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; ¦ lit*-

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Gift of
STUART W.JACKSON
Yale 1898

MS. Stoddard, Williant 0,
AIS to Stuart W. Jackson.
Madison, N.J. , May 22, 1907.

has been removed from this volume
and sent to
Rare Book Room
Historical MSS.

REVISED EDITION

Abraham Lincoln

THE TRUE STORY OF A GREAT LIFE

SHOWING THE INNER GROWTH. SPECIAL TRAINING, AND PECULIAR
FITNESS OF THE MAN FOR HIS WORK.

By WILLIAM O. STODDARD,
One of President Lincoln's Private Secretaries During the War
OF THE Rebellion

azstti) KUustrattons

NEW YORK:
FORDS, HOWARD, & HULBERT
1896

Copyright, 1884, by
Fords, Howard, & Hulbbkt.

PREFACE.

An entire generation has passed away since the close of the
life-work of Abraham Lincoln.
His cabinet ; the generals and the admirals who commanded
under him ; the jurists and the legislators ; the governors of
States and the leaders of parties ; the journalists who sustained
or who criticised him ; the statesmen who upheld the Union
and the statesmen who sought to create the Confederacy, — all
have disappeared. The few notable men who here and there
remain but mark with greater distinctness the fact that a new
nation may now look back, without partisan feeling of any
kind, and study the processes of its renovation, and the men
and the times of its greatest trial.
The amount and variety of materials for such a study, which
have been collected and printed during the ten years which
have elapsed since the author of this book prepared it for the
press, are almost beyond computation. It is worthy of note,
in presenting a new edition, revised as to some important feat
ures, that no cause has been discovered for any modification of
the estimate thus formed, or of the picture thus drawn of the
great President, whose figure in history seems to grow taller
as the years go by.
Full and searching as bas been the biographical and histori
cal work performed by many writers, it is still true, as was
said in the preface to the author's first edition :

iv PREFACE.
" There can be no question but that the popular idea of Mr.
Lincoln's character is vague, fragmentary and incomplete.
His origin, growth, and development, his education and his
services, rightly presented and understood, offer one of the
noblest lessons to be found in the world's history. To present
such a biography is the single aim of this book. It is a record
of political and military events, only as these in some manner
became a part of or illustrated the character and services of
the great President. The writer knew Mr. Lincoln well,
and had many opportunities of preparation for such a work
as this. These were obtained during a residence of several
years, before the war, in Mr. Lincoln's own district in Hli-
nois, and as one of his assistant private secretaries at Washing
ton, from the beginning of his administration in 1861, to about
the end of September, 1864. Every effort possible has been
made to put away partisan feeling and the blindness of per
sonal affection, and to produce and present a faithful portrait
of the man as he was."
As the record now stands, this work was one of the earlier
of the several Lincoln biographies, and subsequent writers
have liberally drawn from it or have duplicated its uses of
original authorities. It may therefore be as well to admit that
the entire mass of accumulated materials has become the com
mon property of literary workers, who are henceforth respon
sible only for the uses they make of it.
There are two ideas which stand facing each other as oppo-
sites in the world's estimate of the relations between man and
the State. The falsified acceptance and erroneous application
of one of these ideas reduces the individual to a mere counter,
and enables a ruler, or a ruling caste, to say with Louis XIV.
" I am the State."
To the United States, in the van of history and of the
world's advance, has been given the keeping and the cham
pionship of the counterbalancing idea, the truth that no State
has a suflicient cause for existence, except as the servant and

PREFACE. V
the exponent of every man and woman within its boundary
and shelter.
There has been no better personification of this life-
thought of the republic, and, at the same time, of its equipoise
with its correspondent, than in the subject of this biography.
His marvelous career would elsewhere bave been impossible,
and it was in a clear-minded, prophetic perception of this fact
that he gave himself, every fiber of his strength, every faculty
of mind or body, every hope and every aspiration, to the end
" that a government of the people, by the people, for the peo
ple, shall not perish from the earth."

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I. PAQB
A Chaotio Beginning,  5
The Birthplace— The Family— The Homestead— 1809 to 1816.
CHAPTER II.
Haphazard Migration,  Si
Tom Lincoln's Venture— Little Abe— The Trip through the Woods— From one
Hut to another— 1816.
CHAPTER HI.
Chtld-lipe m the Wilderness,  16
Pole-shelter— Log Cabin and Clearing— Pestilence and Suffering— A Forest
Funeral— 1818.
CHAPTER IV.
The New Elements,  23
A Step-Mother— Arrival of Civilization— Picture and Reality.
CHAPTER V.
A Genuine Start,  27
Growth— Schooling— Begtnnings of Human Society in the Backwoods.
CHAPTER VI.
Borrowed Treasures  33
The Art of Story-TeUing- The Wonders in Books— The Uses of Written
Words.
CHAPTER VII.
Frontier Training,  39
Oratorical Beginnings -Frontier Politics— Hiring Out— A Wedding and a Fu
neral — studies among Plain People — A Glimpse into Law. vii

viii CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VIII. PAQB
BOY-OF-ALL-WORK,  45
Toil, Fun and Frolic— Books and Speaking Matches— A Severe Lesson in
Caste— Practical Teachings on Temperance— 1825.
CHAPTER IX.
The Elatboat,  52
A Trading Voyage— Life in the Southern States— First View of Human
Slavery— 1828. CHAPTER X.
"Of Illinois,"  57
Another Migration— Of full Age and Free— Farmhand and Flatboatman —
More Southern Studies— 1830. CHAPTER XI.
A Step Upward,  ., . . 65
stranded in New Salem— Purst Public Employment— Miller, Clerk, and Peace
keeper—A WrestUng Match— 1831.
CHAPTER XII.
The Blackhawk War,  73
Lincoln a Volunteer— Army discipline— Captain Lincoln under Punishment —
Going to a New School— Regulars and Volunteers— 1833.
CHAPTER XIII.
Politics,  82
Lincoln a Candidate— Stamping the District— Defeat— "Kie Credit System-
Lincoln a Merchant. CHAPTER XIV.
First Love,  91
A True Romance— Elected to the State Legislature— A New Suit— Free
Thinking. CHAPTER XV.
In THE Legislature,  97
Practical Politics— Lessons in Public Finance— Blowing Bubbles- A Great

Darkness— 1834-36.

CHAPTER XVI.

Bubble Legislation,  1Q3
An Episode— Tbe Lightning-rod— The Long Nine— State Improvements—
Anti-Slavery Declarations— 1836.

CONTENTS. ix

CHAPTER XVII. PAOE
The Young Lawyer,  110
Admitted to the Bar— Honest Poverty— The Panic of 18S7— Politics again-
Matrimonial Tendencies— Another Darkness.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Manhood,  119
An Honest Lawyer— A Storm — The Heniy Clay Campaign— The Old Cabin —
Partnerships— Coarse and Fine— Elected Congressman— The Mexican War —
President Making— The Pro-Slavery Formula — Southern Friendships.
CHAPTER XIX.
The Coming Conflict,  130
OfSce Refused- The Missouri Compromise — A Sure Prophecy— Inner Life—
Ripemng— Death of Tom Lincoln — ^A Written Confession of Faith.
CHAPTER XX,
A Great Awakening,  139
Colonization— The Kansas-Nebraska Act— The Barriers Broken Down— Lin
coln's First Great Speech— Stephen A. Douglas— Growth of a New Party— Dis
covering a Leader— An Oratorical Match.
CHAPTER XXI.
The New Party,  148
Bleeding Kansas— A Watchful Friend— Trapping a Trapper— The Blooming-
ton Convention— General Apathy— The Voice of Faith.
CHAPTER XXII.
The Coming Man,  153
The Fremont Campaign— Lincoln for Vice-President>-The Southern Threat-
Days of Preparation— Buchanan's Term— One Story Higher— A Murder Case.
CHAPTER XXIII.
PoLinoAL Prophecy, . .  16i
A Rejected Leader— A Great Convention— An Historical Speech— Nominated
for United States Senator— The Joint Debates with Douglas— The Splitting of
the Democratic Party — ^Beginnings of a Presidential Nomination— Spring 1858
to Spring 1859.
CHAPTER XXIV.
The Rising Tide,  173
National Fame— The Cooper Institute Speech— Sectionalism — lUinois State
Convention at Decatur— The Rail-spUtter-The Republican National Convention
at Chicago— The Presidential Nomination— 1859.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXV.
PAGE,
Elected President, ...... . . 182
The Great Canvass of 1860— The Critical Election— Southern Threats of Civil
War— Oflce-seekers Early— A Wise Decision— Cabinet-makrng—Preparing for
the Trouble to Come— A Nation without a Ruler.

CHAPTER XXVI.
¦Casus Belli,  188
Secession Activities— Lincoln's PoUcy— In a Trying Position— South Carolina
Takes the Lead— The Confederate States of America— Traitors in Congress-
Capture of United States Forts and Forces— A Campaign of Statesmanship-
Vain Premonitions— A Last Meeting.

CHAPTER XXVII.
President, ...  197
Speaking to the Nation— Diplomacy— Journey to Washington— In the Ene
my's Country— The District of Columbia Mihtia — The Flood of Ofllce-seekers —
The Inauguration— The Address— The True Meaning of Secession — March, 1861.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
War  209
The New Era- Unification of the South— Free Speech— Copperheads— The
Cabinet— The White House— Confederate Ambassadors— Traitors in Ofllce—
The Border States— The Sumpter Gim- The President's Call to Arms— April,
1861.
CHAPTER XXIX.
The Great Uprising,  237
A Steady Hand— The Rebellion Extending— The Loyal North— The Baltimore
Mob— Rebellion in Maryland— Confederate Hopes and Failures— Peril of Wash
ington—Arrival of Troops from the North— The Gateway to the North- Arrival
of the New York Seventh— Capture of Baltimore— Case of Col. Robert E. Lee-
Secession of Vu^inia— Call for Three Years' Volunteers— Crushing of Secession
in Maryland.
CHAPTER XXX.
Over the Long Bridge,  289
Respect for State Rights— Secession of Virginia— Union Advance across the
Potomac— Death of Ellsworth— The Beginning in West Virginia— The Old Flag
disappears from the South— White House Life— War-time Illusions— Studies of
Future Battle-grounds— A Funeral in the East Room.

CONTENTS. XI

CHAPTER XXXI.
PAOBl
The European Question,  248
The Secretary of State— England and France— Privateers and Piracy— The
New Navy— Whaling Schooners as War Vessels.

CHAPTER XXXII.
Bull Run, . .  253
Checker-board Campaign Plans— Ou to Richmond— The Two Armies— Dis
solved Militias-Congressional Legislation under Sudden Pressure— The Presi
dent's Message— Five Hundred Thousand Men.

CHAPTER XXXIII.
The Blockade,  261
Rect^nition— Accepting the Situation— The Neutrality Mask— Rejected In
formation-War Correspondence not History— The Fetters of Etiquette not
Wom. CHAPTER XXXIV.
Work with Raw Materials  367
The New Army— Huntmg for Brigadiers— Finances— Preparations of the
South— Old Guns and New— Presidential Target Practice— Selection of General
Moaellan.
CHAPTER XXXV.
New National Life,  275
A Shattered Idol— A New State— Contraband of War— Transitions and Pro
cesses—Lincoln a Dictator— The Law of Revolution.

CHAPTER XXXVI.
President and General,  281
The Army of the Potomac— Newspaper Acrobats— The President's Mail-
Work of the Private Secretaries— Army Organization— An Advsmce which was
not Made— Offensive and Defensive War.

CHAPTER XXXVII,
Dictator and Congress,  289
The Legislative Branch— The Committee on the Conduct of the War- Useful
Interference — Councils and Umpires — Political CompUcations Beginning— Ci
vilian and Soldier,

Xll CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XXXVin. PAOE
The Peninsular Campaign,  297
Monitor and Merrimac— The Story of a Great Invention— Waiting before
Yorktown— Civil Supremacy in Danger— A Retreat in Good Order— A Perilous
Dilemma^The Army of Virginia — Gen. Pope's Campaign— A New Political
Party- One Army Swallowed by Another.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Military Politics, .  307
Reconstruction— Jarring Counsels — (Jen. John C. FrSmont — ^A Premature
Proclamation — A Modification— Another Subordinate laying down the Law to
the President— A New Secretary of War— A Human Library.
CHAPTER XL.
Drawn Battles,  321
The Fighting imder Pope— News from the Army— The Changes of Comman
ders—Lee in Maryland— The Antietam— Exhausted Patience— Removal of Mc-
dellan— A Great Misunderstanding.
CHAPTER XLI.
Emancipation,  328
The War-Power and the Constitution— A Struggle of Life and Death — The
Hour and the Man— The ProcUunation— Waiting for the Victory— An Unpre
pared People— Suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus— Visiting the Army—
The Reply of the Opposition.
CHAPTER XLH.
The Hardest Blow,  343
Home-Life in the White House— Death of Little WiUie— Proclamation of
Thanksgiving and Prayer— Circular Letter to the Army on Sabbath-keeping—
Spiritual Growth.
CHAPTER XLIII.

The Trent Affair, 
Two Frontier Posts— Western Successes- A SUce at a Time— Trouble with
England— Shortsighted Patriotism— A Message to the Enghsh People— Captain
Wilkes Promoted— Border State Unionism.
CHAPTER XLIV.
A Dark Winter, 
Fredericksburg— A Lost Opportunity— Bumside and Hooker— The Burdens
of a Military Establishment— Congressional Counselors— The Heart of the Na
tion—An Extraordinary Ambassador— The Birth of the Union League.

849

356

CONTENTS xiii
CHAPTER XLV. PAGE
Execution,  365
Efforts for Compensation to Owners of Slaves— Dreams of Colonization-
The Future of the African in America— The Final Proclamation— The Slave-
Owner a Southern Sympathizer.
CHAPTER XLVI.
Dark Days,  371
A Tax Payable in Men— The New Financial System— The States and the Na
tion—Reconstruction Begun— A Flood of Calumny— Freedom of Speech and of
the Press— A Sarcastic Present to the Confederacy— Opposition Taking Form
at the North.
CHAPTER XLVII.
Night,   382
Preparing for a Great Struggle— Popular Discontent— Murmm^ of Sedition-
European Hostihties — ChanceUorsvUle — Bitter Hours for the President — Dark
ness at the South — Statesmen under an Hallucination — The Second Invasion of
the North- Hooker Succeeded by Meade.
CHAPTER XLVIII.
The Turning Point,  392
The Eve of Battle — The Surrender of Vicksburg — The Mississippi River set
Free — The Three Days' Fight at Gettysburg— Lee's Retreat — The Situation
Changed— The Draft Riots— The New York Mob— The President's Reply to the
Unpatriotic Elements.
CHAPTER XLIX.
Thorns  402
Poisoned Arrows— The Ways of a Workingman- Western Bickerings— An
Extraordinary Congress — ^Presenting the President's Case — ^Preparing the Po
litical Future — Visitors at the White House — Wearing Away — Unconditional
Unionism Portrayed— Voices of Good-will from Europe— The Gettysburg Speech.
CHAPTER L.
The Beginning of the End, .... . . 416
Keeping Good Workmen — Absence of Favoritism— A Pohtical Revolution-
A National Prayer-Meeting- The Coming General— Helpless Intrigues.
CHAPTER LI.
The Secoistd Nomination,  433
Lieutenant-General Grant— The First Great Relief- Dealing with Guerillas-
Condensation of the Confederacy— The Double National Convention— The Ad
ministration formally Approved.

XIV CONTENTS.
CHAPTER LII. PACE
On Trial, .  433
The Campaign of Calumny— rhe Reconstruction Proclamation— Traps which
Captured Nothing— Skirmishing Diplomacy— The Blunders of the Opposition-
A Union General in Bad Company. CHAPTER LIII.
The Nation's Verdict,  440
The Rebellion Bleeding to Death— Half a Milhon More— The Results of tfce
Election — Sherman's March to the Sea — The Last Great Battle in the West^
Changes in the Cabinet— Grant on " Executive Interference."
CHAPTER LIV.
A Valedictory,  445
Putting Emancipation into the Constitution — Sherman in South Carolina —
The Peace Conference in Hampton Roads— Useless Bloodshed— The Second In
augural.
CHAPTER LV.
At Last,  .453
A Proclamation of Pardon— Going to the Army— The Death-Struggle of the
Rebellion— Hemmed in by the Hunters— The President in Richmond- Surrend
ers of Lee and Johnson— Cessation of the Civil War.
CHAPTER LVI.
Peace,  457
A Rejoicing People — Vanity and Revenge conspire to Commit Murder— The
Aussassination— The Mourning of a Mighty Multitude— Voices from Distant
iiands— The Teachings of a Great Life.

APPENDIX,

Lincoln's Speech, ••...... 465
At Springfield, DI., June 17, 1S58 (Ch. XXHI.).
Lincoln's Speech,  473
At Cooper Institute, New York, February, 1860 (Ch. XXTV.).
Lincoln's Letter, . . . . ' . 493
To Unconditional Union Men, April, 1864 (Ch. XLIX.).
Lincoln's Letter  ^pg
To Governor Bramlette of Kentucky, Washington, April 4, 1864.
Tribute of London "Punch" to Abraham Lincoln,
After his assassination, May, 1865.

500

ILLUSTRATfONS.

Statue of Lincoln,  Frontispiece
By Aug. St. Gaudens. Erected in Chicago.
The Lincoln Homestead, . . . . . . 2i
Where Abe Spent his First Seven Years, Hardin Couuty, Kentucky.
Portrait of Lincoln,  14,
Just after his Nomination in 1860. From Photograph taken in Springfield, 111.
Life-mask of Lincoln,  30
Taken by the Sculptor Vokes, in Chicago, 1860.
A Council of War,  ,39'
On the U. S. War Steamer Miami, in 1862; Lincoln, Stanton, Chase, and ^
Gen. Viele. Drawn by C. S. Reinhabt.
Mr. Lincoln's Work-room,  34
His private office in the White House, where he studied, wrote, received his
Cabinet, etc. Drawn by Benj. Landek. after original sketch by F. B. Car
penter, whose painting of the "Emancipation Proclamation" has made the
historic old work-table familiar.
The Gettysburg Speech, .  41
Fac-simile of Mr. Lincoln's manuscript of the speech, copied out for
engraving, after its deUvery.
"The President's Last, Shortest, and Best Speech," . 40
Fac-simile of a newspaper paragraph, written out by Mr. Lincoln.
Portrait of Lincoln, . . .... 44
From Photograph by Brady, Washington, ]86o.
Lincoln and Sumner in Richmond, . . . . 45
Saluted by a Detachment of Gen. Weitzel's Colored Troops passing to
occupy Garrison Quarters.

Prom the Commemoration Ode.
Here was a type of the true elder race.
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us face to face.
I praise him not ; it were too late ;
And some innative weakness there must be
In him who condescends to victory
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait,
Safe in himself as in a fate.
So always firmly he :
He knew to bide his time,
And can his fame abide,
Still patient in his simple faith sublime,
Till the wise years decide.
Great captains, with their guns and drums,
Disturb our judgment for the hour,
But at last silence comes ;
These all are gone, and, standing like a tower,
Our children shall behold his fame.
The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man.
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame,
New birth of our new soil, the first American.

ABRAHA.M LINCOLN.

CHAPTER I.
A CHAOTIC BEGINNING.
The Traditions of the Family— A Kentucky Tragedy— The Romance of
Pioneer Life.
It is due to the working of a strong and subtle instinct of
the human race that the first forms of historical record, tradi
tional or written, have consisted largely of efforts to discover
or invent the genealogies of prominent men. The difficulties
which always have attended such researches are perfectly pre
sented in all efforts to follow or verify the eccentric driftings
of the families who first made settlements for themselves upon
the Atlantic shore of what is now the United States.
Patiently and zealously, year after year, plodding workers
have dug out and set in order the attainable records and tra
ditions of the Lincoln family, until a certain series, sufficiently
sustained, can be presented with much probability of truth.
The methodical New England annals establish the fact that
Samuel Lincoln, from Norwich, England, was settled at Hing
ham, in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, in the year 1638.
His son, Mordecai, appears to have continued in residence at
Hingham, but a second Mordecai, his grandson, reraoved to
Monmouth, New Jersey, and owned property there. He again
¦"emoved to Amity township, in what is now Bucks County, 5

6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Pennsylvania. When he died there, somewhere near the year
1735, the Lincoln family in America was a century old, but
was still possessed by the same restless, pioneer spirit which
had brought its founder from England to Massachusetts.
There is no evidence that he was a Quaker, as were some of
his immediate descendants, but their religious persuasion offers
a sufficient reason for their departure from New England,
ruled as it then was, and for their seeking a home in Pennsyl
vania. With that generation, however, so far as the best
known part of them is concerned, all traces of the non-resistant
Quaker spirit or character faded out. John Lincoln, son of
Mordecai, inherited from him a good property in New Jersey,
but moved to Rockingham County, Virginia.
One of the trustees named in Mordecai's will was his " lov
ing friend and neighbor, George Boone." The Boone and
Lincoln families were also related by marriage ; and when a
part of the Boones transferred their pioneer work to Virginia
and North Carolina, they drew John and other Lincolns with
them. The latter were now becoming numerous, and there is
here and there curious evidence that some of the scattered
branches of the family tree preserved or adopted one of the
several traditions of the origin of the family name and called
themselves Linkhorn.
The first evening light of the early Saxons, as of all other
rude peoples, was a torch or " link." The first improvement
made upon the torch was the protection of its flame and light
with plates of thin horn, such as sometimes served for win
dow panes instead of glass. The primitive lanterns, therefore,
were linkhorns, from which the maker or the bearer could
easily borrow a name for himself. It was natural that this,
like so many other names, should shorten in use before tlie
time of its reduction to writing, and that then the spelling
should follow the accustomed sound.
It is not so easy to explain, however, how the original form
should reappear after what seems to have been so long a disuse.

A CHAOTIC BEGINNING. 7
From the settlement of John Lincoln in Virginia, the his
tory of his branch of the family becomes more distinct and
trustworthy. The growth and development of the colony of
which he had become a citizen had, down to this time, been
barred by the central mountain ranges, but the Old Dominion
claimed a vast and vaguely bounded realm beyond them.
That part of it which lay south of the Ohio and was sometimes
spoken of as " the Kentucky woods," was as yet an unexplored
wilderness. It so remained until it was opened to settlement through
the daring and stubborn perseverance of the Boone family
and their associates, under the leadership of Daniel Boone.
The tragical and romantic story of their exploits is plainly re
lated to the fact that no less than three of the five sons of
John Lincoln followed them, at different dates and to different
places in the new domain. Still, it was eleven years after the
first explorations of Daniel Boone, in 1769, before Abraham,
the elder son of John Lincoln, became a Kentucky pioneer.
He took with him a wife whom he had married in North Car
olina and several children. The first entry of land made by
him was a tract of four hundred acres on Long Run, a branch
of Floyd's Fork, in what is now Jefferson County. He after
wards made other purchases and entries, until he was the
owner of no less than seventeen hundred acres, and was a man
of substance even in a day when wild lands were selling at
very low prices. The land-warrants and official surveys still
in existence show that he, or those who spelled for him per
haps, according to pronunciation, went back to the primitive
form and wrote the name " Linkhorn."
If the first Abraham Lincoln had been permitted to continue
the work which he began with so much courage and enterprise,
the after-course of his family might bave been altogether dif
ferent. They were indeed compelled to endure all the ordi
nary privations and hardships of settler-life in the backwoods,
but there were many compensations, for Americans thoroughly

8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
imbued with the pioneer spirit. They had before them a fair
prospect of growing up with the country, and of sharing all
the prosperities of its sure development. They were also
compelled, however, to face the perils and vicissitudes of the
long, bloody struggle with the red men for their hunting
grounds. In the year 1786, the father of the family, with his two sons,
Mordecai and Josiah, were at work near the edge of a clearing
which they had begun upon the land which they had bought
from the government. They were not far from their cabin
and were accompanied by the younger son, Thomas, a child
of seven. A shot rang out in the underbrush near them, the
father fell to the ground, and all the fair future vanished.
An Indian warrior sprang forth to secure the scalp of his
victim. Josiah set out at once to the nearest fort, Hughes
Station, to obtain assistance. Mordecai ran to the cabin for a
rifle and thrust it through a loophole just as the savage was
raising little Thomas from the ground. There was a white
medal on the red man's breast for a mark, and Mordecai's aim
was fatally true. Little Thomas escaped to the cabin. Other
savages made their appearance, but Mordecai phed his rifle and
succeeded in keeping them off until help came.
This is the substance of the several accounts of the disas
trous change in the story of the Lincoln family settlement in
Kentucky. It was but one of the countless bloody marks
upon the western frontier, the ever-advancing skirmish-line of
American civilization. The widowed mother of the family
was compelled to give up the clearing which had cost so much,
and to remove to a safer home in Washington County.

INTO THE BACKWOODS.

CHAPTER II,
INTO THE BACKWOODS.
From Kentuclty to Indiana— A Voyage of Discovery— The Half-faced
Camp.
The Kentucky settlements grew rapidly, although many
treaties with the Indian tribes failed to prevent an all but
ceaseless peril of savage inroads.
Mrs. Lincoln brought up her family of two daughters and
three sons, under somewhat more than the ordinary disad
vantages of pioneer life. Josiah and Mordecai becarae in
dependent farmers, but it is related that, to his dying day, the
latter maintained a reputation as a relentless and successful
Indian-fighter. The daughters grew to maturity and married,
one becoming Mrs. Kmme and the other Mrs. Bromfield.
The third son, Thomas, the child rescued by his brave
brother's rifle from the knife of the Indian warrior, developed
a character by no means uncommon among rural communities.
He was a man of great physical strength, although but little
above middle height, and muscular prowess counted for much
among the backwoodsmen of Kentucky. He was entirely
unlettered, by force of circumstances, as were the great majority
of the people among whom he lived. Unlike many of them,
however, he seemed destitute of enterprise. He had no ambi
tion and seemed contented to go through life as an easy-going,
kindly, jovial raan, without especial aim or calling, and with
little or no idea of rising in the world. It was a matter of
course that such a man should drift from one employment
into another, and from place to place, without attaining pros
perity in any. In the course of time he became a resident of

10 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Elizabethtowii, Kentucky. One important feature of his life
here was his courtship of a very respectable young woman
named Sarah Bush, who rejected him and married a Mr.
Johnston, at that time keeper of the county jail. Not less
productive of notable consequences was an effort that he made
to learn the carpenter's trade, or so much of it as he could
acquire iu the shop of Joseph Hanks, the village carpenter.
The Hanks family was numerous and bad emigrated from
Virginia to Kentucky at abont the same time with the Lin
colns. One of its families contained four daughters, Lucy,
Betty, Polly and Nancy. Betty married Thomas Sparrow;
Polly married Jipe Friend ; Nancy married Levi Hall. A
daughter of Lucy's was also named Nancy and passed so much
of her early life with the Sparrows that she went by their name
as much as by her own. She was a niece of Thomas Lincoln's
employer, but was living at Beechland, Wa.shington County,
and here Lincoln married her on the 12th of June, 1806. The
official records of the raarrlage are still in existence.
There is something shadowy and baffling in all that remains
of the raeraory of Nancy Hanks Lincoln, the mother of the
great President, frora whom he must necessarily have inherited
a full proportion of the natural characteristics wherein he
differed from other men. She seems only to appear and then
to disappear. Those who knew and remembered her describe
her as being, at the time of her marriage with Thomas Lincoln,
a tall, handsome young woman, of graceful manners. She
had somehow learned both reading and writing, and was much
above her husband in intelligence, as in attainments. Born
and brought up in the hard, rude, repulsive society of the
poor whites of Kentucky, she seeras to have been gifted with
quahties which may themselves be indications of a higher
inheritance among her unknown ancestry.
The young married pair began their wedded life in a mere
box of a log-house in Elizabethtown. It was about fourteen
feet square and contained only the simplest necessities of such

INTO THE BACKWOODS. 11
a style of housekeeping. During the following year a
daughter was born. It is not easy to determine whether she
was called simply Nancy, after her mother, or whether the
name Sarah, which afterwards took its place, was given with it
in her infancy.
There was very little carpenter work to be had in or near
Elizabethtown. It is doubtless true, also, that Thomas Lincoln
was very little of a carpenter, and that his services were not
likely to be much sought after. He therefore gave it up and
determined to become again a tiller of the ground.
Some kinds of land were to be obtained by almost anybody
and upon any terras of payment. They were lands of the
kind which men with ready money would not buy at any
price, but they were precisely suited to the finances of Tom
Lincoln, and he became the nominal owner of a patch of stony,
scrubby soil called Rock Spring Farm, on the Big South Fork
of Nolin's Creek, about three miles frora Hodginsville, in what
was then Hardin and is now La Rue County, Kentucky.
It was a poor home ; poorer, in some respects, than had been
the cabin in Elizabethtown. There could hardly be a poorer
family than was that which now undertook to support its
narrow, hopeless life in that dull corner of the earth's teeming
surface. Here, however, on the 12th day of February, 1809,
Abraham Lincoln was born. Here he passed the first four
years of his child-life, and of this period there now remains
neither record nor important tradition.
Thomas and Nancy Lincoln must have worked to some
purpose upon their first unpromising farm. At the end of
four years they were able to remove to a better and larger
piece of land, about two hundred and thirty-eight acres, on
Knob Creek, near its junction with RolHng Fork. The house
was simply a settler's cabin, but the farm might have been
developed into a good property by a good farmer. Thomas
Lincoln attempted its improvement, after his own fashion,
but the undertaking was altogether too much for hira, and

12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
before the end of the third year it had slipped away from
him. The region around Knob Creek was by no means unattract
ive, nor was it an unpleasant play-ground for a sinewy, active-
minded boy. The winters were mild, and the summers and
autumns were long. There were abundant berries and nuts
in the woods in their seasons. There were woodchucks to be
dug out of their holes also, and little Abe is said to have been
a zealous hunter of this sort of burrowing game. Moreover,
there was good fishing to be had in Knob Creek, and every
country boy is a fisherman. His companions in this part of
his boyish experiences were his sister Nancy and his cousin
Dennis Hanks, and such other playmates as could now and
then be obtained in so sparsely settled a neighborhood.
Whether or not his mother attempted to impart to him any of
the unusual scholarship which she possessed, he and his sister
actually obtained some small idea of what a school might be.
Their first schoolmaster was a man named Zachariah Riney.
The next was Caleb Hazel, at a school-house four miles away,
upon the " Friends' Farm."
Their entire attendance under both was only a few, short,
broken months, and Abe, at least, advanced but little if any
thing beyond his letters. In after-years it was impossible for
even those who knew him best to induce him to talk about the
years of his boyhood in Kentucky. He could not have made
upon them another commentary so full of meaning. No
doubt they were, in raany respects, a dismal blank, the un
marked beginning of a life which seemed to have no help or
hope. Another son had been born to Thomas and Nancy Lincoln,
but he died in infancy and was buried in the graveyard near
Hodginsville. They had moved from place to place since
their marriage, but at the end of nine years of half-aimless
toil they had apparently gained nothing. They were as poor
as when they began, while all the country around them had

INTO THE BACKWOODS 13
been growing in population and in wealth. They were there
fore positively poorer by coraparison, and they deterrained to
raove entirely out from a region in which they had failed to
obtain a foothold.
Thomas Lincoln was a born backwoodsman, and there were
good reports brought down frora the Indiana Territory, at that
date just changing into the very new State of Indiana. Home
steads were to be obtained from the governraent on easy terras
by axeraen who were willing to go in and clear away the trees
and open farms for themselves.
It was in the autumn of the year 1816 that the decision was
raade, but the family could not well be raoved until a place for
their next settlement should be selected ; and there is sorae
thing curiously like all that is known of Thoraas in the method
he devised for exploring the forests of Indiana. He began by
building a scow, a rude affair which some have described as a
raft, and launching her in Rolling Fork near the mouth of
Knob Creek. He proposed to combine a kind of trading voy
age with a tour of inspection of the forests of the northern bank
of the Ohio River, and he loaded his boat with a cargo of four
hundred gallons of whiskey, for which he had traded some rem
nants of his small Kentucky possessions. He also took with
him his kit of carpenter's tools, with an eye to any possible job
of work. He knew how to manage a boat, for he had been a
flatboatman. He had even raade the long voyage to New
Orleans, for he had been always ready to turn his hand to
alraost anything.
The Rolling Fork is a branch of Salt River, and there was
no incident of importance to take account of until after the
scow had been guided down that stream and out into the swift,
eddying current of the Ohio. Here, however, the adventur
ous navigator came to grief, for his clumsy craft was upset and
his cargo went to the bottom. It was well for him that the
M'ater was not deep, for after the boat was righted, he suc
ceeded in fishing up his tools and the greater part of his

14 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
whiskey. Shortly afterwards the voyage came to an end at a
place called Thompson's Ferry, in Perry County, Indiana.
The boat was disposed of and its cargo was deposited with a
settler named Posey, while Tom Lincoln pushed on into the
woods to select a spot for the entry of a " squatter's claim."
It was primeval forest. Northward it stretched, unbroken,
to the shore of Lake Erie. Eastward, to the scattered settle
ments of Ohio, there were only a few clearings. Westward,
to the Grand Prairie, whicli was shortly to be opened for the
creation of the State of Illinois, all was wilderness. The en
tire area of the young State contained barely the sixty-five
thousand souls required to entitle it to its emergence from a
territorial condition. The Indian tribes, or their defeated
remnants, had but recently been driven out, for the peace of
Indiana was one of the fruits of the peace with Great Britain
.ind her savage allies at the close of the " War of 1812-M."
Tom Lincoln was not disposed to go too far from the bank
of the Ohio. At the end of about sixteen miles of investiga
tion, he found a spot which satisfied him. It was a fine, grassy
knoll of ground in the forest, and he took no note of the fact
that there was neither spring nor running water near it.
There were pools truly ; but these were an uncertain supply,
and he was afterwards to spend many a long day of weary,
disappointed digging, in vain efforts to find and establish a
well for household uses. He marked the spot which he had
chosen for his future home, and raade his way back to Ken
tucky. His little family was ready for removal.
There are varying traditions of the trip which they made
through the half-summer of the autumnal woods. It is said
by some that two hack-horses, borrowed of Tom's brother-in-
law, Krume, sufficed to transport the beds and bedding and
the few kitchen utensils. It is more probable that the horses
pulled a wagon. The Ohio River was reached and crossed at
Thompson's Ferry, but here the really difficult part of the
journey began. A wagon and horses were hired of Mr. Posey,

INTO THE BACKWOODS. 15
but there was no road before them. However winding might
be the path selected among the trees, every now and then the
forest growth was in the way, and there was need of patient
axework before the team could be driven onward. The trees
came down, however, and when Thomas Lincoln reached his
chosen location, the road to it was a new one of his own raak
ing. It was an attractive spot, that lonely opening among the
woods. It promised well, for the soil was undeniably good
and the timber was of the best. It was situated between Big
Pigeon Creek and Little Pigeon Creek not far from their junc
tion, and in the autumn of 1816 there were no other clearings
near it. It was destitute of neighbors, as of many other ad
vantages, but there was a sure promise of more settlers, for
some of them were already on their way. Tha village of
Gentryville was soon to make its beginning close at hand.
As for iraraediate means of livelihood, there could be no crops
raised until the axe should clear the ground, but there was
almost a superabundance of game, with no wild red hunters
to dispute a white man's right to take it.
The first and most important consideration for a settler was
that of protection from the winter weather which was so soon
to set m. There was really no time for the construction of an
elaborate and perfectly finished log cabin. All that could
at once be provided was the kind of dwelling called by some
a " pole-shelter," and by others a " half-faced camp." It was
a shed, log-walled on three sides, open on the south and roofed
with riven slabs. It was about fourteen feet square, with the
" tire-place" out on the ground on the open side. Its floor was
the earth, and it had neither window, door nor chimney. It
was the poorest home to which Nancy Lincoln's husband had
brought her, but there she and her httle girl and boy passed
the winter as best they could, while Tom phed his axe and
cleared a patch to be planted with cOrn and vegetables in the
spring.

16 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER III.
child-life in the WILDERNESS.
The Log-house Home— The Pestilence— The Child Housekeepers— The
Courtship of Thomas Lincoln.
A " HALF-FACED CAMP," protected from sweeping wind-gusts
by dense forest all around it, may not be an unpleasant winter
residence for a hardy hunter, and Thomas Lincoln was more
a hunter than a farraer in the winter of 1816-17. If, how
ever, there was little hardship for him, there was rauch lone
liness for his wife. She had failed to induce him to learn
reading and writing. He simply would not attempt to rise to
a higher social or mental level than that upon which he had
been born. As for the children, they were somewhat pro
tected by their utter ignorance and could endure because they
knew of nothing better. A sort of industry was forced upon
their father. He plied his axe fairly well, with five to help
him, as is usual in such undertakings, and a pretty good clear
ing was made. He was all the while looking forward, of
course, to the construction of a full-grown log cabin ; but
there was less pressing need for one after the warm weather
arrived — and that work was put off. The family lived in the
half -faced camp about a year before the cabin was ready to
receive them. It was ready then, for it had its chimney of
sticks and mud, its walls of heavy logs chinked with mud ; its
roof of riven slabs ; its floor of pounded earth ; its doorless
doorway ; its windowless window-holes : and in it were such
rude articles of furniture as Tom had been able to manufacture
from the trees which he had felled. The bedstead consisted of

CHILD- LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS. 17
strong stakes driven into the earth, with cross-pieces to support
the bedding. There were seats and a table. There was a loft
overhead, to be reached by climbing, with the aid of pegs
driven into the wall-logs.
The new home was about forty yards distant from the half-
faced camp, and the Lincoln family entered it in the autumn
of the year 1817. At least it was their own, and they were
now more nearly landholders than they had ever been in Ken
tucky. They had actually raised a crop upon their new farm
that year, and the land had proved its quality. It was a
spot whereon industry might expect to win abundance, but
there was never soil so fertile that it could yield prosperity as
a free gift.
Many settlers came to the Pigeon Creek region during that
year, although none seera to have settled very near to the Lin
coln clearing. There may even have been play-fellows for
little Nancy and Abe, by going far enough to find them.
Over in Kentucky, the Sparrow faraily had not prospered.
They had been near neighbors on Nolin's Creek, and they had
done as much for their nephew Dennis Hanks, as for their
niece Nancy. They now received a cordial invitation to come
over to Indiana, bringing Dennis with thera, and occupy the
half -faced camp. They came, and they went into it as the
Lincolns went out, and there was now to be less of loneliness
in that clearing.
The then existing system of obtaining lands from the United
States government, allowed actual sellers ample tirae for
making the moderate payments required of them. On the
15th of October, 1817, Thomas Lincoln made a formal land-
office entry of his claim to the quarter section, or one hundred
and sixty acres of land, upon which he had begun his clearing.
This entitled him to unmolested occupation of his forest-farm,
free of rent, but the greater part of it continued to be forest,
season after season, until at last, June 6th, 1827, nearly two
years after the original entry, he surrendered one half of it to

18 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the government and completed his payment upon the eighty
acres which contained his clearing and his cabin.
The winter of 1817-18 went by in the ordinary, eventless
way of the backwoods. Sorae chopping was done, but no im
portant improvement was made upon either the log cabin or
the hut which now sheltered the Sparrows and Dennis Hanks,
except when the latter climbed into the loft at night to sleep
on a bag of corn husks with his cousin Abe. It was not a
severe winter. In fact, the old settlers of Indiana have borne
a uniform testimony that its winter climate was much milder
before the forests were cleared away than it has been since the
winds frora across the great lakes of the north were permitted
to, sweep the surface of the earth and howl around the houses.
Game was so plentiful that a hunter could hardly fail of bring
ing home a deer on any good hunting day. There was more
than fresh meat to be obtained in this way, since " buckskin "
took the place of cloth to a great extent in the raiment of both
sexes. There were wild turkeys and smaller feathered game
to be trapped rather than hunted. Rabbits and raccoons were
only too numerous for the good of present and future corn
crops, but there was a good market for the skins of the latter,
and they could be traded for grocery supplies at Gentryville
or at the river " landing," only sixteen miles away.
No great account could be taken of long distances by the
children of such a settlement. Abe and Nancy had been ac
customed, at an earlier age, in Kentucky, to go and come four
miles in attending the school upon the Friends' Farm, and
they had now learned how to pick their own way through the
pathless woods. There was as yet, however, no school-house
among the widely scattered cabins of that young neighborhood,
and if they learned anything new or kept what they had
already acquired, their mother was their only teacher. As
for anything Hke danger, other than that of being lost in the
woods, it had disappeared with the vanishing red men. There
were not many " painters" or cougars, and neither these nor

CHILD-LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS. 19
the well-fed wolves were likely to assail human beings in the
daytime, while the habits of the bears were, as a rule, emi
nently pacific.
Spring came again, and another crop was put in, with some
what more of cleared land to put it on. The road to prosper
ity seemed to have opened ; but there was a deadly enemy
arriving. A region teeming with vegetable growth and car
peted with its decay, could not but be miasmatic. Letting in
the sun and turning up the soil set free poisonous exhalations,
which exhibited their effect in various forms of malarial fever.
One of these, a strange, baffling, and peculiarly fatal disorder,
known to the settlers as " the milk sick," began to make its
appearance as an epidemic in the summer of the year 1818.
Its ravages were frightful, and there were no physicians to
study its nature or provide proper remedies. A disorder tak
ing the same name continued to perplex western medical men
during half a century, surviving controversies in which scien
tific disputants even denied its existence. It is described as a
slow, painful, wasting fever, attacking animals as well as men
and women, and suggesting a reference to the fact that all
drank water from standing pools which becarae raore or less
putrid in hot weather.
The corn grew rank and tall, but the raidsuinmer days
darkened, for there was sickness in almost every house, and
even the few cattle and the horses were perishing. There
was little help to be had, and death was the relief raost fre
quently obtained. In the Lincoln settlement, Thomas and
Betty Sparrow were the first to be smitten and they were
removed from the pole-shelter to the cabin for better nursing.
It was by no means well adapted for a hospital, but it became
one, for Mrs. Lincoln herself soon sickened. Her husband
and the children were the only nurses, and there was no phy
sician within twenty miles. There was at this time also a weird
and pressing demand upon the time of Thoraas Lincoln, for he
was the only man in all that region with skill and tools to

20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
whip-saw logs into rough boards and make coffins for the
many victims of the " milk-sick."
The sufferers in his own home lingered on through the long,
hot weeks of August and September. About the first of Oc
tober both Thoraas and Betsy Sparrow died, and they were
buried on a knoll in the forest half a mile northeast of the
cabin. On the 5th of October Mrs. Nancy Lincoln died and
was laid beside them. A number of neighbors, perhaps a
score in all, came to attend the simple funeral services, but
there was no minister. A few months later, a traveling
preacher, named David Elkins, preached a funeral sermon at
the urgent request, it is related, of little Abrahara.
During many a long year that followed there was no stone
to mark the last resting-place of the poor woman whose life
formed so important a link in the processes of a great history.
At this day it is surrounded by a neat iron railing, inclosing a
raonument bearing the following inscription :
NAKCY HANKS LINCOLN.
MOTHBB OF PkESIDENT LINCOLN.
Died October Sth, 1818. Aged 35 years.
Erected by a Friend of her Martyred Son, 1879.
This tribute to her raemory was given by Mr. P. E. Stude-
backer, of South Bend, Indiana, joined by a few of his neigh
bors as contributors.
Abraham Lincoln was now a very ignorant, neglected,
somewhat overgrown backwoods boy of eleven, and there is a
distinct way mark of character in his affection for his mother
and the persistence with which he secured a proper rehgious
testimony of respect for her meraory. Still, he was only a
boy, and he had that before him which might well incline him
to turn his mind away from all these years of his history.
The log-cabin was now no longer a hospital, for the epidemic

CHILD-LIFE IN THE WILDERNESS. 21
spared its remaining inmates, but the half-faced camp was
empty. Dennis Hanks came of course to live with his cous
ins. It was well that there was so little housekeeping to be
done, since it was all upon the small hands of a girl not yet
thirteen, and two younger boys, while Thomas Lincoln gave
himself, as formerly, to chopping or to hunting, or to any
other occupation which did not include making improvements
of any kind upon his house or its furniture. It must have
been a dismal winter, full of such experiences as might deepen
the shadow which was even then making its appearance upon
the face of little Abraham. The months of cold weather wore
away, and spring came again, and then summer, but they
brought no change in the dull, half-savage routine of log-
cabin life to which the three motherless children appeared to
be condemned.
The year which followed the death of Mrs. Nancy Lincoln
was as unmarked as was the grave upon which the grass
grew above her remains. As it closed, however, Thomas Lin
coln himself began to dread the prospect of another lonely,
womanless winter. It raight not be thought easy for such a
man to obtain a second wife, but he believed he had one chance
and he determined to make an effort. While still a compara
tively young man, before he studied the carpenter's trade or
courted Nancy Hanks, he had been wisely rejected by Miss
Sarah Bush, afterwards Mrs. Johnston. He knew that she
still resided at Ehzabethtown, but had now been several years
a widow. She had three children and she was poor, although
she had continued to maintain an exceptionally high character.
He had now much more to offer her than when, without prop
erty or even a trade, he had presumed to admire her, for 'he
had become a land-owner, an independent Indiana farmer, with
a house ready to receive her. His plan was well matured, and
about the first week of November, 1819, the three children had
their windowless, doorless, floorless home all to theraselves, for
Thomas Lincoln was in Kentucky, trying to induce Mrs. Sally

22 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Bush Johnston to disregard the advice of her friends and
marry hira. It surely was not possible for hira to have gone
upon a more important errand, whatever may have been his
motives or his methods. If some of her friends were opposed
to him, it is also related that his own kith and kin came to his
assistance, and used all their influence on his behalf. It is not
understood, however, that any of them had visited him in In
diana, or knew more of the character of his estate there than
they had learned from his own description — such a description
as he undoubtedly gave to the widow Johnston.
As for Abe and Nancy Lincoln and Dennis Hanks, left to
keep house altogether by themselves, they might well endure
a little more for a season, considering what a blessing was in
store for them, in case of the father's success. Perhaps tliere
was really little more to endure than usual, considering the
fact that food and fuel were all they were accustomed to, but
the dreary year of orphanage drew to its close in utter desola
tion, and the first snows of winter came to a hut which con
tained a picture never to be forgotten by the people, rich or
poor, high or low, of this nation,- or of any other to whora it
may be presented. There is no other figure in merely human
history which points a deeper, raore hopeful teaching than
does that of the barefooted, griray, poor-white boy, crouching
in midwinter on the mud floor, before the rude fireplace of
that squalid hovel.

THE NEW ELEMENTS. 2[i

CHAPTER IV.
the NEW ELEMENTS.
A Step mother— The Arrival of Civilization— Picture and Reality.
The courtship of Thomas Lincoln succeeded triumphantly,
and he and Mrs. Sarah Bush Johnston were married. His
brother-in-law, Ralph Krume, volunteered his own services,
with four horses and a wagon, to convey the household wealth
of the bride to her new home in Indiana. She had been pru
dent and industrious and she had accumulated much, accord
ing to the ideas prevailing on the frontier. One massive bu
reau which she owned had cost, when new, no less than forty
dollars, and it was still as good as new. She owned much
bedding ; a large chest of clothing ; table furniture ; cooking
utensils, and many other articles of use and luxury, the like of
which had never yet been seen under any roof belonging to
Thoraas Lincoln. Her three children, a boy, John, and two
girls, Sarah and Matilda, were all quite young and went with
her. She had known the first Mrs. Lincoln, and she was al
ready well acquainted with the boy and girl who were to be
her step-children, having even shown a strong liking for little
Abraham before he left Kentucky.
The children waited in the cabin, day after day and week
after week, with but dim ideas of what might be in store for
them; but one afternoon, late in December, there was a shout
at the edge of the clearing. A four-horse team was driven
slowly in, drawing a well filled wagon. Their father had in
deed returned. He had brought with* him a new mother for

24 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
them, two sisters, a brother, and to Abraham Lincoln, in par^
ticular, his first help and hope.
Mrs. Lincoln found her step-children in a dreadful condi
tion. Their pitiful lack of everything needful, made such an
appeal to her motherly heart that she was better able to over
come her strong indignation at the squalid reality of Thomas
Lincoln's home, as compared with his verbal pictures of it.
The mops of tangled hair ; the bare, frost-cracked feet ; the
scanty, tattered raiment; the unwashed hands, and the sur
prised faces, shyly, sadly trying to welcome her ; all helped
her to forgive the rose-colored fiction which had enticed her
into the woods. She was a Christian woman, actuated by a
strong sense of duty. Long years afterwards she told the
story of that meeting, and of her own feelings, adding : " ' Poor
things 1' I said. ' I'll make 'em look a little more human.' "
If a change had arrived in the lives of the children, so it
had in that of Thoraas Lincoln. The cargo of the wagon was
transferred to the cabin, and Mr. Krume departed, but Tom
was set at work. He was compelled at once to put down the
solid timber floor which ought long since to have covered the
pounded earth. The window-holes received glazed sashes. A
swinging door shut out the winter wind, at last, and every cor.
ner of the house testified to the fact that a new force had en
tered it. There was but one book, as yet, a large Book, which
did not rest on the table all the while, for Mrs. Lincoln was a
reverent reader of it. It was not a great while before it had
another — a boyish reader not so reverent, but who nevertheless
learned from it lessons which bore rich fruit in after time.
The stores of clothing which Mrs. Lincoln brought with her
were distributed impartially, even Dennis Hanks being cared
for with due benevolence. The children learned, for the first
time, what it meant to be not only fed, but washed, combed,
clad warmly, and provided with clean and comfortable beds.
It was true that the one room of that log-house was somewhnt
crowded. There were three boys, now. to climb hand over

THE NEW ELEMENTS. 25
hand into the loft at night. There were also three girls to
assist Mrs. Lincoln in the performance of the duties of her
thrifty housekeeping, and to be instructed by precept and ex
ample in all the womanly ways and knowledges which had
made Sally Bush so respectable, as maid or matron. She gave
especial attention, moreover, to the improvement of the moral
and religious character of her husband, but it was not until the
year 1823 that he was led to join the Baptist church, of which
she was a member. His daughter Nancy appears to have been
sometimes called Sarah, at an earlier day, but from this time
forth to the day of her death she was known by that name
only, although there were two other Sarahs in the house.
As for little Abraham, he had received a new mother, and
wonderful matters with her. He had suddenly stepped out
of misery into a new life. He was clean and clothed and
comfortable and well fed, with such a home as he had never
known before. Another and a greater thing came dawning
in upon the darkness of his stunted life, for he had found
some one whom he could love with all his heart, and love her
he did, and he was well assured of her love for him. To the
end of his hfe, she was the '• mother" to whom his meraories
went back, although beyond her, in an earlier and darker hour
of his morning-tirae, was the form of his first, his own raother.
God is very merciful to children as to all their early troubles
and bereavements; and little Abe had been without any
mother at all for nearly a year and a half when his father re
turned from that most profitable trip to Kentucky.
Nancy Hanks Lincoln herself could not have wished any
thing bettes. than all this reformation for those she had left be-
hind her. Il .Tas a work requiring more than she had been
able to give. At the same time, while the love her son had
borne for her could not cease, it could and did transfer itself,
in a marked manner, to the noble-hearted woman who had
now taken his mother's place. She had taken it so fully, so
lovingly, so conscientiously, that he responded with his whole

26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
heart. Toward the end of his life, after he had grown to man
hood, attained greatness, finished his work and passed away,
she said :
" I can say what scarcely one woraan, a raother, can say, in
a thousand. Abe never gave rae a cross word or look, and
never refused, in fact or appearance, to do anything I requested
of him. I never gave him a cross word in my life 
His mind and mine, what little I had, seemed to run together.
He was here after he was elected President" — tears inter
rupted her there, but she soon added : " He was dutiful to me
always. I think he loved rae truly. I had a son, John, who
was raised with Abe. Both were good boys ; but I raust say,
both being now dead, that Abe was the best boy I ever saw or
expect to see."

A GENUINE START. 27

CHAPTER V.
A genuine START.
Growth — Schooling — Beginnings of Human Society in the Backwoods.
There was a surprise in store for the new mother, and it was
by no means an unpleasant one.
As soon as her step-son's bodily wants had been attended to
and the house was in order for comfortable hving, she set her-
seK at work to discover how much Abe knew, and what. He
was willing enough to be " examined ; " but who would have
expected to find that he had picked up, from the teachings of
Nancy Lincoln or during his few weeks of rough schooling in
Kentucky, both reading and writing ? Not that he could show
any marked proficiency in either, but enough to mark him at
once as a learner of more than common capacity.
He had learned and he had not forgotten, and he had even
made some use of his acquirements ; and his new mother deter
mined that it was time he should begin to add to them.
Over on Little Pigeon Creek, a mile and a half from the
Lincoln farm, a log schoolhouse had been built by the settlers,
near the grand new " meeting-house," also mainly of logs, and
the two were witnesses that civihzation was breaking through
the darkness of the Indiana woods. A man named Hazel Dor-
sey had been secured as schoolmaster, and it was said of him
that he could teach reading and writing and arithmetic. What
more could be asked for in the way of scholarship ? Little in
deed by the bevy of boys and girls who were sent to him by
Mrs. lincoln, with such irregularity as was made compulsory
by their many home duties.
The news of their new educational prospects did not bring

28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the same raeaning to all of thein, but it was the opening of a
wide gate to little Abe. In the loft which served the boys
for a bedroom there was one bed, for Abe and Dennis, which
consisted of a coarse canvas bag, filled with corn husks. The
bag is said by Dennis himself to have been so narrow that if
one boy turned over the other was corapelled to do the same.
John Johnston slept by himself and had more room. Never
theless there were now three boys, who every night lay upon
-the first narrow bag of husks, and two of them were beginning
to crowd each other in a very extraordinary manner.
First, there was Dennis Hanks, only counting for one boy,
then or afterwards ; there beside him lay Abraham Lincoln,
an uncommonly tall, vigorous body of a boy for his age : and
that seemed to be all the bed contained. But inside of Abe
was another boy, taller, larger every way, to whom there had
now arrived a beginning of almost unhmited " growth."
Nobody could guess how tall that inner boy might yet be
come, with space to grow in. He had but a vague idea of it,
as yet, himseK ; but it was much that he had any idea at all.
Quickly, silently, night by night and day by day, he deter
mined that he would grow, and his new mother continually
and lovingly encouraged him. The two were building better
than they knew, and the whole world, for ever and ever, had an
interest in Mrs. Lincoln's womanly perception of her step-son's
capacity and her unselfish efforts to afford him such opportu
nities as her narrow means permitted.
The settlement was now growing fast, and the clearings
were no longer so far apart. A man named Gentry had
opened a country store only a mile and a half, or so, from the
Lincoln homestead, and a village taking his name was gather
ing around it. The store and the village were also to provide
a peculiar school for Abe, but he was to go to Hazel Dorsey's
first. The school-house was a somewhat queer affair, — just
high enough inside for a man to stand up straight in, and the
windows were fitted witli greased paper instead of glass.

A GENUINE START. 29
A mUe and a half is no great distance to walk to such a school
as that, if children have shoes and the snow is not too deep.
Reading and virriting and the art of " ciphering " were to be
walked after, and these were treasures none too common in the
cabins of the earher settlers of Indiana. It is possible that Abe
did his walking more easily than the rest ; but it is matter of
record that before long he could " spell down" all the other
scholars of Hazel Dorsey, and could read anything he could lay
his hands on.
The first term of study was a short one, for the winter
melted rapidly away, and with the coming of settled spring
weather the school had to be closed, that teacher and pupils
alike might turn their attention to planting com and potatoes.
The school at the log schoolhouse on Little Pigeon Creek
was closed indeed, and would not open again until another win
ter ; but the one which Abraham Lincoln was really attending
could not shut its door at aU, and the lessons went on at all
hours. In the first place, the body which contained him was grow
ing at such a tremendous rate that he was a man in height be
fore he was fifteen years old, and by the time he passed his
seventeenth birthday he was as tall as he ever would be. That
is, he stood, barefooted, six feet and four inches of thin and
bony awkwardness. It was just such a body, doubtless, as was
required for the residence of such a boy as he was. There
would never be any great amount of mere pohsh or elegance
about either it or him ; but vast stores of natural strength were
forming in both, capable of undergoing severe training for the
work before them.
Good Mrs. Lincoln very soon despaired of keeping Abraham
in clothes that would fit him. It was not so much that he
wore things out too rapidly, as that he grew out of and away
from whatever she could put upon him. There was yet an
other difficulty. Cloth of any kind was scarce and dear, and a
great part of any boy's apparel had to be made of buckskin,

30 ABRAHAM LINCOLN
and that is a material which can hardly cease to shrink and
shrivel. So, while Abe's long legs were continually lengthen
ing, his buckskin trowsers were continually diminishing, from
day to day, in their capacity for holding or covering the legs
they were provided for. However loose they might be when
made, a few wettings in dewy corn-fields and rainy woods, or
in fording the creeks and sloughs, would surely produce a
tighter fit than any tailor could plan.
Stockings were out of the question at any time ; and when,
on special occasions or in cold weather, the luxury of shoes was
to be indulged in, these were always of a low-quartered leather-
saving pattern. All shoemaking among the settlers was done
at home or by some neighbor who had picked up enough of
the cobbler's art to put together such materials as might be
brought to him.
There was apt to be an ample length of bare blue ankles be
tween the lower border of Abe's tight buckskins and the tops
of his home-made shoes ; and this was a pecuharity of his ward
robe which clung to him for years and years. Nevertheless,
except for growing out of it so fast and so far, he did not dif
fer much in his apparel from any other boy among the settlers
near Little Pigeon Creek. Some of the very latest arrivals
might wear for a season the garments they came in, but in due
course of wear and tear these were sure to be replaced by the
regular backwoods uniform.
The boys were somewhat worse off than the girls with refer
ence to clothing, for a gown of linsey-woolsey or of homespun
jeans, no matter how skimp its pattern or how high its waist
might be, could be provided with "tucks" to let out, from
time to time, hke the reefs of a sail. The forest maidens, how
ever, were as independent as their brothers in the matter of
shoes and stockings. Strict economy required that, in all good
weather and in some that was a little bad, a young lady going
to meeting or to an evening party should carry her shoes in
her hand until near her destination. It was even expected that

A GENUINE START. 31
if, in the course of an evening, there should be over-much danc
ing performed, she should take them off again, lest a good pair
of shoes should be wasted frivolously.
Social features were steadily increasing in number and im
portance, now there were so many neighbors within a few
miles of Mr. Gentry's store. The beginning of a village had
been fairly made, and religious meetings of several kinds, and
parties and merry-makings of a great many kinds, broke rapidly
in upon the old-time monotony of frontier hfe. The woods
had ceased to be a wUdemess.

32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER VI.
BORROWED TREASURES.
The Art of Story-Telling— The Wonders in Books— The Uses of Written
Words.
Abraham Lincoln was just the kind of boy to speedily
make the acquaintance of every new faraily as soon as he
heard of its airival.
It was not only that he was of an eminently sociable disposi
tion. His few weeks of training under Hazel Dorsey had once
more brought to his mind a great and mysterious fact of
human hfe, and its meaning was taking feverish possession of
him. There were books !
He had seen a very few, and knew but little about the man
ner of their making ; and even less definite were his ideas of
what might be in them. There was something weird and
wonderful in their very existence, and there was no telhng
what wonder of a book a new family might own and bring
with them. He aheady knew of men who had brought whole
libraries ; two, three, four, perhaps half a dozen books gath
ered under one roof. It was worth while to walk a few miles,
and then to talk around and bear a helping hand at chopping or
something, to make acquaintance with human beings from
whom such a treasure as a bound volume might perhaps be
afterwards borrowed.
The unprinted learning of the backwoods, fact and fiction,
history and humor, travels from memory to memory by word
of mouth. Abe already knew and could tell more stories of
all sorts than any other scholar of Hazel Dorsey ; but he came
home one day from a borrowing expedition vsdth a book that
could beat him corapletely. He had found a copy of ^sops'

BORROWED TREASURES 33
Fables, and he was to learn from it how to put sharp points to
his stories, at need, and make invaluable weapons of them.
Before he had read that book through more than a score of times
he could make over into an arrowy " fable," with a moral of
some kind or a sting at the end of it, almost any anecdote or
incident with which his memory was stored, and ^sop had
been his schoolmaster in the subtle art of doing it weU.
A good story-teller was an important public acqiusition, and
Abe's popularity was assured in aU the wide and growing
circle of his acquaintances.
The Fables were a borrowed book, and had to be returned in
time ; but before long their place was filled by a story-teller of
a very different kind, sure to leave behind him an equally in
dehble mark on the mind of his young reader.
Abe's new prize came near getting him into disgrace for
neglecting his share of the growing corn. How could a boy
do justice to a corn-field with such a treat awaiting him in his
mother's cupboard at the house ?
An Enghsh tinker had written it : a low fellow who spent
many years of his life in jail for using his tongue too freely.
His name was John Bunyan, and he could hardly have been
poorer if he had settled in Indiana before it became a State.
StiU, he had written the " Pilgrim's Progress," and Abe Lincoln
had now borrowed a stray copy of it. Before that book went
home, Abe knew it almost by heart. It was impossible to do
that without learning a great deal, even if a dull and unim-
pressible boy had been the learner ; and the lessons taught by
Bunyan through that marvelous pilgrimage were the very
lessons Abe Lincoln's education thus far had left him in need
of. All the hfe around him, from his cradle, had been and
still was coarse, rude, earthy, sensuous, to the last degree sor
did and unspiritual.
Other books turned up here and there, and the family
Bible at home was an unfailing resource to Abe for every
thing but theology.

34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
The summer and fall went by and winter came, but no
school came with it. For some reason Hazel Dorsey failed to
gather again his scattered pupils, and it was a full year more
before the little log seminary could renew its usefulness.
Then came a new teacher with many new ways. Mr. Andrew
Crawford saw at once that the young people who came troop
ing around him were in need of other things as well as reading
and writing, or even arithmetic. His own scholarship was
equal to reasonable demands, and he could carry them as far as
the " rule of three," but he could appease no hunger for any
higher mathematics. Such merely ornamental branches as
grammar and geography were not insisted on by the parents
who employed him, but he was willing to add, of his own free
gift, other and valuable instruction. From the outset he be
gan to teach them " manners," and no such thing had been
heard of before in all that settlement. Every pupil was taught
and drilled in the proper method of getting into a room and
getting out of it, with all the kindred niceties of making intro
ductions and acquaintanceships. There was abundant fun in
it for the boys and girls ; and the next best thing to that was
Mr. Crawford's great attention to the correctness of their
speUing. It was not long before Abe's book-training began to show
its fruits. He was acknowledged to be the leader of the school
in the matter of putting together the right letters to make up
a word. He became, in fact, a sort of good-natured walking
dictionary for the rest, and it was at times needful to turn so
willing a prompter out of doors during contested matches or
perplexing recitations.
One day the spelling-class embraced nearly the entire school,
and Abe had been duly turned out, after a terrific threat from Mr.
Crawford that he would keep his victims there all night if they
failed to give the correct spelling of the hard word " defied."
There was indeed work before a mob of young people every
soul of whom was possessed with a conviction that the verbal

BORROWED TREASURES. 35
stumbhng-block had a " y" in it. All around the class it went,
and half-way around again but just as it reached a favorite
of his named Polly Roby, there was Abe's head at the open
window behind the master, with a finger in one eye and a sug
gestive wink in the other.
PoUy's quick wits caught the hint ; the awful word was con
quered in a second, and Andrew Crawford was sure there had
been no unfair assistance given by Abraham Lincoln.
There was one other department of that primitive schoohng
in which Abe stood aU alone. He was the only scholar who
insisted on turning his writing-lessons into any kind of " com
positions." It was altogether out of Andrew Crawford's hue
and beyond him. He would not have done any such thing
himself, and he would not encourage in wild hterary extrava
gance a lot of children whose life-business was to be the raising
of com and the making of pork. Perhaps even Abe might
not have undertaken it so very early if he had not found a
work of common humanity calhng for the use of his pen.
There was not an animal in the woods for which he had not
a kindly feeling. Even the woodchucks he dug out of their
holes were in a manner his neighbors, and the land-turtles got
out of his way, so far as any danger to them was concemed,
mainly because he might carelessly step on them with his im
mense feet. The other boys were not by any means so tender
hearted, and a terrapin marching away from some of them
with a hve coal on his back offered a fine subject to Abe for
an essay upon " Cruelty to Animals."
It was first given orally to the young savages who were mal
treating the helpless terrapin. Then it came out in slowly
written sentences in Abe's copy-book. Then it grew and wid
ened into a full-sized " composition," and Abe's career as a
writer had fairly begun. He had learned to spell words, and
now he had discovered for himself the great art of making
them stand in effective order upon paper. Still, paper was
scarce, and it was necessary to be exceedingly economical in

36 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the use of it. No word could go dovm upon such precious
material until the writer felt very sure it was the best one he
could use in that place, and no more could be employed than
were needed to do the work in hand and express the exact
meaning intended. The scarcity of paper, therefore, was itself
an excellent teacher, continually forcing the young essayist to
avoid the most common fault of all writers, trained and un
trained. There were ways to be invented, however, of overcoming
the paper difficulty, in part, and of stiU obtaining an idea of
how any given sentence would look in written characters.
There was the great wooden shovel in the chimney-corner
every night. The surface of it could be shaved clean with his
father's "drawing-knife," and then, by the light of the fire,
aided by that of a smaU torch of hickory or birch bark, the
whole face of the shovel could be covered with figures and let
ters. By day and out of doors a basswood shingle would an
swer the same purpose, with a piece of charcoal for a crayon.
A matter could be written and rewritten, and anything pro
nounced worthy of preservation could be carefuUy transferred
with pen and ink to the pages of an old blank-book which was
one of Abe's choicest treasures. Not aU the contents of that
misceUaneous coUection were original, for it contained also
copious quotations from every volume its owner managed to
borrow. More of these were now coming within reach, from time to
time. Some of the books themselves were a kind of human
being. No other settler came into that neighborhood in all
those days who was more a real man, come to a real new coun
try, than was Robinson Crasoe, and Abe learned most
thoroughly aU the ingenious methods of that wonderful cast
away in deahng with dangers and difficulties.
Blackhawk and his warriors were only a few days' march
northwestward, and, although there was no " man Friday" to be
obtained among them, the print of a moccasined foot in the

BORROWED TREASURES. 37
mud would stiU have been a thing to cause alarm and astonish
ment, if found.
Yet another good arrival brought with him a " History of the
United States," and this afforded abundant employment for the
fire-shovel and the scrap-book.
There were other wonders of hterature which were not to be
borrowed, but to be read by the friendly hght of the fireplaces
from which they could not be carried away. Among these
was a small book which told of more wonderful achievements
than even the History, for it was Sindbad the Sailor's own ac
count of his perilous voyages.
There was teaching in that book of a specially important
nature, for it told of lands and peoples heretofore not so rauch
s dreamed of by the overgrown stepson of Mrs. Sally Lincoln.
t helped Robinson Crusoe to make the world wider for him ;
and when spring came and there were grass and dry leaves in
the woods to he down upon, he could loaf under the trees and
dream of ships and oceans and far-away countries where ah
things were so different from the life he had known in Ken
tucky and Indiana.
He was now fifteen years old, and of course he had heard of
George Washington. He knew by oral traditions, vague and
fragmentary, that the Father of his Country had at one time
hved in the backwoods and had fought hard battles with the
Indians. His dehght was great, therefore, when one day old
Josiah Crawford, the crustiest of his neighbors, consented to
let him carry home a copy of Weems's " Life of Washington."
It was a small, thin book in a sheepskin cover, but no other or
greater biographer has ever dealt with the deeds of any hero
in a spirit of more exuberant enthusiasm. It was slow, intense,
instmctive reading. Each page had to be dwelt upon and gone
over and over, and there were copious notes to be made on
wood and copied into the scrap-book. Bedtime was a hateful
intruder upon such dehght as that, and it was hard to be forced
away from it and compelled to lift himself, peg by peg, into

38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the dark loft above, and separated even from the very paper
and binding.
Night after night, with special care, the book was deposited
upon a little shelf against the wall of the room below. There
were two stout pegs in the log, and a shingle laid across them
made the shelf. The book should have been in safety there, if
anywhere. It was a pity, however, that Abe should have
failed to examine the mud " chinking" of those logs, for it had
fallen out just above the shelf, leaving a crack which was full
of peril to literature. There came a night, when he and
Dennis Hanks were sound asleep, that was full of wind and
rain. Gust after gust drove in the flying water through the
cranny in the wall, and the shelf was flooded and the precious
book was drowned.
When morning came, there lay the soaked and ruined rehcs
of the only " Life of Washington" tn all that part of Indiana.
It was of little use to dry the leaves in the sun. Abe did so
with sorrowful care, and then he bore them home to their owner ;
but old Josiah refused to receive them.
" Reckon I'U have to make it good somehow," said Abe,
moumfuUy. " Wkat's it wuth ? "
" Seventy-five cents ; and I don't know whar I'll git another."
He might as weU have said seventy-five thousand, and Abe
very frankly told him so.
" Well, Abe," said old Josiah, at last, " seein' it's you, I teU
ye what I'll do. You pull fodder for me three days, at twenty-
five cents a day, and I'll call it squar."
"I'U do it, and I'U jest keep what thar is left of the book."
It had been a well-thumbed, dog's-eared affair, and Crawford
had sold it to Abe, after this fashion, at a remarkably high
price. So high, in fact, that Abe's remorse did not prevent
his sense of justice from rebelling even while he consented to
come and puU the fodder. He and Josiah Crawford were never
more good friends, and more than a httle good-tempered " get
ting even" had to be performed for a long time afterM'ards.

FRONTIER TRAINING. 39

CHAPTER vn.
FRONTIER TRAINING.
Oratorical Beginnings — Frontier Politics — Hiring Out — A Wedding and a
Funeral — Studies among Plain People — A Glimpse into Law.
Now that there were so many settlers, the rehgious gather
ings at the Little Pigeon Creek meeting-house became more
frequent. Whenever there was preaching of any kind, Mrs.
Sally Lincoln was sure to go, and to insist on taking her hus
band with her. It made smaU difference to Tom, indeed, to
what sect the preacher of the day might belong. He himself
had been, in his day, a member of several sects, and not a very
shining ornament to either of them. No change whatever was
required when he moved from one into another.
The young people were frequently left at home ; but they
had preaching among them nevertheless, albeit with more of
rough fun than profitable doctrine in the sermons. No sooner
were their elders out of sight among the trees than the family
Bible would come down from its shelf, and Abe knew its con
tents quite weU enough to find any text he wanted.
" Now, girls," he would say, " you and John and Dennis do
the cryin'. I'U do the preachin'."
A hymn or so was given out and sung, and the sermon was
only too hkely to be a taking off of the style and eccentricities
of some traveling exhorter they had heard at the meeting
house. Not always, indeed ; for Abe once preached a sermon,
on his favorite theme of " cruelty to animals," which was re
membered for many years by one little girl, a neighbor, who
was that day a member of his childish congregation.
The bom orator within him was coming to the surface, and

40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
preaching in the house on Sundays led very naturally to stump-
speaking in the fields on other days in times of pohtical ex
citement. Abe began his training in that school before he waa
sixteen years old. He advanced so rapidly that before long he
could draw the hands in a corn-field away from their husking
at any moment by the droU originahty of his boyish addresses.
It was a positive rehef to a young f eUow who was thinking
so much and so hard to talk out some part of his internal fer
mentation. Pohtical affairs occupied a large share of the
thoughts and conversations of the Pigeon Creek people, and
were attended to from house to house as the best possible ex
cuse for a visit and chat.
A whole family could go over and make a caU upon another
family, and visitors were always welcome. There was the
freest hospitality. K there were not chairs and benches
enough, the floor was an exceUent place for man or woman to
sit down upon. If apples were scarce, or if the supply had
given out, a plate of raw potatoes or turnips, nicely washed,
could be offered instead, with a bottle of whisky : and there
was the very soul of hberahty in the offering.
There was one feature of frontier hospitality, indeed, to
which Abraham Lincoln never at any time took kindly. He
could not bring himseK to the use of any description of intoxi
cating hquor, and in due time he both spoke and wrote against
what he perceived to be a social curse and scourge. Such a
body as his might perhaps have been persuaded to accept the
comraon custom, but the clear common-sense of his inner boy
rebeUed and prevented him from acquiring a taste for any
thing containing alcohoL
Body and mind, he was now growing with tremendous
rapidity; but the lessons he was receiving did not come by way
of any professional school-teacher after he triumphed over
" manners" and the speUing-book under Andrew Crawford.
One lesson of hfe began with a wedding in the old log-
house, when Nancy, or rather SaUy, Hanks Lincoln reached her

FRONTIER TRAINING. 41
eighteenth year. It was the merriest day the place had seen
since Tom Lincoln halted his tired horses on the knoll and
planned his first " pole-shelter." Sally became Mrs. Grigsby,
and left her father's cabin to live in that of her husband.
It was not too far away for Abe to make frequent visits to
his married sister ; hut within the year the young bride was
removed to a more distant country, and Aaron Grigsby was a
widower. Abraham was now the sole remaining child of Mrs. Nancy
Hanks Lincoln, but he was as a favorite son to his loving step
mother. The shadows grew deeper upon his queer, strongly
marked face whenever it was in repose, but there was some
what less of that than formerly. The great sociabihty of his
nature was caUed into more frequent activity as time went on.
His love of fun and his peculiar capacity for making it ren
dered him a welcome visitor throughout the scattered settle
ment. He was liked by all women old and young for his kind
liness, and he was the most popular of all the idlers who stroUed
from their cabins and corn-fields into what had now become the
village of GentryviUe. Idling, in fact, at all seasons when no
work is pressing, is one of the fixed institutions of a new coun
try, and this may in part be owing to the amount and nature
of the compulsory hard work.
As for Tom Lincoln, the older he grew the stronger became
his tendency to shift the drudgeries of his farm upon Abe and
John Johnston and Dennis Hanks, but his thrifty and stirring
wKe insisted that the work should be done by some one. Abe
did his duty by her, as she affectionately boasted in after-years,
but he was now developing a strong preference for working
upon any other piece of ground than the Lincoln farm. He
chose to hire himseK out to other farmers for any kind of
labor, even K his father got most of the benefit by receiving
his wages for him. His services were always in request. He
could chop more wood, handle more hay, husk more com, and
hft a heavier weight than any other young feUow to be had

42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
for the hiring, and he was perpetually good-humored and
obligmg. He was a favorite with aU children, and their
mothers liked to have around the house a " hand" who, after
his field-work was over, was equally ready to 'tend baby, go for
a bucket of water, teU a story, or recite any required amount
of poetry. His memory held everything tenaciously and in
condition for mstant use. It was stored not only with the
miscellaneous contents of his scrap-book and with such pas
sages of prose or verse as had impressed him in his reading,
but also with every telhng jingle he had heard. If he went
to meeting, he could afterwards repeat the sermon alraost word
for word. The very narrowness of his singular course of study
had put his naturally good memory into exceUent training, and
he did not as yet know so many things, acquired either by sight
or hearing, that his mind had not ample space and elbow-room
for aU of them.
From house to house and from farm to farm the taU strip
ling went the rounds as he raight be hired, httle thinking or
caring how thorough a knowledge he was by that means ob
taining of the character of the different classes of people who
were filling up the great West. He could but study them un
consciously as he went and came, and he was learning more
about them than some of them knew about themselves. He
knew frora whence they had eraigrated, and how people lived
in those distant communities. He became famUiar with habits,
prejudices, superstitions, rehgious behefs, pohtical ideas, social
distinctions, varied hopes and fears, and aspirations and disap
pointments. He learned, too, somewhat of different national
ities and the races of which these settlers were bom or had
descended, and to what extent they had become inteUigent
members of a seK-governing community.
He could not know at the time through what a school he
was passing, but every step of his after-life proved that not
any of those hard lessons-by-the-way, so useless to another man,
had been wasted upon him. There was no maimer of miracle

FRONTIER TRAINING. 43
in his intimate knowledge of the thoughts and ways and feel
ings of " the plain people."
He began now to seek and find drier and more difficult
studies. A friend of his named David Turnham had been
made " acting constable" of the settlement, and had purchased
a copy of the " Revised Statutes of Indiana" to guide him in
the duties of his office. David was firm in the idea that a con
stable should always have his printed instructions at hand for
reference, and the book was not to be borrowed, but Abe was
welcome to come to the owner's house and read the laws. It
was very different reading from Robinson Crusoe or Weems's
Washington, but it was pored over none the less persistently.
Abraham Lincoln was beginning his legal studies, but with
only a faint conception of what a lawyer might be. Getting
law from such a book as that was something like getting
wheat-flour or corn-meal from a horse-mill, such as they all
resorted to on Pigeon Creek. There was but one within
reach ; and when a farmer went to it with a load of grain, he
set his own horses at the work of turning the mill when his
turn came. A fuU day's hard toil turned out about fifteen
bushels, without any " bolting." AU that kind of finishing
was to be done at home. Still, it was better than a mere
hand-miU, as that had been an improvement on the primitive
mortar and pestle. Some of Abe's law-study, indeed, must
more have resembled the work of the mortar and pestle, and
aU results were much like the flour from the horse-mill. A
kind of learning was in them, but all unsifted, and his strong
memory retained the veriest " bran" of the statutes of Indiana.
Abe was less and less at home nowadays, but his loving
stepmother by no means lost sight of him. She had strong
hopes and convictions conceming his future, and she encour
aged him continually. She well deserved the hearty affection
with which he accepted her entirely as his " mother." He
gave her so much and so steadily, through all that time, that
when, many long years afterwards, her great, gloomy, fun-lov-

44 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
ing boy had lived out his useful life, the vast nation that
mourned him and whose people sought to study the lessons of
his career and character, were almost surprised to discover that
he had had another mother. It is, however, irapossible to
dismiss from thoughtful consideration the first ten years of his
training, or the shadowy, melancholy, yet attractive picture
which is dimly visible of Nancy Hanks Lincoln.
The are no deeper impressions made upon any life than
those which are received in childhood, and upon the nature of
these must often depend the acceptance and the benefit of
whatever advantage or opportunity may afterwards come
within reach.

BOY-OF-ALL-WORK "^ 45

CHAPTER Vni.

BOT-OF-ALL-WORK.

Toil, Fun and Frolic — Books and Speaking Matches — A Severe Lesson in
Caste — Practical Teachings on Temperance — 1835.
The Lincoln cabin was a smaU one. So large a family could
hardly make themselves comfortable in one room and a loft,
now that its younger members were so fast growing towards
maturity. The farm, too, was liraited in its capacity, and so
there were reasons why Abe was perraitted to have his own
way in the matter of " working out." His longest hiring at
any one place began in the year 1825, when he went to work
for James Taylor, who owned the ferry across the Ohio River,
at the mouth of Anderson's Creek. There were books to be
had at Taylor's, and neW ideas were to be picked up from the
people of all sorts who from time to time were passengers in
the rude ferryboat.
There were duties for Abe in great abundance, for he was
man-of-aU-work about the house and farm. Perhaps the raost
distasteful of aU was grinding com in a hand-mill, or grating
the green ears for Mrs. Taylor's cookery. His hatred of
cruelty to animals did not at all stand in the way of his being
a good hand at butchering hogs in " kdUing time." His feel
ings, however, or his books, or his many industries, or all com
bined, prevented him from forming any taste for hunting.
Game was so plentKul that the smaller varieties were a pest
to the farmers. They were slaughtered to get rid of them,
rather than for the table. Deer, bears, wild turkeys, were
made to be eaten, and formed an important part of any man's
calculations for his supply of provisions for the year. Wild-

46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
cats and even panthers were stiU sufficiently numerous to
render uncomfortable at times the idea of lonely walks after
nightfall. It was a wild country K judged by standards accepted in
older communities, but a change was creeping over the ways
and manners of the Gentryville and Pigeon Creek settlers.
They were becoming somewhat crowded by each other. Here
and there were farms whose borders actuaUy touched, and
there was much more fencing required than in former days.
There was greater sociabihty, of course, and there were larger
gatherings at the meeting-house on Sundays. Right along
with these, in growing size and frequency, came the corn-
shuckings, log-rollings, chopping-bees, shooting-matches, dances,
and other contrivances for getting the neighbors together for
a frohc. Abraham Lincoln was not the boy to wilhngly miss a frohp
of any kind, and as a general thing he was pretty sure of in
vitations, for he had faculties and accomplishments which were
in demand. To his old-time capacity as a story-teUer he was now
adding a turn for satire and travesty, which now and then got
him into difficulties, for his love of fun forbade him to spare
anything worth taking off, and his reverence was as yet an un
developed part of his character. Even in carefully hstening
to a sermon, he was too apt to remember with it every oddity
and eccentricity of the preacher, and the whole would soon be
reproduced, with ludicrous precision of gesture and intonation,
before the uproarious congregations at the merry-makings.
There was only too much that was odd and even grotesque in
the frontier preaching of that day, good and useful as were
sorae of the preachers, and the irreverent mimic had ample
matter for his performances.
From reciting the poetry of others there was but a step to
an attempt at manufacturing verses on his own account. It
was not long before the ambitious boy of all work and de-
vourer of aU books made for himseK a local reputation as a

BOY OF- ALL- WORK. 47
rhymster. Almost any story, or any satirical attack upon an
obnoxious neighbor, could be given a better point or a sharper
sting by being thrown into the shape of a rude but jingling bal
lad. It was easy enough, moreover, to secure an attentive
audience for that kind of " border minstrelsy."
Excepting rehgious services and funerals, there could hardly
be a gathering of such a population without a part of the en
tertainment consisting of trials of bodily strength and skUl
among the younger and even the middle-aged men. Into
these Abe entered with enthusiasm. There were many who
could beat him with the rifle, but it began to be discovered
that as he attained his full size, and his tough muscles filled
out a httle upon his bony frame, the rivals were fewer and
fewer who could hope to excel him at wrestling, jumping, throw
ing the " maul" or heavy hamraer, or in hfting a dead weight.
Physical power was of value for many reasons. The mju
upon whom his wit turned the laugh were not always con
tented to let the matter pass as a joke ; but even the readiest
of rough-and-tumble fighters was less prompt to quarrel with a
young feUow who could laughingly pick up three or four
times his weight and walk off with it. Nevertheless, every
now and then, and even when trying to act as a peacemaker,
Abe was sure to find a fight on his hands. The cheapness and
abundance of whisky was generally at the bottom of such
troubles ; and they served him a good turn, by impressing him
more and more deeply with the fact, then generally ignored,
that a drinking or drunken man has httle prospect of success
in any competition with one who is wise enough to let drink
alone. Frohc as much as he might, and be never so popular at
all merry-makings, his somber and serious " inner man" was
master always, and sure to keep him steady. As for mere
trials of strength, even if forced upon him by the anger of
others, they did but help him to acquire an exhaustless fund of
confidence in his abihty to pull himself and his friends safely
through any difficulty which might be brought upon them.

48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
More books were coming now. A man named Jones opened
an opposition store at Gentryville, and he took a personal hk-
ing to Abe Lincoln. Apart from mere friendship, he saw that
so popular a youngster could not fail to attract customers, and
so, for a time that sufficed for reading every book owned by
Mr. Jones, Abe acted as a sort of clerk and salesman for him.
He kept no books of account and did not acquire the finer
mysteries of merchandise; but he could pack and unpack
goods, attend to customers, crack jokes with idlers, keep the
place looking busy, and increase his pecuhar knowledge of the
world he was to live in. It was every way as valuable to him,
as a piece of schoohng, as would have been another winter
term under Andrew Crawford.
During this part of his motley education Abe made himself
the star orator of the GentryviUe " speaking-matches." These
were carried on in a rude kind of debating club, and the range
of topics discussed was a wide one. Both the consciousness
and the love of oratorical power began to grow strong within
hira. At the same time he was thirsting for a deeper knowl
edge of law and justice than could be sKted from the Revised
Statutes of Indiana.
The county-seat of Warrick County was but fifteen mUes
from Gentryville. Courts were held there at certain seasons
of the year, and judges sat to hear causes, and juries listened
to testimony and arguments and rendered verdicts.
There, too, men were tried for crimes, and some received
the penalty of their evil deeds. Others, again, came forth free
and in a manner distinguished, with the thriUing story of their
trial and escape to teU ever afterwards, as the choicest bit of
frontier history known to them. It was no small thing for
any man that he had been actually tried and acquitted of some
thing serious, and he took a kind of rank proportioned to the
magnitude and peril of his ordeal.
A httle walk of fifteen miles in the early morning, and with
no more to walk in returning after nightfall, could hardly in-

BO Y- OF- ALL- WORK. 49
terfere with the attendance at court of a student combining
Abe's length of hmb with his eagerness for law. He was sure
to be among the audience in the court-room whenever he
coxdd escape from other duties. Not the judge himseK, nor
any jury, attended more zealously the fortunes of every case
he heard.
One day a man was on trial for murder, and had secured
for his defence a lawyer of more than common abihty named
John Breckinridge. Abraiam Lincoln had been exceedingly
interested in the case from the beginning ; but when the
time came for the prisoner's counsel to speak in his defence,
there was a surprise prepared for the young Gentryville de
bater. He had never, until that day, listened to a reaUy
good argument, dehvered by a man of learning and eloquence,
but he had prepared himseK to know and profit by such an ex
perience when it came to him. He hstened as K he had him
seK been the prisoner whose hfe depended upon the success of
Mr. Breckinridge in persuading the jury of his innocence.
Other juries, long afterwards, were to learn how profound
and successf id had been the study the rough backwoods boy
was then giving to the great art of persuading the minds of
men. Millions of his feUow-citizens were to bear witness to
the capacity he was then developing of so uttering a thought
that those who heard or read the utterance could never after
wards tear that thought out of their memories.
Abraham Lincoln learned much from the great speech ; but
he had yet a deep and bitter lesson to receive that day. The
lines of social caste were somewhat rigidly drawn at that time.
A leading lawyer of good family hke Mr. Breckinridge was a
" gentleman," and a species of great man not to be carelessly
addressed by haK-clad boors from the new settlements.
Abe forgot all that ; perhaps not knowing it very well. He
could not repress his enthusiasm over that magnificent appeal
to the judge and jury. The last sentence of the speech had
hardly died away before he was pushing through the throng

50 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
towards the gKted orator. Mr. Breckinridge was walking
grandly out of the court-room, when there stood in his path a
gigantic, solemn-visaged, beardless clodhopper, reaching out a
long coatless arm, with an immense hard hand at the end of
it, while an agitated voice expressed the heartiest commenda
tion of the abihty and eloquence of his plea for his client.
Breckinridge was a smaU-souled man in spite of his mental
power and his training, for he did but glance in proud amaze
ment at the shabby, presumptuous boy, and then pass stupidly
on without speaking. He had imparted priceless instruction
to a f eUow who had yet but a faint perception of the artificial
barriers before him.
The two met again, at the city of Washington, in the year
1862, under other circumstances, and then the President of the
United States again comphmented Mr. Breckinridge upon the
exceUence of his speech in the Indiana murder-case.
The precise information conveyed to Abe, whether or not
he mentally put it into form, was that he was a " poor white"
and of no account; a species of human trash to whom the
respect due to all recognized manhood did not belong. He
forgave the man who told him what he was, but he never ceased
to profit by the stinging, wholesome information.
It was but a little while afterwards, while he was tempora
rily employed by old Josiah Crawford, and when he had wor
ried good Mrs. Crawford overmuch by the fun and uproar he
created in her kitchen, that she asked him,
" Now, Abe, what on earth do you s'pose'U ever become of
ye ? What'U you be good for K you keep a-goin' on in this
way?" " Well," slowly responded Abe, " I reckon I'm goin' to be
President of the United States one of these days."
He said it soberly enough. And that was not the only occasion
upon which there feU from his lips some strange, extravagant
expression of his inner thought that there was a great work
for him to do somewhere in the future. He could plow, chop

BOY-OF-ALL-WORK. 51
wood, 'tend store, do errands, make fun, now ; but he could all
the while feel that he was growing, growing, and that this
would not last forever. He could feel that the change continu-
aUy going forward within him could not be with reference to
such a hfe as he was leading, or to such as he saw led by the
fuU-grown and elderly men around him. For him there was,
there must be, something more and higher, and he was blindly
reaching out after it, day by day ; but all the others deemed
him as one of themselves ; better than some, it might be, but
very much below any young man whose father could give him
a good farm and some hogs and a httle ready money.
In the winter of 1826-7, a school was opened by a Mr. Swa-
ney, in a school-house abont four and a half miles from the
Lincoln farm. The branches of learning taught by hira in
cluded nothing higher than had been attempted by Crawford.
It was an inclement winter, and mere coming and going were
often serious undertakings. Young Lincoln made a begin
ning, but his attendance soon became intermittent, and then
ceased altogether. He had found, perhaps, that he could bet
ter occupy his time at home.

52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER IX.
THE FLATBOAT.
A Trading "Voyage— Life in the Southern States— First View of Human
Slavery— 1838.
Abe Lincoln had made himseK the best known and most
popular young feUow in aU the region round about GentryviUe ;
but although the whole country hked him, he did not at aU hke
the country. He was now nineteen years of age, but was stUl
subject to his father's authority, and Tom Lincoln was not the
raan to surrender his legal right to the wages of his stalwart
son. All rates for farra-labor were low, however, and there was
none too much of it to be sold, at any price, in a community
where most men could do aU their own work and have ample
time left for lounging at neighboring cabins or around the
viUage grocery.
Abe had long since given up the idea of earning a hving be
hind the counter of Jones's store, or any other that he knew of.
He was under bonds to his father, but he made an attempt to
obtain employment as a boat-hand on the river. His age was
against him in his first effort, but his opportunity was coming
to him. In the month of March, 1828, he hired himseK to Mr.
Gentry, the great man of GentryviUe. His duties were to be
mainly performed at Gentry's Landing, near Rockport, on the
Ohio River. There was a great enterprise on foot, or rather in
the water, at Gentry's Landing, for a fiatboat belonging to the
proprietor was loading with bacon and other produce for a
trading trip down the Mississippi to New Orleans. She was to
be under the command of young Allen Gentry, but would never
retum to the Ohio, for flatboats are built to go down with the
stream and not for pulhng against it.

THE FLATBOAT. 53
Abe's hour for travel and adventure had at last arrived. He
was given the position of "bow-hand," at eight doUars a month
and rations, with a paid return-passage home on a steamboat.
It was a golden vision indeed, yet not so much for the money
as for the grand trip itseK.
There was society at the " Landing ;" and while the boat was
taking on her cargo, her taU bow-hand improved his oppor
tunities. Miss Roby, whom he had known at Crawford's school, and
through whom he had saved the spelling-class from disaster,
was deeply interested in the success of that flatboat. Not a
great while after the completion of its one voyage she became
Mrs. Allen Gentry, and even now she found excuses and occa
sions for coming on board to chat with the captain and with
his queer, fun-loving " crew."
"Abe," she said, late one afternoon, "the sun's going down."
"Reckon not," said Abe. "We're coming up, that's all."
" Don't you s'pose I've got eyes ? "
" Reckon so ; but it's the earth that goes round. The sun
keeps as stUl as a tree. When we're swung around so we can't
see him any more, aU the shine's cut off and we caU it night."
" Abe, what a fool you are !"
It was all in vain to explain the matter any further. The
science of astronomy had not been taught at Crawford's, and
was not at aU popular in Indiana. Whatever sprinkling of it
Abe had found among his books, there was no use in trying
to spread its wild vagaries along the banks of the Ohio River.
He knew altogether too much for his time, and a mere flat
boatman had no business to dispute the visible truth concern
ing the daily habits of a contrivance so well known as the sun.
The flatboat was cast loose from her moorings in April, and
swept away down the river, with Abraham Lincoln as manager
of the forward oars. No such craft ever had a longer or
stronger pair of arms pledged to keep her blunt nose well di
rected.

54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
They drifted down the Ohio into the Mississippi, and on
down for hundreds of crooked miles, home swKtly by the
muddy, irresistible current. It was a matter both of skiU and
toil to effect a stoppage at a landing for tradmg purposes ; but
the required visits were made from place to place, and the
young merchants met with very encouraging success. The
worst enemy they had to contend with was counterfeit money,
for they were no experts in detecting the quahty of either coin
or paper. In fact, there was so much more bad money than
good in circulation up and down the Mississippi that a with
drawal of aU the spurious stuff at any one time would have
caused a disastrous contraction of the currency. The all but
universal custom was to take what came and to pass it again
without inquiry, unless it were too hopelessly defective in its
external appearance.
It was a trip fuU of life-long consequences to Abraham Lin
coln. Now again, for the first time since, a mere child, he
had emigrated from Kentucky, the budding statesman came
in contact with human slavery. He had seen much of what
could be done with white men in their degradation by poverty,
ignorance, and intemperance. He was now to observe the ef
fect of aU these upon black human beings held as property
and not regarded as men and women. He was in a fair state
of preparation for Such a study. Already, with patient care,
he had written an essay on Temperance, the pubhcation of
which in a country newspaper at a distance had stirred his
young ambition to fever heat. He had foUowed that with an
other, the leading idea of which was the necessity of general
popular education ; and this too had been printed. In these he
had worked out and presented the results of his studies of hu
man life among his neighbors. He was now to begin his
training and preparation for yet other essays which he was to
print, and for speeches which he was to deliver, in the great
and terrible years that were to come.
He was not to see the sunny side of plantation-hfe, such as

277^ FLATBOAT. 55
it was. Slavery came before him in the shape of negroes under
the whip, engaged in loading and unloading river craft, or toil
ing in unpaid drudgery among the hot fields along the banks.
He saw negroes chained in coffles, on their way to and from
the market, and he saw them bought and sold hke cattle in the
slave-mart at New Orleans. Only the unpleasant, the brutally
offensive f eatiires of the black curse were permitted to make
their impression upon him, and the brand they left was an in
effaceable scar.
All that was upon his inner boy, indeed, but it was to be in
a maimer supplemented and represented by a mark in the body
he occupied. At the plantation of Madame Bushane, six miles
below Baton Rouge, the flatboat was moored for the night
against the landing, and the keepers were sound asleep in theh
httle kennel of a cabin. They slept untU the sound of stealthy
footsteps on the deck aroused Allen Gentry, and he sprang to
his feet. There could be no doubt as to the cause of the dis
turbance. A gang of negroes had boarded the boat for
plunder, and they would think lightly enough, now they were
discovered, of knocking the two traders on the head and throw
ing them into the river.
" Bring the guns, Abe !" shouted Allen. " Shoot them !"
The intruders were not to be scared away by even so alarm
ing an outcry ; and in an instant more Abe Lincoln was among
them, not with a gun but with a serviceable club. They
fought weU, and one of them gave their tall enemy a wound,
the scar of which he carried with him to his grave ; but his
strength and agUity were too much for them. He beat them
aU off the boat, not killing any one man, but convincing the
entire party that they had boarded the wrong " broad-horn."
The trip lasted about three months, going and coming, and
in June the two adventurers were at home again, well satisfied
with their success. Allen Gentry had profited the more
largely in the mere matter of money, but his bow-hand had
brought back with him treasures of information ; of experience

5Q ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
and education, gathered all the way from the mouth of Ander
son's Creek, on the Ohio, to the very borders of the GuK ot
Mexico. The whole country and the world itseK was yet to
he the better and the wiser for Abraham Lincoln's schooling
in his slow sumraer voyage down the Mississippi and up again.
Little he then dreamed that he was yet to direct the course of
fleets on that same water, of armies along the winding shores,
and the sieges of strong forts upon the bluffs and headlands.
His lessons were not aU dark ones, doubtless, but the shad
ows upon his face were deepening with so much to think of,
and there was smaU probabihty that he would again settle
cheerfuUy down to the duU and empty hfe of the Little Pigeon
Greek neighborhood.

•¦ OF ILLINOIS." 57

CHAPTER X.

