Many Republicans shared Lincoln’s belief that slaveholders fully intended to have the country expand southwards and that Northern Democrats supported them. William J. Gregg of Paris, Illinois, predicted that if the Crittenden Compromise were adopted, “the democracy in company with the disunionists will commence their filibustering for the acquisition of Cuba, Mexico, South America etc.”192 Throughout the 1850s, Douglas had been calling for the annexation of Cuba, and in 1854 the Ostend Manifesto—which warned Spain that if she did not sell that island to the United States, Americans had every right to seize it—made clear that he was not alone. The Democratic Party supported the acquisition of Cuba and an aggressive Caribbean foreign policy. “We shall have an empire sufficiently large for our purposes and for empire during the next hundred years,” predicted the Charleston Mercury. “In the meantime, we shall colonize Texas throughout, and Chihuahua [Mexico] and a few more good Southern States. We shall have all the Gulf country when once we have shaken ourselves free of the Puritans.” A Georgia editor scouted the argument that the Confederacy’s expansion southward could be thwarted by Indians, Spaniards, blacks, or Creoles, “for the dominant race will supplant all others, and slavery will expand South to Brazil, and from her till stopped by snow. It may be an evil, but like cholera, no power can check it but frost.”193 Lincoln’s argument was no mere straw man but reflected his genuine belief that to accept the Crittenden Compromise would strengthen the expansionists’ hand, with potentially dire consequences for the cause of freedom.
Lincoln’s emphatic opposition to the Crittenden Compromise was partly responsible for its defeat in the Committee of Thirteen on December 22 and in the senate on January 16. On the day of the first vote, Charles Francis Adams observed that the “declarations coming almost openly from Mr Lincoln have had the effect of perfectly consolidating the Republicans.”194 Senator Henry Wilson reported that some congressional Republicans “are weak; most of them are firm. Lincoln’s firmness helps our weak ones.”195
It was one of Lincoln’s most fateful decisions, for the Kentucky senator’s scheme, though fraught with many practical problems and silent on the constitutionality of secession and the right of a legally-elected president to govern, represented the best hope of placating the Upper South and thus possibly averting war, though it was a forlorn hope at best, given Southern intransigence. The House Committee of Thirty-Three might have approved Crittenden’s plan, which Conditional Unionists of the Upper South regarded as the bare minimum for remaining in the Union, if the Democrats had not insisted that slavery be protected south of the 36° 30’ line in all future acquisitions as well as in territory already belonging to the United States. Though senate Republicans rejected the compromise, it still could have passed the upper house on January 16 if three of the six Southern senators in attendance had voted for it instead of abstaining. Similarly, on December 22 if two abstaining Democratic senators on the Committee of Thirteen had voted for the compromise, it would have received the endorsement of that body. In light of these facts, Duff Green’s allegation that the Civil War was the result of Lincoln’s refusal to back the Crittenden Compromise hardly seems warranted.
Stiff-backed Republicans cheered Lincoln’s course. Carl Schurz told his wife that the president-elect “stands firm as an oak” and that “his determination has communicated itself to the timid members of the party.”196 After visiting Springfield in early January, Indiana Congressman George W. Julian reported that he was “quite captivated” by Lincoln. “He is right,” Julian told a friend. “His backbone is pronounced good by the best judges.”197 Julian’s father-in-law, the old antislavery warhorse Joshua Giddings, came away from an interview with the president-elect convinced that “he intends doing right and will act according to the dictates of his conscience” and “in the most perfect good faith endeavor to carry out the doctrines of the Republican platform.”198 Missouri Congressman Frank Blair met with Lincoln and said that he was “as firm as the rock of ages” and that he “will live up to the principles on which he was elected.”199 The leading senate Radical, Charles Sumner, was optimistic about defeating compromise proposals because “Lincoln stands firm. I know it.”200 Sumner’s ally and future biographer, Edward L. Pierce, rejoiced “to learn that Lincoln is stiffening the backs of our men.”201 Not every Radical agreed. Charles Henry Ray, who called Lincoln “patriotic and honest,” nonetheless thought that “more iron would do him no harm.”202
Lincoln could not be aware that his rejection of the Crittenden plan would necessarily help pave the road to war. He believed that if he were conciliatory on all matters other than slavery expansion and secession, the Upper South and the Border States would remain in the Union and that the Deep South, after a sober second thought, might return to the fold. In retrospect, that seems like wishful thinking, but it was not unreasonable, given the size of the Bell and Douglas vote in the South and other indications that disunionism enjoyed only limited popularity there. On April 6, the eminent author John Pendleton Kennedy of Baltimore observed that “there is great reason to doubt, if the people of Louisiana, or Texas or Georgia are actually in favor of the secession.” Moreover, he noted, Unionism prevailed in northern Alabama, Arkansas, and the Border States. The South Carolina secession ordinance had not been submitted to the voters for ratification; the same held true for five of the six other Cotton states—Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Louisiana—which followed suit that winter. (Texas was the sole exception.) In February the voters of Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee decisively rejected secession. In Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland, and Missouri, disunion efforts also fizzled. Even in the Deep South, Unionism was hardly extinct. In January, Georgia’s immediate secessionists barely won a majority of the votes cast; in the subsequent convention, they carried a crucial motion by the narrow margin of 166 to 130. In Louisiana and Alabama, disunionist candidates did not win by landslides. In fact, fair plebiscites in those three states may well have revealed that immediate secessionists were in the minority. Lincoln said that it “was probably true” that the Louisiana secession ordinance “was adopted against the will of a majority of the people.”203 (It should be borne in mind, however, that the “cooperationists,” those who resisted secession on a state-by-state basis rather than collectively, were not necessarily Unionists but moderate rather than radical secessionists.) It was widely believed that many secessionists had no intention of leaving the Union permanently but simply wanted to strengthen their bargaining position in negotiations with the North, hoping to extort concessions through a temporary withdrawal.
