Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1

by Michael Burlingame

  Some Moderates were conciliators rather than appeasers, favoring less drastic measures such as the repeal of Personal Liberty Laws, compensation to slaveowners for runaways, tougher enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, a constitutional convention to deal with the crisis, patrols along the border between Free and Slave States to discourage runaways, admittance of the territories to the Union immediately, a ban on the acquisition of more land, and guarantees of both the security of slavery where it already existed and the preservation of the internal slave trade.

  Lincoln, like most of his Northern constituents-to-be, sympathized with the hard-liners rather than with the appeasers or the conciliators. Though accommodating by nature, he stubbornly refused to be bullied. Truculent Southerners and timid Northerners could not make him submit to what he considered unreasonable demands. According to a journalist who interviewed him on November 13, Lincoln believed that his election “is only a public pretext for what has long been preparing;” that Southern hotheads had been plotting secession for years and were looking for a convenient excuse to carry out their plans; “that his position on all questions of public concern—all which affect the Slavery question nearly or remotely—is so well known that no declaration of his would change treasonable purposes already announced, and that a reiteration of views which are patent to all men who have sought to know them, would be an evidence of timidity which he does not feel, and of which he would have no man suspect him.”110 He shared the opinion of a Kentucky friend who told him that the “Hotspurs of the South will no doubt try a while to kick up a dust, but sober second thoughts may calm them down into a decent acquiescence to the choice of the Nation.”111 To make possible that sober second thought, those Hotspurs must be firmly resisted.

  The day before the election, Lincoln rejected the appeal of the prosperous Connecticut businessman and former Whig Henry S. Sanford to “reassure the men honestly alarmed” about the threat to the Union. “There are no such men,” Lincoln replied bluntly. He had, said he, “thought much about it—it is the trick by which the South breaks down every Northern man—I would go to Washington without the support of the men who supported me and were my friends before [the] election. I would be as powerless as a block of buckeye wood.” When Sanford persisted, Lincoln added: “The honest man (you talk of honest men) will look at our platform and what I have said—there they will find everything I could now say or which they would ask me to say.—all I could say would be but repetition. Having told them all these things ten times already would they believe the eleventh declaration[?] Let us be practical—there are many general terms afloat such as ‘conservatism’—‘enforcement of the irrepressible conflict at the point of the bayonet’—‘hostility to the South &c’—all of which mean nothing without definition. What then could I say to allay their fears, if they will not define what particular act or acts they fear from me or my friends?” When Sanford handed him letters from anxious merchants, Lincoln snapped: “[I] recognize them as a sett of liars and knaves.” Sanford then pointed out that Southerners were taking steps to arm themselves. “The North does not fear invasion from the Sl[ave] S[tates]—and we of the North certainly have no desire and never had to invade the South,” Lincoln insisted with some heat. “If I shall begin to yield to these threats—If I begin dallying with them, the men who have elected me, if I shall be elected, would give me up before my inauguration—and the South seeing it, would deliberately kick me out.” His first duty, Lincoln explained, “would be to stand by the men who elected me.”112 Sanford, “convinced that no right of the South will be imperilled” in a Lincoln administration, assured William C. Rives that the Rail-splitter’s speeches contained nothing that the Virginia Unionist “would have objected to in 1856” and that the “nigger question” would be solved without bloodshed.113

  Another resident of Connecticut, Lincoln’s former colleague in the U.S. House, Truman Smith, joined Sanford in urging that Lincoln issue a statement placating the South. But the president-elect declined, stressing that he must maintain his self-respect and succumb to no demands that he appease unreasonable Southerners. “It is with the most profound appreciation of your motive, and highest respect for your judgment too, that I feel constrained, for the present, at least, to make no declaration for the public,” he tactfully told Smith on November 10. “I could say nothing which I have not already said, and which is in print, and open for the inspection of all. To press a repetition of this upon those who have listened, is useless; to press it upon those who have refused to listen, and still refuse, would be wanting in self-respect, and would have an appearance of sycophancy and timidity, which would excite the contempt of good men, and encourage bad ones to clamor the more loudly. I am not insensible to any commercial or financial depression that may exist; but nothing is to be gained by fawning around the ‘respectable scoundrels’ who got it up. Let them go to work and repair the mischief of their own making; and then perhaps they will be less greedy to do the like again.”114

