Abraham Lincoln

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With old party lines sundered, the antislavery factions in the North gradually coalesced to form a new party, which took the name REPUBLICAN.
Lincoln stayed aloof at the beginning, fearing that it would be dominated by the radical rather than the moderate antislavery element. Also, he hoped for a resurgence of the Whig party, in which he had attained a position of state leadership. But as the presidential campaign of 1856 approached, he cast his lot with the new party. In the national convention, which nominated John C. Frйmont for president, Lincoln received 110 ballots for the VICE-PRESIDENTIAL nomination, which went eventually to William L.
Dayton of New Jersey. Though Lincoln had favored Justice John McLean, he worked faithfully for Frйmont, who showed surprising strength, notwithstanding his defeat by the Democratic candidate, James BUCHANAN.
With Senator Douglas running for reelection in 1858, Lincoln was recognized in Illinois as the strongest man to oppose him. Endorsed by Republican meetings all over the state and by the Republican State Convention, he opened his campaign with the famous declaration: "`A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free." Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of seven joint debates, and these became the most spectacular feature of the campaign. Douglas refused to take a position on the rightfulness or wrongfulness of slavery, and offered his "popular sovereignty" doctrine as the solution of the problem. Lincoln, on the other hand, insisted that slavery was primarily a moral issue and offered as his solution a return to the principles of the Founding Fathers, which tolerated slavery where it existed but looked to its ultimate extinction by preventing its spread. The
Republicans polled the larger number of votes in the election, but an outdated apportionment of seats in the legislature permitted Douglas to win the senatorship.

Election of 1860

Friends began to urge Lincoln to run for president. He held back, but did extend his range of speechmaking beyond Illinois. on Feb. 27, 1860, at
Cooper Union, in New York City, he delivered an address on the need for restricting slavery that put him in the forefront of Republican leadership.
The enthusiasm evoked by this speech and others overcame Lincoln's reluctance. On May 9 and 10, the Illinois Republican convention, meeting in
Decatur, instructed the state's delegates to the national convention to vote as a unit for him.
When that convention met in Chicago on May 16, Lincoln's chances were better than was generally supposed. William H. Seward, the acknowledged party leader, and other aspirants all had political liabilities of some sort. As Lincoln's managers maneuvered behind the scenes, more and more delegates lined up behind the "Illinois Rail Splitter." Seward led on the first ballot, but on the third ballot Lincoln obtained the required majority.
A split in the Democratic party, which resulted in the nomination of
Douglas by one faction and of John C. Breckinridge by the other, made
Lincoln's ELECTION a certainty. Lincoln polled 1,865,593 votes to Douglas'
1,382,713, and Breckinridge's 848,356. John Bell, candidate of the
Constitutional Union party, polled 592,906. The ELECTORAL vote was Lincoln,
180; Breckinridge, 72; Bell, 39; and Douglas, 12.

