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 toportray the era of Lincoln is still faced with almost impossible demandsand still confronted with arbitrary points of view. It is out of thequestion, in a book so brief as this must necessarily be, to meet allthese demands or to alter these points of view. Interests that arepurely local, events that did not with certainty contribute to the finaloutcome, gossip, as well as the mere caprice of the scholar--these mustobviously be set aside. 

The task imposed upon the volume resolves itself, at bottom, into justtwo questions: Why was there a war? Why was the Lincoln Governmentsuccessful? With these two questions always in mind I have endeavored, on the one hand, to select and consolidate the pertinent facts; on theother, to make clear, even at the cost of explanatory comment, theirrelations in the historical sequence of cause and effect. This purposehas particularly governed the use of biographical matter, in which themain illustration, of course, is the career of Lincoln. Prominent as itis here made, the Lincoln matter all bears in the last analysis on onepoint--his control of his support. On that the history of the Northhinges. The personal and private Lincoln it is impossible to presentwithin these pages. The public Lincoln, including the character of hismind, is here the essential matter. 

The bibliography at the close of the volume indicates the more importantbooks which are at the reader's disposal and which it is unfortunate notto 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 twonations upon earth entertain feelings of more bitter rancor toward eachother 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 theCompromise of 1850. To trace this division of the people to its ultimatesource, one would have to go far back into colonial times. There was aprocess of natural selection at work, in the intellectual and economicconditions of the eighteenth century, which inevitably drew togethercertain types and generated certain forces. This process manifesteditself in one form in His Majesty's plantations of the North, and inanother in those of the South. As early as the opening of the nineteenthcentury, the social tendencies of the two regions were already so faralienated that they involved differences which would scarcely admit ofreconciliation. It is a truism to say that these differences graduallywere concentrated around fundamentally different conceptions oflabor--of slave labor in the South, of free labor in the North. 

Nothing, however, could be more fallacious than the notion that thisgrowing antagonism was controlled by any deliberate purpose in eitherpart of the country. It was apparently necessary that this Republic inits evolution should proceed from confederation to nationality throughan intermediate and apparently reactionary period of sectionalism. Inthis stage of American history, slavery was without doubt one of theprime factors involved, but sectional consciousness, with all itsemotional and psychological implications, was the fundamental impulse ofthe stern events which occurred between 1850 and 1865. 

By the middle of the nineteenth century the more influential Southernershad come generally to regard their section of the country as a distinctsocial unit. The next step was inevitable. The South began to regarditself as a separate political unit. It is the distinction of Calhounthat he showed himself toward the end sufficiently flexible to becomethe exponent of this new political impulse. With all his earlier firehe encouraged the Southerners to withdraw from the so-called nationalparties, Whig and Democratic, to establish instead a single Southernparty, and to formulate, by means of popular conventions, a singleconcerted policy for the entire South. 

At that time such a policy was still regarded, from the Southern pointof view, as a radical idea. In 1851, a battle was fought at the pollsbetween the two Southern ideas--the old one which upheld separate stateindependence, and the new one which virtually acknowledged Southernnationality. The issue at stake was the acceptance or the rejection ofa compromise which could bring no permanent settlement of fundamentaldifferences. 

Nowhere was the battle more interesting than in South Carolina, for itbrought into clear light that powerful Southern leader who ten yearslater was to be the masterspirit of secession--Robert Barnwell Rhett. In1851 he fought hard to revive the older idea of state independenceand to carry South Carolina as a separate state out of the Union. Accordingly it is significant of the progress that the consolidationof the South had made at this date that on this issue Rhett encounteredgeneral opposition. This difference of opinion as to policy was notinspired, as some historians have too hastily concluded, by nationalfeeling. Scarcely any of the leaders of the opposition considered theFederal Government supreme over the State Government. They opposed Rhettbecause they felt secession to be at that moment bad policy. They sawthat, if South Carolina went out of the Union in 1851, she would goalone and the solidarity of the South would be broken. They were notlacking in sectional patriotism, but their conception of the bestsolution of the complex problem differed from that advocated by Rhett. Their position was summed up by Langdon Cheves when he said, "To secedenow is to secede from the South as well as from the Union. " On the basisof 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 sectionalconsciousness. On the surface the life of the people seemed, indeed, tobelie the existence of any such feeling. The Northern capitalist classaimed steadily at being non-sectional, and it made free use of the wordnational. We must not forget, however, that all sorts of people talkedof national institutions, and that the term, until we look closelyinto the mind of, the person using it, signifies nothing. Because theNorthern capitalist repudiated the idea of sectionalism, it does notfollow that he set up any other in its place. Instead of accomplishinganything so positive, he remained for the most part a negative quantity. 

Living usually somewhere between Maine and Ohio, he made it his chiefpurpose to regulate the outflow of manufactures from that industrialregion and the inflow of agricultural produce. The movement of thelatter eastward and northward, and the former westward and southward, represents roughly but graphically the movement of the business of thattime. The Easterner lived in fear of losing the money which was owed himin the South. As the political and economic conditions of the day madeunlikely any serious clash of interest between the East and the West, hehad little solicitude about his accounts beyond the Alleghanies. But agradually developing hostility between North and South was accompaniedby a parallel anxiety on the part of Northern capital for its Southerninvestments and debts. When the war eventually became inevitable, $200, 000, 000 were owed by Southerners to Northerners. For those daysthis was an indebtedness of no inconsiderable magnitude. The Northerncapitalists, preoccupied with their desire to secure this account, werenaturally eager to repudiate sectionalism, and talked about nationalinterests with a zeal that has sometimes been misinterpreted. Throughoutthe entire period from 1850 to 1865, capital in American politics playedfor the most part a negative role, and not until after the war did itbecome independent of its Southern interests. 

For the real North of that day we must turn to those Northerners whofelt sufficient unto themselves and whose political convictions wereunbiased by personal interests which were involved in other parts of thecountry. We must listen to the distinct voices that gave utterance totheir views, and we must observe the definite schemes of their politicalleaders. Directly we do this, the fact stares us in the face that theNorth had become a democracy. The rich man no longer played the roleof grandee, for by this time there had arisen those two groups which, between them, are the ruin of aristocracy--the class of prosperouslaborers and the group of well-to-do intellectuals. Of these, the lattergave utterance, first, to their faith in democracy, and then, with allthe intensity of partisan zeal, to their sense of the North as theagent of democracy. The prosperous laborers applauded this expressionof an opinion in which they thoroughly believed and at the same time gavetheir willing support to a land policy that was typically Northern. 

American economic history in the middle third of the century isessentially the record of a struggle to gain possession of public land. The opposing forces were the South, which strove to perpetuate by thismeans a social system that was fundamentally aristocratic, and theNorth, which sought by the same means to foster its ideal of democracy. Though the South, with the aid of its economic vassal, the Northerncapitalist class, was for some time able to check the land-hunger ofthe Northern democrats, it was never able entirely to secure the controlwhich it desired, but was always faced with the steady and continuedopposition of the real North. On one occasion in Congress, the heartof the whole matter was clearly shown, for at the very moment when theNortherners of the democratic class were pressing one of their frequentschemes for free land, Southerners and their sympathetic Northernhenchmen were furthering a scheme that aimed at the purchase of Cuba. From the impatient sneer of a Southerner that the Northerners sought togive "land to the landless" and the retort that the Southerners seemedequally anxious to supply "niggers to the niggerless, " it can be seenthat American history is sometimes better summed up by angry politiciansthan by historians. 

We must be on our guard, however, against ascribing to either sidetoo precise a consciousness of its own motives. The old days when theAmerican Civil War was conceived as a clear-cut issue are as a watch inthe night that has passed, and we now realize that historical movementsare almost without exception the resultants of many motives. We havecome to recognize that men have always misapprehended themselves, contradicted themselves, obeyed primal impulses, and then deludedthemselves with sophistications upon the springs of action. In a word, unaware of what they are doing, men allow their aesthetic and dramaticsenses to shape their conceptions of their own lives. 

That "great impersonal artist, " of whom Matthew Arnold has so much tosay, is at work in us all, subtly making us into illusions, first toourselves and later to the historian. It is the business of history, asof analytic fiction, both to feel the power of these illusions and towork through them in imagination to the dim but potent motives on whichthey rest. We are prone to forget that we act from subconscious quite asoften as from conscious influences, from motives that arise out of thedim parts of our being, from the midst of shadows that psychology hasonly recently begun to lift, where senses subtler than the obvious makeuse of fear, intuition, prejudice, habit, and illusion, and too oftenplay with us as the wind with blown leaves. 

True as this is of man individually, it is even more fundamentally trueof man collectively, of parties, of peoples. It is a strikingly accuratedescription of the relation of the two American nations that now foundthemselves opposed within the Republic. Neither fully understood theother. Each had a social ideal that was deeper laid than any theory ofgovernment or than any commercial or humanitarian interest. Both knewvaguely but with sure instinct that their interests and idealswere irreconcilable. Each felt in its heart the deadly passion ofself-preservation. It was because, in both North and South, men weresubtly conscious that a whole social system was the issue at stake, andbecause on each side they believed in their own ideals with their wholesouls, that, when the time came for their trial by fire, they went totheir deaths singing. 

In the South there still obtained the ancient ideal of territorialaristocracy. Those long traditions of the Western European peopleswhich had made of the great landholder a petty prince lay beneath theplantation life of the Southern States. The feudal spirit, revived in asofter world and under brighter skies, gave to those who participated init the same graces and somewhat the same capacities which it gave to theknightly class in the days of Roland--courage, frankness, generosity, ability in affairs, a sense of responsibility, the consciousnessof caste. The mode of life which the planters enjoyed and which theinferior whites regarded as a social paradise was a life of completedeliverance from toil, of disinterested participation in localgovernment, of absolute personal freedom--a life in which the mechanicalaction of law was less important than the more human compulsion ofsocial opinion, and in which private differences were settled under thecode 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, stoodthe great house of the planter, usually a graceful example of colonialarchitecture, surrounded by stately gardens. This mansion was the centerof a boundless hospitality; guests were always coming and going; thehostess 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 coacheslumbering along avenues of noble oaks, bringing handsome women to visitthe mansion; of great feastings; of nights of music and dancing; aboveall, of the great festival of Christmas, celebrated much as had been thecustom in "Merrie England" centuries before. 

Below the surface of this bright world lay the enslaved black race. Inthe minds of many Southerners--it was always a secret burden from whichthey saw no means of freeing themselves. To emancipate the slaves, andthereby 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 onlyin small groups and when constantly surrounded by white influence, as inthe case of house servants. Though a few great capitalists had takenup the idea that the deliberate exploitation of the blacks was the highprerogative of the whites, the general sentiment of the Southern peoplewas more truly expressed by Toombs when he said: "The question is notwhether we could be more prosperous and happy with these three and ahalf million slaves in Africa, and their places filled with an equalnumber of hardy, intelligent, and enterprising citizens of the superiorrace; but it is simply whether, while we have them among us, we would bemost prosperous with them in freedom or in bondage. "

The Southern people, in the majority of instances, had no hatred of theblacks. In the main they led their free, spirited, and gracious life, convinced that the maintenance of slavery was but making the best ofcircumstances which were beyond their control. It was these Southernpeople who were to hear from afar the horrible indictment of alltheir motives by the Abolitionists and who were to react in a growingbitterness 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 professionalpolitics. For there was a group of powerful magnates, rich planters or"slave barons, " who easily made their way into Congress, and who playedinto the hands of the Northern capitalists, for a purpose similar totheirs. It was these men who forced the issue upon slavery; they warnedthe common people of the North to mind their own business; and for doingso they were warmly applauded by the Northern capitalist class. It wastherefore in opposition to the whole American world of organized capitalthat the Northern masses demanded the use of "the Northern hammer"--asSumner put it, in one of his most furious speeches--in their aim todestroy a section where, intuitively, they felt their democratic idealcould not be realized. 

And what was that ideal? Merely to answer democracy is to dodge thefundamental question. The North was too complex in its social structureand too multitudinous in its interests to confine itself to one typeof life. It included all sorts and conditions of men--from the mostgracious of scholars who lived in romantic ease among his German andSpanish books, and whose lovely house in Cambridge is forever associatedwith the noble presence of Washington, to the hardy frontiersman, breaking the new soil of his Western claim, whose wife at sunset shadedher tired eyes, under a hand rough with labor, as she stood on thethreshold of her log cabin, watching for the return of her man acrossthe weedy fields which he had not yet fully subdued. Far apart as wereLongfellow and this toiler of the West, they yet felt themselves to beone in purpose. 

They were democrats, but not after the simple, elementary manner of thedemocrats at the opening of the century. In the North, there had cometo life a peculiar phase of idealism that had touched democracy withmysticism and had added to it a vague but genuine romance. This newvision of the destiny of the country had the practical effect of makingthe Northerners identify themselves in their imaginations with allmankind and in creating in them an enthusiastic desire, not only to giveto every American a home of his own, but also to throw open the gates ofthe nation and to share the wealth of America with the poor of all theworld. In very truth, it was their dominating passion to give "land tothe landless. " Here was the clue to much of their attitude toward theSouth. Most of these Northern dreamers gave little or no thought toslavery itself; but they felt that the section which maintained such asystem so committed to aristocracy that any real friendship with it wasimpossible. 

We are thus forced to conceive the American Republic in the yearsimmediately following the Compromise of 1850 as, in effect, a dualnation, without a common loyalty between the two parts. Before long themost significant of the great Northerners of the time was to describethis impossible condition by the appropriate metaphor of a housedivided against itself. It was not, however, until eight years after thedivision of the country had been acknowledged in 1850 that thesewords were uttered. In those eight years both sections awoke to theseriousness of the differences that they had admitted. Both perceivedthat, instead of solving their problem in 1850, they had merely drawnsharply the lines of future conflict. In every thoughtful mind therearose the same alternative questions: Is there no solution but fightingit out until one side destroys the other, or we end as two nationsconfessedly independent? Or is there some conceivable new outlet forthis opposition of energy on the part of the sections, some new mode ofpermanent adjustment?

It was at the moment when thinking men were asking these questions thatone of the nimblest of politicians took the center of the stage. StephenA. Douglas was far-sighted enough to understand the land-hunger ofthe time. One is tempted to add that his ear was to the ground. Thestatement will not, however, go unchallenged, for able apologists havetheir good word to say for Douglas. Though in the main, the traditionalview of him as the prince of political jugglers still holds its own, letus admit that his bold, rough spirit, filled as it was with politicaldaring, was not without its strange vein of idealism. And then let usrepeat that his ear was to the ground. Much careful research has indeedbeen expended in seeking to determine who originated the policy which, about 1853, Douglas decided to make his own. There has also been muchdispute about his motives. Most of us, however, see in his course ofaction an instance of playing the game of politics with an audacity thatwas magnificent. 

His conduct may well have been the result of a combination of motiveswhich included a desire to retain the favor of the Northwest, a wishto pave the way to his candidacy for the Presidency, the intention toenlist the aid of the South as well as that of his own locality, andperhaps the hope that he was performing a service of real value to hiscountry. That is, he saw that the favor of his own Northwest would belavished upon any man who opened up to settlement the rich lands beyondIowa and Missouri which were still held by the Indians, and for whichthe Westerners were clamoring. Furthermore, they wanted a railroad thatwould reach to the Pacific. There were, however, local entanglements andpolitical cross-purposes which involved the interests of the free Stateof Illinois and those of the slave State of Missouri. 

Douglas's great stroke was a programme for harmonizing all theseconflicting interests and for drawing together the West and the South. Slaveholders were to be given what at that moment they wanted most--anopportunity to expand into that territory to the north and west ofMissouri which had been made free by the Compromise of 1820, while thefree Northwest was to have its railroad to the coast and also its chanceto expand into the Indian country. Douglas thus became the champion of abill which would organize two new territories, Kansas and Nebraska, butwhich would leave the settlers in each to decide whether slavery or freelabor should prevail within their boundaries. This territorial schemewas accepted by a Congress in which the Southerners and their Northernallies held control, and what is known as the Kansas-Nebraska Bill wassigned 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 partyof 1854 in which Douglas was a conspicuous leader. The Democrats boastedthat they were the only really national party and contended that theirrivals, the Whigs and the Know-Nothings, were merely the representativesof localities or classes. Sectionalism was the favorite charge which theDemocrats brought against their enemies; and yet it was upon these veryDemocrats that the slaveholders had hitherto relied, and it was uponcertain members of this party that the label, "Northern men withSouthern principles, " had been bestowed. 

The label was not, however, altogether fair, for the motives of theDemocrats were deeply rooted in their own peculiar temperament. In thelast analysis, what had held their organization together, and what hadenabled them to dominate politics for nearly the span of a generation, was their faith in a principle that then appealed powerfully, and thatstill appeals, to much in the American character. This was the principleof negative action on the part of the government--the old idea that thegovernment should do as little as possible and should confine itselfpractically to the duties of the policeman. This principle has seemedalways to express to the average mind that traditional individualismwhich is an inheritance of the Anglo-Saxon race. In America, in themiddle of the nineteenth century, it reenforced that tradition of localindependence which was strong throughout the West and doubly strong inthe South. Then, too, the Democratic party still spoke the language ofthe theoretical Democracy inherited from Jefferson. And Americans havealways been the slaves of phrases!

Furthermore, the close alliance of the Northern party machine withthe South made it, generally, an object of care for all those Northerninterests that depended on the Southern market. As to the Southerners, their relation with this party has two distinct chapters. The firstembraced the twenty years preceding the Compromise of 1850, and maybe thought of as merging into the second during three or four yearsfollowing the great equivocation. In that period, while the antislaverycrusade was taking form, the aim of Southern politicians was mainlynegative. "Let us alone, " was their chief demand. Though aggressivein their policy, they were too far-sighted to demand of the North anypositive course in favor of slavery. The rise of a new type of Southernpolitician, however, created a different situation and began a secondchapter in the relation between the South and the Democratic partymachine in the North. But of that hereafter. 

Until 1854, it was the obvious part of wisdom for Southerners tocooperate as far as possible with that party whose cardinal idea wasthat the government should come as near as conceivable to a systemof non-interference; that it should not interfere with business, andtherefore oppose a tariff; that it should not interfere with localgovernment, and therefore applaud states rights; that it should notinterfere 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 ahuge, loose confederacy of differing political groups, embracing paupersand millionaires, moderate anti-slavery men and slave barons, all ofwhom were held together by the unreliable bond of an agreement not totread on each other's toes. 

Of this party Douglas was the typical representative, both in strengthand weakness. He had all its pliability, its good humor, its broad andeasy way with things, its passion for playing politics. Nevertheless, incalling upon the believers in political evasion to consent for thisonce to reverse their principle and to endorse a positive action, he hadtaken a great risk. Would their sporting sense of politics as a giganticgame carry him through successfully? He knew that there was a hard fightbefore him, but with the courage of a great political strategist, and proudly confident in his hold upon the main body of his party, heprepared 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 Yorkpaper, with the signatures of members of Congress representing both theextreme anti-slavery wing of the Democrats and the organized Free-Soilparty. 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-Soilersand Democrats. With them was the veteran abolitionist, Giddings ofOhio. The "Appeal" denounced Douglas as an "unscrupulous politician"and sounded both the warcries of the Northern masses by accusing him ofbeing engaged in "an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupiedregion immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our ownStates. "

The events of the spring and summer of 1854 may all be grouped undertwo heads--the formation of an anti-Nebraska party, and the quick rushof sectional patriotism to seize the territory laid open by theKansas-Nebraska Act. The instantaneous refusal of the Northerners toconfine their settlement to Nebraska, and their prompt invasion ofKansas; the similar invasion from the South; the support of bothmovements by societies organized for that purpose; the war in Kansasall the details of this thrilling story have been told elsewhere. * Thepolitical 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: theDemocrats, the Whigs, the Free-Soilers, and the Know-Nothings. 

The Free-Soil party, hitherto a small organization, had sought to makeslavery the main issue in politics. Its watchword was "Free soil, freespeech, free labor, and free men. " It is needless to add that it wasinstantaneous in its opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. 

The Whigs at the moment enjoyed the greatest prestige, owing to theassociation with them of such distinguished leaders as Webster and Clay. In 1854, however, as a party they were dying, and the very conditionthat had made success possible for the Democrats made it impossible forthe Whigs, because the latter stood for positive ideas, and aimed to benational 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 dayproved to be sectional. The Whigs would not, like the Democrats, adopt anegative attitude toward these issues, nor would they consent to becomemerely sectional. Yet at the moment negation and sectionalism were theonly alternatives, and between these millstones the Whig organizationwas destined to be ground to bits and to disappear after the nextPresidential election. 

Even previous to 1854, numbers of Whigs had sought a desperate outletfor their desire to be positive in politics and had created a new partywhich during a few years was to seem a reality and then vanish togetherwith its parent. The one chance for a party which had positive ideasand which wished not to be sectional was the definite abandonment ofexisting issues and the discovery of some new issue not connected withsectional feeling. Now, it happened that a variety of causes, social andreligious, had brought about bad blood between native and foreigner, insome of the great cities, and upon the issue involved in this conditionthe failing spirit of the Whigs fastened. A secret society which hadbeen formed to oppose the naturalization of foreigners quickly became arecognized political party. As the members of the Society answered allquestions with "I do not know, " they came to be called "Know-Nothings, "though they called themselves "Americans. " In those states wherethe Whigs had been strongest--Massachusetts, New York, andPennsylvania--this last attempt to apply their former temper, though nottheir principles, had for a moment some success; but it could not escapethe fierce division which was forced on the country by Douglas. As aresult, it rapidly split into factions, one of which merged with theenemies of Douglas, while the other was lost among his supporters. 

What would the great dying Whig party leave behind it? This was thereally momentous question in 1854. Briefly, this party bequeathedthe temper of political positivism and at the same time the dread ofsectionalism. The inner clue to American politics during the next fewyears is, to many minds, to be found largely in the union of this oldWhig temper with a new-born sectional patriotism, and, to other minds, in the gradual and reluctant passing of the Whig opposition to asectional party. But though this transformation of the wrecks ofWhiggism began immediately, and while the Kansas-Nebraska Bill wasstill being hotly debated in Congress, it was not until 1860 that it wascompleted. 

In the meantime various incidents had shown that the sectionalpatriotism of the North, the fury of the abolitionists, and the positivetemper in politics, were all drawing closer together. Each of thesetendencies can be briefly illustrated. For example, the rush to Kansashad begun, and the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Society was preparing toassist settlers who were going west. In May, there occurred at Bostonone of the most conspicuous attempts to rescue a fugitive slave, inwhich a mob led by Thomas Wentworth Higginson attacked the guards ofAnthony Burns, a captured fugitive, killed one of them, but failed toget the slave, who was carried to a revenue cutter between lines ofsoldiers and returned to slavery. Among numerous details of the hour theburning of Douglas in effigy is perhaps worth passing notice. In dulythe anti-Nebraska men of Michigan held a convention, at which theyorganized as a political party and nominated a state ticket. Of theirnominees, two had hitherto ranked themselves as Free-Soilers, three asanti-slavery Democrats, and five as Whigs. For the name of their partythey chose "Republican, " and as the foundation of their platform theresolution "That, postponing and suspending all differences withregard to political economy or administrative policy, " they would "actcordially and faithfully in unison, " opposing the extension of slavery, and would "cooperate and be known as 'Republicans' until the contest beterminated. "

The history of the next two years is, in its main outlines, the storyof the war in Kansas and of the spread of this new party throughout theNorth. It was only by degrees, however, that the Republicans absorbedthe various groups of anti-Nebraska men. What happened at this time inIllinois may be taken as typical, and it is particularly noteworthyas revealing the first real appearance of Abraham Lincoln in Americanhistory. 

Though in 1854 he was not yet a national figure, Lincoln was locallyaccredited with keen political insight, and was, regarded in Illinois asa strong lawyer. The story is told of him that, while he was attendingcourt on the circuit, he heard the news of the Kansas-Nebraska Act ina tavern and sat up most of the night talking about it. Next morninghe used a phrase destined to become famous. "I tell you, " said he to afellow 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 tobecome the Whig candidate for United States senator, to succeed theDemocratic colleague of Douglas. But there was little chance ofhis election, for the real contest was between the two wings of theDemocrats, the Nebraska men and the anti-Nebraska men, and Lincolnwithdrew 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 itsvote lodge temporarily among the Know-Nothings, but before the end ofthe year even they began to lose their prominence. In the autumn, fromthe obscurity of his provincial life, he saw, far off, Seward, the mostastute politician of the day, join the new movement. In New York, theRepublican state convention and the Whig state convention merged intoone, and Seward pronounced a baptismal oration upon the Republican partyof New York. 

In the House of Representatives which met in December, 1855, theanti-Nebraska men were divided among themselves, and the Know-Nothingsheld the balance of power. No candidate for the speakership, however, was able to command a majority, and finally, after it had been agreedthat a plurality would be sufficient, the contest closed, on the onehundred and thirty-third ballot, with the election of a Republican, N. P. Banks. Meanwhile in the South, the Whigs were rapidly leaving theparty, pausing a moment with the Know-Nothings, only to find that theirinevitable resting-place, under stress of sectional feeling, was withthe Democrats. 

On Washington's birthday, 1856, the Know-Nothing national convention metat Philadelphia. It promptly split upon the subject of slavery, anda portion of its membership sent word offering support to anotherconvention which was sitting at Pittsburgh, and which had been called toform a national organization for the Republican party. A third assemblyheld on this same day was composed of the newspaper editors of Illinois, and may be looked upon as the organization of the Republican party inthat state. At the dinner following this informal convention, Lincoln, who was one of the speakers, was toasted as "the next United StatesSenator. "

Some four months afterward, in Philadelphia, the Republicans held theirfirst national convention. Only a few years previous its membershad called themselves by various names--Democrats, Free-Soilers, Know-Nothings, Whigs. The old hostilities of these different groups hadnot yet died out. Consequently, though Seward was far and away the mosteminent member of the new party, he was not nominated for President. That dangerous honor was bestowed upon a dashing soldier and explorer ofthe 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 momentousyear, was to be found in the great number of able Whigs who, seeingthat their own party was lost but refusing to be sidetracked by themake-believe issue of the Know-Nothings, were now hesitating what to do. Though the ordinary politicians among the Republicans doubtless wishedto conciliate these unattached Whigs, the astuteness of the leaders wastoo great to allow them to succumb to that temptation. They seem to havefeared the possible effect of immediately incorporating in their ranks, while their new organization was still so plastic, the bulk of thoseconservative classes which were, after all, the backbone of thisirreducible Whig minimum. 

The Republican campaign was conducted with a degree of passion that hadscarcely been equaled in America before that day. To the well-orderedspirit of the conservative classes the tone which the Republicansassumed appeared shocking. Boldly sectional in their language, sweepingin their denunciation of slavery, the leaders of the campaign madebitter and effective use of a number of recent events. "Uncle Tom'sCabin", published in 1852, and already immensely popular, was used as apolitical tract to arouse, by its gruesome picture of slavery, a hatredof slaveholders. Returned settlers from Kansas went about the Northtelling horrible stories of guerrilla warfare, so colored as to throwthe odium all on one side. The scandal of the moment was the attack madeby Preston Brooks on Sumner, after the latter's furious diatribe in theSenate, which was published as "The Crime Against Kansas". With doubleskill the Republicans made equal capital out of the intellectualviolence of the speech and the physical violence of the retort. Inaddition to this, there was ready to their hands the evidence ofSouthern and Democratic sympathy with a filibustering attempt to conquerthe republic of Nicaragua, where William Walker, an American adventurer, had recently made himself dictator. Walker had succeeded in having hisminister acknowledged by the Democratic Administration, and in obtainingthe endorsement of a great Democratic meeting which was held in NewYork. It looked, therefore, as if the party of political evasion had ananchor to windward, and that, in the event of their losing in Kansas, they intended to placate their Southern wing by the annexation ofNicaragua. 

