CHAPTER XIII

ABRAHAM LINCOLN AND THE CIVIL WAR

REPUBLICAN: 1861-1865

492. Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States, was the greatest American statesman of the nineteenth century. He had come up from the humblest walks of life, his father having been a poor farmer in the pioneer settlements of Kentucky. When Lincoln was but seven years old, the Lincoln family removed to the state of Indiana, erected a log cabin, and began a failing struggle with poverty, hardship, and toil, which was the constant lot of Abraham Lincoln in his early life. At the age of twenty-one, he removed with his father's family to a farm in the prairie state of Illinois, where another log cabin was erected and the struggle familiar to his Indiana life was repeated. Up to the age of twenty-one, his entire education amounted to but twelve months of schooling, and yet during his youth and younger manhood he so applied himself to the acquiring of an education that he became one of the wisest statesmen of his time. His biographers dwell in detail on the untold hours he spent in studying geometry by the flickering light of a fireplace, and how through his study of the Bible and Shakespeare he acquired suchskill in the use of the language as to cause many of his speeches to take rank with the finest specimens of English in our literature. Before coming to the presidency he had been but little in public life. He had served as captain in the Black Hawk war, had been a member of the Illinois state legislature for several terms, and had served a single term in congress during the Mexican war. As a lawyer, he had risen to the head of his profession in his state. the time of the organization of the Republican party, he

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became one of its most prominent leaders. His debates with Douglas while contesting for the senatorship of Illinois revealed his keen insight into the science of government, and brought him prominently before the country as one of the rising men of the nation. As a leader, he was king among men. On assuming the presidency, he called around him an able cabinet, four members of which had formerly been Democrats and three, Whigs, each man devoted to the preservation of the union, but all representing different views as to how such preservation should be accomplished. Each man had a national reputation, and many predicted that Lincoln with his inexperience would be unable to conduct harmoniously the affairs of government with a cabinet representing such diverse views. But such was his strength of character, his self-reliance and his selfconfidence, and such were his powers of persuasion that the cabinet members yielded to his will on every question where the great president found it necessary to dissent from their views. His heart was as tender as a child's, and he loved child nature with such tenderness and affection that wherever he went he won the love of children. No more beautiful picture can be found than that of the great president reading from his mother's Bible to his son Thomas, familiarly known as little Tad. His private grief at the death of his little son William in the White House still makes the reader pause in heartfelt sympathy, and forget for the moment the clash of arms on the battlefields of the civil No man more fully realized the peril of the republic than did Lincoln. On bidding his friends and neighbors farewell at Springfield upon setting out for Washington to assume the reins of government, he said, "I now leave, not knowing when or whether ever I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me, and

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remain with you, and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well."

493. Lincoln's Policy. On the trip from Springfield to Washington, the president made numerous speeches, many of which revealed the great anxiety he felt for the preservation of the union. Time after time he took occasion to say that the incoming administration had no intention of interfering with the institution of slavery in the states where it already existed, and he sought in every way to give notice to the southern states that they would be protected in their constitutional rights the same as any other section of the union. He entered Washington on the evening of February 23, 1861, and on March 4, at half past one o'clock, delivered an able inaugural address which clearly outlined his policy. He held that the union of the states was perpetual; that the United States was one nation and not a federation of states; that no state could, upon its own motion, lawfully withdraw from the union; that the acts of secession passed by South Carolina and the other seceding states were legally void; and that any state opposing the authority of the United States by acts of violence was in a state of insurrection. He served notice that it was his purpose to execute the laws of the United States in every state of the union, and that he would defend the union at whatever cost. "In doing this," he said, "there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority." He declared it the intention of the government "to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts through the custom houses." "On the question of slavery," he said, "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." "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to

do so. I have no inclination to do so." His closing words, memorable and touching, were to the south:

"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.'

"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 hearthstone 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.”

THE YEAR 1861

494. The First Blow Struck: The Fall of Fort SumterApril 14, 1861.-The confederate authorities at Charleston having summoned Fort Sumter to surrender, the governor of South Carolina was officially notified that the federal authorities would send reinforcements and provisions to relieve the now besieged fortress, "peaceably if it could, forcibly if it must." Hereupon, on April 11, General P. G. T. Beauregard, in command of the confederate force at Charleston, summoned Major Robert Anderson to surrender.

Anderson refused, and in the early dawn of the morning of April 12, 1861, the quiet of Charleston Bay was broken by the shrieking of a mortar shell fired from a confederate battery. In an instant fifty confederate guns, from every available point of land around the bay, were playing upon the fort with shot and shell,-the south had defied the national authority, the great rebellion was begun! Though the little garrison could offer but feeble resistance, still for