American Men of Action Part 6

What the time needed was a genius, and fortunately one rose to the occasion. Buchanan, harried and despondent, must have breathed a deep sigh of relief when he surrendered the helm to the man who had been chosen to succeed him--the man, by some extraordinary chance, in all the land best fitted to steer the s.h.i.+p of state to safety--the man who was to be the dominant figure of the century in American history.

SUMMARY

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, GEORGE. Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, February 22 (old style, February 11), 1732; sent on a mission to the French beyond the Alleghenies, 1753-54; appointed lieutenant-colonel, 1754; defeated by the French at Fort Necessity, July 3, 1754; aide-de-camp to Braddock, 1755; commanded on the frontier, 1755-57; led the advance-guard for the reduction of Fort Duquesne, 1758; married Martha Custis, January 9, 1759; delegate to Continental Congress, 1774-75; appointed commander-in-chief of the continental forces, June 15, 1775; a.s.sumed command of the army, July 3, 1775; compelled evacuation of Boston, March 17, 1776; defeated at battle of Long Island, August 27, 1776; defeated at White Plains, October 28, 1776; surprised the British at Trenton, December 26, 1776; won the battle of Princeton, January, 1777; defeated at Brandywine and Germantown in 1777; at Valley Forge, during the winter of 1777-78; won the battle of Monmouth, June 28, 1778; captured Yorktown and the army of Cornwallis, October 19, 1781; resigned his commission as commander-in-chief, December 23, 1783; president of the Const.i.tutional Convention, 1787; unanimously elected President of the United States, January, 1789; inaugurated at New York, April 30, 1789; unanimously re-elected, 1793; issued farewell address to the people, September, 1796; retired to Mount Vernon, March, 1797; died there, December 14, 1799.

ADAMS, JOHN. Born at Braintree, now Quincy, Ma.s.sachusetts, October 30, 1735; graduated at Harvard, 1755; studied law, took a leading part in opposing Stamp Act, was counsel for the British soldiers charged with murder in connection with the "Boston ma.s.sacre" in 1770, and became a leader of the patriot party; member of Revolutionary Congress of Ma.s.sachusetts, 1774; delegate to first and second Continental Congress, 1774-75; commissioner to France, 1777; negotiated treaties with the Netherlands, Great Britain and Prussia, 1782-83; minister to London, 1785-88; Federal Vice-President, 1789-97; President, 1797-1801; defeated for re-election and retired to Quincy, 1801; died there, July 4, 1886.

JEFFERSON, THOMAS. Born at Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia, April 2, 1743; member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, 1769-75, and 1776-78, and of the Continental Congress, 1775-76; drafted Declaration of Independence, 1776; governor of Virginia, 1779-81; member of Congress, 1783-84; minister to France, 1784-89; secretary of state, 1789-93; Vice-President, 1797-1801; President, 1801-09; died at Monticello, Albemarle County, Virginia, July 4, 1826.

MADISON, JAMES. Born at Port Conway, Virginia, March 16, 1751; graduated at Princeton, 1771; delegate to Congress, 1780-83, and to the Const.i.tutional Convention, 1787; member of Congress, 1789-97; secretary of state, 1801-09; President, 1809-1817; died at Montpelier, Orange County, Virginia, June 28, 1836.

MONROE, JAMES. Born in Westmoreland County, Virginia, April 28, 1758; member of Virginia a.s.sembly, 1782; member of Congress, 1783-86; United States senator, 1790-94; minister to France, 1794-96; governor of Virginia, 1799-1802; minister to Great Britain, 1803-07; secretary of state, 1811-17; President, 1817-25, an administration, known as "the era of good feeling"; died at New York City, July 4, 1831.

ADAMS, JOHN QUINCY. Born at Braintree, Ma.s.sachusetts, July 11, 1767; graduated at Harvard, 1788; admitted to the bar, 1791; minister to the Netherlands, 1794-97; and to Prussia, 1797-1801; United States senator, 1803-08; minister to Russia, 1809-14; minister to England, 1815-17; secretary of state, 1817-25; President, 1825-29; member of Congress, 1831-48; died at Was.h.i.+ngton, February 23, 1848.

