The Battles that Made Abraham Lincoln

by Larry Tagg

  The Radicals cheered Lincoln’s stab at the officers. For them, the Democratic gentleman’s club at West Point was too chummy. This was at the heart of Republicans’ distrust of McClellan and the other West Pointers at the tip of the Union spear. The Radicals doubted that such men had the desire to fight their high-bred mess hall pals at the head of the Confederate armies. Ben Wade went on record as saying that West Point turned out false, ungrateful men; it was “aristocratical” and “exclusive.” Zack Chandler swore that West Point had recently hatched more traitors than in all history since Judas Iscariot, and not all of them had gone South. Republicans were especially nervous about officers’ talk of making McClellan dictator.

  * * *

  Now, as the weeks grew chill and the forests went gold and red, the army still squatted in its camps. McClellan’s genius for organization and training had wrought the most splendid army the continent had ever seen. It had grown to 150,000 men, and had been drilling non-stop for three months. But, as Attorney General Bates had confided to his journal as early as September 30, “We absolutely need some dashing expeditions. The public spirit is beginning to quail under the depressing influence of our inaction.” People expected the army to deliver quick, hard blows against the rebels, and here were the Confederate Stars and Bars still fluttering from Virginia hilltops maddeningly close to the capital city.

  McClellan would not move because, by a trick in his psyche, at the same time he thought he was superior to the President, he thought he was inferior to the enemy. The second conviction depended on the first: on October 31, the same day that he complained to his wife about the “incapables” in the government and “the cowardice of the President,” he wrote to the Secretary of War that the rebels facing him were 150,000 men “well drilled and equipped”—which was three times their actual number. His thinking seems to have been the same as Count Gurowski’s, who had earlier grumbled into his diary, “They do it differently on the other side of the Potomac. There the leaders are in earnest.” McClellan, like Gurowski, was convinced that the South was always one step ahead of the North, and his belief was built on his fixed faith in the aristocracy. The plantation aristocrats—the gentlemen—would always be better equipped, better drilled, better disciplined. They would naturally be better prepared for war than the “gorilla” in the Oval Office.

  Men of McClellan’s breeding had only scorn for the vulgar crowd in Washington who had been lifted into power by the muddy-booted democracy. A hundred times better was the South, where Jefferson Davis had been named President by the acclamation of his elite peers, as George Washington had been. A comparison between Davis and Lincoln was an embarrassment to the latter. Davis had been educated at West Point. Davis had been a hero in the Mexican War. Davis had been Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce. Surely he knew how to raise an army and win a war. Even the arch-Republican New York Tribune admitted that Davis was “commonly presumed the abler of the two; he is certainly the better grammarian.” The little children in Virginia sang the song:

  Jeff Davis rides a snow-white horse;

  Abe Lincoln rides a mule.

  Jeff Davis is a gentleman;

  Abe Lincoln is a fool.

  Haunted by the feeling that his own Commander-in-Chief was too inept to provide him with resources that the vastly superior enemy certainly enjoyed, McClellan persisted in thinking he was outnumbered throughout his career at the head of the Army of the Potomac. There was no one to argue with him—in the Civil War, all intelligence was gathered by the army, none by the tiny government in Washington.

  By October the Radicals were chafing at McClellan’s delay. The weather was fine and cool, the roads hard and dry. Why was there no advance, no battle? Horace Greeley forgot the lessons of the summer and began to reprise his cry of “On to Richmond!” in the columns of the Tribune. By mid-October Zack Chandler had lost faith in McClellan, growling, “He seems to be devoting himself to parades & military shows instead of cleaning the country of rebels.” McClellan had foreseen their impatience, and in a meeting with Lincoln on October 10 had extracted a promise. “I intend to be careful and do as well as possible,” the general said. “Don’t let them hurry me, is all I ask.”

  Lincoln replied, “You shall have your own way in the matter, I assure you.”

