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Why We Love Lincoln

<h2 class="nobreak" id="X">X</h2> A month before the first vote for President was cast, Governor Gist, of South Carolina, addressed a secret circular to the other slave State governors saying, that if Lincoln were elected, which seemed almost certain, South Carolina would secede from the Union. The whole South was urged to join in this dismemberment of the republic. The answers of the governors, even before the election had occurred, showed that it was not the intention of the slave States to submit to the rule of the majority, and that, already, armed resistance to the national authority was acceptable as the alternative to “the yoke of a black Republican President.” If any secret voice of this germinating treason reached Lincoln at Springfield he kept it to himself. 98 But when his victory was assured by a majority that made the combined vote of his opponents seem insignificant, his continued silence in the midst of general rejoicing and boasting showed that he understood the gravity of the situation. South Carolina withdrew from the Union, seizing custom houses, post offices, arsenals and forts. <div id="if_i_098" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 40em;"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_098.jpg" width-obs="2198" height-obs="1573" alt="" /> <div class="caption"> Stanton Chase President Lincoln Welles Smith/Seward Blair Bates </div> <div class="captionl"> Carpenter’s picture, painted under the personal supervision of Lincoln, represents the moment when the President told his cabinet that he would issue the Proclamation of Emancipation in fulfilment of a personal vow to God. </div> </div> President Buchanan, old, weak and cowardly, promised to use no force against the rebels, but to leave everything to Congress. His Secretary of War, Mr. Floyd, of Virginia, was a traitor, secretly helping the slave States to arm against the general government. His Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Cobb, of Georgia, also conspired with the disunionists, and finally resigned to take part in the rebellion. His Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Thompson, of Mississippi, actually acted as a rebel commissioner to spread the doctrine of secession while he was still in the Cabinet. The Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. Trescott, was another member of the great plot. Within two months, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas had followed South Carolina out of the Union. Forts, arsenals, post offices and custom houses were captured, the Stars and Stripes lowered, and the rebel flag hoisted. Before Lincoln could be inaugurated, the seceded States had organized a Confederate government, with Jefferson Davis for President. With treason in his Cabinet, and armed rebellion openly preached in Congress, the bewildered, rabbit-hearted Buchanan did nothing to defend the national sovereignty. He was no traitor—simply a poltroon, without character, convictions or courage enough to assert the plain powers of his office, and willing to shelter his cringing soul and dishonored responsibilities behind a paramount authority which he pretended to find in Congress. 100 Imagine Lincoln, sitting in far-away Springfield, helpless to act, while Buchanan permitted a foreign government to be set up within the United States, and promised to use no force against the rebels lest war might follow. Think of the newly-chosen leader of the American people compelled to silence and impotence while the President refused to send relief to loyal Major Anderson and his handful of soldiers besieged in Fort Sumter by rebels whose arms had been furnished by the government they sought to destroy! The lines in Lincoln’s face deepened. His eyes grew more sorrowful. The stooping shoulders stooped still lower. There was that in his look sometimes that compelled mingled awe and pity. For Lincoln loved his country with the love that a father has for his child, and the pent-up agony that showed in his lean visage as he watched the attempt to break up the great republic might not yet find utterance. 101 It was useless for him to repeat that he did not hate the South; that he did not favor the political and social equality of negroes and whites; that he was not an abolitionist; that, although he considered slavery wrong and would oppose its extension to Kansas and all other free soil of the United States, he would do nothing to interfere with it in the States where it had Constitutional rights. Yet he waited patiently and silently, believing that he could persuade the South that he was not an enemy, and in that time of slow anguish his soul turned to God for help. The careless, foot-free, waggish woodchopper of New Salem had scoffed at religion, and written a bitter attack on the Bible, which a wiser friend had snatched from his hands and burned. The President-elect with the cares of a mighty nation in its death throes descending upon his shoulders, stretched his hands child-like to a power greater even than the “omnipotent and sovereign people.” 102 <div id="if_i_102" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 30em;"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_102.jpg" width-obs="1575" height-obs="1939" alt="" /> <div class="caption">Fac-simile of Lincoln’s letter of acceptance</div> </div> Mr. Herndon, his law partner, has given us an unforgetable picture of Lincoln a day before his departure for the White House: “He crossed to the opposite side of the room and threw himself down on the old office sofa, which, after many years of service, had been moved against the wall for support. He lay for some moments, his face towards the ceiling, without either of us speaking. Presently he inquired, ‘Billy’—he always called me by that name—‘how long have we been together?’ ‘Over sixteen years,’ I answered. ‘We’ve never had a cross word in all that time, have we?’