Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  A Republican from the Bluegrass State acknowledged that Lincoln was “worthy & eminently honest” but feared that those qualities were not enough: “We need a man with an iron will & inflexible purpose.” After spending several weeks in New York and Washington, this Kentuckian reported that there “is a painful state of feeling pervading all classes.” The administration’s delay in attacking the Confederates “has become intolerable. Something must be done or every thing will be lost & that speedily. If the Govt is not in earnest let us know it & quit. If it is then let it go to work. … If there is a single person that has not lost all confidence in the powers that be I have yet to find him.”177 Lincoln’s former ally in the antislavery Whig ranks, Truman Smith, admired his “unspotted rectitude & great goodness of heart” but insisted that “in such a crisis rectitude & goodness are poor substitutes for that spirit & determination which Genl. Jackson was accustomed to manifest.”178 People in Wisconsin, according to a Republican editor there, believed “that the President and Cabinet,—as a whole,—are not equal to the occasion.”179

  A Massachusetts woman, who was strongly opposed to slavery, thought Lincoln “was honest, no doubt, but no more fit for his station than I should be. Mrs Lincoln has the stronger will of the two.”180 Less charitable was a constituent of George W. Julian, who complained that Lincoln “has no positive qualities, however trivial. He is the mere puppet in the hands of others,” most notably Seward. David Hunter would have taken Memphis long since, but “General McClellan and Col. Seward and Capt. Lincoln did not want it so.”181 Henry Winter Davis hyperbolically declared that “no administration has been so incompetent and so corrupt—not even Buchanan[’]s.”182 Charles Eliot Norton condemned the “incapacity,” “cowardice,” “wretched feebleness & inefficiency,” and “mean personal ambitions of the men who are in power,” while George Gibbs deplored “the utter incapacity of Lincoln.”183

  Illinoisans were especially critical of the administration. “The people are heartily sick of reviews at an expense of one and a quarter millions a day,” noted Lincoln’s friend Pascal P. Enos of Springfield. The public felt that if the North could whip the Confederates, “let it be done at once,” but, said Enos, “if we cannot we want to know it now and save ourselves from bankruptcy.”184 Gustave Koerner reported from Belleville that “our people, and our army out West are getting very much demoralised by this inaction.” The rate of desertion from the army was soaring, and the “enthusiasm of the People is pretty nearly all gone. Recruiting at the West has come to a dead standstill.”185 “Public sentiment here is becoming sadly debauched,” a resident of Freeport informed Congressman Elihu B. Washburne. “You at Washington must make a stand somewhere, and soon—else all—all is lost. … O! for an hour of an Executive of Jackson nerve and ability to stand forth and save this nation!!”186 Another Freeporter warned Washburne that “unless the War Policy at Washington is soon changed the People will break down every man that endorses it. The rumbling thunder is beginning to be heard and the People are getting aroused and I say to you the watchword must be forward at Every Point.”187 Other Suckers observed that “nearly a Majority of the Men who voted for Uncle Abe are beginning to come out against him. … They curse Lincoln & call him a Damned old traitor.” Thousands “among his most devoted friends, who have persistently stood by him through evil as well as good report,” were now “denouncing him most bitterly. They declare that he has done for the Republican Party what John Tyler did for the Whig Party.”188 Wait Talcott feared “that Kentucky had conquered the Administration, & that the President had forgotten that there was a North pouring out its best blood & treasure free as water to sustain the government.”189

  Discontent also reigned in Ohio. A Cincinnati physician asked: “How is it with our President? Our Republican President! Is he not given over, sold out, or pledged, bound hand and foot, soul and body, to the ‘Conservative,’ ‘Union men’ of the ‘Border States.’—to Kentucky ‘Union men?’ I fear so!”190 A former congressman from the Queen City complained that the “inaction of the army is bad enough, but when it seems that the cause is to prolong the robbery of the public funds, the people feel indignant.”191

