Lincoln

N >> Nathaniel Wright Stephenson >> Lincoln


During the first half of March, the Washington government marked time.
The office-seekers continued to besiege the President. South Carolina
continued to clamor for possession of Sumter. The Confederacy sent
commissioners to Washington whom Lincoln refused to recognize. The
Virginia Convention swayed this way and that.

Seward went serenely about his business, confident that everything was
certain to come his way soon or late. He went so far as to advise an
intermediary to tell the Confederate Commissioners that all they had
to do to get possession of Sumter was to wait. The rest of the Cabinet
pressed their ears more tightly than ever to the ground. The rumblings
of vox populi were hard to interpret. The North appeared to be in two
minds. This was revealed the day following the inauguration, when a
Republican Club in New York held a high debate upon the condition of the
country. One faction wanted Lincoln to declare for a war-policy; another
wished the Club to content itself with a vote of confidence in the
Administration. Each faction put its views into a resolution and as a
happy device for maintaining harmony, both resolutions were passed.(10)
The fragmentary, miscellaneous evidence of newspapers, political
meetings, the talk of leaders, local elections, formed a confused clamor
which each listener interpreted according to his predisposition. The
members of the Cabinet in their relative isolation at Washington found
it exceedingly difficult to make up their minds what the people were
really saying. Of but one thing they were certain, and that was that
they represented a minority party. Before committing themselves any way,
it was life and death to know what portion of the North would stand by
them.(11)

At this point began a perplexity that was to torment the President
almost to the verge of distraction. How far could he trust his military
advisers? Old General Scott was at the head of the army. He had once
been a striking, if not a great figure. Should his military advice be
accepted as final? Scott informed Lincoln that Sumter was short of food
and that any attempt to relieve it would call for a much larger force
than the government could muster. Scott urged him to withdraw the
garrison. Lincoln submitted the matter to the Cabinet. He asked for
their opinions in writing.(12) Five advised taking Scott at his word and
giving up all thought of relieving Sumter. There were two dissenters.
The Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon Portland Chase, struck the
key-note of his later political career by an elaborate argument on
expediency. If relieving Sumter would lead to civil war, Chase was not
in favor of relief; but on the whole he did not think that civil
war would result, and therefore, on the whole, he favored a relief
expedition. One member of the Cabinet, Montgomery Blair, the Postmaster
General, an impetuous, fierce man, was vehement for relief at all costs.
Lincoln wanted to agree with Chase and Blair. He reasoned that if the
fort was given up, the necessity under which it was done would not
be fully understood; that by many it would be construed as part of a
voluntary policy, that at home it would discourage the friends of the
Union, embolden its adversaries, and go far to insure to the matter a
recognition abroad.

Nevertheless, with the Cabinet five to two against him, with his
military adviser against him, Lincoln put aside his own views. The
government went on marking time and considering the credentials of
applicants for country post-offices.

By this time, Lincoln had thrown off the overpowering gloom which
possessed him in the latter days at Springfield. It is possible he
had reacted to a mood in which there was something of levity. His
oscillation of mood from a gloom that nothing penetrated to a sort of
desperate mirth, has been noted by various observers. And in 1861 he
had not reached his final poise, that firm holding of the middle
way,---which afterward fused his moods and made of him, at least in
action, a sustained personality.

About the middle of the month he had a famous interview with Colonel W.
T. Sherman who had been President of the University of Louisiana and had
recently resigned. Senator John Sherman called at the White House with
regard to "some minor appointments in Ohio." The Colonel went with him.
When Colonel Sherman spoke of the seriousness of the Secession movement,
Lincoln replied, "Oh, we'll manage to keep house." The Colonel was so
offended by what seemed to him the flippancy of the President that he
abandoned his intention to resume the military life and withdrew from
Washington in disgust.(13)

Not yet had Lincoln attained a true appreciation of the real difficulty
before him. He had not got rid of the idea that a dispute over slavery
had widened accidentally into a needless sectional quarrel, and that as
soon as the South had time to think things over, it would see that it
did not really want the quarrel. He had a queer idea that meanwhile he
could hold a few points on the margin of the Seceded States, open custom
houses on ships at the mouths of harbors, but leave vacant all Federal
appointments within the Seceded States and ignore the absence of their
representatives from Washington.(14) This marginal policy did not seem
to him a policy of coercion; and though he was beginning to see that the
situation from the Southern point of view turned on the right of a State
to resist coercion, he was yet to learn that idealistic elements of
emotion and of political dogma were the larger part of his difficulty.

