CHAPTER X

BEGINNINGS OF WAR

In spite of some fears the inauguration passed off without disturbance. In the presence of an enormous open-air crowd, Lincoln took the oath, administered by Chief Justice Taney, and delivered his first inaugural address from a platform on which sat James Buchanan and Stephen A. Douglas. One of the most picturesque minor incidents of the day grew out of the presence of the Little Giant. He who had done so much, in opposing Lincoln, to make him, had been among the first to come to his support as President, and now, when he saw his successful rival standing before a great audience of the people who had elected him, holding his new silk hat awkwardly and not quite knowing what to do with it, Senator Douglas quietly relieved him of the incumbrance.

Lincoln's practised voice carried the words of the inaugural to the multitude before him. That document, one of the most important in the history of the country, sounded a note of gentle firmness on the one great issue to which it was mostly confined,- Union against Secession. It was intended to breathe at once confidence to the

North and friendliness to the South. It succeeded, especially as it was read at leisure, in stiffening the courage of the loyal states; but soft words. could no longer affect the trend toward secession, and what the Southern people saw was not that the President wished them well, but that he refused them their most important demand. I hold," he said, " that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the union of these states is perpetual." He declared that no state, upon its own mere motion, could lawfully get out of the Union, and that acts of violence against the United States were insurrectionary or revolutionary. One of his most definite statements was: "To the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the states." Although he gave the greatest amount of time and emphasis to the question of Union, he touched upon slavery, summing it up in his favorite way: "One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute." To the Southerners, he said: "In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict,

without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it.'" The famous end of this inaugural shows in its origin a quality which was one of Lincoln's strongest, an instinct for assimilating and impressing the thoughts of others. Mr. Seward made two suggestions for an ending, thinking that argument ought not, as in the President's first draft, to be the final word. His first suggestion was long and dull. His second was this: "I close. We are not, we must not be, aliens or enemies, but fellow-countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly, they must not, I am sure they will not, be broken. The mystic chords which, proceeding from so many battlefields and so many patriot graves, pass through all the hearts and all the hearths in this broad continent of ours will yet again harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the nation."

Lincoln took the central hint and wrote this: "I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth

stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

On the morning after inauguration, the new President received the news that Fort Sumter must be reënforced within a few weeks or abandoned. The military situation which he saw before him was discouraging. The South was thoroughly prepared and aggressive. The Northern army and navy were small and scattered. General Scott was old, and although thoroughly determined, did not inspire the greatest confidence. The day before the inauguration he proposed in a private letter to Seward to "let the wayward sisters go in peace." Added to this, the lack of unanimity in the North and in the government had to be reckoned with by the President. Republican leaders distrusted Lincoln, and gave him little support, although younger men were more actively favorable; and the Democratic Douglas, in spite of some charlatanism in the Senate, gave sincere help. The cabinet was hardly an aggregation to quiet the nerves of the President. Seward wrote to C. F. Adams, minister to England, on April 10: "Only an imperial and despotic government could subjugate thoroughly disaffected and insurrectionary members of the state.

This Federal, republican country of

ours is, of all forms of government, the very one which is the most unfitted for such a labor." Chase thought possible dissolution was better than a conflict. Welles was a rather watery character, Smith and Bates were old, Cameron and Blair were ordinary politicians. The Senate that met in executive session on the day of inauguration counted twenty-nine Republicans, some disaffected, thirty-two Democrats, one American hostile to the administration, with five vacancies from Southern states that were not filled during the war. It was only the later retirement of senators from seceding states that gave the administration a majority in both branches of Congress. More important, however, than soldiers or politicians, were the mass of the people, and what they felt it was Lincoln's intention to learn by experience. "Step by step he walked before them, slow with their slowness, quickening his march by theirs." He felt that he could master all the rest, however big in name, if he could only keep the resources of the Northern people just behind him. Wendell Phillips declared in New Bedford, on April 9, that the Southern states had a right to secede, and added, "You cannot go through Massachusetts and recruit men to bombard Charleston or New Orleans." If the leading abolition orator was right, then the new President was going to be in a hopeless