Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  McClellan’s reinstatement mortified and disappointed Chase and Stanton. The treasury secretary said Lincoln’s relation with the general called to mind “the case of the woman who after yielding everything but the last favor could hardly help yielding that also.”110 Abolitionists objected vehemently. William Lloyd Garrison found himself “growing more and more skeptical as to the ‘honesty’ of Lincoln,” who in the abolitionist’s opinion was “nothing better than a wet rag.” McClellan’s return to command showed that the president “is as near lunacy as any one not a pronounced Bedlamite.”111 Ohio Congressman John A. Gurley said of Little Mac: “we have lost through him more than fifty thousand lives, [$]400,000,000, & a year[’]s valuable time. God only knows why the President has retained him at the head of the army! I guess Providence designs to prolong this War till we agree to let the Negro go!”112 Whitelaw Reid, who thought that Joseph Hooker, Heintzelman, or Sedgwick would have been a better choice than McClellan, lamented that the president’s “superabundant kindness of heart so often overcomes his better judgment.”113

  That kindness of heart prompted Lincoln to comfort Pope, whom the cabinet viewed as a boastful liar unfit for high command. On September 3, Lincoln met with the general and “assured him of his entire satisfaction with his conduct; assured him that McClellan’s command was only temporary; and gave him reason to expect that another army of active operations would be organized at once,” which Pope would lead. Lincoln allowed him to see letters that Fitz John Porter had sent during the campaign sharply criticizing Pope. In response, Pope composed a screed excoriating Porter and McClellan. On September 4, Lincoln allowed him to read that document to him and the secretary of the navy, who described it as “not exactly a bulletin nor a report, but a manifesto, a narrative, tinged with wounded pride and a keen sense of injustice and wrong.” The following day, the cabinet agreed that it should not be published. The president acted on the report, however, by having Generals Porter, Franklin, and Griffin relieved from duty and brought before courts of inquiry. When newspapers ran Pope’s report, Lincoln deplored its publication but said that the leak could never be traced to the cunning general.

  The president thought that Pope’s services should be acknowledged, and he contemplated preparing a statement to that effect for Halleck’s signature. In the statement, he described Pope “as brave, patriotic, and as having done his whole duty in every respect in Virginia, to the entire satisfaction of himself and Halleck.” But he felt that Pope must be sacrificed because the army was prejudiced against him. When a Sioux Indian uprising erupted in Minnesota, Lincoln sent Pope to quell it. Thinking himself the “most talented general in the world and the one most wronged,” Pope left for Minnesota on September 6, as Lincoln put it, “very angry, and not without cause, but circumstances controlled us.”114 The exiled general called the president’s treatment of him “dastardly & atrocious.”115 (Pope continued grousing at length about Lincoln into 1863, deeming him “the worst enemy I ever had in my life.”)116

  Although Pope became the principal scapegoat for Second Bull Run, sharp criticism was also directed at Lincoln and Stanton. Senator Henry Wilson speculated that the president “couldn’t get one vote in twenty in New England,” and Zachariah Chandler said Lincoln was as “unstable as water.”117 Adams S. Hill, a leading Washington correspondent, reported in early September that “Abraham Lincoln has killed himself this week. Such weakness.”118 Hill thought that Lincoln “lost much ground in the estimation of the people,” had “fallen from a h[e]ight which no President since Jackson ever occupied before,” and had “dumped himself into the back yard of the American people.” Hill added that “[i]nefficiency [and] indecision are weak words for the case,” and speculated that if Hamlin were “more of a man there would be a strong movement for his substitution.”119 Henry W. Bellows wrote from Washington that the “feeling of indignation at the inefficiency or incompetence of the Government is intense.” He believed that the nation’s “political concerns are so loosely & ineptly managed that it sends contagious weakness & demoralization through the Army.”120 Henry Ward Beecher thundered: “It is a supreme and extraordinary want of executive administrative talent at the head of the Government that is bringing us to humiliation. Let it be known that the Nation [is] wasted away by an incurable consumption of Central Imbecility.”121 The New York Evening Post maintained that despite Lincoln’s “personal popularity” and “the general confidence in his good intentions,” the “effect of his management has been such that … a large part of the nation is utterly discouraged and despondent.” It was widely believed, the editors said, “that treachery lurks in the highest quarters.” Such suspicion and demoralization grew “out of the weakness and vacillation of the Administration, which itself has grown out of Mr. Lincoln’s own want of decision and purpose.”122 A leading Indiana Republican lamented that the “President, in his anxiety to do right, has vacillated and is fast losing the confidence of his friends, and the respect of his enemies.”123

