Lincoln Part 47

The message showed that it had been composed under difficulty; it was, several newspapers remarked, less "Lincolnian" than his earlier messages, and certainly it missed several opportunities. The President did follow up one of the themes of his Gettysburg address in announcing that "under the sharp discipline of civil war, the nation is beginning a new life," but he did not develop the idea of a new birth of freedom. Nor did he point to the significance of the first national day of Thanksgiving, which, at the urging of Sarah Josepha Hale, editor of G.o.dey's Lady's Book, he had proclaimed for the last Thursday in November. And he failed to note the symbolic significance of the completion of the Capitol building, despite all the strains of war, and to make mention of the placing of Thomas Crawford's nineteen-foot statue of Armed Liberty atop the lantern of the dome on December 2.

The President also failed to use the occasion to stress the growing importance of blacks in the Union war effort. He did point out that more than 100,000 blacks were now serving in the Union armies, but he did not praise their heroism in battle, as he had earlier done in his letter to Conkling. He did not discuss the exceptionally successful efforts of General Lorenzo Thomas, whom he and Stanton had sent into the Mississippi Valley to raise black troops. Nor did he refer to his growing friendship with the great black leader Frederick Dougla.s.s, who was very active in raising Negro troops in the North. In August, Lincoln had welcomed Dougla.s.s into the White House and, in response to Dougla.s.s's fears that he was vacillating about the value of Negro troops, a.s.sured him, "I think it cannot be shown that when I have once taken a position, I have ever retreated from it."

Only at the end of the message did Lincoln's distinctive voice emerge. Announcing a proclamation of amnesty and reconstruction, the President offered "full pardon ... with restoration of all rights of property, except as to slaves," to all rebels, excepting high-ranking Confederate officials, who would have to take an oath of future loyalty to the Const.i.tution and pledge to obey acts of Congress and presidential proclamations relating to slavery. In order to encourage the political reorganization of the Southern states, he promised to extend recognition when they reestablished governments supported by as few as one-tenth of their 1860 voters who took the oath of allegiance.

Lincoln defended his proclamation as one in which, "as is believed,... nothing is attempted beyond what is amply justified by the Const.i.tution." An oath, he explained, was necessary to separate the loyal from the disloyal elements in the South, and he preferred a liberal oath, "which accepts as sound whoever will make a sworn recantation of his former unsoundness." The requirement that rebels must swear to uphold the legislation and proclamations ending slavery was necessary to prevent any attempt at reenslavement of the newly freed blacks, which would be "a cruel and an astounding breach of faith," and he went on to pledge, "While I remain in my present position I shall not attempt to retract or modify the emanc.i.p.ation proclamation; nor shall I return to slavery any person who is free by the terms of that proclamation." Recognizing that loyal Union men might disagree on the mechanisms of reconstruction, the President allowed for approaches other than his own: "Saying that reconstruction will be accepted if presented in a specified way, it is not said it will never be accepted in any other way."

This program for reconstruction outlined in Lincoln's December 1863 message marked a decided change in his thinking about the future of the Southern states. At the outbreak of the war, believing that secession was the work of a small, conspiratorial minority, he hoped that the Unionist majority in the South would rea.s.sert itself, throw out the traitors, and send loyal representatives and senators to Washington. The military governors he had appointed were intended simply to facilitate this process. But as the war wore on, he increasingly came to question whether loyal whites were in the majority in the seceded states. His early hope of preventing the war from degenerating "into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle" faded, and he had felt obliged to strike at the basic social and economic structure of the South by announcing the emanc.i.p.ation of the slaves. Now, late in 1863, he was afraid that the South might follow the very course that he had favored in the first months of the conflict. There was a real possibility that the Confederates, admitting defeat, might claim that they had never been out of the Union-a legal fiction he and his advisers had always stoutly maintained-and send back to Washington the same congressmen who had denounced the Union in 1861. Lincoln dreaded "to see... 'the disturbing element' so brought back into the government, as to make probable a renewal of the terrible scenes through which we are now pa.s.sing." In order to prevent this possibility, his proclamation of amnesty required much sterner tests of loyalty and an acceptance of emanc.i.p.ation.

