Abraham Lincoln
p>Though Mrs. Lincoln was by no means such a shrew as has been asserted, she
was difficult to live with. Lincoln responded to her impulsive and
imprudent behavior with tireless patience, forbearance, and forgiveness.
Borne down by grief and illness after her husband's death, Mrs. Lincoln
became so unbalanced at one time that her son Robert had her committed to
an institution. Congressman Having attained a position of leadership in state politics and worked
strenuously for the Whig ticket in the presidential election of 1840,
Lincoln aspired to go to CONGRESS. But two other prominent young Whigs of
his district, Edward D. Baker of Springfield and John J. Hardin of
Jacksonville, also coveted this distinction. So Lincoln stepped aside
temporarily, first for Hardin, then for Baker, under a sort of
understanding that they would "take a turn about." When Lincoln's turn came
in 1846, however, Hardin wished to serve again, and Lincoln was obliged to
maneuver skillfully to obtain the nomination. His district was so
predominantly Whig that this amounted to election, and he won handily over
his Democratic opponent.
Lincoln worked conscientiously as a freshman congressman, but was unable to
gain distinction. Both from conviction and party expediency, he went along
with the Whig leaders in blaming the Polk administration for bringing on
war with Mexico, though he always voted for appropriations to sustain it.
His opposition to the war was unpopular in his district, however. When the
annexations of territory from Mexico brought up the question of the status
of slavery in the new lands, Lincoln voted for the Wilmot Proviso and other
measures designed to confine the institution to the states where it already
existed. Disillusionment with Politics In the campaign of 1848, Lincoln labored strenuously for the
nomination and election of Gen. Zachary TAYLOR. He served on the Whig
National Committee, attended the national convention at Philadelphia, and
made campaign speeches. With the Whig national ticket victorious, he hoped
to share with Baker the control of federal patronage in his home state. The
juiciest plum that had been promised to Illinois was the position of
commissioner of the General Land Office in Washington. After trying vainly
to reconcile two rival candidates for this office, Lincoln tried to obtain
it for himself. But he had little influence with the new administration.
The most that it would offer him was the governorship or secretaryship of
the Oregon Territory. Neither job appealed to him, and he returned to
Springfield thoroughly disheartened.
Never one to repine, however, Lincoln now devoted himself to becoming a
better lawyer and a more enlightened man. Pitching into his law books with
greater zest, he also resumed his study of Shakespeare and mastered the
first six books of Euclid as a mental discipline. At the same time, he
renewed acquaintances and won new friends around the circuit. Law practice
was changing as the country developed, especially with the advent of
railroads and the growth of corporations. Lincoln, conscientiously keeping
pace, became one of the state's outstanding lawyers, with a steadily
increasing practice, not only on the circuit but also in the state supreme
court and the federal courts. Regular travel to Chicago to attend court
sessions became part of his routine when Illinois was divided into two
federal districts.
Outwardly, however, Lincoln remained unchanged in his simple, somewhat
rustic ways. Six feet four inches (1.9 meters) tall, weighing about 180
pounds (82 kg), ungainly, slightly stooped, with a seamed and rugged
countenance and unruly hair, he wore a shabby old top hat, an ill-fitting
frock coat and pantaloons, and unblacked boots. His genial manner and fund
of stories won him a host of friends. Yet, notwithstanding his friendly
ways, he had a certain natural dignity that discouraged familiarity and
commanded respect. Return to Politics Lincoln took only a perfunctory part in the presidential campaign of
1852, and was rapidly losing interest in politics. Two years later,
however, an event occurred that roused him, he declared, as never before.
The status of slavery in the national territories, which had been virtually
settled by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850, now
came to the fore. In 1854, Stephen A. Douglas, whom Lincoln had known as a
young lawyer and legislator and who was now a Democratic leader in the U.
S. SENATE, brought about the repeal of a crucial section of the Missouri
Compromise that had prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Purchase north of
the line of 36degrees 30&;. Douglas substituted for it a provision that the
people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska could admit or exclude
slavery as they chose.
The congressional campaign of 1854 found Lincoln back onthe stump in behalf
of the antislavery cause, speaking with a new authority gained from self-
imposed intellectual discipline. Henceforth, he was a different Lincoln--
ambitious, as before, but purged of partisan pettiness and moved instead by
moral earnestness.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act so disrupted old party lines that when the Illinois
legislature met to elect a U.S. senator to succeed Douglas' colleague,
James Shields, it was evident that the Anti-Nebraska group drawn from both
parties had the votes to win, if the antislavery Whigs and antislavery
Democrats could united on a candidate. However, the Whigs backed Lincoln,
and the Democrats supported Lyman Trumbull. though Lincoln commanded far
more strength than Trumbull, the latter's supporters were resolved never to
desert him for a Whig. As their stubbornness threatened to result in the
election of a proslavery Democrat, Lincoln instructed his own backers to
vote for Trumbull, thus assuring the latter's election. Campaigns of 1856 and 1858 With old party lines sundered, the antislavery factions in the North
gradually coalesced to form a new party, which took the name REPUBLICAN.
