SPRINGFIELD

The Real Danger

DECEMBER 31

WITH ANDERSON AT SUMTER, THE NATIONAL CRISIS IMMEDIATELY became more charged. Lincoln’s frustration deepened, fed by numerous tributaries, foremost among them his own inability to direct events in the administrative vacuum left by Buchanan, but also by lesser founts, like the unrelenting surge of petitioners seeking patronage jobs in his administration. Journalist Henry Villard called them “place-wanting cormorants.” A deluge of correspondence threatened to overwhelm him, much of it stained with hatred and carrying threats both veiled and blatant that he would not survive long enough to become president. News reports hinted at plots against the city of Washington itself, with the Springfield Republican conveying an explicit threat from radical U.S. senator Louis T. Wigfall of Texas that “the capital would be in the hands of the secessionists before Inauguration Day.” The proslavery New York Herald added detail to this miasma of menace when it reported earnestly on New Year’s Day that a large Southern force had in fact already been marshaled and was primed to seize Washington.

Adding to the pressure Lincoln felt was the looming matter of his inaugural speech, which seemed certain from the perspective of the day to be the most important speech of his life, and, owing to his public silence thus far, certain to command the nation’s attention. Yet two months remained until he could deliver it and at last take office. “I would willingly take out of my life a period in years equal to the two months which intervene between now and my inauguration to take the oath of office now,” he told a friend in a moment of unusual despond. In those two months, anything could happen. “Because every hour adds to the difficulties I am called upon to meet, and the present Administration does nothing to check the tendency toward dissolution, I, who have been called to meet this awful responsibility, am compelled to remain here, doing nothing to avert it or lessen its force when it comes to me.” Citing scripture, he told his friend, “My cup of bitterness is full and overflowing.”

A rising chorus echoed Lincoln’s frustration. His friend and political advisor, Thurlow Weed, through his newspaper the Albany Evening Journal, posited, “Our only regret is, that Mr. Lincoln could not have taken the helm of state, as successor to Mr. Buchanan, on the first Monday in December.” Another concurring voice, this one Southern, was former congressman Alexander H. Stephens, a proslavery Georgian who at least for the moment favored preservation of the Union. In a December 30 letter he urged Lincoln to do what he could to “save our common country,” and advised: “A word fitly spoken by you now would be like ‘apples of gold in pictures of silver,’” this last a reference to Proverbs 25:11 in the Old Testament of the Bible. A diminutive man of one hundred pounds or so, Stephens was nicknamed “Little Ellick” and often referred to as “the Little Pale Star from Georgia.” Which he apparently did not mind, once describing himself as “a malformed ill-shaped half-finished thing.” Though small, he was also fiery, and in his mind mighty, always willing to express moral certitude. When a fellow Georgian said, “I could swallow him whole and never know the difference,” Stephens shot back, “If you did there would be more brains in your belly than there ever will be in your head!” In his letter to Lincoln, Stephens warned, “When men come under the influence of fanaticism, there is no telling where their impulses or passions may drive them.”

Lincoln did get some good news, however, when William Seward, on Friday, December 28, fully fourteen days after Lincoln’s invitation, at last accepted the post of secretary of state, this after “due reflection and with much self-distrust,” as Seward put it. Having thus delayed, however, he had no compunction about now recommending rapid action. “Habit has accustomed the public to anticipate the arrival of the President elect in this city about the middle of February,” he told Lincoln in a letter dated the same day, “and evil minded persons would expect to organize their demonstrations for that time.” He urged Lincoln to forgo tradition and come to Washington “a week or ten days earlier. The effect would probably be reassuring and soothing.”

But it was not the inauguration that troubled Lincoln. He felt reasonably assured that Commanding General Winfield Scott would make good on his pledge, delivered through an intermediary, to protect him upon his arrival in the capital. The old general with reassuring élan had promised that if any secessionist forces “show their faces or raise a finger I’ll blow them to hell.”

