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Abraham Lincoln, Volume II

by Jr. John T. Morse · English · Gutenberg #12801 · 650,133 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Abraham Lincoln, Volume II

Author: Jr. John T. Morse


        
Release date: July 1, 2004 [eBook #12801]
                Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ABRAHAM LINCOLN, VOLUME II ***

[Illustration: Stephen A. Douglas]


American Statesmen

STANDARD LIBRARY EDITION


[Illustration: _The Home of Abraham Lincoln_]

       *       *       *       *       *






ABRAHAM LINCOLN

BY

JOHN T. MORSE, JR.

IN TWO VOLUMES

VOL. II.

1899

       *       *       *       *       *




CONTENTS


     I. EMANCIPATION AND POLITICS
    II. THE SECOND ACT OF THE MCCLELLAN DRAMA
   III. THE THIRD AND CLOSING ACT OF THE MCCLELLAN DRAMA
    IV. THE AUTUMN ELECTIONS OF 1862, AND THE PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION
     V. BATTLES AND SIEGES: DECEMBER, 1862-DECEMBER, 1863
    VI. SUNDRIES
   VII. THE TURN OF THE TIDE
  VIII. RECONSTRUCTION
    IX. RENOMINATION
     X. MILITARY SUCCESSES, AND THE REËLECTION OF THE PRESIDENT
    XI. THE END COMES INTO SIGHT: THE SECOND INAUGURATION
   XII. EMANCIPATION COMPLETED
  XIII. THE FALL OF RICHMOND, AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT LINCOLN

        INDEX

       *       *       *       *       *




ILLUSTRATIONS


STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS

From a photograph by Brady in the Library of the State Department at
Washington.

Autograph from the Chamberlain collection, Boston Public Library.

The vignette of Mr. Lincoln's home, corner Eighth and Jackson streets,
Springfield, Ill., is from a photograph.


SIMON CAMERON

From a photograph by Mr. Le Rue Lemer, Harrisburg, Pa.

Autograph from the Chamberlain collection, Boston Public Library.


LINCOLN SUBMITTING THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION TO HIS CABINET

From the painting by Carpenter in the Capitol at Washington.


ISAAC N. ARNOLD

From a photograph by Brady in the Library of the State Department at
Washington.

Autograph from one furnished by his daughter, Mrs. Mary A. Scudder,
Chicago, Ill.


MONTGOMERY BLAIR

From a photograph by Brady in the Library of the State Department at
Washington.

Autograph from the Chamberlain collection, Boston Public Library.

       *       *       *       *       *




ABRAHAM LINCOLN

       *       *       *       *       *




CHAPTER I

EMANCIPATION AND POLITICS


During the spring and summer of 1861 the people of the North presented
the appearance of a great political unit. All alleged emphatically that
the question was simply of the Union, and upon this issue no Northerner
could safely differ from his neighbors. Only a few of the more
cross-grained ones among the Abolitionists were contemptuously allowed
to publish the selfishness of their morality, and to declare that they
were content to see the establishment of a great slave empire, provided
they themselves were free from the taint of connection with it. If any
others let Southern proclivities lurk in the obscure recesses of their
hearts they were too prudent to permit these perilous sentiments to
appear except in the masquerade of dismal presagings. So in appearance
the Northern men were united, and in fact were very nearly so--for a
short time.

This was a fortunate condition, which the President and all shrewd
patriots took great pains to maintain. It filled the armies and the
Treasury, and postponed many jeopardies. But too close to the surface to
be long suppressed lay the demand that those who declared the Union to
be the sole issue should explain how it came about that the Union was
put in issue at all, why there was any dissatisfaction with it, and why
any desire anywhere to be rid of it. All knew the answer to that
question; all knew that if the war was due to disunion, disunion in turn
was due to slavery. Unless some makeshift peace should be quickly
patched up, this basic cause was absolutely sure to force recognition
for itself; a long and stern contest must inevitably wear its way down
to the bottom question. It was practical wisdom for Mr. Lincoln in his
inaugural not to probe deeper than secession; and it was well for
multitudes to take arms and contribute money with the earnest
asseveration that they were fighting and paying only for the integrity
of the country. It was the truth, or rather it was _a_ truth; but there
was also another and a deeper truth: that he who fought for the
integrity of the country, also, by a necessity inherent in the case and
far beyond the influence of his volition, fought for the destruction of
slavery. Just as soon as this second truth came up and took distinct
shape beside the other, angry political divisions sundered the
Unionists. Abolition of slavery never displaced Union as a purpose of
the war; but the two became mingled, in a duality which could not
afterward be resolved into its component parts so that one could be
taken and the other could be left. The union of the two issues meant the
disunion of the people of the Middle and even of the Northern States.

In the Border States a considerable proportion of the people was both
pro-slavery and pro-Union. These men wished to retain their servile
laborers under their feet and the shelter of the Union over their heads.
At first they did not see that they might as well hope to serve both God
and Mammon. Yet for the moment they seemed to hold the balance of power
between the contestants; for had all the pro-slavery men in the Border
States gone over in a mass to the South early in the war, they might
have settled the matter against the North in short order. The task of
holding and conciliating this important body, with all its Northern
sympathizers, became a controlling purpose of the President, and caused
the development of his famous "border-state policy," for which he
deserved the highest praise and received unlimited abuse.

The very fact that these men needed, for their comfort, reiterated
assurances of a policy not hostile to slavery indicated the jeopardy of
their situation. The distinct language of the President alleviated their
anxiety so far as the Executive was concerned, but they desired to
commit the legislative branch to the same doctrine. Among all those who
might have been Secessionists, but were not, no other could vie in
respect and affection with the venerable and patriotic John J.
Crittenden of Kentucky. This distinguished statesman now became the
spokesman for the large body of loyal citizens who felt deeply that the
war ought not to impinge in the least upon the great institution of the
South. In the extra session of Congress, convened in July, 1861, he
offered a resolution pledging Congress to hold in mind: "That this war
is not waged upon our part in any spirit of oppression, nor for any
purpose of conquest or subjugation, nor with any purpose of overthrowing
or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those [the
revolted] States; but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the
Constitution, and to preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality,
and rights of the several States unimpaired." After the example of the
Constitution, this resolution was carefully saved from the contamination
of a certain offensive word; but every one knew its meaning and its
purpose; and with this knowledge all the votes save two in the House of
Representatives, and all save five in the Senate, were given for it.[1]
"It was," says Mr. Blaine, "a fair reflection of the popular sentiment
throughout the North." So Mr. Lincoln's inaugural was ratified.

But events control. The Northern armies ran against slavery immediately.
Almost in the very hours when the resolution of Mr. Crittenden was
gliding so easily through the House, thousands of slaves at Manassas
were doing the work of laborers and servants, and rendering all the
whites of the Southern army available for fighting. The handicap was so
severe and obvious that it immediately provoked the introduction of a
bill freeing slaves belonging to rebels and used for carrying on the
war. The Democrats and the men of the Border States generally opposed
the measure, with very strong feeling. No matter how plausible the
reason, they did not wish slavery to be touched at all. They could not
say that this especial bill was wrong, but they felt that it was
dangerous. Their protests against it, however, were of no avail, and it
became law on August 6. The extreme anti-slavery men somewhat
sophistically twisted it into an assistance to the South.

The principle of this legislation had already been published to the
country in a very fortunate way by General Butler. In May, 1861, being
in command at Fortress Monroe, he had refused, under instructions from
Cameron, to return three fugitive slaves to their rebel owner, and he
had ingeniously put his refusal on the ground that they were "contraband
of war." The phrase instantly became popular. General Butler says that,
"as a lawyer, [he] was never very proud of it;" but technical inaccuracy
does not hurt the force of an epigram which expresses a sound principle.
"Contraband" underlay the Emancipation Proclamation.

Thus the slaves themselves were forcing the issue, regardless of
polities and diplomacy. With a perfectly correct instinctive insight
into the true meaning of the war, they felt that a Union camp ought to
be a place of refuge, and they sought it eagerly and in considerable
numbers. Then, however, their logical owners came and reclaimed them,
and other commanders were not so apt at retort as General Butler was.
Thus it came to pass that each general, being without instructions,
carried out his own ideas, and confusion ensued. Democratic commanders
returned slaves; Abolitionist commanders refused to do so; many were
sadly puzzled what to do. All alike created embarrassing situations for
the administration.

General Fremont led off. On August 30, being then in command of the
Western Department, he issued an order, in which he declared that he
would "assume the administrative powers of the State." Then, on the
basis of this bold assumption, he established martial law, and
pronounced the slaves of militant or active rebels to be "free men." The
mischief of this ill-advised proceeding was aggravated by the "fires of
popular enthusiasm which it kindled." The President wrote to Fremont,
expressing his fear that the general's action would "alarm our Southern
Union friends, and turn them against us; perhaps ruin our rather fair
prospect in Kentucky." Very considerately he said: "Allow me, therefore,
to ask that you will, as of your own motion, modify that paragraph so as
to conform to" the Act of August 6. Fremont replied, in substance, that
the President might do this, but that he himself would not! Thereupon
Mr. Lincoln, instead of removing the insubordinate and insolent general,
behaved in his usual passionless way, and merely issued an order that
Fremont's proclamation should be so modified and construed as "to
conform with and not to transcend" the law. By this treatment, which
should have made Fremont grateful and penitent, he was in fact rendered
angry and indignant; for he had a genuine belief in the old proverb
about laws being silent in time of war, and he really thought that
documents signed in tents by gentlemen wearing shoulder-straps were
deserving of more respect, even by the President, than were mere Acts of
Congress. This was a mistaken notion, but Fremont never could see that
he had been in error, and from this time forth he became a vengeful
thorn in the side of Mr. Lincoln.

Several months later, on May 9, 1862, General Hunter proclaimed martial
law in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina, and said: "Slavery and
martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible. The persons
in these States, heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared
forever free." At once, though not without reluctance, Mr. Lincoln
revoked this order, as unauthorized. He further said that, if he had
power to "declare the slaves of any State or States free," the propriety
of exercising that power was a question which he reserved exclusively to
himself. These words he fully made good. The whole country, wild with
excitement and teeming with opinions almost co-numerous with its
citizens, threatened to bury him beneath an avalanche of advice. But
while all talked and wrote madly and endlessly, he quietly held his
peace, did what he chose when he chose, and never delegated any portion
of his authority over this most important business to any one. He took
emancipation for his own special and personal affair; it was a matter
about which he had been doing much thinking very earnestly for a long
while, and he had no notion of forming now any partnership for managing
it.

The trend, however, was not all in one direction. While Butler, Fremont,
and Hunter were thus befriending the poor runaways, Buell and Hooker
were allowing slave-owners to reclaim fugitives from within their lines;
Halleck was ordering that no fugitive slave should be admitted within
his lines or camp, and that those already there should be put out; and
McClellan was promising to crush "with an iron hand" any attempt at
slave insurrection. Amid such confusion, some rule of universal
application was sorely needed. But what should it be?

Secretary Cameron twice nearly placed the administration in an
embarrassing position by taking very advanced ground upon the negro
question. In October, 1861, he issued an order to General Sherman, then
at Port Royal, authorizing him to employ negroes in any capacity which
he might "deem most beneficial to the service." Mr. Lincoln prudently
interlined the words: "This, however, not to mean a general arming of
them for military service." A few weeks later, in the Report which the
secretary prepared to be sent with the President's message to Congress,
he said: "As the labor and service of their slaves constitute the chief
property of the rebels, they should share the common fate of war.... It
is as clearly a right of the government to arm slaves, when it becomes
necessary, as it is to use gunpowder taken from the enemy. Whether it is
expedient to do so is purely a military question." He added more to the
same purport. He then had his report printed, and sent copies, by mail,
to many newspapers throughout the country, with permission to publish it
so soon as the telegraph should report the reading before Congress. At
the eleventh hour a copy was handed to Mr. Lincoln, to accompany his
message; and then, for the first time, he saw these radical passages.
Instantly he directed that all the postmasters, to whose offices the
printed copies had been sent on their way to the newspaper editors,
should be ordered at once to return these copies to the secretary. He
then ordered the secretary to make a change, equivalent to an omission,
of this inflammatory paragraph. After this emasculation the paragraph
only stated that "slaves who were abandoned by their owners on the
advance of our troops" should not be returned to the enemy.

When the Thirty-seventh Congress came together for the regular session,
December 2, 1861, anti-slavery sentiment had made a visible advance.
President Lincoln, in his message, advised recognizing the independence
of the negro states of Hayti and Liberia. He declared that he had been
anxious that the "inevitable conflict should not degenerate into a
violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle," and that he had,
therefore, "thought it proper to keep the integrity of the Union
prominent as the primary object of the contest on our part." Referring
to his enforcement of the law of August 6, he said: "The Union must be
preserved, and hence all indispensable means must be employed." The
shadow which pro-slavery men saw cast by these words was very slightly,
if at all, lightened by an admission which accompanied it,--that "we
should not be in haste to determine that radical and extreme measures,
which may reach the loyal as well as the disloyal, are indispensable."
Further he said that already, by the operation of the Act of August 6,
numbers of persons had been liberated, had become dependent on the
United States, and must be provided for. He anticipated that some of the
States might pass similar laws for their own benefit; in which case he
recommended Congress to "provide for accepting such persons from such
States, according to some mode of valuation, in lieu, _pro tanto_, of
direct taxes, or upon some other plan to be agreed on." He desired that
these negroes, being "at once deemed free," should be colonized in some
"climate congenial to them," and he wished an appropriation for
acquiring territory for this purpose. Thus he indicated with sufficient
clearness the three cardinal points of his own theory for emancipation:
voluntary action of the individual slave States by the exercise of their
own sovereign power; compensation of owners; and colonization. Congress
soon showed that it meant to strike a pace much more rapid than that set
by the President; and the friends of slavery perceived an atmosphere
which made them so uneasy that they thought it would be well to have the
Crittenden resolution substantially reaffirmed. They made the effort,
and they failed, the vote standing 65 yeas to 71 nays. All which this
symptom indicated as to the temper of members was borne out during the
session by positive and aggressive legislation. Only a fortnight had
passed, when Henry Wilson, senator from Massachusetts, introduced a bill
to emancipate the slaves in the District of Columbia, and to pay a
moderate compensation to owners. The measure, rightly construed as the
entering point of the anti-slavery wedge, gave rise to bitter debates in
both houses. The senators and representatives from the slave States
manifested intense feeling, and were aided with much spirit by the
Democrats of the free States. But resistance was useless; the bill
passed the Senate by a vote of 29 to 14, and the House by 92 to 38. On
April 16 the President signed it, and returned it with a message, in
which he said: "If there be matters within and about this Act which
might have taken a course or shape more satisfactory to my judgment, I
do not attempt to specify them. I am gratified that the two principles
of compensation and colonization are both recognized and practically
applied in the Act." It was one of the coincidences of history that by
his signature he now made law that proposition which, as a member of the
House of Representatives in 1849, he had embodied in a bill which then
hardly excited passing notice as it went on its quick way to oblivion.

The confused condition concerning the harboring and rendition of
fugitive slaves by military commanders, already mentioned, was also
promptly taken in hand. Various bills and amendments offered in the
Senate and in the House were substantially identical in the main purpose
of making the recovery of a slave from within the Union lines
practically little better than impossible. The shape which the measure
ultimately took was the enactment of an additional article of war,
whereby all officers in the military service of the United States were
"prohibited from using any portion of the forces under their respective
commands for the purpose of returning fugitives from service or labor;"
any officer who should violate the article was to be dismissed from the
service. Again the men from the Border States, rallying their few
Democratic allies from the North to their assistance, made vehement
opposition, and again they were overwhelmed beneath an irresistible
majority: 83 to 42 in the House, 29 to 9 in the Senate. The President
signed the bill on March 13, 1862, and thereafter "nigger hunting" was a
dangerous sport in the Union camps.

On March 24, Mr. Arnold[2] of Illinois introduced a bill ambitiously
purporting "to render freedom national and slavery sectional." It
prohibited slavery wherever Congress could do so, that is to say, in all
Territories, present and future, in all forts, arsenals, dockyards,
etc., in all vessels on the high seas and on all national highways
beyond the territory and jurisdiction of the several States. Both by its
title and by its substance it went to the uttermost edge of the
Constitution and, in the matter of Territories, perhaps beyond that
edge. Mr. Arnold himself supported it with the bold avowal that slavery
was in deadly hostility to the national government, and therefore must
be destroyed. Upon a measure so significant and so defended, debate
waxed hot, so that one gentleman proposed that the bill should be sent
back to the committee with instructions not to report it back "until the
cold weather." The irritation and alarm of the Border States rendered
modification necessary unless tact and caution were to be wholly thrown
to the winds. Ultimately, therefore, the offensive title was exchanged
for the simple one of "An Act to secure freedom to all persons within
the Territories of the United States," and the bill, curtailed to accord
with this expression, became law by approval of the President on June
19.

A measure likely in its operation to affect a much greater number of
persons than any other of those laws which have been mentioned was
introduced by Senator Trumbull of Illinois. This was "for the
confiscation of the property of rebels, and giving freedom to the
persons they hold in slavery." It made the slaves of all who had taken
up arms against the United States "forever thereafter free." It came up
for debate on February 25, and its mover defended it as "destroying to a
great extent the source and origin of the rebellion, and the only thing
which had ever seriously threatened the peace of the Union." The men of
the Border States, appalled at so general a manumission, declared that
it would produce intolerable conditions in their States, leading either
to reënslavement or extermination. So strenuous an anti-slavery man as
Senator Hale also suggested that the measure was unconstitutional.
Similar discussion upon similar propositions went forward
contemporaneously in the House. For once, in both bodies, the Democrats
won in many skirmishes. Ultimately, as the outcome of many amendments,
substitutes, recommitments, and conferences, a bill was patched up,
which passed by 27 to 12 in the Senate and 82 to 42 in the House, and
was approved by the President July 17. It was a very comprehensive
measure; so much so, that Mr. Blaine has said of it: "Even if the war
had ended without a formal and effective system of emancipation, it is
believed that this statute would have so operated as to render the slave
system practically valueless."