  The president would have appreciated the understanding expressed by a Chicagoan: “I have no doubt, the Prest. would gladly exchange his tribulations for those of St. Paul, and be comparatively happy,” said E. B. Talcott. “It is no holiday Sport to run the Govt Machine at this time.”192

  Lincoln grew as frustrated and discouraged as the Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War. On January 2, he spoke to John A. Dahlgren “of the bare possibility of our being two nations.” (This was the first time the commander of the navy yard could recall the president suggesting such an outcome of the war.)193 When Ben Wade’s committee visited him at the White House on December 31, the senator said bluntly: “Mr. President, you are murdering your country by inches in consequence of the inactivity of the military and the want of a distinct policy in regard to slavery.”194 Lincoln offered no reply, but he did write McClellan about it the next day: “I hear that the doings of an Investigating Committee, give you some uneasiness. You may be entirely relieved on this point. The gentlemen of the Committee were with me an hour and a half last night; and I found them in a perfectly good mood. As their investigation brings them acquainted with facts, they are rapidly coming to think of the whole case as all sensible men would.”195

  Thus, Lincoln hinted that the Army of the Potomac must attack. He also tried to convey that message through a friend of the general, to whom he said: “McClellan’s tardiness reminds me of a man in Illinois, whose attorney was not sufficiently aggressive. The client knew a few law phrases, and finally, after waiting until his patience was exhausted by the non-action of his counsel, he sprang to his feet and exclaimed: ‘Why don’t you go at him with a Fi Fa demurrer, a capias, a surrebutter, or a ne exeat, or something; and not stand there like a nudum pactum, or a non est?’ ”196

  On January 6, Wade’s committee met with Lincoln and the cabinet to recommend that McDowell be given command of the Army of the Potomac and to insist that the war be prosecuted vigorously. The members were surprised that both the president and the secretaries knew little about McClellan’s plans or his reasons for delay. Even more surprising was Lincoln’s assumption that he had no right to know about them because his lack of a military background led him to defer to Little Mac. It seemed outrageous to the committee that the administration let McClellan sit idle without explanation. Wade attacked the Young Napoleon and bluntly demanded that changes be made. Lincoln and the cabinet did not agree with that assessment, and so the meeting ended inconclusively. On another occasion, Lincoln told a delegation protesting against McClellan’s inertness: “Well, gentlemen, for the organization of an army—to prepare it for the field—and for some other things, I will back General McClellan against any general of modern times—I don’t know but of ancient times either—but I begin to believe that he will never get ready to fight.”197

  Other congressional leaders were growing impatient with the administration. “We are in a world of trouble here,” Senator William Pitt Fessenden of Maine told his family. “Everybody is grumbling because nothing is done, and there are no symptoms that anything will be done. The truth is that no man can be found who is equal to this crisis in any branch of the government.”198 A Democratic congressman from Indiana called the president “a feeble & vascillating man” who “lacks the energy, earnestness, comprehensive views & experience necessary for the crisis.”199

  In February, Thurlow Weed growled that “most of the men trusted with the great responsibilities of the Government, either lack ability or fail to comprehend the magnitude of their trust. I am sure that this war wisely entered upon and energetically carried on, would have been virtually concluded now.”200 A Cincinnatian reported that Lincoln “is universally an admitted failure, has no will, no courage, no executive capacity … and his spirit necessarily infuses itself downwards through all depar
tments.”201

