Abraham Lincoln and the Abolition of Slavery in the United States

by Charles Godfrey Leland

“Friends,—No one who has never been placed in a like position can understand my feelings at this hour, nor the oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. For more than a quarter of a century I have lived among you, and during all that time I have received nothing but kindness at your hands. Here I have lived from youth until now I am an old man; here the most sacred ties of earth were assumed; here all my children were born, and here one of them lies buried. To you, dear friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am. All the strange, chequered past seems now to crowd upon my mind. To-day I leave you. I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God who assisted him shall be with me and aid me, I must fail; but if the same omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail—I shall succeed. Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now. To Him I commend you all. Permit me to ask that with equal sincerity and faith you will invoke His wisdom and guidance for me. With these few words I must leave you, for how long I know not. Friends, one and all, I must now bid you an affectionate farewell.”

It may be observed that in this speech Lincoln, notwithstanding his conciliatory offers to the South, apprehended a terrible war, and that when speaking from the heart he showed himself a religious man. If he ever spoke in earnest it was on this occasion. One who had heard him a hundred times declared that he never saw him so profoundly affected, nor did he ever utter an address which seemed so full of simple and touching eloquence as this. It left his audience deeply affected; but the same people were more deeply moved at his return. “At eight o’clock,” says Lamon, “the train rolled out of Springfield amid the cheers of the populace. Four years later, a funeral train, covered with the emblems of splendid mourning, rolled into the same city, bearing a corpse, whose obsequies were being celebrated in every part of the civilised world.”

Lincoln made several speeches at different places along his route from Springfield to Philadelphia, and in all he freely discussed the difficulties of the political crisis, expressing himself to the effect that there was really no danger or no crisis, since he was resolved, with all the Union-loving men of the North, to grant the South all its rights. But these addresses were not all sugar and rose-water. At Philadelphia he said—

“Now, in my view of the present aspect of affairs, there need be no bloodshed or war. There is no necessity for it I am not in favour of such a course; and I may say in advance, that there will be no blood shed, unless it be forced upon the Government, and then it will be compelled to act in self-defence.”

Lincoln had declared that the duties which would devolve upon him would be greater than those which had devolved upon any American since Washington. During this journey, the wisdom, firmness, and ready tact of his speeches already indicated that he would perform these duties of statesmanship in a masterly manner. He was received courteously by immense multitudes; but at this time so very little was known of him beyond the fact that he was called Honest Old Abe the Rail-splitter, and that he had sprung from that most illiterate source, a poor Southern backwoods family, that even his political friends went to hear him with misgivings or with shame. There was a general impression that the Republican party had gained a victory by truckling to the mob, and by elevating one of its roughest types to leadership. And the gaunt, uncouth appearance of the President-elect fully confirmed this opinion. But when he spoke, it was as if a spell had been removed; the disguise of Odin fell away, and people knew the Great Man, called to struggle with and conquer the rebellious giants—a hero coming with the right strength at the right time.

It was at this time that the conspiracy, which had been preparing in earnest for thirty years, and which the North for as many years refused to suspect, had burst forth. South Carolina had declared that if Lincoln was elected she would secede, and on the 17th December, 1860, she did so, true to her word if not to her duty. In quick succession six States followed her, “there being little or no struggle, in those which lay upon the Gulf, against the wild tornado of excitement in favour of rebellion.” “In the Border States,” says Arnold—“in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri—there was, however, a terrible contest.” The Union ultimately triumphed in Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, while the rebels carried Tennessee with great difficulty. Virginia seceded on April 17th, 1861, and North Carolina on the 20th of May. Everything had for years been made ready for them. President Buchanan, who preceded Lincoln—a man of feeble mind, and entirely devoted to the South—had either suffered the rebels to do all in their power to facilitate secession, or had directly aided them. The Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, who became a noted rebel, had for months been at work to paralyse the Northern army. He ordered 115,000 muskets to be made in Northern arsenals at the expense of the Federal Government, and sent them all to the South, with vast numbers of cannon, mortars, ammunition, and munitions of war. The army, reduced to 16,000 men, was sent to remote parts of the country, and as the great majority of its officers were Southern men, they of course resigned their commissions, and went over to the Southern Confederacy. Howell Cobb of Georgia, afterwards a rebel general, was Secretary of the Treasury, and, as his contribution to the Southern cause, did his utmost, and with great success, to cause ruin in his department, to injure the national credit, and empty the treasury. In fact, the whole Cabinet, with the supple President for a willing tool, were busy for months in doing all in their power to utterly break up the Government, to support which they had pledged their faith in God and their honour as gentlemen. Linked with them in disgrace were all those who, after uniting in holding an election for President, refused to abide by its results. On the 20th Nov., 1860, the Attorney-General of the United States, Jer. S. Black, gave, as his aid to treason, the official opinion that “Congress had no right to carry on war against any State, either to prevent a threatened violation of the Constitution, or to enforce an acknowledgment that the Government of the United States was supreme;” and to use the words of Raymond, “it soon became evident that the President adopted this theory as the basis and guide of his executive action.”

