• CHAPTER FIFTEEN •
PARADES AND FAREWELL
The months between a political nomination and the election give the people their chance to decide how to vote. In 1860, this campaign time promised to be exciting because there were four candidates for President (Southern Democrat, Northern Democrat, Constitutional Union, and Republican). Americans differed widely on the ideas these men represented.
The Republican Party had a three-point platform: to keep slavery out of the territories (but they pledged that it should not be disturbed in states where slaveholding was legal); to protect American industries; and to give free homestead land to people who wanted to move west.
Stephen A. Douglas.
But these simple phrases displeased many voters. Abolitionists thought them too soft; Southerners read in them an end to slavery. For if slavery could not go along with the movement west, the kind of life dependent upon slavery would surely die out. As for the other points: if factories—mostly in the north—were protected by a high tariff, wealth in the north would rapidly surpass the wealth of the cotton states; and if new land to the west was free, northerners would quickly settle the territories with non-slaveholding people.
The Southern states promptly threatened to withdraw from the Union if the Republican candidate Lincoln was elected. Abolitionists felt that they had been betrayed, and even Republicans were soon frightened. Many regretted Lincoln’s nomination. It had seemed a clever move to nominate a “man of the people” like Andrew Jackson; now they wished for the experienced Seward. People of all parties wondered whether it was already too late to keep the states united. The question of leadership must be settled by the people at the election in November.
Party leaders knew that parades draw crowds for the serious speeches and that people value what they work for. So they organized cubs, planned parades and picnics. Ladies—who of course did not vote—sewed the uniforms and made handsome banners. Everyone had a chance to help.
The largest campaign club was the Republican “Wide-Awakes,” with more than half a million members by midsummer. Boys formed the “Lincoln Guards” and the “Young Rail Splitters.” Members canvassed voters, escorted speakers, acted as hosts and guides during rallies, and did other valuable service.
While all this was going on, Abraham Lincoln stayed in Springfield, and his days were crowded with duties. He had so many visitors that the governor let him use a pleasant corner room in the State House, and Lincoln held daily receptions there. Artists drew pictures, sculptors made statues, reporters wrote stories, and the campaign committee asked Lincoln to write his own life story.
Willie and Tad Lincoln enjoyed this excitement. They dashed in and out of the State House, bothering everyone but enjoying themselves and entertaining their father. The committee found it hard to be sympathetic when Willie got a mild case of scarlet fever and the fun stopped. Robert, now seventeen, was away finishing his preparation for Harvard University.
Springfield people planned a celebration that should be bigger and better than any in the land. They set the date for August 8th, and everyone went to work. Even opponents agreed to help feed visitors, though announcements warned people to bring their own food if possible. A wigwam designed like the one in Chicago was built near the Square, sidewalks were repaired, extra police appointed, and speakers invited.
August 8th was a clear, hot day, and by nine o’clock the streets were crowded. Special trains brought one hundred and eighty carloads of people, more than fifteen thousand. Thousands and thousands more walked to town or came on horseback, by buggy, or by wagon. They milled around the streets in such numbers that the parade could hardly form. It finally got under way toward Jackson Street, where Mr. Lincoln and his family were to watch it from their front steps.
At the head of the long line was a great ball rolled by uniformed men. Small boys raced alongside trying to read the words on it:
Westward the Star of Empire takes its way;
We link-on to Lincoln—our fathers were for Clay.
Behind the ball marched more than twenty clubs—the “Wide-Awakes,” the “Lincoln Young Americans,” the “Springfield German-Americans,” and others. Bands played, and floats fascinated the crowd. One float was a great flatboat on wheels, marked “New Salem Days.” Another had a real power loom that actually made jeans-cloth on the march. As fast as the cloth was woven, lengths were cut off and made into pants “for Lincoln.” There was a log-cabin float with a man made up to resemble Lincoln—who split rails all the way. Twenty-three yoke of oxen pulled a huge float carrying rail splitters, wheelwrights, and blacksmiths—who illustrated “honest toil” under the hot sun.
