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Why We Love Lincoln

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<h2 class="nobreak" id="XI">XI</h2> All the way from Springfield Lincoln carried a small handbag containing the manuscript of his inaugural address, upon which it was believed that the issue of peace or war would depend. The whole country waited anxiously to hear what the rail-splitter had to say, now that he had command of the army, navy and treasury. Would he dare to send troops to the rescue of Major Anderson and his men, besieged in Charleston harbor by rebellious South Carolina? Would he relieve the loyal garrisons hemmed in by insurgent Florida? To use force meant instant civil war. To refrain from using force meant the destruction of the Union. Only three months before, Mr. Holt,111 Buchanan’s loyal Postmaster General, had written to one of Lincoln’s partners: “I doubt not, from the temper of the public mind, that the Southern States will be allowed to withdraw peacefully; but when the work of dismemberment begins, we shall break up the fragments from month to month, with the nonchalance with which we break the bread upon our breakfast table.... We shall soon grow up a race of chieftains who will rival the political bandits of South America and Mexico, who will carve out to us our miserable heritage with their bloody swords. The masses of the people dream not of these things. They suppose the Republic can be destroyed to-day, and that peace will smile over its ruins to-morrow.” Away out in his Illinois home Lincoln had written these words in his inaugural address: “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the112 momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect and defend it.’” This was the spirit in which he made that journey from the West, knowing that the question of war or peace hung as upon a hair trigger. Backwoodsman and provincial though he might be, he knew the underlying American character well enough to hope, in his own heart, in spite of the secession of so many States, what was bluntly said to Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet: “Unless you sprinkle blood in the face of the people of Alabama, they will be back in the old Union in less than ten days.” But when Lincoln went through the guarded streets of Washington to the bayonet-girt Capitol, to have the pro-slavery Chief Justice administer the oath of office,113 the speech he carried in his pocket had been greatly altered. He had even been persuaded by Mr. Seward, his new Secretary of State, to modify this brave sentence: “All the power at my disposal will be used to reclaim the public property and places which have fallen; to hold, occupy and possess these, and all other property and places belonging to the government.” They thought he might be murdered before he could take the oath. There was artillery in the streets and ominous swarms of soldiers. Even on the roofs sharpshooters were to be seen. Grizzled old General Scott had sent this word from his sick bed to the President-elect: “I’ll plant cannon at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and if any of them show their heads or raise a finger I’ll blow them to hell.” Yet when Lincoln’s long body reared itself before the hushed crowd, and when he laid aside his new ebony, gold-headed cane, set114 his iron-bound spectacles on his nose and removed his hat—there was Douglas, his old rival for Mary Todd’s hand, his competitor for the Senate and the Presidency, his antagonist in the struggle against slavery; but a new Douglas, loyal to the Union, who was content to reach out his hand in the presence of that high-strung multitude and hold Lincoln’s hat. President Buchanan was there, withered, bent, slow, insignificant, in flowing white cravat and swallowtail coat. Beside him towered the homely rail-splitter—also in an unaccustomed and distressing swallowtail coat and wearing a stubby new beard, grown to please a little girl—who dared at last to give the national authority a voice and to say that “No State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union,” that “resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void,” and that “I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of115 the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.” How hard it is for us now to realize the appalling strain of responsibilities that could persuade a valiant frontiersman like Lincoln—knowing that Fort Sumter was already besieged; that the Florida forts were threatened and that an organized Confederate government, with drilled troops, was actually in possession of many States—to say so softly to the armed and defiant South: “I trust that this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it will constitutionally maintain and defend itself.” Just before he closed his speech Lincoln looked up from his manuscript, and his gray eyes—those eyes that could be so tender as to make his gaunt face beautiful—sought the silent, listening crowd. There were dark circles under his eyes. His whole bearing was that of a man in pain. Then116 he raised his splendid head and made that last sublime appeal against war: “I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” As Lincoln kissed the open Bible in the hands of Chief Justice Taney—who wrote the Dred Scott opinion supporting slavery—the thunder of artillery announced his vow to defend the Union. <hr /> 117 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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