Lincoln Part 37

Victory did not come. Throughout July, McClellan's huge army sweltered on the Peninsula, its commander unable to take the offensive and unwilling to withdraw. The general was furious that Halleck, and not he, had been named general-in-chief, and he spent much of his time brooding over the insult that Lincoln and Stanton had inflicted on him. He had learned of Halleck's appointment from the newspapers. He complained that Lincoln had "acted so as to make the matter as offensive as possible-he has not shown the slightest gentlemanly or friendly feeling and I cannot regard him as in any respect my friend." "I am confident that he would relieve me tomorrow if he dared do so," he told his wife. "His cowardice alone prevents it."

For his pan, Lincoln had concluded that McClellan never would fight. "If by magic he could reinforce McClelland [sic] with 100,000 men to-day," he remarked to Browning, "he would be in an ecstacy over it, thank him for it, and tell him that he would go to Richmond tomorrow, but that when tomorrow came he would telegraph that he had certain information that the enemy had 400,000 men, and that he could not advance without reinforcements."

The President informed Halleck, now in command of all the armies, that he could keep McClellan at the head of the Army of the Potomac or remove him as he pleased. He promptly got an unwelcome insight into the character of his new general-in-chief. Halleck had arrived in Washington with a reputation as a broadly informed student of the art of war and an experienced commander of armies that had won victories from the Confederates in the West. But the general, who was called "Old Brains" because he had been a professor at West Point, had more experience with theories of warfare than with realities of military politics. When it dawned upon him that Lincoln, Stanton, and some other members of the cabinet sought to have him take the blame for removing McClellan, he shied away. "They want me to do what they are afraid to attempt," he wrote his wife. Even after Lincoln sent him down to the James to inspect the army himself, Halleck seemed incapable of exercising the authority the President had vested in him. Repeatedly Halleck urged, begged, cajoled, and ordered McClellan to move his army from the Peninsula back to the vicinity of Washington, where he would be in a position to reinforce Pope's advancing army. Always slow, McClellan had no interest in a.s.sisting his archrival and dragged his feet, while Halleck wrung his hands. "I am almost broken down," the general-in-chief complained; "I can't get General McClellan to do what I wish."

With McClellan apparently immovable on the Peninsula, the hope for Union victory rested with John Pope's Army of Virginia, now advancing south of Mana.s.sas. Lincoln closely watched Pope's progress. He was not discouraged when "Stonewall" Jackson checked his advance at Cedar Mountain on August 9, but he again urged McClellan to speed his departure from the James in order to be able to reinforce Pope. Even after Lee, rightly judging that McClellan's army no longer posed a threat to Richmond, dispatched General James Longstreet's corps to a.s.sist Jackson and threw the strength of the full Army of Northern Virginia on Pope's forces in the second battle of Bull Run, the President remained optimistic. During the first two days of the fighting (August 2829) he spent most of his time in the telegraph office of the War Department and closely monitored the dispatches from the front. On August 30 he was relaxed enough to attend an informal supper at Stanton's house, presided over by the Secretary's "pretty wife as white and cold and motionless as marble, whose rare smiles seemed to pain her." Stanton a.s.sured the President "that nothing but foul play could lose us this battle," and after dinner at the War Department, Halleck also exuded quiet confidence. Lincoln retired, expecting to receive news of victory in the morning. His new plan for a hard, decisive war against the Confederacy was about to succeed.

But at about eight in the evening he came to Hay's room with the news he had just received: "Well, John, we are whipped again, I am afraid." Pope had been defeated and forced back to Centreville, where he reported he would "be able to hold his men." "I don't like that expression," Lincoln said, doubtless recalling dozens of similar messages he had received from McClellan. "I don't like to hear him admit that his men need 'holding.'" Though the news was all bad, Lincoln was not in despair and hoped to resume the offensive. "We must hurt this enemy before it gets away," he kept saying; "we must whip these people now."

By the next morning he had absorbed the full extent of Pope's defeat. Once again, Confederate troops threatened Washington. Once again, every hospital bed in the capital was filled with the wounded, and the streets of the city were crowded with stragglers and deserters. Though the Union soldiers, who had fought bravely, were less demoralized than after the first battle of Bull Run, their commanders were more so. Pope denounced McClellan for failing to reinforce him and urged courts-martial for Generals Fitz-John Porter and William B. Franklin. While the generals bickered, the army, in disarray, retreated to the outskirts of the capital.

