President Lincoln- The Duty of a Statesman

by William Lee Miller

  SIR: I herewith demand an immediate surrender of the U.S. Arsenal at this place and under your charge, and a delivery to me of the keys and contents of the arsenals, magazines, &c. I am already proceeding to occupy it with a strong armed detachment of troops. I make the demand in the name of the State of South Carolina, and by virtue of an order from its governor, a copy of which is inclosed.

  Captain Humphreys was forced by his circumstance to make the following reply.

  SIR: I am constrained to comply with your demand for the surrender of this arsenal, from the fact that I have no force for its defense. I do so, however, solemnly protesting against the illegality of this measure in the name of my Government. I also demand, as a right, that I be allowed to salute my flag, before lowering it, with one gun for each state now in the Union (32).

  It is significant that Captain Humphreys specified the number of guns, for the number of states, in the salute to his flag. There had been thirty-three states in the Union when December began. Each state now in the Union; no salute for South Carolina.*2

  THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE

  AS LINCOLN GAVE his address on March 4, the outgoing president would know, but the incoming president would not yet know, that even Fort Sumter, that most potent remaining symbol of the Union’s integrity, was now in peril.

  Senator Seward—as he still was on that day in March 1861, Senator William H. Seward of New York, on the Senate Committee on Arrangements, sitting on the platform—must have been another who listened to the newcomer’s inaugural address with a maelstrom of emotions. On the one hand, he was incomparably more experienced and well prepared than this man, and but for the accidents of “availability,” he would himself be delivering this address. On the other hand, he still at that point assumed, as much of the political world assumed, that he would nevertheless be the dominant figure, the prime minister, in this first Republican administration. Much that had happened in his relationship to the president-elect might seem to confirm that expectation. While Lincoln had been out in Springfield coping with office-seekers and reporters and writing his speech, Seward had been in Washington, in the Senate, playing the central role in crafting the Republican Party response as the string of Deep South states claimed to take themselves out of the Union. Seward, once a prime spokesman for antislavery reformers, now became a prime conciliator, writing letters to keep Lincoln informed. When Lincoln began appointing his cabinet, his first offer was to Seward, proposing to make him secretary of state, and after a brief consideration, Seward accepted. Secretaries of state had often been key figures in government, sometimes as important as their presidents. So it seemed to many—including Seward himself—it would be now.

  When Lincoln named the rest of his cabinet, however, it was by no means the cabinet Seward would have chosen, and in particular it included one of his rivals for the nomination, the Radical Republican leader Salmon Chase of Ohio. Seward, perhaps assuming that his importance gave him leverage, just two days before the inauguration sent Lincoln a brief note asking “leave to withdraw” from his acceptance of the office of secretary of state. The reports that Seward was unhappy with the appointment of Chase swirled through the capital city, and presumably Seward expected Lincoln to drop Chase in order to keep his indispensable self in the administration. But Lincoln did not do this. He was already showing small signs that perhaps he would not be as dependent on Seward as many, including Seward, expected. He had long since shown that he had the elementary political skill to measure power relations. On inauguration morning itself, while the procession was forming, Lincoln remarked to Nicolay, “I can’t let Seward take the first trick,” and handed him a note to Seward asking him to withdraw his withdrawal. “The public interest, I think, demands that you should; and my personal feelings are deeply inlisted in the same direction.” Perhaps Seward had this note in his pocket as he listened to the inaugural address. After the ceremony the two men would confer, and Seward would stay.

  As he listened to the address, Seward no doubt could hear many effects of his own suggestions. When President-elect Lincoln had arrived at the train station in Washington at six in the morning on February 23, after an embarrassing but perhaps necessary secret trip from Philadelphia through strife-torn Baltimore under dark of night, Seward had had breakfast with him at the hotel and taken him to dinner at his house in the evening. During that day Lincoln gave Seward one of the dozen copies printed in Springfield of the draft of his inaugural address, and Seward came to the hotel the evening of the next day, Sunday, February 24, with extensive proposed changes. Lincoln adopted many of them, the most important a revised ending that would one day carve itself into the national memory.

  There cannot be much doubt that, at least with respect to that ending, Seward’s proposals led to a distinct improvement. In Lincoln’s original paragraph, the string of italicized contrasts between you and me went on too long and made the contrast too insistent. Seward, in line with his general purpose to make the address more conciliatory to the South, scribbled some words for two proposed alternative endings.

