The Battles that Made Abraham Lincoln

by Larry Tagg

  When, by the middle of May, Washington was secure, Lincoln was pressed with the problem of what to do next. His April 15 call for troops had announced that “the first service assigned to the forces hereby called forth will probably be to re-possess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union,” and on the afternoon of April 25, after the arrival of the 7th New York regiment, Lincoln repeated to Hay that his plans were to “provide for the entire safety of the Capital … and then go down to Charleston and pay her the little debt we are owing her.” But this pipe dream soon evaporated.

  Instead, General Scott, meaning to avoid a long, bitter struggle by limiting the horrors of war, revealed on May 3 a plan that would “envelop the insurgent States and bring them to terms with less bloodshed than by any other plan.” Instead of an invasion, Scott proposed to rely on “the sure operation of a complete blockade of the Atlantic and Gulf ports,” along with “a powerful movement down the Mississippi to the ocean” with a fleet of gunboats supported by soldiers, undertaken in November, when the weather was cool and the troops were trained. Thus surrounded, the rebel government would suffocate and finally surrender. This method would take a long time to work, and the thrust would be in the West, while the eastern army stood on defense. Scott saw that this last piece would not be popular in the teeming East, and that his plan’s greatest obstacle would be “the impatience of our patriotic and loyal Union friends. They will urge instant and vigorous action, regardless, I fear, of consequences.”

  In this, Scott proved a great prophet. Newspapers scoffed at the slowness of his scheme, calling it the “Anaconda Plan.” In fact, Lincoln had already heard the first note of impatience as soon as troops started stepping off the trains at the Washington depot. Almost before the first arrivals could throw down their bedrolls in the Capitol building, the popular view was that Lincoln was not doing enough to subdue the rebellion. On May 1, two eminent Massachusetts abolitionists, Senator Henry Wilson and Judge Rockwood Hoar, called on Lincoln and every member of the Cabinet, urging aggressive fighting. On their heels, radicals Ben Wade and Zachary Chandler assailed Lincoln, “hot for war,” according to a witness. They spoke for millions in the North who, out of jingoism, impatience, and military ignorance, were weary of “drift” and infatuated with the fantasy of crushing treason with a single blow.

  To the war lovers in Congress and the millions at home cheering their boys off at train stations across the North, Lincoln seemed to be dragging his feet. Hostile campfires flickering every night on the Arlington Heights? Well, go get the traitors and hang them! The prickly Count Gurowski grumbled in his diary:

  Instead of boldly crushing … instead of striking at the traitors, the administration is continually on the lookout where the blows come from, scarcely having courage to ward them off. The deputations pouring from the North urge prompt, decided, crushing action. This thunder-voice of the twenty millions of freemen ought to nerve this senile administration. The Southern leaders do not lose one minute’s time; they spread the fire, arm, and attack with all the fury of traitors and criminals.

  The Northern merchants roar for the offensive; the administration is undecided.

  To many, Lincoln was yet again proving himself hopelessly unready. New York Senator Preston King thought him “not only unequal to the present crisis, but to the position he now holds at any time.” Consul to Paris John Bigelow, after listening to Lincoln discuss military matters for half an hour, came away struck by

  a certain lack of sovereignty. He seemed to me … like a man utterly unconscious of the space which the President of the United States occupied that day in the history of the human race, and of the vast power for the exercise of which he had become personally responsible. This impression was strengthened by Mr. Lincoln’s modest habit of disclaiming knowledge of affairs and familiarity with duties, and frequent avowals of ignorance, which, even where it exists, it is as well for a captain as far as possible to conceal from the public.

  Edwin Stanton was in harmony with King and Bigelow, blasting “the painful imbecility of Lincoln” in a letter to General John Dix in New York.

  The impatient multitude who demanded immediate action, however, had to wait—no move could be made against Virginia, after all, until its people voted to ratify its leaving the Union. And indeed, on May 23, the day the citizens of Virginia voted to secede, the Lincoln administration struck a blow. That night, under a full moon, Union troops ran across two bridges on the Potomac and fanned out over Arlington Heights and Alexandria. They seized a thin swath of Confederate soil against no opposition, with the loss of only one soldier, who, after racing to the roof of an Alexandria hotel to cut down a Confederate flag, was shotgunned by the owner.

