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+Produced by The James J. Kelly Library Of St. Gregory's
+University, Alev Akman, Dianne Bean, and Alison Henry
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE UNION,
+
+A CHRONICLE OF THE EMBATTLED NORTH
+
+Volume 29 In The Chronicles Of America Series
+
+By Nathaniel W. Stephenson
+
+Allen Johnson, Editor
+
+
+New Haven: Yale University Press Toronto: Glasgow
+
+Brook & Co. London: Humphrey Milford
+
+Oxford University Press
+
+1918
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+In spite of a lapse of sixty years, the historian who attempts to
+portray the era of Lincoln is still faced with almost impossible demands
+and still confronted with arbitrary points of view. It is out of the
+question, in a book so brief as this must necessarily be, to meet all
+these demands or to alter these points of view. Interests that are
+purely local, events that did not with certainty contribute to the final
+outcome, gossip, as well as the mere caprice of the scholar--these must
+obviously be set aside.
+
+The task imposed upon the volume resolves itself, at bottom, into just
+two questions: Why was there a war? Why was the Lincoln Government
+successful? With these two questions always in mind I have endeavored,
+on the one hand, to select and consolidate the pertinent facts; on the
+other, to make clear, even at the cost of explanatory comment, their
+relations in the historical sequence of cause and effect. This purpose
+has particularly governed the use of biographical matter, in which the
+main illustration, of course, is the career of Lincoln. Prominent as it
+is here made, the Lincoln matter all bears in the last analysis on one
+point--his control of his support. On that the history of the North
+hinges. The personal and private Lincoln it is impossible to present
+within these pages. The public Lincoln, including the character of his
+mind, is here the essential matter.
+
+The bibliography at the close of the volume indicates the more important
+books which are at the reader's disposal and which it is unfortunate not
+to know.
+
+NATHANIEL W. STEPHENSON. Charleston, S. C., March, 1918.
+
+
+
+ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE UNION
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+I. THE TWO NATIONS OF THE REPUBLIC
+
+II. THE PARTY OF POLITICAL EVASION
+
+III. THE POLITICIANS AND THE NEW DAY
+
+IV. THE CRISIS
+
+V. SECESSION
+
+VI. WAR
+
+VII. LINCOLN
+
+VIII. THE RULE OF LINCOLN
+
+IX. THE CRUCIAL MATTER
+
+X. THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY
+
+XI. NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR
+
+XII. THE MEXICAN EPISODE
+
+XIII. THE PLEBISCITE OF 1864
+
+XIV. LINCOLN'S FINAL INTENTIONS
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE TWO NATIONS OF THE REPUBLIC
+
+
+"There is really no Union now between the North and the South.... No two
+nations upon earth entertain feelings of more bitter rancor toward each
+other than these two nations of the Republic."
+
+This remark, which is attributed to Senator Benjamin Wade of Ohio,
+provides the key to American politics in the decade following the
+Compromise of 1850. To trace this division of the people to its ultimate
+source, one would have to go far back into colonial times. There was a
+process of natural selection at work, in the intellectual and economic
+conditions of the eighteenth century, which inevitably drew together
+certain types and generated certain forces. This process manifested
+itself in one form in His Majesty's plantations of the North, and in
+another in those of the South. As early as the opening of the nineteenth
+century, the social tendencies of the two regions were already so far
+alienated that they involved differences which would scarcely admit of
+reconciliation. It is a truism to say that these differences gradually
+were concentrated around fundamentally different conceptions of
+labor--of slave labor in the South, of free labor in the North.
+
+Nothing, however, could be more fallacious than the notion that this
+growing antagonism was controlled by any deliberate purpose in either
+part of the country. It was apparently necessary that this Republic in
+its evolution should proceed from confederation to nationality through
+an intermediate and apparently reactionary period of sectionalism. In
+this stage of American history, slavery was without doubt one of the
+prime factors involved, but sectional consciousness, with all its
+emotional and psychological implications, was the fundamental impulse of
+the stern events which occurred between 1850 and 1865.
+
+By the middle of the nineteenth century the more influential Southerners
+had come generally to regard their section of the country as a distinct
+social unit. The next step was inevitable. The South began to regard
+itself as a separate political unit. It is the distinction of Calhoun
+that he showed himself toward the end sufficiently flexible to become
+the exponent of this new political impulse. With all his earlier fire
+he encouraged the Southerners to withdraw from the so-called national
+parties, Whig and Democratic, to establish instead a single Southern
+party, and to formulate, by means of popular conventions, a single
+concerted policy for the entire South.
+
+At that time such a policy was still regarded, from the Southern point
+of view, as a radical idea. In 1851, a battle was fought at the polls
+between the two Southern ideas--the old one which upheld separate state
+independence, and the new one which virtually acknowledged Southern
+nationality. The issue at stake was the acceptance or the rejection of
+a compromise which could bring no permanent settlement of fundamental
+differences.
+
+Nowhere was the battle more interesting than in South Carolina, for it
+brought into clear light that powerful Southern leader who ten years
+later was to be the masterspirit of secession--Robert Barnwell Rhett. In
+1851 he fought hard to revive the older idea of state independence
+and to carry South Carolina as a separate state out of the Union.
+Accordingly it is significant of the progress that the consolidation
+of the South had made at this date that on this issue Rhett encountered
+general opposition. This difference of opinion as to policy was not
+inspired, as some historians have too hastily concluded, by national
+feeling. Scarcely any of the leaders of the opposition considered the
+Federal Government supreme over the State Government. They opposed Rhett
+because they felt secession to be at that moment bad policy. They saw
+that, if South Carolina went out of the Union in 1851, she would go
+alone and the solidarity of the South would be broken. They were not
+lacking in sectional patriotism, but their conception of the best
+solution of the complex problem differed from that advocated by Rhett.
+Their position was summed up by Langdon Cheves when he said, "To secede
+now is to secede from the South as well as from the Union." On the basis
+of this belief they defeated Rhett and put off secession for ten years.
+
+There is no analogous single event in the history of the North,
+previous to the war, which reveals with similar clearness a sectional
+consciousness. On the surface the life of the people seemed, indeed, to
+belie the existence of any such feeling. The Northern capitalist class
+aimed steadily at being non-sectional, and it made free use of the word
+national. We must not forget, however, that all sorts of people talked
+of national institutions, and that the term, until we look closely
+into the mind of, the person using it, signifies nothing. Because the
+Northern capitalist repudiated the idea of sectionalism, it does not
+follow that he set up any other in its place. Instead of accomplishing
+anything so positive, he remained for the most part a negative quantity.
+
+Living usually somewhere between Maine and Ohio, he made it his chief
+purpose to regulate the outflow of manufactures from that industrial
+region and the inflow of agricultural produce. The movement of the
+latter eastward and northward, and the former westward and southward,
+represents roughly but graphically the movement of the business of that
+time. The Easterner lived in fear of losing the money which was owed him
+in the South. As the political and economic conditions of the day made
+unlikely any serious clash of interest between the East and the West, he
+had little solicitude about his accounts beyond the Alleghanies. But a
+gradually developing hostility between North and South was accompanied
+by a parallel anxiety on the part of Northern capital for its Southern
+investments and debts. When the war eventually became inevitable,
+$200,000,000 were owed by Southerners to Northerners. For those days
+this was an indebtedness of no inconsiderable magnitude. The Northern
+capitalists, preoccupied with their desire to secure this account, were
+naturally eager to repudiate sectionalism, and talked about national
+interests with a zeal that has sometimes been misinterpreted. Throughout
+the entire period from 1850 to 1865, capital in American politics played
+for the most part a negative role, and not until after the war did it
+become independent of its Southern interests.
+
+For the real North of that day we must turn to those Northerners who
+felt sufficient unto themselves and whose political convictions were
+unbiased by personal interests which were involved in other parts of the
+country. We must listen to the distinct voices that gave utterance to
+their views, and we must observe the definite schemes of their political
+leaders. Directly we do this, the fact stares us in the face that the
+North had become a democracy. The rich man no longer played the role
+of grandee, for by this time there had arisen those two groups which,
+between them, are the ruin of aristocracy--the class of prosperous
+laborers and the group of well-to-do intellectuals. Of these, the latter
+gave utterance, first, to their faith in democracy, and then, with all
+the intensity of partisan zeal, to their sense of the North as the
+agent of democracy. The prosperous laborers applauded this expression
+of an opinion in which they thoroughly believed and at the same time gave
+their willing support to a land policy that was typically Northern.
+
+American economic history in the middle third of the century is
+essentially the record of a struggle to gain possession of public land.
+The opposing forces were the South, which strove to perpetuate by this
+means a social system that was fundamentally aristocratic, and the
+North, which sought by the same means to foster its ideal of democracy.
+Though the South, with the aid of its economic vassal, the Northern
+capitalist class, was for some time able to check the land-hunger of
+the Northern democrats, it was never able entirely to secure the control
+which it desired, but was always faced with the steady and continued
+opposition of the real North. On one occasion in Congress, the heart
+of the whole matter was clearly shown, for at the very moment when the
+Northerners of the democratic class were pressing one of their frequent
+schemes for free land, Southerners and their sympathetic Northern
+henchmen were furthering a scheme that aimed at the purchase of Cuba.
+From the impatient sneer of a Southerner that the Northerners sought to
+give "land to the landless" and the retort that the Southerners seemed
+equally anxious to supply "<DW65>s to the niggerless," it can be seen
+that American history is sometimes better summed up by angry politicians
+than by historians.
+
+We must be on our guard, however, against ascribing to either side
+too precise a consciousness of its own motives. The old days when the
+American Civil War was conceived as a clear-cut issue are as a watch in
+the night that has passed, and we now realize that historical movements
+are almost without exception the resultants of many motives. We have
+come to recognize that men have always misapprehended themselves,
+contradicted themselves, obeyed primal impulses, and then deluded
+themselves with sophistications upon the springs of action. In a word,
+unaware of what they are doing, men allow their aesthetic and dramatic
+senses to shape their conceptions of their own lives.
+
+That "great impersonal artist," of whom Matthew Arnold has so much to
+say, is at work in us all, subtly making us into illusions, first to
+ourselves and later to the historian. It is the business of history, as
+of analytic fiction, both to feel the power of these illusions and to
+work through them in imagination to the dim but potent motives on which
+they rest. We are prone to forget that we act from subconscious quite as
+often as from conscious influences, from motives that arise out of the
+dim parts of our being, from the midst of shadows that psychology has
+only recently begun to lift, where senses subtler than the obvious make
+use of fear, intuition, prejudice, habit, and illusion, and too often
+play with us as the wind with blown leaves.
+
+True as this is of man individually, it is even more fundamentally true
+of man collectively, of parties, of peoples. It is a strikingly accurate
+description of the relation of the two American nations that now found
+themselves opposed within the Republic. Neither fully understood the
+other. Each had a social ideal that was deeper laid than any theory of
+government or than any commercial or humanitarian interest. Both knew
+vaguely but with sure instinct that their interests and ideals
+were irreconcilable. Each felt in its heart the deadly passion of
+self-preservation. It was because, in both North and South, men were
+subtly conscious that a whole social system was the issue at stake, and
+because on each side they believed in their own ideals with their whole
+souls, that, when the time came for their trial by fire, they went to
+their deaths singing.
+
+In the South there still obtained the ancient ideal of territorial
+aristocracy. Those long traditions of the Western European peoples
+which had made of the great landholder a petty prince lay beneath the
+plantation life of the Southern States. The feudal spirit, revived in a
+softer world and under brighter skies, gave to those who participated in
+it the same graces and somewhat the same capacities which it gave to the
+knightly class in the days of Roland--courage, frankness, generosity,
+ability in affairs, a sense of responsibility, the consciousness
+of caste. The mode of life which the planters enjoyed and which the
+inferior whites regarded as a social paradise was a life of complete
+deliverance from toil, of disinterested participation in local
+government, of absolute personal freedom--a life in which the mechanical
+action of law was less important than the more human compulsion of
+social opinion, and in which private differences were settled under the
+code of honor.
+
+This Southern life was carried on in the most appropriate environment.
+On a landed estate, often larger than many of Europe's baronies, stood
+the great house of the planter, usually a graceful example of colonial
+architecture, surrounded by stately gardens. This mansion was the center
+of a boundless hospitality; guests were always coming and going; the
+hostess and her daughters were the very symbols of kindliness and ease.
+To think of such houses was to think of innumerable joyous days;
+of gentlemen galloping across country after the hounds; of coaches
+lumbering along avenues of noble oaks, bringing handsome women to visit
+the mansion; of great feastings; of nights of music and dancing; above
+all, of the great festival of Christmas, celebrated much as had been the
+custom in "Merrie England" centuries before.
+
+Below the surface of this bright world lay the enslaved black race. In
+the minds of many Southerners--it was always a secret burden from which
+they saw no means of freeing themselves. To emancipate the slaves, and
+thereby to create a population of free blacks, was generally considered,
+from the white point of view, an impossible solution of the problem.
+The Southerners usually believed that the African could be tamed only
+in small groups and when constantly surrounded by white influence, as in
+the case of house servants. Though a few great capitalists had taken
+up the idea that the deliberate exploitation of the blacks was the high
+prerogative of the whites, the general sentiment of the Southern people
+was more truly expressed by Toombs when he said: "The question is not
+whether we could be more prosperous and happy with these three and a
+half million slaves in Africa, and their places filled with an equal
+number of hardy, intelligent, and enterprising citizens of the superior
+race; but it is simply whether, while we have them among us, we would be
+most prosperous with them in freedom or in bondage."
+
+The Southern people, in the majority of instances, had no hatred of the
+blacks. In the main they led their free, spirited, and gracious life,
+convinced that the maintenance of slavery was but making the best of
+circumstances which were beyond their control. It was these Southern
+people who were to hear from afar the horrible indictment of all
+their motives by the Abolitionists and who were to react in a growing
+bitterness and distrust toward everything Northern.
+
+But of these Southern people the average Northerner knew nothing.
+He knew the South only on its least attractive side of professional
+politics. For there was a group of powerful magnates, rich planters or
+"slave barons," who easily made their way into Congress, and who played
+into the hands of the Northern capitalists, for a purpose similar to
+theirs. It was these men who forced the issue upon slavery; they warned
+the common people of the North to mind their own business; and for doing
+so they were warmly applauded by the Northern capitalist class. It was
+therefore in opposition to the whole American world of organized capital
+that the Northern masses demanded the use of "the Northern hammer"--as
+Sumner put it, in one of his most furious speeches--in their aim to
+destroy a section where, intuitively, they felt their democratic ideal
+could not be realized.
+
+And what was that ideal? Merely to answer democracy is to dodge the
+fundamental question. The North was too complex in its social structure
+and too multitudinous in its interests to confine itself to one type
+of life. It included all sorts and conditions of men--from the most
+gracious of scholars who lived in romantic ease among his German and
+Spanish books, and whose lovely house in Cambridge is forever associated
+with the noble presence of Washington, to the hardy frontiersman,
+breaking the new soil of his Western claim, whose wife at sunset shaded
+her tired eyes, under a hand rough with labor, as she stood on the
+threshold of her log cabin, watching for the return of her man across
+the weedy fields which he had not yet fully subdued. Far apart as were
+Longfellow and this toiler of the West, they yet felt themselves to be
+one in purpose.
+
+They were democrats, but not after the simple, elementary manner of the
+democrats at the opening of the century. In the North, there had come
+to life a peculiar phase of idealism that had touched democracy with
+mysticism and had added to it a vague but genuine romance. This new
+vision of the destiny of the country had the practical effect of making
+the Northerners identify themselves in their imaginations with all
+mankind and in creating in them an enthusiastic desire, not only to give
+to every American a home of his own, but also to throw open the gates of
+the nation and to share the wealth of America with the poor of all the
+world. In very truth, it was their dominating passion to give "land to
+the landless." Here was the clue to much of their attitude toward the
+South. Most of these Northern dreamers gave little or no thought to
+slavery itself; but they felt that the section which maintained such a
+system so committed to aristocracy that any real friendship with it was
+impossible.
+
+We are thus forced to conceive the American Republic in the years
+immediately following the Compromise of 1850 as, in effect, a dual
+nation, without a common loyalty between the two parts. Before long the
+most significant of the great Northerners of the time was to describe
+this impossible condition by the appropriate metaphor of a house
+divided against itself. It was not, however, until eight years after the
+division of the country had been acknowledged in 1850 that these
+words were uttered. In those eight years both sections awoke to the
+seriousness of the differences that they had admitted. Both perceived
+that, instead of solving their problem in 1850, they had merely drawn
+sharply the lines of future conflict. In every thoughtful mind there
+arose the same alternative questions: Is there no solution but fighting
+it out until one side destroys the other, or we end as two nations
+confessedly independent? Or is there some conceivable new outlet for
+this opposition of energy on the part of the sections, some new mode of
+permanent adjustment?
+
+It was at the moment when thinking men were asking these questions that
+one of the nimblest of politicians took the center of the stage. Stephen
+A. Douglas was far-sighted enough to understand the land-hunger of
+the time. One is tempted to add that his ear was to the ground. The
+statement will not, however, go unchallenged, for able apologists have
+their good word to say for Douglas. Though in the main, the traditional
+view of him as the prince of political jugglers still holds its own, let
+us admit that his bold, rough spirit, filled as it was with political
+daring, was not without its strange vein of idealism. And then let us
+repeat that his ear was to the ground. Much careful research has indeed
+been expended in seeking to determine who originated the policy which,
+about 1853, Douglas decided to make his own. There has also been much
+dispute about his motives. Most of us, however, see in his course of
+action an instance of playing the game of politics with an audacity that
+was magnificent.
+
+His conduct may well have been the result of a combination of motives
+which included a desire to retain the favor of the Northwest, a wish
+to pave the way to his candidacy for the Presidency, the intention to
+enlist the aid of the South as well as that of his own locality, and
+perhaps the hope that he was performing a service of real value to his
+country. That is, he saw that the favor of his own Northwest would be
+lavished upon any man who opened up to settlement the rich lands beyond
+Iowa and Missouri which were still held by the Indians, and for which
+the Westerners were clamoring. Furthermore, they wanted a railroad that
+would reach to the Pacific. There were, however, local entanglements and
+political cross-purposes which involved the interests of the free State
+of Illinois and those of the slave State of Missouri.
+
+Douglas's great stroke was a programme for harmonizing all these
+conflicting interests and for drawing together the West and the South.
+Slaveholders were to be given what at that moment they wanted most--an
+opportunity to expand into that territory to the north and west of
+Missouri which had been made free by the Compromise of 1820, while the
+free Northwest was to have its railroad to the coast and also its chance
+to expand into the Indian country. Douglas thus became the champion of a
+bill which would organize two new territories, Kansas and Nebraska, but
+which would leave the settlers in each to decide whether slavery or free
+labor should prevail within their boundaries. This territorial scheme
+was accepted by a Congress in which the Southerners and their Northern
+allies held control, and what is known as the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was
+signed by President Pierce on May 30,1854.*
+
+     *The origin of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill has been a much
+     discussed subject among historians in recent years.  The
+     older view that Douglas was simply playing into the hands of
+     the "slavepower" by sacrificing Kansas, is no longer
+     tenable.  This point has been elaborated by Allen Johnson in
+     his study of Douglas ("Stephen A. Douglas: a Study in
+     American Politics").  In his "Repeal of the Missouri
+     Compromise", P.O. Ray contends that the legislation of 1854
+     originated in a factional controversy in Missouri, and that
+     Douglas merely served the interests of the proslavery group
+     led by Senator David R. Atchinson of Missouri.  Still
+     another point of view is that presented in the "Genesis of
+     the Kansas-Nebraska Act," by F. H. Hodder, who would explain
+     not only the division of the Nebraska Territory into Kansas
+     and Nebraska, but the object of the entire bill by the
+     insistent efforts of promoters of the Pacific railroad
+     scheme to secure a right of way through Nebraska.  This
+     project involved the organization of a territorial
+     government and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
+     Douglas was deeply interested in the western railroad
+     interests and carried through the necessary legislation.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. THE PARTY OF POLITICAL EVASION
+
+In order to understand Douglas one must understand the Democratic party
+of 1854 in which Douglas was a conspicuous leader. The Democrats boasted
+that they were the only really national party and contended that their
+rivals, the Whigs and the Know-Nothings, were merely the representatives
+of localities or classes. Sectionalism was the favorite charge which the
+Democrats brought against their enemies; and yet it was upon these very
+Democrats that the slaveholders had hitherto relied, and it was upon
+certain members of this party that the label, "Northern men with
+Southern principles," had been bestowed.
+
+The label was not, however, altogether fair, for the motives of the
+Democrats were deeply rooted in their own peculiar temperament. In the
+last analysis, what had held their organization together, and what had
+enabled them to dominate politics for nearly the span of a generation,
+was their faith in a principle that then appealed powerfully, and that
+still appeals, to much in the American character. This was the principle
+of negative action on the part of the government--the old idea that the
+government should do as little as possible and should confine itself
+practically to the duties of the policeman. This principle has seemed
+always to express to the average mind that traditional individualism
+which is an inheritance of the Anglo-Saxon race. In America, in the
+middle of the nineteenth century, it reenforced that tradition of local
+independence which was strong throughout the West and doubly strong in
+the South. Then, too, the Democratic party still spoke the language of
+the theoretical Democracy inherited from Jefferson. And Americans have
+always been the slaves of phrases!
+
+Furthermore, the close alliance of the Northern party machine with
+the South made it, generally, an object of care for all those Northern
+interests that depended on the Southern market. As to the Southerners,
+their relation with this party has two distinct chapters. The first
+embraced the twenty years preceding the Compromise of 1850, and may
+be thought of as merging into the second during three or four years
+following the great equivocation. In that period, while the antislavery
+crusade was taking form, the aim of Southern politicians was mainly
+negative. "Let us alone," was their chief demand. Though aggressive
+in their policy, they were too far-sighted to demand of the North any
+positive course in favor of slavery. The rise of a new type of Southern
+politician, however, created a different situation and began a second
+chapter in the relation between the South and the Democratic party
+machine in the North. But of that hereafter.
+
+Until 1854, it was the obvious part of wisdom for Southerners to
+cooperate as far as possible with that party whose cardinal idea was
+that the government should come as near as conceivable to a system
+of non-interference; that it should not interfere with business, and
+therefore oppose a tariff; that it should not interfere with local
+government, and therefore applaud states rights; that it should not
+interfere with slavery, and therefore frown upon militant abolition.
+Its policy was, to adopt a familiar phrase, one of masterly inactivity.
+Indeed it may well be called the party of political evasion. It was a
+huge, loose confederacy of differing political groups, embracing paupers
+and millionaires, moderate anti-slavery men and slave barons, all of
+whom were held together by the unreliable bond of an agreement not to
+tread on each other's toes.
+
+Of this party Douglas was the typical representative, both in strength
+and weakness. He had all its pliability, its good humor, its broad and
+easy way with things, its passion for playing politics. Nevertheless, in
+calling upon the believers in political evasion to consent for this
+once to reverse their principle and to endorse a positive action, he had
+taken a great risk. Would their sporting sense of politics as a gigantic
+game carry him through successfully? He knew that there was a hard fight
+before him, but with the courage of a great political strategist,
+and proudly confident in his hold upon the main body of his party, he
+prepared for both the attacks and the defections that were inevitable.
+
+Defections, indeed, began at once. Even before the bill had been passed,
+the "Appeal of the Independent Democrats" was printed in a New York
+paper, with the signatures of members of Congress representing both the
+extreme anti-slavery wing of the Democrats and the organized Free-Soil
+party. The most famous of these names were those of Chase and Sumner,
+both of whom had been sent to the Senate by a coalition of Free-Soilers
+and Democrats. With them was the veteran abolitionist, Giddings of
+Ohio. The "Appeal" denounced Douglas as an "unscrupulous politician"
+and sounded both the warcries of the Northern masses by accusing him of
+being engaged in "an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied
+region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own
+States."
+
+The events of the spring and summer of 1854 may all be grouped under
+two heads--the formation of an anti-Nebraska party, and the quick rush
+of sectional patriotism to seize the territory laid open by the
+Kansas-Nebraska Act. The instantaneous refusal of the Northerners to
+confine their settlement to Nebraska, and their prompt invasion of
+Kansas; the similar invasion from the South; the support of both
+movements by societies organized for that purpose; the war in Kansas
+all the details of this thrilling story have been told elsewhere.* The
+political story alone concerns us here.
+
+     *See Jesse Macy, "The Anti-Slavery Crusade". (In "The
+     Chronicles of America".)
+
+When the fight began there were four parties in the field: the
+Democrats, the Whigs, the Free-Soilers, and the Know-Nothings.
+
+The Free-Soil party, hitherto a small organization, had sought to make
+slavery the main issue in politics. Its watchword was "Free soil, free
+speech, free labor, and free men." It is needless to add that it was
+instantaneous in its opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
+
+The Whigs at the moment enjoyed the greatest prestige, owing to the
+association with them of such distinguished leaders as Webster and Clay.
+In 1854, however, as a party they were dying, and the very condition
+that had made success possible for the Democrats made it impossible for
+the Whigs, because the latter stood for positive ideas, and aimed to be
+national in reality and not in the evasive Democratic sense of the term.
+For, as a matter of fact, on analysis all the greater issues of the day
+proved to be sectional. The Whigs would not, like the Democrats, adopt a
+negative attitude toward these issues, nor would they consent to become
+merely sectional. Yet at the moment negation and sectionalism were the
+only alternatives, and between these millstones the Whig organization
+was destined to be ground to bits and to disappear after the next
+Presidential election.
+
+Even previous to 1854, numbers of Whigs had sought a desperate outlet
+for their desire to be positive in politics and had created a new party
+which during a few years was to seem a reality and then vanish together
+with its parent. The one chance for a party which had positive ideas
+and which wished not to be sectional was the definite abandonment of
+existing issues and the discovery of some new issue not connected with
+sectional feeling. Now, it happened that a variety of causes, social and
+religious, had brought about bad blood between native and foreigner, in
+some of the great cities, and upon the issue involved in this condition
+the failing spirit of the Whigs fastened. A secret society which had
+been formed to oppose the naturalization of foreigners quickly became a
+recognized political party. As the members of the Society answered all
+questions with "I do not know," they came to be called "Know-Nothings,"
+though they called themselves "Americans." In those states where
+the Whigs had been strongest--Massachusetts, New York, and
+Pennsylvania--this last attempt to apply their former temper, though not
+their principles, had for a moment some success; but it could not escape
+the fierce division which was forced on the country by Douglas. As a
+result, it rapidly split into factions, one of which merged with the
+enemies of Douglas, while the other was lost among his supporters.
+
+What would the great dying Whig party leave behind it? This was the
+really momentous question in 1854. Briefly, this party bequeathed
+the temper of political positivism and at the same time the dread of
+sectionalism. The inner clue to American politics during the next few
+years is, to many minds, to be found largely in the union of this old
+Whig temper with a new-born sectional patriotism, and, to other minds,
+in the gradual and reluctant passing of the Whig opposition to a
+sectional party. But though this transformation of the wrecks of
+Whiggism began immediately, and while the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was
+still being hotly debated in Congress, it was not until 1860 that it was
+completed.
+
+In the meantime various incidents had shown that the sectional
+patriotism of the North, the fury of the abolitionists, and the positive
+temper in politics, were all drawing closer together. Each of these
+tendencies can be briefly illustrated. For example, the rush to Kansas
+had begun, and the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society was preparing to
+assist settlers who were going west. In May, there occurred at Boston
+one of the most conspicuous attempts to rescue a fugitive slave, in
+which a mob led by Thomas Wentworth Higginson attacked the guards of
+Anthony Burns, a captured fugitive, killed one of them, but failed to
+get the slave, who was carried to a revenue cutter between lines of
+soldiers and returned to slavery. Among numerous details of the hour the
+burning of Douglas in effigy is perhaps worth passing notice. In duly
+the anti-Nebraska men of Michigan held a convention, at which they
+organized as a political party and nominated a state ticket. Of their
+nominees, two had hitherto ranked themselves as Free-Soilers, three as
+anti-slavery Democrats, and five as Whigs. For the name of their party
+they chose "Republican," and as the foundation of their platform the
+resolution "That, postponing and suspending all differences with
+regard to political economy or administrative policy," they would "act
+cordially and faithfully in unison," opposing the extension of slavery,
+and would "cooperate and be known as 'Republicans' until the contest be
+terminated."
+
+The history of the next two years is, in its main outlines, the story
+of the war in Kansas and of the spread of this new party throughout the
+North. It was only by degrees, however, that the Republicans absorbed
+the various groups of anti-Nebraska men. What happened at this time in
+Illinois may be taken as typical, and it is particularly noteworthy
+as revealing the first real appearance of Abraham Lincoln in American
+history.
+
+Though in 1854 he was not yet a national figure, Lincoln was locally
+accredited with keen political insight, and was, regarded in Illinois as
+a strong lawyer. The story is told of him that, while he was attending
+court on the circuit, he heard the news of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in
+a tavern and sat up most of the night talking about it. Next morning
+he used a phrase destined to become famous. "I tell you," said he to a
+fellow lawyer, "this nation cannot exist half slave and half free."
+
+Lincoln, however, was not one of the first to join the Republicans.
+In Illinois, in 1854, Lincoln resigned his seat in the legislature to
+become the Whig candidate for United States senator, to succeed the
+Democratic colleague of Douglas. But there was little chance of
+his election, for the real contest was between the two wings of the
+Democrats, the Nebraska men and the anti-Nebraska men, and Lincoln
+withdrew in favor of the candidate of the latter, who was elected.
+
+During the following year, from the midst of his busy law practice,
+Lincoln watched the Whig party go to pieces. He saw a great part of its
+vote lodge temporarily among the Know-Nothings, but before the end of
+the year even they began to lose their prominence. In the autumn, from
+the obscurity of his provincial life, he saw, far off, Seward, the most
+astute politician of the day, join the new movement. In New York, the
+Republican state convention and the Whig state convention merged into
+one, and Seward pronounced a baptismal oration upon the Republican party
+of New York.
+
+In the House of Representatives which met in December, 1855, the
+anti-Nebraska men were divided among themselves, and the Know-Nothings
+held the balance of power. No candidate for the speakership, however,
+was able to command a majority, and finally, after it had been agreed
+that a plurality would be sufficient, the contest closed, on the one
+hundred and thirty-third ballot, with the election of a Republican, N.
+P. Banks. Meanwhile in the South, the Whigs were rapidly leaving the
+party, pausing a moment with the Know-Nothings, only to find that their
+inevitable resting-place, under stress of sectional feeling, was with
+the Democrats.
+
+On Washington's birthday, 1856, the Know-Nothing national convention met
+at Philadelphia. It promptly split upon the subject of slavery, and
+a portion of its membership sent word offering support to another
+convention which was sitting at Pittsburgh, and which had been called to
+form a national organization for the Republican party. A third assembly
+held on this same day was composed of the newspaper editors of Illinois,
+and may be looked upon as the organization of the Republican party in
+that state. At the dinner following this informal convention, Lincoln,
+who was one of the speakers, was toasted as "the next United States
+Senator."
+
+Some four months afterward, in Philadelphia, the Republicans held their
+first national convention. Only a few years previous its members
+had called themselves by various names--Democrats, Free-Soilers,
+Know-Nothings, Whigs. The old hostilities of these different groups had
+not yet died out. Consequently, though Seward was far and away the most
+eminent member of the new party, he was not nominated for President.
+That dangerous honor was bestowed upon a dashing soldier and explorer of
+the Rocky Mountains and the Far West, John C. Fremont.*
+
+     *For an account of Fremont, see Stewart Edward White, "The
+     Forty-Niners" (in "The Chronicles of America"), Chapter II.
+
+The key to the political situation in the North, during that momentous
+year, was to be found in the great number of able Whigs who, seeing
+that their own party was lost but refusing to be sidetracked by the
+make-believe issue of the Know-Nothings, were now hesitating what to do.
