Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  Senator Charles Sumner, disappointed at not receiving the post that Adams won, resented both him and the president. To mollify Sumner, Lincoln allowed him carte blanche in awarding patronage to other Massachusetts Republicans. Three of the handful of first-class diplomatic posts went to residents of the Bay State: Adams, Burlingame, and Motley. This caused Midwesterners to complain that New Englanders had “every thing worth having—eleven chairmanships of committees in the Senate, a Vice-Presidency, a Cabinet office, the highest foreign mission, and two others of the first class, and a myriad of other lesser appointments.”181 When Sumner and Congressman John B. Alley urged the appointment of yet another Massachusetts resident as secretary of the London legation, the president rebuffed them. Tactfully, he agreed that their state could ably fill all the diplomatic and consular posts, adding “that he considered Massachusetts the banner State of the Union, and admired its institutions and people so much that he had sent his ‘Bob’ … to Harvard for an education.” But, Lincoln explained, he had already appointed several Massachusetts citizens to diplomatic offices and that the man he had selected as secretary of the legation was from a swing state whose influential leaders he could not afford to alienate. Alley recalled that the president’s reasoning, “together with his shrewd compliment to Massachusetts, restored our good humor.” But, the president added, “I hope you will give me a little time before I hear from Massachusetts again.” The congressman and Sumner found the explanation satisfactory.182 Dayton became minister to France, a nation whose tongue he did not speak. In Paris he proved a capable but unexceptional diplomat.

  Southern Appointments

  Lincoln bolstered Southern Unionists by giving patronage to non-Republicans in the Upper South and Border States. To John A. Gilmer he explained that in Slave States with few Republicans, “I do not expect to inquire for the politics of the appointee, or whether he does or does not own slaves. I intend in that matter to accommodate the people in the several localities, if they themselves will allow me to accommodate them. In one word, I never have been, am not now, and probably never shall be in a mood of harassing the people either north or south.”183 To show that he was reaching out to Democrats and Constitutional Unionists, he cited the example of Louisville, where he appointed a John Bell supporter as postmaster rather than a Republican aspirant. Lincoln told a group of Baltimoreans who urged him to appoint only Republicans to office that “he was aware that the republicans who lived in Southern States were brave men, and fond of taking a tilt, but he doubted whether that would be the correct principle upon which he should settle the question, as to who should be Collector and Postmaster of Baltimore.”184 He authorized a friend to inform Maryland Governor Thomas H. Hicks, whose refusal to summon the legislature was widely regarded as a brave pro-Union stand, that “your recommendation will weigh tons for any appointments in Maryland.”185 Hicks told Seward that “[e]verything depends upon proper appointments to leading places in border States.”186 Maryland ex-Congressman Henry Winter Davis moaned that it was “disheartening to see Democrats whose only merit is that they served Buchanan” continue in office “when the active & young men of the Republican party are wholly thrust aside.” Ominously he expressed the hope that in 1864 the Republicans would choose a president who “will weed out all democratic & old fogey influence from the Govt.”187 (In time, Davis would become a bitter enemy of the president.) Congressman James M. Ashley of Ohio expressed similar regrets.

  Lincoln’s policy sometimes backfired. In Washington, D.C., the fight over the local postmastership caused much trouble. The president wanted to name his friend from congressional days, Nathan Sargent, but felt constrained not to. (Sargent eventually won the post of commissioner of customs in Connecticut.) Lewis Clephane, former business manager of the antislavery National Era and secretary of the National Republican Association of Washington, was initially passed over in favor of an undeserving hack who had performed no services for the cause. Eventually, Clephane won that job, though his performance in it displeased the postmaster general. After acquiescing in Ward Hill Lamon’s selection as marshal, Republicans in the District expected to receive the other posts. They were sorely disappointed when a resident of Maine became a naval officer in the customhouse and a New Yorker was named commissioner of public buildings. Other such appointments led Benjamin Brown French to lament that “Abraham seems to be inclined to ignore us Republicans [in Washington] on the ground that we are not popular!!”188

  The president encouraged supporters of Kentuckian John J. Crittenden’s candidacy for a seat on the Supreme Court. Upon assuming command of the State Department, Seward (evidently with Lincoln’s approval) immediately requested Edwin M. Stanton to draw up papers nominating Crittenden to the high court. The secretary confidently predicted that Crittenden would be confirmed, but Radical Republicans, including Chase and Trumbull, objected so vehemently that the plan was scrapped. Lincoln stated “that he will not make any appointment which will be calculated to divide the Republicans in the Senate, as he desires to so act as to consolidate and strengthen the party.”189

