Yale University Libtaty

39002002515493

INCOLNINION

NATHANIEL W.
STEPHENSON

George StJohn Sheffield

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE UNION

ABRAHAM LINCOLN EDITION
VOLUME 29
THE CHRONICLES
OF AMERICA SERIES
ALLEN JOHNSON
EDITOR
GERHARD R. LOMER
CHARLES W. JEFFERYS
ASSISTANT EDITORS

GRAVURE _ANQER5EN_LAMB

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ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Photograph by Mathew Brady, Washington, February 23, 1863.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
AND THE UNION
A CHRONICLE OF THE
EMBATTLED NORTH
BY NATHANIEL W. STEPHENSON

NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
TORONTO: GLASGOW. BROOK & CO.
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
1918

Copyright, 1918, by Yale University Press

TO
CHARLES JACOB LD7INGOOD

PREFACE
In spite of a lapse of sixty years, the historian
who attempts to portray the era of Lincoln is still
faced with almost impossible demands and still
confronted with arbitrary points of view. It is
out of the question, in a book so brief as this
must necessarily be, to meet all these demands or
to alter these points of view. Interests that are
purely local, events that did not with certainty
contribute to the final outcome, gossip, as well as
the mere caprice of the scholar — these must ob
viously be set aside.
The task imposed upon the volume resolves
itself, at bottom, into just two questions: Why
was there a war? Why was the Lincoln Govern
ment successful? With these two questions al
ways in mind I have endeavored, on the one hand,
to select and consolidate the pertinent facts; on
the other, to make clear, even at the cost of

x PREFACE
explanatory comment, their relations in the histori
cal sequence of cause and effect. This purpose has
particularly governed the use of biographical
matter, in which the main illustration, of course,
is the career of Lincoln. Prominent as it is here
made, the Lincoln matter all bears in the last
analysis on one point — his control of his support.
On that the history of the North hinges. The
personal and private Lincoln it is impossible to
present within these pages. The public Lincoln,
including the character of his mind, is here the
essential matter.
The bibliography at the close of the volume in
dicates the more important books which are at
the reader's disposal and which it is unfortunate
not to know.
Nathaniel W. Stephenson.
Charleston, S. C,
March. 1918.

CONTENTS
I. THE TWO NATIONS OF THE RE
PUBLIC Page 1
II. THE PARTY OF POLITICAL EVASION " 19
III. THE POLITICIANS AND THE NEW DAY " 40
IV. THE CRISIS " 59
V. SECESSION " 81
VI. WAR " 102
VH. LINCOLN " 126
VIII. THE RULE OF LINCOLN " 142
EX. THE CRUCIAL MATTER " 168
X. THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY " 192
XI. NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR " 204
XH. THE MEXICAN EPISODE " 224
XIII. THE PLEBISCITE OF 1864 " 233
XIV. LINCOLN'S FINAL INTENTIONS " 251
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE " 261
INDEX " 265

ILLUSTRATIONS
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Photograph by Mathew Brady, Washington,
February 23, 1863. Frontispiece
STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS
Engraving from a photograph taken about I860. Facing page SO
JAMES BUCHANAN
Drawing from a photograph. " " Jf8
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Photograph by Brady, taken at the time of
Lincoln's Cooper Institute speech, February
27, 1860. Lincoln frequently remarked that
this portrait and the Cooper Institute speech
made him President. " " 6i
WILLIAM H. SEWARD
Photograph by Brady. In the collection of
L. C. Handy, Washington. " " 110
GROUP OF FURNITURE FROM LINCOLN'S
HOUSE IN SPRINGFIELD
In the collection of the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. " The sofa, work
table, and chairs were formerly in the possession
of Messrs. Vanuxem and Potter, lawyers, of
Philadelphia. The sofa, which is of mahogany
veneer, upholstered with hair cloth, was made
to order for Lincoln, he being unable to find one

xiv ILLUSTRATIONS

ready made which was long enough for him.
When Lincoln left Springfield, Illinois, for
Washington, much of the furniture of his house
was sold. This sofa was bought for $100 by
Mr. John E. Roll, who sold it to the Lincoln
Memorial Collection of Chicago." — Life of
Lincoln, by Ida M. Tarbell. Facing page 128
ORIGINAL DRAFT OF LINCOLN'S GETTYS
BURG ADDRESS
Lincoln held this copy in his hand while speak
ing. The first page is written in ink, on White
House stationery in use at that time; the second
page is in pencil on a larger sheet of paper. Both
sheets are in the Library of Congress, Washing
ton. Reproduced in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address,
by Orton H. Carmichael. " " HO
EDWIN M. STANTON
Photograph by Brady. " " ISO
GIDEON WELLES. Photograph by Brady.
SALMON P. CHASE. Photograph by Brady. " " m
THURLOW WEED. Photograph by Brady. In
the collection of L. C. Handy, Washington.
HORACE GREELEY. Photograph by Sarony. " " 248

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE UNION
CHAPTER I
THE TWO NATIONS OF THE REPUBLIC
"There is really no Union now between the
North and the South. . . . No two nations upon
earth entertain feelings of more bitter rancor to
ward each other than these two nations of the
Republic. "
This remark, which is attributed to Senator
Benjamin Wade of Ohio, provides the key to Amer
ican politics in the decade following the Compro
mise of 1850. To trace this division of the people
to its ultimate source, one would have to go far
back into colonial times. There was a process of
natural selection at work, in the intellectual and
economic conditions of the eighteenth century,
which inevitably drew together certain types and
generated certain forces. This process manifested

2 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
itself in one form in His Majesty's plantations of
the North, and in another in those of the South.
As early as the opening of the nineteenth century,
the social tendencies of the two regions were al
ready so far alienated that they involved differ
ences which would scarcely admit of reconciliation.
It is a truism to say that these differences grad
ually were concentrated around fundamentally
different conceptions of labor — of slave labor in
the South, of free labor in the North.
Nothing, however, could be more fallacious
than the notion that this growing antagonism was
controlled by any deliberate purpose in either
part of the country. It was apparently necessary
that this Republic in its evolution should proceed
from confederation to nationality through an in
termediate and apparently reactionary period of
sectionalism. In this stage of American history,
slavery was without doubt one of the prime fac
tors involved, but sectional consciousness, with all
its emotional and psychological implications, was
the fundamental impulse of the stern events which
occurred between 1850 and 1865.
By the middle of the nineteenth century the
more influential Southerners had come generally
to regard their section of the country as a distinct

THE TWO NATIONS OF THE REPUBLIC 3
social unit. The next step was inevitable. The
South began to regard itself as a separate political
unit. It is the distinction of Calhoun that he
showed himself toward the end sufficiently flexible
to become the exponent of this new political im
pulse. With all his earlier fire he encouraged the
Southerners to withdraw from the so-called na
tional parties, Whig and Democratic, to establish
instead a single Southern party, and to formu
late, by means of popular conventions, a single
concerted policy for the entire South.
At that time such a policy was still regarded,
from the Southern point of view, as a radical idea.
In 1851, a battle was fought at the polls between
the two Southern ideas — the old one which up
held separate state independence, and the new one
which virtually acknowledged Southern national
ity. The issue at stake was the acceptance or the
rejection of a compromise which could bring no
permanent settlement of fundamental differences.
Nowhere was the battle more interesting than
in South Carolina, for it brought into clear light
that powerful Southern leader who ten years later
was to be the master-spirit of secession — Robert
Barnwell Rhett. In 1851 he fought hard to revive
the older idea of state independence and to carry

4 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
South Carolina as a separate state out of the Union.
Accordingly it is significant of the progress that
the consolidation of the South had made at this
date that on this issue Rhett encountered general
opposition. This difference of opinion as to policy
was not inspired, as some historians have too hast
ily concluded, by national feeling. Scarcely any of
the leaders of the opposition considered the Federal
Government supreme over the State Government.
They opposed Rhett because they felt secession
to be at that moment bad policy. They saw that,
if South Carolina went out of the Union in 1851,
she would go alone and the solidarity of the South
would be broken. They were not lacking in sec
tional patriotism, but their conception of the best
solution of the complex problem differed from that
advocated by Rhett. Their position was summed
up by Langdon Cheves when he said, "To secede
now is to secede from the South as well as from the
Union." On the basis of this belief they defeated
Rhett and put off secession for ten years.
There is no analogous single event in the history
of the North, previous to the war, which reveals
with similar clearness a sectional consciousness.
On the surface the life of the people seemed, indeed,
to belie the existence of any such feeling. The

THE TWO NATIONS OF THE REPUBLIC 5
Northern capitalist class aimed steadily at being
non-sectional, and it made free use of the word
national. We must not forget, however, that all
sorts of people talked of national institutions, and
that the term, until we look closely into the mind
of the person using it, signifies nothing. Because
the Northern capitalist repudiated the idea of
sectionalism, it does not follow that he set up any
other in its place. Instead of accomplishing any
thing so positive, he remained for the most part a
negative quantity.
Living usually somewhere between Maine and
Ohio, he made it his chief purpose to regulate the
outflow of manufactures from that industrial re
gion and the inflow of agricultural produce. The
movement of the latter eastward and northward,
and the former westward and southward, repre
sents roughly but graphically the movement of the
business of that time. The Easterner lived in fear
of losing the money which was owed him in the
South. As the political and economic conditions
of the day made unlikely any serious clash of
interest between the East and the West, he had
little solicitude about his accounts beyond the
AUeghanies. But a gradually developing hostility
between North and South was accompanied by a

6 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
parallel anxiety on the part of Northern capital for
its Southern investments and debts. When the
war eventually became inevitable, $200,000,000
were owed by Southerners to Northerners. For
those days this was an indebtedness of no incon
siderable magnitude. The Northern capitalists,
preoccupied with their desire to secure this ac
count, were naturally eager to repudiate section
alism, and talked about national interests with
a zeal that has sometimes been misinterpreted.
Throughout the entire period from 1850 to 1865,
capital in American politics played for the most
part a negative r61e, and not until after the
war did it become independent of its Southern
interests. For the real North of that day we must turn to
those Northerners who felt sufficient unto them
selves and whose political convictions were un
biased by personal interests which were involved in
other parts of the country. We must listen to the
distinct voices that gave utterance to their views,
and we must observe the definite schemes of their
political leaders. Directly we do this, the fact
stares us in the face that the North had become a
democracy. The rich man no longer played the
r61e of grandee, for by this time there had arisen

THE TWO NATIONS OF THE REPUBLIC 7
those two groups which, between them, are the
ruin of aristocracy — the class of prosperous labor
ers and the group of well-to-do intellectuals. Of
these, the latter gave utterance, first, to their faith
in democracy, and then, with all the intensity of
partisan zeal, to their sense of the North as the
agent of democracy. The prosperous laborers ap
plauded this expression of an opinion in which they
thoroughly1 believed and at the same time gave
their willing support to a land policy that was
typically Northern.
American economic history in the middle third
of the century is essentially the record of a struggle
to gain possession of public land. The opposing
forces were the South, which strove to perpetuate
by this means a social system that was funda
mentally aristocratic, and the North, which sought
by the same means to foster its ideal of democracy.
Though the South, with the aid of its economic
vassal, the Northern capitalist class, was for some
time able to check the land-hunger of the Northern
democrats, it was never able entirely to secure the
control which it desired, but was always faced with
the steady and continued opposition of the real
North. On one occasion in Congress, the heart
of the whole matter was clearly shown, for at the

8 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
very moment when the Northerners of the demo
cratic class were pressing one of their frequent
schemes for free land, Southerners and their
sympathetic Northern henchmen were furthering
a scheme that aimed at the purchase of Cuba.
From the impatient sneer of a Southerner that the
Northerners sought to give "land to the landless"
and the retort that the Southerners seemed equally
anxious to supply "niggers to the niggerless," it
can be seen that American history is sometimes
better summed up by angry politicians than by
historians. We must be on our guard, however, against
ascribing to either side too precise a consciousness
of its own motives. The old days when the Amer
ican Civil War was conceived as a clear-cut issue
are as a watch in the night that has passed, and we
now realize that historical movements are almost
without exception the resultants of many motives.
We have come to recognize that men have always
misapprehended themselves, contradicted them
selves, obeyed primal impulses, and then deluded
themselves with sophistications upon the springs
of action. In a word, unaware of what they are
doing, men allow their aesthetic and dramatic
senses to shape their conceptions of their own lives.

THE TWO NATIONS OF THE REPUBLIC 9
That "great impersonal artist," of whom Matthew
Arnold has so much to say, is at work in us all,
subtly making us into illusions, first to ourselves
and later to the historian. It is the business of
history, as of analytic fiction, both to feel the
power of these illusions and to work through them
in imagination to the dim but potent motives on
which they rest. We are prone to forget that we
act from subconscious quite as often as from con
scious influences, from motives that arise out of
the dim parts of our being, from the midst of shad
ows that psychology has only recently begun to
lift, where senses subtler than the obvious make
use of fear, intuition, prejudice, habit, and illusion,
and too often play with us as the wind with blown
leaves. True as this is of man individually, it is even
more fundamentally true of man collectively, of
parties, of peoples. It is a strikingly accurate
description of the relation of the two American
nations that now found themselves opposed with
in the Republic. Neither fully understood the
other. Each had a social ideal that was deeper
laid than any theory of government or than any
commercial or humanitarian interest. Both knew
vaguely but with sure instinct that their interests

10 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
and ideals were irreconcilable. Each felt in its
heart the deadly passion of self-preservation. It
was because, in both North and South, men were
subtly conscious that a whole social system was
the issue at stake, and because on each side they
believed in their own ideals with their whole souls,
that, when the time came for their trial by fire,
they went to their deaths singing.
In the South there still obtained the ancient
ideal of territorial aristocracy. Those long tradi
tions of the Western European peoples which had
made of the great landholder a petty prince lay
beneath the plantation life of the Southern States.
The feudal spirit, revived in a softer world and
under brighter skies, gave to those who partici
pated in it the same graces and somewhat the
same capacities which it gave to the knightly class
in the days of Roland — courage, frankness, gen
erosity, ability in affairs, a sense of responsibility,
the consciousness of caste. The mode of life which
the planters enjoyed and which the inferior whites
regarded as a social paradise was a life of complete
deliverance from toil, of disinterested participation
in local government, of absolute personal freedom
— a life in which the mechanical action of law was
less important than the more human compulsion

THE TWO NATIONS OF THE REPUBLIC 11
of social opinion, and in which private differences
were settled under the code of honor.
This Southern life was carried on in the most ap
propriate environment. On a landed estate, often
larger than many of Europe's baronies, stood the
great house of the planter, usually a graceful ex
ample of colonial architecture, surrounded by
stately gardens. This mansion was the center of
a boundless hospitality; guests were always com
ing and going; the hostess and her daughters were
the very symbols of kindliness and ease. To
think of such houses was to think of innumerable
joyous days; of gentlemen galloping across coun
try after the hounds; of coaches lumbering along
avenues of noble oaks, bringing handsome women
to visit the mansion; of great f eastings; of nights of
music and dancing; above all, of the great festival
of Christmas, celebrated much as had been the
custom in "Merrie England" centuries before.
Below the surface of this bright world lay the
enslaved black race. In the minds of many South
erners it was always a secret burden from which
they saw no means of freeing themselves. To eman
cipate the slaves, and thereby to create a popula
tion of free blacks, was generally considered, from
the white point of view, an impossible solution of

12 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
the problem. The Southerners usually believed
that the African could be tamed only in small
groups and when constantly surrounded by white
influence, as in the case of house servants. Though
a few great capitalists had taken up the idea that
the deliberate exploitation of the blacks was the
high prerogative of the whites, the general senti
ment of the Southern people was more truly
expressed by Toombs when he said: "The question
is not whether we could be more prosperous and
happy with these three and a half million slaves in
Africa, and their places filled with an equal num
ber of hardy, intelligent, and enterprising citizens
of the superior race; but it is simply whether,
while we have them among us, we would be most
prosperous with them in freedom or in bondage."
The Southern people, in the majority of in
stances, had no hatred of the blacks. In the main
they led their free, spirited, and gracious life, con
vinced that the maintenance of slavery was but
making the best of circumstances which were be
yond their control. It was these Southern people
who were to hear from afar the horrible indictment
of all their motives by the Abolitionists and who
were to react in a growing bitterness and distrust
toward everything Northern.

THE TWO NATIONS OF THE REPUBLIC 13
But of these Southern people the average North
erner knew nothing. He knew the South only
on its least attractive side of professional politics.
For there was a group of powerful magnates, rich
planters or " slave barons," who easily made their
way into Congress, and who played into the hands
of the Northern capitalists, for a purpose similar
to theirs. It was these men who forced the issue
upon slavery; they warned the common people of
the North to mind their own business; and for do
ing so they were warmly applauded by the North
ern capitalist class. It was therefore in opposition
to the whole American world of organized capital
that the Northern masses demanded the use of
"the Northern hammer" — as Sumner put it, in
one of his most furious speeches — in their aim to
destroy a section where, intuitively, they felt their
democratic ideal could not be realized.
And what was that ideal? Merely to answer
democracy is to dodge the fundamental question.
The North was too complex in its social structure
and too multitudinous in its interests to confine
itself to one type of life. It included all sorts
and conditions of men — from the most gracious
of scholars who lived in romantic ease among his
German and Spanish books, and whose lovely house

14 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
in Cambridge is forever associated with the noble
presence of Washington, to the hardy frontiersman,
breaking the new soil of his Western claim, whose
wife at sunset shaded her tired eyes, under a hand
rough with labor, as she stood on the threshold of
her log cabin, watching for the return of her man
across the weedy fields which he had not yet fully
subdued. Far apart as were Longfellow and this
toiler of the West, they yet felt themselves to be
one in purpose. They were democrats, but not
after the simple, elementary manner of the demo
crats at the opening of the century. In the North,
there had come to life a peculiar phase of idealism
that had touched democracy with mysticism and
had added to it a vague but genuine romance.
This new vision of the destiny of the country had
the practical effect of making the Northerners
identify themselves in their imaginations with all
mankind and in creating in them an enthusiastic
desire, not only to give to every American a home
of his own, but also to throw open the gates of the
nation and to share the wealth of America with the
poor of all the world. In very truth, it was their
dominating passion to give "land to the landless."
Here was the clue to much of their attitude toward
the South. Most of these Northern dreamers gave

THE TWO NATIONS OF THE REPUBLIC 15
little or no thought to slavery itself; but they felt
that the section which maintained such a system
was so committed to aristocracy that any real
friendship with it was impossible.
We are thus forced to conceive the American
Republic in the years immediately following the
Compromise of 1850 as, in effect, a dual nation,
without a common loyalty between the two parts.
Before long the most significant of the great North
erners of the time was to describe this impossible
condition by the appropriate metaphor of a house
divided against itself. It was not, however, until
eight years after the division of the country had
been acknowledged in 1850 that these words were
uttered. In those eight years both sections awoke
to the seriousness of the differences that they had
admitted. Both perceived that, instead of solv
ing their problem in 1850, they had merely drawn
sharply the lines of future conflict. In every
thoughtful mind there arose the same alternative
questions: Is there no solution but fighting it out
until one side destroys the other, or we end as
two nations confessedly independent? Or is there
some conceivable new outlet for this opposition of
energy on the part of the sections, some new mode
of permanent adjustment?

16 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
It was at the moment when thinking men were
asking these questions that one of the nimblest of
politicians took the center of the stage. Stephen
A. Douglas was far-sighted enough to understand
the land-hunger of the time. One is tempted to
add that his ear was to the ground. The state
ment will not, however, go unchallenged, for able
apologists have their good word to say for Douglas.
Though in the main, the traditional view of him
as the prince of political jugglers still holds its
own, let us admit that his bold, rough spirit, filled
as it was with political daring, was not without its
strange vein of idealism. And then let us repeat
that his ear was to the ground. Much careful
research has indeed been expended in seeking to
determine who originated the policy which, about
1853, Douglas decided to make his own. There
has also been much dispute about his motives.
Most of us, however, see in his course of action an
instance of playing the game of politics with an
audacity that was magnificent.
His conduct may well have been the result of a
combination of motives which included a desire to
retain the favor of the Northwest, a wish to pave
the way to his candidacy for the Presidency, the
intention to enlist the aid of the South as well as

THE TWO NATIONS OF, THE REPUBLIC 17
that of his own locality, and perhaps the hope that
he was performing a service of real value to his
country. That is, he saw that the favor of his
own Northwest would be lavished upon any man
who opened up to settlement the rich lands be
yond Iowa and Missouri which were still held by
the Indians, and for which the Westerners were
clamoring. Furthermore, they wanted a railroad
that would reach to the Pacific. There were, how
ever, local entanglements and political cross-pur
poses which involved the interests of the free State
of Illinois and those of the slave State of Missouri.
Touglas's great stroke was a programme for har
monizing all these conflicting interests and for
drawing together the West and the South. Slave
holders were to be given what at that moment
they wanted most — an opportunity to expand in
to that territory to the north and west of Missouri
which had been made free by the Compromise of
1820, while the free Northwest was to have its
railroad to the coast and also its chance to expand
into the Indian country. Douglas thus became
the champion of a bill which would organize two
new territories, Kansas and Nebraska, but which
would leave the settlers in each to decide whether
slavery or free labor should prevail within their

18 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
boundaries. This territorial scheme was accepted
by a Congress in which the Southerners and their
Northern allies held control, and what is known
as the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was signed by Presi
dent Pierce on May 30, 1854. T
1 The origin of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill has been a much dis
cussed subject among historians in recent years. The older view
that Douglas was simply playing into the hands of the "slave-
power" by sacrificing Kansas, is no longer tenable. This point
has been elaborated by Allen Johnson in his study of Douglas
(Stephen A. Douglas: a Study in American Politics). In his Re
peal of the Missouri Compromise, P. O. Ray contends that the
legislation of 1854 originated in a factional controversy in Mis
souri, and that Douglas merely served the interests of the pro-
slavery group led by Senator David R. Atchinson of Missouri.
Still another point of view is that presented in the Genesis of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, by F. H. Hodder, who would explain not
only the division of the Nebraska Territory into Kansas and
Nebraska, but the object of the entire bill by the insistent efforts
of promoters of the Pacific railroad scheme to secure a right of
way through Nebraska. This project involved the organization
of a territorial government and the repeal of the Missouri Com
promise. Douglas was deeply interested in the western railroad
interests and carried through the necessary legislation.

CHAPTER II
THE PARTY OF POLITICAL EVASION
In order to understand Douglas one must under
stand the Democratic party of 1854 in which
Douglas was a conspicuous leader. The Demo
crats boasted that they were the only really na
tional party and contended that their rivals, the
Whigs and the Know-Nothings, were merely the
representatives of localities or classes. Sectional
ism was the favorite charge which the Democrats
brought against their enemies; and yet it was upon
these very Democrats that the slaveholders had
hitherto relied, and it was upon certain members
of this party that the label, "Northern men with
Southern principles," had been bestowed.
The label was not, however, altogether fair, for
the motives of the Democrats were deeply rooted
in their own peculiar temperament. In the last
analysis, what had held their organization together,
and what had enabled them to dominate politics
19

20 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
for nearly the span of a generation, was their faith
in a principle that then appealed powerfully, and
that still appeals, to much in the American char
acter. This was the principle of negative action
on the part of the government — the old idea that
the government should do as little as possible and
should confine itself practically to the duties of the
policeman. This principle has seemed always to
express to the average mind that traditional in
dividualism which is an inheritance of the Anglo-
Saxon race. In America, in the middle of the
nineteenth century, it reenf orced that tradition of
local independence which was strong throughout
the West and doubly strong in the South. Then,
too, the Democratic party still spoke the language
of the theoretical Democracy inherited from Jeffer
son. And Americans have always been the slaves
of phrases!
Furthermore, the close alliance of the Northern
party machine with the South made it, generally,
an object of care for all those Northern interests
that depended on the Southern market. As to the
Southerners, their relation with this party has
two distinct chapters. The first embraced the
twenty years preceding the Compromise of 1850,
and may be thought of as merging into the second

STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS
Engraving from a.phbtograph taken about 1860.

THE PARTY OF POLITICAL EVASION 21
during three or four years following the great
equivocation. In that period, while the anti-
slavery crusade was taking form, the aim of South
ern politicians was mainly negative. "Let us
alone," was their chief demand. Though aggres
sive in their policy, they were too far-sighted to
demand of the North any positive course in favor
of slavery. The rise of a new type of Southern
politician, however, created a different situation
and began a second chapter in the relation between
the South and the Democratic party machine in
the North. But of that hereafter. Until 1854,
it was the obvious part of wisdom for Southerners
to cooperate as far as possible with that party
whose cardinal idea was that the government
should come as near as conceivable to a system of
non-interference; that it should not interfere with
business, and therefore oppose a tariff; that it
should not interfere with local government, and
therefore applaud states rights; that it should not
interfere with slavery, and therefore frown upon
militant abolition. Its policy was, to adopt a
familiar phrase, one of masterly inactivity. In
deed it may well be called the party of political
evasion. It was a huge, loose confederacy of
differing political groups, embracing paupers and

22 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
millionaires, moderate anti-slavery men and slave
barons, all of whom were held together by the
unreliable bond of an agreement not to tread on
each other's toes.
Of this party Douglas was the typical represen
tative, both in strength and weakness. He had
all its pliability, its good humor, its broad and
easy way with things, its passion for playing pol
itics. Nevertheless, in calling upon the believers
in political evasion to consent for this once to
reverse their principle and to endorse a positive
action, he had taken a great risk. Would their
sporting sense of politics as a gigantic game carry
him through successfully? He knew that there
was a hard fight before him, but with the courage
of a great political strategist, and proudly confi
dent in his hold upon the main body of his party,
he prepared for both the attacks and the defec
tions that were inevitable.
Defections, indeed, began at once. Even before
the bill had been passed, the Appeal of the Inde
pendent Democrats was printed in a New York
paper, with the signatures of members of Congress
representing both the extreme anti-slavery wing of
the Democrats and the organized Free-Soil party.
The most famous of these names were those of

THE PARTY OF POLITICAL EVASION 23
Chase and Sumner, both of whom had been sent
to the Senate by a coalition of Free-Soilers and
Democrats. With them was the veteran aboli
tionist, Giddings of Ohio. The Appeal denounced
Douglas as an "unscrupulous politician" and
sounded both the war-cries of the Northern masses
by accusing him of being engaged in "an atrocious
plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region im
migrants from the Old World and free laborers
from our own States. "
The events of the spring and summer of 1854
may all be grouped under two heads — the forma
tion of an anti-Nebraska party, and the quick
rush of sectional patriotism to seize the territory
laid open by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The in
stantaneous refusal of the Northerners to confine
their settlement to Nebraska, and their prompt
invasion of Kansas; the similar invasion from the
South; the support of both movements by societies
organized for that purpose; the war in Kansas —
all the details of this thrilling story have been told
elsewhere.1 The political story alone concerns us
here. When the fight began there were four parties
1 See Jesse Macy, The Anti-Slavery Crusade. (In The Chronicles
of America?)

24 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
in the field: the Democrats, the Whigs, the Free-
Soilers, and the Know-Nothings.
The Free-Soil party, hitherto a small organiza
tion, had sought to make slavery the main issue
in politics. Its watchword was "Free soil, free
speech, free labor, and free men." It is needless
to add that it was instantaneous in its opposition
to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
The Whigs at the moment enjoyed the greatest
prestige, owing to the association with them of such
distinguished leaders as Webster and Clay. In
1854, however, as a party they were dying, and the
very condition that had made success possible for
the Democrats made it impossible for the Whigs,
because the latter stood for positive ideas, and
aimed to be national in reality and not in the eva
sive Democratic sense of the term. For, as a mat
ter of fact, on analysis all the greater issues of the
day proved to be sectional. The Whigs would
not, like the Democrats, adopt a negative attitude
toward these issues, nor would they consent to be
come merely sectional. Yet at the moment nega
tion and sectionalism were the only alternatives,
and between these millstones the Whig organization
was destined to be ground to bits and to disappear
after the next Presidential election.

THE PARTY OF POLITICAL EVASION 25
Even previous to 1854, numbers of Whigs had
sought a desperate outlet for their desire to be
positive in politics and had created a new party
which during a few years was to seem a reality
and then vanish together with its parent. The
one chance for a party which had positive ideas
and which wished not to be sectional was the defi
nite abandonment of existing issues and the discov
ery of some new issue not connected with sectional
feeling. Now, it happened that a variety of causes,
social and religious, had brought about bad blood
between native and foreigner, in some of the great
cities, and upon the issue involved in this condi
tion the failing spirit of the Whigs fastened. A
secret society which had been formed to oppose
the naturalization of foreigners quickly became
a recognized political party. As the members of
the Society answered all questions with "I do not
know," they came to be called "Know-Nothings,"
though they called themselves "Americans." In
those states where the Whigs had been strongest
— Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania
— this last attempt to apply their former temper,
though not their principles, had for a moment some
success; but it could not escape the fierce division
which was forced on the country by Douglas. As

26 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
a result, it rapidly split into factions, one of which
merged with the enemies of Douglas, while the
other was lost among his supporters.
What would the great dying Whig party leave
behind it? This was the really momentous ques
tion in 1854. Briefly, this party bequeathed the
temper of political positivism and at the same
time the dread of sectionalism. The inner clue to
American politics during the next few years is, to
many minds, to be found largely in the union of
this old Whig temper with a new-born sectional
patriotism, and, to other minds, in the gradual and
reluctant passing of the Whig opposition to a sec
tional party. But though this transformation of
the wrecks of Whiggism began immediately, and
while the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was still being
hotly debated in Congress, it was not until 1860
that it was completed.
In the meantime various incidents had shown
that the sectional patriotism of the North, the
fury of the abolitionists, and the positive temper
in politics, were all drawing closer together. Each
of these tendencies can be briefly illustrated. For
example, the rush to Kansas had begun, and the
Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society was prepar
ing to assist settlers who were going west. In

THE PARTY OF POLITICAL EVASION 27
May, there occurred at Boston one of the most con
spicuous attempts to rescue a fugitive slave, in
which a mob led by Thomas Wentworth Higginson
attacked the guards of Anthony Burns, a captured
fugitive, killed one of them, but failed to get the
slave, who was carried to a revenue cutter between
lines of soldiers and returned to slavery. Among
numerous details of the hour the burning of
Douglas in effigy is perhaps worth passing notice.
In July the anti-Nebraska men of Michigan held
a convention, at which they organized as a politi
cal party and nominated a state ticket. Of their
nominees, two had hitherto ranked themselves
as Free-Soilers, three as anti-slavery Democrats,
and five as Whigs. For the name of their party
they chose "Republican," and as the foundation
of their platform the resolution "That, postpon
ing and suspending all differences with regard to
political economy or administrative policy, " they
would "act cordially and faithfully in unison,"
opposing the extension of slavery, and would "co
operate and be known as 'Republicans' until the
contest be terminated. "
The history of the next two years is, in its main
outlines, the story of the war in Kansas and of the
spread of this new party throughout the North. It

28 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
was only by degrees, however, that the Republicans
absorbed the various groups of anti-Nebraska men.
What happened at this time in Illinois may be
taken as typical, and it is particularly noteworthy
as revealing the first real appearance of Abraham
Lincoln in American history.
Though in 1854 he was not yet a national figure,
Lincoln was locally accredited with keen political
insight, and was regarded in Illinois as a strong
lawyer. The story is told of him that, while he
was attending court on the circuit, he heard the
news of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in a tavern and
sat up most of the night talking about it. Next
morning he used a phrase destined to become
famous. "I tell you," said he to a fellow lawyer,
"this nation cannot exist half slave and half free."
Lincoln, however, was not one of the first to
join the Republicans. In Illinois, in 1854, Lincoln
resigned his seat in the legislature to become the
Whig candidate for United States senator, to suc
ceed the Democratic colleague of Douglas. But
there was little chance of his election, for the real
contest was between the two wings of the Demo
crats, the Nebraska men and the anti-Nebraska
men, and Lincoln withdrew in favor of the candi
date of the latter, who was elected.

THE PARTY OF POLITICAL EVASION 29
During the following year, from the midst of
his busy law practice, Lincoln watched the Whig
party go to pieces. He saw a great part of its
vote lodge temporarily among the Know-Nothings,
but before the end of the year even they began to
lose their prominence. In the autumn, from the
obscurity of his provincial life, he saw, far off,
Seward, the most astute politician of the day, join
the new movement. In New York, the Republi
can state convention and the Whig state conven
tion merged into one, and Seward pronounced a
baptismal oration upon the Republican party of
New York.
In the House of Representatives which met
in December, 1855, the anti-Nebraska men were
divided among themselves, and the Know-
Nothings held the balance of power. No can
didate for the speakership, however, was able
to command a majority, and finally, after it
had been agreed that a plurality would be suf
ficient, the contest closed, on the one hundred
and thirty-third ballot, with the election of a
Republican, N. P. Banks. Meanwhile in the
South, the Whigs were rapidly leaving the party,
pausing a moment with the Know-Nothings,
only to find that their inevitable resting-place,

30 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
under stress of sectional feeling, was with the
Democrats. On Washington's birthday, 1856, the Know-
Nothing national convention met at Philadelphia.
It promptly split upon the subject of slavery, and
a portion of its membership sent word offering
support to another convention which was sitting
at Pittsburgh, and which had been called to form
a national organization for the Republican party.
A third assembly held on this same day was com
posed of the newspaper editors of Illinois, and may
be looked upon as the organization of the Repub
lican party in that state. At the dinner following
this informal convention, Lincoln, who was one
of the speakers, was toasted as "the next United
States Senator. "
Some four months afterward, in Philadelphia, the
Republicans held their first national convention.
Only a few years previous its members had called
themselves by various names — Democrats, Free-
Soilers, Know-Nothings, Whigs. The old hos
tilities of these different groups had not yet died
out. Consequently, though Seward was far and
away the most eminent member of the new party,
he was not nominated for President. That danger
ous honor was bestowed upon a dashing soldier and

THE PARTY OF POLITICAL EVASION 31
explorer of the Rocky Mountains and the Far
West, John C. Fremont.1
The key to the political situation in the North,
during that momentous year, was to be found in
the great number of able Whigs who, seeing that
their own party was lost but refusing to be side
tracked by the make-believe issue of the Know-
Nothings, were now hesitating what to do. Though
the ordinary politicians among the Republicans
doubtless wished to conciliate these unattached
Whigs, the astuteness of the leaders was too great
to allow them to succumb to that temptation.
They seem to have feared the possible effect of
immediately incorporating in their ranks, while
their new organization was still so plastic, the bulk
of those conservative classes which were, after all,
the backbone of this irreducible Whig minimum.
The Republican campaign was conducted with a
degree of passion that had scarcely been equaled
in America before that day. To the well-ordered
spirit of the conservative classes the tone which
the Republicans assumed appeared shocking.
Boldly sectional in their language, sweeping in their
denunciation of slavery, the leaders of the cam-
1 For an account of Fremont, see Stewart Edward White,
The Forty-Niners (in The Chronicles of America), Chapter II.