JACKSON, ANDREW. Born at the Waxham settlement, North Carolina (?), March 15, 1767; member of Congress, 1796-97; United States senator, 1797-98; justice of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, 1798-1804; defeated the Creeks at Talladega, 1813, and at Horseshoe Bend, 1814; captured Pensacola from the English, 1814; won the battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1815; commanded against the Seminoles, 1817-18; governor of Florida, 1821; United States senator, 1823-25; defeated for President by J.Q.

Adams, 1824; President, 1829-37; died at the Hermitage, near Nashville, Tennessee, June 8, 1845.

VAN BUREN, MARTIN. Born at Kinderhook, New York, December 5, 1782; admitted to the bar, 1803; entered New York State Senate, 1812; United States senator, 1821-28; governor of New York, 1828-29; secretary of state, 1829-31; Vice-President, 1833-37; President, 1837-41; defeated for President, 1840, 1844, 1848; died at Kinderhook, July 24, 1862.

HARRISON, WILLIAM HENRY. Born at Berkeley, Charles City County, Virginia, February 9, 1773; governor of Indiana Territory, 1801-13; won victory of Tippecanoe, 1811, and of the Thames, 1813; member of Congress, 1816-19; United States senator, 1825-28; minister to Colombia, 1828-29; defeated for Presidency, 1836; elected President in the "log-cabin and hard-cider" campaign, 1840; inaugurated, March 4, 1841; died at Was.h.i.+ngton, April 4, 1841.

TYLER, JOHN. Born at Greenway, Charles City County, Virginia, March 29, 1790; admitted to the bar, 1809; member of Virginia legislature, 1811-16; member of Congress, 1816-21; governor of Virginia, 1825-27; United States senator, 1827-36; elected Vice-President, 1840, and succeeded to Presidency on the death of General Harrison, April 4, 1841; president of the peace convention of 1861, favored secession and served as member of the Confederate provisional Congress; died at Richmond, Virginia, January 18, 1862.

POLK, JAMES KNOX. Born in Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, November 2, 1795; admitted to the bar, 1820; member of Congress, 1825-39; speaker of the House of Representatives, 1835-39; governor of Tennessee, 1839-41; President, 1845-49; died at Nashville, Tennessee, June 15, 1849.

TAYLOR, ZACHARY. Born in Orange County, Virginia, September 24, 1784; entered the army as first lieutenant, 1808; served in War of 1812, attaining rank of major; served in Black Hawk's war, 1832, with rank of colonel; defeated Seminole Indians, 1837; commander-in-chief of Florida, 1838; took command of the army in Texas, 1845; won battle of Palo Alto, May 8, 1846, and that of Reseca de la Palma, May 9, 1846; captured Matamoras, May 18, and Monterey, September 24, 1846; defeated Santa Anna at Buena Vista, February 22-23, 1847; appointed major-general, June 29, 1846; elected President, 1848; inaugurated, March 4, 1849; died at Was.h.i.+ngton, July 9, 1850.

FILLMORE, MILLARD. Born at Summer Hill, Cayuga County, New York, January 7, 1800; admitted to the bar, 1823; member of New York State legislature, 1829-31; member of Congress, 1833-35, 1837-43; elected Vice-President, 1848, and succeeded to presidency on the death of Taylor, July 9, 1850; died at Buffalo, New York, March 8, 1874.

PIERCE, FRANKLIN. Born at Hillsborough, New Hamps.h.i.+re, November 23, 1804; member of Congress, 1833-37; United States senator, 1837-42; served with distinction in Mexican war; President, 1853-57; died at Concord, New Hamps.h.i.+re, October 8, 1869.

BUCHANAN, JAMES. Born at Stony Batter, Franklin County, Pennsylvania, April 22, 1791; member of Congress, 1821-31; minister to Russia, 1831-33; United States senator, 1833-45; secretary of state, 1845-49; minister to Great Britain, 1853-56; President, 1857-61; died at Wheatland, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, June 1, 1868.

CHAPTER IV

LINCOLN AND HIS SUCCESSORS

And so we have come down through the years to Abraham Lincoln--that patient and gentle man whose memory ranks with Was.h.i.+ngton's as America's priceless heritage. A blessing and an inspiration--a mystery, too; an enigma among men, lonely and impressive; not fully understood nor understandable to the depths of that great heart of his; not fully explainable, for what strange power was it lifted that ignorant, ill-bred, uncouth, backwoods boy to a station among the stars?

