LINCOLN, Abraham,
twenty-sixth president of the United States and sixteenth under the US
Constitution (For Lincoln notes on the 1st constitution go to abraham-lincoln.org/ArticlesLincoln ), born in Hardin county, Kentucky, 12 February, 1809; died in
Washington, D. C., 15 April, 1865. His earliest ancestor in America seems to
have been Samuel Lincoln, of Norwich, England, who settled in Hingham, Mass.,
where he died, leaving a son, Mordecai, whose son of the same name removed to
Monmouth, N.
J., and thence to Berks County, Pa., dying there in 1735. He was a man of some
property, which at his death was divided among his sons and daughters, one of
whom, John Lincoln, having disposed of his land in Pennsylvania and New Jersey,
established himself in Rockingham county, Va. The records of that county show
that he was possessed of a valuable estate, which was divided among five sons,
one of whom, named Abraham, emigrated to Kentucky about 1780.
At this time
Daniel Boone was
engaged in those labors and exploits in the new country of Kentucky that have
rendered his name illustrious; and there is no doubt that Abraham Lincoln was
induced by his friendship for Boone to give up what seems to have been an
assured social position in Virginia and take his family to share with him the
risks and hardships of life in the new territory. The families of Boone and
Lincoln had been closely allied for many years. Several marriages had taken
place between them, and their names occur in each other's wills as friends and
executors.
The pioneer Lincoln, who took with him what for the time
and place was a sufficient provision in money, the result of the sale of his
property in Virginia, acquired by means of cash and land-warrants a large estate
in Kentucky, as is shown by the records of Jefferson and Campbell Counties.
About 1784 he was killed by Indians while working with his three sons--Mordee,
Josiah, and Thomas--in clearing the forest. His widow removed after his death to
Washington County, and there brought up her family. The two elder sons became
reputable citizens, and the two daughters married in a decent condition of life.
Thomas, the youngest son, seems to have been below the average of the family in
enterprise and other qualities that command success. He learned the trade of a
carpenter, and married, 12 June, 1806, Nancy Hanks, a niece of the man with whom
he learned his trade. She is represented, by those who knew her at the time of
her marriage, as a handsome young woman of twenty-three, of appearance and
intellect superior to her lowly fortunes. The young couple began housekeeping
with little means. Three children were born to them; the first, a girl, who grew
to maturity, married, and died, leaving no children; the third a boy, who died
in infancy ; the second was Abraham Lincoln.
Thomas Lincoln remained in Kentucky until 1816, when he
resolved to remove to the still newer country of Indiana, and settled in a rich
and fertile forest country near Little Pigeon creek, not far distant from the
Ohio river. The family suffered from diseases incident to pioneer life, and Mrs.
Lincoln died in 1818 at the age of thirty-five. Thomas Lincoln, while on a visit
to Kentucky, married a worthy, industrious, and intelligent widow named Sarah
Bush Johnston. She was a woman of admirable order and system in her habits, and
brought to the home of the pioneer in the Indiana timber many of the comforts of
civilized life. The neighborhood was one of the roughest. The president once
said of it : "It was a wild region, with many bears and other wild animals
still in the woods, and there were some schools, so called; but no qualification
was ever required of a teacher beyond readin', writin', and cipherin' to the
rule of three. If a straggler supposed to understand Latin happened to sojourn
in the neighborhood, he was looked upon as a wizard. There was absolutely
nothing to excite ambition for education." But in spite of this the boy
Abraham made the best use of the limited opportunities afforded him, and learned
all that the half-educated backwoods teachers could impart; and besides this he
read over and over all the books he could find.
He practiced constantly the rules of arithmetic, which
he had acquired at school, and began, even in his early childhood, to put in
writing his recollections of what he had read and his impressions of what he saw
about him. By the time he was nineteen years of age he had acquired a remarkably
clear and serviceable handwriting, and showed sufficient business capacity to be
entrusted with a cargo of farm products, which he took to New Orleans and sold.
In 1830 his father emigrated once more, to Macon county,
Illinois. Lincoln had by this time attained his extraordinary stature of six
feet four inches, and with it enormous muscular strength, which was at once put
at the disposal of his father in building his cabin, clearing the field, and
splitting from the walnut forests, which were plentiful in that county, the
rails with which the farm was fenced. Thomas Lincoln, however, soon deserted
this new home, his last migration being to Goose Nest Prairie, in Coles county,
where he died in 1851, seventy-three years of age. In his last days he was
tenderly cared for by his son.
Abraham Lincoln left his
father's house as
soon as the farm was fenced and cleared, hired himself to a man named Denton
Offutt, in Sangamon County, assisted him to build a flat-boat, accompanied him
to New Orleans on a trading voyage, and returned with him to New Salem, in
Menard county, where Offutt opened a store for the sale of general merchandise.