Exhausted from long hours spent in the telegraph office attempting to learn the news and trying to speed reinforcements to Pope's army, Lincoln fell into a deep depression. Once again, his plans had all failed. The strenuous, aggressive war that, in theory, should have resulted in the defeat of Lee's army and the capture of the Confederate capital had aborted. With its failure disappeared Lincoln's opportunity to issue a proclamation abolishing slavery, the cause of the war. Nothing that Lincoln did, it seemed, could speed Union victory. Again, the President returned to his bleak, fatalistic philosophy. "I am almost ready to say... that G.o.d wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet," he wrote in an informal memorandum to himself. After all, G.o.d could "have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest," yet He allowed the war to begin. "And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds." "In the present civil war," Lincoln echoed his old doctrine of necessity, "it is quite possible that G.o.d's purpose is something different from the purpose of either party." Consequently, as he explained to an English Quaker a few weeks later, he had to believe "that He permits [the war] for some wise purpose of his own, mysterious and unknown to us."

With great reluctance the President abandoned the idea of waging an aggressive war against the Confederacy and returned to a defensive posture. With this reversal of policy he looked again to the indispensable man, McClellan. By this time Lincoln harbored no illusions about the general; he thought McClellan was the "chief alarmist and grand marplot of the Army," ridiculed his "weak, whiney, vague, and incorrect despatches," and considered his failure to reinforce Pope unpardonable. Yet he knew that McClellan was a superb organizer and an efficient engineer. And-what was equally important-he recognized that nothing but the reinstatement of McClellan would restore the shattered morale of the Army of the Potomac. "I must have McClellan to reorganize the army and bring it out of chaos," he concluded, adding, "McClellan has the army with him." Without consulting any of his advisers, and merely informing Halleck of his decision, the President asked McClellan to take command of the troops that were falling back into Washington and to defend the capital. "Mad as a March hare" over what he considered repeated snubs, McClellan accepted the a.s.signment with reluctance and only after he had "a pretty plain talk" with Lincoln and Halleck about his new responsibilities. "I only consent to take it for my country's sake and with the humble hope that G.o.d has called me to it," he explained to his wife.

Lincoln moved without consulting his advisers because he was aware that nearly all the members of his cabinet shared his reservations about McClellan. Hearing rumors that McClellan might be recalled to command, Stanton in great excitement told Welles that he "could not and would not submit to a continuance of this state of things." When reminded that the President alone had the final say in selecting a general, he said "he knew of no particular obligations he was under to the President who had called him to a difficult position and imposed upon him labors and responsibilities which no man could carry, and which were greatly increased by fastening upon him a commander who was constantly striving to embarra.s.s him in his administration of the [War] Department." Together with Chase, Stanton drew up a written protest, charging that McClellan was an incompetent and probably a traitor, and he tried to get other members of the cabinet to sign it. Smith agreed to do so. In the hope of getting as many cabinet signatures as possible, Stanton and Chase permitted Bates to tone down the protest to read that it was "not safe to entrust to Major General McClellan the command of any of the armies of the United States," and the Attorney General then signed. But Welles refused to join the others. He agreed that McClellan's "removal from command was demanded by public sentiment and the best interest of the country," but he thought the remonstrance "discourteous and disrespectful to the President."

Already "wrung by the bitterest anguish" over the recent defeat, Lincoln was distraught when he received the memorial, and he told the cabinet that at times "he felt almost ready to hang himself." He respected the "earnest sincerity" of his cabinet advisers who denounced the reinstatement of McClellan and in face of their unanimous opposition (Seward was absent and Blair was silent) declared he would "gladly resign his place; but he could not see who could do the work wanted as well as McClellan." "We must use what tools we have," he explained.