  That soldier, however, was the young, impetuous Elmer Ellsworth, colonel of New York’s colorful Fire Zouaves and a dear friend of the President. News of his loss plunged the nation into mourning. Alexander McClure explained, “public sentiment had at that time no conception of the cruel sacrifices of war. The fall of a single soldier, Colonel Ellsworth, at Alexandria cast a profound gloom over the entire country.” Ellsworth’s lone sacrifice instantly blew new wind into the sails of the North’s ardor for battle. On May 27, New York lieutenant Francis Barlow wrote that the popular impatience for a crushing blow on the rebellion was so great that if Lincoln did not attack immediately, a military dictatorship might replace him. “Already the murmurs of discontent are ocean-loud against the slow and cautious courses of the war,” said Barlow.

  As the July 4 special session of Congress approached, Lincoln became absorbed in writing his Opening Message, and he depended more and more on General Scott to oversee military preparations. After June 19 he refused visitors so that he could devote himself to the Message entirely. His absence from the military hum caused the many who already considered him a puppet to further discount his influence in affairs. The New York Herald flew the headline “Something Wrong in High Quarters,” and warned that his “feeble” measures would weaken the Union cause in Europe. At the same time, Horace Greeley was fuming that instead of “energy, vigor, promptness, daring, decision,” there was “weakness, irresolution, hesitation, and delay.” The troops, he said, were “being demoralized by weeks of idleness.”

  Greeley’s frustration soon boiled over into print. On June 21, the editorial in his New York Tribune had a sarcastic bite: “Our soldiers have been requested to fire blank cartridges in all engagements with Southern forces … there is no intention to press this suppression of the rebellion … we are to run after the old harlot of a compromise.” Then, on June 24, a banner flared across the top of its editorial page:

  THE NATION’S WAR CRY

  Forward to Richmond! Forward to Richmond! The Rebel Congress must not be allowed to meet there on the 20th of July! BY THAT DATE THE PLACE MUST BE HELD BY THE NATIONAL ARMY!”

  The banner was reprinted day after day through early July, and the “Forward to Richmond!” cry was taken up in the Northern press, including the New York Times. “By no government in the wide world other than this of ours,” it ranted, “is treason treated so kindly or rebellion sprinkled with so much rosewater.” Even the faithful New York Evening Post had finally grown restless, observing, “The whole administration has been marked by a certain tone of languor… . We have been sluggish in our preparation and timid in our execution.”

  Greeley, the editors, the congressmen, and the millions knew nothing of war. William Russell of the London Times mocked “the arrogant tone with which writers of stupendous ignorance on military matters write of the operation which they think the generals should undertake.” Armies were not made from scratch in a week, or even a season. Winfield Scott, already dead set against an invasion, distrusted the fighting ability of the green volunteers gathering in Washington and continued to counsel delay at least until the soldiers could learn the basic elements of drill and maneuver.

  Gurowski scribbled the rebuttal to military men like Scott into his diary: “Strategy
—strategy repeats now every imbecile, and military fuss covers its ignorance by that sacramental word… . The people’s strategy is best: to rush in masses on Richmond.” At this early point in Lincoln’s presidency, when he lacked the stature to lead, the voice of the people was not something he could ignore. Northern morale must be sustained—by fighting, if necessary.

  Everyone knew the Confederate army was busy. Southern recruits were massing in Virginia at Harpers Ferry and the Norfolk naval yard. At Manassas Junction—only thirty miles from Washington—a small army assembled to defend the direct route to Richmond. This rebel mob so near the capital acted on the Northern public like a red flag to a bull. As one general ruefully recalled soon afterward, “The country could not understand, ignorant as it was of war and war’s requirements, how it could possibly be true that, after three months of preparation and of parade, an army of thirty thousand men should be still utterly unfit to move thirty miles against a series of earthworks held by no more than an equal number of men.” After all, Andrew Jackson had merely waved his hat, and his rude pioneers had beaten the British at New Orleans!