The possibility of enlisting negroes as soldiers received early
consideration. Black troops had fought in the Revolution; why, then,
should not black men now fight in a war of which they themselves were
the ultimate provocation? The idea pleased the utilitarian side of the
Northern mind and shocked no Northern prejudice. In fact, as early as
the spring of 1862 General Hunter, in the Department of the South,
organized a negro regiment. In July, 1862, pending consideration of a
bill concerning calling forth the militia, reported by the Senate
Committee on Military Affairs, amendments were moved declaring that
"there should be no exemption from military service on account of
color," permitting the enlistment of "persons of African descent," and
making "forever thereafter free" each person so enlisted, his mother,
his wife, and his children. No other measure so aroused the indignation
of the border-state men. Loyalty to the Union could not change their
opinion of the negro. To put arms into the hands of slaves, or
ex-slaves, was a terrible proposition to men who had too often vividly
conceived the dread picture of slave insurrection. To set black men
about the business of killing white men, to engage the inferior race to
destroy the superior race, seemed a blasphemy against Nature. A few
also of the Northerners warmly sympathized with this feeling. Black men
shooting down white men was a spectacle which some who were friends of
the black men could not contemplate without a certain shudder. Also many
persons believed that the white soldiers of the North would feel
degraded by having regiments of ex-slaves placed beside them in camp and
in battle. Doubts were expressed as to whether negroes would fight,
whether they would not be a useless charge, and even a source of peril
to those who should depend upon them. Language could go no farther in
vehemence of protest and denunciation than the words of some of the
slave-state men in the House and Senate. Besides this, Garrett Davis of
Kentucky made a very effective argument when he said: "There is not a
rebel in all Secessia whose heart will not leap when he hears that the
Senate of the United States is originating such a policy. It will
strengthen his hopes of success by an ultimate union of all the slave
States to fight such a policy to the death." It was, however, entirely
evident that, in the present temper of that part of the country which
was represented in Congress, there was not much use in opposing any
anti-slavery measure by any kind of argument whatever; even though the
special proposition might be distasteful to many Republicans, yet at
last, when pressed to the issue, they all faithfully voted Yea. In this
case the measure, finally so far modified as to relate only to slaves
of rebel owners, was passed and was signed by the President on July 17.
Nevertheless, although it thus became law, the certainty that, by taking
action under it, he would alienate great numbers of loyalists in the
Border States induced him to go very slowly. At first actual authority
to enlist negroes was only extorted from the administration with much
effort. On August 25 obstinate importunity elicited an order permitting
General Saxton, at Hilton Head, to raise 5,000 black troops; but this
was somewhat strangely accompanied, according to Mr. Wilson, with the
suggestive remark, that it "must never see daylight, because it was so
much in advance of public sentiment." After the process had been on
trial for a year, however, Mr. Lincoln said that there was apparent "no
loss by it in our foreign relations, none in our home popular sentiment,
none in our white military force,--no loss by it anyhow or anywhere." On
the other hand, it had brought a reinforcement of 130,000 soldiers,
seamen, and laborers. "And now," he said, "let any Union man who
complains of this measure test himself by writing down in one line that
he is for subduing the rebellion by force of arms, and in the next that
he is for taking these 130,000 men from the Union side, and placing them
where they would be best for the measure he condemns." Yet so
ineradicable was the race prejudice that it was not until the spring of
1864, after all efforts for action by Congress had failed, that the
attorney-general declared black soldiers to be entitled to the same pay
as white soldiers. Regarding a soldier merely as a marketable commodity,
doubtless the white was worth more money; yet life was about the same to
each, and it was hard to see why one should be expected to sell his life
for fewer dollars than satisfied the other.

Besides these measures, Congress gave evidence of its sentiments by
passing an act for appointing diplomatic representatives to Hayti and
Liberia; also further evidence by passing certain legislation against
the slave trade.

The recital of all these doings of the legislators sufficiently
indicates the hostility of Congress towards slavery. In fact, a large
majority both in the Senate and in the House had moved out against it
upon nearly every practicable line to the extremity of the
constitutional tether. Neither arguments, nor the entreaties of the
border-state men, nor any considerations of policy, had exercised the
slightest restraining influence. It is observable that this legislation
did not embody that policy which Mr. Lincoln had suggested, and to which
he had become strongly attached. On the contrary, Congress had done
everything to irritate, where the President wished to do everything to
conciliate; Congress made that compulsory which the President hoped to
make voluntary. Mr. Lincoln remained in 1862, as he had been in 1858,
tolerant towards the Southern men who by inheritance, tradition, and
the necessity of the situation, constituted a slaveholding community. To
treat slave-ownership as a crime, punishable by confiscation and ruin,
seemed to him unreasonable and merciless. Neither does he seem ever to
have accepted the opinion of many Abolitionists, that the negro was the
equal of the white man in natural endowment. There is no reason to
suppose that he did not still hold, as he had done in the days of the
Douglas debates, that it was undesirable, if not impossible, that the
two races should endeavor to abide together in freedom as a unified
community. In the inevitable hostility and competition he clearly saw
that the black man was likely to fare badly. It was by such feelings
that he was led straight to the plan of compensation of owners and
colonization of freedmen, and to the hope that a system of gradual
emancipation, embodying these principles, might be voluntarily
undertaken by the Border States under the present stress. If the
executive and the legislative departments should combine upon the policy
of encouraging and aiding such steps as any Border State could be
induced to take in this direction, the President believed that he could
much more easily extend loyalty and allegiance among the people of those
States,--a matter which he valued far more highly than other persons
were inclined to do. Such were his views and such his wishes. To discuss
their practicability and soundness would only be to wander in the
unprofitable vagueness of hypothesis, for in spite of all his efforts
they were never tested by trial. It must be admitted that general
opinion, both at that day and ever since, has regarded them as
visionary; compensation seemed too costly, colonization probably was
really impossible.

After the President had suggested his views in his message he waited
patiently to see what action Congress would take concerning them. Three
months elapsed and Congress took no such action. On the contrary,
Congress practically repudiated them. Not only this, it was
industriously putting into the shape of laws many other ideas, which
were likely to prove so many embarrassments and obstructions to that
policy which the President had very thoughtfully and with deep
conviction marked out for himself. He determined, therefore, to present
it once more, before it should be rendered forever hopeless. On March 6,
1862, he sent to Congress a special message, recommending the adoption
of a joint resolution: "That the United States ought to cooperate with
any State which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such
State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State in its discretion, to
compensate for the inconvenience, both public and private, produced by
such change of system." The first paragraph in the message stated
briefly the inducements to the North: "The Federal government would find
its highest interest in such a measure, as one of the most efficient
means of self-preservation. The leaders of the existing insurrection
entertain the hope that this government will ultimately be forced to
acknowledge the independence of some part of the disaffected region, and
that all the slave States north of such part will then say: 'The Union
for which we have struggled being already gone, we now choose to go with
the Southern section.' To deprive them of this hope substantially ends
the rebellion; and the initiation of Emancipation completely deprives
them of it as to all the States initiating it. The point is that ... the
more northern [States] shall, by such initiation, make it certain to the
more southern that in no event will the former ever join the latter in
their proposed Confederacy. I say 'initiation,' because in my judgment
gradual and not sudden emancipation is better for all. In the mere
financial or pecuniary view, any member of Congress, with the census
tables and Treasury reports before him, can readily see for himself how
very soon the current expenditures of this war would purchase, at fair
valuation, all the slaves in any named State."

The second paragraph hinted at that which it would have been poor tact
to state plainly,--the reasons which would press the Border States to
accept the opportunity extended to them. "If resistance continues, the
war must also continue; and it is impossible to foresee all the
incidents which may attend, and all the ruin which may follow it. Such
as may seem indispensable, or may obviously promise great efficiency
toward ending the struggle, must and will come. The proposition now
made, though an offer only, I hope it may be esteemed no offense to ask
whether the pecuniary consideration tendered would not be of more value
to the States and private persons concerned than are the institution and
property in it, in the present aspect of affairs." The suggestion,
between the lines, to the border slave-owners could not be
misunderstood: that they would do better to sell their slaves now than
to be deprived of them later. The President's proposition was not
cordially received. Pro-slavery men regarded it as an underhand movement
against the institution. Mr. Crittenden expressed confidence in the
President personally, but feared that the resolution "would stir up an
emancipation party" in the loyal slave States. Thus the truth was made
plain that emancipation, by any process, was not desired. In a debate
upon a cognate measure, another Kentuckian said that there was "no
division of sentiment on this question of emancipation, whether it is to
be brought about by force, by fraud, or by purchase of slaves out of the
public treasury." Democrats from Northern States, natural allies of the
border-state men, protested vehemently against taxing their constituents
to buy slave property in other States. Many Republicans also joined the
Democracy against Mr. Lincoln, and spoke even with anger and insult.
Thaddeus Stevens, the fierce and formidable leader of the Radicals, gave
his voice against "the most diluted milk-and-water gruel proposition
that had ever been given to the American nation." Hickman of
Pennsylvania, until 1860 a Democrat, but now a Republican, with the
characteristic vehemence of a proselyte said: "Neither the message nor
the resolution is manly and open. They are both covert and insidious.
They do not become the dignity of the President of the United States.
The message is not such a document as a full-grown, independent man
should publish to the nation at such a time as the present, when
positions should be freely and fully defined." In the Senate, Mr. Powell
of Kentucky translated the second paragraph into blunt words. He said
that it held a threat of ultimate coercion, if the cooperative plan
should fail; and he regarded "the whole thing" as "a pill of arsenic,
sugar-coated."

But, though so many insisted upon uttering their fleers in debate, yet,
when it came to voting, they could not well discredit their President by
voting down the resolution on the sole ground that it was foolish and
ineffectual. So, after it had been abused sufficiently, it was passed by
about the usual party majority: 89 to 34 in the House; 32 to 10 in the
Senate. Thus Congress somewhat sneeringly handed back to the President
his bantling, with free leave to do what he could with it.

Not discouraged by such grudging and unsympathetic permission, Mr.
Lincoln at once set about his experiment. He told Lovejoy and Arnold,
strenuous Abolitionists, but none the less his near friends, that they
would live to see the end of slavery, if only the Border States would
cooperate in his project. On March 10, 1862, he gathered some of the
border-state members and tried to win them over to his views. They
listened coldly; but he was not dismayed by their demeanor, and on July
12 he again convened them, and this time laid before them a written
statement. This paper betrays by its earnestness of argument and its
almost beseeching tone that he wrote it from his heart. The reasons
which he urged were as follows:--

"Believing that you of the Border States hold more power for good than
any other equal number of members, I felt it a duty which I cannot
justifiably waive to make this appeal to you.

"I intend no reproach or complaint when I assure you that, in my
opinion, if you all had voted for the resolution in the gradual
emancipation message of last March, the war would now be substantially
ended.

"And the plan therein proposed is yet one of the most potent and swift
means of ending it. Let the States which are in rebellion see definitely
and certainly that in no event will the States you represent ever join
their proposed Confederacy, and they cannot much longer maintain the
contest. But you cannot divest them of their hope to ultimately have you
with them as long as you show a determination to perpetuate the
institution within your own States; beat them at election as you have
overwhelmingly done, and, nothing daunted, they still claim you as
their own. You and I know what the lever of their power is. Break that
lever before their faces, and they can shake you no more forever. Most
of you have treated me with kindness and consideration; and I trust you
will not now think I improperly touch what is exclusively your own,
when, for the sake of the whole country, I ask: can you, for your
States, do better than to take the course I urge? Discarding punctilio
and maxims adapted to more manageable times, and looking only to the
unprecedentedly stern facts of our case, can you do better in any
possible event? You prefer that the constitutional relation of the
States to the nation shall be practically restored without disturbance
of the institution; and if this were done, my whole duty in this respect
under the Constitution and my oath of office would be performed. But it
is not done, and we are trying to accomplish it by war.

"The incidents of the war cannot be avoided. If the war continues long,
as it must if the object be not sooner attained, the institution in your
States will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion,--by the mere
incidents of the war. It will be gone, and you will have nothing
valuable in lieu of it. Much of its value is gone already. How much
better for you and your people to take the step which at once shortens
the war, and secures substantial compensation for that which is sure to
be wholly lost in any other event. How much better to thus save the
money which else we sink forever in the war. How much better to do it
while we can, lest the war erelong render us pecuniarily unable to do
it. How much better for you, as seller, and the nation, as buyer, to
sell out and buy out that without which the war never could have been,
than to sink both the thing to be sold and the price of it in cutting
one another's throats. I do not speak of emancipation at once, but of a
decision at once to emancipate gradually."

He closed with an ardent appeal to his hearers, as "patriots and
statesmen," to consider his proposition, invoking them thereto as they
"would perpetuate popular government for the best people in the world."

Thirty gentlemen listened to this paper and took two days to consider
it. Then twenty of them signed a response which was, in substance, their
repudiation of the President's scheme. They told him that hitherto they
had been loyal "under the most discouraging circumstances and in face of
measures most distasteful to them and injurious to the interests they
represented, and in the hearing of doctrines, avowed by those who
claimed to be his friends, most abhorrent to themselves and their
constituents." They objected that the measure involved "interference
with what exclusively belonged to the States;" that perhaps it was
unconstitutional; that it would involve an "immense outlay," beyond what
the finances could bear; that it was "the annunciation of a sentiment"
rather than a "tangible proposition;" they added that the sole purpose
of the war must be "restoring the Constitution to its legitimate
authority." Seven others of the President's auditors said politely, but
very vaguely, that they would "ask the people of the Border States
calmly, deliberately, and fairly to consider his recommendations."
Maynard, of the House, and Henderson, of the Senate, alone expressed
their personal approval.

Even this did not drive all hope out of Mr. Lincoln's heart. His
proclamation, rescinding that order of General Hunter which purported to
free slaves in certain States, was issued on May 19. In it he said that
the resolution, which had been passed at his request, "now stands an
authentic, definite, and solemn proposal of the nation to the States and
people most interested in the subject-matter. To the people of these
States I now earnestly appeal. I do not argue; I beseech you to make the
arguments for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be blind to the
signs of the times. I beg of you a calm and enlarged consideration of
them, ranging, if it may be, far above personal and partisan politics.
This proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no
reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it
contemplates would come gently as the dews from Heaven, not rending or
wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it? So much good has not been
done by one effort in all past time as in the providence of God it is
now your high privilege to do. May the vast future not have to lament
that you have neglected it!"

This eloquent and beautiful appeal sounds deeply moving in the ears of
those who read it in these days, so remote from the passions and
prejudices of a generation ago; but it stirred little responsive feeling
and no responsive action in 1862. In fact, the scheme was not
practicable.

It may be--it probably must be--believed that compensated emancipation
and colonization could never have been carried out even if Northern
Republicans had been willing to pay the price and Southern slave-owners
had been willing to accept it, and if both had then cordially united in
the task of deporting the troublesome negro from the country. The vast
project was undoubtedly visionary; it was to be criticised, weighed, and
considered largely as a business enterprise, and as such it must be
condemned. But Mr. Lincoln, who had no capacity for business, was never
able to get at this point of view, and regarded his favorite plan
strictly in political and humanitarian lights. Yet even thus the general
opinion has been that the unfortunate negroes, finding themselves amid
the hard facts which must inevitably have attended colonization, would
have heartily regretted the lost condition of servitude. Historically
the merits of the experiment, which the Southern Unionists declined to
have put to the test of trial, are of no consequence; it is only as the
scheme throws light upon the magnanimity of Mr. Lincoln's temperament
and upon certain limitations of his intellect, that the subject is
interesting. That he should rid himself of personal vindictiveness and
should cherish an honest and intense desire to see the question, which
had severed the country, disposed of by a process which would make
possible a sincere and cordial reunion, may be only moderately
surprising; but it is most surprising to note the depth and earnestness
of his faith that this condition could really be reached, and that it
could be reached by the road which he had marked out. This confidence
indicated an opinion of human nature much higher than human nature has
yet appeared entitled to. It also anticipated on the part of the
Southerners an appreciation of the facts of the case which few among
them were sufficiently clear-minded to furnish. It is curious to observe
that Lincoln saw the present situation and foresaw the coming situation
with perfect clearness, at the same time that he was entirely unable to
see the uselessness of his panacea; whereas, on the other hand, those
who rejected his impracticable plan remained entirely blind to those
things which he saw. It seems an odd combination of traits that he
always recognized and accepted a fact, and yet was capable of being
wholly impractical.

In connection with these efforts in behalf of the slaveholders, which
show at least a singular goodness of heart towards persons who had done
everything to excite even a sense of personal hatred, it may not be
seriously out of place to quote a paragraph which does not, indeed,
bear upon slavery, but which does illustrate the remarkable temper which
Mr. Lincoln maintained towards the seceding communities. In December,
1861, in his annual message to this Congress, whose searching
anti-slavery measures have just been discussed, he said:--

"There are three vacancies on the bench of the Supreme Court.... I have
so far forborne making nominations to fill these vacancies for reasons
which I will now state. Two of the outgoing judges resided within the
States now overrun by revolt; so that if successors were appointed in
the same localities, they could not now serve upon their circuits; and
many of the most competent men there probably would not take the
personal hazard of accepting to serve, even here, upon the Supreme
Bench. I have been unwilling to throw all the appointments northward,
thus disabling myself from doing justice to the South on the return of
peace; although I may remark that to transfer to the North one which has
heretofore been in the South would not, with reference to territory and
population, be unjust."[3] To comment upon behavior and motives so
extraordinary is, perhaps, as needless as it is tempting.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Also in the House Thaddeus Stevens and Lovejoy, and in the Senate
Sumner, did not vote.

[2] Lincoln's intimate personal and political friend, and afterward his
biographer.

[3] Annual Message to Congress, December, 1861.




CHAPTER II

THE SECOND ACT OF THE MCCLELLAN DRAMA


It is time now to return to the theatre of war in Virginia, where, it
will be remembered, we left the Confederate forces in the act of rapidly
withdrawing southward from the line of intrenchments which they had so
long held at Manassas. This unexpected backward movement upon their part
deprived the Urbana route, which McClellan had hitherto so strenuously
advocated, of its chief strategic advantages, and therefore reopened the
old question which had been discussed between him and Mr. Lincoln. To
the civilian mind a movement after the retreating enemy along the direct
line to Richmond, now more than ever before, seemed the natural scheme.
But to this McClellan still remained unalterably opposed. In the letter
of February 3 he had said: "The worst coming to the worst, we can take
Fort Monroe as a base and operate with complete security, although with
less celerity and brilliancy of results, up the Peninsula." This route,
low as he had then placed it in order of desirability, he now adopted as
the best resource, or rather as the only measure; and his judgment was
ratified upon March 13 by unanimous approval on the part of his four
corps commanders. They however made their approval dependent upon
conditions, among which were: that, before beginning the advance along
this line, the new rebel ram Merrimac (or Virginia), just finished at
Norfolk on the James River, should be neutralized, and that a naval
auxiliary force should silence, or be ready to aid in silencing, the
rebel batteries on the York River. In fact, and very unfortunately, the
former of these conditions was not fulfilled until the time of its
usefulness for this specific purpose was over, and the latter condition
was entirely neglected. It was also distinctly stipulated that "the
force to be left to cover Washington shall be such as to give an entire
feeling of security for its safety from menace." Keyes, Heintzelman and
McDowell conceived "that, with the forts on the right bank of the
Potomac fully garrisoned, and those on the left bank occupied, a
covering force, in front of the Virginia line, of 25,000 men would
suffice." Sumner said: "A total of 40,000 for the defense of the city
would suffice."[4] On the same day Stanton informed McClellan that the
President "made no objection" to this plan, but directed that a
sufficient force should be left to hold Manassas Junction and to make
Washington "entirely secure." The closing sentence was: "At all events,
move ... at once in pursuit of the enemy by some route." Thus at last
two important facts were established: that the route up the Peninsula
should be tried; and that the patience of the administration was
exhausted.

Though the enemy upon his retreat was burning bridges and destroying
railroads behind him, and making his possible return towards Washington
a slow, difficult process, which he obviously had no mind to undertake,
still this security of the capital rested as weightily as ever upon
Lincoln's mind. His reiteration and insistence concerning it made
perfectly plain that he was still nervous and disquieted about it,
though now certainly with much less reason than heretofore. But with or
against reason, it was easy to see that he was far from resting in the
tranquillity of conviction that Washington could never be so safe as
when the army of Virginia was far away upon the Peninsula. Nevertheless,
after the condition in its foregoing shape had been so strenuously
imposed by Mr. Lincoln and tacitly accepted by McClellan, the matter was
left as if definitely settled; and the President never demanded[5] from
the general any distinct statement concerning the numerical or specific
allotment of the available forces between the two purposes. The neglect
was disastrous in its consequences; and must also be pronounced both
blameworthy and inexplicable, for the necessity of a plain understanding
on the subject was obvious.

