that he should promptly 
 land the troops from the Brooklyn. The dispatch was conveyed 
 by Lieutenant John L. Worden, later commander of the Monitor 
 in its fight with the Merrimac, who proceeded by land and gained 
 access to Adams by assuring General Braxton Bragg, who was in 
 the command of the Confederates at Pensacola that he had only "a 
 verbal message of a pacific nature" to deliver to Captain Adams. 
 Worden had at Welles suggestion destroyed the written despatch 
 after committing its contents to memory, but the message, written 
 or verbal violating the armistice was hardly of a "pacific nature". 
 On the night of the day when the bombardment at Fort Sumter 
 began (April 12) Adams, taking the Confederates unawares, landed 
 the troops from the Brooklyn. 
 
 When this was brought to the notice of General Bragg on April 
 14, he tersely commented: "Lieutenant Worden must have given 
 these orders in violation of his word, Captain Adams executed 
 them in violation of our agreement." 
 
 On all fours with this questionable diplomacy was the action 
 of G. V. Fox, who, on March' 21, gained access to Fort Sumter 
 by assuring Governor Pickens that he came on "a peaceable mis- 
 sion". And yet Fox says in his report four years later that he 
 was sent to Fort Sumter to "strengthen" his plan to supply the 
 fort, and states certain matters noticed there which made his plan 
 seem "feasible." Fox had as queer an idea of "a peaceable mis- 
 sion" as Worden had of "a verbal message of a pacific nature". 
 
 On July 19, Congress called upon Lincoln for information re- 
 garding the "Quasi-armistice" mentioned in his message of July 
 
 r is l 
 
4, and in reply Lincoln transmitted a letter from the Secretary of 
 the Navy which stated that it was against the public interest to 
 make report! 
 
 There are further facts at this time not at all redounding to 
 the credit of Lincoln. 
 
 In obedience to orders Welles made ready the squadron against 
 Fort Sumter. Fox was made commander of the expedition, and 
 on April 5 Welles submitted to Lincoln the instructions to Cap- 
 tain S'amuel Mercer appointed Naval Commander, containing a 
 list of the boats to be employed. Among them was Mercer's ship 
 the Powhatan, which Welles made the flagship of the proposed 
 expedition. 
 
 Now the President, as we have seen, had selected the Powhatan 
 for another duty, which was for an expedition to Fort Pickens. 
 The orders were personally signed by Lincoln, and the prepara- 
 tion of the ship and its dispatch southward under Porter were to 
 be kept secret from everybody, even Welles, the Secretary of the 
 Navy. When the Powhatan sailed South, the astonished Secretary 
 hastened to the President, who, making no apology for snubbing 
 him, admitted a mistake and requested Seward to recall the Pow- 
 hatan. Seward obeyed very unwillingly, and a dispatch signed by 
 him reached Porter at sea, but that officer pleading previous Presi- 
 dential orders declined to obey, and the Powhatan went on its 
 way to Fort Pickens, with the result already noticed. And so the 
 Relief Squadron reached Charleston bar without a flagship, a Naval 
 Commander or instructions ! 
 
 While these things were doing, other things occurred which 
 presented Lincoln in an even more pitiful light. It is that of a 
 President signing papers of a most important character without 
 knowing their contents. One paper changed the commands of 
 several persons in the Navy Department and another assigned cer- 
 tain duties to other persons whose loyalty Welles had good reason 
 to suspect. When Welles who had not been consulted, protested, 
 the President made the same submission as before, recalled the 
 instructions and told him that these papers, with many others, 
 
 19] 
 
were hastily prepared and "he really knew not what he was sign- 
 ing" ! 24 
 
 What does James Schouler, a friendly historian, say of this 
 astonishing conduct? It is that Lincoln's behavior through the 
 month of March, 1861, was as "though he had no policy and was 
 waiting for his cabinet to form one for him" ! What does Fred- 
 erick Bancroft, the biographer of Seward, assert? "Lincoln'? 
 policy — or rather lack of policy — during the month of March 
 (1861) cannot be successfully defended. It can only be ex- 
 plained and excused" ! And yet this month was the crucial period 
 of his administration, for the issue of peace and war was then de- 
 cided. The idea of some of his admirers that his vacillating con- 
 duct regarding Fort Sumter was a well thought out manoeuvre 
 to work up the North's fighting spirit is without any foundation. 
 
 Even supposing that the action of the Confederates was unpro- 
 voked, Lincoln was not bound to accept it as a gage of battle, as 
 some of his admirers have appeared to think. He knew perfectly 
 well that the Confederates in occupying the Fort had no desire to 
 engage in a general war with the United States. All they wanted 
 was a fort that held the capital city of South Carolina at Lin- 
 coln's mercy. Nor does every hostile act justify war, and in the 
 World War this country submitted to having its flag filled full of 
 holes and scores of its citizens destroyed, before it went to war. 
 Lincoln, without any violation of his views of government, had an 
 obvious alternative in putting the question of reinforcing Fort 
 Sumter up to Congress, the war-making power. Congress could 
 have been assembled in ten days, but it was not called till the 
 country was hopelessly committed to war. In the meantime, Lin- 
 coln assumed both the powers of the Executive and Congress, and 
 it was Lincoln's war. 
 
 There can be no question that Lincoln's resolve, after weeks 
 of vacillation, to reinforce Fort Sumter, was a confession of bank- 
 ruptcy in statesmanship. Force of the mass, and not skill of the 
 individual, was called in to the settlement of questions, and the 
 North having the superior power won the war, as it would prob- 
 
 24Welles, Diary, I. p. 16-32; Welles, Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward. 
 
 r 20 1 
 
ably have done under any President. But how near Lincoln came 
 to losing the war is shown by his saying 25 that without the aid 
 of the negro troops taken from the South's own population he would 
 have to "abandon the war in three weeks." Towards the close of 
 the war Lincoln became thoroughly discredited with the North- 
 ern people, 26 and it was only the victories of Sherman and Sheridan 
 that reinstated him in their good opinion. 
 
