Damn'd on Earth: Was Abraham Lincoln's Martyrdom a Form of Suicide? by John Pharr

Author:John Pharr [Pharr, John]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Bowker
Published: 2020-08-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VII

POSSIBLE REASONS LINCOLN DISREGARDED SECURITY

Lincoln was often pressed for the reason he was so indifferent to security, to which he gave stock answers. In addition to these rationalizations not being consistent, or even making any sense in several instances, Lincoln had already recognized the validity of security concerns when he went through Baltimore early on his way to Washington. That recognition undercuts many of his later comments about how there is no danger and no need for security. Therefore one has to wonder what was really going on.

Did not want to be “walled off from the people” in a democracy.

Americans of Lincoln’s time abhorred trappings of power. The United States Constitution had been written to be the antithesis of the Old World of class and privilege bestowed by birth. Article I, §9, Clause Eight provides, “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” Likewise, Article I, §10, Clause One provides, “No State shall…grant any Title of Nobility.”

Regarding his lack of security, Lincoln explained, “It would never do for a President to have guards with drawn sabers at his door, as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were assuming to be an emperor.” Regarding his “open-door policy,” Lincoln said, “This ready means of access is, I may say, under our form of government, the only link or cord which connects the people with the governing power.” Lincoln objected to the guards Stanton assigned “because they made him feel like a king, and he hated it.”460

By letter dated December 29, 1860, Seward urged Lincoln to arrive in Washington early, without announcement. Lincoln didn’t see it that way. According to Nicolay, Lincoln “had no fondness for public display,’ but well understood “‘the importance of personal confidence and live sympathy’ between a leader and his constituents.” Lamon wrote that Lincoln consciously modeled his administration on that of Thomas Jefferson. “While Mr. Lincoln occupied the White House, his intercourse with his fellow-citizens was fashioned after the Jeffersonian ideal,” Lamon wrote. “He believed that there should be the utmost freedom of intercourse between the people and their President…The doors of the White House were always open…The ease with which he could be approached vastly increased his labor.”461

According to Nicolay and Hay, when they brought up the subject of assassination, Lincoln maintained that “both friends and strangers must have daily access to him in all manner of ways and places; his life was therefore in reach of anyone, sane or mad, who was ready to murder and be hanged for it; that he could not possibly guard against all danger unless he were to shut himself in an iron box, in which condition he could scarcely perform the duties of a President; by the hand of a murderer he could die but once; to go continually in fear would be to die over and over.

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