Radicals were upset not only at Lincoln’s message but also at the conduct of Halleck, McClellan, and Ward Hill Lamon, all of whom appeared soft on slavery. On November 20, Halleck, a conservative Democrat, had issued a general order forbidding runaway slaves to enter Union lines in the Department of the West. Months earlier, McClellan had announced to white Virginians: “Notwithstanding all that has been said by the traitors to induce you to believe that our advent among you will be signalized by interference with your slaves, understand one thing clearly—not only will we abstain from all such interference but we will on the contrary with an iron hand, crush any attempt at insurrection on their part.”327 Other army officers, including Charles P. Stone, were returning fugitive slaves to their owners, and Ward Hill Lamon was holding some runaways in the District jail.
Infuriated Radicals in Congress denounced these actions and began formulating new confiscation measures. A Republican caucus endorsed the unconditional emancipation of slaves held by disloyal masters. On December 7, Lincoln reportedly took umbrage, predicting that “such suicidal legislation” would drive the Border States to secede.328 Congress backed down for the time being, refusing to pass that bill or a resolution urging the president to countermand Halleck’s order.
Cabinet Shake-up
Lincoln also angered Radicals by insisting that Cameron revise a paragraph in his annual report calling for the emancipation and arming of slaves. Under Chase’s influence, Cameron had been growing more radical as time passed. In May, when slaves ran to Union army lines and General Benjamin F. Butler declined to return them to their owners but instead kept them as “contraband of war,” Cameron approved his action. Three months later, Cameron impulsively congratulated Frémont on his emancipation proclamation. In October, he wrote orders for General Thomas W. Sherman, who was to lead the expedition against Port Royal, South Carolina, authorizing him to liberate and arm slaves who came under his control. When he read those orders to Lincoln, the president struck out the clause emancipating slaves. Soon thereafter, the war secretary said that he would send extra arms on any future expedition to the South “to enable those who desired to fight to take the field in aid of the Union cause.”329 On November 13, after Colonel John Cochrane told his regiment that he endorsed the emancipation and arming of slaves as a military measure, Cameron said to those troops: “I heartily approve every sentiment uttered by your commander. The doctrines which he has laid down I approve as if they were my own words.”330 Soon thereafter, Cameron made the same points at a cabinet meeting.
Days later, at a dinner party given by John W. Forney, the war secretary embarrassed his host by reiterating “his opinion that, as a last resort, we ought to arm every man who desires to strike for human liberty.” Caleb B. Smith demurred, protesting heatedly that “the Administration contemplated no such policy. Slaves escaping from rebels might be received as they had been hitherto—within the lines of the army; but it was not intended to arm them. If twenty million of freemen could not, single handed, subdue this rebellion, it would be a disgrace to them, and they ought to give up the contest.”331 The controversy grew so heated that the music stopped and the guests became alarmed.
This intra-cabinet public contretemps delighted Democratic leaders like New York lawyer S. L. M. Barlow, who urged Edwin M. Stanton to foment even greater dissension within the Republican ranks: “Such quarrels should be fostered in every proper way.”332 Stanton was in a good position to do so, for he had become close to Cameron. Acting on Barlow’s advice, Stanton recommended that the war secretary incorporate into his annual report a paragraph on the emancipation and arming of slaves. Stanton perused the draft report closely and suggested the following addition: “Those who make war against the Government justly forfeit all rights of property, privilege, and security derived from the Constitution and laws against which they are in armed rebellion; and as the labor and service of their slaves constitute the chief property of the rebels, such property should share the common fate of war. … It is as clearly the right of the Government to arm slaves, when it may become necessary, as it is to use gunpowder taken from the enemy.”333
Without bothering to consult Lincoln, Cameron took Stanton’s suggestion and included this language in his report. Stanton’s motive is not clear. He may have been trying to carry out Barlow’s scheme to exacerbate tension within the cabinet, or he may have been paving the way for Cameron’s dismissal and thus creating an opportunity for himself to become secretary of war, or he may have sincerely favored those measures. (In fact, the policy Cameron recommended was logical and would eventually be adopted by the administration.)
