Abraham Lincoln

A

1

First Inaugural Address

On March 4, 1861, Lincoln was sworn in as the 16th president of the United States. Ironically, he received the oath of office from Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Roger B. Taney, whose decision in the Dred Scott Case was a direct cause of the crisis Lincoln now faced.

Lincoln's inaugural address was aimed at allaying Southern fears. His opening words were, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” But he flatly rejected the right of any state to secede from the Union, and he announced that he would “hold, occupy, and possess” the property and places belonging to the federal government. Such a threat was necessary because the rebellious states had already seized federal forts, arsenals and customhouses within their boundaries. Even with this threat, Lincoln's tone was moderate. “The government will not assail you,” he addressed the South. “You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect and defend’ it.”

A

2

Lincoln's Cabinet

To his Cabinet, Lincoln appointed his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination and other leading Republicans. He made Seward secretary of state, Chase secretary of the treasury, Cameron secretary of war, and Bates attorney general. Gideon Welles of Connecticut became secretary of the navy, and Caleb B. Smith of Indiana became secretary of the interior. Montgomery Blair of Maryland was named postmaster general.

After one month in office, Lincoln still had not decided on a policy of action against the secessionist states. Seward, therefore, decided to supply the president with one. In a memo entitled “Some Thoughts for the President's Consideration,” Seward suggested that the administration should provoke a war with a foreign nation so as to unite the country in a wave of patriotism. Seward also suggested that he, rather than Lincoln, might be better equipped to formulate the administration's policy. Lincoln tactfully put his presumptuous Secretary of State in his place. Seward knew he had met his match. “Executive force and vigor are rare qualities,” he wrote his wife. “The President is the best of us.” In time, Seward was to become Lincoln's most trusted aide.

---

---

Lincoln also had to contend with Chase's presidential ambitions and Cameron's inefficiency. He kept Chase in the Cabinet for four years and then appointed him chief justice of the Supreme Court. But in January 1862 he replaced Cameron with Edwin M. Stanton, who had been Buchanan's attorney general. With the exception of Cameron, Lincoln's Cabinet appointments were good. An inefficient administrator himself, he was able to delegate less important administrative tasks to his Cabinet while he worked on more important issues.

A

3

Fort Sumter

Lincoln feared that taking direct action against the Confederacy would lead to the secession of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas. But events at Fort Sumter forced him to act. Fort Sumter was located at the entrance to the harbor of Charleston and was occupied by a small detachment of federal troops commanded by Major Robert Anderson. The South demanded the evacuation of the fort because it was in Confederate territory. Because Major Anderson was short on supplies and could not get any in Charleston, a direct confrontation was unavoidable. Early in April, Lincoln decided to send supplies to the fort by sea. Hoping that the ships would be able to land at the fort peacefully, he informed the governor of South Carolina of his intention. The governor notified Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

A

4

The Civil War Begins

Davis and his cabinet instructed Confederate General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard to demand the fort's surrender. Anderson refused this ultimatum, and at 4:30 am on April 12, 1861, Beauregard's guns opened fire on Fort Sumter. Lincoln's relief party was unable to land supplies, and two days later Anderson surrendered the fort.

Lincoln reacted promptly. Using the language and authority of a militia act of 1795, he declared that in seven states the federal laws were being opposed “by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” To quell this insurrection he asked the loyal states to provide 75,000 militia for three months' service. He also called a special session of Congress to convene on July 4. The Civil War had begun.

The North immediately rallied around its president. His old opponent, Stephen Douglas, called at the White House and agreed to tour Illinois to rally public support. Lincoln's call for arms, however, caused Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas to join their sister slave states in the Confederacy. The border states, Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, remained in the Union, although many of their people sympathized with and fought for the Confederacy.

A

5

Emergency Measures

Lincoln now took decisive measures to win the war. No American president had ever faced such a crisis, and Lincoln had to find for himself the necessary powers by which he could pursue the war and uphold his oath to “preserve, protect and defend” the Constitution of the United States. Recognizing the problem, Lincoln said, “It became necessary for me to choose whether, using only the existing means, agencies, and processes which Congress had provided, I should let the Government fall at once into ruin or whether, availing myself of the broader powers conferred by the Constitution in cases of insurrection, I would make an effort to save it.” Lincoln found the necessary powers in the constitutional clause making him “Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several states.” He told some visitors to the White House, “As commander in chief in time of war, I suppose I have a right to take any measure which may subdue the enemy.”

Using this power, Lincoln took a number of vital steps before Congress convened. Besides summoning the militia, he ordered a blockade of the Confederacy's ports, expanded the regular army beyond its legal limit, directed government expenditures in advance of congressional appropriations, and suspended the legal right of habeas corpus. The suspension of this constitutional guarantee, by which a person could not be imprisoned indefinitely without being charged with some specific crime, aroused much opposition throughout the country. Although Lincoln himself made no concentrated effort to suppress political opposition, which at times was extremely vocal, the repeal of habeas corpus enabled overzealous civil and military authorities to imprison thousands of people who were vocal in their opposition to the war against the South.

During the war, in the case Ex parte Merryman, Chief Justice Taney ordered Lincoln to grant a writ of habeas corpus to a Southern agitator who had been arbitrarily jailed by military authorities in Maryland. Lincoln ignored the order. After the war, in the case Ex parte Milligan, in an opinion written by David Davis, the Supreme Court ruled that a president could not suspend habeas corpus without the consent of Congress.

	More from Encarta
	•  7 tips for funding an online degree •  How to succeed in the fashion industry without being a top designer •  Presidential Myths Quiz •  Coffee break: Recharge your brain