32 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
paign made bitter and effective use of a number of
recent events. Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in
1852, and already immensely popular, was used as
a political tract to arouse, by its gruesome picture
of slavery, a hatred of slaveholders. Returned
settlers from Kansas went about the North telling
horrible stories of guerrilla warfare, so colored as
to throw the odium all on one side. The scandal
of the moment was the attack made by Preston
Brooks on Sumner, after the latter's furious dia
tribe in the Senate, which was published as The
Crime Against Kansas. With double skill the
Republicans made equal capital out of the intel
lectual violence of the speech and the physical
violence of the retort. In addition to this, there
was ready to their hands the evidence of Southern
and Democratic sympathy with a filibustering
attempt to conquer the republic of Nicaragua,
where William Walker, an American adventurer,
had recently made himself dictator. Walker had
succeeded in having his minister acknowledged by
the Democratic Administration, and in obtaining
the endorsement of a great Democratic meeting
which was held in New York. It looked, therefore,
as if the party of political evasion had an anchor
to windward, and that, in the event of their losing

THE PARTY OF POLITICAL EVASION 33
in Kansas, they intended to placate their Southern
wing by the annexation of Nicaragua.
Here, indeed, was a stronger political tempest
than Douglas, weatherwise though he was, had
foreseen. How was political evasion to brave it?
With a courage quite equal to the boldness of the
Republicans, the Democrats took another tack
and steered for less troubled waters. Their con
vention at Cincinnati was temperate and discreet
in all its expressions, and for President it nomi
nated a Northerner, James Buchanan of Penn
sylvania, a man who was wholly dissociated in the
public mind from the struggle over Kansas.
The Democratic party leaders knew that they
already had two strong groups of supporters.
Whatever they did, the South would have to go
along with them, in its reaction against the furi
ous sectionalism of the Republicans. Besides the
Southern support, the Democrats counted upon
the aid of the professional politicians — those men
who considered politics rather as a fascinating
game than as serious and difficult work based upon
principle. Upon these the Democrats could con
fidently rely, for they already had, in Douglas in
the North and Toombs in the South, two master
politicians who knew this type and its impulses

34 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
intimately, because they themselves belonged to
it. But the Democrats needed the support of a
third group. If they could only win over the
Northern remnant of the Whigs that was still
unattached, their position would be secure. In
their efforts to obtain this additional and very
necessary reinforcement, they decided to appear
as temperate and restrained as possible — a well
bred party which all mild and conservative men
could trust.
This attitude they formulated in connection
with Kansas, which at that time had two govern
ments: one, a territorial government, set up by
emigrants from the South; the other, a state
government, under the constitution drawn up at
Topeka by emigrants from the North. One
authorized slavery; the other prohibited slavery;
and both had appealed to Washington for recogni
tion. It was with this quite definite issue that
Congress was chiefly concerned in the spring of
1856. During the summer Toombs introduced a
bill securing to the settlers of Kansas complete
freedom of action and providing for an election of
delegates to a convention to draw up a state con
stitution which would determine whether slav
ery or freedom was to prevail — in other words,

THE PARTY OF POLITICAL EVASION 35
whether Kansas was to be annexed to the South
or to the North. This bill was merely the full
expression of what Douglas had aimed at in
1854 and of what was nicknamed "popular sov
ereignty" — the right of the locality to choose for
itself between slave and free labor.
Two years before, such a measure would have
seemed radical. But in politics time is wonder
fully elastic. Those two years had been packed
with turmoil. Kansas had been the scene of a
bloody conflict. Regardless of which side had a
majority on the ground, extremists on each side
had demanded recognition for the government set
up by their own party. By contrast, Toombs's
offer to let the majority rule appeared temperate.
The Republicans saw instantly that they must
discredit the proposal or the ground would be cut
from under them. Though the bill passed the
Senate, they were able to set it aside in the House
in favor of a bill admitting Kansas as a free state
with the Topeka constitution. The Democrats
thereupon accused the Republicans of not wanting
peace and of wishing to keep up the war-cry
"Bleeding Kansas" until election time.
That, throughout the country, the two parties
continued on the lines of policy they had chosen

36 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
may be seen from an illustration. A House com
mittee which had gone to Kansas to investigate
submitted two reports, one of Which, submitted by
a Democratic member, told the true story of the
murders committed by John Brown at Potta
watomie. And yet, while the Republicans spread
everywhere their shocking tales of murders of free-
state settlers, the Democrats made practically no
use of this equally shocking tale of the murder of
slaveholders. Apparently they were resolved to
appear temperate and conservative to the bitter
end. And they had their reward. Or, perhaps the
fury of the Republicans had its just deserts.
From either point of view, the result was a choice
of evils on the part of the reluctant Whigs, and
that choice was expressed in the following words
by as typical a New Englander as Rufus Choate:
"The first duty of Whigs," wrote Choate to the
Maine State central committee, "is to unite
with some organization of our countrymen to
defeat and dissolve the new geographical party
calling itself Republican. . . . The question
for each and every one of us is . . . by what
vote can I do most to prevent the madness of the
times from working its maddest act — the very

THE PARTY OF POLITICAL EVASION 37
ecstasy of its madness — the permanent formation
and the actual triumph of a party which knows one
half of America only to hate and dread it. If
the Republican party," Choate continued, "ac
complishes its object and gives the government to
the North, I turn my eyes from the consequences.
To the fifteen states of the South that government
will appear an alien government. It will appear
worse. It will appear a hostile government. It
will represent to their eye a vast region of states
organized upon anti-slavery, flushed by triumph,
cheered onward by the voice of the pulpit, tribune,
and press; its mission, to inaugurate freedom and
put down the oligarchy; its constitution, the glit
tering and sounding generalities of natural right
which make up the Declaration of Independence.
. . . Practically the contest, in my judgment, is
between Mr. Buchanan and Colonel Fremont. In
these circumstances, I vote for Mr. Buchanan. "
The party of political evasion thus became the
refuge of the old original Whigs who were forced
to take advantage of any port in a storm. Bu
chanan was elected by an overwhelming majority.
To the careless eye, Douglas had been justified by
results; his party had triumphed as perhaps never
before; and yet, no great political success was ever

38 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
based upon less stable foundations. To maintain
this position, those Northerners who reasoned as
Choate did were a necessity; but to keep them in
the party of political evasion would depend upon
the ability of this party to play the game of
politics without acknowledging sectional bias.
Whether this difficult task could be accomplished
would depend upon the South. Toombs, on his
part, was anxious to continue making the party of
evasion play the great American game of politics,
and in his eagerness he perhaps overestimated
his hold upon the South. This, however, remams
to be seen.
Already another faction had formed around
William L. Yancey of Alabama — a faction as
intolerant of political evasion as the Republicans
themselves, and one that was eager to match the
sectional Northern party by a sectional Southern
party. It had for the moment fallen into line with
the Toombs faction because, like the Whigs, it had
not the courage to do otherwise. The question
now was whether it would continue fearful, and
whether political evasion would continue to reign.
The key to the history of the next four years is
in the growth of this positive Southern party,
which had the inevitable result of forcing the

THE PARTY OF POLITICAL EVASION 39
Whig remainder to choose, not as in 1856 between
a positive sectional policy and an evasive non-
sectional policy, but in 1860 between two policies
both of which were at once positive and sectional.

CHAPTER III
THE POLITICIANS AND THE NEW DAY
The South had thus far been kept in line with
the cause of political evasion by a small group of
able politicians, chief among whom were Robert
Toombs, Howell Cobb, and Alexander H. Stephens.
Curiously enough all three were Georgians, and
this might indeed be called the day of Georgia in
the history of the South.
A different type of man, however, and one sig
nificant of a divergent point of view, had long en
deavored to shake the leadership of the Georgian
group. Rhett in South Carolina, Jefferson Davis
in Mississippi, and above all Yancey in Alabama,
together with the interests and sentiment which
they represented, were almost ready to contest the
orthodoxy of the policy of "nothing doing." To
consolidate the interests behind them, to arouse
and fire the sentiment on which they relied, was
now the confessed purpose of these determined
40

THE POLITICIANS AND THE NEW DAY 41
men. So little attention has hitherto been given
to motive in American politics that the modern
student still lacks a clear-cut and intelligent
perception of these various factions. In spite of
this fact, however, these men may safely be re
garded as being distinctly more intellectual, and
as having distinctly deeper natures, than the
men who came together under the leadership of
Toombs and Cobb, and who had the true pro
vincial enthusiasm for politics as the great Ameri
can sport.
The factions of both Toombs and Yancey were
intensely Southern and, whenever a crisis might
come, neither meant to hesitate an instant over
striking hard for the South. Toombs, however,
wanted to prevent such a situation, while Yancey
was anxious to force one. The former conceived
felicity as the joy of playing politics on the biggest
stage, and he therefore bent all his strength to
preserving the so-called national parties; the
latter, scornful of all such union, was for a sepa
rate Southern community.
Furthermore, no man could become enthusi
astic about political evasion unless by nature he
also took kindly to compromise. So, Toombs and
his followers were for preserving the negative

42 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
Democratic position of 1856. In a formal paper
of great ability Stephens defended that position
when he appeared for reelection to Congress in
1857. Cobb, who had entered Buchanan's Cabi
net as Secretary of the Treasury, and who spoke
hopefully of making Kansas a slave state, insisted
nevertheless that such a change must be "brought
about by the recognized principles of carrying out
the will of the majority which is the great doctrine
of the Kansas Bill." To Yancey, as to the Re
publicans, Kansas was a disputed border-land for
which the so-called two nations were fighting.
The internal Southern conflict between these
two factions began anew with the Congressional
elections of 1857. It is worth observing that the
make-up of these factions was almost a resurrec
tion of the two groups which, in 1850, had divided
the South on the question of rejecting the Com
promise. In a letter to Stephens in reference to
one of the Yancey men, Cobb prophesied: "Mc
Donald will utterly fail to get up a new Southern
Rights party. Burnt children dread the fire, and
he cannot get up as strong an organization as he
did in 1850. Still it is necessary to guard every
point, as McDonald is a hard hand to deal with. "
For the moment, he foretold events correctly.

THE POLITICIANS AND THE NEW DAY 43
The Southern elections of 1857 did not break the
hold of the moderates.
Yancey turned to different machinery, quite as
useful for his purpose. This he found in the South
ern commercial conventions, which were held an
nually. At this point there arises a vexed ques
tion which has, of late, aroused much discussion.
Was there then what we should call today a slave
" interest " ? Was organized capital deliberately
exploiting slavery? And did Yancey play into its
hands?1 The truth seems to be that, between
1856 and 1860, both the idealist parties, the Repub
licans and the Secessionists, made peace with,
shall we say, the Mammon of unrighteousness, or
merely organized capital? The one joined hands
with the iron interest of the North; the other, with
the slave interest of the South. The Republicans
preached the domination of the North and a
protective tariff; the Yancey men preached the
independence of the South and the reopening of
the slave trade.
These two issues Yancey, however, failed to
unite, though the commercial convention of 1859
* For those who would be persuaded that there was such a slave
interest, perhaps the best presentation is to be found in Professor
Dodd's Life of J eg er son Davis.

44 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
at last gave its support to a resolution that all laws,
state or federal, prohibiting the African slave trade
ought to be repealed. That great body of North
ern capital which had dealings with the South was
ready, as it always had been, to finance any scheme
that Southern business desired. Slavers were
fitted out in New York, and the city authorities
did not prevent their sailing. Against this som
ber background stands forth that much admired
action of Lewis Cass of Michigan, Buchanan's
Secretary of State. Already the slave trade was in
process of revival, and the British Navy, impelled
by the powerful anti-slavery sentiment in England,
was active in its suppression. American ships sus
pected of being slavers were visited and searched.
Cass seized his opportunity, and declaring that
such things "could not be submitted to by an
independent nation without dishonor," sent out
American warships to prevent this interference.
Thereupon the British government consented to
give up trying to police the ocean against slavers.
It is indeed true, therefore, that neither North nor
South has an historical monopoly of the support of
slavery !
It is but fair to add that, so far as the movement
to reopen the slave trade found favor outside the

THE POLITICIANS AND THE NEW DAY 45
slave barons and their New York allies, it was
advocated as a means of political defense, of in
creasing Southern population as an offset to the
movement of free emigration into the North, and
of keeping the proportion of Southern representa
tion in Congress. Stephens, just after Cass had
successfully twisted the lion's tail, took this posi
tion in a speech that caused a sensation. In a
private letter he added, "Unless we get immigra
tion from abroad, we shall have few more slave
states. This great truth seems to take the people
by surprise. Some shrink from it as they would
from death. Still, it is as true as death." The
scheme, however, never received general accept
ance; and in the constitution of the Southern
Confederacy there was a section prohibiting the
African slave trade. On the other of these two
issues — the independence of the South — Yancey
steadily gained ground. With each year from
1856 to 1860, a larger proportion of Southerners
drew out of political evasion and gave adherence
to the idea of presenting an ultimatum to the
North, with secession as an alternative.
Meanwhile, Buchanan sent to Kansas, as Gover
nor, Robert J. Walker, one of the most astute
of the Democrats of the opposite faction and a

46 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
Mississippian. The tangled situation which Walker
found, the details of his attempt to straighten it
out, belong in another volume.1 It is enough in
this connection merely to mention the episode
of the Lecompton convention in the election of
which the Northern settlers refused to participate,
though Walker had promised that they should
have full protection and a fair count as well as
that the work of the convention should be submit
ted to a popular vote. This action of Walker's
was one more cause of contention between the
warring factions in the South. The fact that he
had met the Northerners half-way was seized upon
by the Yancey men as evidence of the betrayal
of the South by the Democratic moderates. On
the other hand, Cobb, writing of the situation in
Kansas, said that "a large majority are against
slavery and . . . our friends regard the fate of
Kansas as a free state pretty well fixed . . . the
pro-slavery men, finding that Kansas was likely
to become a Black Republican State, determined
to unite with the free-state Democrats." Here
is the clue to Walker's course. As a strict party
man, he preferred to accept Kansas free, with
1 See Jesse Macy, The Anti-Slavery Crusade. (In The Chron
icles of America.)

THE POLITICIANS AND THE NEW DAY 47
Democrats in control, rather than risk losing it
altogether.
The next step in the affair is one of the unsolved
problems in American history. Buchanan sud
denly changed front, disgraced Walker, and threw
himself into the arms of the Southern extremists.
Though his reasons for doing so have been debated
to this day, they have not yet been established
beyond dispute. What seems to be the favorite
explanation is that Buchanan was in a panic.
What brought him to that condition may have
been the following events.
The free-state men, by refusing to take part in
electing the convention, had given control to the
slaveholders, who proved they were not slow to
seize their opportunity. They drew up a con
stitution favoring slavery, but this constitution,
Walker had promised, was to be submitted in
referendum. If the convention decided, however,
not to submit the constitution, would not Congress
have the right to accept it and admit Kansas as a
state? This question was immediately raised.
It now became plain that, by refusing to take part
in the election, the free-state Kansans had thrown
away a great tactical advantage. Of this blunder
in generalship the Yancey men took instant ad-

48 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
vantage. It was known that the proportion of
Free-Soilers in Kansas was very great — perhaps
a majority — and the Southerners reasoned that
they should not be obliged to give up the advan
tage they had won merely to let their enemies re
trieve their mistake. Jefferson Davis formulated
this position in an address to the Mississippi Legis
lature in which he insisted that Congress, not the
Kansas electorate, was entitled to create the Kansas
constitution, that the Convention was a proper
ly chosen body, and that its work should stand.
What Davis said in a stately way, others said in
a furious way. Buchanan stated afterward that
he changed front because certain Southern States
had threatened that, if he did not abandon Walker,
thev would secede. d abandon
W ' — *"1 — ~™ " leAdminis- r
trK.„,^ii ^.i —•:•".-  is with the
Ijtxuiwmjuj- ^'ntvtii'-":.  this be true
to that principle of "popular sovereignty" which
was the very essence of the Kansas-Nebraska Act?
Would it be true to the principle that each locality
should decide for itself between slavery and free
dom? On this issue the Southerners were fairly
generally agreed and maintained that there was no

JAMES BUCHANAN
Drawing from a photograph.

Lj'o.vvTB,Aj7SBTBBii-Liimt,IIa.2i'Y^

THE POLITICIANS AND THE NEW DAY 49
obligation to go behind the work of the convention.
Not so, however, the great exponent of popular
sovereignty, Douglas. Rising in his place in the
Senate, he charged the President with conspiring
to defeat the will of the majority in Kansas. " If
Kansas wants a slave state constitution," said he,
"she has a right to it; if she wants a free state
constitution, she has a right to it. It is none of
my business which way the slavery clause is de
cided. I care not whether it is voted up or down. "
There followed one of those prolonged legisla
tive battles for which the Congress of the United
States is justly celebrated. Furious oratory, prop
ositions, counter-propositions, projected com
promises, other compromises, and at the end —
nothing positive. But Douglas had defeated the
attempt to bring in Kansas with the Lecompton
constitution. As to the details of the story, they
include such distinguished happenings as a brawl
ing, all-night session when "thirty men, at least,
were engaged in the fisticuff, " and one Represen
tative knocked another down.
Douglas was again at the center of the stage, but
his term as Senator was nearing its end. He and
the President had split their party. Pursued by
the vengeful malice of the Administration, Douglas

50 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
went home in 1858 to Illinois to fight for his reelec
tion. His issue, of course, was popular sovereignty.
His temper was still the temper of political evasion.
How to hold fast to his own doctrine, and at the
same time keep to his programme of "nothing
doing"; how to satisfy the negative Democrats of
the North without losing his last hold on the posi
tive men of the South — such were his problems,
and they were made still more difficult by a recent
decision of the Supreme Court.
The now famous case of Dred Scott had been
decided in the previous year. Its bewildering legal
technicalities may here be passed over; funda
mentally, the real question involved was the status
of a negro, Dred Scott. A slave who had been
owned in Missouri, and who had been taken by
his master to the State of Illinois, to the free ter
ritory of Minnesota, and then back to Missouri,
now claimed to be free. The Supreme Court un
dertook to decide whether his residence in Min
nesota rendered him free, and also whether any
negro of slave descent could be a citizen of the
United States. The official opinion of the Court,
delivered by Chief Justice Taney, decided both
questions against the suppliant. It was held that
the "citizens" recognized by the Constitution did

THE POLITICIANS AND THE NEW DAY 51
not include negroes. So, even if Scott were free,
he could not be considered a citizen entitled to
bring suit in the Federal Courts. Furthermore,
he could not be considered free, in spite of his
residence in Minnesota, because, as the Court now
ruled, Congress, when it enacted the Missouri
Compromise, had exceeded its authority; the en
actment had never really been in force; there was
no binding prohibition of slavery in the North
western territories.
If this decision was good law, all the discussion
about popular sovereignty went for nothing, and
neither an act of Congress nor the vote of the popu
lation of a territory, whether for or against slavery,
was of any value whatsoever. Nothing mattered
until the new-made state itself took action after its
admission to the Union. Until that time, no power,
national or local, could lawfully interfere with the
introduction of slaves. In the case of Kansas, it
was no longer of the least importance what be
came of the Lecompton constitution or of any
other that the settlers might make. The territory
was open to settlement by slaveholders and would
Continue to be so as long as it remained a territory.
The same conditions existed in Nebraska and in
all the Northwest. The Dred Scott decision was

52 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
accepted as orthodox Democratic doctrine by the
South, by the Administration, and by the "North
ern men with Southern principles." The astute
masters of the game of politics on the Democratic
side struck the note of legality. This was law,
the expression of the highest tribunal of the Re
public; what more was to be said? Though in
truth there was but one other thing to be said,
and that revolutionary, the Republicans, never
theless, did not falter over it. Seward announced
it in a speech in Congress on "Freedom in Kansas, "
when he uttered this menace: "We shall reorgan
ize the Court and thus reform its political senti
ments and practices. "
In the autumn of 1858 Douglas attempted
to perform the acrobatic feat of reconciling the
Dred Scott decision, which as a Democrat he had
to accept, with that idea of popular sovereignty
without which his immediate followers could not
be content. In accepting the Republican nomi
nation as Douglas's opponent for the senatorship,
Lincoln used these words which have taken rank
among his most famous utterances: "A house
divided against itself cannot stand. I believe
this government cannot endure permanently half
slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to

THE POLITICIANS AND THE NEW DAY 53
be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall —
but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will
become all one thing or all the other. Either the
opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread
of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest
in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate
extinction; or its advocates will push it forward till
it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as
well as new — North as well as South. "
No one had ever so tellingly expressed the death-
grapple of the sections : slavery the weapon of one,
free labor the weapon of the other. Though Lin
coln was at that time forty-nine years old, his
political experience, in contrast with that of Doug
las, was negligible. He afterward aptly described
his early life in that expressive line from Gray,
"The short and simple annals of the poor." He
lacked regular schooling, and it was altogether
from the practice of law that he had gained such
formal education as he had. In law, however, he
had become a master, and his position, to judge
from the class of cases entrusted to him, was second
to none in Illinois. To that severe yet wholesome
cast of mind which the law establishes in men
naturally lofty, Lincoln added the tonic influence
of a sense of style — not the verbal acrobatics of

54 LINCOLN AND THE UMIOJN
the rhetorician, but that power to make words
and thought a unit which makes the artist of a
man who has great ideas. How Lincoln came by
this literary faculty is, indeed, as puzzling as
how Burns came by it. But there it was, discip
lined by the court room, made pungent by famil
iarity with plain people, stimulated by constant
reading of Shakespeare, and chastened by study
of the Bible.
It was arranged that Douglas and Lincoln
should tour the State together in a series of joint
debates. As a consequence there followed a most
interesting opposition of methods in the use of
words, a contest between the method formed in
Congress at a time when Congress was a perfect
rhetorical academy, and that method of using
words which was based on an arduous study of
Blackstone, Shakespeare, and Isaiah. Lincoln is
sued from the debates one of the chief intellec
tual leaders of America, and with a place in
English literature; Douglas came out — a Senator
from Illinois.
But though Douglas kept his following together,
and though Lincoln was voted down, to Lincoln
belonged the real strategic victory. In order to
save himself with his own people, Douglas had

THE POLITICIANS AND THE NEW DAY 55
been forced to make admissions that ruined him
with the South. Because of these admissions the
breach in the party of political evasion became
irreparable. It was in the debate at Freeport that
Douglas's fate overtook him, for Lincoln put this
question: "Can the people of a United States
territory, in any lawful way, against the wish of
any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery
from its limits, prior to the formation of a state
constitution?" Douglas answered in his best style of political
thunder. "It matters not," he said, "what way
the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as to
the abstract question whether slavery may or
may not go into a territory under the Constitu
tion; the people have the lawful means to intro
duce it or exclude it as they please, for the reason
that slavery cannot exist a day or an hour any
where unless it is supported by local police regu
lations. Those police regulations can only be
established by the local legislatures; and if the
people are opposed to slavery, they will elect rep
resentatives to that body who will by unfriendly
legislation effectually prevent the introduction of
it into their midst. If, on the contrary, they are
for it, their legislation will favor its extension.

56 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
Hence, no matter what the decision of the Su
preme Court may be on that abstract question,
still the right of the people to make a slave terri
tory or a free territory is perfect and complete
under the Nebraska Bill."
As to the moral aspect of his actions, Douglas
must ultimately be judged by the significance
which this position in which he placed himself
assumed in his own mind. Friendly critics excuse
him: an interpretation of the Dred Scott decision
which explained it away as an irresponsible utter
ance on a subject outside the scope of the case,
a mere obiter dictum, is the justification which is
called in to save him from the charge of insincerity.
His friends, today, admit that this interpretation
was bad law, but maintain that it may have been
good morals, and that Douglas honestly held it.
But many of us have not yet advanced so far in
critical generosity, and cannot help feeling that
Douglas's position remains political legerdemain —
an attempt by a great officer of the government,
professing to defend the Supreme Court, to show
the people how to go through the motions of
obedience to the Court while defeating its inten
tion. If not double-dealing in a strict sense, it
must yet be considered as having in it the temper

THE POLITICIANS AND THE NEW DAY 57
of double-dealing.1 This was, indeed, the view
of many men of his own day and, among them,
of Lincoln. Yet the type of man on whom the
masters of the game of politics relied saw noth
ing in Douglas's position at which to be disturb
ed. It was merely playing politics, and if that
absorbing sport required one to carry water on
both shoulders, why — play the game! Douglas
was the man for people like that. They cheered
him to the echo and sent him back to the Senate.
So well was this type understood by some of
Lincoln's friends that they had begged him, at
least according to tradition, not to put the ques
tion at Freeport, as by doing so he would enable
Douglas to save himself with his constituency.
Lincoln saw further, however. He understood
better than they the forces then at work in America.
The reply reported of him was: "If Douglas an
swers, he can never be President, and the battle of
1860 is worth a hundred of this. "
Well might Yancey and his followers receive
1 There are three ways of regarding Douglas's position: (1) As
merely a daring piece of evasion designed to hold all the Democrats
together; (2) as an attempt to secure his locality at all costs, taking
his chances on the South; (3) as a sincere expression of the legal in
terpretation mentioned above. It is impossible in attempting to
choose among these to escape wholly one's impression of the man's
character.

evoivea irom uie principle oi let- em-aione tu me
principle of double-dealing? However, the South
erners were far from controlling the situation.
Though the events of 1858 had created discord in
the Democratic party, they had not consolidated
the South. Men like Toombs and Stephens were
still hopeful of keeping the States together in the
old bond of political evasion. The Democratic
machine, damaged though it was, had not yet lost
its hold on the moderate South, and while that
continued to be the case, there was still power
in it.

CHAPTER IV

THE CRISIS

The Southern moderates in 1859 form one of
those political groups, numerous enough in history,
who at a crisis arrest our imagination because of
the irony of their situation. Unsuspecting, these
men went their way, during the last summer of the
old regime, busy with the ordinary affairs of state,
absorbed in their opposition to the Southern
radicals, never dreaming of the doom that was
secretly moving toward them through the plans
of John Brown. In the soft brilliancy of the
Southern summer when the roses were in bloom,
many grave gentlemen walked slowly up and down
together under the oaks of their plantation ave
nues, in the grateful dusk, talking eagerly of how
the scales trembled in Southern politics between
Toombs and Yancey, and questioning whether the
extremists could ride down the moderate South
and reopen the slave trade. In all their wonder-
59

60 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
ing whether Douglas would ever come back to
them or would prove the blind Samson pulling
down their temple about their ears, there was never
a word about the approaching shadow which was
so much more real than the shades of the falling
night, and yet so entirely shut away from their
observation. In this summer, Stephens withdrew as he
thought from public life. With an intensely sensi
tive nature, he had at times flashes of strange feel
ing which an unsophisticated society would regard
as prophetic inspirations. When he left Washing
ton "on the beautiful morning of the 5th of March,
1859, he stood at the stern of the boat for some
minutes gazing back at the capital." He had
announced his intention of not standing again as a
Representative, and one of his fellow-passengers
asked jokingly whether he was thinking of his
return as a Senator. Stephen's reply was full of
emotion, "No, I never expect to see Washington
again unless I am brought here as a prisoner of
war. " During the summer he endeavored to cast
off his intuition of approaching disaster. At his
plantation, "Liberty Hall," he endeavored to be
content with the innumerable objects associated
with his youth; he tried to feel again the grace of

THE CRISIS 61
the days that were gone, the mysterious loveliness
of the Southern landscape with its immense fields,
its forests, its great empty spaces filled with glow
ing sunshme. He tried to possess his troubled soul
with the severe intellectual ardor of the law. But
his gift of second sight would not rest. He could
not overcome his intuition that, for all the peace
and dreaminess of the outward world, destiny was
upon him. Looking out from his spiritual seclu
sion, he beheld what seemed to him complete po
litical confusion, both local and national. His
despairing mood found expression a little later in
the words: "Indeed if we were now to have a
Southern convention to determine upon the true
policy of the South either in the Union or out of it,
I should expect to see just as much profitless dis
cussion, disagreement, crimination, and recrimina
tion amongst the members of it from different
states and from the same state, as we witness in
the present House of Representatives between
Democrats, Republicans, and Americans."
Among the sources of confusion Stephens saw,
close at home, the Southern battle over the reopen
ing of the slave trade. The reality of that issue
had been made plain in May, 1859, when the
Southern commercial congress at Vicksburg en-

62 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
tertained at the same time two resolutions: one,
that the convention should urge all Southern
States to amend their constitutions by a clause
prohibiting the increase of African slavery; the
other, that the convention urge all the Legislatures
of Southern States to present memorials to Con
gress asking the repeal of the law against African
slave trade. Of these opposed resolutions, the
latter was adopted on the last day of the conven
tion, * though the moderates fought hard against it.
The split between Southern moderates and
Southern radicals was further indicated by their
differing attitudes toward the adventurers from
the United States in Central America. The Vicks
burg Convention adopted resolutions which were
thinly veiled endorsements of southward expan
sion. In the early autumn another Nicaraguan ex
pedition was nipped in the bud by the vigilance of
American naval forces. Cobb, prime factor in the
group of Southern moderates as well as Secretary
of the Treasury, wrote to Buchanan expressing his
satisfaction at the event, mentioning the work of
his own department in bringing it about, and also
1 It is significant that the composition of these Southern com
mercial congresses and the Congress of the whole Southern people
was strikingly different in personnel. Very few members of the
commercial congresses reappear in the Confederate Congress.

THE CRISIS 63
alluding to his arrangments to prevent slave trad
ing off the Florida coast.
But the spirit of doubt was strong even among
the moderates. Douglas was the target. Stephens
gives a glimpse of it in a letter written during
his last session in Congress. " Cobb called on me
Saturday night," he writes. "He is exceedingly
bitter against Douglas. I joked him a good deal,
and told him he had better not fight, or he would
certainly be whipped; that is, in driving Douglas
out of the Democratic party. He said that if
Douglas ever was restored to the confidence of the
Democracy of Georgia, it would be over his dead
body politically. This shows his excitement, that
is all. I laughed at him, and told him he would
run his feelings and his policy into the ground."
The anger of Cobb, who was himself a confessed
candidate for the Democratic nomination, was im
periling the Democratic national machine which
Toombs was still struggling so resolutely to hold
together. Indeed, as late as the autumn of 1859
the machine still held together.
Then came the man of destiny, the bolt from the
blue, the end of the chapter. A marvelous fanatic
— a sort of reincarnation of the grimmest of the
Covenanters — by one daring act shattered the

64 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
machine and made impossible any further coali
tion on the principle of "nothing doing." This
man of destiny was John Brown, whose attack on
Harper's Ferry took place October 16th, and
whose execution by the authorities of Virginia on
the charges of murder and treason occurred on
the 2nd of December.
The incident filled the South with consternation.
The prompt condemnation of it by many Republi
can leaders did not offset, in the minds of South
erners, the fury of praise accorded by others.
The South had a ghastly tradition derived chiefly
from what is known as Nat Turner's Rebellion
in Virginia, a tradition of the massacre of white
women and children by negroes. As Brown had
set out to rouse a slave rebellion, every Southerner
familiar with his own traditions shuddered, identi
fying in imagination John Brown and Nat Turner.
Horror became rage when the Southerners heard
of enthusiastic applause in Boston and of Emer
son's description of Brown as "that new saint"
who was to "make the gallows glorious like the
cross." In the excitement produced by remarks
such as this, justice was not done to Lincoln's
censure. In his speech at Cooper Institute in
New York, in February, 1860, Lincoln had said:

ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Photograph by Brady, taken at the .time of Lincoln's Cooper In
stitute speech, February 27, 1860. Lincoln frequently remarked that
this portrait and-the Cooper Institute speech made him President.

