Sketch of the life of Abraham Lincoln

by Isaac N. Arnold

The furniture of this room consisted of a long oak table, covered with cloth, and oak chairs. This table stood in the center of the room, and was the one around which the Cabinet sat, at Cabinet meetings, and is faithfully painted in Carpenter's picture of the Emancipation Proclamation. At the end of the table, near the window, was a large writing-table and desk, with pigeon-holes for papers, such as are common in lawyers' offices. In front of this, in a large arm-chair, Mr. Lincoln usually sat. Behind his chair, and against the west wall of the room, was another writing-desk high enough to write upon when standing, and upon the top of this were a few books, among which were the Statutes of the United States, a Bible, and a copy of Shakespeare. There was a bureau, with wooden doors, with pigeon-holes for papers, standing between the windows. Here the President kept such papers as he wished readily to refer to. There were two plain sofas in the room; generally two or three map-frames, from which hung military maps, on which the movements of the armies were continually traced and followed. The only picture in the room was an old engraving of Jackson, which hung over the fireplace; late in his administration was added a fine photograph of John Bright. Two doors opened into this room—one from the Secretary's, the other from the great hall, where the crowd usually waited. A bell-cord hung within reach of his hand, while he sat at his desk. There was an ante-room adjoining this, plainly furnished; but the crowd usually pressed to the hall, from which an entrance might be directly had to the President's room. A messenger stood at the door, and took in the cards and names of visitors.

Here, in this room, more plainly furnished than many law and business offices—plainer than the offices of the heads of bureaus in the Executive Departments—Mr. Lincoln spent the days of his Presidency. Here he received everybody, from the Lieutenant-General and Chief-Justice, down to the private soldier and humblest citizen. Custom had established certain rules of precedence, fixing the order in which officials should be received. The members of the Cabinet and the high officers of the army were, of course, received always promptly. Senators and members of Congress, who are usually charged with the presentation of petitions and recommendations for appointments, and who are expected to right every wrong and correct every evil each one of their respective constituents may be suffering, or imagine himself to be suffering, have an immense amount of business with the Executive. I have often seen as many as ten or fifteen Senators and twenty or thirty Members of the House in the hall, waiting their turn to see the President. They would go to the ante-room, or up to the hall in front of the reception-room, and await their turns. The order of precedence was, first the Vice-President, if present, then the Speaker of the House, and then Senators and Members of the House in the order of their arrival, and the presentation of their cards. Frequently Senators and Members would go to the White House as early as eight or nine in the morning, to secure precedence and an early interview. While they waited, the loud ringing laugh of Mr. Lincoln, in which he was sure to be joined by all inside, but which was rather provoking to those outside, was often heard by the waiting and impatient crowd. Here, from early morning to late at night, he sat, listened, and decided—patient, just, considerate, hopeful. All the people came to him as to a father. He was more accessible than any of the leading members of his Cabinet—much more so than Mr. Seward, shut up in the State Department, writing his voluminous dispatches; far more so than Mr. Stanton, indefatigable, stern, abrupt, but ever honest and faithful. Mr. Lincoln saw everybody—governors, senators, congressmen, officers, ministers, bankers, merchants, farmers—all classes of people; all approached him with confidence, from the highest to the lowest; but this incessant labor and fearful responsibility told upon his vigorous frame. He left Illinois for the capital, with a frame of iron and nerves of steel. His old friends, who knew him in Illinois as a man who knew not what illness was, who knew him ever genial and sparkling with fun, as the months and years of the war passed slowly on, saw the wrinkles on his forehead deepened into furrows; and the laugh of old days became sometimes almost hollow; it did not now always seem to come from the heart, as in former years. Anxiety, responsibility, care, thought, wore upon even his giant frame, and his nerves of steel became at times irritable. For more than four years he had no respite, no holidays. When others fled away from the dust and heat of the capital, he must stay; he would not leave the helm until the danger was past and the ship was in port.

Mrs. Lincoln watched his care-worn face with the anxiety of an affectionate wife, and sometimes took him from his labors almost in spite of himself. She urged him to ride, and to go to the theater and places of amusement, to divert his mind from his engrossing cares.

