The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln (114 page)

Such complaints, many of them, Lincoln had to endure
while all the time he was awaiting the appropriate public opportunity for launching the proclamation on which he had determined. To supply this much-to-be-desired opportunity rested with McClellan and his men. Major Union victories were not so frequent in ’62; if McClellan had not checked Lee at Antietam, Lincoln’s proclamation, withheld in hope of Federal triumph, would have been indefinitely delayed. From the day (July 22, 1862) when Lincoln put the famous paper aside on Seward’s suggestion that it be not a shriek on the retreat, no important triumph for the United States came, except for Antietam, until July 1863. One appreciates the timeliness of this achievement by the much abused McClellan when one tries to speculate just where Lincoln and emancipation would have stood had the story of McClellan in Maryland been of a piece with that of Pope, Burnside, or Hooker.

It was in this very period of waiting for a victory that there came the word of Pope’s disaster at Second Bull Run. “Things looked darker than ever.” McClellan was grudgingly reinstated. Further anxious days passed. On Wednesday, September 17, Antietam was fought. Lincoln, according to his own account, was then staying at the Soldiers’ Home outside Washington. Here, determining to wait no longer, he finished the “second draft of the preliminary proclamation”; coming in on Saturday, he summoned his Cabinet for Monday.

From
Lincoln the President: Springfield to Gettysburg
, vol. 2, 1946

Benjamin P. Thomas (1902–1956) was an author who dedicated his life to Lincoln. He was the associate editor of the
Abraham Lincoln Quarterly
from 1940 to 1953, editorial advisor to the Collected Works of Lincoln (1953 to 1955), and director of the Abraham Lincoln Association for twenty years. His 1947 book
, Portrait for Posterity: Lincoln and His Biographers,
was awarded the Lincoln
Book of the Year, and in 1949 he was the recipient of the Lincoln Diploma of Honor from Lincoln Memorial University. His books include
Russo-American Relations, 1815–1867
(1930)
, Lincoln’s New Salem
(1934)
, Theodore Weld, Crusader for Freedom
(1950)
,
and a biography of Lincoln (1952), among others.

W
HEN
C
ONGRESS
met early in December, the perplexed and venerable Buchanan, fearful of secession but still sympathetic toward his Southern friends and the Southern point of view, asserted in his annual message that while a state could not lawfully secede, neither could the Federal government coerce it. He proposed to quiet Southern fears by calling a constitutional convention to frame amendments guaranteeing slavery in the states and territories, and assuring the recovery of runaway slaves.

Unmindful of the President’s efforts, South Carolina seceded on December 20. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana speedily took similar action. With Texas’s renunciation of the Union on February 1, 1861, revolt had swept the Gulf states. The secessionists took over Federal forts and arsenals. State flags replaced the Stars and Stripes on customhouses.

Worried Congressmen, with scant faith in Buchanan, sought for their own formula of settlement. A House Committee of Thirty-three proved ineffectual; but the Senate Committee of Thirteen, composed of capable, intelligent men of the caliber of Seward and Douglas, came up with a number of plans. Douglas again advanced the idea of popular sovereignty. Senator Crittenden of Kentucky, political heir of the famous compromiser, Henry Clay, proposed a series of permanent amendments to the Constitution whereby slavery would be guaranteed forever in the slave states and the District of Columbia, continuance of the domestic slave trade would be assured, and slaveowners would be indemnified for runaways. On the troublesome territorial question, Crittenden
favored an extension of the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, slavery to be forever excluded north of it and guaranteed in all territory then owned or thereafter acquired to the south.

Sharing the general anxiety for the safety of the Union, a number of Republican Congressmen were disposed to be conciliatory. Several of them, notably those from Illinois, sought Lincoln’s guidance. The President-elect, worn, torn, harassed by the flood of visitors and office-seekers, knew that his decision might be fateful for the Union, which he was determined to preserve at every cost. But how could this best be done—through such firmness as President Jackson had displayed in the nullification crisis of 1832, or through compromise? And would refusal to compromise mean war?

Lincoln quickly made up his mind. To all inquiries he gave essentially the same response: as to fugitive slaves, slavery in the District of Columbia, the internal slave trade, and “whatever springs of necessity from the fact that the institution is amongst us,” he cared but little. But on the question of slavery in the territories he was immovable. Either popular sovereignty or toleration of slavery south of the Missouri Compromise line would, in his opinion, “put us again on the high road to a slave empire.” In 1854 a restoration of the Missouri Compromise would have satisfied him. Since then, however, he had noted the eagerness of the slave power for expansion into Mexico and Central America, and for the acquisition of Cuba. Allow any sort of territorial compromise to be adopted, he warned Congressman Washburne, and “immediately filibustering and extending slavery recommences.” A year would not pass, he was convinced, “till we shall have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the Union.”

