Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  Word that two of his division commanders had met with the president acted as a tonic restoring McClellan’s health. On Sunday morning, January 12, he unexpectedly called at the White House and outlined a plan to attack Richmond by sailing his army down Chesapeake Bay to Urbanna on the Rappahannock River, 40 miles east of the Confederate capital. Early that afternoon the president met with Chase, Seward, Montgomery Blair, McDowell, Franklin, and Meigs. After Meigs endorsed McDowell’s proposal to attack the Confederate supply lines to Manassas, Lincoln suggested that since McClellan had recovered his health, they meet with him the next day.

  On January 13 at 3 P.M., they did so. After explaining why he had convened this council of war, Lincoln asked McDowell and Franklin to go over their proposals for an advance. When McDowell restated his plan to attack enemy supply lines, the sullen general-in-chief “coldly, if not curtly” exclaimed: “You are entitled to have any opinion you please!” As the discussion continued, McClellan ominously said nothing further. Meigs whispered into Little Mac’s ear that Lincoln expected him to participate in the deliberations. The general-in-chief replied that the Confederates had at least 175,000 men at Manassas (a gross exaggeration), too many for the Army of the Potomac to confront. Moreover, he sneered: “If I tell him my plans they will be in the New York Herald tomorrow morning. He can’t keep a secret, he will tell them to Tadd.” Meigs responded: “That is a pity, but he is the President,—the Commander-in-Chief; he has a right to know; it is not respectful to sit mute when he so clearly requires you to speak.” (Meigs thought McClellan’s conduct a “spectacle to make gods and men ashamed!”)214 Chase told Franklin: “Well, if that is Mac’s decision, he is a ruined man.”215

  Responding to pressure from the treasury secretary, McClellan deigned to say that he would prod Buell to launch an offensive in Kentucky but that he was reluctant to discuss his plans further. Lincoln asked the commanding general “if he had counted upon any particular time” for that movement to begin, without specifying it. When Little Mac replied affirmatively, Lincoln said: “Well, on this assurance of the General that he will press the advance in Kentucky, I will be satisfied, and will adjourn this Council.”216

  Incredibly, the next day McClellan spelled out to a New York Herald reporter the plan he had refused to describe to Lincoln because he feared the president would reveal it to that very newspaper! Little Mac began a three-hour conversation with correspondent Malcolm Ives by saying, “What I declined communicating to them [Lincoln and the others] I am now going to convey through you to Mr. [James Gordon] Bennett … all the knowledge I possess myself, with no reserve.”217 Also incredible was McClellan’s decision to reveal his plan to Chase and to N. P. Banks (but not Lincoln) well before January 13.

  McClellan’s stubborn unwillingness to confide in Lincoln would prove a grave mistake and lead to his undoing. The president’s tendency to defer to Little Mac was also mistaken; if he had been more assertive, the general may have been more compliant. Bates realized this. At a cabinet meeting on January 10, he emphatically urged the president to “take and act out the powers of his place, to command the commanders,” and if they balked, to fire them.218

  The Trent Affair

  Frustrating as McClellan’s conduct was, Lincoln found it even more frustrating to cope with a diplomatic crisis that threatened to lead to war with Great Britain. That autumn, the Confederate government decided to replace its three roving commissioners to Europe with two ministers plenipotentiary—former senators James M. Mason of Virginia (to England) and John Slidell of Louisiana (to France). In mid-October those two boarded a blockade runner that whisked them to Havana, where they transferred to the British mail packet Trent, bound for St. Thomas in the Danish Virgin Islands. There they intended to book passage for Europe. On November 8, Union Captain Charles Wilkes, commanding the San Jacinto, rashly stopped the Trent in the Bahama Channel, boarded her, and seized Mason and Slidell as contraband, maintaining that they were in effect animate dispatches. He allowed the Trent to proceed on its way while he shipped the two would-be diplomats off to confinement at Fort Warren in Boston harbor.