Here, indeed, was a stronger political tempest than Douglas, weatherwisethough he was, had foreseen. How was political evasion to brave it? Witha courage quite equal to the boldness of the Republicans, the Democratstook another tack and steered for less troubled waters. Their conventionat Cincinnati was temperate and discreet in all its expressions, and forPresident it nominated a Northerner, James Buchanan of Pennsylvania, aman who was wholly dissociated in the public mind from the struggle overKansas. 

The Democratic party leaders knew that they already had two stronggroups of supporters. Whatever they did, the South would have to goalong with them, in its reaction against the furious sectionalism of theRepublicans. Besides the Southern support, the Democrats counted uponthe aid of the professional politicians--those men who consideredpolitics rather as a fascinating game than as serious and difficult workbased 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 thesupport of a third group. If they could only win over the Northernremnant of the Whigs that was still unattached, their position would besecure. In their efforts to obtain this additional and very necessaryreinforcement, they decided to appear as temperate and restrained aspossible--a well bred party which all mild and conservative men couldtrust. 

This attitude they formulated in connection with Kansas, which at thattime had two governments: one, a territorial government, set up byemigrants from the South; the other, a state government, under theconstitution drawn up at Topeka by emigrants from the North. Oneauthorized slavery; the other prohibited slavery; and both had appealedto Washington for recognition. It was with this quite definite issuethat Congress was chiefly concerned in the spring of 1856. During thesummer Toombs introduced a bill securing to the settlers of Kansascomplete freedom of action and providing for an election of delegatesto a convention to draw up a state constitution which would determinewhether slavery or freedom was to prevail--in other words, whetherKansas was to be annexed to the South or to the North. This bill wasmerely the full expression of what Douglas had aimed at in 1854 and ofwhat was nicknamed "popular sovereignty"--the right of the locality tochoose for itself between slave and free labor. 

Two years before, such a measure would have seemed radical. But inpolitics time is wonderfully elastic. Those two years had been packedwith turmoil. Kansas had been the scene of a bloody conflict. Regardlessof which side had a majority on the ground, extremists on each side haddemanded recognition for the government set up by their own party. Bycontrast, Toombs's offer to let the majority rule appeared temperate. 

The Republicans saw instantly that they must discredit the proposalor the ground would be cut from under them. Though the bill passed theSenate, they were able to set it aside in the House in favor of a billadmitting Kansas as a free state with the Topeka constitution. TheDemocrats thereupon accused the Republicans of not wanting peace and ofwishing to keep up the war-cry "Bleeding Kansas" until election time. 

That, throughout the country, the two parties continued on the linesof policy they had chosen may be seen from an illustration. A Housecommittee which had gone to Kansas to investigate submitted two reports, one of which, submitted by a Democratic member, told the true story ofthe murders committed by John Brown at Pottawatomie. And yet, whilethe Republicans spread everywhere their shocking tales of murders offree-state settlers, the Democrats made practically no use of thisequally shocking tale of the murder of slaveholders. Apparently theywere resolved to appear temperate and conservative to the bitter end. 

And they had their reward. Or, perhaps the fury of the Republicans hadits just deserts. From either point of view, the result was a choice ofevils on the part of the reluctant Whigs, and that choice was expressedin the following words by as typical a New Englander as Rufus Choate:"The first duty of Whigs, " wrote Choate to the Maine State centralcommittee, "is to unite with some organization of our countrymento defeat and dissolve the new geographical party calling itselfRepublican. . . . The question for each and every one of us is. . . By whatvote can I do most to prevent the madness of the times from working itsmaddest act the very ecstasy of its madness--the permanent formation andthe actual triumph of a party which knows one half of America onlyto hate and dread it. If the Republican party, " Choate continued, "accomplishes its object and gives the government to the North, I turnmy eyes from the consequences. To the fifteen states of the South thatgovernment will appear an alien government. It will appear worse. Itwill appear a hostile government. It will represent to their eye avast 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; itsconstitution, the glittering and sounding generalities of naturalright which make up the Declaration of Independence. . . . Practically thecontest, in my judgment, is between Mr. Buchanan and Colonel Fremont. Inthese circumstances, I vote for Mr. Buchanan. "

The party of political evasion thus became the refuge of the oldoriginal Whigs who were forced to take advantage of any port in a storm. Buchanan was elected by an overwhelming majority. To the carelesseye, Douglas had been justified by results; his party had triumphed asperhaps never before; and yet, no great political success was everbased upon less stable foundations. To maintain this position, thoseNortherners who reasoned as Choate did were a necessity; but to keepthem in the party of political evasion would depend upon the ability ofthis party to play the game of politics without acknowledging sectionalbias. Whether this difficult task could be accomplished would dependupon the South. Toombs, on his part, was anxious to continue making theparty of evasion play the great American game of politics, and inhis eagerness he perhaps overestimated his hold upon the South. This, however, remains to be seen. 

Already another faction had formed around William L. Yancey ofAlabama--a faction as intolerant of political evasion as the Republicansthemselves, and one that was eager to match the sectional Northern partyby a sectional Southern party. It had for the moment fallen into linewith the Toombs faction because, like the Whigs, it had not the courageto 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 thispositive Southern party, which had the inevitable result of forcing theWhig remainder to choose, not as in 1856 between a positive sectionalpolicy and an evasive nonsectional policy, but in 1860 between twopolicies 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 politicalevasion by a small group of able politicians, chief among whom wereRobert Toombs, Howell Cobb, and Alexander H. Stephens. Curiously enoughall three were Georgians, and this might indeed be called the day ofGeorgia in the history of the South. 

A different type of man, however, and one significant of a divergentpoint of view, had long endeavored to shake the leadership of theGeorgian group. Rhett in South Carolina, Jefferson Davis in Mississippi, and above all Yancey in Alabama, together with the interests andsentiment which they represented, were almost ready to contest theorthodoxy of the policy of "nothing doing. " To consolidate the interestsbehind them, to arouse and fire the sentiment on which they relied, wasnow the confessed purpose of these determined men. So little attentionhas hitherto been given to motive in American politics that the modernstudent still lacks a clear-cut and intelligent perception of thesevarious factions. In spite of this fact, however, these men may safelybe regarded as being distinctly more intellectual, and as havingdistinctly deeper natures, than the men who came together underthe leadership of Toombs and Cobb, and who had the true provincialenthusiasm 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 overstriking hard for the South. Toombs, however, wanted to prevent such asituation, while Yancey was anxious to force one. The former conceivedfelicity as the joy of playing politics on the biggest stage, and hetherefore bent all his strength to preserving the so-called nationalparties; the latter, scornful of all such union, was for a separateSouthern community. 

Furthermore, no man could become enthusiastic about political evasionunless by nature he also took kindly to compromise. So, Toombs and hisfollowers were for preserving the negative Democratic position of 1856. In a formal paper of great ability Stephens defended that position whenhe appeared for reelection to Congress in 1857. Cobb, who had enteredBuchanan's Cabinet as Secretary of the Treasury, and who spoke hopefullyof making Kansas a slave state, insisted nevertheless that such a changemust be "brought about by the recognized principles of carrying out thewill of the majority which is the great doctrine of the Kansas Bill. "To Yancey, as to the Republicans, Kansas was a disputed border-land forwhich the so-called two nations were fighting. 

The internal Southern conflict between these two factions began anewwith the Congressional elections of 1857. It is worth observing that themake-up of these factions was almost a resurrection of the two groupswhich, in 1850, had divided the South on the question of rejecting theCompromise. In a letter to Stephens in reference to one of the Yanceymen, Cobb prophesied: "McDonald will utterly fail to get up a newSouthern Rights party. Burnt children dread the fire, and he cannot getup as strong an organization as he did in 1850. Still it is necessaryto guard every point, as McDonald is a hard hand to deal with. " For themoment, he foretold events correctly. The Southern elections of 1857 didnot 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 heldannually. At this point there arises a vexed question which has, oflate, aroused much discussion. Was there then what we should calltoday a slave "interest"? Was organized capital deliberately exploitingslavery? And did Yancey play into its hands?* The truth seems to bethat, between 1856 and 1860, both the idealist parties, the Republicansand the Secessionists, made peace with, shall we say, the Mammon ofunrighteousness, or merely organized capital? The one joined hands withthe iron interest of the North; the other, with the slave interest ofthe South. The Republicans preached the domination of the North and aprotective tariff; the Yancey men preached the independence of the Southand 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 commercialconvention of 1859 at last gave its support to a resolution that alllaws, state or federal, prohibiting the African slave trade ought to berepealed. That great body of Northern capital which had dealings withthe South was ready, as it always had been, to finance any scheme thatSouthern business desired. Slavers were fitted out in New York, andthe city authorities did not prevent their sailing. Against this somberbackground stands forth that much admired action of Lewis Cass ofMichigan, Buchanan's Secretary of State. Already the slave trade wasin process of revival, and the British Navy, impelled by the powerfulanti-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 notbe submitted to by an independent nation without dishonor, " sent outAmerican warships to prevent this interference. Thereupon the Britishgovernment consented to give up trying to police the ocean againstslavers. It is indeed true, therefore, that neither North nor South hasan historical monopoly of the support of slavery!

It is but fair to add that, so far as the movement to reopen the slavetrade found favor outside the slave barons and their New York allies, it was advocated as a means of political defense, of increasing Southernpopulation as an offset to the movement of free emigration into theNorth, and of keeping the proportion of Southern representation inCongress. Stephens, just after Cass had successfully twisted the lion'stail, took this position in a speech that caused a sensation. In aprivate letter he added, "Unless we get immigration from abroad, weshall have few more slave states. This great truth seems to take thepeople by surprise. Some shrink from it as they would from death. Still, it is as true as death. " The scheme, however, never received generalacceptance; and in the constitution of the Southern Confederacy therewas a section prohibiting the African slave trade. On the other ofthese two issues--the independence of the South--Yancey steadilygained ground. With each year from 1856 to 1860, a larger proportion ofSoutherners drew out of political evasion and gave adherence to theidea of presenting an ultimatum to the North, with secession as analternative. 

Meanwhile, Buchanan sent to Kansas, as Governor, Robert J. Walker, one of the most astute of the Democrats of the opposite faction and aMississippian. The tangled situation which Walker found, the detailsof his attempt to straighten it out, belong in another volume. * It isenough in this connection merely to mention the episode of the Lecomptonconvention in the election of which the Northern settlers refused toparticipate, though Walker had promised that they should have fullprotection and a fair count as well as that the work of the conventionshould be submitted to a popular vote. This action of Walker's was onemore cause of contention between the warring factions in the South. Thefact that he had met the Northerners half-way was seized upon by theYancey men as evidence of the betrayal of the South by the Democraticmoderates. On the other hand, Cobb, writing of the situation in Kansas, said that "a large majority are against slavery and. . . Our friends regardthe fate of Kansas as a free state pretty well fixed. . . The pro-slaverymen, finding that Kansas was likely to become a Black Republican State, determined to unite with the free-state Democrats. " Here is the clue toWalker's course. As a strict party man, he preferred to accept Kansasfree, 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 Americanhistory. Buchanan suddenly changed front, disgraced Walker, and threwhimself into the arms of the Southern extremists. Though his reasonsfor doing so have been debated to this day, they have not yet beenestablished beyond dispute. What seems to be the favorite explanationis that Buchanan was in a panic. What brought him to that condition mayhave 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 toseize their opportunity. They drew up a constitution favoring slavery, but this constitution, Walker had promised, was to be submitted inreferendum. If the convention decided, however, not to submit theconstitution, would not Congress have the right to accept it and admitKansas as a Mate? This question was immediately raised. It now becameplain that, by refusing to take part in the election, the free-stateKansans had thrown away a great tactical advantage. Of this blunder ingeneralship the Yancey men took instant advantage. It was known thatthe proportion of Free-Soilers in Kansas was very great--perhaps amajority--and the Southerners reasoned that they should not be obligedto give up the advantage they had won merely to let their enemiesretrieve their mistake. Jefferson Davis formulated this position inan address to the Mississippi Legislature in which he insisted thatCongress, not the Kansas electorate, was entitled to create the Kansasconstitution, that the Convention was a properly chosen body, and thatits work should stand. What Davis said in a stately way, others said ina furious way. Buchanan stated afterward that he changed front becausecertain Southern States had threatened that, if he did not abandonWalker, they would secede. 

Be that as it may, Buchanan did abandon Walker and threw all theinfluence of the Administration in favor of admitting Kansas with theLecompton constitution. But would this be true to that principle of"popular sovereignty" which was the very essence of the Kansas-NebraskaAct? Would it be true to the principle that each locality should decidefor itself between slavery and freedom? On this issue the Southernerswere fairly generally agreed and maintained that there was no obligationto go behind the work of the convention. Not so, however, the greatexponent of popular sovereignty, Douglas. Rising in his place in theSenate, he charged the President with conspiring to defeat the will ofthe 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 slaveryclause is decided. I care not whether it is voted up or down. "

There followed one of those prolonged legislative battles for which theCongress of the United States is justly celebrated. Furious oratory, propositions, counter-propositions, projected compromises, othercompromises, and at the end nothing positive. But Douglas had defeatedthe attempt to bring in Kansas with the Lecompton constitution. As tothe details of the story, they include such distinguished happenings asa brawling, all-night session when "thirty men, at least, were engagedin the fisticuff, " and one Representative knocked another down. 

Douglas was again at the center of the stage, but his term as Senatorwas nearing its end. He and the President had split their party. Pursuedby the vengeful malice of the Administration, Douglas went home in1858 to Illinois to fight for his reelection. His issue, of course, was popular sovereignty. His temper was still the temper of politicalevasion. How to hold fast to his own doctrine, and at the same timekeep to his programme of "nothing doing"; how to satisfy the negativeDemocrats of the North without losing his last hold on the positivemen of the South--such were his problems, and they were made still moredifficult by a recent decision of the Supreme Court. 

The now famous case of Dred Scott had been decided in the previousyear. Its bewildering legal technicalities may here be passed over;fundamentally, the real question involved was the status of a negro, Dred Scott. A slave who had been owned in Missouri, and who had beentaken by his master to the State of Illinois, to the free territoryof Minnesota, and then back to Missouri, now claimed to be free. TheSupreme Court undertook to decide whether his residence in Minnesotarendered him free, and also whether any negro of slave descent couldbe a citizen of the United States. The official opinion of the Court, delivered by Chief Justice Taney, decided both questions againstthe suppliant. It was held that the "citizens" recognized by theConstitution did not include negroes. So, even if Scott were free, hecould not be considered a citizen entitled to bring suit in the FederalCourts. Furthermore, he could not be considered free, in spite of hisresidence in Minnesota, because, as the Court now ruled, Congress, whenit enacted the Missouri Compromise, had exceeded its authority;the enactment had never really been in force; there was no bindingprohibition of slavery in the Northwestern territories. 

If this decision was good law, all the discussion about popularsovereignty went for nothing, and neither an act of Congress nor thevote of the population of a territory, whether for or against slavery, was of any value whatsoever. Nothing mattered until the newmade stateitself took action after its admission to the Union. Until that time, nopower, national or local, could lawfully interfere with the introductionof slaves. In the case of Kansas, it was no longer of the leastimportance what became of the Lecompton constitution or of any otherthat the settlers might make. The territory was open to settlementby slaveholders and would continue to be so as long as it remaineda territory. The same conditions existed in Nebraska and in all theNorthwest. The Dred Scott decision was accepted as orthodox Democraticdoctrine by the South, by the Administration, and by the "Northern menwith Southern principles. " The astute masters of the game of politicson the Democratic side struck the note of legality. This was law, theexpression of the highest tribunal of the Republic; what more was to besaid? Though in truth there was but one other thing to be said, and thatrevolutionary, the Republicans, nevertheless, did not falter over it. Seward announced it in a speech in Congress on "Freedom in Kansas, " whenhe uttered this menace: "We shall reorganize the Court and thus reformits political sentiments and practices. "

In the autumn of 1858 Douglas attempted to perform the acrobatic featof reconciling the Dred Scott decision, which as a Democrat he hadto accept, with that idea of popular sovereignty without which hisimmediate followers could not be content. In accepting the Republicannomination as Douglas's opponent for the senatorship, Lincoln used thesewords which have taken rank among his most famous utterances: "A housedivided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannotendure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Unionto be dissolved. I do not expect the house to fall but I do expect itwill 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 itis in the course of ultimate extinction; or its advocates will push itforward till it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as wellas 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. ThoughLincoln was at that time forty-nine years old, his political experience, in contrast with that of Douglas, was negligible. He afterward aptlydescribed his early life in that expressive line from Gray, "The shortand simple annals of the poor. " He lacked regular schooling, and itwas altogether from the practice of law that he had gained such formaleducation as he had. In law, however, he had become a master, and hisposition, to judge from the class of cases entrusted to him, was secondto none in Illinois. To that severe yet wholesome cast of mind whichthe law establishes in men naturally lofty, Lincoln added thetonic influence of a sense of style--not the verbal acrobatics of arhetorician, but that power to make words and thought a unit whichmakes the artist of a man who has great ideas. How Lincoln came by thisliterary faculty is, indeed, as puzzling as how Burns came by it. Butthere it was, disciplined by the court room, made pungent by familiaritywith plain people, stimulated by constant reading of Shakespeare, andchastened by study of the Bible. 

It was arranged that Douglas and Lincoln should tour the State togetherin a series of joint debates. As a consequence there followed a mostinteresting opposition of methods in the use of words, a contest betweenthe method formed in Congress at a time when Congress was a perfectrhetorical academy, and that method of using words which was based onan arduous study of Blackstone, Shakespeare, and Isaiah. Lincoln issuedfrom the debates one of the chief intellectual leaders of America, andwith a place in English literature; Douglas came out a Senator fromIllinois. 

But though Douglas kept his following together, and though Lincoln wasvoted down, to Lincoln belonged the real strategic victory. In orderto save himself with his own people, Douglas had been forced to makeadmissions that ruined him with the South. Because of these admissionsthe breach in the party of political evasion became irreparable. It wasin the debate at Freeport that Douglas's fate overtook him, for Lincolnput this question: "Can the people of a United States territory, inany lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery from its limits, prior to the formation of a stateconstitution?"

Douglas answered in his best style of political thunder. "It mattersnot, " he said, "what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as tothe abstract question whether slavery may or may not go into a territoryunder the Constitution; the people have the lawful means to introduce itor exclude it as they please, for the reason that slavery cannot exista day or an hour anywhere unless it is supported by local policeregulations. Those police regulations can only be established by thelocal legislatures; and if the people are opposed to slavery, they willelect representatives to that body who will by unfriendly legislationeffectually prevent the introduction of it into their midst. If, on thecontrary, they are for it, their legislation will favor its extension. Hence, no matter what the decision of the Supreme Court may be onthat abstract question, still the right of the people to make a slaveterritory or a free territory is perfect and complete under the NebraskaBill. "

As to the moral aspect of his actions, Douglas must ultimately be judgedby the significance which this position in which he placed himselfassumed in his own mind. Friendly critics excuse him: an interpretationof the Dred Scott decision which explained it away as an irresponsibleutterance on a subject outside the scope of the case, a mere obiterdictum, is the justification which is called in to save him fromthe charge of insincerity. His friends, today, admit that thisinterpretation was bad law, but maintain that it may have been goodmorals, and that Douglas honestly held it. But many of us have not yetadvanced so far in critical generosity, and cannot help feeling thatDouglas's position remains political legerdemain--an attempt by a greatofficer of the government, professing to defend the Supreme Court, toshow the people how to go through the motions of obedience to the Courtwhile 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 ofpolitics relied saw nothing in Douglas's position at which to bedisturbed. It was merely playing politics, and if that absorbing sportrequired one to carry water on both shoulders, why--play the game!Douglas was the man for people like that. They cheered him to the echoand sent him back to the Senate. So well was this type understood bysome of Lincoln's friends that they had begged him, at least accordingto tradition, not to put the question at Freeport, as by doing so hewould enable Douglas to save himself with his constituency. Lincoln sawfurther, however. He understood better than they the forces then at workin America. The reply reported of him was: "If Douglas answers, he cannever 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. ShouldSoutherners trust any longer the man who had evolved from the principleof let-'em-alone to the principle of double-dealing? However, theSoutherners were far from controlling the situation. Though the eventsof 1858 had created discord in the Democratic party, they had notconsolidated the South. Men like Toombs and Stephens were still hopefulof keeping the States together in the old bond of political evasion. TheDemocratic machine, damaged though it was, had not yet lost its hold onthe moderate South, and while that continued to be the case, there wasstill 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 imaginationbecause of the irony of their situation. Unsuspecting, these men wenttheir way, during the last summer of the old regime, busy with theordinary affairs of state, absorbed in their opposition to the Southernradicals, never dreaming of the doom that was secretly moving towardthem through the plans of John Brown. In the soft brilliancy of theSouthern summer when the roses were in bloom, many grave gentlemenwalked slowly up and down together under the oaks of their plantationavenues, in the grateful dusk, talking eagerly of how the scalestrembled in Southern politics between Toombs and Yancey, and questioningwhether the extremists could ride down the moderate South and reopen theslave trade. In all their wondering whether Douglas would ever come backto them or would prove the blind Samson pulling down their temple abouttheir ears, there was never a word about the approaching shadow whichwas so much more real than the shades of the falling night, and yet soentirely 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 strangefeeling which an unsophisticated society would regard as propheticinspirations. When he left Washington "on the beautiful morning of the5th of March, 1859, he stood at the stern of the boat for some minutesgazing back at the capital. " He had announced his intention of notstanding again as a Representative, and one of his fellow-passengersasked jokingly whether he was thinking of his return as a Senator. Stephen's reply was full of emotion, "No, I never expect to seeWashington again unless I am brought here as a prisoner of war. " Duringthe summer he endeavored to cast off his intuition of approachingdisaster. At his plantation, "Liberty Hall, " he endeavored to be contentwith the innumerable objects associated with his youth; he tried to feelagain the grace of the days that were gone, the mysterious loveliness ofthe Southern landscape with its immense fields, its forests, its greatempty spaces filled with glowing sunshine. He tried to possess histroubled soul with the severe intellectual ardor of the law. But hisgift of second sight would not rest. He could not overcome his intuitionthat, for all the peace and dreaminess of the outward world, destinywas upon him. Looking out from his spiritual seclusion, he beheld whatseemed to him complete political confusion, both local and national. Hisdespairing mood found expression a little later in the words: "Indeedif we were now to have a Southern convention to determine upon the truepolicy of the South either in the Union or out of it, I should expect tosee just as much profitless discussion, disagreement, crimination, andrecrimination amongst the members of it from different states and fromthe same state, as we witness in the present House of Representativesbetween Democrats, Republicans, and Americans. "

Among the sources of confusion Stephens saw, close at home, was theSouthern battle over the reopening of the slave trade. The realityof that issue had been made plain in May, 1859, when the Southerncommercial congress at Vicksburg entertained at the same time tworesolutions: one, that the convention should urge all Southern Statesto amend their constitutions by a clause prohibiting the increaseof African slavery; the other, that the convention urge all theLegislatures of Southern States to present memorials to Congress askingthe repeal of the law against African slave trade. Of these opposedresolutions, 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 furtherindicated by their differing attitudes toward the adventurers fromthe United States in Central America. The Vicksburg Conventionadopted resolutions which were thinly veiled endorsements of southwardexpansion. In the early autumn another Nicaraguan expedition was nippedin the bud by the vigilance of American naval forces. Cobb, prime factorin the group of Southern moderates as well as Secretary of the Treasury, wrote to Buchanan expressing his satisfaction at the event, mentioningthe work of his own department in bringing it about, and also alludingto his arrangements to prevent slave trading off the Florida coast. 

But the spirit of doubt was strong even among the moderates. Douglas wasthe target. Stephens gives a glimpse of it in a letter written duringhis last session in Congress. "Cobb called on me Saturday night, " hewrites. "He is exceedingly bitter against Douglas. I joked him a gooddeal, and told him he had better not fight, or he would certainly bewhipped; that is, in driving Douglas out of the Democratic party. He said that if Douglas ever was restored to the confidence of theDemocracy of Georgia, it would be over his dead body politically. Thisshows his excitement, that is all. I laughed at him, and told him hewould run his feelings and his policy into the ground. " The angerof Cobb, who was himself a confessed candidate for the Democraticnomination, was imperiling the Democratic national machine which Toombswas still struggling so resolutely to hold together. Indeed, as late asthe autumn of 1859 the machine still held together. 

Then came the man of destiny, the bolt from the blue, the end of thechapter. A marvelous fanatic--a sort of reincarnation of the grimmestof the Covenanters--by one daring act shattered the machine and madeimpossible any further coalition on the principle of "nothing doing. "This man of destiny was John Brown, whose attack on Harper's Ferry tookplace October 16th, and whose execution by the authorities of Virginiaon the charges of murder and treason occurred on the 2nd of December. 

The incident filled the South with consternation. The promptcondemnation of it by many Republican leaders did not offset, in theminds of Southerners, the fury of praise accorded by others. The Southhad a ghastly tradition derived chiefly from what is known as NatTurner's Rebellion in Virginia, a tradition of the massacre of whitewomen and children by negroes. As Brown had set opt to rouse a slaverebellion, every Southerner familiar with his own traditions shuddered, identifying in imagination John Brown and Nat Turner. Horror became ragewhen the Southerners heard of enthusiastic applause in Boston and ofEmerson's description of Brown as "that new saint" who was to "make thegallows glorious like the cross. " In the excitement produced by remarkssuch as this, justice was not done to Lincoln's censure. In his speechat Cooper Institute in New York, in February, 1860, Lincoln had said:"John Brown's effort. . . In its philosophy corresponds with the manyattempts related in history at the assassination of kings and emperors. An enthusiast broods over the oppression of a people, until he fancieshimself commissioned by Heaven to liberate them. He ventures the attemptwhich ends in little else than in his own execution. " A few monthsafterwards, the Republican national convention condemned the act ofBrown as "among the gravest of crimes. "

An immediate effect of the John Brown episode was a passionate outburstfrom all the radical press of the South in defense of slavery. Thefollowers of Yancey made the most of their opportunity. The men whovoted at Vicksburg to reopen the slave trade could find no words tomeasure their hatred of every one who, at this moment of crisis, wouldnot declare slavery a blessing. Many of the men who opposed the slavetraders 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 awrong impression of the sentiment of the time. A grim desire forself-preservation took possession of the South, as well as a deadly fearof any person or any thing that tended directly or indirectly to incitethe blacks to insurrection. Northerners of abolitionist sympathies werewarned to leave the country, and in some cases they were tarred andfeathered. 

Great anger was aroused by the detection of book-agents who weredistributing a furious polemic against slavery, "The Impending Crisisof the South: How to Meet It", by Hinton Rowan Helper, a Southerner ofinferior 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 byday and of barbarous massacres by the negroes at night?" It is scarcelystrange, therefore, that in 1859 no Southerner would hear a good word ofanyone caught distributing the book. And yet, in the midst of all thisvehement exaltation of slavery, the fight to prevent a reopening ofthe slave trade went bravely on. Stephens, writing to a friend who wascorrespondent for the "Southern Confederacy", in Atlanta, warned him inApril, 1860, "neither to advocate disunion or the opening of the slavetrade. The people here at present I believe are as much opposed to itas they are at the North; and I believe the Northern people could beinduced to open it sooner than the Southern people. "

The winter of 1859-1860 witnessed a famous congressional battle overthe speakership. The new Congress which met in December contained109 Republicans, 101 Democrats, and 27 Know-Nothings. The Republicancandidate for speaker was John Sherman of Ohio. As the first ballotshowed that he could not command a majority, a Democrat from Missouriintroduced this resolution "Whereas certain members of this House, nowin 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 insurrectionaryand hostile to the peace and tranquillity of the country, and that nomember of this House, who has indorsed or recommended it, is fit to bespeaker of the House. "

During two months there were strange scenes in the House, while theclerk acted as temporary speaker and furious diatribes were thunderedback and forth across the aisle that separated Republicans fromDemocrats, with a passage of fisticuffs or even a drawn pistol to addvariety 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 notendorsed Helper, was given the Republican support; a Know-Nothing wasmade sergeant-at-arms; and Know-Nothing votes added to the Republicanvotes made Pennington speaker. In many Northern cities the news of hiselection was greeted with the great salute of a hundred guns, but atRichmond the papers came out in mourning type. 

