The Highest Calling, page 11
Governors and state capitals were very important in 1860. If a war was going to come, it would be the governors who would call up the troops, not a president, or that’s what they thought in 1861.
DR: When did Lincoln realize that people wanted to kill him? Was it right after the election? You mentioned the possible lynching if he’d gone to Kentucky. But Kentucky wasn’t the only state where people were saying, “We’ve got to kill this person.” When did he begin to realize it, and was he afraid of this?
TW: He’s getting hate mail. You can see some of the letters that were coming into Lincoln, thanks to the Library of Congress, which has digitized all of them. There were drawings sent of him with a noose around his neck, and very ugly letters with swear words. Other people who were working with him said he threw out a lot of the hate mail, so probably even more was coming in than we have.
There’s no evidence that he was upset by it. There’s a little bit of evidence that Mary Todd Lincoln, his wife, was upset by it. He did bring four military officers on the train with him. They had been writing to him, warning him of certain dangers along the route. So that shows that he was paying attention.
DR: On the day that he begins the trip, he makes a farewell speech in Springfield. What does he say there?
TW: It’s a beautiful speech. It’s very short, but extremely important. Only about nine sentences, it probably took about two minutes to say. Crowd estimates have varied over the years, but I would guess about 200 people were standing there, and there was a light drizzle. Some people said snow. It’s like the movie Rashomon. Every person there remembered it a little differently. Lincoln spoke with great poignancy about what it meant to him to be from this place that he was leaving, and how he’d lived there for 25 years and raised his children there and buried one child there. He continued that with God’s help, a task was before him that was greater than any president had faced since George Washington. He said that with God’s help he could not fail, without God’s help he could not succeed. And then he asked for their prayers and got on the train.
What is so significant is it was a personal expression from one citizen to his fellow citizens. It was all about small-town democracy. And that is how Americans experienced democracy in 1861. It was instantly transcribed by reporters and then telegraphed, in a way not so different from how a speech goes around very fast today. People around the country got a feeling for Lincoln that they’d never had, that this is a guy we can understand. He’s like a neighbor. I think he helped himself a lot with that speech.
DR: Who went with him on the trip from his family? Did all of his sons and his wife go?
TW: They did, but they met him the second day. They were not on the first leg of the trip from Springfield to Indianapolis.
DR: Each leg of the trip he gets a different train car, is that right? There are different cars available for him, and they’re outfitted as appropriate for a future president of the United States. They’re reasonably nice.
TW: Very nice, usually.
DR: Was he a person attentive to his clothing? Did he make certain that he was neat every day and looked fastidious as the next president of the United States?
TW: He was the absolute opposite of that. He was famous for paying no attention to his clothing at all. His tie was often coming undone. Some people had raised collars. His was usually flatter. Everything about it was relaxed. It wasn’t just how tall he was and how skinny. He had very long arms but his legs were not that long for his height. So, he often had clothes that didn’t fit him properly.
He’d wear a hat that was starting to cave in from overuse and he wouldn’t even notice it. He barely acknowledged how he looked. So other people were always trying to help him. There were moments along the trip where either his wife or one of the younger people around would subtly bring out a new hat and ask him to wear it, and he would look a lot better.
DR: Everywhere he goes, he travels during the day, gets off at night, stays in a hotel, makes a speech, a different speech each time. He goes from Springfield to where?
TW: Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Columbus, Pittsburgh, Cleveland.
DR: And then?
TW: Buffalo, Albany, New York City, Trenton, Philadelphia, Harrisburg, and then a complicated, all-night secret train route back through Philadelphia, then Baltimore to Washington.
DR: You point out in your book that a lot of famous people met him. Former presidents of the United States like Millard Fillmore, future presidents of the United States like Grover Cleveland. How did you find out these famous people were there during these various visits? Can you talk about one young woman he met, who had suggested to him in a letter that he grow a beard?
TW: Yes, that’s the lovely Grace Bedell, who I think was 14 at the time. She lived near Buffalo in Westfield, New York. She wrote an adorable letter to Lincoln saying she had a lot of older brothers and she thought she could get them all to vote for him—she’s like a ward boss—if he would work with her and upgrade his appearance a little bit. She wrote, “If you grow a beard, I think you won’t look so skinny,” and sent the letter. Lincoln obviously liked the letter. He wrote her back. He didn’t write back to that many people, but he wrote her. He said, “Don’t you think people would think it was a bit of affectation?” if he were to change his look. So it sounded like he was saying no. But then he went ahead and grew the beard. That’s a great scene when he gets to Westfield, New York. The train stops and he meets her, and it changed her life. She never stopped talking about it.
DR: Before he gets to New York City, of all the stops, where was the biggest crowd?
TW: They’re a lot in a row. In Cincinnati it’s huge. In Buffalo it’s absolutely huge. And then in New York City itself, it’s about 100,000 people in the streets. You have to trust the reporters. They do exaggerate, so it’s hard to be exact. But people were often saying that about 100,000 people came out to see Lincoln, which is a mind-boggling crowd. We don’t see crowds anywhere near that large today.
