Better Angels

March 4

…On this date in 1861 a crowd started to gather at the US Capitol building before dawn, in order to attend an early afternoon event.  They were not arriving for a concert, to see the Easter bunny, or some mid-19^th century version of black Friday. They were gathering to hear a gangly, self-educated lawyer from the Illinois prairie speak on his policies for a nation undergoing rapid change and division.  As Abraham Lincoln made his way to the Capitol with President Buchanan from the Willard Hotel, his temporary home in Washington, DC, Lincoln would have seen a city that bears little resemblance to the city we see today.  The city was spread out.  A canal ran for much of the approximate length from the Capitol to the Potomac, following much of what we know as Constitution Avenue, and a sewage canal, and I am not talking storm runoff, ran next to the Smithsonian.  Quite simply the city stank, particularly during the hot summer days.  The National Mall was in the early stages of what we see today.  There were a few monuments present, and the obelisk structure recognizing our first president was under construction. The area east of the Washington Monument, from the WWII memorial to the Lincoln Memorial, was water.  Besides the Capitol and the White House, the most significant structures were the Patent office, (Old) Post Office, and the Smithsonian. This presents an interesting, and telling, contrast with today where the Pentagon and Supreme Court are two of the additionally significant buildings. The Army and Navy departments (yes, they were separate departments), like the state department, found offices in former homes.  The most urban section was around the navy yard. 

Hotel at which Lincoln resided from his arrival
in Washington to March 4.

Juxtaposed against a sunny late winter day were strong March type winds which would portend the upcoming conflict over the states in rebellion.  More people than not in the city would wish this man was not giving the address, all but one member of his incoming cabinet felt they were better than he, and the out-going president’s only words to Lincoln during the carriage ride to the Capitol, was that he hoped he (Lincoln) was as “happy entering the office as I am to leave.”  It was in this kite flying weather that Abraham Lincoln would rise to provide his inaugural address and then take the oath of office.   As librarian Ted Widmer comments “there were more beautiful speeches in the Lincoln canon, and more impressive displays of research.  But no Lincoln speech was ever delivered with more preparation, under more scrutiny, for higher stakes than this one.”  Lincoln had worked on this speech for months, even having an initial version type-set in Springfield, IL by the Illinois State Journal.

While Lincoln gave over 100 speeches in about two weeks during his journey from Springfield to Washington, DC, he remained publicly silent about any policy actions.  Of the comments he made regarding the states in secession, he would refer to it as an artificial crises, and believed the south had little to complain about.  Interestingly, he kept the type-set speech in a carpet bag entrusted to his son Robert.  Robert would mistakenly give the bag to a hotel employee at a stop in Pennsylvania.  When Lincoln found out, not only was he furious with fear of the speech being “leaked,” but he rushed down to the front desk to sort through the collected bags to retrieve his, which he would then keep watch under his eyes.  This speech was not ready for prime time.

Lincoln's notes on his speech copy
His method of cut and paste

On arrival in Washington DC he provided a copy of the speech to William Seward, his rival for the Republican nomination and Secretary of State designate, for comment.  Seward would write pages outlining 49 suggestions, of which Lincoln accepted 27.  The most memorable, and concluding, paragraph came as a result of Seward’s comments.  Some historians say that Seward had little to do with the wording, but I tend to agree with Walter Stahr, a Seward biographer, who says that Lincoln improved on Seward’s suggested conclusion, but Lincoln’s improvements to Seward’s draft were less critical than Seward’s to Lincoln’s draft.  While Lincoln re-worked the last paragraph to provide the poetry we recognize today.  Seward suggested a move from what Stahr refers to as “militaristic music” with an end word of “sword” to a paragraph concluding with affection.  He then provided some suggestions.  Lincoln re-worked Seward’s idea to give the work a memorable conclusion.  Lincoln Biographer Ronald White says that Lincoln’s last sentence has found “its place as American Scripture.”  The concluding paragraph as written:

“I am loath 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.”

Lincoln delivery first Inaugural address

Upon conclusion of the speech, the dignitaries and gathered crowd of 30,000 heard Lincoln take the oath of office which was administered by 83 year old Chief Justice Taney, who one commentator of the time referred to as a walking cadaver.  Little known is that just prior to the speech Lincoln was wishing to find a place to put his ever present top hat.  Stephen Douglas, “the Little Giant” a Democratic senator from Illinois and a fierce rival who was one of three who lost the 1860 election to Lincoln, would reach out to take and hold his hat.  It has been commented that Douglas was indicating that if he could not be president, he may as well hold the hat of one.  However, Margaret Leech in a 1941 Pulitzer Prize winning work commented that people viewing the speech saw it as a sign of unity. Thus, even an act of simple kindness by Douglas has come to have two significantly different interpretations. Like the incident with the hat, the speech itself would draw two vastly different reactions.   As one would expect in a partisan and divided nation, some liked the speech, others despised it.  But, Lincoln was looking to work the vast middle.  One commentator points out the words of George Templeton Strong, a diarist from New York, would write that the speech “seems to introduce a man and dispose one to like him.”  Yet, Strong would also go on to say of the speech, that there was a “chunk of metal in it.”  Lincoln’s goal was to shore up his support in the north and at the same time assuage the fears of the south, and the Border States.  But, this bone to southerners was not accepted.  Reinhold Niebuhr in his 1952 work The Irony of American History observes that history is intractable, as its direction and course are beyond human comprehension.  Lincoln found that out.  One can give a speech, but is unable to control how it is heard and interpreted.  Events are often not as controllable as leaders think.

Crowd at First Inaugural 

A Library of Congress on-line exhibit tells us that in preparing his speech, Lincoln turned to historic documents.  In particular “he turned to four documents, all concerned directly or indirectly with state’s rights—the great orator Senator Daniel Webster’s reply to Robert Hayne, Andrew Jackson’s Nullification Proclamation (1832), Henry Clay’s 1850 compromise speech, and the Constitution.  An informed observer of the day would realize that the speech would not make mention of two key aspects of the Republican Party platform—first was its condemnation of efforts to reopen the slave trade, and second the party was against attempts to allow Congress or territorial legislatures to legalize slavery in any territory.  He would state that he did not intend to interfere with slavery where it existed.  Lincoln’s views on slavery were fluid and developing. If war were to come it was to preserve the Union.

Washington, DC in 1860
Note the L shaped green area in the center, top of L is White House
Left base of L would be Washington Monument

Old Fuss and Feathers, whose given name is Winfield Scott, was at the time Commanding General of the US Army, suggested to President Buchanan in October 1860 that US Army installations in the south be resupplied.  Buchanan would not immediately accept this advice, but in January Buchanan would send an unarmed merchant ship Star of the West which was fired upon from shore-side batteries as it attempted a resupply. Scott would oversee the security arrangements for the inauguration, and he himself would be near a battery of artillery at an entrance to the Capitol on that long-ago day.  Later that day, 153 years ago, after taking his oath of office, Lincoln would read a dispatch from the commanding officer of a little regarded outpost in South Carolina.  Major Robert Anderson would write that if Fort Sumter was not soon resupplied that he would have to surrender. 

General Winfield Scott

Surrender would indeed be the end result for Fort Sumter, and it would start the Civil War. Lincoln tried, but ultimately failed to convince the south of working through a political solution.  The south thought the north would never fight a war; the north thought a war would be over with quickly.  Both were wrong.  War would come, and men would die, adding battlefields and patriot graves to the mystic cords of memory that form our national consciousness, but, in the end, the nation discovered the better angels of our nature.