Meanwhile, the upper South had been proclaiming its idealism. Its
attitude was creating a problem for the lower South as well as for the
North. The pro-slavery leaders had been startled out of a dream. The
belief in a Southern economic solidarity so complete that the secession
of any one Slave State would compel the secession of all the others,
that belief had been proved fallacious. It had been made plain that
on the economic issue, even as on the issue of sectional distrust,
the upper South would not follow the lower South into secession. When
delegates from the Georgia Secessionists visited the legislature of
North Carolina, every courtesy was shown to them; the Speaker of the
House assured them of North Carolina's sympathy and of her enduring
friendliness; but he was careful not to suggest an intention to secede,
unless (the condition that was destiny!) an attempt should be made to
violate the sovereignty of the State by marching troops across her soil
to attack the Confederates. Then, on the one issue of State sovereignty,
North Carolina would leave the Union.(15) The Unionists in Virginia
took similar ground. They wished to stay in the Union, and they were
determined not to go out on the issue of slavery. Therefore they laid
their heads together to get that issue out of the way. Their problem
was to devise a compromise that would do three things: lay the Southern
dread of an inundation of sectional Northern influence; silence the
slave profiteers; meet the objections that had induced Lincoln to
wreck the Crittenden Compromise. They felt that the first and second
objectives would be reached easily enough by reviving the line of the
Missouri Compromise. But something more was needed, or again, Lincoln
would refuse to negotiate. They met their crucial difficulty by boldly
appealing to the South to be satisfied with the conservation of its
present life and renounce the dream of unlimited Southern expansion.
Their Compromise proposed a death blow to the filibuster and all he
stood for. It provided that no new territory other than naval stations
should be acquired by the United States on either side the Missouri Line
without consent of a majority of the Senators from the States on the
opposite side of that line.(16)

As a solution of the sectional quarrel, to the extent that it had been
definitely put into words, what could have been more astute? Lincoln
himself had said in the inaugural, "One section of our country believes
slavery is right and ought to be extended; while the other believes
it is wrong and ought not to be extended. That is the only substantial
dispute." In the same inaugural, he had pledged himself not to
"interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it now
exists;" and also had urged a vigorous enforcement of the Fugitive
Slave Law. He never had approved of any sort of emancipation other than
purchase or the gradual operation of economic conditions. It was well
known that slavery could flourish only on fresh land amid prodigal
agricultural methods suited to the most ignorant labor. The Virginia
Compromise, by giving to slavery a fixed area and abolishing its hopes
of continual extensions into fresh land, was the virtual fulfillment of
Lincoln's demand.

The failure of the Virginia Compromise is one more proof that a great
deal of vital history never gets into words until after it is over.
During the second half of March, Unionists and Secessionists in the
Virginia Convention debated with deep emotion this searching new
proposal. The Unionists had a fatal weakness in their position. This was
the feature of the situation that had not hitherto been put into words.
Lincoln had not been accurate when he said that the slavery question
was "the only substantial dispute." He had taken for granted that the
Southern opposition to nationalism was not a real thing,--a mere device
of the politicians to work up excitement. All the compromises he was
ready to offer were addressed to that part of the South which was
seeking to make an issue on slavery. They had little meaning for that
other and more numerous part in whose thinking slavery was an incident.
For this other South, the ideas which Lincoln as late as the middle of
March did not bring into play were the whole story. Lincoln, willing to
give all sorts of guarantees for the noninterference with slavery, would
not give a single guarantee supporting the idea of State sovereignty
against the idea of the sovereign power of the national Union. The
Virginians, willing to go great lengths in making concessions with
regard to slavery, would not go one inch in the way of admitting that
their State was not a sovereign power included in the American Union
of its own free will, and not the legitimate subject of any sort of
coercion.

