Aware that communications would be sporadic once Lieutenant General Grant launched his assault on Lee, Lincoln wrote him a letter that Hay described as “full of kindness & dignity at once.” He conveyed his “entire satisfaction with what you have done,” and promised that “if there is anything wanting which is within my power to give,” it would be provided. Grant graciously replied that he had thus far “been astonished at the readiness with which every thing asked for has been yielded.” The final line of Grant’s letter illustrated the profound difference between his character and McClellan’s. “Should my success be less than I desire, and expect, the least I can say is, the fault is not with you.”
Lincoln had heartily approved Grant’s plan to move in three directions at once: the Army of the Potomac would strike Lee head-on, forcing him to retreat south toward Richmond; Sherman would move through Georgia from west to east, with the aim of capturing Atlanta; Butler, meanwhile, would move northeast against Richmond from the James River. “This concerted movement,” Lincoln reminded Hay, was what he had wanted all along, “so as to bring into action to our advantage our great superiority in numbers.” Still, on the eve of battle, Lincoln felt great “solicitude” for his lieutenant general, telling Browning that while he had complete confidence in Grant, he feared that “Lee would select his own ground, and await an attack, which would give him great advantages.”
Lincoln’s fears proved prescient. As Grant moved south, Lee awaited him in an area just west of Fredericksburg known as the Wilderness—an unforgiving maze of craggy ravines and slippery bogs, dense with vines and thorn bushes. The gloomy terrain provided cover for Lee’s earthworks and prevented Grant’s superb artillery from being used: it effectively negated the Union’s superiority of numbers. Nonetheless, Grant pushed relentlessly south to Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor, slightly northeast of Richmond, engaging Lee in a hideous struggle. Men on both sides had to climb over the dead and dying, “lying in some places in piles three and four deep.” Grant’s biographer calls the campaign “a nightmare of inhumanity,” resulting in 86,000 Union and Confederate casualties in the space of seven weeks. “The world has never seen so bloody and so protracted a battle as the one being fought,” Grant told his wife at the end of the first nine days, “and I hope never will again.” He later admitted in his memoirs that he “always regretted that the last assault at Cold Harbor was ever made.”
Grant buried the dead and sent the wounded to Washington, where they arrived by the thousands. Noah Brooks recorded the heartbreaking scene as steamers reached the city wharves, carrying the “shattered wrecks” of brave soldiers. “Long trains of ambulances are in waiting, and the suffering heroes are tenderly handled and brought out upon stretchers, though with some of them even the lightest touch is torture and pain.” The ghastly scene, repeated day after day, was hard for Washingtonians to bear. Judge Taft was present at the wharves one morning when three thousand wounded soldiers disembarked, “some with their heads bound up and some with their arms in a Sling,” others limping along. As each steamer landed, crowds gathered around, hoping to recognize in “a maimed and battle-stained form, once so proud and manly,” a husband, son, or brother. Elizabeth Blair fled the city, admitting that “the lines [of] ambulances & the moans of their poor suffering men were too much for my nerves.”
“The carnage has been unexampled,” a depressed Bates lamented in his diary. Even the optimistic Seward acknowledged in his European circular that “it seems to myself like exaggeration, when I find, that, in describing conflict after conflict, in this energetic campaign, I am required always to say of the last one, that it was the severest battle of the war.” The immense tension in the War Department, where the cabinet colleagues gathered each night to await the latest news, made it impossible to carry out ordinary business. “The intense anxiety is oppressive,” Welles conceded, “and almost unfits the mind for mental activity.” John Nicolay wrote to Therena that he was “more nervous and anxious” during these weeks than he had been “for a year previous.” Still, he added, “if my own anxiety is so great, what must be [the president’s] solicitude, after waiting through three long, weary years of doubt and disaster.”