The facts seem to be briefly these: in his letter of February 3,
McClellan estimated the force necessary to be taken with him for his
campaign at 110,000 to 140,000 men, and said: "I hope to use the latter
number by bringing fresh troops into Washington." On April 1 he
reported[6] the forces left behind him as follows:--

  At Warrenton, there is to be            7,780 men
  At Manassas, there is to be            10,859 men
  In the Valley of the Shenandoah        35,467 men
  On the Lower Potomac                    1,350 men
  -------------------------------------------------
  In all                                 55,456 men

He adds: "There will thus be left for the garrisons, and the front of
Washington, under General Wadsworth, 18,000 men, exclusive of the
batteries under instruction." New levies, nearly 4,000 strong, were also
expected. He considered all these men as properly available "for the
defense of the national capital and its approaches." The President, the
politicians, and some military men were of opinion that only the 18,000
ought to be considered available for the capital. It was a question
whether it was proper to count the corps of Banks in the Shenandoah
Valley. McClellan's theory was that the rebels, by the circumstances
attendant upon their present retreating movement, had conclusively
annulled any chance of their own return by way of Manassas. Banks
greatly outnumbered Stonewall Jackson, who had only about 15,000 men, or
less, in the Shenandoah Valley. Also Washington was now entirely
surrounded by satisfactory fortifications. McClellan, therefore, was
entirely confident that he left everything in good shape behind him. In
fact, it was put into even better shape than he had designed; for on
March 31 the President took from him Blenker's division of 10,000 men in
order to strengthen Fremont, who was in the mountain region westward of
the Shenandoah Valley. "I did so," wrote Mr. Lincoln, "with great
pain.... If you could know the full pressure of the case, I am confident
that you would justify it." It was unfortunate that the President could
not stand against this "pressure," which was not military, but
political. Fremont could do, and did, nothing at all, and to reinforce
him was sheer absurdity.[7] Against it McClellan protested almost
indignantly, but was "partially relieved by the President's positive and
emphatic assurance" that no more troops "should in any event be taken
from" him, or "in any way detached from [his] command."

Orders had been issued on February 27, to Mr. Tucker, assistant
secretary of war, to prepare means of transporting down the Potomac,
troops, munitions, artillery, horses, wagons, food, and all the vast
paraphernalia of a large army. He showed a masterly vigor in this
difficult task, and by March 17 the embarkation began. On April 2
McClellan arrived at Fortress Monroe. On the very next day he was
disturbed by the revocation of the orders which had left him in command
of that place and had allowed him to "draw from the troops under General
Wool a division of about 10,000 men, which was to be assigned to the
First Corps." Another and a serious disappointment also occurred at
once; he found that the navy could not be utilized for assisting in an
attack on Yorktown, or for running by it so as to land forces in rear of
it. He must therefore depend wholly upon his army to force a way up the
Peninsula. This he had stated to be an unsatisfactory alternative,
because it involved delay at Yorktown. Nevertheless, having no choice,
he began his advance on April 4. He had with him only 58,000 men; but
more were on the way, and McDowell's corps was to be brought forward to
join him as rapidly as transportation would permit. His total nominal
force was smaller than the minimum which, on February 3, he had named as
necessary; yet it was a fine body of troops, and he had lately said to
them: "The army of the Potomac is now a real army, magnificent in
material, admirable in discipline, excellently equipped and armed. Your
commanders are all that I could wish."

In two days he was before the fortifications which the rebels had
erected at Yorktown, and which stretched thence across the Peninsula to
the James River. He estimated the force behind these intrenchments,
commanded by General Magruder, at 15,000 to 20,000 men, easily to be
reinforced; in fact, it was much less. Thereupon, he set about elaborate
preparations for a siege of that city, according to the most thorough
and approved system of military science. He was afterward severely
blamed for not endeavoring to force his way through some point in the
rebel lines by a series of assaults.[8] This was what Mr. Lincoln wished
him to do, and very nearly ordered him to do; for on April 6 he sent
this telegram: "You now have over 100,000 troops with you.... I think
you better break the enemy's line from Yorktown to Warwick River at
once." An entry in McClellan's "Own Story," under date of April 8,
comments upon this message and illustrates the unfortunate feeling of
the writer towards his official superior: "I have raised an awful row
about McDowell's corps. The President very coolly telegraphed me
yesterday that he thought I had better break the enemy's lines at once!
I was much tempted to reply that he had better come and do it himself."
Thus is made evident the lamentable relationship between the President,
who could place no confidence in the enterprise and judgment of the
military commander, and the general, who had only sneers for the
President's incapacity to comprehend warfare. It so happened, however,
that the professional man's sarcasm was grossly out of place, and the
civilian's proposal was shrewdly right, as events soon plainly proved.
In fact what Mr. Lincoln urged was precisely what General Johnston
anticipated and feared would be done, because he knew well that if it
were done it would be of fatal effect against the Confederates. But, on
the other hand, even after the clear proof had gone against him,
McClellan was abundantly supplied with excuses, and the vexation of the
whole affair was made the greater by the fact that these excuses really
seemed to be good. His excuses always were both so numerous and so
satisfactory, that many reasonably minded persons knew not whether they
had a right to feel so angry towards him as they certainly could not
help doing. The present instance was directly in point. General Keyes
reported to him that no part of the enemy's line could "be taken by
assault without an enormous waste of life;" and General Barnard, chief
engineer of the army, thought it uncertain whether they could be carried
at all. Loss of life and uncertainty of result were two things so
abhorred by McClellan in warfare, that he now failed to give due weight
to the consideration that the design of the Confederates in interposing
an obstacle at this point was solely to delay him as much as possible,
whereas much of the merit of his own plan of campaign lay in rapid
execution at the outset. The result was, of course, that he did not
break any line, nor try to, but instead thereof "presented plausible
reasons" out of his inexhaustible reservoir of such commodities. It was
unfortunate that the naval coöperation, which McClellan had expected,[9]
could not be had at this juncture; for by it the Yorktown problem would
have been easily solved without either line-breaking or reason-giving.

Precisely at this point came into operation the fatal effect of the lack
of understanding between the President and the general as to the
division of the forces. In the plan of campaign, it had been designed to
throw the corps of McDowell into the rear of Yorktown by such route as
should seem expedient at the time of its arrival, probably landing it at
Gloucester and moving it round by West Point. This would have made
Magruder's position untenable at once, long before the natural end of
the siege. But at the very moment when McClellan's left, in its advance,
first came into actual collision with the enemy, he received news that
the President had ordered McDowell to retain his division before
Washington--"the most infamous thing that history has recorded," he
afterward wrote.[10] Yet the explanation of this surprising news was so
simple that surprise was unjustifiable. On April 2, immediately after
McClellan's departure, the President inquired as to what had been done
for the security of Washington. General Wadsworth, commanding the
defenses of the city, gave an alarming response: 19,000 or 20,000
entirely green troops, and a woeful insufficiency of artillery. He said
that while it was "very improbable" that the enemy would attack
Washington, nevertheless the "numerical strength and the character" of
his forces rendered them "entirely inadequate to and unfit for their
important duty." Generals Hitchcock and Thomas corroborated this by
reporting that the order to leave the city "entirely secure" had "not
been fully complied with." Mr. Lincoln was horror-struck. He had a right
to be indignant, for those who ought to know assured him that his
reiterated and most emphatic command had been disobeyed, and that what
he chiefly cared to make safe had not been made safe. He promptly
determined to retain McDowell, and the order was issued on April 4.
Thereby he seriously attenuated, if he did not quite annihilate, the
prospect of success for McClellan's campaign. It seems incredible and
unexplainable that amid this condition of things, on April 3, an order
was issued from the office of the secretary of war, to stop recruiting
throughout the country!

This series of diminutions, says McClellan, had "removed nearly 60,000
men from my command, and reduced my force by more than one third.... The
blow was most discouraging. It frustrated all my plans for impending
operations. It fell when I was too deeply committed to withdraw.... It
was a fatal error."

Error or not, it was precisely what McClellan ought to have foreseen as
likely to occur. He had not foreseen it, however, and nothing mitigated
the disappointment. Unquestionably the act was of supreme gravity. Was
Mr. Lincoln right or wrong in doing it? The question has been answered
many times both Yea and Nay, and each side has been maintained with
intense acrimony and perfect good faith. It is not likely that it will
ever be possible to say either that the Yeas have it, or that the Nays
have it.[11] For while it is certain that what actually _did_ happen
coincided very accurately with McClellan's expectations; on the other
hand, it can never be known what _might have_ happened if Lincoln had
not held McDowell, and if, therefore, facts had not been what they were.

So far as Mr. Lincoln is concerned, the question, what military judgment
was correct,--that is, whether the capital really was, or was not,
absolutely secure,--is of secondary consequence. The valuation which he
set on that safety was undeniably correct; it certainly was of more
importance than McClellan's success. If he had made a mistake in letting
McClellan go without a more distinct understanding, at least that
mistake was behind him. Before him was the issue whether he should rest
satisfied with the deliberate judgment given by McClellan, or whether,
at considerable cost to the cause, he should make the assurance greater
out of deference to other advice. He chose the latter course. In so
doing, if he was not vacillating, he was at least incurring the evils of
vacillation. It would have been well if he could have found some quarter
in which permanently to repose his implicit faith, so that one
consistent plan could have been carried out without interference. Either
he had placed too much confidence in McClellan in the past, or he was
placing too little in him now. If he could not accept McClellan's
opinion as to the safety of Washington, in preference to that of
Wadsworth, Thomas, and Hitchcock, then he should have removed McClellan,
and replaced him with some one in whom he had sufficient confidence to
make smooth coöperation a possibility. The present condition of things
was illogical and dangerous. Matters had been allowed to reach a very
advanced stage upon the theory that McClellan's judgment was
trustworthy; then suddenly the stress became more severe, and it seemed
that in the bottom of his mind the President did not thus implicitly
respect the general's wisdom. Yet he did not displace him, but only
opened his ears to other counsels; whereupon the buzz of contradictory,
excited, and alarming suggestions which came to him were more than
enough to unsettle any human judgment. General Webb speaks well and with
authority to this matter: "The dilemma lay here,--whose plans and advice
should he follow, where it was necessary for him to approve and
decide?... Should he lean implicitly on the general actually in command
of the armies, placed there by virtue of his presumed fitness for the
position, or upon other selected advisers? We are bold to say that it
was doubt and hesitation upon this point that occasioned many of the
blunders of the campaign. Instead of one mind, there were many minds
influencing the management of military affairs." A familiar culinary
proverb was receiving costly illustration.

But, setting the dispute aside, an important fact remains: shorn as he
was, McClellan was still strong enough to meet and to defeat his
opponents. If he had been one of the great generals of the world he
would have been in Richmond before May Day; but he was at his old trick
of exaggerating the hostile forces and the difficulties in his way. On
April 7 he thought that Johnston and the whole Confederate army were at
Yorktown; whereas Johnston's advance division arrived there on the 10th;
the other divisions came several days later, and Johnston himself
arrived only on the 14th.

On April 9 Mr. Lincoln presented his own view of the situation in this
letter to the general:--

"Your dispatches complaining that you are not properly sustained, while
they do not offend me, do pain me very much.

... "After you left I ascertained that less than 20,000 unorganized men,
without a single field battery, were all you designed to be left for the
defense of Washington and Manassas Junction, and part of this even was
to go to General Hooker's old position. General Banks's corps, once
designed for Manassas Junction, was diverted and tied up on the line of
Winchester and Strasburg, and could not leave it without again exposing
the upper Potomac and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. This presented,
or would present, when McDowell and Sumner should be gone, a great
temptation to the enemy to turn back from the Rappahannock and sack
Washington. My implicit order that Washington should, by the judgment of
all the commanders of army corps, be left entirely secure, had been
neglected. It was precisely this that drove me to detain McDowell.

"I do not forget that I was satisfied with your arrangement to leave
Banks at Manassas Junction; but when that arrangement was broken up, and
nothing was substituted for it, of course I was constrained to
substitute something for it myself. And allow me to ask, do you really
think I should permit the line from Richmond, via Manassas Junction, to
this city, to be entirely open, except what resistance could be
presented by less than 20,000 unorganized troops? This is a question
which the country will not allow me to evade.

"There is a curious mystery about the number of troops now with you.
When I telegraphed you on the 6th, saying you had over a hundred
thousand with you, I had just obtained from the secretary of war a
statement taken, as he said, from your own returns, making 108,000 then
with you and en route to you. You now say you will have but 85,000 when
all en route to you shall have reached you. How can the discrepancy of
23,000 be accounted for?

"As to General Wool's command,[12] I understand it is doing for you
precisely what a like number of your own would have to do if that
command was away.

"I suppose the whole force which has gone forward for you is with you by
this time. And if so, I think it is the precise time for you to strike a
blow. By delay the enemy will relatively gain upon you,--that is, he
will gain faster by fortifications and reinforcements than you can by
reinforcements alone. And once more let me tell you, it is indispensable
to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this. You will do
me the justice to remember I always insisted that going down the bay in
search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Manassas, was only
shifting, and not surmounting, a difficulty; that we would find the same
enemy, and the same or equal intrenchments, at either place. The country
will not fail to note, is now noting, that the present hesitation to
move upon an intrenched enemy is but the story of Manassas repeated.

"I beg to assure you that I have never written you or spoken to you in
greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to
sustain you, so far as, in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can.
But you must act."

McClellan, in consternation and almost despair at the repeated pruning
of his force, now begged for at least a part of McDowell's corps, which,
he said on April 10, was "indispensable;" "the fate of our cause depends
upon it." Accordingly Franklin's division was sent to him; and then,
after all this palaver, he kept it a fortnight on shipboard, until
Yorktown was evacuated!

On May 1 the President, tortured by the political gadflies in
Washington, and suffering painfully from the weariness of hope so long
deferred, telegraphed: "Is anything to be done?" A pitiful time of it
Mr. Lincoln was having, and it called for a patient fortitude surpassing
imagination. Yet one little bit of fruit was at this moment ripe for the
plucking! After about four weeks of wearisome labor the general had
brought matters to that condition which was so grateful to his cautious
soul. At the beginning of May he had reduced success to a certainty, so
that he expected to open fire on May 5, and to make short work of the
rebel stronghold. But it so happened that another soldier also had at
the same time finished his task. General Magruder had delayed the Union
army to the latest possible hour, he had saved a whole valuable month;
and now, quite cheerfully and triumphantly, in the night betwixt May 3
and May 4, he quietly slipped away. As it had happened at Manassas, so
now again the Federals marched unopposed into deserted intrenchments;
and a second time the enemy had so managed it that their retreat seemed
rather to cast a slur upon Union strategy than to bring prestige to the
Union arms.

McClellan at once continued his advance, with more or less fighting, the
rebels steadily drawing back without offering battle on a large scale,
though there was a sharp engagement at Williamsburg. He had not even the
smaller number of men which he had originally named as his requirement,
and he continued pertinaciously to demand liberal reinforcements. The
President, grievously harassed by these importunate appeals, declared to
McClellan that he was forwarding every man that he could, while to
friends nearer at hand he complained that sending troops to McClellan
was like shoveling fleas across a barnyard; most of them didn't get
there! At last he made up his mind to send the remainder of McDowell's
corps; not because he had changed his mind about covering Washington,
but because the situation had become such that he expected to arrange
this matter by other resources.

The fight at Williamsburg took place on May 5. McClellan pushed after
the retiring enemy, too slowly, as his detractors said, yet by roads
which really were made almost impassable by heavy rains. Two days later,
May 7, Franklin's force disembarked and occupied West Point. This
advance up the Peninsula now produced one important result which had
been predicted by McClellan in his letter of February 3. On May 8 news
came that the Confederates were evacuating Norfolk, and two days later a
Union force marched into the place. The rebels lost many heavy guns,
besides all the advantages of the navy yard with its workshops and
stores; moreover, their awe-inspiring ram, the Merrimac, alias the
Virginia, was obliged to leave this comfortable nestling-place, whence
she had long watched and closed the entrance to the James River. Her
commander, Tatnall, would have taken her up that stream, but the pilots
declared it not possible to float her over the shoals. She was therefore
abandoned and set on fire; and early in the morning of May 11 she blew
up, leaving the southern water-way to Richmond open to the Union
fleet.[13] It was a point of immense possible advantage. Later McClellan
intimated that, if he had been left free to act upon his own judgment,
he would probably have availed himself of this route; and some writers,
with predilections in his favor, have assumed that he was prevented from
doing so by certain orders, soon to be mentioned, which directed him to
keep the northerly route for the purpose of effecting a junction with
McDowell. But this notion seems incorrect; for though he doubtless had
the James River route under consideration, yet dates are against the
theory that he wished to adopt it when at last it lay open. On the
contrary, he continued his advance precisely as before. On May 16 his
leading columns reached White House; headquarters were established
there, and steps were immediately taken to utilize it as a depot and
base of supplies. The York River route was thus made the definitive
choice. Also the advance divisions were immediately pushed out along
the York River and Richmond Railroad, which they repaired as they went.
On May 20 Casey's division actually crossed the Chickahominy at Bottom's
Bridge, and the next day a large part of the army was in position upon
the north bank of that stream. Obviously these operations, each and all,
ruled out the James River route, at least as a part of the present plan.
Yet it was not until they were well under way, viz., on May 18, that the
intelligence reached McClellan, on the strength of which he and others
afterward assumed that he had been deprived of the power to select the
James River route. What this intelligence was and how it came to pass
must now be narrated.

By this time, the advance along the Peninsula had so completely
"relieved the front of Washington from pressure," that Mr. Lincoln and
his advisers, reassured as to the safety of that city, now saw their way
clear to make McDowell's corps, strengthened to a force of 41,000 men,
contribute actively to McClellan's assistance. They could not, indeed,
bring themselves to move it by water, as McClellan desired; but the
President ordered McDowell to move down from Fredericksburg, where he
now lay, towards McClellan's right wing, which McClellan was ordered to
extend to the north of Richmond in order to meet him. But, in the words
of the Comte de Paris, "an absurd restriction revealed the old mistrusts
and fears." For McDowell was strictly ordered not to uncover the
capital; also, with a decisive emphasis indicative of an uneasy
suspicion, McClellan was forbidden to dispose of McDowell's force in
contravention of this still primary purpose. Whether McDowell was under
McClellan's control, or retained an independent command, was left
curiously vague, until McClellan forced a distinct understanding.

Although McClellan, writing to Lincoln, condemned rather sharply the
method selected for giving to him the aid so long implored, yet he felt
that, even as it came to him, he could make it serve his turn. Though he
grumbled at the President's unmilitary ways, he afterward admitted that
the "cheering news" made him "confident" of being "sufficiently strong
to overpower the large army confronting" him. There was no doubt of it.
He immediately extended his right wing; May 24, he drove the
Confederates out of Mechanicsville; May 26, General Porter took position
at Hanover Junction only fifteen miles from McDowell's head of column,
which had advanced eight miles out of Fredericksburg. The situation was
not unpromising; but unfortunately that little interval of fifteen miles
was never to be closed up.

