Abraham Lincoln Inaugurated as President

March 4, 1861 

Abraham Lincoln Inaugurated as President

Abraham Lincoln

A political supporter recalled the turbulent atmosphere of Washington, D.C. shortly before Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861. "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 government."

Lincoln's safety and security became the responsibility of Lieutenant-General Winfield Scott, celebrated war hero and head of the U.S. Army. He wrote of this duty as "the most critical and hazardous event with which I have ever been connected." Not only was Lincoln's life endangered by Southern secessionists, but Scott himself received many death threats if he "dared to protect the ceremony by military force." Scott rounded up as many soldiers as possible from his scant forces, so when Lincoln rode to the Capitol, a reporter noted, "His carriage was closely surrounded on all sides by marshals and cavalry, so as almost to hide it from view."

By 1861 presidential inaugurations had well established customs. The outgoing president usually escorted the president-elect in a procession down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol, starting at Willard's Hotel on 14th Street. On Lincoln's inauguration day 16-year-old Julia Taft and her mother watched the procession from a hardware store because the Capitol might prove too dangerous. "As we took our places a file of green-coated sharpshooters went through up to the roof. The whisper went round that they had received orders to shoot at any one crowding toward the President's carriage."

Julia watched Lincoln and his predecessor ride by in an open carriage. She admitted she "suffered a pang of sorrow at the going of that lovable gentleman of the old school, President Buchanan. Up to that time he had been my ideal of what a President should be." She noticed the crowd seemed hostile toward Lincoln and heard a woman remark, "There goes that Illinois ape, the cursed Abolitionist. But he will never come back alive."

Inaugural Procession

When the presidential party reached the Capitol, the next stop was the Senate chamber. Here the outgoing vice president, John Breckinridge, spoke briefly and his successor, Hannibal Hamlin, took the oath of office. Mary Lincoln's cousin witnessed the scene: "Judges in their silk gowns, Senators, Members of the House, and the members of the diplomatic corps, in their brilliant uniforms, were assigned prominent places ... Mrs. Lincoln and her party occupied the diplomatic gallery."

The audience in the Senate chamber followed Lincoln to the Capitol east front (modern inaugurations use the west front). Senator Edward D. Baker, a longtime friend of the Lincolns, introduced the president-elect to a crowd of about 25,000 people. Carl Schurz, another political friend, watched the proceedings intently. "I saw Lincoln step forward to the desk upon which the Bible lay -- his rugged face, appearing above all those surrounding him, calm and sad." 

He scrutinized three other dignitaries on the platform. The first was Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the new president's "defeated antagonist, the 'little giant' of the past period, who, only two years before, had haughtily treated Lincoln like a tall dwarf." Douglas proved a vigorous political rival in Illinois, famous for the joint debates he and Lincoln held during the Senate race. Douglas won the election and challenged Lincoln for the presidency, but became a bit player in the great inaugural drama. Only a few months later he would die in Chicago.

Lincoln pulled out a pair of reading glasses, secured his manuscript with a gold-headed cane, and tried to lay down his new silk hat. Schurz said, "I witnessed the remarkable scene when Lincoln, about to deliver his inaugural address, could not at once find a convenient place for his hat, and Douglas took that hat and held it like an attendant, while Lincoln was speaking." A reporter wrote that Douglas responded to the speech saying, "Good," "That's so," "No coercion," and "Good again."

Schurz also observed James Buchanan, "the man who had done more than any other to degrade and demoralize the National Government and to encourage the rebellion, now to retire to an unhonored obscurity..." As for 83-year-old Roger Taney, he said, "I saw the withered form of Chief Justice Taney, the author of the famous Dred Scott decision, that judicial compend of the doctrine of slavery, administer the oath of office to the first President elected on a distinct anti-slavery platform." Taney died in office three years later, and Lincoln filled the position with abolitionist Salmon Chase.

Capital Building 1861

Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, sat behind Lincoln during the speech, "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 was forty times the reason for shooting him in 1860 that there was in '65, and at least forty times as many intent on killing or having him killed. No shot was then fired, however; for his hour had not yet come."

