Chapter 41
A New President Comes to Washington
The new southern nation was confident, and in early 1861 better organized and more united than the rest of the United States. All was not lost quite yet, however, because eight more slave states of the upper and border regions of the South had remained loyal to the Union and were determined to give Lincoln a chance.
All this time, President-elect Abraham Lincoln had not revealed to the country what he intended to do about the crisis. Would he attack South Carolina? If so, with what troops? Would he try to find some new compromise nobody had thought of yet? Would he just wait and let events go as Buchanan had? Or would he accept the new nation, and go on as President of just half the former country?
No one knew. So everyone in both countries anxiously awaited Lincoln’s inaugural speech, scheduled for March 4, to find out what his new policy was going to be.
In the meantime, out in California, there was a lot of support for the South. The South Carolina fever for secession ran all the way west to the Pacific!
But for some reason, by the time it reached California, those who felt the state ought to secede didn’t necessarily want to join the Confederacy. They wanted California to pull out of the Union to start a third independent republic. If the North and South couldn’t solve their squabbles, why should California be joined with either of them?
A year before, former California Senator Weller had proclaimed: “If the wild spirit of fanaticism, which now pervades the land, should destroy this magnificent Union, California will not go with the South or the North, but here upon the shores of the Pacific will found and establish a mighty new republic.”
“It’s plumb fool ridiculousness, Almeda!” exclaimed Pa, looking up from the newspaper.
“What is it, Drummond?” she’d asked.
“I’m just reading here in the Standard that this fellow Butts is calling for a convention to found a Pacific republic. Who is he, anyway—do you know, Corrie?”
“Judge Butts is the editor of the Sacramento Standard, Pa.”
“Well, he’s got no business interfering in politics, if you ask me.”
“You better learn to get along with him when you go to Sacramento,” laughed Almeda, “or you might find yourself tarred and feathered in that paper of his!
“It was just a month ago that you were laughing about that proposal by John Burch proposing the formation of a Pacific republic.”
“That’s because I thought it was a joke—California, Oregon, New Mexico, Washington, and Utah forming a new country! But I think Butts is serious!”
“He is serious, Pa,” I said. “The Herald, the Gazette, the Democrat, the Star—they’ve all come out in favor of western independence.”
“What about your Alta?”
“The Alta’s pro-Union all the way,” I said. “You don’t think I’d keep writing for a Democratic paper, do you?”
“Well, if this one Republican has anything to say about it when I get to Sacramento, California’s gonna stay put right where it is—in the Union, and supporting Mr. Abraham Lincoln when he gets to be president!”
All through the elections Lincoln’s opponents had made fun of his appearance—tall, thin, and gawky, with rough features and a big beak nose. He was said to sleep in the same shirt he gave speeches in, and from listening to some reports I would have thought he still lived in the backwoods log cabin where he was raised. Even after his election he was not considered “sophisticated” enough for Washington society.
But people were in for a surprise. Lincoln might not have been handsome or cultured, but he was a strong man, a shrewd politician, and an authoritative leader—just the right man to be president at such a time, and certainly better than James Buchanan. Abraham Lincoln would not do nothing. Whatever he did, it was sure to be decisive.
Lincoln left his home in Springfield, Illinois, for Washington in late February. He traveled by train and took eleven roundabout days to get there, stopping all throughout the states of the North to visit people and make speeches and let them see their new president. Everybody wanted to know what he was going to do about the Confederacy, but he wouldn’t reveal his policies yet. His speeches were light—some even thought them frivolous. People began to get the idea they had elected a simpleton to the White House. He seemed almost unaware of how serious the crisis was.
At Westfield, New York, he asked the crowd if a young girl by the name of Grace Bedell was present. She was brought up to the rear of the train where he was speaking. Then he told the listening crowd that she had written him during the campaign to tell him that he would look much handsomer if he grew some whiskers. Then he stooped down with a smile. “You see, Grace,” he said, “I let these whiskers grow just for you.”
When he attended the opera in New York City, he did the unthinkable by wearing black gloves instead of white. High society was aghast at the thought of having such an oafish man living in the White House and in charge of the country.
In Philadelphia a private detective named Allan Pinkerton came to the President-elect with the news that he had learned of a plot to assassinate him when he changed trains in Baltimore. Lincoln would have paid no attention, except that a little while later another report came to him of the same thing.
So Lincoln let Pinkerton take charge of getting him to Washington safely. He was put up in a sleeper that had been reserved by one of Pinkerton’s female detectives for her “invalid brother.” They passed through Baltimore at three in the morning and reached Washington just about daybreak.
When it was discovered what had happened and that Lincoln had at one point in the journey draped a shawl over his shoulders so as not to be recognized, all kinds of mocking and cruel stories and jokes and cartoons were printed in the newspapers, especially in the South. This was the man, they said, who was going to lead the nation! People were beginning to think he was an incompetent, ignorant clown.
But Lincoln had just been beating around the bush with his lighthearted speeches. In fact, he knew exactly how serious the crisis was. He had been planning for it for four months.
The Pony Express was gearing up to speed Lincoln’s inaugural address to California the moment it was delivered. I wished Zack had been able to be part of it!
It took three days for the speech to reach St. Joseph by train from Washington. Then the Express took over at an amazing pace. The speech was brought down the Main Street of Sacramento from St. Joseph in an all-time speed record: seven days and seventeen hours. Two of the riders, trying to make up for delays, actually rode their horses to death.
The speech, which Pa read to us all from the March 17 edition of the Alta when it arrived in Miracle Springs on the eighteenth, was certainly not the speech of a weakling or a simpleton. It was clear right away what kind of man had been elected President, and I was glad that I’d done my part to help him win California’s four electoral votes. It wasn’t much, out of the 180 he’d received, but I was glad they hadn’t gone to anybody else.
“The Union is older than the states,” he said in his speech, “and was founded to last forever. Secession is illegal, a revolutionary act.” Then the new President went on to tell what he planned to do.
He did not intend to be rash, he said, or to do anything sudden or forceful. He would proceed with patience and caution for a time. And that right there, Almeda said as we listened, was the clue that showed he had no intention of putting up with the so-called new country forever—he would be patient for a time.
But he would, he went on to say, do all in his power to enforce all federal laws in all the states, and he would keep firm hold of federal property. Everyone knew he meant Fort Sumter.
He was not considering any forceful retribution, and there would be no threat to the constitutional rights of the states that had left the Union. If they wished to return, they could. But the government would act to defend itself.
Then he brought up the horrible prospect of what would happen if the southern states didn’t come to their senses and come back to the Union. He spoke straight to the South when he said whose fault it would be.
“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen,” he said, “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.”
The closing words of his speech showed that he still wanted to believe that the people of the South deep down felt as loyal to the country as he did. Maybe their radical leaders didn’t. But surely the great masses of southerners didn’t really want what was happening.
“We are not enemies,” he said, “but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break the 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.”