Lincoln expected McClellan's role to be a temporary, defensive one, but Lee, instead of resting after his victory at Second Bull Run, pushed across the Potomac and invaded Maryland. Initially the President saw the invasion as an opportunity. "We could end the war by allowing the enemy to go to Harrisburg and Philadelphia," he believed; far from his supplies and reinforcements, Lee could be readily defeated. But the approach of the Confederates had demoralized Pennsylvania state officials and the militia was almost on the point of mutiny. Halleck insisted that only McClellan could turn back the invasion. Lincoln agreed reluctantly to restoring McClellan to permanent command, placing full responsibility on Halleck. "I could not have done it," the President explained to Welles, "for I can never feel confident that he will do anything."

Despite his reservations, Lincoln during the next two weeks did all he could to strengthen McClellan's army. To prevent the Army of the Potomac from being dispersed, he fended off urgent requests for aid from local authorities in the path of the Confederate invasion. He had to turn aside a plea from the excitable governor of Pennsylvania for 80,000 troops, reminding Curtin: "We have not... eighty thousand disciplined troops, properly so called, this side of the mountains." He had also to convince panic-stricken mayors from Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and Baltimore that the best way to protect their cities was to keep the Union troops together in pursuit of Lee's army.

The Confederate invasion of Maryland, coming so close after Lee's smashing victory at Second Bull Run, fanned criticism of the President and his conduct of the war. Recent events convinced George Templeton Strong that Lincoln, though an "honest old codger," was simply "unequal to his place." Old friends like Samuel Galloway of Ohio warned the President that "this changing from McClellan to Pope, and from Pope to McClellan, creates distrust and uncertainty." Other critics were blunter. From Chicago the Reverend Robert Laird Collier, a Methodist minister, issued a call for the moral heroism that the President obviously lacked: "Tale-telling and jesting illy suit the hour and become the man in whose hands the destiny of a great nation is trembling.... Earnestness, unmixed and terrible, is the demand alike of the crisis and the people."

Demands rose for a complete reorganization of the administration. Kentucky Senator Garrett Davis urged the President to fire both Stanton and Chase, "the most sinister of all the cabinet." Others demanded that Lincoln oust McClellan. Chase condemned the President's "humiliating submissiveness" to the general and lamented that Lincoln, for all his "true, unselfish patriotism," had "yielded so much to Border State and negrophobic counsels that he now finds it difficult to arrest his own descent towards the most fatal concessions." Ma.s.sachusetts Governor Andrew began trying "if possible to save the Prest. from the infamy of ruining his country," and he summoned a conference of his fellow war governors at Altoona, Pennsylvania, in late September.

VII

Caught in a cross fire, Lincoln had to reconsider his emanc.i.p.ation policy as well as his military strategy. The logical parallel to reinstating McClellan to fight a limited, defensive war waged by professional armies was a return to his inaugural pledge not to interfere with slavery within the states. Many of his oldest and most loyal supporters urged exactly this policy, warning that a more radical policy would surely cost the Republicans support in the fall congressional elections. From Illinois, Browning, who was campaigning for the Republican candidates in that state, entreated him not to listen to the "few very radical and extreme men who can think, nor talk, nor dream of any thing but the negro." If Lincoln held to a moderate course, Browning continued, he would have behind him not merely the members of his own party but the Democrats, who "are for you almost to a man-quite as near a unit in your support as the Republicans."

More than once in the days after McClellan's return to command, Lincoln seemed to revert to this policy. On September 13 when a delegation of Chicago Christians representing all denominations urged him to issue an emanc.i.p.ation order, he reminded them of the practical difficulties in the way of any attempt to free the slaves. He noted that the recent Confiscation Act had not "caused a single slave to come over to us." "What good would a proclamation of emanc.i.p.ation from me do, especially as we are now situated?" he asked. "I do not want to issue a doc.u.ment that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet!"

But Lincoln was under increasing pressure to act. His call for additional volunteers had met a slow response, and several of the Northern governors bluntly declared that they could not meet their quotas unless the President moved against slavery. The approaching conference of Northern war governors would almost certainly demand an emanc.i.p.ation proclamation. He also had to take seriously the insistent reports that European powers were close to recognizing the Confederacy and would surely act unless the United States government took a stand against slavery.