  Working in the Willard Hotel under the intense pressures of the last week before he became president, Lincoln took one set of phrases Seward had written on the back of page four of his worked-over copy and transformed them by the alchemy of his editing from dross to gold. Seward had proposed starting the final paragraph by saying, “I close.” Lincoln gave it emotional power by making it, “I am loath to close.” Seward had dashed off an unedited longer sentence, “We are not we must not be aliens or enemies but countrymen and brethren.” Lincoln broke that into two short sentences with punch: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.” Lincoln did the same with Seward’s effort to say that passion has strained but must not break our bonds of affection. Lincoln cut it, shortened it, picked up Seward’s last words and dropped the others, added a few words of his own—and made it sing. Lincoln had picked up a phrase, and a metaphor, that Seward had written about “mystic chords,” and other phrases that Seward wrote but marked out: “touched as they surely” and “better angel.” Lincoln made the angels plural and made the mystic chords into mystic chords of memory, and he put together a beautiful flowing last sentence that was not there in Seward’s notes. As Joshua Shenk has observed, Lincoln made one key change that was not only rhetorical but also substantive. Seward had had mystic chords breathed upon by “the guardian angel of the nation,” a phrase of banal familiarity. He had written but marked out, above the line, the alternative, “better angel.” Lincoln took that better angel—one angel contrasted to another—made him plural, and moved him from floating vaguely over “the nation” to engaging in struggle within ourselves—“the better angels of our nature”—a different idea altogether. The paragraph that Lincoln wrought out of Seward’s proposal was not simply a rhetorical, literary, and political improvement, although it was all of those; it also gave a first glimpse of a profound moral imagination. It became something new, an echo of Seward’s words in a higher register. One may imagine Seward, sitting on the platform, listening with some mixture of pride, envy, regret, and astonishment as he hears the man who is going to be president in his stead speak some words that are partly his and yet altogether this other man’s.

  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 battle-field, 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.

  HE’S ALL RIGHT

  THE REACTION TO Lincoln’s address corresponded generally, although not entirely, to the nation’s sectional, partisan, and ideological divisions: secessionists were outraged and contemptuous; Democrats were mixed; abolitionists were deeply disappointed; Republicans were mostly impressed.

  Frederick Douglass would write sadly that it
was “little better than our worst fears.” The next four years would be a political education not only for Abraham Lincoln but also for Frederick Douglass.

  Scholars at a later time, with the advantage (or perhaps disadvantage) of having seen Lincoln’s first draft, would have a line of commentary that faulted the address in a way listeners at the time were not equipped to do, claiming it lost altitude from what he had written in Springfield. The distinguished twentieth-century historian David Potter goes through the four areas in which the limited federal government of the time would make its power felt within the states, providing this striking summary of how, in the address as he gave it, Lincoln drew back from each of them:

  This, then, was the much vaunted “firm” policy of Lincoln. He would assert the Federal authority vigorously—but he would not exercise it. He would enforce the laws—where an enforcement mechanism existed. He would deliver the mails—unless repelled. He would collect the duties—offshore. He would hold the forts—at least the ones which Buchanan had held, and which seemed capable of holding themselves.

  Reading that paragraph, one may get a reminiscent whiff of that witty summary, quoted above, that Seward made of Buchanan’s position. But on consideration one sees that Lincoln’s position, for all the restraint, differed at its core; where Buchanan was making close distinctions in order to avoid responsibility, Lincoln was making close distinctions in order to exercise it.

  Harry Jaffa, after quoting that stark paragraph from Potter, gives part of the answer to it:

  This commentary certainly highlights the genuine ambiguity in Lincoln’s text. But it hardly suggests the practical wisdom in that ambiguity. Of course Lincoln would not, because he could not, enforce the laws where no enforcement mechanism existed…When we remember how militarily weak the Union government was at that moment, Lincoln’s speech, notwithstanding its ambiguities, is remarkably bold. He makes no concession, either theoretical or practical, to the idea of any constitutional right of secession.

  He not only makes no concession; he makes a thorough and fundamental argument rejecting any such claimed right, either in governments in general or in the United States in particular. But that is not the most important immediate point; as we have seen, even Buchanan rejected secession theoretically. The immediate question was: What is this new president going to do? And on that point he was indeed very careful—as he should have been—but still quite different from Buchanan.

  Having an inadequate military force—only about seventeen thousand troops scattered in western posts—was not the primary justification for what critics call the ambiguity in Lincoln’s address. Even if he had had a much larger army, it would still not have been wise to deliver the address as he had written it in Springfield. Historian David Herbert Donald asserts:

  That draft…was a no-nonsense document; it declared that the Union was indestructible, that secession was illegal, and that he intended to enforce the laws. “All the power at my disposal will be used to reclaim the public property and places which have fallen,” he pledged, “to hold, occupy and possess these, and all other property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties on imports.”

  Donald says that the address as delivered was “an imperfectly blended mixture of opposites.” Donald quotes the ending challenge to the South: “Shall it be peace or a sword?” and calls the Springfield draft “warlike.” In his collection of newspaper comments on the address, Donald highlights, by placing it at the end, the “most thoughtful” verdict of the Providence Daily Post: “There is some plain talk in the address: But…it is immediately followed by obscurely stated qualifications.”