Lincoln's message to Congress may have lacked his usual literary elegance, but it was certainly not wanting in political adroitness. It contained something for everybody. The President seemed to agree with the Conservative Republican position that the war was a rebellion of individual Southerners-not of Southern states-against their government, and he carefully refrained from discussing whether the rebellious states continued to be states in the Union or reverted to territorial status. (He dropped a pa.s.sage discussing this issue from the draft of the message.) To Conservatives the message offered the a.s.surance that reconstructed governments in the South would maintain "the name of the State, the boundary, the subdivisions, the const.i.tution, and the general code of laws" as before the war. And, most important, Lincoln gave some hope to extreme Conservatives and War Democrats who doubted the legality of the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation by pledging to uphold it only "so long and so far as not modified or declared void by decision of the Supreme Court."

But there was more in the message for Radical Republicans. They were cheered by Lincoln's a.s.surance that Southerners must accept emanc.i.p.ation as an essential condition for reconstruction and by his promise that slaves freed by the Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation would never be restored to owners. The requirement that all citizens in the rebellious states must take the loyalty oath before partic.i.p.ating in the government erased a distinction between loyal and disloyal Southerners that Radicals had long questioned; all white Southerners, at least for a time, would occupy a legal status lower than that of the citizens of the loyal states. In addition, by saying that the governments in the rebellious states had been "subverted," Lincoln implied that they had ceased to be fully equal states in a const.i.tutional sense. With its careful balancing of Radical and Conservative proposals, the message was, as the Democratic New York World sourly remarked, "a creditable specimen of political dexterity," which "trims with marvelous adroitness between the two factions of the Republican party."

So dexterous was it that when it was read to Congress on December 9 reactions were, as John Hay reported, "something wonderful." Among the Radicals, Sumner was beaming, Zachariah Chandler, who had recently warned the President that he must take a bold stand, was delighted, and Henry Wilson of Ma.s.sachusetts said the President had "struck another great blow" for freedom. At the other extreme, Conservative Senator Dixon and War Democrat Reverdy Johnson p.r.o.nounced the message "highly satisfactory." With the lions lying down with the lambs, it really seemed to Hay "as if the millennium had come."

In the country at large, reactions were equally favorable. Of course, a few antiwar Democratic newspapers condemned it. It was, declared the New York Journal of Commerce, a "ukase from the chambers of an autocrat"; the Chicago Times suggested that the severity of the terms for Lincoln's proposed amnesty demonstrated that the President was either "insane with fanaticism, or a traitor who glories in his country's shame." But most other public voices enthusiastically endorsed the President's plan. Greeley's Radical New York Tribune declared that no presidential message since George Washington's had "given such general satisfaction," while the anti-Radical New York Herald praised the President for repudiating "the abolition plan of Senator Sumner." Sumner himself spoke of Lincoln's message "with great gratification," because it satisfied "his idea of proper reconstruction without insisting on the adoption of his peculiar theories." On the other hand, the Blairs praised it because it supported the Conservative position and annihilated "Sumners and Chase's territorial project." From all over the country the President received letters of praise. Friends were "in jubilee over the Message," reported a New Yorker; it was "Magnificent," wrote a Washington resident; "Posterity will regard you as ... the restorer of honor, peace and prosperity to our land," promised another correspondent; while from Ohio came the report that everybody agreed that Lincoln had "said the right word at the right time."

Perhaps the strongest words of praise came from the Chicago Tribune, whose editor, Joseph Medill, had often been critical of Lincoln. After the President's message, Medill felt, "the political future begins to look clear." To finish off the war and bring about a restoration of the Union required "a clear head, an honest mind, and clean hands." "Who [is] so fit to carry on what is begun," asked the Tribune, "as he who has so well conducted us ... thus far?" Looking ahead to the next presidential election, the Tribune editors saw "many worthy men discharging important national trusts" but found only one "in whom the nation more and more confides-Abraham Lincoln." In his private correspondence Medill was positive that "Old Abe has the inside track so completely that he will be nominated by acclamation when the [Republican] convention meets."

