Rise to Greatness

by David Von Drehle

  * * *

  A little after nine A.M. on Monday, September 22, Seward sent messengers to his fellow cabinet members, alerting them that Lincoln wanted to see them all at noon. At the appointed hour, “there was some general talk,” Chase reported, as the council collected around the table in the president’s office. Lincoln held up a prized possession: his brand-new copy of the latest book by Charles Farrar Browne, his favorite humorist. Browne was better known by his pen name, Artemus Ward, a screwball character who delighted audiences with his misspellings, malapropisms, and daffy adventures as proprietor of a traveling menagerie and wax museum. The president opened the book to page 34 and began to read aloud. “High-handed Outrage at Utica” was a very short story recounting Ward’s “recepshun” in that “trooly grate” upstate New York city. Things went wrong, however, when a “big burly feller” mistook Ward’s wax model of Judas Iscariot for the actual betrayer of Jesus Christ. The man dragged the statue from its display and smashed it, whereupon Ward filed a lawsuit. The jury ultimately delivered a verdict “of Arson in the 3d degree.”

  Lincoln roared. His laugh, in the words of one who knew him, “stood by itself. The ‘neigh’ of a horse on his native prairie is not more undisguised and hearty.” Laughter was “the President’s life-preserver,” his answer to “the temporary excitement and relief which another man would have found in a glass of wine.” The reaction of the cabinet to Lincoln’s recitation is a matter of some dispute. Chase reported that they all were amused except for dour Edwin Stanton. According to Stanton, though, no one laughed, not even Seward. By Stanton’s account, Lincoln responded to the silence by asking: “Why don’t you laugh? With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die, and you need this medicine as much as I do.”

  At last the president grew serious. “Gentlemen, I have—as you are aware—thought a great deal about the relation of this war to Slavery,” recorded Chase. Everyone in the room recalled that Lincoln had been prepared to use his war powers to order freedom for slaves in Rebel territory; since putting his order aside in July, he continued, “my mind has been much occupied with this subject,” even as he watched for the right moment to issue the decree. “I think the time has come now. I wish it were a better time. I wish that we were in better condition. The action of the army against the Rebels has not been quite what I should have best liked. But they have been driven out of Maryland, and Pennsylvania is no longer in danger of invasion.”

  There was more to the story, and this part he told gingerly, as if he wasn’t sure how much to admit. As Welles reported it, Lincoln said he “had made a vow, a covenant, that if God gave us the victory in the approaching battle, he would consider it an indication of Divine will, that it was his duty to move forward in the cause of emancipation.”

  “I said nothing to anyone,” Lincoln explained to his colleagues, “but I made a promise to myself, and”—here, according to Chase, Lincoln hesitated—“to my Maker.”

  This confession was out of character, and Lincoln worried that some might think it “strange that he had in this way submitted the disposal of matters when the way was not clear to his mind.” Strange or not, though, Lincoln said that he was now completely convinced that “God had decided this question in favor of the slaves.” And because of his vow and God’s answer, Welles wrote later, Lincoln “was satisfied it was right, was confirmed and strengthened in his action.… His mind was fixed, his decision made.”

  He was not, therefore, interested in hearing his colleagues’ thoughts “about the main matter.” He knew their views already. What he wanted to do was read what he had written and hear their suggestions for improvements. Before he did, however, he wished to make “one other observation.” “I know very well,” he said, “that many might … do better than I can.” He acknowledged that his popular support was weakened, but added that “all things considered, [no] other person has more.” He had sought this office, and though he could not have imagined what the job would require, only he could execute its duties. As Chase remembered it, Lincoln then said: “I am here. I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility.”

  With that, he launched into his reading. This revised version of the Emancipation Proclamation was similar to the one the cabinet had heard in July, but Lincoln was no longer leaning on Congress or the Confiscation Act. The proclamation was entirely a statement of military policy, an exercise of his constitutional power to take all actions necessary to put down an insurrection. Further, the order’s key phrase had been moved closer to the beginning: in the proclamation’s third paragraph, Lincoln decreed that on January 1, 1863, all slaves held in territory under rebellion “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Ominously for Southerners who lived in fear of a slave uprising, he declared that the government, including the army and navy, would “do no act or acts” to interfere with “any efforts [the slaves] may make for their actual freedom.” No one representing the Federal government could return any former slave to bondage in Rebel territory, nor would generals be allowed to ask whether the slave owners were loyalists. Any loyal slaveholders who hoped to avoid emancipation must persuade their neighbors to return to the Union by New Year’s Day. As in the previous version of the proclamation, Lincoln’s order would not apply to loyal territory.