Another Migration — Of full Age and Free — Farmhand and Flatboatman—
More Southern Studies — 1830.
Rapidlt as the young State of Indiana was filling up with
sturdy farmers from the older settlements, it was stiU a very
new country. And yet there was a newer and a more wonder
ful region spread out beyond it. The vast expanse of prairie
and forest between the Indiana line and the Mississippi River
had been formed into the State of lUinois. Men told marvel
ous tales of its fertUity, and of the ease with which farms
could be opened on land where so much and so perfect a
clearing had been made by the hand of Nature.
John Hanks, a cousin of the Lincolns, had settled near Decar
tur, in central Illinois, in 1828, and his letters fired the imar
gination of Dennis Hanks to such a degree that he talked of
httle else than prairie-farming. He even made a visit to
lUinois, and after his retum the question of emigrating or not
was as good as settled for the whole fanuly. Dennis had now
married the oldest daughter of Abe's good stepmother, and
had made a sort of start in hfe for himself, so that he was in
some degree an independent person ; but Abe had yet a few
short months to wait for manhood and freedom.
There were agencies at work to drive as well as to attract,
for the " mUk-sick" had appeared again, and was at work with
terrible energy upon both heasts and human beings. In spite
of that, however, a whole year was consumed in the process of
getting away from the old place.
Another daughter of Mrs. Lincoln had married Levi Hall,

58 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
and the young couple joined the westward movement. Yet,
when land and corn and stock had been sold, one large wagon
held all the household stuff of the three famihes of Hanks,
Hall, and Lincoln. They waited until the latter part of the
winter of 1830, and Abraham Lincoln becarae of age but a
few days before they set out for Illinois.
A worse time of the year could hardly have been selected for
wagoning over western roads, but the choice of it was charac
teristic of Tom Lincoln. The four yoke of oxen over which
Abe held the " gad " were barely sufficient to overcome the
unending succession of mudholes, sloughs, and rivers through
which the clumsy vehicle had to be hauled. It was an un
usually good wagon for those days, although it was the very
first Tom Lincoln ever owned, and it held together weU.
On the first day of March, 1830, after two weeks of slow
and laborious travel, the journey ended at the house of John
Hanks near Decatur.
Abraham Lincoln had reached the scenes of his further edu
cation, his trials and his triumphs for the thirty years which
then lay between him and his highest uses. He would need
all the time, and a good use of aU his opportunities : and these
could hardly be fewer or poorer, nor could the obstacles to be
overcome confront him with more insurmountable stubborn
ness, than those he had left behind him in the fever-haxmted
woods of Indiana.
Some oppressions, indeed, were now removed. He was
twenty-one, and was a free man and a voter. He could come
and go as he pleased, and such wages as he might eam would
be all his ovm. Beyond that, however, there was httle to be
said for him. Trade, profession, manual skUl of any special
kind, he had none except the coarse arts of the wood-chopper,
the boatman, and rough farmer.
He was free, but his first work in Illinois was given to his
father, or rather to his well-beloved stepmother ; for he joined
the other males of the family in building a house on a high

" OF ILLINOIS." 59
bank of the north fork of the Sangamon River, out of some
logs already cut there, and given them for the purpose by
John Hanks.
After the new homestead was completed and the fanuly had
moved into it, Abe and Dennis plowed up fifteen acres of
prairie-land for com, and spht rails enough to fence it in. He
had done what he could to leave matters in good shape behind
him as he went out to toU for himseK. But he severed no tie
of affection in>his going. To his dying day he never ceased
to care for his " mother" and her comfort, and there was no
interruption of the fuU current of her love for him.
It was a great day for Abraham Lincoln when, aU present
fiihal duty weU performed, he once for aU cut himseK loose
from the heaviest part of the load he had carried for twenty-
one long years. The crushing weight of that oppression no
man can estimate. Not even if he has studied never so care
fuUy what it is, and then was, to be a " poor white" in a new
settlement ; for different men take up different weights in the
same pack. Young Lincoln himseK had but dim and formless
perceptions of the truth. Neither he nor any one else could
know or comprehend, moreover, the wonderful manner and
degree of the gain he had won from his very disadvantages.
No one could discern or measure the intemal growth, as aU
coidd the physical and external ; but a giant had been trained
and was still in training for a hf e-long wrestle with opposing
forces of every name and nature.
It was about the middle of spring before a beginning could
be made in the new career, but from that time forward Abe
ceased to make his father's house his home. Except that it
contained his mother, it could not be a home for him in any
true sense. He never had had one : only a log-shelter to eat
and sleep in ; while the cattle he drove were better provided
for, considering their natures and requirements. The hfe he
had led had shown him the insides of many homes, and the
hfe before him was to do the same ; but none of these had been,

60 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
and none was to be, his own. There was that in his organism,
both as to its plan and size, which almost forbade the idea of
his fitting perfectly into any one house or fanuly circle, so that
it should be to Mm much more than a sort of "boarding-
house." He was now not only homeless but pennUess, and it was
needful that he should make a start somewhere ; also that he
should begin in the line to which his previous hfe had accus
tomed him. His capacity and willingness for hard work at
once secured him pretty steady employment. He did not love
such drudgery, but he did it faithfuUy, earning his daUy bread
under a sort of perpetual protest, and aU the while he was vpin-
ning for himseK a local popularity simUar to that which he had
enjoyed in Indiana. His friends, and even some of his rela
tives, had a certain amount of faith in him, and were disposed
to force him into activity when an occasion offered.
There was a little pohtical excitement in the faU of that
year, and the question of the improvement of the Sangamon
River for purposes of navigation was a leading topic of debate.
There was the usual stump-speaking, of course, and among the
orators who traveled through the prairie country on that
errand was a man named Posey. He came to Decatur, and he
raade a speech which so much disgusted John Hanks as to
bring from him the remark,
" Mister, I tell ye what : Abe Lincoln can beat that aU hol
low. Abe, try him on."
A box was turned over for Abe to stand upon, and his career
as an lUinois political stump-speaker fairly began. Not only
did he beat the speech of Mr. Posey, but he so completely con
quered that gentleman that, after the debate was over and
when the opponents carae together, the vanquished campaigner
frankly asked his rough antagonist " where he learned to do
it." Abe rephed freely, and even told the nature and extent of
his reading, as if he owed his power as an orator in great

" OF ILLINOIS." Q\
measure to his books. A host of mere bookworms could have
undeceived him on that point if he could have tested them in
attempts to address crowds of misceUaneous hearers. Mr.
Posey honestly and earnestly encouraged his queer acquaint
ance to persevere ; but he was quite hkely to do that.
The year went by and Abraham Lincoln was still a mere
farm-hand, jobbing his strong body to one employer after
another. It did not seem that he had chrabed a single round
of the long ladder of worldly success. But the retum of his
birthday brought him something new. A man named Denton
Offutt hired John Hanks and John Johnston and Abe Lincoln
to take a flatboat for him down the Sangamon River all the way
from Springfield to New Orleans. He promised them fifty
cents a day for the entire trip, with an additional sixty doUars
to be divided among them at the end of it. For those times
such wages were extraordinary.
The bargain was made in Febmary, and in March the three
friends went down the Sangamon from Decatur in a canoe.
For some reason they left their boat five miles above the town
and walked the rest of the way. They found their employer
easily enough, but they also found that he had failed to procure
for himseK a flatboat for the proposed voyage. If, therefore,
they were to go down the river that season they must provide
their own shipping. The construction of a flatboat was no
formidable affair to men who had been brought up as they
had. They went to the mouth of Spring Creek, five mUes north
of Springfield, and set to work.
The land they were on and the trees they cut down were
still the property of the United States Government, although so
near the future capital of the State of TUinois. The logs when
cut were rafted down the river, to be sawed into planks at the
Sangamontown saw-mill. That work was done in a fortnight,
and in two weeks more the industrious trio had their flatboat
in the water. All the while they hved in a shanty of their

62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
own making and "boarded themselves." There had been
fun along with the hard work, for Abe was the hfe of the
shanty. There had also been evening stroUs into all there was of
Sangamontown, and talks, and yarn-spinning, and cracking of
jokes with the inhabitants.
Mr. Offutt joined thera now, and his cargo was ready for
shipment when the flatboat was launched. The State of
lUinois at that time raised but httle of any other crop than
Indian corn, and sent this to market mainly in the shape of
pork. The cargo therefore consisted of the favorite grain in
both its customary forms, and Mr. Offutt took charge of its
management and sale. Very httle of it would have reached a
southern market, however, K it had not been for the curious
ingenuity of the tallest of his three boatmen.
On the 19th of April the boat ari'ived at New Salem, and at
that point there was a mill-dam upon the ridge of which the
rude craft floated and stuck fast. Her destruction seemed in
evitable, for her stem was sinking, the water was pouring in,
and her loose lading was sliding back as the slope of her awk
ward position increased.
Abe Lincoln at once took command, as K in any time of
special trouble the leadership belonged to him. An empty
boat was floated alongside, and the cargo was hoisted into it
by main strength, untU the grounded craft was sufficiently
hghtened to be set afloat again. Just how he managed to keep
her from sinking during that brief period of desperate exer
tion does not clearly appear.
Before he pulled her off from the dam he rigged some gear
ing under her stem by means of which she was steadUy raised,
whUe the water ran out of her through auger-holes bored in
the bottom of the part which hung over the dam. It was
Abe's first effort as an inventor, but it set his mind at work in
a new direction. Just eight years afterward he sent to the
Patent Office at Washington a wooden model, made by him-

" 07?* ILLINOIS." 63
selt, of a contrivance for floating steamers over bars and other
obstructions in the western rivers.
New Salem was a small place on a low bluff, and all its in
habitants came out to watch the fate of the stuck flatboat.
Great was the admiration expressed for the skill and energy of
the man who saved it. Neither he nor they, however, had any
idea that for seven long years that very man would himseK
be " stuck" and stranded in the odd, grotesque, chance-medley
existence of New Salem.
Mr. Offutt's gratitude made him enthusiastic ; for he vowed
that on his retum he would buUd a steamboat to run on the
Sangamon. He would provide her with runners for ice and
roUers for shoals and dams ; and then, " with Abe Lincoln in
coraraand of her, by thunder, she would have to go !"
The remainder of the trip was much hke any other flatboat
voyage down the Mississippi ; but at New Orleans and else
where Abe received a repetition of his first lessons on slavery.
He again saw negroes manacled for sale, maltreated, beaten,
and felt that it was neither safe nor useful to enter any pro
test. No word could be spoken against an iniquity which all
men declared to be a great good, and a necessity of Southern
hfe ; but a memory could be recorded and put away in the
secret treasure-house of the young flatboatman's heart. The
day was to come when he should take it out and put it into
words so plain, so clear, so strong, that the minds of a miUion
and a haK of voters should receive them as a sort of Gospel.
After that was to come yet another day, when his own hands
should be laid upon the manacles, in power, and should shatter
them, putting an end forever to the buying and selhng of men
and women in the United States.
The steamboat passage homewards terminated at St. Louis.
From that point, all the way up and across the great State of
Illinois, to Coles County, Abe Lincoln and John Johnston
traveled on foot, leaving Hanks on the road to make his way
to Springfield.

64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
The Lincoln family had raoved again during Abe's brief ab
sence, but their Coles County settlement proved a permanent
one. This second experience of river life in the South left the
young giant httle better off than before in worldly goods,
whatever else he may have gained by it. But whUe he was
away his talkative friends had taken good care of his reputa
tion as a man of muscle. They had said so much, indeed, that
the champion wrestler of that region, one Daniel Needham,
sent him a challenge to a pubhc trial of strength and skiU. It
was accepted, as a matter of course, and the meeting took place
with aU the customary prairie formalities ; but rarely has a
" champion" been more astonished than was Daniel Needham.
It was not so much that he was thrown twice in quick succes
sion, but that the thing was done for him with so much appar
ent ease ; and his wrath rose hotly to the fighting point.
" Lincoln," he shouted, " you've thrown me twice, but you
can't whip me."
" Needham," said Abe, " are you satisfied I can throw you ?
WeU, K you ain't, and I've got to satisfy you by thrashing
you, I'U do that too, for your own good."
The crowd laughed ; but the champion gave the inatter a
sober second thought, and concluded that his own good did
not require a mauhng from that man. He was entirely satis
fied already.

A STEP UPWARD. (55

CHAPTER XI.
A STEP upward.
Stranded in New Salem — ^First Public Employment — ^MUler, Clerk, and
Peace-keeper — A Wrestling Match — 1831.
The mUI-dam across the Sangamon River, upon the perilous
edge of which Mr. Offutf s fiatboat stuck, to be rescued by
Abraham Lincoln, is stiU in existence ; but the httle hamlet of
New Salem has long since disappeared. The hand of time re
quires but httle human aid in the destruction of a score or two
of houses built of logs or of pine boards, the best of them at
a cost of less than a hundred doUars.
New Salem, however, was something of a business place in
the summer of the year 1831. The miU was a great help to
it, and it was separated by twenty miles of prairie road from
the crushing rivalry of Springfield. That city already con
tained at least a thousand inhabitants, and no neighboring set
tlement could hope to compete with it successfully.
The whole population of the prairie country was in a condi
tion of continual drift and change, yet hardly any man could
offer a good reason for his restlessness. Whole famihes floated
hither and thither, they knew not why and scarcely how,
drawing friends and connections after them.
A sohtary, loose-footed laborer, without an ounce of prop
erty beyond the shabby clothes he stood in, was a fragment of
human driftwood which might be cast ashore almost any
where by the aimless eddies of such a social state.
Abraham Lincoln, hiring from job to job of uncertain work,
was stranded at New Salem about midsummer of the year 1831.
He had no definite business there, no settled occupation, no

06 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
home, no special friends, although there were some who knew
him by name. His first employment grew out of the fact
that he could write ; for that accomphshraent was by no means
general in New Salem. The " election" was held in August ;
but when the polls were opened the reception of votes was
checked by the sad fact that but one " clerk" was present to
record them, while the inexorable law demanded two. Worse
than that, a search of the known residents of New Salem failed
to discover a second candidate duly educated for the perform
ance of his duties. There was the very taU stranger loitering
around. It was not hkely that he could use a pen, but they
could ask him ; and one of the " judges of election" approached
hira with,
" Mister, kin you write ?"
" WeU, yes, I reckon I can, a httle."
" WiU you take a hand as clerk of 'lection to-day ?"
" Well, yes, K you want me. I'll try it on. Do the best I
can." It was a curious experience for the stranded stranger. He
was performing the first act of his hfe as a pubhc functionary,
and the power and office came to him because he was the one
and only man who had the necessary education.
Mr. Denton Offutt had it in his mind to start a country store
at New Salem, and Abe was in some hope of employment
from hira K the intention should be fulfilled : but it was not.
Mr. Offutt's plans, hke his fiatboat enterprise, were a httle un
certain in their beginnings. Meantime, however, a job turned
up in the piloting of a fiatboat down the Sangamon River in a
flood. It was a task which called for nerve and skUl as well as
strength, for there were places where the swollen current car
ried the boat across prairie, two or three miles away from
the regular channel, and all knowledge of the latter was of no
account. There was a whole family on board with their
household goods, bomid for Texas, and their tall pilot steered
them safely down the freshet, as far as his contract called for.

A STEP UPWARD. QJ
Then he left them in other hands and walked back to New
Salem. More loitering and waiting followed, with a process of get
ting acquainted with everybody, and at last Mr. Offutt's goods
arrived. He added to them by purchasing the stock on hand
of what would otherwise have been the rival estabhshment.
He had kept his liking for his flatboat hero, and Abe was en
gaged as clerk and salesman of the new concern. It was a rise
in hfe for him ; one more round of the ladder he was chmbing
out of the miry bog in which he had been bom.
Mr. Offutt was an enterprising man, and he now rented the
miU itseK frora its owners, and put it under the especial
charge of Abe, while a clerk named Green was assigned to
duty at the store. Tin coin had tried his hand at many things,
and now he was a miller, as K no point of hfe should be found
at which he had not come into contact with the people he lived
among. He mingled with them everywhere, being thoroughly
one of thera. He soon discovered that not even the woods of
Indiana had developed a rougher, coarser, and in some respects
a more vicious and degraded community. Fighting, drinking,
gambling, riotous dissipation of aU the ruder varieties, were
the order of the day, and of almost every day. Abe's physical
prowess once more stood him in good stead. It enabled him
in time to set up as a sort of heavy-handed keeper of the
peace : but this could not be, of course, untU he had been tested
against the local buUy.
The boasts of his friends, headed by Mr. Offutt, shortly
brought that matter about. The latter freely declared that
Abe could outrun, throw, or whip any man in Sangamon
County, and that he knew more than any other man ahve, and
would be President of the United States some day. He had
reasons of his own for the faith that was in him ; but over at
Clary's Grove there was another man who imagined a large
share at least of aU that praise his own pecuhar due. He too
had enthusiastic admirers ready to do his boasting for him.

68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
The " Clary's Grove Boys" were a set of unmitigated mffians,
and Jack Armstrong was their best man. From all accounts
it is hard to guess who or what could have been their worst,
and all peaceable people stood in dread of them.
There came one day a kind of boasting match between
Offutt and Bill Clary, of Clary's Grove, and it could have but
one result. Abe Lincoln and Jack Armstrong were pitted
against each other for a wrestle, in spite of aU the strong ob
jections made by the former. That was not the sort of com
petition or success that Mr. Offutt's foreman was studying for,
and he did his best to avoid it ; but it was too late to escape,
for the match had been definitely made.
The confidence of the Clary's Grove Boys in their cham
pion was unbounded, and so was that of the public generaUy,
so that the tide of betting and talk ran all in favor of Jack Arm
strong, untU the two antagonists were fairly chnched in the
ring. The struggle which foUowed was no common one, for the
men were well matched, and, so long as the rales of fair
wrestling were observed, neither succeeded in gaining any ad
vantage. At last, both out of breath, they separated and stood
looking at each other.
" Jack," said lincoln, " let's quit. You can't throw me and
I can't throw you."
The champion had been deeply stung by his unexpected
faUure, and now a chorus of biting remarks arose among his
own friends and foUowers. He made no verbal reply, but
rashed right in again in the hope of suddenly securing a
" foul hold " and an unfair advantage. But he had aheady
tried too far even the steady temper of his antagonist : in an
other instant, caught by the throat in a pair of iron hands, he
was held out at arm's length, and shaken as if he had been a
child. Then the cry was, " A fight ! A fight !" and the supporters of
Mr. Offutt were by no means equal, in either numbers or bru-

A STEP UPWARD. 69
tality, to those of BUI Clary. The latter claimed the stakes, and
they would perhaps have been surrendered to him but for
the aroused condition of Abe Lincoln's temper. He had an
abundance of it K any one would take the trouble to stir it
up, and it refused always to go down rapidly. He now de
clared himseK ready and wilhng to fight Armstrong or any of
his feUows. The consequences might have been serious but
for the arrival of Mr. Rutledge, the owner of the miU and the
great man of New Salem. The noisy mob had aU a mob's
respect for well-clad wealth. The mill-owner was able to
restore the broken peace, and there was no fighting done.
The episode was fuU of important consequences to Abraham
Lincoln. His courage and prowess had been thoroughly
tested and had made a deep impression upon the minds of his
rough neighbors. He was in no danger of further chaUenges
from any of them, and Jack Armstrong avowed himseK the
fast friend of the man who had given him so good a shaking.
The further results were only a question of time, for the wrest
ling match which was not won by either of the contestants
gained for Abe Lincoln a strong and devoted, K somewhat tur
bulent, constituency. Every member of the Clary's Grove
gang had a vote, and with it a strong admiration for a man who
could not only read and write, but could hold a buUy at arm's
length. The story of the " match" went far and wide, and its
hero was thenceforth a man of note and influence in that com
munity. Thenceforward, moreover, the immediate neighborhood had
a recognized and respected peacemaker, and became a more
pleasant place of residence for men of quiet tastes. Not to
such a degree, however, that an utter stranger would be wise
in loitering here and there too much unless he were prepared
to look out for his personal safety somewhat as Lincoln had
done. The new foreman of Offutt's mill found that his duties left
him with time on his hands, and he did not propose to waste it.

70 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
He could abeady read and write and " cipher." He could
make speeches. He could even compose essays and get them
printed. He knew that he had a fair capacity for the use of
words. But he had latterly made an important discovery. It
was that human language, his own in particular, had its laws,
and these had been ferreted out and formulated by men of
learning, and that no man could be called " educated " whUe
ignorant of them. He went at once to Mr. Graham, the school
master of New Salem, and asked him questions about grammar, :
" I have a notion to study it."
" If you ever expect to go before the public in any capacity,
I think it's the best thing you can do."
" If I had a grammar I'd begin on it right away."
The schoolmaster knew of one that could be had of a man
named Vaner, only six mUes away, and the rare book was pur
chased and brought back to town with aU the speed in the long
limbs of its new owner. Whether or not it would better fit
him to come before such a public as that of Clary's Grove, or
even New Salem, Abe gave all his spare time to the mastery
of it.
There were other books now within reach, and these also
were doggedly conquered, one by one. The dayhght was
burned over them, while the student lay at full length on his
counter in the store, waiting for customers, or stretched upon
the grass outside in dull seasons, or sitting on a sack of com,
" between grists," at the mUl. When evening came, he would
go over to the cooper-shop and read there, burning shaving
after shaving, one kindled from another, in place of unattain
able candles. These were not only scarce but costly, and Abe's
wages permitted him no vain extravagances. He was fighting
his upward way, inch by inch, with iron resolution. Even the
New Salem community could plainly discern how fast his
inner man was growing. They were aU but proud of him,
and the fame of his knowledge spread far and wide, keeping
even pace with his reputation for story-telhng and for shaking

A STEP UPWARD. 71
Jack Armstrong. He could not fail to be popular among
those who knew him weU, and every fresh arrival from the
outside world was sm-e to be seized upon and made a friend of.
Yes, and then subjected to a pumping process, which drew
from him, for Abe's benefit, whatever he might know. There
is hardly a human being from whom such an inquirer could
not learn something, and the power to so gather wisdom grows
continually with its use.
Lincoln's first pohtical speech in Illinois had dealt with the
problem of the future navigation of the Sangamon River, and
now, early in the spring of 1832, a company of gentlemen
went so far, in attempting a practical solution, as to charter a
smaU steamboat named the "Tahsman," and decide to send
her up the stream as high as she could go. Quite a number of
questions could be answered by the results of such an experi
ment : but it was not tried in fiood-time or they might have
found and reported much more water in the channel. They
were wise enough to secure Abe Lincoln's services as pUot,
"from Beardstown, up and back." He steered the boat in
safety around the many crooks and windings, avoiding all snags
and bars and simUar perils, until she found her further progress
barred by the New Salem miU-dam. If she could not pass
that barrier the Sangamon could not be truthf uUy set down on
any map as a navigable stream.
There was but one way of overcoming the difficulty, and
enough of the dam was promptly torn away to permit the
steamboat to pass. On she went. But there were perils before
her even then ; for she reached the shaUow water above, only
to find that it was hourly getting shaUower, and that the river
was rapidly falling. The experiment had been faithfuUy tried.
The inquirers knew just how far they could take just such a
craft up the Sangamon at somewhat low water.
The problem now remaining was how to get her down the
river again, and it seemed a serious one ; but their pilot man
aged it for them. He is said to have been paid forty doUars

72 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
for that part of his achievement ; but he economicaUy walked
all the way home from Beardstown to New Salem.
Feat after feat of seK-denial, skiU, strength, ingenuity, and
perseverance were teUing fast upon the character and educa
tion of Mr. Offutt's brawny " clerk" It was especially weU for
him, indeed, that he should learn to be a good pilot in danger
ous and " falling" waters.

THE BLACKHAWK WAR. 73

CHAPTER XIL
the blackhawk war.
Lincoln a Volunteer — ^Army Discipline — Captain Lincoln under Punish
ment — Going to a New School — Regulars amd Volunteers — 1833, a.d.
One reason why Mr. Offutt could spare his foreman for a
steamboat trip up and down the Sangamon was that his various
mercantUe and milling enterprises were coming to a disastrous
end. One after another he was compeUed to give them up.
Hardly was the " Tahsman" safe in the lower river, before her
pUot found his occupation as a clerk gone from him ; his em
ployer had departed, no man knew whither, and the store was
closed. The mill returned to the management of its owners, and Abe
Lincoln was once more utterly adrKt.
Those, however, were stirring times in Illinois, for the great
war-chief of the Sacs, the terrible Blackhawk, was over the
northwestern border with the fuU strength of his tribe. He was
said, also, to have f omied a great confederacy, after the man
ner of King Philip, Pontiac, and Tecumseh, of the Winneba-
goes. Foxes, Sioux, Kickapoos, and other tribes. This was trae
enough; but the whites did not as yet know how completely
the savage league had f aUen to pieces.
The Governor of Illinois was calling loudly for volunteers
to act with the regular forces of the United States in checking
the raid of the red men.
There had been a good deal of desultory border warfare dur
ing the previous year, and some TUinois troops had taken part in
it. It had been of a somewhat bloody nature at several points,
but the Indians had finaUy retreated, and had promised, at the

74 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
end of the campaign, to behave themselves more peaceably
in future. Their promises were not made to be kept any
longer than until presents could be received and spring should
come again. They had broken them now, and it was necessary
that they should have a sharp lesson administered to them.
The mihtary experience of Abraham Lincoln had been be
gun for him in the faU of 1831, when, at a mihtia-muster at
Clary's Grove, the "boys" had chosen him captain of the com
pany. He was not present when elected, but accepted the
honor thrust upon him, made a speech of thanks, and served
during the muster. He afterwards said that K he had not
been down the river in Offutt's flatboat in the spring of 1831,
he should have surely then enlisted among the volunteers then
caUed out, and gone to the frontier instead of into the store and
miU. Now there was something on hand more serious than a mere
"muster," for nearly the same men were organizing a company
for active service. The choice of a captain became a question of
importance. There were but two candidates, Lincoln and a man
named Kirkpatrick, owner of the sawmiU at which the logs had
been made into planks for Mr. Offutt's flatboat. There was an
old grudge between them, beginning in that connection, and the
rivahy ran high imtU the votes were counted, when it was found
that Lincoln had beaten his competitor " out of sight." It was
no wonder, for the men who had voted were mostly the same
who had stood around the ring and seen him shake Jack Arm
strong, and they had clear notions of the qualities required by
a man whose duty it would be to keep order in their camp.
He must have the necessary muscles and fighting pluck to
whip any rough in his company, or he was no captain for them.
No doubt it was a good escape for Mr. Kirkpatrick, the Clary's
Grove boys themselves being judges.
Neither the young captain nor his mutinous, disorderly re
cruits had the slightest prophetic idea how needful it was that
Abraham Lincoln should be taught by practical experience the

THE BLACKHAWK WAR. 75
difficulties in the way of turning raw volunteers into soldiers.
He had great lessons to learn in the few short weeks of the
Blackhawk War.
The volunteers from that part of the State gathered at
Beardstown and RushvUIe to be organized into regiments.
Captain Lincoln's company was made part of a regiment com
manded by Colonel Samuel Thompson. On the 27th of April
the whole force marched for the Black River country, where
Blackhawk and his warriors lay, going by way of Oquaka, on
the Mississippi.
There had been no time for the drill or disciphne of that
array of free frontiersmen, and no company among them all
stood in greater need of both than did the one which had mus
tered at Clary's Grove.
What could men know of the first duty of a soldier, when
in aU their hves they had never been taught to obey anything?
Even their captain required immediate instruction. While
encamped at Henderson River — over which the soldiers had
buUt a bridge, so rude that many horses were lost in trying to
get a foothold upon it, down the steep bank — an order was
issued by Gen. Whiteside, in command of the forces, forbid
ding the discharge of firearms within fifty paces of the camp
hmits. A military order was nothing but the word of one man, and
the prohibition must mean " fifty paces, more or less," thought
Captain Lincoln, and so he discharged his pistol recklessly,
within a dozen steps of the given line. It was a bad mistake,
since the forty paces he had failed to walk measured the entire
question of army disciphne and of mihtary success or failure,
and it was eminently needful that he, of aU men, should be
made to understand that vital matter.
His sword was taken from him, and he was put under arrest
for an entire day; the very hghtness of the punishment show
ing how much in need of further instmction were the officers
and men of General Whiteside's volunteer army.

76 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
No more was said about the affair after that, and Captain
Lincoln retumed to duty. He had in this case suffered some
what for a fault of his own; but he was shortly to incur a more
severe disgrace for a sin of which he was innocent. So he
was to learn how easUy any commander may be ruined by un
faithful subordinates.
From Henderson River the army marched to YeUow Banks,
on the Mississippi, where they were visited by a band of
Cherokees from the Iowa shore, and were treated to a war-
dance. Thence a sharp push forward for a few days brought
them to the mouth of Rock River and near the field of their
expected campaign. From that place they were to advance up
the river about fifty mUes to Prophetstown, and await the arri
val of the United States regular troops who were to act with
them. But when the order to "fall in" reached the company
commanded by Captain Lincoln, it could not be comphed with.
Aided by a scapegrace from another company, and without
the knowledge of their strictly temperate commander, the men
had supphed themselves with hquor stolen from the officers'
quarters, and most of them were stiU under the effects of it.
It was aU in vain for Captain Lincoln and his orderly sergeant
to urge the wretched drunkards to form company. Even if
they consented to try, they could not keep their ranks, and too
many of them only mocked at all the orders given them.
The army moved that day without the disgraced, besotted
squad, and it was ten o'clock before Captain Lincoln could
march at aU. Even then he was compelled to halt by the way,
that his mutinous ruffians might sleep off the vile stupor they
had brought upon themselves. He pushed them onward after
that, and rejoined the main body in the night, only to find
himseK once more put under arrest and compeUed to wear a
wooden sword for two whole days. These were not precisely
the mUitary honors he had thirsted for, but he was not hkely
to forget either their causes or any of the lessons which came
with them.

THE BLACKHAWK WAR. 77
Instead of waiting at Prophetstown for the regular troops to
arrive. General Whiteside determined to push on towards
Dixon, forty mUes further. He left his baggage-train by the
way, in his blind haste to meet an enemy. The men caught
the infection of his inexperienced recklessness and threw away
their rations, so that their forced march brought them to Dixon
better prepared for a famine than a fight. They were joined
there by two battahons of mounted men as rash as themselves,
and General Whiteside yielded to the clamor of these unwise
horsemen that they should at once be sent forward in search
of Blackhawk and his warriors.
Alas for them! Their search was only too successful.
They found an ambuscade of seven hundred chosen braves,
commanded by the chief in person. In a few hours more all
that were left of the two battahons came straggling back to
Dixon with the bloody story of "StUlman's defeat." The
next day the main body of the whites moved forward to the
ghastly scene of the disaster ; but they were destitute of pro
visions, the men were hungry and mutinous, and the only thing
that army was fit to do was to march back and wait for sup
phes and for better leaders.
There was much fatigue and suffering in all this marching
and counter-marching, and Captain Lincoln shared it aU with
his men. Their personal attachment to him had increased
daily, for they had found but one man in the whole army who
could match him as a wrestler. Even then there was a dispute
as to whether Lincoln was fairly thrown. His men would not
admit the fact, even after he himseK frankly acknowledged it.
He had need of aU his popidarity one day. An old Indian
carae rashly into camp, trusting to the protection of a written
passport signed by General Cass, and professing to be a friend
of the white men. The soldiery was smarting under defeats
and privations, and they refused to beheve that a red man
could be other than a sort of human wild beast, whose hfe was
forfeit whenever and wherever he might be found.

78 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
The poor old savage had come in alone, hungry, helpless, in
search of food, and now an angry mob was rushing upon him,
seeking to murder him. His last moment seemed to have
arrived, when a taU man in the uniform of a captain dashed
through the crowd and stood erect in front of him.
" Men ! this must not be done ! He must not be shot and
kUled by us."
His very body seemed to be growing, as the righteous anger
sweUed hotly within him. But one of the armed mob, after
a moment of amazed sUence, found voice to whine,
" But, Captain, that there Indian is a damned spy."
There were swarms of brutal and thoughtless men around
ready to catch the word, and for a few moments Lincoln's own
hfe was worth but httle more than that of the old red man
who was cowering behind him. He spoke again, passionately,
powerfuUy, waving thera back with his long arms, and they
were beginning to grow calmer and hear reason, when another
whine arose :
" This is cowardly on your part, Lincoln."
The Captain's temper was already at white heat, but it
blazed yet higher as he fiercely responded :
" If any man thinks I am a coward, let him test it."
There was stUI another despicable snarl :
" Well, Lincoln, you're a larger and heavier man than any
of us."
" You can guard against that. Choose your own weapons."
Every line of his dark face told them he was ready, and not
a coward of them aU stepped out to apply the test. The hfe
of the vagrant Indian was saved, and the young captain who
protected him had won the brightest laurel gathered by any
hero of the Blackhawk War, although he was never actually
under fire in any of its recorded battles.
All this shows how miserable was the discipline and soldier
ship of the Illinois volunteers of aU grades. But they were not
without cause for their constant complaints and insubordination.

THE BLACKHAWK WAR. 79
The regular-army officers despised the volunteers then, as
they did for a while at a later day and on a larger scale ; and
their prejudices led them to discriminate in the issue of rations
and pay, and in assignments to duty, whenever possible, in
favor of United States troops. An improper order came
to Captain Lincoln and he obeyed it, but went immediately
afterwards to protest in person against the injustice done his
men and to their volunteer comrades. He said to the official
concemed, in plain words :
" Sir, you forget that we are not under the rules and regular
tions of the War Department at Washington ; are only volun
teers under the orders and regulations of Hhnois. Keep in
your own sphere and there wUl be no difficulty ; but resistance
wiU hereafter be made to your unjust orders. And further, my
men must be equal in all particulars, in rations, arms, camps,
etc., to the regular army."
He carried his point, and there was an immediate improve
ment in the management of affairs. But he had done a very
extraordinary thing. Long years afterwards it was to become
a matter of national importance that he should thoroughly un
derstand the nature and extent of the perpetual jealousy be
tween the Regular Army and the Volunteers ; and now he had
mastered the entire subject once for all, and had learned pre
cisely how the residting difficulties were to be overcorae.
Here was a change indeed. The inner man of the bare
footed Indiana plowboy who had been snubbed by John
Breckinridge for daring to speak to him had already grown
amazingly. He had reached the mental and moral stature of a
hero, who could control a mob of ruffians one day, and force
justice from, the astonished insolence of epauleted authority
another. Every man, moreover, who found himseK better fed and
cared for in consequence of that bold protest was likely to re
tum to the banks of the Sangamon with a high opinion and a
good report to make to his neighbors of Abraham Lincoln.

80 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
The discontent of the volunteers was just ; but it rendered
them of little further use as an army. At their own request,
they were marched from Dixon to Ottawa, TUinois, by way of
Pawpaw Grove, and there disbanded on the 28th of May. The
best material for soldiers hi the whole world had been rendered
worthless in four weeks by incompetent commanders and an
inefficient commissariat, at a heavy expense to the pubhc ; but
a great deal had been accomplished, nevertheless, in the need
ful instruction given to one young captain.
The Governor of the State caUed for two thousand men to
take the places of the disbanded regiments, and a large number
of the discharged men re-enlisted at once. Officers became
privates rather than go home in such an inglorious fashion.
General Whiteside himseK entered the ranks as a common sol
dier, and so, among the rest, did Captain Lincoln, as a member
of the " Independent Spy Company."
By the middle of June the new forces were ready, and they
again marched up the banks of Rock River. In the mean
time Blackhawk and his warriors overran the country they
had come to conquer and intended to keep.
The troops were fairly well-handled now, and the campaign
which followed was a vigorous one, resulting in the utter de
feat and almost the destruction of the savage invaders. But the
work of the Independent Spy Company included little fight
ing. There was a great deal of hard work done by them in
deed. There was much perilous scouting, with fast traveling
as messengers, on horseback and on foot, and their exposure
to danger was of a sort that they did not need to be ashamed
of. The company was finally disbanded, and the men
were discharged at White Water, Wisconsin, just as the war
was drawing to a close. Lincoln prepared to set out for
home, in company with a friend and comrade named George
W. Harrison. Their horses were stolen from them the night
before their intended start, and they were compeUed to reach
Peoria, lUinois, on foot, with some help of borrowed rides

THE BLACKHAWK WAR. gl
on the horses of other soldiers who were going in the same
direction. Here they bought a canoe and paddled down the TUinois
River untU, just below PeMn, they overtook a timber-raft. It
was easy to make friends with the raftsmen, in whose com
pany they floated lazUy down stream as far as the town of
Havana. The rest of the homeward way was a hot and tedious tramp
across country. It was ended in due time, and the man who
went out as a captain and came home as a private had retumed
to discover, through a slow and painful progress, what and
how much his army career had done for him.

82 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTEE Xm.
poLnics.
Lincoln a Candidate— Stumping the Districtr— Defeat— The Credit System
— ^Lincoln a Merchant.'
The pohtics of the United States were in a noteworthy con
dition in the year 1832. There were parties, and party-spirit
ran high ; but party organization, such as now controls the
country, did not then exist. Tn the West generally, and in H-
hnois in particular, the comphcated machinery which was al
ready in process of formation among the older States was
whoUy unknown. Instead of it there was a species of pohtical
chaos, although the State was nominaUy Democratic in its ma
jorities, and for many years continued to be so. The old Fed
eral party was dead and buried, the Whig party was yet un
formed, and men wandered hither and thither among the great
questions of the day, vainly striving to discover what these
were and whither the country was drifting.
In the absence of nominating conventions large or small,
it was the custom for candidates for office to nominate them
selves, if they could persuade a few friends to urge them to do
so. One consequence of this was that, for almost any elective
honor, high or low, there were frequently as many men in the
field as candidates as could combine their ambition with the
energy and means to make the required canvass. For the lat
ter some kind of personal popularity was of much more im
portance than any other qualification.
The volunteers who went from Sangamon County to the
Blackhawk War retumed to their homes in squads or singly,
the greater number bringing httle with them besides their very

POLITICS. g3
moderate allowances of mihtary glory. Abe Lincoln succeeded
in adding to his own share of this, and it was as large as any
body's, an intense but somewhat local popularity. He great
ly increased his fame as an orator, also, by a speech he made
in the New Salem debating club shortly after his retum.
It was the first regular "speech" he had dehvered in that
community, and his neighbors were ignorant of his powers
until that hour. When he arose to begin, the audience ex
pected no more than a well-told story and a good joke or so,
and prepared itseK accordingly for an appreciative laugh.
Abe's hands were in his pockets at the first, and Ms words
carae to him slowly ; but he was not there for the purpose of
making fun. To the astonishment of his hearers, he seriously
took hold of the subject before them, warmed with it as he
went on, argued, reasoned, declaimed, with a force and an
awkward eloquence which took them aU by storm.
Mr. James Rutledge, the owner of the mUl, was president
of the club, and he for some reason felt a deep interest in the
coming election for members of the State Legislature. He
was very strongly impressed by that speech, and a few days
afterwards he urged the young orator to offer himseK as a can
didate. Lincoln at first refused, on the ground that he was httle
known in the greater part of the county, which was a large
one, and that he should surely be defeated.
"Perhaps not," said Mr. Rutledge. "They'U know you
better after you've stumped the county. Anyhow, it'U do
you good to try."
Other friends added their sohcitations, and Lincoln's modesty
gave way under the pressure.
Tt seemed a tremendous undertaking for a mere boy who the
year before had drifted into New Salem as a farm-hand and fiat-
boatman. That it was not altogether absurd offers a window
through which a remarkably good view can be obtained of the
then social and pohtical condition of things in lUinois.

84 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
The general canvass that faU was hot and spirited, for it was
the year of General Jackson's election to the Presidency.
Lincoln had from boyhood admired " Old Hickory." He was
stUI nominaUy a " Jackson man," although the principles he
advocated in his speeches were almost identical with those
upon which the Whig party was afterwards built up.
The pohtics of the State of Hlinois, however, were agitated
by other questions besides those upon which the nation as a
whole was divided. Candidates for the Legislature, even more
than for other pubhc positions, were required to meet their
constituents upon numerous topics of strictly local importance.
The State was fast going crazy upon the subject of " intemal
improvement." Roads of all kinds, and navigable rivers of
designated sizes and patterns, were wanted in all directions.
There was a vague idea abroad, daily obtaining a strong hold
upon the minds of men, that all these could be provided by a
majority vote of the State Legislature in the enacting of a
"law." Lincoln behoved that a great deal could be done for the
Sangamon River, and he was ready to prove it upon stump
after stump. He was also earnestly in favor of laws providing
for popular education. An address which he issued to his con
stituents two years later dealt freely with this and other topics,
and was a very creditable document for a youth of twenty-five
with barely a year of aggregated schooling to look back upon.
He now issued no address, but he had had some training for
the task set before him, and he took hold of it vigorously.
A canvass of Sangamon County was not in those days a
matter for a man of weak body or sensitive nerves to think of
lightly. Tt meant a going from place to place wherever a
crowd could be gathered, and a readiness to face boldly not
only any assembly of proposed hearers, but also such other
assemblages as might propose to interfere with both speaking
and hearing. There were fair copies of Clary's Grove and its
gang of roughs in almost every precinct, and aU this element

POLITICS. 8.5
was sure to make itseK heard and felt in election-time. At
one place, while Lincoln was speaking, a friend of his became
engaged in a fight and was getting the worst of it. So was the
speech, by reason of the divided interest and attention of the
crowd. The orator left the " stump" to interfere, but one of
the men in his way refused to let him pass. There could be
no hesitation on the part of the " candidate." The impeding
person was promptly seized by the nape of the neck and the
seat of his trowsers, was pitched away many feet into the grass,
the friend in trouble was rescued, and then the interrupted
speech was resumed imder better auspices.
There were other candidates traversing Sangamon County
upon the seKsame errand ; men who were better known and
whose pohtical strength had been previously developed. It
was no disgrace to Lincoln that he failed of an election by four
hundred and seventy votes. New Salem precinct stood by
him manfuUy. There were two hundred and eighty votes
cast there, and he got all but three of them. The shaking of
Jack Armstrong, the Blackhawk War, with aU the other
brilliant exploits of Mr. Offutt's clerk, had bound his neighbors
to birn for hfe and death. H there had been voters enough in
New Salem, he could have been elected to anything.
Now that he was beaten at the poUs — for his good — it be
came necessary for Lincoln to look around him for some other
occupation than that of making laws for the State.
He was fond of playing with the chUdren of his friends, and
he was always ready to chop wood or do any other kindly act
for the utterly poor around New Salem. His hand was out to
every man. But aU this would not buy clothes or law-books,
or pay for board.
He was hving at the time with an intimate friend named
Hemdon, one of two brothers who kept a store in the village.
Besides theirs, another was carried on by a man named Rad
ford, and still another, a smaller one, by Mr. Rutledge, the
owner of the miU.

86 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
The course of these three establishments at this time was
somewhat remarkable.
" Jim" Herndon became dissatisfied and sold his interest to
a loose character named Berry. "Row" Hemdon quarreled
with his new partner in six weeks, and sold his share to Abe
Lincoln. The Clary's Grove roughs had a gmdge against
Radford, and one night they carae to town and took it out by
smashing his windows. They scared him so badly that he sold
the wreck of his estabhshment at once to BUI Green on credit
for four hundred dollars. The firm of Lincoln & Berry the
next day bought out BUI Green, also " on time," giving him
their note of hand for two hundred and fifty dollars profit on
his sudden bargain. Then Mr. Rutledge sold Lincoln & Berry
his own httle grocery, and the new concern united the three
" stores" in one, Uaving given httle for them aU besides their
own "notes of hand." Their rivals in business, destined to
survive them, were the firm of HiU & McNeU.
Almost aU business was done upon the credit cystem in those
days. It continued so to be untU a long succession of financial
disasters had taught men the value of hard cash and short set
tlements. lincoln was now a merchant ; beginning his career under a
load of debt, and with the yet heavier burden of an idle, dis
solute, extravagant, uttterly worthless partner.
Tt reqiured no longer time than the \/"inter months of 1832-
1833 to determine the fate of such an undertaking, and the
firm of Lincoln & Berry sold out in their turn, and " on time,"
to a couple of brothers named Trent.
The store was hfted from Lincoln's shoulders, if the debts
were not. These could not begin to press him for some months
to come, and he could turn his attention, meantime, to some
other means of earning a hvehhood. He was stiU boarding
with " Row" Hemdon, and he was working hard at all the law
books he could lay his hands on. He gave to these every hour
he could spare for them. But something else had now to be
done if he would live to study.

POLITICS 87
Once more the pathway to success seemed for a moment to
be barred before him, and once more an altogether unlooked-
for opening appeared.
Mr. Calhoun, surveyor of Sangamon County, was overrun
with business, and needed an assistant. Immigrants and land-
buyers were pouring into the prairie country in a constantly
increasing stream. It was necessary that their demands should
be met, and that the surveying caUed for should be honestly
and faithfuUy done. The temptations to carelessness and cor
ruption were many. Mr. Calhoun knew Abe Lincoln and
trusted him thoroughly. He also knew him to be ignorant of
surveying, but he went to see him about it. He took vdth him
a book of instruction in the art, and told Abe that as soon as
he should be ready to go to work he should have as much as
he could do.
That was enough for the man of iron perseverance. He
took the book on surveying and went out into the country to
board with Minter Graham, the same schoolmaster with whom
he had consulted about Enghsh grammar. Tn six weeks he
was ready to report to Mr. Calhoun for service. They had
been weeks of precisely such unflinching mental toil as he had
for so long a time trained himseK to endure.
Thenceforward there was no danger but what he could pay
his board-bills. His work was found to stand all tests of ac
curacy, and Mr. Calhoun kept his word about giving him
enough of it. In aU the intervals of that employment he strug
gled on with his law-books. He even walked aU the way to
Springfield and back to borrow of a friend there a volume he
could not afford to buy.
Once raore a pubhc employment came to him, though a mar-
velously small one, for on the 7th of May, 1833, he was ap
pointed postmaster of New Salem. There is no record of
where he kept that " post-office," but there is a legend that he
kept it in his hat. The people of New Salera had few corres
pondents, and the mail did not arrive every day. Indeed, one

88 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
of the special and important duties of the postmaster was to
read and even to write letters for those whose lack of educar
tion forbade their doing either for themselves. Here was a
curious mixture of occupations, truly ; but there was hfe for
the present and hope for the future. The prospect would
not have been at all gloomy if it had not been for the store
and the cloud of debts which hung over it.
The Trent brothers kept the business going for a few months,
and then they gave it up and ran away, never again to be heard
of in New Salem. Berry also departed from the scene of his
misbehavior. He did not hve long afterwards. Even before
he went away, the accumulated load of debt for aU those rash
purchases " on time" came drifting back upon the shoulders of
the one honest and hard-working man whose name was signed
to the notes of hand.
Abraham Lincoln could not run away. StiU less could he
pay the notes. He was able to raake arrangement for the fu
ture payment of such of them as were held by his friends, for
every man of them trusted his honesty entirely and never
dreamed of pressing him. In their eyes he was an iU-used
raan, and his misfortunes in business made them more his
friends than ever. One only of the notes had drifted away
through the hands of successive holders beyond all friendly
control. Tt was the one for four hundred doUars given to Mr.
Radford for the wreck of his store and stock the night before
the day on which Bill Green's good bargain had been taken off
his hands. This piece of paper was now held by a Mr. Van
Bergen, and he sued upon it, and of course obtained an imme
diate judgment against Lincoln. An execution was issued, and
the iron hand of the sheriff was held out for aU the debtor's
personal property. His few books could not be touched, under
the exeraption law, but his horse, saddle, bridle, surveyor's in
struraents of all kinds, the tools of his new trade, were seized
upon without pity. Their loss might take away his means ot
livelihood and break up his growing business, but it could not

POLITICS. 89
really set him back one step behind the point to which he had
so steadily worked his way. Araong the many friends he had
made was a weU-to-do farmer named Short, and this man, un-
sohcited, joined Lincoln in giving to the sheriff the needful
bond that the goods should be dehvered on the day of sale, so
that their owner coidd use them meantime.
Lincoln did not attend the sale of his property, but Mr.
Short was there with another of his friends named Greene.
Between them they bought back all that the sheriff had
seized, at the sum of two hundred and forty-five dollars. They
divided their outlay nearly equaUy between them, and at once
turned over their purchases to the man they had come to help,
waiting for repayment untU he should be able to earn the
money. The remainder of that summer was a busy time for the post
master, the deputy county surveyor, and the one law-student
of New Salem. To aU his other work was now added the con
tinual reference to him of small legal matters, such as the
drawing up of deeds and other papers. He even "petti
fogged" smaU cases before justices of the peace, but for aU
these acts of neighborly kindness he never thought of charg
ing a fee. Nor was this aU the duty forced upon him by the
unbounded confidence men had acquired in his fairness and.
integrity. The one great sport of that region was horse-racing. There
were many horses of many kinds, and there was a continual
succession of " matches'' between them, but the human beings
were few indeed by whose decisions, as judges of the result,
aU contestants were wUling to abide. Much against his wiU,
therefore, Abe was frequently compeUed to yield to the unani
mous popular demand, and sit in "the judges' stand" while
the horses were ranning. He had plenty of disputes to settle,
but it was of no use for any disappointed or quarrelsome jockey
to appeal from or severely criticise a decision made by Abe
Lincoln. Once uttered, it had all the force of law.

90 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
In spite of his hard study and his lack of any bodily toil to
maintain the hardness of his muscles, his strength seemed to
increase rather than diminish. Harnessed by shoulder-straps
to a box of stones weighing haK a ton, he hfted it repeatedly
and with ease. This and other feats of a similar nature enabled
him to maintain his place as a keeper of the peace and a recog
nized disturber of all ruffianism. No fight could be fought
out in the old-time way K Lincoln were at hand to interfere
vsdth it. It was so easy for him to take an angry man in each
hand and hold two foolish f eUows wide apart, until they should
agree vdth him to let the matter drop and make the quarrel up.
As a rale, moreover, at least one of the two men was hkely to
think more highly than ever of the rough peacemaker.

FIRST LOVE. 91

CHAPTER XIV.
FIRST LOVE.
A true Romance — ^Elected to the State Legislature — A new Suit — Free
thinking.
The honest and upright ambition of Abraham Lincoln to
make a man of himseK had needed no spurring. There were
within him springs of hfe and thought as yet unopened and of
whose existence he was hitherto ignorant. These were now to
be discovered to him, and a new and strong incentive to exer
tion was to add its power to the other forces which were urg
ing him upward.
The third chUd of Mr. James Rutledge, Lincoln's devoted
friend and admirer, was a girl of high principle and uncom
mon beauty. In all the country around there was no maiden
to be compared with fair Ann Rutledge. Her mental accom
plishments were only such as could then be obtained in TUinois
by the daughter of a country merchant of intelhgence and
property, but they were sufficient. She could not fail to have
admirers ; and when, in the second year of Lincoln's New Salem
hfe, he came to board for a while with her father, she was al
ready promised in marriage to his friend McNeU, a young and
thriving trader and farmer of New Salem. There came to her
soon afterwards a strange, romantic history. Her betrothed
revealed to her the fact that his name was not McNeil but
McNamar, and that he had so concealed his identity in coining
West that he might buUd a fortune unknown to his famUy
and then return to care for his father in his old age. He was
now closing up his business, turning his property into money.

92 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
and would go to New York, perform his purpose there, and
come back to wed the girl who had given him her heart.
She heard and she believed him, and he went but he did not
come again. He wrote to her of his father's sickness and
death. Then other letters came, at longer and longer intervals,
always proraising to retum and holding her to her engageraent,
until at last their coming ceased entirely.
It was a cruel, a terrible thing to fall upon a girl of nine
teen, for she had loved him well untU she had found him false.
The one bitterer drop was added to her cup of trouble when
she found that, during aU that time, she had been winning the
heart of a man whose faith coidd not be broken and whose in
tegrity and manly worth all other men acknowledged.
More and more frequent grew the visits of the young law-
student as the prospect of McNamar's return diminished, but
with httle encouragement from Ann until the summer of 1834.
Her father's farm was but a smaU distance from that of Lin
coln's friend Short, and Abe found many occasions for spend
ing whole days together at the house of the man who so timely
aided him.
Ann was as true as she was beautKul, and she at last was
compelled to teU her urgent suitor frankly what bond it was
that bade her not to love him. She refused, in her sensitive
good faith, to see that she could be set free from her promise
to McNamar without a formal spoken or written release. She
could no longer love a man who had broken his word, had
shghted her, had treated her with a neglect so heartless, but
she was slow to admit her right to take another in his place.
And yet she had already taken him, and Lincoln knew it, and
he gave to her all the unmeasured strength of his first, whole
hearted love.
Tt was a loyal and manly thing to do. No other thing of
which he had yet shovra himself capable told haK so much for
the growth of his inner hfe or promised haK so weU.
He had something to live for now. He had a hope more

FIRST LOVE. 93
bright and beautiful than any dream he had dreamed, whether
among the forests of Indiana, the rivers and bayous of the
South, or the wealth-promising prairies where he had chosen
his home. He worked as he had never worked before, toihng at
bis law-books as he rode or walked about the country. On one
hot march, from Springfield home, with a volume of Black-
stone's Commentaries he had borrowed, he mastered forty pages
of it before he reached New Salem. With him to " master" a
book was to seal its contents, as to their spirit and meaning, and
largely as to their letter, in his memory forever, ready for all
subsequent uses.
There was no need for any urgent friend to prompt his po
htical ambition now. He was thirsting for such honors as
would mark him as a man fitted to court and win Ann Rut
ledge. He weU knew she would be pleased to see him win
them for her, even whUe she reluctantly adhered to her roman
tic scruple conceming her broken bond.
Since the previous campaign the pohtical world had under
gone apparent changes, and the Whig party was taking form.
Its principles were nearly those which Lincoln had aheady
avowed, and he readily floated into it. Still, all party hues
were as yet so loosely drawn that his Democratic personal
friends were under no necessity of refusing him their votes,
whatever they might do with other names upon their tickets.
He announced himseK as a candidate for election to the State
Legislature, issued a printed address to the people of the
county, and made a thorough stumping tour from neighborhood
to neighborhood. He spoke as he had never before spoken,
and was triumphantly elected although there were other strong
candidates in the field.
In the summer of the year 1831 he had landed in Sangamon
County, a penmless, friendless boy of twenty-two. Only three
years later there were 1376 men in the same county ready to
say by their votes that he was a suitable person to represent
them at the State capital.

94 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
He had been growing fast in other ways than in the good
will of his feUow-citizens ; but he had not outgrown his hon
esty nor his debts. These had joined hands to keep him poor
in purse, and a proper sense of personal dignity forbade hira to
go to the Capitol at Vandaha in the shabby clothing which
was good enough for his daily round of hfe and work in New
Salem. Money would also be required for other immediate
expenses, and there was nothing in his hands that he could
honestly seU to obtain it. He was aheady deeply in debt to
his best friends, and his salary as a legislator could not be col
lected in advance. He had resources, however, and they did
not fail him.
Among his older acquaintances was a man named Smoot, as
dry a joker as himseK, but better supplied vrith ready money.
To him Lincoln went one day, in corapany with another friend,
Hugh Arrastrong.
" Smoot, did you vote for me V
" I did that very thing."
" WeU, that makes you responsibla You must lend me the
money to buy suitable clothing, for I want to make a decent
appearance in the Legislature."
" How much do you want ?"
" About two hundred doUars, I reckon."
The honor of Sangamon County, and of New Salem in par
ticular, was at stake, and the new representative received his
two hundred doUars on the spot.
It is not difficult to guess whose eyes were among the first
to discover how great a difference good clothing could make in
the outer man of Ann Rutledge's taU lover. The new gar
ments and the body under them were but a shell, however,
inclosing the man to whom she was really surrendering her
heart. There were long weelfs yet before Lincoln's new public
duties were to begin, and not an hour of one of them could he
afford to waste. He read as desperately as ever, and he was

FIRST LOVE. 95
also thinking deeply upon other subjects besides law. There
was but little rehgion of any kind in and about New Salem, or
through all the prairie country, in those rude days. Such as
there was would hardly stand any exhaustive analysis. Few
men gave any especial care to matters of faith or doctrine.
There were many more horse-races and wrestling-matches than
Gospel gatherings. The exceptional preaching was of a nature
httle calculated to impress a mind like that of Abraham Lin
coln. Moreover, there was a jarring of sects and creeds, here
and there, as in other communities always, and out of this
came vastly more of contention than Christianity. If what he
saw around him were all there was of religion, it required less
effort to reject than to accept it ; but the searching mind of
the young thinker compeUed him to make some sort of personal
inquiry. His first teachers were about as bad as could have
been given him, and he was not yet prepared to penetrate the
shaUow reasoning of Volney and Tom Paine. He even tried
to f oUow out their lines of thought in an elaborate manuscript,
and when this was finished he read it to a little circle in the
store of Mr. Samuel HUl. There were those present who
thought weU of it, but a son of Mr. Hill expressed his own
opinion in the plain word " infamous," took the paper in his
hand and thrust it into the fire. There was nearly enough of
it for a small book, but it burned weU and Lincoln very sen
sibly let it bum.
He did not know how closely he was foUowing in the foot
steps of the great majority of those who honestly seek for the
Truth. StiU less could he then foresee the day when he should
himseK kneel down and lead a whole nation in prayer and
fasting and thanksgiving and confession of sin, and that in
their darkest hour of trial he should rise before thera to en
courage them to trast in the very God whose existence he was
now in caUow fashion persuading himseK to deny.
All trae thinkers are necessarily " free thinkers" until they
enter into some description of bonds to their own self-conceit

96 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
and surrender their freedom to that miserable taskmaster.
Lincoln began as a free inquirer, and never fell in with the
mob of bondmen, but went on learning more and more until
the very end. That at such a time he exercised himseK so
deeply on such a subject is an invaluable index to the formative
processes of his inner life.
The time at last arrived for his joumey to the Capitol of the
State, then at Vandaha, in the southern part of the long, huge
area of Illinois. Thanks to Mr. Smoot's friendly loan, he was
well prepared to go with proper dignity, and to make a pre
sentable appearance among his feUow-legislators. He had but
a hundred miles or so to travel, but that short journey carried
him on into a new sphere of hfe and action.

IN THE LEGISLATURE. 97

CHAPTER XV.

IN THE LEGISLATURE.

Practical Politics— Lessons in Public Finance — Blowing Bubbles — A great
Darkness— 1834-36.
Me. Lincoln had now attained a position which was fuU of
promise. The power of binding men to him by ties of strong
personal attachment had been bom with him. The capacity
for influencing and controUing them when assembled as citi
zens for the discussion of pohtical questions had been devel
oped in him remarkably and almost without his knowledge.
He was now to study and acquire the art or trade of managing
a drove of selfish pohticians. The material for such a training
was gathered for him in perfection at Vandaha. He found
himseK surrounded by narrow-minded, ignorant embodiments
of party prejudice, local jealousy, seK-seeking, and self-conceit.
In such a mob he could not help becoming a man of some
mark, but during the greater part of that first " session" of
1834r-1835 he neither sought nor attained especial prominence.
He was as yet a student of pohtics, not ready to be an active
worker and stUl less a leader. Of many things he knew as
much as did the majority of his feUow-legislators, and of
some things he knew a great deal more, but he was slow to tell
them so. Few of them, at aU events, could equal him in tell
ing a story with a keen point to it, and none surpassed him in
personal height or in the pecuhar heartiness of manner which
made him so speedily at home amid his new surroundings.
At the beginning of his education as a pohtical manager, he
was also at the beginning of a long course of experimental in
struction as to what could and what could not safely be done

98 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
with public credit. He was to be taught fundamental traths
of finance conceming a State or a nation, that he might not,
in after-days, come ignorantly and without experience to the
discussion and arbitrary decision of precisely such questions,
relating to a wider field than that of the very young and now
half-crazy State of TUinois.
Lincoln beheved in a general system of public improvements,
and so did almost everybody else ; but the common accord
ceased at that point. Beyond it lay a tangled mass of problems
as to methods of procuring money wherewith to improve, and
right along with these came a chaos of discord and contention
as to how and where it should be spent, and which of the out-
reaching, grasping local interests should first be served. The
State was out of debt and its credit stood weU in the money
markets. Tt could readUy borrow whatever it might need. It
had sovereign power to create banks, and, through these, an
unhmited capacity for the issue of paper money. The whole
population was gambhng in town-lots, lands, and almost every
other kind of property.
Illinois was by no means alone in her gambling fever. A
somewhat simUar condition of affairs existed elsewhere. North,
South, East, and West.
As for the Legislature, not a soul in Vandaha knew the first
principles of finance or political economy. There had been as
yet no teaching given to the New Salem member of a sort to
open his eyes to the fragility of tbe bubbles he and his asso
ciates were about to inflate. AH looked weU, and nothing
seemed requisite except the soapsuds of the State credit and the
creative breath of the Legislature.
The speculative mania did not rise to fever-heat during that
first winter, but some very fine bubbles were blown. A State
bank was chartered, with a " capital " of a million and a haK.
A broken-dovra money-miU of a bank in the wretched village
of Shawneetown, in the southern part of the State, was set
ranning again by a law which declared that it had three hun-

IN THE LEGISLATURE. 99
dred thousand dollars to run with. The State borrowed half a
mUhon of actual dollars, and began to spend them on the
western end of the TUinois and Michigan Canal. Nothing was
done for the Sangamon River, and that and other incomplete
streams were compelled to postpone for a while, at least, their
ambition of becoming " navigable." Their friends, however,
were firmly determined that the State credit and statute law
should yet supply them with deep, well-made channels and an
abundance of river-water, and thus everybody hving along the
banks of them would be rich at once. Mr. Lincoln was as
signed a place upon the Committee on Pubhc Accounts and
Expenditures. Tt was a good enough comer in which to study
and acquire the information he stood most in need of, but he
did not bring an ounce of practical preparation to the legisla
tive work set before him. He toUed away at his task, never
theless, and at the end of the session he retumed to his New
Salem home and his law-books.
The year 1835 seemed to open brightly enough, but its com
ing weeks and months were bringing Lincoln deeper and sad
der lessons than any which had yet been given him. He had
aheady discovered in himseK the germs of remarkable facul
ties. He had cultivated all industriously and with success,
under the most adverse circumstances. There was in his grow
ing soul yet one more power of whose very existence he was
but dimly conscious. Tt was the power of suffering ; the fa
culty of feehng inward pain more deeply, more keenly, than
other men, and of keeping and carrying it longer. The related
capacity for concealment did not come at the same tirae, but
was to be developed later, when there should be greater need
of it, that he might not fail in doing the duties whose needful
performance should entaU the suffering.
It is not known precisely when Ann Rutledge told her sui
tor that her heart was his, but early in 1835 it was pubhcly
known that they were solemnly betrothed. Even then the
scrapulous maiden waited for the retum of the absent McNa-

100 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
mar, that she might be formally released from the obligation
to him which he had so recklessly forfeited. Her friends ar
gued with her that she was carrying her scruples too far, and
at last, as neither man nor letter came, she permitted it to be
understood that she would marry Abraham Lincoln as soon as
his legal studies should be completed.
That was a glorious summer for him ; the brightest, sweet
est, hopefuUest he yet had known. It was also the fairest
time he was ever to see ; for even now, as the golden days came
and went, they brought an increasing shadow on their wings.
Tt was a shadow that was not to pass away. Little by little
came indications that the health of Ann Rutledge had suffered
under the prolonged strain to which she had been subjected.
Her sensitive nature had been strung to too high a tension, and
the chords of her life were beginning to give way.
There were those of her friends who said that she died of a
broken heart, but the doctors caUed it " brain-fever."
On the 25th of August, just before the summer died, she
passed away frora earth. But she never faded from the heart
of Abraham Lincoln. She hved there in love and memory to
the very last. In her early grave was buried the best hope he
ever knew, and the shadow of that great darkness was never
entirely lifted from him.
A few days before Ann's death, a message from her brought
her betrothed to her bedside, and they were left alone. No
one ever knew what passed between them in the endless mo
ments of that last sad farewell; but Lincoln left the house
with inexpressible agony written upon his face. He had been
to that hour a man of marvelous poise and self-control, but the
pain he now straggled with grew deeper and more deep, until,
when they came and told him she was dead, his heart and will,
and even his brain itseK, gave way. He was utterly without
help or the knowledge of possible help in this world or beyond
it. He was frantic .for the time, seeming even to lose the sense
of his own identity, and aU New Salem said that he was insane.

ly THE LEGISLATURE. jqI
He piteously moaned and raved, " I can never be reconcUed to
have the snow, rains, and storms beat upon her grave !"
The very earth her body slept in gathered to its grassy cover
ing somewhat of the unutterable tenderness the strong man felt
for his first love. His best friends seemed to have lost their
infiuence over him, and he resisted their kindly efforts at com
fort or control with aU the gloomy peevishness and even the
cunning of a madman.
All but one ; for the same Bowlin Greene who had helped
Short save his property for him at the sheriff's sale came now
again to the rescue. He managed to entice the poor feUow to
his own home a short distance from the village, there to keep
watch and ward over him until the fury of his sorrow should
wear away. There were weU-grounded fears lest he might do
himself some injury, and the watch was vigilantly kept. In a
few weeks reason again obtained the mastery, and it was safe
to let him retiirn to his studies and his work. He could indeed
work again, and he could once more study law, for there was a
kind of rehef in steady occupation and absorbing toil ; but he
was not, could not ever be, the same man. In time even the
joke and the laugh would come to his lips, but they would
never cease to have the appearance and character of brief sun
shine breaking through a cloud, and there was always a great
storm of rain resolutely held back in the inner darkness of that
cloud. lincoln had been fond of poetry frora boyhood, and had
graduaUy made himself familiar with large parts of Shake
speare's plays and the works of other great writers. He now
discovered in a strange collection of crude verses, by an un
known hand, the one poem which seemed best to express the
morbid, troubled, sore condition of his- mind. Those who then
or afterwards heard him repeat the lines by WiUiam Knox,
beginning — " Oh, why should the spirit of raortal be proud?"

102 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
discovered what a wealth of pathetic expression could be
poured forth through them. Uttered by him as the voice of
his suffering, they took into their mournful cadences a power
and a majesty borrowed from the grief which drove Abraham
Lincoln from the grave of Ann Rutledge broken-hearted and
all but insane.
AU men in that vicinity weU knew the sad, romantic story,
and there were no hearts on the Sangamon prairies so hard
that they were not touched by the sorrow of their friend and
neighbor. His popularity increased daily as he went about
among them, thin, haggard, gloomy, and he was more than
ever the idol of New Salem. The winter passed away, and
then the spring, and another sumraer brought -with it a renewal
of pohtical excitement There was no longer any question as
to whether Mr. Lincoln should be elected to the Legislature.
Thenceforward his place upon the Whig ticket was a matter
of course so long as he should consent to such a use of his
name. There was nothing, therefore, to mark for him espe-
ciaUy the campaign of 1836, except the fact that he stumped
the county and received a greater number of votes than was
given to any other candidate who ran for the Legislature that
year. In fact, among a population so shKting, changing, grow
ing, he was already becoming one of the older and earher set
tlers, and the majority of his f eUow-citizens were new men
compared to him.

BUBBLE LEGISLATION joii

CHAPTER XVI.
bubble LEGISLATION.
An Episode— The Lightning-rod— The Long Nine-State Improvements—
Anti-slavery Declarations — 1836.
There is nothing else on earth so easily to be taken posses
sion of as an empty house, whether or not the new occupant
may be or become the owner.
When Lincoln returned to work and to political excitement
he also necessarily returned to the society of women. He
sorely needed aU three, and every other attainable help, to keep
his mind in order. It could hardly be called well regulated as
yet, and his emotional nature was enthely out of gear. End
and busy friends, moreover, came to the rescue, and, by their
management, in the autumn of 1836 he found himseK corre
sponding with an attractive young lady named Mary Owens.
He had not at aU forgotten Ann Rutledge, and the raatter
would be hard to understand if so many of the letters which
passed between the two had not been preserved and actually
printed. They offer a sufficient explanation, for they make
very plain the fact that there was no feehng aroused on either
side at aU worthy to be spoken of as " love." She was hand
some, weU educated, intelligent, with enough of good sense to
admire a strong and rising man. He was restless, feverish,
unsettled, hungry at heart — he did not know for what ; and so
there grew up an intimacy, a friendship, a protracted, strug
gling imitation of a courtship and engagement. From the
latter they were both finally glad to release each other.
It is entirely just to say of Mr. Lincoln that during that
brief period of his life he knew very httle of himseK. The

104 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
continual developments of his nature and its powers must now
and then have brought surprises to him, but it is a curious fact
that nobody else seems ever to have been greatly surprised.
He was a man from whom uncommon performances were ex
pected. Tn joke or in earnest, or in somewhat of both, one of the first
pubhc utterances in behaK of female suffi-age came from his
pen. Tn a printed declaration of his principles, issued during
the canvass for that year's election, he said among other things :
" I go for all sharing the privileges of the government who
assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently I go for admitting
aU whites to the right of suffrage who pay taxes or bear arms
— by no means excluding females."
The subject was not then under discussion in TUinois, but
Mr. Lincoln's after-course proved how prompt and decided was
sure to be his response to any appeal to his sense of justice.
The style of his oratory was now rapidly improfing, and his
speeches becarae occasional surprises even to those who knew
him best and expected most of him. He wasted nothing upon
mere display, but then, as afterwards, he exhibited a marvelous
capacity for using to advantage the smaUest available fact or
circumstance within his reach at the moraent. The smaller
and sharper might be the point of any thrust, the deeper he
was apt to drive it home.
A good illustration of this faculty is found in a speech oi
his, in the campaign of 1836, in reply to a Mr. Forquer. This
gentleman had deeply offended aU notions of pohtical morahty
by a recent desertion of the Whigs, and the feehng against him
was very bitter. He was a man of wealth and standing, Reg
ister of the United States Land Office at Springfield, owning
the best " frame house" in that town. From the roof of this
residence arose the one sohtary lightning-rod in all that part
of the State, and it had attracted more than a httle popular at
tention. At a pohtical meeting Mr. Lincoln made a speech of more

BUBBLE LEGISLATION. joS
than common power, to Mr. Forquer's especial disgust and
astonishment. He rephed ably but superciliously, beginning
¦with the rash assertion that " the young man would have to be
taken down." Throughout his remarks he asserted and
claimed his personal superiority. Lincoln listened attentively,
and at the end of Mr. Forquer's speech he took the stand
again. He rephed with force and dignity to whatever of
argument he had to deal with, but at the conclusion of his
remarks he turned upon his lofty opponent with,
" You began your speech by announcing that ' this young
man would have to be taken down.' "
Turning again to the crowd, he added :
" Tt is for you, not for me, to say whether I am up or do-wn.
The gentleman has aUuded to my being a young man. I am
older in years than I am in the tricks and trades of politicians.
I desire to hve, and I desire place and distinction as a politi
cian ; but I would rather die now than, hke the gentleman,
hve to see the day when I would have to erect a hghtning-rod
to protect a guilty conscience from an offended God."
Nevertheless that sohtary hghtning-rod led Mr. Lincoln to
a study and knowledge of the laws of electricity. Right there
was a difference between him and the other men who stared at
the novel iron ornament upon Mr. Forquer's roof. He alone
could make a spear of it, in a speech, where-with to transfix its
o-wner, and then accept it as a directing finger pointing him
the way to a new field of scientific inqiury.
He had made such good use of his first term in the Legisla
ture that on his retum he at once took rank as an able debater
and parhamentarian. He was also skilled in the tactics r&
quired in securing majorities for his favorite schemes.
The pohtics of the State had now become more closely con
nected with those of the country at large.
The subject of State banks, carrying -with it all questions of
local finance, was interwoven -with the management of the
United States Treasury and the fate of the United States

106 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Bank. At the same time, the pohcy of the general govern
ment vsdth reference to its sales of pubhc lands was nowhere
of more importance than in Illinois.
Mr. Lincoln's brain was teeming more fruitfuUy than ever
-with projects for pubhc improvements. The example of New
York was continually before hira, and he had formed, -with
reference to the canals of his o-wn State, the high ambition of
becommg "the De Witt Clinton of Tlhnois." There was
nothing mean or low in such an aspiration in the mind of a
young man who was only separated by five short years from
the deck of a fiatboat and by less than three from bankruptcy,
poverty, and the sheriff's hammer.
He served upon the Committee on Finance. The ideas
of State credit entertained by that committee may be gathered
from the facts, among many, that for the furtherance of canal
and other enterprises laws were passed authorizing loans to
the amount of twelve milhons of doUars. The money was to
be obtained by the sale of State bonds, and was then to be
employed in quite a variety of ways. It was fully beheved
that into the State, improved by that expenditure, a flood of
immigration would surely and s-wKtly roll, to open farms,
pay taxes, and so to make the bonds good property in the
hands of the imaginary capitalists who were now to buy them.
The passage of a " law" creating capitahsts for the occasion
does not seera to have been thought of, but the nominal capital
of the State Bank and of other banks was largely increased,
that they might issue abundant notes, and so that " money"
might be plentKul.
Small blame rightly attaches to any of the untutored legis
lators who proposed or voted for all these wonderful schemes
for making aU men rich at railway speed. They knew no
better untU, at last, the bursting of their own pretty bubbles,
-with aU the other bubbles the whole nation had been blo-wing,
sent them back to their constituencies sadder and -wiser men.
One other project was kept continuaUy in the foreground

BUBBLE LEGISLATION. 107
by that Legislature. The seat of the State government, at
Vandalia, was too far from the geographical center. It was
inconvenient, unpopular, and there were several other to-wns,
some of them even more badly situated, whose citizens were
eager to have the advantages of a " capital " within their cor
porate hmits.
For many reasons the young city of Springfield, in Lincoln's
own county of Sangamon, seemed entitled to the preference.
Every man of the county representatives could discern those
reasons clearly and argue them con-vincingly. There were nine
of these gentlemen, two in the Senate and seven in the lower
house, and their bodUy size had acquired for them the title of
" the Long Nine." Taken together, they were fifty-four feet
long ; Mr. Lincoln himseK ha-ving a surplus of four inches to
contribute in making up the average of six feet. They were
tireless workers and weU sMUed in the art of influencing their
associates. They so arranged the removal of the capital to
Springfield that it was firmly wedged into a combination of all
the other schemes, and the bill for it was passed in the last
hours of the session. It was an enduring piece of work, and
the State is governed from that to-wn at the present time.
Mr. Lincoln could now return to Sangamon County and
New Salem with a consciousness that he had done for his en
thusiastic constituents at least as much as they could reasonably
expect of him. He had, however, done one thing more, and a
greater and worthier thing than any success he had won as an
advocate of intemal improvement or the removal of the State
capital. He had made a bold, clear record of his views upon
the subject of human slavery.
The Legislature adjoumed upon the 4th of March, and on
the pre-vious day, the 3d, -with but one sohtary comrade,
Daniel Stone, Abraham Lincoln presented to the House, and
had read and spread upon the joumals of record, the foUow
ing protest :
" Resolutions upon the subject of domestic slavery having

108 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
passed both branches of the General Assembly at its present
session, the undersigned hereby protest against the passage of
the same.
" They beheve that the institution of slavery is founded on
both injustice and bad pohcy ; but that the promulgation of
abohtion doctrines tends rather to increase than to abate its
e-vils. " They beheve that the Congress of the United States has
no power, under the Constitution, to interfere with the insti
tution of slavery in the different States.
" They believe that the Congress of the United States has
the power, under the Constitution, to abolish slavery in the
District of Columbia, but that the power ought not to be exer
cised unless at the request of the people of the District.
" The difference between these opinions and those contained
in the said resolutions is their reason for entering this protest.
" Dan. Stone,
"A. Lincoln,
" Representatives from the county of Sangamon."
Only two men in that numerous body chmbed high enough,
at that time, or had the courage to declare that human slavery
was " founded on injustice and bad policy," whatever might be
their opinion of the force of the existing laws by which it was
protected. Tt was a bold thing to do, in a day when to be an
antislavery man, even at the North, was to be a sort of social
outcast and political pariah. Twenty years were to roll away
before a great party was to adopt, as its platform of principles,
declarations nearly equivalent and but httle more advanced
than the brave protest in which Abraham Lincoln induced his
friend Dan Stone to join hira.
That was the first pubhc fruit of the flatboat studies of hu
raan slavery away down the Mississippi River, and other -views
of it obtained in the slave-raarket at New Orleans. The neces
sary moral education for persisting in making such a record

BUBBLE LEGISLATION. 109
had been received through "object-lessons," and the actual
sight of slave and whip, and brand and fetters, and the barter
and sale of human fiesh and blood.
Lincoln had struck his first blow in the great warfare, and it
was as hard a stroke as the occasion permitted. It was a regis
tered prophecy that he would strike again in the fullness of
time and when another opportunity should be given him.

110 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER XVII.
the young lawyer.
Admitted to the Bar— Honest Poverty— The Panic of 1837— Politics again
— Matrimonial tendencies — Another Darkness.
Under every disadvantage and in spite of aU manner of in
terruptions and hindrances, Mr. Lincoln steadily pursued the
study of the law. Early in the year 1837 he was admitted to
practice. He could not hope to build up a law business at New
Salem, and at once removed to Springfield.
Here he sooned formed a partnership with John P. Stuart,
the same kind friend from whom he had borrowed law-books
in the by-gone years, when he was glad to walk to Springfield
for them and read them aU the long walk home.
The young lawyer was still poor. He took his meals at the
very respectable residence of Hon. WiUiam Butler, a pohtical
friend, but he slept on a narrow lounge in the law-office of
Stuart & Lincoln, in the second story of the court-house build
ing. He had debts to pay, and he was steadily, honestly pay
ing them ; not in any way wasting a doUar of other people's
money. He was deahng -with vast sums as a legislator, and the
expenditure of these and the management of the many bubble
schemes of the day were mixed and tainted -with fraud, corrup
tion, and bribery. Everybody knew this; but it was also
kno-wn that the most active advocate of pubhc improvement
among the TUinois legislators could not afford to hire himseK a
small room in a Springfield boarding-house. The bitterest
tongue of pohtical detraction never ventured to assaU his per
sonal honor. Had any man been so siUy as to question Ian-

THE YOUNG LAWYER. m
coin's integrity, at that or any subsequent time, he would but
have covered himself -with derision.
The Springfield bar, in those days, numbered among its
members many men of more than common ability. There
were some, indeed, whose names were soon to be famihar to
the whole country. Tt was not, therefore, because his com
petitors were few or weak that Lincoln rapidly advanced to a
foremost position as a sound and able lawyer. Frora the out
set he was compeUed to fight his way against men every way
capable of testing his powers to the uttermost, and there was
none of them whose apparent educational advantages had not
been greater than his o-wn.
The year 1837 was marked in the history of the United
States by the severest financial crisis the country had experi
enced since the close of the Revolutionary War. On the 10th
of May the banks of New York suspended specie payments ;
and on the 12th the Bank of the United States and those of
PMladelphia foUowed the example so set them. Fast and far
the ruin spread in aU directions. Tn July the Governor of H-
hnois caUed a special session of the State Legislature, to see if
something could not be done for the epidemic bankruptcy by
the passage of medicinal laws.
The first act which was passed had the effect of permitting
aU the banks in the State to suspend specie payments. Noth
ing was done, however, to prevent them issuing further paper
promises to pay the money they did not have and could not
hope to obtain. Neither was any step taken towards dimin
ishing the current outlay for mtemal improvements. More
loans were actuaUy authorized, and the State went on fiounder-
ing deeper and deeper into the Dismal Swamp of disaster pre
pared for it by its crazy people as represented by young Lin
coln and aU the other " De Witt Chntons of Uhnois."
When aU had been done that could be devised, the legislators
from a distance went home to their constituents. There -was
no more mischief to be feared from them until another election

112 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
should call them together. Mr. Lincoln remained in Spring
field, resuming what there was of his law practice and the slow
process of wiping out his debts.
All idea of marrjong Mary Owens seems to have left him
early in 1838. Nothing more would ever have been heard of
that affair if, in after-years, its futile record had not been disin
terred too zealously from old letter-boxes and doubtful mem
ories. One value of it now is the testimony so borne to the
fact that not even his admitted abihties were as yet considered
by many a social set-off to his gaunt, ungainly person, his
awkward, unpolished maimers, and the serious deficiencies of
his early training and family connections. He had broken
through every barrier but that of "caste." That, too, was
yet to go do-wn before him, and he was one day to take his
seat, uncrovTued indeed, but throned, among the kings of the
earth. It was nearly a matter of course that Mr. Lincoln should be
again elected to the Legislature in 1838 ; and when that body
carae together he was the candidate of the Whig party for
Speaker of the House. The Deraocratic norainee, Mr. Ewing,
was elected by a smaU majority ; but the unquestioned leader
ship won by Lincoln at so early a day is worthy of especial
notice. The same honorable nomination was given him by his
party in the succeeding Legislature, and -with the same foregone
result, for the Democrats were in power.
Tn that year, 1840, occurred one of the most remarkable of
American political campaigns, resulting in the election of
General Harrison as President of the United States. Mr. Lin
coln was a candidate for Presidential Elector on the Whig
ticket, and he "stumped" a large part of the State in company
and contest with the leading orators of the opposite party.
For the first time his reputation became other than some
what local, and his tall form began to be familiar to the eyes
of the general public of Blinois. Once seen, once heard, there
was no danger that he would ever be forgotten. Prior to that

THE YOUNG LAWYER. 113
date he had done something as a lecturer, but only within a
narrow circle of smaU audiences.
He was now approaching a second crisis of his moral and
emotional nature, and one which proved to be terribly severe.
Among his especial friends in Springfield were Mr. Ninian
Edwards and his family. Mrs. Edwards was a daughter of
Hon. Robert S. Todd of Lexington, Kentucky, and her sister
Mary, a bright, witty, and handsome young woman, came to
reside -with her at about the time of the removal of the State
capital to Springfield, in the year 1839.
Mr. Lincoln found himseK constantly thrown into the society
of a weU-educated, cheerful, and in some respects fascinating
young lady. It was not long before he began to listen to the
suggestions of her friends and his own that he had better
marry Mary Todd. He deeply felt his utter lonehness. The
idea of a home had a charm that was all its own, for that was a
gKt which had hitherto been denied him. Miss Todd herself,
though from a faraily of much pretension to " position," had a
keen perception of the ability and worth of the rising young
lawyer. He was poor ; he was fettered and clogged by many
disadvantages of person, manner, education, history ; but she
was a young woman of more than ordinary penetration and
good sense. She saw that here was a man worthy of any
woman, and her mind speedily settled itseK in his favor with a
firmness which was afterwards proof against aU trials. Tt was
not long before a formal betrothal resulted. He was by no
means her only suitor, but had rivals for her favor whose
worldly prospects, as compared with his o-wn, relieve Miss Todd
of any imputation that she Was influenced in her choice by
mere ambition. Tt is said that at one time, being asked which
of her admirers, Lincoln or Douglas, she preferred, she laugh
ingly rephed, "The one that has the best chance of being
President." It is amusing enough now to note how some men
look back gravely to that merry conversation and accuse the
hvely Kentucky girl of exercising the gift of prophecy, instead

114 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
of consulting her o-wn heart, in deciding between two active
young pohticians in a new-bom Western State.
Lincoln was now engaged to be married, and his purpose
might have drifted smoothly onward to fuMUment if it had
not been for the arrival of yet another member of the Edwards
family. This was a Miss Matilda Edwards, the sister of his
friend. She was very fair, and quickly became the reigning
belle of Springfield. Mr. Lincoln saw much of her and felt
dra-wn towards her irresistibly. She had a secret to unfold to
him ; an unveiling of his inner hfe to perform for him.
What might be her mission he did not know or understand for
a while. He even imagined the emotion now stirring within
him to be a love for Miss Edwards, although he never told her
so. Looking upon her face, however, he discovered that he
was not in love -with Miss Todd, and that his engagement -with
the latter was based upon no better foundation than respect,
admiration, and a keen sense of his own need of a wKe and
home. Upon that discovery followed another like an electric
shock,'and he went at once to Miss Todd to offer her a release
frora her engagement. Had her heart been as hghtly bound
as his, there could have been but one result ; but the interview
did not end in a release. The young man's keen sense of honor
was in the way of that, and this was reinforced by a deeper,
stronger, sadder consideration. He could not confide to her
the real reason of his apparent change, although he could freely
disavow any intention or hope of obtaining Miss Edwards.
But for this, indeed, jealousy would have come to the quick
and somewhat fiery spirit of Miss Todd, and Lincoln would
have been spared a part, at least, of the sharp agony in store
for him. He went away, carrying his secret -with him, and
the wedding-day was set. AU things were made ready, even
to the setting forth of the marriage-feast ; but when the hour
appointed came, it did not bring the bridegroom.
The brain whose steady strength had aheady found a place
among the best-trained intellects of the West — sustained as was

THE YOUNG LAWYER. \\Q
that brain by a bodily frame of the most extraordinary power
and by a -wUl of iron — had once more been swept into tempo
rary ruin as by a hurricane of passionate sorrow. His discovery
was that all the heart and love he had, or ever could have, lay
buried on the bank of the Sangamon, in the grave of Ann
Rutledge. Lincoln was positively demented — ^morbidly, gloomily insane.
He was equaUy unfit for marriage, for society, for business.
Once more he was indebted to a faithful friend for the care
and watching he stood in need of. He never had one -wiser
and more true than Mr. J. F. Speed. This gentleman, then a
resident and merchant of Springfield, was closing up his busi
ness there, and early in January, 1841, he removed to a new
home in Kentucky, carrying Lincoln vrith him.
Complete cessation of mental toil ; severance from too sug
gestive surroundings of places and persons ; -with the firm,
judicious management of friends in whom he put utter confi
dence, gave the disordered inteUect of the smitten man its
best opportunity for restoration to health. Month after month
went by, however, before it was deemed safe to trast him back
among his dangers. Spring and summer and part of the au
tumn passed away, and -with them a whole session of the Legis
lature to which he had been elected. Then he retumed. But
he was not yet altogether himseK. He kept the secret of the
agony which had overpowered him, but his raind stiU vaciUated
strangely conceming his matrimonial engagement. Miss Todd's
friends at one tirae urged her to give him up. At another
they seem to have given her directly opposite counsel. So did
the friends of Lincoln and of both for him. The two met and
met again, but there is no record that at any time there was a
sign of a change of purpose in Mary Todd. Tt is not well to
speak or think hghtly of such womanly faith and constancy as
this. She loved him, trusted him, and she continually drew
him to her more and more nearly and irrevocably.
On his return to Springfield, Mr. Lincoln at once resumed

116 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
his law-practice and plunged again into politics. HabituaUy
gloomy as his face had grown to be, he did not wear his heart
upon his sleeve. He took his part with energy in aU the affaira
of the day. It was well, too, for his mental health, to be
brought so continually in contact -with a high-spirited and fun-
loving girl like Mary Todd.
Tn the course of the foUowing year a merry prank of hers
ended in a serious scrape for him.
Miss Todd was mistress of a somewhat biting style of satire,
and enjoyed the application of it highly. It even led her to
the occasional contribution of pohtical lampoons to the Spring
field newspapers. As a matter of course, Mr. Lincoln was ad
mitted to the secret of the authorship of these " Letters from
the Lost Townships," and he may have aided in the prepara
tion of one or more of them.
Among the rising pohticians of Illinois, at that time, was a
young Irish gentleman, James Shields, afterwards to be famous
as a soldier and political leader, but whose quick teraper and
sensitiveness to ridicule rendered him a dangerous target for
the mischievous archery of Mary Todd.
Letter after letter appeared in " The Sangamon Journal,"
hitting harder and harder, until Mr. Shields could endure no
longer, and sent a friend to the editor demanding the author's
name. The editor, placed in a somewhat awkward position, revealed
a haK-truth by giving to the messenger. General Whiteside,
the name of Abraham Lincoln.
A peppery and offensive communication was at once written
by Mr. Shields to Mr. Lincoln, eliciting a dignified but unsatis
factory reply, and a challenge to fight a duel speedily foUowed.
The "code of honor," as it was the absurd fashion to describe
the system of fantastic rules regulating that form of deliberate
murder, was then in fuU force in the West. Even those who
perceived its insanity and hated its brutahty had not yet learned
to repudiate its helhsh authority.

THE YOUNG LAWYER. n'-j
It seemed therefore necessary for Mr. Lincoln to accept the
chaUenge. Then it was needful that the friends of both par
ties should solemnly ruffle through the customary correspon
dence, public and private. There were the usual interviews,
misunderstandings, dehcate points of honor, and all the other
doings and undoings which make the duehst ridiculous. At
last the very place of meeting was agreed upon, three miles
from Alton, TUinois, but on the Missouri shore of the Missis
sippi River. The weapons selected were " cavalry broadswords
of the largest size," and the idea of being hacked at -with such
a cleaver by a man of Lincoln's size and strength could hardly
have been a pleasant one for Mr. James Shields.
Tt was very much a matter of course that the seconds, sur
geons, mutual friends, and other members of the customary
mob of assistants at such an affair managed to patch the mat
ter up in time to prevent the use of the broadswords, and after
wards the truth graduaUy leaked out as to the authorship of
the " Letters from the Lost To-wnships." Mr. Lincoln did not
fight the duel, and the larger share of the ridicule attached to
Mr. Shields, but it remained a sore subject to the former ever
afterwards. The arrangements for not fighting had been somewhat elabo
rate, and had dragged on through aU the latter part of Septem
ber and into October. Right along with them, and, as it
seemed, somewhat hand-in-hand, a more important result had
been preparing.
On the 4th of November Mr. Lincoln was married to Mary
Todd. The young couple went into very respectable quarters, board
ing at the Globe Tavern, where they were compeUed to pay
the then good price of four doUars a week. The bridegroom
was finally out of debt, but he was still poor and had never
cultivated the faculty of making money. He was henceforth
to have a helpmeet who would see to it that his finances were
kept in better order; but even Mrs. Lincoln perpetuaUy faUed

118 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
in her efforts to induce him to make a proper use of his busi
ness advantages.
Mr. Lincoln's mind had now recovered health and tone and
the calm strength which it never again lost. He was as hard
a student as ever, both of books and men, and his professional
reputation was increasing. He was once more the hfe and
soul of pohtical movements and party organizations. There
was no danger that his ambition would be permitted to slum
ber, -with a -wife at his elbow who f uUy believed in his capacity
for almost any earthly achievement, and whose own pohtical
faculties were much more than ordinary.

MANHOOD. 119

CHAPTER XVIII.
manhood.
An Honest Lawyer — A Storm — Tbe Henry Clay Campaign — The Old Cabin
— ^Partnerships — Coarse and Pine — Elected Congressman — The Mexi
can War — ^President Making — The Pro- Slavery Formula — Southern
Friendships.
Neither pohtics nor social nor domestic interests prevented
Mr. Lincoln from gi-ving careful and laborious attention to his
professional duties. On the 3d of December, 1839, he was
admitted to practice in the Circuit Court of the United States.
His presentation of his first case in that court stands all alone
in the annals of the law. He arose and addressed the bench
as foUows:
" This is the first case I have ever had in this court, and I
have therefore examined it with great care. As the Court -wiU
perceive by looking at the abstract of the record, the only ques
tion in this case is one of authority. I have not been able to
find any authority sustaining my side of the case, but I have
found several cases directly in point on the other side. I -wUl
now give these cases and then submit the case."
The courage, candor, simple honor, required for such an
utterance, working out afterwards in aU he said or did, before
judges and juries, gave him a power -with thera which was pe
cnharly his o-wn. Men cannot fail to be influenced by the
truth-seeking argument of an advocate in whose integrity
they are compeUed by him to repose unquestioning confidence.
There were cases brought to him which he could not and
would not touch. No possible fee would induce him to be-

120 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
come the instrument of injustice under cover of legal form
and merely technical right.
A few months after Mr. Lincoln's marriage an active can
vass began -within the limits of the Whig party as to who
should be its candidate for Congressman from the Sangamon
district. The prospect for an election by the people was very
good, and there were several gentlemen whose friends were
hotly urging their respective claims. Mr. Lincoln earnestly
desired the nomination, but now, for the flrst time in his poh
tical career, he found himseK assailed upon purely personal
grounds. Tt would hardly have answered the purposes of his
rivals to attack him for his low origin before a community
among whom such an assault would but have added to his popu
larity. He could, on the other hand, be accused of having de
serted the cause of the common people by marrying an " aristo
cratic" -wife. All good men who believed the Bible could be
told that he was a deist or an infidel. At the same time, mera
bers of the more numerous sects could be assured that he was
an Episcopahan or a Presbyterian, -with equal recklessness of
the fact that he was neither. Nothing was forgotten or neg
lected which could be remembered or invented against him,
and he was compelled to bend before the storm. He -withdrew
his narae at last in favor of Mr. E. D. Baker, and that gentle
man was both nominated and elected to the Twenty-ninth
Congress. He received, throughout the canvass, the active
support of the defeated aspirant.
Tn the year 1844, Mr. Lincoln's political idol, Henry Clay,
was nominated by the Whigs for the Presidency, and Lincoln
was once more naraed as a candidate for Presidential Elector.
He threw himself into the campaign with all his energy, and
was bitterly disappointed by the defeat of his party and its
great representative. He made many speeches in Illinois, but
the most notable part of his work, that year, came to him in
Indiana. The course of his campaign appointments carried
him to Gentry-ville and its neighborhood. He made three

MANHOOD. 221
speeches within a few miles, one of them within two mUes of
the log-cabin his father had built so many years before. The
country had vastly changed, and so had its inhabitants, but not
so much as had the barefooted boy who shivered under the
" pole-shelter" that first vsdnter.
WliUe m the middle of his speech at GentryviUe, he espied
an old boy-friend and neighbor, Nat Grigsby, far back among
his hearers. The argument suddenly stopped and the orator
sprang do-wn from the platform, urging his way through the
crowd and exclahning, " There's Nat !" Not tiU after a good
shake of the hand and a hearty word about old times -with Nat
did the gathered voters hear the rest of Lincoln's plea on be
haK of Henry Clay.
Nat and nearly aU the rest of the chUdren of the early set
tlers of the Pigeon Creek forests were still, except for the
lapse of time, hving at the earthy level upon which they had
been bom. Their original advantages had been at least as
good, and in many instances had been much better, than those
of Abraham Lincoln. He, however, had so grown and so de
parted from that level of human hfe, during the thirteen years
since he toUed on foot from the woods of Indiana to the prai
ries of Illinois, that now there was a great guK between him
and them.
Other eyes could discern the abyss of separation more clearly
than could those of " the orator of the day." He insisted on
going -with Nat Grigsby to pay a visit to the same Mr. Jones,
in Gentry-ville, for whom he had performed his earliest ser-vice
as clerk. He made it a merry time, apparently, and he met
all old and new acquaintances -with the heartiest cordiahty.
The uses of fun and humor as a mask of his inner man were
aheady only too famihar to him. It was well for hira, then
and afterwards, that he possessed so excellent a shield.
In the shadows of the woods near GentryviUe there were
many graves. Among them were those of Lincoln's own
mother and sister. The very woods themselves were a sort of

122 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
burial-ground for the strange, hard, unchildlike childhood out
of whose hunger and thirst and nakedness of soul and body he
had grown to his present stature. He could not look upon the
log-cabin of his earher days without understanding that some
of the precious treasures of human hfe had been denied him.
His very capacity for reading and so for leading the coarse and
sordid men and women around him told of a side of his being
that was born and bred -with him and that never could or
would be polished away. The capacity was needful, was in
valuable, but it had cost something. If it had been possible,
and if he had chiseled his character away to a finer model,
more in accord -with conventional standards of human per
fection, all these important elements of American life would
have missed finding their o-wn image in him. Failing that, the
people would have refused him the strong, instinctive con
fidence and love which finally fiowed to him and enabled him
to bind the hearts of a nation together as one man, and in one
man, in the hour of the nation's trial.
It is a curious fact that, now, it is among the same people,
educated or uneducated, whether nominaUy high or low,
rich or poor, but who personaUy knew Lincoln so very well in
those old days, we hear the one faint and grumbhng negation
of his greatness. In the language of one prairie-farmer, un
consciously speaking for many : " Wal, no. Linkern wasn't
so much of a man. I knowed him. He lived out this away.
I've seen hira a heap o' times. His folks was torn-down poor.
Reckon they wouldn't ha' made sech a fuss about him ef he
hadn't been shot. That helped hira powerful. I knowed him."
After the defeat of Henry Clay there was little to be done
in pohtics until another campaign, and the hfe Mr. Lincoln
led was necessarily a quiet one. He followed the movements
of the courts from place to place, estabhshing his hard-earned
reputation more and more firmly, and beginning to reap a har
vest of fees which was wealth to a man of his simple tastes
and inexpensive habits. He was now able to do something for

MANHOOD. 123
his beloved " mother," for his shiftless, improvident father,
and for quite a long list of his early friends. He had, how
ever, the good sense not to go too far in this direction, and he
then and afterwards refused to take upon his own shoulders
the burden of carrying sundry altogether too -wilhng depend
ents. Such of his communications to these and others as have
been preserved exhibit a praiseworthy disposition to help even
chronic indolence to help itseK, but not to go much beyond
that hue. It was a matter of course that the persons aided,
always excepting his sound-minded stepmother, entertained
wider and more hberal views of what should be done for them
by a man upon whom they held the strong claim that they
had kno-wn him when he was as poor as themselves. In their
minds, justice required that what they caUed his " luck" should
be divided around among the easy-going mob who had sat so
very stUl whUe he was toiling for it.
Mr. Lincoln's first law-partnership, -with John T. Stuart,
which began in 1837, was dissolved in 1841, in consequence of
Mr. Stuart's election to Congress. His second partnership,
-with Stephen T. Logan, began in 1841 and lasted until 1845.
Shortly afterwards he associated -with him Mr. Wilham H.
Hemdon, -with whom his relations continued to the very end.
These were, from the beginning, more near than those of mere
business partners. The greater part of all that the world
knows of Mr. Lincoln's early life has been gathered and pre
served by the affectionate diligence of his devoted friend. It
goes almost -without saying that Mr. Herndon stood too near
the raan he loved to form a just estimate of him as compared
with other men, or to correctly discern some features of his
character which required to be studied from a greater distance.
It was not until some tirae after Mr. Lincoln began to " ride
the circuit" that he was able to do so on a horse or in a buggy
of his o-wn; but whatever borrowed beast or vehicle brought
him to any county-seat, he was sure to be welcomed by court
and bar as the hfe of aU social gatherings. Among his profes-

124 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
sional associates, more freely and completely than elsewhere,
he could come out from his clouds and vapors and give vent to
the keen but quiet humor which might have made a cheerful
man of him but that so heavy a load was laid upon him con
tinually. There was little refinement of thought or speech among
those Western lawyers or their clients. There had been none
at aU of either in the rough schools through which Mr. Lincoln
had received his education. He had his finer side ; fine even
to sensitiveness, and tender to an extreme capacity for suffer
ing ; but he did not cast the pearls of this before the swine of
a misceUaneous " court-house crowd." As they were, so was
he, for the hour ; exhibiting to them, in careless freedom and
good-feUowship, only such stores of wisdom, wit, or anecdote
as were suited to the average taste, morality, and brain of those
who hstened. Tt was a way in hfe by no means pecuhar to
him, and it was gradually wom frora him in the sharp and
hard attrition of his later days. Tt is a very feeble-minded
error to suppose that even the richest vein of gold is naturaUy
free from dross, or that its treasure is fitted for the mint before
it has passed through the crushing-mill, the furnace, and been
subjected to the subtle and searching arts of the refiner. There
was much dross in the mind and in the speech of Abraham
Lincoln in those days of close contact -with the crime, mean
ness, fraud, chicanery, and pollution of a mixed law-practice
among the new settlements of Tlhnois ; but there was very httle
dross of any kind in his heart, and out of this his mouth was
sure to speak more and more as time went on.
In the year 1846 there was again a sharp contest over the
nomination of a candidate for Congressman by the Whig party
in the Sangamon district. Tt was speedily reduced to a com
petition between the sitting member. General Hardin, and Mr.
Lincoln, and, as early as February 26th, the former -withdrew
in favor of the new aspirant. The regular nomination was
made in the following May, and both before it and afterwards

MANHOOD. 125
the personal record of the candidate was searched for all its
-vulnerable points. His supposed rehgious con-victions were
assailed all the more bitterly because his pohtical opponent in
the campaign was Peter Cartwright, an eccentric but popular
preacher of the Methodist persuasion. The effort to make the
contest one between saint and sinner broke do-wn altogether,
and Mr. Lincoln was elected by an uncomraonly large majority.
He had thus attained a long-sought object of his ambition,
and there were great reasons, not hi any man's mind then, why
a term of service in Congress was especially needful to him.
The honor cost him a high price. His law-practice must suffer
seriously, in spite of all that could be done in his absence by
Mr. Herndon. Separation from home was inevitable, for his
circumstances did not permit that he should take his young
and gro-wing famUy -with him to Washington. Robert, his
first-bom child, was beginning to talk and run around the
house; but his second, WiUy, was still a babe in arms, ha-ving
been born on the 10th of March in that year.
Mr. Lincoln's position in that Congress, the Thirtieth, as the
only Whig member from the State of Ilhnois, had its peculiar
difficulties and responsibihties. It had its unpleasant features
as weU as its honors. It gave him a certain exceptional influ
ence and weight with Whig statesmen from other parts of the
country, and in a manner vastly -widened his constituency at
home. At the same time it was obvious that no other raan
could be more sure of careful watching by political opponents.
The least misstep was certain to be made the raost of against
him. He understood it all, and then, so understanding, he de-
hberately went forward to make, one after the other, the pre
cise missteps his most bitter critics would have asked of him.
He was a politician, traly, but he was a great deal more ; and it
was no wonder, at the end of the Thirtieth Congress, that he
should be looked upon as a ruined man, in whose face the gates
of further advancement had been closed by his own reckless
hand.

126 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
The House was organized on the 6th of December, 1847,
Mr. Lincoln being given a place on the Committee on Post
Offices and Post Roads. His first speech, a short one, was
made in connection with the business of that committee, and
he wrote to Mr. Hemdon that he found it as easy to speak in
Congress as elsewhere.
The great topics of the hour were the Mexican War and the
extension of Slavery, the two being interwoven, and both caU
ing for constant discussion in many forms.
From his own con-victions and as a representative of the
Whig party, Mr. Lincoln was opposed to the war -with Mexico.
As early as the 22d of December he offered a preamble and
resolutions setting forth his -views of the varied wrongs in
volved in the course pursued by the administration of Presi
dent Polk in the current dispute -with the weak, chaotic re
pubhc beyond the Rio Grande. The war was soon to become
popular by reason of the mihtary glory won by the army, and
Mr. Lincoln's advocacy of the weak against the strong lost to
him and to his party the greater portion of his pohtical strength
in Illinois. He made a somewhat elaborate speech in behalf
of his resolutions on the 12th of January, 1848, but it was all
too late to stem the tide of war. AU that any pohtician could
do, in or out of Congress, was to put himseK in such a position
that he would surely be swept away by the flood of popular
passion. Like other Whigs, Mr. Lincoln voted for requisite
supphes for the army in the field. It is even noteworthy how
close is the analogy between his position -with reference to the
Mexican war and that afterwards held by many conscientious
Democrats -with reference to the war for the Union. It goes
far to explain the mutual confidence which existed, at the lat
ter period, between him and them ; and the country was the
gainer. WhUe the war lasted it was exceedingly popxUar, but the
sure reaction from its fierce excitement temporarily crippled
the party which was responsible for it. Nevertheless, the

MANHOOD. 127
political chiefs who had most actively opposed it were not at
once available candidates for political honors. Mr. Lincoln
saw clearly that not himseK only but such men as Henry Clay,
Daniel Webster, and aU the old-time Whig giants must be set
aside. That men accustomed to control should fail to appre
ciate a necessity so disagreeable was every way natural, and
their friends -with keener perceptions were compelled to bestir
themselves in time. It was needful that a Whig Presidential
candidate should be fixed upon in advance of the Whig Na
tional Convention if one was to be offered with any prospect
of an election by the people. There did not really seem to be
more than one man who met the requirements of the pohtical
situation. General Zachary Taylor was the hero of some of
the hardest-fought battles of the war, and he probably pos
sessed as much statesmanship as falls to the lot of most good
mihtary commanders. A respectable lawyer from Western
New York, MiUard Fillmore, was given the second place on
the ticket. Nobody knew enough about either of these gentle
men to say a word against them, and Taylor's war-record was
full of political campaign material. Mr. Lincoln took an active
part in arranging its business beforehand for the National Con
vention. He attended its formal meeting at Philadelphia on
the 1st of June, assisted in placing the candidates upon the
platform of principles constructed for them, and then returned
to Washington to finish his work as a member of Congress.
On the 20th of June he delivered in the House a speech
upon his favorite subject of intemal improvement. On the
27th of July foUo-wing he again spoke in an argument which
embraced the entire field of the Presidential election and the
leading pohtical issues of the day. The most interesting fea
ture of this speech is the plainness -with which it sets forth
Mr. Lincoln's unalterable opposition to slavery. He could not
and did not offensively formulate it then and there. If his
opinions were at all in advance of those held at the time by a
large part of the Whig party in the Northern States, a wise

128 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
care for the results of the pending election forbade their utter
ance. He was cautious, but proslavery men were by no means
either bhnded or satisfied by such moderation in him or in
others. They well understood that aU opposition to the " ex
tension of slavery" had for its source and foundation a hatred
of human bondage for its own sake. It was easy for them, in
their heated imaginations, to transfer that rooted hatred to
themselves and to assume that it could not but be personal.
They promptly adjusted theraselves to that interpretation of
all such utterances as those of Mr. Lincoln. They were men
whose habits of life, of thought and action, forbade them to
flinch from any issue presented. They were both able and
courageous, and they ruled the country thereafter for twenty
years by the mere presentation of the bold formula : "If you
hate slavery, you hate us. If you desire to Mil it, your real
purpose is to murder the people of the South."
Congress adjourned on the 14th of August, and Mr. Lincoln
went to New England on a brief tour of pohtical speech-mak
ing. This was his first opportunity for acquiring any personal
acquaintance -with modes of hfe in the Eastern States. Except
for what study he had made of Yankee settlers in the West, he
was entirely ignorant conceming a population which was yet
to give hira its very heart. He was, however, a student accus
tomed to learn rapidly the contents of the huraan pages brought
before him. He could not possibly fail to profit by such an
experience of contact and observation.
The second session of the Thirtieth Congress did httle or
nothing for the reputation of Mr. Lincoln. He voted -with his
party, now in brief control of the House. He even offered a
biU for compensated emancipation of slaves held in the District
of Columbia, but it died the natural death of aU such proposi
tions in those days. Somewhat curiously, he made more and
more lasting new friendships among Southern representative
men than Northern. It was as if some subtle instinct bade
him seek and study them, telhng him the importance of his

MANHOOD. 129
acquiring a knowledge of them and an understanding through
them of the people who sent them to Congress. Some of these
friendships, as that -with Mr. Stephens, of Georgia, came to the
surface as pohtical factors and powers in subsequent emergen
cies. His correspondence with Mr. Herndon during all this
period exhibits his undiminished interest in his home affairs.
Tt also shows that he was subject to all the minor annoyances
and perplexities of a member of Congress, including the per
tinacities of office-seekers and the carping criticism of personal
friends. There was reaUy no reason why he should be anxious
for a re-election, and there were many good reasons why he
should not openly seek for one. Of these, perhaps the best, in
his judgment, was the absolute certainty of defeat at the polls
if he should be nominated.

