Team of Rivals_ The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - Doris Kearns Goodwin [216]
A “LIGHT AND CAPRICIOUS” SLEEPER, Lincoln generally awakened early in the morning. Before breakfast he liked to exercise, often by walking around the spacious White House grounds. After a simple meal, usually a single egg and a cup of coffee, he made his way down the corridor to his office, where on cool days a fire blazed in the white marble fireplace with a big brass fender. His worktable stood between two tall windows that faced the south lawn, affording a panorama of the incomplete Washington Monument, the red-roofed Smithsonian, and the Potomac River. An armchair nearby allowed him to read in comfort, his long legs stretched before him or crossed one over the other.
In the center of the chamber, which doubled as the Cabinet Room, stood a long oak table around which the members arranged themselves in order of precedence. Old maps hung on the wall, and over the mantel, a portrait of President Andrew Jackson. A few sofas and an assortment of chairs completed the furnishings. The musty smell of tobacco, lodged in the draperies from the heavy cigar smoke of the previous president and the new secretary of state, conveyed the atmosphere of the traditional men’s club.
When Lincoln entered his office on the first morning after his inauguration, he was confronted with profoundly disturbing news. On his desk, “the very first thing placed in his hands” was a letter from Major Anderson at Fort Sumter. The communication estimated, Lincoln later recalled, “that their provisions would be exhausted before an expedition could be sent to their relief.” The letter carried General Winfield Scott’s endorsement: “I now see no alternative but a surrender.”
The immediacy of this crisis posed great difficulties for Lincoln. His revised inaugural had no longer contained a promise to “reclaim” fallen properties, but Lincoln had most definitely pledged to “hold, occupy and possess” all properties still in Federal hands. No symbol of Federal authority was more important than Fort Sumter. Ever since Major Anderson, in the dead of night on December 26, had surreptitiously moved his troops from Fort Moultrie to the better-protected Sumter, he had become a romantic hero in the North. Surrender of his garrison would be humiliating. Still, the president felt bound by his vow to his “dissatisfied fellow countrymen” that the new “government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors.”
The president needed time to think, but scarcely had a moment “to eat or sleep” amid the crush of office seekers. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, pressed in as soon as the doors were opened, ignoring the barriers set up to keep them in line. As Lincoln moved throughout the house to take his lunch—which was generally limited to bread, fruit, and milk—“he had literally to run the gantlet through the crowds.” Each aspirant had a story to tell, a reason why a clerkship in Washington or a job in their local post office or customs house would allow their family to survive. Time and again, Lincoln was faulted for wasting his energies. “You will wear yourself out,” Senator Henry Wilson of Massachusetts warned. “They don’t want much,” Lincoln replied, “they get but little, and I must see them.”
Such openheartedness indicated incompetence to many, or, worse, a sign of terrible weakness. He “has no conception of his situation,” Sumner told Adams. “He is ignorant, and must have help,” Adams agreed, citing Seward as “our only security now.” The New York Times reproved Lincoln repeatedly, writing disdainfully that he “owes a higher duty to the country…than to fritter away the priceless opportunities of the Presidency in listening to the appeals of competing office-hunters.” Seward, too, was critical. “The President proposes to do all his work,” he wrote home. “Of course he