Always reluctant to be out in front of public opinion, always hesitant to a.s.sume positions from which there could be no retreat, Lincoln deliberated long before making a hard choice. Ultimately he chose to leave the decision to a Higher Power. To the Chicago Christians who urged him to issue a proclamation of emanc.i.p.ation, he pledged: "It is my earnest desire to know the will of Providence in this matter. And if I can learn what it is I will do it!" Seeking a sign, he closely monitored the news of Lee's invasion of Maryland and the reports from McClellan's pursuing army. As he told the cabinet later, he "made a vow, a covenant, that if G.o.d gave us the victory in the approaching battle, he would consider it an indication of Divine will, and that it was his duty to move forward in the cause of emanc.i.p.ation."

On September 17, McClellan's victory at Antietam, though not the overwhelming success Lincoln had hoped for, gave the President the omen he had sought. Turning back to his long-delayed proclamation of emanc.i.p.ation, Lincoln, as he said, "fixed it up a little" over the weekend, and called the cabinet together on September 22 to hear it. Now that the decision was made, he was more relaxed and at home with himself than he had been for weeks. Partly, no doubt, to break the ice in the cabinet meeting but chiefly because he wanted others to share his good humor, he began by reading a selection t.i.tled "High-Handed Outrage at Utica" from a new book the humorist Artemus Ward had sent him. This bit of clownery about "a big burly feller" from that "trooly grate sitty" who saw a display of wax figures of the apostles at the Last Supper and caved in the head of the false apostle to prove "that Judas Iscarrot can't show hisself in Utiky with impunerty by a darn site," the President found very funny, and, except for the irascible Stanton, the other heads of departments also enjoyed it-or pretended to.

The President then turned to business, reminding the cabinet of their earlier discussion of emanc.i.p.ation and of the reasons the proclamation had been delayed. "I think the time has come now," he told them. "I wish it were a better time. I wish that we were in a better condition." But now he could redeem the promise he had made to himself and, he said, hesitating a little, to his Maker. He did not seek their advice "about the main matter," for that, he explained, he had determined for himself, but he was willing to accept criticisms of any expressions used or "any other minor matter."

The doc.u.ment the President presented for cabinet consideration lacked the memorable rhetoric of his most notable utterances. The proclamation, in the words of the atrabilious Gurowski, was "written in the meanest and the most dry routine style; not a word to evoke a generous thrill, not a word reflecting the warm and lofty... feelings of... the people." Totally absent was any reference to the barbarism of slavery, nor was morality invoked as a reason for striking it down. Instead, Lincoln cited as his authority for acting against slavery his powers as "President of the United States of America, and Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy thereof," and the provisions of both the First and Second Confiscation Acts. His sole announced purpose was "the object of practically restoring the const.i.tutional relation between the United States, and each of the states, and the people thereof." The President remained reluctant, even at this late hour, to offer unqualified freedom to the slaves. He promised to continue to press for compensated emanc.i.p.ation and for the colonization of African-Americans outside the country. Yet, for all his hesitation, Lincoln announced at the end that on January 1,1863, "all persons held as slaves" within any state or part of a state still in rebellion would be "then, thenceforward, and forever free."

In presenting the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation to the cabinet, Lincoln made it clear that he was as uncertain about its expediency as he was doubtful of its success. He was unsure how his new policy would be received. "I know very well that many others might, in this matter, as in others, do better than I can," he told the cabinet; "and if I were satisfied that the public confidence was more fully possessed by any one of them than by me, and knew of any Const.i.tutional way in which he could be put in my place, he should have it. I would gladly yield it to him." But since that was not possible, he concluded, "I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take."

In the discussion that followed, Seward proposed two minor verbal alterations in the doc.u.ment. Ponderously Chase offered: "The Proclamation does not, indeed, mark out exactly the course I should myself prefer. But I am ready to take it just as it is written, and to stand by it with all my heart." Only Blair expressed dissent, not because he opposed emanc.i.p.ation but because he feared the proclamation would have a bad influence on the border states and the army and that it might strengthen the Democrats in the fall congressional elections. Lincoln said that he had considered the first of these dangers and discounted it; as for the second, he said, it "had not much weight with him." Accordingly the doc.u.ment was handed to the Secretary of State to be copied and officially published.

