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But the dismal commercial failure of Lincoln’s 1849 invention apparently taught the president-elect a valuable lesson: it was not always best to advocate untested ideas. Thus the man who had once proposed an ingenious precursor of the submarine now reined in his creativity, stifling both his voice and pen. Between his election and his inauguration, Lincoln withdrew into intractable official silence, even as the union crumbled during a period that Henry Adams memorably dubbed America’s “Great Secession Winter.”
Supporters called Lincoln’s silence “masterful inactivity” because it offended neither abolitionists nor secessionists. But this political hibernation, a void unimaginable in 21st century politics and 24-hour news cycles, perplexed and irritated many. As one correspondent embedded with the president-elect in Springfield, Ill., complained: “He laughs and jokes, gulping down the largest doses of adulation that a village crowd can manufacture, and altogether deports himself with the air of one who fails to comprehend the task which abolition fanaticism has thrust upon him.” Even generously acknowledging that his “silence is unquestionably creditable to his prudence and his modesty,” the pro-Republican New York Times lamented that “it has not been without its embarrassments.”
Library of CongressDuring his period as president-elect, Abraham Lincoln rarely discussed national affairs with anyone except his private secretaries, John Nicolay, left, and John Hay, right.Hindsight suggests that Lincoln’s refusal to tilt openly toward either coercion or concession still failed to stem the rush of Southern states to quit the Union, and was therefore a failure. And it’s true that, in one sense, “masterly inactivity” did nothing to discourage secession and war — and perhaps encouraged both, while making Lincoln himself seem unprepared to lead. So why did the great orator and gifted writer go mute at such a critical moment? And how should it affect our evaluation of our 16th president?
While many people derided the idea of “masterly inactivity” as a gloss on an inexperienced political mind, Lincoln’s approach was very much intentional. For one thing, silence was nothing new for him. He had said nothing for nearly a year, ever since returning from his triumphant Cooper Union Address in New York in February. Save for one final attempt to deliver a turgid lecture on “Discoveries and Inventions” (another invitation to symbolism) he adopted the ultimate back-porch strategy and retreated in isolation to Springfield.
Nominated by the Republicans in May, he extended his silence into the ensuing six-month general-election campaign. Instead, he encouraged surrogates, biographers, partisan newspapers, reprints of his old speeches and picture publishers circulating flattering new portraits to do the electioneering for him. Though one cartoonist depicted him as an organ-grinder’s monkey with a padlock sealing shut his lips, the strategy paid off yet again with a narrow but indisputable victory in November.
Having won the presidency while withholding new pronouncements, it is hardly surprising that Lincoln resisted requests for policy clarifications after Election Day as well. “I could say nothing which I have not already said, and which is in print and open for inspection for all,” he insisted. Conservatives demanding reassurances that he would not interfere with slavery where it existed and progressives eager that he denounce the earliest expressions of Southern secession as treason were equally disappointed. Saying nothing, Lincoln believed, did the least damage to his fragile winning coalition of moderate Westerners and abolitionist Easterners — a coalition that yet might be called upon to resist rebellion by force.
Not even South Carolina’s secession in mid-December stirred Lincoln back into the public arena. “Party malice,” not “public good,” he insisted, animated such demands. “They seek a sign, and no sign shall be given them.” Ample proof came from his own supporters that silence remained the preferred approach among Republicans. “There are a class of d—-d fools or knaves who want him to make a ‘union saving speech’ — in other words to set down to conciliate the Disunionists and fire-eaters,” warned the editor of the pro-Lincoln Chicago Tribune. “He must keep his feet out of all such wolf traps.” A Republican politician was even blunter: Lincoln, he said, should “not open his mouth, save only to eat.”
But there was more to Lincoln’s “masterly inactivity” than a reluctance to offend supporters or inflame opponents. Pride was involved, too, in a way seldom remembered by history. To “press a repetition” of his long-held views “on those who have refused to listen,” Lincoln insisted, “would be wanting of self-respect, and would have an appearance of sycophancy and timidity which would excite the contempt of good men, and encourage bad ones to clamor the more loudly.”