Mnayii3TE,-A.yixisx3BJi.-IiT^ru3 ¦ Ed .3LJ

THE CRISIS 65
"John Brown's effort ... in its philosophy cor
responds with the many attempts related in history
at the assassination of kings and emperors. An
enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people,
until he fancies himself commissioned by Heaven
to liberate them. He ventures the attempt which
ends in little else than in his own execution. " A
few months afterwards, the Republican national
convention condemned the act of Brown as " among
the gravest of crimes."
An immediate effect of the John Brown episode
was a passionate outburst from all the radical
press of the South in defense of slavery. The fol
lowers of Yancey made the most of their opportu
nity. The men who voted at Vicksburg to reopen
the slave trade could find no words to measure
their hatred of every one who, at this moment of
crisis, would not declare slavery a blessing. Many
of the men who opposed the slave traders also felt
that, in the face of possible slave insurrection, the
peril of their families was the one paramount con
sideration. Nevertheless, it is easy for the special
pleader to give a wrong impression of the sentiment
of the time. A grim desire for self-preservation
took possession of the South, as well as a deadly
fear of any person or any thing that tended directly

66 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
or indirectly to incite the blacks to insurrection.
Northerners of abolitionist sympathies were warned
to leave the country, and in some cases they were
tarred and feathered. Great anger was aroused
by the detection of book-agents who were distribut
ing a furious polemic against slavery, The Impend
ing Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, by Hinton
Rowan Helper, a Southerner of inferior social posi
tion belonging to the class known as poor whites.
The book teemed with such sentences as this,
addressing slaveholders: "Do you aspire to be
come victims of white non-slave-holding vengeance
by day and of barbarous massacres by the negroes
at night?" It is scarcely strange, therefore, that
in 1859 no Southerner would hear a good word of
anyone caught distributing the book. And yet,
in the midst of all this vehement exaltation of
slavery, the fight to prevent a reopening of the
slave trade went bravely on. Stephens, writing to a
friend who was correspondent for the Southern Con
federacy, in Atlanta, warned him in April, 1860,
"neither to advocate disunion or the opening of the
slave trade. The people here at present I believe
are as much opposed to it as they are at the North;
and I believe the Northern people could be in
duced to open it sooner than the Southern people. "

THE CRISIS 67
The winter of 1859-1860 witnessed a famous con
gressional battle over the speakership. The new
Congress which met in December contained 109
Republicans, 101 Democrats, and 27 Know-Noth
ings. The Republican candidate for speaker was
John Sherman of Ohio. As the first ballot showed
that he could not command a majority, a Demo
crat from Missouri introduced this resolution:
"Whereas certain members of this House, now
in nomination for speaker, did endorse the book
hereinafter mentioned, Resolved, That the doc
trines and sentiments of a certain book, called
The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It,
are insurrectionary and hostile to the peace and
tranquillity of the country, and that no member
of this House, who has indorsed or recommended
it, is fit to be speaker of the House. "
During two months there were strange scenes in
the House, while the clerk acted as temporary
speaker and furious diatribes were thundered back
and forth across the aisle that separated Repub
licans from Democrats, with a passage of fisticuffs
or even a drawn pistol to add variety to the scene.
The end of it all was a deal. , Pennington, of the
"People's Party" of New Jersey, who had sup
ported Sherman but had not endorsed Helper,

68 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
was given the Republican support; a Know-Noth-
ing was made sergeant-at-arms; and Know-Noth-
ing votes added to the Republican votes made
Pennington speaker. In many Northern cities
the news of his election was greeted with the great
salute of a hundred guns, but at Richmond the
papers came out in mourning type.
Two great figures now advanced to the center of
the Congressional stage — Jefferson Davis, Senator
from Mississippi, a lean eagle of a man with pierc
ing blue eyes, and Judah P. Benjamin, Senator
from Louisiana, whose perpetual smile cloaked
an intellect that was nimble, keen, and ruthless.
Both men were destined to play leading r61es in
the lofty drama of revolution; each was to expe
rience a tragic ending of his political hope, one in
exile, the other in a solitary proscription amid the
ruins of the society for which he had sacrified his
all. These men, though often spoken of as mere
mouthpieces of Yancey, were in reality quite dif
ferent from him both in temper and in point of
view. Davis, who was destined eventually to become
the target of Yancey's bitterest enmity, had re
fused ten years before to join in the secession
movement which ignored Calhoun's doctrine that

THE CRISIS 69
the South had become a social unit. Though a
believer in slavery under the conditions of the
moment, Davis had none of the passion of the
slave baron for slavery at all costs. Furthermore,
as events were destined to show in a startlingly
dramatic way, he was careless of South Carolina's
passion for state rights. He was a practical poli
tician, but not at all the old type of the party of
political evasion, the type of Toombs. No other
man of the moment was on the whole so well
able to combine the elements of Southern politics
against those more negative elements of which
Toombs was the symbol. The history of the Con
federacy shows that the combination which Davis
now effected was not as thorough as he supposed
it was. But at the moment he appeared to succeed
and seemed to give common purpose to the vast
majority of the Southern people. With his ally
Benjamin, he struck at the Toombs policy of a
National Democratic party.
On the day following the election of Pennington.
Davis introduced in the Senate a series of reso
lutions which were to serve as the Southern ulti
matum, and which demanded of Congress the
protection of slavery against territorial legislatures.
This was but carrying to its logical conclusion that

70 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
Dred Scott decision which Douglas and his follow
ers proposed to accept. If Congress could not
restrict slavery in the territories, how could its
creature, a territorial legislature do so? And yet
the Douglas men attempted to take away the
power from Congress and to retain it for the ter
ritorial legislatures. Senator Pugh of Ohio had
already locked horns with Davis on this point, and
had attempted to show that a territorial legis
lature was independent of Congress. "Then I
would ask the Senator further, " retorted the logical
Davis, "why it is he makes an appropriation to
pay members of the territorial legislature; how it
is that he invests the Governor with veto power
over their acts; and how it is that he appoints
judges to decide upon the validity of their acts. "
In the Democratic convention which met at
Charleston in April, 1860, the waning power of
political evasion made its last real stand against
the rising power of political positivism. To accept
Douglas and the idea that somehow territorial leg
islatures were free to do what Congress could not
do, or to reject Douglas and endorse Davis's ulti
matum — that in substance was the issue. "In
this convention where there should be confidence
and harmony," said the Charleston Mercury, "it is

THE CRISIS 71
plain that men feel as if they were going into a
battle." In the committee on resolutions where
the States were equally represented, the majority
were anti-Douglas; they submitted a report affirm
ing Davis's position that territorial legislatures had
no right to prohibit slavery and that the Federal
Government should protect slavery against them.
The minority refused to go further than an ap
proval of the Dred Scott case and a pledge to
abide by all future decisions of the Supreme Court.
After both reports had been submitted, there fol
lowed the central event of the convention — the
now famous speech by Yancey which repudiated
political evasion from top to bottom, frankly de
fended slavery, and demanded either complete
guarantees for its continued existence or, as an
alternative, Southern independence. Pugh in
stantly replied and summed up Yancey's speech
as a demand upon Northern Democrats to say
that slavery was right, and that it was their duty
not only to let slavery alone but to aid in extend
ing it. "Gentlemen of the South," he exclaimed,
"yf u mistake us — you mistake us — we will not
dot."
I|i the full convention, where the representation
of the States was not equal, the Douglas men, after

72 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
hot debate, forced the adoption of the minority
report. Thereupon the Alabama delegation pro
tested and formally withdrew from the conven
tion, and other delegations followed. There was
wild excitement in Charleston, where that even
ing in the streets Yancey addressed crowds that
cheered for a Southern republic. The remaining
history of the Democratic nominations is a matter
of detail. The Charleston convention adjourned
without making nominations. Each of its frag
ments reorganized as a separate convention, and
ultimately two Democratic tickets were put into
the field, with Breckinridge of Kentucky as the
candidate on the Yancey ticket and Douglas on
the other.
While the Democrats were thus making history
through their fateful break-up into separate parties,
a considerable number of the so-called best people
of the country determined that they had nowhere
politically to lay their heads. A few of the old
Whigs were still unable to consort either with Re
publicans or with Democrats, old or new. The
Know-Nothings, likewise, though their number
had been steadily melting away, had not entirely
disappeared. To unite these political remnants in
any definite political whole seemed beyond human

THE CRISIS 73
ingenuity. A common sentiment, however, they
did have — a real love of the Union and a real un
happiness, because its existence appeared to be
threatened. The outcome was that they organized
the Constitutional Union Party, nominating for
President John Bell of Tennessee, and for Vice-
President Edward Everett of Massachusetts.
Their platform was little more than a profession
of love of the Union and a condemnation of
sectional selfishness.
This Bell and Everett ticket has a deeper sig
nificance than has generally been admitted. It
reveals the fact that the sentiment of Union, in
distinction from the belief in the Union, had be
come a real force in American life. There could
be no clearer testimony to the strength of this feel
ing than this spectacle of a great congregation of
moderate people, unable to agree upon anything
except this sentiment, stepping between the sec
tional parties like a resolute wayfarer going for
ward into darkness along a perilous strand between
two raging seas. That this feeling of Union was
the same thing as the eager determination of the
Republicans, in 1860, to control the Government is
one of those historical fallacies that have had their
day. The Republican party became, in time and

74 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
under stress of war, the refuge of this sentiment
and proved sufficiently far-sighted to merge its
identity temporarily in the composite Union party
of 1864. But in 1860 it was still a sectional party.
Among its leaders Lincoln was perhaps the only
Unionist in the same sense as Bell and Everett.
Perhaps the truest Unionists of the North, out
side the Constitutional Union Party, in 1860, were
those Democrats in the following of Douglas who,
after fighting to the last ditch against both the
sectional parties, were to accept, in 1861, the al
ternative of war rather than dissolution. The
course of Douglas himself, as we shall see hereafter,
showed that in his mind there was a fixed limit of
concession beyond which he could not go. When
circumstances forced him to that limit, the senti
ment of Union took control of him, swept aside
his political jugglery, abolished his time-serving,
and drove him into cooperation with his bitterest
foes that the Union might be saved. Nor was the
pure sentiment of Union confined to the North
and West. Though undoubtedly the sentiment of
locality was more powerful through the South, yet
when the test came in the election of 1860, the
leading candidate of the upper South, in Virginia,
Kentucky, and Tennessee, was John Bell, the Con-

THE CRISIS 75
stitutional Unionist. In every Southern State this
sentiment was able to command a considerable
part of the vote.1
Widely different in temper were those stern and
resolute men whose organization, in perfect fight
ing trim, faced eagerly the divided Democrats.
The Republicans had no division among themselves
upon doctrine. Such division as existed was due to
the ordinary rivalry of political leaders. In the
opinion of all his enemies and of most Americans,
Seward was the Republican man of the hour.
During much of 1859 he had discreetly withdrawn
from the country and had left to his partisans the
conduct of his campaign, which seems to have
been going well when he returned in the midst of
the turmoil following the death of John Brown.
Nevertheless he was disturbed over his prospects,
for he found that in many minds, both North and
South, he was looked upon as the ultimate cause
of all the turmoil. His famous speech on the "ir
repressible conflict" was everywhere quoted as an
exultant prophecy of these terrible latter days.
It was long the custom to deny to Seward any
1 A possible exception was South Carolina. As the presidential
electors were appointed by the legislature, there is no certain record of
minority sentiment.

76 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
good motive in a speech which he now delivered,
just as it was to deny Webster any good motive
for his famous 7th of March speech. But such
criticism is now less frequent than it used to be.
Both men were seeking the Presidency; both, we
may fairly believe, were shocked by the turmoil of
political currents; each tried oiling the waters, and
in the attempt each ruined his candidacy. Sew
ard's speech in condemnation of John Brown in
February, 1860, was an appeal to the conservative
North against the radical North, and to many
of his followers it seemed a change of front. It
certainly gained him no new friends and it lost
him some old ones, so that his star as a presiden
tial candidate began its decline.
The first ballot in the Republican convention
surprised the country. Of the votes, 233 were
necessary for a choice. Seward had only 173j^.
Next to him, with 102 votes, stood none of the
leading candidates, but the comparatively obscure
Lincoln. A gap of more than 50 votes separated
Lincoln from Cameron, Chase, and Bates. On the
second ballot Seward gained 11 votes, while Lin
coln gained 79. The enemies of Seward, finding
it impossible to combine on any of the conspicuous
candidates, were moving toward Lincoln, the man

THE CRISIS 77
with fewest enemies. The third ballot gave Lin
coln the nomination.
We have seen that one of the basal questions
of the time was which new political group should
absorb the Whig remainder. The Constitutional
Union party aimed to accomplish this. The Re
publicans sought to out-maneuver them. They
made their platform as temperate as they could
and yet consistent with the maintenance of their
opposition to Douglas and popular sovereignty;
and they went no further in their anti-slavery
demands than that the territories should be pre
served for free labor.
Another basal question had been considered in
the Republican platform. Where would Northern
capital stand in the reorganization of parties?
Was capital, like men, to become frankly sectional
or would it remain impersonal, careless how nations
rose or fell, so long as dividends continued? To
some extent capital had given an answer. When,
in the excitement following the John Brown inci
dent, a Southern newspaper published a white list
of New York merchants whose political views
should commend them to Southerners, and a black
list of those who were objectionable, many New
Yorkers sought a place in the white list. Northern

78 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
capital had done its part in financing the revived
slave trade. August Belmont, the New York re
presentative of the Rothschilds, was one of the
close allies of Davis, Yancey, and Benjamin in
their war upon Douglas. In a word, a great por
tion of Northern capital had its heart where its
investments were — in the South. But there was
other capital which obeyed the same law, and
which had investments in the North; and with
this capital the Republicans had been trafficking.
They had succeeded in winning over the power
ful manufacturing interests of Pennsylvania, the
pivotal State that had elected Buchanan in 1856.
The steps by which the new party of enthusi
asm made its deal with the body of capital which
was not at one with Belmont and the Democrats
are not essential to the present narrative. Two
facts suffice. In 1857 a great collapse in American
business — "the panic of fifty-seven" — led the
commercial world to turn to the party in power
for some scheme of redress. But their very prin
ciples, among which was non-intervention in busi
ness, made the Democrats feeble doctors for such
a need, and they evaded the situation. The Re
publicans, with their insistence on positivism in
government, had therefore an opportunity to make

THE CRISIS 79
a new application of the doctrine of governmental
aid to business. In the spring of 1860, the Re
publican House of Representatives passed the
Morrill tariff bill, consideration of which was post
poned by the Democratic Senate. But it served
its purpose: it was a Republican manifesto. The
Republicans felt that this bill, together with their
party platform, gave the necessary guarantee to
the Pennsylvania manufacturers, and they there
fore entered the campaign confident they would
carry Pennsylvania — nor was their confidence
misplaced. The campaign was characterized by three things :
by an ominous quiet coupled with great intensity
of feeling; by the organization of huge party so
cieties in military form — "Wide-awakes" for Lin
coln, numbering 400,000, and "Minute Men" for
Breckinridge, with a membership chiefly South
ern; and by the perfect frankness, in all parts of
the South, of threats of secession in case the Re
publicans won.
In none of the States which eventually seceded
were any votes cast for Lincoln, with the excep
tion of a small number in Virginia. In almost all
the other Southern States and in the slave-hold
ing border States, all the other candidates made

80 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
respectable showings. In Virginia, Tennessee, and
Kentucky, Bell led. But everywhere else in the
other slave-holding States Breckinridge led, ex
cepting in Missouri where Douglas won by a few
hundred. Every free State except New Jersey
went for Lincoln. And yet he did not have a ma
jority of the popular vote, which stood: Lincoln,
1,866,452; Douglas, 1,376,957; Breckinridge, 849,-
781; Bell, 588,879. * The majority against Lincoln
was nearly a million. The distribution of the votes
was such that Lincoln had in the Electoral College,
180 electors; Breckinridge, 72; Bell, 39; Douglas,
12. In neither House of Congress did the Repub
licans have a majority.
1 The figures of the popular vote are variously given by different
compilers. These are taken from Stanwood, A History of the Presi
dency.

CHAPTER V
SECESSION
In tracing American history from 1854 to 1860
we cannot fail to observe that it reduces itself
chiefly to a problem in that science which poli
ticians understand so well — applied psychology.
Definite types of men moulded by the conditions
of those days are the determining factors — not
the slavery question in itself; not, primarily, eco
nomic forces; not a theory of government, nor
a clash of theories; not any one thing; but the
fluid, changeful forces of human nature, battling
with circumstances and expressing themselves in
the fashion of men's minds. To say this is to ac
knowledge the fatefulness of sheer feeling. Davis
described the situation exactly when he said, in
1860, "A sectional hostility has been substituted
for a general fraternity." To his own question,
"Where is the remedy?" he gave the answer, "In
the hearts of the people. " There, after all, is the
6 81

82 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
conclusion of the whole matter. The strife be
tween North and South had ceased to be a thing
of the head; it had become a thing of the heart.
Granted the emotions of 1860, the way in which our
country staggered into war has all the terrible
fascination of a tragedy on the theme of fate.
That a secession movement would begin some
where in the South before the end of 1860 was
a foregone conclusion. South Carolina was the
logical place, and in South Carolina the inevitable
occurred. The presidential election was quickly
followed by an election of delegates, on the 6th
of December, to consider in convention the rela
tions of the State with the Union. The arguments
before the Convention were familiar and had been
advocated since 1851. The leaders of the dis
unionists were the same who had led the unsuccess
ful movement of ten years before. The central
figure was Rhett, who never for a moment had
wavered. Consumed his life long by the one idea
of the independence of South Carolina, that stern
enthusiast pressed on to a triumphant conclusion.
The powers which had defeated him in 1851 were
now either silent or converted, so that there was
practically no opposition. In a burst of pas
sionate zeal the independence of South Carolina

SECESSION 83
was proclaimed on December 20, 1860, by an ordi
nance of secession.
Simultaneously, by one of those dramatic coin
cidences which make history stranger than fiction,
Lincoln took a step which supplemented this ac
tion and established its tragic significance. What
that step was will appear in a moment.
Even before the secession began, various types
of men in politics had begun to do each after
his kind. Those whom destiny drove first into a
corner were the lovers of political evasion. The
issue was forced upon them by the instantaneous
demand of the people of South Carolina for pos
session of forts in Charleston Harbor which were
controlled by the Federal Government. Antici
pating such a demand, Major Robert Anderson,
the commandant at Charleston, had written to
Buchanan on the 23d of November that "Fort
Sumter and Castle Pinckney must be garrisoned
immediately, if the Government determines to
keep command of this harbor. "
In the mind of every American of the party of
political evasion, there now began a sad, internal
conflict. Every one of them had to choose among
three courses: to shut his eyes and to continue
to wail that the function of government is to do

84 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
nothing; to make an end of political evasion and
to come out frankly in approval of the Southern
position; or to break with his own record, to emerge
from his evasions on the opposite side, and to
confess himself first and before all a supporter of
the Union. One or another of these three courses,
sooner or later, every man of the President's fol
lowing chose. We shall see presently the relative
strength of the three groups into which that fol
lowing broke and what strange courses — some
times tragic, sometimes comic — two of the three
pursued. For the moment our concern is how the
division manifested itself among the heads of the
party at Washington.
The President took the first of the three courses.
He held it with the nervous clutch of a weak nature
until overmastered by two grim men who gradually
hypnotized his will. The turning-point for Bu
chanan, and the last poor crisis in his inglorious
career, came on Sunday, December 30th. Before
that day arrived, his vacillation had moved his
friends to pity and his enemies to scorn. One of
his best friends wrote privately, "The President
is pale with fear"; and the hostile point of view
found expression in such comments as this, "Buch
anan, it is said, divides his time between praying

SECESSION 85
and crying. Such a perfect imbecile never held
office before. "
With the question what to do about the forts
hanging over his bewildered soul, Buchanan sent
a message to Congress on December 4, 1860, in
which he sought to defend the traditional evasive
policy of his party. He denied the constitutional
right of secession, but he was also denied his own
right to oppose such a course. Seward was not
unfair to the mental caliber of the message when
he wrote to his wife that Buchanan showed "con
clusively that it is the duty of the President to
execute the laws — unless somebody opposes him;
and that no State has a right to go out of the
Union — unless it wants to. "
This message of Buchanan's hastened the in
evitable separation of the Democratic party into
its elements. The ablest Southern member of the
Cabinet, Cobb, resigned. He was too strong an
intellect to continue the policy of "nothing doing"
now that the crisis had come. He was too de
voted a Southerner to come out of political evas
ion except on one side. On the day Cobb resign
ed the South Carolina Representatives called on
Buchanan and asked him not to make any change
in the disposition of troops at Charleston, and par-

86 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
ticularly not to strengthen Sumter, a fortress on an
island in the midst of the harbor, without at least
giving notice to the state authorities. What was
said in this interview was not put in writing but
was remembered afterward in different ways —
with unfortunate consequences.
Every action of Buchanan in this fateful month
continued the disintegration of his following. Just
as Cobb had to choose between his reasonings as a
Democratic party man and his feelings as a South
erner, so the aged Cass, his Secretary of State, and
an old personal friend, now felt constrained to
choose between his Democratic reasoning and his
Northern sympathies, and resigned from the Cab
inet on the 11th of December. Buchanan then
turned instinctively to the strongest natures that
remained among his close associates. It is a com
pliment to the innate force of Jeremiah S. Black,
the Attorney-General, that Buchanan advanced
him to the post of Secretary of State and allowed
him to name as his successor in the Attorney-
Generalship Edwin M. Stanton. Both were tried
Democrats of the old style, "let-'em-alone" sort;
and both had supported the President in his Kan
sas policy. But each, like every other member
of his party, was being forced by circumstances

SECESSION 87
to make his choice among the three inevitable
courses, and each chose the Northern side. At
once the question of the moment was whether the
new Secretary of State and his powerful hench
men would hypnotize the President.
For a couple of weeks the issue hung in the bal
ance. Then there appeared at Washington com
missioners from South Carolina "empowered to
treat . . . for the delivery of forts . . . and
other real estate" held by the Federal Government
within their State. On the day following their
arrival, Buchanan was informed by telegraph that
Anderson had dismantled Fort Moultrie on the
north side of the harbor, had spiked its guns, and
had removed its garrison to the island fortress,
Sumter, which was supposed to be far more de
fensible. At Charleston his action was interpreted
as preparation for war; and all South Carolinians
saw in it a violation of a pledge which they believed
the President had given their congressmen, three
weeks previous, in that talk which had not been
written down. Greatly excited and fearful of de
signs against them, the South Carolina commis
sioners held two conferences with the President on
the 27th and 28th of December. They believed
that he had broken his word, and they told him so.

88 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
Deeply agitated and refusing to admit that he had
committed himself at the earlier conference, he
said that Anderson had acted on his own respon
sibility, but he refused to order him back to the
now ruined Fort Moultrie. One remark which he
let fall has been remembered as evidence of his
querulous state of mind: "You are pressing me
too importunately, " exclaimed the unhappy Presi
dent; "you don't give me time to consider; you
don't give me time to say my prayers; I always
say my prayers when required to act upon any
great state affair." One remembers Hampden
"seeking the Lord" about ship money, and one
realizes that the same act may have a vastly dif
ferent significance in different temperaments.
Buchanan, however, was virtually ready to give
way to the demand of the commissioners. He
drew up a paper to that effect and showed it to
the Cabinet. Then the turning-point came. In
a painful interview, Black, long one of his most
trusted friends, told him of his intention to resign,
and that Stanton would go with him and probably
also the Postmaster-General, Holt. The idea of
losing the support of these strong personalities
terrified Buchanan, who immediately fell into a
panic. Handing Black the paper he had drawn

SECESSION 89
up, Buchanan begged him to retain office and to
alter the paper as he saw fit. To this Black agreed.
The demand for the surrender of the forts was
refused; Anderson was not ordered back to Moul
trie; and for the brief remainder of Buchanan's
administration Black acted as prime minister.
A very powerful section of the Northern democ
racy, well typified by their leaders at Washington,
had thus emerged from political evasion on the
Northern side. These men, known afterwards as
War Democrats, combined with the Republicans
to form the composite Union party which sup
ported Lincoln. It is significant that Stanton
eventually reappeared in the Cabinet as Lincoln's
Secretary of War, and that along with him ap
peared another War Democrat, Gideon Welles,
Lincoln's Secretary of the Navy. With them, at
last, Douglas, the greatest of all the old Demo
crats of the North, took his position. What be
came of the other factions of the old Democratic
party remains to be told.
While Buchanan, early in the month, was weep
ing over the pitilessness of fate, more practical
Northerners were grappling with the question of
what was to be done about the situation. In their
thoughts they anticipated a later statesman and

90 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
realized that they were confronted by a condi
tion and not by a theory. Secession was at last
a reality. Which course should they take?
What strikes us most forcibly, as we look back
upon that day, is the widespread desire for peace.
The abolitionists form a conspicuous example.
Their watchword was "Let the erring sisters go
in peace." Wendell Phillips, their most gifted
orator, a master of spoken style at once simple
and melodious, declaimed splendidly against war.
Garrison, in The Liberator, followed his example.
Whittier put the same feeling into his verse :
They break the links of Union; shall we light
The flames of hell to weld anew the chain
On that red anvil where each blow is pain?
Horace Greeley said in an editorial in the New
York Tribune: "If the cotton states shall decide
that they can do better out of the Union than
in it, we shall insist on letting them go in peace.
. . . Whenever a considerable section of our
Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall
resist all coercive measures designed to keep them
in. We hope never to live in a republic where one
section is pinned to the residue by bayonets. "
The Democrats naturally clung to their tradi
tions, and, even when they went over, as Black

SECESSION 91
and Stanton did, to the Anti-Southern group,
they still hoped that war would not be the result.
Equally earnest against war were most of the Re
publicans, though a few, to be sure, were ready
to swing the "Northern hammer." Sumner pro
phesied that slavery would "go down in blood."
But the bulk of the Republicans were for a sec
tional compromise, and among them there was
general approbation of a scheme which contem
plated reviving the line of the Missouri Compro
mise, and thus frankly admitting the existence of
two distinct sections, and guaranteeing to each
the security of its own institutions. The greatest
Republican boss of that day, Thurlow Weed, came
out in defense of this plan.
No power was arrayed more zealously on the side
of peace of any kind than the power of money. It
was estimated that two hundred millions of dollars
were owed by Southerners to Northerners. War,
it was reasoned, would cause the cancellation of
these obligations. To save their Southern ac
counts, the moneyed interests of the North joined
the extremists of Abolition in pleading to let the
erring sisters go in peace, if necessary, rather
than provoke them to war and the confiscation of
debts. It was the dread of such an outcome —

92 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
which finally happened and ruined many North
ern firms — that caused the stock-market in New
York to go up and down with feverish uncer
tainty. Banks suspended payment in Washing
ton, Baltimore, and Philadelphia. The one im
portant and all-engrossing thing in the mind's
eye of all the financial world at this moment
was that specter of unpaid Southern accounts.
At this juncture, Senator Crittenden of Ken
tucky submitted to the Senate a plan which has
been known ever since as the Crittenden Com
promise. It was similar to Weed's plan, but it also
provided that the division of the country on the
Missouri Compromise line should be established
by a constitutional amendment, which would thus
forever solidify sectionalism. Those elements of
the population generally called the conservative
and the responsible were delighted. Edward Eve
rett wrote to Crittenden, "I saw with great sat
isfaction your patriotic movement, and I wish
from the bottom of my heart it might succeed";
and August Belmont in a letter to Crittenden
spoke for the moneyed interest: "I have yet to
meet the first Union-loving man, in or out of
politics, who does not approve your compromise
proposition. . . ."

SECESSION 93
The Senate submitted the Compromise to a
Committee of Thirteen. In this committee the
Southern leaders, Toombs and Davis, were both
willing to accept the Compromise, if a majority of
the Republican members would agree. Indeed,
if the Republicans would agree to it, there seemed
no reason why a new understanding between the
sections might not be reached, and no reason why
sectionalism, if accepted as the basis of the govern
ment, might not solve the immediate problem and
thus avert war. In this crisis all eyes were turned
to Seward, that conspicuous Republican who was
generally looked upon as the real head of his party.
And Seward, at that very moment, was debating
whether to accept Lincoln's offer of the Secretary
ship of State, for he considered it vital to have an
understanding with Lincoln on the subject of the
Compromise. He talked the matter over with
Weed, and they decided that Weed should go to
Springfield and come to terms with Lincoln. It
was the interview between Weed and Lincoln —
held, it seems, on the very day on which the Ordi
nance of Secession was adopted — which gave to
that day its double significance.
Lincoln refused point-blank to accept the com
promise and he put his refusal in writing. The

94 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
historic meaning of his refusal, and the signifi
cance of his determination not to solve the problem
of the hour by accepting a dual system of govern
ment based on frankly sectional assumptions, were
probably, in a measure, lost on both Weed and
Seward. They had, however, no misunderstand
ing of its practical effect. This crude Western
lawyer had certain ideas from which he would not
budge, and the party would have to go along with
him. Weed and Seward therefore promptly fell
into line, and Seward accepted the Secretaryship
and came out in opposition to the Compromise.
Other Republicans with whom Lincoln had com
municated by letter made known his views, and
Greeley announced them in The Tribune. The
outcome was the solid alignment of all the Repub
licans in Congress against the Compromise. As
a result, this last attempt to reunite the sections
came to nothing.
Not more than once or twice, if ever, in American
history, has there been such an anxious New Year's
Day as that which ushered in 1861. A few days
before, a Republican Congressman had written to
one of his constituents: "The heavens are indeed
black and an awful storm is gathering ... I see
no way that either North or South can escape its

SECESSION 95
fury." Events were indeed moving fast toward
disaster. The garrison at Sumter was in need of
supplies, and in the first week of the new year
Buchanan attempted to relieve its wants. But
a merchant vessel, the Star of the West, by which
supplies were sent, was fired upon by the South
Carolina authorities as it approached the harbor
and was compelled to turn back. This incident
caused the withdrawal from the Cabinet of the last
opposition members — Thompson, of Mississippi,
the Secretary of the Interior, and Thomas, of
Maryland, the Secretary of the Treasury. In the
course of the month five Southern States followed
South Carolina out of the Union, and their Sena
tors and Representatives resigned from the Con
gress of the United States.
The resignation of Jefferson Davis was commu
nicated to the Senate in a speech of farewell which
even now holds the imagination of the student, and
which to the men of that day, with the Union
crumbling around them, seemed one of the most
mournful and dramatic of orations. Davis pos
sessed a beautiful, melodious voice; he had a noble
presence, tall, erect, spare, even ascetic, with a
flashing blue eye. He was deeply moved by the
occasion; his address was a requiem. That he

96 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
withdrew in sorrow but with fixed determination,
no one who listened to him could doubt. Early
in February, the Southern Confederacy was formed
with Davis as its provisional President. With the
prophetic vision of a logical mind, he saw that war
was inevitable, and he boldly proclaimed his vision.
In various speeches on his way South, he had as
sured the Southern people that war was coming,
and that it would be long and bloody.
The withdrawal of these Southern members
threw the control of the House into the hands of
the Republicans. Their realization of their power
was expressed in two measures which also passed
the Senate; Kansas was admitted as a State with
an anti-slavery constitution; and the Morrill tar
iff, which they had failed to pass the previous
spring, now became law. Thus the Republicans
began redeeming their pledges to the anti-slavery
men on the one hand and to the commercial inter
est on the other. The time had now arrived for
the Republican nominee to proceed from Spring
field to Washington. The journey was circuitous
in order to enable Lincoln to speak at a number of
places. Never before, probably, had the Northern
people felt such tense strain as at that moment;
never had they looked to an incoming President

SECESSION 97
with such anxious doubt. Would he prevent war?
Or, if he could not do that, would he be able
to extricate the country — Heaven alone knew
how! — without a terrible ordeal? Since his elec
tion, Lincoln had remained quietly at Springfield.
Though he had influenced events through letters
to Congressmen, his one conspicuous action during
that winter was the defeat of the Crittenden Com
promise. The Southern President had called upon
his people to put their house in order as preparation
for war. What, now, had Lincoln to say to the
people of the North?
The biographers of Lincoln have not satisfac
torily revealed the state of his mind between elec
tion and inauguration. We may safely guess that
his silence covered a great internal struggle, Ex
cept for his one action in defeating the Compromise,
he had allowed events to drift; but by that one
action he had taken upon himself the responsibil
ity for the drift. Though the country at that time
did not fully appreciate this aspect of the situa
tion, who now can doubt that Lincoln did? His
mind was always a lonely one. His very humor has
in it, so often, the note of solitude, of one who is
laughing to make the best of things, of one who
is spiritually alone. During those months when

98 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
the country drifted from its moorings, and when
war was becoming steadily more probable, Lin
coln, after the manner of the prophets, wrestled
alone with the problems which he saw before him.
From the little we know of his inward state, it is
hard for us to conclude that he was happy. A
story which is told by his former partner, Mr.
Herndon, seems significant. As Lincoln was leav
ing his unpretentious law-office for the last time,
he turned to Mr. Herndon and asked him not to
take down their old sign. "Let it hang there
undisturbed," said he. "Give our clients to un
derstand that the election of a President makes
no difference in the firm. ... If I live, I'm
coming back some time, and then we'll go right
on practising law as if nothing had happened. "
How far removed from self-sufficiency was the
man whose thoughts, on the eve of his elevation
to the Presidency, lingered in a provincial law
office, fondly insistent that only death should pre
vent his returning some time and resuming in
those homely surroundings the life he had led pre
vious to his greatness. In a mood of wistfulness
and of intense preoccupation, he began his journey
to Washington. It was not the mood from which
to strike fire and kindle hope. To the anxious,

SECESSION 99
listening country his speeches on the journey
to Washington were disappointing. Perhaps his
strangely sensitive mind felt too powerfully the
fatefulness of the moment and reacted with a sort
of lightness that did not really represent the real
man. Be that as it may, he was never less
convincing than at that time. Nor were people
impressed by his bearing. Often he appeared
awkward, too much in appearance the country
lawyer. He acted as a man who was ill at ease and
he spoke as a man who had nothing to say. Gloom
darkened the North as a consequence of these un
fortunate speeches, for they expressed an opti
mism which we cannot believe he really felt, and
which hurt him in the estimation of the country.
"There is no crisis but an artificial one, " was one of
his ill-timed assurances, and another, "There is
nothing going wrong. . . . There is nothing that
really hurts any one." Of his supporters some
were discouraged; others were exaspera^d; and an
able but angry partisan even went so far as to write
in a private letter, "Lincoln is a Simple Susan. "
The fourth of March arrived, and with it the
end of Lincoln's blundering. One good omen for
the success of the new Administration was the
presence of Douglas on the inaugural platform.

100 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
He had accepted fate, deeply as it wounded him,
and had come out of the shattered party of eva
sion on the side of his section. For the purpose
of showing his support of the administration at
this critical time, he had taken a place on the
stand where Lincoln was to speak. By one of
those curious little dramatic touches with which
chance loves to embroider history, the presence of
Douglas became a gracious detail in the memory
of the day. Lincoln, worn and awkward, con
tinued to hold his hat in his hand. Douglas,
with the tact born of social experience, stepped
forward and took it from him without exposing
Lincoln's embarrassment.
The inaugural address which Lincoln now pro
nounced had little similarity to those unfortunate
utterances which he had made on the journey
to Washington. The cloud that had been over
him, whatever it was, had lifted. Lincoln was
ready for his great labor. The inaugural con
tained three main propositions. Lincoln pledged
himself not to interfere directly or indirectly
with slavery in the States where it then existed;
he promised to support the enforcement of the
fugitive slave law; and he declared he would
maintain the Union. "No State," said he, "upon

SECESSION 101
its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the
Union .... To the extent of my ability I shall
take care, as the Constitution itself expressly en
joins upon me, that the laws of the Union be
faithfully executed in all the States. ... In
doing this, there need be no bloodshed or violence;
and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon
the national authority. The power confided to
me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the
property and places belonging to the government."
Addressing the Southerners, he said: "In your
hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and
not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war.
The Government will not assail you. . . . We
are not enemies but friends. . . . The mystic
cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield
and patriot grave to every living heart and hearth
stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the
chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely
they will be, by the better angels of our nature. "
Gentle as was tho phrasing of the inaugural, it
was perfectly firm, and it outlined a policy which
the South would not accept, and which, in the
opinion of the Southern leaders, brought them a
step nearer war. Wall Street held the same belief,
and as a consequence the price of stocks fell.

CHAPTER VI

WAR

On the day following the inauguration, commis
sioners of the newly formed Confederacy appeared
at Washington and applied to the Secretary of
State for recognition as envoys of a foreign power.
Seward refused them such recognition. But he
entered into a private negotiation with them which
is nearly, if not quite, the strangest thing in our
history. Virtually, Seward intrigued against Lin
coln for control of the Administration. The events
of the next five weeks have an importance out of
all proportion to the brevity of the time. This
was Lincoln's period of final probation. The psy
chological intensity of this episode grew from the
consciousness in every mind that now, irretriev
ably, destiny was to be determined. War or peace,
happiness or adversity, one nation or two — all
these were in the balance. Lincoln entered the
episode a doubtful quantity, not with certainty
102

WAR 103
the master even in his own Cabinet. He emerged
dominating the situation, but committed to the
terrible course of war.
One cannot enter upon this great episode, truly
the turning-point in American history, without
pausing for a glance at the character of Seward.
The subject is elusive. His ablest biographer1
plainly is so constantly on guard not to appear an
apologist that he ends by reducing his portrait
to a mere outline, wavering across a background
of political details. The most recent study of
Seward2 surely reveals between the lines the doubt
fulness of the author about pushing his points
home. The different sides of the man are hard
to reconcile. Now he seemed frank and honest;
again subtle and insincere. As an active politician
in the narrow sense, he should have been sagacious
and astute, yet he displayed at the crisis of his
life the most absolute fatuity. At times he had a
buoyant and puerile way of disregarding fact and
enveloping himself in a world of his own imagining.
He could bluster, when he wished, like any dema
gogue; and yet he could be persuasive, agreeable,
and even personally charming.
1 Frederic Bancroft, Life of WiUiam H. Seward.
2 Gamaliel Bradford, Union Portraits.

