Part 18 (1/2)

WAR FEVER SPREAD quickly across the North. Lincoln issued a proclamation calling up seventy-five thousand troops from state militias to serve as three-month volunteers to suppress what he called an insurrection ”by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” For his authority, Lincoln relied upon a provision of a 1795 militia law. quickly across the North. Lincoln issued a proclamation calling up seventy-five thousand troops from state militias to serve as three-month volunteers to suppress what he called an insurrection ”by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” For his authority, Lincoln relied upon a provision of a 1795 militia law.

In the North and Northwest, the response to Lincoln's proclamation was overwhelming. Maine governor Israel Washburn, Jr., wired his guarantee: ”The people of Maine of all parties will rally with alacrity to the maintenance of the government.” Ohio's governor William Denni-son a.s.sured Lincoln that he ”will furnish the largest number you will receive.” Governor Oliver P. Morton of Indiana promised ten thousand men ”for the defense of the nation and to uphold the authority of the Government.”

Lincoln's request for troops from the border states elicited replies that ranged from evasive to defiant. William Burton, governor of Delaware, delayed his answer but finally replied that his state had no militia law. Governor Beriah Magoffin of Kentucky replied brusquely, ”Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States.” Claiborne Fox Jackson, the new governor of Mssouri, replied, ”Your requisition, in my judgment, is illegal, unconst.i.tutional, and revolutionary in its object. ... Not one man will the state of Missouri furnish to carry on any such unholy crusade.”

Ma.s.sachusetts governor John A. Andrew, one of a coterie of radical Northern leaders, had begun a.s.sembling regiments in January, long before Lincoln even took office. As Lincoln's call to arms raced across the telegraph in April, the Ma.s.sachusetts troops, with new rifles, were marching in a sleet storm on the Boston Common. Andrew responded, ”Dispatch received. By what route should I send?”

Governor Andrew asked a troubling question. As the troops from the North proceeded toward Was.h.i.+ngton, they came upon the same problem that Lincoln had encountered nearly two months earlier: how to pa.s.s through the narrow neck of Maryland, which commanded the only railroad links to Was.h.i.+ngton. Maryland, a border state, was filled with Southern sympathizers. Baltimore, located at the top of the Chesapeake Bay, was the center for three major railroads to the West and the North.

The Sixth Ma.s.sachusetts Volunteer Infantry was the first military unit to approach Was.h.i.+ngton. The seven hundred men arrived in Baltimore on the Philadelphia, Wilmington, and Baltimore Railroad at the President Street Station at noon on April 19, 1861. Immediately, horse-drawn cars began to transport the troops through the city so that their cars could be hooked up to a Baltimore and Ohio engine at Camden Station, one mile away, for the trip to Was.h.i.+ngton. Word spread quickly that troops from the abolitionist stronghold of Ma.s.sachusetts had arrived in Baltimore. The soldiers had not gone far along Pratt Street before an angry crowd jeered and then began throwing bricks and stones at them. Panicking, some soldiers fired into the crowd. Twelve civilians and four soldiers died in the riot; scores were injured. The unrest in Baltimore inflamed secessionist pa.s.sions in the South even as the editors of several Northern newspapers called for Baltimore to be burned to the ground. The riot helped galvanize both Union and Confederate commitments. With no casualties at Fort Sumter, the Baltimore riot of April 19 drew the first blood of the Civil War.

Through these fearful days, authorities in Maryland pressured the president. Unionist governor Thomas Hicks and Baltimore mayor George W. Brown wired Lincoln, ”Send no more troops here.” In Lincoln's reply on April 20, 1861, he thanked the governor and the mayor for their attempts to preserve the peace, but declared, ”Now, and ever, I shall do all in my power for peace, consistently with the maintenance of government.” That evening, John Hay wrote in his diary, ”The streets were full of the talk of Baltimore. ... The town is full tonight of feverish rumours about a meditated a.s.sault upon this town.”

On April 22, 1861, a Baltimore committee of fifty called on Lincoln at the White House to acknowledge the independence of the Southern states and to ask that no more troops be sent through Baltimore. Lincoln's patience had run out. He reminded the Baltimore delegation, ”Your citizens attack troops sent to the defense of the Government, and yet you would have me break my oath and surrender the Government without a blow.” In Lincoln's answer he sought to remind his audience of presidential precedent: ”There is no Was.h.i.+ngton in that-no Jackson in that-no manhood or honor in that.” He asked the representatives how the troops were supposed to get to Was.h.i.+ngton. ”Our men are not moles, and can't dig under the earth; they are not birds, and can't fly through the air.” This abrasive challenge by Maryland authorities stiffened Lincoln's resolve to defend the capital and the Union.