Little was accomplished in this way, and Lincoln employed his too abundant
leisure in constant reading and study. He learned during this time the elements
of English grammar, and made a beginning in the study of surveying and the
principles of law. But the next year an Indian war began, occasioned by the
return of Black Hawk with his bands of Sacs and Foxes from Iowa to Illinois.
Lincoln volunteered in a company raised in Sangamon
county, and was immediately elected captain. His company was organized at
Richland on 21 April, 1832; but his service in command of it was brief, for it
was mustered out on 27 May. Lincoln immediately re-enlisted as a private, and
served for several weeks in that capacity, being finally mustered out on 16
June, 1832, by Lieut.
Robert Anderson,
who afterward commanded
Fort Sumter at the beginning of the civil war.
He returned home and began a hasty canvass for election
to the legislature. His name had been announced in the spring before his
enlistment; but now only ten days were left before the election, which took
place in August. In spite of these disadvantages, he made a good race and was
far from the foot of the poll. Although he was defeated, he gained the almost
unanimous vote of his own neighborhood, New Salem giving him 277 votes against
3. He now began to look about him for employment, and for a time thought
seriously of learning the trade of a blacksmith; but an opportunity presented
itself to buy the only store in the settlement, which he did, giving his notes
for the whole amount involved.
He was associated with an idle and dissolute partner,
and the business soon went to wreck, leaving Lincoln burdened with a debt that
it required several years of frugality and industry for him to meet; but it was
finally paid in full. After this failure he devoted himself with the greatest
earnestness and industry to the study of law. He was appointed postmaster of New
Salem in 1833, an office that he held for three years. The emoluments of the
place were very slight, but it gave him opportunities for reading. At the same
time he was appointed deputy to John Calhoun, the county surveyor, and, his
modest wants being, supplied by these two functions, he gave his remaining
leisure unreservedly to the study of law and politics.
He was a candidate for the legislature in August, 1834,
and was elected this time at the head of the list. He was re-elected in 1836,
1838, and 1840, after which he declined further election. After entering the
legislature he did not return to New Salem, but, having by this time attained
some proficiency in the law, he removed to Springfield, where he went into
partnership with John T. Stuart, whose acquaintance he had begun in the Black
Hawk war and continued at Vandalia. He took rank from the first among the
leading members of the legislature. He was instrumental in having the state
capital removed from Vandalia to Springfield, and during his eight years of
service his ability, industry, and weight of character gained him such standing
among his associates that in his last two terms he was the candidate of his
party for the speakership of the house of representatives.
In 1846 he was elected to congress, his opponent being
the Rev. Peter Cartwright. The most important congressional measure with which
his name was associated during his single term of service was a scheme for the
emancipation of the slaves in the District of Columbia, which in the prevailing
temper of the time was refused consideration by congress. He was not a candidate
for re-election, but for the first and only time in his life he applied for an
executive appointment, the commissionership of the general land-office. The
place was given to another man, but
President Taylor's
administration offered Mr. Lincoln the governorship of the territory of Oregon,
which he declined.
Mr. Lincoln had by this time become the most influential
exponent of the principles of the Whig party in Illinois and his services were
in request in every campaign. After his return from congress he devoted himself
with great assiduity and success to the practice of law, and speedily gained a
commanding position at the bar. As he says himself, he was losing his interest
in politics when the repeal of the
Missouri
Compromise aroused him again. The profound agitation of the question of
slavery, which in 1854 followed the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, awakened
all the energies of Lincoln's nature. He regarded this act, in which Senator
Douglas was the most prominent agent of the reactionary party, as a gross breach
of faith, and began at once a series of earnest political discussions which
immediately placed him at the head of the party that, not only in Illinois but
throughout the west, was speedily formed to protest against and oppose the
throwing open of the territories to the encroachments of slavery.
The legislature elected in Illinois in the heat of this
discussion contained a majority of members opposed to the policy of Douglas. The
duty of selecting a senator in place of General Shields, whose term was dosing,
devolved upon this legislature, and Mr. Lincoln was the unanimous choice of the
Whig members. But they did not command a clear majority of the legislature.
There were four members of Democratic antecedents who, while they were ardently
opposed to the extension of slavery, were not willing to east their votes for a
Whig candidate, and adhered tenaciously through several ballots to Lyman
Trumbull, a Democrat of their own way of thinking. Lincoln, fearing that this
dissension among the anti-slavery men might result in the election of a
supporter of Douglas, urged his friends to go over in a body to the support of
Trumbull, and his influence was sufficient to accomplish this result. Trumbull
was elected, and for many years served the Republican cause in the senate with
ability and zeal.
