Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  In Kentucky, some Unionists were “struck with mingled amazement and indignation” at a proclamation which they said “deserves the unqualified condemnation of every American citizen.”24 But the Bluegrass State would remain loyal; in North Carolina, Virginia, Arkansas, and Tennessee, however, the Unionist sentiment, which had been waxing, abruptly waned. Those states withdrew from the Union after their governors indignantly refused to provide any militia. (Lincoln chastised the governor of Tennessee, Isham Harris, for his “disrespectful and malicious language.” When informed that Harris complained about the seizure of a boatload of weapons, Lincoln said quietly: “He be d—d.”)25 The Upper South and Border States might have resisted secession, at least temporarily, if Lincoln had announced that troops would be used solely to defend Washington. As it was, North Carolina Unionists felt betrayed. One of their leaders, Jonathan Worth, wondered how Lincoln could have failed to anticipate “that he was letting loose on us a torrent to which we could oppose no resistance. It may be said, theoretically, that this should not have been the effect. Statesmen should have common sense. All sensible men knew it would be the effect. … He could have adopted no policy so effectual to destroy the Union.”26 In neighboring Virginia, Unionist leader John Minor Botts called the proclamation “the most unfortunate state paper that ever issued from any Executive since the establishment of the government,” and William C. Rives blamed “Mr. Lincoln’s unlucky & ill-conceived proclamation” for causing Virginia’s catastrophic decision to secede. “Before that, all the proceedings of the Convention indicated an earnest desire to maintain the Union,” Rives asserted.27 Lincoln’s proclamation transformed the sectional conflict in Tennessee from “the negro question” to “a question of resistance to tyranny,” according to Senator A. O. P. Nicholson.28

  Lincoln soon regretted that he had not justified the militia call as a defensive measure. On April 21, he exclaimed to the mayor of Baltimore: “I am not a learned man!” and insisted “that his proclamation had not been correctly understood; that he had no intention of bringing on war, but that his purpose was to defend the capital, which was in danger of being bombarded from the heights across the Potomac.”29 Repeatedly, he “protested, on his honor, in the most solemn way, that the troops were meant exclusively to protect the Capital.”30 When a leading Maryland Unionist, Reverdy Johnson, warned that the people of his state and Virginia feared that troops headed for Washington would invade the South, Lincoln denied any such intent. On April 24, he assured the former senator that “the sole purpose of bringing troops here is to defend this capital. … I have no purpose to invade Virginia, with them or any other troops, as I understand the word invasion.” But Lincoln insisted that he must strike back if Virginia attacked Washington or allowed other Rebels to pass through her territory to do so. “Suppose Virginia erects, or permits to be erected, batteries on the opposite shore, to bombard the city, are we to stand still and see it done? In a word, if Virginia strikes us, are we not to strike back, and as effectively as we can? Again, are we not to hold Fort Monroe (for instance) if we can? I have no objection to declare a thousand times that I have no purpose to invade Virginia or any other State, but I do not mean to let them invade us without striking back.”31

  The proclamation’s call for only 75,000 militia for three months’ service also drew criticism. Before issuing that document, Lincoln consulted Stephen A. Douglas, who recommended that the number be increased to 200,000. The president had asked George Ashmun to arrange an interview with the Little Giant. When the former Massachusetts congressman called on the Illinois senator, Douglas initially balked, protesting that “Mr. Lincoln has dealt hardly with me, in removing some of my friends from office, and I don’t know as he wants my advice or aid.” But persistent cajoling by Ashmun and an appeal from Mrs. Douglas persuaded the Little Giant to capitulate, and, accompanied by Ashmun, he met with Lincoln for two hours. After the president read a draft of the proclamation, Douglas urged the reinforcement of Cairo, Fort Monroe, Harper’s Ferry, and Washington itself, and also warned about the danger of having troops pass through Maryland. He suggested that soldiers be detoured around Baltimore and that Forts Monroe in Virginia and Old Point Comfort in Maryland be secured. After the interview, Douglas informed the press that while he “was unalterably opposed to the Administration on all its political issues, he was prepared to sustain the President in the exercise of all his constitutional functions to preserve the Union, and maintain the Government, and defend the Federal Capital.” The two men spoke “of the present and future without reference to the past.” Lincoln was “very much gratified with the interview,” which had been friendly.32