Lincoln stayed aloof at the beginning, fearing that it would be dominated
by the radical rather than the moderate antislavery element. Also, he hoped
for a resurgence of the Whig party, in which he had attained a position of
state leadership. But as the presidential campaign of 1856 approached, he
cast his lot with the new party. In the national convention, which
nominated John C. Frйmont for president, Lincoln received 110 ballots for
the VICE-PRESIDENTIAL nomination, which went eventually to William L.
Dayton of New Jersey. Though Lincoln had favored Justice John McLean, he
worked faithfully for Frйmont, who showed surprising strength,
notwithstanding his defeat by the Democratic candidate, James BUCHANAN.
With Senator Douglas running for reelection in 1858, Lincoln was recognized
in Illinois as the strongest man to oppose him. Endorsed by Republican
meetings all over the state and by the Republican State Convention, he
opened his campaign with the famous declaration: "`A house divided against
itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently
half slave and half free." Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of seven
joint debates, and these became the most spectacular feature of the
campaign. Douglas refused to take a position on the rightfulness or
wrongfulness of slavery, and offered his "popular sovereignty" doctrine as
the solution of the problem. Lincoln, on the other hand, insisted that
slavery was primarily a moral issue and offered as his solution a return to
the principles of the Founding Fathers, which tolerated slavery where it
existed but looked to its ultimate extinction by preventing its spread. The
Republicans polled the larger number of votes in the election, but an
outdated apportionment of seats in the legislature permitted Douglas to win
the senatorship. Election of 1860 Friends began to urge Lincoln to run for president. He held back, but
did extend his range of speechmaking beyond Illinois. on Feb. 27, 1860, at
Cooper Union, in New York City, he delivered an address on the need for
restricting slavery that put him in the forefront of Republican leadership.
The enthusiasm evoked by this speech and others overcame Lincoln's
reluctance. On May 9 and 10, the Illinois Republican convention, meeting in
Decatur, instructed the state's delegates to the national convention to
vote as a unit for him.
When that convention met in Chicago on May 16, Lincoln's chances were
better than was generally supposed. William H. Seward, the acknowledged
party leader, and other aspirants all had political liabilities of some
sort. As Lincoln's managers maneuvered behind the scenes, more and more
delegates lined up behind the "Illinois Rail Splitter." Seward led on the
first ballot, but on the third ballot Lincoln obtained the required
majority.
A split in the Democratic party, which resulted in the nomination of
Douglas by one faction and of John C. Breckinridge by the other, made
Lincoln's ELECTION a certainty. Lincoln polled 1,865,593 votes to Douglas'
1,382,713, and Breckinridge's 848,356. John Bell, candidate of the
Constitutional Union party, polled 592,906. The ELECTORAL vote was Lincoln,
180; Breckinridge, 72; Bell, 39; and Douglas, 12. Presidency On Feb. 11, 1861, Lincoln left Springfield to take up his duties as
president. Before him lay, as he recognized, "a task ... greater than that
which rested upon [George] Washington." The seven states of the lower South
had seceded from the Union, and Southern delegates meeting in Montgomery,
Ala., had formed a new, separate government. Before Lincoln reached the
national capital, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as President of the
Confederate States of America. The four states of the upper South teetered
on the brink of secession, and disunion sentiment was rampant in the border
states of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri.
When Lincoln reached Washington on February 23, he found the national
government incapable of meeting the crisis. President James Buchanan
deplored secession but could not check it, and Congress fruitlessly debated
compromise. The national treasury was near bankruptcy; the civil service
was riddled with secessionists; and the miniscule armed forces were being
weakened by defection of officers to the South.
It was not immediately evident that Lincoln could avert the dissolution of
the United States. Few American presidents have assumed office under
greater handicaps. Warned of an attempt on his life being planned in
Baltimore, Lincoln had to enter the national capital surreptitiously,
arriving after a secret midnight journey from Harrisburg, Pa. Widely
publicized, the episode did little to inspire public confidence in the
government or to create an image of Lincoln as a dynamic leader. That so
many citizens could believe their new president a coward was evidence of a
more serious handicap under which Lincoln labored: he was virtually unknown
to the American people. Lincoln's record as an Illinois state legislator,
as a one-term member of the House of Representatives in the 1840's, and as
an unsuccessful senatorial candidate against Douglas was not one to inspire
confidence in his abilities. Even the leaders of the Republican party had
little acquaintance with the new President.
Almost at the outset, Lincoln demonstrated that he was a poor
administrator. Accustomed, as his law partner William H. Herndon said, to
filing legal papers in his top hat, Lincoln conducted the administration of
the national govern ment in the same fashion. Selecting for his cabinet
spokesmen of the diverse elements that constituted the Republican party, he
surrounded himself with men of such conflicting views that he could not
rely on them to work together. Cabinet sessions rarely dealt with serious
issues. Usually, Lincoln permitted cabinet officers free rein in running
their departments.
