Lincoln Part 29

Thus two projects got under way at the same time. The Sumter mission, pressed chiefly by Welles and Blair, was largely a naval expedition commanded by Fox; the Pickens expedition, sponsored by Seward, was an army affair led by Meigs. The task forces preparing these fleets worked in secrecy and, partly because of interservice rivalries, partly because of antagonisms among cabinet members, each was kept largely in the dark about what its rival was doing. Inevitably there were contests for the limited resources available for these projects. Welles intended the navy's most powerful steamer, the Powhatan, to be part of Fox's fleet, but Seward wanted it for Meigs's expedition. Placing an order a.s.signing the ship to the Pickens fleet before the President in a pile of other doc.u.ments, he got Lincoln's signature. On learning what had happened, Welles dragged Seward to the White House, where, though it was nearly midnight, Lincoln had not yet gone to bed. Confronted with the problem, "he looked first at one and then the other, and declared there was some mistake." a.s.sured that there was no error, the President, as Welles remembered, "took upon himself the whole blame, said it was carelessness, heedlessness on his part" and that "he ought to have been more careful and attentive." He directed that the Powhatan be restored to Fox's expedition.

Even then there was further evidence of the total confusion that characterized the administration. Seward reluctantly telegraphed the President's message to New York, but the directive rea.s.signing the ship was signed "Seward." Lieutenant David D. Porter, in command of the Powhatan, received the new order just as he was leaving the New York harbor but declined to follow it; a directive from the Secretary of State could not supersede his original orders signed by the President of the United States. Consequently the Powhatan sailed off to a.s.sist in the Pickens expedition, where it was not needed, and Fox's Sumter fleet was weakened through what Fox's wife called "this cruel treachery."

On April 4, Lincoln decided to send Fox's expedition to Fort Sumter, and he notified Anderson that the fleet would attempt to provision the garrison and, in case it met resistance, to reinforce it. He had taken a decisive step, but not yet an irrevocable one. Since the fleet did not actually leave New York until four or five days later, he had a little more time for maneuver. That was cut drastically short on April 6, when he learned, as he feared, that his order to reinforce Fort Pickens had not been carried out. Meigs's expedition could not possibly reach Fort Pickens before Fort Sumter must be reinforced or surrendered.

By this time Seward was almost reconciled to the inevitable, but he made one more attempt to avert hostilities. Because he had given his word to the Confederate commissioners that Sumter would not be reinforced without notice, he wrung from the President a promise to warn South Carolina officials before sending a relief expedition. On April 6, Lincoln sent Robert S. Chew, a clerk in the State Department, to Charleston with orders to inform Governor Francis Pickens that "an attempt will be made to supply Fort-Sumpter with provisions only; and that, if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition, will be made, without further notice." Intended to avoid provoking South Carolina authorities, this message destroyed the slight possibility that Anderson could be secretly reinforced.

The President had little hope of results from Chew's mission; he knew from Hurlbut's report that the South Carolinians would attack any Union ship, even one known to contain only provisions. But, in addition to giving Seward's schemes a last chance, he was building a historical record to prove his peaceable intent throughout the crisis. By this point he was fairly sure that the Sumter expedition would lead to bloodshed. When the governors of Indiana, Ohio, Maine, and Pennsylvania suggested the desirability of putting their state militias in fighting shape, he replied, "I think the necessity of being ready increases. Look to it."

On April 12, while the Union fleet lay helpless offsh.o.r.e, the Confederates began bombarding Fort Sumter, and after thirty-four hours Anderson and his garrison were forced to surrender. The war had begun.

XI

Afterward Lincoln gave several explanations of his course during the Sumter crisis. In his July 4 message to Congress he spoke of his decision to supply Fort Sumter as contingent on the reinforcement of Fort Pickens. The Sumter expedition was "intended to be ultimately used, or not, according to circ.u.mstances." He implied, though he never quite stated, that he would have canceled this expedition had he been able to reinforce Fort Pickens. Success at Fort Pickens "would be a clear indication of policy," which "would better enable the country to accept the evacuation of Fort Sumter, as a military necessity." But this interpretation was not supported by contemporaneous evidence. In none of Lincoln's letters or messages between his inauguration and the firing on Fort Sumter was the relief of the two forts linked. In all probability his memory failed him, and the policy he described to Congress in his July 4 message more accurately represented Seward's tactics rather than his own.