 Throughout the war Lincoln danced from one position to an- 
 other. We have seen that in March, 1861, Lincoln denied audience 
 to the Confederate commissioners, and yet towards the close of 
 the war he met Southern commissioners at Old Point. He had 
 also practically decided to withdraw the troops from Fort Sump- 
 ter, but changed under the circumstances already described, when 
 the tariff governors brought pressure upon him. He decided to 
 issue a proclamation of emancipation in July, 1862, but when 
 Seward, the Secretary of State, showed to him its impropriety at 
 the time, he pocketed the paper and for months later talked on 
 both sides of the question. He at first decided to write a paper 
 justifying the action of Captain Wilkes in seizing the Confeder- 
 ate commissioners from the British steam packet Trent, but shortly 
 united with his Cabinet in making a humiliating apology to Great 
 Britain. He formulated a plan of reconstruction in his proclama- 
 tion of Amnesty, December 8, 1863, but, when Congress formu- 
 lated another one, he professed in another proclamation July 8, 
 1864 that he was not bound up to any single plan and would en- 
 force that too, "if the loyal people of any State" wanted it. How 
 two plans, having contradictory provisions, could have operated in 
 harmony he never undertook to explain. In February, 1865, he 
 recommended to his cabinet a plan of bringing the war to a close 
 by paying the Southern people $400,000,000 for their slaves. But 
 
 25Nicolay and Hay, Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, II. p. 
 562. 
 
 zeSee the memorandum August 23, 1864 where he admits it as 
 "exceedingly probable that this administration will not be reelected". 
 Ibid II. 568. 
 
 21 
 
when the Cabinet refused to agree with him, Lincoln, instead of 
 insisting on his view, humbly submitted. 27 
 
 Lincoln is said to have had a keen insight into human nature, 
 but he did not show it in the appointment of such misfits as Hal- 
 leck, Pope, Hooker and Burnside, Nor did he show it in this pro- 
 posal made to his cabinet to pay the Southern people for their 
 slaves. They would have scorned his proposal to pay them, as 
 they were not fighting for the money value of slaves but in de- 
 fense of their Fatherland and for self-government, as their Revo- 
 lutionary fathers had fought. It is ridiculous to say that the Con- 
 federates fought for slavery, since they would not have fought at 
 all if Lincoln had not made war upon them. Secession was not 
 war. Norway seceded from Sweden, and there was no war. 
 
 Upon the evacuation of Richmond, Lincoln made haste to visit 
 the city which had defied him so long. In his delight over the 
 result he wrote a letter to General Weitzel, who had the command, 
 "to permit the Virginia gentlemen who had acted as the legisla- 
 ture of Virginia" in support of the Rebellion to assemble at Rich- 
 mond, and to take measures to withdraw the Virginia troops and 
 other support from resistance to the general government. A few 
 days later while the members were coming together, Lincoln, who 
 had returned to Washington, sent a telegram withdrawing the per- 
 mission. In a letter afterwards he stated that he had not given 
 permission for the Legislature to assemble but only "those gentle- 
 men who had acted as the Legislature", and that Lee's surrender 
 rendered their coming together unnecessary. 
 
 But that this was a mere subterfuge is shown by the oft-re- 
 peated statements of Lincoln and Congress that the States could 
 not secede and had the old legal status within the Union as soon 
 as resistance ceased. A long official conversation with Mr. Lin- 
 coln a short time before the surrender of General Johnston's 
 army had induced General Sherman to offer the liberal terms of 
 surrender which he first agreed to. But Stanton, Sumner and 
 Stevens held that the Southern States were conquered provinces, 
 and the testimony of Lincoln's Cabinet Secretaries, Stanton and 
 
 27Welles, Diary, II. p. 237. 
 
 [22] 
 
Welles, is to the effect that Lincoln sent his telegram only after 
 Stanton and Sumner's vehement protest, and in the very words 
 that Stanton suggested. If this does not show that Lincoln had 
 adopted the opinions of the Southern States as "conquered prov- 
 inces", it does show that he would have made no or little resist- 
 ance to the plans of the vindictives in Congress, had he lived to 
 see the years of madness which followed the war. Woodburn, in 
 his Life of Thaddeud Stevens, says (page 323) that "Lincoln had 
 shown that he was not fixed beyond change in favor of any par- 
 ticular scheme of reconstruction" and "that no doubt he would 
 have cooperated with Congress and the States in carrying out 
 such a plan as Congress had proposed, if a change of circumstances 
 had appeared to make his cooperation desirable." It is idle, there- 
 fore, to talk of what Lincoln might have done in the way of kind- 
 ness to the South had he lived. 28 He had little of the backbone 
 of Andrew Johnson. 
 
 His eulogists have laid much stress upon some nice utter- 
 ances which Lincoln used in his messages, but these apart from 
 his actual conduct have little substantive value. His course dur 
 ing the war is not encouraging. How any really merciful man 
 could permit medicines to be made contraband of war it is diffi- 
 cult to understand. One of the finest opportunities furnished any 
 man to show his merciful inclinations was afforded when a dele- 
 gation of Andersonville prisoners arrived in Washington to pray 
 that exchanges might be resumed. Their heart-rending petition 
 was published in the New York and Washington newspapers, but 
 Lincoln turned a deaf ear. When such was his treatment of hi a 
 own people, it is not to be supposed that Lincoln would have been 
 charitable to beaten rebels, if there had been any serious opposition 
 in the way, as there would have been, of course, with Edwin M. 
 Stanton in the Cabinet and Ben Wade, Charles Sumner, Thad- 
 deus Stevens and others like them in Congress. There is a letter 
 of Lincoln to Major General Hooker, dated May 8, 1863, pub- 
 
 28For all this see Rhodes, History of the United States, Welles, 
 Diary, Woodhurii, Life of Thaddeus Stevens, Connor, Life of John A. 
 Campbell, etc. 
 
 [23] 
 
lished in War of Rebellion Records, series I. Vol XXV, part II., 
 p. 449, in which Lincoln exults in the story told him by General 
 Willich, an exchanged prisoner, that, when the Federal calvary cut 
 the roads in the vicinity of Eichmond, the city was so undefended 
 that our men could have safely gone in and "burned everything 
 and brought in Jeff Davis." 
 
 The most fatal change of position made by Mr. Lincoln was 
 his change of the character of the war, after the first year, from 
 such as becomes a civilized nation into a campaign of wholesale 
 riot and general outrage. Probably no army in an enemy's coun- 
 try, with the exception of Lee's in Pennsylvania, ever did less in- 
 jury to non-combatants than McClellan's soldiers in the march 
 from Old Point to Eichmond. But on July 22, 1862, Stanton, 
 the Secretary of War, with the approval of Lincoln, ordered the 
 military commanders everywhere to appropriate private property, 
 and no compensation, as required at International law, was pro- 
 vided for. Lincoln himself voiced this change in a declaration 
 made at a cabinet meeting August 3, 1862 that "he was pretty 
 well cured of any objections to any measure except want of adapt- 
 edness to put down the Eebellion".- 9 
 
 In the cruelty of war thus decreed, Lincoln and his generals 
 put it over the Germans in the World War 30 . 
 