Two great figures now advanced to the center of the Congressionalstage--Jefferson Davis, Senator from Mississippi, a lean eagle of a manwith piercing blue eyes, and Judah P. Benjamin, Senator from Louisiana, whose perpetual smile cloaked an intellect that was nimble, keen, andruthless. Both men were destined to play leading roles in the loftydrama of revolution; each was to experience a tragic ending of hispolitical hope, one in exile, the other in a solitary proscription amidthe ruins of the society for which he had sacrificed his all. These men, though often spoken of as mere mouthpieces of Yancey, were in realityquite different from him both in temper and in point of view. 

Davis, who was destined eventually to become the target of Yancey'sbitterest enmity, had refused ten years before to join in the secessionmovement which ignored Calhoun's doctrine that the South had become asocial unit. Though a believer in slavery under the conditions of themoment, Davis had none of the passion of the slave baron for slavery atall costs. Furthermore, as events were destined to show in a startlinglydramatic way, he was careless of South Carolina's passion for staterights. He was a practical politician, but not at all the old type ofthe party of political evasion, the type of Toombs. No other man of themoment was on the whole so well able to combine the elements of Southernpolitics against those more negative elements of which Toombs was thesymbol. The history of the Confederacy shows that the combination whichDavis now effected was not as thorough as he supposed it was. But at themoment he appeared to succeed and seemed to give common purpose to thevast majority of the Southern people. With his ally Benjamin, he struckat the Toombs policy of a National Democratic party. 

On the day following the election of Pennington, Davis introduced inthe Senate a series of resolutions which were to serve as the Southernultimatum, and which demanded of Congress the protection of slaveryagainst territorial legislatures. This was but carrying to its logicalconclusion that Dred Scott decision which Douglas and his followersproposed to accept. If Congress could not restrict slavery in theterritories, how could its creature, a territorial legislature do so?And yet the Douglas men attempted to take away the power from Congressand to retain it for the territorial legislatures. Senator Pugh of Ohiohad already locked horns with Davis on this point, and had attempted toshow that a territorial Legislature was independent of Congress. "ThenI would ask the Senator further, " retorted the logical Davis, "why it ishe 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 oftheir acts. "

In the Democratic convention which met at Charleston in April, 1860, thewaning power of political evasion made its last real stand against therising power of political positivism. To accept Douglas and the ideathat somehow territorial legislatures were free to do what Congresscould not do, or to reject Douglas and endorse Davis's ultimatum--thatin substance was the issue. "In this convention where there should beconfidence and harmony, " said the "Charleston Mercury", "it is plainthat men feel as if they were going into a battle. " In the committee onresolutions where the States were equally represented, the majority wereanti-Douglas; they submitted a report affirming Davis's position thatterritorial legislatures had no right to prohibit slavery and that theFederal Government should protect slavery against them. The minorityrefused to go further than an approval of the Dred Scott case and apledge to abide by all future decisions of the Supreme Court. Afterboth reports had been submitted, there followed the central event of theconvention--the now famous speech by Yancey which repudiated politicalevasion from top to bottom, frankly defended slavery, and demandedeither complete guarantees for its continued existence or, as analternative, Southern independence. Pugh instantly replied and summed upYancey's speech as a demand upon Northern Democrats to say that slaverywas right, and that it was their duty not only to let slavery alone butto aid in extending it. "Gentlemen of the South, " he exclaimed, "youmistake us--you mistake us--we will not do it. "

In the full convention, where the representation of the States was notequal, the Douglas men, after hot debate, forced the adoption of theminority report. Thereupon the Alabama delegation protested and formallywithdrew from the convention, and other delegations followed. There waswild excitement in Charleston, where that evening in the streets Yanceyaddressed crowds that cheered for a Southern republic. The remaininghistory of the Democratic nominations is a matter of detail. TheCharleston convention adjourned without making nominations. Each ofits fragments reorganized as a separate convention, and ultimatelytwo Democratic tickets were put into the field, with Breckinridge ofKentucky as the candidate on the Yancey ticket and Douglas on the other. 

While the Democrats were thus making history through their fatefulbreak-up into separate parties, a considerable number of the so-calledbest people of the country determined that they had nowhere politicallyto lay their heads. A few of the old Whigs were still unable toconsort either with Republicans or with Democrats, old or new. TheKnow-Nothings, likewise, though their number had been steadily meltingaway, had not entirely disappeared. To unite these political remnantsin any definite political whole seemed beyond human ingenuity. A commonsentiment, however, they did have--a real love of the Union and areal 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 PresidentEdward Everett of Massachusetts. Their platform was little more thana profession of love of the Union and a condemnation of sectionalselfishness. 

This Bell and Everett ticket has a deeper significance than hasgenerally been admitted. It reveals the fact that the sentiment ofUnion, in distinction from the belief in the Union, had become a realforce in American life. There could be no clearer testimony to thestrength of this feeling than this spectacle of a great congregation ofmoderate people, unable to agree upon anything except this sentiment, stepping between the sectional parties like a resolute wayfarer goingforward into darkness along a perilous strand between two raging seas. That this feeling of Union was the same thing as the eager determinationof the Republicans, in 1860, to control the Government is one of thosehistorical fallacies that have had their day. The Republican partybecame, in time and under stress of war, the refuge of this sentimentand proved sufficiently far-sighted to merge its identity temporarily inthe composite Union party of 1864. But in 1860 it was still a sectionalparty. Among its leaders Lincoln was perhaps the only Unionist in thesame sense as Bell and Everett. 

Perhaps the truest Unionists of the North, outside the ConstitutionalUnion Party, in 1860, were those Democrats in the following of Douglaswho, after fighting to the last ditch against both the sectionalparties, were to accept, in 1861, the alternative of war rather thandissolution. The course of Douglas himself, as we shall see hereafter, showed that in his mind there was a fixed limit of concession beyondwhich he could not go. When circumstances forced him to that limit, the sentiment of Union took control of him, swept aside his politicaljugglery, abolished his time-serving, and drove him into cooperationwith his bitterest foes that the Union might be saved. Nor was the puresentiment of Union confined to the North and West. Though undoubtedlythe sentiment of locality was more powerful through the South, yet whenthe test came in the election of 1860, the leading candidate of theupper South, in Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, was John Bell, theConstitutional Unionist. In every Southern State this sentiment was ableto 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 whoseorganization, in perfect fighting trim, faced eagerly the dividedDemocrats. The Republicans had no division among themselves upondoctrine. Such division as existed was due to the ordinary rivalryof political leaders. In the opinion of all his enemies and of mostAmericans, Seward was the Republican man of the hour. During much of1859 he had discreetly withdrawn from the country and had left to hispartisans the conduct of his campaign, which seems to have been goingwell when he returned in the midst of the turmoil following the deathof John Brown. Nevertheless he was disturbed over his prospects, for hefound that in many minds, both North and South, he was looked uponas the ultimate cause of all the turmoil. His famous speech on the"irrepressible conflict" was everywhere quoted as an exultant prophecyof these terrible latter days. 

It was long the custom to deny to Seward any good motive in a speechwhich he now delivered, just as it was to deny Webster any good motivefor his famous 7th of March speech. But such criticism is now lessfrequent than it used to be. Both men were seeking the Presidency;both, we may fairly believe, were shocked by the turmoil of politicalcurrents; each tried oiling the waters, and in the attempt eachruined his candidacy. Seward's speech in condemnation of John Brownin February, 1860, was an appeal to the conservative North against theradical 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, sothat 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, butthe comparatively obscure Lincoln. A gap of more than 50 votes separatedLincoln from Cameron, Chase, and Bates. On the second ballot Sewardgained 11 votes, while Lincoln gained 79. The enemies of Seward, findingit impossible to combine on any of the conspicuous candidates, weremoving toward Lincoln, the man with fewest enemies. The third ballotgave Lincoln the nomination. 

We have seen that one of the basal questions of the time was which newpolitical group should absorb the Whig remainder. The ConstitutionalUnion party aimed to accomplish this. The Republicans sought toout-maneuver them. They made their platform as temperate as they couldand yet consistent with the maintenance of their opposition to Douglasand popular sovereignty; and they went no further in their anti-slaverydemands 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 remainimpersonal, careless how nations rose or fell, so long as dividendscontinued? To some extent capital had given an answer. When, in theexcitement following the John Brown incident, a Southern newspaperpublished a white list of New York merchants whose political viewsshould commend them to Southerners, and a black list of those whowere 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 oneof the close allies of Davis, Yancey, and Benjamin in their war uponDouglas. In a word, a great portion of Northern capital had its heartwhere its investments were--in the South. But there was other capitalwhich obeyed the same law, and which had investments in the North;and with this capital the Republicans had been trafficking. They hadsucceeded in winning over the powerful manufacturing interests ofPennsylvania, the pivotal State that had elected Buchanan in 1856. 

The steps by which the new party of enthusiasm made its deal with thebody of capital which was not at one with Belmont and the Democrats arenot essential to the present narrative. Two facts suffice. In 1857 agreat collapse in American business--"the panic of fifty-seven"--ledthe commercial world to turn to the party in power for some scheme ofredress. But their very principles, among which was non-intervention inbusiness, made the Democrats feeble doctors for such a need, andthey evaded the situation. The Republicans, with their insistence onpositivism in government, had therefore an opportunity to make a newapplication of the doctrine of governmental aid to business. In thespring of 1860, the Republican House of Representatives passed theMorrill tariff bill, consideration of which was postponed by theDemocratic Senate. But it served its purpose: it was a Republicanmanifesto. The Republicans felt that this bill, together with theirparty platform, gave the necessary guarantee to the Pennsylvaniamanufacturers, and they therefore entered the campaign confident theywould carry Pennsylvania nor was their confidence misplaced. 

The campaign was characterized by three things: by an ominous quietcoupled with great intensity of feeling; by the organization of hugeparty societies in military form--"Wide-awakes" for Lincoln, numbering400, 000, and "Minute Men" for Breckenridge, with a membership chieflySouthern; and by the perfect frankness, in all parts of the South, ofthreats of secession in case the Republicans won. 

In none of the States which eventually seceded were any votes cast forLincoln, with the exception of a small number in Virginia. In almost allthe other Southern States and in the slave-holding border States, allthe other candidates made respectable showings. In Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, Bell led. But everywhere else in the other slave-holdingStates Breckinridge led, excepting in Missouri where Douglas won by afew 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. Thedistribution of the votes was such that Lincoln had in the ElectoralCollege, 180 electors; Breckinridge, 72; Bell, 39; Douglas, 12. Inneither 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 observethat it reduces itself chiefly to a problem in that science whichpoliticians understand so well--applied psychology. Definite typesof men moulded by the conditions of those days are the determiningfactors--not the slavery question in itself; not, primarily, economicforces; not a theory of government, nor a clash of theories; not any onething; but the fluid, changeful forces of human nature, battling withcircumstances and expressing themselves in the fashion of men's minds. To say this is to acknowledge the fatefulness of sheer feeling. Davisdescribed the situation exactly when he said, in 1860, "A sectionalhostility has been substituted for a general fraternity. " To his ownquestion, "Where is the remedy?" he gave the answer, "In the hearts ofthe 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 terriblefascination of a tragedy on the theme of fate. 

That a secession movement would begin somewhere in the South before theend of 1860 was a foregone conclusion. South Carolina was the logicalplace, and in South Carolina the inevitable occurred. The presidentialelection was quickly followed by an election of delegates, on the 6th ofDecember, to consider in convention the relations of the State with theUnion. The arguments before the Convention were familiar and had beenadvocated since 1851. The leaders of the disunionists were the samewho had led the unsuccessful movement of ten years before. The centralfigure was Rhett, who never for a moment had wavered. Consumed his lifelong by the one idea of the independence of South Carolina, that sternenthusiast pressed on to a triumphant conclusion. The powers which haddefeated him in 1851 were now either silent or converted, so thatthere was practically no opposition. In a burst of passionate zeal theindependence of South Carolina was proclaimed on December 20, 1860, byan ordinance of secession. 

Simultaneously, by one of those dramatic coincidences which make historystranger than fiction, Lincoln took a step which supplemented thisaction and established its tragic significance. What that step was willappear in a moment. 

Even before the secession began, various types of men in politics hadbegun to do each after his kind. Those whom destiny drove first into acorner were the lovers of political evasion. The issue was forced uponthem by the instantaneous demand of the people of South Carolina forpossession of forts in Charleston Harbor which were controlled by theFederal Government. Anticipating such a demand, Major Robert Anderson, the commandant at Charleston, had written to Buchanan on the 23d ofNovember that "Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney must be garrisonedimmediately, if the Government determines to keep command of thisharbor. "

In the mind of every American of the party of political evasion, therenow began a sad, internal conflict. Every one of them had to chooseamong three courses: to shut his eyes and to continue to wail that thefunction of government is to do nothing; to make an end of politicalevasion and to come out frankly in approval of the Southern position;or to break with his own record, to emerge from his evasions on theopposite side, and to confess himself first and before all a supporterof the Union. One or another of these three courses, sooner or later, every man of the President's following chose. We shall see presently therelative strength of the three groups into which that following brokeand what strange courses sometimes tragic, sometimes comic--two of thethree pursued. For the moment our concern is how the division manifesteditself among the heads of the party at Washington. 

The President took the first of the three courses. He held it with thenervous clutch of a weak nature until overmastered by two grim men whogradually hypnotized his will. The turning-point for Buchanan, and thelast poor crisis in his inglorious career, came on Sunday, December30th. Before that day arrived, his vacillation had moved his friends topity and his enemies to scorn. One of his best friends wrote privately, "The President is pale with fear"; and the hostile point of view foundexpression in such comments as this, "Buchanan, it is said, divideshis time between praying and crying. Such a perfect imbecile never heldoffice before. "

With the question what to do about the forts hanging over his bewilderedsoul, Buchanan sent a message to Congress on December 4, 1860, in whichhe sought to defend the traditional evasive policy of his party. Hedenied the constitutional right of secession, but he was also denied hisown right to oppose such a course. Seward was not unfair to the mentalcaliber of the message when he wrote to his wife that Buchanan showed"conclusively that it is the duty of the President to execute thelaws--unless somebody opposes him; and that no State has a right to goout of the Union unless it wants to. "

This message of Buchanan's hastened the inevitable separation of theDemocratic party into its elements. The ablest Southern member of theCabinet, Cobb, resigned. He was too strong an intellect to continuethe policy of "nothing doing" now that the crisis had come. He was toodevoted a Southerner to come out of political evasion except on oneside. On the day Cobb resigned the South Carolina Representatives calledon Buchanan and asked him not to make any change in the dispositionof troops at Charleston, and particularly not to strengthen Sumter, a fortress on an island in the midst of the harbor, without at leastgiving notice to the state authorities. What was said in this interviewwas not put in writing but was remembered afterward in different wayswith unfortunate consequences. 

Every action of Buchanan in this fateful month continued thedisintegration of his following. Just as Cobb had to choose between hisreasonings 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 andhis Northern sympathies, and resigned from the Cabinet on the 11th ofDecember. Buchanan then turned instinctively to the strongest naturesthat remained among his close associates. It is a compliment to theinnate force of Jeremiah S. Black, the Attorney-General, that Buchananadvanced him to the post of Secretary of State and allowed him to nameas his successor in the Attorney-Generalship Edwin M. Stanton. Both weretried Democrats of the old style, "let-'em-alone" sort; and both hadsupported the President in his Kansas policy. But each, like everyother member of his party, was being forced by circumstances to make hischoice among the three inevitable courses, and each chose the Northernside. At once the question of the moment was whether the new Secretaryof State and his powerful henchmen would hypnotize the President. 

For a couple of weeks the issue hung in the balance. Then thereappeared at Washington commissioners from South Carolina "empowered totreat. . . For the delivery of forts. . . And other real estate" held bythe Federal Government within their State. On the day following theirarrival, Buchanan was informed by telegraph that Anderson had dismantledFort Moultrie on the north side of the harbor, had spiked its guns, and had removed its garrison to the island fortress, Sumter, whichwas supposed to be far more defensible. At Charleston his action wasinterpreted as preparation for war; and all South Carolinians saw init a violation of a pledge which they believed the President had giventheir congressmen, three weeks previous, in that talk which had not beenwritten down. Greatly excited and fearful of designs against them, theSouth Carolina commissioners held two conferences with the Presidenton the 27th and 28th of December. They believed that he had broken hisword, and they told him so. Deeply agitated and refusing to admitthat he had committed himself at the earlier conference, he said thatAnderson had acted on his own responsibility, but he refused to orderhim back to the now ruined Fort Moultrie. One remark which he let fallhas been remembered as evidence of his querulous state of mind: "Youare pressing me too importunately" exclaimed the unhappy President;"you don't give me time to consider; you don't give me time to say myprayers; I always say my prayers when required to act upon any greatstate affair. " One remembers Hampden "seeking the Lord" about shipmoney, and one realizes that the same act may have a vastly differentsignificance in different temperaments. 

Buchanan, however, was virtually ready to give way to the demand of thecommissioners. He drew up a paper to that effect and showed it to theCabinet. Then the turning-point came. In a painful interview, Black, long one of his most trusted friends, told him of his intention toresign, and that Stanton would go with him and probably also thePostmaster-General, Holt. The idea of losing the support of these strongpersonalities terrified Buchanan, who immediately fell into a panic. Handing Black the paper he had drawn up, Buchanan begged him to retainoffice and to alter the paper as he saw fit. To this Black agreed. Thedemand for the surrender of the forts was refused; Anderson was notordered back to Moultrie; and for the brief remainder of Buchanan'sadministration Black acted as prime minister. 

A very powerful section of the Northern democracy, well typified bytheir leaders at Washington, had thus emerged from political evasionon the Northern side. These men, known afterwards as War Democrats, combined with the Republicans to form the composite Union party whichsupported Lincoln. It is significant that Stanton eventually reappearedin the Cabinet as Lincoln's Secretary of War, and that along with himappeared another War Democrat, Gideon Welles, Lincoln's Secretary of theNavy. With them, at last, Douglas, the greatest of all the old Democratsof the North, took his position. What became of the other factions ofthe old Democratic party remains to be told. 

While Buchanan, early in the month, was weeping over the pitilessnessof fate, more practical Northerners were grappling with the questionof what was to be done about the situation. In their thoughts theyanticipated a later statesman and realized that they were confronted bya condition and not by a theory. Secession was at last a reality. Whichcourse should they take?

What strikes us most forcibly, as we look back upon that day, is thewidespread desire for peace. The abolitionists form a conspicuousexample. Their watchword was "Let the erring sisters go in peace. "Wendell Phillips, their most gifted orator, a master of spoken style atonce simple and melodious, declaimed splendidly against war. Garrison, in "The Liberator", followed his example. Whittier put the same feelinginto his verse:

They break the links of Union; shall we light The flames of hell to weldanew the chain On that red anvil where each blow is pain?

Horace Greeley said in an editorial in the "New York Tribune": "If thecotton states shall decide that they can do better out of the Unionthan in it, we shall insist on letting them go in peace. Whenever aconsiderable section of our Union shall deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive measures designed to keep them in. We hopenever to live in a republic where one section is pinned to the residueby bayonets. "

The Democrats naturally clung to their traditions, and, even when theywent over, as Black and Stanton did, to the Anti-Southern group, theystill hoped that war would not be the result. Equally earnest againstwar were most of the Republicans, though a few, to be sure, were readyto swing the "Northern hammer. " Summer prophesied that slavery would"go down in blood. " But the bulk of the Republicans were for a sectionalcompromise, and among them there was general approbation of a schemewhich contemplated reviving the line of the Missouri Compromise, andthus frankly admitting the existence of two distinct sections, andguaranteeing to each the security of its own institutions. The greatestRepublican boss of that day, Thurlow Weed, came out in defense of thisplan. 

No power was arrayed more zealously on the side of peace of any kindthan the power of money. It was estimated that two hundred millions ofdollars were owed by Southerners to Northerners. War, it was reasoned, would cause the cancellation of these obligations. To save theirSouthern accounts, the moneyed interests of the North joined theextremists of Abolition in pleading to let the erring sisters goin peace, if necessary, rather than provoke them to war and theconfiscation of debts. It was the dread of such an outcome--whichfinally happened and ruined many Northern firms--that caused thestock-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 allthe financial world at this moment was that specter of unpaid Southernaccounts. 

At this juncture, Senator Crittenden of Kentucky submitted to the Senatea plan which has been known ever since as the Crittenden Compromise. Itwas similar to Weed's plan, but it also provided that the division ofthe country on the Missouri Compromise line should be established bya constitutional amendment, which would thus forever solidifysectionalism. Those elements of the population generally called theconservative and the responsible were delighted. Edward Everett wrote toCrittenden, "I saw with great satisfaction your patriotic movement, andI wish from the bottom of my heart it might succeed"; and August Belmontin a letter to Crittenden spoke for the moneyed interest: "I have yetto meet the first Union-loving man, in or out of politics, who does notapprove your compromise proposition. . . . "

The Senate submitted the Compromise to a Committee of Thirteen. In thiscommittee the Southern leaders, Toombs and Davis, were both willing toaccept the Compromise, if a majority of the Republican members wouldagree. Indeed, if the Republicans would agree to it, there seemedno reason why a new understanding between the sections might not bereached, and no reason why sectionalism, if accepted as the basis of thegovernment, might not solve the immediate problem and thus avert war. 

In this crisis all eyes were turned to Seward, that conspicuousRepublican who was generally looked upon as the real head of hisparty. And Seward, at that very moment, was debating whether to acceptLincoln's offer of the Secretaryship of State, for he considered itvital to have an understanding with Lincoln on the subject of theCompromise. He talked the matter over with Weed, and they decided thatWeed should go to Springfield and come to terms with Lincoln. It was theinterview between Weed and Lincoln held, it seems, on the very day onwhich the Ordinance of Secession was adopted--which gave to that day itsdouble significance. 

Lincoln refused point-blank to accept the compromise and he put hisrefusal in writing. The historic meaning of his refusal, and thesignificance of his determination not to solve the problem of the hourby accepting a dual system of government based on frankly sectionalassumptions, were probably, in a measure, lost on both Weed and Seward. They had, however, no misunderstanding of its practical effect. Thiscrude Western lawyer had certain ideas from which he would not budge, and the party would have to go along with him. Weed and Seward thereforepromptly fell into line, and Seward accepted the Secretaryship and cameout in opposition to the Compromise. Other Republicans with whom Lincolnhad communicated by letter made known his views, and Greeley announcedthem in The Tribune. The outcome was the solid alignment of all theRepublicans in Congress against the Compromise. As a result, this lastattempt to reunite the sections came to nothing. 

Not more than once or twice, if ever, in American history, has therebeen such an anxious New Year's Day as that which ushered in 1861. Afew days before, a Republican Congressman had written to one of hisconstituents: "The heavens are indeed black and an awful storm isgathering. . . I see no way that either North or South can escape itsfury. " Events were indeed moving fast toward disaster. The garrison atSumter was in need of supplies, and in the first week of the new yearBuchanan attempted to relieve its wants. But a merchant vessel, the Starof the West, by which supplies were sent, was fired upon by the SouthCarolina authorities as it approached the harbor and was compelled toturn back. This incident caused the withdrawal from the Cabinet of thelast opposition members--Thompson, of Mississippi, the Secretary of theInterior, and Thomas, of Maryland, the Secretary of the Treasury. In thecourse of the month five Southern States followed South Carolina outof the Union, and their Senators and Representatives resigned from theCongress of the United States. 

The resignation of Jefferson Davis was communicated to the Senate in aspeech of farewell which even now holds the imagination of the student, and which to the men of that day, with the Union crumbling aroundthem, seemed one of the most mournful and dramatic of orations. Davispossessed a beautiful, melodious voice; he had a noble presence, tall, erect, spare, even ascetic, with a flashing blue eye. He was deeplymoved by the occasion; his address was a requiem. That he withdrew insorrow but with fixed determination, no one who listened to him coulddoubt. Early in February, the Southern Confederacy was formed with Davisas its provisional President. With the prophetic vision of a logicalmind, he saw that war was inevitable, and he boldly proclaimed hisvision. In various speeches on his way South, he had assured theSouthern people that war was coming, and that it would be long andbloody. 

The withdrawal of these Southern members threw the control of the Houseinto the hands of the Republicans. Their realization of their powerwas expressed in two measures which also passed the Senate; Kansas wasadmitted--as a State with an anti-slavery constitution; and the Morrilltariff, which they had failed to pass the previous spring, nowbecame law. Thus the Republicans began redeeming their pledges to theanti-slavery men on the one hand and to the commercial interest on theother. The time had now arrived for the Republican nominee to proceedfrom Springfield to Washington. The journey was circuitous in order toenable Lincoln to speak at a number of places. Never before, probably, had the Northern people felt such tense strain as at that moment; neverhad they looked to an incoming President with such anxious doubt. Would he prevent war? Or, if he could not do that, would he be ableto extricate the country--Heaven alone knew how!--without a terribleordeal? Since his election, Lincoln had remained quietly at Springfield. Though he had influenced events through letters to Congressmen, his oneconspicuous action during that winter was the defeat of the CrittendenCompromise. The Southern President had called upon his people to puttheir house in order as preparation for war. What, now, had Lincoln tosay to the people of the North?

The biographers of Lincoln have not satisfactorily revealed the state ofhis mind between election and inauguration. We may safely guess that hissilence covered a great internal struggle. Except for his one action indefeating the Compromise, he had allowed events to drift; but by thatone action he had taken upon himself the responsibility for the drift. Though the country at that time did not fully appreciate this aspect ofthe situation, who now can doubt that Lincoln did? His mind was always alonely 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 isspiritually alone. During those months when the country drifted fromits moorings, and when war was becoming steadily more probable, Lincoln, after the manner of the prophets, wrestled alone with the problems whichhe saw before him. From the little we know of his inward state, it ishard for us to conclude that he was happy. A story which is told by hisformer partner, Mr. Herndon, seems significant. As Lincoln was leavinghis unpretentious law-office for the last time, he turned to Mr. Herndonand asked him not to take down their old sign. "Let it hang thereundisturbed, " said he. "Give our clients to understand that the electionof a President makes no difference in the firm. . . . If I live, I'm comingback some time, and then we'll go right on practising law as if nothinghad happened. "

How far removed from self-sufficiency was the man whose thoughts, onthe eve of his elevation to the Presidency, lingered in a provincial lawoffice, fondly insistent that only death should prevent his returningsome time and resuming in those homely surroundings the life he hadled previous to his greatness. In a mood of wistfulness and of intensepreoccupation, he began his journey to Washington. It was not the moodfrom which to strike fire and kindle hope. To the anxious, listeningcountry his speeches on the journey to Washington were disappointing. Perhaps his strangely sensitive mind felt too powerfully the fatefulnessof the moment and reacted with a sort of lightness that did not reallyrepresent the real man. Be that as it may, he was never less convincingthan at that time. Nor were people impressed by his bearing. Often heappeared awkward, too much in appearance the country lawyer. He acted asa 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 nocrisis but an artificial one, " was one of his ill-timed assurances, andanother, "There is nothing going wrong. . . . There is nothing that reallyhurts any one. " Of his supporters some were discouraged; others wereexasperated; and an able but angry partisan even went so far as to writein a private letter, "Lincoln is a Simple Susan. "

The fourth of March arrived, and with it the end of Lincoln'sblundering. One good omen for the success of the new Administration wasthe presence of Douglas on the inaugural platform. He had accepted fate, deeply as it wounded him, and had come out of the shattered party ofevasion on the side of his section. For the purpose of showing hissupport of the administration at this critical time, he had taken aplace on the stand where Lincoln was to speak. By one of those curiouslittle dramatic touches with which chance loves to embroider history, the presence of Douglas became a gracious detail in the memory of theday. Lincoln, worn and awkward, continued to hold his hat in his hand. Douglas, with the tact born of social experience, stepped forward andtook it from him without--exposing Lincoln's embarrassment. 

