Rise to Greatness by David Von Drehle Read Free Book Online

once come within a single vote of abolishing slavery. Lincoln believed that if he could coax Delaware to free its slaves, the result would be the snowball that starts the avalanche. Maryland would soon follow suit, and then the other border slave states, Missouri and Kentucky, would do the same. This would sap Confederate morale while galvanizing support for the North among antislavery Europeans. The tide of the war would turn, the Constitution would be preserved, and slavery would be on the path to extinction—all because of Delaware.
    The trouble was that Delaware did not care for abolitionists, a fact made perfectly clear in the 1860 election, when the state chose for its senators “two of the most truculent proslavery Democrats on Capitol Hill.” But Lincoln was undeterred, and was crafting a tiptoe process of gradual emancipation in which the federal government would pay up to $500 for each slave set free. He planned to propose that Delaware immediately free all slaves over the age of thirty-five and also declare freedom for all children born to slaves henceforth. When every slave in the state had reached the age of thirty-five, the gradual process would be complete, although Lincoln suspected that total emancipation would come more quickly once partial emancipation got under way. “If Congress will pass a law authorizing the issuance of bonds for the payment of the emancipated Negroes in the border states,” he told a friend, “Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri will accept the terms.” After that, the gradual death of slavery would be inevitable. Delaware, he believed, was “the initiative to hitch the whole thing to.”
    The plan seemed eminently reasonable to Lincoln. But these were not reasonable times. Many of those who tolerated slavery immediately attacked his proposal as an unprecedented federal intervention in what was properly a state-level issue. Meanwhile, antislavery forces in Congress and the press grew increasingly outraged by what they saw as Lincoln’s pussyfooting. “Timid, vacillating, & inefficient” was Senator Chandler’s assessment of the president’s strategy for dealing with slavery. When Senator Wade told the president on New Year’s Eve that he was “murdering [the] country by inches,” he was giving voice to the feelings of many.
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    Lincoln shook the last dignitary’s hand; then, precisely at noon, as The New York Times reported, “the gates were thrown open to the public, and the immense multitude made a simultaneous rush for the reception room.” Scrambling up the mansion driveway, jostling for advantage as they passed through the doors, the crowd slowed near the East Room, where the Lincolns had relocated to greet the general public. Care had been taken to protect Mary’s recent purchases. Protective cloths were laid over the East Room carpets, marking a path from the doors, past the president, to a flight of temporary steps through a tall window and down to the lawn.
    Attorney General Bates fretted about the crowd “overwhelming the poor fatigued President,” and by the end of the reception Lincoln’s right hand was indeed numb and trembling. In two hours, the president had shaken hundreds if not thousands of hands. “There certainly never was a man who [shook hands] with the celerity and abandon of President Lincoln,” wrote one observer. “He goes it with both hands, and hand over hand, very much as a sailor would climb a rope. What is to the satisfaction of all is, that he gives a good honest, hearty shake, as if he meant it.” Lincoln’s aides were constantly trying to limit the time he spent meeting office seekers, grieving mothers, delegations of churchmen, and other visitors, but the president understood keenly the value of these encounters. Further, he scoffed at fears for his safety. “Anything that kept the people themselves away from him he disapproved,” said Hay.
    Lincoln knew that these were the citizens who paid the taxes