Team of Rivals (49 page)

Although increasingly infuriated by Southern misrepresentations of his positions, Lincoln confined expression of his anger to private letters. Upon hearing from the
New York Times’
s Henry Raymond that one of his correspondents, a wealthy Mississippi gentleman named William Smedes, had justified the state’s “blaze of passion” for secession on the grounds that Lincoln was “pledged to the ultimate extinction of slavery, holds the black man to be the equal of the white, & stigmatizes our whole people as immoral & unchristian,” Lincoln issued a blistering reply. As evidence, Smedes had cited an “infamous” speech Lincoln had purportedly given on the occasion when Chase was presented with his silver pitcher by the free blacks of Cincinnati. For such a speech, Smedes proclaimed, he would “regard death by a stroke of lightning to Mr. Lincoln as but a just punishment from an offended deity.”

“What a very mad-man your correspondent, Smedes is,” Lincoln replied, countering that he “was never in a meeting of negroes in [his] life; and never saw a pitcher presented by anybody to anybody.” Moreover, he went on, “Mr. Lincoln is not pledged to the ultimate extinctincton of slavery; does not hold the black man to be the equal of the white, unqualifiedly as Mr. S. states it; and never did stigmatize their white people as immoral & unchristian.”

However justifiable Lincoln’s anger at what he rightly called a “forgery out and out,” his response reveals the gulf still separating him from Chase on the issue of race. Although Lincoln’s views on racial equality reflected the majority position in the North, Chase regarded his call at the pitcher ceremony to eradicate the Black Laws one of the proudest moments of his life.

W
HILE OUTRAGED BY
the South’s willful distortions of his positions, Lincoln was far more troubled by the growing rancor splitting his own party. Conciliators believed that with the proper compromises, the eight remaining slaveholding states could be kept in the Union, hoping that without expansion, the secession movement would ultimately die out. Hard-liners, meanwhile, ranged from those who thought compromise would only embolden the South to extremists who believed that military force alone would bring the South back to the Union fold. As president-elect, Lincoln had to balance two emerging poles of the Republican Party, a task made all the more difficult by the over 700 miles that separated Springfield from Washington.

Yet, almost unnoticed, Lincoln managed through a series of complex and subtle maneuvers to keep the Republican Party intact through the “Great Secession Winter.” Whatever conciliatory measures he might consider, Lincoln was adamant, he told Trumbull, that there must be “no compromise on the question of
extending
slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again…. Stand firm. The tug has to come, & better now, than any time hereafter.” If the door were opened to slavery in any of the new territories, Lincoln feared that the South would eventually try to annex Cuba or invade Mexico, thereby restarting the long struggle.

Though Lincoln remained inflexible on the territorial question, he was willing, he told Seward, to compromise on “fugitive slaves, District of Columbia, slave trade among the slave states, and whatever springs of necessity from the fact that the institution is amongst us.” Knowing that two parallel committees in the House and Senate were set to address the sectional crisis, Lincoln relayed a confidential message to Seward that he had drafted three short resolutions. He instructed Seward to introduce these proposals in the Senate Committee of Thirteen without indicating they issued from Springfield. The first resolved that “the Constitution should never be altered so as to authorize Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in the states.” The second would amend the Fugitive Slave Law “by granting a jury trial to the fugitive.” The third recommended that all state personal liberty laws in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law be repealed.

Seward agreed to introduce Lincoln’s resolutions without revealing their source, though he was of the opinion that they would do nothing to stop the secession movement. The best option, he told Lincoln, was to focus on keeping the border states in the Union, though he feared “nothing could
certainly
restrain them” short of adopting the series of proposals authored by Kentucky’s John Crittenden. The Crittenden Compromise, among other provisions, offered to extend the Missouri Compromise line to the Pacific, thereby initiating the very extension of slavery into the territories Lincoln had pledged to prevent.