  When the president finished reading, all eyes turned to the secretary of state. “The general question having been decided, nothing can be said further about that,” Seward began. He then offered a proposal that may have been surprising, given that he was often accused of being a principal impediment to emancipation. Lincoln had written that the government would “recognize” the freedom of the former slaves; wouldn’t it be better, Seward asked, to say, “recognize and maintain”? This brief addition, which the president approved, packed a wallop, for it committed the United States not just to proclaim freedom, but to enforce it. Welles was impressed. Having suspected Seward of opposing an emancipation decree, he now saw that “in the final discussion he has … cordially supported the measure.”

  Chase spoke next and gave his own approval, though he couldn’t resist pointing out that he would have done a few things differently. Welles also endorsed the decree, although he had no illusions that it would lead to a quick victory. “The subject has, from its magnitude and its consequences, oppressed me,” Welles confessed later, for he was sure that it would guarantee a long, terrible conflict, a war of subjugation to destroy a way of life and an economic system. Though “desirable,” Welles concluded, Lincoln’s proclamation was “an arbitrary and despotic measure in the cause of freedom.”

  When no one offered criticism of the measure, Lincoln handed the paper to Seward with instructions to publish it the next day. Montgomery Blair now spoke up. He began by asking permission to publish his own written statement against the proclamation, which he had given to Lincoln “some days since.” It wasn’t that he opposed freedom for slaves, Blair said; on the contrary, he had always been in favor of abolition. Instead, he was terribly concerned about the impact this proclamation would have in the border states and in the army. “The results,” he predicted, “would be to carry over [the loyal slave states] en masse to the Secessionists.” At the same time, he added, the executive order would hand the Democrats “a club … to beat the Administration.”

  Lincoln was quiet. This wasn’t the right moment to reveal just how sharply he felt those same worries. “When I issued that proclamation, I was in great doubt about it myself,” he later admitted. “I did not think that the people had been quite educated up to it, and I feared its effects on the Border States. Yet I think it was right. I knew it would help our cause in Europe.” In any event, the time for second-guessing was past. Lincoln’s capacity for thinking and rethinking was great—but not endless. Determined to go forward, he left Blair’s fears hanging there in the room.

  * * *

  Abraham Lincoln’s preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was published on September 23 to an immediate
storm of protest and praise. Charles Sumner spoke for many abolitionists when he declared that “the skies are brighter and the air is purer, now that slavery has been handed over to judgment.” Frederick Douglass was less enthusiastic, remarking that the dry document contained not “one word of regret and shame that this accursed system had remained for long the disgrace and scandal of the Republic.” Vice President Hannibal Hamlin was awed: “It will stand as the great act of the age.”

  Many felt otherwise. In Lincoln’s home state of Illinois, the Macomb Eagle snorted: “Hoop de-dooden-do! The niggers are free!” Critics of the proclamation attacked it from every direction: The decree was hollow. It was tyrannous. It would unleash a storm of murder and rape across the South. It would flood the North with inferior black refugees. Lincoln did not put much stock in the angry newspaper editorials. When Hay raised the subject after the first round had been published, Lincoln simply replied that he “knew more about it than they did.”

  Among other things, he knew he was in for a rough ride. “At last we have got our harpoon fairly into the monster,” he told a visitor, “but now we must look how we steer, or with one flop of his tail, he will yet send us into eternity.” A parade of Washingtonians, celebrating the proclamation with a marching band, paused outside the White House on the day after the decree was released. When they called for a speech, Lincoln said a few words and then apologized for his brevity: “In my position, I am environed with difficulties.” Four days later, replying to Hamlin’s note of congratulations, he elaborated. “The stocks have declined, and troops have come forward more slowly than ever. This, looked soberly in the face, is not very satisfactory.”