As soon as the Republican
party became fully organized in the nation, embracing in its ranks the
anti-slavery members of the old Whig and Democratic parties, Mr. Lincoln, by
general consent, took his place at the head of the party in Illinois; and when,
in 1858, Senator Douglas sought a re-election to the senate, the Republicans
with one voice selected Mr. Lincoln as his antagonist. He had already made
several speeches of remarkable eloquence and power against the pro-slavery
reaction of which the Nebraska bill was the significant beginning, and when Mr.
Douglas returned to Illinois to begin his canvass for the senate, he was
challenged by Mr. Lincoln to a series of joint discussions.
The challenge was accepted,
and the most remarkable oratorical combat the state has ever witnessed took
place between them during the summer. Mr. Douglas defended his thesis of
non-intervention with slavery in the territories (the doctrine known as
"popular sovereignty," and derided as "squatter sovereignty") with
remarkable adroitness and energy. The ground that Mr. Lincoln took was higher
and bolder than had yet been assumed by any American statesman of his time. In
the brief and sententious speech in which he accepted the championship of his
party, before the Republican convention of 16 June, 1858, he uttered the
following pregnant and prophetic words: "A house divided against itself
cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and
half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house
to fall; but I do expect that it will cease to be divided. It will become all
the one thing or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the
further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief
that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it
forward until it shall become alike lawful in all the states, old as well as
new, north as well as south."
This bold utterance excited
the fears of his timid friends, and laid him open to the hackneyed and
conventional attacks of the supporters of slavery; but throughout the contest,
while he did not for an instant lower this lofty tone of opposition to slavery
and hope of its extinction, he refused to be crowded by the fears of his friends
or the denunciations of his enemies away from the strictly constitutional ground
upon which his opposition was made. The debates between him and
Senator Douglas
aroused extraordinary interest throughout the state and the country. The men
were perhaps equally matched in oratorical ability and adroitness in debate, but
Lincoln's superiority in moral insight, and especially in farseeing political
sagacity, soon became apparent. The most important and significant of the
debates was that which took place at Freeport. Mr. Douglas had previously asked
Mr. Lincoln a series of questions intended to embarrass him, which Lincoln
without the slightest reserve answered by a categorical yes or no. At Freeport,
Lincoln. taking his turn, inquired of Douglas whether the people of a territory
could in any lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States,
exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a state constitution.
By his reply, intimating that slavery might be excluded by unfriendly
territorial legislation, Douglas gained a momentary advantage in the
anti-slavery region in which he spoke, but dealt a fatal blow to his popularity
in the south, the result of which was seen two years afterward at the Charleston
convention. The ground assumed by Senator Douglas was, in fact, utterly
untenable, and Lincoln showed this in one of his terse sentences. " Judge
Douglas holds," he said, "that a thing may lawfully be driven away from a
place where it has a lawful right to go."
This debate established the
reputation of Mr. Lincoln as one of the leading orators of the Republican party
of the Union, and a speech that he delivered at Cooper Institute, in New York,
on 27 February, 1860, in which he showed that the unbroken record of the
founders of the republic was in favor of the restriction of slavery and against
its extension, widened and confirmed his reputation; so that when the Republican
convention came together in Chicago in May, 1860, he was nominated for the
presidency on the third ballot, over
William H. Seward,
who was his principal competitor.
The
Democratic convention, which met in Charleston, S. C., broke up after numerous
fruitless balloting, and divided into two sections. The southern half, unable to
trust Mr. Douglas with the interests of slavery after his Freeport speech, first
adjourned to Richmond, but again joined the other half at Baltimore, where a
second disruption took place, after which the southern half nominated
John C.
Breckinridge, of Kentucky, and the northern portion nominated Mr. Douglas.
John Bell, of Tennessee, was nominated by the so-called Constitutional Union
party.
Lincoln,
therefore, supported by the entire anti-slavery sentiment of the north, gained
an easy victory over the three other parties. The election took place on 6
November, and when the electoral college cast their votes Lincoln was found to
have 180, Breckinridge 72, Bell 39, and Douglas 12. The popular vote stood: for
Lincoln, 1,866,462; for Douglas, 1,375,157; for Breckinridge, 847,953; for Bell,
590,631.
The
extreme partisans of slavery had not even waited for the election of Lincoln, to
begin their preparations for an insurrection, and as soon as the result was
declared a movement for separation was begun in
South
Carolina, and it carried along with her the states of
Georgia,
Alabama,
Florida,
Mississippi,
Louisiana,
and Texas. A
provisional government, styled the "Confederate States of America," of
which Jefferson
Davis, of Mississippi, was made president, was promptly organized, and
seized, with few exceptions, all the posts, arsenals, and public property of the
United States within their limits. Confronted by this extraordinary crisis, Mr.
Lincoln kept his own counsel, and made no public expression of his intentions or
his policy until he was inaugurated on 4 March, 1861.
