Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  The president often visited army camps ringing the capital. On September 10, he and McClellan toured fortifications and reviewed George A. McCall’s division, whose ranks cheered the general heartily. “You have no idea how the men brighten up now, when I go among them,” McClellan told his wife. “I can see every eye glisten. Yesterday they nearly pulled me to pieces in one regt. You never heard such yelling. I did not think the Presdt liked it much.”12 (Such enthusiasm was not always spontaneous; General William F. Smith ordered his men to hurrah whenever they saw McClellan.) On November 20, at what Nicolay called “the largest and most magnificent military review ever held on this continent,” Lincoln and McClellan galloped for two hours inspecting 50,000 men, passing before and behind each regiment on the plain between Munson’s Hill and Bailey’s Cross Roads. Nicolay, who was among the entourage following the two leaders, reported that Lincoln “rode [as] erect and firm in his saddle as a practical trooper—he is more graceful in his saddle than anywhere else I have seen him.”13 A journalist concurred, noting that the “President looked well in the saddle—much better than he ever looked on any other public occasion. He is an excellent horseman, and grace, impossible as it may seem, becomes a Lincolnian attribute when the executive legs are spurred and stirruped.”14 One of McClellan’s staff officers was less complimentary, noting that as the president rode along holding his hat in one hand, he resembled a blind beggar. A corporal saw Lincoln with “one hand [a]hold of the bridle, the other convulsively clutched in the mane of his horse which never relaxed its hold except for a moment to crowd his hat further down over his eyes. His long legs were well clasped around the body of his horse, his hair & coat tails horizontal. He looked as though he was determined to go through it if it killed him but would be most almighty glad when it was over.”15

  Rather than fighting the nearby Confederates, McClellan defiantly campaigned against Winfield Scott, whom he wished to supplant as general-in-chief of the army. This came as a shock to Scott, for McClellan had praised him extravagantly in July: “All that I know of war I have learned from you, & in all that I have done I have endeavored to conform to your manner of conducting a campaign, as I understand the history of your achievements. It is my ambition to merit your praise & never to deserve your censure.”16 (In fact, McClellan’s strategy and tactics in the Civil War resembled those he had observed Scott employ during the Mexican War.) Three weeks later, McClellan wrote Scott a very different letter, haughtily expressing alarm that the 100,000 Confederate troops facing them (a gross overestimate) placed Washington in “imminent danger” and urging that his own command be enlarged. After consulting with Seward that same day, McClellan wrote his wife: “How does he think that I can save this country when stopped by Genl Scott—I do not know whether he is a dotard or a traitor! I can’t tell which. He cannot or will not comprehend the condition in which we are placed & is entirely unequal to the emergency. If he cannot be taken out of my path I will not retain my position, but will resign & let the adm[instratio]n take care of itself.” Scott “is a perfect imbecile” who “understands nothing, appreciates nothing & is ever in my way.”17 Ironically, he complained that Scott “is for inaction & the defensive.”18

  Scott, understandably offended by McClellan’s presumptuous tone, denied that the capital was in danger and, feeling infirm and undermined by his subordinate officer, asked to be retired. The president tried to smooth things over by persuading McClellan to withdraw his letter and requesting the general-in-chief to retract his. Scott, however, refused, explaining that “it would be against the dignity of my years, to be filing daily complaints against an ambitious junior” who ignored him, defied him, and dealt with cabinet members without consulting him.19 (By communicating directly with McClellan, Lincoln and Cameron had inadvertently helped weaken Scott’s authority.) Scott did not, however, insist that his resignation be accepted.

  Try as he may, Lincoln was unable to stop the feuding between the hypersensitive Scott and his contemptuous subordinate; they continued to squabble for the next three months. McClellan ignored Scott’s requests for information about his command, bypassed him in dealing with the administration, and flouted his chief’s orders. On September 27, an ugly flare-up occurred in Lincoln’s presence. At Scott’s office, the president, Welles, Cameron, Seward, and McClellan met to discuss the military situation. When no one else seemed to know how many Union troops were in and around the capital, Seward offered an exact count, much to the chagrin of Old Fuss and Feathers, who indignantly asked: “Am I, Mr. President, to apply to the Secretary of State for the necessary military information to discharge my duties?” As they left, Scott confronted McClellan, saying: “When I proposed that you should come here to aid, not supersede, me, you had my friendship and confidence. You still have my confidence.”20 Lincoln intervened, remarking kindly that “he could not afford to permit them to disagree.”21 Little Mac boasted to his wife that “I kept cool, looked him [Scott] square in the face, & rather think I got the advantage of him. … I said nothing, merely looked at him, & bowed assent.”22 The president explained that in managing his generals, “he tried to cultivate ‘good temper’ ” and “not to let any of them get mad with him, nor gain much by getting mad with each other.”23

  In October, when three impatient Radical Republican senators—Benjamin F. Wade of Ohio, Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, and Lyman Trumbull of Illinois—urged McClellan to advance on the enemy, he replied that he could do nothing as long as Scott remained in charge. Chandler came away deeply dissatisfied with McClellan, who, he said, seemed “to be devoting himself to parades” rather than “cleaning the country of Rebels.”24 The president warned McClellan that, ill-informed though the senators might be, they and their constituents could not be ignored. “I have a notion to go out with you and stand or fall with the battle,” Lincoln mused.25

  Those senators (deemed “the Jacobin club” by John Hay) also implored Lincoln to remove Scott.26 In fact, the president on October 18 had read to cabinet a draft of a tactful letter accepting Scott’s resignation. The aged general had become too ill and was too unfamiliar with war of such vast scope to be effective.

