EPILOGUE
Let us buy one immense homestead for Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan . . . the Republic certainly owes them a debt of gratitude for the neglect to advocate in any hearty manner the cause of the Republic during its late struggle for existence. If we had been cursed with the active assistance of such friends, we should surely have gone to ruin.
—SYRACUSE DAILY JOURNAL, MAY 12, 1865
On the morning of April 15, Franklin Pierce waited at the Concord Post Office for updates on Lincoln’s condition. That evening a crowd gathered outside Pierce’s house, which displayed no signs of mourning, prepared to cause trouble. The former president came outside to address them. “I wish I could address to you words of solace. But that can hardly be done. The magnitude of the calamity, in all its aspects, is overwhelming. If your hearts are oppressed by events more calculated to awaken profound sorrow and regret than any which have hitherto occurred in our history, mine mingles its deepest regrets and sorrows with yours.
“It is not necessary for me to show my devotion for the Stars and Stripes by any special exhibition of any man or body of men . . . If the period which I have served our state and country in various situations, commencing more than thirty-five years ago, has left the question of my devotion to the flag, the constitution and the Union in doubt, it is too late now to resume it by any such exhibition as the enquiry suggests.” The crowd had listened to him silently. He bid them “Good night!” and they responded with “three cheers” for Pierce.
After the war, Pierce would spend considerable time trying to secure Jefferson Davis’s release from prison. Pierce was Davis’s first choice for an attorney, but his friends, unaware of his preference, enlisted someone else. The ex-president reread the body of Hawthorne’s work, knowing perhaps that an author can always be accessed through what he leaves behind. Famously secular, the only president who had affirmed rather than sworn the oath of office was baptized at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Concord, on the two-year anniversary of his devout wife’s death. “I have turned, I hope, with a submission of spirit to Him who is ‘the resurrection and the life.’” What sins he may have atoned for remained between him and God.
On April 16, 1865, a group of young men visited Julia Tyler on Staten Island.
“Madame, I beg pardon for disturbing you,” their leader said, “but we have called to ask for the Secession flag you have in your possession.”
“There is no such flag here,” replied Mrs. Tyler.
“I beg pardon again, but such a flag, if I am not mistaken, hangs over your parlor mantle-piece.”
Tyler denied it again. “You can look for yourself.” He did, and found it right where he was looking. The object in question, which bears a striking resemblance to the Confederate battle flag, was actually made by her sister ten years earlier. It was eventually returned.
Robert Tyler, the president’s oldest son, Confederate Register of the Treasury, had fled Richmond with Jefferson Davis. Dismissed in Charlotte, he was left destitute. James Buchanan, whose ambitions he had served over many years, sent him a check for $1,000. “Although I could not approve your course in favor of the secessionists,” Buchanan wrote, “yet I have never doubted the sincerity of your belief and the purity of your motives. Thank God! The war is over, and the Union has not been broken.”
Tyler responded that he was “not originally a disunionist, as I had no intention of leaving Pennsylvania at the commencement of the war. I was forcibly expelled, and lost all in a day—office, home, friends, and property—for which I had toiled for years.”
Ironically, in light of its multiple occupations during the war, Sherwood Forest remains the only home of any president occupied by his descendants.* President Andrew Johnson pardoned Julia Tyler, while John Tyler, never pardoned by name, was covered by a general amnesty for Confederate officials issued after the war. He remains the only president of the United States to die an enemy of his country.
* Two sons of his second youngest son, Tyler, are still alive at the time of this writing.
James Buchanan believed Lincoln was “a man of kindly and benevolent heart,” an impression that never changed. He wrote, “The ways of divine providence are inscrutable, and it is the duty of poor, frail man, whether he will or not, to submit to his mysterious dispensations. The war—the necessary war, forced upon us by the madness of the rebels—we all fondly hoped was drawing to a triumphant conclusion in the restoration of the Union with a return of friendly relations among all the states, under the auspices of Mr. Lincoln. At such a moment the terrible crime was committed, which hurried him into eternity; and God only knows what may be the direful consequences. I deeply mourn his loss from private feelings, but still more for the sake of the country. Heaven, I trust, will not suffer the perpetrators of the deed and their guilty accomplices to escape just punishment.” But “we must not despair for the Republic,” offering his encouragement at the presidency of Andrew Johnson, whom he had “known . . . for many years.”
