The Life of Abraham Lincoln (Holland)/Chapter XIX
The emergency which the rebellion forced upon the government found that government no less prepared to meet it than it found the loyal people of the country wanting in military knowledge and experience. The people were so eager to furnish men and supplies that they at once became impatient for results. No one among them seemed to doubt that the rebellion might be crushed in a few months, at most. They did not comprehend the almost infinite detail of a war. Patience was a virtue which it took four years to teach them; and when every man connected with the government was making all the efforts possible to forward the preparations for the struggle, the popular press--meaning well, but much misapprehending the difficulties of the situation--were already finding fault with the tardiness of operations. They had apparently forgotten how long it took to bring the Mexican war to a successful termination;--indeed, they stood in a very different relation to this war from that which they had held toward the Mexican war. That was a war of the government against another power; this was a war of their own, against domestic traitors who sought to overthrow the government. Every loyal man had a direct interest in the war; and he judged every movement and every delay as if it were his own private enterprise. There were inconveniences in this; but, in this universal personal interest, lay the secret of those four years of popular devotion to the war which so astonished the observers of other lands, and made ultimate victory, under Providence, a certainty from the first.
This popular impatience was, during the first two or three years of the war, one of the serious difficulties with which the administration had to deal. It had its advantages in holding to vigilance and industry all who were in responsible positions, but it had disadvantages in sometimes compelling precipitancy of action, and in breeding in the administration the idea that the people were to be managed like children whose food should be carefully prepared in the departments whenever it was administered, or carefully withheld when their stomachs were not able to receive it. This idea of the people was not born in the White House. Mr. Lincoln had a profound respect for the people, and never had any sympathy with efforts which aimed to make them instruments in the hands of the government, or which ignored the fact that they were the source of all his power.
During the latter part of April, certain important military operations were effected. Washington, the safety of which was the first consideration, was relieved from immediate danger; Fortress Monroe, commanding the water gateway of Virginia, was reinforced and held; the government works at Harper's Ferry were blown up and burned by Lieutenant Jones, in command of a company of regulars, moved by the intelligence of an advance of a large confederate force; Cairo, Illinois, an important strategic point at the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi rivers, had been occupied by government forces, and the blockade was extended so as to embrace the states of Virginia and North Carolina. Then began organization. On the twenty-seventh of April, Adjutant General Thomas made the following announcement of new military departments: First, The military department of Washington, including the District of Columbia, according to its original boundary, Fort Washington and the adjacent country, and the state of Maryland as far as Bladensburgh, to be under the charge of Colonel Mansfield, with head-quarters at Washington. Second, The department of Annapolis, head-quarters at that city, and including the country for twenty miles on either side of the railroad between Annapolis and Washington, under command of General B.F. Butler, of the Massachusetts volunteers. Third, The department of Pennsylvania, including that state, Delaware and all of Maryland not included in the other departments already mentioned, and with Major General Patterson in command. The extension of the department of Washington to the old limits of the district was for the purpose of including territory absolutely necessary for the defense of the capital.
On the following tenth of May, another department was added to this list, including the states of Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, under the charge of General George B. McClellan. The object of this department was to maintain a defensive line on the Ohio River from Wheeling to Cairo.
On the twenty-ninth of April, Jefferson Davis convened his Congress at Montgomery, and sent them a message which was intended to be a justification of himself and his cause, before the country and the world. It was a document of rare ability, in its plausible presentation of the favorite southern doctrine of state rights, and its rehearsal of the pretended wrongs which the South had suffered at the hands of the North. It must have made a profound impression upon the great multitude of minds ready to receive it among his own people, and upon statesmen abroad who, from the first opening of the American difficulties, manifested a strange ignorance of the genius and structure of American institutions.
It is interesting to notice here the attempt on the part, both of Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Davis, to argue the rightfulness of their respective positions, in a great number of their state papers. Mr. Lincoln's old intellectual struggle with Mr. Douglas had ceased, and Jefferson Davis was now his antagonist--a man of higher culture and deeper character.
Mr. Davis, in his message, assumed the role of the wronged party. Notwithstanding the fact that he had seized all the property of the United States upon which he could lay his hands, and had, by bombardment, compelled the surrender of Fort Sumter, he tried to shift the burden of opening the war upon Mr. Lincoln, whose ca1l for troops, weeks after a confederate army was on its feet and actively gathering numbers, was the pretended cause of the convening of the rebel Congress. In this very message, indeed, he announced that there were already nineteen thousand men in different forts, and that sixteen thousand were on their way to Virginia.