II

That kind of talk, of course, made the problem of reconstruction a part of the contest for the next presidential race. From time to time during the previous year, there had been talk of reelecting Lincoln in 1864, but for the most part it had been desultory and not particularly fervent. Republican newspaper editors, when the question of a second term was raised, usually combined praise for Lincoln with commendation of other conceivable Republican presidential candidates-Seward, Chase, Banks, Butler, Fremont, and so on. Lincoln tried to think as little as possible about the 1864 election. Nowhere in his letters or his public papers during the first two and a half years of the war did he mention renomination or reelection. When newspapers began to agitate the issue, he remarked testily: "I wish they would stop thrusting that subject of the Presidency into my face. I don't want to hear anything about it."

But, for all the burdens of his office, he did desire reelection. As he remarked later, he viewed a second term not as just a personal compliment but as an expression of the people's belief that he could "better finish a difficult work... than could any one less severely schooled to the task." By the fall of 1863, when E. B. Washburne asked Lincoln to let some of his confidential friends know his intentions with regard to the next presidential election, he answered with only a minimum of tentativeness: "A second term would be a great honor and a great labor, which together, perhaps I would not decline, if tendered." By November he was more open, and an Illinois visitor who talked with him in the White House reported, "He will be a candidate again-if his friends so desire-of course."

There was little that Lincoln could do openly to promote his renomination and reelection. Custom prohibited him from soliciting support, making public statements, or appearing to campaign for office. But as the nominating season approached, he made a point of hosting numerous social activities at the White House. Both the Lincolns were resolved to make the winter of 18631864 a brilliant social season, which could only boost the President's hopes for a second term.

Mary Lincoln willingly cooperated in promoting her husband's reelection. Her mental and physical health had improved, and she gained greater control over her emotions when she was obliged to contrast her own problems with those of her youngest half sister, Emilie Todd Helm, whose husband, Confederate General Benjamin Hardin Helm, was killed at Chickamauga. Seeking to return from the Deep South to her home in Kentucky, Emilie was pa.s.sed through the Union lines in December and sought refuge in the White House. The Lincolns tried to keep her visit a secret, because the presence of the widow of a high-ranking Confederate officer in the White House was a potential source of embarra.s.sment, especially since Emilie remained outspoken in her loyalty to the South. Inevitably the news leaked out, and General Daniel Sickles, who had lost a leg in the battle of Gettysburg, told the President, "You should not have that rebel in your house." Firmly Lincoln responded: "General Sickles, my wife and I are in the habit of choosing our own guests. We do not need from our friends either advice or a.s.sistance in the matter." After a week, with a pa.s.s from the President allowing her to cross the army lines, Emilie left for Kentucky.

Inspirited by Emilie's visit, Mary shed her depressing mourning clothing and appeared at the White House New Year's Day reception in a purple dress trimmed with black velvet. The President wore a long black coat, which, an English observer noted, "seemed to hang on him." With more enthusiasm than they had displayed for many months, both the President and his wife greeted the visitors who thronged the White House. At this reception, for the first time in American history, the guests presented to the President included what one newspaper described as "four colored men of genteel exterior, and with the manners of gentlemen." As each visitor was introduced, the President shook hands and bowed, usually saying only "Good morning, Mr. Jones" or "Mr. Smith, how do you do?" Occasionally he paused to exchange a few words with an old friend. Once when a woman asked whether these receptions were not hard work, he replied, "Oh, no-no.... Of course this is tiresome physically; but I am pretty strong, and it rests me, after all, for here n.o.body is cross or exacting, and no man asks me for what I can't give him!"

