Lincoln; An Account of his Personal Life

Chapter 3

Prev List Next

Of those papers which he had signed without reading on April first, Lincoln was to hear again in still more surprising fashion six days thereafter.

He was now at the very edge of his second crucial decision. Though the naval expedition was in preparation, he still hesitated over issuing orders to sail. The reply to the Thoughts had not committed him to any specific line of conduct. What was it that kept him wavering at this eleventh hour? Again, that impenetrable taciturnity which always shrouded his progress toward a conclusion, forbids dogmatic a.s.sertion. But two things are obvious: his position as a minority president, of which he was perhaps unduly conscious, caused him to delay, and to delay again and again, seeking definite evidence how much support he could command in the North; the change in his comprehension of the problem before him-his perception that it was not an "artificial crisis" involving slavery alone, but an irreconcilable clash of social-political idealism-this disturbed his spirit, distressed, even appalled him. Having a truer insight into human nature than Seward had, he saw that here was an issue immeasurably less susceptible of compromise than was slavery. Whether, the moment he perceived this, he at once lost hope of any peaceable solution, we do not know. Just what he thought about the Virginia Compromise is still to seek. However, the nature of his mind, the way it went straight to the human element in a problem once his eyes were opened to the problem"s reality, forbid us to conclude that he took hope from Virginia. He now saw what, had it not been for his near horizon, he would have seen so long before, that, in vulgar parlance, he had been "barking up the wrong tree." Now that he had located the right tree, had the knowledge come too late?

It is known that Seward, possibly at Lincoln"s request, made an attempt to bring together the Virginia Unionists and the Administration. He sent a special representative to Richmond urging the despatch of a committee to confer with the President.

The strength of the party in the Convention was shown on April fourth when a proposed Ordinance of Secession was voted down, eighty-nine to forty-five. On the same day, the Convention by a still larger majority formally denied the right of the Federal government to coerce a State. Two days later, John B. Baldwin, representing the Virginia Unionists, had a confidential talk with Lincoln. Only fragments of their talk, drawn forth out of memory long afterward-some of the reporting being at second hand, the recollections of the recollections of the partic.i.p.ants-are known to exist. The one fact clearly discernible is that Baldwin stated fully the Virginia position: that her Unionists were not nationalists; that the coercion of any State, by impugning the sovereignty of all, would automatically drive Virginia out of the Union.(23) Lincoln had now reached his decision. The fear that had dogged him all along-the fear that in evacuating Sumter he would be giving something for nothing, that "it would discourage the friends of the Union, embolden its adversaries"-was in possession of his will. One may hazard the guess that this fear would have determined Lincoln sooner than it did, except for the fact that the Secretary of State, despite his faults, was so incomparably the strongest personality in the Cabinet. We have Lincoln"s own word for the moment and the detail that formed the very end of his period of vacillation. All along he had intended to relieve and hold Fort Pickens, off the coast of Florida. To this, Seward saw no objection. In fact, he urged the relief of Pickens, hoping, as compensation, to get his way about Sumter. a.s.suming as he did that the Southern leaders were opportunists, he believed that they would not make an issue over Pickens, merely because it had not in the public eye become a political symbol. Orders had been sent to a squadron in Southern waters to relieve Pickens. Early in April news was received at Washington that the attempt had failed due to misunderstandings among the Federal commanders. Fearful that Pickens was about to fall, reasoning that whatever happened he dared not lose both forts, Lincoln became peremptory on the subject of the Sumter expedition. This was on April sixth. On the night of April sixth, Lincoln"s signatures to the unread despatches of the first of April, came home to roost. And at last, Welles found out what Seward was doing on the day of All Fools.(24) While the Sumter expedition was being got ready, still without sailing orders, a supplemental expedition was also preparing for the relief of Pickens. This was the business that Seward was contriving, that Lincoln would not explain, on April first. The order interfering with the Navy Department was designed to checkmate the t.i.tular head of the department. Furthermore, Seward had had the amazing coolness to a.s.sume that Lincoln would certainly accept his Thoughts and that the simple President need not hereinafter be consulted about details. He aimed to circ.u.mvent Welles and to make sure that the Sumter expedition, whether sailing orders were issued or not, should be rendered innocuous. The warship Powhatan, which was being got ready for sea at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, was intended by Welles for the Sumter expedition. One of those unread despatches signed by Lincoln, a.s.signed it to the Pickens expedition. When the sailing orders from Welles were received, the commander of the Sumter fleet claimed the Powhatan. The Pickens commander refused to give it up. The latter telegraphed Seward that his expedition was "being r.e.t.a.r.ded and embarra.s.sed" by "conflicting" orders from Welles. The result was a stormy conference between Seward and Welles which was adjourned to the White House and became a conference with Lincoln. And then the whole story came out. Lincoln played the scapegoat, "took the whole blame upon himself, said it was carelessness, heedlessness on his part; he ought to have been more careful and attentive." But he insisted on immediate correction of his error, on the restoration of the Powhatan to the Sumter fleet. Seward struggled hard for his plan. Lincoln was inflexible. As Seward had directed the preparation of the Pickens expedition, Lincoln required him to telegraph to Brooklyn the change in orders. Seward, beaten by his enemy Welles, was deeply chagrined. In his agitation he forgot to be formal, forgot that the previous order had gone out in the President"s name, and wired curtly, "Give up the Powhatan. Seward."

This despatch was received just as the Pickens expedition was sailing. The commander of the Powhatan had now before him, three orders. Naturally, he held that the one signed by the President took precedence over the others. He went on his way, with his great warship, to Florida. The Sumter expedition sailed without any powerful ship of war. In this strange fashion, chance executed Seward"s design.

Lincoln had previously informed the Governor of South Carolina that due notice would be given, should he decide to relieve Sumter. Word was now sent that "an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only; and that if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms or ammunition will be made without further notice, or in case of an attack upon the fort."(25) Though the fleet was not intended to offer battle, it was supposed to be strong enough to force its way into the harbor, should the relief of Sumter be opposed. But the power to do so was wholly conditioned on the presence in its midst of the Powhatan. And the Powhatan was far out to sea on its way to Florida.