In the doctrine of state rights was the only justification of the rebellion; and it was necessary that Mr. Davis should labor to establish it. With him, a state was greater than the United States. The state was sovereign, and the Union was essentially subject. Whenever, therefore, any state should have a plausible pretext for dissolVing its union with other states, it had a right to do so. Mr. Davis did not stop to consider that he could not establish a government on any such basis as this, and that the doctrine of state rights would, in the end, be just as fatal to his confederacy as he was endeavoring to make it to the United States. On the other hand, Mr. Lincoln held the Union sovereign and the state subject. A state had no right to coerce a nation into dissolution, any more than a county had a right to force a state into dissolution. He maintained that the United States were a nation, one and indivisible, and that any attempt to dissolve it on the part of a state, or a combination of states, was treason. Here was where the Union and the new confederacy separated. The confederacy was a logical result of the doctrine of state rights, and its destruction, by all the power of the federal government, was the logical necessity of its contravention. Mr. Lincoln believed that a nation had a fundamental right to live, and that the United States were a nation. Mr. Davis believed that the United States were not a nation--or, if one--that it held its only right to live at the will of any state that might choose to exercise it.
On the third of May, Mr. Lincoln found it necessary to call for forty-two thousand additional volunteers, to serve for three years, unless sooner discharged, and for an aggregate of twenty-two thousand seven hundred and fourteen men for different classes of service in the regular army. An additional call for eighteen thousand men to serve in the navy was also made in the same proclamation. The country gave quick response to this call, and the demand for army volunteers was soon answered to excess.
The area of operations was rapidly spreading. Secessionists in and around St. Louis, Missouri, were plotting for the seizure of the arsenal in that city, but Captain (afterward General) Lyon promptly thwarted the scheme, and secured the arms for the government forces. A secession camp, forming in the same city, was captured, and many within it taken prisoners. The Governor of Missouri was disloyal, and did what he could to throw that state into the hands of the rebels; and General Harney, for a short time in command of the military department of the West, so far aided his schemes as to agree with Sterling Price that the whole duty of maintaining order in the state should be intrusted to the state authorities. Harney was removed, and General Lyon put in his place, with a force for which he found abundant employment, and at the head of which he afterwards fell--one of the first and costliest sacrifices of the war.
During all the first part of May, a secession flag floated over a building in Alexandria, in sight of the capitol at Washington; the rebel forces were gathering at Manassas Junction, and rebel troops held Harper's Ferry. On the twenty-second of May, General Butler took command of the new department of the South, with head-quarters at Fortress Monroe. Five days afterward, he issued his famous order declaring slaves "contraband of war." The phrase imbodied a new idea, which was the germ of a new policy, as well as the basis of a new name for the freed negro. General Butler had under command here about twelve thousand men. Confederate troops were already gathering and fortifying in the vicinity, and on the tenth of June occurred the first considerable battle of the war at Big Bethel. It was a badly managed affair on the part of the Union forces; and, in the excited and expectant state of the public mind, produced a degree of discouragement in the country quite disproportioned to the importance of its results. Here fell Major Winthrop, a young man of great bravery and rare literary ability. The troops fought well, but were badly handled. Enough was learned, however, of the bravery of the Yankee, to give prophecy of fine results when the art of war should be better learned.
These comparatively small and widely separated movements were but ripples shot out into the coves and reaches of treason from the tidal sweep of the loyal armies, crowding southward to dash against the grand front of the rebellion. The government had no lack of men; but it suffered sadly for the want of arms to put into their hands. But they were armed in one way and another--some of them very poorly. The impatient people could not know how poorly, because it would expose the weakness of the government to the enemy; so they clamored for a movement, and it was made. On the twenty-fourth of May, General Mansfield began his passage into Virginia. The gallant and lamented Colonel Ellsworth was sent with his regiment of Zouaves to Alexandria; and troops to the number of thirteen thousand were moved across the river, and set to work in the erection of forts for the defense of Washington. Colonel Ellsworth, on landing at Alexandria, without resistance, went personally to the Marshall House, kept by James Jackson, and mounting to the top, pulled down the secession flag with which Jackson had for weeks been insulting the authorities at Washington. On descending, the owner shot him dead, and was in turn immediately shot dead by a private named Brownell, who accompanied his Colonel.
