Twenty Years of Congress Volume I Part 40

Mr. Lincoln had been some time in the Presidency before the public estimate of him was correct or appreciative. The people did not at first understand him. In the glamour of the Presidential canva.s.s they had idealized him,--attributing to him some traits above and many below his essential qualities. After his election and before his inauguration there was a general disposition to depreciate him.

He became a.s.sociated in the popular mind with an impending calamity, and tens of thousands who had voted for him, heartily repented the act and inwardly execrated the day that committed the destinies of the Union to his keeping. The first strong test brought upon Mr.

Lincoln was this depressing re-action among so many of his supporters.

A man with less resolute purpose would have been cast down by it, but Mr. Lincoln preserved the _mens aequa in arduis_. Through the gloom of the weeks preceding his inauguration he held his even way.

Perhaps in the more terrible crises through which he was afterwards called to pa.s.s, a firmer nerve was required, but not so rare a combination of qualities as he had shown in the dismal months with which the year 1861 opened.

Mr. Lincoln united firmness and gentleness in a singular degree.

He rarely spoke a harsh word. Ready to hear argument and always open to conviction, he adhered tenaciously to the conclusions which he had finally reached. Altogether modest, he had confidence in himself, trusted to the reasoning of his own mind, believed in the correctness of his own judgment. Many of the popular conceptions concerning him are erroneous. No man was farther than he from the easy, familiar, jocose character in which he is often painted.

While he paid little attention to form or ceremony he was not a men with whom liberties could be taken. There was but one person in Illinois outside of his own household who ventured to address him by his first name. There was no one in Washington who ever attempted it. Appreciating wit and humor, he relished a good story, especially if it ill.u.s.trated a truth or strengthened an argument, and he had a vast fund of ill.u.s.trative anecdote which he used with the happiest effect. But the long list of vulgar, salacious stories attributed to him, were retailed only by those who never enjoyed the privilege of exchanging a word with him. His life was altogether a serious one--inspired by the n.o.blest spirit, devoted to the highest aims. Humor was but an incident with him, a partial relief to the melancholy which tinged all his years.

He presented an extraordinary combination of mental and moral qualities. As a statesman he had the loftiest ideal, and it fell to his lot to inaugurate measures which changed the fate of millions of living men, of tens of millions yet to be born. As a manager of political issues and master of the art of presenting them, he has had no rival in this country unless one be found in Jefferson.

The complete discomfiture of his most formidable a.s.sailants in 1863, especially of those who sought to prejudice him before the people on account of the arrest of Vallandigham, cannot easily be paralleled for shrewdness of treatment and for keen appreciation of the reactionary influences which are certain to control public opinion. Mr. Van Buren stands without rival in the use of partisan tactics. He operated altogether on men, and believed in self- interest as the mainspring of human action. Mr. Lincoln's ability was of a far higher and broader character. There was never the slightest lack of candor or fairness in his methods. He sought to control men through their reason and their conscience. The only art the employed was that of presenting his views so convincingly as to force conviction on the minds of his hearers and his readers.

The Executive talent of Mr. Lincoln was remarkable. He was emphatically the head of his own Administration, ultimate judge at all points and on all occasions where questions of weight were to be decided. An unwise eulogist of Mr. Seward attributes to him the origination and enforcement of the great policies which distinguished the Administration. So far is this from the truth that in more than one instance the most momentous steps were taken against the judgment and contrary to the advice of the Secretary of State. The position of control and command so firmly held by Mr. Lincoln was strikingly shown when the Peace Conference was about to a.s.semble at Fortress Monroe. He dispatched Mr. Seward to the place of meeting in advance of his own departure from Washington, giving him the most explicit instructions as to his mode of action, --prescribing carefully the limitations he should observe, and concluding with these words: "_You will hear all they may choose to say, and report it to me. You will not a.s.sume to definitely consummate any thing_." a.s.suredly this is not the language of deference. It does not stop short of being the language of command.

