Battle Cry of Freedom

by James M. McPherson

  57. Bruce Catton, The Coming Fury (Garden City, N.Y., 1961), 214–15; Rowland, Davis, V, 47–53.

  border-state tycoons like the Blairs of Maryland, of strong leaders several of whom still considered themselves better qualified for the presidency than the man who won it. Lincoln had to satisfy all of these interests with his seven cabinet appointments, which would also indicate the direction of his policy toward the South.58

  With an aplomb unparalleled in American political history, the president-elect appointed his four main rivals for the nomination to cabinet posts. Lincoln did not hesitate in his choices of Seward for secretary of state and Bates for attorney general. Cameron represented a more formidable problem. The Pennsylvanian believed that he had a commitment from Lincoln's convention managers. In any case, to leave him out would cause disaffection. But putting him in provoked an outcry when word leaked that Lincoln had offered Cameron the treasury. Many Republicans considered the "Winnebago Chief"—a derisive nickname Cameron had acquired years earlier when he had allegedly cheated an Indian tribe in a supply contract—to be "a man destitute of honor and integrity." Taken aback, Lincoln withdrew the offer, whereupon Cameron's friends mobilized a campaign in his behalf that distracted the party as the inauguration neared. Lincoln finally settled the matter—but not the controversy—by giving Cameron the war department. The treasury went to Chase, who had become a leader of the "iron-back" Republicans opposed to any hint of concession to the South. Chase's appointment so offended Seward that he withdrew his acceptance as secretary of state—an obvious attempt to make Lincoln dump Chase. This was the first test of Seward's ambition to be "premier" of the administration. "I can't afford to let Seward take the first trick," Lincoln told his private secretary. The president-elect persuaded Seward to back down and remain in the cabinet with Chase—though one more confrontation lay ahead before Seward was convinced that Lincoln intended to be his own premier.59

  Paying a debt to Indiana for early support of his nomination, Lincoln named Caleb Smith secretary of the interior. The fussy, bewigged Connecticut Yankee Gideon Welles received the navy department. Lincoln

  58. This and the following paragraphs on Lincoln's purposes and problems in putting together a cabinet are drawn from James G. Randall, Lincoln the President, 4 vols. (New York, 1946–55), I, 256–72; Nevins, Emergence, II, 436–55; Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, III, 347–72; and Baringer, A House Dividing, passim.

  59. Quotations from Nevins, Emergence, II, 441, and Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, III, 371

  wanted to appoint a non-Republican from the upper South as a gesture of good will to hold this region in the Union. He offered a portfolio to Congressman John Gilmer of North Carolina. But to join a Black Republican administration was too much of a political risk, so Gilmer turned down the offer on grounds that Lincoln's refusal to compromise on slavery in the territories made it impossible for him to accept. Lincoln thereupon rounded out his cabinet with Montgomery Blair as postmaster general. Though a resident of Maryland, Blair was a Republican and an "iron-back."60

  Even more important than the cabinet as a sign of future policy would be Lincoln's inaugural address. Knowing that the fate of the upper South, and of hopes for voluntary reconstruction of the lower South, might rest on what he said on March 4, Lincoln devoted great care to every phrase of the address. It went through several drafts after consultation with various Republican leaders, especially Seward. This process began in Springfield two months before the inauguration and continued through Lincoln's twelve-day roundabout trip by rail to Washington, during which he made dozens of speeches to trackside crowds and official receptions. The president-elect felt an obligation to greet the multitudes who lined his route to catch a glimpse of their new leader. In effect, Lincoln was making a whistle-stop tour after his election, even to the point of climbing down from the train to kiss the eleven-year-old girl in upstate New York who had suggested that he grow the beard which was now filling out on his face.

