A SHORT 
 LIFE OF 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 RALPH SHIRLEY 
 
GIFT OF 
 EVGENE MEYERS 
 
- 
 
A SHORT LIFE OF 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
LINCOLN AS HE APPEARED DURING THE DEBATE 
 WITH DOUGLAS 
 
 Frontispiece. 
 
A SHORT LIFE OF 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 BY THE HON. 
 
 RALPH SHIRLEY 
 
 <> 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE NEW GOD, AND OT :s ESSAYS, 
 
 "PROPHECIES AND OMENS OF THE GREAT WAR, 
 
 BTC. 
 
 WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Only the actions of the just 
 
 Smell sweet and blossom in their dust: 
 
 LONDON 
 WILLIAM RIDER & SON, LIMITED 
 
 8 PATERNOSTER ROW, E.G. 4 
 1919 
 
First printed January 1919. 
 Reprinted August 1919 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAQB 
 
 our. 
 
 vi i 
 FOREWORD ... 
 
 1. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH .... 
 
 2. EARLY STRUGGLES T 4 
 
 3. LOVE AFFAIRS AND MARRIAGE - 24 
 
 4. LEGAL PRACTICE LINCOLN AS MEMBER OF 
 
 CONGRESS . 30 
 
 5. THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 47 
 
 6. FROM PRAIRIE POLITICIAN TO PRESIDENT . 70 
 
 7. THE RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF THE WAR - 
 
 8. THE GATHERING STORM . 9 1 
 
 9. LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET . IO2 
 
 10. THE WAR . . IJ 3 
 
 11. NEGRO EMANCIPATION THE TURN OF THE 
 
 TIDE I2 5 
 
 12. LINCOLN RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT . . 15 
 
 13. THE END .... .162 
 
 448943 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Lincoln as he appeared during the Debate with 
 
 Douglas Frontispiece 
 
 The Birthplace of Abraham Lincoln . To face page 8 
 General Ulysses S. Grant . . . . ,,138 
 Abraham Lincoln in 1864 . . 152 
 
FOREWORD 
 
 THE revived interest in President Abraham Lincoln, 
 evoked in the main through the numerous Press 
 references to his political career during the recent 
 Great War, seems to offer a favourable opportunity 
 for a short popular study of his life and work. 
 Needless to say, such a study makes no claim to 
 original research, the material for the Life of the 
 great American President which is already ac 
 cessible being, indeed, most voluminous, and the 
 difficulty being rather to know what to omit. The 
 aim of the present volume is to give, in as concise 
 a form as possible, the story of Lincoln s life and 
 the part played by him in connection with the 
 maintenance of the American Union and the sup 
 pression of Slavery on the American Continent. 
 Of recent literature on the subject, I would acknow 
 ledge a special debt to the very impartial and 
 painstaking study of Lincoln s policy and place in 
 history which has been written for the Makers of 
 the Nineteenth Century Series by Lord Charnwood. 
 
 RALPH SHIRLEY. 
 
 vii 
 
LIFE OF 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 
 
 OF the world s great men, surely the greatest are 
 those who have made history ; that is to say, those 
 who, by their personal action, have turned the 
 current of events in such a manner that the sub 
 sequent history of the world has been radically 
 changed by their intervention in the course of 
 affairs. Among such men we may name without 
 hesitation Alexander the Great, Napoleon, and in 
 our own times Otto von Bismarck. Owing to the 
 individual action of each of these three men, who 
 may be selected as typical instances, the current 
 of history was radically altered from what it would 
 have been if they had played no prominent part 
 in the shaping of events. As a rule, the modern 
 statesman, however notable his achievements, can 
 hardly claim a place among such moulders of 
 history. To name one of the most eminent, 
 Gladstone was always an opportunist, and even in 
 the case of his championship of Home Rule he 
 
 1 
 
2 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was driven to the position he adopted by the force 
 of circumstances. 
 
 Can we place the name of Abraham Lincoln in 
 the first category ? It is doubtful if any unani 
 mous agreement could be arrived at on this point, 
 but a careful survey of the events of his time 
 will, I think, lead us to the conclusion that the 
 substitution of some other President of the United 
 States at the critical moment would have resulted 
 in a very different solution of the grave prob 
 lem which confronted America, from that which 
 actually eventuated. The desire to find a way 
 out of the difficulty which should at all costs avoid 
 the horrors of civil war was strong on both sides, 
 and overwhelmingly so in the case of the North. 
 The majority of the politicians of that time were 
 eager, probably over eager, for compromise ; and 
 extremists, such as the whole-hearted Abolitionists, 
 were not merely scouted in the South, but cold- 
 shouldered and looked upon with the gravest dis 
 favour in the North. There was, indeed, in the 
 North the strongest feeling against any disruption 
 of the Union, but there were vast numbers who 
 were prepared to sacrifice even this, should such 
 a step prove to be the only manner of avoiding 
 internecine strife. There was, again, a very large 
 body of opinion which, while greatly averse to 
 any extension of slavery within the borders of 
 the States, were yet prepared to make concessions 
 even on what was with them a question of prin- 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 3 
 
 ciple, rather than alienate the Southern States. 
 Concessions in this direction had already been 
 made to the South beyond what might have been 
 considered justifiable, notably in the case of the 
 repeal of the Missouri Compromise, and it seemed 
 probable that further pressure by the slave-owning 
 communities might lead in the final issue to further 
 concession still. That a firm stand was made on 
 this question of no further concession to slavery 
 was due, we may say almost entirely, to the 
 attitude taken up by Abraham Lincoln, and it 
 was the adoption of this firm stand which led to 
 the war between North and South, with all that 
 it eventually entailed. 
 
 There are few to-day who would hesitate to 
 affirm that Lincoln was justified in the attitude 
 which he took up. There remains, however, the 
 strong probability that, had he been absent from 
 the helm, compromise might have held the day. 
 If this is the true view to take, clearly Lincoln 
 must be classed among those men who by their 
 personal action have moulded history. It is for 
 this reason that many have delighted to point to 
 the nomination of Lincoln to the Presidency as 
 evidence of the intervention of Providence in 
 human affairs. For, taking the view that, apart 
 from his election, the cause of slavery would in 
 all probability have triumphed, they are able to 
 show that to all appearance this election was due 
 to fortuitous circumstances rather than to any 
 
4 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 great movement of the majority of the American 
 people to summon him to the first position in the 
 great Republic as the man of their choice. Provi 
 dence, these people will tell us, stepped in and so 
 moulded events that the one man who could save 
 the situation was chosen President. As William 
 Eleroy Curtis l remarks : 
 
 " When Mr Lincoln was nominated for the Presidency 
 he was an unknown man. He had occupied no impor 
 tant position. He had rendered no great public service. 
 His reputation was that of a debater and politician, and 
 did not become national until he delivered a remarkable 
 speech at the Cooper Union, New York. His election 
 was not due to personal popularity, nor to the strength 
 of the party he represented, nor to the justice of his 
 cause, but to factional strife and jealousies among his 
 opponents." 
 
 In following out the life-history of this remarkable 
 man, I think we shall be able to realise that the 
 position which Lincoln won was due more to his 
 personal qualifications, diplomatic talents, and 
 political foresight than is generally appreciated ; 
 but a cursory view of the situation gives a very 
 plausible appearance to the arguments advanced by 
 those who would see in this appointment definite 
 evidence of the overruling of the Divine Hand. 
 At least the position taken up is a tacit admission 
 how much in the actual course of events must 
 be acknowledged to be due to Lincoln s personal 
 character and individual action. 
 
 1 The True Abraham Lincoln, p. 14. 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 5 
 
 The greatest appeal to the imagination is ever 
 made by those men who have risen from the 
 humblest situation in life to the highest pinnacle 
 of fame. Lincoln s career was a case in point. 
 When asked by the reporters after his election to 
 the Presidency to give some account of his early 
 life, he observed that all that he could say was 
 comprised in the well-known line of Gray s Elegy : 
 
 " The short and simple annals of the poor." 
 
 The reporters doubtless went away dissatisfied, 
 and his biographers have been far from willing to 
 accept this brief description of his early life as a 
 sufficient account of the upbringing and youthful 
 adventures of their hero. As is usual in such 
 cases, every channel of information has been 
 ransacked and Lincoln s early associates appealed 
 to for reminiscences and records. The result is 
 that we are able to furnish a fairly full and graphic 
 account of the conditions under which Lincoln 
 came into the world, and in which he grew up to 
 manhood. These were far from affording favour 
 able opportunities, in view of his future destiny. 
 Though his family figured among the earliest 
 settlers in the New England States, and some of 
 them had risen to position and prosperity, Lincoln 
 owed nothing to family connections. His parents 
 were miserably poor, and his father was one of 
 those people who always, somehow, managed to 
 keep the wolf from the door without being sue- 
 
6 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 cessful in ever shutting out from his conditions 
 the proximate menace which the old adage im 
 plies. Samuel Lincoln, the progenitor of Abraham 
 Lincoln, appears to have emigrated from the West 
 of England some years subsequently to the landing 
 of the Pilgrim Fathers, and to have settled at a 
 village called Hingham on the south shore of 
 Massachusetts Bay. Among the descendants of 
 this Samuel was one John, who became prominent 
 in public life and was a member of the Convention 
 that framed the first constitution of the State 
 of Pennsylvania. John s third son was named 
 Abraham. His father presented him with a farm 
 in the Shenandoah Valley, and he married one 
 Anna Boon, a cousin of Daniel Boon, a famous 
 American pioneer, and by her had three sons. It 
 happened that while at work upon his farm Abraham 
 and his sons were attacked by a squad of Indians. 
 The father was shot on the spot ; the elder brother 
 ran for a rifle and, coming back, shot his father s 
 assailant. In the meantime Josiah, the second son, 
 had gone to the neighbours for assistance, and the 
 Indians took to flight without doing further damage. 
 Of these three brothers, the youngest, Thomas, 
 then a child of six, was the father of the future 
 President. It is suggested that the mother, Anna, 
 was a poor manager. Anyhow, she abandoned the 
 farm in Jefferson County. Eventually the eldest 
 son, Mordecai, inherited the bulk of his father s 
 property, and subsequently became sheriff of 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 7 
 
 Washington County and a member of the Kentucky 
 Legislature. Misfortune dogged Thomas s foot 
 steps from his earliest years. For some unknown 
 reason he seems to have been left to shift for him 
 self, and at ten years of age is met with as a wander 
 ing labouring boy who supported himself by farm 
 work and other such employment, and subsequently 
 learned the trade of carpenter and cabinetmaker. 
 He is stated to have been a powerfully built man, 
 and, like his son, had a wide local reputation as a 
 wrestler. While learning his trade of carpenter in 
 the shop of Joseph Hanks, Thomas Lincoln fell 
 in love with and married Nancy Hanks, the niece 
 of his employer. Nancy Hanks was the youngest 
 of eight children, and brought nothing to improve 
 Thomas Lincoln s financial position. She is, how 
 ever, represented as being a woman of a sweet 
 temper and handsome appearance, and of intelli 
 gence and character superior to her position. 
 Thomas Lincoln in the first instance took his wife 
 to a log cabin in a village called Elizabeth Town, 
 where he practised his trade as carpenter ; but two 
 years later he abandoned carpentering and moved 
 to Hodgensville on Nolan Creek, where he took up 
 farming as his means of livelihood. Here, in a 
 one-room cabin with a single window, his eldest 
 son and second child, Abraham Lincoln, was born 
 on 12th February 1809, the first child, a daughter, 
 Sarah, having been born at Elizabeth Town. Four 
 years later the family moved to a more comfortable 
 
8 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 home on Knob Creek, six miles from Hodgensville, 
 and here Thomas Lincoln bought a farm of 238 acres. 
 Three years after this Thomas moved again. 
 He does not appear to have done much good for 
 himself with his farm, for he sold it for $20 in 
 money and ten barrels of whisky. These and his 
 household effects he loaded in a flat-boat, which 
 finally landed him at Thompson s Ferry, in Perry 
 County, Indiana. The boat upset on the way, and 
 part of the whisky was lost as well as some of 
 his other effects, which were possibly of more 
 value. Thomas Lincoln s destination was a piece 
 of timber-land one and a half miles from what is 
 now Gentry ville. Here he built a log cabin four 
 teen feet square, open to the weather on one side, 
 and without either windows or chimney. It 
 appears, then, that Abraham Lincoln s third home 
 was even worse than its predecessors. Here 
 Thomas raised a patch of corn and some vegetables 
 during the summer. Other food, however, was not 
 difficult to procure, as game was abundant, and 
 the streams were full of fish, and wild fruits were 
 plentiful. Abraham slept on a heap of dry leaves 
 in a loft at one end of the cabin. His father pur 
 chased his quarter-section of land, according to the 
 arrangements of those days, by yearly payments, 
 and it took him eleven years in this manner to 
 obtain a patent for half of it. Having done so, 
 however, he erected a permanent home of logs, 
 which proved a comfortable tenement. 
 
[To face page 8. 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 9 
 
 In the autumn of 1818, when Abraham was 
 between nine and ten years old, misfortune over 
 took the family. An epidemic visited the neigh 
 bourhood, and among the victims was his mother, 
 Nancy. This left his sister, a girl of only eleven 
 years, in charge of the household. The family 
 struggled on under these conditions until the 
 autumn of 1819, when their father returned to 
 Hodgensville and married Sally Bush Johnston, a 
 widow with three children, whom he had courted 
 before his first marriage. She brought a little pro 
 perty into the family as well as her three children, 
 and her influence proved to be a good one, as she 
 stimulated her husband to industry and made a 
 prudent and wise stepmother for Abraham, en 
 couraging his talents and assisting him in every 
 way as far as she was able. 
 
 Meanwhile Abraham was growing up. His great 
 height and unusual strength made him foremost 
 in athletic sports, and he was early noted for his 
 studious habits and powers of memory. He soon 
 gained a reputation as the best talker and story 
 teller in the neighbourhood. At the age of sixteen 
 he worked a ferry-boat at the mouth of Anderson s 
 Creek, transporting passengers across the Ohio 
 River. At the age of nineteen he made his first 
 journey outside the Indiana Forest. Mr Gentry, 
 the leading man in the neighbourhood, who kept 
 a store, sent Abraham along with his own son, 
 Allen, upon a flat-boat to New Orleans, with a 
 
10 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 load of bacon, corn-meal, and other provisions, 
 paying him $8 a month and his passage home 
 on a steamboat. On this journey they were 
 attacked by some negroes while trading along the 
 sugar coast, but succeeded in driving them off 
 without serious damage having been done. 
 
 On another occasion somewhat later a second 
 voyage down the Mississippi was made by Lincoln. 
 An incident in this journey made an indelible 
 impression on his mind, and deserves to be related 
 in view of its bearing on the work he was destined 
 later to accomplish. Among the sights that 
 Lincoln witnessed at New Orleans on this occasion 
 was the slave-market of that city. He saw there 
 negroes chained, maltreated, and scourged. In a 
 slave auction he and his companions were the 
 witnesses when a fine mulatto girl was pinched, 
 prodded, and trotted up and down the room to 
 show how she moved, that bidders might satisfy 
 themselves of the soundness of the article which 
 they were proposing to buy. John Hanks observes 
 of the incident : " Lincoln saw it. His heart bled. 
 He said nothing much. Was silent. I can see, 
 however," he adds, " that it was on this trip that he 
 formed his opinion of slavery. It ran its iron 
 into him then and there. I have heard him say 
 so, often." On another occasion, referring to the 
 same incident, he said that Lincoln remarked, " If 
 ever I get a chance to hit that thing I will hit it 
 hard." Whether this observation was put into his 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 11 
 
 mouth in the light of subsequent events, we have 
 no means of knowing ; but clearly Lincoln did not 
 forget. Such incidents in early life often leave 
 more mark and produce greater results than is 
 realised at the time. Rousseau tells a similar 
 story with regard to the origin of his hatred of the 
 oppressive French Government of the eighteenth 
 century. It was in the course of his early wander 
 ings in France, after he had left his native Geneva. 
 Having walked further from home than he had 
 intended and lost his way, he found himself half 
 dead with hunger and thirst at the house of a 
 French peasant. He entered in, hoping to find 
 something to appease his ravenous appetite, but 
 was offered nothing but coarse barley bread and 
 skimmed milk. By and by, however, the peasant 
 into whose home he had entered discovered the 
 character of his guest, and, having satisfied him 
 self that he was not likely to " give him away," 
 descended by a trap -door into his cellar, and brought 
 up some good brown bread, meat, and a bottle of 
 wine, and subsequently cooked an omelette for his 
 benefit. Having done so, he explained to Rousseau 
 that he had hidden away the wine on account of 
 the duties, and his bread on account of the taille, 
 declaring that he would be a ruined man if any 
 suspicion were aroused that he was not dying of 
 hunger. In commenting on the incident, Rousseau 
 observes : " Here was the germ of that inextin 
 guishable hatred which afterwards grew up in my 
 
12 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 heart against the vexations that harassed the 
 common people, and against their oppressors. 
 This man actually did not dare to eat the bread 
 which he had won by the sweat of his brow, and 
 only avoided ruin by showing the same misery as 
 reigned all around him." It is a mistake to under 
 estimate the influence of such incidents when they 
 occur in early life, when the mind is more impres 
 sionable than in later years. In both these cases 
 an incident, apparently quite trivial, led to results 
 which affected the whole history of the world. 
 
 In 1830, when Abraham was just twenty-one, 
 there was yet another family migration. " His 
 father and stepmother," he tells us, "with the 
 families of the two daughters and sons-in-law of 
 the step -mother, left the old homestead in Indiana 
 and came to Illinois. His father and family settled 
 a new place on the north side of the Sangamon 
 River, at the junction of the timber land and pro 
 perty about ten miles westerly from Decatur. Here 
 they built a log cabin, into which they removed, 
 and made sufficient rails to fence ten acres of 
 ground, fenced and broke the ground, and raised 
 a crop of sown corn upon it the same year." The 
 sons-in-law of his stepmother, here alluded to, 
 were Dennis Hanks and Levi Hall, who had married 
 Sarah and Matilda, Lincoln s step-sisters. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln s schooling was of a very 
 spasmodic character. He first went to school 
 when he was seven years old and was living in 
 
CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 13 
 
 Kentucky. The school was held in a log hut 
 near the Lincolns cabin, and was taught by an 
 Irish Catholic of the name of Zachariah Riney, and 
 it was here that he learned to read. In the follow 
 ing year he attended along with his sister Sarah 
 a school some three or four miles distant, kept by 
 one Caleb Hazel, where the two children were 
 taught to write. This was all the schooling he 
 had in Kentucky except what his mother taught 
 him. At the age of nine he again attended school 
 for a few months, and apparently again after a 
 long interval when he was fourteen. He also 
 attended some classes with a man named Swaney 
 some three years later. He was always a studious 
 boy, and his inclination in this direction was en 
 couraged by his stepmother, who helped him in 
 his work at home and read with him. His father, 
 however, evidently considered that he was better 
 occupied assisting him in his farmwork than in 
 cultivating his mind with a view to future 
 eventualities. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 EARLY STRUGGLES 
 
 WHEN he reached the age of twenty-one Lincoln 
 became a clerk at Denton Offutt s store at New 
 Salem, and in the following year started on a 
 mercantile adventure on his own account, which 
 ended disastrously. He went into partnership with 
 a man named Berry, in a local grocery stores. 
 Berry took to drink, and the stores were finally 
 sold at a heavy loss. The goodwill and stock of 
 the stores had been bought on credit, and when 
 the business was disposed of this was a credit 
 transaction also. The man to whom they were 
 sold shortly after failed and disappeared. Lincoln 
 was thus left with the liability for the purchase 
 money of the stores upon his shoulders, without 
 having seen any part of the money for which the 
 business had been sold again. Berry himself had 
 died of drink, so that there was no assistance forth 
 coming in this direction. This liability weighed 
 very heavily on Lincoln for a number of years, 
 and he used humorously to allude to it as " the 
 National Debt." Rather than go bankrupt or come 
 
 u 
 
EARLY STRUGGLES 15 
 
 to a composition with his creditors, he decided, like 
 Sir Walter Scott under similar circumstances, to 
 offer to pay off the whole on the understanding 
 that they would give him sufficient time to do so. 
 He accordingly went to them, explained the cir 
 cumstances, and undertook to give them all he 
 could earn over and above his bare living. 
 
 In the upshot he paid them all off, but it took 
 him some fifteen years to do so. In only one case 
 was his offer refused, one of his creditors selling his 
 interest in the debt due to him. The purchaser 
 eventually brought action and obtained judgment 
 against him, and levied upon the horse, saddle, and 
 instruments which were used by him in the surveying 
 business in which he was at that time engaged. 
 At this crisis in his fate a farmer friend of his, of 
 the name of James Short, heard of his trouble, 
 and without informing Lincoln attended the sale 
 and bought in the horse and instruments for 
 $120, making them over to their former owner. 
 When Lincoln became President he did not forget 
 his benefactor. Thirty years after, James Short, 
 who had removed to the Far West, received a 
 letter from Washington containing the announce 
 ment that he had been commissioned by the 
 Government as Indian agent. 
 
 Shortly after this Lincoln had his one and only 
 experience of soldiering. The Indian chief, Black 
 Hawk, had entered into a treaty to remain on the 
 western side of the Mississippi. He crossed the 
 
16 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 river, however, in defiance of the agreement entered 
 into. The Governor of Illinois thereupon called for 
 volunteers, and Lincoln among others offered his 
 services. Much to his surprise and gratification, 
 he was elected captain of his company, this being 
 doubtless due not a little to his great physical 
 strength and height. He was now six foot four, 
 and enjoyed no small reputation among his neigh 
 bours for his feats of physical prowess. He saw, 
 however, no actual fighting, and apparently had 
 his work cut out in keeping his somewhat unruly 
 company in order. On one occasion during this 
 expedition a friendly Indian found his way into the 
 American camp. He produced a letter of creden 
 tials which was pronounced a forgery by Lincoln s 
 men, who proposed to hang him as a spy. Lincoln, 
 however, appeared on the scene in time, and with 
 his usual humanity promptly rescued the hapless 
 man from his impending fate. 
 
 As soon as this little war was over, Lincoln 
 became a candidate for his State Legislature, and, 
 though not elected, succeeded in securing practi 
 cally the whole votes in his immediate neighbour 
 hood. He had shown quite early a remarkable 
 aptitude as a ready, original, and witty speaker, 
 as well as a popular story-teller, and his power of 
 getting the ear of his audience by his direct and 
 frank manner, coupled with his pithy and homely 
 illustrations in support of his arguments, soon 
 earned for him a reputation of which he was not 
 
EARLY STRUGGLES 17 
 
 slow to take advantage. Whatever people might 
 have thought in those early days of his qualifica 
 tions as their representative, there were apparently 
 no two opinions as to his unique gifts as a popular 
 stump orator. 
 
 Lincoln was now at his wits end to find " the 
 needful." He subsisted for some time living from 
 hand to mouth by the aid of odd jobs done for 
 neighbouring farmers and other friends. But when 
 his prospects seemed at their lowest he was fortunate 
 in being recommended to John Calhoun, then 
 surveyor of the county, as his assistant. Lincoln 
 at this time knew nothing of the work which would 
 qualify him for his position. With the help, how 
 ever, of one Mentor Graham, a schoolmaster who 
 had already employed him as a clerk, and with 
 much hard application on his own part, he soon 
 acquired the rudiments of the business, and it has 
 always been said to his credit that his surveys of 
 property were done with the greatest care and 
 accuracy. A further small financial assistance 
 came to him by his appointment to the local post- 
 mastership. New Salem was but a village, and 
 has long since disappeared off the map. The 
 duties involved, accordingly, were not serious, and 
 it is stated that he " carried the office around in 
 his hat." In 1834 he again became a candidate 
 for the Illinois Legislature. His uncouth appear 
 ance and ill-fitting clothes (his trousers were 
 always several inches too short for him) were 
 
 2 
 
18 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 successful as an advertisement of their wearer, but 
 the first impressions such a strange figure created 
 were by no means always in his favour. It is 
 related that one of those present at an early election 
 meeting asked, on seeing him, " Can t the party 
 raise any better material than that ? " But after 
 hearing him speak he completely changed his 
 mind, and declared that Lincoln knew more than 
 all the other candidates put together. On this 
 occasion he was duly returned, being at the time 
 twenty-five years of age. 
 
 In those days politicians did not wait for any 
 political convention to construct a platform, but 
 were in the habit of issuing their own manifestos, 
 irrespective of the party to which they were at 
 tached. The following is Lincoln s as it appeared 
 in the local paper of the day : 
 
 " NEW SALEM, June 13, 1836. 
 " To the Editor of the Journal 
 
 " In your paper of last Saturday I see a communication 
 over the signature of Many Voters in which the candi 
 dates who are announced in the Journal are called upon 
 to show their hands. Agreed. Here s mine :-- 
 
 " I go for all sharing the privileges of the government 
 who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go 
 for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage who pay 
 taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females). 
 
 " If elected I shall consider the whole people of San- 
 gamon my constituents, as well those that oppose as those 
 that support me. 
 
 " While acting as their representative, I shall be 
 
EARLY STRUGGLES 19 
 
 governed by their will on all subjects upon which I have 
 the means of knowing what their will is ; and upon all 
 others I shall do what my own judgment teaches me 
 will best advance their interests. Whether elected or not ?> 
 I go for distributing the proceeds of the sales of public 
 lands to the several States to enable our State, in common 
 with others, to dig canals and construct railroads without 
 borrowing money and paying the interest on it. 
 
 " If alive on the first Monday in November, I shall 
 vote for Hugh L. White for President. Very respectfully, 
 
 " A. LINCOLN." 
 
 It is clear that Lincoln appealed to the electors 
 on a broad platform, boldly announcing his ap 
 proval of female suffrage, and an enterprising 
 policy with regard to the development of the 
 resources of the State. This ambitious pro 
 gramme was, as a matter of fact, carried a good 
 deal further than the financial capacity of the State 
 allowed, and reckless expenditure, regardless of 
 the ability of the State to foot the bills involved, 
 soon landed Illinois in a parlous predicament. In 
 this case, as in others throughout his life, Lincoln 
 showed a lack of any true grasp of large financial 
 problems. It is true he was not alone to blame 
 for the position that resulted, but he threw him 
 self heart and soul into a venture which more 
 prudent statesmanship would have approached in 
 far less reckless way, and the State suffered from 
 the results of the too sanguine temperament of its 
 representatives for many years after. 
 
 It was on the second occasion of his election to 
 
20 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the Illinois Legislature that Lincoln made a speech 
 which was very characteristic of the speaker, and 
 which was remembered against its unfortunate 
 victim for a long time after it had been delivered. 
 It was a few days before the election at Spring 
 field, and among those present was a certain George 
 Forquer, a man of recognised prominence and 
 ability as a lawyer in the locality. Forquer had 
 been one of the leading members of the Whig 
 party, but had recently turned his coat and joined 
 the Democrats, to the great disgust of his erst 
 while supporters. As a result apparently of this 
 change of mind, he had received the appointment 
 of Registrar of the Land Office. About the same 
 time Forquer had had built for himself a mansion of 
 greater pretensions than those of his neighbours, 
 and over it he had had erected a lightning-rod, 
 the first of its kind to be seen in Springfield. At 
 the conclusion of Lincoln s speech, Forquer rose 
 and requested to be heard. He began by saying 
 that the young man (alluding to Lincoln) would 
 have to be taken down, and regretted that the 
 task devolved upon himself. He replied in detail 
 to Lincoln s speech, giving himself considerable 
 airs of superiority. As soon as he sat down, 
 Lincoln rose to reply. " Mr Forquer," he observed, 
 l commenced his speech by announcing that the 
 young man would have to be taken down. It is 
 for you, fellow-citizens, not for me, to say whether 
 I am up or down. The gentleman has seen fit to 
 
EARLY STRUGGLES 21 
 
 allude to my being a young man ; but he forgets 
 that I am older in years than I am in the tricks 
 and trades of politicians. I desire to live, and I 
 desire place and distinction ; but I would rather 
 die now than, like this gentleman, live to see the 
 day that I would change my politics for an office 
 worth three thousand dollars a year, and then feel 
 compelled to erect a lightning-rod to protect a 
 guilty conscience from an offended God." 
 
 The effect of the rejoinder was dramatic, and 
 Forquer found it desirable to make himself very 
 scarce for some time afterwards. 
 
 Lincoln s capacity in his quite early life for 
 holding his audience, as well as his ungainly ap 
 pearance, is borne witness to by Judge Stephen T. 
 Logan, with whom he subsequently went into 
 partnership. Judge Logan writes of him in those 
 days : "He was a tall, gawky, and rough-looking 
 fellow. His pantaloons did not meet his shoes 
 by six inches, but after he began speaking I 
 became very much interested in him. He made 
 a very sensible speech. His manner was very 
 much the same as in after life. That is, the some 
 what peculiar characteristics were apparent then, 
 though of course in after years he evinced more 
 knowledge and experience. But he had then the 
 same novelty and the same peculiarity in present 
 ing his ideas." 
 
