The Lincoln Story Book Part 54

a.s.sa.s.sINATION.

At Springfield, immediately upon the election for President, Lincoln began to receive letters with lethal menaces. His friends took them as serious, and two or more carried weapons, and escorted him closely that no one with a dagger might reach his side. Calling on his stepmother for the farewell, she reiterated the general, and rising, fears. At Philadelphia, detectives and others whispered of a plot matured at Baltimore, and in his speech at raising the flag over Independence Hall he said pointedly:

"If this country cannot be saved without giving up this principle--liberty to the world--I was about to say I would rather be a.s.sa.s.sinated on the spot than surrender it.... I have said nothing but what I am willing to live by, and, if it be the pleasure of Almighty G.o.d, to die by."--(Speech, Philadelphia, February, 1861.)

A PRESIDENT, NOT AN EMPEROR.

The President said to Colonel Halpine as respected the life-guards, which he soon dispensed with around his person, often going out unawares so as to "dodge" the escort in waiting:

"It will never do for the President of a republic to have guards with drawn swords at his door, as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were a.s.suming to be, an emperor."

THE PLOT TO WAYLAY THE PRESIDENT (1860).

The dispute as to whether there was a foundation to the supposed plot to waylay and sequester President-elect Lincoln between Philadelphia and Was.h.i.+ngton is notable. From the later light and the letter from Wilkes Booth to his brother-in-law, Sleeper Clarke, the comedian, no doubt is left that to kidnap him was a plot dated very early when the foresighted slave-holders were certain that he was a greater enemy from consistency than the louder-voiced and openly violent Abolitionists. While Colonel Lamon doubted, and wished he had not been beguiled into aiding in the ignominious flight in disguise and secretly by train, Secretary Seward and General Scott gave it credence. The foreboding had touched Lincoln before he left his Illinois home. At Springfield his farewell speech is tinged with shade. At Philadelphia and Harrisburg he spoke of blood-spilling, and used the word "a.s.sa.s.sination" at the former. He took up the matter like a reasoner. Already the detective brothers, Pinkerton, had an inkling of the doings of the Knights of the Golden Circle, or some such secret society, designing regicide. So, as the Concordance is held as a proof from the variance of the witnesses to scenes, he argued that the story was founded. Otherwise he would not have heard of the criminal attempt from all sides. That was what made him yield his dignity to the safety of a person whom he felt was chosen for the crisis. The next morning he had concluded to pa.s.s through Baltimore at another than the arranged hour to foil the plot.

"I DON'T BELIEVE THERE IS ANY DANGER!"

One night the President had been very late with the secretary of war at the latter's department. But, just the same, he insisted on his getting home by the short cut--a foot-path, lined and embowered by trees, then leading from the war office to the White House. But Stanton stopped him.

"You ought not to go that way; it is dangerous for you in the daytime"--it did lend itself to an ambuscade, and persons who knew Wilkes Booth a.s.sert having seen him prowling around--"it is worse at night!"

"I do not believe there is _any_ danger there, night or day!"

responded the President, with Malcolm's confidence that he stood "in the great hand of G.o.d."

"Well, Mr. President," continued Stanton, a stubborn man himself, "you shall not be killed returning from my department by that dark way while I am in it!"

And he forced him to enter his carriage to return by the well-lighted avenue.

Lincoln had previously consented to carry a cane. (By Schuyler Colfax.)

WORRY TILL YOU GET RID OF THINGS.

On Colonel Halpine trying to make the chief see that even indoors there was danger, he debated about the two menaces--violence of "cranks" and of a political fanatic. He thought too well of the sense of the "people at Richmond," some of whom had been colleagues of his in his first stay in Was.h.i.+ngton as congressman.

"Do you think that they would like to have Hannibal Hamlin--his first vice-president--here any better than myself?"

The story is repeated with his second Vice subst.i.tuted for the first, with the more justification, as "Andy" Johnson was impeached for his incompetency. Detective Baker put it this way: "As to the crazy folks, I must take my chances. The most crazy people being, I fear, some of my own too zealous adherents."

(He had the same idea as in an ancient Chinese proverb: "You may steal the captain out of his castle, but you cannot steal the castle.")

"I am but a single individual, and it would not help their cause, or make the least difference in the progress of the war." [Footnote: He might have said, as truly as his predecessor, John Tyler, reproached also for going about unguarded: "My body-guard is the people who elected me."]--(Cited by F. B. Carpenter.)

THE FEARLESSNESS OF THE G.o.d-FEARING.

Lincoln said that by the death of his son Willie he was touched; by the victory of Gettysburg made a believer. It is plain that, after this, a fort.i.tude replaced the despondency stamping him. It may be due to this conviction of being one of the chosen, like Cromwell and Gordon, soldiers of Christ, that he met all adjurations for him to take care of his precious life with fanatical unconcern. He communicated to the Cabinet, at the close of the conflict, how he had appointed to confer alone and without guards to terrify the emissary, a noted Confederate. They were to discuss peace--and by that word, Lincoln was drawn to any one. He answered the cautions with the simple saying:

"I am but an individual, and my removal will not in any way advance the other folks in their endeavors."

In fact, it was so--the misdeed was a double-edged blade which cut both ways. It will never be known, probably, how near a ma.s.sacre followed the explosion of indignation at that maniac's murder of the Emanc.i.p.ator. Fortunately for the unsullied robe of Columbia, a hundred advocates of leaving retribution to Heaven echoed Garfield's appeasing address.

Lincoln met the intermediator, but the ultimate negotiation fell through, like the others all. He came home from City Point with sadness, but from his seed has outcome the Universal Peace Tribunal of The Hague. Professor Martens based his original plea of the czar's on the Lincolnian guide for the soldiers in our war.

THE POISONING PLOT.

A servant at the White House testifies that he was approached by emissaries who offered him a sum almost preposterously large to put a powder in the milk for the Lincoln family's table. The agents knew that they were temperance followers, milk being as common as wine at previous tenants' table. This was laughed at before the shadow of Booth's patricide was cast ahead. But the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher publicly declares--and he was in the state secrets as deeply as any layman--that President-General Harrison, "Tippecanoe," was poisoned that Tyler might fulfil the plan to annex Texas as a slave State.

"With even stronger convictions is it affirmed that President-General Taylor was poisoned, that a less stern successor might give a suppler instrument to manage. Who doubts now that it was attempted Breckenridge in his room?"

NOTHING LIKE GETTING USED TO THINGS!

The more evident it grew that the President, at whom the stupid jeers persisted through incurable density of his enemies, was the vital motor of the Union cause, than threats of violently removing him were continually sent him. So many such letters acc.u.mulated that he grimly packeted them together and labeled the ma.s.s: "a.s.sa.s.sination Papers."

It was a Damoclesian dagger of which he spoke lightly, because fear of death never awed him. When a man walks in the manifest path traced out for him by Heaven, he does not tremble. But friends, more concerned by the strain in watching over his safety, expressing surprise at his indifference, he tried to rea.s.sure them:

"Oh, there is nothing like getting used to things!"