Nor was Lincoln an effective leader of his party in the Congress, where
after secession the Republicans had overwhelming majorities. Long a Whig,
vigilant against executive "usurpation," he earnestly felt that as
president he ought not to exert even "indirect influence to affect the
action of congress." In consequence there was poor rapport between Capitol
Hill and the WHITE HOUSE. Even those measures that the President earnestly
advocated were weakened or defeated by members of his own party. But on
important issues relating to the conduct of the war and the restoration of
the Union, Lincoln followed his own counsel, ignoring the opinions of
Congress.
More than counterbalancing these deficiencies, however, were Lincoln's
strengths. Foremost was his unflinching dedication to the preservation of
the Union. Convinced that the United States was more than an ordinary
nation, that it was a proving ground for the idea of democratic government,
Lincoln felt that he was leading a struggle to preserve "the last, best
hope of earth." Despite war-weariness and repeated defeats, he never
wavered in his "paramount object." To restore national unity he would do
what was necessary, without regard to legalistic construction of the
CONSTITUTION, political objections in Congress, or personal popularity.
Partly because of that single-minded dedication, the American people, in
time, gave to Lincoln a loyalty that proved to be another of his great
assets. Making himself accessible to all who went to the White House,
Lincoln learned what ordinary citizens felt about their government. In
turn, his availability helped create in the popular mind the stereotype of
"Honest Abe," the people's president, straightforward, and sympathetic.
Lincoln's mastery of rhetoric further endeared him to the public. In an age
of pretentious orators, he wrote clearly and succinctly. Purists might
object when he said that the Confederates in one engagement "turned tail
and ran," but the man in the street approved. Lincoln's 268-word address at
the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg meant more than the
preceding two-hour oration by Edward Everett.
Another of Lincoln's assets was the fact that he was a genius at the game
of politics. He astutely managed the patronage at his disposal,
distributing favors so as to bind local politicians to his administration
and to undermine potential rivals for the presidency. He understood the
value of silence and secrecy in politics and refrained from creating
divisive issues or causing needless confrontations. He was extraordinarily
flexible and pragmatic in the means he employed to restore the Union. "My
policy," he frequently said, "is to have no policy." That did not mean that
his was a course of drift. Instead, it reflected his understanding that, as
president, he could only handle problems as they arose, confident that
popular support for his solutions would be forthcoming.
Lincoln believed that the ultimate decision in the Civil War was beyond
his, or any other man's, control. "Now, at the end of three years
struggle," he wrote, as the war reached its climax, "the nation's condition
is not what either party, or any man, devised or expected. God alone can
claim it." Sumter Crisis In 1861, Lincoln's weaknesses were more evident than his strengths.
Immediately after his inauguration he faced a crisis over Fort Sumter in
the Charleston (S. C.) harbor, one of the few remaining U.S. forts in the
seceded states still under federal control. Informed that the troops would
have to be supplied or withdrawn, the inexperienced President anxiously
explored solutions. Withdrawal would appear a cowardly backdown, but
reinforcing the fort might precipitate hostilities. Lincoln painfully
concluded that he would send supplies to Sumter and let the Confederates
decide whether to fire on the flag of the Union. Historians differ as to
whether Lincoln anticipated that hostilities would follow his decision, but
they agree that Lincoln was determined that he would not order the first
shot fired. Informed of the approach of the federal supply fleet,
Confederate authorities at Charleston during the early hours of April 12
decided to bombard the fort. Thus, the Civil War began.
Because Congress was not in session, Lincoln moved swiftly to mobilize the
Union by executive order. His requisition to the states for 75,000
volunteers precipitated the secession of Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, and Arkansas. Kentucky tried to adopt an official policy of
"neutrality," while secession sentiment in Maryland was so strong that for
a time Washington, D.C., was cut off from communication with the North. In
order to restore order, Lincoln directed that the privilege of the writ of
habeas corpus be suspended, at first along the line between Washington and
Philadelphia and later throughout most of the North, so that known
secessionists and persons suspected of disloyalty could be held without
trial. At the same time the President, without congressional authorization--
and thus in direct violation of the Constitution--ordered an increase in
the size of the regular Army and Navy. Doubting the loyalty of certain
government officials, he also entrusted public funds to private agents in
New York to purchase arms and supplies.
When the 37th Congress assembled in special session on July 4, 1861, it was
thus confronted with a fait accompli. The President, acting in his capacity
as commander in chief, had put himself at the head of the whole Union war
effort, arrogating to himself greater powers than those claimed by any
previous American president. His enemies termed him a dictator and a
tyrant. In fact, his power was limited, partly by his own instincts, partly
by the knowledge that his actions would be judged in four years at the
polls, and chiefly by the inadequacy of the federal bureaucracy.
Nevertheless, the role of Congress was sharply defined: it could
appropriate money to support the war, it could initiate legislation on
issues not related to the war, it could debate questions relating to the
conflict. But direction of the Union war effort was to remain firmly in
Lincoln's hands.
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