For McClellan to take advantage: Sears’s description is most telling. “He [McClellan] reacted as he had before Richmond in June: realizing it was now his decisions that would decide the fate of the nation, and borne down by the added responsibility, he became more sensitive to risk than ever.” Sears, Young Napoleon, pp. 283–84.
“[I]t is to be hoped”: Williams, Lincoln Finds a General, 1:371.
“our victory [is] complete”: McClellan to Halleck and to Mary Ellen McClellan, both on September 19, 1862. Sears, Papers of McClellan, pp. 469–70.
“firm steady and honest support”: Ibid., p. 493.
“We are about to be photographed”: Quoted under the front picture in Stephen W. Sears, “Lincoln and McClellan,” in Gabor Boritt, ed., Lincoln’s Generals (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), p. 2.
From a hilltop he and his friends saw: N&H, 6:175.
That order was issued: “I am instructed to telegraph you as follows: The President directs that you cross the Potomac and give battle to the enemy or drive him south. Your army must move now while the roads are good.” OR, ser. 1, vol. 19 (pt. II), p. 72.
“The dispatch opened a thirty-day war”: Sears, Young Napoleon, p. 332.
“I have just read your dispatch”: Lincoln’s telegram and McClellan’s response can be found in CW, 5:474 (with the note) and OR, ser. 1, vol. 19 (pt. II), p. 485. The “three day dustup”—the exchange of telegrams between Lincoln and McClellan about the tired horses—continues in OR, ser. 1, vol. 19 (pt. II), pp. 490–91. The last exchange—about filling up the regiments—is in OR, ser. 1, vol. 19 (pt. II), pp. 497–98.
“I began to fear”: Quoted in Burlingame and Ettlinger, Inside, p. 232.
“tried long enough”: Lincoln to Francis Blair, in Sears, Young Napoleon, p. 338.
“an exceptionally unforgiving boss”: Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (New York: Free Press, 2002), p. 21. In support of his contention that Lincoln was an “unforgiving” boss, Cohen lists the sequence of commanders of the Army of the Potomac and their brief months of service. But one cannot accept the complex history of that sequence in a suddenly created army in an expanding war fought by an unmilitary people—each change with its particular reason—as evidence that Lincoln was “ruthless” or “unforgiving.” The case of McClellan certainly argues the opposite.
“Well…put yourself in my place”: Helen Nicolay, Personal Traits of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Century, 1912), p. 255.
“[T]he most compelling reason”: Catton, Sword, p. 421.
CHAPTER TEN. THE TRENT AND A DECENT RESPECT FOR THE OPINIONS OF MANKIND
“Probably no two men in the entire South”: Charles Francis Adams, “The Trent Affair,” American Historical Review 17, no. 3 (1912), p. 541.
“an affront to the British flag”: Earl Russell, quoted in Bruce Catton, Terrible Swift Sword (New York: Pocket Books, 1967), p. 104.
It was even rumored: Ibid.
“the utter absence of any acquaintance with the subject”: David Herbert Donald, Charles Sumner, 2 vols. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1996), 2:18.
“This paper is for your own guidance”: Seward’s draft, with Lincoln’s changes, is printed in N&H, 4:270–75.
“there will be no war”: Donald, Sumner, 2:36.
“The President’s usual cool judgment”: N&H, 5:25.
“a well-known writer”: We learn from James Randall that the writer was a historian named Benson J. Lossing, who “participated in an interview” with Lincoln and who wrote A Pictorial History of the Civil War. Randall’s account is in James G. Randall, Lincoln the President (New York: Da Capo Press, 1977), vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 41. Nicolay and Hay’s use of the quotation is in N&H, 5:25.
“The United States did not have”: Adams, “Trent Affair,” p. 544.
“We must stick to American principles”: N&H, 5:25–26.
“intended no affront”: Lincoln’s draft response to the Trent affair is in CW, 5:62–64.
“two wars on his hands”: Randall, Lincoln the President, vol. 1, pt. 1, p. 41, quoting a letter from R. M. Mason to Amos Lawrence.
“What a magnificent move”: Adams, “Trent Affair,” p. 558.
“Though Lincoln’s part”: Randall, Lincoln the President, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 50.
“the original mistake”: N&H, 6:49.
“The vessel was English”: N&H, 6:55.
“In reviewing this long correspondence”: N&H, 6:51.