 The main features in this system of terrorism, as detailed in 
 the "Official Eecords of the Eebellion", were (1) Shooting down 
 
 29Diary of Salmon P. Chase. 
 
 30The excuse I have often seen and heard advanced for this policy 
 is that all war is Hell, which may be true, but Dante in his U Inferno 
 had a succession of Hells differing in torment, just as Mahomet had a 
 succession of Heavens differing in happiness. And the difference be- 
 tween the Hells created by McClellan and Grant is given in Hon. 
 George L. Christian's report to Lee Camp of Confederate Veterans, 
 October 25, 1901 on the "Cause and Conduct of the War Between the 
 States", L. H. Jenkins, Publisher, Richmond, Virginia. He says: "The 
 writer's home was visited by the Army of the Potomac, both under 
 McClellan and under Grant. At the time McClellan was in command, 
 guards were stationed to protect the premises, with orders to shoot 
 any soldier caught depredating, and but little damage was actually 
 done; none with the consent or connivance of the commanding general 
 
 [24 1 
 
innocent non-combatants on small pretexts, burning of private 
 homes, and wholesale destruction of private property 31 ; (2) The 
 expulsion from their houses of women and children and non-com- 
 batants, unless an oath of allegiance was taken. This was as if 
 the German commanders had required every Frenchman in the 
 occupied territory in France to swear allegiance to the Kaiser. 
 (3) The subordination of the lives of prisoners to military success, 
 which resulted in the deaths of thousands of prisoners on both 
 sides. 32 (4) The arrest of 38,000 persons in the North itself on 
 bare suspicion of sympathy with the South, who were confined in 
 damp and crowded dungeons and allowed neither trial nor attor- 
 ney. Many died, and many were injured for life. 
 
 Both governments at first entered orders that prisoners should 
 
 But when the same army came, commanded by Grant, every house on 
 the place, except one negro cabin, was burned to the ground; all stock 
 and everything else of any value was carried off. The occupants were 
 only women, children and servants; nearly all the servants were car- 
 ried off; one of the ladies was so shocked at the outrages committed as 
 to cause her death, and the other and the children were turned out 
 of doors without shelter or food, and with only the clothing they had 
 on. So that the writer has had a real experience of the difference be- 
 tween civilized and barbarous warfare." 
 
 siChristian, Cause and Conduct of the War Between the States. 
 
 32ln 1864 General Grant was made Commissioner of Exchange, 
 and in a letter August 19, 1864, to Stanton, the Secretary of War, 
 Grant wrote: "We ought not to make a single exchange or release a 
 prisoner on any pretext whatever till the war closes. We have got to 
 fight until the military power of the South is exhausted, and if we 
 release or exchange prisoners captured it simply becomes a war of ex- 
 termination." Lincoln stood by Grant, and when Welles, his Secre- 
 tary of the Navy, in a letter dated Sept. 9, 1864, agreed with the Con- 
 federate government for a general exchange of Naval prisoners, Lin- 
 coln wrote Grant that Welles had acted without his knowledge and 
 that he Grant was at liberty to arrest the whole operation, W. O. R. 
 Series II. vol vii. p. 924. 
 
 Much stress has been laid upon Lincoln's tenderness to deserters 
 from his armies, but Don Piatt, one of his warm friends, has said 
 that there was much more of policy in Lincoln's course than mercy 
 or humanity. It was questioned by many as unjust to those who 
 hazarded their lives and fatal to the discipline of his armies. 
 
 [25 1 
 
receive the same fare as soldiers in the field. The Federal govern- 
 ment is the only one on record for having reduced this by 20 per 
 cent. This was done by the War department April 20, 1864 and 
 ori June 1 all but the sick were deprived of coffee, tea and sugar. 
 This was followed by an order refusing all supplies by gift or 
 purchase to Confederate prisoners (Rhodes, United States vol V., 
 p. 505) In December, 1864, when some ladies of England asked 
 permission of this government through Charles Francis Adams, 
 the American minister at London, to distribute $85000 among Con- 
 federate prisoners, Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State, made re- 
 fusal in terms as insulting almost to Mr. Adams as to the chari- 
 table ladies concerned. Seward had the "cheek" to resolve him- 
 self into a champion of the Southern people who, he said, would 
 "rejoice" on "being saved by their considerate and loyal govern- 
 ment" from the grave insult (i. e. the proposal to give them some- 
 thing to eat or wear) offered by the ladies in question. (William 
 and Mary College Quarterly XXIII. p. 170). The field of mercy 
 covers the whole war, and I have found no evidence of the hu- 
 manitarian intervention of Lincoln with his cabinet officers or his 
 generals in the field. None whatever. 
 
 That there must be no humanity in war was, according to 
 Charles Francis Adams, the accepted policy of Lincoln's govern- 
 ment, during the last stages of the war. (Adams, Studies Mili- 
 tary and Diplomatic, p. 266.) 
 
 The policy of killing all the people of Georgia and repopulat- 
 ing that state was advocated 33 by General Sherman in a letter to 
 Grant, March 9, 1864, and Lincoln declared on September 13, 
 1862 that "the possible consequences of insurrection and massa- 
 cre in the Southern States" would not deter him from the use of 
 the Emancipation policy. 34 In a letter to Andrew Johnson March 
 
 33Sherman wrote: "Until we can repopulate Georgia it is useless 
 for us to occupy it, but the utter destruction of its roads, houses and 
 people will cripple their military resources * * * I can make the 
 march and make Georgia howl." "Make the Valley a barren waste," 
 and "hang every one of Mosby's men without trial," were telegraphic 
 dispatches of Grant to Sheridan. 
 
 3*Nicolay and Hay, Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, II. p. 235. 
 
 [26] 
 
3, 1863, he declared that "the bare sight of 50,000 armed and 
 drilled black soldiers on the banks of the Mississippi would end 
 the rebellion at once." "No human power" said 35 he, two years 
 later, "can subdue this Rebellion without the use of the Eman- 
 cipation policy and every other policy calculated to weaken the 
 moral and physical forces of the Rebellion". Lincoln could not 
 have pictured a case where self-government was more applicable. 
 
 It was without doubt the incapacity of Lincoln that prolonged 
 the war. Lincoln never had any experience as an officer save in 
 the Blackliawk war, when he was captain of a company of "gen- 
 erous ruffians". But the records show that he and his Secretary 
 of War, Edwin M. Stanton, were constantly interfering by tele- 
 grams and written messages with their generals, giving bad orders 
 and making bad appointments. One blunder alone doubtless pro- 
 tracted the war two years. Upon the retirement of General Mc- 
 Clellan to "Berkeley" or Harrison's Landing on James River, 
 General Lee sent most of his army to attack Pope, who was ad- 
 vancing from Washington. This left Richmond with only 30,- 
 000 men, and General McClellan asked permission to attack that 
 city. 
 