  Shortly thereafter, Douglas told a friend: “I’ve known Mr. Lincoln a longer time than you have, or than the country has; he will come out all right and we will all stand by him.”33 On the floor of the senate he defended the proclamation, and, acting the part of a true statesman as he had done in the final stages of the 1860 campaign, he took to the stump, denouncing secession and urging his followers to support the Union. Lincoln had encouraged him “to arouse the Egyptians [i.e., residents of southern Illinois].”34 The Little Giant proceeded to Springfield, where, on April 25, he delivered an electrifying address to the General Assembly. Douglas’s prestige among Northern Democrats helped cement their loyalty to the Union cause.

  Some agreed with Douglas’s contention that a call for 200,000 troops was more reasonable than 75,000. Others recommended 300,000, and Horace Greeley even proposed that 500,000 men be enlisted. But those numbers seemed unrealistic at a time when the regular army had only 17,000 men, Northern arsenals contained few weapons and little equipment, and the treasury was virtually empty. In addition, the 1795 statute authorizing the president to call out the militia specified that it could serve for only thirty days after the next session of Congress began.

  But in general, the proclamation was enthusiastically received in the North, where the bombardment of Sumter triggered a passionate uprising. Rage at the secessionists swept through the Free States like a tornado. As Lincoln put it later, “the response of the country was most gratifying, surpassing, in unanimity and spirit, the most sanguine expectation.”35 For too long Southerners had played the bully; now Northerners would stand up for themselves and their rights. The South must confront the pent-up anger of patient men. People in Vermont, wrote a Brattleboro resident, “have felt for the last three months mortified, indignant, ‘mad clear through’ at the disgrace & shame inflicted on us & we now rejoice & are glad that the insults heaped on us are to be avenged, & our wounded honor vindicated.”36 From Wisconsin, Senator James R. Doolittle reported that if “an Angel from Heaven had issued a proclamation it could hardly have received a heartier response than the proclamation of the President.”37 On April 16, John Hay noted that there “is something splendid, yet terrible, about this roused anger of the North. It is stern, quiet, implacable, irresistible. On whomever it falls it will grind them to powder.”38 Mass meetings throughout the North testified to the deep devotion felt for the Union. Thousands flocked to join the army. Seward’s fear of divisiveness within the North proved illusory. Like the United States after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Free States rallied around the flag with virtual unanimity.

  Anxiety: Awaiting the Arrival of Troops

  Immediately after the fall of Fort Sumter, Northern anxiety mounted steadily as disaster followed disaster. On April 17, Virginia seceded; on April 18, federal troops abandoned Harper’s Ferry at the northern entrance to the vital Shenandoah Valley, torching the armory as they left; and on April 20, Union forces set afire the Gosport Navy Yard in Norfolk before evacuating it.

  Lincoln found it hard to credit reports that Virginia had left the Union so precipitously. On April 17, when he learned of the Old Dominion’s secession, he “said he was not yet prepared to believe that one of the founders of the Union, and the mother of so many of its rulers, was yet ready to break down her own work and blast her own glorious histor
y by this act of treason.”39 That night it was feared that Confederates would attack the city. Rumors abounded that the fierce Texas Ranger Ben McCulloch would lead such an assault (although he was then in Arkansas and would never come east of the Mississippi River before his death in battle the following year). The loyalty of the District’s thirty companies of raw militia was suspect. Lincoln and other Washingtonians awaited the arrival of troops from the North with deep apprehension. “Never was a capital left in such a defenceless condition,” complained one member of an informal military force hastily thrown together to protect Washington.40 On April 20 a colleague confided to his diary: “A universal gloom and anxiety sits upon every countenance.” The city was “rife with treason, and the streets full of traitors.” Anxiously he asked: “when will reinforcements come? Will it be too late?”41

