Rise to Greatness

by David Von Drehle

  Lincoln departed the Antietam battlefield convinced that a highway to victory lay wide open in front of McClellan. The general could potentially lead his army straight to Richmond, about 150 miles away; with Lee camped to the west of the mountains in the Shenandoah Valley, the path was clear of Rebels. Lincoln would have preferred to see McClellan hit Lee where he stood, but that had not happened. Alternatively, why not set off for Richmond and let Lee try to catch him? If McClellan outmarched the enemy, the Confederate capital would be his prize. If Lee caught up to him, McClellan could choose his ground for the decisive battle that Lincoln desired. Either way, from Lincoln’s point of view, the result would be a success. Besides, he felt the clock ticking toward another winter of muddy roads and mired wagon trains and he did not want to lose more time. He instructed Halleck to get Little Mac going.

  “The President directs that you cross the Potomac and give battle to the enemy or drive him south,” the general in chief wired McClellan. “Your army must move now while the roads are good.” By taking the route that kept his army between Lee and Washington, McClellan would provide protection for the capital—a result that, Halleck informed him, would allow the government to send him an additional 30,000 troops.

  These orders arrived just as the general was putting the finishing touches on a statement he planned to issue to the entire Army of the Potomac. For two weeks, soldiers had been arguing about the Emancipation Proclamation. Fitz John Porter told the newspaper editor Manton Marble that the camps were rife with “disgust, discontent, and expressions of disloyalty.” Not only the soldiers but the whole country wanted to know what McClellan’s reaction would be. Everyone understood that this issue was a source of deep division between McClellan’s command and the abolitionist Republicans in Washington, and many saw that division as the cause of all the army’s woes.

  McClellan’s initial response to Lincoln’s decree was outrage and dismay. He suspected that the order was designed to foment a slave revolt. When Lincoln followed up by suspending habeas corpus protections, the general detected the foul hand of a despot. For days, Little Mac brooded on these twin disasters. At one point he drafted a letter to Lincoln criticizing the policies, but a friend persuaded him to destroy it. He consulted with other generals, including Burnside, who warned him that open defiance of the elected government would be “a fatal error.” Even his supporters in New York agreed. One of these advisers, the transportation magnate William Aspinwall, received a letter from McClellan in which the general said he was “very anxious to know how you and men like you regard the recent Proclamations of the Pres[ident].” Aspinwall rushed to Sharpsburg to deliver his answer in person. An open clash between McClellan and Lincoln would only prolong the war, Aspinwall said; the best course was to “submit” and “quietly continue doing [your] duty as a soldier.”

  Wisely, the general decided to pursue this more conservative course. Released on October 7, his statement to the Army of the Potomac admonished his men to remember that military subordination to civilian government was “a fundamental rule of our political system” and “should be thoroughly understood & observed.” Failure to respect this rule in their political conversations could “destroy the discipline & efficiency of troops by substituting the spirit of political faction” for a soldier’s “highest duty.” This was certainly patriotic and true, but McClellan didn’t stop there. Reminding his audience that elections were under way in the North, he added: “The remedy for political error if any are committed is to be found only in the action of the people at the polls.” Ostensibly addressed to the men of his army, this sentence had no practical value for them; they were miles from the nearest ballot box. The real audience for this message was the Northern electorate, which McClellan was counting on to boost Democrats into control of Congress, where they could crush Stanton, chasten Lincoln, and implement policies more to the general’s liking. Writing to his wife, Little Mac was more candid than he had been in his public statement: “I still hope the indignant people will punish them as they deserve.”

  But the autumn elections would continue for another month, and meanwhile McClellan had new orders from Washington, along with Halleck’s offer of 30,000 new troops. He had been pleading for reinforcements for six months; thanks to renewed recruiting, they were at last available in large numbers. But, as McClellan and other Union generals well understood, all reinforcements are not created equal. The recruits he wanted were fresh soldiers who had not yet been organized into regiments and brigades. Such men could be inserted into existing units to replace fallen troops; in this way the new soldiers would quickly mature by learning from their experienced, battle-hardened comrades.