Two days later, responding to serenaders who came to the White House in celebration of the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, the President revealed that he still felt uncertain about his action. "I can only trust in G.o.d I have made no mistake," he told the crowd. "It is now for the country and the world to pa.s.s judgment on it.... I will say no more upon this subject." He concluded lamely, "In my position I am environed with difficulties."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

A Pumpkin in Each End of My Bag

In time, Lincoln came to think of the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation as the crowning achievement of his administration. It was, he told his old Kentucky friend Joshua F. Speed, a measure that would ensure his fame by linking "his name with something that would resound to the interest of his fellow man." But in the months immediately following the preliminary proclamation, he was much less sanguine. The proclamation threatened to break up the tenuous coalition of Republicans, War Democrats, and border-state leaders that he had so carefully been building since the outbreak of the war. At the same time, it strengthened the peace element in the Democratic party, and it seemed likely to provoke a mutiny in the army. During the hundred days after he issued the preliminary proclamation, Lincoln's leadership was more seriously threatened than at any other time, and it was not clear that his administration could survive the repeated crises that it faced.

I

The initial Northern responses to the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation were predictable. Antislavery men were jubilant. "G.o.d bless Abraham Lincoln," exclaimed Horace Greeley's New York Tribune. The President, announced Joseph Medill's Chicago Tribune, had promulgated "the grandest proclamation ever issued by man." In every major city throughout the North there were huge rallies to celebrate the proclamation, marked by bonfires, parades with torches and transparencies, and, inevitably, fountains of oratory.

Scores of letters of commendation poured into the President's office. "G.o.d bless you for the word you have spoken!" wrote three correspondents from Erie, Pennsylvania. "All good men upon the earth will glorify you, and all the angels in Heaven will hold jubilee." "The virtuous, the reflecting, the intelligently patriotic ... as one man hail your edict with delight," the veteran Pennsylvania abolitionist J. M. McKim told the President, "and [they] bless and thank G.o.d that he put it in your heart to issue it." A Baltimorean took an odd way of showing his enthusiasm for the proclamation by sending the President half a dozen hams.

Nearly every notable man of letters, especially those from New England, voiced approval of the proclamation. John Greenleaf Whittier, William Cullen Bryant, and James Russell Lowell all wrote eloquently in its praise. Hitherto cool toward Lincoln, Ralph Waldo Emerson was now prepared to forget "all that we thought shortcomings, every mistake, every delay," because the President had "been permitted to do more for America than any other American man."

For the moment, Lincoln's critics within his own party were silenced. Thaddeus Stevens and Benjamin F. Wade, both of whom had scathingly attacked Lincoln for his incompetence and for his slowness to move against slavery, had nothing to say. Charles Sumner, locked in a close contest in Ma.s.sachusetts for reelection to the Senate, saw that the proclamation would help erase the doubts that his abolitionist supporters continued to feel toward Lincoln and jubilantly announced that he stood "with the loyal mult.i.tudes of the North, firmly and sincerely by the side of the President." The governors of the Northern states who gathered at Altoona in the hope of pushing Lincoln to prosecute the war more vigorously, found that the President had preempted their ground, and somewhat lamely their leaders trooped down to Washington to congratulate the President on his proclamation "as a measure of justice and sound policy."

No doubt such tributes were gratifying to a President who had hitherto received little public praise, but Lincoln was too much of a realist to overestimate their importance. "Commendation in newspapers and by distinguished individuals is all that a vain man could wish," he reported to Hannibal Hamlin, but he noted that subscriptions to government securities had fallen off and volunteering had dropped. "The North responds to the proclamation sufficiently in breath," he told the Vice President, "but breath alone kills no rebels."

In the South, so far as the President could determine, the reaction to the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation was altogether negative. Jefferson Davis denounced it as an attempt to stir up servile insurrection and called it a further reason why the Confederacy must fight for its independence. On Southern Unionism the proclamation had a chilling effect. In Tennessee, Emerson Etheridge discovered in Lincoln's proclamation "treachery to the Union men of the South," and Thomas A. R. Nelson, one of the most vigorous opponents of secession in eastern Tennessee, attacked "the atrocity and barbarism of Mr. Lincoln's proclamation." Lincoln could learn little of its impact on African-Americans in the South; not until the war was over did they dare admit that they had learned of impending emanc.i.p.ation through the grapevine and were preparing to escape to freedom at the first opportunity.

