Every thoughtless Northerner went wild with joy.  At last the government had done something.  Even the Secretary of the Navy so far forgot himself as to telegraph to Wilkes “Congratulate you on the great public service you have rendered in the capture of the rebel emissaries."(14) Chandler promptly applauded the seizure and when it was suggested that perhaps the envoys should be released he at once arrayed himself in opposition.(15) With the truculent Jacobins ready to close battle should the government do its duty, with the country still echoing to cheers for Fremont and hisses for the President, with nothing to his credit in the way of military success, Lincoln faced a crisis.  He was carried through the crisis by two strong men.  Sumner, head and front of Abolitionism but also a great lawyer, came at once to his assistance.  And what could a thinking Abolitionist say after that!  Seward skilfully saved the face of the government by his management of the negotiation.  The envoys were released and sent to England.

It was the only thing to do, but Chandler and all his sort had opposed it.  The Abolition fury against the government was at fever heat.  Wendell Phillips in a speech at New York denounced the Administration as having no definite purpose in the war, and was interrupted by frantic cheers for Fremont.  McClellan, patiently drilling his army, was, in the eyes of the Jacobins, doing nothing.  Congress had assembled.  There was every sign that troubled waters lay just ahead.

XIX.  THE JACOBINS BECOME INQUISITORS

The temper animating Hay’s “Jacobins” formed a new and really formidable danger which menaced Lincoln at the close of 1861.  But had he been anything of an opportunist, it would have offered him an unrivaled opportunity.  For a leader who sought personal power, this raging savagery, with its triple alliance of an organized political machine, a devoted fanaticism, and the war fury, was a chance in ten thousand.  It led to his door the steed of militarism, shod and bridled, champing upon the bit, and invited him to leap into the saddle.  Ten words of acquiescence in the program of the Jacobins, and the dreaded role of the man on horseback was his to command.

The fallacy that politics are primarily intellectual decisions upon stated issues, the going forth of the popular mind to decide between programs presented to it by circumstances, receives a brilliant refutation in the course of the powerful minority that was concentrating around the three great “Jacobins.”  The subjective side of politics, also the temperamental side, here found expression.  Statecraft is an art; creative statesmen are like other artists.  Just as the painter or the poet, seizing upon old subjects, uses them as outlets for his particular temper, his particular emotion, and as the temper, the emotion are what counts in his work, so with statesmen, with Lincoln on the one hand, with Chandler at the opposite extreme.