 Lincoln remained a member of the Illinois Legis 
 lature for some time, being regularly re-elected for 
 
22 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 three further terms of two years each. In the 
 meantime he had been devoting his leisure to a 
 study of the law, and had even practised a little as 
 an unlicensed practitioner in the inferior courts. In 
 1837 he was fortunate in obtaining a proper licence. 
 In those days, in the Western States, reading for 
 the law was not so arduous or so exacting an 
 undertaking as it is to-day, and a comparatively 
 brief course of study was deemed sufficient as a 
 qualification. 
 
 About this time a Bill was brought in and 
 passed by the State Government for moving the 
 capital to Springfield, for the carrying of which 
 Lincoln himself enjoyed no little local credit. 
 With the removal of the Legislature Lincoln 
 removed himself. The society in Springfield was 
 naturally of a much less primitive kind than that 
 of New Salem, and Lincoln began to find himself 
 for the first time in association with people who had 
 some pretensions to education and culture. Here 
 he entered into a law partnership with a friend, 
 John T. Stuart, and on Stuart s election to Congress 
 four years later a new partnership was formed with 
 Stephen T. Logan as above mentioned. He was 
 still at this time in the most urgent need of funds. 
 An incident on his first arrival at Springfield bears 
 eloquent testimony to this fact. Requiring to find 
 himself some place of abode, he went into a shop 
 and purchased a bedstead with a view to furnish 
 ing it, and then went on to a young tradesman, 
 
EARLY STRUGGLES 23 
 
 one Joshua Speed, to ask the price of the cheapest 
 bedding and other necessary articles. The sum 
 quoted him was $17, which he found it impossible 
 to produce. Joshua Speed, however, took a fancy 
 to his customer, and, having a large double bedstead 
 himself, offered to let him share it for the time 
 being. Lincoln went upstairs to have a look at 
 the room, and came back delighted. " Well, Speed, 
 I m moved," he said, shaking him warmly by the 
 hand. Speed was evidently impressed by his 
 tragic air. " I looked up at him," he said, narrating 
 the story of his interview afterwards, " and thought 
 then, as I think now, that I never saw so gloomy 
 and melancholy a face in my life." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 LOVE AFFAIRS AND MARRIAGE 
 
 To his constant financial difficulties at this time 
 must be added the effect of a recent love affair 
 which had had a very pathetic ending, the tragedy 
 of which for a time went near to affecting Lincoln s 
 reason, and is stated to have cast a shadow over 
 all his subsequent life. This love affair had for 
 its object a certain Anne But ledge, who was the 
 daughter of one of the founders of the village of 
 Salem, who kept the tavern at which Lincoln was 
 a boarder. He came of a family of some note, and 
 boasted of the fact that his grandfather was one 
 of the signatories of the Declaration of American 
 Independence. The girl, who is described as 
 something of a local beauty, had auburn hair, 
 blue eyes, and a fair complexion. At the time 
 Lincoln first knew her she was engaged to a certain 
 John M Neill or, as he gave his name subsequently, 
 M Namara. This young man, starting in poverty, 
 had made very successful headway with his 
 business undertakings, and the match seemed to 
 
 24 
 
LOVE AFFAIRS AND MARRIAGE 25 
 
 hold out favourable prospects to the young couple. 
 M Namara, however, before settling down and 
 marrying, proposed to go East to arrange certain 
 business matters in connection with his family, 
 who, he said, did not know of his whereabouts, 
 and from whom he had deliberately concealed his 
 movements, fearing that they might interfere with 
 his prospects. M Namara, to whom the girl was 
 obviously deeply attached, went on his projected 
 journey, but his letters, after his departure, grew 
 fewer and colder, and it seemed to his fiancee that 
 he would be glad to be released from his engage 
 ment. She wrote eventually and made the offer 
 to set him free, but waited in vain for an answer 
 to her letter. Meanwhile her pathetic air had 
 aroused the sympathy of the neighbours, and her 
 own family in particular were intensely indignant 
 with M Namara, and urged her to give up all 
 thought of a man who had treated her so badly. 
 About this time Lincoln appeared on the scene, 
 and naturally, as he boarded at her father s tavern, 
 saw much of the young girl. Indeed, it appears 
 that he generally sat beside her at table, and spent 
 the evening in her company. Pity is said to be 
 akin to love, and certainly in Lincoln s case one 
 soon gave place to the other. He was encouraged 
 in his suit by her relatives, who were glad to place 
 an obstacle in the way of the return of M Namara, 
 and finally, recognising the hopelessness of regain 
 ing her first love, she consented to become his wife. 
 
26 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The shock, however, of what she had suffered 
 proved too much for her. She developed brain 
 fever, which ended fatally. The neighbours attri 
 buted her illness to a broken heart. The blow to 
 Lincoln was terrible. He sank into a condition of 
 profound melancholy, and his grief was so intense 
 that his friends were afraid that he would commit 
 suicide. Later on, after he had been elected 
 President, speaking of the matter to a friend, he 
 observed, " I really loved that girl, and often 
 think of her now ; and I have loved the name of 
 Rutledge to this day." 
 
 His next affair of the heart, if so it may be called, 
 occurred three or four years later, at Springfield. 
 The heroine in this case was a Miss Mary Owens. 
 It is evident that Lincoln s affections were never 
 really engaged in the case, and he seems to have 
 been drawn into a false position in the matter by 
 his own rather fantastic sense of honour. He had 
 met Miss Owens once before, and thought her 
 attractive, and, meeting her married sister, Mrs 
 Abel, took the opportunity to inquire after her. 
 Mrs Abel told Lincoln, apparently in jest, that 
 she would bring her sister back with her to Spring 
 field if he would consent to marry her. The offer 
 was accepted by Lincoln, who did not seem to 
 consider that it was meant seriously. He was 
 informed, however, later, to his consternation, that 
 the young lady expected him to fulfil his agreement, 
 and he felt himself bound to propose to her, which 
 
LOVE AFFAIRS AND MARRIAGE 27 
 
 he did in a manner which must certainly have 
 given her the impression that she had no very 
 ardent lover. In any case she refused him, and 
 his feelings on the occasion seem to have been a 
 mixture of humiliation and relief, as he had come 
 to the conclusion that the lady in question was not 
 likely to find another lover in a hurry. In this, 
 as the event proved, he was mistaken. It is 
 admitted by those who knew her that she was a 
 capable, intelligent, and withal handsome young 
 woman, but evidently she did not make appeal to 
 Lincoln. When he met her the second time her 
 early attractions had given place to a somewhat 
 premature stoutness and matronly figure, and she 
 must have presented in every way a marked con 
 trast to his first love. She, on her part, complained 
 that Lincoln was lacking in the attentions which 
 a girl had a right to expect from an admirer, which, 
 under the circumstances, is hardly to be wondered 
 at. Writing to a lady friend on the subject, 
 Lincoln observed, " Others have been made fools 
 of by girls, but this can never with truth be said 
 of me. I most emphatically in this instance made 
 a fool of myself " a conclusion with which most 
 people will find it difficult to disagree. 
 
 Certainly Lincoln was one of those people for 
 whom the proverb that the course of true love 
 never did run smooth had a specially appropriate 
 application. His third adventure of the kind was 
 destined to eventuate in matrimony, but not before 
 
28 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 serious complications had supervened ; and even 
 so the choice of his partner has been the subject 
 of considerable criticism and comment on the part 
 of his biographers, who seem generally to have 
 agreed with her sister, who made the remark in the 
 early days of their courtship, that she and Lincoln 
 were not suited to one another. The lady in 
 question was a certain Mary Todd, who originally 
 came to Springfield on a visit to her sister, who 
 was the wife of Ninian W. Edwards, a person of 
 some consequence in the neighbourhood, and one 
 of Lincoln s colleagues in the Illinois Legislature. 
 There does not seem to be much dispute about 
 Miss Todd s early attractions. She occupied a 
 prominent position in the society of that day, was 
 bright, witty, and vivacious, and by no means 
 destitute of good looks. She was, however, quick 
 tempered and somewhat imperious, and frequent 
 quarrels broke out between the two lovers as a 
 consequence. Matters at last became so unsatis 
 factory that it seemed a mistake to continue the 
 engagement, and Lincoln himself suggested its 
 being broken off. This, however, was more than 
 the young lady herself had bargained for. She 
 burst into tears at the interview, and Lincoln 
 kissed her, in token, presumably, of forgiveness. 
 The upshot of it, however, was that the engage 
 ment continued, in spite of Lincoln s reluctance and 
 obvious unhappiness over the prospect of marriage. 
 Things drifted on until (according to one story) the 
 
LOVE AFFAIRS AND MARRIAGE 29 
 
 marriage was finally fixed for the first of January 
 1841. When the day came everyone put in an 
 appearance at the anticipated ceremony except the 
 bridegroom, who was waited for in vain. 1 The 
 next day, after a persistent search, Lincoln s friends 
 found him, in a condition of misery and despera 
 tion. In a letter written on the 23rd January 
 following, to his partner, Stuart, he observes : "I 
 am now the most miserable man living. If what I 
 feel were equally distributed to the whole human 
 family, there would not be one cheerful face on 
 earth. Whether I shall ever be better I cannot 
 tell. I awfully forebode I shall not." 
 
 Apparently after this fiasco Miss Todd did the 
 only thing which seemed possible under the circum 
 stances, and wrote releasing Lincoln from his 
 engagement. Lincoln s own disinclination to the 
 marriage was quite manifest, and the prospect of 
 a happy consummation seemed outside the bounds 
 of possibility. By degrees he recovered his spirits 
 and resumed his practice of the law. The paths 
 of the two diverged, and the whole matter might 
 well have been treated as an episode of the past. 
 Things went on in this fashion for some eighteen 
 months, when the idea occurred to the wife of 
 Simeon Francis, editor of the Sangamon Journal, 
 
 1 This incident has been disputed, but the reference to " the 
 fatal first of January 1841 " stands on record as a crisis which 
 led not only to a breach between the two lovers, but also to a 
 serious breakdown on Lincoln s part. Under the circumstances, 
 what precisely happened must be left to surmise. 
 
30 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 to bring the two together once more. The lady 
 in question was a warm friend of Mary Todd, and 
 presumably was acquainted with her wishes ; 
 while the husband was a friend of Lincoln. Mrs 
 Francis was a great social entertainer, and doubt 
 less it seemed to her that if she could bring about 
 a reconciliation between the rising young politician 
 and the brilliant society belle it would be a feather 
 in her social cap. The result was that the engage 
 ment was renewed, Lincoln, though unwilling, 
 perhaps feeling, not without reason, that he had 
 inflicted upon the young lady an undeserved 
 humiliation and owed her reparation. For fear 
 of a renewed disaster the marriage arrangements 
 were kept a profound secret. One morning in 
 November Lincoln arrived at the home of his friend, 
 James H. Matheney, while the latter was still in 
 bed, and informed him that he was to be married 
 the same evening. It is related that while dressing 
 for the wedding in his room at his friend Butler s 
 house, the latter s little boy, seeing Lincoln so 
 handsomely attired, asked him where he was going. 
 " To Hell, I suppose," was Lincoln s rejoinder. 
 The marriage licence was duly obtained, and the 
 pair were united by the Rev. Charles N. Dresser 
 in the presence of a hastily assembled company of 
 friends of the bride and bridegroom. It is plain 
 that, as Mr Win. H. Herndon, Lincoln s law partner 
 for many years, states, Lincoln married Mary Todd 
 to save his honour, and in doing so sacrificed his 
 
LOVE AFFAIRS AND MARRIAGE 31 
 
 domestic peace. The main facts of the case have 
 been glossed over or disputed by a number of 
 biographers, but they do not appear to admit of 
 any real doubt ; and in view of the long period that 
 has elapsed since the date of these incidents, and 
 the fact that all the people concerned are long 
 since dead, it seems foolish to make any conceal 
 ment of the real circumstances of the case. Mary 
 Todd was quick-tempered, inconsiderate, and lack 
 ing in self-control. As a wife she was constantly 
 making scenes which rendered her husband s posi 
 tion extremely uncomfortable, and his uniform 
 forbearance merely had the effect of making 
 matters worse than they would have been had 
 the lady married a husband who was less disposed 
 to tolerate her outbursts. 
 
 One or two instances will be sufficient to illus 
 trate this regrettable tendency. A lady relative 
 who lived for two years with the Lincolns told 
 Mr Herndon that Mr Lincoln was in the habit of 
 lying on the floor with the back of a chair for a 
 pillow when he read. " One evening, when in this 
 position in the hall, a knock was heard at the front 
 door, and, though in his shirt sleeves, Lincoln 
 answered the call. Two ladies were at the door, 
 whom he invited into the parlour, notifying them, 
 in his open, familiar way, that he would trot the 
 womenfolk out. Mrs Lincoln from an adjoining 
 room witnessed the ladies entrance and overheard 
 her husband s jocose expression. Her indignation 
 
32 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was so instantaneous that she made the situation 
 exceedingly interesting for him, and he was glad 
 to retreat from the mansion. He did not return 
 till very late at night, and then slipped in quietly 
 at a back door." One of the difficulties of the 
 household was due to the fact that Mrs Lincoln s 
 unreasonableness and violent temper made it im 
 possible for her to retain servants in her employ for 
 any length of time. On one occasion a man 
 whose niece had been engaged by her called at the 
 house to learn why the girl has been so uncere 
 moniously dismissed from her employment. Mrs 
 Lincoln met the man at the door, giving vent to 
 her feelings and resorting to such violent gesticu 
 lations and emphatic language that the man 
 beat a hasty retreat. He took the earliest oppor 
 tunity of complaining to Lincoln himself on the 
 matter and exacting, as he hoped, proper satis 
 faction for his wife s conduct. He found Lincoln 
 entertaining a crowd in a local store. The man 
 called him to the door and put his complaint before 
 him. Lincoln, having listened to his story, ob 
 served, in his quiet way : " My friend, I regret 
 to hear this ; but let me ask you in all candour, 
 cannot you endure for a few moments what I have 
 had as my daily portion for the last fifteen years ? " 
 Lincoln s appeal completely disarmed the offended 
 fellow-townsman. Grasping the unfortunate 
 husband s hands, he expressed his sympathy in 
 no uncertain terms. Lincoln afterwards, adds 
 
LOVE AFFAIRS AND MARRIAGE 33 
 
 Herndon, had no better friend in Springfield. 
 Lincoln made special efforts to retain the services 
 of one of the servants who was specially useful in 
 the household. On account of the frequency of 
 the tempestuous scenes with Mrs Lincoln, this 
 was no easy matter. Finally Lincoln made an 
 arrangement with her, of course without his wife s 
 knowledge, to pay her an extra dollar a week out 
 of his own pocket, on the understanding that she 
 should humour his wife and overlook her frequent 
 outbreaks. The natural result of this state of 
 affairs was that Lincoln did not spend more time 
 in his home than he found necessary. In this 
 connection Judge Da vis s statement is of interest. 
 He observes : " As a general rule, when all the 
 lawyers on a Saturday evening would go home and 
 see their families and friends, Lincoln would find 
 some excuse and refuse to go. We said nothing, 
 but it seemed to us all that he was not domesti 
 cally happy." 
 
 Mary Todd was extremely ambitious from a 
 social standpoint ; and, indeed, had assured her 
 friends, long before she married, that she had set 
 her heart upon becoming a President s wife. 
 Curiously enough, a double chance seemed to offer 
 itself to her, as during her early engagement with 
 Lincoln, Stephen Douglas, destined later to become 
 Lincoln s greatest rival, and looked upon by 
 many as a probable future President of the United 
 States, crossed her path. In spite of her prior 
 
 3 
 
34 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 engagement, a somewhat violent flirtation ensued, 
 and it was thought by some that Miss Todd pre 
 ferred Douglas to his rival. As, from the society 
 point of view, Douglas was far more accomplished 
 and attractive than Lincoln, who was shy and 
 awkward in the presence of the ladies, this is 
 hardly to be wondered at. In any case, Mary 
 Todd fell ill, harassed, as it appears, by her 
 perplexity between the rival suitors, and it is 
 stated that the lady s physician, Dr William 
 Wallace, intervened, saw Douglas, and induced him 
 to withdraw. It is clear that Lincoln was under 
 the spell of the lady s fascination, even while 
 he felt that the marriage could only end in dis 
 aster. His habitual inability to say "No " sealed 
 his fate, and led to a marriage which failed at 
 least to bring him domestic happiness. There were, 
 however, undoubted compensations. Lincoln had 
 no family connections or social influence. Mary 
 Todd had both. She was not only a good conversa 
 tionalist, but spoke French and English with equal 
 fluency. She had a quick intelligence and, when 
 her temper did not get the better of her, charming 
 and attractive manners. In addition to this, a 
 very important point in marrying a man so poor 
 as Lincoln, she was an excellent housewife, had a 
 good judgment of men and matters, and did much 
 to stimulate Lincoln s ambition in his political 
 career. In fact, on one occasion she intervened 
 when an offer was made to him of a Territorial 
 
LOVE AFFAIRS AND MARRIAGE 35 
 
 governorship, which, had the offer been accepted 
 by him, would have led to his being side-tracked 
 at the most critical period of his career, with the 
 consequent loss of all prospects of filling the chief 
 office of State. It can hardly be doubted that, 
 where his political life was concerned, her advice 
 and guidance were of great value. 
 
 It may be added that there is no question but 
 that Mrs Lincoln admired and appreciated her 
 husband, however unsuccessful she may have been, 
 through her own faults of temper, in making him 
 liappj^. And the husband, however distasteful his 
 home life may have been to him, appreciated the 
 fact that the frequent scenes were no true index to 
 his wife s feelings towards him. The home situa 
 tion, however, undoubtedly contributed not a little 
 to deepen Lincoln s natural melancholy and gloomy 
 outlook on life. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 LEGAL PRACTICE LINCOLN AS MEMBER OF 
 CONGRESS 
 
 LINCOLN was now no longer a member of the Illinois 
 Legislature, and it was his wife s ambition as well 
 as his own that he should become a member of 
 Congress. There were, however, difficulties in the 
 way of his nomination. Other people in Illinois 
 had claims as well as himself . Lincoln belonged to 
 the old Whig party, to which, not long after, the 
 Civil War gave the coup de grace ; while his great 
 rival, Stephen Douglas, was a Democrat. Among 
 the Whigs who were in the running against him in 
 Illinois were Baker and Hardin, two prominent 
 local politicians of the day, and Lincoln was 
 annoyed to find that at the party gathering to 
 settle the question of nomination Baker received 
 more support than himself, apparently owing to 
 the fact that he was backed by the various local 
 religious denominations, with whom Lincoln was by 
 no means in favour, on account of his reputation 
 for free thinking. It became accordingly Lincoln s 
 
 36 
 
LEGAL PRACTICE 37 
 
 duty to work for Baker. When, however, the 
 matter came before the official party convention, 
 Hardin, not Baker, was chosen, and Lincoln, sacri 
 ficing his own interests, felt it his duty to press 
 Baker s claims for the representation of Illinois 
 at the subsequent election two years later. This 
 meant Lincoln himself standing aside for a period 
 of four years. It was not, accordingly, till the 
 spring of 1847 that he took his seat in the House of 
 Representatives. The interval was devoted to his 
 regular law practice. In April 1841 Lincoln had 
 retired from his first partnership with Stuart (who 
 had been elected to Congress), and had gone into 
 partnership with Stephen T. Logan, who enjoyed 
 the reputation of being the best nisi prius lawyer 
 in the State and who presented in every way the 
 greatest contrast to Lincoln, being orderly and 
 methodical, and having a very intimate grasp of 
 the details of the law. These qualities were un 
 doubtedly very helpful to Lincoln in his partner 
 ship, a mastery of detail never being one of his 
 strong points, while his lack of order and method 
 hampered him throughout in his business, and to 
 some extent also in his political career. Logan, 
 however, had also political ambitions, and they 
 clashed with those of Lincoln. Apparently for this 
 reason the partnership was severed, and Lincoln 
 appealed to William H. Herndon to take his place. 
 This latter partnership was continued uninterrupted 
 until Lincoln s death, Herndon carrying on the 
 
38 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 business on his own responsibility during Lincoln s 
 period of office as President. 
 
 Shortly before Lincoln s election to Congress, war 
 had broken out between the United States and 
 Mexico, and Lincoln, in common with the rest of 
 the Whig party, had opposed a resort to extreme 
 measures. While supporting the necessary votes of 
 credit for carrying on the war with energy when once 
 it had broken out, Lincoln made no concealment of 
 his own disapproval of the whole enterprise, and 
 protested that " the war was unnecessarily and 
 unconstitutionally begun by the President." The 
 strong line he took in this matter gave offence to a 
 considerable number of his constituents, and would 
 probably have led to his defeat had he offered him 
 self for re-election to Congress. It was only some 
 twenty years before this time that Mexico had 
 revolted from Spain, and seven years later the 
 province of Texas had in its turn withdrawn from 
 the Mexican Republic. Texas had been peopled to a 
 great extent by immigrants from the United States, 
 and a petition was got up by an influential section 
 of the inhabitants for annexation to the American 
 Republic. In 1845 an Annexation Bill was pushed 
 through at the expiration of his term of office by 
 President Tyler, in spite of Whig opposition. Here 
 upon Mexico, which had throughout opposed the 
 arrangement, broke off diplomatic relations. There 
 was a dispute about the exact frontier as between 
 Texas and Mexico. Mexico claimed both banks of 
 
LEGAL PRACTICE 39 
 
 the Rio Grande, which the American Government 
 maintained should be the border of the respective 
 territories. The new President, Polk, ordered 
 General Taylor to march his troops up the banks 
 of the Rio Grande and occupy a position command 
 ing the encampment of the Mexican soldiers. The 
 Mexican general hereupon attacked, and a war 
 ensued which by a little diplomacy could easily have 
 been prevented. It appeared that the American 
 President had acted without justification, and that 
 he was anxious to provoke war rather than to avoid 
 it. This at least was the criticism levelled against 
 him, and it had many supporters among the 
 American public. The military success of the 
 American Army soon, however, settled the questions 
 at issue. General Taylor and General Scott com 
 pletely defeated the Mexican forces, and the city 
 of Mexico was occupied in September 1847. 
 
 The critics of the war, however just may have 
 been their contentions, found themselves at a mani 
 fest disadvantage in face of the accomplished fact ; 
 and as, .n the words of the proverb, " Nothing 
 succeeds like success," the anti-war party began 
 to incur no little popular hostility, and Lincoln, 
 who never compromised with his conscience or 
 hesitated to speak out for the cause which he 
 believed 10 be right, was himself one of the sufferers 
 from this wave of popular feeling. Lincoln took 
 up the psition that the President had, in effect, 
 by his .nstructions to General Taylor, himself 
 
40 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 initiated the war, and that this was directly con 
 trary to constitutional usage. 
 
 Apart from the matter of Mexico, nothing of 
 particular importance occurred while Lincoln was a 
 Member of Congress, while he himself, though he 
 made certain political friendships which were of use 
 to him subsequently, failed to make any special 
 mark in the House of Representatives. As evi 
 dence of his interest in the abolition of slavery, he 
 introduced a little Bill for its gradual and compen 
 sated extinction in the District of Columbia, having 
 previously ascertained that the representative 
 people of the district approved of it ; but the Bill 
 met with no encouragement from either side. On 
 Lincoln s part it was little more than an advertise 
 ment of his own standpoint, and in the upshot was 
 not pressed to a division. As already stated, he de 
 cided not to offer himself for re-election, and on his 
 retirement received an offer of the Governorship of 
 Oregon Territory, which, personally, he felt tempted 
 to accept. Mrs Lincoln, however, realising that by 
 this act he would cut himself off from political life, 
 very wisely induced him to decline the offer. It is 
 clear, however, that his experience at Washington 
 had proved a disappointing one to him and for 
 some time after he showed a disinclination to take 
 any active or prominent part in Americar. politics, 
 and returned once more to his legal pursuits. 
 
 In those days, in the Western State* , courts 
 travelled in circuits a practice now discoitinued 
 
LEGAL PRACTICE 41 
 
 and each court was presided over by a judge who 
 went from one county town to another to hear 
 whatever cases were on the list. Springfield was 
 situated in the Eighth Judicial Circuit, and included 
 fifteen counties in the central part of Illinois. There 
 being no railways at that time, the judge travelled 
 on horseback or in a carriage, followed by the 
 lawyers. The meeting of the Supreme Court once 
 a year at Springfield was a great event, and, in 
 consequence, attracted large numbers of people 
 to the town. 
 
 " When the county town was reached " (says William 
 Eleroy Curtis 1 ), " the judge was given the best room at the 
 hotel and presided at the dining-room table, surrounded 
 by lawyers, jurors, witnesses, litigants, prisoners on bail, 
 and even the men who drove their teams. The hotels 
 were primitive and limited, and, as the sitting of a court 
 usually attracted aU the idle men in the vicinity, the 
 landlords were taxed to accommodate their guests, and 
 packed them in as closely as possible ; usually two in a 
 bed and often as many as could find room on the floor. 
 The townspeople made the semi-annual meeting of the 
 court an occasion for social festivities, the judge being 
 the guest of honour at dinners, receptions, quiltings, 
 huskings, weddings, and other entertainments, while the 
 lawyers ranked according to their social standing and 
 accomplishments. 
 
 " In some of the towns there was no court-house, and 
 trials were held in a church or a school-house, and 
 sometimes, when the weather was favourable, in the 
 open air." 
 
 1 The True Abraham Lincoln. 
 
42 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 On such occasions Lincoln was a great centre of 
 attraction owing to his well-known reputation as a 
 brilliant story-teller. In one instance, indeed, he 
 seems to have gone too far, and disturbed the 
 hearing of the case by collecting a large crowd in 
 the corner of the court-room to listen to his witty 
 stories. Anyhow, the presiding judge (Judge Davis) 
 rapped on the bench and, calling him by name, 
 exclaimed : " Mr Lincoln, this must stop. There is 
 no use in trying to carry on two courts. One of 
 them will have to adjourn, and I think yours will 
 have to be the one." After the judicial proceedings 
 were over, the judge called to Lincoln and insisted 
 on the stories that caused so much merriment being 
 repeated to him. 
 
 Lawyers fees in those days were very low com 
 pared with what they became later, and Lincoln 
 was especially conscientious in his refusal to charge 
 high fees. The account book of Stuart & Lincoln 
 shows that the fees charged did not exceed $1600 
 for the year, and were rarely more than $10 for 
 a case. On one occasion, however, Lincoln pre 
 sented a bill for two thousand dollars, in an im 
 portant case in which he appeared for the Illinois 
 Central Railroad, and the fee was complained of as 
 excessive. Having withdrawn the original bill, he 
 consulted professional friends, and later on sub 
 mitted another for five thousand dollars instead of 
 two, with a memorandum signed by six of the most 
 prominent lawyers in the State, giving their opinion 
 
LEGAL PRACTICE 43 
 
 that the fee was not unreasonable. The company 
 still refused to pay, and Lincoln sued and recovered 
 the full amount. The case arose from the fact that 
 the Illinois Railroad was exempt from taxation by 
 its charter, conditional on its paying into the State 
 Treasury 7 per cent, of its gross earnings. The 
 officials of M Lean County disputed this right, and 
 contended that the Legislature of the State had no 
 authority to exempt or remit county taxes. They 
 brought a suit to compel payment, and Lincoln 
 defended and won the case. 
 
 On the matter of fees Lincoln wrote : " An exor 
 bitant fee should never be claimed. As a general 
 rule, never take your whole fee in advance, or any 
 more than a small retainer. When fully paid before 
 hand, you are more than a common mortal if you 
 can feel the same interest in the case as if something 
 was still in prospect for you as well as for your 
 client." 
 
 On one occasion Lincoln secured the acquittal of 
 an old neighbour, named Duff Armstrong, on a 
 charge of murder. Several witnesses testified that 
 they saw the accused commit the deed one night 
 about eleven o clock. Lincoln induced the witnesses 
 to amplify their statements, and particularly the 
 assertion that they had seen the act distinctly on 
 account of the bright moonlight. By cross-examin 
 ing still further he was able to prove the exact posi 
 tion and size of the moon at the time of the murder. 
 Lincoln finally announced that he had no defence to 
 
44 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 submit except an almanac, which showed that there 
 was no moon visible on that particular night ! 
 Needless to say, the accused got off, and in addition 
 all the witnesses were impeached and convicted of 
 perjury. 
 
 Lincoln had a habit of studying the opposite side 
 of every disputed question in every law case or 
 political issue, no less carefully than his own side. 
 In consequence he was never surprised by the 
 strength of the arguments of his opponent. His 
 habit was almost invariably to brush aside the less 
 important points in a case and go for the essential 
 issue. Said Justice Davis with regard to him : 
 " He seized the strong points of a case and presented 
 them with clearness and great compactness. His 
 mind was logical and direct, and he did not indulge 
 in superfluous discussion. An unfailing fund of 
 humour never deserted him, and he was able to 
 claim the attention of court and jury when the 
 cause was most uninteresting by the appropriate 
 ness of his anecdotes. The framework of his mental 
 and moral being was honesty, and a wrong cause 
 was poorly defended by him." Conscious of his 
 own weakness in defending a bad case, he was in 
 the habit of persuading his clients to give up litiga 
 tion in such instances, even when he felt that he 
 could probably win the case. Leonard Swett, of 
 Chicago, one of the most famous American lawyers, 
 states that sometimes after Lincoln entered upon a 
 criminal case the conviction that his client was 
 
LEGAL PRACTICE 45 
 
 guilty would affect him with a sort of panic. On 
 one occasion he turned suddenly to his associate, 
 and said : " Swett, the man is guilty. You defend 
 him, I cannot," thus giving up his share of a 
 large fee. 
 