  This tour may have been a mistake in two respects. Not wishing by a careless remark or slip of the tongue to inflame the crisis further, Lincoln often indulged in platitudes and trivia in his attempts to say nothing controversial. This produced an unfavorable impression on those who were already disposed to regard the ungainly president-elect as a commonplace prairie lawyer. Second, Lincoln's mail and the national press had for weeks been full of threats and rumors of assassination. A public journey of this sort with all stops announced in advance greatly increased the risk of violence. Two days before he was scheduled to travel through Baltimore, a city rife with secession sympathizers and notorious for political riots, Lincoln's party got wind of a plot to assassinate him as he changed trains there. Indeed, warnings came from two independent sources—a Pinkerton detective force employed by the railroad

  60. Daniel W. Crofts, "A Reluctant Unionist: John A. Gilmer and Lincoln's Cabinet," CWH, 24 (1978), 225–49.

  and an agent of the war department—both of which had infiltrated Baltimore's political gangs. Lincoln reluctantly consented to a change in his schedule which took him secretly through Baltimore in the middle of the night. An assassination plot probably did exist; the danger was real. But Lincoln thereafter regretted the decision to creep into Washington "like a thief in the night." It embarrassed many of his supporters and enabled opposition cartoonists to ridicule him. The whole affair started his administration off on the wrong foot at a time when it needed the appearance of firmness and command.61

  Lincoln put the finishing touches on his inaugural address during these first days in Washington. While he had been composing it, seven states were not only seceding but were also seizing federal property within their borders—customshouses, arsenals, mints, and forts. The first draft of the inaugural therefore had one theme and two variations. The theme was Lincoln's determination to preserve an undivided Union. The variations contrapuntally offered a sword and an olive branch. The sword was an intention to use "all the powers at my disposal" 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, and to collect the duties on imports." The olive branch was a reiteration of his oft-repeated pledge not "to interfere with the institution of slavery where it exists" and to enforce the constitutional injunction for the return of fugitive slaves. Lincoln also promised the South that "the government will not assail you, unless you first assail it."62

  Seward and Lincoln's Illinois confidant Orville Browning found the sword too prominent in this draft. The upper South, not to mention the Confederate government, was sure to regard any attempt to "reclaim" forts and other property as "coercion." And even the promise not to assail these states unless they first assailed the government contained a veiled threat. Seward persuaded Lincoln to delete "unless you first assail it" and to soften a few other phrases. He also drafted a peroration appealing to the historic patriotism of southern people. The president-elect added a passage assuring southerners that whenever "in any interior locality" the hostility to the United States was "so great and so universal, as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices," he would suspend government activities "for the time."

  61. Randall, Lincoln the President, I, 288–91; Norma B. Cuthbert, ed., Lincoln andthe Baltimore Plot (San Marino, Cal., 1949).

  62. CWL, IV, 254, 250–52, 261.

  Most significantly, perhaps, Browning prevailed on Lincoln to drop his threat to reclaim federal property, so that the final version of the address vowed only to "hold, occupy, and possess" such property and to "collect duties and imposts."63

  These phrases were ambiguous. How would the duties be collected? By naval vessels stationed offshore? Would this be coercion? How could the government "hold, occupy and possess" property that was under control of Confederate forces? The only remaining property in Union hands were two obscure forts in the Florida Keys along with Fort Pick-ens on an island at the mouth of Pensacola Bay and Fort Sumter on an is
land in Charleston harbor. Fort Sumter had become a commanding symbol of national sovereignty in the very cradle of secession, a symbol that the Confederate government could not tolerate if it wished its own sovereignty to be recognized by the world. Would Lincoln use force to defend Sumter? The ambiguity was intentional. Hoping to avoid provocation, Lincoln and Seward did not wish to reveal whether the velvet glove enclosed an iron fist.

  There was no ambiguity about the peroration, revised and much improved from Seward's draft. "I am loth to close," said Lincoln. "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."

  Contemporaries read into the inaugural address what they wished or expected to see. Republicans were generally satisfied with its "firmness" and "moderation." Confederates and their sympathizers branded it a "Declaration of War." Douglas Democrats in the North and conditional unionists in the south formed the constituencies that Lincoln most wanted and needed to reach. From these quarters the verdict was mixed but encouraging. "I am with him," said Douglas. Influential Tennesseans commended the "temperance and conservatism" of the address. And John Gilmer of North Carolina, though he had been unwilling to join Lincoln's cabinet, approved the president's first act in office. "What more does any reasonable Southern man expect or desire?" Gilmer asked.64

  63. The final version of the address is in ibid., 249–71.

  64. Douglas quoted in Providence Daily Post, Mar. 8, 1861, in Perkins, ed., Northern Editorials, 645; Tennesseans quoted in Reynolds, Editors Make War, 192; Gilmer quoted in Randall, Lincoln the President, I, 308–9.

