Daily, the mail brings threats of impending peril. Nicolay reads to me an anonymous letter.
Caesar had Brutus. Charles I, his Cromwell. And, the President may profit by their example.
Friends also send warnings. I open a letter from Seward, still in Washington, who suggests,
Would it not be a coup d’état were you to quietly, with only a carpet sack, get on the cars and drop down into this city someday next week or so?
Seward makes the same appeal on several occasions. To determine whether I should follow his advice and sneak into Washington to avoid assassins, I send the Illinois State Adjutant General Thomas Mather there for a meeting with General Winfield Scott, commander of the federal army. Mather, as stalwart in friendship as he is in physique, earned my trust when he was president of the State Bank of Illinois.
He lifts a burden off my shoulders when he returns with a message from the elderly general who says he will “plant two cannons on either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and if any of them insurrectionists show their faces or raise a finger, I’ll blow them to hell.”
With that matter settled I focus on bigger game, in particular, recruiting members of my Cabinet. My ability to concentrate improves when Mother travels to New York City to shop for new clothes and furnishings. I’m left at home to keep house and tend to the boys, who are half the handful she can be.
Of course, it’s not as if my hands don’t have enough to occupy them. On January 15, the news that Georgia has voted a secession ordinance is accompanied by a gloom that matches our prairie winter. Louisiana’s secession on January 26 intensifies the darkness. This January has brought more trouble than that “Fatal 1st” of 1841, when Speed left for Farmington. I’m older and wiser now, and have no need for Dr. Henry’s brutal treatments. Just the same, in my desk I keep a supply of little blue mercury pills like the ones he gave me to see me through my melancholy storms.
I meet the bitter news of spiraling disunion with a public announcement of our plans to depart for our nation’s capital on February 11. I spend the remainder of my time here preparing my speech for the inauguration ceremony—except for one diversion.
On the morning of January 30, the day after Mother returns from her shopping excursion, I pack an old carpet-bag and put on a short coat and faded hat for a jaunt down to Coles County. I’m off to visit Mama, the only surviving love of my youth. Along the icy path to the rail station, I meet Henry Clay Whitney, a young lawyer who worked on my nomination committee. He’s also headed for the train and will be pleasant company, at least for part of my journey.
Upon our arrival at the two-story brick depot, I realize I’ve neglected to buy a ticket, so Whitney offers to arrange for my passage while I check the luggage. I thank him and bend over to tie together the handles of my bag using some string.
A short time later when Whitney returns, he’s accompanied by F.W. Bowen, the genial Great Western Railroad superintendent.
Bowen looks down at me as I’m now on my knees in the frozen snow, fumbling with my bag, my fingers numb from cold. He says, “Mr. Lincoln, I understand you’re headed to Coles County this morning.”
I look up and tell him that’s so, upon which he offers me a free pass and invites me to his office. As Whitney and I follow him, I thank him for his generosity and ask how business is for the line. He tells me all is fine in the railroad business these days.
When I sit beside his desk in an old wooden chair, I lean back and sigh. “You are a heap better off running a good road than I am playing president. When I first knew Whitney, here, I was getting on well. I was clean out of politics and contented to stay so. I had a good business, and my children were coming up and becoming interesting to me. But now—here I am.” With that, I turn sullen and don’t speak another word until it’s time for the train to depart.
Down line, we’re joined by Cousin John Hanks and become engaged in storytelling and swapping jokes. As a result, we lose track of the train’s progress and miss our stop. We ride on to the next depot and catch a return train.
At about six o’clock, after sunset, we arrive in Charleston where I’m staying the night at the home of Tom Marshall, a friend from the Circuit. Mama’s home is a few miles out of town. Since my visit is unannounced, folks are surprised to see me walking down the street toward the Marshall’s elegant brick home. When the word spreads, hundreds of well-wishers stop by to greet me.
The next morning, with bitter cold still hanging in the air, I meet Cousin Dennis Hanks and we borrow a two-horse buggy for the ride to Mama’s. He’s the same chatterbox he was back when he moved into the half-face camp in Little Pigeon Creek. I tell him to bide his tongue when we reach the river crossing. The banks are hard frozen, and our wheels slip as the horses wade into the frigid water. Chunks of ice float by in the current.
I remember crossing an icy swollen river in an early spring decades ago. I was helping Father and Mama remove from Indiana to a new home in Decatur. Mama wanted to turn back when she saw how wild and deep the current was, but we pressed on. From Decatur they eventually came here to Coles County.
When Dennis and I pull the buggy up to the cabin that she now shares with her daughter’s family, Mama barely waits for my feet to hit the ground before hugging me. It’s not because she’s delicate and stooped that she refuses to let go. Only after I stay my tears and say we should go inside does she release her embrace and clutch my arm like a drowning man latching onto a floating log.
After supper we all gather around the fireplace and catch up on family news. At some point, I give her a black cape I brought as a gift. While she unwraps it, I stand by her rocking chair, holding onto its frame. Tears flow down her cheeks as she folds the cape in her lap.
I smile down at her, my throat aching. She clutches my elbow and pulls me toward her ’til my face is next to hers. Next, she cradles the back of my head in her hand and kisses my cheek.
Tears trickle down my face. “I love you, Mama. No son could love a mother more.”
The next day as we say a bitter-sweet good-bye, Mama wraps her arms around my waist, clinging tightly. “I fear I shall never see you again. Your enemies are certain to kill you.”
“No, no, Mama. They will not do that. Trust in the Lord, and all will be well. We will see each other—again.”