  All Quiet in the West

  Union commanders in the West seemed as inert and querulous as McClellan. One exception was Ulysses S. Grant, who commanded a district with headquarters at Cairo. From there on November 7 he moved 9 miles south to attack Confederate forces at Belmont, Missouri, where he demolished a camp, captured half a dozen guns, and inflicted 642 casualties while sustaining comparable losses before being repulsed. John A. McClernand, a brigade commander under Grant (and Lincoln’s former political opponent and congressman) complained that the administration had inadequately supported the Illinois units he headed. The president thanked and congratulated him and his men for all “you have done honor to yourselves and the flag and service to the country.” As for the shortages and other problems the Illinoisans faced, Lincoln explained that in “my present position, I must care for the whole nation; but I hope it will be no injustice to any other state, for me to indulge a little home pride, that Illinois does not disappoint us. … Be assured, we do not forget or neglect you. Much, very much, goes undone: but it is because we have not the power to do it faster than we do. Some of your forces are without arms, but the same is true here, and at every other place where we have considerable bodies of troops. The plain matter-of-fact is, our good people have rushed to the rescue of the Government, faster than the government can find arms to put into their hands. It would be agreeable to each division of the army to know its own precise destination: but the Government cannot immediately, nor inflexibly at any time, determine as to all; nor if determined, can it tell its friends without at the same time telling its enemies. We know you do all as wisely and well as you can; and you will not be deceived if you conclude the same is true of us.”202

  On another occasion, when officers complained about lack of equipment, Lincoln urged them to make do with what they had. To drive home the point, he told an anecdote from his days on the circuit in Illinois. Late one night a thirsty traveler banged on the door of a tavern in Postville and demanded whisky. When the host and guests explained that they had none, the desperate fellow exclaimed, “Great heavens, give me an ear of corn and a nutmeg grater and I’ll make some!”203

  On November 9, Lincoln broke up the gigantic Western Department, placing Henry W. Halleck, a pedantic, goggle-eyed, indecisive West Point graduate in command of the new Department of Missouri (which also encompassed Arkansas and western Kentucky). Halleck had earned the sobriquet “Old Brains” for writing several books, most notably Elements of Military Art and Science, which made him the premier military theorist in the country. Hunter was assigned to the Department of Kansas, and Don Carlos Buell was appointed head of the Department of the Ohio, with responsibility for eastern Kentucky. Buell and Halleck were supposed to coordinate their efforts; the latter was to move south along the Mississippi toward Memphis, while the former was to slice the critically important rail line connecting Virginia with the Confederate West and to liberate eastern Tennessee, where Unionists were suffering persecution. In the West, Lincoln emphasized seizing territory, and in the East, destruction of the enemy’s army.

  A stern martinet who suffered from indecisiveness, Buell understandably thought Lincoln’s plan infeasible, for his army faced daunting logistical problems in marching across four mountain chains in winter, then occupying eastern Tennessee, with no rail line to supply it. McClellan, however, counted on Buell to cut the railroad from Virginia to Chattanooga, isolating the Confederate forces he planned to attack in the Old Dominion; Little Mac said he would be unable to advance until Buell accomplished his mission. Buell, however, favored moving against Nashville in central Tennessee, following the line of the Cumberland River, as a more practicable alternative to Lincoln’s strategy. Impertinently, he told the president that he moved to carry out his plan with reluctance: “I have been bound to it more by, say sympathy for the people of Eastern Tennessee, and the anxiety with which yourself and the General in Chief have desired it, than by my opinion of its wisdom.”204

  Meanwhile in Missouri, Halleck reported that “everything here is in complete chaos. The most astonishing orders and contracts for supplies of all kinds have been made and large amounts purport to have been received, but there is nothing to show that they have ever been properly issued, and they cannot now be found.”205 He swiftly canceled fraudulent contracts, suppressed guerrillas, brought order out of the administrative rat’s-nest left behind by Frémont, fired do-nothing staffers, suspended the construction of needless fortifications around St. Louis, and restored order to the state, all the while complaining about a shortage of troops and weapons.

