In exercising his new-found assertiveness, Lincoln continued to face a daunting challenge in McClellan. Getting him to move proved as difficult as ever. Among the general’s chief defects were the ones that he mistakenly ascribed to Robert E. Lee, who, Little Mac alleged, “is too cautious & weak under grave responsibility” and “wanting in moral firmness when pressed by heavy responsibility & is likely to be timid & irresolute in action.”21 This assessment is a classic example of the psychological mechanism of projection—accusing others of having one’s own flaws.
Presidential Reading
As Lincoln took greater control of his administration, he had little time to relax. In January, when chided for inaccessibility, he said that he simply could not accommodate everybody who wanted to see him and exclaimed: “I have not looked into a newspaper for a month!”22 He told his Illinois friend George W. Rives “that he had no time to read many letters & none to read newspapers.”23 Some mistakenly interpreted these remarks as a scandalous admission that the president cared little for public opinion. As John Hay noted, Lincoln “read very little. Scarcely ever looked into a newspaper unless I called his attention to an article on some special subject. He frequently said ‘I know more about that than any of them.’ ”24 Hay’s coadjutor, John G. Nicolay, reported that except for telegraphic dispatches in the Washington press, “the President rarely ever looks at any papers, simply for want of leisure to do so.”25 Nicolay and Hay’s assistant, William O. Stoddard, recalled that Lincoln “cared little” for newspaper opinion. In 1861, the president instructed him to prepare a digest of the most significant editorials in prominent journals. Stoddard complied for a few weeks but eventually quit because Lincoln ignored his handiwork. The president “knew the people so much better than the editors did,” Stoddard explained, “that he could not bring himself to listen with any patience to the tissue of insane contradictions which then made up the staple of the public press.”26
When an army officer volunteered to write a defense of the administration, Lincoln told him: “Oh, no, at least, not now. If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how—the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference.”27 In 1865, Lincoln said: “As a general rule, I abstain from reading the reports of attacks upon myself, wishing not to be provoked by that to which I can not properly offer an answer.”28
Lincoln also avoided reading newspapers because he was, as he put it, too “thin-skinned.” Mary Lincoln testified that press attacks caused her husband “great pain.” When she tried to share with him hostile journalistic commentary, he would say: “Don’t do that, for I have enough to bear.”29 One Sunday afternoon he spent an hour perusing some anti-administration editorials clipped from Henry Ward Beecher’s New York Independent. The eminent preacher snobbishly dismissed Lincoln: “It would be difficult for a man to be born lower than he was. He is an unshapely man. He is a man that bears evidence of not having been educated in schools or in circles of refinement.”30 Upon finishing Beecher’s salvos, Lincoln indignantly threw them down and quoted heatedly from the Second Book of Kings: “Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this thing?”31 He sharply criticized an editor of that journal, Henry C. Bowen, who protested that he only controlled the commercial, not editorial, side of the paper and therefore could do nothing about Beecher’s attacks.