He was “not unmindful of the uneasiness which may exist in many parts of the country,” he privately conceded. But “nothing is to be gained by fawning around the ‘respectable scoundrels’ who got it up.” As he confided to one visitor, he would rather be “hung by the neck till he was dead on the steps of the Capitol before he would buy or beg a peaceful inauguration.”
Besides — and this crucial fact is often forgotten — Lincoln had not yet been formally or finally elected. True, he had won an outright majority of presidential electors in November. But their votes would not be officially counted until February, leaving ample time for mischief. Indeed, an effort soon got underway — in loyal New York, no less — to divert his electors to another candidate in order to block an outright Lincoln victory and throw the decision to the House of Representatives where, it was presumed, a more experienced and less provocative leader might emerge. Lincoln could ill-afford to confront, or even acknowledge, this outrageous threat. (As it turned out, not until General Winfield Scott ordered artillery to Capitol Hill to frighten dissidents would the crucial vote-counting proceed free of sabotage or surprise.)
Meanwhile, as the day of electoral reckoning approached, another effort got underway that similarly threatened to wrest control of the crisis from Lincoln. At Willard’s Hotel in Washington, veteran politicians from around the country gathered for a so-called National Peace Convention. Its goal was to draft a series of constitutional amendments designed to reverse secession and prevent war — before Lincoln ever took office.
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Just as Lincoln feared, the convention commenced by weighing the extension of slavery all the way to the Pacific (in defiance of the Republican Party platform), a guarantee to preserve it forever where it existed and a tight restriction on Congressional debate about its future. New slave territory meant new pro-slavery senators — and a permanent Congressional majority against free labor.
At this point, Lincoln at last broke his long silence—though the results hardly seemed masterly. Already en route from Illinois to Washington via New York for his swearing-in, he could not help but offer a series of informal, occasionally discordant and entirely forgettable addresses wherever his train stopped to refuel. Before the largest crowds ever to see a president-elect, he showed off his new whiskers, introduced his wife and urged audiences to wait for his inaugural address to learn his policy. Though neither these chats nor the more extended remarks he offered at various state capitols did little to inspire confidence, they displayed an amiability that at least diverted attention from the crisis — even as Jefferson Davis was making his own way to Montgomery, Ala., to take office as president of the new Confederacy.
Of much greater consequence, though unknown to the public, Lincoln also commenced issuing instructions to Republican allies on Capitol Hill on precisely how they should vote on whatever compromise bills ultimately reached Congress. These Lincoln marked “private” or “strictly confidential,” though he knew his allies would usefully circulate his views anyway. And there was no mistaking his policy now.
“Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery,” he all but ordered Senator Lyman Trumbull. “Have none if it. Stand firm. The tug has to come, & better now, than any time hereafter.” To Congressman Elihu Washburne he was equally explicit: “hold firm, as with a chain of steel.” Masterful inactivity had finally morphed into a form of secret dictatorship: quiet in public, loud and clear behind the scenes. Without his support, the convention’s toxic antidotes to the secession crisis died in Congress, just as Lincoln hoped.
By the time he rose on the Capitol portico for his inaugural on March 4, Lincoln had brilliantly employed his secret weapon of masterly inactivity to distance himself from sectional rancor, dispel fears of his alleged radicalism without appearing too conservative, preserve his tenuous political coalition, successfully discourage (at least until then) Upper South secession, buy time for careful Cabinet selection, guarantee his once-uncertain official election to the presidency and, most important of all, discourage compromise that would have violated his unyielding opposition to spreading slavery.
Masterly inactivity did not prevent secession or a war over slavery. But that was never Lincoln’s point — and any alternative would probably have sped things up. Instead, it bought him the time to prepare for the coming conflict, a fact that too few acknowledged at the time — or have given him credit for since.
Harold Holzer is the chairman of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Foundation and the author, co-author or editor of 36 books on Lincoln and the Civil War era, including Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech that Made Abraham Lincoln President and Lincoln President-Elect: Abraham Lincoln and the Great Secession Winter 1860-1861. His most recent work is The New York Times Complete Civil War, co-edited with Craig L. Symonds.