 But Lincoln fearful for his capital refused through Halleck to 
 grant permission, and soon after removed McClellan from his com- 
 mand, and recalled his army. Unfriendly as the historian Rhodes 34 
 is to the memory of McClellan he admits that the move proposed 
 by McClellan was "the most promising strategy of the whole cam- 
 paign, both for the security of Washington and for positive re- 
 sults." 
 
 Lincoln was always urging his generals on to attack, whether 
 they were prepared or not, and the administration not infrequently 
 employed menacing language to the generals for failure to act or 
 win success. To such an intimation coming from the truculent 
 General Halleck, who professed to speak in the name of the Presi- 
 dent, General Rosecrans replied in words becoming the Roman 
 Brutus, "To threats of removal and the like I must be permitted 
 
 ssibid II. p. 562. 
 
 seRhodes, History of the U. 8. IV, pp. Ill, 161. 
 
 [27 1 
 
to say that I am insensible" (Ropes, Story of the Civil War, II. p. 
 422.) The dreadful massacre of Burnside's troops at Fredericks- 
 burg is ascribed to his orders to that unfortunate general, who 
 was visited by Lincoln in his encampment shortly before the bat- 
 tle. "It was a disaster unmatched by McDowell or McClellan. 
 Burnside went to Washington and resigned forthwith, though he 
 nobly kept the President's responsibility to himself." (Dr. Wm. 
 E. Dodd, Lincoln or Lee, p. 87; and see statement of Major W. 
 Roy Mason in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, vol iii, p. 101) 
 
 If there is any truth in the claim that Lincoln grew to be a 
 better strategist than Grant or Thomas, 37 his value to the war was 
 of little account since it is also said that towards the end of the 
 war, when this astonishing development occured, he learned to 
 leave his generals to their own wishes. 
 
 As to the domestic history of the administrations of the two 
 presidents he must be prejudiced indeed to detect anything like 
 weakness or instability in John Tyler. On the death of Harrison 
 the "Whig cabinet and Whig managers wanted to treat him as 
 "Vice-President acting as President". But he overruled them in a 
 moment, and permanently settled the tenure of all the vice-presi- 
 dents that have subsequently succeeded to the office and functions 
 of President. Subsequently, when the Whigs in Congress brought 
 to him, with the worst faith possible, two measures, not only vio- 
 latory of the Constitution but of practical good sense, he used his 
 veto — twice repeated in both cases — at the risk of standing alone. 
 One 61 these measures was a National Bank, 38 which was a great 
 private monopoly of all the immense revenues of the government, 
 (wholly unlike the present excellent Federal Banking System,) 
 and the other a tariff in which the Whigs had incorporated a pro- 
 vision for the distribution of the proceeds of the sales of the pub- 
 lic lands, thus uniting two contradictory things and making the 
 measure both a tax measure and an appropriation bill. 
 
 37This is seriously asserted by C. A. Dana in his "Recollections"; 
 but see John C. Ropes' opinion of Lincoln in his Story of the Civil War. 
 
 ssCarl Schurz, no friend of Tyler, declares in his Life of Henry 
 Clay that "the impartial verdict of history will probably be that in 
 vetoing the Bank bills Tyler rendered his country a valuable service". 
 
 [28] 
 
The friends of Lincoln make no profession that he had any 
 knowledge of finance, 39 but Daniel Webster eulogized Tyler's sub- 
 stitute for the Bank called "The Exchequer", which Tyler pre- 
 pared with his own hand, as "second" only in promise to the Con- 
 stitution itself ! 40 This was the highest praise that the great Web- 
 ster ever accorded to any man or any measure. In striking con- 
 trast, Lincoln has to his credit no constructive measure of any kind. 
 
 The Exchequer was defeated by a partisan Congress, and the 
 finances of the country remained in Tyler's private keeping dur- 
 ing his whole term without any loss to the government, and, in 
 his management of the public expenditures, the same great author- 
 ity declared 41 that "he was remarkably cautious, exact and par- 
 ticular." 
 
 The contrast afforded in the honesty of the two administra- 
 tions is startling. During the period of the war 1861-1865, vice 
 reared its head everywhere. So fearful were these corruptions 
 that Congress was fairly shamed into investigating them and de- 
 nouncing them, and a Republican paper declared that the thous- 
 and page report which was made by a committee was "a record of 
 infamy." No doubt a great deal of this corruption was insepara- 
 ble from a condition of war with such vast expenditures, but mucn 
 of it was undoubtedly due to Lincoln's admitted want of care in 
 money matters and laziness. John Hay, who was Lincoln's private 
 secretary, says that the President was extremely "unmethodical", 
 and that he signed without reading them the letters that Hay wrote 
 in his name (Letter in Herndon, Life of Lincoln III. p. 515). 
 
 In Tylers time there were no public defaulters worth the name, 
 no corrupt army contracts, and nothing resembling the dreadful 
 scandals of Lincoln's administration — a result which may be largely 
 attributed to the President's close supervision of all the depart- 
 ments. To which it may be added in Mr. Tyler's own words that 
 "in the receipts and disbursement of more than $100,000,000.00 
 the government sustained no loss whatever — a fact betokening 
 more vigilance than that bestowed by an individual over his pri- 
 vate affairs." 
 
 3<*Stephenson, Lincoln, p. 291. 
 
 ^Letters and Times of the Tylers, II. p, 133. 
 
 -"Curtis. Webster, II. p. 275. 
 
 [29 1 
 
Instead of building up a colossal debt like Lincoln, Tyler re- 
 duced the one that came to him and administered the government 
 on one-fourth less expense than his predecessor Mr. Van Buren.** 
 
 I have to omit many other matters of domestic concern in 
 which Mr. Tyler set an example, but the question afforded by 
 Dorr's Rebellion must not be forgotten. In this matter it was the 
 first time that the Federal Government had interfered in the affairs 
 of a state. The care which characterized his action in the employ- 
 ment of the Federal troops contrasted with Lincoln's high-handed 
 methods in the Northern States, which were not in rebellion, and 
 evoked from Webster the declaration that it was "worthy of all 
 praise". "The case was new", he wrote, 43 "and it was managed 
 with equal discretion and firmness." 
 
 How Tyler closed his administration we may learn from the 
 disinterested evidence of Charles H. Raymond, the Texan repre- 
 sentative at Washington, in a confidential letter to his govern- 
 ment: "The diplomatic corps waited on the President this morn- 
 ing at the White House. He has had much opposition and many 
 difficulties to encounter, and yet no President has closed his term 
 with the affairs of the nation in a more prosperous condition than 
 they are at this moment." 
 