130 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER XIX.
the coming conflict.
Office Refused — The Missouri Compromise — A Sure Prophecy — Inner Life
— Ripening — Death of Tom Lincoln — A Written Confession of Faith.
Mr. Lincoln would -wiUingly have continued in Congress
if such a thing had been pohtically possible ; but it was not.
Among other obstacles appears to have been some sort of an
informal understanding between him and other Whig leaders
of central TUinois aiming at a rotation among them of the
honor of representing the Sangamon district. The nomination
fell to Lincoln's friend. Judge Logan, but he received it only
to meet the sure defeat prepared for him by the anti-war and
antislavery record of his predecessor. The latter at this junc
ture of his affairs made an effort to obtain from the new Whig
administration the appointment of Commissioner of the Gen
eral Land Office at Washington. It was probably at that time
the one public employment which would have offered him op
portunities for furthering his internal-improvement schemes.
The national landed property, always large, had been greatly
increased by the results of the war -with Mexico. Tt was im
possible that Lincoln's mind should not turn -with ideas and
projects relating to the future use and occupation of areas so
vast and so fuU of aU the prophecies of empire.
The coveted post was given to another citizen of TUinois,
and Mr. Lincoln was offered in its stead the governorship of
Oregon Territory. He was urged by his friends to take the
appointment, on the ground that Oregon would soon be a
State and would thus send him to the United States Senate.
It was a tempting bait, but all the reply he made was that he

THE COMING CONFLICT. 181
would accept K Mrs. Lincoln approved. The question was
duly submitted to her, and her refusal was equally absolute
and prompt. She would not let her husband bury himseK
again in the wilds of another new country, and he acted upon
her -wKely advice, returning -with aU his accustomed vigor to
his sadly run-do-wn and neglected legal practice.
The Eighth Judicial District was territorially large, includ
ing fourteen prairie counties. To each of the several county-
seats Mr. Lincoln traveled twice in each year. Each circuit
required nearly three months, and not much more than haK of
any year could be spent quietly at home by an active prac
titioner. The temptation to make much of earlier events in the light
of later ones always besets the biographer, but there is ample
evidence that Mr. Lincoln's ability as a lawyer was notable
throughout the Western country, and that he was regarded
as a man of exceptional powers, even by the strong men about
hira, many of whom afterwards theraselves achieved national
reputation as congressmen, senators, governors and generals.
Of these may be cited one — Justice David Davis of the United
States Supreme Court, an eminent lawyer, a distinguished
senator, and one of the recognized superior men of the Su
preme Court bench. In an address upon Lincoln, after the
latter's death, he said :
" In all the elements that constitute the great lawyer he had
few equals. He was great both at nisi prius and before an ap
pellate tribunal. He seized the strong points of a cause, and
presented them with clearness and great compactness. His
raind was logical and direct, and he did not indulge in extra
neous discussion. Generalities and platitudes had no charms
for him. An unfailing vein of huraor never deserted hira ;
and he was able to claim the attention of court and jury, when
the cause was the most uninteresting, by the appropriateness
of his anecdotes.
" His power of comparison was large, and he rarely failed in

132 ABRAHA3I LINCOLN.
a legal discussion to use that mode of reasoning. The frame
work of his mental and moral being was honesty, and a wrong
cause was poorly defended by him. The abUity which some
eminent lawyers possess, of explaining away the bad points of
a cause by ingenious sophistry, was denied hira. Tn order to
bring into full activity his great powers, it was necessary that
he should be convinced of the right and justice of the matter
which he advocated ; when so convinced, whether the cause
was great or small, he was usually successful. He read few
law-books, except when the cause in hand made it necessary ;
yet he was usually self-reliant, depending on his own resources,
and rarely consulting his brother lawyers, either on the man
agement of his case or on the legal questions involved 
" He hated wrong and oppression everywhere, and many a
raan whose fraudulent conduct was undergoing review in a
court of justice has writhed under his terrific indignation and
rebukes. He was the most simple and unostentatious of men
in his habits, having few wants and those easily supplied.
To his honor be it said that he never took from a client, even,
when his cause was gained, more than he thought the services
were worth and the client could reasonably afford to pay.
The people where he practised law were not rich, and his
charges were always small. I question whether there was a
lawyer in the circuit, who had been at the bar so long a time,
whose means were not larger 
" Mr. Lincoln was loved by his brethren of the bar. His
presence on the circuit was watched for with interest, and
never faUed to produce joy or hilarity. When casually absent
the spirits of both bar and people were depressed."
In the intervals of these unavoidable absences, caused by his
going on circuit for law practice, Lincoln's home grew very
dear to him. His habits were simple and domestic to the last
degree, and his fondness for his children was one of his most
deeply marked characteristics. His wife was utterly devoted
to him. His widening circle of friends grew more and more

THE COMING CONFLICT. 133
attached and trusting, and his affairs were eminently prosper
ous. In Mr. Arnold's interesting Life of Lincoln is given a little
picture of his home life at this period which is most attractive,
and, as coming from a familiar friend and frequent visitor, is
authentic. The author says :
" I recall, with sad pleasure, the dinners and evening parties
given by Mrs. Lincoln. In her modest and simple home,
where everything was so orderly and refined, there was always
on the part of both host and hostess a cordial and hearty West
ern welcome, which put every guest perfectly at ease. Their
table was famed for the excellence of raany rare Kentucky
dishes, aud for the venison, wild turkeys, and other garae
then so abundant. Yet it was her genial manner and ever
kind welcome, and Mr. Lincoln's wit and humor, anecdote
and unrivalled conversation, which formed the chief attrac
tion." Mr. Lincoln's position during this period was hardly second
to that of any other man in the State, and it seemed that he
had already won every success in life which could reasonably
be aspired to by the son of an Indiana settler, a " poor white"
from Kentucky.
He himseK was anything but satisfied. He was still aspir
ing, studying, preparing, gro-wing. He carried with him upon
the chcuit other books than those which treated of the law.
Copies of Shakespeare, historical works, mathematical school
text-books, were his frequent companions. He was still pur
suing in his ripe manhood the tireless process of education
which he had begun -with a piece of charcoal and a wooden
fire-shovel. He was much sought after as a " counsel for the defendant"
in criminal cases, although his noted power over a jury passed
away from him at once if he himself believed his client to be
guilty. In one such case that is recorded he remarked to his
associate counsel :

134 ' ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
" If you can say anything for the man, do it. I can't. If
I attempt, the jury -wiU see that I think he is guilty and con-
-vict him of course."
The other lawyers followed their chief's example ; the case
was submitted vrathout argument ; and the jury, unassisted by
any " confession" from Abraham Lincoln, failed to agree upon
a verdict. Tn a similar case, years later, in Champaign County, a man
was on trial for murder. Mr. Lincoln was employed to defend
him, assisted by Leonard Swett. The prosecution was con
ducted by Ward H. Lamon and Judge Fickhn ; and when they
had done theh duty, the prisoner's leading counsel was con-
-vinced of his guilt.
" Swett," said he, " the man is guilty. You defend him. I
can't." Mr. Swett, only less effective before a jury than Mr. Lincoln
himself, made the remaining fight so weU that his client was
acquitted ; but his associate refused to take any part of the fee
that was paid for the work he had refused to do.
There are many anecdotes told of Lincoln's professional
readiness, -wit, learning, capacity, eloquence, but few afford
any better knowledge of the real life of the man. He was in
wardly advancing to a higher stature of mind and soul than
was required for the -winning of a succession of court-room
-victories over the arts of opposing counsel and over the minds
of petty juries. Not as a mere la-wyer, of what rank and
power soever, was his name to go do-wn to future generations.
Still it is weU to be assured that in these duties as in aU others
he was notably capable and faithful.
Questions of national importance were now beginning to
stir more and more powerfully in his conscience and in his
heart as the fruits of his Congressional experience slowly
ripened. Long before going to Washington, he had been sent
to look -with open eyes upon some aspects of the slave-life of
the Southern States. While in Congress he had studied and

THE COMING CONFLICT. J 35
understood the men who excused, defended, or glorified the
laws and institutions by which that IKe was created and con
tinued in existence.
It was not difficult for any thoughtful man to comprehend,
in part at least, the purposes and plans of the advocates of
slavery, for they were even brutally frank in many of their
pubhc declarations. They had to the utterraost the courage
of their con-victions, and they shrank from no part or issue or
consequence of the work to which they had set themselves.
Mr. Lincoln understood fully now their courage, their activity,
their great inteUectual abUity. He saw with equal clearness
the sluggish cowardice of aU the opposition to their -wiU, which
had as yet a position to make itseK effective. He knew men,
and had analyzed the processes through which their slow
thoughts and feehngs are developed into purposes and pass on
into express action. He was watching these processes -with
intense interest. Tn the year 1850, in a conversation -with his
friend and former law-partner, Mr. Stuart, he said :
" The time wiU come when we must all be Democrats or
Abohtionists. When that time comes my mind is raade up.
The slavery question can't be compromised."
" So is ray mind raade up," rephed Mr. Stuart ; but it was
that he would be no Abohtionist.
The very thing Mr. Lincoln said could not be done was now
attempted. ShaUow thinkers said it had been done, by the so-
caUed "Compromise Measures of 1850," whether regarded
merely as laws or as a species of social contract. These, it may
be well to recaU, admitted Missouri vrithout restriction as to
Slavery, and at the same time prohibited Slavery forever in the
new territory west of Missouri and north of the latitude 36° 30'
— ^the southern boundary hue of that State. This " Missouri
Compromise" did indeed arise to the dignity of a hollow and
fraudulent political truce. So long as the fetters it sought to
impose retained their fictitious binding power there was no
fitting place in pohtics for men like Abraham Lincoln. The

136 , ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
condition of his mind with reference to all this matter is
admhably set forth by Mr. Herndon :
" Mr. Lincoln and I were going to Petersburg, in 1850, I
think. The political world was dead : the compromises of
1850 seemed to have settled the negro's fate. Things were
stagnant, and all hope for progress in the line of freedom
seemed to be crushed out. Lincoln was speculating -with me
about the deadness of things and the despair which arose out
of it, and deeply regretting that his human strength and power
were limited by his nature to rouse and stir up the world. He
said gloomUy, despairingly, sadly : ' How hard, oh, how hard
it is to die and leave one's country no better than if one had
never hved for it ! The world is dead to hope, deaf to its own
death-struggle, made known by a universal cry. What is to
be done ? Is anything to be done ? Who can do anything ?
And how is it to be done? Did you ever think of these
things?'" Tt was a grand utterance ; and the world can understand it
now, and can also understand by help of it what forces were at
work behind the sad face of the man who was yet to answer
effectively the fierce questionings of his o-wn despairing cry.
The world of 1850 was not the world of to-day. There have
been vast con-vulsions and wonderful changes in every part of
it since then, and every change and every con-vulsion which
has taken place began in the hearts of raen who had in some
measure received, like Lincoln, the priceless gKts of thinking
and seeing and suffering.
Men who heard him at times — men like Herndon, who was
a sincere Abolitionist — could and did wonder why the man
who felt so deeply and spoke so strongly did not at once break
out into some species of agitation. Other men were so doing
here and there, and were bravely performing the work of
pioneers in the cause of freedom. Lincoln also was doing the
work allotted him, and his zealous friends were unable to see
that his time for something different had not yet come. He

THE COMING CONFLICT. 137
understood, rather than saw, the unad-visabihty of present ac-
ti-vity on his part. It was nothing to him that other men, such
as in after-time mistook themselves and their frantic outcries
for causes instead of effervescent effects, were aU the while
hurhng anathemas at any who might dare await the coming
fullness of time. It had not come, and he would bravely wait.
The great mass of American citizens went somewhat stohdly
on with their plowing and planting, their merchandise, their
pohtics, — such as they thought they could understand, — and
their religions, such as they had.
The fullness of time came, and -with it the man who had
ripened vsdth it for the work of the great harvest ; but even
now, after the work is done and he has passed on out of the
field, there stiU remain those who look back to the year 1850,
and even later, and try to persuade themselves and others:
" At that time Mr. Lincoln's mind was not made up. He was
no further advanced then than we ourselves were."
By others somewhat this sort of comment has been freely
made : " He and the other pohticians were ready enough to reap
the harvest we had sown and tUled for them. The new pohti
cal world was created by us and we put into it the men, hke
Lincoln, whom we manufactured out of the dust of the earth.
We blew into them aU the hfe they ever had."
Mr. Lincoln's determination to abstain from current pohtics
was so firm, that when in that very year the nomination for
Congress was again offered him, he positively and pubhcly de
chned it. It is very possible that he could have been elected,
as aU personal opposition to him had ebbed away. But there
was httle to be then accomplished at Washington which could
not just as weU be done by other men. Moreover, the sacri
fice of professional and doraestic interests and ties would then
have been greater than before.
His father's health began to fail towards the close of 1850,
and Mr. Lincoln took care that his last days should be provided
for in every needful way. Tt was also just before the birth of

138 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
little " Tad," and there were other reasons which forbade a
prolonged absence from Springfield.
As for Thomas Lincoln, it is pleasant to know how tenderly
and kindly the poor old shiftless Kentucky ne'er-do-well was
cared for upon his death-bed by his faithful son. Mr. Lincoln
-wrote to his step-brother, John Johnston, a letter which closes
with the f oUo-wing sentences :
" I sincerely hope father may yet recover his health ; but at
all events tell him to remember to caU upon and confide in our
great and good and merciful Maker, who wiU not turn away
from him in any extreraity. He notes the fall of the sparrow
and nurabers the hairs of our heads ; and He -wUl not forget
the dying man who puts his trust in Him. Say to him that,
K we could meet now, it is doubtful whether it would not be
more painful than pleasant ; but that K it be his lot to go now,
he wiU soon have a joyful meeting with loved ones gone be
fore, and where the rest of us, through the mercy of God, hope
ere long to join them."
These utterances, too, may well stand as an answer to those
who tried to make the thoughtful man responsible for the raw
infidehty of the thinking youth. This faith in the fatherhood
of God, and his later manifestations of positive behef in the
brotherhood of man, are not far from obedience to the great
commandments on which, said Jesus, "hang aU the law and
the prophets."
After his father's death, as before, Mr. Lincoln continued
his kind offices to his step-mother, and to other members of
the family, although some of the latter took a course in hfe
which reflected small credit upon her or him. He probably
did as much for aU of them as was in any manner weU or
worth whUe.

A GREAT A WAKENING, 139

CHAPTER XX.
a great awakening.
Colonization — The Kansas-Nebraska Act — The Barriers Broken Down 
Lincoln's First Great Speech — Stephen A. Douglas — Gro-wth of a New
Party — ^Discovering a Leader — An Oratorical Match.
In July, 1852, Mr. Lincoln was selected by the citizens of
Springfield to deliver a funeral oration upon Henry Clay. He
performed the pubhc duty aUotted him, but with an absence
of enthusiasm for his old pohtical idol which occasioned re
mark. Tt need not have surprised any who knew him weU.
He had that upon his mind which forbade his rising to any un
usual height of eloquence in deahng -with the meraory of a
statesman whose sun had set behind the clouds of " compro
mise" of the slavery question. The only noteworthy feature
of the address is its be-wUdered agreement -with Mr. Clay's
idea of the colonization of the black people in Africa as a pos
sible remedy for existing evUs. Clearly foreseeing the a-wful
perils into which the country was drifting ; discovering no
possibility of emancipation upon the soil of the United States ;
regarding the continued presence of such a population as a
danger to the future welfare of the whites, both of the North
and South — aU the threatening images with which his inner
thought was tuming goaded him on in a search which seemed
hopeless. Tn such a state of mind, the vain chimera of a
wholesale transportation of the apparent cause of the coming
strife and misery to other lands took hold of him -with a
power which would have been impossible had any alternative
proposition been presented. Tt clung to him for years with a
pertinacity which is not at all wonderful, but which is not easy

140 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
of explanation to minds which have not had the same probleme
to deal -with.
During the same year Mr. Lincoln made a speech at Spring
field, in commentary upon one dehvered by Stephen A. Doug
las at Richmond, Virginia. Like other ephemeral utterances
it has httle interest now.
The minor features of the slow movement of national poh
tics in the years preceding the great colhsion have passed out
of sight. It was regarded by some, at that time, as an act of pre
sumption for Mr. Lincoln to assume such an attitude of equal
ity with " the httle giant of lUinois."
To Mr. Douglas, however, the whole country was soon to be
indebted for an act of ser-vihty to the slave-power which set
free the forces for a tirae bound do-wn by the compromises of
1850. The bill afterwards known in history as " The Kansas-
Nebraska Act," in its coraplete forra, was reported to the Sen
ate of the United States on the 23d of January, 1854, by Mr.
Douglas, as Chairman of the Committee on Territories.
The Act pro-vided for the creation of the Territories of Kan
sas and Nebraska out of the immense area then bearing the
latter name. It reraoved the safeguards and ignored the
solemn compact provided by the Missouri Compromise, and
left the people of these or any other Territories, or a tempo
rary majority vote of them, empowered to admit or rejeci
human slavery, subject only to the Constitution of the United
States, in which there was then no specific barrier. In no other
way could the impending peril have been placed before the
pubhc in a shape so easily understood. AU mere theories were
out of date in an instant, when the propagandists of bondage
said to the nation : " Here are two new States to be organized.
They must be Slave-States. We have broken down the fence
agreed upon between you and us. You shall not put up any
more." The people as a whole were slow in di-viding upon the new
issue so presented. The Democratic party. North and South,

A GREAT AWAKENING. 141
was wonderfully -vigorous and in perfect discipline, and it held
the Federal government, -with all its machinery of administra
tion, in a grasp of iron. The Whig party was in process of
disintegration; dying because it had nothing to live for.
There was no existing pohtical organization capable of taking
up the chaUenge of the South. The chiefs of the latter were
utterly astounded by the roar of surprise, fury, dismay, of
helpless, aimless, mobhke wrath which swept the North like a
tidal wave from the Atlantic westward.
Mr. Douglas was as much astonished as were his Southern
coUeagues. He finished his Senatorial work in Washington,
and hurried to TUinois to try and persuade the people that his
biU did not mean what they all said it did. At Chicago the
angry multitude refused to listen to him, and he went on to
Springfield. The State Fair was held in that city in October, dra-wing to
gether a vast throng from all parts of the State, thoroughly
representing its best population ; and before that assembly the*
Senator pleaded in his o-wn defense.
There was one man in Springfield to whom the Kansas-Ne
braska bUl, the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the re-open
ing of the slavery question, had come as a new lease of life.
As by one voice the duty of answering Douglas was assigned
to Mr. Lincoln, and he may be truly said to have made his
first great political speech that day. All the smothered fire of
his brooding days and nights and years burst forth in a power
and -with an eloquence which even those who knew him best
had not so much as hoped for.
There was no report made of that speech. Not a sentence
of it had been reduced to -writing beforehand. He spoke all
that was in his heart to speak, and when he sat do-wn there
had been a new party born in the State of Illinois, and he was
its father, its head, its unquestioned and unquestionable repre
sentative and leader.
Mr. Douglas briefly and vainly attempted a reply, ending bj

142 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
a promise of another speech in the evening ; but his defeat had
been altogether too complete. He made no second appearance
before the assembly which had listened while Mr. Lincoln tore
his fallacies to shreds and held his personal political i;ecord up
to their scom and ridicule. The evening was occupied instead
by a number of the best orators in the State, both Whigs and
Democrats, enforcing the great lesson of the day and carrying
forward the work which Lincoln had so well begun.
The elements for the formation of a new party were a.bun-
dant in every Northern State, and they were aggregating ra
pidly, but they were yet confused, unorganized, chaotic. There
was great intensity of feehng among aU the varied and discon
nected constituencies, but no forraulated expression had been
agreed upon. So far as men were able to typify the ideas and
purposes to which they were opposed, these were temporarily
embodied in Stephen A. Douglas rather than in any Southern
leader. It was a distinction of which he afterwards laboriously
and painfully divested himseK. But he wore it long enough
to serve the purpose for which it was given him.
A part of this had been aheady weU served. Pubhcly, be
fore a vast jury of his f eUow-citizens, as the champion of his
cause he had met and been vanquished by the man who thence
forward was to express in his own voice and personahty, and
at last to officially represent and direct, the national -will and
soul, aroused by proslavery aggression. The ser-vice was not
fully performed that day, for afterwards Mr. Douglas was to
act as a pointing hand, concentrating the eyes of men upon
Mr. Lincoln, so that they might know their leader and form
column behind him as he went forward.
Much good work for freedom had aheady been done upon
the floors of Congress, in House and Senate ; much in the press
and in the pulpit ; more in talks by firesides and in neighbor
hood gatherings. The fire passed swiftly from man to man.
Had it not been so there would have been no party to organize.
It is, nevertheless, a matter of historical record that the exist-

A GREAT AWAKENING. 143
ence of the Republican party, unnamed but li-ving, dates from
the first collision at Springfield of Stephen A. Douglas with the
man who for forty-seven years of toUsome development had
un-wittingly prepared himseK for that hour and for the long
straggle which was to foUow.
The other orators of the day, the crowd that sympathized,
admired, applauded, saw httle more than the fact that " Old
Abe has made a splendid speech. We did not know it was in
hun." Some of them also perceived the e-vident fact that whenever
Mr. Douglas or any other champion of the cause he repre
sented should require to be met again, there could be no doubt
as to the popular choice of a man to meet hira. Not that Mr.
Lincoln was a great man or the equal of Mr. Douglas. He
was too near a neighbor for that, and not known much outside
of the State. Nothing great about him. They knew him.
Had heard him teU stories. StiU, he was a sort of gro-wing
man, and he coidd make a right down good speech. A man
vnth a sadly defective education.
There was a reason why Mr. Lincoln did not attend the
gathering of the people in the evening after his great Spring
field speech. The extreme Abohtionists, blind to the meaning
of that which was passing before their eyes, had announced a
separate meeting of their own. They had planned, moreover,
that the triumphant orator of the day should be there present
and be forced to identKy himself with their faction. He was
plainly an Abohtionist in heart and why should he not become
one in name ?
It was a thoroughly sincere and honest piece of un-wisdom.
But even so ardent an antislavery man as Mr. Hemdon saw
the danger to his friend and to all the interests at stake, and he
hastened to give warning. He himseK says :
" I rushed to Lincoln and said, ' Lincoln, go home ; take Bob
and the buggy and leave the county ; go quickly ; right off ;
and never mind the order of your going.' He stayed away tiU
aU conventions and fairs were over."

144 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Tt was the announced purpose of Mr. Douglas to speak be
tween that time and the election at various large to-wns
throughout the State, and Mr. Lincoln was requested to f oUow
and reply to him, according to the prevaihng Western custom.
The request was united in by prominent men of the three fac
tions, Whigs, Abolitionists, and Anti-Nebraska Democrats,
which were already coalescing to form the new party and did
not know it. The duty was promptly accepted by Mr. Lincoln,
and the two leaders met at Peoria in a second encounter. The
results of this destroyed all -wilhngness on the part of Douglas
for any further trial of strength. An agreement, afterwards
somewhat departed from, was entered into, by the terms of
which both combatants retired from the canvass. It was a
pohtical capitulation.
Mr. Lincoln's Peoria speech was printed and -widely read.
By it his foUowers were supplied -with forcible verbal formulas
for the expression of their thoughts and feehngs, and aU the
local speakers of the faU campaign were given a magazine of
fresh material to draw upon.
Mr. Douglas, prior to his arrangement for withdrawal, had
made an appointment to speak at Lacon, and Mr. Lincoln went
to meet him there, but refrained from speaking when he found
his opponent disabled by Ulness. On his return home he
learned that his friends, represented by Mr. WiUiam Jayne,
had announced him in the Journal as a candidate for the
State Legislature, and that Mrs. Lincoln, well knowing her
husband's -views and -wishes, had called upon the editor, Mr.
Francis, and procured the removal of the announcement from
the paper. Of course Mr. Jayne went to see Mr. Lincoln on
his arrival, and he thus relates the story of it :
" I went to see him in order to get his consent to run. This
was at his house. He was then the saddest man I ever saw •
the gloomiest. He walked up and down the floor, almost
crying, and to all my persuasions to let his name stand in the
paper he said, ' No, I can't. You don't know all. I say you

bcs?

Frofn Photograph taken immediately after Nomination, i860.

A GREAT AWAKENING. 145
don't begin to know one half, and that's enough.' I did, how
ever, go and have his name reinstated, and there it stood. He
and Logan were elected by about six hundred majority."
There is a wonderful simplicity about this whole transaction
of wKe and husband and devoted friends. Little enough the
others knew, — ^unless it may have been to some extent kno-wn
to his wKe, — ^the awful struggle of which the external symp
toms so puzzled them.
They seem to have sagely decided, although -with some won
der that Lincoln should feel so badly about it, that he had
serious doubts of the ad-visabihty of going to the Legislature
just then. His very soul was wrung to agony ; they could see
that ; but he never took the small trouble to have his candidacy
denied. He was elected; and then, as soon as the Legislature
came together, he resigned.
There was an ob-vious reason for the latter step. Mr. Lin
coln was weU kno-wn to be a candidate for United States Sena
tor, in place of James Shields, whose term was expiring. The
latter had voted for the Kansas-Nebraska BiU with Mr. Doug
las, and the opponents of the hated law were in the majority if
their several factions could be induced to act in concert. Some
other man than Shields would surely be chosen by the Legis
lature, and Mr. Lincoln's sense of propriety forbade him to sit
as a member of the body which was to act upon his claims as a
candidate. He had a strong deshe to go to the Senate, there to continue
the war he had so well begun. He was no prophet, and had
none to tell him that, for a time at least, private life was a bet
ter place for him than the dignified assembly which has been
shrewdly described as " the graveyard of Presidential candi
dates." Tt was necessary that he should remain a man of the
people, among the people ; studying the course of events bet
ter than that could be done in the heated atmosphere of the
Capitol. Tt was equaUy needful that he should keep himself
untrammeled by the fetters of official responsibihty, and that

146 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
he should avoid the sure peril of injudicious utterances in the
fierce debates that were soon to come, and to which the country
was to listen as it had never hstened before.
More than aU was it needful that the forces preparing and
growing within him should have two years of accumulation,
rather than exhaustion.
On the 8th of February, 1855, the Legislature took in hand
the election of a United States Senator. Tt was found that
Gen. Shields, and after hira ex-Govemor Mattison, to whom
the Democrats transferred their strength, had forty-one votes ;
whUe the anti-Democratic majority were di-vided, gi'ving to
Mr. Lincoln forty-five, Mr. TrumbuU five, and Mr. Koerner
two. Forty-seven were required to elect, and repeated baUotings
brought no change in favor of either of the leading candidates.
Then came signs of danger that some of Mr. TrumbuU's sup
porters, who were opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska measure, but
were Democrats aU, and old political opponents of Mr. Lin
coln, might relapse into their former party aUegiance. Mr.
Lincoln's advice was asked and given. He said -without a mo
ment's hesitation : " You ought to drop me and go for Trum
bull. That is the only way you can defeat Mattison."
His friend, Judge Logan, urged that he should continue to
be a candidate, but was firraly answered :
" If I do, you will lose both TrambuU and myself, and I
think the cause, in this case, is to be preferred to men."
The Whigs obeyed, in bitterness of spirit, and Lyman Trum
buU was chosen Senator instead of Abraham Lincoln. The act
of the latter did more than send an able and patriotic man to
the Senate. Tt retained the anti-Nebraska Democratic element
in the new party, in that and in other States. It kept Lincoln
at home in Illinois, but in charge of all further consohdation of
jarring elements, and with the threads of all control more
firmly in his hands than ever. His neighbors had trusted his
integrity and recognized his capacity. They were now com
pelled to acknowledge and to honor his rare unselfishness.

A GREAT AWAKENING. 147
The sacrifice had cost him something, but the unexpected re
ward was promptly and loyally paid him.
It was an additional recompense, shortly afterwards, to find
how bravely and how well Senator Trumbull was performing
the high duty so magnanimously surrendered to him. His
very presence in the Senate-chamber was a -visible warning to
the slavery propagandists that their long control of the Demo
cratic party of the North had been broken forever.

148 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER XXI.
the new party.
Bleeding Kansas — A Watchful Friend — Trapping a Trapper — The Bloom.
ington Convention — General Apathy — The Voice of Paith.
Of the two Territories created by the Kansas-Nebraska Bill,
the former was manifestly the more nearly ready for admis
sion into the Union as a State. Upon the soU of Kansas,
therefore, the contending pohtical forces had aheady begun to
pour themselves, in a tide of extraordinary immigration from
the older States. The lawless and often bloody scenes enacting
there were doing rauch to convince the nation that the days of
mere argument, and even of mere balloting, were passing away.
A most peaceful generation, born and nurtured in the hatred
of all violence, was undergoing a process of habituation to the
idea of brute force as a tribunal of final appeal.
The sympathies of the anti-slavery men of Illinois were
strongly appealed to on behalf of their do-wntrodden brethren
of Kansas. In 1856, not long after the Senatorial election, an
association was formed of the more zealous Abolitionists, -with
the -view of emigrating, armed and equipped, to what was prac-
ticaUy the seat of civil war. Among these was Mr. Hem
don, and his purpose could not long be concealed from his
wiser, cooler, more far-seeing law-partner. By some means
Mr. Lincoln got the hot-heads together, and addressed them in
the name of peace, law, order, and sound common-sense. He
not only con-vinced them that their purpose was -wrong, but
that it was foolish, and persuaded them to stay at home. He
joined them, however, in sending pecuniary and other contri-

THE NEW PARTY. 149
buttons to the assistance of the actual Kansas settlers who were
suffering in consequence of the political disorders.
He himseK had been too -wise, in his most earnest utter
ances, to avow himseK an extreme Abohtionist. In his mind,
the country had other interests than those of the black man.
The future of the white race was also entitled to some consid
eration. The best good of all forbade indifference to the wel
fare of any part.
The several factions into which the opposition to the con
troUing party was still di-vided in TUinois were in a state of
seeming bhndness to their approaching consolidation ; but Mr.
Lincoln was not. Eaich coterie put forth eager but vain efforts
to secure the adhesion to their number of the man who con
tained in himself more power than any or all of thera. They
compeUed him to exercise great care. So reticent was he, so
cautious not to make any answer which should seem to identKy
his name with any chque or segment, that even Mr. Herndon
felt himseK caUed upon to labor -with his friend in the interest
of the cause of freedom. He lent him antislavery books and
papers ; read him extracts from speeches and lectures ; strove
in every way to arouse in him a more aggressive hatred of
slavery and a disposition to fight against it. Mr. Lincoln might
weU have said to him, as he had said to Mr. Jayne : " You
don't begin to know the haK of it, and that's enough."
He said very httle, however, and his friend persisted in con.
sidering him unsettled in his pohtical mind.
The radicals of every name were shortly summoned to a
State convention to be held at Bloomington, and a " call " was
circulated in Springfield for a county convention for the selec
tion of delegates. There still remained a curious doubt as to
the course Mr. Lincoln would pursue. He was absent when
the " caU " was passed around for signatures, but Mr. Hemdon,
zealously determined to make him commit himself, signed his
name to it for him. Nothing could add to Mr. Hemdon's own
account of the transaction and its consequences. He says :

150 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
"I determined to make him take a stand, if he would not do
it willingly, as he might have done, as he was naturaUy in
clined Abohtionward. Lincoln was absent when the caU was
signed and circulated here. I signed Mr. Lincoln's name -with
out authority ; had it published in the Journal. John T.
Stuart was keeping his eye on Lincoln, with the view of keep
ing him on his side — the totally dead conservative side. Mr.
Stuart saw the published call and grew mad ; rushed into my
office. Seemed mad and horrified, and said to me, ' Sir, did
Mr. Lincoln sign that Abolition caU which is published this
morning ? ' I answered, ' Mr. Lincoln did not sign that call.'
' Did Mr. Lincoln authorize you to sign it ? ' said Mr. Stuart.
' No, he never authorized me to sign it.' ' Then do you know
that you have ruined Mr. Lincoln ? ' 'I did not know that I
had ruined Mr. Lincoln ; did not intend to do so ; thought he
was a made man by it ; that the tirae had come when conser
vatism was a crime and a blimder.' ' You, then, take the re
sponsibihty of your acts, do you ? ' ' I do, most emphaticaUy.'
However, I sat down and wrote to Mr. Lincoln, who was then
in Pekin or Treraont, possibly at court. He received my let
ter and instantly replied, either by letter or telegraph, — most
hkely by letter, — that he adopted m toto what I had done, and
promised to meet the radicals — Lovejoy and such-like men —
among us."
All this is as much as to say that they thought it was need
ful to entrap Mr. Lincoln, and this is the way in which the
large garae was caught and caged.
There was, however, soraething of a surprise in store for the
successful trappers. When the State convention came together
at Bloomington, it was found to comprise strong conservative
as well as ultra-progressive elements. Tt was precisely the
conclave for which Mr. Lincoln had long been waiting, and the
opportunity had come for him to dehver another decisive
speech. He was undeniably the man of the occasion, and
others were waiting to hear from him.

THE NEW PARTY. 1 51
It was pretty well understood that his utterance would be
regarded as the voice of the convention, and would be, to all
intents and purposes, the " platform" upon which it would be
compeUed to stand. So to speak, he had taken possession of
the trap wherein his -wise friends had caged him and was
calmly proceeding to capture the trappers.
The speech he made has been declared the ablest of his
strictly pohtical addresses. In many respects it is certainly the
most interesting of aU. He was able, for the first time, to
free his arguments from many of the meshes formerly cast
around them by existing laws, by " compromises," and by ex
pressed or imphed social contracts. Mr. Douglas and his
friends in Congress had done this much for him and for free
dora. The new party, thus beginning to assume organic existence,
first assumed the name of " Repubhcan" at this particular Con
vention at Bloomington, TUinois, and it has been common to
say that it was " bom" then and there. This is simply a con
fusion of ideas, for the young pohtical organism had aheady
left its cradle and was advanced far along the hue of prepara
tion for the severe work of early manhood. There is a differ
ence between mere ceremonies of christening and other -vital
izing processes of creation.
Apart from the more glo-wing paragraphs of Mr. Lincoln's
speech, the proceedings at Bloomington were apparently con
servative, and the extremists were but little pleased -with them.
The " platform" actuaUy adopted did not go far enough, and
yet it went to the hmit of what Mr. Lincoln beheved the peo
ple were ready to accept. It went so much further than that
in fact, and the whole undertaking had in it so much of au
dacity, of presumptuous rebellion against the existing order
of things, of an advance into unknown and perilous ground,
that the report of it was received -with general apathy and was
foUowed by a mysteriously deep and timid reaction. So strong
in the minds of men was the doubt as to what course they

152 ABRAHA3I LINCOLN.
should pursue, that the entire voting population may be said
to have held its political breath. About five days after the
adjournment of the convention, a pubhc meeting was caUed in
Springfield to " ratify" the action taken. The county court
house, where the meeting was to be held, was well lighted ;
the usual posters on all the fences had announced the meeting
and the name of the distinguished orator who was to address
it ; a band of music paraded the streets to drum up enthusiasm,
and the bells were rung. The net result of all these praise
worthy efforts is reported by Mr. Hemdon, who, -with Mr. Lin
coln and a man named John Pain, were aU the multitude the
occasion brought together :
"When Mr. Lincoln came into the court-house, he came
with a sadness and a sense of the ludicrous on his face. He
walked to the stand, mounted it with a kind of mocking, —
mhth and sadness aU combined, — and said : ' Gentlemen, this
meeting is larger than I knew it would be. I knew that
Herndon and rayseK would come, but I did not know that
any one else would be here ; and yet another has come, — you,
John Pain. These are sad times and seem out of joint. All
seems dead, dead, dead ; but the age is not yet dead : it hveth
as sure as our Maker liveth. Under all this seeming want of
hfe and motion the world does move, nevertheless. Be hope
ful. And now let us adjourn, and appeal to the people.' "
He made many longer speeches in the course of his hfe, but
not one that was braver or better. He well understood the
true nature of the temporary paralysis of the new pohtical
movement, and had measured the forces whose h-repressible
acti-vities forbade its long continuance. Nevertheless, it re
quired a good deal of faith to stand up in an empty haU and so
address Mr. Herndon and John Pain.

THE UOMIJS'G MAN. 153

CHAPTER XXn.
THE COMING MAN.
The Fremont Campaign — Lincoln for Vice-President — The Southern Threat
— Days of Preparation — Buchanan's Term — One Story Higher — A
Murder Case.
The varied elements of the new party, in all those parts of
the country wherein it could be permitted to exist, were now
rapidly coalescing, but did not yet caU themselves Repubhcans.
A " national convention" was held at Pittsburg, Pennsylvania,
in February, 1856, but adjourned -without making nominations.
A second convention met at PhUadelphia, on the 17th of June,
and nominated John C. Fremont for President and WiUiam
L. Dayton for Vice-President. The supporters of these candi
dates very generaUy concealed their hesitation as to their future
pohtical course by styhng themselves vaguely " The People's
Party." At the PhUadelphia convention, when the Tlhnois delega
tion, in its turn, was caUed upon to present a nomination for
the office of Vice-President of the United States, its chairman
announced the name of Abraham Lincoln. When the ballots
were counted, he was found to be the second on the hst of
candidates, ha-ving received 110 votes. Mr. Dayton had 289
votes, and 180 ballots were distributed among many other
names. Mr. Lincoln had not yet had time to think much of his own
pohtical prospects in connection -with the new party. Position
and power had come to him more rapidly than he was aware.
So httle did he know how strong a hold he was taking upon
the minds of men that the honor thus given him came as a

154 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
complete surprise. He was attending court in Urbana, Cham
paign County, when the telegraph brought the news that Day
ton had been nominated, but that " Mr. Lincoln received 110
votes." " That must be our Lincoln," half doubtfuUy remarked some
of his friends in his hearing ; but he said, " No, it could not
be : it must have been the great Lincoln from Massachusetts."
There was, indeed, a prominent citizen of that State who
bore the same name.
All that was left of the old Whig party nominated " Fill
more and Donelson." The Democrats nominated " Buchanan
and Breckinridge," -with a positive assurance of success. The
campaign began at once, and Mr. Lincoln went into it with all
his energy, as a candidate for Presidential Elector of the State
of Illinois, on the Fremont and Dayton ticket. Tn so doing,
he was, of necessity, brought before the entire country as the
immediate antagonist and, as it proved, intellectual superior of
of the Democratic champion, Stephen A. Douglas, a man of
national reputation. Mr. Lincoln's closest friends and warmest
admirers in Illinois had but inadequate ideas of the extent to
which, in part or in whole, the speeches of the man whom they
regarded as their excellent and, in sorae things, very capable
neighbor were read by the people of other States. They httle
guessed how widely and deeply the foundations of his repute
and power were building through all the busy days of that
great though seemingly unsuccessful campaign.
Any discussing of pending questions, as then formulated,
may be set aside as belonging to the political history of the
times rather than to the biography of Abraham Lincoln. Not
so, however, with the fact that the Democratic press and ora
tors, North and South, from beginning to end of the campaign
of 1856, held up before the people the red specters of dis
union and civil war, to deter aU timid men from opposing the
onward march of slavery. Tt was not a mere threat, and Mr.
Lincoln at no time treated it as such, but discussed it seriously.

THE COMING 3IAN. I55
He repeatedly argued the wicked unreason of regarding the
election of the anti-slavery candidates as an excuse for the
commission of the proposed crime.
He clearly perceived the reahty of the coming peril, even
whUe he pubhcly declared its de-vilish folly. His fits of de
spondency came upon him more frequently than ever, and
more darkly. There was no suddenness whatever in this ripen
ing of his understanding and the appreciation of the forces in
collision. It had come -with the growth of his personal convic
tions of duty and -with his painfuUy labored study of the
measures -wisely to be taken or avoided, the words well to be
uttered or left unspoken, and of the slow processes through
which the general popular mind was unwittingly preparing to
meet the -wrath to come.
It has been only too common a stupidity for men to look upon
Mr. Lincoln as a species of pohtical miracle; a prodigy of
sudden sagacity and power ; blindly selected from among an
unknown multitude by the chance-medley results of a political
lottery at a convention ; s-wiftly expanding to colossal knowl
edge and -wisdom under the furnace-heat of circumstances.
Sound common-sense and healthy human reason have no faith
in such irrational marvels.
Every day of his hfe, prior to the Fremont campaign, had
been a preparation for it. Every hour of that intense excite
ment was surcharged -with the same close, penetrating, unf or-
getting study that he had given to the charcoal scores on his
Indiana shingle ; to the law-books he devoured during his hot
walks from Springfield to New Salem ; or to the Euclid or
Shakespeare he carried with him in his borrowed buggy around
the Sangamon three-months' circuit.
Every comer of his soul was a busy workshop, with no open
-windows through which other men could look in and see what
was going on. While others were discontentedly waiting and
wondering what would be the end of it all, he was aiding them
to wait with better patience. At the same time he was saga-

156 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
ciously aiding them in getthig ready for such action as might
be required when the hour should cOme to wait no longer.
When that hour came, it was only because of their own sur
prise at what he said and did that they dimly imagined he
must also be astonishing himseK.
The results of the November voting were precisely what all
but a few over-sanguine and inexperienced pohticians had ex
pected. Mr. Buchanan was elected President of the United
States, and the Deraocratic paiiy seemed to be settled more
firmly than ever in its long-held place of power. Trae, there
was a strong and persistent minority of Republicans in each
House of Congress. Theh nurabers were gro-wing, and they
were soon to be in control of the Lower House. They had al
ready carried one of their number to the Speaker's chair, but
-with an Ul-disciphned and somewhat uncertain support for hira
after he was put there. The assumption of the name " Repub
hcans" by the new party was progressive, as the several ele
ments and factions were from day to day absorbed by it.
The newspaper reporters and editors aided the process by a
continual application of the terra.
The hot debates of the sessions now to foUow would weld
that fragmentary mass upon the floor of the House into the
compactness of hammered iron. Already the watchful eyes of
the Southern leaders were noting the menacing fact that the
new party lost no inch of vantage-ground once fairly won.
Mr. Lincoln's law-practice was now larger than ever before,
and was fairly lucrative, although his fees were never such as
prominent Eastern counsel were in the habit of receiving. His
first really heavy fee, of five thousand dollars for services ren
dered the Ilhnois Central Raihoad Company, was actually dis
puted by that corporation as extortionate, although they would
have paid it instantly to any leader of the New York bar. Mr.
Lincoln brought suit for his claim, and a " jury of lawyers"
affirraed its justice before it was paid hira. He was li-ving in
a good but very unobtrusive style. His house had gro-wn to a

THE COMING MAN. 157
sufficient size under the hands of his -wife rather than his own.
During one of his long professional absences, she procured the
building of a larger and handsomer second story, with a new
roof and a coat of fresh paint over all. On her husband's re
turn, he is said to have paused for a moment in front of the
unexpected transformation, and then to have jocosely hailed a
passer-by :
" Stranger, can you teU me where Lincoln lives ? He used
to hve here."
It was enthely impossible for even a busy la-wyer to keep
out of pohtics altogether during the year and a half immedi
ately foUo-wing the inauguration of President Buchanan. The
course of events in Kansas and in Congress was such as daily
to fan the popular excitement. All men were beginning to
discern for themselves the exact nature and direction of their
moral and inteUectual leanings. The greater number were
rising toward the high rank of persons ha-ving con-victions,
purposes, and some knowledge of public affairs. Below these
was the swarming mob of those who can feel but who cannot
think. These latter, hke their betters, were waiting for a
leader and a plainly uttered " order of the day." Both were
to come in due time, for the one was formulating the other
and was patiently awaiting the right time for its utterance.
During the summer of the year 1857 a man named Metzgar
was murdered at a camp-meeting in Mason County, Uhnois,
and two men, named James H. Norris and William D. Arra
strong, were accused of the crime. The former was tried in
Mason County, con-victed of manslaughter, and sentenced to
eight years of prison-life. The popular feeling against Arm
strong was so bitter that it was doubted if a fair trial could be
given him near the scene of the murder. A " change of
venue" was therefore taken to Beardstown, in Cass County,
where he was tried for murder, in the spring of 1858.
Armstrong was a mere " rough" and vn-etchedly poor ; but
he had not committed the murder he was accused of. He

153 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
was a son of that Jack Armstrong of Clary's Grove, near New
Salera, whose affection Lincoln had gained by shaking him at
arm's length. When a baby he had been rocked in his cradle
by his father's tall friend, while his mother, Hannah Arm
strong, attended to other household duties. At one time Lin
coln had been almost a member of the famUy.
Hannah was old now, and she had no money to pay lawyers,
but she had faith in her friend, and wrote him an account of
her trouble. Mr. Lincoln at once rephed that he would under
take the defense, but the heartbroken old woman managed to
travel to Springfield that she might tell him all she knew
about the matter, and -win his honest help as weU as his
sympathy. It seemed a hopeless ease, for the e-vidence against Arm
strong was clear and positive and not at all circumstantial. It
appeared to be inevitable that he would be con-victed not of
manslaughter but of murder, and that he would surely be
hanged for his crime, and as the principal offender.
Mr. Lincoln appeared in court on the day of trial, but gave
over the verbal manageraent of the -witnesses to his coUeague
in the case, Mr. Walker, who had already made a study of it.
He himseK did little more than to suggest questions and
keenly watch for the way of escape which no other man in the
court-room beheved could be discovered.
The proof of murder was complete. Good -witnesses testi
fied to ha-ving seen Armstrong coramit the deed, by the light
of a nearly fuU moon shining high in a cloudless heaven. Until
Mr. Lincoln arose to speak, the prisoner at the bar stood prac
tically con-victed, and the jury could have given against bim a
verdict of " guilty" -without leaving their seats.
The e-vidence, however, was only too perfect. It was too
nicely fitted and adjusted, and when taken up in the hands of
a master it came to pieces and could be put together again in
another shape so as to show that the murder was not commit
ted then and there by that man, but elsewhere, afterwards, and

THE COMING MAX. 159
by other hands. The speaker went on step by step until he
was ready to call upon the clerk of the court for an almanac
which he had previously placed in his hands for the purpose.
Then he asked the jury to note the fact that at the alleged
hour of the murder, instead of the splendor of moonlight
sworn to by the prosecuting -witnesses, there was no moon at
aU and darkness reigned.
Court, jury, lawyers, burst into a roar of astonished laughter ;
but the moment it died away Mr. Lincoln launched out into a
speech which has been described by all who heard it as won-
derfuUy eloquent. AU said that it saved the hfe of Arm
strong, without reference to the testimony so skiUfuUy puUed
to pieces, by its touching description of his own early struggles
and the kindness then shown him by the now -widowed mother
of the prisoner at the bar. He beheved the young man inno
cent, and he made the jury beheve so -with him. There were
tears in his voice and in his eyes, however, while he talked of
those old days of hardship and toU and privation, and of the
simple, rough, kindly-hearted prairie people -with whom he had
shared them. Tt was a noble appeal, fuU of pathos, argument,
genius, eloquence, persuasive power. More than all this is
such an utterance of value in the study of his hfe and char
acter, by the revelation it affords of his own perpetual con
sciousness of the level from which he had chmbed and of the
inner forces by whose operation he had arisen. Tn this is to
be found one secret of his influence over men who remained
at or near that first low level, for it is more than likely that
the jury before him was largely composed of such men. More
than one of his most important public utterances, as President
of the United States, -will be found on analysis to have been
framed and worded that it might reach the understandings and
the hearts of that vast popular jury which is but a multiplica
tion of country juries and the " boys" of Clary's Grove. In
order that he might have and retain this power, he faithfully
carried with him to the very end, half mournfully, half lov-

160 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
ingly, a minute memory and understanding of all the events of
his early life, and of all the persons, types of character, experi
ences, which thereby had been made his instructors.
When the hour came for the uses of this pecuhar gKt, all
the Hannah Armstrongs in the country felt free to go to him
about their boys, and aU the Bill Armstrongs north of the
Ohio River came marching at his call in serried masses of
" three hundred thousand more."
Pohshed incapacity shuts its bhnd eyes unnecessarily to this
very day, and sneers at the unseen lesson it might learn from
the great lawyer and pohtician weeping genuine tears before
a Cass County jury whUe he told them about the baby and the
cradle in Jack Armstrong's log-cabin.
Poor old Hannah came . back to the congratulations of the
crowded court-room, from which she had fled, after the speech,
"do-wn to Thompson's pasture," remaining there until in
formed of the acquittal of her son. The judge shook hands
with her ; so did the jury ; so did Abraham Lincoln, with the
hot tears pouring down his face. He said a few kind words
to her then, and afterwards, when she asked him how much
he was going to charge her and told him she was poor, he
said : " Why, Hannah, I sha'n't charge you a cent. Never.
Anything I can do for you I -wiU do for you wiUingly and
freely -without charges."

POLITICAL PROPHECY. 161

CHAPTER XXIIL
POLITICAL PROPHECY.
A Rejected Leader — A Great Convention — An Historical Speech — Nomin
ated for United States Senator — The Joint Debates with Douglas — The
Splitting of the Democratic Party — Beginnings of a Presidential
Nomination — Spring 1858 to Spring 1859.
The term for which Stephen A. Douglas had been elected
to the Senate of the United States was now drawing to a close.
He was, as a matter of course, a candidate for re-election ; but
there had been a great change in his pohtical relations since
the beginning of the Buchanan Administration. He had sev
ered his pre-vious connection -with the Southern chiefs of the
Democracy and their more subservient tools at the North.
The tremendous lessons of the Fremont campaign had not
been lost upon him. He saw that a large and much the raore
inteUigent section of the Northern Democracy would go no
further in submission to the arrogant demands of the slave
power. He boldly and ably put himseK at their head and
forced them to acknowledge him as their representative.
When that was accoraphshed, he would wUhngly have led
thera bodily into the Repubhcan camp could he have been
assured as a reward a re-election to the Senate.
Many sincere Repubhcans earnestly advocated the proposed
coahtion, but the greater number distrusted Mr. Douglas.
They were -wiUing to receive him as a recruit but not as a
commanding officer. Headed by Senator TrambuU, who had
now become fully identified -vpith the new party, the Illi
nois Repubhcans determined to stand or fall by their existing
organization. Ha-ving so determined, there could be but one

162 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
voice as to who should be their standard-bearer in the battle
before them. When, however, hi April, 1858, the Democratic
State Convention met, and, after making the usual nominations
for State officers, added thereto an indorsement of Mr. Doug
las, it was again strongly urged by some Repubhcans that the
great Democratic Senator was not only himseK advancing in
the right direction but was skillfully taking his whole party
with him. It was declared to be the part of -wisdom for the
Repubhcans to name no candidate against hira. They should
rather accept and even triumphantly claim him as their o-wn.
The proposition was not at all unreasonable. At that day,
Mr. Douglas was quite enough of an anti-slavery man to satisfy
the great majority of those who called themselves Repubhcans
and deemed it a kind of " radicahsra" to stand upon the plat
form of principles they had vaguely adopted for the uses of
the Fremont campaign. They were somewhat in ignorance
of their own immediate future. The old battle-field, with
which they had grown fairly famihar, was not at all the one to
which they were now to be led, neither was it in the heart or
brain of Mr. Douglas to marshal them for the ground upon
which they were shortly to be arrayed. If they had accepted
him, as proposed, he would have led them to a sure victory —
over nothing whatever. Rejecting him, they were to be led
to a sure defeat, foUowed by a surer -victory, under the orders
of a captain able to see beyond the narrow consequences of the
present emergency.
The Repubhcan State Convention was called to meet at
Springfield on the 16th of June. When gathered, the dele
gates, -with their alternates, actually present numbered nearly a
thousand men. They represented nearly all the old parties and
fractions of parties, and were of all shades of political opinion
and social standing. Owing to the peculiar composition of the
population of the State of Ulinois, the entire country was per
sonally represented in that assembly. There were men there
from every Northern State and from many States of the

POLITICAL PROPHECY. 163
South. An unusuaUy large proportion were young raen
never before active in politics. It was to such a conclave as
this that Mr. Lincoln dehberately prepared to present the issue
before the country. He decided that it raust be so presented
that no man among them could fail to understand it.
That he would be the orator of the occasion was a matter of
course, and the preparation of the speech he was to make was
a task the performance of which is worthy of careful noting.
It was not the work of a mere pohtician ; it was the thought
ful expression of a human hfe. Tt came from his mind in
scraps and smaU pieces, a sentence at a time, jotted down on
fragments and shps of paper. Then at last these were gathered
and put into form for delivery and for printing. All those
detached segments had been gro-wing in the speaker's thought
through gloomy, toilsome years.
On the 16th of June the Convention unanimously adopted
the f oUo-wing resolution :
"That Abraham Lincoln is our first and only choice for
United States Senator, to fiU the vacancy about to be created
by the expiration of Mr. Douglas's term of office."
They were now pledged to their chosen chief beyond recaU,
and must abide by his leadership.
Mr. Lincoln had taken neither advice nor counsel in the pre
paration of his speech, but he saw the necessity of also prepar
ing some of his nearer friends for what it was to be. He read
it first to Mr. Herndon, the most extreme Abohtionist of his
intiraates, and that exceUent gentleman timidly asked him :
" It is true ; but is it entirely pohtic to speak it or read it as
it is -written ?"
The question referred particularly to the key-note of the
speech, and Mr. Lincoln rephed :
" That makes no difference. That expression is a truth of
aU human experience, ' a house divided against itseK cannot
stand,' and ' he that runs may read.' The proposition is indis
putably true and has been true for more than six thousand

164 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
years ; and — I will deliver it as it is -written. I want to use
sorae universaUy known figure, expressed in simple language
as universaUy known, that may strike home to the minds of
men in order to rouse them to the peril of the times. I would
rather be defeated with this expression in the speech, and it
held up and discussed before the people, than to be -victorious
¦without it."
Ha-ving sounded the depths of Abohtion courage through
his friend Herndon, Mr. Lincoln proceeded to consult others,
and finaUy gathered a dozen leading men in the Library Room
of the State House, not to ask theh guidance, but to assure
them of his purpose by reading the speech to them, and, K
possible, to form a small nucleus of favorable pubhc opinion
in advance. He read and they listened, and every man present
except Mr. Hemdon, who had already caught fire and was be
ginning to bum pretty well, condemned the bold utterance as
an utter destruction of the party at the hands of its captain.
Tt was in advance of the time. Tt was unwise. It was im
politic if not, indeed, untrue.
Mr. Lincoln heard them aU thoughtfuUy. He walked up
and do-wn the room ; then stood stiU and said to them :
" Friends, I have thought about this matter a great deal ;
have surveyed the question well from aU corners; and am
thoroughly convinced the tirae has come when it should be
uttered: and if it must be that I go down because of this
speech, then let me go do-wn hnked to truth, — die in the advo
cacy of what is right and just. This nation cannot hve on in
justice. ' A house divided against itseK cannot stand,' I say
again and again."
The results of his long years of study, internal strife, brood
ing thought, agonized wrestlings with doubt on the one side
and ambition on the other, was that he planted his faith deep
in a word of Jesus the Christ, and was ready to live or die by it.
He saw that this was the way, the truth, and the hfe for him
and for the nation, and aU expostulation failed to move him.

POLITICAL PROPHECY. 165
, The speech was dehvered without modification, on the 17th
of June, to the Convention and a dense throng of other citizens
from all parts of the State. With the entire, colossal argument
we have httle to do here, but the " key-note" which startled the
nation is as foUows :
" Gentlemen of the Convention : If we could first know
where we are and whither we are tending, we could then better
judge what to do and how to do it. We are now far on into
the fifth year since a pohcy was initiated -with the avowed ob
ject and confident promise of putting an end to slavery agita
tion. Under the operation of that pohcy, that agitation has
not only not ceased but has continuaUy augmented. In my
opinion it -will not cease until a crisis shaU have been reached
and passed. ' A house di-vided against itseK cannot stand.' I
believe this government cannot endure permanently, haK slave
and haK free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved ; I do
not expect the house to f aU ; but I do expect that it -will cease
to be di-vided. It wUl become aU one thing or all the other.
Either the opponents of slavery wUl arrest the further spread
of it and place it where the pubhc mind shall rest in the behef
that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates -wiU
push it forward tiU it shaU become ahke lawful in all the
States, old as weU as new, North as well as South."
No words so daring, no such unequivocal statement of the
great problem, had yet been uttered by any man of pohtical
prominence and power.
Mr. Seward had been -visited -with vast abuse for declaring
" the irrepressible conflict" between freedom and slavery, but
his boldest utterance had been philosophical feebleness com
pared to this.
His work, of inestimable value, had been in the nature of a
preparation of the pubhc mind for the forced reception of a
great and gloomy fact to which it had hitherto shut its ears
and bhnded its eyes. Such words as Lincoln uttered can never
be recaUed, for, being truth, they are spirit and they are hfe.

166 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
and they cannot die, but live forever. Tn other forms and
adaptations, they apply and wiU be apphed to any and every
question of huraan right and -wrong upon which, in aU the
world, a people or nation shaU henceforth be divided. They
-vriU help all men to see and know that, in any such division,
the fighting cannot cease but must go on to an end, whether
men choose for themselves that they vsall fight for heU or
for heaven.
Nevertheless, as Lincoln himseK said, in the sublimely cour
ageous words with which the great speech ended :
" The result is not doubtful. We shall not f aU, — if we stand
firm we shall not fail. Wise counsels may accelerate or mis
takes delay it, but, sooner or later, the -victory is sure to come."
From the Kentucky hut and the Indiana "pole-shelter;"
from ignorance, -vice, filth, darkness, poverty; through toil
and sorrow and suffering ; through storms of heart and soul
which drove him mad, the germ of a great life and noble man
hood had expanded slowly, until this was the voice it could
send forth to a tumultuous time, to a doubting, hesitating
party, and to a be-wildered, faint-hearted people.
The immediate result of the speech was precisely what his
friends had feared and prophesied. All the more conservative
elements were horrified, and the very radicals murmured at an
impohtic frankness which openly in-vited defeat at the poUs.
There is no question that it prevented Mr. Lincoln's election
to the Senate and sent Mr. Douglas there in his stead, at the
end of the raost reraarkable personal canvass on record. They
raet in debates at prominent points all over the State. Every
where Mr. Lincoln proved his superiority both in intellectual
power and in soundness of moral position, but the people were
not yet quite ready to foUow him. He had gone on too far in
advance of them, and they required time in which they might
open their new-born political eyes and learn to look at realities
and grow and think a little.
Mr. Lamon relates that, a day or two after the delivery of

POLITICAL PROPHECY. 167
the speech, a Dr. Long, unconsciously representing a great
multitude, came into Lincoln's law-office to free his mind. He
said :
" Well, Lincoln, that foohsh speech of yours will kill you — ¦
wiU defeat you in this contest, and probably for all offices for
aU time to come. I am sorry, sorry, — very sorry. I wish it
was -wiped out of existence. Don't you wish it, now ?"
Mr. Lincoln dropped the pen he had been busy with, and
turned his sad, earnest, haK-contemptuous smile upon the
mourner :
" Well, Doctor, K I had to draw a pen across and erase my
whole hfe from existence, and I had one poor gKt or choice
left as to what I should save from the wreck, I should choose
that speech and leave it to the world unerased."
With others he afterwards argued earnestly the wisdom and
pohcy as weU as the trath of that speech, both as to time and
place, and most men of the party were shortly able to agree
with him.
An important result of the joint debates between Lincoln and
Douglas was that the latter was forced into such explanations
and to take such ground before his own constituents that he
thereby lost all hope of regaining his broken hold upon the
South. He was driven to the alternative of abandoning his
ambitious design upon the Presidency or of splitting his own
party in sunder. His subsequent choice of the latter course
made possible the Repubhcan triumph of 1860, and his tem
porary success in 1858 encouraged him to that determina
tion. One of the pivotal points of the tiraes was the " Dred Scott
Decision," by the Suprerae Court of the United States.
Dred Scott was a negro who began a suit in St. Louis, Mis
souri, demanding his freedom and that of his wife and two
children, on the ground that his owner. Dr. Emerson, a sur
geon of the U. S. army, had taken him as a slave from Mis
souri to several raUitary posts in other States where slavery was

168 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
prohibited by State law; that he had married with his master's
consent, and had children in these free States, and had then
been brought back to Missouri. The local court at St. Louis
gave him his freedora, on the accustoraed ground of comity
between the States ; the Supreme Court of Missouri, on ap
peal, however, reversed that decision. Upon the sale of Scott
and his family shortly after to a citizen of New York, living
in Missouri, a new suit was begun by the negro in the United
States Circuit Court in St. Louis. The result being stUl un
favorable, aided by friends, Scott appealed on a point of error
to the United States Supreme Court at Washington.
The case had by this time become celebrated, and excited
great interest. Tt was argued twice before the Suprerae Court
by distinguished lawyers ; it was talked about and written
about, in public and in private ; and finaUy, instead of raerely
directing the lower Court to disraiss the suit on the ground that
Scott, being a negro slave, was not a citizen entitled to sue,
and that his freedora by reason of being taken to a free State
was a question of Missouri law, already settled by the State
Courts (the original intention of the Justices), the raembers of
the Supreme Court allowed themselves to be drawn into the
partisan wranglings of the tirae, and raade the case one of so
cial, political, and constitutional inquiry. The Chief Justice,
Roger B. Taney, affirmed and argued in full the inferiority of
the negro and his condition as mere property ; the sufficiency of
State law to pronounce upon his freedom or slavery; and
the constitutional right of slave-owners to hold their property
and be protected in the Territories, all Congressional or terri
torial legislation to the contrary notwithstanding.
The excitement which this decision aroused throughout the
North was intense : it added fuel to the already fierce flame of
political discussion. And, since it directly involved Mr.
Douglas as a Democratic leader, Mr. Lincoln was not slow to
take advantage of it in the Senatorial contest.
One of the most admirable portraitures of Lincoln that has

POLITICAL PROPHECY. 169
ever been raade is to be found in an article by Carl Schurz iu
the " Atlantic Monthly" for June, 1891, in the form of a re
view of Nicolay and Hay's " Abraham Lincoln : A History."
Referring to the explanations into which Lincoln forced Doug
las during this great debate, Mr. Schurz so tersely presents the
situation that we cannot forbear quoting it.
Tt raust be reraerabered that the Supreme Court decision
practically asserted the constitutional right of the inhabitants
of the Territories to hold slaves as property, while denying the
right of the same people through any acts of their territorial
governmentto nullify that property-right based on the suprerae
law of the land. Says Schurz : — -
"Lincoln perceived keenly the ugly dUeramain which Doug
las found himself, between the Dred Scott decision, which de
clared the right to hold slaves to exist in the Territories by vir
tue of the Federal Constitution, and his ' great principle of
popular sovereignty,' according to which the people of a Ter
ritory, if they saw fit, were to have the right to exclude slav
ery therefrom. Douglas was twisting and squirming to the
best of his ability to avoid the admission that the two were in
compatible. The question then presented itself if it would be
good policy for Lincoln to force Douglas to a clear expression
of his opinion as to whether, the Dred Scott decision notwith
standing, ' the people of a Territory could, in any lawful way,
exclude slavery frora its limits prior to the f orraation of a State
constitution.' .... The interrogatory was pressed upon Doug
las, and Douglas did [as Lincoln predicted] answer that, no
raatter what the decision of the Suprerae Court raight be on
the abstract question, the people of a Territory had the lawful
means to introduce or exclude slavery by territorial legislation
friendly or unfriendly to the institution. Lincoln found it
easy to show the absurdity of the proposition that, if slavery
were admitted to exist of right in the Territories by virtue of
the supreme law, the Federal Constitution, it could not be
kept out or expelled by an inferior law, one made by a terri-

170 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
torial legislature. Again the judgment of the politicians, hav
ing only the nearest object in view, proved correct : Douglas
was re-elected to the Senate. But Lincoln's judgment proved
correct, also : Douglas, by resorting to the expedient of his
'unfriendly legislation doctrine,' forfeited his last chance of
becoming President of the United States. He raight have
hoped to win, by sufficient atonement, his pardon from the
South for his opposition to the Lecompton Constitution ; but
that he taught the people of the Territories a trick by which
they could defeat what the pro-slavery men considered a con
stitutional right, and that he called that trick lawful, — this the
slave power would never forgive. The breach between the
Southern and the Northern Democracy was thenceforth ir
remediable and fatal."
The popular vote in November, 1858, showed a numerical
majority of over four thousand for the Repubhcan ticket, but
that did not carry with it a majority of members of the Legis
lature. The friends of Douglas controlled both Houses. H,
in the heat of the struggle, Mr. Lincoln permitted himself to
hope for a different result, he took his defeat with equanimity.
He could not have more than dimly dreamed of the immediate
reward in store for him, but he had done his duty. He had
been placed before the whole country in a strong hght. He
had fahly won a national reputation. He had proved himself
such a leader as anxious men were waiting for. Nevertheless,
those who saw him daily and beheved that they knew htm best
had but a faint and fragmentary idea of the impression he had
made, and was stiU making, upon others than themselves.
At the county-seat of Champaign County, in the Eighth Ju
dicial District, there was printed at that time a weekly news
paper, of good standing and circulation, caUed the Central Il
linois Gazette. It was owned and nominally managed by an
eccentric and illiterate country doctor, who never wrote for it.
Its sole editor and real manager was a young man from New
York who had barely a speaking acquaintance with Mr. Lin-

POLITICAL PROPHECY. 171
coin, though, hke most of his neighbors, profoundly respecting
and even enthusiastically admiring him.
Tn AprU, 1859, Mr. Lincoln was at the Doane House, in
Champaign, the " railway haK " of the county-seat, in attend
ance on business before the court. He had been to the post-
office quite early one morning, returning, with a hat haK full
of letters, to a chair in the hotel office. He came in, absorbed,
gloomy, neither speaking to or even noticing any one as he en
tered. He rested his feet on the big stove in the middle of the
room and began to open and read his letters.
There had been a sharp dispute in the Gazette office the
previous day, between the doctor and the editor, as to the pre
cise pohtical course to be pursued by that journal. As the
young man now came out from his breakfast in the hotel
dining-room -with his mind yet fuU of the subject of the quar
rel, he saw the weU-kno-wn face and form of Mr. Lincoln, and
suddenly resolved to address him and ask his advice. But
something in the dark, strong face arrested him, and he waited.
Tt was worth any man's whUe to study such a face as that.
Mr. Lincoln tore open a letter of more than ordinary length
and began to read. It was closely written in a crabbed, black
hand-writing, but it must have contained matter for thought.
He read it half through, dropped it in his hat and sat there as
K looking at something a thousand miles away. His heavy
features, deeply furrowed with -wrinkles and sallow -with fa
tigue of heart and brain, seemed flabby and lifeless for a few
moments. Then, and s-wiftly, as if the keeper of the hght-
house had kindled the great fire -within, the eyes and the whole
face began to hght up and glow -with all the radiance of the
hidden hfe that had so long been hving there. The young
watcher had never before seen anything like that upon any
face of h-ving bemg, and he reverently forbore to speak. He
was thrilled and speU-bound by something of the force of a per
sonality which had so often swayed multitudes to the wiU of
the orator.

172 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
In a few raoraents he was in his own office and the doctor
was there before him. He announced, to the doctor's great
astonishment, that the Oazette^s presidential candidate had got
to be Abe Lincoln, and concluded, "Doctor, you've got to
tend office to-day. I'm off for Springfield, the next train, to
get material for a campaign-life editorial."
The doctor yielded, as usual. The young editor went to
Springfield and returned with his material. The article was
written, and early in May it was printed. Hundreds of copies
were industriously sent out, aU over the State, to be quoted,
commented upon, approved, and ridiculed, and the work of
nominating a President, so far as Illinois was concerned, had
been weU begun before the nominee had been spoken to upon
the subject. At the same time, a letter from the same hand,
and to the same general effect, was printed in a journal pub
lished in the city of New York, but of course -without attract
ing especial attention there.
The fact here related is a fuU refutation of the baseless as
sertion that Mr. Lincoln had anything whatever to do with the
inception of what was strictly a popular movement. But the
discussion and comments of people and press of course at
tracted the attention of those most interested, and from that time
forth, naturaUy, both Mr. Lincoln and his friends watched
closely and discussed freely all indications of the drKt of pub
lic opinion -with reference to the coming choice.

THE RISING TIDE. I7y

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE RISING TIDE.

National Fame— The Cooper Institute Speech— Sectionalism— Illinois State
Convention at Decatur— The Eail-splitter— The Republican National
Convention at Chicago — The Presidential Nomination — 1859.
All over the country, and in every part of every section, pop
ular preparations for the Presidential campaign of 1860 began
earher than usual. Men of all parties perceived, more or less
clearly, that an unprecedented crisis was at hand in pubhc af
fairs. Mr. Lincoln began to receive letters from various persons
who inquhed as to his -views of different questions. These
were not aU sent him -with a friendly purpose, but his replies
were at once frank and judicious. During the autumn of the
year 1859 he made a number of political speeches in Ohio,
and early in the -winter he did the same in Kansas. Every
where he gave renewed e-vidences of the ripening of his powers
as a statesman and orator. His fame was gro-wing so fast that
even his best friends were compeUed to recognize it. At last,
a seK-appointed committee of them arranged a conference with
him, in a room of the State House at Springfield, to urge upon
him the propriety of formally permitting the use of his name
as a Presidential candidate. He heard them. He took one
night to consider the matter, and the next day gave his consent.
His demeanor throughout the conference was quiet, modest,
thoughtful, and he expressed strong doubt of success in obtain
ing the nomination.
Meantime an unintended movement in his favor was made
by men who had no thought of him as a rival of their own pre-

174 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
ferred candidates. In October he had received an in-vitation
to deliver a lecture at the Cooper Institute, in New York City.
After consulting -with Mr. Hemdon, he consented, on condi
tion that he should be permitted to speak upon political ques
tions, setting a day in the foUo-wing February. This was
readily agreed to, and he at once set himself diligently to the
work of preparation.
The people of the United States were wonderfully " sec
tional " in the year 1859. The North knew httle of the South,
and the South knew almost nothing of the North. The West
was the very symbol of vagueness and uncertainty to the people
of the East. The people of the West, other than immigrants
from the seaboard States, did but dinUy bear in mind their re
lations to the older settlements between their homes and the
Atlantic. There were therefore few men in Illinois who could com
prehend the significance of the invitation to Mr. Lincoln to
speak in New York, or see how high, how very rare a comph
ment was thereby offered him. The great East teemed with
eloquent men, — ^lawyers, scholars, statesmen, theologians, — and
yet its chief city asked to hear a man who as yet had won no
tangible eminence in either of these characters. Except as a
local celebrity, made such in recent pohtical campaigns, it was
supposed that he had never been heard of. This was in a
measure true, for he had been felt rather than heard, and aU
the more did men desire to see and hear him.
No previous effort of his life cost hira so much hard work
as did that Cooper Institute speech. When finished, it was a
masterly review of the history of the slavery question from
the foundation of the governraent, with a clear, bold, states-
manhke presentation of the then present attitude of parties and
of sections. Tt exhibited a careful research, a thorough knowl
edge and understanding of pohtical movements and develop
ments, that staggered even the most laborious and painstaking
students. It showed a grasp, a breadth, a mental training, and

THE RISING TIDE. 175
a depth of penetration which compelled the admiration of
critical scholars. Those who heard and those who afterwards
read it in print alike filed it away as an historical document.
Those who hstened to its delivery acknowledged -with one voice
that the country possessed and had now discovered one more
great man and great orator.
Nothing hke this had been at all expected, although enough
was already known of Mr. Lincoln to call together in Cooper
Institute an audience which astonished him. The great haU
was crowded -with the best citizens of New York. The mem
bers of that throng had aU of them hstened to many celebrated
speakers and to what they deemed great speeches. They were
cultivated, inteUigent, critical, but they were -wiUing to be
amused, or even interested, by a first-class specimen of Western
" stump oratory." They knew sufficiently weU that the taU,
ungainly, awkward man in black who arose upon the platform
to be introduced by WiUiam CuUen Bryant had had no edu
cational advantages. He was a coarse feUow, of low origin,
who had never been to coUege or moved in pohshed society.
He had not so much as distinguished himseK as a soldier, office
holder, editor, nor had he ever -written a book. Tt was said of
him that he told funny stories well, and that he had a strange
faculty for holding the attention of a Western gathering of
rude, iUiterate people.
Very vague indeed were the notions and expectations of the
multitude when the speaker began, but it was not long before
an unlooked-for light began to dawn upon them. Slowly the
minds of all took in the idea that this was an address, not to
them only, but to the entire American people.
Mr. Lincoln had toiKuUy prepared, and was now uttering,
a declaration of the causes, principles, and purposes which
underlay the existence and action, past, present, and to come,
of the Repubhcan party. He had also fallen but little short of
combining a pohtical platform with an "Inaugural Address."
The effect may be well expressed in the words with which

176 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the next day's issue of the New York Trihune, February 28,
1860, prefaced its report of the speech : " No man ever before
made such an impression on his first appeal to a New York
audience." Neither has any other man since then approached it, for that
speech stands alone in the oratorical annals of the great city.
Mr. Lincoln's further errand in the East had been to -visit
his son Robert, then a student at Harvard; but in-vitations
to speak at other points poured in upon him, and he had no
thought of refusing. Everywhere, as he went, he took the
minds of men and women captive, and left behind him an im
pression which could not pass away. Everywhere, also, he was
hiraseK taking careful notes of men and things and perfecting
his knowledge of the people and the country he was so soon
to rule. He returned to his home a man better and more
-widely known than nine out of every ten who sit out a long
term in the United States Senate, or than ninety-nine out of
every hundred who are elected governors of States.
The Republican National Convention had been called to
meet at Chicago on the 16th of May, 1860, and the Repubhcan
State Convention of Ilhnois was held at Decatur on the 9th
and 10th of the same month. The friends of Mr. Lincoln re
solved that the one should prepare their candidate for the
other. They did not reveal their plans to him, but they laid
them weU and they carried them out to perfection.
When the State Convention assembled for business, an
enormous crowd of delegates and other citizens packed the
large temporary structure erected for the occasion, but Mr.
Lincoln was not upon the platform.
Governor Oglesby arose and said :
" I am informed that a distinguished citizen of TUinois, and
one whom TUinois will ever be delighted to honor, is present •
and I wish to move that this body invite him to a seat upon
the stand." He paused a moment, and then he added in a
loud, clear voice :

THE RISING TIDE. I77
" Abraham Lincoln !"
The scene which foUowed is indescribable for its tumultuous
enthusiasm. No way could be made through the dense, ex
cited, shouting throng, and Mr. Lincoln was borne bodily, over
their heads and shoulders, to the place of honor. The order of
business went on for a while, and then Governor Oglesby arose
again: " There is an old Democrat outside who has something he
¦wishes to present to this convention."
There was a roar of assent frora every direction, raingled
-with some few doubts and objections. Then the door of the
"¦wigwam" s-wung open, and a strong old man marched in,
shouldering two fence-raUs of moderate size surmounted by a
banner inscribed, in large letters :
« TWO RAILS
FROM A LOT MADE BT AbRAHAM LiNCOLN AND JoHN HaNKS,
IN THE Sangamon Bottom, in the tear 1830."
The hearty-looking, sunburned bearer was old John Hanks
himseK, and he had come to do his part in making his old
friend President of the United States. He and his burden
were fitting representatives of the old days of toil, darkness,
and privation, and the vast throng arose as one raan to do
honor to the striking testiraony they brought -with them. Tn
an instant Abraham Lincoln, " the raU-sphtter," was accepted
as the representative of the working man and the type and
embodiment of the American idea of human freedom and
possible human elevation. The applause was deafening. But
it was something more than mere applause : it was the tem
pestuous outburst of a tidal wave of strange and hresistible
enthusiasm which swept from Decatur to Chicago and thence
over the whole country.
Silence came as Mr. Lincoln rose to respond to the vocifer
ous demand for a "speech." It was not yet, however, the

178 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
right time for him to speak, and he made no blunder. He
said: " Gentlemen : I suppose you want to know soraething about
those things. WeU, the trath is, in the year 1830 John Hanks
and I did make some raUs, in the Sangamon bottom, to fence
a piece of land. I don't know whether these are some of
those raUs or not. The fact is, I don't think they are a
credit to the makers. But I do know this : I made raUs then
and T think I could make better rails than these now."
Shouts and laughter accompanied and followed the few re
marks of the " Tlhnois RaU-splitter," but the work of capturing
that convention was accoraphshed. There was not a breath of
opposition, afterwards, to a resolution that —
"Abraham Lincoln is the first choice of the Republican
party of TUinois for the Presidency, and its delegates to the
Chicago Convention are hereby instructed to use aU honorable
means to secure his nomination, and to cast the vote of the
State as a unit for him."
On the 16th of the month the National Convention of the
party assembled at Chicago. With it came swarms of the
eager friends of many Presidential aspirants. The city was
crowded as it never had been before, and the excitement was
at fever-heat even before the appointed day.
Two days were consumed in agreeing upon a party platform
and in a -vigorous canvass of delegates with reference to the
coming baUots for nominations.
The third day came and the balloting began. Tt was well
kno-wn beforehand that on the first ballot the highest vote
would be given to WiUiam H. Seward of New York, but no
man could forra a valuable opinion as to what raight or might
not take place afterwards. Mr. Seward's actual vote was 173f ,
but it was a surprise to many that Mr. Lincoln should at once
come next in rank with 102. The surprise increased upon the
announcement of the second ballot, when Mr. Seward's vote
arose to 184^ and Mr. Lincoln followed him with 181. It was

THE RISING TIDE. I79
manKest that the friends of minor candidates were breaking
away from their men under the tremendous pressure and ex
citement of the hour, and that the issue lay between the lead
ing representatives of the East and the West. It is worthy
of note that Mr. Lincoln himself had remarked, some days
before the Convention, that Seward or he would get the nomi
nation. The call of States began upon the third baUot. As it pro
ceeded votes flew fast from every quarter, untU it was known
that Mr. Lincoln had 231^, only a vote and a haK less than the
required number. The Convention held its breath for a rao
raent, and then Mr. Cartter of Ohio arose to change four of
the votes of that State delegation from Mr. Chase to Mr. Lin
coln. The nomination was sealed, and the great " wigwam" shook
-with the excited outburst that foUowed. No such enthusiasm
could have greeted any other result, for the fire kindled at
Decatur had been burning hotter and hotter every hour, and it
must be said that the men of TUinois had scattered the brands
of it weU and zealously. Hannibal Hamlin of Maine was
named for Vice-President, and the Convention shortly ad
joumed. AU. through these proceedings Mr. Lincoln remained at
Springfield. He was continuaUy advised by his friends as to
the course of events, and took a deep though undemonstrative
interest in the news they sent him. He was not at aU indK-
f erent, and made no vain and weak pretense of being so ; but he
exhibited exceUent seK-control. This was not the kind of ex
citement which could disturb a mind so disciphned as his had
been. On the great third day, when all was seemingly trem-
bhng in the balance, he chatted with friends, read dispatches,
commented freely on the prospects of other candidates, but
gave utterance to no opinion as to his own, — untU the telegraphic
announcement of the result of the second baUot was handed
him. A single flash of personal feehng and human ambition

ISO ABRAHAM LINCOLN,
escaped him then, for, with famihar reference to his powerful
rival, he exclaimed :
" Pve got him !"
He was not thinking of himseK too much, however.
Shortly afterwards came another message informing him of
his nomination.
WhUe the streets of Springfield rang vrith " cheers for Lin
coln" from men of all parties, proud of their friend and neigh
bor, he turned quietly away from theh plaudits and congratu
lations, remarking :
" WeU, gentlemen, there's a little short woraan at our house
who is probably more interested in this dispatch than I am ;
and, if you -wUl excuse me, I wiU take it up and let her see it."
On the foUo-wing day the appointed Committee of the Con
vention, headed by its president, arrived in Springfield "with
the formal announcement of its action. They found the man
of their choice, contrary to their expectation, sad, gloomy,
already depressed by the crushing burden they had come to
lay upon him. He received their address with great dignity,
replying in a few well-chosen sentences fuU of deep feehng.
He proraised to answer thera in -writing after a more careful
consideration of the resolutions adopted by the Convention.
The formal acceptance, made the f oUo-wing day, was very brief,
but left nothing to be asked for in its manner or its substance.
The several forces which were to contend for mastery in the
political campaign of 1860 were marshaled in a manner sig
nificant of the chaotic state to which all the old party organiza
tions had been reduced. After a vain effort to retain its long-
accustomed sohdity, the Democratic party had angrily split in
twain. What may be called its Northern di-vision nomi
nated Stephen A. Douglas of Ilhnois for President and Hers-
chel V. Johnson of Georgia for Vice-President. The other
division — the pro-slavery, or Southern — ^nominated John C.
Breckinridge of Kentucky for President and Joseph Lane of
Oregon for Vice-President. The persistent remainder of the

THE RISING TIDE. 181
old Whig party, after passing through several mutations of
name and searching out vain excuses for continuance, now ap
peared for the last time, as the " Constitutional Union Party,"
under the nominal leadership of John BeU of Tennessee, as its
candidate for the Presidency, and of Edward Everett of Mas
sachusetts as a possible Vice-President. The voting popula
tion of the country had therefore an uncomraonly -wide discre
tion offered them.

182 ABRALtAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER XXV.

ELECTED PRESIDENT.

The Great Canvass of 1860— The Critical Election— Southern Threats of
Civil War — Office-seekers Early — A Wise Decision — Cabinet-making —
Preparing for the Trouble to Come — A Nation Without a Ruler.
During the pohtical canvass which followed the Chicago
Convention Mr. Lincoln remained at Springfield. Tt was a
matter of manifest propriety that he should maintain as much
reserve as was consistent with his customary frankness. He
continued to meet aU men freely and avoided none who desired
to see or speak -with him.
Those few short months were a time of feverish and hourly
increasing excitement to the entire people, and most of aU to
the man whora the clearest-rainded politicians. North and
South, himself included, knew they were about to elect as their
Chief Magistrate. He passed the dense and burdened days,
therefore, as an intense student of all the present symptoms
and probable results of that fierce fermentation.
The collision he had foreseen and prophesied twenty years
before was at hand. The crisis he had more pubhcly formu
lated in his Bloomington speech was hourly drawing nearer.
Hundreds of Southern orators and writers plainly declared that
the election of Lincoln would precipitate the straggle he had
foretold. They were the exponents of a feeling more deep and
more wiUful than careless observers knew or would believe.
Their real meaning was that they would regard such an elec
tion as their justification for themselves precipitating the
struggle. It was more a threat than a warning.
Great pains were taken, by enemies as weU as friends, to

ELECTED PRESIDENT.

183

keep Mr. Lincoln weU advised of these hostile utterances and
of aU known preparations for such action as would fulfill
threats. Enough of such preparation showed itself, almost
publicly, to indicate its extent. Even the methods of its
veiled and secret operations were from time to time suggested.
For none of this treasonable agitation, or its consequences,
could Mr. Lincoln hold himself in any manner responsible. It
forced upon his mind, however, the necessity he was under of
speedUy establishing his o-wn relations to public affairs and to
the future of the country.
The popular vote was given on the 6th of November, with
a result which showed that if the adversaries of the Republican
party could have united upon any one candidate they would
have elected him ; but the same was also true of each of the
four parties. The Lincoln electoral tickets received an aggre
gate of 1,857,610 votes; those of Mr. Douglas, 1,291,574;
those of Mr. BeU, 646,124 ; those of Mr. Breckinridge, 850,082.
The popular majority against Mr. Lincoln, if it could have
been so counted, was 930,170 ; but would, by a like reckoning,
have been much larger against either of the others.
When the Electoral CoUeges of the several States came
together and performed their official duties, Mr. Lincoln re
ceived 180 votes ; Mr. Breckinridge, 72 ; Mr. BeU, 30 ; Mr.
Douglas, 12. That, however, was but the formal declaration
of a result which was already kno-wn to the whole country.
Hardly was the popular vote counted, on the 6th of Novem
ber, before the current of office-seekers and other political
pilgrims to Springfield sweUed rapidly to a sort of flood, and
an important part of Mr. Lincoln's Presidential powers and
perplexities at once demanded his attention.
Tt was popularly taken for granted, at the first, that the in
cumbents of all federal offices would presently be reraoved
and that their places would be fiUed by new men, selected
from the -victorious party. Mr. Lincoln had been thinking of
this. He understood the situation and the strength it brought

184 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
to him. No other President ever had at his disposal more
than a fraction of the appointing power, for good or evil,
which would be his. He could hardly have had a vision, how
ever, of the multitudinous offices afterwards to be created and
added. Here was, therefore, the opportunity for an exhibition of
broad and courageous statesmanship. He plainly saw that the
administration soon to faU into his hands would need aU the
support it could by any means obtain. He saw that he could
not assume the position of the paymaster of a greedy party if
he would long remain the ruler of a nation. It was not many
days before he was reported, and truly, to have declared his
intention of appointing to official positions Democrats as well
as Republicans, and of retaining faithful and capable public
servants wherever possible. There was a groan of dismay and
wrath among the office-seekers, but subsequent developments
proved that the President-elect was prepared to stand firmly
by his -wise and just decision.
As a sort of coroUary of this, it was also made to be under
stood that Mr. Lincoln regarded the federal appointments at his
disposal as in the nature of a public trust, and not at all as his
private property or to be apportioned among his friends, rela
tives, or personal adherents. There was to be httle advantage
to any man in the fact that he had kno-wn Mr. Lincoln for
many years ; or had exchanged sraall favors -with hira ; or em
ployed him in law-business ; or said " Good-morning" to him,
daily. This was terribly unexpected, and there were sorae hundreds
who could never afterwards see that he had not been ungrate
ful, they could hardly say for what. Not a few declared him
unmindful of his most sacred obhgations — to themselves.
The great mass of tax-payers and other citizens, for whose
uses the offices were created and tbeir duties performed, were
all the better satisfied. At the same time, the sting of defeat
rankled less dangerously in the hearts of some hundreds of

ELECTED PRESIDENT. 185
thousands of people, whose good will was essential to the sta
bility of what was, to all intents and purposes, a new govern
ment. It was from the first manifest that Mr. Lincoln would have
peculiar difficulty in the formation of his Cabinet. He was
busy with that duty even before election-day. He would
gladly have obtained the ser-vices of some well-known repre
sentative of the declared Union-lo-ving element at the South,
but no such man could be found. There was not one of suffi
cient prominence who loved the Union well enough to help an
Abohtion President to preserve it. Every day that came
brought -with it something to render the search more hopeless.
It was therefore necessary to confine the selections made at
first to the narrow circle of the chiefs of the Repubhcan party.
A majority of the Cabinet, when at last it was completed, were
men who had received votes as candidates for nomination in
the Chicago Convention. The raan who called thera around
hira had risen above aU jealousies, all rivahies, aU selfish con
siderations. The settlement of this important matter was not
finished until after Mr. Lincoln's arrival in Washington, but
enough had been done to assure him of the active co-operation
of the strong men of his own pohtical faith.
Percei-ving how rapid was and would be the unification of
the elements -with which the nation was to struggle for its
hfe, it was the part of a sound and wise statesmanship to con-
sohdate, with aU possible speed, the power which was to meet
the now inevitable shock of battle. The difficulties of Mr.
Lincoln's position at that time have been but little understood.
The majority of those who have -written about them have
strangely taken it for granted that he was in a maimer ignor
ant of the course of events. They have regarded him as being
as much taken by surprise by each successive development as
might be any private citizen who puzzled over the news
brought to him, correctly or incorrectly, by his favorite news
paper.

186 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
On the contrary, Mr. Lincoln's preparatory education from
childhood, supplemented now through a thousand channels of
information, public and private, placed him beyond and above
the possibihty of a surprise.
There was an absorbing problem constantly before him now,
and his every act and word had to be weighed -with reference
to the danger of an adverse, because premature, solution. It
was, simply stated, whether the surely coming storm could
be delayed until the new government should be placed in
possession of the national capital, and that also -with the
nominal acquiescence of the government which was passing
away; for four months had yet to elapse between Novem
ber of the election and March of the inauguration, and in
four months what might not happen ! Considering what
the former government had been in its nature, plans, pur
poses, and subser-viencies, the best interests of the whole
country were served by the fact that for the time being
there was no President at Washington, and that the Disunion
leaders were acting for themselves upon that weU-understood
hypothesis. Mr. Buchanan, the nominal President, weak, va
cillating, out of date, groped blindly around among the jarring
factions of his kaleidoscopic Cabinet, whUe its traitors and per
jured conspirators were begging theh more hot-headed confed
erates in the cotton States not to spoil their -vile work for them
by over-haste. At the same time, the loyal members of the
same remarkable junto of " constitutional ad-visers" were strug
gling manfully to keep in hand something in the outward sem
blance of a " Union" to hand over to the man whom the people
had selected to take the control of it. How nearly they came
to an utter failure was well known to Mr. Lincoln, from day
to day. The gloom deepened around him and -within him, un
til his best friends could but see the shadows on his face, the
circles under his eyes, the intensity of the sadness in which he
had been called to make his dwelhng-place. He hiraself was
aware of this external effect and saw a danger in it. Lest it

ELECTED PRESIDENT. 187
should influence unfavorably the spirits and courage of those
about him, and go out through them in widening ripples of
despondency, he more frequently than ever now assumed an out
ward air of cheerful joculaiity. Tt served both for a convenient
and useful mask and for a genuine relief. Behind it he studied
the chaotic Unionism slowly forming and moving into acti-vity
at the North, and the much more rapidly developing Rebelhon
at the South. No other fact of necessary statesmanship was
plainer than this : for the creation of a strong, steady, and per
manently trustworthy public opinion at the North, the South
must be permitted to put itseK openly, manifestly, outrage
ously in the -wrong -with reference to the central government.
There was no doubt that it would shortly do so under the fos
tering care of Mr. Buchanan and his Cabinet. A strong-minded
man in the executive chah would surely have given the plot
ters of secession some ghostly shadow of an excuse for violent
measures. As it was and as it continued to be, the savage
brutahty of their successive acts remains to be recorded as with
out any other palhation than the presumption of theh fellow-
citizens in electing a President openly hostUe to the purchase
and sale of human beings.

188 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER XXVL

CAStrS BELLI.

Secession Activities — Lincoln's Policy — In a Trying Position — South Carol
ina Takes the Lead — The Confederate States of America — Traitors in
Congress — Capture of United States Ports and Forces — A Campaign
of Statesmanship — Vain Premonitions — A Last Meeting.
That the more advanced and determined secessionists were
prepared to regard the triumph of the Repubhcan party and
the election of Abraham Lincoln as an ample justification of
anything they might choose to do, had aheady been openly de
clared in numberless unofficial utterances.
The extreme -view held by so many found a more effective
if not a more definite expression in a circular letter sent by
Governor Gist of South Carohna to the governors of the other
" cotton States" on the 5th of October, 1860. The governors
of the slave States subsequently known as "border States"
were not supposed to be yet prepared to return a favorable re
sponse, and were therefore not appealed to. The letter was an
in-vitation to concerted and alhed action in case the November
election should result as was expected, and its language requires
no explanation :
" If a single State secedes, we -will f oUow her. If no other
State takes the lead, South Carohna -wiU secede (in my opinion)
alone, if she has any assurance that she -will soon be foUowed
by another or other States ; otherwise it is doubtful."
The answers, of different dates, varied in character and not
aU favorable, were probably all in Governor Gist's hands on or
before election-day. That of the Governor of Georgia con
tained a very significant and important declaration. He said
that, in his opinion, the people of Georgia would " wait for

CASUS BELLI 189
some overt act" from the Lincoln govermueut. It was not at
aU necessary to inform the secession conspirators that an
" overt act" of their own would answer their purposes equally
as weU. If they had awaited a sufficient provocation from the
-wise, watchful, patriotic statesman who was then studying
their course so carefuUy at Springfield, their conspiracy would
have died of old age upon their hands. Mr. Lincoln had made
up his mind and determined his pohcy as to that point, and
he afterwards took every opportunity of publicly so saying.
The chcular letter was " secret," but the " message'' of
Governor Gist to the Legislature of South Carolina, Novem
ber 5, 1860 (pubhshed on the day preceding the general election-
day), was an all-sufficient pubhc warning. He advised the
assembling of a State Convention and the purchase of arras
and other war-material. From this date, K not from an
earher day, Mr. Lincoln was entitled to consider a war as actu
aUy begun, and to guide himseK accordingly. Upon what he
might say or do, or leave unsaid and undone, would mamfestly
depend, in great measure, the character and results of the now
ine-vitable hostihties. He was already burdened -with the deh
cate task of so directing the moral forces he represented, and
over which he exercised an increasing control, that they should
not too soon assume an aggressive attitude at any point. It is
hardly possible to overestimate the tact and patience -with
which he successfuUy accomplished this first duty and victory
of his adininistration.
The war-spirit of the South was most intense in South
Carolina, but was there focalized rather than localized. The
daily energy displayed by the people of that State in their
open preparations for bloodshed presented an " object-lesson"
which Mr. Lincoln and a few other men comprehended per
fectly. At the same time, the conservative element at the
South very sincerely underestimated the deterraination of their
neighbors, and the great mass of the Northern people refused
to regard the matter as anything more serious than an uncom-

190 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
monly absurd outburst of bluster and parade. The election
took place, and resulted as has been stated, in the election of
Mr. Lincoln.
The State Convention of South Carolina, summoned by the
Act of the Legislature caUed for in the message of Governor
Gist, was chosen on the 6th of December. It met at Columbia,
the capital of the State, adjourned to Charleston, and almost
iraraediately, December 20, adopted an " Ordinance of Seces
sion," whereby it pretended to sever the bond between South
Carohna and the Union, and to terminate aU right, power, and
authority of the general government -within the hmits of the
State. With sundry variations in the manner, form, and declared
causes and purposes of their alleged going out, the other " cot
ton States" foUowed. Mississippi " seceded " January 9, 1861 ;
Florida, January 10 ; Alabama, January 11 ; Georgia, Janu
ary 19 ; Louisiana, January 26 ; and Texas on the 1st of Feb
ruary. It was sure to f oUow that these States would league them
selves together in a bond of some kind, as suggested in the
secret circular letter of Governor Gist.
Theh representatives at Washington, in House and Senate,
in a paper signed by about haK their number, ad-vised that
such action should be taken promptly. These and other gen
tlemen afterwards held seats and exercised Federal legislative
functions, to hold and exercise which was ludicrously as weU
as criminaUy Ulegal if the several secession ordinances were of
any binding or effective power. The docuraent itseK was ac
tuaUy made public, as a preparatory step, some days prior to
the secession of South Carolina. It did but embody, for speci
fic uses, the matter and manner of a vast correspondence both
pubhc and private.
Pursuing the plan laid do-wn for them, the several seceded
States appointed delegates to a species of inter-State conven
tion, to be held at Montgomery, Alabama. These delegates

CASUS BELLI 191
met in that city on the 4th of February. So well were they
drUled beforehand in the task aUotted them, that on the 8th
of that mouth they announced to the world a provisional
government, under the name of " The Confederate States of
America." Before that joint and formal action could be taken, much
and very important separate and local rebellion had been -vigor
ously transacted. Even before adopting her own Ordinance of
Secession, the disunionists who acted as the State of South
Carolina had determined upon the early captiire of the forts in
Charleston harbor, which were the specific property of the
United States Government. These were Castle Pinckney, a
small affair near the city and of no importance ; Fort Moultrie,
a larger structure, on Sulhvan's Island, occupied by about one
company of United States regular troops ; and, the most im
portant of aU, as commanding the approaches from the sea,
Fort Sumter, a weU-buUt and, if properly manned and pro
visioned, all but irapregnable fortress on a natural shoal raised
to an artificial island, near the harbor-mouth.
So rapid and so pubhc were the preparations for the seizure
of these forts that Major Anderson, the officer in command of
Fort Moultrie, found himseK compeUed to transfer his small
force, -with such stores as he could easUy move, to Fort Sumter,
this being his sole tenable defense. He did so secretly, on the
night of December 26, only six days after the forraal act of
secession of the State. From that day forward Fort Sumter
was as regularly and actively besieged as was ever any other
fortification in any other war.
On the morning of January 9, the steamer " Star of the
West," carrying the national flag and bearing needed supphes
to Fort Sumter, was flred upon and driven back to sea by the
rebel batteries besieging Major Anderson and his forlorn squad.
Nearly similar was the subsequent course of events at Pen-
sacola, Florida. Armed forces of the incipient rebeUion com
pelled the surrender of the Pensacola Navy Yard. Lieutenant

192 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Slemmer, with forty-six men of the regular army and thirty
seamen from the Navy Yard, was obliged to abandon Forts
Barrancas and McRee, on the mainland, and occupy Fort Pick
ens, on Santa Rosa Island, at the harbor-entrance.
On February 18th, General Twiggs, commanding the
United States troops in Texas, but himself a secessionist, sur
rendered to an arraed force of the then recently seceded State,
the national forts, military posts, and property in that State,
and made preparations for evacuation.
There were numberless minor acts of open hostihty, but the
recital of these is enough to show that the War of the Rebel
lion had been in active prosecution on the part of the South,
with continual and important military successes won for them,
during three fuU months before Mr. Lincoln could, on the 4th
of March, assume the nominal direction of pubhc affairs.
Through all that time nothing whatever of a warlike nature
was done by the Federal government, beyond some dUatory
and faint-hearted attempts to send to its servants, shut up in
Southern forts, reasonable supphes of food.
The War Office, under the charge of Mr. Floyd, of Vir
ginia, up to the day of his resignation, December 31, was ad
ministered wholly in the interests of the conspiracy. The ap
pointment of Mr. Holt as his successor secured as great a
change as was possible, for the undeniable patriotism of Mr.
Buchanan was entirely crippled by his existing relations to the
outgoing leaders, and by his lack of relations with the majority
in control of Congress. It should be recognized, however,
that he avoided doing any act which might mar or defeat
beforehand the policy of the incoming President.
The latter fully grasped the situation from hour to hour.
He well understood that an unwise word or act of his, particu
larly any utterance which could be constraed as a threat of
coercion or an expression of bitter feehng or even of just in
dignation, would be equivalent to a fatal military disaster.
There was a vast mass of human tinder in existence, so situated

CASUS BELLI

193

as to be pretty sure to burn for the side which should succeed
in setting it on fire. It was yet an open question how far the
conspirators would succeed in carrying with them the non-cot-
ton-gro-wing slave States.
An error of judgment on the part of Mr. Lincoln ; an out
burst of passion, of impatience, or of partisanship during the
gloomy days of that long watchfulness and self-restraint, or
even during the first few weeks of his legal term of office,
would have lost to the Union at the outset the States of Mis
souri, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, the area which soon
afterwards became West Virginia ; and -with these as depend
encies would also have been lost, at least temporarily, Kansas,
Southern Illinois, the control of the Mississippi River, and the
mihtary frontier of the Ohio and the Potomac.
This was the first campaign of the civil war, and its vast re
sults were won by a -wise, firm statesmanship. They were won
before the reorganized nation had a regiment in the field, and
whUe its real Commander-in-Chief was li-ving in a two-story
frame-house at Springfield, in the State of Illinois.
There was a constant and at times a vehement pressure
brought to bear upon Mr. Lincohi by some of his more fiery-
spirited pohtical associates. He was urged to abandon his reti
cence and to make some pubhc appeal that should " fire the
Northern heart" as the heart of the South was firing, but he
was deaf to aU such urgency. He was not unready, indeed,
with some apt and telling story -with which to turn the subject
and bhnd and cover his actual perception and purpose.
In the month of February, 1861, as a last preparation for his
departure from TUinois, Mr. Lincoln paid a visit to his relatives
in Coles County. He talked -with old friends and neighbors ;
visited famihar scenes ; stood for a moment by the grave of
his father. More than aU, he paid a -visit of respect and affec
tion to his now aged step-mother to whom he was so deeply
indebted. He spoke of her to friends who were with him in
terras of strong and tender feehng. He treated her with all

194 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the devoted kindness of a son. The parting between them,
writes Mr. Lamon, on the authority of persons present, was
very touching. She embraced him -with deep emotion, and
said she was sure she should never see him again, for she felt
sure that his enemies would assassinate him. He replied :
"No, no, mamma, they wUl not do that. Trust in the
Lord and all wiU be well. We shall see each other again."
He himself was deeply affected, but he was sincere in his
rejection of her motherly warning. Only a few days later he
could with difficulty be brought to acquiesce in the precautions
insisted upon by Mr. Seward and other friends to avoid a well-
authenticated plot for his murder on the way to Washington.
Later still, when threatening letters were almost daily arriving
at the Executive Mansion, the private secretary in charge of
the President's mail was instructed to destroy aU such missives
at once and never to show them to Mr. Lincoln or to mention
to others the fact of their reception.
He was justified in this, for the assassins, who at last added
brute courage to their senseless hatred, did not send their in
tended -victim any written warning. The threatening letters
were but the cowardly expression of a bitterness which had no
heart to go further.
Among the crowds who flocked to see Mr. Lincoln during
this brief -visit to the scene of some of his early experiences
was old Hannah Armstrong. She also said to him that she
should never see him again ; that something told her so. They
would kiU him. He only smUed and said to her :
" Hannah, if they do kiU me, I shall never die another death."
The forebodings which were really weighing upon him did
not relate to himself, nor could any merely personal considera
tion have induced him to postpone for an hour the perform
ance of a known duty.
The time was dra-win^ near for his departure from the home
he was never to see again. It was a plain, respectable-looking
wooden dweUing, of two stories, and he had made no attempt

CASUS BELLI ID.")
to beautify it. His law-office was a dusty, littered, carelessly
kept place. Yet in the home and in the office he had thought
and suffered much, and his heart and brain, in all their patience
and growth, were hnked to every commonplace feature of
either. He asked Mr. Herndon as a favor, after settling their
partnership affairs, not to take down the old sign of " Lincoln
& Herndon" for at least four years. He had a hope or thought,
however faint, that perhaps the days of its usefulness might
return. They seemed almost happy days, in comparison -with
those to which he weU knew he was going forward. His per
ception of the true nature of these has many -witnesses. Men
who remeraber how he looked during those last few weeks be
fore his departure for Washington invariably dwell upon his
weary, sad, haggard, woe-struck face and his bent and burdened
form. There were darker circles under his eyes, and the far
away, indweUing look, so noticeable in some of his portraits,
had gro-wn deeper, gloomier than ever.
Wliat is known as " happiness" had been denied hun in his
home relations — ^faithful, devoted, lo-ving as his vsdfe assuredly
was, and utterly trae to her as was he hiraseK. The one love
which can insure the highest married happiness had come
to bim once, and it had been buried, years and years ago, in
a grave on the bank of the Sangamon. No breath of scandal
ever assaUed the purity of his domestic hfe. No smallest
stain blotted the clear record of his integrity. Of all the
citizens of Springfield, he was the best kno-wn, most highly
honored, best beloved. But those treasures of huraan hfe
which were as daily bread to the men and women who loved
and honored him were impossible possessions to the man
whose merry jokes they were so fond of repeating, and for
whom they and others invented such a wealth of varied humor
over and above all that he ever uttered.
Much has been said and written to prove that, at this partic
ular time, he permitted hiraself to entertain forebodings and
f oreshadowings of the -violent death which was to come to him.

