5 Making a Ruler

The morning of the 4th of March came, dark, cloudy, and threatening, cold winds blowing off the hills and river, and men and women wrapping themselves in cloaks and overcoats. Faces became pinched, and lips showed blue in the blasts. Spring had fled again with all her deceitful promises; the premature buds were nipped, the young green on the foliage was frostbitten into brown, and winter wailed in full desolation through the streets and around the houses of the city.

Yet it was a day for people to come forth, because a new ruler was about to take the office to which he had been elected, and duty ordered a whole nation to rejoice with him. But with the event only a few hours away, there were still some who believed that it might never occur; and many more who wished the belief true. It seemed to me that everybody was forgetting the vast toil and cost with which the nation had been built up, that sacrifices, countless in number, made in the earlier days had been dismissed as nothing, and the counsels of the great men, the memory of whom all revered, tossed aside. But the founders themselves had shirked the very questions now dividing the people and threatening them with a bloody war; and I reflected on the truth of the saying, that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children, although nothing had been said about such a heavy compounding of interest as I was about to witness.

No omen of good fortune could be drawn from the angry skies which lowered in the whole circle of the heavens, and shivering in my overcoat, I went forth to witness the last act in the making of a ruler. A Congress depleted by the secession of Southern members had voted down the day before a peace resolution, a proposed compromise which pleased nobody and angered everybody; and one side as before went on with its preparations, while the other remained absorbed in business and still would not believe.

My good friends, Shaftoe and Pembroke, the one for the Union and the other for the South, were with me. Their difference of opinion never caused any disagreement between them, nor was it necessary for us in our talk to ignore the quarrel which was about to divide the nation. We could discuss it with perfect good temper, which I think was a sure proof of lasting friendship. I congratulated myself daily upon the impulse which had caused me to seek the companionship of Shaftoe.

We passed through the streets and joined a crowd in front of Willard’s Hotel who were waiting to see the man of the hour come forth and take his place. It was a strange gathering, of which we made a small part: a few who had come there from a curiosity of high purpose, and after these all the idle and noisy of the capital, a ragged crowd, at least half of it negroes, many of it boys and not so many women, noisy, talkative, chewing much tobacco and spitting more, cracking bad jokes and cursing sometimes, because the chief figure in the show did not hurry upon the stage and let himself be seen, and yet not bad natured, nor wishing any mischance to happen, unless the display should prove unpicturesque. The metallic rattle of arms and the flash of bayonets came down the avenues, adding to the sombre note that was dominant on this official day of rejoicing.

Looking at my watch, I saw that it was past noon, and the new man had not come forth to be President. He lingered yet behind the walls that had sheltered him since his arrival in the capital, and the crowd eager for its free show was becoming impatient and critical. Not especially hostile to Lincoln, it grew angry with him because it had to wait so long in the cold for its rights, and I shared the feeling. Perhaps Lincoln at the very last would shirk the issue and the mighty risks and cost of civil war.

“He is afraid,” said some one aloud. “The rail splitter of the backwoods knows that he does not belong in the seat of Washington and Jefferson.”

It was Tourville, the South Carolinian, who spoke, likable enough most of the time, but possessing the gift of irresponsible speech, and the spirit of prophecy was heavy upon him just then. Not far away hovered Major Tyler, stately in his finest array, his red cheeks redder in the March wind, and his long white hair showing like snow against his black hat brim. Neither saw us just then, and it was soon evident that the major shared Tourville’s feelings, as they began to jeer.

They talked of the great break-up just ahead, the superiority in all vital respects of the republic that the South would establish to the shop-worn, cast-off remnant left to the North; the ridiculous nature of the new President, the Illinois rail splitter, the first ignorant backwoodsman to be chosen ruler of the nation; they wondered if his message to the people would be merely a string of the bad jokes which were his only product. I grew angry, but I held my wrath; I began to feel a great sympathy for this Lincoln whom everybody abused. Ugly and commonplace in bearing he might be, but those sad eyes could not belong to a dishonest or cruel man, and the seams in his face and stoop in his shoulders had been made by work, the common heritage of his countrymen. I had been disappointed in his appearance, I scarcely confessed to myself how deeply, but after all we had no right to expect anything else of a man chosen from surroundings of such utter democracy. Unconsciously I began to look upon the new leader as a sort of prophet.