  However, owing to political considerations the reinforcements almost always arrived already formed into new regiments, because new regiments created new positions of honor for their newly elected officers and inspired fresh pride for the communities that sent them marching off to war. This argument—form new regiments or fill old ones—would continue for most of the war, with Lincoln in the middle of it. The military men were correct in military terms, and the politicians were correct in political terms. For Lincoln, politics took priority.

  Further complicating matters for McClellan was the difficulty of feeding and clothing the troops already with him. Western Maryland was a remote piece of real estate on which to shelter and supply a force that was growing to number more than 100,000 men. Only a small canal connected Washington to Harpers Ferry, and a single strand of railroad ran from Pennsylvania to Hagerstown, in the rear of McClellan’s vast camps. These supply lines were quickly snarled. The Union general John Reynolds complained that many of his men lacked “shoes, tents, blankets, knapsacks, or other clothing.” William Franklin’s corps was short two thousand tents. George Meade reported that “artillery horses and train animals have been literally starving.”

  With his seasoned troops still recovering from wounds, his fresh soldiers in need of training, and his entire army poorly supplied, McClellan shrugged off the orders from Halleck and settled down with his wife and year-old daughter in the lovely countryside. “We are having a very quiet & pleasant time,” he wrote to a friend.

  Across the lines, General J. E. B. Stuart took a less leisurely approach to the business of war, setting out on another bold dash while the Federals sat motionless. Starting in the foggy dawn of October 9, Stuart led some 1,800 cavalry up the Cumberland Valley to Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where he deepened the Union supply problems by looting a major depot. Then he turned east across the mountains and roared back down through Maryland, gathering livestock as he went. After three days’ hard riding, the Rebels recrossed the Potomac to safety, having once again circled the Army of the Potomac.

  “It is humiliating, disgraceful,” stormed Gideon Welles. “The Rebels have possessed themselves of a good deal of plunder, reclothed their men from our stores, run off a thousand horses, fat cattle, etc. etc. It is not a pleasant fact to know that we are clothing, mounting, and subsisting not only our troops but the Rebels also.” Lincoln’s reaction was more wry than wrathful: “Three times round and out is the rule,” he said, referring to an early version of baseball. “Stuart has been twice around McClellan. The third time, by the rules of the game, he must surrender.”

  * * *

  In England, news of the battle of Antietam stunned the public. “The effect upon the popular mind … has already been quite considerable,” Charles Francis Adams wrote to Seward early in October. Having predicted the fall of Washington, the British newspapers were now reporting Lee’s retreat, and the most prevalent reaction, Adams wrote, was “surprise.” The invincibility of the Rebels, which had seemed so manifest in mid-September as they advanced on every front, was once again in doubt. Lord Palmerston immediately began to have second thoughts about putting his nose into such a violent quarrel. Prominent lawmakers and members of the cabinet underlined the prime minister’s misgivings by warning that Britain would be dragged into the war. When Lincoln’s procla
mation arrived close behind the unexpected battlefield report, the fine points of the U.S. Constitution confused many people, but the chief implication was obvious: the American conflict had a new aspect. “The whole matter is full of difficulty,” Palmerston wrote to Russell, “and can only be cleared up by some more decided events between the contending armies.”

  Russell disagreed. The foreign minister was now bent on creating a united European front to end the war, and his enthusiasm spread to the chancellor of the exchequer, William Ewart Gladstone. As tribune of Britain’s Liberal Party he had no truck with slavery. And he dreaded the mischief that might follow if the United States fractured. But Gladstone was convinced that the South could never be forced back into the Union. Unaware that the prime minister was getting cold feet, Gladstone was delighted to hear that a serious effort was at last being mounted to stop the carnage in North America and prevent riots in cotton-starved England. He was so delighted, in fact, that he couldn’t resist hinting at the intervention plan during a speech on October 7 in Newcastle. “We may have our own opinions about slavery,” he bellowed, trying to be heard in a hall that swallowed his words. “We may be for or against the South, but there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made what is more than either—they have made a nation!” The roar of the crowd testified to the weariness of people who had been waiting in vain for the mills to reopen and for trade to resume with luxury-loving Southern planters.