DR: The train would stop. He’d get off, a carriage would meet him, he’d make a speech and the crowd would envelop him. He would have a hard time getting through the crowd, but eventually he’d go to the hotel. He stayed at a hotel each night.
TW: That’s right.
DR: In those days, in the 1860s, if you stayed at good hotels, did they have showers? Did they have bathrooms with indoor plumbing?
TW: That is the kind of question I was often trying to solve, and it’s hard to find in a Lincoln biography. You have to do a lot of sleuthing to find out. Most of them did not. It’s possible there was hot water he could use in some way, that someone would carry up some hot water that was heated over a fire for him, maybe. The one exception was the fanciest hotel in America, a hotel called the Astor House in New York City on lower Broadway. They had indoor plumbing, which was a revolution. No one could believe it. When he got there, there was real plumbing.
DR: He gets to New York City, which at that time is the biggest city in the United States?
TW: Yes. It’s got a little over 800,000 people, which is way bigger than any other city.
DR: Why did so many people want to greet him, just to see him?
TW: There was almost no way to visualize Lincoln. You might see a campaign pin. You could mail a letter in an envelope that was printed with an image of Lincoln. They were trying to get his image around, but it was hard. And daily newspapers had no visuals. There were weekly newspapers, kind of like Time magazine, that could do primitive images. The weekly newspapers, which mostly came out of New York City, were important in getting people a sense of what he looked like. They went out by train all around the country. But for an overwhelming number of people, it was the first time they’d ever seen him. And everybody knew the country was going to change forever because of this guy. They didn’t quite know what was going to happen, but they knew a big change was coming.
DR: He had reporters covering him on the train, traveling with him. What was the general impression in the articles they wrote? That he was a distinguished person, a little unusual-looking but a great speaker? How many speeches did he give before he got to New York?
TW: That’s one of the most fascinating aspects of the trip for me. The trip was hard and there was a constant demand on him to speak. Every time the train pulled into a little village—there are a lot of little villages in America—he would go out and speak, and those speeches were unscripted. He generally wrote out a scripted speech, one per day, which was the formal big event, like going to Ohio and speaking to the governor and legislature.
And he would write out some formal, a little bit boring speech for a situation like that. What was not boring at all were these informal human encounters where he’s just going to the platform on the back of the train and saying hello to people. He was funny. Sometimes he was a little bit emotional. Everyone who knew him said he varied a lot, from a kind of lower register where he seemed depressed to an upper register where he seemed buoyant. You didn’t know which Lincoln you were going to get. It’s dynamic and unpredictable.
DR: How old is he at this time?
TW: He turned 52 on the second day of the trip.
DR: After New York, he goes to the heart of American history—Philadelphia, a place that is almost religious to him, because that’s where the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were drafted. He goes to Independence Hall, where they were actually drafted. Can you talk about the speeches that he gave there and why they were so emotional? They may have been the most uplifting speeches he gave during the entire trip.
TW: It’s funny you use the word religious. I really agree with that. He felt that this was where America’s secular scripture came from, almost like the Ten Commandments, but it’s the Declaration and the Constitution. All came out of this building, which was sacred to Americans then. It still is. But now, in a way, Washington is—we hear this phrase a lot—the soul of America, around the Lincoln Memorial. But back then, it was more Independence Hall. He’d grown up loving American history. He read the famous childhood books, just like I read childhood books about Lincoln. He was reading about George Washington, reading Mason Weems’s biography of Washington, which is filled with stories we don’t believe, like cutting down the cherry tree. Lincoln read those books and loved them.
As he was coming out of New York and going into New Jersey, he remembers the struggles of George Washington in New Jersey—the crossing of the Delaware to take Trenton from the Hessians, and just how hard it was. In the New Jersey State House he gives a beautiful speech about what the American Revolution meant to him and how they must have been fighting for some bigger cause than just their independence, something that would mean a lot to all people everywhere, someday.
He gets to Philadelphia and he goes into Independence Hall. And he can feel the emanations coming out of Independence Hall. He’s talking about its teachings, almost like the building is alive and talking to him. It’s unusual and sort of spiritual. He says, “If I ever forget its teachings,” meaning the Declaration, “may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth and may my right hand forget its cunning,” which is right out of the Old Testament.
He goes in the next morning and he’s overwhelmed. It’s his first time ever in Independence Hall. He’d been to Philadelphia but not in the building. And he gets very emotional again. He says, “Every political sentiment I have ever had comes from the Declaration of Independence.”
He adds, “I would rather be assassinated than ever forget what I know to be the truth of this document.” He’s just been told there’s a good chance he will be assassinated. So a moment freighted with emotion. But it’s also very sophisticated politics. I’m sure it’s sincere and it’s coming out of his memory of his life and childhood. But it’s also really good politics, because he’s reminding Americans that the Declaration of Independence is an antislavery document. It promises these human rights, these freedoms—“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”—to every person, and that means African Americans. So he’s using a beautiful and familiar document to promote the cause of antislavery.