  To an interviewer, Lincoln again emphasized his desire to maintain his self-respect while confronting bullies: “I know the justness of my intentions and the utter groundlessness of the pretended fears of the men who are filling the country with their clamor. If I go into the Presidency, they will find me as I am on record—nothing less, nothing more. My declarations have been made to the world without reservation. They have been often repeated; and now, self-respect demands of me and the party that has elected me that when threatened I should be silent.”115 Other Republicans expressed similar views. Lincoln’s friend Thomas Marshall of Coles County told his fellow state senators, “I cherish this Union as dearly as any man in this chamber,” but, he insisted, “there is something dearer than even the Union—there is something dearer even than peace—it is manhood—it is principle.”116

  On November 16, Lincoln explained to visitors that “[m]y own impression is, at present, (leaving myself room to modify the opinion, if upon a further investigation I should see fit to do so), that this government possesses both the authority and the power to maintain its own integrity;” but, he added, that was “not the ugly point of this matter. The ugly point is the necessity of keeping the government together by force, as ours should be a government of fraternity.”117 When Judge Daniel Breck of Kentucky, a distant relative of Mrs. Lincoln, urged him to appoint conservatives to office and shun “obnoxious men” like Seward and Cassius M. Clay, Lincoln challenged him to identify a speech in which Seward “had ever spoken menacingly of the South.” He also “said that so far as he knew not one single prominent public Republican had justly made himself obnoxious to the South by anything he had said or done, and that they had only become so because the Southern politicians had so persistently bespotted and bespattered every northern man by their misrepresentations to rob them of what strength they might otherwise have[.]” Lincoln told Breck that the Kentuckian was in effect suggesting “that the Republicans should now again surrender the Government into the hands of the men they had just conquered.”118 Rhetorically he asked: “Does any man think that I will take to my bosom an enemy?” Breck concluded that the president-elect “was rather ultra in the Republican faith.”119

  That same day, in a sharply worded letter to a Democratic editor, Lincoln criticized Southern distortions of his views: “Please pardon me for suggesting that if the papers, like yours, which heretofore have persistently garbled, and misrepresented what I have said, will now fully and fairly place it before their readers, there can be no further misunderstanding. I beg you to believe me sincere when I declare I do not say this in a spirit of complaint or resentment; but that I urge it as the true cure for any real uneasiness in the country that my course may be other than conservative. The Republican newspapers now, and for some time past, are and have been republishing copious extracts from my many published speeches, which would at once reach the whole public if your class of papers would also publish them. I am not at liberty to shift my ground—that is out of the question. If I though
t a repetition would do any good I would make it. But my judgment is it would do positive harm. The secessionists, per se believing they had alarmed me, would clamor all the louder.”120 In December, Lincoln gave Thurlow Weed his views on secession: “my opinion is that no state can, in any way lawfully, get out of the Union, without the consent of the others; and that it is the duty of the President, and other government functionaries to run the machine as it is.”121

  During his first month as president-elect, Lincoln fended off appeals to placate the South by pointing out that he would not be officially chosen until December 5. “My time not having arrived,” he told a visitor in mid-November, “I am content to receive all possible light on the subject, and glad to be out of the ring.”122 He was following the policy of “masterly inactivity” recommended by several advisors and Republican editors. Because “Mr. Lincoln is nothing beyond a private American citizen at this time,” the Ohio State Journal argued on November 14 that it would be manifestly inappropriate for him to issue unofficial proclamations.123 Joseph Medill spoke for many Republicans when he insisted that Lincoln’s letter of acceptance and published speeches, along with the party’s platform, were sufficient: “There are a class of d[amne]d fools or knaves who want him to make a ‘union saving speech’—in other words to set down to conciliate the disunionists and fire-eaters. He must keep his feet out of all such wolf traps.”124