  Adams was angry when he read Gladstone’s words in the next day’s newspapers, especially the reference to a Confederate navy. He knew very well that Davis and his fellow Rebels weren’t making their navy by themselves. The shipwrights of Liverpool were doing it for them, while the British government turned a half-blind eye, secretly pleased by the prospect of sapping U.S. power on the seas. The Confederate cruiser Alabama, fresh from the river Mersey, was busy raiding and sinking Union merchant vessels off the Azores, and more ships were in the works. Adams protested to Russell, but like the other formal complaints the ambassador registered against the flagrant partisanship in the shipyards, this one was stifled in bluster and legalese.

  Continuing his push for intervention, Russell filed a strong memo in favor of action. But then the foreign minister’s effort stalled. Under pressure from others in his party, Gladstone backpedaled, saying that in Newcastle he had merely been expressing a personal opinion, not an official position. Most important, it became clear that Palmerston had made up his mind. “We must continue merely to be lookers-on,” the prime minister said, “till the war shall have taken a more decided turn.”

  But as Palmerston cooled, across the English Channel the idea of intervention was heating up again. Henri Mercier reported from Washington that the Emancipation Proclamation threatened to bring on a race war that would wipe out the American cotton industry for years to come. This radical initiative was, in his view, driving the border states away from the Union and swelling the popularity of the Democrats. Now was the moment, Mercier urged, for Europe to step in.

  The envoy’s dispatch arrived in Paris at about the same time as a letter from Leopold I of Belgium, making the case for mediation. Because Leopold was a relative and close adviser of Queen Victoria, Louis-Napoleon took this letter to be a signal of Britain’s readiness to step in. He promptly summoned the Confederate emissary, John Slidell, to a meeting.

  Slidell was initially elated to find the emperor on the verge of action, but his heart sank when Napoleon announced that he wanted Russia and England to join him. By now the Southerner had come to understand an essential truth about the European powers: they were incapable of forming a true partnership. The Russian czar favored the North as a counterweight to established European powers. The British wanted a quick end to the war, but not one that risked their own safety, and they could not find their way into an effective alliance with France, their eternal foes. Now Slidell tried once again to persuade the emperor to take the plunge alone, to be sole author of Southern independence, in exchange for which the Confederate States would help him build a new Latin American empire.

  Slidell’s efforts were for naught. Just as the invasion of the border states had been the South’s best chance for military victory, so were these busy weeks of October the high tide of Rebel hopes for European support—and the tide quickly receded. As he told Slidell he would do, Napoleon proposed a joint effort, and as Slidell feared would happen, the proposal failed. England backed away, unwilling to risk war with the United States; Russia demurred, not wanting to offend the North; and France, finding itself alone, returned to the sidelines with a Gallic shrug.

  A week after Slidell’s interview with the emperor, William Dayton met for the first time with the new French foreign minister. The American envoy was pleased to learn that no further initiative was being contemplated. France “wish[ed] that the war could be ended,” said Edouard Drouyn de L’Huys mildly, and “reserved to herself the right to express this wish” in some formal way in the future. Dayton considered this enigmatic statement for a moment and then asked: “What will be the consequences” if Washington were to ignore such a wish?

  The new minister, a veteran diplomat who had spent years in London, spoke perfect English. “Nothing,” he replied.

  * * *

  By now a week had melted away since McClellan was ordered to move, and other than sending cavalry to chase helplessly after J. E. B. Stuart, he had done nothing. On October 13, Lincoln took up pen and paper for one last try to get through to his difficult general. The result was his longest and most closely argued letter to the general, striking in its grasp of military tactics—the fruit of almost a year of close and costly study. Remarkably, despite all McClellan’s slights, aspersions, and tantrums, Lincoln still had the patience to make his case respectfully and candidly.

