Rise to Greatness

by David Von Drehle

  The arrival of Lord Lyons sent a surge through the room because only a short time earlier, in late December, he had received instructions from London to prepare for a formal withdrawal from Washington. This break in diplomacy would, if it came, almost certainly be followed by war. The crisis stemmed from the arrest of two Confederate officials as they attempted to reach Europe to appeal for support. Until the South’s secession, both these men had been important figures at Washington events like this one. James Mason, a wild-haired Virginian, had been president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate. John Slidell of Louisiana had served in the Senate as well. As they embarked on their mission to Europe, yet another distinguished Washingtonian—navy captain Charles Wilkes, famed explorer of Antarctica and the Pacific—learned from his station in the Caribbean that Mason and Slidell could be found aboard the British steamship Trent. The idea of such high-ranking U.S. officials touring London and Paris to promote the breakup of the Republic was too much for Wilkes to swallow. He overtook the Trent, ordered a warning shot fired across her bow, then sent a boarding party to seize the traitorous former senators.

  Wilkes’s bold step was entirely unauthorized, and clearly violated Britain’s declared neutrality in the North-South conflict. But the captain had shown exactly the sort of spine many Unionists were clamoring for from Washington, and he was glorified in Northern newspapers. Congress passed a resolution extolling his action and ordered a gold medal struck bearing his likeness. Lincoln, however, was put in a terrible spot, because the British were understandably furious. The Trent affair threatened to undo months of careful maneuvering to isolate the Confederacy.

  Britain’s elderly prime minister, Lord Palmerston, summoned his cabinet when the news reached London, flung his hat on the table, and declared: “You may stand for this, but damned if I will!” As he calmed down, though, the shrewd and patient Palmerston saw that the Trent crisis presented both an opportunity and a danger. His government was already annoyed with the United States over tariffs and the cotton shortage. And the United States had recently sent packing a British consul, Robert Bunch, because of his sympathy for the Confederacy. These issues aside, Britain had grave reservations about the rapid rise of the young nation. It might not be the worst thing for England if the South were to win its independence and disrupt the American ascent to international power.

  In the wake of Captain Wilkes’s rash act, the world watched to see whether Britain would use its muscle to break up the United States. Many influential figures hoped the answer would be yes. America’s envoy to France, William Dayton, reported that Europe’s “aristocracy [is] bent upon … the destruction of our government and the permanent failure of our institutions.” Another American diplomat, Cassius M. Clay, declared of England’s ruling class, “They [hope] for our ruin! They are jealous of our power.”

  But Europe was no longer in thrall to its aristocrats. In England, the burgeoning middle class took pride in the British Empire’s leading role in fighting the slave trade. The industrial working class felt kinship with the free-labor North against the slave-labor South. Palmerston’s public, in other words, was deeply divided; so he moved with characteristic caution. He dispatched British troops to reinforce the Canadian border and instructed Lord Lyons to demand an apology from the American president. When the demand was presented to Queen Victoria for her approval, Her Majesty’s husband, Prince Albert, lowered the heat still further, editing the document to give Lincoln more room to save face.

  Even so, the prospect of freeing Mason and Slidell was a bitter one. The secretary of state, William Seward, devised an artful response to the British demands, claiming that respect for neutral ships was a “confessedly American” principle, and that therefore the United States would “cheerfully” agree to undo what Wilkes had done. After listening to Seward’s draft, Lincoln tried, but failed, to make a logical case in favor of defiance. What he could not support by logic, he would not indulge out of emotion. So he gave Palmerston everything but a formal apology—and, by caving in, further inflamed the critics who judged him to be weak. “People are almost frantic with rage,” Lincoln’s friend Joseph Gillespie reported from Illinois. “Succumbing to England has ruined the Administration beyond redemption.”