It is indeed the expression of one who realized that he was clothed with all the power belonging to his great office. No one had a more sincere admiration of Mr. Seward's large qualities than the President; no one more thoroughly appreciated his matchless powers.

But Mr. Lincoln had not only full trust in his own capacity, but a deep sense of his own responsibility--a responsibility which could not be transferred and for which he felt answerable to his conscience and to G.o.d.

CHARACTER OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN.

There has been discussion as to Mr. Lincoln's religious belief.

He was silent as to his own preference among creeds. Prejudice against any particular denomination he did not entertain. Allied all his life with Protestant Christianity, he thankfully availed himself of the services of an eminent Catholic prelate--Archbishop Hughes of New York--in a personal mission to England, of great importance, at a crisis when the relations between the two countries were disturbed and threatening. Throughout the whole period of the war he constantly directed the attention of the nation to dependence on G.o.d. It may indeed be doubted whether he omitted this in a single state paper. In every message to Congress, in eery proclamation to the people, he made it prominent. In July, 1863, after the battle of Gettysburg he called upon the people to give thanks because "it had pleased Almighty G.o.d to hearken to the supplications and prayers of an afflicted people and to vouchsafe signal and effective victories to the Army and Navy of the United States," and he asked the people "to render homage to the Divine Majesty and to invoke the influence of his Holy Spirit to subdue the anger which has produced and so long sustained a needless and cruel rebellion." On another occasion, recounting the blessings which had come to the Union, he said, "No human counsel hath devised, nor hath any mortal hand worked out, these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High G.o.d who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy."

Throughout his entire official career,--attended at all times with exacting duty and painful responsibility,--he never forgot his own dependence, or the dependence of the people, upon a Higher Power.

In his last public address, delivered to an immense crowd a.s.sembled at the White House on the 11th of April, to congratulate him on the victories of the Union, the President, standing as he unconsciously was in the very shadow of death, said reverently to his hearers, "In the midst of your joyous expression, He from whom all blessings flow must first be remembered"!

Not only in life but in treasure the cost of the war was enormous.

In addition to the large revenues of the Government which had been currently absorbed, the public debt at the close of the struggle was $2,808,549,437.55. The incidental losses were innumerable in kind, incalculable in amount. Mention is made here only of the actual expenditure of money--estimated by the standard of gold.

The outlay was indeed princ.i.p.ally made in paper, but the faith of the United States was given for redemption in coin--a faith which has never been tarnished, and which in this instance has been signally vindicated by the steady determination of the people.

Never, in the same s.p.a.ce of time, has there been a National expenditure so great.

Other nations have made costly sacrifices in struggles affecting their existence or their master pa.s.sions. In the memorable campaigns of the French in 1794, when the Republic was putting forth its most gigantic energies, the expenses rose to 200,000,000 francs a month, or about $450,000,000 a year. For the three years of the rebellion, after the first year, our War Department alone expended $603,314,411.82, $690,391,048.66, and $1,030,690,400 respectively. The French Directory broke down under its expenditures by its lavish issue of _a.s.signats_ and the French Republic became bankrupt. Our Government was saved by its rigorous system of taxation imposed upon the people by themselves. Under Napoleon, in addition to the impositions on conquered countries, the budgets hardly exceeded in francs the charges of the United States for the rebellion, in dollars. Thus in 1805 the French budget exhibited total expenditures of 666,155,139 francs, including 69,140,000 francs for interest on the debt. In the same year the minister stated to the Chambers that income was derived from Italy of 30,000,000 francs, and from Germany and Holland 100,000,000, leaving 588,998,705 to be collected from France. In 1813 the French expenditures had risen to 953,658,772 francs, and the total receipts from French revenue were 780,959,847 francs. The French national debt has been measured since 1797 by the interest paid, fixed at that time at five per cent. From 1800 to 1814, the period of the Consulate and the Empire, this interest was increased by 23,091,635 francs, indicating an addition of twenty times that sum to the princ.i.p.al of the debt. The Government of the Restoration added in 1815, 101,260,635 francs to the annual interest. Thus the cost of the Napoleonic wars to France may be stated at about $487,000,000 added to the princ.i.p.al of the debt, or less than one-fifth of the increment of our national obligations on account of the rebellion. The French burdens were extended over the whole period from 1800 to 1814. Our own were concentrated into the s.p.a.ce of four years.

