Our Presidents and how we make them

by Alexander K. McClure

“Oh, Phil; he’s all right.”

The same order went to Sheridan, of which no record was ever kept, and Sheridan sent five thousand of his veterans home to vote as they shot, and Lincoln’s majority on the home vote was 5712, to which the army vote added 14,363, making a total majority in the State of 20,075.

It is not generally known how earnestly Lincoln labored for compensated emancipation. He made earnest efforts to save the Border States to the Union by the assurance of compensation for slaves, and even after all the slave States south of the Potomac and the Ohio had joined the Confederacy, he adhered to the policy of compensated emancipation until the day of his death. In August, 1864, when the political situation presented a very gloomy aspect, I had a long conference with Lincoln at the White House, and he then introduced the subject of compensated emancipation.

In that conversation he gave me the first intimation of his purpose to try and end the war by paying the South $400,000,000 as compensation for the freedom of the slaves. He had the proposition written out in his own handwriting, but he well knew that if such a purpose on his part were made public, it would make his re-election impossible. He discussed it freely and very earnestly, however, and said that he regarded compensated emancipation as the only way to restore fellowship between the States. He did not doubt the ability of the North to overthrow the military power of the Confederacy, but what he most feared was that the people of the South, driven to desperation by the severe sacrifices they had suffered, and the general desolation of their country, that gave them no hope of regaining prosperity, would make their armies disband into guerrilla squads and would be implacable in their resentments against the Government.

In all of the many expressions I heard Lincoln make use of, toward the close of the war, he always exhibited an earnest desire to do something that would impressively teach the Southern people that they were not to be held as conquered subjects of a despotic power, but were to come back into the Union and enjoy the blessings of a reunited people.

Lincoln believed that in no way could he so widely and profoundly impress the Southern people with the desire of the Government to deal with them in generous justice as by paying them $400,000,000 as compensation for the loss of their slaves. I can never forget the earnestness with which he spoke of this proposition at a time when he did not dare breathe it to the public. He said the war was costing $4,000,000 a day, and that it would certainly last for more than four months, thus costing the Government more than the whole amount he would have gladly given as compensation for the freedom of the slaves, not to calculate the sacrifice of life and destruction of property. He fretted because he could not convey to the South what he believed should be done to close the war and enable them to re-establish their homes and fruitful fields. He believed in his theory of compensated emancipation until his death, and he abandoned it only a short time before the surrender of Lee. He would have suggested it to Vice-President Stephens, of the Confederacy, at their City Point meeting in the winter of 1865, had not Stephens advised him at the outset that he was instructed by Jefferson Davis to entertain no proposition that did not perpetuate the Confederacy, and after his return he wrote a message to Congress in favor of it, submitted it to his Cabinet, by which it was nearly or quite unanimously disapproved, and he endorsed upon it the disapproval of the Cabinet and laid it away.

Lincoln was the most notable combination of sadness and mirth that I ever met with in any of our public men. His face in repose, under all circumstances, was one of the saddest I ever beheld. It would brighten in conversation, and at times would portray a measure of sorrow that could not be surpassed. He was from his youth much given to melancholy. While he was known as fond of sports and brimful of humor, a very large portion of his life was always given to isolation and solitude, when he gave free latitude to the melancholy tendencies of his mind.

Strange as it may seem, he was always a hopeful man, never pessimistic, and always inclined when discussing any question to take the bright side. He was severely conscientious in his convictions and in his actions. He had faith in the present and greater faith in the future. He had been in early life what is now commonly called an agnostic, with a strong inclination to atheism, but in his mature years he never exhibited a trace of it. I have never known any man who had greater reverence for God than Abraham Lincoln. Throughout his writings, political and otherwise, will be found multiplied expressions of his abiding faith in the Great Ruler of nations and individuals.

In a single sentence to be found in Lincoln’s second inaugural address the country and the world have the most complete portrayal of his character. When he was inaugurated for a second term as President, on the 4th of March, 1865, the military power of the Confederacy was broken, and many in his position would have exhibited the pride of the victor over the vanquished on such an occasion; but after stating in the kindest and most temperate language the duty of himself and of the patriotic people of the country to protect the Union against dismemberment, he does not utter a word of resentment against the South. “With malice toward none; with charity for all,” was the brief and eloquent sentence in which he defined the duty of those who had then substantially destroyed the power of the Rebellion. That beautiful expression came from the heart of Abraham Lincoln, and it profoundly impressed the whole country, then wildly impassioned by the bitterness of fraternal strife. He knew the resentments which must confront him in restoring the shattered fragments of the Union, and his supreme desire was to have the bitterness of the conflict perish when peace came.

No man who has filled the Presidential chair was so vindictively and malignantly defamed as was Lincoln in the South. The opponents of the war in the North were guilty of unpardonable assaults upon his integrity, his ability, and his methods, but the South had no knowledge of him, as he had filled no important part in national affairs before his election to the Presidency; and his humble birth in Kentucky, close by the birthplace of Jefferson Davis, and his exaggerated rudeness of appearance and manner made the people of the South ready to believe anything to his discredit. He was proclaimed throughout the Confederacy as a second Nero; as a bloody and remorseless butcher; as a vulgar clown who met the sorrows of the nation with ribald jest. Not a single virtue was conceded to him.