President Lincoln- The Duty of a Statesman

by William Lee Miller

  Miller received his Ph.D. in religious social ethics in 1958 from Yale. He was for a time a staff writer and editor at The Reporter magazine in New York; his articles from those days were collected in Piety Along the Potomac (1964). In 1956 he was speechwriter on the Adlai Stevenson presidential campaign staff and made several other forays into political campaigns. His memories of his three terms as a New Haven alderman were published as The Fifteenth Ward and the Great Society (1966).

  He has been a consultant to, and beneficiary of, several foundations; moderated a number of humanities seminars at the Aspen Institute; served on the Fund for the Republic’s Commission on Religion and a Free Society; and had fellowships at the Woodrow Wilson Center of Scholars at the Smith sonian Institution in Washington, D.C., the Rockefeller Foundation’s center in Bellagio, Italy, and the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions in Santa Barbara. He has written numerous articles and essays on public affairs.

  ALSO BY WILLIAM LEE MILLER

  Lincoln’s Virtues: An Ethical Biography

  Arguing About Slavery: John Quincy Adams and the Great Battle in the United States Congress

  The First Liberty: America’s Foundation in Religious Freedom

  The Business of May Next: James Madison and the Founding

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2008 by William Lee Miller

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Miller, William Lee.

  President Lincoln: the duty of a statesman/by William Lee Miller.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references

  eISBN: 978-0-307-26871-6

  1. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865. 2. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865—Military leadership. 3. Lincoln, Abraham, 1809–1865—Ethics. 4. Political leadership—United States—Case studies. 5. Command of troops—Case studies. 6. Presidents—United States—Biography. 7. United States—Politics and government—1861–1865. 8. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865. 9. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title.

  E457.2.M645 2008

  973.7092—dc22 2007015677

  [B]

  v1.0

  FOOTNOTES

  *1Message to the special session of Congress, July 4, 1861.

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  *2There would be thirty-four girls in white dresses in the inaugural parade on March 4 because the supposedly seceded states were all included and Kansas had been admitted on January 29, 1861.

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  *3Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas would later join the Confederacy, and Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware would be kept out of it.

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  *4Jackson had already taken his two oaths before Taney was appointed, and Taney missed the two vice presidents who inherited the office, Tyler and Fillmore. The New York Times dispatch to the Associated Press said that this was the eighth time for Taney, but they counted Fillmore, which they should not have. Fillmore was sworn in by Chief Judge of the U.S. Circuit Court William Cranch in the Hall of the House on July 10, 1850, the day after President Zachary Taylor died.

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  *5Did not Jefferson Davis down in Montgomery also take an oath? Yes, but Davis had long before sworn oaths to the Constitution of the United States, when he had been secretary of war and a senator. Oath number two presumably does not have the moral dignity of oath number one, which it flatly contradicts—unless there has been some radical moral detour justifying such a betrayal.

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  *6Lincoln then went on to say: “But it was not believed that this question was presented. It was not believed that any law was violated.” In the draft he had made clear who it was who was doing this not believing: “In my opinion I violated no law.” An editor might have said, Why did you not say that in the first place?

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  †7CW, 4:430n. The draft versions and changes in the July 4 Message are given in the notes to the message.

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  *8“The oath clause does seem to place the president in a special position of responsibility regarding the Constitution. No other official is required to swear that he or she ‘will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.’ But this language does not purport to grant any additional powers. Rather, it is an injunction to use whatever powers the president does have as needed to achieve certain ends.” Daniel Farber, Lincoln’s Constitution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), p. 128.

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  *9The full paragraph from Morgenthau said: “Lincoln’s political philosophy is not the result of theoretical reflection and study nor even of experience, but of innate qualities of character and mind. The qualities of his mind are as extraordinary as the quality of his character. His sheer brainpower must have exceeded that of all other presidents, Jefferson included. The manifestations are the more astounding, as Lincoln’s mind was virtually untrained, his sporadic formal elementary schooling having amounted altogether to about one year. That extraordinary intelligence revealed itself in a philosophic understanding of public issues, in a judicious concern with politically relevant detail, in a mastery of political manipulation, in military judgment.” Hans Morgenthau, “The Mind of Abraham Lincoln,” in Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., Essays on Lincoln’s Faith and Politics (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1983), p. 59.

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  *10Lincoln gave portions and versions of this speech in several Illinois cities and towns in the fall of 1854. The Springfield State Fair was a major instance; the finished version he gave in Peoria on October 16. CW, 2:247–82.

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  *11John Nicolay would not think the estimate of Southern unionism was wrong, because in his view secession was more a plot or coup or conspiracy brought off by a rabid few leaders. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion (New York: Da Capo Press, 1995).