104 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
But of one thing with regard to Seward, in the
first week of March, 1861, there can be no doubt:
he thought himself a great statesman — and he
thought Lincoln "a Simple Susan. " He conceived
his r61e in the new administration to involve a sub
tle and patient manipulation of his childlike su
perior. That Lincoln would gradually yield to his
spell and insensibly become his figurehead; that
he, Seward, could save the country and would go
down to history a statesman above compare, he
took for granted. Nor can he fairly be called con
ceited, either; that is part of his singularity.
Lincoln's Cabinet was, as Seward said, a com
pound body. With a view to strengthening his
position, Lincoln had appointed to cabinet posi
tions all his former rivals for the Republican no
mination. Besides Seward, there was Chase as
Secretary of the Treasury; Simon Cameron of
Pennsylvania as Secretary of War; Edward Bates
of Missouri as Attorney-General. The appoint
ment of Montgomery Blair of Maryland as Post
master-General was intended to placate the border
Slave States. The same motive dictated the later
inclusion of James Speed of Kentucky in the Cabi
net. The Black-Stanton wing of the Democrats
was represented in the Navy Department by

WAR 105
Gideon Welles, and in course of time in the War
Department also, when Cameron resigned and
Stanton succeeded him. The West of that day
was represented by Caleb B. Smith of Indiana.
Seward disapproved of the composition of the
Cabinet so much that, almost at the last mo
ment, he withdrew his acceptance of the State
Department. It was Lincoln's gentleness of ar
gument which overcame his reluctance to serve.
We may be sure, however, that Seward failed to
observe that Lincoln's tactlessness in social mat
ters did not extend to his management of men in
politics; we may feel sure that what remained in his
mind was Lincoln's unwillingness to enter office
without William Henry Seward as Secretary of
State. The promptness with which Seward assumed the
role of prime minister bears out this inference.
The same fact also reveals a puzzling detail of
Seward's character which amounted to obtuseness
— his forgetfulness that appointment to cabinet
offices had not transformed his old political rivals
Chase and Cameron, nor softened the feelings of an
inveterate political enemy, Welles, the Secretary of
the Navy. The impression which Seward made on
his colleagues in the first days of the new Govern-

106 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
ment has been thus sharply recorded by Welles:
"The Secretary of State was, of course, apprised of
every meeting [of ministers] and never failed in his
attendance, whatever was the subject-matter, and
though entirely out of his official province. He was
vigilantly attentive to every measure and move
ment in other Departments, however trivial — as
much so as to his own — watched and scrutinized
every appointment that was made, or proposed
to be made, but was not communicative in re
gard to the transaction of the State Department."
So eager was Seward to keep all the threads of
affairs in his own hands that he tried to persuade
Lincoln not to hold cabinet meetings but merely
to consult with particular ministers, and with the
Secretary of State, as occasion might demand.
A combined protest from the other Secretaries,
however, caused the regular holding of Cabinet
meetings. With regard to the Confederacy, Seward's pol
icy was one of non-resistance. For this he had
two reasons. The first of these was his rooted
delusion that the bulk of the Southerners were
opposed to secession and, if let alone, would force
their leaders to reconsider their action. He might
have quoted the nursery rhyme, "Let them alone

WAR 107
and they'll come home"; it would have been like
him and in tune with a frivolous side of his nature.
He was quite as irresponsible when he compla
cently assured the North that the trouble would all
blow over within ninety days. He also believed
that any display of force would convert these hy
pothetical Unionists of the South from friends to
enemies and would consolidate opinion in the Con
federacy to produce war. In justice to Seward it
must be remembered that on this point time justi
fied his fears.
His dealings with the Confederate commissioners
show that he was playing to gain time, not with
intent to deceive the Southerners but to acquire
that domination over Lincoln which he felt was his
by natural right. Intending to institute a peace
policy the moment he gained this ascendency, he
felt perfectly safe in making promises to the com
missioners through mutual friends. He virtually
told them that Sumter would eventually be given
up and that all they need do was to wait.
Seward brought to bear upon the President the
opinions of various military men who thought the
time had passed when any expedition for the relief
of Sumter could succeed. For some time Lincoln
seemed about to consent, though reluctantly, to

108 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
Seward's lead in the matter of the forts. He
was pulled up standing, however, by the threat
ened resignation of the Postmaster-General, Blair.
After a conference with leading Republican poli
ticians the President announced to his Cabinet
that his policy would include the relief of Sumter.
"Seward," says Welles, "... was evidently
displeased." Seward now took a new tack. Fort Pickens,
at Pensacola, was a problem similar to that of
Sumter at Charleston. Both were demanded by the
Confederates, and both were in need of supplies.
But Fort Pickens lay to one side, so to speak, of
the public mind, and there was not conspicuously
in the world's eye the square issue over it that
there was over Sumter. Seward conceived the
idea that, if the President's attention were diverted
from Sumter to Pickens and a relief expedition
were sent to the latter but none to the former,
his private negotiations with the Confederates
might still be kept going; Lincoln might yet be
hypnotized; and at last all would be well.
On All-Fools' Day, 1861, in the midst of a press
of business, he obtained Lincoln's signature to
some dispatches, which Lincoln, it seems, dis
cussed with him hurriedly and without detailed

WAR 109
consideration. There were now in preparation
two relief expeditions, one to carry supplies to
Pensacola, the other to Charleston. Neither was
to fight if it was not molested. Both were to be
strong enough to fight if their commanders deemed
it necessary. As flagship of the Charleston expe
dition, Welles had detailed the powerful warship
Powhatan, which was rapidly being made ready
at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Such was the situa
tion as Welles understood it when he was thinking
of bed late on the night of the 6th of April. Until
then he had not suspected that there was doubt
and bewilderment about the Powhatan at Brooklyn.
One of those dispatches which Lincoln had so
hastily signed provided for detaching the Powhatan
from the Charleston expedition and sending it safe
out of harm's way to Pensacola. The commander
of the ship had before him the conflicting orders,
one from the President, one from the Secretary of
the Navy. He was about to sail under the Presi
dent's orders for Pensacola; but wishing to make
sure of his authority, he had telegraphed to Wash
ington. Gideon Welles was a pugnacious man.
His dislike for Seward was deep-seated. Imagine
his state of mind when it was accidently revealed
to him that Seward had gone behind his back and

110 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
had issued to naval officers orders which were
contradictory to his own! The immediate result
was an interview that same night between Seward
and Welles in which, as Welles coldly admitted
in after days, the Secretary of the Navy showed
"some excitement." Together they went, about
midnight, to the White House. Lincoln had some
difficulty recalling the incident of the dispatch on
the 1st of April; but when he did remember, he
took the responsibility entirely upon himself, say
ing he had had no purpose but to strengthen the
Pickens expedition, and no thought of weakening
the expedition to Charleston. He directed Seward
to telegraph immediately cancelling the order de
taching the Powhatan. Seward made a desperate
attempt to put him off, protesting it was too late
to send a telegram that night. "But the President
was imperative," writes Secretary Welles, in de
scribing the incident, and a dispatch was sent.
Seward then, doubtless in his agitation, did a
strange thing. Instead of telegraphing in the
President's name, the dispatch which he sent read
merely, "Give up the Powhatan . . . Seward."
When this dispatch was received at Brooklyn, the
Powhatan was already under way and had to be
overtaken by a fast tug. In the eyes of her com-

WILLIAM H. SEWARD
Photograph by Brady. In the: collection of L. C. Handy, Wash
ington.

Ej-cmiTB, JijiJJBTueji~liam.h. Ed- Jlf.y

WAR 111
mander, however, a personal telegram from the
Secretary of State appeared as of no weight against
the official orders of the President, and he con
tinued his voyage to Pensacola.
The mercurial temper of Seward comes out
even in the caustic narrative written afterwards
by Welles. Evidently Seward was deeply morti
fied and depressed by the incident. He remarked,
says Welles, that old as he was he had learned
a lesson, and that was that he had better attend
to his own business. " To this, " commented his
enemy, "I cordially assented."
Nevertheless Seward's loss of faith in himself was
only momentary. A night's sleep was sufficient to
restore it. His next communication to the com
missioners shows that he was himself again, sure
that destiny owed him the control of the situation.
On the following day the commissioners had got
wind of the relief expedition and pressed him for
information, recalling his assurance that nothing
would be done to their disadvantage. In reply,
still through a third person, Seward sent them the
famous message, over the precise meaning of which
great debate has raged: "Faith as to Sumter fully
kept; wait and see." If this infatuated dreamer
still believed he could dominate Lincoln, still

112 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
hoped at the last moment to arrest the expedition
to Charleston, he was doomed to bitterest disap
pointment. On the 9th of April, the expedition to Fort Sum
ter sailed, but without, as we have seen, the assist
ance of the much-needed warship, the Powhatan.
As all the world knows, the expedition had been
too long delayed and it accomplished nothing. Be
fore it arrived, the surrender of Sumter had been
demanded and refused — and war had begun. Dur
ing the bombardment of Sumter, the relief expedi
tion appeared beyond the bar, but its commander
had no vessels of such a character as to enable him
to carry aid to the fortress. Furthermore, he had
not been informed that the Powhatan had been
detached from his squadron, and he expected to
meet her at the mouth of the harbor. There his
ships lay idle until the fort was surrendered, wait
ing for the Powhatan — for whose detachment from
the squadron Seward was responsible.
To return to the world of intrigue at Washington,
however, it must not be supposed, as is so often
done, that Fort Sumter was the one concern of the
new government during its first six weeks. In
fact, the subject occupied but a fraction of Lin
coln's time. Scarcely second in importance was

WAR lis
that matter so curiously bound up with the relief
of the forts — the getting in hand of the strangely
vainglorious Secretary of State. Mention has
already been made of All-Fools' Day, 1861.
Several marvelous things took place on that day.
Strangest of all was the presentation of a paper by
the Secretary of State to his chief, entitled Thoughts
for the President's Consideration. Whether it be re
garded as a state paper or as a biographical detail
in the career of Seward, it proves to be quite the
most astounding thing in the whole episode. The
Thoughts outlined a course of policy by which the
buoyant Secretary intended to make good his
prophecy of domestic peace within ninety days.
Besides calmly patronizing Lincoln, assuring him
that his lack of "a policy either domestic or
foreign" was "not culpable and . . . even un
avoidable," the paper warned him that "policies
. . . both domestic and foreign" must immedi
ately be adopted, and it proceeded to point out
what they ought to be. Briefly stated, the one
true policy which he advocated at home was to
evacuate Sumter (though Pickens for some un
explained reason might be safely retained) and
then, in order to bring the Southerners back into
the Union, to pick quarrels with both Spain and

114 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
France; to proceed as quickly as possible to war
with both powers; and to have the ultimate sat
isfaction of beholding the reunion of the country
through the general enthusiasm that was bound
to come. Finally, the paper intimated that the
Secretary of State was the man to carry this pro
ject through to success.
All this is not opera bouffe, but serious history.
It must have taxed Lincoln's sense of humor and
strained his sense of the fitness of things to treat
such nonsense with the tactful forbearance which
he showed and to relegate it to the pigeonhole with
out making Seward angry. Yet this he contrived
to do; and he also managed, gently but firmly,
to make it plain that the President intended to
exercise his authority as the chief magistrate of
the nation. His forbearance was further shown in
passing over without rebuke Seward's part in the
affair of Sumter, which might so easily have been
made to appear treacherous, and in shouldering
himself with all responsibility for the failure of
the Charleston expedition. In the wave of excite
ment following the surrender, even so debonair a
minister as Seward must have realized how for
tunate it was for him that his chief did not tell all
he knew. About this time Seward began to per-

WAR 115
ceive that Lincoln had a will of his own, and that
it was not safe to trifle further with the President.
Seward thereupon ceased his interference.
It was in the dark days preceding the fall of
Sumter that a crowd of office-seekers gathered at
Washington, most of them men who had little
interest in anything but the spoils. It is a dis
tressing commentary on the American party sys
tem that, during the most critical month of the
most critical period of American history, much of
the President's time was consumed by these po
litical vampires who would not be put off, even
though a revolution was in progress and nations,
perhaps, were dying and being born. "The
scramble for office," wrote Stanton, "is terrible."
Seward noted privately: "Solicitants for office
besiege the President. . . . My duties call me
to the White House two or three times a day.
The grounds, halls, stairways, closets, are filled
with applicants who render ingress and egress
difficult." Secretary Welles has etched the Washington of
that time in his coldly scornful way:
A strange state of things existed at that time in
Washington. The atmosphere was thick with treason.
Party spirit and old party differences prevailed, how-

116 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
ever, amidst these accumulated dangers. Secession was
considered by most persons as a political party ques
tion, not as rebellion. Democrats to a large extent
sympathized with the Rebels more than with the Ad
ministration, which they opposed, not that they wished
Secession to be successful and the Union divided, but
they hoped that President Lincoln and the Republicans
would, overwhelmed by obstacles and embarrassments,
prove failures. The Republicans on the other hand,
were scarcely less partisan and unreasonable. Patri
otism was with them no test, no shield from party
malevolence. They demanded the proscription and
exclusion of such Democrats as opposed the Rebel
movement and clung to the Union, with the same vehe
mence that they demanded the removal of the worst
Rebels who advocated a dissolution of the Union.
Neither party appeared to be apprehensive of, or to
realize the gathering storm.
Seen against such a background, the political
and diplomatic frivolity of the Secretary of State
is not so inexplicable as it would otherwise be.
This background, as well as the intrigue of the
Secretary, helps us to understand Lincoln's great
task inside his Cabinet. At first the Cabinet was
a group of jealous politicians new to this sort of
office, drawn from different parties, and totally
lacking in a cordial sense of previous action to
gether. None of them, probably, when they first
assembled had any high opinion of their titular

WAR 117
head. He was looked upon as a political makeshift.
The best of them had to learn to appreciate the fact
that this strange, ungainly man, sprung from plain
est origin, without formal education, was a great
genius. By degrees, however, the large minds in the
Cabinet became his cordial admirers. While Lin
coln was quietly, gradually exercising his strong
will upon Seward, he was doing the same with
the other members of his council. Presently they
awoke — the majority of them at least — to the
truth that he, for all his odd ways, was their
master. Meanwhile the gradual readjustment of all fac
tions in the North was steadily going forward.
The Republicans were falling into line behind the
Government; and by degrees the distinction be
tween Seward and Lincoln, in the popular mind,
faded into a sort of composite picture called "the
Administration. " Lincoln had the reward of his
long forbearance with his Secretary. For Seward
it must be said that, however he had intrigued
against his chief at Washington, he did not intrigue
with the country. Admitting as he had, too, that
he had met his master, he took the defeat as a good
sportsman and threw all his vast party influence
into the scale for Lincoln's fortunes. Thus, as

118 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
April wore on, the Republican party settled down
to the idea that it was to follow the Government at
Washington upon any course that might develop.
The Democrats in the North were anti-Southern
in larger proportion, probably, than at any other
time during the struggle of the sections. We have
seen that numbers of them had frankly declared
for the Union. Politics had proved weaker than
propinquity. There was a moment when it seemed
— delusively, as events proved — that the North
was united as one man to oppose the South.
There is surely not another day in our history
that has witnessed so much nervous tension as
Saturday, April 13, 1861, for on that morning the
newspapers electrified the North with the news
that Sumter had been fired on from Confederate
batteries on the shore of Charleston Harbor. In
the South the issue was awaited confidently, but
many minds at least were in that state of awed
suspense natural to a moment which the thought
ful see is the stroke of fate. In the North, the
day passed for the most part in a quiet so breath
less that even the most careless could have fore
told the storm which broke on the following
day. The account of this crisis which has been
given by Lincoln's private secretary is interesting:

WAR 119
"That day there was little change in the busi
ness routine of the Executive office. Mr. Lincoln
was never liable to sudden excitement or sudden
activity. ... So while the Sumter telegrams
were on every tongue . . . leading men and offi
cials called to learn or impart the news. The Cabi
net, as by common impulse, came together and
deliberated. All talk, however, was brief, senten
tious, formal. Lincoln said but little beyond mak
ing inquiries about the current reports and criti
cizing the probability or accuracy of their details,
and went on as usual receiving visitors, listening
to suggestions, and signing routine papers through
out the day. " Meanwhile the cannon were boom
ing at Charleston. The people came out on the
sea-front of the lovely old city and watched the
duel of the cannon far down the harbor, and spoke
joyously of the great event. They saw the shells
of the shore batteries ignite portions of the fort
ress on the island. They watched the fire of the
defenders — driven by the flames into a restrict
ed area — slacken and cease. At last the flag
of the Union fluttered down from above Fort
Sumter. When the news flashed over the North, early
Sunday morning, April 14th, the tension broke.

120 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
For many observers then and afterward, the only
North discernible that fateful Sabbath was an
enraged, defiant, impulsive nation, forgetful for
the moment of all its differences, and uniting all
its voices in one hoarse cry for vengeance. There
seemed to be no other thought. Lincoln gave it
formal utterance, that same day, by assembling
his Cabinet and drawing up a proclamation which
called for 75,000 volunteer troops.
An incident of this day which is as significant
historically as any other was on the surface no more
than a friendly talk between two men. Douglas
called at the White House. For nearly two hours
he and Lincoln conferred in private. Hitherto it
had been a little uncertain what course Douglas
was going to take. In the Senate, though con
demning disunion, he had opposed war. Few
matters can have troubled Lincoln more deeply
than the question which way Douglas's immense
influence would be thrown. The question was
answered publicly in the newspapers of Monday,
April 15th. Douglas announced that while he was
still "unalterably opposed to the Administration
on all its political issues, he was prepared to sus
tain the President in the exercise of all his con
stitutional functions to preserve the Union, and

WAR 121
maintain the Government, and defend the federal
capital. "
There remained of Douglas's life but a few
months. The time was filled with earnest speech-
making in support of the Government. He had
started West directly following his conference with
Lincoln. His speeches in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,
were perhaps the greatest single force in breaking
up bis own following, putting an end to the prin
ciple of doing nothing, and forcing every Democrat
to come out and show his colors. In Shakespeare's
phrase, it was — "Under which king, Bezonian?
speak or die!" In Douglas's own phrase: "There
can be no neutrals in this war; only patriots — or
traitors. "
Side by side with Douglas's manifesto to the
Democrats there appeared in the Monday papers
Lincoln's call for volunteers. The militia of sev
eral Northern States at once responded.
On Wednesday, the 17th of April, the Sixth
Massachusetts Regiment entrained for Washing
ton. Two days later it was in Baltimore. There
it was attacked by a mob; the soldiers fired; and
a number of civilians were killed as well as sev
eral soldiers.
These shots at Baltimore aroused the Southern

122 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
party in Maryland. Led by the Mayor of the city,
they resolved to prevent the passage of other troops
across their State to Washington. Railway tracks
were torn up by order of the municipal authorities,
and bridges were burnt. The telegraph was cut.
As in a flash, after issuing his proclamation, Lin
coln found himself isolated at Washington with
no force but a handful of troops and the govern
ment clerks. And while Maryland rose against
him on one side, Virginia joined his enemies on
the other. The day the Sixth Massachusetts left
Boston, Virginia seceded. The Virginia militia
were called to their colors. Preparations were at
once set on foot for the seizure of the great federal
arsenal at Harper's Ferry and the Navy Yard
at Norfolk. The next day a handful of federal
troops, fearful of being overpowered at Harper's
Ferry, burned the arsenal and withdrew to Wash
ington. For the same reason the buildings of the
great Navy Yard were blown up or set on fire, and
the ships at anchor were sunk. So desperate and
unprepared were the Washington authorities that
they took these extreme measures to keep arms
and ammunition out of the hands of the Virgin
ians. So hastily was the destruction carried out,
that it was only partially successful and at both

WAR 128
places large stores of ammunition were seized by
the Virginia troops. While Washington was iso
lated, and Lincoln did not know what response the
North had made to his proclamation, Robert E.
Lee, having resigned his commission in the federal
army, was placed in command of the Virginia
troops. The secretaries of Lincoln have preserved a pic
ture of his desperate anxiety, waiting, day after
day, for relief from the North which he hoped
would speedily come by sea. Outwardly he main
tained his self-control. "But once, on the after
noon of the 23d, the business of the day being
over, the Executive office being deserted, after
walking the floor alone in silent thought for nearly
half an hour, he stopped and gazed long and wist
fully out of the window down the Potomac in the
direction of the expected ships; and, unconscious
of other presence in the room, at length broke out
with irrepressible anguish in the repeated exclama
tion, 'Why don't they come! Why don't they
come!'" During these days of isolation, when Washing
ton, with the telegraph inoperative, was kept in
an appalling uncertainty, the North rose. There
was literally a rush to volunteer. "The heather

124 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
is on fire," wrote George Ticknor, "I never be
fore knew what a popular excitement can be." As
fast as possible militia were hurried South. The
crack New York regiment, the famous, dandified
Seventh, started for the front amid probably the
most tempestuous ovation which until that time
was ever given to a military organization in Amer
ica. Of the march of the regiment down Broad
way, one of its members wrote, "Only one who
passed as we did, through the tempest of cheers
two miles long, can know the terrible enthusiasm
of the occasion. "
To reach Washington by rail was impossible.
The Seventh went by boat to Annapolis. The
same course was taken by a regiment of Massa
chusetts mechanics, the Eighth. Landing at An
napolis, the two regiments, dandies and labor
ers, fraternized at once in the common bond of
loyalty to the Union. A branch railway led
from Annapolis to the main line between Wash
ington and Baltimore. The rails had been torn
up. The Massachusetts mechanics set to work to
relay them. The Governor of Maryland protested.
He was disregarded. The two regiments toiled to
gether a long day and through the night follow
ing, between Annapolis and the Washington junc-

WAR 125
tion, bringing on their baggage and cannon over
relaid tracks. There, a train was found which the
Seventh appropriated. At noon, on the 25th of
April, that advance guard of the Northern hosts
entered Washington, and Lincoln knew that he
had armies behind him.

CHAPTER VII

LINCOLN

The history of the North had virtually become,
by April, 1861, the history of Lincoln himself, and
during the remaining four years of the President's
life it is difficult to separate his personality from
the trend of national history. Any attempt to
understand the achievements and the omissions of
the Northern people without undertaking an intel
ligent estimate of their leader would be only to
duplicate the story of Hamlet with Hamlet left out.
According to the opinion of English military ex
perts,1 "Against the great military genius of cer
tain Southern leaders fate opposed the unbroken
resolution and passionate devotion to the Union,
which he worshiped, of the great Northern Presi
dent. As long as he lived and ruled the people of
the North, there could be no turning back. "
1 Wood and Edmonds, The Civil War in the United States.
126

LINCOLN 127
Lincoln has been ranked with Socrates; but he
has also been compared with Rabelais. He has
been the target of abuse that knew no mercy; but
he has been worshiped as a demigod. The ten big
volumes of his official biography are a sustained,
intemperate eulogy in which the hero does no
thing that is not admirable; but as large a book
could be built up out of contemporaneous North
ern writings that would paint a picture of unmiti
gated blackness — and the most eloquent portions
of it would be signed by Wendell Phillips.
The real Lincoln is, of course, neither the Lin
coln of the official biography nor the Lincoln of
Wendell Phillips. He was neither a saint nor a
villain. What he actually was is not, however, so
easily stated. Prodigious men are never easy to
sum up; and Lincoln was a prodigious man. The
more one studies him, the more individual he
appears to be. By degrees one comes to under
stand how it was possible for contemporaries to
hold contradictory views of him and for each to
believe frantically that his views were proved by
facts. For anyone who thinks he can hit off in a
few neat generalities this complex, extraordinary
personality, a single warning may suffice. Walt
Whitman, who was perhaps the most original

128 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
thinker and the most acute observer who ever saw
Lincoln face to face has left us his impression; but
he adds that there was something in Lincoln's face
which defied description and which no picture had
caught. After Whitman's conclusion that "One
of the great portrait painters of two or three hun
dred years ago is needed," the mere historian
should proceed with caution.
There is historic significance in his very appear
ance. His huge, loose-knit figure, six feet four
inches high, lean, muscular, ungainly, the evi
dence of his great physical strength, was a fit sym
bol of those hard workers, the children of the soil,
from whom he sprang. His face was rugged like
his figure, the complexion swarthy, cheek bones
high, and bushy black hair crowning a great fore
head beneath which the eyes were deep-set, gray,
and dreaming. A sort of shambling powerfulness
formed the main suggestion of face and figure,
softened strangely by the mysterious expression of
the eyes, and by the singular delicacy of the skin.
The motions of this awkward giant lacked grace;
the top hat and black frock coat, sometimes rusty,
which had served him on the western circuit con
tinued to serve him when he was virtually the dic
tator of his country. It was in such dress that

GROUP OF FURNITURE FROM LINCOLN'S HOUSE IN
SPRINGFIELD
In the (Collection of the Historical Society. -of Pennsylvania, Phila
delphia. "The sofa, work table, and chairs Were formerly in the
possession of Messrs. Vanuxem and Potter, lawyers, of Philadelphia.
The sofa, which is of mahogany veneer, upholstered with hair cloth,
was made to order for Lincoln, he being unable to find one ready made
which was long enough for him. When Lincoln left Springfield,
Illinois, for Washington, much of the furniture of his house was sold.
This sofa was bought for $100^ by Mr. John E. Roll, who sold it to the
Lincoln Memorial Collection of Chicago." — Life of Lincoln, by
IdaM. Tarbelh,;!

!

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LINCOLN 129
he visited the army, where he towered above his
generals. Even in a book of restricted scope, such as this,
one must insist upon the distinction between the
private and public Lincoln, for there is as yet no
accepted conception of him. What comes nearest
to an accepted conception is contained probably
in the version of the late Charles Francis Adams.
He tells us how his father, the elder Charles
Francis Adams, ambassador to London, found
Lincoln in 1861 an offensive personality, and he
insists that Lincoln under strain passed through a
transformation which made the Lincoln of 1864
a different man from the Lincoln of 1861. Per
haps; but without being frivolous, one is tempted
to quote certain old-fashioned American papers
that used to label their news items "important
if true." What then, was the public Lincoln? What ex
plains his vast success? As a force in American
history, what does he count for? Perhaps the
most significant detail in an answer to these ques
tions is the fact that he had never held conspic
uous public office until at the age of fifty-two
he became President. Psychologically his place
is in that small group of great geniuses whose

130 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
whole significant period lies in what we commonly
think of as the decline of life. There are several
such in history: Rome had Caesar; America had
both Lincoln and Lee. By contrasting these in
stances with those of the other type, the egoistic
geniuses such as Alexander or Napoleon, we be
come aware of some dim but profound dividing-
line separating the two groups. The theory that
genius, at bottom, is pure energy seems to fit
Napoleon; but does it fit these other minds who
appear to meet life with a certain indifference, with
a carelessness of their own fate, a willingness to
leave much to chance? That irresistible passion
for authority which Napoleon had is lacking in
these others. Their basal inspiration seems to
resemble the impulse of the artist to express, rather
than the impulse of the man of action to possess.
Had it not been for secession, Lee would probably
have ended his days as an exemplary superintend
ent of West Point. And what of Lincoln? He
dabbled in politics, early and without success; he
left politics for the law, and to the law he gave
during many years his chief devotion. But the
fortuitous break-up of parties, with the revival of
the slavery issue, touched some hidden spring; the
able provincial lawyer felt again the political im-

LINCOLN 131
pulse; he became a famous maker of political
phrases; and on this literary basis he became the
leader of a party.
Too little attention has been paid to this pro
gression of Lincoln through literature into politics.
The ease with which he drifted from one to the
other is also still to be evaluated. Did it show
a certain slackness, a certain aimlessness, at the
bottom of his nature? Had it, in a way, some sort
of analogy — to compare homespun with things
Olympian — to the vein of frivolity in the great
Caesar? One is tempted to think so. Surely,
here was one of those natures which need circum
stance to compel them to greatness and which are
not foredoomed, Napoleon-like, to seize greatness.
Without encroaching upon the biographical task,
one may borrow from biography this insistent echo :
the anecdotes of Lincoln sound over and over the
note of easy-going good nature; but there is to be
found in many of the Lincoln anecdotes an over
tone of melancholy which lingers after one's im
pression of his good nature. Quite naturally, in
such a biographical atmosphere, we find ourselves
thinking of him at first as a little too good-humored,
a little too easy-going, a little prone to fall into
reverie. We are not surprised when we find his

132 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
favorite poem beginning "Oh, why should the
spirit of mortal be proud. "
This enigmatical man became President in his
fifty-second year. We have already seen that his
next period, the winter of 1860-61, has its bio
graphical problems. The impression which he
made on the country as President-elect was dis
tinctly unfavorable. Good humor, or opportunism,
or what you will, brought together in Lincoln's
Cabinet at least three men more conspicuous in
the ordinary sense than he was himself. We for
get, today, how insignificant he must have seemed
in a Cabinet that embraced Seward, Cameron, and
Chase — all large national figures. What would
not history give for a page of self -revelation show
ing us how he felt in the early days of that com
pany! Was he troubled? Did he doubt his ability
to hold his own? Was he fatalistic? Was his sad
smile his refuge? Did he merely put things by,
ignoring tomorrow until tomorrow should arrive?
However we may guess at the answers to such
questions, one thing now becomes certain. His
quality of good humor began to be his salvation.
It is doubtful if any President except Washington
had to manage so difficult a Cabinet. Washington
had seen no solution to the problem but to let

LINCOLN 133
Jefferson go. Lincoln found his Cabinet often on
the verge of a split, with two powerful factions
struggling to control it and neither ever gaining
full control. Though there were numerous with
drawals, no resigning secretary really split Lin
coln's Cabinet. By what turns and twists and
skillful maneuvers Lincoln prevented such a di
vision and kept such inveterate enemies as Chase
and Seward steadily at their jobs — Chase during
three years, Seward to the end — will partly appear
in the following pages; but the whole delicate
achievement cannot be properly appreciated except
in detailed biography.
All criticism of Lincoln turns eventually on one
question: Was he an opportunist? Not only his
enemies in his own time but many politicians of a
later day were eager to prove that he was the latter
— indeed, seeking to shelter their own opportun
ism behind the majesty of his example. A modern
instance will perhaps make vivid this long stand
ing debate upon Lincoln and his motives. Merely
for historic illumination and without becoming in
vidious, we may recall the instance of President
Wilson and the resignation of his Secretary of War
in 1916 because Congress would not meet the is
sue of preparedness. The President accepted the

134 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
resignation without forcing the issue, and Congress
went on fiddling while Rome burned. Now, was
the President an opportunist, merely waiting to see
what course events would take, or was he a politi
cal strategist, astutely biding his time? Similar in
character is this old debate upon Lincoln, which is
perhaps best focussed in the removal of Secretary
Blair which we shall have to note in connection
with the election of 1864.
It is difficult for the most objective historian
to deal with such questions without obtruding his
personal views, but there is nothing merely in
dividual in recording the fact that the steady drift
of opinion has been away from the conception of
Lincoln as an opportunist. What once caused him
to be thus conceived appears now to have been a
failure to comprehend intelligently the nature of
his undertaking. More and more, the tendency
nowadays is to conceive bis career as one of those
few instances in which the precise faculties needed
to solve a particular problem were called into play
at exactly the critical moment. Our confusions
with regard to Lincoln have grown out of our fail
ure to appreciate the singularity of the American
people, and their ultra-singularity during the years
in which he lived. It remains to be seen hereafter

LINCOLN 135
what strange elements of sensibility, of wayward
ness, of lack of imagination, of undisciplined ardor,
of selfishness, of deceitfulness, of treachery, com
bined with heroic ideality, made up the character
of that complex populace which it was Lincoln's
task to control. But he did more than control it:
he somehow compounded much of it into some
thing like a unit. To measure Lincoln's achieve
ment in this respect, two things must be re
membered: on the one hand, his task was not as
arduous as it might have been, because the most
intellectual part of the North had definitely com
mitted itself either irretrievably for, or irrecon
cilably against, his policy. Lincoln, therefore, did
not have to trouble himself with this portion of the
population. On the other hand, that part which he
had to master included such emotional rhetoricians
as Horace Greeley; such fierce zealots as Henry
Winter Davis of Maryland, who made him trouble
indeed, and Benjamin Wade, whom we have met
already; such military egoists as McClellan and
Pope; such crafty double-dealers as his own Secre
tary of the Treasury; such astute grafters as Cam
eron; such miserable creatures as certain powerful
capitalists who sacrificed his army to their own lust
for profits filched from army contracts.

136 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
The wonder of Lincoln's achievement is that
he contrived at last to extend his hold over all
these diverse elements; that he persuaded some,
outwitted others, and overcame them all. The
subtlety of this task would have ruined any states
man of the driving sort. Explain Lincoln by any
theory you will, his personality was the keystone
of the Northern arch; subtract it, and the arch
falls. The popular element being as complex and
powerful as it was, how could the presiding states
man have mastered the situation if he had not
been of so peculiar a sort that he could influence
all these diverse and powerful interests, slowly,
by degrees, without heat, without the impera
tive note, almost in silence, with the universal,
enfolding irresistibility of the gradual things in
nature, of the sun and the rain. Such was the
genius of Lincoln — all but passionless, yet so quiet
that one cannot but believe in the great depth of
his nature.
We are, even today, far from a definitive under
standing of Lincoln's statecraft, but there is per
haps justification for venturing upon one prophecy.
The farther from him we get and the more clearly
we see him in perspective, the more we shall realize
his creative influence upon his party. A Lincoln

LINCOLN 137
who is the moulder of events and the great creator
of public opinion will emerge at last into clear view.
In the Lincoln of his ultimate biographer there
will be more of iron than of a less enduring metal
in the figure of the Lincoln of present tradition.
Though none of his gentleness will disappear, there
will be more emphasis placed upon his firmness,
and upon such episodes as that of December, 1860,
when his single will turned the scale against com
promise; upon his steadiness in the defeat of his
party at the polls in 1862; or his over-ruling of
the will of Congress in the summer of 1864 on the
question of reconstruction; or his attitude in the
autumn of that year when he believed that he was
losing his second election. Behind all his gentle
ness, his slowness, behind his sadness, there will
eventually appear an inflexible purpose, strong as
steel, unwavering as fate.
The Civil War was in truth Lincoln's war.
Those modern pacifists who claim him for their
own are beside the mark. They will never get
over their illusions about Lincoln until they see, as
all the world is beginning to see, that his career has
universal significance because of its bearing on the
universal modern problem of democracy. It will
not do ever to forget that he was a man of the

138 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
people, always playing the hand of the people, in
the limited social sense of that word, though play
ing it with none of the heat usually met with in
the statesmen of successful democracy from Cleon
to Robespierre, from Andrew Jackson to Lloyd
George. His gentleness does not remove Lincoln
from that stern category. Throughout his life,
besides his passion for the Union, besides his an
tipathy to slavery, there dwelt in his very heart
love of and faith in the plain people. We shall
never see him in true historic perspective until
we conceive him as the instrument of a vast
social idea — the determination to make a govern
ment based on the plain people successful in war.
He did not scruple to seize power when he
thought the cause of the people demanded it, and
his enemies were prompt to accuse him of holding
to the doctrine that the end justified the means
— a hasty conclusion which will have to be re
considered; what concerns us more closely is the
definite conviction that he felt no sacrifice too
great if it advanced the happiness of the generality
of mankind. The final significance of Lincoln as
a statesman of democracy is brought out most
clearly in his foreign relations. Fate put it into
the hands of England to determine whether his

LINCOLN 139
Government should stand or fall. Though it is
doubtful how far the turning of the scale of Eng
lish policy in Lincoln's favor was due to the in
fluence of the rising power of English democracy,
it is plain that Lincoln thought of himself as having
one purpose with that movement which he re
garded as an ally. Beyond all doubt among the
most grateful messages he ever received were the
New Year greetings of confidence and sympathy
which were sent by English workingmen in 1863.
A few sentences in his Letter to the Workingmen of
London help us to look through his eyes and see
his life and its struggles as they appeared to him
in relation to world history:
As these sentiments [expressed by the English
workmen] are manifestly the enduring support of the
free institutions of England, so am I sure that they
constitute the only reliable basis for free institutions
throughout the world. . . . The resources, advantages,
and power of the American people are very great, and
they have consequently succeeded to equally great
responsibilities. It seems to have devolved upon them
to test whether a government established on the
principles of human freedom can be maintained against
an effort to build one upon the exclusive foundation of
human bondage. They will rejoice with me in the
new evidence which your proceedings furnish that the
magnanimity they are exhibiting is justly estimated

140 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
by the true friends of freedom and humanity in foreign
countries. Written at the opening of that terrible year,
1863, these words are a forward link with those
more celebrated words spoken toward its close at
Gettysburg. Perhaps at no time during the war,
except during the few days immediately following
his own reelection a year later, did Lincoln come so
near being free from care as then. Perhaps that
explains why his fundamental literary power re
asserted itself so remarkably, why this speech of
his at the dedication of the National Cemetery at
Gettysburg on the 19th of November, 1863, re
mains one of the most memorable orations ever
delivered: Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought
forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in
liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men
are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing
whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and
so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great
battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a
portion of that field as a final resting-place for those
who here gave their lives that that nation might live.
It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do
this.

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ORIGINAL DRAFT OF LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS
Lincoln held this copy in his hand while speaking. The first page
is written in ink, on White House stationery in use at that time;
the second page is in pencil on a larger sheet of paper. Both sheets
are in the Library of Congress, Washington. Reproduced in Lin
coln's Gettysburg Address, by Orton H. Carmichael.