There were, indeed, nights when Lincoln did not sleep. One of these nights, Francis Carpenter “met him, clad in a long morning wrapper, pacing back and forth…his hands behind him, great black rings under his eyes, his head bent forward upon his breast.” There were moments when he was overwhelmed with sorrow at the appalling loss of life. As the leader of his cabinet and the leader of his country, however, he understood the need to remain collected and project hope and confidence to his colleagues and his people. Between anxious hours at the War Department awaiting news from the front, Lincoln made time to get to the theater, attend a public lecture on Gettysburg, and see an opera. “People may think strange of it,” he explained, “but I must have some relief from this terrible anxiety, or it will kill me.”
Schuyler Colfax came to visit one Sunday during the Battle of the Wilderness. “I saw [Lincoln] walk up and down the Executive Chamber, his long arms behind his back, his dark features contracted still more with gloom; and as he looked up, I thought his face the saddest one I had ever seen.” But, Colfax added, “he quickly recovered,” and suddenly spoke of Grant with such confidence that “hope beamed on his face.” An hour later, greeting a delegation of congressional visitors, he managed to tell “story after story,” which hid “his saddened heart from their keen and anxious scrutiny.”
Lincoln never lost faith in Grant. He realized that whereas “any other General” would have retreated after sustaining such terrible losses, Grant somehow retained “the dogged pertinacity…that wins.” Lincoln hugged and kissed a young reporter on the forehead who arrived at the White House with a verbal message from the general that said, “there is to be no turning back.” His spirits rose further when he read the words in Grant’s famous dispatch on May 11: “I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.” When a visitor asked one day about the prospects of the army under Grant, Lincoln’s face lit up “with that peculiar smile which he always puts on when about to tell a good story.” The question, he said, “reminds me of a little anecdote about the automaton chessplayer, which many years ago astonished the world by its skill in that game. After a while the automaton was challenged by a celebrated player, who, to his great chagrin, was beaten twice by the machine. At the end of the second game, the player, significantly pointing his finger at the automaton, exclaimed in a very decided tone. ‘There’s a man in it!’” That, he explained, referring to Grant, was “the secret” to the army’s fortunes.
IN EARLY JUNE, when the Republican Convention was set to open in Baltimore, Salmon Chase grew restless. Though he had withdrawn his name from the race the previous March, he still retained the hope that events might turn in his favor. Thurlow Weed had repeatedly warned the president that Chase’s withdrawal was simply a “shrewd dodge” that would allow him “to turn up again with more strength than ever.” The well-informed political boss had compiled a long list of Treasury employees who were devoting all their energies to the Chase campaign. More troubling still, Weed had heard from myriad sources that corrupt Treasury agents were exchanging army supplies for Confederate cotton in violation of the congressional law that forbade any trade between the free and slave states without an express permit from the Treasury. Weed believed that Chase’s son-in-law, Sprague, was a beneficiary of one of these schemes. He could not fathom Lincoln’s refusal to fire Chase, predicting that if the president “goes into the canvass with this mill-stone tied to him, he will inevitably sink.”
Meanwhile, the smoldering feud between Chase and the Blairs erupted into full public view. With the army in winter quarters the previous January, Frank Blair had resigned his commission and retaken his seat in Congress. He intended to return to Sherman’s command in time for the march to Atlanta, but first, he had a score to settle with Chase. A Chase partisan had publicly accused Blair of
swindling the government by charging $8,000 for a personal shipment of liquor and tobacco. Blair knew the document in question was spurious and suspected that it had been forged in the Treasury Department. He asked a congressional committee to investigate the matter. The resulting report fully exonerated Blair. The accusing document was, indeed, a forgery penned by a Treasury agent. Although there was no suggestion of Chase’s personal involvement, Blair waited for the issuance of the committee’s report before rising to speak on the floor.
Addressing a packed audience the day before his scheduled departure for Sherman’s army, he began by calmly summarizing the report’s findings. His self-control swiftly vanished, however, as he turned his anger on Chase. “These dogs have been set on me by their master, and since I have whipped them back into their kennel I mean to hold their master responsible for this outrage and not the curs who have been set upon me.” Speaker Colfax admonished Blair to stick to the committee report, but Blair’s supporters insisted that he be allowed to continue. He accused Chase of corruption, treachery against Lincoln, lack of patriotism, and sordid ambition for the presidency.