May 24, Mr. Lincoln wrote to McClellan, and after suggesting sundry
advisable movements, he said: "McDowell and Shields[14] both say they
can, and positively will, move Monday morning." Monday was the 26th. In
point of fact, McDowell, feeling time to be of great value, urged the
President to let him move on the morning of Sunday, the 25th; but Mr.
Lincoln positively refused; the battle of Bull Run had been fought on a
Sunday, and he dreaded the omen.[15] This feeling which he had about
days was often illustrated, and probably the reader has observed that he
seemed to like dates already marked by prestige or good luck; thus he
had convened Congress for July 4, and had ordered the general advance of
the armies for February 22; it was an indication of the curious thread
of superstition which ran through his strange nature,--a remnant of his
youth and the mysterious influence of the wilderness. But worse than a
superstitious postponement arrived before nightfall on Saturday. A
dispatch from Lincoln to McClellan, dated at four o'clock that
afternoon, said: "In consequence of General Banks's critical position, I
have been compelled to suspend General McDowell's movements to join you.
The enemy are making a desperate push upon Harper's Ferry, and we are
trying to throw General Fremont's force and part of General McDowell's
in their rear." The brief words conveyed momentous intelligence. It is
necessary to admit that Mr. Lincoln was making his one grand blunder,
for which there is not even the scant salvation of possible doubt. All
that can be said in palliation is, that he was governed, or at least
strongly impelled, by the urgent advice of the secretary of war, whose
hasty telegrams to the governors of several States show that he was
terror-stricken and had lost his head. Mr. Blaine truly says that
McDowell, thus suddenly dispatched by Mr. Lincoln upon a "fruitless
chase," "was doing precisely what the President of the Confederate
States would have ordered, had he been able to issue the orders of the
President of the United States." There is no way to mitigate the painful
truth of this statement, made by a civilian, but amply sustained by the
military authorities on both sides.[16]

The condition was this. The retention of McDowell's corps before
Washington published the anxiety of the administration. The Confederate
advantage lay in keeping that anxiety alive and continuing to neutralize
that large body of troops. Strategists far less able than the Southern
generals could not have missed so obvious a point, neither could they
have missed the equally obvious means at their disposal for achieving
these purposes. At the upper end of the valley of the Shenandoah
Stonewall Jackson had an army, raised by recent accretions to nearly or
quite 15,000 men. The Northern generals erelong learned to prognosticate
Jackson's movements by the simple rule that at the time when he was
least expected, and at the place where he was least wanted, he was sure
to turn up.[17] The suddenness and speed with which he could move a body
of troops seemed marvelous to ordinary men. His business now was to make
a vigorous dashing foray down the valley. To the westward, Fremont lay
in the mountains, with an army which checked no enemy and for the
existence of which in that place no reasonable explanation could be
given. In front was Banks, with a force lately reduced to about 5,000
men. May 14, Banks prudently fell back and took position in
Strasburg.[18] Suddenly, on May 23, Jackson appeared at Front Royal; on
the next day he attacked Banks at Winchester, and of course defeated
him; on the 25th Banks made a rapid retreat to the Potomac, and Jackson
made an equally rapid pursuit to Halltown, within two miles of Harper's
Ferry. The news of this startling foray threw the civilians of
Washington into a genuine panic, by which Mr. Lincoln was, at least for
a few hours, not altogether unaffected.[19] Yet, though startled and
alarmed, he showed the excellent quality of promptitude in decision and
action; and truly it was hard fortune that his decision and his action
were both for the worst. He at once ordered McDowell to move 20,000
troops into the Shenandoah Valley, and instructed Fremont also to move
his force rapidly into the valley, with the design that the two should
thus catch Jackson in what Mr. Lincoln described as a "trap."[20]
McDowell was dismayed at such an order. He saw, what every man having
any military knowledge at once recognized with entire certainty, and
what every military writer has since corroborated, that the movement of
Jackson had no value except as a diversion, that it threatened no
serious danger, and that to call off McDowell's corps from marching to
join McClellan in order to send it against Jackson was to do exactly
that thing which the Confederates desired to have done, though they
could hardly have been sanguine enough to expect it. It was swallowing a
bait so plain that it might almost be said to be labeled. For a general
to come under the suspicion of not seeing through such a ruse was
humiliating. In vain McDowell explained, protested, and entreated with
the utmost vehemence and insistence. When Mr. Lincoln had made up his
mind, no man could change it, and here, as ill fortune would have it,
he had made it up. So, with a heavy heart, the reluctant McDowell set
forth on his foolish errand, and Fremont likewise came upon his,--though
it is true that he was better employed thus than in doing nothing,--and
Jackson, highly pleased, and calculating his time to a nicety, on May 31
slipped rapidly between the two Union generals,--the closing jaws of Mr.
Lincoln's "trap,"--and left them to close upon nothing.[21] Then he led
his pursuers a fruitless chase towards the head of the valley,
continuing to neutralize a force many times larger than his own, and
which could and ought to have been at this very time doing fatal work
against the Confederacy. Presumably he had saved Richmond, and therewith
also, not impossibly, the chief army of the South. The chagrin of the
Union commanders, who had in vain explained the situation with entire
accuracy, taxes the imagination.

There is no use in denying a truth which can be proved. The blunder of
Mr. Lincoln is not only undeniable, but it is inexcusable. Possibly for
a few hours he feared that Washington was threatened. He telegraphed to
McClellan May 25, at two o'clock P.M., that he thought the movement down
the valley a "general and concerted one," inconsistent with "the purpose
of a very desperate defense of Richmond;" and added, "I think the time
is near when you must either attack Richmond, or give up the job and
come to the defense of Washington." How reasonable this view was at the
moment is of little consequence, for within a few hours afterward the
character of Jackson's enterprise as a mere foray became too palpable to
be mistaken. Nevertheless, after the President was relieved from such
fear for the capital as he might excusably have felt for a very brief
period, his cool judgment seemed for once in his life, perhaps for the
only time, to be disturbed. The truth is that Mr. Lincoln was a sure and
safe, almost an infallible thinker, when he had time given him; but he
was not always a quick thinker, and on this occasion he was driven to
think quickly. In consequence he not only erred in repudiating the
opinions of the best military advisers, but even upon the basis of his
own views he made a mistake. The very fact that he was so energetic in
the endeavor to "trap" Jackson in retreat indicates his understanding of
the truth that Jackson had so small a force that his prompt retreat was
a necessity. This being so, he was in the distinct and simple position
of making a choice between two alternatives, viz.: either to endeavor to
catch Jackson, and for this object to withhold what was needed by and
had been promised to McClellan for his campaign against Richmond; or,
leaving Jackson to escape with impunity, to pursue with steadiness that
plan which it was Jackson's important and perfectly understood errand to
interrupt. It is almost incredible that he chose wrong. The statement of
the dilemma involved the decision. Yet he took the little purpose and
let the great one go. Nor even thus did he gain this lesser purpose. He
had been warned by McDowell that Jackson could not be caught, and he was
not. Yet even had this been otherwise, the Northerners would have got
little more than the shell while losing the kernel. Probably Richmond,
and possibly the Southern army, fell out of the President's hand while
he tried without success to close it upon Jackson and 15,000 men.

The result of this civilian strategy was that McClellan, with his
projects shattered, was left with his right wing and rear dangerously
exposed. Jackson remained for a while a mysterious _bête noire_, about
whose force, whereabouts, and intentions many disturbing rumors flew
abroad; at last, on June 26, he settled these doubts in his usual sharp
and conclusive way by assailing the exposed right wing and threatening
the rear of the Union army, thus achieving "the brilliant conclusion of
the operations which [he] had so successfully conducted in the Valley of
Virginia."

Simultaneously with the slipping of Jackson betwixt his two pursuers on
May 31, General Johnston made an attack upon the two corps[22] which lay
south of the Chickahominy, in position about Seven Pines and Fair Oaks.
Battle was waged during two days. Each side claimed a victory; the
Southerners because they had inflicted the heavier loss, the
Northerners because ultimately they held their original lines and foiled
Johnston's design of defeating and destroying the Northern army in
detail. The result of this battle ought to have proved to McClellan two
facts: that neither in discipline nor in any other respect were the
Southern troops more formidable than his own; also that the Southerners
were clearly not able to overwhelm him with such superior numbers as he
had supposed; for in two days they had not been able to overwhelm much
less than half of his army. These considerations should have encouraged
him to energetic measures. But no encouragement could counteract the
discouragement inflicted by the loss of McDowell's powerful corps and
the consequent wrecking of his latest plan. Nearly to the end of June he
lay immovable. "June 14, midnight. All quiet in every direction,"--thus
he telegraphed to Stanton in words intended to be reassuring, but in
fact infinitely vexatious. Was he, then, set at the head of this great
and costly host of the nation's best, to rest satisfied with preserving
an eternal quietude,--like a chief of police in a disorderly quarter?
Still he was indefatigable in declaring himself outnumbered, and in
demanding more troops; in return he got assurances, with only the slight
fulfillment of McCall's division. Every two or three days he cheeringly
announced to the administration that he was on the verge of advancing,
but he never passed over the verge. Throughout a season in which
blundering seemed to become epidemic, no blunder was greater than his
quiescence at this time.[23] As if to emphasize it, about the middle of
June General Stuart, with a body of Confederate cavalry, actually rode
all around the Union army, making the complete circuit and crossing its
line of communication with White House without interruption. The foray
achieved little, but it wore the aspect of a signal and unavenged
insult.

In Washington the only powerful backing upon which McClellan could still
rely was that of the President, and he was surely wearing away the
patience of his only friend by the irritating attrition of promises ever
reiterated and never redeemed. No man ever kept his own counsel more
closely than did Mr. Lincoln, and the indications of his innermost
sentiments concerning McClellan at this time are rare. But perhaps a
little ray is let in, as through a cranny, by a dispatch which he sent
to the general on June 2: "With these continuous rains I am very anxious
about the Chickahominy,--so close in your rear, and crossing your line
of communication. Please look to it." This curt prompting on so obvious
a point was a plain insinuation against McClellan's military competence,
and suggests that ceaseless harassment had at last got the better of
Lincoln's usually imperturbable self-possession; for it lacked little of
being an insult, and Mr. Lincoln, in all his life, never insulted any
man. As a spot upon a white cloth sets off the general whiteness, so
this dispatch illustrates Lincoln's unweariable patience and
long-suffering without parallel. McClellan, never trammeled by respect,
retorted sharply: "As the Chickahominy has been almost the only obstacle
in my way for several days, your excellency may rest assured that it has
not been overlooked." When finally the general became active, it was
under the spur of General Jackson, not of President Lincoln. Jackson
compelled him to decide and act; and the result was his famous southward
movement to the James River. Some, adopting his own nomenclature, have
called this a change of base; some, less euphemistically, speak of it as
a retreat. According to General Webb, it may be called either the one or
the other with equal propriety, for it partook of the features of
each.[24] It is no part of the biographer of Lincoln to narrate the
suffering and the gallantry of the troops through those seven days of
continuous fighting and marching, during which they made their painful
way, in the face of an attacking army, through the dismal swamps of an
unwholesome region, amid the fierce and humid heats of the Southern
summer. On July 1 they closed the dread experience by a brilliant
victory in the desperate, prolonged, and bloody battle of Malvern Hill.

In the course of this march a letter was sent by McClellan to Stanton
which has become famous. The vindictive lunge, visibly aimed at the
secretary, was really designed, piercing this lesser functionary, to
reach the President. Even though written amid the strain and stress of
the most critical and anxious moment of the terrible "Seven Days," the
words were unpardonable. The letter is too long to be given in full, but
the closing sentences were:--

"I know that a few thousand more men would have changed this battle[25]
from a defeat to a victory. As it is, the government must not and cannot
hold me responsible for the result. I feel too earnestly to-night. I
have seen too many dead and wounded comrades to feel otherwise than that
the government has not sustained this army. If you do not do so now, the
game is lost. If I save this army now, I tell you plainly that I owe no
thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington. You have done your
best to sacrifice this army."[26] It was safe to write thus to Mr.
Lincoln, whose marvelous magnanimity was never soiled by a single act
of revenge; but the man who addressed such language to Stanton secured a
merciless and unscrupulous enemy forever.

Though, at the close of this appalling week, the troops at last were
conquerors on the banks of the James, they were in a position not
permanently tenable, and before they could rest they had to fall back
another march to Harrison's Landing. The rear guard reached this haven
on the night of July 3, and the army, thus at last safely placed and in
direct communication with the fleet and the transports, was able to
recuperate,[27] while those in authority considered of the future.
Certain facts were established: first, concerning the army,--that before
it met the baptism of heavy fighting it had been brought into a splendid
condition of drill and efficiency, and that by that baptism, so severe
and so long continued, it had come as near as volunteers could come to
the excellence of veterans and regulars; also that it was at least a
match for its opponents; and, finally, strange to say, it was very
slightly demoralized, would soon again be in condition for an advance,
and felt full confidence and strong affection for its commander.
Brilliant and enthusiastic tributes have been paid to these men for
their endurance amid disease and wounds and battle; but not one word too
much has been said. It is only cruel to think of the hideous price
which they had paid, and by which they had bought only the capacity to
endure further perils and hardship. Second, concerning McClellan; it was
to be admitted that his predictions as to points of strategy had been
fulfilled; that he had managed his retreat, or "change of base," with
skill, and had shown some qualities of high generalship; but it was also
evident that he was of a temperament so unenterprising and apprehensive
as to make him entirely useless in an offensive campaign. Yet the burden
of conducting a successful offense lay upon the North. Must Mr. Lincoln,
then, finally accept the opinion of those who had long since concluded
that McClellan was not the man for the place?

A collateral question was: What should be done next? McClellan,
tenacious and stubborn, was for persisting in the movement against Lee's
army and Richmond. He admitted no other thought than that, having paused
to gather reinforcements and to refresh his army, he should assume the
offensive, approaching the city by the south and southwest from the
James River base. Holding this purpose, he was impolitic in sending very
dolorous dispatches on July 4 and 7, intimating doubts as to his power
to maintain successfully even the defensive. Two or three days later,
however, he assumed a better tone; and on July 11 and 12 he reported
"all in fine spirits," and urged that his army should be "promptly
reinforced and thrown again upon Richmond. If we have a little more
than half a chance, we can take it." He continued throughout the month
to press these views by arguments which, though overruled at the time,
have since been more favorably regarded. Whether or not they were
correct is an item in the long legacy of questions left by the war to be
disputed over by posterity; in time, one side or the other may desist
from the discussion in weariness, but, from the nature of the case,
neither can be vanquished.

Whether McClellan was right or wrong, his prestige, fresh as it still
remained with his devoted troops, was utterly gone at Washington, where
the political host was almost a unit against him. The Committee on the
Conduct of the War had long been bitterly denouncing him; and he had so
abused the secretary of war that even the duplicity of Mr. Stanton was
unequal to the strain of maintaining an appearance of good
understanding. New military influences also fell into the same scale.
General Pope, the latest "favorite," now enjoying his few weeks of
authority, endeavored to make it clear to Mr. Lincoln that to bring
McClellan back from the Peninsula was the only safe and intelligent
course. Further, on July 11, President Lincoln appointed General Halleck
general-in-chief. It may be said, in passing, that the appointment
turned out to be a very bad mistake; for Halleck was as dull a man as
ever made use of grand opportunities only to prove his own
incompetence. Now, however, he came well recommended before Lincoln,
and amid novel responsibilities the merit of any man could only be known
by trial. Halleck did not arrive in Washington till near the end of the
month, then he seemed for a while in doubt, or to be upon both sides of
the question as to whether the army should be advanced or withdrawn; but
ultimately, in the contemptuous language of Mr. Swinton, he "added his
strident voice in favor of the withdrawal of the army from the
Peninsula." This settled the matter; for the President had decided to
place himself under the guidance of his new military mentor; and,
moreover, his endurance was worn out.

In the way of loyalty the President certainly owed nothing further to
the general. All such obligations he had exhaustively discharged. In
spite of the covert malicious suggestions and the direct injurious
charges which tortured the air of the White House and vexed his
judgment, he had sustained McClellan with a constancy which deserved
warm gratitude. This the general never gave, because he could never
forgive Mr. Lincoln for refusing to subordinate his own views to those
of such a military expert as himself. This point, it is true, Lincoln
never reached; but subject only to this independence of opinion and
action, so long as he retained McClellan in command, he fulfilled toward
him every requirement of honor and generosity. The movement across the
Peninsula, whatever construction might possibly be put upon it, seemed
in Washington a retreat, and was for the President a disappointment
weighty enough to have broken the spirit of a smaller man. Yet Lincoln,
instead of sacrificing McClellan as a scapegoat, sent to him on July 1
and 2 telegrams bidding him do his best in the emergency and save his
army, in which case the people would rally and repair all losses; "we
still have strength enough in the country and will bring it out," he
said,--words full of cheering resolution unshaded by a suspicion of
reproach, words which should have come like wine to the weary. The next
day, July 3, he sent a dispatch which even McClellan, in his formal
report, described as "kind:" "I am satisfied that yourself, officers,
and men have done the best you could. All accounts say better fighting
was never done. Ten thousand thanks for it." But when it came to
judgment and action the President could not alleviate duty with
kindness. To get information uncolored by passage through the minds of
others, he went down to Harrison's Landing on July 7, observed all that
he could see, and talked matters over. Prior to this visit it is
supposed that he had leaned towards McClellan's views, and had inclined
to renew the advance. Nor is it clearly apparent that he learned
anything during this trip which induced him to change his mind. Rather
it seems probable that he maintained his original opinion until General
Halleck had declared against it, and that then he yielded to General
Halleck as he had before yielded to General McClellan, though certainly
with much less reluctance. At the same time the question was not
considered wholly by itself, but was almost necessarily complicated with
the question of deposing McClellan from the command. For the
inconsistency of discrediting McClellan's military judgment and
retaining him at the head of the army was obvious.

Thus at last it came about that McClellan's plan lost its only remaining
friend, and on August 3 came the definite order for the removal of the
army across the Peninsula to Acquia Creek. The campaign against Richmond
was abandoned. McClellan could not express his indignation at a policy
"almost fatal to our cause;" but his strenuous remonstrances had no
effect; his influence had passed forever. The movement of the army was
successfully completed, the rear guard arriving at Yorktown on August
20. Thus the first great Peninsula campaign came to its end in
disappointment and almost in disaster, amid heart-burnings and
criminations. It was, says General Webb, "a lamentable failure,--nothing
less." There was little hope for the future unless some master hand
could control the discordant officials who filled the land with the din
of their quarreling. The burden lay upon the President. Fortunately his
good sense, his even judgment, his unexcitable temperament had saved him
from the appearance or the reality of partisanship and from any
entangling or compromising personal commitments.