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LINCOLN 141
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot
consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave
men, living and dead, who struggled here, have conse
crated it far above our power to add or detract. The
world will little note nor long remember what we say
here, but it can never forget what they did here. It
is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus
far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here
dedicated to the great task remaining before us: that
from these honored dead we take increased devotion to
that cause for which they gave the last full measure of
devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead
shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under
God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that
government of the people, by the people, and for the
people, shall not perish from the earth.

CHAPTER VHI

THE RULE OF LINCOLN

The fundamental problem of the Lincoln Gov
ernment was the raising of armies, the sudden
conversion of a community which was essentially
industrial into a disciplined military organization.
The accomplishment of so gigantic a transforma
tion taxed the abilities of two Secretaries of War.
The first, Simon Cameron, owed his place in the
Cabinet to the double fact of being one of the ablest
of political bosses and of standing high among
Lincoln's competitors for the Presidential nomina
tion. Personally honest, he was also a political
cynic to whom tradition ascribes the epigram de
fining an honest politician as one who "when he is
bought, will stay bought. " As Secretary of War
he showed no particular ability.
In 1861, when the tide of enthusiasm was in
flood, and volunteers in hosts were responding to
acts of Congress for the raising and maintenance
142

THE RULE OF LINCOLN 143
of a volunteer army, Cameron reported in Decem
ber that the Government had on foot 660,971 men
and could have had a million except that Congress
had limited the number of volunteers to be re
ceived. When this report was prepared, Lincoln
was, so to speak, in the trough of two seas. The
devotion which had been offered to him in April,
1861, when the North seemed to rise as one man,
had undergone a reaction. Eight months without
a single striking military success, together with the
startling defeat at Bull Run, had had their inevi
table effect. Democracies are mercurial; variabil
ity seems to be part of the price of freedom. With
childlike faith in their cause, the Northern people,
in midsummer, were crying, "On to Richmond!"
In the autumn, stung by defeat, they were ready
to cry, "Down with Lincoln."
In a subsequent report, the War Department
confessed that at the beginning of hostilities,
"nearly all our arms and ammunition" came from
foreign countries. One great reason why no mili
tary successes relieve the gloom of 1861 was
that, from a soldier's point of view, there were no
armies. Soldiers, it is true, there were in myriads;
but arms, ammunition, and above all, organization
were lacking. The supplies in the government

144 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
arsenals had been provided for an army of but
a few thousand. Strive as they would, all the
factories in the country could not come any
where near making arms for half a million men;
nor did the facilities of those days make it pos
sible for munition plants to spring up over
night. Had it not been that the Confederacy
was equally hard pushed, even harder pushed, to
find arms and ammunition, the war would have
ended inside Seward's ninety days, through sheer
lack of powder.
Even with the respite given by the unprepared
ness of the South, and while Lincoln hurriedly col
lected arms and ammunition from abroad, the
startled nation, thus suddenly forced into a real
ization of what war meant, lost its head. From
its previous reckless trust in sheer enthusiasm, it
reacted to a distrust of almost everything. Why
were the soldiers not armed? Why did not mil
lions of rounds of cartridges fall like manna out of
the sky? Why did not the crowds of volunteers
become armies at a word of command? One of
the darkest pages in American history records the
way in which the crowd, undisciplined to endure
strain, turned upon Lincoln in its desire to find in
the conduct of their leader a pretext for venting

THE RULE OF LINCOLN 145
upon him the fierceness of their anxiety. Such a
pretext they found in his treatment of Fremont.
The singular episode of Fremont's arrogance in
1861 is part of the story of the border States whose
friendship was eagerly sought by both sides —
Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and those moun
tainous counties which in time were to become
West Virginia. To retain Maryland and thus to
keep open the connection between the Capital and
the North was one of Lincoln's deepest anxif v'.es.
By degrees the hold of the Government ir .iarv
land was made secure, and the State ney sr aed.
Kentucky, too, held to the Union, tl ., during
many anxious months in 1861, Lincoln did not
know whether this State was to be for him or
against him. The Virginia mountains, from the
first, seemed a more hopeful field, for the moun
taineers had opposed the Virginia secession and,
as soon as it was accomplished, had begun holding
meetings of protest. In the meantime George
B. McClellan, with the rank of general bestowed
upon him by the Federal Government, had been
appointed to command the militia of Ohio. He
was sent to assist the insurgent mountaineers, and
with him went the Ohio militia. From this situa
tion and from the small engagements with Con-

146 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
federate forces in which McClellan was successful,
there resulted the separate State of West Virginia
and the extravagant popular notion that McClellan
was a great general. His successes were contrasted
in the ordinary mind with the crushing defeat at
Bull Run, which happened at about the same time.
The most serious of all these struggles in the
border States, however, was that which took place
in Missouri, where, owing to the strength of both
factions and their promptness in organizing, real
war began immediately. A Union army led by
General Nathaniel Lyon attacked the Confederates
with great spirit at Wilson's Creek but was beaten
back in a fierce and bloody battle in which their
leader was killed.
Even before these events Fremont had been
appointed to chief command in Missouri, and here
he at once began a strange course of dawdling and
posing. His military career must be left to the
military historians — who have not ranked him
among the great generals. Civil history accuses
him, if not of using his new position to make il
legitimate profits, at least of showing reckless
favoritism toward those who did. It is hardly
unfair to say that Lincoln, in bearing with Fre
mont as long as he did, showed a touch of amiable

THE RULE OF LINCOLN 147
weakness; and yet, it must be acknowledged that
the President knew that the country was in a
dangerous mood, that Fremont was immensely
popular, and that any change might be misunder
stood. Though Lincoln hated to appear anything
but a friend to a fallen political rival, he was at
last forced to act. Frauds in government con
tracts at St. Louis were a public scandal, and the
reputation of the government had to be saved by
the removal of Fremont in November, 1861. As
an immediate consequence of this action the over
strained nerves of great numbers of people snapped.
Fremont's personal followers, as well as the aboli
tionists whom he had actively supported while in
command in Missouri, and all that vast crowd
of excitable people who are unable to stand silent
under strain, clamored against Lincoln in the wild
est and most absurd vein. He was accused of
being a "dictator"; he was called an "imbecile";
he ought to be impeached, and a new party, with
Fremont as its leader, should be formed to prose
cute the war. But through all this clamor Lincoln
kept his peace and let the heathen rage.
Toward the end of the year, popular rage turned
suddenly on Cameron, who, as Secretary of War,
had taken an active but proper part in the investi-

148 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
gation of Fremont's conduct. It was one of those
tremulous moments when people are desperately
eager to have something done and are ready to be
lieve anything. Though McClellan, now in chief
command of the Union forces, had an immense
army which was fast getting properly equipped,
month faded into month without his advancing
against the enemy. Again the popular cry was
raised, "On to Richmond!" It was at this mo
ment of military inactivity and popular restless
ness that charges of peculation were brought for
ward against Cameron.
These charges both were and were not well
founded. Himself a rich man, it is not likely
that Cameron profited personally by government
contracts, even though the acrimonious Thad
Stevens said of his appointment as Secretary
that it would add "another million to his for
tune." There seems little doubt, however, that
Cameron showered lucrative contracts upon his
political retainers. And no boss has ever held
the State of Pennsylvania in a firmer grip. His
tenure of the Secretaryship of War was one means
to that end.
The restless alarm of the country at large ex
pressed itself in such extravagant words as these

THE RULE OF LINCOLN 149
which Senator Grimes wrote to Senator Fessenden:
"We are going to destruction as fast as imbecility,
corruption, and the wheels of time can carry us. "
So dissatisfied, indeed, was Congress with the con
duct of the war that it appointed a committee
of investigation. During December, 1861, and
January, 1862, the committee was summoning
generals before it, questioning them, listening to
all manner of views, accomplishing nothing, but
rendering more and more feverish an atmosphere
already surcharged with anxiety. On the floors
of Congress debate raged as to who was respon
sible for the military inaction — for the country's
"unpreparedness," we should say today — and as
to whether Cameron was honest. Eventually the
House in a vote of censure condemned the Secre
tary of War.
Long before this happened, however, Lincoln
had interfered and very characteristically removed
the cause of trouble, while taking upon himself
the responsibility for the situation, by nominating
Cameron minister to Russia, and by praising him
for his "ability, patriotism, and fidelity to the
public trust." Though the President had not
sufficient hold upon the House to prevent the
vote of censure, his influence was strong in the

150 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
Senate, and the new appointment of Cameron was
promptly confirmed.
There was in Washington at this time that grim
man who had served briefly as Attorney-General
in the Cabinet of Buchanan — Edwin M. Stanton.
He despised the President and expressed his opin
ion in such words as "the painful imbecility of
Lincoln. " The two had one personal recollection
in common: long before, in a single case, at Cin
cinnati, the awkward Lincoln had been called in
as associate counsel to serve the convenience of
Stanton, who was already a lawyer of national re
pute. To his less-known associate Stanton showed
a brutal rudeness that was characteristic. It
would have been hard in 1861 to find another man
more difficult to get on with. Headstrong, iras
cible, rude, he had a sharp tongue which he de
lighted in using; but he was known to be inflexibly
honest, and was supposed to have great executive
ability. He was also a friend of McClellan, and
if anybody could rouse that tortoise-like general,
Stanton might be supposed to be the man. He
had been a valiant Democrat, and Democratic
support was needed by the government. Lincoln
astonished him with his appointment as Secretary
of War in January, 1862. Stanton justified the

EDWIN M. STANTON
Photograph by Brady.

THE RULE OF LINCOLN 151
President's choice, and under his strong if ruth
less hand the War Department became sternly
efficient. The whole story of Stanton's relations
to his chief is packed, like the Arabian genius
in the fisherman's vase, into one remark of Lin
coln's. "Did Stanton tell you I was a fool?"
said Lincoln on one occasion, in the odd, smiling
way he had. "Then I expect I must be one,
for he is almost always right, and generally says
what he means. "
In spite of his efficiency and personal force,
Stanton was unable to move his friend McClellan,
with whom he soon quarreled. Each now sought
in his own way to control the President, though
neither understood Lincoln's character. From Mc
Clellan, Lincoln endured much condescension of a
kind perilously near impertinence. To Stanton,
Lincoln's patience seemed a mystery; to McClel
lan — a vain man, full of himself — the President
who would merely smile at this bullyragging on
the part of one of his subordinates seemed indeed
a spiritless creature. Meanwhile Lincoln, appar
ently devoid of sensibility, was seeking during the
anxious months of 1862, in one case, merely how
to keep his petulant Secretary in harness; in the
other, how to quicken his tortoise of a general.

152 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
Stanton made at least one great blunder.
Though he had been three months in office, and
McClellan was still inactive, there were already
several successes to the credit of the Union arms.
The Monitor and Virginia (Merrimac) had fought
their famous duel, and Grant had taken Fort
Donelson. The latter success broke through the
long gloom of the North and caused, as Holmes
wrote, " a delirium of excitement." Stanton rashly
concluded that he now had the game in his hands,
and that a sufficient number of men had volun
teered. This civilian Secretary of War, who had
still much to learn of military matters, issued
an order putting a stop to recruiting. Shortly
afterwards great disaster befell the Union arms.
McClellan, before Richmond, was checked in May.
Early in July, his peninsula campaign ended dis
astrously in the terrible "Seven Days' Battles."
Anticipating McClellan's failure, Lincoln had
already determined to call for more troops. On
July 1st, he called upon the Governors of the
States to provide him with 300,000 men to serve
three years. But the volunteering enthusiasm —
explain it as you will — had suffered a check. The
psychological moment had passed. So slow was
the response to the call of July 1st, that another

THE RULE OF LINCOLN 153
appeal was made early in August, this time for
300,000 men to serve only nine months. But this
also failed to rouse the country. A ree'nforcement
of only 87,000 men was raised in response to this
emergency call. The able lawyer in the War De
partment had still much to learn about men and
nations. After this check, terrible incidents of war came
thick and fast — the defeat at Second Manassas,
in late August; the horrible drawn battle of Antie
tam — Sharpsburg, in September; Fredericksburg,
that carnival of slaughter, in December; the dearly
bought victory of Murfreesboro, which opened
1863. There were other disastrous events at least
as serious. Foreign affairs1 were at their darkest.
Within the political coalition supporting Lincoln,
contention was the order of the day. There was
general distrust of the President. Most alarming
of all, that ebb of the wave of enthusiasm which
began in midsummer, 1861, reached in the autumn
of 1862 perhaps its lowest point. The measure of
the reaction against Lincoln was given in the Con
gressional election, in which, though the Govern
ment still retained a working majority, the Demo
crats gained thirty-three seats.
• See Chapter IX.

154 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
If there could be such a thing as a true psy
chological history of the war, one of its most
interesting pages would determine just how far
Stanton was responsible, through his strange
blunder over recruiting, for the check to en
thusiasm among the Northern people. With this
speculation there is connected a still unsolved
problem in statistics. To what extent did the
anti-Lincoln vote, in 1862, stand for sympathy
with the South, and how far was it the hopeless
surrender of Unionists who felt that their cause
was lost? Though certainty on this point is ap
parently impossible, there can be no doubt that
at the opening of 1863, the Government felt it
must apply pressure to the flagging spirits of its
supporters. In order to reenforce the armies and
to push the war through, there was plainly but one
course to be followed — conscription.
The government leaders in Congress brought in
a Conscription Act early in the year. The hot
debates upon this issue dragged through a month's
time, and now make instructive reading for the
present generation that has watched the Great
War.1 The Act of 1863 was not the work of
1 The battle over conscription in England was anticipated in
America sixty-four years ago. Bagot says that the average British
point of view may be expressed thus: "What I am sayin' is this here

THE RULE OF LINCOLN 155
soldiers, but was literally "made in Congress."
Stanton grimly made the best of it, though he
unwaveringly condemned some of its most con
spicuous provisions. His business was to retrieve
his blunder of the previous year, and he was
successful. Imperfect as it was, the Conscription
Act, with later supplementary legislation, enabled
him to replace the wastage of the Union armies
and steadily to augment them. At the close of
the war, the Union had on foot a million men with
an enrolled reserve of two millions and a half,
subject to call.
The Act provided for a complete military census,
for which purpose the country was divided into
enrollment districts. Every able-bodied male citi
zen, or intending citizen, between the ages of
twenty and forty-five, unless exempted for certain
specified reasons, was to be enrolled as a member
of the national forces; these forces were to be cal
led to the colors — "drafted," the term was — as
the Government found need of them; each sue-
as I was a sayin' yesterday." The Anglo-Saxon mind is much the
same the world over. In America, today, the enemies of effective
military organization would do well to search the arguments of their
skillful predecessors in 1863, who fought to the last ditch for a mili
tary system that would make inescapable "peace at any price."
For the modern believers in conscription, one of their best bits of
political thunder is still the defense of it by Lincoln.

156 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
cessive draft was to be apportioned among the
districts in the ratio of the military population,
and the number required was to be drawn by lot;
if the district raised its quota voluntarily, no draft
would be made; any drafted man could offer a sub
stitute or could purchase his discharge for three
hundred dollars. The latter provision especially
was condemned by Stanton. It was seized upon
by demagogues as a device for giving rich men an
advantage over poor men.
American politics during the war form a wildly
confused story, so intricate that it cannot be made
clear in a brief statement. But this central fact
may be insisted upon: in the North, there were
two political groups that were the poles around
which various other groups revolved and combined,
only to fly asunder and recombine, with all the
maddening inconstancy of a kaleidoscope. The
two irreconcilable elements were the "war party"
made up of determined men resolved to see things
through, and the "copperheads"1 who for one
reason or another united in a faithful struggle
for peace at any price. Around the copperheads
1 The term arose, it has been said, from the use of the copper cent
with its head of Liberty as a peace button. But a more plausible ex
planation associates the peace advocates with the deadly copperhead
snake.

THE RULE OF LINCOLN 157
gathered the various and singular groups who
helped to make up the ever fluctuating "peace
party." It is an error to assume that this peace
party was animated throughout by fondness for
the Confederacy. Though many of its members
were so actuated, the core of the party seems to
have been that strange type of man who sustained
political evasion in the old days, who thought that
sweet words can stop bullets, whose programme
in 1863 called for a cessation of hostilities and a
general convention of all the States, and who
promised as the speedy result of a debauch of talk
a carnival of bright eyes glistening with the tears
of revived affection. With these strange people in
1863 there combined a number of different types:
the still stranger, still less creditable visionary, of
whom much hereafter; the avowed friends of the
principle of state rights; all those who distrusted
the Government because of its anti-slavery sym
pathies; Quakers and others with moral scruples
against war; and finally, sincere legalists to whom
the Conscription Act appeared unconstitutional.
In the spring of 1863 the issue of conscription drew
the line fairly sharply between the two political
coalitions, though each continued to fluctuate,
more or less, to the end of the war.

158 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
The peace party of 1863 has been denounced
hastily rather than carefully studied. Its precise
machinations are not fully known, but the ugly
fact stands forth that a portion of the foreign
population of the North was roused in 1863 to
rebellion. The occasion was the beginning of the
first draft under the new law, in July, 1863, and
the scene of the rebellion was the City of New
York. The opponents of conscription had already
made inflammatory attacks on the Government.
Conspicuous among them was Horatio Seymour,
who had been elected Governor of New York in
that wave of reaction in the autumn of 1862.
Several New York papers joined the crusade.
In Congress, the Government had already been
threatened with civil war if the act was enforced.
Nevertheless, the public drawing by lot began on
the days announced. In New York the first
drawing took place on Saturday, July 12th, and
the lists were published in the Sunday papers.
As might be expected, many of the men drawn
were of foreign birth, and all day Sunday, the for
eign quarter of New York was a cauldron boiling.
On Monday, the resumption of the drawing was
the signal for revolt. A mob invaded one of the
conscription offices, drove off the men in charge,

THE RULE OF LINCOLN 159
and set fire to the building. In a short while, the
streets were filled with dense crowds of foreign-
born workmen shouting, "Down with the rich
men," and singing, "We'll hang Horace Greeley
on a sour apple tree." Houses of prominent
citizens were attacked and set on fire, and sev
eral drafting offices were burned. Many negroes
who were seized were either clubbed to death or
hanged to lamp posts. Even an orphan asylum
for colored children was burned. The office of
the Tribune was raided, gutted, and set on fire.
Finally a dispatch to Stanton, early in the night,
reported that the mob had taken possession of
the city.
The events of the next day were no less shocking.
The city was almost stripped of soldiers, as all
available reserves had already been hurried south
when Lee was advancing toward Gettysburg. But
such militia as could be mustered, with a small
force of federal troops, fought the mob in the
streets. Barricades were carried by storm; blood
was freely shed. It was not, however, until the
fourth day that the rebellion was finally quelled,
chiefly by New York regiments, hurried north by
Stanton — among them the famous Seventh —
which swept the streets with cannon.

160 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
The aftermath of the New York riots was a cor
respondence between Lincoln and Seymour. The
latter had demanded a suspension of the draft
until the courts could decide on the constitu
tionality of the Conscription Act. Lincoln refused.
With ten thousand troops now assembled in
New York, the draft was resumed, and there was
no further trouble.
The resistance to the Government in New York
was but the most terrible episode in a protracted
contention which involves, as Americans are be
ginning to see, one of the most fundamental
and permanent questions of Lincoln's rule: how
can the exercise of necessary war powers by the
President be reconciled with the guarantees of
liberty in the Constitution? It is unfortunate
that Lincoln did not draw up a fully rounded
statement of his own theory regarding this prob
lem, instead of leaving it to be inferred from
detached observations and from his actions.
Apparently, he felt there was nothing to do but
to follow the Roman precedent and, in a case of
emergency, frankly permit the use of extraordi
nary power. We may attribute to him that point
of view expressed by a distinguished Democrat
of our own day: "Democracy has to learn how

THE RULE OF LINCOLN 161
to use the dictator as a necessary war tool."1
Whether Lincoln set a good model for democracy
in this perilous business is still to be determined.
His actions have been freely labeled usurpation.
The first notorious instance occurred in 1861,
during the troubles in Maryland, when he au
thorized military arrests of suspected persons.
For the release of one of these, a certain Merry-
man, Chief Justice Taney issued a writ of habeas
corpus.3 Lincoln authorized his military repre
sentatives to disregard the writ. In 1862 he
issued a proclamation suspending the privileges
of the writ of habeas corpus in cases of persons
charged with "discouraging volunteer enlistments,
1 President Edwin A. Alderman, of the University of Virginia.
2 The Constitution permits the suspension of the privileges of the
writ of habeas corpus " when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public
safety may require it," but fails to provide a method of suspension.
Taney held that the power to suspend lay with Congress. Five years
afterward, when Chase was Chief Justice, the Supreme Court, in ex
parte Milligan, took the same view and further declared that even
Congress could not deprive a citizen of his right to trial by jury so
long as the local civil courts are in operation. The Confederate
experience differed from the Federal inasmuch as Congress kept
control of the power to suspend the writ. But both governments
made use of such suspension to set up martial law in districts where
the local courts were open but where, from one cause or another, the
Administration had not confidence in their effectiveness. Under
ex parte Milligan, both Presidents and both Congresses were guilty
of usurpation. The mere layman waits for the next great hour of
trial to learn whether this interpretation will stand. In the Milligan
case the Chief Justice and three others dissented.

162 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
resisting military drafts, or guilty of any disloyal
practice. ..." Such persons were to be tried
by military commissions.
There can be little doubt that this proclamation
caused something like a panic in many minds,
filled them with the dread of military despotism,
and contributed to the reaction against Lincoln
in the autumn of 1862. Under this proclamation
many arrests were made and many victims were
sent to prison. So violent was the opposition
that on March 3, 1863, Congress passed an act
which attempted to bring the military and civil
courts into cooperation, though it did not take
away from the President all the dictatorial power
which he had assumed. The act seems, how
ever, to have had little general effect, and it
was disregarded in the most celebrated of the
cases of military arrest, that of Clement L. Val
landigham. A representative from Ohio and one of the most
vituperative anti-Lincoln men in Congress, Val
landigham in a sensational speech applied to the
existing situation Chatham's words, "My lords,
you cannot conquer America." He professed to
see before him in the future nothing "but universal
political and social revolution, anarchy, and blood-

THE RULE OF LINCOLN 163
shed, compared with which the Reign of Terror
in France was a merciful visitation." To escape
such a future, he demanded an armistice, to be
followed by a friendly peace established through
foreign mediation.
Returning to Ohio after the adjournment of
Congress, Vallandigham spoke to a mass-meeting
in a way that was construed as rank treason
by General Burnside who was in command at
Cincinnati. Vallandigham was arrested, tried by
court martial, and condemned to imprisonment.
There was an immediate hue and cry, in conse
quence of which Burnside, who reported the affair,
felt called upon also to offer to resign. Lincoln's
reply was characteristic: "When I shall wish to
supersede you I shall let you know. All the
Cabinet regretted the necessity for arresting, for
instance, Vallandigham, some perhaps doubting
there was a real necessity for it; but being done,
all were for seeing you through with it. " Lincoln,
however, commuted the sentence to banishment
and had Vallandigham sent through the lines into
the Confederacy.
It seems quite plain that the condemnation of
Lincoln on this issue of usurpation was not con
fined to the friends of the Confederacy, nor has

164 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
it been confined to his enemies in later days.
One of Lincoln's most ardent admirers, the his
torian Rhodes, condemns his course unqualifiedly.
"There can be no question," he writes, "that
from the legal point of view the President should
have rescinded the sentence and released Val
landigham." Lincoln, he adds, "stands re
sponsible for the casting into prison of citizens
of the United States on orders as arbitrary as
the lettres-de-cachet of Louis XIV." Since Mr.
Rhodes, uncompromising Unionist, can write as
he does upon this issue, it is plain that the op
position party cannot be dismissed as through and
through disunionist.
The trial of Vallandigham made him a martyr
and brought him the Democratic nomination for
Governor of Ohio. * His followers sought to make
the issue of the campaign the acceptance or re
jection of military despotism. In defense of his
course Lincoln wrote two public letters in which he
gave evidence of the skill which he had acquired
as a lawyer before a jury by the way in which he
played upon the emotions of his readers.
1 Edward Everett Hale's famous story The Man Without a Country,
though it got into print too late to affect the election, was aimed at
Vallandigham. That quaint allegory on the lack of patriotism be
came a temporary classic.

THE RULE OF LINCOLN 165
Long experience [he wrote] has shown that armies can
not be maintained unless desertion shall be punished
by the severe penalty of death. The case requires, and
the law and the Constitution sanction, this punishment.
Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts,
while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who in
duces him to desert? This is none the less injurious
when effected by getting a father, or brother, or friend
into a public meeting, and there working upon his
feelings till he is persuaded to write the soldier boy
that he is fighting in a bad cause for a wicked adminis
tration and a contemptible government, too weak to
arrest and punish him if he shall desert. I think that
in such a case to silence the agitator and save the boy
is not only constitutional, but, withal, a great mercy.
His real argument may be summed up in these
words of his :
You ask, in substance, whether I really claim that I
may override all the guaranteed rights of individuals,
on the plea of conserving the public safety — when I
may choose to say the public safety requires it. This
question, divested of the phraseology calculated to re
present me as struggling for an arbitrary prerogative,
is either simply a question who shall decide, or an af
firmation that nobody shall decide, what the public
safety does require in cases of rebellion or invasion.
The Constitution contemplates the question as likely
to occur for decision, but it does not expressly declare
who is to decide it. By necessary implication, when
rebellion or invasion comes, the decision is to be made,
from time to time; and I thmk the man, whom for the

166 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
time, the people have under the Constitution, made the
commander-in-chief of their army and navy, is the man
who holds the power and bears the responsibility of
making it. If he uses the power justly, the same people
will probably justify him; if he abuses it, he is in their
hands to be dealt with by all the modes they have
reserved to themselves in the Constitution.
Lincoln virtually appealed to the Northern peo
ple to secure efficiency by setting him momentarily
above all civil authority. He asked them in sub
stance, to interpret their Constitution by a show
of hands. No thoughtful person can doubt the
risks of such a method; yet in Ohio, in 1863, the
great majority — perhaps everyone who believed in
the war — accepted Lincoln's position. Between
their traditional system of legal juries and the new
system of military tribunals the Ohio voters made
their choice without hesitation. They rejected
Vallandigham and sustained the Lincoln candidate
by a majority of over a hundred thousand. That
same year in New York the anti-Lincoln candidate
for Secretary of State was defeated by twenty-nine
thousand votes.
Though these elections in 1863 can hardly be
called the turning-point in the history of the Lin
coln Government, yet it was clear that the tide
of popularity which had ebbed so far away from

THE RULE OF LINCOLN 167
Lincoln in the autumn of 1862 was again in the
flood. Another phase of his stormy course may be
thought of as having ended. And in accounting
for this turn of the tide it must not be forgotten
that between the nomination and the defeat of a
Vallandigham the bloody rebellion in New York
had taken place, Gettysburg had been fought,
and Grant had captured Vicksburg. The autumn
of 1863 formed a breathing space for the war party
of the North.

CHAPTER IX
THE CRUCIAL MATTER
It is the custom of historians to measure the
relative strength of North and South chiefly
in terms of population. The North numbered
23,000,000 inhabitants; the South, about 9,000,-
000, of which the slave population amounted
to 3,500,000. But these obvious statistics only
partially indicate the real situation. Not what
one has, but what one is capable of using is, of
course, the true measure of strength. If, in 1861,
either side could have struck swiftly and with all
its force, the story of the war would have been
different. The question of relative strength was
in reality a question of munitions. Both powers
were glaringly unprepared. Both had instant
need of great supplies of arms and ammunition,
and both turned to European manufacturers for
aid. Those Americans who, in a later war, wished
to make illegal the neutral trade in munitions for-
168

THE CRUCIAL MATTER 169
got that the international right of a belligerent to
buy arms from a neutral had prevented their own
destruction in 1861. In the supreme American
crisis, agents of both North and South hurried to
Europe in quest of munitions. On the Northern
side the work was done chiefly by the three min
isters, Charles Francis Adams, at London; William
L. Dayton, at Paris; and Henry S. Sanford, at
Brussels; by an able special agent, Colonel George
L. Schuyler; and by the famous banking-house
of Baring Brothers, which one might almost have
called the European department of the United
States Treasury.
The eager solicitude of the War Department
over the competition of the two groups of agents
in Europe informs a number of dispatches that
are, today, precious admonitions to the heedless
descendants of that dreadful time. As late as
October, 1861, the Acting Secretary of War wrote
to Schuyler, one of whose shipments had been
delayed: "The Department earnestly hopes to
receive . . . the 12,000 Enfield rifles and the
remainder of the 27,000, which you state you
have purchased, by the earliest steamer following.
Could you appreciate the circumstances by which
we are surrounded, you would readily understand

170 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
the urgent necessity there is for the immediate
delivery of all the arms you are authorized to pur
chase. The Department expects to hear that you
have been able to conclude the negotiations for
the 48,000 rifles from the French government ar
senals. " That the Confederate Government acted
even more promptly than the Union Government
appears from a letter of Sanford to Seward in
May: "I have vainly expected orders," he com
plains, "for the purchase of arms for the Govern
ment, and am tempted to order from Belgium all
they can send over immediately. . . . Meanwhile
the workshops are filling with orders from the
South. ... It distresses me to think that while
we are in want of them, Southern money is taking
them away to be used against us."
At London, Adams took it upon himself to
contract for arms in advance of instructions. He
wrote to Seward: "Aware of the degree to which
I exceed my authority in taking such a step, no
thing but a conviction of the need in which the
country stands of such assistance and the joint
opinion of all the diplomatic agents of the United
States ... in Paris, has induced me to overcome
my scruples." How real was the necessity of
which this able diplomat was so early conscious,

THE CRUCIAL MATTER 171
is demonstrated at every turn in the papers of
the War Department. Witness this brief dispatch
from Harrisburg: "All ready to leave but no arms.
Governor not willing to let us leave State with
out them, as act of Assembly forbids. Can arms
be sent here?" When this appeal was made,
in December, 1861, arms were pouring into the
country from Europe, and the crisis had passed.
But if this appeal had been made earlier in the
year, the inevitable answer may be guessed from a
dispatch which the Ordnance Office sent, as late as
September, to the authorities of West Virginia, re
fusing to supply them with arms because the sup
plies were exhausted, and adding, "Every possible
exertion is being made to obtain additional supplies
by contract, by manufacture, and by purchase, and
as soon as they can be procured by any means, in
any way, they will, be supplied."
Curiously enough, not only the Confederacy but
various States of the North were more expedi
tious in this all-important matter than Cameron
and the War Department. Schuyler's first dis
patch from London gives this singular informa
tion: "All private establishments in Birming
ham and London are now working for the States
of Ohio, Connecticut, and Massachusetts, except

172 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
the London Armory, whose manufacture is sup
posed to go to the Rebels, but of this last fact
I am not positively informed. I am making ar
rangements to secure these establishments for our
Government, if desirable after the present State
contracts expire. On the Continent, Messrs. Day
ton and Sanford . . . have been making con
tracts and agreements of various kinds, of which
you are by this time informed. " Soon afterward,
from Paris, he made a long report detailing the
difficulties of his task, the limitations of the ex
isting munitions plants in Europe, and promising
among other things those "48,000 rifles from the
French government arsenals " for which, in the let
ter already quoted, the War Department yearned.
It was an enormous labor; and, strive as he would,
Schuyler found American mail continuing to
bring him such letters as this from the Assistant
Secretary of War in October: "I notice with
much regret that [in the latest consignment] there
were no guns sent, as it was confidently expected
that 20,000 would arrive by the [steamship]
Fulton, and accordingly arrangements had been
made to distribute them through the different
States. Prompt and early shipments of guns are
desirable. We hope to hear by next steamer

THE CRUCIAL MATTER 173
that you have shipped from 80,000 to 100,000
stand." The last word on the problem of munitions,
which was so significant a factor in the larger
problem, is the report of the United States Ord
nance Office for the first year of the war. It
shows that between April, 1861, and June, 1862,
the Government purchased from American manu
facturers somewhat over 30,000 rifles, and that
from European makers it purchased 726,000.
From these illustrations it is therefore obvious
that the true measure of the immediate strength
of the American contestants in 1861 was the
extent of their ability to supply themselves from
Europe; and this, stated more concretely, became
the question as to which was the better able to
keep its ports open and receive the absolutely
essential European aid. Lincoln showed his clear
realization of the situation when he issued,
immediately after the first call for volunteers, a
proclamation blockading the Southern coasts.
Whether the Northern people at the time appre
ciated the significance of this order is a question.
Amid the wild and vain clamor of the multitude
in 1861, with its conventional and old-fashioned
notion of war as a thing of trumpets and glittering

174 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
armies, the North seems wholly to have ignored
its fleet; and yet in the beginning this resource
was its only strength.
The fleet was small, to be sure, but its task was
at first also small. There were few Southern ports
which were doing a regular business with Europe,
and to close these was not difficult. As other
ports opened and the task of blockade grew, the
Northern navy also increased. Within a few
months, to the few observers who did not lose their
heads, it was plain that the North had won the
first great contest of the war. It had so hampered
Southern trade that Lincoln's advantage in arming
the North from Europe was ten to one. At the
very time when detractors of Lincoln were hysteri
cal over the removal of Fremont, when Grimes
wrote to Fessenden that the country was going to
the dogs as fast as imbecility could carry it, this
great achievement had quietly taken place. An
expedition sailing in August from Fortress Monroe
seized the forts which commanded Hatteras Inlet
off the coast of North Carolina. In November,
Commander Dupont, U. S. N., seized Port Royal,
one of the best harbors on the coast of South
Carolina, and established there a naval base.
Thenceforth, while the open Northern ports re-

THE CRUCIAL MATTER 175
ceived European munitions without hindrance, it
was a risky business getting munitions into the
ports of the South. Only the boldest traders
would attempt to "run the blockade," to evade
the Federal patrol ships by night and run into a
Southern port.
However, for one moment in the autumn of
1861, it seemed as if all the masterful work of the
Northern navy would be undone by the North
ern people themselves in backing up the rashness
of Captain Charles Wilkes, of the war-ship San
Jacinto. On the high seas he overhauled the Brit
ish mail steamer, Trent. Aboard her were two
Confederate diplomatic agents, James M. Mason
and John Slidell, who had run the blockade from
Charleston to Havana and were now on their way
to England. Wilkes took off the two Confederates
as prisoners of war. The crowd in the North went
wild. "We do not believe," said the New York
Times, "that the American heart ever thrilled
with more sincere delight."
The intemperate joy of the crowd over the rash
ness of Wilkes was due in part to a feeling of
bitterness against the British Government. In
May, 1861, the Queen had issued a proclamation
of neutrality, whose justification in international

176 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
law was hotly debated at the time and was gen
erally denied by Northerners. England was the
great cotton market of the world. To the ex
cited Northern mind, in 1861, there could be but
one explanation of England's action: a partisan
desire to serve the South, to break up the block
ade, and to secure cotton. Whether such was the
real purpose of the ministry then in power is now
doubted; but at that time it was the beginning of
a sharp contention between the two Governments.
The Trent affair naturally increased the tension.
So keen was the indignation of all classes of Eng
lishmen that it seemed, for a moment, as if the
next step would be war.
In America, the prompt demand for the release
of Mason and Slidell was met, at first, in a spirit
equally bellicose. Fortunately there were cool and
clear heads that at once condemned Wilkes's action
as a gross breach of international law. Promin
ent among these was Sumner. The American Gov
ernment, however, admitted the justice of the Brit
ish demand and the envoys were released.
Relations with the United States now became a
burning issue in English politics. There were three
distinct groups in Parliament. The representa
tives of the aristocracy, whether Liberals or Con-