 The relations of the two presidents to cabinet affairs should 
 be noticed. Lincoln allowed his cabinet officers a free rein, and 
 the accounts teem with the insubordinate actions of Seward, Stan- 
 ton and Chase, to say nothing of Welles. Stanton and Chase re- 
 velled in insults to Lincoln, and Lincoln is nevertheless praised 
 for sinking himself for the good of the country. This excuse for 
 their retention might pass, if there were absolutely no other men 
 capable of performing their duties, but this is absurd. There were 
 plenty of men in the North of ability enough to take their places. 
 
 What were the relations of Mr. Tyler and his Cabinet? He 
 had some of the greatest men of the age among his advisers — such 
 as Daniel Webster, Abel P. Upshur, John C. Spencer and John 
 C. Calhoun, and nothing exists to show that while in office they 
 
 ^Letters and Times of the Tylers, II. pp. 374, 378, 398. See Ap- 
 pendix; Tyler, Parties and Patronage in the United States, p. 91. 
 ^Letters and Times of the Tylers, II. p. 199. 
 
 [30] 
 
did not treat him with "utmost respect. Nothing passed of any 
 importance in any department without being first submitted to the 
 President, and receiving his approval. The most deferential of 
 all was perhaps the great Massachusetts statesman Webster. 44 
 
 Calhoun, as Secretary of State, had more of the initiative than 
 Webster, but when after the rejection of the treaty for the annexa- 
 tion of Texas he proposed to let all negotiations go over to the in- 
 coming administration, the President would stand no foolishness, 
 and directed him to proceed without delay with the matters before 
 him, which he did with the important results that developed be- 
 fore the expiration of President Tyler's term. 45 
 
 Like the monks of the twelfth century, Lincoln loved to jockey 
 with words, and his Gettysburg Address has a remarkable rhetori- 
 cal effect, largely because it assumes as true something that was 
 totally false. That assumption is that, if the South had succeeded, 
 "government of the people, by the people, for the people would 
 have perished from the earth" ! As a matter of fact the speech in 
 its real nature was a bad sophism, for all that would have hap- 
 pened would have been the establishment of two governments in 
 the place of one. The United States would have lost some terri- 
 tory, but all the liberties of their people would have remained in- 
 tact. The loss of territory was all that happened to the British 
 Empire, when the American States, asserting, as the Southern 
 States did in 1861, the immortal right of "self-government," 
 seceded from it in 1776. The British Empire was afterwards 
 stronger than ever. 
 
 Lincoln was said to be "superlatively honest", but there is 
 no proof that he was any more honest than any other President. 
 It is impossible to believe that Lincoln did not know the facts 
 concerning the origin of our Union and the principle of self-gov- 
 
 **Mr. Tyler in his beautiful address "The Dead of the Cabinet" 
 referred to Webster as follows: "It was a great charm of life to be 
 associated with one not only so richly endowed with the gifts of mind, 
 but who was so tolerant in matters of opinion and whose entire de- 
 portment was so deferential and respectful — a deference and respect 
 which he never for a moment lost sight of." 
 
 ^Letters and Times of the Tylers, II. pp. 330, 331, 393. 
 
 [31] 
 
eminent expressed in the Declaration of Independence. And yet 
 His first inaugural address and his special message to Congress 
 in July, 1861 are scarcely more than a collection of plausible 
 falsehoods, without any historical support. In creating sophis- 
 tries, what Seward said of him, according to his friend Don Piatt, 
 was true, that he had "a cunning amounting to genius." 
 
 Often Lincoln's attempt to play with words rendered his soph- 
 isms grotesque and ridiculous, and such was his argument about 
 the debts 46 of the Union in his special message of July, 1861, and 
 such his stunt as to the admission of West Virginia in 1864. 47 No 
 more unholy or wicked measure was ever devised. After a thor- 
 ough examination of the facts Dr. James C. McGregor in his Dis- 
 ruption of Virginia states his conviction that that measure was 
 not only not necessary for the prosecution of the war, but that it 
 was not desired by more than a small minority of the people of 
 West Virginia. The tearing away of territory is the most serious 
 offence that can be committed against a State, and France never 
 forgave Germany for seizing Alsace and Lorraine. 
 
 Every one of Lincoln's argument in favor of the freedom of 
 the slaves had an equal application to the States in secession. Why 
 were they not equally entitled to their freedom and independence ? 
 
 Tyler was a good letter writer, and his address on "The Dead r.f 
 the Cabinet" has few equals. Granting that, Tyler could not have 
 writen Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, it is also true that he could 
 not have written, at any period of his life, the indecent letter 48 
 which Lincoln wrote to Mrs. Browning concerning a lady to whom 
 he had proposed and by whom he had been rejected, nor could he 
 
 46Lincoln said: "If one state may secede, so may another, and 
 when all shall secede none is left to pay the debts of the Union". Any 
 schoolboy could have told him that the States could have been obli- 
 gated to pay the debts, even if all did secede. 
 
 47This stunt was: "It is said that the admission of West Vir- 
 ginia is secession and only tolerated because it is our secession. Well, 
 if we call it by that name, there is still difference enough between 
 secession against the constitution and secession for the constitution." 
 
 48Lamon, Life 0/ Lincoln, pp. 180-182; Nicolay and Hay, Works of 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 [32 1 
 
PRIVATE DAVID GARDINER TYLER, C. S. A., 1864 
 
 Age 18 years 
 
 Eldest son of John Tyler by his second marriage with Julia Gardiner 
 
 Member of the College Gompany, Washington College, 1862-1864 
 
 Private in the Rockbridge Artillery, 1864-1865 
 
 Presidential elector, 1888 
 
 State Senator, 1891-1892, 1899-1904 
 
 U. S. House of Representatives, 1893-1897 
 
 Judge State Fourteenth Judicial Circuit Court, 1904-1928 
 
have written any letter like that which Lincoln wrote to General 
 Grant in February, 1865, asking that his son, aged 22, who had 
 been kept at Harvard College, despite the draft, should be put on 
 his staff and "not in the ranks." 49 Tyler had four grandsons, pri- 
 vates in the Confederate Army, one of whom was killed and an- 
 other wounded, and two sons by his second marriage who surren- 
 dered at Appomattox aged 16 and 18. 
 
