1861_ The Civil War Awakening - Adam Goodheart [77]
Several hours earlier, the president-elect had risen in his suite at the Willard and sat down to make a few last-minute changes to his inaugural address. Just before noon, President Buchanan’s open barouche pulled up in front of the hotel to collect him. The two men had little to say to each other as the carriage rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue. The Old Public Functionary, for once, seemed at a loss for pleasantries; the Rail-Splitter gazed down contemplatively at the floorboards.
A short while later, as they waited inside the Capitol for the ceremony to begin, Buchanan finally drew Lincoln into a corner to offer a few parting words of wisdom. John Hay, who stood nearby, strained to listen. “I waited with boyish wonder and credulity,” he later remembered, “to see what momentous counsels were to come from that gray and weatherbeaten head. Every word must have its value at such an instant. The ex-president said: ‘I think you will find the water of the right-hand well at the White House better than that of the left.’ ”97
Lincoln’s first inaugural address would be handed down to future generations as one of the greatest pieces of oratory in American history. It was inspired, tactful, perceptive, ageless in its eloquent final paragraph—and, at the time, almost entirely ineffectual. Seward had imposed many alterations and addenda, and although the president-elect made further revisions and polished up the language considerably, much of the New Yorker’s equivocating spirit remained in the final version. Lincoln’s final additions had been hastily scribbled on several scraps of lined paper and pasted on top of the printed text. By far the longest of these came nearly at the end of the speech. Even today, it is sometimes omitted from published versions. In this passage, Lincoln spoke of his willingness to rewrite parts of the Constitution to accommodate the South—and referred specifically to the amendment that the Senate had passed nine hours earlier. “I have no objection,” he concluded, “to its being made express and irrevocable.”98
The address very soon became—and remains—one of the most selectively quoted speeches ever given. Moderates liked Lincoln’s assurance that he had neither the intention nor the desire “to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists,” and that he was committed to enforcing the fugitive slave laws. Hard-liners applauded his pledge “to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places [in the South] belonging to the Government”—which must include Sumter. Temporizers like Seward appreciated his plea to both North and South that “nothing can be lost by taking time.” There was also something in Lincoln’s words for almost everyone to dislike. Frederick Douglass called it a “double-tongued document” offering little hope “for the cause of our heart-broken and down-trodden countrymen”—that is, the slaves. Lincoln, he observed sadly, “has avowed himself ready to catch them if they run away, to shoot them down if they rise against their oppressors, and to prohibit the federal government indefinitely from interfering for their deliverance.” Wigfall, on the other hand, fuming and muttering among the dignitaries at the Capitol as he listened to Lincoln’s remarks about federal property, hurried off to telegraph Charleston: “Inaugural means war … war to the knife and knife to the hilt.”99
Oddly enough, hardly anyone at the time remarked on the passage that would become the most quoted of all—the only part of the speech that is still quoted much today. The original words were Seward’s, to which Lincoln applied rhetorical gilding:
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.