  But are we to judge Lincoln’s revisions to the Springfield draft a mistake? Or the resulting address unwisely marked down from what he had written in Springfield? Rather, one could argue that Lincoln, in the changes he kept making in the printed draft, on the train and in the Willard, was beginning to learn what it is to be a statesman.

  Worthy statesmen regularly combine ingredients—they state things plainly, then follow with qualifications, sometimes even “obscurely stated” qualifications, more often silences. Clarity and consistency are virtues in most human settings but may not be in relations among giant collectives in conflict. Lincoln recognized this and swiftly saw what the situation required. He made a rigorous statement of the enduring underlying principle (the unbroken Union) but then made expedient, implicitly temporary concessions. Much was left unsaid because explicit statement would itself have become a political act that would affect how others respond.

  Lincoln had written in Springfield, in a paragraph intended to be reassuring: “The government will not assail you, unless you first assail it.” But in his revision, at Seward’s suggestion, he struck out “unless you first assail it,” so that there was no mention of the Union doing any assailing, even as a rejoinder to a rebel act. The flat promise that there would be no initial Union assault was left unqualified. (But in the silence after that sentence, surely one could hear the echo of the clause that had been there.)

  The epitome of the issue would be Lincoln’s having written in Springfield that he would “use all the power…to reclaim…the usurped federal installations.” That “reclaim” was consistent with his fundamental insistence that the Union was unbroken—but would it have been wise to say it? To say it—and not do it? Or to say it—and try to do it? To mount a military effort (“all the power…will be used”) to recapture the forts, mints, arsenals all across the Deep South that the seceded states had taken? That would have been impossible in the first place and undesirable in the second—impossible because he did not have the force, undesirable because overt military action would have been seen to be the “coercion” that multitudes of border state citizens and Democrats would condemn. So he had to take out that “reclaim,” even though the logic underlying it was the backbone of the address. His friend Orville Browning was surely right to have argued that the announced intention to reclaim the federal installations should be dropped. It “will be construed as a threat or menace,” Browning wrote, “and will be irritating even in the border states. On principle the passage is right as it stands. The fallen places ought to be reclaimed. But cannot that be accomplished as well or better without announcing your purpose in your inaugural?” Again, the studied silence. Lincoln would do the same in the future, with respect, for example, to Kentucky’s claimed “neutrality,” when he did not believe there was any such thing as “neutrality” but did not say so.

  The situation at the time he gave the address was this: eight slave states still had not joined the Confederacy.*3 The rebel tide had rolled across the Deep South, the cotton South, and then stalled. Opinion was volatile in the North. The moment was fraught with peril, with shifting passions. Lincoln was a new man, mostly unknown, representing a party that had never held national office. He therefore reshaped the Springfield draft, adding the promises of restraint alongside its fundamental firmness.

  These political considerations, together with his sense of constitutional propriety, shaped also—we may surmise—those reassurances about slavery, offensive to Douglass and the abolitionists, with which he started his address. In the long run, and in his heart, he agreed with those critics, but he could not shape his stated policy at this moment to please them.

  Citizens—including scholars—of a later time have the advantage (and, again, disadvantage) of knowing that although there would be a terribly destructive war, the outcome would be that the Union was preserved. They therefore can ignore the frightful contingency of the situation as Lincoln faced it: he did not know what the ultimate outcomes would be, what the shape of the contending forces would be.

  The New York Times reported two exchanges with the Democratic leader Senator Stephen Douglas, in response to Lincoln’s address:

  Mr. Douglas said, “He does not mean coercion; he says nothing about retaking the forts, or Federal property—he’s all right.” Subsequently, to another querist, Douglas said: “Well, I
hardly know what he means. Every point in the address is susceptible of a double construction; but I think he does not mean coercion.”

  That partially positive response, mixed with a dollop of doubt, is about what a budding statesman in Lincoln’s extremely perilous position would want from the leader of the Union-supporting Democrats, Stephen Douglas. That the Mississippi press should say Lincoln’s inaugural was a declaration of war was inevitable; that Frederick Douglass would be outraged was regrettable; but had Stephen Douglas been hostile, it would have been a disaster.

  Six weeks later, on the very day that the news came into Washington that the rebels had fired upon and “reduced” Fort Sumter—thereby initiating “coercion” from their side—Senator Douglas visited the president in the executive mansion and gave him his full support.

  SOLEMN OATH

  WHEN HE FINISHED READING his address, there arose on the platform a withered figure, a “gnarled corpse,” who tottered forward accompanied by a clerk holding a large Bible. This was Chief Justice Roger Taney. Taney had been attorney general of the United States before young Lincoln had held any public office at all; he had now served for a quarter of a century. Perhaps this ceremony had become for Taney a little humdrum; he was administering the presidential oath for the seventh time and was about to serve under a tenth president.*4 But there was nothing humdrum about it for the other participant in this little ceremony. Taking a “solemn” oath, “registered in Heaven,” transformed his moral situation.