On the night of January 5th, 1861, the leading conspirators, Jefferson Davis, with Senators Toombs, Iverson, Slidell, Benjamin, Wigfall, and others, held a meeting, at which it was resolved that the South should secede, but that all the seceding senators and representatives should retain their seats as long as possible, in order to inflict injury to the last on the Government which they had officially pledged themselves to protect. At the suggestion probably of Mr. Benjamin, all who retired were careful to draw not only their pay, but also to spoil the Egyptians by taking all the stationery, documents, and “mileage,” or allowance for travelling expenses, on which they could lay their hands. Only two of all the Slave State representatives remained true—Mr. Bouligny from New Orleans, and Andrew J. Hamilton from Texas. When President Lincoln came to Washington, it was indeed to enter a house divided against itself, tottering to its fall, its inner chambers a mass of ruin.

The seven States which had seceded sent delegates, which met at Montgomery, Alabama, February 4th, 1861, and organised a government and constitution similar to that of the United States, under which Jefferson Davis was President, and Alexander H. Stephens Vice-President. No one had threatened the new Southern Government, and at this stage the North would have suffered it to withdraw in peace from the Union, so great was the dread of a civil war. But the South did not want peace. Every Southern newspaper, every rebel orator, was now furiously demanding of the North the most humiliating concessions, and threatening bloodshed as the alternative. While President Lincoln, in his Inaugural Address, spoke with the most Christian forbearance of the South, Jefferson Davis, in his, assumed all the horrors of civil war as a foregone conclusion. He said, that if they were permitted to secede quietly, all would be well. If forced to fight, they could and would maintain their position by the sword, and would avail themselves to the utmost of the liberties of war. He expected that the North would be the theatre of war, but no Northern city ever felt the rebel sword, while there was not one in the South which did not suffer terribly from the effects of war. Never in history was the awful curse Væ victis so freely invoked by those who were destined to be conquered.

It was characteristic of Lincoln to illustrate his views on all subjects by anecdotes, which were so aptly put as to present in a few words the full force of his argument. Immediately after his election, when the world was vexed with the rumours of war, he was asked what he intended to do when he got to Washington? “That,” he replied, “puts me in mind of a little story. There was once a clergyman, who expected during the course of his next day’s riding to cross the Fox River, at a time when the stream would be swollen by a spring freshet, making the passage extremely dangerous. On being asked by anxious friends if he was not afraid, and what he intended to do, the clergyman calmly replied, ‘I have travelled this country a great deal, and I can assure you that I have no intention of trying to cross Fox River until I get to it.’” The dangers of the political river which Mr. Lincoln was to cross were very great. It is usual in England to regard the struggle of the North with the South during the Rebellion as that of a great power with a lesser one, and sympathy was in consequence given to the so-called weaker side. But the strictest truth shows that the Union party, what with the Copperheads, or sympathisers with the South, at home, and with open foes in the field, was never at any time much more than equal to either branch of the enemy, and that, far from being the strongest in numbers, it was as one to two. Those in its ranks who secretly aided the enemy were numerous and powerful. The Union armies were sometimes led by generals whose hearts were with the foe; and for months after the war broke out, the entire telegraph service of the Union was, owing to the treachery of officials, entirely at the service of the Confederates.

It must be fairly admitted, and distinctly borne in mind, that the South had at least good apparent reason for believing that the North would yield to any demands, and was so corrupt that it would crumble at a touch into numberless petty, warring States, while the Confederacy, firm and united, would eventually master them all, and rule the Continent. For years, leaders like President Buchanan had been their most submissive tools; and the number of men in the North who were willing to grant them everything very nearly equalled that of the Republican party. From the beginning they were assured by the press and leaders of the Democrats, or Copperheads, that they would soon conquer, and receive material aid from Northern sympathisers. And there were in all the Northern cities many of these, who were eagerly awaiting a breaking-up of the Union, in order that they might profit by its ruin. Thus, immediately after the secession of South Carolina, Fernando Wood, Mayor of New York, issued a proclamation, in which he recommended that it should secede, and become a “free city.” All over the country, Democrats like Wood were looking forward to revolutions in which something might be picked up, and not a few really spoke of the revival of titles of nobility. All of these prospective governors of lordly Baratarias avowed sympathy with the South. It was chiefly by reliance on these Northern sympathisers that the Confederacy was led to its ruin. President Lincoln found himself in command of a beleagured fortress which had been systematically stripped and injured by his predecessor, a powerful foe storming without, and nearly half his men doing their utmost to aid the enemy from within.