The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (104 page)

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Hackett had released Lincoln’s letter of August 17 to the press. He had written to the President in an effort to apologize for his error in making the letter public, and Lincoln writes to him here a pathetic paragraph forgiving him for what he had done. The episode had a still unhappier aftermath. When Hackett later visited the President at the White House, he took advantage of the occasion to ask to be appointed to a government office. Noah Brooks reported Lincoln as saying that “it seemed to be impossible for him to have any close relations with people in Washington without finding that the acquaintance thus formed generally ended with an application for office.
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Washington, D. C., November 2, 1863

M
Y
D
EAR
S
IR
: Yours of October 22 is received, as also was in due course that of October 3. I look forward with pleasure to the fulfilment of the promise made in the former.

Give yourself no uneasiness on the subject mentioned in that of the 22d.

My note to you I certainly did not expect to see in print; yet I have not been much shocked by the newspaper comments upon it. Those comments constitute a fair specimen of what has occurred to me through life. I have endured a great deal of ridicule without much malice; and have received a great deal of kindness, not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it.

Lincoln had known Dr. Jacob R. Freese in Illinois. He writes this colorful note about him to Stanton, peremptorily instructing his
Secretary of War to make Freese a colonel. Somehow Stanton must have wriggled out of the situation, because Freese, a year later, was editing a newspaper in New Jersey.

Executive Mansion, November 11, 1863

D
EAR
S
IR
: I personally wish Jacob Freese, of New Jersey, to be appointed colonel for a colored regiment, and this regardless of whether he can tell the exact shade of Julius Cæsar’s hair.

Lincoln went to Gettysburg on November 18, leaving behind him his son, Tad, sick in bed in Washington. The special Presidential train arrived in Gettysburg in the early evening, and Lincoln spent the night at the home of Judge David Wills. When serenaders called on him, he said to them: “In my position, it is sometimes important that I should not say foolish things. It very often happens that the only way to help it, is to say nothing at all. Believing that is my present condition this evening, I must beg of you to excuse me from addressing you further.” At eleven o’clock the next morning, the President rode on horseback in a procession to the new battle cemetery just outside the town. Edward Everett, the chief orator of the day, was late in arriving; the ceremony was held up until he came. Everett spoke for two hours. The Baltimore Glee Club then sang a brief dirge. Ward Lamon introduced the President, who rose to deliver this speech, which of all his speeches, has become the most celebrated. It is interesting to compare the exact wording of this address as given here in the form in which Lincoln later revised it, with the text shown on
this page
of this volume in a version that reproduces Lincoln’s words as they were probably spoken on the field at Gettysburg that day. Whole books have been written on the address and its background. It has been
analyzed from every point of view, and its possible origins have been traced. One of the most important origins is Lincoln’s own speech on the night of July 7, 1863, when he replied to a serenade in celebration of the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Another is a sermon by Theodore Parker, abolitionist minister, who spoke in Boston on July 4, 1858, and on that occasion, in a sermon entitled, “The Effect of Slavery on the American People,” said: “Democracy is direct self-government, over all the people, for all the people, and by all the people.” Parker corresponded regularly with Herndon, and there can be little doubt that Lincoln had seen this phrase of his. He may very well have forgotten it, but it was probably stored away somewhere in his subconscious mind to rise to the surface and be made use of here. The Gettysburg Address has often been compared to the “Funeral Oration” of Pericles, one of the masterpieces of oratory of the ancient world. Colonel Clark E. Carr has made the following interesting analysis of the structure of this well-organized speech in a passage reproduced in William E. Barton’s
The Life of Abraham Lincoln,
Vol. II, p. 224: “It includes all the essential parts of a formal oration. There is an exordium of five short and clear sentences introducing the theme and defining clearly the approach to the discussion. There is an argument of four sentences, and the climax is reached in the last of these. Then there is the dignified
peroration
in one long sentence.” Carr also points out that of the two hundred and sixty-seven words, only thirty-two are of Latin derivation (some are repeated); all the rest are of Anglo-Saxon origin. The first draft of this speech, which was written on two sheets of paper, one in ink and the other in pencil, and also the second draft which Lincoln held in his hands while delivering it, are now in the Library of Congress.

November 19, 1863

F
OURSCORE
and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

Everett had written to Lincoln to say of his Gettysburg speech: “I should be glad it I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.” Everett had sent a printed copy of his own speech to
Lincoln before the ceremony at the battlefield, so Lincoln had had an opportunity to become familiar with his text.

Executive Mansion, Washington, D. C.,
November 20, 1863

M
Y
D
EAR
S
IR
: Your kind note of today is received. In our respective parts yesterday, you could not have been excused to make a short address, nor I a long one. I am pleased to know that, in your judgment, the little I did say was not entirely a failure.