Seldom has any man who started so low mounted so high. Abraham Lincoln's early life was of the most miserable description. His father, Thomas Lincoln, was a worthless rover; his mother, Nancy Hanks, was of a "poor white" Virginia family with an unenviable record. His birthplace was a squalid log cabin in Was.h.i.+ngton County, Kentucky. His surroundings were such as are commonly encountered in a coa.r.s.e, low, ignorant, poverty-stricken family. His father was at the very bottom of the social scale, so ignorant he could scarcely write his name. His mother inherited the s.h.i.+ftlessness and carelessness which is part and parcel of "poor white." These things are incontestable, they must be looked in the face. And yet, in spite of them, in spite of such a handicap as few other great men even approximated, Abraham Lincoln emerged to be the leader of a race.

In 1816, Thomas Lincoln decided he would remove to Indiana. Abraham was at that time seven years old, and for a year after the removal, the family lived in what was called a "half-faced camp," fourteen feet square--that is to say, a covered shed of three sides, the fourth side being open to the weather. Then the family achieved the luxury of a cabin, but a cabin without floor or door or window. Amid this wretchedness, Lincoln's mother died, and was laid away in a rough coffin of slabs at the edge of the little clearing. Three months later, a pa.s.sing preacher read the funeral service above the grave.

Thomas Lincoln soon married again and, strangely enough, made a wise choice, for his new wife not only possessed furniture enough to fill a four-horse wagon, but, what was of more importance, was endowed with a thrifty and industrious temperament. That she should have consented to marry the ne'er-do-well is a mystery; perhaps he was not without his redeeming virtues, after all. She made him put a floor and windows in his cabin, and she was a better mother to his children than their real one had ever been. For the first time, young Abraham got some idea of the comforts and decencies of life, and, as his step-mother put it, "began to look a little human." He was not an attractive object, even at best, for he was lanky and clumsy, with great hands and feet, and a skin prematurely wrinkled and shrivelled. By the time he was seventeen, he was six feet tall, and he soon added two more inches to his stature.

Needless to say, his clothes never caught up with him, but were always too small.

His schooling was of the most meagre description; in fact, in his whole life, he went to school less than one year. Yet there soon awakened within the boy a trace of unusual spirit. He actually liked to read. He saw few books, but such as he could lay his hands on, he read over and over. That one fact alone set him apart at once from the other boys of his cla.s.s. To them reading was an irksome labor.

All this reading had its effect. He acquired a vocabulary. That is to say, instead of the few hundred words which were all the other boys knew by which to express their thoughts, he soon had twice as many; besides that, he soon got a reputation as a wit and story-teller, and his command of words made him fond of speechmaking. He resembled most boys in liking to "show off." He had learned, too, that there were comforts in the world which he need never look for in his father's house, and so, as soon as he was of age, he left that unattractive dwelling-place and struck out for himself, making a livelihood in various ways--by splitting rails, running a river boat, managing a store, enlisting for the Black Hawk war--doing anything, in a word, that came to hand and would serve to put a little money in his pocket. He came to know a great many people and so, in 1832, he proclaimed himself a candidate for the state legislature for Sangamon County, Illinois, where he had made his home for some years. No doubt to most people, his candidacy must have seemed in the nature of a joke, and though he stumped the county thoroughly and entertained the crowds with his stories and flashes of wit, he was defeated at the polls.

That episode ended, he returned to store-keeping; but he had come to see that the law was the surest road to political preferment, and so he spent such leisure as he had in study, and in 1836 was admitted to the bar. As has been remarked before, the requirements for admission were anything but prohibitory, most lawyers sharing the oft-quoted opinion of Patrick Henry that the only way to learn law was to practise it. Lincoln decided to establish himself at Springfield, opened an office there, and for the next twenty years, practised law with considerable success, riding from one court to another, and gradually extending his circle of acquaintances. He even became prosperous enough to marry, and in 1842, after a courts.h.i.+p of the most peculiar description, married a Miss Mary Todd--a young woman somewhat above him in social station, and possessed of a sharp tongue and uncertain temper which often tried him severely.

It was inevitable, of course, that he should become interested again in politics, and he threw in his fortunes with the Whig Party, serving two or three terms in the state legislature and one in Congress. All of this did much to temper and chasten his native coa.r.s.eness and uncouthness, but he was still just an average lawyer and politician, with no evidence of greatness about him, and many evidences of commonness. Then, suddenly, in 1858, he stood forth as a national figure, in a contest with one of the most noteworthy men in public life, Stephen A. Douglas.