  Lincoln had hoped to cool passions and buy time with his inaugural address—time to organize his administration, to prove his pacific intent, to allow the seeds of voluntary reconstruction to sprout. But when the new president went to his office for the first time on the morning after the inauguration, he received a jolt. On his desk lay a dispatch from Major Robert Anderson, commander of the Union garrison at Fort Sumter. Anderson reported that his supplies would last only a few more weeks. Time was running out.

  III

  Fort Sumter stood on a man-made granite island four miles from downtown Charleston at the entrance to the bay. With brick walls forty feet high and eight to twelve feet thick, designed to mount 146 big guns, this new fort when fully manned by 650 soldiers could stop anything trying to enter or leave the harbor. But at the beginning of December 1860 Fort Sumter was untenanted except by workmen completing the construction of its interior. Most of the eighty-odd soldiers of the U. S. garrison at Charleston occupied Fort Moultrie, an obsolete work a mile across the bay from Sumter on an island easily accessible from the mainland and exposed to capture from the rear. The Carolinians had expected to get Moultrie along with Sumter and all other United States property in Charleston for the asking. Even before seceding, South Carolina officials began pressing the Buchanan administration on this matter. After declaring its independence, the republic of South Carolina sent commissioners to Washington to negotiate for the forts and the arsenal. Their quest was backed by hundreds of militiamen in Charleston who vowed to drive the Yankees out if they did not leave voluntarily.

  The garrison at Fort Moultrie was not commanded by a Yankee, however. Major Robert Anderson was a Kentuckian, a former slaveowner who sympathized with the South but remained loyal to the flag he had served for thirty-five years. A man haunted by a tragic vision, Anderson wanted above all to avert a war that would divide his own family as well as his state and nation. Yet he knew that if war came, it was likely to start on the spot where he stood. Carolina hotspurs were straining at the leash; if they attacked, honor and his orders would require him to resist. Once the flag was fired upon and blood shed, there would be no stopping the momentum of war.

  Like Anderson, President Buchanan keenly desired to prevent such a calamity—at least until he left office on March 4. One way to forestall a clash, of course, was to withdraw the garrison. Though urged to do so by three southern members of his cabinet, Buchanan refused to go this far. He did promise South Carolina congressmen on December 10 not to send the reinforcements Anderson had requested. In return, South Carolina pledged not to attack Anderson while negotiations for transfer of the forts were going on. The Carolinians also understood Buchanan to have agreed not to change the military status quo at Charleston in any way.65

  While Buchanan dithered, Anderson acted. Interpreting ambiguous orders from the War Department as giving him authority to move his command from weak Fort Moultrie to powerful Fort Sumter if necessary to deter an attack, Anderson did so with stealth and skill after dark on the evening of December 26. Having made this move to preserve the peace, Anderson awoke next morning to find himself a hero in the North for thumbing his nose at the arrogant Carolinians and a villain to angry southerners who branded the occupation of Sumter as a violation of Buchanan's pledge. "You are today the most popular man in the nation," wrote a Chicagoan to Anderson. Leverett Saltonstall of Boston praised Anderson as the "one true man" in the country. "While you hold Fort Sumter, I shall not despair of our noble, our glorious Union." But the Charleston Mercury charged that Anderson's "gross breach of faith" had inaugurated civil war, while Jefferson Davis rushed to the White House to berate a "dishonored" president.66

  The harried Buchanan almost succumbed to southern insistence that he must order the garrison back to Moultrie. But he knew that if he did so, he and his party would lose their last shred of respect in the North. A prominent Democrat in New York reported that "Anderson's course is universally approved and if he is recalled or if Sumter is surrendered . . . Northern sentiment will be unanimous in favor of hanging Buchanan. . . . I am not joking—Never have I known the entire people

  65. Nevins, Emergence, II, 347–50, 357–58; Catton, Coming Fury, 145–46; Elbert B. Smith, The Presidency of James Buchanan (Lawrence, Kansas, 1975), 169–70.