  Two weeks later, the general-in-chief renewed his request that he be placed on the retired list. On November 1, Lincoln agreed and, along with the cabinet, paid a visit to Scott, who was too weak to sit up. The president read him a statement as he lay on his couch: “The American people will hear with sadness and deep emotion that General Scott has withdrawn from the active control of the army, while the President and a unanimous Cabinet express their own and the nation’s sympathy in his personal affliction and their profound sense of the important public services rendered by him to his country during his long and brilliant career, among which will ever be gratefully distinguished his faithful devotion to the Constitution, the Union, and the Flag, when assailed by parricidal rebellion.” Lincoln assured the general that his staff would be well taken care of.27 The aged hero of Lundy’s Lane wept as he listened to the president’s words, replied graciously, and shook hands with his visitors as he bade them a sad farewell. Upon emerging from the room, Lincoln, too, had tears in his eyes.

  That evening, the president called on McClellan, who rejoiced in his triumph over Scott. Old Fuss and Feathers had magnanimously recommended Little Mac as his successor. After hearing McClellan read his order concerning Scott’s retirement, the president said: “I should be perfectly satisfied if I thought that this vast increase of responsibility would not embarrass you.”

  “It is a great relief, sir. I feel as if several tons were taken from my shoulders today. I am now in contact with you, and the Secretary. I am not embarrassed by intervention.”

  “Draw on me for all the sense I have, and all the information. In addition to your present command, the supreme command of the army will entail a vast labor upon you.”

  “I can do it all,” McClellan replied quietly.28

  Around that same time, Little Mac told the president: “I think we wil
l succeed entirely if our friends will be patient, and not hurry us.”

  “I promise you, you shall have your own way,” Lincoln said.29

  With this change in high command, impatient Northerners expected action. Angry at the army’s inertia, several senators, including Trumbull, Wade, and Chandler, called on Lincoln. According to a journalist, they “kindled a brisk fire around his crazy and spavined old legs.” They wanted to know who was responsible for the army’s failure to move. The president “assured them that now and henceforth McClellan should be in full command [of] the Army of the Potomac [which] is to act under his orders, he [is] to be responsible for [an] advance, and to be actually unfettered.”30 Trumbull warned the president “that if the federal army did not achieve a decided success before winter set in, it would be very difficult not only to raise a fresh loan in the money market, but [also] to get Congress to authorize a new loan.”31 Wade expressed doubt that “the people of the northern states care to pay forty millions a month simply to retain Maryland in the Union, for that seems to be about all the government is doing, or attempting to do.” He cautioned “that Congress would not allow the Army of the Potomac to winter” in Washington and declared: “Something, Mr. President, must be done. War must be made on the secessionists, or we will make war on the Administration.”32

  Back in Illinois, William H. Herndon wondered what his partner was doing. “Does he suppose he can crush—squelch out this huge rebellion by pop guns filled with rose water?” he asked. “He ought to hang somebody and get up a name for will or decisiveness of character. Let him hang some child or woman, if he has not courage to hang a man.”33 Equally bloody-minded was a Detroit resident who called for “war to the knife and the knife to the hilt” and expressed astonishment that “the Government has managed to be so far behind the people.”34

  The quarrelsome Young Napoleon, who seldom got along with superiors, implied that Scott alone had hindered him, and now that Old Fuss and Feathers was out of the way, he could take the offensive. But in fact, McClellan complained about the president as much as he ever did about Scott. To his wife, he described Lincoln as “an idiot,” “the original gorilla,” a “baboon,” and “ ‘an old stick’—& pretty poor timber at that.” He denounced “the cowardice of the Presdt” and declared that “I can never regard him with feeling other than those of thorough contempt—for his mind, heart & morality.”35

  McClellan manifested his contempt for Lincoln in deeds as well as words. Less than two weeks after his elevation to the supreme command, he returned home from a wedding to discover the president, John Hay, and Seward waiting for him. According to Hay, the general “without paying any particular attention to the porter who told him the President was waiting to see him, went up stairs, passing the door of the room where the President and Secretary of State were seated. They waited about half-an-hour, and sent once more a servant to tell the General they were there, and the answer cooly came that the General had gone to bed.” As they returned to the White House, Hay bemoaned “this unparrallelled insolence of epaulettes,” but Lincoln “seemed not to have noticed it specially, saying it was better at this time not to be making points of etiquette & personal dignity.”36

  This snub from McClellan was hardly an isolated example. A month earlier, the English journalist William Howard Russell noted in his diary: “Calling on the General [McClellan] the other night at his usual time of return, I was told by the orderly, who was closing the door, ‘The General’s gone to bed tired, and can see no one. He sent the same message to the President, who came inquiring after him ten minutes ago.’ ”37 Around that same time, Lincoln called at the general’s headquarters, only to be told that he was “lying down, very much fatigued.”38 On another occasion, McClellan did not stop eating his breakfast when the president called; Lincoln was kept waiting till the general finished his meal, much to the surprise of an observer. One day David D. Porter was astounded by McClellan’s reaction when a conversation he was having with the general concerning the New Orleans campaign was interrupted by a servant announcing that Lincoln wished to see him.