He called about him a
cabinet of the most prominent members of the anti-slavery parties of the nation,
giving no preference to any special faction. His secretary of state was William
H. Seward, of New York, who had been his principal rival for the nomination, and
whose eminence and abilities designated him as the leading member of the
administration; the secretary of the treasury was
Salmon P. Chase,
of Ohio, whose pre-eminence in the west was as unquestioned as Seward's in the
east ; of war, Simon Cameron, of Pennsylvania, the most influential politician
of that state; of the navy, Gideon Welles, of Connecticut; of the interior,
Caleb B. Smith, of Indiana: the border slave-states were represented in the
government by Edward
Bates, of Missouri, attorney-general, and
Montgomery Blair,
of Maryland, postmaster-general--both of them men of great distinction of
character and high standing as lawyers. Seward, Smith, and Bates were of Whig
antecedents; all the rest of Democratic. The cabinet underwent, in the course of
Mr. Lincoln's term, the following modifications : Sec. Chase, after a brilliant
administration of the finances, resigned in 1864 from personal reasons, and was
succeeded by
William P. Fessenden, of Maine ; Sec. Cameron left the war department at the
close of the Russia, and his place was taken by
Edwin M. Stanton,
a war
Democrat of singular energy and vigor, and equal ability
and devotion; Sec. Smith, accepting a judgeship, gave way to John P. Usher, of
Indiana; Attorney-General Bates resigned in the last year of the administration,
and was succeeded by
James Speed, of Kentucky; and Postmaster-General Blair about the same time
gave way to
William Dennison, of Ohio.
In his inaugural address President Lincoln treated the
acts of secession as a nullity. He declared the Union perpetual and inviolate,
and announced with perfect firmness, though with the greatest moderation of
speech and feeling, the intention of the government to maintain its authority
and to hold the places under its jurisdiction. He made an elaborate and
unanswerable argument against the legality as well as the justice of secession,
and further showed, with convincing clearness, that peaceful secession was
impossible. "Can aliens make treaties," he said, "easier than friends
can make laws
Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between
aliens than laws can among friends ? Suppose you go to war ; you cannot fight
always, and when, after much loss on both sides and no gain on either, you cease
fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon
you." He pleaded for peace in a strain of equal tenderness and dignity, and
in closing he said : " In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and
not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail
you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have
no oath registered in heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have a
most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it." This speech profoundly
affected the public opinion of the north; but in the excited state of sentiment
that then controlled the south it naturally met only contempt and defiance in
that section.
A few weeks later the inevitable war began, in an attack
upon Fort Sumter by the secessionists of South Carolina under General
G. T. Beauregard,
and after a long bombardment the fort surrendered on 13 April, 1861. The
president instantly called for a force of 75,000 three-months' militiamen, and
three weeks later ordered the enlistment of 64,000 soldiers and 18,000 seamen
for three years. He set on foot a blockade of the southern ports, and called
congress together in special session, choosing for their day of meeting the 4th
of July. The remaining states of the south rapidly arrayed themselves on one
side or the other; all except Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri were drawn into
the secession movement, and the western part of Virginia, adhering to the Union,
under the name of
West
Virginia, separated itself from that ancient commonwealth.
The first important battle of the war took place at
Bull Run, near
Manassas station, Va., 21 July, 1861, and resulted in the defeat of the National
troops under General Irwin McDowell by a somewhat larger force of the
Confederates under Generals
Joseph E. Johnston
and Beauregard. Though the loss in killed and wounded was not great, and was
about the same on both sides, the victory was still one of the utmost importance
for the Confederates, and gave them a great increase of prestige on both sides
of the Atlantic. They were not, however, able to pursue their advantage. The
summer was passed in enlisting, drilling, and equipping a formidable National
army on the banks of the Potomac, which was given in charge of General
George B.
McClellan, a young officer who had distinguished himself by a successful
campaign in western Virginia.
In spite of the urgency of
the government, which was increased by the earnestness of the people and their
representatives in congress, General McClellan made no advance until the spring
of 1862, when General Johnston, in command of the Confederate army, evacuated
the position which, with about 45,000 men, he had held during the autumn and
winter against the Army of the Potomac, amounting to about 177,.000 effectives.
General McClellan then transferred his army to the peninsula between the James
and York rivers. Although there was but a force of 16,000 opposed to him when he
landed, he spent a month before the works at Yorktown, and when he was prepared
to open fire upon them they were evacuated, and General Johnston retreated to
the neighborhood of Richmond.