And now it was the turn of the Confederate government to confront a crisis. It, no less than Washington, had pa.s.sed through a period of disillusion. The a.s.sumption upon which its chief politicians had built so confidently had collapsed. The South was not really a unit. It was not true that the secession of any one State, on any sort of issue, would compel automatically the secession of all the Southern States. North Carolina had exploded this illusion. Virginia had exploded it. The South could not be united on the issue of slavery; it could not be united on the issue of sectional dread. It could be united on but one issue-State sovereignty, the denial of the right of the Federal Government to coerce a State. The time had come to decide whether the cannon at Charleston should fire. As Seward had foreseen, Montgomery held the trumps; but had Montgomery the courage to play them? There was a momentous debate in the Confederate Cabinet. Robert Toombs, the Secretary of State, whose rapid growth in comprehension since December formed a parallel to Lincoln"s growth, threw his influence on the side of further delay. He would not invoke that "final argument of kings," the shotted cannon. "Mr. President," he exclaimed, "at this time, it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will instantly strike a hornet"s nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal." But Toombs stood alone in the Cabinet. Orders were sent to Charleston to reduce Fort Sumter. Before dawn, April twelfth, the first shot was fired. The flag of the United States was hauled down on the afternoon of the thirteenth. Meanwhile the relieving fleet had arrived-without the Powhatan. Bereft of its great ship, it could not pa.s.s the harbor batteries and a.s.sist the fort. Its only service was to take off the garrison which by the terms of surrender was allowed to withdraw. On the fourteenth, Sumter was evacuated and the inglorious fleet sailed back to the northward.

Lincoln at once accepted the gage of battle. On the fifteenth appeared his proclamation calling for an army of seventy-five thousand volunteers. Automatically, the upper South fulfilled its unhappy destiny. Challenged at last, on the irreconcilable issue, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, seceded. The final argument of kings was the only one remaining.

XVI "ON TO RICHMOND!"

It has been truly said that the Americans are an unmilitary but an intensely warlike nation. Seward"s belief that a war fury would sweep the country at the first cannon shot was amply justified. Both North and South appeared to rise as one man, crying fiercely to be led to battle.

The immediate effect on Washington had not been foreseen. That historic clash at Baltimore between the city"s mob and the Sixth Ma.s.sachusetts en route to the capital, was followed by an outburst of secession feeling in Maryland; by an attempt to isolate Washington from the North. Railway tracks were torn up; telegraph wires were cut. During several days Lincoln was entirely ignorant of what the North was doing. Was there an efficient general response to his call for troops? Or was precious time being squandered in preparation? Was it conceivable that the war fury was only talk? Looking forth from the White House, he was a prisoner of the horizon; an impenetrable mystery, it shut the capital in a ring of silence all but intolerable. Washington a.s.sumed the air of a beleaguered city. General Scott hastily drew in the small forces which the government had maintained in Maryland and Virginia. Government employees and loyal Washingtonians were armed and began to drill. The White House became a barracks. "Jim Lane," writes delightful John Hay in his diary, which is always cool, rippling, sunny, no matter how acute the crisis, "Jim Lane marshalled his Kansas warriors today at Williard"s; tonight (they are in) the East Room."(1) Hay"s humor brightens the tragic hour. He felt it his duty to report to Lincoln a "yarn" that had been told to him by some charming women who had insisted on an interview; they had heard from "a dashing Virginian" that inside forty-eight hours something would happen which would ring through the world. The ladies thought this meant the capture or a.s.sa.s.sination of the President. "Lincoln quietly grinned." But Hay who plainly enjoyed the episode, charming women and all, had got himself into trouble. He had to do "some very dexterous lying to calm the awakened fears of Mrs. Lincoln in regard to the a.s.sa.s.sination suspicion." Militia were quartered in the Capitol, and Pennsylvania Avenue was a drill ground. At the President"s reception, the distinguished politician C. C. Clay, "wore with a sublimely unconscious air three pistols and an "Arkansas toothpick," and looked like an admirable vignette to twenty-five cents" worth of yellow covered romance."

But Hay"s levity was all of the surface. Beneath it was intense anxiety. General Scott reported that the Virginia militia, concentrating about Washington, were a formidable menace, though he thought he was strong enough to hold out until relief should come. As the days pa.s.sed and nothing appeared upon that inscrutable horizon while the telegraph remained silent, Lincoln became moodily distressed. One afternoon, "the business of the day being over, the executive office deserted, after walking the floor alone in silent thought for nearly a half-hour, he stopped and gazed long and wistfully out of the window down the Potomac in the direction of the expected ships (bringing soldiers from New York); and unconscious of other presence in the room, at length broke out with irrepressible anguish in the repeated exclamation, "Why don"t they come! Why don"t they come!""(2) His unhappiness flashed into words while he was visiting those Ma.s.sachusetts soldiers who had been wounded on their way to Washington. "I don"t believe there is any North... " he exclaimed. "You are the only Northern realities."(3) But even then relief was at hand. The Seventh New York, which had marched down Broadway amid such an ovation as never before was given any regiment in America, had come by sea to Annapolis. At noon on April twenty-fifth, it reached Washington bringing, along with the welcome sight of its own bayonets, the news that the North had risen, that thousands more were on the march.

Hay who met them at the depot went at once to report to Lincoln. Already the President had reacted to a "pleasant, hopeful mood." He began outlining a tentative plan of action: blockade, maintenance of the safety of Washington, holding Fortress Monroe, and then to "go down to Charleston and pay her the little debt we are owing there."(4) But this was an undigested plan. It had little resemblance to any of his later plans. And immediately the chief difficulties that were to embarra.s.s all his plans appeared. He was a minority President; and he was the Executive of a democracy. Many things were to happen; many mistakes were to be made; many times the piper was to be paid, ere Lincoln felt sufficiently sure of his support to enforce a policy of his own, defiant of opposition. Throughout the spring of 1861 his imperative need was to secure the favor of the Northern ma.s.s, to shape his policy with that end in view. At least, in his own mind, this seemed to be his paramount obligation. And so it was in the minds of his advisers. Lincoln was still in the pliable mood which was his when he entered office, which continued to be in evidence, except for sudden momentary disappearances when a different Lincoln flashed an instant into view, until another year and more had gone by. Still he felt himself the apprentice hand painfully learning the trade of man of action. Still he was deeply sensitive to advice.