Even more disappointing was the initial foreign reaction to the proclamation, for one of Lincoln's purposes had been to forestall threatened moves by Great Britain and France toward the recognition of the Confederacy. Eventually, immense throngs in London, Birmingham, and other British cities would rally to celebrate Lincoln's declaration of freedom and an outraged public opinion would make it impossible for any British government to intervene on behalf of the slaveholding Confederacy, but the immediate foreign response was negative. Many were sure that the proclamation would be ineffective, since it applied only to slaves beyond the reach of Union arms while doing nothing to free those behind Union lines. Others antic.i.p.ated that it would incite a servile war; Lord John Russell, the British foreign minister, predicted "acts of plunder, of incendiarism, and of revenge." As Seward had warned, many Europeans feared that emanc.i.p.ation might interfere with the cotton supply so necessary for British and French mills.

Even in the North, once the initial euphoria had abated, the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation came under skeptical scrutiny. Abolitionists noted that Lincoln had only made a promise of freedom and that, apart from being conditional, his promise could be withdrawn before January 1. A few even claimed that the proclamation postponed emanc.i.p.ation as required by the Second Confiscation Act. Recovering from his initial enthusiasm, Greeley lamented that Lincoln exempted from his decree most of Louisiana and Tennessee, two states which had "more than One Hundred Thousand of their citizens in arms to destroy the Union." Similarly, William Lloyd Garrison regretted that the proclamation left "slavery, as a system ..., still to exist in all the so-called loyal Slave States."

More troubling to the President was the disaffection the proclamation caused his moderate supporters. Some border-state Unionists believed that his action would undermine the loyalty of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri. Conservative Republicans thought the proclamation unconst.i.tutional and unwise. Orville H. Browning, one of Lincoln's oldest friends and one of the few in Washington in whom he had hitherto confided freely, was so offended by it that he avoided discussing public issues with the President. Even some of the President's cabinet advisers regretted his proclamation. Seward loyally supported the President once he had made his decision, but he continued to think that the emanc.i.p.ation decree was both unnecessary and ineffective. Montgomery Blair m.u.f.fled his criticisms, but his sister accurately captured the feelings of the Blair clan when she called the proclamation "a mistake ... a paper p.r.o.nunciamento and of no practical result." Less significant was the muted opposition of Secretary of the Interior Caleb B. Smith, whose unhappiness with Lincoln's policies, together with ill health, caused him to resign in November.

From the start many Democrats were bitterly opposed to the proclamation. The New York World declared that Lincoln was now "adrift on a current of radical fanaticism." Terming the proclamation a violation of both the Const.i.tution and the law of nations, the New York Evening Express called it "an act of Revolution," which would render "the restoration of the old Const.i.tution and Union impossible," while the New York Journal of Commerce predicted that the proclamation would "lead to ... a continuation of the war, in a dark future, in which the end is beyond our vision."

Much of the dissatisfaction with the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation was muted, because the President on September 24 issued another proclamation, which suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus throughout the country and authorized the arbitrary arrest of any person "guilty of any disloyal practice, affording aid and comfort to Rebels against the authority of the United States." To the President this seemed such a routine matter that he did not even mention it to the cabinet. Stanton, as authorized by the Militia Act of July 17, 1862, had been issuing stringent orders to suppress criticism of the newly inst.i.tuted draft; enforced by petty officials all across the country, these regulations had resulted in hundreds of cases of violation of civil liberties, when civilians were subjected to arbitrary, and often quite unreasonable, arrests. Lincoln's proclamation was simply designed to codify these War Department rules, but Democrats like Senator James A. Bayard of Delaware read it to mean that the President was "declaring himself a Dictator, (for that and nothing less it does)." Whatever Lincoln's intent, the new proclamation had a chilling effect on public dissent. Editors feared that they might be locked up in Fort Lafayette or in the Old Capitol Prison in Washington if they voiced their criticisms too freely, and even writers of private letters began to guard their language.