Presidency

On Feb. 11, 1861, Lincoln left Springfield to take up his duties as president. Before him lay, as he recognized, "a task ... greater than that which rested upon [George] Washington." The seven states of the lower South had seceded from the Union, and Southern delegates meeting in Montgomery,
Ala., had formed a new, separate government. Before Lincoln reached the national capital, Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as President of the
Confederate States of America. The four states of the upper South teetered on the brink of secession, and disunion sentiment was rampant in the border states of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri.
When Lincoln reached Washington on February 23, he found the national government incapable of meeting the crisis. President James Buchanan deplored secession but could not check it, and Congress fruitlessly debated compromise. The national treasury was near bankruptcy; the civil service was riddled with secessionists; and the miniscule armed forces were being weakened by defection of officers to the South.
It was not immediately evident that Lincoln could avert the dissolution of the United States. Few American presidents have assumed office under greater handicaps. Warned of an attempt on his life being planned in
Baltimore, Lincoln had to enter the national capital surreptitiously, arriving after a secret midnight journey from Harrisburg, Pa. Widely publicized, the episode did little to inspire public confidence in the government or to create an image of Lincoln as a dynamic leader. That so many citizens could believe their new president a coward was evidence of a more serious handicap under which Lincoln labored: he was virtually unknown to the American people. Lincoln's record as an Illinois state legislator, as a one-term member of the House of Representatives in the 1840's, and as an unsuccessful senatorial candidate against Douglas was not one to inspire confidence in his abilities. Even the leaders of the Republican party had little acquaintance with the new President.
Almost at the outset, Lincoln demonstrated that he was a poor administrator. Accustomed, as his law partner William H. Herndon said, to filing legal papers in his top hat, Lincoln conducted the administration of the national govern ment in the same fashion. Selecting for his cabinet spokesmen of the diverse elements that constituted the Republican party, he surrounded himself with men of such conflicting views that he could not rely on them to work together. Cabinet sessions rarely dealt with serious issues. Usually, Lincoln permitted cabinet officers free rein in running their departments.
Nor was Lincoln an effective leader of his party in the Congress, where after secession the Republicans had overwhelming majorities. Long a Whig, vigilant against executive "usurpation," he earnestly felt that as president he ought not to exert even "indirect influence to affect the action of congress." In consequence there was poor rapport between Capitol
Hill and the WHITE HOUSE. Even those measures that the President earnestly advocated were weakened or defeated by members of his own party. But on important issues relating to the conduct of the war and the restoration of the Union, Lincoln followed his own counsel, ignoring the opinions of
Congress.
More than counterbalancing these deficiencies, however, were Lincoln's strengths. Foremost was his unflinching dedication to the preservation of the Union. Convinced that the United States was more than an ordinary nation, that it was a proving ground for the idea of democratic government,
Lincoln felt that he was leading a struggle to preserve "the last, best hope of earth." Despite war-weariness and repeated defeats, he never wavered in his "paramount object." To restore national unity he would do what was necessary, without regard to legalistic construction of the
CONSTITUTION, political objections in Congress, or personal popularity.
Partly because of that single-minded dedication, the American people, in time, gave to Lincoln a loyalty that proved to be another of his great assets. Making himself accessible to all who went to the White House,
Lincoln learned what ordinary citizens felt about their government. In turn, his availability helped create in the popular mind the stereotype of
"Honest Abe," the people's president, straightforward, and sympathetic.
Lincoln's mastery of rhetoric further endeared him to the public. In an age of pretentious orators, he wrote clearly and succinctly. Purists might object when he said that the Confederates in one engagement "turned tail and ran," but the man in the street approved. Lincoln's 268-word address at the dedication of the national cemetery at Gettysburg meant more than the preceding two-hour oration by Edward Everett.
Another of Lincoln's assets was the fact that he was a genius at the game of politics. He astutely managed the patronage at his disposal, distributing favors so as to bind local politicians to his administration and to undermine potential rivals for the presidency. He understood the value of silence and secrecy in politics and refrained from creating divisive issues or causing needless confrontations. He was extraordinarily flexible and pragmatic in the means he employed to restore the Union. "My policy," he frequently said, "is to have no policy." That did not mean that his was a course of drift. Instead, it reflected his understanding that, as president, he could only handle problems as they arose, confident that popular support for his solutions would be forthcoming.
Lincoln believed that the ultimate decision in the Civil War was beyond his, or any other man's, control. "Now, at the end of three years struggle," he wrote, as the war reached its climax, "the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man, devised or expected. God alone can claim it."

Sumter Crisis

In 1861, Lincoln's weaknesses were more evident than his strengths.
Immediately after his inauguration he faced a crisis over Fort Sumter in the Charleston (S. C.) harbor, one of the few remaining U.S. forts in the seceded states still under federal control. Informed that the troops would have to be supplied or withdrawn, the inexperienced President anxiously explored solutions. Withdrawal would appear a cowardly backdown, but reinforcing the fort might precipitate hostilities. Lincoln painfully concluded that he would send supplies to Sumter and let the Confederates decide whether to fire on the flag of the Union. Historians differ as to whether Lincoln anticipated that hostilities would follow his decision, but they agree that Lincoln was determined that he would not order the first shot fired. Informed of the approach of the federal supply fleet,
Confederate authorities at Charleston during the early hours of April 12 decided to bombard the fort. Thus, the Civil War began.
Because Congress was not in session, Lincoln moved swiftly to mobilize the
Union by executive order. His requisition to the states for 75,000 volunteers precipitated the secession of Virginia, North Carolina,
Tennessee, and Arkansas. Kentucky tried to adopt an official policy of
"neutrality," while secession sentiment in Maryland was so strong that for a time Washington, D.C., was cut off from communication with the North. In order to restore order, Lincoln directed that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus be suspended, at first along the line between Washington and
Philadelphia and later throughout most of the North, so that known secessionists and persons suspected of disloyalty could be held without trial. At the same time the President, without congressional authorization-- and thus in direct violation of the Constitution--ordered an increase in the size of the regular Army and Navy. Doubting the loyalty of certain government officials, he also entrusted public funds to private agents in
New York to purchase arms and supplies.
When the 37th Congress assembled in special session on July 4, 1861, it was thus confronted with a fait accompli. The President, acting in his capacity as commander in chief, had put himself at the head of the whole Union war effort, arrogating to himself greater powers than those claimed by any previous American president. His enemies termed him a dictator and a tyrant. In fact, his power was limited, partly by his own instincts, partly by the knowledge that his actions would be judged in four years at the polls, and chiefly by the inadequacy of the federal bureaucracy.
Nevertheless, the role of Congress was sharply defined: it could appropriate money to support the war, it could initiate legislation on issues not related to the war, it could debate questions relating to the conflict. But direction of the Union war effort was to remain firmly in
Lincoln's hands.