In many ways and for many reasons, this story of the Peninsula has been
both difficult and painful to write. To reach the truth and sound
conclusions in the many quarrels which it has provoked is never easy,
and upon some points seems impossible; and neither the truth nor the
conclusions are often agreeable. Opinion and sympathy have gradually but
surely tended in condemnation of McClellan and in favor of Lincoln. The
evidence is conclusive that McClellan was vain, disrespectful, and
hopelessly blind to those non-military but very serious considerations
which should have been allowed to modify the purely scientific strategy
of the campaign. Also, though his military training was excellent, it
was his misfortune to be placed amid exigencies for which neither his
moral nor his mental qualities were adapted. Lincoln, on the other hand,
displayed traits of character not only in themselves rare and admirable,
but so fitted to the requirements of the times that many persons have
been tempted to conceive him to have been divinely led. But against this
view, though without derogating from the merits which induce it, is to
be set the fact that he made mistakes hardly consistent with the theory
of inspiration by Omniscience. He interfered in military matters; and,
being absolutely ignorant of military science, while the problems before
him were many and extremely perplexing, he blundered, and on at least
one occasion blundered very badly. After he has been given the benefit
of all the doubt which can be suggested concerning the questions which
he disposed of, the preponderance of expert authority shows a residuum
of substantial certainty against him. It is true that many civilian
writers have given their judgments in favor of the President's strategy,
with a tranquil assurance at least equal to that shown by the military
critics. But it seems hardly reasonable to suppose that Mr. Lincoln
became by mere instinct, and instantly, a master in the complex science
of war, and it is also highly improbable that in the military criticism
of this especial campaign, the civilians are generally right and the
military men are generally wrong. On the whole it is pleasanter as well
as more intelligent to throw out this foolish notion of miraculous
knowledge suddenly illuminating Mr. Lincoln with a thorough mastery of
the art of war. It is better not to believe that he became at once
endowed with acquirements which he had never had an opportunity to
attain, and rather to be content with holding him as a simple human
being like the rest of us, and so to credit our common humanity with the
inspiring excellence of the moral qualities displayed by him in those
months of indescribable trial.

How much of expectation had been staked upon that army of the Potomac!
All the Northern people for nearly a year kept their eyes fastened with
aching intensity upon it; good fortunes which befell elsewhere hardly
interrupted for a moment the absorption in it. The feeling was well
illustrated by the committee of Congress, which said that in the
history of this army was to be found all that was necessary for framing
a report on the Conduct of the War; and truly added that this army had
been "the object of special care to every department of the government."
It occurred to many who heard this language, that matters would have
gone better with the army if the political and civil departments had
been less lavish of care and attention. None the less the fact remained
that the interest and anticipation of the whole loyal part of the nation
were concentrated in the Virginia campaign. Correspondingly cruel was
the disappointment at its ultimate miscarriage. Probably, as a single
trial, it was the most severe that Mr. Lincoln ever suffered. Hope then
went through the painful process of being pruned by failure, and it was
never tortured by another equal mutilation. Moreover, the vastness of
the task, the awful cost of success, were now, for the first time,
appreciated. The responsibility of a ruler under so appalling a destiny
now descended with a weight that could never become greater upon the
shoulders of that lonely man in the White House. A solitary man, indeed,
he was, in a solitude impressive and painful to contemplate. Having none
of those unofficial counselors, those favorites, those privy confidants
and friends, from whom men in chief authority are so apt to seek relief,
Mr. Lincoln secretively held his most important thoughts in his own
mind, wrought out his conclusions by the toil of his own brain, carried
his entire burden wholly upon his own shoulders, and in every part and
way met the full responsibility of his office in and by himself alone.
It does not appear that he ever sought to be sustained or comforted or
encouraged amid disaster, that he ever endeavored to shift upon others
even the most trifling fragment of the load which rested upon himself;
and certainly he never desired that any one should ever be a sharer in
any ill repute attendant upon a real or supposed mistake. Silent as to
matters of deep import, self-sustained, facing alone all grave duties,
solving alone all difficult problems, and enduring alone all
consequences, he appears a man so isolated from his fellow men amid such
tests and trials, that one is filled with a sense of awe, almost beyond
sympathy, in the contemplation.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] This language was too vague to make known to us now what Sumner's
demand was; for one of the questions bitterly in dispute soon became:
what forces were properly to be regarded as available "for the defense
of the city."

[5] McClellan says that he offered to General Hitchcock, "who at that
time held staff relations with his excellency, the President, and the
secretary of war," to submit a list of troops, to be left for the
defense of Washington, with their positions; but Hitchcock replied that
McClellan's judgment was sufficient in the matter. McClellan's _Report_,
683. VOL. II.

[6] By letter to the adjutant-general, wherein he requested the
transmission of the information to the secretary of war. _Report of
Comm. on Conduct of the War_, ii. pt. i. 13. The addition in the
_Report_ is erroneous, being given as 54,456 instead of 55,456.

[7] See Comte de Paris, _Civil War in America_, i. 626, 627.

[8] See discussion by Swinton, _Army of Potomac_, 108 _et seq._

[9] Perhaps he was not justified in counting upon it with such apparent
assurance as he had done. Webb, _The Peninsula_, 37-42.

[10] General Webb says that this question is "the leading point of
dispute in the campaign and may never be satisfactorily set at rest."
But he also says: "To allow the general to remain in command, and then
cut off the very arm with which he was about to strike, we hold to have
been inexcusable and unmilitary to the last degree." Swinton condemns
the withholding McDowell (_Army of the Potomac_, 104), adding, with fine
magnanimity, that it is not necessary to impute any "really unworthy
motive" to Mr. Lincoln!

[11] It seems to me that military opinion, so far as I can get at it,
inclines to hold that the government, having let McClellan go to the
Peninsula with the expectation of McDowell's corps, ought to have sent
it to him, and not to have repaired its own oversight at his cost. But
this does not fully meet the position that, oversight or no oversight,
Peninsula-success or Peninsula-defeat, blame here or blame there, when
the President had reason to doubt the safety of the capital, he was
resolved, and rightly resolved, to put that safety beyond _possibility
of question_, by any means or at any cost. The truth is that to the end
of time one man will think one way, and another man will think another
way, concerning this unendable dispute.

[12] General Wool was in command at Fortress Monroe. It had been
originally arranged that General McClellan should draw 10,000 men from
him. But this was afterward countermanded. The paragraph in the
President's letter has reference to this.

[13] A slight obstruction by a battery at Drury's Bluff must have been
abandoned instantly upon the approach of a land force.

[14] Whose command had been added to McDowell's.

[15] Colonel Franklin Haven, who was on General McDowell's staff at the
time, is my authority for this statement. He well remembers the reason
given by Mr. Lincoln, and the extreme annoyance which the general and
his officers felt at the delay.

[16] "The expediency of the junction of this [McD.'s] large corps with
the principal army was manifest," says General Johnston. _Narr. 131._

[17] Jackson used to say: "Mystery, mystery, is the secret of success."

[18] The Comte de Paris is very severe, even to sarcasm, in his comments
on the President's orders to Banks (_Civil War in America_, ii. 35, 36,
and see 44); and Swinton, referring to the disposition of the armies,
which was well known to have been made by Mr. Lincoln's personal orders,
says: "One hardly wishes to inquire by whose crude and fatuous
inspiration these things were done." _Army of Potomac_, 123. Later
critics have not repeated such strong language, but have not taken
different views of the facts.

[19] Observe the tone of his two dispatches of May 25 to McClellan.
McClellan's _Report_, 100, 101.

[20] The Comte de Paris prefers to call it a "chimerical project."
_Civil War in America_, ii. 45. Swinton speaks of "the skill of the
Confederates and the folly of those who controlled the operations of the
Union armies." _Army of Potomac_, 122.

[21] Yet, if Fremont had not blundered, the result might have been
different. Comte de Paris, _Civil War in America_, ii. 47.

[22] The Third, under Heintzelman, and the Fourth, under Keyes.

[23] Even his admirer, Swinton, says that any possible course would have
been better than inaction. _Army of Potomac_, 140, 141.

[24] _The Peninsula_, 188. Swinton seems to regard it in the same light.
_Army of Potomac_, 147.

[25] Gaines's Mill, contested with superb courage and constancy by the
Fifth Corps, under Porter, against very heavy odds.

[26] McClellan's _Report_, 131, 132. See, also, his own comments on this
extraordinary dispatch; _Own Story_, 452. He anticipated, not without
reason, that he would be promptly removed. The Comte de Paris says that
the two closing sentences were suppressed by the War Department, when
the documents had to be laid before the Committee on the Conduct of the
War. _Civil War in America_, ii. 112. Another dispatch, hardly less
disrespectful, was sent on June 25. See McClellan's _Report_, 121.

[27] For a vivid description of the condition to which heat, marching,
fighting, and the unwholesome climate had reduced the men, see statement
of Comte de Paris, an eye-witness. _Civil War in America,_ ii. 130.




CHAPTER III

THE THIRD AND CLOSING ACT OF THE MCCLELLAN DRAMA


As it seems probable that Mr. Lincoln did not conclusively determine
against the plan of McClellan for renewing the advance upon Richmond by
way of Petersburg, until after General Halleck had thus decided, so it
is certain that afterward he allowed to Halleck a control almost wholly
free from interference on his own part. Did he, perchance, feel that a
lesson had been taught him, and did he think that those critics had not
been wholly wrong who had said that he had intermeddled ignorantly and
hurtfully in military matters? Be this as it might, it was in accordance
with the national character to turn the back sharply upon failure and
disappointment, and to make a wholly fresh start; and it was in
accordance with Lincoln's character to fall in with the popular feeling.
Yet if a fresh start was intrinsically advisable, or if it was made
necessary by circumstances, it was made in unfortunate company. One does
not think without chagrin that Grant, Sherman, Sheridan lurked
undiscovered among the officers at the West, while Halleck and Pope were
pulled forth to the light and set in the high places. Halleck was
hopelessly incompetent, and Pope was fit only for subordinate command;
and by any valuation which could reasonably be put upon McClellan, it
was absurd to turn him out in order to bring either of these men in. But
it was the experimental period. No man's qualities could be known except
by testing them; and these two men came before Lincoln with records
sufficiently good to entitle them to trial. The successes at the West
had naturally produced good opinions of the officers who had achieved
them, and among these officers John Pope had been as conspicuous as any
other. For this reason he was now, towards the close of June, 1862,
selected to command the "Army of Virginia," formed by uniting the corps
of Fremont, McDowell, and Banks.[28] Fremont resigned, in a pet at
having an officer who was his junior in the service placed over his
head; but he was no loss, since his impetuous temperament did not fit
him for the duties of a corps commander. He was succeeded by General
Sigel. The fusing of these independent commands, whose separate
existence had been a wasteful and jeopardizing error, was an excellent
measure.

General Pope remained in Washington a few weeks, in constant
consultation with the administration. How he impressed Lincoln one would
gladly know, but cannot. He had unlimited self-confidence, and he gave
it to be understood at once that he was a fighting man; but it showed an
astounding lack of tact upon his part that, in notifying the troops of
this, his distinguishing characteristic, he also intimated that it would
behoove them to turn over a new leaf now that he had come all the way
from the West in order to teach Eastern men how to win victories! The
manifesto which he issued has become famous by its folly; it was
arrogant, bombastic, little short of insulting to the soldiers of his
command, and laid down principles contrary to the established rules of
war. Yet it had good qualities, too; for it was designed to be
stimulating; it certainly meant fighting; and fortunately, though Pope
was not a great general, he was by no means devoid of military knowledge
and instincts, and he would not really have committed quite such
blunders as he marked out for himself in his rhetorical enthusiasm. On
the whole, however, the manifesto did harm; neither officers nor
soldiers were inclined to receive kindly a man who came presumably on
trial with the purpose of replacing McClellan, whom they loved with deep
loyalty; therefore they ridiculed part of his address and took offense
at the rest of it. Mr. Lincoln could hardly have been encouraged; but he
gave no sign.

On July 29 Pope left Washington and joined his army, near Culpepper. He
had not quite 45,000 men, and was watched by Jackson, who lay near
Gordonsville with a scant half of that number. On August 9 Banks was
pushed forward to Cedar Mountain, where he encountered Jackson and
attacked him. In "a hard-fought battle, fierce, obstinate, sanguinary,"
the Federals were worsted; and such consolation as the people got from
the gallantry of the troops was more than offset by the fact, which
became obvious so soon as the whole story was known, that our generals
ought to have avoided the engagement and were outgeneraled both in the
bringing it on and in the conducting it.

Greatly as Jackson was outnumbered by Pope, he could hope for no
reinforcements from Lee so long as McClellan, at Harrison's Landing,
threatened Richmond. But when gratifying indications showed the purpose
to withdraw the Northern army from the Peninsula the Southern general
ventured, August 13, to dispatch General Longstreet northward with a
strong force. Soon afterward he himself followed and took command. Then
for two or three days ensued a sharp matching of wits betwixt the two
generals. By one of those audacious plans which Lee could dare to make
when he had such a lieutenant as Jackson to carry it out, Jackson was
sent upon a rapid march by the northward, around the army of Pope, to
cut its communications. He did it brilliantly; but in doing it he
necessarily offered to Pope such an opportunity for fighting the
Southern forces in detail as is rarely given by a good general to an
adversary whom he fears. Pope would fain have availed himself of the
chance, and in the effort to do so he hurried his troops hither and
thither, mingled wise moves with foolish ones, confused his
subordinates, fatigued his men, and finally accomplished nothing.
Jackson retired safely from his dangerous position, rejoined the rest of
the Southern army, and then the united force had as its immediate
purpose to fight Pope before he could receive reinforcements from
McClellan's army, now rapidly coming forward by way of Washington. _E
converso_, Pope's course should have been to retire a day's march across
Bull Run and await the additional troops who could at once join him
there. Unfortunately, however, he still felt the sting of the ridicule
which his ill-starred manifesto had called forth, and was further
irritated by the unsatisfactory record of the past few days, and
therefore was in no temper to fall back. So he did not, but stayed and
fought what is known as the second battle of Bull Run. In the conflict
his worn-out men showed such constancy that the slaughter on both sides
was great. Again, however, the bravery of the rank and file was the only
feature which the country could contemplate without indignation. The
army was beaten; and retired during the evening of August 30 to a safe
position at Centreville, whither it should have been taken without loss
two days earlier.[29] Thus was fulfilled, with only a trifling
inaccuracy in point of time, the prediction made by McClellan on August
10, that "Pope will be badly thrashed within ten days."[30]

In all this manoeuvring and fighting the commanding general had shown
some capacity, but very much less than was indispensable in a commander
who had to meet the generals of the South. Forthwith, also, there broke
out a series of demoralizing quarrels among the principal officers as to
what orders had been given and received, and whether or not they had
been understood or misunderstood, obeyed or disobeyed. Also the enemies
of General McClellan tried to lay upon him the whole responsibility for
the disaster, on the ground that he had been dilatory, first, in moving
his army from Harrison's Landing, and afterward, in sending his troops
forward to join Pope; whereas, they said, if he had acted promptly, the
Northern army would have been too strong to have been defeated,
regardless of any incompetence in the handling of it. Concerning the
former charge, it may be said that dispatches had flown to and fro
between Halleck and McClellan like bullets between implacable duelists;
Halleck ordered the army to be transported, and McClellan retorted that
he was given no transports; it is a dispute which cannot be discussed
here. Concerning the other charge, it was also true that the same two
generals had been for some days exchanging telegrams, but had been
entirely unable to understand each other. Whose fault it was cannot
easily be determined. The English language was giving our generals
almost as much trouble as were the Southerners at this time; so that in
a few short weeks material for endless discussion was furnished by the
orders, telegrams, and replies which were bandied between Pope and
Porter, McClellan and Halleck. A large part of the history of the period
consists of the critical analysis and construing of these documents.
What did each in fact mean? What did the writer intend it to mean? What
did the recipient understand it to 'mean? Did the writer make his
meaning sufficiently clear? Was the recipient justified in his
interpretation? Historians have discussed these problems as theologians
have discussed puzzling texts of the New Testament, with not less
acerbity and with no more conclusive results. Unquestionably the
capacity to write two or three dozen consecutive words so as to
constitute a plain, straightforward sentence would have been for the
moment a valuable adjunct to military learning.

The news of the defeat brought dismay, but not quite a panic, to the
authorities in Washington. In fact, there was no immediate danger for
the capital. The army from the Peninsula was by this time distributed at
various points in the immediate neighborhood; and a force could be
promptly brought together which would so outnumber the Confederate army
as to be invincible. Yet the situation demanded immediate and vigorous
action. Some hand must seize the helm at once, and Pope's hand would not
do; so much at least was entirely certain. He had been given his own
way, without interference on the part of President or secretary, and he
had been beaten; he was discredited before the country and the army;
nothing useful could now be done with him. Halleck was utterly
demoralized, and was actually reduced to telegraphing to McClellan: "I
beg of you to assist me, in this crisis, with your ability and
experience." It was the moment for a master to take control, and the
President met the occasion. There was only one thing to be done, and
circumstances were such that not only must that thing be done by him,
but also it must be done by him in direct opposition to the strenuous
insistence of all his official and most of his self-constituted
advisers. It was necessary to reinstate McClellan.

It was a little humiliating to be driven to this step. McClellan had
lately been kept at Alexandria with no duty save daily to disintegrate
his own army by sending off to Washington and to the camp of his own
probable successor division after division of the troops whom he had so
long commanded. Greatly mortified, he had begged at least to be
"permitted to go to the scene of battle." But he was ignored, as if he
were no longer of any consequence whatsoever. In plain truth it was made
perfectly obvious to him and to all the world that if General Pope could
win a victory the administration had done with General McClellan. Mr.
Lincoln described the process as a "snubbing." Naturally those who were
known to be the chief promoters of this "snubbing," and to have been
highly gratified by it, now looked ruefully on the evident necessity of
suddenly cutting it short, and requesting the snubbed individual to
assume the role of their rescuer. McClellan's more prominent enemies
could not and would not agree to this. Three members of the cabinet even
went so far as formally to put in writing their protest against
restoring him to the command of any army at all; while Stanton actually
tried to frighten the President by a petty threat of personal
consequences. But this was foolish. The crisis was of the kind which
induced Mr. Lincoln to exercise power, decisively. On this occasion his
impersonal, unimpassioned temperament left his judgment free to work
with evenness and clearness amid the whirl of momentous events and the
clash of angry tongues. No one could say that he had been a partisan
either for or against McClellan, and his wise reticence in the past gave
him in the present the privilege of untrammeled action. So he settled
the matter at once by ordering that McClellan should have command
within the defenses of Washington.

By this act the President gave extreme offense to the numerous and
strenuous band with whom hatred of the Democratic general had become a
sort of religion; and upon this occasion even Messrs. Nicolay and Hay
seem more inclined to apologize for their idol than to defend him. In
point of fact, nothing can be more misplaced than either apology or
defense, except criticism. Mr. Lincoln could have done no wiser thing.
He was simply setting in charge of the immediate business the man who
could do that especial business best. It was not a question of a battle
or a campaign, neither of which was for the moment imminent; but it was
a question of reorganizing masses of disorganized troops and getting
them into shape for battles and campaigns in the future. Only the
intensity of hatred could make any man blind to McClellan's capacity for
such work; and what he might be for other work was a matter of no
consequence just now. Lincoln simply applied to the instant need the
most effective help, without looking far afield to study remote
consequences. Two remarks, said to have been made by him at this time,
indicate his accurate appreciation of the occasion and the man: "There
is no one in the army who can man these fortifications and lick these
troops of ours into shape half so well as he can." "We must use the
tools we have; if he cannot fight himself, he excels in making others
ready to fight."