THE CRUCIAL MATTER 177
servatives, in the main sympathized with the
South. So did most of the large manufacturers
whose business interests were affected by cotton.
Great bitterness grew up among the Northerners
against both these groups, partly because in the
past many of their members had condemned slav
ery and had said scornful things about America for
tolerating it. To these Northerners the English
men replied that Lincoln himself had declared the
war was not over slavery; that it was an ordinary
civil war not involving moral issues. Nevertheless,
the third Parliamentary group insisted that the
American war, no matter what the motives of
the participants, would, in the event of a North
ern victory, bring about the abolition of slavery,
whereas, if the South won, the result would be the
perpetuation of slavery. This third group, there
fore, threw all its weight on the side of the North.
In this group Lincoln recognized his allies, and
their cause he identified with his own in his letter
to English workmen which was quoted in the pre
vious chapter. Their leaders in Parliament were
Richard Cobden, W. E. Forster, and John Bright.
All these groups were represented in the Liberal
party, which, for the moment, was in power.
In the Cabinet itself there was a "Northern"

178 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
and a "Southern" faction. Then, too, there were
some who sympathized with the North but who
felt that its cause was hopeless — so little did
they understand the relative strength of the two
sections — and who felt that the war was a ter
rible proof of the uselessness of mere suffering.
Gladstone, in later days, wished to be thought
of as having been one of these, though at the
time, a famous utterance of his was construed
in the North as a declaration of hostility. To
a great audience at Newcastle he said in Octo
ber, 1862: "We may have our own opinions
about slavery; we may be for or against the
South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis
and other leaders of the South have made an
army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and
they have made, what is more than either —
they have made a nation."
The Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, wished to
intervene in the American war and bring about
an amicable separation into two countries, and
so, apparently, did the Foreign Secretary, Lord
John Russell. Recently, the American minister
had vainly protested against the sailing of a ship
known as 290 which was being equipped at Liver
pool presumably for the service of the Confederacy,

THE CRUCIAL MATTER 179
and which became the famous Alabama. For two
years it roved the ocean destroying Northern
commerce, and not until it was sunk at last in a
battle with the U. S. S. Kearsarge did all the mari
time interests of the North breathe again freely.
In time and as a result of arbitration, England
paid for the ships sunk by the Alabama. But in
1862, the protests of the American minister fell on
deaf ears.
It must be added that the sailing of the Alabama
from Liverpool was due probably to the careless
ness of British officials rather than to deliberate
purpose. And yet the fact is clear that about
the first of October, 1862, the British ministry was
on the verge of intervening to secure recognition
of the independence of the Southern confederacy.
The chief motive pressing them forward was the
distress in England caused by the lack of cotton
which resulted from the American blockade. In
1860, the South had exported 615,000 bales; in
1861, only 10,127 bales. In 1862 half the spindles
of Manchester were idle; the workmen were out of
employment; the owners were without dividends.
It was chiefly by these manufacturing capitalists
that pressure was put upon the ministry, and it
was in the manufacturing district that Gladstone,

180 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
thinking the Government was likely to intervene,
made his allusion to the South as a nation.
Meanwhile the Emperor of the French was con
sidering a proposal to England and Russia to join
with him in mediation between the American bel
ligerents. On October 28, 1862, Napoleon III.
gave audience to the Confederate envoy at Paris,
discussed the Southern cause in the most friendly
manner, questioned him upon the Maryland cam
paign, plainly indicated his purpose to attempt
intervention, and at parting cordially shook hands
with him. Within a few days the Emperor made
good his implied promise.
The month of November, 1862, is one of the
turning-points in American foreign relations. Both
Russia and England rejected France's proposal.
The motive usually assigned to the Emperor
Alexander is his hatred of everything associated
with slavery. His own most famous action was
the liberation of the Russian serfs. The motives
of the British ministry, however, appear more
problematical. Mr. Rhodes thinks he can discern evidence that
Adams communicated indirectly to Palmerston
the contents of a dispatch from Seward which
indicated that the United States would accept

THE CRUCIAL MATTER 181
war rather than mediation. Palmerston had kept
his eyes upon the Maryland campaign, and Lee's
withdrawal did not increase his confidence in the
strength of the South. Lord Russell, two months
previous, had flatly told the Confederate envoy at
London that the South need not hope for recogni
tion unless it could establish itself without aid,
and that "the fluctuating events of the war, the
alternation of defeat and victory," composed such
a contradictory situation that "Her Majesty's
Government are still determined to wait."
Perhaps the veiled American warning — assum
ing it was conveyed to Palmerston, which seems
highly probable — was not the only diplomatic
innuendo of the autumn of 1862 that has escaped
the pages of history. Slidell at Paris, putting
together the statements of the British Ambassa
dor and those of the French Minister of Foreign
Affairs, found in them contradictions as to what
was going on between the two governments in re
lation to America. He took a hand by attempt
ing to inspire M. Drouyn de L'huys with distrust
of England, telling him he "had seen ... a letter
from a leading member of the British Cabinet . . .
in which he very plainly insinuated that France
was playing an unfair game," trying to use Eng-

182 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
land as Napoleon's catspaw. Among the many
motives that may well have animated the Palmer
ston Government in its waiting policy, a distrust
of Napoleon deserves to be considered.
It is scarcely rash, however, to find the chief
motive in home politics. The impetuous Glad
stone at Newcastle lost his head and spoke too
soon. The most serious effect of his premature
utterance was the prompt reaction of the "North
ern party" in the Cabinet and in the country.
Whatever Palmerston's secret desires were, he
was not prepared to take the high hand, and he
therefore permitted other members of the Cabinet
to state in public that Gladstone had been mis
understood. In an interview with Adams, Lord
Russell, "whilst endeavoring to excuse Mr.
Gladstone," assured him that "the policy of the
Government was to adhere to a strict neutrality
and leave the struggle to settle itself." In the last
analysis, the Northern party in England was gain
ing ground. The news from America, possibly,
and Gladstone's rashness, certainly, roused it to
increased activity. Palmerston, whose tenure of
power was none too secure, dared not risk a break
that might carry the disaffected into the ranks of
the Opposition.

THE CRUCIAL MATTER 183
From this time forward the North rapidly grew
in favor in British public opinion, and its influence
upon the Government speedily increased.
Says Lord Charnwood in his recent life of
Lincoln: "The battle of Antietam was followed
within five days by an event which made it im
possible for any government of this country to
take action unfriendly to the North." He refers
of course to the Emancipation Proclamation,
which was issued on September 23, 1862. Lord
Charnwood's remark may be too dramatic. But
there can be no doubt that the Emancipation Pro
clamation was the turning-point in Lincoln's for
eign policy; and because of it, his friends in Eng
land eventually forced the Government to play in
to his hands, and so frustrated Napoleon's scheme
for intervention. Consequently Lincoln was able
to maintain the blockade by means of which the
South was strangled. Thus, at bottom, the crucial
matter was Emancipation.
Lincoln's policy with regard to slavery passed
through three distinct stages. As we have seen, he
proposed, at first, to pledge the Government not to
interfere with slavery in the States where it then
existed. This was his maximum of compromise.
He would not agree to permitting its extension

184 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
into new territory. He maintained this position
through 1861, when it was made an accusation
against him by the Abolitionists and contributed
to the ebb of his popularity. It also played a
great part in the episode of Fremont. At a crucial
moment in Fremont's career, when his hold upon
popularity seemed precarious, he set at naught
the policy of the President and issued an order
(August 30, 1861), which confiscated all property
and slaves of those who were in arms against the
United States or actively aiding the enemy, and
which created a "bureau of abolition." Whether
Fremont was acting from conviction or "playing
politics" may be left to his biographers. In a
most tactful letter Lincoln asked him to modify
the order so as to conform to the Confiscation Act
of Congress; and when Fremont proved obdurate,
Lincoln ordered him to do so. In the outcry
against Lincoln when Fremont was at last removed,
the Abolitionists rang the changes on this reversal
of his policy of military abolition.
Another Federal General, Benjamin F. Butler,
in the course of 1861, also raised the issue, though
not in the bold fashion of Fremont. Runaway
slaves came to his camp on the Virginia coast, and
he refused to surrender them to the owners. He

THE CRUCIAL MATTER 185
took the ground that, as they had probably been
used in building Confederate fortifications, they
might be considered contraband of war. He was
sustained by Congress, which passed what is com
monly called the First Confiscation Act providing
that slaves used by Confederate armies in mili
tary labor should, if captured, be "forfeited" —
which of course meant that they should be set
free. But this did not settle what should be done
with runaways whose masters, though residents of
seceded States, were loyal to the Union. The War
Department decided that they should be held until
the end of the war, when probably there would be
made "just compensation to loyal masters."
This first stage of Lincoln's policy rested upon
the hope that the Union might be restored with
out prolonged war. He abandoned this hope about
the end of the year. Thereupon, his policy entered
its second stage. In the spring of 1862 he for
mulated a plan for gradual emancipation with
compensation. The slaves of Maryland, Delaware,
Kentucky, Missouri, and the District of Colum
bia were to be purchased at the rate of $400 each,
thus involving a total expenditure of $173,000,-
000. Although Congress adopted the joint resolu
tion recommended by the President, the "border

186 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
States " would not accept the plan. But Congress,
by virtue of its plenary power, freed the slaves by
purchase in the District of Columbia, and pro
hibited slavery in all the territories of the United
States. During the second stage of his policy Lincoln
again had to reverse the action of an unruly
general. The Federal forces operating from their
base at Port Royal had occupied a considerable
portion of the Carolina coast. General Hunter is
sued an order freeing all the slaves in South Caro
lina, Georgia, and Florida. In countermanding
the order, Lincoln made another futile appeal to
the people of the border States to adopt some plan
of compensated emancipation.
"I do not argue," he said; "I beseech you to
make arguments for yourselves. You cannot, if
you would be blind to the signs of the times. I
beg of you a calm and enlarged consideration of
them, ranging, if it may be, far above personal and
partisan politics. This proposal makes common
cause for a common object, casting no reproaches
upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change
it contemplates would come gently as the dews of
heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will
you not embrace it? So much good has not been

THE CRUCIAL MATTER 187
done by one effort in all past time, as in the
providence of God it is now your high privilege
to do. May the vast future not have to lament
that you neglected it. "
This persuasive attitude and reluctance to force
the issue had greatly displeased the Abolitionists.
Their most gifted orator, Wendell Phillips, reviled
Lincoln with all the power of his literary genius,
and with a fury that might be called malevolent.
Meanwhile, a Second Confiscation Act proclaimed
freedom for the slaves of all those who supported
the Confederate Government. Horace Greeley
now published in the New York Tribune an edito
rial entitled, "The Prayer of Twenty Millions."
He denounced Lincoln's treatment of Fremont and
Hunter and demanded radical action. Lincoln re
plied in a letter now famous. "I would save the
Union," said he, "I would save it the shortest
way under the Constitution. ... If I could save
the Union without freeing any slave, I would do
it; and if I could save it by freeing some and
leaving others alone, I would also do that. What
I do about slavery and the colored race, I do be
cause I believe it helps to save the Union; and
what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe
it would help to save the Union."

188 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
However, at the very time when he wrote this
remarkable letter, he had in his own mind entered
upon the third stage of his policy. He had even
then discussed with his Cabinet an announcement
favoring general emancipation. The time did not
seem to them ripe. It was decided to wait until a
Federal victory should save the announcement
from appearing to be a cry of desperation. An
tietam, which the North interpreted as a victory,
gave Lincoln his opportunity.
The Emancipation Proclamation applied only
to the States in arms against the Federal Govern
ment. Such States were given three months in
which to return to the Union. Thereafter, if they
did not return, their slaves would be regarded by
that Government as free. No distinction was made
between slaves owned by supporters of the Con
federacy and those whose owners were in opposi
tion to it. The Proclamation had no bearing on
those slave States which had not seceded. Need
less to add, no seceded State returned, and a
second Proclamation making their slaves theoreti
cally free was in due time issued on the first of
January, 1863.
It must not be forgotten that this radical change
of policy was made in September, 1862. We

THE CRUCIAL MATTER 189
have already heard of the elections which took
place soon after — those elections which mark
perhaps the lowest ebb of Lincoln's popularity,
when Seymour was elected Governor of New
York, and the peace party gained over thirty
seats in Congress. It is a question whether, as
a purely domestic measure, the Emancipation
Proclamation was not, for the time, an injury
to the Lincoln Government. And yet it was the
real turning-point in the fortunes of the North.
It was the central fact in the maintenance of the
blockade. In England at this time the cotton famine was
at its height. Nearly a million people in the
manufacturing districts were wholly dependent
upon charity. This result of the blockade had
been foreseen by the Confederate Government
which was confident that the distress of England's
working people would compel the English ministry
to intervene and break the blockade. The em
ployers in England whose loss was wholly finan
cial, did as the Confederates hoped they would do.
The workmen, however, took a different course.
Schooled by a number of able debaters, they fell
into line with that third group of political leaders
who saw in the victory of the North, whatever

190 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
its motives, the eventual extinction of slavery.
To these people, the Emancipation Proclamation
gave a definite programme. It was now, the lead
ers argued, no longer a question of eventual ef
fect; the North had proclaimed a motive and
that motive was the extinction of slavery. Great
numbers of Englishmen of all classes who had
hitherto held back from supporting Cobden and
Bright now ranged themselves on their side. Ad
dresses of praise and sympathy "began to pour in
to the Legation of the United States in a steady
and ever swelling stream. " An immense popular
demonstration took place at Exeter Hall. Cob
den, writing to Sumner, described the new situa
tion in British politics, in a letter amounting to an
assurance that the Government never again would
attempt to resist the popular pressure in favor of
the North.
On the last day of 1862 a meeting of working-
men at Manchester, where the cotton famine was
causing untold misery, adopted one of those New
Year greetings to Lincoln. Lincoln's reply ex
pressed with his usual directness his own view
of the sympathetic relation that had been estab
lished between the democratic classes of the two
countries :

THE CRUCIAL MATTER 191
I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the
workingmen at Manchester, and in all Europe, are
called to endure in this crisis. It has been often and
studiously represented that the attempt to overthrow
this Government, which was built upon the foundation
of human rights, and to substitute for it one which
should rest exclusively on the basis of human slavery,
was likely to obtain the favor of Europe. Through the
action of our disloyal citizens, the workingmen of
Europe have been subjected to severe trials, for the
purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt.
Under the circumstances, I cannot but regard your
decisive utterances upon the question as an instance
of sublime Christian heroism which has not been sur
passed in any age or in any country. It is indeed an
energetic and reinspiring assurance of the inherent
power of truth, and of the ultimate triumph of justice,
humanity, and freedom. I do not doubt that the
sentiments you have expressed will be sustained by
your great nation; and, on the other hand, I have no
hesitation in assuring you that they will excite admi
ration, esteem, and the most reciprocal feelings of
friendship among the American people. I hail this in
terchange of sentiment, therefore, as an augury that
whatever else may happen, whatever misfortune may
befall your country or my own, the peace and friend
ship which now exists between the two nations will be,
as it shall be my desire to make them, perpetual.

CHAPTER X
THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY
Though the defeat of the Democrats at the polls
in 1863 and the now definitely friendly attitude of
England had done much to secure the stability of
the Lincoln Government, this success was due in
part to a figure which now comes to the front
and deserves attentive consideration. Indeed the
work of Salmon Portland Chase, Secretary of the
Treasury, forms a bridge, as one might say, be
tween the first and second phases of Lincoln's
administration. The interesting Englishman who is the latest
biographer of Lincoln says of Chase: "Unfor
tunately, this imposing person was a sneak."
But is Lord Charnwood justified in that surpris
ing characterization? He finds support in the
testimony of Secretary Welles, who calls Chase,
"artful dodger, unstable, and unreliable." And
yet there is another side, for it is the conven-
192

THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY 193
tional thing in America to call him our greatest
finance minister since Hamilton, and even a con
spicuous enemy said of him, at a crucial mo
ment, that his course established his character
"as an honest and frank man."
Taking these contradictory estimates as hints
of a contradiction in the man, we are forced to
the conclusion that Chase was a professional in
politics and an amateur in finance. Perhaps here
in is the whole explanation of the two charac
teristics of his financial policy — his reluctance
to lay taxes, and his faith in loans. His two eyes
did not see things alike. One was really trying
to make out the orthodox path of finance; the
other was peering along the more devious road of
popular caprice.
The opening of the war caught the Treasury, as
it caught all branches of the Government, utterly
unprepared. Between April and July, 1861, Chase
had to borrow what he could. When Congress
met in July, his real career as director of financial
policy began — or, as his enemies think, failed to
begin. At least, he failed to urge upon Congress
the need of new taxes and appeared satisfied with
himself asking for an issue of $240,000,000 in
bonds bearing not less than seven per cent interest.
13

194 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
Congress voted to give him $250,000,000 of which
$50,000,000 might be interest-bearing treasury
notes; made slight increases in duties; and pre
pared for excise and direct taxation the following
year. Later in the year Congress laid a three
per cent tax on all incomes in excess of $800.
When Congress reassembled in December, 1861,
expenditures were racing ahead of receipts, and
there was a deficit of $143,000,000. It must not
be forgotten that this month was a time of in
tense excitability and of nervous reaction. Fre
mont had lately been removed, and the attack
on Cameron had begun. At this crucial moment
the situation was made still more alarming by
the action of the New York banks, followed by
all other banks, in suspending specie payments.
They laid the responsibility upon Chase. A syn
dicate of banks in New York, Boston, and Phila
delphia had come to the aid of the Government,
but when they took up government bonds, Chase
had required them to pay the full value cash
down, though they had asked permission to hold
the money on deposit and to pay it as needed
on requisition by the Government. Furthermore,
in spite of their protest, Chase issued treasury
notes, which the banks had to receive from their

GIDEON WELLES
Photograph by Brady.

SALMON P. CHASE
Photograph by Brady. :^

THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY 195
depositors, who nevertheless continued to demand
specie. On January 1, 1862, the banks owed
$459,000,000 and had in specie only $87,000,000.
Chase defended his course by saying that the fi
nancial crisis was not due to his policy — or lack
of policy, as it would now seem — but to a general
loss of faith in the outcome of the war.
There now arose a moral crisis for this "imposing
person" who was Secretary of the Treasury — a
crisis with regard to which there are still differ
ences of opinion. While he faced his problem
silently, the Committee on Ways and Means in
the House took the matter in hand. Its solution
was an old one which all sound theorists on
finance unite in condemning — the issue of irre
deemable paper money. And what did the Secre
tary of the Treasury do? Previously, as Governor
of Ohio, he had denounced paper money as, in
effect, a fraud upon society. Long after, when
the tide of fortune had landed him in the high
place of Supreme Justice, he returned to this view
and condemned as unconstitutional the law of
1862 establishing a system of paper money. But
at the time when that law was passed Chase,
though he went through the form of protesting,
soon acquiesced. Before long he was asking Con-

196 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
gress to allow a further issue of what he had pre
viously called "fraudulent" money.
The answer to the question whether Chase
should have stuck to his principles and resigned
rather than acquiesce in the paper money legisla
tion turns on that other question — how were the
politician and the financier related in his make-up?
Before Congress and the Secretary had finished,
$450,000,000 were issued. Prices naturally rose,
and there was speculation in gold. Even before
the first issue of paper money, the treasury notes
had been slightly below par. In January, 1863,
a hundred dollars in paper would bring, in New
York, only $69.00 in gold; a year later, after falling,
rising, and falling again, the value was $64.00; in
July and August, 1864, it was at its lowest, $39.00;
when the war closed, it had risen to $67.00.
There was powerful protest against the legislation
responsible for such a condition of affairs. Jus
tin Morrill, the author of the Morrill tariff, said,
"I would as soon provide Chinese wooden guns
for the army as paper money alone for the army.
It will be a breach of public faith. It will injure
creditors; it will increase prices; it will increase
many fold the cost of the war." Recent students
agree, in the main, that his prophecies were ful-

THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY 197
filled; and a common estimate of the probable
increase in the cost of the war through the use
of paper money and the consequent inflation of
prices is $600,000,000.
There was much more financial legislation in
1862; but Chase continued to stand aside and
allow Congress the lead in establishing an excise
law, an increase in the income tax, and a higher
tariff — the last of which was necessitated by the
excise law which has been described as a bill
"that taxed everything." To enable American
manufacturers to bear the excise duties levied
upon their business, protection was evoked to
secure them the possession of their field by ex
cluding foreign competition. All these taxes, how
ever, produced but a fraction of the Government's
revenue. Borrowing, the favorite method of the
Secretary, was accepted by Congress as the main
resource. It is computed that by means of taxa
tion there was raised in the course of the war
$667,163,247.00, while during the same period the
Government borrowed $2,621,916,786.00.
Whatever else he may think of Chase, no one
denies that in 1862 he had other interests besides
finance. Lincoln's Cabinet in those days was far
from an harmonious body. All through its history

198 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
there was a Chase faction and a Seward faction.
The former had behind them the Radical Repub
licans, while the latter relied upon the support of
the moderates. This division in the Republican
party runs deep through the politics of the time.
There seems to be good reason to think that Chase
was not taken by surprise when his radical allies
in Congress, in December, 1862, demanded of Lin
coln the removal of Seward. It will be remem
bered that the elections of the autumn of 1862
had gone against Lincoln. At this moment of
dismay, the friends of Chase struck their blow.
Seward instantly offered bis resignation. But
Lincoln skillfully temporized. Thereupon, Chase
also resigned. Judging from the scanty evidence
we have of his intention, we may conclude that
he thought he had Lincoln in a corner and that
he expected either to become first minister or the
avowed chief of an irresistible opposition. But
he seems to have gone too fast for his followers.
Lincoln had met them, together with his Cabinet,
in a conference in December, 1862, and frankly
discussed the situation, with the result that some
of them wavered. When Lincoln informed both
Seward and Chase that he declined to accept their
resignations, both returned — Seward with alac-

THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY 199
rity, Chase with reluctance. One of the clues to
Lincoln's cabinet policy was his determination to
keep both these factions committed to the Gov
ernment, without allowing himseK to be under the
thumb of either.
During the six months following the cabinet
crisis Chase appears at his best. A stupendous
difficulty lay before him and he attacked it man
fully. The Government's deficit was $276,900,000.
Of the loans authorized in 1862 — the "five-twen
ties" as they were called, bringing six per cent
and to run from five to twenty years at the Gov
ernment's pleasure — the sales had brought in,
to December, 1862, only $23,750,000, though five
hundred million had been expected. The banks in
declining to handle these bonds laid the blame on
the Secretary, who had insisted that all purchasers
should take them at par.
It is not feasible, in a work of this character,
to enter into the complexities of the financial sit
uation of 1863, or to determine just what influ
ences caused a revolution in the market for govern
ment bonds. But two factors must be mentioned.
Chase was induced to change his attitude and to
sell to banks large numbers of bonds at a rate
below par, thus enabling the banks to dispose of

200 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
them at a profit. He also called to his aid Jay
Cooke, an experienced banker, who was allowed
a commission of one-half per cent on all bonds
sold up to $10,000,000 and three-eighths of one
per cent after that. Cooke organized a country
wide agency system, with twenty-five hundred
sub-agents through whom he offered directly to
the people bonds in small denominations. By all
manner of devices, patriotism and the purchase of
bonds were made to appear the same thing, and
before the end of the year $400,000,000 in five-
twenty bonds had been sold. This campaign to
dispose of the five-twenties was the turning-point
in war finance, and later borrowings encountered
no such difficulties as those of 1862 and 1863.
Better known today than this precarious leg
islation is the famous Act of 1863, which was
amended in the next year and which forms the
basis of our present system of national banks. To
Chase himself the credit for this seems to be due.
Even in 1861 he advised Congress to establish a
system of national banks, and he repeated the
advice before it was finally taken. The central
feature of this system which he advocated is one
with which we are still familiar: permission to
the banks accepting government supervision to

THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY 201
deposit government bonds in the Treasury and
to acquire in return the right to issue bank-notes
to the amount of ninety per cent of the value
of the bonds.
There can be no doubt that Chase himself
rated very highly his own services to his country.
Nor is there any doubt that, alone among Lin
coln's close associates, he continued until the end
to believe himself a better man than the President.
He and his radical following made no change in
their attitude to Lincoln, though Chase pursued a
course of confidential criticism which has since
inspired the characterization of him as a "sneak,"
while his followers were more outspoken. In the
summer of 1863 Chase was seriously talked of as
the next President, and before the end of the year
Chase clubs were being organized in all the large
cities to promote his candidacy. Chase himself
took the adroit position of not believing that any
President should serve a second term.
Early in 1864 the Chase organization sent out a
confidential circular signed by Senator Pomeroy of
Kansas setting forth the case against Lincoln as a
candidate and the case in favor of Chase. Un
fortunately for Chase, this circular fell into the
hands of a newspaper and was published. Chase

202 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
at once wrote to Lincoln denying any knowledge
of the circular but admitting his candidacy and
offering his resignation. No more remarkable
letter was written by Lincoln than his reply to
Chase, in which he showed that he had long fully
understood the situation, and which he closed
with these words: "Whether you shall remain at
the head of the Treasury Department is a ques
tion which I do not allow myself to consider from
any standpoint other than my judgment of the
public service, and, in that view, I do not perceive
occasion for change."
The Chase boom rapidly declined. The death
blow was given by a caucus of the Union members
of the legislature of his own State nominating
Lincoln "at the demand of the people and the
soldiers of Ohio." The defeat embittered Chase.
For several months, however, he continued in the
Cabinet, and during this time he had the morti
fication of seeing Lincoln renominated in the Na
tional Union Convention amid a great display of
enthusiasm. More than once in the past, Chase had offered
his resignation. On one occasion Lincoln had
gone to his house and had begged him to recon
sider his decision. Soon after the renomination,

THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY 203
Chase again offered his resignation upon the pretext
of a disagreement with the President over appoint
ments to office. This time, however, Lincoln felt
the end had come and accepted the resignation.
Chase's successor in the Treasury was William Pitt
Fessenden, Senator from Maine. During most of
the summer of 1864 Chase stood aside, sullen and
envious, watching the progress of Lincoln toward
a second election. So much did his bitterness af
fect his judgment that he was capable of writing
in his diary his belief that Lincoln meant to re
verse his policy and consent to peace with slavery
reestablished.

CHAPTER XI
NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR
The real effects of war on the life of nations is one
of those old and complicated debates which lie
outside the scope of a volume such as this. Yet
in the particular case of the Northern people it is
imperative to answer two questions both of which
have provoked interminable discussion: Was the
moral life of the North good or bad in the war
years? Was its commercial life sound?
As to the moral question, contemporary evidence
seems at first sight contradictory. The very able
Englishman who represented the Times, William
H. Russell, gives this ugly picture of an American
city in 1863:
"Every fresh bulletin from the battlefield of
Chickamauga, during my three weeks' stay in
Cincinnati, brought a long list of the dead and
wounded of the Western army, many of whom, of
the officers, belonged to the best families of the
204

NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR 205
place. Yet the signs of mourning were hardly
anywhere perceptible; the noisy gaiety of the
town was not abated one jot."
On the other hand, a private manuscript of a
Cincinnati family describes the "intense gloom
hanging over the city like a pall" during the period
of that dreadful battle. The memories of old
people at Cincinnati in after days — if they had
belonged to the "loyal" party — contained only
sad impressions of a city that was one great hospi
tal where "all our best people" worked passion
ately as volunteer assistants of the government
medical corps.
A third fact to be borne in mind in connection
with this apparent contradiction in evidence is the
source of the greater fortunes of Cincinnati, a
large proportion of which are to be traced, directly
or indirectly to government contracts during the
war. In some cases the merciless indifference of
the Cincinnati speculators to the troubles of their
country are a local scandal to this day, and it is
still told, sometimes with scorn, sometimes with
amusement, how perhaps the greatest of these
fortunes was made by forcing up the price of iron
at a time when the Government had to have iron,
cost what it might.

206 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
Thus we no sooner take up the moral problem
of the times than we find ourselves involved in the
commercial question, for here, as always, morals
and business are intertwined. Was the commer
cial management of the North creditable to the
Government and an honor to the people? The
surest way to answer such questions is to trace
out with some fullness the commercial and indus
trial conditions of the North during the four years
of war.
The general reader who looks for the first time
into the matter is likely to be staggered by what
statistics seem to say. Apparently they contra
dict what he is accustomed to hear from popular
economists about the waste of war. He has been
told in the newspapers that business is undermined
by the withdrawal of great numbers of men from
"productive" consumption of the fruits of labor
and their engagement as soldiers in "unproduc
tive" consumption. But, to his astonishment, he
finds that the statistics of 1861-1865 show much
increase in Northern business — as, for example,
in 1865, the production of 142 million pounds of
wool against 60 million in 1860. The government
reports show that 13 million tons of coal were
mined in 1860 and 21 million in 1864; in 1860,

NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR 207
the output of pig iron was 821,000 tons, and 1,-
014,282 tons in 1864; the petroleum production
rose from 21 million gallons in 1860 to 128 mil
lion in 1862; the export of corn, measured in
money, shows for 1860 a business of $2,399,808
compared with $10,592,704 for 1863; wheat ex
porting showed, also, an enormous increase, rising
from 14 millions in 1860 to 46 millions in 1863.
There are, to be sure, many statistics which seem
to contradict these. Some of them will be men
tioned presently. And yet, on the whole, it seems
safe to conclude that the North, at the close of
the third year of war was producing more and was
receiving larger profits than in 1860.
To deal with this subject in its entirety would
lead us into the labyrinths of complex economic
theory, yet two or three simple facts appear so
plain that even the mere historian may venture to
set them forth. When we look into the statistics
which seem to show a general increase of business
during the war, we find that in point of fact this
increase was highly specialized. All those indus
tries that dealt with the physical necessities of
life and all those that dealt peculiarly with armies
flourished amazingly. And yet there is another
side to the story, for there were other indus-

208 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
tries that were set back and some that almost,
if not entirely, disappeared. A good instance
is the manufacture of cotton cloth. When the
war opened, 200,000 hands were employed in this
manufacture in New England. With the seal
ing up of the South and the failure of the cot
ton supply, their work temporarily ceased. What
became of the workmen? Briefly, one of three
things happened: some went into other trades,
such as munitions, in which the war had created
an abnormal demand for labor; a great number
of them became soldiers; and many of them went
West and became farmers or miners. Further
more, many whose trades were not injured by the
war left their jobs and fled westward to escape
conscription. Their places were left open to be
filled by operatives from the injured trades. In
one or another of these ways the laborer who was
thrown out of work was generally able to recover
employment. But it is important to remember
that the key to the labor situation at that time
was the vast area of unoccupied land which could
be had for nothing or next to nothing. This fact
is brought home by a comparison of the situation
of the American with that of the English workman
during the cotton famine. According to its own

NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR 209
ideas England was then fully cultivated. There
was no body of land waiting to be thrown open,
as an emergency device, to a host of new-made
agriculturists. When the cotton-mills stopped at
Manchester, their operatives had practically no
openings but in other industrial occupations. As
such opportunities were lacking, they became ob
jects of charity until they could resume their
work. As a country with a great reserve of un
occupied land, the United States was singularly
fortunate at this economic crisis.
One of the noteworthy features of Northern
life during the war is that there was no abnor
mal increase in pauperism. A great deal has been
written upon the extensive charities of the time,
but the term is wrongly applied, for what is
really referred to is the volunteer aid given to the
Government in supporting the armies. This was
done on a vast scale, by all classes of the popula
tion — that is, by all who supported the Union
party, for the separation between the two parties
was bitter and unforgiving. But of charity in the
ordinary sense of the care of the destitute there
was no significant increase because there was no
peculiar need. Here again the fact that the free
land could be easily reached is the final explana-
14

210 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
tion. There was no need for the unemployed
workman to become a pauper. He could take
advantage of the Homestead Act,1 which was
passed in 1862, and acquire a farm of 160 acres
free; or he could secure at almost nominal cost
farm-land which had been given to railways as
an inducement to build. Under the Homestead
Act, the Government gave away land amounting
to 2,400,000 acres before the close of the war.
The Illinois Central alone sold to actual settlers
221,000 acres in 1863 and 264,000 in 1864. It was
during the war, too, that the great undertaking
of the transcontinental railway was begun, partly
for military and partly for commercial reasons.
In this project, both as a field of labor and as a
stimulus to Western settlement, there is also to be
found one more device for the relief of the labor
situation in the East.
There is no more important phenomenon of the
time than the shifting of large masses of popula
tion from the East to the West, while the war
was in progress. This fact begins to indicate why
1 This Act, which may be regarded as the culmination of the long
battle of the Northern dreamers to win "land for the landless,"
provided that every settler who was, or intended to be, a citizen
might secure 160 acres of government land by living on it and cul
tivating it for five years.

NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR 211
there was no shortage in the agricultural out
put. The North suffered acutely from inflation
of prices and from a speculative wildness that
accompanied the inflation, but it did not suffer
from a lack of those things that are produced by
the soil — food, timber, metals, and coal. In ad
dition to the reason just mentioned — the search
for new occupation by Eastern labor which had
been thrown out of employment — three other
causes helped to maintain the efficiency of work
in the mines, in the forests, and on the farms.
These three factors were immigration, the labor
of women, and labor-saving machines.
Immigration, naturally, fell off to a certain de
gree but it did not become altogether negligible.
It is probable that 110,000 able-bodied men came
into the country while war was in progress — a
poor offset to the many hundred thousand who
became soldiers, but nevertheless a contribution
that counted for something.
Vastly more important, in the work of the
North, was the part taken by women. A pathetic
detail with which in our own experience the world
has again become familiar was the absence of
young men throughout most of the North, and
the presence of women new to the work in many

212 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
occupations, especially farming. A single quota
tion from a home missionary in Iowa tells the
whole story:
I will mention that I met more women driving teams
on the road and saw more at work in the fields than
men. They seem to have said to their husbands in the
language of a favorite song,
"Just take your gun and go;
For Ruth can drive the oxen, John,
And I can use the hoe ! "
I went first to Clarinda, and the town seemed deserted.
Upon inquiry for former friends, the frequent answer
was, "In the army." From Hawleyville almost all the
thoroughly loyal male inhabitants had gone; and in
one township beyond, where I formerly preached, there
are but seven men left, and at Quincy, the county
seat of Adams County, but five.
Even more important than the change in the
personnel of labor were the new machines of the
day. During the fifteen years previous to the war
American ingenuity had reached a high point.
Such inventions as the sewing-machine and the
horse-reaper date in their practical forms from
that period, and both of these helped the North

NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR 218
to fight the war. Their further improvement, and
the extension of the principles involved to many
new forms of machinery, sprang from the pressing
need to make up for the loss of men who were
drained by the army from the farms and the
workshops. It was the horse-reaper, the horse-
rake, the horse-thresher that enabled women and
boys to work the farms while husbands, fathers,
and elder brothers were at the front.
All these causes maintained Northern farming
at a high pitch of productivity. This efficiency
is implied in some of the figures already quoted,
but many others could be cited. For example, in
1859, the total production of wheat for the whole
country was 173 million bushels; in 1862, the
North alone produced 177 millions; even in 1864,
with over a million men under arms, it still pro
duced 160 million bushels.
It must be remembered that the great Northern
army produced nothing while it consumed the
products of agriculture and manufacture — food,
clothing, arms, ammunition, cannon, wagons,
horses, medical stores — at a rate that might have
led a poetical person to imagine the army as a
devouring dragon. Who, in the last analysis, pro
vided all these supplies? Who paid the soldiers?