Elizabeth Blair, present in the galleries, believed the speech “a complete triumph” in the short run but worried about its livid tone. “Anger is the poorest of counselors,” she conceded, “& revenge is suicide.” She was right to worry, for the speech inflamed the ongoing war between Chase and Blair that would end by damaging both men. Chase’s friends reacted quickly, labeling the accusations against the treasury secretary “mendacious slanders.”
Gideon Welles considered the speech “violent and injudicious” and feared that it would ultimately hurt the president. The wise navy secretary was dismayed by the continuing feud between Chase and the Blairs, believing both sides shared the blame. “Chase is deficient in magnanimity and generosity. The Blairs have both, but they have strong resentments. Warfare with them is open, bold and unsparing. With Chase it is silent, persistent, but regulated with discretion.”
Chase was told about the speech later that night as he boarded a train to the Sanitary Fair in Baltimore. His friend Congressman Albert Riddle joined him in his private car. “He was alone,” Riddle recalled, “and in a frightful rage, and controlled himself with difficulty while he explained the cause. The recital in a hoarse, constrained voice, seemed to rekindle his anger and aggravate his intensity. The spacious car fairly trembled under his feet.” Chase felt certain that “all this, including the speech, had been done with the cordial approval of the President.” Ohio congressman James Garfield agreed with this assessment. He considered Frank Blair Lincoln’s “creature,” sent to the House for the “special purpose” of destroying Chase’s reputation. With this accomplished, Garfield charged, Lincoln would simply renew Blair’s commission and return him to the front, “thus ratifying all he said and did while here.” Chase told Riddle that unless Lincoln repudiated Blair, he would feel honor-bound once again to tender his resignation.
Riddle and another friend of Chase’s, Rufus Spalding, called on the president. They warned him that “Chase’s abrupt resignation now would be equal in its effects to a severe set-back of the army under Grant.” Explaining that the coincidence of Blair’s vicious speech and the president’s renewal of his commission “seemed as if planned for dramatic effect, as parts of a conspiracy against a most important member of the Cabinet,” they demanded to know if Lincoln had known ahead of time the nature of Blair’s remarks.
Lincoln had prepared well for the encounter. The last thing he wanted was for Chase to resign on a point of honor. The rift between the radicals and conservatives in the Republican Party might then become irreparable. He gave the visitors his usual undivided attention. When they finished, Riddle recalled, “he arose, came round, and with great cordiality took each of us by the hand and evinced the greatest satisfaction at our presence.” Then, taking up a stack of papers on his desk, he inquired if either of them had seen his letter to Chase two months earlier when the secretary had offered to resign over his implication in the humiliating Pomeroy circular. Determining that Riddle had not, Lincoln read aloud the lines where he concurred with Chase that neither of them should be “held responsible for what our respective friends may do without our instigation or countenance.”
He explained that while he had great respect for Frank Blair, he “was annoyed and mortified by the speech.” He had, in fact, warned Blair against “pursuing a personal warfare.” As soon as he heard of Blair’s rant, Lincoln knew that “another beehive was kicked over” and considered canceling “the orders restoring him to the army and assigning him to command.” After assessing how much General Sherman valued Frank’s services, however, he had decided to let the orders stand.
In making his case, Riddle recalled, Lincoln “was plain, sincere, and most impressive.” Riddle and Spalding were “perfectly satisfied” and assured Lincoln that Chase would be, too. Once again, Lincoln had sutured a potentially dangerous wound within his administration and his party.