The ceremony ended with the oath of office, breaking the tension. Said a young New Englander, "When the address closed and the cheering subsided, Taney rose, and 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 a man and a President."

Across town, Charles Francis Adams, Jr. remarked, "the long, eager, anxious struggle was over. A Republican President was safely inaugurated." Walking home, he encountered Senator Charles Sumner, who thought Lincoln's speech was "best described by Napoleon's simile of 'a hand of iron and a velvet glove.'" When Adams reached home he found his father "in high glee" over the inaugural. "Thus, that day, every one was, as [Secretary of State] Seward predicted they would be, 'satisfied.'"

On the day after the inauguration a local editor wrote, "In this city there are no two opinions relative to the ability of President Lincoln's inaugural. All regard it as being a State paper of great force of reasoning; while all friends of the Union of all parties assent to most of its conclusions. The few disunionists left among us to-day ... of course fail to see propriety in its exposition of the President's obligation to execute the laws of the land as far as he has power to do so."

Response from Southerners was predictably negative. A New York Times reporter wrote, "The Inaugural Address is the subject of much excited comment among Southern politicians here. Hon. John Bell is said to pronounce it a declaration of war, and to declare that he shall urge Tennessee to prepare for conflict. This is very doubtful. Some Southern men consider it a hostile paper clothed in the most pacific and conciliatory language, or, in other words, that it presents a basis for either war, or peace."

Live Long and Prosper....

A Few Words About the National Anthem

Cover of sheet music for "The Star-Spangled Banner"

I noticed on my calendar that today, March 3rd, is the anniversary of the signing of the law (in 1931 by President Herbert Hoover) that officially made “The Star Spangled Banner” the national anthem of the United States of America. Being a bit of a history buff –and a patriot who still believes in standing at attention and occasionally even gets a tear in his eye when the Anthem is played properly, I thought this would be a great time to do a blog about the Anthem and how it came to be “The National Anthem”.

197 years ago, on September 3, 1814, Francis Scott Key and John Stuart Skinner set sail from Baltimore aboard the ship HMS Minden, flying a flag of truce on a mission approved by President James Madison. Their objective was to secure the exchange of prisoners, one of whom was Dr. William Beanes, the elderly and popular town physician of Upper Marlboro and a friend of Key’s who had been captured in his home. Beanes was accused of aiding the arrest of British soldiers. Key and Skinner boarded the British flagship HMS Tonnant on September 7 and spoke with Major General Robert Ross and Vice Admiral Alexander Cochrane over dinner while the two officers discussed war plans. At first, Ross and Cochrane refused to release Beanes, but relented after Key and Skinner showed them letters written by wounded British prisoners praising Beanes and other Americans for their kind treatment.

Because Key and Skinner had heard details of the plans for the attack on Baltimore, they were held captive until after the battle, first aboard HMS Surprise (Yes, Margaret, the same HMS Surprise featured in Master and Commander) and later back on HMS Minden. After the bombardment, certain British gunboats attempted to slip past the fort and effect a landing in a cove to the west of it, but they were turned away by fire from nearby Fort Covington, the city's last line of defense.

During the rainy night, Key had witnessed the bombardment and observed that the fort’s smaller "storm flag" continued to fly, but once the shell and Congreve rocket barrage had stopped, he would not know how the battle had turned out until dawn. By then, the storm flag had been lowered and the larger flag had been raised.

Key was inspired by the American victory and the sight of the large American flag flying triumphantly above the fort. This flag, with fifteen stars and fifteen stripes, came to be known as the Star Spangled Banner Flag and is today on display in the National Museum of American History, a treasure of the Smithsonian Institution. It was restored in 1914 by Amelia Fowler, and again in 1998 as part of an ongoing conservation program.

Aboard the ship the next day, Key wrote a poem on the back of a letter he had kept in his pocket. At twilight on September 16, he and Skinner were released in Baltimore. He completed the poem at the Indian Queen Hotel, where he was staying, and entitled it "Defense of Fort McHenry."

Note: The words "the hireling and slave" (in the 3rd stanza) allude to the fact that the British attackers had many ex-slaves in their ranks, who had been promised liberty and demanded to be placed in the battle line "where they might expect to meet their former masters."