The inaugural address which Lincoln now pronounced had little similarityto those unfortunate utterances which he had made on the journey toWashington. The cloud that had been over him, whatever it was, hadlifted. Lincoln was ready for his great labor. The inaugural containedthree main propositions. Lincoln pledged himself not to interferedirectly or indirectly with slavery in the States where it then existed;he promised to support the enforcement of the fugitive slave law; and hedeclared he would maintain the Union. "No State, " said he, "upon its ownmere motion can lawfully get out of the Union. . . . To the extent of myability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoinsupon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all theStates. . . . In doing this, there need be no bloodshed or violence; andthere shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possessthe property and places belonging to the government. " Addressing theSoutherners, he said: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Governmentwill not assail you. . . . We are not enemies but friends. . . . The mysticcords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave toevery living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yetswell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they willbe, by the better angels of our nature. "

Gentle, as was the phrasing of the inaugural, it was perfectly firm, andit outlined a policy which the South would not accept, and which, in theopinion of the Southern leaders, brought them a step nearer war. WallStreet held the same belief, and as a consequence the price of stocksfell. 

CHAPTER VI. WAR

On the day following the inauguration, commissioners of the newly formedConfederacy appeared at Washington and applied to the Secretary of Statefor recognition as envoys of a foreign power. Seward refused them suchrecognition. But he entered into a private negotiation with them whichis nearly, if not quite, the strangest thing in our history. Virtually, Seward intrigued against Lincoln for control of the Administration. Theevents of the next five weeks have an importance out of all proportionto the brevity of the time. This was Lincoln's period of finalprobation. The psychological intensity of this episode grew from theconsciousness in every mind that now, irretrievably, destiny was to bedetermined. War or peace, happiness or adversity, one nation or two--allthese were in the balance. Lincoln entered the episode a doubtfulquantity, not with certainty the master even in his own Cabinet. Heemerged dominating the situation, but committed to the terrible courseof war. 

One cannot enter upon this great episode, truly the turning point inAmerican history, without pausing for a glance at the character ofSeward. The subject is elusive. His ablest biographer* plainly is soconstantly on guard not to appear an apologist that he ends by reducinghis portrait to a mere outline, wavering across a background ofpolitical details. The most recent study of Seward** surely revealsbetween the lines the doubtfulness of the author about pushing hispoints home. The different sides of the man are hard to reconcile. Nowhe seemed frank and honest; again subtle and insincere. As an activepolitician in the narrow sense, he should have been sagacious andastute, yet he displayed at the crisis of his life the most absolutefatuity. At times he had a buoyant and puerile way of disregardingfact and enveloping himself in a world of his own imagining. He couldbluster, when he wished, like any demagogue; and yet he could bepersuasive, 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--andhe thought Lincoln "a Simple Susan. " He conceived his role in the newadministration to involve a subtle and patient manipulation of hischildlike superior. That Lincoln would gradually yield to his spelland insensibly become his figurehead; that he, Seward, could save thecountry and would go down to history a statesman above compare, he tookfor granted. Nor can he fairly be called conceited, either; that is partof his singularity. 

Lincoln's Cabinet was, as Seward said, a compound body. With a view tostrengthening his position, Lincoln had appointed to cabinet positionsall his former rivals for the Republican nomination. Besides Seward, there was Chase as Secretary of the Treasury; Simon Cameron ofPennsylvania as Secretary of War; Edward Bates of Missouri asAttorney-General. The appointment of Montgomery Blair of Maryland asPostmaster-General was intended to placate the border Slave States. Thesame motive dictated the later inclusion of James Speed of Kentucky inthe Cabinet. The Black-Stanton wing of the Democrats was represented inthe Navy Department by Gideon Welles, and in course of time in the WarDepartment also, when Cameron resigned and Stanton succeeded him. TheWest 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 StateDepartment. It was Lincoln's gentleness of argument which overcame hisreluctance to serve. We may be sure, however, that Seward failed toobserve that Lincoln's tactlessness in social matters did not extend tohis management of men in politics; we may feel sure that what remainedin his mind was Lincoln's unwillingness to enter office without WilliamHenry Seward as Secretary of State. 

The promptness with which Seward assumed the role of prime ministerbears out this inference. The same fact also reveals a puzzling detailof Seward's character which amounted to obtuseness--his forgetfulnessthat appointment to cabinet offices had not transformed his oldpolitical rivals Chase and Cameron, nor softened the feelings of aninveterate political enemy, Welles, the Secretary of the Navy. Theimpression which Seward made on his colleagues in the first days of thenew Government has been thus sharply recorded by Welles: "The Secretaryof State was, of course, apprised of every meeting [of ministers] andnever failed in his attendance, whatever was the subject-matter, and though entirely out of his official province. He was vigilantlyattentive to every measure and movement in other Departments, howevertrivial--as much so as to his own--watched and scrutinized everyappointment that was made, or proposed to be made, but was notcommunicative in regard to the transaction of the State Department. "So eager was Seward to keep all the threads of affairs in his own handsthat he tried to persuade Lincoln not to hold cabinet meetings butmerely to consult with particular ministers, and with the Secretaryof State, as occasion might demand. A combined protest from the otherSecretaries, however, caused the regular holding of Cabinet meetings. 

With regard to the Confederacy, Seward's policy was one ofnon-resistance. For this he had two reasons. The first of these washis rooted delusion that the bulk of the Southerners were opposed tosecession and, if let alone, would force their leaders to reconsidertheir action. He might have quoted the nursery rhyme, "Let them aloneand they'll come home"; it would have been like him and in tune witha frivolous side of his nature. He was quite as irresponsible when hecomplacently assured the North that the trouble would all blow overwithin ninety days. He also believed that any display of force wouldconvert these hypothetical Unionists of the South from friends toenemies and would consolidate opinion in the Confederacy to producewar. In justice to Seward it must be remembered that on this point timejustified his fears. 

His dealings with the Confederate commissioners show that he was playingto gain time, not with intent to deceive the Southerners but to acquirethat domination over Lincoln which he felt was his by natural right. Intending to institute a peace policy the moment he gained thisascendency, he felt perfectly safe in making promises to thecommissioners through mutual friends. He virtually told them that Sumterwould eventually be given up and that all they need do was to wait. 

Seward brought to bear upon the President the opinions of variousmilitary men who thought the time had passed when any expedition for therelief of Sumter could succeed. For some time Lincoln seemed aboutto consent, though reluctantly, to Seward's lead in the matter of theforts. He was pulled up standing, however, by the threatened resignationof the Postmaster-General, Blair. After a conference with leadingRepublican politicians the President announced to his Cabinet thathis 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 problemsimilar to that of Sumter at Charleston. Both were demanded by theConfederates, and both were in need of supplies. But Fort Pickens layto one side, so to speak, of the public mind, and there was notconspicuously in the world's eye the square issue over it that therewas over Sumter. Seward conceived the idea that, if the President'sattention were diverted from Sumter to Pickens and a relief expeditionwere sent to the latter but none to the former, his private negotiationswith the Confederates might still be kept going; Lincoln might yet behypnotized; and at last all would be well. 

On All-Fools' Day, 1861, in the midst of a press of business, heobtained Lincoln's signature to some dispatches, which Lincoln, itseems, discussed with him hurriedly and without detailed consideration. There were now in preparation two relief expeditions, one to carrysupplies to Pensacola, the other to Charleston. Neither was to fightif it was not molested. Both were to be strong enough to fight iftheir commanders deemed it necessary. As flagship of the Charlestonexpedition, Welles had detailed the powerful warship Powhatan, whichwas rapidly being made ready at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Such was thesituation as Welles understood it when he was thinking of bed late onthe night of the 6th of April. Until then he had not suspected thatthere was doubt and bewilderment about the Powhatan at Brooklyn. Oneof those dispatches which Lincoln had so hastily signed provided fordetaching the Powhatan from the Charleston expedition and sending itsafe out of harm's way to Pensacola. The commander of the ship hadbefore him the conflicting orders, one from the President, one from theSecretary of the Navy. He was about to sail under the President'sorders for Pensacola; but wishing to make sure of his authority, hehad telegraphed to Washington. Gideon Welles was a pugnacious man. Hisdislike for Seward was deepseated. Imagine his state of mind when it wasaccidently revealed to him that Seward had gone behind his back and hadissued to naval officers orders which were contradictory to his own!The immediate result was an interview that same night between Seward andWelles in which, as Welles coldly admitted in after days, the Secretaryof the Navy showed "some excitement. " Together they went, aboutmidnight, to the White House. Lincoln had some difficulty recalling theincident of the dispatch on the 1st of April; but when he did remember, he took the responsibility entirely upon himself, saying he had hadno purpose but to strengthen the Pickens expedition, and no thought ofweakening the expedition to Charleston. He directed Seward to telegraphimmediately cancelling the order detaching the Powhatan. Seward made adesperate attempt to put him off, protesting, it was too late to senda telegram that night. "But the President was imperative, " writesSecretary Welles, in describing the incident, and a dispatch was sent. 

Seward then, doubtless in his agitation, did a strange thing. Insteadof telegraphing in the President's name, the dispatch which he sent readmerely, "Give up the Powhatan. . . Seward. " When this dispatch was receivedat Brooklyn, the Powhatan was already under way and had to be overtakenby a fast tug. In the eyes of her commander, however, a personaltelegram from the Secretary of State appeared as of no weight againstthe official orders of the President, and he continued his voyage toPensacola. 

The mercurial temper of Seward comes out even in the caustic narrativewritten afterwards by Welles. Evidently Seward was deeply mortified anddepressed by the incident. He remarked, says Welles, that old as he washe had learned a lesson, and that was that he had better attend to hisown business. "To this, " commented his enemy, "I cordially assented. "

Nevertheless Seward's loss of faith in himself was only momentary. Anight's sleep was sufficient to restore it. His next communication tothe commissioners shows that he was himself again, sure that destinyowed him the control of the situation. On the following day thecommissioners had got wind of the relief expedition and pressed him forinformation, recalling his assurance that nothing would be done to theirdisadvantage. In reply, still through a third person, Seward sent themthe famous message, over the precise meaning of which great debate hasraged: "Faith as to Sumter fully kept; wait and see. " If this infatuateddreamer still believed he could dominate Lincoln, still hoped at thelast moment to arrest the expedition to Charleston, he was doomed tobitterest 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, thePowhatan. As all the world knows, the expedition had been too longdelayed and it accomplished nothing. Before it arrived, the surrenderof Sumter had been demanded and refused--and war had begun. During thebombardment of Sumter, the relief expedition appeared beyond the bar, but its commander had no vessels of such a character as to enable himto carry aid to the fortress. Furthermore, he had not been informed thatthe Powhatan had been detached from his squadron, and he expected tomeet her at the mouth of the harbor. There his ships lay idle until thefort was surrendered, waiting for the Powhatan--for whose detachmentfrom the squadron Seward was responsible. 

To return to the world of intrigue at Washington, however, it must notbe supposed, as is so often done, that Fort Sumter was the one concernof the new government during its first six weeks. In fact, the subjectoccupied but a fraction of Lincoln's time. Scarcely second in importancewas that matter so curiously bound up with the relief of the forts--thegetting in hand of the strangely vain glorious Secretary of State. Mention has already been made of All-Fools' Day, 1861. Several marvelousthings took place on that day. Strangest of all was the presentation ofa paper by the Secretary of State to his chief, entitled "Thoughts forthe President's Consideration". Whether it be regarded as a state paperor as a biographical detail in the career of Seward, it proves to bequite the most astounding thing in the whole episode. The "Thoughts"outlined a course of policy by which the buoyant Secretary intended tomake good his prophecy of domestic peace within ninety days. Besidescalmly patronizing Lincoln, assuring him that his lack of "a policyeither domestic or foreign" was "not culpable and. . . Even unavoidable, "the paper warned him that "policies. . . Both domestic and foreign" mustimmediately be adopted, and it proceeded to point out what they ought tobe. Briefly stated, the one true policy which he advocated at home wasto evacuate Sumter (though Pickens for some unexplained reason might besafely retained) and then, in order to bring the Southerners back intothe Union, to pick quarrels with both Spain and France; to proceed asquickly as possible to war with both powers; and to have the ultimatesatisfaction of beholding the reunion of the country through the generalenthusiasm that was bound to come. Finally, the paper intimated that theSecretary of State was the man to carry this project through to success. 

All this is not opera bouffe, but serious history. It must have taxedLincoln's sense of humor and strained his sense of the fitness of thingsto treat such nonsense with the tactful forbearance which he showed andto relegate it to the pigeonhole without making Seward angry. Yet thishe contrived to do; and he also managed, gently but firmly, to make itplain that the President intended to exercise his authority as the chiefmagistrate of the nation. His forbearance was further shown in passingover without rebuke Seward's part in the affair of Sumter, which mightso easily have been made to appear treacherous, and in shoulderinghimself with all responsibility for the failure of the Charlestonexpedition. In the wave of excitement following the surrender, even sodebonair a minister as Seward must have realized how fortunate it wasfor him that his chief did not tell all he knew. About this time Sewardbegan to perceive that Lincoln had a will of his own, and that it wasnot safe to trifle further with the President. Seward thereupon ceasedhis interference. 

It was in the dark days preceding the fall of Sumter that a crowd ofoffice-seekers gathered at Washington, most of them men who had littleinterest in anything but the spoils. It is a distressing commentary onthe American party system that, during the most critical month of themost critical period of American history, much of the President's timewas consumed by these political vampires who would not be put off, eventhough a revolution was in progress and nations, perhaps, were dyingand being born. "The scramble for office, " wrote Stanton, "isterrible. " Seward noted privately: "Solicitants for office besiege thePresident. . . . My duties call me to the White House two or three times aday. The grounds, halls, stairways, closets, are filled with applicantswho render ingress and egress difficult. "

Secretary Welles has etched the Washington of that time in his coldlyscornful way:

"A strange state of things existed at that time in Washington. The atmosphere was thick with treason. Party spirit and old partydifferences 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 theRebels more than with the Administration, which they opposed, not thatthey wished Secession to be successful and the Union divided, but theyhoped that President Lincoln and the Republicans would, overwhelmed byobstacles and embarrassments, prove failures. The Republicans on theother hand, were scarcely less partisan and unreasonable. Patriotism waswith them no test, no shield from party malevolence. They demandedthe proscription and exclusion of such Democrats as opposed the Rebelmovement and clung to the Union, with the same vehemence that theydemanded the removal of the worst Rebels who advocated a dissolution ofthe Union. Neither party appeared to be apprehensive of, or to realizethe gathering storm. "

Seen against such a background, the political and diplomatic frivolityof the Secretary of State is not so inexplicable as it would otherwisebe. This background, as well as the intrigue of the Secretary, helpsus to understand Lincoln's great task inside his Cabinet. At first theCabinet was a group of jealous politicians new to this sort of office, drawn from different parties, and totally lacking in a cordial senseof previous action together. None of them, probably, when they firstassembled had any high opinion of their titular head. He was looked uponas a political makeshift. The best of them had to learn to appreciatethe fact that this strange, ungainly man, sprung from plainest origin, without formal education, was a great genius. By degrees, however, thelarge minds in the Cabinet became his cordial admirers. While Lincolnwas quietly, gradually exercising his strong will upon Seward, he wasdoing the same with the other members of his council. Presently theyawoke--the majority of them at least--to the truth that he, for all hisodd ways, was their master. 

Meanwhile the gradual readjustment of all factions in the North wassteadily going forward. The Republicans were falling into line behindthe Government; and by degrees the distinction between Seward andLincoln, in the popular mind, faded into a sort of composite picturecalled "the Administration. " Lincoln had the reward of his longforbearance with his Secretary. For Seward it must be said that, howeverhe had intrigued against his chief at Washington, he did not intriguewith 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 partyinfluence 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 theGovernment 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 itseemed--delusively, as events proved--that the North was united as oneman to oppose the South. 

There is surely not another day in our history that has witnessed somuch nervous tension as Saturday, April 13, 1861, for on that morningthe newspapers electrified the North with the news that Sumter had beenfired on from Confederate batteries on the shore of Charleston Harbor. In the South the issue was awaited confidently, but many minds atleast were in that state of awed suspense natural to a moment which thethoughtful see is the stroke of fate. In the North, the day passed forthe most part in a quiet so breathless that even the most careless couldhave foretold the storm which broke on the following day. The accountof this crisis which has been given by Lincoln's private secretary isinteresting:

"That day there was little change in the business routine of theExecutive office. Mr. Lincoln was never liable to sudden excitementor sudden activity. . . . So while the Sumter telegrams were on everytongue. . . Leading men and officials called to learn or impart the news. The Cabinet, as by common impulse, came together and deliberated. Alltalk, however, was brief, sententious, formal. Lincoln said but littlebeyond making inquiries about the current reports and criticizing theprobability or accuracy of their details, and went on as usualreceiving visitors, listening to suggestions, and signing routine papersthroughout the day. " Meanwhile the cannon were booming at Charleston. The people came out on the sea-front of the lovely old city and watchedthe duel of the cannon far down the harbor, and spoke joyously of thegreat event. They saw the shells of the shore batteries igniteportions of the fortress on the island. They watched the fire of thedefenders--driven by the flames into a restricted area--slacken andcease. At last the flag of the Union fluttered down from above FortSumter. 

When the news flashed over the North, early Sunday morning, April 14th, the tension broke. For many observers then and afterward, the only Northdiscernible that fateful Sabbath was an enraged, defiant, impulsivenation, forgetful for the moment of all its differences, and uniting allits voices in one hoarse cry for vengeance. There seemed to be no otherthought. Lincoln gave it formal utterance, that same day, by assemblinghis Cabinet and drawing up a proclamation which called for 75, 000volunteer troops. 

An incident of this day which is as significant historically as anyother 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 Lincolnconferred in private. Hitherto it had been a little uncertain whatcourse Douglas was going to take. In the Senate, though condemningdisunion, he had opposed war. Few matters can have troubled Lincoln moredeeply than the question which way Douglas's immense influence would bethrown. The question was answered publicly in the newspapers of Monday, April 15th. Douglas announced that while he was still "unalterablyopposed to the Administration on all its political issues, hewas prepared to sustain the President in the exercise of all hisconstitutional functions to preserve the Union, and maintain theGovernment, and defend the federal capital. "

There remained of Douglas's life but a few months. The time was filledwith earnest speechmaking in support of the Government. He had startedWest directly following his conference with Lincoln. His speeches inOhio, Indiana, Illinois, were perhaps the greatest single force inbreaking up his own following, putting an end to the principle of doingnothing, and forcing every Democrat to come out and show his colors. In Shakespeare's phrase, it was--"Under which king, Bezonian? speak ordie!" 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 inthe Monday papers Lincoln's call for volunteers. The militia of severalNorthern States at once responded. 

On Wednesday, the 17th of April, the Sixth Massachusetts Regimententrained for Washington. Two days later it was in Baltimore. There itwas attacked by a mob; the soldiers fired; and a number of civilianswere killed as well as several soldiers. 

These shots at Baltimore aroused the Southern party in Maryland. Ledby the Mayor of the city, they resolved to prevent the passage of othertroops across their State to Washington. Railway tracks were torn upby order of the municipal authorities, and bridges were burnt. Thetelegraph was cut. As in a flash, after issuing his proclamation, Lincoln found himself isolated at Washington with no force but a handfulof troops and the government clerks. And while Maryland rose against himon one side, Virginia joined his enemies on the other. The day the SixthMassachusetts left Boston, Virginia seceded. The Virginia militia werecalled to their colors. Preparations were at once set on foot for theseizure of the great federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry and the Navy Yardat Norfolk. The next day a handful of federal troops, fearful of beingoverpowered at Harper's Ferry, burned the arsenal and withdrew toWashington. For the same reason the buildings of the great Navy Yardwere blown up or set on fire, and the ships at anchor were sunk. Sodesperate and unprepared were the Washington authorities that they tookthese extreme measures to keep arms and ammunition out of the hands ofthe Virginians. So hastily was the destruction carried out, that it wasonly partially successful and at both places large stores of ammunitionwere seized by the Virginia troops. While Washington was isolated, and Lincoln did not know what response the North had made to hisproclamation, Robert E. Lee, having resigned his commission in thefederal army, was placed in command of the Virginia troops. 

The secretaries of Lincoln have preserved a picture of his desperateanxiety, waiting, day after day, for relief from the North whichhe hoped would speedily come by sea. Outwardly he maintained hisself-control. But once, on the afternoon of the 23d, the business ofthe day being over, the Executive office being deserted, after walkingthe floor alone in silent thought for nearly half an hour, he stoppedand gazed long and wistfully out of the window down the Potomac in thedirection of the expected ships; and, unconscious of other presence inthe room, at length broke out with irrepressible anguish in the repeatedexclamation, "Why don't they come! Why don't they come!"

During these days of isolation, when Washington, with the telegraphinoperative, was kept in an appalling uncertainty, the North rose. There was literally a rush to volunteer. "The heather is on fire, " wroteGeorge Ticknor, "I never before knew what a popular excitement canbe. " As fast as possible militia were hurried South. The crack New Yorkregiment, the famous, dandified Seventh, started for the front amidprobably the most tempestuous ovation which until that time was evergiven to a military organization in America. Of the march of theregiment down Broadway, one of its members wrote, "Only one who passedas we did, through the tempest of cheers two miles long, can know theterrible enthusiasm of the occasion. "

To reach Washington by rail was impossible. The Seventh went by boatto Annapolis. The same course was taken by a regiment of Massachusettsmechanics, the Eighth. Landing at Annapolis, the two regiments, dandiesand laborers, fraternized at once in the common bond of loyalty to theUnion. A branch railway led from Annapolis to the main line betweenWashington and Baltimore. The rails had been torn up. The Massachusettsmechanics set to work to relay them. The Governor of Maryland protested. He was disregarded. The two regiments toiled together a long day andthrough the night following, between Annapolis and the Washingtonjunction, bringing on their baggage and cannon over relaid tracks. There, a train was found which the Seventh appropriated. At noon, onthe 25th of April, that advance guard of the Northern hosts enteredWashington, and Lincoln knew that he had armies behind him. 

CHAPTER VII. LINCOLN

The history of the North had virtually become, by April, 1861, thehistory of Lincoln himself, and during the remaining four years of thePresident's life it is difficult to separate his personality from thetrend of national history. Any attempt to understand the achievementsand the omissions of the Northern people without undertaking anintelligent estimate of their leader would be only to duplicate thestory of "Hamlet" with Hamlet left out. According to the opinion ofEnglish military experts*, "Against the great military genius of certainSouthern leaders fate opposed the unbroken resolution and passionatedevotion to the Union, which he worshiped, of the great NorthernPresident. As long as he lived and ruled the people of the North, therecould 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 comparedwith Rabelais. He has been the target of abuse that knew no mercy; buthe has been worshiped as a demigod. The ten big volumes of his officialbiography are a sustained, intemperate eulogy in which the hero doesnothing that is not admirable; but as large a book could be built upout of contemporaneous Northern writings that would paint a picture ofunmitigated blackness--and the most eloquent portions of it would besigned by Wendell Phillips. 

The real Lincoln is, of course, neither the Lincoln of the officialbiography nor the Lincoln of Wendell Phillips. He was neither a saintnor a villain. What he actually was is not, however, so easily stated. Prodigious men are never easy to sum up; and Lincoln was a prodigiousman. The more one studies him, the more individual he appears to be. Bydegrees one comes to understand how it was possible for contemporariesto hold contradictory views of him and for each to believe franticallythat his views were proved by facts. For anyone who thinks he can hitoff in a few neat generalities this complex, extraordinary personality, a single warning may suffice. Walt Whitman, who was perhaps the mostoriginal thinker and the most acute observer who ever saw Lincoln faceto face has left us his impression; but he adds that there was somethingin Lincoln's face which defied description and which no picture hadcaught. After Whitman's conclusion that "One of the great portraitpainters of two or three hundred years ago is needed, " the merehistorian 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 thosehard workers, the children of the soil, from whom he sprang. His facewas rugged like his figure, the complexion swarthy, cheek bones high, and bushy black hair crowning a great forehead beneath which the eyeswere deep-set, gray, and dreaming. A sort of shambling powerfulnessformed the main suggestion of face and figure, softened strangely by themysterious expression of the eyes, and by the singular delicacy of theskin. The motions of this awkward giant lacked grace; the top hat andblack frock coat, sometimes rusty, which had served him on the westerncircuit continued to serve him when he was virtually the dictator of hiscountry. It was in such dress that he visited the army, where he toweredabove his generals. 

Even in a book of restricted scope, such as this, one must insist uponthe distinction between the private and public Lincoln, for there isas yet no accepted conception of him. What comes nearest to an acceptedconception is contained probably in the version of the late CharlesFrancis Adams. He tells us how his father, the elder Charles FrancisAdams, ambassador to London, found Lincoln in 1861 an offensivepersonality, and he insists that Lincoln under strain passed through atransformation which made the Lincoln of 1864 a different man from theLincoln of 1861. Perhaps; but without being frivolous, one is temptedto quote certain old-fashioned American papers that used to label theirnews items "important if true. "

What then, was the public Lincoln? What explains his vast success? Asa force in American history, what does he count for? Perhaps the mostsignificant detail in an answer to these questions is the fact that hehad never held conspicuous public office until at the age of fifty-twohe became President. Psychologically his place is in that small group ofgreat geniuses whose whole significant period lies in what we commonlythink of as the decline of life. There are several such in history:Rome had Caesar; America had both Lincoln and Lee. By contrasting theseinstances with those of the other type, the egoistic geniuses such asAlexander or Napoleon, we become aware of some dim but profound dividingline separating the two groups. The theory that genius, at bottom, ispure energy seems to fit Napoleon; but does it fit these other minds whoappear to meet life with a certain indifference, with a carelessness oftheir own fate, a willingness to leave much to chance? That irresistiblepassion for authority which Napoleon had is lacking in these others. Their basal inspiration seems to resemble the impulse of the artist toexpress, rather than the impulse of the man of action to possess. Hadit not been for secession, Lee would probably have ended his days as anexemplary superintendent of West Point. And what of Lincoln? He dabbledin politics, early and without success; he left politics for the law, and to the law he gave during many years his chief devotion. But thefortuitous break-up of parties, with the revival of the slavery issue, touched some hidden spring; the able provincial lawyer felt again thepolitical impulse; he became a famous maker of political phrases; and onthis literary basis he became the leader of a party. 

Too little attention has been paid to this progression of Lincolnthrough literature into politics. The ease with which he drifted fromone to the other is also still to be evaluated. Did it show a certainslackness, a certain aimlessness, at the bottom of his nature? Hadit, in a way, some sort of analogy--to compare homespun with thingsOlympian--to the vein of frivolity in the great Caesar? One istempted to think so. Surely, here was one of those natures which needcircumstance to compel them to greatness and which are not foredoomed, Napoleon-like, to seize greatness. Without encroaching upon thebiographical task, one may borrow from biography this insistent echo:the anecdotes of Lincoln sound over and over the note of easy-going goodnature; but there is to be found in many of the Lincoln anecdotes anovertone of melancholy which lingers after one's impression of his goodnature. Quite naturally, in such a biographical atmosphere, we findourselves thinking of him at first as a little too good-humored, alittle too easy-going, a little prone to fall into reverie. We are notsurprised when we find his favorite poem beginning "Oh, why should thespirit of mortal be proud. "

This enigmatical man became President in his fifty-second year. Wehave already seen that his next period, the winter of 1860-61, has itsbiographical problems. The impression which he made on the country asPresident-elect was distinctly unfavorable. Good humor, or opportunism, or what you will, brought together in Lincoln's Cabinet at least threemen more conspicuous in the ordinary sense than he was himself. Weforget, today, how insignificant he must have seemed in a Cabinet thatembraced Seward, Cameron, and Chase--all large national figures. Whatwould not history give for a page of self-revelation showing us how hefelt in the early days of that company! Was he troubled? Did he doubthis ability to hold his own? Was he fatalistic? Was his sad smile hisrefuge? Did he merely put things by, ignoring tomorrow until tomorrowshould arrive?