  On November 20, during the jubilation in Springfield, Lincoln spoke publicly for the first time since the election. His tone was far more conciliatory than the one he had used in dealing with Truman Smith, Henry S. Sanford, and others. A torchlight procession of Wide Awakes led an exultant crowd to his house, where they shouted themselves hoarse. Distinctly and emphatically, he told them: “I thank you, in common with all those who have thought fit, by their votes, to endorse the republican cause. [Applause.] I rejoice with you in the success which has so far attended that cause. [Applause.] Yet in all our rejoicings let us neither express nor cherish any harsh feelings towards any citizen who by his vote has differed with us. [Loud cheering.] Let us at all times remember that all American citizens are brothers of a common country, and should dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling. [Immense applause.]”125

  Although these vague remarks offered little to reassure the South, Lincoln penned a more explicit statement, which Lyman Trumbull incorporated into his speech that same day in Springfield. The president-elect had been urged to have a surrogate like Trumbull deliver such a message; a Tennessee merchant had advised him that secessionists in South Carolina “are sending their emisaries all over the South, and the people are made to believe that the Republicans are intending to emancipate the ignorant negroes by force. If some of your friends, (like Trumbull), would make a declaration that you were eminently conservative it would do no harm, but we at the South could use it to combat our political disunion antagonists.”126 Others seconded that suggestion.

  In his speech, Trumbull spoke the following words written by Lincoln: “I have labored in, and for, the Republican organization with entire confidence that whenever it shall be in power, each and all of the States will be left in as complete control of their own affairs respectively, and at as perfect liberty to choose, and employ, their own means of protecting property, and preserving peace and order within their respective limits, as they have ever been under any administration. Those who have voted for Mr. Lincoln, have expected, and still expect this; and they would not have voted for him had they expected otherwise. I regard it as extremely fortunate for the peace of the whole country, that this point, upon which the Republicans have been so long, and so persistently misrepresented, is now to be brought to a practical test, and placed beyond the possibility of doubt. Disunionists per se, are now in hot haste to get out of the Union, precisely because they perceive they can not, much longer, maintain apprehension among the Southern people that their homes, and firesides, and lives, are to be endangered by the action of the Federal Government. With such ‘Now, or never’ is the maxim.” Naively, Lincoln added this closing thought: “I am rather glad of this military preparation in the South. It will enable the people the more easily to suppress any uprisings there, which their misrepresentations of purposes may have encouraged.”127

  The press identified Lincoln as the author of these sentiments, and the public reaction confirmed his view that he should remain silent. Although Republican journals praised the speech, opposition papers did not. To Henry J. Raymond, editor of the New York Times, Lincoln explained: “On the 20th. inst. Senator Trumbull made a short speech which I suppose you have both seen and approved. Has a single newspaper, heretofore against us, urged that speech [upon its readers] with a purpose to quiet public anxiety? Not one, so far as I know. On the contrary the Boston Courier, and its’ class, hold me responsible for the speech, and endeavor to inflame the North with the belief that it foreshadows an abandonment of Republican ground by the incoming administration; while the Washington Constitution, and its’ class hold the same speech up to the South as an open declaration of war against them. This is just as I expected, and just what would happen with any declaration I could make. These political fiends are not half sick enough yet. ‘Party malice’ and not ‘public good’ possesses them entirely. ‘They seek a sign, and no sign shall be given them.’ ”128

