Authors: Doris Kearns Goodwin
Lincoln’s ominous mention of assassination may have been prompted by the previous day’s report of a plot to kill him during his scheduled stop in Baltimore, a city rampant with Southern sympathizers. Lincoln first received word of the plot through the detective Allan Pinkerton, responsible for guarding him on the trip, who advised him to leave Philadelphia at once and pass through Baltimore on a night train ahead of schedule to confound the conspirators. “This,” according to Ward Lamon, who accompanied Lincoln on the trip, “he flatly refused to do. He had engagements with the people, he said, to raise a flag over Independence Hall in the morning, and to exhibit himself at Harrisburg in the afternoon.”
That same afternoon, Seward’s son Fred was in the Senate gallery when a page summoned him to speak with his father at once. Meeting in the lobby, Seward handed Fred a note from General Winfield Scott carrying a similar warning of trouble in Baltimore. “I want you to go by the first train,” Seward directed his son. “Find Mr. Lincoln, wherever he is. Let no one else know your errand.” Fred immediately boarded a train and arrived at the Continental Hotel in Philadelphia, where Lincoln was staying, after ten that night.
“I found Chestnut street crowded with people, gay with lights, and echoing with music and hurrahs,” Fred recalled. Lincoln was encircled by people, and Fred was forced to wait several hours to deliver his message. “After a few words of friendly greeting with inquiries about my father and matters in Washington,” Fred remembered, “he sat down by the table under the gas-light to peruse the letter I had brought.” After a few moments, Lincoln spoke: “If different persons, not knowing of each other’s work, have been pursuing separate clews that led to the same result, why then it shows there may be something in it. But if this is only the same story, filtered through two channels, and reaching me in two ways, then that don’t make it any stronger. Don’t you see?” Then, Fred related, “noticing that I looked disappointed at his reluctance to regard the warning, he said kindly: ‘You need not think I will not consider it well. I shall think it over carefully, and try to decide it right; and I will let you know in the morning.’”
The next morning, Lincoln agreed to leave Philadelphia for Washington on the night train as soon as his engagement in Harrisburg was completed. Pinkerton insisted, against Mary’s judgment, that she and the boys should remain behind and travel to Washington in the afternoon as scheduled. Wearing a felt hat in place of his familiar stovepipe, Lincoln secretly boarded a special car on the night train, accompanied by Ward Lamon and Detective Pinkerton. All other trains were to be “side-tracked” until Lincoln’s had passed. All the telegraph wires were to be cut between Harrisburg and Washington until it was clear that Lincoln had arrived in the capital. At 3:30 a.m., the train passed through Baltimore without mishap and proceeded straight to Washington. “At six o’clock,” a relieved Lamon recalled, “the dome of the Capitol came in sight.”
It was an inauspicious beginning for the new president. Though he arrived safely, critics, including Edwin Stanton, spoke maliciously of the manner in which Lincoln had “crept into Washington.” A scurrilous rumor spread that he had entered the train in a Scotch plaid cap, Scottish kilts, and a long military cloak. “It’s to be hoped that the conspiracy can be proved beyond cavil,” wrote George Templeton Strong in his diary. “If it cannot be made manifest and indisputable, this surreptitious nocturnal dodging or sneaking of the President-elect into his capital city, under cloud of night, will be used to damage his moral position and throw ridicule on his Administration.” Lincoln regretted ever heeding General Scott and Detective Pinkerton.
The question of Lincoln’s accommodations in Washington for the ten days until his inauguration had been debated for weeks. In early December, Montgomery Blair had issued the Lincolns an invitation to stay at the Blair House on Pennsylvania Avenue, offering the very room “Genl Jackson intended to occupy after leaving the White house,” and insisting that the Blairs “would be delighted for you to begin where he left.” In the meantime, Senator Trumbull and Congressman Washburne had rented a private house for the Lincolns several blocks from the White House. When Lincoln had passed through Albany on his roundabout tour, however, Weed strongly objected. He advised Lincoln that he was “now public property, and ought to be where he can be reached by the people until he is inaugurated.”
Lincoln agreed. “The truth is, I suppose I am now public property; and a public inn is the place where people can have access to me.” A suite of rooms was reserved at the celebrated Willard Hotel, which stood at the corner of 14th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, within sight of the White House.