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  *12As late as March 31 John Nicolay, writing to his girlfriend Therena back in Illinois, would refer to “the president” and then add in parentheses: “[I]t still seems queer to speak of Mr. Lincoln in that way, although I am becoming used to it.” Note headed July 3, 1861, in John Nicolay file, AL Papers.

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  *13It is unfortunately the case that the governor of South Carolina and the fort in Florida had the same name. It is also unfortunately the case that this president misspelled the name of the fort about which he had his first great crisis, inserting a “p” where it was not needed. But sometimes that was corrected.

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  *14Ramsdell adds that they assumed in this decision that all of that preparation up in the Brooklyn Navy Yard—the Pickens as well as the Sumter expedition—was headed for Sumter.

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  *15This sentence appears in an article Welles wrote in Galaxy in a passage quoted in N&H, 4:5. The little touch about the confusing names does not appear in the book edition of Welles’s diary.

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  *16Section 2 of the 1795 Militia Act: “That whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed, or the execution thereof obstructed, in any state, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by this act, it shall be lawful for the president of the United States to call forth the militia of such state, or of any other state or states, as may be necessary to suppress such combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed; and the use of militia so to be called forth may be
continued, if necessary, until the expiration of thirty days after the commencement of the next session of Congress.”

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  *17“Makers of the modern ‘imperial presidency’ have drawn heavily on the example and immortal fame of Abraham Lincoln for vindication of their actions, conveniently ignoring the extent to which precedents taken for the Civil War are rendered invalid by its uniqueness. It is accordingly possible to conclude that Lincoln’s use of executive power was wise and appropriate in its context, but not an unmixed blessing as a presidential tradition.” Don E. Fehrenbacher, Lincoln in Text and Context (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987), p.122.

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  *18“Lincoln never claimed that he possessed full authority to act as he did. In fact, he admitted to exceeding the constitutional boundaries established for the President and thus needed the sanction of Congress…Lincoln therefore invoked each stage of the executive prerogative acting in the absence of law and sometimes against it; explaining to the legislature what he had done, and why; and requesting the legislative body to authorize his actions. The superior lawmaking body was Congress, not the President. Congress debated this request at length…Congress eventually passed legislation ‘approving, legalizing, and making valid all the acts, proclamations, and orders of the President, etc. as if they had been issued and done under the previous express authority and direction of the Congress of the United States.’” Louis Fisher, Presidential War Power (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995), p. 48.

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  *19Abraham Lincoln would never be president of any but a slaveholding republic; the Thirteenth Amendment would take effect after he was dead.

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  *20Mark E. Neely, Jr., has explained a garble in the last line of this order to Scott. In the text as we have it in The Collected Works, Lincoln seems to be treating the suspension of habeas corpus as more extreme than bombardment, but Neely, looking at the holograph original, shows that to have been the result of a hasty editing. See Neely, The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 7.

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  *21War Department, Washington, September 11, 1861.

  Maj. Gen. N. P. Banks, Commanding, near Darnestown, Md.

  General:

  The passage of any act of secession by the Legislature of Maryland must be prevented. If necessary all or any part of the members must be arrested. Exercise your own judgment as to the time and manner, but do the work effectively. Very Respectfully, your obedient servant.

  Simon Cameron

  Secretary of War.

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  *22Sic semper tyrannis—“thus always to tyrants”—was and is the Virginia state motto, and would be John Wilkes Booth’s cry on the stage of Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865. At the dedication of a monument to Lincoln in Richmond in April 2003, a small airplane flew overhead throughout the ceremony towing a banner taunting the audience with that phrase.

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  †23To be sure, colonial Virginia had been even larger, including all the territory that would become the state of Kentucky. At the dedication of that Lincoln memorial statue in Richmond in 2003, former Virginia governor Linwood Holton would say: “I dare suggest that the man we honor today was also a Virginian. He was born in one of our far western counties—some call it ‘Kentucky.’”

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  *24Republican (Lincoln); Northern Democratic (Douglas); Southern Democratic (Breckinridge); Constitutional Union (Bell).

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  *25“It is with great delicacy and hesitancy I take the liberty to observe that the energetic and necessary measures of day before yesterday…require persevering and consistent exertion…and that the authority of General Harney under these circumstances embarrasses…the execution of the plans I had contemplated, and upon which the safety and welfare of the Government…so much depend.”OR, ser. 1, vol. 3, p. 9.