While Lincoln was preparing this message, Browning visited the White House, and the two old friends naturally talked about how the war began. According to Browning's rather arid diary, Lincoln did not denounce the Confederates, who after all fired the first shots, nor did he express any feeling of regret, much less of guilt, over his own role in bringing on the war. He mentioned the terrible stress of the weeks between his inauguration and the attack on Fort Sumter and spoke of his physical exhaustion, but he did not acknowledge that his ineffectual leadership contributed to the crisis and made no mention of divided counsels in the administration, inadequate preparation of the relief expeditions, and bureaucratic snarls and interservice rivalries. He probably remembered an instructive letter that Browning wrote him before his inauguration: "In any conflict... between the government and the seceding States, it is very important that the traitors shall be the aggressors, and that they be kept constantly and palpably in the wrong. The first attempt... to furnish supplies or reinforcements to Sumter will induce aggression by South Carolina, and then the government will stand justified, before the entire country, in repelling that aggression, and retaking the forts."

That was the scenario Lincoln had followed in sending the Sumter expedition. "The plan succeeded," he told Browning. "They attacked Sumter-it fell, and thus, did more service than it otherwise could." These were not idle words. When Gustavus Fox, bitter over the failure of his expedition to relieve Fort Sumter, asked for endors.e.m.e.nt from his commander-in-chief, Lincoln responded, "You and I both antic.i.p.ated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumpter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our antic.i.p.ation is justified by the result."

These cryptic utterances did not mean that Lincoln sought to provoke war. His repeated efforts to avoid collision in the months between his inauguration and the firing on Fort Sumter showed that he adhered to his vow not to be the first to shed fraternal blood. But he had also vowed not to surrender the forts. That, he was convinced, would lead to the "actual, and immediate dissolution" of the Union. The only resolution of these contradictory positions was for the Confederates to fire the first shot. The attempt to relieve Fort Sumter provoked them to do just that. Had the expedition been successful, the fort, which had no military value to the United States, would eventually have been abandoned because it could not be defended against a determined Confederate a.s.sault. In that sense, as he told Browning, by falling, the fort "did more service than it otherwise could." And, to use a phrase from his letter to Fox, "the cause of the country would be advanced" because everybody had to recognize that he did not start the war but had war forced on him. After the attack, he told the Congress, "no choice was left but to call out the war power of the Government; and so to resist force, employed for its destruction, by force, for its preservation."

CHAPTER ELEVEN

A People's Contest

The attack on Fort Sumter cleared the air. The news revived the Lincoln administration, which had appeared indecisive and almost comatose, and gave it a clear objective: preserving the Union by putting down the rebellion.

Many Northerners were euphoric at the outbreak of war, confident that the Union with its vast natural resources, its enormous superiority in manufactures, its 300 percent advantage in railroad mileage was bound to prevail. Surely its 20,000,000 inhabitants could easily defeat the 5,000,000 in the Confederacy (which grew to 9,000,000 after the states of the upper South seceded). Seward thought the war would be over in ninety days. The Chicago Tribune antic.i.p.ated success "within two or three months at the furthest," because "Illinois can whip the South by herself." The New York Times predicted victory in thirty days, and the New York Tribune a.s.sured its readers "that Jeff. Davis & Co. will be swinging from the battlements at Washington ... by the 4th of July."

The President was not so optimistic. Overhearing boastful contrasts of Northern enterprise and endurance with Southern laziness and fickleness, Lincoln warned against overconfidence. Northerners and Southerners came from the same stock and had "essentially the same characteristics and powers." "Man for man," he predicted, "the soldier from the South will be a match for the soldier from the North and vice versa."

I

On April 15, 1861, the day after Fort Sumter surrendered, Lincoln issued a proclamation announcing that the execution of the laws in the seven states of the Deep South was obstructed "by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings," and he called for the states to supply 75,000 militiamen "in order to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed." At the same time, he summoned a special session of Congress, to meet on July 4.

A tidal wave of approval greeted his proclamation. "Cincinnati sustains proclamation great and universal enthusiasm," wired William M. d.i.c.kson. "Nothing can exceed the enthusiasm," two New York City merchants reported. Large Union demonstrations a.s.sembled in nearly every Northern city. Typical was a public meeting in Pittsburgh where thousands of citizens, disregarding all partisan feeling, vowed undying fealty to the nation and pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to defend their country.

Democrats as well as Republicans rallied behind the President. On April 14 during a private two-hour conversation, Lincoln showed Douglas the draft of the proclamation he intended to issue the next day. The senator forgot their past differences. In a statement released to the press he announced that while he "was unalterably opposed to the administration on all its political issues, he was prepared to sustain the President in the exercise of all his const.i.tutional functions to preserve the Union, and maintain the government, and defend the Federal Capital." Returning to Illinois a few days later, Douglas worked heroically to persuade Democrats in the West to support the President because "the shortest way to peace is the most stupendous and unanimous preparation for war."