And what advice did the country give him? There was one roaring shout dinning into his ears all round the Northern horizon-"On to Richmond!" Following Virginia"s secession, Richmond had become the Confederate capital. It was expected that a session of the Confederate Congress would open at Richmond in July. "On to Richmond! Forward to Richmond!" screamed The Tribune. "The Rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet there on the 20th of July. By that date the place must be held by the national army." The Times advised the resignation of the Cabinet; it warned the President that if he did not give prompt satisfaction he would be superseded. Though Lincoln laughed at the threat of The Times to "depose" him, he took very seriously all the swiftly acc.u.mulating evidence that the North was becoming rashly impatient Newspaper correspondents at Washington talked to his secretaries "impertinently."(5) Members of Congress, either carried away by the excitement of the hour or with slavish regard to the hysteria of their const.i.tuents, thronged to Washington clamoring for action. On purely political grounds, if on no other, they demanded an immediate advance into Virginia. Military men looked with irritation, if not with contempt, on all this intemperate popular fury. That grim Sherman, who had been offended by Lincoln"s tone the month previous, put their feeling into words. Declining the offer of a position in the War Department, he wrote that he wished "the Administration all success in its almost impossible task of governing this distracted and anarchial people."(6) In the President"s councils, General Scott urged delay, and the gathering of the volunteers into camps of instruction, their deliberate transformation into a genuine army. So inadequate were the resources of the government; so loose and uncertain were the militia organizations which were attempting to combine into an army; such discrepancies appeared between the nominal and actual strength of commands, between the places where men were supposed to be and the places where they actually were; that Lincoln in his droll way compared the process of mobilization to shoveling a bushel of fleas across a barn floor.(7) From the military point of view it was no time to attempt an advance. Against the military argument, three political arguments loomed dark in the minds of the Cabinet; there was the clamor of the Northern majority; there were the threats of the politicians who were to a.s.semble in Congress, July fourth; there was the term of service of the volunteers which had been limited by the proclamation to three months. Late in June, the Cabinet decided upon the political course, overruled the military advisers, and gave its voice for an immediate advance into Virginia. Lincoln accepted this rash advice. Scott yielded. General Irwin McDowell was ordered to strike a Confederate force that had a.s.sembled at Mana.s.sas.(8) On the fourth of July, the day Congress met, the government made use of a coup de theatre. It held a review of what was then considered a "grand army" of twenty-five thousand men. A few days later, the sensibilities of the Congressmen were further exploited. Impressionable members were "deeply moved," when the same host in marching order pa.s.sed again through the city and wheeled southward toward Virginia. Confident of victory, the Congressmen spent these days in high debate upon anything that took their fancy. When, a fortnight later, it was known that a battle was imminent, many of them treated the Occasion as a picnic. They took horses, or hired vehicles, and away they went southward for a jolly outing on the day the Confederacy was to collapse. In the mind of the unfortunate General who commanded the expedition a different mood prevailed. In depression, he said to a friend, "This is not an army. It will take a long time to make an army. But his duty as a soldier forbade him to oppose his superiors; the poor fellow could not proclaim his distrust of his army in public."(9) Thoughtful observers at Washington felt danger in the air, both military and political.

Sunday, July twenty-first, dawned clear. It was the day of the expected battle. A noted Englishman, setting out for the front as war correspondent of the London Times, observed "the calmness and silence of the streets of Washington, this early morning." After crossing the Potomac, he felt that "the promise of a lovely day given by the early dawn was likely to be realized to the fullest"; and "the placid beauty of the scenery as we drove through the woods below Arlington" delighted him. And then about nine o"clock his thoughts abandoned the scenery. Through those beautiful Virginia woods came the distant roar of cannon.

At the White House that day there was little if any alarm. Reports received at various times were construed by military men as favorable. These, with the rooted preconception that the army had to be successful, established confidence in a victory before nightfall. Late in the afternoon, the President relieved his tension by taking a drive. He had not returned when, about six o"clock, Seward appeared and asked hoa.r.s.ely where he was. The secretaries told him. He begged them to find the President as quickly as possible. "Tell no one," said he, "but the battle is lost. The army is in full retreat."

The news of the rout at Bull Run did not spread through Washington until close to midnight. It caused an instantaneous panic. In the small hours, the s.p.a.ce before the Treasury was "a moving ma.s.s of humanity. Every man seemed to be asking every man he met for the latest news, while all sorts of rumors filled the air. A feeling of mingled horror and despair appeared to possess everybody... . Our soldiers came straggling into the city covered with dust and many of them wounded, while the panic that led to the disaster spread like a contagion through all cla.s.ses." The President did not share the panic. He "received the news quietly and without any visible sign of perturbation or excitement""(10) Now appeared in him the quality which led Herndon to call him a fatalist. All night long he sat unruffled in his office, while refugees from the stricken field-especially those overconfident Senators and Representatives who had gone out to watch the overthrow of the Confederates-poured into his ears their various and conflicting accounts of the catastrophe. During that long night Lincoln said almost nothing. Meanwhile, fragments of the routed army continued to stream into the city. At dawn the next day Washington was possessed by a swarm of demoralized soldiers while a dreary rain settled over it.

The silent man in the White House had forgotten for the moment his dependence upon his advisers. While the runaway Senators were talking themselves out, while the rain was sheeting up the city, he had reached two conclusions. Early in the morning, he formulated both. One conclusion was a general outline for the conduct of a long war in which the first move should be a call for volunteers to serve three years.(11) The other conclusion was the choice of a conducting general. Scott was too old. McDowell had failed. But there was a young officer, a West Pointer, who had been put in command of the Ohio militia, who had entered the Virginia mountains from the West, had engaged a small force there, and had won several small but rather showy victories. Young as he was, he had served in the Mexican War and was supposed to be highly accomplished. On the day following Bull Run, Lincoln ordered McClellan to Washington to take command.(12)

XVII. DEFINING THE ISSUE

While these startling events were taking place in the months between Sumter and Bull Run, Lincoln pa.s.sed through a searching intellectual experience. The reconception of his problem, which took place in March, necessitated a readjustment of his political att.i.tude. He had prepared his a.r.s.enal for the use of a strategy now obviously beside the mark. The vital part of the first inaugural was its attempt to cut the ground from under the slave profiteers. Its a.s.sertion that nothing else was important, the idea that the crisis was "artificial," was sincere. Two discoveries had revolutionized Lincoln"s thought. The discovery that what the South was in earnest about was not slavery but State sovereignty; the discovery that the North was far from a unit upon nationalism. To meet the one, to organize the other, was the double task precipitated by the fall of Sumter. Not only as a line of attack, but also as a means of defense, Lincoln had to raise to its highest power the argument for the sovereign reality of the national government. The effort to do this formed the silent inner experience behind the surging external events in the stormy months between April and July. It was governed by a firmness not paralleled in his outward course. As always, Lincoln the thinker asked no advice. It was Lincoln the administrator, painfully learning a new trade, who was timid, wavering, pliable in council. Behind the apprentice in statecraft, the lonely thinker stood apart, inflexible as ever, impervious to fear. The thinking which he formulated in the late spring and early summer of 1861 obeyed his invariable law of mental gradualness. It arose out of the deep places of his own past. He built up his new conclusion by drawing together conclusions he had long held, by charging them with his later experience, by giving to them a new turn, a new significance.

