The Battles that Made Abraham Lincoln

by Larry Tagg

  As warning shots across the bow of the growing movement toward compromise among the Republicans in Congress, Lincoln fired off letters, writing to three Illinois congressmen in four days. On December 10 he sent the first to Senator Lyman Trumbull, which began abruptly, “Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again. … The tug has to come, and better now than at any time hereafter.” He followed this with a similar letter the next day to Congressman William Kellogg: “Entertain no proposition for a compromise in regard to the extension of slavery.” A couple of days later, he wrote to Congressman Elihu Washburne, repeating the warning against compromise lest “immediately filibustering [as with William Walker in Nicaragua] and extending slavery recommences. On that point hold firm, as with a chain of steel.” On December 17, he indirectly informed a conference of Republican governors of his resolve. “Should the … Governors … seem desirous to know my views,” he wrote to his emissary, Thurlow Weed, “tell them you judge from my speeches that I will be inflexible on the territorial question.”

  Here Lincoln was at odds with the nation, even at odds with the North. With South Carolina hell-bent on leaving the Union, the masses now wanted compromise. As a result, Lincoln’s support had already started shrinking in the first days after his election. Many of the 40% minority of voters who voted for Lincoln in November had voted for his homespun image as “The Railsplitter,” or had voted Republican for the tariff, or homesteads, or against Democratic corruption—they had voted for Lincoln in spite of his stand on slavery, not because of it. These were the first to desert him. Even many anti-slavery Republicans were suddenly panicked, however, as a growing list of Deep South states prepared to secede. Seeing the republic threatened by Lincoln’s intransigence on the issue of slavery in the territories, they too abandoned the party ranks.

  “Iron-backed” Republicans were frantic at the mass defections. Norman Judd, meeting with Republicans in the Illinois legislature in December, reported “trouble holding them steady,” even in the rah-rah Republican milieu of the Illinois state capital. New York millionaire Moses Grinnell warned Seward that “many of our Republican friends have strong sympathies with those who are ready to yield… .” Banker August Belmont of New York wrote of the thousands there who were repenting their votes for Lincoln, men he met every day “who confess the error, and almost with tears in their eyes wish they could undo what they helped to do.” Now that committees in Congress were putting their heads together for a solution—which would necessarily demand compromise—the pro-slavery New York Herald, on December 9, confidently predicted that “better things will occur within a fortnight than the most ultra of either side anticipate.” The 22-year-old Henry Adams, grandson and greatgrandson of presidents, with his privileged view into the Republican heart from family’s parlor in Washington, was in despair over the wavering lines in the Senate and House. It looked to him as though the old story would be retold: the anti-slavery legions would throw down their swords in the face of Southern hostility. Adams wrote to his brother on December 9, listing “very fishy and weak-kneed” senators. A full third of Republicans were not to be trusted, he said. And the situation was only getting worse. On December 13, Adams wrote to his brother again, warning him to “prepare yourself for a complete disorganization of our party. … How many there will be faithful unto the end, I cannot say, but I fear me much, not a third of the House.” By January 3 the Herald was crowing that many of the Republicans, victorious in November, now wanted adjustment, and that they were restrained from saying so only out of fear of the militant Republican press.

  “Consulting the Oracle.” Columbia, standing for the people, gives Lincoln a “Constitutional Amendment”; he has put the “Chicago Platform” behind him.

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  To show the incredible lengths to which the overwhelming majority of Northerners were willing to go to avoid the breakup of the Union in the Secession Winter, it is revealing to examine the most serious compromise proposal under consideration in the Senate in December: the Crittenden Compromise, so called after its sponsor, Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky. This document would have guaranteed for all eternity a hands-off policy toward slavery by the federal government. It contained a series of six unalterable constitutional amendments—amendments “no future amendment of the Constitution shall affect”—the most important of which recognized slavery of the African race “in all territory now held or hereafter acquired” south of the Missouri Compromise line. It also added that no future amendment should ever alter the three-fifths rule (for counting slaves for representation), nor abridge the right to recover fugitive slaves, nor give Congress power to encroach on slavery in the states where it already existed.