  From Kansas, Hunter protested bitterly that his new command was too small for a man of his rank. Lincoln gently chided him and offered sound paternal advice: “I am constrained to say it is difficult to answer so ugly a letter in good temper. I am, as you intimate, losing much of the great confidence I placed in you, not from any act or omission of yours touching the public service, up to the time you were sent to Leavenworth, but from the flood of grumbling despatches and letters I have seen from you since. I knew you were being ordered to Leavenworth at the time it was done; and I aver that with as tender a regard for your honor and your sensibilities as I had for my own, it never occurred to me that you were being ‘humiliated, insulted and disgraced’; nor have I, up to this day, heard an intimation that you have been wronged, coming from any one but yourself. No one has blamed you for the retrograde movement from Springfield, nor for the information you gave Gen. Cameron; and this you could readily understand, if it were not for your unwarranted assumption that the ordering you to Leavenworth must necessarily have been done as a punishment for some fault. I thought then, and think yet, the position assigned to you is as respo[n]sible, and as honorable, as that assigned to Buell. … You constantly speak of being placed in command of only 3000. Now tell me, is not this mere impatience? Have you not known all the while that you are to command four or five times that many? I have been, and am sincerely your friend; and if, as such, I dare to make a suggestion, I would say you are adopting the best possible way to ruin yourself.” Quoting one of his favorite poets, Alexander Pope, Lincoln counseled: “ ‘Act well your part, there all the honor lies.’ He who does something at the head of one Regiment, will eclipse him who does nothing at the head of a hundred.”206

  Halleck and Buell each offered abundant excuses for delay. When Buell opposed forwarding arms to East Tennessee, the president wrote on January 6: “Your despatch of yesterday has been received, and it disappoints and distresses me. … I am not competent to criticise your views; and therefore what I offer is merely in justification of myself.” Rather than attack Nashville, which Buell preferred to do, Lincoln repeated his earlier advice to move on East Tennessee, where persecuted Unionists were begging for assistance. He told Buell that “my distress is that our friends in East Tennessee are being hanged and driven to despair, and even now I fear, are thinking of taking rebel arms for the sake of personal protection. In this we lose the most valuable stake we have in the South. My despatch, to which yours is an answer, was sent with the knowledge of Senator [Andrew] Johnson and Representative [Horace] Maynard of East Tennessee, and they will be upon me to know the answer, which I cannot safely show them. They would despair—possibly resign to go and save their families somehow, or die with them. I do not intend this to be an order in any sense, but merely, as intimated before, to show you the grounds of my anxiety.”207 He urged Buell to name a date when he could begin an offensive: “Delay is ruining us; and it is indispensable for me to have something definite.”208 The president sent a similar request to Halleck, who was unwilling to commit troops to Kentucky while he was preparing for an advance in southwest Missouri.

  Despair

  For Lincoln, January 10, 1862, was one of the worst days in the war. He dejectedly wrote to Cameron apropos of the negative responses from Halleck and Buell: “It is exceedingly discouraging. As everywhere else, nothing can be done.”209 On January 1, Lincoln said “with much feeli
ng” to John A. Dahlgren, commander of the Washington Navy Yard: “No one seemed ready.”210 In despair, he turned to Montgomery Meigs, whose counsel he valued. (The president said Meigs “never comes [to the White House] without he has something to say worth hearing.”)211 “General,” Lincoln asked, “what shall I do? The people are impatient; Chase has no money and he tells me he can raise no more; the General of the Army has typhoid fever. The bottom is out of the tub. What shall I do?”212

  When Meigs suggested a consultation with Little Mac’s division commanders, Lincoln called a meeting for January 10 with Generals Irvin McDowell and William B. Franklin, along with Seward and Assistant Secretary of War Thomas A. Scott. Cameron was conspicuously absent. According to McDowell, the president told them that he “was in great distress, and, as he had been to General McClellan’s house, and the General did not ask to see him, and as he must talk to somebody, he had sent for General Franklin and myself, to obtain our opinion as to the possibility of soon commencing active operations with the Army of the Potomac.” He added that “if something was not done soon, the bottom would be out of the whole affair; and if General McClellan did not want to use the army, he would like to ‘borrow it.’ ”213 When Lincoln asked for recommendations, McDowell suggested an attack on the Confederates’ supply line to Manassas, a sensible plan that the president had been urging on McClellan. Franklin proposed a campaign against Richmond via the York River. Lincoln asked that they reflect on the matter and convene again the next day, which they did.