Rise to Greatness

by David Von Drehle

  Yet more than a week after the announcement of Lincoln’s plan to emancipate the slaves, Bennett still had not publicly criticized the president. Instead, he minimized the importance of what Lincoln had done. Bennett’s archrival Horace Greeley was declaring, GOD BLESS ABRAHAM LINCOLN!, but the Herald largely glossed over the revolutionary implications of the decree. Instead, Bennett latched onto the fact that the Emancipation Proclamation would not take effect until New Year’s Day. Lincoln, he theorized, was trying to save slavery by ending the war quickly—a notion that mirrored the Herald’s agenda. “We accept this proclamation,” the Herald announced, “not as that of an armed crusade against African slavery, but as … a liberal warning to our revolted States” to return to the Union in time to preserve their peculiar institution. The editor advised his readers to “look through the wretched but transparent negro” in the proclamation and “see clearly the end of the war.”

  The president was not the only person at the White House who cultivated Bennett. Mary Lincoln visited, flattered, and gossiped with him long after his spy, the “Chevalier” Wikoff, had been banished from her circle. The day after the editorial gently mocking Lincoln’s foot problems, she wrote Bennett a silky letter from the cottage at the Soldiers’ Home. “My Dear Sir,” she began, “your kind note … has been received.” She was so happy to have it that she intended to ride into town to extend her personal thanks to the gentleman who had hand-delivered it to the Executive Mansion. “It is so exceedingly dusty, it is quite an undertaking” to make the trip, she continued, but since the fellow had carried “a note from you, I scarcely feel like having him leave, without seeing him.” Shifting from flattery to gossip, Mary then confided that she agreed with Bennett about the need for a shakeup of the cabinet, and hinted that many other powerful figures shared his views. She also promised to urge her husband to take action against the “ambitious fanatics” in his administration, but closed by assuring Bennett that such radicals “have very little control over the P[resident] when his mind is made up, as to what is right.” With syrupy apologies for “so long a note”—as if a journalist would ever prefer less access to the president’s family—she bade farewell to “my dear Mr. Bennett.”

  * * *

  In that same letter to Bennett, Mary remarked that her husband was “with the Army of the Potomac.” Once again, Lincoln had decided that he needed to see McClellan and his army firsthand. After the unsettling episode with Major Key, he wanted to “satisfy himself personally,” in the words of one of his traveling companions, “of the purposes, intentions, and fidelity of McClellan, his officers, and the army.” Accordingly, Lincoln set out from Washington on October 1, reaching Harpers Ferry about noon. The Rebels had moved off to the southwest, camping near Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley, and Union troops had retaken possession of the heights surrounding the ferry.

  McClellan was in a foul mood that morning. He had resolved to rebuild the railroad bridge at Harpers Ferry—the same bridge he had planned to repair in February, when he was foiled by the canal-boat fiasco. Finally rebuilt that summer, the bridge had been destroyed again by the recently departed Rebels. But Halleck, mindful of Lincoln’s hunger for action, rebuked McClellan for dallying over construction projects. “Compel the enemy to fall back or to give you battle,” Halleck directed. Little Mac fumed: “I do think that man Halleck is the most stupid idiot I ever heard of—either that or he drinks hard.” McClellan was working at his headquarters near Sharpsburg when he learned of Lincoln’s arrival. The general was leery: “His ostensible purpose is to see the troops & the battle fields. I incline to think that the real purpose of the visit is to push me into a premature advance,” he alerted his wife. The visit was thus steeped in mutual suspicion from the start.

  The day was very fine. McClellan met Lincoln at the ferry, and in warm sunshine the two rode south to the Bolivar Heights to review troops from Sumner’s corps. Afterward, the general returned to Sharpsburg while Lincoln stayed overnight at Harpers Ferry. The next day, they were together again, and late that afternoon the president took up residence in a big white canvas tent next door to McClellan’s own. History would glimpse their meetings and simple accommodations through the lens of the photographer Alexander Gardner, who had arrived at Antietam the previous week to take some of the earliest and most horrifying pictures ever made of the high price of modern war.

  In place of the romantic canvases of earlier war artists, Gardner’s images offered the public a glimpse of reality: corpses in piles along fencerows and facedown in wheel-worn roads, lined up for burial in a bare field, staring blankly into the unseen sky, twisted at painful angles. It was as if Gardner had “brought bodies and laid them in our dooryards and along the streets,” as The New York Times put it. This intimacy with the war’s ugly face complicated the president’s task as he worked to shape public opinion, but Gardner’s presence during the visit with McClellan also gave Lincoln a novel opening to show the citizenry that their president was actively encouraging and supporting his general. While in Sharpsburg, Lincoln posed for a series of seemingly casual photos showing him at work with McClellan; in one of the most famous, the viewer glimpses the president and the general conferring at a small table inside a tent, its flap open.