Lincoln"s was one of those natures in which ideas have to become latent before they can be precipitated by outward circ.u.mstance into definite form. Always with him the idea that was to become powerful at a crisis was one that he had long held in solution, that had permeated him without his formulating it, that had entwined itself with his heartstrings; never was it merely a conscious act of the logical faculty. His characteristics as a lawyer-preoccupation with basal ideas, with ethical significance, with those emotions which form the ultimates of life-these always determined his thought. His idea of nationalism was a typical case. He had always believed in the reality of the national government as a sovereign fact. But he had thought little about it; rather he had taken it for granted. It was so close to his desire that he could not without an effort acknowledge the sincerity of disbelief in it. That was why he was so slow in forming a true comprehension of the real force opposing him. Disunion had appeared to him a mere device of party strategy. That it was grounded upon a genuine, a pa.s.sionate conception of government, one irreconcilable with his own, struck him, when at last he grasped it, as a deep offense. The literary statesman sprang again to life. He threw all the strength of his mind, the peculiar strength that had made him president, into a statement of the case for nationalism.

His vehicle for publishing his case was the first message to Congress.(1) It forms an amazing contrast with the first inaugural. The argument over slavery that underlies the whole of the inaugural has vanished. The message does not mention slavery. From the first word to the last, it is an argument for the right of the central government to exercise sovereign power, and for the duty of the American people-to give their lives for the Union. No hint of compromise; nought of the cautious and conciliatory tone of the inaugural. It is the blast of a trumpet-a war trumpet. It is the voice of a stern mind confronting an adversary that arouses in him no sympathy, no tolerance even, much less any thought of concession. Needless to insist that this adversary is an idea. Toward every human adversary, Lincoln was always unbelievably tender. Though little of a theologian, he appreciated intuitively some metaphysical ideas; he projected into politics the philosopher"s distinction between sin and the sinner. For all his hatred of the ideas which he held to be treason, he never had a vindictive impulse directed toward the men who accepted those ideas. Destruction for the idea, infinite clemency for the person-such was his att.i.tude.

It was the idea of disunion, involving as he believed, a misconception of the American government, and by implication, a misconception of the true function of all governments everywhere, against which he declared a war without recourse.

The basis of his argument reaches back to his oration on Clay, to his a.s.sertion that Clay loved his country, partly because it was his country, even more because it was a free country. This idea ran through Lincoln"s thinking to the end. There was in him a suggestion of internationalism. At the full height of his power, in his complete maturity as a political thinker, he said that the most sacred bond in life should be the brotherhood of the workers of all nations. No words of his are more significant than his remarks to pa.s.sing soldiers in 1863, such as, "There is more involved in this contest than is realized by every one. There is involved in this struggle the question whether your children and my children shall enjoy the privileges we have enjoyed." And again, "I happen temporarily to occupy this White House. I am a living witness that any one of your children may look to come here as my father"s child has."(2) This idea, the idea that the "plain people" are the chief concern of government was the bed rock of all his political thinking. The mature, historic Lincoln is first of all a leader of the plain people-of the ma.s.s-as truly as was Cleon, or Robespierre, or Andrew Jackson. His gentleness does not remove him from that stern category. The latent fanaticism that is in every man, or almost every man, was grounded in Lincoln, on his faith-so whimsically expressed-that G.o.d must have loved the plain people because he had made so many of them.(3) The basal appeal of the first message was in the words: "This is essentially a people"s contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world that form and substance of government whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men; to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all an unfettered start and a fair chance in the race of life."(4) Not a war over slavery, not a war to preserve a const.i.tutional system, but a war to a.s.sert and maintain the sovereignty of-"We, the People."

But how was it to be proved that this was, in fact, the true issue of the moment? Here, between the lines of the first message, Lincoln"s deepest feelings are to be glimpsed. Out of the discovery that Virginia honestly believed herself a sovereign power, he had developed in himself a deep, slow-burning fervor that probably did much toward fusing him into the great Lincoln of history. But why? What was there in that idea which should strike so deep? Why was it not merely one view in a permissible disagreement over the interpretation of the Const.i.tution? Why did the cause of the people inspire its champion to regard the doctrine of State sovereignty as anti-christ? Lincoln has not revealed himself on these points in so many words. But he has revealed himself plainly enough by implication.

The clue is in that element of internationalism which lay at the back of his mind. There must be no misunderstanding of this element. It was not pointing along the way of the modern "international." Lincoln would have fought Bolshevism to the death. Side by side with his a.s.sertion of the sanct.i.ty of the international bond of labor, stands his a.s.sertion of a sacred right in property and that capital is a necessity.(5) His internationalism was ethical, not opportunistic. It grew, as all his ideas grew, not out of a theorem, not from a const.i.tutional interpretation, but from his overpowering commiseration for the ma.s.s of mankind. It was a practical matter. Here were poor people to be a.s.sisted, to be enriched in their estate, to be enlarged in spirit. The mode of reaching the result was not the thing. Any mode, all sorts of modes, might be used. What counted was the purpose to work relief, and the willingness to throw overboard whatever it might be that tended to defeat the purpose. His internationalism was but a denial of "my country right or wrong." There can be little doubt that, in last resort, he would have repudiated his country rather than go along with it in opposition to what he regarded as the true purpose of government. And that was, to advance the welfare of the ma.s.s of mankind.

