|
|
|
| Wednesday March 27, 1861 |
William Russell was a reporter for the London Times and kept a
diary of his impressions as he covered the war in both the North
and South. We join his account three weeks after Lincoln's
inauguration. The Southern states have seceded and established
the Confederacy but open warfare would not commence until April
12 when the Confederates bombard Fort Sumter in Charleston
harbor. Russell sits in an anteroom as the new President enters:
"March 27, 1861
Soon afterwards there entered, with a shambling, loose, irregular,
almost unsteady gait, a tall, lank, lean man, considerably over six
feet in height, with stooping shoulders, long pendulous arms,
terminating in hands of extraordinary dimensions, which, however,
were far exceeded in proportion by his feet. He was dressed in an
ill-fitting, wrinkled suit of black, which put one in mind of an
undertaker's uniform at a funeral; round his neck a rope of black
silk was knotted in a large bulb, with flying ends projecting beyond
the collar of his coat; his turned-down shirt-collar disclosed a
sinewy muscular yellow neck, and above that, nestling in a great
black mass of hair, bristling and compact like a ruff of mourning
pins, rose the strange quaint face and head, covered with its
thatch of wild, republican hair, of President Lincoln.
The impression produced by the size of his extremities, and by his
flapping and wide projecting ears, may be removed by the
appearance of kindliness, sagacity, and the awkward bonhomie of
his face; the mouth is absolutely prodigious; the lips, straggling
and extending almost from one line of black beard to the other,
are only kept in order by two deep furrows from the nostril to the
chin; the nose itself - a prominent organ - stands out from the
face, with an inquiring, anxious air, as though it were sniffing for
some good thing in the wind; the eyes dark, full, and deeply set,
are penetrating, but full of an expression which almost amounts to
tenderness; and above them projects the shaggy brow, running
into the small hard frontal space, the development of which can
scarcely be estimated accurately, owing to the irregular flocks of
thick hair carelessly brushed across it.
One would say that, although the mouth was made to enjoy a
joke, it could also utter the severest sentence which the head
could dictate, but that Mr. Lincoln would be ever more willing to
temper justice with mercy, and to enjoy what he considers the
amenities of life, than to take a harsh view of men's nature and of
the world, and to estimate things in an ascetic or puritan spirit.
A person who met Mr. Lincoln in the street would not take him to
be what - according to the usages of European society - is called
a 'gentleman;' and, indeed, since I came to the United States, I
have heard more disparaging allusions made by Americans to him
on that account than I could have expected among simple
republicans, where all should be equals; but, at the same time, it
would not be possible for the most indifferent observer to pass
him in the street without notice. . . .