Lincoln’s clear resolve never to accept any measure extending slavery prevented the wavering Seward and other like-minded Republicans from backing the Crittenden Compromise. As one Southern state after another withdrew from the Union, Seward came to believe that only conciliation could save the Union. With Lincoln’s iron hand guiding the way in this matter, however, Seward conceded that there was not “the slightest” chance that the Republican side would adopt the Compromise. Still, Seward retained his characteristic optimism, assuring Lincoln that with the passage of time, “sedition will be growing weaker and Loyalty stronger.”

Events soon eclipsed the slender hope that time would bring about a peaceful solution to the sectional crisis. There were three federal forts in South Carolina: Fort Moultrie, under the command of Major Robert Anderson; Fort Sumter; and Castle Pinckney. South Carolina announced that all three were in its domain and that three commissioners of the new “republic” had been named to negotiate the matter with the Buchanan administration. “From the first,” John Nicolay reported, it was apparent that “the Carolinians intended somehow to get possession of these fortifications, as it was the only means by which they could make any serious resistance to the federal government.”

In late December, a rumor reached Springfield that Buchanan had instructed Major Anderson “to surrender Fort Moultrie if it is attacked.” When Lincoln heard the news, he told Nicolay: “If that is true they ought to hang him!” Straightaway, he sent a message to General Scott through his friend Congressman Washburne, to be prepared at the time of the inauguration “to either
hold,
or
retake,
the forts, as the case may require.”

In fact, the ever-vacillating Buchanan had not decided to surrender the forts. The issue produced an open rift in his already compromised cabinet. Treasury Secretary Howell Cobb of Georgia had resigned and departed for his native state, but several secessionists remained, “vying…for Buchanan’s ear” with staunch Unionists Secretary of State Jeremiah Black and Postmaster General Joseph Holt. In the midst of the cabinet crisis, Black prevailed on Buchanan to offer the attorney generalship to his good friend Edwin Stanton, who was still practicing law in Washington. Black also pressured Stanton to accept the post, adding a third ally to bolster Buchanan’s will. While Buchanan waffled over the proper course of action, Anderson preempted his decision on the night of December 26, 1860, by deciding to move his troops from Fort Moultrie to the less vulnerable Fort Sumter. The next day, South Carolina took possession of the abandoned Fort Moultrie as well as Castle Pinckney.

Under the influence of Black, Holt, and Stanton, Buchanan agreed to send reinforcements to Anderson at Sumter. In early January, the same day that Lincoln met with Chase in Springfield, an unarmed merchant vessel, the
Star of the West,
headed for Charleston Harbor equipped with men and supplies. The mission failed when the weaponless vessel was fired upon by shore batteries. The
Star of the West
turned back immediately and headed north.

These dramatic events created what Seward called “a feverish excitement” in Washington. No one felt more apprehensive than the newest member of Buchanan’s cabinet, Edwin Stanton. Thoroughly loyal to the Union, excitable and suspicious by nature, he became convinced that secessionists planned to seize the nation’s capital and prevent Lincoln’s inauguration. From his position inside the government, Stanton feared that “every department in Washington then contained numerous traitors and spies.” He discovered that the army had been deployed in far-flung places and that treasonous officers had shifted arms and guns from arsenals in the North to various places in the South. If Maryland and Virginia could be provoked into secession, Stanton believed secessionists would be in a position to take Washington. With the essentially defenseless capital captured, they would possess “the
symbols
of government, the seals and the treaties—the treasuries & the apparent right to control the army & the navy.” Stanton was driven to distraction when President Buchanan could not
“be made to believe,
the existence of this danger,” and would not credit the treasonous plot, which, Stanton feared, would include an attempt to assassinate Lincoln before his inauguration.

At this juncture, his co-biographers report, Stanton “came to a momentous decision: he decided to throw party fealty and cabinet secrecy to the winds and to work behind the President’s back.” With the White House paralyzed and the Democratic Party at loggerheads, he determined that “Congress and its Republican leaders were the last hope for a strong policy, the last place for him to turn.” Stanton knew that becoming an informer violated his oath of office, but concluded that his oath to support the Constitution was paramount.