He thought upon this subject in the same manner in which he thought as a lawyer, sweeping aside everything but what seemed to him the ethical reality at the heart of the case. For him the "right" of a State to do this or that was a const.i.tutional question only so long as it did not cross that other more universal "right," the paramount "charter of liberty," by which, in his view, all other rights were conditioned. He would impose on all mankind, as their basic moral obligation, the duty to sacrifice all personal likes, personal ambitions, when these in their permanent tendencies ran contrary to the tendency which he rated as paramount. Such had always been, and was always to continue, his own att.i.tude toward slavery. No one ever loathed it more. But he never permitted it to take the first place in his thoughts. If it could be eradicated without in the process creating dangers for popular government he would rejoice. But all the schemes of the Abolitionists, hitherto, he had condemned as dangerous devices because they would strain too severely the fabric of the popular state, would violate agreements which alone made it possible. Therefore, being always relentless toward himself, he required of himself the renunciation of this personal hope whenever, in whatever way, it threatened to make less effective the great democratic state which appeared to him the central fact of the world.

The enlargement of his reasoning led him inevitably to an unsparing condemnation of the Virginian theory. One of his rare flashes of irritation was an exclamation that Virginia loyalty always had an "if."(6) At this point, to make him entirely plain, there is needed another basic a.s.sumption which he has never quite formulated. However, it is so obviously latent in his thinking that the main lines are to be made out clearly enough. Building ever on that paramount obligation of all mankind to consider first the welfare of G.o.d"s plain people, he a.s.sumed that whenever by any course of action any congregation of men were thrown together and led to form any political unit, they were never thereafter free to disregard in their att.i.tude toward that unit its value in supporting and advancing the general cause of the welfare of the plain people. A sweeping, and in some contingencies, a terrible doctrine! Certainly, as to individuals, cla.s.ses, communities even, a doctrine that might easily become destructive. But it formed the basis of all Lincoln"s thought about the "majority" in America. Upon it would have rested his reply, had he ever made a reply, to the Virginia contention that while his theory might apply to each individual State, it could not apply to the group of States. He would have treated such a reply, whether fairly or unfairly, as a legal technicality. He would have said in substance: here is a congregation to be benefited, this great ma.s.s of all the inhabitants of all the States of the Union; accident, or destiny, or what you will, has brought them together, but here they are; they are moving forward, haltingly, irregularly, but steadily, toward fuller and fuller democracy; they are part of the universal democratic movement; their vast experiment has an international significance; it is the hope of the "Liberal party throughout the world"; to check that experiment, to break it into Separate minor experiments; to reduce the imposing promise of its example by making it seem unsuccessful, would be treason to mankind. Therefore, both on South and North, both on the Seceders he meant to fight and on those Northerners of whom he was not entirely sure, he aimed to impose the supreme immediate duty of proving to the world that democracy on a great scale could have sufficient vitality to maintain itself against any sort of attack. Antic.i.p.ating faintly the Gettysburg oration, the first message contained these words: "And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a const.i.tutional republic, or democracy-a government of the people by the same people-can or can not maintain its integrity against its own domestic foes... . Must a government of necessity be too strong for the liberties of its people or too weak to maintain its own existence?"(7) He told Hay that "the crucial idea pervading this struggle is the necessity that is upon us to prove that popular government is not an absurdity"; "that the basal issue was whether or no the people could govern themselves."(8) But all this elaborate reasoning, if it went no further, lacked authority. It was political speculation. To clothe itself with authority it had to discover a foundation in historic fact. The real difficulty was not what ought to have been established in America in the past, but what actually had been. Where was the warrant for those bold proposition-who "we, the people," really were; in what their sovereign power really consisted; what was history"s voice in the matter? To state an historic foundation was the final aim of the message. To hit its mark it had to silence those Northerners who denied the obligation to fight for the Union; it had to oppose their "free love" ideas of political unity with the conception of an established historic government, one which could not be overthrown except through the nihilistic process of revolution. So much has been written upon the exact location of sovereignty in the American federal State that it is difficult to escape the legalistic att.i.tude, and to treat the matter purely as history. So various, so conflicting, and at times so tenuous, are the theories, that a flippant person might be forgiven did he turn from the whole discussion saying impatiently it was blind man"s buff. But on one thing, at least, we must all agree. Once there was a king over this country, and now there is no king. Once the British Crown was the sovereign, and now the Crown has receded into the distance beyond the deep blue sea. When the Crown renounced its sovereignty in America, what became of it? Did it break into fragments and pa.s.s peacemeal to the various revolted colonies? Was it transferred somehow to the group collectively? These are the obvious theories; but there are others. And the others give rise to subtler speculations. Who was it that did the actual revolting against the Crown-colonies, parties, individuals, the whole American people, who?

Troublesome questions these, with which Lincoln and the men of his time did not deal in the spirit of historical science. Their wishes fathered their thoughts. Southerners, practically without exception, held the theory of the disintegration of the Crown"s prerogative, its distribution among the States. The great leaders of Northern thought repudiated the idea. Webster and Clay would have none of it. But their own theories were not always consistent; and they differed among themselves. Lincoln did the natural thing. He fastened upon the tendencies in Northern thought that supported his own faith. Chief among these was the idea that sovereignty pa.s.sed to the general congregation of the inhabitants of the colonies-"we, the people"-because we, the people, were the real power that supported the revolt. He had accepted the idea that the American Revolution was an uprising of the people, that its victory was in a transfer of sovereign rights from an English Crown to an American nation; that a new collective state, the Union, was created by this nation as the first act of the struggle, and that it was to the Union that the Crown succ.u.mbed, to the Union that its prerogative pa.s.sed. To put this idea in its boldest and its simplest terms was the crowning effort of the message.

"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 and 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 this old dependence for them and made them States, such as they are."(9) This first message completes the evolution of Lincoln as a political thinker. It is his third, his last great landmark. The Peoria speech, which drew to a focus all the implications of his early life, laid the basis of his political significance; the Cooper Union speech, summing up his conflict with Douglas, applied his thinking to the new issue precipitated by John Brown; but in both these he was still predominantly a negative thinker, still the voice of an opposition. With the first message, he became creative; he drew together what was latent in his earlier thought; he discarded the negative; he laid the foundation of all his subsequent policy. The breadth and depth of his thinking is revealed by the fulness with which the message develops the implications of his theory. In so doing, he antic.i.p.ated the main issues that were to follow: his determination to keep nationalism from being narrowed into mere "Northernism"; his effort to create an all-parties government; his stubborn insistence that he was suppressing an insurrection, not waging external war; his doctrine that the Executive, having been chosen by the entire people, was the one expression of the sovereignty of the people, and therefore, the repository of all these exceptional "war powers" that are dormant in time of peace. Upon each of those issues he was destined to wage fierce battles with the politicians who controlled Congress, who sought to make Congress his master, who thwarted, tormented and almost defeated him. In the light of subsequent history the first message has another aspect besides its significance as political science. In its clear understanding of the implications of his att.i.tude, it attains political second sight. As Lincoln, immovable, gazes far into the future, his power of vision makes him, yet again though in a widely different sense, the "seer in a trance, Seeing all his own mischance."

His troubles with Congress began at once. The message was received on July fourth, politely, but with scant response to its ideas. During two weeks, while Congress in its fatuousness thought that the battle impending in Virginia would settle things, the majority in Congress would not give a.s.sent to Lincoln"s view of what the war was about. And then came Bull Run. In a flash the situation changed. Fatuousness was puffed out like a candle in a wind. The rankest extremist saw that Congress must cease from its debates and show its hand; must say what the war was about; must inform the nation whether it did or did not agree with the President.

On the day following Bull Run, Crittenden introduced this resolution: "That the present, deplorable civil war has been forced upon the country by the Disunionists of the Southern States, now in arms against the const.i.tutional government, and in arms around the capital; that in this national emergency, Congress, banishing all feelings of mere pa.s.sion and resentment, will recollect only its duty to the whole country; that this war is not waged on their part in any spirit of oppression or for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, or purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established inst.i.tutions of these States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Const.i.tution, and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished, the war ought to cease." This Crittenden Resolution was pa.s.sed instantly by both Houses, without debate and almost without opposition. (10) Paradoxically, Bull Run had saved the day for Lincoln, had enabled him to win his first victory as a statesman.

XVIII. THE JACOBIN CLUB

The keen Englishman who had observed the beauty of the Virginian woods on "Bull Run Sunday," said, after the battle was lost, "I hope Senator Wilson is satisfied." He was sneering at the whole group of intemperate Senators none of whom had ever smelled powder, but who knew it all when it came to war; who had done their great share in driving the President and the generals into a premature advance. Senator Wilson was one of those who went out to Mana.s.sas to see the Confederacy overthrown, that fateful Sunday. He was one of the most precipitate among those who fled back to Washington. On the way, driving furiously, amid a press of men and vehicles, he pa.s.sed a carriage containing four Congressmen who were taking their time. Perhaps irritated by their coolness, he shouted to them to make haste. "If we were in as big a hurry as you are," replied Congressman Riddle, scornfully, "we would."

These four Congressmen played a curiously dramatic part before they got back to Washington. So did a party of Senators with whom they joined forces. This other party, at the start, also numbered four. They had planned a jolly picnic-this day that was to prove them right in hurrying the government into battle!-and being wise men who knew how to take time by the forelock, they had taken their luncheon with them. From what is known of Washington and Senators, then as now, one may risk a good deal that the luncheon was worth while. Part of the tragedy of that day was the accidental break-up of this party with the result amid the confusion of a road crowded by pleasure-seekers, that two Senators went one way carrying off the luncheon, while the other two, making the best of the disaster, continued southward through those beautiful early hours when Russell was admiring the scenery, their luncheon all to seek. The lucky men with the luncheon were the Senators Benjamin Wade and Zachary Chandler. Senator Trumbull and Senator Grimes, both on horseback, were left to their own devices. However, fortune was with them. Several hours later they had succeeded in getting food by the wayside and were resting in a grove of trees some distance beyond the village of Centerville. Suddenly, they suffered an appalling surprise; happening to look up, they beheld emerging out of the distance, a stampede of men and horses which came thundering down the country road, not a hundred yards from where they sat. "We immediately mounted our horses," as Trumbull wrote to his wife the next day, "and galloped to the road, by which time it was crowded, hundreds being in advance on the way to Centerville and two guns of Sherman"s battery having already pa.s.sed in full retreat. We kept on with the crowd, not knowing what else to do. We fed our horses at Centerville and left there at six o"clock.... Came on to Fairfax Court House where we got supper and, leaving there at ten o"clock reached home at half past two this morning... . I am dreadfully disappointed and mortified."(1) Meanwhile, what of those other gay picnickers, Senator Wade and Senator Chandler? They drove in a carriage. Viewing the obligations of the hour much as did C. C. Clay at the President"s reception, they were armed. Wade had "his famous rifle" which he had brought with him to Congress, which at times in the fury of debate he had threatened to use, which had become a byword. These Senators seem to have ventured nearer to the front than did Trumbull and Grimes, and were a little later in the retreat At a "choke-up," still on the far side of Centerville, their carriage pa.s.sed the carriage of the four Congressmen-who, by the way, were also armed, having among them "four of the largest navy revolvers."

All these men, whatever their faults or absurdities, were intrepid. The Congressmen, at least, were in no good humor, for they had driven through a regiment of three months men whose time expired that day and who despite the cannon in the distance were hurrying home.

The race of the fugitives continued. At Centerville, the Congressmen pa.s.sed Wade. Soon afterward Wade pa.s.sed them for the second time. About a mile out of Fairfax Court House, "at the foot of a long down grade, the pike on the northerly side was fenced and ran along a farm. On the other side for a considerable distance was a wood, utterly impenetrable for men or animals, larger than cats or squirrels." Here the Wade carriage stopped. The congressional carriage drove up beside it. The two blocked a narrow way where as in the case of Horatius at the bridge, "a thousand might well be stopped by three." And then "bluff Ben Wade" showed the mettle that was in him. The "old Senator, his hat well back on his head," sprang out of his carriage, his rifle in his hand, and called to the others, "Boys, we"ll stop this d.a.m.ned runaway." And they did it. Only six of them, but they lined up across that narrow road; presented their weapons and threatened to shoot; seized the bridles of horses and flung the horses back on their haunches; checked a panic-stricken army; held it at bay, until just when it seemed they were about to be overwhelmed, military reserves hurrying out from Fairfax Court House, took command of the road. Cool, unpretentious Riddle calls the episode "Wade"s exploit," and adds "it was much talked of." The newspapers dealt with it extravagantly.(2) Gallant as the incident was, it was all the military service that "Ben" Wade and "Zach" Chandler-for thus they are known in history-over saw. But one may believe that it had a lasting effect upon their point of view and on that of their friend Lyman Trumbull. Certain it is that none of the three thereafter had any doubts about putting the military men in their place. All the error of their own view previous to Bull Run was forgotten. Wade and Chandler, especially, when military questions were in dispute, felt that no one possibly could know more of the subject than did the men who stopped the rout in the narrow road beyond Fairfax.

Three of those picnickers who missed their guess on Bull Run Sunday, Wade, Chandler and Trumbull, were destined to important parts in the stern years that were to come. Before the close of the year 1861 the three made a second visit to the army; and this time they kept together. To that second visit momentous happenings may be traced. How it came about must be fully understood.

Two of the three, Wade and Chandler, were temperamentally incapable of understanding Lincoln. Both were men of fierce souls; each had but a very limited experience. Wade had been a country lawyer in Ohio; Chandler, a prosperous manufacturer in Michigan. They were party men by instinct, blind to the faults of their own side, blind to the virtues of their enemies. They were rabid for the control of the government by their own organized machine.

Of Chandler, in Michigan, it was said that he "carried the Republican organization in his breeches pocket"; partly through control of the Federal patronage, which Lincoln frankly conceded to him, partly through a "judicious use of money."(3) Chandler"s first clash with Lincoln was upon the place that the Republican machine was to hold in the conduct of the war.

From the beginning Lincoln was resolved that the war should not be merely a party struggle. Even before he was inaugurated, he said that he meant to hold the Democrats "close to the Administration on the naked Union issue."(4) He had added, "We must make it easy for them" to support the government "because we can"t live through the case without them." This was the foundation of his attempt-so obvious between the lines of the first message-to create an all-parties government. This, Chandler violently opposed. Violence was always Chandler"s note, so much so that a scornful opponent once called him "Xantippe in pants."

Lincoln had given Chandler a cause of offense in McClellan"s elevation to the head of the army.* McClellan was a Democrat. There can be little doubt that Lincoln took the fact into account in selecting him. Shortly before, Lincoln had aimed to placate the Republicans by showing high honor to their popular hero, Fremont.

* Strictly speaking he did not become head of the army until the retirement of Scott in November. Practically, he was supreme almost from the moment of his arrival in Washington.

When the catastrophe occurred at Bull Run, Fremont was a major-general commanding the Western Department with headquarters at St. Louis. He was one of the same violent root-and-branch wing of the Republicans-the Radicals of a latter day-of which Chandler was a leader. The temper of that wing had already been revealed by Senator Baker in his startling p.r.o.nouncement: "We of the North control the Union, and we are going to govern our own Union in our own way." Chandler was soon to express it still more exactly, saying, "A rebel has sacrificed all his rights. He has no right to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness."(5) Here was that purpose to narrowing nationalism into Northernism, even to radicalism, and to make the war an outlet for a sectional ferocity, which Lincoln was so firmly determined to prevent. All things considered, the fact that on the day following Bull Run he did not summon the Republican hero to Washington, that he did summon a Democrat, was significant. It opened his long duel with the extremists.

The vindictive Spirit of the extremists had been rebuffed by Lincoln in another way. Shortly after Bull Run, Wade and Chandler appealed to Lincoln to call out negro soldiers. Chandler said that he did not care whether or no this would produce a servile insurrection in the South. Lincoln"s refusal made another count in the score of the extremists against him.(6) During the late summer of 1861, Chandler, Wade, Trumbull, were all busily organizing their forces for an attack on the Administration. Trumbull, indeed, seemed out of place in that terrible company. In time, he found that he was out of place. At a crucial moment he came over to Lincoln. But not until he had done yeoman service with Lincoln"s bitterest enemies. The clue to his earlier course was an honest conviction that Lincoln, though well-intentioned, was weak.(7) Was this the nemesis of Lincoln"s pliability in action during the first stage of his Presidency? It may be. The firm inner Lincoln, the unyielding thinker of the first message, was not appreciated even by well-meaning men like Trumbull. The inner and the outer Lincoln were still disconnected. And the outer, in his caution, in his willingness to be instructed, in his opposition to extreme measures, made the inevitable impression that temperance makes upon fury, caution upon rashness.

Throughout the late summer, Lincoln was the target of many attacks, chiefly from the Abolitionists. Somehow, in the previous spring, they had got it into their heads that at heart he was one of them, that he waited only for a victory to declare the war a crusade of abolition.(8) When the crisis pa.s.sed and a Democrat was put at the head of the army, while Fremont was left in the relative obscurity of St. Louis, Abolition bitterness became voluble. The Crittenden Resolution was scoffed at as an "ill-timed revival of the policy of conciliation." Threats against the Administration revived, taking the old form of demands for a wholly new Cabinet The keener-sighted Abolitionists had been alarmed by the first message, by what seemed to them its ominous silence as to slavery. Late in July, Emerson said in conversation, "If the Union is incapable of securing universal freedom, its disruption were as the breaking up of a frog-pond."(9) An outcry was raised because Federal generals did not declare free all the slaves who in any way came into their hands. The Abolitionists found no solace in the First Confiscation Act which provided that an owner should lose his claim to a slave, had the slave been used to a.s.sist the Confederate government. They were enraged by an order, early in August, informing generals that it was the President"s desire "that all existing rights in all the States be fully respected and maintained; in cases of fugitives from the loyal Slave States, the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law by the ordinary forms of judicial proceedings must be respected by the military authorities; in the disloyal States the Confiscation Act of Congress must be your guide."(10) Especially, the Abolitionists were angered because of Lincoln"s care for the forms of law in those Slave States that had not seceded. They vented their bitterness in a famous sneer-"The President would like to have G.o.d on his side, but he must have Kentucky."

A new temper was forming throughout the land. It was not merely the old Abolitionism. It was a blend of all those elements of violent feeling which war inevitably releases; it was the concentration of all these elements on the issue of Abolition as upon a terrible weapon; it was the resurrection of that primitive blood-l.u.s.t which lies dormant in every peaceful nation like a sleeping beast. This dreadful power rose out of its sleep and confronted, menacing, the statesman who of all our statesmen was most keenly aware of its evil, most determined to put it under or to perish in the attempt With its appearance, the deepest of all the issues involved, according to Lincoln"s way of thinking, was brought to a head. Was the Republic to issue from the war a worthy or an unworthy nation? That was pretty definitely a question of whether Abraham Lincoln or, say, Zachary Chandler, was to control its policy.

A vain, weak man precipitated the inevitable struggle between these two. Fremont had been flattered to the skies. He conceived himself a genius. He was persuaded that the party of the new temper, the men who may fairly be called the Vindictives, were lords of the ascendent. He mistook their volubility for the voice of the nation. He determined to defy Lincoln. He issued a proclamation freeing the slaves of all who had "taken an active part" with the enemies of the United States in the field. He set up a "bureau of abolition."

Lincoln first heard of Fremont"s proclamation through the newspapers. His instant action was taken in his own extraordinarily gentle way. "I think there is great danger," he wrote, "that the closing paragraph (of Fremont"s proclamation) in relation to the confiscation of property and the liberating of slaves of traitorous owners, will alarm our Southern Union friends and turn them against us; perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky. Allow me, therefore, to ask that you will, as of your own motion, modify that paragraph so as to conform" to the Confiscation Act. He added, "This letter is written in the Spirit of caution, not of censure."(11) Fremont was not the man to understand instruction of this sort. He would make no compromise with the President. If Lincoln wished to go over his head and rescind his order let him do so-and take the consequences. Lincoln quietly did so. His battle with the Vindictives was on. For a moment it seemed as if he had destroyed his cause. So loud was the outcry of the voluble people, that any one might have been excused momentarily for thinking that all the North had risen against him. Great meetings of protest were held. Eminent men-even such fine natures as Bryant-condemned his course. In the wake of the incident, when it was impossible to say how significant the outcry really was, Chandler, who was staunch for Fremont, began his active interference with the management of the army. McClellan had insisted on plenty of time in which to drill the new three-year recruits who were pouring into Washington. He did not propose to repeat the experience of General McDowell. On the other hand, Chandler was bent on forcing him into action. He, Wade and Trumbull combined, attempting to bring things to pa.s.s in a way to suit themselves and their faction. To these men and their followers, clever young Hay gave the apt name of "The Jacobin Club."

They began their campaign by their second visit to the army. Wade was their chief spokesman. He urged McClellan to advance at once; to risk an unsuccessful battle rather than continue to stand still; the country wanted something done; a defeat could easily be repaired by the swarming recruits.(12) This callous att.i.tude got no response from the Commanding General. The three Senators turned upon Lincoln. "This evening," writes Hay in his diary on October twenty-sixth, "the Jacobin Club represented by Trumbull, Chandler and Wade, came out to worry the Administration into a battle. The agitation of the summer is to be renewed. The President defended McClellan"s deliberateness. The next night we went over to Seward"s and found Chandler and Wade there." They repeated their reckless talk; a battle must be fought; defeat would be no worse than delay; "and a great deal more trash."

But Lincoln was not to be moved. He and Hay called upon McClellan. The President deprecated this new manifestation of popular impatience, but said it was a reality and should be taken into account. "At the same time, General," said he, "you must not fight until you are ready."(13) At this moment of extreme tension occurred the famous incident of the seizure of the Confederate envoys, Mason and Slidell, who were pa.s.sengers on the British merchant ship, the Trent. These men had run the blockade which had now drawn its strangling line along the whole coast of the Confederacy; they had boarded the Trent at Havana, and under the law of nations were safe from capture. But Captain Wilkes of the United States Navy, more zealous than discreet, overhauled the Trent and took off the two Confederates. Every thoughtless Northerner went wild with joy. At last the government had done something. Even the Secretary of the Navy so far forgot himself as to telegraph to Wilkes "Congratulate you on the great public service you have rendered in the capture of the rebel emissaries."(14) Chandler promptly applauded the seizure and when it was suggested that perhaps the envoys should be released he at once arrayed himself in opposition.(15) With the truculent Jacobins ready to close battle should the government do its duty, with the country still echoing to cheers for Fremont and hisses for the President, with nothing to his credit in the way of military success, Lincoln faced a crisis. He was carried through the crisis by two strong men. Sumner, head and front of Abolitionism but also a great lawyer, came at once to his a.s.sistance. And what could a thinking Abolitionist say after that! Seward skilfully saved the face of the government by his management of the negotiation. The envoys were released and sent to England.

It was the only thing to do, but Chandler and all his sort had opposed it. The Abolition fury against the government was at fever heat. Wendell Phillips in a speech at New York denounced the Administration as having no definite purpose in the war, and was interrupted by frantic cheers for Fremont. McClellan, patiently drilling his army, was, in the eyes of the Jacobins, doing nothing. Congress had a.s.sembled. There was every sign that troubled waters lay just ahead.

XIX. THE JACOBINS BECOME INQUISITORS

The temper animating Hay"s "Jacobins" formed a new and really formidable danger which menaced Lincoln at the close of 1861. But had he been anything of an opportunist, it would have offered him an unrivaled opportunity. For a leader who sought personal power, this raging savagery, with its triple alliance of an organized political machine, a devoted fanaticism, and the war fury, was a chance in ten thousand. It led to his door the steed of militarism, shod and bridled, champing upon the bit, and invited him to leap into the saddle. Ten words of acquiescence in the program of the Jacobins, and the dreaded role of the man on horseback was his to command.

The fallacy that politics are primarily intellectual decisions upon stated issues, the going forth of the popular mind to decide between programs presented to it by circ.u.mstances, receives a brilliant refutation in the course of the powerful minority that was concentrating around the three great "Jacobins." The subjective side of politics, also the temperamental side, here found expression. Statecraft is an art; creative statesmen are like other artists. Just as the painter or the poet, seizing upon old subjects, uses them as outlets for his particular temper, his particular emotion, and as the temper, the emotion are what counts in his work, so with statesmen, with Lincoln on the one hand, with Chandler at the opposite extreme.

The Jacobins stood first of all for the sudden reaction of bold fierce natures from a long political repression. They had fought their way to leadership as captains of an opposition. They were artists who had been denied an opportunity of expression. By a sudden turn of fortune, it had seemed to come within their grasp. Temperamentally they were fighters. Battle for them was an end in itself. The thought of Conquest sang to them like the morning stars. Had they been lit

Prev List Next