The Virginia Compromise was really a profound new complication. The very
care with which it divided the issue of nationality from the issue
of slavery was a storm signal. For a thoroughgoing nationalist like
Lincoln, deep perplexities lay hidden in this full disclosure of the
issue that was vital to the moderate South. Lincoln's shifting of his
mental ground, his perception that hitherto he had been oblivious of his
most formidable opponent, the one with whom compromise was impossible,
occurred in the second half of the month.

As always, Lincoln kept his own counsel upon the maturing of a purpose
in his own mind. He listened to every adviser--opening his office doors
without reserve to all sorts and conditions--and silently, anxiously,
struggled with himself for a decision. He watched Virginia; he watched
the North; he listened--and waited. General Scott continued hopeless,
though minor military men gave encouragement. And whom should the
President trust-the tired old General who disagreed with him, or the
eager young men who held views he would like to hold? Many a time he was
to ask himself that question during the years to come.

On March twenty-ninth, he again consulted the Cabinet.(17) A great deal
of water had run under the mill since they gave their opinions on March
sixteenth. The voice of the people was still a bewildering roar, but
out of that roar most of the Cabinet seemed to hear definite words. They
were convinced that the North was veering toward a warlike mood. The
phrase "masterly inactivity," which had been applied to the government's
course admiringly a few weeks before, was now being applied
satirically. Republican extremists were demanding action. A subtle
barometer was the Secretary of the Treasury. Now, as on the sixteenth,
he craftily said something without saying it. After juggling the word
"if," he assumed his "if" to be a fact and concluded, "If war is to
be the result, I perceive no reason why it may not best be begun in
consequence of military resistance to the efforts of the Administration
to sustain troops of the Union, stationed under authority of the
government in a fort of the Union, in the ordinary course of service."

This elaborate equivocation, which had all the force of an assertion,
was Chase all over! Three other ministers agreed with him except that
they did not equivocate. One evaded. Of all those who had stood with
Seward on the sixteenth, only one was still in favor of evacuation.
Seward stood fast. This reversal of the Cabinet's position, jumping as
it did with Lincoln's desires, encouraged him to prepare for action.
But just as he was about to act his diffidence asserted itself. He
authorized the preparation of a relief expedition but withheld sailing
orders until further notice.(18) Oh, for Seward's audacity; for the
ability to do one thing or another and take the consequences!

Seward had not foreseen this turn of events. He had little respect for
the rest of the Cabinet, and had still to discover that the President,
for all his semblance of vacillation, was a great man. Seward was
undeniably vain. That the President with such a Secretary of
State should judge the strength of a Cabinet vote by counting
noses--preposterous! But that was just what this curiously simple-minded
President had done. If he went on in his weak, amiable way listening to
the time-servers who were listening to the bigots, what would become of
the country? And of the Secretary of State and his deep policies? The
President must be pulled up short--brought to his senses--taught a
lesson or two.

Seward saw that new difficulties had arisen in the course of
that fateful March which those colleagues of his in the
Cabinet--well-meaning, inferior men, to be sure--had not the subtlety to
comprehend. Of course the matter of evacuation remained what it always
had been, the plain open road to an ultimate diplomatic triumph. Who
but a president out of the West, or a minor member of the Cabinet, would
fail to see that! But there were two other considerations which, also,
his well-meaning colleagues were failing to allow for. While all this
talk about the Virginia Unionists had been going on, while Washington
and Richmond had been trying to negotiate, neither really had any
control of its own game. They were card players with all the trumps out
of their hands. Montgomery, the Confederate Congress, held the trumps.
At any minute it could terminate all this make-believe of diplomatic
independence, both at Washington and at Richmond. A few cannon shots
aimed at Sumter, the cry for revenge in the North, the inevitable
protest against coercion in Virginia, the convention blown into the air,
and there you are--War!