+Though the ordinary politicians among the Republicans doubtless wished
+to conciliate these unattached Whigs, the astuteness of the leaders was
+too great to allow them to succumb to that temptation. They seem to have
+feared the possible effect of immediately incorporating in their ranks,
+while their new organization was still so plastic, the bulk of those
+conservative classes which were, after all, the backbone of this
+irreducible Whig minimum.
+
+The Republican campaign was conducted with a degree of passion that had
+scarcely been equaled in America before that day. To the well-ordered
+spirit of the conservative classes the tone which the Republicans
+assumed appeared shocking. Boldly sectional in their language, sweeping
+in their denunciation of slavery, the leaders of the campaign made
+bitter and effective use of a number of recent events. "Uncle Tom's
+Cabin", published in 1852, and already immensely popular, was used as a
+political tract to arouse, by its gruesome picture of slavery, a hatred
+of slaveholders. Returned settlers from Kansas went about the North
+telling horrible stories of guerrilla warfare, so  as to throw
+the odium all on one side. The scandal of the moment was the attack made
+by Preston Brooks on Sumner, after the latter's furious diatribe in the
+Senate, which was published as "The Crime Against Kansas". With double
+skill the Republicans made equal capital out of the intellectual
+violence of the speech and the physical violence of the retort. In
+addition to this, there was ready to their hands the evidence of
+Southern and Democratic sympathy with a filibustering attempt to conquer
+the republic of Nicaragua, where William Walker, an American adventurer,
+had recently made himself dictator. Walker had succeeded in having his
+minister acknowledged by the Democratic Administration, and in obtaining
+the endorsement of a great Democratic meeting which was held in New
+York. It looked, therefore, as if the party of political evasion had an
+anchor to windward, and that, in the event of their losing in Kansas,
+they intended to placate their Southern wing by the annexation of
+Nicaragua.
+
+Here, indeed, was a stronger political tempest than Douglas, weatherwise
+though he was, had foreseen. How was political evasion to brave it? With
+a courage quite equal to the boldness of the Republicans, the Democrats
+took another tack and steered for less troubled waters. Their convention
+at Cincinnati was temperate and discreet in all its expressions, and for
+President it nominated a Northerner, James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, a
+man who was wholly dissociated in the public mind from the struggle over
+Kansas.
+
+The Democratic party leaders knew that they already had two strong
+groups of supporters. Whatever they did, the South would have to go
+along with them, in its reaction against the furious sectionalism of the
+Republicans. Besides the Southern support, the Democrats counted upon
+the aid of the professional politicians--those men who considered
+politics rather as a fascinating game than as serious and difficult work
+based upon principle. Upon these the Democrats could confidently rely,
+for they already had, in Douglas in the North and Toombs in the South,
+two master politicians who knew this type and its impulses intimately,
+because they themselves belonged to it. But the Democrats needed the
+support of a third group. If they could only win over the Northern
+remnant of the Whigs that was still unattached, their position would be
+secure. In their efforts to obtain this additional and very necessary
+reinforcement, they decided to appear as temperate and restrained as
+possible--a well bred party which all mild and conservative men could
+trust.
+
+This attitude they formulated in connection with Kansas, which at that
+time had two governments: one, a territorial government, set up by
+emigrants from the South; the other, a state government, under the
+constitution drawn up at Topeka by emigrants from the North. One
+authorized slavery; the other prohibited slavery; and both had appealed
+to Washington for recognition. It was with this quite definite issue
+that Congress was chiefly concerned in the spring of 1856. During the
+summer Toombs introduced a bill securing to the settlers of Kansas
+complete freedom of action and providing for an election of delegates
+to a convention to draw up a state constitution which would determine
+whether slavery or freedom was to prevail--in other words, whether
+Kansas was to be annexed to the South or to the North. This bill was
+merely the full expression of what Douglas had aimed at in 1854 and of
+what was nicknamed "popular sovereignty"--the right of the locality to
+choose for itself between slave and free labor.
+
+Two years before, such a measure would have seemed radical. But in
+politics time is wonderfully elastic. Those two years had been packed
+with turmoil. Kansas had been the scene of a bloody conflict. Regardless
+of which side had a majority on the ground, extremists on each side had
+demanded recognition for the government set up by their own party. By
+contrast, Toombs's offer to let the majority rule appeared temperate.
+
+The Republicans saw instantly that they must discredit the proposal
+or the ground would be cut from under them. Though the bill passed the
+Senate, they were able to set it aside in the House in favor of a bill
+admitting Kansas as a free state with the Topeka constitution. The
+Democrats thereupon accused the Republicans of not wanting peace and of
+wishing to keep up the war-cry "Bleeding Kansas" until election time.
+
+That, throughout the country, the two parties continued on the lines
+of policy they had chosen may be seen from an illustration. A House
+committee which had gone to Kansas to investigate submitted two reports,
+one of which, submitted by a Democratic member, told the true story of
+the murders committed by John Brown at Pottawatomie. And yet, while
+the Republicans spread everywhere their shocking tales of murders of
+free-state settlers, the Democrats made practically no use of this
+equally shocking tale of the murder of slaveholders. Apparently they
+were resolved to appear temperate and conservative to the bitter end.
+
+And they had their reward. Or, perhaps the fury of the Republicans had
+its just deserts. From either point of view, the result was a choice of
+evils on the part of the reluctant Whigs, and that choice was expressed
+in the following words by as typical a New Englander as Rufus Choate:
+"The first duty of Whigs," wrote Choate to the Maine State central
+committee, "is to unite with some organization of our countrymen
+to defeat and dissolve the new geographical party calling itself
+Republican.... The question for each and every one of us is...by what
+vote can I do most to prevent the madness of the times from working its
+maddest act the very ecstasy of its madness--the permanent formation and
+the actual triumph of a party which knows one half of America only
+to hate and dread it. If the Republican party," Choate continued,
+"accomplishes its object and gives the government to the North, I turn
+my eyes from the consequences. To the fifteen states of the South that
+government will appear an alien government. It will appear worse. It
+will appear a hostile government. It will represent to their eye a
+vast region of states organized upon anti-slavery, flushed by triumph,
+cheered onward by the voice of the pulpit, tribune, and press;
+its mission, to inaugurate freedom and put down the oligarchy; its
+constitution, the glittering and sounding generalities of natural
+right which make up the Declaration of Independence.... Practically the
+contest, in my judgment, is between Mr. Buchanan and Colonel Fremont. In
+these circumstances, I vote for Mr. Buchanan."
+
+The party of political evasion thus became the refuge of the old
+original Whigs who were forced to take advantage of any port in a storm.
+Buchanan was elected by an overwhelming majority. To the careless
+eye, Douglas had been justified by results; his party had triumphed as
+perhaps never before; and yet, no great political success was ever
+based upon less stable foundations. To maintain this position, those
+Northerners who reasoned as Choate did were a necessity; but to keep
+them in the party of political evasion would depend upon the ability of
+this party to play the game of politics without acknowledging sectional
+bias. Whether this difficult task could be accomplished would depend
+upon the South. Toombs, on his part, was anxious to continue making the
+party of evasion play the great American game of politics, and in
+his eagerness he perhaps overestimated his hold upon the South. This,
+however, remains to be seen.
+
+Already another faction had formed around William L. Yancey of
+Alabama--a faction as intolerant of political evasion as the Republicans
+themselves, and one that was eager to match the sectional Northern party
+by a sectional Southern party. It had for the moment fallen into line
+with the Toombs faction because, like the Whigs, it had not the courage
+to do otherwise. The question now was whether it would continue fearful,
+and whether political evasion would continue to reign.
+
+The key to the history of the next four years is in the growth of this
+positive Southern party, which had the inevitable result of forcing the
+Whig remainder to choose, not as in 1856 between a positive sectional
+policy and an evasive nonsectional policy, but in 1860 between two
+policies both of which were at once positive and sectional.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE POLITICIANS AND THE NEW DAY
+
+The South had thus far been kept in line with the cause of political
+evasion by a small group of able politicians, chief among whom were
+Robert Toombs, Howell Cobb, and Alexander H. Stephens. Curiously enough
+all three were Georgians, and this might indeed be called the day of
+Georgia in the history of the South.
+
+A different type of man, however, and one significant of a divergent
+point of view, had long endeavored to shake the leadership of the
+Georgian group. Rhett in South Carolina, Jefferson Davis in Mississippi,
+and above all Yancey in Alabama, together with the interests and
+sentiment which they represented, were almost ready to contest the
+orthodoxy of the policy of "nothing doing." To consolidate the interests
+behind them, to arouse and fire the sentiment on which they relied, was
+now the confessed purpose of these determined men. So little attention
+has hitherto been given to motive in American politics that the modern
+student still lacks a clear-cut and intelligent perception of these
+various factions. In spite of this fact, however, these men may safely
+be regarded as being distinctly more intellectual, and as having
+distinctly deeper natures, than the men who came together under
+the leadership of Toombs and Cobb, and who had the true provincial
+enthusiasm for politics as the great American sport.
+
+The factions of both Toombs and Yancey were intensely Southern and,
+whenever a crisis might come, neither meant to hesitate an instant over
+striking hard for the South. Toombs, however, wanted to prevent such a
+situation, while Yancey was anxious to force one. The former conceived
+felicity as the joy of playing politics on the biggest stage, and he
+therefore bent all his strength to preserving the so-called national
+parties; the latter, scornful of all such union, was for a separate
+Southern community.
+
+Furthermore, no man could become enthusiastic about political evasion
+unless by nature he also took kindly to compromise. So, Toombs and his
+followers were for preserving the negative Democratic position of 1856.
+In a formal paper of great ability Stephens defended that position when
+he appeared for reelection to Congress in 1857. Cobb, who had entered
+Buchanan's Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury, and who spoke hopefully
+of making Kansas a slave state, insisted nevertheless that such a change
+must be "brought about by the recognized principles of carrying out the
+will of the majority which is the great doctrine of the Kansas Bill."
+To Yancey, as to the Republicans, Kansas was a disputed border-land for
+which the so-called two nations were fighting.
+
+The internal Southern conflict between these two factions began anew
+with the Congressional elections of 1857. It is worth observing that the
+make-up of these factions was almost a resurrection of the two groups
+which, in 1850, had divided the South on the question of rejecting the
+Compromise. In a letter to Stephens in reference to one of the Yancey
+men, Cobb prophesied: "McDonald will utterly fail to get up a new
+Southern Rights party. Burnt children dread the fire, and he cannot get
+up as strong an organization as he did in 1850. Still it is necessary
+to guard every point, as McDonald is a hard hand to deal with." For the
+moment, he foretold events correctly. The Southern elections of 1857 did
+not break the hold of the moderates.
+
+Yancey turned to different machinery, quite as useful for his purpose.
+This he found in the Southern commercial conventions, which were held
+annually. At this point there arises a vexed question which has, of
+late, aroused much discussion. Was there then what we should call
+today a slave "interest"? Was organized capital deliberately exploiting
+slavery? And did Yancey play into its hands?* The truth seems to be
+that, between 1856 and 1860, both the idealist parties, the Republicans
+and the Secessionists, made peace with, shall we say, the Mammon of
+unrighteousness, or merely organized capital? The one joined hands with
+the iron interest of the North; the other, with the slave interest of
+the South. The Republicans preached the domination of the North and a
+protective tariff; the Yancey men preached the independence of the South
+and the reopening of the slave trade.
+
+     * For those who would be persuaded that there was such a
+     slave interest, perhaps the best presentation is to be found
+     in Professor Dodd's Life of Jefferson Davis.
+
+These two issues Yancey, however, failed to unite, though the commercial
+convention of 1859 at last gave its support to a resolution that all
+laws, state or federal, prohibiting the African slave trade ought to be
+repealed. That great body of Northern capital which had dealings with
+the South was ready, as it always had been, to finance any scheme that
+Southern business desired. Slavers were fitted out in New York, and
+the city authorities did not prevent their sailing. Against this somber
+background stands forth that much admired action of Lewis Cass of
+Michigan, Buchanan's Secretary of State. Already the slave trade was
+in process of revival, and the British Navy, impelled by the powerful
+anti-slavery sentiment in England, was active in its suppression.
+American ships suspected of being slavers were visited and searched.
+Cass seized his opportunity, and declaring that such things "could not
+be submitted to by an independent nation without dishonor," sent out
+American warships to prevent this interference. Thereupon the British
+government consented to give up trying to police the ocean against
+slavers. It is indeed true, therefore, that neither North nor South has
+an historical monopoly of the support of slavery!
+
+It is but fair to add that, so far as the movement to reopen the slave
+trade found favor outside the slave barons and their New York allies,
+it was advocated as a means of political defense, of increasing Southern
+population as an offset to the movement of free emigration into the
+North, and of keeping the proportion of Southern representation in
+Congress. Stephens, just after Cass had successfully twisted the lion's
+tail, took this position in a speech that caused a sensation. In a
+private letter he added, "Unless we get immigration from abroad, we
+shall have few more slave states. This great truth seems to take the
+people by surprise. Some shrink from it as they would from death. Still,
+it is as true as death." The scheme, however, never received general
+acceptance; and in the constitution of the Southern Confederacy there
+was a section prohibiting the African slave trade. On the other of
+these two issues--the independence of the South--Yancey steadily
+gained ground. With each year from 1856 to 1860, a larger proportion of
+Southerners drew out of political evasion and gave adherence to the
+idea of presenting an ultimatum to the North, with secession as an
+alternative.
+
+Meanwhile, Buchanan sent to Kansas, as Governor, Robert J. Walker,
+one of the most astute of the Democrats of the opposite faction and a
+Mississippian. The tangled situation which Walker found, the details
+of his attempt to straighten it out, belong in another volume.* It is
+enough in this connection merely to mention the episode of the Lecompton
+convention in the election of which the Northern settlers refused to
+participate, though Walker had promised that they should have full
+protection and a fair count as well as that the work of the convention
+should be submitted to a popular vote. This action of Walker's was one
+more cause of contention between the warring factions in the South. The
+fact that he had met the Northerners half-way was seized upon by the
+Yancey men as evidence of the betrayal of the South by the Democratic
+moderates. On the other hand, Cobb, writing of the situation in Kansas,
+said that "a large majority are against slavery and... our friends regard
+the fate of Kansas as a free state pretty well fixed... the pro-slavery
+men, finding that Kansas was likely to become a Black Republican State,
+determined to unite with the free-state Democrats." Here is the clue to
+Walker's course. As a strict party man, he preferred to accept Kansas
+free, with Democrats in control, rather than risk losing it altogether.
+
+     * See Jesse Macy, "The Anti-Slavery Crusade".  (In "The
+     Chronicles of America".)
+
+The next step in the affair is one of the unsolved problems in American
+history. Buchanan suddenly changed front, disgraced Walker, and threw
+himself into the arms of the Southern extremists. Though his reasons
+for doing so have been debated to this day, they have not yet been
+established beyond dispute. What seems to be the favorite explanation
+is that Buchanan was in a panic. What brought him to that condition may
+have been the following events.
+
+The free-state men, by refusing to take part in electing the convention,
+had given control to the slaveholders, who proved they were not slow to
+seize their opportunity. They drew up a constitution favoring slavery,
+but this constitution, Walker had promised, was to be submitted in
+referendum. If the convention decided, however, not to submit the
+constitution, would not Congress have the right to accept it and admit
+Kansas as a Mate? This question was immediately raised. It now became
+plain that, by refusing to take part in the election, the free-state
+Kansans had thrown away a great tactical advantage. Of this blunder in
+generalship the Yancey men took instant advantage. It was known that
+the proportion of Free-Soilers in Kansas was very great--perhaps a
+majority--and the Southerners reasoned that they should not be obliged
+to give up the advantage they had won merely to let their enemies
+retrieve their mistake. Jefferson Davis formulated this position in
+an address to the Mississippi Legislature in which he insisted that
+Congress, not the Kansas electorate, was entitled to create the Kansas
+constitution, that the Convention was a properly chosen body, and that
+its work should stand. What Davis said in a stately way, others said in
+a furious way. Buchanan stated afterward that he changed front because
+certain Southern States had threatened that, if he did not abandon
+Walker, they would secede.
+
+Be that as it may, Buchanan did abandon Walker and threw all the
+influence of the Administration in favor of admitting Kansas with the
+Lecompton constitution. But would this be true to that principle of
+"popular sovereignty" which was the very essence of the Kansas-Nebraska
+Act? Would it be true to the principle that each locality should decide
+for itself between slavery and freedom? On this issue the Southerners
+were fairly generally agreed and maintained that there was no obligation
+to go behind the work of the convention. Not so, however, the great
+exponent of popular sovereignty, Douglas. Rising in his place in the
+Senate, he charged the President with conspiring to defeat the will of
+the majority in Kansas. "If Kansas wants a slave state constitution,"
+said he, "she has a right to it; if she wants a free state constitution,
+she has a right to it. It is none of my business which way the slavery
+clause is decided. I care not whether it is voted up or down."
+
+There followed one of those prolonged legislative battles for which the
+Congress of the United States is justly celebrated. Furious oratory,
+propositions, counter-propositions, projected compromises, other
+compromises, and at the end nothing positive. But Douglas had defeated
+the attempt to bring in Kansas with the Lecompton constitution. As to
+the details of the story, they include such distinguished happenings as
+a brawling, all-night session when "thirty men, at least, were engaged
+in the fisticuff," and one Representative knocked another down.
+
+Douglas was again at the center of the stage, but his term as Senator
+was nearing its end. He and the President had split their party. Pursued
+by the vengeful malice of the Administration, Douglas went home in
+1858 to Illinois to fight for his reelection. His issue, of course,
+was popular sovereignty. His temper was still the temper of political
+evasion. How to hold fast to his own doctrine, and at the same time
+keep to his programme of "nothing doing"; how to satisfy the negative
+Democrats of the North without losing his last hold on the positive
+men of the South--such were his problems, and they were made still more
+difficult by a recent decision of the Supreme Court.
+
+The now famous case of Dred Scott had been decided in the previous
+year. Its bewildering legal technicalities may here be passed over;
+fundamentally, the real question involved was the status of a <DW64>,
+Dred Scott. A slave who had been owned in Missouri, and who had been
+taken by his master to the State of Illinois, to the free territory
+of Minnesota, and then back to Missouri, now claimed to be free. The
+Supreme Court undertook to decide whether his residence in Minnesota
+rendered him free, and also whether any <DW64> of slave descent could
+be a citizen of the United States. The official opinion of the Court,
+delivered by Chief Justice Taney, decided both questions against
+the suppliant. It was held that the "citizens" recognized by the
+Constitution did not include <DW64>s. So, even if Scott were free, he
+could not be considered a citizen entitled to bring suit in the Federal
+Courts. Furthermore, he could not be considered free, in spite of his
+residence in Minnesota, because, as the Court now ruled, Congress, when
+it enacted the Missouri Compromise, had exceeded its authority;
+the enactment had never really been in force; there was no binding
+prohibition of slavery in the Northwestern territories.
+
+If this decision was good law, all the discussion about popular
+sovereignty went for nothing, and neither an act of Congress nor the
+vote of the population of a territory, whether for or against slavery,
+was of any value whatsoever. Nothing mattered until the newmade state
+itself took action after its admission to the Union. Until that time, no
+power, national or local, could lawfully interfere with the introduction
+of slaves. In the case of Kansas, it was no longer of the least
+importance what became of the Lecompton constitution or of any other
+that the settlers might make. The territory was open to settlement
+by slaveholders and would continue to be so as long as it remained
+a territory. The same conditions existed in Nebraska and in all the
+Northwest. The Dred Scott decision was accepted as orthodox Democratic
+doctrine by the South, by the Administration, and by the "Northern men
+with Southern principles." The astute masters of the game of politics
+on the Democratic side struck the note of legality. This was law, the
+expression of the highest tribunal of the Republic; what more was to be
+said? Though in truth there was but one other thing to be said, and that
+revolutionary, the Republicans, nevertheless, did not falter over it.
+Seward announced it in a speech in Congress on "Freedom in Kansas," when
+he uttered this menace: "We shall reorganize the Court and thus reform
+its political sentiments and practices."
+
+In the autumn of 1858 Douglas attempted to perform the acrobatic feat
+of reconciling the Dred Scott decision, which as a Democrat he had
+to accept, with that idea of popular sovereignty without which his
+immediate followers could not be content. In accepting the Republican
+nomination as Douglas's opponent for the senatorship, Lincoln used these
+words which have taken rank among his most famous utterances: "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 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 the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push it
+forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well
+as new--North as well as South."
+
+No one had ever so tellingly expressed the death-grapple of the sections:
+slavery the weapon of one, free labor the weapon of the other. Though
+Lincoln was at that time forty-nine years old, his political experience,
+in contrast with that of Douglas, was negligible. He afterward aptly
+described his early life in that expressive line from Gray, "The short
+and simple annals of the poor." He lacked regular schooling, and it
+was altogether from the practice of law that he had gained such formal
+education as he had. In law, however, he had become a master, and his
+position, to judge from the class of cases entrusted to him, was second
+to none in Illinois. To that severe yet wholesome cast of mind which
+the law establishes in men naturally lofty, Lincoln added the
+tonic influence of a sense of style--not the verbal acrobatics of a
+rhetorician, but that power to make words and thought a unit which
+makes the artist of a man who has great ideas. How Lincoln came by this
+literary faculty is, indeed, as puzzling as how Burns came by it. But
+there it was, disciplined by the court room, made pungent by familiarity
+with plain people, stimulated by constant reading of Shakespeare, and
+chastened by study of the Bible.
+
+It was arranged that Douglas and Lincoln should tour the State together
+in a series of joint debates. As a consequence there followed a most
+interesting opposition of methods in the use of words, a contest between
+the method formed in Congress at a time when Congress was a perfect
+rhetorical academy, and that method of using words which was based on
+an arduous study of Blackstone, Shakespeare, and Isaiah. Lincoln issued
+from the debates one of the chief intellectual leaders of America, and
+with a place in English literature; Douglas came out a Senator from
+Illinois.
+
+But though Douglas kept his following together, and though Lincoln was
+voted down, to Lincoln belonged the real strategic victory. In order
+to save himself with his own people, Douglas had been forced to make
+admissions that ruined him with the South. Because of these admissions
+the breach in the party of political evasion became irreparable. It was
+in the debate at Freeport that Douglas's fate overtook him, for Lincoln
+put this question: "Can 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 formation of a state
+constitution?"
+
+Douglas answered in his best style of political thunder. "It matters
+not," he said, "what way the Supreme Court may hereafter 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 legislatures; 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 favor its extension.
+Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be on
+that abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slave
+territory or a free territory is perfect and complete under the Nebraska
+Bill."
+
+As to the moral aspect of his actions, Douglas must ultimately be judged
+by the significance which this position in which he placed himself
+assumed in his own mind. Friendly critics excuse him: an interpretation
+of the Dred Scott decision which explained it away as an irresponsible
+utterance on a subject outside the scope of the case, a mere obiter
+dictum, is the justification which is called in to save him from
+the charge of insincerity. His friends, today, admit that this
+interpretation was bad law, but maintain that it may have been good
+morals, and that Douglas honestly held it. But many of us have not yet
+advanced so far in critical generosity, and cannot help feeling that
+Douglas's position remains political legerdemain--an attempt by a great
+officer of the government, professing to defend the Supreme Court, to
+show the people how to go through the motions of obedience to the Court
+while defeating its intention. If not double-dealing in a strict sense,
+it must yet be considered as having in it the temper of double-dealing.*
+This was, indeed, the view of many men of his own day and, among them,
+of Lincoln. Yet the type of man on whom the masters of the game of
+politics relied saw nothing in Douglas's position at which to be
+disturbed. It was merely playing politics, and if that absorbing sport
+required one to carry water on both shoulders, why--play the game!
+Douglas was the man for people like that. They cheered him to the echo
+and sent him back to the Senate. So well was this type understood by
+some of Lincoln's friends that they had begged him, at least according
+to tradition, not to put the question at Freeport, as by doing so he
+would enable Douglas to save himself with his constituency. Lincoln saw
+further, however. He understood better than they the forces then at work
+in America. The reply reported of him was: "If Douglas answers, he can
+never be President, and the battle of 1860 is worth a hundred of this."
+
+     * There are three ways of regarding Douglas's position: (1)
+     As a daring piece of evasion designed to hold all the
+     Democrats together; (2) as an attempt to secure his locality
+     at all costs, taking his chances on the South; (3) as a
+     sincere expression of the legal interpretation mentioned
+     above.  It is impossible in attempting to choose among these
+     to escape wholly one's impression of the man's character.
+
+Well might Yancey and his followers receive with a shout of joy the
+"Freeport Doctrine," as Douglas's supreme evasion was called. Should
+Southerners trust any longer the man who had evolved from the principle
+of let-'em-alone to the principle of double-dealing? However, the
+Southerners were far from controlling the situation. Though the events
+of 1858 had created discord in the Democratic party, they had not
+consolidated the South. Men like Toombs and Stephens were still hopeful
+of keeping the States together in the old bond of political evasion. The
+Democratic machine, damaged though it was, had not yet lost its hold on
+the moderate South, and while that continued to be the case, there was
+still power in it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. THE CRISIS
+
+The Southern moderates in 1859 form one of those political groups,
+numerous enough in history, who at a crisis arrest our imagination
+because of the irony of their situation. Unsuspecting, these men went
+their way, during the last summer of the old regime, busy with the
+ordinary affairs of state, absorbed in their opposition to the Southern
+radicals, never dreaming of the doom that was secretly moving toward
+them through the plans of John Brown. In the soft brilliancy of the
+Southern summer when the roses were in bloom, many grave gentlemen
+walked slowly up and down together under the oaks of their plantation
+avenues, in the grateful dusk, talking eagerly of how the scales
+trembled in Southern politics between Toombs and Yancey, and questioning
+whether the extremists could ride down the moderate South and reopen the
+slave trade. In all their wondering whether Douglas would ever come back
+to them or would prove the blind Samson pulling down their temple about
+their ears, there was never a word about the approaching shadow which
+was so much more real than the shades of the falling night, and yet so
+entirely shut away from their observation.
+
+In this summer, Stephens withdrew as he thought from public life.
+With an intensely sensitive nature, he had at times flashes of strange
+feeling which an unsophisticated society would regard as prophetic
+inspirations. When he left Washington "on the beautiful morning of the
+5th of March, 1859, he stood at the stern of the boat for some minutes
+gazing back at the capital." He had announced his intention of not
+standing again as a Representative, and one of his fellow-passengers
+asked jokingly whether he was thinking of his return as a Senator.
+Stephen's reply was full of emotion, "No, I never expect to see
+Washington again unless I am brought here as a prisoner of war." During
+the summer he endeavored to cast off his intuition of approaching
+disaster. At his plantation, "Liberty Hall," he endeavored to be content
+with the innumerable objects associated with his youth; he tried to feel
+again the grace of the days that were gone, the mysterious loveliness of
+the Southern landscape with its immense fields, its forests, its great
+empty spaces filled with glowing sunshine. He tried to possess his
+troubled soul with the severe intellectual ardor of the law. But his
+gift of second sight would not rest. He could not overcome his intuition
+that, for all the peace and dreaminess of the outward world, destiny
+was upon him. Looking out from his spiritual seclusion, he beheld what
+seemed to him complete political confusion, both local and national. His
+despairing mood found expression a little later in the words: "Indeed
+if we were now to have a Southern convention to determine upon the true
+policy of the South either in the Union or out of it, I should expect to
+see just as much profitless discussion, disagreement, crimination, and
+recrimination amongst the members of it from different states and from
+the same state, as we witness in the present House of Representatives
+between Democrats, Republicans, and Americans."
+
+Among the sources of confusion Stephens saw, close at home, was the
+Southern battle over the reopening of the slave trade. The reality
+of that issue had been made plain in May, 1859, when the Southern
+commercial congress at Vicksburg entertained at the same time two
+resolutions: one, that the convention should urge all Southern States
+to amend their constitutions by a clause prohibiting the increase
+of African slavery; the other, that the convention urge all the
+Legislatures of Southern States to present memorials to Congress asking
+the repeal of the law against African slave trade. Of these opposed
+resolutions, the latter was adopted on the last day of the convention*,
+though the moderates fought hard against it.
+
+     *It is significant that the composition of these Southern
+     commercial congresses and the Congress of the whole Southern
+     people was strikingly different in personnel.  Very few
+     members of the commercial congresses reappear in the
+     Confederate Congress.
+
+The split between Southern moderates and Southern radicals was further
+indicated by their differing attitudes toward the adventurers from
+the United States in Central America. The Vicksburg Convention
+adopted resolutions which were thinly veiled endorsements of southward
+expansion. In the early autumn another Nicaraguan expedition was nipped
+in the bud by the vigilance of American naval forces. Cobb, prime factor
+in the group of Southern moderates as well as Secretary of the Treasury,
+wrote to Buchanan expressing his satisfaction at the event, mentioning
+the work of his own department in bringing it about, and also alluding
+to his arrangements to prevent slave trading off the Florida coast.
+
+But the spirit of doubt was strong even among the moderates. Douglas was
+the target. Stephens gives a glimpse of it in a letter written during
+his last session in Congress. "Cobb called on me Saturday night," he
+writes. "He is exceedingly bitter against Douglas. I joked him a good
+deal, and told him he had better not fight, or he would certainly be
+whipped; that is, in driving Douglas out of the Democratic party.
+He said that if Douglas ever was restored to the confidence of the
+Democracy of Georgia, it would be over his dead body politically. This
+shows his excitement, that is all. I laughed at him, and told him he
+would run his feelings and his policy into the ground." The anger
+of Cobb, who was himself a confessed candidate for the Democratic
+nomination, was imperiling the Democratic national machine which Toombs
+was still struggling so resolutely to hold together. Indeed, as late as
+the autumn of 1859 the machine still held together.
+
+Then came the man of destiny, the bolt from the blue, the end of the
+chapter. A marvelous fanatic--a sort of reincarnation of the grimmest
+of the Covenanters--by one daring act shattered the machine and made
+impossible any further coalition on the principle of "nothing doing."
+This man of destiny was John Brown, whose attack on Harper's Ferry took
+place October 16th, and whose execution by the authorities of Virginia
+on the charges of murder and treason occurred on the 2nd of December.
+
+The incident filled the South with consternation. The prompt
+condemnation of it by many Republican leaders did not offset, in the
+minds of Southerners, the fury of praise accorded by others. The South
+had a ghastly tradition derived chiefly from what is known as Nat
+Turner's Rebellion in Virginia, a tradition of the massacre of white
+women and children by <DW64>s. As Brown had set opt to rouse a slave
+rebellion, every Southerner familiar with his own traditions shuddered,
+identifying in imagination John Brown and Nat Turner. Horror became rage
+when the Southerners heard of enthusiastic applause in Boston and of
+Emerson's description of Brown as "that new saint" who was to "make the
+gallows glorious like the cross." In the excitement produced by remarks
+such as this, justice was not done to Lincoln's censure. In his speech
+at Cooper Institute in New York, in February, 1860, Lincoln had said:
+"John Brown's effort...in its philosophy corresponds with the many
+attempts related in history at the assassination of kings and emperors.
+An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people, until he fancies
+himself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attempt
+which ends in little else than in his own execution." A few months
+afterwards, the Republican national convention condemned the act of
+Brown as "among the gravest of crimes."
+
+An immediate effect of the John Brown episode was a passionate outburst
+from all the radical press of the South in defense of slavery. The
+followers of Yancey made the most of their opportunity. The men who
+voted at Vicksburg to reopen the slave trade could find no words to
+measure their hatred of every one who, at this moment of crisis, would
+not declare slavery a blessing. Many of the men who opposed the slave
+traders also felt that, in the face of possible slave insurrection,
+the peril of their families was the one paramount consideration.
+Nevertheless, it is easy for the special pleader to give a
+wrong impression of the sentiment of the time. A grim desire for
+self-preservation took possession of the South, as well as a deadly fear
+of any person or any thing that tended directly or indirectly to incite
+the blacks to insurrection. Northerners of abolitionist sympathies were
+warned to leave the country, and in some cases they were tarred and
+feathered.
+
+Great anger was aroused by the detection of book-agents who were
+distributing a furious polemic against slavery, "The Impending Crisis
+of the South: How to Meet It", by Hinton Rowan Helper, a Southerner of
+inferior social position belonging to the class known as poor whites.
