The picture and the men: being biographical sketches of President Lincoln and his cabinet;

Front matter

PICTUH

OF THE

UN IVLRSITY OF ILLINOIS from Carl Sandburg's Library

Preface

THIS rapidly-written little book is intended to serve as a companion and key to Mr. Carpenter's great pictured The sketches of the persons whom that picture represents, the account of the picture itself, of the crisis which suggested it, and of the painter who executed it, are all meant to give such information as will help to a clearer and fuller understanding of the painting.

The writer has no wish to conceal the fact that he is what is called an "extreme Radical ;" but he has sought to omit himself from this subject, and to sketch the persons here represented, not with reference to any approval or disapproval of his own, but as they may justly be believed to have meant while laboring honestly to the best of their ability for the preservation of the Union.

IV . PKEFACE.

The principal authorities used in the work, besides some standard books of reference accessible to all, are : Mr. Carpenter's own very interesting work, " Six Months at the White House, " a singularly full collection of the most graphic and entertaining anecdotes and reminiscences ; the lives of Mr. Lincoln by Raymond, Holland, Barrett, Crosby, and Mrs. Hanaford j Trowb ridge's biography of Mr. Chase, entitled " Ferry Boy and Financier;'7 and Baker's Life of Seward.

Technical criticism of Mr, Carpenter's picture has been avoided ; as the writer is one of the very few persons living who do not understand the business of art criticism.

FRED. B. PERKINS.

January Zd, 1867.

Table Of Contents

PAGE

LIFE or FRANCIS B. CARPENTER 7

TUB OCCASION 19

II. The Occasion

THE Emancipation of the Slaves in the United States belongs to a class of events so lofty and so vast in nature and meaning, that it is an effort to comprehend them. It has often been said that no single deed so Great has been done on earth since Christ was crucified.

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If any can be compared with it, they are the very greatest : the Christianizing of the Roman Empire by Constantino ; the issue of Magna Charta to England ; the inauguration of the Reformation by Luther ; the Declaration of Independence. Indeed, it would be easy to show that it is linked with these in one chain of cause and effect. The last three of the series are obviously so related. The Declaration of Independence was the logical result of the principles of Luther put in practice by English Puritans, and announced in their political applications by the descendants and successors of those Puritans, the Continental Congress. Emancipation has made the United States the banner-bearer of mankind — the foremost nation in human, progress — just as the Declaration did in 1776.

The train of circumstances that preceded President Lincoln's Proclamation of September 22, 1862, is, of course, of great historical interest and importance. The Constitution of the United States was in its very framing put together with compromises about Slavery.

20 THE riCTUKK AND THE MEN.

The first period of the history of this subject comes down to about the end of the last century. During that period there was much opposition to shareholding, by men of high moral nature and profound political insight, all over the country, and since business interest coincided with the moral duty of the case, there was decidedly a tendency toward a gradual dying out of the system.

The second period begins with that great increase in the production of cotton which resulted from the invention and use of Whitney's cotton-gin, dating from about 1793. This increase caused slaves to grow rapidly more valuable, and it is a matter of course that men desire to think, and therefore tend strongly to think, that what is very profitable must be right, or at least excusable.

The third period may be reckoned from the beginning of the abolition movement of Mr. Garrison and his associates down to the date of the Proclamation, in which it culminated. The first period was that of feeble moral reprobation of slavery ; the second, that of increasing financial acquiescence in slavery; the third, that of earnest moral attack and defense of slavery, the financial and political aspects of it not being now the really predominant ones.

In this third period came the successive excitements of the Missouri Compromise, the " incendiary document" and " gag-law" time, the " Political Abolition" time, the "Free Soil" time, the "Kansas" time, the " John Brown" time, and lastly the rebellion.

The rebellion was the effort of the slave interest to take a snap judgment, so to speak, on a question which the country was evidently in a steady advance toward deciding on the side of freedom. And so much organization and preparation had the South, so utterly ignorant of the scheme was the North, so strong was the combination of a united South, Northern sympathizers, and European monarchies, and so undecided and dormant were the convictions of very many even of the loyal Northern men, that undoubtedly the nation had a narrow escape from destruction, winning in the conflict not merely nor even chiefly as the richest and strongest of the two warring powers, but by means of the strength of the patriotism and moral convictions that germinated and grew vigorously and fast by the stimulus of the very fire that was kindled to consume them.