It is interesting to remember the profound impression which the death of this young and enthusiastic officer produced upon the country. He was among the first the nation gave to the war, and his name, with those of Greble and Winthrop, who fell at Big Bethel, and Lyon who afterward fell in Missouri were embalmed in the fresh sensibilities of the people, and remain there, fixed and fragrant, while thousands of those since fallen have found only weary and sickened hearts to rest in, or memories too sadly crowded with precious names to give them room. Ellsworth's death affected Mr. Lincoln with peculiar sorrow. He had known the young man well. At one time, Ellsworth was a student in Lincoln & Herndon's office; and he accompanied Mr. Lincoln on his journey to Washington. The body of the young martyr was borne sadly back to Washington, and was received into the White House itself, where the funeral took place, Mr. Lincoln himself assuming the position of chief mourner.
After the accumulation of a large army on the Virginia side of the Potomac, it was determined to push forward the forces then under the command of Major General McDowell, for a battle with the rebel army which had been gathered at Manassas. For this battle each side had been preparing with great industry. The enemy had withdrawn his forces from the occupation of Harper's Ferry, and that important point had passed into federal control. From every quarter he gathered in his troops, or held them within easy call, and waited for the attack. It began on the nineteenth, and ended on the twenty-first of July, in a most terrible rout of the Union forces. The whole army upon which the President and the people had rested such strong hope and expectation was broken in pieces, and came flying back toward Washington, Panic-stricken, worn out, disorganized and utterly demoralized. They had fought bravely and well; but they were not above influences that have affected armies since time began, and they yielded to fears which made them uncontrollable.
The loss of this battle, fought under the pressure of popular impatience, cost the country a fearful amount of sacrifice. It greatly encouraged the rebels, their sympathizers abroad sent up a shout of triumph, and the loyal masses were put to such a test of their patriotism and determined bravery as they had never been subjected to. The work had all to be done again, under the most discouraging circumstances; but when the case was reviewed, reason was found for gratitude that it had been no worse. Washington, at the close of the battle at Bull Run, was at the mercy of the rebels. It was well that they did not know this, or that, if they knew it, they were not in a condition to push on, and occupy what must have fallen into their hands.
Among all the millions to whom this event brought sorrow, there was not one who suffered so keenly as the tender-hearted and patient man who, walking back and forth between the White House and the War Department, felt the great burden of it all upon his own shoulders. He had need of the full exercise of his abounding faith in Providence to sustain him in that dark and perilous hour. He could not but feel that peace had been put far away by the result of the battle; but he learned afterwards that Providence had wise and beneficent designs in that result. Peace conquered then, would have been peace with the cause of the war retained. Peace then would have left four million slaves in bondage. Peace then would have left the "house divided against itself" still, with the possibility of an indefinite extension of slavery. It was not so to be. A thousand plagues were yet to come before the public mind would be ready to let the bondman go.
Soon after the original movement into Virginia, the Postmaster-general suspended all postal service in the seceded states; and at this time active movements commenced in General McClellan's department. Under the auspices of Governor Magoffin of Kentucky--one of the governors who had sent back an insulting response to the President's original call for troops--his Inspector-general Buckner organized a force in Kentucky, which was watched with much anxiety by the loyal people on the other side of the Ohio, because it was believed to be intended for the rebel service. Buckner visited General McClellan at Cincinnati on the eighth of June, and on the twenty-second of that month he reported to Governor Magoffin the terms of a convention into which he had entered with the federal general. Briefly he reported that General McClellan stipulated that Kentucky should be regarded by the United States as neutral territory, even though southern troops should occupy it. In such a case, the United States should call upon Kentucky to remove such troops, and if she should fail to do so within a reasonable time, then the General claimed the same right of occupation accorded to the southern troops, and promised to withdraw so soon as those troops should be expelled. Whether this was a true statement of the agreement or not, General McClellan did nothing inconsistent with it, although he afterwards denied Buckner's statement of the results of the consultation. The occupation and defense of important points upon the bank of the river opposite Cincinnati were abandoned, and, in a letter to Mr. Crittenden, he disclaimed all responsibility for the intrusion of a body of General Prentiss' men, who had landed on the Kentucky shore and brought away a secession flag. The General, it was evident, did not comprehend the character of the rebellion, or he failed to recognize the fact that in such a struggle there could be no such thing as the neutrality which Kentucky was professedly desirous to maintain.
