LINCOLN (Vol. 1-7). Theodore Roosevelt
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act upon it.... The Chief Magistrate derives all his authority from the people, and they have conferred none upon him to fix terms for the separation of the States. The people themselves can do this also, if they choose; but the Executive, as such, has nothing to do with it. His duty is to administer the present Government as it came to his hands, and to transmit it, unimpaired by him, to his successor.... By the frame of the Government under which we live, the same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief; and have, with equal wisdom, provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance, no administration, by any extreme of wickedness or folly, can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years.
My countrymen, one and all, think calmly and well upon this whole subject. Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time. If there be an object to hurry any of you in hot haste to a step which you would never take deliberately, that object will be frustrated by taking time; but no good can be frustrated by it. Such of you as are now dissatisfied still have the old Constitution unimpaired, and, on the sensitive point, the laws of your own framing under it; while the new administration will have no immediate power, if it would, to change either. If it were admitted that you who are dissatisfied hold the right side in the dispute, there still is no single good reason for precipitate action. Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty.
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government; while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend" it.
I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break, our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield 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.
At the close of the address, which was delivered with the utmost earnestness and solemnity, Lincoln, "with reverent look and impressive emphasis, repeated the oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of his country. Douglas, who knew the conspirators and their plots, with patriotic magnanimity then grasped the hand of the President, gracefully extended his congratulations, and the assurance that in the dark future he would stand by him, and give to him his utmost aid in upholding the Constitution and enforcing the laws of his country."
"At the inauguration," says Congressman Riddle, "I stood within a yard of Mr. Lincoln when he pronounced his famous address. How full of life and power it then was, with the unction of his utterance! Surely, we thought, the South, which rejected the concessions of Congress, would accept him. How dry and quaint, yet ingenious, much of that inaugural appears to me now, when the life and soul seem to have gone out of it! A sad thing—a spectre of the day—will forever haunt my memory: Poor old President Buchanan, short, stout, pale, white-haired, yet bearing himself resolutely throughout, linked by the arm to the new President, into whom from himself was passing the qualifying unction of the Constitution, jostled hither and thither, as already out of men's sight, yet bravely maintaining the shadow of dignity and place. How glad he must have been to take leave of his successor at the White House when all was ended!"
The formalities of the inauguration concluded, Lincoln passed back through the Senate Chamber, and, again escorted by Mr. Buchanan, was conducted to the White House, where the cares and anxieties of his position immediately descended upon him. "Strange indeed," says General Logan, "must have been the thoughts that crowded through the brain and oppressed the heart of Abraham Lincoln that night—his first at the White House. The City of Washington swarmed with rebels and rebel sympathizers, and all the departments of Government were honeycombed with treason and shadowed with treachery and espionage. Every step proposed or contemplated by the Government would be known to the so-called Government of the Confederate States almost as soon as thought of. All means to thwart and delay the carrying out of the Government's purposes that the excuses of routine and red tape admitted of would be used by the traitors within the camp to aid the traitors without. No one knew all this better than Mr. Lincoln. With no army, no navy, not even a revenue cutter left—with forts and arsenals, ammunition and arms, in possession of the South, with no money in the National Treasury, and the National credit blasted—the position must, even to his hopeful nature, have seemed desperate. Yet even in this awful hour, he was sustained by confidence in the good effects of his conciliatory message to the South, and by his trust in the patriotism of the people and the Providence of God."
Mr. Welles, the incoming Secretary of the Navy, in writing of the period immediately following the inauguration, says: "A strange state of things existed at that time in Washington. The atmosphere was thick with treason. Party spirit and old party differences prevailed amidst the accumulating dangers. Secession was considered by most persons as a political party question, not as rebellion. Democrats to a large extent sympathized with the Rebels more than with the Administration. The Republicans, on the other hand, were scarcely less partisan and unreasonable ... clamorous for the removal of all Democrats, indiscriminately, from office."
The President's first official act was the announcement of his Cabinet, which was composed of the following persons: William H. Seward, Secretary of State; Simon Cameron, Secretary of War; Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury; Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy; Caleb B. Smith, Secretary of the Interior; Montgomery Blair, Postmaster General; and Edward Bates, Attorney General. Lincoln had selected these counselors with grave deliberation. In reply to the remonstrances urged, on political grounds, against the appointment of one or two of them, he had said: "The times are too grave and perilous for ambitious schemes and personal rivalries. I need the aid of all of these men. They enjoy the confidence of their several States and sections, and they will strengthen the administration." On another occasion he remarked: "It will require the utmost skill, influence, and sagacity of all of us, to save the country; let us forget ourselves, and join hands like brothers to save the Republic. If we succeed, there will be glory enough for all."
Speculations have been almost endless as to how the Cabinet came to be made up as it was. But the truth is, according to Secretary Welles, that it was practically made up in Springfield almost as soon as Lincoln found himself elected. In Lincoln's own words, as given by Mr. Welles: "On the day of the Presidential election the operator of the telegraph in Springfield placed his instrument at my disposal. I was there without leaving, after the returns began to come in, until we had enough to satisfy us how the election had gone. This was about two in the morning of Wednesday. I went home, but not to get much sleep; for I then felt, as I never had before, the responsibility that was upon me. I began at once to feel that I needed support,—others to share with me the burden. This was on Wednesday morning, and before the sun went down I had made up my Cabinet. It was almost the same that I finally appointed."
The only two members of the Cabinet who served from the beginning to the end of Lincoln's administration were Welles and Seward. Stanton was not appointed until January 13, 1862, succeeding Simon Cameron. Chase left the Treasury Department to become Chief Justice, and was succeeded in the Treasury Department by ex-Governor Fessenden of Vermont, who in his turn was succeeded by Hugh McCulloch. The Attorney General's chair was filled successively by Bates and Speed. Caleb B. Smith was the first Secretary of the Interior, succeeded (January 1, 1863) by John P. Usher. The first Postmaster General was Montgomery Blair, who was followed (September 4, 1864) by ex-Governor Dennison of Ohio. The appointment that gave the greatest surprise of any in the Cabinet was that of Stanton as Secretary of War. Stanton had been in Buchanan's cabinet as Attorney General. He had been outspoken, almost brutal, in his scornful hostility to Lincoln, and the appointment by him was as great a surprise to Stanton as his acceptance of it was to everyone. When asked, somewhat incredulously, what he would do as War Secretary Stanton replied, "I will make Abe Lincoln President of the United States." Of the character of this remarkable man, Mr. Alonzo Rothschild, in his interesting study of the relations between Lincoln and Stanton ("Lincoln, Master of Men," p. 229), says: "Intense earnestness marked Stanton's every act. So sharply were