NATIONAL EXPENDITURES IN THE WAR.

The total expenditures of Great Britain during the French Revolution and the career of Napoleon were 1,490,000,888, or nearly five times that sum in dollars. The largest expenditures in any single year were in 1815, 130,305,958, or in dollars, $631,976,894.

After 1862 our expenditures were not so low as that in any year, and they were more than double that sum in the closing year of the war when the great armies were mustered out of service and final payment was made to all.

The British expenditures in the war against the French during the period of the Revolution were a little more than 490,000,000 and against Napoleon a little less than 1,000,000,000; or $4,850,000,000 in the aggregate, for twenty-three years. The total outlay was therefore larger than our payments on account of the rebellion.

But there was no period of ten years in her wars with the French, in which Great Britain expended so much as the United States expended in four years. The loss of Great Britain by discounts in raising money or by the use of depreciated paper was greater than that incurred by the United States. A leading English authority says that of the vast burden up to 1816, the "artificial enhancements due to discounts in raising money were so great that for every 100 received into the treasury a national debt of 173 was created."

No other wars than those of England and France can be compared with ours in point of expenditure. For the war between France and Germany in 1870 the indemnity demanded by the conqueror was 5,000,000,000 francs, equivalent in American money to $930,000,000.

This sum was much in excess of the outlay of Germany. The expenses of France on her own account in that contest were 1,873,238,000 francs, or $348,432,068, and this is only from one-half to one- third of the annual outlay of the United States during the rebellion.

France added to the interest charge at this time 349,637,116 francs, indicating that the whole sum of the indemnity and other war expenditures has pa.s.sed into the princ.i.p.al of the permanent debt of the country.

The one grand feature of this lavish expenditure of wealth by the Government of the United States is that it was directed and enforced by the people themselves. No imperial power commanded it, no kingly prerogative controlled it. It was the free, unbiased, unchangeable will of the Sovereign People. They declared at the ballot-box, by untrammeled popular suffrage, that the war must go on. "The American people,"--said Henry Winter Davis in the House of Representatives at one of the most exciting periods of the struggle,--"the American people, rising to the height of the occasion, dedicate this generation to the sword, and, pouring out the blood of their children, demand that there be no compromise; that ruin to the Republic or ruin to the Rebel Confederacy are the only alternatives; that no peace shall be made except under the banner of Victory. Standing on this great resolve to accept nothing but Victory or ruin, Victory is ours!"

At the outbreak of hostilities the Government discovered that it had no Navy at its command. The Secretary, Mr. Welles, found upon entering his office but a single ship in a Northern port fitted to engage in aggressive operations. In the beginning of the great contest which was at once to be waged upon the seas, wherein the Government proposed to close Southern ports, and the South to destroy Northern commerce, the advantage was clearly with the South.

From Cape Henry to the Rio Grande the Navy of the United States was called upon to create an effective blockade against all ingress and egress. The conformation of the coast, which along great distances prevented the entrance and exit of ocean-going vessels, materially aided in the task, but it was still such a one as had never before been attempted in the naval history of the world.

The line to be subjected to blockade was as long as the line from the Bay of Biscay to the Golden Horn and in many respects it was far more difficult to control.

This blockade was an absolute necessity imposed on the United States. The South relied with implicit faith upon its ability to secure by the sale of cotton the means of carrying on the war.

The Confederate Government did not believe that the United States would hazard a conflict with the manufacturing nations of Europe, by attempting a blockade that would prevent the export of the staple; or if they did believe it, they looked upon it as the fatuous step on the part of the National Government that would promptly induce intervention by the combined power of England and France. This reliance was explicitly stated in advance by Mr.