  Now, the presence of Lord Lyons at the White House and his willingness to shake Lincoln’s hand signified that the American response to the crisis was acceptable to Great Britain. The immediate danger was past and, this very morning, Mason and Slidell were walking out of a New York prison, free to resume their voyage. At least for the moment, England would remain a bystander in the Civil War. But Lincoln had seen how quickly the Europeans could rise to the verge of action, and he had discovered how strong pro-Confederate feelings ran in key precincts of Britain and France. He understood that only one thing would keep the foreign powers in check: Union victories. Of which, nine months into the war, there had been almost none.

  * * *

  As the receiving line moved forward, Lincoln greeted the last of the diplomats. According to protocol, they would be followed by members of the Supreme Court, but justices were in short supply. Of the Court’s nine seats, two were vacant because their occupants had died and a third justice had resigned to join the Confederacy. These departures put Lincoln in a tricky spot, because in those days Supreme Court justices were appointed to represent the various federal judicial circuits. Two of the three missing justices had represented regions that were now in rebellion. To find loyal Southerners to fill those seats was a difficult proposition; on the other hand, if Lincoln nominated Northerners, it might be read as a sign that he was giving up on his effort to restore the Union and accepting the departure of the South. This was the explanation that Lincoln gave to Congress for his failure to fill the empty seats, and it was no doubt true as far as it went. But something more was also at work. Of the three branches of the federal government, only the Supreme Court was led by a Southern sympathizer. This gave Lincoln reason to want the court to remain as toothless as possible.

  That New Year’s morning, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney was not among those who paid his respects at the White House. After more than thirty years in the upper reaches of American government—first as attorney general, then as Treasury secretary, and for more than a quarter century as Chief Justice—Taney felt free to spurn the president he had come to despise. The Chief Justice was oil to Lincoln’s water, a well-born Andrew Jackson Democrat where Lincoln was a self-made Henry Clay Whig. Yet Taney, as much as any man, had put Lincoln on the road to the presidency. As the author of the court’s Dred Scott decision, the infamous 1857 ruling that people of African ancestry could never enjoy the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, Taney convinced many moderate Northerners that the long-smoldering problem of slavery now threatened their own freedom and the nation’s survival. Taney’s radical judgment effectively nullified the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and denied the authority given to residents of U.S. territories by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 to decide for themselves whether to prohibit slavery. The next step, many commentators believed, would be a ruling that denied the authority of Northern states to ban slavery.

  Lincoln’s powerful critiques of the Dred Scott holding had helped to lift him from relative obscurity onto the national stage. In his famous “House Divided” speech, in his debates with Stephen A. Douglas, and yet again in the Cooper Union speech that opened his presidential bid, the prairie lawyer relentlessly attacked Taney’s opinion, and even indicted Taney himself as part of a conspiracy to spread slavery. In his sly and folksy way, Lincoln eroded Taney’s credibility and stature everywhere his speeches were published, for he spoke of the Chief Justice not with awe but with scorn, referring to the venerable jurist by his first name only: “Roger.” Though Lincoln and Douglas would be linked forever, in many ways Taney was his true intellectual nemesis.

  Now, more than four years after Dred Scott, most of the powerful friends of slavery had left the capital. Yet Taney remained. Others in Washington might express sym
pathy and even affection for the Confederacy, but Taney was still in a position to do something about it—or at least, to try. He had already ordered Lincoln to release suspected Rebel spies and saboteurs being held without charges in Maryland. Lincoln ignored the order, dealing with the prisoners on his own timetable. If given the chance, Taney was prepared to rule that Lincoln’s call for volunteer troops, his blockade of Southern ports, and his emerging plans to pay for the war with paper money also violated the Constitution. And Taney would surely try to stop any forced emancipation of slaves. As Lincoln worked through these explosive issues, especially the core question of slavery, he had to avoid placing Taney in a position where he could turn the court’s authority against him. In a battle for the Constitution, it would be a priceless propaganda victory for the South to have the Chief Justice denounce Lincoln as a lawless tyrant.