Douglas was an aggressive, tireless and brilliant political leader, the acknowledged head of the Democratic party, and had represented Illinois in the Senate for many years. He had a great ambition to be President, had missed the nomination in 1852 and 1856, but was determined to secure it in 1860, and was carefully building to that end. His term as senator expired in 1858, and his re-election seemed essential to his success. Of his re-election he had no doubt, for Illinois had always been a Democratic state, though it was becoming somewhat divided in opinion.

The southern part was largely pro-slavery, but the northern part, including the rapidly-growing city of Chicago, was inclined the other way. This division of opinion made Douglas's part an increasingly difficult one, for pro-slave and anti-slave sentiment were as irreconcilable as fire and water.

Lincoln, meanwhile, had been active in the formation of the new Republican party in the state, had made a number of strong speeches, and, on June 16, 1858, the Republican convention resolved that: "Hon.

Abraham Lincoln is our first and only choice for United States senator to fill the vacancy about to be created by the expiration of Mr.

Douglas's term of office." A month later, Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of joint debates. Douglas at once accepted, never doubting his ability to overwhelm his obscure opponent, and the famous duel began which was to rivet national attention and give Lincoln a national prominence.

The challenge on Lincoln's part was a piece of superb generals.h.i.+p. In such a contest, he had everything to gain and nothing to lose. Whatever the result, the fact that he had crossed swords with so renowned a man as Stephen A. Douglas would give him a kind of reflected glory. But in addition to that, he had the better side of the question. His course was simple; he was seeking the support of anti-slavery people; Douglas's task was much more complex, for he wished to offend neither northern nor southern Democrats, and he soon found himself offending both. To carry water on both shoulders is always a risky thing to attempt, and Douglas soon found himself fettered by the awkward position he was forced to maintain; while Lincoln, free from any such handicap, could strike with all his strength.

His stand from the first was a bold one--so bold that many of his followers regarded it with consternation and disapproval. In his speech accepting the nomination, he had said, "I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. It will become all one thing or all the other," and he pursued this line of argument in the debates alleging that the purpose of the pro-slavery men was to make slavery perpetual and universal, and pointing to recent history in proof of the a.s.sertion. When asked by Douglas whether he considered the negro his equal, he answered: "In the right to eat the bread which his own hand earns, he is my equal, and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." He was not an abolitionist, and declared more than once that he had "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the inst.i.tution of slavery in the states where it exists," that he had "no lawful right to do so," but only to prohibit it in "any new country which is not already cursed with the actual presence of the evil."

Even so skillful a debater as Douglas soon found himself hard put to it to answer Lincoln's arguments, without offending one or the other of the powerful factions whose support he must have to reach the presidency. At the beginning, his experience and adroitness gave him an advantage, which, however, Lincoln's earnestness and directness soon overcame. Tens of thousands of people gathered to hear the debates, they were printed from end to end of the country, and Lincoln loomed larger than ever before the nation; but so far as the immediate result was concerned, Douglas was the victor, for the election gave him a majority of the legislature, and he was chosen to succeed himself in the Senate.

Yet more than once he must have regretted that he had consented to cross swords with his lank opponent, for he had been forced into many an awkward corner. There is a popular tradition that the presidential nomination came to Lincoln unsought; but this is anything but true. On the contrary, in those debates with Douglas, he was consciously laying the foundation for his candidacy two years later. He used every effort to drive Douglas to admissions and statements which would tell against him in a presidential campaign, while he himself took a position which would insure his popularity with the Republican party. So his defeat at the time was of no great moment to him.

He had gained an entrance to the national arena, and he took care to remain before the public. He made speeches in Ohio, in Kansas, and even in New York and throughout New England, everywhere making a powerful impression. To disunion and secession he referred only once or twice, for he perceived a truth which, even yet, some of us are reluctant to admit: that every nation has a right to maintain by force, if it can, its own integrity, and that a portion of a nation may sometimes be justified in struggling for independent national existence. The whole justification of such a struggle lies in whether its cause and basis is right or wrong. So, beneath the question of disunion, was the question as to whether slavery was right or wrong. On this question, of course, northern opinion was practically all one way, while even in the South there were many enemies of the inst.i.tution. The world was outgrowing what was really a survival of the dark ages.