  Environed with difficulties, but no longer quite so alone. The millions pleased with Lincoln’s decision felt fresh admiration for their president and a new dedication to the Union cause. The governors of the loyal states had been planning a meeting to formulate a shared war policy that might stiffen Lincoln’s spine, but now he had shown an oaken backbone and they threw out their old agenda. Instead, gathering on September 23 and 24 at the big new hotel in Altoona, Pennsylvania, the governors almost unanimously endorsed Lincoln and his executive order, and then headed for Washington to tell him so in person.

  Emancipation was now front and center as an election issue, so this sign of solidarity in the Union coalition was a comfort to the president. But with antiwar agitation on the rise in many Northern states, Lincoln followed his radical proclamation by issuing a second extraordinary and dangerous decree: he ordered the military to arrest any persons believed to be “discouraging volunteer enlistments, resisting militia drafts, or guilty of any disloyal practice, affording aid and comfort to Rebels.” Furthermore, he invoked the power that Congress had granted him to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, the constitutional guarantee that protects Americans from unlawful imprisonment. (This was not the first time he had done so: he had issued an executive order suspending the writ at the beginning of the war, but it had been deemed unconstitutional by Chief Justice Taney, who ruled that only Congress could grant him that authority.) The message was clear: Lincoln would not fight the battle for public opinion with words alone.

  Lincoln knew that the Emancipation Proclamation marked a critical moment in the nation’s history. By publishing it and announcing his intention to free all the Confederacy’s slaves at the start of the following year, the president placed a fateful wager on the willingness of the North to see a hard war through to total victory. He acknowledged what the Southern secessionists had affirmed when they broke from the Union: that slavery could no longer be negotiated or compromised away. Either slavery must go or the Union must go; they could not coexist. What was more, Lincoln’s bet must pay off twice—among the military and at the ballot box—or it would pay off not at all. With Antietam behind him and the elections looming, the next several months would tell whether his wager would succeed.

  * * *

  The military outcome of Lincoln’s gamble rested on the banks of the Potomac, where McClellan’s army licked its wounds within a few miles of Lee and his Rebels. In those quiet camps, McClellan brooded on his future under a president who had promulgated “such an accursed doctrine.” He doubted it was possible to “retain my commission & self respect at the same time.”

  His mood dark, the general was cheered by a visit from a delegation of friendly New York Democrats—the same ones who had met with him on the peninsula during the slow days of July. Led by the antiwar former mayor of New York City, Fernando Wood, they had come to Sharpsburg to persuade McClellan to run for president in 1864. As one of McClellan’s associates later told Lincoln, the delegation proposed that the general run on a platform promising reconciliation between North and South. But if that platform was to be viable two years hence, the war had to slow down. Hostilities must be held in check, hard-war policies somehow softened. No peaceful settlement between the combatants could be possible where all common ground was laid waste. Two months earlier, McClellan had demurred, the general’s associate told Lincoln, but at Sharpsburg he finally accepted the proposal.

  This meeting and its outcome may have been the root of a shocking report that ripped through Washington on September 24. An officer on McClellan’s staff, Major John Key, was quoted as telling the judge advocate, Levi Turner, that Lee’s army wasn’t “bagged” at Antietam because “That is not the game.” Key allegedly went on to say that “the game” called for McClellan’s army to “tire the rebels out, and ourselves.” Why? Because “that was the only way the Union could be preserved, we come together fraternally, and slavery be saved.”

  Lincoln, disgusted by all the loose talk from McClellan’s people, determined that Key should be made an example. He summoned the young major and demanded to know whether the offending words had been spoken. Key tried to put a loyal face on his remarks, but the president was not appeased. “If there was a ‘game’ ever among Union men, to have our army not take advantage of the enemy when it could,” Lincoln said angrily, it was his object “to break up that game.” He cashiered Key.

  That was all well and good and forceful, but when September ended and Key was gone, McClellan was still resting in the valley of the fresh graves. The enemy was nearby, but no one was making an effort to take advantage of his weakness. For all Lincoln knew, then, the game was still on. And if that was the case, he had no choice but to break it up at a higher level.