196 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
It is as if a vague effort were made to account in some such
stupid way for his access of sadness. Such premonitions corae,
as all men know, whether or not they are afterwards fulfiUed.
If verified, then superstition recaUs them and points theatri-
caUy to the grim fulfillment. If not, then skepticism, -with
equal pertinence, forgets them, or gleefully mocks at a false
prophecy. The shadow upon Lincoln's life was not cast before
any such inadequate specter as the wonder-seekers have de
scribed, but by the coming agony of a great people. For long-
years he had been reading the signs of the times. He under
stood better than other men the meaning of the black portents
on the political sky. They were to him fuU of blood, and they
were dark -with the horrible suffering of milhons. Under and
in face of all, the responsibihty had been laid upon him of
leading his people forward into the day of their trial and into
the measureless woe before them. He had been carefully
trained and developed in the pro-vidence of God for the as
sumption and bearing of that very burden ; but aU his training,
whUe gi'ving him the power to bear it, gave him no power to
cast off any ounce of its crashing weight.

PRESIDENT. 197

CHAPTER XXVII.
PRESIDENT.
Speaking to the Nation — Diplomacy — Journey to Washington — In the
Enemy's Country — The District of Columbia Militia — The Flood of
Office-seekers — The Inauguration — The Address — The True Meaning
of Secession — March, 1861.
Mr. Lincoln's term of office as President of the United
States was to begin on the 4th of March, 1861, but he deter
mined to leave Springfield on the 11th of February.
The pohcy he was pursuing required that he should be seen
and heard and more perfectly understood by the people. Tt
was needful that his proceeding to Washington should be made
under the concentrated watching of both friends and enemies.
So he decided and so he went. The feverish anxieties of
nuUions attended every step of his joumey, and the hearts of
men grew hourly better prepared to sustain him after his ar
rival at the seat of government.
Such preparations for war as had yet been made at the
North bore no comparison to those of the South. It was the
18th of February before even such a State as Massachusetts
passed an Act to increase the State mihtia, and tendering men
and money to the general government for the maintenance of
the national authority. The great State of Pennsylvania did
not take simUar action until April 9th, and the State Legisla
ture of New York passed its dilatory " war bill " on the I7th
of that month. A great deal was doing, in a desultory and ill-
directed way, by patriotic individuals, but it was not well that
the zeal of even these should be so stimulated that their ac
tivity should endanger the diplomatic campaign for the mih-

198 ABRAHAM LINCOLN
tary possession of the border slave-States, or injuriously affect
the sluggish and bevdldered "pubhc opinion" of important
elements all over the North.
At different places on his road to Washington Mr. Lincoln
made brief offhand speeches to the crowds which gathered to
meet him, and to reply to various addresses more or less patri
otic. Every one of these, however informal and apparently
devoid of special effort, -will bear a careful analysis -with refer
ence to their intended effect, as that can now be understood.
The manner of Mr. Lincoln's departure from Springfield
expressed with honest unreserve his thoughts, feehngs, and the
simple purity of his aspirations. None the less did it clearly
sound the key-note of all his subsequent official conduct and
utterances. Seldom, indeed, have words so few and homely
appealed so powerfuUy to the hearts of such a mighty multi
tude as in reality listened to his fareweU speech to his neigh
bors. The railway-train was nearly ready to bear hira away, and a
crowd had gathered to see it start. The rain was faUing fast
from a darkened sky, and the misty atmosphere suited weU the
gloomy feeling which replaced enthusiasm in the minds of the
waiting assembly. Mr. Lincoln came out upon the platform
of the rear car, standing in silence for a moment, bareheaded,
in the rain. There were tears in his voice when he began to
speak, but the husMness departed as he went on and his tones
grew clear and strong, though tremulous with emotion. He
said: " Friends : No one who has never been placed in a hke posi
tion can understand my feehngs at this hour, — nor the oppres
sive sadness I feel at this parting. For more than a quarter of
a century I have hved among you, and during all that tirae I
have received nothing but kindness at your hands. Here I
have lived frora my youth, until now I am an old man. Here
the most sacred ties of earth were assumed. Here all my chil
dren were born, and here one of them lies buried. To you.

PRESIDENT. • 199
dear friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am. All the
strange, checkered past seems to crowd now upon my mind
To-day I leave you. I go to assume a task more difficult than
that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God
who assisted him shall be with and aid me, I shaU fail ; but if
the same omniscient Mind and almighty Arm that directed
and protected him shall guide and support me, I shaU not fail.
I shall succeed. Let us pray that the God of our fathers may
not forsake us now. To him I commend you all. Permit
me to ask that, -with equal security and faith, you wiU invoke
his wisdom and guidance for me.
" With these few words I must leave you, for how long I
know not. Friends, one and all, I must now bid you an affec
tionate fareweU."
The railway-train bore him away and they saw his face no
more. It is worthy of note, at this point, how entirely every trace
of skepticism conceming God and his active pro-vidence in
huraan affairs had vanished frora the mind of Mr. Lincoln.
The fact should also be noted that he had not enrolled himseK as
a member of any one sect, or declared his unquestioning accept
ance of any one creed, selected from among the many formu
las presented by professional theologians. The first fact be
comes of greater importance and the second of less and less,
henceforward. The raan who could not lie and did not know
how to be a hypocrite, pubhcly and before the world declared
his simple faith, both then and afterwards. So doing, he con
tinuaUy caUed upon his countrymen to join him in acts of re
pentance, forgiveness, prayer, thanksgiving, hope, trust ; reas
suring them in God's name when their own hearts sank and
their own faith failed. He waded through deep waters and
found God with him there, and he reverently said so. Tt is
too late now for any raan rationally to accuse Abraham Lin
coln of ha-ving acted and uttered a solemn he.
There was nothing in the journey to Washington which put

200 ABRAHAM LINCOLN
upon it the appearance of a triumphal procession, in spite of
several iU-ad-vised local efforts in that direction. Crowds gath
ered to see and hear him, and there was much patriotic enthu
siasm raamfested, although there were raany expressions of
dissatisfaction at the moderate, pacific, and concihatory nature
of aU the speeches made by Mr. Lincoln. He could see and
understand that the hot-heads were in a smaU minority. To
his ears, under and through all the multitudinous cheering,
there plainly spoke the hoarse and boding monotone of the
doubt and dread -with which the hearts of men were filhng.
Tt would seem, from current expressions in the daily press,
that one great fact escaped every audience of all that heard
him. Not one seemed to coraprehend that the President-elect
in addressing it, was also speaking to a multitude of other
audiences, North and South. StiU less could some understand
that the expressions they would have been glad to hear would
have fallen from his hps -with the effect of lost battles. Tt should
have been, but was not, obvious to all that the one remaining
hope for the speedy restoration of peace lay in such a restric
tion of the area and resources of the rebeUion as should dis
hearten its leaders by con-vincing thera of foregone failure.
It was indeed a faint hope, but it was honest and merciful,
and it was carefuUy encouraged by Mr. Lincoln in the hearts
of the yet undecided masses of the disputable Southern areas,
until they were raade ready to turn in their wrath against the
conspirators whose violence disappointed them.
On his arrival at Philadelphia, Mr. Lincoln received a grim
warning that he had reached the borders of the doubtful terri
tory for the control of which the rebel leaders were intriguing.
The State of Maryland was in a condition of fierce but some
what vague fermentation, and the city of Baltimore was hardly
less bitter against Abolitionism than was Richmond itself. On
the other hand, it is equally true that if, at as early a day, Rich
mond could have been forcibly occupied and controlled as was
Baltimore soon after this date, quite as much and as genuine a

LIFE MASK OF LINCOLN.
Taken by the Sculptor., Vokes, in the year j86o.

PRESIDENT. 201
"Union sentiment" would have been found there, or surely
Mould have been developed by similar processes.
Mr. Lincoln's responsible advisers were warned of what
seemed to be a desperate plot for his murder while on the road
to Washington. Whether or not their conclusions were well
sustained by the evidence in their possession is of no impor
tance whatever. They were convinced of the reality of the
impending perU, and every consideration forbade to them or
him the crime of running a needless risk of such a disaster.
No question of mere vanity of individual courage could be en
tertained for a moment. The trip across Maryland was there
fore made suddenly and in private, and the Chief Magistrate-
elect of the United States entered the Capital unexpectedly to
all, and -without so much as a group of waiting officials to wel
come him. There had been no attempt at personal disguise,
nor any really undignified concealment on the part of Mr. Lin
coln or the personal friends who accompanied him. Neverthe
less, the whole affair was a sad comraentary upon the weU-
understood attitude of pro-slavery feeling and purpose. All
men knew that slavery had frequently committed murder on a
small scale ; that it was deliberately preparing to do murder
on a large scale ; and that its fiercer fanatics could not sanely
be trasted to withhold their hands from any particular brutality.
The city of Washington itseK, so far as its genuine popular
feehng went, was hardly a part of the disputed territory.
There was a strong and faithful Union element araong its citi
zens, but this was in a sad minority both as to number and
power. When the new Commander-in-Chief and President
reached his hotel, he was, in a manner, -within the enemy's lines.
He had stolen a march, however, and his very presence gar
risoned the city for the Union.
There was very httle indeed of any other garrison as yet,
except a few marines at the Navy Yard, and a handful of artil-
ler-vmen at the arsenal, not 500 in aU. Regular organizations
of Secessionists, some of them armed and equipped, existed,

¦202 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
met, drUled, within the city limits, and even in the offices and
halls of more than one of the pubhc buildings.
An attempt had been made to reorganize the local mihtia,
for defense only, and not for service beyond the District of
Columbia, but the results had been more instructive than en
couraging. As early as January 2d, 1861, the War Depart
ment, advised by General Scott, assigned to this duty Captain
Charles P. Stone of the regular army, as Inspector-General of
the District of Columbia. General Stone's services were in
valuable and were rendered under pecuhar difficulties. He
quickly made the discovery that the greater part of the official
civUians of the District, and of the Capital in particular, hke
theh friends and exemplars the Southern officers of the army
and navy, were meditating if not actuaUy preparing for a
speedy exchange into the rebel ser-vice. The several mihtia
organizations of the city were able to present but one weU
drUled and uniformed " crack" company, the National Rifles.
This company, which afterwards rated in the new organization
as " Company A, Third Battahon, District of Columbia Rifles,"
was composed of young gentlemen of good social standing and
fairly represented the better classes of the municipahty, and it
placed on record a striking illustration of the situation. It
speedily became so depleted by desertions Southward, including
its captain, that it was necessary to fiU its ranks anew -with loyal
clerks from the departments and -with young men recently
arrived from the North. When so fiUed up, it contained still a
trace and remnant of the local mihtia, but its body was com
posed of representatives of nearly every loyal State, Virginia,
Kentucky, and Missouri not excepted. The second company of
the same battalion was composed almost entirely of Germans,
and the third of a general mixture of native and foreign ele
ments. Several other " battahons" were formed under Gen.
Stone's management, but a well-grotmded distrust of their fidel
ity prevented any very active use of them as a whole. After
the first company named was made over and became truly

PRESIDENT.

203

" national'^ it rendered good ser-vice. Tt was employed on guard-
duty at the Long Bridge over the Potomac and elsewhere ; to
seize a river-steamer threatened -with capture by the rebels ; to
occupy the railway-station at Annapolis Junction, and so hold
open the gate for the New York Seventh to come safely in ;
and on the final invasion of Virginia it was the first to enter
that State, across the Potomac. Still its history describes, more
perfectly than it could in any other manner be described, the
kind of loyalty Mr. Lincoln found waiting for him in Wash
ington : the one military company the District owned broke
ranks and went South.
Mr. Lincoln took rooms at WiUard's Hotel on his arrival.
He had yet a week of hard work between him and the 4th
of March. He put himseK at once in communication with the
loyal members of Buchanan's Cabinet, and -with that true-
hearted and unswerving old patriot, Lieutenant-General Win-
field Scott, of Vhginia. The commonwealth possessed in the
latter a pUlar of honor that could not be and was not for a
moment shaken.
The formal counting of the electoral votes in the presence
of Congress had been duly performed on the 13th of February,
and even before that date the tide of new men set in from the
North. The city soon became crowded as it had never been
before, although so large a percentage of its custoraary popula
tion, official and otherwise, was daily leaving it for more South
erly and congenial atmospheres.
There was something almost phenomenal in the crowd of
hungry office-seekers. They fiUed the hotels and boarding-
houses. They thronged the passages and anterooms of the
pubhc buUdings. Hundreds of anxious politicians, large and
smaU, came pouring in by every train, so ignorant of pubhc af-
fahs that they hardly knew what to apply for, and stiU less
for what duties they were prepared. They came from every
nook and corner of the country, and they brought at least one
unmistakable comfort to Mr. Lincoln. Their very coming as-

204 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
sured hira that the people they represented had an undisturbed
confidence in the stabihty of the government. The masses
failed to reahze any danger of its overthrow. Men could not
and did not see how nearly new was the fabric about to take
shape in Mr. Lincoln's hands, or how completely the old order
of things had passed away.
The tone of Washington "society" was intensely "seces
sion," but, for the first tirae in its history, it found itseK utterly
bereft of political influence. Its feeble cry was quickly
dro-wned in the flood of unreasoning loyalty from the North.
It was all in vain that the unanimous pianos of the lady-rebels
wore themselves out with pouring through spitefuUy open
windows the " patriotic music" of the South. They kept it
up until the day when the TweKth New York regiment
marched do-wn Pennsylvania Avenue with its fuU brass band
playing " Dixie" for dear IKe. Then the piano-players yielded
in disgust, declaring that " the Yankees had robbed them of
even their national ahs."
The preparations made for the "inauguration ceremonies"
on the 4th of March were somewhat as usual, but precautions
were taken, of a pohce and mihtary nature, against possible
mob-action or any attempt at assassination.
For the first time in American history was any part of the
people of the United States deemed unworthy to be trusted to
keep the peace while a chosen President should take the oath
of office.
A vast throng gathered in front of the eastern portico of the
Capitol, upon the steps of which a temporary structure of wood
had been erected for the occasion. At twelve o'clock, noon,
the Buchanan Administration expired by hmitation. Up to
that hour Mr. Buchanan himself remained at the Capitol, en
gaged in signing bills. He then went to WiUard's Hotel, to
accompany Mr. Lincoln, and both Houses of Congress ad
journed. All remaining preparations were quickly completed, and the

PRESIDENT. 205
Presidential procession formed upon Pennsylvania Avenue. Tt
moved along -with a slow dignity, undisturbed in any manner,
yet bearing a heavy and somber air which seemed to be fully
in sympathy -with that of the crowds which stared at or accom
panied it.
At about a quarter past one o'clock Mr. Lincoln reached the
Senate Charaber, where the members of the two Houses, of
the Supreme Court, of the Diplomatic Corps, the heads of ex
ecutive departments, and other pri-vUeged persons, were already
assembled. From thence, a few moments later, aU passed on,
in stately progress, to the platform from which Mr. Lincoln
was to announce his purposes as President, — not to that throng
only, but to the country and to the world.
He had given the finishing touches to his address that very
morning. None knew so weU as he what consequences would
surely f oUow any blunder in tone or mistake in declaration.
He looked worn and pale and anxious, but from tlie first to the
last his voice rang out clear, firm, unhesitating, resonant with
faith and courage, whUe its every tremor and modulation
seemed to vouch for his sincerity. He was making his last
appeal for peace and his last solemn protest against needless
bloodshed. The address may be epitomized as an argumenta
tive attempt to con-vince aU whom it might concern that there
was nothing in the past or present attitude or purposes of the
Repubhcan party, nor any possible action by the national gov
ernment as it would be administered by himseK, which could
sanely be construed as a justification of revolution and ci-vil
war. There was in it, however, no expression which could be
interpreted as an admission of the right of peaceable secession
on the part of any State. On the contrary, it contained one
clause which closed the door upon any hope which the con-
sphators may have entertained that the threatening aspect of
affahs had affected his steady firmness. He said :
" The power confided to me -wUl be used to hold, occupy, and
possess the property and places belonging to the government

206 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
and to collect the duties and imposts ; but beyond what may
be necessary for these objects there wiU be no invasion, no
using of force among the people anywhere."
He kept his word carefully afterwards, for he thus described
the precise result obtained when, four years later, the last rebel
army laid do-wn its arms and surrendered. Tn these few words
he condensed the most important visible expressions of Ameri
can national sovereignty.
Towards the close of his argument Mr. Lincoln addressed
himseK altogether to the people of the seceded States and such
other communities as seemed likely to follow theh leading.
He said :
" In your hands, my dissatisfied feUow-countrymen, and not
in mine is the moraentous issue of ci-vil war. The govern
ment wiU not assaU you. You can have no conflict -without
being yourselves the aggressors."
This was but a plain reiteration of his frequently declared
position, and it was now more than ever perfectly understood
and comprehended. The rebeUion had already taken him at
his word. Tt had made itseK the aggressor at a hundred dK-
f erent places, and it was hourly preparing to strike such addi
tional blows as should assume for it the full responsibility he
so forcibly presented.
There is one other sentence in the address which is full of
meaning. Tt tells in a few words a fundamental truth of the
American national organism.
Of pohtics, in 1850, he had said to his friend Mr. Stuart :
" The time -wiU come when we must all be Democrats or
Abohtionists." Of the government and its constitution he had said, in 1858,
in his Bloomington speech : " I beheve this government can
not endure permanently haK slave and haK free. I do not ex
pect the Union to be dissolved. It wiU become aU one thing
or all the other."

PRESIDENT. 207
Of the territori;il area involved he now said with equal
clearness : " Physically speaking we cannot separate."
The leaders of the rebeUion perfectly understood the axiom
so enunciated, and they had laid theh plans accordingly.
For more than a generation they had ruled the whole coun
try through the clumsy machinery pro-vided for them at Wash
ington. Their " secession" now was but a first step in a design
which proposed a more absolute, more sweeping, and more
arbitrary domination.
They looked forward to the control of the enthe territory of
the United States, then to that of the whole continent to the
Isthmus, and -with that the absorption of the West Indies.
Slavery was aggressive as a necessity of its existence. Its
rebuff in its attempt upon Kansas and Nebraska had but pre
cipitated the more desperate undertakings of its bloody cam
paign for its hfe. At the hour when Mr. Lincoln was speak
ing, armed rebel forces were aheady preparing to seize New
Mexico and the adjacent Territories. A well-devised conspir
acy was at work in the free State of Cahf ornia. There was a
strong pro-slavery element in the city of New York, hardly
deigning to disguise itseK under what now seems the -wild pro
ject for shcing off that commercial metropohs by itseK as " a
free city."
Tn every place, and in whatever form, the true intent and
meaning of every suggestion of dismemberment was the event
ual unification of the United States as a Slave Empire.
The issue thus created was raet squarely by Mr. Lincohi then
and afterwards, but the hour was not ripe for its elaborate pre
sentation. He was a ruler about to assurae the dhection of a
war in which his opponents had had nearly their own way for
three months. He was a commander-in-chief with a bank-
rapt treasury and -without either array or navy. He was
himseK then standing upon a platform on the steps of a build
ing some days' march within the enemy's hues. He was ad
dressing himseK to populations listening to his words as if

208 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
almost in search of causes of offence. He was compeUed to
clothe his plainest enunciations in such forms of speech as
should not throw away communities and States by arraying
angrily against him the very elements whereof he hoped and
intended to make immediate use.
Read in the hght of subsequent deeds and events, Mr. Lin
coln's inaugural address must be given the high praise that it
was a State paper equal to the demands of an unparaUeled oc
casion. The Century Magazine for July, 1891, contains " An Un
published Address" on Lincoln, written in 1868, by Horace
Greeley, who, having had an interview with the President
shortly after his inauguration, believed that Mr. Lincoln ac
tually expected to influence the South by his inaugural ad
dress, and that there would be no war. He says :
" That document will be lingered over and admired long after we shall
all have passed away. It -was a masterly effort at persuasion and concilia
tion, by one -whose command of logic was as perfect as his reliance on it
-was unqualified. The man evidently believed with all his soul that if he
could but convince the South that he would arrest and return her fugitive
slaves, and offered to slavery every support required by comity or by the
letter of the Constitution, he would avert her hostility, dissolve the Confed
eracy, and restore throughout the Union the sway of the Federal authority
and laws ! . . . .
"I apprehend that Mr. Lincoln -was very nearly the last man in the
country -whether North or South to relinquish his rooted conviction that
the growing chasm might be closed, and the Union fully restored without
the shedding of blood. Inured to the -ways of the Bar and the Stump, so
long accustomed to hear of rebellions that never came to light, he long
and obstinately refused to believe that reason and argument, fairly em
ployed, could fail of their proper effect."
I do not agree with Mr. Greeley; but his opinion is most
interesting and entitled to great weight.

WAR. 209

CHAPTER XXVin.
WAR.
The New Era— Unification of the South— Free Speech— Copperheads— The
Cabinet — The White House — Confederate Ambassadors — Traitors in
Office- The Border States— The Sumter Gun— The President's Call to
Arms— April, 1861.
Mr. Jefferson Davis was installed as President of the
Southern Confederacy on the 18th of February, 1861, and the
flag of rebeUion, afterwards so weU kno-wn as the " Stars and
Bars," was formaUy adopted, on the 4th of March, as the em
blem of organized pro-slavery war. Around the flag and its
chosen bearer were rapidly grouped and sohdified the ready
elements of the great peril with which Mr. Lincoln had thus
far dealt -with such skUKul and courageous conservatism.
The forces he was thenceforth to direct were ample but
were as yet chaotic and tumultuous, and his first duties were
mainly those of organization.
The last Congress of the Buchanan Administration had
steadily drifted out of pro-slavery control. The consecutive
departures of its ultra-Southern membership left it more and
more a " Republican" body, politicaUy speaking, but its Union-
lo-ving elements were irregularly stratified and were not yet
prepared to work in unison. Its closing hours were signalized
by the rejection of the weak work of the so-caUed "Peace
Congress" and of what was known as the " Crittenden Com
promise." The timely death of these twin-chUdren of legislative timid
ity relieved Mr. Lincoln of any annoying guardianship of what
must have proved a perpetual minority.

210 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
On the adjournment of Congress and the unobstracted in
auguration, the North as a whole and the Union men of the
border States breathed more freely for a few days, but the war
went steadily onward. The chosen chief of the rebellion, a
man of intense indi-viduahty, despotic -will, and much executive
abihty, was rapidly invested -with powers which were only in
name and form less than autocratic. He and his feUow-con-
spirators clearly perceived the necessity of forbidding and pre
venting any open division of popular sentiment in the districts
under their control.
The structure of Southern society gave them all facihties,
and they began at once a work of suppression, continued to the
end of the war, which did not hesitate in the employment of
needful methods and agencies. The most searching espionage
was supplemented by the most pitiless cruelty, and in due tirae
the rebelhous region was effectively unified.
No similar assault upon or destruction of personal hberty of
thought or speech or action was at aU possible at the North.
No such tyranny was called for, nor was it ever undertaken.
Tt would have been as foreign to the nature of Mr. Lincoln as
to the genius of the free people who sustained him. Both he
and they were afterwards slow to adopt the simplest and most
necessary repressive measures. From the first to the last the
critics of the Administration used their tongues and pens with
a freedom which was by no means altogether due to the gen
eral faith in their impotence for serious mischief. Doubtless
contempt had its share, however, in the leniency extended at
the North to the large class of politicians of traitorous ten
dencies who shortly came to be kno-wn as " Copperheads," from
the venomous reptile of that name.
The selection of Mr. Lincoln's Cabinet was nearly completed
when he took the oath of office. The group of men he now
gathered around him was erainently representative, politically
and geographically. Williara H. Seward, of New York, was
appointed Secretary of State; Simon Cameron, of Pennsyl

WAR. 211
vania, Secretary of War; Gideon WeUes, of Connecticut,
Secretary of the Navy ; Salmon P. Chase, of Ohio, Secretary
of the Treasury ; Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana, Secretary of the
Interior ; Edward Bates, of Missouri, Attorney-General ; and
Montgomery Blair, of Maryland, Postmaster-General.
Subsequent changes need not now be noted, but it was evi=
dent from the first that it would require a man of marked in
teUectual and moral superiority to be the actual guiding mind,
governing -wUl, and recognized chief among such men as these
whose success as leaders was aheady notable. Many, indeed,
were ready to offer an opinion that Mr. Lincoln would either
be a puppet in theh hands, tossed to and fro between opposing
cabals as Mr. Buchanan had been, or that, for peace and quiet,
he would soon drift imder the sole manageraent of some one
strong mind and subtle purpose among his constitutional ad
visers. That there was never the slightest peril or sign of
either disaster is a testimonial of the completeness -with which
he had already mapped out the course he meant to pursue. At
the same time it speaks for the acuteness and patriotic readiness
-with which the Cabinet at once stepped out upon the path upon
which they were to co-operate but not to lead.
The Executive Mansion was a curious study during many
days and weeks foUo-wing the inauguration. Its halls and
offices were hteraUy packed -with human beings. There were
days when the throng of eager applicants for office fiUed the
broad staircase to its lower steps ; the corridors of the first
floor ; the faraous East Room ; the private parlors ; while anx
ious groups and individuals paraded up and down the outer
porch, the walks, and the Avenue.
The entrance of the Cabinet officers upon their duties and
appointing powers drew away much of this pressure after a
while, and Mr. Lincoln was at once accused of transferring top
much of his prerogative to his subordinates. That he should
have relief would have been a physical necessity under any
chcumstances, but he now had more important matters on his

212 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
hands than the apportionment of partisan rewards of services.
His kindly nature led him to surrender only too much of his
time and strength to private hopes and ambitions. He had
hardly time left him to eat and sleep.
The clerical work of the executive office under pre-vious ad
ministrations had been coraparatively small, and there was no
existing law under which the force for its performance could
be increased. The President of the United States was aUowed
but one " private secretary," on a very moderate stipend. To
this office he appointed Mr. John G. Nicolay, who had aheady
served him in that capacity. Now that the sheer need of work
in hand called for a second private secretary, and Mr. John
Hay was in fact made such, it was necessary to .have him ap
pointed a clerk in a department and " assigned to duty" at the
White House. A few weeks later, when a third was needed,
it was easy to sumraon to Mr. Nicolay's assistance Mr. Wil
liam O. Stoddard, who had been already appointed the Presi
dent's secretary to sign land-patents.
These three young men, -with occasional help from depart
ment clerks detailed, were all the force with which Mr. Lincoln
performed the ceaseless labors of the executive office during
the earlier and stormier days of his administration.
That there was much transfer of "bureau work" to the
several departments where it belonged requires no other ex
planation. It was contrary to Mr. Lincoln's nature to meddle -with petty
details unnecessarily, but he was frequently dra-wn into what
looked like meddhng by Ms eager desire for exact informa
tion ; by the real or apparent application of a principle ; by the
expression of personal good -will or under the influence of some
strong emotion. Those who accused him of listening too easUy
to the importunities of friends and the pressure of interested
politicians knew very httle of the tidal waves which daily
broke at his door to recede in a grumbling "undertow" of bit
ter dissatisfaction.

WAS. 213
The days of the first week were expended in making the
more important official appointments to office ; in strengthen
ing somewhat the shadowy mUitary force at command ; but
more than aU in gaining time for the sure operation of the less
-visible forces which were steadUy depriving the conspirators
of the advantages so nearly within their reach.
On the 12th of March there arrived in Washington three
very extraordinary ambassadors. Mr. Roman, of Louisiana,
Mr. Forsyth, of Alabama, and Mr. Crawford, of Georgia, were
empowered by the Confederate Government to open diplo
matic relations -with the Government of the United States.
They were not private adventurers, but commissioners duly
nominated by the Confederate President, and confirmed Feb
ruary 25 by the Confederate Senate. Their errand, to ex
press it concisely and correctly, was to demand and accept the
pusUlanimous surrender, by Mr. Lincoln, to the Rebelhon in
arms, of aU it had aheady seized and as much more as it could
lay its hands upon. Tt was their business to in-vite hira to
imitate stupidly the inteUigent treachery of General T-wiggs
when the latter surrendered the troops and forts in Texas.
The three commissioners were not arrested for treason.
They came unnoticed and departed unhindered. Mr. Lincoln
was bitterly blamed for this by over-zealous patriots, who
could not discern that the brazen impudence of such an em
bassy was also a plain expression of the dullness behind it
which could be guilty of such a blunder.
The North was now at last beginning to wake up and arm
itself. The new government at Washington was rapidly com
pleting its organization. S-wift search and inquiry was raaking
among army and navy officers and ci-vil employees of the de
partments as to what might be expected of them. It was pre
eminently needful that the government should know something
of the probable capacity and fidehty of its agents before en
trusting them with the execution of war measures. The absence
or defectiveness of such knowledge, in the outset, and the se-

214 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
lection and assignment of new men to varied duties, and not
at all any imaginable vaciUation or uncertainty of the Presi
dent's purposes, operated as a kind of partial paralysis for a
time. A complete illustration of this peculiar difficulty of Mr. Lin
coln's position during those long, weary weeks of March is
offered by the subsequent destruction of the Norfolk Navy
Yard, in Virginia, instead of its retention as a mihtary post.
With all its vast uses, it was lost to the nation by the base
treachery of the very officers in charge of it ; its loyal com
mander. Commodore McCauley, being powerless among his
rebel subordinates. Mr. Lincoln might weU act cautiously un
til a species of weeding-out process had performed itseK more
thoroughly by the actual personal seceding of the Secessionists
in Federal offices.
On the 6th of the month the Confederate Government is
sued its first formal caU for troops. Only one hundred thou
sand were summoned, but it had at least that number already,
more or less perfectly organized and armed, under competent
officers. The South contained much more than its proportion of
West Point graduates, retired from mihtary ser-vice. To these
were rapidly added no less than 269 officers whose secession
procli-vities led them to resign their positions in the United
States army. How large a power of courage, dash, genius, and
military science these men carried -with them the course of
the war was yet to show ; but the army was an untrustworthy
machine until they were all out of it.
The Confederate statesmen were providing their proposed
campaign with materials as well as men. Their emissaries in
New York and elsewhere were buying and shipping to them
aU obtainable arras and raunitions of war. Larger purchases
than ever before were raaking in the West of pro-visions of all
sorts, and the cargoes were hastening do-wn the Mississippi.
The energy, foresight, and abihty displayed in this direction

WAR. 215
were undehiable ; but in spite of all this and their relentless
determination, they were wasting time which Mr. Lincoln was
using. He was in sore need of every hour. The secession element
in aU the doubtful regions was in a state of fermentation,
nearly ready for an explosion. Should this be unduly hastened,
no human -wisdom could forecast the consequences. As early
as December 34, 1860, the Richmond, Va., Enquirer newspaper
had editoriaUy recommended that Virginia and Maryland
should unite in resuming possession of the District of Colum
bia and the city of Washington. The seizure could then have
been made irresistibly, or at any date thereafter up to the first
day of May. Both States contained organized military bodies
of sufficient strength, composed of men who merely waited an
apparent pretext and some sort of lawful authority for active
operations. Delay was theh defeat. The national capital and the territory
north of it, to the free-State hues, which lay at the mercy of
the rebeUion all through the month of March, grew less and
less so from the first of April onward. That its danger then
became more apparent to all men was but because all men be
gan to see more plainly. By that time the new national gov
ernment was organized very nearly as thoroughly as was its
somewhat older antagonist at Montgomery. Tt had at its com
mand no troops to speak of, but the States of Virginia and
North Carohna were stUl left as a neutral belt between the
bare and undefended lines of the Potomac and that part of the
rebel forces which was prepared for immediate battle.
It was impossible that this state of things should continue
much longer. The Confederacy was suffering too much from
it and found at last a pretext for its forcible termination.
The siege of Fort Sumter had thus far been confined to a
rigid blockade, and the unmilitary millions of the American
people were unable to realize that this was as distinct and posi
tive an act of war as the resonant use of gunpowder. The gar-

216 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
risen was now running short of pro-visions, and it was both the
right and duty of the government at Washington to supply
them. The performance of this duty was delayed to the last
moment consistent -with honor or humanity, in order that the
inevitable consequences might also be postponed as long as
possible. On the 8th of April a government messenger read to Gov
ernor Pickens, of South Carohna, at Charleston, the foUowing
brief message ;
" I am directed by the President of the United States to no
tify you to expect an atterapt -wiU be made to supply Fort
Sumter -with provisions only, and that K such attempt be not
resisted no effort to throw in provisions, arms, or ammunition
-wiU be made without further notice or in case of an attack on
the fort."
The rehe-ving expedition did not sail from New York untU
the morning of the 9th, and it never performed its mission.
There was something of confusion and delay in its official
management, and a rough sea helped to defeat the zeal of its
brave coramander ; but it had already been denied a landing.
After some prehminary exchanges of threats and responses
between the besiegers and the besieged, the political mine had
been fired, and the explosion had blown away all remaining
uncertainties. The rebel authorities gravely decided that Mr.
Lincoln's notification of his intention to prevent starvation in
Fort Sumter was " a declaration of war." Only the grim and
ghastly consequences of their decision conceal the humorous
absurdity of it. At haK-past four o'clock, on the morning of
April 12, the first gun, "the Sumter gun," was fired, and
the first shell struck the fort. It was a well-aimed shot. No
harra was done to the fortress, but Mr. Lincoln's most serious
perplexities were knocked away for him. The " policy of de
lay" was shattered forever, at the very moment when Mr. Lin
coln had himseK decided that he coidd not continue it with
advantage nor abandon it without peril. He knew that every

WAR. 217
man in the country could hear that cannon and understand the
meaning of that bursting shell.
For the RebeUion, also, that shot and those which foUowed
it were apparently weU aimed. The garrison of Fort Sumter
was compeUed to haul down the Stars and Stripes and surren
der, on Sunday morning, April 14 ; but the capture of the
fortress was only a part of the seeming Secession victory. Al
ready the war-fever had spread with electric swiftness through
North Carolina, Vhginia, Arkansas, Maryland, and the news
of such a -victory augmented it with a sudden power.
The war — for such the state of hostilities must be caUed —
had now continued for four full months -with fiuctuating
fortunes, and the rebels had many good reasons for rejoicing
over theh present advantage. With it came the port of
Charleston, afterwards so useful to them, and which would
have been so dangerous to them in the hands of a Federal
army. Tn a few days, and practicaUy captured at the same hour,
came aU the States above named except Maryland. They
would have obtained that also, and -with it what is now West
Virginia, and Kentucky and Missouri, if it had not been for
yet another and to them an enthely unlooked-for consequence
of their victory in Charleston harbor.
It is very difficult now to understand, difficult even to be
heve, the nature, degree, extent, of the delusions then preva
lent at the South conceming the resources and character of
the people of the North. Even the nominally educated and
inteUigent classes shared in these delusions, remarkably. That
the population of the free States was utterly unwarhke, and
would shrink from the ordeal of actual bloodshed, was so
deeply ingrained in the Southern mind that it was impossible,
years afterwards, for even official statistics to convince them
that the national armies were not mainly composed of hired
foreigners. Mr. Lincoln knew his countrymen better, and his entire

218 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
demeanor changed, in his utter confidence as to the response
which would be made to the Sumter gun.
Yet he had reasons for proceeding with caution even now.
Clearly percei-ving the near and open coming to himseK of
dictatorial power and responsibihty, and feeling that he must
at once, but unobtrusively, assume and exercise both, his first
action evinced neither alarm nor haste.
The news of the fall of Sumter reached Washington on Sun
day morning, April 14, but it was aheady well known by the
President that such news must come and that its arrival was a
question of a few hours only. The news of the bombardment
had arrived but one day earher, but its foreordained results did
not take him by surprise. The Cabinet had already been sum
moned, and had assembled to discuss the situation. There is
good e-vidence that Mr. Lincoln had been opposed by the
majority of his constitutional ad-visers, first, in his determina
tion to hold Fort Sumter to the last, and then in his decision to
re-pro-vision it. He was now to show them that the result was
no more a disappointment to him than to Mr. Jefferson Davis
hiraseK. That gentleraan, in the raouth of February, 1861,
when on his way to Montgomery to assume the Presidency of
the Confederacy, remarked to ex-Chief Justice Sharkey, of
Mississippi, "There wUl be war, long and bloody." In his
inaugural address he said, "It is deemed advisable in the
present condition of affairs that there should be a weU in
structed and disciplined army, more numerous than would
usually be required on a peace estabhshment."
How -vigorously he and his supporters acted upon their sound
con-victions is matter of history. They did what they could, but
they had thus far been unable to break through the " border-
State barrier" maintained against them by Mr. Lincoln's pru
dence. It had been the only defense he could safely employ
until they themselves, by the capture of Fort Sumter, set his
hands free. So many things were then h-ving that are now

WAR. 219
dead, or hve only in other forms, that it is not easy to explain
or understand what mere questions of "statute law" and con
stitutional interpretation had, up to tliis moment, been felt by
Mr. Lincoln as fetters upon his conduct. There was a war
upon his hands, but nothing as yet had -visibly conferred the
war power upon him. Huge " anti-coercion meetings" in the
great cities of the North, and the utterances of the most loyal
joumals, kept him well advised of the prevalent conservatism
of pubhc opinion.
Able la-wyers openly expressed professional doubts as to
whether Mi*. Lincoln had any power to caU for troops or to
make use of them K he should caU and get them. He had no
constitutional right or authority to raise or appropriate money.
The lawyers were almost unanimous in declaring that he
must at least await the assembling and action of Congress.
Tt would not do for him to tyrannically usurp anything
beyond what was set do-wn in the books and expounded by
learned counsel.
Mr. Lincoln was himseK a lavryer, but he was something
more. He was a statesman and a ruler, born, educated,
trained, and prepared for the precise emergency in which he
now found himseK. He possessed a thorough knowledge of
and an unfaltering confidence in a people who would be ready
to sustain him in almost any imaginable course of action which
should express and accomplish their vehement but altogether
inteUigent and righteous wiU.
So complete was Mr. Lincoln's moral and mental prepara
tion that the famous "first proclamation caUing for troops"
was -written by his o-wn hand and was on its way over the
country by mail and telegraph before that Sunday was over.
It bore date of Monday, the 15th of AprU, 1861, and is a sort
of crystaUization in words of the President's exact raind and
purpose. Tt was as foUows :

220 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
" Proclamation
" £y the President of the United States.
"Whereas, The laws of the United States have been for
some time past and now are opposed, and the execution thereof
obstructed, in the States of South Carohna, Alabama, Georgia,
Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too
powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial
proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals by law :
Now therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United
States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution
and the laws, have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do caU
forth, the mihtia of the several States of the Union, to the
aggregate number of seventy-five thousand, in order to sup
press said combinations and to cause the laws to be duly ex
ecuted. " The details for this object -wiU be immediately communi
cated to the State authorities through the War Department.
I appeal to aU loyal citizens to favor, f acihtate, and aid this
effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and existence of our
National Union and the perpetuity of popular government,
and to redress wrongs aheady long enough endured. I deem
it proper to say that the first ser-vice assigned to the forces
hereby called forth -wUl probably be to repossess the forts,
places, and property which have been seized from the Union,
and in every event the utmost care -wiU be observed consist
ently -with the objects aforesaid to avoid any devastation, any
destruction of or interference -with property, or any disturb
ance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country ; and I
hereby coraraand the persons coraposing the combinations
aforesaid to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective
abodes -within twenty days from this date.
" Deeming that the present condition of pubhc affairs pre
sents an extraordinary occasion, I do hereby, in virtue of the

WAR. 221
power in me vested by the Constitution, convene both Houses
of Congress. Senators and Representatives are therefore sum
moned to assemble at their respective chambers at twelve
o'clock noon on Thursday, the fourth day of July next, then
and there to consider and determine such measures as in
their wisdom the public safety and interest may seem to
demand. "In -witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and
caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
"Done at the city of Washington, this fifteenth day of
AprU, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-one, and of the independence of the United States the
eighty-fifth. Abraham Lincoln.
" By the President, " William H. Seward, Secretary of State."
The actual -writing of this extraordinary document was done
in the few hours which foUowed the arrival of the news of the
fall of Fort Sumter, but it presents no marks of sudden or
hasty work. Tt was the result of thoughtful preparation, and
is the condensed expression of dehberate statesmanship.
At that very hour nothing could be more sure than that
Virginia and North Carohna would at once join the Confeder
acy, and that the national capital, -with aU that it contained,
would speedUy require armed defenders. That these were
ready to come at the caU of the President was also instantly
kno-wn. The first effect of the Sumter gun was felt in the Cabinet of
Mr. Lincoln, which was unified by the same event which made
it otherwise possible for him to go forward in utter disregard
of legal technicahties. He was at once endowed with all the
powers latent in his responsibihties or imphed by the necessi
ties of the case ; and he was in mind and wiU f uUy prepared to
employ them.
It was needful for him to assume dictatorial authority, and

222 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the people tacitly expected of him that he should do so. He
did it, but did it so strictly in accordance with the plain logic
of the situation that neither he nor the popular masses who
obeyed him perceived that he had done so. This, too, although
the portentous fact of his dictatorship was urged upon them
both, from that time forward, by a host of busy tongues •and
pens, in the press, in legislative bodies, in courts of law, and in
the halls of the national Congress.
An extraordinary exaraple of Mr. Lincoln's reserved force,
of the real power of the raan, was given within a raonth after
his inauguration as President. His previous career had been
that of a Western lawyer and politician. His experience in
state-craft and his knowledge of the subtle processes of official
action had been such as raight be acquired in the narrow,
crude, and defective training school of a rainor State govern
ment. He was now in the executive office of the national
capitol itself. He was surrounded by mature statesmen whose
lives had been spent, very largely, not only in the constant
discussion, but in the management, of national affairs. Such
of them as were members of his cabinet were his constitu
tional advisers, but they were, individually, almost strangers
to him and he to them. They and he had not as yet worked
together under pressure of responsibihty or searching demands
of sudden emergency, such as may compel and develop mutual
confidence. They were ignorant of each other's qualities and
qualifications, related to the moraentous task in their hands,
and it is alraost assured that he was the least understood man
among them.
On the first day of April, Mr. Lincoln received from Mr.
Seward, the Secretary of State, a meraorandura which could
not then have seemed to the capable and experienced writer of
it at all amazing. It seems so to any reader now, and the fact
that its presentation was possible then, throws a strong explan
atory light upon the administrative situation. We are in
debted for it to the Life of Lincoln by Messrs. Nicolay and
Hay. It was as follows ;

WAR. 223
SOME THOUGHTS FOR THE PRESIDENT'S CONSIDERATION,
April 1, 1861.
First. We me at the end of a month's administration, and yet without a
policy, either domestic or foreign.
Second. This, however, is not culpable, and it has even been unavoid
able. The presence of the Senate, with the need to meet applications for
patronage, have prevented attention to other and more grave matters.
Third. But further delay to adopt and prosecute our policies for both
domestic and foreign affairs would not only bring scandal on the Adminis
tration, but danger upon the countiy.
Fourth. To do this we must dismiss the applicants for office. But how?
I suggest that we make the local appointments forthwith, leaving foreign
or general ones for ulterior and occasional action.
Fifth. The policy at home. I am aware that my vie-ws are singular, and
perhaps not sufficiently explained. My system is built upon this idea as a
ruling one, namely, that we must
CHANGE THE QUESTION BEFORE THE PUBLIC FROM ONE
UPON SLAVERY, OR ABOUT SLAVERY, for a question upon UNION
OR DISUNION.
In other words, from what would be regarded as a party question, to one
of Patriotism or Union.
The occupation or evacuation of Fort Sumter, although not in fact a
slavery or party question, is so regarded. Witness the temper manifested
by the Republicans in the free'States, aud even by Union men in the South.
I would therefore terminate it as a safe means for changing the issue. I
deem it fortunate that the last Administration created the necessity.
For the rest I would simultaneously defend and re-enforce all the forts
in the Gulf, and have the navy recalled from foreign stations to be prepared
for a blockade. Put the island of Key West under martial law.
This will raise distinctly the question of Union or Disunion. I would
maintain every fort and possession in the South.
FOR FOREIGN NATIONS.
I would demand explanations from Spain and France, categorically, at
once. I would seek explanations from Great Britain and Russia, and send agents
into Canada, Mexico, and Central America, to rouse a vigorous continental
spirit of independence on this continent against European intervention.
And, if satisfactory explanations are not received fi-om Spain and France,
Would convene Congress and declare war against them.
But whatever policy we adopt, there must be an enei-getic prosecution of
it.

224 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Por this purpose it must be somebody's business to pursue and direct it
incessantly. Either the President m\]st do it himself, and be all the while active in it,
or, Devolve it on some member of his Cabinet. Once adopted, debates on
it must end, and all agree and abide.
It is not my especial province.
But I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility.
Certainly a more disturbing paper could hardly have been
subraitted by one raan to another, under all the circurastances,
and any common man — indeed, most great men — in Lincoln's
place would have resented such an attempt to really dispos
sess, of the actual power of leadership, the man who must bear
the responsibility. But Mr. Lincoln was no ordinary " great
raan." Cool, calm, practical, sagacious, wary, wise, as was his
intellect, his character was even larger than that, and enabled
hira to treat the raatter in such a raanner that his great secre
tary should be quietly put back into his place, and yet without
feeling the sting of mortification or wounded pride.
Mr. Lincoln on the same day sent to Mr. Seward the fol
lowing reply : ExECUTi-VB Mansion, April 1, 1861.
Hon. W. H. Sbward.
My Dbak Sik : Siuce parting with you I have been considering your
paper dated this day and entitled " Some Thoughts for the President's Con
sideration." The first proposition in it is, "First, We are at the end of a
month's administration, and yet without a policy, either domestic or for
eign." At the beginning of that month, in the inaugural, I said, "The power
confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and
places belonging to the Government, and to collect the duties and imposts."
This had your distinct approval at the time ; and, taken in connection with
the order I immediately gave General Scott, directing him to employ every
means in his power to strengthen and hold the forts, comprises the exact
domestic policy you now urge, with the single exception that it does not
propose to abandon Fort Sumter.
Again, I do not perceive how the re-enforcement of Fort Sumter would
be done on a slavery or party issue, while that of Fort Pickens would be
on a more national and patriotic one.

WAR. 225
The news received yesterday iu regard to St. Domingo certainly brings a
new item within the range of our foreign policy ; but up to that time we
have been preparing circulare aud instructions to ministers and the like, all
in perfect harmony, without even a suggestion that we had no foreign pol
icy. Upon your closing proposition, that ' ' whatever policy we adopt, there
must be an energetic prosecution of it,
" For this purpose it must be somebody's business to pursue and direct it
incessantly, " Either the President must do it himself, and be all the while active in
it, or
"Devolve it on some member of his cabinet. Once adopted, debates on
if must end, and all agree and abide," I remark that if this must be done,
I must do it. When a general line of policy is adopted, I apprehend there
is no danger of its being changed without good reason or continuing to be
a subject of unnecessary debate ; still, upon points arising in its progress I
-wish, and suppose I am entitled to have, the advice of all the cabinet.
Your obedient servant, A. Lincoln.
While the world did not know the cause of Mr. Seward's
unfaltering devotion and indefatigable labors in seconding
from that tirae forth his great chief, yet the fact of his admi
rable and effective adrainistration of the State Department long
ago won hira iraperishable renown ; doubtless his keen eye in
stantly detected what raanner of raan he had to deal with, and
he responded with appreciative gratitude to the opportunity
given him to retrieve his grave raistake.
There is no reason to suppose that any one in those days,
outside of the parties interested, knew of the occurrence, but
it must have given the astute Secretary of State a start of sur
prise to find himself so easily subordinated, followed by a
thrill of confidence and joy, to know that he was still the
trusted adviser of so wise and strong a man.
We may here properly quote again from Horace Greeley's
Lincoln address {Century Magazine, July, 1891) showing
how the man grew to great leadership by always taking the
needed step when the need arose :
"He was not a born king of men, ruling by the resistless might of his
natural superiority, but a child of the people, who made himself a great

226 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
persuader, therefore a leader, by dint of firm resolve, patient effort and
dogged perserverance. He slowly won his way to eminence and fame by
ever doing the work that lay next to him— doing it with all his growing
might— doing it as well as he could, and learning by his failure, when
failure was encountered, how to do it better. . . . He was open to all
impressions and influences, and gladly profiled by the teaching of events
and circumstance, no matter how adverse or unwelcome. There was prob
ably no year of his life in which he was not a wiser, cooler and better
man than he had been the year preceding."

THE GREAT AWAKENING. 227
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE GREAT AWAXENING.
A Steady Hand — The Rebellion extending — The Loyal North — The Bal
timore Mob — Rebellion in Maryland — Confederate Hopes and Failures
—Peril of Washington— Arrival of Troops from the North— The
Gateway to the North — Arrival of the New York Seventh — Capture
of Baltimore — Case of Col. Robert E. Lee — Secession of Virginia 
Call for Three Years' Volunteers— Crushing of Secession in Maryland.
On the 6th of March, 1861, the Confederate Congress had
passed a law for the establishment of " The Army of the Con
federate States of America." From that time forward the
armed forces of the RebeUion ceased to be "State troops,"
defending State rights or the boundary hues or the territorial
integrities of States.
The proclamation of Mr. Lincoln, therefore, did not at aU
refer to or deal with commonwealths or communities, or even
the doctrine of secession, but -with unlawful combinations of
individuals banded for an assault upon the national hfe and
the plunder of national property.
WhUe the States of the North, as such, were called upon to
furnish theh quotas of mUitia, the same summons was ad
dressed in set terms to such of the border and Southern States
as could be reached, and to all " loyal citizens," for it was to
the people as a mass that the President looked for support. A
feeble cry arose in some quarters that the judiciary should in
some manner have been appealed to, but the cumbrous machi
nery of the courts was set aside by the ob-vious fact of its in
sufficiency, and the cries died into sUence. There were many
who, -with greater appearance of sound reason, were eager for
an immediate assembhng of Congress ; but, in Mr. Lincoln's
knowledge and perception, a large part of the membership of
that body had need of special education through the sure course

228 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
of coming events before they could safely be trusted to help or
hinder. The wisest heads in either House were probably the
least in haste to meet these others in council. The day for
their gathering was judiciously and firmly postponed accord-
mgly. The Executive would certainly require eighty days to cut
out for Congress such work as it would need to do when it
should assemble.
The proclamation contains but one breath of the suppressed
indignation to which Mr. Lincoln had given no utterance dur
ing those long and patient days, weeks, months of waiting and
endurance. The forces were to be used for purposes set forth
" and to redress wrongs aheady long enough endured."
He could not wisely have then said more ; but the words
meant a great deal coming from him.
The caU for State mihtia was nominally based upon the Act
of 1Y95, and was promptly responded to by the governors of
aU the free States. Virginia answered by " seceding" on the
17th of April, in secret session of her State Convention, and in
open session on the 22d, adding an empty and yet to Mr. Lin
coln's military plans a very useful pro-vision for submitting the
question to a popular vote on the 23d of May. North Caro
lina, Arkansas, and Tennessee rapidly sent back similar rephes
and cast their fortunes with the Rebelhon. The governor of
Kentucky returned only a contemptiious refusal to furnish the
quota of troops called for by the President, and Maryland
almost immediately blazed out into open and dangerous revolt.
All this was hardly more than had been expected, and caused
no pang of disappointment ; but the dark and threatening pic-
tare had its brighter side. The people of the North had heard
the Sumter gun, and its fuU meaning was interpreted to them
by the President's proclamation. Long months of refusal to
beheve that the Secessionists were in earnest, — months of
anxious suspense and benumbing doubt — were terminated fitly

THE GREAT AWAKENING. 229
by a few short hours of bewilderment. Sunday passed under
that cloud, but on Monday morning, April 15th, the Nation
awoke, and accepted the war for the Union with a burst of
enthusiastic patriotism which astonished the world. Party
hues seemed to melt away in the fierce heat of the sudden ex
citement. Tn every nook and corner of the loyal areas, as well
as in the larger towns and cities, men flocked together by a
common impulse, eagerly offering themselves to defend their
country in what to them was its suddenly discovered peril.
Mothers gave their sons ; -wives hastened the steps of their
husbands. The recruiting offices were thronged- as if by mobs.
The very pulpits and prayer-meetings were aU on fire with de
votion to a cause which at once took upon itseK sacredness, as
the cause of the whole human race for aU tirae to come, sure to
have the blessing of Almighty God. If armed men could
have telegraphed themselves to Washington, the city would
have been garrisoned instantaneously.
The first -visible help arrived on the 18th, in the shape of one
hastUy gathered regiment of Pennsylvania mihtia, unarmed and
half equipped. They had been hurried off on the spur of the
moment, and passed through Baltimore so unexpectedly as to
meet no open opposition. The passions whose expression theh
unarmed ranks barely escaped rose hotly behind them and were
only too weU prepared for the next-comers.
These were very near. On the morning of the 16th of
April the Massachusetts Sixth Regiment mustered upon Bos
ton Common, perfectly equipped for action. It was on the
cars for Washington by Wednesday evening, the ITth. It
passed through New York on the 18th, marching down Broad
way between excited thousands on either hand, and singing as
it s-wung along that strange refrain which had arisen, no one
knew whence, —
" John Brown's body lies a-mould'ring in the grave.
His soul goes marching on !"

230 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Their passage through the great commercial center of the
country gave a sort of rallying-point for the city's loyalty,
which was to be intensified the day following by the starting of
the New York Seventh Regiment for the beleaguered national
capital. Meantime the Massachusetts regiment passed on, and
on the morning of the 19th, the anniversary of the battle of Lex
ington, it entered the city of Baltimore, Maryland. A misun
derstanding between the raUway officials and the regimental
coramander resulted in an attempt to convey the troops through
the city in the cars they occupied, so di-viding their strength
and caging thera instead of giving them fair play as a sohd body.
The Baltimore mob was braver against imprisoned and sepa
rated squads than it would have been against a strong column
of marching men. A murderous assault was made upon these
citizens of Massachusetts, whose only offense, even against a
proslavery mob, was the obvious fact of their ready patriotism.
No resistance was made by the troops until self-preservation
rendered the use of arms compulsory. There was some firing
done ; a few were killed and raore were wounded on both sides ;
the city pohce carae to the rescue and did their duty admirably,
headed by the mayor and the city marshal. The self-control
and disciplined good conduct of the troops is emphasized by the
fact that the mayor himself, marching at their head, took a rifle
frora a soldier and shot down one of the rioters whose intem
perate zeal was prematurely endangering the deep-laid plot of
the conspirators for the secession of Maryland. The subse
quent course of both mayor and marshal threw much light
upon the disaster sustained that day by the Confederacy at the
hands of the over-hasty Baltimore mob.
The regiment raade its way through and reached Washing
ton ; and the Baltimore gateway to the North was shut behind
them : but this was before the men who closed it were at all
prepared to keep it so.
Still, they did their very best to repair their error. There
had been many public secession-meetings already in Balti-

THE GREAT AWAKENING. 231
more and at other places throughout the State. That very
evening a monster gathering was held in the city, and the evil
spirit of the mob entered into and took possession of the au
thorities. Even the governor of the State, hitherto regarded as
unswer-vingly " loyal," openly announced his readiness to " bow
to the -wUl of the people," and declared that " he would rather
lose his right arm than raise it to strike a sister-State," mean
ing, of course, a rebeUious, slave-holding State. The mihtia of
Maryland seemed, therefore, hkely indeed to be called out, but
not to be put under the coramand of Abraham Lincoln.
Hardly an hour after the adjournment of the meeting, at
midnight of the 19th, secret orders went out, with men for
theh execution, headed by the Baltimore city marshal, to
burn the nearest bridges leading from the free States into
Maryland. Before dayhght half a dozen of the more important
bridges had been destroyed ; telegraph-whes were severed ;
armed patrols were riding hither and thither ; the rebel element
throughout the State was notified that the hour to strike had
come ; and the city of Washington was placed in a state of
semi-siege between an organized rebellion and a bloodthhsty
mob in s-wKt process of organization. Had there been one
man among the Maryland rebels fit to lead a battalion, the peril
to Washington would have been extreme. They had a surplus
of demagogues but no leader.
Such were some of the first-fruits of the proclamation.
Precisely similar events, large and small, were occurring in the
West and Center, but their recital would add nothing to this
iUustration of Mr. Lincoln's position, and it required no prophet
to predict the nature of those which now must shortly follow.
It did not even require the mind of a statesman or a mili
tary leader to understand that promptness and energy on the
part of the rebel leaders, coupled with a moderate degree of
the unscrapulous daring they had already exhibited, would
surely result in the capture of Washington. They had formed
the purpose so definitely and indulged the hope so strongly

232 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
that the Rebel Secretary of War publicly asserted that the Con
federate Stars and Bars would float from the national Capitol
before the first of May. He could not have set forth more
plainly the fact that the war waged by himseK and his associates
was essentially a war of aggression and conquest and not at all
for the mere defense of imperiled State lines. He did but
underrate his abihty to move troops to North Carohna and Vir
ginia, forget the only haK-seceded position of the latter State,
and overestimate the capacity and courage of the Maryland con
spirators. The latter, indeed, were frightened and disconcerted
unreasonably by the premature explosion of theh o-wn mob.
Virginia, still nominaUy acting as an independent State, re
sponded to the supposed necessities of Maryland by sending
on' at once two thousand muskets and promising twenty heavy
guns. She was urged to this by Mr. Jefferson Da-vis even be
fore the adoption by the people of her formal act of secession.
Tn spite of Mr. Lincoln's confidence and courage, and the
unflinching patriotism of those around him, these were anxious
days in the capital of the Repubhc. The very office-seekers
caUed for arms and formed teraporary mihtary organizations.
They encamped in the halls of pubhc buUdings, in the legisla
tive chambers at the Capitol, and in the reception-rooms of the
Executive Mansion. It is quite possible that the numbers and
military efficiency of these brave and -wiUing but entirely un
disciplined mobs were happily exaggerated in the minds of the
rebel authorities.
Mr. Lincoln went on steadUy, unswer-vingly, -with the tre
mendous work he had on hand. His faith in the patriotism of
the loyal people was absolutely unbounded, and he framed all
measures accordingly. Every hour that passed saw the vast
machinery of the new government he was creating take form
and order under his dihgent dhection, and the preparations
made for the days to come were on a plan both broad and deep.
Man after man was chosen, appointed, and ordered to duty.
The several departments were alive with busy and trustworthy

THE GREAT AWAKENING. 233
toUers, while in almost every room of every civic bureau there
appeared some ominous token, such as a rifle and a cartridge-
box, that its occupant was prepared to defend his right to be
there. There was at least no opportunity left for the arising
of a pro-slavery mob in Washington, or for the success of any
other than a weU-led attack by a competent and disciphned
force of the pubhc enemy. Mere mihtia and guerriUas would
indeed have been out of the question, but the Confederate
leaders must have strangely miscalculated their resources in not
being ready to avail themselves of an opportunity so golden.
It was rapidly shpping away from them, never to retum.
The Eighth Massachusetts Regiment arrived in Philadelphia
AprU 19th, under command of General Butler, and the New
York Seventh, under Colonel Lefferts, on the 20th.
These troops were thoroughly driUed and equipped, and
quite capable of facing and scattering any mob ; but it would
have been a foohsh deed to waste one hfe among them in the
streets of Baltimore. It would also have been a political and
military blunder. Mr. Lincohi was bitterly blamed at the tirae
for " not forcing a passage and teaching the rebels a lesson ;"
but he had not lost an atom of his calm, -wise courage. He
knew how much of the current feeling in Baltimore and
throughout Maryland was mere excitement and temporary
effervescence. He knew it would cool and subside unless some
thing hot and hasty should be done to keep it stirred up. He
is said to have " yielded to the urgent request of the governor"
that no more troops should be forwarded through Maryland
and especially through Baltimore. He did nothing of the kind.
He did but foUow the dictates of the plainest common-sense
and refuse to be influenced by resentment or passion, or by the
counsels of angry patriots who were not — as he was — directly
responsible for consequences.
The two Union commanders were promptly informed of the
bridge-burning and of the fact that another road could be
opened to Washington by way of Annapolis and Chesapeake

234 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Bay. They set out at once by different routes. Gen. Butler
arriving at Annapolis on the 21st, and Colonel Lefferts on the
22d. As a matter of course they were met by a protest from
the governor of Maryland warning them not to land ; but the
protest had no troops behind it and occasioned no delay in get
ting the two regiments on shore. The governor also at once
addressed a letter to the President, asking that the troops
should be promptly removed. He also betrayed his bewU-
dered state of mind by suggesting that the British Minister
should be requested to " mediate" between the national gov
ernment and its rebels in arms.
Through windows like this insane suggestion it is possible to
obtain a -view of the existing vagueness of ideas, in the minds
of even educated men, as to the very first principles of national
entity and human government. An answer was sent through
the Secretary of State, and the troops were not removed.
The New York Seventh was ordered to Washington, and
General Butler remained to keep open the gateway to the
North. He made it much wider in a few days. So small was
the disposable force at Washington that Mr. Lincoln had few
men to spare to hold the road by which the Seventh was to
come. There was a serious doubt K the District mUitia, now
sworn in as three-months volunteers, could be depended upon
for service outside of the naiTow area they supposed them
selves sworn to defend. Two companies only, " A" and " B,"
of the third battalion, the National Rifles and the German
company before mentioned, volunteered their services, and
those who saw them march away looked upon their undertak
ing as a sort of " forlorn hope." They did their duty without
discovering any danger, and the Seventh arrived in safety on the
25th. The exuberant hopes of the Washington secessionists
went down somewhat as those faultless hues of bayonets came
glittering down the avenue to pass in review before the Presi
dent. StiU, as before, so then and afterwards, the secessionists
were freely permitted to speak treason and write it, and to

THE GREAT AWAKENING. 235
come and go unhindered. Nothing else really galled some of
them quite so much as this feature of indifference in Mr. Lin
coln's pohcy.
During all this time the rebel flag floated from the roof of
Arlington House, the family mansion of General Lee, just
across the Potomac, in fuU view of the city. The proposal of
a squad of the District mihtia to go and take it down was in
stantly negatived as an unwise irritation of the people of Vir
ginia. The "guard" for the defense of the Long Bridge
over the Potomac never numbered more than twenty raen at a
time, prior to the 25th of April.
On the 20th, -with or -without good reason, the great navy-
yard at Gosport, Virginia, was burned and abandoned by the
small national force in charge of it, with all its costly apph-
ances and a number of ships upon which the rebel government
had securely counted as the commencement of its " navy." A
siraUar fate had overtaken the United States arsenal at Har
per's Ferry, Virginia, on the 18th. In the West a state of af
fahs existed which imitated remarkably the local chaos at the
corresponding points in the East. Everywhere Mr. Lincoln
was appealed to by both friends and enemies, and at every
point he exhibited the same steadiness, good temper, and sound
judgment. It was a task of extraordinary difficulty, and the
results obtained bear striking witness of its -wise and faithful
performance. The Annapolis route to Washington continued open, nor
could there now be any successful effort on the part of the
Maryland secessionists to prevent further reinforcements of all
sorts from pouring into the city they had so narrowly failed to
-win. They still retained undisputed control of Baltimore and
of the greater part of the State, but were not able to receive
further supplies of military material from the South. At the
same time, numbers of their most active and dangerous spirits
were continually lea-ving them to seek employment in the army
under Jefferson Davis. The State Legislature was in session

236 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
at Frederick, but contained just enough of loyal leaven, acting
-with and upon its " conservative" and timid elements, to induce
delay and irresolution in all its action untU the hour for suc
cessful treason had gone by.
President Lincoln authorized General Butler to suspend the
writ of habeas corpus in certain districts, but no strictly mih
tary movement was attempted until May 13. Then, under
cover of a storm and the approach of night. General Butler,
¦with less than a thousand men, suddenly entered Baltimore,
seized a position from which his guns comraanded the city, and
effected a coraplete capture of it without the loss of a man.
It was a deed the success of which justified its apparently reck
less daring.
The " siege of Washington" was raised, the State of Mary
land was forever lost to the Confederacy, and its population
generally, if slowly, ranged themselves among the assured sup
porters of the national authority. The possible line of subse
quent conflict at once drifted Southward from the banks of
the Chesapeake to those of the Potomac, and the entire aspect
of affairs changed.
A striking illustration of the difficiUty under which Mr. Lin
coln began his work and the darkness he was in as to whom he
could employ and trust as servants of the new government is
afforded by the case of Colonel Robert E. Lee, of the regular
army. So complete had been the confidence reposed in this
man's honor and patriotism, and so carefully had he abstained
frora giving any token of disloyalty, that, as late as April 20,
he was informally offered the command of the Union forces
about to take the field. His response was a resignation of his
commission in the army, dated the same day. Three days later
he was formally installed as commander of the State forces of
Vhginia. These were turned over to the " Army of the Con
federacy" on the 24th of May, and he with them, to receive at
once a coraraission as full " general" under the Rebel flag. No
doubt he acted in accordance -with his ideas of his duty to the

THE GREAT AWAKENING. 237
State in which he had happened to be born and which was
more sacred in his eyes than was the government to which he
had sworn allegiance ; but his course throws a lurid hght upon
the harassing perils of Mr. Lincoln's position. While such
lessons of caution as this were daily given and received in the
most surprising maimer, a -wise reticence kept most of thera
from the immediate knowledge of the nation at large.
The President's proclamation called for State militia, in
nominal accordance -with laws which were considered by raany
jurists to be severely strained by the summons. The troops
were rapidly coining forward, but the force they would consti
tute could be but httle better than a temporary expedient, as
their term of ser-vice was but ninety days. The entire atten
tion of the pubhc mind was concentrated upon and absorbed
by the several State contingents, and small notice was bestowed
upon a much more important exercise of the latent powers of
the national executive.
Mr. Lincoln's experience in the Blackhawk War, brief as it
was, had taught him a -vitaUy important lesson as to the nature,
value, and melting-away tendencies of aU such extemporized
armies. Neither had he read the history of the Revolutionary
War so carefuUy in his boyhood, -without storing his mind with
its most important mihtary Isssons. Precisely the difficulties
which at times so paralyzed the genius of Washington were
right before him now, and he prepared for them in advance.
Volunteers were freely offering, all over the North, and it
was but ten days after issuing the proclamation, or on April
26, that Mr. Lincoln sent out official notifications through
the War Department that a certain number of these, 44,034,
would be accepted " for three years or during the war." He
had no warrant of law, apparently, for any increase of the reg
ular army or navy, but he had at the same time caUed for
22,714 " regulars" and 18,000 seamen.
All this was somewhat quietly done ; but the Northern aUies
of the rebels in arms did not faU to express their opinion of it

238 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
openly and very freely. Tn theh eyes, and as expressed by
their tongues and pens, it was the unscrapulous deed of a
tyrant, a dictator, a would-be autocrat. There was in it, in
deed, a good deal of that patriotic autocracy which refused to
let the nation lie stUl and be murdered while thousands of
-willing hearts were offering strong hands to defend it.
The acceptances of men were by no means rigidly hmited to
the terms of the first War Office orders, and it was soon safe
to say that there would be an army in the field after the mUitia
regiments should serve their time and go home.
After all, one of the raost important matters was that noth
ing should be done too audaciously startling and suggestive of
" aggression and invasion."
The incipient rebeUion in Maryland was now completely
crushed. The dangerous elements were weeded out of the
State Legislature, a little, by a few salutary arrests. There
was no longer any peril threatening the city of Washington in
the rear. Nevertheless, the Confederate flag still flaunted in
the face of the national capital from the roof of Arhngton
House as late as May 23, eighty days after President Lincoln's
inauguration. There was nothing except the date of the Vh
ginia election to prevent the planting of a rebel battery in
General Lee's front yard. Such a battery would have been
within easy range of all the government buildings, and would
have commanded the Long Bridge over the Potomac, -with all
its northern approaches. The range of low elevations on the
Virginia shore of the Potomac was e-vidently calhng loudly for
occupation. Ad-vices from the South added strength to all
considerations based upon mihtary science, but not onfe step
was -visibly taken which could appear to threaten, much less to
assail, " the rights of a sovereign State," untU she should for
mally divest herself of them. No solitary Virginia voter was
afforded a fresh pretext for casting his misguided baUot in favor
of the " Ordinance of Secession."

OVER THE LONG BRIDGE. 239

CHAPTER XXX.
OVER THE LONG BRIDGE.
Respects for State Rights — Secession of Virginia — Union Advance across
the Potomac — Death of Ellsworth — The Beginning in West Virginia
—The Old Flag disappears from the South— White House Life— War
time Illusions — Studies of future Battle-grounds — A Funeral in the East
Room.
Nothing could weU exceed the closeness -with which Mr.
Lincoln watched the course of events at the South, or the logical
sequence of the steps which he took in pursuance of each
and every movement made by his adversaries. Up to this last
hour, he had neither done nor authorized any proceeding, as to
Virginia, which the most fanatical expounder of " State rights"
could reasonably caU in question.
There was a small guard kept, to be sure, at the Long Bridge
over the Potomac, to prevent its very possible destruction, but
there was no vexatious interference -with travel and traffic or
even -with the passage of Maryland stray volunteers for the
rebel army. More than once, after nightfall, the squad of
Union soldiers in charge at that point went hilariously over and
hobnobbed with the Virginia State mihtia similarly posted at
the old tavern on the other shore, and were hardly reprimanded
by their officers for so doing. Even in the serious matters of
the Gosport navy-yard and the Harper's Ferry arsenal, all
pains were taken to avoid any open collision with the forces
sent by the governor of Virginia for their seizure. Forbear
ance was carried to the utmost limit of endurance, but there it
expired, strictly by limitation.
Tn accordance with the action of the Virginia State Conven-

240 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
tion, the question of the secession of the State was submitted
to a popular vote on the 23d of May. Except in what now
constitutes the State of West Virginia, no such thing as a f ah
and free expression of the popular -wiU was possible, for mih
tary moveraents had begun and railitary domination rendered
the so-called " vote" a mere matter of form. There was httle
use in counting such a preordained collection as were those
heaps of ballots.
Nevertheless, although General Lee assumed command of
the State troops on the 23d of April, and aU men knew the use
he would surely raake of them, they could not be and were not
turned over to the Confederate array, so losing theh character
as " State" troops, until the 24th of May. The Confederate
leaders were therefore yet in sorae degree hindered by the con
stitutional and legal technicalities whose spirit and letter had
been so much more carefully regarded by Mr. Lincoln.
They were themselves seemingly prompt enough in their
operations, so soon as theh hands were untied, but they were
not at all prepared for the electric suddenness and energy of
his final action.
The Virginia Convention's Act of Secession was duly con
firmed by the formal election-returns, not yet made up but
perfectly well kno-wn, at the setting of the sun on May 23,
1861. Within one hour afterwards there were columns of
United States troops in motion towards the Northern shore of
the Potomac and the Washington end of the Long Bridge.
Before midnight a light force of scouts and skirmishers crossed
the bridge and began to feel their way down towards Alexan
dria. This advance consisted of but one company, barely sixty
men aU told, and all the armed opposition they met or saw was
a mere squad of mounted Virginia militia who rode hurriedly
away without firing a shot. By two o'clock a.m., the same
night, three full regiments had crossed the Potomac at George
town, D. C; four more by the Long Bridge ; and one, Ells
worth's Zouaves, had gone directly to Alexandria by steamer,

OVER THE LONG BRIDGE. 241
with one war-vessel as a convoy. By dayhght every position
aimed at had been occupied without hindrance. The stupid
mm-der of the brave and lamented EUsworth by a tavern-
keeper in Alexandria was merely an expression of indi-vidual
ferocity, such as afterwards made severe measures necessary at
times in deahng with certain elements of the population of the
South. Forty-eight hours later two regiments from General Mc-
Clellan's command crossed into Western Virginia at Wheeling,
to support the Union men who were rising throughout that
region to defend themselves against Secession tyranny.
The soldiers of the Union had come to stay, for the first
duty imposed upon those who had crossed the Potomac at
Washington was the construction of strong earthworks upon
the heights commanding the approaches to the city. Even the
New York Seventh, the kid-gloved favorites of the great me
tropolis, were at work -with pick and spade on the " sacred soil
of Vhginia," in the early morning of the day after the old
commonwealth surrendered its immunities as such and became
a part of the new organism which styled itself the " Confeder
ate States of America."
A similar comparison of dates with acts and occurrences of
varied nature and locahty would present a simUar teaching,
but here is quite enough to Ulustrate clearly the sagacious pre-
-vision and careful preparation which were concealed under
what was then considered by many " Mr. Lincoln's unaccount
able dUatoriness."
He was forbidden the luxury of explaining his plans and
purposes to the general pubhc, including the public eneray.
His immediate ad-visers were not talking men, then or after
wards. He was compelled to steer carefully between the con
tinuous perils of over-haste and loss of time. In those all-im
portant first days of the long straggle, whUe paying no undue
regard to legal technicalities of any kind, the twin-perils re
ferred to contained in themselves the necessity that no com-

242 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
munity or population should be treated as in rebellion until it
had formally become so by its own express act and word.
So far as State Conventions and Legislatures and their sup
plementary actions were concerned, the work of Secession was
now complete. It is worthy of note that on the first day of
June, 1861, the fiag of the United States floated over only
these few spots throughout all the vast territory ruled by
President Jefferson Da-vis : the camps opposite Washington ;
Fortress Monroe, Virginia ; Fort Pickens, Key West, and Gar
den Key, in the State of Florida. (West Vhginia and East
Tennessee can hardly be counted as ha-ving been at any time or
by their own -will part and parcel of the Confederacy, and are
therefore excepted.) From every other place, fort, na"vy-yard,
arsenal, pubhc building, private house, it had disappeared, and
the vast majority of the people of the civilized world beheved
that it had so disappeared forever. What is sometimes de
scribed by politicians as "a good working majority and no
more" of the people of the free States were utterly deter
mined that it should one day go back again.
Mr. Lincoln had now been in Washington three fuU months,
and the routine moveraent of his daily hfe had become well
established. He had not materiaUy changed his personal habits.
He was as careless as ever conceming his dress, and retained
his free, familiar ways with his nearer friends. His distaste
was as strong as ever for mere ceremonial, social forraahties,
etiquette of rank, outward insignia of place and power. He
increased with iron endurance his steady, tireless industry, his
patient investigation of all subjects which his duties, present or
to come, might bring before him. It was needful that he
should not be too easy of access ; but if he had business at any
bureau of any Department, he was not at all unlikely to attend
to it in person. He more than once did so, somewhat to the
discomfiture of inattentive subordinates.
He labored under one disadvantage, perhaps, as a ruler. If
he met a governor, a general, a foreign diplomat, a visitor of

OVER THE LONG BRIDGE. 243
especial distinction, it was out of his power to look upon the
great personage before him as other or more or less than a
human being hke himself or any other man so to be met and
spoken to. Some of the dissatisfaction caused in this way has
been duly recorded by the sufferers.
He retained in all its freshness his love for children. If a
chUd was led past him at a pubhc " reception," he was apt to
take it up and kiss it and give it a kind word as simply and even
a httle more eagerly than K he had met the chUd of some old
neighbor on the sidewalk of his own street in Springfield.
The business offices of the Executive Mansion were in the
second story, and were but three in number, with ante-rooms
for the accommodation of -visitors in waiting. One very large
room, fronting southward, had been " the President's room"
ever since the house was built. Next to this, on the east, was
a narrow room in which the Private Secretary performed his
double duty of defending the President from needless intrusion
and of acting almost as a second President in a host of minor
matters. Across the haU was another roora of hke dimensions,
occupied by the two assistant secretaries and such clerical help
as was sometimes given them. To this latter room, indeed,
Mr. Lincoln sometimes fled for refuge from the pressure he
coxdd not escape in his o-wn. Adjoining this was a large sleep
ing-room, also sometimes teraporarily apphed to more strictly
official uses.
Mr. Lincoln had shown his usual -wisdom in selecting the
confidential servants of his o-wn office. They were all young
men of sufficient capacity and education for their duties, but
were without other associations or ambitions than such as
bound them to himseK. He could and did put utter con
fidence in them, and there was in the feeling with which they
all regarded him something quite as strong as any tie of blood
could possibly have been.
Mr. Lincoln's old friend Colonel Ward H. Lamon, and after
wards other officials, had at first somewhat of the external man-

244 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
agement of social " state affairs" in the White House, but they
were not actual members of Mr. Lincoln's smaU and unpre
tending household. Only his family and its guests took their
meals in the house.
From the very beginning Mrs. Lincoln assumed and held her
rightful position as lady of the mansion ; nor was it always easy
to designate the precise hmit of her authority. Tt was never
in the world easy to do this as to the wife of any private citi
zen, the lady ha-ving a will of her own. An understanding of
the fact that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Lincoln for a long time fuUy
grasped the idea that they were no longer " private citizens"
furnishes a complete key to the solution of much which then
and afterwards excited curious comment.
Much more than most of those around him, Mr. Lincoln had
internally formulated his clear comprehension of the intense
and stern realities with which he was dealing. Crowds of eager
applicants begged and pleaded and all but fought -with one
another for the offices in his gift. Deputations called upon
him to express in various ways the exuberance of their patriot
ism. Regiment after regiment came marching gayly down
Pennsylvania .^venue and passed in glittering re-view before
him -with a sort of " picnic and Fourth of July" expression
upon their bright and brave young faces. Those about to die
saluted him as K he had summoned them to some grand hoh-
day excursion.
Upon one and all he looked sadly, kindly, earnestly, through
eyes that were dim with seeing, far beyond their serried ranks
and silken flags, the torn and bloody turf, the scattered corpses,
the hfting powder-smoke of the inevitable battle-fields to come.
In the large roora where he worked through all the days
and haK through all the nights there was but little furniture.
What there was had an old-time and half-faded look, and no
great part of it had been added or altered since the days of
President Jackson. The marks of the feet of that strong-
headed enemy of treason aud secession were plainly visible

OVER THE LONG BRIDGE. 245
upon the bricks above the fireplace until these were removed.
The favorite chair of the old hero, an easy, oddly shaped affair
of Mexican manufacture, was one of the heirlooms of the office
from which he had bearded the South Carohna " nuUifiers" of
his own time.
In one corner of the room was an upright frame of wood,
upon which were many maps, conveniently mounted on spring-
roUers. To this were afterwards added others of sirailar pat
tern. Folios of maps leaned against the walls or hid behind
the sofas. Volumes of military history and kindred hterature
came and went from various hbraries and had theh days of
lying around the room or on the President's table. He was an
early riser and was apt to be at his toil before the humblest
clerk on the national pay-roUs had eaten his breakfast. That
of the Chief Magistrate was very frequently brought to him in
his office that he might lose no time, for now, as always, from
his log-house cradle, he was a hard student. He knew every
river, mountain-range, creek, HU, valley, on the broad areas
through which the tides of the war were to ebb and fiow.
More than that, he made hiraseK better than ever acquainted
-with the constituent elements of the local populations, their
industries, tendencies, origins, wealths or poverties. No man
h-ving was endowed -with a better capacity to digest, assimilate,
and employ the multKorm information he sought out so per-
severingly. How important aU this laborious study was to the
nation can only be approximately estimated by raeans of an
atterapt to grasp and imagine the possible consequences of its
neglect and absence. The rain, disgrace, misery, which would
surely have resulted from ignorance-in-power striving to per
form the functions devolved upon Mr. Lincoln, form a picture
from which the coldest critic might be glad to turn away.
About one year later, in a private note to General McCleUan,
Mr. Lincoln was able to say of an order he had given and was
defending: "I ordered ... on the unanimous opinion of
every military man I could get an opinion from, and every

246 . ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
modern military hooJc, — yourself only excepted." How many
hours of intense, absorbed, brain-wearying apphcation are im
phed in that siraple but pregnant sentence !
There was something almost drearahke and unreal about hfe
in Washington for raost raen during those first three raonths
of the new government. The very excitement and the tense
ness of the strain in which raen's minds were held removed
the IKe they were li-ving so far away from any life which any
of them had ever before hved or thought of h-ving.
The hazy atmosphere of semi-tragic unreality pervaded at
last even the White House itseK. The bright spring weather
aided the effect of the increasing glitter of uniforms and flutter
of flags and the all but ceaseless flow and crash of martial
music from the noisy bands of the arriving regiments.
There had been no battle fought siuce Fort Sumter was
bombarded, and there were not wanting false prophets of
peace to chirrup gayly that there would be no actual blood
shed. Through all this over-strained, unnatural, feverish, misty
state of things came suddenly the tramp of the movement
across the Potomac on the 24th of May. Virginia threw
open her gates by a vote of her people, and the Union troops
marched in : but precious blood was spilled upon the threshold.
The shot fired murderously by the Alexandria tavern-keeper
struck amark in the very household of tbe President. Colonel
Ellsworth was but a boy of twenty-four, but he had won the
admiration of the entire country by his genius and energy.
He had journeyed to Washington with Mr. Lincoln, who had
become warmly attached to him, and shortly afterwards ap
pointed him a second-heutenant in the regular army. The
regiment he raised among the firemen of New York, under
the call for volunteers, was considered second to none in its
promise of usefulness under such a commander. He was a
type and personal embodiment of the young manhood which
was springing forward at the caU of their country's peril. He

OVER THE LONG BRIDGE. 247
was, as such type and representative, to offer a bloody illustra
tion of the true raeaning of the summons.
The Sunday before the eventful day, Ellsworth was at the
White House, less as a guest than as a well-loved member of
the household. To the same place his body was borne after
the murder, and the funeral ceremonies were held in the
gaudy " East Room," sadly dressed and draped for the occa
sion. That Mr. Lincoln grieved for his bright, genial, gKted young
friend ; that aU the sorrow he expressed for him was real, re-
quhes no saying. Nevertheless, to hira as to the people gen
erally, the death of Ellsworth raarked the end of a worn-out
pohcy and the beginning of a new order of thoughts and feel
ings. A splendid regiment of "Ellsworth Avengers," the 44th
New York Volunteers, was speedily formed, but the blood
upon the Vhginia threshold did not call for human vengeance.
Tt did but -witness before God and men that the day of com
promise, negotiation, dallying, delay, had passed, and that the
day of -wrath had come, — the day for which Mr. Lincoln had
been buying ships and enhsting men -without due form and
warrant of statute law.

248 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER XXXI.
the EUROPEAN QUESTION.
The Secretary of State— England and France— Privateers and Piracy — The
New Navy — Whaling Schooners as War Vessels.
Mr. Lincoln's education for the duties he was now per
forming had been given hira through long and painful pro
cesses by all of which he had faithfuUy profited, but his attain
ments were aU in a pecuhar manner limited by the boundaries
of his own country. He spoke no other than the Enghsh
tongue. He knew httle of other nations beyond a moderate
acquaintance with their geography and history and some stray
ideas conveyed to him by such representatives as they had sent
to America as emigrants. From these latter, indeed, he had
learned all they had to teach, and such acquisitions were of
value to him now ; but aU the emigrants had been men and
women of " the people."
Of the governing castes and classes of Europe, and of Euro
pean politics, the cesspool in which kings and theh ministers
dabbled and fished and groped for the prizes of war and diplo
macy, he knew alraost nothing and cared but httle more.
He could but be a-ware that the great maritime nations of the
Old World were watching with jealous eyes the gro-wth of the
new power in the West over which he had been called to rule,
but he had great faith in the Atlantic Ocean and the supposa-
ble common-sense of European statesmen. So great was this
faith of his that it came perilously near to leading him into an
error. Tt would surely have done so but for the simple direct
ness of the doctrine he at once formulated for the government
of the foreign pohcy of the United States.

THE EUROPEAN QUESTION. 249
" This is our own affair," he said, iu effect. " Tt is a faraily
quarrel with which foreign nations have nothing to do, and
they must let it alone."
The practical details of the processes by which that doctrine
was to be communicated to European powers were left almost
altogether to the care of Mr. Seward, the Secretary of State.
They could not have been intrusted to a brain more capable or to
a heart more utterly worthy of the raomentous trust. There was
httle need for Mr. Lincoln to add the State Department to his
other burdens while its manageraent was under such an eye and
hand as those of the practised New York statesman. Here, at
least, there was something in the nature of complete relief,
and the weary ruler accepted it as frankly as it was given.
The friendship between him and his " minister of foreign af
fahs," from the very first, assumed a warm and personal char
acter. The gossips who strove to give it any other significance,
then or afterwards, did but testify their incapacity to under
stand the broad patriotism and generous mutual confidence of
these two men.
Tn training, as in natural gifts, Mr. Seward was as uhhke
Mr. Lincoln as he well could be ; but they had one thing in
common and one tie of measureless brotherhood in their unsel
fish devotion to the perforraance of the great work which God
had laid upon thera. If, at first, they were a little slow, Mr.
Seward somewhat the slower, in coraing to a mutual under
standing of each other's character, aim, and purpose, that was
all the more surely attained in the course of joint toil and
counsel and anxiety. Together, each in his appointed place,
they labored in harmony to the end.
It was weU known that one of the first acts of Mr. Davis, on
assuming the reins of power, had been to dispatch emissaries
to the more important courts of Europe, notably to those of
England and France. Much prehminary work, of a prepara
tory kind, had before that time been accomplished by the un
official agents of the intended rebellion. A strong feeling of

2.')0 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
syrapathy for the South had been most skilKuUy created. Tn
Europe, as in America, the " War" had been in j^rogress for
months before Mr. Lincoln's inauguration. Up to the close
of the Buchanan Adrainistration the cause of the South had
been vigorously served abroad, in not a few instances, by the
official and accredited representatives of the National Govern
ment at Washington.
Tt was difficult, at first, for foreign diplomacy to find a place
for the insertion of an entering wedge of interference. The
stern directness of Mr. Lincoln's own policy was shortly to
offer one, in such a shape as should present the most tempting
bait and -with it the most trying problem. As early as the
17th of April, 1861, three days after the surrender of Fort
Sumter, Mr. Davis issued a proclamation offering " letters of
marque and reprisal," under the seal of the Confederate States,
to armed privateers of all nations.
It was truly a tempting offer to the supposable pirates of
Europe, but it was rendered somewhat less so, in about forty-
eight hours, by the counter-proclamation of President Lincoln.
This document contained a deal of salutary warning and had a
most beneficial effect. Tt notified the " privateers" in-vited by
Mr. Davis that they would be " held amenable to the laws of
the United States for the prevention and punishment of piracy."
This declaration was in strict accordance with the more re
cent utterances of the great commercial powers and -with the
treaties they had mutually entered into. At the same time a
rigid blockade was declared of all the ports of the States then
included in the Confederacy. Those of Virginia and North
Carolina were added in due time.
The most -vigorous efforts were made to render the blockade
effective. Ships were fitted out and put to sea even more
rapidly than regiments on land were raised and equipped.
The new navy of the United States was in the active perform
ance of its sudden duties before the first company of skirmish
ers marched across the Long Bridge.

THE EUROPEAN QUESTION. 251
Of naval affairs, as such, Mr. Lincohi knew but little. He
had never been upon salt water nor examined a vessel of war.
He had, however, studied with care and acquired an intimate,
practical knowledge of the navigation of the great rivers of the
West. These latter and theh flotilla, present and prospective,
were judiciously loosened somewhat from the control of the
Navy Department. They remained to the end under the es
pecial care of the man who had himself been a " river-pilot,"
who had made and managed flatboats, and who had mastered
problems of fresh-water na-vigation which would have been
new and strange to the most accomplished seaman in the At
lantic squadron.
There was httle difficulty in obtaining the services of all de-
shable sea-going vessels, o-wing to the panic created among the
commercial classes by the Confederate threat of privateering.
0-wners were eager to place theh ships and steamers under the
national flag, whether by sale or charter. There were notable
instances of patriotic liberahty in this direction, but there were
more of a kind hardly so creditable to human nature. These
latter may be fairly illustrated by the case of a Connecticut
merchant who urged Mr. Lincoln to purchase "' for war pur
poses" a batch of worn-out whaling-schooners. No longer fit
to deal with a whale, they were just the thing in which a crew
of brave men under government pay could pursue, fight, cap
ture, a fleet of French or English armed steamers under the
rebel flag.
Mr. Lincoln preferred to look on the ludicrous side of such
incidents as this and a hundred other raanKestations of stupid
greed which daily came before him. He was genuinely glad
to be able to do so. He freely declared, to more than one who
conversed -with him, that the raost important relief to his
heavy load of care and anxiety was that which he found in his
capacity for enjoying fun for its o-wn sake. He could still teU
a story or laugh at a joke, and he could still use either as a
weapon or a shield. In any form of employment they per-

252 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
formed invaluable uses. Those whose solemn shallowness ena
bles thera to disregard the structure of the huraan mind and
brain, or to confound the one -with the other, will probably con
tinue to wonder at the trustworthy anecdotes of the President's
unaccountable frivohty in those days of overstrain.
The beetle sees a giant laugh while he is hfting a rock, and
indignantly remarks to the glow-worm at his side : " The fel
low is indecent. You or I would have done it -with due sol
emnity."

BULL RUN. 253

CHAPTER XXXII.
BULL RUN.
Checker-board Campaign Plans— On to Richmond — The Two Armies 
Dissolved Militia — Congressional Legislation Under Sudden Pressure
— The President's Message — Five Hundred Thousand Men.
The gro-svth and development of the people of the United
States up to the outbreak of the Rebelhon had been attained
through processes pecnharly peaceful. On the first day of
June, 1861, it could have been said of them all, both North
and South of the Potomac and Ohio rivers, that no one of
their characteristics was more distinctly marked than their ig
norance of war. The hving generation had no memory or
knowledge of its effects, and the idea that it might be or that
it involved a distinct science had dawned upon but few minds
among them.
The next most important fact, pohtically, was the stone-
blindness of the raasses to the fact of their own ignorance.
The South beheved itseK essentially martial, and a great
deal had latterly been done to make it so. Tt was in vastly
better condition for warhke purposes than was the North, and
the people of the latter section were ignorant of this fact also.
All over the free States the newspaper editors and local ora
tors, great and smaU, dabbled fiercely in patriotic statesman
ship. They united in assuring the President that they had
supplied him with "an army," and that he was in duty bound
to crush the RebeUion -with it. The prevalent idea of army-
movements appears to have been borrowed from the black and
white squares of a checker-board and their easUy transferable
" buttons." Substitute the seceded territory for the checker-

254 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
board, and the President's obvious business was to -nin the
game at once, while so many eager people were looking on and
were waiting impatiently to see him do it.
The cry of " On to Richmond !"' now began to rise, -with a
fuU-throated volume which threatened to dro-wu the explana
tory reply that there were many brave raen, with rifies in theh
hands, standing right in the way.
A badly managed skirmish at Big Bethel, Vhginia, on the
10th of June, costing several valuable lives, did but whet the
popular appetite for mihtary acti-vity. Little affahs of even
less bloodshed, but -with more important results, took place in
West Virginia. The "battle of BoonvUle," Missouri, was
faintly fought and fled frora by the Rebel militia on the 17th
of June, and it was urged that the Confederate forces between
Washington and Richmond would scatter as promptly as theh
Western brethren, K advanced upon in a simUar manner.
Mr. Lincoln did not share in this delusion, but both he and
his mUitary counselors were aware that there were positions
of great strategic importance which might well be seized and
occupied, with a view to further operations. The most im
portant of these, as was afterwards proved, was the one upon
which the first moveraent was planned by the generals on both
sides. Manassas Junction was the point where the railroad from
Alexandria, on the Potomac, met the raUway connecting the
rest of Vhginia -with the Shenandoah VaUey. Tt had been
feebly occupied by the State mihtia of Virginia, even before
the secession of that commonwealth, and it was made a rallying-
point for subsequent levies. About the first of June, 1861,
General Beauregard, of the Confederate army, was sent to take
command of the forces assembled for the protection of the
Manassas hnes. These were, therefore, the first obstruction in
the way of any direct movement " on to Richmond."
The Union troops were mainly composed of State militia,
aud these were all " three-months men." They included aU the

BULL RUN. 2.55
well-driUed and disciplined regiments, for the " regulars" were
few indeed, and the volunteers were yet hardly fit for use as
soldiers. The State-mihtia term of service was a raost impor
tant factor in Mr. Lincoln's mihtary calculations. It was so
much so, that their melting away by reason of its expiration
began before a blow could be struck. On the very eve of the
battle of BuU Run, the Fourth Pennsylvania Regiment and
Varian's Battery of (New York) Light Artillery were dis
missed and marched away from the field of battle because their
time had run out. Others, similarly circumstanced, remained,
and took theh share of the work in hand.
The forward movement caUed for by the country, and per
haps by military as weU as political necessity, was ordered, and
was made under General McDowell. With a dissol-ving army
of less than twenty-eight thousand men and forty-nine guns,
he fought an army of the best soldiers in the Confederacy,
thirty-two thousand strong, -with fifty-seven guns. Actual
fighting began on the 18th of July, and it continued, with
varied fluctuations, but -with general good conduct of both
officers and men on both sides, until the so-called " panic" of
the Union troops. This took place on the afternoon of the
21st. By that tirae a large part of the Rebel forces had been
so severely handled that they were under a strong irapression
that they had been defeated. They were only a little less dis
organized for railitary purposes than were their tired-out and
routed antagonists. It afterwards required sorae investigation
to assure the Confederate commanders of their -victory. Even
when satisfied of the fact, they were in no condition to
foUow it up. The losses on both sides, officially reported,
were : United States — 25 guns, 481 men kiUed, 1011 wounded,
1460 prisoners sent to Richmond, including raany wounded ;
Confederates — 387 men killed, 1582 wounded, and a few pri
soners. Tt was a hard-fought action, and the " panic" was simply the
disintegration of a number of regiments of raw troops, worn

256 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
out -with fatigue from marching, fighting, hunger, thirst, ex
treraely hot weather, and intense exciteraent. ^ There was quite
enough of the Union army left in good form, when all was
over, to have checked any forward movement on the part of
what was also left in good order of the forces it had been
fighting -with. The Confederate commanders were men of
sense and were contented -with reaping the harvest left in their
possession in such a raanner.
They did weU ; but the enthe South went crazy -with exulta
tion, after a fashion which, as its rulers afterwards openly
stated, sadly interfered with aU 'current plans and operations.
Southern contempt for all men and things north of "Mason
and Dixon's line" received a sudden and enormous inflation, and
the impression went abroad that " the Yankees" woidd never
presume to face " the Chivalry" again.
Washington city, for a number of days, was thronged -with
a mob of fugitive members of the shattered regiments. Every
raan of thera had a fearful tale to teU and was anxious to get
something to eat. To aU appearance the cause of the Union
had received a severe blow. There had been an undeniable
defeat and what to sorae critics looked like a thro-wing away
of men and guns and mihtary prestige. The disaster was in
appearance mainly, however, and Mr. Lincoln so understood it.
The army beaten at BuU Run was, for its greater part, an
impro-vised force, on the eve of disbandment. H it had there
won never so complete a -victory, it could hardly have been held
together long enough to reap any other fruit thereof than the
occupation of important positions. The majority of its per
sonal membership, stung by the memory of their disaster and
as brave as ever, were only the more eager to rush into the
perraanent organizations of " three-years men." No victory
could have done haK so much towards suddenly converting
them into steady and trusty veterans. The gain right here all
but counterbalanced the seeming loss. At the North, throuo-h
every State, county, town, village, homestead, the effect was

BULL RUN. 257
instantaneous and most salutary. The editors were given
something new to write about for a while, and the men of ac
tion poured in steadier, more angrily determined streams to
wards the Federal recruiting offices. The whole people were
taught, as it were in one day, much of the real nature of the
gage of battle they had accepted, and they did not flinch for a
moment from the grisly truth so presented to them.
To Mr. Lincoln himself, as a ruler, the fate of the militia
army brought a tremendous justification of the steps he had
taken for the increase of the regular army and navy and for
the almost unhmited enlistment of volunteers. Congress had
assembled on the 4th of July, in a most liberal and patriotic
state of mind, -with the exception of a mere squad of timid
temporizers and another of open sympathizers -with Seces
sion. Nevertheless there had been much criticism of the
Administration in both branches of the legislative body, with
some loud-toned " On to Richmond " oratory, and also a gen
eral industry in obtaining the appointment of constituents to
office which had interfered sadly -with the performance of
strictly legislative functions. Very few men, in either House
or Senate, had yet discovered the fact that Mr. Lincoln was,
and for some busy months had been, the Dictator of a Republic
struggling for its very hfe. Tt did not fuUy dawn upon them
until the day when they suddenly awoke to the conviction that
they theraselves eagerly desired him to be so and were ready
to put into his hands aU the dictatorial powers they knew how
to give him, and then hasten home.
The message the President sent to Congress upon its assem
bhng was a remarkable document. Tt began with a condensed
historical sketch of the rise of the Rebelhon and of its progress
to that date. Tt carefully summed up and presented the great
fact, so carefuUy left unshaken by his own course from the
beginning, that the Rebels and not the National Government
had forced upon the country the one distinct issue, " iraraediate
dissolution or blood." It showed that they had foUowed this

258 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
forcing by practical dissolution, so far as that was in their
power, and by drawing the first blood themselves.
This issue, so presented, the message then contended, was
not all which was at stake in the conflict thus ruthlessly pre
cipitated. It said : " And this issue embraces more than the
fate of these United States. It presents to the whole famUy
of man the question whether a constitutional • repubhc or
democracy, — a government of the people by the same people,
— can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its
own domestic foes. Tt presents the question whether discon
tented indi-viduals, too few in number to control administra
tion according to organic law in any case, can always, upon
the pretenses made in this case, or on any other pretenses, or
arbitrarily without any pretense, break up their government,
and thus put an end to free government upon the earth. It
forces us to ask, ' Is there in aU republics this inherent and
fatal weakness ? ' ' Must a governraent, of necessity, be too
strong for the hberties of its own people or too weak to main
tain its o-wn existence ? ' "
These questions presented the precise -view of the case held
by European statesmen, and they had often and openly de
clared their belief that, whenever such a question should be
asked by the logic of actual events, the answer would be given
in the affirmative and the republic or democracy involved
would at once go to pieces. As to the American Republic,
the issue was now plainly set before the whole world by the
man who was more serenely confident than almost any other
that such answer would be given as should assure aU future
thinkers of the stability of all free governments, pro-vided these
were bravely maintained by the men in charge of them.
Mr. Lincoln's message dealt briefly but sharply with certain
absurd ideas of possible " neutrahty" which were employed at
the time in Kentucky as a convenient cloak for cowardice and
treason. He defended his course in the arbitrary suspension
of the writ of habeas corpus. He then advised that Congress,

BULL RUN. 259
in the hope of making the war a short one, should place at the
disposal of the government four hundred thousand men and,
four hundred mUhons of dollars.
These were large figures, and they alraost took away the
breath of sorao who heard them ; but the members of the body
to whom the message was addressed had been doing the requi
site amount of thinkir.g, during the eighty days which had
passed since the President's proclamation summoned thera to
gether. They did what they would surely not have done if
they had been gathered too hastily. They voted half a mil
hon of men and five hundred miUions of doUars, in a burst of
eager patriotism.
Even Mr. Lincoln had almost a hope, at first, that this might
prove sufficient. Tt might weU have been so if the half mil
hon of raen had at that hour been soldiers, and if these had
been under officers, great and sraall, such r.s the course of the
war, -with Mr. Lincoln's watchful help, afterwards selected
from among the long hst of then untried, unknown, altogether
undiscovered and undeveloped heroes.
The message concluded with an exhaustive analysis of the
stupidities and absurdities of the old doctrine of " State rights"
as now apphed to the war purposes of the Rebellion. Such an
arguraent was timely, both for home and foreign reading. It
was intended for both, as was also rauch of the earher matter
of the message.
Congress passed the necessary acts to legalize whatever Mr.
Lincoln had seen fit to do. Its leadership was in the hands of
strong, hard-headed, resolute men, fresh from hearing the
voices of their angry constituents, male and female, and not a
little very martial music of other descriptions. The protests
of the disloyal members were loud and bitter, but small atten
tion was paid them. The minority vote against the measures
sustaining the government contained the names of several men
who afterwards accepted commissions in the Rebel army, and
of one, VaUandigham of Ohio, who was afterwards contemptu-

260 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
ously sent across the lines into the Confederacy, " because he
belonged there."
Into such a body as this Congress, busily engaged in so good
a work and in the discussion of its details, the news of the de
feat at Bull Run fell like a bursting bombshell. Tt was an ex
plosion which put an end to useless debate and blew to atoms
the last vestige of hesitation as to the necessities of the case.
AU remaining business was finished in exactly two weeks, fur
nishing perhaps the most remarkable instance on record of
legislation condensed under pressure. Congress adjourned and
went home, lea-ving Mr. Lincoln at Washington as sole dic
tator, endowed for the first time with fuU forms of law for the
carrying on of the war.

