雙語·林肯傳 17

17

While Lincoln was en route to Washington for his inauguration, both the United States Secret Service and private detectives discovered what they believed was a plot to assassinate him as he passed through Baltimore.

In alarm Lincoln's friends pleaded with him to abandon the schedule that had been announced, and urged him to slip into Washington incognito by night.

That sounded cowardly, and Lincoln knew it would raise a storm of scoffs and sneers. He was decidedly against it. But finally, after hours of pleading, he bowed to the wishes of his trusted advisers, and prepared to make the rest of the trip secretly.

As soon as Mrs. Lincoln heard about the altered arrangements she insisted that she would go with him, and when she was told most emphatically that she must come on a later train she lost her temper and protested so loudly that she all but gave the plan away.

It had been announced that Lincoln would speak in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on February 22, spend the night there, and then leave the next morning for Baltimore and Washington.

He made his speech in Harrisburg according to schedule; but, instead of spending the night there, he slipped out of the back door of the hotel that evening at six and, disguised in an old threadbare overcoat and a soft wool hat such as he had never worn before, he was driven to an unlighted railway coach, and a few minutes later an engine was whirling him away to Philadelphia, and the telegraph wires in Harrisburg were cut at once so that the information would not be relayed to the would-be assassins.

At Philadelphia, his party had to wait for an hour to change trains and stations. In order to prevent recognition during that time, Lincoln and Allan Pinkerton, the famous detective, drove about the streets of the city in a darkened cab.

At 10:55, leaning on Pinkerton's arm and stooping so as not to draw attention to his height, Lincoln entered the station by a side door. He carried his head bent forward and had his old traveling shawl drawn close so that it almost covered his face. In that guise, he crossed the waiting-room and made his way to the rear section of the last sleeping-car on the train, which one of Pinkerton's aides, a woman, had had cut off from the rest of the car by a heavy curtain and reserved for her “invalid brother.”

Lincoln had received scores of threatening letters, declaring that he would never live to enter the White House, and General Winfield Scott, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, feared that Lincoln would be shot during the inaugural address—and so did thousands of others.

Many people in Washington were afraid to attend the ceremony.

So old General Scott had sixty soldiers stationed under the platform at the east portico of the Capitol from which Lincoln read his inaugural address; and he had soldiers standing on guard in the Capitol behind the President, and soldiers encircling the audience in front of him. And after the ceremony, the new President stepped into a carriage and rode back through Pennsylvania Avenue under the protection of buildings covered with sharpshooters in green coats, and between rows of infantrymen with bristling bayonets.

When he finally reached the White House without a bullet in his heart, many people were surprised.

Others were disappointed.

For several years prior to 1861 the nation had been struggling under a financial depression. Suffering had been so intense that the Government had been compelled to send troops to New York City to prevent hungry mobs from breaking into the sub-Treasury.

Thousands of gaunt, desperate men were still looking for work when Lincoln was inaugurated; and they knew that the Republicans, coming into power for the first time, would dismiss all Democratic office-holders, even down to the ten-dollar-aweek clerks.

Scores of applicants were scrambling for every job; and Lincoln had not been in the White House two hours when he was overwhelmed by them. They rushed through the halls; jammed the corridors; took entire possession of the East Room; and invaded even the private parlors.

Beggars came, importuning him for the price of a lunch. One man wanted Lincoln to give him an old pair of pants.

A widow came, seeking an appointment for a man who had promised to marry her provided she could get him an office that would support a family.

Hundreds came merely to get his autograph. An Irishwoman who kept a boarding-house rushed to the White House to implore Lincoln to help her collect a board bill from a government clerk.

As soon as an office-holder became seriously ill, dozens of applicants flocked to Lincoln, asking for the appointment “in case he should die.”

Every one was armed with testimonials, but of course Lincoln couldn't read a tenth of them. One day when two applicants for the same post-office thrust huge bundles of letters into his hands he simplified matters by tossing both packages unopened onto the scales, and appointed the man who had the heavier one.

Scores came to see Lincoln again and again, demanding jobs and abusing him savagely because he refused. Many were loafers without a shred of merit. One woman came asking for an appointment for her husband, admitting he was too drunk to come himself.

Their sordid selfishness, their voracious greed, appalled Lincoln. They intercepted him on his way to lunch. They rushed up to his carriage as he drove through the streets, presenting their credentials, begging for jobs. Even after Lincoln had been President for a year and the nation had been at war for ten months, the milling mob still hounded him.

“Will they never cease?” he exclaimed.

The mad onslaught of office-seekers had killed Zachary Taylor before he had been President a year and a half. The worry of it killed “Tippecanoe” Harrison in four weeks. But Lincoln had to endure the office-seekers and run a war at the same time. Finally, however, even his iron constitution all but broke under the strain. Stricken with an attack of smallpox, he said:

“Tell all the office-seekers to come at once, for now I have something I can give to all of them.”

Lincoln hadn't been in the White House twenty-four hours when he was confronted with a grave and momentous problem. The garrison holding Fort Sumter, in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina, was almost out of food. The President had to decide whether to provision the fort or surrender it to the Confederates.

His army and navy advisers said: “Don't try to send food. If you do, it will mean war.”

Six of the seven members of his Cabinet said the same thing. But Lincoln knew that he couldn't evacuate Sumter without virtually recognizing secession and encouraging it, and dissolving the Union.

In his inaugural address he had declared that he had the most solemn oath “registered in heaven” to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Union. He intended to keep his oath.

So he gave the orders, and away sailed the U.S.S. Powhatan, carrying bacon and beans and bread for Fort Sumter. But no guns, no men, no ammunition.

When Jefferson Davis heard the news he telegraphed General Beauregard to attack Fort Sumter if he thought it necessary.

Major Anderson, in command of the fortress, sent word to General Beauregard that, if he would wait only four days, the garrison would be compelled to evacuate through starvation, for they were already living on nothing but salt pork.

Why didn't Beauregard wait?

Perhaps it was because a few of his advisers felt that “unless blood were sprinkled in the faces of the people,” some of the seceding States might return to the Union.

Shooting a few Yankees would arouse enthusiasm and cement the Confederacy.

So Beauregard issued his tragic orders; and, at half-past four on the morning of April 12, a shell screamed through the air and fell hissing into the sea near the walls of the fort.

For thirty-four hours, the bombardment continued.

The Confederates turned the affair into a social event. Brave young men, gay in their new uniforms, fired their cannon to the applause of fashionable society women promenading the wharves and the Battery.

On Sunday afternoon the Union soldiers surrendered the fort and four barrels of salt pork; and, with the Stars and Stripes flying, and the band playing “Yankee Doodle,” they sailed away, bound for New York.

For a week Charleston abandoned itself to joy. A Te Dewn was sung with great pomp in the cathedral; and crowds paraded the streets, drinking and singing and carousing in tap rooms and taverns.

Judged by the loss of life, the bombardment of Sumter was nothing. Neither side lost a man. But judged by the train of events which it set in motion, few battles have been more momentous. It was the beginning of the bloodiest war the world had ever known up to that time.