  While McClellan dashed along his lines and enjoyed the display of his troops, the Confederates went to work building batteries on the banks of the lower Potomac, which scared off sea traffic and effectively blockaded the capital. It was an embarrassment to the nation, and the complaints of the Radicals grew to a wail, especially after the bloody calamity at the Battle of Ball’s Bluff on October 21. The battle was a nasty, mismanaged affair on the Virginia bank of the upper Potomac thirty miles above the capital, and it cost the life of Lincoln’s dear friend Colonel Edward Baker, who was cut down along with scores of his men, many of them shot in the back as they frantically tried to swim across the river to safety. The bodies washed against the pilings of the Washington bridges for days, and the Radicals, who had started to gather for the opening of the December session of Congress, seethed. Chandler despaired of the “timid, vacil[l]ating and inefficient” Lincoln government. Wade called Lincoln a “fool,” and snorted, “You could not inspire Old Abe … with courage, decision and enterprise, with a galvanic battery.” Even inside the Cabinet there was concern. Attorney General Bates lamented, “It is now evident that the Adm[inistratio]n has no system—no unity—no accountability—no subordination.” Secretary of War Cameron was throwing up his hands, asking, “What shall we do? Neither the President nor I know anything about military matters.”

  Five days after Ball’s Bluff, the Radicals descended on Lincoln. “This evening the Jacobin Club, represented by Trumbull, Chandler, and Wade, came up to worry the administration into a battle,” wrote John Hay in his diary; “The wild howl of the summer is to be renewed.” Complaining that the war was bogging down, they demanded an advance—a defeat could be no worse than a delay! Lincoln put them off, and a frustrated Chandler explained the country’s paralysis to a friend: “Lincoln means well but has no force of character. He is surrounded by Old Fogy Army officers more than half of whom are downright traitors and the other one half sympathize with the South.” Lincoln antagonized the Jacobins by remaining steadfastly on the side of McClellan. He met with the general to warn him that he must consider the rising tide of restlessness, but ended by telling him, “You must not fight until you are ready.”

  So more weeks passed. By November 20, when McClellan staged a giant review of 70,000 troops—the grandest yet—on a vast Virginia field, reports of the neat regiments arrayed in their straight rows no longer delighted the Northern people. Now, they snickered at the daily bulletin from the capital: “All quiet on the Potomac.” Belief in McClellan was beginning to slip away.

  * * *

  People’s confidence in the government as a whole dwindled as well. In late November a group of distinguished Bostonian visitors who called at the White House came away saddened, one saying of Lincoln, “We have seen it in his face: hopeless honesty; that is all.” His companion was Julia Ward Howe, who had just days before written the lyrics to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in her hotel room. She wrote how Lincoln told them he had “heerd” a good story, and she observed that with the war dragging on, few had faith in their President: “The most charitable held that he meant well.” British author Anthony Trollope, visiting Washington at the time, described a scene of melancholy, a city of downcast faces, “with that sort of indifference which arises from a break down of faith in anything.” Even Lincoln himself, attending a concert in the White House by the popular abolitionist Hutchinson family singers, looked worn-out and dejected. Twice during the performance he closed his eyes in exhaustion.

  Then came more bad news for Lincoln. On November 25, Secretary of War Simon Cameron released his annual report to Congress. Already widely distrusted for his corruption, Cameron’s stunning inadequacy at the War Department
had made him the most despised member of the cabinet. With his practiced eye on the political weather vane, he had recognized the coming strength of the Radicals, and he attempted to save his job by joining them. He included a paragraph in his report urging that captured slaves be used as soldiers, which went far beyond the Confiscation Act passed in the summer session. He sent a copy of his report to Lincoln on November 30, but Lincoln, with characteristic inattention to the business of the Cabinet, didn’t look at it. Taking Lincoln’s silence for approval, Cameron mailed his report to postmasters for release to newspapers with Lincoln’s forthcoming Annual Message to Congress. Too late, Lincoln discovered his slip. He immediately ordered that all copies of Cameron’s report be seized, with a new paragraph to replace the inflammatory one. Some copies of the original had already reached the press, however, and were widely reprinted. Lincoln was forced to publicly repudiate Cameron’s provocative idea, and Radicals were incensed at the President for blocking another blow at slavery. One of Lincoln’s earliest supporters, editor C. H. Ray of the Chicago Tribune, voiced the depth of outrage at this newest betrayal, writing, “Old Abe is now unmasked, and we are sold out.”