When the campaign for the presidential nomination opened in the winter of 1859-1860, Lincoln was early in the field and did everything possible to win support. He secured the Illinois delegates without difficulty, and when the national convention met at Chicago, in May, the contest soon narrowed down to one between Lincoln and William H. Seward. Let it be said, at once, that Seward deserved the nomination, if high service and party loyalty and distinguished ability counted for anything, and it looked for a time as though he were going to get it, for on the first ballot he received 71 more votes than Lincoln. But in the course of his public career he had made enemies who were anxious for his defeat, his campaign managers were too confident or too clumsy to take advantage of opportunity; Lincoln's friends were busy, and by some expert trading, of which, be it said in justice to Lincoln, he himself was ignorant, succeeded in securing for him a majority of the votes on the third ballot.

So, blindly and almost by chance, was the nomination secured of the one man fitted to meet the crisis. The only other event in American history to be compared with it in sheer wisdom was the selection of Was.h.i.+ngton to head the Revolutionary army--a selection made primarily, not because of Was.h.i.+ngton's fitness for the task, but to heal sectional differences and win the support of the South to a war waged largely in the North.

The nomination, so curiously made, was received with anything but enthusiasm by the country at large. "Honest Abe, the Rail-Splitter,"

might appeal to some, but there was a general doubt whether, after all, rail-splitting, however honorable in itself, was the best training for a President. However, the anti-slavery feeling was a tie that bound together people of the most diverse opinions about other things, and a spirited canva.s.s was made, greatly a.s.sisted by the final and suicidal split in the ranks of the Democracy, which placed in nomination two men, Lincoln's old antagonist, Stephen A. Douglas, representing the northern or moderate element of the party, and John C. Breckenridge, of Kentucky, representing the southern, or extreme pro-slavery element. And this was just the corner into which Lincoln had hoped, all along, to drive his opponents. Had the party been united, he would have been hopelessly defeated, for in the election which followed, he received only a little more than one third of the popular vote; but this was sufficient to give him the northern states, with 180 electoral votes. But let us remember that, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was the choice for President of very much less than half the people of the country.

The succeeding four months witnessed the peculiar spectacle of the South leisurely completing its arrangements for secession, and perfecting its civil and military organization, while the North, under a discredited ruler of whom it could not rid itself until March 4th, was unable to make any counter-preparation or to do anything to prevent the diversion of a large portion of the arms and munitions of the country into the southern states. It gave the southern leaders, too, opportunity to work upon the feelings of their people, more than half of whom, in the fall of 1860, were opposed to disunion. It should not be forgotten that, however fully the South came afterwards to acquiesce in the policy of secession, it was, in its inception, a plan of the politicians, undertaken, to a great extent, for purposes of self-aggrandizement. They controlled the conventions which, in every case except that of Texas, decided whether or not the state should secede. "We can make better terms out of the Union than in it," was a favorite argument, and many of them dreamed of the establishment of a great slave empire, in which they would play the leading parts.

To the southern leaders, then, the election of Lincoln was the striking of the appointed hour for rebellion. South Carolina led the way, declaring, on December 17, 1860, that the "Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved." Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas followed. Opinion at the North was divided as to the proper course to follow. Horace Greeley, in the New York _Tribune_, said that the South had as good a right to secede from the Union as the colonies had to secede from Great Britain, and, as Greeley afterwards observed, the _Tribune_ had plenty of company in these sentiments.

Meanwhile the Southern Confederacy had been formed, Jefferson Davis elected President, and steps taken at once for the organization of an army.

Everyone was waiting anxiously for the inauguration of the new President--waiting to see what his course would be. They were not left long in doubt. His inaugural address was earnest and direct. He said, "The union of these States is perpetual. No State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union. I shall take care that the laws of the Union are faithfully executed in all the States." It was, in effect, a declaration of war, and was so received by the South. Whether or not it was the const.i.tutional att.i.tude need not concern us now.

The story of Lincoln's life for the next five years is the story of the Civil War. How Lincoln grew and broadened in those fateful years, how he won men by his deep humanity, his complete understanding, his ready sympathy; how, once having undertaken the task of conquering rebellion, he never faltered nor turned back despite the awful sacrifices which the conflict demanded; all this has pa.s.sed into the commonplaces of history.

No man ever had a harder task, and no other man could have accomplished it so well.