S
EWARD AND
I
LLINOIS CONGRESSMAN
W
ASHBURNE
were appointed to greet Lincoln and escort him to the Willard. Accounts vary, however, as to whether Seward was actually there to meet the train. He wrote his wife that “the President-elect arrived
incog.
at six this morning. I met him at the depot.” Nevertheless, Washburne later claimed that Seward had overslept and arrived at the Willard two minutes after Lincoln, “much out of breath and somewhat chagrined to think he had not been up in season to be at the depot on the arrival of the train.”
What is certain is that Seward greeted the president-elect with “a virtuoso performance,” attempting to control his every movement and make himself indispensable to the relative newcomer. The two men breakfasted together that morning in the Willard, choosing from an elaborate menu of “fried oysters, steak and onions, blanc mange and
pâté de foie gras.”
Then, after breakfast, Seward escorted Lincoln to the White House to meet with President Buchanan and his cabinet. Lincoln’s surprise call disconcerted Harriet Lane, Buchanan’s niece, who had brilliantly performed the role of hostess for her bachelor uncle. The appearance of Buchanan’s successor signaled the end of her days in the White House. Afterward, she had few kind words to say about the new couple who would occupy her former home. She likened Lincoln to the “tall awkward Irishman who waits on the door,” but insisted that the doorman was “the best looking.” About Mary, Harriet claimed, she had heard only that she “is awfully
western,
loud & unrefined.”
From the White House, Seward shepherded Lincoln to see General Scott. An inch taller than Lincoln and twice his weight, the old hero of the Mexican War was now scarcely able to walk. After the conversation with Scott, Seward and Lincoln drove together for an hour through the streets of Washington. Pressing issues, particularly the still-unfinished cabinet, required immediate attention. Months earlier, Lincoln had promised Weed and Seward that if John Gilmer of North Carolina would accept a seat, he would offer him a position. Seward considered the inclusion of a Unionist Southerner vital in retaining the border states, and Lincoln also considered Gilmer the best choice due to his
“living
position in the South.” Gilmer had failed to respond to Lincoln’s invitation to visit him in Springfield, however, and Seward had been unable to secure a positive reply.
Simon Cameron remained a candidate whom Seward considered a necessary ingredient in the cabinet. Five weeks earlier, Seward had warned Lincoln that “to grieve as well as disrespect [Cameron] would produce great embarrassment…. I should dread exceedingly the army of Cameron’s friends in hostility.” In fact, after much painful deliberation, Lincoln had decided to offer Cameron a place. During his train trip through Pennsylvania, he had met with a delegation of Cameron supporters who assured him they were authorized to speak for Governor Curtin and Alexander McClure. All the charges against Cameron had been withdrawn, they told Lincoln; the state now stood strongly behind him. Apparently the fear that Pennsylvania might have no representation in the administration had brought warring factions to agree on Cameron. Telling the delegation that “the information relieved him greatly,” Lincoln remained unwilling to make his decision until he reached Washington. The problem was that Cameron still insisted on the Treasury position, which Lincoln had resolved to give to Chase. Only when Cameron realized he was not in a position to dictate what he wanted did he grudgingly accept the War Department.
When his carriage ride with Seward ended, Lincoln rested for an hour in his suite before receiving his old adversary Stephen Douglas at two-thirty. Then, while Seward went to the train station to greet Mary, he welcomed the Blairs, Francis Senior and Montgomery. “The Blairs,” Hay wrote in his diary, “have to an unusual degree the spirit of a clan. Their family is a close corporation…. They have a way of going with a rush for anything they undertake.” Lincoln understood all this, but he liked and trusted the old man and knew that he needed former Democrats and hard-liners to counterbalance Seward.
The Blairs had been appalled by Seward’s conciliatory speech. Old Man Blair warned Lincoln that Seward’s compromises resembled Mr. Buchanan’s approach and would only invite more aggression from the South. Indeed, the Blairs so violently championed their hard-line position that they effectively advocated war. Monty contended that so long as the Southerners continued to believe “that one Southern man is equal to half a dozen Yankees,” they would never submit to anything without a “decisive defeat” on the field. “It will show the Southern people that they wholly mistake the quality of the men they are taught by demagogues to despise.” Only as magnanimous victors could Northerners afford to conciliate. Beyond Seward’s premature willingness to compromise, Francis Blair, Sr., cautioned that the New Yorker would prove a perpetual thorn in Lincoln’s side. “In your cabinet his restless vanity & ambition would do nothing but mischief. He would set himself up as a rival…& make an influence to supplant all aspirants for the succession.”