  On the heels of this came even more bad news. In November, two Confederate diplomats, Mason and Slidell, had run the sea blockade and were on their way to Europe on a British ship, the Trent, when it was overtaken and boarded by a zealous Union naval officer, who forcibly dragged the two diplomats off the ship and imprisoned them in Boston harbor. At the news, every super-patriot went wild with joy. The British ambassador in Washington, Lord Lyons, spoiled the celebration when he presented a formal demand that the United States apologize to Britain and release the prisoners or prepare for war. Lincoln, with no military successes to his credit and with the Radicals still fuming over the Frémont debacle, was faced with an international crisis that threatened war with the mighty British at the same time as the rebellion. In the end, the Lincoln government prudently backed down and released the two Confederate envoys.

  The international embarrassment of a retreat before the British ultimatum, however, added fuel to the Radicals’ ire. As Congress convened, the Radicals were in a high fever, spoiling for a fight with the President. Everywhere there was anxiety and discouragement. Lincoln, the nominee of a party that had been founded on antislavery, had twice denied slaves the blessings of freedom in the first fall of the war. Pro-slavery Democrats, McClellan and Halleck, were at the head of the two Union armies East and West, and neither appeared anxious to strike a blow against the enemies of the Union. It had been almost eight months since rebels had fired on Fort Sumter, and five months since Bull Run, and neither defeat had been avenged, even though the manhood of the North had leaped to the standard and the governors of the states had stretched every sinew to arm and equip them. Not only was there no action, there was no plan of action. The mood in Congress was represented by Senator Grimes of Iowa, who wrote to his wife, “I reached Washington last night, weary with the journey, and disgusted with … the course of the Administration. If the other Northwestern members feel as I do, there will be something more during the coming session than growling and showing our teeth. And, from what I hear, they do feel excited and incensed.” In the whispers and murmurings in the corridors of the Capitol were hints that the Radicals were grimly whetting their blades. By bold enactments they would gain control of the war and force emancipation.

  * * *

  On December 3, 1861, a congressional clerk strode down the aisle of the convened members of both Houses to read Lincoln’s First Annual Message to Congress. Those who hoped for a ringing statement of purpose and decision were disappointed. The Message was a loose, rambling laundry list, drifting from topic to topic—the London Times called it “ill arranged and worse expressed.” Lincoln seemed to want to show that things were business-as-usual with the United States, but his Message succeeded only in advertising a distracted president caught up in mundane details. It had no phrases that would reach across years or inspire multitudes. Nowhere in it was there a signal of energy in winning the war. The Cincinnati Commercial’s verdict was typical: “It is not a great State paper. As for its style—enough is said when we observe that Mr. Lincoln certainly wrote it himself… . [H]e brings to the aid of the country no such aid as first rate Executive ability.” London’s Saturday Review said the Message gave “a fair picture of the man—illiterate, narrow-minded, technical, without any definite aim or policy.”

  In the Message, Lincoln ignored the Radicals; he included not one word to please them. His only mention of emancipation came in a proposal to colonize confiscated slaves abroad. Instead of embracing any part of their ultra-Republican program, he warned against making the war a “violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle,” and he told the nation, “We should not be in haste to determine that radical and extreme measures, which may reach the loyal as well as the disloyal, are indispensable.”

  Thaddeus Stevens reacted violently, sputtering that Lincoln was an untrue and unsound Republican whom the conservative Northwest had foisted on the party. Enraged opposition spread as telegraph wires relayed the Message to the newspapers. Three men who had worked hardest for Lincoln’s nomination in Chicago now signaled their loss of faith in him. In New York, Horace Greeley criticized the President’s faint-hearted conservatism in the pages of the Tribune; the Chicago Tribune’s C. H. Ray called Lincoln “reactionary and feeble,” adding, “when the time comes, we are ready to oppose Lincoln, the cabinet, McClellan or anybody else”; and Judge Davis washed his hands of his former friend in a letter to his wife, “There is no greatness about him. He is simply a stump speaker.”