Although newspapers had accurately predicted what Cameron would write, Lincoln felt blindsided by the report, copies of which had been mailed to the press. On December 1, immediately after reading it, the president exclaimed: “This will never do! Gen. Cameron must take no such responsibility. This is a question which belongs exclusively to me!”334 He told a supporter of the secretary’s policy: “Arm the slaves, and we shall have more of them than white men in our army.”335 Indeed, a Kentucky Unionist said the effect of Cameron’s proposal “is worse than pouring fifty thousand more Secession voters in among us. … Proclaim the general emancipation of all slaves of rebels, and as sure as there is a heaven, you annihilate the Union sentiment in every Southern state, destroy every hope of a Union party anywhere with which to begin a reconstruction, and unite the whole South as one man in a struggle of desperation.”336
Lincoln demanded that Cameron delete the controversial language, whose true authorship was unknown to him. The president was working on a proposal dealing with slavery in Delaware and did not want his war secretary to rile up the public on that sensitive subject. The impertinent Cameron refused. At a cabinet meeting the next day, Welles and Chase backed the war secretary, but Bates, Blair, Seward, and Smith did not. The secretary of state was especially alarmed. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Lincoln “finally settled it by going to General Cameron and insisting upon his confining his report to a statement of the past, and not dictate to Congress what they should do! Cameron insisted that his policy was correct, and must be carried out at once. The President assured him that it did not follow, if he changed his report or left out any of it, that he must necessarily change his policy, but that he could carry it out; only let Congress take hold of the matter first.” The secretary then reluctantly complied with the presidential directive.337
The offending paragraph was replaced with a less controversial statement, which Lincoln may have written: “It is already a grave question what shall be done with those slaves who were abandoned by their owners on the advance of our troops into southern territory, as at the Beaufort district, in South Carolina. The number left within our control at that point is very considerable, and similar cases will probably occur. What shall be done with them? Can we afford to send them forward to their masters, to be by them armed against us, or used in producing supplies to sustain the rebellion? Their labor may be useful to us; withheld from the enemy it lessens his military resources, and withholding them has no tendency to induce the horrors of insurrection, even in the rebel communities. They constitute a military resource, and, being such, that they should not be turned over to the enemy is too plain to discuss. Why deprive him of supplies by a blockade, and voluntarily give him men to produce them? The disposition to be made of the slaves of rebels, after the close of the war, can be safely left to the wisdom and patriotism of Congress. The Representatives of the people will unquestionably secure to the loyal slaveholders every right to which they are entitled under the Constitution of the country.”338
The original version of Cameron’s report had been sent to some newspapers. Angrily, Lincoln ordered Montgomery Blair to telegraph postmasters instructing them to stop delivery of the report until the revised version arrived. A few papers ran both versions of the document, causing Radical Republicans to cheer Cameron and denounce the president. “What a fiasco!” exclaimed Charles
Henry Ray of the Chicago Tribune. “Old Abe is now unmasked, and we are sold out. We want to keep the peace as long as there is hope of unity, but … we are ready to quarrel with Lincoln, the Cabinet, McClellan, and anybody else.” Ray urged that Congress force Lincoln “to accede to the popular demand to make this a war in earnest.”339 An Illinois abolitionist lamented that “the modification of Cameron’s report has absolutely broken down all enthusiasm in his [Lincoln’s] favor among the people. No man … ever threw away so completely, an opportunity, such as occurs to no individual, more than once in an age, to make himself revered, and loved by millions, and secure to himself a place and a name in history, more enviable than often falls to the lot of man. The modification reveals to the eyes of the people the real position and sentiments of the president, in a way that destroys in a great measure all confidence in his ability to bring the war to a successful issue.”340 Wendell Phillips sneered, “If we had a man for President, or an American instead of a Kentuckian, we should have had the satisfaction of attempting to save the Union instead of Kentucky.”341 He conceded that Lincoln was honest, but added: “as a pint pot may be full, and yet not be so full as a quart, so there is a vast difference between the honesty of a small man and the honesty of a statesman.”342