  It is hard to imagine a proposal more at odds with the Chicago platform that Lincoln was dedicated to uphold. Yet converts to the new plan were streaming out of the Republican fold. Railway president John Brodhead of Philadelphia claimed that half of the Pennsylvanians who had voted for Lincoln now supported Crittenden; he was sure that “three fourths of the people of Pennsylvania and New Jersey warmly approve” the plan. Jay Gould, too, estimated “not less than a hundred thousand majority” in favor of compromise in Pennsylvania. New York insurance magnate James DePeyster Ogden wrote to Crittenden that conservatives were leaving the Republican Party, and that even moderates were pressing for compromise. Horatio Seymour predicted a New York majority of 150,000 in favor of the amendments—in New York City alone, 63,000 signed a petition endorsing the plan. In Massachusetts, a greater number signed petitions for Crittenden in December than had voted for Lincoln the month before. Crittenden himself was encouraged, he said, by “commendation … from high Republican sources.” Others, such as John A. Dix of New York, looked ahead “with strong confidence that we could carry three-fourths of the States” needed to ratify the amendments. Governor Hicks of Maryland wrote to Crittenden on December 13 that millions were loyal to the cause of compromise, and the number was growing rapidly. Horace Greeley himself later admitted that, if it had been submitted to a popular vote, the Crittenden Compromise would have carried “by the hundreds of thousands.”

  The clamor for Crittenden’s amendments mirrored the erosion of support for Abraham Lincoln in the first few weeks after his election. Starting with his absurdly low 40% election figure, and using as a guide Henry Adams’ estimate of the December defections of his supporters in Congress—by one-third in the Senate, by perhaps two-thirds in the House—it is probable that, in the Secession Winter of 1860-1861, Lincoln’s support—his “approval rating,” in modern parlance—was no more than 25% nationwide, and that, even in the North, his support had dwindled to around 40%. This, indeed, was the estimate of the December 19, 1860, New York Herald. Half Lincoln’s 1,800,000 votes had been Whigs and 315,000 party-jumping Democrats, the Herald claimed. Half those Whigs and all the Democrats, it surmised, were indifferent or hostile to his anti-slavery, leaving barely 1,000,000—less than one-fourth the 4.7 million who voted in 1860—to support Lincoln in his stand on slavery. Lincoln’s woeful slide in popularity in the month after his election is further borne out by returns from Massachusetts, where, in the local elections of December, the Republicans’ 51% November majority slid to a 40% minority.

  But there would be no opportunity for the huge anti-Lincoln, pro-compromise majority to express itself. No compromise plan was ever submitted to the people. Extremists from both sides, over-represented in Congress, thwarted it. Congressmen from the Deep South would refuse to consider a compromise even if it had been offered—for their constituents, the word “compromise” connoted dishonor, as in the “compromise” of a woman’s virtue. And in the North, there were enough stalwart Republicans to prevent any compromise from being offered in the first place. On December 22, the Crittenden Compromise was killed in committee. On January 16, Republican ultras defeated it again on the Senate floor, with the help of Deep South senators who refused to cast vote
s.

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  On the evening of December 20, South Carolina seceded, declaring, “The union is dissolved!” and citizens wild with delight lit every light in the city and poured into the streets to celebrate, with the sound of brass bands, clanging church bells, and one hundred roaring cannon ringing in their ears, amid bonfires, fireworks, and a military parade. Over the next six weeks, all six Deep South states, from Florida to Texas, followed South Carolina out of the Union. Overnight, the vital question became not whether a man was for or against slavery, but whether he was for or against secession. The sides were completely reshuffled. Extremists on both sides of the slavery question sought a separation; those in the middle wanted the Union preserved.

  Lincoln was late to see the shift, tone deaf to the martial music that sounded in the angry Southern declarations. Lincoln in mid-December showed his inability to fathom the Southern sensitivity on the subject of slavery in a revealing letter to North Carolina congressman John A. Gilmer in which he said, “On the territorial question I am inflexible … . On that there is a difference between you and us; and it is the only substantial difference. You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. For this neither has any just occasion to be angry with the other.” A week later Lincoln again discounted the explosiveness of this central question in a letter to Alex Stephens of Georgia: “You think slavery is right and ought to be extended, while we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. That, I suppose, is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.” Lincoln showed a failure of imagination when he thus dismissed a world of Southern feeling on this crucial subject. Was the difference, for him, merely abstract? Lincoln showed himself to have temporarily lost his sure sense for the workings of the heart of the common man.