+The book teemed with such sentences as this, addressing slaveholders:
+"Do you aspire to become victims of white non-slave-holding vengeance by
+day and of barbarous massacres by the <DW64>s at night?" It is scarcely
+strange, therefore, that in 1859 no Southerner would hear a good word of
+anyone caught distributing the book. And yet, in the midst of all this
+vehement exaltation of slavery, the fight to prevent a reopening of
+the slave trade went bravely on. Stephens, writing to a friend who was
+correspondent for the "Southern Confederacy", in Atlanta, warned him in
+April, 1860, "neither to advocate disunion or the opening of the slave
+trade. The people here at present I believe are as much opposed to it
+as they are at the North; and I believe the Northern people could be
+induced to open it sooner than the Southern people."
+
+The winter of 1859-1860 witnessed a famous congressional battle over
+the speakership. The new Congress which met in December contained
+109 Republicans, 101 Democrats, and 27 Know-Nothings. The Republican
+candidate for speaker was John Sherman of Ohio. As the first ballot
+showed that he could not command a majority, a Democrat from Missouri
+introduced this resolution "Whereas certain members of this House, now
+in nomination for speaker, did endorse the book hereinafter mentioned,
+resolved, That the doctrines and sentiments of a certain book, called
+'The Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It', are insurrectionary
+and hostile to the peace and tranquillity of the country, and that no
+member of this House, who has indorsed or recommended it, is fit to be
+speaker of the House."
+
+During two months there were strange scenes in the House, while the
+clerk acted as temporary speaker and furious diatribes were thundered
+back and forth across the aisle that separated Republicans from
+Democrats, with a passage of fisticuffs or even a drawn pistol to add
+variety to the scene. The end of it all was a deal. Pennington, of the
+"People's Party" of New Jersey, who had supported Sherman but had not
+endorsed Helper, was given the Republican support; a Know-Nothing was
+made sergeant-at-arms; and Know-Nothing votes added to the Republican
+votes made Pennington speaker. In many Northern cities the news of his
+election was greeted with the great salute of a hundred guns, but at
+Richmond the papers came out in mourning type.
+
+Two great figures now advanced to the center of the Congressional
+stage--Jefferson Davis, Senator from Mississippi, a lean eagle of a man
+with piercing blue eyes, and Judah P. Benjamin, Senator from Louisiana,
+whose perpetual smile cloaked an intellect that was nimble, keen, and
+ruthless. Both men were destined to play leading roles in the lofty
+drama of revolution; each was to experience a tragic ending of his
+political hope, one in exile, the other in a solitary proscription amid
+the ruins of the society for which he had sacrificed his all. These men,
+though often spoken of as mere mouthpieces of Yancey, were in reality
+quite different from him both in temper and in point of view.
+
+Davis, who was destined eventually to become the target of Yancey's
+bitterest enmity, had refused ten years before to join in the secession
+movement which ignored Calhoun's doctrine that the South had become a
+social unit. Though a believer in slavery under the conditions of the
+moment, Davis had none of the passion of the slave baron for slavery at
+all costs. Furthermore, as events were destined to show in a startlingly
+dramatic way, he was careless of South Carolina's passion for state
+rights. He was a practical politician, but not at all the old type of
+the party of political evasion, the type of Toombs. No other man of the
+moment was on the whole so well able to combine the elements of Southern
+politics against those more negative elements of which Toombs was the
+symbol. The history of the Confederacy shows that the combination which
+Davis now effected was not as thorough as he supposed it was. But at the
+moment he appeared to succeed and seemed to give common purpose to the
+vast majority of the Southern people. With his ally Benjamin, he struck
+at the Toombs policy of a National Democratic party.
+
+On the day following the election of Pennington, Davis introduced in
+the Senate a series of resolutions which were to serve as the Southern
+ultimatum, and which demanded of Congress the protection of slavery
+against territorial legislatures. This was but carrying to its logical
+conclusion that Dred Scott decision which Douglas and his followers
+proposed to accept. If Congress could not restrict slavery in the
+territories, how could its creature, a territorial legislature do so?
+And yet the Douglas men attempted to take away the power from Congress
+and to retain it for the territorial legislatures. Senator Pugh of Ohio
+had already locked horns with Davis on this point, and had attempted to
+show that a territorial Legislature was independent of Congress. "Then
+I would ask the Senator further," retorted the logical Davis, "why it is
+he makes an appropriation to pay members of the territorial legislature;
+how it is that he invests the Governor with veto power over their acts;
+and how it is that he appoints judges to decide upon the validity of
+their acts."
+
+In the Democratic convention which met at Charleston in April, 1860, the
+waning power of political evasion made its last real stand against the
+rising power of political positivism. To accept Douglas and the idea
+that somehow territorial legislatures were free to do what Congress
+could not do, or to reject Douglas and endorse Davis's ultimatum--that
+in substance was the issue. "In this convention where there should be
+confidence and harmony," said the "Charleston Mercury", "it is plain
+that men feel as if they were going into a battle." In the committee on
+resolutions where the States were equally represented, the majority were
+anti-Douglas; they submitted a report affirming Davis's position that
+territorial legislatures had no right to prohibit slavery and that the
+Federal Government should protect slavery against them. The minority
+refused to go further than an approval of the Dred Scott case and a
+pledge to abide by all future decisions of the Supreme Court. After
+both reports had been submitted, there followed the central event of the
+convention--the now famous speech by Yancey which repudiated political
+evasion from top to bottom, frankly defended slavery, and demanded
+either complete guarantees for its continued existence or, as an
+alternative, Southern independence. Pugh instantly replied and summed up
+Yancey's speech as a demand upon Northern Democrats to say that slavery
+was right, and that it was their duty not only to let slavery alone but
+to aid in extending it. "Gentlemen of the South," he exclaimed, "you
+mistake us--you mistake us--we will not do it."
+
+In the full convention, where the representation of the States was not
+equal, the Douglas men, after hot debate, forced the adoption of the
+minority report. Thereupon the Alabama delegation protested and formally
+withdrew from the convention, and other delegations followed. There was
+wild excitement in Charleston, where that evening in the streets Yancey
+addressed crowds that cheered for a Southern republic. The remaining
+history of the Democratic nominations is a matter of detail. The
+Charleston convention adjourned without making nominations. Each of
+its fragments reorganized as a separate convention, and ultimately
+two Democratic tickets were put into the field, with Breckinridge of
+Kentucky as the candidate on the Yancey ticket and Douglas on the other.
+
+While the Democrats were thus making history through their fateful
+break-up into separate parties, a considerable number of the so-called
+best people of the country determined that they had nowhere politically
+to lay their heads. A few of the old Whigs were still unable to
+consort either with Republicans or with Democrats, old or new. The
+Know-Nothings, likewise, though their number had been steadily melting
+away, had not entirely disappeared. To unite these political remnants
+in any definite political whole seemed beyond human ingenuity. A common
+sentiment, however, they did have--a real love of the Union and a
+real unhappiness, because its existence appeared to be threatened.
+The outcome was that they organized the Constitutional Union Party,
+nominating for President John Bell of Tennessee, and for Vice President
+Edward Everett of Massachusetts. Their platform was little more than
+a profession of love of the Union and a condemnation of sectional
+selfishness.
+
+This Bell and Everett ticket has a deeper significance than has
+generally been admitted. It reveals the fact that the sentiment of
+Union, in distinction from the belief in the Union, had become a real
+force in American life. There could be no clearer testimony to the
+strength of this feeling than this spectacle of a great congregation of
+moderate people, unable to agree upon anything except this sentiment,
+stepping between the sectional parties like a resolute wayfarer going
+forward into darkness along a perilous strand between two raging seas.
+That this feeling of Union was the same thing as the eager determination
+of the Republicans, in 1860, to control the Government is one of those
+historical fallacies that have had their day. The Republican party
+became, in time and under stress of war, the refuge of this sentiment
+and proved sufficiently far-sighted to merge its identity temporarily in
+the composite Union party of 1864. But in 1860 it was still a sectional
+party. Among its leaders Lincoln was perhaps the only Unionist in the
+same sense as Bell and Everett.
+
+Perhaps the truest Unionists of the North, outside the Constitutional
+Union Party, in 1860, were those Democrats in the following of Douglas
+who, after fighting to the last ditch against both the sectional
+parties, were to accept, in 1861, the alternative of war rather than
+dissolution. The course of Douglas himself, as we shall see hereafter,
+showed that in his mind there was a fixed limit of concession beyond
+which he could not go. When circumstances forced him to that limit,
+the sentiment of Union took control of him, swept aside his political
+jugglery, abolished his time-serving, and drove him into cooperation
+with his bitterest foes that the Union might be saved. Nor was the pure
+sentiment of Union confined to the North and West. Though undoubtedly
+the sentiment of locality was more powerful through the South, yet when
+the test came in the election of 1860, the leading candidate of the
+upper South, in Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, was John Bell, the
+Constitutional Unionist. In every Southern State this sentiment was able
+to command a considerable part of the vote.*
+
+     *A possible exception was South Carolina.  As the
+     presidential electors were appointed by the legislature,
+     there is no certain record of minority sentiment.
+
+Widely different in temper were those stern and resolute men whose
+organization, in perfect fighting trim, faced eagerly the divided
+Democrats. The Republicans had no division among themselves upon
+doctrine. Such division as existed was due to the ordinary rivalry
+of political leaders. In the opinion of all his enemies and of most
+Americans, Seward was the Republican man of the hour. During much of
+1859 he had discreetly withdrawn from the country and had left to his
+partisans the conduct of his campaign, which seems to have been going
+well when he returned in the midst of the turmoil following the death
+of John Brown. Nevertheless he was disturbed over his prospects, for he
+found that in many minds, both North and South, he was looked upon
+as the ultimate cause of all the turmoil. His famous speech on the
+"irrepressible conflict" was everywhere quoted as an exultant prophecy
+of these terrible latter days.
+
+It was long the custom to deny to Seward any good motive in a speech
+which he now delivered, just as it was to deny Webster any good motive
+for his famous 7th of March speech. But such criticism is now less
+frequent than it used to be. Both men were seeking the Presidency;
+both, we may fairly believe, were shocked by the turmoil of political
+currents; each tried oiling the waters, and in the attempt each
+ruined his candidacy. Seward's speech in condemnation of John Brown
+in February, 1860, was an appeal to the conservative North against the
+radical North, and to many of his followers it seemed a change of front.
+It certainly gained him no new friends and it lost him some old ones, so
+that his star as a presidential candidate began its decline.
+
+The first ballot in the Republican convention surprised the country.
+Of the votes, 233 were necessary for a choice. Seward had only 173 1/2.
+Next to him, with 102 votes, stood none of the leading candidates, but
+the comparatively obscure Lincoln. A gap of more than 50 votes separated
+Lincoln from Cameron, Chase, and Bates. On the second ballot Seward
+gained 11 votes, while Lincoln gained 79. The enemies of Seward, finding
+it impossible to combine on any of the conspicuous candidates, were
+moving toward Lincoln, the man with fewest enemies. The third ballot
+gave Lincoln the nomination.
+
+We have seen that one of the basal questions of the time was which new
+political group should absorb the Whig remainder. The Constitutional
+Union party aimed to accomplish this. The Republicans sought to
+out-maneuver them. They made their platform as temperate as they could
+and yet consistent with the maintenance of their opposition to Douglas
+and popular sovereignty; and they went no further in their anti-slavery
+demands than that the territories should be preserved for free labor.
+
+Another basal question had been considered in the Republican platform.
+Where would Northern capital stand in the reorganization of parties?
+Was capital, like men, to become frankly sectional or would it remain
+impersonal, careless how nations rose or fell, so long as dividends
+continued? To some extent capital had given an answer. When, in the
+excitement following the John Brown incident, a Southern newspaper
+published a white list of New York merchants whose political views
+should commend them to Southerners, and a black list of those who
+were objectionable, many New Yorkers sought a place in the white list.
+Northern capital had done its part in financing the revived slave trade.
+August Belmont, the New York representative of the Rothschilds, was one
+of the close allies of Davis, Yancey, and Benjamin in their war upon
+Douglas. In a word, a great portion of Northern capital had its heart
+where its investments were--in the South. But there was other capital
+which obeyed the same law, and which had investments in the North;
+and with this capital the Republicans had been trafficking. They had
+succeeded in winning over the powerful manufacturing interests of
+Pennsylvania, the pivotal State that had elected Buchanan in 1856.
+
+The steps by which the new party of enthusiasm made its deal with the
+body of capital which was not at one with Belmont and the Democrats are
+not essential to the present narrative. Two facts suffice. In 1857 a
+great collapse in American business--"the panic of fifty-seven"--led
+the commercial world to turn to the party in power for some scheme of
+redress. But their very principles, among which was non-intervention in
+business, made the Democrats feeble doctors for such a need, and
+they evaded the situation. The Republicans, with their insistence on
+positivism in government, had therefore an opportunity to make a new
+application of the doctrine of governmental aid to business. In the
+spring of 1860, the Republican House of Representatives passed the
+Morrill tariff bill, consideration of which was postponed by the
+Democratic Senate. But it served its purpose: it was a Republican
+manifesto. The Republicans felt that this bill, together with their
+party platform, gave the necessary guarantee to the Pennsylvania
+manufacturers, and they therefore entered the campaign confident they
+would carry Pennsylvania nor was their confidence misplaced.
+
+The campaign was characterized by three things: by an ominous quiet
+coupled with great intensity of feeling; by the organization of huge
+party societies in military form--"Wide-awakes" for Lincoln, numbering
+400,000, and "Minute Men" for Breckenridge, with a membership chiefly
+Southern; and by the perfect frankness, in all parts of the South, of
+threats of secession in case the Republicans won.
+
+In none of the States which eventually seceded were any votes cast for
+Lincoln, with the exception of a small number in Virginia. In almost all
+the other Southern States and in the slave-holding border States, all
+the other candidates made respectable showings. In Virginia, Tennessee,
+and Kentucky, Bell led. But everywhere else in the other slave-holding
+States Breckinridge led, excepting in Missouri where Douglas won by a
+few hundred. Every free State except New Jersey went for Lincoln.
+And yet he did not have a majority of the popular vote, which stood:
+Lincoln, 1,866,459; Douglas, 1,376,957; Breckinridge, 849,781; Bell,
+588,879*. The majority against Lincoln was nearly a million. The
+distribution of the votes was such that Lincoln had in the Electoral
+College, 180 electors; Breckinridge, 72; Bell, 39; Douglas, 12. In
+neither House of Congress did the Republicans have a majority.
+
+     *The figures of the popular vote are variously given by
+     different compilers.  These are taken from Stanwood, "A
+     History of the Presidency".
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. SECESSION
+
+In tracing American history from 1854 to 1860 we cannot fail to observe
+that it reduces itself chiefly to a problem in that science which
+politicians understand so well--applied psychology. Definite types
+of men moulded by the conditions of those days are the determining
+factors--not the slavery question in itself; not, primarily, economic
+forces; not a theory of government, nor a clash of theories; not any one
+thing; but the fluid, changeful forces of human nature, battling with
+circumstances and expressing themselves in the fashion of men's minds.
+To say this is to acknowledge the fatefulness of sheer feeling. Davis
+described the situation exactly when he said, in 1860, "A sectional
+hostility has been substituted for a general fraternity." To his own
+question, "Where is the remedy?" he gave the answer, "In the hearts of
+the people." There, after all, is the conclusion of the whole matter.
+The strife between North and South had ceased to be a thing of the head;
+it had become a thing of the heart. Granted the emotions of 1860,
+the way in which our country staggered into war has all the terrible
+fascination of a tragedy on the theme of fate.
+
+That a secession movement would begin somewhere in the South before the
+end of 1860 was a foregone conclusion. South Carolina was the logical
+place, and in South Carolina the inevitable occurred. The presidential
+election was quickly followed by an election of delegates, on the 6th of
+December, to consider in convention the relations of the State with the
+Union. The arguments before the Convention were familiar and had been
+advocated since 1851. The leaders of the disunionists were the same
+who had led the unsuccessful movement of ten years before. The central
+figure was Rhett, who never for a moment had wavered. Consumed his life
+long by the one idea of the independence of South Carolina, that stern
+enthusiast pressed on to a triumphant conclusion. The powers which had
+defeated him in 1851 were now either silent or converted, so that
+there was practically no opposition. In a burst of passionate zeal the
+independence of South Carolina was proclaimed on December 20, 1860, by
+an ordinance of secession.
+
+Simultaneously, by one of those dramatic coincidences which make history
+stranger than fiction, Lincoln took a step which supplemented this
+action and established its tragic significance. What that step was will
+appear in a moment.
+
+Even before the secession began, various types of men in politics had
+begun to do each after his kind. Those whom destiny drove first into a
+corner were the lovers of political evasion. The issue was forced upon
+them by the instantaneous demand of the people of South Carolina for
+possession of forts in Charleston Harbor which were controlled by the
+Federal Government. Anticipating such a demand, Major Robert Anderson,
+the commandant at Charleston, had written to Buchanan on the 23d of
+November that "Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney must be garrisoned
+immediately, if the Government determines to keep command of this
+harbor."
+
+In the mind of every American of the party of political evasion, there
+now began a sad, internal conflict. Every one of them had to choose
+among three courses: to shut his eyes and to continue to wail that the
+function of government is to do nothing; to make an end of political
+evasion and to come out frankly in approval of the Southern position;
+or to break with his own record, to emerge from his evasions on the
+opposite side, and to confess himself first and before all a supporter
+of the Union. One or another of these three courses, sooner or later,
+every man of the President's following chose. We shall see presently the
+relative strength of the three groups into which that following broke
+and what strange courses sometimes tragic, sometimes comic--two of the
+three pursued. For the moment our concern is how the division manifested
+itself among the heads of the party at Washington.
+
+The President took the first of the three courses. He held it with the
+nervous clutch of a weak nature until overmastered by two grim men who
+gradually hypnotized his will. The turning-point for Buchanan, and the
+last poor crisis in his inglorious career, came on Sunday, December
+30th. Before that day arrived, his vacillation had moved his friends to
+pity and his enemies to scorn. One of his best friends wrote privately,
+"The President is pale with fear"; and the hostile point of view found
+expression in such comments as this, "Buchanan, it is said, divides
+his time between praying and crying. Such a perfect imbecile never held
+office before."
+
+With the question what to do about the forts hanging over his bewildered
+soul, Buchanan sent a message to Congress on December 4, 1860, in which
+he sought to defend the traditional evasive policy of his party. He
+denied the constitutional right of secession, but he was also denied his
+own right to oppose such a course. Seward was not unfair to the mental
+caliber of the message when he wrote to his wife that Buchanan showed
+"conclusively that it is the duty of the President to execute the
+laws--unless somebody opposes him; and that no State has a right to go
+out of the Union unless it wants to."
+
+This message of Buchanan's hastened the inevitable separation of the
+Democratic party into its elements. The ablest Southern member of the
+Cabinet, Cobb, resigned. He was too strong an intellect to continue
+the policy of "nothing doing" now that the crisis had come. He was too
+devoted a Southerner to come out of political evasion except on one
+side. On the day Cobb resigned the South Carolina Representatives called
+on Buchanan and asked him not to make any change in the disposition
+of troops at Charleston, and particularly not to strengthen Sumter,
+a fortress on an island in the midst of the harbor, without at least
+giving notice to the state authorities. What was said in this interview
+was not put in writing but was remembered afterward in different ways
+with unfortunate consequences.
+
+Every action of Buchanan in this fateful month continued the
+disintegration of his following. Just as Cobb had to choose between his
+reasonings as a Democratic party man and his feelings as a Southerner,
+so the aged Cass, his Secretary of State, and an old personal friend,
+now felt constrained to choose between his Democratic reasoning and
+his Northern sympathies, and resigned from the Cabinet on the 11th of
+December. Buchanan then turned instinctively to the strongest natures
+that remained among his close associates. It is a compliment to the
+innate force of Jeremiah S. Black, the Attorney-General, that Buchanan
+advanced him to the post of Secretary of State and allowed him to name
+as his successor in the Attorney-Generalship Edwin M. Stanton. Both were
+tried Democrats of the old style, "let-'em-alone" sort; and both had
+supported the President in his Kansas policy. But each, like every
+other member of his party, was being forced by circumstances to make his
+choice among the three inevitable courses, and each chose the Northern
+side. At once the question of the moment was whether the new Secretary
+of State and his powerful henchmen would hypnotize the President.
+
+For a couple of weeks the issue hung in the balance. Then there
+appeared at Washington commissioners from South Carolina "empowered to
+treat...for the delivery of forts...and other real estate" held by
+the Federal Government within their State. On the day following their
+arrival, Buchanan was informed by telegraph that Anderson had dismantled
+Fort Moultrie on the north side of the harbor, had spiked its guns,
+and had removed its garrison to the island fortress, Sumter, which
+was supposed to be far more defensible. At Charleston his action was
+interpreted as preparation for war; and all South Carolinians saw in
+it a violation of a pledge which they believed the President had given
+their congressmen, three weeks previous, in that talk which had not been
+written down. Greatly excited and fearful of designs against them, the
+South Carolina commissioners held two conferences with the President
+on the 27th and 28th of December. They believed that he had broken his
+word, and they told him so. Deeply agitated and refusing to admit
+that he had committed himself at the earlier conference, he said that
+Anderson had acted on his own responsibility, but he refused to order
+him back to the now ruined Fort Moultrie. One remark which he let fall
+has been remembered as evidence of his querulous state of mind: "You
+are pressing me too importunately" exclaimed the unhappy President;
+"you don't give me time to consider; you don't give me time to say my
+prayers; I always say my prayers when required to act upon any great
+state affair." One remembers Hampden "seeking the Lord" about ship
+money, and one realizes that the same act may have a vastly different
+significance in different temperaments.
+
+Buchanan, however, was virtually ready to give way to the demand of the
+commissioners. He drew up a paper to that effect and showed it to the
+Cabinet. Then the turning-point came. In a painful interview, Black,
+long one of his most trusted friends, told him of his intention to
+resign, and that Stanton would go with him and probably also the
+Postmaster-General, Holt. The idea of losing the support of these strong
+personalities terrified Buchanan, who immediately fell into a panic.
+Handing Black the paper he had drawn up, Buchanan begged him to retain
+office and to alter the paper as he saw fit. To this Black agreed. The
+demand for the surrender of the forts was refused; Anderson was not
+ordered back to Moultrie; and for the brief remainder of Buchanan's
+administration Black acted as prime minister.
+
+A very powerful section of the Northern democracy, well typified by
+their leaders at Washington, had thus emerged from political evasion
+on the Northern side. These men, known afterwards as War Democrats,
+combined with the Republicans to form the composite Union party which
+supported Lincoln. It is significant that Stanton eventually reappeared
+in the Cabinet as Lincoln's Secretary of War, and that along with him
+appeared another War Democrat, Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of the
+Navy. With them, at last, Douglas, the greatest of all the old Democrats
+of the North, took his position. What became of the other factions of
+the old Democratic party remains to be told.
+
+While Buchanan, early in the month, was weeping over the pitilessness
+of fate, more practical Northerners were grappling with the question
+of what was to be done about the situation. In their thoughts they
+anticipated a later statesman and realized that they were confronted by
+a condition and not by a theory. Secession was at last a reality. Which
+course should they take?
+
+What strikes us most forcibly, as we look back upon that day, is the
+widespread desire for peace. The abolitionists form a conspicuous
+example. Their watchword was "Let the erring sisters go in peace."
+Wendell Phillips, their most gifted orator, a master of spoken style at
+once simple and melodious, declaimed splendidly against war. Garrison,
+in "The Liberator", followed his example. Whittier put the same feeling
+into his verse:
+
+They break the links of Union; shall we light The flames of hell to weld
+anew the chain On that red anvil where each blow is pain?
+
+Horace Greeley said in an editorial in the "New York Tribune": "If the
+cotton states shall decide that they can do better out of the Union
+than in it, we shall insist on letting them go in peace. Whenever a
+considerable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out,
+we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep them in. We hope
+never to live in a republic where one section is pinned to the residue
+by bayonets."
+
+The Democrats naturally clung to their traditions, and, even when they
+went over, as Black and Stanton did, to the Anti-Southern group, they
+still hoped that war would not be the result. Equally earnest against
+war were most of the Republicans, though a few, to be sure, were ready
+to swing the "Northern hammer." Summer prophesied that slavery would
+"go down in blood." But the bulk of the Republicans were for a sectional
+compromise, and among them there was general approbation of a scheme
+which contemplated reviving the line of the Missouri Compromise, and
+thus frankly admitting the existence of two distinct sections, and
+guaranteeing to each the security of its own institutions. The greatest
+Republican boss of that day, Thurlow Weed, came out in defense of this
+plan.
+
+No power was arrayed more zealously on the side of peace of any kind
+than the power of money. It was estimated that two hundred millions of
+dollars were owed by Southerners to Northerners. War, it was reasoned,
+would cause the cancellation of these obligations. To save their
+Southern accounts, the moneyed interests of the North joined the
+extremists of Abolition in pleading to let the erring sisters go
+in peace, if necessary, rather than provoke them to war and the
+confiscation of debts. It was the dread of such an outcome--which
+finally happened and ruined many Northern firms--that caused the
+stock-market in New York to go up and down with feverish uncertainty.
+Banks suspended payment in Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.
+The one important and all-engrossing thing in the mind's eye of all
+the financial world at this moment was that specter of unpaid Southern
+accounts.
+
+At this juncture, Senator Crittenden of Kentucky submitted to the Senate
+a plan which has been known ever since as the Crittenden Compromise. It
+was similar to Weed's plan, but it also provided that the division of
+the country on the Missouri Compromise line should be established by
+a constitutional amendment, which would thus forever solidify
+sectionalism. Those elements of the population generally called the
+conservative and the responsible were delighted. Edward Everett wrote to
+Crittenden, "I saw with great satisfaction your patriotic movement, and
+I wish from the bottom of my heart it might succeed"; and August Belmont
+in a letter to Crittenden spoke for the moneyed interest: "I have yet
+to meet the first Union-loving man, in or out of politics, who does not
+approve your compromise proposition...."
+
+The Senate submitted the Compromise to a Committee of Thirteen. In this
+committee the Southern leaders, Toombs and Davis, were both willing to
+accept the Compromise, if a majority of the Republican members would
+agree. Indeed, if the Republicans would agree to it, there seemed
+no reason why a new understanding between the sections might not be
+reached, and no reason why sectionalism, if accepted as the basis of the
+government, might not solve the immediate problem and thus avert war.
+
+In this crisis all eyes were turned to Seward, that conspicuous
+Republican who was generally looked upon as the real head of his
+party. And Seward, at that very moment, was debating whether to accept
+Lincoln's offer of the Secretaryship of State, for he considered it
+vital to have an understanding with Lincoln on the subject of the
+Compromise. He talked the matter over with Weed, and they decided that
+Weed should go to Springfield and come to terms with Lincoln. It was the
+interview between Weed and Lincoln held, it seems, on the very day on
+which the Ordinance of Secession was adopted--which gave to that day its
+double significance.
+
+Lincoln refused point-blank to accept the compromise and he put his
+refusal in writing. The historic meaning of his refusal, and the
+significance of his determination not to solve the problem of the hour
+by accepting a dual system of government based on frankly sectional
+assumptions, were probably, in a measure, lost on both Weed and Seward.
+They had, however, no misunderstanding of its practical effect. This
+crude Western lawyer had certain ideas from which he would not budge,
+and the party would have to go along with him. Weed and Seward therefore
+promptly fell into line, and Seward accepted the Secretaryship and came
+out in opposition to the Compromise. Other Republicans with whom Lincoln
+had communicated by letter made known his views, and Greeley announced
+them in The Tribune. The outcome was the solid alignment of all the
+Republicans in Congress against the Compromise. As a result, this last
+attempt to reunite the sections came to nothing.
+
+Not more than once or twice, if ever, in American history, has there
+been such an anxious New Year's Day as that which ushered in 1861. A
+few days before, a Republican Congressman had written to one of his
+constituents: "The heavens are indeed black and an awful storm is
+gathering...I see no way that either North or South can escape its
+fury." Events were indeed moving fast toward disaster. The garrison at
+Sumter was in need of supplies, and in the first week of the new year
+Buchanan attempted to relieve its wants. But a merchant vessel, the Star
+of the West, by which supplies were sent, was fired upon by the South
+Carolina authorities as it approached the harbor and was compelled to
+turn back. This incident caused the withdrawal from the Cabinet of the
+last opposition members--Thompson, of Mississippi, the Secretary of the
+Interior, and Thomas, of Maryland, the Secretary of the Treasury. In the
+course of the month five Southern States followed South Carolina out
+of the Union, and their Senators and Representatives resigned from the
+Congress of the United States.
+
+The resignation of Jefferson Davis was communicated to the Senate in a
+speech of farewell which even now holds the imagination of the student,
+and which to the men of that day, with the Union crumbling around
+them, seemed one of the most mournful and dramatic of orations. Davis
+possessed a beautiful, melodious voice; he had a noble presence, tall,
+erect, spare, even ascetic, with a flashing blue eye. He was deeply
+moved by the occasion; his address was a requiem. That he withdrew in
+sorrow but with fixed determination, no one who listened to him could
+doubt. Early in February, the Southern Confederacy was formed with Davis
+as its provisional President. With the prophetic vision of a logical
+mind, he saw that war was inevitable, and he boldly proclaimed his
+vision. In various speeches on his way South, he had assured the
+Southern people that war was coming, and that it would be long and
+bloody.
+
+The withdrawal of these Southern members threw the control of the House
+into the hands of the Republicans. Their realization of their power
+was expressed in two measures which also passed the Senate; Kansas was
+admitted--as a State with an anti-slavery constitution; and the Morrill
+tariff, which they had failed to pass the previous spring, now
+became law. Thus the Republicans began redeeming their pledges to the
+anti-slavery men on the one hand and to the commercial interest on the
+other. The time had now arrived for the Republican nominee to proceed
+from Springfield to Washington. The journey was circuitous in order to
+enable Lincoln to speak at a number of places. Never before, probably,
+had the Northern people felt such tense strain as at that moment; never
+had they looked to an incoming President with such anxious doubt.
+Would he prevent war? Or, if he could not do that, would he be able
+to extricate the country--Heaven alone knew how!--without a terrible
+ordeal? Since his election, Lincoln had remained quietly at Springfield.
+Though he had influenced events through letters to Congressmen, his one
+conspicuous action during that winter was the defeat of the Crittenden
+Compromise. The Southern President had called upon his people to put
+their house in order as preparation for war. What, now, had Lincoln to
+say to the people of the North?
+
+The biographers of Lincoln have not satisfactorily revealed the state of
+his mind between election and inauguration. We may safely guess that his
+silence covered a great internal struggle. Except for his one action in
+defeating the Compromise, he had allowed events to drift; but by that
+one action he had taken upon himself the responsibility for the drift.
+Though the country at that time did not fully appreciate this aspect of
+the situation, who now can doubt that Lincoln did? His mind was always a
+lonely one. His very humor has in it, so often, the note of solitude,
+of one who is laughing to make the best of things, of one who is
+spiritually alone. During those months when the country drifted from
+its moorings, and when war was becoming steadily more probable, Lincoln,
+after the manner of the prophets, wrestled alone with the problems which
+he saw before him. From the little we know of his inward state, it is
+hard for us to conclude that he was happy. A story which is told by his
+former partner, Mr. Herndon, seems significant. As Lincoln was leaving
+his unpretentious law-office for the last time, he turned to Mr. Herndon
+and asked him not to take down their old sign. "Let it hang there
+undisturbed," said he. "Give our clients to understand that the election
+of a President makes no difference in the firm.... If I live, I'm coming
+back some time, and then we'll go right on practising law as if nothing
+had happened."
+
+How far removed from self-sufficiency was the man whose thoughts, on
+the eve of his elevation to the Presidency, lingered in a provincial law
+office, fondly insistent that only death should prevent his returning
+some time and resuming in those homely surroundings the life he had
+led previous to his greatness. In a mood of wistfulness and of intense
+preoccupation, he began his journey to Washington. It was not the mood
+from which to strike fire and kindle hope. To the anxious, listening
+country his speeches on the journey to Washington were disappointing.