  * * *

  So on June 29, Lincoln convened a Cabinet meeting in his library to hear a plan of attack presented by Brigadier General Irvin McDowell, a protégé of Secretary Chase and a favorite of Radical Republicans. Unsurprisingly, it was the Radicals’ plan: a quick march to hit the rebels where they were. Lincoln approved it.

  The jump-off was scheduled for July 9, but was delayed because of a lack of horses and mules to pull the wagons. When McDowell’s army of some 30,000 finally lurched into motion on July 16, there were only enough wagons for ammunition and ambulances. There was no cavalry to scout ahead, no staff to provide information, and no good maps to guide the officers through the dense woods. The men, unused to discipline, treated the march like a lark, halting to fill their canteens when they crossed a stream and deserting their columns to pick blackberries whenever they got hungry.

  Once McDowell’s men arrived in front of the rebels on July 18, it took three days before the real fighting started. On the day of the battle, July 21, Washingtonians hurried down to the battlefield—either in their carriages and buggies or on horseback—and spread out their blankets and baskets to enjoy a Sunday picnic while they watched the stirring spectacle of Union victory. When the cannon roared, one lady with an opera glass within earshot of William Russell exclaimed, “That is splendid. Oh, my! Is not that first-rate? I guess we will be in Richmond this time tomorrow.”

  Things did not remain splendid. The thousands of Union soldiers who had been up all night marching around the enemy left flank were exhausted by the time the fighting began. The combat was prolonged, confusing, and often waged at very close quarters. The afternoon was waning when late-appearing rebel reinforcements reached the field. A rout ensued as the tired, panicstricken Union soldiers pushed their way through the debris of battle amid the heat, dust, noise, and confusion. Then it started to rain, and the mob of refugees surged back toward the capital like the rush of a great river, soaked and streaked with the clay of the roads, throwing away knapsacks, belts, canteens, blankets, coats, and muskets. By the next morning, the residents of Washington awoke to find the beaten, footsore, mud-caked soldiers sleeping in the dripping rain—on the steps of houses, by basements or fences, on sidewalks, and in vacant lots.

  As the wires carried news of the casualties from the battle of Bull Run across the North, citizens were horrified as the figures rose to 5,000 killed, wounded, and missing for both sides. Americans had never lost so many men in any battle in its history—this was closer to the losses in the entire War of 1812 or the entire Mexican War. Recriminations after the bloody debacle were many and fierce. The Richmond Enquirer, of course, knew right where to put the blame: “Of these men Abraham Lincoln is the murderer. We charge their blood upon him. May the Heavens, which have rebuked his madness thus far, still battle his demon designs.”

  From Washington, Stanton wrote to Buchanan:

  The imbecility of the Administration culminated in that catastrophe—an irretrievable misfortune and national disgrace never to be forgotten are to be added to the ruin of all peaceful pursuits and national bankruptcy as the result of Lincoln’s “running the machine” for five months… . The capture of Washington seems now inevitable … . While Lincoln, Scott, and the Cabinet are disputing who is to blame, the city is unguarded and the enemy at hand.

  Stanton guessed that it would not be long “until Jeff Davis turns out the whole concern.”

  Radical Senator Ben Wade of Ohio, too, sneered at Lincoln’s haplessness, saying, “I do not wonder that people desert to Jefferson Davis, as he shows brains; I may desert myself.” Illinois Senator Lyman Trumbull judged that Lincoln was “not equal to the occasion”; he lacked “positive action.” The New York Herald blamed the loss on the abolitionists, but rebuked Lincoln for weakness and for trusting “everything to his Cabinet, to his party and to Providence.” He must, insisted the Herald, “cease to be the politician, and perform the duties of the statesman.” Among those who blamed Lincoln for pushing the recruits prematurely into battle was General Scott, albeit in a backhanded way. “Sir,” Scott said to Lincoln, “I am the greatest coward in America… . I deserve removal because I did not stand up, when my army was not in condition for fighting, and resist it to the last.” Lincoln immediately perceived the slight, saying, “Your conversation seems to imply that I forced you to fight this battle.” Scott declined to pursue the subject further.