  According to Henry Villard, the South’s reaction to Trumbull’s speech convinced people in Springfield (presumably including Lincoln) that “disunion has been determined upon, and that it will be accomplished at all hazards.” Almost all residents of the Illinois capital “have made up their minds to the certainty of the secession of South Carolina, and their apprehensions now centre in the question whether she will be followed by any other of the restive states. The ineffectiveness of Trumbull’s effort precludes the probability of another definition of Mr. Lincoln’s executive intentions in advance of the inaugural. A repetition of the attempt to pacify the South by mere words, without the additional guarantee of official acts, it is believed would prove equally fruitless, and perhaps be construed into a sign of fear and weakness.”129

  Criticizing Lincoln’s silence, Democrats sneered that he was “nothing but a weak, prejudiced local politician” from “a retired country village in the interior of Illinois,” a man of little understanding, “surrounded constantly by venal flatterers and breathing but one atmosphere … that created by the extreme and fanatical portion of his party.”130 In the draft of a speech he did not deliver, Lincoln explained his refusal to issue a public statement about the crisis: “During the present winter it has been greatly pressed upon me by many patriotic citizens … that I could in my position, by a word, restore peace to the country. But what word? I have many words already before the public; and my position was given me on the faith of those words. Is the desired word to be confirmatory of these; or must it be contradictory to them? If the former, it is useless repe[ti]tion; if the latter, it is dishonorable and treacherous. Again, it is urged as if the word must be spoken before the fourth of March. Why? Is the speaking the word a ‘sine qua non’ to the inaugeration? Is there a Bell-man, a Breckinridge-man, or a Douglas man, who would tolerate his own candidate to make such terms, had he been elected? Who amongst you would not die by the proposition, that your candidate, being elected, should be inaugerated, solely on the conditions of the constitution, and laws, or not at all.” Lincoln denied that his silence was “a matter of mere personal honor.”131

  Lincoln’s unwillingness to make a public declaration may have been a mistake. Such a document might have allayed fears in the Upper South and Border States and predisposed them to remain in the Union when hostilities broke out. But it might also have wrecked the Republican coalition and doomed his administration to failure before it began.

  Lincoln did not issue formal statements before leaving Springfield in February, but he did make his views known in other ways. He sometimes spoke about the crisis with visitors, who then leaked his remarks to the press. “He receives all wi
th winning affability, converses freely upon political topics, [and] does not hesitate to express his opinions thereon,” according to one report.132 But he would often qualify his remarks by saying that he hoped his callers “would bear in mind that he was not speaking as President, or for the President, but only exercising the privilege of talking which belonged to him, in common with private citizens.” He also possessed “the faculty of checking and turning conversation, when it seems to be taking a direction not likely to suit him, and of barring by his mere manner rising inquiries which ought not to be put.”133

  Lincoln occasionally let his guard down. When a visitor speculated that disunionists would seize Washington before his inauguration if they were not appeased, he replied: “I will suffer death before I will consent or will advise my friends to consent to any concession or compromise which looks like buying the privilege of taking possession of this government to which we have a constitutional right; because, whatever I might think of the merit of the various propositions before Congress, I should regard any concession in the face of menace the destruction of the government itself, and a consent on all hands that our system shall be brought down to a level with the existing disorganized state of affairs in Mexico.”134 This strong statement was widely published by Northern newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and the New York Tribune, both of which ran it daily below their mastheads. To a Missourian who urged him to support a “backdown declaration,” Lincoln replied with emphasis that he “would sooner go out into his backyard & hang himself.”135 On February 8, making yet another allusion to suicide, he answered an old friend who asked him if he would stand by his 1858 speeches, by the Chicago platform, and by the Constitution: “I will die before I will depart from any of those things under threats made by traitors and secessionists under arms, defying the government. I can go out to my barn and hang myself for the good of my country; but to stultify myself, my party, the people, to buy from the traitors for the people what are the people’s rights and dues, thus demoralizing the government and the Union, I shall never do it—no, never.” The friend to whom he made these remarks noted that Lincoln had “a dominant, ruling will on questions pertaining to the right, the just and the true.”136