Lincoln was looking out of the upstairs windows of the Executive Mansion on April 24, 1861, when the troops of the Sixth Ma.s.sachusetts Volunteers finally reached Pennsylvania Avenue. Clara Barton, a thirty-nine-year-old U.S. Patent Office clerk from Ma.s.sachusetts, organized a relief program for the soldiers of her home state, beginning on that day a lifetime of nursing and philanthropy. Seeing the troops, Lincoln felt a momentary sense of relief, but he worried that secessionists from Maryland might use the same Baltimore and Ohio tracks to a.s.sault the capital. Lincoln hosted some of the wounded officers and men at the Executive Mansion. He commended their courage and wondered aloud about what had happened to the regiments from other states, none of which had arrived in Was.h.i.+ngton. ”I began to believe that there is no North. The Seventh regiment is a myth. Rhode Island is another. You are the only real thing.”

But two days later, the Seventh Regiment of the New York State Mlitia arrived in Was.h.i.+ngton after bypa.s.sing Baltimore, sailing down the Chesapeake Bay to Annapolis, Maryland, and traveling by train the thirty miles to the capital. In the spring suns.h.i.+ne, Lincoln waited outside the White House as the soldiers, with their splendid regimental bra.s.s band, marched up the entire length of Pennsylvania Avenue. Their arrival ”created much enthusiasm and relief.” The gloom of the ten days following Fort Sumter disappeared as windows were opened and people took to the streets to meet the young Union soldiers. Lincoln waved his welcome to the troops.

”WANTED-A LEADER!”

Even as Lincoln enjoyed reviewing the Seventh New York Regiment, the criticism of his leaders.h.i.+p grew louder. He had long since learned to discount condemnation from opposition Democratic newspapers, but it became more difficult to ignore criticism from his friends. On April 25, 1861, he read an editorial in the New York Times, New York Times, opining, ”In every great crisis, the human heart demands a leader that incarnates its ideas, its emotions and its aims. Till such a leader appears, everything is disorder, disaster, and defeat. The moment he takes the helm, order, prompt.i.tude and confidence follow as the necessary result. When we see such results-we know that a hero leads.” Something about this particular article compelled Lincoln to clip and save it, including its final charge: ”No such hero at present directs affairs.” opining, ”In every great crisis, the human heart demands a leader that incarnates its ideas, its emotions and its aims. Till such a leader appears, everything is disorder, disaster, and defeat. The moment he takes the helm, order, prompt.i.tude and confidence follow as the necessary result. When we see such results-we know that a hero leads.” Something about this particular article compelled Lincoln to clip and save it, including its final charge: ”No such hero at present directs affairs.”

Lincoln faced another challenged when Southern sympathizers in Maryland started cutting telegraph wires, burning bridges, and doing everything in their power to disrupt communications between the North and the capital. Maryland, a state noted for its crabs, was situated geographically like one, with claws pinching in on the capital from three sides.

On April 27, 1861, Lincoln gave an order to his top commander, General Scott, authorizing him ”to suspend the writ of habeas corpus” if ”an insurrection against the laws of the United States” erupted anywhere along a line from Philadelphia to Baltimore to Was.h.i.+ngton. The president instructed Scott to make arrests without specific charges. The right of habeas corpus, which protects citizens from illegal detention, requires that a prisoner be brought before a court to decide the legality of his arrest.

The responses to the suspension of habeas corpus created another predicament for Lincoln. Since the termination of the Revolutionary War seventy-eight years before, Americans had sailed upon a remarkably peaceful sea, with brief interruptions for the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. Unlike Europeans and Latin Americans, Americans had become accustomed to living in an open society. The nation was a society of small towns, where most citizens never saw a national army, never encountered a national police force, and encountered little federal intrusion. Authority was vested in the town mayors or constables. Now, in 1861, the arrest of citizens by a national army created a sensation. It caused people to consider, many for the first time, the vessel-the Const.i.tution-in which they were sailing. Fortunately, the person at the helm was an astute lawyer and adroit politician.