214 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
Who supplemented their meager pay and sup
ported their families? The people, of course; and
they did so both directly and indirectly. In taxes
and loans they paid to the Government about
three thousand millions of dollars. Their indirect
assistance was perhaps as great, though it is
impossible today to estimate with any approach
to accuracy the amount either in money or service.
Among obvious items are the collections made by
the Sanitary Commission for the benefit of the
hospital service, amounting to twenty-five million
dollars, and about six millions raised by the Chris
tian Commission. In a hundred other ways both
individuals and localities strained their resources
to supplement those of the Government. Immense
subscription lists were circulated to raise funds
for the families of soldiers. The city of Phila
delphia alone spent in this way in a single year
$600,000. There is also evidence of a vast amount
of unrecorded relief of needy families by the neigh
bors, and in the farming districts such assistance,
particularly in the form of fuel during winter, was
very generally given.
What made possible this enormous total of
contributions was, in a word, the general willing
ness of those supporting the war to forego luxuries.

NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR 215
They ceased buying a great multitude of unneces
sary things. But what became of the labor that
had previously supplied the demand for luxuries?
A part of it went the way of all other Northern
labor — into new trades, into the army, or to the
West — and a part continued to manufacture
luxuries: for their market, though curtailed, was
not destroyed. There were, indeed, two popu
lations in the North, and they were separated
by an emotional chasm. Had all the North been a
unit in feeling, the production of articles of luxury
might have ceased. Because of this emotional
division of the North, however, this business sur
vived; for the sacrifice of luxurious expenditure
was made by only a part of the population, even
though it was the majority.
Furthermore, the whole matter was adjusted
voluntarily without systematic government direc
tion, since there was nothing in the financial policy
of the Government to correspond to conscription.
Consequently, both in the way of loans and in the
way of contributions, as well as in the matter of
unpaid service, the entire burden fell upon the
war party alone. In the absence of anything like
economic conscription, if such a phrase may be
used, those Northerners who did not wish to lend

216 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
money, or to make financial sacrifice, or to give
unpaid service, were free to pursue their own
bent. The election of 1864 showed that they
formed a market which amounted to something
between six and nine millions. There is no reason
to suppose that these millions in 1864 spent less
on luxuries than they did in 1860. Two or three
items are enough. In 1860, the importation of
silk amounted to 32 million dollars; in 1862,
in spite of inflated prices, it had shrunk to 7
millions; the consumption of malt liquors shrank
from 101 million gallons in 1860 to 62 million
gallons in 1863 ; of coffee, hardly to be classed as a
luxury, there were consumed in 1861, 184 million
pounds and in 1863, 80 millions.
The clue to the story of capital is to be found in
this fact, too often forgotten, that there was an
economic-political division cutting deep through
every stratum of the Northern people. Their
economic life as well as their political life was
controlled on the one hand by a devotion to the
cause of the war, and on the other hand by a
hatred of that cause or by cynical indifference.
And we cannot insist too positively that the
Government failed very largely to take this fact
into account. The American spirit of invention,

NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR 217
so conspicuous at that time in mechanics, did not
apply itself to the science of government. Lincoln
confessedly was not a financier; his instinct was at
home only in problems that could be stated in
terms of men. Witness his acceptance of con
scription and his firmness in carrying it through,
as a result of which he saved the patriotic party
from bearing the whole burden of military service.
But there was no parallel conservation of power
in the field of industry. The financial policy, left
in the hands of Chase, may truly be described
as barren of ideas. Incidentally, it may be men
tioned that the "loyal" North was left at the
mercy of its domestic enemies and a prey to
parasites by Chase's policy of loans instead of
taxes and of voluntary support instead of enforced
support. The consequence of this financial policy was an
immense opportunity for the "disloyals" and the
parasites to make huge war profits out of the "loy-
als" and the Government. Of course, it must not
be supposed that everyone who seized the chance
to feather his nest was so careless or so impolitic as
to let himself be classed as a "disloyal." An in
cident of the autumn of 1861 shows the temper of
those professed "loyals" who were really para-

218 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
sites. The background of the incident is supplied
by a report of the Quartermaster-General :
"Governors daily complain that recruiting will
stop unless clothing is sent in abundance and
immediately to the various recruiting camps and
regiments. With every exertion, this department
has not been able to obtain clothing to supply
these demands, and they have been so urgent that
troops before the enemy have been compelled to
do picket duty in the late cold nights without
overcoats, or even coats, wearing only thin sum
mer flannel blouses. . . . Could 150,000 suits of
clothing, overcoats, coats, and pantaloons be
placed today, in depot, it would scarce supply the
calls now before us. They would certainly leave
no surplus."
The Government attempted to meet this diffi
culty in the shortest possible time by purchas
ing clothing abroad. But such disregard of home
industry, the "patriotism" of the New England
manufacturers could not endure. Along with the
report just quoted, the Quartermaster-General
forwarded to the Secretary of War a long argu
mentative protest from a committee of the Boston
Board of Trade against the purchase of army
clothing in Europe. Any American of the present

NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR 219
day can guess how the protest was worded and
what arguments were used. Stripped of its in
sincerity, it signified this: the cotton mills were
inoperative for lack of material; their owners
saw no chance to save their dividends except by
re-equipment as woolen mills; the existing woolen
mills also saw a great chance to force wool upon
the market as a substitute for cotton. In Ohio,
California, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, the growers
of wool saw the opportunity with equal clearness.
But, one and all, these various groups of parasites
saw that their game hinged on one condition: the
munitions market must be kept open until they
were ready to monopolize government contracts.
If soldiers contracted pneumonia doing picket
duty on cold nights, in their summer blouses, that
was but an unfortunate incident of war.
Very different in spirit from the protest of
the Boston manufacturers is a dispatch from
the American minister at Brussels which shows
what American public servants, in contrast with
American manufacturers, were about. Abroad the
agents of North and South were fighting a com
mercial duel in which each strove to monopolize
the munitions market. The United States Navy,
seeing things from an angle entirely different from

220 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
that of the Boston Board of Trade, ably seconded
the ministers by blockading the Southern ports
and by thus preventing the movement of specie
and cotton to Europe. As a consequence, four-
month notes which had been given by Southern
agents with their orders fell due, had to be re
newed, and began to be held in disfavor. Agents
of the North, getting wind of these hitches in
negotiations, eagerly sought to take over the un
paid Confederate orders. All these details of the
situation help to explain the jubilant tone of this
dispatch from Brussels late in November, 1861:
"I have now in my hands complete control of
the principal rebel contracts on the continent, viz. :
206,000 yards of cloth ready for delivery, already
commencing to move forward to Havre; gray but
can be dyed blue in twenty days; 100,000 yards
deliverable from 15th of December to 26th of
January, light blue army cloth, same as ours;
100,000 blankets; 40,000 guns to be shipped in
ten days; 20,000 saber bayonets to be delivered
in six weeks. . . . The winter clothing for 100,000
men taken out of their hands, when they cannot
replace it, would almost compensate for Bull Run.
There is no considerable amount of cloth to be
had in Europe; the stocks are very short."

NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR 221
The Secretary of War was as devoid of ideas as
the Secretary of the Treasury was and even less
equipped with resisting power. Though he could
not undo the work already done by the agents of
the Government abroad, he gave way as rapidly as
possible to the allied parasites whose headquarters,
at the moment, were in Boston. The story grows
uglier as we proceed. Two powerful commercial
combinations took charge of the policy of the
woolen interests — the National Wool-growers'
Association and the National Association of Wool
Manufacturers, which were soon in control of this
immense industry. Woolen mills sprang up so
fast that a report of the New York Chamber
of Commerce pronounced their increase "scarcely
credible." So great was the new market created
by the Government demand, and so ruthless were
the parasites in forcing up prices, that dividends on
mill stock rose to 10, 15, 25, and even 40 per cent.
And all the while the wool growers and the wool
manufacturers were clamoring to Congress for
protection of the home industry, exclusion of the
wicked foreign competition, and all in the name
of their devoted "patriotism" — patriotism with a
dividend of 40 per cent!
Of course, it is not meant that every wool

222 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
grower and every woolen manufacturer was either
a "disloyal" or a parasite. By no means. Num
bers of them were to be found in that great host of
"loyals" who put their dividends into government
bonds and gave their services unpaid as auxiliaries
of the Commissary Department or the Hospital
Service of the Army. What is meant is that the
abnormal conditions of industry, uncorrected by
the Government, afforded a glaring opportunity for
unscrupulous men of business who, whatever their
professions, cared a hundred times more for them
selves than for their country. To these was due the
pitiless hampering of the army in the interest of
the wool-trade. For example, many uniforms paid
for at outrageous prices, turned out to be made
of a miserable cheap fabric, called " shoddy,"
which resisted weather scarcely better than paper.
This fraud gave the word "shoddy" its present
significance in our American speech and produced
the phrase — applied to manufacturers newly be
come rich — "shoddy aristocracy." An even more
shameful result of the selfishness of the manu
facturers and of the weakness of the Government
was the use of cloth for uniforms not of the regula
tion colors, with the result that soldiers sometimes
fired upon their comrades by mistake.

NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR 223
The prosperity of the capitalists who financed
the woolen business did not extend to the labor
employed in it. One of the ugliest details of the
time was the resolute attempt of the parasites
to seize the whole amount of the abnormal profits
they wrung from the Government and from the
people. For it must not be forgotten that the
whole nation had to pay their prices. It is esti
mated that prices in the main advanced about
100 per cent while wages were not advanced more
than sixty per cent. It is not strange that these
years of war form a period of bitter antagonism
between labor and capital.
What went on in the woolen business is to be
found more or less in every business. Immense
fortunes sprang up over night. They had but two
roots : government contracts and excessive profits
due to war prices. The gigantic fortunes which
characterized the North at the end of the war are
thus accounted for. The so-called prosperity of
the time was a class-prosperity and was absorbed
by parasites who fattened upon the necessities of
the Government and the sacrifices of the people.

CHAPTER Xn
THE MEXICAN EPISODE
That French demagogue whom Victor Hugo aptly
called Napoleon the Little was a prime factor in
the history of the Union and the Confederacy.
The Confederate side of his intrigue will be told
in its proper place. Here, let us observe him from
the point of view of Washington.
It is too much to attempt to pack into a sentence
or two the complicated drama of deceit, lies, and
graft, through which he created at last a pretext
for intervention in the affairs of Mexico; it is
enough that in the autumn of 1862 a French army
of invasion marched from Vera Cruz upon Mexico
City. We have already seen that about this same
time Napoleon proposed to England and Russia
a joint intervention with France between North
and South — a proposal which, however, was re
jected. This Mexican venture explains why the
plan was suggested at that particular time.
224

THE MEXICAN EPISODE 225
Disappointed in England and Russia, Napo
leon unexpectedly received encouragement, as he
thought, from within the United States through
the medium of the eccentric editor of the New
York Tribune. We shall have occasion to return
later to the adventures of Horace Greeley — that
erratic individual who has many good and gen
erous acts to his credit, as well as many foolish
ones. For the present we have to note that to
ward the close of 1862 he approached the French
Ambassador at Washington with a request for
imperial mediation between the North and the
South. Greeley was a type of American that no
European can understand: he believed in talk,
and more talk, and still more talk, as the cure for
earthly ills. He never could understand that
anybody besides himself could have strong con
victions. When he told the Ambassador that the
Emperor's mediation would lead to a reconcilia
tion of the sections, he was doubtless sincere in his
belief. The astute European diplomat, who could
not believe such simplicity, thought it a mask.
When he asked for, and received, permission to
pass the Federal lines and visit Richmond, he
interpreted the permit in the light of his assump
tion about Greeley. At Richmond, he found no
is

226 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
desire for reunion. Putting this and that together,
he concluded that the North wanted to give up
the fight and would welcome mediation to save its
face. The dreadful defeat at Fredericksburg fell
in with this reasoning. His reports on American
conditions led Napoleon, in January, 1863, to at
tempt alone what he had once hoped to do sup
ported by England and Russia. He proposed his
good offices to the Government at Washington as
a mediator between North and South.
Hitherto, Washington had been very discreet
about Mexico. Adroit hints not to go too far
had been given Napoleon in full measure, but
there was no real protest. The State Department
now continued this caution and in the most polite
terms declined Napoleon's offer. Congress, how
ever, took the matter more grimly, for throughout
the dealings with Napoleon, it had been at odds
with Lincoln. It now passed the first of a series of
resolutions which expressed the will of the country,
if not quite the will of the President, by resolving
that any further proposal of mediation would be
regarded by it as "an unfriendly act."
Napoleon then resumed his scheming for joint
intervention, while in the meantime his armies
continued to fight their way until they entered

THE MEXICAN EPISODE 227
Mexico City in June, 1863. The time had now
come when Napoleon thought it opportune to
show his hand. Those were the days when Lee
appeared invincible, and when Chancellorsville
crowned a splendid series of triumphs. In Eng
land, the Southern party made a fresh start; and
societies were organized to aid the Confederacy.
At Liverpool, Laird Brothers were building, os
tensibly for France, really for the Confederacy,
two ironclads supposed to outclass every ship in
the Northern navy. In France, 100,000 unem
ployed cotton hands were rioting for food. To
raise funds for the Confederacy the great Erlanger
banking-house of Paris negotiated a loan based
on cotton which was to be delivered after the
breaking of the blockade. Napoleon dreamed of
a shattered American union, two enfeebled re
publics, and a broad way for bis own scheme in
Mexico. In June an English politician of Southern sym
pathies, Edward Roebuck, went over to France,
was received by the Emperor, and came to an
understanding with him. Roebuck went home to
report to the Southern party that Napoleon was
ready to intervene, and that all he waited for was
England's cooperation. A motion "to enter into

228 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
negotiations with the Great Powers of Europe for
the purpose of obtaining their cooperation in the
recognition" of the Confederacy was introduced
by Roebuck in the House of Commons.
The debate which followed was the last chance
of the Southern party and, as events proved, the
last chance of Napoleon. How completely the
British ministry was now committed to the North
appears in the fact that Gladstone, for the Govern
ment, opposed Roebuck's motion. John Bright
attacked it in what Lord Morley calls "perhaps
the most powerful and the noblest speech of his
life." The Southern party was hardly resolute
in their support of Roebuck and presently he
withdrew his motion.
But there were still the ironclads at Liverpool.
We have seen that earlier in the war, the care
lessness of the British authorities had permitted
the escape of ship 290, subsequently known as the
Confederate commerce-destroyer, Alabama. The
authorities did not wish to allow a repetition of
the incident. But could it be shown that the
Laird ships were not really for a French pur
chaser? It was in the course of diplomatic con
versations that Mr. Adams, speaking of the pos
sible sailing of the ships, made a remark destined to

THE MEXICAN EPISODE 229
become famous: "It would be superfluous in me to
point out to your lordship that this is war." At
last, the authorities were satisfied. The ships
were seized and in the end bought for the British
Navy. Again Napoleon stood alone. Not only had he
failed to obtain aid from abroad, but in France
itself his Mexican schemes were widely and bit
terly condemned. Yet he had gone too far to re
cede, and what he had been aiming at all along
was now revealed. An assembly of Mexican not
ables, convened by the general of the invaders,
voted to set up an imperial government and of
fered the crown to Napoleon's nominee, the Arch
duke Maximilian of Austria.
And now the Government at Washington was
faced with a complicated problem. What about
the Monroe Doctrine? Did the Union dare risk
war with France? Did it dare pass over without
protest the establishment of monarchy on Ameri
can soil by foreign arms? Between these horns of
a dilemma, the Government maintained its pre
carious position during another year. Seward's
correspondence with Paris was a masterpiece of
evasion. He neither protested against the inter
vention of Napoleon nor acknowledged the au- -

230 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
thority of Maximilian. Apparently, both he and
Lincoln were divided between fear of a French
alliance with the Confederacy and fear of prema
ture action in the North that would render Napo
leon desperate. Just how far they comprehended
Napoleon and his problems is an open question.
Whether really comprehending or merely trust
ing to its instinct, Congress took a bolder course.
Two men prove the antagonists of a parliamen
tary duel — Charles Sumner, chairman of the Sen
ate Committee on Foreign Relations, and Henry
Winter Davis, chairman of the corresponding com
mittee of the House. Sumner played the hand
of the Administration. Fiery resolutions demand
ing the evacuation of Mexico or an American de
claration of war were skillfully buried in the silence
of Sumner's committee. But there was neverthe
less one resolution that affected history: it was a
ringing condemnation of the attempt to establish
a monarchy in Mexico. In the House, a joint re
solution which Davis submitted was passed with
out one dissenting vote. When it came to the
Senate, Sumner buried it as he had buried earlier
resolutions. None the less it went out to the world
attended by the news of the unanimous vote in
the House.

THE MEXICAN EPISODE 231
Shortly afterwards, the American Ambassador
at Paris called upon the imperial Foreign Secre
tary, M. Drouyn de L'huys. News of this resolu
tion had preceded him. He was met by the curt
question, "Do you bring peace or war?" Again,
the Washington Government was skillfully eva
sive. The Ambassador was instructed to explain
that the resolution had not been inspired by the
President and "the French Government would be
seasonably apprized of any change of policy . . .
which the President might at any future time
think it proper to adopt."
There seems little doubt that Lincoln's course
was very widely condemned as timid. When we
come to the political campaign of 1864, we shall
meet Henry Winter Davis among his most relent
less personal enemies. Dissatisfaction with Lin
coln's Mexican policy has not been sufficiently
considered in accounting for the opposition to
him, inside the war party, in 1864. To it may be
traced an article in the platform of the war party,
adopted in June, 1864, protesting against the es
tablishment of monarchy "in near proximity to the
United States." In the same month Maximilian
entered Mexico City.
The subsequent moves of Napoleon are ex-

232 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
plained elsewhere.1 The central fact in the story
is his virtual change of attitude, in the summer of
1864. The Confederate agent at Paris complained
of a growing coolness. Before the end of the sum
mer, the Confederate Secretary of State was bit
ter in his denunciation of Napoleon for having
deserted the South. Napoleon's puppet Maxi
milian refused to receive an envoy from the Con
federacy. Though Washington did not formally
protest against the presence of Maximilian in
Mexico, it declined to recognize his Government,
and that Government continued unrecognized at
Washington throughout the war.
'Nathaniel W. Stephenson, The Day of the Confederacy. (In
The Chronicles of America.)

CHAPTER XIII
THE PLEBISCITE OF 1864
Every great revolution among Anglo-Saxon peo
ple — perhaps among all people — has produced
strange types of dreamers. In America, however,
neither section could claim a monopoly of such
types, and even the latter-day visionaries who can
see everything in heaven and earth, excepting
fact, had their Northern and Southern originals
in the time of the great American war. Among
these is a strange congregation which assembled
in the spring of 1864 and which has come to be
known, from its place of meeting, as the Cleve
land Convention. Its coming together was the re
sult of a loose cooperation among several minor
political groups, all of which were for the Union
and the war, and violently opposed to Lincoln.
So far as they had a common purpose, it was to
supplant Lincoln by Fremont in the next election.
The Convention was notable for the large pro-
233

234 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
portion of agnostics among its members. A mo
tion was made to amend a resolution that "the
Rebellion must be put down " by adding the words
"with God's assistance." This touch of piety was
stormily rejected. Another group represented at
Cleveland was made up of extreme abolitionists
under the leadership of that brilliant but disor
dered genius, Wendell Phillips. He sent a letter
denouncing Lincoln and pledging his support of
Fremont because of the latter's "clear-sighted
statesmanship and rare military ability." The
convention declared itself a political party, under
the style of the Radical Democracy, and nomin
ated Fremont for President.
There was another body of dreamers, still more
singular, who were also bitter opponents of Lin
coln. They were, however, not in favor of war.
Their political machinery consisted of secret soci
eties. As early as 1860, the Knights of the
Golden Circle were active in Indiana, where they
did yeoman service for Breckinridge. Later this
society acquired some underground influence in
other States, especially in Ohio, and did its share
in bringing about the victories at the polls in the
autumn of 1862, when the Democrats captured
the Indiana legislature.

THE PLEBISCITE OF 1864 235
The most serious charge against the Golden
Circle was complicity in an attempt to assassinate
Oliver P. Morton, Governor of Indiana, who was
fired at, one night, as he was leaving the state
house. When Morton demanded an investiga
tion of the Golden Circle, the legislature refused
to sanction it. On his own authority and with
Federal aid he made investigations and published
a report which, if it did not actually prove treason,
came dangerously near to proof. Thereafter, this
society drops out of sight, and its members appear
to have formed the new Order of the American
Knights, which in its turn was eclipsed by the
Sons of Liberty. There were several other such
societies all organized on a military plan and with
a great pretense of arming their members. This,
however, had to be done surreptitiously. Boxes
of rifles purchased in the East were shipped West
labeled "Sunday-school books," and negotiations
were even undertaken with the Confederacy to
bring in arms by way of Canada. At a meeting
of the supreme council of the Sons of Liberty, in
New York, February 22, 1864, it was claimed that
the order had nearly a million members, though
the Government secret service considered half a
million a more exact estimate.

236 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
As events subsequently proved, the societies
were not as formidable as these figures would
imply. Most of the men who joined them seem
to have been fanciful creatures who loved se
crecy for its own sake. While real men, North
and South, were laying down their lives for their
principles, these make-believe men were holding
bombastic initiations and taking oaths such as
this from the ritual of the American Knights:
"I do further solemnly promise and swear, that
I will ever cherish the sublime lessons which the
sacred emblems of our order suggest, and will, so
far as in me lies, impart those lessons to the
people of the earth, where the mystic acorn falls
from its parent bough, in whose visible firmament
Orion, Arcturus, and the Pleiades ride in their
cold resplendent glories, and where the Southern
Cross dazzles the eye of degraded humanity with
its coruscations of golden light, fit emblem of
Truth, while it invites our sacred order to conse
crate her temples in the four corners of the earth,
where moral darkness reigns and despotism holds
sway. . . . Divine essence, so help me that I
fail not in my troth, lest I shall be summoned
before the tribunal of the order, adjudged and
condemned to certain and shameful death, while

THE PLEBISCITE OF 1864 237
my name shall be recorded on the rolls of infamy.
Amen. "
The secret orders fought hard to prevent the
Lincoln victory in the elections of 1863. Even
before that time their leaders had talked myste
riously of another disruption of the Union and
the formation of a Northwestern Confederacy in
alliance with the South. The scheme was known
to the Confederates, allusions to it are to be found
in Southern newspapers, and even the Confederate
military authorities considered it. Early in 1863,
General Beauregard thought the Confederates
might "get into Ohio and call upon the friends of
Vallandigham to rise for his defense and support;
then . . . call upon the whole Northwest to join
in the movement, form a confederacy of their own,
and join us by a treaty of alliance, offensive and
defensive." Reliance on the support of the socie
ties was the will-o'-the-wisp that deceived General
John Morgan in his desperate attempt to carry
out Beauregard's programme. Though brushed
aside as a mere detail by military historians,
Morgan's raid, with his force of irregular cavalry,
in July, 1863, through Indiana and Ohio, was one
of the most romantic episodes of the war. But
it ended in his defeat and capture. While his

238 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
gallant troopers rode to their destruction, the
men who loved to swear by Arcturus and to gabble
about the Pleiades showed the fiber to be expected
of such people, and stayed snug in their beds.
But neither their own lack of hardihood nor the
disasters of their Southern friends could dampen
their peculiar ardor. Their hero was Vallandig
ham. That redoubtable person had fixed his head
quarters in Canada, whence he directed his parti
sans in their vain attempt to elect him Governor
of Ohio. Their next move was to honor him with
the office of Supreme Commander of the Sons of
Liberty, and now Vallandigham resolved to win
the martyr's crown in very fact. In June, 1864,
he prepared for the dramatic effect by carefully ad
vertising his intention and came home. But to
his great disappointment Lincoln ignored him, and
the dramatic martyrdom which he had planned
did not come off.
There still existed the possibility of a great up
rising, and to that end arrangements were made
with Southern agents in Canada. Confederate
soldiers, picked men, made their way in disguise
to Chicago. There the worshipers of Arcturus
were to join them in a mighty multitude; the
Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas in Chicago

THE PLEBISCITE OF 1864 239
were to be liberated; around that core of veterans,
the hosts of the Pleiades were to rally. All this
was to coincide with the assembling at Chicago
of the Democratic national convention, in which
Vallandigham was to appear. The organizers of
the conspiracy dreamed that the two events might
coalesce; that the convention might be stampeded
by their uprising; that a great part, if not the
whole, of the convention would endorse the estab
lishment of a Northwestern Confederacy.
Alas for him who builds on the frame of mind
that delights in cheap rhetoric while Rome is afire!
At the moment of hazard, the Sons of Liberty
showed the white feather, were full of specious
words, would not act. The Confederate soldiers,
indignant at this second betrayal, had to make
their escape from the country.
It must not be supposed that this Democratic
national convention was made up altogether of
Secessionists. The peace party was still, as in the
previous year, a strange complex, a mixture of
all sorts and conditions. Its cohesion was not so
much due to its love of peace as to its dislike of
Lincoln and its hatred of his party. Vallandigham
was a member of the committee on resolutions.
The permanent chairman was Governor Seymour

240 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
of New York. The Convention was called to
order by August Belmont, a foreigner by birth, the
American representative of the Rothschilds. He
was the head and front of that body of Northern
capital which had so long financed the South and
which had always opposed the war. In opening
the Convention he said: "Four years of misrule
by a sectional, fanatical, and corrupt party have
brought our country to the verge of ruin." In the
platform Lincoln was accused of a list of crimes
which it had become the habit of the peace party
to charge against him. His administration was de
scribed as "four years of failure," and McClellan
was nominated for President.
The Republican managers called a convention at
Baltimore in June, 1864, with a view to organizing
a composite Union Party in which the War Demo
crats were to participate. Their plan was success
ful. The second place on the Union ticket was
accepted by a War Democrat, Andrew Johnson, of
Tennessee. Lincoln was renominated, though not
without opposition, and he was so keenly aware
that he was not the unanimous choice of the
Union Party that he permitted the fact to appear
in a public utterance soon afterward. "I do not
allow myself, " he said, in addressing a delegation

THE PLEBISCITE OF 1864 241
of the National Union Lealgue, "to suppose that
either the Convention or the League have con
cluded to decide that I am either the greatest or the
best man in America, but rather they have con
cluded it is not best to swap horses while crossing
the river, and have further concluded that I am
not so poor a horse that they might not make a
botch of it in trying to swap." But the Union
Party was so far from being a unit that during
the summer factional quarrels developed within
its ranks. All the elements that were unfriendly
to Lincoln took heart from a dispute between the
President and Congress with regard to reconstruc
tion in Louisiana, over a large part of which Fed
eral troops had established a civil government
on the President's authority. As an incident in
the history of reconstruction, this whole matter
has its place in another volume. T But it also has a
place in the history of the presidential campaign
of 1864. Lincoln's plan of reconstruction was ob
noxious to the Radicals in Congress inasmuch as
it did not definitely abolish slavery in Louisiana,
although it required the new Government to give
its adherence to the Emancipation Proclamation.
1 Walter L. Fleming, The Sequel of Appomattox. (In The Chronicles
cf America.) 16

242 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
Congress passed a bill taking reconstruction out
of the President's hands and definitely requiring
the reconstructed States to abolish slavery. Lin
coln took the position that Congress had no power
over slavery in the States. When his Proclama
tion was thrown in his teeth, he replied, "I con
ceive that I may in an emergency do things on
military grounds which cannot be done consti
tutionally by Congress." Incidentally there was
a further disagreement between the President and
the Radicals over negro suffrage. Though neither
scheme provided for it, Lincoln would extend it, if
at all, only to the exceptional negroes, while the
Radicals were ready for a sweeping extension.
But Lincoln refused to sign their bill and it lapsed.
Thereupon Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Henry
Winter Davis of Maryland issued a savage de
nunciation of Lincoln which has been known ever
since as the Wade-Davis Manifesto.
There was a faction in the Union Party which
we may justly name the Vindictives. The Mani
festo gave them a rallying cry. At a conference
in New York they decided to compel the retire
ment of Lincoln and the nomination of some other
candidate. For this purpose a new convention
was to be called at Cincinnati in September. In

THE PLEBISCITE OF 1864 243
the ranks of the Vindictives at this time was the
impetuous editor of the New York Tribune, Hor
ace Greeley. His presence there calls for some
explanation. Perhaps the most singular figure of
the time, he was one of the most irresponsible and
yet, through his paper, one of the most influential.
He had a trick of phrase which, somehow, made
him appear oracular to the plain people, especially
in the rural districts — the very people on whom
Lincoln relied for a large part of his support.
Greeley knew his power, and his mind was not
large enough to carry the knowledge well. Fur
thermore, his was the sort of nature that relates
itself to life above all through the sensibilities.
Kipling speaks scornfully of people who if their
"own front door is shut will swear the world is
warm." They are relations in the full blood of
Horace Greeley.
In July, when the breach between the President
and the Vindictives was just beginning to be
evident, Greeley was pursuing an adventure of his
own. Among the least sensible minor incidents of
the war were a number of fantastic attempts of
private persons to negotiate peace. With one
exception they had no historic importance. The
exception is a negotiation carried on by Greeley,

244 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
which seems to have been the ultimate cause of
his alliance with the Vindictives.
In the middle of July, 1864, gold was selling in
New York at 285. There was distress and dis
content throughout the country. The horrible
slaughter of the Wilderness, still fresh in every
body's mind, had put the whole Union Party into
mourning. The impressionable Greeley became
frantic for peace — peace at any price. At the
psychological moment word was conveyed to him
that two persons in Canada held authority from
the Confederacy to enter into negotiations for
peace. Greeley wrote to Lincoln demanding ne
gotiations because "our bleeding, bankrupt, al
most dying country longs for peace, shudders at
the prospect of fresh conscriptions, of further
wholesale devastations, and of new rivers of
human blood."
Lincoln consented to a negotiation but stipulated
that Greeley himself should become responsible
for its conduct. Though this was not what Greeley
wanted — for his type always prefers to tell others
what to do — he sullenly accepted. He proceeded
to Niagara to meet the reputed commissioners of
the Confederacy. The details of the futile con
ference do not concern us. The Confederate

THE PLEBISCITE OF 1864 245
agents were not empowered to treat for peace
— at least not on any terms that would be con
sidered at Washington. Their real purpose was
far subtler. Appreciating the delicate balance in
Northern politics, they aimed at making it appear
that Lincoln was begging for terms. Lincoln, who
foresaw this possible turn of events, had expressly
limited Greeley to negotiations for "the integrity
of the whole Union and the abandonment of slav
ery." Greeley chose to believe that these instruc
tions, and not the subtlety of the Confederate
agents and his own impulsiveness, were the cause
of the false position in which the agents now
placed him. They published an account of the
episode, thus effecting an exposure which led to
sharp attacks upon Greeley by the Northern press.
In the bitterness of his mortification Greeley then
went from one extreme to the other and joined the
Vindictives. Less than three weeks after the conference at
Niagara, the Wade-Davis Manifesto appeared. It
was communicated to the country through the
columns of Greeley's paper on the 5th of August.
Greeley, who so short a time before was for peace
at any price, went the whole length of reaction by
proclaiming that "Mr. Lincoln is already beaten.

246 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
. . . We must have another ticket to save us
from utter overthrow. If we had such a ticket
as could be made by naming Grant, Butler, or
Sherman for President and Farragut for Vice, we
could make a fight yet."
At about this same time the chairman of the
Republican national committee, who was a Lin
coln man, wrote to the President that the situa
tion was desperate. Lincoln himself is known
to have made a private memorandum containing
the words, "It seems extremely probable that
this Administration will not be reelected." On
the 1st of September, 1864, with three presi
dential candidates in the field, Northern politics
were bewildering, and the country was shrouded
in the deepest gloom. The Wilderness campaign,
after slaughter unparalleled, had not in the pop
ular mind achieved results. Sherman, in Geor
gia, though his losses were not as terrible as
Grant's, had not yet done anything to lighten
the gloom. Not even Farragut's victory in Mo
bile Bay, in August, far-reaching as it proved to
be, reassured the North. A bitter cry for peace
went up even from lovers of the Union whose
hearts had failed.
Meanwhile, the brilliant strategist in Georgia

THE PLEBISCITE OF 1864 247
was pressing his drive for political as well as
for military effect. To rouse those Unionists who
had lost heart was part of his purpose when he
hurled his columns against Atlanta, from which
Hood was driven in one of the most disastrous of
Confederate defeats. On the 3rd of September
Lincoln issued a proclamation appointing a day
of thanksgiving for these great victories of Sher
man and Farragut.
On that day, it would seem, the tide turned in
Northern politics. Some historians are content
with Atlanta as the explanation of all that fol
lowed; but there are three separate events of im
portance that now occurred as incidents in the
complicated situation. In the first place, three
weeks later the radical opposition had collapsed;
the plan for a new convention was abandoned;
the Vindictive leaders came out in support of
Lincoln. Almost simultaneously occurred the re
maining two surprising events. Fremont with
drew from his candidacy in order to do his "part
toward preventing the election of the Democratic
candidate." And Lincoln asked for the resigna
tion of a member of his Cabinet, Postmaster-
General Montgomery Blair, who was the especial
enemy of the Vindictives.

248 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
The official biographers of Lincoln1 keep these
three events separate. They hold that Blair's re
moval was wholly Lincoln's idea, and that from
chivalrous reasons he would not abandon his
friend as long as he seemed to be losing the game.
The historian Rhodes writes confidently of a
bargain with Fremont, holding that Blair was
removed to terminate a quarrel with Fremont
which dated back even to his own removal in
1861. A possible third theory turns upon Chase,
whose hostility to Blair was quite equal to that
of the ill-balanced Fremont. It had been stimu
lated the previous winter by a fierce arraignment
of Chase made by Blair's brother in Congress, in
which Chase was bluntly accused of fraud and of
making money, or allowing his friends to make
money, through illicit trade in cotton. And Chase
was a man of might among the Vindictives. The
intrigue, however, never comes to the foreground
in history, but lurks in the background thick with
shadows. Once or twice among those shadows
we seem to catch a glimpse of the figure of
Thurlow Weed, the master-politician of the time.
Taking one thing with another, we may risk the
guess that somehow the two radical groups which
' His private secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay.

THURLOW WEED
Photograph by Brady. In the collection of L. C. Handy, Wash
ington.

HORACE GREELEY
Photograph by Sarony.

THE PLEBISCITE OF 1864
were both relentless against Blair were led to
pool their issues, and that Blair's removal was the
price Lincoln paid not to one faction of radicals
but to the whole unmerciful crowd.
Whatever complex of purposes lay back of the
triple coincidence, the latter part of September
saw a general reunion of the factions within the
Union Party, followed by a swift recovery of
strength. When the election came, Lincoln re
ceived an electoral vote of 212 against 21, and a
popular vote of 2,330,552 against 1,835,985.
The inevitable question arises as to what was
the real cause of this success. It is safe to say
that the political campaign contained some adroit
strategy; that Sherman was without doubt an
enormous factor; that the Democrats made nu
merous blunders; and that the secret societies
had an effect other than they intended. However,
the real clue seems to be found in one sentence
from a letter written by Lowell to Motley when
the outlook for his party was darkest: "The
mercantile classes are longing for peace, but I
believe that the people are more firm than ever."
Of the great, silent mass of the people, the true
temper seems to be struck off in a popular poem
of the time, written in response to one of the calls

250 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
for more troops, a poem with refrains built on the
model of this couplet:
We're coming from the hillside, we're coming from
the shore,
We're coming, Father Abraham, six hundred thousand
more.