The tenderness of the government, as well as of the generals it had appointed, toward slavery, is worthy of note at this juncture. Mr. Lincoln had always taken great pains to show that he respected the legal rights of slavery under the Constitution. The republicans, in national convention and in Congress, had done the same. The three democratic generals it had placed in command--Butler, Patterson and McClellan--went a step further, and promised in advance that they would not only not interfere with slavery, but would assist the rebels in putting down a slave insurrection. General Butler, of the three, experienced a healthy reaction from this devotion to slavery at an early day.
Western Virginia was loyal, and, on the seventeenth of June, in convention at Wheeling, repudiated the ordinance of secession passed by the state convention, and promptly inaugurated a new state government, with Francis H. Pierpoint for Governor. This was the first step toward "reconstruction," and it was taken under the direct sanction of Mr. Lincoln. The doctrine of secession thus early returned to plague the inventors. Rebel forces and rebel sympathizers were of course in Western Virginia; and a campaign was inaugurated there, early in June, for the expulsion of these forces from the territory. General Rosecrans and General Thomas A. Morris had this campaign in hand, and, on the twenty-third of June, General McClellan arrived. On the tenth of July, a skirmish was had with the rebels at Laurel Hill, and two days later the battle of Rich Mountain was fought, which resulted in the defeat and surrender of the rebel Colonel Pegram, with a thousand men. This did not compass the successes of the day. General Garnett who was bringing supports to General Pegram was pursued, his forces routed, and himself killed. This temporarily cleaned out the enemy from Western Virginia. General McClellan's dispatch to the war department announcing this very grateful victory was direct, spirited and well written, and immediately attracted the attention of the country. These successes in Western Virginia, together with the Napoleonic manner of their announcement, paved the way to that wonderful popular confidence which was afterward accorded to the commanding general, although he had very little to do in planning the campaign in which they were won, or the battles by which they were secured.
Congress, according to the proclamation of the President, had assembled on the fourth of July, and was of course in session when the successes in Western Virginia were achieved, as well as when the rout of the army at Bull Run occurred. Indeed, the presence of the members at Washington added to the pressure which precipitated the movement that resulted so disastrously. Some of the members went out to see the fight. One of these was taken prisoner, and others took such a lesson in retreating as to cure them of all curiosity concerning battles and battle-fields forever.
On the meeting of Congress, the President communicated a message which was received with profound interest, both by Congress and the whole country. The opening portions of the document were strictly historical of the events of the rebellion up to the date of its utterance; and as the most of these events have already found record in these pages, their reproduction is not necessary.
By opening fire upon Sumter, when it had not "a gun in sight, or in expectancy, to return their fire, save only the few in the fort sent to that harbor years before for their own protection," he declared that the rebels had forced upon the country the distinct issue--immediate dissolution or blood. "And this issue," the message proceeds, "embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic or democracy-- a government of the people by the same people--can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity, against its own domestic foes. It presents the question whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration according to organic law in any case, can always, upon the pretences made in this case, or on any other pretences, or arbitrarily, without any pretence, break up their 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 attempt of some of the border states to maintain a sort of armed neutrality--as illustrated in the case of Kentucky--the arming of those states to keep the forces on either side from passing over their territory--he declared would be disunion completed, if for a moment entertained. It would be building "an impassable wall along the line of separation, and yet, not quite an impassable one, for, under the guise of neutrality, it would tie the hands of Union men, and freely pass supplies from among them to the insurrectionists, which it could not do as an open enemy. At a stroke it would take all the trouble off the hands of secession, except only what proceeds from the external blockade."