  * * *

  Following the justices came the military men, lushly bearded and vainglorious. There were many more than in past years, reflecting the swelling ranks of generals and colonels and majors and captains leading the Union’s overnight armies. Each officer present at the White House stood in for perhaps a thousand more in camps across the country: the untested, largely untrained commanders of green troops from Maine to Missouri. In a matter of months, the Federal armed forces had grown nearly fiftyfold. “I very much doubt whether any other nation ever made such an effort in so short a time,” one European observer ventured. And yet, in those vast armies, there was not a single combat-ready man with more than a few months’ experience at leading large forces. In the words of one historian: “They knew almost nothing about the history and theory of war or of strategy.” They were terribly ill-equipped: to prepare a campaign in the Mississippi River valley, the commanding general had to use maps he found in a bookstore. The Civil War, at this point, was a struggle directed by novice generals in command of amateur troops.

  The senior officers from America’s last significant war, the invasion of Mexico in 1846, were old men by 1862. Mere lieutenants in Mexico were now sporting stars on their shoulders, and making plans, in some cases, to lead columns of troops ten times the size of the armies that crossed the Rio Grande. Other Union generals had even less experience, or none at all. Volunteer militia were the backbone of the Civil War army, and volunteers elected their own officers. Thus, colonels often gained their rank merely by being the most popular men in the towns where the regiments were assembled. Or the richest: senior officers frequently earned their braid by purchasing uniforms and train tickets for their men. Often conniving, highly political, or—worst of all—incompetent as officers, America’s mayors, newspaper editors, lawyers, factory owners, and sons of millionaires were recast in a twinkling as colonels in the grand crusade. Inevitably the colonels wanted to be brigadier generals, and nearly every brigadier a major general.

  Lincoln’s job was to glean somehow, from these thousands of unproven men, the few with the stuff of true leaders. As he was already discovering, a West Point education or a long stretch in uniform provided no guarantee of military ability. That January morning, in fact, Lincoln shook hands with General William B. Franklin, a fine engineer. (West Point specialized in turning out engineers.) He greeted General Samuel Heintzelman, a seasoned commander of frontier garrisons. He clasped hands with General Silas Casey, author of a soon-to-be-published manual of infantry tactics. These men knew everything that books could teach about war. They looked splendid in dress blue. But time would show that none was a true warrior-general, nor were many others like them.

  If any man had seemed to radiate the promise of greatness, it was George McClellan. He had a powerful intellect (he graduated second in his West Point class), he exuded charisma, and he thrived on discipline. Diminutive—his men called him Little Mac—but broad-shouldered and dashingly mustached, McClellan looked born to be cast in bronze and, until he fell sick, he had been ubiquitous in the streets and camps of Washington. From early morning until long past nightfall, McClellan could be seen striding purposefully from one meeting to the next, or storming impatiently about the capital on horseback. He also seemed to be blessed with the priceless gift of victors everywhere: good timing. Plucked from private life at the outbreak of the war, McClellan was placed in command of Ohio’s volunteers. In the summer of 1861, he led a relatively small column of militia through western Virginia and, moving quickly, scattered Rebels and secured a vital railroad on the way. His triumphant little army was nearing Washington when another Union force, led by General Irwin McDowell, was whipped by the Rebels near the railroad junction at Manassas. Because he was close by and had a couple of minor victories to his name, McClellan was the obvious choice to assume command of the demoralized troops in and around the capital.

  In that role, he worked something like a miracle, turning a multitude of raw volunteers into a disciplined army. Astride his big black charger, or smartly saluting troops as they paraded past his headquarters, or twirling his cap to acknowledge the cheers of his men, McClellan looked every inch the ideal leader in an age when Napoleon was the measure. Soon enough, the venerable Lieutenant General Winfield Scott decided that he was too old, at seventy-five, to vie with this exceedingly ambitious underling. On November 1, Scott retired as general in chief, and Lincoln promoted McClellan. Still just thirty-four, McClellan was suddenly overall leader of the world’s largest armed force and, simultaneously, operational head of the Union’s single biggest command, the Army of the Potomac. The job provided enough work for at least two able men, but McClellan assured Lincoln, saying, “I can do it all.”