Lincoln’s concern lay elsewhere. “I have been considering your suggestions as to my reaching Washington somewhat earlier than is usual,” Lincoln wrote in his reply to Seward. “It seems to me the inauguration is not the most dangerous point for us. Our adversaries have us more clearly at disadvantage, on the second Wednesday of February, when the votes should be officially counted.” Here he referred to the constitutionally mandated final count and certification of the electoral vote, to be conducted in the House on February 13, 1861, by Buchanan’s vice president. Ordinarily this would be the most routine of events, a celebration of the constitution and of peaceful succession, but the tensions of the times raised all manner of concern, especially given the fact that the vice president, the man who would count and certify the electoral votes, was Southern Democrat John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky, who not only sympathized with the South but had been Lincoln’s leading opponent in the presidential election. “If the two Houses refuse to meet at all, or meet without a quorum of each, where shall we be?” Lincoln wrote. “I do not think that this counting is constitutionally essential to the election; but how are we to proceed in absence of it?”

In light of this, he told Seward, “I think it is best for me not to attempt appearing in Washington till the result of that ceremony is known.”

SO ENDED THE YEAR, with none of the optimism that past New Year’s celebrations had brought, only the promise of tumult to come, perhaps even violence. “Oh God save our dear City Charleston,” wrote planter Keziah Brevard on December 29. “Let not a head be bruised by the Northern people—thou canst save us, Oh save us!! This old year truly goes out full of trouble. Let better signs soon gleam on us and Oh that ’61 could bring peace and love to thy people.”

On New Year’s Eve she had a dream, a nightmare, in which “fearful” clouds drifted overhead. She was standing near the brick oven in her mother’s home. In the corner of her yard she saw fire—“two raging, smoking fires, the flames burning high at intervals.” She cried out. She ordered the fire extinguished. The fear woke her.

“Now about 2 O’clock A.M.—” she wrote, “and all gloom without—My Country!!! My Country!!!”

IN WASHINGTON, NEW YEAR’S DAY was subdued, despite excellent weather: “a fine clear and rather cool day,” according to diarist Charles Francis Adams, who made a point of noting weather conditions in the first line of each of his diary entries. As per New Year’s custom, Adams made the rounds of various homes and receptions.

He had planned to call on General Scott, but the general was ill “and did not receive me.” Adams made numerous other visits and talked for a time with Senator Seward. “I thought Mr. Seward was graver than usual today,” Adams wrote, “and he talked much of the obligation of the people of this city to make preparations for defense. On the whole, I suspect there is something in it.” He learned as well, to his relief, that General Scott had not been named secretary of war to replace the disgraced Floyd, something Adams had feared. He interpreted the appointment of Joseph Holt as a signal that Buchanan might be planning to toughen his approach to the secession crisis. “This was the only encouraging thing of the day,” he wrote.

Varina Davis made the rounds as well. This New Year’s Day was for her an especially poignant one. She and her husband, Jeff, who would soon resign from the Senate, were preparing to leave town and return to Brierfield, Davis’s plantation in Mississippi. Varina went to the White House to say goodbye to Buchanan by herself, her husband having vowed never to have any future interaction with the man. She described her farewell as “affectionate.”

In a letter to a friend, she complained that a pall seemed to have settled over Washington this New Year’s Day. There were no parties or dinners; Southern men now shunned Buchanan because of what they perceived to be his betrayal over Sumter. The city had become a “great mausoleum,” the atmosphere full of “gloom,” she wrote. Varina did not share her husband’s harsh disavowal of Buchanan. “I love the dear old man,” she wrote, “and would like to forget that I do.”

ELSEWHERE IN WASHINGTON, TEXAS senator Wigfall, the fire-eating advocate of rebellion, learned of War Secretary Floyd’s exit and his replacement by Holt; on January 2 he wired the news to Charleston.

“Holt succeeds Floyd. It means war.”