 The business of Lincoln & Herndon was carried 
 on in a primitive sort of way. They kept no books, 
 and divided their fees. Sometimes when Herndon 
 was away Lincoln would wrap up his share of a 
 fee in a piece of paper and place it in his drawer, 
 marking it with a pencil, " Case of Roe v. Doe 
 Herndon s half." In the Illinois Railroad case 
 above alluded to, when the fee for $5000 was 
 eventually paid up, Lincoln came in and said : 
 " Well, Billy ! " (his usual manner of addressing his 
 partner), " here s our fee. Sit down and let me 
 divide." Lincoln had the habit of keeping docu 
 ments that he had in hand at the moment in the 
 lining of his silk hat, which was generally speaking 
 of a somewhat antiquated type. On one occasion, 
 however, he had purchased a new one, and this 
 led to some confusion, as important papers were 
 left behind in its predecessor. In a letter to a 
 fellow-lawyer in another town on this occasion, 
 apologising for his failure to reply sooner, Lincoln 
 wrote : " First, I have been very busy in the 
 United States Court. Second, when I received the 
 letter, I put it in my old hat, and, buying a new 
 one the next day, the old one was set aside, and so 
 the letter was lost sight of for a time." These are 
 
46 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 not the sort of details that one usually gives to 
 one s business correspondent, but that made no 
 difference to Lincoln, who was throughout his 
 life the most unconventional of men. 
 
 Lincoln s knowledge of the technicalities of the 
 law was never his strong point, and he was liable 
 to lose cases which turned on legal technicalities 
 rather than on abstract justice or common sense. 
 His mind was one that worked slowly, and required 
 full time for preparation and to " get the hang " 
 of a case. He suffered, too, through his lack of 
 method, but no one was better in getting and 
 holding the ear of a jury. The law, however, was 
 always the second string to Lincoln s bow, and as 
 far as his own inclination was concerned he looked 
 upon it rather as a means to an end, even though, 
 for several years of his life, it seemed that the end 
 he had in view might have to be abandoned. In 
 spite, however, of this interlude, Lincoln per 
 sistently kept in touch with the political world. 
 Politics was his first and last love, and the time 
 was now about to arrive when politics was destined 
 once more to claim his entire energies. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 
 
 IT is quite an open question whether Lincoln would 
 ever have figured prominently again in American 
 political life, if it had not been for the revival in 
 an acute form of the dispute between North and 
 South with reference to the question of the ex 
 tension of slavery in the American Territories. 
 In order to understand the position that this 
 question occupied in American politics, it will be 
 necessary to take a brief survey of the history of 
 the subject in its earlier stages. 
 
 The original founders of the American Common 
 wealth were generally speaking opposed to slavery 
 and anxious to secure its abolition. Among these 
 may be included the first four Presidents of 
 the Union : Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and 
 Madison. The Declaration of Independence con 
 tained its implicit repudiation. Before the breach 
 with the mother country, several of the American 
 Colonies had desired to suppress it, but the British 
 Government of the day had intervened. In 1774 
 a convention of all the colonies voted " that the 
 
 47 
 
48 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object 
 of desire in these colonies, where it was unhappily 
 introduced in their infant state. But previous to 
 the enfranchisement of the slaves in law, it is 
 necessary to exclude all further importation from 
 Africa." Jefferson especially was untiring in his 
 efforts to put a stop to the institution. " I 
 tremble for my country," he wrote, "when I think 
 of the negro, and remember that God is just." 
 
 In 1784 the North -West Territory was ceded by 
 Virginia to the pre-Union Congress. When this 
 was done, Jefferson succeeded in securing the 
 passing of an ordinance by which slavery was 
 excluded from the soil of this Territory and the 
 States into which this was subsequently broken 
 up, i.e. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and 
 Wisconsin, which thus became, ipso facto, free 
 States. The slave-trade from Africa was abolished 
 by Congress on 1st January 1808. Seven of the 
 original thirteen States of the Union, and also Ver 
 mont, the fourteenth State, had abolished slavery 
 by 1805. It will be seen, therefore, that in the 
 early days of the Union slavery to all appearance 
 was in a fair way of gradual extinction. The value, 
 however, of slave labour for the cotton industry, 
 which made rapid strides about the end of the 
 eighteenth century, led to a serious set-back to 
 the Emancipation Movement, and greatly increased 
 the favour with which slavery was regarded in 
 the Southern States, where this industry was pre- 
 
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 49 
 
 dominant. In consequence, the strong support of 
 the North to measures favourable to its extinction 
 was counteracted by the interest of the South in 
 its perpetuation. In 1820 the dispute between 
 North and South over this matter reached a crisis. 
 It was a question of the admission to the Union 
 of the new State of Missouri, which had been 
 carved out of the French territory purchased from 
 Napoleon. The Northern senators and members 
 of Congress demanded, in framing the new Con 
 stitution, that it should provide for the gradual 
 extinction of slavery in the State. The repre 
 sentatives of the South were determined that 
 slavery should be allowed. Assisted by the votes 
 of several of the Northern members, they succeeded 
 in carrying their point. Missouri was accordingly 
 admitted to the Union as a slave State, while 
 Maine was admitted about the same time as a free 
 State, thus counterbalancing the gain of the 
 South. It was, however, felt necessary that dis 
 putes of the kind should be avoided in future, 
 and accordingly what was termed the Missouri 
 Compromise was arrived at. By this agreement 
 it was enacted that ever after slavery should be 
 unlawful north of lat. 36 30 and lawful south 
 of it. While this was on the face of it a con 
 cession to the slave-owning States, it was, on the 
 other hand, a guarantee to the opponents of 
 slavery that all States subsequently formed north 
 of the latitude in question should have free con- 
 
 4 
 
50 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 stitutions. It was hoped on both sides that the 
 Compromise would prevent the slavery question 
 from ever again threatening the Union with 
 possible disruption. For thirty-four years this 
 compact was observed. The rescinding of it in 
 1854 at the instance of Stephen Douglas proved 
 to be the turning-point of Lincoln s career, and 
 led within seven years to the outbreak of the 
 American Civil War. 
 
 The occasion of this momentous repeal was a 
 Bill which dealt with the government of Kansas 
 and Nebraska, and their admission as States to 
 the Union. Stephen Douglas moved that the 
 people of these States should be empowered to 
 decide for themselves whether they would allow 
 slavery or not. As this was contrary to the terms 
 of the Missouri Compromise, it involved the Bill 
 repealing this in set form. As the Compromise 
 in question had come to be regarded, at least in 
 the North, as one of the pillars of the Constitution, 
 the motion naturally created extraordinary excite 
 ment. Douglas, however, was successful in carry 
 ing his point, and President Pierce offered no 
 opposition. Douglas had always taken up the 
 position that in the matter of slavery he was 
 frankly indifferent. He had said on one occasion 
 that in any question between white men and 
 negroes he was on the side of the white men, and 
 on any question between negroes and crocodiles 
 he was on the side of the negroes. 
 
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 51 
 
 One result of the passing of this Bill was a 
 struggle between the contending parties to win 
 Kansas for slavery or for freedom. It soon ap 
 peared, however, to the intense annoyance of the 
 defenders of slavery, that the party of freedom in 
 this State would win hands down. In spite of 
 this, an attempt was actually made to impose the 
 slave system on Kansas against the will of the 
 majority. This, however, was defeated, and in 
 deed Douglas himself revolted against this open 
 defiance of the principle of the sovereignty of the 
 people, which he had defended as the justification 
 for the attitude he had adopted in his Bill. 
 
 A further consequence of the passing of this 
 measure was the disruption of the old Whig party, 
 to which Lincoln had so far belonged. The political 
 struggle was obviously now between those who 
 were in favour of the extension of slavery in the 
 States, and those who were determined to prevent 
 any such extension. The Whig party had through 
 out been a party of compromise, and had never 
 taken any firm line in the matter, though anxious 
 as far as might be to prevent slavery getting the 
 upper hand. It was obvious that a party holding 
 such indefinite views on the great question of the 
 day had no chance of any strong popular support 
 either from one side or the other. The majority 
 of the Democrats were prepared to endorse the 
 views of the population of the slave States, from 
 which they were in the main recruited. There 
 
52 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was, however, a considerable section of this party 
 which revolted from it when it became mani 
 fest that it was likely to be identified definitely 
 with pro-slavery opinions. Accordingly it became 
 necessary to found a new party which should stand 
 for the restriction of slavery and its gradual 
 abolition. Thus arose the great Republican party, 
 which from that day to this has remained one of 
 the two political parties of the Union. The party 
 in question was recruited in the main from those 
 of the old Whig party who felt that the Whigs 
 had not taken a strong enough line on the question 
 at issue. It also had the support of the revolt 
 ing Northern Democrats. When in 1854 Lincoln 
 returned to political life it was as one of the 
 founders of this new party. 
 
 Stephen Douglas in the autumn of 1854 came 
 to Springfield to attend the State Agricultural 
 Fair, and, in view of his prominent position in 
 political life and his standing as United States 
 Senator, he was made the lion of the occasion. 
 He availed himself of the opportunity to make a 
 speech justifying the action of Congress in connec 
 tion with the Bill which involved the repeal of the 
 Missouri Compromise. Lincoln about the same 
 time had taken the field on behalf of Richard 
 Yates, who was then standing for Congress. The 
 opponents of the appeal called upon Lincoln to 
 reply to Douglas. He did this in a speech in 
 which he was successful in carrying almost his 
 
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 53 
 
 entire audience with him. Douglas himself was 
 present, and rose to his feet on several occasions 
 to reply to Lincoln s criticisms and arguments. 
 He found these so difficult to deal with that he 
 finally asked for permission to reply in a set speech. 
 Twelve days later Lincoln and Douglas met by 
 arrangement on the same platform at Peoria, 
 Lincoln allowing Douglas to make the first and 
 closing speeches, while he himself merely claimed 
 the right of replying to his first address. This 
 speech again created an immense impression, and 
 accentuated the rivalry between Lincoln and 
 Douglas, who it was understood would shortly be 
 contesting a seat in the United States Senate on 
 behalf of the Democratic and Republican parties 
 respectively. Writing of this speech of Lincoln s, 
 Horace White, afterwards editor of the New York 
 Evening Post, who was present on the occasion, 
 said : 
 
 " I was then in the employ of the Chicago Evening 
 Journal. I had been sent to Springfield to report the 
 political doings of State Fair Week for that paper. Thus 
 it came about that I occupied a front seat in the Repre 
 sentatives Hall when Mr Lincoln delivered the speech 
 in question. The impression made upon me by the orator 
 was quite overpowering. I had not heard much political 
 speaking up to that time. I have heard a great deal 
 since. I have never heard anything since, either by 
 Mr Lincoln or by anybody, that I would put on a higher 
 plane of oratory. All the strings that play upon the 
 human heart and understanding were touched with 
 
54 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 masterly skill and force, while beyond and above all 
 skill was the overwhelming conviction pressed upon the 
 audience that the speaker himself was charged with an 
 irresistible and inspiring duty to his fellow -men. Having 
 since then heard all the great speakers of the country, 
 I award the palm to Mr Lincoln as the one who, al 
 though not first in all respects, would bring more men 
 of doubtful or hostile leanings around to his way of 
 thinking, by talking to them on a platform, than any 
 other." 
 
 Stephen Douglas, who at this time was Lincoln s 
 great rival, had risen from as humble circum 
 stances as Lincoln himself ; but in the first instance 
 his progress in the political world had been far 
 more rapid than that of his opponent. As a youth 
 he was apprenticed to a cabinetmaker in Vermont, 
 and had studied law under similar difficulties and 
 disadvantages to the future President. His ready 
 wit and remarkable aptitude, however, quickly over 
 came these, and he was admitted to the bar at 
 the early age of twenty-one. Then, coming to 
 Springfield with nothing but his talents and his 
 address to his credit, and without political support, 
 in spite of these drawbacks he successfully con 
 tested for the office of State Attorney with John 
 J. Hardin, one of the most successful lawyers of 
 the State. Shortly after this he was elected to 
 the Legislature on the Democratic side. In 1837 
 he obtained from President van Buren the appoint 
 ment of Registrar of the Public Land Office, and 
 settled definitely at Springfield. The same year 
 
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 55 
 
 he was nominated for Congress in opposition to 
 John T. Stuart, Lincoln s first law partner, who 
 defeated him on this occasion by fourteen votes. 
 No two men could have offered a greater con 
 trast than Douglas and Lincoln. Douglas was short 
 and square built, possessed an attractive and in 
 gratiating manner, and a personal magnetism 
 which has been described as almost irresistible. 
 His voice was rich and remarkable for its compass. 
 His skill as an orator and debater was unrivalled. 
 He was self-reliant and troubled by few political 
 scruples. Lincoln was more than a foot taller 
 than his rival. He was ungainly and awkward. 
 His voice when first he began to speak was harsh 
 and shrill, and he had none of the qualities which 
 tend to general popularity and social favour. 
 But he impressed all who heard him speak by his 
 honesty of purpose and the depth and sincerity 
 of his political convictions. While Douglas was 
 by far the more plausible of the two in his style 
 of oratory, and electrified his hearers with his 
 eloquence, Lincoln convinced his audience by the 
 sheer force of logic. Lincoln s style of speaking 
 and the peculiarities of his delivery, as contrasted 
 with those of Douglas, are thus described by one 
 of his political friends : 
 
 " When standing erect he was six feet four inches high. 
 He was lean in flesh and ungainly in figure ; thin through 
 the chest, and hence slightly stoop-shouldered. When 
 he arose to address courts, juries, or crowds of people his 
 
56 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 body inclined forward to a slight degree. At first he was 
 very awkward, and it seemed a real labour to adjust him 
 self to the surroundinga. He struggled for a time under 
 a feeling of apparent diffidence and sensitiveness, and 
 these only added to his awkwardness. When he began 
 speaking his voice was shrill, piping, and unpleasant. 
 His manner, his attitude, his dark, yellow face wrinkled 
 and dry, his oddity of pose, his diffident movements 
 everything seemed to be against him ; but only for a short 
 time. After having arisen, he generally placed his hands 
 behind him, the back of his left hand in the palm of his 
 right, the thumb and fingers of his right hand clasped 
 around the left arm at the wrist. For a few moments 
 he played the combination of awkwardness, sensitive 
 ness, and diffidence. As he proceeded he became some 
 what animated, and to keep in harmony with his growing 
 warmth his hands relaxed their grasp and fell to his side. 
 Presently he clasped them in front of him, interlocking 
 his fingers, one thumb meanwhile chasing the other. 
 His speech now requiring more emphatic utterance, his 
 fingers unlocked and his hands fell apart. His left arm 
 was thrown behind, the back of his hand resting against 
 his body, his right hand seeking his side. By this time 
 he had gained sufficient composure, and his real speech 
 began. He did not gesticulate as much with his hands 
 as he did with his head. He used the latter frequently, 
 throwing it with vim this way and that. This move 
 ment was a significant one when he sought to enforce 
 his statement. It sometimes came with a quick jerk, 
 as if throwing off electric sparks into combustible material. 
 He never sawed the air nor rent space into tatters and 
 rags, as some orators do. He never acted for stage 
 effect. He was cool, considerate, reflective in time 
 self-possessed and sell-reliant. His style was clear, terse, 
 and compact. In argument he was logical demonstra- 
 
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 57 
 
 tive, and fair. He was careless of his dress, and his 
 clothes, instead of fitting, as did the garments of Douglas 
 on the latter s well-rounded form, hung loosely on his 
 huge frame." 
 
 What was practically the official inauguration of 
 the new Republican party took place at Bloom- 
 ington, in the spring of 1856. This Bloomington 
 Convention has always been remembered as the 
 occasion of what is usually termed " Lincoln s lost 
 speech." 
 
 "The Convention " (says William Eleroy Curtis), "which 
 was composed of former members of all political parties, 
 had adopted the name Republican, had taken extreme 
 grounds against slavery, and had launched a new political 
 organisation ; but it contained many discordant, envious, 
 and hostile elements. Those who had watched the pro 
 ceedings were anxious and apprehensive of dissension and 
 jealousy, and Lincoln, with his acute political perceptions, 
 realised the danger, perhaps, more keenly than any other 
 man in the assembly. He saw before him a group of 
 earnest, zealous, sincere men, willing to make tremendous 
 sacrifices and undertake titanic tasks, but at the same time 
 most of them clung to their own theories and advocated 
 their individual methods with a tenacity that promised 
 to defeat their common purpose. Therefore, when he 
 arose in response to the unanimous demand for a speech 
 from the great orator of Springfield, his soul was flooded 
 with a desire and a purpose to harmonise and amalgamate 
 the patriotic emotions of his associates. He realised 
 that it was a crisis in the history of his country, and 
 rose to the full height of the occasion. 
 
 " Those who were present say that at first he spoke 
 slowly, cautiously, and in a monotone ; but gradually his 
 
58 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 words grew in force and intensity until he swept the 
 discordant souls of the assembly together and his hearers 
 arose from their chairs with pale faces and quivering 
 lips and pressed unconsciously towards him. His in 
 fluence was irresistible. Even the trained reporters, 
 accustomed to witness the most touching and impressive 
 scenes with the indifference of their profession, dropped 
 their pencils, and what was perhaps the greatest speech 
 of Lincoln s entire career was unreported." 
 
 Hence the speech became popularly known as 
 " Lincoln s lost speech," and no record was kept 
 of words that had the effect of electrifying a political 
 audience in a manner in which no audience of the 
 kind has ever, perhaps, been carried away before 
 or since. Fragments of the speech were quoted 
 from memory by his hearers, but Lincoln himself, 
 though constantly appealed to by numerous news 
 papers to reproduce his words, declared his inability 
 to do so. Joseph Medill, subsequently editor of 
 the Chicago Tribune, narrates how he took up his 
 pencil in the ordinary way to take shorthand notes 
 of the speech, but completely forgot himself after 
 the first ten minutes, so entirely was he absorbed 
 by the magnetic oratory of the speaker. He states 
 how, walking out of the room in a sort of hypnotic 
 trance, after Lincoln had sat down, it suddenly 
 flashed through his mind that he had no report to 
 hand to the Tribune. His feeling of dismay, how 
 ever, at this occurrence was somewhat mitigated 
 when he discovered that all the other newspaper 
 men present were in the same predicament, the 
 
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 59 
 
 excitement having carried away the entire audience, 
 including the reporters themselves. 
 
 It was in the Presidential contest of this year 
 (1856) that the first trial of strength took place 
 between the new Republicans and the Democratic 
 party, which had hitherto been opposed to the 
 old Whigs. The Republicans chose as their 
 candidate General Fremont, a Southerner of French 
 origin, while the Democratic candidate was James 
 Buchanan, of Vermont, a man more noted for his 
 caution and respectability than for any more posi 
 tive virtues. Although Buchanan was elected, the 
 show made by the Republicans at the polls was far 
 better than they had anticipated, and the result 
 seemed to encourage their hopes that at the next 
 election they might carry their own nominee. 
 Things, however, did not in all directions run 
 smoothly for the new party. In 1857 the celebrated 
 Dred Scott case came to a head, and the ruling of 
 the Supreme Court in this notable trial proved a 
 severe blow to the prospects of the Republicans. 
 
 Dred Scott was a negro who, before the repeal 
 of the Missouri Compromise, had been taken by his 
 master into Nebraska. Hence he claimed that by 
 virtue of this agreement he became, ipso facto, a 
 free man. If so, he was entitled to sue his master 
 in a Federal Court, as he was in that case a citizen 
 of Missouri. The question for the Supreme Court 
 to decide was, therefore, whether Dred Scott was 
 a citizen. The subsidiary question was neces- 
 
60 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 sarily raised whether Dred Scott was a free man. 
 The judgment was pronounced by Chief Justice 
 Roger Taney, and concurred in by a majority of 
 the justices in the Supreme Court of the United 
 States, five of his colleagues concurring and two 
 only dissenting. The pronouncement amounted to 
 a decision that Dred Scott was not a citizen, and 
 went on to state that he also was not free, in view 
 of the fact that the Missouri Compromise had all 
 along been unconstitutional and void, the exclusion 
 of slavery from any portion of the Territories being 
 contrary to the established Constitution of the 
 American Commonwealth. 
 
 The question that arose was the intention of the 
 framers of the Constitution and the authors of the 
 Declaration of Independence. Judge Taney laid it 
 down that thrse men had hardly counted negroes 
 as human at all, and used words such as " men," 
 " persons," " citizens " in a sense which neces 
 sarily excluded the negro. The fact is, however, 
 that the Constitution in question was formulated 
 by a number of States, in some of which negroes 
 were actually at that time exercising the full rights 
 of citizens. All the earlier Presidents of the United 
 States had acted on the belief that Congress had the 
 power to allow or forbid slavery in the Territories, 
 and the point had been universally recognised and 
 admitted throughout the history of the American 
 Republic until Calhoun first disputed it some eight 
 or ten years previously, in his defence of slavery 
 
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 61 
 
 in Southern States. Justices M Lean and Curtis 
 put forward arguments in opposition to those of 
 the Chief Justice, and the majority of the American 
 legal profession were disposed to call in question the 
 legality of this memorable decision. In spite of 
 this, the judgment of the Supreme Court could not 
 lightly be set aside, and the Republicans, who had 
 based their programme on their constitutional posi 
 tion, were, for the time being, thrown into much 
 confusion and embarrassment. 
 
 In 1856, and again in 1858, Lincoln became Sena 
 torial candidate for the State of Illinois. American 
 Senators are elected by the Legislatures of their 
 States, and a Senator to be elected must have an 
 absolute majority. Thus the name that heads the 
 poll at the first ballot is not necessarily the one 
 elected. In the election for 1856 Lincoln headed 
 the first ballot, but he soon realised that unless his 
 friends transferred their votes to Lynam Trumbull, 
 a Democrat, who, however, was also a sound oppo 
 nent of slavery, a supporter of Douglas would prob 
 ably win the election. Sacrificing, therefore, his 
 own personal interests, he induced his friends to 
 vote for Trumbull and thus secure his absolute 
 majority. When a Senatorial vacancy again 
 occurred two years later, Douglas himself became 
 the candidate of the Democrats, and Lincoln was 
 at once recognised as his only possible opponent. 
 The struggle between these two men for the Sena 
 torial vacancy in Illinois was destined to prove of 
 
62 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 historical importance. The question that was at 
 issue in connection with it was whether the insti 
 tution of slavery was to be tolerated beyond its 
 present limits, or whether it was to be left simply 
 for the voters of each new State to determine as 
 they thought fit. Lincoln, while recognising that 
 slavery must be tolerated in the present existing 
 Slave States, from the necessities of the Union, 
 was resolute against its extension, and was equally 
 resolute in the attitude he maintained that slavery, 
 whenever or however tolerated under stress of cir 
 cumstances, must be recognised as a violation of 
 eternal right. " We have temporised with it," he 
 said in one of his speeches, "from the necessities 
 of our condition ; but as sure as God reigns, and 
 school children read, that black, foul lie can never 
 be consummated into God s hallowed truth." 
 
 A further question, destined shortly after to as 
 sume an even more prominent position than the 
 question of slavery, was now becoming mixed up 
 with this issue. If slavery were to be placed under 
 a sort of interdict, even though tacitly permitted 
 in certain States of the Union, what attitude would 
 these same Slave States take up ? Would they con 
 sent to remain within the four corners of the Union 
 under such circumstances ? This doubt was raised 
 in the minds of many whose hostility to slavery 
 from conscientious motives was beyond dispute, 
 but who dreaded, before all else, to see a break-up 
 of the Union. There were not a few, accordingly, 
 
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 63 
 
 whose natural sympathies were with Lincoln, who 
 yet preferred to side with Douglas and the party 
 of indifference, rather than run so grave a risk 
 to the integrity of the Commonwealth. It was 
 Lincoln s great distinction that he was throughout 
 absolutely opposed to any compromise or tamper 
 ing with the great principle involved. The central 
 idea of the founders of the Union was, he main 
 tained, the equality of man, and a steady approxi 
 mation to this, as far as circumstances and condi 
 tions would allow, was the basis and corner-stone 
 of the American Constitution. 
 
 Lincoln had to contend against a natural prejudice, 
 " a natural disgust," as he termed it, " in the minds 
 of nearly all white people at the idea of an indis 
 criminate amalgamation of the white and black 
 men." His opponents were constantly urging that 
 the logical outcome of his principles would be the 
 encouragement of mixed marriages between the 
 two races. Lincoln lost no opportunity of attack 
 ing this line of argument. " I protest," he said, 
 " against the counterfeit logic which says that 
 since I do not want a negro woman for my slave, 
 I must necessarily want her for my wife. I may 
 want her for neither. I may simply let her alone. 
 In some respects she is certainly not my equal ; 
 but in her natural right to eat the bread which 
 she has earned by the sweat of her brow, she is my 
 equal and the equal of any man." Lincoln at this 
 time entirely repudiated the title of Abolitionist, 
 
64 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 and firmly declined to support the Abolitionists in 
 their efforts to get slavery declared illegal through 
 out the whole of the United States. The Slave 
 States had entered the Union under specific condi 
 tions, and the maintenance of slavery within their 
 borders was one of them. These conditions must 
 be recognised, however regrettable such recognition 
 might be. " We grant," he said, " a Fugitive Slave 
 Law because it is so nominated in the bond." But 
 as to the eternal principle of right and wrong 
 Lincoln would allow no paltering. " If slavery," 
 he said, " is not wrong, nothing is wrong." And 
 wherever, therefore, it was not " nominated in the 
 bond," slavery must be prevented. In a speech 
 delivered at a slightly later date, and one phrase in 
 which was quoted and remembered throughout the 
 length and breadth of America, he declared : 
 
 " We are now far into the fifth year since a policy was 
 initiated with the avowed object, and confident promise, 
 of putting an end to slavery agitation. Under the opera 
 tion of that policy, that agitation has not only not ceased, 
 but has constantly augmented. In my opinion it will not 
 cease until a crisis shall have been reached and passed. 
 A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe 
 this Government cannot endure permanently half slave 
 and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved 
 I do not expect the house to fall but I do expect 
 that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one 
 thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery 
 will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the 
 public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of 
 
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 65 
 
 ultimate extinction ; or its advocates will push it forward 
 till it shall become lawful alike in all the States, old as 
 well as new North as well as South." 
 
 No well-known public man in America had ever 
 spoken so boldly on the question of slavery, had 
 ever voiced the issue so clearly. Lincoln s Re 
 publican supporters were afraid of the effect on 
 public opinion of so frank and outspoken a pro 
 nouncement. Lincoln, however, saw more clearly 
 than they, in realising that the issue must be faced, 
 and that success at the polls would be the lot of 
 the party who took the firm stand and refused to 
 temporise. To Herndon, himself an Abolitionist, 
 when he questioned whether the passage was politic, 
 Lincoln said, " I would rather be defeated with 
 this expression in my speech than be victorious 
 without it." 
 
 Of the shrewdness of Lincoln s judgment in 
 matters political, of his capacity for gauging the 
 sentiments and attitude of the man in the street, 
 and his sagacity in judging the effects of political 
 moves, there are no two opinions. An Illinois 
 political wirepuller gives him this testimony : " He 
 was one of the shrewdest politicians in the State. 
 Nobody had more experience in that way. Nobody 
 knew better what was passing in the minds of the 
 people. Nobody knew better how to turn things 
 to advantage politically." At the same time, he 
 adds that he could not cheat people out of their 
 votes any more than he could out of their money. 
 