And after all that, who knows what next? And yet, Blair and Chase
and the rest would not consent to slip Montgomery's trumps out of her
hands--the easiest thing in the world to do!--by throwing Sumter into
her lap and thus destroying the pretext for the cannon shots. More than
ever before, Seward would insist firmly on the evacuation of Sumter.

But there was the other consideration, the really new turn of events.
Suppose Sumter is evacuated; suppose Montgomery has lost her chance to
force Virginia into war by precipitating the issue of coercion, what
follows? All along Seward had advocated a national convention to
readjust all the matters "in dispute between the sections." But what
would such a convention discuss? In his inaugural, Lincoln had advised
an amendment to the Constitution "to the effect that the Federal
government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of
the State, including that of persons held to service." Very good! The
convention might be expected to accept this, and after this, of course,
there would come up the Virginia Compromise. Was it a practical scheme?
Did it form a basis for drawing back into the Union the lower South?

Seward's whole thought upon this subject has never been disclosed. It
must be inferred from the conclusion which he reached, which he put
into a paper entitled, Thoughts for the President's Consideration, and
submitted to Lincoln, April first.

The Thoughts outlined a scheme of policy, the most startling feature
of which was an instant, predatory, foreign war. There are two clues to
this astounding proposal. One was a political maxim in which Seward had
unwavering faith. "A fundamental principle of politics," he said, "is
always to be on the side of your country in a war. It kills any party to
oppose a war. When Mr. Buchanan got up his Mormon War, our people, Wade
and Fremont, and The Tribune, led off furiously against it. I supported
it to the immense disgust of enemies and friends. If you want to sicken
your opponents with their own war, go in for it till they give it
up."(19) He was not alone among the politicians of his time, and some
other times, in these cynical views. Lincoln has a story of a politician
who was asked to oppose the Mexican War, and who replied, "I opposed
one war; that was enough for me. I am now perpetually in favor of war,
pestilence and famine."

The second clue to Seward's new policy of international brigandage was
the need, as he conceived it, to propitiate those Southern expansionists
who in the lower South at least formed so large a part of the political
machine, who must somehow be lured back into the Union; to whom the
Virginia Compromise, as well as every other scheme of readjustment yet
suggested, offered no allurement. Like Lincoln defeating the Crittenden
Compromise, like the Virginians planning the last compromise, Seward
remembered the filibusters and the dreams of the expansionists,
annexation of Cuba, annexation of Nicaragua and all the rest, and he
looked about for a way to reach them along that line. Chance had
played into his hands. Already Napoleon III had begun his ill-fated
interference with the affairs of Mexico. A rebellion had just taken
place in San Domingo and Spain was supposed to have designs on the
island. Here, for any one who believed in predatory war as an infallible
last recourse to rouse the patriotism of a country, were pretexts
enough. Along with these would go a raging assertion of the Monroe
Doctrine and a bellicose attitude toward other European powers on less
substantial grounds. And amid it all, between the lines of it all, could
not any one glimpse a scheme for the expansion of the United States
southward? War with Spain over San Domingo! And who, pray, held the
Island of Cuba! And what might not a defeated Spain be willing to do
with Cuba? And if France were driven out of Mexico by our conquering
arms, did not the shadows of the future veil but dimly a grateful Mexico
where American capital should find great opportunities? And would not
Southern capital in the nature of things, have a large share in all that
was to come? Surely, granting Seward's political creed, remembering the
problem he wished to solve, there is nothing to be wondered at in his
proposal to Lincoln: "I would demand explanations from Spain and France,
categorically, at once." . . . And if satisfactory explanations were not
received from Spain and France, "would convene Congress and declare war
against them."

His purpose, he said, was to change the question before the public,
from one upon slavery, or about slavery, for a question upon Union or
Disunion. Sumter was to be evacuated "as a safe means for changing
the issue," but at the same time, preparations were to be made for
a blockade of the Southern coast.(20) This extraordinary document
administered mild but firm correction to the President. He was told
that he had no policy, although under the circumstances, this was "not
culpable"; that there must be a single head to the government; that the
President, if not equal to the task, should devolve it upon some member
of the Cabinet. The Thoughts closed with these words, "I neither seek to
evade nor assume responsibility."