A test case of habeas corpus came one month later when John Mer-ryman was arrested on May 25, 1861, at his home in c.o.c.keysville, Maryland, for allegedly drilling troops to aid the secessionist movement. Merryman was imprisoned at Fort McHenry, the star-shaped brick fort best known for its defense of Baltimore harbor in the War of 1812. Merryman's lawyer pet.i.tioned the federal court in Baltimore to look at the charges against him under the writ of habeas corpus.

The federal judge who heard the case just happened to be Chief Justice Roger Taney, who had offered the majority opinion in the Dred Scott case in 1857. Merryman obtained a writ from Taney ordering that he be either tried before a regular court or released. When Taney sent his order to Fort McHenry to be served, the officer in charge refused to receive it, citing Lincoln's order.

The Const.i.tution, article 1, section 9, specifies that the right of habeas corpus ”shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” The Const.i.tution does not say who is authorized to suspend the privilege, but most legal experts, up until 1861, believed the power belonged to Congress, because the suspension clause was found in article 1, which enumerated congressional power. The framers of the Const.i.tution, working against the background of resistance to the powers of a king, George III, placed the habeas corpus clause under congressional power because they were wary of an American president someday a.s.suming monarchical powers.

Habeas corpus became the only principle of English common law that found its way into the Const.i.tution. In the years leading up to the Civil War, habeas corpus, and corollaries to it, was not studied in law schools nor was it a part of the curriculum at West Point. When habeas corpus was discussed, the debate arose over the contentious fugitive slave law. The writ of habeas corpus came to symbolize America's commitment to individual freedom. While Lincoln believed that secession went against the Const.i.tution, many argued that arbitrary arrest did as well. Lincoln understood that he had defied the mainstream of judicial opinion in his actions.

In the end, Lincoln chose a course of no action: He did not respond, appeal, or order the release of Merryman. Chief Justice Taney, on May 28, 1861, ruling in Ex parte Merryman, Ex parte Merryman, gladly delivered a sermon to Lincoln and the nation about the true meaning of the Const.i.tution. Taking care to strike his t.i.tle as presiding judge of the U.S. Circuit Court, Baltimore, in favor of chief justice, he argued that Lincoln was usurping the role of both Congress and the judicial branches of government in his employment of the military to carry out his purposes. Taney warned that Lincoln was on the road to becoming a military dictator. Nevertheless, the president's decisive action was applauded by the Republican press. gladly delivered a sermon to Lincoln and the nation about the true meaning of the Const.i.tution. Taking care to strike his t.i.tle as presiding judge of the U.S. Circuit Court, Baltimore, in favor of chief justice, he argued that Lincoln was usurping the role of both Congress and the judicial branches of government in his employment of the military to carry out his purposes. Taney warned that Lincoln was on the road to becoming a military dictator. Nevertheless, the president's decisive action was applauded by the Republican press.

ON MAY 3, Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for an additional 42,034 three-year volunteers and 18,000 sailors, as well as expanding the regular army by 22,714 men. By the end of May, the war was beginning to achieve a human face, for no one more than Lincoln.

Somehow during the first confusing days of the Civil War, Lincoln found time to correspond with a young soldier named Elmer E. Ellsworth. Born in Saratoga County, New York, in 1837, Ellsworth had moved to Springfield, Illinois, in August 1860, to read law in Lincoln's office. Boyish in appearance, only five feet six, with clean-cut features, Ellsworth quickly became like a son to Lincoln. He accompanied the Lincolns on the Presidential Special to Was.h.i.+ngton. With Robert away at Harvard, Ellsworth became like an older brother to the two younger Lincoln boys, even catching the measles from them.

Ellsworth, after meeting a French Zouave veteran, Charles A. DeVillier, reorganized the Sixtieth Regiment of the Illinois State Militia into a Zouave unit. Ellsworth led his fifty young American men, dressed in bright red, blue, and gold uniforms with jaunty red caps with orange or gold decoration. In city after city, Ellsworth's Zouaves mesmerized audiences as they went through their military routines: marching, retreating, parrying and thrusting their bayonets, and loading and firing their Sharps rifles in every possible position, even kneeling and on their backs.