+Perhaps his strangely sensitive mind felt too powerfully the fatefulness
+of the moment and reacted with a sort of lightness that did not really
+represent the real man. Be that as it may, he was never less convincing
+than at that time. Nor were people impressed by his bearing. Often he
+appeared awkward, too much in appearance the country lawyer. He acted as
+a man who was ill at ease and he spoke as a man who had nothing to say.
+Gloom darkened the North as a consequence of these unfortunate speeches,
+for they expressed an optimism which we cannot believe he really felt,
+and which hurt him in the estimation of the country. "There is no
+crisis but an artificial one," was one of his ill-timed assurances, and
+another, "There is nothing going wrong.... There is nothing that really
+hurts any one." Of his supporters some were discouraged; others were
+exasperated; and an able but angry partisan even went so far as to write
+in a private letter, "Lincoln is a Simple Susan."
+
+The fourth of March arrived, and with it the end of Lincoln's
+blundering. One good omen for the success of the new Administration was
+the presence of Douglas on the inaugural platform. He had accepted fate,
+deeply as it wounded him, and had come out of the shattered party of
+evasion on the side of his section. For the purpose of showing his
+support of the administration at this critical time, he had taken a
+place on the stand where Lincoln was to speak. By one of those curious
+little dramatic touches with which chance loves to embroider history,
+the presence of Douglas became a gracious detail in the memory of the
+day. Lincoln, worn and awkward, continued to hold his hat in his hand.
+Douglas, with the tact born of social experience, stepped forward and
+took it from him without--exposing Lincoln's embarrassment.
+
+The inaugural address which Lincoln now pronounced had little similarity
+to those unfortunate utterances which he had made on the journey to
+Washington. The cloud that had been over him, whatever it was, had
+lifted. Lincoln was ready for his great labor. The inaugural contained
+three main propositions. Lincoln pledged himself not to interfere
+directly or indirectly with slavery in the States where it then existed;
+he promised to support the enforcement of the fugitive slave law; and he
+declared he would maintain the Union. "No State," said he, "upon its own
+mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union.... To the extent of my
+ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins
+upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the
+States.... In doing this, there need be no bloodshed or violence; and
+there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority.
+The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess
+the property and places belonging to the government." Addressing the
+Southerners, he said: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen,
+and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government
+will not assail you.... We are not enemies but friends.... The mystic
+cords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to
+every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet
+swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will
+be, by the better angels of our nature."
+
+Gentle, as was the phrasing of the inaugural, it was perfectly firm, and
+it outlined a policy which the South would not accept, and which, in the
+opinion of the Southern leaders, brought them a step nearer war. Wall
+Street held the same belief, and as a consequence the price of stocks
+fell.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. WAR
+
+On the day following the inauguration, commissioners of the newly formed
+Confederacy appeared at Washington and applied to the Secretary of State
+for recognition as envoys of a foreign power. Seward refused them such
+recognition. But he entered into a private negotiation with them which
+is nearly, if not quite, the strangest thing in our history. Virtually,
+Seward intrigued against Lincoln for control of the Administration. The
+events of the next five weeks have an importance out of all proportion
+to the brevity of the time. This was Lincoln's period of final
+probation. The psychological intensity of this episode grew from the
+consciousness in every mind that now, irretrievably, destiny was to be
+determined. War or peace, happiness or adversity, one nation or two--all
+these were in the balance. Lincoln entered the episode a doubtful
+quantity, not with certainty the master even in his own Cabinet. He
+emerged dominating the situation, but committed to the terrible course
+of war.
+
+One cannot enter upon this great episode, truly the turning point in
+American history, without pausing for a glance at the character of
+Seward. The subject is elusive. His ablest biographer* plainly is so
+constantly on guard not to appear an apologist that he ends by reducing
+his portrait to a mere outline, wavering across a background of
+political details. The most recent study of Seward** surely reveals
+between the lines the doubtfulness of the author about pushing his
+points home. The different sides of the man are hard to reconcile. Now
+he seemed frank and honest; again subtle and insincere. As an active
+politician in the narrow sense, he should have been sagacious and
+astute, yet he displayed at the crisis of his life the most absolute
+fatuity. At times he had a buoyant and puerile way of disregarding
+fact and enveloping himself in a world of his own imagining. He could
+bluster, when he wished, like any demagogue; and yet he could be
+persuasive, agreeable, and even personally charming.
+
+     *Frederic Bancroft, "Life of William H. Seward".
+
+     ** Gamaliel Bradford, "Union Portraits".
+
+But of one thing with regard to Seward, in the first week of March,
+1861, there can be no doubt: he thought himself a great statesman--and
+he thought Lincoln "a Simple Susan." He conceived his role in the new
+administration to involve a subtle and patient manipulation of his
+childlike superior. That Lincoln would gradually yield to his spell
+and insensibly become his figurehead; that he, Seward, could save the
+country and would go down to history a statesman above compare, he took
+for granted. Nor can he fairly be called conceited, either; that is part
+of his singularity.
+
+Lincoln's Cabinet was, as Seward said, a compound body. With a view to
+strengthening his position, Lincoln had appointed to cabinet positions
+all his former rivals for the Republican nomination. Besides Seward,
+there was Chase as Secretary of the Treasury; Simon Cameron of
+Pennsylvania as Secretary of War; Edward Bates of Missouri as
+Attorney-General. The appointment of Montgomery Blair of Maryland as
+Postmaster-General was intended to placate the border Slave States. The
+same motive dictated the later inclusion of James Speed of Kentucky in
+the Cabinet. The Black-Stanton wing of the Democrats was represented in
+the Navy Department by Gideon Welles, and in course of time in the War
+Department also, when Cameron resigned and Stanton succeeded him. The
+West of that day was represented by Caleb B. Smith of Indiana.
+
+Seward disapproved of the composition of the Cabinet so much that,
+almost at the last moment, he withdrew his acceptance of the State
+Department. It was Lincoln's gentleness of argument which overcame his
+reluctance to serve. We may be sure, however, that Seward failed to
+observe that Lincoln's tactlessness in social matters did not extend to
+his management of men in politics; we may feel sure that what remained
+in his mind was Lincoln's unwillingness to enter office without William
+Henry Seward as Secretary of State.
+
+The promptness with which Seward assumed the role of prime minister
+bears out this inference. The same fact also reveals a puzzling detail
+of Seward's character which amounted to obtuseness--his forgetfulness
+that appointment to cabinet offices had not transformed his old
+political rivals Chase and Cameron, nor softened the feelings of an
+inveterate political enemy, Welles, the Secretary of the Navy. The
+impression which Seward made on his colleagues in the first days of the
+new Government has been thus sharply recorded by Welles: "The Secretary
+of State was, of course, apprised of every meeting [of ministers] and
+never failed in his attendance, whatever was the subject-matter,
+and though entirely out of his official province. He was vigilantly
+attentive to every measure and movement in other Departments, however
+trivial--as much so as to his own--watched and scrutinized every
+appointment that was made, or proposed to be made, but was not
+communicative in regard to the transaction of the State Department."
+So eager was Seward to keep all the threads of affairs in his own hands
+that he tried to persuade Lincoln not to hold cabinet meetings but
+merely to consult with particular ministers, and with the Secretary
+of State, as occasion might demand. A combined protest from the other
+Secretaries, however, caused the regular holding of Cabinet meetings.
+
+With regard to the Confederacy, Seward's policy was one of
+non-resistance. For this he had two reasons. The first of these was
+his rooted delusion that the bulk of the Southerners were opposed to
+secession and, if let alone, would force their leaders to reconsider
+their action. He might have quoted the nursery rhyme, "Let them alone
+and they'll come home"; it would have been like him and in tune with
+a frivolous side of his nature. He was quite as irresponsible when he
+complacently assured the North that the trouble would all blow over
+within ninety days. He also believed that any display of force would
+convert these hypothetical Unionists of the South from friends to
+enemies and would consolidate opinion in the Confederacy to produce
+war. In justice to Seward it must be remembered that on this point time
+justified his fears.
+
+His dealings with the Confederate commissioners show that he was playing
+to gain time, not with intent to deceive the Southerners but to acquire
+that domination over Lincoln which he felt was his by natural right.
+Intending to institute a peace policy the moment he gained this
+ascendency, he felt perfectly safe in making promises to the
+commissioners through mutual friends. He virtually told them that Sumter
+would eventually be given up and that all they need do was to wait.
+
+Seward brought to bear upon the President the opinions of various
+military men who thought the time had passed when any expedition for the
+relief of Sumter could succeed. For some time Lincoln seemed about
+to consent, though reluctantly, to Seward's lead in the matter of the
+forts. He was pulled up standing, however, by the threatened resignation
+of the Postmaster-General, Blair. After a conference with leading
+Republican politicians the President announced to his Cabinet that
+his policy would include the relief of Sumter. "Seward," says Welles,
+"...was evidently displeased."
+
+Seward now took a new tack. Fort Pickens, at Pensacola, was a problem
+similar to that of Sumter at Charleston. Both were demanded by the
+Confederates, and both were in need of supplies. But Fort Pickens lay
+to one side, so to speak, of the public mind, and there was not
+conspicuously in the world's eye the square issue over it that there
+was over Sumter. Seward conceived the idea that, if the President's
+attention were diverted from Sumter to Pickens and a relief expedition
+were sent to the latter but none to the former, his private negotiations
+with the Confederates might still be kept going; Lincoln might yet be
+hypnotized; and at last all would be well.
+
+On All-Fools' Day, 1861, in the midst of a press of business, he
+obtained Lincoln's signature to some dispatches, which Lincoln, it
+seems, discussed with him hurriedly and without detailed consideration.
+There were now in preparation two relief expeditions, one to carry
+supplies to Pensacola, the other to Charleston. Neither was to fight
+if it was not molested. Both were to be strong enough to fight if
+their commanders deemed it necessary. As flagship of the Charleston
+expedition, Welles had detailed the powerful warship Powhatan, which
+was rapidly being made ready at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Such was the
+situation as Welles understood it when he was thinking of bed late on
+the night of the 6th of April. Until then he had not suspected that
+there was doubt and bewilderment about the Powhatan at Brooklyn. One
+of those dispatches which Lincoln had so hastily signed provided for
+detaching the Powhatan from the Charleston expedition and sending it
+safe out of harm's way to Pensacola. The commander of the ship had
+before him the conflicting orders, one from the President, one from the
+Secretary of the Navy. He was about to sail under the President's
+orders for Pensacola; but wishing to make sure of his authority, he
+had telegraphed to Washington. Gideon Welles was a pugnacious man. His
+dislike for Seward was deepseated. Imagine his state of mind when it was
+accidently revealed to him that Seward had gone behind his back and had
+issued to naval officers orders which were contradictory to his own!
+The immediate result was an interview that same night between Seward and
+Welles in which, as Welles coldly admitted in after days, the Secretary
+of the Navy showed "some excitement." Together they went, about
+midnight, to the White House. Lincoln had some difficulty recalling the
+incident of the dispatch on the 1st of April; but when he did remember,
+he took the responsibility entirely upon himself, saying he had had
+no purpose but to strengthen the Pickens expedition, and no thought of
+weakening the expedition to Charleston. He directed Seward to telegraph
+immediately cancelling the order detaching the Powhatan. Seward made a
+desperate attempt to put him off, protesting, it was too late to send
+a telegram that night. "But the President was imperative," writes
+Secretary Welles, in describing the incident, and a dispatch was sent.
+
+Seward then, doubtless in his agitation, did a strange thing. Instead
+of telegraphing in the President's name, the dispatch which he sent read
+merely, "Give up the Powhatan...Seward." When this dispatch was received
+at Brooklyn, the Powhatan was already under way and had to be overtaken
+by a fast tug. In the eyes of her commander, however, a personal
+telegram from the Secretary of State appeared as of no weight against
+the official orders of the President, and he continued his voyage to
+Pensacola.
+
+The mercurial temper of Seward comes out even in the caustic narrative
+written afterwards by Welles. Evidently Seward was deeply mortified and
+depressed by the incident. He remarked, says Welles, that old as he was
+he had learned a lesson, and that was that he had better attend to his
+own business. "To this," commented his enemy, "I cordially assented."
+
+Nevertheless Seward's loss of faith in himself was only momentary. A
+night's sleep was sufficient to restore it. His next communication to
+the commissioners shows that he was himself again, sure that destiny
+owed him the control of the situation. On the following day the
+commissioners had got wind of the relief expedition and pressed him for
+information, recalling his assurance that nothing would be done to their
+disadvantage. In reply, still through a third person, Seward sent them
+the famous message, over the precise meaning of which great debate has
+raged: "Faith as to Sumter fully kept; wait and see." If this infatuated
+dreamer still believed he could dominate Lincoln, still hoped at the
+last moment to arrest the expedition to Charleston, he was doomed to
+bitterest disappointment.
+
+On the 9th of April, the expedition to Fort Sumter sailed, but without,
+as we have seen, the assistance of the much needed warship, the
+Powhatan. As all the world knows, the expedition had been too long
+delayed and it accomplished nothing. Before it arrived, the surrender
+of Sumter had been demanded and refused--and war had begun. During the
+bombardment of Sumter, the relief expedition appeared beyond the bar,
+but its commander had no vessels of such a character as to enable him
+to carry aid to the fortress. Furthermore, he had not been informed that
+the Powhatan had been detached from his squadron, and he expected to
+meet her at the mouth of the harbor. There his ships lay idle until the
+fort was surrendered, waiting for the Powhatan--for whose detachment
+from the squadron Seward was responsible.
+
+To return to the world of intrigue at Washington, however, it must not
+be supposed, as is so often done, that Fort Sumter was the one concern
+of the new government during its first six weeks. In fact, the subject
+occupied but a fraction of Lincoln's time. Scarcely second in importance
+was that matter so curiously bound up with the relief of the forts--the
+getting in hand of the strangely vain glorious Secretary of State.
+Mention has already been made of All-Fools' Day, 1861. Several marvelous
+things took place on that day. Strangest of all was the presentation of
+a paper by the Secretary of State to his chief, entitled "Thoughts for
+the President's Consideration". Whether it be regarded as a state paper
+or as a biographical detail in the career of Seward, it proves to be
+quite the most astounding thing in the whole episode. The "Thoughts"
+outlined a course of policy by which the buoyant Secretary intended to
+make good his prophecy of domestic peace within ninety days. Besides
+calmly patronizing Lincoln, assuring him that his lack of "a policy
+either domestic or foreign" was "not culpable and... even unavoidable,"
+the paper warned him that "policies...both domestic and foreign" must
+immediately be adopted, and it proceeded to point out what they ought to
+be. Briefly stated, the one true policy which he advocated at home was
+to evacuate Sumter (though Pickens for some unexplained reason might be
+safely retained) and then, in order to bring the Southerners back into
+the Union, to pick quarrels with both Spain and France; to proceed as
+quickly as possible to war with both powers; and to have the ultimate
+satisfaction of beholding the reunion of the country through the general
+enthusiasm that was bound to come. Finally, the paper intimated that the
+Secretary of State was the man to carry this project through to success.
+
+All this is not opera bouffe, but serious history. It must have taxed
+Lincoln's sense of humor and strained his sense of the fitness of things
+to treat such nonsense with the tactful forbearance which he showed and
+to relegate it to the pigeonhole without making Seward angry. Yet this
+he contrived to do; and he also managed, gently but firmly, to make it
+plain that the President intended to exercise his authority as the chief
+magistrate of the nation. His forbearance was further shown in passing
+over without rebuke Seward's part in the affair of Sumter, which might
+so easily have been made to appear treacherous, and in shouldering
+himself with all responsibility for the failure of the Charleston
+expedition. In the wave of excitement following the surrender, even so
+debonair a minister as Seward must have realized how fortunate it was
+for him that his chief did not tell all he knew. About this time Seward
+began to perceive that Lincoln had a will of his own, and that it was
+not safe to trifle further with the President. Seward thereupon ceased
+his interference.
+
+It was in the dark days preceding the fall of Sumter that a crowd of
+office-seekers gathered at Washington, most of them men who had little
+interest in anything but the spoils. It is a distressing commentary on
+the American party system that, during the most critical month of the
+most critical period of American history, much of the President's time
+was consumed by these political vampires who would not be put off, even
+though a revolution was in progress and nations, perhaps, were dying
+and being born. "The scramble for office," wrote Stanton, "is
+terrible." Seward noted privately: "Solicitants for office besiege the
+President.... My duties call me to the White House two or three times a
+day. The grounds, halls, stairways, closets, are filled with applicants
+who render ingress and egress difficult."
+
+Secretary Welles has etched the Washington of that time in his coldly
+scornful way:
+
+"A strange state of things existed at that time in Washington.
+The atmosphere was thick with treason. Party spirit and old party
+differences prevailed, however, amidst these accumulated dangers.
+Secession was considered by most persons as a political party question,
+not as rebellion. Democrats to a large extent sympathized with the
+Rebels more than with the Administration, which they opposed, not that
+they wished Secession to be successful and the Union divided, but they
+hoped that President Lincoln and the Republicans would, overwhelmed by
+obstacles and embarrassments, prove failures. The Republicans on the
+other hand, were scarcely less partisan and unreasonable. Patriotism was
+with them no test, no shield from party malevolence. They demanded
+the proscription and exclusion of such Democrats as opposed the Rebel
+movement and clung to the Union, with the same vehemence that they
+demanded the removal of the worst Rebels who advocated a dissolution of
+the Union. Neither party appeared to be apprehensive of, or to realize
+the gathering storm."
+
+Seen against such a background, the political and diplomatic frivolity
+of the Secretary of State is not so inexplicable as it would otherwise
+be. This background, as well as the intrigue of the Secretary, helps
+us to understand Lincoln's great task inside his Cabinet. At first the
+Cabinet was a group of jealous politicians new to this sort of office,
+drawn from different parties, and totally lacking in a cordial sense
+of previous action together. None of them, probably, when they first
+assembled had any high opinion of their titular head. He was looked upon
+as a political makeshift. The best of them had to learn to appreciate
+the fact that this strange, ungainly man, sprung from plainest origin,
+without formal education, was a great genius. By degrees, however, the
+large minds in the Cabinet became his cordial admirers. While Lincoln
+was quietly, gradually exercising his strong will upon Seward, he was
+doing the same with the other members of his council. Presently they
+awoke--the majority of them at least--to the truth that he, for all his
+odd ways, was their master.
+
+Meanwhile the gradual readjustment of all factions in the North was
+steadily going forward. The Republicans were falling into line behind
+the Government; and by degrees the distinction between Seward and
+Lincoln, in the popular mind, faded into a sort of composite picture
+called "the Administration." Lincoln had the reward of his long
+forbearance with his Secretary. For Seward it must be said that, however
+he had intrigued against his chief at Washington, he did not intrigue
+with the country. Admitting as he had, too, that he had met his master,
+he took the defeat as a good sportsman and threw all his vast party
+influence into the scale for Lincoln's fortunes. Thus, as April wore on,
+the Republican party settled down to the idea that it was to follow the
+Government at Washington upon any course that might develop.
+
+The Democrats in the North were anti-Southern in larger proportion,
+probably, than at any other time during the struggle of the sections.
+We have seen that numbers of them had frankly declared for the Union.
+Politics had proved weaker than propinquity. There was a moment when it
+seemed--delusively, as events proved--that the North was united as one
+man to oppose the South.
+
+There is surely not another day in our history that has witnessed so
+much nervous tension as Saturday, April 13, 1861, for on that morning
+the newspapers electrified the North with the news that Sumter had been
+fired on from Confederate batteries on the shore of Charleston Harbor.
+In the South the issue was awaited confidently, but many minds at
+least were in that state of awed suspense natural to a moment which the
+thoughtful see is the stroke of fate. In the North, the day passed for
+the most part in a quiet so breathless that even the most careless could
+have foretold the storm which broke on the following day. The account
+of this crisis which has been given by Lincoln's private secretary is
+interesting:
+
+"That day there was little change in the business routine of the
+Executive office. Mr. Lincoln was never liable to sudden excitement
+or sudden activity.... So while the Sumter telegrams were on every
+tongue...leading men and officials called to learn or impart the news.
+The Cabinet, as by common impulse, came together and deliberated. All
+talk, however, was brief, sententious, formal. Lincoln said but little
+beyond making inquiries about the current reports and criticizing the
+probability or accuracy of their details, and went on as usual
+receiving visitors, listening to suggestions, and signing routine papers
+throughout the day." Meanwhile the cannon were booming at Charleston.
+The people came out on the sea-front of the lovely old city and watched
+the duel of the cannon far down the harbor, and spoke joyously of the
+great event. They saw the shells of the shore batteries ignite
+portions of the fortress on the island. They watched the fire of the
+defenders--driven by the flames into a restricted area--slacken and
+cease. At last the flag of the Union fluttered down from above Fort
+Sumter.
+
+When the news flashed over the North, early Sunday morning, April 14th,
+the tension broke. For many observers then and afterward, the only North
+discernible that fateful Sabbath was an enraged, defiant, impulsive
+nation, forgetful for the moment of all its differences, and uniting all
+its voices in one hoarse cry for vengeance. There seemed to be no other
+thought. Lincoln gave it formal utterance, that same day, by assembling
+his Cabinet and drawing up a proclamation which called for 75,000
+volunteer troops.
+
+An incident of this day which is as significant historically as any
+other was on the surface no more than a friendly talk between two men.
+Douglas called at the White House. For nearly two hours he and Lincoln
+conferred in private. Hitherto it had been a little uncertain what
+course Douglas was going to take. In the Senate, though condemning
+disunion, he had opposed war. Few matters can have troubled Lincoln more
+deeply than the question which way Douglas's immense influence would be
+thrown. The question was answered publicly in the newspapers of Monday,
+April 15th. Douglas announced that while he was still "unalterably
+opposed to the Administration on all its political issues, he
+was prepared to sustain the President in the exercise of all his
+constitutional functions to preserve the Union, and maintain the
+Government, and defend the federal capital."
+
+There remained of Douglas's life but a few months. The time was filled
+with earnest speechmaking in support of the Government. He had started
+West directly following his conference with Lincoln. His speeches in
+Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, were perhaps the greatest single force in
+breaking up his own following, putting an end to the principle of doing
+nothing, and forcing every Democrat to come out and show his colors.
+In Shakespeare's phrase, it was--"Under which king, Bezonian? speak or
+die!" In Douglas's own phrase: "There can be no neutrals in this war;
+ONLY PATRIOTS--OR TRAITORS."
+
+Side by side with Douglas's manifesto to the Democrats there appeared in
+the Monday papers Lincoln's call for volunteers. The militia of several
+Northern States at once responded.
+
+On Wednesday, the 17th of April, the Sixth Massachusetts Regiment
+entrained for Washington. Two days later it was in Baltimore. There it
+was attacked by a mob; the soldiers fired; and a number of civilians
+were killed as well as several soldiers.
+
+These shots at Baltimore aroused the Southern party in Maryland. Led
+by the Mayor of the city, they resolved to prevent the passage of other
+troops across their State to Washington. Railway tracks were torn up
+by order of the municipal authorities, and bridges were burnt. The
+telegraph was cut. As in a flash, after issuing his proclamation,
+Lincoln found himself isolated at Washington with no force but a handful
+of troops and the government clerks. And while Maryland rose against him
+on one side, Virginia joined his enemies on the other. The day the Sixth
+Massachusetts left Boston, Virginia seceded. The Virginia militia were
+called to their colors. Preparations were at once set on foot for the
+seizure of the great federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry and the Navy Yard
+at Norfolk. The next day a handful of federal troops, fearful of being
+overpowered at Harper's Ferry, burned the arsenal and withdrew to
+Washington. For the same reason the buildings of the great Navy Yard
+were blown up or set on fire, and the ships at anchor were sunk. So
+desperate and unprepared were the Washington authorities that they took
+these extreme measures to keep arms and ammunition out of the hands of
+the Virginians. So hastily was the destruction carried out, that it was
+only partially successful and at both places large stores of ammunition
+were seized by the Virginia troops. While Washington was isolated,
+and Lincoln did not know what response the North had made to his
+proclamation, Robert E. Lee, having resigned his commission in the
+federal army, was placed in command of the Virginia troops.
+
+The secretaries of Lincoln have preserved a picture of his desperate
+anxiety, waiting, day after day, for relief from the North which
+he hoped would speedily come by sea. Outwardly he maintained his
+self-control. But once, on the afternoon of the 23d, the business of
+the day being over, the Executive office being deserted, after walking
+the floor alone in silent thought for nearly half an hour, he stopped
+and gazed long and wistfully out of the window down the Potomac in the
+direction of the expected ships; and, unconscious of other presence in
+the room, at length broke out with irrepressible anguish in the repeated
+exclamation, "Why don't they come! Why don't they come!"
+
+During these days of isolation, when Washington, with the telegraph
+inoperative, was kept in an appalling uncertainty, the North rose.
+There was literally a rush to volunteer. "The heather is on fire," wrote
+George Ticknor, "I never before knew what a popular excitement can
+be." As fast as possible militia were hurried South. The crack New York
+regiment, the famous, dandified Seventh, started for the front amid
+probably the most tempestuous ovation which until that time was ever
+given to a military organization in America. Of the march of the
+regiment down Broadway, one of its members wrote, "Only one who passed
+as we did, through the tempest of cheers two miles long, can know the
+terrible enthusiasm of the occasion."
+
+To reach Washington by rail was impossible. The Seventh went by boat
+to Annapolis. The same course was taken by a regiment of Massachusetts
+mechanics, the Eighth. Landing at Annapolis, the two regiments, dandies
+and laborers, fraternized at once in the common bond of loyalty to the
+Union. A branch railway led from Annapolis to the main line between
+Washington and Baltimore. The rails had been torn up. The Massachusetts
+mechanics set to work to relay them. The Governor of Maryland protested.
+He was disregarded. The two regiments toiled together a long day and
+through the night following, between Annapolis and the Washington
+junction, bringing on their baggage and cannon over relaid tracks.
+There, a train was found which the Seventh appropriated. At noon, on
+the 25th of April, that advance guard of the Northern hosts entered
+Washington, and Lincoln knew that he had armies behind him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. LINCOLN
+
+The history of the North had virtually become, by April, 1861, the
+history of Lincoln himself, and during the remaining four years of the
+President's life it is difficult to separate his personality from the
+trend of national history. Any attempt to understand the achievements
+and the omissions of the Northern people without undertaking an
+intelligent estimate of their leader would be only to duplicate the
+story of "Hamlet" with Hamlet left out. According to the opinion of
+English military experts*, "Against the great military genius of certain
+Southern leaders fate opposed the unbroken resolution and passionate
+devotion to the Union, which he worshiped, of the great Northern
+President. As long as he lived and ruled the people of the North, there
+could be no turning back."
+
+     * Wood and Edmonds. "The Civil War in the United States."
+
+Lincoln has been ranked with Socrates; but he has also been compared
+with Rabelais. He has been the target of abuse that knew no mercy; but
+he has been worshiped as a demigod. The ten big volumes of his official
+biography are a sustained, intemperate eulogy in which the hero does
+nothing that is not admirable; but as large a book could be built up
+out of contemporaneous Northern writings that would paint a picture of
+unmitigated blackness--and the most eloquent portions of it would be
+signed by Wendell Phillips.
+
+The real Lincoln is, of course, neither the Lincoln of the official
+biography nor the Lincoln of Wendell Phillips. He was neither a saint
+nor a villain. What he actually was is not, however, so easily stated.
+Prodigious men are never easy to sum up; and Lincoln was a prodigious
+man. The more one studies him, the more individual he appears to be. By
+degrees one comes to understand how it was possible for contemporaries
+to hold contradictory views of him and for each to believe frantically
+that his views were proved by facts. For anyone who thinks he can hit
+off in a few neat generalities this complex, extraordinary personality,
+a single warning may suffice. Walt Whitman, who was perhaps the most
+original thinker and the most acute observer who ever saw Lincoln face
+to face has left us his impression; but he adds that there was something
+in Lincoln's face which defied description and which no picture had
+caught. After Whitman's conclusion that "One of the great portrait
+painters of two or three hundred years ago is needed," the mere
+historian should proceed with caution.
+
+There is historic significance in his very appearance. His huge,
+loose-knit figure, six feet four inches high, lean, muscular, ungainly,
+the evidence of his great physical strength, was a fit symbol of those
+hard workers, the children of the soil, from whom he sprang. His face
+was rugged like his figure, the complexion swarthy, cheek bones high,
+and bushy black hair crowning a great forehead beneath which the eyes
+were deep-set, gray, and dreaming. A sort of shambling powerfulness
+formed the main suggestion of face and figure, softened strangely by the
+mysterious expression of the eyes, and by the singular delicacy of the
+skin. The motions of this awkward giant lacked grace; the top hat and
+black frock coat, sometimes rusty, which had served him on the western
+circuit continued to serve him when he was virtually the dictator of his
+country. It was in such dress that he visited the army, where he towered
+above his generals.
+
+Even in a book of restricted scope, such as this, one must insist upon
+the distinction between the private and public Lincoln, for there is
+as yet no accepted conception of him. What comes nearest to an accepted
+conception is contained probably in the version of the late Charles
+Francis Adams. He tells us how his father, the elder Charles Francis
+Adams, ambassador to London, found Lincoln in 1861 an offensive
+personality, and he insists that Lincoln under strain passed through a
+transformation which made the Lincoln of 1864 a different man from the
+Lincoln of 1861. Perhaps; but without being frivolous, one is tempted
+to quote certain old-fashioned American papers that used to label their
+news items "important if true."
+
+What then, was the public Lincoln? What explains his vast success? As
+a force in American history, what does he count for? Perhaps the most
+significant detail in an answer to these questions is the fact that he
+had never held conspicuous public office until at the age of fifty-two
+he became President. Psychologically his place is in that small group of
+great geniuses whose whole significant period lies in what we commonly
+think of as the decline of life. There are several such in history:
+Rome had Caesar; America had both Lincoln and Lee. By contrasting these
+instances with those of the other type, the egoistic geniuses such as
+Alexander or Napoleon, we become aware of some dim but profound dividing
+line separating the two groups. The theory that genius, at bottom, is
+pure energy seems to fit Napoleon; but does it fit these other minds who
+appear to meet life with a certain indifference, with a carelessness of
+their own fate, a willingness to leave much to chance? That irresistible
+passion for authority which Napoleon had is lacking in these others.
+Their basal inspiration seems to resemble the impulse of the artist to
+express, rather than the impulse of the man of action to possess. Had
+it not been for secession, Lee would probably have ended his days as an
+exemplary superintendent of West Point. And what of Lincoln? He dabbled
+in politics, early and without success; he left politics for the law,
+and to the law he gave during many years his chief devotion. But the
+fortuitous break-up of parties, with the revival of the slavery issue,
+touched some hidden spring; the able provincial lawyer felt again the
+political impulse; he became a famous maker of political phrases; and on
+this literary basis he became the leader of a party.
+
+Too little attention has been paid to this progression of Lincoln
+through literature into politics. The ease with which he drifted from
+one to the other is also still to be evaluated. Did it show a certain
+slackness, a certain aimlessness, at the bottom of his nature? Had
+it, in a way, some sort of analogy--to compare homespun with things
+Olympian--to the vein of frivolity in the great Caesar? One is
+tempted to think so. Surely, here was one of those natures which need
+circumstance to compel them to greatness and which are not foredoomed,
+Napoleon-like, to seize greatness. Without encroaching upon the
+biographical task, one may borrow from biography this insistent echo:
+the anecdotes of Lincoln sound over and over the note of easy-going good
+nature; but there is to be found in many of the Lincoln anecdotes an
+overtone of melancholy which lingers after one's impression of his good
+nature. Quite naturally, in such a biographical atmosphere, we find
+ourselves thinking of him at first as a little too good-humored, a
+little too easy-going, a little prone to fall into reverie. We are not
+surprised when we find his favorite poem beginning "Oh, why should the
+spirit of mortal be proud."
