Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [212]
As the day brightened, Washington, according to one foreign observer, “assume[d] an almost idyllic garb.” Though the city “displayed an unfinished aspect”—with the monument to President Washington still only one third of its intended height, the new Capitol dome two years away from completion, and most of the streets unpaved—the numerous trees and gardens were very pleasing, creating the feel of “a large rural village.”
The appearance of Lincoln on the square platform constructed out from the east portico of the Capitol was met with loud cheers from more than thirty thousand spectators. Mary sat behind her husband, their three sons beside her. In the front row, along with Lincoln, sat President Buchanan, Senator Douglas, and Chief Justice Taney, three of the four men Lincoln had portrayed in his “House Divided” speech as conspiring carpenters intent on destroying the original house the framers had designed and built.
Lincoln’s old friend Edward Baker, who had moved to Oregon and won a seat in the Senate, introduced the president-elect. Lincoln made his way to the little table from which he was meant to speak. Noting Lincoln’s uncertainty as to where to place his stovepipe hat, Senator Douglas reached over, took the hat, and placed it on his own lap. Then Lincoln began. His clear high voice, trained in the outdoor venues of the Western states, could be heard from the far reaches of the crowd.
Having dropped his opening pledge of strict fealty to the Chicago platform, Lincoln moved immediately to calm the anxieties of the Southern people, quoting an earlier speech in which he had promised that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” He turned then to the controversial Fugitive Slave Law, repeating his tenet that while “safeguards” should be put in place to ensure that free men were not illegally seized, the U.S. Constitution required that the slaves “shall be delivered upon claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.” Although he understood that the Fugitive Slave Law offended “the moral sense” of many people in the North, he felt compelled, under the Constitution, to enforce it.
Lincoln went on to make his powerful case for continued federal authority over what he insisted, “in view of the Constitution and the laws,” was an “unbroken” Union. While “there needs to be no bloodshed,” he intended to execute the laws, “to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion—no using of force against, or among the people anywhere….
“Physically speaking, we cannot separate,” Lincoln declared, prophetically adding: “Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions, as to terms of intercourse, are again upon you….
“In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors.”
He closed with the lyrical assurance that “the mystic chords of memory…will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely as they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
At the end of the address, Chief Justice Taney walked slowly to the table. The Bible was opened, and Abraham Lincoln was sworn in as the sixteenth President of the United States.
“THE MANSION was in a perfect state of readiness” when the Lincolns arrived, Mary’s cousin Elizabeth Grimsley observed. “A competent chef, with efficient butler and waiters, under the direction of the accomplished Miss Harriet Lane, had an elegant