 How can it be doubted that the duty of a citizen to his coun- 
 try was better expressed by Tyler than by Lincoln? In 1847 Lin- 
 coln proposed the "Spot resolutions" and denounced the war then 
 being fought with Mexico. In 1846, when war was imminent with 
 Great Britain, Tyler, while deprecating hostilities as "the greatest 
 of calamities", wrote: "Should we be found at war, then every 
 man should do his duty and God forbid that son of mine should 
 prove recreant". In 1847, in the matter of the Mexican war, he 
 wrote : "In a conflict with a foreign power it is the duty of one 
 and all to stand by the country. Even if the war be improper in 
 its inception, there is no other mode by which we can get out of it 
 with honor". His son, Col. Robert Tyler raised a volunteer regi- 
 ment in Pennsylvania and offered it to the government in the Mexi- 
 can war. 
 
 When in 1861-65 men and newspapers in the North complained 
 of Lincoln's war with the South, Lincoln, forgetful of his course 
 in 1847, suppressed the newspapers and threw his critics into jail. 
 
 John Quincy Adams had little use for Southern slave owners, 
 but confessed in his Memoirs that Tyler's Texas move was marked 
 with "equal intrepidity and address". Alexander H. Stephens was 
 an opponent of Tyler in Congress, but, in his character as histo- 
 rian, he said 50 of his State Papers that "they compared favorably 
 in point of ability with those of any of his predecessors". Jeffer- 
 son Davis declared him "the most felicitous among the orators he 
 had known", a statement which receives support from Justice Bald- 
 win of the Supreme Court, who crossed swords with Mr. Tyler on 
 the Tariff question in 1821, and was so impressed with his elo- 
 
 49Nicolay and Hay, Works of Abraham Lincoln, II. p. 630. 
 ^Stephens, Pictorial History of the U. S., p. 47. 
 
 [33 1 
 
quence and ability that he came to his seat and predicted that he 
 would reach high station — a prediction, of which he never failed 
 to remind Mr. Tyler as he rose from step to step in political pre- 
 ferment. 51 His great speech against the tariff in 1832' made a 
 profound impression upon Ex-President Madison and Chief-Jus- 
 tice Marshall, who both wrote to him in terms of high commenda- 
 tion. 52 
 
 Coming down to more personal matters how is it possible to 
 associate Tyler with the filthy stories ascribed to Lincoln by his 
 friends, many of which are said to have been unprintable. If 
 anyone would take refuge in the hope that the responsibilities of 
 his high office raised Lincoln above this habit of indecency, they 
 are met by authentic accounts of his grossly unseemly behavior as 
 President and by the evidence of Lamon, the closest associate of 
 his lifetime, that his indulgence in gross jokes and stories was 
 "restrained by no presence and no occasion". Chandler, in his 
 Life of Governor Andrew, repeats a story how the war governor 
 of Massachusetts in pressing a matter upon Lincoln when Presi- 
 dent, was put off with a smutty joke, and Hugh McCulloch is a 
 witness to the unrefined language of the President in a story con- 
 test with Randall, his Postmaster General, after the report of 
 Sheridan's victory in the Valley of Virginia was received. (Rice, 
 Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, p. 419) 
 
 When Butler issued at New Orleans his notorious order No. 
 2'8, which Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister of England, de- 
 nounced in the British Parliament "as unfit to be written in the 
 English language," Lincoln had a fine opportunity, to show his 
 sense of decency, by revoking the order. But he did not do so, 
 and on the contrary promoted Butler to responsible positions and 
 wanted him as his running mate for the vice presidency in 1864. 
 And yet Butler is the man who, Dr. John Fiske declared, "could 
 not have understood in the smallest degree the feelings of gen- 
 tlemen". 
 
 Nor does it require any studied argument to make a Christian 
 
 ^Letters and Times of the Tylers, I. p. 334. 
 «2/&»d /. p. 439. 
 
 [34 1 
 
of John Tyler, as it does of Lincoln. As a member of the Epis- 
 copal Church he talked the language of Jesus. When he was so- 
 licited to help the son of one of his political persecutors he said," 
 ft I would seek no sweeter revenge over my enemies than to do them 
 favors." 
 
 Kindness and gentle words were natural to him. When he 
 learned of the death of Mr. Clay, who had led the Whigs in all 
 the attacks upon him, he wrote as follows: 54 "Yes, my dear Sir, 
 Mr. Clay has paid the great debt of nature which we are all sooner 
 or later to be obliged to pay. He did me great wrong and caused 
 thousands to entertain opinions of me which had no foundation in 
 truth; but in doing so he was madly ambitious, and while injur- 
 ing me he did more serious and lasting injury to his fame. His- 
 tory is the impartial arbiter to decide between us, and to her de- 
 cision I fearlessly submit myself. My feelings of anger towards 
 him are all buried in the grave. We were once intimate, and I 
 had a warm attachment and admiration for him; but he broke 
 the silver chord with a reckless hand, and his arm became too 
 short to reach the golden fruit for which he gave up friendship 
 and everything." In Shakespeare's golden words he found the 
 favorite advice which he imparted to his children in his letters: 
 "Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace to silence envious 
 tongues." 
 
 He was noted as a merciful master, and there was a mutual 
 love between him and his slaves. There is no evidence that Lin- 
 coln had ever more than a theoretic regard for the freedom of the 
 negroes, and his Emancipation measure was only a war measure, 
 forced upon him by the Radicals in his party, who threatened to 
 withhold supplies for the war if he did not issue it. (James 
 C. Welling in Rice, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln, p. 533) 
 Mr. Tyler looked to the future for the peaceful abolition of slavery, 55 
 
 ^Letters and Times of the Tylers, II. p. 265. 
 
 MlMd II. p. 499. 
 
 65in 1847 he wrote: "Climate should be left to determine the 
 question of slavery, as it will most assuredly. It has already abol- 
 ished it as far as Delaware, and if left to work out the result will at 
 no distant day produce similar effects on Delaware, Maryland and 
 Virginia." Letters and Times of the Tylers, II. p. 479. 
 
 f35 1 
 
and in 1832 as a member of a committee for the Senate he drew 
 a code for the District of Columbia which proposed to eliminate 
 the slave trade and ameliorate the condition of the negroes in the 
 District in many ways. Lincoln once figured as attorney for a 
 man who claimed a runaway slave as his property. 56 There is no 
 evidence that John Tyler ever figured in such a case, but, as he 
 states, he often appeared as attorney without pay in his own State 
 for negroes suing for freedom. 57 
 
 As to his general appearance the famous Charles Dickens, who 
 saw him in 1842, wrote 58 of his "mild and pleasant appearance" 
 and "his remarkably unaffected, gentlemanly and agreeable man- 
 ners", and added that "in his whole carriage and demeanor he be- 
 came his station singularly well." 
 