Hammond of South Carolina, who three years before the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, on the fourth day of March, 1858, made this declaration in the United-States Senate:--

"Without firing a gun, without drawing a sword, should the North make war on us, we could bring the whole world to our feet. What would happen if no cotton was furnished for three years? I will not stop to depict what every one can imagine, but this is certain, England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her. No, you dare not make war on cotton. No Power on earth dares to make war upon cotton. _Cotton is King_."

EFFECTIVENESS OF THE BLOCKADE.

Boastful and impotent as the declaration of Mr. Hammond now seems, it had a better basis of fact to stand upon than many of the fiery predictions in which Southern statesmen were wont to indulge. The importance of cotton to the civilized world could hardly be exaggerated, and yet it was this very importance that forced the United States to the course which was pursued. The National Government could not permit the export of cotton without constantly aggrandizing the power of the rebellion, and it could not prevent its export without tempting the manufacturing nations of Europe to raise the blockade. The Administration wisely prepared to enforce the blockade and to meet all the consequences.

To accomplish its undertaking, the energy of the Nation was devoted to the creation of a navy. By the end of the year 1863 the government had six hundred vessels of war which were increased to seven hundred before the rebellion was subdued. Of the total number at least seventy-five were ironclad. It may be instanced with laudable pride that one enterprising man, honorably distinguished as a scientific engineer, constructed in less than a hundred days an armored squadron of eight ships, in the aggregate of five thousand tons burden, capable of steaming nine knots per hour and destined for effective service upon the rivers of the South-West. When the contractor, Mr. James B. Eads of St. Louis, agreed to furnish these steamers to the Government, the timber from which they were to be built was still standing in the forest and the machinery with which the armor was to be rolled was not constructed.

A year after the first battle was fought the naval force of the United States had practically interdicted all legitimate commerce with the Southern States. No more effective method of warfare could have been devised. At the outbreak of the war the States in rebellion were able to manufacture but few of the articles indispensable to the ordinary life of a people. Their wealth was purely agricultural. Cotton and tobacco were their only exports.

For a supply of manufactures the South had depended wholly upon its trade with the North and with Europe. The natural effect of the war was greatly to lessen production, and the blockade made it impossible to find a market for any large portion of the diminished product of cotton. As a striking evidence of the prosperity in the South at the time it complained of oppression, the largest cotton crop which had ever been grown was that of 1860. It numbered more than five million two hundred thousand bales, nearly four and a half millions of which had found a ready market in Europe and the North before the outbreak of the war. The crop of 1861 was little more than one-half that of the preceding year. Of the three and a half millions which remained available for export at the end of 1861 it was estimated that up to August, 1862, not more than fifty thousand bales had been carried to England, the princ.i.p.al foreign consumer.

The demand for food created by the Southern army caused a majority of the plantations to raise corn, and the cotton crop of 1862 did not amount to more than one million bales, very little of which found a foreign market; and the supply and exportation diminished from this time onward. Cotton which sold in December, 1861, in Liverpool for 11_d_. per pound had risen in December, 1862, to 24_d_. per pound, and as a result, half a million persons in England, dependent for their daily bread upon this manufacturing industry, were thrown out of employment and reduced to beggary.

So great was the distress that by April, 1863, nearly two million pounds sterling had been expended for their relief, and this sum does not include the vast amounts expended in local volunteer charities. English manufacturers saw that the supply of the raw product from America could no longer be depended upon, and efforts were made to introduce the manufacture of the inferior staple from India, but the experiment proved in the main unsatisfactory and unprofitable.

The stringency of the blockade which prevented the exportation of cotton, prevented also the importation of manufactured articles.

