The election results were decisive. The new president-elect had won the popular vote by a substantial margin and had won more electoral votes than his competitors combined. The election had been secure, and the results were unequivocal.
Yet the conservative faction rebelled against the result. They said they would not abide by the voice of the people. Elements inside the government tried to override the vote and disrupt the government. Tearing the Union apart was more acceptable to them then living with the election results. Shortly after the election this faction sought to divide the country in half. Before the president-elect could even arrive in Washington to be inaugurated, he knew he would face a divided nation.
The election was 1860 and the president-elect was Abraham Lincoln.
Before Lincoln could take office, the conservative faction (the Democrats in Lincoln’s time), led by South Carolina and joined shortly thereafter by six more Southern states, seceded from the Union. Four more would join not long after the inauguration of its first Republican president (the “liberals” of the time).
The inauguration almost didn’t happen.
Unwilling to accept the election results, these conservative states attempted to keep the president-elect from reaching Washington. After some smaller attacks failed, they planned to assassinate the president-elect as he approached Washington by train along the corridor between Philadelphia and the nation’s Capital. Their plan to have a mob attack the president-elect as he passed through Baltimore was thwarted as Lincoln altered his schedule to arrive early. With many traitors to the Union present in Washington, and some engaging in active sedition in the Capitol itself, General Winfield Scott to extra precautions to protect Lincoln during his inauguration ceremony.
In his first inaugural address, Lincoln reminded the crowd that as President, he had “the most solemn” oath to “preserve, protect, and defend” the government, even as some were trying to attack the nation from within.
I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
In this peroration, Lincoln hoped that the nation could remain united. Conservatives refused, and the war came. Four years and nearly 750,000 dead Americans later, Lincoln was reelected and offered a second inaugural address. In it he called for the nation, without malice, and with charity for all, to “strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
An earlier message to Congress reminded us the choices we make will be remembered.
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves…The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We — even we here — hold the power, and bear the responsibility.
The choice is up to us. Will we “nobly save or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth”?
We must.
We cannot escape history.
Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.
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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.
His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