THE BLOCKADE. 261

CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE BLOCKADE.

Recognition — Accepting the Situation — The Neutrality Mask — Rejected
Information — War Correspondence not History — The Fetters of Eti
quette not Worn.
Mr. Lincoln carefuEy abstained from coming into open col
hsion -with any State government acting as such. In pubhc
and in private he recognized the assaUants of the national in
tegrity only as criminal individuals. He treated the Con
federacy simply as the same men acting together in an organ
ized body for the same essentially criminal purposes. He in
sisted that, as no power existed anywhere for the dissolution
of the Union -without the assent of all concerned or a majority
of them, it had not been dissolved. A different -view was con
veniently taken for political purposes on the other side of the
Atlantic. England and France did not even wait for the cora
plete forraation of the Confederacy before they made haste to
recognize it as a " belligerent" and to treat it as in some sort
one of the nations of the earth. " The South," as they com
monly called it, had yet no navy, but its admirers hoped and
beheved that the deficiency would soon be supphed.
The North, they were yet more sure, was unable to send to
sea a fleet capable of coping with any one of their cruising
squadrons. Tt had neither ships nor money nor credit, and it
was so far disorganized that it was not likely to obtain either
at an early day. Tt was to their minds merely a question of
time, indeed, into how many fragments, of what shapes, the
offensive republic should fall.
The motion towards recognition was met by a prompt and

262 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
-vigorous protest. The attitude and purpose of the United
States, expressed through the courageous and skilKul diplomacy
of Mr. Seward, induced the most precious hesitation abroad as
to what precise step in favor of the South had better next be
taken. One of Mr. Lincoln's flrst and most difficult duties, after
declaring a blockade of Southern ports, had been to deprive
foreign nations of all pretext for denying its practical efficiency.
A mere "paper blockade" would have in-vited certain rain,
and so one was enforced which was quickly found to stand the
most expensive tests. The work of shutting up the blockaded
ports was performed by a na-vy of hastily gathered and some
what misceUaneous material, but one that proved amply effi
cient. Finding that the Union cruisers were -vigilant and numer
ous, and that the blockade could neither be avoided nor denied,
the powers raost directly interested were compeUed to meet
the question whether they should forcibly break through or
surrender all hope of getting regular supphes of Southern cot
ton tiU the end of the war.
They at first very nearly reached the conclusion to break the
blockade by force, dehberately calculating that the United
States, already struggling under terrible difficulties, would at
once be cowed by the prospect of a war -with England and
France and the open addition of their powers to those of the
Confederacy. They were not at aU acquainted with Mr. Lin
coln, and h;t shghtly so with the great people who sustained
him. Both had been sadly misrepresented to them by inter
ested parties.
Nothing could well be plainer to the mind of the President
than that the CJnited States had little to lose and everything to
gain by braving the worst at once. Cowardice was the road to
sure and swift destruction. The only hope was in utterly un
flinching courage. Our commerce was aheady fast disappear
ing from the seas, and there was every reason to believe that

THE BLOCKADE. 263
in any event it would shortly vanish altogether. Tt did so
vanish, strictly in accordance -with this expectation. In more
than twenty years foUowing the issue of Mr. Da-vis's privateer
ing proclamation it has not recovered the ground it that day
began to lose. So perceiving and so expecting, Mr. Lincoln
declared in good set terms that if France and England should
so determine on their o-wn behalf, their commerce also should
follow into disaster that which we were inevitably losing.
They were to estimate for themselves the relative values of
theh general commerce, on the one hand, and the prospective
cotton-crops and friendship of the Confederacy, on the other.
For several months the two powers looked the problem in
the face vdthout coining to any definite conclusion. The form
in which it was laid before them from time to time can best
be understood by quotations from the written instructions
given by Mr. Seward to Mr. Charles Francis Adams on the
latter's departure to his duties as Minister to England.
" If, as the President does not at aU apprehend, you shall
find Her Majesty's government tolerating the application of
the so-caUed seceding States or wavering about it, you -wiU not
leave them to suppose for a moment that they can grant that
apphcation and remain the friends of the United States. You
may even assure thera promptly, in that case, that if they de
termine to recognize, they may at the same time prepare to
enter into an aUiance -with the enemies of this repubhc."
There was more to the same effect ; and a similar message
was carried to France. Tt was by no means kindly received
by either power, but its expression of unflinching determina
tion prevented the threatened disaster.
Through the foUowing three months the two governments
beyond seas continued to wrestle with the difficulty before
thera. There, along the whole Confederate seaboard, was still the
effective blockade, and behind it lay stores of cotton with end
less crops yet to come, and with a young nation ready to raise

264 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
them and sell them and at the same time forever to divide
and cripple the growing and dangerous power of the United
States. Here, all the while before their eyes, was the stern
alternative presented by Mr. Seward.
They decided that they would not exactly "recognize" and
so at once bring on hostihties. The government of Great
Britain first discovered a sort of solution. It sought to dodge,
beg, and circumvent the entire difficulty by solemnly declaring
itself "neutral" between two morally equal and beUigerent
parties, into which it assumed the American Repubhc to be
di-vided. There was something painfully ludicrous about such a posi
tion, but for the tremendous consequences immediately threat
ened by it and the miseries and wastes which were actually re
sultant. The manner in which it was received at Washington
reads now singularly like a bit of dry, grim hximor, officially
perpetrated by Mr. Seward at Mr. Lincoln's suggestion.
On the 16th of June the representatives of England and
France at Washington asked Mr. Seward for the pri-vilege of
reading to him officially certain fresh instructions sent to them
by their respective governments. Mr. Seward politely de
clined to listen until he should first " unofficially" have read
the proffered papers by himself that he might know what they
were. He was permitted to examine the suspicious instruc
tions, therefore, privately. Having done so, and having con
sulted Mr. Lincoln, he refused to know or to be " officiaUy"
informed what there was in them. He was two men for that
occasion, and Mr. Seward was too -wise to let the Secretary of
State take official notice of documents which formally set forth
the entire doctrine of " neutrality." Fresh instructions, how
ever, were at once forwarded to Mr. Adams and our other rep
resentatives abroad.
As a result of this mingling of prudence and firmness, Rebel
sympathy in Europe was left with no other way of expressino-
itself but to arm and send out the Alabama and like piratical

THE BLOCKADE. 265
craft, and to bmld swKt steamers in which to " run the block
ade" of the Southern Atlantic seaports. The general disposi
tion to do these things received a tremendous impulse from the
battle of BuU Run.
The trae cnaracter of this engagement was -wUdly travestied
for foreign consumption by an English " war-correspondent"
by the name of RusseU, who saw none of the hard fighting
and a good deal of the disorganized mUitia whose mob of fugi
tives interfered -with his o-wn panic-stricken race from the sup
posed approach of danger. Tt is a curious fact that to this
day the accounts written by such men on the spur of the
moment, in great excitement, -without any possible means of
obtaining correct information, are accepted -widely as "his
tory," while the contrary statements of commanding generals
and other competent authorities, on ioth sides, are unread or
disbeheved. Conferences between Mr. Seward and Mr. Lincoln were
almost of daily occurrence, and the iron hand discernible in
the conduct of our foreign affahs was not solely that of the
shrewd and able head of the State Department. These con
ferences were generally held at the White House, to and from
which Mr. Seward went and came -with the easy faraiharity of
a household intimate rather than -with any observance of use
less etiquette. Tt was not at all uncommon, however, for Mr.
Lincoln to walk over to the State Department, in the daytime,
or to Mr. Seward's house, in the evening, with or -without an
attending private secretary to carry papers. On the whole,
he generally preferred to go alone, as he would have done
formerly in the transaction of private business at Springfield.
Tt was the business itseK, and that only, -with which he bur
dened his mind. It is to be doubted K either he or Mr. Sew
ard ever wasted a thought upon theh purely personal methods
of doing theh work
Then and afterwards a simUar freedom marked the inter
course of the President -with the other members of his Cabinet,

266 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
and yet a close observer would not have failed to perceive such
differences, finely but unconsciously graded and marked, as
each man's personal character and uses indicated or de
manded.

WORK WITH RAW MATERIALS. 267

CHAPTER XXXIV.

WORK WITH RAW MATERIALS.

The New Army — Hunting for Brigadiers — Finances — Preparations ot the
South— Old Guns and New — ^Presidential Target-Practice — Selection
of General McCleUan.
When Congress adjourned on the 6th of August, 1861,
there was a strong feehng in the minds of its membership, and
throughout the country among aU men, that to " the Govern
ment," meaning by that word, very distinctly, Abraham Lin
coln, the President, had been given aU that it or he could ask
for, and that the war ought, in aU reason, to be made a short
one. A great deal had been given, traly. Every day that passed
saw sorae fresh regiment of enthusiastic volunteers marching,
-with more or less of regularity in theh lines, through the
streets of Washington, or into one of the several designated
camps of the West and Center. Five hundred thousand men
had been voted, and five hundred miUions of raoney. That
was a great deal. Men enough to overran the whole Confed
eracy, and money enough to pay their expenses. Great things
were expected of the President, but no other man h-ving knew
so weU as he did the marvelous differences between the good
" voting" done by the national legislature and the long results
of it which had been left for him to realize.
Up to the date of the passage of the Act by which Mr. Lin
coln was authorized to accept the ser-vices of volunteers, about
three hundred thousand men had offered themselves and had
been, for the greater part, promptly accepted. They had also
been put into training, as efficiently as might be, in such a

268 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
famine of military teachers, for the purpose of turning them
into soldiers. Quite a large force was already in actual service,
but the new law was nevertheless a good thing to have and
work under, and the business of recruiting new regiments went
forward with great energy.
The organization of such an army presented difficult prob
lems in abundance ; but these were met and seized and solved
-with a sagacity and patience which appears more wonderful as
the years go by. The very organic structure of the country,
politically, created peculiar features of the situation, and these
were not altogether detrimental. The appointments to offices
of every grade in the regular army, in aU its branches, were in
the sole control of the President. Tt was not so -with the vol
unteers, for these, in a curiously complex way, were stiU re
garded as " State troops," although in the national service.
Their regiments were named and numbered as of the several
States wherein they were recruited, and aU their regimental
officers were chosen and commissioned under the laws of the
same States. Mr. Lincoln could not appoint so much as a
second-lieutenant in a regiment of volunteer infantry. There
is one^instance recorded of a cavalry regiment from New York
reduced to one haK its original strength and ha-ving lost aU
its comraissioned officers in one way and another, untU it was
in command of the orderly sergeant of one of its companies.
Tt was necessary to apply to the Governor of New York for a
commission for that sergeant as a second-heutenant, and he
passed the succeeding grades to that of major in a few weeks
from the date of his first promotion. With the grade of " col
onel " the State appointing power terrainated and that of the
Coraraander-in-Chief began. With it also began the all but in
surmountable difficulties in the way of making even reasonably
good selections of " general officers." Much could be done by
the employment of graduates of the West Point military school,
reappearing now from their long retirements in ci-vil occupa
tions. The regular army itself furnished much good material.

WORK WIIH RAW MATERIALS 269
of which such liberal use was made as to interfere seriously with
the efficiencj" of that important arm of the service. The re
cords of the Mexican War were searched to find the naraes
of men who had shown themselves capable of good service.
The result may be somewhat illustrated by the career of a
well-known officer, a graduate of West Point and of the
Mexican War, who marched down Broadway as a volunteer
private in a New York regiraent, and in a marvelously short
time, -with small help of his own, save merit, found himself a
major-general, in command of a di-vision in the West.
Tt was a matter of course that the pressure for " general "
appointments should be tremendous. Politicians of all parties
were anxious for the glory of stars upon their shoulders, with
httle reference to their personal qualifications for the command
of men on a field of battle. Such men actually gathered and
carried or forwarded to Mr. Lincoln -written " recommenda
tions" for their appointment as brigadiers, in precisely the
same manner and of the same kind as if they had been apply
ing for clerkships in the Treasury.
Until the chaos coiUd be reduced to something approaching
order, aU these papers were kept by Mr. Lincoln iu his own
office; but they were afterwards transferred to their proper
pigeon-holes in the War Department.
The most serious consideration in the appointment or em
ployment of generals arose from the fact that there was yet
almost no possibihty of knowing who would and who would
not prove able to perform well the work so given. Much was
necessarily left to the appointing power of events and to the
sure selections of actual service ; but the untried capacities of
aU comraanding officers gave Mr. Lincoln a raost anxious
reason for hesitation in risking iraportant mihtary operations
at too early a day. There were other reasons for the delays
which so severely exercised the pens of the newspaper critics
of the Adrainistration.
The details of the processes to be employed in converting

270 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the Congressional grant of " power to raise money" into some
specific shape available for the payment of salaries and the
purchase of war materials were in the capable hands of Mr.
Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury. The methods
proposed by him were such as, on the whole, secured the warm
approval and hearty co-operation of the President. The lead
ing financiers of the great Northern cities were very prompt
in reaching a comprehensive view of the situation. At an
early meeting of the New York bankers certain timid sugges
tions as to the future value of government bonds were met by
an energetic capitalist with the caustic warning : " If you let
the government go down, your other securities won't be worth
much to speak of. We must let the President have the last
cent." The Treasury and its payments became, in a short time,
very much an affair of skilKul engraving and rapid printing.
A similar process was at the same tirae carried forward, as
rapidly but not so skiUfuUy, at the South.
The Confederate Congress had voted its President also a
nearly unliraited army, and he was fast assembhng it. He had
a very good start of Mr. Lincoln, as to tirae at least, in all pre
paration and equipment. Some advantages had also been pro-
-vided for him by Mr. Floyd, President Buchanan's Secretary
of War, in transferring quantities of arras frora United States
arsenals at the North to similar places of deposit within what
were now the Confederate army hnes. Purchases of war ma
terials at the North and in Europe had been pushed with in
dustry and success until the Southern ports were closed by the
blockade and armed forces were stationed at all the points
where highways and railroads crossed the boundaries of seceded
territory. In every Southern State the work of organizing
and drilhng soldiers had been pushed with feverish energy for
months before Mr. Lincoln was inaugurated. He knew very
well how great a disadvantage his raw le-vies would be under
tn any collision with better disciphned troops.
The obtaining of men and officers, the turning cf these into

WORK ^MTH RAW MATERIALS. 271
soldiers and leaders, constituted one vast tribulation : but it
was only a part of the problem that embarrassed Mr. Lincoln.
The entire country did not contain enough of serviceable mus
kets, all patterns counted, to put one in the hands of each man
already enhsted. There were not sabers or carbines or pistols
for the cavalry ; nor guns or caissons or ammunition or suita
ble harness for the artiUery ; neither were there wagons for
the quartermaster's sei-vice and comraissariat, or horses yet col
lected to haul them or to mount the cavahy. Tents were
scai'ce. Clothing was so difficult to obtain that even when the
foUowing -winter came the system for its full supply had not
yet been perfected. The entire machinery and multiform ap-
phances of a brand-new mihtary establishment in camp and
field had to be developed from raw materials, and to this task
Mr. Lincoln gave Ms very hfe.
There was in the upper chcles of the ordnance service of
the regular army an aU but invincible conservatisra. It took
the form, especiaUy, of a strange prejudice against the adoption
of any new invention in the way of arras and equipraents.
At the sarae tirae there was a sweeping epidemic of invention
among aU the ingenious patriots of the nation. Many, indeed,
who were not at aU ingenious, but desired to make a httle
money, caught it also.
Between these two opposing forces Mr. Lincoln was com
peUed to estabhsh some kind of equUibrium. The manufac
ture of improved arms went forward with good rapidity and
-with a constant effort towards the attainment of uniformity.
Government agents in Europe made purchases of such mate
rials as they could find. They found a great deal that they did
not purchase, indeed ; and every batch of murderous antiquities
rejected by an United States inspecting officer was sure to be
at once shipped to America on speculative account, to be
urged upon the War Department. There was much " pohtical
influence" brought to bear on behalf of those curious collections
of condemned weapons. Mr. Lincoln was more than once

272 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
compelled to laugh, indignantly, over the effrontery of men
who brought to his own office actual specimens of so-called
" rifles," to be offered him by the thousand at high prices, the
specimen itself, in more cases than one, being an unfirable
tool which would have disgraced a curiosity-shop.
Other matters, even more curious, were constantly urged
upon him: wonderful new forms of cannon; coffee-miU
guns ; breastplates and cuirasses, of steel or of complex "pad
ding," which would have been fine loads for men on a forced
march in summer ; new pistols, good and bad, and bayonets
of raany patterns, and de-vilish contrivances which even the in
ventor found difficulty in explaining the possible use of.
Mr. Lincoln patiently examined whatever was brought to
him. He took an especial interest in improved rifles. He at
once accepted the idea, which the old army men rejected, that
the breech-loading rifle was the weapon sure of universal adop
tion in the near future ; and whenever one was sho-wn him that
seemed to promise weU, he did his best to give it a personal
trial. On the -wide space of open ground between the White
House and the Potomac, in the latter months of 1861, there
stood a huge pile of old lumber, nobody knew whence or why.
It was just the thing upon which to set up a target ; and there,
in the very early morning, the President of the United States
might have been seen, accompanied by one of his private secre
taries, diligently firing away -with the last new invention, and
forming his o-wn opinions of its prospective usefulness. He
came as near as was possible to being arrested there, one
morning, for using fire-arms -within the city hmits contrary to
existing military regulations. He was in the act of stooping
on one knee for a very careful aim, when a " corporal of the
guard" -with a squad of men came running down upon him to
make the seizure called for by their orders. A chorus of an
gry shouts dropped suddenly into silence, however, and the
whole squad turned and ran away faster than they came
when the stooping culprit stood erect and they had a good

WORK WITH RAW MATERIALS. 273
look into the smihng face of the President. His only remark
was: " Well, they might have staid and seen the shooting."
This, truly, was not very good, considered as marksmanship,
for Mr. Lincoln had never acquired accuracy in that accom
plishment, even among the Indiana backwoods.
After the gathering of armies, the appointment of a smaU
army of generals, and the creation of a war organism, one
more question lay heavy on the heart and brain of Mr. Lin
coln. Tt was one he was to carry for a long time, for it re
lated to the discovery of a great comraander. Immediately
after the battle of BuU Run it was necessary to relieve Gen
eral McDoweU — under whose nominal leadership and in spite
of whose abihty and good conduct that weU-fought battle had
been thro-wn away — of the comraand of the forces defending
Washington. He was succeeded, under the ad-vice of Lieu
tenant-General Winfield Scott, by Major-General George B.
McCleUan, an accoraphshed officer, favorably known as a mili
tary scholar and -writer, and also, to the country generally, by
reason of the successes achieved by the troops under his com
mand in West Virginia, which were then attributed to his
generalship. That they occurred -without his especial compli
city and almost -without his knowledge was not accurately as
certained until a later day.
General McClellan, in the beginning, was a great and wel
come rehef to Mr. Lincoln, and his ser-vices were appreciated
to the uttermost. He was young, ambitious, overflowing -with
bodily -vigor and high spirits, and he was thoroughly equipped
¦with the technical knowledge and skill required for the present
emergency. Tt is entirely safe to say that a better selection
could not have been made at the time, since the chosen gen
eral possessed a peculiar genius for organization. That his
genius as a military comraander went but little beyond the
range of faculties so to be now employed was not discovered
until a different set of circurastances called upon him for the

274 ABRAHA3I LINCOLN.
exercise of powers of whose very absence he was sincerely ig
norant. On the resignation and retirement of General Scott, in the
foUo-wing November, General McClellan, as the then senior
major-general of the army, was advanced to the chief com
mand. It was his serious misfortune that with his advance
ment he accepted and retained a vague idea that the President,
a mere ci-vil and elective functionary, had somehow ceased to
be his mihtary superior and actual commander-in-chief.
Through all the trials and changes which foUowed, it is well
to say here, Mr. Lincoln never materiaUy modified his original
estimate of General McClellan and much regretted his inabihty
to add to it. Just before the final act of removing him from
comraand, he at last remarked to a member of his personal
staff: " For organizing an army, for preparing an army for the
field, for fighting a defensive campaign, I -wiU back General
McCleUan against any general of modern times. I don't know
but of ancient times, either. But I begin to beheve that he
-wiU never get ready to go forward !"
It was said with somewhat of sadness but -with more than
ordinary emphasis, for it implied that the forward movement
was of more importance, in the eyes of Mr. Lincoln, than were
the personal fortunes of any one commander. That was a
point overlooked by many people, both then and afterwards.
McClellan assumed command on July 27, 1861. The work
of equipping the army and navy went steadily forward. The
Southern statesmen and generals toiled at their similar task
on the other side of the now rigidly tightening army lines.
Mr. Lincoln saw more and more clearly the magnitude of the
straggle before him, while hourly the people began to clamor
more loudly for the battles and -victories which were not ready
and did not come.

NEW NATIONAL LIFE. 21 1

CHAPTER XXXV.
NEW NATIONAL LIEE.
A Shattered Idol— A New State— Contraband of War— Transitions and
Processes — Lincoln a Dictator — The Law of Revolution.
It is not altogether easy at this day to understand how
deeply ingrained in the minds of the American people was
once the idea of the legality of human slavery. Only a small
percentage of even the men who cast their votes for Abraham
Lincohi, in 1860, were thorough-going enemies of slavery for
its o-wn sake, or were at aU entitled or willing to be classed as
"Abolitionists." If, however, those who hated the institution
were few at the beginning, every day of the continuance of the
war added to their nurabers. Every drop of good blood wasted
by the slaveholders' rebeUion intensified the horror with which
human bondage fast grew to be regarded. Nevertheless, the
great majority of the people yet required a prolonged and
severe course of instruction and of mental and moral awaken
ing to prepare them for the final breaking of the old-time idol.
Mr. Lincoln knew very well that slavery must perish. He
had so declared in public and in private. He was fully
con-vinced, from the first, that the downfall of the Rebellion
must carry with it the destruction of the one cause and object
of the RebeUion, but his own hands were for the moment tied.
He was fettered by the opinions and prejudices of the very
people upon whom he was calling and depending for men and
money. He was fettered by the prevailing sentiment of the
army itself and by that of many of its best commanders. He
was fettered by the unf orf cited legal rights of slaveholders in

276 ABRAHA3I LINCOLN.
the District of Columbia, Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky,
Missouri, and that part of Virginia known as West Virginia,
which had loyaUy repudiated the " ordinance of secession" on
the 23d of May.
In this latter area, indeed, an important political action had
followed. The Union men in about forty counties, between
the Allegheny Mountains and the Ohio River, strengthened by
the presence of Northern troops and by their first successes in
arms, held a convention of delegates at Wheeling, as early as
June 11, 1861. They pro-vided speedily for a new State gov
ernraent, and the Legislature gathered under the direction of
the convention raet at Wheeling, on the first day of July, to
declare its adhesion to the Union and to elect two Senators of
the United States. These latter were sworn in as members of
the Senate on the 13th of July, but it was not until two years
later that the new State of West Virginia was adraitted into
the Union as a separate commonwealth.
Mr. Lincoln was dealing with a subject of which he had
made a life-long study. He was hourly studying it now, and
clearly perceived the delicate and dangerous nature of the situ
ation. The deeply rooted prejudices of milhons were not to
be trifled with. Time must be given for changes to take
place, and these would be made at great cost of blood and
treasure and untold suffering ; but the price so to be paid for
them was unavoidable.
Nevertheless, at the very threshold of the war, Mr. Lincoln
was compeUed to meet and deal -with the African- American
slave, in actual, personal presence. Eager, hopeful, jubilant,
the colored men and women, by day and by night, came
marching into every camp on the long border. They brought
their children with them when they could, and their continual
arrival seemed to shout in the ears of the troubled ruler, whom
they already regarded as a divinely appointed deliverer :
" Here we are ! What are you going to do with us ?"
The whole country heard it, more or less distinctly, and

NEW NATIONAL LIFE. 277
floods of confficting counsels as to the matter and manner of
the answer poured in upon the President.
There were men among his newly appointed generals who
were ready and wUhng to answer it for him as to the areas
under theh dhection, obli-vious of the need of uniformity in
the pohcy to be pursued and of some other important con
siderations. Decidedly the best solution of the difficulty was offered by
General B. F. Butler, himseK a former pro-slavery Democrat.
Accepting in its fullness the idea that slaves were not human
beings but mere personal property, they were also " property
used for military purposes," of many kinds, and so, when cap
tured or found, were " contraband of war," as much as a loaded
musket or a quartermaster's wagon. They could not be sent
back to strengthen the mihtary hands of the enemy, and few
" Contrabands" were retumed to their owners after the slightly
grotesque idea became weU lodged in the minds of the army
and its officers. The practice in this respect varied much for
a while, but a fair degree of uniformity came at last in the
sure course of human events. All Mr. Lincoln could do was
to prevent pernicious haste, and this he managed to accom-
phsh. His precise action in the most important case arising,
that of Fremont in Missouri, was complicated with other con
siderations, and must be treated in another place. There is,
however, something not a httle absurd in the idea entertained
and advocated by many : that for a number of months, at and
about this time, Mr. Lincoln ceased to be the earnest foe of
slavery he so long had been, and that he was afterwards happily
reconverted in time to -write and issue the proclamation of
emancipation, in 1863. He underwent no such falhng away,
and he requhed no such subsequent change of heart and pur
pose. Tn order to perceive the entire consistency of his course
it is but necessary to form an approximately correct idea of the
condition of our national affairs and of his relations to them in
the remaining months of the year 1861 and during 1862.

278 ABRAHA3I LINCOLN.
The country was serai-chaotic in aU its conditions, foreign
relations and domestic affairs alike, political, moral, financial,
and industrial. A revolution had arrived and was progressing
which affected every citizen in all his relations in hfe, and the
very excitement men were under prevented all but a very few
from percei-ving, studying, or comprehending the changes they
were passing through. There is a sense in which Mr. Lincoln
was an embodiment and expression of these changes. He also
was developing, learning, advancing, and it is enough for his
greatness that he was at all points and continually so much
more advanced than other men, and so much better informed,
that he was able to lead them -wisely and not into ruin.
The national government at Washington, such as it was
prior to the outbreak of the Rebellion, had been the object of
varied degrees of patriotic devotion, but the average American
voter had but a faint and fragmentary understanding of his
duties relating to it or of its rights and powers relating to
hira. These latter raight be exceeded with irapunity by Mr. Lin
coln, so far as the masses of the people were concerned, so long
as his action accorded at aU -with theh conception of what it
was best for him to do. It is therefore not very far from the
truth to say that the President assumed and freely used, from
time to time, aU powers required by any emergency as being
conferred upon him by the emergency. If these powers were
also conferred upon him by the Constitution and the laws, as
previously interpreted, so much the better for those instru
ments and for their pre-vious interpretation. If not, it would
answer equally well if Congress afterwards should pass laws
covering the matters involved, and if the Constitution should
be duly amended at the defective spot so discovered. Such is
the fundamental law of all human societies in aU revolutionary
states and conditions. For Mr. Lincoln to have failed to
utilize this would have been idiotically weak and would have,
involved sure destruction of the interests in his keeping.

NEW NATIONAL LIFE. 279
From the first, nevertheless, all efforts were made to avoid
unnecessary interferences with vested rights or the well-being
of individuals. Mr. Lincoln's own personal characteristics
came to the front in this connection. A large part of his daily
annoyances came to him on account of his kindly inability to
turn a deaf ear to a story of suffering or injustice. Any power
he at any time assumed or exercised was taken not to himself
at aU. It was but a means apphed to a raanifest use, and, so
far as he could determine, the best and most righteous means
for the best and most righteous use. He toiled, patiently and
unselfishly. Tn such a multiplicity of duties his mind knew no
rest, turning hourly from one branch of his responsibihties to
another. He grappled resolutely ^^^th every problem put to
him by his needs for action, foreign or domestic. Tt seems
clear to those who knew him best that he himself perceived,
as did many of his nearer observers, the s-wKt and steady
growth of his o-wn capacities as a ruler of men. His inner life
expanded under the intense heat of his trials. The strength of
his -wiU, the iron resolution which lay behind his easy-man
nered kindliness, had been raanifested day by day from his
very chUdhood ; but the world contains a multitude of strong-
wiUed, resolute, able, successful men not one of whom con
tains the rare material whereof a Revolution may construct for
its needs a competent Ruler.
The times were testing him in many ways. Weaker men,
often more briUiant in many expressions of capacity, began to
come frequently into what resembled collisions with him. Tt
was all but amusing, now and then, to -witness their surprise at
their own helplessness in such trials of their strength as had
not called upon him for conscious exertion, just as in the early
days he had quietly held out at arm's length the burly -wrestler
from Clary's Grove.
He was now about to enter upon the most prolonged and
perplexing of these coUisions, and the only one which at any
time seemed to present elements of public peril. His course

280 A BR AH A 31 LINCOLN.
in the management of aU minor difficulties may be rationally
gathered or imagined after obtaining a fair understanding of
the first struggle between "military authority" and "ci-vU
supremacy."

PRESIDENT AND GENERAL. 281

CHAPTER XXXVI.
PRESIDENT AND GENERAL.
The Army of the Potomac — Newspaper Acrobats — The President's Mail —
Work of the Private Secretaries — Army Organization — An Advance
which was Not Made — Offensive and Defensive War.
The routine of Mr. Lincoln's office-work, during this first
summer and autumn, as afterwards, was varied by occasional
-visits to the camps and forts, where he was always welcomed
with enthusiasm. The personal attachment for him among the
rank and file of the army grew faster and became stronger than
his critics and enemies were at aU wiUing to beheve.
Hia evenings at home were also varied now not unfrequently
by -visits at the house of the general in command of the Army
of the Potomace, when McClellan happened to be in the city.
The President's course and personal relations with him for a
time were, as nearly as might be, those of a confiding and
famihar friend. The entire mass of the written correspond
ence between them bears witness to such a state of things. In
the eyes of Mr. Lincoln's nearest advisers he seeraed even too
indifferent to aU rales of military etiquette, and also to a very
apparent assumption and arrogance in act and manner on the
part of his briUiant subordinate. These were as yet of rainor
consequence, and the main thing, after all, was that the work in
hand should be done.
There were great things going on in those days in the West
and elsewhere; and of these we shaU take due note farther
on. But at the present juncture we have to do with matters
which then chiefly engaged Mr. Lincoln's attention, and that

282 ABRAHA3I LINCOLN.
of the country at large throughout the Atlantic States. To
the minds of people at Washington the Army of the Potomac
was the Army of the United States. It was very important,
certainly ; and its splendid commander with his ghttering staff
dashing through the streets hke a smaU earthquake-in-new-
uniform were a wonder which must, men thought, dazzle the
eyes of all the miUions who were not there to see. The coun
try at large was but moderately dazzled, and the President not
at aU. He knew that the area of the war extended beyond
the picket-lines of that one army, for he was watching the
swift fluctuations of success and disaster to the farthest
frontier. He was also studying the rapid changes of thought
and purpose among the people, and knew what a continual
battle there was in the souls of men and women aU over the
North. He grew more and more absorbed in his work and
raore difficult of approach upon any but needful business.
Nevertheless it was during these months that he almost en
tirely gave up any attempt at reading the newspapers. He at
one time instructed one of his private secretaries to make a
daily digest of the attitude of the leading joumals as editori
ally expressed.
It was actually so done for about a week. The President
glanced at the digest once or t-wice, during that time, but he
discovered how httle he really cared for it aU, and told the young
man to return to more useful work. There were too many
sudden " revolutions," perhaps, in the attitudes assumed by the
journalists, while there was reaUy but one with which he or
the people had anything to do.
The maU of the Executive Mansion, always large, had now
grown to a volume which was, probably, not afterwards in
creased. Its very size shut out all probabihty of its examina
tion by Mr. Lincoln himself. Counting packages of docu
ments as one " letter," the number of letters of aU kinds varied
from two hundred to two hundred and fifty each day. The
range of subjects treated by the writers was about as wide as

PRESIDENT AND GENERAL. 283
the human imagination. It is possible that three per cent of
these communications, including subsequent references, were
at some time seen by the President. About half were sure to
relate to business belonging to bureaus of the several executive
departments and were at once forwarded to the proper places.
The other half might contain a few which required fihng in
the President's own office for reference. The secretary's waste-
basket received the mass remaining, of advice, abuse, fault-find
ing, insanity, egotism, and threats of personal -violence. A
careful estimate shows that of all the letters sent by maU to
Mr. Lincoln, at this time, he saw and read, at the time of their
arrival, about one in a hundred : less rather than more. The
fact iUustrates forcibly the absorption of his mind and the
pressure upon his time and energies, for it had been his life
long habit to examine -with care every paper that came to him
from any source, however humble. Even when some epistle
of uncommon importance prompted the secretary in charge
to urge its contents upon him, the response was sure to be,
" WeU, what is it ?" and a digest in brief was expected unless
the letter itseK were of the briefest.
With the more persistently intrusive official and legislative
multitude it was not possible to deal in a similar way. It
was out of the question to put the raost selfish of raen into
a waste-basket, nor was it easy to transfer such a person to his
proper bureau. Nevertheless, the secretaries in charge of the
raatter did succeed in performing, for the throngs of callers, a
process analogous in some of its results to that employed upon
the mails.
Mr. Lincoln's time and strength were saved for him to the
extent of theh very good ability, and they protected him from
untold annoyances. It was a good while before the President's
patience gave way and he came, at last, to their assistance.
Embodied pertinacities would succeed in getting in their " cards"
and securing interviews to which they were not entitled.
Very much this state of things continued, to the end. Time

284 ABRAHA3i LINCOLN.
did but perfect the simple and unostentatious machinery with
which the President performed his duties. He did but put
himself continually into more complete connection -with and
relations to the vast and complicated organism of national ad
ministration which was fast assuming shape and efficiency.
In every corner of the country, all imaginable interests were
adjusting their relations to the government, or discovering that
they had any, mainly through the varied means by which they
were induced to take upon them some share of the pubhc
burdens or were able to derive profit from the pubhc expen
ditures. Of all the formative processes, in all theh ramifications, no
other man knew or could know so much as did Mr. Lincoln.
No better example can be given, perhaps, than the creation of
the first Army of the Potomac. The credit of this has been
generaUy accorded to McCleUan, and the President is himseK
a -witness that his first commander did zealously and well the
part that by nature and assignment belonged to him. There is
a sense in which it was the part of a traly great Orderly Ser
geant, and ignorance only can underestimate or despise a work
so vitally important.
The men who were to form that army had been gathered by
Mr. Lincoln, as has been seen, and they were now in the
service of the United States under due form of law. The
selections of regimental officers had been made under State
authorities. The appointment of brigade, division, and corps commanders
was in the hands of the President. So of all appointments in
the Ordnance, Commissary, and Quartermaster services; and
the connection of these with the War Office continued to be
more or less direct, even after they were ordered to duty.
Their efficiency depended largely upon that of their specific
official superiors, and these were practicaUy on the staff of the
President. The latter had, therefore, not only an intimate
knowledge of the conditions of the army, but an especial respon-

PRESIDENT AND GENERAL. 285
sibility concerning its operations. It was this which gave him
the right to complain when after all had been done except
.the duty of the field-commauder, performance failed to follow
preparations and so vast and costly a machine remained com
paratively unemployed.
This, as hinted above, grew to be Mr. Lincoln's chief care
during that momentous -winter of 1861-2. As is well known,
an " advance" of the Army of the Potomac had been planned,
and, by an order issued by the President on the 27th of January,
it was to take place on the 22d of February. Every effort had
been made that there should by that time be at least a show pre
sented to the nation of something to corae of all the sacrifices it
was making. The President knew but too weU the profoundly
disturbed and hritated state of pubhc feehng. He Icnew how
rauch of justice was in the eager popular demand for " action,"
and had been uttering it continuaUy in every form of speech and
writing. He had studied and planned and provided, toiling by
day and night that nothing required should be lacking. He
was intensely, absorbingly interested, and had been positively
assured that the ordered advance would be duly made. He
was not in any manner undeceived until a day or two before
the date assigned. He was alone in his room when an officer
of General McCleUan's staff was announced by the door-keeper
and was admitted. The President turned in his chair to hear,
and was informed, in respectful set terms, that the advance
movement could not be made.
" Why ?" he curtly demanded.
" The pontoon trains are not ready — "
" Why in hell and damnation ain't they ready ?"
The officer could think of no satisfactory reply, but turned
very hastily and left the room. Mr. Lincohi also turned to the
table and resumed the work before him, but wrote at about
double his ordinary speed.
Little apology is caUed for by the precise manner of his ex
pression ; entirely at variance from his habit of speech, it was

286 ABR.iHAM LINCOLN.
extorted from him by the awful pressure of months concen
trated in the intense irritation of au instant.
While allthe records of that period and particularly his o-wn
correspondence, official and private, are fuU of strong commen
taries upon the fidelity with which he labored for the perfec
tion of the Army of the Potomac, he was equaUy hard at
work for and -with every other army. He by no means neg
lected the Navy, and he shared -with Mr. Seward the pressure
of foreign affairs. No comraander, of course, could give due
weight to all this, or more than a thought or so to the questions
of finance and national politics, without a due care of which by
the President the armed forces could not be kept in the field.
There were times when General McClellan seemed even less
able than other military men to grasp an idea which conflicted
with the fulfilment of his own demands, and his capacity for
waiting a little longer was marvelous.
As early as October 27, 1861, he officiaUy reported, to the
Secretary of War, that he had under his command, ready for
duty, 147,695 men, of all arras, -with additional forces, not yet
ready for duty but in course of preparation and soon to become
so, that swelled his muster-roU to 168,318. More men were
constantly arriving, and the question in the minds of the
people and their President was identical : " Why is not some
thing decisive done with such an army ?"
No sufficient answer was given, then or afterwards ; or ever
can be.
For an advance, lea-ving the capital weU protected. General
McClellan officiaUy reported that, at that date, he had at his
disposal 76,285 men and 228 pieces of artillery.
The President felt that his relations to the forces in the
field were not altogether conferred upon him by the article in
the Constitution which declared him the Commander-in-Chief.
Pecuharly was it trae of the Army of the Potomac that he had
created it. Governors of States, generals, heads of bureaus,
all subordinate agencies, had done their duty. The people had

PRESIDENT AND GENERAL. 287
responded nobly to every call. Still it was true that no such
army, or any army at all, would then have been upon the Po
tomac K the President had awaited the action of States and
governors and legislators. The organization of both army and
navy had, in his mind, preceded the fall of Sumter, and the
Army of the Potomac found its nucleus in the regular and
volunteer recruits he began to gather in the last weeks of
April, 1861. But for this nucleus the subsequent " army"
would have formed, K at aU, elsewhere than on the line of the
Potomac. The reports of General McCleUan show that 50,000 men
were prepared for field-duty during each consecutive thirty
days, from July 27 to October 27. The South had been at
work longer and had accomplished less, because its equally effi
cient subordinates had a less competent head to direct and sus
tain them. That this was true was made less important from
the technically defensive nature of the war to be carried on by
them and the character of the areas to be defended. For
Southern purposes, except as to the numbers arrayed for any
one encounter, every hundred men they could raise and equip
at home was an offset to three hundred of the far distant
Northern recruits ; for, the value of indi-vidual soldiers being
equal, the longer the march of a Union army to a battle-field,
the more was its likehhood of being outnumbered when it
arrived. The Confederates, therefore, had men enough. The " Cop
perheads" of the North were useful alhes to them at all times.
Europe aided them in many ways. Even the stormy zeal of
impatient patriots in the free States soraetiraes fought for them.
They found help of some kind at every turn. They found an
unintentional but extraordinary co-operation in the prolonged
idleness of the Army of the Potomac. It is not too much to
say that, in the early fall of 1861, Mr. Lincoln seemed to have
a splendid army at his disposal, but was compelled to waste the
months until spring in obtaining the adoption of digested

288 ABRAHA3I LINCOLN.
plans for its employment. The result was that, at the last, the
army was in no better condition for actual ser-vice ; the plans
finally acted upon were fragmentary and incomplete ; time and
money and much precious human hfe had been thro-wn away ;
and the campaign which followed did but crown the mournful
record -with the fruits of hesitation, in disaster and discourage
ment.

DICTATOR AND CONGRESS. 289

CHAPTER XXXVII.
DICTATOR AND CONGRESS.
The Legislative Branch — The Committee on tbe Conduct of the War —
Useful Interference — Councils and Umpires — Political Complications
Beginning — Civilian and Soldier.
The position of President Lincohi in the year 1862 cannot
be sttidied advantageously -without a glance at his relations to
the National Legislature which assembled at Washington in
the -winter.
Congress came together -with the majority of its membership
in a red heat of patriotism. There was a minority, indeed, and
the material for an " opposition," but only a very few ultraists
cared to be kno-wn as anti-war men. Omitting the extreme
Copperheads, every member was under a sort of triple pres
sure : — of his o-wn ideas as to the prosecution of the war ; of a
knowledge of the feverish eagerness of his constituents for the
suppression of the RebeUion ; and of the even greater eager
ness of a persistent fraction of that same constituency to obtain
ci-vil or military offices under the general governraent.
There were, indeed, a great many offices to be given, and
these were all nominaUy at the disposal of Mr. Lincoln. He
had a vast amoimt of trouble in avoiding the onerous respon
sibihty of gi'ving that wide business his personal attention.
He succeeded fahly well, but could not escape altogether. He
drily remarked of it aU that there were twenty applicants for
each office, and every time he fUled one he made twenty ene
mies. The nineteen were enemies because they were dis
appointed, and the man appointed hated him because he

290 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
thought he ought to have a better place or because he was in
debted for it to some other man.
As a body. Congress was profoundly ignorant of the Dicta
torship, although a few voices made bold to denounce it. The
idea prevailed that the government had traveled thus far by
¦virtue of the work done during the hasty summer session of
1861. The President had obeyed and followed very weU, but
must now be again taken in hand a little. It was not long be
fore the " Legislative Branch" of the government began to in
terfere -with the " Executive Branch" in mihtary matters. It
was a little more patriotic than constitutional, but Mr. Lincoln
had no manner of objection. When, in December, 1861, Con
gress appointed a strong and capable " Committee on the Con
duct of the War," its members were at once taken into hearty
and intimate consultation. What would surely have been a
peril or a hindrance to a weak or a selfish ruler was trans
formed at once into an additional and powerful guaranty of
Congressional co-operation. It was not so much, thencefor
ward, that Congress had assumed a part of the Executive pro-
-vince, but that the Executive had deftly provided himseK
with personal and official representatives upon the fioor of
Senate and House.
This Committee, constantly ad-vised -with, cordiaUy in-vited
to investigate, to consider, to come and to go, and to know
everything before it happened, became a priceless safety-valve
for the growing discontent over inexplicable delays. Without
it, there can now be httle question that Mr. Lincohi would
have been more seriously misunderstood and even antagonized
by the body of men nominally represented by the committee.
The President of the United States is Constitutionally the
Commander-in-Chief, and Abraham Lincoln was also actually
Dictator ; but he was entirely at ease as to aU his rights and
dignities when a joint committee of Senators and Representa
tives freely summoned before them his military officers, by the
dozen, and called for their -views of things in general and their

DICTATOR AND CONGRESS. 29]
professional opinions of battles and campaigns. He knew be
forehand that the sure result would be the strong and unani
mous sympathy of that " jury" of clear-headed men, with him
personally, and their approval of the general outlines of his
pohcy, however much they might disagree among themselves
or -with him as to details of specific operations. In the long
run it turned out as he expected.
Congress had appointed seven of its best men to find fault
with the President, and grumble at him, and agree with him,
and help him; and to help the nation stand by him more firmly
than ever. Changed in its membership somewhat, as time
went on, the Committee continued its ser-vices to the end of the
war. Never at any time were they of greater utility than in
their close and searching study of the condition of the army
and the causes of its inaction during the long trial of that
memorable -winter. At the sarae time, their personal pressure,
and that of Congress exerted upon Mr. Lincoln through thera,
was an additional burden of no insignificant weight.
It is now very easy to perceive that if the President had at
once assumed the fuU exercise of his nominal powers as Com
mander-in-Chief, forcing a reluctant general and his minor
generals to a course of action for which they avowed them
selves unprepared, the results could hardly have been other
than disastrous. The President fuUy understood this feature
of his responsibihties, and it was forcibly dwelt upon by his
civil and mihtary ad-visers. Tt was also trae that the latter held
erroneous ideas of the Rebel forces opposed to them, and mag
nified less than fifty thousand effective raen into a hundred and
fifteen thousand in theh official estiraates ; but Mr. Lincoln had
no trustworthy means of refuting the error. He beheved it
to be one, but was compelled to submit to its effects as pa
tiently as the circumstances permitted. He did so, but even
his tough patience wore slowly away, as has been related, and
at last became altogether exhausted.
It has been said and printed that he " disclaimed aU military

292 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
abUhy," and h is true that he often spoke very modestly of
his pretensions ; but the necessity was upon him, and he contin
ually and distinctly and from the beginning exercised the im
portant functions of a mUitary umpire. His decision was final
in the selection of plans and in their modifications as campaigns
progressed. This was equally true when he yielded his own
opinion to that of another. It was unavoidable, in the ab
sence of any one mihtary authority of weU-attested value. He
never shirked the implied responsibility ; but the records, so
far as these are preserved, clearly sustain the conclusion that
the announced and adopted decisions and plans attributed
solely or mainly to him were in fact the verdicts of a sort of
perpetual " council of war" of which he was the conspicuous
chairman. This councU was of varying membership and size,
but he made it include not only his maps and books but the
best educated and informed mihtary capacity in the country.
To this he added the Committee on the Conduct of the War
and judicious selections from his Cabinet. He would gladly
have been relieved of a responsibihty so heavy. The hour
and the man for his rehef came at last, but neither had arrived
in 1862.
Now that the veils of the army lines are reraoved from the
then hidden condition of the Confederate armies between
Richmond and Washington, and all personal and pohtical con
siderations can be omitted from an analysis of the situation,
the attitude and action of Mr. Lincoln, prior to the Peninsular
campaign of 1862, is more than justified.
Beginning in full time, he had summoned an army and had
strained aU the resources of the country to prepare it for the
field. At the earliest day of its apparent readiness he had
urged the prompt and vigorous use of that army in a forward
movement. His estimate of the opposing forces and their
power to resist such an attack is now proved to have been cor
rect. As to specific plans of movements, military critics are
yet divided concerning the relative wisdom of such as were

DICTATOR AND CONGRESS. 293
presented by General McClellan, representing his own council
of war, on the one side, and by Mr. Lincoln on the other as
the fruit of the joint skill and -wisdom of the " council " over
which he presided. There is, however, no longer any respect
able authority bold enough to commend the inaction against
which the President so earnestly strove and protested.
The campaign on the Potomac was but a part of the load
upon his shoulders, and he was sufficiently -wise and self-con-
troUed not to exercise the fullness of his authority, even when
compeUed to say, as he did to General McDoweU, in December,
1861, " If something is not done soon, the bottom will be out
of the whole affair." He was weU aware that a yet more cer
tain min to the national cause would follow the failure of any
great military movement directly ordered by himself, and that
no campaign can be more sure of faUure than one undertaken
contrary to the wiU of its controlhng general and his most
trasted heutenants.
Perhaps the most striking fact of all is that the apparent
repugnance to forward movements never ceased. It was mani
fested, under various forms, to the very end of the Peninsular
campaign, and even later. It is in vain now, but it is hardly pos
sible not to ask the question : " What would have been the
net residts of the campaigns upon the Potomac in 1861 and
1862 K President Lincoln had been sustained by a general as
eager for action as himseK and as correctly estimating the
strength of his o-wn army and the enemy ?"
The natural reply is : " Why, then, did not Mr. Lincohi re
move McCleUan at once and appoint some other commander ?"
It was urged upon him more than once or tvdce, and he
answered it by the homely anecdote of the man who declared
it "a bad time to swap horses when you are crossing a
freshet." Trae, doubtless ; but there was raore than a question of mere
mihtary expediency in the way, and the President labored
under difficulties which are worthy of record.

294 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
In some inscrutable manner, General McClellan had become,
and was too weU aware of it, the chief and representative of
that part of the American people which had not given its heart
to Mr. Lincoln, however fuU it might be of genuine patriot
ism. McClellan was also curiously adopted by that other part
of the population which had no patriotism whatever and which
hated ahke the President and the cause he represented.
There had not yet been time, nor heat, nor suffering, to
hammer and weld the nation into a compact mass -with refer
ence to the issues of the war, and the base upon which the
government stood was appreciably narrow and infirm. The
powers in the hands of Mr. Lincoln, even as Dictator, were
mainly executive and directory, rather than creative. He was
compelled to meet and deal with aU the forces of the hour,
whether assistant or opposing, just as they were and not as he
might have wished them. There was an indefinite mark at
which his power might break in his hands if unwisely over
strained. He well understood the unreasoning enthusiasm
with which the greater part of the army regarded theh young
and, as they deemed him, their " dashing" commander. They
had seen him dash, frequently and at full gallop, through camp
after camp, accompanied by a brilhant staff which contained
sprigs of European royalty. They had, indeed, manipulated
the Comte de Paris and the Due de Chartres into " Captain
Parry " and " Captain Chatters," but these were stiU a land of
wandering king, and the great general, the young American
Napoleon, had his tent full of that kind of men and was teach
ing thera the art of war. He was also teaching it, they half
beheved, to the rest of the army and to Congress and to Mr.
Lincoln, and some day he would give the Confederates a com
plete course of instruction.
The intensity of the army jealousy of " civihan interference"
offers an utterly ludicrous aspect of the situation, considering
who and what were the civihans in question and who and
what were the " mihtary." StiU, it was a power and not to

DICTATOR AND CONGRESS 295
be disregarded, and had much to do with the President's long
endurance of General McCleUan's procrastination. The exist
ence of such an obstacle seems to have been unknown to the
country at large at the time, but it was sadly set forth after
wards, in detaU, in the testimony given on the trial of Fitz
John Porter, after the second battle of Bull Run.
The Peninsular campaign was an accoraphshed failure before
the removal of McCleUan, but that was no hindrance to the
persistent declaration, by his partisans, that the failure had
been ordained and engineered by " civilians" at Washington,
in order that disaster might furnish a pretext for the removal.
Mr. Lincoln's position was one of extreme dehcacy, but at
last the Confederate authorities came to his deliverance. The
final adoption of a plan of campaign for the Union armies was
provided for at Richmond. Early in March, 1862, the rebel
generals concluded that their forces at and about Manassas Gap
had bearded and checked an army three times their strength as
long as it was safe to do so. They retreated, -without striking
a blow, or so much as gi'ving warning, or even saying what
they meant to do next.
So bitter and taunting a comment upon the wisdom of Mr.
Lincoln's previous urgency enabled him to compel army action
of some kind. At a meeting of the corps coraraanders of the
Army of the Potomac, on the 13th of March, the retreat of the
enemy was f ormaUy recognized ; a plan of an advance upon
Richmond was adopted, approved by General McCleUan, and
forwarded to the President. It is worthy of note that his
official approval and reply, through the Secretary of War, was
instantaneous. Tt bears the same date of March 13, 1862.
Whatever default of energy or promptness raight be charge
able to others, not an hour of precious time was wasted by the
Commander-in-Chief. The joint dates of the Army plan and of its approval by
Mr. Lincoln once more bring out the fact of his continuous
and perfect state of preparation. He did not wait and study.

296 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
because he did not need to do so. He had carefuUy digested
the whole subject, and no forra of its presentation could take
him by surprise. As he himseK was apt to remark when
seeraingly new things were laid before hira, he had " studied
that matter," and his action upon it was a foregone conclusion.
It was said that a plan had been adopted, but, after aU, it
was httle more than a determination that the army should sail
down the Potomac, land on the Vhginia side and hunt for
something to do. It was agreed upon -with Mr. Lincoln that
the hunt should be pushed -vigorously in the direction of Rich
mond, and he went down in person to urge and press and aid
in every possible way the magnificent " meet " of weU-armed
hunters.

THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN. 297

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN.
Monitor and Merrimac — The Story of a Great Invention — ^Waiting before
Yorktown — Civil Supremacy in Danger — A Retreat in Good Order —
A Perilous Dilemma — The Army of Virginia — Gen. Pope's Campaign
— ^A New Political Party — One Army Swallowed by Another.
The moveraent of the Array of the Potomac had been pre
ceded by a great naval event. On the 8th of March, 1862, the
Confederate armored ram Virginia or Merrimac steamed out
into Hampton Roads and destroyed several United States ships-
of-war. She demonstrated in a few minutes that any wooden
or other war ship kno-wn to exist was helpless against her. So
far as any eyes could see, the Potomac was open to her, Wash
ington city was at her mercy, and the face of military affairs
was changed. A kind of Egyptian darkness came down at
once, and, for a few hours, men walked around as if they were
feeling theh way in it.
On the foUo-wing day occurred the world-famous fight be
tween the Merrimac and the Monitor, the latter being
described by the Confederates, as looking like a Yankee
cheese-box on a raft. The timely arrival of this revolving
gun-tower was as httle a matter of human foresight as if she
had fallen from the sky, and the nation recovered promptly
from its fit of shivering dread. The power of the destroyer
was at least neutrahzed and things could go on somewhat as
before. Not upon the sea, indeed ; for the naval constraction
of aU the world was revolutionized in a day and aU the armed
vessels afloat, except the two which fought in Hampton Roads,
became antiquated.

298 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Mr. Lincoln had not foreseen the Merrimac, but he had
foreseen the Monitor and her construction, and therefore her
presence and service were as much due to him as was her plan
ning to her inventor. When Mr. C. S. Bushnell, to whom the
Monitor had been intrusted, and to whom lasting honor is due
for his management of the matter, arrived in Washington -with
the plans and specifications of the proposed vessel, he carried
them straightway to the President. Mr. Lincoln comprehend
ed them at once and became deeply interested. He remarked,
pleasantly, that he knew but httle about ships, but he did un
derstand a flatboat, and this invention was flat enough. He
promised to meet Mr. BushneU at the Navy Department at
eleven o'clock the next day and do all he could in securing the
adoption of the plan and the construction of a " monitor" for
trial. That was precisely what she was built for, no one
prophesying what the trial would be. At the hour named he
left the White House and walked over to the Navy Depart
ment to fulfill his promise. A number of naval officers and
other experts were assembled to sit in judgment, and the
President listened patiently and silently to their successive ex
pressions of opinion. These were almost unanimously given
adversely to the practicability of the plan of vessel proposed.
Finally, Rear-Admiral Sraith, chairman of the Naval Board in
charge of the matter, turned to the President and asked him
what he thought of it.
" WeU," said Mr. Lincoln, " I feel about it a good deal as
the fat girl did when she put her foot into her stocking. She
thought there was something in it."
There was a laugh, but everybody present understood that
Mr. Lincoln was in earnest. Admiral Smith, who had been one
of the few who had understood and favored the invention, was
glad enough to be sustained by the President, and took it up
with energy. Mr. Bushnell and his associates obtained their
contract for a trial-monitor and built it, and after its work in
Hampton Roads Mr. Lincoln had a right to express strongly.

THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN. 299
as he did, his satisfaction over the fact that he " had given the
Monitor a hft " at the time when, without it, she would have
remained an inventor's dream.
The "co-operation of the Navy" was now more than ever a
factor in the plans of the Army, and it was given with hearty
efficiency. The troops were shipped and lauded without any
greater number of blunders than mark the records of simUar
feats of transportation in other wars. The enemy were in a
bad condition to -withstand the forward push the President
continually urged. He was so anxious for action that, early in
May, -with Secretaries Stanton and Chase and General Viele of
the Engineers, he went down to Hampton Roads on the U. S.
steamer Miami, to see for himself how matters were. This
happened (May 11) just as Norfolk was abandoned and the
Merrimac blown up by the retiring Rebels. It is now well
known, too, that McClellan could have marched to the very
gates of Richmond -with but moderate hindrance if he had
not discovered a sort of reproduction of the "Manassas lines,"
-with another imaginary host behind them. These were pro-
-vided him by the petty defenses at Yorktown, and before these
he promptly sat do-wn. Mr. Lincoln wrote and urged in vain.
Tt is not needful to deal -with all the details of what may be
considered a purely "tactical" controversy. The result was a
simple and natural sort of repetition of the previous lesson.
The army lay before Yorktown for a month, and the Confed
erate purpose in holding the place had been accomplished.
When it was done, the few obstructing regiments and guns at
Yorkto-wn were quietly removed, and the Rebellion had again
secured the results of a great victory without fighting a battle.
The remainder of the Peninsular campaign belongs to the
mihtary history of the war and not to the Life of Lincoln.
At and before its outset and until it was completed and aban
doned, the President was confronted, for the first and last
time, -with the peril, common to all human revolutions, that

300 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the personal power and position of a favorite mihtary officer
might enable him to predominate over, or at least be practically
independent of, the ci-vil authority.
That General McClellan was, perhaps unintentionaUy, per
haps almost unconsciously, the exponent of that peril, was but
imperfectly discerned by the President, for a time. It was
more clearly perceived by others, following the course of events
on the spot, and narrowly watching the demeanor of General
McCleUan in personal inter-views with the President or with
his own subordinates. It was yet more clear to those who
listened to much of the iU-ad-vised talk among some of the
latter. It can even more plainly be discerned, at this day, by
any student who will take the trouble to examine the official
reports and correspondence. No man can now pretend to de
clare what might have been the consequences to the country if
Mr. Lincoln had been less firm or less wisely forbearing and
patient. A weak or hasty man in the President's chair would
surely have fallen from it, if not in name, at least to all intents
and purposes, and his power would have passed into the hands
of the Army Commander.
As for the latter, all he really requhed was tirae to offer the
able leaders opposed to him the opportunities of which they
continually avaUed themselves.
They and not Mr. Lincoln demonstrated to the country the
trae rank of McClellan in the hst of celebrated generals. It
is not at all necessary to question his zeal, or patriotisra, or un-
coraraon capacity. To briefly paraphrase Mr. Lincoln's own
words concerning him : " For the organization of an army, or
for handhng that army in a defensive campaign, second to no
other general. For a -vigorous advance movement, never
ready." And add : " When forced to make such a movement,
incapable of so making it as to succeed."
The last battle on the Virginia peninsula was fought, and
weU fought, on the first of July, 1862, at Malvern HUl. It
was the repulse of a desperate attempt of the Confederates to

THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN. 30I
crush a retreating enemy. It brought out with great clearness
the fact that the Army of the Potomac, with experience of
such battle-names as Seven Pines, Fair Oaks, MechanicsvUle,
and Cold Harbor, had become an army of veterans, and that
its commander held it well in hand. There was no sign of
disorganization or of any lack of discipline or of confidence or
patriotism among the men. Their retreat was secured and
their assailants were too badly shattered to repeat the attack.
StiU, the campaign was a mournful failure, and any attempt to
renew it, under General McCleUan, would have shaken the
hold of the government upon the nation. Neither could he,
then and there, have been safely replaced by any other gen
eral. The most distinguished of his lieutenants did not hesi
tate to say that they could not and would not step into his
place if he should be removed. It was, therefore, inevitable
that the army should abandon the effort to reach Richmond by
that road, and it was accordingly withdrawn, by Mr. Lincoln's
orders, during the month of August, 1862.
After the -withdrawal an increasing importance began to
attach to the declarations made by General McClellan as to
what he could and would have done had he been permitted to
remain and had he been properly supported. That such asser
tions were made, and that they were echoed in many modifica
tions, throughout the country by the growing and organizing
opposition to Mr. Lincoln, was altogether a matter of course.
The fact of the -withdrawal afforded a spurious life to proposi
tions incapable of disproof. A direct issue was created and
assumed by what had actually become two jarring factions in
aU the land.
H, therefore, it were possible to admit all that was then or
is now claimed by General McCleUan and his friends, and to
advance, on behalf of the Administration, no other fact than
this direct issue, that is quite enough.
The President was compelled to relieve General McClellan
of his command at as early a day as was consistent with the

302 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
proper care of the army. To have retained him would haye
been a pubhc assumption by the President of the responsibihty
of his faUure, and would have rendered all but impossible any
further resistance to his demands. So would Mr. Lincoln
have put a fatal weapon into the hands of his enenues, at the
same time that he severed himself at a blow from the patriotic
raasses who sustained him and whose view of the whole matter
closely coincided -with his own.
A task of unusual delicacy was now before him. He was
confronting questions of national politics and statesmanship as
well as of war and the selection of military leaders. There
were men, even araong the friends of the Administration,
who so grossly misconceived the feelings *of the army as to
assert that the soldiers would refuse to fight under any other
comraander than McClellan. Mr. Lincoln troubled himself
very little about the rank and file. He knew them too well
to have any doubt as to their choice between a favorite officer
and their country. At the same time, he was indifferent to
any casual and hasty remarks " the boys" might make about
himself. They did not make many which would have been
disagreeable for him to hear. The result showed that they
understood the campaign they had been fighting better than
the pohticians gave them credit for, and they were beginning
to understand Mr. Lincoln very weU.
The main difficulty now in the mind of the latter was not
at all the removal of McCleUan, but the choice of his successor.
There were reasons for preferring one of the weU-kno-wn chiefs
of the Array of the Potomac, but a brief search among them
failed to discover the right man. Qiute a number of thera had
exhibited high qualities and achieved reputation, but no one
towered sufficiently above his brethren to be regarded by them
as their selection for the first place. Each general felt and said
that he could not take the reins of his falhng leader without
concentrating upon himseK such jealousy and resentment as
would impair his usefulness. What was worse, each seemed to

THE PENINSULAR C A 31 PA ION 303
feel the same thing even more strongly on behaK of any other
general whom Mr. Lincoln might choose to narae.
The conclusion was plain. It was necessary that the new
commander should be a man as far as possible removed from
the operation of corps jealousies and what might almost be re
garded as family contentions and neighborhood rivalries.
MUitary operations in the West had thus far been upon a
smaller scale as to separate battles and campaigns, however vast
in aggregate importance. A number of corapetent men were
rapidly mamf esting theh abihties and raaking names for them
selves. Nevertheless there had not been time or opportunity
for any man to estabhsh his pre-eminence as a general com
manding large bodies of troops in the field. The course of
events had not made a selection; and Mr. Lincoln did not
actuaUy make one, but he did the next best thing. He deter
mined to keep on trying tUl he should find what he wanted.
What was called " The Army of Virginia" had been organ
ized from the several commands operating in the western part
of that State, and the troops reserved for the protection of the
city of Washington. The organization was nominally effected,
on paper, by a general order issued July 26, 1862, and Major-
General John Pope, an officer of admitted merit, had been
placed in command.
The Army of Vhginia, therefore, was ready to receive and
absorb the several detachments of theArmy of the Potomac, as
they arrived, on their return from the Peninsula. The two
armies became somewhat as one, in that manner, under General
Pope, -without any formal change of commanders; but he had
no time to get them at all well in hand, before he was called
upon to meet the forces of the Rebellion upon their old battle
grounds in front of the defences of the national capital.
The evacuation of the Peninsula had set them free from their
task of defending Richmond. They turned to the northward
and broke upon General Pope's army in a series of desperate
encounters, whose disastrous results offered a fitting appendix

304 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
to the sad story which had pre-viously concluded at Malvern
HUl.
During nearly the whole course of this fighting, which in
cluded the second battle of BuU Run, General McClellan was
at or near Washington. He was not exactly in disgrace or
" removed," but he was in the position of a man teraporarily
out of work, for he was a general -without an army. Mr. Lin
coln had carefuUy avoided open collision -with him, and had
treated him in a friendly manner, personaUy, but the general
himseK and the whole country well understood the situation.
The all but instantaneous pohtical result justified the fore
cast of Mr. Lincoln's sagacity, for the Democratic party of the
North, destitute of great names and leaders, at once took up
the cause of McClellan as their own. They had no other, and
it offered them a rallying-ery. When, therefore, at the close
of General Pope's summer campaign, General McClellan reas-
suraed coramand of the forces in the field, he did so as a " po
litical idol " as well as a mihtary leader. Tt was two years yet
to the next Presidential election, but he was aheady the Demo
cratic candidate. It was altogether a new Democratic party,
and not the old, which was then in process of organization. It
was sweeping into its embraces all disappointment, aU discon
tent and sourness, and every element hostUe to Mr. Lincoln
personally and to the manifestly increasing antislavery ten
dencies of the Repubhcan party and the Adrainistration.
If the results of the hard fighting done by the army under
Pope had been less unfavorable, a different course might have
been possible, but the close of the month of August left the
President -with no choice whatever. Loud voices were heard in
all the camps and columns of the array. Not those of any con
siderable majority, doubtless, but hkely to be joined by others
if things should continue to go wrong. Tt was necessary to
heed them and to act at once, for the -victorious rebels, in spite
of the severe losses they had suffered, were about to pour across
the upper Potomac and carry the war into the Northern States.

THE PENINSULAR CAMPAIGN. 305
Mr. Lincoln, as has been seen, had no doubt ataUof General
McCleUan's capacity for the kind of work now to be required
of him. It was not exactly a forward movement. There was
no need to issue any formal order reinstating an officer who
had never been pubhcly or formaUy removed and who still re
tained his fuU rank in the army. Indeed, so littie had been
done to interfere with the personal cordiahties ex-isting between
all the parties concerned, in spite of the tremendous war of
words between their respective admirers and defenders, that
Mr. Lincoln himself, accompanied by General HaUeck, actually
called at McCleUan's house, in Washington, on the morning of
the 2d of September, 1862, instead of sending for him to come
to the War Office or the Executive Mansion.
The whole affair, as it is related by General McCleUan,
sounds wonderfuUy hke Abraham Lincoln's lifelong way of
doing things. He had nothing to say about the past and was
in no wise disturbed by any part of his own previous action.
He had, however, a good deal to say about the present state of
affairs in the army. He said it briefly, and then, relates the
general : " He instructed me to take steps at once to stop and
coUect the stragglers ; to place the works in a proper state of
defense, and to go out and meet and take command of the
army, when it approached the vicinity of the works, then to
place the troops in the best position, — committing everything to
my hands."
General Pope was not " removed," any more than General
McClellan had been. He was stUl in comraand of the Army
of Virginia, but was thus subordinated to General McClellan.
Within two weeks, the Army of the Potomac had quietly
swaUowed the very organization by which its own separate
corps and divisions and brigades had previously been absorbed,
as fast as they arrived from the Peninsula. This result was
strictly logical, for the greater must contain the less, but a
good haK of the troops now under McClellan were men who
had not been with him before Richmond and were by no

306 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
means his admirers. They were " his men" oiUy because of
orders from headquarters, and the speU of his power had been
broken. As to the restoration of the old name to the consohdated
mass, Mr. Lincoln had no objection. " The boys" would fight
as weU, or better, and that was the main thing, for they had
sharp work cut out for them.
Only a small part of the army under Pope had been " disor
ganized," in any correct use of that term. The great mass of
them was in good condition. The men had fought weU and
were proud of it, and had not lost confidence in their irarae
diate commanders. They had fought so well, indeed, that the
forces under General Lee were seriously diminished in num
bers and efficiency. Not aU the glory of their barren -victories
could make up to thera the loss of so many of their best sol
diers, both officers and men.
Had the condition of the troops been at all as some have
misrepresented it, active operations at once, with those very
men, under McClellan, would have been absurdly impossible.
As it really was, he had no manner of difficulty in getting
thera weU in hand as he marched. He performed no miracle,
and theh fighting condition was forcibly exemplified, in a very
few days, at the battles of South Mountain and the Antietam.

MILITARY POLITICS. 307

CHAPTER XXXIX.
MTLITART POLITICS.
Reconstruction— Jarring Counsels— Gen. John C. Fremont— A Premature
Proclamation — A Modification — Another Subordinate laying down the
Law to the President — A New Secretary of War— A Human Library.
The shattered aggregate of rusty political machinery which
feU into Mr. Lincoln's hands, at the close of the Buchanan Ad
ministration, was not a " government."
The tumultuous mass of factions and local organisms under
his nominal chief magistracy was not a " nation."
What he would raake of the one and what would become of
the other were open questions in the minds of all men, of all
parties, in this and other countries, and they were very freely
debated in pubhc and in private.
The post to which Abraham Lincoln was really elected, and
the position he proceeded to occupy and fill, was that of an ex
pression of the deeply rooted and tenacious popular wUl that
there should be a government, and a strong one, and that this
government should organize and perpetuate a nation.
His whole hfe had prepared him for the task. The causes
which prepared the task for him had been subjects of his study
from boyhood. He met all difficulties, as they arose, in a man
ner which testified what familiar acquaintances they were and
how much he had been thinking that they might visit hira
some day.
As has been seen, the new government took form rapidly,
and the sohd ground of the new nation began to arise with a
very permanent look, through and above the turbulent political
flood.

308 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Tt was not as yet easy to designate or hmit the powers of the
government in " war time," but the ideas of other men as to
the extent and nature of these powers were more vague than
were those of the ruler himseK. He saw that he had, as Presi
dent, and acting as Dictator in many relations, the power to do
anything which the people could be made to see it was need
ful or best that he should do. He had no more, because that
and no other is always the hmit of the power of a revolution
ary autocrat. The people had many ways of expressing theh
approval, and their faithful servant had little need to regard
the vagaries of indi-viduals, so long as he was devotedly doing
his duty.
It was essential to the performance of Mr. Lincoln's task
that no element of substantial power should be permitted to
slip away frora him or from either branch of the central gov
ernment which he represented. Congress and the Judiciary
and the Executive were bound together as a unit. It was nat
ural, however, and was a difficulty which came early and never
departed, that the President should find himseK in continual
collision -with the political -views, the aspirations and ambitions,
of the able men around him. That these all had views, aspi
rations, and ambitions, is to be mentioned in their praise and
not in blame.
The difficulty arising from this source was aggravated
by the fact that every general in the army, whether he would
or no, was also in some degree a political general and possible
leader. It was of course that many of even the best should
be aware of this and should cultivate " doctrinal views" of
their o-wn, and by these should at times be hifluenced, more
or less, in their uses of the powers they derived from the cen
tral authority at Washington. Alraost the flrst mihtary officers
to whom high coramands were assigned at once began to ad
rainister those commands in accordance with their pohtical
leanings and lockings forward. Tt was safe to prophesy that
the country would select its party idols and rulers, for a gen-

MILITARY POLITICS. 309
eration or so after the war, from araong those who should
come out of it in the character of " heroes." I-lad the South
succeeded, the Confederacy would necessarily have become a
sort of military despotism, sustained and governed by an
epauletted and army -titled aristocracy. Only the firmness and
wisdom of Mr. Lincoln prevented the Federal government
from drifting, at an early day, under the control of the rank
ing officers of its first mUitary organization. That, too, with
these very officers at wide variance among themselves as to
vital questions of policy and statesmanship.
Two instances suffice to iUustrate the situation and vindi
cate the course pursued by Mr. Lincoln : and it is not at all
necessary to claim for him perfection of -wisdom or of conduct
in either case. It is necessary to say, however, that Mr. Lin
coln did not act from personal motives in either, and that least
of all did he act from jealousy or unkindly feeling.
On the same day in which General McClellan assumed com
mand of the troops in front of Washington, General John C.
Fremont arrived in St. Louis, Missouri, to take comraand of
the Department of the West. There was as yet very httle for
him to take command of, and two thirds of the populations of
Southern Illinois, Missouri, and Kentucky, including many
thousands who afterwards became devoted supporters of the
national government, were wavering in almost helpless inde
cision as to which way they should go, to the Confederacy or
to the Union. Tn the city of St. Louis itself leading business
men were contributing timidly to the mihtary funds of both
Rebel and Union undertakings, and begging the agents of
either side not to make pubhc their names or their payments.
Tn the rural districts of Missouri the loyal people were gen
eraUy overawed by their more "violent as well as better pre
pared and organized antagonists. Tn Southern Illinois the
majority of the people were from Southern States, densely ig
norant and strongly pro-slavery in sentiment. Their geo
graphical position and httle more, as yet, retained them under

310 ABRAHA3I LINCOLN.
the sway of an " Abolition government." Kentucky was still
occupying an attitude of " neutrality" which was repudiated
by Mr. Lincoln, but which answered a most important pur
pose in keeping the State out of the first mad rush of the Re
bellion. Its people were ha-ving time given them to think the
matter over and, in due season, to welcome Federal armies as
deliverers and defenders.
General Fremont was a brave and intelhgent officer, doubt
less, although he never at any time established a reputation as
a " general." Tt is fah to say that he never had a good oppor
tunity. He had quahties of mind which prevented him from
being a successful " statesman." He was a man of reckless
daring, undisguised ambition, strong imagination, and was
already prominent as a pohtical leader. He had been the
"standard-bearer" selected by the People's party for their
hopeless, but earnest and first aggressive campaign of 1856,
and a good deal of the popular enthusiasm aroused for him
then, as a candidate for the Presidency, still clung to his name
in 1861. The romance of his early achievements as an ex
plorer of the Rocky Mountains, and of his dashing mihtary
exploits in Cahfornia, had been made widely known during
his presidential campaign. There were many, indeed, who re
garded him as in some inscrutable way the " founder" of the
party which had nominated him, and which was so speedily
reorganized as the Repubhcan party after its first briUiant
struggle. General Fremont was a Radical, with an opportunity in his
hands for making himseK the representative man and leader of
all the Radicals of the North. He took the opportunity very
sincerely but very humanly. His iraraediate ambition, be
yond doubt, was patriotic and mihtary; but it naturaUy, ine-vi-
tably, had a political horizon beyond and all around it. There
is no need of flinching a fact so entirely devoid of anything
blameworthy. He had, at the outset, several difficulties with
the War Office at Washington, and in sorae of these the record

MILITARY POLITICS 311
favors him decidedly. He took hold of his work with charac
teristic promptness and vigor, and, under many disadvantages,
began to coUect and arm troops. He also began to fortify his
base of action, St. Louis, so that it might be safely left in sub
sequent operations. So far all was well ; but before he had
forces enough to make sure of any part of his infant depart
ment, on the 31st of August, 1861, he issued a proclamation,
altogether on his own account. He declared martial law
within specified hmits, and threatened instant death to all
rebels found -within those hnes -with arms in their hands. He
declared aU real and personal property of all persons taking up
arms against the government confiscated to the public use, and
theh slaves, K they had any, were declared free.
It was a curious docuraent, in which a subordinate army
officer, in charge of a department under Mr. Lincoln, assumed
to exercise the joint and several powers of the President, Con
gress, and the Judiciary. Tt was doubtless intended as a mili
tary measure, to awe the rebel elements around him and im
prove the morals of his own little army ; but it was, in fact,
something more. Tt was a political firebrand hurled among
the combustible populations above described, and the effect
threatened to be disastrous, both there and elsewhere. The
effect upon General Fremont's personal popularity with the
most loyal elements of the populations of the free States was,
for the moment, aU he could have asked for. He had appealed,
in one breath, to patriotism, hatred of slavery, and to the vague,
popular lust for raore -vigorous raeasures. A great raany ex
cellent people were temporarily misled into loud approval of
his usurpation of authority over life and property, and failed
to see the mad impohcy of his really empty threats. The gen
eral thus presented the President with a problem of more than
common difficulty ; but, at the same time, he performed an
important service. He at least warned the waverers in the
doubtful districts that there might be a wrath to come, and
raany of them needed such a warning. Even in overstepping

312 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
his own powers he gave the government an opportunity for
the better defining its own. He directed the perceptions of
all men, in good season, towards the sure result of the Rebel
hon — ^that " abohtion of slavery" which so few were yet pre
pared to face and consider.
Mr. Lincoln was disposed to give Fremont an opportunity
for correcting, as of his own raotion, the raore manifest ex
cesses of his proclamation ; but the general received his remon
strances, for such they were, with a plain refusal to recede.
Even the President's intimation that Congress then had in hand
the subject of the confiscation of rebel property does not seem
to have opened the somewhat seK-willed commander's eyes to
the fact that the legislative and judicial branches of the gen
eral government had sole power for the making of laws con
cerning the o-wnership of real and personal property. As to
the emancipation of slaves, especially, he requested that, K his
proclamation in that regard were to be modified, the President
should do it for hira, sho-wing that he, the general, had not re
treated from a hasty and ill-considered advanced position, but
had been overruled from Washington. He claimed that it was
as much his province to initiate such a pohcy, in the depart
ment for which he was responsible, as to adopt and order any
other strategic or tactical movement, as of troops. If the
President disagreed with him, he prayed that the President
should take the responsibility of pubhcly saying so. What
ever was Fremont's motive, — and no man could question his
political sincerity, — the effect of this would be to leave to him,
untouched and perhaps augmented, the entire benefit of the
popularity he had evidently won. Mr. Lincoln was quite will
ing to resign to the general all that part of the " spoils of war,"
and in a dispatch dated October 6, 1861, he said : " Tt is there
fore ordered that said clause of said proclamation be so modi
fied, held, and construed as to conform to and not to transcend
the pro-visions on the same subject contained in the Act of
Congress entitled ' An Act to confiscate property used for in-

MILITARY POLITICS. 3I3
surrectionary purposes,' approved August 6, 1861, and that
such Act be published at length, with this order."
General Fremont yielded externally, but set the seal of his
disapprobation upon the order by manumitting, on the follow
ing day, two slaves, the property of a St. Louis rebel. His
subsequent management of the affairs of his department dis
played both his abilities and peculiarities ; and before the mid
dle of October — in spite of what he had accomplished in rais
ing and equipping troops, in clearing Missouri of guerilla
bands, in securing Caho, an important enlrepot for supphes
at the junction of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, in beginning
the afterwards famous fleet of gunboats, and other efficient
preparations for good work, — Mr. Lincoln felt compelled to
replace him by the appointment of an officer less brilhantly
erratic and -with fewer probabilities of political aspiration.
The enthe nation better understood its relations to both the
President and the general before the arrival of another Presi
dential election. At that time, however, it was not so well
comprehended that the President's action was taken on
groimds of pubhc pohcy and sound statesmanship. Tt was
contrasted strongly by many -with the retention in power of
General McCleUan, equally well known to be in training as a
candidate for pohtical power, but proposing to reach it by fol
io-wing a very different pohtical highway. Tt is at all events
to General Fremont's credit that his instincts were in favor of
loyalty and freedom, and his deeds in the direction of military
activity and efficiency.
At the time of General McCleUan's appointment to the com
mand of the Army of the Potomac he was still a young man.
He had his name yet to win as a commander in the field. He
had attained neither experience nor distinction as a pohtician,
much less as a statesman. He had no position whatever, ex
cept as one of Mr. Lincoln's military subordinates. Neverthe
less, so strong were the temptations of the hour and so raani
fest were the openings leading to possible political eminence.

314 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
that we speedily find him undertaking to advise and even to
direct the policy of the government. It is almost beyond be
lief at this day, but in less than one year from his appointment,
under date of July 7, 1862, we find General McClellan writing
to President Lincoln from Harrison's Landing, and that too
with his Peninsular campaign just behind him, as follows :
" Mihtary power should not be allowed to interfere with the
relations of ser-yitude, either by supporting or impairing the
authority of the master, except for repressing disorder, as in
other cases."
This meant, being interpreted :
" Whatever else may be the object of this war, it must not
disturb Slavery, and any slave accidentally relieved of his fet
ters must have thera replaced as soon as the accident can be
pro-vided for."
The tone and matter of that letter, or of any one of several
others, supply a window through which can plainly be dis
cerned the writer's estimate of his o-wn position, prerogative,
and power, as well as his clear understanding that a large con
stituency in the army and among the people already regarded
him as their pohtical representative.
How nearly correct his estimate was may partly be gathered
from the election returns of the year 1864. A study of these,
and of events between their date and the date of this letter to
Mr. Lincoln, -wiU lead to the conclusion that in July, 1862, he
was more strongly fortified as a political leader than he ever
was afterwards. He was strong then in every respect but in
his lack of the legal authority to retain his military command
for one day after Mr. Lincoln should decide that he had held
it long enough. If an election could then have been held, its
results would have been vastly more in doubt. That was but
nine months after the removal of Fremont, and nothing had
occurred in the interim. East or West, to encourage the people
as to the probable end and outcome of the war. The more ex
posed of the districts endangered by the over-hasty zeal of

MILITARY POLITICS. 315
Fremont were still being fought over, backwards and forwards,
with varying successes, by contending armies. The " successes"
had not exhibited quite so much variation on the Potomac, and
this, too, was laid at Mr. Lincoln's door.
It was plainly needful that General McClellan should be in
duced to give up plapng President for a httle while. It was
impossible to give him troops for the renewal of his advance
upon Richmond, even if it had been wise to do so. His urgent
demand for them was denied and overruled, but the fact that
the President had no troops which could safely be sent him
was one which he and his partisans could and did ignore.
Nevertheless, his pohtical fortunes culminated when the Army
of the Potomac was transferred, even in part and for a few
days, from under his immediate command.
Tt was but for a few days, apparently. General Pope's sum
mer campaign of hot marches and hard battles, by no means all
of which are to be classed as defeats, must be regarded as little
more than a carapaign to keep the enemy occupied and checked
during the removal of the Army of the Potomac from Harri
son's Landing to Acquia Creek and the lines opposite Wash
ington. The fighting covered a retreat.
At this time the coimtry at large believed itseK to be strain
ing its every nerve to carry on the war. Tt was mistaken, but
the time had not come for the safe application of greater pres
sure. The assistance of Congress would be required for that.
The President's powers were temporarily restricted to the
utilization of such war material as he had on hand or within
easy reach. Tt did not suffice for the creation of new armies
to be expended by General McClellan on the wrong road to
Richmond. Other changes had taken place. The Department of War
had been revolutionized during the first months of 1862.
When Mr. Lincoln appointed Simon Cameron his first Secre
tary of War, he unintentionally assigned that very capable gen
tleman to a post at which he was as sure to fall as was the color-

316 ABRAHA3f LINCOLN.
bearer of a " forlorn hope." Upon him rushed the first and
most impudent swarm of contractors, speculators, adventurers,
plunderers of every narae and kind. Upon him surely feU the
hasty anger of the people for the inevitable crudities of the
first year of the existence of the army. He was compelled to
resign, for the good of the ser-vice ; but Mr. Lincoln answered
bis detractors by appointing him minister to Russia, the best
national friend we then had among the larger powers of
Europe. Mr. Cameron doubtless had his defects as a Secre
tary of War in such a time, but his career enabled Mr. Lincoln
to make up his mind as to the kind of man the place required.
He knew just such a man. His narae was Ed-win M. Stanton,
a resident of the District of Columbia, an old-time Democrat
in politics, a lawyer of distinction, but without popularity any
where or personal foUowing of any kind. He was absolutely
sure never to have either. His sturdy loyalty had been proved
as by fire during a brief service as a member of Buchanan's
last Cabinet. He had helped to keep the governmental wreck
from being entirely swept away before Mr. Lincoln's arrival.
Mr. Lincoln had met Mr. Stanton before that day, and knew
him to be the possessor of certain personal quahties which were
as rare as they were likely now to become valuable. In the
sumraer of the year 1859 Mr. Lincoln went to Cincinnati,
Ohio, as one of the associate counsel in the great " McCorraick
reaper case." The leading counsel on his side was Mr. Stanton,
and that gentleman had imbibed a bitter prejudice, political or
other-wise, against his ungainly eoUeague from Ilhnois. Such
was, in consequence, his habitual and pointed rudeness that
Mr. Lincoln's seK-respect compelled him to rethe from the
case. When he got home he remarked that he " had never
been so brutally treated as by that man Stanton."
He was -with him long enough, however, to discover in him
a pecuhar executive ability, thelessness, disregard of obstacles
and a ravenous capacity for the mastery of details, rare indeed
among men, while the bluntness, directness, even the harshness

3nLITARY POLITICS. 317
amounting to brutidity, were gifts eminently desirable in the
Secretary of War of the United States during the years which
were now to follow. Tt was a certainty that men would have
no ground whereon to accuse Mr. Stanton of favoritism or of
paltering -with treason, and his official chief would never be in
effect betrayed by weak-kneed subserviency. The latter con
sideration was almost beyond price in those days.
The new Secretary would be just the man to stand between
the Treasury and the contractors, at the same time that he
would relieve the President of some of the most trying respon
sibihties of army management.
There was much criticism of this appointment among the
friends of Mr. Lincoln, and they gave him loads of advice.
He was urged to appoint a man from New England, or one
who might be considered in some beneficial manner pohtically
or geographically representative. He had done a great deal of
that sort of thing in the first organization of his Cabinet, and
the net results had not impressed him with its importance as a
source of anything he was now in need of. He did not beheve
that any one segment of the national territory contained a raan
sufficiently representative of its population to be able to add an
ounce of strength to the Administration by his appointraent
to office. He was weU aware, on the other hand, that much
strength might easily be lost by the appointment of a man ob
noxious to extremists of any description.
Mr. Stanton had not as yet made himseK offensive to any
faction or fraction. To -wise friends who expressed a fear of
mischief to come from what they called his " impulsiveness,"
Mr. Lincoln rephed : " Well, we may have to treat him as they
are sometimes obhged to treat a Methodist minister I know of
out West. He gets -wrought up to so high a pitch of excite
ment in his prayers and exhortations that they are obhged to
put bricks in his pockets to keep hira down. We may be
obliged to treat Stanton the same way, but I guess we will let
him jump awhile first."

318 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
The restraining power hinted at in the anecdote was always
at Mr. Stanton's elbow. His superfluous energy consumed
itself in such ceaseless toil that, when the war was ended and
the duties to which Mr. Lincoln assigned him were all done,
the great War Secretary had expended his life for his country
and very soon lay do-wn for his long rest. That he would
make countless enemies was well understood in the hour of his
appointment, and that he continually did so was no surprise at
all to Mr. Lincoln. That he should make many mistakes,
especially in minor matters rapidly decided and acted upon,
was as certain as sunset, but he never once made the cardinal
blunders, in such a tirae, of cowardice, indecision, or inaction.
He was, as nearly as might be, the very man Mr. Lincoln re
quired for the hard place he was called to fill. He supphed
quahties and training which had not been given to the Presi
dent. Between the two men, so different, so strangely thrown
together, there grew to be a bond of rautual reliance which
had in it a remarkable thread of personal, human tenderness.
The constant study of military questions forced upon Mr.
Lincoln's mind a perception of certain other defects in his o-wn
preparation for the post of Commander-in-Chief. Lack of
technical knowledges and of the specific trainings of the mih
tary schools hampered him at every turn, and it was too late for
htm to take a "West Point course" of education. He could
not even give the time required for the full examination of
authorities or for miscellaneous consultations with all the gen
erals from aU the multiplying commands. It was needful,
therefore, that he should have at his elbow some man whose
carefully tiUed and well-stored brain should be in itseK a
library of mihtary sciences and knowledges, -with aU its vol
umes ready to open at the page. Precisely such a man had been
made ready for him in the person of Major-General Henry
W. HaUeck. This officer had aheady distinguished himself by
his management of affairs intrusted to him in the West, but
Mr. Lincoln perceived that his best services were not to be

MILITARY POLITICS. 31 9
rendered hi the field. He was essentially a military scholar,
ha-ving devoted his life to studies, researches, and writings, of
such a nature and quality as to mark him unmistakably as the
man of men to supply Mr. Lincoln's technical and other de
ficiencies. On the 11th of July, 1862, General HaUeck was
appointed General-in-Chief of all the armies of the United
States, and reached Washington in the latter part of the month
to assume control. Tt was not an unimportant consideration
that thenceforth generals of armies in the field would receive
their orders from a professional soldier, ranking them, and not
frora a " ci-vihan" of any grade whatever.
Tt is easy to overlook or behttle the practical statesmanship
displayed in the creation of such an office as that to which
General HaUeck was appointed. The " statute laws" of the
land made no mention of it, and the appointment carried -with
it no perraanent promotion or increase of pay. The " General-
in-Chief " had a thankless task before him : almost as much
so as had the Secretary of War. Victories won would surely
give all theh glory to the generals in immediate command of
the forces -winning them. Sore-hearted men in search of scape
goats for the blame of defeats and failures would continually
have one prepared and named for them at the right hand of
the President at Washington. He would receive small credit
for good ad-vice, and his powers for preventing mischief were
hmited on every side in spite of his sounding title. This was
strikingly exemplified by the results of the Fredericksburg
campaign, undertaken against his counsel, lost as he expected,
and much of the blarae of it east upon his head by a host of
uninformed faultfinders.
It was of the last importance to the stabihty of the Admin
istration that the tides of sure disappointment and discontent
should rise and dash and be dissipated against such breakwaters
as Stanton and HaUeck and not be perraitted to assail injuri
ously the one man whose personal hold upon the popular heart
and confidence was -vital to the existence of the nation. Stu-

320 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
dents of the Constitution of the British Empire may possibly
find an analogy there by looking for it.
It may fairly be said that the close of the summer of 1862
found Mr. Lincoln's official staff, for the first time, fully pre
pared to deal -with the work before him and them. Surely a
year and a haK was no excessive length of tirae for the accom-
phshment of so great a feat of wisdora in selection. He had
done well with such materials as he had -within his reach in the
beginning. It is not easy to see how he could have done bet
ter. Now, at last, he was efficiently pro-vided, but before hira
opened gloomily " the dark days" of the war. The prospect or
hope of a speedy collapse of the Rebelhon had disappeared,
and, for the moment, the Nation stood upon the defensive.

DRAWN BATTLES. 821

CHAPTER XL.
DRAWN BATTLES.
The Fighting under Pope — News from the Army — The Changes of Com
manders — Lee in Maryland — The Antietam — Exhausted Patience —
Removal of McClellan — A Great Misunderstanding.
The position of the Army of the Potomac during the last
week of August, 1862, and the days next following, caUed for
the exercise of uncommon firmness and discretion.
Genei^ McCleUan arrived from Harrison's Landing on the
24th of August, and reported to General HaUeck for orders.
On the 27th he removed his quarters from Acquia Creek to
Alexandria, and was assigned to the duty of forwarding troops
to General Pope. Tt was a time of universal gloom and deep
excitement. The tongues of rumor, detraction, of every kind
of bitterness, were so busy with all the questions of the hour
that it was impossible to sift the true from the false of even
what purported to be "e-vidence." This difficulty was seri
ously comphcated by the practical untrustworthiness of any
dispatches. The general in command had done his duty and
knew it, and his despatches expressed his indomitable courage
and confidence much more accurately than they did the con
dition of the army or the results of recent battles.
On the 30th of August was fought the battle of Manassas
(commonly caUed the Second Battle of Bull Run) ; and the
]3attle of ChantiUy, which followed, may be regarded as part of
it so far as the effect upon the army or people is concemed. A
part of the army had behaved badly and was demoralized, but
only a part. Tt was unfortunate that the country at large and
the soldiers out of the fight obtained a first and lasting impres-

322 ABRAHA3I LINCOLN.
sion of the fighting under Pope from stragglers of broken regi
ments reporting to newspaper correspondents. More was lost
in this way than could easily be remedied. General Pope
himself reported of the Bull Run affair : " The troops are in
good heart and marched off the field without the least hurry or
confusion. Their conduct was very fine. . . . The enemy is
badly whipped, and we shaU do weU enough. I think this
army entitled to the gratitude of the country."
General HaUeck was inclined to take the same -view of the
matter, and said to General Pope, " You have done nobly.'^'
So he had. And the more carefully the records of that short
campaign are searched, the better is the figure cut by its gen
eral, -with some reservations as to his use of the pen. He
seems to have been unaware of the feeling and opinion exist
ing araong sorae of his subordinates. So was General HaUeck,
for a few days. But no such blindness troubled Mr. Lincoln.
The President had heard from the Army in many ways, and
even from an inf orraal councU of war of its corps and di-vision
commanders. There was something almost dramatic about that " council "
and its consequences. Immediately after the Second Battle of
Bull Run, a call was made upon the civil employees of the
Washington Departments for volunteers to go over into Vir
ginia and aid in caring for the wounded. Many went ; and
among them was a brother of one of the President's secretaries.
This young man was met upon the field by a corps commander
whom he knew, and was at once taken to the headquarters of
another corps commander. Other well-known officers were
present or were sent for. They came, they remained a longer
or shorter time, they conversed freely and went away. The
young man was directed to note down every name and every
statement of opinion given, but not to be understood as doing
anything of the kind. It was a strictly confidential inter
change of military -views of the situation, and some of the ex
pressions were quite strong and marked by indi-viduahties. At

DRAWN BATTLES. 323
the close, the corps commander remarked to his young friend :
" We could not send aU that in a dispatch to Washington ; but
the quicker it is repeated to the President, the better for the
army and the country."
Means of rapid transportation were at once provided, and
the next morning the weary, muddy, and, from his ser-vices
among the wounded, somewhat bloodstained young raan was
closeted first with Mr. Lincoln and then with General HaUeck
and Mr. Stanton. The details of his report were never raade
pubhc : but Mr. Lincoln had heard from the army. He had the
unanimous though unofficial and entirely free opinion of a
dozen of its best officers, perhaps of a score, that it could no
longer be successfully handled by General Pope, with the
added assurance that these men spoke for large numbers of
theh companions of aU grades and arms. Of the officers who
constituted that inf orraal but iraportant council of war, sorae
knew not at all that they were members of it, but more spoke
with a fuU understanding and spoke directly for the purposes
in hand. The greater number of them are dead, and so is their
messenger, and so are all the men to whom he delivered his
message. The effect was instantaneous, as may be seen by a
comparison of dates. The President obviously had but one
duty to perform, and he performed it without hesitation.
General Pope was not formally removed, but he hterally
drifted out of the command as General McClellan drifted back
into it. The Army of Virginia quietly ceased to be, and the
Army of the Potomac set out at once for the battle-fields of
South Mountain and the Antietam. Glad enough would
Mr. Lincoln have been, and well would it have been for the
country, K he could on many another emergency have listened
to a fuU and unreserved expression of the views of men hold
ing corresponding positions in that and other armies ; but the
rules of the service, and the rigid requirements of railitary
etiquette, and the impossibility of providing ways of access to
himseK, were aU prohibitory.