While compelled to acknowledge this fact, the Confederate Secretary of State, Mr. Benjamin, attempted very cleverly to turn it to account by showing the advantages which would accrue to the commercial and manufacturing cla.s.ses of England by the speedy triumph of the rebellion. Writing to Mr. Mason, who represented the Confederacy in England, Mr. Benjamin said, "The almost total cessation of external commerce for the last two years has produced the complete exhaustion of all articles of foreign growth and manufacture, and it is but a moderate computation to estimate the imports into the Confederacy at three hundred millions of dollars for the first six months which will ensue after the treaty of peace." The unexpressed part of the proposition which this statement covered was the most interesting. The merchants and ship-owners of England were to understand that the sale and transportation of this vast amount of fabrics would fall into the hands of England if the Confederacy should succeed, and that if it should fail, the domestic trade of the United States would absorb the whole of it. It was a shrewd appeal to a nation whose foreign policy has always been largely influenced by considerations of trade.

EFFECTIVENESS OF THE BLOCKADE.

The economic condition of the South at this time may be compared to that of a man with full purse, lost in a desert. Southern cotton would easily sell in the markets of New York or Liverpool for four times its price in Charleston, while the manufactures of Manchester or of Lowell were worth in Charleston four times the price in Liverpool or New York. Exchange was rendered by the blockade practically impossible. When the profits of a successful voyage from Liverpool to Charleston and return, would more than repay the expense of the construction of the best steamer and of the voyage, the temptation to evade the blockade was altogether too strong to be resisted by the merchants and manufacturers of England. Blockade- running became a regular business with them, and the extent to which it was carried may be inferred from the fact that during the war the American fleet captured or sunk more than seven hundred vessels bound from British ports to ports of the Confederacy. How many vessels escaped our navy and safely ran the blockade may never be known, but for three years it was a steady contest between the navy of the United States and the blockade-runners of England.

The persistent course of the latter was stimulated both by cupidity and by ill will to this country. They were anxious to make pecuniary gains for themselves and to aid the Confederacy at the same time.

They were checked only by the extra-hazardous character imparted to the trade by the alertness and superior vigilance of our cruisers which sent many millions of English ventures to less profitable markets and many millions to the adjudication of our own Prize- courts.

The establishment and maintenance of a blockade is not accounted by naval officers as the most brilliant service to which in the line of their profession they may be deputed, but it was a service of inestimable value to the cause of the Union, and it was performed with a skill and thoroughness never surpa.s.sed. The blockade required an enormous force of men. In addition to the marines, to the large body of soldiers transferred from time to time to the navy, and to the rebel prisoners that joined in the service, there were 121,807 men specially enlisted in the navy during the war. But for the aid thus rendered by the navy, the hard fight would have been longer and more sanguinary. Had not the South been thus deprived of the munitions of war, of clothing and of all manner of supplies which England and France were eager to furnish her, we should not have seen the end of the civil war in 1865, and we should have been subjected to all the hazards implied by the indefinite continuance of the struggle.

The census of 1860 shows that the thirty-three States and seven Territories, which at that time composed the United States, contained a population of 31,443,791. Fifteen of these States with 12,140,296 inhabitants were slave-holding, more than four millions of the population being slaves; eighteen with an aggregate population of 19,303,494 were cla.s.sed as free. Four of the fifteen slave States, Delaware, Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky, whose people numbered three and one-half millions, const.i.tuted what were known as the Border slave States--West Virginia being added to the list in 1862.

Though a considerable proportion of the inhabitants of these States, from a.s.sociation and interest, sympathized with the South, they contributed to the Union cause an army equal to two hundred thousand men enlisted for three years, and throughout the war they were loyal to the National Government. Many of the inhabitants of these States fought in the Confederate Army, but this loss was more than compensated by the effective aid rendered by the loyal men who joined the Union Army from the rebellious States. Tennessee furnished more than thirty thousand men to the armies of the Union, and from almost every State which formed a portion of the Confederacy men enlisted in the loyal forces. It may with reasonable precision be affirmed that the encouragement which the Confederacy received from the slave States that remained true to the Union, was more than offset by the effective aid rendered by loyal men residing within the limits of the rebellious States.

STRENGTH OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY.