“I hope you don’t think, Henry, that they are talking for me as well as for themselves, just because I am going with the South too,” said Pembroke, looking annoyed at the wholesale and violent criticism to which we were compelled to listen. “Tourville, when the blood has gone to his head, speaks first and thinks afterward, and the major is borne away by the force of his example.”

“Why shouldn’t they talk if they feel that way?” said Shaftoe. “They are not the men who do the most harm. It’s the silent ones that our side have to dread.”

The crowd swayed about, and groaned, not with pain, but impatience. The cold wind swept down from the hills, and the gray circle of clouds thickened and darkened. There was no cheerful note in all the sombre scene save that which came from a little group of which Major Tyler and Tourville had become the centre; they seemed to draw an acute delight from the embarrassed situation, the ominous skies, the necessity of an armed force to protect the shabby entrance of the new ruler upon his duties, and the chance that he might not come out at all to take the oath before men, but accept it in his own apartments in the same secret manner in which he had arrived in Washington. I suspected that part of their gaiety and talk was a mere assumption, since not even a friend of the South and wellwisher of its plans could feel very cheerful at such a gloomy scene, surely serving some day as a landmark from which to date many disasters. We walked farther away, not wishing to hear more, drawing our overcoat collars higher around our faces and turning our backs to the winds from the hills, which were growing colder and cut to the bone.

The shabby crowd billowed and heaved like deep waters in a storm, began to give forth shouts and approving cries, and then parted in half, forming a narrow lane, down which came a carriage containing a single man, and that man old and troubled. He was a large, but awkward figure, the wrinkles and seams were interwoven thickly on his broad face, and his hair was short, thin, and gray. He was very old, showing all his years and more, and his look of time was heightened by his old-fashioned dress; his silk hat was low in the crown and extremely broad in the brim, his tall, stiff collar cut his ears, and over his chest and throat surged the waves and folds of a huge white tie. Beneath the collar and tie all his dress was jet black, the swallowtail coat of a cut many years earlier. The man’s appearance was not without dignity, but the pathetic note predominated. His whole aspect was of one crushed by care; it showed in the sunken eyes, the seamed face, and the drooping lines around the mouth. It seemed fitting that he should be alone in the carriage, for so he was in the world, rejected by all the parties, including his own, paying the usual price of one who tries to please people who do not please each other.

There was a hum in the crowd as he rode through, followed by a faint groan, a cheer equally faint, and then apathetic silence. The men and the women and the boys showed no curiosity, their interest in him was due solely to the fact that he was the signal for something else, and after the signal they waited for the other.

The solemn, gloomy man went on, turning his heavy eyes but once or twice to look upon the crowd that four years before had watched him coming in, not going out, and, full of eager curiosity, had thundered in applause at the sight of his face. He felt the full keenness of the old and cruel jest, “The king is dead; long live the king!” and he knew that the reign of the dying king would never be considered glorious. He, too, shivered a little as the cold winds cut his face, and drew the collar of his coat more closely around his neck. I looked once at the group of Southerners; they were regarding the man in the carriage with eyes in which anger and contempt were mingled, as if he had been half their friend and then had failed.

The solemn coachman stopped at the hotel and opened the door of the carriage for the sombre old man, who climbed heavily and awkwardly out, disappearing a moment later in the building.

The crowd burst into talk when he had gone, but in another minute relapsed into the silence of waiting. We pushed a little closer, looking over the heads of those shorter than ourselves.

The door of the hotel opened again, and the old man came out arm in arm with another man, as solemn and awkward as himself. The second towered over the first, despite the stoop in his shoulders, and had he straightened himself up there would have been none perhaps in the watching crowd to match him in height. Gaunt, hollow-cheeked, his face too a network of seams, with the sad, pathetic eyes looking from under the heavy brows, he also was a melancholy figure, and it seemed fitting that the two men should lean upon each other. His costume was as sombre and old-fashioned as his companion’s—new in cloth, but bad in cut, and seeming in every particular to have been made for some one else. He carried in his disengaged hand a great black cane with a huge gold head, and as he twirled it about in his uneasy awkwardness it gave to his bearing a strange grotesqueness, at which one, however, could never laugh. Nobody was further from laughing than I; the pathos of this man, his unconscious air of martyrdom, his look of benignity which seemed to embrace all, friends and enemies alike, impressed me more powerfully than ever, and made me forget his awkwardness and ugliness.