... He gathered a bundle of papers and books he wished to take with him, and started to go; but, before leaving, he made the strange request that the sign-board which swung on its rusty hinges at the foot of the stairway should remain. ‘Let it hang there,’ he said, with a significant lowering of the voice. ‘Give our clients to understand that the election of a President103 makes no change in the firm of Lincoln & Herndon. If I live, I am coming back some time, and then we’ll go right on practising law as if nothing had happened.’ He lingered for a moment, as if to take a last look at the old quarters, and then he passed through the door into the narrow hallway.” On the day Lincoln left Springfield to take the oath of office at Washington he stood in a cold rain on the rear end of the train that was to take him away, and addressed a bareheaded crowd. His face worked with emotion. His lips trembled and his voice shook. His eyes sought the faces of his old neighbors with a new sadness. “To-day I leave you,” he said, bending his tall, ugly figure, as if in benediction. “I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God who assisted him shall be with me and aid me, I must fail.” 104 Strong men in the crowd wept. “But if the same omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail—I shall succeed.” The long arms and bony hands were extended. The crooked mouth quivered, the gray eyes were moist, and the tall figure seemed to grow taller. “Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now.” With that prayer on his lips Lincoln went on his way to Washington through many a cheering multitude that uncovered as the train passed. He made speeches at Indianapolis, Columbus, Steubenville, Pittsburg, Cleveland, Buffalo, Albany and New York. He begged the American people to be patient. No blood would be shed unless the government was compelled to act in self-defense. There would be no “coercion” or “invasion” of the South, but the United States would105 retake its own forts and other property and collect duties on importations. In Cincinnati Lincoln spoke to the South, which was reviling him and defying the national authority, in terms that prove how eager he was to avert armed conflict: “We mean to leave you alone, and in no way interfere with your institutions; to abide by all and every compromise of the Constitution; and, in a word, coming back to the original proposition, to treat you, so far as degenerate men—if we have degenerated—may, according to the examples of those noble fathers, Washington, Jefferson and Madison. We mean to remember that you are as good as we are; that there is no difference between us other than the difference of circumstances. We mean to recognize and bear in mind always that you have as good hearts in your bosoms as other people, or as we claim to have, and to treat you accordingly.” It took a great soul in a man of Lincoln’s106 heroic origin, direct methods, intense patriotism and deep hatred of slavery to speak in such terms to rebellion. The time came when he hurled a million armed men against the insurgent South, when with a stroke of his pen he set free four millions of slaves, representing a property value of about two and a half billion dollars; and when, with fire and sword and the expenditure of hundreds of thousands of lives and billions on billions of treasure, he proved to the world that democratic institutions were strong enough to resist the mightiest shocks of civil war. But as he moved on to the scene of his great ordeal in Washington, there was nothing but temperate reason, kindness and peace on his lips. It must not be forgotten that the tall, gawky, sad-faced lawyer in ill-fitting funereal black, was no limp-limbed product of sedentary sentimentalism, but a man with muscles of steel, who had thrashed and107 cowed the most dreaded desperadoes of the frontier, a self-made son of the wilderness, who had battled against floods, famines and wild beasts; and who had in him the stout heart and steady will of the cabin-born and forest-bred. Lincoln was incapable of fear, save the fear of folly or injustice. He was not afraid even of ridicule, that poisoned weapon before which so many strong men tremble. As the nation prepared to honor the hundredth anniversary of his birth, well might it remember him, newly separated from his provincial and rude, but heroic West, advancing between the haggard passions of a divided country with firm, brotherly hands held out to the whole people. In Philadelphia he was told by Allan Pinkerton, the detective, that there was a conspiracy to murder him when he reached Baltimore. Unless he agreed to make the rest of the journey secretly he could not reach Washington alive. He was urged not108 to expose himself again in public, but to go right on to his destination at once. With this knowledge of his peril, he assisted in the raising of a new flag over Independence Hall that day, and delivered a noble address, in which he recalled the sentiment in the Declaration of Independence “which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.” “Now, my friends,” he cried, his shrill voice ringing to the outer edge of the excited multitude, “can this country be saved on that basis? If it can, I will consider myself one of the happiest men in the world if I can help to save it.... But if this country cannot be saved without giving up that principle, I was about to say that I would rather be assassinated on this spot.... I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty God, to die by.” <div id="if_i_108" class="figcenter" style="max-width: 25em;"> <ANTIMG src="images/i_108.jpg" width-obs="1551" height-obs="2513" alt="" /> <div class="caption">Mrs. Abraham Lincoln</div> </div> 109 With assassins waiting in Baltimore to save the cause of slavery and disunion by striking down the President-elect, Lincoln, by a secret change of plan, managed to reach Washington in safety. <hr /> 110 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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