Let us for a moment try to appreciate the greatness of his work and his services. He was the Commander-in-Chief, during the war, of the largest army and navy in the world; and this army and navy was created during his administration, and its officers were sought out and appointed by him. The operations of the Treasury were vast beyond all previous conceptions of the ability of the country to sustain; and yet, when he entered upon the Presidency, he found an empty treasury, the public credit shaken, no army, no navy, the officers all strangers, many deserting, more in sympathy with the rebels, Congress divided, and public sentiment unformed. The party which elected him were in a minority. The old Democratic party, which had ruled the country for half a century, hostile to him, and, by long political association, in sympathy with the insurgent States. His own party, new, made up of discordant elements, and not yet consolidated, unaccustomed to rule, and neither his party nor himself possessing any prestige. He entered the White House, the object of personal prejudice to a majority of the people, and of contempt to a powerful minority. And yet I am satisfied, from the statement of the conversation of Mr. Lincoln with Mr. Bateman, quoted hereafter, and from various other reasons, that he himself more fully appreciated the terrible conflict before him than any man in the nation, and that even then he hoped and expected to be the Liberator of the slaves. He did not yet clearly perceive the manner in which it was to be done, but he believed it would be done, and that God would guide him.

In four years, this man crushed the most stupendous rebellion, supported by armies more vast, and resources greater than were ever before combined to overthrow any government. He held together and consolidated, against warring factions, his own great party, and strengthened it by securing the confidence and bringing to his aid a large proportion of all other parties. He was re-elected almost by acclamation, and he led the people, step by step, up to emancipation, and saw his work crowned by the Constitutional Amendment, eradicating Slavery from the Republic for ever. Did this man lack firmness? Study the boldness of the Emancipation! See with what fidelity he stood by his Proclamation! In his message of 1863, he said: "I will never retract the proclamation, nor return to slavery any person made free by it." In 1864, he said: "If it should ever be made a duty of the Executive to return to slavery any person made free by the Proclamation or the acts of Congress, some other person, not I, must execute the law."

When hints of peace were suggested as obtainable by giving over the negro race again to bondage, he repelled it with indignation. When the rebel Vice-President, Stephens, at Fortress Monroe, tempted him to give up the freedman, and seek the glory of a foreign war, in which the Union and Confederate soldiers might join, neither party sacrificing its honor, he was inflexible; he would die sooner than break the nation's plighted faith.

Mr. Lincoln did not enter with reluctance upon the plan of emancipation; and in this statement I am corroborated by Lovejoy and Sumner, and many others. If he did not act more promptly, it was because he knew he must not go faster than the people. Men have questioned the firmness, boldness, and will of Mr. Lincoln. He had no vanity in the exhibition of power, but he quietly acted, when he felt it his duty so to do, with a boldness and firmness never surpassed.

What bolder act than the surrender of Mason and Slidell, against the resolution of Congress and the almost universal popular clamor, without consulting the Senate or taking advice from his Cabinet? The removals of McClellan and Butler, the modification of the orders of Fremont and Hunter, were acts of a bold, decided character. He acted for himself, taking personally the responsibility of deciding the great questions of his administration.

He was the most democratic of all the presidents. Personally, he was homely, plain, without pretension, and without ostentation. He believed in the people, and had faith in their good impulses. He ever addressed himself to their reason, and not to their prejudices. His language was simple, sometimes quaint, never sacrificing expression to elegance. When he spoke to the people, it was as though he said to them, "Come, let us reason together." There can not be found in all his speeches or writings a single vulgar expression, nor an appeal to any low sentiment or prejudice. He had nothing of the demagogue. He never himself alluded to his humble origin, except to express regret for the deficiencies of his education. He always treated the people in such a way, that they knew that he respected them, believed them honest, capable of judging correctly, and disposed to do right.

I know not how, in a few words, I can better indicate his political and moral character, than by the following incident: A member of Congress, knowing the purity of his life, his reverence for God, and his respect for religion, one day expressed surprise, that he had not joined a church. After mentioning some difficulties he felt in regard to some articles of faith, Mr. Lincoln said, "Whenever any church will inscribe over its altar, as its sole qualification for membership, Christ's condensed statement of both Law and Gospel, 'Thou shalt love the Lord, thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself,' that church will I join with all my heart."