The organization of the House was so promptly effected that the President's message was received on the same day. Throughout the country there was an eagerness to hear Mr. Lincoln's views on the painful situation. The people had read with deep sympathy the tender plea to the South contained in his Inaugural address. The next occasion on which they had heard from him officially was his proclamation for troops after the fall of Sumter. Public opinion in the North would undoubtedly be much influenced by what the President should now say. Mr. Lincoln was keenly alive to the importance of his message, and he weighed every word he wrote. He maintained, as he always did, calmness of tone, moderation in expression. He appealed to reason, not to prejudice. He spoke as one who knew that he would be judged by the public opinion of the world. It was his fortune to put his name to many state papers of extraordinary weight, but never to one of graver import than his first message to Congress.
PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S FIRST MESSAGE.
The President informed Congress that he would not call their attention "to any ordinary subject of legislation." In fact there were but two things for Congress to do in the national exigency— provide for the enlistment of an army, and for the raising of money necessary to the conduct of a great war. The President vividly narrated the progressive steps in the South which had brought about the existing status of affairs. He depicted in strong colors the condition in which he found the government when he assumed office; how "the forts, arsenals, dock-yards, and custom-houses" of the National Government had been seized; how "the accumulations of national revenue" had been appropriated; how "a disproportionate share of Federal muskets and rifles" had found their way into the Southern States, and had been seized to be used against the government; how the navy had been "scattered in distant seas, leaving but a small part of it within immediate reach of the government;" how seven States had seceded from the Union, and formed "a separate government, which is already invoking recognition, aid, and intervention from foreign powers." With this critical situation he was compelled to deal at once, and the policy which he had chosen when he entered upon his office looked to the exhaustion of all peaceful measures before a resort to stronger ones.
In pursuing the policy of peace, the President had "sought only to hold the public places and property not already wrested from the government, and to collect the revenue—relying for the rest on time, discussion, and the ballot-box." He had even gone so far as "to promise a continuance of the mails at government expense to the very people who were resisting the government;" and he had given "repeated pledges" that every thing should be "forborne without which it was believed possible to keep the government on foot;" that there should be no "disturbances to any of the people, or to any of their rights." He had gone in the direction of conciliation as far as it was possible to go, without consenting to a disruption of the government.
The President gave in detail the events which led to the assault on Sumter. He declared that the reduction of the fort "was in no sense a matter of self-defense on the part of the assailants." They well knew "that the garrison in the fort could by no possibility commit an aggression upon them;" they were expressly notified that "the giving of bread to the few brave and hungry men of the garrison was all which would be attempted, unless themselves, by resisting so much, should provoke more." They knew that the National Government desired to keep the garrison in the fort, "not to assail them, but merely to maintain visible possession, and thus to preserve the Union from actual and immediate dissolution." The Confederate Government had "assailed and reduced the fort for precisely the reverse object—to drive out the visible authority of the Federal Union, and thus force it to immediate dissolution."
"In this act," said Mr. Lincoln, "discarding all else, they have forced upon the country the distinct issue—immediate dissolution or blood; and this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question, whether a Constitutional Republic, a government of the people by the same people, can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes." The President presented this point with elaboration. The question really involved, was "whether discontented individuals, too few in number to control the administration according to the organic law, can always, upon the pretenses made in this case, or any other pretenses, or arbitrarily without pretenses, break up the government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask, Is there in all Republics this inherent and fatal weakness? Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?"
The President was severe upon Virginia and Virginians. He had made earnest effort to save the State from joining the Rebellion. He had held conferences with her leading men, and had gone so far on the 13th of April as to address a communication, for public use in Virginia, to the State convention then in session at Richmond, in answer to a resolution of the convention asking him to define the policy he intended to pursue in regard to the Confederate States. In this he re-asserted the position assumed in his Inaugural, and added that "if, as now appears to be true, an unprovoked assault has been made on Fort Sumter, I shall hold myself at liberty to repossess it if I can, and the like places which had been seized before the government was devolved upon me. I shall, to the best of my ability, repel force by force." This letter was used to inflame public sentiment in Virginia, and to hurl the State into Secession through the agency of a Convention elected to maintain the Union. Mr. Lincoln afterwards believed that the letter had been obtained from him under disingenuous pretenses and for the express purpose of using it, as it was used, against the Union and in favor of the Confederacy.
PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S FIRST MESSAGE.
The President's resentment towards those who had thus, as he thought, broken faith with him is visible in his message. Referring to the Virginia convention, he observed that, "the people had chosen a large majority of professed Union men" as delegates. "After the fall of Sumter, many members of that majority went over to the original Disunion minority, and with them adopted an ordinance withdrawing the State from the Union." In his own peculiar style, Mr. Lincoln made the stinging comment, "Whether this change was wrought by their great approval of the assault upon Sumter, or by their great resentment at the government's resistance to that assault, is not definitely known." Though the Virginia convention had submitted the ordinance of Secession to a vote of the people, to be taken on a day nearly a month in the future, the President informed Congress that "they immediately commenced acting as if the State was already out of the Union." They seized the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, and the navy-yard at Norfolk, and "received, perhaps invited, large bodies of troops from the so-called seceding States." They "sent members to their Congress at Montgomery, and finally permitted the insurrectionary government to be transferred to their Capitol at Richmond." Mr. Lincoln concluded with an ominous sentence which might well have inspired Virginians with a sense of impending peril; "The people of Virginia have thus allowed his giant insurrection to make its nest within her borders, and this government has no choice left but to deal with it where it finds it." In that moment of passion these words, with all their terrible significance, were heard by Southern men only to be jeered at.
When the President came to specific recommendations he was brief and pointed. He asked that Congress would place "at the control of the government at least four hundred thousand men, and four hundred millions of money." He said this number was about one- tenth of those of proper age within the regions where all were apparently willing to engage, and the sum was "less than a twenty- third part of the money value owned by men who seem ready to devote the whole." He argued that "a debt of six hundred millions of dollars is now a less sum per head than the debt of the Revolution when we came out of that struggle, and the money value in the country bears even a greater proportion to what it was then than does the population." "Surely," he added, "each man has as strong a motive now to preserve our liberties as each had then to establish them."