  Greeley, wracked by guilt for his heavy hand in ordering the advance from the pages of the Tribune and fearing the Union irrevocably gone, sobbed mightily to Lincoln in a letter dated “Midnight” for dramatic effect: “You are not considered a great man, and I am a hopelessly broken one.”

  “Comedy of Death.” Lincoln is a harlequin onstage with generals as toys.

  * * *

  For most, a grim new realism dawned. As the three-months men went back to their homes, a new dedication grew up in the North, a new resolve to take firmer steps to crush the rebellion. The Chicago Tribune, which earlier had predicted a short war, blew a new trumpet: “If this is to be a war of years instead of months, so let it be.” The debacle at Bull Run, however, signaled the end of the solidarity brought on by the war fever, and the end of the gala period that Lincoln had enjoyed before the defeat. One editor foreshadowed a new peace movement when he wrote to Seward on August 9, after making a tour of the North: “There is no longer observable that feeling of unanimity in support of the Administration … or that confidence in the war and its ultimate issue, which pervaded the popular heart a few weeks ago… . There is an anti-war party slowly but surely forming all over the North.”

  There was a different group in the North, however, whose members were glad of a good blood-letting. Indeed, they believed that the defeat at Bull Run had helped their cause, since if the war became drawn out and bitter, either the United States must be destroyed or slavery must die. Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner wrote to abolitionist Wendell Phillips that “our defeat was the worst event & the best event in our history; the worst, as it was the greatest present calamity & shame,—the best, as it made the extinction of Slavery inevitable. Be hopeful. I am. Never so much so.”

  Chapter 18

  The Rise of the Radical Republicans

  “Thus Mr. Lincoln is deserted by his party.”

  Presidents in Abraham Lincoln’s time were seldom heard from. After a President’s inaugural address, his statements usually came only once a year—in the Annual Message to Congress, the precursor of the State of the Union address, delivered on the first Monday of December at the opening of the congressional session. The bombs bursting in April of 1861, however, compelled Lincoln to call a special session of Congress for July 4, and his eighty-day dictatorship in the interim obliged him to formally ask Congress to authorize his unconstitutional acts.

  More than that, though, Lincoln’s July Message to Congress was needed to defi
ne the nation’s war aims. Outrage over Fort Sumter was universal, but many in the North were like Nathaniel Hawthorne, who wrote to a friend in May, “Though I approve the war as much as any man, I don’t quite understand what we are fighting for, or what definite result can be expected.” Northern loyalty was fragmented. It was a time when a man’s patriotism rested with his own state, or, at farthest, his own section. In the South, the defense of slave property and the dread of invasion had submerged state rivalries and quickly made that section a unified nation with the single aim of self-preservation. In the North, however, there were a variety of war aims in the several sections, and there was danger that the national good might be obscured by local prejudices. The Yankees of New England would fight to free the slaves and to maintain the mercantile system that had worked so strongly to their advantage as the manufacturing center of the country. The frontiersmen of the Far Northwest, however, cared little for the preservation of New England’s mercantile power, and even less for the freedom of black men who would compete with them as settlers; but they would fight to expand their influence into the territories of the West. The farmers of Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, where neither abolitionism, nor mercantilism, nor freedom of the West had any strong appeal, would fight for the Union tradition. The men in the Border States would fight only for the Union with slavery intact. The immigrant wage slaves in the teeming cities of the Eastern seaboard would fight only for pay.

  Lincoln’s Message was needed to cement the Northern war purpose, but also to cement his party. Now that the exodus of southern Democrats had left the Republicans in charge, the business of governing exposed a chasm between the two wings of the Republican Party: the conservatives, who prized the Union above all; and the Radicals, who pressed for ending slavery and punishing the rebels.