Military Policy

The first responsibility of the President was the successful prosecution of the war against the Confederate States. In this duty he was hampered by the lack of a strong military tradition in America and by the shortage of trained officers. During the early months of the conflict the
War Department was headed by Simon Cameron, and corruption and inefficiency were rife. Not until January, 1862, when Lincoln replaced Cameron with the imperious but efficient Edwin M. Stanton, was some semblance of order brought to the procurement of supplies for the federal armies. Navy secretary Gideon Welles was above suspicion, but he was inexperienced in nautical affairs and cautious in accepting innovations, such as the ironclad monitors.
Even more difficult was the task of finding capable general officers. At first the President gave supreme command of the Union forces to the elderly
Gen. Winfield Scott. After the Confederate victory at the first battle of
Bull Run (July 21, 1861), Lincoln increasingly entrusted power to George B.
McClellan, a brilliant organizer and administrator. But McClellan's caution, his secretiveness, and his willingness to strip the defenses of
Washington the better to attack Richmond led Lincoln to look elsewhere for military advice. Borrowing "a large number of strategical works" from the
Library of Congress, he attempted to direct the overall conduct of the war himself by issuing a series of presidential general war orders. Gen. Henry
W. Halleck, whom Lincoln brought to Washington as a strategic planner, served more as a glorified clerk, and the President repeatedly exercised personal supervision over the commanders in the field.
Not until the emergence of Ulysses S. GRANT, hero of Vicksburg and
Chattanooga, did Lincoln find a general to whom he could entrust overall direction of the war. Even then, the President kept a close eye on military operations, advising and even occasionally overruling the general, but mostly supporting and encouraging him.

Emancipation

Strongly opposed to slavery, Lincoln made a sharp distinction between his personal views and his public responsibilities. He had been elected on a platform that pledged not to interfere with the "peculiar institution" in states where it already existed and had sworn to uphold a Constitution that protected Southern rights. From the first day of the war, however, he was under pressure from the more extreme antislavery men in his own party to strike at slavery as the mainspring of the rebellion. Counterbalancing this pressure was the need to conciliate opinion in the border states, which still recognized slavery but were loyal to the Union. Any move against slavery, Lincoln feared, would cause their secession.
Wartime pressure inescapably forced the president toward emancipation.
Foreign powers could not be expected to sympathize with the North, when both the Union and the Confederate governments were pledged to uphold slavery. As the war dragged on, more and more northerners saw the absurdity of continuing to protect the "peculiar institution," which, by keeping a subservient labor force on the farms, permitted the Confederates to put proportionately more of their able-bodied white men into their armies. When
Union casualties mounted, even racist northerners began to favor enlisting blacks in the Union armies.
As sentiment for emancipation mounted, Lincoln was careful to keep complete control of the problem in his own hands. He sharply overruled premature efforts by two of his military commanders, Frйmont in Missouri and David
Hunter in the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina, to declare slaves in their military theaters free. At the same time, the President urged the border states to accept a program of gradual emancipation, with federal compensation.
By midsummer of 1862, however, it was evident that these efforts would not be successful. Still troubled by divided Union sentiment and still uncertain of his constitutional powers to act, Lincoln prepared to issue an emancipation proclamation. Secretary of State William H. Seward, however, persuaded him that such an order, issued at the low point of Union military fortunes, would be taken as evidence of weakness. The President postponed his move until after the Battle of Antietam. Then, on Sept. 22, 1862, he issued his preliminary proclamation, announcing that after 100 days all slaves in states still in rebellion would be forever free. This was followed, in due course, by the definitive Emancipation Proclamation of
Jan. 1, 1863.
Because the proclamation exempted slavery in the border states and in all
Confederate territory already under the control of Union armies and because
Lincoln was not certain that his action would be sustained by the Supreme
Court, he strongly urged Congress to adopt the 13th Amendment, forever abolishing slavery throughout the country. Congressional action on this measure was completed in January 1865. Lincoln considered the amendment
"the complete consummation of his own work, the emancipation proclamation."

