Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [201]
Lincoln understood that his country faced a perilous situation, perhaps the most perilous in its history. That same morning, Jefferson Davis was beginning a journey of his own. He had bade farewell to his wife, children, and slaves, heading for the Confederacy’s new capital at Montgomery, Alabama. To the cheers of thousands and the rousing strains of the “Marseillaise,” he would be inaugurated president of the new Confederacy. Alexander Stephens, Lincoln’s old colleague from Congress, would be sworn in as his vice president.
Lincoln’s spirits began to revive somewhat as he witnessed the friendly crowds lined up all along the way, buoyed by “the cheers, the cannon, and the general intensity of welcome.” When he reached Indianapolis, thirty-four guns sounded before he alighted to face a wildly enthusiastic crowd of more than twenty thousand people. They lined the streets, waving flags and banners as he made his way to the Bates House, where he was scheduled to spend the night. Knowing that here in Indianapolis, he was expected to deliver his first public speech since election, he had carefully crafted its language before leaving Springfield.
From the balcony of the Bates House, he delivered a direct, powerful talk, one of the few substantive speeches he would make during the long journey. He began by illustrating the word “coercion.” If an army marched into South Carolina without the prior consent of its people, that would admittedly constitute “coercion.” But would it be coercion, he asked, “if the Government, for instance, but simply insists upon holding its own forts, or retaking those forts which belong to it?” If such acts were considered coercion, he continued, then “the Union, as a family relation, would not be anything like a regular marriage at all, but only as a sort of free-love arrangement.” His words provoked loud cheers, sustained applause, and hearty laughter. The speech was considered a great success.
As the train rolled into Cincinnati the next day, John Hay noted that Lincoln had “shaken off the despondency which was noticed during the first day’s journey, and now, as his friends say, looks and talks like himself. Good humor, wit and geniality are so prominently associated with him in the minds of those who know him familiarly, that to see him in a melancholy frame of mind, is much as seeing Reeve or Liston in high tragedy would have been.” (Reeve and Liston were celebrated comic actors in Shakespeare’s plays.) It is interesting to note that Hay considered Lincoln’s despondency an aberration rather than the rule.
The following day, as Lincoln was fêted in the state Capitol at Columbus, Ohio, he received a telegram that the electors had met in Washington to count the votes and make his election official. For weeks, Seward and Stanton had worried that secessionists would choose this day to besiege the capital and prevent the electors from meeting. The day, Lincoln learned, had passed peacefully. “The votes have been counted,” Seward’s son Fred reported to his wife, Anna, “and the Capital is not attacked. Gen. Scott had his troops all under arms, out of sight but ready, with guns loaded, horses harnessed and matches lighted so that they could take the field at a moments notice. But there was no enemy.”
Seward himself was immensely relieved to “have passed the 13th safely,” believing, he wrote home, that “each day brings the people apparently nearer to the tone and temper, and even to the policy I have indicated…. I am, at last, out of direct responsibility. I have brought the ship off the sands, and am ready to resign the helm into the hands of the Captain whom the people have chosen.” Despite his stated intentions, Seward would make one later effort to resume the helm.
In Columbus, a great celebration followed news of the official counting of the votes.