(Beecher was pleased that Lincoln read his barbs and rejoiced “that the arrow is well directed,” but his brother Thomas, a recruiting officer in upstate New York, criticized his naiveté about the degree of public support for emancipation: “I am satisfied that the day you succeed in writing your magnificent principles on our national banner, you will have only a flag and a sentiment; the army, the men with one voice will say, ‘We ain[’]t going to fight for the Niggers.’ You remember [your earlier years in] Indiana. Do you soberly think that those fighting Hoosiers would hurry to enlist for the sake of freeing the slave? Will negro hating Illinois that now gives nigh half her men to the war, consent to fight for the slaves she despises? I can answer for rural New York. The more emancipation you talk, the less recruits you can enlist.”)32
Ward Hill Lamon heard Lincoln cry out after learning of criticism like Beecher’s: “I would rather be dead than, as President, thus abused in the house of my friends.”33 When Henry J. Raymond’s New York Times was severely critical of Lincoln, he made it clear that Raymond would receive no government position. The president once protested to Sydney Howard Gay, managing editor of the New York Tribune, about an unfair article in that paper: “I want to straighten this thing out and then I don’t care what they do with me. They may hang me.”34
Instead of perusing newspapers to gauge the mood of the country, Lincoln relied on what he called “public-opinion baths”—that is, talking with innumerable callers. He acknowledged to journalist Charles G. Halpine that it was a “heavy tax” on his time to do so, but insisted that “no hours of my day are better employed than those which thus bring me again within the direct contact and atmosphere of the average of our whole people.” Government officials moved in such limited circles that they could easily lose touch with the electorate. By regularly admitting all comers, even those with “utterly frivolous” concerns, he was able to obtain “a clearer and more vivid image of that great popular assemblage out of which I sprung, and to which at the end of two years I must return.”35
Lincoln read only a tiny percentage of the letters that poured into the White House, for most business correspondence was routed to the appropriate departments. At his request, White House secretaries summarized the incoming mail for him. “Mr. Nicolay, please run over this & tell me what is in it,” he endorsed a 15-page missive.36 One of those secretaries, William O. Stoddard, recalled that “there never was on earth such another omnium gatherum as the President’s mail.” It consisted of “applications for office, for contracts, for pardons, for pecuniary aid, for advice, for information, for autographs, voluminous letters of advice, political disquisitions, religious exhortations, the rant and drivel of insanity, bitter abuse, foul obscenity, slanderous charges against public men, police and war information, military reports,” and a “large number of threatening letters.” Stoddard could not get the president to take seriously the threats, which averaged one a day. If Lincoln bothered to notice them at all, he responded with “contemptuous ridicule.”37
The president had little time for voluminous documents. When he received a very detailed committee report on artillery, he threw it down, exclaiming: “I should want a new lease of life to read this through! Why can’t a committee of this kind occasionally exhibit a grain of common sense? If I send a man to buy a horse for me, I expect him to tell me his ‘points’—not how many hairs there are in his tail.”38
To a caller presenting a long petition, he stated bluntly: “I’m not going to read that.”
“Why not?”
“Why, if all these thing were read it would take fifty Presidents to do the business.”
“But this once, do just read mine.”
Holding up the lengthy document, Lincoln exclaimed: “Read that! Why I don’t expect to live long enough to read it through.”39
In the winter of 1861–1862, Lincoln looked especially haggard and careworn. A guest at a mid-January dinner recalled that it “was evident that he was harassed by haunting cares; the obligation of politeness to his guests made him endeavor to be agreeable; he would tell a funny story to my mother who sat next to him, or make some amusing remark to his other neighbor, then when the attention of these ladies was called away, Mr. Lincoln’s thoughts lapsed into their ‘sea of trouble’ and flew far away from the lights and the guests and the scene around him; the face a moment before twinkling with the merriment of a jest, became rigid in its inten
sity of thought.”40 The president, wrote D. W. Bartlett on New Years Day, “is not so cheerful as he used to be, is a little more grave in his demeanor, and is somewhat worn.”41 This news caused alarm, for it was widely believed that the president’s face unerringly indicated the state of public affairs.