The battle of Seven Pines,
in which the Confederates, successful in their first attack, were afterward
repelled, was fought on 31 May, 1862. Johnston was wounded, and the command
devolved upon General
Robert E. Lee, who in the latter part of June moved out from his position
before Richmond and attacked McClellan's right flank, under General Fitz-John
Porter, at Gaines's Mills, north of the Chickahominy. Porter, with one corps,
resisted the Confederate army all day with great gallantry, unassisted by the
main army under McClellan, but withdrew in the evening, and McClellan at once
began his retreat to the James river. Several battles were fought on the way, in
which the Confederates were checked; but the retreat continued until the
National army reached the James. Taking position at Malvern Hill, they inflicted
a severe defeat upon General Lee, but were immediately after withdrawn by
General McClellan to Harrison's Landing. Here, as at other times during his
career, McClellan labored under a strange hallucination as to the numbers of his
enemy. He generally estimated them at not less than twice their actual force,
and continually re-preached the president for not giving him impossible
re-enforcements to equal the imaginary numbers he thought opposed to him. In
point of fact, his army was always in excess of that of Johnston or Lee.
The continual disasters in
the east were somewhat compensated by a series of brilliant successes in the
west. In February, 1862, General
Ulysses S. Granthad captured the Confederate forts Henry and Donelson, thus laying open the
great strategic lines of the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, and, moving
southward, had fought (6 and 7 April) the
battle of Shiloh,
with unfavorable results on the first day, which were turned to a victory on the
second with the aid of General D. C. Buell and his army, a battle in which
General Albert Sidney Johnston was killed and the Confederate invasion of
Kentucky baffled.
Farragut, on
24: April, had won a brilliant naval victory over the twin forts above the
mouths of the Mississippi, which resulted in the capture of New Orleans and the
control of the lower Mississippi. After General McClellan's retreat to the
James, the president visited the army at Harrison's Landing (8 July), and, after
careful consultations with the corps commanders, became convinced that in the
actual disposition of the officers and the troops there was no reasonable
expectation of a successful movement upon Richmond by McClellan. An order was
therefore issued for the withdrawal of the army from the James, and,
General Halleck having been appointed general-in-chief,
General Pope was sent forward
from Washington with a small force to delay the Confederate army under General
Lee until the Army of the Potomac could arrive and be concentrated to support
him. McClellan's movements, however, were so deliberate, and there was such a
want of confidence and co-operation on the part of his officers toward General
Pope, that the National army met with a decisive defeat on the same battlefield
of Bull Run that saw their first disaster. General Pope, disheartened by the
lack of sympathy and support that he discerned among the most eminent officers
of the Army of the Potomac, retreated upon Washington, and General McClellan,
who seemed to be the only officer under whom the army was at the moment willing
to serve, was placed in command of it. General Lee, elated with his success,
crossed the Potomac, but was met by the army under McClellan at South Mountain
and Antietam,
and after two days of great slaughter Lee retreated into Virginia.
President Lincoln availed
himself of this occasion to give effect to a resolve that had long been maturing
in his mind in an act the most momentous in its significance and results that
the century has witnessed. For a year and a half he had been subjected to urgent
solicitations from the two great political parties of the country, the one side
appealing to him to take decided measures against slavery, and the other
imploring him to pursue a conservative course in regard to that institution. His
deep-rooted detestation of the system of domestic servitude was no secret to any
one; but his reverence for the law, his regard for vested interests, and his
anxiety to do nothing that should alienate any considerable body of the
supporters of the government, had thus far induced him to pursue a middle course
between the two extremes. Meanwhile the power of events had compelled a steady
progress in the direction of emancipation. So early as August, 1861, congress
had passed an act to confiscate the rights of slave-owners in slaves employed in
a manner hostile to the Union, and
General Fremont had seized the occasion of the
passage of this act to issue an order to confiscate and emancipate the slaves of
rebels in the state of Missouri. President Lincoln, unwilling, in a matter of
such transcendent importance, to leave the initiative to any subordinate,
revoked this order, and directed General Fremont to modify it so that it should
conform to the confiscation act of congress.
This excited violent
opposition to the president among the radical anti-slavery men in Missouri and
elsewhere, while it drew upon him the scarcely less embarrassing importunities
of the conservatives, who wished him to take still more decided ground against
the radicals. On 6 March, 1862, he sent a special message to congress inclosing
a resolution, the passage of which he recommended, to offer pecuniary aid from
the general government to states that should adopt the gradual abolishment of
slavery. This resolution was promptly passed by congress; but in none of the
slave-states was public sentiment sufficiently advanced to permit them to avail
themselves of it. The next month, however, congress passed a law emancipating
slaves in the District of Columbia, with compensation to owners, and President
Lincoln had the happiness of affixing his signature to a measure that he had
many years before, while a representative from Illinois, fruitlessly urged upon
the notice of congress. As the war went on, wherever the National armies
penetrated there was a constant stream of fugitive slaves from the adjoining
regions, and the commanders of each department treated the complicated questions
arising from this body of "contra-bands," as they came to be called, in
their camps, according to their own judgment of the necessities or the
expediencies of each case, a discretion which the president thought best to
tolerate. But on 9 May, 1862, General David Hunter, an intimate and esteemed
friend of Mr. Lincoln's, saw proper, without consultation with him, to issue a
military order declaring all persons theretofore held as slaves in Georgia,
Florida, and South Carolina forever free. The president, as soon as he received
this order, issued a proclamation declaring it void, and reserving to himself
the decision of the question whether it was competent for him, as
commander-in-chief of the army and navy, to declare the slaves of any state or
states free, and whether at any time or in any case it should have become a
necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the govern-merit to exercise such
supposed power, and prohibiting to commanders in the field the decision of such
questions. But he added in his proclamation a significant warning and appeal to
the slave-holding states, urging once more upon them the policy of emancipation
by state action. "I do not argue," he said; "I beseech you to make the
argument for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be blind to the signs of the
times. I beg of you a calm and enlarged consideration of them, ranging, if it
may be, far above personal and partisan politics. This proposal makes common
cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any .... Will you not
embrace it? So much good has not been done, by one effort, in all past time, as
in the providence of God it is now your high privilege to do. Nay the vast
future not have cause to la-merit that you have neglected it."