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  *26“Let me say one thing more: I think you should admit that we already have an important principle to rally and unite the people in the fact that constitutional government is at stake. This is a fundamental idea, going down about as deep as any thing.”“Reply to Emancipation Memorial Presented by Chicago Christians of All Denominations,” September 13, 1862.

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  *27The public assumed that the slogan had been written by Greeley, the Tribune’s editor and the best-known newspaperman in the land. But in fact the actual words had been written by the paper’s Washington correspondent, a man named Fitz-Henry Warren, although of course Greeley endorsed them. On June 28 Lincoln reportedly called Warren to the White House and told him that what he was calling for would indeed happen—which, if true, meant that Lincoln had already made up his mind before the June 29 gathering with his cabinet and advisers. Harry J. Maihafer, War of Words: Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War Press (Washington, D.C.: Brassey’s, 2001), p. 42.

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  *28McClellan would serve as governor of New Jersey in 1877–80, an important post perhaps but something of a comedown from Savior of the Nation. He would continue to live in New York, going to Trenton only one day a week. Saving the nation took full time; governing New Jersey took only Tuesdays.

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  *29McClellan did not hold back on Stanton. In a letter to his wife he went on to say that “had he lived in the time of the Saviour, Judas Iscariot would have remained a respected member of the fraternity of the Apostles,& that the magnificent treachery & rascality of E.M. Stanton would have caused Judas to have raised his arms in holy horror & unaffected wonder.” Stephen W. Sears, ed., The Civil War Papers of George B. McClellan: Selected Correspondence, 1860–1865 (New York: Da Capo Press, 1992), p. 354.

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  *30“1st. Does not your plan involve a greatly larger expenditure of time, and money than mine? 2nd. Wherein is a victory more certain by your plan than mine? 3rd. Wherein is a victory more valuable by your plan than mine? 4th. In fact, would it not be less valuable, in this, that it would break no great line of the enemie’s communications, while mine would? 5th. In case of disaster, would not a safe retreat be more difficult by your plan than by mine?” Lincoln to McClellan, February 3, 1862.

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  *31“[E]ver bear in mind, that my fate is linked to yours…I am to watch over you as a parent over his children; and you know that your General loves you from the depths of his heart. It shall be my care, as it has ever been, to gain success with the least possible loss, but I know that, if it is necessary, you will willingly follow me to our graves, for our righteous cause…We will share all these together, and when this sad war is over we will all return to our homes, and feel that we can ask no higher honor than the proud consciousness that we belonged to the ARMY OF THE POTOMAC.” Sears, Papers of McClellan, p. 211.

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  *32“Joe Johnston, after an inspection of Magruder’s lines, would write to Lee, ‘No one but McClellan could have hesitated to attack.’ In military history it would be difficult to find a more crushing indictment than that.” Kenneth P. Williams, Lincoln Finds a General: A Military Study of the Civil War, 5 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1949), 1:166.

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  *33Fitz John Porter would be court-martialed for his failure to support Pope in the battle at the end of August, just before these September events. When the court-martial came to Lincoln, he declined to pardon Porter.

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  *34Mark E. Neely, Jr., describes this message as “one of the few ill-tempered and mean-spirited letters of his [Lincoln’s] life,” in The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 71. It might more accurately be described as sarcasm provoked by extreme frustration, with still a faint trace of wryly exasperated humor in it. But a reader seeing the context can
make his own evaluation.

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  *35When on October 13 McClellan had to report that Stuart had again circled his army, Halleck wired another entry in the anthology of Lincolnian wrynesses about Little Mac: “The President…directs me to suggest that, if the enemy had more occupation south of the river his cavalry would not be so likely to make raids north of it.”

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  *36Charles Francis Adams’s son, also named Charles Francis Adams, would produce an article that included pages and pages of quotations from American literati that, after the affair was over, must have been intensely embarrassing to those who uttered them. At one celebratory dinner “the speakers…seemed to vie with each other in establishing a record from which thereafter it would be impossible to escape.” Adams, “The Trent Affair,”American Historical Review 17, no. 3 (1912), p. 546.

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  *37“I would demand explanations from Spain and France, categorically, at once. I would seek explanations from Great Britain and Russia, and send agents into Canada, Mexico, and Central America, to rouse a vigorous continental spirit of independence on this continent against European intervention. And if satisfactory explanations are not received from Spain and France, would convene Congress and declare war against them.” Seward’s April 1 “considerations,”CW, 4:317–18n.

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  *38Charles Francis Adams, Jr., in his article published more than a half century after the event, notes the irony that if there were any nation under whose interpretation of international law Wilkes’s action back then might have been justified, it was that of Great Britain. “If it was the law and practice in Great Britain then, it was the law and practice nowhere else; least of all the United States.”