+
+This enigmatical man became President in his fifty-second year. We
+have already seen that his next period, the winter of 1860-61, has its
+biographical problems. The impression which he made on the country as
+President-elect was distinctly unfavorable. Good humor, or opportunism,
+or what you will, brought together in Lincoln's Cabinet at least three
+men more conspicuous in the ordinary sense than he was himself. We
+forget, today, how insignificant he must have seemed in a Cabinet that
+embraced Seward, Cameron, and Chase--all large national figures. What
+would not history give for a page of self-revelation showing us how he
+felt in the early days of that company! Was he troubled? Did he doubt
+his ability to hold his own? Was he fatalistic? Was his sad smile his
+refuge? Did he merely put things by, ignoring tomorrow until tomorrow
+should arrive?
+
+However we may guess at the answers to such questions, one thing now
+becomes certain. His quality of good humor began to be his salvation.
+It is doubtful if any President except Washington had to manage so
+difficult a Cabinet. Washington had seen no solution to the problem but
+to let Jefferson go. Lincoln found his Cabinet often on the verge of a
+split, with two powerful factions struggling to control it and neither
+ever gaining full control. Though there were numerous withdrawals, no
+resigning secretary really split Lincoln's Cabinet. By what turns and
+twists and skillful maneuvers Lincoln prevented such a division and
+kept such inveterate enemies as Chase and Seward steadily at their
+jobs--Chase during three years, Seward to the end--will partly appear
+in the following pages; but the whole delicate achievement cannot be
+properly appreciated except in detailed biography.
+
+All criticism of Lincoln turns eventually on one question: Was he an
+opportunist? Not only his enemies in his own time but many politicians
+of a later day were eager to prove that he was the latter--indeed,
+seeking to shelter their own opportunism behind the majesty of his
+example. A modern instance will perhaps make vivid this long standing
+debate upon Lincoln and his motives. Merely for historic illumination
+and without becoming invidious, we may recall the instance of President
+Wilson and the resignation of his Secretary of War in 1916 because
+Congress would not meet the issue of preparedness. The President
+accepted the resignation without forcing the issue, and Congress went
+on fiddling while Rome burned. Now, was the President an opportunist,
+merely waiting to see what course events would take, or was he a
+political strategist, astutely biding his time? Similar in character
+is this old debate upon Lincoln, which is perhaps best focussed in the
+removal of Secretary Blair which we shall have to note in connection
+with the election of 1864.
+
+It is difficult for the most objective historian to deal with such
+questions without obtruding his personal views, but there is nothing
+merely individual in recording the fact that the steady drift of opinion
+has been away from the conception of Lincoln as an opportunist. What
+once caused him to be thus conceived appears now to have been a failure
+to comprehend intelligently the nature of his undertaking. More and
+more, the tendency nowadays is to conceive his career as one of
+those few instances in which the precise faculties needed to solve a
+particular problem were called into play at exactly the critical moment.
+Our confusions with regard to Lincoln have grown out of our failure
+to appreciate the singularity of the American people, and their
+ultra-singularity during the years in which he lived. It remains to be
+seen hereafter what strange elements of sensibility, of waywardness,
+of lack of imagination, of undisciplined ardor, of selfishness, of
+deceitfulness, of treachery, combined with heroic ideality, made up
+the character of that complex populace which it was Lincoln's task to
+control. But he did more than control it: he somehow compounded much of
+it into something like a unit. To measure Lincoln's achievement in this
+respect, two things must be remembered: on the one hand, his task was
+not as arduous as it might have been, because the most intellectual part
+of the North had definitely committed itself either irretrievably for,
+or irreconcilably against, his policy. Lincoln, therefore, did not have
+to trouble himself with this portion of the population. On the
+other hand, that part which he had to master included such emotional
+rhetoricians as Horace Greeley; such fierce zealots as Henry Winter
+Davis of Maryland, who made him trouble indeed, and Benjamin Wade, whom
+we have met already; such military egoists as McClellan and Pope; such
+crafty double-dealers as his own Secretary of the Treasury; such astute
+grafters as Cameron; such miserable creatures as certain powerful
+capitalists who sacrificed his army to their own lust for profits
+filched from army contracts.
+
+The wonder of Lincoln's achievement is that he contrived at last to
+extend his hold over all these diverse elements; that he persuaded some,
+outwitted others, and overcame them all. The subtlety of this task would
+have ruined any statesman of the driving sort. Explain Lincoln by any
+theory you will, his personality was the keystone of the Northern arch;
+subtract it, and the arch falls. The popular element being as complex
+and powerful as it was, how could the presiding statesman have mastered
+the situation if he had not been of so peculiar a sort that he could
+influence all these diverse and powerful interests, slowly, by degrees,
+without heat, without the imperative note, almost in silence, with the
+universal, enfolding irresistibility of the gradual things in nature,
+of the sun and the rain. Such was the genius of Lincoln--all but
+passionless, yet so quiet that one cannot but believe in the great depth
+of his nature.
+
+We are, even today, far from a definitive understanding of Lincoln's
+statecraft, but there is perhaps justification for venturing upon one
+prophecy. The farther from him we get and the more clearly we see him in
+perspective, the more we shall realize his creative influence upon his
+party. A Lincoln who is the moulder of events and the great creator of
+public opinion will emerge at last into clear view. In the Lincoln
+of his ultimate biographer there will be more of iron than of a less
+enduring metal in the figure of the Lincoln of present tradition. Though
+none of his gentleness will disappear, there will be more emphasis
+placed upon his firmness, and upon such episodes as that of December,
+1860, when his single will turned the scale against compromise; upon
+his steadiness in the defeat of his party at the polls in 1862; or his
+overruling of the will of Congress in the summer of 1864 on the question
+of reconstruction; or his attitude in the autumn of that year when
+he believed that he was losing his second election. Behind all his
+gentleness, his slowness, behind his sadness, there will eventually
+appear an inflexible purpose, strong as steel, unwavering as fate.
+
+The Civil War was in truth Lincoln's war. Those modern pacifists who
+claim him for their own are beside the mark. They will never get over
+their illusions about Lincoln until they see, as all the world is
+beginning to see, that his career has universal significance because of
+its bearing on the universal modern problem of democracy. It will not do
+ever to forget that he was a man of the people, always playing the hand
+of the people, in the limited social sense of that word, though playing
+it with none of the heat usually met with in the statesmen of successful
+democracy from Cleon to Robespierre, from Andrew Jackson to Lloyd
+George. His gentleness does not remove Lincoln from that stern category.
+Throughout his life, besides his passion for the Union, besides his
+antipathy to slavery, there dwelt in his very heart love of and faith
+in the plain people. We shall never see him in true historic perspective
+until we conceive him as the instrument of a vast social idea--the
+determination to make a government based on the plain people successful
+in war.
+
+He did not scruple to seize power when he thought the cause of the
+people demanded it, and his enemies were prompt to accuse him of holding
+to the doctrine that the end justified the means--a hasty conclusion
+which will have to be reconsidered; what concerns us more closely is the
+definite conviction that he felt no sacrifice too great if it advanced
+the happiness of the generality of mankind.
+
+The final significance of Lincoln as a statesman of democracy is brought
+out most clearly in his foreign relations. Fate put it into the hands of
+England to determine whether his Government should stand or fall. Though
+it is doubtful how far the turning of the scale of English policy in
+Lincoln's favor was due to the influence of the rising power of English
+democracy, it is plain that Lincoln thought of himself as having one
+purpose with that movement which he regarded as an ally. Beyond all
+doubt among the most grateful messages he ever received were the New
+Year greetings of confidence and sympathy which were sent by English
+workingmen in 1863. A few sentences in his "Letter to the Workingmen
+of London" help us to look through his eyes and see his life and its
+struggles as they appeared to him in relation to world history:
+
+"As these sentiments [expressed by the English workmen] are manifestly
+the enduring support of the free institutions of England, so am I sure
+that they constitute the only reliable basis for free institutions
+throughout the world.... The resources, advantages, and power of the
+American people are very great, and they have consequently succeeded to
+equally great responsibilities. It seems to have devolved upon them to
+test whether a government established on the principles of human freedom
+can be maintained against an effort to build one upon the exclusive
+foundation of human bondage. They will rejoice with me in the new
+evidence which your proceedings furnish that the magnanimity they
+are exhibiting is justly estimated by the true friends of freedom and
+humanity in foreign countries."
+
+Written at the opening of that terrible year, 1863, these words are a
+forward link with those more celebrated words spoken toward its close
+at Gettysburg. Perhaps at no time during the war, except during the few
+days immediately following his own reelection a year later, did Lincoln
+come so near being free from care as then. Perhaps that explains why
+his fundamental literary power reasserted itself so remarkably, why this
+speech of his at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg
+on the 19th of November, 1863, remains one of the most memorable
+orations ever delivered:
+
+"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon this
+continent a new nation, conceived 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 that 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 honored 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."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII. THE RULE OF LINCOLN
+
+The fundamental problem of the Lincoln Government was the raising of
+armies, the sudden conversion of a community which was essentially
+industrial into a disciplined military organization. The accomplishment
+of so gigantic a transformation taxed the abilities of two Secretaries
+of War. The first, Simon Cameron, owed his place in the Cabinet to
+the double fact of being one of the ablest of political bosses and
+of standing high among Lincoln's competitors for the Presidential
+nomination. Personally honest, he was also a political cynic to whom
+tradition ascribes the epigram defining an honest politician as one who
+"when he is bought, will stay bought." As Secretary of War he showed no
+particular ability.
+
+In 1861, when the tide of enthusiasm was in flood, and volunteers
+in hosts were responding to acts of Congress for the raising and
+maintenance of a volunteer army, Cameron reported in December that the
+Government had on foot 660,971 men and could have had a million except
+that Congress had limited the number of volunteers to be received. When
+this report was prepared, Lincoln was, so to speak, in the trough of two
+seas. The devotion which had been offered to him in April, 1861, when
+the North seemed to rise as one man, had undergone a reaction. Eight
+months without a single striking military success, together with
+the startling defeat at Bull Run, had had their inevitable effect.
+Democracies are mercurial; variability seems to be part of the price of
+freedom. With childlike faith in their cause, the Northern people,
+in midsummer, were crying, "On to Richmond!" In the autumn, stung by
+defeat, they were ready to cry, "Down with Lincoln."
+
+In a subsequent report, the War Department confessed that at the
+beginning of hostilities, "nearly all our arms and ammunition" came from
+foreign countries. One great reason why no military successes relieve
+the gloom of 1861 was that, from a soldier's point of view, there
+were no armies. Soldiers, it is true, there were in myriads; but arms,
+ammunition, and above all, organization were lacking. The supplies
+in the government arsenals had been provided for an army of but a few
+thousand. Strive as they would, all the factories in the country could
+not come anywhere near making arms for half a million men; nor did the
+facilities of those days make it possible for munition plants to spring
+up overnight. Had it not been that the Confederacy was equally hard
+pushed, even harder pushed, to find arms and ammunition, the war would
+have ended inside Seward's ninety days, through sheer lack of powder.
+
+Even with the respite given by the unpreparedness of the South, and
+while Lincoln hurriedly collected arms and ammunition from abroad, the
+startled nation, thus suddenly forced into a realization of what
+war meant, lost its head. From its previous reckless trust in sheer
+enthusiasm, it reacted to a distrust of almost everything. Why were the
+soldiers not armed? Why did not millions of rounds of cartridges fall
+like manna out of the sky? Why did not the crowds of volunteers become
+armies at a word of command? One of the darkest pages in American
+history records the way in which the crowd, undisciplined to endure
+strain, turned upon Lincoln in its desire to find in the conduct of
+their leader a pretext for venting upon him the fierceness of their
+anxiety. Such a pretext they found in his treatment of Fremont.
+
+The singular episode of Fremont's arrogance in 1861 is part of the
+story of the border States whose friendship was eagerly sought by both
+sides--Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and those mountainous counties
+which in time were to become West Virginia. To retain Maryland and thus
+to keep open the connection between the Capital and the North was one
+of Lincoln's deepest anxieties. By degrees the hold of the Government
+in Maryland was made secure, and the State never seceded. Kentucky, too,
+held to the Union, though, during many anxious months in 1861, Lincoln
+did not know whether this State was to be for him or against him. The
+Virginia mountains, from the first, seemed a more hopeful field, for the
+mountaineers had opposed the Virginia secession and, as soon as it was
+accomplished, had begun holding meetings of protest. In the meantime
+George B. McClellan, with the rank of general bestowed upon him by the
+Federal Government, had been appointed to command the militia of Ohio.
+He was sent to assist the insurgent mountaineers, and with him went the
+Ohio militia. From this situation and from the small engagements with
+Confederate forces in which McClellan was successful, there resulted the
+separate State of West Virginia and the extravagant popular notion that
+McClellan was a great general. His successes were contrasted in the
+ordinary mind with the crushing defeat at Bull Run, which happened at
+about the same time.
+
+The most serious of all these struggles in the border States, however,
+was that which took place in Missouri, where, owing to the strength
+of both factions and their promptness in organizing, real war began
+immediately. A Union army led by General Nathaniel Lyon attacked the
+Confederates with great spirit at Wilson's Creek but was beaten back in
+a fierce and bloody battle in which their leader was killed.
+
+Even before these events Fremont had been appointed to chief command
+in Missouri, and here he at once began a strange course of dawdling and
+posing. His military career must be left to the military historians--who
+have not ranked him among the great generals. Civil history accuses him,
+if not of using his new position to make illegitimate profits, at least
+of showing reckless favoritism toward those who did. It is hardly unfair
+to say that Lincoln, in bearing with Fremont as long as he did, showed
+a touch of amiable weakness; and yet, it must be acknowledged that the
+President knew that the country was in a dangerous mood, that Fremont
+was immensely popular, and that any change might be misunderstood.
+Though Lincoln hated to appear anything but a friend to a fallen
+political rival, he was at last forced to act. Frauds in government
+contracts at St. Louis were a public scandal, and the reputation of the
+government had to be saved by the removal of Fremont in November, 1861.
+As an immediate consequence of this action the overstrained nerves of
+great numbers of people snapped. Fremont's personal followers, as well
+as the abolitionists whom he had actively supported while in command in
+Missouri, and all that vast crowd of excitable people who are unable to
+stand silent under strain, clamored against Lincoln in the wildest and
+most absurd vein. He was accused of being a "dictator"; he was called an
+"imbecile"; he ought to be impeached, and a new party, with Fremont as
+its leader, should be formed to prosecute the war. But through all this
+clamor Lincoln kept his peace and let the heathen rage.
+
+Toward the end of the year, popular rage turned suddenly on Cameron,
+who, as Secretary of War, had taken an active but proper part in the
+investigation of Fremont's conduct. It was one of those tremulous
+moments when people are desperately eager to have something done and are
+ready to believe anything. Though McClellan, now in chief command of
+the Union forces, had an immense army which was fast getting properly
+equipped, month faded into month without his advancing against the
+enemy. Again the popular cry was raised, "On to Richmond!" It was at
+this moment of military inactivity and popular restlessness that charges
+of peculation were brought forward against Cameron.
+
+These charges both were and were not well founded. Himself a rich
+man, it is not likely that Cameron profited personally by government
+contracts, even though the acrimonious Thad Stevens said of his
+appointment as Secretary that it would add "another million to his
+fortune." There seems little doubt, however, that Cameron showered
+lucrative contracts upon his political retainers. And no boss has ever
+held the State of Pennsylvania in a firmer grip. His tenure of the
+Secretaryship of War was one means to that end.
+
+The restless alarm of the country at large expressed itself in such
+extravagant words as these which Senator Grimes wrote to Senator
+Fessenden: "We are going to destruction as fast as imbecility,
+corruption, and the wheels of time can carry us." So dissatisfied,
+indeed, was Congress with the conduct of the war that it appointed a
+committee of investigation. During December, 1861, and January, 1862,
+the committee was summoning generals before it, questioning them,
+listening to all manner of views, accomplishing nothing, but rendering
+more and more feverish an atmosphere already surcharged with anxiety.
+On the floors of Congress debate raged as to who was responsible for
+the military inaction--for the country's "unpreparedness," we should say
+today--and as to whether Cameron was honest. Eventually the House in a
+vote of censure condemned the Secretary of War.
+
+Long before this happened, however, Lincoln had interfered and very
+characteristically removed the cause of trouble, while taking upon
+himself the responsibility for the situation, by nominating Cameron
+minister to Russia, and by praising him for his "ability, patriotism,
+and fidelity to the public trust." Though the President had not
+sufficient hold upon the House to prevent the vote of censure, his
+influence was strong in the Senate, and the new appointment of Cameron
+was promptly confirmed.
+
+There was in Washington at this time that grim man who had served
+briefly as Attorney-General in the Cabinet of Buchanan--Edwin M.
+Stanton. He despised the President and expressed his opinion in such
+words as "the painful imbecility of Lincoln." The two had one personal
+recollection in common: long before, in a single case, at Cincinnati,
+the awkward Lincoln had been called in as associate counsel to serve the
+convenience of Stanton, who was already a lawyer of national repute.
+To his less-known associate Stanton showed a brutal rudeness that was
+characteristic. It would have been hard in 1861 to find another man more
+difficult to get on with. Headstrong, irascible, rude, he had a sharp
+tongue which he delighted in using; but he was known to be inflexibly
+honest, and was supposed to have great executive ability. He was also
+a friend of McClellan, and if anybody could rouse that tortoise-like
+general, Stanton might be supposed to be the man. He had been a valiant
+Democrat, and Democratic support was needed by the government. Lincoln
+astonished him with his appointment as Secretary of War in January,
+1862. Stanton justified the President's choice, and under his strong
+if ruthless hand the War Department became sternly efficient. The whole
+story of Stanton's relations to his chief is packed, like the Arabian
+genius in the fisherman's vase, into one remark of Lincoln's. "Did
+Stanton tell you I was a fool?" said Lincoln on one occasion, in the
+odd, smiling way he had. "Then I expect I must be one, for he is almost
+always right, and generally says what he means."
+
+In spite of his efficiency and personal force, Stanton was unable to
+move his friend McClellan, with whom he soon quarreled. Each now sought
+in his own way to control the President, though neither understood
+Lincoln's character. From McClellan, Lincoln endured much condescension
+of a kind perilously near impertinence. To Stanton, Lincoln's patience
+seemed a mystery; to McClellan--a vain man, full of himself--the
+President who would merely smile at this bullyragging on the part of
+one of his subordinates seemed indeed a spiritless creature. Meanwhile
+Lincoln, apparently devoid of sensibility, was seeking during the
+anxious months of 1862, in one case, merely how to keep his petulant
+Secretary in harness; in the other, how to quicken his tortoise of a
+general.
+
+Stanton made at least one great blunder. Though he had been three months
+in office, and McClellan was still inactive, there were already several
+successes to the credit of the Union arms. The Monitor and Virginia
+(Merrimac) had fought their famous duel, and Grant had taken Fort
+Donelson. The latter success broke through the long gloom of the North
+and caused, as Holmes wrote, "a delirium of excitement." Stanton rashly
+concluded that he now had the game in his hands, and that a sufficient
+number of men had volunteered. This civilian Secretary of War, who had
+still much to learn of military matters, issued an order putting a stop
+to recruiting. Shortly afterwards great disaster befell the Union arms.
+McClellan, before Richmond, was checked in May. Early in July, his
+peninsula campaign ended disastrously in the terrible "Seven Days'
+Battle."
+
+Anticipating McClellan's failure, Lincoln had already determined to call
+for more troops. On July 1st, he called upon the Governors of the
+States to provide him with 300,000 men to serve three years. But the
+volunteering enthusiasm--explain it as you will--had suffered a check.
+The psychological moment had passed. So slow was the response to the
+call of July 1st, that another appeal was made early in August, this
+time for 300,000 men to serve only nine months. But this also failed
+to rouse the country. A reinforcement of only 87,000 men was raised in
+response to this emergency call. The able lawyer in the War Department
+had still much to learn about men and nations.
+
+After this check, terrible incidents of war came thick and fast--the
+defeat at Second Manassas, in late August; the horrible drawn battle
+of Antietam-Sharpsburg, in September; Fredericksburg, that carnival of
+slaughter, in December; the dearly bought victory of Murfreesboro, which
+opened 1863. There were other disastrous events at least as serious.
+Foreign affairs* were at their darkest. Within the political coalition
+supporting Lincoln, contention was the order of the day. There was
+general distrust of the President. Most alarming of all, that ebb of the
+wave of enthusiasm which began in midsummer, 1861, reached in the autumn
+of 1862 perhaps its lowest point. The measure of the reaction against
+Lincoln was given in the Congressional election, in which, though the
+Government still retained a working majority, the Democrats gained
+thirty-three seats.
+
+     * See Chapter IX.
+
+If there could be such a thing as a true psychological history of the
+war, one of its most interesting pages would determine just how far
+Stanton was responsible, through his strange blunder over recruiting,
+for the check to enthusiasm among the Northern people. With this
+speculation there is connected a still unsolved problem in statistics.
+To what extent did the anti-Lincoln vote, in 1862, stand for sympathy
+with the South, and how far was it the hopeless surrender of Unionists
+who felt that their cause was lost? Though certainty on this point is
+apparently impossible, there can be no doubt that at the opening of
+1863, the Government felt it must apply pressure to the flagging spirits
+of its supporters. In order to reenforce the armies and to push the war
+through, there was plainly but one course to be followed--conscription.
+
+The government leaders in Congress brought in a Conscription Act early
+in the year. The hot debates upon this issue dragged through a month's
+time, and now make instructive reading for the present generation
+that has watched the Great War*. The Act of 1863 was not the work of
+soldiers, but was literally "made in Congress." Stanton grimly made
+the best of it, though he unwaveringly condemned some of its most
+conspicuous provisions. His business was to retrieve his blunder of
+the previous year, and he was successful. Imperfect as it was, the
+Conscription Act, with later supplementary legislation, enabled him to
+replace the wastage of the Union armies and steadily to augment them.
+At the close of the war, the Union had on foot a million men with an
+enrolled reserve of two millions and a half, subject to call.
+
+     * The battle over conscription in England was anticipated in
+     America sixty-four years ago.  Bagot says that the average
+     British point of view may be expressed thus: "What I am
+     sayin' is this here as I was a sayin' yesterday."  The
+     Anglo-Saxon mind is much the same the world over.  In
+     America, today, the enemies of effective military
+     organization would do well to search the arguments of their
+     skillful predecessors in 1888, who fought to the last ditch
+     for a military system that would make inescapable "peace at
+     any price."  For the modern believers in conscription, one
+     of their best bits of political thunder is still the defense
+     of it by Lincoln.
+
+The Act provided for a complete military census, for which purpose the
+country was divided into enrollment districts. Every able-bodied
+male citizen, or intending citizen, between the ages of twenty and
+forty-five, unless exempted for certain specified reasons, was to be
+enrolled as a member of the national forces; these forces were to be
+called to the colors--"drafted," the term was--as the Government found
+need of them; each successive draft was to be apportioned among the
+districts in the ratio of the military population, and the number
+required was to be drawn by lot; if the district raised its quota
+voluntarily, no draft would be made; any drafted man could offer a
+substitute or could purchase his discharge for three hundred dollars.
+The latter provision especially was condemned by Stanton. It was seized
+upon by demagogues as a device for giving rich men an advantage over
+poor men.
+
+American politics during the war form a wildly confused story, so
+intricate that it cannot be made clear in a brief statement. But
+this central fact may be insisted upon: in the North, there were two
+political groups that were the poles around which various other groups
+revolved and combined, only to fly asunder and recombine, with all the
+maddening inconstancy of a kaleidoscope. The two irreconcilable elements
+were the "war party" made up of determined men resolved to see things
+through, and the "copperheads"* who for one reason or another united
+in a faithful struggle for peace at any price. Around the copperheads
+gathered the various and singular groups who helped to make up the ever
+fluctuating "peace party." It is an error to assume that this peace
+party was animated throughout by fondness for the Confederacy. Though
+many of its members were so actuated, the core of the party seems to
+have been that strange type of man who sustained political evasion
+in the old days, who thought that sweet words can stop bullets, whose
+programme in 1863 called for a cessation of hostilities and a general
+convention of all the States, and who promised as the speedy result of
+a debauch of talk a carnival of bright eyes glistening with the tears
+of revived affection. With these strange people in 1863 there combined
+a number of different types: the still stranger, still less creditable
+visionary, of whom much hereafter; the avowed friends of the principle
+of state rights; all those who distrusted the Government because of its
+anti-slavery sympathies; Quakers and others with moral scruples against
+war; and finally, sincere legalists to whom the Conscription Act
+appeared unconstitutional. In the spring of 1863 the issue of
+conscription drew the line fairly sharply between the two political
+coalitions, though each continued to fluctuate, more or less, to the end
+of the war.
+
+     * The term arose, it has been said, from the use of the
+     copper cent with its head of Liberty as a peace button.  But
+     a more plausible explanation associates the peace advocates
+     with the deadly copperhead snake.
+
+The peace party of 1863 has been denounced hastily rather than carefully
+studied. Its precise machinations are not fully known, but the ugly fact
+stands forth that a portion of the foreign population of the North was
+roused in 1863 to rebellion. The occasion was the beginning of the first
+draft under the new law, in July, 1863, and the scene of the rebellion
+was the City of New York. The opponents of conscription had already
+made inflammatory attacks on the Government. Conspicuous among them was
+Horatio Seymour, who had been elected Governor of New York in that wave
+of reaction in the autumn of 1862. Several New York papers joined the
+crusade. In Congress, the Government had already been threatened with
+civil war if the act was enforced. Nevertheless, the public drawing
+by lot began on the days announced. In New York the first drawing took
+place on Saturday, July 12th, and the lists were published in the Sunday
+papers. As might be expected, many of the men drawn were of foreign
+birth, and all day Sunday, the foreign quarter of New York was a
+cauldron boiling.
+
+On Monday, the resumption of the drawing was the signal for revolt.
+A mob invaded one of the conscription offices, drove off the men in
+charge, and set fire to the building. In a short while, the streets were
+filled with dense crowds of foreignborn workmen shouting, "Down with
+the rich men," and singing, "We'll hang Horace Greeley on a sour apple
+tree." Houses of prominent citizens were attacked and set on fire, and
+several drafting offices were burned. Many <DW64>s who were seized were
+either clubbed to death or hanged to lamp posts. Even an orphan asylum
+for <DW52> children was burned. The office of the "Tribune" was raided,
+gutted, and set on fire. Finally a dispatch to Stanton, early in the
+night, reported that the mob had taken possession of the city.
+
+The events of the next day were no less shocking. The city was almost
+stripped of soldiers, as all available reserves had already been hurried
+south when Lee was advancing toward Gettysburg. But such militia as
+could be mustered, with a small force of federal troops, fought the mob
+in the streets. Barricades were carried by storm; blood was freely shed.
+It was not, however, until the fourth day that the rebellion was finally
+quelled, chiefly by New York regiments, hurried north by Stanton--among
+them the famous Seventh--which swept the streets with cannon.
+
+The aftermath of the New York riots was a correspondence between Lincoln
+and Seymour. The latter had demanded a suspension of the draft until the
+courts could decide on the constitutionality of the Conscription Act.
+Lincoln refused. With ten thousand troops now assembled in New York, the
+draft was resumed, and there was no further trouble.
+
+The resistance to the Government in New York was but the most terrible
+episode in a protracted contention which involves, as Americans are
+beginning to see, one of the most fundamental and permanent questions
+of Lincoln's rule: how can the exercise of necessary war powers by
+the President be reconciled with the guarantees of liberty in the
+Constitution? It is unfortunate that Lincoln did not draw up a fully
+rounded statement of his own theory regarding this problem, instead
+of leaving it to be inferred from detached observations and from his
+actions. Apparently, he felt there was nothing to do but to follow the
+Roman precedent and, in a case of emergency, frankly permit the use
+of extraordinary power. We may attribute to him that point of view
+expressed by a distinguished Democrat of our own day: "Democracy has to
+learn how to use the dictator as a necessary war tool."* Whether Lincoln
+set a good model for democracy in this perilous business is still to be
+determined. His actions have been freely labeled usurpation. The first
+notorious instance occurred in 1861, during the troubles in Maryland,
+when he authorized military arrests of suspected persons. For the
+release of one of these, a certain Merryman, Chief Justice Taney
+issued a writ of habeas corpus**. Lincoln authorized his military
+representatives to disregard the writ. In 1862 he issued a proclamation
+suspending the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus in cases of
+persons charged with "discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting
+military drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice...." Such persons
+were to be tried by military commissions.
+
+     *President Edwin A. Alderman, of the University of Virginia.
+
+     ** The Constitution permits the suspension of the privileges
+     of the writ of habeas corpus "when in cases of rebellion or
+     invasion the public safety may require it," but fails to
+     provide a method of suspension.  Taney held that the power
+     to suspend lay with Congress.  Five years afterward, when
+     Chase was Chief Justice, the Supreme Court, in ex parte
+     Milligan, took the same view and further declared that even
+     Congress could not deprive a citizen of his right to trial
+     by jury so long as the local civil courts are in operation.
+     The Confederate experience differed from the Federal
+     inasmuch as Congress kept control of the power to suspend
+     the writ.  But both governments made use of such suspension
+     to set up martial law in districts where the local courts
+     were open but where, from one cause or another, the
+     Administration had not confidence in their effectiveness.
+     Under ex parte Milligan, both Presidents and both Congresses
+     were guilty of usurpation. The mere layman waits for the
+     next great hour of trial to learn whether this
+     interpretation will stand.  In the Milligan case the Chief
+     Justice and three others dissented.
+
+There can be little doubt that this proclamation caused something like
+a panic in many minds, filled them with the dread of military despotism,
+and contributed to the reaction against Lincoln in the autumn of 1862.
+Under this proclamation many arrests were made and many victims were
+sent to prison. So violent was the opposition that on March 3, 1863,
+Congress passed an act which attempted to bring the military and civil
+courts into cooperation, though it did not take away from the President
+all the dictatorial power which he had assumed. The act seems; however,
+to have had little general effect, and it was disregarded in the
+most celebrated of the cases of military arrest, that of Clement L.
+Vallandigham.
+
+A representative from Ohio and one of the most vituperative anti-Lincoln
+men in Congress, Vallandigham in a sensational speech applied to the
+existing situation Chatham's words, "My lords, you cannot conquer
+America." He professed to see before him in the future nothing "but
+universal political and social revolution, anarchy, and bloodshed,
+compared with which the Reign of Terror in France was a merciful
+visitation." To escape such a future, he demanded an armistice, to be
+followed by a friendly peace established through foreign mediation.
+
+Returning to Ohio after the adjournment of Congress, Vallandigham spoke
+to a mass-meeting in a way that was construed as rank treason by General
+Burnside who was in command at Cincinnati. Vallandigham was arrested,
+tried by court martial, and condemned to imprisonment. There was an
+immediate hue and cry, in consequence of which Burnside, who reported
+the affair, felt called upon also to offer to resign. Lincoln's reply
+was characteristic: "When I shall wish to supersede you I shall let
+you know. All the Cabinet regretted the necessity for arresting, for
+instance, Vallandigham, some perhaps doubting there was a real necessity
+for it; but being done, all were for seeing you through with it."
+Lincoln, however, commuted the sentence to banishment and had
+Vallandigham sent through the lines into the Confederacy.
+
+It seems quite plain that the condemnation of Lincoln on this issue of
+usurpation was not confined to the friends of the Confederacy, nor has
+it been confined to his enemies in later days. One of Lincoln's
+most ardent admirers, the historian Rhodes, condemns his course
+unqualifiedly. "There can be no question," he writes, "that from the
+legal point of view the President should have rescinded the sentence and
+released Vallandigham." Lincoln, he adds, "stands responsible for
+the casting into prison of citizens of the United States on orders as
+arbitrary as the lettres-de-cachet of Louis XIV." Since Mr. Rhodes,
+uncompromising Unionist, can write as he does upon this issue, it is
+plain that the opposition party cannot be dismissed as through and
+through disunionist.