After Fort Sumter, Ellsworth hurried to New York City, where he organized the New York Zouaves, an 1,100-man volunteer regiment made up of New York firemen. Returning to Was.h.i.+ngton on April 29, 1861, he paraded his disciplined troops up the ”Ave,” the locals' name for Pennsylvania Avenue. Thereafter, almost daily, Ellsworth paraded his men in front of the Executive Mansion, and sometimes on the South Lawn, for Lincoln to review with pride.

When Virginia formally seceded on May 23, 1861, Ellsworth prepared his men to march on Alexandria. Landing at the Alexandria waterfront early on the morning of May 24, Ellsworth led his men to the telegraph office to cut all communication to the South. Spying a Confederate flag flying from the Marshall House, a three-story hotel, Ellsworth crossed the street and went inside. He took down the flag, but as he was coming back down the stairs, James W. Jackson, the hotel owner, shot and killed him with a double-barrel shotgun. Elmer Ellsworth was the first commissioned officer to die in the Civil War.

An officer brought news of Ellsworth's death to the White House. The young captain found Lincoln in the library and told him the sad news. At that moment, Senator Henry Wilson of Ma.s.sachusetts and a reporter entered the library. Lincoln, stunned and heartbroken, turned to the visitors, extended his hand, and said simply, ”Excuse me, but I cannot talk.”

Elmer Ellsworth almost like a son to Abraham Lincoln, was the first Union officer to die in the Civil War. This ill.u.s.tration depicts the deed of the first hero killed in battle.

Abraham and Mary went down to the Was.h.i.+ngton Navy Yard to view Ellsworth's body. The president ordered it to lie in state in the East Room. A funeral service took place in the White House on May 26, 1861. Throughout the North, Ellsworth became a symbol of courageous young men willing to give their lives for the Union. His death also helped shake off any remaining complacency in the Northern public.

Overcome with grief, Lincoln wrote a letter to Ellsworth's parents on the day before the funeral. ”In the untimely loss of your n.o.ble son, our affliction here, is scarcely less than your own.” He described Ellsworth's sterling qualities, ”a fine intellect, an indomitable energy, and a taste altogether military, const.i.tuted in him, as seemed to me, the best natural talent, in that department, I ever knew.” Lincoln then turned to his own relations.h.i.+p with the young man-”as intimate as the disparity of our ages, and my engrossing engagements, would permit.” He added, ”What was conclusive of his good heart, he never forgot his parents. ... In the hope that it may be no intrusion upon the sacredness of your sorrow, I have ventured to address this tribute to your brave and early fallen child. May G.o.d give you that consolation which is beyond all earthly power.” Lincoln's letter, the first of hundreds he would write to the parents or spouses of fallen soldiers, is remarkable in both its affection and eloquence-written by a man consumed in grief.

THE MOST PUBLIC MAN in America lived in a White House that served as both home and office. The West Wing, which houses the current White House offices, would not be added until 1902 by President Theo dore Roosevelt. This arrangement became the setting of an odd mixture of politics and pomp. in America lived in a White House that served as both home and office. The West Wing, which houses the current White House offices, would not be added until 1902 by President Theo dore Roosevelt. This arrangement became the setting of an odd mixture of politics and pomp.

William Howard Russell, correspondent of the Times Times of London, described the White House as ”the moderate mansion.” He and other visitors from abroad compared it unfavorably to London's Buckingham Palace or Paris's Tuileries. Abraham and Mary Lincoln, on the contrary, were impressed with a home that had thirty-one rooms set amid twenty-two acres of woodlands. To try to add to the dignity of the residence, President James K. Polk had placed a bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson on the North Lawn in 1848. President Buchanan had built a conservatory to replace a greenhouse, but admittedly much of the surrounding woodlands were untidy and contained old, unused buildings and sheds. There was also the marshy Ellipse that slanted down to the Potomac River. The White House had obtained city water just two years before the Lincolns arrived. of London, described the White House as ”the moderate mansion.” He and other visitors from abroad compared it unfavorably to London's Buckingham Palace or Paris's Tuileries. Abraham and Mary Lincoln, on the contrary, were impressed with a home that had thirty-one rooms set amid twenty-two acres of woodlands. To try to add to the dignity of the residence, President James K. Polk had placed a bronze statue of Thomas Jefferson on the North Lawn in 1848. President Buchanan had built a conservatory to replace a greenhouse, but admittedly much of the surrounding woodlands were untidy and contained old, unused buildings and sheds. There was also the marshy Ellipse that slanted down to the Potomac River. The White House had obtained city water just two years before the Lincolns arrived.