  Other prominent Illinoisans derided Lincoln’s Annual Message in letters to their senator, Lyman Trumbull. “Not one single manly, bold, dignified position taken,” wrote one, “but a … timid, timeserving, commonplace sort of an abortion of a message, cold enough … to freeze h-ll over.” Another rued of Lincoln, “No man … ever threw away so completely, an opportunity … to make himself revered, and loved by millions, and to secure to himself a place and a name in history … .” “Let the administration continue thus,” wrote another, “and the Republican Party would be forever broken and Lincoln ‘the most unpopular man in the nation.’” Even more ominous was one that said, “Every one is … disappointed at the Presidents course … . The first man I met … this morning in a rage declared that if a speedy change … did not soon occur, he hoped some Brutus would arise and love his country more than he did the President.” Trumbull did not contradict them. He had reached the conclusion that Lincoln “lacks confidence in himself and the will necessary in this great emergency.”

  Abolitionists abused the Annual Message and its author. “What a wishy-washy message from the President,” wrote William Lloyd Garrison. “It is … evident that he is a man of very small caliber, and had better be at his old business of splitting rails … . He has evidently not a drop of anti-slavery blood in his veins.” Wendell Phillips denounced Lincoln’s failure to mention emancipation as a shameful evasion, crying, “I demand of the government a policy!” to the roar of an Anti-Slavery Society crowd. He belittled Lincoln’s honesty by pointing out that “as a pint-pot may be full, and yet not so full as a quart, so there is a vast difference between the honesty of a small man and the honesty of a statesman.” In the same vein, the Anti-Slavery Society published a claim that Lincoln was a hypocrite, good for nothing more than a lesson in the danger of half measures. The Society indicted the President with wit and at length:

  A sort of bland, respectable middle-man, between a very modest Right and the most arrogant and exacting Wrong; a convenient hook whereon to hang appeals at once to a moderate anti-slavery feeling and to a timid conservatism practically pro-slavery … . He thinks slavery wrong, but opposes the immediate abolition of it; believes it ought to be kept out of the Territories, but would admit it to the Union in new States; asserts the power of Congress to abolish it in the District of Columbia, but would have leave asked of
the slave-holders for the exercise of that power; considers slave-catching as a “distasteful” business, but would enforce it by Congressional enactments, not only under but beyond the Constitution’s warrant for it; dislikes the slave trade, but is not ready to forbid it between the States; affirms the equality of white men and black in natural rights, but is “not in favor of negro citizenship”; in short, if we rightly understand him, regards impartial justice as a most excellent thing, but as somewhat too fine and costly for everyday wear.

  Among the Radicals, Lincoln’s respect for moderate sentiments was seen as kowtowing to the Border States. “For the last three months K[entuck]y has been the government,” wrote one exasperated critic to Senator Trumbull. “We are paying to[o] much for Kentucky… . I hope Mr. Lincoln can leave Washington without making Buchanan’s administration respectable.” Exasperated, James Lowell demanded, “How many times are we to save Kentucky and lose our self-respect?”

  Now that they were again convened in Congress, the Radicals could show their muscle. Gone was the tentativeness of the previous summer, a fact they made clear at once. On December 4, one day after hearing of the President’s Annual Message, the House refused to re-adopt the conservative Crittenden Resolution of July—a sharp denial of Lincoln’s go-slow appeal. Notice was served that Congress would make the end of slavery an object of the war. Horace Greeley exhorted the Radicals from his pulpit at the New York Tribune: “It is high time that we had either war or peace,” he thundered, “and a contest in which we guard and protect our enemies on their most exposed and critical point is not war. It is at best one of those sham fights so current of late on the Potomac.”

  The army might have been Lincoln’s saving grace in these dark days. It carried the fortunes of Lincoln’s government on the points of its bayonets. As would be the case throughout the war, a victory in battle, a strategic point captured, even so much as an energetic advance, would more than anything else inspire the Northern people and boost confidence in Lincoln.