Thursday, December 27, 1860
In Charleston, Governor Francis Pickens sends two men to Fort Sumter to demand that Major Robert Anderson return to Fort Moultrie. Anderson responded: “Make my compliments to the governor, and say to him that I decline to accede to his request; I cannot and will not go back.”
At the St. Nicholas Hotel in Springfield, President-elect Lincoln sits for sculpter Thomas Jones – and contemplates the wisdom of appointing Pennsylvanian Simon Cameron to his cabinet.
Monday, December 10, 1860
In Charleston, Francis W. Pickens takes office as governor of South Carolina which continues to move toward secession.
In Springfield, President-elect Lincoln attempts to stiffen Republican resolve against any compromise that involves the extension of slavery. He writes Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull a letter – which over the next few days would be replicated in different forms to other Republican congressmen from Illinois: “Let there be no compromise on the question of extending slavery. If there be, all our labor is lost, and, ere long, must be done again. The dangerous ground—that into which some of our friends have a hankering to run—is Pop. Sov. Have none of it. Stand firm. The tug has to come, & better now, than any time hereafter.”
Connecticut editor Gideon Welles, who will become secretary of the Navy in the Lincoln administration, writes him: “I would not intrude uponyou, but to offer my congratulations on the result of the late election, but our friend Gen’l Welch expressed an earnest desire that I would write you on the subject of issugin a document in some form that shoudl appease the discontented and violent portion ofour countrymen who have been defeated. At no time have I entertained an apprehension thatyou would sent out a proclamation or an official paper before you were in office, and your note to Mr. Fogg settles this question, but as it had been asserted so authoritatively and the temper exhibited in certain quarters is so excited, Gen’l W. (who has known my opinions) wishes me to say how cordially I approve of your conclusions. This I do most cheerfully and unqualifiedly…What then is to be done? Must we be maligned and misrepresented for the nextg three months? Shall the present hostile and erroneous feeling go on increasing. I am sorry to believe that the Administration and its partisans wish it. He suggested that Lincoln set forth his political position in a letter to a friend that might be reprinted.
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Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War 