+
+The trial of Vallandigham made him a martyr and brought him the
+Democratic nomination for Governor of Ohio*. His followers sought to
+make the issue of the campaign the acceptance or rejection of military
+despotism. In defense of his course Lincoln wrote two public letters in
+which he gave evidence of the skill which he had acquired as a lawyer
+before a jury by the way in which he played upon the emotions of his
+readers.
+
+     * Edward Everett Hale's famous story "The Man Without a
+     Country", though it got into print too late to affect the
+     election, was aimed at Vallandigham.  That quaint allegory
+     on the lack of patriotism became a temporary classic.
+
+"Long experience [he wrote] has shown that armies cannot be maintained
+unless desertion shall be punished by the severe penalty of death.
+The case requires, and the law and the Constitution sanction, this
+punishment. Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while
+I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?
+This is none the less injurious when effected by getting a father, or
+brother, or friend into a public meeting, and there working upon his
+feelings till he is persuaded to write the soldier boy that he is
+fighting in a bad cause for a wicked administration and a contemptible
+government, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert. I
+think that in such a case to silence the agitator and save the boy is
+not only constitutional, but, withal, a great mercy."
+
+His real argument may be summed up in these words of his:
+
+"You ask, in substance, whether I really claim that I may override all
+the guaranteed rights of individuals, on the plea of conserving the
+public safety--when I may choose to say the public safety requires it.
+This question, divested of the phraseology calculated to represent me as
+struggling for an arbitrary prerogative, is either simply a question
+who shall decide, or an affirmation that nobody shall decide, what the
+public safety does require in cases of rebellion or invasion.
+
+"The Constitution contemplates the question as likely to occur for
+decision, but it does not expressly declare who is to decide it. By
+necessary implication, when rebellion or invasion comes, the decision is
+to be made, from time to time; and I think the man, whom for the time,
+the people have under the Constitution, made the commander-in-chief
+of their army and navy, is the man who holds the power and bears the
+responsibility of making it. If he uses the power justly, the same
+people will probably justify him; if he abuses it, he is in their hands
+to be dealt with by all the modes they have reserved to themselves in
+the Constitution."
+
+Lincoln virtually appealed to the Northern people to secure efficiency
+by setting him momentarily above all civil authority. He asked them
+in substance, to interpret their Constitution by a show of hands. No
+thoughtful person can doubt the risks of such a method; yet in Ohio,
+in 1863, the great majority--perhaps everyone who believed in the
+war--accepted Lincoln's position. Between their traditional system of
+legal juries and the new system of military tribunals the Ohio voters
+made their choice without hesitation. They rejected Vallandigham
+and sustained the Lincoln candidate by a majority of over a hundred
+thousand. That same year in New York the anti-Lincoln candidate for
+Secretary of State was defeated by twenty-nine thousand votes.
+
+Though these elections in 1863 can hardly be called the turning-point in
+the history of the Lincoln Government, yet it was clear that the tide
+of popularity which had ebbed so far away from Lincoln in the autumn of
+1862 was again in the flood. Another phase of his stormy course may be
+thought of as having ended. And in accounting for this turn of the tide
+it must not be forgotten that between the nomination and the defeat of
+a Vallandigham the bloody rebellion in New York had taken place,
+Gettysburg had been fought, and Grant had captured Vicksburg. The autumn
+of 1863 formed a breathing space for the war party of the North.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. THE CRUCIAL MATTER
+
+It is the custom of historians to measure the relative strength of North
+and South chiefly in terms of population. The North numbered 23,000,000
+inhabitants; the South, about 9,000,000, of which the slave population
+amounted to 3,500,000. But these obvious statistics only partially
+indicate the real situation. Not what one has, but what one is capable
+of using is, of course, the true measure of strength. If, in 1861,
+either side could have struck swiftly and with all its force, the story
+of the war would have been different. The question of relative strength
+was in reality a question of munitions. Both powers were glaringly
+unprepared. Both had instant need of great supplies of arms and
+ammunition, and both turned to European manufacturers for aid. Those
+Americans who, in a later war, wished to make illegal the neutral trade
+in munitions forgot that the international right of a belligerent to buy
+arms from a neutral had prevented their own destruction in 1861. In
+the supreme American crisis, agents of both North and South hurried to
+Europe in quest of munitions. On the Northern side the work was done
+chiefly by the three ministers, Charles Francis Adams, at London;
+William L. Dayton, at Paris; and Henry S. Sanford, at Brussels; by
+an able special agent, Colonel George L. Schuyler; and by the famous
+banking-house of Baring Brothers, which one might almost have called the
+European department of the United States Treasury.
+
+The eager solicitude of the War Department over the competition of the
+two groups of agents in Europe informs a number of dispatches that are,
+today, precious admonitions to the heedless descendants of that dreadful
+time. As late as October, 1861, the Acting Secretary of War wrote to
+Schuyler, one of whose shipments had been delayed: "The Department
+earnestly hopes to receive...the 12,000 Enfield rifles and the remainder
+of the 27,000, which you state you have purchased, by the earliest
+steamer following. Could you appreciate the circumstances by which we
+are surrounded, you would readily understand the urgent necessity there
+is for the immediate delivery of all the arms you are authorized to
+purchase. The Department expects to hear that you have been able
+to conclude the negotiations for the 48,000 rifles from the French
+government arsenals." That the Confederate Government acted even more
+promptly than the Union Government appears from a letter of Sanford to
+Seward in May: "I have vainly expected orders," he complains, "for
+the purchase of arms for the Government, and am tempted to order from
+Belgium all they can send over immediately.... Meanwhile the workshops
+are filling with orders from the South.... It distresses me to think
+that while we are in want of them, Southern money is taking them away to
+be used against us."
+
+At London, Adams took it upon himself to contract for arms in advance of
+instructions. He wrote to Seward: "Aware of the degree to which I exceed
+my authority in taking such a step, nothing but a conviction of the need
+in which the country stands of such assistance and the joint opinion of
+all the diplomatic agents of the United States...in Paris, has induced
+me to overcome my scruples." How real was the necessity of which this
+able diplomat was so early conscious, is demonstrated at every turn
+in the papers of the War Department. Witness this brief dispatch from
+Harrisburg: "All ready to leave but no arms. Governor not willing to
+let us leave State without them, as act of Assembly forbids. Can arms
+be sent here?" When this appeal was made, in December, 1861, arms were
+pouring into the country from Europe, and the crisis had passed. But if
+this appeal had been made earlier in the year, the inevitable answer may
+be guessed from a dispatch which the Ordnance Office sent, as late as
+September, to the authorities of West Virginia, refusing to supply
+them with arms because the supplies were exhausted, and adding, "Every
+possible exertion is being made to obtain additional supplies by
+contract, by manufacture, and by purchase, and as soon as they can be
+procured by any means, in any way, they will be supplied."
+
+Curiously enough, not only the Confederacy but various States of the
+North were more expeditious in this all-important matter than Cameron
+and the War Department. Schuyler's first dispatch from London gives
+this singular information: "All private establishments in Birmingham
+and London are now working for the States of Ohio, Connecticut, and
+Massachusetts, except the London Armory, whose manufacture is supposed
+to go to the Rebels, but of this last fact I am not positively informed.
+I am making arrangements to secure these establishments for our
+Government, if desirable after the present State contracts expire. On
+the Continent, Messrs, Dayton and Sanford...have been making contracts
+and agreements of various kinds, of which you are by this time
+informed." Soon afterward, from Paris, he made a long report detailing
+the difficulties of his task, the limitations of the existing munitions
+plants in Europe, and promising among other things those "48,000 rifles
+from the French government arsenals" for which, in the letter already
+quoted, the War Department yearned. It was an enormous labor; and,
+strive as he would, Schuyler found American mail continuing to bring him
+such letters as this from the Assistant Secretary of War in October: "I
+notice with much regret that [in the latest consignment] there were no
+guns sent, as it was confidently expected that 20,000 would arrive by
+the [steamship] Fulton, and accordingly arrangements had been made to
+distribute them through the different States. Prompt and early shipments
+of guns are desirable. We hope to hear by next steamer that you have
+shipped from 80,000 to 100,000 stand."
+
+The last word on the problem of munitions, which was so significant
+a factor in the larger problem, is the report of the United States
+Ordnance Office for the first year of the war. It shows that between
+April, 1861, and June, 1862, the Government purchased from American
+manufacturers somewhat over 30,000 rifles, and that from European makers
+it purchased 726,000.
+
+From these illustrations it is therefore obvious that the true measure
+of the immediate strength of the American contestants in 1861 was the
+extent of their ability to supply themselves from Europe; and this,
+stated more concretely, became the question as to which was the better
+able to keep its ports open and receive the absolutely essential
+European aid. Lincoln showed his clear realization of the situation
+when he issued, immediately after the first call for volunteers, a
+proclamation blockading the Southern coasts. Whether the Northern people
+at the time appreciated the significance of this order is a question.
+Amid the wild and vain clamor of the multitude in 1861, with its
+conventional and old-fashioned notion of war as a thing of trumpets and
+glittering armies, the North seems wholly to have ignored its fleet; and
+yet in the beginning this resource was its only strength.
+
+The fleet was small, to be sure, but its task was at first also small.
+There were few Southern ports which were doing a regular business with
+Europe, and to close these was not difficult. As other ports opened and
+the task of blockade grew, the Northern navy also increased. Within a
+few months, to the few observers who did not lose their heads, it was
+plain that the North had won the first great contest of the war. It had
+so hampered Southern trade that Lincoln's advantage in arming the North
+from Europe was ten to one. At the very time when detractors of Lincoln
+were hysterical over the removal of Fremont, when Grimes wrote to
+Fessenden that the country was going to the dogs as fast as imbecility
+could carry it, this great achievement had quietly taken place. An
+expedition sailing in August from Fortress Monroe seized the forts which
+commanded Hatteras Inlet off the coast of North Carolina. In November,
+Commander Dupont, U. S. N., seized Port Royal, one of the best harbors
+on the coast of South Carolina, and established there a naval base.
+Thenceforth, while the open Northern ports received European munitions
+without hindrance, it was a risky business getting munitions into the
+ports of the South. Only the boldest traders would attempt to "run the
+blockade," to evade the Federal patrol ships by night and run into a
+Southern port.
+
+However, for one moment in the autumn of 1861, it seemed as if all the
+masterful work of the Northern navy would be undone by the Northern
+people themselves in backing up the rashness of Captain Charles Wilkes,
+of the war-ship San Jacinto. On the high seas he overhauled the British
+mail steamer, Trent. Aboard her were two Confederate diplomatic
+agents, James M. Mason and John Slidell, who had run the blockade from
+Charleston to Havana and were now on their way to England. Wilkes took
+off the two Confederates as prisoners of war. The crowd in the North
+went wild. "We do not believe," said the New York Times, "that the
+American heart ever thrilled with more sincere delight."
+
+The intemperate joy of the crowd over the rashness of Wilkes was due in
+part to a feeling of bitterness against the British Government. In
+May, 1861, the Queen had issued a proclamation of neutrality, whose
+justification in international law was hotly debated at the time and was
+generally denied by Northerners. England was the great cotton market of
+the world. To the excited Northern mind, in 1861, there could be but one
+explanation of England's action: a partisan desire to serve the South,
+to break up the blockade, and to secure cotton. Whether such was the
+real purpose of the ministry then in power is now doubted; but at
+that time it was the beginning of a sharp contention between the two
+Governments. The Trent affair naturally increased the tension. So keen
+was the indignation of all classes of Englishmen that it seemed, for a
+moment, as if the next step would be war.
+
+In America, the prompt demand for the release of Mason and Slidell was
+met, at first, in a spirit equally bellicose. Fortunately there were
+cool and clear heads that at once condemned Wilkes's action as a gross
+breach of international law. Prominent among these was Sumner. The
+American Government, however, admitted the justice of the British demand
+and the envoys were released.
+
+Relations with the United States now became a burning issue in
+English politics. There were three distinct groups in Parliament. The
+representatives of the aristocracy, whether Liberals or Conservatives,
+in the main sympathized with the South. So did most of the large
+manufacturers whose business interests were affected by cotton. Great
+bitterness grew up among the Northerners against both these groups,
+partly because in the past many of their members had condemned slavery
+and had said scornful things about America for tolerating it. To these
+Northerners the Englishmen replied that Lincoln himself had declared
+the war was not over slavery; that it was an ordinary civil war not
+involving moral issues. Nevertheless, the third Parliamentary group
+insisted that the American war, no matter what the motives of the
+participants, would, in the event of a Northern victory, bring about the
+abolition of slavery, whereas, if the South won, the result would be
+the perpetuation of slavery. This third group, therefore, threw all its
+weight on the side of the North. In this group Lincoln recognized his
+allies, and their cause he identified with his own in his letter to
+English workmen which was quoted in the previous chapter. Their leaders
+in Parliament were Richard Cobden, W. E. Forster, and John Bright.
+All these groups were represented in the Liberal party, which, for the
+moment, was in power.
+
+In the Cabinet itself there was a "Northern" and a "Southern" faction.
+Then, too, there were some who sympathized with the North but who felt
+that its cause was hopeless--so little did they understand the relative
+strength of the two sections--and who felt that the war was a terrible
+proof of the uselessness of mere suffering. Gladstone, in later days,
+wished to be thought of as having been one of these, though at the time,
+a famous utterance of his was construed in the North as a declaration
+of hostility. To a great audience at Newcastle he said in October, 1862:
+"We may have our own opinions about slavery; we may be for or against
+the South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders
+of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and
+they have made, what is more than either--they have made a nation."
+
+The Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, wished to intervene in the American
+war and bring about an amicable separation into two countries, and so,
+apparently, did the Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell. Recently, the
+American minister had vainly protested against the sailing of a ship
+known as 290 which was being equipped at Liverpool presumably for the
+service of the Confederacy, and which became the famous Alabama. For two
+years it roved the ocean destroying Northern commerce, and not until
+it was sunk at last in a battle with the U. S. S. Kearsarge did all the
+maritime interests of the North breathe again freely. In time and as a
+result of arbitration, England paid for the ships sunk by the Alabama.
+But in 1862, the protests of the American minister fell on deaf ears.
+
+It must be added that the sailing of the Alabama from Liverpool was
+due probably to the carelessness of British officials rather than to
+deliberate purpose. And yet the fact is clear that about the first of
+October, 1862, the British ministry was on the verge of intervening to
+secure recognition of the independence of the Southern confederacy. The
+chief motive pressing them forward was the distress in England caused by
+the lack of cotton which resulted from the American blockade. In 1860,
+the South had exported 615,000 bales; in 1861, only 10,127 bales. In
+1862 half the spindles of Manchester were idle; the workmen were out of
+employment; the owners were without dividends. It was chiefly by these
+manufacturing capitalists that pressure was put upon the ministry,
+and it was in the manufacturing district that Gladstone, thinking the
+Government was likely to intervene, made his allusion to the South as a
+nation.
+
+Meanwhile the Emperor of the French was considering a proposal to
+England and Russia to join with him in mediation between the American
+belligerents. On October 28, 1862, Napoleon III gave audience to the
+Confederate envoy at Paris, discussed the Southern cause in the most
+friendly manner, questioned him upon the Maryland campaign, plainly
+indicated his purpose to attempt intervention, and at parting cordially
+shook hands with him. Within a few days the Emperor made good his
+implied promise.
+
+The month of November, 1862, is one of the turning-points in American
+foreign relations. Both Russia and England rejected France's proposal.
+The motive usually assigned to the Emperor Alexander is his hatred of
+everything associated with slavery. His own most famous action was the
+liberation of the Russian serfs. The motives of the British ministry,
+however, appear more problematical.
+
+Mr. Rhodes thinks he can discern evidence that Adams communicated
+indirectly to Palmerston the contents of a dispatch from Seward which
+indicated that the United States would accept war rather than mediation.
+Palmerston had kept his eyes upon the Maryland campaign, and Lee's
+withdrawal did not increase his confidence in the strength of the South.
+Lord Russell, two months previous, had flatly told the Confederate envoy
+at London that the South need not hope for recognition unless it could
+establish itself without aid, and that "the fluctuating events of
+the war, the alternation of defeat and victory," composed such a
+contradictory situation that "Her Majesty's Government are still
+determined to wait."
+
+Perhaps the veiled American warning--assuming it was conveyed to
+Palmerston, which seems highly probable--was not the only diplomatic
+innuendo of the autumn of 1862 that has escaped the pages of history.
+Slidell at Paris, putting together the statements of the British
+Ambassador and those of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, found in
+them contradictions as to what was going on between the two governments
+in relation to America. He took a hand by attempting to inspire M.
+Drouyn de L'huys with distrust of England, telling him he "HAD SEEN...a
+letter from a leading member of the British Cabinet...in which he very
+plainly insinuated that France was playing an unfair game," trying to
+use England as Napoleon's catspaw. Among the many motives that may
+well have animated the Palmerston Government in its waiting policy, a
+distrust of Napoleon deserves to be considered.
+
+It is scarcely rash, however, to find the chief motive in home politics.
+The impetuous Gladstone at Newcastle lost his head and spoke too soon.
+The most serious effect of his premature utterance was the prompt
+reaction of the "Northern party" in the Cabinet and in the country.
+Whatever Palmerston's secret desires were, he was not prepared to take
+the high hand, and he therefore permitted other members of the Cabinet
+to state in public that Gladstone had been misunderstood. In an
+interview with Adams, Lord Russell, "whilst endeavoring to excuse Mr.
+Gladstone," assured him that "the policy of the Government was to adhere
+to a strict neutrality and leave the struggle to settle itself." In the
+last analysis, the Northern party in England was gaining ground. The
+news from America, possibly, and Gladstone's rashness, certainly, roused
+it to increased activity. Palmerston, whose tenure of power was none too
+secure, dared not risk a break that might carry the disaffected into the
+ranks of the Opposition.
+
+From this time forward the North rapidly grew in favor in British public
+opinion, and its influence upon the Government speedily increased.
+
+Says Lord Charnwood in his recent life of Lincoln: "The battle of
+Antietam was followed within five days by an event which made it
+impossible for any government of this country to take action unfriendly
+to the North." He refers of course to the Emancipation Proclamation,
+which was issued on September 23, 1862. Lord Charnwood's remark may
+be too dramatic. But there can be no doubt that the Emancipation
+Proclamation was the turning-point in Lincoln's foreign policy; and
+because of it, his friends in England eventually forced the Government
+to play into his hands, and so frustrated Napoleon's scheme for
+intervention. Consequently Lincoln was able to maintain the blockade
+by means of which the South was strangled. Thus, at bottom, the crucial
+matter was Emancipation.
+
+Lincoln's policy with regard to slavery passed through three distinct
+stages. As we have seen, he proposed, at first, to pledge the Government
+not to interfere with slavery in the States where it then existed. This
+was his maximum of compromise. He would not agree to permitting its
+extension into new territory. He maintained this position through 1861,
+when it was made an accusation against him by the Abolitionists and
+contributed to the ebb of his popularity. It also played a great part
+in the episode of Fremont. At a crucial moment in Fremont's career, when
+his hold upon popularity seemed precarious, he set at naught the
+policy of the President and issued an order (August 30, 1861), which
+confiscated all property and slaves of those who were in arms against
+the United States or actively aiding the enemy, and which created a
+"bureau of abolition." Whether Fremont was acting from conviction or
+"playing politics" may be left to his biographers. In a most tactful
+letter Lincoln asked him to modify the order so as to conform to the
+Confiscation Act of Congress; and when Fremont proved obdurate, Lincoln
+ordered him to do so. In the outcry against Lincoln when Fremont was at
+last removed, the Abolitionists rang the changes on this reversal of his
+policy of military abolition.
+
+Another Federal General, Benjamin F. Butler, in the course of 1861, also
+raised the issue, though not in the bold fashion of Fremont. Runaway
+slaves came to his camp on the Virginia coast, and he refused to
+surrender them to the owners. He took the ground that, as they had
+probably been used in building Confederate fortifications, they might be
+considered contraband of war. He was sustained by Congress, which passed
+what is commonly called the First Confiscation Act providing that slaves
+used by Confederate armies in military labor should, if captured, be
+"forfeited"--which of course meant that they should be set free. But
+this did not settle what should be done with runaways whose masters,
+though residents of seceded States, were loyal to the Union. The War
+Department decided that they should be held until the end of the war,
+when probably there would be made "just compensation to loyal masters."
+
+This first stage of Lincoln's policy rested upon the hope that the Union
+might be restored without prolonged war. He abandoned this hope about
+the end of the year. Thereupon, his policy entered its second stage. In
+the spring of 1862 he formulated a plan for gradual emancipation with
+compensation. The slaves of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, and
+the District of Columbia were to be purchased at the rate of $400 each,
+thus involving a total expenditure of $173,000,000. Although Congress
+adopted the joint resolution recommended by the President, the "border
+States" would not accept the plan. But Congress, by virtue of its
+plenary power, freed the slaves by purchase in the District of Columbia,
+and prohibited slavery in all the territories of the United States.
+
+During the second stage of his policy Lincoln again had to reverse the
+action of an unruly general. The Federal forces operating from their
+base at Port Royal had occupied a considerable portion of the Carolina
+coast. General Hunter issued an order freeing all the slaves in South
+Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. In countermanding the order, Lincoln
+made another futile appeal to the people of the border States to adopt
+some plan of compensated emancipation.
+
+"I do not argue," he said; "I beseech you to make arguments for
+yourselves. You cannot, if you would be blind to the signs of the times.
+I beg of you a calm and enlarged consideration of them, ranging, if it
+may be, far above personal and partisan politics. This proposal makes
+common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It
+acts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would come gently
+as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will you not
+embrace it? So much good has not been done by one effort in all past
+time, as in the providence of God it is now your high privilege to do.
+May the vast future not have to lament that you neglected it."
+
+This persuasive attitude and reluctance to force the issue had greatly
+displeased the Abolitionists. Their most gifted orator, Wendell
+Phillips, reviled Lincoln with all the power of his literary genius,
+and with a fury that might be called malevolent. Meanwhile, a Second
+Confiscation Act proclaimed freedom for the slaves of all those who
+supported the Confederate Government. Horace Greeley now published in
+the "New York Tribune" an editorial entitled, "The Prayer of Twenty
+Millions." He denounced Lincoln's treatment of Fremont and Hunter and
+demanded radical action. Lincoln replied in a letter now famous. "I
+would save the Union," said he, "I would save it the shortest way under
+the Constitution.... If I could save the Union without freeing any
+slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving
+others alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and the
+<DW52> race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and
+what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save
+the Union."
+
+However, at the very time when he wrote this remarkable letter, he had
+in his own mind entered upon the third stage of his policy. He had
+even then discussed with his Cabinet an announcement favoring general
+emancipation. The time did not seem to them ripe. It was decided to wait
+until a Federal victory should save the announcement from appearing
+to be a cry of desperation. Antietam, which the North interpreted as a
+victory, gave Lincoln his opportunity.
+
+The Emancipation Proclamation applied only to the States in arms against
+the Federal Government. Such States were given three months in which to
+return to the Union. Thereafter, if they did not return, their slaves
+would be regarded by that Government as free. No distinction was made
+between slaves owned by supporters of the Confederacy and those whose
+owners were in opposition to it. The Proclamation had no bearing on
+those slave States which had not seceded. Needless to add, no
+seceded State returned, and a second Proclamation making their slaves
+theoretically free was in due time issued on the first of January, 1863.
+
+It must not be forgotten that this radical change of policy was made in
+September, 1862. We have already heard of the elections which took
+place soon after--those elections which mark perhaps the lowest ebb of
+Lincoln's popularity, when Seymour was elected Governor of New York, and
+the peace party gained over thirty seats in Congress. It is a question
+whether, as a purely domestic measure, the Emancipation Proclamation was
+not, for the time, an injury to the Lincoln Government. And yet it was
+the real turning-point in the fortunes of the North. It was the central
+fact in the maintenance of the blockade.
+
+In England at this time the cotton famine was at its height. Nearly a
+million people in the manufacturing districts were wholly dependent
+upon charity. This result of the blockade had been foreseen by the
+Confederate Government which was confident that the distress of
+England's working people would compel the English ministry to intervene
+and break the blockade. The employers in England whose loss was wholly
+financial, did as the Confederates hoped they would do. The workmen,
+however, took a different course. Schooled by a number of able debaters,
+they fell into line with that third group of political leaders who
+saw in the victory of the North, whatever its motives, the eventual
+extinction of slavery. To these people, the Emancipation Proclamation
+gave a definite programme. It was now, the leaders argued, no longer a
+question of eventual effect; the North had proclaimed a motive and that
+motive was the extinction of slavery. Great numbers of Englishmen of all
+classes who had hitherto held back from supporting Cobden and Bright now
+ranged themselves on their side. Addresses of praise and sympathy "began
+to pour into the Legation of the United States in a steady and ever
+swelling stream." An immense popular demonstration took place at Exeter
+Hall. Cobden, writing to Sumner, described the new situation in British
+politics, in a letter amounting to an assurance that the Government
+never again would attempt to resist the popular pressure in favor of the
+North.
+
+On the last day of 1862 a meeting of workingmen at Manchester, where the
+cotton famine was causing untold misery, adopted one of those New
+Year greetings to Lincoln. Lincoln's reply expressed with his usual
+directness his own view of the sympathetic relation that had been
+established between the democratic classes of the two countries:
+
+"I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the workingmen at
+Manchester, and in all Europe, are called to endure in this crisis. It
+has been often and studiously represented that the attempt to overthrow
+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 favor of Europe. Through
+the action of our disloyal citizens, the workingmen of Europe have been
+subjected to severe trials, for the purpose of forcing their sanction to
+that attempt. Under the circumstances, I cannot but regard your decisive
+utterances upon the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroism
+which has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeed
+an energetic and reinspiring assurance of the inherent power of truth,
+and of the ultimate triumph of justice, humanity, and freedom. I do not
+doubt that the sentiments you have expressed will be sustained by your
+great nation; and, on the other hand, I have no hesitation in assuring
+you that they will excite admiration, esteem, and the most reciprocal
+feelings of friendship among the American people. I hail this
+interchange of sentiment, therefore, as an augury that whatever else may
+happen, whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peace
+and friendship which now exists between the two nations will be, as it
+shall be my desire to make them, perpetual."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY
+
+Though the defeat of the Democrats at the polls in 1863 and the now
+definitely friendly attitude of England had done much to secure the
+stability of the Lincoln Government, this success was due in part to
+a figure which now comes to the front and deserves attentive
+consideration. Indeed the work of Salmon Portland Chase, Secretary of
+the Treasury, forms a bridge, as one might say, between the first and
+second phases of Lincoln's administration.
+
+The interesting Englishman who is the latest biographer of Lincoln says
+of Chase: "Unfortunately, this imposing person was a sneak." But is
+Lord Charnwood justified in that surprising characterization? He finds
+support in the testimony of Secretary Welles, who calls Chase, "artful
+dodger, unstable, and unreliable." And yet there is another side, for
+it is the conventional thing in America to call him our greatest finance
+minister since Hamilton, and even a conspicuous enemy said of him, at a
+crucial moment, that his course established his character "as an honest
+and frank man."
+
+Taking these contradictory estimates as hints of a contradiction in the
+man, we are forced to the conclusion that Chase was a professional
+in politics and an amateur in finance. Perhaps herein is the whole
+explanation of the two characteristics of his financial policy--his
+reluctance to lay taxes, and his faith in loans. His two eyes did not
+see things alike. One was really trying to make out the orthodox path
+of finance; the other was peering along the more devious road of popular
+caprice.
+
+The opening of the war caught the Treasury, as it caught all branches of
+the Government, utterly unprepared. Between April and July, 1861, Chase
+had to borrow what he could. When Congress met in July, his real career
+as director of financial policy began--or, as his enemies think, failed
+to begin. At least, he failed to urge upon Congress the need of new
+taxes and appeared satisfied with himself asking for an issue of
+$240,000,000 in bonds bearing not less than seven per cent interest.
+Congress voted to give him $250,000,000 of which $50,000,000 might be
+interest-bearing treasury notes; made slight increases in duties; and
+Prepared for excise and direct taxation the following year. Later in
+the year Congress laid a three per cent tax on all incomes in excess of
+$800.
+
+When Congress reassembled in December, 1861, expenditures were racing
+ahead of receipts, and there was a deficit of $143,000,000. It must not
+be forgotten that this month was a time of intense excitability and of
+nervous reaction. Fremont had lately been removed, and the attack on
+Cameron had begun. At this crucial moment the situation was made still
+more alarming by the action of the New York banks, followed by all other
+banks, in suspending specie payments. They laid the responsibility upon
+Chase. A syndicate of banks in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia had
+come to the aid of the Government, but when they took up government
+bonds, Chase had required them to pay the full value cash down, though
+they had asked permission to hold the money on deposit and to pay it as
+needed on requisition by the Government. Furthermore, in spite of their
+protest, Chase issued treasury notes, which the banks had to receive
+from their depositors, who nevertheless continued to demand specie.
+On January 1, 1862, the banks owed $459,000,000 and had in specie only
+$87,000,000. Chase defended his course by saying that the financial
+crisis was not due to his policy--or lack of policy, as it would now
+seem--but to a general loss of faith in the outcome of the war.
+
+There now arose a moral crisis for this "imposing person" who was
+Secretary of the Treasury--a crisis with regard to which there are
+still differences of opinion. While he faced his problem silently, the
+Committee on Ways and Means in the House took the matter in hand: Its
+solution was an old one which all sound theorists on finance unite in
+condemning--the issue of irredeemable paper money. And what did the
+Secretary of the Treasury do? Previously, as Governor of Ohio, he had
+denounced paper money as, in effect, a fraud upon society. Long after,
+when the tide of fortune had landed him in the high place of Supreme
+Justice, he returned to this view and condemned as unconstitutional the
+law of 1862 establishing a system of paper money. But at the time
+when that law was passed Chase, though he went through the form of
+protesting, soon acquiesced. Before long he was asking Congress to allow
+a further issue of what he had previously called "fraudulent" money.
+
+The answer to the question whether Chase should have stuck to his
+principles and resigned rather than acquiesce in the paper money
+legislation turns on that other question--how were the politician and
+the financier related in his make-up?
+
+Before Congress and the Secretary had finished, $450,000,000 were
+issued. Prices naturally rose, and there was speculation in gold. Even
+before the first issue of paper money, the treasury notes had been
+slightly below par. In January, 1863, a hundred dollars in paper would
+bring, in New York, only $69.00 in gold; a year later, after falling,
+rising, and falling again, the value was $64.00; in July and August,
+1864, it was at its lowest, $39.00; when the war closed, it had risen to
+$67.00. There was powerful protest against the legislation responsible
+for such a condition of affairs. Justin Morrill, the author of the
+Morrill tariff, said, "I would as soon provide Chinese wooden guns
+for the army as paper money alone for the army. It will be a breach of
+public faith. It will injure creditors; it will increase prices; it will
+increase many fold the cost of the war." Recent students agree, in the
+main, that his prophecies were fulfilled; and a common estimate of the
+probable increase in the cost of the war through the use of paper money
+and the consequent inflation of prices is $600,000,000.
+
+There was much more financial legislation in 1862; but Chase continued
+to stand aside and allow Congress the lead in establishing an excise
+law, an increase in the income tax, and a higher tariff--the last of
+which was necessitated by the excise law which has been described as a
+bill "that taxed everything." To enable American manufacturers to bear
+the excise duties levied upon their business, protection was evoked
+to secure them the possession of their field by excluding foreign
+competition. All these taxes, however, produced but a fraction of the
+Government's revenue. Borrowing, the favorite method of the Secretary,
+was accepted by Congress as the main resource. It is computed that
+by means of taxation there was raised in the course of the war
+$667,163,247.00, while during the same period the Government borrowed
+$2,621,916,786.00.
+
+Whatever else he may think of Chase, no one denies that in 1862 he had
+other interests besides finance. Lincoln's Cabinet in those days was
+far from an harmonious body. All through its history there was a Chase
+faction and a Seward faction. The former had behind them the Radical
+Republicans, while the latter relied upon the support of the moderates.