324 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
It was true, as General Pope had reported, that the army as
a whole was in good heart and good condition. He might well
feel personally hurt and injured that it should so drift out from
under lum. General McClellan was again in command from
and after September 2d. On the 3d he had in his hands in
formation which con-vinced him of General Lee's intention to
cross the upper Potomac into Maryland. It was necessary
that he should move at once, establishing his relations with the
forces under his command while on the march. This is the
process commonly spoken of as his reorganization of the army.
The movement of the Confederate troops across the Potomac
began at Leesburg between the 4th and 5th of September.
Beyond all question they and their leaders beheved that they
had come to stay. They had exaggerated ideas of the injuries
they had infficted upon the Army of the Potomac and the
forces under Pope. Still more erroneous was their conception
of the state of pubhc opinion in Maryland. Wilder and more
frantic stiU were their ideas of the condition of affahs at the
North and of the relations of what they caUed " the Lincoln
despotism" to the masses of the people. Tn one point only
were they enthely correct. A series of -victories in Maryland
over the Union armies would undoubtedly have converted their
dreams into something very like realities. The stake was tre
mendous, and it was played for with aU the boldness of exult
ing self-confidence, with the full consciousness of courage and
abihty, -with, the deliberate purpose of fighting superior num
bers, and the expectation of beating them if those superior
numbers could at all be induced to face thera upon the field of
battle. It is at least apparently true, also, that they were mis
led as to the whereabouts of a considerable part of their old
antagonists of the peninsular battle-grounds.
General McClellan moved very slowly, but the Confederate
commanders were pushing their invasion with tremendous
vigor. On the 15th of September, without any battle at all,
they captured the entire Union force aimlessly permitted to

DRAWN BATTLES. 325
remain at Harper's Ferry, of about 11,000 men, with 73 pieces
of artillery and with valuable material of sraall arms and stores.
No mihtary critic has ever discovered a good excuse for this
blunder, and Mr. Lincoln could find none at the time. Ac
companying the news of the loss at Harper's Ferry were Gen
eral McCleUan's reports of a brace of severe engagements at
South Mountain, commonly described as the battle of that
name. About 30,000 Confederates were driven out of good
positions after a hard fight. The nature of the ground pre
vented concentration of the troops on either side or the effec
tive use of superior numbers, but no high degree of " general
ship" was exhibited. As usual, the Rebels claimed a " -victory,"
but it was not of the kind it would be necessary for them to
-win K they desired to make a long visit in Maryland. It was
also claimed by General McClellan as a -victory ; and so it was,
for he had not been defeated ; but it was not what it should
have been, and it prepared the way for the greater failure im
mediately to f oUow.
The 15th and 16th of September, after the victory of South
Mountain, did not contain rauch pursuing of the vanquished
enemy, but on the 17th was fought the reaUy terrible battle of
the Antietam Creek. It was not at all a weU-managed fight,
but it was splendidly contested by the armies on either side.
The Union forces engaged had somewhat the advantage of
numbers, as the rebels had of position. The forraer would
have had a greater nuraerical advantage if their coraraander
had made a proper use of them. That he did not do so enabled
General Lee to extract a " drawn battle" from the jaws of what
should have been a destractive defeat. He was then permitted
to raarch away into Virginia unmolested. Not aU the urgency
brought to bear upon General McCleUan by Mr. Lincoln could
induce him to interfere with the movements of the enemy he
had so thoroughly shattered, although he could have done so
with troops who had not been under fire and were fresh.
The patience of Mr. Lincoln was once more exhausted by

326 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the short history of McCleUan's new command of the Army of
the Potomac. Too much had been wasted of men and mate
rials and precious opportunities. Too many costly advantages
had been thrown away, and too many orders recklessly disre
garded. The remaining days of September and the whole of
October were indeed consumed in unavaihng efforts to drive
hira forward, while a force of Rebel cavahy under Stuart
dashed across the Potomac and derisively rode aU around him.
On the 26th of October he began at last to move his army
across the river. It was all over by the 2d of November ; but
McClellan was stiU in doubt as to what he should do -with it
afterwards, and, on the 7th of November, he was finally re
lieved of his coraraand. General Arabrose E. Burnside was
named as his successor.
It is manifest from the record that the latter general was
selected from among a dozen officers of nearly equal fame, be
cause he was in some respects the least objectionable and had
aheady held, with good success, an independent mUitary com
raand in North Carolina.
It seems hardly necessary to say, but to some it may be so,
that Mr. Lincohi would not have removed General McCleUan
for other than strictly mUitary reasons. Tn fact, without such
reasons, clearly so marked out as to be read by all unprejudiced
observers, it would not have been politically safe to do so.
Even as it was, the removal was both politicaUy dangerous and
pohtically necessary.
General McCleUan was already the representative of pro-
slavery Unionism at the North, and of all the forms of discon
tent which were wUhng to co-operate -with it. His mistakes
were his o-wn. If he had obeyed Mr. Lincoln's urgency and
consented to win a few more victories, or had made good use
of such as were forced upon hira, he could not have been set
aside -without assuring hira an overwhelming triumph at the
following Presidential election. Had he been left in com
mand, there is reasoii to doubt if the course of events would

DRA WN BA TTLES. 327
not have been such that the destruction of slavery for which
Mr. Lincohi was preparing would have been out of the ques
tion. There is a sense, not hard to find, in which the removal of
General McCleUan is a part of the Proclamation of Emancipa
tion which foUowed later. All antislavery raen understood it
as a teUing blow at their pohtical opponents, as well as a thing
done for the good of the army and of the Union cause. Tt sent
a shock even through the minds of Southern leaders, for they
weU understood the di-visions of public sentiment at the North.
They were by no means as blind as were theh followers to the
swKt changes of opinion concerning them and their cherished
institution. They knew what this meant, and it was as if they
had lost a battle.
It raay almost be said that General McCleUan deserved the
thanks of his country for giving the President good mihtary
reasons for making a removal so eminently desirable politi
caUy. At the North, at the tirae, raultitudes received the news
-with a storm of angry execrations. As they understood the
inatter, a great general im justly put aside had generously corae
to the rescue at a critical moraent. He had ralhed and re
organized a ruined army, and with it had won tremendous -vic
tories, and had dehvered his country from invasion if not from
conquest. Tt is for many to this day impossible to grasp the
situation as it was, or to regard such a setting forth as has been
made above as other than grossly partisan. They cannot be
made to believe that at the battle of the Antietam McClellan
had at his disposal at least twice as many men as had Lee, aU
every inch as good soldiers as his, as well equipped, as full of
fight and enthusiasm, and that yet Lee actually fought with
about equal numbers, the rest of McCleUan's army not fighting
at all. They are blind to the simple facts of the drawn battle,
and the unhindered escape, and the non-employment of forces
in hand.

328 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER XLL

EMANCIPATION.

The War-Power and the Constitution. — A Struggle of Life and Death —
The Hour and the Man — The Proclamation — Waiting for a Victory —
An Unprepared People — Suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus —
Visiting the Army — The Reply of the Opposition.
It is necessary at this point to recall -with care the record
of Mr. Lincoln as a life-long enemy of human slavery, and to
understand fuUy the position he was forced to occupy regard
ing it.
Tn the year 1850 he said to his friend Mr. Stuart : " The
time -will come when we must all be Democrats or Abolition
ists. When that tirae comes, my mind is made up." Tn his
great speech at Bloomington, Ulinois in 1858, he said: "I
beheve this government cannot endure permanently, half slave
and haK free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, — I
do not expect the house to f aU, — but I do expect it wiU cease
to be divided. Tt will becorae aU one thing or all the other."
In the private conversation, as in the public utterance, he
clearly expressed a con-viction which had become a part of his
hfe. That conviction could not have been taken from him by
any possible course of events or power of argument. From
the date of the Bloomington speech, and from hour to hour,
the course of events did but deepen as they justified the sure
processes of his reason and their unchanged conclusion.
Before the war began, he saw, as did many other men, that
a success of the secession conspiracy and a di-vision of the na
tional territory meant more than the triumph and perraanence
of human slavery in the Southern Confederacy. It meant also

EMANCIPATION. 329
a perpetual predominance of proslavery influence in the nomi
nally Free North. That influence was already so strong there
as to threaten the stabihty of an openly Abohtion Administra
tion. Its power was made to be felt even in strictly military
matters from the beginning. Mr. Lincoln found it grapphng
-with him for the mastery and assailing him in every imagina
ble disguise.
The fact grew plainer to the minds of all men, as the strife
went on, that the institution of slavery was the real prize for
which the armies were contending. Still, time was required
to so flLx and confirm the hearts and minds of the great majority
that they could endure to have their secret con-victions formu
lated and proclaimed.
Mr. Lincoln understood the people very well. He was a
sort of revolutionary dictator. He was ready and -willing to
use aU powers given him by his un-written coraraission to
" See to it that the Commonwealth suffers no harm." He was
also a Constitutional President, under an oath to protect the
rights of aU citizens of every part of the country. If he were
not President of the South, he had no right to send troops
there, to restore order and enforce his authority. The people
of the seceded States were stiU his fellow-citizens, or it would
have been idle to caU them " rebels." Against them he cher
ished no atom of merely personal animosity, and he was desti
tute of mere sectional prejudices. His course cannot be at all
understood by any man who narrowly imagines him as tliink-
ing only of his duties to the populations -within the Union
army hnes.
Tn his inaugural address, he said : " I have no purpose,
directly or indirectly, to interfere -with the institution of
slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no law
ful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." And,
speaking as if to the people of the South : " You can have no
conflict without being yourselves the aggressors : we are not
enemies, but friends."

330 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
They insisted on becoming his enemies ; but he continued to
be their friend to the end, even whUe resisting to the utter
most the aggressors who demanded and compeUed conffict
when he pleaded for peace.
No change of any consequence was made, or could be made,
constitutionally, in the written law of the land respecting
slavery. Mr. Lincoln's mind underwent no change as to his
view of his " la-wf ul right" thence derived. Any such right
must therefore corae to him in another way ; but he steadily
and thoughtfully prepared himseK to exercise it in the hour of
its coming.
At the time of Fremont's premature " proclamation" no law
or lawful right had as yet been created. The power to set
aside written law was inherent in the " dictatorship," but could
come even to the dictator only from the hand of necessity and
for the safety of the hfe of the Comraonwealth. It was not
personal to Mr. Lincoln, or, through or without him, to any of
his subordinate officers.
That slave^-y must die or that the Commonwealth must die
became gradually but more and more plainly manifest. It was
also plain that the death of the pubhc enemy must be by the
hands of the war power and as a mUitary execution, without
waiting for the slow and doubtful processes of ci-vil procedure.
The remaining questions related only to the time and manner of
an act so important. On the 18th of March and on the 16th of
July, 1862, Mr. Lincoln had approved and signed Acts of
Congress the effect of which was to give due form of law to
General B. F. Butler's doctrine that all slaves of rebels in arms
were " contraband of war." These Acts, with a little help,
would have proved fatal to the institution in due time ; but
they dealt -with individuals and not with geographical areas or
entire communities, and were subject to Congressional action
in repeal or modification. They did much towards preparing
the way for better things, however, and the President -wisely
embodied them in his first proclamation. He thereby absorbed

EMANCIPATION. 331
in and united with his own action as Dictator and President
the previous action of the legislative branch of the government.
Members of Cojigress were enabled to say to each other, " The
Commander-in-Chief has issued a general order embodying and
enforcing our legislation."
The " general order" contained and enforced such amplifica
tions as rendered the Dictatorial Proclamation forever inde
pendent of the Legislative Act.
That the "view here taken may not be deemed strained or
overwrought, it is best to condense it into Mr. Lincoln's own
words. Tn a letter dated April 4, 1864, written to Mr. George
C. Hodges, of Frankfort, Kentucky, he says :
" I felt that measures other-wise unconstitutional might be
come lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of
the Constitution, through the preservation of the Nation.
When, early in the war. General Fremont attempted military
emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an
indispensable necessity. When, a little later, General Cameron,
then Secretary of War, suggested the arming of the blacks, I
objected, because I did not yet think the indispensable neces
sity had come."
Through these few sentences the whole course of his mental
operations may be unerringly traced.
The hour he waited for came at last, and his action came
-with it. The deed itself, and aU the manner of its doing, bring
out in striking iUustration the inner life of the man. Tt sets
forth once more his lifelong characteristic of foresight and
pre-vious preparation, that so dehvered him from ruinous sur
prises. Even as he had patiently waited for the Rebelhon,
kno-wing that it would surely come, so he now waited for the
hour of the Emancipation Proclamation, -with faith in God
that it also would come.
In the summer of 1862 he prepared a draft of the impor
tant document. At about the last of July or the first of Au
gust he called a fuU meeting of his Cabinet. The members

332 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
of it had no information of the reason of their coming together,
and Mr. Lincoln seemed in no hurry to give them any. They
were eminently representative men, and he kaew that by the
effect upon them of the paper he was about to read to them he
could fairly judge its probable effect upon the nation. He
was not yet prepared, mentally, for the struggle before him.
He even trifled for a few minutes, internally steadying his o-wn
powers and gauging the status of the sober statesmen around
him. He read to them a chapter of a book by " Orpheus C.
Kerr," and heartily laughed at its drolleries. No raan among
them was aware of, or could penetrate, the depths of thought
and emotion, or discern the gathering strength of will, behind
that laugh. The seemingly frivolous delay had unseen uses ;
but the members of the Cabinet looked at one another -with a
gro-wing sense that their personal dignity was in peril. All
cause for such nervousness disappeared wh'en that of the Presi
dent himself had been removed and he had adjusted himseK
to his task.
His deraeanor suddenly underwent a change. The amused
humorist vanished. In his place was a man who had reached
a new grandeur of moral elevation to which he was pro
foundly anxious to raise each soul among them. He announced
his purpose and read the paper which he had prepared. He
stated, in good set terras, that he had not called them together
to ask their advice, but to lay the subject-matter of a procla
mation before them, suggestions as to which would be in order
after they had heard it read. It was not so much for general
consultation, therefore, as to finally announce a settled purpose
and to receive counsel on minor points.
There is no accurate report of the debate which followed,
but the scene itself is pictorially presented, with an extreme of
careful exactness, in the painting by Mr. F. B. Carpenter, pre
served in the Capitol at Washington. Mr. Chase, it is said,
¦wished the language made stronger with reference to the arm
ing of the blacks, not percei-ving that the emergency was al-

EMANCIPATION. 333
ready loaded to the very limits of its power to endure. Mr.
Blair opposed the proclamation on the ground that it would
cost the Administration the fall elections, not seeing that the
gift of freedom to the slave opened a perpetual fountain of
popular support. Other remarks were made ; but little seems
to have been effectively said until Mr. Seward spoke, as a
statesman comprehending the effect of a measure so fully in
accord -with the tenor of his own IKe and work :
" Mr. President, I approve of the proclamatioij, but I ques
tion the expediency of its issue at this juncture. The depres
sion of the public raind, consequent upon our repeated reverses,
is so great that I fear the effect of so important a step. Tt may
be -viewed as the last measure of an exhausted government*— a
cry for help — ^the government stretching out its hands to Ethi
opia, instead of Ethiopia stretching out its hands to the gov
ernment." (Mr. Carpenter relates that Mr. Lincoln himself
said, " His idea was that it would be considered our last shriek
on the retreat.") Mr. Seward added that, in his opinion, the pub
hcation of the proclamation should be delayed untU it could fol
low some notable mihtary success. The advice of the Secre
tary of State was undeniably sound, and Mr. Lincoln followed
it. Quite hkely the precise idea expressed by Mr. Seward was
already in his mind.
The Army of Vhginia, under Pope, was at that time con
fronting the Rebels under Lee. A -victory sufficient for the
purpose might come any day. The President patiently waited
for one ; but none came. The dark days of August closed -with
the Second BuU Run and Chantilly. Then McClellan was
once more in command, but he was no emancipationist.
The condition of Mr. Lincoln's mind, during those terrible
days of enforced waiting, may be learned from his subsequent
action and from his own account. He stated to Mr. F. B.
Carpenter, the artist of the picture of the " First Reading :"
" When Lee came over the river, I made a resolve that when
McClellan should drive him back,— and I expected he would

334 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
do it, some tirae or other, — I would send the proclamation
after him. I worked upon it and got it pretty much prepared.
The battle of Antietam was fought on Wednesday, but I could
not find out till Saturday whether we had really won a -victory
or not. It was too late to issue the proclaraation that week,
and I dressed it over a httle, on Sunday and on Monday I
gave it to them. The fact is, I never thought of the meeting
of the governors at Altoona, and I can hardly remember that
I knew anythipg about it."
The latter clause refers to a conference of the War Gov
ernors, as they were called, of several of the free States, to con
fer as to the condition of public affairs, which by some had
been supposed to have influenced the action of the President.
A Cabinet raeeting was held on the Saturday foUo-wing the
battle of the Antietam. There had been no great -victory, in
one sense ; but there had in another, for the army under Lee
was defeated by its hard-earned " drawn battle" so completely
that its campaign of invasion was ended and it had leisurely
recrossed the Potomac.
The members of the Cabinet were summoned, as before, not
to give ad-vice but to hear a decision. Mr. Lincoln told them
that the time for delay or hesitation had goUe by, and that
Emancipation must now be made the declared pohcy of the
Administration. Public sentiment would now sustain it. A
strong and outspoken popular voice openly demanded it, and
the demand carae from the best friends of the governraent.
That was not all. In a low voice, and reverently, Mr. Lin
coln added : " And I have promised my God that I -will do it."
Mr. Chase, who sat nearest hira, heard but indistinctly the
low-voiced utterance, and inquired :
" Did I understand you correctly, Mr. President ? "
Mr. Lincoln rephed :
" I raade a solemn vow, before God, that, if General Lee
should be driven back from Pennsylvania, I would cro-wn the
result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves."

EMANCIPATION. 335
The proclamation was issued on Monday, September 22,
1862, aud was as follows :
" I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of
America, and Commander-in-Chief of the array and navy
thereof, do hereby proclaim and declare that hereafter, as here
tofore, the war -wUl be prosecuted for the object of practically
restoring the constitutional relation between the United States
and each of the States, and the people thereof, in which States
that relation is or may be suspended or disturbed.
" That it is my purpose, upon the next meeting of Congress,
to again recommend the adoption of a practical measure ten
dering pecuniary aid to the free acceptance or rejection of all
slave-States, so caUed, the people whereof may not then be in
rebeUion against the United States, and which States raay then
have voluntarily adopted, or thereafter may voluntarily adopt,
immediate or gradual abohshment of slavery within their re
spective hmits ; and that the effort to colonize persons of Afri
can descent, -with their consent, upon this continent or else
where, with the previously obtained consent of the govern
ments existing there, wUl be continued.
" That on the flrst day of January, in the year of our Lord
one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as
slaves -within any State or designated part of a State, the peo
ple whereof shaU then be in rebeUion against the United States,
shaU be then, thenceforward and forever, free ; and the Execu
tive Government of the United States, including the military
and naval authority thereof, will recognize and raaintain the
freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress
such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for
their actual freedom.
" That the Executive v^l, on the flrst day of January afore
said, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States,
if any, in which the people thereof respectively shaU then be
in rebellion against the United States ; and the fact that any
State, or the people thereof, shall on that day be in good faith

336 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
represented in the Congress of the United States, by members
chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified
voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the ab
sence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive
e-vidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then
in rebellion against the United States.
" That attention is hereby caUed to an Act of Congress, en
titled ' An Act to make an additional Article of War,' approved
March 13, 1862, and which Act is in the words and figures
f oUo-wing :
" ' Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives
of the United States of America in Congress assembled. That
hereafter the f oUo-wing shall be promulgated as an additional
article of war, for the government of the army of the United
States, and shall be obeyed and observed as such :
" ' Article — All officers or persons in the mihtary or naval
ser-vice of the United States are prohibited from employing
any of the forces under their respective commands for the pur
pose of returning fugitives frora service or labor who may
have escaped from any persons to whora service or labor is
claimed to be due ; and any officer who shall be found guilty
by a court-martial of violating this article shaU be dismissed
from the service.
" ' Sec. 2. And be it further enacted. That this Act shaU take
effect from and after its passage.'
" Also to the ninth and tenth sections of an Act entitled ' An
Act to suppress insurrection, to punish treason and rebelhon,
to seize and conflscate property of rebels, and for other pur
poses,' approved July 16, 1862, and which sections are in the
words and figures f oUo-wing :
" ' Section 9. And be it further enacted, That all slaves of all
persons who shaU hereafter be engaged in rebellion against the
government of the United States, or who shall in any way give
aid or comfort thereto, escaping from such persons and taking
refuge vidthin the hnes of the army ; and all slaves captured

EMANCIPATION. 337
frora such persons, or deserted by them, and coming under the
control of the government of the United States, and aU slaves
of such persons found on [or] being within any place occupied
by rebel forces, and afterwards occupied by the forces of the
United States, shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be
forever free of their servitude and not again held as slaves.
" ' Section 10. And be it further enacted. That no slave es
caping into any State, Territory, or the District of Columbia,
from any other State, shall be dehvered up, or in any way im
peded or hindered of his hberty, except for crime, or some of
fense against the laws, unless the person clairaing said fugitive
shdl first make oath that the person to whom the labor or
service is alleged to be due is his lawful owner, and has not
borne arms against the United States in the present rebellion,
nor in any way given aid and comfort thereto ; and no person
engaged in the mihtary or naval service of the United States
shaU, under any pretense whatever, assurae to decide on the
validity of the claim of any person to the service or labor of
any other person, or surrender up any such person to the
claimant, on pain of being dismissed from the ser-vice.'
" And I do hereby enjoin upon and order all persons en
gaged in the military or naval ser-vice of the United States to
observe, obey, and enforce, -within their respective spheres of
service, the Act and sections above recited.
" And the Executive will in due time recommend that aU
citizens of the United States who shall have remained loyal
thereto throughout the rebeUion shaU (upon the restoration of
the constitutional relation between the United States and their
respective States and people, if that relation shall have been
suspended or disturbed) be compensated for all losses by acts
of the United States, including the loss of slaves.
"In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and
caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
" Done at the city of Washington, this twenty-second day of
September, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred

338 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
and sixty-two, and of the independence of the United States
the eighty-seventh.
[l. S.J " Abraham Lincoln.
" By the President :
" William H. Seward, Secretary of State."
It was true that a day in the future was named as the date
upon which the Executive axe would fall, but all men knew
that it was as if the intervening tirae were already past and
that the act of emancipation was final. Neither retraction nor
raodification was araong the possibilities of the future.
Tt was to be expected that the antislavery elements of the
people should welcome -with enthusiasra so bold and deadly a
stroke at the aboraination they hated. They would surely be
glad to see the future course of the Adrainistration deterrained,
and they would accept the results as accoraphshed, for they
were generally raen of faith.
Not all, indeed ; for a shiver of dread and doubt swept over
a large mass of them, and made itself audible in foreboding
mutters and dark prophecies.
It was even more a matter of course that the conservative ele
ments would withhold their open approval until the course of
events should justify the act. They would require time to re
cover from the shock of a new idea and to accustom theh -vision
to the glare of a new light.
There were others to be considered in an emergency so tre
mendous. Mr. Lincohi well knew that the proslavery and all
other anti-Administration politicians at the North would in
stantly be stirred to a white heat of activity. The faU elec
tions were near, and he had before hira a struggle on behalf of
the Nation. Tt was not well to confess openly that it was a
struggle of life and death. The men mth whom he was to
contend were every way as dangerous as the armies under Lee
with which they were co-operating. But for them, indeed, and
hope and aid and comfort from them, the armies under Lee

EMANCIPATION. 339
could never have been gathered in the first place, nor so long
have been held together. The main confidence of the Con
federacy, at the outset, had been in a divided North. So it re
mained, in greater or less degree, untU near the end ; and the
fact is recorded in the very localities of the battle-fields of the
Antietam and Gettysburg.
Knowing how all the detrimental acti-vities of Northern
treason would be stimulated by the declared and open " Aboli
tionism" of the Administration, it was needful for the latter to
put into the hands of its supporters a new and powerful weapon,
for prompt use wherever needed. The foe in the rear, as weU
as the foe in front, must be made to feel the strong grip of the
War power.
Mr. Lincoln had prepared yet another proclamation, of tem
porary effect, but that sounded sternly supplementary of the
first. It was a proclamation " suspending the Writ of Habeas
Corpus" in all cases of persons arrested, confined, or sentenced
by court-martial, as accused or con-victed of certain specified
classes of offenses, aU of which might be included under the
general head of " giving aid and comfort to the insurrection."
NominaUy based upon a clause of the written Constitution, it
went so far beyond the pro-visions of that clause that, in the
opinion of many lawyers, it gave good reason for the storm of
fierce denunciation -with which it was received. Not the Pro
clamation of Emancipation itself was raade the text of so many
angry speeches and editorials. The speakers loudly declared
that " freedom of speech is destroyed," and the writers that
" the liberty of the press is taken away." Tt was not so easy
to convince the hearers or readers of these philippics that the
" Despot at Washington" had actually done the deed, as yet.
That part of the storm blew itself over untU the foUowing
winter. Tt then broke out again in Congress, and there it ex
hausted itself in speeches and resolutions of a nature which
profitably compelled that body to sustain Mr. Lincoln's course
most thoroughly, by enacting the necessary and customary

340 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
laws in such cases. Congress always caught up with him
before the end of a session. Tt was yet to be discovered how
weU he was then pro-viding for future emergencies, and how
very needful it was that the required pro-vision should be made
a good while beforehand.
All this was attended to. But Mr. Lincoln had a raatter
of especial statesmanship very close at hand. If General
McClellan had striven to impress upon him one thing more
than another, it had been the pohticaUy conservative opinions
of the commissioned and non-commissioned officers and rank
and file of the Army of the Potomac. He had told the Presi
dent, in about so many words, that they could not be rehed
upon or held together for an " Abolition war."
Mr. Lincoln did not believe this setting forth implicitly, for
a great part of that army consisted of men who had voted for
him in 1860. They surely had not changed their opinions
greatly under the influences of the camp and battle-field.
Still it was a matter to be looked into, especiaUy as ominous
reports came rapidly in conceming the tone of talk at many
representative " mess-tables."
The President was detained in Washington for a week or so
by his other duties ; but by the first week of October he was
with the array, on a long and very sociable -visit. The victori
ous troops were "resting," under McCleUan's care, from the
fatigues of the Antietam campaign ; while Lee's defeated army,
not needing so much rest, was busily carrying on the war.
For several days Mr. Lincoln went about among them,
freely minghng and conversing with officers and men. Every
where he was received with enthusiasm, and often with tokens
of strong affection. At no point or place or in any part of any
command could he detect perceptible signs of disaffection.
Such moderate ebullitions of prejudices as were now mere
"political reminiscences" had pretty nearly subsided by the
end of that week. Had the talk among the true-hearted sol
diers, around their camp-fires, been even louder than it was,

EMANCIPATION. 341
the President's visit would have sufficed to restore a better
state of mind.
AU pohtical and other perils were freely discussed by Mr.
Lincoln -with McClellan himself, and very effectively. On the
6th of October the former returned to Washington. On the
very next day the latter issued a " general order" reminding
the officers and men of his command of their duty to the civil
authorities. It was also, in effect, a sharp suggestion and re
minder that they were dissatisfied -with the political attitude of
the government which they were defending. The great ma
jority would never have known it K they had not been told,
and doubted it even ^ihen. He said :
" Discussion by officers and soldiers conceming pubhc meas
ures determined upon and declared by the government, when
carried beyond the ordinary temperate and respectful expres
sion of opinion, tends greatly to impair and destroy the dis
ciphne and efficiency of the troops by substituting the spirit of
pohtical faction for the firm, steady, and earnest support of the
authority of the government, which is the highest duty of the
American soldier."
Tt was admhable. It was the precise form of words and
sound doctrine he should have meditated upon before penning
some of his own dispatches to the President. It sounded well
now ; but the army and nation somehow perversely paraphrased
it so that it did hira no good. They made it read : " Fellow-
soldiers, you and I are of one mind in this matter. You con
demn this accursed Abolition policy as bitterly as I do ; but it
is our duty to say no more about it than we can help, just now.
We must keep our opinions to ourselves."
There was no open fault to be found -with such a " general
order," but it was reaUy a species of dull reply to the Emanci
pation Proclamation and the Suspension of the Writ of Habeas
Corpus, issued by the mihtary representative of the Opposi
tion. The disloyal elements in the army were so small that the

342 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
dismissal of one or two subordinate officers who indulged in
mutinous talk furnished an ample corrective. In fact, it now
began to dawn upon the minds even of pohticians that an army
is a great machine, and that Mr. Lincoln had done nothing at
all to loosen his strong grasp of the controUing mechanism of
the Army of the Potomac.
That of General McCleUan had been loosened materially, and
a few weeks later it was severed altogether and forever. Not
even the soldiers themselves were then aware, at first, how
much more close and personal thenceforward would be their
relations to the one raan whom nobody could remove or trans
fer, and under whom they served continuously, no matter what
subordinate officer of his selection might for the time intervene,

M
OW5
H

oo« I
«o
oo

THE HARDEST BLO W. 343

CHAPTER XLIL
the hardest blow.
Home-Life in the White House— Death of Little Willie— Proclamation of
Thanksgiving and Prayer— Circular Letter to the Army on Sabbath
Keeping— Spiritual Growth.
The year 1862 was a period of rapid growth for Abraham
Lincohi. It was a cup fiUed to overflowing -with trials of every
kind and nature.
He was calhng upon aU the famihes in the land to send
their sons to die upon the many battle-fields of the war, and
the responsibihty of that sacred but a-wful duty weighed hea-vily
upon him. He was in the kind of furnace whose fires either
harden a man or burn away the dross from the better metal of
his composition. It is well to study the process, somewhat, in
order to obtain a clearer perception of the result.
There could be but little of home hfe at the White House.
It was the business centre of a vast and growing web of civil
and military offices and operations. Nevertheless, it was all
the home the President coiUd have. His wife presided over
the few apartments reserved for family uses and hospitahties.
There were social features attached to the duties of the Execu
tive, but these, for the greater part, assumed a public and offi
cial character.
Nearly to the end of the first year of Mr. Lincoln's terra,
there had been one brightness in and about the rooras and
offices which at times gave them almost a home-like look, for
his two younger boys came and went, through all of them, at
their own chUdish -wUl. The elder of these children, WiUie,
was a peculiarly promising boy, and Thomas, or "Tad,"

344 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the younger, was full of merry mischief, the ludicrous
effect of which was in no wise lessened by the impediraent in
his speech whenever he was caUed to an account. That was
not very often, indeed, nor a very serious matter for him or
his brother. Tad could explore the garret, discovering the
place where all the bell-wires in the house were attached to a
central pinion, and could set all bells, and aU human answerers
of bells, in futile motion. Willie could sht into ribbons the
cloth covering of the private secretary's table. Both or either
could come and stand by their father's knee, at times, when
grave statesmen and pompous generals were presenting to him
matters of national or world--wide importance. Such rebukes
as might occasionally be administered to them savored very
little of " army disciphne." They were of more value to their
father and to his work than anybody knew, even then. But
they were to render a greater and a higher ser-vice.
In February, 1862, while Mr. Lincohi was straining every
nerve to obtain from General McCleUan the forward moveraent
of the array which a discontented people so loudly demanded,
the boys were taken sick and little Willie died.
The White House was a gloomy place during the illness of
the children, but it was none the less a busy one. AU work
went on as usual. If the President left his office to -visit the
sick-room, it was only to retum again and meet as before the
hourly tribulations of his unrelaxing ser-vice of his country.
Even the presence of death in the house could not privilege
him to remit for one moment his supervision of all the multi
tudinous life and death intrusted to his care by the people he
was raling.
Tt is impossible for any man or woman who has never passed
through some such trial to grasp and comprehend the inner
experiences which surely came to Mr. Lincoln at that tirae.
A multitude of those who have endured corresponding ordeals
-will need no other key to the understanding of some of his
subsequent utterances.

THE HARDEST BLOW. 345
The good lady who acted as nurse for the httle sufferers re
lates that their father came in, at times, to watch by them, and
that on one occasion he walked up and down the room, saying
sadly : " This is the hardest trial of my hfe ! Why is it ?
Why is it ?"
Tt was not merely a selfish expression of petulant sorrow.
Just so he was accustomed to walk up and down, in his great
Executive work-room, alone, at night, after the news had
come of some great battle, whether a -victory or defeat. It
was late, indeed, when the sound of his slow, heavy, grief-
laden footsteps ceased, on the nights after Ball's Bluff, Chan-
cellorsviUe, and Fredericksburg, and in each case the agonized
question upon his hps must have been the same.
To all such questions, when honestly asked, there is an an
swer, although it may not always be heard at once. A part of
it seems to have been sent to Mr. Lincoln through this very
lady. Numbers of kind, good people who knew it did their
best to send it to him. Dr. J. G. HoUand records of her that,
after the worst had come and the stroke had fallen, when she
told Mr. Lincoln, in conversation, her own story of trial ; that
she was a -widow, aU alone, her husband and two children being
in heaven ; she added that she saw the hand of God in it all,
and had never loved Him before her affiiction as she had
since. Mr. Lincoln inquired of her : " How is that brought about ?"
She rephed : " Simply by trusting in God and feeling that
He does all things weU."
He asked : " Did you submit fully under the first loss ?"
Little she may have guessed what memories of suffering
were lurking behind the few words of that simple question.
She did not know what shattering of the very reason and
clouding of the brain of the man before her had resulted from
his inabihty to " submit fuUy under the first loss." That had
been long ago, and she was thinking only of the present. She
answered :

346 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
" Not wholly ; but as blow came upon blow, aud aU was taken,
I could and did submit, and was very happy."
He responded : " I am glad to hear you say that. Your
experience wiU help me to bear my affiictions." He had de
termined to imitate her and to fuUy submit, now blow upon
blow had come.
On the morning of the funeral of Willie, he said of the
prayers offered for him by the good people aU over the land :
" I am glad to hear that. I want them to pray for me. I
need their prayers."
That to theirs he added his o-wn is also a matter of record :
and yet there have been, and perhaps now are, men and women
so grossly ignorant of human nature as to suppose that such an
effect, so produced upon such a man, and followed by an in
creasing instead of diminishing attrition of toil and trial, was
or could be other than eternally indelible.
A few weeks later, before the grass grew well upon the
grave of httle WiUie, occurred the terrific fighting and slaughter
of ShUoh and Corinth, in which -victory was -wrested from the
jaws of defeat at the cost of the sons of thousands of darkened
households. Tt was an occasion for thankfulness, and Mr.
Lincoln issued a proclamation of thanksgi-ving for that and
other -victories, asking the people to " render thanks to our
Heavenly Father for these inestimable blessings."
The thanks were sincere, for the gleams of light from the
West were greatly needed in those days of national darkness
and depression ; but the lesson of the President's personal trial
followed in the plain words which directed those who offered
thanks also to " implore spiritual consolation in behaK of all
those who have been brought into affliction by the casualties
and calamities of civil war."
Not then, perhaps not now, could Southern fathers and
mothers accept the idea that he could not possibly have ex
cluded them, tn his mental -vision of the sufferers who were in
need of " spiritual consolation," but they were no more ex-

THE HARDEST BLOW. 347
eluded from his thought than they were from the express terms
of the proclamation.
There was little occasion for Mr. Lincoln to express himself
upon doctrinal points. His early hfe and subsequent associa
tions had put it out of his power to examine, approve, and ac
cept any one formulated creed of any one church or sect, even
if he had set himseK at the task of selection ; but his reverence
for God and His revealed law continued to increase.
When a delegation of weU-meaning gentlemen called upon
him to urge, in effect, that no more battles should be fought
on Sunday, as so many already had been fought, he could re
ply, haK humorously, that the Rebel commanders would need
to be taken into consultation before anything definite could be
done in that direction. Nevertheless, on the 16th of Novem
ber, 1862, he sent out to the soldiers a circular letter which
gave his -views upon the Sunday question very distinctly. He
urged upon them that, " The importance for man and beast of
the prescribed weekly rest, the sacred rights of Christian sol
diers and sailors, a becoming deference to the best sentiment
of a Christian people, and a due regard for the Di-vine Will,
demand that Sunday labor in the army and navy be reduced
to the measure of strict necessity." He added, even more
strenuously : " The disciphne and character of the national
forces should not suffer, nor the cause they defend be imper-
Ued, by the profanation of the day or the narae of the Most
High." The only escape from the ob-vious meaning of these and
many other simUar utterances, as expressions of the operations
and condition of Mr. Lincoln's mind at this time, is to roundly
charge him -with hypocrisy.
This, too, has been done ; but the absurdity of the allegation
comes out in strong rehef when the words he spoke are exam
ined in connection -with dates and facts, and particularly when
coUated with the sad event in his own family.
Tt is now forever too late to call in question either the fact or

348 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the depth of his religious convictions. Tt is too late to deny
that he again and again made public as weU as private i^rof es
sion of his simple faith. Especially is it of no manner of im
portance for the best of -witnesses to testKy, " he used to talk,
sometimes, kind o' half-way infidel, when I knew hira, back in
Ilhnois." The testimony may cheerfuUy be accepted as hon
estly given, but it does not bear at aU upon the case before the
court.

THE TRENT AFFAIR. 349

CHAPTER XLIII.

the TRENT AFFAIR.

Two Frontier Posts — ^Western Successes — A Slice at a Time — Trouble with
England — Shortsighted Patriotism — A Message to the English People —
Captain Wilkes Promoted— Border State Unionism.
At the outset of the Rebellion the District of Columbia was
as much -within the intended boundaries of the Confederacy as
was any similar area on the northern line of the State of Ten
nessee. Maryland was even more nearly ready for secession
than Kentucky ; and the difficulty of retaining either State
in the Union was about the same, and required the operation
of competent armed forces as weU as prudent statesmanship.
Washington city was therefore, in the beginning, a position
occupied by the Union troops weU within the enemy's hnes.
Afterwards it became an aU-important frontier post.
That the city was occupied or held at aU was due to Mr.
Lincoln's success in carrying on the war for months before the
people generaUy knew there was one going forward.
A serious aggravation and comphcation of the difficulties of
the situation resulted from this history and locality of the
political capital. The minds of men, at home and abroad, be
came absorbed in watching the fluctuations of the struggle for
the capture, at one time, of the city of Washington and, at
another, of the almost correspondingly situated city of Rich
mond. The interest in these campaigns, their advances and
retreats, theh many and bloody battles, became so deep that
equaUy iraportant contests in other parts of the great field
failed to receive the popular attention they merited. Had the
importance of successes in the West been better understood by

350 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the people, their depressions over disasters in the East would
have been, at times, advantageously diminished.
To the mind of Mr. Lincohi, as to many other minds, civil
and mihtary, it was an axiom that the Confederacy must needs
be taken possession of, as he curtly expressed it, " a shoe at a
time." That was the way in which it was done ; but it was not
always easy to persuade men of the value of the consecutive
shces as they were cut off and secured.
In the early days of the war the great State of Missouri was
more in doubt as to its pohtical future than was Maryland. Its
loss would have entailed consequences every way as disastrous
to the Union cause ; but the rapid series of movements and suc
cesses, beginning with those of General John C. Fremont,
which placed it beyond the reach of the Confederate com
manders was but moderately appreciated on the Atlantic sea
board and not at all in Europe. Tt was won and held by
achievements of high merit both in statesmanship and arms ;
and in hke manner was the State of Kentucky severed from,
the hopes of the Confederacy. Subsequent operations were
transferred from the Ohio River and the Ilhnois line of the
Mississippi River and the Iowa border, away down to the hne
of the Cumberland River, and the grand result was accepted
by the pubhc very much as if a ripe apple had faUen from a
tree. The consecutive apples fell, indeed, but the shaking of
the tree began very early in the season and cost the lives of
many thousands of brave men.
There was a respectable amount of popular rejoicing when a
permanent foothold was won, by the Federal forces under Burn-
side, on the sea-coast of North Carolina ; but the grumbhng mul
titude refused to see that it was of any great importance to the
general result.
Even when, in AprU, 1862, the city of New Orleans, and
with it the mouth of the Mississippi River, feU into the hands
of the national troops and a fair degree of enthusiasm was
kindled, for a moraent, nine men out of ten would have tossed

THE TRENT AFFAIR. 351
their hats more zealously over the news of a much less fruitful
victory on the Potomac.
It was not so -with Mr. Lincoln. From first to last he
watched the course of events in the West with an interest
which never flagged. AU that country was familiar ground to
him, and he made himseK thoroughly master of the peculiar
campaigmng required for its reduction. He knew the rivers
and their variations of flood and fall ; the lowlands and the
highlands and their roads and lack of roads ; more than all,
he knew, better than did the Eastern generals and statesmen
around him, the peculiar characteristics of the varied popula
tions and how very far they were from being one people.
The ci-vil war was a War for the Union in more ways than
one. In all its processes it operated as a national unifier, and
Mr. Lincoln aided the processes as best he could. He drew
Western soldiers to fight in the Army of the Potomac until he
changed materiaUy the originaUy somewhat sectional composi
tion of that organism. He sent Eastern troops to join in the
marches and battles in Kentucky and Tennessee. Tt was not
by any maimer of accident that volunteers from widely sepa
rated localities found themselves marching up to the guns of
the enemy shoulder to shoulder. Even as early as December,
1862, the records show that the Army of the Potomac con
tained regiments, batteries, or brigades from Wisconsin, In
diana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and TUinois. At a some
what later date, the Army of the Cumberland contained, in
hke manner, distinct organizations from Pennsylvania, New
York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland, and
Maine. This wise blending of the contingents of the several
States continued to the end of the war.
How closely the President watched the mUitary operations
m the West appears from his dispatches and correspondence.
It is further iUustrated by his recognition of the successive
achievements of Pope, HaUeck, Sherman, Sheridan, Grant, and
a long list of other meritorious officers.

352 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
His eyes were everywhere ; and everywhere the commanders
and soldiers, in camp and field, were made conscious of his
thoughtful sympathy, and made to feel the eager help with
which he urged them to the performance of their duty. He
gave them aU but his personal presence, and his telegraphic
correspondence proves that they almost had that also. Still the
records of battles and sieges, in whatever section or locality,
belong to the history of the war and not to the " life" of the
man. The year 1862 contained other than mihtary problems for
Mr. Lincoln to meet and solve. Our foreign affairs were suf
ficiently complicated by the almost unconcealed syrapathy of
England and France -with the Jefferson Davis government.
Mr. Seward had aheady estabhshed a high reputation as a
diplomatist by the skill and vigor -with which he had continu
ally parried their expressions of haK-angry discontent. The
Confederate ruler had it in mind to establish closer relations
with these very powers, and with that object sent out two com
missioners, duly accredited. These men, named Mason and
SlideU, had both been members of the Senate of the United
States. Escaping from Charleston to Cuba, they saUed from
Havana, on the 7th of November, on the British mail-steamer
Trent, bound for St. Thomas. On the next day the Trent was
stopped at sea by the United States war-steamer San Jacinto,
Captain WUkes ; the two commissioners were taken out of her
by force, against the protests of her officers, and carried to the
United States to be shut up in Fort Warren.
Tt was a high-handed proceeding, strongly resembhng, in
many of its features, the accustomed course of Great Britain in
dealing with weaker powers ; and the indignation it aroused in
the British mind, official and otherwise, was extreme. It was
natural that such should be the case ; but the tone and manner
in which the indignation found expression rendered the task of
offering reparation a pecuharly hard one. The path to hostili
ties was made easy and the path to peace was haK shut up.

THE TRENT AFFAIR. 353
At the same time Mr. Lincoln's perplexities were multiplied
by the state of the public mind at the North. Tt was exceed
ingly bitter against England, for it was well understood that
her Ul offices to us in our hour of trouble had but lamely halted
short of open war, and that further evil was sure to come to us
from her. Popular patience was nearly exhausted, and, for a
moment, the general opinion was plainly and loudly uttered
that avowed and regular hostilities could do us little more harm
than could the veiled but steady pressure and the secret thrusts
of a haK-concealed enraity. The capture of the two Rebel emis
saries was haUed with an acclaim as boisterous as K Captain
WUkes had won a great sea-fight and had not disturbed the
shadowy "law of nations" in the least. He becarae, in fact, the
hero of the hour.
It was necessary, however, that we should have no open
quarrel -with England, and the law of the raatter was sufficiently
in her favor to enable the United States to withdraw with
dignity, almost in spite of her.
At that juncture of the struggle -with the South, a new
crisis; British fleets upon the coast; British supplies of
money and war material pouring into the ports of the Con
federacy without restriction, instead of under serious diffi
culties ; British annoyance of Northern seaports, and the neces
sity for the immediate conquest of the Canadas by the United
States, — ^would have added terribly to the burdens of the nation.
The result to the United States might have been the same, in
the long-run ; but the " ran" would have been longer, and the
cost vastly greater. England, indeed, might have been badly
crippled ; but there would have been loss instead of gain in
that, for no sensible American -wishes to see her crippled. In
fact, it is hard to imagine anything more short-sighted and
stupid than the ennuty of the then govemment of England to
the cause of the Union. As Mr. Lincoln pointedly remarked
to the Enghsh people in his next Message to the Congress of
the United States, the shortest way out of the commercial diffi-

354 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
culties resulting to foreign nations from our ci-vil war was to
be found in the prompt suppression rather than in the pro
longed maintenance of the Rebellion. It was strictly trae ;
and K England and France suffered losses from tbe continu
ance of the war, the responsibihty therefor was largely their
o-wn. England was practically and very effectively the ally of
the South, on land and sea ; while the animus of the French
Imperial Government, never more than externaUy courteous,
found its most perfect expression at last in its ill-fated Mexican
policy, rendered possible only by the fact that the hands of the
United States were tied frora interfering.
The refusal of Mr. Lincoln to be dragged into a war -with
England was a bitter disappointraent to the Confederacy and
to all our other national enemies, and not even the truly ad
mirable manageraent of the matter by the Secretary of State
could altogether satisfy the angry patriots who had glorifled
Captain Wilkes.
The government was roundly and la-vishly berated ; but the
two Rebel commissioners were hberated ; and Captain Wilkes
was soon proraoted.
Mr. Lincoln was under a perpetual pressure frora the most
sincere and earnest supporters of the govemment, for these
were mostly men of positive minds and strong con-victions.
They were the very men to make a great nation out of, and
they spoke their minds hberally. They could not see all the
obstacles in his way, as he saw them, nor was it always safe to
explain too fully and minutely what he was doing.
The very existence of some of his most serious hindrances
had to be kept to himseK. The men were by no means numer
ous who could have been made to understand the methods pur
sued with the border-States, and notably -with Kentucky.
That name and those of Maryland and Missouri and Delaware,
and so forth, were but geographical expressions to the great
majority. The President, however, was dealing, not with geo
graphy and local boundaries, but with men, and their prejudices

THE TRENT AFFAIR. H.").')
and fears and self-interests, and, what was all-important, with
their sure changes of opinion.
In the same Message to the Congress above mentioned, he
was able to say : " These three States, of Maryland, Kentucky,
and Missouri, neither of which would promise a single soldier
at the first, have now an aggregate of not less than forty
thousand in the field for the Union ; while, of their citizens,
certainly not more than a third of that number, and they of
doubtful whereabouts and doubtful existence, are in arms
against it."

356 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER XLIV.
A DARK WINTER.
Fredericksburg — A Lost Opportunity — Burnside and Hooker — The Bur
dens of a Military Establishment — Congressional Counselors — The
Heart of the Nation — An Extraordinary Ambassador — The Birth of
the Union League.
The year 1862 closed, both for the country and for Mr.
Lincoln, in the great grief of the defeat of the Array of the
Potomac at Fredericksburg. It was a blow of peculiar severity
to the President, for he was made to seem responsible for the
movements which led to it and for the mismanaged battle itself.
It affected him very deeply, and yet, now that all the facts
have been sought out, it is impossible to charge him -with any
fault in the premises.
That he had earnestly insisted upon active operations was
true. He had done that daily, from the outset ; but he had
not undertaken to direct details ; and the inexcusable blunders
of the Fredericksburg fight were committed without his
knowledge. The history of the affair had deep lessons in it. By an un
derstanding with General Burnside, General McClellan con
tinued in command until the 9th of November, and the orders
for the forward movement were issued by him in person. No
change, for a number of days, was made in the plans which he
had pre-viously approved. General HaUeck had at once called
upon General Burnside for a " plan of campaign," &id the
latter prepared and submitted an abstract of his conception of
the situation. This did not meet the approval of the General-
in-Chief, and he at once went, in person, to General Bomside's
headquarters, at Warrenton, Virginia. Here, on the 12th and

A DARK WINTER. 357
13th of the month, a long conference was held, which resulted
in the submission of their separate plans to the President. On
the 14th, General HaUeck telegraphed to General Burnside
Mr. Lincoln's assent to the -views of the latter, but with this
vital and unmistakable indication, in the express words of the
dispatch : " He thinks it [your plan] -will succeed if you raove
rapidly. Otherwise, not."
Nothing could be more plain and definite in the rendering
of a mihtary decision. Subsequent investigations justify Mr.
Lincohi. If General Bumside had moved rapidly, as he did
not, his troops would have been in possession of the very posi
tion at Fredericksburg, then unoccupied, from which he after
wards vainly strove to dislodge the iron veterans of General
Lee. The approval of his plan, as submitted, by no means im
phed that he should permit the best general of the Confederacy,
-with a recorded force of 78,228 effective men and guns in pro
portion, to dehberately intrench himself on ground of his own
choosing, and then, -without any definite plan of battle, to hurl
against thera, in vague incapacity, column after column of
doomed volunteers.
That is about aU that can be said of the generalship of the
battle of Fredericksburg. The men behaved splendidly. They
inflicted sharp losses upon their antagonists. They were sent
to do an impossibihty, and they failed simply because it was
an impossibihty ; but, for a hurt and disappointed moment,
haK the nation beheved that they had been ordered to the vain
effort by a " civihan" President, interfering with and over
ruling his general in the field.
General Bumside was under no pressure whatever which
need have irapeUed him to the assault of General Lee's posi
tion ; and there was no good reason, pohtical or mihtary, why
the Rebel army should not have been permitted to encamp aU
winter in those particular intrenchments. If Lee could have
been induced to do that very thing, as he surely could not have

358 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
been, being a man of uncommon good sense in such matters,
the result would have been a greater advantage to the Union
arms than had been won upon the banks of the Antietam
Creek. The very maintenance of his army was draining the
life-blood of the Confederacy, while the resources of the North
had hardly as yet been drawn upon. " Active operations" to
keep him there would have been grand generalship. Much
hard fighting would have been requhed for such a feat ; but aU
the while the Confederacy would have been bleeding to death,
and the Army of the Potoraac would not have scored another
bloody disaster.
The American people had no experience of what is called
" mihtarism," and had but little actual knowledge of the need
less monstrosities which curse the Old World under the guise
of " governments." A consequence of this was that a most
erroneous impression prevailed, throughout the free States, as
to the nature and extent of the sacrifices they had made and as
to their remaining capacity for more of the same kind.
Every great nation in Europe is compelled, habitiially, year
by year, to do all that the North had done, up to that time,
except as to the cost of what manufacturing establishments de
scribe as " the plant" of their undertakings. That is, the pro
vision of machinery and apphances and the needful outlays
involved in beginnings upon new ground. The waste had
been considerable, in many directions, but the gro-wth and
prosperity of the community, as a whole, had not been danger
ously interfered -with. A very different state of things existed
at the South, o-wing to fundamental defects of the Southern
social structure.
The battle of Fredericksburg was fought on the 13th of De
cember, just after the assembling of Congress, while Mr. Lin
coln was preparing to deal -with the most dangerous period of
his political administration. It rendered a -winter campaign
in Virginia an impossibility, and made necessary another
change in the command of the Army of the Potomac. Gen-

A DARK WINTER. 359
eral Burnside was reheved and General Joseph Hooker was
named in his place.
" Fighting Joe," as his immediate command had dehghted
to call him, was a tried soldier, but, regarded as a general in
charge of a great army, he was necessarily another experiment.
Neither the President, nor the army, nor the country at large,
was ready to invest him -with unlimited confidence as to his
fitness for his new and vast responsibilities. He himself was
probably the only man in the nation who never for a moment
lacked or lost that very unUmited confidence : and there was
both good and evil in that trait of his character.
Congress assembled in a perplexed and captious frame of
mind. Almost every member was fiUed to the lips -with ut
tered, or unuttered and unutterable, criticisms upon the policy
of the Adrainistration and the management of the war. A
steady stream of Senators and Representatives poured into and
out of Mr. Lincoln's office at the White House, and their
recommendations of their constituents for appointments and
promotions were accompanied by statements, more or less
frank and positive, of their indi-vidual -views upon the ques
tions of the day. It is very interesting, now, to discover how
unvarying is the testimony borne by all these inteUigent and
patriotic men to the kindly and considerate reception they met
-with at the hands of the President. This, too, even when the
strength of their con-victions or the warmth of their tempers
gave their language the tone and form of severe censure. He
could afford to take it from such men, and to present, in return
his own understanding of the matter. So it carae to pass, be
fore long, that his Congressional censors became bound to him
by near ties of mutual understanding and respect. A sort of
faraily feeling grew in the hearts of many, unconsciously re
garding themselves as watching the control of the coraraon
household by a raan who oddly combined the functions of a
father and an elder brother. As for the people generally, they
had become well accustomed to talking, half affectionately, about

360 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
" Father Abraham ;" but there were not lacking some statesmen
who seemed to look upon him rather as somehow a sort of
senior partner and business manager of a firm in which they
were at least " junior" partners and entitled to a voice in the
direction of all its affairs.
Mr. Lincoln did not look upon Congress itseK as, in any
maimer or sense, a " junior partner," and these perpetual con
sultations with its indi-vidual members enabled him to explain
to that body both his past conduct and his future plans quite
satisfactorily. The net result was that laws were passed to
cover the one and pro-vide for the other, and the proposers of
the specific " bills" required for the objects attained continued
to their dying days under the impression that the legislation
originated with them and not -with Mr. Lincoln. This had
been the rule from the beginning, and illustrates notably his
infaUible prescience of the popular -will and of its approval or
disapproval of any supposable course of action. There was
nothing mysterious or magical in this faculty. It is not even
difficult to discern its source and the methods of its opera
tion. Any purpose which any man may put in forra, or any act to
which he raay give his free assent, must be, to a greater or
less extent, an expression of his " will." The will of any man
is the resultant of the emotions of what we describe as his
heart, guided, although under raany interferences, by whatever
he may have of reason. If, therefore, Mr. Lincoln had any
sufficient gauge or measure of the emotions of the men and
women upon whose united wills his power depended, he could
then trace with ease the average results of their reasoning pro
cesses. That he continually did this very thing is a matter of re
cord, and has been commented upon as a marvel; but it was
nothing of the kind. He possessed an unerring "gauge" in
the sea-like depth and breadth and power of his own emotional
nature, adjusted as it was to the solemn and mournful earnest-

A DARK WINTER. 361
ness of those days of trial. He suffered with aU, and more than
each ; and he could therefore understand all and be sure how
far the popular heart and will would go with him and sustain
him in the exercise of power, at any time or in any dhection.
He accepted, as frankly and unselfishly as it was offered, the
gro-wing reverence and love of multitudes. It was to him per
fectly natural that they should feel as he did, and should most
humanly expect him to feel as they did. So he could talk
-with women about theh sons, and not be at all ashamed to weep
a little -with them when he could not altogether restrain him
seK. The tears welled up more and more easily as time went
by, and yet they did not often get up further than into the
softening tones of his voice or the ever-deepening sadness of
his eyes.
Corresponding processes of unformulated interior thought
enabled the President to gauge -with accuracy the gro-wing
bitterness of the "opposition" leaders. He had httle time to
spend in reading their printed calumnies and -vituperations, or
even in hearing the reports of them brought hira by his friends.
Every now and then his angry assailants forced their -views
upon him, in one form or another. His mails were fairly
overflo-wing -with -wrathful communications which he never
saw ; but now and then his eye and ear were gained through
other channels.
A representative raan of the opposition to the Administra
tion, and pecuharly of that wing of it which had openly sym
pathized -with the Rebellion, was Mr. Fernando Wood, of New
York. This was the man who, when mayor of that city, at
the outbreak of secession, had pubhcly ad-vised that the muni
cipahty should set up for itseK as a " free city," so severing its
connection -with abolitionism and retaining its commercial re
lations -with the cotton-producing areas of the South. In the
latter part of 1862 he addressed to Mr. Lincoln a letter, in
which he set forth that he was trustworthily advised that the
Southern States would send representatives to the next Con-

362 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
gross, provided that a full and general amnesty should permit
them to do so.
The trap -svas neither so well set nor so well baited as it
seemed to be, and Mr. Lincoln was not drawn into any blunder.
He quietly rephed, on the 12th of December, the day before
the battle of Fredericksburg, and while he was ob-viously not
superintending, by telegraph or otherwise, the precise move
ments of the Army. He paid but moderate attention to any
part of Mr. Wood's letter, except that which declared his
quasi-di'piorasitic position and authority. Of this, he said:
" I strongly suspect your inf orraation -wiU prove to be ground
less ; nevertheless I thank you for coraraunicating it to rae.
Understanding the phrase in the paragraph above quoted
[from Mr. Wood's letter], " the Southern States -wiU send repre
sentatives to the next Congress,' to be substantially the same
as that ' the people of the Southern States would cease resist
ance, and would re-inaugurate, subrait to, and maintain, the
national authority, -within the limits of such States ; under the
Constitution of the United States,' I say that in such case the
war would cease on the part of the United States ; and K,
within a reasonable time, a fuU and general amnesty were
necessary to such an end, it would not be withheld."
Mr. Wood strove hard to carry the matter further, and to
obtain some kind of authority from the Administration for
acting as a go-between and proslavery-Democratic angel of
peace ; but Mr. Lincoln could not be induced to trast him with
the honor of the nation in such a dehcate matter. Had he
done so, neither the rebels in arms, nor the Union armies,
nor the people of the South, nor any part of the people of the
North, nor any foreign power on earth, would have failed to
conclude and say : " The disasters have done their work. His
courage has failed him. He is suing for peace. He has even
employed a weU-kno-wn enemy as an ambassador."
Tt is true that there was always a large " peace element" at
the South ; but at no time was it in even momentary power,

A DARK WINTER. 363
and Ml". Lincoln was only too well advised of the increasing
rigidity of the military despotism exercised by the Da-vis gov
ernment at Richmond. He was now watching it -with aU the
greater sohcitude for the reason that he foresaw a necessity for
tightening the pressure of the governmental machinery under
his own hands.
The disloyal elements in the free States, especially of the
populations nearest the army lines, had for some time been
taking on a form of which the general pubhc knew but little.
Under several names, secret affiliations of "orders," and
lodges and memberships, honeycombed the whole country,
in communication with corresponding organizations at the
South. To counteract these agencies in some measure, as well as to
afford an effective framework to the political forces which
were sustaining the Administration and the armies in the field,
Mr. Lincoln had silently favored the creation of what was soon
kno-wn as " The Union League." Secret associations of Union
men, both white and black, aheady existed at the South ; but
no one of these had succeeded in becoming general. The
black men are supposed to have attained a common and general
method of mutual recognition and confidence, much more
nearly than had the whites. Even as to the former, however,
and surely as to the latter, the raore effective " Union secret
societies" of the South were geographicaUy restricted and local
ized. It was needful that those of the North should be united
under one organization, and that the centre of its control should
be at the seat of government.
In the summer of 1862 the nucleus of the League was
formed, at Washington, by the selection, rather than the elec
tion, of a "Grand Council" of twelve members. By this
committee of control agents were sent out in every direction
and with great rapidity. Local " councils" were organized in
every city and town and -village of the North. The most
complete pohtical machine ever kno-wn took form in the very

364 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
heat and pressure of the fall elections, and spread its ramifica
tions further and deeper through aU the winter months.
It was not easy for any critic to say that Mr. Lincohi had
anything to do -with it ; but there were those who remarked
upon the suspicious fact that the Grand Council was made up
of his personal friends and official subordinates, even to the
extent that one of his private secretaries was Grand Corre
sponding Secretary of the entire League.
In this way, and otherwise, every available measure was
taken to organize the patriotism of the nation and to maintain
its activity. But the President was learning yet another lesson
from the Confederacy. The Southern leaders, almost from
the beginning, had made the burden of their pitiless exactions
fall most hea-vily upon the parts of their populations which
they beheved to be least in sympathy with them. The
National Government had touched its disaffected citizens only
through the equal bearing of taxes payable in money. The
awful tax which was payable in human flesh and blood had
been borne by the patriots only, of whatever pohtical name or
party affihation.
The men who loved theh country most unselfishly were in
the army to so great an extent that the consequences were al
ready dangerously manifested at the polls. Should the process
go on uncorrected, it might yet affect the balance of power in
State governments and in Congress. There were large districts
in which the upholders of the government were weak, not only
from numerical depletion, but because their best and ablest
leaders were in the field with their constituents. Day by day
their enemies grew more annoying and defiant. The Union
League was a strong arm, indeed ; but the situation demanded
another weapon, and Mr. Lincoln had planned, and now laid
before Congress, a new and strenuously energetic " policy."

EXECUTION. 365

CHAPTER XLV.

EXECUTION.

Efforts for Compensation to Owners of Slaves — Dreams of Colonization —
The Future of the African iu America — The Final Proclamation — The
Slave-Owner a Southern Sympathizer.
When Congress assembled in December, 1862, the issuing
of the final Proclamation of Emancipation on the approaching
New- Year's Day was an already assured result.
Its future effect, so far as the nominaUy seceded States were
concemed, would depend much upon the success of current
mUitary operations. The people, however, of the border slave-
States, occupied in part or in whole by Union armies, were
rapidly becoming aware that the " peculiar institution," among
themselves, had received its death-blow. AU discontent was
deepened and aU loyal sentiment was weakened in the minds
of the slave-o-wners of Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, Kentucky,
and West Virginia, and all in other States that sympathized
-with them and respected the Constitutional legality of their
human property. By no fault of their own they were losing
that which had come to them in strict accordance -with the
laws of their States and country, and these they were stiU
obeying. They had vested rights which even the hand of
revolution and reformation was bound to respect as far as
possible. Tt was true that the proclamation did not include
them in its sweeping blow, but there now remained no effective
or operative power to keep in bondage any slave, anywhere, who
should make an effort for freedom. Tt was a sense of justice,
therefore, quite as much as policy, which led Mr. Lincoln to

366 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
urge upon Congress the adoption of a system of compensated
emancipation for these areas and for the reimbursement of
loyal owners of the prices of slaves set free by the operations
of the war. Even at the North such legislation was regarded,
very generally, as both wise and just. But the measures pro
posed were permitted to die.
Frora an early day, as a f oUower of Henry Clay, Mr. Lin
coln had vaguely entertained the ideas of that statesraan with
reference to the colonization of the colored population. So
long as the mass of it seeraed to be doomed to perpetual servi
tude, the yearly shipment of a few hundreds, or even many
thousands, to any other part of the world was httle more than
a philanthropic experiment, with but moderate possibilities of
good or evil. Now, however, in the very act and hour of giv
ing wholesale freedom to millions of the marked race, the
problem of their future well-being pressed with increasing
force upon the heart and brain of the man who set them free.
Tt was yet a question in his mind whether they could safely be
intrusted with the powers and responsibilities of citizenship.
He openly stated, even to delegations of black raen standing
before him in the Executive Mansion, his behef that the black
and white races, hving in contact, were a mutual detriment to
each other. It would not be easy to disprove the correctness
of such an opinion from the records of the African in America
up to the year 1868, and it could even be fairly weU defended
from the annals of after-years. Tn his perplexity, at the time,
Mr. Lincoln turned to his old dream of colonization. Fantastic
as it was, he clung to it for a while, and until the better con-
-viction forced itself upon him that the Africans had corae to
Araerica to stay and raust be made men of, here and now.
His raessage to Congress, at this session, did little raore than
set forth the difficulties he had already discovered in the way
of his idea. Tt is not irapossible that he learned something
from writing and reading his own statement that the black
man refused to go to Liberia or to Hayti, and that there seemed

EXECUTION 367
to be no other patch of the earth's surface upon which he could
be securely landed.
Less than two years later, still in the same spirit of thought
ful care for the weKare of the freed black men, he was ready
to say, and said, to a personal friend whom he had appointed to
an important ei^¦il post in one of the seceded States which was
first to be reconstructed : " I ara glad you are so strongly in
favor of gi-ving the colored men the baUot. Do all you can to
have it done now. I urge you to push the matter. Once the
war is over, the ballot -wiU soon be about all the protection
they -wiU have. We must fix it so they can protect themselves.
They must have it now, and then it can't be taken away from
them." That was in September, 1864 ; but he could not have said as
much in the -winter of 1862-3, even if the belief and purpose
had then existed in his mind and -wiU. Emancipation itself,
by the act of a " mihtary despotisra," was about as heavy a
burden as the pohtical fortunes of the Adrainistration were
just then able to carry.
It was staggering a httle under its accumulated load, for this
included the enthe mihtary and diplomatic situation ; the bat
tles in Vhginia ; the bad look of the recent f aU elections ; the
necessity of increasing taxes ; the reorganization of the national
finances ; and the imperative need for more men to be expended
as soldiers.
On the first of January, 1863, according to his covenant in
September, the President issued the final Proclamation of
Emancipation, as follows :
" Whereas, on the twenty-second day of September, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, a
proclamation was issued by the President of the United States,
containing, among other things, the foUowing, to -wit :
" ' That on the first day of January, in the year of our Lord
one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, all persons held as
slaves in any State, or designated part of a State, the people

368 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
whereof shall then be in rebelhon against the United States,
shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free ; and the Execu
tive Governraent of the United States, including the railitary
and naval authority thereof, -wiU recognize and maintain the
freedom of such persons, and wiU do no act or acts to repress
such persons, or any of thera, in any efforts they may make for
their actual freedom.
" ' That the Executive will, on the first day of January afore
said, by proclamation, designate the States and parts of States,
K any, in which the people thereof respectively shaU then be
in rebelhon against the United States ; and the fact that any
State or the people thereof shall on that day be in good faith
represented in the Congress of the United States, by members
chosen thereto at elections wherein a majority of the qualified
voters of such State shall have participated, shall, in the ab
sence of strong countervailing testimony, be deemed conclusive
e-vidence that such State, and the people thereof, are not then
in rebellion against the United States.'
"Now, therefore, 1, Abraham Lincoln, President of the
United States, by -virtue of the power in me vested as Com
mander-in-Chief of the army and na-vy of the United States in
time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and gov
ernment of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war
measure for suppressing said rebeUion, do, on this first day of
January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred
and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do,
publicly proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days
from the day first above mentioned, order and designate, as the
States and parts of States wherein the people thereof respect
ively are this day in rebeUion against the United States, the
following, to vsdt :
" Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana (except the parishes of St. Ber
nard, Plaquemiue, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James,
Ascension, Assumption, Terre Bonne, Lafourche, St. Marci,
St. Martin, and Orleans, including the city of New Orleans),

EXECUTION. 369
Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carohna, North
Carohna, and Virginia (except the forty-eight counties desig
nated as West Virginia, and also the counties of Berkely, Ac-
comac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess Anne,
and Norfolk, including the chies of Norfolk and Portsmouth),
and which excepted parts are left precisely as if this proclama
tion were not issued.
" And, by -virtue of the power and for the purposes afore
said, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves
¦within said designated States and parts of States are, and
henceforward shall be, free ; and that the Executive Govem
ment of the United States, including the military and naval
authorities thereof, wiU recognize and maintain the freedom of
said persons.
" And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be
free, to abstain from aU -violence, unless in necessary seK-de-
f ense ; and I recommend to them that in all cases, when al
lowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
" And I further declare and raake known that such persons
of suitable condition -will be received into the armed ser-vice of
the United States, to garrison forts, positions, and other places,
and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.
" And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice,
warranted by the Constitution, upon military necessity, I in
voke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious
favor of Almighty God.
" Tn testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my name, and
caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
" Done at the city of Washington, this first day of January,
in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-
three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-
seventh.
Abraham Lincoln.
" By the President :
"William H. Seward, Secretary of State."

370 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
The last door of possible coraproraise with Slavery was shut
and bolted firraly. AU men knew that the institution could
not be maintained in a few detached States and parts of States.
Legislation might or might not pro-vide remedies for these, but
the President had done his whole duty by them. Especially is
this true in -view of the consideration, which so largely affected
the course of Congress, that the " loyal " population of the dis
tricts in question consisted mainly of those who had no slaves
to lose. There were exceptions, many and honorable ; but, as
a general rule, wherever one found a slaveholder, in those days,
he found a person whose heart, if not his open deeds, were
with the Southern Confederacy.

DARK DAYS. 371

CHAPTER XLVI.
DARK DAYS.
A Tax Payable in Men— The New Financial System— The States and the
Nation — Reconstruction Begun — A Flood of Calumny — Freedom of
Speech and of the Press — A Sarcastic Present to the Confederacy —
Opposition Taking Form at the North.
The results of the fall elections had been sufficiently un
favorable to warn so experienced and shrewd a political man
ager as Mr. Lincoln. Tt was manifestly needful that the North
should be reorganized for war purposes as completely as any
army at the end of an exhausting campaign. He had already
prepared for the work, and a host of busy and eager hands
were co-operating -with him. The Union League was spread
ing fast and -wide. Tt had aheady accomplished excellent re
sults, and promised stiU better things in the future. The sus
pension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus had given a stem and
ominous suggestion to the more noisy malcontents ; but a meas
ure was now preparing which was to faU with terrific force
upon them and theh supporters.
No other request made by Mr. Lincoln of Congress for any
legislation at any time was ever met -with so intense and bitter
a partisan opposition as that which was overcorae in the passage
of the " Draft Act." By this law the entire " mihtia" of the
country, up to that time in the several control of the States as
such, was placed in the hands of the Federal Government, as a
general fund of fighting humanity. Tt was to be enrolled
under rigid pro-visions that swept in the whole population sup
posed to be capable of carrying arms. It was to be drawn
upon,^rt> rata, at the will of the Executive, subject only to the

372 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
forms prescribed by the law, and withoux any reference what
ever to the political opinions of the human beings dra-wn or to
their readiness to die for their country. Those who were
thoroughly -wiUing and ready were so nearly all in the field, at
that date, that the " draft" was sure to draw upon the luke
warm, the timid, the unwilling, the men bound by home ties
and business cares ; and the law contained no clause exempting
even the bitterest enemy of the Administration or the most
profound admher of human slavery and of peace-at-any-price.
That such a law, enforced in such a maimer, would work
great hardships in multitudes of cases was not to be denied,
although the Act had been carefuUy framed to pro-vide for
these as weU as might be. The power placed in the hands of
the President was enormous, but, in order to make it effective,
sundry other measures were necessary, of an entirely different
character. During Mr. Lincoln's long experience in the Tlhnois Legis
lature, and as a member of the " Long Nine" in that body and
an ambitious imitator of De Witt Clinton, he had been made
to pass a laborious apprenticeship and course of study in all
matters of State debt. National debt, banks both State and Na
tional; bank-notes, bankruptcies, credit and losses of credit.
He was well trained and prepared to join -with the Secretary
of the Treasury, Mr. Chase, in devising the ways and means
for revolutionizing the finances of the country.
They were sadly in need of a most sweeping revolution ; and
it came. The long Congressional debates could have but one
termination so far as the gross amounts of money to be raised
were concemed, and the sums tendered to the Administration
were imposingly colossal. Nine hundred millions of six-per
cent-interest bonds were authorized to be printed and sold — to
somebody. Four hundred millions of Treasury notes bearing
interest were authorized to be printed and used as money.
One hundred and fifty milhons of Treasury notes without in
terest were also authorized ; and there is a curious suggestion

DARK DA YS. 373
of the politician rather than the banker in the simultaneous
offering of the two kinds of chculating raediura side by side.
The flrst kind remained in circulation until it had earned a few
cents' worth of interest, and then it did not circulate any more.
StUl it helped pay contractors and soldiers, and that was the
main thing in those days.
Mr. Lincoln's favorite, of aU the flnancial schemes pushed to
conclusion by this Congress, was the National-Bank Act. He
advocated it in his message to Congress and in private conver
sations -with his friends. Tt met so strong an opposition on the
floors of House and Senate, from the friends of the existing
State-bank systems and from what yet remained of the old-
time enmity to a National Bank of any kind, that its fate
seemed more than doubtful for a time. Its possible faUure
was regarded by Mr. Lincoln as a greater disaster than a defeat
of the Union arms tn the field. At the sarae tirae a gro-wing
jealousy of Executive interference was strong in either House,
and there were liraits beyond which even Mr. Lincoln could
not safely venture. He did venture to the very verge, never
theless, and the narrow margin of a majority by which the Act
was finally passed was obtained so directly by his personal
efforts, unobtrusively as these were made, that the National-
Bank system owes to him individually its existence and its use
fulness. This done, a secure market was obtained for a vast mass of
the authorized " bonds," and it was not long before every paper
doUar in the pocket of every raan throughout the country
bound hira to sustain the credit and solvency of the National
Government. The base upon which the Administration stood
was suddenly and enormously -widened.
Through the entire course of Mr. Lincoln's pubhc acts and
utterances, from a time long before the war, can be clearly
traced his personal con-viction, slowly gro-wing into definite
form and ripeness, that the nation as a whole, and the now
seceded States in particular, required an intelhgent rebuilding.

374 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
At this day, looking back, the most shaUow student of political
history has little difficulty in pointing out the manifest differ
ences between the organism now known as " The United
States" and the loose, vague, unhooped, uncemented structure
which do-wn to the year 1860 bore the same title upon aU
maps of the world.
Something analogous to pulhng down preceded rebuilding,
even at the North. Here, however, the work of renewal had
proceeded rapidly. The practical relations of State govern
ments to the central authority had been discovered or created
and were daily becoming better and better defined, through
processes so sharp and searching that their results were hkely
to be permanent and unquestionable. The several conditions
of the border slave-States had been even more entirely revolu
tionized, and the legislation procured by Mr. Lincohi of this
Congress set the seal of perpetuity upon their renewed exist
ence. During this session of it, moreover, the flrst wedge was
driven home into the seemingly solid mass of the Confederacy,
and no power could afterwards -withdraw it. The old State of
Virginia was permanently di-vided by the admission to the
Union, as an independent State, of what is now West Virginia.
Two representatives were also seated in the House frora the
occupied districts of Louisiana. The Confederate authorities
were again duly notified of the fundamental principle upon
which the repression of the Rebelhon was to be carried on :
that every Congressional district securely redeemed from their
grasp was to return at once, if it would, to the performance of
its functions as a part of the national body, and that the Gov
ernment knew nothing of " States" as members of a foreign
confederacy. It acknowledged the existence of a sedition, a
riot, a conspiracy, a powerful organization of armed disturbers
of the peace of the Commonwealth, but it recognized nothing
more respectable.
There was no other political subject in which Mr. Lincoln
took a more active interest, from first to last, than he did in

DARK DAYS 375
that of " reconstruction." There were many, at a later day,
who accused him of even undue haste in his eagerness to obtain
the restoration of local civil governments in every part of the
territory conquered.
The natural reaction of pubhc feeling at the North had been
plainly indicated even before the fall elections of 1862, and
found a stronger expression in them. Tt was well represented
upon the fioor of Congress throughout the winter. The com
pletion of the act of Emancipation, on the first day of the new
year, the entire course and character of the legislation proposed
or accoraphshed, as well as the outlines and particulars of the
military situation, were so successfully misrepresented by the
Opposition press, and so mischievously misunderstood by large
masses of the people, as to greatly increase the general discon
tent and strengthen the hands of aU enemies of the Adminis
tration. The spring of 1863 found the President well supplied with
financial resources and expedients, and -with forraulated powers
for suppressing sedition and for keeping up the arraies in the
field. Tt raust be said, however, and it was weU understood by
himseK, that not at any other time, before or afterwards, was
Mr. Lincoln's hold upon the popular confidence and affection
so weak, so very nearly broken.
The strongest and raost -widely read journals of his own
political party were freely and even bitterly criticising his
management of the war. AU blows fell most heavily upon
him, but not a member of his Cabinet escaped aspersion. His
very family was attacked, in pubhc and in private, by the most
¦vile and cowardly calumny. Not a few bitter tongues roundly
asserted that Mrs. Lincoln herself was in constant correspond
ence, as a spy, with the chiefs of the Rebellion. Through her
they obtained the secrets of the Cabinet and the plans of gen
erals in the field. The insanity of the accusation does not seem
to have been considered. It was of no avail that she was as
ignorant of Cabinet matters as K she had been in Maine, and

376 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
that she did not see enough of her husband to ask his over
weary brain a question of the war. It was equally unirapor-
tant, though strictly trae, that she refused to open her own
private letters, and insisted that all which carae to her through
the raails should first be opened by one of the President's private
secretaries. The absurd and wicked slander refused to die, and
it is barely possible that sorae obtuse or ignorant people accept
it as truth to this very day. Tt probably annoyed her rauch
more than it did Mr. Lincoln, but it serves now as a gauge of
the bitterness and unreason -with which both men and women
assailed the President. Tt also indicates the bewildered state
of mind with which they sought to account for the continued
existence of the Rebelhon. They were willing to dig for the
secret in dark corners, and to find it in the alleged defects and
misconducts of Union statesmen and generals rather than to
see it in the very magnitude of the task these men and their
leader were so heroically performing. Even patriotic and
hopeful men seemed unable to comprehend how large a part
of that task had already been perforraed, or how well ; while the
unpatriotic and the desponding openly asserted that nothing
had yet been done but to place the nation, bound hand and
foot, in the grasping hands of a despotic and blundering Dic
tator. The conductors of the loyal press were not any too con
siderate of the effect of such words as they saw fit to pen frora
day to day. There were few who showed any intelligent ap
preciation of the fact that these persistent attacks upon the
Adrainistration were weakening the armies in the field and
gi-ving the most valuable aid and comfort to the public enemy.
No sirailar state of affairs was permitted to cripple the ener
gies of the Jefferson Da-vis government. No European autoc
racy holds or ever held its subject populations in the crushing
grasp of a raore rigid mihtary system than had by this time
been perfected at the South. The entire human life within
the limits of the Rebellion had been dragooned into an efficient

DARK DAYS 377
political unit. No careless utterances of individual opinion,
opposed to the cause of Secession, were tolerated in public or
in private. Such a thing as an organized and formally repre
sented opposition was unknown. The rope, the buUet, or the
prison took the places of aU other arguraents in answering
hostile or too-critical tongues and pens. As a consequence,
the araount of general information in circulation among the
people was regulated and controllable, and the Confederacy
was what is called " unanimous" on all questions relating to
the war.
The accomphshraent of such an unanimity as that formed
no part of Mr. Lincoln's necessities or plans at any time. Tn
the very darkest hours of the year 1863, his severities were of
a kind which endangered no hfe and very httle liberty. Even
atrocious hcense, masquerading as " hberty," was but shghtly
and exceptionally interfered -with.
With reference to this, it was reaUy needful that something
should be done, over and above notifying friendly journals not
to print, for the inf orraation of the eneray, the plans and ar
maments of ships and forts and camps, and the exact disposi
tion and condition and intentions of the forces and coraraanders.
Journalistic enterprise had led them in several instances to do
this very thing, and its prohibition was sorely grumbled at,
as an invasion of the freedom of the press. A more rigid
censorship was rendered unnecessary by the general inaccuracy
of most of these reports and a shrewd desire that the Rebel
generals might accept them as guides.
Something had to be done, indeed, with the more noisy
pohticians, and it was difficult to see what or how, until a curi
ous but sufficient " test case" was supplied by the treasonable
folly of one weak man, -with prominence enough to make him
very useful. A member of Congress from Ohio, named Cle
ment L. VaUandigham, a strong pro-slavery Democrat before
the war, had, since its outbreak, earned distinction as the raost
violent assailant of the Administration and its raeasures that

378 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
could be pointed out. It was his pride to be somewhat more
of a Rebel than if he had been in command of a Confederate
regiraent. Up to the spring of 1863, he had been permitted
to talk as he would, for the good reason that he had no foUow
ing worth mentioning, and that he served admirably as a per
petual -witness that the Government did not interfere -with the
freedom of speech. He was now to serve an equaUy important
use of another kind. After doing his best for the Rebelhon
all the winter, upon the floor of Congress, he went home to
Ohio and began a series of pubhc addresses in which he sur
passed all pre-vious exhibitions of partisan malice and vitupera
tive capacity.
General Burnside was then in command of the Department
of the Ohio, and his patriotism was of the most sterhng quahty.
He had issued an order setting forth that aU persons found
-within the Union array lines who should corarait acts for the
benefit of the enemy would be tried as spies or as traitors, and,
K con-victed, would be put to death.
This order plainly included such traitors as VaUandigham ;
and he not only publicly denounced it on the stump, but
urged the people to forcibly resist its execution. The mihtary
" order of arrest," which he in this manner courted and asked
for, was issued by General Bumside as a raatter of course, and
the orator was locked up. The next day. May 5, 1863, an apph
cation for a -writ of habeas corpus, in his case, was made to the
United States Circuit Court. It was a fine opportunity to test
the Constitutionahty and effect of the President's suspension
of the writ, as well as the authority of the Commander-in-Chief
to protect the rear of his army.
The presiding judge, himself a lifelong Democrat, politically,
listened to a long argument from the prisoner's counsel ; but he
sternly refused the writ, stating the law of the matter in a
form which raade his decision invaluable to the Governraent.
He said : " The legality of the arrest depends upon the necessity
for making it, and that is to be deterrained by the mihtary

DARK DAYS 379
comraander." He added a good deal of outspoken patriotism
and common-sense to his " law," and the subject of arbitrary
arrests was cleared of a great part of the rubbish which had
been heaped around it. VaUandighara was tried at once by
court-martial, and was sentenced to be confined in some fort
ress. General Burnside approved the finding of the court and
named Fort Warren as the place of punishment. But Mr.
Lincoln was not disposed to throw away his opportune " ex
ample" in that manner. He could express, through him, his
hearty contempt for the class of demagogues VaUandigham so
perfectly represented. A broad smile swept across the face of
the North, and a subdued chuckle went through the people
and the army and was heard even at the South, when the sen
tence of the culprit was read in the newspapers.
The President modified the imprisonment in Fort Warren
to an imprisonment within the Rebel lines, and sent the convict
do-wn South, -svith a warning not to return until after the war.
There was a touch of humor in it, but it was the most biting
sarcasm ever penned by Abraham Lincohi. Well might the
South grumble that it was no sort of " Botany Bay," and had
no use for that kind of immigration. The sentence worked a
world of good at the North. A host of mere talking men felt
that the blow was aimed at thera. Quarters in Federal prisons
could be given to but few. From such places there might be
means of possible escape. There would, at least, be food and
raiment there, and safe shelter ; but who could guess what hor
rors might await a poor Northern traitor " beyond the army
hnes" ? The people of the South, themselves, were suspected
of ha-ving strong notions, here and there, of a raan's duty to
" go -with his State, side with his section, and stand by his o-wn
people," and Southern hospitality raight curl its haughty lip a
little at the Northern renegade sent down to help eat the
scanty rations of its soldiery.
VaUandigham got around into Ohio again, before the end of
the war ; but he had served all the uses that could be made of

380 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
him, and no further notoriety was forced upon hira by the
Government. Even after his expulsion, however, his remarka
ble usefulness continued for a season. His case and con^viction,
and the shiver of dread caused thereby to all similar offenders,
drew the raore ¦virulent eleraents of the Opposition together,
forced them to take public action, and so enabled Mr. Lincoln
to answer them before the people, as he could not otherwise
have done. Pubhc meetings were at once held, in the larger
cities, for general purposes of denunciation of the " Lincoln
despotisra." These raeetings answered well as safety-valves,
and also to convince the nation that there was really no inter
ference -with freedora of speech. Great men and small raen,
alike, expressed theraselves frora these platforras very much
as the transported Ohio scapegoat had expressed himseK from
his platforms, and no hand of Executive tyranny was laid upon
them. The meetings were largely and noisily attended, and
their managers, without any such intention, afforded Mr. Lin
coln the means of measuring, with fair accuracy, the extent,
nature, and capacities of the disaffection.
A month after VaUandigham had been bundled across the
army lines and received by " his o-wn," the Democratic State
Convention of Ohio, representing the disloyal elements of that
State, nominated him for Governor of the State, and his law-
counsel for Lieutenant-Governor. They also did , Mr. Lincoln
the favor to send a delegation to him at Washington, to pre
sent their -view of the case.
They did very rightly. They were by no means bad raen.
Their action, at that very hour, although they knew it not,
was a marvellous expression of their personal confidence in the
integrity of the President. They did not know, either, how
glad he was of the opportunity they thus gave him to tell the
whole country, in his answer to their address : " Your attitude,
therefore, encourages desertion, resistance to the Draft, and the
like, because it teaches those who incline to desert and to es
cape the draft to believe it is your purpose to protect them."

DARK DA YS 381
To the utterances of a great raeeting held at Albany, New
York, Mr. Lincoln raade a more elaborate reply. Tt was a
peculiarly representative assemblage, and gave him an oppor
tunity to explain to the whole people why he had pursued so
lenient a policy from the beginning, and why he had waited
for the commission of actual crime, by any and every indi-
-vidual, before employing the strong hand of the law. Tt also
enabled him to ask, of both friends and foes, the practical
question :
" Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier-boy who deserts,
while I must not touch a hair of the -wily agitator who induces
him to desert ? I think that, in such a case, to silence the agi
tator and save the boy is not only constitutional, but withal a
great mercy."
There was -wind enough stirring to blow away a great deal
of unwholesome fog. By the time all the speeches had been
made and all the editorials had been printed, the people had
read and digested the President's replies. They had also
chuckled grimly over " VaUandigham in Dixie," and had en
joyed the panicky dismay of the demagogues. The beneficial
effect was sure and rapid, and a great revulsion of popular
feeling set strongly in.
The dark days were by no means shortened. There was
more trouble to come. Nevertheless, the President discerned
that he could safely employ the exceptional powers placed in
his hands, and that all the people would sustain him. The
great mUitary events of the year, in due season, completed the
work so well begun, and, when her next State election took
place, Ohio declared, by the largest majority in her pohtical
history, that she preferred a patriot for her governor and had,
like Mr. Lincoln, no further use for the Idnd of men repre
sented by VaUandigham.

382 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER XLVII.

NIGHT.

Preparing for a Great Struggle— Popular Discontent— Murmurs of Sedi-
tion — European Hostilities — ChanceUorsvUle — Bitter Hours for the
President — Darkness at the South — Statesmen under a Hallucination —
The Second Invasion of the North — Hooker Succeeded by Meade.
Mr. Lincoln did not retain the external equanimity of his
earlier days under the gaUing pressure of the burdens laid upon
him in 1863. The' goading irritations were too many, and they
gave him no rest whatever. The path he was forced to walk
in was rugged with lacerating difficulties. To say that he now
and then gave way to short-lived fits of petulance is but to
admit that he was huraan. He was keenly conscious of every
deficiency, in hiraself or in his human and other means for
performing his vast undertaking, and he could not but worry
when things went -wrong. More than enough did go wrong, and
the few adraissions of harassed weariness which escaped him do
not deserve especial record.
Tt was weU understood, through many channels of informa
tion, that the Confederacy was now preparing to put forth its
full and uttermost strength : and this was more than the North
would or could be induced to do. There was, indeed, a sort
of prophetic hope in the ob-vious fact that such an exhaustive
effort could never be raade more than once by the South ; but
the certainty that it was coming filled the outlook for the mUi
tary year -with promises of bloodshed, and these were speedily
and terribly fulfilled. Mr. Lincoln read all these signs and
proraises, and knew their meaning perfectly. He saw and he
felt that a large proportion of the men he was drawing into the

NIGHT. 383
array from their homes and workshops were to be sent, by his
orders, to certain and sudden death ; and he was not the man
to put from bim carelessly any of the solemn questions asked
of him by such a responsibility.
The cares heaped upon the President by the demands and
perils of the mihtary situation were made hea-vier by the aspect
of affairs in several of the loyal States. The murmurs of the
opponents of the Draft grew louder daily, as the machinery for
its enforcement assumed forms which men could see. Tt was
something new and strange and horrible, even to the minds of
many who were genuinely patriotic ; for it was a sort of re
morseless and unavoidable " direct tax" which could only be
paid, in person or by substitute, -with the bodies of h-ving men.
There were yet other oraens of possible disaster. More em
phatic than ever came continual assurances frora abroad,
official, unofficial, and journalistic, that the syrapathies of the
great commercial powers and controUing aristocracies of Europe
were strongly -with the Confederacy. The sympathies of the
French Imperial Government assumed their most offensive
form in the disastrous history of its Mexican expedition, and
the foregone failure of this was a significant prophecy of the
subsequent events by means of which the French people re
gained seK-govemment. Popular good-wiU in France for the
American Republic was without any means for raaking itself
heard or felt in the year 1863.
The " Southern" sympathies of that part of the English na
tion affected by such leanings were made to be very deeply
felt by the American people. We were assailed by them, and
in the most hurtful modes, by land and sea. On the sea, by
the continuous and often successful efforts of British blockade-
runners to enter or leave the Southern ports, and by the ravages
of British cruisers, like the Alabama, under the Confederate
fiag; on the land, by the presence, on every battle-field, of
British arms and ammunition in rapidly increasing supply.
That part of the English nation whose heart and hope instinc-

384 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
tively clung to the Free North and its long struggle for Free
Labor had attained no other pohtical power than that of suffer
ing patiently, in the year 1868.
Whatever may have been the caste feeling of a part of the
German ruling classes, the Germans as a mass were with the
North. They bought our national "bonds" liberally, at war
time prices, and in due season they reaped a golden harvest of
rich profits thereby.
Alone among the great powers of Europe, Russia was firmly
bound to America by the ties of a friendship which bore a
strict relation to her undying hatred of France and England.
Her -vi-vid memories of the Crimean War were sure guaranties
of her active alliance, in case her old enemies should offer her
an opportunity to obtain satisfaction for Sevastopol. Her
position aided largely in cheeking any too aggressive an expres
sion of the now half-triumphant malice of her rivals who mistak
enly regarded themselves as interested in our political division
and destruction.
The State Department was in good hands, and Mr. Seward
could safely be intrusted -with all diplomatic affairs. The con
dition and promise of the revenue and the Treasury seemed
all that could be reasonably expected. The Navy grew more
and more efficient, at sea and on the Western rivers. Secretary
Stanton was accomplishing marvels of genius and of sleepless
toil in the War Office, burning out in faithful sei-vices the fiery
energy which led Mr. Lincoln to select him for that tremendous
duty. Congress adjourned and its membership went home. The
very air grew hot and dense -with expectations of a " battle-
summer." The army was in fine condition, East and West.
The forces on the line of the Potomac were necessarily some
what scattered, but they outnumbered, two to one, the forces
opposed to them under Lee.
The Army of the Potomac was still, to the perceptions of a
large majority of the people, the representative army, by the

NIGHT. 385
successes or failures of which they measured the tides of the
war. It was under the command of General Hooker ; and
the exact condition of the President's mind in relation to this
officer cannot be better expressed than by the following letter,
on file in the War Department : Executive Mansion,
Washington, D. C, January 36, 1863.
Major-General HooTcer.
General : I have placed you at the head of the Array of
the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appear
to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you
to know that there are some things in regard to which I am
not quite satisfied -with you. I beheve you to be a brave and
skillful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do
not mix politics -with your profession, in which you are right.
You have confidence in yourseK, which is a valuable, if not an
indispensable, quahty. You are ambitious, which, within rea
sonable bounds, does good rather than harm. But I think that
during General Bumside's command of the array you have
taken counsel of your arabitions, and thwarted him as much as
you could, in which you did a great wrong both to the country
and a most meritorious and honorable brother-officer. I have
heard, in such a way as to beheve it, of your recently saying
that both the Army and the Government needed a dictator. Of
course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given
you a command. Only those generals who gain success can
set up as dictators. What I ask of you is military success, and
I -wfll risk the dictatorship. The Govemment will support you
to the utmost of its abihty, which is neither more nor less than
it has done and will do for aU commanders. I rauch fear that
the spirit you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticising
their comraander and withholding confidence from him, -will
now turn upon you. I shall assist you, as far as I can, to put
it do-wn. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again,

386 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
could get any good out of an array whUe such a spirit prevails
in it.
And now, beware of rashness ! Beware of rashness ! But
with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us
victories. Yours very truly,
A. Lincoln.
General Hooker had succeeded in winning the good-will and
confidence of his men, but that was all he was destined to ¦win.
Leaving to professional military critics all discussion of the
exact strategic methods eraployed or oraitted, it is enough to
state the facts as follows :
During the first week in May, 1863, General Hooker so
handled several of his best array corps, in what is known as the
Battle of ChanceUorsvUle, that the net result to thera was a
severe defeat. The obstinacy of the fighting and the generaUy
good conduct of the forces engaged appears frora the official
stateraents of losses on both sides. The Confederate com
raander adraits a total loss of 13,019, and the Union general of
17,197, and, ¦with these, of the battle-ground.
Mr. Lincoln might well walk the fioor of his roora, late into
the night, after recei-ving the news of this disaster. One of his
private secretaries was detained by unusual pressure of clerical
work in an adjoining room. Midnight carae ; one o'clock ; two
o'clock ; and when, a haK-hour later, the young man paused at
the head of the stairs, before creeping silently out to go to his
O'wn residence, the last sounds he heard were the slow and heavy
footfalls of the all but heart-broken ruler. So many more
fathers and mothers were looking towards hira, reproachfully,
between their sobs for their sons. So many more widows were
mouming for their husbands and wondering whether their
heartache need have come to them if Mr. Lincoln had done, or
had not done, something, — they knew not what. He Icnew
that the news would stimulate the hatred in Europe and
strengthen all the disaffection at the North. Even loyal

NIGHT. 387
enthusiasts would be deterred from enlisting. The Drait
would be denounced more bitterly than ever, as a means of
dragging helpless and nn^willing men into a shambles of useless
butchery. Other men, in distant corners of the country, could not under
stand, as did the President, that such a ¦victory as that of Chan-
cellors-ville, won at so great a cost to the South, was, in its trae
and final effect, a damaging blow to the Southern cause. They
overlooked the simple arithmetic of the matter and refused to
see how hardly General Lee could spare the men he had lost,
and that a very few such fights would leave the Rebellion with
out an army. If General Lee's own records are to be trasted,
nearly a fourth part of his movable strength was temporarily
or permanently destroyed, while the Union loss, relatively, was
but fifteen per cent, instead of twenty-five. One bitter com
plaint made against General Hooker, indeed, was that he had
not employed his men and had kept 37,000 of them out of the
fight although they were near enough to have turned the defeat
into a -victory for him had he but set them free. With excel
lent show of reason could Mr. Lincoln urge, as he speedily did,
that another battle should be sought and fought before the
enemy should be given time to recuperate. He urged in vain.
There was a man then in training for him, in the West, who had
learned that precise lesson of the stern arithmetic of war : but
Grant had not arrived, in 1863, and it seemed impossible for the
President to enforce his con-viction of the truth upon the mind
of any comraander he had as yet discovered. AU the apparent
e-vils of the defeat were therefore perraitted to remain, and
Secretary Stanton hiraseK is reported to have declared that
the darkest hour of the whole war was just after Chancellors-
-ville. The dark days of the year 1863 were not dark for the North
alone. There was trouble in the councils of the Confederacy
also ; and -with it carae at times a sickening consciousness of
failing strength. The course of mUitary events had not by any

388 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
means been uniformly favorable to the South. After a series
of bloody engagements, one of their best arraies was cooped up in
Vicksburg by General Grant, and there seeraed to be but small
hope that his hold upon it could be broken. Throughout the
West the Union lines were steadily drifting Southerly. Not a
man could the Rebellion spare to its Western generals frora its
resources in the East, for here every effort was raaking to re-
enforce General Lee. Unbounded confidence was reposed in
hira, but it was becoraing painfully e-vident that he raust do
soraething rauch raore productive of results than the costly
winning of even such victories as that of Chancellors-viUe.
General Hooker was still in command of the Array of the
Potoraac, and the opposing forces watched each other zealous
ly. A fierce battle of mutual interrogation as to position aud
purposes was fought at Brandy Station in the second week of
June, but no general engageraent was obtained, for various good
reasons. The chief of these was, probably, that General Lee
did not desire one. He was making aU things ready for a
second invasion of the North, and more fighting on Southern
ground, just then, would but have wasted his war raaterial.
That Lee should make such a Northward movement at all
was both a dire necessity and a fatal blunder. It is not alto
gether fair to place either of these upon the shoulders of so
good a general. The great error of the Confederate statesmen
concerning the state of pubhc opinion and feehng, as well as
of material prosperity, at the North, is by no means easy to
understand when their general shrewdness and abihty are taken
into consideration. They should have known their country
and countrymen better than they did. The national resources
of the North, always vastly greater than those of the South,
had not been perceptibly impaired, and no acre of its area had
been either devastated or rent away. As to its population, the
out-and-out Vallandighams araong them were not fighting men,
by any means, as Mr. Lincoln contemptuously illustrated when
he sent that person through the hnes. Lee was quite welcome

NIGHT. 389
to them all, if he had any use for them. They were, for the
greater part, mere political demagogues, who talked themselves
into disreputable notoriety, while all the good and strong raen
of their own " Democratic" party ralhed like heroes around the
flag of their country. The demagogues had now, indeed, been
able to take advantage of a sore-hearted and weary multitude ;
but experienced pohtical leaders, like Jefferson Davis and his
counselors, should have understood, without being told, that
the multitudes were loyal and trae to their govemment, at the
bottora of aU their grurabhng. The discontented elements at
the North could not be handled, even in the accustomed form
of a pohtical party, -without the narae of a favorite Union gen
eral, McCleUan, at their head. They raust be able to assure
themselves and everybody else that they wanted only a raore
vigorous and successful management of the war and, perhaps,
a httle less of Abolitionism. All Northern murmurs were
heard by Southern pohtical and mihtary managers as conveyed
to them by theh spies and correspondents, or as expressed in
-wild exaggeration by " Copperhead " editors of newspapers.
The rabid utterances of demagogues, and even the observa
tions of the most cultivated and ignorant foreign tourists, were
sent South and interpreted as the sincere expressions of great
popular constituencies. The imported riff-raff of great cities
was carefuUy cross-examined, and its mouthings were studied
and duly reported as indicating the state of mind of our entire
foreign-bom citizenship.
It was a direct result of the hallucination thus created that
the ineffable mistake of an invasion of the North was repeated.
The best army of the South was sent across the fatal border
that it might serve as a nucleus for an anticipated rising of all
the friends of Secession according to their varieties. It was a
splendid army of nearly ninety thousand men, and was fully
competent for the conquest proposed, so soon as it should be
augmented by a few hundred thousands of Northern malcon
tents. It was mainly composed of trained veterans, new levies

390 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
being retained for other duties, and h look forward confi
dently to the career of supposed -victories before it.
Tt was not difficult for Lee to elude any possible -vigUance
of Hooker. A rapid dash by a force thrown forward for the
purpose cleared the Shenandoah Valley of Union troops, and
then, through the broad highway thus opened, General Lee was
pressing on to his mad enterprise before his purpose could be
di^vined. This was the culrainating point of the whole war. The
Draft for raen had been ordered to take place in July. Mur-
raurs of threatened resistance were orainously rising from
many localities, and it was not difficult to connect the North
ward march of Lee ¦with possible consphacies, secretly or
ganized and prepared for co-operative action. That such con
spiracies existed was beyond all doubt, although their extent
and power for e-vil was unknown. It was now also certain
that Lee would be in Pennsylvania before a single army corps
could be thrown across his path.
The President called upon the States of New York, West
Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania for 120,000 men, for
temporary use ; and it is interesting to note the names of these
four States combined in such a call by him. In the exciteraent
of the raoraent the raen came fast enough, but it was not so
easy to arm and equip and make a practical use of them. In
hke manner, at the same tirae, Mr. Jefferson Da-vis was calhng
out every able-bodied man or boy he could arm, to defend
Richmond frora a counter-attack the raovement for which had
been instantly ordered by Mr. Lincoln.
General Hooker moved bis forces somewhat leisurely, and
the result of a diversity of views between him and General
HaUeck was the offer and acceptance of his resignation and the
appointment of General George G. Meade to the comraand of
the Array of the Potomac.
General Meade had previously commanded the Fifth Army
Corps and was an officer of tried and acknowledged ability,

NIGHT. 391
He had not attained then, nor did he afterwards establish, a
reputation as an exceptionally great commander, but he was in
all respects eminently capable and trustworthy, and he was less
of an experiment than any pre-vious chief of that army. It never
had had less need of a great comraander than at that very hour.
The subordinate leaders of the Array of the Potomac were now
becorae experienced generals, faraihar -with their commands
and duties, whUe its veteran soldiers were a body of men that
had but one equal on earth, and that was its old antagonist,
the Army of NortheA Virginia, under Lee. No other large
armies then in existence had added to theh science and their
drUl the perfecting processes of so many hard marches and
fights. There was a curiously high degree of mutual respect
and of emulation between those two armies, for which each
had many and most exceUent reasons.

392 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER XLVIII
THE TtTRNING POINT.
The Eve of Battle — The Surrender of Vicksburg — The Mississippi River
set Free — The Three Days' Fight at Gettysburg — Lee's Retreat — The
Situation Changed — The Draft Riots — The New York Mob — The
President's Reply to the Unpatriotic Elements.
The month of June was fast shpping away, and it began to
look as K the gates of the North were at last open to the Con
federacy. By the 24th the main body of Lee's army was north
of the Potomac. On the 27th two of his army corps were at
Chambersburg, well up the Cumberland VaUey, west of the
mountains, while a third occupied Carhsle, -within striking
distance of Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania. General
Hooker had held his old position opposite Washington, -with
his main body, as late as the 23d ; but all doubt as to the safety
of that city, for the tirae being, was now reraoved, and on the
25th he began to cross the Potoraac at Edward's Ferry. From
thence he advanced to Frederick, Maryland, and halted, only
thirty miles, as the crow flies, from the battle-field of Gettys
burg. Here, on the 28th, the change of commanders took
place, and General Meade only carried out a pre-viously ex
pressed purpose of his predecessor in at once mo-ving his
forces towards the Susquehanna. Omitting all details of mili
tary movements as out of place here, it is enough to say that
on the evening of June 30 the entire Rebel army was concen
trating towards Gettysburg ; the Union army lay -within little
more than a good day's march, and both commanders were
fully aware that a great and decisive battle could not be long
delayed.