The words in which Mr. Lincoln described the occasion on which the Proclamation was planned and issued have all his striking and characteristic plainness, simplicity, directness, and graphic force. He said to Mr. Carpenter, " Things had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing ; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics, or lose the game."

This time was the latter part of the summer of 18G2, the period of the discouragement produced by the " Peninsular campaign." It is true that Union successes had taken place at several points upon the outer circumference of the rebellion ; but its main body yet remained substantially untouched, and above all, its mailed head — consisting of the main army under Lee, protected by the strong and extremely defensible country of Northern Virginia — that mailed head which it constantly thrust out at Washington and the North, was still full of threatening and dangerous life. Although the Government had in the field in the beginning of that year more than 660,000 soldiers, and a navy of 246 ships, 22,000 men, and 1,892 guns, no decisive injury had yet been done to the enemy. Political opponents at home were raising an awful clamor about the inefficiency and incapacity of the Administration, and a good many even of its friends were joining in the cry. There was a very visible and growing weariness among the people, of conscriptions, of taxes, of the disordered currency, of the increasing prices of all sorts of manufactured and imported commodities. Mr. Greeley even goes so far as to say that it is doubtful whether a popular, vote on giving up the fight, if taken during the year next after the issue of the Proclamation, would not have been affirmative. This opinion, however, is probably shaded by its author's well-known liability to look on the dark side, for the patriotism of Mr. Greeley can not be doubted.

However, Mr. Blair urged to Mr. Lincoln as a reason against the Proclamation, that its issue would cause tli3 loss of the fall elections ; and, sure enough, it apparently did. In ten States which gave Mr. Lincoln in 1860 more than 208,000 majority, the Administration candidates for State offices were beaten in the fall of 1862 by nearly 36,000. This, however, was rather the result of the hesitating non-emancipation policy of the previous two years, and its attendant ill success, than the result of the new emancipation policy, only just announced, .and not yet proved as an influence in the war.

It was the result of the old mistakes, not of the new correction. As soon as the new policy was well understood, and began to show its operation, there was no more fear of losing elections by it. It became the policy of the nation, and ceased to be a party question, just as the support of the Government had ceased to be a party question ever since Sumter was attacked.

Assuredly the people of the United States waited long enough before resolving upon universal freedom. Most undoubtedly the Proclamation was made at the right time to take the great mass of the nation with it. Any time would have been too late for extremists on one side, and too early for extremists on the other. But the deeds of Mr. Lincoln were the resolutions of the loyal people as a whole, and his course was with a sort of magnetic truth what they felt to be best.

It was therefore really the people who did the acts which the President superintended, as their chief manager. Even after the war broke out, it took nearly two years to bring the people into the conviction that emancipation must come — that this vast moral justice was absolutely indispensable, alike to free the North from its false position and to put the South in its true one — to unite and strengthen the right side and to cripple the wrong. Accordingly, the war had commenced with the most circumspect and systematic observance of " conservative" precedent in this matter, and went on for a long time in a manner which, so far as slavery was concerned, " could not offend the feelin ccs of the most fastidious" slaveholder. So cautious

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and conservative a statesman as Edward Everett asserted that it was matter of grave doubt " whether any act of the Government of the United States was necessary to liberate the slaves in a State which is in open rebellion." Prophetic minds felt from the very first gun that the day of universal freedom was at hand. But prophetic minds are few ; national convictions and sentiments change very gradually ; and before emancipation could be safely made the law, an underpinning of public opinion had to be slowly laid for it, even though thousands of millions of dollars were expended in the building, and though the structure was cemented and soaked in the blood of our bravest men. In the United States, no law will operate which public opinion does not support. This is true, no matter whether such law be right or wrong, It is a fundamental fact in democracies. It has been proved over and over in laws on the liquor question, and perhaps an understanding of this may have influenced the President's delay in the matter. However that may be, Mr. Lincoln, while personally profoundly anxious for universal freedom, was utterly immovable in the resolution to maintain the national existence within undoubted constitutional forms if possible — and persisted in this course, until, as lie said, its last card had been played. This is most strongly shown in his letter to Mr. Greeley of Aug. 22, 1862, a remarkably terse and forcible statement in every possible variation of assertion, of this object. " My paramount object," he said, " is to save the Union, and not either to save or to destroy slavery.