At the same time, Jefferson Davis is trying to start his government. He has a stronger claim to the memory of the American Revolution. His family and his wife’s family fought in a more distinguished way, but he doesn’t say anything. So Lincoln gets an advantage.
DR: From Philadelphia, he goes to Harrisburg to meet with the governor. After, he gets on a very small train, smaller than normal, and it’s kept secret. Why?
TW: So all along, there’s another drama. My first drama is the difficulty of a guy on a train where everyone in America is trying to get at him. He’s trying to speak in a compelling way and succeeding. That’s the second big drama. And then there’s a third drama, which is they’re beginning to figure out a lot of people are trying to kill him when he comes through Baltimore.
There have been spies on the ground, very effectively going around the bars and restaurants, picking up intelligence and conveying it to Lincoln’s entourage that this is a serious threat. The news of the threat, by the way, came to them from a woman, Dorothea Dix, a mental health advocate traveling through the South, who heard verifiable stories about an assassination conspiracy.
He’s trying to ignore it. He doesn’t want to have to change his route. But finally he’s persuaded. They put him on an all-night commuter train with ordinary passengers, in a passenger compartment, leaving Philadelphia late at night, going through Baltimore, with a change. They would change the locomotive and move the passenger cars by horse. The horse would pull the car along the streetcar tracks of downtown Baltimore, from one train station to another, and they would hitch that car to the southbound train that would go to Washington. They’d do all that about 11:00 at night in Philadelphia. They come into Baltimore about 3:30 in the morning, leave about 4:00, and get into D.C. at about 6:00 in the morning. And he made it. No one knew he was on the train.
DR: There have been reports over the years that he snuck into Washington dressed as a woman. Where did those reports come from?
TW: That’s an interesting story about how the press was a little unreliable in his time. Lincoln’s got all kinds of headaches to deal with. The whole time he’s on this trip, the South is attacking him every moment they can, criticizing his speeches and saying, “He’s uncouth, he’s physically repellent. He’s the least qualified person who’s ever been elected.” He has hardly any education and very little political experience, so let’s just give them credit for that one. It’s probably true. But then, after all his speeches, they say, “You cannot read his speeches without howling with laughter, because they’re so bad.” Which is the opposite of how we think of Lincoln today. And he’s got problems with the Northern press too, though he’s got some papers behind him. There’s a Republican media network, not really organized, it’s just city by city. But there are Republican papers in most of the Northern cities. There are also Stephen Douglas papers, Northern Democrats who don’t like him very much and are kind of mad that he got elected.
The night he takes the secret train, they shut down Harrisburg. They actually cut the wires so no one could send a telegram out of Harrisburg, and they locked all of the reporters into the hotel they were staying in and waited a few hours until Lincoln was safely far enough away that they couldn’t spoil the secret. Then they told them. A reporter for the New York Times, which was one of Lincoln’s relatively sympathetic papers, was so mad that as a result he concocted a totally fake story that ran.
Then as now, the New York Times considered itself a very reliable newspaper. But the story was filled with false information that said Lincoln had dressed up in Scottish clothes, whatever those are. That was enough for editorial cartoonists in weekly and monthly newspapers and magazines to draw Lincoln in a kilt or a tam. They didn’t really know what Scottish clothes looked like, often making them look sort of Irish. Either way Lincoln looked ridiculous, and it was a real black eye for him as he was trying to be the dignified new president of the United States.
DR: So when he does arrive in Washington, not in a dress and not in a kilt, he is driven to the Willard Hotel, where he stays until he’s inaugurated. How long is he there before the inauguration?
TW: He comes in on the morning of the 23rd of February, and he stays there until March 4th. Nine days.
DR: The people in Baltimore who wanted to assassinate him missed him because he came through on a conventional train. They didn’t realize he was on it. Why didn’t they go to his hotel and assassinate him there?
TW: It’s a really good question. I don’t have a very good answer, except I think he was in a kind of security bubble once he made it to a hotel filled with famous politicians. And presumably there was security in a well-known, genteel establishment in Washington. I would imagine he also had his own security. Allan Pinkerton rides with him. Pinkerton’s a railroad detective then and later works for the U.S. government. He gets Lincoln into the hotel, and I would imagine he stayed pretty close for the days that followed.
DR: During the trip, one person who does see him, as you report in your book, is a man named John Wilkes Booth. Did he have any contact with Lincoln during this trip?
TW: John Wilkes Booth is performing in a play in Albany, New York. Lincoln comes into Albany on the train and speaks. As usual, huge crowds come out, and Booth was reported to be denouncing Lincoln loudly within earshot of anyone who was close to him, to the point that people were telling him to cool it. I wondered if he had actor’s jealousy, because Lincoln was getting huge crowds. His crowds were okay but nothing like what Lincoln had.