In addition to receptions, the Lincolns gave a number of dinner parties, to which political friends and possible supporters were invited. Fiercely loyal, Mary wanted to exclude her husband's rivals, and when Nicolay came up with a guest list for the annual cabinet dinner on January 14, she struck off Chase, his daughter, Kate, and his son-in-law, William Sprague. Nicolay appealed to the President, who ordered the names restored. "There soon arose such a rampage as the [White] House hasn't seen for a year," Nicolay reported, and Mary, whom the secretary referred to as "her Satanic Majesty," announced that she was going to take charge of all the arrangements for the dinner. Finding that she was unable to manage, she summoned Nicolay on the very afternoon of the dinner, apologized to him, and asked his help. "I think," reported the young secretary smugly, "she has felt happier since she cast out that devil of stubbornness."

Both Lincolns gave particular attention to Charles Sumner, who had shown a disturbing tendency during the previous summer to oppose the administration's policies. Lincoln respected Sumner for his knowledge, his sacrifices in the antislavery cause, and his seriousness of purpose, and, as they became better acquainted, found the man behind the cold and haughty senatorial mask. Sumner and Lincoln, Mary said, used to talk and "laugh together like two school boys." Mary found the handsome bachelor senator equally attractive, and they became fast friends. They wrote each other notes in French, they went for carriage drives, and they lent each other books; he let her read his correspondence from European notables, and she sent him bouquets from the White House conservatory. The senator, Mary recalled later, "was a constant visitor at the W[hite] H[ouse]. both in office and drawing room-he appreciated my n.o.ble husband and I learned to converse with him, with more freedom and confidence than any of my other friends." No doubt a good deal of calculation lay behind the attentions that Sumner received from the White House, for the President realized that the senator was a powerful force in the extreme abolitionist wing of his party.

But Lincoln knew that it was going to take more than White House receptions or bouquets for Charles Sumner to a.s.sure his reelection. No President since Andrew Jackson had served a second term, and within the Republican party there was considerable sentiment in favor of rotation in office-especially among those opposed to Lincoln. He could readily identify several groups of such opponents. The most vocal were abolitionists, mostly in New England but also powerful in the West, who feared he might negotiate a peace that did not completely eradicate slavery. Typical was an Iowa caucus of abolitionists that condemned the President as "an insignificant man," who had "clogged and impeded the wheels and movements of the revolution"; moreover, because he was "a Kentuckian by birth, and his brothers-in-law being in the rebel army," he had "always shielded the rebels." German-Americans were also disaffected. Many thought that Lincoln, together with Stanton and especially Halleck, was at heart a nativist who discriminated against German-born generals like Franz Sigel and Carl Schurz. As the prominent Indiana Freie Presse said, "We cannot and dare not vote for Lincoln, unless we are willing to partic.i.p.ate in the betrayal of the republic, unless we are willing to remain for all future the most despicable step-children of the nation." The Charcoal, or Radical, faction of Missouri Republicans was especially hostile, believing that the President had shabbily rejected their overtures of friendship.

In nearly every Northern state Lincoln's reelection was opposed by one or more factions within the Republican party. Sometimes these factions continued the rivalry between former Whigs and former Democrats; in other states they reflected nothing more than intense personal rivalries. Thus in New York one faction consisted of the supporters of Seward and Thurlow Weed, who seemed to be the princ.i.p.al beneficiaries of the appointments and contracts given by the Lincoln administration; the other, which cl.u.s.tered around Greeley and David Dudley Field, was usually critical of the President. In Maryland an intense struggle between the Blairs and Henry Winter Davis continued; when Lincoln sustained his Postmaster General, Davis became one of the President's most articulate and vituperative enemies.

In most cases dissatisfaction with the President did not derive from fundamental ideological differences. Virtually all Republicans agreed that the war must be fought until victory, that slavery had to be abolished, and that some conditions had to be imposed on the Southern states before they could be readmitted to the Union. But there was disagreement over Lincoln's ability to attain these goals. Many considered him an ineffectual administrator who tolerated looseness and inefficiency throughout the government. The best evidence was that, after two and a half years of costly, b.l.o.o.d.y warfare, the 20,000,000 loyal citizens of the North were unable to overcome 5,000,000 rebellious white Southerners.