 Quite in contrast was the description 59 of Lincoln by Co*. 
 Theodore Lyman of Massachusetts, an officer on General Meade's 
 staff, who saw Lincoln not long before his death : "There was an 
 expression of plebeian vulgarity in his face. You recognize the 
 recounter of coarse stories." 
 
 There could be no two weightier witnesses than Dickens and 
 Lyman. Dickens was a stranger and disinterested, and Lyman 
 was a cultivated Federal officer, friendly to Lincoln. 
 
 Lyon G. Tyler 
 
 sestephenson, Lincoln, p. 76. 
 
 57Letter to H. S. Foote in Letters and Times of the Tylers, II. p. 
 489. 
 
 "Dickens, American Notes. 
 ^Meade's Headquarters, p. 324. 
 
 36 
 
APPENDIX 
 Note upon Secession (Ante p. 22) 
 
 Lincoln made the preservation of the Union his justification of a 
 destructive war on the South, and in doing so logically condemned 
 George Washington, who broke the integrity of the British nation in 
 defence of self-government of the American Colonies. The majority 
 of Northern writers, since 1865, notably J. F. Rhodes, as if conscious 
 of the weakness of Lincoln's position, have made the effort to side- 
 track the principle of self-determination by emphasizing slavery as the 
 cause of the war. Thus Rhodes, in his History, uses this language: 
 "The cause of the war was slavery, the South fought to preserve and 
 extend it. The North fought to repress and further restrict it." This 
 statement he has the impudence to make in face of another that "the 
 objects mentioned were avowed by neither side". In answer, the cause 
 of the war was not slavery, for there would have been no war had 
 Lincoln not denied the right of self-determination. Nor did the South 
 fight to preserve and extend slavery, for had Lincoln withdrawn the 
 troops from Fort Sumter and recognized the independence of the Con- 
 federacy, the Southerners would have done no lighting at all. Indeed, 
 by secession the Southerners deliberately gave up the chief bone of 
 contention with the North, the right of taking their slaves into the 
 territories and thereby extending slavery. 
 
 Indeed, if Rhodes' interpretation of the war is correct, Lincoln, in 
 repeatedly denying that he was fighting to free the slaves, must ap- 
 pear as either lacking in sense or sincerity — a fool or a hypocrite. But 
 it is not correct. 
 
 Nor was slavery the cause of secession, for slavery was antecedent 
 to the Constitution and coexistent with the Federal Union. It was un- 
 doubtedly the intemperate agitation in the North against the South, 
 added to the numberless past grievances, that prepared the way for se- 
 cession. But the actual secession turned in the Cotton States upon the 
 election of a sectional president on a platform that defied the Supreme 
 Court, and in Virginia and the other border States upon the uncon- 
 stitutionality of Lincoln's resolve to coerce the seceding States. And 
 as for the matter of war, there is overwhelming evidence that Lin- 
 coln's final determination turned, not upon secession, nor upon slav- 
 ery, nor upon preserving the Union, but upon the tariff. "What will 
 become of my tariff if I allow the Southern States, with their ten cent 
 tf.riff to go?" was the question asked by him on three several occasions. 
 It was currently feared that, as a result of the low tariff of the South, 
 that section would become the ruling power in North America, and 
 "grass would grow in the streets of New York". 
 
 37 
 
Secession and war had nothing in common, although every effort 
 has been made by Northern writers to confound the two. Secession 
 was a mere civil procedure and involved no violence, and it depended 
 upon Lincoln whether he would have war or not. 
 
 The linking of slavery with secession and war is merely an effort 
 to obscure the issue — "a red herring drawn across the trail". How 
 can it be denied that, whatever the occasion of secession, the primary 
 object of the South on seceding was to shake off all connection with 
 the North' There was do time during the war that the South would 
 not have stopped fighting if its independence had been recognized, and 
 for independence the South was prepared to sacrifice even their slaves, 
 as was shown by the mission of Duncan F. Kenner to England, towards 
 the close of the war, for recognition with the promise of freedom to 
 the slaves. What makes Lincoln especially censurable, from his own or 
 any other standpoint, was his involving the country in a great war 
 without calling Congress to get its consent. 
 
 Mr. Tyler's Care of the Finances (p. 29) 
 
 Jefferson Davis gives a remarkable instance of Mr. Tyler's hon- 
 esty. Mr. Webster became involved in charges in 1846 respecting the 
 secret service fund, and Mr. Tyler went to Washington to defend hi 3 
 former Secretary of State. He appeared before the Senate Committee 
 and absolved Mr. Webster from all responsibility by assuming all blame, 
 if there was any, to himself. Mr. Davis, who was a member of the 
 committee, records: 
 
 "The Ex-President declined the offer of the book containing the 
 list of warrants drawn against the fund, saying that he was willing 
 to state all that he could remember, but did not desire any aid to his 
 memory. He then recited the warrants drawn, giving the name and 
 amount in each case, and thus covered all which the record contained. 
 It semed to me such an extraordinary exhibition of memory that I took 
 occasion to remark upon it, when he modestly replied that supposing 
 those disbursements would never be inquired into he had felt more 
 than the ordinary weight of responsibility in regard to them, and 
 could not probably have so well remembered the expenditure of any 
 other fund." (Letters and Times of the Tylers III, p. 183.) 
 
 Lincoln's "Nice Utterances" (p. 23) 
 
 Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural "with malice to none and 
 charity to all", but was there not a touch of malice and an absence 
 of all charity when in almost the same breath he stressed the lash 
 in connection with slavery and declared that the negro had no re- 
 quital for his service of 250 years? 
 
 [38 1 
 
It is a remarkable fact that the government which freed the 
 slaves, tried to incite them to insurrection and actually placed them 
 above their masters, uses today the same argument for keeping the 
 Filipinos under political duress which the slave owners used for keep- 
 ing the negroes in slavery. They are not fit to act for themselves and 
 must be trained. Just lately Henry L. Stimson, Governor of the 
 Philippine Islands, stressed the view, in his inaugural address, that 
 "only through industrial and economic progress could a larger measure 
 of self-government be obtained". It has been well said by an accu- 
 rate writer, Paul S. Whitcomb, that "the first need of a backward 
 race is not liberty but discipline, and labor is the greatest disciplina- 
 rian known" (Whitcomb, "Lincoln and Democracy" in Tyler's Quar- 
 terly Hist, and Gen. Mag. vol. IX, pp. 1-33). 
 