The same impression seemed to have been made upon the thoughtless or sneering crowd; no one spoke aloud when the two appeared, and the silence continued while they climbed heavily into the carriage. There they sat side by side, the old and the new, and the solemn coachman, turning his solemn horses, drove solemnly toward the Capitol, the crowd stringing out behind it in a procession which was not dignified, nor was it disorderly—merely curious and often ragged and immature.

The two men in the carriage never looked back at their following, and rarely spoke to each other. No ray of sunlight fell upon them. Once I thought I felt a dash of rain against my face, but looking up I saw only the threatening clouds stalking across the sky. There was no colour in all the scene save the gleam of bayonets, and that added only another sombre touch to the tragedy. Soldiers had been there at similar events, but never before with the expectation of using the arms they carried. Shaftoe and Pembroke walked by my side in silence.

The carriage stopped before a square platform built from the Capitol, and the two helped each other out. Nobody looked at the first, all at the second man who walked upon the wooden stage and stood for a moment facing ten thousand people looking so curiously at him; he took off his hat and held it awkwardly in one hand, while he swung the great cane with equal awkwardness in the other. There were men at the far corner of the platform, but none came forward, none spoke. His look became embarrassed, and the crowd gazing at him felt a strange embarrassment too; neither seemed to know what to do, and each understood the trouble of the other. I shared the feeling, and the pain of the suspense was increased when my eyes wandered beyond the lone figure in black and stopped at another figure, a Texas senator whom I knew, a zealous supporter of the new Southern empire, a bitter enemy of the old republic as it stood, leaning against the doorway of the Capitol, his arms folded across his breast, his face smiling, contemptuous, his white teeth showing as he looked upon the new ruler, standing in awkward silence, and the waiting and puzzled crowd below; he did not move or speak, but remained fixed in his dramatic attitude, his smiling gaze, which contained only irony, passing from Lincoln to the crowd and from the crowd to Lincoln, as if he would cast a malignant spell over both.

The tall man in black at last leaned his great cane against a corner of the railing that surrounded him like the boards of a pen, and looked vainly for a place to put his hat. A short, thickset man stepped from the silent group behind him and taking the hat from his hands held it and waited. The rescuer was one of those whom Lincoln had beaten in the race for the Presidency, the choice of a great party, and the crowd, seeing the grace of the act, the first of the day not marked by constraint or awkwardness, applauded, though not loudly, the gloomy heavens and the strange nature of the moment seeming to forbid much noise.

Then another came forward, a figure, older and drier and thinner than all that had gone before, a wrinkled man, clad in heavy black robes, out of which his face looked, as pale as that of the dead. The Chief Justice of the nation was ready to administer the oath to the new President, while the old one, who had ridden with him in the carriage, compelled by custom to assist at his own burial, was about to pass his last minute of office.

“The parson has come, the funeral can go on,” said some one, and others laughed.

Yet I was forced to admit the justice of the comparison. Those weary old men waiting there, and then the oldest of them all appearing in his black robes, struck me with a deeper chill than any that I had felt before. My thoughts had always given funerals a colour and note like this—sodden gray skies, a raw March wind, wrinkled old men in black reciting mechanical phrases in monotonous voices, and a group of silent people listening in pious resignation, anxious to get it over quickly and go home. Yes, it was a funeral, and perhaps but few sincere mourners were present.

The old man, the oldest of the old, administered the oath; the new President was born and the old one, standing sadly in the background, the heavy lids drooping over his eyes, ceased to be.