 5 
 
66 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Lincoln s great political foresight was never more 
 conspicuously shown than in his contest with 
 Douglas in 1858. One of the incidents of this 
 campaign, which involved almost daily speeches 
 before public audiences for the two great pro 
 tagonists during a period of some three months, was 
 a series of questions which either party proposed 
 for the other to answer by way of establishing the 
 precise attitude which his opponent took up. 
 Douglas began by propounding a list of questions 
 for Lincoln to reply to, his object being to commit 
 him to strong Abolitionist doctrines, which he felt 
 confident would lose him public support. Thus, 
 for instance, he wanted to know whether Lincoln 
 was pledged to the repeal of the Fugitive Slave 
 Law, to resist the admission of negro Slave States, 
 to the prohibition of the slave-trade between the 
 States, and to the prohibition of slavery in the 
 Territories. Lincoln replied that he was pledged to 
 no proposition except the prohibition of slavery in 
 all the Territories. He then propounded to Douglas 
 four questions, on the second of which the very 
 gravest issues hung. " Can," he asked, " the people 
 of a United States Territory, in any lawful way, 
 against the wish of any citizen of the United States, 
 exclude slavery from its limits, prior to the forma 
 tion of a State Constitution ? " His friends warned 
 Lincoln that his putting this question would give 
 Douglas the opportunity he desired to set himself 
 right with the people of Illinois and to secure his 
 
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 67 
 
 re-election as Senator. To this Lincoln rejoined : 
 " I am killing larger game. If Douglas answers, 
 he can never be President ; and the battle of 1860 
 is worth a hundred of this." Chief Justice Taney s 
 judgment on the Dred Scott case had indeed caused 
 great embarrassment to the Republican party. It 
 had, however, created also a serious difficulty for 
 Douglas. In view of the attitude he had adopted, 
 he was bound to treat this decision as right ; but 
 if so, Congress had not the power to prohibit 
 slavery in a Territory ; nor indeed was it clear 
 how a Territorial Legislature whose authority was 
 delegated by Congress could possess this power 
 either. What, then, became of the point on which 
 Douglas had laid so much stress, that each State 
 should decide for itself whether it would admit 
 slavery or not ? To this question Douglas replied : 
 
 " It matters not what way the Supreme Court may here 
 after decide as to the abstract question whether slavery 
 may or may not go into a Territory under the Constitution ; 
 the people have the lawful means to introduce it or exclude 
 it. as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exist 
 a day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by local 
 police regulations. Those police regulations can only be 
 established by the local Legislature, and if the people are 
 opposed to slavery they will elect representatives to that 
 body who will, by unfriendly legislation, effectually prevent 
 the introduction of it into their midst. If, on the contrary, 
 they are for it, their legislation will favour its extension." 
 
 This reply, as Douglas confidently anticipated, 
 gave satisfaction to his Illinois supporters, and 
 
68 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 ensured his re-election to the Senate. But it gave 
 offence to the out-and-out pro-slavery men in the 
 Southern States, without whose support Douglas 
 could not win as Democratic candidate for the 
 Presidency. Henceforth, by the Southern leaders, 
 Douglas was regarded as suspect, and they made up 
 their minds that, whatever happened, he should not 
 become President. This, in spite of the fact that 
 had he met with the whole-hearted support of the 
 Democratic party, his election was almost a fore 
 gone conclusion. The situation thus brought about 
 rendered the return of a Republican President at 
 the next election in the highest degree probable. 
 But who this President was likely to be was still 
 a matter of very considerable doubt, and Lincoln 
 himself, despite the leading role he had taken 
 in the creation of the Republican party, was 
 hardly thought of in this connection. He had, 
 indeed, only been a member of Congress for two 
 years, and had never occupied any important 
 official position. Seward, who was the popular 
 favourite for the nomination, had been Governor of 
 New York State. He had been a staunch opponent 
 of compromise in the matter of slavery and had 
 enjoyed a long and honourable political career. 
 Other leaders of the party besides Seward were not 
 without some show of justification in considering 
 that their claims to the position of President were 
 greater than Lincoln s. Among these was Chase, 
 who had been Governor of Ohio, and who after- 
 
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 69 
 
 wards became Secretary of the Treasury during 
 Lincoln s first administration, or, as we should 
 call it in England, Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
 Both afterwards felt very sore at the preference 
 accorded to Lincoln, and Chase never got over his 
 resentment at what he considered a slight to his 
 superior talents and qualifications. Certain, how 
 ever, of Lincoln s friends had made up their 
 minds that Lincoln was the right person for the 
 Presidency. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 FROM PRAIRIE POLITICIAN TO PRESIDENT 
 
 THE electric condition of the political atmosphere 
 in connection with the slavery question, and the 
 violent passions aroused on both sides in this con 
 troversy, resulted about this time in a number of 
 outbreaks of greater or lesser consequence in various 
 parts of America. The most noteworthy of these 
 was the celebrated raid of John Brown and his 
 band of Abolitionists and negroes upon the Gov 
 ernment Arsenal at Harper s Ferry in Virginia. 
 John Brown was by religion a Puritan of the 
 Mayflower brand, and he was in some sense 
 the Garibaldi of the anti-slavery battle, the free 
 lance and extremist who was determined to force 
 the issue at all hazards, without regard to the 
 laws of society or the State. In the disturbances 
 in Kansas in connection with the new constitution 
 for that State and the struggle to prevent a slave 
 constitution being forced upon it, John Brown had 
 taken a foremost part. He had already engaged 
 in local battles and forays, in which blood had been 
 
 70 
 
PRAIRIE POLITICIAN TO PRESIDENT 71 
 
 shed on both sides. In October 1859 he engaged 
 in a more daring and ambitious enterprise by 
 seizing upon the State Arsenal at Harper s Ferry. 
 This exploit, however, was fated to be his last. 
 Things had reached a point at which it was 
 necessary for the State to intervene by armed 
 force. Robert Lee, afterwards destined to win 
 fame as the noted Southern general, took com 
 mand of the troops, and resistance was very soon 
 brought to an end. John Brown fought to the last. 
 Two of his sons were slain in the encounter, and 
 he himself was desperately wounded. His object 
 had been doubtless to obtain the wherewithal 
 to free further slaves by force ; but the mad 
 enterprise had the only possible termination. 
 Brown was legally tried and hanged. No State 
 can afford to wink at those who take the law 
 into their own hands. At the same time his 
 death aroused widespread indignation and sym 
 pathy ; for it was felt that, however misguided 
 he had been, he had died in a noble cause and for 
 conscience sake. He was asked shortly before his 
 death how he justified his acts. In reply to his 
 interlocutor he observed : " I think, my friend, 
 you are guilty of a great wrong against God and 
 humanity I say it without wishing to be offensive, 
 and it would be perfectly right for anyone to 
 interfere with you so far as to free those you wil 
 fully and wickedly hold in bondage. I think I did 
 right, and that others will do right who interfere 
 
72 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 with you at any time and at all times." He wrote 
 to a friend that he rejoiced like Paul, for if they 
 killed him it would greatly advance the cause of 
 Christ. Longfellow, in an entry in his Diary for 
 Friday, 2nd December 1859, the day on which 
 John Brown was hanged, voiced a very widespread 
 feeling throughout the Northern States of America : 
 " This will be a great day in our history ; the 
 date of a new revolution quite as much needed as 
 the old one. Even now, as I write, they are 
 leading old John Brown to execution in Virginia 
 for attempting to rescue slaves. This is sowing the 
 wind to reap the whirlwind, which will soon come." 
 Coming events were indeed already beginning 
 to cast their shadows before, and those with fore 
 sight could read the signs of the times and realise 
 how ominous were the clouds that were gathering 
 in all quarters of the political sky. The attitude 
 of Lincoln towards John Brown was somewhat 
 similar to that of Cavour to Garibaldi. Lincoln 
 was the last man to look with favour on open 
 defiance of the law. He had alienated the Aboli 
 tionists by his insistence on adhering to the terms 
 of the Union, by which slavery was admitted in 
 certain States. He had now no word of sympathy 
 for the misguided enthusiast who imagined that he 
 had some divine commission to liberate the slave. 
 This view he expressed in his celebrated Cooper 
 Institute Speech, and though to some, at a time 
 when passions were so intensely aroused, it must 
 
PRAIRIE POLITICIAN TO PRESIDENT 73 
 
 have struck a jarring note, it was entirely true to 
 the character of the man who made it, and in 
 keeping with his whole outlook upon life and his 
 conception of the duty of man to man. This 
 Cooper Institute Speech, like several other of 
 Lincoln s famous orations, marks an important 
 turning-point in his political career. It was in 
 a sense his introduction to the intellectual aristoc 
 racy of the Eastern States, who had hitherto 
 merely heard rumours of him as a prairie politician 
 and witty stump orator, with an unrivalled repu 
 tation for telling risky stories. " In October 
 1859," says Herndon, " he came rushing into the 
 office one morning with a letter from New York 
 City, inviting him to deliver a lecture there, and 
 asked my advice, and that of other friends, as to 
 the subject and character of his address. We all 
 recommended a speech on the political situation. 
 He accepted the invitation of the New York 
 committee, at the same time notifying them that 
 his speech would deal entirely with political 
 questions, and fixing a day late in February as the 
 most convenient time. Meanwhile he spent the 
 intervening time in careful preparation." 
 
 It was an anxious occasion for Lincoln. The 
 audience he was to meet in New York would 
 include among its members many of the best 
 known men of the day, the foremost representatives 
 of the wealthy and fashionable society of the greatest 
 city of the Union. He himself was not without 
 
74 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 considerable misgiving as to the reception with 
 which he was likely to meet. The result showed 
 that he had gauged rightly the temper of his 
 audience. He avoided all attempt at rhetorical 
 display or impassioned oratory, and studied to 
 make appeal to the reason rather than to the 
 emotions of his listeners. The speech was char 
 acterised by the temperateness of its tone and the 
 forcible and logical manner in which he drove 
 home his points on the leading question of the 
 day. It was widely reported in full in the New 
 York press, and praised for its " great apparent 
 candour and great fairness." The late Joseph 
 Choate, for some years American Ambassador in 
 London, who was present on the occasion, has 
 left a record of his impressions of the speech and 
 the speaker : 1 
 
 " It is now," he said, " forty years since I first saw and 
 heard Abraham Lincoln, but the impression which he left 
 on my mind is ineffaceable. After his great successes in the 
 West, he came to New York to make a political address. 
 He appeared in every sense of the word like one of the 
 plain people among whom he loved to be counted. At 
 first sight there was nothing impressive or imposing about 
 him, except that his great stature singled him out from 
 the crowd ; his clothes hung awkwardly on his giant frame, 
 his face was of a dark pallor, without the slightest tinge 
 of colour ; his seamed and rugged features bore the 
 furrows of hardship and struggle ; his deep- set eyes looked 
 sad and anxious ; his countenance in repose gave little 
 evidence of that brain-power which had raised him from 
 
 1 In an address given at Edinburgh in 1900. 
 
PRAIRIE POLITICIAN TO PRESIDENT 75 
 
 the lowest to the highest station among his country 
 men. . . . 
 
 ; It was a great audience, including all the noted men 
 all the learned and cultured of his party in New York : 
 editors, clergymen, statesmen, lawyers, merchants, critics. 
 They were all very curious to hear him. His fame as a 
 powerful speaker had preceded him, and exaggerated 
 rumour of his wit had reached the East. When Mr Bryant 
 presented him on the high platform of the Cooper Institute, 
 a vast sea of eager, upturned faces greeted him, full of 
 intense curiosity to see what this rude child of the people 
 was like. He was equal to the occasion. When he spoke 
 he was transformed ; his eye kindled, his voice rang, his 
 face shone and seemed to light up the whole assembly. 
 For an hour and a half he held his audience in the hollow 
 of his hand. His style of speech and manner of delivery 
 were severely simple. What Lowell called the grand 
 simplicities of the Bible, with which he was so familiar, 
 were reflected in his discourse. With no attempt at 
 ornament or rhetoric, without parade or pretence, he spoke 
 straight to the point. If any came expecting the turgid 
 eloquence or the ribaldry of the frontier, they must have 
 been startled at the earnest and sincere purity of his 
 utterances. . . . 
 
 "He spoke upon the theme which he had mastered so 
 thoroughly. He demonstrated by copious historical 
 proofs and masterly logic that the Fathers who created 
 the Constitution in order to form a more perfect union, 
 to establish justice, and to secure the blessings of liberty 
 to themselves and their posterity, intended to empower 
 the Federal Government to exclude slavery from the 
 Territories. In the kindliest spirit, he protested against 
 the avowed threat of the Southern States to destroy the 
 Union if, in order to secure freedom in those vast regions, 
 out of which future States were to be carved, a Republican 
 
76 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 President were elected. . . . He concluded with this 
 telling sentence : Let us have faith that right makes 
 right, and in that faith let us to the end dare to do our 
 duty as we understand it. " 
 
 Following his address at the Cooper Institute, 
 Lincoln travelled to New England to visit his son 
 Robert, who was then at college, and in answer to 
 many invitations, spoke at a number of places in 
 Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire, 
 and was everywhere very favourably received, both 
 by the public and the press. 
 
 The Manchester Mirror, in an editorial dealing 
 with one of the local addresses, thus commented 
 on his appearance and manner of delivery : " For 
 the first half -hour his opponents would agree with 
 every word he uttered, and from that point he 
 would lead them off little by little until it seemed 
 as if he had got them all into his fold. He is far 
 from prepossessing in personal appearance, and his 
 voice is disagreeable, yet he wins your attention 
 from the start. He indulges in no flowers of rhe 
 toric, but displays more shrewdness and more 
 knowledge of the masses of mankind than any 
 public speaker we have heard since Long Jim 
 Wilson left for California." 
 
 The very favourable impression that Lincoln 
 had made in New York and the New England 
 States generally reacted upon his prospects in 
 Illinois, and on his return it became clear to him 
 that the Presidential nomination was within his 
 
PRAIRIE POLITICIAN TO PRESIDENT 77 
 
 reach if he chose to put himself out to obtain it. 
 After a momentary hesitation, he gave his friends 
 permission to place his name in the field if they 
 thought proper to do so. He was asked whether, 
 in the event of the nomination for President not 
 being obtainable, he would accept the post of Vice- 
 President, which he declined to do. His friends, 
 prominent among whom were Judges Logan and 
 David Davis, took up the matter with enthusiasm. 
 The Illinois State Convention shortly after met at 
 Decatur on the 9th and 10th May, and, appointing 
 George Logan the Springfield delegate, instructed 
 for Lincoln. 
 
 An incident at the Decatur Convention has won 
 almost as much celebrity in its way as the adven 
 ture of King Alfred with the cakes. While the 
 meeting was being held, John Hanks, Lincoln s 
 old friend and cousin, suddenly appeared bringing 
 in two historic rails which he declared he and 
 Lincoln had made in their early days in the San- 
 gamon Bottom in 1830. These were received with 
 great cheering and applause by the Convention, 
 and the Sangamon rails were associated with the 
 name of Lincoln ever after, their hero being 
 chaffingly alluded to as the " rail-splitter." A 
 delegate at the Convention declared that these 
 rails would be symbolical of the issue of the coming 
 contest as between free and slave labour. Lincoln 
 regarded them when they were brought in with 
 embarrassed amusement. Finally, in response to 
 
78 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 loud calls, he observed : " Gentlemen, I suppose 
 you want to know something about those things. 
 Well, the truth is, John Hanks and I did make rails 
 in the Sangamon Bottom. I do not know whether 
 we made those rails or not. Fact is, I do not 
 think they are a credit to the makers. But I do 
 know this : I made rails then, and I think I could 
 make better ones than these now." 
 
 A week later the delegates gathered from the 
 various States for the great political Convention 
 at Chicago for the nomination of the Republican 
 candidate for the Presidency. The strong proba 
 bility that whoever was nominated at this Con 
 vention would become President of the United 
 States at its most critical period since the 
 foundation of the Union gave the meeting unpre 
 cedented importance. Lincoln had given Judge 
 Logan a letter authorising him to withdraw his 
 name whenever his friends deemed such action 
 necessary or proper. Davis was the business 
 manager, and any negotiations that were entered 
 into passed through his hands. Lincoln instructed 
 him to make no contracts that would bind him, 
 a request to which Davis did not find it possible 
 strictly to adhere. It soon became obvious that 
 the contest would be narrowed down to a neck- 
 and-neck race between Seward and Lincoln. No 
 one else was seriously in the running. On the first 
 ballot Seward led, followed at no very great dis 
 tance by Lincoln. The second ballot showed that 
 
PRAIRIE POLITICIAN TO PRESIDENT 79 
 
 Lincoln had gained appreciably on his rival, but 
 Seward was still first favourite. At the third 
 ballot Carter of Ohio transferred his support to 
 the Lincoln candidature, enabling Lincoln easily 
 to obtain the requisite majority. Meanwhile he 
 himself remained at Springfield, waiting the latest 
 news from Chicago at the office of the Springfield 
 Journal. He was sitting there in an armchair 
 when the news of his nomination reached him. 
 His first anxiety was to get up and leave the 
 newspaper office " to tell a little woman down the 
 street the news." Needless to say, he was over 
 whelmed with congratulations by his Illinois 
 friends ; and the next day the Committee from the 
 Chicago Convention, with George Ashmun of 
 Massachusetts at its head, called to give formal 
 notice of his nomination. The Republican platform 
 amounted to a declaration (which was warmly 
 endorsed by Lincoln) " that the new dogma that 
 the Constitution carries slavery into all the Terri 
 tories is a dangerous political heresy, revolutionary 
 in tendency, and subversive of the peace and 
 harmony of the country. That the normal condi 
 tion of all the Territories is that of Freedom. That 
 neither Congress, the Territorial Legislature, nor 
 any individual can give legal existence to slavery 
 in any Territory. That the reopening of the slave 
 trade would be a crime against humanity." 
 
 After his nomination Lincoln turned over his 
 law practice to his partner, W. H. Herndon, and 
 
80 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 engaged as his private secretary a clerk in the office 
 of the Secretary of State, of the name of John 
 G. Nicolay, who afterwards collaborated in the 
 production of the standard Life of the great Presi 
 dent. He was given the use of the Governor s 
 room at the State House for an office, and it was 
 from this as headquarters that Lincoln conducted 
 his own presidential campaign. His activities 
 were throughout devoted to harmonising the rather 
 numerous discords and local dissensions in the 
 Republican party, for which his tact and good 
 temper specially adapted him. His foresight as 
 regards the probable moves of his opponents in the 
 political campaign was remarkable and unique. 
 He was, however, over-sanguine in his belief that 
 the South would not have recourse to the arbitra 
 ment of arms at the last resort. " The people of 
 the South," he said, " have too much sense to 
 attempt the ruining of the Government." His own 
 cool and calculating nature made it difficult for him 
 to realise the extent to which passions had been 
 aroused in the Southern States. He attempted con 
 stantly to reassure the slave-owning States as regards 
 the attitude likely to be taken by a Republican 
 administration. " Do the people of the South," he 
 asked in a letter to Alexander Stephens, " really 
 entertain fears that a Republican administration 
 would directly or indirectly interfere with the 
 slaves ? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once 
 a friend and still, I hope, not an enemy, there is 
 
PRAIRIE POLITICIAN TO PRESIDENT 81 
 
 no cause for such fears. The South would be in 
 no greater danger in this respect than in the days 
 of Washington. I suppose, however, that this 
 does not meet the case. 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." The election took place on 
 6th November 1860. There were four competitors : 
 Lincoln, for the Republicans ; Douglas, for the 
 Democrats ; Breckenridge, for the Slave-owners ; 
 and Bell, for the old Whigs, now quite a forlorn 
 hope. The popular vote gave Lincoln a majority 
 of some 600,000 over Douglas, his nearest rival ; 
 but in the voting of the Electoral College, Lincoln 
 received an absolute majority of 180 votes, his 
 nearest competitor being Breckenridge, with 72. 
 Springfield, needless to say, was en fete on receipt 
 of the news of the declaration of the poll. Lincoln 
 was called upon for a speech, but he merely thanked 
 his supporters for their congratulations and 
 observed : "In all our rejoicing let us neither 
 express nor cherish any hard feeling towards any 
 citizen who has differed from us. 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. " 
 Lincoln s habitual caution was indeed never more 
 strongly shown than in what he said and what he 
 refrained from saying at this critical moment of his 
 country s history. 
 
 6 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF THE WAR 
 
 FOR the next four months, according to the rules of 
 the United States Constitution, Lincoln found his 
 hands tied. He was President-elect, but did not 
 come into office until the succeeding March. In 
 view of the active steps for secession which were at 
 once taken by the South as soon as the news of his 
 election became known, this position was a singu 
 larly embarrassing one, as he had no means of 
 taking action himself, and the outgoing President 
 was also unwilling to take any steps which might, 
 as he feared, precipitate a conflict. Appeals came 
 to him from all quarters, but naturally he could do 
 nothing. To an old friend who came to see him at 
 Springfield he observed sadly : "I suppose you have 
 forgotten the trial down in Montgomery County, 
 where your partner gave away your case in his 
 opening speech. I saw you motioning to him, and 
 how uneasy you were ; but you could not stop him. 
 And that is just the way with Buchanan and me. 
 He is giving away the case, and I cannot stop him." 
 
 82 
 
RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF THE WAR 83 
 
 One effort was made for a joint conference of the 
 President and the President-elect on the situation ; 
 but Lincoln realised the danger that might arise 
 through thus compromising himself in the matter 
 without possessing the necessary power to act, 
 and replied with a counter proposition which threw 
 back upon the representatives of the seceding States 
 the responsibility for opening hostilities. General 
 Green came to Springfield in December, suggesting 
 such a conference on behalf of President Buchanan. 
 Lincoln listened to Green with courtesy and atten 
 tion, and handed him a letter in which he stated 
 that he did not desire any amendment to the 
 Constitution, although he recognised the right of 
 the American people to adopt one. That he 
 believed in maintaining inviolate the rights of each 
 State to control its own domestic institutions ; and 
 that he considered the lawless invasion by armed 
 force of the soil of any State or Territory as the 
 gravest of crimes. While these were his sentiments, 
 he declined to consent to their publication unless 
 the Senators from Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, 
 Florida, Louisiana, and Texas would sign a pledge 
 " to suspend all action for the dismemberment of 
 the Union until some act deemed to be violative of 
 our rights shall be done by the incoming adminis 
 tration." Thus the negotiations fell through. 
 
 From the first Lincoln took up a most determined 
 attitude with regard to the questions of secession 
 and slavery. Of the former he said : " The right 
 
84 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 of a State to secede is not an open or debatable 
 question/ With regard to the latter, he wrote to 
 Robert Washburne as follows : " Prevent our 
 friends from demoralising themselves and their 
 cause by entertaining propositions for compromise 
 of any sort on slavery extensions." And again to 
 Seward he wrote : " I say now, as I have said all 
 the while, that on the question of extending slavery 
 I am inflexible. I am for no compromise which 
 assists or permits the extension of the institution 
 on soil owned by the nation." 
 
 Lincoln s attitude on both these questions was 
 thus quite unmistakable from the first, and he never 
 flinched or compromised throughout, or deviated in 
 anyway from the position he had adopted. In 
 America generally, however, there were all sorts and 
 varieties of opinions with regard to both one ques 
 tion and the other. The South was determined to 
 maintain slavery at all hazards, and freely quoted 
 the Bible in its support, naming an earlier Abraham 
 as one of its most undoubted supporters. The pulpit 
 was thus brought in as a champion of an institu 
 tion which outraged the very basic principles of 
 Christianity. In the North there were many men 
 like Stephen Douglas, who were indifferent in the 
 matter. Then, again, there were the Abolitionists, 
 who were determined to abolish slavery throughout 
 the Union at whatever price, even if this involved 
 the breaking up of the Union itself. These, how 
 ever, were a comparatively small minority. The 
 
RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF THE WAR 85 
 
 large majority of the Northern voters took a very 
 similar line to Lincoln, refusing to purchase the 
 adhesion of the South by making any further con 
 cessions to the slave-owning States. A very much 
 larger, indeed an overwhelming majority, were 
 determined that under no circumstances whatever 
 should the Union be dissolved, even if this involved 
 all the horrors of civil war. The average Northerner 
 looked upon the secession of a State or States from 
 the Union as rebellion pure and simple. In the 
 South, on the other hand, the Union was merely 
 regarded as a federation which it would be regret 
 table to dissolve, but from which it was legitimate 
 for any State, should it so desire, to withdraw at 
 its own option. 
 
 On the question, thus, of the fundamental 
 character of the Union itself, North and South were 
 sharply divided. It is pertinent to ask which was 
 in the right. There are two points of view from 
 which this question may be answered. The first 
 and most obvious is the historical standpoint, and 
 to some, at first sight, this may seem to be the only 
 inquiry that has a bearing on the matter at issue. 
 Taking this point of view first, it is by no means 
 clear that the original Constitution of the Union 
 deprived the federating States of the right of seces 
 sion. The intention doubtless was to form a per 
 manent federation ; but there was no denial of the 
 right of a State to secede at any subsequent period 
 if it so chose, and if any such stipulation had been 
 
86 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 then made it is somewhat doubtful if the federa 
 tion could have been formed. Grave difficulties 
 had to be overcome at the time in order to 
 induce the several States to come together under 
 one government. In order to reduce to a minimum 
 the not inconsiderable opposition which existed in 
 some of these States to bringing the federation into 
 being, public declarations were made to the citizens 
 of the most reluctant of the original States by their 
 own representatives to the effect that if the federa 
 tion proved detrimental to their interests it would 
 be open to the States in question to withdraw. 
 Though such statements were made without any 
 real authority, they obviously expressed the view 
 then held by many, and it is noteworthy that no 
 trouble was taken to contradict them. It seems, 
 indeed, that from the historical standpoint the case 
 of the North for the enforcement of the Union was 
 singularly weak. 
 
 Apart, however, from this historical question, 
 there were and are certain general considerations in 
 a case of the kind which are bound to have very 
 grave weight with all serious statesmen and 
 politicians. The fact is, as the Duke of Argyll in 
 this country very plainly stated, " no government 
 in the world can afford in practice to admit the 
 right of secession of any part or portion of the 
 country from its own allegiance." Lord Charnwood 
 has put the case in his recent Life of Abraham 
 Lincoln with admirable clearness : "At the best," 
 
RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF THE WAR 87 
 
 he says, " if the States which adhered to the old 
 Union had admitted the claim of the first seceding 
 States to go, they could only have retained for 
 themselves an insecure existence as a nation, 
 threatened, at each fresh conflict of interest or 
 sentiment, with a further disruption which could 
 not upon any principle have been resisted." A 
 nation must either tend to union or to disintegra 
 tion. The nation which tends to union becomes 
 year by year more definitely a single coherent whole, 
 the several parts of which are unable to regard 
 themselves as existent apart from the general 
 commonwealth, any more than the different 
 members of the human body can exist independently 
 of the individual. Disintegration, on the other 
 hand, once commenced, tends to further disintegra 
 tion at an accelerated rate, and the total destruction 
 of the national unity is the inevitable consequence. 
 Had the North permitted the secession of the South, 
 there was no guarantee that this would have in 
 volved a final settlement or that war might not 
 have broken out at some subsequent date between 
 their respective governments. In addition to this, 
 the break-up of the Union, as Lincoln was not 
 slow to point out, was a disaster to a larger 
 cause, the cause of popular self-government. If 
 the American Union should prove to be a failure, 
 the greatest attempt that had ever been made in 
 this direction would be an admitted fiasco and, 
 following its failure, the principle of popular self- 
 
88 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 government itself would inevitably receive a severe 
 setback throughout the entire world. In fighting for 
 the Union, the North were thus fighting for a vital 
 principle, the importance of which lay far more in 
 its own inherent nature than in any adventitious 
 support which it might find in the precise wording 
 of the original Constitution of the States. 
 
 With regard to the question of negro slavery, it 
 is rare indeed nowadays to find anyone who is will 
 ing to defend this institution as morally justifiable ; 
 but it is very common to meet people who will point 
 out that the abolition of slavery in certain cases 
 caused greater evils than it suppressed, and that 
 among the negro slaves in the South the acquisition 
 of a freedom to which they were not accustomed 
 led, in not a few instances, to moral degeneration. 
 In reply to this it may be said that no great social 
 revolution can possibly be carried through without 
 bringing about certain inevitable harmful results. 
 The effect of any vast change in the social organism 
 is always to produce certain individual cases of 
 injustice or actual moral evil ; but this must not 
 blind us to the general justice and beneficence of 
 the change. No one will dispute the fact that there 
 were many honourable and humane slave-owners in 
 the South ; but it is none the less true that they 
 were the instruments of an essentially evil and 
 debasing system. The kindness and humanity of 
 individual slave-owners was no real compensation 
 for this. " Your children," exclaimed Lincoln, 
 
RIGHTS AND WRONGS OF THE WAR 89 
 
 " may play with the little black children, but 
 they must not play with his " i.e. the slave- 
 dealer s or the slave-driver s. By this fact alone, 
 as Lincoln was shrewd enough to point out, every 
 decent man in the South joined in the condemna 
 tion of the very basis on which slavery rested. A 
 stronger point could scarcely have been made. 
 If the slave-dealer s trade was an honourable one, 
 why did the slave-owner turn his back upon him ? 
 
