This letter is written in the strictest confidence, and is for your eye alone. But you are at liberty to say to members of your cabinet that you know I will second any move you may see fit to make. But do nothing timidly nor by halves. Send me word what to do. I will live until I can hear it at all events. If it is best for the country and for mankind that we make peace with the rebels at once and on their own terms, do not shrink even from that. But bear in mind the greatest truth: "Whoso would lose his life for my sake shall save it." Do the thing that is the highest right, and tell me how I am to second you. Yours, in the depths of bitterness, Lincoln quickly saw the importance of calling for a much larger number of men and for a longer period of service than his original proclamation contemplated. He soon learned that three months would not be long enough. He therefore urged upon Secretary Cameron the acceptance of a larger number than he originally contemplated. Regiment after regiment was added and provisions were made for their equipment and sustenance. Gradually the nation came to understand, and Lincoln earlier. than many of the leaders of public opinion, that the war was to be longer and much more bitter than any one, either North or South, had supposed. The effect of Bull Run was to convince both North and South that the war was not to be a short and easy one, but perhaps its most important result was its influence on European Governments. They believed quite generally after this battle, that superiority of leadership was with the South. With the exception of Russia, all European Governments, and especially that of England and France, tended to side with the South. Nevertheless, it is more than possible that it was better for the Union cause that its armies did not win at Bull Run. A cheap and easy victory won at that stage of the war might have proved disastrous in the days that followed. In the West the situation was more favorable. Under Generals Lyons, Frémont and Halleck, the Confederate forces were gradually driven out of Missouri, and that state was saved to the Union. The citizens of German birth in that state were an important factor in the attainment of this result. Kentucky, which at first officially maintained an armed neutrality, was held in the Union by regiments of her own loyal citizens. Thus was the line of the Confederacy pushed far to the south of the Missouri and Ohio Rivers. In the east, however, the Confederate flag flew within sight of the capitol, and it was considered cheering news when the papers could report that all was "quiet along the Potomac." This is not a history of the Civil War. Many of its battles will not be mentioned. Many of its leading generals and notable events must go without recognition in these pages. Only so much is to be said about the war and those engaged in it as is necessary to our interpretation of the life of Abraham Lincoln. But the "impending crisis" long foretold by Hinton Rowan Helper, the "irrepressible conflict" of which William H. Seward had spoken, the "house divided against itself" of which Lincoln had talked in his debates with Douglas, came swiftly. Lincoln had been careful to disclaim responsibility for John Brown, whom he regarded as an unauthorized fanatic. But the war which Lincoln found himself compelled to fight gave him unexpected fellowship with that praying old fighter. Not without reason did Lincoln's seventy-five thousand volunteers rally to the defense of the Union, with a song about "Old John Brown." They were fighting, whether they knew it or not, for something more than a definition of the Constitution. sang as they marched : "John Brown's body lies a-mould'ring in the grave, They CHAPTER VI LINCOLN AND CONGRESS THE president of the United States is commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States; but he has no power to declare war, and no power to raise or appropriate money to carry on a war. These functions belong to the Congress. But there are certain powers which the Constitution recognizes but does not definitely locate. Even in times of peace it is not easy to say just where the powers of Congress end and those of the president begin; and the extraordinary necessities of war give opportunity for much misunderstanding and friction. Lincoln had seen little of Congress since his own membership for a single term in 1847-8. He had opportunity to behold Congress in session, and to feel its atmosphere a few days before his inauguration. Lincoln's reception in that Congress was none too favorable. When he reached Washington, the Congress then sitting was near its end. Some of its most prominent members were concluding their service and were about to depart, some to their districts that had elected as their successors men of the new party, and others to the Confederacy, with which already they were virtually identified. Adam Gurowski, in his entertaining Diary, in which he claimed to record events as rapidly as they occurred and impressions while yet they were fresh, began his orderly chronicle with the inauguration, but going back for a few days for an introduction to his narrative, wrote: Some days previous to the inauguration, Mr. Seward brought Mr. Lincoln on the Senate floor, of course on the Republican side; but soon Mr. Seward was busily running among Demo crats, begging them to be introduced to Mr. Lincoln. It was a saddening, humiliating and revolting sight for the galleries, where I was. Criminal as is Mason, for a minute I got reconciled to him for the scowl of horror and contempt with which he shook his head at Seward. Only two or three Democratic Senators were moved by Seward's humble entreaties.* Ethan Allen is alleged to have demanded the surrender of Fort Ticonderoga "in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress." It seems almost a pity to learn that this story does not rest on secure foundation. We should like to discover the Congress of the United States in more normal alignment with the Divine purpose, and in more frequent appeal to the heroic. During the Revolution, Congress was small comfort to Washington, and during the Civil War it was sometimes a thorn in the flesh of Lincoln. Lincoln's first message to Congress, when that body assembled on July 4, 1861, was a very different document from his inaugural address. It recited the events which had occurred during his four months of office. It gave a detailed account of matters relating to Fort Sumter and the call for volunteers. It recited that after the first call for troops it had been necessary to increase the number of volunteers to three hundred thousand and extend the period of service to three years. These calls for troops he believed to have been justified by "a popular demand and a public necessity." He did not discuss whether these measures were strictly legal or not. He believed that Congress would readily ratify them. The body of the message was a discussion of the question of the right of secession. This right he denied in the most explicit terms and in an extended argument. He declared the theory of the right of secession to be "an ingenious sophism, which if conceded, might be followed by perfectly logical steps, through all the incidents, to the complete destruction of the Union." This "sophism" he defined in terms of this proposition: *Gurowski's Diary, p. 15. That any State of the Union may consistently with the National Constitution, and therefore lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from the Union without the consent of the Union or of any other State. He said: Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it our people have already settled-the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world that those who can fairly carry an election can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace; teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by a war; teaching all the folly of being the beginners of a war. Were these states at leave the remaining Suppose all the states. remaining state be re He considered the fact that certain of the states, as for instance Florida, had involved the government in large expense, either for their purchase price or for expenses incurred in repelling Indian attacks or in the settlement of the claims of the Indian tribes or compensation for the land. liberty to withdraw from the Union and states to discharge these obligations? should secede but one; would that one sponsible for the debts incurred by the Federal Government of which it was now the sole remainder? Suppose the one remaining state decided to secede, who then would remain responsible for the obligations incurred by the nation? Avowedly his inaugural address was an appeal to the plain people. So also was Lincoln's first message to Congress. It was couched in language easily understood; but it was a very statesmanlike document, and one deserving at once the attention not only of Congress but of the people. |