  11

  OCTOBER

  In the midst of all his military and political troubles, Abraham Lincoln turned up in the most unexpected role of advertising pitchman. A podiatrist in Manhattan named Isachar Zacharie was papering the metropolis that autumn with testimonials boasting of the famous feet he had tended. Among the endorsements was one from Lincoln, who had placed his aching toes in Zacharie’s hands on the advice of Stanton, another satisfied patient. Delighted with the results, Lincoln took time to write a grateful affirmation: “Dr. Zacharie has operated on my feet with great success, and considerable addition to my comfort.” The note now featured in Zacharie’s advertising campaign.

  Little that was embarrassing, scandalous, or sensational got past the New York Herald, so naturally this caught the paper’s attention. In its October 3 edition, the Herald asked archly whether it could be “that many of the haps and mishaps of the nation, during this war, may be traced to a matter no greater than the corns and bunions which have afflicted the feet of our leaders?” Perhaps the Emancipation Proclamation itself could be blamed on Lincoln’s tender extremities, for “how could the President put his foot down firmly” with the hectoring abolitionists “when he was troubled with corns?”

  The Herald was the most widely read newspaper in America, and among its devoted subscribers was Lincoln himself. He might grumble that he had no time to attend to the mewling of the press, but the Herald was in a class apart, because of both its reach and its influence among Democratic Unionists. The loudest voice of the loyal opposition rang out from the Herald’s pages; it was the populist soul o
f a very prickly element of Lincoln’s fractious coalition. Not surprisingly, therefore, Lincoln’s relationship with the editor and publisher, James Gordon Bennett, was the embodiment of an ancient maxim: Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

  The brilliant and savage Bennett was one of the most innovative figures in newspaper history, pioneering the coverage of sports, finance, and sensational crimes in the daily penny press. A spine-tingling character with piercing crossed eyes that burned holes in two directions at once, Bennett wrote with the slashing ferocity of a man in a razor fight. He was proudly and crudely racist, and he strongly supported slavery. Yet he also believed in the Union. His fervent views marked the immigrant Scot as a man of New York, which owed much of its rise as a financial center to its role in capitalizing the Southern cotton economy. To save the Union would serve Wall Street’s interests, because it would restore easy commerce—but only if it were done with the South’s slave system left intact and ready to resume churning out cotton as soon as the war ended.

  Bennett was masterly in reading and rallying popular opinion to support this agenda, so Lincoln cultivated him assiduously. He took time to write personal notes thanking Bennett for his “able support”; he gave Bennett’s son a plum commission in the navy; he helped to muffle a congressional investigation into the Herald’s theft of his annual message to Congress. And he suffered mostly in silence when Bennett portrayed him as a fellow foe of the hated abolitionists, even though the distortions in Bennett’s editorials inflamed the impatience of Lincoln’s antislavery friends. (The abolitionist William Goodell, in a furious letter warning Lincoln not to be fooled by Bennett’s feigned support, referred to the Herald as a “pestilent sheet” controlled by “well known Secession-Sympathizers.”)

  Thus far, Lincoln’s handling of Bennett had been mostly a success. The editor trained his lethal fire on other targets and remained ostensibly loyal to the Union cause and to Lincoln himself. “I do very believe that you yourself are the only man in the government that possesses the confidence of the people,” Bennett wrote to the president in August (while also asking for a patronage post for a friend). But now Lincoln was at a particularly dangerous point in his relationship with the nation’s most powerful and ruthless media baron. The Emancipation Proclamation landed at a time when Bennett had more than the usual amount of latitude to make trouble. His Democratic pet, McClellan, was surrounded by voices urging him to overthrow the government, and the influential editor was in a position to amplify those voices. The state of New York, meanwhile, was in the midst of electing a new governor, and the race pitted the abolitionist Republican James Wadsworth against the anti-Lincoln Democrat Horatio Seymour. If he cared to, Bennett could easily paint Lincoln’s face on Wadsworth’s lagging candidacy and urge all Democrats to make Seymour their sign of defiance to the administration’s war policy.