  From December to February, the country was thrown into an uproar as state after state left the Union and seized the Federal customs houses, forts, mints, and arsenals on their soil. Lincoln could only watch in despair as the paralyzed Buchanan government did nothing to block the exodus. In January, the Illinois state legislature convened, and Lincoln moved from the governor’s office across the street to a dusty empty room over Smith’s store, where he wrestled alone with the Republic’s sins. What was to be done with the seceding states? What was to be done with the federal property in those states? How would Federal authority be extended into a region that did not recognize that authority? Should he use the military to coerce the South into returning? On these questions, as before, Lincoln kept silent.

  During the weeks before his departure for Washington, while he grappled with these questions, he was assaulted by an army of office-seekers who descended in swarms and jammed every hotel room in Springfield, eager for spoils. It was a miserable and disgraceful invasion that so profoundly offended him that he was sick of office before he got into it, according to his law partner, William Herndon. At the same time, he had to meet for the first time with the leaders of his party and choose a Cabinet. All of this was necessary to unite a polyglot party that had years of practice in the role of The Opposition, but no experience in actually wielding power. Moreover, he had to write the most important inaugural address in the nation’s history. Meanwhile, so many threats had been made, so many rumors were in the air, that party leaders feared Lincoln would never live to be inaugurated. He watched the nation disintegrate as a result of his election, an unknown President-elect with views so profoundly unpopular that he dared not utter them before he took office.

  Under the combined weight of responsibilities and threats no American, certainly no private citizen, had ever known, Lincoln’s soul passed into shadow. He began a “wilderness” period plagued by a melancholy so black and thick it would last through the rest of the Secession Winter. His friend W. H. L. Wallace wrote to his wife, “I have seen Mr. Lincoln two or three times since I have been here, but only for a moment & he is continually surrounded by a crowd of people. He has a world of responsibility & seems to feel it & to be oppressed by it. He looks care worn & more haggard & stooped than I ever saw him.” Another friend who saw him then reported, “Not only was the old-time zest lacking, but in its place was a gloom and despondency.” It was during this time that he saw a vision in a mirror of two Lincolns—one alive, one dead. He took it to mean that he would not survive his presidency.

  Chapter 11

  The Journey to Washington

  “His speeches put to flight all notions of greatness.”

  With all the menacing rumors coming from the South, the timing of Lincoln’s arrival in Washington was sensitive. Tradition had it that the incoming President should appear in the capital in mid-February, a couple of weeks before the inauguration. There had been so many threats of assassination, however, that the journey to Washington for the swearing-in had taken on an air of suspense. Lincoln’s friend Ward Hill Lamon, who accompanied him as a bodyguard, wrote, “Some thought the cars might be thrown from the track; some thought he would be surrounded and stabbed in some great crowd; others thought he might be shot from a house-top as he rode up Pennsylvania Avenue on inauguration day; while others still were sure he would be quietly poisoned long before the 4th of March.” Many of his friends had advised the President-elect to come as swiftly and as quietly as possible, avoiding all publicity. Medill of the Chicago Tribune wrote to Lincoln, as a “volunteer sentinel on the walls,” that enemies planned to seize Washington with an army and that Lincoln should grab his “carpet sack” and hurry down. The cautious Lincoln, however, favored delay: “Our adversaries have us now clearly at disadvantage. On the second Wednesday of February, when the [electoral] votes should be officially counted, if the two Houses refuse to meet at all, or meet without a quorum of each, where shall we be? … In view of this, I think it best for me not to attempt appearing in Washington till the result of that ceremony is known.”