Foreign Relations

Never having traveled abroad and having few acquaintances in the courts of Europe, Lincoln, for the most part, left the conduct of foreign policy to Seward. Yet, at critical times he made his influence felt. Early in his administration, when Seward recklessly proposed to divert attention from domestic difficulties by threatening a war against Spain and perhaps other powers, the President quietly squelched the project. Again, in 1861,
Lincoln intervened to tone down a dispatch Seward wrote to Charles Francis
Adams, the U.S. minister in London, which probably would have led to a break in diplomatic relations with Britain. In the Trent affair, that same year, when Union Capt. Charles Wilkes endangered the peace by removing two
Confederate emissaries from a British ship and taking them into custody,
Lincoln took a courageous but unpopular stand by insisting that the prisoners be released.

Wartime Politics

Throughout the war Lincoln was the subject of frequent, and often vitriolic, attacks, both from the Democrats who thought he was proceeding too drastically against slavery and from the Radicals in his own party--men like Charles Sumner, Benjamin F. Wade, and Zachariah Chandler--who considered him slow and ineffective. Partisan newspapers abused the
President as "a slangwhanging stump speaker," a "half-witted usurper," a
"mole-eyed" monster with "soul ... of leather,""the present turtle at the head of the government." Men of his own party openly charged that he was
"unfit," a "political coward," a "dictator,""timid and ignorant,""shattered, dazed, utterly foolish."
A minority president in 1861, Lincoln lost further support in the congressional elections of 1862, when Democrats took control of the crucial states of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. As the 1864 election approached, it was clear that Lincoln would face formidable opposition for reelection, not merely from a Democratic candidate but from rivals within his own party. Republican anti-Lincoln sentiment centered on treasury secretary Salmon P. Chase, who was working with the Radical critics of Lincoln in Congress. The Chase boom failed, however, chiefly because Lincoln insisted upon keeping the ambitious secretary in his cabinet. At the same time, Lincoln's own agents were working quietly to sew up the state delegations to the Republican national convention. Even
Chase's own state of Ohio pledged to vote for Lincoln. Facing certain defeat, Chase withdrew from the race, but Lincoln kept him in the cabinet until after the Republican national convention, which met in Baltimore in
June 1864.
Lacking a prominent standard bearer, some disgruntled Republicans gathered in Cleveland in May 1864 to nominate Frйmont, but the movement never made much headway. Radical pressure was powerful enough, however, to persuade
Lincoln to drop the most outspokenly conservative member of his cabinet,
Postmaster General Montgomery Blair, and Frйmont withdrew from the race.
Lincoln's Republican critics continued to hope they could summon a new national convention, which would replace the President with a more Radical candidate, but this scheme died with news of Union military victories.
For a time Democratic opposition in 1864 to Lincoln's reelection also appeared to be formidable, for people were tired of the endless war and disinclined to fight for the liberty of black men. But the Democrats found it impossible to bring together the two major groups of Lincoln's critics-- those who wanted the President to end the war, and those who wanted him to prosecute it more vigorously. Meeting at Chicago in August, the Democratic national convention nominated a candidate, Gen. George B. McClellan, pledged to the successful conclusion of the war on a platform that called the war a failure. McClellan's repudiation of this peace plank showed how fundamentally split were the Democrats.
Whatever chance the Democrats had in 1864 was lost when the war at last began to favor the Union cause. By the late summer of 1864, Grant had forced Lee back into the defenses of Richmond and Petersburg. In the West,
Sherman's advancing army captured Atlanta on September 2. At the same time,
Admiral Farragut's naval forces closed the key Confederate port of Mobile.
When the ballots were cast in November, the results reflected both these
Union triumphs and the rift among the opposition. Lincoln carried every state except Kentucky, Delaware, and New Jersey. He polled 2,206,938 popular votes to McClellan's 1,803,787 and won an electoral vote victory of
212 to 21. It must be remembered, however, that voters in the seceded states, the strongholds of the Democratic party, did not participate in the election.

