The sun found a space in the clouds over downtown Indianapolis on the afternoon of February 11, 1861. Only two months before the attack on Fort Sumpter, the city’s mood was charged with gray speculation. It had been a fairly dry month, but there was enough melting snow the previous day to muddy the ditches lining the railroad tracks. President-elect Lincoln’s train had stopped several times as it came south from Lafayette with the Indiana Welcoming Committee on board. The people of the capital city had been preparing for a fortnight, and 28-year-old Benjamin Harrison, newly elected as court reporter, was on the arrangement committee. Bunting was drawn across Indianapolis and the railroad companies had issued discount tickets for Hoosiers from remote towns who wanted to see the man who’d become a lightning rod for the nation’s confusion. Republicans and Democrats were at each other’s throats, each blaming the other for the imminent downfall of the Union. According to Sievers, author of Hoosier Warrior, the Railsplitter left it to local Republican office seekers to speak frankly about human bondage, to which Harrison referred in 1860 when he campaigned against “the insidious inroads of the slavery power.”
party’s carriage was led forward in a parade of Indiana politicians, judges, military units, and officials, including Harrison. Lincoln stood for the entire trip and waved in response to the wall of sound bounding off the buildings. The parade route was directed east to Washington, north on Pennsylvania, west on Ohio, and south on Illinois. The journey ended at the Bates House hotel, which was reserved for the visitors (photo). It occupied the present location of the Embassy Suites near the Arts Garden at the NW corner of Illinois and Washington (Also once the site of Claypool Court).
Some reports estimated 50,000 people occupied the city during Lincoln’s brief visit. The National Republican newspaper (Feb 13, 1861) described the scene. At 5:00pm, 34 guns were fired to announce his arrival. His company unloaded at the rail crossing of Missouri and Washington Streets to the straining cheer of thousands of onlookers. Near the back platform, newly-elected Republican Governor Morton and Mayor Maxwell escorted the President-elect to a barouche pulled by four white horses. After a brief welcome from Morton, Lincoln was joined by Reception Committee Chairman George Steele, and the featured
Before dinner, Lincoln spoke to a Washington Street crowd of 2,000 from the hotel balcony. This was the first time Harrison had a good look at the new president. He remembered, “….it seemed to me hardly to be a glad crowd, and he not to be a glad man. There was no sense of culpability either in their hearts or in his; no faltering; no disposition to turn back, but the hour was shadowed with forebodings.” Harrison also recalled that the time was so perilous, and Lincoln so unknown and odd, that the great orator seemed to bear the weight of uncertainty on his back. (Continued on page 5)