Recorded in “Six Months at the White House”
Colonel Halpine, while serving as a member of General Halleck’s staff, had frequently to wait upon the President, both during official hours and at other times. On one of these occasions, Mr. Lincoln concluded some interesting remarks with these words: “It would never do for a President to have guards with drawn sabres at his door, as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were assuming to be, an emperor.”
“This expression,” writes Colonel Halpine, called my attention afresh to what I had remarked to myself almost every time I entered the White House, and to which I had very frequently called the attention both of Major Hay and General Halleck the utterly unprotected condition of the President’s person, and the fact that any assassin or maniac, seeking his life, could enter his presence without the interference of a single armed man to hold him back. The entrance-doors, and all doors on the official side of the building, were open at all hours of the day, and very late into the evening; and I have many times entered the mansion, and walked up to the rooms of the two private secretaries, as late as nine or ten o’clock at night, without seeing or being challenged by a single soul. There were, indeed, two attendants,–one for the outer door, and the other for the door of the official chambers; but these — thinking, I suppose, that none would call after office hours save persons who were personally acquainted, or had the right of official entry — were, [66] not unfrequently, somewhat remiss in their duties.
To this fact I now ventured to call the President’s attention, saying that to me — perhaps from my European education — it appeared a deliberate courting of danger, even if the country were in a state of the profoundest peace, for the person at the head of the nation to remain so unprotected.
“There are two dangers,” I wound up by saying; “the danger of deliberate political assassination, and the mere brute violence of insanity.”
Mr. Lincoln heard me through with a smile, his hands locked across his knees, his body rocking back and forth,–the common indication that he was amused.
“Now, as to political assassination,” he said, “do you think the Richmond people would like to have Hannibal Hamlin here any better than myself? In that one alternative, I have an insurance on my life worth half the prairie land of Illinois. And beside,” –this more gravely,–“if there were such a plot, and they wanted to get at me, no vigilance could keep them out. We are so mixed up in our affairs, that — no matter what the system established — a conspiracy to assassinate, if such there were, could easily obtain a pass to see me for any one or more of its instruments.”
“To betray fear of this, by placing guards or so forth, would only be to put the idea into their heads, and perhaps lead to the very result it was [67] intended to prevent. As to the crazy folks, Major, why I must only take my chances, the worst crazy people at present, I fear, being some of my own too zealous adherents. That there may be such dangers as you and many others have suggested to me, is quite possible; but I guess it wouldn’t improve things any to publish that we were afraid of them in advance.”
Another separate record.
When Union officer Major Charles G. Halpine suggested to President Lincoln that he ought to screen his visitors, the President replied: “Ah, yes! Such things do very well for you military people, with your arbitrary rule, and in your camps. But the office of president is essentially a civil one, and the affair is very different. For myself, I feel, though the tax on my time is heavy, no hours of my day are better employed than those which thus bring me again within the direct contact and atmosphere of our whole people.
Men moving only in an official circle are apt to become merely official, not to say arbitrary, in their ideas, and are apter and apter, with each passing day, to forget that they only hold power in a representative capacity. Now this is all wrong. I go into these promiscuous receptions of all who claim to have business with me twice each week, and every applicant for audience has to take his turn as if waiting to be shaved in a barber’s shop. Many of the matters brought to my notice are utterly frivolous, but others are of more or less importance, and all serve to renew in me a clearer and more vivid image of that great popular assemblage, out of which I sprang, and to which at the end of two years I must return. I tell you, Major, that I call these receptions my public-opinion baths; for I have but little time to read the papers and gather public opinion that way, and though they may not be pleasant in all their particulars, the effect as a whole is renovating and invigorating to my perceptions of responsibility and duty. It would never do for a president to have guards with drawn sabres at his door, as if he fancied he were, or were trying to be, or were assuming to be, an emperor.”
Source Don E. and Virginia E. Fehrenbacher, editors, Recollected Words of Abraham Lincoln (Chicago Tribune, February 16, 1884), p. 350.
Another record
Colonel Charles Halpine, an aide to General Henry Halleck, observed: “The entrance-doors, and all doors on the official side of the building, were open at all hours of the day, and very late into the evening; and I have many times entered the mansion, and walked up to the rooms of the two private secretaries, as late as nine or ten o’clock at night, without seeing or being challenged by a single soul. There were, indeed, two attendants, — one for the outer door, and the other for the door of the official chamber; but these — thinking, I suppose that none would call after office
hours save persons who were personally acquainted, or had the right of official entry — were, not unfrequently, somewhat remiss in their duties.”
Doorkeeper Thomas Pendel recalled:
Almost every day about ten o’clock I would accompany Mr. Lincoln to the War Department. I used to try to expedite his leaving the White House as much as possible, because people would always hang around and wait to see Mr. Lincoln and would thrust notes into his hands as he passed and in many ways annoy him. One day just as we got to the front door, after going out of the private corridor, there was a nurse who had been in the East Room with an infant in her arms and a little tot walking by her side. Just as we were about to pass out of the door, she got in front
of us. I took hold of the little tot gently, and moved her to one side so that we could get out. The President noticed this action, and rather disapproved of my moving the child to let him pass and said, ‘That’s all right; that’s all right’. The interpretation I put upon his words was that he would sooner have been annoyed by people thrusting letters into his hands than make a little child move aside for him to pass.
Those entering the White House for the President’s semi weekly receptions came through the main entrance. On one occasion, according to army Sergeant Smith Stimmel, several members of the presidential bodyguard decided to “slick up” and attend a reception. “We stood in the anteroom quite a while watching the dignitaries pass in before we could make up our minds to venture into the presence of the President,” wrote Stimmel later. “The Cabinet Ministers, the Judges of the Supreme Court, Senators and Congressmen, foreign Ambassadors in their dazzling uniforms, all accompanied by their wives, Army and Navy officers of high rank, and the wealth and aristocracy of the city, all in full evening dress, were there. Naturally we boys in the garb of the common soldier felt a little timid in the presence of such an assemblage. We stood talking for a while with the doorkeeper, whom we had come to know. When one of the boys expressed some reluctance about going in, the doorkeeper said, ‘Go on in; he would sooner see you boys than all the rest of these people.’”
THANKS TO THE CONTRIBUTOR, Mr. Kim Mettam, Perth, Australia
Courtesy of Mr. Kim Mettam, Perth, Western Australia: Major Charles Halpine is part of my Irish Family. A second cousin several generations removed. He was quite a character! When he migrated to America he added the “e” to his name, he was also a famous journalist and met a sad accidental death several years after the civil war. He died from the effects of an undiluted dose of chloroform. Incessant work brought on insomnia led him to use chloroform.
Related Story: Another Irish Halpin cousin several generations removed was Captain Robert Charles Halpin, he commanded ‘The Great Eastern” and solved the navigation and engineering problems of undersea cables. He was known as the “cable man ” and created the first connected world of the continents including Australia and the USA to Europe and Europe to Asia. I have several photos of him on the beach at Darwin in 1872 with the cable about to connect Australia to the rest of the world.