  Lincoln was, as always, interested in hard data. He carried a slip of paper on which he wrote the exact number of men in each corps of McClellan’s army: 24,130 under Sumner, 14,000 under Burnside, 16,479 under Porter, and so on for a total of more than 88,000 troops. A lot of fleas had been shoveled across the barnyard in the past few months, and now here he was one more time sharing a table with McClellan, hoping to find the magic words that had eluded him all year, words that would persuade Little Mac to use those soldiers fearlessly. “The Pres[ident] was very kind personally,” McClellan later wrote of their discussions. He “told me he was convinced I was the best general in the country etc etc. He was very affable & I really think he does feel very kindly towards me personally.”

  Lincoln, clearly, was wielding more carrot than stick; for his part, McClellan tried to reassure Lincoln of his loyalty. He handed the president at least four letters he had received from friends in the Confederate army urging him to “make himself dictator” and end the conflict. The gesture—which suggested the general’s eagerness to let Lincoln know that he was not seriously harboring such thoughts—was slightly wide of the mark, since the president seems never to have doubted McClellan’s fundamental loyalty. Instead, Lincoln worried about the passion of the army, particularly because it was led by men so devoted to their general. McClellan may have been unlikely to lead a coup, but he might allow himself to be carried into one—especially if Lincoln tried to remove him from command. At this point in the war, Lincoln later explained, he “regarded his position … as a striking and noteworthy illustration of the dangers to which republican institutions were subjected by wars of such magnitude.” Though he was nominally the nation’s commander in chief, in truth this was a “season of insubordination, panic, and general demoralization” in which his authority over the troops was far from certain.

  * * *

  That worry lay heavy on Lincoln’s mind the next morning, October 3, when he awakened a member of his traveling party, an Illinois politician named Ozias Hatch. Hatch recalled the encounter vividly:

  It was very early, Daylight was just lighting the east—the soldiers were all asleep in their tents. Scarce a sound could be heard except the notes of early birds, and the farm-yard voices from distant farms. Lincoln said to me, “Come, Hatch, I want you to take a walk with me.” His tone was serious and impressive. I arose without a word, and as soon as we were dressed we left the tent together. He led me about the camp, and then we walked upon the surrounding hills overlooking the great city of white tents and sleeping soldiers. Very little was spoken between us, beyond a few words as to the pleasantness of the morning.… We walked slowly and quietly, meeting here and there a guard … looking at the beautiful sunrise and the magnificent sce
ne before us.

  Finally, reaching a commanding point where almost that entire camp could be seen—the men were just beginning their morning duties, and evidences of life and activity were becoming apparent … the President, waving his hand towards the scene before us, and leaning towards me, said in an almost whispering voice: “Hatch—Hatch, what is all this?”

  “Why, Mr. Lincoln,” said I, “this is the Army of the Potomac.” He hesitated a moment, and then, straightening up, said in a louder tone: “No, Hatch, no. This is General McClellan’s body-guard.” Nothing more was said. We walked to our tent, and the subject was not alluded to again.

  After breakfast, the presidential party toured the site of the great battle, starting at the southern end of the field, where Lincoln and McClellan reviewed Burnside’s corps. Little Mac then suggested they hand over their horses to aides and ride to the next camp in the comfort of an ambulance, for it was two or three miles distant. As the wagon lurched along carrying the president and his companions, Lincoln said to Ward Hill Lamon: “Sing one of your sad little songs.” Before the war, the two men had been part of a group of lawyers who traveled Illinois’s Eighth Judicial Circuit; trying cases by day, the lawyers shared fellowship in the evenings, and Lamon was the singer of the bunch.

  Lamon knew immediately which song the president had in mind. The pall of so much death had a depressing effect, and Lincoln was, in Lamon’s words, “weary and sad.” When such a mood was upon him he liked to hear a “homely tune” called “Twenty Years Ago,” about lost friends and unrecoverable youth and true love buried in the grave. No song “touched his great heart” as this one did, Lamon recalled; Lincoln rarely heard it without tears in his eyes.

  I’ve wandered to the village, Tom,

  I’ve sat beneath the tree

  Upon the schoolhouse playground,

  That sheltered you and me;

  But none were there to greet me, Tom,

  And few were left to know

  That played with us upon the grass

  Some twenty years ago …

  The wheels creaked as Lamon’s voice drifted down to the low notes of the dirgelike song. His slow words told of the schoolmaster now buried on the hillside where the friends once went sledding, and of the tree where the names of young sweethearts had been carved, now stripped of bark and “dying sure but slow.”

  I visited the old churchyard

  And took some flowers to strew

  Upon the graves of those we loved

  Some twenty years ago.

  “As I well knew it would, the song only deepened his sadness,” Lamon wrote later. He also reported that he then “did what I had done many times before: I startled him from his melancholy.” Sometimes Lamon jolted Lincoln with a ribald joke, sometimes with an outrageous statement. This time, he launched into a comic song made famous in minstrel shows, one that celebrated the famous banjo player Picayune Butler. It “broke the spell … and restored somewhat his accustomed easy humor.” It also sowed the seeds of a minor scandal: when Lincoln returned to Washington, he was closely followed by outraged reports that he had spent his time in Maryland enjoying boisterous songs beside the fresh graves of the Union dead.