Republican members of Congress, who were in the best position to observe the workings of the administration, gave little support for Lincoln's renomination. The chairmen of the most important Senate committees-such as Henry Wilson of Ma.s.sachusetts, chairman of the Military Affairs Committee; Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, chairman of the Committee on Territories; Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, chairman of the Commerce Committee; and James W. Grimes of Iowa, chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia-were openly opposed to a second term, and only careful management kept Sumner, who headed the Foreign Relations Committee, from joining the opposition. Republican leaders in the House of Representatives were also mostly hostile to Lincoln. Early in 1864 when a visiting editor asked Thaddeus Stevens to introduce him to some congressmen who favored Lincoln's renomination, the Pennsylvania congressman brought him to Representative Isaac N. Arnold of Illinois, explaining: "Here is a man who wants to find a Lincoln member of Congress. You are the only one I know and I have come over to introduce my friend to you."

Aware of this congressional dissatisfaction, Lincoln and his friends took solace in the belief that it was shared by only a few disgruntled politicians. Surely the ma.s.s of the people thought differently, and his supporters convinced themselves that there was "a widespread and constantly increasing concurrence of sentiment in favor of the reelection of Mr. Lincoln." "Mr. Lincoln has the inside track," announced the Chicago Tribune; "he has the confidence of the people, and even the respect and affections of the ma.s.ses." Lincoln's mail was filled with repeated a.s.surances of the support of the voters. "Acting upon your own convictions-irrespective of those who threaten, as well as of those who fawn and flatter," wrote a Bostonian, "you have touched and taken the popular heart-and secured your re-election beyond a peradventure-should you desire it." Especially heartening were the expressions of support from the army. "The soldier will trust no one but Abraham Lincoln," announced one veteran in the Army of the Potomac. "I believe it is G.o.d's purpose ... to call Abraham Lincoln again to the Presidential chair."

Such letters encouraged Lincoln's managers to present him in the role of an outsider, who had the support of the people if not the politicians. In several states, Union meetings begged the President to become "the People's candidate for re-election," accepting "the nomination so generously tendered without awaiting a nomination from a [Republican] National Convention." Nowhere was this movement stronger than in New York City, where a National Conference Committee of the Union Lincoln a.s.sociation, headed by the wealthy Simeon Draper, urged the people throughout the nation to meet on February 22 and express their support for Lincoln's reelection. The Democratic New York World thought it reasonably certain that Lincoln would "nominate himself and leave the Republican Convention, if there should be one, nothing to do but hold a ratification meeting."

That prospect helped to mobilize Lincoln's opponents within the Republican party, but to have any chance of success they needed a rival candidate. Some looked to General Grant. Others thought of Benjamin F. Butler, famous for his severity during the occupation of New Orleans, but Lincoln largely neutralized him by giving him a dead-end job as commander at Fort Monroe. John C. Fremont had backers as well, both because he was known to hate Lincoln and because he had substantial support among the Germans and the Radicals, especially in Missouri. But in the winter of 18631864 most rested their hopes on Salmon P. Chase.

Chase's disaffection with the administration of which he was part had steadily increased since his embarra.s.sing role in the cabinet crisis of December 1862. Though he and Lincoln had developed an effective working relationship, they were not personally congenial. Chase was stiff, reserved, and ponderous. In the course of a general conversation he was given to uttering profundities like: "It is singularly instructive to meet so often as we do in life and in history, instances of vaulting ambition, meanness and treachery failing after enormous exertions and integrity and honesty march straight in triumph to its purpose." He resented the easygoing relationship Lincoln had established with Seward; the President often made impromptu evening visits to Seward's home to pa.s.s along the latest news and gossip or to share his most recent joke, but he never thought of dropping in on Chase. But there was more to it than that. Chase's discontent stemmed fundamentally from his conviction that he was superior to Lincoln both as a statesman and as an administrator.