“grasped the main facts”: Colin Ballard quotes another authority who says, “[M]ilitary genius shows itself first in character, and, second, in the application of the grand principles of war.” And then he continues: “The application of grand principles—not the mere knowledge of them…like the poet, the strategist is born, not made, and Lincoln had the character of a born strategist. He could not apply the grand principles because he had never had an opportunity to study them; but instinctively he grasped the main facts and gave them their proper value. It is undeniable that a knowledge of the technical side of war would have been of use to him; it would have helped him to pick up the threads more quickly and surely; it would have enabled him to detect the weak points in his own forces. But theoretical knowledge is like a powerful drug, of great worth in the hands of a wise man but a deadly poison when misapplied…. Themules of Frederick the Great went through twenty campaigns but still remained mules.’ There have been other mules since the days of Frederick, but Abraham Lincoln was not one of them.” Colin R. Ballard, The Military Genius of Abraham Lincoln (Cleveland: World, 1952), pp. 8–9.
“[I]t remains one of the unsolved mysteries”: Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 114.
“how unhesitatingly we all use cotton and sugar”: Lincoln’s annual message, December 1, 1862, CW, 5:531–32.
“The American Civil War was becoming”: Catton, Sword, p. 377.
“Jefferson Davis and other leaders”: Gladstone’s “notorious speech” at Newcastle is quoted and discussed in Randall, Lincoln the President, vol. 1, pt. 2, pp. 342–43.
A series of “remarkable meetings”: Randall, Lincoln the President, vol. 1, pt. 2, p. 177.
“Lincoln himself began a campaign”: David Herbert Donald, Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 415.
“I know and deeply deplore”: Abraham Lincoln to the Workingmen of Manchester, England, January 19, 1863, in CW, 6:63–65.
“the family of Christian and civilized nations”: Lincoln’s draft is printed in CW, 6:176–77, with a valuable note.
“I can not believe that civilization”: John Bright, extract from speech [copy in Lincoln’s hand], December 18, 1862, AL Papers.
CHAPTER ELEVEN. TOO VAST FOR MALICIOUS DEALING
called the president an “idiot”: Stephen W. Sears, ed.,The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860–1865 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992), pp. 85, 106, 135.
he was “concealed”: Ibid., p. 113.
“imbecility”: Stanton wrote of “the painful imbecility of Lincoln” (to John Dix in New York, June 11, 1860) and stated that “the imbecility of the administration culminated in the catastrophe” of Bull Run (to ex-President Buchanan in retirement in Pennsylvania).
“While men are striving nobly”: Benjamin P. Thomas and Harold M. Hyman, eds., Stanton: The Life and Times of Lincoln’s Secretary of War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), p. 170.
“[B]ecause Lincoln was a great man”: Ibid., p. 381.
“[T]he good of the country”: Sears, Papers of McClellan, p. 515.
“had been profoundly concerned at the present state of affairs”: Salmon P. Chase, Inside Lincoln’s Cabinet: The Civil War Diaries of Salmon P. Chase, ed. David Herbert Donald (New York: Longmans, Green, 1954), p. 95.
“contemplated authority to Commanders”: Ibid.
“[i]n an orderly manner”: OR, ser. 1, vol. 11 (pt. III), pp. 3
62–63. The order was issued by Stanton for the president.
“directly the reverse instructions”: George B. McClellan to his wife, August 8, 1862, in Sears, Papers of McClellan, p. 388.
“should be conducted up on the highest principles”: OR, ser. 1, vol. 11 (pt. III), p. 364.
“When forced to choose”: Harry S. Stout, Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the American Civil War (New York: Viking, 2006), p. 138.
“If the same battle were to be fought”: This oft-quoted and sometimes-disputed comment by Stoddard appears and is discussed in Michael Burlingame, ed., Dispatches from Lincoln’s White House (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2002), p. xv.
Republican congressman Schuyler Colfax: Colfax felt he might have been passed over for a cabinet post because he not only had held out for Seward against Lincoln at the 1860 Republican convention but, back in 1858, had committed the far worse sin, in the eyes of Illinois Republicans, of joining in the suggestion by easterners that it might be all right to drop their opposition to Senator Stephen Douglas. If you were Douglas’s designated Republican opponent, that surely did not seem to be a good idea. So did Lincoln now take the opportunity to get his own back by passing over Colfax? President Lincoln, with the weight of a nation abruptly dropped on his shoulders, nevertheless took time to write to Colfax to insist that this was not so.
“You have more of that feeling”: Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, eds., Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), pp. 244–55.
“rather the mildest cussing”: Ibid., p. 100.
“What would you do in my position?” “I am in no boastful mood”: Abraham Lincoln to Cuthbert Bullitt, July 28, 1862, CW, 5:344–46.
“I am a patient man”: Lincoln to Reverdy Johnson, July 26, 1862, CW, 5:343.
“Lincoln had demonstrated from the start”: Mark E. Neely, Jr., The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 74–75.
“[e]xecutive skill and vigor are rare qualities”: “The President is the best of us, but he needs constant and assiduous cooperation.” William H. Seward to Frances A. Seward, June 5, 1861, in Doris Kearns Goodwin, Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), p. 590.