As his anxiety grew, Lincoln’s temper shortened. When confronted by the increasingly vehement criticism of McClellan’s tardiness in attacking the Confederates, he responded that “there was probably but one man in the country more anxious for a battle than himself, and that man was McClellan.” He “repudiated in words of withering rebuke those who make the charge that he or Mr. Seward or General McClellan were temporizing or delaying out of any consideration for rebels or rebel institutions, or that they indulged any thought of ending the war by any means other than by conquest on the battlefield.”42 He insisted that “McClellan is not a traitor; his difficulty is that he always prefers to-morrow to to-day. He never is ready to move. I think the immense importance of the interests at stake affects him thus. In this he is very much like myself. When I was practicing law at Springfield, I sometimes had a case involving a man’s life or death, and I never could feel that I was ready to go on with the trial; I always wished to postpone it; and when the next court came round I felt a similar impression that I was not ready, whatever preparations I had made.”43
Cheering News from Kentucky and Tennessee
As time passed, Lincoln grew more optimistic. On January 19, Union troops under the exceptionally capable Virginian George H. Thomas won a battle at Mill Springs, Kentucky, killing 148 of the enemy, including General Felix K. Zollicoffer, while losing only 55 men. The president was in excellent spirits upon hearing of that victory, which he looked upon as the first in a series that would extend into the warmer months. Also cheering was word that General Ambrose E. Burnside and his men had safely reached North Carolina, where they quickly defeated the Confederates at Roanoke Island. On February 5, Lincoln said “that he felt more confidence now than ever in the power of the Government to suppress the rebellion.”44 When Joshua Speed protested against a rumored plan to award a general’s stars to Cassius M. Clay—then serving as U.S. minister to Russia—the president said “that he was now in great hopes that the rebellion would pretty much [be] ended” before Clay could return from St. Petersburg.45
(Lincoln came to regret offering a commission to Clay. In December 1862, the “much annoyed” president refused to see that general, saying Clay had “a great deal of conceit and very little sense, and that he did not know what to do with him, for he could not give him a command—he was not fit for it.”46 But feeling sorry for the unpopular Clay, he nominated him to serve once again as minister to Russia despite the objections of Sumner and Seward. Seeing that the president was “vexed and grieved” at the prospect that the senate might well reject Clay, Seward magnanimously agreed to abandon his opposition and help secure the indiscreet Kentuckian’s confirmation.)47
On February 6, U.S. Grant, with the help of gunboats under the command of Navy Captain Andrew Hull Foote, took Fort Henry on the Tennessee River, a victory that Lincoln considered extremely important. And on February 16, when Grant captured a Rebel army at Fort Donelson on the Cumberland, Washingtonians became wildly excited. The wife of a prominent government official told friends back in Iowa: “Our hearts are bursting with gratitude, our tears start, we grasp hands, we laugh, we say ‘God be thanked;’ our country’s honor is vindicated, the stain of our Flag is forever blotted out!”48 An army officer noted, “some think that the back bone of the rebellion, as it is called, is broken forever.”49
At Donelson, Grant took several thousand Confederates prisoner. This successful joint operation represented the first major Northern victory in the war; it not only opened the South to invasion along two rivers but also forced the rebels to forsake their positions in Kentucky and much of Tennessee. Tired of hearing reports that all was quiet on the Potomac, many Northerners scoffed when McClellan’s partisans claimed that their hero, as general-in-chief, should receive credit for those victories.
Lincoln rejoiced at the triumph of Grant and Foote. When the news arrived and someone jubilantly suggested “let’s have a drink,” the teetotaling president drolly responded: “All right bring in some water.”50 Informed that the victory had been achieved with the help of many Illinois troops, he remarked: “I cannot speak so confidently about the fighting qualities of the Eastern men, … but this I do know—if the Southerners think that man for man they are better than our Illinois men, or western men generally, they will discover themselves in a grievous mistake.”51
For weeks Lincoln had been working behind the scenes to provide Grant and Foote with floating mortars, the brainchild of Gustavus Fox, who realized that the Mississippi, Cumberland, and Tennessee rivers would be convenient invasion routes and that to attack forts along their banks, mortars on boats would be essential. While still in charge of the Department of the West, Frémont to his credit approved the idea and ordered the construction of a mortar fleet at Cairo. It was to assist the army in a thrust led by Grant, who had obtained permission from Halleck to launch an offensive down the Tennessee. Special beds had to be manufactured to accommodate the gigantic 13-inch mortars. This was successfully accomplished for a flotilla being constructed in New Jersey at the behest of David Dixon Porter, who was planning to attack New Orleans, but Lincoln grew anxious as the work on a similar fleet in Cairo was seemingly abandoned. On January 10, the cabinet learned that nobody knew anything about those vessels. When he made inquiries, Lincoln was infuriated to discover that no mortars had been constructed for Foote’s armada and only two mortar beds. He instructed Navy Lieutenant Henry A. Wise “to put it through.” With fierce determination, he told Wise on January 23, “I am going to devote a part of every day to these mortars and I won[’]t leave off until it fairly rains Bombs.”52 He wanted “to rain the Rebels out” and “treat them to a refreshing shower of sulphur and brimstone.”53 When word of the president’s special interest in the flotilla reached Cairo, it galvanized the officers and men there.