  As he promised in his inaugural, Lincoln strove to appoint men to posts in the South who were unobjectionable to local residents. He urged his cabinet secretaries to make no removals on political grounds in that region, especially Virginia. When Montgomery Blair selected a postal agent for the Old Dominion who proved so unpopular that after his first run he was threatened with death should he return, Lincoln “expressed his regret that any obnoxious person was appointed mail agent on any mail route” in Virginia.190 To one faction of Virginia Unionists who appealed for patronage, Lincoln “replied that he must pursue a cautious policy” and showed them a letter from Virginia Congressman Sherrard Clemens recommending that further action on Old Dominion appointments be postponed. To weaken Clemens’s influence, John C. Underwood of another faction suggested that Lincoln be shown a letter in which Clemens described the president, after interviewing him, as “a cross between a sandhill crane and Andalusian Jackass,” “vain, weak, puerile, hypocritical, without manners, without moral grace,” an “abolitionist of the Lovejoy and Sumner type,” “by all odds the weakest man who has ever been elected—worse than Taylor, and he was bad enough.” When “he talks to you [he] punches you under your ribs. He swears equal to uncle Toby, and in every particular, morally and mentally, I have lost all respect for him.” Clemens was shocked to discover that Lincoln “did not know what the Adams amendment was until I told him.” The congressman predicted that “Virginia under his follies and puerilities, will secede.”191 To Clemens’s embarrassment, his unflattering assessment of Lincoln appeared in the press.

  As Lincoln dealt with patronage squabbles, the Fort Sumter crisis simmered ominously. He must choose among three options: should he reinforce the garrison, merely resupply it, or surrender it?

  22

  “You Can Have No Conflict Without Being

  Yourselves the Aggressors”

  The Fort Sumter Crisis

  (March–April 1861)

  One of Lincoln’s greatest challenges was taming his secretary of state. “I can’t afford to let Seward take the first trick,” he told Nicolay in early March.1 While struggling with the Fort Sumter dilemma, Lincoln had to keep the wily New Yorker, who presumed he would serve as the Grand Vizier of the administration, from taking not just the first trick but the entire rubber. Seward hoped to dominate Lincoln just as he had dominated President Zachary Taylor. Charles Francis Adams, Jr., who knew and admired Seward, aptly described the Sage of Auburn’s frame of mind as he settled into his new position as secretary of state: “He thought Lincoln a clown, a clod, and planned to steer him by … indirection, subtle maneuvering, astute wriggling and plotting, crooked paths. He would be Prime Minister; he would seize the reins from a nerveless President; keep Lincoln separated from other Cabinet officers—[hold] as few Cabinet meetings as possible; overawe and browbeat Welles and Cameron—get the War Navy and State [departments] really under his own co
ntrol.”2

  Seward evidently wished the motto of the administration to be, “The King reigns, but does not govern.”3 He told a European diplomat that there “exists no great difference between an elected president of the United States and a hereditary monarch. The latter is called to the throne through the accident of birth, the former through the chances which make his election possible. The actual direction of public affairs belongs to the leader of the ruling party here just as in a hereditary principality.”4 The New Yorker considered himself, not Lincoln, the “leader of the ruling party.” In his own eyes, he was a responsible, knowledgeable veteran statesman who must guide the naïve, inexperienced Illinoisan toward sensible appointments and policies. Unlike Lincoln, he did not believe that the new administration had to carry out the Republicans’ Chicago platform. At a dinner given by Stephen A. Douglas in February 1861, Seward proposed a toast: “Away with all parties, all platforms, all previous committals, and whatever else will stand in the way of restoration of the American Union.”5 That same month, Seward told former Kentucky Governor Charles S. Morehead: “if this whole matter is not satisfactorily settled within sixty days after I am seated in the saddle, and hold the reins firmly in my hand, I will give you my head for a football.”6 Soon thereafter he crowed: “I have built up the Republican party; I have brought it to triumph; but its advent to power is accompanied by great difficulties & perils. I must save the party & save the Government in its hands. To do this, war must be averted; the negro question must be dropped; the ‘irrepressible conflict’ ignored; & a Union party, to embrace the border slave States inaugurated. I have already whipped [Virginia Senators James M.] Mason & [R. M. T.] Hunter in their own State. I must crush out [Jefferson] Davis, [Robert] Toombs & their colleagues in sedition in their respective States. Saving the border States to the Union by moderation & justice, the people of the Cotton States, unwillingly led into secession, will rebel against their leaders & reconstruction will follow.”7

  Charles Sumner, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned Lincoln: “You must watch him [Seward] & overrule him!”8 A prominent Indiana Republican feared that “Seward and his friends would create the impression that it was his administration! That will not do. The people must be made to understand from the start that Mr. Lincoln is the President in fact, as well as in name.”9 To control the meddlesome, headstrong, mercurial secretary of state was a Herculean task for the president, eight years Seward’s junior and far less politically experienced. Seward naively thought that Southern disaffection could be overcome by clever intrigue, and he optimistically declared that the Deep South “will be unable to exist for long as a separate confederation and will return to the Union sooner or later.”10 He remarked insouciantly that “he & all his brothers & sisters seceded from home in early life but they all returned. So would the States.”11

  The Fateful Decision to Relieve Fort Sumter

  The day after the inauguration, Lincoln was astounded not only by news that Major Anderson had a mere six weeks’ worth of supplies, but also by a letter from General Scott stating that Anderson and his fellow officers believed that they must either surrender or be overrun. Scott recommended that the garrison be evacuated. The obese, vain, aged general was retreating from his hard-line position of October, when he had urged the reinforcement of forts throughout the South, including those in Charleston harbor. On March 3, he had written to Seward suggesting that it would be unwise, if not actually impossible, to subdue the South militarily and that it might be best for Lincoln either to endorse the Crittenden Compromise or else tell the Cotton States, “Wayward sisters, depart in peace!”12