While Lincoln generally respected the opinions of Old Man Blair, he had long since determined that he needed Seward for the premier post in his administration. He also hoped, however, to include Monty Blair in his cabinet. While the availability of a true Southerner would have left no room for the border-state Blair, the attempt to enlist Gilmer had apparently failed. Lincoln was prepared to offer Monty a position, most likely as U.S. Postmaster General.
As Lincoln was conversing with the Blairs, Seward made his way through the large crowd at the train depot. Unaware that Lincoln had arrived earlier that day, the throng had gathered to welcome him on the special four o’clock train. When the train finally arrived, one reporter noted, “four carriages were driven up to the rear car, from which Mr. Seward soon emerged with Mrs. Lincoln” and her sons. Once it became clear that the president-elect was not aboard, the assembled citizens began to voice their dismay. “The rain was pouring down in torrents, there was no escape, and the crowd indulged in one or two jokes, a little whistling, and considerable swearing.” This was not the welcome Mary had expected. Leaning upon Seward’s arm as she alighted at the Willard, she was anxious. She had distrusted Seward from the start, fearing that he would be a continuing rival to her husband; now she was forced to depend on him during her less than triumphant entry into the city that would be her new home.
That evening Lincoln visited Seward’s home for a dinner hosted by Fred’s wife, Anna, who served as mistress of the household while Frances remained in Auburn to complete some ongoing work on her home. Although Frances would visit several times a year, she never made Washington her home, leaving all the social duties to her husband, son, and daughter-in-law.
Lincoln returned to the Willard for a nine o’clock reception with the members of the Peace Convention, called by Virginia to attempt a compromise before Congress adjourned on March 4. As the convention members from both South and North assembled, one of the delegates, Lucius Chittenden, representing Vermont, called upon Lincoln in his suite to brief him on the workings of the convention. Chittenden knew that many of the Southern delegates had come simply “to scoff” or “to nourish their contempt for the ‘rail-splitter.’” He could not imagine how Lincoln, who had traveled for ten days and “just escaped a conspiracy against his life,” could face a gathering in which so many were openly hostile. Yet Lincoln’s “wonderful vivacity surprised every spectator,” Chittenden marveled. “He spoke apparently without premeditation, with a singular ease of manner and facility of expression.”
Representing Ohio was Salmon Chase, whom Lincoln had not seen since their meeting in Springfield. Still uncertain whether he would have a place in the cabinet, Chase stiffly assumed the responsibility of introducing Lincoln to the members of the delegation. Lincoln, Chittenden recalled, “had some apt observation for each person ready the moment he heard his name.” The introductions complete, a lively discussion ensued.
In the end, the Peace Convention produced no proposal that could command a majority in Congress, indicating that the time for compromise had passed. That evening at the Willard, however, the delegates had gotten a revelatory glimpse of the president-elect. “He has been both misjudged and misunderstood by the Southern people,” William Rives of Virginia said. “They have looked upon him as an ignorant, self-willed man, incapable of independent judgment, full of prejudices, willing to be used as a tool by more able men. This is all wrong. He will be the head of his administration, and he will do his own thinking.” Judge Thomas Ruffin of North Carolina considered Lincoln’s unwillingness to make concessions on the territorial issue a great “misfortune,” but was relieved to hear of his hearty support of the Constitution.
The next morning, a “clear and blustering” day with “a wind that sweeps over this city with mighty power,” Seward escorted Lincoln to St. John’s Episcopal Church; then, returning to Seward’s house, they conferred for two hours. “Governor Seward, there is one part of my work that I shall have to leave largely to you,” Lincoln said. “I shall have to depend upon you for taking care of these matters of foreign affairs, of which I know so little, and with which I reckon you are familiar.” At some point that morning, Lincoln handed Seward a draft of his inaugural address and asked for his suggestions.