If Lincoln overestimated the depth and extent of Southern Unionism, secessionists underestimated Northern resolve to resist their scheme. Misleading them were conservative newspapers like the Detroit Free Press, which that winter warned Republicans that “if the refusal to repeal the personal liberty laws shall be persisted in, and if there shall not be a change in the present seeming purpose to yield to no accommodation of national difficulties, and if troops shall be raised in the North to march against the people of the South, a fire in the rear will be opened on such troops which will either stop their march altogether or wonderfully accelerate it.”204 Ohio Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham declared that he would shoulder arms to fend off an attack on his state but not to invade the South. After hostilities began, the New Orleans Bee acknowledged that such reassurances “completely deceived” thousands of Southerners. “There is no doubt whatever,” said the editors, “that an opinion prevailed among us that if Lincoln should attempt to make war upon the South, the conservative element in the North would overwhelm his administration, and by timely diversions would extend aid and succor to us.”205
Lincoln may have anticipated that war would follow the rejection of the Crittenden Compromise, but he might also have reckoned that the Upper South and Border States would assist in putting down Cotton State rebels. An editorial in the Illinois State Journal, perhaps by the president-elect, argued that the Deep Sout
h had different economic interests from the other Slave States. Secession “would certainly render the recapture of fugitive slaves utterly impossible when they had once crossed the northern border,” and thus “slave property would at once become a hundred fold more precarious than it is now,” especially in those states close to the Ohio River and the Mason-Dixon line. Moreover, the Upper South and the Border States had reason to fear that the Cotton States might reopen the African slave trade, thus drastically reducing the price of their most lucrative export, slaves. “We are of opinion, therefore, that it will be entirely safe for the Free States, who are perfectly united in their attachment to the Union and the Constitution as it is, to abide by that, make no alterations in it, and no compromise of its principles. We also incline to the belief that the great body of the border Slave States are pretty much of the same opinion, and at all events, doubtful whether they would gain anything by tinkering at the Constitution. If the Cotton States are not satisfied with this, as it appears they are not, and persist in their mad schemes of secession—the General Government will of course have to do its duty, and see that the Constitution and laws are faithfully observed in South Carolina as well as in Massachusetts. And if any extra force is needed for this purpose, we think that the border Slave States, whose tranquility and interests are more imperiled than those of any other part of the country, are just as likely to furnish it as any other part of the Union.”206
By the same token, many Southerners misjudged Northern economic divisions. The New Orleans Bee pointed out that there “were not wanting among us … numbers of shrewd and experienced citizens who calculated largely on the commercial ties and identity of interests between the South and West, and who believed that ultimately Ohio, Indiana, and other States in that quarter would be glad to unite their destinies with those of a Southern Confederacy.”207 This view was not entirely confined to the South. An Ohio legislator predicted that his state and its neighbors “will never consent that the mouth of the Miss. River shall be held by a foreign power. In case of a rupture between the Slave and free States All our pecuniary interests will drive us in Ohio with the South. We cannot afford to pay Tariff[s] to keep up eastern manufacturers alone.”208
Others argued that economic considerations would impel Midwesterners to crush any Southern rebellion. An Illinois Democratic congressman boldly declared that he would prefer “war for five hundred years, rather than the exclusion of the people of the Upper Mississippi from the unshackled navigation of that river to its mouth.”209
Lincoln doubtless shared the widespread, misguided belief that if war broke out, it would be short and relatively bloodless.
18
“What If I Appoint Cameron, Whose Very
Name Stinks in the Nostrils of the People
for His Corruption?”