The only criticism of the President's proclamation was that it called for too few men. Douglas told Lincoln that he should have asked for 200,000 men, and Browning thought he needed 300,000. But in calling for only 75,000 men on April 15, Lincoln was acting on General Scott's advice. In addition, the President had to keep in mind the states of the upper South, still teetering between Union and secession. They would certainly regard the summoning of a vast army as proof that he intended to invade the South. And, most important of all, he recognized that the government was unprepared to arm, feed, transport, and train hundreds of thousands of new recruits.

Lincoln called for troops to serve only ninety days not because he believed that the war would be over quickly but because a 1795 law limited a call-up of militia to not more than thirty days after the a.s.sembling of Congress. With Congress called into session on July 4, the volunteer force would have to be disbanded by August 4. He could have convened Congress earlier, but that would have meant an even shorter term of service for the volunteers.

Promptly the Northern states began to fill their quotas of soldiers. Ma.s.sachusetts Governor John A. Andrew, who had antic.i.p.ated the outbreak of hostilities, instantly replied to Lincoln's call: "Dispatch received. By what route shall I send?" Other governors used more words to convey the same message. From the far north Israel Washburn a.s.sured the President that "the people of Maine of all parties will rally with alacrity to the maintenance of the Government." From the West, Governor O. P. Morton of Indiana pledged 10,000 men "for the defense of the Nation and to uphold the authority of the Government."

They had no trouble filling their quotas with eager volunteers. There were thousands of men like Renewick d.i.c.kerson of Nashua, New Hampshire, who wrote to the President: "I have but one son of seventeen Summers, he our only child, a man in stature-We are ready to volunteer, to fight for the integrity of the Union-These rugged hills of New Hampshire overlook strong arms and brave hearts." These volunteers, vowing "woe to the rebel hordes that meets them in battle array," were, as one youthful soldier reported to his mother, "wound up to the very pinnacle of patriotic ardor." "There are," this lad continued, "but two contingencies both equally glorious, either to die, and be numbered among the martyrs to freedom, or live to pa.s.s victoriously through this strug[g]le for the right and be crowned with an aureole of glory."

But the states of the upper South, still in the Union, gave a very different response. "I can be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country, and to this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina," Governor John Ellis responded to Lincoln's call, and the governors of Virginia, Tennessee, and Arkansas echoed his words. All four states promptly seceded from the Union. Within weeks all joined the Confederacy, which moved its capital to Richmond.

In the border slave states initial reactions to Lincoln's proclamation were also unfavorable. "Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subduing her sister Southern States," Governor Beriah Magoffin responded, and Governor Claiborne Jackson of Missouri denounced the call for troops as "illegal, unconst.i.tutional, and revolutionary in its object, inhuman and diabolical." In Delaware, where slavery was a minor factor, the governor refused to comply with Lincoln's requisition but permitted volunteer companies to offer their services for the support of the Const.i.tution and laws of the country.

More important was Maryland, a state that nearly surrounded the national capital and controlled the only railroad access to the District of Columbia. "The excitement is fearful," Governor Thomas Hicks and Baltimore Mayor George W. Brown telegraphed the President on April 18. "Send no troops here." The next day the Sixth Ma.s.sachusetts Regiment, on its way to defend Washington, was attacked by a secessionist mob as it attempted to cross Baltimore, and four soldiers, along with some civilians, were killed. Lincoln wanted to sh.o.r.e up the governor, a wavering Unionist who tended to collapse under secessionist pressure, and he agreed for the time that reinforcements would be marched around, rather than through, Baltimore.

Doubting that this arrangement would last, he said to the Marylanders half playfully: "If I grant you this concession, that no troops shall pa.s.s through the city, you will be back here to-morrow demanding that none shall be marched around it." He was right. Shortly afterward Governor Hicks asked him to stop sending any troops through Maryland and suggested asking Lord Lyons, the British minister, to mediate the sectional conflict. That was too much for Lincoln. When a Baltimore committee descended on his office on April 22 and demanded that he bring no more troops across Maryland and make peace with the Confederacy on any terms, he had had enough. "You would have me break my oath and surrender the Government without a blow," he exploded. "There is no Washington in that-no Jackson in that-no manhood nor honor in that." He had to have troops to defend the capital, and they could only come across Maryland. "Our men are not moles, and can't dig under the earth; they are not birds, and can't fly through the air," he reminded the committee. "Go home and tell your people that if they will not attack us, we will not attack them; but if they do attack us, we will return it, and that severely."