On September 1 Halleck verbally instructed McClellan to take command of
the defenses of Washington, defining this to mean strictly "the works
and their garrisons." McClellan says that later on the same day he had
an interview with the President, in which the President said that he had
"always been a friend" of the general, and asked as a favor that the
general would request his personal friends among the principal officers
of the army to give to General Pope a more sincere and hearty support
than they were supposed to be actually rendering.[31] On the morning of
September 2, McClellan says, "The President informed me that Colonel
Keelton had returned from the front; that our affairs were in a bad
condition; that the army was in full retreat upon the defenses of
Washington, the roads filled with stragglers, etc. He instructed me to
take steps at once to stop and collect the stragglers; place the works
in a proper state of defense, and go out to meet and take command of the
army, when it approached the vicinity of the works, then to place the
troops in the best position,--committing everything to my hands." By
this evidence, Mr. Lincoln intrusted the fate of the country and with it
his own reputation absolutely to the keeping of McClellan.

McClellan was in his element in fusing into unity the disjointed
fragments of armies which lay about in Virginia like scattered ruins.
His bitterest tractors have never denied him the gift of organization,
and admit that he did excellent service just now for a few days. But
circumstances soon extended his field of action, and gave detraction
fresh opportunities. General Lee, in a bold and enterprising mood,
perhaps attributable to the encouraging inefficiency of his Northern
opponents, moved up the banks of the Potomac and threatened an irruption
into Maryland and even Pennsylvania. It was absolutely necessary to
watch and, at the right moment, to fight him. For this purpose McClellan
was ordered to move along the north bank of the river, but under strict
injunctions at first to go slowly and cautiously and not to uncover
Washington. For General Halleck had not fully recovered his nerve, and
was still much disquieted, especially concerning the capital. Thus the
armies drew slowly near each other, McClellan creeping forward, as he
had been bidden, while Lee, with his usual energy, seemed able to do
with a thousand men more than any Northern general could do with thrice
as many, and ran with exasperating impunity those audacious risks which,
where they cannot be attributed to ignorance on the part of a commander,
indicate contempt for his opponent. This feeling, if he had it, must
have received agreeable corroboration from the clumsy way in which the
Federals just at this time lost Harper's Ferry, with General Miles's
garrison. The Southern troops, who had been detailed against it, rapidly
rejoined General Lee's army; and again the people saw that the South
had outmarched and outgeneraled the North.

With all his troops together, Lee was now ready to fight at the
convenience or the pleasure of McClellan, who seemed chivalrously to
have deferred his attack until his opponent should be prepared for it!
The armies were in presence of each other near where the Antietam
empties into the Potomac, and here, September 17, the bloody conflict
took place.

The battle of Antietam has usually been called a Northern victory. Both
the right and the left wings of the Northern army succeeded in seizing
advanced positions and in holding them at the end of the fight; and Lee
retreated to the southward, though it is true that before doing so he
lingered a day and gave to his enemy a chance, which was not used, to
renew the battle. His position was obviously untenable in the face of an
outnumbering host. But though upon the strength of these facts a victory
could be claimed with logical propriety, yet the President and the
country were, and had a right to be, indignant at the very
unsatisfactory proportion of the result to the means. Shortly before the
battle McClellan's troops, upon the return to them of the commander whom
they idolized, had given him a soul-stirring reception, proving the
spirit and confidence with which they would fight under his orders; and
they went into the fight in the best possible temper and condition. On
the day of the battle the Northern troops outnumbered the Southerners
by nearly two to one; in fact, the Southern generals, in their reports,
insisted that they had been simply overwhelmed by enormous odds against
which it was a marvel of gallantry for their men to stand at all. The
plain truth was that in the first place, by backwardness in bringing on
the battle, McClellan had left Lee to effect a concentration of forces
which ought never to have been permitted. Next, the battle itself had
not been especially well handled, though perhaps this was due rather to
the lack of his personal attention during its progress than to errors in
his plan. Finally, his failure, with so large an army, of which a part
at least was entirely fresh, to pursue and perhaps even to destroy the
reduced and worn-out Confederate force seemed inexplicable and was
inexcusable.

The South could never be conquered in this way. It had happened, on
September 12, that President Lincoln heard news apparently indicating
the withdrawal of Lee across the Potomac. He had at once sent it forward
to McClellan, adding: "Do not let him get off without being hurt." Three
days later, he telegraphed: "Destroy the rebel army if possible." But
McClellan had been too self-restrained in his obedience. He had, indeed,
hurt Lee, but he had been very careful not to hurt him too much; and as
for destroying the rebel army, he seemed unwilling to enter so lightly
on so stupendous an enterprise. The administration and the country
expected, and perfectly fairly expected, to see a hot pursuit of
General Lee. They were disappointed; they saw no such thing, but only
saw McClellan holding his army as quiescent as if there was nothing more
to be done, and declaring that it was in no condition to move!

It was intolerably provoking, unintelligible, and ridiculous that a
ragged, ill-shod, overworked, under-fed, and beaten body of Southerners
should be able to retreat faster than a great, fresh, well-fed,
well-equipped, and victorious body of Northerners could follow. Jackson
said that the Northern armies were, kept in too good condition; and
declared that he could whip any army which marched with herds of cattle
behind it. But the North preferred, and justly, to attribute the
inefficiency of their troops to the unfortunate temperament of the
commander. Mr. Lincoln looked at the unsatisfactory spectacle and held
his hand as long as he could, dreading perhaps again to seem too forward
in assuming control of military affairs. Patience, however, could not
endure forever, nor common sense be always subservient to technical
science. Accordingly, on October 6, he ordered McClellan to cross the
Potomac, and either to "give battle to the enemy, or to drive him
south." McClellan paid no attention to the order. Four days later the
Confederate general, Stuart, with 2000 cavalry and a battery, crossed
into Maryland and made a tour around the Northern army, with the same
insolent success which had attended his like enterprise on the
Peninsula. On October 13 the President wrote to McClellan a letter, so
admirable both in temper and in the soundness of its suggestions that it
should be given entire:--



"MY DEAR SIR,--You remember my speaking to you of what I called your
over-cautiousness. Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you
cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing? Should you not claim to be
at least his equal in prowess, and act upon the claim?

"As I understand, you telegraphed General Halleck that you cannot
subsist your army at Winchester, unless the railroad from Harper's Ferry
to that point be put in working order. But the enemy does now subsist
his army at Winchester at a distance nearly twice as great from railroad
transportation as you would have to do without the railroad last named.
He now wagons from Culpepper Court House, which is just about twice as
far as you would have to do from Harper's Ferry. He is certainly not
more than half as well provided with wagons as you are. I certainly
should be pleased for you to have the advantage of the railroad from
Harper's Ferry to Winchester; but it wastes all the remainder of autumn
to give it to you, and, in fact, ignores the question of _time_, which
cannot and must not be ignored.

"Again, one of the standard maxims of war, as you know, is 'to operate
upon the enemy's communications as much as possible without exposing
your own.' You seem to act as if this applies _against_ you, but cannot
apply in your _favor_. Change positions with the enemy, and think you
not he would break your communication with Richmond within the next
twenty-four hours? You dread his going into Pennsylvania. But if he does
so in full force, he gives up his communication to you absolutely, and
you have nothing to do but to follow and ruin him; if he does so with
less than full force, fall upon and beat what is left behind, all the
easier.

"Exclusive of the water line, you are now nearer Richmond than the enemy
is, by the route that you _can_, and he _must_ take. Why can you not
reach there before him, unless you admit that he is more than your equal
on a march? His route is the arc of a circle, while yours is the chord.
The roads are as good on yours as on his.

"You know I desired, but did not order you, to cross the Potomac below,
instead of above, the Shenandoah and Blue Ridge. The idea was that this
would at once menace the enemy's communications, which I would seize, if
he would permit. If he should move northward, I would follow him
closely, holding his communications. If he should prevent our seizing
his communications, and move towards Richmond, I would press closely to
him, fight him if a favorable opportunity should present, and at least
try to beat him to Richmond on the inside track. I say, try; if we never
try, we shall never succeed. If he makes a stand at Winchester, moving
neither north nor south, I would fight him there, on the idea that if
we cannot beat him when he bears the wastage of coming to us, we never
can when we bear the wastage of going to him. This proposition is a
simple truth, and is too important to be lost sight of for a moment. In
coming to us, he tenders us an advantage which we should not waive. We
should not so operate as to merely drive him away. As we must beat him
somewhere, or fail finally, we can do it, if at all, easier near to us
than far away. If we cannot beat the enemy where he now is, we never
can, he again being within the intrenchments of Richmond.

"Recurring to the idea of going to Richmond on the inside track, the
facility for supplying from the side away from the enemy is remarkable,
as it were by the different spokes of a wheel extending from the hub
towards the rim; and this, whether you moved directly by the chord or on
the inside arc, hugging the Blue Ridge more closely. The chord line, as
you see, carries you by Aldie, Haymarket, and Fredericksburg, and you
see how turnpikes, railroads, and finally the Potomac, by Acquia Creek,
meet you at all points from Washington. The same, only the lines
lengthened a little, if you press closer to the Blue Ridge part of the
way. The Gaps through the Blue Ridge, I understand to be about the
following distances from Harper's Ferry, to wit: Vestala, five miles;
Gregory's, thirteen; Snicker's, eighteen; Ashby's, twenty-eight;
Manassas, thirty-eight; Chester, forty-five; and Thornton's,
fifty-three. I should think it preferable to take the route nearest the
enemy, disabling him to make an important move without your knowledge,
and compelling him to keep his forces together for dread of you. The
Gaps would enable you to attack if you should wish. For a great part of
the way you would be practically between the enemy and both Washington
and Richmond, enabling us to spare you the greatest number of troops
from here. When, at length, running for Richmond ahead of him enables
him to move this way, if he does so, turn and attack him in rear. But I
think he should be engaged long before such point is reached. It is all
easy if our troops march as well as the enemy, and it is unmanly to say
they cannot do it. This letter is in no sense an order."



A general who failed to respond to such a spur as this was not the man
for offensive warfare; and McClellan did not respond. Movement was as
odious to him now as it ever had been, and by talking about shoes and
overcoats, and by other dilatory pleas, he extended his delay until the
close of the month. It was actually the second day of November before
his army crossed the Potomac. Another winter of inaction seemed about to
begin. It was simply unendurable. Though it was true that he had
reorganized the army with splendid energy and skill, and had shown to
the Northern soldiers in Virginia the strange and cheerful spectacle of
the backs of General Lee's soldiers, yet it became a settled fact that
he must give place to some new man. He and Pope were to be succeeded by
a third experiment. Therefore, on November 5, 1862, the President
ordered General McClellan to turn over the command of the army to
General Burnside; and on November 7 this was done.

This action, taken just at this time, called forth a much more severe
criticism than would have attended it if the removal had been made
simultaneously with the withdrawal from the Peninsula. By what motive
was Mr. Lincoln influenced? Not very often is the most eager search
rewarded by the sure discovery of his opinions about persons. From what
we know that he did, we try to infer why he did it, and we gropingly
endeavor to apportion the several measures of influence between those
motives which we choose to put by our conjecture into his mind; and
after our toilful scrutiny is over we remain painfully conscious of the
greatness of the chance that we have scarcely even approached the truth.
Neither diary nor letters guide us; naught save reports of occasional
pithy, pointed, pregnant remarks, evidence the most dubious, liable to
be colored by the medium of the predilections of the hearer, and to be
reshaped and misshaped by time, and by attrition in passing through many
mouths. The President was often in a chatting mood, and then seemed not
remote from his companion. Yet while this was the visible manifestation
on the surface, he was the most reticent of men as to grave questions,
and no confidant often heard his inmost thoughts. Especially it would
be difficult to name an instance in which he told one man what he
thought of another; a trifling criticism concerning some single trait
was the utmost that he ever allowed to escape him; a full and careful
estimate, never.

Such reflections come with peculiar force at this period in his career.
What would not one give for his estimate of McClellan! It would be worth
the whole great collection of characters sketched by innumerable friends
and enemies for that much-discussed general. While others think that
they know accurately the measure of McClellan's real value and
usefulness, Lincoln really knew these things; but he never told his
knowledge. We only see that he sustained McClellan for a long while in
the face of vehement aspersions; yet that he never fully subjected his
own convictions to the educational lectures of the general, and that he
seemed at last willing to see him laid aside; then immediately in a
crisis restored him to authority in spite of all opposition; and shortly
afterward, as if utterly weary of him, definitively displaced him.
Still, all these facts do not show what Lincoln thought of McClellan.
Many motives besides his opinion of the man may have influenced him. The
pressure of political opinion and of public feeling was very great, and
might have turned him far aside from the course he would have pursued if
it could have been neglected. Also other considerations have been
suggested as likely to have weighed with him,--that McClellan could do
with the army what no other man could do, because of the intense
devotion of both officers and men to him; and that an indignity offered
to McClellan might swell the dissatisfaction of the Northern Democracy
to a point at which it would seriously embarrass the administration.
These things may have counteracted, or may have corroborated, Mr.
Lincoln's views concerning the man himself. He was an extraordinary
judge of men in their relationship to affairs; moreover, of all the men
of note of that time he alone was wholly dispassionate and non-partisan.
Opinions tinctured with prejudices are countless; it is disappointing
that the one opinion that was free from prejudice is unknown.[32]

FOOTNOTES:

[28] The consolidation, and the assignment of Pope to the command, bore
date June 26, 1862.

[29] This campaign of General Pope has been the topic of very bitter
controversy and crimination. In my brief account I have eschewed the
view of Messrs. Nicolay and Hay, who seem to me if I may say it, to have
written with the single-minded purpose of throwing everybody's blunders
into the scale against McClellan, and I have adopted the view of Mr.
John C. Ropes in his volume on _The Army under Pope_, in the Campaigns
of the Civil War Series. In his writing it is impossible to detect
personal prejudice, for or against any one; and his account is so clear
and convincing that it must be accepted, whether one likes his
conclusions or not.

[30] _Own Story_, 466.

[31] Pope retained for a few days command of the army in camp outside
the defenses.

[32] McClure says: "I saw Lincoln many times during the campaign of
1864, when McClellan was his competitor for the presidency. I never
heard him speak of McClellan in any other than terms of the highest
personal respect and kindness." _Lincoln and Men of War-Times_, 207.




CHAPTER IV

THE AUTUMN ELECTIONS OF 1862, AND THE PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION


The chapter which has been written on "Emancipation and Politics" shows
that while loyalty to the Union operated as a bond to hold together the
people of the North, slavery entered as a wedge to force them asunder.
It was not long before the wedge proved a more powerful force than the
bond, for the wedge was driven home by human nature; and it was
inevitable that the men of conservative temperament and the men of
progressive temperament should erelong be easily restored to their
instinctive antagonism. Of those who had been stigmatized as "Northern
men with Southern principles," many soon found their Southern
proclivities reviving. These men, christened "Copperheads," became more
odious to loyal Northerners than were the avowed Secessionists. In
return for their venomous nickname and the contempt and hatred with
which they were treated, they themselves grew steadily more rancorous,
more extreme in their feelings. They denounced and opposed every measure
of the government, harangued vehemently against the war and against all
that was done to prosecute it, reviled with scurrilous and passionate
abuse every prominent Republican, filled the air with disheartening
forecasts of defeat, ruin, and woe, and triumphed whenever the miserable
prophecies seemed in the way of fulfillment. General Grant truly
described them as auxiliaries to the Confederate army, and said that the
North would have been much better off with a hundred thousand of these
men in the Southern ranks, and the rest of their kind at home thoroughly
subdued, as the Unionists were at the South, than was the case as the
struggle was actually conducted. In time the administration found itself
forced, though reluctantly, to arrest and imprison many of the
ringleaders in this Northern disaffection. Yet all the while the
Copperheads resolutely maintained their affiliations with the Democratic
party, and though they brought upon it much discredit which it did not
deserve, yet they could not easily be ejected from it. Differences of
opinion shaded into each other so gradually that to establish a line of
division was difficult.

Impinging upon Copperheadism stood the much more numerous body of those
who persistently asserted their patriotism, but with equal persistence
criticised severely all the measures of the government. These men
belonged to that well-known class which is happily described as being
"for the law, but ag'in the enforcement of it." They were for the Union,
but against saving it. They kept up a disapproving headshaking over
pretty much everything that the President did. With much grandiloquent
argument, in the stately, old-school style, they bemoaned the breaches
which they charged him with making in the Constitution. They also hotly
assumed the role of champions of General McClellan, and bewailed the
imbecility of an administration which thwarted and deposed him.
Protesting the purest and highest patriotism, they were more evasive
than the outspoken Copperheads, and as their disaffection was less
conspicuous and offensive, so also it was more insidious and almost
equally hurtful. They constituted the true and proper body of Democracy.

In a fellowship, which really ought not to have existed, with these
obstructionists, was the powerful and respectable body of war Democrats.
These men maintained a stubborn loyalty to the old party, but prided
themselves upon being as hearty and thorough-going war-men as any among
the Republicans. A large proportion of the most distinguished generals,
of the best regimental officers, of the most faithful soldiers in the
field, were of this political faith. The only criticism that Republicans
could reasonably pass upon them was, that they did not, in a political
way, strengthen the hands of the government, that they would not uphold
its authority by swelling its majorities, nor aid its prestige by giving
it their good words.

Over against this Democracy, with its two very discordant wings, was
arrayed the Republican party, which also was disturbed by the ill-will
of those who should have been its allies; for while the moderate
Abolitionists generally sustained the President, though only imperfectly
satisfied with him, the extreme Abolitionists refused to be so
reasonable. They were a very provoking body of pure moralists. They
worried the President, condemned his policy, divided the counsels of the
government, and introduced injurious personal enmities and partisanship
with reckless disregard of probable consequences. To a considerable
extent they had the same practical effect as if they had been avowed
opponents of the Republican President. They wished immediately to place
the war upon the footing of a crusade for the abolition of slavery.
Among them were old-time Abolitionists, with whom this purpose was a
religion, men who had hoped to see Seward the Republican President, and
who said that Lincoln's friends in the nominating convention had
represented a "superficial and only half-hearted Republicanism." Beside
these men, though actuated by very different and much less honorable
motives, stood many recruits, some even from the Democracy, who were so
vindictive against the South that they desired to inflict abolition as a
punishment.

All these critics and dissatisfied persons soon began to speak with
severity, and sometimes with contempt, against the President. He had
said that the war was for the Union; but they scornfully retorted that
this was to reduce it to "a mere sectional strife for ascendency;" that
"a Union, with slavery spared and reinstated, would not be worth the
cost of saving it." It was true that to save the Union, without also
removing the cause of disunion, might not be worth a very great price;
yet both Union and abolition were in serious danger of being thrown away
forever by these impetuous men who desired to pluck the fruit before it
was ripe, or rather declared it to be ripe because they so wanted to
pluck it.