THE TURNING POINT. 393
What was only of a little less iraportance, the entire country
was almost equally aware and in waiting. A Rebel force pene
trated -within sight of Harrisburg. The citizens of Philadelphia
found themselves digging trenches and throwing up earthworks
for the possible defence of that city. The Governor of Penn
sylvania called for 60,000 more raen. A sudden and fierce
exciteraent spread like -wildfire throughout the North, and a
spasm of warlike feehng stirred the hearts of men in every
community and neighborhood. The effect was not at all what
the Richmond statesmen had counted upon, but it was very
much what they should have expected. The presence of Lee
in Pennsylvania did aU that was necessary to render the Draft
endurable and only failed of making it popular. Certain
it is that there remained hardly a tithe of the trouble in enforc
ing it that there might have been but for a vague idea which
almost every man unconsciously entertained that he could hear
the sound of distant cannonading and possibly of drums.
The President urged forward -with all his might the army
movement under Meade. He did not neglect the forces in
front of Washington nor the insufficient counter-raoveraent
towards Richraond. At the sarae tirae he stimulated to his
uttermost, as his letters and dispatches to the commanding
generals testify, the operations he was watching in the West.
He pushed forward -with increased vigor the now almost com
pletely organized machinery for the enforcement of the Draft.
The decisive hour had come, and he proved himseK fully equal
to all its demands upon him. So did the Army of the Potomac.
So did the men in the West, under Grant.
The first week of July, 1863, was crowned with hard-won
triumph. The garrison of Vicksburg surrendered to General
Grant on the 4th, and so, a few days later, did that of Port
Hudson, further do-wn the river. With these was also surren
dered the Mississippi River to its mouth. The Confederacy
was cleft in twain, never raore to be the compact and stubbornly
resisting mass which it so long had been. In the East, on the

394 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
first day of the month, at Gettysburg, the advanced corps of
the armies under Meade and Lee began a struggle as of life
and death. At the end of the first day's fighting the advan
tage was with the Confederates ; but all they had won had cost
them dearly. All through the hot hours of July 2, and on
into the night, the strKe continued -with a success so varying that
the result stiU trembled in the balance. At night a council of
war was held by Meade and his generals, and the corps com
manders unanimously voted to stay and fight it out. It is
recorded of General W. S. Hancock, in particular, that when
his opinion was called for he added to it, in strong language,
" The Army of the Potomac has retreated too often." Tt is a
sufficient comraent upon the aspect of affairs that the usual
and prudent precautions for covering the retreat of the army
in case of further disaster were made with special care. The
fighting on the third day began with the dawn of light ; but
before noon its bloody tides were manifestly turning in favor
of the Union. Tt became necessary for Lee to strike a desper
ate, decisive blow, and he prepared for one which, if it could
have succeeded against the preparations made to receive it,
would have changed the remaining history of the war. It was
begun a little after 3 o'clock p.m., the best troops of the Rebel
army, hitherto untouched and fresh, being hurled against the
Union centre. They have been estimated at about 18,000 raen,
under General Pickett, sometimes termed the "Ney of the
Confederate armies." Tt was a grand charge, well planned
but for a mistaken idea as to what it was to meet, and it was
raade magnificently ; but it failed in slaughter, rout, and min,
and its failure terminated the Invasion of the North. The
Rebel forces stiU held the positions to which they had fallen
back, but at haK past 6 o'clock p.m. they ceased firing. They
still held their ground, unassailed, during aU the next day; and
General Meade's caution in not instantly pressing another
general engagement has found able defenders as weU as severe
critics among military men.

THE TURNING POINT. 395
Except on the first day, the actual combatants had not been
very unequally matched as to nurabers, and then only by the
Confederate troops being the more rapidly carried into action.
General Meade had under him, first and last, about 82,000 men,
not all engaged, while General Lee had about 73,500 actually
present for service. The cavahy on either side was about
equal in nuraerical strength, but the Array of the Potoraac was
largely superior in field-artillery. The severity of the fighting
is grimly iUustrated by the losses, in killed, wounded, and miss
ing. These are trustworthily reported or estimated at 23,186
for the Army of the Potoraac and 22,728 for the Army of
Northern Virginia, a difference of 458 men in apparent favor
of the Confederacy.
Lee's errand in the North was over, at the end of such a fight,
even if it were to be considered, what some of the Confederate
leaders actuaUy clairaed, " a drawn battle." Tt was, indeed,
nothing of the kind, but a distinctly raarked and definite defeat
of Lee's army, which only escaped destruction because it was
not instantly smitten again.
Fresh troops were pouring forward to re-enforce Meade, and
Mr. Lincoln urged him to assume the offensive again at once ;
but he failed to do so. General Lee was once more permitted,
though -with better reason than after the Antietam battle,
peaceably and all but unmolested to withdraw a shattered
though stiU stubborn and dangerous army and to retreat into
Virginia. This second invasion of the North terminated rauch raore
disastrously for the Confederacy than did the mad march which
ended at the Antietam. Wlien the results of it were summed
up and the great events on the banks of the Mississippi were
added to thera, it was discovered that the entire military situa
tion had undergone a change. Both in the East and in the
West this change was of a nature that was necessarily perma
nent, and the possible future area of the war was narrower than
before. Its tide had unmistakably turned and was ebbing

396 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Southward, however any of its waves raight thenceforth
advance or recede.
During all the time of the change, nevertheless, and even
after its bloody crisis was passed, serious political matters
aheady referred to had demanded the thoughtful attention of
the President. The governor, for the time being, of the great
State of New York had taken upon himseK to be a sort of
official mouthpiece for the eleraents opposed to the enforcement
of the Draft of men for the army. He indeed represented
them, for by their votes he was in office. It is now impossible
to more than guess what raight have been the course of such a
man, so upheld, if the battle of Gettysburg had ended in a
rout of Meade's array, or if Grant, at the same tirae, had been
repulsed before Vicksburg. As it was, and whUe yet the clouds
of uncertainty and dread hung over the battle-fields and hid
the coming victories, the raany emissaries of the Richmond
govemment, and low demagogues without any other commis
sion than such as their o-wn malice gave thera, worked busUy
and effectively araong the more debased and ignorant popula
tions of New York and other great cities. The Draft Act
contained an unhappy clause whereby a man could secure
exemption through a money payment, and it was easy to
represent this as a "rich man's exemption." This pro-vision
added materially to the necessarily offensive nature of the law,
great as was its real mercy. The promoters of sedition were
able so to use it as to touch as with caustic aU the sore places
of poverty and of class prejudice.
Mihtary events had now accoraphshed much in the way of
checking the growth and preventing the pernicious effect of
aU this exciteraent ; but the path for mischief to come had been
prepared in ways unperceived by Mr. Lincoln. Well as he
knew his countrymen generaUy, he was but httle acquainted
with the population of New York City. He knew as little of
it, in fact, as do nine tenths of its better classes at this day.
He was not at all aware how strong, active, and well-armed a

THE TURNING POINT. 397
" garrison" it constantly requires in time of peace. He there
fore could not estimate how much more numerous and efficient
should have been its armed occupancy at such an hour of sure
and sore emergency as that of the enforceraent of the Draft
Act. The time was one, for him especially, in the intense excite
ment of whose tremendous events alraost any human oversight
might well be pardoned ; but the precise error he comraitted or
permitted was full of peril. He allowed the New York State
authorities to strip the city of its organized militia in response
to his caU for temporary troops to check the advance of Lee.
They were aU sent, but there was little use made of them at
Gettysburg. That fighting was hardly the kind of work for
mihtia. The additional error was then committed of seeraing to for
get theh very existence, and so of not hastening their return to
the place where they were needed as guardians of peace and
law. It is not easy to iraagine how precisely such an eraergen-
cy could occur again, but it raight.
For several generations the city of New York had received
from Europe, in addition to all that was good and valuable in
human immigration, a steady influx, such as it still receives, of
the -vilest elements of the worst populations of the Old World.
The chUdren of these people do not become Americans, and
theh very grandchildren, in a large proportion, are still alien
in heart and soul to aU that distinctively raakes and consti
tutes Americanism.
From these elements had come but few " volunteers" for the
army, and nearly as many deserters as volunteers. Upon
them, however, the Draft was now about to lay its iron hand ;
and the word went around among them that the mihtia were
aU gone, they had only the police to deal with, and the city
was at theh mercy. Their dull brains were slow to grasp the
new idea, and the flrst day of the Draft passed very quietly.
This, after several postponements, had been ordered by the

398 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
War Department at Washington to take place on Saturday,
the 11th of July. It was to be under the purely imaginary
protection of a few squads of the Invalid Corps ; and the Met
ropolitan Police were not notified, nor was any request made
of them for assistance or even for especial vigilance. They
had no expectation of any disturbance, and made no preparation
whatever. It was a fuU week after the battle of Gettysburg,
and every mihtia regiment raight as well have been at horae.
The Metropolitan Police force was an adrairable body of men,
weU organized, well drilled, efficient, seK-reliant, and was
officered and handled by men of uncommon courage and capa
city. It was strong enough, even in nurabers, to raeet any
reasonable deraand ; but a strain beyond all reason was about to
be thrown upon it.
The next day was Sunday, the 12th, and it is a noteworthy
fact that the everywhere-present police did not discover or
report a single indication of the coraing trouble. There were
timid people who feared soraething ; there were angry raen
who raade many threats in the ears of sympathizers ; the mob
was thoroughly ready for it knew not what : but Sunday passed
very quietly.
" The Mob." That was a thing, an existence, a feature of
the population of the United States, of which Mr. Lincoln had
no definite knowledge. Even his old rough neighbors, the
" Clary's Grove Boys," were fit to wear -wings in comparison
¦with the wild beasts who were now about to astonish him. If
he had any thought of possible trouble in the great city, he
doubtless believed, with all its good citizens, that the pohce
would be strong enough to prevent any general disturbance of
the peace. So they were, and would have been had they not
been permitted to be taken utterly by surprise.
On Monday, the 13th, the offices for enrollment and selec
tion opened again, but it was only to close in haste. The Mob
rose suddenly and grew fast, compelling accessions to its ranks
under pain of death, by a fiercely brutal " draft act" of its own.

THE TURNING POINT. 399
It rapidly discovered and assured itself of its power, and the
city learned, for the first tirae, what a raultitude of devilish
natures it contained. Four days of riot and lawlessness fol
lowed. There were twenty-four distinct " fires" of importance
¦within twenty-four hours from the outbreak of the riot, and
what was then the " Fire Department" was unfit to deal with
them. Too many of its " volunteer" membership were among
the rioters, and it was one of the things destroyed by the raoh
and those fires.
At the first, a pretense was made by the rioters of confining
aU actual murders committed by them to colored men and
women and chUdren, and members of the police force. This,
however, was soon abandoned, and any well-dressed or de
cently behaved man was in peril of being pointed out as " a
Lincoln man" of some kind, and of being inhumanly butch
ered. Stores and houses were broken into and sacked and
fired, and the negro orphan-asylum was devilishly destroyed.
Plunder, drunkenness, cruelty, held a sort of carnival.
The Metropohtan Police did their duty like heroes, fighting
magnificently, under every disadvantage. Beaten and mur
dered in small squads or singly, they did not lose a single fight,
from first to last, where the odds were not raore than ten to
one against them, or where they coxdd bring a reasonable force
to bear. As it was, they held their assailants at bay, checked
their ravages, prevented untellable devastation, and finaUy suc
ceeded in overpowering the Mob. Private citizens armed
themselves and came to help, twelve hundred entering the
police force as sworn "specials." The guns of government
vessels in the harbor were brought to bear at several localities,
but could not well be used. The fragraentary reraainders of
the organized raihtia came to the assistance of the Metropoli
tans at the very outset of the riot. The veterans of disbanded
"volunteer" regiments rallied promptly at the call of their
former commanders and did excellent service. DetaUs of in
fantry and artillery from the forts in the harbor, and of ma-

400 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
rines and sailors frora the Navy Yard and from war-vessels in
the harbor performed their duty thoroughly. Towards the
close, f uU regiments arrived from the interior of the State, the
seat of war and elsewhere, and quiet was at last restored.
The fighting was continuous and bloody. How raany of
the Mob were actuaUy killed and wounded before its fury was
expended and its power broken was never officially reported.
There were reasons for not saying too much about it at the time,
but the count probably fell little short of fifteen hundred.
Mr. Lincoln was bitterly but unjustly blamed for the occur
rence of the Draft Riot. Men saw that its apparent cause and
opportunity carae from his action as Chief Magistrate of the
nation, and raany did not look rauch further. They failed to
consider that he was as ignorant as they were that the ¦wild
beasts of Europe were so nuraerous in the dens of New York
City. The good uses of the whole matter were at once developed,
and the Draft Riot was of incalculable assistance to the Ad
ministration. The entire country, in its amazed perusal of the
newspaper accounts of the horror, could see the glare of the
burning buildings and hear the brutal roar of the Mob and
the shrieks of its helpless ¦victims. The sacking of the negro
orphan-asylum, the murder of colored persons, and the other
hideous cruelties of the rioters, turned old pro-slavery Demo
crats, by the thousand, into red-hot Abohtionists. The entire
affair, moreover, -with all its disgrace and misery, was finally
charged over to the account which was to be settled with the
RebeUion. Everybody felt that a Draft, or something even
more dreadful, ought to be put in operation at once, and that
nothing else under heaven was haK so bad as a Mob.
The Governor of New York had not distinguished himseK,
during the riot, by any effort of his to suppress it, but he con
tinued a demand he had made upon the President for a post
ponement of the Draft, and for sundry modifications of its
operation. He even went so far as to ask that the postpone-

THE TURNING POINT. 401
ment should be until a test of the constitutionahty of the Act
should be had before the courts. Mr. Lincoln's reply was, in
effect, that he had no objection whatever to having the matter
brought before the Suprerae Court, but that, in the raean time,
the Draft must go on and the ranks of the army must be fiUed
up. He said :
" We are contending with an enemy who, as I understand,
drives every able-bodied man he can reach into his ranks, very
much as a butcher drives buUocks into a slaughter-pen. No
time is wasted, no argument is used. This produces an army
which -wiU soon turn upon our now -victorious soldiers already
in. the field, if they shall not be sustained by recruits as they
should be."
The iraraediate action of the Confederate authorities was
precisely as described by the President to Governor Seymour.
The South caUed for its last man after the defeat at Gettys
burg, and the war went on -with a stubbornness of determina
tion unsurpassed in history.
Tt was not in Mr. Lincoln's nature to withhold his admiration
from the abihty and courage of the men -with whom he was
contending. To him, as to any right-minded man, the record
of their fruitless daring and misdirected devotion had in it a
sort of mournful fascination.
Who can feel other than an emotion of sadness and regret,
for instance, in mentaUy looking do-wn the slope at the Gettys
burg fight and seeing Pickett's magnificent columns and lines
march on and melt away in that wonderful charge which was,
after aU, a blunder? And so of many another charge and
raUy of our gallant but misguided brethren of the now doomed
Confederacy.

402 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER XLIX.

THORNS.

Poisoned Arrows— The Ways of a Workingman— Western Bickerings—
An Extraordinary Congress — Presenting the President's Case — Pre
paring the Political Future— Visitors at the White House— Wearing
Away — Unconditional Unionism Portrayed — Voices of Goodwill from
Europe — The Gettysburg Speech.
It is well to keep in sight the fact that the bitter opposition
to the policy of the Administration had generaUy assumed the
shape of a personal detestation of the President. Hatred has
keen eyes, and it made no error in this, for he was " the Admin
istration." No satire was too pointed, no ridicule too coarse, no calumny
too -vile, no vituperation too profane, to be hurled at the raan
whora both Araerican and English journalists did not hesitate
to describe as a "goriUa" and as "the Ulinois ape." Well
might even so respectable an affair as the London Pwnch,
after his death, in 1865, print with his obituary its versified
and thorough contrition for its course towards him as a man
and ruler.* It is not possible to rightly measure the strength
of any raan -without taking into account all the weights raak
ing up the burden he is carrying. Tt is not pleasant, now, to
think of such a man exposed to such foul and cowardly abuse ;
but he had it all to endure daily, nevertheless.
His personal manner changed but httle, and whatever varia
tions came were not caused by any thought or purpose of his
own. Any special reserve, or coldness, or sternness, as weU as
* See Appendix.

THORNS. 403
any special heartiness in his greetings of men or woraen, was
an outward expression which took cai-e of itseK, for he was no
actor. From his chUdhood to his last days, his kindly nature
came to the surface in a smile on reaching out his hand to grasp
another. He could not help it. A child could stop him and
get a pleasant word from him, even if he were on his way to
the State Department or the War Office. Some success had
been attained by Mrs. Lincoln in her efforts at securing
greater care in matters of dress, but the care was almost
enthely her o-wn, he merely submitting to occasional new
clothes with more docility, including gloves on state occasions.
He was a man of too much good sense to despise the minor
social proprieties of all sorts, but his head and heart were too
f uU of the larger interests of his position to spare much thought
for its formalities. It had not been easy to raake hira attend
regularly to his raeals in Springfield, and the difficulty in
creased in Washington. Towards his iraraediate subordinates,
private secretaries, raessengers, and other officials or servants, it
raay almost be said that he had no manner at aU, he took their
presence and the perfonnance of their duties so utterly for
granted. Not one of them was ever made to feel, unpleasantly,
the fact of his inferior position by reason of any look or word of
the President. AU were weU assured that they could not get
a word from hira unless the business which brought them to
his elbow justified them in coming. The number of tiraes that
Mrs. Lincoln herseK entered his business-room at the White
House could probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.
It is a misuse of words and a falsification of ideas to say or
think that this absorption in duty and simphcity in manner
imphed or produced any real lack of dignity. True dignity of
character can carry well what littleness breaks down under.
The most superficial observer, looking in upon Lincoln and his
Cabinet of uncommonly strong raen, during an hour of trial and
its counsels, could have had no difficulty in pointing out their
unquestionable chief and leader.

404 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Mr. Lincoln, in aU his public career, invariably left his per
sonal popularity to take care of itself. He never for one
moment hesitated to do the most unpopular things that were
required of hira by the duties of the hour. Tn the long-run
events were pretty sure to justify his judgraent, even in cases
where it had gone against that of other raen or contrary to
local public opinion.
Concerning a multitude of matters, including many of great
iraportance, he was corapeUed to form his conclusions from
such information as he was able to obtain frora interested
parties, making such aUowances as he could for their preju
dices. It was needful to trust largely to representations made
by raen whose social, political, or railitary position seeraed to
render them trustworthy and responsible witnesses. A notable
instance of this occurred in the summer and fall of 1863. It
had been difficult to steer a straight course araong the jarring
factions of Missouri and Kansas, especially because they aU
contained so many able and exceUent men. Had each of the
more prominent Union men of that section been in fact the
being he was described by some equally active patriotic neigh
bor, Mr. Lincoln's task in the preraises would have been cora
paratively easy. The foreign element in both States was large,
and was mainly composed of German immigrants of the better
classes. The New England settlers were numerous and were
generally of the extreme anti-slavery type. The " old settler"
element, on the other hand, was not at all anti-slavery, and a
good deal of its " Union" feeling had been developed sorae
what late in the day, but it was none the less iraportant and en
titled to thoughtful consideration. The " rebel sympathizers"
were also numerous, and added to the difficulties of the situa
tion the continual complications of their intrigues and conspha
cies. Tt was simply impossible for any railitary coraraander,
however corapetent as an " array raan," to so carry himseK in
his management of affairs as not to get himself into trouble.
Every man Mr. Lincoln sent there got in, K time were given

THORNS. 405
him. From the day of General Fremont's withdrawal, varie
ties of discontents had exhibited theraselves in raany annoying
ways. There were not many " leading men," Senators, Con
gressmen, governors, generals, or editors, from the western bank
of the Mississippi and beyond, who had not at one tirae or
another obtained an interview -with the President to explain to
hira the goodness and wisdom of their own faction and the un
mixed evU of every other.
Such was the case, in a measure, -with several other States
and localities ; but nowhere else was the difficulty quite so in
grained and irremediable. Kansas and Missouri had been a
sort of battle-ground, even before the war, and they had not
yet entirely ceased to be so. The troubles in the Eastern
States, in the Center, in the Northwest, were pretty weU over
come by the effects of the great -victories and of the Draft Riot
in New York. StUl, the political situation could not be con
sidered at aU clear so long as the disturbances in the far West
were so great and were so directly attributed to the acts of
" satraps" retained in power by the President's favoritism and
incapacity. The time drew near for the annual raeeting, at Washington,
of the Grand CotmcU of the Union League, and the public
generaUy was not at all aware of the fact. The disaffected
pohticians of Kansas and Missouri were, however, and they
were aU of them merabers of the League. The delegations
frora those States to the Grand Council were composed exclu
sively of the critics of the Administration. They included
United States Senators, Representatives, and a Governor or so,
and aU the way across the country they addressed gatherings
of people and rehearsed their story of the blunders and tyran
nies of the Government. They reached the city of Washing
ton in due time, and they attended the Grand Council.
This was an admhably selected representative body of raen,
fresh frora the people. It was an independent Congress, an
important part of whose membership was entitled to seats in

406 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the other " Congress," provided for by the Constitution of the
United States. The session was secret, of course, and there was
no reason why men should not talk freely. Mr. Lincoln never
knew — perhaps — how thoroughly his Western pohcy and
much of his other pohcy was pulled in pieces in the course of
that verbally stormy evening. His assailants had everything
their own way at first. They labored -with fiery energy. Tt
was a desperate effort of the personal opposition in his o-wn
party to create a sentiment against him in timely preparation
for the pohtical canvass of 1864. The assault was v^eU planned
and was ably and even eloquently made, but it failed some
what ignobly.
The Kansas mihtary management had been selected as the
very worst feature of all that part of the " dictatorship and
tyrannical personal despotism," but no proper preparation had
been made for the manner and matter of the reply. The
Council seemed to be in alraost entire syrapathy -with the op
pressed and downtrodden complainants, and no single voice
had been raised in defense of the Adrainistration.
At last, however, one of the Grand Officers of the League
took the stand. He siraply offered e-vidence, -written and oral,
that the policy of Mr. Lincoln in Kansas, in whole and in part,
had been at its outset advised and aU but dictated by the very
men who now assailed hira for it. Tt was also shown that at
no point frora the beginning of the war had the President
failed to consult with the Senators and members of Congress
from both Kansas and Missouri.
There was very httle of what is caUed eloquence in such a
rejoinder ; but no more speeches were made, for none were
needed. The Council promptly and all but unanimously, omit
ting the malcontents from the count, adopted a resolution ap
proving and sustaining the Adrainistration.
Tt was a vote which raeant a great deal at that pecuhar junc
ture, and it was followed by yet another which was destined to
produce important pohtical fruit. This was the action of the

THORNS. 407
Grand Council pro-viding that its next Annual Meeting should
be held at the same time and in the same locality vrith the
National Con-vention of the Repubhcan party for the nomina
tion of candidates for President and Vice-President. The
Union League of America was fast becoraing, to aU present
intents and purposes, the organized body of the Republican
party and the Horae Guard and rear-guard of the Union
armies in the field.
The merabers of the Grand Council went horae and reported
what tilings they had heard and seen at Washington. Every
man of them had heard and seen Abraham Lincoln, and, -with
a few exceptions, was proud of the fact and ready to sustain
him in anything he raight thenceforth see fit to do. It was
siraply impossible for any unprejudiced man or woman to look
him in the face and take his kindly hand and then to not laugh
at or be angry -with the next lunatic who should speak of him
as a " tyrant."
Even many who came to that gathering loaded with false
ideas left their burdens on the steps of the White House when
they came away from their interview. If it had been possible
and K Mr. Lincoln could have raet such a popular representa
tion, newly selected every month in the year and man by man,
there would have been smaU misunderstanding of him by the
people. In one manner he was actually so doing, for men and
women were continuaUy coming to him -with their sorrows
and petitions. Now it was a mother asking for her sick or
wounded son, that she might take him horae with her and
nurse hira back to health. Then it was another raother, who
had given four of her sons to her country and three had faUen
tn battle and but one was left, and she wanted hira. Then it
ivas a group of anxious men and women pleading for the for
feited IKe of some deserter, or for the establishraent of a hos
pital, or for some other mitigation of the horrors of the war.
Not infrequently it was even an embassy frora " the other
side," — some raother or -wife pleading for a captive son or

408 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
husband. Mr. Noah Brooks, at that time a Washington corre
spondent for one of the New York papers, has given an in
stance of this latter kind which Mr. Lincoln hiraseK, in one of
his very few Spare minutes, wrote out for Mr. Brooks to print
as a newspaper paragraph. On the opposite page appears a
fac-simile of the httle scrap, entitled by Mr. Lincoln, "The
President's Last, Shortest and Best Speech."
He listened to all, bore -with aU, sympathized -with all ; and
he was glad indeed to be offered a fah excuse for extending
mercy to an offender.
AU the while, through the heavy shadows and through the
brief gleams of broken sunshine, the hearts of the people be
came more and more knit to his, and there came to be less and
less need of forraal explanations between him and the patriotic
masses. By forcible draft as by voluntary enhstment, Mr. Lincoln
was caUing upon raen to step forward and die for their coun
try, and he well knew that his o-wn name was among those
" enroUed." He verily was dying by slow inches. Tt has been
said, with some show of probabihty, that before he left TUi
nois he as weU as others had a presentiment that he would fall
by the hand of -violence. There would be sraall cause for
wonder if aU that is related of this matter were minutely true.
StUl smaller occasion would there be to regard so very reason
able an impression as at aU prophetic or supernatural.
The strong impression now spoken of was of another sort,
and was equally reasonable. To one friend he said : " The
springs of life are wearing away, and I shall not last." To
another, in apology for teUing a humorous story : " If it were
not for this occasional vent, I should die." To another : " I
feel a presentiment that I shall not outlast the RebeUion. When
it is over, my work will be done." To another : " Whichever
way it ends, I have the impression that I shall not last long
after it is over." In 1864 Mrs. H. B. Stowe asked him " what
policy he proposed to pursue after the war." With a mourn-

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THORNS. 409
ful sort of laugh, he rephed : " After the war ? I shall not be
troubled about that. The war is kilhng me."
Men looked into his face, day by day, and saw there something
they could not understand. It gave them the idea of a man
in suppressed pain, and they were apt to turn away with littie
inchnation to find fault with him. Some weight should be
given to aU this, -with reference to his " personal arabition" for
a second term of office and his asserted desire to perpetuate his
pohtical power.
There was, as there always is and must be, a great deal of self-
conceit and stupidity in the country in those days. There were
men, in very considerable numbers, who had leamed httle or
nothing in the terrible school of the war. Some of these, pos
ing for the moment as " unconditional Union men," proposed
and caUed an universal mass-meeting, to be held at Springfield,
Tlhnois. That this was Mr. Lincoln's old home was an impor
tant part of the " stage effect " designed to be produced. As
a part of the preparations for the announced discussion of the
faults and foUies of the Govemment, a -written invitation to
be present and hear himseK discussed was sent to the President
of the United States.
With this in-vitation, these Unconditional Union men for
warded a statement of some of the conditions upon which they
were willing to he unconditional. They thus gave hira an ad
mhable opportunity for talking plainly to the elements, the
whole country over, which they so well represented, and, at the
sarae time, for setting them up for exhibition in a tolerably
clear hght before the world. His reply was dated August 23,
1863, at a time when he was making extensive preparations for
employing colored men as soldiers. It is almost conversational
in style and language, but was perfectly adapted to its purpose.
Among its other pointed, or stirring, or stinging sentences,
are these :
" You say you -will not fight to free negroes. Some of them
seem wilhng to fight for you ; but no matter. Fight you, then.

410 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
exclusively to save the Union. I issued the Proclamation on
purpose to aid you in saving the Union. ... I thought that,
in your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes
should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the
enemy in his resistance to you. But negroes, like other men,
act upon motives. Why should they do anything for us if we
vrill do nothing for them ? If they stake their hves for us, they
raust be prompted by the strongest motive, even the proraise
of freedom. And the proraise, being raade, must be kept."
That was a clear enough setting forth of the mere worldly
-wisdom of his policy. It offered precisely the kind of seK-
preservation arguraent which such men might be supposed to
be able to coraprehend. He added, " The signs look better,"
and gave them a brief sketch of the advances aheady made to
ward the military end. He closed his reply -with words which
none who read them were hkely to forget, and it mattered very
httle that some would not soon forgive.
" Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will
come soon, and come to stay, and so corae as to be worth the
keeping in all future time. It wiU then have been proved that
among freemen there can be no successful appeal frora the
ballot to the bullet, and that those who take such appeal are
sure to lose their case and pay the cost. And there ¦will be
sorae black raen who can remember that, -with silent tongue,
and clinched teeth, and well-poised bayonet, they have helped
raankind on to this great consummation ; while I fear there
¦wiU be some white ones unable to forget that with mahgnant
heart and deceitful speech they have striven to hinder it."
Never for one raoraent, from the beginning to the end, did
Mr. Lincoln forget that the war for freedom and the Union
was fought on behaK of the oppressed of all nations. There
was no cause for wonder that the intelligent aristocracies and
higher castes of Europe should desire the success of the Con
federacy. The Rebels in a manner represented them and were
curiously proud to say so. On the other hand, that raultitudes

THORNS. 411
of the classes in other lands whose interests were at stake in
the struggle — the ignorant, the poor, the toilers — should receive
and hold and act upon a deep conviction of the truth of the
matter, constitutes one of the most noteworthy features of the
tirae. The cotton operatives of England suffered more than
others from the effects of the war ; but they were ¦wiser than
their rulers, and their hearts were ¦with the North.
Tn 1863 they sent to the President a letter, from the work-
ingmen of Manchester tn particular, but weU understood to be
the voice of a great multitude. They expressed theh sympathy
and good-wiU and hope, and he sent them a reply in which he
said to them : " It has been often and studiously represented
that the attempt to overthrow this government, which was
built upon the foundation of human rights, and to substitute
for it one which should rest exclusively upon the basis of
human slavery, was hkely to obtain the favor of Europe.
Through the action of our disloyal feUow-citizens, the work-
ingmen of Europe have been subjected to severe trial, for the
purpose of forcing their sanction to that attempt. Under these
chcumstances I cannot but regard your decisive utterances upon
the question as an instance of subhme Christian heroism which
has not been surpassed in any age or in any country."
More and raore clear, as time went on, became Mr. Lincoln's
perception of the Source of all true heroism. More continu
ously and thoughtfuUy outspoken became his public acknowl
edgments and declarations of his perceptions. In his public
dispatch announcing to the nation an assured victory at Gettys
burg, he expressed his desire that, in the customary celebration
of " The Fourth of July," the anniversary of national inde
pendence, "He whose ¦will, not ours, should everywhere be
done, be everywhere reverenced with profoundest gratitude."
The country never before had such a keeping of the Fourth ;
but it is worth while to note how sudden was the change frora
utter depression to a capacity for " celebration." Tn the city
of Washington itself the usual preparations had been under

412 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
way for sorae time and on a somewhat larger scale than usual.
Such was the gloomy state of the public raind, however, that
several of the raost patriotic citizens and even weU-kno^wn
statesraen openly declared their refusal to join in the exercises
of the day. The feehng grew to such a strength that a meet
ing of " loyal citizens" was held, and a committee appointed to
call upon the Chairman of the Celebration Committee having
the matter in charge and urge an abandonment of the whole
affair, as inappropriate under the truly a^wf ul circumstances.
The appointed committee called upon the chairman and stated
their errand, recei^ving for reply :
" Gentlemen, there will be a celebration of the Fourth of
July in Washington this year, and there ¦wiU be a big one too,
if we can hear Lee's cannon all the time, and K we adjourn
frora the speaker's stand to the trenches."
Tt was made a great day, there and everywhere, in the abid
ing assurance frora Mr. Lincoln that the sound of General Lee's
cannon was forever receding. Everywhere was read, as a part
of the regular proceedings, the dispatch of the President declar
ing his belief in the God who had given to the nation the fruits
of that great battle and of the parallel ¦victories in the West.
He had not, however, completed the great lessons he was to
teach from the tremendous text of the Gettysburg fight. The
State of Pennsylvania bought a piece of land on the battle-field
and gave it to the Governraent of the United States as a cerae-
tery wherein to bury the bodies of the slain heroes. Tt was
land on which many of them had actually fallen, and sorae were
already buried there. On the 19th of Noveraber the battle
ceraetery was dedicated ¦with solemn ceremonies. The Hon.
Edward Everett, of Massachusetts, delivered an oration worthy
of his high oratorical fame. Mr. Lincoln had been in-vited
to be present, but the stern pressure of his duties pre
vented elaborate preparation. After lea^ving Washington, while
on the way, he wrote a few sentences which have found a
lasting place in the hearts and memories of men.

THORNS. 413
" Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth
upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and
dedicated to the proposition that aU men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great ci^vil war, testing whether that
nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long
endure. We are met upon a great battle-field of that war. We
have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-
place for those who here gave their hves that that nation might
hve. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate,
we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, h^ving and
dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our
power to add or detract. The world wiU little note, nor long
remeraber, what we say here ; but it can never forget what
they did here. Tt is for us, the hving, rather to be dedicated
here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have
thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here
dedicated to the great task remaining for us, that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which
they gave the last fuU measure of devotion; that we here
highly resolve that these dead shaU not have died in vain ; that
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and
that the government of the people, by the people, and for the
people shall not perish from the earth."
Among the vast throng listening there were those who had
expected a long speech, fuU of they knew not what, and so
were disappointed, and freely declared as much ; but Mr. Lin
coln had said enough, and aU the loyal land responded with a
deep-voiced and reverent " Amen I"

414
FAC-SIMILE
OF THE
Gettysburg Cemetery Speech,
AS COPIED OUT FOR ENGRA VING,
BY THE
PRESIDENT, AFTER ITS DELIVERY.

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416 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER L.
THE BEGnTNING OP THE END.
Keeping Good Workmen — Absence of Favoritism — A Political Revolution
— A National Prayer-Meeting — The Coming General — Helpless in
trigues.
It would be fair to describe Mr. Lincoln's management of
the long hst of mihtary commanders under his direction as a
persistent effort by him to put each man, as nearly as might
be, in the place for which he was best fitted and wherein he
could perforra the most effective ser^vice.
If, having appointed any man to an especial duty, he found
him insufficient for it, he was quite ¦wilhng to transfer hira to
another. If a strong man's usefulness were impaired or de
stroyed by local or transitory causes, no undue or continuing
weight was ever assigned to these.
Fhie illustrations of this rare element in the President's ca
pacity as a ruler are furnished by the records of Generals
Burnside and Hooker, after each in turn had ceased to com
raand the Array of the Potoraac. Neither Fredericksburg nor
Chancellors^ville was permitted to deprive the country of valu
able ser-vices. There was no sort of quarrel between either of
them and the Commander-in-Chief, and they went on, in new
fields and with other armies, to prove the soundness of his
judgraent conceming thera.
The watchfulness required for the exercise of such a judg
ment was aU but sleepless, and caUed for the constant study of
circumstances as weU as of men and of apparent results. Mr.
Lincoln's hours of hard-won solitude were a perpetual " court
of inquiry." He followed every movement of every army

THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 417
with the map before him, yet never permitted himself to make
the error of meddhng -with the decision of a competent general
in the field. He himseK, unintentionally but accurately, sets
forth his methods of study and control, in his letter of con
gratulation to General Grant after the Vicksburg Lriuraph.
Tt is dated July 13, 1863.
" Mt dear Geneeal : I do not reraeraber that you and I
have ever met personaUy. I write this now as a grateful ac
knowledgment for the almost inestimable service you have
done the country. I -write to say a word further. When you
first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should
do what you finally did, — raarch the troops across the neck,
run the batteries with the transports, and then go below ; and
I never had any faith, except a general hope, that you knew
better than I that the Yazoo Pass expedition and the like
could succeed. When you got below and took Port Gibson,
Grand GuK, and vicinity, I thought you should go down the
river and join General Banks, and when you turned northward,
east of the Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I wish, now,
to make the personal acknowledgment that you were right
and I was wrong."
Every man who did his duty was sure of precisely such
thoughtful and unselfish appreciation, if by any raeans the
facts in the case could be brought to the knowledge of the
President. Sometimes, beyond question, the facts were not so
brought to his knowledge, and injustice foUowed ; but it was
never by any neglect upon the part of Mr. Lincoln. Even in
jured men came to so understand the matter at last, and few
were so unreasonable as to demand from him omniscience as
well as justice. As a whole, the record of his assignments to
duty wiU bear a remarkably close scrutiny, and his continual
discoveries of the men he was looking for were notably justi
fied by theh subsequent careers and achievements. His per
sonal attachments, strong as they admittedly were, never were
permitted to come between him and his perception of the re-

418 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
quirements of the public service. His oldest son, Robert Todd
Lincoln, was a student at coUege when the war broke out.
His father did but restrain the young man's enthusiastic im
pulse to join the array and kept him at his books until his
course of study was completed. A subordinate staff appoint
ment was then given bira, just as such appointraents were given
to hundreds of other bright young men, and there aU parental
" favoritism" terminated. The President's son served to the
end of the war and left the array as a simple captain. It is
more than probable that his abihties would have given him
a higher grade but that his very birthright was in his way.
The record conveys its lesson forcibly.
The remainder of the sumraer and auturan of the year 1863
was weU marked by mihtary activities and successes, and only
here and there by any considerable check to the national arms,
both in the East and West. Very rauch the most important
work accomplished, however, was largely in the nature of a
clearing up and securing title to the ground aheady won, and
preparing for the final struggle.
The results of the fall elections were such as might have
been expected. The reaction of popular feeling from deep
depression to buoyant hope was sufficient to carry every State
but one. New Jersey, for the Administration. Even there the
combined opposition assuraed an attitude of earnest Unionism.
A Congress was secured which could be depended on for
voting the last raan and the last dollar for war purposes.
It nevertheless contained a nuraber of active and able men
who were anything but weU pleased -with Mr. Lincoln's per
sonal control of the affairs in his hands. There was httle to be
wondered at in this. He was no tyrant, indeed, and he was
thoughtfully cautious in his respect for all the prerogatives of
the legislative branch of the government ; but the fact of his
autocracy within his own sphere was often painfully mamfest.
The United States contained but one President, and he was
necessarily dictatorial tn war times : and his name was Abraham

THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 419

Lincoln. Tt was not always pleasant for sorae other man
strong of will and conscious of capacity and of good purposes
towards himseK and his country, when brought into sudden
contact or collision with an unyielding power he had never
felt before.
Very httle pubhc grumbling was done, however, before
Congress assembled at Washington, for the people were hardly
in a state of mind to listen to it kindly, except frora raouth-
pieces of the beaten " opposition." The President, without
especiaUy laboring for it, was fast raUying to his personal sup
port the great religious element which, in aU its diversified
forms of doctrinal behef and of serai-repudiation of doctrinal
belief, is the positive body and soul of the American people.
He was uniting, as one man, the multitude of earnest hearts
that believed, absolutely, that the cause of the Union was the
cause of the God Almighty.
On the 15th of July, 1863, he issued a proclamation, imme
diately f oUo-wing up his pre-vious utterances of a similar nature,
in which he named the 6th of August as a day of public
thanksgi-ving and prayer. He asked all raen and woraen to
" render the horaage due to the Di-vine Majesty for the won
derful things He has done in the nation's behaK ; and invoke
the influences of his Holy Spirit to subdue the anger which has
produced and so long sustained a needless and cruel rebeUion ;
to change the hearts of the insurgents ; to guide the counsels
of the govemment -with wisdom adequate to so great a national
emergency ; and to -visit -with tender care and consolation,
throughout the length and breadth of our land, all those who,
through the vicissitudes of marches, voyages, battles, and sieges,
have been brought to suffer in raind, body, or estate ; and
finaUy, to lead the whole nation through paths of repentance
and submission to the Divine Will, back to the perfect enjoy
ment of union and fraternal peace."
That was a grand prayer-meeting; and it -was led by the
President in person. He made the customary *' Thp-nksgiving

420 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Day" in November the occasion of a similar proclamation ; and
it is through him, in a very great measure, that that day has
ceased to be local and has become general and national in its
annual observance. He again suraraoned the people to prayer
and thanksgiving on the 7th of December, after the Union
successes in East Tennessee. The conviction grew in the
rainds of all that the President was fighting this fight out in
the narae of God and beheved that God was helping him. It
was easier for the masses to strengthen theh o-wn faith after
that idea took permanent root. The very few who sneered at
the whole thing as an hypocritical formality were not num
bered among those whose hearts were aching over losses or who
were meditating further sacrifices for the cause. Men who
suffer have a keen instinct which informs them of the suffering
of another man, and it was of httle use, in those days, to ac
cuse Abrahara Lincoln of playing a part. He was well hated,
but even his worst eneraies were forced to beheve in him.
One of the steps towards the proposed reorganization of the
Army was the appointraent of General Grant to the coraraand
of the MUitary Department of the Mississippi ; but it was only
one of several steps which the President had in ¦view. The
rest of them depended very much upon the course and out
come of the winter campaigns.
It was by no means plain that General Meade was the right
man, above all others, to lead the Army of the Potomac ; rauch
less to handle the tremendous forces preparing for the last
struggle with the RebeUion. It was sure that the Confederacy
would die hard, striking terrible blows to its last breath. The
situation demanded something more than an accoraphshed
soldier ; something raore, even, than a good general. Tt was
tirae for the war to be closed, and only a hand of iron could
be entrusted with the relentless and raachine-hke processes of
its closing. The eyes of the nation as weU as of the President
were turning -with more and more of definite hope and pur
pose towards the man for the hour which was coming.

THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 421
The Message to Congress contained, of necessity, an his
torical re^view of the events of the year and a setting forth of
their justification of the leading features of the policy of the
Administration. Emancipation, employment of colored sol
diers, reconstruction, foreign relations, the national finances, a
number of minor topics, were presented in proper form, but it
was mainly a " report of progress" and an expression of con
fident hope. The territory already rescued from the grasp of
the Richraond government was to be restored to relations with
the Constitution and the laws as rapidly as possible. No doubt
remained that its present reoccupation implied permanent pos
session. No power existed in the now shattered and weakened
Confederacy to break the national mastery of the regions so to
be reconstructed, and the beginning of the end had come.
A con^viction of this fact settled firraly in the minds of all
the pohticians north of the Rebel army-lines, and it produced
some curious results. Close upon the announcement by Mr.
Lincoln that he regarded his administration as a success and not
a failure came the accusation that he was ambitious of a re
election to the Presidency. The suggestion that he was already
intriguing for such a result followed as a matter of course, and
it came from the hps of the busy men who were already in
triguing to prevent his success. The t^win accusations, as such,
died a very early and perfectly natural death. The sound-
minded people, the country over, took it for granted that Mr.
Lincoln desired a second term and thought no whit the worse
of hira. No raan ¦with unclouded brain could have understood
or approved a willingness, on the part of the President, to lay
down such a work before it was completed. Not many would
have held him moraUy excusable for such a sin against the
nation. He would need another term to reap and gather in
the great harvest now ripening, and there was no other reaper
to whom the task was at all hkely to be given unless the " op
position" themselves should succeed in electing their man.
As for " intrigue," it was only too ob^vious that no other form

422 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
of it was caUed for than might be included in a vigorous and
successful prosecution of the war. Everybody saw the point
clearly, and not a few were intelligent enough to perceive and
say that the politicians had a great deal more time on theh
hands for that kind of political work than had the over-wearied
toiler in the map-strewn roora in the White House. They had
all the time, indeed, that was used in the preraises. Mr. Lin
coln gave the raatter no attention whatever, except when some
body forced it upon him. The real intriguers talked much
and worked hard and failed for a long time to discover what a
raere skeleton of a faction they really were. It consisted al
raost altogether of " leading men," and the further they went
the greater became the gap between them and the vote-casting
masses of the Union.

THE SECOND NOMINATION. 423

CHAPTER LI.
THE SECOND NOMINATION.
Lieutenant-General Grant — Tbe First Great Relief — Dealing with Guerillas
— Condensation of the Confederacy — The Double National Convention
— The Administration Formally Approved.
The mihtary events of the ¦winter of 1863-4, intensely inter
esting as they were, belong exclusively to the history of the
war. They were such as enabled Mr. Lincoln to move stead
Uy forward along the hne he had so distinctly marked out.
The grade of Lieutenant-General, previously created solely
for the purpose of conferring an honor upon General Scott,
was revived by Act of Congress, February 29, 1864, and the
President fulfilled his own previous purpose conceming it when
he comphed ¦with the popular acclamation which named Ulys
ses S. Grant as the man for the place. Tt was equaUy a matter
of course that the President and the Lieutenant-General should
instantly agree upon General W. T. Sherman as Grant's succes
sor in the West.
General Grant received his new commission on the 9th of
March, 1864, at the hands of the President in person, at the
Executive Mansion, in the presence of the Cabinet and General
HaUeck. The occasion was made somewhat cereraonial, but
the words spoken on either side were few and very much to
the point. The appointment of an officer outranking all others
was an affair of moraentous iraportance. So far as the Array was
concemed, only the President and, through him, the Secretary of
War held higher commissions. StiU it should be borne in mind
that the new rank of General Grant did not necessarily affect

424 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
or change or reduce the rank of any other officer in any of the
armies. General Meade remained as before, for instance, in
direct command of the Army of the Potoraac, which after
wards received Grant's orders through Meade. General Hal-
leck did not cease to be the President's raihtary counselor be
cause Mr. Lincoln had at last obtained an arm of iron where-
¦with to deal the blows he had so longed to deal, but in vain.
General Grant at once entered upon the discharge of his
duties, taking up his headquarters ¦with the Array of the Poto
raac, on the 10th of March ; and it was not long before the
President began to experience an unwonted feeling of rehef.
The tremendous burden which he had borne so long and so
patiently began to shp away a httle. He could with difficulty
reahze it at first, the situation was so new and so agreeable.
A few weeks later, in April, a personal friend came into his
office on Sunday forenoon. The President lay upon the sofa,
seeraing more than usually fatigued but cheerful. He did not
rise at first, but chatted freely upon several topics. At last
his ¦visitor remarked :
"Now, Mr. Lincoln, what sort of a raan is Grant? I've
never even seen him. He has taken hold here while I have
been laid up. What do you think of him ?"
The President haK arose, and laughed silently, as he rephed :
" WeU,  , I hardly know what to think of him, alto
gether. He's the quietest httle fellow you ever saw."
"How is that?"
" Why, he makes the least fuss of any man you ever knew.
I beheve two or three times he has been in this room a minute
or so before I knew he was here. It's about so aU around.
The only evidence you have that he's in any place is that he
makes things git ! Wherever he is, things raove 1"
He grew energetic as he talked, and there was almost a glow
upon his face. He was describing the man he had been long
ing for. Other questions and answers followed, until the visi
tor inquired :

THE SECOND NOMINATION. 425
" But how about Grant's generalship ? Is he going to be the
man ?"
Mr. Lincoln again half arose, and emphasized his reply with
his long forefinger :
"  , Grant is the first general I've had ! He's a general !"
" How do you mean, Mr. Lincoln ?"
" WeU, I'U teU you what I mean. You know how it's been
with all the rest. As soon as I put a man in command of the
army, he'd come to me ¦with a plan of a campaign and about as
rauch as say, ' Now, I don't beheve I can do it, but K you say
so I'U try it on,' and so put the responsibihty of success or
failure on me. They all wanted me to be the general. Now
it isn't so ¦with Grant. He hasn't told me what his plans are.
I don't know, and I don't want to know. I'm glad to find a
man that can go ahead ¦without me."
A shghtly critical reply brought the President bolt upright.
" You see,  , when any of the rest set out on a carapaign,
they'd look over matters and pick out sopae one thing they were
short of and they knew I couldn't give 'era, and teU rae they
couldn't hope to ¦win unless they had it, — and it was most gene
raUy cavalry." He paused for one of his quiet, long, peculiar
laughs and went on. " Now, when Grant took hold, I was waiting
to see what his pet irapossibUity would be, and I reckoned it
would be cavalry, as a matter of course, for we hadn't horses
enough to mount even what men we had. There were fifteen
thousand, or thereabouts, up near Harper's Ferry, and no horses
to put them on. WeU, the other day Grant sends to me about
those very men, just as I expected ; but what he wanted to
know was whether he should make infantry of 'em or disband
'em. He doesn't ask impossibilities of me, and he's the first
general I've had that didn't."
Somewhat carelessly and haK grotesquely he had sketched
some of his most trying responsibihties, such as had pressed upon
bim from before the firing of the Sumter gun. Men of all other
sorts, as well as generals in command of armies, had demanded

426 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
impossibilities of hira, and sorae had hated and denounced him
because he perforraed no rairacle. He might well rejoice also,
as he did, in the arrival of a man who would require no urging,
but who would be sure to strike again, after every battle, with
supreme indifference to the semblance which that battle might
bear to either victory or defeat. That part of the load could
be confidently laid aside : but what remained was stiU over-
heavy for mortal shoulders.
The work of restoring order in the reoccupied States was
going bravely forward, and the severest measures for the sup
pression of gueriUa warfare and neighborhood revenges were
enforced with the President's full approval. That is to say,
with his fuU approval of as much as he knew of the precise
manner of the enforcement, for a good deal of bloody work
was done whereof no report went up. The merciful side of his
nature inclined him, in this iraportant raatter, to extend all pos
sible protection to undefended homes and women and children.
The continuous record of atrocities committed was an aU-suffi-
cient justification. He took all reasonable means, at the same
time, for maintaining and defending the rights of colored sol
diers in the ranks of Union armies. East and West.
Not taking into specific consideration operations on the sea,
nor sea-coast defenses, nor detached commands, the military
situation in the spring of the year 1864 raay be suranied up in
outline as foUows :
The dimensions and the strength of the Confederacy had
been materially reduced, but the latter had been in a raanner
concentrated for its last despairing struggle. Its armies were
composed largely of veterans, and were led by generals of un
questionable capacity. Tt had massed the greater part of these
in two main bodies with their branches. One, under Lee, de
fended its old ground in Virginia. The other, under Johnston,
held northwestern Georgia, and -with it the railway connections
and topographical advantages which raade that position the
key to all that reraained to the Rebellion of the cotton-gro-wing

TEE SECOND NOMINATION. 427
States. Much remained to be done in Louisiana, Texas, Ar
kansas, and elsewhere, but these two armies contained about all
that was reaUy left to carry ou the war for slavery. Against
these, therefore, aU the hard fighting of the year 1864 was
planned and directed, and all other operations were of minor
importance. Every now and then haK-rauffled voices carae up from beyond
the Rebel array-lines, telhng of the weariness of their long-
suffering which the masses of the Southern people were not
permitted openly to express. They had done all that it was
possible for human beings to do, and were beginning to per
ceive that aU subsequent battles were to be in the nature of
useless bloodshed, bordering horribly close upon the crime of
wholesale murder. No voice whatever, nor any sraall murmur
of one, came from the merciless despotism at Richmond or
from the men who controlled its armies in the field. They
were mamfestly determined to continue the strife to the bitter
end. The machinery of the Federal govemment was now in
almost perfect working order, but its very bulk and its re
morseless efficiency made it an incubus. The people were fast
wearying of incessant exactions, in spite of the general appear
ance of prosperity. The President was straining every power
given bira to maintain the Army and Navy at their utmost
acti-vity, and the Opposition was alraost hourly supphed with
texts, great or smaU, upon which to preach its crusade against
his administration.
Extravagance, wastefulness, corruption, favoritism, heartless
thro-wing away of human hfe, — a thousand separate accusations
sweUed steadUy into a chorus which was by many men believed
to arise from the tax-paying and war-sustaining masses. This
idea was altogether a mistake ; but sundry curious political ex
periments were tried before the trath of the matter could be
demonstrated. At this day there would be smaU profit in
relating the duU detaUs of the several experiments. One of

428 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
them included an independent and very irregular " Repubhcan
Convention" at Cleveland, Ohio, on the 31st of May, for the
purpose of declaring that the national hberties were in danger,
and that Mr. Lincoln should be set aside in accordance vrith
"the one-term principle," which had never been heard of
before to any noteworthy extent.
What threatened at first to be a more dangerous, because
altogether regular, undertaking was made in another way, and
produced beneficial results.
The National Convention of the Republican party was to
be held at Baltimore, Maryland, on the Sth of June, 1864, and
the National Grand Council of the Union League of America
was suraraoned to meet in the same city on the Tth. Some
thing like two thirds of the delegates to the latter, roughly
estimated, were also delegates to the forraer, and the control
ling spirits of both were largely the same men. The malcon
tent elements of the party secured full and satisfactory repre
sentation in the Grand Council, and there were those among
them who confidently expected to there exert a power which
would render the renomination of Abraham Lincoln im
possible. Some of his best friends were not -without anxiety
as to the results obtainable in such a body raeeting in secret
session. The day came, and the city of Baltimore was packed to over
flo-wing. The session of the Grand Council was to be held in
the evening, and it was not easy for the outside world to guess
what might be done by raen whose lips were closed as to theh
instructions and their purposes. They carae together in perfect
order and decorura, but of course without any audience to hear
or cheer or interfere. Hardly had the prelirainary work of the
evening been completed before the prepared assault upon the
Administration in general and Mr. Lincoln in particular was
-vigorously begun and prosecuted. There was a superabun
dance of seemingly good material for such an assault, and it

THE SECOND NOMINATION. 429
seemed before long as if the Council were about to be swept
away by a rising tide. This, however, was mainly because the
Kansas and Missouri orators and a few others had been quietly
permitted to have their own way unanswered. Besides, almost
every man in the whole body of delegates was compeUed to
admit to himseK that raistakes had been comraitted, by sorae-
body; by a great many persons in authority ; perhaps by Mr.
Lincoln ; perhaps even by Congress ; perhaps by the Nation as
a whole ; and perhaps by the human race itself. The very bit
terness and eloquence of the successive attacks answered an
admirable purpose. They cleared away the mental fogs in the
minds of aU who heai-d, and at last aU of these that reraained
required only the strong breeze of one decisive arguraent. Tt
was given by Senator " Jira" Lane of Kansas, hiraseK formerly
for a season anything but a friend of Mr. Lincoln. He de
fended the Administration. His speech was not long, but it
was masterly, for it enabled each of his hearers to ask himself
and answer the simple question :
" WUl not the country be safer -with Abraham Lincoln as
President than -with any other raan I can narae ?"
There was httle further debate after Senator Lane's speech.
Some voting was done. The difficulty was all over when it
was discovered that only a couple of dozens of even the dele
gates to the Grand CouncU were wUhng to ran the risk of ven
turing before the people -with any other nominee than Lincoln.
The anticipated storm had come and gone, and the National
Convention the next day formaUy ratified the decision of the
Union League ¦without any disturbance whatever. The twenty-
two votes of Missouri were cast for General Grant at first, but
were then changed to Lincoln, and the nomination was declared
to be unanimous.
The platform of principles adopted left very httle to be asked
for as an expression of the ¦wUl and faith and hope of the loyal
people of the United States. The very act of dropping the

430 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
narae of Hannibal Hamhn, of Maine as a candidate for the
Vice-Presidency, and the substitution of that of Andrew John
son of Tennessee, was a strong recognition and approval of the
policy of reconstruction. This action is said to have been
urged by Mr. Lincoln's personal friends at his own private
request. According to custom, the Convention appointed its chair
man. Governor Dennison, of Ohio, with a coramittee, to wait
upon the President at Washington ¦with a formal announce
ment of the action thus taken. He received them, hstened to
their address, and responded as follows :
" Ha^ving served four years in the depths of a great and yet
unended national peril, I can view this call to a second term in
nowise more flattering to myself than as an expression of the
public judgment that 1 may better finish a difficult work in
which I have labored frora the first than could any one less
severely schooled to the task. Tn this view, and with assured
reliance on the Almighty Ruler who has graciously sustained
us thus far, and ¦with increased gratitude to the generous
people for their continued confidence, I accept the renewed
trust ¦with its yet onerous and perplexing duties and respon
sibihties." He was waited upon the same day by a similar committee
from the Union League, but no report was made to him by
them of the exact nature of the highly interesting session of
that body.
In due time he received the written notification of the
action of the Republican Convention, -with a copy of the plat
form, and to this he rephed, on the 27th of June :
" Gentlemen : Your letter of the 14th inst., formally noti
fying me that I have been nominated by the Convention you
represent for the Presidency of the United States for four
years from ths fourth of March next, has been received. The

THE SECOND NOMINATION. 431
nomination is gratefully accepted, as the resolutions of the Con
vention called the platform are heartily approved. While the
resolution in regard to the supplanting of republican govern
ments on the Western Continent is fully concurred in, there
raight be misunderstanding were I not to say that the position
of the govemment in relation to the action of France in Mexico,
as assumed, through the State Departraent, and endorsed by the
Convention among the measures and acts of the Executive,
¦wiU be faithfuUy maintained so long as the state of facts shall
leave that position pertinent and apphcable. I ara especially
gratified that the soldier and seaman were not forgotten by the
Convention, as they forever must and ¦will be remembered by
the grateful country for whose salvation they devoted their
lives. " Thanking you for the kind and coraphmentary terras in
which you have coraraunicated the nomination and other pro
ceedings of the Convention, I subscribe myseK
" Your obedient servant,
" Abeaham Lincoln."
The platform and the enthe action of the Convention, vrith
the terms of theh formal acceptance, combined to express one
fact and idea ; and this was, that the Repubhcan party had
deterrained to go before the people upon the record raade by
Mr. lincoln as President, and to stand or fall ¦with hira. The
Opposition, caUing itseK the Deraocratic party, took up the
chaUenge so offered. Tt should not be necessary to remark in
this connection, but it may be well to do so for the benefit of
careless readers, that the parties of that day are not the parties
of this, whatever may be some of the incidental inheritances
of our existing political organisms. Tt is unavoidable to em
ploy here the party names then in use ; but it should be with
the understanding that they do not necessarily describe or
define anything now in existence.

432 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Mr. Lincoln himself had long since ceased to be a partisan
in any sense of that word. He was the representative and
director of the great forces, moral, inteUectual, and physical,
devoted to the work of developing, shaping, defending, and
perpetuating the new Nation, thenceforth to be known as the
United States of America. As he himseK expressed it in his
Gettysburg speech, he had " highly resolved that this nation,
under God, shaU have a new bhth of freedom ;" and that which
is bom again is no more the same, forever and ever.

ON TRIAL. 433

CHAPTER LIL
ON TEIAL.
The Campaign of Calumny— The Reconstruction Proclamation — Traps
which Captured Nothing— Skirmishing Diplomacy— The Blunders of
the Opposition— A Union General in Bad Company.
The National Convention of the Democratic party had been
called to meet at Chicago on the 27th of August. There re
mained, therefore, after Mr. Lincoln's second nomination, more
than two fuU months during which his enemies might plot
and plan and search for the weak spots in his armor and devise
weapons where^with to stab him. They had in this a great
apparent advantage, ¦with the concurrent pri^vilege of misrepre
senting whatever he or his might do, or fail to do, in the raean
tirae. Theh party press could describe every battle as more
or less of a defeat and keep its columns open to the ¦virulent
expression of every possible form of criticism, discontent, or
personal enmity. The Administration was on trial before the
country as a tyranny and a faUure, and aU the witnesses against
it were to be called, mostly swearing if not sworn, and they
and their able advocates were to have a free, full, unhindered
hearing. That which could pass unharmed through such an
ordeal must have in it a great preponderance of such pure gold
as need not to fear the fire.
The Opposition was not left altogether to the blundering
devices of the second-rate demagogues and new ambitions which
nominally controlled its present operations. The brains of the
old pro-slavery Democracy had ever been supphed by the
South, for the greater part, and the best inspiration and help
of its campaign of 1864 came still from Richmond.

434 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
The very directness and siraplicity with which the great
political question of the day was propoxraded had in it sorae
thing appaUing to many raen. All idea of change for the sake
of change, so attractive to the restless and the weary, was shut
out. The result was to be soraething as yet unknown, or else
four years raore of Abrahara Lincoln. No raan was greatly in
doubt as to what the latter alternative included. He had made
his purposes clearly understood, and his first pubhc act after
his nomination was taken unselfishly, without the slightest
reference to its effect upon his personal popularity. Congress
passed, in July and just before its adjournment, an Act em
bodying an elaborate plan of reconstruction for the seceded
States, recovered and to be recovered. Tt provided a system
of bonds and fetters for the Executive as well as for the re
gained areas, and the President refused his approval. Tt was
necessary for him to explain his position to the country, and
he did so, on the Sth of July, in a proclamation. In this he
embodied the Act, as one of several admissible plans of recon
struction, but refused to commit hiraseK, in advance, to that
or any other specific raode of procedure, or to set aside the
State governments aheady organized in Arkansas and Loui
siana. His action called forth very bitter assaults from raen
who had been the active proraoters of the Act, in the Senate
and House of Representatives ; but the acquiescence of the gen
eral public in the views of Mr. Lincoln was so plainly mani
fested that no great harm was done. The unkindly personal
nature of some criticisms made by forraer friends gaUed hira a
little, but he was absorbed in watching movements of his polit-
cal enemies which were of a much more perilous and threatening
character. It was manifest to the Richraond raanagers of the Deraocratic
party that there was httle hope of successfully opposing a
renewal of power to the Lincoln Administration otherwise
than by creating a division among its adherents. For this
purpose, therefore, they plotted well and wisely. The trap they

ON TRIAL. 435
laid was one into which an unwary raan might easily have stum
bled. That the Northern people were weary of the war was
very obvious. That they would hail with delight any prospect
of peace was a matter of course. If, therefore, Mr. Lincoln
could be forced or beguiled into presenting an appearance of
standing in the way of a restoration of peace, the Democratic
Convention at Chicago would be provided with a war-cry and
the Opposition could go before the country with new hope of
¦winning the faU elections.
The country did not contain a purer jJatriot, with wider in
fluence, nor the Republican party an abler advocate than
Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Trihune. He was
therefore selected 'as the gateway through which the insidious
attack could best be made. On the 5th of July a letter was
sent to Mr. Greeley from a wandering diplomatist naraed
Jewett, at Niagara Falls, setting forth that two commissioners
of the Confederate Government were in Canada, ¦with full powers
to negotiate a peace. He asked a conference with Mr. Greeley
or a safe-conduct for the Richmond raen to come to New York.
Very properly, Mr. Greeley sent the letter to the President,
¦with a statement of his own ¦views of the matter and of the
perils threatening the party and the Administration. He said,
among other things : " A 'widespread conviction that the
government and its supporters are not anxious for peace, and
do not iraprove proffered opportunities to achieve it, is doing
great harm now, and is morally certain, unless removed, to do
far greater in the approaching election."
He thus described, ¦with a fair degree of accuracy, the sort
of mine which the Deraocratic managers were digging. Mr.
Lincoln rephed, on the 9th of July :
" If you can find any person, anywhere, professing to have
any proposition of Jefferson Davis, in writing, embracing the
restoration of the Union and abandonment of slavery, whatever
else it embraces, say to him that he raay come to rae with you."
Mr. Greeley was again induced to write, on the 13th, that

436 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
two persons, duly coramissioned and empowered to negotiate
for peace, were waiting near Niagara FaUs for a conference
with the President or his proper representative ; or they and
another would come to Washington for such a conference if a
safe-conduct were afforded. Theh names were given, and
were such as to make the affah assume a semblance of plausi
bility. Other correspondence foUowed ; a safe-conduct was freely
offered to any " commissioners" duly empowered as stated in
the President's first Aply ; Major John Hay, one of the Presi
dent's private secretaries, was sent to New York and t-o Niagara
Falls with full power in the premises ; but the " commission
ers" were compeUed to acknowledge that they were not accred
ited by the Confederate Governraent. They were a very
attractive pohtical trap and they were not anything more. A
very precise statement of the President's position was carried
to Niagara FaUs by Major Hay and was afterwards printed and
read by the nation. It was addressed to many millions of
people, when it was ¦written, quite as rauch as to any pair or
trio of rebel negotiators for party capital. It read :
"Executive Mansion,
" Washington, July 18, 1864.
" To whom it ma/y concern :
" Any proposition which embraces the restoration of peace,
the integrity of the whole Union, and the abandonment of sla
very, and which comes by and ¦with an authority that can con
trol the armies now at war against the United States, ¦wiU be
received and considered by the Executive Government of the
United States, and ¦will be met on liberal terms on substantial
and collateral points ; and the bearer or bearers thereof shaU
have safe-conduct both ways."
The commissioners were of course indignant, and said so ;
and a slight misunderstanding arose between the President and
Mr. Greeley as to the details of the correspondence and its

ON TRIAL. 437
management. Nevertheless the worst of the intended mis
chief was prevented, the subtle plot was made a failure, and all
that could be said and done, before or after election-day, could
not convince any large number of sound-minded voters that the
beginning of an offer of actual peace had been made or intend
ed. That is, of peace on any such terms as those set forth by
Mr. Lincoln. The country, as a whole, had finally decided, in
its heart of hearts, that it was not willing to have any other
kind of peace, hve or die.
The Opposition made only fairly good profit by its two
months of preparation, and learned no wisdom at all. When
its National Convention came together at Chicago, it made
Governor Seymour, of New York, its presiding officer, and
VaUandigham, of Ohio, the chairman of its coraraittee on reso
lutions. The latter crept back from his grotesque banishment
in the Confederate lines just about in time to frarae the plat
form of grievances upon which Mr. Lincoln was to be assailed.
The platform recited duly all known complaints against the
Administration, and demanded a cessation of hostUities. Tt
was a foregone necessity that even such an absurd agglomer
ation of discontent should appeal in some way to loyal senti
ment, and sorae loyalty was therefore put in. A further at
tempt was made tn the nomination of General McCleUan as
the Deraocratic candidate for President. George H. Pendleton,
of Ohio, was named for Vice-President. Tt is only bare jus
tice to General McClellan to record that it soon appeared that
he felt very strangely about that platform and about his re
markable associates and indorsers. He had had his difficulties
¦with Mr. Lincohi, indeed, and he had views of his own as to
the management of the war, but he had never done anything
to entitle or condemn him to rank ¦with the kind of men who
had been foremost m giving him that nomination. The speedy
reports of his personal and honorable discontent sent quite a
large number of sensible voters over to Mr. Lincoln's support.
The Democratic Convention closed its session vrith a covert

438 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
threat which had a half-way revolutionary sound and scared
men away from them. It did not dissolve, as is customary
with such bodies, but adjourned, " subject to be called at any
time and place that the National Executive Committee may
designate." Important Union successes in the field aided materiaUy in
solidtfying the good effect produced by the action of the Demo
cratic Convention. Telegraphic reports of ¦victories were un
pleasant commentaries upon editorial or other assertions that
" the conduct of the war by the Lincoln despotism has been and
is a disgraceful failure."
It could but be manifest to all that the President had at his
disposal the enormous and ubiquitous raachinery of the gov
ernment. The Opposition determined to prop their failing
fortunes ¦with the assertion that he- was using his power as the
national Executive to secure his own re-election.
Tn a reply to a delegation of loyal Marylanders, early in Oc
tober, he said :
" I therefore say that, if I live, I shall remain President un
til the fourth of March, and that whoever shall be constitution
ally elected in Noveraber shall be duly installed as President
on the fourth of March ; and, in the interval, I shaU do my
utraost that whoever is to hold the helm for the next voyage
shall start with the best chance of sa-ving the ship."
Now at such a time there might possibly be raised a ques
tion as to who, after the votes were counted, was " constitution
ally elected." Even in advance it raight be effectively charged
that Mr. Lincoln was already using his power to prevent a con
stitutional election. An excellent opportunity for getting a
little raischief ready beforehand was afforded by the course of
events in Tennessee. Andrew Johnson, the Repubhcan candi
date for Vice-President, was military governor of that State,
in process of reconstruction. The convention called to re
organize the State had been composed of unconditional Union
men, and had provided an oath to be taken by all voters at

ON TRIAL. 439
the elections, which it also provided for. This was an oath
of loyalty which could have been truthfully taken by only
a smaU minority of the delegates to the Chicago Convention,
although it contained no word which could have troubled the con
science of any loyal citizen of the United States. The cry was
loudly raised that this was a trick of the Administration to
prevent " the McCleUan men" of Tennessee from voting. To
strengthen the cry, a committee of such men was chosen to
bear a ¦written protest to the President, at Washington. They
came and he received thera, but for once his overtasked pa
tience gave way. The coramittee afterwards reported that
he received thera " roughly." That he even said to their
chairman :
" I expect to let the friends of George B. McClellan manage
theh side of this contest in theh own way, and I will manage
my side of it in my way." In reply to their demand for an
answer in ¦writing, as they reported, he said :
" Not now. Lay those papers down here. I may or may
not ¦write something about this hereafter. I know you intend
to make a point of this. But go ahead. You have my an
swer." If the report be correct, and it raay be, Mr. Lincoln betrayed
irritation. A pitf aU was opened before hira and he was asked
to tumble into it, and there was a lack of courtesy in the man
ner of his immediate refusal. Critical people declared that he
should have rejected the mud-hole ¦with grace and dignity. He
rejected it, at aU events, and ¦with force, in a written commu
nication, dated the 22d of October, which left the Opposition
no profit whatever from that speculation. The McClellan
ticket was ostentatiously withdra^wn from Tennessee, on the
alleged ground that its supporters there could not take the
oath.

440 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER LIIL
THE nation's VEEDIGT.
The Rebellion Bleeding to Death— A Half a Million More— The Results of
the Election — Sherman's March to the Sea— The Last Great Battle in
the West — Changes in the Cabinet — Grant on "Executive Interference."
The course of the ci^vU war during the summer and early
auturan of the year 1864, studded thickly as it was ¦with bloody
battles, raay be described ¦with fair exactness as a process of at
trition. Both in the East and West, the opposing armies were
grinding in almost continuous struggle.
The railitary results, ¦viewed strictly as such, were in favor
of the Union armies, and, all the whUe, the conquered districts
put behind these in their advances were becoming more and
more hopelessly lost forever to the Confederacy. One ob'vious
fact needed no presentation in any army buUetin. The area
from which the Rebel forces could draw recruits and supphes
was steadily narro-wing. Whenever their armies now in the
field should be ground away and used up by the ceaseless cam
paigning forced upon them, no others like them could be ob
tained to take their places. The end of aU drew nearer with
every charge they made, successful or otherwise, upon the wall
of steel and fire that was pitilessly closing in around them.
The resources of the North were not perceptibly diminished.
A Rebel officer of Texas cavalry, captured and carried to one of
the forts in New York harbor, was paroled late one evening
and spent the night at the Astor House, on Broadway, in New
York City. He came out upon the steps of the hotel, after
breakfast, the next morning, and stood for an hour or so, watch
ing the tide of men flow past him. At first he thought it a

THE NATION'S VERDICT. 44I
" procession" or the result of sorae uncoramon excitement ; but
when the truth dawned upon him that this was only the every
day rush of the great city, he sat down and wrote to his friends
at the South :
" How they have lied to us ! Tt is of no use. I give it up.
There are more men in the North than there were before the
war. Ours are all gone, and it's about time to stop."
Mr. Lincoln would gladly have seen the entire South arriv
ing at so sensible a decision ; but every faint sign of proraise in
any such direction proved instantly Ulusory. He was now con
tending with the wounded pride, rather than the sane hope or
expectation, of a group of raen in power at Richmond, whose
indomitable obstinacy upheld them until the gaUant men whom
they forced to fight for them were uselessly crashed upon the
last vain battle-fields of the ci-vU war.
Fully understanding his antagonists, Mr. Lincoln prepared
for the worst. On the 18th of July he caUed for five hundred
thousand more men, the number not furnished by voluntary
enlistments to be obtained by a draft, after September 5.
Even his eneraies were unable to describe so unpopular an act
as an electioneering operation in behalf of his re election. His
friends told hira, plainly, that it raight insure his defeat at the
Noveraber polls.
Perhaps he had more correctly gauged the temper and under
standing of the people. At aU events, the suraraoned raen carae
forward rapidly, a large and valuable percentage of thera being
veterans who had served their tirae under previous enhstraents.
One after another, every device of the Opposition utterly
broke down. Even before election-day it was e-vident that no
danger of Democratic success remained. When the poUs were
closed and the votes were counted, it was found that the coun
try contained 4,015,902 voters, the greater part of whom were
possible fighters. Mr. Lincoln's enormous majority of 411,428
fairly buried the McCleUan electoral tickets. Kentucky and
Delaware, old slave-States, with New Jersey, feebly testified

442 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
their disgust with Emancipation, but they were of small account
in an electoral college of 233 votes, wherein 212 were sohdly
against them. There could be raised no question of the " con
stitutionality" of such an election. It was the carefully formed
and solemnly announced judgraent of the nation. Mr. Lin
coln had taken no especial or undue raeans to secure the pohti
cal victory, but it was altogether such as he had confidently
looked for. It was no surprise to him, and it justified alike his
faith in God and in the general right-mindedness of his f eUow-
citizens. The people breathed more freely after the election, in spite
of the exciting nature of current news frora the array.
In the very middle of Noveraber began Sherman's " raarch
to the sea," and only one raonth later, -with the tidings that he
had reached the coast, carae the defeat and deraorahzation of
tbe last great Rebel array in the West, at Nash-ville. The fight
ing in Virginia had been hard and costly, upon both sides,
throughout the season. Tt included the " battles of the Wil
derness," the siege of Petersburg, the ¦victories of Sheridan in
the Shenandoah Valley, and raany another fierce colhsion of
forces, and it ended vrith the beginning of the final closing in
upon Richmond and Lee's army.
There had been three changes in the Cabinet during the year.
Mr. Montgomery Blair, Postmaster-General, after rendering
valuable services, had been succeeded by Governor William
Dennison, of Ohio. Edward Bates, of Missouri, Attorney-
General, had been succeeded by Mr. Lincoln's old personal
friend, James Speed, of Kentucky. Salmon P. Chase, Secre
tary of the Treasury, had been succeeded by William Pitt Fes-
senden, of Maine.
Neither of these changes originated in the personal wiU or
feehng of the President, or iraplied any dissatisfaction on his
part with the official conduct of the gentleraen who tendered
their resignations. The precise causes, in either case, have
ceased to be important or generally interesting. If there were

THE NATION'S VERDICT. 443
peculiar circumstances attending the withdrawal of Mr. Chase,
connected with the course talvcn by his friends prior to the
Baltimore Convention, all cause for remerabering thera was re
moved by the subsequent action of Mr. Lincoln. Chief- Justice
Taney of the Supreme Court died on the 12th of October, and,
after giving a fuU hearing to all who chose to offer advice upon
the subject, the President named Mr. Chase as his successor.
The possible range of human events could not have offered him
a better means for testifying his repudiation of personal ani
mosity and his keen appreciation of patriotic fidelity and capa
city. The appointment to the Suprerae Court bench of his old and
tried friend and adviser, David Davis, of TUinois, was in a
somewhat different way a sirailar testimonial to personal worth,
conferred ¦without regard to political or any other influence to
the contrary.
If Mr. Lincoln's utterances and letters, during this period,
continually express his increasing religious feeling and his con
fidence in an overruling Providence, his correspondence with
army coraraanders testifies to his belief that the conduct of
raihtary affahs was at last in the right hands. He had his
doubts, indeed, as to the wisdora of Sherman's march into
Georgia, but he refused to interfere. Tn a letter to General
Grant he said :
" The particulars of your plan I neither know nor seek to
know. You are vigilant and seK-reliant; and, pleased with
this, I wish not to obtrude any restraints or constraints upon
you." General Grant's reply contained this comprehensive testi
mony: " From my first entrance into the volunteer service of my
country to the present day, I have never had cause of cora
plaint. . . . Indeed, since the promotion which placed me in
command of all the armies, and in view of the great responsi
bihty and importance of success, I have been astonished at the

444 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
readiness with which everything asked for has been yielded,
without even an explanation being asked."
How great a relief was thus obtained by the weary Com-
raander-in-Chief can hardly be estiraated. How much he was
in need of such rehef could only be guessed, at the time, by
those who loved him and narrowly noted the ¦visible signs that
his iron constitution was beginning to yield to the ceaseless
drain and strain.
The overthrow of the Rebelhon, the return of peace, might
possibly bring hira easier tiraes. His mind was stronger and
clearer than ever, and his education was stiU going steadily for
ward ; but his bodily frarae was bent and at tiraes it drooped a
little, for the burdens yet upon him were almost too much for
human endurance.

^^x ^^ -rf^:

A ."^i

m.

From rhoto^raph by Drcidy. Washington. 1865.

A VALEDICTORY 445

CHAPTER LIV.

A valedictoet.

Putting Emancipation into the Constitution — Sherman in South Carolina —
The Peace Conference in Hampton Roads — Useless Bloodshed — The
Second Inaugural.
Congeess assembled on the 5th of December, 1864, and the
President sent in his Message the next day. In this he tersely
re^viewed the mUitary and political position of the country, at
home and abroad. He called attention to the manifest gains
of the country in wealth and population, with reference to its
undiminished ability to continue the war. He urged the adop
tion of an Amendment to the Constitution, forever prohibiting
human slavery in the United States. He declared that the
Rebels coxdd at any time have peace by simply laying down
their arms and submitting to the national authority under the
Constitution. At the pre^vious session of the same Congress an effort to
pro^vide for such a Constitutional Amendment as Mr. Lincoln
advised had failed. The time was not then ripe for it. It
was now plain to all, however, that the full tirae had corae,
and the necessary two-thirds vote of the House of Representa
tives was obtained ¦with moderate difficulty, the Senate being
already secure.
The President pubhcly declared to a crowd who assembled
at the White House, to congratulate him, that the Araendraent
seemed to him the one thing needful. It completed and con
firmed the work of the Proclamation of Emancipation, if duly
ratified by the several States. He urged those who heard him
to go home and see that this was done.
The war was pressed with untiring vigor, at every point,

446 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
through the month of December. In January the army
under General Sherman faced northward, sweeping through
South Carohna. Charleston feU into its hands like an over
ripe apple. No force remained with any power to stand in its
way, and the Richmond rulers began to reahze that their hour
was coraing. Studying well the terms of peace announced in
Mr. Lincoln's message to Congress, but not yet comprehending
them, they determined upon a last effort to save something
from the impending wreck of the Confederacy.
An informal conference was obtained, February 3, 1865,
upon a steamer in Hampton Roads, between the Vice-Presi
dent of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, R. M. T.
Hunter and J. A. CampbeU, representing the Richmond
authorities ; and Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Seward. The President's
assent to this interview was given at the request of General
Grant, but ¦with small hope of profitable results. None such
were at all possible. No written propositions were made or
offered on either side. No formal report of the conversation
was permitted, but the substance of it was at once made pub
hc, both at the North and South.
The Confederate commissioners desired to obtain a tem
porary cessation of hostihties, in the nature of an armistice or
truce between two independent powers, each reducing their
armaments and postponing the express terms and conditions
of a permanent peace and settlement to some future time and
after further consideration and negotiation. It was argued
that the passions of the two peoples would thus have tirae to
cool, comraercial and other relations could at once be resumed,
and an end could be reached ¦without further bloodshed.
What the commissioners omitted to urge was that the Rebel
lion would thereby gain much more than it could by a sudden
destruction of Sherman's array.
Mr. Lincoln's replies were a substantial reproduction of the
doctrines announced in his raessage to Congress, with the addi
tion of the Constitutional Amendment prohibiting slavery.

A VALEDICTORY. 447
The commissioners, sincere as might be their desire to ob
tain a season of rest and recuperation for the Confederacy,
with a covert acknowledgment of its independent, treaty-mak
ing existence, or earnest as may have been their personal long
ing for peace, were neither prepared nor empowered to nego
tiate for a fuU surrender. The President neither could nor
would discuss any other proposition than precisely that, for he
was acting solely as Commander-in-Chief. He really pos
sessed no other than strictly mihtary right and power in the
premises, for it was not a case of a treaty with a foreign power.
A Georgia newspaper, on ^he supposed authority of Mr.
Stephens, reports Mr. Lincoln as declaring that he could not
recognize another government inside the one of which he alone
was President. " That," he said, " would be doing what you
so long asked Europe to do, in vain, and be resigning the only
thing the Union arraies are fighting for." Mr. Hunter re
phed that the recognition of the power of Mr. Davis to make
a treaty was the first and indispensable step to peace.
This was a mere play upon words, substituting the idea of a
" treaty of peace" with the Richraond authorities for the other
idea of a restoration of the peace of the whole country. To
point his reply, and as offering one precedent of a constitu
tional ruler treating with arraed rebels, Mr. Hunter cited the
correspondence of Charles the First of England with the Par-
haraent. The newspaper report says :
"Mr. Lincoln's face wore that indescribable expression
which generally preceded his hardest hits ; and he remarked :
' Upon questions of history I must refer you to Mr. Seward,
for he is posted in such things, and I don't profess to be ; but
my only distinct recoUection of the raatter is that Charles lost
his head.' "
There was an old personal friendship between Mr. Lincoln
and Mr. Stephens, dating frora the tirae when they were mem
bers of Congress together, and the conference assumed there
from a tone of mutual ease and freedora frora constraint ; but

448 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the gulf was too wide to be bridged and too deep to be fiUed
up, and the humane desires which led to it suffered their fore
doomed disappointraent.
The Northern people understood the matter perfectly, ¦with
remarkably few exceptions, and there was never an opportunity
for the Southern people, generaUy, to know why the awful
bloodshed of the next few weeks was uselessly insisted upon
by their obstinate rulers. Peace was not at aU denied or -with
held from them, and there was no attainable object for which
so many of them should suffer or die. The United States,
through its President, did but continue its steady denial of the
existence as a nation, and of the treaty-making independence,
of the Confederacy.
For one month more the war went bitterly on, from day to
day. The end of Mr. Lincoln's first term of office, ¦with the
beginning of a second term, arrived at 12 o'clock, noon, of the
4th of March, 1865. The term of Congress also expired, and
the session -with it ; but the President convened the Senate, at
once, for an " extra session," by proclamation. For a second
time Mr. Lincoln took the oath of office as President of the
United States. It was a grand and solemn occasion, full of
strong and striking contrasts with the same ceremonial, in the
same place, four years before.
The crowd which assembled was even larger, this time ; but
it was a different crowd, with changed hearts and -with better
and higher hopes. The multitude was not the sarae. The Man
was the sarae and yet he was not, for behind hira as behind
thera was the fire of the sevenfold furnace through which God
had led him. No smell of burning was upon his garments of
integrity and faith, but his fetters had been largely burned away.
He was almost ready to walk out of the furnace and stand
before the King. The oath of office was adrainistered by Chief-
Justice Chase ; the President looked out for a moment, silently,
over the multitude, and then he addressed them, and all other
men, as follows :

A VALEDICTORY. 449
" Fellow-countrymen : At this second appearing to take the
oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an ex
tended address than there was at the first. Then, a statement
somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seeraed fitting and
proper. Now, at the exphation of four years, during which
pubhc declarations have been constantly called forth on every
point and phase of the great contest which stiU absorbs the
attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is
new could be presented.
"The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly
depends, is as weU kno-wn to the pubhc as to myself ; and it is,
I trast, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With
high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is
ventured. " On the occasion corresponding to this, four years ago, all
thoughts were anxiously dhected to an impending ci-vil war.
AU dreaded it ; aU sought to avoid it. While the inaugural
address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether
to sa-ving the Union -without war, insurgent agents were in the
city seeking to destroy it -without war — seeking to dissolve the
Union and di-vide the effects by negotiation. Both parties
deprecated war ; but one of thera would make war rather than
let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather
than let it perish : and the war came.
"One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves,
not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the
southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar
and powerful interest. AU knew that this interest was some
how the cause of the war. To strengthen, extend, and perpet
uate this interest was the object for which the insurgents would
rend the Union even by war, while the government claimed
no right to do more than restrict the territorial enlargement
of it.
" Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the
duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated

450 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
that the cause of the conflict raight cease with, or even before,
the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier tri
umph, and a result less fundamental and astounding.
"' Both read the same Eiblc and pray to the same God, and
each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange
that any men should ask a just God's assistance in -wringing
their bread from the sweat of other men's faces ; but let us judge
not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be
answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The
Almighty has His own purposes. ' Woe unto the world because
of offenses, for it must needs be that offenses come ; but woe
unto that man by whom the offense coraeth.' If we shall sup
pose that American slavery is one of these offenses, which in
the pro-ridence of God must needs come, but which, having
continued through his appointed time, he now -wills to remove,
and that he gives to both North and South this terrible war, as
the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shaU we dis
cern therein any departure from those divine attributes which
the believers in a hving God always ascribe to him ? Fondly
do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of
war raay soon pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue
until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and
fifty years of unrequited toil shaU be sunk, and until every
drop of blood dra-wn -with the lash shall be paid -with another
dra-wn with the sword, — as was said three thousand years ago,
so stiU it must be said, ' The judgraents of the Lord are just
and righteous altogether.'
" With raalice toward none, -with charity for aU ; with firra-
ness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive
on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up the nation's wounds ;
to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his
widow and orphans ; to do all which may achieve and cherish
a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
The inaugural address made a deep impression upon the
nation. Nothing at aU resembling it had ever been heard before.

A VALEDICTORY. 451
A ruler, publicly receiving the trust of four years more of
power, felt called upon to set before the people the result of
his profound study and analysis of the Divine Providence, as
presented in the Scriptures, and to call upon them to join him
in acknowledging the wisdom and justice of God. He also,
having many times aheady called upon them to pray with
hira, deeraed it weU to refer to the nature of both prayer and
its answers. As for his policy as a ruler, he was able, in talk
ing to such a people, to sum it all up in a condensed paraphrase
of the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount.
It was not exactly a " state paper," and there was in it a
strangely solemn and mournful undertone, not so much heard
as felt. It was a Farewell Address of a man whose work was
nearly done and who, somehow, was diraly aware of that fact.
Abrahara Lincoln's work was indeed done, for all that even
then reraained was for the hands of others. He had only a few
short weeks to wait before turning over all his power and re
sponsibility and toil to those who were to f oUow. At the sarae
time his education was completed, so far as it could be in this
present world. His mind and soul had reached their full
development, in a rehgious hfe so unconsciously intense and
absorbing that it could not otherwise than utter itseK in the
grand sentences of his last address to the people. The knowl
edge had come, and the faith had come, and the charity had
come ; and -with all had come the love of God, which put away
aU thought of rebelhous resistance to the will of God, leading
as in his earher days of trial to despah and insanity.

452 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

CHAPTER LV.
AT LAST.
A Proclamation of Pardon— Going to the Army— The Death Struggle of
the Rebellion— Hemmed in by the Hunters — The President in Rich
mond — Surrenders of Lee and Johnson — Cessation of the Civil War.
Me. Fessenden retired frora the Treasury Department, on
account of ill-health, on the 6th of March, and Hugh McCul-
loch, of Indiana, was appointed in his stead; but no other
changes were made in the Cabinet. The raachinery of the gov
ernment was all in good order and worked right on, without a
pause or a break. There was no occasion for the presence of
anxious crowds of office-seekers, as in 1861. This was not in any
-wise a new Administration. Nevertheless, for a fortnight, there
was an increase in the rush and pressure of official duties. In
pursuance of an Act of Congress, a proclaraation was issued, on
the 11th of March, offering pardon to all deserters who should at
once return to their posts. A draft for three hundred thousand
raen more began on the 15th, as K in preparation for possible
needs of the army. All matters were settled and adjusted, and
then the President, for the first time, indulged himself in what
bore a weird and somber hkeness to a vacation. On the 22d
of the raonth he went down the Potomac to City Point, to be
with the army during the closing struggles of the war. He
was very weary, in heart and brain, and he could there escape
from many of his daily and hourly tormentors. Not even the
very good people who only desired to see him and shake hands
with hira could all follow hira to City Point.
General Sherraan's army reached Goldsborough, North Caro
lina, on the 22d, and the General left it there and came up to
consult as to further operations.

LINCOLN AND SUMNER IN RICHMOND.
A Detachmeiit of Colored Tj oops passing, to occupy Garrison Quarters.

AT LAST. 453
There was to have been a grand re-view of the troops on the
23d, but on that day occurred a desperate battle for the posses
sion of Fort Steadman. The Rebels having once taken it, they
were driven out of it with heavy losses, and Mr. Lincoln -visited
the scene of £he combat. The enthusiasm with which he was
everywhere received by the soldiers enabled him to say, " This
is better than a review."
General Sherman arrived and attended a councU of war, held
on the 28th, at which were also present Mr. Lincoln and Gen
erals Grant, Sheridan, Meade, and Ord. He then shortly re
joined his army, and the results of the consultation followed
-with terrific rapidity. The operations under Grant began in a
few hours after the adjournment of the council. There was
some sharp fighting on the next day, Wednesday. Thursday
was so stormy as somewhat to interfere with activity, but
through Friday, Saturday, and Sunday there was a continuous
succession of bloody engagements along the entire front. Mr.
Lincoln reraained at City Point, recei-ving reports of the pro
gress-making and sending frequent dispatches to the people.
On Sunday he was able to announce " the triumphant success
of our armies, after three days of hard fighting, in which both
sides displayed unsurpassed valor."
The results were indeed a triumphant success, for the army
under Lee had lost one haK of its effective raen. Twelve
thousand of them were prisoners in the hands of the -victors,
with fifty pieces of artiUery. There was no longer any possi
bihty of holding Richmond. There had not been any, in
reality, for a long tirae, and the raost obstinate courage was cora
peUed to admit it now. The evacuation was made by the Rebel
authorities, ci^vU and military, at once and in haste. What
remained of the Rebel fleet in the James River was blo^wn up
before the departure, and as little was left of other war-material
as the tirae and opportunity given for destmction or removal
permitted. The Union troops nearest the city were those under General

454 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
Weitzel, lying on the north side of the James River. On the
morning of Monday, April 3, the Fifth Massachusetts Cav
alry was sent out by General Weitzel to reconnoiter. They
quickly discovered and reported the flight of the enemy, and
the city was entered and occupied by a quarter past eight
o'clock. The wearied, haK-starved people received the Union
troops with demonstrations of joy. They had had a good deal
more than enough of Secession and its consequences.
As soon as possible after recei^ving the news of the evacua
tion of Richmond, and on the sarae day, Mr. Lincoln made a
visit to the captured city. General Grant was pushing on
after Lee with all the forces he could move, and Sherman was
hurrying up frora the South. There remained no imaginable
loophole for the escape of the last Rebel army, and the war was
practically over.
Mr. Lincoln was carried by a war-steamer to a point about
a mile below Richraond, and the rest of the way in one of the
steamer's boats. Senator Sumner was ¦with hira ;, also httle Tad;
and the sailors who rowed the boat went ashore too, as a kind
of a suggestion of a body-guard. He did not need any. On
foot, almost alone, ¦with a dignity of simplicity which becarae
him wonderfully well, he passed on from street to street. Tt
was something like a dream : and yet all the ¦wild dreams of the
Confederate leaders had forever vanished in their enforced
abandonment of that town. He was at once recognized by
some of the colored people, and the news of his presence
spread like ¦wildfire. They thronged around him ¦with all the
extravagant expressions of joy and devotion of which their ex
citement made them capable. General Weitzel's men had to
come and serve as a police force to clear the streets. Men and
women wept and danced and shouted and praised God.
The President took his hat off, reverently, and bowed ; but he
could not speak, for the tears were pouring down his cheeks.
The Liberator had come suddenly among the people whose
bonds he had broken and to whora he had opened a hope of

AT LAST. 455
free manhood and womanhood in the days that were to be. Tt
was an hour worth li^ving and dying for, and it was given him
to see it. He returned to City Point that night, but paid the
city another visit two days later with Mrs. Lincoln and Tad,
accorapanied by Vice-President Johnson and others. Sorae
of the more prominent citizens came to see hira, at that time,
to discuss the future of the State of Virginia. Among these
was Judge CampbeU, whom the President had met in the
peace conference in Hampton Roads. This gentleman desired
hira to authorize the assembling of the State Legislature, that
by distinct State action the troops of Virginia might be with
drawn from Lee's army and the present condition of affahs
accepted. The death of the Rebelhon hardly required the ver
dict of such a local "coroner's jury" as was thus asked for,
and the President refused to issue any proclamation in the
preraises. He afterwards, however, wrote to General Weit
zel from City Point, instructing him to permit the assembhng
of the legislature. He told him to show the note to Judge
CampbeU, but not to have it made public. The surrender of
the array under Lee rendered needless any withdrawal of the
Vhginia troops, but, much to Mr. Lincoln's disgust, Judge
CampbeU made public not only the private conversation but
also the contents of the note to the general. Tt was made to
appear as an indication of the President's purposes and policy,
and it unduly affected the terms made by General Sherraan
¦with General Johnston, in the surrender of the part of the Rebel
army commanded by the latter. This made some trouble for
General Sherraan and stirred Mr. Lincohi to a more than ordi
nary expression of feeling.
Here and there a few remnants of Confederate forces were
stiU in arms, but nowhere was there anything properly to be
described as an array. Such as they were, the reranants rap
idly surrendered or disbanded, and even the guerilla bands
gave it up.
Orders were speedily issued from the War Department for

456 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
the cessation of enhstraents and for stopping the operation of
the draft, with other orders looking to the reduction and even
tual disbandraent of the arraies.
Military restrictions upon trade and coramerce between the
warring sections were removed as fast as was consistent with
local requhements. The whole nation awoke to the glad cer
tainty that Peace had corae, and that it had come to stay, and
that it had so come as to be worth the having. Tt had come
by the forcible and complete restoration of the authority of
the United States over every part and parcel of its territory
and population. It had corae without treaty, or condition, or
coraproraise. AU questions of future citizenship, whether of
rebels recently in arras or of black men recently in bondage,
were left in the unfettered control of Congress and the Presi
dent. There were such questions, truly, and they presented
momentous problems for statesraen to consider, but the raan
ner of the closing of the war stripped all such problems of
artificial complications and left them in shape and condition
for swKt and sure solution. Mr. Lincoln's views upon the sub
ject of universal suffrage were already well kno^wn, and he took
specific opportunities for leaving thera on record. His desire
and hope was that the colored raen should becorae citizens in
all respects, without even covert reference to the tint of their
skins. He did not reraain long enough to see his wishes grati
fied, but there was no doubt in his mind as to the pohcy to be
pursued by the government. He well knew that the processes
required for making good citizens, of even white material, de
manded time and opportunity and patient wisdom for the
production of tolerable results, and he believed that the requhe
ments of the enfranchised race were measurably the same.
They too would need both time and opportunity and patience
and intelligent help. The supervision of all that work was to
be put into other hands than his, and already he had done
what he could.

PEACE. 457

CHAPTER LVL
PEACE.
A Rejoicing People — Vanity and Revenge conspire to Commit Murder —
The Assassination — The Mourning of a Mighty Multitude — Voices
from Distant Lands — The Teachings of a Great Life.
The idea, at times the dread, of Mr. Lincoln's possible assas
sination had fioated vaguely in the rainds of his friends from
the very hour of his election. It was again and again suggested
to hira tn raany ways, but he invariably refused to give it a
serious consideration.
Threats were so freely made, as the war went on, and those
around him were so reasonably alarmed, that he was alraost
compeUed to justKy ¦with argument his utter indifference. Men
would need motives, he thought and said, for the doing of such
a deed. " H they kUl me, the next man wUl be just as bad for
them ; and in a country like this, where our habits are siraple,
and must be, assassination is always possible, and -will come if
they are determined upon it."
He came and went, attended or unattended, as the case might
be, -with careless freedom, not gi-ving the matter any further
consideration. With the coUapse of the rebeUion and the return of peace, it
seemed as K aU supposable rational raotive for assailing the
President's life had vanished, and ¦with it all peril of his assas
sination. No words can paint the joy of the nation over the fall of
Richraond and the surrender of Lee's army. The bells in all
the steeples rang hke mad ; the cannon booraed ; the people
met in the churches to praise God ; raen who did not know

458 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
each other stopped in busy streets to shake hands, and turned
away with streaming eyes ; mothers and widows quieted their
aching hearts in the thought that their sons and husbands had
not died in vain ; soraething of charitable warrath was sweUtng
and reaching out towards the rained and stricken South. It
was an hour of the retum of peace on earth and good-^will to
raen, and any pre^vious suggestion of possible murder was for
gotten. Rational motives had indeed all passed away ; but men had
failed to take account of two of the ¦viler and meaner passions
whereby Hell is represented in the hearts of human beings, —
Revenge and Vanity. A corabination of these in the minds of
several men led to a conspiracy for the murder of Mr. Lincoln,
Mr. Johnson, Mr. Seward, General Grant, and, perhaps, sorae
others. Tt was a very deliberate affair, although miserably
planned and imperfectly executed.
The Vice-President escaped unassailed ; Mr. Seward received
wounds from which he soon recovered ; and the only part of
the conspiracy which f uUy attained its purpose was that which
was put into the base hands of mere vanity in the person of an
unsuccessful actor named Booth. This man was not a South
erner ; he was not a soldier ; he was but a fah representative
of the meaner, because better educated, Northern " copper
head." The Confederacy was but recently dead and had not yet
been buried. The new order of things was not yet under way.
The President was toiling, day and night, in the settlement of
nuraberless important questions. He was not so strong as for
merly, and a breath of recreation was more than ever needful.
He was invited by the manager of Ford's Theater, in Washing
ton, to witness the performance of a play kno-wn as " Our
American Cousin," on the evening of the 14th of April. He
assented, for he was soraewhat fond of the draraa. He had
made Shakspeare a study to such an extent that he could sit
throughout the most perfect presentation of Falstaff, -without

PEACE. 459
one smile upon his face, absorbed in the delineation of human
nature by the master, through the actor.
Tn the present case he was not eager, knowing nothing of
the play; but he yielded to the wifely urgency of Mrs. Lincoln.
General Grant was to have been of the party, but had other
engagements more imperative which called him out of the city.
Mr. Lincoln passed the day as usual. He raade an appointraent
to raeet Hon. George Ashraun, of Massachusetts, and Judge
Charles P. Daly, of New York, the next raorning. He never
wasted rauch time in dressing, and when Mrs. Lincoln came
for him he was ready to go -with her. They passed on their
way to take -with them Miss Harris and Major Rathbone,
daughter and stepson of Senator Harris, of New York. It was
twenty minutes before nine o'clock when they entered the
crowded theater, and the throng rose and cheered enthusiasti
cally as they passed on to the " state box" reserved for them.
The murder of the President could have been accomplished
more safely and easily at almost any other tirae and place, but
the gratification of diseased vanity and morbid hate required
pubhcity. John Wilkes Booth, the actor who had selected this for his
last tragedy, made his preparations for escape with sorae care
and cunning, as K unaware that the earth contained no cave
dark enough to afterwards conceal him. He pro^vided hiraself
¦with a good horse, in waiting at the rear of the theater, on
which to ride away. He entered, looked in upon the stage
as K ¦with professional curiosity, and then worked his way
around into the outer passage leadhig towards the box occupied
by the President.
One of the President's " messengers" was at the end of an
inner passage, leading to the box-door, for the purpose of pre
venting undue intrusions. To him Booth presented a card,
stating that Mr. Lincoln had sent for him. On that he he was
permitted to pass. After overcoming this slight barrier there
reraained no hindrance to the commission of the murder, for

40U ABRAHAM LINVVIjJS.
the President sat quietly in an arm-chair, entirely absorbed in
the play.
Booth had a two-edged dagger and a single-barreled Der
ringer pistol, carrying a heavy ball. With the latter he took
fuU aira at the back of the head so near him and puUed the
trigger. The bullet entered the brain, so weary ¦with long toil
for others : but the President hardly stirred in his chair. The
report of the pistol rang through the house, but for several
heart-beats no man seems to have guessed what it meant.
Major Rathbone was the flrst to comprehend the inatter, and
he instantly closed with Booth, but was thrown off ¦with a
wound in his arm frora the dagger.
Freeing hiraseK frora the grasp of Rathbone, Booth sprang
to the front of the box and leaped upon the stage below. It
was but a step down, but his spurs caught in the Araerican flag
with which the box was draped, and he half fell. Regaining
his feet, he faced the audience for a raoraent, dagger in hand,
spouting theatrically the State raotto of Virginia, " Sic semper
tyrcmnis,^^ and added, " The South is avenged !"
He was familiar 'with the exits of the stage. It was easy to
dash aside the few bewildered actors and actresses in his way.
Only one man, a gentleman named Stewart, was quick-witted
enough to spring upon the stage and follow him, and he was too
late in doing so. The assassin reached his horse and rode away,
escaping for the hour, only to be hunted down and shot in a
burning bam in Maryland, some twelve days after the murder.
It was all the work of a few seconds. The fact that the
President had been shot fell upon the audience with awful
power. Women screamed incoherently or fainted away. Men
stood white-faced with dismay and wrath, or blasphemed, or
swore revenge. All was uproar and confusion.
The leading actress, Laura Keene, stepped to the front of
the stage and begged the audience to be calm. Then she en
tered the President's box ¦with the water Miss Harris had been
calling for, and with stimulants. Mrs. Lincoln was at once and

PEACE. 461
entirely overcome. She had never shared her husband's indif
ference to his perpetual peril, but the shock was none the less
severe when it now smote upon her so suddenly.
The evU deed had been completely done. Mr. Lincoln was
unconscious from the moment when the bullet struck him.
There was httle need for the verdict of the medical raen who
gathered so quickly around him, that the hurt was surely fatal,
and the news went out to the country untempered by any de
lusive hope.
There had been a mutual agreement between the conspha-
tors as to the time for striking, and the less successful assault
upon Mr. Seward was made at precisely the same hour. Inci
dental chcumstances prevented the remainder of the plot from
even attempted execution.
The unconscious President was carried to a private residence,
near the theater ; and here, at twenty-two minutes past seven
o'clock, April 15, 1865, the last tokens of life disappeared.
There was bitter grief among the statesraen and generals
who sobbed around that death-bed. Be^wUdering and agonizing
was the sorrow of Mrs. Lincoln and her sons, in the roora ad
joining. These were of the fallen ruler's flesh and blood and
hfe. Those were the associates and co-workers of his long toil
and trial. Tt was but natural that they should break down,
stunned and staggering, under such a blow. The greater raar-
vel was in the immediate effect upon the nation. It was as if
there had been a death in every house throughout the land.
The day before the murder, the North had been rejoicing,
even beyond the bounds of sober reason. Even the South was
drawing long breaths of rehef and hope. By both sections
ahke the a-wful news was heard with a shudder and with a rao-
mentary spasm of unbelief. Then followed one of the most
remarkable spectacles in the history of the human race, for
there is nothing else at aU hke it on record. Bells had tolled
before at the death of a loved ruler, but never did all bells toll
so mournfully as they did that day. Business ceased, except-

462 ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
ing the purchase of crape. Men came together in pubhc meet
ings as if by a coraraon impulse, and party lines and sectional
hatreds seemed to be obhterated. It is trae that here and there
an angry voice called aloud for vengeance. Tt is true that a
few bitter-hearted brutes declared their infernal gratiflcation,
even at peril of their miserable lives. The former calmed
themselves to learn the holier lessons of the hour, and the lat
ter were too few and insignificant to add a black drop of dis
grace to the cup of the national sorrow.
The inteUigent people of the Southern States felt that their
stage-mad " avenger" had infficted upon them a fresh disaster,
and they both publicly and privately expressed their anger and
regret. Their feeling is weU iUustrated by the action of the Masonic
fraternity in Arkansas, locally known as the " Reb. Masons."
They were the first to caU and hold a meeting to declare and
emphasize their condemnation and sorrow, and a haU in Little
Rock, the State capital, was weU fiUed -with those who as
sembled. Tn large part they were ex-Confederate soldiers,
many of whom stiU wore remnants of their army unKorms,
and they hstened to a funeral oration upon Abraham Lincoln
from the lips of a weU-known Union man, of the Masonic fra
ternity. Tt was but twelve hours after the news of the murder
reached Little Rock by telegraph.
The assassination took place on Friday evening, and on the
Sunday following funeral ser-vices were held in all the churches
in the land, and every church was draped in mourning. The
ingenuity of grief seeraed to exhaust itseK in vain atterapts for
adequate expression. Nowhere was there any visible sign of
disorder. A vague dread of what might possibly come turned every
raan into a self-appointed guardian of the public peace, robbed
of its Constitutional protector. The feeling in the army was
intense ; but the sternest soldier felt that no act of stupid re
venge could honor the memory of a raan like Lincoln. Not
one such act was undertaken or committed, then or afterwards.