Life in the White House

Beset by military, diplomatic, and political problems, the President tried to keep his family life as normal as possible. The two youngest
Lincoln boys, Thomas (Tad) and William Wallace (Willie), were high spirited lads. Their older brother, the sober Robert Todd Lincoln, was less frequently in Washington, because he was first a student at Harvard and later an aide to General Grant. Despite the snobbishness of Washington society and criticisms from those who wanted all social affairs suspended because of the war, the Lincolns continued to hold receptions in the White
House. But the President found these affairs costly and tiring. He would slip away late at night after a White House party to visit the telegraph room of the War Department to read the latest dispatches from the front. He never took a vacation, but in summer he moved his family to the cooler and more secluded Soldier's Home in Washington.
Lincoln visibly aged during the war years, and by 1865 he appeared almost haggard. His life was made harder by personal trials. Early in 1862, Willie died of typhoid. His mother, always high-strung and hysterical, suffered a nervous breakdown, and Lincoln had to watch over her with careful solicitude. But Lincoln emerged from his public and private agonies with a new serenity of soul. Any trace of vanity or egotism was burned out by the fires of war. In his second inaugural address, his language reached a new level of eloquence. Urging his countrymen to act "with malice toward none; with charity for all," he looked beyond the end of the war toward binding up the nation's wounds, so as to "achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace."

Reconstruction

From the start of the Civil War, Lincoln was deeply concerned about the terms under which the Southern states, once subdued, should be restored to the Union. He had no fixed plan for reconstruction. At the outset, he would have welcomed a simple decision on the part of any Southern state government to rescind its ordinance of secession and return its delegation to Congress. By 1863, however, to this war aim of union he added that of liberty, for he now insisted that emancipation of the slaves was a necessary condition for restoration. By the end of the war he was beginning to add a third condition, equality, for he realized that minimal guarantees of civil rights for blacks were essential. Privately, he let it be known that he favored extending the franchise in the Southern states to some of the blacks--"as, for instance, the very intelligent, and especially those who have fought gallantly in our ranks."
As to means by which to achieve these goals, Lincoln was also flexible.
When Union armies advanced into the South, he appointed military governors for the states that were conquered. Most notable of these was the military governor of Tennessee, Andrew JOHNSON, who became Lincoln's running mate in
1864. In December 1863, Lincoln enunciated a comprehensive reconstruc tion program, pledging pardon and amnesty to Confederates who were prepared to swear loyalty to the Union and promising to turn back control of local governments to the civil authorities in the South when as few as 10% of the
1860 voting population participated in the elections. Governments operating under this 10% plan were set up in Louisiana and Arkansas and soon were petitioning for readmission to Congress.
Inevitably Lincoln's program ran into opposition, both because it represented a gigantic expansion of presidential powers and because it appeared not to give adequate guarantees to the freedmen. Defeating an attempt to seat the senators from the new government in Arkansas, Radical
Republicans in Congress in July 1864 set forth their own terms for restoration in the far harsher Wade-Davis Bill. When Lincoln pocket-vetoed this measure, declaring that he was "unprepared to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of reconstruction," Radicals accused him of "dictatorial usurpation."
The stage was set for further conflict over reconstruction when Congress reassembled in December 1864, just after Lincoln's reelection. Assisted by the Democrats, the Radicals forced Lincoln's supporters to drop the bill to readmit Louisiana. Lincoln was deeply saddened by the defeat. "Concede that the new government of Louisiana is only to what it should be as the egg is to the fowl," he said, "shall we sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it?" On April 11, 1865, in his last public address, the
President defended his reconstruction policy.

Death

Three days later, the President was shot by the actor John Wilkes
Booth while attending a performance at Ford's Theater in Washington. He died at 7:22 the following morning, April 15, 1865. After lying in state in the Capitol, his body was taken to Springfield, Ill., where he was buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery.
Benjamin P. Thomas,

Author of "Abraham Lincoln: A Biography" and

David Herbert Donald

Harry C. Black Professor of History and Director of the Institute of
Southern History, The Johns Hopkins University

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