Soon after the first call for militia, liberty was given to the commanding general to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in certain cases, or "to arrest and detain without resort to the ordinary processes of law such individuals as he might deem dangerous to the public safety." Although this liberty was indulged very sparingly, there were not wanting men unfriendly to the administration who made it the subject of factious complaint. This fact Mr. Lincoln noticed, and this was his defense:
"The whole of the laws which were required to be faithfully executed were being resisted, and failing of execution, in nearly one-third of the states. Must they be allowed to finally fail of execution, even had it been perfectly clear that by the use of the means necessary to their execution some single law, made in such extreme tenderness of the citizen's liberty, that, practically, it relieves more of the guilty than the innocent, should, to a very limited extent, be violated? To state the question more directly: are all the laws but one to go unexecuted, and the government itself go to pieces, lest that one be violated? Even in such a case, would not the official oath be broken, if the government should be overthrown when it was believed that disregarding the single law would tend to preserve it? But it was not believed that this question was presented. It was not believed that any law was violated. The provision of the Constitution that 'the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless, when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it,' is equivalent to a provision--is a provision--that such privilege may be suspended when, in case of rebellion or invasion, the public safety does require it. It was decided that we have a case of rebellion, and that the public safety does require the qualified suspension of the privilege of the writ, which was authorized to be made. Now it is insisted that Congress, and not the Executive, is invested with this power. But the Constitution itself is silent as to which or who is to exercise this power; and as the provision was plainly made for a dangerous emergency, it cannot be believed the framers of the instrument intended that, in every case, the danger should run its course until Congress could be called together, the very assembling of which might be prevented, as was intended in this case by the rebellion."
After recommending that Congress make the contest a short and decisive one, by placing at the control of the government four hundred thousand men and four hundred million dollars, and stating that a right result at that time would be worth more to the world than ten times the men and ten times the money, Mr. Lincoln took up the doctrine of state rights, state sovereignty, the right of secession, &c., and argued against it at length, doubtless as a reply to the message of Mr. Davis, and to place before the world, whose governments and people were sitting in judgment on the case, the grounds of the national struggle with the rebellion. The passage is too important to be abbreviated:
"It might seem, at first thought, to be of little difference whether the present movement at the South be called "secession," or "rebellion." The movers, however, will understand the difference. At the beginning, they knew they could never raise their treason to any respectable magnitude by any name which implies violation of law. They knew their people possessed as much of moral sense, as much of devotion to law and order, and as much pride in, and reverence for the history and government of their common country, as any other civilized and patriotic people. They knew they could make no advancement directly in the teeth of these strong and noble sentiments. Accordingly, they commenced by an insidious debauching of the public mind. They invented an ingenious sophism, which, if conceded, was followed by perfectly logical steps, through all the incidents, to the complete destruction of the Union. The sophism itself is, that any state of the Union may, consistently with the national Constitution, and therefore lawfully and peacefully, withdraw from the Union without the consent of the Union, or of any other state. The little disguise that the supposed right is to be exercised only for just cause, themselves to be the sole judges of its justice, is too thin to merit any notice.
"With rebellion thus sugar-coated they have been drugging the public mind of their section for more than thirty years, and until at length they have brought many good men to a willingness to take up arms against the government the day after some assemblage of men have enacted the farcical pretence of taking their state out of the Union, who could haye been brought to no such thing the day before.
"This sophism derives much, perhaps the whole, of its currency from the assumption that there is some omnipotent and sacred supremacy pertaining to a state--to each state of our Federal Union. Our states have neither more nor less power than that reserved to them in the Union by the Constitution--no one of them ever having been a state out of the Union. The original ones passed into the Union even before they cast off their British colonial dependence; and the new ones each came into the Union directly from a condition of dependence, excepting Texas. And even Texas, in its temporary independence, was never designated a state. The new ones only took the designation of states on coming into the Union, while that name was first adopted by the old ones in and by the Declaration of Independence. Therein the "United Colonies" were declared to be "free and independent states;" but, even then, the object plainly was not to declare their independence of one another, or of the Union, but directly the contrary, as their mutual pledge and their mutual action before, at the time, and afterwards, abundantly show. The express plighting of faith by each and all of the original thirteen in the Articles of Confederation, two years later, that the Union shall be perpetual, is most conclusive. Having never been states, either in substance or in name, outside of the Union, whence this magical omnipotence of "state rights," asserting a claim of power to lawfully destroy the Union itself? Much is said about the "sovereignty" of the states; but the word even is not in the national Constitution; nor, as is believed, in any of the state constitutions. What is "sovereignty" in the political sense of the term? Would it be far wrong to define it "a political community without a political superior?" Tested by this, no one of our states except Texas, ever was a sovereignty. And even Texas gave up the character on coming into the Union; by which act she acknowledged the Constitution of the United States and the laws and treaties of the United States made in pursuance of the Constitution, to be for her the supreme law of the land. The states have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this, they can only do so against law and by revolution. The Union, and not themselves, separately, procured their independence and their liberty. By conquest or purchase the Union gave each of them whatever of independence or liberty it has. The Union is older than any of the states, and, in fact, it created them as states. Originally some dependent colonies made the Union, and, in turn, the Union threw off their old dependence for them, and made them states, such as they are. Not one of them ever had a state constitution independent of the Union. Of course, it is not forgotten that all the new states framed their constitutions before they entered the Union; nevertheless dependent upon, and preparatory to, coming into the Union.