However we may guess at the answers to such questions, one thing nowbecomes certain. His quality of good humor began to be his salvation. It is doubtful if any President except Washington had to manage sodifficult a Cabinet. Washington had seen no solution to the problem butto let Jefferson go. Lincoln found his Cabinet often on the verge of asplit, with two powerful factions struggling to control it and neitherever gaining full control. Though there were numerous withdrawals, noresigning secretary really split Lincoln's Cabinet. By what turns andtwists and skillful maneuvers Lincoln prevented such a division andkept such inveterate enemies as Chase and Seward steadily at theirjobs--Chase during three years, Seward to the end--will partly appearin the following pages; but the whole delicate achievement cannot beproperly appreciated except in detailed biography. 

All criticism of Lincoln turns eventually on one question: Was he anopportunist? Not only his enemies in his own time but many politiciansof a later day were eager to prove that he was the latter--indeed, seeking to shelter their own opportunism behind the majesty of hisexample. A modern instance will perhaps make vivid this long standingdebate upon Lincoln and his motives. Merely for historic illuminationand without becoming invidious, we may recall the instance of PresidentWilson and the resignation of his Secretary of War in 1916 becauseCongress would not meet the issue of preparedness. The Presidentaccepted the resignation without forcing the issue, and Congress wenton fiddling while Rome burned. Now, was the President an opportunist, merely waiting to see what course events would take, or was he apolitical strategist, astutely biding his time? Similar in characteris this old debate upon Lincoln, which is perhaps best focussed in theremoval of Secretary Blair which we shall have to note in connectionwith the election of 1864. 

It is difficult for the most objective historian to deal with suchquestions without obtruding his personal views, but there is nothingmerely individual in recording the fact that the steady drift of opinionhas been away from the conception of Lincoln as an opportunist. Whatonce caused him to be thus conceived appears now to have been a failureto comprehend intelligently the nature of his undertaking. More andmore, the tendency nowadays is to conceive his career as one ofthose few instances in which the precise faculties needed to solve aparticular problem were called into play at exactly the critical moment. Our confusions with regard to Lincoln have grown out of our failureto appreciate the singularity of the American people, and theirultra-singularity during the years in which he lived. It remains to beseen hereafter what strange elements of sensibility, of waywardness, of lack of imagination, of undisciplined ardor, of selfishness, ofdeceitfulness, of treachery, combined with heroic ideality, made upthe character of that complex populace which it was Lincoln's task tocontrol. But he did more than control it: he somehow compounded much ofit into something like a unit. To measure Lincoln's achievement in thisrespect, two things must be remembered: on the one hand, his task wasnot as arduous as it might have been, because the most intellectual partof the North had definitely committed itself either irretrievably for, or irreconcilably against, his policy. Lincoln, therefore, did not haveto trouble himself with this portion of the population. On theother hand, that part which he had to master included such emotionalrhetoricians as Horace Greeley; such fierce zealots as Henry WinterDavis of Maryland, who made him trouble indeed, and Benjamin Wade, whomwe have met already; such military egoists as McClellan and Pope; suchcrafty double-dealers as his own Secretary of the Treasury; such astutegrafters as Cameron; such miserable creatures as certain powerfulcapitalists who sacrificed his army to their own lust for profitsfilched from army contracts. 

The wonder of Lincoln's achievement is that he contrived at last toextend his hold over all these diverse elements; that he persuaded some, outwitted others, and overcame them all. The subtlety of this task wouldhave ruined any statesman of the driving sort. Explain Lincoln by anytheory you will, his personality was the keystone of the Northern arch;subtract it, and the arch falls. The popular element being as complexand powerful as it was, how could the presiding statesman have masteredthe situation if he had not been of so peculiar a sort that he couldinfluence all these diverse and powerful interests, slowly, by degrees, without heat, without the imperative note, almost in silence, with theuniversal, enfolding irresistibility of the gradual things in nature, of the sun and the rain. Such was the genius of Lincoln--all butpassionless, yet so quiet that one cannot but believe in the great depthof his nature. 

We are, even today, far from a definitive understanding of Lincoln'sstatecraft, but there is perhaps justification for venturing upon oneprophecy. The farther from him we get and the more clearly we see him inperspective, the more we shall realize his creative influence upon hisparty. A Lincoln who is the moulder of events and the great creator ofpublic opinion will emerge at last into clear view. In the Lincolnof his ultimate biographer there will be more of iron than of a lessenduring metal in the figure of the Lincoln of present tradition. Thoughnone of his gentleness will disappear, there will be more emphasisplaced upon his firmness, and upon such episodes as that of December, 1860, when his single will turned the scale against compromise; uponhis steadiness in the defeat of his party at the polls in 1862; or hisoverruling of the will of Congress in the summer of 1864 on the questionof reconstruction; or his attitude in the autumn of that year whenhe believed that he was losing his second election. Behind all hisgentleness, his slowness, behind his sadness, there will eventuallyappear an inflexible purpose, strong as steel, unwavering as fate. 

The Civil War was in truth Lincoln's war. Those modern pacifists whoclaim him for their own are beside the mark. They will never get overtheir illusions about Lincoln until they see, as all the world isbeginning to see, that his career has universal significance because ofits bearing on the universal modern problem of democracy. It will not doever to forget that he was a man of the people, always playing the handof the people, in the limited social sense of that word, though playingit with none of the heat usually met with in the statesmen of successfuldemocracy from Cleon to Robespierre, from Andrew Jackson to LloydGeorge. His gentleness does not remove Lincoln from that stern category. Throughout his life, besides his passion for the Union, besides hisantipathy to slavery, there dwelt in his very heart love of and faithin the plain people. We shall never see him in true historic perspectiveuntil we conceive him as the instrument of a vast social idea--thedetermination to make a government based on the plain people successfulin war. 

He did not scruple to seize power when he thought the cause of thepeople demanded it, and his enemies were prompt to accuse him of holdingto the doctrine that the end justified the means--a hasty conclusionwhich will have to be reconsidered; what concerns us more closely is thedefinite conviction that he felt no sacrifice too great if it advancedthe happiness of the generality of mankind. 

The final significance of Lincoln as a statesman of democracy is broughtout most clearly in his foreign relations. Fate put it into the hands ofEngland to determine whether his Government should stand or fall. Thoughit is doubtful how far the turning of the scale of English policy inLincoln's favor was due to the influence of the rising power of Englishdemocracy, it is plain that Lincoln thought of himself as having onepurpose with that movement which he regarded as an ally. Beyond alldoubt among the most grateful messages he ever received were the NewYear greetings of confidence and sympathy which were sent by Englishworkingmen in 1863. A few sentences in his "Letter to the Workingmenof London" help us to look through his eyes and see his life and itsstruggles as they appeared to him in relation to world history:

"As these sentiments [expressed by the English workmen] are manifestlythe enduring support of the free institutions of England, so am I surethat they constitute the only reliable basis for free institutionsthroughout the world. . . . The resources, advantages, and power of theAmerican people are very great, and they have consequently succeeded toequally great responsibilities. It seems to have devolved upon them totest whether a government established on the principles of human freedomcan be maintained against an effort to build one upon the exclusivefoundation of human bondage. They will rejoice with me in the newevidence which your proceedings furnish that the magnanimity theyare exhibiting is justly estimated by the true friends of freedom andhumanity in foreign countries. "

Written at the opening of that terrible year, 1863, these words are aforward link with those more celebrated words spoken toward its closeat Gettysburg. Perhaps at no time during the war, except during the fewdays immediately following his own reelection a year later, did Lincolncome so near being free from care as then. Perhaps that explains whyhis fundamental literary power reasserted itself so remarkably, why thisspeech of his at the dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburgon the 19th of November, 1863, remains one of the most memorableorations ever delivered:

"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon thiscontinent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to theproposition 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 meton a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portionof that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave theirlives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and properthat we should do this. 

"But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, wecannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggledhere, have consecrated it far above our power to add or detract. Theworld will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it cannever forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, tobe dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here havethus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated tothe great task remaining before us: that from these honored dead wetake increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last fullmeasure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shallnot have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a newbirth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, andfor the people, shall not perish from the earth. "

CHAPTER VIII. THE RULE OF LINCOLN

The fundamental problem of the Lincoln Government was the raising ofarmies, the sudden conversion of a community which was essentiallyindustrial into a disciplined military organization. The accomplishmentof so gigantic a transformation taxed the abilities of two Secretariesof War. The first, Simon Cameron, owed his place in the Cabinet tothe double fact of being one of the ablest of political bosses andof standing high among Lincoln's competitors for the Presidentialnomination. Personally honest, he was also a political cynic to whomtradition ascribes the epigram defining an honest politician as one who"when he is bought, will stay bought. " As Secretary of War he showed noparticular ability. 

In 1861, when the tide of enthusiasm was in flood, and volunteersin hosts were responding to acts of Congress for the raising andmaintenance of a volunteer army, Cameron reported in December that theGovernment had on foot 660, 971 men and could have had a million exceptthat Congress had limited the number of volunteers to be received. Whenthis report was prepared, Lincoln was, so to speak, in the trough of twoseas. The devotion which had been offered to him in April, 1861, whenthe North seemed to rise as one man, had undergone a reaction. Eightmonths without a single striking military success, together withthe startling defeat at Bull Run, had had their inevitable effect. Democracies are mercurial; variability seems to be part of the price offreedom. With childlike faith in their cause, the Northern people, in midsummer, were crying, "On to Richmond!" In the autumn, stung bydefeat, they were ready to cry, "Down with Lincoln. "

In a subsequent report, the War Department confessed that at thebeginning of hostilities, "nearly all our arms and ammunition" came fromforeign countries. One great reason why no military successes relievethe gloom of 1861 was that, from a soldier's point of view, therewere no armies. Soldiers, it is true, there were in myriads; but arms, ammunition, and above all, organization were lacking. The suppliesin the government arsenals had been provided for an army of but a fewthousand. Strive as they would, all the factories in the country couldnot come anywhere near making arms for half a million men; nor did thefacilities of those days make it possible for munition plants to springup overnight. Had it not been that the Confederacy was equally hardpushed, even harder pushed, to find arms and ammunition, the war wouldhave ended inside Seward's ninety days, through sheer lack of powder. 

Even with the respite given by the unpreparedness of the South, andwhile Lincoln hurriedly collected arms and ammunition from abroad, thestartled nation, thus suddenly forced into a realization of whatwar meant, lost its head. From its previous reckless trust in sheerenthusiasm, it reacted to a distrust of almost everything. Why were thesoldiers not armed? Why did not millions of rounds of cartridges falllike manna out of the sky? Why did not the crowds of volunteers becomearmies at a word of command? One of the darkest pages in Americanhistory records the way in which the crowd, undisciplined to endurestrain, turned upon Lincoln in its desire to find in the conduct oftheir leader a pretext for venting upon him the fierceness of theiranxiety. Such a pretext they found in his treatment of Fremont. 

The singular episode of Fremont's arrogance in 1861 is part of thestory of the border States whose friendship was eagerly sought by bothsides--Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, and those mountainous countieswhich in time were to become West Virginia. To retain Maryland and thusto keep open the connection between the Capital and the North was oneof Lincoln's deepest anxieties. By degrees the hold of the Governmentin Maryland was made secure, and the State never seceded. Kentucky, too, held to the Union, though, during many anxious months in 1861, Lincolndid not know whether this State was to be for him or against him. TheVirginia mountains, from the first, seemed a more hopeful field, for themountaineers had opposed the Virginia secession and, as soon as it wasaccomplished, had begun holding meetings of protest. In the meantimeGeorge B. McClellan, with the rank of general bestowed upon him by theFederal Government, had been appointed to command the militia of Ohio. He was sent to assist the insurgent mountaineers, and with him went theOhio militia. From this situation and from the small engagements withConfederate forces in which McClellan was successful, there resulted theseparate State of West Virginia and the extravagant popular notion thatMcClellan was a great general. His successes were contrasted in theordinary mind with the crushing defeat at Bull Run, which happened atabout 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 strengthof both factions and their promptness in organizing, real war beganimmediately. A Union army led by General Nathaniel Lyon attacked theConfederates with great spirit at Wilson's Creek but was beaten back ina fierce and bloody battle in which their leader was killed. 

Even before these events Fremont had been appointed to chief commandin Missouri, and here he at once began a strange course of dawdling andposing. His military career must be left to the military historians--whohave not ranked him among the great generals. Civil history accuses him, if not of using his new position to make illegitimate profits, at leastof showing reckless favoritism toward those who did. It is hardly unfairto say that Lincoln, in bearing with Fremont as long as he did, showeda touch of amiable weakness; and yet, it must be acknowledged that thePresident knew that the country was in a dangerous mood, that Fremontwas immensely popular, and that any change might be misunderstood. Though Lincoln hated to appear anything but a friend to a fallenpolitical rival, he was at last forced to act. Frauds in governmentcontracts at St. Louis were a public scandal, and the reputation of thegovernment had to be saved by the removal of Fremont in November, 1861. As an immediate consequence of this action the overstrained nerves ofgreat numbers of people snapped. Fremont's personal followers, as wellas the abolitionists whom he had actively supported while in command inMissouri, and all that vast crowd of excitable people who are unable tostand silent under strain, clamored against Lincoln in the wildest andmost 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 asits leader, should be formed to prosecute the war. But through all thisclamor 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 theinvestigation of Fremont's conduct. It was one of those tremulousmoments when people are desperately eager to have something done and areready to believe anything. Though McClellan, now in chief command ofthe Union forces, had an immense army which was fast getting properlyequipped, month faded into month without his advancing against theenemy. Again the popular cry was raised, "On to Richmond!" It was atthis moment of military inactivity and popular restlessness that chargesof peculation were brought forward against Cameron. 

These charges both were and were not well founded. Himself a richman, it is not likely that Cameron profited personally by governmentcontracts, even though the acrimonious Thad Stevens said of hisappointment as Secretary that it would add "another million to hisfortune. " There seems little doubt, however, that Cameron showeredlucrative contracts upon his political retainers. And no boss has everheld the State of Pennsylvania in a firmer grip. His tenure of theSecretaryship of War was one means to that end. 

The restless alarm of the country at large expressed itself in suchextravagant words as these which Senator Grimes wrote to SenatorFessenden: "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 acommittee 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 renderingmore and more feverish an atmosphere already surcharged with anxiety. On the floors of Congress debate raged as to who was responsible forthe military inaction--for the country's "unpreparedness, " we should saytoday--and as to whether Cameron was honest. Eventually the House in avote of censure condemned the Secretary of War. 

Long before this happened, however, Lincoln had interfered and verycharacteristically removed the cause of trouble, while taking uponhimself the responsibility for the situation, by nominating Cameronminister to Russia, and by praising him for his "ability, patriotism, and fidelity to the public trust. " Though the President had notsufficient hold upon the House to prevent the vote of censure, hisinfluence was strong in the Senate, and the new appointment of Cameronwas promptly confirmed. 

There was in Washington at this time that grim man who had servedbriefly as Attorney-General in the Cabinet of Buchanan--Edwin M. Stanton. He despised the President and expressed his opinion in suchwords as "the painful imbecility of Lincoln. " The two had one personalrecollection in common: long before, in a single case, at Cincinnati, the awkward Lincoln had been called in as associate counsel to serve theconvenience of Stanton, who was already a lawyer of national repute. To his less-known associate Stanton showed a brutal rudeness that wascharacteristic. It would have been hard in 1861 to find another man moredifficult to get on with. Headstrong, irascible, rude, he had a sharptongue which he delighted in using; but he was known to be inflexiblyhonest, and was supposed to have great executive ability. He was alsoa friend of McClellan, and if anybody could rouse that tortoise-likegeneral, Stanton might be supposed to be the man. He had been a valiantDemocrat, and Democratic support was needed by the government. Lincolnastonished him with his appointment as Secretary of War in January, 1862. Stanton justified the President's choice, and under his strongif ruthless hand the War Department became sternly efficient. The wholestory of Stanton's relations to his chief is packed, like the Arabiangenius in the fisherman's vase, into one remark of Lincoln's. "DidStanton tell you I was a fool?" said Lincoln on one occasion, in theodd, smiling way he had. "Then I expect I must be one, for he is almostalways right, and generally says what he means. "

In spite of his efficiency and personal force, Stanton was unable tomove his friend McClellan, with whom he soon quarreled. Each now soughtin his own way to control the President, though neither understoodLincoln's character. From McClellan, Lincoln endured much condescensionof a kind perilously near impertinence. To Stanton, Lincoln's patienceseemed a mystery; to McClellan--a vain man, full of himself--thePresident who would merely smile at this bullyragging on the part ofone of his subordinates seemed indeed a spiritless creature. MeanwhileLincoln, apparently devoid of sensibility, was seeking during theanxious months of 1862, in one case, merely how to keep his petulantSecretary in harness; in the other, how to quicken his tortoise of ageneral. 

Stanton made at least one great blunder. Though he had been three monthsin office, and McClellan was still inactive, there were already severalsuccesses to the credit of the Union arms. The Monitor and Virginia(Merrimac) had fought their famous duel, and Grant had taken FortDonelson. The latter success broke through the long gloom of the Northand caused, as Holmes wrote, "a delirium of excitement. " Stanton rashlyconcluded that he now had the game in his hands, and that a sufficientnumber of men had volunteered. This civilian Secretary of War, who hadstill much to learn of military matters, issued an order putting a stopto recruiting. Shortly afterwards great disaster befell the Union arms. McClellan, before Richmond, was checked in May. Early in July, hispeninsula campaign ended disastrously in the terrible "Seven Days'Battle. "

Anticipating McClellan's failure, Lincoln had already determined to callfor more troops. On July 1st, he called upon the Governors of theStates to provide him with 300, 000 men to serve three years. But thevolunteering enthusiasm--explain it as you will--had suffered a check. The psychological moment had passed. So slow was the response to thecall of July 1st, that another appeal was made early in August, thistime for 300, 000 men to serve only nine months. But this also failedto rouse the country. A reinforcement of only 87, 000 men was raised inresponse to this emergency call. The able lawyer in the War Departmenthad still much to learn about men and nations. 

After this check, terrible incidents of war came thick and fast--thedefeat at Second Manassas, in late August; the horrible drawn battleof Antietam-Sharpsburg, in September; Fredericksburg, that carnival ofslaughter, in December; the dearly bought victory of Murfreesboro, whichopened 1863. There were other disastrous events at least as serious. Foreign affairs* were at their darkest. Within the political coalitionsupporting Lincoln, contention was the order of the day. There wasgeneral distrust of the President. Most alarming of all, that ebb of thewave of enthusiasm which began in midsummer, 1861, reached in the autumnof 1862 perhaps its lowest point. The measure of the reaction againstLincoln was given in the Congressional election, in which, though theGovernment still retained a working majority, the Democrats gainedthirty-three seats. 

 * See Chapter IX. 

If there could be such a thing as a true psychological history of thewar, one of its most interesting pages would determine just how farStanton was responsible, through his strange blunder over recruiting, for the check to enthusiasm among the Northern people. With thisspeculation there is connected a still unsolved problem in statistics. To what extent did the anti-Lincoln vote, in 1862, stand for sympathywith the South, and how far was it the hopeless surrender of Unionistswho felt that their cause was lost? Though certainty on this point isapparently impossible, there can be no doubt that at the opening of1863, the Government felt it must apply pressure to the flagging spiritsof its supporters. In order to reenforce the armies and to push the warthrough, there was plainly but one course to be followed--conscription. 

The government leaders in Congress brought in a Conscription Act earlyin the year. The hot debates upon this issue dragged through a month'stime, and now make instructive reading for the present generationthat has watched the Great War*. The Act of 1863 was not the work ofsoldiers, but was literally "made in Congress. " Stanton grimly madethe best of it, though he unwaveringly condemned some of its mostconspicuous provisions. His business was to retrieve his blunder ofthe previous year, and he was successful. Imperfect as it was, theConscription Act, with later supplementary legislation, enabled him toreplace 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 anenrolled 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 thecountry was divided into enrollment districts. Every able-bodiedmale citizen, or intending citizen, between the ages of twenty andforty-five, unless exempted for certain specified reasons, was to beenrolled as a member of the national forces; these forces were to becalled to the colors--"drafted, " the term was--as the Government foundneed of them; each successive draft was to be apportioned among thedistricts in the ratio of the military population, and the numberrequired was to be drawn by lot; if the district raised its quotavoluntarily, no draft would be made; any drafted man could offer asubstitute or could purchase his discharge for three hundred dollars. The latter provision especially was condemned by Stanton. It was seizedupon by demagogues as a device for giving rich men an advantage overpoor men. 

American politics during the war form a wildly confused story, sointricate that it cannot be made clear in a brief statement. Butthis central fact may be insisted upon: in the North, there were twopolitical groups that were the poles around which various other groupsrevolved and combined, only to fly asunder and recombine, with all themaddening inconstancy of a kaleidoscope. The two irreconcilable elementswere the "war party" made up of determined men resolved to see thingsthrough, and the "copperheads"* who for one reason or another unitedin a faithful struggle for peace at any price. Around the copperheadsgathered the various and singular groups who helped to make up the everfluctuating "peace party. " It is an error to assume that this peaceparty was animated throughout by fondness for the Confederacy. Thoughmany of its members were so actuated, the core of the party seems tohave been that strange type of man who sustained political evasionin the old days, who thought that sweet words can stop bullets, whoseprogramme in 1863 called for a cessation of hostilities and a generalconvention of all the States, and who promised as the speedy result ofa debauch of talk a carnival of bright eyes glistening with the tearsof revived affection. With these strange people in 1863 there combineda number of different types: the still stranger, still less creditablevisionary, of whom much hereafter; the avowed friends of the principleof state rights; all those who distrusted the Government because of itsanti-slavery sympathies; Quakers and others with moral scruples againstwar; and finally, sincere legalists to whom the Conscription Actappeared unconstitutional. In the spring of 1863 the issue ofconscription drew the line fairly sharply between the two politicalcoalitions, though each continued to fluctuate, more or less, to the endof 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 carefullystudied. Its precise machinations are not fully known, but the ugly factstands forth that a portion of the foreign population of the North wasroused in 1863 to rebellion. The occasion was the beginning of the firstdraft under the new law, in July, 1863, and the scene of the rebellionwas the City of New York. The opponents of conscription had alreadymade inflammatory attacks on the Government. Conspicuous among them wasHoratio Seymour, who had been elected Governor of New York in that waveof reaction in the autumn of 1862. Several New York papers joined thecrusade. In Congress, the Government had already been threatened withcivil war if the act was enforced. Nevertheless, the public drawingby lot began on the days announced. In New York the first drawing tookplace on Saturday, July 12th, and the lists were published in the Sundaypapers. As might be expected, many of the men drawn were of foreignbirth, and all day Sunday, the foreign quarter of New York was acauldron 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 incharge, and set fire to the building. In a short while, the streets werefilled with dense crowds of foreignborn workmen shouting, "Down withthe rich men, " and singing, "We'll hang Horace Greeley on a sour appletree. " Houses of prominent citizens were attacked and set on fire, andseveral drafting offices were burned. Many negroes who were seized wereeither clubbed to death or hanged to lamp posts. Even an orphan asylumfor colored children was burned. The office of the "Tribune" was raided, gutted, and set on fire. Finally a dispatch to Stanton, early in thenight, reported that the mob had taken possession of the city. 

The events of the next day were no less shocking. The city was almoststripped of soldiers, as all available reserves had already been hurriedsouth when Lee was advancing toward Gettysburg. But such militia ascould be mustered, with a small force of federal troops, fought the mobin the streets. Barricades were carried by storm; blood was freely shed. It was not, however, until the fourth day that the rebellion was finallyquelled, chiefly by New York regiments, hurried north by Stanton--amongthem the famous Seventh--which swept the streets with cannon. 

The aftermath of the New York riots was a correspondence between Lincolnand Seymour. The latter had demanded a suspension of the draft until thecourts could decide on the constitutionality of the Conscription Act. Lincoln refused. With ten thousand troops now assembled in New York, thedraft was resumed, and there was no further trouble. 

The resistance to the Government in New York was but the most terribleepisode in a protracted contention which involves, as Americans arebeginning to see, one of the most fundamental and permanent questionsof Lincoln's rule: how can the exercise of necessary war powers bythe President be reconciled with the guarantees of liberty in theConstitution? It is unfortunate that Lincoln did not draw up a fullyrounded statement of his own theory regarding this problem, insteadof leaving it to be inferred from detached observations and from hisactions. Apparently, he felt there was nothing to do but to follow theRoman precedent and, in a case of emergency, frankly permit the useof extraordinary power. We may attribute to him that point of viewexpressed by a distinguished Democrat of our own day: "Democracy has tolearn how to use the dictator as a necessary war tool. "* Whether Lincolnset a good model for democracy in this perilous business is still to bedetermined. His actions have been freely labeled usurpation. The firstnotorious instance occurred in 1861, during the troubles in Maryland, when he authorized military arrests of suspected persons. For therelease of one of these, a certain Merryman, Chief Justice Taneyissued a writ of habeas corpus**. Lincoln authorized his militaryrepresentatives to disregard the writ. In 1862 he issued a proclamationsuspending the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus in cases ofpersons charged with "discouraging volunteer enlistments, resistingmilitary drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice. . . . " Such personswere 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 likea 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 weresent to prison. So violent was the opposition that on March 3, 1863, Congress passed an act which attempted to bring the military and civilcourts into cooperation, though it did not take away from the Presidentall the dictatorial power which he had assumed. The act seems; however, to have had little general effect, and it was disregarded in themost celebrated of the cases of military arrest, that of Clement L. Vallandigham. 

A representative from Ohio and one of the most vituperative anti-Lincolnmen in Congress, Vallandigham in a sensational speech applied to theexisting situation Chatham's words, "My lords, you cannot conquerAmerica. " He professed to see before him in the future nothing "butuniversal political and social revolution, anarchy, and bloodshed, compared with which the Reign of Terror in France was a mercifulvisitation. " To escape such a future, he demanded an armistice, to befollowed by a friendly peace established through foreign mediation. 

Returning to Ohio after the adjournment of Congress, Vallandigham spoketo a mass-meeting in a way that was construed as rank treason by GeneralBurnside who was in command at Cincinnati. Vallandigham was arrested, tried by court martial, and condemned to imprisonment. There was animmediate hue and cry, in consequence of which Burnside, who reportedthe affair, felt called upon also to offer to resign. Lincoln's replywas characteristic: "When I shall wish to supersede you I shall letyou know. All the Cabinet regretted the necessity for arresting, forinstance, Vallandigham, some perhaps doubting there was a real necessityfor it; but being done, all were for seeing you through with it. "Lincoln, however, commuted the sentence to banishment and hadVallandigham sent through the lines into the Confederacy. 

It seems quite plain that the condemnation of Lincoln on this issue ofusurpation was not confined to the friends of the Confederacy, nor hasit been confined to his enemies in later days. One of Lincoln'smost ardent admirers, the historian Rhodes, condemns his courseunqualifiedly. "There can be no question, " he writes, "that from thelegal point of view the President should have rescinded the sentence andreleased Vallandigham. " Lincoln, he adds, "stands responsible forthe casting into prison of citizens of the United States on orders asarbitrary as the lettres-de-cachet of Louis XIV. " Since Mr. Rhodes, uncompromising Unionist, can write as he does upon this issue, it isplain that the opposition party cannot be dismissed as through andthrough disunionist. 

The trial of Vallandigham made him a martyr and brought him theDemocratic nomination for Governor of Ohio*. His followers sought tomake the issue of the campaign the acceptance or rejection of militarydespotism. In defense of his course Lincoln wrote two public letters inwhich he gave evidence of the skill which he had acquired as a lawyerbefore a jury by the way in which he played upon the emotions of hisreaders. 

