Walks about Washington

by Francis E. Leupp

Before the end of June, 1860, four Presidential tickets were in the field. The Republican ticket was headed by Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, the Northern Democratic ticket by his old rival in State politics, Stephen A. Douglas. The Southern Democrats had nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, then Vice-president, and what was left of the Whig party had united with the peacemakers generally in naming John Bell of Tennessee. When Lincoln was elected in November, every one knew that a crisis was at hand; for, although opposed to the use of violence for the extinction of slavery, he disbelieved utterly in the system, and the radical leaders in the South proceeded at once with their plans for divorcing the slave States from the free States.

South Carolina led the actual revolt by adopting an ordinance of secession and withdrawing her delegation from Congress. Almost simultaneously she sent three commissioners to Washington, “empowered to treat with the Government of the United States for the delivery of the forts, magazines, lighthouses and other real estate within the limits of South Carolina” to the State authorities. President Buchanan, fearing lest any discussion with them might be construed as a recognition of their claim to an ambassadorial status, referred them to Congress, which met the difficulty at the threshold by turning their case over to a special committee, with the result that their demands were disregarded. The committee, however, played a pretty important part in the activities of the succeeding winter, for the Union men in its membership organized themselves into a sort of subcommittee of safety, and opened confidential channels of communication with men and women all over the city who were in a position to tell them promptly what the enemies of the Union were planning to do. These secret informers included all classes of persons, from domestic servants to Cabinet officers. The correspondence was conducted not through the post-office, but by cipher notes hidden in out-of-the-way places, where the parties for whom they were intended could safely look for them after nightfall.

The militia and fire departments of the District of Columbia were modest affairs then, but their members were alert to the growing possibilities of trouble. Some who were secession sympathizers formed themselves into rifle clubs and drilled privately at night; while the Unionists built up a little body of minutemen, who elected their own officers and secreted stands of arms at the Capitol and other convenient points, so that they could respond instantly, wherever they chanced to be, to a summons for emergency service. Day after day brought its budget of news from the South, saddening or thrilling. Thomas and Floyd quitted the Cabinet, Dix became Secretary of the Treasury, and Holt Secretary of War. In January, 1861, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi seceded, seizing all the forts, vessels, and other Government property on which they could lay hands; and Dix put upon the wire his historic despatch to his special agent at New Orleans, “If any one attempts to haul down the American flag, shoot him on the spot,” but it was intercepted and never reached its destination.

February witnessed the secession of Texas, the election of Jefferson Davis as President and Alexander H. Stephens as Vice-president of the Confederate States of America, and the withdrawal of several Senators and Representatives from the United States Congress. The only cheering news of the month was the refusal of Tennessee and Missouri to secede, though both States contained a multitude of citizens who would have preferred to do so. Daily the galleries of Congress were crowded with spectators representing all shades of opinion and at times uncontrollable in their expressions of approval or disapproval. When the House voted to submit a Constitutional amendment forbidding the interference of Congress with slavery or any other State institution, one element in the gallery burst into deafening applause; the opposing element in the Senate became equally boisterous in applauding a speech by Andrew Johnson, denouncing as a traitor any man who should fire upon the flag or conspire to take over Government property for the Confederacy. The difference in the treatment of the two outbreaks was significant: that in the House was merely rebuked in words, but in the Senate the gallery was cleared and closed to spectators for the rest of the day.

In fairness it should be said that at this trying juncture several men in positions of responsibility, who had made no secret of their interest in the Southern cause, acted the honorable part when put to the test. Vice-president Breckinridge was credited by current gossip with an intention, at the official count of the electoral vote, to refuse to declare Lincoln elected, or permit a mob to break up the session and destroy the authenticated returns. On the contrary, he conducted the count with as much scrupulousness in every detail as if his heart were in the result. Equal praise is due to the chief of the Capitol police, who, though bitterly hostile to Mr. Lincoln, took all the precautions for his safety on the day of inauguration that his best friend could have taken.

Thus the Buchanan administration went out, and the Lincoln administration came in. The persistent

Octagon House

warnings of a plot to kill or kidnap the President-elect led to the adoption of an extraordinary program for bringing him safely to Washington. Under the escort of an experienced detective, he made the journey from Harrisburg at high speed, in a special train provided by the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, all the tracks having been previously cleared, and the telegraph wires cut along the route. Meanwhile, a sensational newspaper had published locally a story that Lincoln was already in the city, having been smuggled through Baltimore in disguise in order to elude the conspirators who were waiting there to assassinate him. This fiction so incensed William H. Seward, who had been in Washington preparing for the arrival of his future chief, that Lincoln was not allowed to make a toilet after his night’s journey, but was hurried, all unwashed and unshaven, to the Capitol, so that the members of Congress could see him and satisfy themselves of the falsity of what they had read.

His immunity thus far did not quiet the apprehensions of Lincoln’s friends, who took especial pains to prevent the interruption of his inauguration at any point. A temporary fence was built around the space immediately in front of the platform from which his address was to be delivered, and an enclosed alley of boards was constructed from the place where he would leave his carriage to the place where he would pass into the Capitol. On the morning of the fourth of March, armed men in citizen’s clothing were stationed on the roofs of all the buildings overlooking the main east portico, and others on and under its platform, while yet others mingled with the crowd of thirty thousand spectators that early assembled on the plaza. Batteries of light artillery were posted in commanding positions, with their cannon loaded and prepared to sweep any of several converging streets on the approach of a mob. Buchanan drove with Lincoln to the Capitol, and their carriage was surrounded by a hollow square of regular troops, in formation so dense that the occupants of the vehicle were scarcely visible from the sidewalk. Hannibal Hamlin, the Vice-president-elect, walked up from Willard’s Hotel, on purpose to hear what the people who lined the Avenue were saying. Their comments were, as a rule, far from friendly to the incoming administration, and some were distinctly ominous.