Chase also felt that his labors in the Treasury Department were unappreciated. His exhausting efforts to borrow money and raise taxes in order to finance the war seemed to go unnoticed. Chase especially resented the President's decentralized administrative policy of allowing each cabinet officer to run his own department without interference or even consultation with his colleagues. What was at stake here was not just Chase's power drive; it was his sense that he was the only one responsible for keeping the government's financial tub filled, while the War, Navy, and other departments controlled the spigots that drained it.

He was willing to admit that the President had always treated him with kindness, and he did not doubt Lincoln's fairness or integrity of purpose. But he believed Lincoln's policies toward the South and slavery were too slow and too cautious. The Secretary was determined that the end of the war must bring about "unconditional and immediate emanc.i.p.ation in all the Rebel States, no retrograde from the Proclamation of Emanc.i.p.ation, no recognition of a Rebel State as a part of the Union, or [any] terms with it except on the extinction, wholly, at once and forever of slavery." Repeatedly he prodded the President to extend his Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation to areas in the South under Union military control, which Lincoln had excepted. Increasingly he came to share Sumner's belief that the only true Unionists in the South were the blacks, and he favored the partic.i.p.ation of "colored loyalists" in the reconstruction of the rebellious states.

Lincoln was aware of these dissatisfactions of his Secretary of the Treasury. For the most part, Chase openly and honorably expressed his dissents, and the President made no complaint about them. Nor did he object when Chase sought to make the army of Treasury Department employees, a force greatly enlarged after the pa.s.sage of the Internal Revenue Act of 1862, loyal to him personally, rather than to the administration. He did not even protest when the Secretary made heavy-handed efforts to woo the support of key senators, as when he allowed John Conness of California to nominate the customs collector at San Francisco. But Lincoln could not help noticing that whenever he made a decision that offended some influential person, the Secretary promptly ranged himself in opposition and tried to persuade the victim that he had been unjustly dealt with and that things would have been different had Chase been in control. Thus he leapt to ingratiate himself with Fremont after Lincoln required him to withdraw his hasty proclamation against slavery in Missouri, with General Hunter after his emanc.i.p.ation order was overruled, with General Butler after he was recalled from New Orleans, with General Rosecrans when he was replaced by Thomas, and with the Missouri Radicals after they failed to get the President's endors.e.m.e.nt. "I am entirely indifferent as to his success or failure in these schemes," Lincoln told John Hay, "so long as he does his duty as the head of the Treasury Department."

For the most part Lincoln regarded Chase's rather clumsy efforts to promote himself with detached amus.e.m.e.nt. Generally he was willing to appoint the Secretary's partisans to positions in the Treasury Department, preferring, as he said, to let "Chase have his own way in these sneaking tricks than getting into a snarl with him by refusing him what he asks." When he learned that Chase was trying to make political capital out of the removal of Rosecrans, he laughed and said, "I suppose he will, like the bluebottle fly, lay his eggs in every rotten spot he can find." Behind Lincoln's easy tolerance was his recognition that his Secretary of the Treasury would probably make a very good President-and his confidence that he would never have a chance to do so.

The President could afford to be confident because throughout the North his partisans were quietly working to secure his renomination. It was not considered proper for a presidential candidate himself to seem to have anything to do with these maneuvers, and Lincoln kept a strict public silence about them. But whenever Republican party leaders came to Washington, they gained easy access to the White House and were often closeted with the President for hours. Out of these conferences arose the strategy of opening the offensive against Chase in New Hampshire, the state of his birth. When Republicans of the Granite State met in Concord on January 7, their only stated business was to renominate Governor Joseph A. Gilmore, but young William E. Chandler seized the occasion to rush through a resolution praising Lincoln's "unequaled sagacity and statesmanship" and declaring him "the people's choice for re-election to the Presidency in 1864." Chase's supporters had to be content with the backhanded compliment of a resolution that expressed confidence in the financial abilities of the Secretary of the Treasury-but urged him "promptly to detect, expose and punish all corruption and fraud upon the Government."