He had several times
endeavored to bring this proposition before the members of congress from the
loyal slave-holding states, and on 12 July he invited them to meet him at the
executive mansion, and submitted to them a powerful and urgent appeal to induce
their states to adopt the policy of compensated emancipation. He told them,
without reproach or complaint, that he believed that if they had all voted for
the resolution in the gradual emancipation message of the preceding March, the
war would now have been substantially ended, and that the plan therein proposed
was still one of the most potent and swift means of ending it. "Let the
states," he said, "which are in rebellion see definitely and certainly
that in no event will the states you represent ever join their proposed
confederacy, and they cannot much longer maintain the contest." While urging
this policy upon the conservatives, and while resolved in his own mind upon
emancipation by decree as a last resource, he was the subject of vehement
attacks from the more radical anti-slavery supporters of the government, to
which he replied with unfailing moderation and good temper. Although in July he
had resolved upon his course, and had read to his cabinet a draft of a
proclamation of emancipation which he had then laid aside for a more fitting
occasion (on the suggestion from Mr. Seward that its issue in the disastrous
condition of our military affairs would be interpreted as a sign of
desperation), he met the reproaches of the radical Republicans, the entreaties
of visiting delegations, and the persuasions of his eager friends with arguments
showing both sides of the question of which they persisted in seeing only one.
To
Horace Greeley,
on 22 Aug., Mr. Lincoln said: "My paramount object is to save the Union, and
not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing
any slave, I would do it; if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would
do it; and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would
also do that." And even so late as 13 Sept. he said to a delegation of a
religious society, who were urging immediate ac ton "I do not want. to issue
a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like
the pope's bull against the comet . I view this matter as a practical war
measure, to be decided on according to the advantages or disadvantages it may
offer to the suppression of the rebellion." Still, he assured them that he
had not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but that the
matter occupied his deepest thoughts.
The retreat of Lee from Maryland after his defeat at
Antietam seemed to the president to afford a proper occasion for the execution
of his long-matured resolve, and on 22 Sept. he issued his preliminary
proclamation, giving notice to the states in rebellion that, on 1 Jan., 1863,
all persons held as slaves within any state or designated part of a state, the
people where of should then be in rebellion against the United States, should be
then, thence-forward, and forever free. When congress came together on 1 Dec. he
urged them to, supplement what had already been done by constitutional action,
concluding his message with this impassioned appeal "Fellow-citizens, we
cannot escape history. We of this congress and this administration will be
remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can
spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us
down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We --even we here--hold the
power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure
freedom to the free--honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We
shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth. Other means may
succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just--a way
which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."
It was hardly to be expected, however, that any action
would be taken by congress before the lapse of the hundred days that the
president had left between his warning and its execution. On 1 Jan., 1863, the
final proclamation of emancipation was issued. It recited the preliminary
document, and then designated the states in rebellion against the United States.
They were
Arkansas, Texas,
a part of
Louisiana,
Mississippi,
Alabama,
Florida,
Georgia,
South
Carolina,North
Carolina, and
Virginia,
excepting certain counties. The proclamation then continued "I do order and
declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated states and parts
of states are, and henceforward shall be,” free"and that the executive
government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities
thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons."
The criticisms and forebodings of the opponents of
emancipation had well-nigh been exhausted during the previous three months, and
the definitive proclamation was received with general enthusiasm throughout the
loyal states. The dissatisfaction with which this important measure was regarded
in the border states gradually died away, as did also the opposition in
conservative quarters to the enlistment of Negro soldiers. Their good conduct,
their quick submission to discipline, and their excellent behavior in several
battles, rapidly made an end of the prejudice against them; and when, in the
winter session of congress of 1863-'4, Mr. Lincoln again urged upon the
attention of that body the passage of a constitutional amendment abolishing
slavery, his proposition met with the concurrence of a majority of congress,
though it failed of the necessary two-third vote in the house of
representatives.