Tension had been building between the president and Cameron for some time. In May, a friend of Lincoln reported that there was “evidently much feeling between Lincoln & Cameron—judging from the conversation of each of them.” The president said he had received complaints “about some Pennsylvania contracts” and “that he hoped the contracts were fair, but that he intended to have the matter examined.”343 Five months later, Lincoln complained that the secretary of war was “utterly ignorant and regardless of the course of things, and the probable result,” “[s]elfish and openly discourteous,” “[o]bnoxious to the Country,” and “[i]ncapable of organizing details or conceiving and advising general plans.”344 An example of Cameron’s rudeness occurred in the late fall when a young man presented him a letter of recommendation from McClellan with a strong endorsement from Lincoln. The general wanted the bearer to have an important position in the commissary department. The war secretary read the document impassively, tossed it aside, and said Lincoln’s “recommendation has not the slightest weight with me.”345 A similar episode had occurred months earlier, when a sharpshooter presented Cameron a letter from Lincoln endorsing his plan to raise a regiment in Wisconsin. The secretary of war treated him gruffly, saying the government wanted no more troops. When the rejected would-be soldier reported this conversation to the president, Lincoln appointed him to a highly desirable civilian post.
Chase and others shared the president’s concern about the administration of the War Department. The treasury secretary chastised Cameron for tardiness and sloppiness in submitting bud get estimates. In May, an up-and-coming political leader from Maine, James G. Blaine, reported from Washington that he was having trouble getting the War Department to accept troops from the Pine Tree state because “Cameron is too busy awarding contracts to Pennsylvanians and in giving the new lieutenancies in such a manner that S. Cameron shall not lose the convention in 1864. Besides it is said that his capacity is for intrigue and not for business.”346 Iowa Senator James W. Grimes, alluding to Napoleon’s fabled war minister, fumed that “[i]nstead of having a man in these times at the head of the War Dept. who Carnot like, can sit down and organize victory for us we have a man there whose highest capabilities would be reached as payment broker of third class notes in Wall Street or as the speculator of corner lots in some of our western paper towns.”347 Similarly, Henry Winter Davis asked: “Why will not the President find a Carnot to end the rebellion with?”348
In June, Lincoln seemed “agitated” and “in a temper” when asking T. J. Barnett, a lawyer-journalist and Republican activist, about War Department contracts.349 Soon thereafter, when Ebenezer Peck urged him to replace Cameron, the president was impressed with his arguments about the Chief’s incompetence but feared that his hostility would have a deleterious effect on Pennsylvania. In August, influential New Yorkers called at the White House to express their lack of confidence in Cameron’s probity and efficiency and to recommend that he be supplanted by Joseph Holt. Even though the public was rapidly losing confidence in the war secretary that summer, Lincoln hesitated to replace him, saying: “It is no time to swap horses when we are crossing a torrent” and “I know everything that Mr. Cameron has done since he came into office, and I tell you that he is as honest as I am.”350
But shortly thereafter, Lincoln changed his tune. In early September 1861, he told Hiram Barney that he wished to remove Cameron because the war secretary “was unequal to the duties of the place” and “his public affiliation with army contractors was a scandal.” Moreover, when away from Washington, Cameron often gave “telegraphic orders for the removal of troops and munitions, of which no record was made in the Department,” thus causing “serious disorder and difficulty.” The president, according to Barney, also “named other instances to the same end.”351 The New York Times complained about Cameron’s refusal to accept regiments or to encourage the enlistment of cavalry, his reluctance to enroll a regiment of marksmen until Lincoln practically forced him to do so, his awarding of contracts for cannon to one Pennsylvania manufacturer instead of several different firms who collectively could have filled the order more quickly, and to his wasting time by “quarrelling over the appointment of sutlers and messengers, and arranging minor matters of the least possible consequence to the public.”352 The Boston Transcript denounced Cameron’s favoritism in making army appointments and his “sheer want of executive capacity.”353
Cameron blocked the appointment of capable men, like Ethan Allen Hitchcock and Montgomery C. Meigs. Lincoln did manage to get Meigs named quartermaster general but had less luck with Hitchcock’s case. Once the war broke out, General Scott asked Cameron’s permission to have Hitchcock, who had retired from the army in 1855 after thirty-eight years of service, recalled to duty and assigned to Washington. The secretary of war, whose corruption in dealing with the Winnebago Indians in 1838 had been denounced at the time by Hitchcock, refused. When Scott appealed to Lincoln, the president replied “that he must let the Head of the War Dept. have his voice.”354 (Eventually, Hitchcock was made supervisor of prisoner exchanges.)