  With his approach to Washington thus closely gauged, Abraham Lincoln on February 11 gave a short address to the gathered townspeople of Springfield in a cold rain, disappeared into a train car, and headed east on his journey to Washington. So many towns and cities had invited him to visit that Lincoln felt obliged to schedule a long, slow, winding itinerary of 1,600 miles on eighteen different railroads. The train would travel at a sustained thirty miles an hour, guarded by flagmen stationed at every crossing and every half-mile along the track. There were some public objections to this “royal procession.” The Crisis of Columbus, Ohio, objected to the holiday atmosphere of the procession, and chided, “So we shall have an ‘ovation’ before he reaches the capital of the nation. How little he seems to estimate the troubled times, the importance of his position, or the true theory of our system.”

  As he had said repeatedly for months, Lincoln was determined not to say anything that would anticipate his upcoming inaugural address. He thus plunged himself into a difficult situation. He was handicapped by the need to remain extremely guarded lest some careless utterance be taken as future government policy and ignite combustible public opinion in the slave states. He had nevertheless consented to speak at official welcomes in numerous major cities, as well as dozens of minor stops where he would show himself on the rear platform, bow, and deliver a few pleasant remarks along the route.

  It would have been better if he had not spoken at all. Lincoln was not good at impromptu speeches. He tended to fumble with lame clichés when he had not prepared his thoughts and written them down beforehand. He had never been comfortable with appearing before crowds and saying high-sounding nothings. He was the opposite of the great orators of the day. When he had nothing to say, he could not cover the lack with pretty phrases. Without a vision, his gifts deserted him. His speeches on the twelve-day train journey were unfortunate. They were most often trite, and where they were not trite they were evasive, and where they were not evasive they were harmful. He left his listeners with off-the-cuff remarks that all too often gave the impression that a pitiably unfit man was about to take office
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  On one of his very first stops, in Tolono, Illinois, he stepped onto the rear platform and delivered to the crowd only a maddeningly inadequate platitude: “Let us believe, as some poet has expressed it, ‘Behind the cloud, the sun is still shining.’” He then disappeared into his car. Later that day, in Indianapolis, he made the homely observation that according to the secessionists’ view, the Union “as a family relation, would not be anything like a regular marriage at all, but only … a sort of free-love arrangement to be maintained on what that sect calls passionate attraction.” The Hoosiers on hand roared with laughter. But seeing the words in print, readers nationwide were appalled by what they considered his vulgar remarks. “Who would have supposed,” clucked the New Orleans Daily Crescent, “that a man elevated to the Presidency of a nation would indulge in comparisons of this sort? Imagine George Washington or James Madison, on their way to the capital, making public speeches, destined to be read by the whole world, in which illustrations were drawn from such sources as these! … No wonder Seward … should hesitate to accept a position in the Cabinet of one who has so poor an opinion of the popular intelligence, and so small an appreciation of the dignity of his office, as Mr. Lincoln displayed in his speech at Indianapolis.”

  In Indianapolis also, Lincoln broke his rule against saying anything of substance, and learned a bruising lesson. When he stepped off the train, Governor Oliver P. Morton had set the tone with a speech that was not an official welcome but rather a declaration of policy, exhorting Lincoln to stand firm for the Union. Lincoln, following Morton’s lead, spoke that evening on the sensitive subject of whether asserting Federal authority could be fairly construed as “coercing” the Southern states. What if the government simply held or recaptured its own forts, or enforced the laws by collecting duties, or stopped the mails where they were being violated? “Would any or all of these things be coercion?” he asked rhetorically. For the next few days, newspapers all over the South twisted the speech to mean that Lincoln promised invasion and bloodshed, and was only waiting until he was in office to begin the war. The Louisville Courier cried, “It is a war proposition couched in language intended to conceal the enormity of the crime beneath pretexts too absurd to require exposure and fallacies too flimsy to deceive the most stupid.” The Nashville Patriot attacked not the proposition but the man: “Whatever may have been the motive which suggested the Indianapolis harangues,” it declared, “there can be no mistake as to one thing, and that is they prove him to be a narrow-minded Republican partisan incapable apparently of rising to the attitude of statesmanship necessary to a thorough comprehension of the national crisis, and the remedies demanded by patriotism to preserve the government he has been selected to administer.”