  “Let him wait,” said McClellan. “I am busy.”

  “Oh,” remarked Porter, “don’t send such a message to the President, he is very much interested in this matter, and it is not respectful to keep him waiting. Remember that he is our Commander-in-chief.”

  “Well,” said the general, “let the Commander-in-chief wait, he has no business to know what is going on.” Porter accurately concluded that McClellan’s days were numbered.39

  In December 1861, Lincoln asked McClellan to speak with Colonel Rush Hawkins, but the general refused. When Hawkins complained to Secretary of the Interior Caleb B. Smith about Little Mac’s unwillingness to honor a presidential request, Smith assured him that such behavior was common.

  Several months later, Lincoln once again found McClellan unwilling to get out of bed to meet with him. The president called at the general’s house one Sunday morning and asked to see him. Soon McClellan’s chief of staff, General Randolph Marcy, “came down and with flushed face and confused manner said he was very sorry but McClellan was not yet up. A strange expression came over Lincoln’s face, as he rose and said, ‘Of course he’s very busy now, and no doubt was laboring far into the night.’ He departed hastily.”40 McClellan was equally rude when he failed to keep an appointment with the president, General Ormsby M. Mitchel, and Ohio Governor William Dennison. After a long wait, Lincoln said with customary magnanimity and forbearance: “Never mind; I will hold McClellan’s horse if he will only bring us success.”41 William O. Stoddard recalled how mortified he was one day when he accompanied Lincoln to the home of McClellan, who kept the president waiting for an unconscionably long time.

  In early 1862, McClellan stood up Lincoln and the entire cabinet. As the president told General Ambrose E. Burnside in February, Little Mac “is a good fellow and means well,” but he “don’t know so much about etiquette as I do. I asked him to come and meet the Cabinet in Consultation the other day and he promised to do so. I called them together at 12 and all came, but no McClellan. At 1/2 past 12 Seward got impatient and went away, and at one all were gone. At half-past one McClellan came, and when I asked him why he was not here, he said he forgot it.”

  This absentmindedness reminded Lincoln of one of his legal cases. “When I was practicing law in Illinois a bad fellow in our town was charged with moral delinquency or in other words rape. He was accused of having committed two outrages on the woman—one in the afternoon and the other next day; everybody believed him guilty and when he applied to me to defend him, I refused; but he pled so hard and assured me so positively that the woman was a willing party that I consented to defend him and took up his cause. My friends remonstrated; but I was so convinced of the man’s innocence that I determined to go on. At the trial, the woman gave in [an?] excellent direct testimony. I saw its effect on the jury and that it must be overcome; & in the cross examination I led her off to other topics and then suddenly returned to the charge.

  “ ‘Did you sleep with your husband after the first outrage?’ ”

  “She said ‘Yes.’

  “ ‘Did you tell him about it?’

  “ ‘No—I forgot.’ ”42

  Even when McClellan deigned to allow the president to consult with him, he would not say much. In mid-December, Lincoln visited the general’s house, accompanied by the eminent historian George Bancroft, who described Little Mac unflatteringly: “Of all the silent, uncommunicative, reserved men, whom I ever met, the general stands among the first. He is one, who if he thinks deeply keeps his thoughts to himself.”43

  McClellan’s contempt for the president was partially rooted in snobbery. The scion of an eminent Philadelphia family, McClellan viewed many people as his social inferiors, among them Lincoln. Years after the war, he wrote that the sixteenth president “was not a man of very strong character, & as he was destitute of refinement—certainly in no sense a gentleman—he was easily wroug
ht upon by coarse associates whose style of conversation agreed so well with his own.”44 (Other well-bred Phila-delphians agreed with McClellan’s assessment. William M. Meredith, attorney general of Pennsylvania and former treasury secretary under President Taylor, complained after several interviews at the White House that Lincoln was “greatly wanting in dignity,” too “familiar in his manners, eternally joking and jesting and fond of telling bawdy stories in gross language,” and “deficient in force, knowledge & ability.”)45

  McClellan had contempt for other civilian leaders, including the cabinet, which he scorned as “a most dispicable set of men.” Seward he called “a meddling, officious, incompetent little puppy.” Welles was “weaker than the most garrulous old woman you were ever annoyed by.” Bates was an “inoffensive old man.”46 When he kept Edwin M. Stanton (Cameron’s replacement as head of the War Department) cooling his heels, much as he did Lincoln, the infuriated secretary said: “That will be the last time General McClellan will give either myself or the President the waiting snub.”47 Chase told Little Mac that he was tired of calling on him and being told the general was too busy to be disturbed.