 In those days the work of political propagandism 
 was little understood, otherwise it would seem 
 almost incredible that the sympathy of the majority 
 of English society was on the side of the South. 
 The Englishman, however, was dependent on his 
 Press, and in the matter of the Press of that day it 
 must be admitted that he was not well served. 
 Had it been purely a question of a war for the 
 suppression of slavery, British sympathy must 
 inevitably have been found on the other side ; but 
 the issues were confused, and the average man in 
 the street was puzzled to know what precisely the 
 North was fighting for. That the South was fight 
 ing for the institution of slavery pure and simple, 
 he positively refused to believe, and yet this was 
 most unquestionably the case. The sympathy of 
 men like Gladstone tended to be ever on the side 
 of smaller nationalities, and he mistakenly looked 
 upon the secession of the South as a rightful demand 
 on their part for self-government according to their 
 own ideas. It should also, perhaps, not be for- 
 
90 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 gotten that Gladstone s own immediate ancestors 
 were identified with the slave-trade, and it is hardly 
 to be questioned that he regarded the institution 
 with more leniency from this very cause, little 
 though he would have been willing to admit it even 
 to himself. John Bright, Tennyson, and the Duke 
 of Argyll were among the few prominent men in 
 England who consistently defended the cause of 
 the North. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE GATHERING STORM 
 
 THE first consequence of the election of Lincoln as 
 President was the convening by the Legislature of 
 South Carolina of a specially elected Convention of 
 the State to consider the desirability of secession. 
 This resulted in the passing on 20th December of a 
 definite ordinance of secession. The question then 
 arose what other States would follow in South 
 Carolina s footsteps. Buchanan, as already indi 
 cated, was still President. He was in his last 
 months of office. Never possessed of great resolu 
 tion of character, the fact that he would soon 
 again become a private citizen deprived him of all 
 moral strength to deal with the crisis. No steps 
 were taken by his Government to make clear that 
 in the case of the seceding States the Government 
 would maintain its rights. In the meantime 
 one State after another was withdrawing from 
 the Union, and by February 1861 Mississippi, 
 Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana had 
 
 91 
 
92 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 followed the example of South Carolina, and Texas 
 was very shortly to follow suit. The representa 
 tives of these States met together at Montgomery 
 in Alabama to found what was called the Con 
 federate States. These States were subsequently 
 joined by Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and 
 Arkansas ; but definite steps were not taken by 
 them till after the actual commencement of hostili 
 ties. By this time the first seceding States had 
 already adopted a provisional constitution much on 
 the lines of the original Union, and Jefferson 
 Davis was duly elected President, with Stephens, 
 one of the most moderate men of the party, who 
 was specially anxious to avoid war, as Vice-Presi- 
 dent. In his inaugural address the Southern 
 President complained that the South had been 
 driven to separation by wanton aggression on the 
 part of others a statement which strikes one as 
 singularly inapplicable to the facts of the case. 
 The Southern Congress thereupon resolved to take 
 over all forts and public property generally in the 
 seceded States. 
 
 Lincoln left Springfield for the last time on 
 llth February 1861, and took a touching farewell 
 of his old friends and neighbours. 
 
 " My friends," he said " no one not in my situation 
 can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To 
 this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe every 
 thing. Here I have lived for a quarter of a century, 
 and have passed from a young to an old man. Here 
 
THE GATHERING STORM 93 
 
 my children have been born and one is buried. I now 
 leave, not knowing when or whether I may ever return, 
 with a task before me greater than that which rested 
 upon Washington. Without the assistance of that 
 Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. 
 With that assistance, I cannot fail. Trusting in Him 
 who can go with me, and remain with you, and be every 
 where for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet 
 be well. To His care commending you, as I hope in your 
 prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate 
 farewell." 
 
 Lincoln may well have felt misgivings as he 
 realised the formidable task that lay before him. 
 It was becoming daily more and more clear that 
 the Southern States would insist on secession, and 
 if the President would not consent to this, it 
 followed that war was inevitable. Lincoln at the 
 same time, as we have seen, was quite unprepared 
 for any compromise. Nor would his Northern 
 followers have listened for a moment to a step 
 involving the disintegration of the Union, however 
 reluctant they might be to taking the final plunge. 
 But if he was confronted, as he said, " with a 
 task greater than that which rested upon Washing 
 ton," he was to all appearance but little qualified 
 for so grave a responsibility. He had had none 
 of the previous training and experience which 
 might have fitted him for the post. Unlike other 
 members of his Cabinet, he had occupied no promi 
 nent responsible position. He had made his name 
 solely as a public speaker and a party leader. 
 
94 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 From the point of view of the country generally 
 he was " a dark horse." Seward, in many ways 
 the Republican party s most obvious choice, a 
 man of long political experience and training, 
 had been rejected in his favour. It has been 
 contended by some that the reason for this lay in 
 the fact that on the question of slavery Seward 
 was more likely to go to extremes, and Lincoln 
 was regarded as the more cautious and prudent of 
 the two. Lincoln, however, was a man who had 
 never compromised on a matter of vital principle, 
 and there is every reason to believe that when it 
 came to an issue of peace and war, Seward would 
 have done so. At the final crisis, rather than 
 engage in civil war, Seward actually suggested 
 embroiling his country in a foreign quarrel a 
 truly desperate means of meeting a desperate 
 emergency. 
 
 The rise of Lincoln from the position of a 
 prominent public speaker to that of President 
 was, indeed, unprecedented ; yet undoubtedly 
 events had been moving towards such a denoue 
 ment, and there is little doubt that Lincoln, with 
 his customary far-sightedness, did not fail to 
 realise the fact. He had been, in short, the pro 
 tagonist in the anti-slavery campaign. He was 
 the one popular figure that overtopped all the 
 others in this great movement. He was, more 
 over, in spite of the boldness of some of the quoted 
 observations in his speeches, known for the essen- 
 
THE GATHERING STORM 95 
 
 tial moderation of his attitude. He would have 
 nothing to do with the Abolitionists. He would 
 have nothing to do with any measures which with 
 drew from the slave-owning States any of the rights 
 which they possessed under the Union. He was 
 not willing even to abolish the Fugitive Slave Law, 
 though he favoured its amendment. He went out 
 of his way to assure the Southern States that they 
 had nothing to fear from his appointment as 
 President. Why, then, it may be asked, did they 
 revolt ? Lord Charnwood, in his Life of Abraham 
 Lincoln, makes some very interesting observations 
 on this point : 
 
 "It is common," he says, "to reproach the Southern 
 leaders with reckless folly. They tried to destroy the 
 Union, which they really valued, for the sake of slavery, 
 which they valued more ; they in fact destroyed slavery ; 
 and they did this, it is said, in alarm at an imaginary 
 danger. This is not a true ground of reproach to them. 
 It is true that the danger to slavery from the election of 
 Lincoln was not immediately pressing. He neither would 
 have done nor could have done more than prevent during 
 his four years of office any new acquisition of territory 
 to the slave-holding interest, and impose his veto on any 
 Bill extending slavery within the existing territory of the 
 Union. His successor after four years might or might 
 not have been like-minded. He did not seem to stand 
 for any overwhelming force in American politics ; there 
 was a majority opposed to him in both Houses of Con 
 gress ; a great majority of the Supreme Court, which 
 might have an important part to play, held views of the 
 Constitution opposed to his ; he had been elected by a 
 minority only of the whole American people. Why could 
 
96 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 not the Southern States have sat still, secure that no 
 great harm would happen to their institution for the 
 present, and hoping that their former ascendancy would 
 come back to them with the changing fortunes of party 
 strife ? " 
 
 Lord Charnwood replies to these apparently 
 very cogent objections that in the South slavery 
 had come to be regarded as a national and indeed 
 almost a divine institution. The Southerner was 
 determined to hand it down to his children s 
 children. The North had voted slavery to be a 
 crime, and their new President had put the matter 
 without mincing : " That if slavery was not wrong, 
 nothing was wrong." It was certain that America 
 would never go back to the position which she 
 occupied before this first explicit national assertion 
 of the wrongfulness of slavery had been made. If 
 the Southern States were not to secede, they must 
 make up their minds to remain the fellow-country 
 men of a people who regarded their fundamental 
 institution with " growing reprobation." " Lincoln 
 decided that this Government cannot endure 
 permanently half slave and half free. Lincoln was 
 right, and so, from their own point of view, that 
 of men not brave or wise enough to take in hand a 
 difficult social reform, were the leaders who de 
 clared immediately for secession." 
 
 This doubtless gives clearly enough the point of 
 view of the South. They were not willing to 
 wait for a possible turn of the political pendulum ; 
 
THE GATHERING STORM 97 
 
 they were not prepared to " wait and see." They 
 had compelled the North to compromise with its 
 convictions time after time, and now that they 
 saw that there was to be no further question of 
 compromise, they, on their part, were determined 
 not to recede. A man who, by force of threats, is 
 able to get his own way again and again, and is 
 suddenly brought up against a point-blank refusal 
 to yield further ground, will generally rather fight 
 than give up his point. With a man who has been 
 met firmly from the first it is otherwise. This 
 was precisely the position where the South was 
 concerned. Each time a concession had been made 
 to them they had grown more determined and more 
 confident in their own standpoint. It was too late 
 for compromise when at length the North said to 
 them, " Hold ! enough ! " Whether they were 
 right from their own point of view, as Lord Charn- 
 wood thinks, it is very difficult to decide. 
 
 It is clear that they might have taken another 
 course altogether, which would have prevented the 
 election of Lincoln as President. They might, 
 that is to say, have decided to support Douglas 
 instead of putting up a slavery candidate for 
 the Presidency, thereby dividing the voting power 
 of the Democratic party. Douglas then would 
 almost inevitably have been elected. Had this 
 happened, the Slave States would have certainly 
 been in no worse position than they were under 
 the preceding Presidency of Buchanan. The con- 
 
 7 
 
98 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 elusion is forced upon us that if they had been 
 willing to continue anything in the nature of a 
 compromise with the North, they might have 
 done so without any fear of aggressive action 
 against their own interests. They had, it is plain, 
 determined to force matters to an issue, feeling 
 doubtless that compromise was no permanent 
 solution, and that Slave States and Free States 
 could not remain for ever under a single govern 
 ment. The recognition of this attitude of mind 
 on the part of the South was doubtless what 
 prompted Lincoln to say that the Government 
 " could not endure permanently half slave and 
 half free." The crisis, in short, might well have 
 been tided over for the time, and probably for a 
 considerable period ; but it was bound to arrive, 
 and would have to be faced eventually. 
 
 Lincoln reached Washington at the end of 
 February, after a journey the latter part of which 
 was rendered noteworthy by the receipt of news 
 of a plot to assassinate both the President himself 
 and other members of his cabinet in passing 
 through Baltimore. In order to avoid the danger, 
 he suddenly and unexpectedly left Harrisburg, 
 where he had been staying the night, in company 
 with Colonel Lamon, and was driven to a special 
 train which was waiting for him on the Pennsyl 
 vania Railroad. At the same time the telegraph 
 wires were cut, so that in the event of his departure 
 being discovered, intelligence could not be com- 
 
THE GATHERING STORM 99 
 
 municated. At 10.30 the train reached Phila 
 delphia, where Lincoln was met by a detective, 
 who had a carriage waiting in which the party 
 were driven to the depot of the Philadelphia, 
 Wilmington, and Baltimore Railway. They there 
 took berths in a sleeping-car, and passed without 
 change through Baltimore to Washington, where 
 Lincoln arrived at 6.30 one morning at the end 
 of February 1861. He was driven thence to 
 Willard s Hotel, where he found Senator Stuart 
 expecting him, and where he remained until the 
 departure of the outgoing President from the 
 White House. 
 
 During all this time, owing to the dominant 
 influence of Southern sympathisers in Buchanan s 
 cabinet, the Northern States were being stripped 
 of arms and ammunition, and quantities of military 
 stores were being sent south, without any inter 
 ference on the part of the President. Military 
 posts in the Southern States were at the same 
 time being placed under the command of officers 
 hostile to the Union. Lincoln warned General 
 Scott of the situation, and intimated that it might 
 be necessary shortly to take steps to recover such 
 forts on behalf of the Federal Government, pressing 
 him to take such measures as were possible in the 
 meantime to render this practicable. On 4th 
 March 1861, the outgoing President arrived in his 
 carriage to escort his successor to the Capitol, 
 where the Oath of Allegiance to the Constitution 
 
100 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 was administered to him by Chief Justice Taney. 
 Here he delivered his inaugural speech as President, 
 while Douglas, his defeated rival, stood by his 
 side taking charge of his hat and cane while he 
 delivered his address. The speech had been 
 drawn up with great care, and every effort had 
 been made to rob it of any appearance of aggressive 
 ness towards the South. Originally written by 
 Lincoln in his customary manner on scraps of 
 paper and the backs of envelopes, it was exten 
 sively revised and modified by Seward, whose 
 suggestions were in the main adopted by the 
 President. It set out the position of the Govern 
 ment on the slavery controversy in a manner 
 calculated to avoid arousing any feelings of 
 resentment on the part of the opposition. It 
 strongly emphasized the indissoluble character 
 of the Union, and announced the decision of the 
 Government to maintain this Union in the face of 
 all attempts to undermine it. " The power," said 
 Lincoln, " conferred on me will be used to hold, 
 occupy, and possess the property and places belong 
 ing to the Government and to collect the duties on 
 imports. But beyond what may be necessary for 
 these objects there will be no invasion, no using 
 of force against or among the people any where. " 
 " In your hands," he concluded, " my dissatisfied 
 fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the moment 
 ous issue of civil war. The Government will not 
 assault you. You can have no conflict without 
 
THE GATHERING STORM I OI 
 
 being yourselves the aggressors. . . . The mystic 
 chords of memory stretching from every battle 
 field and patriot grave to every loving hearth and 
 hearthstone all over this broad land will yet 
 swell the chorus of union when again touched, as 
 surely they will be, by the better angels of our 
 nature." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 
 
 LINCOLN had for some time past been busily 
 occupied in the construction of his Cabinet, which 
 he was desirous should represent as far as possible 
 all shades of opinion in the new Republican party. 
 Though he had full knowledge of the political 
 antecedents of the men he selected, his personal 
 knowledge of them was limited to not more 
 than three or four. They did not prove in the 
 upshot by any means a happy family, and per 
 sonal antagonisms and rivalries showed themselves 
 almost from the very first. Among his first 
 selections were his own rivals for the Presidency 
 Seward, of New York ; Chase, of Ohio ; Bates, 
 of Missouri ; and Cameron, of Pennsylvania. It 
 was most important for Lincoln to secure the 
 adhesion of Seward, who became Secretary of 
 State, and though he was within an ace of with 
 drawing his acceptance, he proved in the end Lin 
 coln s most loyal and staunch supporter. Between 
 Seward and Chase there was no love lost. Chase 
 
 102 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 103 
 
 represented the more radical wing of the Cabinet, 
 while Seward represented the more conservative 
 elements. Chase became Secretary of the Treasury, 
 a position for which he was singularly well fitted ; 
 Bates, Attorney - General ; and Cameron, for a 
 time, Secretary for War. To these were subse 
 quently added Caleb Smith, of New York, as 
 Secretary of the Interior ; Gideon Welles, of Con 
 necticut, Secretary of the Navy ; and Montgomery 
 Blair, of Maryland, as Postmaster-General. 
 
 Cameron, as already intimated, did not remain 
 long in the Cabinet, his business incapacity render 
 ing his retention impossible. Before the first year 
 of Lincoln s administration had closed, he was 
 replaced by a much abler man, a lawyer of note, 
 in the person of Edwin M. Stanton. Stanton was 
 a Dejnocrat, but strongly anti-slavery. His chief 
 drawback was his violent temper and his over 
 bearing manner towards all and sundry. The 
 stories told of Lincoln s tact in dealing with this 
 very difficult colleague are innumerable. He had 
 already been warned, when he first contemplated 
 Stanton s appointment, of the man s ungovernable 
 temper and the trouble that was likely to arise 
 in the Cabinet in consequence. One of his friends, 
 in protesting against the appointment on these 
 grounds, urged that Stanton, when beside him 
 self with rage, was in the habit of jumping up and 
 down in his excitement. Lincoln replied : " Well, 
 if he gets to jumping too much we will treat him 
 
104 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 as they used to treat a minister I knew out West. 
 He would get so excited and wrought up at revival 
 meetings that they had to put bricks in his pockets 
 to keep him down." " But," he added, " I guess 
 we will let Stanton jump awhile first." The diffi 
 culties and disputes that arose through the addition 
 of this new member of the Cabinet proved not to 
 have been overestimated ; but in Lincoln s view, 
 and doubtless it was a correct one, his efficiency as 
 Secretary for War more than counterbalanced 
 them. He had, however, as little respect for 
 Lincoln himself as for any other member of the 
 Cabinet. On one occasion a committee of Western 
 men, headed by a certain Mr Love joy, procured 
 from the President an important order providing 
 for the exchange of Eastern and Western soldiers 
 during the war, with a view to more effective 
 work. This was quite contrary to Stanton s 
 ideas, and he put his foot down emphatically on 
 the new order. The story runs that, armed with 
 the document bearing the President s own signa 
 ture, Lovejoy betook himself to the Secretary for 
 War, and apprised him of the decision that had 
 been arrived at. It is perhaps hardly to be 
 wondered at that Stanton resented outside inter 
 ference with the management of his own special 
 department. In any case he was beside himself 
 with rage. On hearing the scheme explained to 
 him he flatly refused to carry it out. " But," 
 remonstrated Lovejoy, " we have the President s 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 105 
 
 own order." " Did Lincoln give you an order of 
 that kind ? " asked Stanton. " He did, sir." 
 " Then," exclaimed the irate Secretary, "he is a 
 damned fool." " Do you mean to say that the 
 President is a damned fool ? " exclaimed Love joy, 
 in amazement. "Yes, sir," retorted Stanton, "if 
 he gave you such an order as that." The astounded 
 Congressman betook himself at once to the Presi 
 dent and narrated the result of his conference, re 
 peating the conversation in detail. " Did Stanton 
 say I was a damned fool ? " asked Lincoln, at the 
 close of the recital. " He did, sir, and repeated 
 it." After a moment s pause, the President looked 
 up and said : "If Stanton said I was a damned 
 fool, then I must be one, for he is nearly always 
 right, and he generally says what he means. I 
 will step over and see him." 
 
 On one occasion (in 1863) Dennis Hanks, Lincoln s 
 boyhood friend and cousin, called to see him at the 
 White House. His mission brought him in con 
 tact with the Secretary for War, who was deter 
 mined and apparently quite rightly not to 
 accede to his request, which had reference to the 
 release of some soldiers who had brought about a 
 riot at Charleston, in which several citizens had met 
 their deaths. Stanton was greatly incensed at 
 Hanks intervention, and expressed the view that 
 " every damned one of them should be hung." 
 Dennis took away a decidedly unfavourable re 
 collection of the Secretary for War, whom he 
 
106 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 described as a " frisky little Yankee with a short 
 coat tail." " I asked Abe," he informed Herndon 
 in confidence, " why he did not kick him out. I 
 told him he was too fresh altogether." Lincoln s 
 answer was : " If I did, Dennis, it would be difficult 
 to find another man to fill his place." 
 
 Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, was another 
 member of his Cabinet with whom Lincoln had 
 constant trouble, and for whose behaviour he 
 throughout showed the most uniform forbearance. 
 Lincoln quite rightly had the highest opinion of 
 Chase s financial abilities, but the Secretary to the 
 Treasury had it so firmly fixed in his own mind 
 that he was the most competent member of the 
 Cabinet that it was difficult to retain him in office 
 without constant and continual friction. Chase, in 
 the first instance, was one of the foremost supporters 
 of General M Clellan, and subsequently was the 
 most bitter of all in his denunciation of his dilatory 
 tactics. He was perhaps the foremost supporter 
 of negro emancipation in the Cabinet, and would 
 have gladly seen the proposal put into force at 
 an earlier date than Lincoln thought prudent. At 
 a later date the critics of the Cabinet found a 
 ready sympathiser in Chase, who was never tired 
 of expressing very decided views as to his 
 own capacity and their incompetence. Finally he 
 entered into an intrigue to supplant Lincoln in the 
 Presidency, in spite of which Lincoln still retained 
 him in office. In reply to his friends who com- 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 107 
 
 plained of his overlooking the hostile attitude of 
 one of his own colleagues, " I have determined," 
 he said, " to shut my eyes as far as possible to 
 everything of the sort. Mr Chase makes a good 
 Secretary, and I shall keep him where he is. If he 
 becomes President, all right. I hope we may never 
 have a worse man." Eventually his retention as a 
 member of the Cabinet became no longer practicable. 
 He interfered in other people s departments until 
 the President found it impossible to reconcile 
 their differences. Finally he sent in his resignation, 
 fully expecting it to be refused. Lincoln replied 
 in accepting it : "Of all I have said in commenda 
 tion of your ability and fidelity I have nothing 
 to unsay, yet you and I have reached a point 
 of mutual embarrassment in our official relations 
 which it seems cannot be overcome or longer 
 sustained consistently with the public service." 
 Lincoln s magnanimity towards the man who had 
 so constantly traduced and intrigued against him 
 went so far as to grant him the appointment of 
 Chief Justice when this fell vacant, greatly to the 
 surprise of Chase s friends, who could not believe 
 his unfriendly attitude would have been so readily 
 forgiven. This action was singularly character 
 istic. Lincoln s failure, indeed, to bear ill-will 
 against those who had done him an injury seemed 
 to many almost to amount to a fault, and it was 
 complained of him, not without some show of 
 justification, that he was more generous to his 
 
108 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 enemies than to his friends. Lincoln hoped, in 
 the formation of his Cabinet, to conciliate the 
 largest possible amount of public opinion. In 
 this he was successful, but his selection had the 
 corresponding disadvantage of bringing together 
 a number of men whose views on most political 
 questions were remarkably divergent. This has 
 always been one of the drawbacks of a Coalition 
 Cabinet the more sections you conciliate, the more 
 internal discord there must be within the circle 
 of the Cabinet. As one who knew Lincoln well 
 (Leonard Swett) observed with regard to him, 
 after his death : " An adhesion of all forces was 
 indispensable to his success, and the success of 
 the country. Hence he husbanded his means with 
 the greatest nicety of calculation. Adhesion was 
 what he wanted. He used every force to the best 
 possible advantage. He never wasted anything, 
 and would always give more to his enemies than 
 he would to his friends. And the reason was that 
 he never had anything to spare, and in the close 
 calculation of attaching the factions to him he 
 counted upon the abstract affection of his friends 
 as an element to be offset against some gift with 
 which he must appease his enemies. ... In his 
 conduct of the war he acted upon the theory that 
 but one thing was necessary, and that was a 
 united North. He had all shades of sentiments 
 and opinions to deal with, and the considera 
 tion was always presented to his mind, How can 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 109 
 
 I hold these discordant elements together ? 
 Lincoln s tact and conciliatory demeanour was 
 successful in accomplishing this, and he rightly 
 realised that it was a condition precedent to 
 winning the war. In view of recent discussions 
 as to the number of members required to form an 
 efficient War Cabinet, it will be observed that the 
 number of Lincoln s Cabinet was eight. It was 
 complained to him when he first made his appoint 
 ments that he included four Democrats and only 
 three Kepublicans. His reply to this was that he 
 himself was a Republican, and that he "hoped it 
 might be possible for him to be present not infre 
 quently at the Cabinet s deliberations, and thus 
 redress the balance ! " One can scarcely believe 
 that even Lincoln s tact would have been equal to 
 the task of efficiently carrying on with a Cabinet 
 of twenty-two, especially if the relations of the 
 remaining fourteen had been as difficult of adjust 
 ment as those of the ministers actually appointed. 
 Of the other members of the Cabinet, Montgomery 
 Blair, of Maryland, the new Postmaster-General, 
 represented the Border State aristocracy, and was 
 one of the founders of the Republican party. 
 He had been solicitor of the Court of Claims under 
 the late President Buchanan, who had removed 
 him from office on account of his opposition to 
 the repeal of the Missouri Compromise. He was 
 a useful member of the Cabinet and a staunch 
 supporter of Lincoln himself, and favoured generally 
 
110 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 a bold and energetic policy too bold, frequently, 
 for the President s cautious temper. He had, 
 however, many enemies, and was constantly 
 coming into collision with both Stanton and Seward. 
 He was reluctant to adopt the Emancipation 
 Proclamation, for fear that it would drive the 
 Border States over to the Confederacy, and on 
 this account was one of the members of the Cabinet 
 who stood out against it to the last. In 1864, 
 when the war was drawing to a close, he was 
 anxious to secure a compromise with the South, 
 and being on friendly terms with a number of 
 the leading Southern politicians, believed that the 
 opening of negotiations through his means would 
 lead to some practical result. When his views on 
 this matter became known they led to a measure 
 of alarm on the part of those who realised the 
 danger of an inconclusive peace. President 
 Lincoln allowed Blair to see what he could do 
 in the matter, but gave him no official authority 
 as a negotiator and had no faith in the utility of 
 his mission, which eventually came to nothing. 
 Lincoln doubtless felt that this was the best 
 way of satisfying Blair of the fact that he was 
 labouring under a delusion. 
 
 In spite of his quarrels with other members of 
 the Administration, and his suspicions of the 
 motives of many leading members of the Republican 
 party, which he was never tired of insinuating to 
 the President himself, Blair remained a member 
 
LINCOLN AND HIS CABINET 111 
 
 of the Cabinet for upwards of three years. He 
 had always assured the President, in view of the 
 disputes with his colleagues, that he would be pleased 
 to resign his position in case the difficulties arising 
 from his retention proved too great an embarrass 
 ment to Lincoln. Finally Lincoln felt himself 
 compelled to accept this offer of withdrawal, 
 rather than continue a state of affairs in which 
 constant friction seemed inevitable. In writing to 
 ask him to resign Lincoln observed : " You know 
 very well that this request proceeds from no dis 
 satisfaction of mine with you personally or officially. 
 Your uniform kindness has been unsurpassed by 
 that of any other friend." After his resignation 
 Blair s loyalty to Lincoln continued unabated, 
 and he took the field on his behalf during the 
 campaign for his re-election. 
 
 Not the least capable member of the Adminis 
 tration was Gideon Welles, of Connecticut, Secretary 
 of the Navy. 
 
 Lincoln first met Gideon Welles in a purely 
 accidental manner, after a speech he had been 
 delivering at Hartford, Connecticut, in the spring 
 of 1860. William Eleroy Curtis 1 narrates the story 
 of their first meeting : 
 
 "As he approached his hotel, Lincoln stepped into a 
 bookstall, where a gentleman who had been in his audience 
 the evening before approached and introduced himself. 
 There seemed to be a mutual attraction, and for two hours 
 
 1 The True Abraham Lincoln, p. 196. 
 
112 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 they discussed various subjects of interest politics, law, 
 and literature. The next time they met was after the 
 Chicago Convention, to which Mr Welles was a delegate, 
 and during the Campaign they exchanged frequent letters, 
 until Lincoln was thoroughly convinced of the fitness, 
 availability, and character of the Connecticut lawyer for 
 a position in his Cabinet. The special knowledge of 
 maritime law shown by the latter seems to have suggested 
 his assignment to the Navy Department." 
 
 The Navy played a most important, though 
 for long periods a silent part in the conduct of the 
 war. The eventual effect of the Northern campaign 
 was to cut off the South from its resources, 
 and the command of the sea, which was secured 
 early in the war by the North, necessarily contrib 
 uted in no small degree to this end. As Lord 
 Charnwood well says : " The subjugation of the 
 South began by a process necessarily slow and 
 much interrupted, whereby, having been blockaded 
 by sea, it was surrounded by land, cut off from 
 its Western territory, and deprived of its main 
 internal lines of communication." Gideon Welles 
 and his able lieutenant, Fox, deserve no small 
 measure of credit for bringing about this result. 
 Welles himself was a man of great decision of char 
 acter and executive ability, but his relations with 
 Seward, with whom he came into collision through 
 the latter s interference in naval affairs, were one 
 more source of constant friction in the Cabinet. 
 In spite of this, both retained their posts until 
 Lincoln s death. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE WAR 
 
 THE first news that reached Lincoln immediately 
 after the inauguration was that Fort Sumter, off 
 Charlestown, on the coast of South Carolina, would 
 be forced to capitulate to the Southern forces 
 unless promptly reinforced and re victualled. The 
 majority of the Cabinet were opposed to taking 
 definite steps in the matter. General Scott being 
 questioned on the military position, had given it 
 as his opinion that the fort should be evacuated. 
 The opponents of its retention argued that the blame 
 lay with the outgoing administration, who had not 
 taken steps in time. 
 
 Lincoln was most anxious to avoid anything in 
 the nature of provocation. Finally, after some hesi 
 tation, he decided to give instructions to revictual 
 the fort, but not to send troops. It was, however, 
 already too late. Beauregard, the Southern general, 
 received orders to reduce the fort, and summoned 
 Anderson, who was in command, to surrender. 
 Anderson, now almost starved out, replied that 
 
 113 8 
 
114 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 unless he received supplies and instructions he 
 would surrender on 15th April. How it happened 
 is not known, whether by accident or through 
 intention to offer definite provocation, but, in 
 spite of Anderson s reply, the Confederate batteries 
 opened fire on 12th April. Fort Sumter became 
 immediately untenable. Anderson capitulated and 
 marched out on Sunday, 14th April, with the 
 honours of war. The South had now definitely 
 assumed the offensive, and in reply to the challenge 
 the North sprang to arms. 
 