  The president left Sharpsburg the next day. As McClellan had expected, Lincoln warned his general “that he would be a ruined man if he did not move forward, move rapidly and effectually.” But Lincoln was not hopeful. Officially, he had nothing to report at the end of his visit. Passing through Frederick on the way home, he disappointed a cheering crowd by saying: “In my present position it is hardly proper for me to make speeches. Every word is so closely noted that it will not do to make trivial ones.” But to trusted friends he revealed his skepticism. Once again, he had seen McClellan’s forces well-ordered and in good spirits. “For the organization of an army … I will back General McClellan against any general of modern times,” he said. “But I begin to believe that he will never get ready to fight.”

  * * *

  While Lamon sang to Lincoln in Maryland, Union forces in faraway Mississippi were battling fiercely to maintain their foothold in the Deep South. Sterling Price and Earl Van Dorn had at last managed to combine their little armies for an attack on Grant at Corinth, and now their troops pressed through choking smoke in ninety-four-degree heat, driving the Federals as they came. But as the blue line fell back, it found even stronger positions in the well-built fortifications around the railroad junction. The first day’s combat ended with the Southerners stalled.

  The next morning, October 4, the Rebels charged again. Union artillery, firing exploding canisters that sprayed musket balls, blew ragged holes in the advancing ranks. Grant would have few opportunities in his long war to enjoy the advantages of fighting while entrenched in a strong defensive position, but on this day he watched the enemy melt under murderous fire from his soldiers. After losing nearly a quarter of their men in the effort to break through, the Rebel generals gave up. Price wept when he saw what remained of his vanquished army.

  The effort to uproot Grant from Dixie died then and there. And with Lee pushed back into Virginia, two of the three Confederate initiatives of September had now been thwarted. Only Bragg’s Kentucky invasion remained viable—but not for long. On the day of the battle at Corinth, Bragg was watching his puppet governor Richard Hawes take the oath of office in Frankfort. The general was eager to get on with it, because Union troops under Buell were marching down from Louisville and would arrive at any minute. Sure enough, just as Hawes launched into his inaugural address, the roar of Federal artillery rose from the outskirts of town. The speech was cut short; the Hawes administration did not last much longer.

  Bragg decided to avoid a clash at Frankfort and instead attack what he thought was a small detachment of the Union army near Bardstown, to the west. This was just what Buell hoped he would do. In fact, the Federal sortie that broke up the inaugural party in Frankfort was just a feint, while the troops at Bardstown formed Buell’s main body. Bragg’s confusion led within a few days to the even greater confusion that was the battle of Perryville, fought on October 8. A nightmare of jumbled violence, it was, according to Bragg, “the severest and most desperately contested engagement” ever compressed into a few hours. The chaos on the battlefield was such that at one point the commander of the Confederate right wing, Leonidas Polk, rode straight into the middle of a Union regiment, thinking they were his own troops. The bluecoats responded with equal confusion: when this unknown man with stars on his shoulders (who had quickly realized his mistake) brazenly ordered them to cease firing, the Federals actually put down their rifles. And Polk rode safely away.

  Perryville was more than just pointless slaughter, however, for at least two reasons. When the Rebels opened the battle with a sudden attack on what they thought was a small Union force and the surprise threatened to collapse the North’s left wing, a young general named Philip Sheridan saw what was happening from a nearby hilltop and swiftly turned his guns on the Confederate flank. He followed this up with a cavalry charge that broke the Rebel momentum. The Confederacy would hear much more from Phil Sheridan, and his response on this day was the sort of quick, decisive, and effective action that was separating the true warrior-generals from the mass of Northern men so hastily pressed into service.

  Perryville was also the excuse Bragg needed to bring his deflated project to an end. It was mere vanity to believe that his army could impose Confederate government on a state that didn’t want it. When Kentuckians failed to join Bragg’s cause, they rendered a clear verdict on his invasion; after that, the only question was how much blood he would spill on his way back to Tennessee. The 7,600 combatants lost on that October afternoon must have been enough, because Bragg mustered his men at midnight and turned them toward the south.

  Some in his army disagreed bitterly with this decision, among them General Basil Duke, who still believed the Confederates could crush Buell and then do as they pleased with the singular prize of Kentucky. Whether or not he was right
about strategy, Duke was correct when he summed up the effects of Bragg’s retreat. “On the 10th of October more than fifty thousand Confederate soldiers were upon the soil of Kentucky,” he wrote. “The first of November they were all gone, and with them departed all hope, perhaps, of Southern independence.”

  * * *

  Lincoln returned from Sharpsburg to find the White House corridor even more jammed than usual. This was the price he paid for leaving town: after being away for most of a week, he “was perfectly overwhelmed with the crowd on his return.” He and his secretaries toiled to catch up on “deferred and delayed business,” as Nicolay reported. Lincoln may have been too busy to notice that his monthly paycheck, issued that day, was light by $61. Thanks to the new revenue bill he had signed, an income tax was withheld from the salaries of the nation’s highest earners for the first time in American history.