If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it — if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it — and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." Mr. Seward took it for granted that the war would not touch the slavery question at all. In his dispatch to Minister Dayton, of April 22d, 1861, he said, with mistaken prediction, " The condition of slavery in the several States will remain just the same, whether it (the rebellion) succeed or fail." The manifesto of Gen. McDowell on his first entry into Virginia, in July, 1861, contained nothing that showed whether or not such a thing as slavery existed. Mc- Clellan's proclamation in West Virginia of May 26, 1861, had before announced that he would "subdue slave insurrection with an iron hand." Gen. T. W. Sherman, after the victory at Port Royal, expressly disclaimed any intention of meddling with slavery. Gen. Dix, in occupying the Eastern Shore counties of Virginia, did the like, and shut his lines to fugitives from slavery ; Gen. Halleck, on succeeding Fremont in Missouri, did the like, and, moreover, expelled from the protection of his lines such fugitives as had already taken refuge there. Gen. Burnsicle published a similar disclaimer on occupying Roanoke Island; Gen. Buell in Tennessee and Kentucky, Gen. Hooker on the upper Potomac, Gen. Williams in Louisiana, did the like, and still further, they opened their camps to slave-catchers, and officially helped them, by ordering the surrender of fugitives, and even by furnishing detachments or details to assist in the chase. Fremont's proclamation of freedom in Missouri was at once modified within the statutory limits ; Hunter's in South Carolina was promptly annulled ; Phelps' at Ship Island would have been, had not circumstances rendered it unnecessary. Never since the creation of the world was there seen

26 THE riCTUPwE AND THE MEN.

any war before, conducted by the year together, on the avowed principle and in the diligent and effective practice of not touching the greatest source of the enemy's strength, of assuring him the full enjoyment of it, of carefully returning to him any of it that got away, and of helping him cliase it right through the very ranks of the extra-magnanimous belligerents. It was exerting our whole force to protect the enemy's powder-magazine.

Even when the course of events gradually forced the nation from this strange method of making war by guaranteeing the enemy, the change was made very slowly and gradually. Officers commanding in one and another locality found it a physical impossibility to dispense with the services of the negroes, and a moral impossibility to treat them otherwise than as men and freemen. Such cases multiplied in number and grew in importance for months and months, and a series of partial measures, dealing with slavery in tlie District of Columbia, or with slaves as contraband of war, or as subject to confiscation, or as fit material for enlistment, had successively tested the public sentiment of the country for a long time before the cautious President could determine that the hour was come for proclaiming "liberty throughout all the land." At last, however, it was time. With true instinct, the man of the people felt that the will of the people was ripe for the new policy. The furious battles of South Mountain and Antietam, and the subsequent retreat of Lee, beaten and driven over the Potomac from his first invasion of Maryland, constituted a turn in the tide of affairs which enabled the Proclamation to appear in victory instead of defeat.

As prompt at snatching an occasion as he was slow in maturing the purpose to be served, Mr. Lincoln instantly published the grandest utterance of the age. It was not, it is true, an unconditional assertion either of the rights of man, or of the freedom of any class of men. In fact, as it was worded, it gave the rebels an opportunity of retaining the system of slavery in every Southern State ; for it was not in itself a gift of emancipation, but only contingent notice of emancipation at one hundred days. Mr. Lincoln had no wish to seem to do a great action himself, nor to put forth any impressive phrases. It is a feature most characteristic of his simple, weighty, honest, unconscious, straightforward nature, that in this great state paper, announcing a radical change in the social and political policy of the strongest nation in the world, relieving the foremost people on earth from a social blot and blunder which would have disgraced and hampered the hindmost, admitting four millions of chattels personal into the brotherhood of man, and completing for the first time the exemplification of Christian morals in the legal action of a democracy — that in doing all this, he so did it as to seem not to do it ; as to allow it to happen, not at once, by the force of an actual fiat, but after three months, in the form of the obligatory fulfillment of a past promise ; and even then, not by any act of his, or even of the nation, but simply by the neglect of the persons addressed to perform the plainest duties of the citizen.