Like Seward's previous move, when he sent Weed to Springfield, this
other brought Lincoln to a point of crisis. For the second time he must
render a decision that would turn the scale, that would have for his
country the force of destiny. In one respect he did not hesitate. The
most essential part of the Thoughts was the predatory spirit. This
clashed with Lincoln's character. Serene unscrupulousness met unwavering
integrity. Here was one of those subjects on which Lincoln was not
asking advice. As to ways and means, he was pliable to a degree in the
hands of richer and wider experience; as to principles, he was a rock.
Seward's whole scheme of aggrandizement, his magnificent piracy,
was calmly waved aside as a thing of no concern. The most striking
characteristic of Lincoln's reply was its dignity. He did not,
indeed, lay bare his purposes. He was content to point out certain
inconsistencies in Seward's argument; to protest that whatever action
might be taken with regard to the single fortress, Sumter, the question
before the public could not be changed by that one event; and to say
that while he expected advice from all his Cabinet, he was none the less
President, and in last resort he would himself direct the policy of the
government.(21)

Only a strong man could have put up with the patronizing condescension
of the Thoughts and betrayed no irritation. Not a word in Lincoln's
reply gives the least hint that condescension had been displayed. He
is wholly unruffled, distant, objective. There is also a quiet tone of
finality, almost the tone one might use in gently but firmly correcting
a child. The Olympian impertinence of the Thoughts had struck out of
Lincoln the first flash of that approaching masterfulness by means of
which he was to ride out successfully such furious storms. Seward was
too much the man of the world not to see what had happened. He never
touched upon the Thoughts again. Nor did Lincoln. The incident was
secret until Lincoln's secretaries twenty-five years afterward published
it to the world.

But Lincoln's lofty dignity on the first of April was of a moment only.
When the Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles, that same day called on
him in his offices, he was the easy-going, jovial Lincoln who was always
ready half-humorously to take reproof from subordinates--as was evinced
by his greeting to the Secretary. Looking up from his writing, he said
cheerfully, "What have I done wrong?"(22) Gideon Welles was a pugnacious
man, and at that moment an angry man. There can be little doubt that his
lips were tightly shut, that a stern frown darkened his brows. Grimly
conscientious was Gideon Welles, likewise prosaic; a masterpiece of
literalness, the very opposite in almost every respect of the Secretary
of State whom he cordially detested. That he had already found occasion
to protest against the President's careless mode of conducting business
may be guessed--correctly--from the way he was received. Doubtless the
very cordiality, the whimsical admission of loose methods, irritated
the austere Secretary. Welles had in his hand a communication dated
that same day and signed by the President, making radical changes in the
program of the Navy Department. He had come to protest.

"The President," said Welles, "expressed as much surprise as I felt,
that he had sent me such a document. He said that Mr. Seward with two
or three young men had been there during the day on a subject which he
(Seward) had in hand and which he had been some time maturing; that it
was Seward's specialty, to which he, the President, had yielded, but as
it involved considerable details, he had left Mr. Seward to prepare
the necessary papers. These papers he had signed, many of them without
reading, for he had not time, and if he could not trust the Secretary of
State, he knew not whom he could trust. I asked who were associated with
Mr. Seward. 'No one,' said the President, 'but these young men who were
here as clerks to write down his plans and orders.' Most of the work was
done, he said, in the other room.

"The President reiterated that they (the changes in the Navy) were not
his instructions, though signed by him; that the paper was an improper
one; that he wished me to give it no more consideration than I thought
proper; to treat it as cancelled, or as if it had never been written. I
could get no satisfactory explanation from the President of the origin
of this strange interference which mystified him and which he censured
and condemned more severely than myself. . . . Although very much
disturbed by the disclosure, he was anxious to avoid difficulty, and to
shield Mr. Seward, took to himself the whole blame."

Thus Lincoln began a role that he never afterward abandoned. It was the
role of scapegoat Whatever went wrong anywhere could always be loaded
upon the President. He appeared to consider it a part of his duty to
be the scapegoat for the whole Administration. It was his way of
maintaining trust, courage, efficiency, among his subordinates.