Seeking the most powerful conduit for his information, Stanton chose Seward. Knowing they could not openly communicate, fearful that secessionists lurking on every corner would report the meetings in newspapers, Stanton prevailed on Peter Watson—the same Watson who had initially interviewed Lincoln for the Reaper trial—to act as his middleman. Almost every evening, Watson would call on Seward at his home to deliver oral and written messages from Stanton. Watson would then return to Stanton with Seward’s responses. “The question what either of us could or ought to do at the time for the public welfare was discussed and settled,” Seward later recalled.

The first meeting between Seward and Watson likely took place on December 29, prompting the flurry of private letters that Seward penned late that night. “At length I have gotten a position in which I can see what is going on in the Councils of the President,” Seward wrote Lincoln. “It pains me to learn that things are even worse than is understood…. A plot is forming to seize the Capitol on or before the 4th of March…. Believe that I know what I write. In point of fact the responsibilities of your administration must begin before the time arrives. I therefore renew the suggestion of your coming here earlier than you otherwise would…. I trust that by this time you will be able to know your correspondent without his signature, which for prudence is omitted.” That same evening, Seward confided in Frances that “treason is all around and amongst us,” and warned Weed, whose presence in Washington he would welcome, that a plot to seize the government had “abettors near the President.”

Seward assumed that Stanton was communicating with him alone. In fact, the cunning Stanton secretly spread word of the danger to several other Republicans, including Charles Sumner, Salmon Chase, and Congressman Henry Dawes. “By early disclosure,” Dawes later wrote, Stanton was able to thwart some of the attempts by treasonous officers to turn supplies and arms over to “the enemies of their country.” Increasingly paranoid, Stanton invited Sumner to his office and then led him through a half-dozen different rooms before feeling safe to talk for a few minutes. Arrangements were made for papers to be “found and read by the light of the street lamp at night, and then returned to the place of deposit.”

Unaware of these other communications, Seward assumed it was on his shoulders to save the Union, that he “held the key to all discontent.” After his appointment as secretary of state was made public on January 10, 1861, when he “came to be regarded somewhat extensively as a person representing the incoming administration and the Republican party,” the pressure of his position was immense. “By common consent,” Seward’s admirer Henry Adams later wrote, “all eyes were turned on him, and he was overwhelmed by entreaties from men in all sections of the country to do something to save the Union.” As members of Congress, the cabinet, and hundreds of nervous citizens approached him “with prayers and tears,” Seward became “virtually the ruler of the country.” Or so he thought.

Intuiting that the country needed a clear, strong Republican voice, Seward announced that he would deliver a major speech in the Senate on January 12. “Never in the history of the American Congress has there been witnessed so intense an anxiety to hear a speech as that which preceded the delivery of Mr. Seward’s,” a reporter for the Chicago
Tribune
wrote. “What gave so much interest and weight to the Senator’s words, was the belief that it was equivalent to a speech from Lincoln himself.”

“The families of nearly all the Senators and Cabinet officers were present,” another correspondent reported, and the crush to get in was so great that “extravagant prices were offered to the various doorkeepers to obtain admission.” As Seward began to speak, senators on both sides of the aisle sat in rapt attention, including Mississippi’s Jefferson Davis, who would soon resign the Senate to become the president of the Southern Confederacy. “No man was as usual engaged in writing letters, no one called for pages, no one answered messages,” a witness observed, “and every ear in the vast assembly was strained to catch his every word.”

Seward’s chief purpose was “to set forth the advantages, the necessities to the Union to the people…and the vast calamities to them and to the world which its destruction would involve.” He warned that disunion would give rise to a state of “perpetual civil war,” for neither side would tolerate an imbalance of strength or power. Opportunistic foreign nations would then move in, preying on the bickering factions. “When once the guardian angel has taken flight,” he predicted, “everything is lost.”