In December, Montgomery Blair told Lincoln that “he ought to get rid of C[ameron] at once, that he was not fit to remain in the Cabinet, and was incompetent to manage the War Department.”355 For some time the president had been planning to do so. In September, he hinted to Edwin M. Stanton that soon he would probably be named to an important position. (Stanton, who had been contemplating a move from Washington to New York, postponed those plans. After months of waiting, however, he grew impatient and harshly criticized Lincoln.) In October, the president informed Cameron that he would be dismissed sooner or later. But what to do with him? Because he remained a powerful force in Pennsylvania, the Chief had to be given a consolation prize, like a diplomatic post. As it developed, Cassius M. Clay wished to return home from Russia, where he had been serving as U.S. minister, and take an army command. From Thurlow Weed, the president learned that Cameron would be willing to take Clay’s place. (When informed of this move, Thaddeus Stevens quipped: “Send word to the Czar to bring in his things of nights.”)356
So on January 11, Lincoln sent Cameron an uncharacteristically curt note: “As you have, more than once, expressed a desire for a change of position, I can now gratify you, consistently with my view of the public interest. I therefore propose nominating you to the Senate, next monday, as minister to Russia.”357 According to Henry Winter Davis, Cameron’s “removal was after the fashion of the deposition of an eastern Vizier. No consultation of the Cabinet—not one of them knew it was contemplated except Mr. Seward.”358
Because Lincoln’s note contained no expression of regret or gratitude, Cameron felt deeply wounded and complained that Lincoln was “discourteou
s.”359 To Alexander K. McClure and Thomas A. Scott, the Chief predicted tearfully that it “meant personal as well as political destruction.” Those three men agreed to ask Lincoln to replace that note with a more generous and complimentary one. The president obliged, sending Cameron another missive, backdated to January 11, paying tribute to his services.
Cameron later maintained that he was fired because of his antislavery principles, but that seems unlikely, though many at the time believed it was so. William P. Fessenden accurately observed that “Cameron did not leave the department on account of his Slavery views,” which “were the same as those of Mr Chase and others, who remain.” (A case in point was Welles, whose annual report describing his policy of sheltering fugitive slaves and hiring them for the navy was more radical than Cameron’s, yet the navy secretary was not reprimanded; he stayed in the cabinet throughout Lincoln’s administration.) As Fessenden put it, Cameron simply “could not manage so large a concern,” for he “had neither the capacity nor strength of will.” As a result, “there was great mismanagement. He did his best, but his best was not enough.”360 Welles concurred, noting that Cameron lacked “the grasp, power, energy, comprehension, and important qualities essential to the administration of the War Department.”361 Among Cameron’s most widely criticized shortcomings were his “worse than equivocal antecedents; his swarms of corrupt hangers-on and contract-hunting friends; his repeated and persistent attempts to enrich his Pennsylvania favorites at the expense of the people,” and his lack of “a single military instinct” or a “comprehensive and organizing executive faculty.”362
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