For the reader of the Proclamation will see at once how entirely it throws the responsibility of the act upon the South. If the Southern States had discontinued their rebellious organization and resumed their places in Congress within the hundred days, the nation would have been bound to accept such action and appearance as a reparation in full, and to have suffered the whole fabric of slavery to remain as before, not merely upheld by the laws of each State and the entire frame of Southern society, but, as before the war, by the acquiescence and moral support of the whole United States. Doubtless, Mr. Lincoln may have felt that there was in fact no danger of such submission and return ; but the absolute disinterestedness, profound caution, sagacious foreseeing statesmanship, and lawyer-like clearness, accuracy, and safety of the drafting of the paper are none the less wonderful for that. The Proclamation does not say one word nor do one thing not absolutely necessary ; it neither discusses a principle, nor argues a case, nor expresses a feeling. It does not even put forth its real and vast significance directly ; much less with ornaments of speech or largeness of words. It is the barest, briefest notice to legal delinquents to return to duty, with a proviso of further action if they do not return. It is so arranged, that if there be a chance not to secure emancipation, the chance shall be taken ; that if the crowning glory of the century can be avoided, it shall be avoided ; that if the signer can escape the credit of freeing four millions of slaves, he shall escape it ; that if the South can be induced to retain their labor system, they shall retain it ; that if the actual responsibility of freedom is to rest anywhere, it shall rest upon the rebel slaveholders themselves. It embodies the utter abnegation of personal merit or emotion ; the entire avoidance of controversy upon either any principle in doctrine or any material interest or association of human beings; it is the simple, plain statement of one future fact, unless there shall happen another future fact. And notwithstanding all this guarded negation of statement and •conditional assertion, yet such were the aspects of the war in the field, and of the public opinion of the North, that these two gigantic forces, embodying the moral sum total of the United States for the time being, inspired into the words of this plain short paper that whole and complete and immense meaning which has rendered it immortal.

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32 THE PICTURE AND THE MKX.

III. The Picture

THE original conception of Mr. Carpenter's great picture is due to his profound loyalty to the United States, his fervent devotion to Freedom, his deep exultation when the issue of the Great Proclamation announced that Slavery was Abolished, his strong desire to execute some work within the field of his art which should express his appreciation of the questions of the war, and the nation's action upon them, and his honorable ambition to associate his own name and reputation with an occasion so glorious. The artist thus describes his own first clear conception of the time and sentiment of his picture, in his " Six Months at the White House :"

"The long-prayed-for year of jubilee had come; the bonds of the oppressed wTere loosed ; the prison doors were opened. ' Behold,' said a voice, * how a man maybe exalted to a dignity and glory almost divine, and give freedom to a race ! Surely Ait should unite with Eloquence and Poetry to celebrate such a theme.' I conceived of that band of men upon whom the eyes of the world centred as never before upon ministers of state, gathered in council, depressed, perhaps disheartened at the vain efforts of many months to restore the supremacy of the Government. I saw, in thought, the head of the nation, bowed clown with his weight of care and responsibility, solemnly announcing, as he unfolded the prepared draft of the Proclamation, that the time for the inauguration of this policy had arrived ; I endeavored to imagine the conflicting emotions of satisfaction, doubt, and distrust with which such an an- • nouncement would be received by men of the varied characteristics of the assembled councilors."

This was in the end of the year 1863, the first day of which had witnessed the issuing of the Supplementary Proclamation announcing the fulfillment of the promise. For some weeks the painter, after his manner, brooded silently over his design. Gradually the group assumed in his imagination such a form and arrangement as satisfied his conception of what the assembly must have been. Mr. Carpenter is not with. out a decided tendency toward those lofty realms of human aspiration and emotional thought, the mystical and the supernatural ; and he records a coincidence in the matter of adjusting his design which is sufficiently striking. "In seeking a point of unity or action for the picture," he says, " I was impressed with the conviction that important modifications followed the reading of the Proclamation at the suggestion of the Secretary of State, and I determined upon such an incident as the moment of time to be represented. I was subsequently surprised and gratified when Mr. Lincoln himself, reciting the history of the Proclamation to me, dwelt particularly upon the fact, that not only was the time of its issue decided by Secretary Seward's advice," but that one of the most important words in the document was added through his strenuous representations."

The design thus determined, it remained to execute it, .and Mr. Carpenter first consulted Mr. Samuel Sinclair, now publisher of the IN". Y. Tribune, upon the means of interesting in the scheme Messrs. Schuyler Colfax and Owen Lovejoy, who should, in their turn, influence their personal and political friend the Presi. dent. This shrewd little piece of wire-pulling succeeded, for Mr. Sinclair, being the very next week in Washington, went with Mr. Colfax to Mr. Lincoln, explained the plan, and without much difficulty obtained his assent.