Key gave the poem to his brother-in-law, Judge Joseph H. Nicholson. Nicholson saw that the words fit the popular melody "The Anacreontic Song", of English composer John Stafford Smith, which was the official song of the Anacreontic Society, an 18th-century gentlemen's club of amateur musicians in London. Nicholson took the poem to a printer in Baltimore, who anonymously printed broadside copies of it—the song’s first known printing.

Francis Scott Key's original manuscript

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson ordered that "The Star-Spangled Banner" be played at military and other appropriate occasions. Although the playing of the song two years later during the seventh-inning stretch of the 1918 World Series is often noted as the first instance that the anthem was played at a baseball game, evidence shows that the "Star-Spangled Banner" was performed as early as 1897 at opening day ceremonies in Philadelphia and then more regularly at the Polo Grounds in New York City beginning in 1898. However, the tradition of performing the national anthem before every baseball game began in World War II. Today, the anthem is performed before the beginning of all MLS, NBA, NFL, MLB and NHL games (with at least one American team playing), as well as in a pre-race ceremony portion of every NASCAR race. In Baltimore, where the anthem was written, fans at the Baltimore Orioles, Baltimore Ravens, and Maryland Terrapins game often yell "O!" when the anthem reaches the line, "Oh, say does that Star Spangled...". This began because one of the common nicknames for the Orioles is the "O's".

On November 3, 1929, Robert Ripley drew a panel in his syndicated cartoon, Ripley's Believe it or Not!, saying "Believe It or Not, America has no national anthem". In 1931, John Philip Sousa published his opinion in favor, stating that "it is the spirit of the music that inspires" as much as it is Key’s "soul-stirring" words. By a law signed on March 3, 1931 by President Herbert Hoover, "The Star-Spangled Banner" was adopted as the official national anthem of the United States.

Lyrics

O! say can you see by the dawn's early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming,

Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,

O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?

And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;

O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave,

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,

Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,

In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:

'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore

That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion,

A home and a country should leave us no more?

Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps' pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand

Between their loved home and the war's desolation.

Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!

Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,

And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

Note: During the Civil War, Oliver Wendell Holmes added a fifth stanza to the song in 1861 which appeared in songbooks of the era.

When our land is illumined with liberty's smile,

If a foe from within strikes a blow at her glory,

Down, down with the traitor that tries to defile

The flag of the stars, and the page of her story!

By the millions unchained,

Who their birthright have gained

We will keep her bright blazon forever unstained;

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave,

While the land of the free is the home of the brave.

Custom

United States Code, 36 U.S.C. § 301, states that during a rendition of the national anthem, when the flag is displayed, all present except those in uniform should stand at attention facing the flag with the right hand over the heart; Members of the Armed Forces and veterans who are present and not in uniform may render the military salute; men not in uniform should remove their headdress with their right hand and hold the headdress at the left shoulder, the hand being over the heart; and individuals in uniform should give the military salute at the first note of the anthem and maintain that position until the last note; and when the flag is not displayed, all present should face toward the music and act in the same manner they would if the flag were displayed. Military law requires all vehicles on the installation to stop when the song is played and all individuals outside to stand at attention and face the direction of the music and either salute, in uniform, or place the right hand over the heart, if out of uniform. Recently enacted law in 2008 allows military veterans to salute out of uniform, as well. Personal Comment: Unfortunately there is no penalty assigned to violations of this section of the U.S. Code. That is a shame because we have all seen a few who should be locked up for their behavior during the playing of our National Anthem.

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Some Advice for my College Friends

For those of you here in the good ‘ole US of A who are in college and are starting to make your ‘Spring Break’ plans, here is a little advise from Uncle Gary. Brochures in your travel agent's office may show a Mexico of sun, surf and R&R, but an escalating landscape of cartel violence should make any traveler stop and reconsider spring break plans that include Mexican destinations. There were more than 15,000 cartel-related deaths in Mexico in 2010 (including “tourists” in places like Acapulco). That's a seven-fold increase in just 4 years. In other words – go there and your biggest concerns are no longer SPF count and jellyfish. –I’m just saying…

Live Long and Prosper...