Spurred by the action of New Hampshire, Simon Cameron sprang into action in Pennsylvania. Loyal to a President who had generously accepted part of the blame for his mismanagement of the War Department, Cameron also recognized that Lincoln's renomination would be a blow to the rival Republican faction in Pennsylvania headed by Thaddeus Stevens. Back in December, finding the President pessimistic about his chances for renomination, Cameron reminded him that when Andrew Jackson sought a second term his managers outflanked any possible rivals by procuring a pet.i.tion from the members of the Pennsylvania legislature asking him to run again. "Cameron," asked Lincoln, "could you get me a letter like that?" "Yes I think I might," replied the wily Pennsylvanian, and he went to work. By January 9 he had secured the signatures of all the Republican members of the Pennsylvania house and senate to a request that the President would allow himself to be reelected. "I have kept my promise," he told John Hay.

Promptly other Republican organizations began to swing into line. Throughout the North chapters of the Union League, originally formed in 1862 to restore Northern morale shaken by political and military reverses, came out in support of Lincoln's reelection. The Philadelphia Union League, for example, praised the President for "showing himself the leader of a people and not a party." The Trenton Union League declared that he had shown "his pre-eminent fitness" for the presidency. The New England Loyal Publication Society, which issued patriotic broadsides distributed to nearly nine hundred newspapers, broke its rule against taking a position on political contests and published a powerful editorial urging Lincoln's reelection. The Union members of the legislatures of New Jersey, Kansas, California, and the Territory of Colorado all came out in favor of a second term.

With Lincoln's supporters on the move, Chase's backers were forced into the open. They had begun to organize as early as December 9, the day after Lincoln issued his amnesty proclamation, when an advisory committee met in Washington to consider plans to make Chase the next President. The core membership included two Ohio congressmen, an Ohio army paymaster who was in the employ of the Treasury Department, and Whitelaw Reid, the consistently pro-Chase Washington correspondent of the Cincinnati Gazette. Subsequently it was expanded by the addition of Senator John Sherman and Representative James A. Garfield, both of Ohio, and Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy of Kansas, who felt aggrieved because Lincoln had favored his rival fellow senator, James H. Lane, in the distribution of Kansas patronage.

Early in February the Chase campaign tested the waters by issuing a pamphlet, The Next Presidential Election, which deplored efforts to procure "the formal nomination of Mr. Lincoln in State Legislatures and other public bodies." "The people have lost all confidence in his ability to suppress the rebellion and restore the Union," the pamphlet continued. The "vascillation [sic] and indecision of the President," "the feebleness of his will," and his "want of intellectual grasp" were responsible for the failure of Union armies to crush the rebellion. "Mr. Lincoln cannot be re-elected to the Presidency," the argument ran. The next Republican candidate must be "an advanced thinker; a statesman profoundly versed in political and economic science, one who fully comprehends the spirit of the age." Salmon P. Chase's name was not mentioned; it did not have to be.

This secret, anonymous attack on Lincoln backfired on its authors. As early as February 6, Ward Hill Lamon learned of this "most scurrilous and abusive pamphlet" and warned the President of its existence. When it was circulated in Ohio under the franks of Senator Sherman and Representative James M. Ashley, Lincoln's supporters were already on the alert. The doc.u.ment was "so mean and dastardly in its character," one correspondent wrote Sherman, "that it will brand with infamy your character as a statesman and your honor as a gentleman." Another protested this attempt on the part of "a few politicians at Washington" to turn the people against "Old Honest Abe" and instructed the senator: "You cant do it and Mr. Sherman you need not try it. If you were to resign tomorrow you could not get 10 votes in the Legislature.... If you cant do anything better you had better quit."

Undeterred, Chase's backers continued to organize and in late February, under the signature of Senator Pomeroy, distributed a second circular, again marked "Private," declaring that the reelection of Lincoln was "practically impossible." This time they frankly announced that Chase, with his "record, clear and unimpeachable, showing him to be a statesman of rare ability, and an administrator of the very highest order," possessed "more of the qualities needed in a President during the next four years, than are combined in any other available candidate." Sent to hundreds of Republicans throughout the North, this Pomeroy Circular promptly became a matter of public knowledge. The Washington Const.i.tutional Union published it on February 20, and two days later the National Intelligencer gave it broad circulation.