PEACE. 463
The punishraent of the conspirators, under due forra of law,
was ordinary justice and not raere vengeance. These were all
captured and received varying sentences, according to their
several adjudged degrees of crime.
After Mr. Lincoln's death, his body was removed to the
White House and embalmed. A gathering of Congressmen
and other public men, at the Capitol, on Monday, made arrange
ments for funeral services on Wednesday. Pall-bearers were
named, and also a Congressional Coramittee, representing the
several States, to accorapany the' remains to their resting-place
in Uhnois.
The funeral services, on Wednesday, were held in the East
Room of the Executive Mansion, and from this the coffined
body was borne in solemn procession to the catafalque prepared
for it in the rotunda of the Capitol. Endless crowds had
poured through the East Room, while the body remained
there, each passer bending to take a last look at the silent face
the nation had loved so well. The same sad stream poured on
through the corridors of the Capitol, for none was wiUing to
f aU of that final opportunity, and they came from all the region
round about.
On the 21st of the month the funeral-train left Washing
ton ; and, through aU the fifteen hundred miles of its route to
Uhnois, the mournful pageant of its reception by the people
surpasses all power of words for its description. Slowly the
train proceeded, from city to city, between almost continuous
hnes of sorro-wing midtitudes doing last honors to their beloved
Chief Magistrate, whose hold upon their hearts they had not
kno^wn tiU they had lost him.
With the remains of Mr. Lincoln were carried those of his
beloved son WUlie. Father and chUd had gone Home, for
ever, and their earthly bodies were borne homeward side by
side. Springfield, Illinois, was reached on the morning of the 3d of
May. The grief of Mr. Lincoln's oldest friends and near neigh-

464 ABRAHAM LINCOLN
bors could hardly exceed that of many who had never heard hira
utter a word nor at any time had looked upon his living face.
A day later, in the presence of a great multitude, the coffin
was placed in a tomb prepared for it in Oak Ridge Cemetery,
near the city, with appropriate ceremonials and oratory.
A sort of echo of the National sorrow came back from
almost every corner of the world, and many of the tones and
expressions were only less surprising than were their sources.
America was at once on better terms with Europe, especiaUy,
aU in a day, when the voices 'of the trans- Atlantic press were
printed in our o'wn newspapers, side by side with the official
condolences of foreign potentates. The pubhc uses of the IKe
of Mr. Lincoln did not terminate until this last ser-vice had
been effected by his death, and the value of it was by no means
insignificant. This is all. The lessons of such a life are very plainly to be
read. They should be made famihar to the heart and brain of
every Araerican. Every soul born in the United States, or
coraing to dwell here, should study thera weU and so learn to
understand and love the country wherein alone on earth such
a life is possible. It is a land which has been rich in noble men
and well-spent hves, both of men and women ; but there has
been no other just like this. Among all there is not one re
corded which is so weU adapted to teach and enforce these
things : that the lowliest may hopefully strive for the highest
elevation ; that the most ignorant, under every imaginable dis
advantage, may successfuUy seek for knowledge and its uses ;
that the most skeptical, broken-hearted, hopeless, despairing of
all men, may go on to do his duty to himself and others, tum
ing his eyes and lifting his hands to God and drawing surely
nearer to Him.
Whatever were his f aihngs, faults, and flaws, this was the
unselfish, truth-seeking and truth-serving IKe of Abeaham
Lincoln.

APPENDIX.
A FEW PIVOTAL SPEECHES AND LETTERS OF MR. LINCOLN
ALLUDED TO IN THIS VOLUME.

I.
SPEECH,
Delivered at Spiingfleld, HI., June 17, 1858.
THE FIEST AFTER ME. LINCOLN'S NOMINATION FOE THE UNITED
STATES SENATOESHIP FEOM ILLINOIS. (See Ch. XXIII.)
Me. Peesident, a:nd Gentlemen of the Convention: — If
we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending,
we could better judge what to do, and how to do it. We are
now far into the fifth year since a policy was initiated with the
avowed object, and confident promise, of putting an end to
slavery agitation. Under the operation of that policy that agi
tation has not only not ceased, but has constantly augmented.
In my opinion, it -will not cease until a crisis shall have been
reached and passed. "A house divided against itself cannot
stand." I beheve this Government cannot endure permanently
haW slave and haK free. I do not expect the Union to be dis
solved, I do not expect the house to fall, but I do expect it will
cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the
other. Either the opponents of slavery wiU arrest the further
spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the
behef that it is in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advo
cates wiU push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all
the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.
Have we no tendency to the latter condition ?
Let any one who doubts carefully contemplate that now almost

466 APPENDIX.
complete legal combination— piece of machinery, so to speak—
compounded of the Nebraska doctrine and the Dred Scott decis
ion. Let him consider not only what work the machinery is
adapted to do, and how weU adapted; but also let him study the
history of its construction, and trace, if he can, or rather fail, if
he can, to trace, the evidences of design and concert of action
among its chief architects from the beginning.
The new year of 1854 found slavery excluded from more than
half the States by State Constitutions, and from most of the
national territory by Congressional prohibition. Four days
later commenced the struggle which ended in repealing that
Congressional prohibition. This opened all the national terri
tory to slavery, and was the first point gained.
But so far Congress only had acted; and an indorsement by
the people, real or apparent, was indispensable, to save the point
already gained and give chance for more.
This necessity had not been overlooked, but had been provided
for, as well as might be, in the notable argument of " squatter
sovereignty," otherwise called " sacred right of self-government;"
which latter phrase, though expressive of the only rightful basis
of any government, was so perverted in this attempted use of it
as to amount to just this: That if any one man choose to enslave
another, no third man shall be allowed to object. That argu
ment was incorporated into the Nebraska bill itself, in the lan
guage which follows: " It being the true intent and meaning of
this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor
to exclude it therefrom; but to leave the people tbereof perfectly
free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own
way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States."
Then opened the roar of loose declamation in favor of " squatter
sovereignty," and " sacred right of self-government." " But,"
said opposition members, "let us amend the bill so as to ex
pressly declare that the people of the Territory may exclude
slavery." "Not we," said the friends of the measure; and down
they voted the amendment.
While the Nebraska bill was passing through Congress, a law-
case, involving the question of a negro's freedom, by reason of
his owner ha-ring voluntarily taken him first into a free State and

APPENDIX. 467
then into a Territory covered by the Congressional prohibition,
and held him as a slave for a long time in each, was passing
through the United States Circuit Court for the District of Mis
souri; and both Nebraska bill and lawsuit were brought to a de
cision in the same month of May, 1854. The negro's name was
"Dred Scott," which name now designates the decision finally
made in the case. Before the then next Presidential election,
the law-case came to, and was argued in, the Supreme Court of
the United States ; but tbe decision of it was deferred until after
the election. Still, before the election, Senator Trumbull, on the
floor of the Senate, requested the leading advocate of the Ne
braska bill to state his opinion whether tbe people of a Territory
can constitutionally exclude slavery from their limits; and the
latter answers: "That is a question for the Supreme Court."
The election came. Mr. Buchanan was elected, and the in
dorsement, such as it was, secured. That was the second point
gained. The indorsement, however, fell short of a clear popular
majority by nearly four hundred thousand votes, and so, per
haps, was not overwhelmingly reliable and satisfactory. The
outgoing President, in his last annual message, as impressively
as possible echoed back upon the people the weight and author
ity of the indorsement. The Supreme Court met again ; did not
announce their decision, but ordered a re-argument. The Presi
dential inauguration came, and still no decision of the court; but
the incoming President, in his inaugural address, fervently ex
horted the people to abide by the forthcoming decision, what
ever it might be. Then, in a few days, came the decision.
The reputed author of the Nebraska bill finds an early occasion
to make a speech at this capital, indorsing the Dred Scott decis
ion, and vehemently denouncing all opposition to it. The new
President, too, seizes the early occasion of the Silliman letter to
indorse and strongly construe that decision, and to express his
astonishment that any different view had ever been entertained.
At length a squabble springs up between the President and
the author of the Nebraska bill, on the mere question of fact,
whether the Lecompton Constitution was or was not, in any just
sense, made by the people of Kansas; and in that quarrel the
latter declares that aU he wants is a fair vote for the people, and

468 APPENDIX.
that he cares not whether slavery be voted down or voted up. I
do not understand his declaration, that he cares not whether
slavery be voted down or voted up, to be intended by him other
than as an apt definition of the policy he would impress upon the
public mind — the principle for which he declares he has suffered
so much, and is ready to suffer to the end. And well may he
cling to that principle. If he has any parental feeling, well may
he cling to it. That principle is the only shred left of his origi
nal Nebraska doctrine. Under the Dred Scott decision " squat
ter sovereignty" squatted out of existence, tumbled down, like
temporary scaffolding — like the mold at the foundry served
through one blast and fell back into loose sand — helped to carry
an election, and then was kicked to the winds. His late joint
struggle with the Republicans, against the Lecompton Constitu
tion, involves nothing of the original Nebraska doctrine. That
struggle was made on a point — the right of a people to make
their own constitution — upon which he and the Republicans
have never differed.
The several points of the Dred Scott decision, in connection
with Senator Douglas's " care not" policy, constitute the piece
of machinery, in its present state of advancement. This was the
third point gained. The working points of that machinery are:
First. That no negro slave, imported as such from Africa, and
no descendant of such slave, can ever be a citizen of any State,
in the sense of that term as used in the Constitution of the United
States. This point is made in order to deprive the negro, in
every possible event, of the benefit of that provision of the
United States Constitution which declares that " The citizens of
each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States."
Secondly. That, "subject to the Constitution of the United
States," neither Congress nor a Territorial Legislature can ex
clude slavery from any United States Territory. This point is
made in order that individual men may fill up the Territories
-with slaves without danger of losing them as property, and thus
to enhance the chances of permanency to the institution through
all the future.
Thirdly. That whether the holding a negro in actual slavery

APPENDIX. 469
in a free State makes him free, as against the holder, the United
States courts wiU not decide, but will leave to be decided by the
courts of any slave-State the negro may be forced into by the
master. This point is made, not to be pressed immediately; but,
if acquiesced in for a while, and apparently indorsed by the
people at an election, then to sustain the logical conclusion that
what Dred Scott's master might lawfully do with Dred Scott, in
the free State of lUinois, every other master may lawfully do
with any other one, or one thousand slaves, in Illinois, or in any
other free State.
Auxihary to all this, and working hand in hand with it, the
Nebraska doctrine, or what is left of it, is to educate and mold
public opinion, at least Northern public opinion, not to care
whether slavery is voted do-wn or voted up. This shows exactly
where we now are; and partially, also, whither we are tending.
It -wiU throw additional light on the latter, to go back, and run
the mind over the string of historical facts already stated.
Several things -wiU now appear less dark and mysterious than
they did when they were transpiring. The people were to be
left "perfectly free," "subject only to the Constitution." What
the Constitution had to do -with it, outsiders could not then see.
Plainly enough now, it was an exactly fitted niche for the Dred
Scott decision to afterward come in, and declare the perfect free
dom of the people to be just no freedom at aU. Why was the
amendment, expressly declaring the right of the people, voted
do-wn? Plainly enough now: the adoption of it would have
spoiled the niche for the Dred Scott decision. Why was the
court decision held up ? Why even a Senator's individual opin
ion -withheld tUl after the Presidential election ? Plainly enough
now: the speaking out then would have damaged the perfectly
free argument upon which the election was to be carried. Why
the outgoing President's fehcitation on the indorsement? Why
the delay of a re-argument ? Why the incoming President's
advance exhortation in favor of the decision ? These things
look like the cautious patting and petting of a spirited horse
preparatory to mounting him, when it is dreaded that he may
give the rider a fall. And why the hasty after-indorsement of
the decision by the President and others ?

470 APPENDIX.
We cannot absolutely know that all these exact adaptations
are the result of preconcert. But when we see a lot of framed
timbers, different portions of which we know have been gotten
out at different times and places, and by different workmen —
Stephen, Franklin, Roger, and James, for instance — and when
we see these timbers joined together, and see they exactly make
the frame of a house or a mill, all the tenons and mortises ex
actly fitting, and all the lengths and proportions of the different
pieces exactly adapted to their respective places, and not a piece
too many or too few — not omitting even scaffolding — or, if a
single piece be lacking, we see the place in the frame exactly
fitted and prepared yet to bring such piece in — in such a case,
we find it impossible not to believe that Stephen and Frank
lin and Roger and James all understood one another from the
beginning, and all worked upon a common plan or draft drawn
up before the first blow was struck.
It should not be overlooked that, by the Nebraska bill, the
people of a State, as well as Territory, were to be left " perfectly
free," " subject only to the Constitution." Why mention a
State? They were legislating for Territories, and not for or
about States. Certainly, the people of a State are and ought to
be subject to the Constitution of the United States; but why is
mention of this lugged into this merely territorial law ? Why
are the people of a Territory and the people of a State therein
lumped together, and their relation to the Constitution therein
treated as being precisely the same? While the opinion of the
court, by Chief -Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott case, and the
separate opinions of all the concurring Judges, expressly declare
that the Constitution of the United States neither permits Con
gress nor a Territorial Legislature to exclude slavery from any
United States Territory, they all omit to declare whether or not
the same Constitution permits a State, or the people of a State,
to exclude it. Possibly, this is a mere omission; but who can
be quite sure, if McLean or Curtis had sought to get into the
opinion a declaration of unlimited power in the people of a State
to exclude slavery from their limits, just as Chase and Mace
sought to get such declaration, in behalf of the people of a Ter
ritory, into the Nebraska bill ; — I ask, who can be quite sure that

APPENDIX. 471
it would not have been voted down in the one case, as it had
been in the other ? The nearest approach to the point of declar
ing the power of a State over slavery is made by Judge Nelson.
He approaches it more than once, using the precise idea, and
almost the language, too, of the Nebraska act. On one occasion,
his exact language is, "Except in cases where the power is re
strained by the Constitution of the United States, the law of the
State is supreme over the subject of slavery within its jurisdic
tion." In what cases the power of the States is so restrained by
the United States Constitution is left an open question, pre
cisely as the same question as to the restraint on the power of
the Territories, was left open in the Nebraska act. Put this
and that together, and we have another nice little niche, which
we may, ere long, see filled with another Supreme Court de
cision, declaring that the Constitution of the United States does
not permit a State to exclude slavery from its limits. And this
may especially be expected, if the doctrine of " care not whether
slavery be voted down or voted up" shall gain upon the public
mind sufSciently to give promise that such a decision can be
maintained when made.
Such a decision is aU that slavery now lacks of being alike
la-wful in all the States. Welcome or unwelcome, such decision
is probably coming, and will soon be upon us, unless the power
of the present political dynasty shall be met and overthrown.
We shall lie do-wn pleasantly dreaming that the people of Mis
souri are on the verge of making their State free, and we shall
awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made
lUinois a slave-State. To meet and overthrow the power of
that dynasty is the work now before all those who would pre
vent that consummation. That is what we have to do. How
can we best do it ?
There are those who denounce us openly to their own friends,
and yet whisper us softly that Senator Douglas is the aptest in
strument there is with which to effect that object. They -wish
us to infer all, from the fact that he now. has a little quarrel
with the present head of the dynasty; and that he has regularly
voted with us on a single point, upon which he and we have
never differed. They remind us that he is a great man, and that

472 APPENDIX.
the largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But
" a living dog is better than a dead lion." Judge Douglas, if
not a dead lion, for this work, is at least a caged and toothless
one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery ? He don't
care anything about- it. His avowed mission is impressing the
"public heart" to care nothing about it. A leading Douglas
Democratic newspaper thinks Douglas's superior talent will be
needed to resist the revival of the African slave-trade. Does
Douglas believe an effort to revive that trade is approaching ?
He has not said so. Does he really think so ? But if it is, how
can he resist it ? For years he has labored to prove it a sacred
right of white men to take negro slaves into the new Territories.
Can he possibly show that it is less a sacred right to buy them
where they can be bought cheapest ? And unquestionably they
can be bought cheaper in Africa than in Virginia. He has done
all in his power to reduce the whole question of slavery to one
of a mere right of property; and as such, how can he oppose
the foreign slave-trade — how can he refuse that trade in that
"property" shall be "perfectly free" — unless he does it as a
protection to the home production ? And as the home pro
ducers will probably not ask the protection, he will be wholly
without a ground of opposition.
Senator Douglas holds, we know, that a man may rightfully
be wiser to-day than he was yesterday — that he may rightfully
change when he finds himself wrong. But can we, for that
reason, run ahead, and infer that he -will make any particular
change, of which he himself has given no intimation ? Can we
safely base our action upon any such vague inference ? Now,
as ever, I wish not to misrepresent Judge Douglas's position,
question his motives, or do aught that can be personally offen
sive to him. Whenever, if ever, he and we can come together
on principle, so that our cause may have assistance from his
great ability, I hope to have interposed no adventitious obstacle.
But, clearly, he is not now with us — ^he does not pretend to be —
he does not promise ever to be.
Our cause, then, must be intrusted to, and conducted by, its
own undoubted friends — those whose hands are free, whose
hearts are in the work — who do care for the result. Two years

APPENDIX. 473
ago, the Republicans of the nation mustered over thirteen hun
dred thousand strong. We did this under the single impulse of
resistance to a common danger, with every external circumstance
against us. Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements,
we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the
battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined
proud, and pampered enemy. Did we brave all then, to filter
now? — now, when that same enemy is wavering, dissevered,
and belligerent ? The result is not doubtful. We shall not
fail — if we stand firm, we shall not fail. Wise counsels may
accelerate, or nustakes delay it; but, sooner or later, the victory
is sure to come.

n.
SPEECH,
Delivered at Cooper Institute, New York, Feb. 27, 1860. (See Ch. XXIV.)
Me. PEEsroENT, AiTO Fellow-Citizens of New Yoek: The
facts with which I shall deal this evening are mainly old and
fanuliar; nor is there anything new in the general use I shaU
make of them. If there shall be any novelty, it -will be in the
mode of presenting the facts, and the inferences and observa
tions foUo-wing that presentation.
In his speech last autumn, at Columbus, Ohio, as reported in
the New York Times, Senator Douglas said:
" Our fathers, when they framed the government under which
we live, understood this question just as well, and even better
than we do noio."
I fully indorse this, and I adopt it as a text for this discourse,
I so adopt it because it furnishes a precise and an agreed start
ing-point for a discussion between Republicans and that wing of
the Democracy headed by Senator Douglas. It simply leaves
the inquiry: " What was the understanding those fathers had of
the question mentioned P"
What is the frame of government under which we live ?

474 APPENDIX.
The answer must be: " The Constitution of the United States."
That Constitution consists of the original, framed in 1787 (and
under which the present government first went into operation),
and twelve subsequently framed amendments, the first ten of
which were framed in 1789.
Who were our fathers that framed the Constitution ? I sup
pose the " thirty-nine" who signed the original instrument may
be fairly called our fathers who framed that part of the present
government. It is almost exactly true to say they framed it,
and it is altogether true to say they fairly represented the
opinion and sentiment of the whole nation at that time.
Their names, being familiar to nearly all, and accessible to
quite all, need not now be repeated.
I take these " thirty-nine," for the present, as being our
"fathers who framed the government under which we live."
What is the question which, according to the text, those
fathers understood "just as well, and even better than we do
now" ?
It is this: Does the proper division of local from Federal
authority, or anything in the Constitution, forbid our Federal
Government to control as to slavery in our Federal Territories ?
Upon this Senator Douglas holds the affirmative, and Repub
licans the negative. This affirmation and denial form an issue,
and this issue — this question — is precisely what the text declares
our fathers understood " better than we."
Let us now inquire whether the "thirty-nine," or any of them,
acted upon this question; and if they did, how they acted upon
it — how they expressed that better understanding.
In 1784, three years before the Constitution — the United
States then owning the Northwestern Territory, and no other —
the Congress of the Confederation had before them the question
of prohibiting slavery in that Territory; and four of the "thirty-
nine" who afterward framed the Constitution were in that
Congress and voted on that question. Of these, Roger Sher
man, Thomas Mifflin, and Hugh Williamson voted for the pro
hibition, thus showing that, in their understanding, no line
dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything else, pro
perly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slaverv

APPENDIX. 475
in Federal territory. The other of the four — .Tames M'Henry —
voted against the prohibition, showing that, for some cause, he
thought it improper to vote for it.
In 1787, still before the Constitution, but while the Conven
tion was in session framing it, and while the Northwestern
Territory still was the only territory owned by the United
States, the same question of prohibiting slavery in the territory
again came before the Congress of the Confederation; and two
more of the "thirty-nine" who afterward signed the Constitu
tion were in that Congress, and voted on the question. They
were William Blount and William Few ; and they both voted for
the prohibition — thus sho-wing that, in their understanding, no
line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything else,
properly forbade the Federal Government to control as to
slavery in Federal territory. This time the prohibition became
a law, being part of what is now well known as the Ordinance
of '87.
The question of Federal control of slavery in the Territories
seems not to have been directly before the Convention which
framed the original Constitution; and hence it is not recorded
that the " thirty-nine," or any of them, while engaged on that
instrument, expressed any opinion on that precise question.
In 1789, by the first Congress which sat under the Constitu
tion, an act was passed to enforce the Ordinance of '87, includ
ing the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory.
The bhl for this act was reported by one of the "thirty- nine,"
Thomas Fitzsimmons, then a member of the House of Repre
sentatives from Pennsylvania. It went through all its stages
without a word of opposition, and finally passed both branches
without yeas and nays, which is equivalent to a unanimous
passage. In this Congress there were sixteen of the thirty-nine
fathers who framed the original Constitution. They were John
Langdon, Nicholas Oilman, .William S. Johnson, Roger Sherman,
Robert Morris, Thomas Fitzsimmons, William Few, Abraham
Bald-win, Rufus King, William Paterson, George Clymer, Rich
ard Bassett, George Read, Pierce Butler, Daniel Carroll, James
Madison. This shows that, in their understanding, no line dividing local

476 APPENDIX.
from Federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, pro
perly forbade Congress to prohibit slavery in the Federal terri
tory; else both their fidelity to correct principles, and their oath
to support the Constitution, would have constrained them to
oppose the prohibition.
Again: George Washington, another of the" thirty-nine," was
then President of the United States, and, as such, approved and
signed the bill; thus completing its validity as a law, and thus
showing that, in his understanding, no line dividing local from
Federal authority, nor anything in the Constitution, forbade the
Federal Government to control as to slavery in Federal terri
tory. No great while after the adoption of the original Constitution,
North Carolina ceded to the Federal Government the country
now constituting the State of Tennessee; and, a few years later,
Georgia ceded that which now constitutes the States of Missis
sippi and Alabama. In both deeds of cession it was made a
condition by the ceding States that the Federal Government
should not prohibit slavery in the ceded country. Besides this,
slavery was then actually in the ceded country. Under these
circumstances. Congress, on taking charge of these countries,
did not absolutely prohibit slavery within them. But they did
interfere with it — take control of it — even there, to a certain
extent. In 1798 Congress organized the Territory of Mississippi.
In the act of organization, they prohibited the bringing of slaves
into the Territory, from any place without the United States, by
fine, and giving freedom to slaves so brought. This act passed
both branches of Congress without yeas and nays. In that
Congress were three of the "thirty-nine" who framed the
original Constitution. They -were John Langdon, George
Read, and Abraham Baldwin. They all, probably, voted for
it. Certainly they would have placed their opposition to it
upon record, if, in their understanding, any line dividing local
from Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution, pro
perly forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery
in Federal territory.
In 1803 the Federal Government purchased the Louisiana
country. Our former territorial acquisitions came from certain

APPENDIX. 477
of our own States; but this Louisiana country was acquired
from a foreign nation. In 1804 Congress gave a territorial
organization to that part of it which now constitutes the State
of Louisiana. New Orleans, lying within that part, was an old
and comparatively large city. There were other considerable
towns and settlements, and slavery was extensively and thor
oughly intermingled with the people. Congress did not, in the
Territorial Act, prohibit slavery; but they did interfere with it
— take control of it — in a more marked and extensive way than
they did in the case of Mississippi. The substance of the pro
vision therein made in relation to slaves was:
First. That no slave should be imported into the Territory
from foreign parts.
Second. That no slave should be carried into it who had been
imported into the United States since the first day of May,
1798. Third. That no slave should be carried into it except by the
ovsTier, and for his o-wn use as a settler; the penalty in all the
cases being a fine upon the violator of the law, and freedom to
the slave.
This act also was passed -without yeas and nays. In the Con
gress which passed it there were two of the " thirty -nine." They
were Abraham Baldwin and Jonathan Dayton. As stated in
the case of Mississippi, it is probable they both voted for it.
They would not have allowed it to pass without recording their
opposition to it, if, in their understanding, it violated either the
line properly di-viding local from Federal authority, or any
provision of the Constitution.
In 1819-20 came and passed the Missouri question. Many
votes were taken, by yeas and nays, in both branches of Con
gress, upon the various phases of the general question. Two of
the "thirty-nine" — Rufus King and Charles Pinckney — were
members of that Congress. Mr. King steadily voted for slavery
prohibition and against aU compromises, while Mr. Pinckney as
steadily voted against slavery prohibition and against aU com
promises. By this Mr. King showed that, in his understanding,
no line dividing local from Federal authority, nor anything in
the Constitution, was violated by Congress prohibiting slavery

478 APPENDIX.
in Federal territory; while Mr. Pinckney, by his vote, showed
that, in his understanding, there was some sufficient reason for
opposing such prohibition in that case.
The cases I have mentioned are the only acts of the " thirty-
nine," or of any of them, upon the direct issue, which I have
been able to discover.
To enumerate the persons who thus acted, as being four in
1784, two in 1787, seventeen in 1789, three in 1798, two in 1804,
and two in 1819-20, there would be thirty of them. But this
would be counting John Langdon, Roger Sherman, William
Few, Rufus King, and George Read, each twice, and Abraham
Baldwin three times. The true number of those of the " thirty-
nine" whom I have shown to have acted upon the question
which, by the text, they understood better than we is twenty-
three, leaving sixteen not shown to have acted upon it in any
way. Here, then, we have twenty-three out of our thirty-nine
fathers " who framed the government under which we livfe,"
who have, upon their official responsibility and their corporal
oaths, acted upon the very question which the text affirms they
"understood just as well, and even better than we do now;" and
twenty-one of them — a clear majority of the whole " thirty-
nine" — so acting upon it as to make them guilty of gross
political impropriety and willful perjury, if, in their understand
ing, any proper division between local and Federal authority, or
anything in the Constitution they had made themselves, and
sworn to support, forbade the Federal Government to control as
to slavery in the Federal Territories. Thus the twenty-one
acted; and, as actions speak louder than words, so actions,
under such responsibility, speak still louder.
Two of the twenty-three voted against Congressional prohi
bition of slavery in the Federal Territories, in the instances in
which they acted upon the question. But for what reasons they
so voted is not known. They may have done so because they
thought a proper division of local from Federal authority, or
some provision or principle of the Constitution, stood in the
way; or they may, without any such question, have voted
against the prohibition on what appeared to them to be suffi-

APPENDIX. 479
cient grounds of expediency. No one who has sworn to sup
port the Constitution can conscientiously vote for what he
understands to be an unconstitutional raeasure, however expedi
ent he may think it; but one may and ought to vote against a
measure which he deems constitutional, if, at the same time,
he deems it inexpedient. It therefore would be unsafe to set
down even the two who voted against the prohibition as having
done so because, in their understanding, any proper division of
local from Federal authority, or anything in the Constitution,
forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in
Federal territory.
The remaining sixteen of the "thirty-nine," so far as I have
discovered, have left no record of their understanding upon the
direct question of Federal control of slavery in the Federal
Territories. But there is much reason to believe that their
understanding upon that question would not have appeared
different from that of their twenty- three compeers, had it been
manifested at all.
For the purpose of adhering rigidly to the text, I have pur
posely omitted whatever understanding may have been mani
fested by any person, however distinguished, other than the
thirty-nine fathers who framed the original Constitution; and,
for the same reason, I have also omitted whatever understand
ing may have been manifested by any of the " thirty-nine," even,
on any other phase of the general question of slavery. If we
should look into their acts and declarations on those other
phases, as the foreign slave-trade, and the morality and policy
of slavery generally, it would appear to us that on the direct
question of Federal control of slavery in Federal Territories,
the sixteen, if they had acted at aU, would probably have acted
just as the twenty-three did. Among that sixteen were several
of the most noted antislavery men of those times, — as Dr.
Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouverneur Morris, — while
there was not one now known to have been otherwise, unless it
may be John Rutledge, of South Carolina.
The sum of the whole is, that of our thirty-nine fathers who
framed the original Constitution, twenty-one— a clear majority
of the whole — certainly understood that no proper division of

480 APPENDIX.
local from Federal authority, nor any part of the Constitution,
forbade the Federal Government to control slavery in the Fed
eral Territories; whilst all the rest probably had the same
understanding. Such, unquestionably, was the understanding
of our fathers who framed the original Constitution; and the
text affirms that they understood the question " better than we."
But, so far, I have been considering the understanding of the
question manifested by the framers of the original Constitution.
In and by the original instrument, a mode was provided for
amending it; and, as I have already stated, the present frame of
" the government under which we live" consists of that original,
and twelve amendatory articles framed and adopted since.
Those who now insist that Federal control of slavery in Federal
Territories violates the Constitution, point us to the pro-risions
which they suppose it thus violates; and, as I understand, they
all fix upon provisions in these amendatory articles, and not in
the original instrument. The Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott
case, plant themselves upon the fifth amendment, which provides
that no person shall be deprived of "life, liberty, or property
without due process of law;" while Senator Douglas and his
peculiar adherents plant themselves upon the tenth amendment,
pro-riding that " the powers not delegated to the United States
by the Constitution" " are reserved to the States respectively,
or to the people."
Now, it so happens that these amendments were framed by
the first Congress which sat under the Constitution — the identi
cal Congress which passed the act already mentioned, enforcing
the prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern Territory. Not
only was it the same Congress, but they were the identical
same individual men who, at the same session, and at the same
time within the session, had under consideration, and in pro
gress toward maturity, these Constitutional amendments, and
tbis act prohibiting slavery in all the territory the nation then
owned. The Constitutional amendments were introduced before,
and passed after, the act enforcing the Ordinance of '87; so that,
during the whole pendency of the act to enforce the Ordinance,
the Constitutional amendments were also pending.
The seventy-six members of that Congress, including sixteen

APPENDIX. 481
of the framers of the original Constitution, as before stated,
were pre-eminently our fathers who fraraed that part of " the
government under which we live" which is now claimed as
forbidding the Federal Government to control slavery in the
Federal Territories.
Is it not a little presumptuous in any one at this day to affirm
that the two things which that Congress deliberately framed,
and carried to maturity at the same time, are absolutely incon
sistent with each other? And does not such affirmation become
impudently absurd when coupled with the other affirmation
from the same mouth, that those who did the two things alleged
to be inconsistent understood whether they really were incon
sistent better than we — better than he who affirms that they are
inconsistent ?
It is surely safe to assume that the thirty-nine framers of the
original Constitution, and the seventy-six members of the Con
gress which framed the amendments thereto, taken together, do
certainly include those who may be fairly called " our fathers
who framed the government under which we live." And, so
assuming, I defy any man to show that any one of them ever, in
his whole Ufe, declared that, in his understanding, any proper
di-vision of local from Federal authority, or any part of the
Constitution, forbade the Federal Government to control as to
slavery in the Federal Territories. I go a step further. I defy
any one to show that any living man in the whole world ever
did, prior to the beginning of the present century (and I might
almost say prior to the beginning of the last half of the present
century), declare that, in his understanding, any proper division
of local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution,
forbade the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the
Federal Territories. To those who now so declare, I give not
only " our fathers who framed the government under which we
live," but with them all other living men within the century in
which it was framed, among whom to search, and they shall not
be able to find the evidence of a single man agreeing with
them. Now, and here, let me guard a little against being misunder
stood. I do not mean to say we are bound to follow implicitly

482 APPENDIX.
in whatever our fathers did. To do so would be to discard afl
the lights of current experience — to reject all progress, all im
provement. What I do say is, that if we would supplant the
opinions and policy of our fathers in any case, we should do so
upon evidence so conclusive, and argument so clear, that even
their great authority, fairly considered and weighed, cannot
stand; and most surely not in a case whereof we ourselves
declare they understood the question better than we.
If any man at this day sincerely believes that proper division
of local from Federal authority, or any part of the Constitution,
forbids the Federal Government to control as to slavery in the
Federal Territories, he is right to say so, and to enforce his
position by all truthful evidence and fair argument which he
can. But he has no right to mislead others who have less access
to history, and less leisure to study it, into the false belief that
" our fathers who framed the government under which we live"
were of the same opinion — thus substituting falsehood and
deception for truthful evidence and fair argument. If any man
at this day sincerely believes " our fathers who framed the gov
ernment under which we live" used and applied principles, in
other cases, which ought to have led them to understand that a
proper division of local from Federal authority, or some part of
the Constitution, forbids the Federal Government to control as
to slavery in the Federal Territories, he is right to say so. But
he should, at the same time, brave the responsibility of declar
ing that, in his opinion, he understands their principles better
than they did themselves; and especially should he not shirk
that responsibility by asserting that they " understood the ques
tion just as well, and even better than we do now."
But enough ! Let all who believe that " our fathers toho
framed the government under which we live understood this
question just as well, and even better than we do now," speak as
they spoke, and act as they acted upon it. This is all Hepub-
licans ask — all Republicans desire — in relation to slavery. As
those fathers marked it, so let it be again marked, as an evil
not to be extended, but to he tolerated and protected only because
of, and so far as, its actual presence among us makes that tole
ration and protection a necessity. Let all the guaranties those

APPENDIX. 488
fathers gave it be not grudgingly, but fully and fairly main
tained. For this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as
I know or believe, they will be content.
And now, if they would listen — as I suppose they wUl not — I
would address a few words to the Southern people.
I would say to them: You consider yourselves a reasonable
and a just people; and I consider that in the general qualities of
reason and justice you are not inferior to any other people.
Still, when you speak of us Republicans, you do so only to
denounce us as reptiles, or, at the best, as no better than outlaws.
Tou -will grant a hearing to pirates or murderers, but nothing
like it to "Black Republicans." In all your contentions with
one another, each of you deems an unconditional condemnation
of " Black Republicanism" as the first thing to be attended to.
Indeed, such condemnation of us seems to be an indispensable
prerequisite — license, so to speak — among you, to be admitted
or permitted to speak at all. Now, can you, or not, be prevailed
upon to pause, and to consider whether this is quite just to us,
or even to yourselves ? Bring forward your charges and speci
fications, and then be patient long enough to hear us deny or
justify. Tou say we are sectional. We deny it. That makes an issue;
and the burden of proof is upon you. Tou produce your proof;
and what is it ? Why, that our party has no existence in your
section — gets no votes in your section. The fact is substantially
true; but does it prove the issue ? If it does, then in case we
should, without change of principle, begin to get votes in your
section, we should thereby cease to be sectional. Tou cannot
escape this conclusion; and yet, are you willing to abide by it?
If you are, you ¦will probably soon find that we have ceased to
be sectional, for we shall get votes in your section this very
year. Tou wiU then begin to discover, as the truth plainly is,
that your proof does not touch the issue. The fact that we get
no votes in your section is a fact of your making, and not of
ours. And if there be fault in that fact, that fault is primarily
yours, and remains so until you show that we repel you by some
wrong principle or practice. If we do repel you by any wrong
principle or practice, the fault is ours; but this brings you to

484 APPENDIX.
where you ought to have started — to a discussion of the right or
wrong of our principle. If our principle, put in practice, would
wrong your section for the benefit of ours, or for any other
object, then our principle, and we with it, are sectional, and are
justly opposed and denounced as such. Meet us, then, on the
question of whether our principle, put in practice, would wrong
your section; and so meet us as if it were possible that some
thing may be said on our side. Do you accept the challenge ?
No ! Then you really believe that the principle which " our
fathers who framed the government under which we live"
thought so clearly right as to adopt it, and indorse it again and
again, upon their official oaths, is in fact so clearly wrong as to
demand your condemnation without a moment's consideration.
Some of you delight to flaunt in our faces the warning against
sectional parties given by Washington in his Farewell Address.
Less than eight years before Washington gave that warning, he
had, as President of the United States, approved and signed an
act of Congress enforcing the prohibition of slavery in the
Northwestern Territory, which act embodied the policy of the
government upon that subject up to, and at, the very moment
he penned that warning; and about one year after he penned it,
he wrote La Fayette that he considered that prohibition a ¦wise
measure, expressing in the same connection his hope that we
should at some time have a confederacy of free States.
Bearing this in mind, and seeing that sectionalism has since
arisen upon this same subject, is that warning a weapon in your
hands against us, or in our hands against you ? Could Wash
ington himself speak, would he cast the blame of that sectional
ism upon us, who sustain his policy, or upon you, who repudiate
it? We respect that warning of Washington, and we commend
it to you, together with his example pointing to the right apph
cation of it.
But you say you are conservative — eminently conservative —
while we are revolutionary, destructive, or something of the
sort. What is conservatism ? Is it not adherence to the old
and tried, against a new and untried? We stick to, contend
for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which
was adopted by " our fathers who framed the government under

APPENDIX. 485
which we live;" while you with one accord reject, and scout,
and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting some
thing new. True, you disagree among yourselves as to what
that substitute shall be. Tou are divided on new propositions
and plans, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing
the old policy of the fathers. Some of you are for reviving the
foreign slave-trade; some for a Congressional Slave-Code for
the Territories; some for Congress forbidding the Territories
to prohibit slavery within their limits; some for maintaining
slavery in the Territories through the judiciary; some for the
" gur-reat pur-rinciple" that " if one man would enslave another,
no thhd man should object," fantastically called " Popular Sov
ereignty;" but never a man among you in favor of Federal pro
hibition of slavery in Federal Territories, according to the
practice of "our fathers who framed the government under
which we live." Not one of all your various plans can show a
precedent or an advocate in the century within which our gov
ernment originated. Consider, then, whether your claim of
conservatism for yourselves, and your charge of destructiveness
against us, are based on the most clear and stable foundations.
Again: you say we have made the slavery question more
prominent than it formerly was. We deny it. We admit that
it is more prominent, but we deny that we made it so. It was
not we, but you, who discarded the old policy of the fathers.
We resisted, and still resist your innovation; and thence comes
the greater prominence of the question. Would you have that
question reduced to its former proportions ? Go back to that
old policy. What has been will be again, under the same con
ditions. If you would have the peace of the old times, readopt
the precepts and policy of the old times.
Tou charge that we stir up insurrections among your slaves.
We deny it; and what is your proof? Harper's Ferry! John
Brown ! ! John Brown was no Republican ; and you have failed
to implicate a single Republican in his Harper's Ferry enter
prise. If any member of our party is guilty in that matter, you
know it or you do not know it. If you do know it, you are
inexcusable for not designating the man and proving the fact.
If you do not know it, you are inexcusable for asserting it, and

486 APPENDIX.
especially for persisting in the assertion after you have tried
and failed to make the proof. Tou need not be told that per
sisting in a charge which one does not know to be true is simply
malicious slander.
Some of you admit that no Republican designedly aided or
encouraged the Harper's Ferry affair; but still insist that our
doctrines and declarations necessarily lead to such results. We
do not believe it. We know we hold to no doctrine, and make
no declaration, which were not held to and made by " our
fathers who framed the government under which we live."
Tou never dealt fairly by us in relation to this affair. When it
occurred, some important State elections were near at hand, and
you were in evident glee with the belief that, by charging the
blame upon us, you could get an advantage of us in those elec
tions. The elections came, and your expectations were not
quite fulfilled. Every Republican man knew that, as to himself
at least, your charge was a slander, and he was not much
inclined by it to cast his vote in your favor. Republican doc
trines and declarations are accompanied with a continued pro
test against any interference whatever with your slaves, or with
you about your slaves. Surely, this does not encourage them to
revolt. True, we do, in common with " our fathers who framed
the government under which we live," declare our belief that
slavery is wrong; but the slaves do not hear us declare even
this. For anything we say or do, the slaves would scarcely
know there is a Republican party. I believe they would not, in
fact, generally know it but for your misrepresentations of us in
their hearing. In your political contests among yourselves,
each faction charges the other with sympathy with Black Re
publicanism; and then, to give point to the charge, defines
Black Republicanism to simply be insurrection, blood, and
thunder among the slaves;
Slave-insurrections are no more common now than they were
before the Republican party was organized. What induced the
Southampton insurrection, twenty-eight years ago, in which at
least three times as many lives were lost as at Harper's Ferry ?
Tou can scarcely stretch your very elastic fancy to the conclu
sion that Southampton was " got up by Black Republicanism.'"

APPENDIX. 487
In the present state of things in the United States, I do not
think a general or even a very extensive slave-insurrection is
possible. The indispensable concert of action cannot be
attained. The slaves have no means of rapid communication;
nor can incendiary freemen, black or white, supply it. The
explosive materials are everywhere in parcels; but there neither
are, nor can be supplied, the indispensable connecting-trains.
Much is said by Southern people about the affection of slaves
for their masters and mistresses; and a part of it, at least, is
true. A plot for an uprising could scarcely be devised and com
municated to twenty individuals before some one of them, to
save the life of a favorite master or mistress, would divulge it.
This is the rule; and the slave-revolution in Hayti was not an
exception to it, but a case occurring under peculiar circum
stances. The gunpowder-plot of British history, though not
connected with slaves, was more in point. In that case, only
about twenty were admitted to the secret ; and yet one of them,
in his anxiety to save a friend, betrayed the plot to that friend,
and, by consequence, averted the calamity. Occasional poison
ings from the kitchen, and open or stealthy assassinations in the
field, and local revolts, extending to a score or so, will continue
to occur as the natural results of slavery; but no general insur
rection of slaves, as I think, can happen in this country for a
long tune. Whoever much fears or much hopes for such an
event wUl be alike disappointed.
In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, " It
is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation and
deportation peaceably, and in such slow degrees as that the evil
will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled
up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to
force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect
held up."
Mr. Jefferson did not mean to say, nor do I, that the power
of emancipation is in the Federal Government. He spoke of
Virginia; and, as to the power of emancipation, I speak of the
slave-holding States only. The Federal Government, however,
as we insist, has the power of restraining the extension of the
institution — the power to insure that a slave-insurrection shall

488 APPENDIX.
never occur on any American soil which is now free from
slavery. John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave-insur
rection. It was an attempt by white men to get up a revolt
among slaves, in which the slaves refused to participate. In
fact, it was so absurd that the slaves, ¦with all their ignorance,
saw plainly enough it could not succeed. That affair, in its
philosophy, corresponds -with the many attempts related in his
tory at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast
broods over the oppression of a people till he fancies himself
commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the
attempt, which ends in little else than his own execution.
Orsini's attempt on Louis Napoleon and John Brown's attempt
at Harper's Ferry were, in their philosophy, precisely the same.
The eagerness to cast blame on old England in the one case, and
on New England in the other, does not disprove the sameness of
the two things.
And how much would it avail you, if you could, by the use of
John Brown, Helper's Book, and the like, break up the Repub
lican organization ? Human action can be modified to some
extent, but human nature cannot be changed. There is a judg
ment and a feeling against slavery in this nation which cast at least
a million and a half of votes. Tou cannot destroy that judgment
and feeling — that sentiment — by breaking up the political organ
ization which rallies around it. Tou can scarcely scatter and
disperse an army which has been formed into order in the face
of your heaviest fire; but if you could, how much would you
gain by forcing the sentiment which created it out of the peace
ful channel of the ballot-box into some other channel ? What
would that other channel probably be ? Would the number of
John Browns be lessened or enlarged by the operation ?
But you will break up the Union rather than submit to a
denial of your Constitutional rights.
That has a somewhat reckless sound; but it would be palli
ated, if not fully justified, were we proposing, by the mere force
of numbers, to deprive you of some right plainly written down
in the Constitution. But we are proposing no such thing.
When you make these declarations, you have a specific and

APPENDIX. 489
weU-understood allusion to an assumed Constitutional right of
yours to take slaves into the Federal Territories, and to hold
them there as property. But no such right is specificaUy writ
ten in the Constitution. That instrument is literally silent
about any such right. We, on the contrary, deny that such a
right has any existence in the Constitution, even by implica
tion. Tour purpose, then, plainly stated, is, that you will destroy
the government unless you be allowed to construe and enforce
the Constitution as you please on all points in dispute between
you and us. Tou will rule or ruin, in all events.
This, plainly stated, is your language. Perhaps you wdl say
the Supreme Court has decided the disputed Constitutional
question in your favor. Not quite so. But, waiving the law
yer's distinction between dictum and decision, the Court have
decided the question for you in a sort of way. The Court have
substantially said, it is your Constitutional right to take slaves
into the Federal Territories, and to hold them there as property.
When I say the decision was made in a sort of way, I mean it
was made in a divided Court, by a bare majority of the judges,
and they not quite agreeing with one another in the reasons for
making it; that it is so made as that its avowed supporters dis
agree with one another about its meaning, and that it was
mainly based upon a mistaken statement of fact — ^the statement
in the opinion that " the right of property in a slave is distinctly
and expressly affirmed in the Constitution."
An inspection of the Constitution -will show that the right of
property in a slave is not " distinctly and expressly affirmed " in
it. Bear in mind, the judges do not pledge their judicial
opinion that such right is impliedly affirmed in the Constitution;
but they pledge their veracity that it is " distinctly and express
ly" affirmed there — " distinctly," that is, not mingled with any
thing else; "expressly," that is, in words meaning just that,
-without the aid of any inference, and susceptible of no other
meaning. If they had only pledged their judicial opinion that such right
is affirmed in the instrument by implication, it would be open to
others to show that neither the word " slave" nor " slavery" is

490 APPENDIX.
to be found in the Constitution, nor the word " property," even,
in any connection with language alluding to the things slave
or slavery; and that wherever in that instrument the slave is
alluded to, he is called a "person;" and wherever his master's
legal right in relation to him is alluded to, it is spoken of as
"service or labor which may be due," — as a debt payable in
service or labor. Also, it would be open to show, by contempo
raneous history, that this mode of alluding to slaves and slavery,
instead of speaking of them, was employed on purpose to exclude
from the Constitution the idea that there could be property in
man. To show all this is easy and certain.
When this obvious mistake of the judges shall be brought to
their notice, is it not reasonable to expect that they will with
draw the mistaken statement, and reconsider the conclusion
based upon it ?
And then it is to be remembered that "our fathers who
framed the government under which we live" — the men who
made the Constitution — decided this same Constitutional ques
tion in our favor, long ago: decided it without division among
themselves when making the decision; without division among
themselves about the meaning of it after it was made, aud, so
far as any evidence is left, without basing it upon any mistaken
statement of facts.
Under all these circumstances, do you really feel yourselves
justified to break up this government, unless such a court
decision as yours is shall be at once submitted to as a conclusive
and final rule of political action ? But you -will not abide the
election of a Republican President ! In that supposed event,
you say, you will destroy the Union; and then, you say, the
great crime of having destroyed it will be upon us ! That is
cool. A highwayman holds a pistol to my ear, and mutters
through his teeth, " Stand and deliver, or I shall kill you, and
then you will be a murderer !"
To be sure, what the robber demanded of me — my money —
was my own ; and I had a clear right to keep it. But it was no
more my own than my vote is my own; and the threat of death
to me to extort my money, and the threat of destruction to the

APPENDIX. 491
Union to extort my vote, can scarcely be distinguished in prin
ciple. A few words now to Republicans. It is exceedingly desirahle
that all parts of this great confederacy shall be at peace, and
in harmony one with another. Let us Mepublicans do our part
to have it so. Even though much provoked, let us do nothing
through passion and ill-temper. Even though the Southern
people icill not so much as listen to us, let us calmly consider
their demands, and yield to them if, in our deliberate vieio of
our duty, we possibly can. Judging by all they say and do, and
by the subject and nature of their controversy with us, let us
determine, if we can, what will satisfy them.
Will they be satisfied if the Territories be unconditionally
surrendered to them? We know they will not. In all their
present complaints against us, the Territories are scarcely men
tioned. Invasions and insurrections are the rage now. Will it
satisfy them if, in the future, we have nothing to do with
invasions and insurrections ? We know it will not. We so
know, because we know we never had anything to do with in
vasions and insurrections; and yet this total abstaining does not
exempt us from the charge and the denunciation.
The question recurs, What will satisfy them? Simply this:
We must not only let them alone, but we must, somehow, con
vince them that we do let them alone. This, we know by expe
rience, is no easy task. We have been so trying to convince
them from the very beginning of- our organization, but with no
success. In all our platforms and speeches we have constantly
protested our purpose to let them alone; but this has had no
tendency to convince them. Alike unavailing to convince them
is the fact that they have never detected a man of us in any
attempt to disturb them.
These natural and apparently adequate means all failing,
what -will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call
slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this
must be done thoroughly — done in acts as well as in words.
Silence wiU not be tolerated: we must place ourselves avow
edly with them. Senator Douglas's new sedition-law must
be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that

492 APPENDIX.
slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits,
or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves
with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our free-State Con
stitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all
taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe
that all their troubles proceed from us.
I am quite aware they do not state their case precisely in this
way. Most of them would probably say to us, " Let us alone,
do nothing to us, and say what you please about slavery." But
we do let them alone — ^have never disturbed them; so that, after
all, it is what we say which dissatisfies them. They will con
tinue to accuse us of doing until we cease saying.
I am also aware they have not as yet, in terms, demanded the
overthrow of our free-State Constitutions. Tet those Constitu
tions declare the wrong of slavery, with more solemn emphasis
than do all other sayings against it; and when all these other
sayings shall have been silenced, the overthrow of these Consti
tutions will be demanded, and nothing be left to resist the
demand. It is nothing to the contrary, that they do not demand
the whole of this just now. Demanding what they do, and for
the reason they do, they can voluntarily stop nowhere short
of this consummation. Holding as they do that slavery is
morally right and socially elevating, they cannot cease to
demand a full national recognition of it, as a legal right and a
social blessing.
Nor can we justifiably withhold this on any ground save our
conviction that slavery is wrong. If slavery is right, all words,
acts, laws, and constitutions against it are themselves wrong,
and should be silenced and swept away. If it is right, we can
not justly object to its nationality — its universality; if it is
wrong, they cannot justly insist upon its extension — its enlarge
ment. All they ask we could readily grant, if we thought
slavery right; all we ask they could as readily grant, if they
thought it wrong. Their thinking it right, and our thinking it
wrong, is the precise fact upon which depends the whole con
troversy. Thinking it right, as they do, they are not to blame
for desiring its full recognition, as being right; bnt, thinking it
wrong, as we do, can we yield to them ? Can we cast our votes

APPENDIX. 493
with their view and against our own ? In view of our moral,
?ocial, and political responsibilities, can we do this ?
Wrong as we think slavery is, we can yet afford to let it alone
-where it is, because that much is due to the necessity arising
from its actual presence in the nation; but can we, while our
votes -will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Terri
tories, and to overrun us here in these free States ? If our
sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty fear
lessly and effectively. Let us be diverted by none of those
sophistical contrivances where-with we are so industriously plied
and belabored — contrivances such as groping for some middle
ground between the right and the ¦wrong, vain as the search for
a man who shoidd be neither a living man nor a dead man; such
as a policy of " don't care" on a question about which all true
men do care; such as Union appeals beseeching true Union men
to yield to Disunionists, reversing the divine rule, and calling,
not the sinners, but the righteous to repentance ; such as invoca
tions to Washington, imploring men to unsay what Washington
said, and undo what Washington did.
Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations
against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to
the government or of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have
FAITH THAT RlGHT MAKES MlGHT, AND IN THAT FAITH LET US,
TO THE END, DAEE TO DO OUE DUTT AS WE UNDEESTAND IT.

m.
LETTER,
TO THE tTNCONDITIONAL UNION MEN.
(See Ch. XLIX.) ExBCDTivB Mansion,
Washington, August 26, 1863.
Mon. James C. Conkling.
Mt deae Sir: Tour letter inviting me to attend a mass-
meeting of unconditional Union men, to be held at the capital
of Illinois, on the 3d day of September, has been received. It

494 APPENDIX.
would be very agreeable for me thus to meet my old friends at
ray own home; but I cannot just now be absent from here so
long as a visit there would require.
The meeting is to be of all those who maintain unconditional
devotion to the Union; and I am sure that my old political
friends -will thank me for tendering, as I do, the nation's grati
tude to those other noble men whom no partisan malice or parti
san hope can make false to the nation's life.
There are those who are dissatisfied with me. To such I
would say: Tou desire peace, and you blame me that we do not
have it. But how can we attain it ? There are but three con
ceivable ways. First, to suppress the rebellion by force of
arms. This I am trying to do. Are you for it ? If you are, so
far we are agreed. If you are not for it, a second way is to give
up the Union. I am against this. Are you for it ? If you are,
you should say so plainly. If you are not ior force, nor yet for
dissolution, there only remains some imaginable compromise.
I do not believe that any compromise embracing the mainte
nance of the Union is now possible. All that I learn leads to a
directly opposite belief. The strength of the rebellion is its
military, its army. That army dominates all the country, and
all the people, ¦within its range. Any offer of terms made by
any man or men within that range, in opposition to that army,
is simply nothing for the present; because such man or men
have no power whatever to enforce their side of a compromise,
if one were made ¦with them.
To illustrate: Suppose refugees frora the South and peace
men of the North get together in convention, and frame and
proclaim a compromise embracing a restoration of the Union.
In what way can that compromise be used to keep Lee's army
out of Pennsylvania ? Meade's army can keep Lee's army out of
Pennsylvania, and, I think, can ultimately drive it out of exist
ence. But no paper compromise to which the controllers of
Lee's army are not agreed can at all affect that army. In an
effort at such compromise we would waste time, which the
enemy would improve to our disadvantage; and that would
be all.
A compromise, to be effective, must be made either with

APPENDIX. 495
those who control the rebel army, or with the people, first liber
ated from the domination of that army by the success of our
own army. Now, allow me to assure you that no word or inti
mation from that rebel army, or from any of the men control
ling it, in relation to any peace compromise, has ever come to
my knowledge or belief. All charges and insinuations to the
contrary are deceptive and groundless. And I promise you
that if any such proposition shall hereafter come, it shall not be
rejected and kept a secret from you. I freely acknowledge
myseK to be the servant of the people, according to the bond of
ser^rice, the United States Constitution; and that, as such, I am
responsible to them.
But to be plain. Tou are dissatisfied with me about the
negro. Quite likely there is a difference of opinion between
you and myseK upon that subject. I certainly -wish that all
men could be free, whUe you, I suppose, do not. Tet I have
neither adopted nor proposed any measure which is not consist
ent with even your view, provided that you are for the Union.
I suggested compensated emancipation; to which you replied
you -wished not to be taxed to buy negroes. But I had not
asked you to be taxed to buy negroes, except in such way as to
save yon from greater taxation to save the Union exclusively by
other means.
Tou disUke the Emancipation Proclamation, and perhaps
would have it retracted. Tou say it is unconstitutional. I
think differently. I think the Constitution invests its Com
mander-in-Chief with the law of war in time of war. The most
that can be said, if so much, is, that slaves are property. Is
there, has there ever been, any question that by the law of war,
property, both of enemies and friends, may be taken when
needed ? And is it not needed whenever it helps us and hurts
the enemy ? Armies, the world over, destroy enemies' property
when they cannot use it; and even destroy their own to keep it
from the enemy. Civdized belligerents do aU in their power to
help themselves or hurt the enemy, except a few things regarded
as barbarous or cruel. Among the exceptions are the massacre
of vanquished foes and non-combatants, male and female.
But the Proclamation, as law, either is vaUd or is not valid.

496 APPENDIX.
If it is not valid, it needs no retraction. If it is valid, it cannot
be retracted, any more than the dead can be brought to life.
Some of you profess to think its retraction would operate favor
ably for the Union. Why better after the retraction than
before the issue ? There was more than a year and a half of
trial to suppress the rebellion before the Proclamation was
issued, the last one hundred days of which passed under an
explicit notice that it was coming, unless averted by those in
revolt returning to their allegiance. The war has certainly
progressed as favorably for us since the issue of the Proclama
tion as before.
I know, as fully as one can know the opinions of others, that
some of the commanders of our armies in the field, who have
given us our most important victories, believe the Emancipation
policy and the use of colored troops constitute the heaviest
blows yet dealt to the rebellion, and that at least one of those
important successes could not have been achieved when it was
but for the aid of black soldiers.
Among the commanders who hold these views are some who
have never had any affinity with what is called " Abolitionism,"
or with " Republican party politics," but who hold them purely
as military opinions. I submit their opinions as entitled to some
weight against the objections often urged that emancipation
and arming the blacks are unwise as military measures, and
were not adopted as such in good faith.
Tou say that you ¦will not fight to free negroes. Some of
them seem vrilling to fight for you; but no matter. Fight you,
then, exclusively to save the Union. I issued the Proclamation
on purpose to aid you in saving the Union. Whenever you
shall have conquered all resistance to the Union, if I shall urge
you to continue fighting, it will be an apt time then for you to
declare you will not fight to free negroes. I thought that in
your struggle for the Union, to whatever extent the negroes
should cease helping the enemy, to that extent it weakened the
enemy in his resistance to you. Do you think differently ? I
thought that whatever negroes can be got to do as soldiers,
leaves just so much less for white soldiers to do in saving the
Union. Does it appear otherwise to you ? But negroes, like

APPENDIX. 497
other people, act upon motives. Why should they do anything
for us if we wiU do nothing for them ? If they stake their lives
for us they must be prompted by the strongest motive, even the
promise of freedom. And the promise, being made, must be kept.
The signs look better. The Father of Waters again goes
unvexed to the sea. Thanks to the great Northwest for it; nor
yet whoUy to them. Three hundred miles up they met New
England, Empire, Keystone, and Jersey, hewing their way right
and left. The sunny South, too, in more colors than one, also
lent a helping hand. On the spot, their part of the history was
jotted down in black and white. The job was a great national
one, and let none be sUghted who bore an honorable part in it.
And while those who have cleared the great river may well be
proud, even that is not all. It is hard to say that anything has
been more bravely and well done than at Antietam, Murfrees-
borough, Gettysburg, and on many fields of less note. Nor must
Uncle Sam's web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins
they have been present, not only on the deep sea, the broad bay,
and the rapid river, but also up the narrow, muddy bayou, and
wherever the ground was a httle damp, they have been and
made theh tracks. Thanks to aU. For the great Republic;
for the principle it lives by and keeps alive; for man's vast
future — ^thanks to aU.
Peace does not appear so distant as it did. I hope it will
come soon, and come to stay; and so come as to be worth the
keeping in aU future time. It will then have been proved that
among freemen there can be no successful appeal from the ballot
to the bullet, and that they who take such appeal are sure to
lose their case and pay the cost. And there will be some black
men who can remember that with silent tongue, and clinched
teeth, and steady eye, and weU-poised bayonet, they have helped
mankind on to this great consummation, while I fear there ¦wiU
be some white ones unable to forget that with malignant heart
and deceitful speech they have striven to hinder it.
StUl, let us not be over -sanguine of a speedy, final triumph.
Let us be quite sober. Let us diligently apply the means, never
doubting that a just God, in His own good time, will give us
the rightful result. Tours, very truly, A. Lincoln.

498 APPENDIX.

IV.

LETTER,
CONCEENING THE GOVEENMENt's ATTITUDE TOWAEDS SLAVEET.
(See Ch. XLI.)
GovEENOE Beamlbtte and some other Kentucky gentlemen
having called upon the President in relation to the draft in
Kentucky, the following letter from the President was called
forth by the conversation which then ensued :
Executive Mansion,
Washington, April 4, 1864.
A. G. Hodges, Esq., Frankfort, Ky.
Mt deae Sie: Tou ask me to put in writing the substance of
what I verbally said the other day, in your presence, to Gov
ernor Bramlette and Senator Dixon. It was about as follows:
" I am naturally antislavery. If slavery is not wrong, noth
ing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and
feel, and yet I have never understood that the Presidency con
ferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this
judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would,
to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Con
stitution of the United States. I could not take the office with
out taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an
oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I
understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath
even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract
judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly
declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that,
to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my
abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand,
however, that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best
of my ability imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by
every indispensable means, that government — that nation, of
which that Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible
to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution ? By gen-

APPENDIX. 499
eral law, life and limb must be protected; yet often a limb must
be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to
save a limb. I felt that measures otherwise unconstitutional
might become la^wf ul by becoming indispensable to the preserva
tion of the Constitution, through the preservation of the nation.
Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I
could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to
preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery or any minor mat
ter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Con
stitutional together. When, early in the war. General Fremont
attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not
then think it an indispensable necessity. When, a little later,
General Cameron, then Secretary of War, suggested the arming
of the blacks, I objected, because I did not yet think it an indis
pensable necessity. When, still later, General Hunter attempted
miUtary emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet
think the indispensable necessity had come. When, in March,
and May, and July, 1862, I made earnest and successive appeals
to the border-States to favor compensated emancipation, I
believed the indispensable necessity for military emancipation
and arming the blacks would come, unless averted by that
measure. They declined the proposition, and I was, in my best
judgment, driven to the alternative of either surrendering the
Union, and ¦with it the Constitution, or of laying strong hand
upon the colored element. I chose the latter. In choosing it,
I hoped for greater gain than loss, but of this I was not entirely
confident. More than a year of trial now shows no loss by it in
our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment, none
in our white military force, no loss by it anyhow or anywhere.
On the contrary, it shows a gain of quite a hundred and thirty
thousand soldiers, seamen, and laborers. These are palpable
facts, about which, as facts, there can be no caviling. We have
the men, and we could not have had them without the measure.
" And now let any Union man who complains of the measure
test himself by writing down in one line that he is for subduing
the rebeUion by force of arms, and in the next that he is for
taking three hundred and thirty thousand men from the Union
side and placing them where they would be best for the measure

500 APPENDIX.
he condemns. If he cannot face his case so stated, it is only
because he cannot face the truth."
I add a word which was not in the verbal conversation. In
telling this tale, I attempt no compliment to my own sagacity, I
claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that
events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years' strug
gle, the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man,
devised or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is
tending seems plain. If God now wUls the removal of a great
wrong, and wills also that we of the North, as well as you of
the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong,
impartial history will find therein new causes to attest and
revere the justice and goodness of God. Tours truly,
A. Lincoln.

V.
POEM,
BY TOM TAYLOE.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.*
FouiiLY Assassinated, Apeil 14, 1865.
Tou lay a ¦wreath on murdered Lincoln's bier,
Tom, who with mocking pencil wont to trace,
Broad for the self-complacent British sneer,
His length of shambling limb, his furrowed face,
His gaunt, gnarled hands, his unkempt, bristling hair.
His garb uncouth, his bearing ill at ease,
His lack of all we prize as debonair,
Of power or will to shine, of art to please;
* This tribute appeared in the London Punch, which, up to the time of the assassina
tion of Mr. Lincoln, had ridiculed and maligned him with all its well-known powers oi
pen and pencil. It is the poem alluded to on page 402.

APPENDIX. 501
You, whose smart pen backed up tbe pencil's laugh,
Judging each step as though the way were plain.
Reckless, so it could point its paragraph
Of chief's perplexity, or people's pain :
Beside this corpse, that bears for winding-sheet
The Stars and Stripes he lived to rear anew.
Between the mourners at his head and feet,
Say, scurrile jester, is there room for you?
Tes: he had lived to shame me from my sneer,
To lame my pencil, and confute my pen;
To make me own this hind of princes peer,
This rail-splitter a true-born king of men.
My shallow judgment I had learned to rue,
Noting how to occasion's height he rose;
How his quaint wit made home-truth seem more true;
How, iron-like, his temper grew by blows.
How humble, yet how hopeful, he could be;
How, in good fortune and in ill, the same;
Nor bitter in success, nor boastful he.
Thirsty for gold, nor feverish for fame.
He went about his work, — such work as few
Ever had laid on head and heart and hand, —
As one who knows, where there's a task to do,
Man's honest ¦will must Heaven's good grace command;
Who trusts the strength will with the burden grow.
That God makes instruments to work his will.
If but that will we can arrive to know,
Nor tamper ¦with the weights of good and ill.
So he went forth to battle, on the side
That he felt clear was Liberty's and Right's,
As in his peasant boyhood he had plied
His warfare with rude Nature's thwarting mights;
The uncleared forest, the unbroken soil,
The iron-bark, that turns the lumberer's ax,

502 APPENDIX.
The rapid, that o'erbears the boatman's toil,
The prairie, hiding the mazed wanderer's tracks,
The ambushed Indian, and the prowling bear, —
Such were the deeds that helped his youth to train;
Rough culture, but such trees large fruit may bear,
If but their stocks be of right girth and grain.
So he grew up, a destined work to do.
And lived to do it: four long-suffering years'
Ill-fate, ill-feeling, ill-report, lived through,
And then he heard the hisses change to cheers,
The taunts to tribute, the abuse to praise,
And took both with the same unwavering mood;
Till, as he came on light, from darkling days.
And seemed to touch the goal from where he stood,
A felon hand, between the goal and him,
Reached from behind his back, a trigger prest,
And those perplexed and patient eyes were dim,
Those gaunt, long-laboring limbs were laid to rest!
The words of mercy were upon his lips,
Forgiveness in his heart and on his pen,
When this vile murderer brought swift eclipse
To thoughts of peace on earth, good-will to men.
The Old World and the New, from sea to sea,
Utter one voice of sympathy and shame:
Sore heart, so stopped when it at last beat high;
Sad life, cut short just as its triumph came!
A deed accurst! Strokes have been struck before
By the assassin's hand, whereof men doubt
If more of horror or disgrace they bore;
But thy foul crime, like Cain's, stands darkly out.
Vile hand, that brandest murder on a strife,
Whate'er its grounds, stoutly and nobly striven;
And with the martyr's crown crownest a life
With much to praise, little to be forgiven.

INDEX

Abolitionists, melting into the new^ par
ty, IBO; trying to convert Mr. Lincoln,
155; not yet retid}' to follow him, 170
Anderson, Mag. E., m command of Fort
Sumter, 195
Anti-coercion meetings at the North, 223
Antietam Creek, battle of, 325; President's
doubt as to its being a victory, 834
Armstrong, Jack, of Cfiry's Grove, wrest
ling mateh with Lincoln, 76
Armstrong, Hannah, appealing to Lincoln
to defend her son, 164; forebodings of
Lincoln's assassination, 198
Armstrong, Wilham D., son of Jack and
Hannah, accused of murder and de
fended by Lincoln, 163
Arlington House, Lee family mansion,
Eebel flag on, 235-238
Army of the Potomac, representative ar
my, 384
Army organization, comphcations of State
and National authority, 268; difficul
ties, 271; formative processes, 284
Assassination, conspiracy and prepara
tions for, 458; accomplished, 459; com
ments of European powers smd press,
461.
Ashmun, GJeorge, Chairman of Chicago
Nat. Eep. Convention, 184; appoint
ment to meet President, etc., 459
Bak£b, E. D., Lincoln's withdrawal in his
favor as a candidate for Congress, 128
Baltimore, Secession feeling in, 2(M ; attaxsk
upon Massachusetts 6th Beg., 230; city
captured by troops imder Gen. B. F.
Butler, 232^6 ; National Convention of
Eep. party held there, 428
Bates, Edward, appointed Attorney-Gen
eral, 215; resigned, 442
Beauregard, Gen. P. G. T., in command of
Eefel troops at Manassas Junction, 254
Berry, business partner of Lincoln in New
aiem, 94-96
Big Bethel, fight, 254
Blackhawk ¦War, outbreak of, 81; StUl
man's defeat, 85; Independent Spy
Company, 88
Blackstone's Commentaries, borrowed of
JohnT. Stuart by Lincoln. 101
Blair, Montgomery, Postmaster-General,
215; opposed to Proclamation of Eman
cipation, 333; resigned, 442
Blockade of Southern seaports, first pro
clamation of, 250; effectiveness of, 262
Bloomington, IH., State Convention of
Anti-Nebraslia, men held there, 155;
speech of Mr. Lincoln, 157
Booth, John WUkes, actor and assassm,
459; death of, 460
Border States, saved to the Union, 197, 221,
350; furnishing volunteers for the ar
ray, 355; disturbed by Emancipation,
365, reconstruction of, 374

Brandy Station, battle of, 888
Breckinridge, great speech in murder-
case and repulse of young Lincohi's
compliments, 58 '
Breckinridge, John C, Vice-President, 160;
nomination for President, 184
Bryant, William Cullen, presided at
Cooper Institute meeting and intro
duced Mr. Lincoln, 179
Buchanan, James, nominated for Presi
dent, 160; character of his administra
tion, 190-196; accompanies Mr. Lincoln
at his inauguration, 208
BuU Eun, batfle of, 255; effects of, 2.57;
false accounts of, 265
Bumside, Gen. Ambrose E., succeeded
McClellan in command, 326; successes
in North Carolina, 350; plan of cam
paign on Potomac, 356; removal from
command, 358; commanded in Ohio,
378; further services, 414
Bushnell C. S., and the construction of the
idonitor, 298
Butler, Gen. B. P., commanding Massachu
setts troops in Maryland, 233; sus
pends writ of Habeas Corpus, 236; cap
ture of Baltimore, 236; declares fugi
tives from slavery contraband, 277
Butler, WUliam, friend with whom Lincoln
boarded, 118
Cabinet, the, formation of, 189. 214; Opin
ions with reference to Fort Sumter, 222
Calhoun, surveyor of Sangamon County, 95
CaU for troops, first, 224; from four States
to repel second invasion, 389
Cameron, Simon, Secretary of War, 214;
resignation of, 316
CampbeU, J. A., at Peace Conference in
Hampton Eoads, 446; action with ref
erence to Lee's surrender, 455
Carpenter, Frank B., painting picture of
first reading of Emancipation Procla
mation, 332; conversations with Mr.
Lincohi, 333
Cartwright, Eev. Peter, candidate for Con
gress against Lincoln and defeated, 133
Central llhnoin Gazette, newspaper nomi-
' nation of Lincoln for the Presidency,
174
CivU war, threats of, in case of Lincoln's
election, 160; termination of, 455
Champaign County, IU., Lincoln retires
from a murder-case in, 140; received
there the news of his votes for Vice-
President, 160; nominated first for
President in, 174
Chancellorsville, battle of, etc., 386, 387
ChantUly, battle of, 231
Charleston, S. C, forts in and about har
bor of ,195 ; capture of, by Union troops,
446
Chase, Salmon P., candidacy at Chicago,
183; Secretary of the Treasury, 215,

504

INDEX.

270; resigned, 443; appointed Chief
Justice or the Supreme Court, 443
Chicago, BepubUcan National Convention
in 1660, 183
Claiy's Grove Boys, character of, 76; elect
Lincohi their captain, 82
Clay, Henry, pohtical idol of Lincoln, 128;
defeat of, for Presidency, 130; put
aside, 135; funeral oration by Lincoln,
145
Colonization, chimerical ideas entertained,
etc., 145; recommended in Emancipa
tion Proclamation, 865
Commissioners, Confederate, not recog
nized, 217
Committee on the Conduct of the War, 290
Compensation for slaves of loyal owners,
365
Confederacy, Southern, formation of, 195;
flrst army of, 225
Congress of United States, call for extra
session, 227; fii^ war-legislation, 259,
267
Constitutional Amendment prohibiting
slavery, 446
Cooper Institute speech, 178
Copperheads, name given to Northern
Eebels, 214; useful allies of the South,
287,389
Crawford, Josiah, owner of " Weems' Life
of Washington" spoUed by Lincoln, 45
Crisis, financial], of ie», 119
Crittenden Compromise, faUure of, 213
Cruelty to Animals, lecture and essay by
young Lincoln, 43.
Davis, David, appointed to the Supreme
Court, etc., 443
Davis, Jefferson, President of the Confede
racy, 213; predicts a bloody war, 222;
urges Virginia to hostUities, 232
Dayton, WiUiam L., candidate of People's
party for Vice-President, 159
Debating Club, of GentryvUle, Ind., 56: of
New Salem, HI., 91
Decatur, m., town of, near flrst settlement
of Lincoln family, 65; Lincoln's first
stump-speech in Illinois made there,
89
Democratic party, condition of, in 1854, etc.,
146; division of , in 1660, 184; conven
tion of, in 1864, 431, 435
Dennison, Gov. W., of Ohio, Chairman of
Bepublican National Convention, 430;
Postmaster-General, 442
District of Columbia, compensated emanci
pation is advocated oy Lincoln, 136:
pohtical condition of, in 1861, 205, 349
Dorsey, Haael, one of Lincoln's Indiana
school-teachers, 86
Douglas, Stephen A., rival of Lincoln in
courtship, 121; author of Kansas-Ne
braska Act, 146; speech at Springfield,
IU., rephed to by Lincoln, 147; candi
date for re-election to U. S. Senate, 167;
elected, 173; nominated for President,
184
Draft Act, recommended to Congress, 371 ;
opposition to, increasing, 383,387,396;
riot m New "Vork City, 397, 400
Edwards, Matilda, story of, 122

Edwards. Ninian, brother-in-law of Mrs.
Lincoln, 121
Eighth Kegiment Massachusetts Mihtia,
reach Maryland under Gen. Butler, 233
Election, results of, in 1860, 187; in 1863,
416; in 1864, 441
Electoral CoUeges, report of votes in I860,
187; m 1864, 442
Ellsworth, Colonel, death of, 246
Emancipation, right and power, 329, 331 ;
Congressional preparation for, 330;
reading of, 382, 834: second proclama
tion, 865, 368
England, sympathy with and support ol
Confederacy, 249, 261, 383: warned not
to interfere, 263; declaration of neu
trahty not received, 264; conduct in
Trent affair, 352
Enquirer, Eichmond, Va., newspaper de
mand for resumption of ownership of
District of Columbia by Virginia and
Maryland, 219
Everett, Edward, candidate of Constitu
tional Union party for Vice-President
in 1860, 185
Executive Mansion, Washington, D. C,
packed with oflice-seekers. 215; busi
ness arrangements of, 243; mails of.

Federal party, death of, 90
Female suffrage, assent to, in Lincoln's
addresSjeto., 112
Fessenden,WiUiam P. , appointed Secretary
of the 'Treasury, 442; resigned, 462
Fillmore, MUlard, Vice-President, 135;
nominee of Constitutional Union party
for President in 1860, 160
Finances, United States, Lincoln's training
for, 106, 113; Congress makes flrst war-
loan, 260; European opinion of, 261;
new loans and national banking sys
tem, 372, 373
Floyd, Secretary of War under Buchanan
Adininistration, 196
Forebodings conceming assassination, 198
Fort Sumter, siege of, begins, 195; bom
bardment of, 230; news of capture re
ceived at Washington, 222
Fourth of July, celebration in Washington
m 1863, 411
France, OTinpathy with Confederacy, 249,
261, 383; warned not to interfere, 263;
declaration of neutrality not received,
264
Fredericksburg, battle of, 356, 358
Fremont, Gen. John C, nominated for
President by the People's party in
1856, 159; appointed to command De
partment of the West, 309; proclama
tion of conflscation, etc., issued by,
311; services, 313, 350; reference to, in
letter of President, 331
Game and hunting in Indiana, 53
Gentry, AUen, Lincoln's companion in flrst
fiat-boat trip down the Mississippi 60 64
Gentry. GentryvUle, store and village' in
Indiana, 36, 49; Lincoln's clerkship
there, 56; at Gentry's Landing and ou
flat-boat owned by Gentry, 60, 64
Germany, sympathy with Union cause, 883

INDEX.

bos

Gettysburg, battle of, 392, 391; estimate of
forces engaged, 395; dedication of
cemetery and speeches, 414
Gist, Governor of South Carolina in 1860,
issued circular letter to other Southern
States, 192
Gosport Navy Yard, NorfoUi, Va., burning
of, etc., 218, 235 ^^
Graham, Minterj schoolmaster of New Sa
lem, m., advises Lincoln to study gram
mar, 78; instructs him in surveying,
Grant, Gen. Ulysses S., President's letter
to him, 415: appointed to MUitary De
partment of the West, 421 ; Lieutenant-
General in command of aU armies,
428; Lincoln's opinion of him, 424; cor
respondence with Lincoln on army
plans, 443; in front of Eichmond, 453
Greeley, Hortice, aud the Niagara FaUs
Commissioners, 435
Greene, Bowlin, helps buy Lincoln's effects
at sheriff's sale, 97; took care of him
during melancholia, etc., 109
Grigsby, Aaron, brother-in-law of Lincohi,
49
Grigsby, Nat, Lincoln interrupts a speech
to step down and speak to Mm, 129
Habeas Corpus, Writ of, suspended in
certain parts of Maryland, 336; (Jen-
eral Proclamation, 339, 371 ; test-case in
Ohio, 378
HaU, Levi, married Lincoln's step-sister
and emigrated to Illinois with him, 65
HaUeck, Gen. H. W., appointed Gteneral-
in-Caiief, 318; views of Pope's cam
paign, 322
Hamhn, Hannibal, Vice-President, 183
Hancock, Gen. W. S., remark in councU of
war at Gettysburg, 394
Hanks, Dennis, cousin and playteUow of
Lincoln in Kentucky, 19; in Indiana,
27; goes to Illinois, 65; works with
lum,67
Hanks, John, settled in Illinois and drew
the Lincolns to foUow, 65; caused Lin
coln's first speech in Illinois, 68; com
panion in flat-boat voyage, etc., 69;
gave him the name and fame of " Eail-
qjlitter," 181
Harmn, General, Lincoln withdrew in his
favor, as candidate for Congress, in
1846, 132
Harper's Ferry, arsenal burned, 235; sur
render of troops in 1862, 325
Harris, Miss C, with the President when
he was murdered, 459
Harrison, George W., retumed from Black
hawk War in company with Lincoln,
88
Harrison, pohtical campaign, 120
Hay, Colonel John, Private Secretary to
the President, 216; sent to meet Con
federate envoys at Niagara, 486
Hazel, Caleb, second schoolmaster of Lin
coln in K!entucky, 18
Hemdon, I. and E., brothers, businessmen
of New Salem, m., intimate friends of
Lincoln, 94
Hemdon, WiUiam H., law-partner of Lin
coln, 131; corresponded with him in

Congress, 134; report of Lincoln's de
spair of political altairs, 142: prevented
by Lincoln trom gomg to Kansas, 154;
signed Lincoln's name to the caU for
the Bloomington Convention, 166;
makes half of his next audience, 158;
shrinking consequences a Uttle, 169 ; the
old law-sign not to be taken down, 198
HiU, Samuel, Lincoln's infidel manuscript
read and bm-ned in store of, 103
Holt, Joseph, Secretary of War at the
close of the Buchanan Administration,
196 '
Hooker, Gen. Joseph, succeeded Burnside
in command of Army of the Potomac,
859, 385; resigned, 893; further services,
414
House Divided against Itself, preparation
and dehvery of speech, 169, 172. (See
Appendix.)
Hunter, E. M. T., at Peace Conference in
Hampton Eoads, 446
Illinois Central Eailroad, disputing law-
fee demanded by Lincoln, 162
Illinois, State of, Lincoln's emigration from
Indiana to, 65; pohtics and financial
excitement in, 92
Inauguration, Presidential, features of, in
1861, 208; in 1865, 448
Indiana, Territory and State, 19; Lincohi's
flrst home there, 25
Intemal Improvements, a hobby of Lin
coln's early pohtical Ufe, 92, 106, 118
Invalid Corps, on duty in New York dur
ing Draft Riots, 398
Jackson, Gen. Andrew, Lincoln a " Jack
son man," 92
Jayne, WUham, nominating Lincoln for
the Legislature without authority, 150
Jewett, W. C, of Colorado, with the Eebel
commissioners, 435
Jomt Debates of 1856, 160; of 1858, 173
Johnson, Andrew, nominated for Vice-
President, 480; MUitary Governor of

etc., 468
Johnson, Herschel V., Douglas-Democratic
candidate for Vice-President, 184
Johnston famUy, at time of marriage of
Mrs. Johnston with Thomas Lincohi, 32
Johnston, John, step-brother of Lincoln,
32; partner in second fiat-boat voyage,
69,71; letter to him in last illness of
Thomas Lincoln, 144
Jones, keeper of country store in Gentry
ville, mred Lincoln as salesman, 56
Joumey to Washington iu 1861, speeches
and incidents, 201, 204
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, reported to U. S.
Senate m 1854, 146
Kansas Territory and State, troubles in,
164; stumping tour in, by Lincoln, 177;
pohtical troubles conceming mihtary
management, 404, 406, 438
Kean, Laura, actress at Ford's Theater at
assassination of the President, 460
Kentucky, neutrahty of, 26S
Kirkpatrick, competitor of Lincohi for
captaincy in lUinois Volunteers, 83

506

INDEX.

Lamon, Ward H., associate counsel with
Lincoln, 140; duties at the White
House, 243
Lane, Senator James, of Kansas, speech in
defense of Lincoln, 439
Lane, Joseph, proslavery Democratic can
didate for "Vice-President in 1860, 184
Lee, Gen. Eobert E., offered command of
tjnlon forces, 236; takes command of
¦Virginia State troops, 340; surrender
of, 455
Letters of marque, Jefferson Davis issued
proclamation offering, 260
Lincoln, Abraham, birtli and chUdhood,
13-34; brother, 21; schooling, 18, 35, 37,
42; bodUy strength, 37,55,98; books,
40, 44, 46, 78; writmg, 43; first stump-
speaking, 48, 68; early temperate hab
its, 48; clerk in a covmtry store, 56;
flrst law-studies, 51, 56; sociabihty, 54;
first flat-boat voyage, 60; removal from
Indiana to Illinois, 65 ; second fliit-boat
voyage, 69; inventor, 70; clerk of elec
tion, 74; miller, 75; wrestler, 72, 76;
captain of volunteers in the Blackhawk
¦War, 82; private soldier, 88; candidate
for the State Legislature, 91 ; merchant,
94; law-student, 94; surveyor, 95; post
master, 95; bankrupt, 96; first love, 99;
elected to the State Legislature, 101 ;
skeptic, 103; temporary insanity, 108,
122; correspondence with Mary Owens,
111; antislavery protest in Ilhnois
Legislature, 116; admitted to the bar,
118: betrothal to Mary Todd, 121; duel
with Shields, 124; marriage, 126; ad
mitted to practice la U. S. Circuit
Court, 127; elected to Congress, 183;
death of hiis father, 144; first reply to
Douglas, 147; defeated candidate for
thetJnited States Senate, 152, 169, 173;
Bloomington speech, 156; candidate for
Vice-President of the United States,
159; "House divided against Itself"
speech, 170; editorial nomination for
President of the United States, 174;
Cooper Institute speech, 178; raU-split-
ter, 181; nomination for the Presidency
by the Eepubhcan National Conven
tion, 183; elected President, 186 ; pohcy
before inauguration, 190; fareweU
speech to citizens of Springfield, 202;
inauguration, 209; selection of Cabinet,
214; mUitary student, 245; read no let
ters, 282; procures the construction of
the Monitor 398; Proclamation of
Emancipation, 330, 382, 834; visiting
Army of Potomac, 340; loss of httle
WiUle, 345; letter to the armies on Sab-
bath-keepmg, 347; watching armies in
the West, 351, 415; harassed to petu
lance, 382; calumny and abuse ot^ 402
426; "last, best, and shortest speech,''
408; consciousness of wearing out, 408;
nominated for a second term, 429, 481 ;
elected, 441; inaugurated, wltli ad-
' dress, etc., 448; last visit to the ar
my, 462; entry of Eichmond after
evacuation, 464; assassination, 459
Lincoln, Mrs. Mary Todd, engagement to
marry Abraham Lincoln, 131; author
of the "Lost Township Letters," I'J-l;

marriage, 125; her husband's business
adviser, 139, 1507T62; life aTthe'VS'hite
House, 244, 403; calumniated, 375, 876;
care of the R'esident's personal ap
pearance, 403; prostrated by his assas
sination, 461.
Lincoln, Mrs. Nancy Hanks, mother of
Abraham Lincoln, Chapter I. ; death,
30
Lmcoln, Mrs. SaUy Johnston, step-mother
of Abraham Lincoln, 33; his love for
her, .34; care of her in later days, 131,
144; visit to her before going to Wash
ington, and her forebodings, 198
Lincohi, Eobert Todd, son of Abraham
Lincoln, chUdhood, 138; at school, 180;
serving in the army, 418
Lincoln, SaUy, or Nancy, sister of Abra
ham Lincoln, 17; marriage to Aaron
Grigsby, 48; death, 49
Lincoln, Thomas, father of Abraham Lin
coln, personal character, etc.. Chapter
I.; ii'eatment of his son, 60; death,
144
Lincohi, Thomas, son of Abraham Lincoln,
"Little Tad," birth of, 144; Ulness, 344
Lincoln, WiUle, son of Abraham Lincoln,
buth, 183; death, 344
Logan, Stephen T., law-partner of Lin
coln, 131; defeated for Congress, 138;
urging Lincoln not to give way for
TrumbuU, 162
Long Bridge over Potomac, slenderly
guarded, 235; crossed by Union forces,
340
Long, Dr., condoling with lincoln, etc.,
172
Long Nine, the, Sangamon County dele
gation in the Illinois Le^lature, 115
Lost Township Letters, written by Mary
Todd, story of, 124
Macauley, Commodore, in command of
Gosport Navy Yard, etc., 218
Manassas, mihtary importance of, 354 : Sec
ond BuU Eun, battle of. 331
Manchester, England, letter of working-
men to President Lincoln, 412
Maryland, State of, ready for secession,
204, 231, 234, 349
Massachusetts Sixth Eegiment, mustered
for service, 229; mobbed in Baltimore,
330
Massachusetts War-bUl passed, 201
Meade, Gen. George G., in command of
Army of Potomac, 390, 892, 420, 424
Metzgar murder-case, 163
Mexican War, opposed by Lincoln in Con
gress, 134
McClellan, Gen. Geo. B., appointed to com
mand, 273; systematizing Army of Po
tomac, 284; reports condition of army,
autumn of 1861, 286 ; army idea of him,
294; President's opinion of him, 300;
retum from Peninsula, 304, 321; re-as-
avunes command, 305, 324; pohtical as
pirations, 813,315; removed from com
mand, 326; nominated for President by
the Opposition, 437
McCuUoch, Hugh, appointed Secretary of
the Treasury, 463
McDoweU, Gen. Irwin, in coumiand of

INDEX.

507

Union troops at the battle otBuU Run,
355
McNamar, McNeU, desertion of Arm Rut
ledge by, 100
Milk-siSc, nature and ravages of, 28
MiU-dam at New Salem, on Sangamon
Eiver, on which Lincoln's fiat-boat
stuck, 70; oU now left of town, 78
Mississippi Biver, control of upper waters
retained, 197, 313; of mouth secured,
350; entire control secured, 393
Missouri, State of, saved from seceding,
350; pohtical troubles in, 404, 406, 439
Monitor iron-clad, fight with Merrimac,
297; story of her construction, 298
Montgomery, Ala., flrst seat of govern
ment of Southern Confederacy, 194
National Rifles, Washington, D. C., sig
nificance of its history, 206, 236
Navy of United States, beginnings of, 350
Needham, Daniel, wrestling-match with
Lincoln, 72
New Orleans, effect of the capture of, 350
New Salem, tU., character and population
of^71, 73
New ¦York Seventh Eegiment, set out for
Washington, 330; in Virginia, 241
New York ¦War-bUl, passage of, 201
Nicolay, John G., Privafe Secretary to
President Lincoln, 216
Offige-seeeebs, first disappointment of,
by Lincoln, 188; throngs of them at
¦White House, 207, 215
Offutt, Denton, employs Lincoln, etc., to
build flat-boat, 69, 70; ditto as salesman
in New Salein, 74; faUure, 81;
Oglesby, Gov. Eichard, action at Decatur
Convention, 180
Ohio, pohtical speeches in, by Lincoln, 177
Ord, Gen. E. O. C, member of President
Lincoln's last councU of war, 453
Ordinance of Secession of Vii^inia, 239
Oregon Territory, governorship of, refused
by Lincoln, 138
Owens, Mary, correspondence with Lin
coln, 111, 120
Pain, John, with W. H. Hemdon, Lincoln's
audience at State House in Springfleld,
158
Peace Commissioners at Niagara FaUs,
435, etseq
Peace Conference in Hampton Eoads, 446
Peace Congress, faUure of, 213
PendlefKjn, George H., Democratic nomi
nee for Vice-President, 437
Peninsular campaign, plan for, adopted,
295; close of, 300
Pennsylvania, ¦War-biU passed, 201; 5th
E^'t Mihtia reaches Washington, 229;
invasion of, by Lee's army, 390
Pensacola, Florida, navy-yard surrendered
and forts besieged, 195
People's party, organization and National
Convention of, 159
Peoria, IU., speech by Lincoln in reply to
Douglas, 149
Pickens, Governor, of South Carolina, 220
Pickett, Gen., leader of last charge of bat
tle of Gettysburg, 294

Pirates, Confederate privateers so declared
by iiroclamation, 250
Polk, James K., Pi-esident, course of, on
Mexican question, 184
Pope, Gen. John, in command of the Army
of Vh-gmia, 803; drifted out of it, 305.
conduct and reports of, 331, 332
Posey, reply to his speech at Decatur, IU.,
by Lincoln, 68
Press, hberty of, restricted, 376, 377
Private secretaries of the President, 216;
ofBoes and duties of, 243, 283
Protest, antislavery, in Legislature of Il
linois, by Lincoln aud Stone, 115
Pitmcft, London journal, versified obituary
on Lincoln, 403. (See Appendix.)
Radford store in New Salem mobbed, etc.,
93
EaU-spUtter, origin and occasion of title,
181
Eathbone, Major Henry, with the President
at Ford's Theater, 459
Reconstruction, beginnings of, 374, 375;
act providing for, passed and vetoed,
434
Regular army, increased at the beginning,
etc., 337
Repubhcan pai*ty, elements of, 148; in
Congress, 163; first State Convention
of, in nunois, 168; second ditto, 180;
firat National Convention, 182; second
ditto, 426
Richmond, Virginia, latent Unionism in,
204
Einey, Zachariah, first schoolmaster of
Lincoln, 18
Eoby, PoUy, anecdotes of, and Lincoln,
43,61
Russia, friendship for United States, 384
Eutledge, Ann, story of her first betrothal,
99; to Lincoln, 107; death, 108
Rutledge, James, miU-owner at New Sa
lem, prevents fight, etc., 77; urged Lin
coln to run for Legislature, 91
Sanqamon Rivbr, house buUt and work
done on bank of, by Abraham Lincoln,
67; fiat-boat brnlt there by him, 69;
pUoting flat-boat down it in a fiood, 74;
testing It for steamboat navigation, 79
Sangamontown, stroUs into, 70
Schoolmasters of Abraham Lincoln, Zach
ariah Riney, 18; Caleb Hazel, 18; Ha
zel Dorsey, 35, 40; Andrew Crawford,
43; Minter Graham, 78
Scott, Gen. Winfield, directing organiza
tion of District of Columbia militia,
206; co-operating with President Lin
coln in 1861, 207; advising appointment
of Gen. McClellan, 273 ; resignation and
retirement, 274
Secession, original purposes, 211 ; ripened
by Lincoln's election, 192; cotton-States
act, 194; Virginia Act, 240: recognized
only as sedition, 334, 227, 374
Second term, beginning of pohtical cam
paign for, 421, 428
Seventh Regunent, N. Y. N. G., 230
Seward, WiUiam H., "Irrepressible Con
flict" services, 171 ; candidate for Presi
dential nomination, 182; appointed Sec-

508

INDEX.

retary of State, 214; personal relations
to Mr. Lincoln, 249; wounded by assas
sins, 458
Seymour, Horatio, anti-administration
Governor of New York, 396, 400; Chair
man of Democratic National Conven
tion, 487
Shakespeare, read by Lincoln while riding
the Judicial District circuit, 139
Shawneetown, charter of bank at, 106
Sherman, Gen. W. T., in command of the
Western armies, 423 ; march to the sea,
443; President's doubt of its wisdom,
443; northward movement begun, 446;
at councU of war near Richmond, 463;
Shields, Gen. James, chaUenging Lincoln
to fight a duel, 124; candidate for re
election to U. S. Senate, 150. 151
ShUoh (Corinth), battle of, and proclama
tion of thanksgiving, 346
Short, assisting Lincoln in his bankruptcy,
97, 100
Siege of Yorktown, Va., 249
Slavery, opposition to the extension of,
134, 136, 146, 154; Southem ambition
of a slave-holder's empire, 211
Slemmer, Lieutenant, in command of Pen
sacola navy-yard and forts, 196
Smith, Caleb B., Secretary of the Interior,
215
Smoot, lending Lincoln money to take him
to Vandaha, 102
South Carolina, taking the lead in seced-
mg, 192, 194
Southem Army, its beginning, 218; in
crease, etc., 270
South Mountain, battle of, 326
Sparrow, Thomas and Betsy, related to the
Lincoln family, foUow them to Indi
ana, 27; death of, 29
Speed, James, appointed Attorney-General,
442
Springfleld, lUinois, State Capital removed
from Vandaha to Springfleld, 118
Stanton, Edwin M., Secretary of War, 316;
characteristics, etc., 317, 318
Star of thi. West, steamer, taking supphes
to Fort Sumter, fired upon, 195
State rights, care taken not to infringe, 339
Stephens, Alex. H., friendship with Lin
coln begun in Congress, 137; Vice-
President of Confederacy and confer
ence in Hampton Roads, 446
Stewart, Joseph P., pursuing Booth upon
the stage, 460
Stoddard, WUliam O., Secretary to the
President to sign land-patents, acting
as Assistant Private Secretary, 216
Stone, Gen. Charles P., unportant services
at outset, 206
Stuart, John T., flrst law-partner of Mr.
Lincoln, 118; elected to Congress, 131;
prophetic conversation with Mr. Lin
coln, 141 ; attempt to keep Mr. Lincohi
a conservative, 156
Suffrage, negro, ideas of President, etc.,
367
Swett, Leonard, associate-counsel with
Lincoln, 140
Taylor, James, Lincoln employed by, as
boy-of-all-work, 58

Taylor, Gen. Zachary, President, 135
Texas, surrender of U. S. forts, etc., 196
Thanksgiving and prayer, proclama-tions
appointing days of ,'419, 420
Thompson, Col. Samuel, commanding reg
iment in which Lincoln served in Black
hawk War, 83
Trent affair, capture of Mason and SUdeU
by Captain WUkes, 362, 354
Trent Brothers, traders to whom Lincoln
sold out and who caused his bank
ruptcy, 94, 96
Tribune, New York, comment upon the
Cooper Institute speech, 180
Trumbull, Lyman, elected Senator of Uni
ted States, 152; course in Senate, 158;
pohtical soundness as an adviser,
167
Turnham, David, lent Lincoln his first law
book, 51
Twelfth N.Y. Eeg't, arrival in Washington,
etc., 207
Twiggs, General, treacherous conduct in
Texas, 196
Unconditional Union Men, Mass Conven
tion at Springfleld, HI., 410
Union League, origin and organization of,
363; spread and value of, 371; first
grand councU, 405; second ditto, 428
Vallandigham, Clement L., course in
Congress, 259, 377; convicted of sedi
tion by court-martial, 378, 379; sent
across the hnes, 879, 881 ; candidate for
Governor of Ohio and defeated, 380; at
Chicago Democratic Convention, 437
Vandaha, former capital of State of lUi
nois, Lincoln's first journey there,
102, 104
Vicksburg, surrender of, 393
Virginia, State of, Act of Secession, 228,
240; Invasion of, by Union forces, 240,
241
Volunteers, Union, first caU for, issued, 237
War, acts of, by South, during Buchanan's
Administration, 196, 196
Washmgton City, disloyal character of its
population in 1861, 205
Weitzel, Gen., first forces to enter city of
Richmond, 454
WeUes, Gideon, Secretary of the Navy,
215
West Point, large number of its graduates
in Rebel army, 218
West Virginia, first action towards separa
tion, 276; admitted to the Union, 874
¦Whig party, beginning of, 90, 92, 101 ; Con
gressional candidates in Sangamon
District, 128; Presidential campaign,
1850, 135; disintegration, 147; relics of
in 1860, 184
Whiteside, General, in command of Illinois
Volunteers in the Blackhawk War, 83,
86; re-enlisted as a private, 88; second
to Shields in duel, 124
Wood, Fernando, amnesty correspondence
with the President, 361
Zouaves, Ellsworth's, conveyed to Alexan
dria by steamer, 240

YALE UNIVERSITY