Of course I knew Mr. Everett would not fail, and yet, while the whole discourse was eminently satisfactory, and will be of great value, there were passages in it which transcended my expectations.…

The point made against the theory of the General Government being only an agency whose principals are the States, was new to me, and, as I think, is one of the best arguments for the national supremacy. The tribute to our noble women for their angel ministering to the suffering soldiers surpasses in its way, as do the subjects of it, whatever has gone before.

Our sick boy, for whom you kindly inquire, we hope is past the worst.

By the end of 1863, Lincoln felt certain that the North would eventually win the War and that the seceding states would be brought back into the Union. In order to prepare the way for this, he drew up this proclamation which provided for pardon to those who would take a specified oath of allegiance to the United States. This oath of December 8 was often later referred to by Lincoln in issuing instructions that certain prisoners take the oath and be
discharged. He also outlines here a plan for the reconstruction of the government of those states which had left the Union but which might he willing to come back to it. This plan, which required only one-tenth of the voters who had been registered in 1860 to act in setting up a new state government, met with the violent opposition of the Radical Republicans in Congress (see Proclamation Concerning Reconstruction, July 8, 1864).

December 8, 1863

W
HEREAS
, in and by the Constitution of the United States, it is provided that the President “shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment”; and

Whereas
a rebellion now exists whereby the loyal State governments of several States have for a long time been subverted, and many persons have committed, and are now guilty of, treason against the United States; and

Whereas
, with reference to said rebellion and treason, laws have been enacted by Congress, declaring forfeitures and confiscation of property and liberation of slaves, all upon terms and conditions therein stated, and also declaring that the President was thereby authorized at any time thereafter, by proclamation, to extend to persons who may have participated in the existing rebellion, in any State or part thereof, pardon and amnesty, with such exceptions and at such times and on such conditions as he may deem expedient for the public welfare; and

Whereas
the Congressional declaration for limited and conditional pardon accords with well-established judicial exposition of the pardoning power; and

Whereas
, with reference to said rebellion, the President of the United States has issued several proclamations, with provisions in regard to the liberation of slaves; and

Whereas
it is now desired by some persons heretofore engaged in said rebellion to resume their allegiance to the United States, and to reinaugurate loyal State governments within and for their respective States; therefore

I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, do proclaim, declare, and make known to all persons who have, directly or by implication, participated in the existing rebellion, except as hereinafter excepted, that a full pardon is hereby granted to them and each of them, with restoration of all rights of property, except as to slaves, and in property cases where rights of third parties shall have intervened, and upon the condition that every such person shall take and subscribe an oath, and thenceforward keep and maintain said oath inviolate; and which oath shall be registered for permanent preservation, and shall be of the tenor and effect following, to-wit:

I, —–, do solemnly swear, in presence of almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and the union of the States thereunder; and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all acts of Congress passed during the existing rebellion with reference to slaves, so long and so far as not repealed, modified, or held void by Congress, or by decision of the Supreme Court; and that I will, in like manner, abide by and faithfully support all proclamations of the President made during the existing rebellion having reference to slaves, so long and so far as not modified or declared void by decision of the Supreme Court. So help me God.

The persons exempted from the benefits of the foregoing provisions are all who are, or shall have been, civil or diplomatic officers or agents of the so-called Confederate Government; all who have left judicial stations under the United States to aid the rebellion; all who are or shall have been military or naval officers of said so-called Confederate Government above the rank of colonel in the army or of lieutenant in the navy; all who left seats in the United States Congress to aid the
rebellion; all who resigned commissions in the Army or Navy of the United States and afterward aided the rebellion; and all who have engaged in any way in treating colored persons, or white persons in charge of such, otherwise than lawfully as prisoners of war, and which persons may have been found in the United States service as soldiers, seamen, or in any other capacity.

And I do further proclaim, declare, and make known that whenever, in any of the States of Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, and North Carolina, a number of persons, not less than one-tenth in number of the votes cast in such State at the presidential election of the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty, each having taken the oath aforesaid and not having since violated it, and being a qualified voter by the election law of the State existing immediately before the so-called act of secession, and excluding all others, shall reestablish a State government which shall be republican, and in no wise contravening said oath, such shall be recognized as the true government of the State, and the State shall receive thereunder the benefits of the constitutional provision which declares that “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and, on application of the legislature, or the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened), against domestic violence.”

And I do further proclaim, declare, and make known, that any provision which may be adopted by such State government in relation to the freed people of such State, which shall recognize and declare their permanent freedom, provide for their education, and which may yet be consistent as a temporary arrangement with their present condition as a laboring, landless, and homeless class, will not be objected to by the national executive.