Cabinet-Making in Springfield
(1860–1861)
As he struggled with the thorny problem of secession, Lincoln faced a related challenge: selecting a cabinet. Should he take a Southerner from either the Democratic or Constitutional Unionist parties? Many Republican conciliators urged him to appoint at least one of them to his cabinet. He was not averse to the suggestion, telling Herndon “that he wanted to give the South, by way of placation, a place in his cabinet; that a fair division of the country entitled the Southern States to a reasonable representation there.”1 But who? Among the Republicans, should he select only ex-Whigs, or should he form a coalition government including ex-Democrats? Should he favor the Conservatives, the Moderates, or the Radicals? The day after the election he had tentatively chosen his department chiefs, but six weeks later he complained that “the making of a cabinet, now that he had it to do, was by no means as easy as he had supposed.” He believed “that while the population of the country had immensely increased, really great men were scarcer than they used to be.”2
Throughout the long weeks from the election until his departure from Springfield in February 1861, callers besieged Lincoln offering advice about the cabinet. As one of them observed, “he is troubled,” for “every name he mentions in connection with [the] Cabinet brings to Springfield an army of Patriotic Individuals protesting against this or that man[’]s appointment.”3 To his old friend, Illinois attorney Joseph Gillespie, Lincoln expressed the desire to “take all you lawyers down there with me, Democrats and Republicans alike, and make a Cabinet out of you. I believe I could construct one that would save the country, for then I would know every man and where he would fit. I tell you, there are some Illinois Democrats, whom I know well, that I would rather trust than a Republican I would have to learn, for I’ll have no time to study the lesson.”4
Lincoln, unlike many executives, had no fear of surrounding himself with strong-willed subordinates who might overshadow him. When advised not to appoint Salmon P. Chase to a cabinet post because the Ohioan regarded himself as “a great deal bigger” than the president-elect, Lincoln asked: “Well, do you know of any other men who think they are bigger than I am? I want to put them all in my cabinet.”5 He included every major competitor at the Chicago Convention in his cabinet, a decision that required unusual self-confidence, a quality misunderstood by some, including his assistant personal secretary, John Hay. Deeming modesty “the most fatal and most unsympathetic of vices” and the “bane of genius, the chain-and-ball of enterprise,” Hay argued that it was “absurd to call him a modest man.”6 But Hay was projecting onto his boss his own immodesty. Lincoln was, in fact, both remarkably modest and self-confident, and he had no need to surround himself with sycophants dependent on him for political preferment. Instead he chose men with strong personalities, large egos, and politically significant followings whose support was necessary for the administration’s success.
Initial Appointments
Seward’s stature as a leading exponent of Republican principles virtually guaranteed that he would be named secretary of state. Though physically unprepossessing, he had a powerful personality and a keen intellect. His small body contrasted with his enormous head, which featured deep-set eyes, a huge Roman nose, a wide, deep forehead, and a receding chin. Henry Adams limned him memorably as “a slouching, slender figure” with “a head like a wise macaw; a beaked nose; shaggy eyebrows; unorderly hair and clothes; hoarse voice; offhand manner; free talk, and perpetual cigar.”7 He charmed friend and foe alike. One of his bitterest enemies in the Lincoln administration, Montgomery Blair, called him “a kindly man in his social relations” who “had a warm and sympathetic feeling for all that pertained to his domestic life.” Blair “always found his society attractive” because of the “freshness and heartiness in his manner” and his humorous conversation.8 William Howard Russell of the London Times deemed Seward “a subtle, quick man, rejoicing in power” and “fond of badinage, bursting with the importance of state mysteries.”9 Although he got off to a rocky start with Lincoln, the two men became close friends. The president valued Seward’s wit, charm, bonhomie, and competence.
Lincoln offered Seward the State Department portfolio on December 8 after some elaborate preliminary maneuvering. Weed attempted to inveigle the president-elect into calling on the senator at his Auburn home, just as William Henry Harrison before his inauguration in 1841 had conferred with Henry Clay at Clay’s Kentucky estate. When Lincoln refused to follow Harrison’s example, Weed tried to persuade him to meet with Seward in Chicago; Lincoln rejected that proposal as well.
Lincoln may have been reluctant to meet in Chicago because he wanted to avoid a repetition of the disagreeable experience he had had there in late November while discussing cabinet appointments with Hannibal Hamlin. Chicago’s local elite had ridiculed him and his wife for their unsophisticated ways, and when he was back in Springfield, he complained about the social whirl he had endured in the metropolis. Henry Villard reported from the Illinois capital that Lincoln’s description “of the dinner and other parties, and the Sunday school meetings he had to attend—of the crowds of [the] curious that importuned him at all hours of
the day, of the public levees he was obliged to hold, &c., &c., was graphic. It seems that instead of enjoying rest and relief, as expected, he was even more molested than in this place. If people only knew his holy horror of public ovations, they would probably treat him more sparingly. To be lugged around from place to place to satisfy the curiosity of the populace, is a doubtful mode of bestowing honor and rendering homage, &c. Mr. Lincoln’s experience at Chicago in this respect will probably deter him from undertaking another journey previous to his final departure for Washington City.”10
Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 1 Page 128