It is not, here and now, a question of the merits and the usefulness of
these men; undoubtedly their uncompromising ardor could not have been
dispensed with in the great anti-slavery struggle; it was what the steam
is to the engine, and if the motive power had been absent no one can say
how long the United States might have lain dormant as a slave-country.
But the question is of their present attitude and of its influence and
effect in the immediate affairs of the government. Their demand was for
an instant and sweeping proclamation of emancipation; and they were
angry and denunciatory against the President because he would not give
it to them. Of course, by their ceaseless assaults they hampered him and
weakened his hands very seriously. It was as an exercise of the
President's war-power that they demanded the proclamation; and the
difficulty in the way of it was that Mr. Lincoln felt, and the great
majority of Northern men were positive in the opinion, that such a
proclamation at this time would not be an honest and genuine exercise of
the war-power, that it would be only falsely and colorably so called,
and that in real truth it would be a deliberate and arbitrary change of
the war from a contest for Union to a contest for abolition. Mr. Lincoln
could not _make_ it a war measure merely by _calling_ it so; it was no
mere matter of political christening, but distinctly a very grave and
substantial question of fact. It may be suspected that very many even of
the Abolitionists themselves, had they spoken the innermost conviction
of their minds, would have admitted that the character of the measure as
a wise military transaction, pure and simple, was very dubious. It was
certain that every one else in all the country which still was or ever
had been the United States would regard it as an informal and misnamed
but real change of base for the whole war. No preamble, no _Whereas_, in
Mr. Lincoln's proclamation, reciting as a fact and a motive that which
he would have known, and ninety-nine out of every hundred loyal men
would have believed, not to be the true fact and motive, could make the
rest of his proclamation lawful, or his act that of an honest ruler.
Accordingly no pressure could drive him to the step; he preferred to
endure, and long did endure, the abuse of the extreme Abolitionists, and
all the mischief which their hostility could inflict upon his
administration. Yet, in truth, there was not in the North an
Abolitionist who thought worse of the institution of slavery than did
the man who had repeatedly declared it to be "a moral, a social, and a
political evil." Referring to these times, and the behavior of the
Abolitionists, he afterward wrote:[33]--

"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.
I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and yet I have never
understood that the presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right
to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I
took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and
defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the
office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an
oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood,
too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to
practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question
of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways.
And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere
deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did
understand, however, that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the
best of my ability imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every
indispensable means, that government,--that nation, of which that
Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and
yet preserve the Constitution? By general law, life and limb must be
protected, yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a
life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures,
otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming
indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution through the
preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and
now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had
even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery or any
minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and
Constitution all together. When, early in the war, General Fremont
attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then
think it an indispensable necessity. When, a little later, General
Cameron, then secretary of war, suggested the arming of the blacks, I
objected because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity.
When, still later, General Hunter attempted military emancipation, I
again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable
necessity had come."

None could deny that the North could abolish slavery in the South only
by beating the South in the pending war. Therefore, by his duty as
President of the Union and by his wishes as an anti-slavery man, Mr.
Lincoln was equally held to win this fight. Differing in opinion from
the Abolitionists, he believed that to turn it, at an early stage, into
a war for abolition rather than to leave it a war for the Union would be
to destroy all hope of winning. The step would alienate great numbers at
the North. The "American Society for promoting National Unity" had
lately declared that emancipation "would be rebellion against Providence
and destruction to the colored race in our land;" and it was certain
that this feeling was still widely prevalent in the loyal States. In
July, 1862, General McClellan said, warningly, that a declaration of
radical views on the slavery question would rapidly disintegrate and
destroy the Union armies. Finally, it seemed hardly doubtful that fatal
defections would take place in the Border States, even if they should
not formally go over to the Confederacy. No man saw the value of those
Border States as Mr. Lincoln did. To save or to lose them was probably
to save or lose the war; to lose them and the war was to establish a
powerful slave empire. Where did abolition come in among these events?
It was not there!

[Illustration: Simon Cameron]

Painfully, therefore, untiringly, with all the skill and tact in his
power, Mr. Lincoln struggled to hold those invaluable, crucial States.
His "border-state policy" soon came to be discussed as the most
interesting topic of which men could talk wherever they came together.
Savage were the maledictions which emancipationists uttered against it,
and the intensity of their feeling is indicated by the fact that, though
that policy was carried out, and though the nation, in due time,
gathered the ripe and perfect fruit of it both in the integrity of the
country and the abolition of slavery, yet even at the present day many
old opponents of President Lincoln, survivors of the Thirty-seventh
Congress, remain unshaken in the faith that his famous policy was "a
cruel and fatal mistake."

By the summer of 1862 the opinions and the action of Mr. Lincoln in all
these matters had brought him into poor standing in the estimation of
many Republicans. The great majority of the politicians of the party and
sundry newspaper editors, that is to say, those persons who chiefly make
the noise and the show before the world, were busily engaged in
condemning his policy. The headquarters of this disaffection were in
Washington. It had one convert even within the cabinet, where the
secretary of the treasury was thoroughly infected with the notion that
the President was fatally inefficient, laggard, and unequal to the
occasion. The feeling was also especially rife in congressional circles.
Mr. Julian, than whom there can be no better witness, says: "No one at a
distance could have formed any adequate conception of the hostility of
Republican members toward Mr. Lincoln at the final adjournment [the
middle of July], while it was the belief of many that our last session
of Congress had been held in Washington. Mr. Wade said the country was
going to hell, and that the scenes witnessed in the French Revolution
were nothing in comparison with what we should see here." If most of the
people at the North had not had heads more cool and sensible than was
the one which rested upon the shoulders of the ardent "Ben" Wade, the
alarming prediction of that lively spokesman might have been fulfilled.
Fortunately, however, as Mr. Julian admits, "the feeling in Congress was
far more intense than [it was] throughout the country." The experienced
denizens of the large Northern cities read in a critical temper the
tirades of journalist critics, who assumed to know everything. The
population of the small towns and the village neighborhoods, though a
little bewildered by the echoes of denunciation which reached them from
the national capital, yet by instinct, or by a divine guidance, held
fast to their faith in their President. Thus the rank and file of the
Republican party refused to follow the field officers in a revolt
against the general. No better fortune ever befell this very fortunate
nation. If the anti-slavery extremists had been able to reinforce their
own pressure by the ponderous impact of the popular will, and so had
pushed the President from his "border-state policy" and from his general
scheme of advancing only very cautiously along the anti-slavery line, it
is hardly conceivable either that the Union would have been saved or
that slavery would have been destroyed.

On August 19, 1862, the good, impulsive, impractical Horace Greeley
published in his newspaper, the New York "Tribune," an address to the
President, to which he gave an awe-inspiring title, "The Prayer of
20,000,000 of People." It was an extremely foolish paper, and its title,
like other parts of it, was false. Only those persons who were agitators
for immediate emancipation could say amen to this mad prayer, and they
were far from being even a large percentage of "20,000,000 of people."
Yet these men, being active missionaries and loud preachers in behalf of
a measure in which they had perfect faith, made a show and exerted an
influence disproportioned to their numbers. Therefore their prayer,[34]
though laden with blunders of fact and reasoning, fairly expressed
malcontent Republicanism. Moreover, multitudes who could not quite join
in the prayer would read it and would be moved by it. The influence of
the "Tribune" was enormous. Colonel McClure truly says that by means of
it Mr. Greeley "reached the very heart of the Republican party in every
State in the Union;" and perhaps he does not greatly exaggerate when he
adds that through this same line of connection the great Republican
editor "was in closer touch with the active loyal sentiment of the
people than [was] even the President himself." For these reasons it
seemed to Mr. Lincoln worth while to make a response to an assault
which, if left unanswered, must seriously embarrass the administration.
He therefore wrote:--



"DEAR SIR,--I have just read yours of the 19th instant, addressed to
myself through the New York 'Tribune.'

"If there be in it any statements or assumptions of fact which I may
know to be erroneous, I do not now and here controvert them.

"If there be any inferences which I believe to be falsely drawn, I do
not now and here argue against them.

"If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I
waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always
supposed to be right.

"As to the policy 'I seem to be pursuing,' as you say, I have not meant
to leave any one in doubt. I would save the Union. I would save it in
the shortest way under the Constitution.

"The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union
will be,--the Union as it was.

"If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at
the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them.

"If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at
the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them.

"_My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or
destroy slavery_.

"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.
And if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. And if
I could save it by freeing some, and leaving others alone, I would also
do that.

"What I do about slavery and the colored race, I do because I believe it
helps to save the Union, and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not
believe it would help to save the Union.

"I shall do less whenever I believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and
shall do more whenever I believe doing more will help the cause.

"I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors, and I shall
adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

"I have here stated my purpose, according to my view of official duty,
and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish, that all
men everywhere could be free."



This reply, placing the Union before all else, did "more to steady the
loyal sentiment of the country in a very grave emergency than anything
that ever came from Lincoln's pen." It was, very naturally,
"particularly disrelished by anti-slavery men," whose views were not
modified by it, but whose temper was irritated in proportion to the
difficulty of meeting it. Mr. Greeley himself, enthusiastic and
woolly-witted, allowed this heavy roller to pass over him, and arose
behind it unaware that he had been crushed. He even published a retort,
which was discreditably abusive. A fair specimen of his rhetoric was his
demand to be informed whether Mr. Lincoln designed to save the Union "by
recognizing, obeying, and enforcing the laws, or by ignoring,
disregarding, and in fact defying them." Now the precise fact which so
incensed Mr. Greeley and all his comrades was that the President was
studiously and stubbornly insisting upon "recognizing, obeying, and
enforcing the laws;" and the very thing which they were crying for was a
step which, according to his way of thinking, would involve that he
should "ignore, disregard, and defy" them. They had not shrunk from
taking this position, when pushed toward it. They had contemned the
Constitution, and had declared that it should not be allowed to stand in
the way of doing those things which, in their opinion, ought to be done.
Their great warrior, the chieftain of their forces in the House of
Representatives, Thaddeus Stevens, was wont to say, in his defiant
iconoclastic style, that there was no longer any Constitution, and that
he was weary of hearing this "never-ending gabble about the sacredness
of the Constitution." Yet somewhat inconsistently these same men held as
an idol and a leader Secretary Chase; and he at the close of 1860 had
declared: "At all hazards and against all opposition, the laws of the
Union should be enforced.... The question of slavery should not be
permitted to influence my action, one way or the other." Later, perhaps
he and his allies had forgotten these words. Still many persons hold to
the opinion that the emancipationists did not give Mr. Lincoln fair
play.[35]

On September 13 a body of clergymen from Chicago waited upon Mr. Lincoln
to urge immediate and universal emancipation. The occasion was made
noteworthy by his remarks to them.

"I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by
religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the Divine
will. I am sure that either the one or the other class is mistaken in
that belief, and perhaps, in some respect, both. I hope it will not be
irreverent for me to say that, if it is probable that God would reveal
his will to others on a point so connected with my duty, it might be
supposed He would reveal it directly to me; for, unless I am more
deceived in myself than I often am, 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! These are not, however, the days of miracles, and I suppose it
will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation. I must
study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible,
and learn what appears to be wise and right. The subject is difficult,
and good men do not agree.

... "What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do,
especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a document
that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the
Pope's bull against the comet! Would my word free the slaves, when I
cannot even enforce the Constitution in the rebel States? Is there a
single court, or magistrate, or individual that would be influenced by
it there? And what reason is there to think it would have any greater
effect upon the slaves than the late law of Congress, which I approved,
and which offers protection and freedom to the slaves of rebel masters
who come within our lines? Yet I cannot learn that that law has caused a
single slave to come over to us.

... "Now, then, tell me, if you please, what possible result of good
would follow the issuing of such a proclamation as you desire?
Understand, I raise no objections against it on legal or constitutional
grounds, for, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, in time of
war, I suppose I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue
the enemy; nor do I urge objections of a moral nature, in view of
possible consequences of insurrection and massacre at the South. I view
this matter as a practical war measure, to be decided on according to
the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the
rebellion.

... "Do not misunderstand me because I have mentioned these objections.
They indicate the difficulties that have thus far prevented my action in
some such way as you desire. I have not decided against a proclamation
of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under advisement. And I
can assure you that the subject is on my mind, by day and night, more
than any other. Whatever shall appear to be God's will I will do. I
trust that in the freedom with which I have canvassed your views I have
not in any respect injured your feelings."

Whether or not the clerical advisers winced under the President's irony,
at least they must have appreciated the earnestness and sincerity with
which he considered the subject.

All this while that newspaper writers, religious teachers, members of
Congress, and political busy-bodies generally were tirelessly
enlightening Mr. Lincoln concerning what was right, what was wise, what
was the will of the people, even what was the will of God, he was again
quietly making good that shrewd Southerner's prophecy: he was "doing his
own thinking;" neither was he telling to anybody what this thinking was.
Throngs came and went, and each felt called upon to leave behind him
some of his own wisdom, a precept, advice, or suggestion, for the use of
the President; perhaps in return he took away with him a story which was
much more than full value for what he had given; but no one found out
the working of the President's mind, and no one could say that he had
influenced it. History is crowded with tales of despots, but it tells of
no despot who thought and decided with the tranquil, taciturn
independence which was now marking this President of the free American
Republic. It is a little amusing for us, to-day, to know that while the
emancipationists were angrily growling out their disgust at the ruler
who would not abolish slavery according to their advice, the rough draft
of the Emancipation Proclamation had already been written. It was
actually lying in his desk when he was writing to Greeley that letter
which caused so much indignation. It had been communicated to his
cabinet long before he talked to those Chicago clergymen, and showed
them that the matter was by no means so simple as they, in their
one-sided, unworldly way, believed it to be.

It is said to have been on July 8 that the President wrote this rough
draft, on board the steamboat which was bringing him back from his visit
to McClellan at Harrison's Landing. He then laid it away for the days
and events to bring ripeness. By his own statement he had for some time
felt convinced that, if compensated emancipation should fail,
emancipation as a war measure must ensue. Compensated emancipation had
now been offered, urged, and ill received; therefore the question in his
mind was no longer _whether_, but _when_ he should exercise his power.
This was more a military than a political question. His right to
emancipate slaves was strictly a war-power; he had the right to exercise
it strictly for the purpose of weakening the enemy or strengthening his
own generals; he had not the right to exercise it in the cause of
humanity, if it would not either weaken the enemy or strengthen his own
side. If by premature exercise he should alienate great numbers of
border-state men, while the sheet of paper with his name at its foot
would be ineffectual to give actual liberty of action to a single black
man in the Confederacy, he would aid the South and injure the
North,--that is to say, he would accomplish precisely the reverse of
that which alone could lawfully form the basis of his action. The
question of _When_, therefore, was a very serious one. At what stage of
the contest would a declaration of emancipation be hurtful to the
Southern and beneficial to the Northern cause?

Schuyler Colfax well said that Mr. Lincoln's judgment, when settled,
"was almost as immovable as the eternal hills." A good illustration of
this was given upon a day about the end of July or beginning of August,
1862, when Mr. Lincoln called a cabinet meeting. To his assembled
secretaries he then said, with his usual simple brevity, that he was
going to communicate to them something about which he did not desire
them to offer any advice, since his determination was taken; they might
make suggestions as to details, but nothing more. After this imperious
statement he read the preliminary proclamation of emancipation. The
ministers listened in silence; not one of them had been consulted; not
one of them, until this moment, knew the President's purpose; not even
now did he think it worth while to go through any idle form of asking
the opinion of any one of them.[36] He alone had settled the matter, and
simply notified them that he was about to do the most momentous thing
that had ever been done upon this continent since thirteen British
colonies had become a nation. Such a presentation of "one-man-power"
certainly stood out in startling relief upon the background of popular
government and the great free republican system of the world!

One or two trifling verbal alterations were made. The only important
suggestion came from Mr. Seward, who said that, in the "depression of
the public mind consequent upon our repeated adverses," he feared that
so important a step might "be viewed as the last measure of an exhausted
government, a cry for help; the government stretching forth its hands to
Ethiopia, instead of Ethiopia stretching forth her hands to the
government." He dreaded that "it would be considered our last shriek on
the retreat." Therefore he thought it would be well to postpone issuing
the proclamation till it could come before the country with the support
of some military success. Mr. Lincoln, who had not committed himself
upon the precise point of time, approved this idea. In fact, he had
already had in mind this same notion, that a victory would be an
excellent companion for the proclamation. In July Mr. Boutwell had said
to him that the North would not succeed until the slaves were
emancipated, and Mr. Lincoln had replied: "You would not have it done
now, would you? Had we not better wait for something like a victory?"
This point being accordingly settled to the satisfaction of all, the
meeting then dissolved, with the understanding that the secret was to be
closely kept for the present; and Mr. Lincoln again put away his paper
to await the coming of leaden-footed victory.

For the moment the prospects of this event were certainly sufficiently
gloomy. Less than three weeks, however, brought the battle of Antietam.
As a real "military success" this was, fairly speaking, unsatisfactory;
but it had to serve the turn; the events of the war did not permit the
North to be fastidious in using the word victory; if the President had
imprudently been more exacting, the Abolitionists would have had to wait
for Gettysburg. News of the battle reached Mr. Lincoln at the Soldiers'
Home. "Here," he says, "I finished writing the second draft. I came to
Washington on Saturday, called the cabinet together to hear it, and it
was published on the following Monday, the 22d of September, 1862."

The proclamation was preliminary or monitory only, and it did not
promise universal emancipation. It stated that, on January 1, 1863, "all
persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State,
the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United
States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free;" also, that "the
Executive will, on the first day of January aforesaid, by proclamation,
designate the States and parts of States, if any, in which the people
thereof respectively shall then be in rebellion against the United
States."

The measure was entirely Mr. Lincoln's own. Secretary Chase reports that
at the cabinet meeting on September 22 he said: "I must do the best I
can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I
ought to take." It has been said that he acted under a severe specific
pressure, emanating from the calling of the famous conference of
governors at Altoona. This, however, is not true. On September 14
Governor Curtin invited the governors of loyal States to meet on
September 24 to discuss the situation and especially the emergency
created by the northward advance of General Lee. But that this meeting
was more than a coincidence, or that the summons to it had any influence
in the matter of the proclamation, is disproved by all that is known
concerning it.[37] The connection with the battle is direct, avowed, and
reasonable; that with the gubernatorial congress is supposititious and
improbable. Governor Curtin says distinctly that the President, being
informed by himself and two others that such a conference was in
preparation, "did not attempt to conceal the fact that we were upon the
eve of an emancipation policy," in response to which statement he
received from his auditors the "assurance that the Altoona conference
would cordially indorse such a policy." As matter of fact, at the
meeting, most of the governors, in a sort of supplementary way, declared
their approval of the proclamation; but the governors of New Jersey,
Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri would not unite in this
action. If further evidence were needed upon this point, it is furnished
by the simple statement of President Lincoln himself. He said: "The
truth is, I never thought of the meeting of the governors at all. When
Lee came over the Potomac I made a resolve that, if McClellan drove him
back, I would send the proclamation after him. The battle of Antietam
was fought Wednesday, but I could not find out until Saturday whether we
had won a victory or lost a battle. It was then too late to issue it on
that day, and on Sunday I fixed it up a little, and on Monday I let them
have it." Secretary Chase, in his Diary, under date of September 22,
1862, gives an account in keeping with the foregoing sketch, but casts
about the proclamation a sort of superstitious complexion, as if it were
the fulfillment of a religious vow. He says that at the cabinet meeting
the President said: "When the rebel army was at Frederick, I determined,
as soon as it should be driven out of Maryland, to issue a proclamation
of emancipation, such as I thought most likely to be useful. I said
nothing to any one; but I made the promise to myself, and (hesitating a
little) to my Maker. The rebel army is now driven out, and I am going to
fulfill that promise." About an event so important and so picturesque
small legends will cluster and cling like little barnacles on the solid
rock; but the rock remains the same beneath these deposits, and in this
case the fact that the proclamation was determined upon and issued at
the sole will and discretion of the President is not shaken by any
testimony that is given about it. He regarded it as a most grave
measure, as plainly it was; to a Southerner, who had begged him not to
have recourse to it, he replied: "You must not expect me to give up this
government without playing my last card."[38] So now, on this momentous
twenty-second day of September, the President, using his own judgment in
playing the great game, cast what he conceived to be his ace of trumps
upon the table.