Many marchers carried fence rails. John Hanks had started that fad when Lincoln’s name was put in nomination for president at the state convention in May. John had hunted up two of Warnick’s rails and had taken them to the convention at Decatur. Delegates were entranced when he pointed out the actual ax marks that “Old Abe” had made. Here were symbols of pioneer toil that people would understand. The idea was so popular that it is a wonder any rail fence was left standing! After Lincoln’s nomination thousands and thousands of rails were sold, all supposed to have been split by the Republican candidate. Some of the popular slogans that were tied in with those rails were:
The Union shall be preserved—Old Abe will fence it in.
Abe Lincoln—in Illinois he mauled rails and Stephen A. Douglas.
There were hundreds of gay banners waving snappy slogans in that long, colorful line of march.
By two o’clock the parade had wound back and forth over Springfield streets and arrived at the fair grounds for the speeches. The crowd of some seventy-five thousand was separated into groups where different orators held forth. In the evening there was a torchlight parade. Marching men wore oilcloth capes to protect themselves from sparks and dripping oil. Willie and Tad watched till the last man passed. It was a great day.
The next morning the Illinois State Journal carried a glowing account headed by an elephant, the first use of this animal as a campaign symbol. The creature wore two pairs of boots and carried a streamer saying,
“WE ARE COMING!”
On the saddlecloth were the words,
“CLEAR THE TRACK!”
The headlines below the picture said:
A POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE
THE PRAIRIES ON FIRE FOR LINCOLN!
THE BIGGEST DEMONSTRATION EVER HELD
IN THE WEST
The great rally was but one of many such dramatic gatherings across the country. The vast crowds whipped up strained emotions and kept people conscious of the election—and of their country’s political conflict.
The parade was only a brief interruption in Abraham Lincoln’s program. The next morning he continued seeing people and reading letters. Market baskets piled with mail arrived daily from the post office, and he attempted to read every letter and to answer (in longhand) as many as he could.
One letter in his daily pile gave him special pleasure.
NY
Westfield Chautauqua Co.
Oct 15, 1860
Hon A B Lincoln
Dear Sir
My father has just come home from the fair and brought home your picture and Mr. Hamlin’s. I am a little girl only eleven years old, but want you should be president of the United States very much so I hope you wont think me very bold to write to such a great man as you are. Have you any little girls about as large as I am if so give them my love and tell her to write to me, if you cannot answer this letter. I have got 4 (?) brothers and part of them will vote for you anyway and if you will let your whiskers grow I will try and get the rest of them to vote for you you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin. All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you and then you would be President. My father is agoing to vote for you to but I will try and get every one to vote for you that I can think that rail fence around your picture makes it look very pretty I have got a baby sister she is nine weeks old and is just as cunning as can be. When you direct your letter diret to Grace Bedell Westfield Chautauqua County New York.
I must not write any more answer this letter right off Goodbye
Grace Bedell
Lincoln replied in his own hand.
Private
Springfield, Ills.
Oct. 19, 1860
Miss Grace Bedell
MY DEAR LITTLE MISS,
Your very agreeable letter of the 15th. is received.
I regret the necessity of saying I have no daughters. I have three sons—one seventeen, one nine and one seven, years of age. They, with their mother, constitute my whole family.
As to the whiskers, having never worn any, do you not think people would call it a piece of silly affection if I were to begin it now—?
Your very sincere well-wisher
A. Lincoln
Pictures taken some weeks after this letter show that Lincoln had grown a beard, in the modish fashion of the day. He wore it the rest of his life. When he went to Washington for his inauguration, the train stopped in Westfield and he met and talked to Grace Bedell.
Election day, November 6th, was clear and warm. Springfield people got up early and milled around the square. Lincoln had decided not to vote; it didn’t seem mannerly. But friends told him that his party needed his vote for other offices. So he cut off the upper part of his ticket and voted. Local pride got the better of politics, and men and boys of all parties cheered him when he went to the polls.
When returns began to “tap in,” Lincoln went to the small telegraph office and sat tranquilly, awaiting his fate. Reports from the North came first and of course were good. Telegraphers gathered up batches of messages and read news to the people waiting outside. When the South began to be heard from Lincoln remarked, “Now we should get a few licks back!”
At midnight Lincoln and a few others went to a party prepared by the ladies. Mrs. Lincoln, flushed and excited, was there. During the party a few friends risked congratulating Lincoln.
