Lincoln: A Photobiography by Russell Freedman Read Free Book Online Page A

Democrats meeting in Baltimore nominated Stephen Douglas for president. Southern Democrats, unwilling to accept any Northerner, held their own convention in Richmond, Virginia, and nominated John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Another group, the Constitutional Union party, also entered the contest with John Bell of Tennessee as their candidate.
    It wasn't customary in those days for a Presidential candidate to campaign on his own behalf. Lincoln didn't even leave Springfield until after Election Day But his supporters carried on a spirited campaign, playing up Lincoln's humble background. At Republican rallies and parades all over the North, he was hailed as Honest Abe, the homespun rail-splitter from Illinois, a man of the people who was born in a log cabin and was headed for the White House.
    Shortly before the election, Lincoln received a letter from Grace Bedell, an eleven-year-old girl in Westfield, New York, suggesting that he grow a beard. "...you would look a great deal better for your face is so thin," she wrote. "All the ladies like whiskers and they would tease their husbands to vote for you." As he waited for the nation to vote, Lincoln took her advice.
    On Election Day—November 6, 1860—Lincoln waited in the Springfield telegraph office until he was certain of victory. Then he went out into the streets of Springfield to be greeted by fireworks and torchlight parades. Mary joined him, radiant and beaming, at a Republican Ladies' supper that evening. A guest reported that the women paid "solicitous attention" to the president-elect, fetching him coffee, serving him sandwiches, and serenading him with "vigorous Republican choruses."

 
    Republican victory poster, 1860.

 
    A crowd of well-wishers gathers in front of Lincoln's home to celebrate his nomination as Republican candidate for president in 1860. Lincoln is standing to the right of the doorway in a white summer suit.
    Lincoln received 1,866,000 votes and carried every Northern state. Douglas had 1,377,000 votes, and Breckinridge, the candidate of the Southern Democrats, 850,000 votes. The North had swept Lincoln into office. In the South, his name hadn't even appeared on the ballot.

 
    Lincoln's last beardless portrait, August 13, 1860.

 
    The president-elect sprouts whiskers, November 25, 1860.
    Douglas had warned that a Republican victory would bring on "a war of sections, a war of the North against the South, of the free states against the slave states—a war of extermination." Southern leaders were saying that they would never accept this "Black Republican" as president. They were already threatening to withdraw from the Union and form an independent slave nation. An Atlanta newspaper declared: "Let the consequences be what they may ... the South will never submit to such humiliation and degradation as the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln."
    In December—three months before Lincoln took his oath of office—South Carolina led the way. The state announced that it had seceded from the Union. It was now a sovereign nation, dedicated to the preservation of slavery.

 
    Lincoln with a full beard, January 13, 1861. "Old Abe is ... puttin' on (h)airs!" a newspaper joked.

 
    February
9,
1861. Two days later, Lincoln left for Washington to become the first bearded president of the United States.

 
    Thousands of people gather in front of the unfinished U.S. Capitol to witness Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, 1861. Note the fashionable stovepipe hats scattered through the crowd.

FIVE
Emancipation
"
If my name ever goes into history, it will be for this act.
"
    On Inauguration Day—March 4, 1861—Washington looked like an armed camp. Cavalry and artillery had been clattering through the streets all morning. Troops were everywhere. Rumors of assassination plots, of Southern plans to seize the capital and prevent the inauguration, had put the army on the alert.
    Shortly after noon, the carriage bearing President James Buchanan and President-elect