Abraham Lincoln, Volume I

by Jr. John T. Morse

"Once adopted, debates on it must end, and all agree and abide.

"

It is not in my especial province.

"But I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility."

Suggestions so wild could not properly constitute material for "consideration" by the President; but much consideration on the part of students of those times and men is provoked by the fact that such counsel emanated from such a source. The secretary of state, heretofore the most distinguished leader in the great Republican movement, who should by merit of actual achievement have been the Republican candidate for the presidency, and who was expected by a large part of the country to save an ignorant president from bad blunders, was advancing a proposition to create pretexts whereby to force into existence a foreign war upon a basis which was likely to set one half of the civilized world against the other half. The purpose for which he was willing to do this awful thing was: to paralyze for a while domestic discussions, and to undo and leave to be done anew by the next generation all that vast work which he himself, and the President whom he advised, and the leaders of the great multitude whom they both represented, had for years been engaged in prosecuting with all the might that was in them. But the explanation is simple: like many another at that trying moment, the secretary was smitten with sudden panic at the condition which had been brought about so largely by his own efforts. It was strictly a panic, for it passed away rapidly as panics do.

The biographer of Mr. Seward may fairly enough glide lightly over this episode, since it was nothing more than an episode; but one who writes of Mr. Lincoln must, in justice, call attention to this spectacle of the sage statesman from whom, if from any one, this "green hand," this inexperienced President, must seek guidance, thus in deliberate writing pointing out a course which was ridiculous and impossible, and which, if it had been possible, would have been an intolerably humiliating retreat. The anxious people, who thought that their untried President might, upon the worst estimate of his own abilities, get on fairly well by the aid of wise and skilled advisers, would have been aghast had they known that, inside of the government, the pending question was: not whether Mr. Lincoln would accept sound instruction, but whether he would have sense to recognize bad advice, and independence to reject it. Before Mr. Seward went to bed on that night of April 1, he was perhaps the only man in the country who knew the solution of this problem. But he knew it, for Mr. Lincoln had already answered his letter. It had not taken the President long! The secretary's extraordinary offer to assume the responsibility of pursuing and directing the policy of the government was rejected within a few hours after it was made; rejected not offensively, but briefly, clearly, decisively, and without thanks. Concerning the proposed policies, domestic and foreign, the President said as little as was called for; he

actually did not even refer to the scheme for inaugurating gratuitously a war with a large part of Europe, in order for a while to distract attention from slavery.

To us, to-day, it seems that the President could not have missed a course so obvious; yet Mr. Seward, who suggested the absurdity, was a great statesman. In truth, the President had shown not only sense but nerve. For the difference between Seward's past opportunities and experience and his own was appreciated by him as fully as by any one. He knew perfectly well that what seemed the less was controlling what seemed the greater when he overruled his secretary. It took courage on the part of a thoughtful man to put himself in such a position. Other solemn reflections also could not be avoided. Not less interested than any other citizen in the fate of the nation, he had also a personal relation to the ultimate event which was exclusively his own. For he himself might be called, in a certain sense, the very cause of rebellion; of course the people who had elected him carried the real responsibility; but he stood as the token of the difference, the concrete provocation to the fight. The South had said: Abraham Lincoln brings secession. It was frightful to think that, as he was in fact the signal, so posterity might mistake him for the very cause of the rending of a great nation, the failure of a grand experiment. It might be that this destiny was before him, for the outcome of this struggle no one could

foretell; it might be his sad lot to mark the end of the line of Presidents of the United States. Lincoln was not a man who could escape the full weight of these reflections, and it is to be remembered that all actions were taken beneath that weight. It was a strong man, then, who stood up and said, This is my load and I will carry it; and who did carry it, when others offered to shift much of it upon their own shoulders; also who would not give an hour's thought to a scheme which promised to lift it away entirely, and to leave it for some other who by and by should come after him.

It is worth while to remember that Mr. Lincoln was the most advised man, often the worst advised man, in the annals of mankind. The torrent must have been terribly confusing! Another instance deserves mention: shortly before Mr. Seward's strange proposal, Governor Hicks, distracted at the tumult in Maryland, had suggested that the quarrel between North and South should be referred to Lord Lyons as arbitrator! It was difficult to know whether to be amused or resentful before a proposition at once so silly and so ignominious. Yet it came from an important official, and it was only one instance among thousands. With war as an actuality, such vagaries as those of Hicks and Seward came sharply to an end. People wondered and talked somewhat as to how long hostilities would last, how much they would cost, how they would end; and were not more correct in these speculations than they had been in