To say that the upcoming inauguration of Joe Biden is causing stress and anxiety in our country is an understatement. The fears of what may or could happen during the inauguration are running rampant. These concerns are causing certain precautions are being taken, such as additional troops are being brought into Washington DC in advanced of event. To Americans today, this is s0 troubling partly because we have never experienced this type of anxiety around the inauguration of a President. We have been blessed to witness countless peaceful transitions of power between one administration to another. But what if I told you that the people alive during 1860 Presidential election were experiencing similar fears and were seeing similar precautions taken in advance of their President elect being sworn in? Of course that man was not Joe Biden, but Abraham Lincoln.
Today inauguration day is January 20, but 1861 March 4 was the date when the transfer of power from the Buchannan administration to the Lincoln administration would take place. The election of Lincoln had once again fanned the flames of divisions within the country, with Southern states threatening to secede from the Union if Lincoln was inaugurated as President. You think people today have a right to cry "not my President" when their candidate doesn't win? In the 1860 election Lincoln received only 40% of the popular vote, was not even on the ballot in some Southern states, and in fact, did not carry a single Southern state. It is easy to see then why the Southern states were irate about Lincoln being elected. Along with those facts, Lincoln was elected on a platform that declared he would not support extending slavery into new territories. Southerners looked on this as a direct assault on their livelihood, and were fearful that their way of life would be wiped out. Needless to say, all of these factors created an atmosphere of tension in the country, and set the city of Washington DC on edge as inauguration day approached.
A political supporter of Lincoln said that "the air was still thick with rumors of 'rebel plots' to assassinate Mr. Lincoln, or to capture him and carry him off before he could take hold of the reins of power." (and all this before the days of social media!) It fell to the aging military
General Winfield Scott to keep the President-elect safe during the inaugural process. Although this was his role as a general of US Army, it did not prevent people from threatening Scott's life if he "dared to protect the ceremony by military force." Despite these threats, Scott rounded up what little military he had at his disposal, and according to a reporter he [Scott] made sure "his [Lincoln] carriage was closely surrounded on all sides by marshals and Calvary, so as almost to hide it from view." Scott also lined the carriage route with rooftop snipers, and the whispers were that their orders were to shoot anyone who crowded too close to Lincoln's carriage.
On Inauguration day, Julia Taft was 16 years old and was witness to this historic event. She watched with her mother as Lincoln and his predecessor rode past in their carriage to the inauguration. Although Taft was sad to see Buchannan leave, as she felt he was the ideal of what a President should be, she was surprised at the hostility within the crowd towards Lincoln. She claims to have heard one woman in the crowd say "There goes the Illinois ape, the cursed abolitionist. But he will never come back alive."
After attending the swearing in of Vice President Hannibal Hamlin at the Senate Chamber, the Presidential party proceeded to the Capitol east front (today the process takes place on the Capitol west front) for Lincoln's swearing in. As Lincoln stood to give his inaugural address, one of his former foes, Judge Douglas, of the infamous Lincoln Douglas debates, stepped forward on the platform to hold Lincoln's hat when he could not find a place to put it. Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, sat behind Lincoln as he gave his speech. Horace would later recall that during Lincoln's speech, he [Horace] sat "expecting to hear its delivery arrested by the crack of a rifle aimed at his heart, but it pleased God to postpone the deed, though there were forty times the reasons for shooting him in 60 than there was in 65, and at least forty times more intent on killing or having him killed. No shot was then fired however, for his hour had not yet come."
At the conclusion of his speech, Lincoln took the oath of office, finally breaking the tension.
One New Englander remembered "When the address closed and the cheering subsided, Taney rose, almost as tall as Lincoln, he administered the oath, Lincoln repeating it; and as the words 'preserve, protect, and defend the constitution' came ringing out, he bent and kissed the book [bible]; and for one, I breathed freer and gladder than for months. The man looked like a man, and acted like a President." Across town Charles Francis Adams Jr remarked "the long, eager, anxious struggle was over. A Republican (Lincoln was the first ever Republican elected to the office of the President) President was safely inaugurated."
Of course not everyone was relieved that Lincoln had been safely inaugurated, and although Lincoln survived the event unscathed, the country would not. This inauguration would lead to seeing the decades old threats of secession from the Southern states finally put into action, ushering in five bloody years of war. Lincoln would prove his leadership ability during the coming trials of the following years, and his legacy would be debated and studied for centuries to come.
We can only hope that the 2021 inauguration follows the path of the 1860 inauguration event in that all fears and threats prove unfounded, and a peaceful transition of power takes place. However, we certainly hope that that is where the similarities end, and instead of increased division and violence, we work to come back together and to continue to move our great country forward in unity and peace.
Comments