The threat was an empty one, because Lincoln did not have enough troops to defend Washington, much less to reduce Baltimore. After the firing on Fort Sumter the capital seemed almost deserted because of a steady exodus of pro-Confederate officials, including high-ranking army and navy officers. The most notable of these was Robert E. Lee, who declined an offer to head the Union armies because he felt he must go with his state, Virginia. To preserve some semblance of order in the national capital, Ca.s.sius M. Clay, wearing three pistols and an "Arkansas toothpick" (a sharp dagger), organized the Clay Guards, and Senator-elect James H. Lane of Kansas recruited the Frontier Guards from fellow Kansans who were in Washington looking for jobs. Lane's group was quartered in the East Room of the White House.

For nearly a week Washington was virtually under siege.. Marylanders destroyed the railroad bridges linking Baltimore with the North and cut the telegraph lines. A Confederate a.s.sault from Virginia was expected daily, and everyone predicted that it would be aided by the thousands of secessionist sympathizers in the city. In the lonely hours, Lincoln paced the floor of the White House, gazing wistfully down the Potomac for the sight of ships bringing reinforcements and breaking out eventually in anguish: "Why don't they come! Why don't they come!" Every day there were rumors that additional troops, including the Seventh New York and a Rhode Island regiment, were coming soon, but none arrived. Chatting with the wounded soldiers of the Ma.s.sachusetts Sixth Regiment, the President said with bitter irony: "I don't believe there is any North. The Seventh Regiment is a myth. R. Island is not known in our geography any longer. You are the only Northern realities."

On April 25 the arrival of the Seventh New York Regiment changed the picture. General Benjamin F. Butler had discovered an ingenious way of circ.u.mventing Baltimore by ferrying men down the Chesapeake Bay to Annapolis, where they could be entrained for Washington. Within days thousands of troops began pouring into Washington. There was still a danger that when the Maryland legislature met in Frederick on April 26 it would vote to secede. General Scott was ready to arrest secessionist politicians in advance of this meeting, but the President directed him to hold off, observe the proceedings, and, if it became necessary, then resort "to the bombardment of their cities-and of course the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus." Neither of these extreme measures proved necessary, but to make certain that Maryland remained loyal, General Butler occupied Federal Hill, overlooking Baltimore harbor, on May 13.

Meanwhile, on April 27, Lincoln did authorize the suspension of the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus along the route between Washington and Philadelphia. This meant that the military authorities could make summary arrests of persons thought to be aiding the Confederacy or attempting to overthrow the government. Such persons could be detained indefinitely without judicial hearing and without indictment, and the arresting officer was not obliged to release them when a judge issued a writ of habeas corpus. The President's action at this time was of limited scope and did not attract great attention until the arrest of one John Merryman, lieutenant of a secessionist drill company, at c.o.c.keysville, Maryland. Imprisoned at Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor, Merryman secured a writ of habeas corpus from Chief Justice Taney, which ordered that he be tried before a regular court or released. When the arresting officer, under Lincoln's orders, refused to accept the writ, Taney felt he had no alternative but to rule that the Chief Executive had acted unlawfully. He reminded Lincoln of his oath to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed" and warned that if such usurpation continued "the people of the United States are no longer living under a government of laws." Unprepared at this time to make a general argument for broad presidential war powers, Lincoln ignored Taney's ruling.

The situation in Kentucky was as critical as that in Maryland. Lincoln could not let his native state, which controlled the south bank of the vital Ohio River, fall under Confederate control. Ties of kinship and commerce, along with the inst.i.tution of slavery, linked Kentucky to the South, but a long tradition, personified by Henry Clay and John J. Crittenden, bound the state to the Union. Lincoln's call for troops aroused the pro-Southern elements in the state to bitter opposition. Fortunately he had sober and responsible friends in Kentucky, like Joshua Speed and his brother James, a prominent attorney in Louisville, on whose advice he could implicitly rely. When Kentucky adopted a policy of neutrality, "taking sides not with the Administration nor with the seceding States, but with the Union against them both," the President shrewdly avoided a confrontation. He had "the unquestioned right at all times to march the United States troops into and over any and every State," Lincoln told former Kentucky Congressman Garrett Davis, but promised that "if Kentucky made no demonstration of force against the United States, he would not molest her."