+This division in the Republican party runs deep through the politics
+of the time. There seems to be good reason to think that Chase was not
+taken by surprise when his radical allies in Congress, in December,
+1862, demanded of Lincoln the removal of Seward. It will be remembered
+that the elections of the autumn of 1862 had gone against Lincoln. At
+this moment of dismay, the friends of Chase struck their blow. Seward
+instantly offered his resignation. But Lincoln skillfully temporized.
+Thereupon, Chase also resigned. Judging from the scanty evidence we have
+of his intention, we may conclude that he thought he had Lincoln in
+a corner and that he expected either to become first minister or the
+avowed chief of an irresistible opposition. But he seems to have gone
+too fast for his followers. Lincoln had met them, together with his
+Cabinet, in a conference in December, 1862, and frankly discussed the
+situation, with the result that some of them wavered. When Lincoln
+informed both Seward and Chase that he declined to accept their
+resignations, both returned--Seward with alacrity, Chase with
+reluctance. One of the clues to Lincoln's cabinet policy was his
+determination to keep both these factions committed to the Government,
+without allowing himself to be under the thumb of either.
+
+During the six months following the cabinet crisis Chase appears at
+his best. A stupendous difficulty lay before him and he attacked it
+manfully. The Government's deficit was $276,900,000. Of the loans
+authorized in 1862--the "five-twenties" as they were called, bringing
+six per cent and to run from five to twenty years at the Government's
+pleasure---the sales had brought in, to December, 1862, only
+$23,750,000, though five hundred million had been expected. The banks in
+declining to handle these bonds laid the blame on the Secretary, who had
+insisted that all purchasers should take them at par.
+
+It is not feasible, in a work of this character, to enter into the
+complexities of the financial situation of 1863, or to determine just
+what influences caused a revolution in the market for government bonds.
+But two factors must be mentioned. Chase was induced to change his
+attitude and to sell to banks large numbers of bonds at a rate below
+par, thus enabling the banks to dispose of them at a profit. He also
+called to his aid Jay Cooke, an experienced banker, who was allowed a
+commission of one-half per cent on all bonds sold up to $10,000,000 and
+three-eighths of one per cent after that. Cooke organized a countrywide
+agency system, with twenty-five hundred subagents through whom he
+offered directly to the people bonds in small denominations. By all
+manner of devices, patriotism and the purchase of bonds were made to
+appear the same thing, and before the end of the year $400,000,000
+in five-twenty bonds had been sold. This campaign to dispose of the
+five-twenties was the turning-point in war finance, and later borrowings
+encountered no such difficulties as those of 1862 and 1863.
+
+Better known today than this precarious legislation is the famous Act
+of 1863, which was amended in the next year and which forms the basis
+of our present system of national banks. To Chase himself the credit for
+this seems to be due. Even in 1861 he advised Congress to establish
+a system of national banks, and he repeated the advice before it was
+finally taken. The central feature of this system which he advocated is
+one with which we are still familiar: permission to the banks accepting
+government supervision to deposit government bonds in the Treasury and
+to acquire in return the right to issue bank-notes to the amount of
+ninety per cent of the value of the bonds.
+
+There can be no doubt that Chase himself rated very highly his own
+services to his country. Nor is there any doubt that, alone among
+Lincoln's close associates, he continued until the end to believe
+himself a better man than the President. He and his radical following
+made no change in their attitude to Lincoln, though Chase pursued
+a course of confidential criticism which has since inspired the
+characterization of him as a "sneak," while his followers were more
+outspoken. In the summer of 1863 Chase was seriously talked of as the
+next President, and before the end of the year Chase clubs were being
+organized in all the large cities to promote his candidacy. Chase
+himself took the adroit position of not believing that any President
+should serve a second term.
+
+Early in 1864 the Chase organization sent out a confidential circular
+signed by Senator Pomeroy of Kansas setting forth the case against
+Lincoln as a candidate and the case in favor of Chase. Unfortunately
+for Chase, this circular fell into the hands of a newspaper and was
+published. Chase at once wrote to Lincoln denying any knowledge of the
+circular but admitting his candidacy and offering his resignation. No
+more remarkable letter was written by Lincoln than his reply to Chase,
+in which he showed that he had long fully understood the situation, and
+which he closed with these words: "Whether you shall remain at the head
+of the Treasury Department is a question which I do not allow myself
+to consider from any standpoint other than my judgment of the public
+service, and, in that view, I do not perceive occasion for change."
+
+The Chase boom rapidly declined. The deathblow was given by a caucus of
+the Union members of the legislature of his own State nominating Lincoln
+"at the demand of the people and the soldiers of Ohio." The defeat
+embittered Chase. For several months, however, he continued in the
+Cabinet, and during this time he had the mortification of seeing Lincoln
+renominated in the National Union Convention amid a great display of
+enthusiasm.
+
+More than once in the past, Chase had offered his resignation. On one
+occasion Lincoln had gone to his house and had begged him to reconsider
+his decision. Soon after the renomination, Chase again offered his
+resignation upon the pretext of a disagreement with the President over
+appointments to office. This time, however, Lincoln felt the end had
+come and accepted the resignation. Chase's successor in the Treasury was
+William Pitt Fessenden, Senator from Maine. During most of the summer
+of 1864 Chase stood aside, sullen and envious, watching the progress of
+Lincoln toward a second election. So much did his bitterness affect his
+judgment that he was capable of writing in his diary his belief that
+Lincoln meant to reverse his policy and consent to peace with slavery
+reestablished.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR
+
+The real effects of war on the life of nations is one of those old and
+complicated debates which lie outside the scope of a volume such as
+this. Yet in the particular case of the Northern people it is imperative
+to answer two questions both of which have provoked interminable
+discussion: Was the moral life of the North good or bad in the war
+years? Was its commercial life sound?
+
+As to the moral question, contemporary evidence seems at first sight
+contradictory. The very able Englishman who represented the "Times",
+William H. Russell, gives this ugly picture of an American city in 1863:
+
+"Every fresh bulletin from the battlefield of Chickamauga, during my
+three weeks' stay in Cincinnati, brought a long list of the dead and
+wounded of the Western army, many of whom, of the officers, belonged to
+the best families of the place. Yet the signs of mourning were hardly
+anywhere perceptible; the noisy gaiety of the town was not abated one
+jot."
+
+On the other hand, a private manuscript of a Cincinnati family describes
+the "intense gloom hanging over the city like a pall" during the period
+of that dreadful battle. The memories of old people at Cincinnati in
+after days--if they had belonged to the "loyal" party--contained only
+sad impressions of a city that was one great hospital where "all
+our best people" worked passionately as volunteer assistants of the
+government medical corps.
+
+A third fact to be borne in mind in connection with this apparent
+contradiction in evidence is the source of the greater fortunes of
+Cincinnati, a large proportion of which are to be traced, directly or
+indirectly to government contracts during the war. In some cases the
+merciless indifference of the Cincinnati speculators to the troubles
+of their country are a local scandal to this day, and it is still told,
+sometimes with scorn, sometimes with amusement, how perhaps the greatest
+of these fortunes was made by forcing up the price of iron at a time
+when the Government had to have iron, cost what it might.
+
+Thus we no sooner take up the moral problem of the times than we find
+ourselves involved in the commercial question, for here, as always,
+morals and business are intertwined. Was the commercial management of
+the North creditable to the Government and an honor to the people? The
+surest way to answer such questions is to trace out with some fullness
+the commercial and industrial conditions of the North during the four
+years of war.
+
+The general reader who looks for the first time into the matter is
+likely to be staggered by what statistics seem to say. Apparently they
+contradict what he is accustomed to hear from popular economists about
+the waste of war. He has been told in the newspapers that business is
+undermined by the withdrawal of great numbers of men from "productive"
+consumption of the fruits of labor and their engagement as soldiers in
+"unproductive" consumption. But, to his astonishment, he finds that the
+statistics of 1861-1865 show much increase in Northern business--as,
+for example, in 1865, the production of 142 million pounds of wool
+against 60 million in 1860. The government reports show that 13 million
+tons of coal were mined in 1860 and 21 million in 1864; in 1860, the
+output of pig iron was 821,000 tons, and 1,014,282 tons in 1864; the
+petroleum production rose from 21 million gallons in 1860 to 128
+million in 1862; the export of corn, measured in money, shows for 1860
+a business of $2,399,808 compared with $10,592,704 for 1863; wheat
+exporting showed, also, an enormous increase, rising from 14 millions
+in 1860 to 46 millions in 1863. There are, to be sure, many statistics
+which seem to contradict these. Some of them will be mentioned
+presently. And yet, on the whole, it seems safe to conclude that the
+North, at the close of the third year of war was producing more and was
+receiving larger profits than in 1860.
+
+To deal with this subject in its entirety would lead us into the
+labyrinths of complex economic theory, yet two or three simple facts
+appear so plain that even the mere historian may venture to set them
+forth. When we look into the statistics which seem to show a general
+increase of business during the war, we find that in point of fact this
+increase was highly specialized. All those industries that dealt with
+the physical necessities of life and all those that dealt peculiarly
+with armies flourished amazingly. And yet there is another side to the
+story, for there were other industries that were set back and some that
+almost, if not entirely, disappeared. A good instance is the manufacture
+of cotton cloth. When the war opened, 200,000 hands were employed in
+this manufacture in New England. With the sealing up of the South and
+the failure of the cotton supply, their work temporarily ceased. What
+became of the workmen? Briefly, one of three things happened: some went
+into other trades, such as munitions, in which the war had created an
+abnormal demand for labor; a great number of them became soldiers; and
+many of them went West and became farmers or miners. Furthermore,
+many whose trades were not injured by the war left their jobs and fled
+westward to escape conscription. Their places were left open to be
+filled by operatives from the injured trades. In one or another of
+these ways the laborer who was thrown out of work was generally able to
+recover employment. But it is important to remember that the key to the
+labor situation at that time was the vast area of unoccupied land which
+could be had for nothing or next to nothing. This fact is brought
+home by a comparison of the situation of the American with that of the
+English workman during the cotton famine. According to its own ideas
+England was then fully cultivated. There was no body of land waiting
+to be thrown open, as an emergency device, to a host of new-made
+agriculturists. When the cotton-mills stopped at Manchester, their
+operatives had practically no openings but in other industrial
+occupations. As such opportunities were lacking, they became objects of
+charity until they could resume their work. As a country with a great
+reserve of unoccupied land, the United States was singularly fortunate
+at this economic crisis.
+
+One of the noteworthy features of Northern life during the war is that
+there was no abnormal increase in pauperism. A great deal has been
+written upon the extensive charities of the time, but the term is
+wrongly applied, for what is really referred to is the volunteer aid
+given to the Government in supporting the armies. This was done on
+a vast scale, by all classes of the population--that is, by all who
+supported the Union party, for the separation between the two parties
+was bitter and unforgiving. But of charity in the ordinary sense of the
+care of the destitute there was no significant increase because there
+was no peculiar need. Here again the fact that the free land could
+be easily reached is the final explanation. There was no need for the
+unemployed workman to become a pauper. He could take advantage of the
+Homestead Act*, which was passed in 1862, and acquire a farm of 160
+acres free; or he could secure at almost nominal cost farm-land
+which had been given to railways as an inducement to build. Under the
+Homestead Act, the Government gave away land amounting to 2,400,000
+acres before the close of the war. The Illinois Central alone sold to
+actual settlers 221,000 acres in 1863 and 264,000 in 1864. It was during
+the war, too, that the great undertaking of the transcontinental railway
+was begun, partly for military and partly for commercial reasons. In
+this project, both as a field of labor and as a stimulus to Western
+settlement, there is also to be found one more device for the relief of
+the labor situation in the East.
+
+     *This Act, which may be regarded as the culmination of the
+     long battle of the Northern dreamers to win "land for the
+     landless," provided that every settler who was, or intended
+     to be, a citizen might secure 180 acres of government land
+     by living on it and cultivating it for five years.
+
+There is no more important phenomenon of the time than the shifting of
+large masses of population from the East to the West, while the war was
+in progress. This fact begins to indicate why there was no shortage in
+the agricultural output. The North suffered acutely from inflation of
+prices and from a speculative wildness that accompanied the inflation,
+but it did not suffer from a lack of those things that are produced by
+the soil--food, timber, metals, and coal. In addition to the reason just
+mentioned--the search for new occupation by Eastern labor which had
+been thrown out of employment--three other causes helped to maintain the
+efficiency of work in the mines, in the forests, and on the farms. These
+three factors were immigration, the labor of women, and labor-saving
+machines.
+
+Immigration, naturally, fell off to a certain degree but it did not
+become altogether negligible. It is probable that 110,000 able-bodied
+men came into the country while war was in progress--a poor offset
+to the many hundred thousand who became soldiers, but nevertheless a
+contribution that counted for something.
+
+Vastly more important, in the work of the North, was the part taken by
+women. A pathetic detail with which in our own experience the world has
+again become familiar was the absence of young men throughout most
+of the North, and the presence of women new to the work in many
+occupations, especially farming. A single quotation from a home
+missionary in Iowa tells the whole story:
+
+"I will mention that I met more women driving teams on the road and saw
+more at work in the fields than men. They seem to have said to their
+husbands in the language of a favorite song,
+
+     'Just take your gun and go;
+     For Ruth can drive the oxen, John,
+     And I can use the hoe!'
+
+"I went first to Clarinda, and the town seemed deserted. Upon inquiry
+for former friends, the frequent answer was, 'In the army.' From
+Hawleyville almost all the thoroughly loyal male inhabitants had gone;
+and in one township beyond, where I formerly preached, there are but
+seven men left, and at Quincy, the county seat of Adams County, but
+five."
+
+Even more important than the change in the personnel of labor were the
+new machines of the day. During the fifteen years previous to the war
+American ingenuity had reached a high point. Such inventions as the
+sewing machine and the horse-reaper date in their practical forms from
+that period, and both of these helped the North to fight the war. Their
+further improvement, and the extension of the principles involved to
+many new forms of machinery, sprang from the pressing need to make up
+for the loss of men who were drained by the army from the farms and the
+workshops. It was the horse-reaper, the horse-rake, the horse-thresher
+that enabled women and boys to work the farms while husbands, fathers,
+and elder brothers were at the front.
+
+All these causes maintained Northern farming at a high pitch of
+productivity. This efficiency is implied in some of the figures already
+quoted, but many others could be cited. For example, in 1859, the total
+production of wheat for the whole country was 173 million bushels; in
+1862, the North alone produced 177 millions; even in 1864, with over a
+million men under arms, it still produced 160 million bushels.
+
+It must be remembered that the great Northern army produced nothing
+while it consumed the products of agriculture and manufacture--food,
+clothing, arms, ammunition, cannon, wagons, horses, medical stores--at
+a rate that might have led a poetical person to imagine the army as
+a devouring dragon. Who, in the last analysis, provided all these
+supplies? Who paid the soldiers? Who supplemented their meager pay and
+supported their families? The people, of course; and they did so both
+directly and indirectly. In taxes and loans they paid to the Government
+about three thousand millions of dollars. Their indirect assistance was
+perhaps as great, though it is impossible today to estimate with any
+approach to accuracy the amount either in money or service. Among
+obvious items are the collections made by the Sanitary Commission for
+the benefit of the hospital service, amounting to twenty-five million
+dollars, and about six millions raised by the Christian Commission. In
+a hundred other ways both individuals and localities strained their
+resources to supplement those of the Government. Immense subscription
+lists were circulated to raise funds for the families of soldiers. The
+city of Philadelphia alone spent in this way in a single year $600,000.
+There is also evidence of a vast amount of unrecorded relief of
+needy families by the neighbors, and in the farming districts, such
+assistance, particularly in the form of fuel during winter, was very
+generally given.
+
+What made possible this enormous total of contributions was, in a word,
+the general willingness of those supporting the war to forego luxuries.
+They ceased buying a great multitude of unnecessary things. But
+what became of the labor that had previously supplied the demand for
+luxuries? A part of it went the way of all other Northern labor--into
+new trades, into the army, or to the West--and a part continued to
+manufacture luxuries: for their market, though curtailed, was not
+destroyed. There were, indeed, two populations in the North, and they
+were separated by an emotional chasm. Had all the North been a unit in
+feeling, the production of articles of luxury might have ceased.
+Because of this emotional division of the North, however, this business
+survived; for the sacrifice of luxurious expenditure was made by only a
+part of the population, even though it was the majority.
+
+Furthermore, the whole matter was adjusted voluntarily without
+systematic government direction, since there was nothing in the
+financial policy of the Government to correspond to conscription.
+Consequently, both in the way of loans and in the way of contributions,
+as well as in the matter of unpaid service, the entire burden fell
+upon the war party alone. In the absence of anything like economic
+conscription, if such a phrase may be used, those Northerners who did
+not wish to lend money, or to make financial sacrifice, or to give
+unpaid service, were free to pursue their own bent. The election of 1864
+showed that they formed a market which amounted to something between six
+and nine millions. There is no reason to suppose that these millions in
+1864 spent less on luxuries than they did in 1860. Two or three items
+are enough. In 1860, the importation of silk amounted to 32 million
+dollars; in 1862, in spite of inflated prices, it had shrunk to 7
+millions; the consumption of malt liquors shrank from 101 million
+gallons in 1860 to 62 million gallons in 1863; of coffee, hardly to be
+classed as a luxury, there were consumed in 1861, 184 million pounds and
+in 1863, 80 millions.
+
+The clue to the story of capital is to be found in this fact, too often
+forgotten, that there was an economic-political division cutting deep
+through every stratum of the Northern people. Their economic life
+as well as their political life was controlled on the one hand by a
+devotion to the cause of the war, and on the other hand by a hatred
+of that cause or by cynical indifference. And we cannot insist too
+positively that the Government failed very largely to take this fact
+into account. The American spirit of invention, so conspicuous at that
+time in mechanics, did not apply itself to the science of government.
+Lincoln confessedly was not a financier; his instinct was at home only
+in problems that could be stated in terms of men. Witness his acceptance
+of conscription and his firmness in carrying it through, as a result
+of which he saved the patriotic party from bearing the whole burden of
+military service. But there was no parallel conservation of power in the
+field of industry. The financial policy, left in the hands of Chase, may
+truly be described as barren of ideas. Incidentally, it may be mentioned
+that the "loyal" North was left at the mercy of its domestic enemies and
+a prey to parasites by Chase's policy of loans instead of taxes and of
+voluntary support instead of enforced support.
+
+The consequence of this financial policy was an immense opportunity for
+the "disloyally" and the parasites to make huge war profits out of the
+"loyals" and the Government. Of course, it must not be supposed that
+everyone who seized the chance to feather his nest was so careless or so
+impolitic as to let himself be classed as a "disloyal." An incident of
+the autumn of 1861 shows the temper of those professed "loyals" who were
+really parasites. The background of the incident is supplied by a report
+of the Quartermaster-General:
+
+"Governors daily complain that recruiting will stop unless clothing is
+sent in abundance and immediately to the various recruiting camps and
+regiments. With every exertion, this department has not been able to
+obtain clothing to supply these demands, and they have been so urgent
+that troops before the enemy have been compelled to do picket duty in
+the late cold nights without overcoats, or even coats, wearing only thin
+summer flannel blouses.... Could 150,000 suits of clothing, overcoats,
+coats, and pantaloons be placed today, in depot, it would scarce supply
+the calls now before us. They would certainly leave no surplus."
+
+The Government attempted to meet this difficulty in the shortest
+possible time by purchasing clothing abroad. But such disregard of home
+industry, the "patriotism" of the New England manufacturers could not
+endure. Along with the report just quoted, the Quartermaster-General
+forwarded to the Secretary of War a long argumentative protest from
+a committee of the Boston Board of Trade against the purchase of army
+clothing in Europe. Any American of the present day can guess how
+the protest was worded and what arguments were used. Stripped of its
+insincerity, it signified this: the cotton mills were inoperative for
+lack of material; their owners saw no chance to save their dividends
+except by re-equipment as woolen mills; the existing woolen mills also saw
+a great chance to force wool upon the market as a substitute for cotton.
+In Ohio, California, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, the growers of wool saw
+the opportunity with equal clearness. But, one and all, these various
+groups of parasites saw that their game hinged on one condition: the
+munitions market must be kept open until they were ready to monopolize
+government contracts. If soldiers contracted pneumonia doing picket duty
+on cold nights, in their summer blouses, that was but an unfortunate
+incident of war.
+
+Very different in spirit from the protest of the Boston manufacturers
+is a dispatch from the American minister at Brussels which shows what
+American public servants, in contrast with American manufacturers, were
+about. Abroad the agents of North and South were fighting a commercial
+duel in which each strove to monopolize the munitions market. The United
+States Navy, seeing things from an angle entirely different from that of
+the Boston Board of Trade, ably seconded the ministers by blockading the
+Southern ports and by thus preventing the movement of specie and cotton
+to Europe. As a consequence, fourmonth notes which had been given by
+Southern agents with their orders fell due, had to be renewed, and
+began to be held in disfavor. Agents of the North, getting wind of
+these hitches in negotiations, eagerly sought to take over the unpaid
+Confederate orders. All these details of the situation help to explain
+the jubilant tone of this dispatch from Brussels late in November, 1861:
+
+"I have now in my hands complete control of the principal rebel
+contracts on the continent, viz.: 206,000 yards of cloth ready for
+delivery, already commencing to move forward to Havre; gray but can
+be dyed blue in twenty days; 100,000 yards deliverable from 15th of
+December to 26th of January, light blue army cloth, same as ours;
+100,000 blankets; 40,000 guns to be shipped in ten days; 20,000 saber
+bayonets to be delivered in six weeks.... The winter clothing for
+100,000 men taken out of their hands, when they cannot replace it, would
+almost compensate for Bull Run. There is no considerable amount of cloth
+to be had in Europe; the stocks are very short."
+
+The Secretary of War was as devoid of ideas as the Secretary of the
+Treasury was and even less equipped with resisting power. Though he
+could not undo the work already done by the agents of the Government
+abroad, he gave way as rapidly as possible to the allied parasites whose
+headquarters, at the moment, were in Boston. The story grows uglier
+as we proceed. Two powerful commercial combinations took charge of the
+policy of the woolen interests--the National Woolgrowers' Association
+and the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, which were soon in
+control of this immense industry. Woolen mills sprang up so fast that
+a report of the New York Chamber of Commerce pronounced their increase
+"scarcely credible." So great was the new market created by the
+Government demand, and so ruthless were the parasites in forcing up
+prices, that dividends on mill stock rose to 10, 15, 25, and even 40 per
+cent. And all the while the wool growers and the wool manufacturers were
+clamoring to Congress for protection of the home industry, exclusion
+of the wicked foreign competition, and all in the name of their devoted
+"patriotism"--patriotism with a dividend of 40 per cent!
+
+Of course, it is not meant that every wool grower and every woolen
+manufacturer was either a "disloyal" or a parasite. By no means. Numbers
+of them were to be found in that great host of "loyals" who put their
+dividends into government bonds and gave their services unpaid as
+auxiliaries of the Commissary Department or the Hospital Service of
+the Army. What is meant is that the abnormal conditions of industry,
+uncorrected by the Government, afforded a glaring opportunity for
+unscrupulous men of business who, whatever their professions, cared a
+hundred times more for themselves than for their country. To these
+was due the pitiless hampering of the army in the interest of the
+wool-trade. For example, many uniforms paid for at outrageous prices,
+turned out to be made of a miserable cheap fabric, called "shoddy,"
+which resisted weather scarcely better than paper. This fraud gave
+the word "shoddy" its present significance in our American speech and
+produced the phrase--applied to manufacturers newly become rich--"shoddy
+aristocracy." An even more shameful result of the selfishness of the
+manufacturers and of the weakness of the Government was the use of cloth
+for uniforms not of the regulation colors, with the result that soldiers
+sometimes fired upon their comrades by mistake.
+
+The prosperity of the capitalists who financed the woolen business did
+not extend to the labor employed in it. One of the ugliest details of
+the time was the resolute attempt of the parasites to seize the whole
+amount of the abnormal profits they wrung from the Government and from
+the people. For it must not be forgotten that the whole nation had to
+pay their prices. It is estimated that prices in the main advanced about
+100 per cent while wages were not advanced more than sixty per cent.
+It is not strange that these years of war form a period of bitter
+antagonism between labor and capital.
+
+What went on in the woolen business is to be found more or less in every
+business. Immense fortunes sprang up over night. They had but two
+roots: government contracts and excessive profits due to war prices. The
+gigantic fortunes which characterized the North at the end of the war
+are thus accounted for. The so-called prosperity of the time was a
+class prosperity and was absorbed by parasites who fattened upon the
+necessities of the Government and the sacrifices of the people.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. THE MEXICAN EPISODE
+
+That French demagogue whom Victor Hugo aptly called Napoleon the Little
+was a prime factor in the history of the Union and the Confederacy. The
+Confederate side of his intrigue will be told in its proper place. Here,
+let us observe him from the point of view of Washington.
+
+It is too much to attempt to pack into a sentence or two the complicated
+drama of deceit, lies, and graft, through which he created at last a
+pretext for intervention in the affairs of Mexico; it is enough that in
+the autumn of 1862 a French army of invasion marched from Vera Cruz upon
+Mexico City. We have already seen that about this same time Napoleon
+proposed to England and Russia a joint intervention with France between
+North and South--a proposal which, however, was rejected. This Mexican
+venture explains why the plan was suggested at that particular time.
+
+Disappointed in England and Russia, Napoleon unexpectedly received
+encouragement, as he thought, from within the United States through the
+medium of the eccentric editor of the "New York Tribune". We shall
+have occasion to return later to the adventures of Horace Greeley--that
+erratic individual who has many good and generous acts to his credit, as
+well as many foolish ones. For the present we have to note that toward
+the close of 1862 he approached the French Ambassador at Washington
+with a request for imperial mediation between the North and the South.
+Greeley was a type of American that no European can understand: he
+believed in talk, and more talk, and still more talk, as the cure for
+earthly ills. He never could understand that anybody besides himself
+could have strong convictions. When he told the Ambassador that the
+Emperor's mediation would lead to a reconciliation of the sections, he
+was doubtless sincere in his belief. The astute European diplomat, who
+could not believe such simplicity, thought it a mask. When he asked for,
+and received, permission to pass the Federal lines and visit Richmond,
+he interpreted the permit in the light of his assumption about Greeley.
+At Richmond, he found no desire for reunion. Putting this and that
+together, he concluded that the North wanted to give up the fight
+and would welcome mediation to save its face. The dreadful defeat at
+Fredericksburg fell in with this reasoning. His reports on American
+conditions led Napoleon, in January, 1863, to attempt alone what he had
+once hoped to do supported by England and Russia. He proposed his good
+offices to the Government at Washington as a mediator between North and
+South.
+
+Hitherto, Washington had been very discreet about Mexico. Adroit hints
+not to go too far had been given Napoleon in full measure, but there was
+no real protest. The State Department now continued this caution and in
+the most polite terms declined Napoleon's offer. Congress, however, took
+the matter more grimly, for throughout the dealings with Napoleon, it
+had been at odds with Lincoln. It now passed the first of a series of
+resolutions which expressed the will of the country, if not quite
+the will of the President, by resolving that any further proposal of
+mediation would be regarded by it as "an unfriendly act."
+
+Napoleon then resumed his scheming for joint intervention, while in
+the meantime his armies continued to fight their way until they entered
+Mexico City in June, 1863. The time had now come when Napoleon thought
+it opportune to show his hand. Those were the days when Lee appeared
+invincible, and when Chancellorsville crowned a splendid series of
+triumphs. In England, the Southern party made a fresh start; and
+societies were organized to aid the Confederacy. At Liverpool,
+Laird Brothers were building, ostensibly for France, really for the
+Confederacy, two ironclads supposed to outclass every ship in the
+Northern navy. In France, 100,000 unemployed cotton hands were rioting
+for food. To raise funds for the Confederacy the great Erlanger
+banking-house of Paris negotiated a loan based on cotton which was to
+be delivered after the breaking of the blockade. Napoleon dreamed of a
+shattered American union, two enfeebled republics, and a broad way for
+his own scheme in Mexico.
+
+In June an English politician of Southern sympathies, Edward Roebuck,
+went over to France, was received by the Emperor, and came to an
+understanding with him. Roebuck went home to report to the Southern
+party that Napoleon was ready to intervene, and that all he waited for
+was England's cooperation. A motion "to enter into negotiations with the
+Great Powers of Europe for the purpose of obtaining their cooperation
+in the recognition" of the Confederacy was introduced by Roebuck in the
+House of Commons.
+
+The debate which followed was the last chance of the Southern party
+and, as events proved, the last chance of Napoleon. How completely the
+British ministry was now committed to the North appears in the fact that
+Gladstone, for the Government, opposed Roebuck's motion. John Bright
+attacked it in what Lord Morley calls "perhaps the most powerful and the
+noblest speech of his life." The Southern party was hardly resolute in
+their support of Roebuck and presently he withdrew his motion.
+
+But there were still the ironclads at Liverpool. We have seen that
+earlier in the war, the carelessness of the British authorities had
+permitted the escape of ship 290, subsequently known as the Confederate
+commerce-destroyer, Alabama. The authorities did not wish to allow a
+repetition of the incident. But could it be shown that the Laird
+ships were not really for a French purchaser? It was in the course
+of diplomatic conversations that Mr. Adams, speaking of the possible
+sailing of the ships, made a remark destined to become famous: "It would
+be superfluous in me to point out to your lordship that this is war." At
+jest, the authorities were satisfied. The ships were seized and in the
+end bought for the British Navy.
+
+Again Napoleon stood alone. Not only had he failed to obtain aid
+from abroad, but in France itself his Mexican schemes were widely and
+bitterly condemned. Yet he had gone too far to recede, and what he
+had been aiming at all along was now revealed. An assembly of Mexican
+notables, convened by the general of the invaders, voted to set up an
+imperial government and offered the crown to Napoleon's nominee, the
+Archduke Maximilian of Austria.
+
+And now the Government at Washington was faced with a complicated
+problem. What about the Monroe Doctrine? Did the Union dare risk war
+with France? Did it dare pass over without protest the establishment
+of monarchy on American soil by foreign arms? Between these horns of
+a dilemma, the Government maintained its precarious position during
+another year. Seward's correspondence with Paris was a masterpiece of
+evasion. He neither protested against the intervention of Napoleon
+nor acknowledged the authority of Maximilian. Apparently, both he
+and Lincoln were divided between fear of a French alliance with the
+Confederacy and fear of premature action in the North that would render
+Napoleon desperate. Just how far they comprehended Napoleon and his
+problems is an open question.
+
+Whether really comprehending or merely trusting to its instinct,
+Congress took a bolder course. Two men prove the antagonists of a
+parliamentary duel--Charles Sumner, chairman of the Senate Committee on
+Foreign Relations, and Henry Winter Davis, chairman of the corresponding
+committee of the House. Sumner played the hand of the Administration.
+Fiery resolutions demanding the evacuation of Mexico or an American
+declaration of war were skillfully buried in the silence of Sumner's
+committee. But there was nevertheless one resolution that affected
+history: it was a ringing condemnation of the attempt to establish
+a monarchy in Mexico. In the House, a joint resolution which Davis
+submitted was passed without one dissenting vote. When it came to the
+Senate, Sumner buried it as he had buried earlier resolutions. None the
+less it went out to the world attended by the news of the unanimous vote
+in the House.
+
+Shortly afterwards, the American Ambassador at Paris called upon the
+imperial Foreign Secretary, M. Drouyn de L'huys. News of this resolution
+had preceded him. He was met by the curt question, "Do you bring peace
+or war?" Again, the Washington Government was skillfully evasive. The
+Ambassador was instructed to explain that the resolution had not been
+inspired by the President and "the French Government would be seasonably
+apprized of any change of policy...which the President might at any
+future time think it proper to adopt."
+
+There seems little doubt that Lincoln's course was very widely condemned
+as timid. When we come to the political campaign of 1864, we shall
+meet Henry Winter Davis among his most relentless personal enemies.