  66. Northern statements and Charleston Mercury quoted in William A. Swanberg, First Blood: The Story of Fort Sumter (New York, 1957), 136, 108; Davis quoted in Smith, Buchanan, 179.

  more unanimous on any question. We are ruined if Anderson is disgraced or if Sumter is given up."67 A cabinet reshuffle also stiffened Buchanan's backbone. The southern members and one infirm Yankee resigned during December and early January. Into their places stepped staunch unionists, especially Secretary of War Joseph Holt (a Kentuckian), Attorney General Edwin M. Stanton, and Secretary of State Jeremiah Black. Stanton and Black drafted for Buchanan a reply to the South Carolina commissioners rejecting their demand for Sumter. Buoyed by this new experience of firmness, Buchanan went further—he approved a proposal by General-in-Chief Scott to reinforce Anderson.

  In an effort to minimize publicity and provocation, Scott sent the reinforcements (200 soldiers) and supplies on the unarmed merchant vessel Star of the West. Bungling marred the whole enterprise, however. Word of the mission leaked to the press, while the War Department failed to get notice of it to Anderson, so that the garrison at Sumter was about the only interested party that lacked advance knowledge of the Star of the West's arrival at the harbor entrance January 9. South Carolina artillery fired on the ship and scored one hit before her civilian captain, discretion eclipsing valor, turned around and headed out to sea. These could have been the opening shots of a civil war. But they were not—because Anderson did not fire back. Lacking information and orders, he did not want to start a war on his own responsibility. So the guns of Sumter remained silent.68

  Wrath in both North and South rose almost to the bursting point. But it did not burst. Despite mutual charges of aggression, neither side wanted war. Secessionists from other states quietly warned South Carolinians to cool down lest they provoke a conflict before the new Confederacy
was organized and ready. A tacit truce emerged whereby the Carolinians left the Sumter garrison alone so long as the government did not try again to reinforce it. A similar (and explicit) arrangement prevailed at Fort Pickens—where, in contrast to Sumter, the navy could have landed reinforcements on the island at any time well out of range of southern guns.

  Fort Pickens, however, remained something of a sideshow. The spotlight of history focused on Charleston and Fort Sumter. Anderson and

  67. Samuel L. M. Barlow to William M. Browne, Dec. 29, 1860, Barlow Papers. See also Stampp, And the War Came, 70–79.

  68. The best accounts of this incident are Catton, Coming Fury, 176–81, and Swanberg, First Blood, 144–49.

  his men became in northern eyes the defenders of a modern Thermopylae. James Buchanan and Governor Francis Pickens of South Carolina handed the fate of these men over to Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis. The new Confederate president sent another trio of commissioners to Washington to negotiate for the transfer of Forts Sum-ter and Pickens to his government. He also sent newly commissioned General Pierre G. T. Beauregard, a Louisianian, to take command of the thousands of militia and several dozen big seacoast guns and mortars ringing Charleston harbor and pointing at the lonely soldiers inside Fort Sumter.

  This was the situation when Lincoln learned on March 5 that the garrison was running short of supplies. The new president faced some hard choices. He could scrape together every available warship and soldier to shoot their way into the bay with supplies and reinforcements. But this would burden him with the onus of starting a war. It would divide the North and unite the South including most of the not-yet-seceded states. Or Lincoln could prolong peace and perhaps keep the upper South in the Union by withdrawing the garrison and yielding Sumter. But this too would divide the North, demoralize much of the Republican party, perhaps fatally wreck his administration, constitute an implicit acknowledgment of the Confederacy's independence, and send a signal to foreign governments whose diplomatic recognition the Confederacy was earnestly seeking. Or Lincoln could play for time, hoping to come up with some solution to preserve this vital symbol of sovereignty without provoking a war that would divide his friends and unite his enemies. Lincoln had six weeks at the outside to find a solution, for by then Anderson's men would be starved out of Sumter. These pressures sent the untried president to a sleepless bed with a sick headache more than once during those six weeks.69