 Lincoln's Arguments in Favor of Freedom for the Slaves (p. 32) 
 
 In Lincoln's Missouri compromise speech he said: "I trust I un- 
 derstand and truly estimate the right of self-government. * * * When 
 the white man governs himself that is self-government, but when he 
 governs himself and also governs another man, that is more than self- 
 government — that of despotism." Why was it not equally true that 
 when the people of the North govern themselves that is self-govern- 
 ment, but when they govern themselves and also govern the people of 
 the South that is more than self-government — that is despotism. To as- 
 sert that the Southern States could not secede was the same as assert- 
 ing that a negro could sell himself into slavery. No contract of any 
 kind can be made perpetual, and Lord Blackburn, an English jurist, 
 has reasoned that to deny a stockholder the right to sell his shares is 
 tantamount to confiscation (Whitcomb, Lincoln and Democracy). 
 
 Was Lincoln Kind? (p. 23) 
 
 Northern writers have become ashamed of the way the South has 
 been treated, and they have magnified some vague words of Lincoln 
 into an assurance of a course of kindness to the South, had he sur- 
 vived the war. As a matter of fact, no other President said so many 
 unkind things of the South. Thus Lincoln's second inaugural has been 
 greatly exploited, but, if relieved of its sophistical rhetoric, it contains 
 a scandalous misrepresentation. He said, "Fondly do we hope, fer- 
 vently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass 
 away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by 
 the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be 
 sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid 
 with another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years 
 ago, so still it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and 
 righteous altogether." 
 
 [39 1 
 
Plainly stated this is a charge that the negroes were inhumanly 
 treated by Southerners and received no recompense for their labor. 
 As a matter of fact, the negroes were the most spoiled domestics in the 
 world, "The negro was the beneficiary, rather than the victim of 
 slavery, as Booker T. Washington has admitted. Lincoln's talk about 
 'unrequited toil' ignores the fact that the condition of the negro was 
 better under slavery than it was in Africa, it ignores the fact that, as 
 compared with white laborers of equal mentality, he was not deprived 
 of any substantial rights, it ignores the economic and social status of 
 so-called free labor which bordered closely upon serfdom, and it ignores 
 the contribution of management to production. The probability is 
 that the negro received at least as great a share in proportion to what 
 he contributed to production, as did the technically free Northern la- 
 borer. In any event Civil War was no more a legitimate remedy for 
 slavery than were the reputedly revolutionary methods of the I. W. W. 
 a proper remedy for the wrongs inflicted upon free labor by Northern 
 capitalists." (Paul S. Whitcomb in Lincoln and Democracy, Tyler's 
 Quarterly Historical and Genealogical Magazine, IX. p. 18.) 
 
 Again the term "rebel" as applied to the Americans by the British 
 was resented because it was made to imply not merely a political crime 
 but a moral one (Graydon's Memoirs). Lincoln outdid the British, and 
 described the Southerners as "insurgent rebels, who have been so long 
 waging a cruel war against the government of the United States for 
 its overthrow" (Proclamation September 3, 1864). Of course, the gov- 
 ernment of the United States would not have been overthrown by the 
 success of the South, any more than the British government was over- 
 thrown by the success of the Americans. The spirit of Lincoln is seen 
 in another proclamation, July 7, 1864, in which he appointed a day of 
 prayer to soften the hearts of the Rebels, and cause them to lay down 
 their arms "that they may not be utterly destroyed". Rather than 
 lose the war which would have ruined him politically, there can be no 
 doubt that Lincoln would have consented to the entire annihilation of 
 the Southern people, men, women and children. 
 
 Not the least evil of Lincoln's example was his putting rhetoric 
 ahead of truth. Contributors to newspapers and magazines write 
 more for effect than for fact. Was Lincoln kind? 
 
 Beveridge and Lincoln. 
 
 H 2 n j_ A - J - Beveridge set out to write a monumental Life of Lin- 
 coln, but death overtook him ere he completed his work. Two vol- 
 umes, however, have appeared covering the early part of Lincoln's 
 Life. This is an accurate summary of their contents by Major Ru- 
 pert Hughes, published in the Chicago Tribune for December 8, 1928: 
 
 [40 1 
 
"Beveridge alleges (and, what is more, proves) that Lincoln's 
 father did not picturesquely oppose the boy's study; that Lincoln's 
 love affair with Ann Rutledge was carried on while she was really en- 
 gaged to another man; that he did not acquit a client by the use of 
 the wrong almanac; that he was not greatly excited over slavery till 
 well on in life; that he appeared as attorney for a slave-holder try- 
 ing to drag a chattel back across the border; that he was a machine 
 politician who was more ambitious than conscientious; that he used 
 anonymous letters lavishly in his campaigns and when challenged 
 to a duel by a man he defamed thus, not only broke the law by ac- 
 cepting the challenge, but violated all codes by insisting on a weapon 
 that left his brave and honorable opponent at a fatal disadvantage. 
 
 "Furthermore, Beveridge proves that Lincoln advocated the Mexi- 
 can war when it meant his election, then, after getting to congress, 
 made such speeches against the prosecution of it that his own con- 
 stituents called him "dastardly" and "a Benedict Arnold" and he 
 dared not go home till after the hostility died out. Beveridge shows 
 that none of Lincoln's family voted for or sided with him, and that 
 he did not like his own father. He is pictured as slipshod and slovenly 
 and shiftless, yet shifty in principles to such an appalling degree 
 that some of his debts are still unpaid. There was so much dirt in 
 one corner of his office that weeds grew up in it. 
 
 "He verifies beyond dispute Lincoln's passion for funny stories, 
 particularly for dirty ones; he describes a "repellent" poem he wrote, 
 a salacious wedding burlesque too indecent to quote, proves that he 
 Kept a liquor store, that he had no love for beauty, and never got on 
 well with women. 
 
 "Like Carl Sandburg, Beveridge gives the evidence that Lincoln's 
 reason for suddenly putting off his wedding was the intensely unro- 
 mantic, however dramatic, discovery that he was in need of medical 
 treatment and asserts that Lincoln's melancholias verging on insanity 
 were due to this mishap. He presents Mrs. Lincoln as a half mad 
 savage, a she wolf and a miser. 
 
 "These and a thousand other details of this astounding biography 
 have not stirred a ripple in the news columns, though tornadoes of 
 wrath have greeted others who have disclosed far less about other 
 heroes and heroines. 
 
 "But Lincoln has always been chosen for our homely hero and 
 everybody welcomes anything that makes him homelier. This Bever- 
 idge does with amazing success, marching through the records and 
 knocking over many even of the homeliest legends. 
 
 "Such manifest truth is in everything he compiles that he has 
 silenced even those peculiar people who believe in telling lies about 
 our statesmen in order to build up ideals for the young." 
 
 [411 
 

 m 
 

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