+Dissatisfaction with Lincoln's Mexican policy has not been sufficiently
+considered in accounting for the opposition to him, inside the war
+party, in 1864. To it may be traced an article in the platform of the
+war party, adopted in June, 1864, protesting against the establishment
+of monarchy "in near proximity to the United States." In the same month
+Maximilian entered Mexico City.
+
+The subsequent moves of Napoleon are explained elsewhere.* The central
+fact in the story is his virtual change of attitude, in the summer of
+1864. The Confederate agent at Paris complained of a growing coolness.
+Before the end of the summer, the Confederate Secretary of State was
+bitter in his denunciation of Napoleon for having deserted the South.
+Napoleon's puppet Maximilian refused to receive an envoy from the
+Confederacy. Though Washington did not formally protest against
+the presence of Maximilian in Mexico, it declined to recognize his
+Government, and that Government continued unrecognized at Washington
+throughout the war.
+
+     *Nathaniel W. Stephenson, "The Day of the Confederacy". (In
+     "The Chronicles of America").
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. THE PLEBISCITE OF 1864
+
+Every great revolution among Anglo-Saxon people--perhaps among all
+people--has produced strange types of dreamers. In America, however,
+neither section could claim a monopoly of such types, and even the
+latter-day visionaries who can see everything in heaven and earth,
+excepting fact, had their Northern and Southern originals in the time
+of the great American war. Among these is a strange congregation which
+assembled in the spring of 1864 and which has come to be known, from its
+place of meeting, as the Cleveland Convention. Its coming together was
+the result of a loose cooperation among several minor political groups,
+all of which were for the Union and the war, and violently opposed to
+Lincoln. So far as they had a common purpose, it was to supplant Lincoln
+by Fremont in the next election.
+
+The Convention was notable for the large proportion of agnostics among
+its members. A motion was made to amend a resolution that "the Rebellion
+must be put down" by adding the words "with God's assistance." This
+touch of piety was stormily rejected. Another group represented at
+Cleveland was made up of extreme abolitionists under the leadership of
+that brilliant but disordered genius, Wendell Phillips. He sent a letter
+denouncing Lincoln and pledging his support of Fremont because of the
+latter's "clearsighted statesmanship and rare military ability." The
+convention declared itself a political party, under the style of the
+Radical Democracy, and nominated Fremont for President.
+
+There was another body of dreamers, still more singular, who were also
+bitter opponents of Lincoln. They were, however, not in favor of war.
+Their political machinery consisted of secret societies. As early as
+1860, the Knights of the Golden Circle were active in Indiana, where
+they did yeoman service for Breckinridge. Later this society acquired
+some underground influence in other States, especially in Ohio, and did
+its share in bringing about the victories at the polls in the autumn of
+1862, when the Democrats captured the Indiana legislature.
+
+The most serious charge against the Golden Circle was complicity in an
+attempt to assassinate Oliver P. Morton, Governor of Indiana, who was
+fired at, one night, as he was leaving the state house. When Morton
+demanded an investigation of the Golden Circle, the legislature refused
+to sanction it. On his own authority and with Federal aid he made
+investigations and published a report which, if it did not actually
+prove treason, came dangerously near to proof. Thereafter, this society
+drops out of sight, and its members appear to have formed the new Order
+of the American Knights, which in its turn was eclipsed by the Sons
+of Liberty. There were several other such societies all organized on a
+military plan and with a great pretense of arming their members. This,
+however, had to be done surreptitiously. Boxes of rifles purchased
+in the East were shipped West labeled "Sunday-school books," and
+negotiations were even undertaken with the Confederacy to bring in arms
+by way of Canada. At a meeting of the supreme council of the Sons of
+Liberty, in New York, February 22, 1864, it was claimed that the order
+had nearly a million members, though the Government secret service
+considered half a million a more exact estimate.
+
+As events subsequently proved, the societies were not as formidable as
+these figures would imply. Most of the men who joined them seem to have
+been fanciful creatures who loved secrecy for its own sake. While real
+men, North and South, were laying down their lives for their principles,
+these make-believe men were holding bombastic initiations and taking
+oaths such as this from the ritual of the American Knights: "I do
+further solemnly promise and swear, that I will ever cherish the sublime
+lessons which the sacred emblems of our order suggest, and will, so far
+as in me lies, impart those lessons to the people of the earth, where
+the mystic acorn falls from its parent bough, in whose visible firmament
+Orion, Arcturus, and the Pleiades ride in their cold resplendent
+glories, and where the Southern Cross dazzles the eye of degraded
+humanity with its coruscations of golden light, fit emblem of Truth,
+while it invites our sacred order to consecrate her temples in the four
+corners of the earth, where moral darkness reigns and despotism holds
+sway.... Divine essence, so help me that I fail not in my troth, lest
+I shall be summoned before the tribunal of the order, adjudged and
+condemned to certain and shameful death, while my name shall be recorded
+on the rolls of infamy. Amen."
+
+The secret orders fought hard to prevent the Lincoln victory in the
+elections of 1863. Even before that time their leaders had talked
+mysteriously of another disruption of the Union and the formation of
+a Northwestern Confederacy in alliance with the South. The scheme was
+known to the Confederates, allusions to it are to be found in Southern
+newspapers, and even the Confederate military authorities considered it.
+Early in 1863, General Beauregard thought the Confederates might "get
+into Ohio and call upon the friends of Vallandigham to rise for his
+defense and support; then...call upon the whole Northwest to join in the
+movement, form a confederacy of their own, and join us by a treaty
+of alliance, offensive and defensive." Reliance on the support of the
+societies was the will-o'-the-wisp that deceived General John Morgan
+in his desperate attempt to carry out Beauregard's programme. Though
+brushed aside as a mere detail by military historians, Morgan's raid,
+with his force of irregular cavalry, in July, 1863, through Indiana and
+Ohio, was one of the most romantic episodes of the war. But it ended
+in his defeat and capture. While his gallant troopers rode to their
+destruction, the men who loved to swear by Arcturus and to gabble about
+the Pleiades showed the fiber to be expected of such people, and stayed
+snug in their beds.
+
+But neither their own lack of hardihood nor the disasters of their
+Southern friends could dampen their peculiar ardor. Their hero was
+Vallandigham. That redoubtable person had fixed his headquarters in
+Canada, whence he directed his partisans in their vain attempt to elect
+him Governor of Ohio. Their next move was to honor him with the office
+of Supreme Commander of the Sons of Liberty, and now Vallandigham
+resolved to win the martyr's crown in very fact. In June, 1864, he
+prepared for the dramatic effect by carefully advertising his intention
+and came home. But to his great disappointment Lincoln ignored him, and
+the dramatic martyrdom which he had planned did not come off.
+
+There still existed the possibility of a great uprising, and to that
+end arrangements were made with Southern agents in Canada. Confederate
+soldiers, picked men, made their way in disguise to Chicago. There the
+worshipers of Arcturus were to join them in a mighty multitude; the
+Confederate prisoners at Camp Douglas in Chicago were to be liberated;
+around that core of veterans, the hosts of the Pleiades were to
+rally. All this was to coincide with the assembling at Chicago of the
+Democratic national convention, in which Vallandigham was to appear. The
+organizers of the conspiracy dreamed that the two events might coalesce;
+that the convention might be stampeded by their uprising; that a
+great part, if not the whole, of the convention would endorse the
+establishment of a Northwestern Confederacy.
+
+Alas for him who builds on the frame of mind that delights in cheap
+rhetoric while Rome is afire! At the moment of hazard, the Sons of
+Liberty showed the white feather, were full of specious words, would not
+act. The Confederate soldiers, indignant at this second betrayal, had to
+make their escape from the country.
+
+It must not be supposed that this Democratic national convention was
+made up altogether of Secessionists. The peace party was still, as
+in the previous year, a strange complex, a mixture of all sorts and
+conditions. Its cohesion was not so much due to its love of peace as to
+its dislike of Lincoln and its hatred of his party. Vallandigham was
+a member of the committee on resolutions. The permanent chairman was
+Governor Seymour of New York. The Convention was called to order by
+August Belmont, a foreigner by birth, the American representative of the
+Rothschilds. He was the head and front of that body of Northern capital
+which had so long financed the South and which had always opposed the
+war. In opening the Convention he said: "Four years of misrule by a
+sectional, fanatical, and corrupt party have brought our country to the
+verge of ruin." In the platform Lincoln was accused of a list of crimes
+which it had become the habit of the peace party to charge against
+him. His administration was described as "four years of failure," and
+McClellan was nominated for President.
+
+The Republican managers called a convention at Baltimore in June, 1864,
+with a view to organizing a composite Union Party in which the War
+Democrats were to participate. Their plan was successful. The second
+place on the Union ticket was accepted by a War Democrat, Andrew
+Johnson, of Tennessee. Lincoln was renominated, though not without
+opposition, and he was so keenly aware that he was not the unanimous
+choice of the Union Party that he permitted the fact to appear in a
+public utterance soon afterward. "I do not allow myself," he said, in
+addressing a delegation of the National Union League, "to suppose that
+either the Convention or the League have concluded to decide that I am
+either the greatest or the best man in America, but rather they have
+concluded it is not best to swap horses while crossing the river, and
+have further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might not
+make a botch of it in trying to swap."
+
+But the Union Party was so far from being a unit that during the summer
+factional quarrels developed within its ranks. All the elements
+that were unfriendly to Lincoln took heart from a dispute between the
+President and Congress with regard to reconstruction in Louisiana, over
+a large part of which Federal troops had established a civil government
+on the President's authority. As an incident in the history of
+reconstruction, this whole matter has its place in another volume.* But
+it also has a place in the history of the presidential campaign of
+1864. Lincoln's plan of reconstruction was obnoxious to the Radicals in
+Congress inasmuch as it did not definitely abolish slavery in Louisiana,
+although it required the new Government to give its adherence to the
+Emancipation Proclamation. Congress passed a bill taking reconstruction
+out of the President's hands and definitely requiring the reconstructed
+States to abolish slavery. Lincoln took the position that Congress had
+no power over slavery in the States. When his Proclamation was thrown in
+his teeth, he replied, "I conceive that I may in an emergency do things
+on military grounds which cannot be done constitutionally by Congress."
+Incidentally there was a further disagreement between the President and
+the Radicals over <DW64> suffrage. Though neither scheme provided for
+it, Lincoln would extend it, if at all, only to the exceptional <DW64>s,
+while the Radicals were ready for a sweeping extension. But Lincoln
+refused to sign their bill and it lapsed. Thereupon Benjamin Wade of
+Ohio and Henry Winter Davis of Maryland issued a savage denunciation of
+Lincoln which has been known ever since as the "Wade-Davis Manifesto".
+
+     * Walter L. Fleming, "The Sequel of Appomattox". In "The
+     Chronicles of America".
+
+There was a faction in the Union Party which we may justly name the
+Vindictives. The "Manifesto" gave them a rallying cry. At a conference
+in New York they decided to compel the retirement of Lincoln and the
+nomination of some other candidate. For this purpose a new convention
+was to be called at Cincinnati in September. In the ranks of the
+Vindictives at this time was the impetuous editor of the "New York
+Tribune", Horace Greeley. His presence there calls for some explanation.
+Perhaps the most singular figure of the time, he was one of the most
+irresponsible and yet, through his paper, one of the most influential.
+He had a trick of phrase which, somehow, made him appear oracular to the
+plain people, especially in the rural districts--the very people on whom
+Lincoln relied for a large part of his support. Greeley knew his
+power, and his mind was not large enough to carry the knowledge well.
+Furthermore, his was the sort of nature that relates itself to life
+above all through the sensibilities. Kipling speaks scornfully of people
+who if their "own front door is shut will swear the world is warm." They
+are relations in the full blood of Horace Greeley.
+
+In July, when the breach between the President and the Vindictives was
+just beginning to be evident, Greeley was pursuing an adventure of his
+own. Among the least sensible minor incidents of the war were a number
+of fantastic attempts of private persons to negotiate peace. With
+one exception they had no historic importance. The exception is a
+negotiation carried on by Greeley, which seems to have been the ultimate
+cause of his alliance with the Vindictives.
+
+In the middle of July, 1864, gold was selling in New York at 285.
+There was distress and discontent throughout the country. The horrible
+slaughter of the Wilderness, still fresh in everybody's mind, had put
+the whole Union Party into mourning. The impressionable Greeley became
+frantic for peace peace at any price. At the psychological moment word
+was conveyed to him that two persons in Canada held authority from
+the Confederacy to enter into negotiations for peace. Greeley wrote to
+Lincoln demanding negotiations because "our bleeding, bankrupt, almost
+dying country longs for peace, shudders at the prospect of fresh
+conscriptions, of further wholesale devastations, and of new rivers of
+human blood."
+
+Lincoln consented to a negotiation but stipulated that Greeley himself
+should become responsible for its conduct. Though this was not what
+Greeley wanted for his type always prefers to tell others what to
+do--he sullenly accepted. He proceeded to Niagara to meet the reputed
+commissioners of the Confederacy. The details of the futile conference
+do not concern us. The Confederate agents were not empowered to treat
+for peace--at least not on any terms that would be considered at
+Washington. Their real purpose was far subtler. Appreciating the
+delicate balance in Northern politics, they aimed at making it appear
+that Lincoln was begging for terms. Lincoln, who foresaw this possible
+turn of events, had expressly limited Greeley to negotiations for "the
+integrity of the whole Union and the abandonment of slavery." Greeley
+chose to believe that these instructions, and not the subtlety of the
+Confederate agents and his own impulsiveness, were the cause of the
+false position in which the agents now placed him. They published an
+account of the episode, thus effecting an exposure which led to sharp
+attacks upon Greeley by the Northern press. In the bitterness of his
+mortification Greeley then went from one extreme to the other and joined
+the Vindictives.
+
+Less than three weeks after the conference at Niagara, the "Wade-Davis
+Manifesto" appeared. It was communicated to the country through the
+columns of Greeley's paper on the 5th of August. Greeley, who so short
+a time before was for peace at any price, went the whole length of
+reaction by proclaiming that "Mr. Lincoln is already beaten.... We must
+have another ticket to save us from utter overthrow. If we had such
+a ticket as could be made by naming Grant, Butler, or Sherman for
+President and Farragut for Vice, we could make a fight yet."
+
+At about this same time the chairman of the Republican national
+committee, who was a Lincoln man, wrote to the President that the
+situation was desperate. Lincoln himself is known to have made a private
+memorandum containing the words, "It seems extremely probable that this
+Administration will not be reelected." On the 1st of September, 1864,
+with three presidential candidates in the field, Northern politics were
+bewildering, and the country was shrouded in the deepest gloom. The
+Wilderness campaign, after slaughter unparalleled, had not in the
+popular mind achieved results. Sherman, in Georgia, though his losses
+were not as terrible as Grant's, had not yet done anything to lighten
+the gloom. Not even Farragut's victory in Mobile Bay, in August,
+far-reaching as it proved to be, reassured the North. A bitter cry for
+peace went up even from lovers of the Union whose hearts had failed.
+
+Meanwhile, the brilliant strategist in Georgia was pressing his drive
+for political as well as for military effect. To rouse those Unionists
+who had lost heart was part of his purpose when he hurled his columns
+against Atlanta, from which Hood was driven in one of the most
+disastrous of Confederate defeats. On the 3rd of September Lincoln
+issued a proclamation appointing a day of thanksgiving for these great
+victories of Sherman and Farragut.
+
+On that day, it would seem, the tide turned in Northern politics. Some
+historians are content with Atlanta as the explanation of all that
+followed; but there are three separate events of importance that now
+occurred as incidents in the complicated situation. In the first place,
+three weeks later the radical opposition had collapsed; the plan for a
+new convention was abandoned; the Vindictive leaders came out in support
+of Lincoln. Almost simultaneously occurred the remaining two surprising
+events. Fremont withdrew from his candidacy in order to do his "part
+toward preventing the election of the Democratic candidate." And Lincoln
+asked for the resignation of a member of his Cabinet, Postmaster-General
+Montgomery Blair, who was the especial enemy of the Vindictives.
+
+The official biographers of Lincoln* keep these three events separate.
+They hold that Blair's removal was wholly Lincoln's idea, and that from
+chivalrous reasons he would not abandon his friend as long as he seemed
+to be losing the game. The historian Rhodes writes confidently of a
+bargain with Fremont, holding that Blair was removed to terminate a
+quarrel with Fremont which dated back even to his own removal in 1861.
+A possible third theory turns upon Chase, whose hostility to Blair was
+quite equal to that of the illbalanced Fremont. It had been stimulated
+the previous winter by a fierce arraignment of Chase made by Blair's
+brother in Congress, in which Chase was bluntly accused of fraud and
+of making money, or allowing his friends to make money, through illicit
+trade in cotton. And Chase was a man of might among the Vindictives. The
+intrigue, however, never comes to the foreground in history, but lurks
+in the background thick with shadows. Once or twice among those
+shadows we seem to catch a glimpse of the figure of Thurlow Weed, the
+master-politician of the time. Taking one thing with another, we may
+risk the guess that somehow the two radical groups which were both
+relentless against Blair were led to pool their issues, and that Blair's
+removal was the price Lincoln paid not to one faction of radicals but to
+the whole unmerciful crowd.
+
+     *His private secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay.
+
+Whatever complex of purposes lay back of the triple coincidence, the
+latter part of September saw a general reunion of the factions within
+the Union Party, followed by a swift recovery of strength. When the
+election came, Lincoln received an electoral vote of 212 against 21, and
+a popular vote of 2,330,552 against 1,835,985.
+
+The inevitable question arises as to what was the real cause of this
+success. It is safe to say that the political campaign contained some
+adroit strategy; that Sherman was without doubt an enormous factor; that
+the Democrats made numerous blunders; and that the secret societies had
+an effect other than they intended. However, the real clue seems to be
+found in one sentence from a letter written by Lowell to Motley when the
+outlook for his party was darkest: "The mercantile classes are longing
+for peace, but I believe that the people are more firm than ever." Of
+the great, silent mass of the people, the true temper seems to be struck
+off in a popular poem of the time, written in response to one of the
+calls for more troops, a poem with refrains built on the model of this
+couplet:
+
+"We're coming from the hillside, we're coming from the shore, We're
+coming, Father Abraham, six hundred thousand more."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. LINCOLN'S FINAL INTENTIONS
+
+The victory of the Union Party in November enabled Lincoln to enjoy for
+a brief period of his career as President what may be thought of as a
+lull in the storm. He knew now that he had at last built up a firm
+and powerful support. With this assured, his policy, both domestic and
+foreign--the key to which was still the blockade--might be considered
+victorious at all points. There remains to be noticed, however, one
+event of the year 1864 which was of vital importance in maintaining the
+blockade.
+
+It is a principle of international law that a belligerent must itself
+attend to the great task of suppressing contraband trade with its enemy.
+Lincoln was careful to observe this principle. Though British merchants
+were frankly speculating in contraband trade, he made no demand upon
+the British Government to relieve him of the difficulty of stopping it.
+England also took the legitimate position under international law
+and warned her merchants that, while it was none of the Government's
+business to prevent such trade, they practised it at their own risk,
+subject to well-understood penalties agreed upon among nations. The
+merchants nevertheless continued to take the risk, while both they and
+the authorities of the Confederacy thought they saw a way of minimizing
+the danger. Instead of shipping supplies direct to the Confederate ports
+they shipped them to Matamoros, in Mexico, or to the West Indies. As
+these ports were in neutral territory, the merchants thought their goods
+would be safe against capture until they left the Mexican or West
+Indian port on their brief concluding passage to the territory of the
+Confederacy. Nassau, then a petty West India town, was the chief depot
+of such trade and soon became a great commercial center. To it came vast
+quantities of European goods which were then transferred to swift, small
+vessels, or "blockade-runners," which took a gambler's chance and often
+succeeded in eluding the Federal patrol ships and in rushing their
+cargoes safe into a Confederate port.
+
+Obviously, it was a great disadvantage to the United States to allow
+contraband supplies to be accumulated, without interference, close to
+the blockaded coast, and the Lincoln Government determined to remove
+this disadvantage. With this end in view it evoked the principle of the
+continuous voyage, which indeed was not new, but which was destined to
+become fixed in international law by the Supreme Court of the United
+States. American cruisers were instructed to stop British ships sailing
+between the British ports of Liverpool and Nassau; they were to use the
+recognized international rights of visit and search; and if there was
+evidence that the cargo was not destined for actual consumption at
+Nassau, they were to bring the ship into an American port to be dealt
+with by an American prize court. When such arrests began, the owners
+clamored to the British Government, and both dealers in contraband and
+professional blockade-runners worked themselves into a fury because
+American cruisers watched British ports and searched British ships on
+the high seas. With regard to this matter, the British Government and
+the Government at Washington had their last important correspondence
+during the war. The United States stood firm for the idea that when
+goods were ultimately intended for the Confederacy, no matter how
+roundabout the journey, they could be considered as making a single
+continuous voyage and were liable to capture from the day they left
+Liverpool. Early in 1865, the Supreme Court of the United States fully
+developed the principle of continuous voyage in four celebrated cases
+that are now among the landmarks of international law.*
+
+     * The Great war has once again led to controversy over this
+     subject, so vital to neutral states.
+
+This was the last step in making the blockade effective. Thereafter, it
+slowly strangled the South. The Federal armies enormously overmatched
+the Southern, and from November, 1864, their continuance in the field
+was made sure. Grim work still lay before Lincoln, but the day of
+anxiety was past. In this moment of comparative ease, the aged Chief
+Justice Taney died, and Lincoln appointed to that high position his
+ungenerous rival, Chase.
+
+Even now Lincoln had not established himself as a leader superior to
+party, but he had the satisfaction, early in 1865, of seeing the ranks
+of the opposition begin to break. Naturally, the Thirteenth Amendment
+to the Constitution, abolishing slavery throughout the United States,
+appeared to Lincoln as in a way the consummation of his labors. When
+the House voted on the resolution to send this amendment to the States,
+several Democrats joined the government forces. Two nights afterward,
+speaking to a serenading party at the White House, Lincoln made a brief
+speech, part of which is thus reported by his secretaries: "He thought
+this measure was a very fitting if not an indispensable adjunct to the
+winding up of the great difficulty. He wished the reunion of all the
+States perfected, and so effected as to remove all causes of disturbance
+in the future; and to attain this end, it was necessary that the
+original disturbing cause should, if possible, be rooted out."
+
+An event which in its full detail belongs to Confederate rather than to
+Union history took place soon after this. At Hampton Roads, Lincoln and
+Seward met Confederate commissioners who had asked for a parley--with
+regard to peace. Nothing came of the meeting, but the conference gave
+rise to a legend, false in fact and yet true in spirit, according to
+which Lincoln wrote on a sheet of paper the word "Union," pushed it
+across to Alexander H. Stephens and said, "Write under that anything you
+please."
+
+This fiction expresses Lincoln's attitude toward the sinking
+Confederacy. On his return from Hampton Roads he submitted to his
+Cabinet a draft of a message which he proposed to send to Congress. He
+recommended the appropriation of $400,000,000 to be distributed among
+the slave states on condition that war cease before April 1, 1865. Not a
+member of the Cabinet approved. His secretary, Mr. Nicolay, writes: "The
+President, in evident surprise and sorrow at the want of statesmanlike
+liberality shown by his executive council, folded and laid away the
+draft of his message...." With a deep sigh he added, "But you are all
+opposed to me, and I will not send the message."
+
+His second inauguration passed without striking incidents. Chase, as
+Chief Justice, administered the oath. The second inaugural address
+contained words which are now famous: "With malice towards 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 a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."
+
+That gigantic system of fleets and armies, the creation of which was due
+to Lincoln, was closing tight around the dying Confederacy. Five weeks
+after the inauguration Lee surrendered, and the war was virtually at an
+end. What was to come after was inevitably the overshadowing topic of
+the hour. Many anecdotes represent Lincoln, in these last few days
+of his life, as possessed by a high though melancholy mood of extreme
+mercy. Therefore, much has been inferred from the following words, in
+his last public address, made on the night of the 11th of April: "In the
+present situation, as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some
+new announcement to the people of the South. I am considering and shall
+not fail to act when action shall be proper."
+
+What was to be done for the South, what treatment should be accorded the
+Southern leaders, engrossed the President and his Cabinet at the meeting
+on the 14th of April, which was destined to be their last. Secretary
+Welles has preserved the spirit of the meeting in a striking anecdote.
+Lincoln said that no one need expect he would "take any part in hanging
+or killing those men, even the worst of them. Frighten them out of the
+country, open the gates, let down the bars, scare them off;" said he,
+throwing up his hands as if scaring sheep. "Enough lives have been
+sacrificed; we must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony and
+union."
+
+While Lincoln was thus arming himself with a valiant mercy, a band of
+conspirators at an obscure boardinghouse in Washington were planning his
+assassination. Their leader was John Wilkes Booth, an actor, brother of
+the much abler Edwin Booth. There seems little doubt that he was insane.
+Around him gathered a small group of visionary extremists in whom much
+brooding upon Southern wrongs had produced an unbalanced condition. Only
+a morbid interest can attach today to the strange cunning with
+which Booth laid his plans, thinking of himself all the while as a
+reincarnation of the Roman Brutus.
+
+On the night of the 14th of April, the President attended a performance
+of "Our American Cousin". While the play was in progress, Booth stole
+into the President's box, came close behind him, and shot him through
+the head. Lincoln never spoke again and, shortly after seven next
+morning, ceased breathing.
+
+At the same time, a futile attempt was made upon the life of Seward.
+Booth temporarily escaped. Later he was overtaken and shot. His
+accomplices were hanged.
+
+
+The passage of sixty years has proved fully necessary to the placing of
+Lincoln in historic perspective. No President, in his own time, with the
+possible exception of Washington, was so bitterly hated and so fiercely
+reviled. On the other hand, none has been the object of such intemperate
+hero-worship. However, the greatest of the land were, in the main, quick
+to see him in perspective and to recognize his historic significance. It
+is recorded of Davis that in after days he paid a beautiful tribute to
+Lincoln and said, "Next to the destruction of the Confederacy, the death
+of Abraham Lincoln was the darkest day the South has known."
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
+
+There are two general histories, of conspicuous ability, that deal with
+this period:
+
+J. F. Rhodes, "History of the United States from the Compromise of
+1850", 7 vols. (1893-1906), and J. B. McMaster, "History of the People
+of the United States", 7 vols. (1883-1912). McMaster has the more
+"modern" point of view and is excellent but dry, without any sense of
+narrative. Rhodes has a somewhat older point of view. For example, he
+makes only a casual reference, in a quotation, to the munitions
+problem of 1861, though analyzing with great force and candor such
+constitutional issues as the arrests under the suspension of the writ
+of habeas corpus. The other strong points in his work are its sense
+of narrative, its freedom from hero-worship, its independence of
+conventional views of Northern leaders. As to the South, it suffers from
+a certain Narrowness of vision due to the comparative scantiness of the
+material used. The same may be said of McMaster.
+
+For Lincoln, there is no adequate brief biography. Perhaps the best is
+the most recent, "Abraham Lincoln", by Lord Charnwood ("Makers of the
+Nineteenth Century", 1917). It has a kind of cool detachment that hardly
+any biographer had shown previously, and yet this coolness is joined
+with extreme admiration. Short biographies worth considering are John
+T. Morse, Jr., "Abraham Lincoln" ("American Statesmen" Series, 2 vols.,
+1893), and Ida M. Tarbell, "Life of Abraham Lincoln", 2 vols. (1900).
+The official biography is in ten volumes, "Abraham Lincoln, a History",
+by his secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay (1890). It is a
+priceless document and as such is little likely to be forgotten. But its
+events are so numerous that they swamp the figure of Lincoln and yet are
+not numerous enough to constitute a definitive history of the times. It
+is wholly eulogistic. The same authors edited "The Writings of Abraham
+Lincoln" (Biographical Edition, 2 vols., 1894), which has since been
+expanded (1905) and now fills twelve volumes. It is the definitive
+presentation of Lincoln's mind. A book much sought after by his enemies
+is William Henry Herndon and Jesse William Weik, "The History and
+Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln", 8 vols. (1889; unexpurgated
+edition). It contains about all we know of his early life and paints a
+picture of sordid ugliness. Its reliability has been disputed. No study
+of Lincoln is complete unless one has marched through the "Diary" of
+Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, 3 vols. (1911), which is our most
+important document showing Lincoln in his Cabinet. Important sidelights
+on his character and development are shown in Ward Hill Lamon,
+"Recollections of Lincoln" (1911); David Homer Bates, "Lincoln in the
+Telegraph Office" (1907); and Frederick Trevor Hill, "Lincoln as a
+Lawyer" (1906). A bibliography of Lincoln is in the twelfth volume of
+the latest edition of the "Writings".
+
+The lesser statesmen of the time, both Northern and Southern, still, as
+a rule, await proper treatment by detached biographers. Two Northerners
+have had such treatment, in Allen Johnson's "Stephen A. Douglas" (1908),
+and Frederic Bancroft's "Life of William H. Seward", 2 vols. (1900).
+Good, but without the requisite detachment, is Moorfield Storey's
+"Charles Sumner", ("American Statesmen Series", 1900). With similar
+excellences but with the same defect, though still the best in its
+field, is Albert Bushnell Hart's "Salmon P. Chase" ("American Statesmen
+Series", 1899). Among the Southern statesmen involved in the events of
+this volume, only the President of the Confederacy has received adequate
+reconsideration in recent years, in William E. Dodd's "Jefferson Davis"
+(1907). The latest life of "Robert Toombs", by Ulrich B. Phillips
+(1914), is not definitive, but the best extant. The great need for
+adequate lives of Stephens and Yancey is not at all met by the obsolete
+works--R. M. Johnston and W. M. Browne, "Life of Alexander H. Stephens"
+(1878), and J. W. Du Bose, "The Life and Times of William Lowndes
+Yancey" (1892). There is a brief biography of Stephens by Louis
+Pendleton, in the "American Crisis Biographies". Most of the remaining
+biographies of the period, whether Northern or Southern, are either too
+superficial or too partisan to be recommended for general use. Almost
+alone in their way are the delightful "Confederate Portraits", by
+Gamaliel Bradford (1914), and the same author's "Union Portraits"
+(1916).
+
+Upon conditions in the North during the war there is a vast amount of
+material; but little is accessible to the general reader. A book of
+great value is Emerson Fite's Social and Industrial Conditions in
+the North during the Civil War (1910). Out of unnumbered books of
+reminiscence, one stands forth for the sincerity of its disinterested,
+if sharp, observation--W. H. Russell's "My Diary North and South"
+(1868). Two newspapers are invaluable: The "New York Tribune" for a
+version of events as seen by the war party, "The New York Herald" for
+the opposite point of view; the Chicago papers are also important,
+chiefly the "Times" and "Tribune"; the "Republican "of Springfield,
+Mass., had begun its distinguished career, while the "Journal" and
+"Advertiser" of Boston revealed Eastern New England. For the Southern
+point of view, no papers are more important than the Richmond
+"Examiner", the Charleston "Mercury", and the New Orleans "Picayune".
+Financial and economic problems are well summed up in D. R. Dewey's
+"Financial History of the United States" (3d edition, 1907), and in
+E. P. Oberholzer's "Jay Cooks", 2 vols. (1907). Foreign affairs
+are summarized adequately in C. F. Adams's "Charles Francis Adams"
+("American Statesmen Series", 1900), John Bigelow's "France and the
+Confederate Navy" (1888), A. P. Martin's "Maximilian in Mexico" (1914),
+and John Bassett Moore's "Digest of International Law", 8 vols. (1906).
+
+The documents of the period ranging from newspapers to presidential
+messages are not likely to be considered by the general reader, but if
+given a fair chance will prove fascinating. Besides the biographical
+edition of Lincoln's Writings, should be named, first of all, "The
+Congressional Globe" for debates in Congress; the "Statutes at Large";
+the "Executive Documents", published by the Government and containing a
+great number of reports; and the enormous collection issued by the
+War Department under the title "Official Records of the Union and
+Confederate Armies", 128 vols. (1880-1901), especially the groups of
+volumes known as second and third series.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Abraham Lincoln and the Union, by 
+Nathaniel W. Stephenson
+
+*** 
\ No newline at end of file