Once again, Chase found himself in the embarra.s.sing position of appearing disloyal to the President to whose favor he owed his office, and he quickly disclaimed responsibility for the Pomeroy Circular. He was, he wrote Lincoln, only a reluctant candidate, and he had not been consulted by the friends who were organizing in his behalf. Choosing his words very carefully, he denied knowledge of the existence of the Pomeroy Circular before it was published-a statement that may have been literally true, though the author of the doc.u.ment, James M. Winch.e.l.l, remembered that the Secretary was informed in advance of the plan to send it out and fully approved it. Chase offered his resignation, declaring, "I do not wish to administer the Treasury Department one day without your entire confidence."

Coolly Lincoln acknowledged the Secretary's letter, promising to answer fully when he could find time to do so, and he left Chase dangling in the wind. Lincoln's aides were furious over the "unscrupulous and malicious" activities of the "treasury rats" who were out to injure the President, but Lincoln held his peace for a week. Then, in a rare attempt to discuss political questions with Robert, who was home from Harvard for the holidays, he strolled into his son's room one evening and showed him Chase's letter.

Calling for pen and paper, the President drafted a reply to the Secretary, stating that he did "not perceive occasion for a change" in the Treasury Department. He had not read the Pomeroy Circular and did not think he would read it. He was, however, "not shocked, or surprised" by its appearance, for he had been aware of Pomeroy's pro-Chase organization for several weeks. "I have known just as little of these things as my own friends have allowed me to know," he a.s.sured Chase. "They bring the doc.u.ments to me, but I do not read them-they tell me what they think fit to tell me, but I do not inquire for more."

When Robert asked in surprise if he really had not seen the circular, his father replied almost sternly that, though "a good many people had tried to tell him something he did not wish to hear," his answer to Chase was literally true.

Before his low-key letter reached Chase, Lincoln had already delivered a different sort of reply. On February 22 the National Committee of the Republican party (which in the forthcoming election was to call itself the National Union party) met in Washington, and four-fifths of its members, who were mostly federal officeholders appointed by Lincoln, expressed support for his reelection. The committee also followed the President's wishes in appointing an early date, June 7, for the national convention, to be held in Baltimore. The next day in Indianapolis, where John D. Defrees, the superintendent of the Government Printing Office, had been working with the President's knowledge and approval to check the Chase forces, the Indiana Republican convention endorsed Lincoln's reelection. Two days later the President's supporters in the Ohio state Republican convention rammed through a resolution urging his renomination. Then, on February 27 in the House of Representatives, Frank Blair, on leave from his army command by permission of the President, launched a savage attack on corruption in the Treasury Department and placed the blame squarely on Chase. Referring directly to the Pomeroy Circular, Blair remarked, "It is a matter of surprise that a man having the instincts of a gentleman should remain in the Cabinet after the disclosure of such an intrigue against the one to whom he owes his portfolio," and he speculated, "I presume the President is well content that he should stay; for every hour that he remains sinks him deeper in the contempt of every honorable mind."

Sore and unhappy, Chase withdrew from the presidential contest on March 5, on the grounds that his home state of Ohio had expressed a preference for another candidate. He sent a copy of his letter of withdrawal to the President. Few took Chase's declination at face value. Playing on the first name of the Secretary of the Treasury, the New York Herald reminded its readers: "The salmon is a queer fish, very shy and very wary. Often it appears to avoid the bait just before gulping it down; and even after it is hooked it has to be allowed plenty of line and must be 'played' carefully before it can be safely landed." So Chase, it suggested, was still playing with the bait of a presidential nomination, and he would probably leap at it again. David Davis, now an a.s.sociate justice of the Supreme Court but still a political adviser to the President, was more blunt: "Mr. Chase's declination is a mere sham, and very ungracefully done. The plan is to get up a great opposition to Lincoln through Fremont and others and..., when the convention meets,... present Chase again."

III