The nomination of Lincoln had succeeded brilliantly for the Republicans, but was his election a good thing for the country? As the inauguration approached, many Americans had doubts. Honest Abe was a clever politician who had spoken well about the central issue
A cartoonist in Richmond, Virginia in April 1861 depicts Lincoln as a cat attempting to catch fleeing mice—the seceding states of the South. The biggest mouse, though, is dead: the Union.
Lincoln, First Inaugural Address at
Of the times, but would he act decisively in this crisis? His behavior as president-elect was not reassuring. He spent much time closeted with politicians. Was he too obtuse to understand the grave threat to the Union posed by secession? People remembered uneasily that he had never held executive office, that his congressional career had been short and undistinguished. When he finally uprooted himself from Springfield in February 1861, his occasional speeches en route to Washington were vague, almost flippant. He kissed babies, shook hands, mouthed platitudes. Some people thought it downright cowardly that he let himself be spirited in the dead of night through Baltimore, where feeling against him ran high.
Everyone waited tensely to see whether Lincoln would oppose secession with force, but Lincoln seemed concerned only with organizing his Cabinet. The final slate was not ready until the morning of inauguration day, March 4, and shrewd observers found it alarming, for the new president had chosen to construct a “balanced” Cabinet representing a wide range of opinion instead of putting together a group of harmonious advisers who could help him face the crisis.
William H. Seward, the secretary of state, was the ablest and best known of the appointees. Despite his reputation for radicalism, the hawk-nosed, chinless, tousle-haired Seward hoped to conciliate the South and was thus in bad odor with the radical wing of the Republican party. In time Seward proved himself Lincoln’s strong right arm, but at the start he underestimated the president and expected to dominate him. Senator Salmon P. Chase, a bald, square-jawed, antislavery leader from Ohio, whom Lincoln named secretary of the treasury, represented the radicals. Chase was humorless and vain but able; he detested Seward. Many of the president’s other selections worried thoughtful people.
Lincoln’s inaugural address was conciliatory but firm. Southern institutions were in no danger from his administration. Secession, however, was illegal, and the Union “perpetual.” “A husband and wife may be divorced,” Lincoln said, employing one of his homely and unconsciously risque metaphors, “but the different parts of our country cannot.” His tone was calm and warm. His concluding words catch the spirit of the inaugural perfectly:
I am loath 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 battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart. . . will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
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