 It is surely well for the world in general that in 
 certain grave crises of its history the immediate 
 future is hidden by an impenetrable veil. The 
 Northern States when they engaged in the con 
 flict never dreamed of the gravity of the task that 
 lay before them. Many believed that the war 
 would be over in a few short months. Few sus 
 pected that it would outlast a year. The idea 
 that it might conceivably endure for four whole 
 years was nowhere entertained as within the bounds 
 of possibility. In this respect there lies a very 
 close parallel between the war between North and 
 South and the great World War of to-day. Would 
 England, one may well ask, have stepped into the 
 breach had the Cabinet of the day realised what 
 was before them ? That they would have been 
 well advised to do so in any case there can be no 
 doubt, but that they would have ventured to face 
 so stupendous a task seems in the highest degree 
 
THE WAR 115 
 
 unlikely. In both cases the marked superiority 
 of one side in material resources and in the number 
 of men at their disposal seemed to render impos 
 sible any doubt as to the ultimate result. Surprise 
 in each case was felt at the confidence of the 
 enemy in their own power, and, as it seemed, their 
 rashness in defying the heavy odds against them. 
 In both cases these calculations proved to have 
 overlooked vital factors in the situation. At the 
 time of the outbreak of the Civil War in America, 
 the North had more than double the population 
 of the South, and of this Southern population a 
 considerable portion were slaves who, it was known, 
 could not be enlisted. The North, again, was far 
 richer in material resources and soon found itself 
 in a position to drive the Southern fleet from the 
 seas. On the other hand, the objects of the war 
 imposed upon the North a far greater task than 
 devolved upon the South. All the South required 
 to do was to retain and defend its own territory. 
 If the Union were to be maintained, the North 
 must not merely win isolated battles, but must 
 completely subjugate the Southern territory. The 
 South, again, were much better situated with a view 
 to defence than the North. They could operate on 
 interior lines, and the Confederacy could hardly 
 be gravely weakened by the occupation by the 
 North of any important strategic centres. 
 
 At the commencement of the war neither side 
 possessed an army of any consequence, the actual 
 
116 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 army in the service of the United States as a whole 
 then consisting of only 16,000 officers and men. 
 The armies with which the war was eventually 
 fought out had to be called up and trained while 
 the campaign was in progress. The Southerner, who 
 had lived a more outdoor life than his Northern 
 neighbour, probably took more readily to the 
 pursuit of arms. One factor above all others 
 helped the South for all the first half of the cam 
 paign to an extent that can hardly be overestimated, 
 and this was perhaps more due to pure luck than to 
 any more definite cause. While the North was 
 seeking in vain for two long years for someone who 
 might be qualified to command their armies and 
 lead them to victory, the South commenced their 
 campaigns under the generalship of Lee and 
 " Stonewall " Jackson, whose efficiency as com 
 manders in the field was never in doubt or ques 
 tion. Lee, indeed, was opposed to the war from 
 the commencement, and it was only with much 
 reluctance that he sided with the South. Of Lee s 
 pre-eminent military qualifications there can be 
 no doubt, and the late Lord Wolseley was inclined 
 to write them higher than those of Moltke. General 
 Scott, on the other hand, who was put in command 
 of the Northern forces, was obviously from the 
 first too old and infirm for his very arduous duties, 
 and his successor, M Clellan, on whom the greatest 
 hopes had been placed, in spite of his ample op 
 portunities, did nothing whatever to justify them. 
 
THE WAR 117 
 
 It is hardly open to doubt that Lincoln retained 
 him in command long after his incapacity had 
 become obvious. He laboured, however, under 
 the disadvantage of not knowing who to put in 
 his place, and hesitated to dismiss a man who, at 
 least during the earlier part of the war, had become 
 a sort of popular idol. M Clellan, indeed, took 
 over the command of the Northern armies amid 
 a burst of popular applause and enthusiasm. He 
 appeared to the man in the street to be the heaven 
 sent saviour of the popular cause, while in reality 
 possessing nothing more startling than a genius 
 for popularit} r , a certain capacity for organisation, 
 and a confidence in his own abilities which was 
 far from justified. 
 
 On the day after the bombardment of Fort 
 Sumter, Lincoln issued a proclamation calling upon 
 the States of the North to furnish 75,000 men for 
 the suppression of an unlawful combination. So 
 unfitted was the constitution to cope with the 
 situation created by the Civil War, that the law 
 actually did not empower the President to call 
 out the militia, for such it was, for a longer period 
 than three months. This proclamation was, ac 
 cordingly, shortly followed by another, appealing 
 for volunteers to enlist for three years service. 
 
 The first incident in the war was the Battle 
 of Bull Run, which involved a somewhat serious 
 reverse for the forces of the North. The Southern 
 army, under General Beauregard, lay near Bull 
 
118 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Run River, some twenty miles from Washington, 
 covering the railway junction of Manassas on the 
 line to Richmond, the Southern capital. General 
 Scott was unwilling to attack owing to the un- 
 preparedness of the Northern forces, but there 
 was a very general demand on the part of the 
 North for action to be taken, and the Cabinet was 
 anxious to gain an early victory for political 
 reasons. General Patterson was at this time 
 opposing a Southern force in the Shenandoah 
 Valley. The plan was for M Dowell to attack the 
 Confederates at Manassas, while Patterson pre 
 vented Johnston s army from joining Beauregard. 
 Patterson, however, conspicuously failed to do 
 this. The result was that M Dowell found himself 
 confronted with the conjoined Southern armies. 
 Both sides of course consisted of untrained levies. 
 The attempt to drive Beauregard from the position 
 he had occupied proved too much for M Dowell, 
 and in the upshot the Northern soldiers retreated 
 in disorder, and, in fact, in something of a panic. 
 Johnston, however, who now took over the com 
 mand of the Southern forces, did not feel himself 
 in a position to follow up the results of his victory, 
 and the military consequences of the engagement 
 were not of great practical consequence. It had the 
 effect, however, of rudely shattering the confidence 
 of the North, and in this way had a salutary effect in 
 leading to much more energetic measures than had 
 hitherto been taken. Scott blamed himself bitterly 
 
THE WAR 119 
 
 for consenting to act against his better judgment, 
 and Lincoln himself seems to have felt that the 
 commander was to a great extent responsible for 
 the reverse through declining to insist on his views 
 in a stronger manner. This preliminary engage 
 ment was followed by a long period of inactivity 
 on both sides as far as the actual fighting was 
 concerned, both combatants being engaged in 
 organising their respective armies in view of the 
 coming struggle. Neither clearly felt that they 
 were in a position to strike anything in the nature 
 of a decisive blow. The lack of military discipline, 
 as was not surprising under the circumstances, 
 was a grave obstacle on both sides. 
 
 Not long after this, in November 1861, General 
 Scott surrendered his command, which was con 
 ferred, as above stated, on General M Clellan. His 
 first and, as it proved in the upshot, his most useful 
 work was the organisation of the army of the North. 
 He certainly showed no anxiety to repeat the 
 blunder of launching into hostilities with untrained 
 troops, and, indeed, rather went to the other extreme, 
 always tending to exaggerate the number of the 
 enemy opposed to him, and fearing to engage them 
 without vastly superior forces. The early part of 
 the following year brought about a recommencement 
 of hostilities, and the Northern arms were generally 
 successful in the West. Kentucky, till now a debat 
 able ground between the two armies, was secured 
 for the cause of the North. The Federal gunboats 
 
120 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 pushed up the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers 
 into the State of Kentucky, took Fort Henry, on 
 the 6th February, and, with the aid of the land forces 
 under General Grant, occupied also Fort Donelson, 
 16th February, capturing some 10,000 prisoners. 
 Following on this, Nashville, the capital of 
 Tennessee, surrendered to the Northern army on 
 the 23rd of the same month. 
 
 Further progress was made down the Mississippi, 
 the greater part of Missouri being cleared of the 
 enemy, and the troops of the Union advancing 
 into Arkansas, where a great battle was fought at 
 Pea Ridge, which terminated in the complete rout 
 of the Southern forces. Finally Admiral Farragut, 
 advancing still further south to the mouths of 
 the Mississippi, after six days bombardment 
 captured New Orleans on 28th April. 
 
 Meanwhile, from 21st July 1861 (the date of the 
 battle of Bull Run) to March 1862, the main army 
 of the North continued to remain on the Potomac 
 opposed to the Southern army of Joseph Johnstone, 
 which was drilling at Manassas. Further troops 
 were constantly being sent to reinforce M Clellan, 
 whose army by October amounted to 147,000 men, 
 whereas Johnstone had barely 47,000 under his 
 command. Johnstone was naturally expecting 
 M Clellan to attack, and there was danger of his right 
 flank being turned and his railway communications 
 cut. Finally, in February, as his position became 
 too precarious, he retreated unmolested behind the 
 
THE WAR 121 
 
 Rapidan River, thirty miles further south. No 
 attempt whatever was made by M Clellan to molest 
 him, and great surprise and annoyance was felt 
 in the North that what appeared to be an excellent 
 opportunity had been missed. M Clellan seems to 
 have been under a total misapprehension as to 
 the forces of the enemy, whose numbers he had 
 enormously exaggerated in his own mind. Lincoln, 
 over and over again, urged him to attack, but all 
 to no purpose. All M Clellan could be induced to 
 do was to abuse the Government for incompetence, 
 and to demand further reinforcements. On 27th 
 January Lincoln published a general War Order in 
 his capacity of Commander-in-Chief for a forward 
 movement of the army on the Potomac. For a 
 moment M Clellan made up his mind to carry out 
 Lincoln s instructions, and then changed it again. 
 Finally, a decision was arrived at to land troops at 
 Fort Monroe, which lies at the end of the peninsula 
 that juts out between the estuaries of the York 
 and James Rivers. 
 
 On 2nd April M Clellan himself landed, and the 
 Peninsula Campaign, which it was anticipated would 
 end in the capture of Richmond, was commenced. 
 M Dowell was retained by Lincoln s orders with a 
 force sufficient for the defence of Washington, 
 greatly, as it appears, to M Clellan s annoyance. 
 M Clellan commenced his expedition in command 
 of 100,000 men, and 40,000 more troops were sub 
 sequently dispatched to him. After he had been 
 
122 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 some two months in the peninsula, making gradual 
 progress, he was unexpectedly attacked by Joseph 
 Johnstone, but defeated him on 31st May. A 
 portion of his army pursued the enemy to within 
 four miles of Richmond, and it was contended that 
 by a rapid movement M Clellan might have captured 
 the city ; but rapidity of movement was never one 
 of his strong points. Stonewall Jackson was now 
 making a movement with a Southern army which 
 threatened the position of Washington, and Lincoln, 
 who had decided to send M Dowell to reinforce 
 M Clellan, felt himself compelled to abandon the 
 idea. M Clellan s advance on Richmond was, 
 however, slowly progressing. A series of battles 
 took place (26th June to 2nd July) between his 
 forces and those of General Lee, of a somewhat 
 indecisive character. M Clellan s left wing eventu 
 ally succeeded in winning a strong position over 
 looking Richmond, but in the upshot he found his 
 right flank threatened by reinforcements which had 
 reached the Southern army, and came to the 
 conclusion that his position was a perilous one. On 
 2nd July he withdrew his whole force to Harrison s 
 Landing, some way up the James estuary, having, 
 with the co-operation of the navy, effected a 
 transfer of his base. 
 
 M Clellan now advised Lincoln that in order to 
 capture Richmond he must have further large 
 reinforcements. This meant withdrawing a con 
 siderable portion of the army which was defending 
 
THE WAR 123 
 
 Washington. The alternative was retreat. After 
 careful consideration, Lincoln decided to instruct 
 M Clellan to withdraw altogether from the peninsula. 
 M Clellan s army was transferred to General Pope, 
 who was in charge of the defence of Washington. 
 Pope himself, now in command of some 150,000 
 men, pushed forward into Virginia. Opposed to 
 him was Lee, with probably not more than 55,000 
 men. In face of this vast superiority Lee boldly 
 divided his forces and sent Jackson with one por 
 tion of them by a circuitous route to cut Pope s 
 communications with Washington. On 29th-30th 
 August Pope turned on Lee in the ill-omened 
 neighbourhood of Bull Run, and sustained a heavy 
 defeat, in spite of his numerical superiority. Pope 
 himself, abandoning hope, begged to be withdrawn 
 within the defences of the capital, and was relieved 
 of his command. Lincoln now directed M Clellan 
 to take command. Information accidentally 
 reached M Clellan of Lee s movements, and had 
 he taken advantage of it, he could have crushed 
 Lee s and Jackson s armies in detail. He was, 
 however, too slow. They were allowed to join 
 forces once more, and the Northern army came up 
 with them near the Antietam Creek, a tributary of 
 the Potomac, some sixty miles north-east of 
 Washington. Battles took place on the 14th and 
 17th September between the two armies, first at 
 South Mountain and then at Antietam. 
 
 In the latter battle both sides lost very heavily, 
 
124 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 but the Southern army found themselves compelled 
 to retreat, which they did unmolested into Vir 
 ginia. Lincoln issued instructions to M Clellan to 
 follow up this partial success, and cross the Potomac 
 in pursuit. He declined to do so, thus allowing 
 a golden opportunity of striking a decisive blow 
 to pass by, and was thereupon superseded by 
 General Burnside. This change in the command 
 did not, however, turn the tide in favour of the 
 North. Burnside met with a severe reverse before 
 the Confederate works of Fredericksburg on 13th 
 December, and this was followed by a fresh with 
 drawal of the Northern army beyond the Rappa- 
 hannock. Sherman, too, met with a grave defeat 
 before Vicksburg on 26th to 29th December. 
 Holly Springs, Mississippi, was surrendered to the 
 Confederates, 19th December, with a vast ac 
 cumulation of stores ; and General Grant, in con 
 sequence, found himself compelled to fall back, 
 being prevented from joining hands, as he had 
 hoped, with General Sherman. Meanwhile General 
 Foster had met with a measure of success in North 
 Carolina, and the battle of Murfreesborough (in 
 Tennessee), after continuing from 31st December 
 to 4th January, resulted in a victory for the 
 Federal arms, General M Cook, in command of 
 the Southern forces, being compelled to beat a 
 hasty retreat. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 NEGRO EMANCIPATION THE TURN OF THE TIDE 
 
 WHILE the fortunes of war were thus fluctuating, 
 and while the prospect of a speedy victory for the 
 North was becoming month by month more re 
 mote, the agitation for negro emancipation was 
 steadily gaining ground. The President was being 
 constantly beset by deputations and by individual 
 men of influence and repute, who pressed upon him 
 the necessity for a proclamation of emancipation. 
 On the 13th September 1862 he received a deputa 
 tion on the subject from all the religious denomina 
 tions in Chicago. Some of the ministers in this 
 deputation even went so far as to assure him that 
 they had authority from heaven to command him, 
 in God s name, to emancipate the slaves. In reply 
 Lincoln told them that he was " approached with 
 the most opposite opinions and advice, and that 
 by religious men who are equally certain that they 
 represent the divine will." He was (he said) sure 
 that either one or other class was mistaken in that 
 belief, and perhaps in some respects both. " I 
 
 125 
 
126 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 hope " (he continued) " that it will not be irreverent 
 for me to say that if it is probable that God would 
 reveal his will to others oil a point so connected 
 with my duty, it might be supposed He would 
 reveal it directly to me. I do not " (he proceeded) 
 " want to issue a document that the whole world 
 will see must necessarily be inoperative like the 
 Pope s Bull against the comet. Now, do not mis 
 understand me because I have mentioned these 
 objections. They indicate difficulties that have 
 thus far prevented me acting in some way such 
 as you desire. I have not decided against a pro 
 clamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the 
 matter under advisement, and I can assure you 
 that the subject is on my mind by day and night 
 more than any other. Whatever shall appear to 
 be God s will, I will do." Lincoln s view was that 
 it was his first duty to save the Union, and not 
 either to save or destroy slavery. It was, how 
 ever, steadily becoming clearer to him that, quite 
 apart from his anxiety to solve the slave problem, 
 the saving of the Union itself necessitated the 
 emancipation of the slaves. The Northern out 
 look had become darker and darker, and apart 
 from some such action on his part Lincoln was 
 beginning to feel that the situation was a hopeless 
 one. He was determined, in any case, " not to 
 surrender the game leaving any available card 
 unplayed." He did not feel that he was pre 
 vented from emancipating the slaves on constitu- 
 
NEGRO EMANCIPATION TIDE TURNS 127 
 
 tional grounds, as he took the view that as Com- 
 mander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy in time of 
 war (a position the President ipso facto occupied) 
 he had the right to take any measure which might 
 best ensure the triumph of the Union. As a matter 
 of fact, only a month or two before the Chicago 
 deputation had interviewed him, he had almost 
 decided on this emancipation policy. About the 
 end of July 1862 he called a Cabinet meeting 
 together to deal with this very subject, and sub 
 mitted to it the original draft of the proposed 
 proclamation. All members of the Cabinet were 
 present except Blair, the Postmaster-General. 
 Lincoln in effect told the Cabinet that he had de 
 cided to issue the proclamation, and various sug 
 gestions were offered by Cabinet Ministers with 
 regard to alterations and emendations in the word 
 ing. While the meeting was being held, Blair 
 came in and opposed the policy suggested, on the 
 ground that it would lead to the Government 
 losing the coming autumn elections. Finally, after 
 everyone else had expressed their views, Secretary 
 Seward spoke as follows : 
 
 " Mr President, I approve the proclamation, but I ques 
 tion the expediency of its issue at this juncture. The 
 depression of the public mind, consequent upon our 
 repeated reverses, is so great that I fear the effect of so 
 important a step. It may be viewed as the last measure 
 of an exhausted Government a cry for help ; the Govern 
 ment stretching forth its hands to Ethiopia, instead of 
 
128 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Ethiopia stretching forth her hands to the Government. 
 My idea is that it would be considered our last shriek on 
 the retreat. Now, while I approve the measure, I suggest, 
 sir, that you postpone its issue until you can give it to 
 the country supported by military success, instead of 
 issuing it, as would be the case now, upon the greatest 
 disasters of the war." 
 
 Lincoln was impressed by the force of Seward s 
 arguments, and decided to put the draft of the 
 proclamation aside for the time being. When, 
 however, the news reached him of the battle of 
 Antietam, and he realised that this involved the 
 retreat of the Southern forces, he made up his mind 
 to wait no longer. Having finished the second 
 draft of the proclamation, he called the Cabinet 
 together the fifth day after the battle, 22nd Sep 
 tember, and, after being duly passed, it was published 
 on the following Monday. The first proclamation 
 was indeed merely an announcement of what was 
 intended, but on the first of January of the follow 
 ing year, 1863, the President signed the further pro 
 clamation required to put the preliminary announce 
 ment into operation. This proclamation declared 
 that " in virtue of the power vested in him as 
 Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of 
 the United States in time of actual armed rebellion 
 against the authority and government of the 
 United States, and as a fit and necessary war 
 measure for suppressing the said rebellion, all 
 persons held as slaves within the States of 
 
NEGRO EMANCIPATION TIDE TURNS 129 
 
 Arkansas, Louisiana (thirteen counties excepted), 
 Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South 
 Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia (the forty- 
 eight counties of Western Virginia and seven others 
 excepted) are and henceforward shall be free, and 
 that the executive Government of the United 
 States, including the military and naval authorities 
 thereof, will recognise and maintain the freedom 
 of the said persons." The proclamation further 
 declared that " such persons as were of suitable 
 condition would be received into the army service 
 of the United States to garrison forts, positions, 
 stations, and other places, and to man vessels of 
 all sorts in the said service." The President, in 
 concluding his proclamation, invoked " the con 
 siderate judgment of mankind and the gracious 
 favour of Almighty God upon an act sincerely 
 believed to be an act of justice warranted by the 
 situation and the military necessity." 
 
 The eventual effect of this proclamation was to 
 enrol no less than 300,000 negroes in the armies of 
 the North. Its immediate effect was in some ways 
 no less noteworthy. The North had been living 
 in constant dread lest the Southern Confederacy 
 should be officially recognised by the European 
 Powers. It was known that the Emperor Napoleon 
 was anxious to do this, and that European nations 
 were hesitating what line to adopt. It was now 
 no longer possible for any European country to 
 dispute the fact that the cause of the North was 
 
 9 
 
130 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 the cause of freedom. Nothing during the whole 
 war tended so much to discourage the supporters 
 of the South in England as well as on the 
 Continent, or to put heart into the partisans of 
 the North, who were now in a position to maintain 
 openly that the cause of the Union was the cause 
 of justice and liberty. A special message of 
 congratulation was sent to the President by the 
 cotton workers of Manchester and the North, who 
 had been specially hard hit by the war, warmly 
 congratulating him on the step which he had taken. 
 Lincoln replied in a most appreciative spirit, saying 
 that he well understood that the duty of self- 
 preservation rested solely with the American 
 people, but that he realised also that the favour 
 or disfavour of foreign opinion might have a 
 material influence in enlarging or prolonging the 
 struggle. " It has " (he continued) " been often 
 and steadily represented that the attempt to over 
 throw this government, which was built upon the 
 foundation of human rights, and to substitute for 
 it one which should rest exclusively on the basis 
 of human slavery, was likely to obtain the favour 
 of Europe. . . . Under the circumstances, I 
 cannot but regard your decisive utterances upon 
 the question as an instance of sublime Christian 
 heroism. It is indeed an energetic and reinspiring 
 assurance of the inherent power of truth and of 
 the ultimate and universal triumph of justice, 
 humanity, and freedom." 
 
NEGRO EMANCIPATION TIDE TURNS 131 
 
 It is evidence of Lincoln s profound innate 
 religious temperament that he told Chase that he 
 had made a solemn vow that if General Lee were 
 driven back from Pennsylvania he would crown the 
 result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves. 
 It was in fulfilment of this vow that the proclama 
 tion was issued. It will be realised that though 
 this proclamation was a step of the utmost import 
 ance, it did not actually abolish slavery. It merely 
 proclaimed the freedom of all the slaves within 
 the States in rebellion against the Union. The 
 larger measure was to come later. To have done 
 more than this by proclamation would have trans 
 cended the powers of the President even in time of 
 war. The justification for the step taken was that 
 it was a military necessity. 
 
 In the meantime the military situation continued 
 to be far from satisfactory, and the first six months 
 of 1863 saw further reverses to the cause of the 
 Union. Bu.rnside had been relieved of his command 
 of the army of the Potomac after his reverse 
 before Fredericksburg, and was replaced by General 
 Hooker. The change of command failed, however, 
 to change the fortunes of war. Hooker attempted 
 a second advance on Richmond, but only met with 
 new disasters, and in a series of battles at Chan- 
 cellorsville in the first week of May found himself 
 forced to retreat with a loss of some 18,000 men. 
 General Grant was more successful. About the 
 same date he commenced a new movement, landing 
 
132 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 his forces at a point on the Mississippi some sixty- 
 five miles south of Vicksburg, which had long 
 resisted the attacks of the Union forces. From 
 this point he proceeded to march in a northerly 
 direction, compelling the evacuation by the Southern 
 armies of some strong fortifications at Grand Gulf 
 and dispersing the army which, under General 
 Joseph Johnstone, had advanced to relieve the 
 place. This left the city of Jackson, the capital 
 of the State of Mississippi, at the mercy of the 
 Northern general, who took possession of the place 
 with its large stores of supplies and artillery. 
 Advancing further he reached Vicksburg about 
 the middle of May and, after a preliminary un 
 successful attempt to storm the place, proceeded 
 to invest it closely. 
 
 The slow progress of the Northern arms was 
 in the meantime breeding grave discontent with 
 the Government generally, and the President in 
 particular. An agitation against the war was 
 started by an old pro -slavery man, Vallandigham 
 of Ohio. Vallandigham was arrested and sentenced 
 to close confinement in a fortress. This, however, 
 only had the effect of leading to an outcry against 
 the Government on the charge of military despotism, 
 which had the support of Governor Seymour of 
 New York. Finally, the President decided to 
 release Vallandigham and have him conducted to 
 within the Confederate lines, the understanding 
 being that he should not return during the war. 
 
NEGRO EMANCIPATION TIDE TURNS 133 
 
 To make matters worse, the Democratic party at 
 their State Convention for the nomination of State 
 Governors in Ohio, llth June, chose Vallandigham 
 as candidate for Governor by an almost unanimous 
 vote. In this same month of June the Federal 
 territory was actually being invaded by the Southern 
 forces under General Lee, who was marching in a 
 north-westerly direction up the Shenandoah Valley. 
 On the 13th of the month his lieutenant, Ewell, 
 drove Milroy from Winchester. On the following 
 day the Confederate forces crossed the Potomac. 
 Hampered by internal discontent, and faced at the 
 same time by military failure, Lincoln was con 
 fronted with what threatened to prove the gravest 
 crisis in the war. The tide, however, was already 
 on the point of turning. Hooker s army, now 
 under the command of General Meade, who first 
 comes into prominence at this time, and whose 
 army had been given the slip by General Lee, 
 advanced into Pennsylvania in pursuit of the 
 Southern army, which had already invaded this 
 Northern State. The two armies met at Gettysburg, 
 and after three days fighting, 1st to 3rd July, the 
 Confederate forces were compelled to retreat, 
 leaving some 14,000 prisoners in Meade s hands. 
 Only one day later, 4th July, Vicksburg, which, 
 as already stated, had been invested by Grant, 
 surrendered unconditionally. The prisoners here 
 taken amounted to upwards of 30,000 in number, 
 besides 220 guns. In the following week Fort 
 
134 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Hudson on the Lower Mississippi surrendered to 
 the Federal armies, with 7000 prisoners and 50 
 pieces of artillery. The result of this success was 
 that the Northern forces now controlled the whole 
 course of the Mississippi, and the Confederate 
 territory was cut in two. These victories, coming 
 after such a long series of failures and reverses, 
 were acclaimed in the North with general rejoicings. 
 Independence Day, 4th July, was made the occasion 
 of widespread enthusiasm, the news of the surrender 
 of Vicksburg, following the victory of Gettysburg, 
 arriving on the afternoon of that day. The 
 President was serenaded by the delighted populace, 
 when he took the opportunity to point the moral 
 of the occasion by alluding to the Southern rebellion 
 as "an effort to overthrow the principle that all 
 men were created equal," which was the avowed 
 basis of the Declaration of Independence, and which 
 was now threatened by the champions of slavery 
 and the inequality of man. To General Grant 
 Lincoln wrote personally " a grateful acknowledg 
 ment for the almost inestimable service he had done 
 to the country." The 6th August was set apart 
 as a day of national thanksgiving for the victories 
 achieved, at what was without doubt the real 
 turning-point of the war. 
 
 These great successes of the Northern forces 
 synchronised, curiously enough, with very serious 
 internal disturbances. On the 13th July the 
 carrying out of the Conscription Act was forcibly 
 
NEGRO EMANCIPATION- TIDE TURNS 135 
 
 resisted in New York, and Mob Law reigned in 
 the city for four days. Negroes were beaten to 
 death. A coloured orphan asylum was sacked and 
 set on fire. The State authorities, who were 
 Democratic in sympathies, stood by without 
 taking any action. Governor Seymour asked for 
 the postponement of the draft a concession to 
 the mob which the President firmly declined to 
 grant. On 19th August it was carried out without 
 opposition. These riots, however, had exactly 
 the reverse effect to that which their organisers 
 anticipated. A wave of indignation swept over 
 the country against such enemies of the Union. 
 In the following elections Vallandigham was de 
 feated for the Governorship of Ohio by a majority 
 of nearly 100,000. New York was won by the 
 Republicans, and every State except New Jersey 
 endorsed the Government policy. The end, how 
 ever, of the Federal reverses, was not yet. General 
 Rosecrans had successfully driven the Southern 
 forces under General Bragg through south-eastern 
 Tennessee until he had compelled them on the 9th 
 September to evacuate Chattanooga ; while at 
 the same time General Burnside, advancing from 
 the east, entered its capital, Knoxville. Bragg, 
 however, was immediately afterwards reinforced by 
 an army commanded by Longstreet, General Lee s 
 ablest lieutenant. The combined army fell on 
 Bragg, who apparently had not anticipated this 
 move, and inflicted on him a sanguinary defeat. 
 
136 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 The Federal armies found themselves shut up in 
 Chattanooga in a perilous position with only scanty 
 supplies. General Grant was hereupon placed in 
 command of the Federal army in Tennessee, 
 whither Sherman was hurried to his support with 
 reinforcements from the Mississippi. The reverse 
 was rapidly retrieved. Grant with his reinforced 
 army moved out to attack Bragg, and drove the 
 Confederates from their positions. At the same 
 time Grainger and Sherman were sent to relieve 
 Burnside at Knoxville. Longstreet, the Southern 
 general, thereupon raised the siege and retreated 
 into Virginia. 
 
 Before this latest reverse had been retrieved, 
 19th November 1863, the President was called 
 upon to speak at the dedication of a national 
 bury ing -ground on the field of Gettysburg. The 
 few words which he addressed to his audience on 
 this memorable occasion have long been remem 
 bered, and afford a typical example of Lincoln s 
 simple and yet singularly moving style of oratory. 
 Of this speech, M. Dusergier de Hauranne, in an 
 appreciative article on President Lincoln in the 
 Revue des Deux Mondes, written shortly after the 
 President s assassination, observed : " I do not 
 think that modern eloquence has ever produced 
 anything more lofty in tone than the discourse pro 
 nounced by Lincoln over the tomb of the soldiers 
 who perished at Gettysburg," and later critics have 
 been unanimous in endorsing this judgment. 
 
NEGRO EMANCIPATION TIDE TURNS 137 
 
 " Fourscore and seven years ago" (said Lincoln) "our 
 fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, con 
 ceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all 
 men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great 
 civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so 
 conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met 
 on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to 
 dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place 
 for those who here gave their lives that this nation might 
 live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should 
 do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we 
 cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The 
 brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have 
 consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. 
 The world will little note, nor long remember, what we 
 say here ; but it can never forget what they did here. 
 It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the 
 unfinished work which they who fought here have thus 
 far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here 
 dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that 
 from these honoured dead we take increased devotion 
 to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of 
 devotion ; that we here highly resolve that these dead 
 shall not have died in vain ; that this nation, under God, 
 shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government 
 of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not 
 perish from the earth." 
 