  The North rejoiced, for Mason and Slidell were particularly loathed as extreme fire-eaters. Mason was the principal author of the widely execrated Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, and Slidell had been a leading spokesman for slavery and disunion. Here was good news for a change. Temporarily, the defeats at Bull Run, Wilson’s Creek, Lexington, and Ball’s Bluff were forgotten. “We do not believe the American heart ever thrilled with more genuine delight,” declared the New York Times.219 Congress voted a resolution of thanks to Wilkes “for his brave, adroit, and patriotic conduct,” Secretary of the Navy Welles congratulated him officially, the city fathers of Boston gave him a banquet, and editorial writers showered him with praise. Leading jurists like Edward Everett, Edwin M. Stanton, and Reverdy Johnson declared Wilkes’s action legal. Many other prominent observers, however, like Charles Sumner, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, did not celebrate; they thought Wilkes had violated international law by seizing men from a neutral ship in transit from one neutral port to another. They were right; the envoys should have been released as soon as the administration ascertained the facts.

  Lincoln may have briefly shared his constituents’ glee, but within hours of receiving the news, he realized that Mason and Slidell had to be surrendered. On November 16, the president told Benson J. Lossing: “I fear the traitors will prove to be white elephants.”220 Three days thereafter, D. W. Bartlett wrote that the president was “somewhat fearful of the result” because “some men in whom he has confidence” informed him “that England will try to get up a war with the United States over the affair.”221 To Gideon Welles, Lincoln expressed “anxiety … as to the disposition of the prisoners.” The public’s “indignation was so overwhelming against the chief conspirators, that he feared it would be difficult to prevent severe and exemplary punishment, which he always deprecated.”222 The president told Edward Bates, “I am not getting much sleep out of that exploit of Wilkes’, and I suppose we must look up the law of the case. I am not much of a prize lawyer, but it seems to me pretty clear that if Wilkes saw fit to make that capture on the high seas he had no right to turn his quarter-deck into a prize court.”223

  Initially, the cabinet did not share Lincoln’s view. Edouard de Stoeckl, Russian chargè d’affaires in Washington, informed his government that upon hearing of Wilkes’s actions, “the President was disposed to disavow Captain Wilkes’s act, restore the prisoners, and apologize to England. But he ran into strong opposition from his Cabinet and from the demagogues among his advisors who believed … they [Union forces] were stronger than ever and could defy England.”224 At a cabinet meeting early in the crisis, Lincoln, according to a press account, “expressed himself in favor of restoring them [Mason and Slidell] to the protection of the British flag, if it should be demanded. He said it was doubtful if the course of Captain Wilkes could be justified by international law, and that, at all events, he could not afford to have two wars upon his hands at the same time.” (More succinctly, he cautioned: “one war at a time.”) Only Montgomery Blair agreed. Chase forcefully maintained that the president’s approach would dishonor the nation. Bates argued that Wilkes had acted lawfully. At first, Seward was, as Gideon Welles recalled, “jubilant” and “elated” and “for a time made no attempt to conceal his gratification and approval of the act of Wilkes.” He “discredited every suggestion that Great Britain would avail herself of any technical error of the officer [Wilkes], and take serious exception to the proceeding. It was, he claimed, in conformity with British ruling and British practice; and if the commander of the San Jacinto has erred in permitting the Trent to proceed, it was not for that government to take advantage of his mistaken generosity by which they had been benefited.” But at the cabinet meeting Seward did not commit himself.225

