Still more serious was the effect of his manner on many men who agreed with him otherwise.Such a high-minded leader as Governor Andrew of Massachusetts never got over the feeling that Lincoln was a rowdy.How could a rowdy be the salvation of the country?In the dark days of 1864,when a rebellion against his leadership was attempted,this merely accidental side of him was an element of danger.The barrier it had created between himself and the more formal types,made it hard for the men who finally saved him to overcome their prejudice and nail his colors to the mast.Andrew's biographer shows himself a shrewd observer when he insists on the unexpressed but inexorable scale by which Andrew and his following measured Lincoln.They had grown up in the faith that you could tell a statesman by certain external signs,chiefly by a grandiose and commanding aspect such as made overpowering the presence of Webster.And this idea was not confined to any one locality.
Everywhere,more or less,the conservative portion in every party held this view.It was the view of Washington in 1848when Washington had failed to see the real Lincoln through his surface peculiarities.It was again the view of Washington when Lincoln returned to it.
Furthermore,his free way of talking,the broad stories he continued to tell,were made counts in his indictment.One of the bequests of Puritanism in America is the ideal,at least,of extreme scrupulousness in talk.To many sincere men Lincoln's choice of fables was often a deadly offense.Charles Francis Adams never got over the shock of their first interview.Lincoln clenched a point with a broad story.Many professional politicians who had no objection to such talk in itself,glared and sneered when the President used it--because forsooth,it might estrange a vote.
Then,too,Lincoln had none of the social finesse that might have adapted his manner to various classes.He was always incorrigibly the democrat pure and simple.He would have laughed uproariously over that undergraduate humor,the joy of a famous American University,supposedly strong on Democracy:
"Where God speaks to Jones,in the very same tones,That he uses to Hadley and Dwight."Though Lincoln's queer aplomb,his good-humored familiarity on first acquaintance,delighted most of his visitors,it offended many.It was lacking in tact.Often it was a clumsy attempt to be jovial too soon,as when he addressed Greeley by the name of "Horace"almost on first sight.His devices for putting men on the familiar footing lacked originality.The frequency with which he called upon a tall visitor to measure up against him reveals the poverty of his social invention.He applied this device with equal thoughtlessness to the stately Sumner,who protested,and to a nobody who grinned and was delighted.
It was this mere envelope of the genius that was deplorably evident on the journey from Springfield to Washington.There was one detail of the journey that gave his enemies a more definite ground for sneering.By the irony of fate,the first clear instance of Lincoln's humility,his reluctance to set up his own judgment against his advisers,was also his first serious mistake.There is a distinction here that is vital.
Lincoln was entering on a new role,the role of the man of action.Hitherto all the great decisions of his life had been speculative;they had developed from within;they dealt with ideas.The inflexible side of him was intellectual.Now,without any adequate apprenticeship,he was called upon to make practical decisions,to decide on courses of action,at one step to pass from the dream of statecraft to its application.
Inevitably,for a considerable time,he was two people;he passed back and forth from one to the other;only by degrees did he bring the two together.Meanwhile,he appeared contradictory.Inwardly,as a thinker,his development was unbroken;he was still cool,inflexible,drawing all his conclusions out of the depths of himself.Outwardly,in action,he was learning the new task,hesitatingly,with vacillation,with excessive regard to the advisers whom he treated as experts in action.It was no slight matter for an extraordinarily sensitive man to take up a new role at fifty-two.
This first official mistake of Lincoln's was in giving way to the fears of his retinue for his safety.The time had become hysterical.The wildest sort of stories filled the air.Even before he left Springfield there were rumors of plots to assassinate him.[6]On his arrival at Philadelphia information was submitted to his companions which convinced them that his life was in danger--an attempt would be made to kill him as he passed through Baltimore.Seward at Washington had heard the same story and had sent his son to Philadelphia to advise caution.Lincoln's friends insisted that he leave his special train and proceed to Washington with only one companion,on an ordinary night train.Railway officials were called in.
Elaborate precautions were arranged.The telegraph lines were all to be disconnected for a number of hours so that even if the conspirators--assuming there were any--should discover his change of plan,they would be unable to communicate with Baltimore.The one soldier in the party,Colonel Sumner,vehemently protested that these changes were all "a damned piece of cowardice."But Lincoln acquiesced in the views of the majority of his advisers.He passed through Baltimore virtually in disguise;nothing happened;no certain evidence of a conspiracy was discovered.And all his enemies took up the cry of cowardice and rang the changes upon it.[7]