 The following winter was not favourable to the 
 Northern arms. They were defeated in an expedi 
 tion into the heart of Florida one of the principal 
 sources of Confederate supplies. An attempt to 
 surprise Richmond also ended in a reverse, General 
 Kilpatrick actually advancing as far as the second 
 
138 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 line of fortifications, two and a half miles outside 
 the city, on 1st March 1864. He was, however, 
 then compelled to withdraw owing to the defeat and 
 capture of a portion of his forces under Colonel 
 Dahlgren. A more serious defeat was suffered by 
 General Banks in the West. Banks was advancing 
 up the valley of the Red River, one of the 
 principal westerly affluents of the Mississippi, 
 when he was encountered by General Kirby 
 Smith, in command of the Southern forces, 
 and compelled to fall back with a loss of 16,000 
 men. This was followed by the capture of 
 Fort Pillow, on the Mississippi, by the Confeder 
 ate forces, and a disgraceful massacre of the 
 Northern soldiery, who had been taken prisoners, 
 mostly negroes. 
 
 General Grant was now in chief command of all 
 the United States armies, and the President 
 addressed to him on 30th April the following 
 letter : 
 
 " LIEUT.-GEN. GRANT, Not expecting to see you before 
 the Spring campaign opens, I wish to express in this way 
 my entire satisfaction with what you have done up to 
 this time, so far as I understand it. 
 
 " The particulars of your plans I neither know nor seek 
 to know. You are vigilant and self-reliant ; and, pleased 
 with this, I wish not to obtrude any restraints and con 
 straints upon you. While I am very anxious that any 
 great disaster or capture of our men in great numbers 
 shall be avoided, I know that these points are less likely 
 to escape your attention than they would be mine. If 
 
[To f rice page 138. 
 
 Copyright.. 1901, by M. P. Rice. 
 
 GENERAL ULYSSES S. GRANT 
 
NEGRO EMANCIPATION TIDE TURNS 139 
 
 there be anything wanting which is within my power to 
 give, do not fail to let me know it. 
 
 " And now, with a brave army and a just cause, may 
 God sustain you ! " 
 
 The change of attitude towards his new Com- 
 mander-in- Chief is not a little noteworthy. While 
 General M Clellan held command and after, the 
 responsibilities of the military situation weighed 
 heavily upon the President, who felt himself obliged 
 to give constant advice and indeed definite instruc 
 tions to his Commander-in-Chief on a number of 
 different occasions, going so far as to sketch out 
 plans of campaign and issuing definite orders for 
 the generals guidance wherever he thought this 
 necessary. The confidence he felt in the judgment 
 and capacity of General Grant, on the other hand, 
 and the friendly relations between them, led to an 
 entirely different line of action. Grant was, in fact, 
 allowed a perfectly free hand, and even when his 
 views did not coincide with those of Lincoln, the 
 President preferred to leave him to use his own 
 discretion and to await the result. In replying to 
 his letter, Grant observed : 
 
 " The confidence you express for the future and satis 
 faction for the past in my military administration, is 
 acknowledged with pride. It will be my earnest endeavour 
 that you and the country shall not be disappointed. 
 From my first entrance into the Volunteer service of the 
 country to the present day I have never had cause of 
 complaint. I have never expressed or implied a com 
 plaint against the administration or the Secretary of War 
 
140 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 for throwing any barrier in the way of my prosecuting 
 what appeared to be my duty. Indeed" (he added) "I 
 have been astonished at the readiness with which every 
 thing asked for has been yielded without any explanation 
 being asked." 
 
 No greater contrast than the above letter could 
 be offered to the endless and querulous complaints 
 made by General M Clellan against the Army 
 Administration for failing to meet his frequently 
 unreasonable and impossible demands. It must, 
 however, be borne in mind that the forces now at 
 the disposal of the North were infinitely greater 
 than in the earlier period of the campaign, and the 
 same obstacles accordingly did not offer themselves 
 to meeting the requirements of the general in com 
 mand. The campaign now in preparation was the 
 one destined to bring the war to a successful issue. 
 Grant s plan was to concentrate the vast bulk of 
 the United States forces into two great armies, the 
 object of which would be to strike simultaneous 
 blows from the North and from the South. One 
 of these armies accordingly commenced a renewed 
 march upon Richmond from the North under the 
 command of Grant himself and General Meade. 
 The other, under the command of Sherman, ad 
 vanced from Chattanooga towards the Atlantic 
 coast and thence northwards. 
 
 Grant proceeded to cross the Rapidan, and there 
 upon advanced into the broken wooded country 
 termed " The Wilderness," where it was impossible 
 
NEGRO EMANCIPATION TIDE TURNS 141 
 
 for artillery to manoeuvre, and which was admirably 
 adapted for the defensive and harassing tactics of 
 the enemy. In this disadvantageous terrain Grant 
 found himself face to face with Lee s army in full 
 force. There was a stubborn and indecisive engage 
 ment on 5th and 6th May 1864, involving great 
 losses to the Southern army, and still heavier to 
 Grant s. Following this, Grant made a movement 
 to the left with a view to outflanking Lee. In this, 
 however, he was not successful, but the movement 
 led to a further destructive battle on 8th to 12th 
 May, in which, again, both sides lost heavily 
 Grant s army losing some 18,000 men and Lee s 
 probably as many. Lee, however, was compelled 
 to fall back further to a position north of the River 
 Anna. Grant still endeavoured to turn Lee s right, 
 Lee meanwhile manoeuvring his army with a view 
 to the protection of Richmond. By the end of the 
 month Grant had arrived at Coldharbour, ten miles 
 north-east of Richmond. He had at the same time 
 sent an expedition under General Butler by sea 
 up the James River, with the object of making a 
 landing south of Richmond, his instructions being 
 to take the fortress of Petersburg, twenty-two miles 
 south of the Southern capital. The expedition, how 
 ever, proved a failure. The Northern armies under 
 Grant himself suffered a further reverse on 1st to 
 3rd June, in a frontal attack on Lee s entrench 
 ments, which led finally to his abandonment of the 
 attack. Finding a direct offensive impracticable, 
 
142 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Grant thereupon moved his army across the James 
 River to the neighbourhood of City Point, some 
 miles east of Petersburg. 
 
 At the commencement of the summer General 
 Sigel, who was in command in the lower part of the 
 Shenandoah Valley, had marched southwards on 
 Grant s instructions. General Early was detached 
 by Lee to stop his progress. An engagement ensued 
 in which Sigel was defeated. General Hunter was 
 sent out to supersede Sigel, and met with 110 better 
 success. Early advanced and overwhelmed a 
 smaller force under General Wallace, and on llth 
 July actually appeared before Washington. He 
 was not, however, in a position to make a serious 
 attack on the capital, and after an assault upon one 
 of the Washington forts withdrew back across the 
 Potomac. Meanwhile, in pursuance of the other 
 portion of Grant s plan of campaign, Sherman pro 
 ceeded to advance in an easterly direction from 
 Chattanooga, where he found himself opposed by 
 General Joseph Johnstone, whom he succeeded in 
 pushing back along the line of railway towards 
 Atlanta. Johnstone had carefully avoided open 
 engagements. His cautious tactics were, however, 
 not approved by Jefferson Davis, who sent out 
 General Hood to supersede him. The new general 
 promptly gave battle, and suffered a severe defeat 
 before Atlanta, which town he was compelled to 
 evacuate on 2nd September. In the meantime 
 Admiral Farragut, in a naval engagement on 5th 
 
NEGRO EMANCIPATIONTIDE TURNS 143 
 
 August, possessed himself of the harbour of Mobile 
 with its forts. General Grant now dispatched 
 General Sheridan to put an end to the raids up the 
 Shenandoah Valley, placing him in command of 
 Hunter s army. The consequent military opera 
 tions led to the defeat of Early at Cedar Creek on 
 19th October, while the country was devastated by 
 Grant s orders, so that it should be impossible in 
 future for Richmond to draw further supplies from 
 this source, and with a view to preventing further 
 raids in the same direction. 
 
 Meanwhile Sherman, with Grant s reluctant con 
 sent, had established the headquarters of his army 
 at Atlanta, while he sent General Thomas back 
 into Tennessee where the Southern General Hood 
 was contemplating a diversion. Thomas took up 
 a defensive position behind the fortifications of 
 Nashville, leaving General Schofield to check the 
 enemy s advance, while he himself waited for further 
 reinforcements. An engagement ensued between 
 Schofield and Hood at Franklin, in which Hood s 
 army suffered heavy losses ; as a result Schofield 
 was able to fall back slowly unmolested to Nash 
 ville, rejoining Thomas s army. Grant felt great 
 anxiety with regard to Thomas s position and his 
 failure to take more prompt steps to stop the advance 
 of the Southern general. He had, in fact, already 
 sent out instructions to supersede him ; but in the 
 meantime news reached him that in a battle on 
 15th to 16th December Thomas had fallen upon 
 
144 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Hood s army, completely routing it, capturing on 
 the occasion some 13,000 prisoners. 
 
 Sherman s forces were now occupying themselves 
 in systematically devastating the agricultural 
 country of Georgia, which had served as a granary 
 for the Confederate forces. This work of destruc 
 tion being accomplished, Sherman proceeded to take 
 possession of Savannah on the Atlantic coast, and 
 made preparations to proceed thence on his North 
 ern march. Grant was all this time extending his 
 entrenchments further round the south side of 
 Petersburg, and had seized two out of the three 
 railway lines which converged on that city, thus 
 cutting off the enemy s supplies. The Confederate 
 forces were now almost entirely hemmed in, and 
 desertion was playing havoc in their armies. It 
 was clear that their final defeat could not be in 
 definitely postponed. 
 
 In the meantime Sherman was continuing his 
 march northwards from his headquarters at 
 Savannah. Lee endeavoured to concentrate all 
 available forces against him at Augusta. While 
 appearing to threaten this city on the one hand, 
 and the port of Charleston on the other, Sherman, 
 as a matter of fact, was making preparations for an 
 advance due north on Columbia, the capital of 
 South Carolina. He reached this town on 17th 
 February by forced marches, and thus put an end 
 to the intended concentration of the Southern forces 
 at Augusta. Sherman s march had the effect of 
 
NEGRO EMANCIPATION TIDE TURNS 145 
 
 cutting the communications with Charleston, which 
 was hurriedly abandoned, and occupied by the 
 Northern forces on 18th February. 
 
 Wilmington was now the only seaport left in 
 possession of the Southern Confederation, and Rich 
 mond, cut off from its main arteries of communi 
 cation, was to a great extent dependent on the 
 supplies which reached it through this quarter in 
 spite of the blockade. An unsuccessful attack had 
 been made by General Butler on Wilmington at the 
 end of December, but this reverse was soon retrieved. 
 Admiral Porter, co-operating with the land forces, 
 effected the capture of Port Fisher at the mouth 
 of Wilmington Harbour. Following this, on the 
 22nd February, the city itself was stormed by 
 General Schofield, and the last maritime port passed 
 into the hands of the Union forces. It was now 
 Sherman s aim to effect a junction with General 
 Schofield. Johnstone, whose object was to prevent 
 this, had not with him more than some 33,000 men ; 
 and Sherman had probably three times the number. 
 There were, however, a large number of other Con 
 federate troops in Georgia and the Carolinas, and 
 Johnstone counted on getting a fair proportion of 
 these to come to his assistance. An indecisive 
 battle took place between Sherman s army and 
 Johnstone s at Bentonville, Johnstone withdrawing 
 within an entrenched position where Sherman 
 hesitated to attack him. Schofield, however, now 
 arrived on the scene, and Johnstone was forced to 
 
 10 
 
146 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 abandon his position. On 23rd March Sherman 
 occupied Goldsborough, having advanced four 
 hundred and twenty-five miles from Savannah 
 during a period of fifty days, in spite of the un 
 favourable weather conditions at this time of the 
 year. He had now the port of New Berne on his 
 right as a safe base of supplies. 
 
 In another field of the war Sheridan, who had 
 remained in winter quarters until 27th February, 
 started once more up the Shenandoah Valley with 
 10,000 cavalry in pursuit of the remains of Early s 
 forces. These were now dispersed and captured, 
 and having broken up the railway communication 
 to the north-west of Richmond, Sheridan proceeded 
 to join Grant and place his cavalry at his service. 
 
 While the war was thus progressing, the President 
 continued to occupy his mind with the question of 
 Negro Emancipation. After issuing his proclama 
 tion freeing all slaves in States in arms against the 
 central government, he proceeded in December 1862, 
 in his annual message, to put before Congress a 
 considered policy for dealing with the whole ques 
 tion. What he proposed was a constitutional 
 amendment to be submitted to the people providing 
 that compensation should be given by the Govern 
 ment to any State, whether now in rebellion or not, 
 which should abolish slavery before the year 1900 ; 
 and that all slaves who had acquired their freedom 
 through the chances of war should be granted such 
 freedom in perpetuity, and their owners compen- 
 
NEGRO EMANCIPATION TIDE TURNS 147 
 
 sated. Also that Congress should vote money for 
 a scheme for the colonisation of negroes outside the 
 borders of the United States. These moderate pro 
 posals on the part of the President were not followed 
 up by Congress. The Democrats in especial were 
 opposed to them. But the situation created by the 
 Emancipation Proclamation was bound to lead to a 
 position which would have to be dealt with, and 
 dealt with on bold lines. It was clear that matters 
 could not remain as they had been in the past. 
 Lincoln himself long viewed with favour the scheme 
 for negro colonisation, realising the difficulties which 
 would eventuate for the United States Government 
 in having to deal with so large and rapidly in 
 creasing an emancipated negro population. Bills 
 were introduced into Congress to compensate the 
 States of Missouri and Maryland if they abolished 
 slavery, the popular feeling in these States being 
 strongly in favour of abolition. The majority in 
 both Houses supported these bills, but they were 
 eventually killed by persistent obstruction. 
 
 As time went on, the Abolitionist Movement 
 gained steadily in strength. In the autumn of 
 1864 Maryland passed an amendment to the State 
 Constitution abolishing slavery, and allowing no 
 compensation to the slave-owners. Missouri 
 followed later with a similar measure, while Ken 
 tucky and Tennessee started a movement in the 
 same direction. It was clear now which way the 
 current was running, and the Republican Conven- 
 
148 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 tion of 1864, in choosing Lincoln as its candidate 
 for re-election to the Presidency, declared in favour 
 of a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery 
 throughout the States. There was little doubt that 
 the next Congress would do this, but Lincoln was 
 anxious that the matter should be taken in hand at 
 once. In his message to Congress in 1864 he urged 
 the advisability of prompt action. An amendment 
 to the constitution necessitated a two-thirds 
 majority. The resolution was passed in the Senate, 
 but its fate in the House of Representatives seemed 
 extremely uncertain till the very last moment. It 
 hung, in short, upon a very few doubtful votes. 
 Lincoln picked out two Democratic Congressmen, 
 who presumably had compromised themselves in 
 some way and stood in wholesome awe of the 
 Presidential authority. He told them in so many 
 words that the gaining of a few votes would 
 secure the passing of the resolution, and that 
 these votes must be gained. He added that he 
 looked to them personally to see that they were 
 secured. His threat had the desired effect, and on 
 31st January 1865 the resolution was passed in the 
 House of Representatives by the requisite two- 
 thirds majority, the crowd in the galleries breaking 
 out at the announcement of the result into a 
 demonstration of enthusiasm which was long after 
 wards remembered. The action of Congress required 
 to be subsequently endorsed by twenty-seven out 
 of the thirty-six individual States, and it was not 
 
NEGRO EMANCIPATION TIDE TURNS 149 
 
 till December of the same year that this final step 
 was completed. The necessary majority had then 
 been obtained, and slavery in the United States of 
 America was a thing of the past. Lincoln was no 
 longer alive to see this much-desired consummation, 
 but it had been practically assured some months 
 before his death. 
 
 Three years later a constitutional amendment was 
 passed forbidding any distinction in the franchise 
 on the ground of race or colour. This amendment 
 evidently went further than Lincoln s own views on 
 the matter, his cautious policy aiming rather at 
 confining the franchise to the better educated and 
 more influential portion of the black population. 
 It was, however, feared that vagrancy laws and 
 other such methods might be put into operation as 
 an indirect means of re-enslaving the negroes in the 
 South, and the defenders of the amendment argued 
 that universal franchise would be the best means to 
 be adopted for their protection. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 LINCOLN RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT 
 
 IT has been mentioned that the Republican Party 
 had adopted Lincoln as their candidate for the 
 Presidency, but he was not destined to be elected 
 unopposed. His four years term of office was due 
 to expire in March 1865, and the election would 
 take place in the preceding November. The re 
 verses to the Federal arms in the early months of 
 1864 had led to great discontent and dissatisfaction 
 in the North, and it was feared for some time that 
 Lincoln s chances of re-election were by no means 
 encouraging. The Democrats, taking advantage of 
 popular discontent, decided to put forward General 
 M Clellan ; while the extreme section of Abolitionists 
 nominated General Fremont, who, however, with 
 drew his candidature before the election. Lincoln 
 formally accepted the nomination on 27th June 
 1864. Replying to a congratulatory address from 
 the " National Union League," he used an expres 
 sion in thanking the League, which has since become 
 a household word. " I have not," he said " per- 
 
 150 
 
LINCOLN RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT 151 
 
 mitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the 
 best man in the country, but I am reminded in this 
 connection of a story of an old Dutch farmer who 
 remarked to a companion once that it was best not 
 to swap horses when crossing a stream/ 
 
 His renomination recalled to the President a 
 curious experience which he had had at the time of 
 his first nomination at the Chicago Convention of 
 1860, which serves to illustrate the strong vein of 
 superstition in his character. He related the 
 experience at the time of its occurrence to Mr 
 Carpenter, and also to John Hay, his assistant 
 private secretary. " In the afternoon of the day, 
 returning home from down town," he said, " I went 
 upstairs to Mrs Lincoln s sitting-room. Feeling 
 somewhat tired, I lay down upon a couch in the 
 room, directly opposite a bureau, upon which was 
 a looking-glass. As I reclined, my eye fell upon the 
 glass, and I saw distinctly two images of myself, 
 exactly alike, except that one was a little paler than 
 the other. I arose and lay down again, with the 
 same result. It made me quite uncomfortable for 
 a few moments ; but some friends coming in, the 
 matter passed out of my mind. The next day, 
 while walking in the street, I was suddenly reminded 
 of the circumstances and a disagreeable sensation 
 was produced by its return. I had never seen 
 anything of the kind before, and did not know what 
 to make of it. I determined to go home and place 
 myself in the same position ; and, if the same 
 
152 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 effect was produced, I would make up my mind 
 that it was the natural result of some principle 
 of refraction or optics which I did not understand, 
 and dismiss it. I tried the experiment, with the 
 same result ; and, accounting for it on some prin 
 ciple unknown to me, it ceased to trouble me." It 
 is perhaps worth noting that Mrs Lincoln took this 
 at the time as a psychic intimation of her husband s 
 second election to the Presidency. 
 
 Following Lincoln s nomination, an attempt was 
 made by the South at a settlement by negotiation, 
 and three Confederate commissioners applied for 
 a safe-conduct to Washington to treat for peace. 
 With parties in the North so disunited, there was 
 no little danger of intrigues being set on foot by 
 these commissioners. At the same time there was 
 obvious risk involved if the President consented to 
 treat with them. If he did so without any stipula 
 tion as to the restoration of the Union, he for 
 feited his title to support as a Union candidate. 
 If, again, he did so without any stipulation as to 
 the abolition of slavery, he would forfeit the entire 
 support of the Abolitionists. Lincoln, moreover, 
 was unwilling to recognise officially the govern 
 ment of Jefferson Davis, as this would give an 
 armed rebellion a status which he had invariably 
 refused to accord it. It was doubtful, again, how 
 far the commissioners terms would be considered 
 binding by the armed forces of the South, and 
 unless they were in a position to secure the disband- 
 
[To face page 152. 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN 1804 
 
LINCOLN RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT 153 
 
 ing of the Southern army on the acceptance of 
 their terms, negotiations with them would obviously 
 be futile. Lincoln under these circumstances 
 issued a statement which was entirely successful 
 in baffling the intrigue without compromising his 
 own position. It ran as follows : 
 
 : To whom it may concern : Any proposition which 
 embraces the restoration of peace, the integrity of the 
 whole Union, and the abandonment of slavery, and 
 which comes by and with an authority that can control 
 the armies now at war against the United States, will be 
 received and considered by the Executive Government of 
 the United States, and will be met by liberal terms on 
 substantial and collateral points, and the bearer or bearers 
 thereof shall have safe-conduct both ways." 
 
 It was about this time, as already narrated, that 
 the Confederate army was raiding in Maryland and 
 Pennsylvania, and that Grant met with the serious 
 repulse in his assault of Petersburg on 30th July. 
 In view of the gravity of the situation Lincoln 
 had called for a further levy of five hundred 
 thousand men. His friends endeavoured to dis 
 suade him from doing so, for fear of endangering 
 his electioneering prospects. "As to my re 
 election," he replied, "it matters not. We must 
 have the men. If I go down I intend to do so, 
 like the Cumberland, 1 with my colours flying." The 
 President was looking ill and was suffering from 
 
 1 The Cumberland was a wooden frigate sunk by the Confederate 
 ironclad Merrimac in Hampton Roads. 
 
154 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 worry and overwork. His friends were anxious 
 about his condition and urged him to take things 
 more easily. " I cannot work less," he replied. 
 " But it is not that. Work never troubled me. 
 Personally I care nothing about a re-election ; but 
 if our divisions defeat us, I fear for the country." 
 He said again that he had faith in the ultimate 
 triumph of the North, but added, " I may never 
 live to see it. I feel a presentiment that I shall 
 not outlast the rebellion. When it is over my 
 work will be done." 
 
 Before the Presidential election took place, the 
 tide had turned once more and finally in favour of 
 the North. Lincoln had now no longer any real 
 anxiety as regards his re-election. He was, in fact, 
 returned by the votes of all the loyal States except 
 three, and by a larger popular majority than had 
 ever yet been given in a contested Presidential 
 election. He received a triumphant ovation on 
 the occasion, and replied to his enthusiastic sup 
 porters in the following memorable words : 
 
 " It has long been a grave question whether any Govern 
 ment, not too strong for the liberties of the people, can 
 be strong enough to maintain its own existence in great 
 emergencies. On this point the present rebellion has 
 brought our Republic to a severe test ; and the Presi 
 dential elections occurring in regular course during the 
 rebellion added not a little to the strain. If the loyal 
 people united were put to the utmost of their strength 
 by the rebellion, must they not fall when divided and 
 partially paralysed by a political war among themselves ? 
 
LINCOLN RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT 155 
 
 But the election was a necessity. We cannot have a free 
 government without elections ; and if a rebellion could 
 force us to forego or postpone a national election, it might 
 fairly claim to have already conquered us. ... But the 
 rebellion continues ; and now that the election is over, 
 may not all having a common interest reunite in a common 
 effort to save our common country ? For my own part, 
 I have striven and shall strive to avoid placing any 
 obstructions in the way. So long as I have been here I 
 have not willingly planted a thorn for any man s bosom. 
 While I arn duly sensible to the high compliment of a 
 re-election, and duly grateful to Almighty God for having 
 directed our countrymen to right conclusions, as I think, 
 for their good, it adds nothing to my satisfaction that any 
 other man may be disappointed by the result. May I 
 ask those who have differed with me to join with me 
 in this same spirit to those who have not ? And 
 now let me close by asking three hearty cheers for our 
 brave soldiers and seamen, and their gallant and skilful 
 commanders." 
 
 The raising of the respective armies of the North 
 and South had proved a very serious matter to a 
 country not accustomed to military service. The 
 resources of the South were necessarily much 
 smaller than those of the North, and compulsion 
 had accordingly to be resorted to at a much earlier 
 date. The Southern Government granted the 
 necessary powers in April 1862, about one year after 
 the commencement of hostilities. The Conscription 
 Act in the North did not become law till March 
 1863, and even so the percentage of men enrolled 
 under this Act was remarkably small, though it 
 
156 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 proved a very efficient incentive to voluntary 
 enlistment. There were in arms at the end of the 
 war in the Northern army 980,000 white soldiers, 
 and something like 300,000 black. Before con 
 scription was put into force the Northern army 
 had already reached the total of 860,000, but it 
 was found impossible to make good the constant 
 wastage of war. At one period in the war, 
 curiously enough at the very time that the South 
 was adopting conscription, recruiting was suddenly 
 stopped in the North, the reason apparently being 
 the congestion of the War Department and the 
 fact that recruits presented themselves faster than 
 they could be organised and equipped. During 
 the latter part of the war the numbers in arms in 
 the North were immensely greater than those in 
 the South, and the Southern armies in consequence 
 constantly found themselves confronted with very 
 greatty superior forces. In the original measure 
 of compulsion in the South the liability to serve 
 was limited to the ages of eighteen to thirty-five. 
 This was extended in September 1862 to eighteen 
 to forty-five, and finally in February 1864 to all 
 between seventeen and fifty. The Northern Con 
 scription Act placed the recruiting organisation 
 under the control of General J. B. Fry, as Provost- 
 Marshal-General. The country was divided into a 
 number of districts and sub-districts, and authority 
 was given to enroll all male citizens between twenty 
 and forty-five. Each district, however, was merely 
 
LINCOLN RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT 157 
 
 required to provide its special quota, and if it 
 could do this without the aid of compulsion, the 
 Conscription Act was not put into force. Con 
 scripts were chosen by lot from those liable to serve, 
 but those chosen were at liberty to find substitutes 
 if they could do so, the price of a substitute, generally 
 speaking, amounting to about a thousand dollars. 
 Provision was made to safeguard such as could 
 not pay this price, the arrangement being that 
 a substitute should be found for them for three 
 hundred dollars. It stands to reason, however, 
 that there must have been many conscripts who 
 would not be in a position to find this sum. This 
 method of conscription has of course been very 
 widely adopted in the past, but was rejected in 
 the great war of to-day on account of its very 
 obvious unfairness to the poorer citizens. It was, 
 however, the traditional method, and evidently 
 Lincoln did not see his way to substitute anything 
 of a more efficient and at the same time juster 
 character. The number of men actually con 
 scripted in the North was comparatively small, 
 and the main use of conscription was in reality as 
 a threat to stimulate voluntary enlistment. 
 
 The re-election of Lincoln as President and their 
 reverses in the field brought home to the South 
 the fact that it was high time to make peace. 
 Jefferson Davis, however, was not prepared to 
 accept the only possible terms. At the same time 
 he was anxious to try if it would not be possible 
 
158 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 to secure peace on some more favourable con 
 ditions. With this view he dispatched Vice- Presi 
 dent Stephens, who had always been at heart 
 opposed to the war, and two other Southern 
 leaders, who were instructed to go to Grant s 
 headquarters and make an appeal through the 
 commander in the field, which would induce 
 Lincoln to consent to see them, and open negotia 
 tions. Lincoln was unwilling, but finally, at Grant s 
 express desire, consented to see the commissioners, 
 and make clear to them the only terms on which 
 the South could have peace. He accordingly went, 
 taking Seward with him, and met the three com 
 missioners on a ship at Hampton Roads on 3rd 
 February. They were clearly told that the Union 
 must be accepted in the most unqualified manner, 
 and also advised of the constitutional amendment 
 which Congress had submitted to the people on 
 the subject of slavery, and which it must be under 
 stood would not be opposed. The attempt of the 
 commissioners to whittle down these terms met 
 with no sort of success ; and as it was clear that 
 Jefferson Davis was not prepared to accept them, 
 the Conference, as Lincoln anticipated, led to no 
 result. The commissioners were, however, informed 
 that while Lincoln could make no promise as regards 
 amnesty for rebels, the executive power which lay 
 in his hands would be used in the interests of 
 clemency. " I understand, then," Stephens said, 
 " that you regard us as rebels who are liable to be 
 
LINCOLN RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT 159 
 
 hung for treason." Lincoln replied that that was 
 the case. " Well," said Stephens, " to tell you the 
 truth, we are none of us much afraid of being hanged 
 with you as President." 
 
 Lincoln now took office for the second time as 
 President of the United States, and delivered his 
 second inaugural address. Never has any great 
 public pronouncement on a momentous occasion 
 of history breathed so deep a religious feeling. 
 Lincoln was indeed one of the only great public 
 men in histor}^ who could make use of Biblical 
 phraseology in public life without the slightest 
 suspicion of insincerity. Everything he said in 
 public or private was so stamped with his own 
 natural earnestness and the intensity of his con 
 victions, that words which would have rung false 
 from the lips of any other statesman only served, 
 when used by him, to add a note of greater solemnity 
 and sense of responsibility to the address. 
 