As I board the train for Springfield I’m told Texas has seceded. I ask myself, “Why are we given bonds of love, if in the end we are meant to part?”
While the mails and telegraph office feed us a steady course of bad news, the parcel deliveries that come our way are peppered with all manner of threatening “gifts.” On one occasion, Mother unwraps a painting of my likeness wearing a hangman’s rope for a necktie; my legs are shackled in chains, and my body covered with tar and feathers.
Not long afterward, I’m posing in the office for a sculpture of my bust when a package is delivered, wrapped in brown paper and tied loosely with string. I say to the elfish, impertinent sculptor Thomas Dow Jones, “What do you suppose is in it?”
“Don’t open it,” he says, edging away to collect his wide-brimmed hat and shawl. “There’s always the chance it could explode.”
“Where are you going?” I say, as I toy with the string.
“Nowhere,” he says, returning to the parcel.
I scratch my head. “Should we soak it in water?”
“We should say our prayers if we do.” Holding his hat and shawl behind his back, he bends forward, puts his face right up to the package and sniffs it. He appears to be more squirrel than human.
I laugh. “I remember once saying that prayers are nonsense. These days I’ve come to believe praying should be done whether or not one thinks they’ll do any good.”
He straightens up. “Go over there and wait.”
I retreat to a corner of the room. “What are doing?”
“I’ll hide it behind this clay model I’ve been working on. If it explodes when I open it, we might get a little messy, but we won’t get hurt.”
“Be careful,” I warn, crouching next to a desk.
When Jones tugs the string undone, a pigtail whistle falls out of the wrapping.
He turns and stares at me.
I walk over to the workbench and pick up the harmless device, grinning. “It’s a souvenir to remind me of something a newspaperman printed about me. ‘No whistle can be made out of a pig’s tail.’”
Afterward, I take the pigtail whistle home and try to make it work. When I give up, I hand the useless contraption to young Tad who immediately produces some musical tones. Within an hour he’s playing fully recognizable songs.
When Bob returns from Harvard to join us for the journey to Washington he says, “Public life is nothing more than a gilded prison.” Willy and Tad match each other’s tantrums over leaving the family dog Fido behind with neighbors. I give them a photograph of the dog to take along. I wish the secessionists, and Bob for that matter, could be so easily soothed.
On February 9, while a Peace Conference is underway in Washington City, delegates from the six seceded states meet in Montgomery, Alabama and elect Jefferson Davis President of the Confederate States of America. I say to Nicolay, “Nearly everyone I’ve loved has been torn away. Only my boys, Mama, and this precious Union remain. Now that I am about to take an oath to protect and defend it, it’s being torn apart limb by limb.”
He stares up at me. “It’s not your doing.”
His words are well intended, but of little comfort.
On the morning we leave Springfield for the nation’s capital, I go to the law office for a long talk with Billy Herndon. First, we examine some papers and confer over certain legal matters he’s working on. We also review the books and arrange for the completion of all unsettled and unfinished matters. I point out certain lines of procedure I wish for him to observe. Once these things are disposed of, I cross over to the opposite side of the room and throw myself down on the old office sofa. After many years of service, it has been moved against the wall for support. I stare at the ceiling in silence for a few moments before saying, “Billy, how long have we been together?”
“Over sixteen years,” he says.
“We've never had a cross word in all that time.”
Billy shakes his head. “No, indeed we have not.”
“Others have tried to supplant you in our partnership over the years, but they were weak men who hoped to secure a law practice by hanging onto my coattails. In spite of your faults, which I’ve never criticized except privately, I have valued your trustworthiness and loyalty too much to be tempted by any of them.”
“You’ve been like a father to me,” he says.
“And you, like a son.” I get up off the sofa and gather a bundle of books and papers to take with me. As I start to go, I turn to Billy once more. “That signboard down at the foot of the stairway—let it hang where it is, undisturbed. Give our clients to understand that the election of a president makes no change in the firm of Lincoln and Herndon. If I live, I'm coming back, and then we'll go right on as if nothing had ever happened.”
He puffs out his chest. “I have always considered it an honor to have my name beside yours.”
I linger for a moment, dabbing a tear, and take a last look at the old quarters.
When we arrive at the train depot to board the special cars that will carry us to Washington City, we’re joined by Nicolay and Hill; the latter I’ve asked to accompany me as my bodyguard. I stand on the platform and say to a large crowd that’s gathered to see us off,
My friends, no one, not in my situation, can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this parting. To this place and the kindness of these people I owe everything. Here I have lived a quarter of a century and have passed from a young to an old man. Here my children have been born and one is buried.
I now leave, not knowing when, or whether ever, I may return, with a task before me greater than that which rested upon Washington. Without the assistance of the Divine Being who ever attended him, I cannot succeed. With that assistance I cannot fail. Trusting in Him who can go with me and remain with you and be everywhere for good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be well.
To His care commending you, as I hope in your prayers you will commend me, I bid you an affectionate farewell.
I wave good-bye and take a seat on the train next to Nicolay. A lump rises in my throat. I pat his knee. “I will soon take an oath ‘to preserve and protect the Constitution,’ but already, the Union and its foundations are being rocked and its bonds ripped apart.”
When I consider the great trouble that is before us, I am reminded of the Savior’s lament as he stood upon a hill and gazed upon his beloved city, Jerusalem.
How often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings.
I gaze out the window, my eyes misting over as I watch my beloved countryside roll past. Memories, some joyful and others laced with pain, consume my thoughts.