The war over, Buchanan could now attempt the overriding ambition of his post-presidency. “The world is at last favored with James Buchanan’s book on the rebellion,” quipped the Lowell Daily Citizen. But contrary to his expectations, Buchanan would find his reputation materially unchanged from the day he left office. The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, “Nobody cares particularly what excuses Mr. Buchanan may offer for his official derelictions. We know what the effect of his vacillation was, and we have paid very dearly for the information . . . As a literary venture, Buchanan’s ‘last dying speech and confession’ would not command as wide a sale as the recollections of the hero of the last sensational murder.”
On the day Lincoln died, Millard Fillmore’s house was splashed with black ink, in retaliation for the fact that it was the only one on his block without mourning drape. The lack of recognition was attributable to a less sinister motive than the vandals suspected—Fillmore was simply out of town. Writing his condolences to Mary Lincoln, Fillmore said, “Sympathizing most deeply with you in your affliction, and understanding from the papers that you may be expected in this city on Thursday next, Mrs. Fillmore and myself would esteem it a favor if you and your family would make our house your house during your time in the city.” Robert Lincoln, on behalf of his mother, responded that they would not be in Buffalo on Thursday, and therefore unable to accept. “My mother is still confined to her room . . . and will not be able to travel for some weeks.”
A debate began in the newspapers regarding Fillmore’s role in the war. He saved some of these articles, positive and otherwise. One read, “Discussion of Mr. Fillmore’s course in connection with the war has been opened by his friends and social satellites. We seem to have no choice left us but to allow the use of our columns to those who desire to oppose, in a dignified manner, the effort that is being made to puff up the patriotism and loyalty of an ‘old public functionary.’” Another was from his neighbor of twenty years, who reminded the public of his loyalty, particularly his services at the outset of the war, reminding them that streets named after Fillmore in the South were changed to Davis and Beauregard and Lee.
On May 9, Fillmore spoke to the Buffalo Historical Society, formed in the midst of a Civil War, in the ultimate recognition that the past has value.
“Perhaps no member of this society appreciates more fully than I do, the difficult task which President Lincoln had to perform, and I am sure none can deplore his death more sincerely than I do.
“It is well known that I have not approved of all acts which have been done in his name during his administration, but I am happy to say that his recent course met my approbation, and I have looked forward with confident expectation that he would soon be able to end the war, and by his kind, conciliatory manner win back our erring and repentant brethren and restore the Union.” He expressed sympathy for President Johnson, “in being thus suddenly called to the helm of state.
“While, therefore, we justly deplore the loss of President Lincoln, let us never despair of the republic . . . Let us remember amidst all our grief and disappointments that there is an unerring Providence that governs this world, and that no one man is indispensable to a nation’s life; and let us look hopefully for the rainbow of peace that will surely succeed the storm if we do our own duty.”
As Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan reacted to the death of their successor, it fell once again to the Marquis de Chambrun, who was far enough away, to describe the situation accurately. “Nothing revealed to me more clearly the true greatness of America,” he wrote, than watching a nation, through its sorrow, invest its support in the new president. “Thus while I stood motionless and awed with sadness before Mr. Lincoln’s bloody remains, his country had already recovered self-possession. I then understood and realized that a nation may place her confidence in a chief without giving herself wholly to him; and that room still is left for great characters and great virtues in a people proud enough to believe that however pure, honest, and noble those to whom it entrusts governmental honors may be, itself remains greater yet than they.”
Abraham Lincoln assumed the presidency over the opposition of five of his predecessors, who feared that he would break the customs of the office that they had established and carefully cultivated. Their concerns were well founded. The American presidency is now a dynamic institution and powerful force for principle in the hands of the proper occupant. Enlarged to these new proportions, it could never again shrink to what it was before. In the last of the debates that made him famous, Lincoln argued that the cause for which he dedicated—and gave—his life was part of a struggle as ancient as humanity itself: whether a man had the right to control another man. The struggle continues to this day. The American people have often been governed by a chief executive who did not reflect their inherent wisdom, integrity, and exceptionalism. Often America has been bereft of the leadership it wanted. But we may find comfort in knowing that in hours of great crisis for the Republic, America has never failed to find the leader to match the moment.