During the following year, however, public opinion made
rapid progress, and the influence of the president with congress was largely
increased after his triumphant re-election. In his annual message of 6 Dec.,
1864, he once more pleaded, this time with irresistible force, in favor of
constitutional emancipation in all the states. As there had been much
controversy during the year in regard to the president's anti-slavery
convictions, and the suggestion had been made in many quarters that, for the
sake of peace, he might be induced to withdraw the proclamation, he repeated the
declaration made the year before: "While I remain in my present position I
shall not attempt to retract or modify the emancipation proclamation; nor shall
I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation or
by any of the acts of congress. If the people should, by whatever mode or means,
make it an executive duty to re-enslave such persons, another, and not I, must
be then' instrument to perform it."
This time congress acted with alacrity, and on 31 Jan.,
1865, proposed to the states the 13th amendment to the constitution, providing
that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for
crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the
United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. The states rapidly
adopted the
amendment by the action of their legislatures, and the president was
especially pleased that his own state of Illinois led the van, having passed the
necessary resolution within twenty-four hours. Before the year ended
twenty-seven of the thirty-six states (being the necessary three fourths) had
ratified the amendment, and
President Johnson,
on 18 Dec., 1865, officially proclaimed its adoption.
While the energies of the government and of the people
were most strenuously occupied with the war and the questions immediately
concerning it, the four years of Mr. Lincoln's administration had their full
share of complicated and difficult questions of domestic and foreign concern.
The interior and post-office departments made great progress in developing the
means of communication throughout the country. Mr. Chase, as secretary of the
treasury, performed, with prodigious ability and remarkable success, the
enormous duties devolving upon him of providing funds to supply the army at an
expense amounting at certain periods to $3,000,000 a day; and Mr. Seward, in
charge of the state department, held at bay the suppressed hostility of European
nations. Of all his cabinet, the president sustained with Mr. Seward relations
of the closest intimacy, and for that reason, perhaps, shared more directly in
the labors of his department. He revised the first draft of most of Seward's
important dispatches, and changed and amended their language with remarkable
wisdom and skill. He was careful to avoid all sources of controversy or
ill-feeling with foreign nations, and when they occurred he did his best to
settle them in the interests of peace, without a sacrifice of national dignity.
At the end of the year 1861 the friendly relations between England and the
United States were seriously threatened by the capture of the Confederate
envoys, Mason and Slidell, on board a British merchant-ship.
Public sentiment approved
the capture, and, as far as could be judged by every manifestation in the press
and in congress, was in favor of retaining the prisoners and defiantly refusing
the demand of England for their return. But when the president, after mature
deliberation, decided that the capture was against American precedents, and
directed their return to British custody, the second thought of the country was
with him. His prudence and moderation were also conspicuously displayed in his
treatment of the question of the invasion of Mexico by France, and the
establishment by military power of the emperor Maximilian in that country.
Accepting as genuine the protestations of the emperor of the French, that he
intended no interference with tile will of the people of Mexico, he took no
measures unfriendly to France or the empire, except those involved in the
maintenance of unbroken friendship with the republican government under
President Juarez, a proceeding that, although severely criticized by the more
ardent spirits in congress, ended, after the president's death, in the triumph
of the National party in Mexico and the downfall of the invaders. He left no
doubt, however, at any time, in regard to his own conviction that "the safety
of the people of the United States and the cheerful destiny to which they aspire
are intimately dependent upon the maintenance of free republican institutions
throughout Mexico." He dealt in a sterner spirit with the proposition for
foreign mediation that the emperor of the French, after seeking in vain the
concurrence of other European powers, at last presented singly at the beginning
of 1863. This proposition, under "the orders of the president”, was
declined by Mr. Seward on 6 Feb., in a dispatch of remarkable ability and
dignity, which put an end to all discussion of overtures of intervention from
European powers. The diplomatic relations with England were exceedingly strained
at several periods during the war. The building and fitting out of Confederate
cruisers in English ports, and their escape, after their construction and its
purpose had been made known by the American minister, more than once brought the
two nations to the verge of war; but the moderation with which the claims of the
United States were made by Mr. Lincoln, the energy and ability displayed by Sec.
Seward and by Mr. Charles Francis Adams in presenting these claims, and, it must
now be recognized, tile candor and honesty with which the matter was treated by
Earl Russell, the British minister for foreign affairs, saved the two countries
from that irreparable disaster: and the British government at last took such
measures as were necessary to put an end to this indirect war from the shores of
England upon American commerce.
In the course of two years the war attained such
proportions that volunteering was no longer a sufficient resource to keep the
army, consisting at that time of nearly a million men, at its full fighting
strength. Congress therefore authorized, and the departments executed, a scheme
of enrolment and draft of the arms-bearing population of the loyal states.