“It is due to the President to say”: W. Seward to F. Seward, March 17, 1861, ibid., p. 575. One of the great backstories of the early days of the war, well told in Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, is Seward’s growing appreciation of Lincoln.
“the vast and long-enduring consequences”: Lincoln to Rev. Alexander Reed, February 22, 1863, CW, 6:114.
A SECOND INTRODUCTION. LINCOLN’S NATION AMONG THE NATIONS
“expectations that the peculiar institution would wither away”: “During the years preceding the Civil War, slavery, and the Southern economy that was based on it, seemed to be thriving as never before, and expectations that the peculiar institution would wither away had themselves largely withered away. On the eve of the war, it seemed as if Southern slavery would survive for a long time.” Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619–1877 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1993), pp. 98–99.
CHAPTER TWELVE. I FELT IT MY DUTY TO REFUSE
I wrote this chapter before I knew that Ron Soodalter was at work on the Gordon case. When C-SPAN carried a presentation I made of this chapter, I met him and also Karen Needles, an archivist working on the Gordon case, who generously helped me. Soodalter’s book, Hanging Captain Gordon: The Life and Trial of an American Slave Trader (New York: Atria Books, 2006), gives an excellent account of Gordon and his case in the setting of the terrible history of the slave trade. He graciously read this chapter and improved it but is not to be blamed for errors that remain.
“I have sometimes told him”: Francis B. Carpenter, The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln: Six Months at the White House (1866; repr. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), pp. 68–69.
“Clemency invoked by”: Record Group 204, Stack Area 230, Row 40, Compartment 27, Shelf 2, “Docket of Pardon Cases 1853–1923,” vol. 3 of 81, PI-87 Entry 7, AL Papers.
“he was met by his wife”: Ron Soodalter, in Hanging Captain Gordon, includes several indications of the devotion of the Gordons (for example, on pp. 216–17) and sympathetic pictures of the troubles of Elizabeth Gordon.
a woman named Rhoda White: When Lincoln’s son Willie was ill with the typhoid fever from which he would die, Rhoda White would write to the president: “I would not intrude upon the sanctity of your sick room and upon your hours of grief but for the sake of Mercy, and for the sake of an afflicted Mother and wife who are bowed down with sorrow and look to God and to you to lift the heavy burden they are suffering under.” Rhoda White to Abraham Lincoln, February 17, 1862, AL Papers.
The accused’s neighbors in Portland: Petitions to the President of the United States (two), from Portland, Maine, dated December 1861, 1861 Executive Clemency files, Record A, p. 391, AL Papers.
“His wife, an interesting woman”: Rhoda E. White to Abraham Lincoln, February 17, 1862, AL Papers.
“I have felt it to be my duty”: Stay of Execution for Nathaniel Gordon, February 4, 1862, AL Papers.
“Thus, the thing is hid away”: CW, 2:274.
“the first action against the trade”: Warren S. Howard, American Slavers and the Federal Law (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963), p. 3.
And that almost unanimous act: Ibid., p. 26.
“Indeed, for all the talk”: Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619–1877 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1993), p. 63.
“S. Carolina and Georgia were inflexible”: Madison’s letter to Jefferson about the Constitutional Convention, including his remark about the inflexibility of South Carolina and Georgia, was dated October 24, 1787, and is printed in Robert A. Rutland and W. M. E. Rachal, eds., The Papers of James Madison, 17 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 10:206–19.
“It is as though the Framers”: Don E. Fehrenbacher, Slavery, Law, and Politics: The Dred Scott Case in Historical Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 15.
“Twenty years will produce”: Max Ferrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, 4 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), 2:415.
Those few slavers who were caught: I count six full pardons in the list of criminal prosecutions under the slave trade acts from 1837 to 1862 in Howard’s American Slavers appendix (pp. 224–35). None of these, of course, was a capital case.
“At the Constitutional Convention”: Fehrenbacher, Slavery, Law, p. 15.
“It has been estimated”: Soodalter, Hanging, pp. 21–22.
“I got them by barter”: Quoted in James A. Rawley, Turning Points of the Civil War, 2nd ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989), p. 54, and Soodalter, Hanging, p. 1.
“In 1781, running short of water”: Soodalter tells about this outrage in Hanging, p. 21.
Henry Wise, a leading Virginia politician: Howard, American Slavers, pp. 11–12.
And the states’ rights interpretation: W. E. B. DuBois, The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America, 1638–1870 (1896; repr. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1969), pp. 188–91.
“lying on their right sides”: Howard, American Slavers, p. 194.
“thinks it a pity”: Ibid., pp. 195–96.
“you are soon to pass”: Stuart Lutz, “Lincoln Let Him Hang,” Civil War Times, March 1998, p. 37.
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