  When the British first learned of Wilkes’s act more than two weeks afterward, their indignation knew no bounds.
The Union Jack had been insulted! The outraged prime minister, Lord Palmerston, allegedly exclaimed to his cabinet: “I don’t know whether you are going to stand for this, but I’ll be damned if I do!” Lord Lyons regarded Wilkes’s act as a grave affront to his country. Her Majesty’s government was predisposed to react angrily in part because of Seward’s well-known Anglophobia. Weed reported from London that a “spirit, almost infernal, has been roused here against Gov. Seward, who is regarded as the incarnation of hostility to England.”226 Such a view was not unjustified. While visiting England in 1859, Seward had offended Britons with tactless remarks about the high cost of English books and the gullibility of nobles who paid too much for paintings. In July, the impulsive secretary of state had told William Howard Russell of the London Times that a “contest between Great Britain and the United States would wrap the world in fire, and at the end it would not be the United States which would have to lament the results of the conflict.”227 According to the duke of Newcastle, the previous year Seward had said to him that “he was likely to occupy a high office; that when he did so it would become his duty to insult England, and he should insult her accordingly.”228

  Palmerston instructed his foreign minister, Lord John Russell, to compose a belligerent, curt message, which Queen Victoria and her mortally-ill husband, Prince Albert, toned down. The revised document stated that British authorities would accept an American explanation that Wilkes had acted without instructions; but the United States must agree within seven days to offer an apology, pay indemnities, and forthwith release Mason and Slidell. If the Lincoln administration balked, Lord Lyons must pack his bags and return home. Lyons was to give Seward informal notice of this message in order to allow the administration sufficient time to consider its response. Ominously, 11,000 British troops set sail for Canada; Great Britain refused to sell the United States any more saltpeter (then the principal ingredient of gunpowder, imported from India); and several warships were ordered to the North American Station. As hostilities between America and Britain loomed, Wall Street panicked. “It looks like war,” observed Foreign Minister Russell.229 One of the most dangerous moments of Lincoln’s presidency had arrived.

  Russell’s dispatch did not reach Washington until December 19. Meanwhile, Lincoln took comfort from (mistaken) reports that British legal authorities had declared Wilkes’s action justified. On December 10, the president told his old friend Orville H. Browning “that there would probably be no trouble about it.”230 Three days later he was jolted out of his complacency when English newspapers arrived describing British indignation. Two days thereafter, informal word came that Her Majesty’s government would demand the release of the Confederate emissaries and an apology. The news astounded Lincoln. Browning, who was at the White House when this intelligence arrived, told him that he did not “believe England has done so foolish a thing,” but “if she is determined to force a war upon us why so be it. We will fight her to the death.”231 Among the many Americans who agreed with Browning was Anson S. Miller of Illinois. The “National Govt and Washington must not be bullied by England,” wrote Miller. “Even war with England … is far preferable to humiliation.”232 A Cincinnati attorney howled that England “has humbled us,” “emasculated our pride, and thus invited any other insolent nation to spit upon us.”233

  On December 16, Seward exclaimed to a British journalist and some diplomats: “We will wrap the whole world in flames! No power so remote that she will not feel the fire of our battle and be burned by our conflagration.”234 That day he and his fellow cabinet members decided to keep Mason and Slidell because it was believed that Her Majesty’s government would not go to war over their capture; instead, it would probably demand their release, and a prolonged diplomatic correspondence would solve the issue.

  But a lengthy negotiation no longer seemed possible after December 19, when Lord Lyons informally showed Seward the dispatch from Russell insisting on the release of Mason and Slidell and demanding a response within one week. Four days later, the British envoy officially submitted Russell’s document, giving the administration until December 30 to reply. On December 18, Seward and Lincoln visited the navy yard to see Commander John A. Dahlgren, whom the president regarded highly and in whom he confided. (Lincoln told a friend, “I like to see Dahlgren. The drive to the Navy Yard is one of my greatest pleasures. When I am depressed, I like to talk with Dahlgren. I learn something of the preparations for defence, and I get from him consolation and courage.”)235 Dahlgren noted in his diary that “I never saw the President or Mr. Seward more quiet or grave. The British affair seems to weigh on them.”236

