1861_ The Civil War Awakening - Adam Goodheart [213]
In choosing to share these ideas with the Sammarinesi rather than with political associates closer at hand, Lincoln was being characteristically discreet; he was not yet ready to address the American public, and the regent captains were unlikely to be in regular communication with James Gordon Bennett or Horace Greeley. Yet he also revealed a deep belief that the conflict in America was one of critical significance to the rest of the world, and that in his July Fourth message he needed to speak not only to Congress, not only to the American people, but perhaps, in a sense, to all of humanity. Perhaps posterity, too. In 1861, republics were still rarities: tiny San Marino was one of only two in Europe. Since they were so few, the American Civil War would matter not so much in terms of preserving existing democracies (clearly the Sammarinesi were doing just fine) as in stimulating or inhibiting the birth of future ones. Like the Forty-Eighters in St. Louis, Lincoln was well aware of the impact that the Union’s ultimate victory or defeat might have among the restless nations of Europe and even beyond.
By mid-June, Lincoln was “engaged almost constantly in writing his message,” Nicolay recorded. On the 19th, with two weeks left, the president took the extraordinary step of announcing publicly that he would receive no visitors until after submitting it to Congress.14 (Indeed, Lincoln worked far harder on his July Fourth document than Jefferson had done on his own, more famous one; the Declaration of Independence was written and revised over the course of seventeen days at most.) By this point, Lincoln had developed a keener appreciation of the potential damage of ill-considered remarks. “Nobody hurt,” a quotation from one of Lincoln’s ill-considered speeches during his train trip through Ohio, was still a national catchphrase, a barbed joke that grew sharper-edged with each fresh report of war casualties. He would not allow himself a second such rhetorical disaster.
Even so, many Americans shook their heads in disbelief at how much time the president was spending on his message. Would this end up like the last presidential epistle to Congress, Buchanan’s fourteen thousand words of ineffectual wind? No less a literary craftsman than Emerson himself wrote reproachfully in his journal that Lincoln “writes his own message instead of borrowing the largest understanding as he so easily might.” The apostle of self-reliance was arguing in favor of crowdsourcing, or at least the time-honored American habit of plagiarism.15
As the momentous date grew near, Lincoln shared a rough draft with a few select counselors. One, predictably, was Seward, who did not stint in offering suggestions, although he would play a far smaller role than he had in drafting the inaugural address: the secretary of state prevailed upon the president to tone down several passages, substituting more tactful language in places. But the president’s other sources of advice were somewhat surprising. Among them was Charles Sumner, to whom he read his draft aloud in late June; the two men were hardly close, and in fact their few face-to-face encounters had left each somewhat put off by the other. Another of Lincoln’s chosen confidants was a man he had never even met before, the eminent historian John Lothrop Motley, who was visiting the capital and dropped by the White House to call on the president; Lincoln not only broke his vow of seclusion but impulsively scooped up the scattered sheets of manuscript on his desk and read Motley nearly the entire draft. Finally, the night before sending off the message, still engrossed in last-minute revisions, he shared it with Orville H. Browning, the old Illinois friend who had written him that fierce letter about emancipating the slaves.16
One cannot help looking to Lincoln’s choices to find clues to his thoughts