The measure took the country by surprise. The President's secret had
been well kept, and for once rumor had not forerun execution. Doubtless
the reader expects now to hear that one immediate effect was the
conciliation of all those who had been so long reproaching Mr. Lincoln
for his delay in taking this step. It would seem right and natural that
the emancipationists should have rallied with generous ardor to sustain
him. They did not. They remained just as dissatisfied and distrustful
towards him as ever. Some said that he had been _forced_ into this
policy, some that he had drifted with the tide of events, some that he
had waited for popular opinion at the North to give him the cue, instead
of himself guiding that opinion. To show that he was false to the
responsibility of a ruler, there were those who cited against him his
own modest words: "I claim not to have controlled events, but confess
plainly that events have controlled me." Others, however, put upon this
language the more kindly and more honest interpretation, that Mr.
Lincoln appreciated that both President and people were moved by the
drift of events, which in turn received their own impulse from an agency
higher than human and to which they must obediently yield. But whatever
ingenious excuses were devised by extremists for condemning the man who
had done the act, the Republican party faithfully supported the act
itself. In the middle of December the House passed a resolution
ratifying the President's policy as "well adapted to hasten the
restoration of peace," and "well chosen as a war measure."

The President himself afterward declared his "conviction" that, had the
proclamation been issued six months earlier, it would not have been
sustained by public opinion; and certainly it is true that
contemporaneous political occurrences now failed to corroborate the
soundness of those assertions by which the irreconcilable
emancipationist critics of Mr. Lincoln had been endeavoring to induce
him to adopt their policy earlier. They themselves, as Mr. Wilson
admits, "had never constituted more than an inconsiderable fraction" of
the whole people at the North. He further says: "At the other extreme,
larger numbers received it [the proclamation] with deadly and outspoken
opposition; while between these extremes the great body even of Union
men doubted, hesitated.... Its immediate practical effect did perhaps
more nearly answer the apprehensions of the President than the
expectations of those most clamorous for it. It did, as charged, very
much 'unite the South and divide the North.'"

In the autumn of 1862 there took place the elections for Representatives
to the Thirty-eighth Congress. The most ingenious sophist could hardly
maintain that strenuous anti-slavery voters, who had been angry with the
government for backwardness in the emancipation policy, ought now to
manifest their discontent by voting the Democratic ticket. If there
should be a Democratic reaction at the polls it could not possibly be
construed otherwise than as a reaction against anti-slavery; it would
undeniably indicate that Congress and the administration had been too
hostile rather than too friendly towards that cause of the strife, that
they had outstripped rather than fallen behind popular sympathy. It soon
became evident that a formidable reaction of this kind had taken place,
that dissatisfaction with the anti-slavery measures and discouragement
at the military failures, together, were even imperiling Republican
ascendency. Now all knew, though some might not be willing to say, that
the loss of Republican ascendency meant, in fact, the speedy settlement
of the war by compromise; and the South was undoubtedly in earnest in
declaring that there could be no compromise without disunion. Therefore,
in those elections of the autumn months in 1862 the whole question of
Union or Disunion had to be fought out at the polls in the loyal States,
and there was an appalling chance of its going against the Unionist
party. "The administration," says Mr. Blaine, "was now subjected to a
fight for its life;" and for a while the fortunes of that mortal combat
wore a most alarming aspect.

The Democracy made its fight on the ground that the anti-slavery
legislation of the Republican majority in the Thirty-seventh Congress
had substantially made abolition the ultimate purpose of the war. Here,
then, they said, was a change of base; were or were not the voters of
the loyal States willing to ratify it? Already this ground had been
taken in the platforms of the party in the most important Northern
States, before Mr. Lincoln issued his proclamation. Was it unreasonable
to fear that this latest and most advanced step would intensify that
hostility, stimulate the too obvious reaction, and aggravate the danger
which, against his judgment,[39] as it was understood, Congress had
created? Was it not probable that Mr. Blair was correct when he warned
the President that the proclamation would "cost the administration the
fall elections"? Naturally it will be asked: if this was a reasonable
expectation, why did the President seize this critical moment to ally
the administration with anti-slavery? Mr. Blaine furnishes a probable
explanation: "The anti-slavery policy of Congress had gone far enough to
arouse the bitter hostility of all Democrats, who were not thoroughly
committed to the war, and yet not far enough to deal an effective blow
against the institution." The administration stood at a point where
safety lay rather in defying than in evading the ill opinion of the
malcontents, where the best wisdom was to commit itself, the party, and
the nation decisively to the "bold, far-reaching, radical, and
aggressive policy," from which it would be impossible afterward to turn
back "without deliberately resolving to sacrifice our nationality."
Presumably the President wished to show the people that their only
choice now lay between slavery on the one hand and nationality on the
other, so that, of the two things, they might take that one which they
deemed the more worthy. The two together they could never again have.
This theory tallies with the well-known fact that Mr. Lincoln was always
willing to trust the people upon a question of right and wrong. He never
was afraid to stake his chance upon the faith that what was
intrinsically right would prove in the long run to be politically safe.
While he was a shrewd politician in matters of detail, he had the wisdom
always in a great question to get upon that side where the inherent
morality lay. Yet, unfortunately, it takes time--time which cannot
always be afforded--for right to destroy prejudice; the slow-grinding
mill of God grinds sometimes so slowly that man cannot help fearing that
for once the stint will not be worked out; and in this autumn of 1862
there was one of these crises of painful anxiety among patriots at the
North.

Maine held her election early in September, and upon the vote for
governor a Republican majority, which usually ranged from 10,000 to
19,000, was this year cut down to a little over 4000; also, for the
first time in ten years, a Democrat secured a seat in the national House
of Representatives. Then came the "October States." In that dreary month
Ohio elected 14 Democrats and 5 Republicans; the Democrats casting, in
the total, about 7000 more votes than the Republicans. Indiana sent 8
Democrats, 3 Republicans. In Pennsylvania the congressional delegation
was divided, but the Democrats polled the larger vote by about 4000;
whereas Mr. Lincoln had had a majority in the State of 60,000! In New
York the famous Democratic leader, Horatio Seymour, was elected governor
by a majority of nearly 10,000. Illinois, the President's own State,
showed a Democratic majority of 17,000, and her congressional delegation
stood 11 Democrats to 3 Republicans. New Jersey turned from
Republicanism to Democracy. Michigan reduced a Republican majority from
20,000 to 6000. Wisconsin divided its delegation evenly.[40] When the
returns were all in, the Democrats, who had had only 44 votes in the
House in the Thirty-seventh Congress, found that in its successor they
would have 75. Even if the non-voting absentees in the army[41] had been
all Republicans, which they certainly were not, such a reaction would
have been appalling.

Fortunately some other Northern States--New England's six, and Iowa,
Kansas, Minnesota, California, and Oregon--held better to their
Republican faith. But it was actually the border slave States which, in
these dark and desperate days, came gallantly to the rescue of the
President's party. If the voters of these States had seen in him a
radical of the stripe of the anti-slavery agitators, it is not
imaginable that they would have helped him as they now did. Thus was his
much maligned "border-state policy" at last handsomely vindicated; and
thanks to it the frightened Republicans saw, with relief, that they
could command a majority of about twenty votes in the House. Mr. Lincoln
had saved the party whose leaders had turned against him.

Beneath the dismal shadow of these autumnal elections the
Thirty-seventh Congress came together for its final session, December 1,
1862. The political situation was peculiar and unfortunate. There was
the greatest possible need for sympathetic coöperation in the Republican
party; but sympathy was absent, and coöperation was imperfect and
reluctant. The majority of the Republican members of Congress
obstinately maintained their alienation from the Republican President;
an enormous popular defection from Republicanism had taken place in its
natural strongholds; and Republican domination had only been saved by
the aid of States in which Republican majorities had been attainable
actually because a large proportion of the population was so disaffected
as either to have enlisted in the Confederate service, or to have
refrained from voting at elections held under Union auspices. Therefore,
whether Mr. Lincoln looked forth upon the political or the military
situation, he beheld only gloomy prospects. But having made fast to what
he believed to be right, he would not, in panic, cast loose from it. In
the face of condemnation he was not seen to modify his course in order
to conciliate any portion of the people; but, on the contrary, in his
message he returned to his plan which had hitherto been so coldly
received, and again strenuously recommended appropriations for gradual,
compensated emancipation and colonization. The scheme had three especial
attractions for him: 1. It would be operative in those loyal States and
parts of States in which military emancipation would not take effect.
2. In its practical result it would do away with slavery by the year
1900, whereas military emancipation would now free a great number of
individuals, but would leave slavery, as an institution, untouched and
liable to be revived and reinvigorated later on. 3. It would make
emancipation come as a voluntary process, leaving a minimum of
resentment remaining in the minds of slaveholders, instead of being a
violent war measure never to be remembered without rebellious anger.
This last point was what chiefly moved him. He intensely desired to have
emancipation effected in such a way that good feeling between the two
sections might be a not distant condition; the humanity of his
temperament, his passion for reasonable dealing, his appreciation of the
mischief of sectional enmity in a republic, all conspired to establish
him unchangeably in favor of "compensated emancipation."

For the accomplishment of his purpose he now suggested three articles of
amendment to the Constitution. He spoke earnestly; for "in times like
the present," he said, "men should utter nothing for which they would
not willingly be responsible through time and eternity." Beneath the
solemnity of this obligation he made for his plan a very elaborate
argument. Among the closing sentences were the following:--

"The plan would, I am confident, secure peace more speedily, and
maintain it more permanently, than can be done by force alone; while
all it would cost, considering amounts, and manner of payment, and times
of payment, would be easier paid than will be the additional cost of the
war, if we rely solely upon force. It is much, very much, that it would
cost no blood at all.

... "Is it doubted, then, that the plan I propose, if adopted, would
shorten the war, and thus lessen its expenditure of money and of blood?
Is it doubted that it would restore the national authority and national
prosperity, and perpetuate both indefinitely? Is it doubted that we
here--Congress and Executive--can secure its adoption? Will not the good
people respond to a united and earnest appeal from us? Can we, can they,
by any other means so certainly or so speedily assure these vital
objects? We can succeed only by concert. It is not 'Can _any_ of us
_imagine_ better?' but; 'Can we _all do_ better?' Object whatsoever is
possible, still the question recurs, 'Can we do better?' The dogmas of
the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is
piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our
case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall
ourselves, and then we shall save our country.

"Fellow citizens, _we_ cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and
this administration, will [shall] be remembered in spite of ourselves.
No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another
of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in
honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We _say_ we are for the
Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save
the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We--even _we
here_--hold the power and bear the responsibility. In _giving_ freedom
to the _slave_ we _assure_ freedom to the _free_,--honorable alike in
what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose,
the last, best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not
fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just,--a way which, if
followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."

Beautiful and impressive as was this appeal, it persuaded few or none.
In fact, no effort on the President's part now, or at any time, could
win much approval for his plan. Not many were ever pleased by it; but
afterward, in the winter of 1863, many members of the Thirty-eighth
Congress were willing, without believing in it, to give him a chance to
try it in Missouri. Accordingly a bill then passed the House
appropriating $10,000,000 to compensate slave-owners in that State, if
abolition of slavery should be made part of its organic law. The Senate
made the sum $15,000,000 and returned the bill to the House for
concurrence. But the representatives from Missouri were tireless in
their hostility to the measure, and finally killed it by parliamentary
expedients of delay.

This was a great disappointment to Mr. Lincoln. While the measure was
pending he argued strenuously with leading Missourians to induce them to
put their State in the lead in what he hoped would then become a
procession of slave States. But these gentlemen seemed to fear that, if
they should take United States bonds in payment, they might awake some
morning in these troublous times to find their promiser a bankrupt or a
repudiationist. On the other hand, such was the force of habit that a
slave seemed to them very tangible property. Mr. Lincoln shrewdly
suggested that, amid present conditions, "_bonds_ were better than
_bondsmen_," and "two-legged property" was a very bad kind to hold. Time
proved him to be entirely right; but for the present his argument,
entreaty, and humor were all alike useless. Missouri would have nothing
to do with "compensated emancipation;" and since she was regarded as a
test case, the experiment was not tried elsewhere. So it came to pass
afterward that the slaveholders parted with their slaves for nothing
instead of exchanging them for the six per cent. bonds of the United
States.

       *       *       *       *       *

The first day of January, 1863, arrived, and no event had occurred to
delay the issue of the promised proclamation. It came accordingly. By
virtue of his power as commander-in-chief, "in time of actual armed
rebellion,... and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing
said rebellion," the President ordered that all persons held as slaves
in certain States and parts of States, which he designated as being then
in rebellion, should be thenceforward free, and declared that the
Executive, with the army and navy, would "recognize and maintain the
freedom of said persons." The word "maintain" was inserted at Seward's
suggestion, and somewhat against Mr. Lincoln's wish. He said that he had
intentionally refrained from introducing it, because it was not his way
to promise what he was not entirely _sure_ that he could perform. The
sentence invoking the favor of God was contributed by Secretary Chase.
The paper was signed after the great public reception of New Year's Day.
Mr. Lincoln, as he took the pen, remarked to Mr. Seward that his
much-shaken hand was almost paralyzed, so that people who, in time to
come, should see that signature would be likely to say: "He hesitated,"
whereas, in fact, his whole soul was in it. The publication took place
late in the day, and the anti-slavery critics grumbled because it was
not sent out in the morning.

The people at large received this important step with some variety of
feeling and expression; but, upon the whole, approval seems to have far
outrun the dubious prognostications of the timid and conservative class.
For the three months which had given opportunity for thinking had
produced the result which Mr. Lincoln had hoped for. It turned out that
the mill of God had been grinding as exactly as always. Very many who
would not have advised the measure now heartily ratified it. Later,
after men's minds had had time to settle and the balance could be fairly
struck, it appeared undeniable that the final proclamation had been of
good effect; so Mr. Lincoln himself said.

It is worth noting that while many Englishmen spoke out in generous
praise, the rulers of England took the contrary position. Earl Russell
said that the measure was "of a very strange nature," "a very
questionable kind," an act of "vengeance on the slave-owner," and that
it did no more than "profess to emancipate slaves, where the United
States authorities cannot make emancipation a reality." But the English
people were strongly and genuinely anti-slavery, and the danger of
English recognition of the Confederacy was greatly diminished when the
proclamation established the policy of the administration.

The proclamation contained a statement that ex-slaves would be "received
into the armed service of the United States." Up to this time not much
had been done in the way of enlisting colored troops. The negroes
themselves had somewhat disappointed their friends by failing to take
the initiative, and it became evident that they must be stirred by
influences outside their own race. The President now took the matter in
hand, and endeavored to stimulate commanders of Southern departments to
show energy concerning it. By degrees successful results were obtained.
The Southerners formally declared that they would not regard either
negro troops or their officers as prisoners of war; but that they would
execute the officers as ordinary felons, and would hand over the negroes
to be dealt with by the state authorities as slaves in insurrection.
Painful and embarrassing questions of duty were presented by these
menaces. To Mr. Lincoln the obvious policy of retaliation seemed
abhorrent, and he held back from declaring that he would adopt it, in
the hope that events might never compel him to do so. But on July 30 he
felt compelled, in justice to the blacks and those who led them, to
issue an order that for every Union soldier killed in violation of the
laws of war a rebel soldier should be executed; and for every one
enslaved a rebel soldier should be placed at hard labor on the public
works. Happily, however, little or no action ever became necessary in
pursuance of this order. The Southerners either did not in fact wreak
their vengeance in fulfillment of their furious vows, or else covered
their doings so that they could not be proved. Only the shocking
incident of the massacre at Fort Pillow seemed to demand stern
retaliatory measures, and even this was, too mercifully, allowed
gradually to sink away into neglect.[42]

[Illustration: Lincoln Submitting the Emancipation Proclamation to His
Cabinet.]

FOOTNOTES:

[33] To A.G. Hodges, April 4, 1864, N. and H. vi. 430; and see Lincoln
to Chase, September 2, 1863; _ibid._ 434.

[34] "It was," says Mr. Arnold, "full of errors and mistaken inferences,
and written in ignorance of many facts which it was the duty of the
President to consider." _Life of Lincoln_, 254. But, _per contra_, Hon.
George W. Julian says: "It was one of the most powerful appeals ever
made in behalf of justice and the rights of man." _Polit. Recoil._ 220.
Arnold and Julian were both members of the House, and both
thorough-going Abolitionists. Their difference of opinion upon this
letter of Mr. Greeley illustrates well the discussions which, like the
internecine feuds of Christian sects, existed between men who ought to
have stood side by side against the heretics and unbelievers.

[35] For views contrary to mine, see Julian, _Polit. Recoil._ 221.

[36] The story that some members of the cabinet were opposed to the
measure was distinctly denied by the President. Carpenter, _Six Months
in the White House_, 88.

[37] For interesting statements about this Altoona conference see
McClure, _Lincoln and Men of War-Times_, 248-251.

[38] Blaine, i. 439.

[39] It was understood that he had not favored the principal
anti-slavery measures of the Thirty-seventh Congress, on the ground
measures of the Thirty-seventh Congress, on the ground that they were
premature.

[40] The foregoing-statistics have been taken from Mr. Elaine, _Twenty
Years of Congress_, i. 441-444.

[41] Later, legislation enabled the soldiers in the field to vote; but
at this time they could not do so.

[42] For account of these matters of retaliation and protection of
negroes, see N. and H. vol. vi. ch. xxi.




CHAPTER V

BATTLES AND SIEGES: DECEMBER, 1862-DECEMBER, 1863


The clouds of gloom and discouragement, which shut so heavily about the
President in the autumn of 1862, did not disperse as winter advanced.
That dreary season, when nearly all doubted and many despaired, is
recognized now as an interlude between the two grand divisions of the
drama. Before it, the Northern people had been enthusiastic, united, and
hopeful; after it, they saw assurance of success within reach of a
reasonable persistence. But while the miserable days were passing, men
could not see into the mysterious future. Not only were armies beaten,
but the people themselves seemed to be deserting their principles. The
face and the form of the solitary man, whose position brought every part
of this sad prospect fully within the range of his contemplation, showed
the wear of the times. The eyes went deeper into their caverns, and
seemed to send their search farther than ever away into a receding
distance; the furrows sank far into the sallow face; a stoop bent the
shoulders, as if the burden of the soul had even a physical weight. Yet
still he sought neither counsel, nor strength, nor sympathy from any
one; neither leaned on any friend, nor gave his confidence to any
adviser; the problems were his and the duty was his, and he accepted
both wholly. "I need success more than I need sympathy," he said; for it
was the cause, not his own burden, which absorbed 

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