Mr. Lincoln then turned his face to the crowd and read his address, according to the custom prescribed to new presidents. Much of his awkwardness, his air of hesitation, had vanished, and he straightened the curve out of his shoulders, showing his real great height; his voice became clear and strong as he read the words, and he looked with an air of confidence over the crowd, which he knew contained so many threatening to himself. He understood the extraordinary nature of the scene in which he was the chief and almost the only actor; that he was pronouncing a benediction to be followed immediately not by peace, but by a bloody convulsion involving the whole nation, and himself perhaps as the chief victim. Though seeing all these things with the preternatural foresight which Nature had given to him as a recompense, and over, for many of the things which she had bestowed upon the ordinary man, but not him, he did not flinch, and I saw in his manner and bearing evidences of the rare quality which constitutes true greatness, a courage that increases with the dangers confronting it. The ugliness of his face passed away and I beheld only the light of his eyes—brave, forgiving, and still pathetic.

The penetrating voice went on with the reading, and once or twice the crowd applauded, though not with spirit. The theatrical figure of the sneering senator leaning against the doorway did not stir, nor did the look upon his face depart. The chilling blasts came oftener from the hills and fluttered the black coat-tails of the speaker about his long and spare figure, the thin-blooded old men shivered in their heavy clothes, and the ancient Chief Justice drew his head down into his collar like a mouse going into its hole.

My eyes wandered a moment from the President’s face to the city about us. The Capitol rose above us white and gleaming, despite the clouds, and along the hills and slopes were other structures, massive and built for time, but the old and civilized was still jostled by the new and untamed. The crowd itself was shabby in the main; many of the men on the platform and near it, names of note in the nation, were careless in dress, and seemed to take little thought of appearances. Signs of newness were yet visible everywhere; the people stood forth in all their raw strength, unadorned, and unconscious of it, a race that had known little in its life but hard work and expected nothing else. I saw men of either section about us, and I noticed them closely; I knew how much those lank and often awkward figures could do and endure, and I felt a sudden glow of pride which the most peaceful can not escape, evil though it may be, that if they must make a war what a war they would make!

The sombre clouds threatened rain again, and the arms of the soldiers rattled as they shifted their posts; but I paid no attention, forgetting my comrades, following only the speaker, who was now near the end of his address, and confident, as I saw the light in his eyes, that this was the man for the time and place. The crowd began to disperse, its fringe dropped off, disappearing silently. Nothing impressed me more than the lack of noise on a day usually so noisy, and it seemed fitting; perhaps the same feeling had taken hold of the careless mob. Little streams of people flowed away, and the grayness that enveloped the city swallowed them up; two or three of the old men crept from the stage and into the building, where they sought to warm their withered fingers; the lake of heads around the wooden stage diminished steadily as the streams trickled off in all directions, and I saw Tourville, Major Tyler, and their friends preparing to go.

The speaker finished, and stood a moment looking over the heads of the people, his melancholy eyes not seeing them, seeing only what was in his thoughts, and that I did not know; then he turned and walked quietly from the stage, the feeble applause quickly dying, and the crowd dispersing with little noise in the gray fog. My mind was full of the event I had just witnessed, so shabby in some of its aspects, yet so solemn and significant, and it was a minute or two before I recalled the presence of Shaftoe and Pembroke. Then Pembroke said that Elinor and her uncle and aunt were near. They were in Paul Warner’s carriage, and the crowd had hidden them from us until the inauguration was over. Varian was on horseback by the carriage, and Elinor, closely wrapped in a long gray cloak, sat beside her aunt. We approached, and Varian raised his hat cheerfully.

“Was it comedy or tragedy that we have just witnessed, Mr. Kingsford?” he asked.

“Tragedy,” I replied, “with perhaps a slight touch of comedy.”

“I think you are right,” he continued. “It is likely to be the last of its kind, and the end of anything is pathetic.”

“I can not agree with you, Mr. Varian,” said Elinor, with sudden emphasis. “I believe that you and your friends will find in that melancholy, awkward man a far more powerful opponent than you expect.”

“We always defer to the opinion of a lady, even when she is wrong,” said Varian, with his most graceful bow.

“Wherein you do not compliment the lady,” replied Elinor with spirit; “if you wish to flatter us, disagree with us sometimes, as you would with men, and it will show that you take our opinions seriously.”

“I suggest that we drive on,” said Mrs. Maynard, with some asperity. “This east wind is dangerous, at least to one of my age.”

It seemed that Pembroke and I brought the east wind with us, but her request could not be disregarded, and so the carriage drove on, with Varian riding beside it, while Pembroke, Shaftoe, and I walked slowly away.

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