  Henry Villard recalled the “impatience, gloom, and depression” that enveloped the capital as day after day reinforcements failed to materialize. “No one felt it more than the President,” according to Villard. “I saw him repeatedly, and he fairly groaned at the inexplicable delay in the advent of help from the loyal States.”42 Illinois Congressman Philip B. Fouke, who visited the White House on the night of April 22, reported that Lincoln was “especially exercised at the critical condition of the federal capital.”43 The next day the president exclaimed in anguish, “Why don’t they come! Why don’t they come!”44 On April 25, he asked a Connecticut visitor, who thought he looked badly depressed: “What is the North about? Do they know our condition?”45

  Compounding Lincoln’s woes was the resignation of approximately one-third of the officers in the army and navy. Especially disconcerting was the case of Colonel John B. Magruder, commander of the Washington garrison, who, on April 18, had told the president: “Sir, I was brought up and educated under the glorious old flag. I have lived under it and have fought under it, and, sir, with the help of God, I shall fight under it again and, if need be, shall die under it.” Lincoln replied: “you are an officer of the army and a Southern gentleman, and incapable of any but honorable conduct.” The president added that “independently of all other reasons he felt it to be a constitutional obligation binding upon his conscience to put down secession,” even though “he bore testimony to the honor, good faith, and high character of the Southern people, whom he ‘knew well.’ ” Three days thereafter, however, the colonel announced his intention of quitting the service to join the Confederacy. Lincoln said later that he could not remember “any single event of my administration that gave me so much pain or wounded me so deeply as the singular behavior of Colonel Magruder.” To the president “it seemed the more wanton and cruel in him because he knew that I had implicit confidence in his integrity. The fact is, when I learned that he had gone over to the enemy and I had been so completely deceived in him, my confidence was shaken in everybody, and I hardly knew who to trust anymore.”46

  More significantly, Colonel Robert E. Lee of Virginia spurned an offer that Lincoln unofficially conveyed through Francis P. Blair, Sr., to command the Union army. “Mr Blair,” said the country’s most capable officer, “I look upon secession as anarchy—if I owned the four millions of slaves in the South I would sacrifice them all to the Union—but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native State?”47 On April 23, Lee accepted command of the military forces of the Old Dominion. (Generals Winfield Scott, George H. Thomas, Philip St. George Cooke, John W. Davidson, L. P. Graham, William Hays, and John Newton—Virginians all—did not follow Lee’s example.)

  In July, Lincoln told Congress that it was “worthy of note, that while in this, the government’s hour of trial, large numbers of those in the Army and Navy, who have been favored with the offices, have resigned, and played false to the very hand which had pampered them, not one common soldier, or common sailor has deserted his flag. Great honor is due to those officers who remained true, despite the example of their treacherous associates; but the greatest honor, and most important fact of all is, the unanamous firmness of the common soldiers and common sailors. To the last man, they have successfully resisted the traitorous efforts of those, whose commands, but an hour before, they obeyed as absolute law. This is the patriotic instinct of plain people. They understand, without an argument, that destroying the government which was made by Washington, means no good to them.”48 (Actually, twenty-six enlisted men resigned to join the Confederacy.)

  In the midst of all the uncertainty, General Scott drew up emergency plans to protect the capital. He designated the massive treasury building as a refuge for the president and his cabinet, who would take shelter in the basement while troops assembled at nearby Lafayette Square. In the meantime, to guard the White House, Old Fuss and Feathers assigned Major David Hunter, who called on two Republican leaders, Cassius M. Clay of Kentucky and Jim Lane of Kansas, to organize informal units. Clay, who was preparing to leave for Russia to take up his duties as minister to the czar’s government, hastily assembled the “Clay Battalion,” a rag-tag company of a few dozen senators, congressmen, clerks, mechanics, and salesmen. The vain, melodramatic Clay appeared at the Executive Mansion “with a sublimely unconscious air, three pistols and an Arkansas toothpick [Bowie knife] and looked like an admirable vignette to 25-cents-worth of yellow-covered romance,” according to John Hay.49

