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Chapter VIII - Two Presidents Take Office
Two Presidents Take Office 1861
On February 11, 1861, in the midst of this impossible situation, two men both left their homes and headed toward their separate presidential inaugurations. Jefferson Davis, president of the newly formed Confederate States of America, affectionately bid farewell to his wife and numerous slaves in Mississippi and slowly headed by train for the new Confederate capitol in Montgomery, Alabama. There he was heartily greeted by a band and a delegation of staunch supporters who introduced Davis to the large, enthusiastic crowd at the railroad station as the "man of the hour." As the rousing strains of "Dixie" faded away, Davis forcefully told the crowd that the new government was ready to use "the sword" against the "northeastern states of the American Union if necessary." Describing his first day as president, Davis later wrote, "Upon my weary heart was showered smiles, [congratulations] and flowers." Regardless of the widespread optimism which surrounded him, though, Davis accurately predicted "troubles and thorns innumerable" for the future.
On the same day that Davis victoriously left for Alabaman Abraham Lincoln quietly departed by train from Springfield, Illinois, to Washington, D.C., cloaked in a cold drizzle and an atmosphere of gloom. His train meandered across the country through the lush Ohio and Mohawk valleys and alongside the Hudson River toward New York City. Frequently, his train stopped so that he could mingle with farmers, immigrants, miners, slave holders and merchants. Years later people still recalled how the gangly, soft-spoken Lincoln had stopped to compellingly share his views on the "impending crisis."
As his train moved closer to Washington and his much anticipated inaugural speech, Lincoln faced the seemingly insurmountable dilemma of how to maintain the authority of the federal government without provoking war in the states that had recently left the Union. As if this were not enough, Lincoln and his advisors also had to contend with persistent rumors of an assassination plot in Baltimore. Tempers were at a fever pitch as the agitated citizens of Maryland, the "middle ground state," decided whether to stay within the Union or secede. Apparently, those in conspiracy against Lincoln intended to murder him as he rode from one train to another in Baltimore. A skeptical Lincoln refused to believe the rumor and told his advisors he would not "forgo his engagements for the next day" in Philadelphia.
When additional information trickled in about the assassination plot, Lincoln reluctantly changed his mind, deciding to make a very brief stop in Baltimore, secretly continuing on to Washington. Disguised in a brown hat and an overcoat and protected by discreet bodyguards armed with hidden knives and revolvers, Lincoln inconspicuously boarded the last sleeping car of a train slowly pulling out of the station. The berth he hid in was so short that he had to double up his long, thin legs as he lay in the cramped quarters silently worrying about the safety of this family. Lincoln later recalled that at approximately 3:15 in the chilly morning he could hear a man drunkenly singing "Dixie" just outside the passing train car.
At dawn on February 23, ten days before he would address the nation, Lincoln's train arrived in Washington. This same train would carry his body back to Springfield in the even narrower accommodations of a wooden box after his assassination four years later. But at the time of Lincoln's inauguration, who could have foreseen that seeds of dissension buried within our Constitution would produce a tragic harvest only seventy-four years after its creation? Not only Lincoln but also hundreds of thousands of other men, women and children, both free and slave, were about to become victims of our Constitution's inherent shortcomings and contradictions.
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