Photograph of Lincoln taken just before leaving Springfield for the White House in 1861, age 52 years-Original negative by THE CRUMBLING NATION IN LINCOLN'S ARMS HEN the world thinks that a man has won, his struggles have just begun. When Lincoln stood before the throng at the steps of the National Capitol, to be inaugurated President of the United States, the first "government of the people, by the people, and for the people," that the world had ever known, he stood as the personification of the principles upon which the republic is founded. Before him now gathered a remarkable group of men who had made history. Here were statesmen who had served their country through long lives of distinguished loyalty and had seen it rise from the war with England to become one of the world's greatest powers. Here were diplomats of foreign embassies who were pledged to the divine rights of kings and shook their heads prophetically as they agreed that the theory of self-government was now to take its place as the heresy of civilization. Lincoln rose and stood before them. There was a faint cheer from the crowd that was being held in restraint by the battalion of soldiers. Riflemen scanned the scene from the capitol windows, while just ahead moved a battery of flying artillery. There was a moment's pause as Lincoln moved forward. He removed his tall silk hat. A short, heavy, strong-featured man stretched forth his hand and took it from him. Lincoln bowed courteously and smiled. It was Stephen A. Douglas, the political antagonist of his whole public career, the man who had fought him through every step of progress, and who had just contested him for the crowning honor of his life—and lost. "If I can't be President," he whispered to a member of the Lincoln party, "I at least can hold his hat." As Lincoln stood there, pledging himself to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution and the Union, every ear was strained to catch the words from his lips: "I am loath to close," he said. "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.' A hush fell over the assemblage. The oath of office came from his lips. The cannons of the battery boomed. And Abraham Lincoln, the son of a log cabin, held the future of a nation in his arms. LINCOLN AT HIS INAUGURATION-Photograph taken while Lincoln was delivering his inaugural address before the great throng that had gathered at the National Capitol-The judges of the Supreme Court can be seen sitting at his left-Print in the Brady-Gardner Collection deposited at Springfield, Massachusetts. THE DETERMINED WILL OF LINCOLN AMONG MEN OWER is not so much what a man can accomplish as what he can lead others to do. Lincoln had the ability to lead men. It was with a heavy heart that he entered the White House. The South had insisted upon the supremacy of the state as the true interpretation of the Constitution, and to uphold this principle seven historic old states had withdrawn and established a new republic to be known as the Confederate States of America. The Southern Senators and Representatives were withdrawing from the Congress of the United States. The Federal courts were suspending, and the stars and stripes were being hauled down from their flagstaffs. The prophecy of Lincoln had come true and the house was now divided. Lincoln gathered his cabinet about him. Among them were statesmen who had opposed him for the nomination for the Presidency and who now beheld him with grave perplexity. They were strong men of strong convictions, but they could little comprehend the subtle power of this strange man who had come up from the western wilderness and taken control of their government. Look at Lincoln as he sat in his cabinet room. Among the faces of those men there is not a friend, not one who had known Lincoln a year before. But to establish the new spirit of republicanism in power, he had gathered about him this cabinet composed of his rivals for political honors and had not even reserved for himself the appointment of one personal friend to whom he might now turn. There they sat, in their inability to measure the greatness of their chief, contending for leadership and power, only to find at last that a mighty man may come from the rough paths through the woods, one who takes his heart from the oak and his judgment from the mountain rocks. In the corridors of the White House strode the wily politicians in the wild stampede for office in the new political party that had come into power for the first time. Within-was dissension and misunderstanding, political prowess and manipulation. Without-were the rumbles of discontent and threats of war. But there sat Lincoln, with words of hope and courage, turning away impatience and wrath with pointed stories of wit and philosophy, holding the threads of a nation together with the keen insight of human nature and the instinctive understanding of men, while in his mind he was working out the solution in the mighty problem of maintaining the American people one and inseparable. |