 * 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 maintainedunless desertion shall be punished by the severe penalty of death. The case requires, and the law and the Constitution sanction, thispunishment. Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, whileI 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, orbrother, or friend into a public meeting, and there working upon hisfeelings till he is persuaded to write the soldier boy that he isfighting in a bad cause for a wicked administration and a contemptiblegovernment, too weak to arrest and punish him if he shall desert. Ithink that in such a case to silence the agitator and save the boy isnot 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 allthe guaranteed rights of individuals, on the plea of conserving thepublic safety--when I may choose to say the public safety requires it. This question, divested of the phraseology calculated to represent me asstruggling for an arbitrary prerogative, is either simply a questionwho shall decide, or an affirmation that nobody shall decide, what thepublic safety does require in cases of rebellion or invasion. 

"The Constitution contemplates the question as likely to occur fordecision, but it does not expressly declare who is to decide it. Bynecessary implication, when rebellion or invasion comes, the decision isto 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-chiefof their army and navy, is the man who holds the power and bears theresponsibility of making it. If he uses the power justly, the samepeople will probably justify him; if he abuses it, he is in their handsto be dealt with by all the modes they have reserved to themselves inthe Constitution. "

Lincoln virtually appealed to the Northern people to secure efficiencyby setting him momentarily above all civil authority. He asked themin substance, to interpret their Constitution by a show of hands. Nothoughtful person can doubt the risks of such a method; yet in Ohio, in 1863, the great majority--perhaps everyone who believed in thewar--accepted Lincoln's position. Between their traditional system oflegal juries and the new system of military tribunals the Ohio votersmade their choice without hesitation. They rejected Vallandighamand sustained the Lincoln candidate by a majority of over a hundredthousand. That same year in New York the anti-Lincoln candidate forSecretary of State was defeated by twenty-nine thousand votes. 

Though these elections in 1863 can hardly be called the turning-point inthe history of the Lincoln Government, yet it was clear that the tideof popularity which had ebbed so far away from Lincoln in the autumn of1862 was again in the flood. Another phase of his stormy course may bethought of as having ended. And in accounting for this turn of the tideit must not be forgotten that between the nomination and the defeat ofa Vallandigham the bloody rebellion in New York had taken place, Gettysburg had been fought, and Grant had captured Vicksburg. The autumnof 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 Northand South chiefly in terms of population. The North numbered 23, 000, 000inhabitants; the South, about 9, 000, 000, of which the slave populationamounted to 3, 500, 000. But these obvious statistics only partiallyindicate the real situation. Not what one has, but what one is capableof using is, of course, the true measure of strength. If, in 1861, either side could have struck swiftly and with all its force, the storyof the war would have been different. The question of relative strengthwas in reality a question of munitions. Both powers were glaringlyunprepared. Both had instant need of great supplies of arms andammunition, and both turned to European manufacturers for aid. ThoseAmericans who, in a later war, wished to make illegal the neutral tradein munitions forgot that the international right of a belligerent to buyarms from a neutral had prevented their own destruction in 1861. Inthe supreme American crisis, agents of both North and South hurried toEurope in quest of munitions. On the Northern side the work was donechiefly by the three ministers, Charles Francis Adams, at London;William L. Dayton, at Paris; and Henry S. Sanford, at Brussels; byan able special agent, Colonel George L. Schuyler; and by the famousbanking-house of Baring Brothers, which one might almost have called theEuropean department of the United States Treasury. 

The eager solicitude of the War Department over the competition of thetwo groups of agents in Europe informs a number of dispatches that are, today, precious admonitions to the heedless descendants of that dreadfultime. As late as October, 1861, the Acting Secretary of War wrote toSchuyler, one of whose shipments had been delayed: "The Departmentearnestly hopes to receive. . . The 12, 000 Enfield rifles and the remainderof the 27, 000, which you state you have purchased, by the earlieststeamer following. Could you appreciate the circumstances by which weare surrounded, you would readily understand the urgent necessity thereis for the immediate delivery of all the arms you are authorized topurchase. The Department expects to hear that you have been ableto conclude the negotiations for the 48, 000 rifles from the Frenchgovernment arsenals. " That the Confederate Government acted even morepromptly than the Union Government appears from a letter of Sanford toSeward in May: "I have vainly expected orders, " he complains, "forthe purchase of arms for the Government, and am tempted to order fromBelgium all they can send over immediately. . . . Meanwhile the workshopsare filling with orders from the South. . . . It distresses me to thinkthat while we are in want of them, Southern money is taking them away tobe used against us. "

At London, Adams took it upon himself to contract for arms in advance ofinstructions. He wrote to Seward: "Aware of the degree to which I exceedmy authority in taking such a step, nothing but a conviction of the needin which the country stands of such assistance and the joint opinion ofall the diplomatic agents of the United States. . . In Paris, has inducedme to overcome my scruples. " How real was the necessity of which thisable diplomat was so early conscious, is demonstrated at every turnin the papers of the War Department. Witness this brief dispatch fromHarrisburg: "All ready to leave but no arms. Governor not willing tolet us leave State without them, as act of Assembly forbids. Can armsbe sent here?" When this appeal was made, in December, 1861, arms werepouring into the country from Europe, and the crisis had passed. But ifthis appeal had been made earlier in the year, the inevitable answer maybe guessed from a dispatch which the Ordnance Office sent, as late asSeptember, to the authorities of West Virginia, refusing to supplythem with arms because the supplies were exhausted, and adding, "Everypossible exertion is being made to obtain additional supplies bycontract, by manufacture, and by purchase, and as soon as they can beprocured by any means, in any way, they will be supplied. "

Curiously enough, not only the Confederacy but various States of theNorth were more expeditious in this all-important matter than Cameronand the War Department. Schuyler's first dispatch from London givesthis singular information: "All private establishments in Birminghamand London are now working for the States of Ohio, Connecticut, andMassachusetts, except the London Armory, whose manufacture is supposedto go to the Rebels, but of this last fact I am not positively informed. I am making arrangements to secure these establishments for ourGovernment, if desirable after the present State contracts expire. Onthe Continent, Messrs, Dayton and Sanford. . . Have been making contractsand agreements of various kinds, of which you are by this timeinformed. " Soon afterward, from Paris, he made a long report detailingthe difficulties of his task, the limitations of the existing munitionsplants in Europe, and promising among other things those "48, 000 riflesfrom the French government arsenals" for which, in the letter alreadyquoted, the War Department yearned. It was an enormous labor; and, strive as he would, Schuyler found American mail continuing to bring himsuch letters as this from the Assistant Secretary of War in October: "Inotice with much regret that [in the latest consignment] there were noguns sent, as it was confidently expected that 20, 000 would arrive bythe [steamship] Fulton, and accordingly arrangements had been made todistribute them through the different States. Prompt and early shipmentsof guns are desirable. We hope to hear by next steamer that you haveshipped from 80, 000 to 100, 000 stand. "

The last word on the problem of munitions, which was so significanta factor in the larger problem, is the report of the United StatesOrdnance Office for the first year of the war. It shows that betweenApril, 1861, and June, 1862, the Government purchased from Americanmanufacturers somewhat over 30, 000 rifles, and that from European makersit purchased 726, 000. 

From these illustrations it is therefore obvious that the true measureof the immediate strength of the American contestants in 1861 was theextent of their ability to supply themselves from Europe; and this, stated more concretely, became the question as to which was the betterable to keep its ports open and receive the absolutely essentialEuropean aid. Lincoln showed his clear realization of the situationwhen he issued, immediately after the first call for volunteers, aproclamation blockading the Southern coasts. Whether the Northern peopleat the time appreciated the significance of this order is a question. Amid the wild and vain clamor of the multitude in 1861, with itsconventional and old-fashioned notion of war as a thing of trumpets andglittering armies, the North seems wholly to have ignored its fleet; andyet 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 withEurope, and to close these was not difficult. As other ports opened andthe task of blockade grew, the Northern navy also increased. Within afew months, to the few observers who did not lose their heads, it wasplain that the North had won the first great contest of the war. It hadso hampered Southern trade that Lincoln's advantage in arming the Northfrom Europe was ten to one. At the very time when detractors of Lincolnwere hysterical over the removal of Fremont, when Grimes wrote toFessenden that the country was going to the dogs as fast as imbecilitycould carry it, this great achievement had quietly taken place. Anexpedition sailing in August from Fortress Monroe seized the forts whichcommanded Hatteras Inlet off the coast of North Carolina. In November, Commander Dupont, U. S. N. , seized Port Royal, one of the best harborson the coast of South Carolina, and established there a naval base. Thenceforth, while the open Northern ports received European munitionswithout hindrance, it was a risky business getting munitions into theports of the South. Only the boldest traders would attempt to "run theblockade, " to evade the Federal patrol ships by night and run into aSouthern port. 

However, for one moment in the autumn of 1861, it seemed as if all themasterful work of the Northern navy would be undone by the Northernpeople themselves in backing up the rashness of Captain Charles Wilkes, of the war-ship San Jacinto. On the high seas he overhauled the Britishmail steamer, Trent. Aboard her were two Confederate diplomaticagents, James M. Mason and John Slidell, who had run the blockade fromCharleston to Havana and were now on their way to England. Wilkes tookoff the two Confederates as prisoners of war. The crowd in the Northwent wild. "We do not believe, " said the New York Times, "that theAmerican heart ever thrilled with more sincere delight. "

The intemperate joy of the crowd over the rashness of Wilkes was due inpart to a feeling of bitterness against the British Government. InMay, 1861, the Queen had issued a proclamation of neutrality, whosejustification in international law was hotly debated at the time and wasgenerally denied by Northerners. England was the great cotton market ofthe world. To the excited Northern mind, in 1861, there could be but oneexplanation of England's action: a partisan desire to serve the South, to break up the blockade, and to secure cotton. Whether such was thereal purpose of the ministry then in power is now doubted; but atthat time it was the beginning of a sharp contention between the twoGovernments. The Trent affair naturally increased the tension. So keenwas the indignation of all classes of Englishmen that it seemed, for amoment, as if the next step would be war. 

In America, the prompt demand for the release of Mason and Slidell wasmet, at first, in a spirit equally bellicose. Fortunately there werecool and clear heads that at once condemned Wilkes's action as a grossbreach of international law. Prominent among these was Sumner. TheAmerican Government, however, admitted the justice of the British demandand the envoys were released. 

Relations with the United States now became a burning issue inEnglish politics. There were three distinct groups in Parliament. Therepresentatives of the aristocracy, whether Liberals or Conservatives, in the main sympathized with the South. So did most of the largemanufacturers whose business interests were affected by cotton. Greatbitterness grew up among the Northerners against both these groups, partly because in the past many of their members had condemned slaveryand had said scornful things about America for tolerating it. To theseNortherners the Englishmen replied that Lincoln himself had declaredthe war was not over slavery; that it was an ordinary civil war notinvolving moral issues. Nevertheless, the third Parliamentary groupinsisted that the American war, no matter what the motives of theparticipants, would, in the event of a Northern victory, bring about theabolition of slavery, whereas, if the South won, the result would bethe perpetuation of slavery. This third group, therefore, threw all itsweight on the side of the North. In this group Lincoln recognized hisallies, and their cause he identified with his own in his letter toEnglish workmen which was quoted in the previous chapter. Their leadersin Parliament were Richard Cobden, W. E. Forster, and John Bright. All these groups were represented in the Liberal party, which, for themoment, 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 feltthat its cause was hopeless--so little did they understand the relativestrength of the two sections--and who felt that the war was a terribleproof 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 declarationof 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 againstthe South; but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leadersof the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; andthey have made, what is more than either--they have made a nation. "

The Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, wished to intervene in the Americanwar and bring about an amicable separation into two countries, and so, apparently, did the Foreign Secretary, Lord John Russell. Recently, theAmerican minister had vainly protested against the sailing of a shipknown as 290 which was being equipped at Liverpool presumably for theservice of the Confederacy, and which became the famous Alabama. For twoyears it roved the ocean destroying Northern commerce, and not untilit was sunk at last in a battle with the U. S. S. Kearsarge did all themaritime interests of the North breathe again freely. In time and as aresult 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 wasdue probably to the carelessness of British officials rather than todeliberate purpose. And yet the fact is clear that about the first ofOctober, 1862, the British ministry was on the verge of intervening tosecure recognition of the independence of the Southern confederacy. Thechief motive pressing them forward was the distress in England caused bythe lack of cotton which resulted from the American blockade. In 1860, the South had exported 615, 000 bales; in 1861, only 10, 127 bales. In1862 half the spindles of Manchester were idle; the workmen were out ofemployment; the owners were without dividends. It was chiefly by thesemanufacturing capitalists that pressure was put upon the ministry, and it was in the manufacturing district that Gladstone, thinking theGovernment was likely to intervene, made his allusion to the South as anation. 

Meanwhile the Emperor of the French was considering a proposal toEngland and Russia to join with him in mediation between the Americanbelligerents. On October 28, 1862, Napoleon III gave audience to theConfederate envoy at Paris, discussed the Southern cause in the mostfriendly manner, questioned him upon the Maryland campaign, plainlyindicated his purpose to attempt intervention, and at parting cordiallyshook hands with him. Within a few days the Emperor made good hisimplied promise. 

The month of November, 1862, is one of the turning-points in Americanforeign relations. Both Russia and England rejected France's proposal. The motive usually assigned to the Emperor Alexander is his hatred ofeverything associated with slavery. His own most famous action was theliberation of the Russian serfs. The motives of the British ministry, however, appear more problematical. 

Mr. Rhodes thinks he can discern evidence that Adams communicatedindirectly to Palmerston the contents of a dispatch from Seward whichindicated that the United States would accept war rather than mediation. Palmerston had kept his eyes upon the Maryland campaign, and Lee'swithdrawal did not increase his confidence in the strength of the South. Lord Russell, two months previous, had flatly told the Confederate envoyat London that the South need not hope for recognition unless it couldestablish itself without aid, and that "the fluctuating events ofthe war, the alternation of defeat and victory, " composed such acontradictory situation that "Her Majesty's Government are stilldetermined to wait. "

Perhaps the veiled American warning--assuming it was conveyed toPalmerston, which seems highly probable--was not the only diplomaticinnuendo of the autumn of 1862 that has escaped the pages of history. Slidell at Paris, putting together the statements of the BritishAmbassador and those of the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, found inthem contradictions as to what was going on between the two governmentsin 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. . . Aletter from a leading member of the British Cabinet. . . In which he veryplainly insinuated that France was playing an unfair game, " trying touse England as Napoleon's catspaw. Among the many motives that maywell have animated the Palmerston Government in its waiting policy, adistrust 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 promptreaction of the "Northern party" in the Cabinet and in the country. Whatever Palmerston's secret desires were, he was not prepared to takethe high hand, and he therefore permitted other members of the Cabinetto state in public that Gladstone had been misunderstood. In aninterview with Adams, Lord Russell, "whilst endeavoring to excuse Mr. Gladstone, " assured him that "the policy of the Government was to adhereto a strict neutrality and leave the struggle to settle itself. " In thelast analysis, the Northern party in England was gaining ground. Thenews from America, possibly, and Gladstone's rashness, certainly, rousedit to increased activity. Palmerston, whose tenure of power was none toosecure, dared not risk a break that might carry the disaffected into theranks of the Opposition. 

From this time forward the North rapidly grew in favor in British publicopinion, and its influence upon the Government speedily increased. 

Says Lord Charnwood in his recent life of Lincoln: "The battle ofAntietam was followed within five days by an event which made itimpossible for any government of this country to take action unfriendlyto the North. " He refers of course to the Emancipation Proclamation, which was issued on September 23, 1862. Lord Charnwood's remark maybe too dramatic. But there can be no doubt that the EmancipationProclamation was the turning-point in Lincoln's foreign policy; andbecause of it, his friends in England eventually forced the Governmentto play into his hands, and so frustrated Napoleon's scheme forintervention. Consequently Lincoln was able to maintain the blockadeby means of which the South was strangled. Thus, at bottom, the crucialmatter was Emancipation. 

Lincoln's policy with regard to slavery passed through three distinctstages. As we have seen, he proposed, at first, to pledge the Governmentnot to interfere with slavery in the States where it then existed. Thiswas his maximum of compromise. He would not agree to permitting itsextension into new territory. He maintained this position through 1861, when it was made an accusation against him by the Abolitionists andcontributed to the ebb of his popularity. It also played a great partin the episode of Fremont. At a crucial moment in Fremont's career, whenhis hold upon popularity seemed precarious, he set at naught thepolicy of the President and issued an order (August 30, 1861), whichconfiscated all property and slaves of those who were in arms againstthe 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 tactfulletter Lincoln asked him to modify the order so as to conform to theConfiscation Act of Congress; and when Fremont proved obdurate, Lincolnordered him to do so. In the outcry against Lincoln when Fremont was atlast removed, the Abolitionists rang the changes on this reversal of hispolicy of military abolition. 

Another Federal General, Benjamin F. Butler, in the course of 1861, alsoraised the issue, though not in the bold fashion of Fremont. Runawayslaves came to his camp on the Virginia coast, and he refused tosurrender them to the owners. He took the ground that, as they hadprobably been used in building Confederate fortifications, they might beconsidered contraband of war. He was sustained by Congress, which passedwhat is commonly called the First Confiscation Act providing that slavesused by Confederate armies in military labor should, if captured, be"forfeited"--which of course meant that they should be set free. Butthis did not settle what should be done with runaways whose masters, though residents of seceded States, were loyal to the Union. The WarDepartment 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 Unionmight be restored without prolonged war. He abandoned this hope aboutthe end of the year. Thereupon, his policy entered its second stage. Inthe spring of 1862 he formulated a plan for gradual emancipation withcompensation. The slaves of Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, Missouri, andthe District of Columbia were to be purchased at the rate of $400 each, thus involving a total expenditure of $173, 000, 000. Although Congressadopted the joint resolution recommended by the President, the "borderStates" would not accept the plan. But Congress, by virtue of itsplenary 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 theaction of an unruly general. The Federal forces operating from theirbase at Port Royal had occupied a considerable portion of the Carolinacoast. General Hunter issued an order freeing all the slaves in SouthCarolina, Georgia, and Florida. In countermanding the order, Lincolnmade another futile appeal to the people of the border States to adoptsome plan of compensated emancipation. 

"I do not argue, " he said; "I beseech you to make arguments foryourselves. 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 itmay be, far above personal and partisan politics. This proposal makescommon cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. Itacts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would come gentlyas the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will you notembrace it? So much good has not been done by one effort in all pasttime, 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 greatlydispleased the Abolitionists. Their most gifted orator, WendellPhillips, reviled Lincoln with all the power of his literary genius, and with a fury that might be called malevolent. Meanwhile, a SecondConfiscation Act proclaimed freedom for the slaves of all those whosupported the Confederate Government. Horace Greeley now published inthe "New York Tribune" an editorial entitled, "The Prayer of TwentyMillions. " He denounced Lincoln's treatment of Fremont and Hunter anddemanded radical action. Lincoln replied in a letter now famous. "Iwould save the Union, " said he, "I would save it the shortest way underthe Constitution. . . . If I could save the Union without freeing anyslave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leavingothers alone, I would also do that. What I do about slavery and thecolored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; andwhat I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to savethe Union. "

However, at the very time when he wrote this remarkable letter, he hadin his own mind entered upon the third stage of his policy. He hadeven then discussed with his Cabinet an announcement favoring generalemancipation. The time did not seem to them ripe. It was decided to waituntil a Federal victory should save the announcement from appearingto be a cry of desperation. Antietam, which the North interpreted as avictory, gave Lincoln his opportunity. 

The Emancipation Proclamation applied only to the States in arms againstthe Federal Government. Such States were given three months in which toreturn to the Union. Thereafter, if they did not return, their slaveswould be regarded by that Government as free. No distinction was madebetween slaves owned by supporters of the Confederacy and those whoseowners were in opposition to it. The Proclamation had no bearing onthose slave States which had not seceded. Needless to add, noseceded State returned, and a second Proclamation making their slavestheoretically 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 inSeptember, 1862. We have already heard of the elections which tookplace soon after--those elections which mark perhaps the lowest ebb ofLincoln's popularity, when Seymour was elected Governor of New York, andthe peace party gained over thirty seats in Congress. It is a questionwhether, as a purely domestic measure, the Emancipation Proclamation wasnot, for the time, an injury to the Lincoln Government. And yet it wasthe real turning-point in the fortunes of the North. It was the centralfact in the maintenance of the blockade. 

In England at this time the cotton famine was at its height. Nearly amillion people in the manufacturing districts were wholly dependentupon charity. This result of the blockade had been foreseen by theConfederate Government which was confident that the distress ofEngland's working people would compel the English ministry to interveneand break the blockade. The employers in England whose loss was whollyfinancial, 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 whosaw in the victory of the North, whatever its motives, the eventualextinction of slavery. To these people, the Emancipation Proclamationgave a definite programme. It was now, the leaders argued, no longer aquestion of eventual effect; the North had proclaimed a motive and thatmotive was the extinction of slavery. Great numbers of Englishmen of allclasses who had hitherto held back from supporting Cobden and Bright nowranged themselves on their side. Addresses of praise and sympathy "beganto pour into the Legation of the United States in a steady and everswelling stream. " An immense popular demonstration took place at ExeterHall. Cobden, writing to Sumner, described the new situation in Britishpolitics, in a letter amounting to an assurance that the Governmentnever again would attempt to resist the popular pressure in favor of theNorth. 

On the last day of 1862 a meeting of workingmen at Manchester, where thecotton famine was causing untold misery, adopted one of those NewYear greetings to Lincoln. Lincoln's reply expressed with his usualdirectness his own view of the sympathetic relation that had beenestablished between the democratic classes of the two countries:

"I know and deeply deplore the sufferings which the workingmen atManchester, and in all Europe, are called to endure in this crisis. Ithas been often and studiously represented that the attempt to overthrowthis Government, which was built upon the foundation of human rights, and to substitute for it one which should rest exclusively on the basisof human slavery, was likely to obtain the favor of Europe. Throughthe action of our disloyal citizens, the workingmen of Europe have beensubjected to severe trials, for the purpose of forcing their sanction tothat attempt. Under the circumstances, I cannot but regard your decisiveutterances upon the question as an instance of sublime Christian heroismwhich has not been surpassed in any age or in any country. It is indeedan energetic and reinspiring assurance of the inherent power of truth, and of the ultimate triumph of justice, humanity, and freedom. I do notdoubt that the sentiments you have expressed will be sustained by yourgreat nation; and, on the other hand, I have no hesitation in assuringyou that they will excite admiration, esteem, and the most reciprocalfeelings of friendship among the American people. I hail thisinterchange of sentiment, therefore, as an augury that whatever else mayhappen, whatever misfortune may befall your country or my own, the peaceand friendship which now exists between the two nations will be, as itshall 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 nowdefinitely friendly attitude of England had done much to secure thestability of the Lincoln Government, this success was due in part toa figure which now comes to the front and deserves attentiveconsideration. Indeed the work of Salmon Portland Chase, Secretary ofthe Treasury, forms a bridge, as one might say, between the first andsecond phases of Lincoln's administration. 

The interesting Englishman who is the latest biographer of Lincoln saysof Chase: "Unfortunately, this imposing person was a sneak. " But isLord Charnwood justified in that surprising characterization? He findssupport in the testimony of Secretary Welles, who calls Chase, "artfuldodger, unstable, and unreliable. " And yet there is another side, forit is the conventional thing in America to call him our greatest financeminister since Hamilton, and even a conspicuous enemy said of him, at acrucial moment, that his course established his character "as an honestand frank man. "

Taking these contradictory estimates as hints of a contradiction in theman, we are forced to the conclusion that Chase was a professionalin politics and an amateur in finance. Perhaps herein is the wholeexplanation of the two characteristics of his financial policy--hisreluctance to lay taxes, and his faith in loans. His two eyes did notsee things alike. One was really trying to make out the orthodox pathof finance; the other was peering along the more devious road of popularcaprice. 

The opening of the war caught the Treasury, as it caught all branches ofthe Government, utterly unprepared. Between April and July, 1861, Chasehad to borrow what he could. When Congress met in July, his real careeras director of financial policy began--or, as his enemies think, failedto begin. At least, he failed to urge upon Congress the need of newtaxes 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 beinterest-bearing treasury notes; made slight increases in duties; andPrepared for excise and direct taxation the following year. Later inthe year Congress laid a three per cent tax on all incomes in excess of$800. 

When Congress reassembled in December, 1861, expenditures were racingahead of receipts, and there was a deficit of $143, 000, 000. It must notbe forgotten that this month was a time of intense excitability and ofnervous reaction. Fremont had lately been removed, and the attack onCameron had begun. At this crucial moment the situation was made stillmore alarming by the action of the New York banks, followed by all otherbanks, in suspending specie payments. They laid the responsibility uponChase. A syndicate of banks in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia hadcome to the aid of the Government, but when they took up governmentbonds, Chase had required them to pay the full value cash down, thoughthey had asked permission to hold the money on deposit and to pay it asneeded on requisition by the Government. Furthermore, in spite of theirprotest, Chase issued treasury notes, which the banks had to receivefrom 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 financialcrisis was not due to his policy--or lack of policy, as it would nowseem--but to a general loss of faith in the outcome of the war. 

There now arose a moral crisis for this "imposing person" who wasSecretary of the Treasury--a crisis with regard to which there arestill differences of opinion. While he faced his problem silently, theCommittee on Ways and Means in the House took the matter in hand: Itssolution was an old one which all sound theorists on finance unite incondemning--the issue of irredeemable paper money. And what did theSecretary of the Treasury do? Previously, as Governor of Ohio, he haddenounced paper money as, in effect, a fraud upon society. Long after, when the tide of fortune had landed him in the high place of SupremeJustice, he returned to this view and condemned as unconstitutional thelaw of 1862 establishing a system of paper money. But at the timewhen that law was passed Chase, though he went through the form ofprotesting, soon acquiesced. Before long he was asking Congress to allowa further issue of what he had previously called "fraudulent" money. 

The answer to the question whether Chase should have stuck to hisprinciples and resigned rather than acquiesce in the paper moneylegislation turns on that other question--how were the politician andthe financier related in his make-up?

Before Congress and the Secretary had finished, $450, 000, 000 wereissued. Prices naturally rose, and there was speculation in gold. Evenbefore the first issue of paper money, the treasury notes had beenslightly below par. In January, 1863, a hundred dollars in paper wouldbring, 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 responsiblefor such a condition of affairs. Justin Morrill, the author of theMorrill tariff, said, "I would as soon provide Chinese wooden gunsfor the army as paper money alone for the army. It will be a breach ofpublic faith. It will injure creditors; it will increase prices; it willincrease many fold the cost of the war. " Recent students agree, in themain, that his prophecies were fulfilled; and a common estimate of theprobable increase in the cost of the war through the use of paper moneyand the consequent inflation of prices is $600, 000, 000. 

There was much more financial legislation in 1862; but Chase continuedto stand aside and allow Congress the lead in establishing an exciselaw, an increase in the income tax, and a higher tariff--the last ofwhich was necessitated by the excise law which has been described as abill "that taxed everything. " To enable American manufacturers to bearthe excise duties levied upon their business, protection was evokedto secure them the possession of their field by excluding foreigncompetition. All these taxes, however, produced but a fraction of theGovernment's revenue. Borrowing, the favorite method of the Secretary, was accepted by Congress as the main resource. It is computed thatby 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 hadother interests besides finance. Lincoln's Cabinet in those days wasfar from an harmonious body. All through its history there was a Chasefaction and a Seward faction. The former had behind them the RadicalRepublicans, while the latter relied upon the support of the moderates. This division in the Republican party runs deep through the politicsof the time. There seems to be good reason to think that Chase was nottaken by surprise when his radical allies in Congress, in December, 1862, demanded of Lincoln the removal of Seward. It will be rememberedthat the elections of the autumn of 1862 had gone against Lincoln. Atthis moment of dismay, the friends of Chase struck their blow. Sewardinstantly offered his resignation. But Lincoln skillfully temporized. Thereupon, Chase also resigned. Judging from the scanty evidence we haveof his intention, we may conclude that he thought he had Lincoln ina corner and that he expected either to become first minister or theavowed chief of an irresistible opposition. But he seems to have gonetoo fast for his followers. Lincoln had met them, together with hisCabinet, in a conference in December, 1862, and frankly discussed thesituation, with the result that some of them wavered. When Lincolninformed both Seward and Chase that he declined to accept theirresignations, both returned--Seward with alacrity, Chase withreluctance. One of the clues to Lincoln's cabinet policy was hisdetermination 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 athis best. A stupendous difficulty lay before him and he attacked itmanfully. The Government's deficit was $276, 900, 000. Of the loansauthorized in 1862--the "five-twenties" as they were called, bringingsix per cent and to run from five to twenty years at the Government'spleasure---the sales had brought in, to December, 1862, only$23, 750, 000, though five hundred million had been expected. The banks indeclining to handle these bonds laid the blame on the Secretary, who hadinsisted that all purchasers should take them at par. 