The road was now clear for the execution of the ambitious scheme of the artist ; but how was he to travel in it ? " Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges ?" — and besides, he had not the means for such unscriptural expenditure, even were he so anti-biblical as to make it. A second coincidence attended the solution of the difficulty. He left home one morningj pondering deeply upon the financial lion in his path ; and contriving and rejecting, with increasing discouragement, one expedient after another, he reached the door of the building where his studio was established, and was about to enter. At that moment he happened to observe a gentleman who was intently examining some pictures in a shop window. Something familiar in the air of the figure attracted the artist, and when in a few moments the gazer turned round, it proved to be Frederick A. Lane, Esq., an old acquaintance who, jive years before, had lived near Mr. Carpenter in Brooklyn, and, like him, had at that time been struggling hard for a living, though in the dry path of law, instead of the supposed more flowery ways of Art.

Mr. Carpenter asked Mr. Lane up into his studio,

THE PICTUKE. 35

and there was some comparing of old reminiscences and late experiences. The lawyer had prospered in business and in purse ; the artist was still poor. Suddenly the sensitive painter was stirred with the thought that this meeting was " providential." A less spontaneous man would have reckoned this a mere conceit, and would have reasoned away from it. But the mental constitution of an artist has often much of the same quickness of intuition and instinctive reliance ujwn it, which is usually attributed to women. Mr. Carpenter at once briefly laid before his visitor his whole scheme. Mr. Lane quietly heard him through. " Are you sure of Mr. Lincoln's consent and co-operation ?" he asked. The painter told him of the* promise which Messrs. Sinclair and Colfax had received. " Then," said this liberal friend, " you shall paint the picture. Take plenty of time. Make it the great work of your life ; and draw upon me for whatever funds you will require to the end."

On the 4th of February, 1864, Mr. Carpenter went to Washington, and calling next day upon Hon. Owen Lovejoy, obtained a note of introduction to Mr. Lincoln. After waiting in vain for two days for an opportunity to present it, the artist at last went up to the White House on the afternoon of Saturday, and taking his place in what the French call the " tail" of citizens who were filing past the patient President, each shaking hands and uttering some observation as they went, like so many customers popping their letters into some crowded post-office window, he took, his turn, and was named to Mr. Lincoln. After a moment's recollection, Mr. Lincoln said, "O yes, I know — this is the painter;"

o6 THE PICTURE AND THE MEN.

and standing up as tall as he could — which was much —he added, with a queer look, " Do you think, Mr. Carpenter, that you can make a handsome picture of me fn The painter was taken aback at this very direct query, and too polite to say Ko, and too honest to say Yes, he answered at random, coming, however, enough to the point to ask if he could have a private interview after the reception. " I reckon !" was the reply of the Executive, as he went gravely on again with his pumphandling.

When this tiresome ceremony was. over, the painter was admitted to the President's office, where Mr. Lincoln was already hard at work signing acts of Congress. He ga\ne his visitor a seat, and received and read Mr. Lovejoy's note of introduction. Then, taking off his spectacles, he turned to the artist and said, in his characteristic way, " Well, Mr. Carpenter, we will turn you in loose here" — as if the painter were a harmless sort of beast, safe in pasture without " poke" or " hobbling" — " and try to give yon a good chance to work out your idea." It is curious to consider how many of the rulers of the earth would have thus assented to an artist's proposal for a great historical picture of one of the turning-points in human progress, in a sentence of twenty-one words (not counting the name of the person spoken to), all monosyllables but one, and expressing their thought with a metaphor accurate, forcible, a*nd taken from the pasture and the oxen.

The enthusiastic artist began to express as well as he could, one or. another lofty idea of his intended work. The President paid little attention to this, but after his fashion went straight to the root of the matter and proceeded to give his auditor a history of the circumstances. We transcribe Mr. Lincoln's own words as given by Mr. Carpenter.*

"It had got to be midsummer, 1802. Things had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing ; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics, or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy; and without consultation with or the knowledge of the Cabinet, I prepared the original draft of the proclamation, and, after much anxious thought, called a Cabinet meeting upon the subject. This was the last of July, or the first part of August, 1862. This Cabinet meeting took place upon a Saturday. All were present, excepting Mr. Blair, the postmaster-general, who was absent at the opening of the discussion, but came in subsequently. I said to the Cabinet that I had resolved upon this step, and had not called them together to ask their advice, but to lay the subject-matter of a proclamation before them ; suggestions as to which would be in order after they had heard it read. Mr. Lovejoy was in error when he informed you [viz., Mr. Carpenter, at a previous time] that it excited no comment, excepting on the part of Secretary Seward. Various suggestions were offered. Secretary Chase wished the language stronger in reference to the arming of the blacks ; Mr. Blair, after he came in, deprecated the policy on the ground that it would cost the Administration the fall elections.