As the source of supply for an army the Southern Confederacy had eleven States with an aggregate population of nine millions. It is difficult to estimate with accuracy the numerical strength of the army which they organized at the beginning of the war. In a semi-official publication it was a.s.serted that the army numbered more than five hundred thousand men, but as twenty thousand of this army were credited to Maryland and thirty-five thousand to Missouri, the number given was evidently a gross exaggeration. The statement was probably made for effect upon the North rather than in the interest of truth. A member of the Confederate Congress from North Carolina stated in debate in 1864 that the Confederate muster-roll numbered more than four hundred thousand men, "of whom probably one-half were not there." During the entire period of the war it is probable that eleven hundred thousand men were embodied in the Confederate Army, though its effective strength did not at any time consist of more than one-half that number. But this force was obtained by the South at great sacrifice. The necessity of a stringent conscription act was felt as early as April 16, 1862, at which time the first Enrolment Act was pa.s.sed by the Confederate Congress. Under this Act, which was amended on the 27th of September of the same year, Mr. Davis issued on the 15th of July, 1863, his first conscription proclamation which called into the service of the Confederacy all white men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five who were not legally exempted from military service.

The date of the proclamation shows that it was forced upon the Confederates by Lee's abortive invasion of Pennsylvania, and was intended to fill the ranks of the army which had been shattered and beaten on the field of Gettysburg. Further legislation by the Confederate Congress in February, 1864, extended the enrolment so as to include all white male residents of the Confederate States between the ages of seventeen and fifty. In February, 1865, Mr.

Davis estimated that more than one hundred and fifty thousand men were added to the Confederate armies by this forced conscription.

Comparing the strength of the Confederate Army with the population from which it was recruited, and taking into account the absolute lack of provision made for the comfort of the Southern soldier, the insufficient provision made for his sustenance and clothing, and the consequent desertion which made it imperative to repair diminished strength, it is evident that the conscription legislation bore with fearful severity upon the people of the South. Comprehensive as was the Enrolment Act, which rendered liable to military duty the entire male population between the ages of seventeen and fifty, the South was compelled to overstep its self-imposed limit. The forces which Lee and Johnston surrendered contained so many boys unfitted by youth and so many men unfitted by age for military service, that a Northern General epigrammatically remarked that for its armies the Confederacy had been compelled in the end to rob alike the cradle and the grave.

Grave misstatements however have been made in regard to the diminished forces of the Confederacy at the cessation of the war. The astounding a.s.sertion has crept into statements intended to be historical that Lee surrendered an army of only ten thousand men, and Johnston an army of most insignificant numbers in comparison with that of Sherman. An accurate count made of the forces surrendered by the Confederacy and paroled by the North at the conclusion of the war, shows that the following numbers were embodied in the various Southern armies and were rendering active service in the field:--

The army of Virginia under General Robert E. Lee . . . . 28,356 The army of Tennessee under General Joseph E. Johnston . . 37,047 The army of Florida under Major-General Samuel Jones . . . 2,113 The army of Alabama under Lieutenant-General Richard Taylor . 12,723 The Trans-Mississippi army of General E. Kirby Smith . . . 10,167 The Arkansas army of Brigadier-General M. Jeff Thompson . . 5,048

Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95,454

These figures are given as the result of actual count made of the paroles signed, and have been verified by officers both of the Union Army and of the Confederate Army. They represent the actual force engaged in the field, and upon the basis of calculation adopted in the North would indicate a Confederate Army of nearly three hundred thousand men at the close of the struggle. When the frequent desertions from the Southern Army are remembered, and their losses in prisoners and those disabled in the fearful fights of the months which preceded the surrender of Lee, it will not be exaggeration to say that the South had at the opening of General Grant's campaign in Virginia the preceding summer more than five hundred thousand men borne upon the rolls of its armies. The waste of the Confederate forces during the sixty days immediately preceding the final surrender was very great. The knowledge of the situation had penetrated the ranks, and the men lost spirit and hope. The result which followed was precisely that which has always happened with armies so circ.u.mstanced. The ranks melted away, and there were neither resource nor discipline to fill them again.