It is not feasible, in a work of this character, to enter into thecomplexities of the financial situation of 1863, or to determine justwhat influences caused a revolution in the market for government bonds. But two factors must be mentioned. Chase was induced to change hisattitude and to sell to banks large numbers of bonds at a rate belowpar, thus enabling the banks to dispose of them at a profit. He alsocalled to his aid Jay Cooke, an experienced banker, who was allowed acommission of one-half per cent on all bonds sold up to $10, 000, 000 andthree-eighths of one per cent after that. Cooke organized a countrywideagency system, with twenty-five hundred subagents through whom heoffered directly to the people bonds in small denominations. By allmanner of devices, patriotism and the purchase of bonds were made toappear the same thing, and before the end of the year $400, 000, 000in five-twenty bonds had been sold. This campaign to dispose of thefive-twenties was the turning-point in war finance, and later borrowingsencountered no such difficulties as those of 1862 and 1863. 

Better known today than this precarious legislation is the famous Actof 1863, which was amended in the next year and which forms the basisof our present system of national banks. To Chase himself the credit forthis seems to be due. Even in 1861 he advised Congress to establisha system of national banks, and he repeated the advice before it wasfinally taken. The central feature of this system which he advocated isone with which we are still familiar: permission to the banks acceptinggovernment supervision to deposit government bonds in the Treasury andto acquire in return the right to issue bank-notes to the amount ofninety per cent of the value of the bonds. 

There can be no doubt that Chase himself rated very highly his ownservices to his country. Nor is there any doubt that, alone amongLincoln's close associates, he continued until the end to believehimself a better man than the President. He and his radical followingmade no change in their attitude to Lincoln, though Chase pursueda course of confidential criticism which has since inspired thecharacterization of him as a "sneak, " while his followers were moreoutspoken. In the summer of 1863 Chase was seriously talked of as thenext President, and before the end of the year Chase clubs were beingorganized in all the large cities to promote his candidacy. Chasehimself took the adroit position of not believing that any Presidentshould serve a second term. 

Early in 1864 the Chase organization sent out a confidential circularsigned by Senator Pomeroy of Kansas setting forth the case againstLincoln as a candidate and the case in favor of Chase. Unfortunatelyfor Chase, this circular fell into the hands of a newspaper and waspublished. Chase at once wrote to Lincoln denying any knowledge of thecircular but admitting his candidacy and offering his resignation. Nomore remarkable letter was written by Lincoln than his reply to Chase, in which he showed that he had long fully understood the situation, andwhich he closed with these words: "Whether you shall remain at the headof the Treasury Department is a question which I do not allow myselfto consider from any standpoint other than my judgment of the publicservice, and, in that view, I do not perceive occasion for change. "

The Chase boom rapidly declined. The deathblow was given by a caucus ofthe Union members of the legislature of his own State nominating Lincoln"at the demand of the people and the soldiers of Ohio. " The defeatembittered Chase. For several months, however, he continued in theCabinet, and during this time he had the mortification of seeing Lincolnrenominated in the National Union Convention amid a great display ofenthusiasm. 

More than once in the past, Chase had offered his resignation. On oneoccasion Lincoln had gone to his house and had begged him to reconsiderhis decision. Soon after the renomination, Chase again offered hisresignation upon the pretext of a disagreement with the President overappointments to office. This time, however, Lincoln felt the end hadcome and accepted the resignation. Chase's successor in the Treasury wasWilliam Pitt Fessenden, Senator from Maine. During most of the summerof 1864 Chase stood aside, sullen and envious, watching the progress ofLincoln toward a second election. So much did his bitterness affect hisjudgment that he was capable of writing in his diary his belief thatLincoln meant to reverse his policy and consent to peace with slaveryreestablished. 

CHAPTER XI. NORTHERN LIFE DURING THE WAR

The real effects of war on the life of nations is one of those old andcomplicated debates which lie outside the scope of a volume such asthis. Yet in the particular case of the Northern people it is imperativeto answer two questions both of which have provoked interminablediscussion: Was the moral life of the North good or bad in the waryears? Was its commercial life sound?

As to the moral question, contemporary evidence seems at first sightcontradictory. 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 mythree weeks' stay in Cincinnati, brought a long list of the dead andwounded of the Western army, many of whom, of the officers, belonged tothe best families of the place. Yet the signs of mourning were hardlyanywhere perceptible; the noisy gaiety of the town was not abated onejot. "

On the other hand, a private manuscript of a Cincinnati family describesthe "intense gloom hanging over the city like a pall" during the periodof that dreadful battle. The memories of old people at Cincinnati inafter days--if they had belonged to the "loyal" party--contained onlysad impressions of a city that was one great hospital where "allour best people" worked passionately as volunteer assistants of thegovernment medical corps. 

A third fact to be borne in mind in connection with this apparentcontradiction in evidence is the source of the greater fortunes ofCincinnati, a large proportion of which are to be traced, directly orindirectly to government contracts during the war. In some cases themerciless indifference of the Cincinnati speculators to the troublesof their country are a local scandal to this day, and it is still told, sometimes with scorn, sometimes with amusement, how perhaps the greatestof these fortunes was made by forcing up the price of iron at a timewhen the Government had to have iron, cost what it might. 

Thus we no sooner take up the moral problem of the times than we findourselves involved in the commercial question, for here, as always, morals and business are intertwined. Was the commercial management ofthe North creditable to the Government and an honor to the people? Thesurest way to answer such questions is to trace out with some fullnessthe commercial and industrial conditions of the North during the fouryears of war. 

The general reader who looks for the first time into the matter islikely to be staggered by what statistics seem to say. Apparently theycontradict what he is accustomed to hear from popular economists aboutthe waste of war. He has been told in the newspapers that business isundermined 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 thestatistics of 1861-1865 show much increase in Northern business--as, for example, in 1865, the production of 142 million pounds of woolagainst 60 million in 1860. The government reports show that 13 milliontons of coal were mined in 1860 and 21 million in 1864; in 1860, theoutput of pig iron was 821, 000 tons, and 1, 014, 282 tons in 1864; thepetroleum production rose from 21 million gallons in 1860 to 128million in 1862; the export of corn, measured in money, shows for 1860a business of $2, 399, 808 compared with $10, 592, 704 for 1863; wheatexporting showed, also, an enormous increase, rising from 14 millionsin 1860 to 46 millions in 1863. There are, to be sure, many statisticswhich seem to contradict these. Some of them will be mentionedpresently. And yet, on the whole, it seems safe to conclude that theNorth, at the close of the third year of war was producing more and wasreceiving larger profits than in 1860. 

To deal with this subject in its entirety would lead us into thelabyrinths of complex economic theory, yet two or three simple factsappear so plain that even the mere historian may venture to set themforth. When we look into the statistics which seem to show a generalincrease of business during the war, we find that in point of fact thisincrease was highly specialized. All those industries that dealt withthe physical necessities of life and all those that dealt peculiarlywith armies flourished amazingly. And yet there is another side to thestory, for there were other industries that were set back and some thatalmost, if not entirely, disappeared. A good instance is the manufactureof cotton cloth. When the war opened, 200, 000 hands were employed inthis manufacture in New England. With the sealing up of the South andthe failure of the cotton supply, their work temporarily ceased. Whatbecame of the workmen? Briefly, one of three things happened: some wentinto other trades, such as munitions, in which the war had created anabnormal demand for labor; a great number of them became soldiers; andmany of them went West and became farmers or miners. Furthermore, many whose trades were not injured by the war left their jobs and fledwestward to escape conscription. Their places were left open to befilled by operatives from the injured trades. In one or another ofthese ways the laborer who was thrown out of work was generally able torecover employment. But it is important to remember that the key to thelabor situation at that time was the vast area of unoccupied land whichcould be had for nothing or next to nothing. This fact is broughthome by a comparison of the situation of the American with that of theEnglish workman during the cotton famine. According to its own ideasEngland was then fully cultivated. There was no body of land waitingto be thrown open, as an emergency device, to a host of new-madeagriculturists. When the cotton-mills stopped at Manchester, theiroperatives had practically no openings but in other industrialoccupations. As such opportunities were lacking, they became objects ofcharity until they could resume their work. As a country with a greatreserve of unoccupied land, the United States was singularly fortunateat this economic crisis. 

One of the noteworthy features of Northern life during the war is thatthere was no abnormal increase in pauperism. A great deal has beenwritten upon the extensive charities of the time, but the term iswrongly applied, for what is really referred to is the volunteer aidgiven to the Government in supporting the armies. This was done ona vast scale, by all classes of the population--that is, by all whosupported the Union party, for the separation between the two partieswas bitter and unforgiving. But of charity in the ordinary sense of thecare of the destitute there was no significant increase because therewas no peculiar need. Here again the fact that the free land couldbe easily reached is the final explanation. There was no need for theunemployed workman to become a pauper. He could take advantage of theHomestead Act*, which was passed in 1862, and acquire a farm of 160acres free; or he could secure at almost nominal cost farm-landwhich had been given to railways as an inducement to build. Under theHomestead Act, the Government gave away land amounting to 2, 400, 000acres before the close of the war. The Illinois Central alone sold toactual settlers 221, 000 acres in 1863 and 264, 000 in 1864. It was duringthe war, too, that the great undertaking of the transcontinental railwaywas begun, partly for military and partly for commercial reasons. Inthis project, both as a field of labor and as a stimulus to Westernsettlement, there is also to be found one more device for the relief ofthe 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 oflarge masses of population from the East to the West, while the war wasin progress. This fact begins to indicate why there was no shortage inthe agricultural output. The North suffered acutely from inflation ofprices and from a speculative wildness that accompanied the inflation, but it did not suffer from a lack of those things that are produced bythe soil--food, timber, metals, and coal. In addition to the reason justmentioned--the search for new occupation by Eastern labor which hadbeen thrown out of employment--three other causes helped to maintain theefficiency of work in the mines, in the forests, and on the farms. Thesethree factors were immigration, the labor of women, and labor-savingmachines. 

Immigration, naturally, fell off to a certain degree but it did notbecome altogether negligible. It is probable that 110, 000 able-bodiedmen came into the country while war was in progress--a poor offsetto the many hundred thousand who became soldiers, but nevertheless acontribution that counted for something. 

Vastly more important, in the work of the North, was the part taken bywomen. A pathetic detail with which in our own experience the world hasagain become familiar was the absence of young men throughout mostof the North, and the presence of women new to the work in manyoccupations, especially farming. A single quotation from a homemissionary in Iowa tells the whole story:

"I will mention that I met more women driving teams on the road and sawmore at work in the fields than men. They seem to have said to theirhusbands 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 inquiryfor former friends, the frequent answer was, 'In the army. ' FromHawleyville almost all the thoroughly loyal male inhabitants had gone;and in one township beyond, where I formerly preached, there are butseven men left, and at Quincy, the county seat of Adams County, butfive. "

Even more important than the change in the personnel of labor were thenew machines of the day. During the fifteen years previous to the warAmerican ingenuity had reached a high point. Such inventions as thesewing machine and the horse-reaper date in their practical forms fromthat period, and both of these helped the North to fight the war. Theirfurther improvement, and the extension of the principles involved tomany new forms of machinery, sprang from the pressing need to make upfor the loss of men who were drained by the army from the farms and theworkshops. It was the horse-reaper, the horse-rake, the horse-thresherthat 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 ofproductivity. This efficiency is implied in some of the figures alreadyquoted, but many others could be cited. For example, in 1859, the totalproduction of wheat for the whole country was 173 million bushels; in1862, the North alone produced 177 millions; even in 1864, with over amillion men under arms, it still produced 160 million bushels. 

It must be remembered that the great Northern army produced nothingwhile it consumed the products of agriculture and manufacture--food, clothing, arms, ammunition, cannon, wagons, horses, medical stores--ata rate that might have led a poetical person to imagine the army asa devouring dragon. Who, in the last analysis, provided all thesesupplies? Who paid the soldiers? Who supplemented their meager pay andsupported their families? The people, of course; and they did so bothdirectly and indirectly. In taxes and loans they paid to the Governmentabout three thousand millions of dollars. Their indirect assistance wasperhaps as great, though it is impossible today to estimate with anyapproach to accuracy the amount either in money or service. Amongobvious items are the collections made by the Sanitary Commission forthe benefit of the hospital service, amounting to twenty-five milliondollars, and about six millions raised by the Christian Commission. Ina hundred other ways both individuals and localities strained theirresources to supplement those of the Government. Immense subscriptionlists were circulated to raise funds for the families of soldiers. Thecity of Philadelphia alone spent in this way in a single year $600, 000. There is also evidence of a vast amount of unrecorded relief ofneedy families by the neighbors, and in the farming districts, suchassistance, particularly in the form of fuel during winter, was verygenerally 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. Butwhat became of the labor that had previously supplied the demand forluxuries? A part of it went the way of all other Northern labor--intonew trades, into the army, or to the West--and a part continued tomanufacture luxuries: for their market, though curtailed, was notdestroyed. There were, indeed, two populations in the North, and theywere separated by an emotional chasm. Had all the North been a unit infeeling, the production of articles of luxury might have ceased. Because of this emotional division of the North, however, this businesssurvived; for the sacrifice of luxurious expenditure was made by only apart of the population, even though it was the majority. 

Furthermore, the whole matter was adjusted voluntarily withoutsystematic government direction, since there was nothing in thefinancial 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 fellupon the war party alone. In the absence of anything like economicconscription, if such a phrase may be used, those Northerners who didnot wish to lend money, or to make financial sacrifice, or to giveunpaid service, were free to pursue their own bent. The election of 1864showed that they formed a market which amounted to something between sixand nine millions. There is no reason to suppose that these millions in1864 spent less on luxuries than they did in 1860. Two or three itemsare enough. In 1860, the importation of silk amounted to 32 milliondollars; in 1862, in spite of inflated prices, it had shrunk to 7millions; the consumption of malt liquors shrank from 101 milliongallons in 1860 to 62 million gallons in 1863; of coffee, hardly to beclassed as a luxury, there were consumed in 1861, 184 million pounds andin 1863, 80 millions. 

The clue to the story of capital is to be found in this fact, too oftenforgotten, that there was an economic-political division cutting deepthrough every stratum of the Northern people. Their economic lifeas well as their political life was controlled on the one hand by adevotion to the cause of the war, and on the other hand by a hatredof that cause or by cynical indifference. And we cannot insist toopositively that the Government failed very largely to take this factinto account. The American spirit of invention, so conspicuous at thattime in mechanics, did not apply itself to the science of government. Lincoln confessedly was not a financier; his instinct was at home onlyin problems that could be stated in terms of men. Witness his acceptanceof conscription and his firmness in carrying it through, as a resultof which he saved the patriotic party from bearing the whole burden ofmilitary service. But there was no parallel conservation of power in thefield of industry. The financial policy, left in the hands of Chase, maytruly be described as barren of ideas. Incidentally, it may be mentionedthat the "loyal" North was left at the mercy of its domestic enemies anda prey to parasites by Chase's policy of loans instead of taxes and ofvoluntary support instead of enforced support. 

The consequence of this financial policy was an immense opportunity forthe "disloyally" and the parasites to make huge war profits out of the"loyals" and the Government. Of course, it must not be supposed thateveryone who seized the chance to feather his nest was so careless or soimpolitic as to let himself be classed as a "disloyal. " An incident ofthe autumn of 1861 shows the temper of those professed "loyals" who werereally parasites. The background of the incident is supplied by a reportof the Quartermaster-General:

"Governors daily complain that recruiting will stop unless clothing issent in abundance and immediately to the various recruiting camps andregiments. With every exertion, this department has not been able toobtain clothing to supply these demands, and they have been so urgentthat troops before the enemy have been compelled to do picket duty inthe late cold nights without overcoats, or even coats, wearing only thinsummer flannel blouses. . . . Could 150, 000 suits of clothing, overcoats, coats, and pantaloons be placed today, in depot, it would scarce supplythe calls now before us. They would certainly leave no surplus. "

The Government attempted to meet this difficulty in the shortestpossible time by purchasing clothing abroad. But such disregard of homeindustry, the "patriotism" of the New England manufacturers could notendure. Along with the report just quoted, the Quartermaster-Generalforwarded to the Secretary of War a long argumentative protest froma committee of the Boston Board of Trade against the purchase of armyclothing in Europe. Any American of the present day can guess howthe protest was worded and what arguments were used. Stripped of itsinsincerity, it signified this: the cotton mills were inoperative forlack of material; their owners saw no chance to save their dividendsexcept by re-equipment as woolen mills; the existing woolen mills also sawa great chance to force wool upon the market as a substitute for cotton. In Ohio, California, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, the growers of wool sawthe opportunity with equal clearness. But, one and all, these variousgroups of parasites saw that their game hinged on one condition: themunitions market must be kept open until they were ready to monopolizegovernment contracts. If soldiers contracted pneumonia doing picket dutyon cold nights, in their summer blouses, that was but an unfortunateincident of war. 

Very different in spirit from the protest of the Boston manufacturersis a dispatch from the American minister at Brussels which shows whatAmerican public servants, in contrast with American manufacturers, wereabout. Abroad the agents of North and South were fighting a commercialduel in which each strove to monopolize the munitions market. The UnitedStates Navy, seeing things from an angle entirely different from that ofthe Boston Board of Trade, ably seconded the ministers by blockading theSouthern ports and by thus preventing the movement of specie and cottonto Europe. As a consequence, fourmonth notes which had been given bySouthern agents with their orders fell due, had to be renewed, andbegan to be held in disfavor. Agents of the North, getting wind ofthese hitches in negotiations, eagerly sought to take over the unpaidConfederate orders. All these details of the situation help to explainthe jubilant tone of this dispatch from Brussels late in November, 1861:

"I have now in my hands complete control of the principal rebelcontracts on the continent, viz. : 206, 000 yards of cloth ready fordelivery, already commencing to move forward to Havre; gray but canbe dyed blue in twenty days; 100, 000 yards deliverable from 15th ofDecember 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 saberbayonets to be delivered in six weeks. . . . The winter clothing for100, 000 men taken out of their hands, when they cannot replace it, wouldalmost compensate for Bull Run. There is no considerable amount of clothto be had in Europe; the stocks are very short. "

The Secretary of War was as devoid of ideas as the Secretary of theTreasury was and even less equipped with resisting power. Though hecould not undo the work already done by the agents of the Governmentabroad, he gave way as rapidly as possible to the allied parasites whoseheadquarters, at the moment, were in Boston. The story grows uglieras we proceed. Two powerful commercial combinations took charge of thepolicy of the woolen interests--the National Woolgrowers' Associationand the National Association of Wool Manufacturers, which were soon incontrol of this immense industry. Woolen mills sprang up so fast thata report of the New York Chamber of Commerce pronounced their increase"scarcely credible. " So great was the new market created by theGovernment demand, and so ruthless were the parasites in forcing upprices, that dividends on mill stock rose to 10, 15, 25, and even 40 percent. And all the while the wool growers and the wool manufacturers wereclamoring to Congress for protection of the home industry, exclusionof 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 woolenmanufacturer was either a "disloyal" or a parasite. By no means. Numbersof them were to be found in that great host of "loyals" who put theirdividends into government bonds and gave their services unpaid asauxiliaries of the Commissary Department or the Hospital Service ofthe Army. What is meant is that the abnormal conditions of industry, uncorrected by the Government, afforded a glaring opportunity forunscrupulous men of business who, whatever their professions, cared ahundred times more for themselves than for their country. To thesewas due the pitiless hampering of the army in the interest of thewool-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 gavethe word "shoddy" its present significance in our American speech andproduced the phrase--applied to manufacturers newly become rich--"shoddyaristocracy. " An even more shameful result of the selfishness of themanufacturers and of the weakness of the Government was the use of clothfor uniforms not of the regulation colors, with the result that soldierssometimes fired upon their comrades by mistake. 

The prosperity of the capitalists who financed the woolen business didnot extend to the labor employed in it. One of the ugliest details ofthe time was the resolute attempt of the parasites to seize the wholeamount of the abnormal profits they wrung from the Government and fromthe people. For it must not be forgotten that the whole nation had topay their prices. It is estimated that prices in the main advanced about100 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 bitterantagonism between labor and capital. 

What went on in the woolen business is to be found more or less in everybusiness. Immense fortunes sprang up over night. They had but tworoots: government contracts and excessive profits due to war prices. Thegigantic fortunes which characterized the North at the end of the warare thus accounted for. The so-called prosperity of the time was aclass prosperity and was absorbed by parasites who fattened upon thenecessities of the Government and the sacrifices of the people. 

CHAPTER XII. THE MEXICAN EPISODE

That French demagogue whom Victor Hugo aptly called Napoleon the Littlewas a prime factor in the history of the Union and the Confederacy. TheConfederate 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 complicateddrama of deceit, lies, and graft, through which he created at last apretext for intervention in the affairs of Mexico; it is enough that inthe autumn of 1862 a French army of invasion marched from Vera Cruz uponMexico City. We have already seen that about this same time Napoleonproposed to England and Russia a joint intervention with France betweenNorth and South--a proposal which, however, was rejected. This Mexicanventure explains why the plan was suggested at that particular time. 

Disappointed in England and Russia, Napoleon unexpectedly receivedencouragement, as he thought, from within the United States through themedium of the eccentric editor of the "New York Tribune". We shallhave occasion to return later to the adventures of Horace Greeley--thaterratic individual who has many good and generous acts to his credit, aswell as many foolish ones. For the present we have to note that towardthe close of 1862 he approached the French Ambassador at Washingtonwith a request for imperial mediation between the North and the South. Greeley was a type of American that no European can understand: hebelieved in talk, and more talk, and still more talk, as the cure forearthly ills. He never could understand that anybody besides himselfcould have strong convictions. When he told the Ambassador that theEmperor's mediation would lead to a reconciliation of the sections, hewas doubtless sincere in his belief. The astute European diplomat, whocould 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 thattogether, he concluded that the North wanted to give up the fightand would welcome mediation to save its face. The dreadful defeat atFredericksburg fell in with this reasoning. His reports on Americanconditions led Napoleon, in January, 1863, to attempt alone what he hadonce hoped to do supported by England and Russia. He proposed his goodoffices to the Government at Washington as a mediator between North andSouth. 

Hitherto, Washington had been very discreet about Mexico. Adroit hintsnot to go too far had been given Napoleon in full measure, but there wasno real protest. The State Department now continued this caution and inthe most polite terms declined Napoleon's offer. Congress, however, tookthe matter more grimly, for throughout the dealings with Napoleon, ithad been at odds with Lincoln. It now passed the first of a series ofresolutions which expressed the will of the country, if not quitethe will of the President, by resolving that any further proposal ofmediation would be regarded by it as "an unfriendly act. "

Napoleon then resumed his scheming for joint intervention, while inthe meantime his armies continued to fight their way until they enteredMexico City in June, 1863. The time had now come when Napoleon thoughtit opportune to show his hand. Those were the days when Lee appearedinvincible, and when Chancellorsville crowned a splendid series oftriumphs. In England, the Southern party made a fresh start; andsocieties were organized to aid the Confederacy. At Liverpool, Laird Brothers were building, ostensibly for France, really for theConfederacy, two ironclads supposed to outclass every ship in theNorthern navy. In France, 100, 000 unemployed cotton hands were riotingfor food. To raise funds for the Confederacy the great Erlangerbanking-house of Paris negotiated a loan based on cotton which was tobe delivered after the breaking of the blockade. Napoleon dreamed of ashattered American union, two enfeebled republics, and a broad way forhis 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 anunderstanding with him. Roebuck went home to report to the Southernparty that Napoleon was ready to intervene, and that all he waited forwas England's cooperation. A motion "to enter into negotiations with theGreat Powers of Europe for the purpose of obtaining their cooperationin the recognition" of the Confederacy was introduced by Roebuck in theHouse of Commons. 

The debate which followed was the last chance of the Southern partyand, as events proved, the last chance of Napoleon. How completely theBritish ministry was now committed to the North appears in the fact thatGladstone, for the Government, opposed Roebuck's motion. John Brightattacked it in what Lord Morley calls "perhaps the most powerful and thenoblest speech of his life. " The Southern party was hardly resolute intheir support of Roebuck and presently he withdrew his motion. 

But there were still the ironclads at Liverpool. We have seen thatearlier in the war, the carelessness of the British authorities hadpermitted the escape of ship 290, subsequently known as the Confederatecommerce-destroyer, Alabama. The authorities did not wish to allow arepetition of the incident. But could it be shown that the Lairdships were not really for a French purchaser? It was in the courseof diplomatic conversations that Mr. Adams, speaking of the possiblesailing of the ships, made a remark destined to become famous: "It wouldbe superfluous in me to point out to your lordship that this is war. " Atjest, the authorities were satisfied. The ships were seized and in theend bought for the British Navy. 

Again Napoleon stood alone. Not only had he failed to obtain aidfrom abroad, but in France itself his Mexican schemes were widely andbitterly condemned. Yet he had gone too far to recede, and what hehad been aiming at all along was now revealed. An assembly of Mexicannotables, convened by the general of the invaders, voted to set up animperial government and offered the crown to Napoleon's nominee, theArchduke Maximilian of Austria. 

And now the Government at Washington was faced with a complicatedproblem. What about the Monroe Doctrine? Did the Union dare risk warwith France? Did it dare pass over without protest the establishmentof monarchy on American soil by foreign arms? Between these horns ofa dilemma, the Government maintained its precarious position duringanother year. Seward's correspondence with Paris was a masterpiece ofevasion. He neither protested against the intervention of Napoleonnor acknowledged the authority of Maximilian. Apparently, both heand Lincoln were divided between fear of a French alliance with theConfederacy and fear of premature action in the North that would renderNapoleon desperate. Just how far they comprehended Napoleon and hisproblems is an open question. 

Whether really comprehending or merely trusting to its instinct, Congress took a bolder course. Two men prove the antagonists of aparliamentary duel--Charles Sumner, chairman of the Senate Committee onForeign Relations, and Henry Winter Davis, chairman of the correspondingcommittee of the House. Sumner played the hand of the Administration. Fiery resolutions demanding the evacuation of Mexico or an Americandeclaration of war were skillfully buried in the silence of Sumner'scommittee. But there was nevertheless one resolution that affectedhistory: it was a ringing condemnation of the attempt to establisha monarchy in Mexico. In the House, a joint resolution which Davissubmitted was passed without one dissenting vote. When it came to theSenate, Sumner buried it as he had buried earlier resolutions. None theless it went out to the world attended by the news of the unanimous votein the House. 

Shortly afterwards, the American Ambassador at Paris called upon theimperial Foreign Secretary, M. Drouyn de L'huys. News of this resolutionhad preceded him. He was met by the curt question, "Do you bring peaceor war?" Again, the Washington Government was skillfully evasive. TheAmbassador was instructed to explain that the resolution had not beeninspired by the President and "the French Government would be seasonablyapprized of any change of policy. . . Which the President might at anyfuture time think it proper to adopt. "

There seems little doubt that Lincoln's course was very widely condemnedas timid. When we come to the political campaign of 1864, we shallmeet Henry Winter Davis among his most relentless personal enemies. Dissatisfaction with Lincoln's Mexican policy has not been sufficientlyconsidered in accounting for the opposition to him, inside the warparty, in 1864. To it may be traced an article in the platform of thewar party, adopted in June, 1864, protesting against the establishmentof monarchy "in near proximity to the United States. " In the same monthMaximilian entered Mexico City. 

