Nevertheless,with the Cabinet five to two against him,with his military adviser against him,Lincoln put aside his own views.The government went on marking time and considering the credentials of applicants for country post-offices.
By this time,Lincoln had thrown off the overpowering gloom which possessed him in the latter days at Springfield.It is possible he had reacted to a mood in which there was something of levity.His oscillation of mood from a gloom that nothing penetrated to a sort of desperate mirth,has been noted by various observers.And in 1861he had not reached his final poise,that firm holding of the middle way,---which afterward fused his moods and made of him,at least in action,a sustained personality.
About the middle of the month he had a famous interview with Colonel W.T.Sherman who had been President of the University of Louisiana and had recently resigned.Senator John Sherman called at the White House with regard to "some minor appointments in Ohio."The Colonel went with him.When Colonel Sherman spoke of the seriousness of the Secession movement,Lincoln replied,"Oh,we'll manage to keep house."The Colonel was so offended by what seemed to him the flippancy of the President that he abandoned his intention to resume the military life and withdrew from Washington in disgust.[13]
Not yet had Lincoln attained a true appreciation of the real difficulty before him.He had not got rid of the idea that a dispute over slavery had widened accidentally into a needless sectional quarrel,and that as soon as the South had time to think things over,it would see that it did not really want the quarrel.He had a queer idea that meanwhile he could hold a few points on the margin of the Seceded States,open custom houses on ships at the mouths of harbors,but leave vacant all Federal appointments within the Seceded States and ignore the absence of their representatives from Washington.[14]This marginal policy did not seem to him a policy of coercion;and though he was beginning to see that the situation from the Southern point of view turned on the right of a State to resist coercion,he was yet to learn that idealistic elements of emotion and of political dogma were the larger part of his difficulty.
Meanwhile,the upper South had been proclaiming its idealism.
Its attitude was creating a problem for the lower South as well as for the North.The pro-slavery leaders had been startled out of a dream.The belief in a Southern economic solidarity so complete that the secession of any one Slave State would compel the secession of all the others,that belief had been proved fallacious.It had been made plain that on the economic issue,even as on the issue of sectional distrust,the upper South would not follow the lower South into secession.When delegates from the Georgia Secessionists visited the legislature of North Carolina,every courtesy was shown to them;the Speaker of the House assured them of North Carolina's sympathy and of her enduring friendliness;but he was careful not to suggest an intention to secede,unless (the condition that was destiny!)an attempt should be made to violate the sovereignty of the State by marching troops across her soil to attack the Confederates.Then,on the one issue of State sovereignty,North Carolina would leave the Union.[15]The Unionists in Virginia took similar ground.They wished to stay in the Union,and they were determined not to go out on the issue of slavery.Therefore they laid their heads together to get that issue out of the way.Their problem was to devise a compromise that would do three things:lay the Southern dread of an inundation of sectional Northern influence;silence the slave profiteers;meet the objections that had induced Lincoln to wreck the Crittenden Compromise.They felt that the first and second objectives would be reached easily enough by reviving the line of the Missouri Compromise.But something more was needed,or again,Lincoln would refuse to negotiate.
They met their crucial difficulty by boldly appealing to the South to be satisfied with the conservation of its present life and renounce the dream of unlimited Southern expansion.Their Compromise proposed a death blow to the filibuster and all he stood for.It provided that no new territory other than naval stations should be acquired by the United States on either side the Missouri Line without consent of a majority of the Senators from the States on the opposite side of that line.[16]
As a solution of the sectional quarrel,to the extent that it had been definitely put into words,what could have been more astute?Lincoln himself had said in the inaugural,"One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended;while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended.That is the only substantial dispute."In the same inaugural,he had pledged himself not to "interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it now exists;"and also had urged a vigorous enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law.He never had approved of any sort of emancipation other than purchase or the gradual operation of economic conditions.
It was well known that slavery could flourish only on fresh land amid prodigal agricultural methods suited to the most ignorant labor.The Virginia Compromise,by giving to slavery a fixed area and abolishing its hopes of continual extensions into fresh land,was the virtual fulfillment of Lincoln's demand.