  At first, the president believed that he and McClellan could work together. In what John Hay called a “fatherly” talk soon after the promotion, Lincoln told his young general: “Draw on me for all the sense I have, and all the information.” But McClellan, a man of military training and eastern refinement, did not value the lessons accrued by the unpolished Lincoln. The more authority McClellan was given, the less respect he accorded the president until, by the beginning of 1862—having received all the favors Lincoln had to give—the general had cut Lincoln out of the loop almost entirely and begun developing his battle plans within a clique of like-minded men. Nor was McClellan’s scorn reserved for Lincoln; he had a low opinion of nearly all politicians, believing that they inflamed disputes rather than resolved them. He preferred to think of himself as their opposite: the soul of reason, a master of crisis, the savior of the nation. “By some strange operation of magic I seem to have become the power in the land,” McClellan exulted to his wife when he was called to the defense of the capital. He enjoyed “letter after letter … conversation after conversation … alluding to the Presidency, Dictatorship etc.” that his supporters saw in his future. And though he disavowed any such goal, his relatives and friends, placed in key staff positions and high commands, weren’t always so circumspect.

  One evening in November, during one of his forays away from the stifling White House, Lincoln led Hay and Secretary of State Seward on a walk to McClellan’s nearby headquarters. For weeks, the president had been trying to lead McClellan to the conviction that the fine brigades drilling in the warm, dry autumn fields around Washington must soon be put to use. Newspapers demanded action. Congress demanded action. Financiers of the nation’s skyrocketing debt demanded action. The general’s contempt for political pressure was leading to a dangerous blindness, Lincoln believed. But McClellan cared little for Lincoln’s counsel, nor did he see the need to keep the president informed. “The Commander-in-Chief … has no business to know what is going on,” he had declared. That evening, when Lincoln’s little group entered the general’s house, they were told that McClellan was out. Lincoln took a seat in the parlor. Eventually, the general burst into the house and stormed up the stairs. Lincoln waited another half hour; when at last he asked about the delay, he was informed that McClellan had gone to bed.

  Hay was stunned by this “unparalleled insolence,” which he read as “a portent” of evils to come. For the f
irst time, the president’s young secretary concluded that the loose talk about a military coup might have some basis in fact. Lincoln took the snub in stride, reminding Hay that a national crisis was no time to make points of etiquette. Over the next few days, the president outlined his thoughts for the general in writing. But McClellan was just as dismissive on paper as he was in person; he returned Lincoln’s memo with a few unenlightening comments in the margins and a cryptic reference to a secret plan he was cooking up.

  Outwardly, Lincoln was unperturbed. Inwardly, he was beginning to suspect that McClellan’s personality was all wrong for his vast responsibilities. Wittingly or unwittingly, the president had helped to create the general’s enormous power without realizing that the unseasoned young man harbored a dangerous combination of certitude and distrust. McClellan believed that he knew best in all things, and he confused questions with criticism, disagreement with enmity. He indulged a haughty pride that made him unwilling to explain his ideas or defend his actions, yet if others failed to support his unexplained decisions, then the fault was theirs, not his. “It is terrible to stand by & see the cowardice of the Pres[ident], the vileness of Seward, the rascality of Cameron,” McClellan had recently written, ticking through his many inferiors in the cabinet. “Welles is an old woman—Bates an old fool.… The people think me all powerful. Never was there a greater mistake—I am thwarted & deceived by these incapables at every turn.” Volatile and occasionally almost paranoid, McClellan bounced wildly between unfounded overconfidence and hand-wringing worry, so that he could not settle on a clear-eyed assessment of military or political situations.