"Unquestionably the states have the powers and rights reserved to them in and by the national Constitution: but among these, surely, are not included all conceivable powers, however mischievous or destructive; but, at most, such only as were known in the world, at the time, as governmental powers; and, certainly, a power to destroy the Government itself had never been known as a governmental--as a merely administrative power. This relative matter of national power and state rights, as a principle, is no other than the principle of generality and locality. Whatever concerns the whole should be confided to the whole--to the general government; while whatever concerns only the state should be left exclusively to the state. This is all there is of original principle about it. Whether the national Constitution in defining boundaries between the two has applied the principle with exact accuracy, is not to be questioned. We are all bound by that defining, without question.
"What is now combated, is the position that secession is consistent with the Constitution--is lawful and peaceful. Is is not contended that there is any express law for it; and nothing should ever be implied as law which leads to unjust or absurd consequences. The nation purchased with money the countries out of which several of these states were formed; is it just that they shall go off without leave and without refunding? The nation paid very large sums (in the aggregate, I believe, nearly a hundred millions) to relieve Florida of the aboriginal tribes; is it just that she shall now be off without consent, or without making any return? The nation is now in debt for money applied to the benefit of these so-called seceding states in common with the rest; is it just either that creditors shall go unpaid, or the remaining states pay the whole? A part of the present national debt was contracted to pay the old debts of Texas; is it just that she shall leave and pay no part of this herself?
"Again, if one state may secede, so may another; and when all shall have seceded, none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just to creditors? Did we notify them of this sage view of ours when we borrowed their money? If we now recognize this doctrine by allowing the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do if others choose to go, or to extort terms upon which they will promise to remain.
"The seceders insist that our Constitution admits of secession. They have assumed to make a national constitution of their own, in which, of necessity, they have either discarded or retained the right of secession, as they insist it exists in ours. If they have discarded it, they thereby admit that on principle it ought not to exist in ours; if they have retained it, by their own construction of ours they show that, to be consistent, they must secede from one another whenever they shall find it the easiest way of settling their debts, or effecting any other selfish or unjust object. The principle itself is one of disintegration, and upon which no government can possibly endure.
"If all the states save one should assert the power to drive that one out of the Union, it is presumed the whole class of seceder politicians would at once deny the power, and denounce the act as the greatest outrage upon state rights. But suppose that precisely the same act, instead of being called 'driving the one out,' should be called 'the seceding of the others from that one,' it would be exactly what the seceders claim to do, unless, indeed, they make the point that the one, because it is a minority, may rightfully do what the others, because they are a majority, may not rightfully do. These politicians are subtle, and profound on the rights of minorities. They are not partial to that power which made the Constitution, and speaks from the preamble, calling itself 'We, the people.'"
The popular government of the United States, Mr. Lincoln said, had been called an experiment. Two points of the experiment had already been settled; the government had been established, and it had been administered. One point remained to be established: its successful maintenance against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It remained to be demonstrated to the world that those who could fairly carry an election could also suppress a rebellion--"that ballots are the rightful and peaceful successors to bullets, and that when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no successful appeal back to bullets--that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections." Another justification of the war in which he was engaged he found in that article of the Constitution which provides that "the United States shall guarantee to every state in this Union a republican form of government." If a state might lawfully go out of the Union, it might also, having gone out, discard the republican form of government, "so that to prevent its going out is an indispensable means to the end of maintaining the guarantee mentioned; and when an end is lawful and obligatory, the indispensable means to it are also lawful and obligatory."