Mathew Brady took this photograph of Mary Lincoln sometime in 1861. She is proud of her role as the hostess of the White House and is seen here in a beautiful gown with a floral headdress.

Inside, the Executive Mansion-as it was called on official stationery until the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt-boasted the large elegant East Room, the ornate Red Room with a piano, and the lovely Blue Room, on the main floor. On their first evening in their new home, Mary Lincoln led a tour of inspection and was surprised to find the upstairs family quarters in shabby condition, with cracked wallpaper, worn carpets, dilapidated draperies, and furniture that looked like it had belonged to the first residents, John and Abigail Adams. Rather than an Executive Mansion, most of the private residence had the appearance of a run-down hotel.

Mary Lincoln believed she was prepared, by family background and education, to be ”First Lady,” a t.i.tle that had been conferred for the first time in 1857 upon Harriet Lane, the orphaned daughter of bachelor James Buchanan's much-loved sister. At age forty-two, Mary eagerly set out to take responsibility for the public life in the White House.

She welcomed her new position. If her husband was the new commander in chief in the masculine public sphere of the nation, she wanted to be the commander in chief in the feminine sphere of the home. As her husband took the lead in building a ragtag army into a modern, well-equipped military, she became determined to turn the run-down White House into a modern, well-furnished public place for the people.

Mary found herself living a difficult ”semiprivate” life, a s.p.a.ce in between the customary private lives of women in the nineteenth century, and the public life of the new First Lady of the White House. She had always taken pleasure in the political aspects of public life. In Illinois, she had grown accustomed to being a part of her husband's inner circle, offering him counsel and advice. In Was.h.i.+ngton, she expected to do the same.

But Mary was not prepared for the cold reception she would receive in Was.h.i.+ngton. She found herself excluded from Was.h.i.+ngton society by various cliques of women. Although Mary was a Southerner by birth, the Southern women who remained in Was.h.i.+ngton rebuffed her because they deemed her husband the ”Black Republican.” On the other hand, Eastern women snubbed her because they saw her as an uncivilized frontier woman from the West.

Soon after arriving in Was.h.i.+ngton, Mary decided to restore the Executive Mansion both as a personal home and as a public s.p.a.ce. Not since Dolly Madison, a half century earlier, had a First Lady approached her task with such resolve. Ever since 1841, Congress had provided twenty thousand dollars annually for refurbis.h.i.+ng the White House. Few of her predecessors had spent the full allowance. Harriet Lane, Buchanan's niece, had focused her attention on social events on the main floor and spent nothing on the living quarters on the second floor. Mary Lincoln got busy spending the allowance on furniture, wallpaper, rugs, and china.

In early May, Mary set off for New York and Philadelphia. Accompanied by her cousin Lizzie Grimsley and William Wood, who had been in charge of the Lincolns' travel arrangements from Springfield to Was.h.i.+ngton, she attacked the finest stores in New York and Philadelphia. Alexander T. Stewart, known as ”the Merchant Prince” of New York, hosted Mary at a dinner party and she returned the favor by buying two thousand dollars' worth of rugs and curtains at his marble emporium on Broadway. This would be the first of eleven buying trips by the First Lady.

CONGRESS RETURNED ON the first days of July 1861 to prepare for the special session. George Templeton Strong, who traveled to the capital during these same days, observed that Was.h.i.+ngton in early July was not for the fainthearted. ”For all the detestable places, Was.h.i.+ngton is the first-in July, and with Congress sitting.” He described his experiences: ”Crowd, heat, bad quarters, bad fare, bad smells, mosquitoes, and a plague of flies transcending everything within my experience.” Strong invoked Old Testament imagery to express his impressions of Was.h.i.+ngton and its best hotel. ”Beelzebub surely reigns there, and Willard's Hotel is his temple.” the first days of July 1861 to prepare for the special session. George Templeton Strong, who traveled to the capital during these same days, observed that Was.h.i.+ngton in early July was not for the fainthearted. ”For all the detestable places, Was.h.i.+ngton is the first-in July, and with Congress sitting.” He described his experiences: ”Crowd, heat, bad quarters, bad fare, bad smells, mosquitoes, and a plague of flies transcending everything within my experience.” Strong invoked Old Testament imagery to express his impressions of Was.h.i.+ngton and its best hotel. ”Beelzebub surely reigns there, and Willard's Hotel is his temple.”