Lieutenant Wise turned to the firm of Cooper and Hewitt, which speedily completed the beds by mid-February and sent them westward in boxcars plainly labeled “U. S. GRANT, CAIRO. NOT TO BE SWITCHED UNDER PENALTY OF DEATH.”54 A similar feat was accomplished by a Cincinnati foundry. Lincoln supervised all these efforts closely. Despite his best endeavors, however, the mortar flotilla was not ready in time for Foote and Grant’s campaign. Happy as he was with the news from Tennessee, Lincoln was “[m]ad about mortars.” He remarked that “he must take these army matters into his own hands. The Navy have built their ships and mortars for N[ew] O[rleans] and are ready to go. Gen. McC[lellan] & [General James W.] Ripley & all are to blame.”55
One-Man Research-and-Development Bureau for New Weaponry
Lincoln’s attempt to expedite the creation of a mortar fleet was emblematic of his desire to provide the military with the latest, most lethal weapons. In keeping with his long-standing interest in things mechanical, he studied weaponry as well as strategy, and during the first two years of his administration became in effect a one-man research-and-development branch of the War Department in addition to its main strategist. But the chief of army ordnance, General James W. Ripley (known as “Ripley Van Winkle”), proved obstinate and recalcitrant. Trying to get the unimaginative, cantankerous Ripley to adopt technological innovations was as difficult as it was to get McClellan or Buell to attack the enemy.
Lincoln concerned himself with a wide variety of weapons: small arms, artillery, flame throwers, rockets, submarines, mines, iron-clad ships, and explosives. Often he tested new-fangled rifles himself. An inventor with a patent of his own, he encouraged all sorts of innovations, most notably the breechloading rifle and the machine gun. His interest in the latter began in June 1861, when he observed tests of “the Union Repeating Gun,” modestly described by its salesman as “an army in six feet square.” Lincoln dubbed it the “coffee-
mill gun” because its hopper, into which bullets were poured, resembled that culinary apparatus. Impressed by what he saw, Lincoln in October ordered all of the ten guns then available at $1,300 apiece. On October 26, the president called on McClellan and “began to talk about his wonderful new repeating battery of rifled gun, shooting 50 balls a minute.” Lincoln was “delighted with it” and asked the general to “go down and see it, and if proper, detail a corps of men to work it.”56 Characteristically, Little Mac hesitated to act, asking Cameron if fifty could be purchased at the rather steep price. Lincoln then demanded that the general back his decision to buy them. Impatiently, the president told a salesman promoting the weapon that McClellan “knows whether the guns will be serviceable. I do not. It avails nothing for him that he has no objection to my purchasing them.” McClellan ultimately agreed, and on December 19 Lincoln ordered the purchase of fifty coffee-mill guns.
More significantly, Lincoln championed the introduction of breechloading rifles, which allowed a soldier to avoid the cumbersome, time-consuming, and dangerous procedures necessary to reload single-shot muzzleloaders: while standing or kneeling he must take a from a pouch a paper cartridge containing powder and bullet, tear it open with his teeth, pour the powder into the barrel, stick the ball point-first into the muzzle, pull out a ramrod, jam the bullet home, replace the ramrod in its tube, raise the weapon, half-cock the hammer, remove the spent percussion cap, place a new one on the nipple, and cock the hammer once more. Had breechloaders been widely adopted by the North early in the war, the conflict might have been significantly shortened.
Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2 Page 52