Congress was ready to do all that the President desired, and even more. Instead of four hundred million dollars, they placed at his disposal five hundred millions, and instead of confining his levy of troops to four hundred thousand, they gave him liberty to call out half a million. They also legalized all the steps he had thus far taken for the suppression of the rebellion, and labored in all ways to strengthen his hands and encourage his heart. These measures were passed in the presence, and against the protest, of secessionists, who still held their places in both houses of Congress. Burnett of Kentucky and Reid and Norton of Missouri, in the House, afterwards proved their treason by engaging directly in the rebellion. Breckinridge and Powell of Kentucky and Polk and Johnson of Missouri, in the Senate, were known at the time to be anything but loyal. And they had sympathizers who, under any other government, would have been arrested and held, if not treated with still greater severity. Vallandigham of Ohio was afterwards sent into the rebel lines for treason, and it is undoubtedly true that Kennedy of Maryland, Bayard of Delaware, Bright of Indiana, and Ben Wood of New York had personal reason for feeling that he had been very harshly used. Yet it was best that these men should be where they were, to bicker and bite, and illustrate the spirit of that incorporate infamy--a slaveholders' rebellion. Such toleration illustrated alike the strength and moderation of the government. Some of these men were permitted to rise in the places they had justly forfeited, and, with perjured lips, to talk treason--to complain of arbitrary arrests when they were suffered to go and come, and scheme and brawl with perfect liberty, in the streets of the national capital.
There was plenty of treasonable talk in Congress, but no treasonable action. The party friends of the government were in a majority, and they were aided by numbers of loyal democrats. The schemes of finance recommended by Mr. Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, were adopted essentially as recommended, a moderate confiscation act was passed, and a resolution adopted by the House--introduced by Mr. Crittenden of Kentucky--that the war had been forced upon the country by the disunionists of the southern states, then in revolt against the constitutional government and in arms around the capital: that Congress, banishing all feeling of passion or resentment, would recollect only its duty to the whole country: that the war was not waged on the part of the government in the spirit of oppression, nor for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of the states; but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to preserve the Union, with all the dignities, equality and rights of the several states unimpaired: and that as soon as those objects were accomplished, the war ought to cease. During the session, Mr. Trumbull or Illinois introduced a bill in the Senate to emancipate all the slaves in the rebel states. This was a prophecy and a threat of what would come as the reward of rebel contumacy.
The session closed on the sixth day of August, having lasted but little more than a month. The President found himself abundantly supported, and the means in his hands for carrying on the great contest.
The message of Mr. Lincoln to this extra session of Congress, taken with his inaugural, did much to overcome the unpleasant impressions produced by the speeches he made on his way to Washington. There is no question that those speeches seriously damaged him, and shook the confidence of the country in his ability. The inaugural and the message had the old ring in them, and betrayed something of those qualities which had originally attracted the country to him.
It is true, however, that he did not spend much time in writing his messages. His later efforts in this line did not bear always so many marks of painstaking as the first. He had a great aversion to what he called "machine writing," and always used the fewest words possible to express his meaning. Mr. Defrees, the public printer, an intimate personal friend of Mr. Lincoln, testifies that he made the fewest corrections in his proof of any man he ever knew. He knew nothing of the rules of punctuation, yet the manuscripts of very few of our public men are as well punctuated as his uniformly were, though his use of commas was excessive.
Mr. Defrees, being on easy terms with Mr. Lincoln, took it upon him to suggest with relation to his first message that he was not preparing a campaign document, or delivering a stump speech in Illinois, but constructing an important state paper, that would go down historically to all coming time; and that, therefore, he did not consider the phrase, "sugar-coated," which he had introduced, as entirely a becoming and dignified one. "Well, Defrees," said Mr. Lincoln, good naturedly, "if you think the time will ever come when the people will not understand what "sugar-coated" means, I'll alter it; otherwise, I think I'll let it go." To make people understand exactly what he meant, was his grand aim. Beyond that, he had not the slightest ambition to go.
To close this chapter, it only remains to record the relief of Major General McDowell, a worthy but unfortunate officer, and the appointment of General McClellan to the command of the army of the Potomac. The country had been attracted to McClellan by his dispatches from Western Virginia. General Scott favored him, and to him was accordingly assigned the work of re-organizing the shattered army. The public hope was ready to cling somewhere, and the public heart gave itself to McClellan with an enthusiastic devotion rarely accorded to any man. His pictures were in all the windows of the shops, and on all the center tables of all the drawing-rooms in the land. If he had done but little before to merit this confidence--if he did but little afterwards to justify it--he, at least, served at that time to give faith to the people, and furnish a rallying point for their patriotic service. For three months, under his faithful and assiduous supervision, the organization of troops went on, until he had at his command a magnificent army which needed only to be properly led to be victorious.