CHAPTER XTV
Lincoln's final intentions
The victory of the Union Party in November
enabled Lincoln to enjoy for a brief period of his
career as President what may be thought of as a
lull in the storm. He knew now that he had at
last built up a firm and powerful support. With
this assured, his policy, both domestic and for
eign — the key to which was still the blockade —
might be considered victorious at all points. There
remains to be noticed, however, one event of the
year 1864 which was of vital importance in main
taining the blockade.
It is a principle of international law that a
belligerent must itself attend to the great task
of suppressing contraband trade with its enemy.
Lincoln was careful to observe this principle.
Though British merchants were frankly specu
lating in contraband trade, he made no demand
upon the British Government to relieve him of the
251

252 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
difficulty of stopping it. England also took the
legitimate position under international law and
warned her merchants that, while it was none of
the Government's business to prevent such trade,
they practised it at their own risk, subject to well-
understood penalties agreed upon among nations.
The merchants nevertheless continued to take
the risk, while both they and the authorities
of the Confederacy thought they saw a way of
minimizing the danger. Instead of shipping sup
plies direct to the Confederate ports they shipped
them to Matamoros, in Mexico, or to the West
Indies. As these ports were in neutral territory,
the merchants thought their goods would be safe
against capture until they left the Mexican or
West Indian port on their brief concluding passage
to the territory of the Confederacy. Nassau, then
a petty West India town, was the chief depot of
such trade and soon became a great commercial
center. To it came vast quantities of European
goods which were then transferred to swift, small
vessels, or "blockade-runners," which took a
gambler's chance and often succeeded in eluding
the Federal patrol ships and in rushing their
cargoes safe into a Confederate port.
Obviously, it was a great disadvantage to the

LINCOLN'S FINAL INTENTIONS 258
United States to allow contraband supplies to be
accumulated, without interference, close to the
blockaded coast, and the Lincoln Government
determined to remove this disadvantage. With
this end in view it evoked the principle of the
continuous voyage, which indeed was not new,
but which was destined to become fixed in inter
national law by the Supreme Court of the United
States. American cruisers were instructed to stop
British ships sailing between the British ports of
Liverpool and Nassau; they were to use the re
cognized international rights of visit and search;
and if there was evidence that the cargo was not
destined for actual consumption at Nassau, they
were to bring the ship into an American port to
be dealt with by an American prize court. When
such arrests began, the owners clamored to the
British Government, and both dealers in contra
band and professional blockade-runners worked
themselves into a fury because American cruisers
watched British ports and searched British ships
on the high seas. With regard to this matter,
the British Government and the Government at
Washington had their last important correspond
ence during the war. The United States stood
firm for the idea that when goods were ultimately

254 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
intended for the Confederacy, no matter how
roundabout the journey, they could be consid
ered as making a single continuous voyage and
were liable to capture from the day they left
Liverpool. Early in 1865, the Supreme Court
of the United States fully developed the prin
ciple of continuous voyage in four celebrated
cases that are now among the landmarks of in
ternational law.1
This was the last step in making the block
ade effective. Thereafter, it slowly strangled the
South. The Federal armies enormously over
matched the Southern, and from November, 1864,
their continuance in the field was made sure.
Grim work still lay before Lincoln, but the day
of anxiety was past. In this moment of compara
tive ease, the aged Chief Justice Taney died, and
Lincoln appointed to that high position his un
generous rival, Chase.
Even now Lincoln had not established himself as
a leader superior to party, but he had the satis
faction, early in 1865, of seeing the ranks of the
opposition begin to break. Naturally, the Thir
teenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing
1 The Great War has once again led to controversy over this
subject, so vital to neutral states.

LINCOLN'S FINAL INTENTIONS 255
slavery throughout the United States, appeared
to Lincoln as in a way the consummation of his
labors. When the House voted on the resolu
tion to send this amendment to the States, several
Democrats joined the government forces. Two
nights afterward, speaking to a serenading party
at the White House, Lincoln made a brief speech,
part of which is thus reported by his secretaries:
"He thought this measure was a very fitting if
not an indispensable adjunct to the winding up of
the great difficulty. He wished the reunion of all
the States perfected, and so effected as to remove
all causes of disturbance in the future; and to
attain this end, it was necessary that the original
disturbing cause should, if possible, be rooted out."
An event which in its full detail belongs to Con
federate rather than to Union history took place
soon after this. At Hampton Roads, Lincoln and
Seward met Confederate commissioners who had
asked for a parley with regard to peace. Nothing
came of the meeting, but the conference gave rise
to a legend, false in fact and yet true in spirit, ac
cording to which Lincoln wrote on a sheet of
paper the word "Union, " pushed it across to Alex
ander H. Stephens and said, "Write under that
anything you please."

256 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
This fiction expresses Lincoln's attitude toward
the sinking Confederacy. On his return from
Hampton Roads he submitted to his Cabinet a
draft of a message which he proposed to send to
Congress. He recommended the appropriation of
$400,000,000 to be distributed among the slave
states on condition that war cease before April 1,
1865. Not a member of the Cabinet approved. His
secretary, Mr. Nicolay, writes: "The President, in
evident surprise and sorrow at the want of states
manlike liberality shown by his executive council,
folded and laid away the draft of his message. . . .
With a deep sigh he added, 'But you are all op
posed to me, and I will not send the message.' "
His second inauguration passed without striking
incidents. Chase, as Chief Justice, administered
the oath. The second inaugural address contained
words which are now famous: "With malice to
wards none; with charity for all; with firmness in
the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us
strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up
the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall
have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his
orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish
a just and a lasting peace among ourselves, and
with all nations."

LINCOLN'S FINAL INTENTIONS 257
That gigantic system of fleets and armies, the
creation of which was due to Lincoln, was closing
tight around the dying Confederacy. Five weeks
after the inauguration Lee surrendered, and the
war was virtually at an end. What was to come
after was inevitably the overshadowing topic of
the hour. Many anecdotes represent Lincoln, in
these last few days of his life, as possessed by a
high though melancholy mood of extreme mercy.
Therefore, much has been inferred from the follow
ing words, in his last public address, made on the
night of the 11th of April: "In the present situa
tion, as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to
make some new announcement to the people of
the South. I am considering and shall not fail
to act when action shall be proper."
What was to be done for the South, what treat
ment should be accorded the Southern leaders,
engrossed the President and his Cabinet at the
meeting on the 14th of April, which was destined
to be their last. Secretary Welles has preserved
the spirit of the meeting in a striking anecdote.
Lincoln said that no one need expect he would
"take any part in hanging or killing those men,
even the worst of them. Frighten them out of the
country, open the gates, let down the bars, scare

258 LINCOLN AND THE UNION
them off," said he, throwing up his hands as if
scaring sheep. " Enough lives have been sacrificed ;
we must extinguish our resentments if we expect
harmony and union."
While Lincoln was thus arming himself with
a valiant mercy, a band of conspirators at an
obscure boarding-house in Washington were plan
ning his assassination. Their leader was John
Wilkes Booth, an actor, brother of the much abler
Edwin Booth. There seems little doubt that he
was insane. Around him gathered a small group
of visionary extremists in whom much brooding
upon Southern wrongs had produced an unbal
anced condition. Only a morbid interest can at
tach today to the strange cunning with which
Booth laid his plans, thinking of himself all the
while as a reincarnation of the Roman Brutus.
On the night of the 14th of April, the President
attended a performance of Our American Cousin.
While the play was in progress, Booth stole into
the President's box, came close behind him, and
shot him through the head. Lincoln never spoke
again and, shortly after seven next morning, ceased
breathing. At the same time, a futile attempt was made
upon the life of Seward. Booth .temporarily

LINCOLN'S FINAL INTENTIONS 259
escaped. Later he was overtaken and shot. His
accomplices were hanged.
. The passage of sixty years has proved fully
necessary to the placing of Lincoln in historic per
spective. No President, in his own time, with the
possible exception of Washington, was so bitterly
hated and so fiercely reviled. On the other hand,
none has been the object of such intemperate
hero-worship. However, the greatest of the land
were, in the main, quick tb see him in perspective
and to recognize his historic significance. It is
recorded of Davis that in after days he paid a
beautiful tribute to Lincoln and said, "Next to
the destruction of the Confederacy, the death of
Abraham Lincoln was the darkest day the South
has known."

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
There are two general histories, of conspicuous
ability, that deal with this period :
J. F. Rhodes, History of the United States from the
Compromise of 1850, 7 vols. (1893-1906), and J. B.
McMaster, History of the People of the United States,
7 vols. (1883-1912) . McMaster has the more " modern "
point of view and is excellent but dry, without any
sense of narrative. Rhodes has a somewhat older point
of view. For example, he makes only a casual reference,
in a quotation, to the munitions problem of 1861,
though analyzing with great force and candor such
constitutional issues as the arrests under the suspen
sion of the writ of habeas corpus. The other strong
points in his work are its sense of narrative, its freedom
from hero-worship, its independence of conventional
views of Northern leaders. As to the South, it suffers
from a certain narrowness of vision due to the com
parative scantiness of the material used. The same
may be said of McMaster.
For Lincoln, there is no adequate brief biography.
Perhaps the best is the most recent, Abraham Lincoln,
by Lord Charnwood (Makers of the Nineteenth Century,
1917). It has a kind of cool detachment that hardly
any biographer had shown previously, and yet this
coolness is joined with extreme admiration. Short
biographies worth considering are John T. Morse> Jr->
261

262 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Abraham Lincoln (American Statesmen Series, 2 vols.,
1893), and Ida M. Tarbell, Life of Abraham Lincoln, 2
vols. (1900). The official biography is in ten volumes,
Abraham Lincoln, a History, by his secretaries, John
G. Nicolay and John Hay (1890). It is a priceless
document and as such is little likely to be forgotten.
But its events are so numerous that they swamp the
figure of Lincoln and yet are not numerous enough to
constitute a definitive history of the times. It is
wholly eulogistic. The same authors edited The
Writings of Abraham Lincoln (Biographical Edition,
2 vols., 1894), which has since been expanded (1905)
and now fills twelve volumes. It is the definitive
presentation of Lincoln's mind. A book much sought
after by his enemies is William Henry Herndon and
Jesse Wilham Weik, The History and Personal Recollec
tions of Abraham Lincoln, 3 vols. (1889; unexpurgated
edition). It contains about all we know of his early
life and paints a picture of sordid ugliness. Its re
liability has been disputed. No study of Lincoln is
complete unless one has marched through the Diary
of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, 3 vols. (1911),
which is our most important document showing Lincoln
in his Cabinet. Important sidelights on his character
and development are shown in Ward Hill Lamon,
Recollections of Lincoln (1911); David Homer Bates,
Lincoln in the Telegraph Office (1907); and Frederick
Trevor Hill, Lincoln as a Lawyer (1906). A biblio
graphy of Lincoln is in the twelfth volume of the latest
edition of the Writings.
The lesser statesmen of the time, both Northern
and Southern, still, as a rule, await proper treatment by
detached biographers. Two Northerners have had

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 263
such treatment, in Allen Johnson's Stephen A. Doug
las (1908), and Frederic Bancroft's Life of William H.
Seward, 2 vols. (1900). Good, but without the requisite
detachment, is Moorfield Storey's Charles Sumner,
(American Statesmen Series, 1900). With similar ex
cellences but with the same defect, though still the
best in its field, is Albert Bushnell Hart's Salmon P.
Chase (American Statesmen Series, 1899). Among the
Southern statesmen involved in the events of this
volume, only the President of the Confederacy has
received adequate reconsideration in recent years, in
William E. Dodd's Jefferson Davis (1907). The latest
life of Robert Toombs, by Ulrich B. Phillips (1914), is not
definitive, but the best extant. The great need for
adequate lives of Stephens and Yancey is not at all met
by the obsolete works — R. M. Johnston and W. M.
Browne, Life of Alexander H. Stephens (1878), and J. W.
Du Bose, The Life and Times of William Lowndes
Yancey (1892). There is a brief biography of Stephens
by Louis Pendleton, in the American Crisis Biographies.
Most of the remaining biographies of the period,
whether Northern or Southern, are either too superficial
or too partisan to be recommended for general use.
Almost alone in their way are the delightful Confederate
Portraits, by Gamaliel Bradford (1914), and the same
author's Union Portraits (1916).
Upon conditions in the North during the war there is
a vast amount of material; but little is accessible to the
general reader. A book of great value is Emerson Fite's
Social and Industrial Conditions in the North during
the Civil War (1910). Out of unnumbered books of
reminiscence, one stands forth for the sincerity of its
disinterested, if sharp, observation — W. H. Russell's

264 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
My Diary North and South (1863) . Two newspapers are
invaluable: The New York Tribune for a version of
events as seen by the war party, The New York Herald
for the opposite point of view; the Chicago papers are
also important, chiefly the Times and Tribune: the
Republican of Springfield, Mass., had begun its dis
tinguished career, while the Journal and Advertiser
of Boston revealed Eastern New England. For the
Southern point of view, no papers are more important
than the Richmond Examiner, the Charleston Mercury,
and the New Orleans Picayune. Financial and eco
nomic problems are well summed up in D. R. Dewey's
Financial History of the United States (3d edition, 1907),
and in E. P. Oberholzer's Jay Cooke, 2 vols. (1907).
Foreign affairs are summarized adequately in C. F.
Adams's Charles Francis Adams (American Statesmen
Series, 1900), John Bigelow's France and the Confederate
Navy (1888), A. P. Martin's Maximilian in Mexico
(1914), and John Bassett Moore's Digest of Interna
tional Law, 8 vols. (1906).
The documents of the period ranging from news
papers to presidential messages are not likely to be
considered by the general reader, but if given a fair
chance will prove fascinating. Besides the biographical
edition of Lincoln's Writings, should be named, first of
all, The Congressional Globe for debates in Congress;
the Statutes at Large; the Executive Documents, published
by the Government and containing a great number of
reports; and the enormous collection issued by the
War Department under the title Official Records of the
Union and Confederate Armies, 128 vols. (1880-1901),
especially the groups of volumes known as second and
third series.

INDEX

Abolitionists, warned to leave
South, 66; desire peace, 90;
displeased with Lincoln, 187
Adams, C F., Ambassador to
London, 129, 169, 170, 228
Alabama, The, ship, 179
Alabama delegation withdraws
from Democratic Convention,
72
Alexander, Emperor of Russia,
hatred of slavery, 180
American Knights, Order of,
235-37
American party, 25
Anderson, Robert, Major, 83, 87,
88, 89
Annapolis, Northern troops
reach, 124
Anti-Nebraska party, 23, 27,
28,29
Antietam, Battle of, 153
Appeal of the Independent Demo-
crats, 22-23
Atchinson, D. R., of Missouri, 18
(note)
Baltimore, Sixth Massachusetts
Regiment attacked in, 121
Banks, N. P., 29
Baring Brothers, banking house,
169
Bates, Edward, Attorney-Gen
eral, 104
Beauregard, G. T., General,
scheme for Northwestern Con
federacy, 237
Bell, John, of Tennessee, 73,
74-75. 80

Belmont, August, 78, 92,
240
Benjamin, J. P., of Louisiana,
68,69
Black, J. S., Attorney-General,
advanced to post of Secretary
of State, 86, 88-89
Blair, Montgomery, Postmaster-
General, 104, 108, 134, 247
Blockade of Southern ports, 173
et seq., 251-54
Booth, J. W., 258-59
Border states, affairs in, 145-46;
Lincoln's plan of freeing slaves
in, 185-86
Boston, attempt to rescue fugi
tive slave at, 27; applauds
John Brown, 64
Breckinridge, J. C, 79, 80
Bright, John, 177, 228
Brooks, Preston, attacks Sumner,
32
Brown, John, raid at Harper's
Ferry, 63-65
Brown, John, murders at Pott
awatomie, 36
Buchanan, James, nominated by
Democratic Convention, 33;
elected President, 37; changes
attitude toward Southern ex
tremists, 47-48; crisis in career
of, 84; message to Congress,
Dec. 4, 1860, 85; agitation
over South Carolina Commis
sion, 87-88
Bull Run, defeat at, 146
Burns, Anthony, fugitive slave,
27

265

266

INDEX

Butler, B. F., General, refuses
to surrender fugitive slaves,
184-85; mentioned by Greeley
as presidential candidate, 246

Cabinet, Lincoln's, 104-05, 116-
117,132-33
Calhoun, J. C, 3
Cameron, Simon, Secretary of
War, 104; political rival of
Seward, 105; national figure,
132; grafter, 135; as a politi
cian, 142; popular rage against,
147-48; nominated minister
to Russia, 149; appointment
confirmed, 150
Capital, Northern, economic vas
sal of South, 7; joins interest
to Republican party, 43;
interest in South, 77-78; stand
in party reorganization, 77-79;
urges against war and confisca
tion of debts, 91
Cass, Lewis, Secretary of State,
44; resigns, 86
Charleston, relief expedition to,
109-10, 112
Charleston Mercury, 70
Charnwood, Lord, quoted, 183
Chase, S. P., sent to Senate by
Free-Soilers and Democrats,
23; Secretary of Treasury, 104;
political rival of Seward, 105;
national figure, 132; enemy of
Seward, 133; estimates of,
192-93; asks for bond issue,
193; issues Treasury notes,
194-95; issues paper money,
195-96; leads faction in Cabi
net, 197-98; resigns, 198;
resignation not accepted, 198;
returns with reluctance, 199;
calls Cooke to aid, 200; advises
establishment of national
banks, 200; conceit of, 201;
considered for presidency, 201-
202; resignatior accepted, 203;
possible connection with Blair's

removal, 248; appointed Chief
Justice, 254
Cheves, Langdon, quoted, 4
Choate, Rufus, quoted, 36-37
Cincinnati in war-time, 204-05
Clay, Henry, 24
Cleveland Convention, 233-34
Cobb, Howell, a Southern leader
of Democratic party, 40;
attitude toward Kansas ques
tion, 42; quoted, 42; opinion
on Kansas question, 46; ap
proves curtailing of slave-trade,
62-63; bitter against Douglas,
63; resigns from Cabinet, 85
Cobden, Richard, 177, 190
Compromise of 1850, failure to
solve problem, 15
Confederate States of America,
Davis made provisional Presi
dent, 96; delegates refused
recognition at Washington,
102
Confiscation Act, Fremont asked
to conform order to, 184;
Butler sustained by Congress's
passing, 185; second, 187
Congress of U. S., legislative
battle over Lecompton Con
stitution, 49; in 1859^60, 67;
debates as to responsibility for
delays, 149
Conscription Act, 154-56, 158-
159, 160
Constitutional Union party, 73,
74.
Continuous voyage, principle of,
253-54
Cooke, Jay, 200
Copperheads, 156-57
Crittenden, J. B., of Kentucky,
92
Crittenden Compromise, 92, 93-
94
Davis, H. W., of Maryland, 135,
230, 231, 242
Davis, Jefferson, Southern politi
cal leader, 40; opinion as to

INDEX

267

Davis, Jefferson — Continued
creation of Kansas constitu
tion, 48; gains prominence in
Congress, 68; attitude on
political issues, 68-69; ac
counts for sectional hostility,
81; willing to accept Critten
den Compromise, 93; resigns
from Senate, 95-96; provisional
President of Confederacy, 96;
tribute to Lincoln, 259
Dayton, W. L., 169
Debt, Southern, to Northerners,
6,91
Democratic party, in 1854, 19
et seq.; endorses Walker, 32;
convention at Cincinnati, 33;
support of, 33-34; conserva
tism of, 34 et seq.; attitude
toward Kansas, 34-35; be
comes refuge of original Whigs,
37; discord in, 58; machine
holding together in 1859, 63;
convention of 1860, 70-72;
break-up of, 72-73; Unionists
of North belong to, 74; divi
sion of, 83-84, 85; War Demo
crats, 89; desire for peace,
90-91; anti-Southern in North,
118; convention at Chicago,
239-40
Donelson, Fort, 152
Douglas, S. A., motives in cham
pioning Kansas-Nebraska Bill,
16-17; Democratic leader, 19;
typical Democrat, 22; de
nounced by Appeal of the
Independent Democrats, 23;
burned in effigy, 27; a master
politician, 33; upholds popular
sovereignty, 49; problems of
reelection (1858), 50; attempts
reconciling Dred Scott deci
sion with popular sovereignty,
52; Lincoln debates, 54-57;
reelected to Senate, 57; incurs
anger of Southern Democrats,
63; as a Unionist, 74; presi
dential vote for, 80; joins

Union party, 89; at Lincoln's
inauguration, 100; confers with
Lincoln, 120; announces sup
port of President, 120; speeches
in West, 121
Draft, see Conscription Act
Dred Scott case, 50-51
Dupont, S. F., Rear-Admiral,
174
Emancipation Proclamation, 183,
188
England, relations with U. S.,
176-82; sympathy with South,
177; rejects France's proposal
of mediation, 180; attitude
toward America, 180-83; cot
ton famine in, 189-91
Everett, Edward, of Massa
chusetts, 73, 92
Farragut, D. G., Admiral, 246
Fessenden, W. P., Secretary of
Treasury, 203
Finance, National, Treasury un
prepared for war, 193; income
tax, 194; financial crisis, 194
et seq.; issuance of paper money,
195-97; financial legislation,
197; deficit of Government,
199; bond sales, 199-200; Act
of 1863, 200; direct and in
direct payment by the people,
214; no "economic conscrip
tion, " 215; financial policy, 217
Fleming, W. L., The Sequel of
Appamattox, cited, 241 (note)
Forster, W. E., 177
France, considers mediation, 180;
attempt in Mexico, 224 et seq.
Fredericksburg, Battle of, 153
Free-Soil party, 22, 24
"Freeport Doctrine," 58
Fremont, J. C, nominated for
President, 31; Lincoln's treat
ment of, 145-47; chief in
command in Missouri, 146;
removal, 147; issues order
creating "bureau of aboli-

268

INDEX

Fremont, J. C. — Continued
tion," 184; nominated for
President by Cleveland Con
vention, 234; withdraws from
candidacy, 247; connection
with Blair's removal, 248
Fulton, The, steamship, 172
Garrison, W. L., 90
Giddings, J. R., of Ohio, 23
Gladstone, W. E., speaks of
South as nation, 178, 182;
opposes Roebuck's motion, 228
Grant, U. S., General, 152, 246
Greeley, Horace, desires peace,
90; an emotional rhetorician,
135; denounces Lincoln's treat
ment of Fremont and Hunter,
187; requests mediation of
French ambassador, 225; in
ranks of Vindictives, 243-45;
suggests another Presidential
ticket, 245-46
Hampton Roads, meeting at, 255
Harper's Ferry, John Brown's
raid, 63-65; arsenal burned,
122
Helper, H. R., The Impending
Crisis of the South, 66, 67
Higginson, T. W., 27
Hodder, F. H., Genesis of the
Kansas-Nebraska Act, 18
(note)
Holt, Joseph, Postmaster- Gener
al, 88
Homestead Act, 210
Hood, J. B., General, 247
Hunter, David, General, 186
Johnson, Allen, Stephen A. Doug
las, 18 (note), 57
Johnson, Andrew, 240
Kansas, rush to, 26; government
of, 34; influence of Dred Scott
decision on, 51; admitted as
state, 96
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, cham

pioned by Douglas, 17-18;
origin, 18 (note); an effect of,
23; opposed by Free-Soilers, 24
Kearsarge, The, U. S. S., 179
Kentucky remains in Union, 145
Knights of the Golden Circle,
234-35
Know-Nothing party, 19, 24,
25-26, 29, 30
Land, Struggle to gain posses
sion of public, 7-8
Lecompton Convention, Northern
settlers refuse to participate
in, 46; Buchanan endorses
constitution of, 48
Lee, R. E., in command of Vir
ginia troops, 123; appears in
vincible, 227; surrenders, 257
L'huys, Drouyn de, French
Foreign Secretary, 181, 231
Liberator, The, 90
Lincoln, Abraham, in 1854, 28;
toasted at convention in Illi
nois, 30; quoted, 52-53;
personal characteristics, 53-
54; Douglas debates, 54-57;
censures John Brown's raid,
64-65; nominated for Presi
dent, 76-77; wins election of
1860, 80; supported by Union
party, 89; refuses to accept
Crittenden Compromise, 93-
94; journeys to Washington,
96-97, 98-99; state of mind
between election and inaugu
ration, 97-99; inauguration,
99-101; period of probation,
102-03; attitude toward Se
ward's actions, 114-15; gains
control of his Cabinet, 117;
calls for volunteers, 120, 121;
anxiety in awaiting relief, 123;
history of North merged in,
126; estimates of, 127-28;
appearance, 128-29; Adams's
estimate of, 129; as a public
man, 129 et seq.; as an oppor
tunist, 133-34; genius, 136;

INDEX

269

Lincoln, Abraham — Continued
statecraft, 136-37; statesman
of democracy, 137-41; Letter
to the Workingmen of Ijmdon,
139-40; Gettysburg Address
(text), 140-41; reaction of
North against, 143, 144-45,
147; calls for further volun
teers, 152-53; makes use of
war powers, 160-67; blockades
Southern ports, 173; slavery
policy, 183 et seq.; reply to
workingmen of Manchester
(text), 191; letter to Chase,
202; renominated, 202; op
posed by Cleveland Conven
tion, 233; opposed by secret
orders, 237; accused by Demo
cratic Convention, 240; re
nominated, 240-41; dispute
with Congress over recon
struction in Louisiana, 241;
disagreement over negro suf
frage, 242; appoints day of
thanksgiving for victories, 247;
reelected, 249; opinion upon
sending Amendment to States,
255; legend of Hampton Roads
meeting, 255; Cabinet dis
approves draft of message,
256; second inauguration, 256;
last public address, 257; as
sassination, 258; placed in
historic perspective, 259; bib
liography, 261-62
Lyon, Nathaniel, General, 146
McClellan, G. B., General, a
military egoist, 135; appointed
to command of Ohio militia,
145; delay of, 148; friend of
Stanton, 150, 151; failures of
1862, 152; nominated for
President, 240
Macy, Jesse, The Anti-Slavery
Crusade, cited, 23 (note); 46
(note)
Man without a Country. Hale,
164 (note)

Manassas, Second, defeat at, 153
Maryland, Government main
tains hold in, 145
Mason, J. M., capture of, 175-76
Massachusetts Emigrant Aid
Society, 26
Maximilian, Archduke, of Aus
tria, 229
Mexico, French army marches
upon Mexico City, 224, 226-
227; crown offered to Maxi
milian, 229; condemnation of
expedition, 230; Maximilian
enters Mexico City, 231;
Washington refuses to recog
nize government, 232
Monitor and Virginia (Merri
mac), Battle of, 152
Morgan, John, General, 237
Morrill Tariff Bill, 79, 96
Morton, O. P., Governor of
Indiana, 235
Moultrie, Fort, 87
Munitions procured from abroad,
143, 168-73, 175
Murfreesboro, Battle of, 153
Napoleon III, gives audience to
Confederate envoy, 180; dis
trusted by English, 182; inter
vention in Mexico, 224 et seq.;
offers mediation between
North and South, 226; fails to
obtain aid from abroad, 229;
changes attitude in 1864, 232
New York City, draft riots in,
158-60
New York Times, quoted, 175
New York Tribune, 90, 94, 159,
187
Nicaragua, filibustering attempt
in, 32; expedition thwarted,
62
Norfolk Navy Yard destroyed,
122
North, attitude toward South,
1-2; labor, 2; capital opposed
to sectionalism, 5-6; demo
cracy in, 6-7; struggle for

270

INDEX

North — Continued
possession of land, 7-8; com
plex social structure, 13-14;
rushes to volunteer, 123-24;
military unpreparedness in,
142-44; population, 168; life
during war, 204 et seq.; busi
ness, 206-09; labor situation,
208; charities, 209; Western
settlement, 210; shifting of
population, 210-11; factors in
efficiency, 211; immigration,
211; work of women, 211-12;
labor-saving machines, 212-
213; agriculture, 213; subscrip
tions for relief, 214; sacrifice
of luxuries, 214-16; war pro
fiteering, 217-19, 221-23; buys
supplies from Europe, 219-20;
prices, 223; gloom of Septem
ber, 1864. 246
Palmerston, Lord, British Prime
Minister, 178, 180, 181, 182
Pennington, of New Jersey, 67-68
Pensacola, Florida, relief expedi
tion to, 109-11
Phillips, Wendell, 90, 127, 187
Pickens, Fort, 108
Politics, in the South, 3, 38-39,
40 et seq.; during the war,
156-58; see also names of
political parties
Pope, John, General, 135
"Popular Sovereignty," 35, 48-
50,51
Port Royal, seized by Dupont,
174; base at, 186
Powhatan, warship, 109, 110, 112
President, War powers of, 160
Pugh, G. E., of Ohio, 70, 71
Ray, P. O., repeal of the Missouri
Compromise, 18 (note)
Republican party, formed of
Anti-Nebraska men, 27, 28;
merged with Whigs in New
York, 29; part of Know-Noth
ings join, 30; first national con

vention, 30; campaign of 1856,
31-32; Kansas question, 35-
36; joins iron interest of North,
43; still sectional in 1860, 74;
merges with Union party of
1864, 74; undivided, 75; plat
form (1860), 77; wins capital
interests, 78; campaign of
1860, 79-80; against war,
91; for sectional compromise,
91; alignment against Critten
den Compromise, 94; gains con
trol of House, 96; convention
at Baltimore, 240
Rhett, R. B., 3-4, 40. 82
Rhodes, J. F., quoted, 164
Richmond, McClellan checked
before, 152
Roebuck, Edward, 227-28
Russell, Lord John, British For
eign Secretary, 178, 181
Russell, W. H, quoted, 204-05
Russia, rejects France's proposal
of mediation, 180; liberates
serfs, 180
San Jacinto, warship, 175
Sanford, H. S., 169
Schuyler, G. L., Colonel. 169, 171
Secession movement, begins in
South Carolina, 82; five South
ern states follow, 95
"Seven Days' Battles." 152
Seward, W. H., joins Republican
party, 29; eminent member of
new party, 30; quoted, 52;
Republican man of the hour,
75; criticism of, 76; defeated
in nomination, 76; debates
accepting appointment as
Secretary of State, 93; accepts
Secretaryship and opposes
Crittenden Compromise, 94 ;
refuses recognition to envoys
of Confederacy, 102; enters
into private negotiation with
them, 102; character of, 103;
attempts control of adminis
tration, 104; disapproves Lin-

INDEX

271

Seward, W. H. — Continued
coin's Cabinet, 105; assumes
role of prime minister, 105-06;
policy of non-resistance, 106-
107; part in Powhatan affair,
108-12; Thoughts for the Presi
dent's Consideration, 113; ad
vocates foreign war, 113-14;
quoted, 115; meets master in
Lincoln, 117; a national figure,
132; enemy of Chase, 133;
futile attempt upon life of,
258
Seymour, Horatio, Governor of
New York, 158, 160, 239-
240
Sharpsburg, Battle of, 153
Sherman, John, of Ohio, 67
Sherman, W. T., General sug
gested as presidential candi
date, 246; campaign in Georgia,
246-47; factor in political
campaign, 249
Slave-trade, British interference,
with, 44; prohibited in con
stitution of Confederacy, 45;
Southern contention over, 61-
62; stand of South on, 66
Slavery, factor in evolution of
nation, 2; forced issue, 13;
in Kansas, 34; no binding
prohibition in Northwest, 51;
Russian serfs liberated, 180;
Lincoln's policy, 183 et seq.;
reconstructed States to abolish,
242; Thirteenth Amendment
to the Constitution, 254-55
Slidell, John, capture of, 175-76;
at Paris, 181
Smith, C. B., of Indiana, 105
Sons of Liberty, 235, 238, 239
South, attitude toward North,
1-2; labor in, 2; begins to
regard itself as social and
political unit, 2-3; conflicting
political policies, 3-4; indebt
edness to Northerners, 6;
struggle for public land, 7-8;
territorial aristocracy in, 10-

11; attitude toward blacks,
11-12; supports Democratic
party, 33; conflicting political
factions in, 40 et seq.; stand on
disunion and slave-trade, 66;
sentiment of locality in, 74-
75; population, 168; problem
of treatment for, 257
South Carolina, secedes, 82-83;
delegations interview Bucha
nan, 85-86, 87-88
Southern Confederacy, 66
Speed, James, 104
Stanton, E. M., Attorney-Gener
al, 86, 88; Lincoln's Secretary
of War, 89; succeeds Cameron,
105; quoted, 115; relations
with Lincoln, 150-51; personal
characteristics, 150; appointed
Secretary of War (1862), 150;
stops recruiting, 152; respon
sibility for check of Northern
enthusiasm, 154
Stanwood, A History of the
Presidency, 80|(note)
Star of the West, The, merchant
vessel, 95
Stephens, A. H., a Southern
Democratic leader, 40; defends
negative Democratic position,
42; opinion as to slave-trade,
45; hopeful of Democratic
party (1858), 58; leaves Wash
ington, 60; quoted, 66; at
Hampton Roads, 255
Stevens, Thad, 148
Sumner, Charles, of Massachu
setts, 23, 32, 91, 230
Sumter, Fort, subject of inter
view, 86; garrison removed to,
87; effort to divert President's
attention from, 108; surrender
demanded, 112; fired on, 118;
surrenders, 119
Taney, R. B., Chief Justice, 50,
161, 254
Territories, regulation of slavery
in, 69-IT1

272

INDEX

Thomas, of Maryland, Secretary
of Treasury, 95
Thompson, Jacob, Secretary of
Interior, 95
Ticknor, George, quoted, 123-24
Toombs, Robert, quoted, 12; a
master politician, 33; intro
duces bill securing freedom of
choice to Kansas, 34-35; eager
to keep Democratic party in
foreground, 38; a Southern
Democratic leader, 40; policy
of evasion, 41-42; hopeful of
Democratic party (1858), 58;
willing to accept Crittenden
Compromise, 93
Trent affair, 175-76
Turner, Nat, Rebellion, 64
S90, ship, 1781
Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe, 32
Union party, formed by War
Democrats and Republicans,
89; composite party, 240; re
united, 249; victory of 1864,
251
Vallandigham, C. L., case of,
162-67; plans dramatic mar
tyrdom, 238
Vicksburg, Southern Commer
cial Congress at, 61-62
Vindictives, faction of Union
party, 242, 247
Virginia secedes, 122
Wade, Benjamin, of Ohio, 1, 185,
242

Wade-Davis Manifesto, iii, 245
Walker, R. J., 45-47
Walker, William, 32
Washington, office-seekers in,
115; described by Welles,
115-16; isolation of, 123-24;
Northern troops reach, 125
Webster, Daniel, 24
Weed, Thurlow, 91, 93, 248
Welles, Gideon, Secretary of
Navy, 89, 104-05, 106, 109-10,
115-16
West Virginia becomes separate
state, 146
Whig party, rival of Democratic
party, 19; prestige of, 24;
political positivism of, 26;
renominates Lincoln for U. S.
Senate (1854), 28; dissolves,
29; members hesitate to join
existing parties, 31
White, S. E., The Forty Niners,
cited, 31 (note)
Whitman, Walt, 127-28
Wilderness campaign, 246
Wilkes, Charles, Captain, 175-
176
Wilson, Woodrow, in 1916, 133-
134
Wilson's Creek, battle at, 146
Yancey, W. L., leader of South
ern political faction, 38, 40;
for separate Southern com
munity, 41; commercial con
ventions an aid to, 43-45;
speech in Democratic Conven
tion (1860), 71

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1937

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