  And what was his case? That Northern men were a match for Southern men. That they could march as fast and fight as hard, if only McClellan would have faith in them. Lincoln asked whether the general recalled their conversation at Sharpsburg, when Lincoln had warned him about what he termed “over-cautiousness.” Well, this was what he meant by the word: “when you assume that you cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing.” Instead of being over-cautious, Lincoln continued, “should you not claim to be at least his equal in prowess, and act upon the claim?”

  The president then cited several examples. There was McClellan’s recent telegram to Halleck, calling again for railroad improvements before the Army of the Potomac could move south. Lincoln pointed out that Lee had only half as many wagons as McClellan did, and was sending them twice as far to reach the nearest railroad depot. Yet somehow Lee got along without commencing a major construction project that would consume the rest of the year. Why couldn’t McClellan do the same?

  Lincoln now made the case for launching the footrace mentioned in Halleck’s orders a week earlier. Set out toward Richmond on a straight line, he suggested, drawing supplies from Washington. Watch Lee come chasing behind on the longer, curving valley route, and then seize an opportunity to launch an attack through a gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains. “If we never try, we shall never succeed,” Lincoln urged.

  Next he shifted gears slightly. Suppose that McClellan’s worst fear, expressed in his wires to the War Department, came true. What if, instead of racing south to pursue the Army of the Potomac, Lee moved north again toward Pennsylvania? That would be a godsend, Lincoln suggested. “You have nothing to do but to follow, and ruin him!”

  This rigorous letter provided a clear window into Lincoln’s orderly mind. He reasoned from hard data: specific mileages, waypoints, roads and rivers. He used clear metaphors drawn from mathematics: Lee must march on the arc of the circle while McClellan could march on the chord. He considered possible flaws in his argument and answered each one. Binding it all together was his stoic self-reliance, a faith that fortune smiled on those who shouldered the responsibility and dared to make
the attempt, to try. Lincoln closed by restating his challenge to Little Mac to have more faith in his army. “It is all easy if our troops march as well as the enemy,” he concluded, “and it is unmanly to say they can not do it.”

  Lincoln showed the letter to Vice President Hamlin before he sent it away. He had scant hope it would do any good—he told a visitor he would fire McClellan now if not for the possible impact on the elections. And indeed, even before the letter could be delivered, McClellan displayed another sign of his deep-seated insecurity. His cavalry was no match for Stuart’s, he complained in a message to Halleck. Irritated, Lincoln told Halleck to convey the following response: “If the enemy had more occupation south of the river, his cavalry would not be so likely to make raids north of it.”

  Bragg, meanwhile, was slipping away in the West, and Buell seemed content to watch him go. “It is rather a good thing to be a Major General and in command of a Department,” Nicolay wrote with caustic irony. “One can take things so leisurely!” Halleck conveyed the president’s frustration in a message to Buell: “He does not understand why we cannot march as the enemy marches, live as he lives, and fight as he fights.… Your army must enter East Tennessee this fall.” Buell’s answer, such as it was, rested on the premise that Confederate soldiers were better able to endure hardship than the Federals.

  That reply marked the end of Buell’s command, this time for good. Lincoln might be stuck with McClellan for the moment, but he wasn’t stuck with Buell. He would not tolerate an inferiority complex at the top of the Union armies. Lincoln dismissed the slow-marching general and replaced him with another Ohioan: William Rosecrans, from Grant’s command.

  * * *

  “We are all blue here,” Nicolay reported on October 14 as election results arrived from Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana. Democrats made large strides in each of these key states, overshadowing more encouraging news from Iowa, where Senator James Grimes exulted in a big Republican victory—“twice our usual majority,” he estimated—and predicted a similar landslide in Wisconsin. Grimes gave the credit to the Emancipation Proclamation, but clearly it was an open question whether the public would ultimately support the decree. Lincoln distracted himself from the election returns by commissioning an unusual gift for Tad: he instructed the Bureau of Ordnance to manufacture a miniature, fully functional brass cannon, “a little gun that he can not hurt himself with.”