Violent opposition arose to this measure in many parts of the country, which was
stimulated by the speeches of orators of the opposition, and led, in many
instances, to serious breaches of the public peace. A frightful riot, beginning
among the foreign population of New York, kept that city in disorder and terror
for three days in July, 1863. But the riots were suppressed, the disturbances
quieted at last, and the draft was executed throughout the country. Clement L.
Vallandigham, of Ohio, one of the most eloquent and influential orators of the
Democratic party, was arrested in Ohio by
General Burnside
for his violent public utterances in opposition to the war, tried by a military
court, and sentenced to imprisonment (luring the continuance of the war. The
president changed his sentence to that of transportation within the lines of the
rebellion. These proceedings merit among his party in Ohio, who, by way of
challenge to the government, nominated him for governor of that state. A
committee of its prominent politicians demanded from the president his
restoration to his political rights, and a correspondence took place between
them and the president, in which the rights and powers of the government in case
of rebellion were set forth by him with great lucidity and force. His letters
exercised an important influence in the political discussions of the year, and
Mr. Vallandigham was defeated in his candidacy by John Brough by a majority of
100,000 votes.
The war still continued at a rate that appears rapid
enough in retrospect, but seemed slow to the eager spirits watching its course.
The disasters of the Army of the Potomac did not end with the removal of General
McClellan, which took place in November. 1862, as a consequence of his
persistent delay in pursuing Lee's retreating army after the battle of Antietam.
General Burnside, who succeeded him, suffered a humiliating defeat in his attack
upon the entrenched position of the Confederates at Fredericksburg. General
Hooker, who next took command, after opening his campaign by crossing the
Rapidan in a march of extraordinary brilliancy, was defeated at
Chancellorsville, in a battle where both sides lost severely, and then
retired again north of the river. General Lee, leaving the National army on his
right flank, crossed the Potomac, and
Hooker having, at
his own request, been relieved and succeeded by General Meade, the two armies
met in a three days'
battle at
Gettysburg, Pa., where General Lee sustained a decisive defeat, and was
driven back into Virginia. His flight from Gettysburg began on the evening of
the 4th of July, a day that in this year doubled its luster as a historic
anniversary. For on this day Vicksburg, the most important Confederate
stronghold in the west, surrendered to General Grant. He had spent the early
months of 1863 in successive attempts to take that fortress, all of which had
failed; but on the last day of April he crossed the river at Grand Gulf, and
within a few days fought the successful battles of Port Gibson, Raymond,
Jackson, Champion Hills, and the Big Black river, and shut up the army of
Pemberton in close siege in the city of Vicksburg, which he finally captured
with about 30,000 men on the 4th of July.
The speech that Mr. Lincoln
delivered at the dedication of the National cemetery on the battlefield of
Gettysburg, 19 Nov., 1863, was at once recognized as the philosophy in brief of
the whole great struggle, and has already become classic. There are slightly
differing versions the one that is here given is a literal transcript of the
speech as he afterward wrote it out for a fair in Baltimore :
"Fourscore
and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new
nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are
created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that
nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met
on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that
field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that
nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot
hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have
consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will
little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what
they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the
unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It
is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before
us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for
which they gave the last full measure of devotion --that we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall
have a new birth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people,
for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Lincoln closely supervised the victorious war effort, especially the
selection of top generals, including Ulysses S. Grant. Historians have concluded
that he handled the factions of the Republican Party well, bringing leaders of
each faction into his cabinet and forcing them to cooperate. Lincoln
successfully defused the Trent
Affair, a war scare with Britain in 1861.
Under his leadership, the Union took control of the border slave states at the start of
the war. Additionally, he managed his own reelection in the 1864 presidential
election.
Opponents of the war (also known as Copperheads) criticized Lincoln for
refusing to compromise on the slavery issue. Conversely, the Radical
Republicans, an abolitionist faction of the Republican Party, criticized him
for moving too slowly in abolishing slavery. Even with these road blocks,
Lincoln successfully rallied public opinion through his rhetoric and speeches;
his Gettysburg
Address is but one example of this. At the close of the war, Lincoln held a
moderate view of Reconstruction, seeking
to speedily reunite the nation through a policy of generous reconciliation. His
successor in the White House, Andrew Johnson, also wanted reconciliation among
white Americans, but failed to protect the rights of newly freed slaves. Lincoln's assassination in 1865
was the first presidential assassination in U.S. history. He has since
consistently been ranked by scholars as one of the greatest U.S.
Presidents.[3]
Personal life
Abraham Lincoln was born on February 12, 1809, to Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, two uneducated
farmers, in a one-room log cabin
on the 348-acre (1.4 km2) Sinking Spring Farm, in southeast
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