  That same day, at Lincoln’s urging, John W. Forney, editor of the Philadelphia Press, published an article maintaining that war with the British would be catastrophic and that therefore “the Administration may be compelled to concede the demands of England, and, perhaps, release Messrs. Mason and Slidell. God forbid!—but in a crisis like this we must adapt ourselves to stern circumstances, and yield every feeling of pride to maintain our existence.”237 The president had told Forney: “I want you to sit down and write one of your most careful articles, preparing the American people for the release of Mason and Slidell. I know this is much to ask of you, but it shows my confidence in you, my friend, when I tell you that this course is forced upon us by our peculiar position; and that the good Queen of England is moderating her own angry people, who are as bitter against us as our people are against them. I need say no more.”238

  Two days later, the president and Seward met to discuss the crisis. No record of their meeting remains, though it seems likely that Seward explained the British position. The following day, Lincoln confessed that he “feared trouble.”239 He now confronted a dilemma: if the Confederate envoys were released, it would outrage public opinion in the North; if they were not, Britain might declare war and break the blockade.

  Arbitration seemed a possible middle way. A champion of that solution, Charles Sumner, called at the White House regularly during the critical week of December 19–25 to share correspondence from his well-placed English friends warning of the dangers of war and urging the surrender of Mason and Slidell. One such letter from John Bright recommended mediation. Sumner suggested that Prussia “or better still, three learned publicists of the Continent” could serve that function.240 Thurlow Weed, who had been sent abroad as a propagandist for the Union cause, offered similar counsel from London. France was rumored to be willing to act as an umpire, and American diplomats like Norman B. Judd, Henry S. Sanford, and George G. Fogg were suggesting that Louis Napoleon’s government should play that role. James R. Doolittle, Sumner’s colleague on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urged Lincoln to “refer the matter to the Emperors of France, & Russia to determine the question whether upon the law of nations we were not as belligerents justified in making that arrest.”241

  On December 20 and 21, Lincoln acted on such advice, drafting a dispatch for Seward’s signature. He tactfully wrote: “this government has intended no affront to the British flag, or to the British nation; nor has it intended to force into discussion, an embarrassing question, all which is evident by the fact, hereby asserted, that the act complained of was done by the officer, without orders from, or expectation of, the government. But being done, it was no longer left to us to consider whether we might not, to avoid a controversy, waive an unimportant, though a strict right; because we too, as well as Great Brittain, have a people justly jealous of their rights, and in whose presence our government could undo the act complained of, only upon a fair showing that it was wrong, or, at least, very questionable. The United States government and people, are still willing to make reparation upon such showing.”242 On December 21, he read this document to Browning, who agreed that “the question was easily susceptible of a peaceful solution if England was at all disposed to act justly.”243 Similarly, the president informed Sumner that there “will be no war unless England is bent upon having one.” To help defuse tension, Lincoln propo
sed circumventing normal diplomatic channels in order to deal directly with the British minister to the United States. “If I could see Lord Lyons, I could show him in five minutes that I am heartily for peace,” he said to Sumner. When the senator counseled against such an irregular procedure, Lincoln abandoned that idea.244

  Meanwhile, Seward drafted his own response to the British government, which Lincoln promised to examine carefully in order to make sure that it contained no offensive language like that in the secretary’s May dispatch to Charles Francis Adams. Seward endorsed the release of Mason and Slidell, even though he maintained that those men were in fact contraband of war. Wilkes had acted without instructions, Seward explained, and though justified in seizing the Confederate emissaries, the captain should have taken the Trent to a prize court for adjudication. Such a step would have been in keeping with the traditional American view of neutral rights, a view that the British had earlier rejected, leading to the War of 1812. But because he voluntarily let the Trent sail away, Wilkes vitiated America’s case for holding Mason and Slidell. Seward gratuitously added that if the survival of the Union had hung in the balance, the prisoners would not have been yielded, and that he was glad the British were finally agreeing with the American position on impressment.