  Scott’s unsettling about-face was effected by Seward, who exercised great influence over the general. All winter long the senator had assiduously cultivated him. Montgomery Blair thought that Scott had “fallen into Mr. [Charles Francis] Adams’ error in regarding Mr. Seward as the head of the government, and for this reason surrendered his own better judgment to that of Mr. Seward.”13 On March 6, at Lincoln’s request, Scott briefed Welles, Cameron, Seward, and other officials, who were dumbfounded when the general reiterated what he had written to the president. Welles and Cameron urged that the administration “take immediate and efficient measures to relieve and reinforce the garrison.” Scott did not express an opinion but pointed out that an earlier attempt to provision the fort had failed. He added that since Major Anderson had shifted his base from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, the South Carolinians had surrounded the latter with formidable batteries and were preparing an attack. Scott acknowledged, however, that the question was “one for naval authorities to decide.”14

  The following day, Lincoln again met with this small group for an informal discussion. Scott and his chief engineer, Joseph G. Totten, agreed that it would be impracticable to reinforce Sumter. Welles and his advisor, Captain Silas Stringham, insisted that the navy could do so. The skeptical Seward offered many suggestions and raised several questions, but no conclusions were reached.

  On March 9, the full cabinet convened to hear some unsettling news. “I was astonished to be informed that Fort Sumter … must be evacuated,” Bates confided to his diary.15 That same day, Lincoln asked Scott how long Sumter could hold out, whether he could supply or reinforce the garrison within that time frame, and what additional means might be needed to accomplish that goal if present means were insufficient. He asked the general to put his answers in writing and to “exercise all possible vigilance for the maintenance of all the places within the military department of the United States; and to promptly call upon all the departments of the government for the means necessary to that end.”16 Incredibly, Scott ignored that directive. Instead, he simply replied that to save Sumter, he would need a large fleet, 25,000 more troops, and several months to train them. “As a practical military question,” he said, “the time for succoring Fort Sumter, with any means at hand, had passed away nearly a month ago. Since then a surrender under assault, or from starvation, has been merely a question of time.”17 On March 11, Scott drafted an order instructing Anderson to evacuate the fort.

  Lincoln gave serious thought to issuing that order but hesitated to do so. He may well have been tempted to accept Scott’s advice. After all, the general spoke with great authority, and the president had no military background. Scott’s letter criticized the Buchanan administration for allowing the South Carolinians to surround Fort Sumter with artillery, and Lincoln could plausibly blame the necessity for removing the garrison on his predecessor. But if Lincoln did so think, he did not so act. Instead he asserted his leadership against both Scott and Seward.

  Based on leaks (probably from Seward), newspapers reported that the administration would remove the Sumter garrison. This speculation touched off a firestorm of indignant protest. In Illinois, that rumor cast a pall over Republicans, including Lincoln’s good friend William Butler, who expostulated: “death before disgrace.”18 Another Republican leader in the Prairie State insisted that “it is of no use (however true it may be) to tell us, we can not keep or retake the public property at the South (‘hold, occupy, and possess.’) We can try. We can shed our treasure and blood in the defence and support of our principles and lawful rights as our Fathers did.” Thousands who had voted for Lincoln in 1860 stood ready to “cheerfully shoulder their musket and hazard their all in this world in support of the principles for which we contended then. We have compromised and truckled long enough. War is bad. Civil war is worse, but if liberty and the right of the people to govern themselves was worth fighting for in the days of the Revolution, it is worth fighting for now.”19 The Radical abolitionist Parker Pillsbury scornfully remarked that “the abandonment of Fort Sumner [sic] goes to show that indeed we have no government at all.”20

  Montgomery Blair was so angry at the prospect of surrendering Fort Sumter that he prepared a letter of resignation. He described the cabinet discussions to his father, who, at the urging of some senators, called at the White House to stiffen Lincoln’s b
ackbone. The old man, with vivid memories of Andrew Jackson’s forceful crushing of South Carolina nullifiers in 1832–1833, told Lincoln on March 12 “that the surrender of Fort Sumter, was virtually a surrender of the Union unless under irresistable force.” He added that such a craven move would “lose his Administration irrevocably the public confidence—that submission to secession would be a recognition of its constitutionality.” Blair condemned both Scott and Seward and warned that the president might be impeached if he followed their counsel. (Blair regretted his impetuosity, telling his son that same day: “I may have said things that were impertinent & I am sorry I ventured on the errand.”)21 Blair’s views were held by many Northerners, including a Wall Street attorney who wrote that “one bold Jacksonian stroke of Lincoln would electrify the North & encourage the true friends of the country everywhere.” But if “a part of the country is permitted to float off he & all his assistants in such a suicide will be damned to eternal infamy. We all have the most perfect confidence in him. We are willing to bear national disgrace & obloquy till he can turn out the traitors & fill the offices with true men. But no time must be frittered away.”22