Coming Fury, Volume 1 by Bruce Catton

Author:Bruce Catton [Catton, Bruce]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-83307-5
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2013-04-09T16:00:00+00:00

2: Memorandum from Mr. Seward

William Howard Russell, correspondent for the London Times, found Abraham Lincoln a more impressive figure than he had anticipated. He was long, craggy, strong, and awkward, as everyone said he was, but to study his “strange, quaint face and head, covered with its thatch of wild republican hair” was to get an impression of kindness and good sense, and although “the mouth was made to enjoy a joke,” there was plenty of firmness in it. Russell liked it when Lincoln told him that the Times was one of the greatest powers in the world, and he also liked the President’s whimsical addition—“in fact, I don’t know anything which has much more power, except perhaps the Mississippi River.” Greeting a convocation of diplomats at the White House, Lincoln apparently had to restrain an impulse to shake hands with everybody; smiling good-naturedly, he bowed instead, and his bow was ungainly, jerky, “a prodigiously violent demonstration,” as Russell felt, which “had almost the effect of a smack in its rapidity and abruptness.” All in all, Russell felt that by the standards of European society, Lincoln was hardly a gentleman, but no one who saw him could fail to take a second look at him.

After paying a more or less formal call at the White House, Russell was invited to a state dinner, held on the evening of March 28—the first affair of the kind for the new administration. The Englishman scanned the cabinet members with frank curiosity. Secretary Chase, clearly, was distinguished and intelligent, a man of power and energy; Cameron seemed able and adroit, with deep-set eyes over a thin mouth; Welles did not look like much, although Russell was assured that he was a man of ability even though he hardly knew one end of a ship from the other; and Blair was a hard, lean Scotchman, with a head that might be “an anvil for ideas to be hammered on.” Russell admitted he was agreeably disappointed in Mrs. Lincoln. She was pleasant, nicely gowned, and carried herself with dignity, and altogether seemed to be much more of a person than unkind secessionist ladies in Washington were saying she was. Russell noted that General Scott had come to the dinner but did not stay, having been compelled by some indisposition to retire.1

Scott’s retirement was perhaps advisable. He had just given Lincoln a memorandum that was about to raise a storm; it was so disturbing that when the party at last ended, Lincoln asked the cabinet members to remain and listen to it. As he read it, Lincoln seemed agitated, as well he might. Having previously urged that Fort Sumter be abandoned, Scott now was advising the same thing in respect to Fort Pickens, and was basing his advice, not on military considerations, but on straight political grounds.

It seemed doubtful, the general had written, “whether the voluntary evacuation of Fort Sumter alone would have a decisive effect upon the States now wavering between adherence to the Union and secession.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.