  Supplementing these men were the “Frontier Guards,” hurriedly organized at Major Hunter’s request by the cunning, ambitious, violence-prone Jim Lane, senator from Kansas. Consisting of about fifty men, the Guards on April 18 took up residence in the White House, where Hay observed them as they “filed into the famous East Room, clad in citizens’ dress, but carrying very new, untarnished muskets, and following Lane, brandishing a sword of irreproachable brightness. Here ammunition-boxes were opened and cartridges dealt out; and after spending the evening in an exceedingly rudimentary squad drill, under the light of the gorgeous gas chandeliers, they disposed themselves in picturesque bivouac on the brilliant-patterned velvet carpet—perhaps the most luxurious cantonment which American soldiers have ever enjoyed.”50 A member of the Guard wrote home, describing how he and his colleagues “slept sweetly on the President’s rich Brussels [carpet], with their arms stacked in martial line down the center of the hall, while two long rows of Kansas ex-Governors, Senators, Judges, Editors, Generals and Jayhawkers were dozing upon each side, and the sentinels made regular beats around them.” Those guardians were instructed to admit to the East Room no one who failed to give the password. When Lincoln tried to enter the hall, a sentinel barked “that he could not possibly come in!”51 To the amusement of the other guards, Lincoln beat a hasty retreat. When the unit was disbanded after a few days, the president said in thanking them that “language was incapable of expressing how great an obligation he and the people all over this country are under to this little patriotic band of men, for their timely services in preventing, as they undoubtedly did prevent, this capital from falling into the hands of the enemy.”52

  Relieving tension slightly was the arrival of five unarmed companies of Pennsylvania militiamen on April 18. Accompanied by Cameron and Seward, Lincoln visited them at the Capitol to extend hearty thanks for their promptitude. One soldier recalled that when they entered, “[p]rofound silence for a moment resulted, broken by the hand clapping and cheers of the tired volunteers.” The militiaman was “impressed by the kindliness of his [Lincoln’s] face and awkward hanging of his arms and legs, his apparent bashfulness in the presence of these first soldiers of the Republic, and with it all a grave, rather mournful bearing in his attitude.” After observing the men, some of whom had been wounded while passing through Baltimore, the president said: “I did not come here to make a speech. The time for speech-making has gone by, and the time for action is at hand. I have come here to give the Washington Artillerists from the State of Pennsylvania a warm welcome to the city of Washington and to shake every officer and soldier by the hand, providing you will give me that privilege.” As he grasped their hands, they felt awestr
uck.53

  That same day, Lincoln met with the celebrated author Bayard Taylor, who found him “calm and collected” as “he spoke of the present crisis with that solemn, earnest composure, which is a sign of a soul not easily perturbed.”54 In the evening, when informed that some daredevil Virginia guerrillas planned to swoop into the city and either capture or assassinate him, the president merely grinned. Mary Lincoln, however, was not so nonchalant, and John Hay had to do “some very dexterous lying” to calm her fears.55

  On April 19, the anniversary of the 1775 battle of Lexington where Massachusetts men were the first to be killed in the Revolutionary War, members of the Sixth Massachusetts regiment were the first to die in the Civil War when a mob attacked them as they passed through Baltimore. In February, a leading politician in that city had warned that if the Lincoln administration “shall dare to bring its Black Republican cohorts to the banks of the Susquehanna” in order to defend Washington, “that river shall run red with blood before the first man of them should cross it.”56 Shots were exchanged, killing four soldiers and wounding thirty-six of their comrades; in addition, twelve civilians were killed and scores injured. The North howled in outrage, causing residents of the Monumental City to dread possible retaliation. When two of Baltimore’s leading citizens expressed fear that indignant Northerners might swarm into the Free State, Lincoln offered them reassurance: “Our people are easily influenced by reason. They have determined to prosecute this matter with energy but with the most temperate spirit. You are entirely safe from lawless invasion.”57