Lincoln had begun to compose his July 4 message to Congress in May. He had never written an executive report to a legislative body before. As the day approached, the president changed his open-door policy and would not see anyone except for members of the cabinet or high officials. He worked in his office alone, often speaking words aloud before he put pencil to paper.

While writing and revising, Lincoln would sometimes look up and, in a brooding mood, gaze through the window, past the South Lawn, at the red sandstone Smithsonian Inst.i.tution, which had only been completed in 1855, and beyond to the unfinished Was.h.i.+ngton Monument. Lincoln had been present when the cornerstone for the monument was laid in a grand patriotic ceremony on July 4, 1848. In the intervening years, work on the monument had stalled and then stopped. Improper management and a lack of funds dampened public support. At the outbreak of the Civil War, the monument still stood at 176 feet high, only about one-third of its final 555% feet. The grounds surrounding the monument had been turned into an open grazing pen for cattle, sheep, and pigs, giving it the name ”the Was.h.i.+ngton National Monument Cattle Yard.” One of Lincoln's heroes was George Was.h.i.+ngton, and the stoppage of work on the monument, coupled with the suspension of the completion of the dome of the Capitol, symbolized the fragile condition of the Union in the early summer of 1861.

Lincoln could look through the south window of his office at the Was.h.i.+ngton Monument. As a congressman, he was present on July 4, 1848, for the laying of the cornerstone, but the monument remained unfinished in 1861.

As Lincoln moved from the first to the second draft of his July 4 address, he invited his cabinet to look over the proof sheets. Secretary of State Seward again became an editor, offering more than twenty revisions. Once more, his editing was aimed at ”softening the expression and eliminating potential problems,” but his revisions did not have the same impact as they had on Lincoln's inaugural address. In the end, Lincoln's chief editor was Lincoln himself; he revised again and again, making nearly a hundred revisions in the several versions of the text.

After the secession of eleven states, the new Thirty-seventh Congress comprised 105 Republicans and 43 Democrats in the House of Representatives and 31 Republicans and 10 Democrats in the Senate. Democrats had lost almost half their representation in Congress. A new force in Congress were the ”War Democrats,” those from the South who supported Lincoln's efforts to preserve the Union, such as Senator Andrew Johnson from Tennessee, whose home state was the last Southern state to secede.

There was also a deeply felt absence. Stephen Douglas, Lincoln's longtime opponent, had died on June 3, 1861, in Chicago, probably of cirrhosis of the liver. He was only forty-eight years old. To the end, Douglas had gone far out of his way to express his support for President Lincoln. At Douglas's death, Lincoln ordered the White House and government buildings draped in bereavement bunting. Department offices closed.

In 1861, the president did not deliver an annual message to Congress in person. George Was.h.i.+ngton and John Adams, the nation's first two presidents, had personally delivered their annual messages, but Thomas Jefferson changed this tradition. Jefferson held a deep aversion to the monarchical configuration from which the colonies freed themselves. He believed the symbol of the president speaking to Congress smacked of the old order, in which the king or queen spoke from on high to Parliament. He declared a clean break from his two Federalist predecessors by saying he would not address Congress in person, but rather send up a written message. Jefferson's practice lasted more than one hundred years, all the way into the early twentieth century. Woodrow Wilson broke with this precedent in his first year as president when he spoke in person to Congress about the State of the Union in 1913.

On July 4, 1861, all the members of Congress gathered for a chief ceremonial occasion in the young republic: the reading of a presidential message. The clerk read Lincoln's words in a dull monotone.

At the outset, Lincoln restated the policy he had announced in his inaugural address: to pursue ”all peaceful measures” to avoid war, reminding friend and foe that the policy of his administration was to rely on the peaceful measures of ”time, discussion, and the ballot box.” He continued, ”And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man, the question, whether a const.i.tutional republic, or a democracy-a government of the people, by the same people can, or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity, against its own domestic foes.”

In Lincoln's opening paragraphs, he signaled that his audience was to be more than Congress. He directed his remarks to the people of the South and the North, as well as to foreign governments who were making up their minds about their posture toward the Union and the new Confederate government.