 " Fellow-countrymen ! " (he said) " At this second 
 appearance to take the oath of the Presidential office, there 
 is less occasion for an extended address than there was at 
 the first. Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a 
 course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, 
 at the expiration of four years, during which public 
 declarations have been constantly called forth on every 
 point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs 
 the energies and engrosses the attention of the nation, 
 little that is new could be presented. The progress of 
 our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well 
 known to the public as to myself ; and it is, I trust, 
 
160 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With 
 high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is 
 ventured. 
 
 " On the occasion corresponding to this four years 
 ago, all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending 
 civil war. All dreaded it all sought to avert it. While 
 the inaugural address was being delivered from this 
 place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without 
 war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy 
 it without war seeking to dissolve the Union and divide 
 effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war ; 
 but one of them would make war rather than let the nation 
 survive ; and the other would accept war rather than let 
 it perish. And the war came. 
 
 " One-eighth of the whole population were coloured 
 slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but 
 localised in the Southern part of it. These slaves con 
 stituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that 
 this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. To 
 strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the 
 object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, 
 even by war ; while the Government claimed no right to 
 do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. 
 Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the 
 duration which it has already attained. Neither expected 
 that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even 
 before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for 
 an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and 
 astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the 
 same God ; and each invokes His aid against the other. It 
 may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just 
 God s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat 
 of other men s faces ; but let us judge not, that we be 
 not judged. The prayer of both could not be answered 
 that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty 
 
LINCOLN RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT 161 
 
 has His own purposes. Woe unto the world because of 
 offences ; for it must needs be that offence cometh. 
 If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of these 
 offences which, in the providence of God, must needs 
 come, but which, having continued through His appointed 
 time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both 
 North and South this terrible war, as the woe due to 
 those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein 
 any departure from those divine attributes which the 
 believers in a living God always ascribe to Him ? Fondly 
 do we hope fervently do we pray that this mighty 
 scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God 
 wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the 
 bondman s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited 
 toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn 
 with the lash shall be paid with another drawn with the 
 sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it 
 must be said, The judgments of the Lord are true and 
 righteous altogether. 
 
 " With malice toward none ; with charity for all ; 
 with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, 
 let us strive on to finish the work we are in ; to bind up 
 the nation s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne 
 the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan to do all 
 which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace 
 among ourselves, and with all nations." 
 
 11 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE END 
 
 LINCOLN now left Washington at Grant s desire, 
 and proceeded to headquarters. Sheridan was 
 already with Grant, and Sherman joined them 
 shortly afterwards. Meanwhile Lee made over 
 tures with a view to a conference which Lincoln 
 instructed Grant to refuse except on the terms of 
 unconditional surrender. 
 
 Lee s defences were now extended some forty miles 
 around Richmond and Petersburg. On April 1st 
 Sheridan, passing to the south of these lines, in a 
 battle at Five Forks, established himself in posses 
 sion of the railway running west from Petersburg. 
 Grant s army proceeded to deliver assaults at 
 various points to the east of the Petersburg 
 defences. On 2nd April the Confederate Govern 
 ment left the capital, and Lee evacuated Rich 
 mond, which had become no longer tenable, on the 
 next day. Jefferson Davis took refuge with 
 Johnstone s army. Johnstone told him frankly 
 that further resistance was impossible, and obtained 
 
 162 
 
THE END 163 
 
 his permission to treat with Sherman, the Presi 
 dent himself escaping South. Lee now aimed at 
 joining hands with Johnstone, but the Northern 
 cavalry headed him off and destroyed the railway 
 lines on his route, cutting off his supplies. A 
 running fight followed, culminating in a battle 
 on 6th April at Sailor s Creek. Driven back 
 thence, the Southern general found himself sur 
 rounded beyond any possibility of escape at 
 Appomattox Court House. A meeting was arranged 
 between himself and Grant and their respective 
 staffs in a neighbouring farmhouse. Lee inquired 
 on what terms Grant would accept surrender. 
 Grant gave permission for every Southern officer to 
 keep his sword and his horse, and subsequently 
 accorded permission, on Lee s solicitation, for the 
 cavalry troopers also to retain their horses. A 
 general indemnity against the charge of treason 
 was also granted to the Confederate officers. 
 Lincoln returned to Washington and met with an 
 ovation at the White House on llth April, where 
 he addressed the crowd on the problem of recon 
 struction in the South. On the Good Friday 
 following, 14th April, the Union flag was once 
 more hoisted at Fort Sumter by its old defender, 
 General Anderson, on the anniversary of the day 
 on which it had been hauled down four years 
 before ; and on the same morning a Cabinet Council 
 took place at Washington and discussed the 
 problem of reconstruction. 
 
164 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 Lincoln, on the same day, also saw General Grant, 
 who expressed some anxiety concerning the situa 
 tion of General Sherman, from whom he had heard 
 nothing for some days. Lincoln told Grant that 
 he was convinced that some good news was coming 
 from Sherman, and proceeded to narrate a dream 
 which he had had on the previous night, and 
 which he declared had always come to him on the 
 eve of momentous news. In this dream he found 
 himself on board a curiously built vessel which was 
 drifting rapidly towards a dark and undefined 
 shore. He said that he had had this dream before 
 several of the Northern victories. He had dreamt 
 it before Antietam, before Murfreesborough, and 
 also before Vicksburg. General Grant commented 
 that the battle of Antietam had not resulted in 
 a victory ; but the President took no notice of this 
 comment and continued to describe his dream in 
 more detail, and the sensations which accompanied 
 it, insisting that he was sure that it referred 
 to Sherman s victory, as he could think of no 
 other important event to which it might relate. 
 As a matter of fact, on the same morning 
 Sherman had received and replied to a letter 
 from Johnstone opening negotiations for a peace 
 ful surrender, which was completed twelve days 
 later. 
 
 On the fateful day Mr and Mrs Lincoln drove out 
 together, and the President seemed in a particu 
 larly cheerful mood. Mrs Lincoln had arranged 
 
THE END 165 
 
 for a party at the Ford Theatre that night and 
 insisted on the President being one of the party, 
 though he himself was reluctant, as he had already 
 seen the play, Our American Cousin, before, and 
 did not care to go to it again. He, however, 
 gave way to his wife s importunity, humorously 
 remarking, when he found that further protest was 
 useless, " All right, Mary, I ll go ; but if I don t go 
 down to history as the martyr President, I miss 
 my guess." The Grants were to have been of the 
 party, but General Grant changed his mind at 
 the last moment, and left Washington the same 
 day. They were, however, accompanied by Major 
 Rathbone, a young officer, and his fiancee. The 
 theatre was crowded, and the President was 
 enthusiastically cheered. At about a quarter past 
 ten John Wilkes Booth, the actor, passed along 
 the passage behind the spectators, showing a card 
 to the attendant, and entered the vestibule of the 
 President s box. Closing the door behind him and 
 entering by the door of the box itself, which was 
 left open, as the President was leaning forward he 
 shot him with a small pistol through the back of 
 the head. Lincoln fell forward immediately, and 
 made no further movement. Major Rathbone 
 jumped up and seized Booth, who turned to 
 attack him with a dagger which he carried in 
 his left hand, and escaped from his grasp. He 
 then rushed to the front shouting the words of the 
 Virginian motto, " Sic semper tyrannis," and leaped 
 
166 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 upon the stage. The spur, however, which he was 
 wearing caught in the Stars and Stripes banner 
 which was displayed for the occasion, and he fell, 
 breaking his leg. In spite of this, he jumped 
 up again and succeeded in making his escape 
 to the door of the theatre, where he mounted 
 a horse which was waiting for him. Eventually 
 he was pursued and tracked down to a barn, which 
 was set on fire by the soldiers in pursuit of him, 
 and shot dead as he emerged from the flames. 
 
 On the same night another of the conspirators 
 gained entrance to Se ward s house, wounding three 
 people, including Seward himself, who was lying in 
 bed from the effects of an accident. All, however, 
 subsequently recovered. The President himself 
 never regained consciousness, and at 7.20 on the 
 following morning passed peacefully away. Two 
 of Lincoln s sons survived him one of the two 
 destined later to become ambassador to this 
 country. The third, Willie, who was described as 
 " the chartered libertine of the White House," 
 died during the war, to the intense grief of his 
 parents, who were devoted to him. This blow, 
 the President himself confessed, overwhelmed him. 
 Lincoln on one occasion, after reading to his aide- 
 de-camp, Colonel Cannon, the lines from Shake 
 speare s King John : 
 
 ; Father Cardinal, I have heard you say 
 That we shall see and know our friends in heaven. 
 If that be true, I shall see my boy again/ 
 
THE END 167 
 
 turned to Cannon saying : " Colonel ! Did you 
 ever dream of a lost friend, and feel that you were 
 holding conversation with that friend, and yet 
 have a sad consciousness that it was not a reality ? 
 Just so I dream of my boy, Willie." Overcome 
 with emotion, he dropped his head on the table 
 and burst into tears. One likes to think that the^ 
 boy he loved so well was waiting to welcome the 
 President on the other side of the Great Divide. 
 
 No one who ever rose to the position of Chief 
 Magistrate of a great State was more entirely free 
 from self -consciousness, or what is colloquially 
 termed " side," than Lincoln. He loved to be 
 considered as one of the plain people from among 
 whom he had sprung. Of dignity in the strictest 
 sense of the word he had none. He was hail- 
 fellow-well-met with all, and always preferred to 
 be addressed as " Mr Lincoln " rather than as 
 " Mr President " during his term of office. His 
 tendency, specially in the early part of his life, was 
 consistently to underestimate his own abilities, 
 and, as so many people will always take a man at 
 his own valuation, this doubtless had an effect 
 detrimental to a widespread recognition of his 
 actual capacity and intellectual power. 
 
 Another and most striking trait in the character 
 of the great American President was his humanity. 
 I think one may safely say that no man who was 
 responsible for the conduct of a great war, since 
 the world began, was ever so humane by nature 
 
168 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 as Lincoln. The clemency of Julius Caesar to his 
 enemies when they fell into his power became 
 proverbial, but Julius Caesar s clemency was not 
 comparable with Lincoln s. His official position 
 devolved upon the President the duty of counter 
 signing the orders for the shooting of deserters 
 from the army, and various other delinquents, 
 under martial law. Lincoln always endeavoured to 
 find some excuse for letting the offenders off. The 
 stories told of this trait in his character are abso 
 lutely legion. On one occasion a Congressman who 
 had failed to move the Secretary for War to grant 
 a pardon, went to the White House late at night 
 after the President had retired, and forcing his 
 way into his bedroom, earnestly pleaded for his 
 interference, exclaiming tragically, " This man must 
 not be shot, Mr Lincoln." " Well," said the 
 President coolly, " I do not believe shooting will 
 do him any good," and the pardon was granted. 
 This reminds us by contrast of the story of a very 
 dour Scotch judge to whom a man who had been 
 condemned for murder appealed piteously at the 
 conclusion of the trial, protesting in vain that he 
 was absolutely innocent of the crime of which he 
 had been found guilty. " Weel, weel," said the 
 Scottish dignitary, waiving aside the whole question 
 of guilt or innocence, " ye 11 be nane the waur for 
 a wee bit hanging." 
 
 On another occasion an old man came to Lincoln 
 with a tragic story. His son had been convicted 
 
THE END 169 
 
 of unpardonable crimes and sentenced to death ; 
 but he was an only son, and the President said 
 kindly : "I am sorry I can do nothing for you. 
 Listen to this telegram I received from General 
 Butler yesterday : President Lincoln. I pray you 
 not to interfere with the courts martial of the 
 Army. You will destroy all discipline among our 
 soldiers. B. P. Butler. Lincoln watched the 
 old man s grief for a minute, and then exclaimed, 
 " By Jingo ! Butler or no Butler, here goes ! " 
 Writing a few words he handed the paper to the 
 old man, which read as follows : " Job Smith is 
 not to be shot until further orders from me. 
 Abraham Lincoln." " Why," said the old man 
 sadly, " I thought it was a pardon. You may 
 order him to be shot next week." " My old friend," 
 replied the President, " I see you are not very 
 well acquainted with me. If your son never dies 
 till orders come from me to shoot him, he will live 
 to be a great deal older than Methuselah." It is 
 small wonder that Lincoln s generals felt no little 
 anxiety as to the effect his humanitarian doctrines 
 might exercise upon army discipline. 
 
 In the realm of diplomacy Lincoln, immediately 
 after his arrival at the White House, showed himself 
 a past master, to the great surprise of all his sub 
 ordinates, who wondered how it was that a man who 
 had had so little natural training could prove so 
 adept in dealing with complicated matters of ad 
 ministration and negotiations with foreign Powers. 
 
170 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 At a quite early date during his first tenure of office 
 he found himself face to face with a very embarras 
 sing situation in respect of the relations of the United 
 States with more than one European country, owing 
 to the claim of the Southern Confederacy to be recog 
 nised as a nation. The position grew more difficult 
 still later on, when it became the generally accepted 
 opinion in Europe that the South would be able to 
 enforce its claim to independence. On 28th February 
 1861, in the last days of the outgoing administra 
 tion, Jeremiah Black, Secretary of State, had issued 
 a circular instructing the representatives of the 
 United States at foreign capitals that the Govern 
 ment had not relinquished its constitutional juris 
 diction anywhere within its territory and did not 
 propose to do so. He also gave instructions in the 
 same circular that a recognition of the Confederacy 
 must not be allowed. Upon assuming the duties 
 of Secretary of State, Seward confirmed these 
 instructions, expressing the confidence of the 
 President in the speedy suppression of the rebellion. 
 The answers he received from the European Powers 
 were cautious and non-committal. England and 
 France issued a proclamation of neutrality which 
 conceded to the Confederate States the privileges 
 of a belligerent Power. Seward, in reply to this, 
 drew up a vehement dispatch which threatened to 
 embroil the relations of England and America. 
 Lincoln, however, had instructed his subordinates 
 on no account to send off important dispatches with- 
 
THE END 171 
 
 out his supervision, and on the dispatch being sub 
 mitted to him, made such modifications as completely 
 altered the tone and manner of the communication 
 without detracting from the firm line adopted. He, 
 moreover, left it to the American representative, 
 Adams, to use his discretion as to whether he 
 should read the whole dispatch to Lord John 
 Russell, or convey its sense to him in what manner 
 he thought best. Lord Charnwood observes : " Pro 
 bably his few pen strokes made peaceful relations 
 easy when Seward s dispatch would have made 
 them almost impossible. Certainly a study of this 
 document will prove both his strange untutored 
 diplomatic skill, and the general soundness of his 
 views on foreign affairs." 
 
 Further trouble arose with England through the 
 action of a captain of the Northern navy who over 
 hauled The Trent and carried off two emissaries 
 who were being dispatched to England and France 
 on behalf of the Confederate Government, sub 
 sequently releasing the vessel. This was a violation 
 of recognised international law, and the British 
 Government demanded the release of the prisoners. 
 Unfortunately, Welles, the Naval Secretary, ap 
 proved the sea-captain s action, and the House of 
 Representatives confirmed this approval. Lincoln 
 realised that the prisoners would have to be given 
 up, and that indeed America herself had adopted an 
 attitude in the past which was directly at variance 
 with her present position. The matter aroused 
 
172 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 heated debates in the American Cabinet, and 
 exactly what occurred there is somewhat obscure ; 
 but in the end the only decision consistent with 
 common sense was adopted, and Mason and Slidell, 
 the two emissaries concerned, were given up. 
 
 When the question arose of the recognition of 
 the South as an independent Republic, the British 
 Government consistently refused to act in this sense, 
 though there was a time when the fortunes of the 
 North were at their lowest ebb, when the Cabinet 
 hesitated as to what was the wisest course to pursue. 
 Disraeli, however, then leader of the Opposition, 
 whom they consulted in the matter, would have 
 nothing to do with such recognition, and his opinion 
 prevailed, in spite of the desire of Napoleon III. 
 (who had his own schemes afoot for founding an 
 empire in Mexico) to induce England to commit 
 herself. British sympathy was, however, in the 
 main strongly on the side of the South, with certain 
 notable exceptions. After Lincoln s proclamation of 
 the Emancipation of the Slaves was issued, opinion 
 in many quarters veered round to the side of the 
 North, and thenceforward there could be no question 
 of intervention. The stroke was thus one which 
 apart from its influence on the internal conduct 
 of the war, was highly favourable to the North 
 in ridding it of embarrassment in its foreign 
 relations. 
 
 We are, most of us, strange mixtures of strength 
 and weakness, but in the case of no great man were 
 
THE END 173 
 
 strong and weak points blended more remarkably 
 than in Abraham Lincoln. He himself constantly 
 pleaded guilty to an inability to say " No," and ex 
 pressed thankfulness on this account that he had 
 not been born a woman. In his home life he yielded 
 in almost everything. His relations with women 
 before his marriage argued a certain irresolution 
 and lack of grit and moral fibre. And yet, where 
 essential principles were at stake, there was no one 
 in the whole country who was so immovable. 
 Once he had made up his mind that a certain course 
 was right, and that it was his duty to pursue it, 
 wild horses (as the colloquial phrase goes) would 
 not drag him from his decision. So it was that 
 in the matter of all that was at hazard in con 
 nection with the maintenance of the Union, and 
 the attitude to be adopted towards the slavery 
 dispute, he appeared to be the one strong man 
 in a party where all others were in danger of 
 compromising on the most vital principles at 
 issue. Lincoln was certainly slow at arriving at 
 his conclusions, and we shall probably be right in 
 attributing his irresolution on many occasions to 
 his inability to arrive at a definite decision with 
 sufficient promptitude. He was always accustomed 
 to weigh the pros and cons of any question of 
 policy with scrupulous fairness, and this led at 
 times to a certain inability to see on which side 
 the balance of advantage lay. 
 
 Much ink has been wasted in a discussion of what 
 
174 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 were Lincoln s precise religious opinions. While 
 some biographers have held him up as a noble 
 example of the orthodox Christian, others, like 
 Herndon, his partner, have bluntly pronounced him 
 an " infidel." The truth is, of course, that both 
 statements are equally false, and indeed, equally 
 absurd. Of theology, properly speaking, he took 
 no account whatever. He frankly avowed his 
 belief that theological disputation was the enemy 
 of all true religion. His early life had brought him 
 into conflict with the orthodox parson of the day, 
 and he had learned to gauge him at his true value. 
 But there was perhaps no one in the whole of the 
 United States to whom genuine religion was more 
 part and parcel of his everyday life. As President, 
 his deeply religious nature came out again and 
 again in his speeches, and I think it may be safely 
 maintained that during the last century there has 
 been one man, and one only, to compare with him, 
 among all those who have been called upon to rule 
 the destinies of great nations, in the profound depth 
 of his religious convictions. Regarded from this 
 standpoint, Abraham Lincoln and William Ewart 
 Gladstone stand apart. And this, in spite of the 
 fact that whereas Gladstone was an enthusiastic 
 theologian, Lincoln had no theological interests. It 
 is doubtless the case that in his later life Lincoln s 
 natural religious tendencies became accentuated. 
 As his biographers, Nicolay and Hay, state in their 
 life of the President t " The pressure of the tre- 
 
THE END 175 
 
 niendous problems by which he was surrounded ; 
 the awful moral significance of the conflict of which 
 he was the chief combatant ; the overwhelming 
 sense of personal responsibility which never left 
 him for an hour all contributed to produce in a 
 temperament naturally serious and predisposed to a 
 spiritual view of life and conduct, a sense of reverent 
 acceptance of the guidance of a superior Power." 
 
 When the New School Presbyterians in 1863 
 embodied their sentiments of loyalty to the Union 
 in a Memorial to the President, he observed in the 
 course of his reply : " From the beginning I saw 
 that the issues of our great struggle depended upon 
 Divine interposition and favour." Again, on another 
 occasion, a clergyman from Central New York called 
 upon him on behalf of his congregation, and assured 
 him that " the loyal people of the North are sustain 
 ing you and will continue to do so," adding, ; We 
 are giving you all that we have the lives of our 
 sons, as well as our confidence and our prayers. 
 You must know that no pious father or mother ever 
 kneels in prayer these days without asking God to 
 give you strength and wisdom." It is narrated that 
 the tears rilled Lincoln s eyes as he thanked his 
 visitor and said, " But for those prayers I should 
 have faltered and perhaps failed long ago. Tell 
 every father and mother you know to keep praying, 
 and I will keep on fighting, for I am sure that God 
 is on our side." 
 
 It would be possible to continue citing such 
 
176 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 instances indefinitely. The point, however, is that 
 this profoundly serious and religious sense was 
 representative of Lincoln s normal attitude towards 
 the duties he was called upon to discharge, and was 
 part and parcel of that high sense of responsibility 
 which carried him through unexampled difficulties 
 and disheartening reverses to the triumphant issue 
 of the work which he had to perform. He did 
 everything, in short, in the time-honoured old 
 Miltonian phrase, "as in the great Taskmaster s 
 eye/ 
 
 It is not to be wondered at that a man who had 
 so deep a realisation of the spiritual side of life 
 should have had his own strange experiences of the 
 psychic forces ever present around us. 
 
 Of this the present narrative has already given 
 several instances. Lincoln even went so far as to 
 dabble in Spiritualism. His mind was an open one, 
 and he brought all experiences of this nature to the 
 test of his own shrewd common sense. On one occa 
 sion he invited a celebrated medium to display his 
 powers at the White House, when several members 
 of the Cabinet were present, and on other occasions 
 it is recorded of him that he consulted a clairvoyante 
 in times of political stress and difficulty. 
 
 Allusion has already been made to the premoni 
 tion which constantly haunted him, that he was 
 destined not to outlive the Civil War. He alluded 
 to this conviction on many occasions, though the 
 thought of his impending doom seemed to have left 
 
THE END 177 
 
 him in the last weeks of his life, when victory was 
 clearly imminent. The strange dream which he had 
 on the night before his assassination has already been 
 noted, but it is curious that an Englishwoman, not 
 an American, dreamed of the tragedy itself within 
 a few hours of the time of its occurrence. 
 
 On the morning following President Lincoln s 
 death, the wife of John Morrison Davidson, the 
 well-known leader-writer for the Liberal press, had 
 a trance, and on recovering from it told her husband 
 that she had seen a man shoot at Lincoln in some 
 theatre or opera-house, and rush out shouting words 
 which she was unable to distinguish. In the course 
 of the afternoon the news of the death reached 
 London. A somewhat similar incident is recorded 
 in connection with the assassination of Mr Percival 
 in the House of Commons, but in this case the 
 warning dream preceded the event by some days. 
 It may be mentioned that Mrs Davidson was sub 
 ject to trances. 
 
 Of the position that Lincoln s name will eventually 
 occupy on the scroll of fame, historians are some 
 what undecided. Of the nobility of his character 
 and of his transparent sincerity and integrity there 
 can be no possible doubt, and his tact and political 
 sagacity were unique ; but as regards his genius 
 and ability as a statesman there is still room for two 
 opinions. A man, it is argued, of a different mould 
 and of a more ruthless and sterner nature might 
 have brought the war to an end at an earlier date. 
 
 12 
 
178 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 It is scarcely to be doubted that Lincoln erred on 
 the side of tolerance towards both his incompetent 
 generals and his recalcitrant cabinet ministers. 
 His patience, indeed, was almost inexhaustible ; 
 and his kindness of heart proved more than once a 
 source of weakness to him in his political career. 
 Both generals and cabinet ministers took advantage 
 of this. General M Clellan was insubordinate to the 
 point of insolence, and there were those in his 
 Cabinet who openly intrigued against him and strove 
 to undermine his influence, confident in the leniency 
 of the President. It must be remembered, on the 
 other hand, that he found himself in the position 
 of First Magistrate of a divided nation, without 
 practical political experience, and as the repre 
 sentative of a party which had but recently come 
 into existence. The crisis in which he found the 
 country limited his choice of ministers, and those 
 who were obviously indicated as entitled to port 
 folios by the circumstances of the case, able and 
 brilliant as indeed many of them were, were hardly 
 men either qualified to work harmoniously together 
 or to deal wisely with so grave an emergency, apart 
 from the constant control and guidance of their 
 Chief. 
 
 All writers are agreed as to the remarkable effect 
 produced by Lincoln s personal appearance by 
 the originality of his manner, his angular features, 
 and his long limbs hanging loosely in his ill-fitting 
 clothes, and the strange ungainliness of his figure. 
 
THE END 179 
 
 He stood six feet four inches in his socks, and was 
 not a little proud of his gigantic stature. Men 
 called him ugly, but his ugliness was of an im 
 pressive kind. In commencing to speak, his 
 audience was struck by something that almost 
 jarred in the harshness of his voice ; but it inevi 
 tably arrested their attention, and the unpleasant 
 impression was soon lost, owing to the fascination 
 and homely force of his oratory. His humour was 
 of the broadest kind, and his stories, reminiscent 
 of the early backwoodsman s life, at times caused 
 offence among the more sober-minded members of 
 the community. This humour found vent on the 
 most trifling as well as the most serious occasions. 
 Here is one such story that illustrates the sim 
 plicity of his habits. On one occasion a visitor 
 called to see him at the White House, and was told 
 that the President was downstairs. He walked 
 down to the basement, and found Lincoln cleaning 
 his boots. " You do not mean to say that you 
 clean your own boots, Mr President ! " exclaimed 
 his visitor in horror. " Whose boots did you 
 suppose I was cleaning ? " the President inquired 
 innocently. 
 
 The story of his reply to the temperance deputa 
 tion who complained of General Grant because he 
 drank so much whisky is well known. Could his 
 informers not let him know the name of the 
 special brand that Grant drank, as in that case he 
 would send a consignment to each of his other 
 
180 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 generals ? It is curious to note that Lincoln, himself 
 a teetotaller and a non-smoker, was frequently 
 pestered by temperance cranks and temperance 
 deputations ; one of these deputations attributed 
 the reverses of the North to the fact that the 
 soldiers drank so much whisky. This, retorted 
 Lincoln, was, he felt, most unfair, as he had it on 
 the best authority that the Southern troops drank 
 more whisky and of a worse quality than their 
 Northern antagonists. 
 
 The Abolitionists were constantly pressing 
 Lincoln to issue his proclamation of Emancipation 
 before, as it seemed to him, the psychological 
 moment for such a step had arrived. Among 
 those who were most untiring in their importunity 
 in this direction were three Radical members of 
 the party, of the names of Sumner, Stevens, and 
 Wilson. Lincoln complained to his friend Senator 
 Henderson that wherever he went, and wherever he 
 turned, they were on his trail. Looking out of the 
 window at this moment he espied them in the 
 distance, and proceeded to tell a characteristic 
 story in illustration of the situation. " The only 
 schooling I ever had, Henderson," he remarked, 
 " was in a log school -house, where reading-books 
 and grammars were unknown. All our reading 
 was done from the Scriptures, and we stood up 
 in a long line and read in turn from the Bible. On 
 one occasion the chapter was that dealing with the 
 casting of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego into 
 
THE END 181 
 
 the fiery furnace. A little boy was set on to read 
 for whom the Biblical names proved altogether 
 too tough a morsel. He stumbled on Shadrach, 
 floundered on Meshach, and went all to pieces on 
 Abednego. Instantly the hand of the master 
 dealt him a cuff on the side of the head, and left 
 him blubbering as the next boy took up the reading. 
 He finally subsided, and his blunder was forgotten 
 by the others of the class until his turn came round 
 again. Then, like a thunderclap out of a clear 
 sky, he set up a wail which quite alarmed the 
 master, who inquired with unwonted gentleness, 
 What s the matter now ? Pointing with a 
 shaking finger at a verse which a few moments 
 later would fall to him to read, the little boy 
 managed to quaver the answer : * Look there, 
 master, there comes them same damn three fellers 
 again. * Then Lincoln s face lighted up with a 
 smile such as only he could give, and he beckoned 
 Senator Henderson to his side, silently pointing 
 his long bony finger to three men who were just 
 then crossing Pennsylvania Avenue towards the 
 White House. They were Sumner, Wilson, and 
 Thaddeus Stevens. 1 
 
 The above story is peculiarly characteristic of 
 Lincoln s special type of humour. He delighted 
 in finding parallels of a grotesque kind, and was 
 never so happy as when introducing an apposite 
 illustration for the purpose of the occasion from his 
 
 1 Lincoln * Own Stories. Harper & Bros. 
 
182 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 almost inexhaustible fund of anecdotes. Nothing 
 is more subtle or more difficult to analyse than 
 humour. Lincoln s wit found its vent in a form 
 of comic comparison and caricature which was part 
 and parcel of his unique and singularly original 
 mentality. 
 
 In some sense Lincoln may be described as having 
 been, in the Latin phrase, Felix opportunitate mortis. 
 From the point of view of the South, however, this 
 was far from being the case. John Wilkes Booth s 
 mad act proved indeed to be, as Disraeli would 
 have said, " worse than a crime, a blunder." For 
 his successor lacked those qualities with which 
 Lincoln was so conspicuously endowed, and which 
 were so calculated to heal the wounds caused by 
 the war. Andrew Johnson was the last man 
 fitted by temperament to deal diplomatically and 
 prudently with the problem with which he found 
 himself confronted on Lincoln s death, and none had 
 more reason than the champions of the South to 
 regret the tragedy which caused the end of the war 
 to coincide with the death of the great protagonist 
 of the Union and of the cause of Freedom. 
 
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