Thus Lincoln took upon himself the grave responsibility of blocking compromise. “Stand firm,” he admonished Senator Trumbull. “The tug has to come, & better, now than any time hereafter.” “Hold firm, as with a chain of steel,” he wrote to
Washburne. To Lincoln, compromise did not necessarily mean peace. He had seen too many supposed compromises perverted or renounced.

But neither did Lincoln’s rejection of compromise mean that he either wanted or expected war. He had supreme confidence in the sound common sense of the people. During the entire four months between his election and his assumption of office, he continued to believe that the strong Union sentiment in the Southern states would assert itself if given time. The real test would come in the more northerly slave states. If they remained under the old flag, traditions, self-interest, and inherent loyalties would soon bring the others back.

Nor did Lincoln seem to have misjudged the strength of Southern Unionism. Secession appeared to have run its course. News came from North Carolina: a decisive vote against a secession convention. Similar good tidings came from Tennessee. Arkansas and Missouri showed little disposition toward hasty action. Buchanan and his reconstructed cabinet had stiffened. Douglas was preaching loyalty. Lincoln’s native state of Kentucky was resisting the efforts of her Governor to take her out. Governor Thomas H. Hicks of Maryland, where secession sentiment burned hot, staved off the disunionists by refusing to call the Legislature into session. And, most encouraging of all, Virginia, whose influence was paramount with the slave states, not only selected 122 loyalists against 30 disunionists as delegates to her state convention, but stipulated additionally that any ordinance of secession must be ratified by popular vote. Going even farther, Virginia offered her own plan of reconciliation. All the loyal slave states except Arkansas accepted her invitation to send delegates to a peace convention at Washington. With seven states out of the Union, eight showed unmistakable signs of loyalty. It seemed that the tide had turned.

With the safety of the Union hinging on the attitude of these loyal slave states, Lincoln made it his objective to maintain the
national authority while avoiding any rash or provocative action. The Republicans must come to power with the government still respected, and with the slave states in a temperate mood. Tactically such a policy would demand rare skill. Signs of weakness would inspirit the hotheads and forfeit the confidence of the moderates, whereas belligerence would encourage the upper slave states to join their sister commonwealths in revolt.

From
Abraham Lincoln: A Biography
, 1952

Stefan Lorent (1901–1997) was a Hungarian-born journalist, editor, and photographer. After a short career in filmmaking, he began reporting and writing for various newspapers in Berlin and then in 1928, he became chief editor of the
Müncher Illustrierte Presse
(which he turned into the first modern photo journalistic paper in Europe). After having spent a year in prison for criticizing Hitler, he left Germany for Britain, where he embarked on a very successful career launching and editing illustrated magazines. In 1940, he moved to New York, where, after immersing himself in a study of United States history, he began publishing illustrated books in the field.

Y
ES, THERE
was the frightful plague of milk sickness that winter in Indiana. Dennis [Hanks] lost four milk cows and eleven calves in one week; how many of Thomas Lincoln’s perished, we do not know. But we do know that his farm was not paying, and as John Hanks sent messages of the wonderful land in Illinois, he was willing to give it a try. By the middle of February, 1830, he had sold his farm for $125—and once more he and his family were on the move.

Thirteen people went with the wagons, drawn by ox teams and filled with bedding, furniture, ovens, skillets, and all the
household goods the migrants possessed. Thomas Lincoln, his wife Sarah, his son Abraham, and her son John D. Johnston made four. (Sarah, the elder sister of Abraham was no longer living. Married to Aaron Grigsby, she had died in childbirth two years before.) Dennis Hanks, who nine years before had married Sarah Bush Lincoln’s fifteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth, was with his wife and four children in another wagon; Squire Hall, the husband of Matilda Johnston, Sarah Bush Lincoln’s second daughter, his wife and child were in still another.

It was a tedious journey, “painfully slow and tiresome,” recalled Lincoln later.

Abraham, who around this time had completed his twenty-first year and was lawfully free of his father’s command, drove one of the teams. Before they left, he bought $30 worth of merchandise, investing all his savings in it. There were knives, forks, needles, pins, threads, buttons, and other things which he peddled all the way, making a handsome profit on his investment.

From
Lincoln: A Picture Story of His Life
, 1957