The subsequent moves of Napoleon are explained elsewhere. * The centralfact in the story is his virtual change of attitude, in the summer of1864. The Confederate agent at Paris complained of a growing coolness. Before the end of the summer, the Confederate Secretary of State wasbitter in his denunciation of Napoleon for having deserted the South. Napoleon's puppet Maximilian refused to receive an envoy from theConfederacy. Though Washington did not formally protest againstthe presence of Maximilian in Mexico, it declined to recognize hisGovernment, and that Government continued unrecognized at Washingtonthroughout 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 allpeople--has produced strange types of dreamers. In America, however, neither section could claim a monopoly of such types, and even thelatter-day visionaries who can see everything in heaven and earth, excepting fact, had their Northern and Southern originals in the timeof the great American war. Among these is a strange congregation whichassembled in the spring of 1864 and which has come to be known, from itsplace of meeting, as the Cleveland Convention. Its coming together wasthe result of a loose cooperation among several minor political groups, all of which were for the Union and the war, and violently opposed toLincoln. So far as they had a common purpose, it was to supplant Lincolnby Fremont in the next election. 

The Convention was notable for the large proportion of agnostics amongits members. A motion was made to amend a resolution that "the Rebellionmust be put down" by adding the words "with God's assistance. " Thistouch of piety was stormily rejected. Another group represented atCleveland was made up of extreme abolitionists under the leadership ofthat brilliant but disordered genius, Wendell Phillips. He sent a letterdenouncing Lincoln and pledging his support of Fremont because of thelatter's "clearsighted statesmanship and rare military ability. " Theconvention declared itself a political party, under the style of theRadical Democracy, and nominated Fremont for President. 

There was another body of dreamers, still more singular, who were alsobitter opponents of Lincoln. They were, however, not in favor of war. Their political machinery consisted of secret societies. As early as1860, the Knights of the Golden Circle were active in Indiana, wherethey did yeoman service for Breckinridge. Later this society acquiredsome underground influence in other States, especially in Ohio, and didits share in bringing about the victories at the polls in the autumn of1862, when the Democrats captured the Indiana legislature. 

The most serious charge against the Golden Circle was complicity in anattempt to assassinate Oliver P. Morton, Governor of Indiana, who wasfired at, one night, as he was leaving the state house. When Mortondemanded an investigation of the Golden Circle, the legislature refusedto sanction it. On his own authority and with Federal aid he madeinvestigations and published a report which, if it did not actuallyprove treason, came dangerously near to proof. Thereafter, this societydrops out of sight, and its members appear to have formed the new Orderof the American Knights, which in its turn was eclipsed by the Sonsof Liberty. There were several other such societies all organized on amilitary plan and with a great pretense of arming their members. This, however, had to be done surreptitiously. Boxes of rifles purchasedin the East were shipped West labeled "Sunday-school books, " andnegotiations were even undertaken with the Confederacy to bring in armsby way of Canada. At a meeting of the supreme council of the Sons ofLiberty, in New York, February 22, 1864, it was claimed that the orderhad nearly a million members, though the Government secret serviceconsidered half a million a more exact estimate. 

As events subsequently proved, the societies were not as formidable asthese figures would imply. Most of the men who joined them seem to havebeen fanciful creatures who loved secrecy for its own sake. While realmen, North and South, were laying down their lives for their principles, these make-believe men were holding bombastic initiations and takingoaths such as this from the ritual of the American Knights: "I dofurther solemnly promise and swear, that I will ever cherish the sublimelessons which the sacred emblems of our order suggest, and will, so faras in me lies, impart those lessons to the people of the earth, wherethe mystic acorn falls from its parent bough, in whose visible firmamentOrion, Arcturus, and the Pleiades ride in their cold resplendentglories, and where the Southern Cross dazzles the eye of degradedhumanity with its coruscations of golden light, fit emblem of Truth, while it invites our sacred order to consecrate her temples in the fourcorners of the earth, where moral darkness reigns and despotism holdssway. . . . Divine essence, so help me that I fail not in my troth, lestI shall be summoned before the tribunal of the order, adjudged andcondemned to certain and shameful death, while my name shall be recordedon the rolls of infamy. Amen. "

The secret orders fought hard to prevent the Lincoln victory in theelections of 1863. Even before that time their leaders had talkedmysteriously of another disruption of the Union and the formation ofa Northwestern Confederacy in alliance with the South. The scheme wasknown to the Confederates, allusions to it are to be found in Southernnewspapers, and even the Confederate military authorities considered it. Early in 1863, General Beauregard thought the Confederates might "getinto Ohio and call upon the friends of Vallandigham to rise for hisdefense and support; then. . . Call upon the whole Northwest to join in themovement, form a confederacy of their own, and join us by a treatyof alliance, offensive and defensive. " Reliance on the support of thesocieties was the will-o'-the-wisp that deceived General John Morganin his desperate attempt to carry out Beauregard's programme. Thoughbrushed aside as a mere detail by military historians, Morgan's raid, with his force of irregular cavalry, in July, 1863, through Indiana andOhio, was one of the most romantic episodes of the war. But it endedin his defeat and capture. While his gallant troopers rode to theirdestruction, the men who loved to swear by Arcturus and to gabble aboutthe Pleiades showed the fiber to be expected of such people, and stayedsnug in their beds. 

But neither their own lack of hardihood nor the disasters of theirSouthern friends could dampen their peculiar ardor. Their hero wasVallandigham. That redoubtable person had fixed his headquarters inCanada, whence he directed his partisans in their vain attempt to electhim Governor of Ohio. Their next move was to honor him with the officeof Supreme Commander of the Sons of Liberty, and now Vallandighamresolved to win the martyr's crown in very fact. In June, 1864, heprepared for the dramatic effect by carefully advertising his intentionand came home. But to his great disappointment Lincoln ignored him, andthe dramatic martyrdom which he had planned did not come off. 

There still existed the possibility of a great uprising, and to thatend arrangements were made with Southern agents in Canada. Confederatesoldiers, picked men, made their way in disguise to Chicago. There theworshipers of Arcturus were to join them in a mighty multitude; theConfederate prisoners at Camp Douglas in Chicago were to be liberated;around that core of veterans, the hosts of the Pleiades were torally. All this was to coincide with the assembling at Chicago of theDemocratic national convention, in which Vallandigham was to appear. Theorganizers of the conspiracy dreamed that the two events might coalesce;that the convention might be stampeded by their uprising; that agreat part, if not the whole, of the convention would endorse theestablishment of a Northwestern Confederacy. 

Alas for him who builds on the frame of mind that delights in cheaprhetoric while Rome is afire! At the moment of hazard, the Sons ofLiberty showed the white feather, were full of specious words, would notact. The Confederate soldiers, indignant at this second betrayal, had tomake their escape from the country. 

It must not be supposed that this Democratic national convention wasmade up altogether of Secessionists. The peace party was still, asin the previous year, a strange complex, a mixture of all sorts andconditions. Its cohesion was not so much due to its love of peace as toits dislike of Lincoln and its hatred of his party. Vallandigham wasa member of the committee on resolutions. The permanent chairman wasGovernor Seymour of New York. The Convention was called to order byAugust Belmont, a foreigner by birth, the American representative of theRothschilds. He was the head and front of that body of Northern capitalwhich had so long financed the South and which had always opposed thewar. In opening the Convention he said: "Four years of misrule by asectional, fanatical, and corrupt party have brought our country to theverge of ruin. " In the platform Lincoln was accused of a list of crimeswhich it had become the habit of the peace party to charge againsthim. His administration was described as "four years of failure, " andMcClellan 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 WarDemocrats were to participate. Their plan was successful. The secondplace on the Union ticket was accepted by a War Democrat, AndrewJohnson, of Tennessee. Lincoln was renominated, though not withoutopposition, and he was so keenly aware that he was not the unanimouschoice of the Union Party that he permitted the fact to appear in apublic utterance soon afterward. "I do not allow myself, " he said, inaddressing a delegation of the National Union League, "to suppose thateither the Convention or the League have concluded to decide that I ameither the greatest or the best man in America, but rather they haveconcluded it is not best to swap horses while crossing the river, andhave further concluded that I am not so poor a horse that they might notmake a botch of it in trying to swap. "

But the Union Party was so far from being a unit that during the summerfactional quarrels developed within its ranks. All the elementsthat were unfriendly to Lincoln took heart from a dispute between thePresident and Congress with regard to reconstruction in Louisiana, overa large part of which Federal troops had established a civil governmenton the President's authority. As an incident in the history ofreconstruction, this whole matter has its place in another volume. * Butit also has a place in the history of the presidential campaign of1864. Lincoln's plan of reconstruction was obnoxious to the Radicals inCongress inasmuch as it did not definitely abolish slavery in Louisiana, although it required the new Government to give its adherence to theEmancipation Proclamation. Congress passed a bill taking reconstructionout of the President's hands and definitely requiring the reconstructedStates to abolish slavery. Lincoln took the position that Congress hadno power over slavery in the States. When his Proclamation was thrown inhis teeth, he replied, "I conceive that I may in an emergency do thingson military grounds which cannot be done constitutionally by Congress. "Incidentally there was a further disagreement between the President andthe Radicals over negro suffrage. Though neither scheme provided forit, Lincoln would extend it, if at all, only to the exceptional negroes, while the Radicals were ready for a sweeping extension. But Lincolnrefused to sign their bill and it lapsed. Thereupon Benjamin Wade ofOhio and Henry Winter Davis of Maryland issued a savage denunciation ofLincoln 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 theVindictives. The "Manifesto" gave them a rallying cry. At a conferencein New York they decided to compel the retirement of Lincoln and thenomination of some other candidate. For this purpose a new conventionwas to be called at Cincinnati in September. In the ranks of theVindictives at this time was the impetuous editor of the "New YorkTribune", Horace Greeley. His presence there calls for some explanation. Perhaps the most singular figure of the time, he was one of the mostirresponsible and yet, through his paper, one of the most influential. He had a trick of phrase which, somehow, made him appear oracular to theplain people, especially in the rural districts--the very people on whomLincoln relied for a large part of his support. Greeley knew hispower, and his mind was not large enough to carry the knowledge well. Furthermore, his was the sort of nature that relates itself to lifeabove all through the sensibilities. Kipling speaks scornfully of peoplewho if their "own front door is shut will swear the world is warm. " Theyare relations in the full blood of Horace Greeley. 

In July, when the breach between the President and the Vindictives wasjust beginning to be evident, Greeley was pursuing an adventure of hisown. Among the least sensible minor incidents of the war were a numberof fantastic attempts of private persons to negotiate peace. Withone exception they had no historic importance. The exception is anegotiation carried on by Greeley, which seems to have been the ultimatecause 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 horribleslaughter of the Wilderness, still fresh in everybody's mind, had putthe whole Union Party into mourning. The impressionable Greeley becamefrantic for peace peace at any price. At the psychological moment wordwas conveyed to him that two persons in Canada held authority fromthe Confederacy to enter into negotiations for peace. Greeley wrote toLincoln demanding negotiations because "our bleeding, bankrupt, almostdying country longs for peace, shudders at the prospect of freshconscriptions, of further wholesale devastations, and of new rivers ofhuman blood. "

Lincoln consented to a negotiation but stipulated that Greeley himselfshould become responsible for its conduct. Though this was not whatGreeley wanted for his type always prefers to tell others what todo--he sullenly accepted. He proceeded to Niagara to meet the reputedcommissioners of the Confederacy. The details of the futile conferencedo not concern us. The Confederate agents were not empowered to treatfor peace--at least not on any terms that would be considered atWashington. Their real purpose was far subtler. Appreciating thedelicate balance in Northern politics, they aimed at making it appearthat Lincoln was begging for terms. Lincoln, who foresaw this possibleturn of events, had expressly limited Greeley to negotiations for "theintegrity of the whole Union and the abandonment of slavery. " Greeleychose to believe that these instructions, and not the subtlety of theConfederate agents and his own impulsiveness, were the cause of thefalse position in which the agents now placed him. They published anaccount of the episode, thus effecting an exposure which led to sharpattacks upon Greeley by the Northern press. In the bitterness of hismortification Greeley then went from one extreme to the other and joinedthe Vindictives. 

Less than three weeks after the conference at Niagara, the "Wade-DavisManifesto" appeared. It was communicated to the country through thecolumns of Greeley's paper on the 5th of August. Greeley, who so shorta time before was for peace at any price, went the whole length ofreaction by proclaiming that "Mr. Lincoln is already beaten. . . . We musthave another ticket to save us from utter overthrow. If we had sucha ticket as could be made by naming Grant, Butler, or Sherman forPresident and Farragut for Vice, we could make a fight yet. "

At about this same time the chairman of the Republican nationalcommittee, who was a Lincoln man, wrote to the President that thesituation was desperate. Lincoln himself is known to have made a privatememorandum containing the words, "It seems extremely probable that thisAdministration will not be reelected. " On the 1st of September, 1864, with three presidential candidates in the field, Northern politics werebewildering, and the country was shrouded in the deepest gloom. TheWilderness campaign, after slaughter unparalleled, had not in thepopular mind achieved results. Sherman, in Georgia, though his losseswere not as terrible as Grant's, had not yet done anything to lightenthe gloom. Not even Farragut's victory in Mobile Bay, in August, far-reaching as it proved to be, reassured the North. A bitter cry forpeace went up even from lovers of the Union whose hearts had failed. 

Meanwhile, the brilliant strategist in Georgia was pressing his drivefor political as well as for military effect. To rouse those Unionistswho had lost heart was part of his purpose when he hurled his columnsagainst Atlanta, from which Hood was driven in one of the mostdisastrous of Confederate defeats. On the 3rd of September Lincolnissued a proclamation appointing a day of thanksgiving for these greatvictories of Sherman and Farragut. 

On that day, it would seem, the tide turned in Northern politics. Somehistorians are content with Atlanta as the explanation of all thatfollowed; but there are three separate events of importance that nowoccurred as incidents in the complicated situation. In the first place, three weeks later the radical opposition had collapsed; the plan for anew convention was abandoned; the Vindictive leaders came out in supportof Lincoln. Almost simultaneously occurred the remaining two surprisingevents. Fremont withdrew from his candidacy in order to do his "parttoward preventing the election of the Democratic candidate. " And Lincolnasked for the resignation of a member of his Cabinet, Postmaster-GeneralMontgomery 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 fromchivalrous reasons he would not abandon his friend as long as he seemedto be losing the game. The historian Rhodes writes confidently of abargain with Fremont, holding that Blair was removed to terminate aquarrel with Fremont which dated back even to his own removal in 1861. A possible third theory turns upon Chase, whose hostility to Blair wasquite equal to that of the illbalanced Fremont. It had been stimulatedthe previous winter by a fierce arraignment of Chase made by Blair'sbrother in Congress, in which Chase was bluntly accused of fraud andof making money, or allowing his friends to make money, through illicittrade in cotton. And Chase was a man of might among the Vindictives. Theintrigue, however, never comes to the foreground in history, but lurksin the background thick with shadows. Once or twice among thoseshadows we seem to catch a glimpse of the figure of Thurlow Weed, themaster-politician of the time. Taking one thing with another, we mayrisk the guess that somehow the two radical groups which were bothrelentless against Blair were led to pool their issues, and that Blair'sremoval was the price Lincoln paid not to one faction of radicals but tothe whole unmerciful crowd. 

 *His private secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay. 

Whatever complex of purposes lay back of the triple coincidence, thelatter part of September saw a general reunion of the factions withinthe Union Party, followed by a swift recovery of strength. When theelection came, Lincoln received an electoral vote of 212 against 21, anda popular vote of 2, 330, 552 against 1, 835, 985. 

The inevitable question arises as to what was the real cause of thissuccess. It is safe to say that the political campaign contained someadroit strategy; that Sherman was without doubt an enormous factor; thatthe Democrats made numerous blunders; and that the secret societies hadan effect other than they intended. However, the real clue seems to befound in one sentence from a letter written by Lowell to Motley when theoutlook for his party was darkest: "The mercantile classes are longingfor peace, but I believe that the people are more firm than ever. " Ofthe great, silent mass of the people, the true temper seems to be struckoff in a popular poem of the time, written in response to one of thecalls for more troops, a poem with refrains built on the model of thiscouplet:

"We're coming from the hillside, we're coming from the shore, We'recoming, Father Abraham, six hundred thousand more. "

CHAPTER XIV. LINCOLN'S FINAL INTENTIONS

The victory of the Union Party in November enabled Lincoln to enjoy fora brief period of his career as President what may be thought of as alull in the storm. He knew now that he had at last built up a firmand powerful support. With this assured, his policy, both domestic andforeign--the key to which was still the blockade--might be consideredvictorious at all points. There remains to be noticed, however, oneevent of the year 1864 which was of vital importance in maintaining theblockade. 

It is a principle of international law that a belligerent must itselfattend to the great task of suppressing contraband trade with its enemy. Lincoln was careful to observe this principle. Though British merchantswere frankly speculating in contraband trade, he made no demand uponthe British Government to relieve him of the difficulty of stopping it. England also took the legitimate position under international lawand warned her merchants that, while it was none of the Government'sbusiness to prevent such trade, they practised it at their own risk, subject to well-understood penalties agreed upon among nations. Themerchants nevertheless continued to take the risk, while both they andthe authorities of the Confederacy thought they saw a way of minimizingthe danger. Instead of shipping supplies direct to the Confederate portsthey shipped them to Matamoros, in Mexico, or to the West Indies. Asthese ports were in neutral territory, the merchants thought their goodswould be safe against capture until they left the Mexican or WestIndian port on their brief concluding passage to the territory of theConfederacy. Nassau, then a petty West India town, was the chief depotof such trade and soon became a great commercial center. To it came vastquantities of European goods which were then transferred to swift, smallvessels, or "blockade-runners, " which took a gambler's chance and oftensucceeded in eluding the Federal patrol ships and in rushing theircargoes safe into a Confederate port. 

Obviously, it was a great disadvantage to the United States to allowcontraband supplies to be accumulated, without interference, close tothe blockaded coast, and the Lincoln Government determined to removethis disadvantage. With this end in view it evoked the principle of thecontinuous voyage, which indeed was not new, but which was destined tobecome fixed in international law by the Supreme Court of the UnitedStates. American cruisers were instructed to stop British ships sailingbetween the British ports of Liverpool and Nassau; they were to use therecognized international rights of visit and search; and if there wasevidence that the cargo was not destined for actual consumption atNassau, they were to bring the ship into an American port to be dealtwith by an American prize court. When such arrests began, the ownersclamored to the British Government, and both dealers in contraband andprofessional blockade-runners worked themselves into a fury becauseAmerican cruisers watched British ports and searched British ships onthe high seas. With regard to this matter, the British Government andthe Government at Washington had their last important correspondenceduring the war. The United States stood firm for the idea that whengoods were ultimately intended for the Confederacy, no matter howroundabout the journey, they could be considered as making a singlecontinuous voyage and were liable to capture from the day they leftLiverpool. Early in 1865, the Supreme Court of the United States fullydeveloped the principle of continuous voyage in four celebrated casesthat 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, itslowly strangled the South. The Federal armies enormously overmatchedthe Southern, and from November, 1864, their continuance in the fieldwas made sure. Grim work still lay before Lincoln, but the day ofanxiety was past. In this moment of comparative ease, the aged ChiefJustice Taney died, and Lincoln appointed to that high position hisungenerous rival, Chase. 

Even now Lincoln had not established himself as a leader superior toparty, but he had the satisfaction, early in 1865, of seeing the ranksof the opposition begin to break. Naturally, the Thirteenth Amendmentto the Constitution, abolishing slavery throughout the United States, appeared to Lincoln as in a way the consummation of his labors. Whenthe 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 briefspeech, part of which is thus reported by his secretaries: "He thoughtthis measure was a very fitting if not an indispensable adjunct to thewinding up of the great difficulty. He wished the reunion of all theStates perfected, and so effected as to remove all causes of disturbancein the future; and to attain this end, it was necessary that theoriginal disturbing cause should, if possible, be rooted out. "

An event which in its full detail belongs to Confederate rather than toUnion history took place soon after this. At Hampton Roads, Lincoln andSeward met Confederate commissioners who had asked for a parley--withregard to peace. Nothing came of the meeting, but the conference gaverise to a legend, false in fact and yet true in spirit, according towhich Lincoln wrote on a sheet of paper the word "Union, " pushed itacross to Alexander H. Stephens and said, "Write under that anything youplease. "

This fiction expresses Lincoln's attitude toward the sinkingConfederacy. On his return from Hampton Roads he submitted to hisCabinet a draft of a message which he proposed to send to Congress. Herecommended the appropriation of $400, 000, 000 to be distributed amongthe slave states on condition that war cease before April 1, 1865. Not amember of the Cabinet approved. His secretary, Mr. Nicolay, writes: "ThePresident, in evident surprise and sorrow at the want of statesmanlikeliberality shown by his executive council, folded and laid away thedraft of his message. . . . " With a deep sigh he added, "But you are allopposed to me, and I will not send the message. "

His second inauguration passed without striking incidents. Chase, asChief Justice, administered the oath. The second inaugural addresscontained words which are now famous: "With malice towards none; withcharity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see theright, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up thenation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, andfor his widow, and his orphan--to do all which may achieve and cherish ajust and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations. "

That gigantic system of fleets and armies, the creation of which was dueto Lincoln, was closing tight around the dying Confederacy. Five weeksafter the inauguration Lee surrendered, and the war was virtually at anend. What was to come after was inevitably the overshadowing topic ofthe hour. Many anecdotes represent Lincoln, in these last few daysof his life, as possessed by a high though melancholy mood of extrememercy. Therefore, much has been inferred from the following words, inhis last public address, made on the night of the 11th of April: "In thepresent situation, as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make somenew announcement to the people of the South. I am considering and shallnot fail to act when action shall be proper. "

What was to be done for the South, what treatment should be accorded theSouthern leaders, engrossed the President and his Cabinet at the meetingon the 14th of April, which was destined to be their last. SecretaryWelles has preserved the spirit of the meeting in a striking anecdote. Lincoln said that no one need expect he would "take any part in hangingor killing those men, even the worst of them. Frighten them out of thecountry, open the gates, let down the bars, scare them off;" said he, throwing up his hands as if scaring sheep. "Enough lives have beensacrificed; we must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony andunion. "

While Lincoln was thus arming himself with a valiant mercy, a band ofconspirators at an obscure boardinghouse in Washington were planning hisassassination. Their leader was John Wilkes Booth, an actor, brother ofthe much abler Edwin Booth. There seems little doubt that he was insane. Around him gathered a small group of visionary extremists in whom muchbrooding upon Southern wrongs had produced an unbalanced condition. Onlya morbid interest can attach today to the strange cunning withwhich Booth laid his plans, thinking of himself all the while as areincarnation of the Roman Brutus. 

On the night of the 14th of April, the President attended a performanceof "Our American Cousin". While the play was in progress, Booth stoleinto the President's box, came close behind him, and shot him throughthe head. Lincoln never spoke again and, shortly after seven nextmorning, 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. Hisaccomplices were hanged. 

The passage of sixty years has proved fully necessary to the placing ofLincoln in historic perspective. No President, in his own time, with thepossible exception of Washington, was so bitterly hated and so fiercelyreviled. On the other hand, none has been the object of such intemperatehero-worship. However, the greatest of the land were, in the main, quickto see him in perspective and to recognize his historic significance. Itis recorded of Davis that in after days he paid a beautiful tribute toLincoln and said, "Next to the destruction of the Confederacy, the deathof Abraham Lincoln was the darkest day the South has known. "

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

There are two general histories, of conspicuous ability, that deal withthis period:

J. F. Rhodes, "History of the United States from the Compromise of1850", 7 vols. (1893-1906), and J. B. McMaster, "History of the Peopleof the United States", 7 vols. (1883-1912). McMaster has the more"modern" point of view and is excellent but dry, without any sense ofnarrative. Rhodes has a somewhat older point of view. For example, hemakes only a casual reference, in a quotation, to the munitionsproblem of 1861, though analyzing with great force and candor suchconstitutional issues as the arrests under the suspension of the writof habeas corpus. The other strong points in his work are its senseof narrative, its freedom from hero-worship, its independence ofconventional views of Northern leaders. As to the South, it suffers froma certain Narrowness of vision due to the comparative scantiness of thematerial used. The same may be said of McMaster. 

For Lincoln, there is no adequate brief biography. Perhaps the best isthe most recent, "Abraham Lincoln", by Lord Charnwood ("Makers of theNineteenth Century", 1917). It has a kind of cool detachment that hardlyany biographer had shown previously, and yet this coolness is joinedwith extreme admiration. Short biographies worth considering are JohnT. 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 apriceless document and as such is little likely to be forgotten. But itsevents are so numerous that they swamp the figure of Lincoln and yet arenot numerous enough to constitute a definitive history of the times. Itis wholly eulogistic. The same authors edited "The Writings of AbrahamLincoln" (Biographical Edition, 2 vols. , 1894), which has since beenexpanded (1905) and now fills twelve volumes. It is the definitivepresentation of Lincoln's mind. A book much sought after by his enemiesis William Henry Herndon and Jesse William Weik, "The History andPersonal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln", 8 vols. (1889; unexpurgatededition). It contains about all we know of his early life and paints apicture of sordid ugliness. Its reliability has been disputed. No studyof Lincoln is complete unless one has marched through the "Diary" ofGideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, 3 vols. (1911), which is our mostimportant document showing Lincoln in his Cabinet. Important sidelightson his character and development are shown in Ward Hill Lamon, "Recollections of Lincoln" (1911); David Homer Bates, "Lincoln in theTelegraph Office" (1907); and Frederick Trevor Hill, "Lincoln as aLawyer" (1906). A bibliography of Lincoln is in the twelfth volume ofthe latest edition of the "Writings". 

The lesser statesmen of the time, both Northern and Southern, still, asa rule, await proper treatment by detached biographers. Two Northernershave 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 similarexcellences but with the same defect, though still the best in itsfield, is Albert Bushnell Hart's "Salmon P. Chase" ("American StatesmenSeries", 1899). Among the Southern statesmen involved in the events ofthis volume, only the President of the Confederacy has received adequatereconsideration 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 foradequate lives of Stephens and Yancey is not at all met by the obsoleteworks--R. M. Johnston and W. M. Browne, "Life of Alexander H. Stephens"(1878), and J. W. Du Bose, "The Life and Times of William LowndesYancey" (1892). There is a brief biography of Stephens by LouisPendleton, in the "American Crisis Biographies". Most of the remainingbiographies of the period, whether Northern or Southern, are either toosuperficial or too partisan to be recommended for general use. Almostalone in their way are the delightful "Confederate Portraits", byGamaliel Bradford (1914), and the same author's "Union Portraits"(1916). 

Upon conditions in the North during the war there is a vast amount ofmaterial; but little is accessible to the general reader. A book ofgreat value is Emerson Fite's Social and Industrial Conditions inthe North during the Civil War (1910). Out of unnumbered books ofreminiscence, 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 aversion of events as seen by the war party, "The New York Herald" forthe 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 Southernpoint 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 inE. P. Oberholzer's "Jay Cooks", 2 vols. (1907). Foreign affairsare summarized adequately in C. F. Adams's "Charles Francis Adams"("American Statesmen Series", 1900), John Bigelow's "France and theConfederate 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 presidentialmessages are not likely to be considered by the general reader, but ifgiven a fair chance will prove fascinating. Besides the biographicaledition of Lincoln's Writings, should be named, first of all, "TheCongressional Globe" for debates in Congress; the "Statutes at Large";the "Executive Documents", published by the Government and containing agreat number of reports; and the enormous collection issued by theWar Department under the title "Official Records of the Union andConfederate Armies", 128 vols. (1880-1901), especially the groups ofvolumes known as second and third series.