IT WAS A WARM DAY on June 7, 1864, when Republicans gathered in Baltimore to choose their candidates for president and vice president. Noah Brooks was moved by the sight of the people’s representatives gathering “in the midst of a civil war and in the actual din of battle” to perform the most precious function of democracy. The Democrats would also meet that summer, though they delayed their convention until the end of August to give themselves a better chance to react to the latest events on the battlefield.
As the delegates from twenty-five states flocked to the Republican Convention, which was relabeled the National Union Convention, Lincoln’s renomination was assured. So certain was the outcome that David Davis, who had been instrumental in guiding Lincoln to the nomination four years earlier, chose not to attend. He had originally planned to go, he told Lincoln, “but since the New York & Ohio Conventions, the necessity for doing so is foreclosed—I have kept count of all the States that have instructed, & you must be nominated by acclamation—if there had been a speck of opposition, I wd have gone to Baltimore—But the opposition is so utterly beaten, that the fight is not even interesting, and the services of no one is necessary.” In Judge Davis’s stead, Lincoln sent John Nicolay as his personal emissary to the convention.
Even Horace Greeley, while holding out for an alternative, acknowledged that the president had earned an honored place in the hearts of his fellow Americans. “The People think of him by night & by day & pray for him & their hearts are where they have made so heavy investments.” Long before the convention opened its doors, the official nominating committee said, “popular instinct had plainly indicated [Lincoln] as its candidate,” and the work of the convention was simply to register “the popular will.” While politicians in Washington may have entertained other prospects, Brooks observed, “the country at large really thought of no name but Lincoln’s.”
There were, of course, some pockets of resistance. At the end of May, several hundred malcontents had gathered in Cleveland’s Chapin Hall to nominate John Frémont for president on a third-party ticket. Frémont had never forgiven Lincoln for relieving him of command in 1861. Though he had eventually been offered another commission, he had refused upon learning that he would report to another general. His supporters were a mix of radicals, abolitionists, disappointed office seekers, and Copperheads. They hoped to split the Republican Party with a platform calling for a constitutional amendment ending slavery. They demanded that Congress, rather than the president, take the lead on Reconstruction, and pressed for the “confiscation of the lands of the rebels, and their distribution among the soldiers.”
Lincoln had been in the telegraph office when reports of the Frémont convention came over the wires. Hearing that the attendance was a mere four hundred of the expected thousands, he was reminded of a passage in the Bible. Opening his Bible to I Samuel 22:2, he read aloud: “And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became
a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men.”
The night before the Baltimore convention, Lincoln talked with Noah Brooks. When Brooks observed that his “renomination was an absolute certainty,” Lincoln “cheerfully conceded that point without any false modesty.” Understanding that there were several candidates for vice president, including the incumbent Hannibal Hamlin, New York’s Daniel Dickinson, and Tennessee’s military governor, Andrew Johnson, Lincoln declined to express his preference. He did say, however, that “he hoped that the convention would declare in favor of the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery,” and he asked Brooks to report back to him all “the odd bits of gossip” that a good reporter would pick up.
As expected, the convention was initially confronted with two contesting delegations from Missouri: an anti-Blair radical delegation pledged to vote for Grant as a means of expressing displeasure with Lincoln, and a pro-Blair conservative delegation pledged to Lincoln. With the president’s approval, the radical delegation was seated. Lincoln understood the importance, as one delegate put it, of integrating “all the elements of the Republican party—including the impracticables, the Pharisees, the better-than-thou declaimers, the long-haired men and the short-haired women.” Moreover, the radicals had tacitly agreed that they would switch their votes to Lincoln after the first ballot, making the president’s nomination unanimous.
Nothing better indicated the nation’s transformation since the Chicago convention four years earlier than the tumultuous applause that greeted the third resolution of the platform: “Resolved, That as Slavery was the cause, and now constitutes the strength, of this Rebellion…[we] demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic.” While upholding the president’s proclamation, which “aimed a death-blow at this gigantic evil,” the resolution continued: “we are in favor, furthermore,” of a constitutional amendment to “forever prohibit the existence of slavery” in the United States.
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