Ostensibly respecting Kentucky's neutrality, both Union and Confederate authorities worked surrept.i.tiously to strengthen their supporters in the state. Lincoln named Robert Anderson, the hero of Fort Sumter and a native of Kentucky, commander of the newly created Military Department of Kentucky, which embraced all of the state within one hundred miles of the Ohio River, and he authorized William Nelson, another Kentucky native, secretly to distribute 5,000 stand of arms to the Unionists in the state. But he avoided hostilities during the uneasy neutrality, recognizing that Unionism was growing faster in Kentucky than secessionist sentiment.

Less successful was Lincoln's handling of Missouri, a border slave state of enormous strategic importance because it controlled traffic on the Ohio, Mississippi, and Missouri river network so vital to the Northwest. Not familiar with the politics of the state, Lincoln had to rely on the Blairs, whose primary interest was in promoting the political fortunes of Frank Blair. The pro-Southern faction in eastern Missouri rallied at Camp Jackson (named after the prosecession governor) just outside St. Louis, while pro-Union forces organized inside that city under the command of the aggressive Nathaniel Lyon. When Lyon forced the men at Camp Jackson to surrender, fighting broke out in the streets of the city, and twenty-eight deaths resulted. Governor Jackson then formed a military force and put it under the control of ex-Governor Sterling Price. General William A. Harney, who commanded the Military Department of the West, worked out a truce with Price roughly comparable to the neutrality established in Kentucky. But Lyon, backed by the Blairs, undermined Harney's support in Washington, and Lincoln failed to support the truce. Internecine war resulted.

Lincoln was less involved in attempts to hold Virginia in the Union. Delegates from the strongly Unionist western counties, outraged when the state convention voted to secede, returned to their homes resolved to secede from secession. A Unionist convention held at Wheeling in effect set up a rival government to the Confederate government of Virginia in Richmond and elected Francis H. Pierpont governor. The convention also called for the creation of a new state out of the western counties of Virginia. Since the Const.i.tution provides that no state shall be divided without its own permission, the Pierpont regime was set up as a kind of puppet government that would consent to this proposed part.i.tion. Pierpont fulfilled his function. Ostensibly speaking for the entire state of Virginia, he approved the secession of the western counties, which then applied for admission to the Union as the state of West Virginia. The Pierpont administration left Wheeling and spent the rest of the war under the shelter of federal guns at Alexandria. The whole process of part.i.tioning Virginia was extraordinarily complicated and largely extralegal; and, at a time of great unrest when thieves, bandits, and desperate men roamed the countryside, neither the Pierpont regime nor the new government of West Virginia had the backing of more than a minority of the citizens. Lincoln could do little to shape the course of events. He extended formal recognition of Pierpont's regime as the legitimate government of all of Virginia (though it controlled only a few counties behind the Union lines), and he looked with considerable skepticism on the movement for statehood for West Virginia.

While maintaining a tenuous hold on the border states, Lincoln took steps to increase Northern preparedness. On May 3 he called up additional volunteers, this time for three years. Without waiting for congressional authorization, he also expanded the regular United States Army by adding eight regiments of infantry, one of cavalry, and one of artillery and ordered the enlistment of 18,000 seamen in the navy. Earlier, on April 19, he had proclaimed a blockade of the ports of the seven Confederate states, subsequently extended to include those of North Carolina and Virginia. Two days later, with the unanimous concurrence of his cabinet, he dispatched an armed revenue cutter to protect ships from California bearing gold so necessary for Union finances. At the same time, again without congressional authorization, he directed the commandants of the navy yards at Boston, New York, and Philadelphia each to purchase and arm five steamships in order to preserve water communication to Washington. In case that communication was temporarily cut off, he empowered Governor E. D. Morgan of New York and an a.s.sociate, Alexander c.u.mmings, who was recommended by Secretary Cameron, to act for the government in forwarding troops and supplies. He also authorized the Treasury Department, without requiring security, to advance $2,000,000 to a New York committee headed by John A. Dix, to pay "such requisitions as should be directly consequent upon the military and naval measures necessary for the defence and support of the government."

In the weeks after the firing on Fort Sumter, the demands on the President's time were incessant and exhausting, but now that he could clearly see what had to be done, he bore up well under the strain. When the writer Bayard Taylor visited Washington, he was delighted to discover, contrary to rumor, that Lincoln was not exhausted or sick but instead appeared "very fresh and vigorous... thoroughly calm and collected." Even Seward was impressed. "Executive skill and vigor are rare qualities," he wrote his wife in June. "The President is the best of us; but he needs constant and a.s.siduous cooperation."

II