Chapter XVII

SAVING THE UNION

S

UMTER FELL and war came. His appeal to the better nature of his enemies having been unheeded, the

President was forced to fight for the Union he had sworn to uphold at all hazards. Congress was not in session and he was compelled to act on his own initiative. He called for volunteers. Everywhere were heard the ominousroll of the drum, the shrill cadence of the fife, and the growing murmur of defiance.

City streets were picturesque with volunteer commands, zouaves, artillery companies, civilian gatherings. Along rural roads in clouds of dust country boys hurried to offer themselves to the recruiting station. This all over the North. In the seceding slave states where preparation had been going forward for months, the nucleus of a large army was already in solid formation under the instructions of trained officers, educated in the military academies of the Nation. The rights of a State as against the rights of a Nation, were proclaimed and the chivalry of the aristocratic South was pitted against the less spectacular but deeply determined commonalty of the North. The land was dotted with white tents. Mothers of all sections gave tearful blessings to their sons while, like those of ancient Sparta, they bade them "come home with their shields or on them."

At the Nation's capitol there was hurrying to and fro in strange disordered tumult. The desertion of southern congressmen had left the Republicans in control of the Government, and when Congress assembled it hurried to make legal the President's acts in calling for volunteers and to declare war upon the insurrection that had spread to all the cotton states and was threatening to have the support of the border states. To save if possible these border states to the Union was Mr. Lincoln's pronounced determination. He had called to his Cabinet men representing all factions of those parties which denied the claim of the States' Rights as opposed to the supreme right of the Union. But no two of these factions agreed as to the best way to preserve the Union. Some were for an immediate proclamation freeing the slaves. Some were for allowing slavery to continue, even with its encroachments upon the Territories. Some were for permitting it to exist in the States where it had already been given recognition by the Constitution.

Among them all, the President was alone in his position to preserve the Union by any or all these means. He had told them that a house divided against itself could not stand, that the Nation could not continue half slave and half free. He had told them, both North and South, that he would not override the Constitution in either case. He had pleaded with them in his sublime Inaugural to recognize their own brotherhood. He had counselled calmness of judgment and patience to work out a peaceful solution of the gigantic problem. His great heart glowed with sympathy for humanity, denying entrance to no section, neither to race, color nor creed. He asked for but one thing-veneration for the Union. Amid the gloom of approaching fratricidal war he alone took up the harp of the Union and "Smote on all the chords with might,

Smote the chord of self that trembling passed in music out of sight."

He alone was brave without boasting, patient without pretense, gentle without compromise, stern without detraction, sympathetic without weakness, sad without pessimism, tearful without despair. Other great leaders fixed their eyes on some particular star of their selection moving in the orbit of their beliefs. He alone steered his course by the one fixed star. Because he would not allow his eyes to be blinded by sympathy for one race to the exclusion of all races, he was declared heartless. Because he gave away to his advisors in a thousand minor details, he was charged with weakness. Because he would resign no hair's breadth of his authority in great things, he was labelled stubborn. Because he would not change a general in the field until he had found another who might better fill his place, he was scoffed at as being ignorant of the situation. Because he sought to strengthen the party upon which he must depend for support, he was judged as a scheming politician. Because he would not pull up the roots of his being from the soil of the common people, he was satirized as a clown. Because he, like the Man of Nazareth, taught with homely parables the great truths of life, he was frowned on by the cultured and sophisticated. Because he could not bring himself to have shot the volunteers of a newly organized army of civilians who disobeyed stern military rules, he was censured for disorganization and defeats due to the lack of military leadership. Because, like Shakespeare, he made humor the open window to let in reviving sunlight to his overcharged heart, he was sneered at as lacking in appreciation of the dignity of his high office and unappreciative of the seriousness of the hour. Because he forgave his enemies, both for and against the Union, his firmness was doubted and oftentimes his judgment denied.

This surging sea of criticism and abuse, which made his place unique and difficult beyond that of any other president, and probably beyond that of any man who was ever called to rule a people, gives authority for the conclusion of the foremost minds of succeeding generations that Abraham Lincoln, judged by his works, is the greatest figure in the drama of Civilization. Accepting all men, he conquered all men. Denied of all while denying none, he lifted all men several notches in the scale of progress and put under their feet a foundation of such everlasting substance that the structure he builded seems destined to become the cornerstone for the temple of universal freedom.

That the President venerated freedom and hated slavery, goes without saying. His whole life had been devoted to the principle of the one and to exposing the erroneous claims of the other. But he knew, by that marvelous power of intuition. which was the natural result of his knowledge of the whole people and sympathy for them, that even the North as a solid whole would not continue the war on the declared proposition to free the slaves. The leading Members of his Cabinet, Seward, Chase, and later Stanton, held different views. Horace Greeley believed such a declaration would strengthen the Union cause. Beecher, Sumner, Garrison, Wendell Phillips, great orators all, were pronounced in their conviction that the war should be prosecuted with this one end in view. It is evident now that they were all wrong, and that Lincoln was wise as well as good and saw far clearer than they the great danger of such a proceeding.

His hope of keeping the border states in the Union was founded on his understanding of human nature. His frequent attempts to gain their consent to gradual emancipation with payment for their slaves, won their confidence and respect

for his honesty and by these means some of them remained loyal and were immense assets to the cause of the Federal arms. Difficult beyond conception was Lincoln's position during those first years of the Civil War. To keep the North as solidly behind him as possible he sought out their favorites in public life and gave them offices of trust and command. Loyal to his old friends, he advanced them wherever he could, so long as the public service did not suffer. Often it was a man who had been his opponent and who continued to mistrust or despise him that he pushed to the front.

Among the men whom Lincoln selected for important duty in the western field was Fremont. That the President believed in Fremont's genius for command was not strange. He had been "The Pathfinder" across the great plains and also for the Republican Party as its standard bearer in its first campaign as a National Party. Lincoln had stumped the State of Illinois for the hero of the hour and had a warm feeling in his heart for him. He placed the bulk of the western regiments under Fremont's command with headquarters at St. Louis. Fremont could not but know Lincoln's expressed decision to leave the slave question to be settled later while the greater question of saving the Union was on trial. But his abolition leanings and his unwonted ambition to lead, caused him to overlook or to ignore the President's well-defined attitude. Feeling certain of winning a large backing for his act from his admirers all over the country, and anxious to reinstate himself in the full confidence of the public eye for several costly military blunders, (one of which cost the life of the brave General Lyon), without previous consultation with the President or any of his advisers or friends, on August 30, 1861, Fremont wrote and printed, as Commander of the Department of the West, a proclamation establishing martial law throughout the State of Missouri and announcing that: