Seward suggested: "I close. We are not we must not be aliens or enemies but fellow countrymen and brethren. Although pa.s.sion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly they must not, I am sure they will not be broken. The mystic chords which proceeding from so many battle fields and so many patriot graves pa.s.s through all the hearts and all the hearths in this broad continent of ours will yet again harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the nation."
Lincoln proceeded to recast and sharpen Seward"s patriotic sentiments into a concise and powerful poetry: "I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though pa.s.sion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." Most significant, Seward"s "guardian angel" breathes down on the nation from above; Lincoln"s "better angels" are inherent in our nature as a people.
AFTER PLACING HIS FINISHING TOUCHES on the final draft, Lincoln read the speech to his family. Then he asked to be left alone. Several blocks away, Seward had finished reading the morning newspapers and was getting ready to go to the Capitol when a chorus of voices outside attracted his attention. Hundreds of devoted followers were a.s.sembled in front of his house. Moved by the spirit of the serenade, Seward spoke to them with emotion. "I have been a representative of my native State in the Senate for twelve years, and there is no living being who can look in my face and say that in all that time I have not done my duty toward all-the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the bond and the free."
Perhaps this show of popular support softened the wrenching realization that his chance had come and gone. When a congressman argued with him that a certain politician would be disappointed if he didn"t get an appointment in the new administration, Seward lost his composure: "Disappointment! You speak to me of disappointment. To me, who was justly ent.i.tled to the Republican nomination for the presidency, and who had to stand aside and see it given to a little Illinois lawyer!"
As the clock struck noon, President Buchanan arrived at the Willard to escort the president-elect to the ceremony. Lincoln, only fifty-two, tall and energetic in his shiny new black suit and stovepipe hat, presented a striking contrast to the short and thickset Buchanan, nearly seventy, who had a sorrowful expression on his aged face. As they moved arm in arm toward the open carriage, the Marine Band played "Hail to the Chief." The carriage made its way up Pennsylvania Avenue, while cheering crowds and hundreds of dignitaries mingled uneasily with the hundreds of troops put in place by General Scott to guard against an attempted a.s.sa.s.sination. Sharpshooters looked down from windows and rooftops. Cavalry were placed strategically throughout the entire route.
Along the way, an ominous sound was heard. "A sharp, cracking, rasping sort of detonation, at regular intervals of perhaps three seconds" set everyone"s nerves on edge, the Washington Evening Star reported. The perplexed police finally identified the sound as issuing from the New England delegation. They wore their customary "pegged" shoes, with heavy soles designed for the ice and snow of the north country. In the more temperate climate of Washington, the "heat and dryness of the atmosphere" had apparently "shrunk the peg timber in the foot-gear excessively, occasioning a general squeaking with every movement, swelling in the aggregate" when the delegation marched in step.
As the day brightened, Washington, according to one foreign observer, "a.s.sume[d] an almost idyllic garb." Though the city "displayed an unfinished aspect"-with the monument to President Washington still only one third of its intended height, the new Capitol dome two years away from completion, and most of the streets unpaved-the numerous trees and gardens were very pleasing, creating the feel of "a large rural village."
The appearance of Lincoln on the square platform constructed out from the east portico of the Capitol was met with loud cheers from more than thirty thousand spectators. Mary sat behind her husband, their three sons beside her. In the front row, along with Lincoln, sat President Buchanan, Senator Douglas, and Chief Justice Taney, three of the four men Lincoln had portrayed in his "House Divided" speech as conspiring carpenters intent on destroying the original house the framers had designed and built.
Lincoln"s old friend Edward Baker, who had moved to Oregon and won a seat in the Senate, introduced the president-elect. Lincoln made his way to the little table from which he was meant to speak. Noting Lincoln"s uncertainty as to where to place his stovepipe hat, Senator Douglas reached over, took the hat, and placed it on his own lap. Then Lincoln began. His clear high voice, trained in the outdoor venues of the Western states, could be heard from the far reaches of the crowd.
Having dropped his opening pledge of strict fealty to the Chicago platform, Lincoln moved immediately to calm the anxieties of the Southern people, quoting an earlier speech in which he had promised that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the inst.i.tution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." He turned then to the controversial Fugitive Slave Law, repeating his tenet that while "safeguards" should be put in place to ensure that free men were not illegally seized, the U.S. Const.i.tution required that the slaves "shall be delivered upon claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." Although he understood that the Fugitive Slave Law offended "the moral sense" of many people in the North, he felt compelled, under the Const.i.tution, to enforce it.
Lincoln went on to make his powerful case for continued federal authority over what he insisted, "in view of the Const.i.tution and the laws," was an "unbroken" Union. While "there needs to be no bloodshed," he intended to execute the laws, "to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion-no using of force against, or among the people anywhere....
"Physically speaking, we cannot separate," Lincoln declared, prophetically adding: "Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you....
"In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not a.s.sail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors."
He closed with the lyrical a.s.surance that "the mystic chords of memory...will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely as they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
At the end of the address, Chief Justice Taney walked slowly to the table. The Bible was opened, and Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as the sixteenth President of the United States.
"THE MANSION was in a perfect state of readiness" when the Lincolns arrived, Mary"s cousin Elizabeth Grimsley observed. "A competent chef, with efficient butler and waiters, under the direction of the accomplished Miss Harriet Lane, had an elegant dinner prepared." As Buchanan bade farewell, he said to Lincoln, "If you are as happy, my dear sir, on entering the house as I am in leaving it and returning home, you are the happiest man in this country." After some hasty unpacking, the Lincolns dressed for the Inaugural Ball, held in the rear of the City Hall, in a room referred to as the Muslim Palace of Aladdin "because of the abundance of white draperies trimmed with blue used in its decoration." Brightened by five enormous chandeliers, the room accommodated two thousand people, though the hooped crinolines worn by the women took up a good deal of s.p.a.ce. Seward was there with his daughter-in-law Anna. Chase was accompanied by the lovely Kate. Still, this night Mary shone as the brightest star. "Dressed all in blue, with a necklace and bracelets of gold and pearls," she danced the quadrille with her old beau Stephen Douglas and remained at the ball for several hours after the departure of her exhausted husband.
While the party was still in full swing, word of Lincoln"s inaugural speech was making its way across the country, carried by telegraph and printed in dozens of evening newspapers. In Auburn, Frances and f.a.n.n.y waited in suspense throughout the night for the paper to arrive. Finally, f.a.n.n.y heard a sound downstairs and raced to find out the news. "What an inappreciable relief," f.a.n.n.y wrote in her diary when she read that the ceremony went off without violence. "For months I have felt constant anxiety for Father"s safety-& of course joined in the fears so often expressed that Lincoln would never see the 5th of March." The news traveled more slowly west of St. Joseph, Missouri, where the telegraph lines stopped. Dozens of pony express riders, traveling in relays, carried the text of the address to the Pacific Coast. They did their job well. In a record time of "seven days and seventeen hours," Lincoln"s words could be read in Sacramento, California.
Reactions to his speech varied widely, depending on the political persuasion of the commentators. Republican papers lauded the address as "grand and admirable in every respect," and "convincing in argument, concise and pithy in manner." It was "eminently conciliatory," the Philadelphia Bulletin observed, extolling the president"s "determination to secure the rights of the whole country, of every State under the Const.i.tution." The Commercial Advertiser of New York claimed that the inaugural was "the work of Mr. Lincoln"s own pen and hand, unaltered by any to whom he confided its contents."
In Northern Democratic papers, the tone was less charitable. A "wretchedly botched and unstatesmanlike paper," the Hartford Times opined. "It is he that is the nullifier," the Albany Atlas and Argus raged. "It is he that defies the will of the majority. It is he that initiates Civil War." Not surprisingly, negative reactions were stronger in the South. The Richmond Enquirer argued that the address was "couched in the cool, unimpa.s.sioned, deliberate language of the fanatic...pursuing the promptings of fanaticism even to the dismemberment of the Government with the horrors of civil war." In ominous language, the Wilmington, North Carolina, Herald warned that the citizens of America "might as well open their eyes to the solemn fact that war is inevitable."
But beneath the bl.u.s.tery commentary in the majority of Southern papers, the historian Benjamin Thomas notes, the address "won some favorable comment in the all-important loyal slave states" of Virginia and North Carolina. This was the audience Seward had targeted when he told Lincoln to soften the tone of his speech. Indeed, Seward was greatly relieved, not only because he realized many of his suggestions had been adopted, but because Lincoln"s conciliatory stance had given him cover with his critics in Congress. He could now leave the Senate, he told his wife, "without getting any bones broken," content with having provided a foundation "on which an Administration can stand."
Likewise, Charles Francis Adams, Sr., felt that a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders when Lincoln accepted the controversial amendment that prevented Congress from ever interfering with slavery. Having sponsored the amendment in the House, to the great dismay of the hard-liners, Adams now felt that he had "been fully justified in the face of the country by the head of the nation as well as of the Republican party.... Thus ends this most trying period of our history.... I should be fortunate if I closed my political career now. I have gained all that I can for myself and I shall never have such another opportunity to benefit my country."
Of the reactions to the inaugural speech, perhaps the most portentous came from within the Republican Party itself. Radicals and abolitionists were disheartened by what they considered an appeasing tone. The news of Lincoln"s election had initially provided some desperately needed hope to the black abolitionist Frederick Dougla.s.s.
The dramatic life of the former slave who became an eloquent orator and writer was well known in the North. He had been owned by several cruel slaveholders, but his second master"s kindly wife had taught him to read. When the master found out, he stopped the instruction immediately, warning his wife that "it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read...there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave.... It would make him...discontented and unhappy." These words proved prescient. Young Dougla.s.s soon felt that "learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy." He fervently wished that he were dead or perhaps an animal-"Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking!" Only the faraway hope of escaping to freedom kept him alive. While waiting six years for his chance, he surrept.i.tiously learned to write.
At the age of twenty, Dougla.s.s managed to escape from Maryland to New York, eventually becoming a lecturer with the Ma.s.sachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, headed by William Lloyd Garrison. His autobiography made him a celebrity in antislavery circles, allowing him to edit his own monthly paper in Rochester, New York. Throughout all his writings, the historian David Blight argues, there was "no more pervasive theme in Dougla.s.s" thought than the simple sustenance of hope in a better future for blacks in America."
Dougla.s.s believed that the election of a Republican president foretold a rupture in the power of the slaveocracy. "It has taught the North its strength, and shown the South its weakness. More important still, it has demonstrated the possibility of electing, if not an Abolitionist, at least an anti-slavery reputation to the Presidency." But when Dougla.s.s read the inaugural, beginning with Lincoln"s declaration that he had "no lawful power to interfere with slavery in the States," and worse still, no "inclination" to do so, he found little reason for optimism. More insufferable was Lincoln"s readiness to catch fugitive slaves, "to shoot them down if they rise against their oppressors, and to prohibit the Federal Government irrevocably from interfering for their deliverance." The whole tone of the speech, Dougla.s.s claimed, revealed Lincoln"s compulsion to grovel "before the foul and withering curse of slavery. Some thought we had in Mr. Lincoln the nerve and decision of an Oliver Cromwell; but the result shows that we merely have a continuation of the Pierces and Buchanans."
THE WHITE HOUSE FAMILY QUARTERS were then confined to the west end of the second floor. Lincoln chose a small bedroom with a large dressing room on the southwest side. Mary took the more s.p.a.cious room adjacent to her husband"s, while Willie and Tad occupied a bedroom across the hall. Beyond the ample sleeping quarters, there was only one other private s.p.a.ce-an oval room, filled with bookcases, that Mary turned into the family"s library. At the east end of the same floor was a sleeping chamber shared by Nicolay and Hay and a small, narrow works.p.a.ce that opened onto the president"s simply furnished office. The rest of the mansion was largely open to the public. In the first few weeks, Seward reported to his wife, "the grounds, halls, stairways, closets" were overrun with hundreds of people, standing in long winding lines and waving their letters of introduction in desperate hope of securing a job.
For Willie and Tad, now ten and almost eight, respectively, the early days in the White House were filled with great adventures. They ran from floor to floor, inspecting every room. They talked with everyone along the way, "from Edward, the door keeper, Stackpole, the messenger, to the maids and scullions." Willie was "a n.o.ble, beautiful boy," Elizabeth Grimsley observed, "of great mental activity, unusual intelligence, wonderful memory, methodical, frank and loving, a counterpart of his father, save that he was handsome." Willie spent hours memorizing railroad timetables and would entertain his friends by conducting "an imaginary train from Chicago to New York with perfect precision" and dramatic flair. He was an avid reader, a budding writer, and generally sweet-tempered, all reminiscent of his father.
Tad, to whom Willie was devoted, bore greater resemblance to his mother. Healthy and high-spirited, he had a blazing temper, which disappeared as quickly as it came. He was a "merry, spontaneous fellow, bubbling over with innocent fun, whose laugh rang through the house, when not moved to tears." Irrepressible and undisciplined, never hesitant to interrupt his father in the midst of a cabinet meeting, he was "the life, as also the worry of the household." A speech impediment made it hard for anyone outside his family to understand his words, but he never stopped talking. He had, John Hay recalled, "a very bad opinion of books and no opinion of discipline."
The boys harried the staff at the executive mansion, racing through the hallways, playing advocate for the most anguished office seekers, organizing little plays in the garret, and setting off all the servants" bells at the same time. Fearing that her boys would grow lonely and isolated, Mary found them two lively companions in twelve-year-old Horatio Nelson "Bud" Taft and his eight-year-old brother, Halsey, nicknamed "Holly." Together with their older sister, Julia, who later wrote a small book recording their adventures in the White House, the Taft children quickly formed a tight circle with Willie and Tad. "If there was any motto or slogan of the White House during the early years," Julia recalled, "it was this: "Let the children have a good time.""
Mary, too, seemed happy at first, surrounded by friends and relatives, who stayed on for weeks after the inauguration. Her confidence that she could handle the demands of first lady was buoyed by the great success of the first evening levee on the Friday after they moved in. Seward had proposed that he would lead off the social season from his own mansion, but Mary immediately took exception. Like her husband, Mary had no desire "to let Seward take the first trick." She insisted that the new administration"s first official entertainment take place at the White House. Though she had little time to prepare, she arranged an unforgettable event. "For over two hours," Nicolay wrote his fiancee, Therena, "the crowd poured in as rapidly as the door would admit them, and many climbed in at the windows." The president and first lady shook hands with as many of the five thousand "well dressed and well behaved" guests as they could. Even the blue-blood Charles Francis Adams was impressed by Mary"s poise, though he found Lincoln to be wholly ignorant of formal "social courtesy." Nonetheless, according to Nicolay, the levee "was voted by all the "oldest inhabitants" to have been the most successful one ever known here."
Mary was thrilled. "This is certainly a very charming spot," she wrote her friend Hannah Shearer several weeks later, "& I have formed many delightful acquaintances. Every evening our blue room, is filled with the elite of the land, last eve, we had about 40 to call in, to see us ladies, from Vice. P. Breckinridge down.... I am beginning to feel so perfectly at home, and enjoy every thing so much. The conservatory attached to this house is so delightful." Scarcely concealing her pride at having outdone her older sister Elizabeth, she told Hannah that Elizabeth had so enjoyed herself at the festivities that she "cannot settle down at home, since she has been here."
A "LIGHT AND CAPRICIOUS" SLEEPER, Lincoln generally awakened early in the morning. Before breakfast he liked to exercise, often by walking around the s.p.a.cious White House grounds. After a simple meal, usually a single egg and a cup of coffee, he made his way down the corridor to his office, where on cool days a fire blazed in the white marble fireplace with a big bra.s.s fender. His worktable stood between two tall windows that faced the south lawn, affording a panorama of the incomplete Washington Monument, the red-roofed Smithsonian, and the Potomac River. An armchair nearby allowed him to read in comfort, his long legs stretched before him or crossed one over the other.
In the center of the chamber, which doubled as the Cabinet Room, stood a long oak table around which the members arranged themselves in order of precedence. Old maps hung on the wall, and over the mantel, a portrait of President Andrew Jackson. A few sofas and an a.s.sortment of chairs completed the furnishings. The musty smell of tobacco, lodged in the draperies from the heavy cigar smoke of the previous president and the new secretary of state, conveyed the atmosphere of the traditional men"s club.
When Lincoln entered his office on the first morning after his inauguration, he was confronted with profoundly disturbing news. On his desk, "the very first thing placed in his hands" was a letter from Major Anderson at Fort Sumter. The communication estimated, Lincoln later recalled, "that their provisions would be exhausted before an expedition could be sent to their relief." The letter carried General Winfield Scott"s endors.e.m.e.nt: "I now see no alternative but a surrender."
The immediacy of this crisis posed great difficulties for Lincoln. His revised inaugural had no longer contained a promise to "reclaim" fallen properties, but Lincoln had most definitely pledged to "hold, occupy and possess" all properties still in Federal hands. No symbol of Federal authority was more important than Fort Sumter. Ever since Major Anderson, in the dead of night on December 26, had surrept.i.tiously moved his troops from Fort Moultrie to the better-protected Sumter, he had become a romantic hero in the North. Surrender of his garrison would be humiliating. Still, the president felt bound by his vow to his "dissatisfied fellow countrymen" that the new "government will not a.s.sail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors."
The president needed time to think, but scarcely had a moment "to eat or sleep" amid the crush of office seekers. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, pressed in as soon as the doors were opened, ignoring the barriers set up to keep them in line. As Lincoln moved throughout the house to take his lunch-which was generally limited to bread, fruit, and milk-"he had literally to run the gantlet through the crowds." Each aspirant had a story to tell, a reason why a clerkship in Washington or a job in their local post office or customs house would allow their family to survive. Time and again, Lincoln was faulted for wasting his energies. "You will wear yourself out," Senator Henry Wilson of Ma.s.sachusetts warned. "They don"t want much," Lincoln replied, "they get but little, and I must see them."
Such openheartedness indicated incompetence to many, or, worse, a sign of terrible weakness. He "has no conception of his situation," Sumner told Adams. "He is ignorant, and must have help," Adams agreed, citing Seward as "our only security now." The New York Times reproved Lincoln repeatedly, writing disdainfully that he "owes a higher duty to the country...than to fritter away the priceless opportunities of the Presidency in listening to the appeals of competing office-hunters." Seward, too, was critical. "The President proposes to do all his work," he wrote home. "Of course he takes that business up, first, which is pressed upon him most."
Somehow Lincoln managed, despite the chaos, to focus upon the crisis at Sumter. Late at night, he would sit in the library, clothed in his "long-skirted faded dressing-gown, belted around his waist," his large leather Bible beside him. He liked to read and think in "his big chair by the window," observed Julia Taft, "in his stocking feet with one long leg crossed over the other, the unshod foot slowly waving back and forth, as if in time to some inaudible music."
Unwilling to accept Scott"s a.s.sumption that Sumter must be evacuated, Lincoln penned a note to the old general, asking for more specifics. Exactly how long could Anderson hold out? What would it take to resupply him and to reinforce Sumter? Scott"s reply laid out a bleak prospect indeed. With the government of South Carolina now preventing the garrison from resupplying in Charleston, Anderson could hold out, Scott estimated, for only twenty-six days. It would require "six to eight months" to a.s.semble the "fleet of war vessels & transports, 5,000 additional regular troops & 20,000 volunteers" necessary to resupply and reinforce the garrison.
Rumors spread that Sumter would soon be surrendered, but Lincoln "was disinclined to hasty action," Welles recorded in his diary, "and wished time for the Administration to get in working order and its policy to be understood." Repeatedly, he called his cabinet into session to discuss the situation. He met with Francis Blair, who, like his son, Monty, believed pa.s.sionately that the surrender of Sumter "was virtually a surrender of the Union unless under irresistible force-that compounding with treason was treason to the Govt."
At Monty Blair"s suggestion, Lincoln met with his brother-in-law, Gustavus Fox, a former navy officer who had developed an ingenious plan for relief by sea. Bread and supplies could be loaded onto two st.u.r.dy tugboats, shadowed by a large steamer conveying troops ready to fire if the tugs were opposed. Intrigued, Lincoln asked Fox to present his plan; and the next day, March 15, the cabinet gathered around the long table to discuss the stratagem. Lincoln seldom took his seat, pacing up and down as he spoke. After the meeting, he sent a memo to each of the members, asking for a written response to the following question: "a.s.suming it to be possible to now provision Fort-Sumpter, under all the circ.u.mstances, is it wise to attempt it?"
Seward, who had exerted himself in the previous months trying to mollify the Union"s remaining slave states, found the idea of provisioning Sumter and sending troops to South Carolina detestable. From his suite in the old State Department, a two-story brick building containing only thirty-two rooms, Seward drafted his reply, while his son Frederick, who had been confirmed by the Senate as a.s.sistant secretary of state, handled the crowds downstairs. In his lengthy reply to the president, Seward reiterated that without the conciliation measures that had solidified the Unionist sentiment in the South, Virginia, North Carolina, Arkansas, and the border states would have joined the Confederacy. The attempt to supply Fort Sumter with armed forces would inevitably provoke the remaining slave states to secede and launch a civil war-that "most disastrous and deplorable of national calamities." Far better, Seward advised, to a.s.sume a defensive position, leaving "the necessity for action" in the hands of "those who seek to dismember and subvert this Union.... In that case, we should have the spirit of the country and the approval of mankind on our side." His emphatic negative reply probably reached Lincoln within minutes, for the State Department was adjacent to the northern wing of the Treasury Department and connected by a short pathway to the White House.
Chase did not return his answer until the following day, repairing that evening to his suite at the Willard Hotel. Considering his hard-line credentials, Chase returned a surprisingly evasive and equivocal reply: "If the attempt will so inflame civil war as to involve an immediate necessity for the enlistment of armies and the expenditure of millions I cannot advise it." Better, he later explained, to consider "the organization of actual government by the seven seceded states as an accomplished revolution-accomplished through the complicity of the late admn.-& letting that confederacy try its experiment." Still, he concluded in his answer to Lincoln, "it seems to me highly improbable" that war will result. "I return, therefore, an affirmative answer."
Every other cabinet officer save Blair rejected the possibility of sustaining Fort Sumter. Bates argued that he was loath "to do any act which may have the semblance, before the world of beginning a civil war." Cameron contended that even if Fox"s plan should succeed, which he considered doubtful, the surrender of the fort would remain "an inevitable necessity." Thus, "the sooner it be done, the better." Welles, writing from his second-floor suite in the Navy Department on 17th Street, reasoned that since the "impression has gone abroad that Sumter is to be evacuated and the shock caused by that announcement has done its work," it would only cause further damage to follow "a course that would provoke hostilities." And if it did not succeed, "failure would be attended with untold disaster." In like fashion, Interior Secretary Caleb Smith concluded that while the plan might succeed, "it would not be wise under all the circ.u.mstances."
Only Montgomery Blair delivered an unconditional yes, arguing that "every new conquest made by the rebels strengthens their hands at home and their claim to recognition as an independent people abroad." So long as the rebels could claim "that the Northern men are deficient in the courage necessary to maintain the Government," the secession momentum would continue. Just as President Jackson stopped the attempted secession of South Carolina in 1833 by making it clear that punishment would follow, so Lincoln must now take "measures which will inspire respect for the power of the Government and the firmness of those who administer it."
In the end, five cabinet members strongly opposed the resupply and reinforcement of Sumter; one remained ambiguous; one was in favor.
IN THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED the cabinet vote, Lincoln appeared to waver. Weed later insisted that on at least three occasions, the president said if he could keep Virginia in the Union, he would give up Sumter. Seward urged that so long as Fort Pickens in Florida remained in Union hands, Sumter"s evacuation would matter little. Pickens was fully provisioned and, situated in Pensacola Bay, would be easier than Sumter to defend. Orders had already been issued to reinforce the garrison. However, Lincoln felt that the surrender of Sumter would be "utterly ruinous...that, at home, it would discourage the friends of the Union, embolden its adversaries, and go far to insure to the latter, a recognition abroad."
Desiring more information, Lincoln sent Fox to talk directly to Major Anderson and determine exactly how long his supplies would last. Through the intervention of an old friend who was close to the governor of South Carolina, Fox received permission to enter Sumter and meet with Anderson. If his men went on half-rations, Anderson told him, he could last until April 15. At the same time, Lincoln sent Stephen Hurlbut, whom he had known well in Springfield, to Charleston. Hurlbut had grown up in Charleston, and his sister still lived there. Speaking privately to old friends, he could test Seward"s a.s.sumption that Unionist sentiment throughout the South would continue to strengthen so long as the government refrained from any provocative action or perceived aggression. Hurlbut spent two days in his native city. He returned with "no hesitation in reporting as unquestionable" that Unionist sentiment in both city and state was dead, "that separate nationality is a fixed fact."
While Lincoln was learning more about the facts of the situation, his cabinet colleagues were engaged in a series of petty feuds. Chase considered Smith "a cypher" and Bates "a humdrum lawyer." Seward was furious when Chase and Bates insisted on two appointments in his own district and stated that would be "humiliating" to him. "I would sooner attack either of those gentlemen in the open street," Seward indignantly wrote Lincoln, "than consent to oppose any local appointment they might desire to make in their respective states." From his Treasury Department office overlooking the White House grounds, Chase complained to Lincoln that Seward would "certainly have no cause to congratulate himself if he persists in denying the only favor he can show me." Blair Senior, echoing the sentiment of his son, grumbled to Chase that all the best missions abroad had been given to Seward"s old Whig friends. "I believe our Republican Party will not endure, unless there is a fusion of the Whig & Democratic element," he noted ruefully.
While the cabinet members squabbled over patronage, they united in their resentment of Seward"s preeminent position. They were irritated that he was the one who called the cabinet into session, and the time he spent with Lincoln inspired jealousy. Finally, with Chase as their "spokesman," they requested that cabinet meetings be held at regular times. Lincoln agreed, designating Tuesdays and Fridays at noon.