“How do you do, Mr. President?” was a choice bit of wit.
By one-thirty Republican victory seemed certain, and the Lincolns went home. But the city’s jollification lasted till dawn. When the official count was published, Lincoln had won the electoral vote of every free state but New Jersey (it was divided); but his vote was nearly a million less than the total of his opponents, so he was a minority president. And Republicans were a minority in both houses of Congress. It was a staggering task that awaited him in Washington—made worse by the fact that many, both Republicans and Democrats, thought that Lincoln’s election was a national calamity. Now when it was too late, many Republicans wished that the experienced Seward had been elected; Democrats saw in Lincoln’s election the end of the union of states and probably civil war. Meanwhile, Buchanan, with the best of intention and little forcefulness, marked time in Washington. Everyone waited as people wait for a burning fuse to set off a bomb.
In preparation for his new office Lincoln must select his cabinet and write his inaugural address. But how was a man to think and write when the country seemed to be going to pieces around him? Soon after the election South Carolina seceded. Every mail brought word of more trouble! Southerners honestly believed that only by withdrawing from the Union could they save their way of life. Soon six other states—Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Texas—joined South Carolina and formed the Confederate States of America with the distinguished Jefferson Davis, former United States Senator, as their president.
In December, frightened statesmen tried to get some agreement that would save the country. They even proposed that the Missouri Compromise be restored. But Lincoln refused because he had been elected on his promise that slavery should not spread. It was too late to bring back an agreement that would let slavery into the west.
Terror—a secret, fearful terror—spread like a sickness over the country. Even Republicans who had voted for Lincoln felt that they had gone too far. Many were relieved when word got out that William Seward was to be the Secretary of State. He was a “safe man.” He could save the country. Lincoln, they now thought, didn’t know much about statecraft.
In the midst of all this turmoil, Lincoln gathered a few books and shut himself in a back room over a store to write his address. He had with him his history of the United States with the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the speeches of his favorite statesmen—Webster, Jackson, and Clay—and the Bible. The country eyed that room. What was Lincoln writing? Would he try to appease and save the nation from war? Or would he defy—and bring on armed conflict?
In February, after the Confederates had taken several Gulf forts and had threatened Fort Sumter, the speech was finished. The cabinet was chosen too: Lincoln asked his three rivals for the nomination—Seward, Bates, and Cameron—and four others to be his advisers. This must have taken courage, but Lincoln never lacked for that.
Now it was time to wind up personal business in Springfield. He rented his house and sold the furniture. He traveled to Charleston, Illinois, to bid his stepmother good-bye and see that she was well cared for. He had a long talk with Billy Herndon about their law partnership; and as he left the office, he pointed to their shabby sign.
“Let it hang,” he said. “Give our clients to understand that the election of a president makes no change in the firm of Lincoln & Herndon. If I live, I’m coming back sometime; and then we’ll go right on practicing law as if nothing had ever happened.”
He went to Billy’s Barber Shop and had the new beard trimmed. Proud Billy hated to see his friend go away.
“We colored people will miss you, Mr. Lincoln,” he said.
After Lincoln left the shop, Billy remarked to a friend: “I feel uneasy about Mr. Lincoln—almost as though he may never come back to Springfield.” Billy stood at the window watching as Lincoln walked away.
Long ago Abe Lincoln had felt a clear conviction about the time to leave New Salem. His success in law and in politics had proved the rightness of that decision. But leaving Springfield seemed hardly an act of his own choosing. He was now riding a tide of monstrous events.
The eleventh of February was a dreary day. Mr. Lincoln drove to the railroad station in a drizzle of cold rain. But weather did not keep friends from coming to see him off. The crowds made it impossible to say a personal farewell to each one, but he could not leave without expressing his friendship. After he got aboard the train he walked through to the end platform and stood a moment in the cold, looking at these loyal friends. Then he spoke to them:
“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 that 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 every where 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.”
Lincoln turned, pulled his old gray shawl tighter around his neck, and went into the car. The whistle blew. The train stirred; people waited as it slowly moved out of sight. Then they silently turned away. Abraham Lincoln, their friend and neighbor, was gone from their town. Uneasy and sad, they plodded to their homes.
