The Fiery Trial_ Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery - Eric Foner [102]
Physically speaking, we cannot separate. We cannot remove our respective sections from each other, nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced, and go out of the presence, and beyond the reach of each other; but the different parts of our country cannot do this.
Lincoln closed with an eloquent call for reconciliation, based on a paragraph suggested by Seward but reworked into a poetic conclusion to an otherwise impersonal speech:
I am loth to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.58
The diarist Sidney George Fisher found this “fine sentiment and beautiful image” so moving that he commented, “He who wrote it is no common man.”59
Some abolitionists criticized Lincoln for failing to address the real cause of the crisis. Borrowing Lincoln’s own words, the Weekly Anglo-African noted that the “only substantial dispute” was not the “mere question of extension,” but the very existence of slavery. But the address rallied Republicans and seems to have reassured Unionists in the Upper South and Democrats and conservative former Whigs in the North. Under the circumstances, commented a Jersey City newspaper that had supported John C. Bell for president in 1860, “it was hardly possible for Mr. Lincoln to speak with more mildness.” In New York City, according to one letter to the White House, reactions to the speech were universally enthusiastic, except for one “stock broker” who thought “there is too much fight in it.”60
But if Lincoln thought his speech would persuade secessionists to abandon their ways, he was sorely disappointed. To Confederates and their supporters, Lincoln’s refusal to recognize the legitimacy of secession and his insistence on retaining control of federal property in the seceded states amounted to a decision for confrontation. Two days after Lincoln delivered the speech, the Confederate Congress authorized the raising of 100,000 troops. Americans, wrote one North Carolina newspaper, “might as well open their eyes to the solemn fact that war is inevitable.” Frederick Douglass chided Lincoln for failing to include any statement of his personal feelings “against slavery.” But, he added, while Lincoln complained that his intentions had been misunderstood in the South, the real problem was that “the slaveholders understand the position of the Republican party” all too well. Secessionists were not “such fools” as to believe that Lincoln would suddenly issue a proclamation abolishing slavery, but they knew “that the power of slavery” in the federal government had been broken. Lincoln had insisted that in a democratic government, the “majority” must rule. Of course, Lincoln’s was an extremely unusual majority, comprising only 40 percent of the popular vote. But his election indicated that the free states, when united, now constituted a self-conscious national majority and here, Douglass suggested, lay the real cause of secession.61
When Lincoln assumed the presidency, four forts in Confederate states remained in Union hands within Confederate territory—Taylor and Jefferson in the Florida Keys and in no danger of attack; Pickens on an island off Pensacola, Florida; and Sumter, in Charleston harbor, very much within range of Confederate shore batteries. Moreover, the Star of the West episode in January left little doubt as to how Confederates would respond to an attempt to resupply Sumter. In his letter of February proposing