  Lincoln tried to deflect such criticism by stating “that he was ‘under bonds’ to let Halleck have his own way in everything in regard to the army: to make no appointments or removals even without his advice or consent.”124 At the close of the order restoring the army to McClellan, only Halleck’s name appeared. To former governor William Dennison of Ohio, Lincoln explained: “I found I must select one man to command all the armies of the United States, and though it may be possible that Halleck is not a great General, I firmly believe he is the best I have got.” Therefore “he left military matters entirely to General Halleck.” He added that “Stanton had no more to do with military movements than a clerk. He is like a Secretary of War in time of peace—he attends to all the duties of his office, but does not plan a campaign anywhere.”125

  But after Second Bull Run, the opposite was actually the case; Halleck became, in effect, a clerk, while Stanton resumed his earlier status as a co-planner of the war effort. In 1864, Lincoln remarked that Old Brains at first had accepted the full power and responsibility of a true general-in-chief and persisted “till Pope’s defeat: but ever since that event, he had shrunk from the responsibility whenever it was possible.” After Second Bull Run, “he broke down—nerve and pluck all gone” and became “little more since that [time] than a first-rate clerk.”126 (Hooker contemptuously likened Halleck to a man who wed with the understanding that he would not have sex with his bride.) In early September, Halleck told his wife of the “terrible anxiety” he had suffered in the past month, and complained that he was “greatly dissatisfied with the way things go here. There are so many cooks, they destroy all the broth. I am tired and disgusted with the working of this great political machine.”127

  Especially exasperating to the president was Halleck’s “habitual attitude of demur.”128 According to Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana, the “first impulse of his mind toward a new plan was not enthusiasm; it was analysis, criticism.”129 Halleck had other flaws. Caleb B. Smith thought that he demoralized the army by treating volunteer officers contemptuously. In Smith’s view, he was unqualified for his post by a lack of talent, genius, and success. After a conversation with the general, George Templeton Strong confided to his diary that Halleck was “weak, shallow, commonplace, vulgar,” and that his “silly talk was conclusive as to his incapacity.”130

  But Lincoln kept Halleck on as a technical advisor, a translator of presidential wishes into military parlance, a shield against criticism, and an administrator. In these roles he proved useful. Halleck described his function as “simply a military adviser of the Secretary of War and the President” and said that he “must obey and carry out what they decide upon.”131 General Jacob D. Cox accurately deemed Halleck a mere “bureau officer in Washington.”132

  Key Turning Point: Quasi-Victory at Antietam

  On September 3, instead of besieging Washington, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia began splashing across the upper Potomac and entered Maryland, spreading panic throughout
that state and Pennsylvania. Lincoln was not alarmed, for when asked earlier about the possibility of a Confederate invasion of the Free State, he had said “that there was exactly where he would have them; & where the military men would have them.”133

  For Lincoln, the vexing question of command arose once again: who should lead the Union forces pursuing Lee? (McClellan had been given control only of the Washington forts.) Halleck declined the job when Lincoln indirectly offered it to him. Burnside also begged off, modestly insisting that he was not up to the job. Chase thought that Joseph Hooker or Edwin V. Sumner might do, but his opinion was not widely shared. By default, the choice settled on McClellan. (When the elderly John E. Wool learned that he had been passed over yet again, he bitterly complained that Lincoln was “a joker” lacking “the first qualification to govern a great people,” a man who “delights in relating smutty stories” and whose pets, most notably McClellan, “have all failed.”)134

  On September 5, Halleck and the president asked Little Mac to take charge of the army in the field. The decision, which essentially restored the Army of the Potomac to McClellan (Pope’s army had been given to him three days earlier), was doubtless Lincoln’s, though for some unknown reason he ascribed it to Halleck. Nathaniel P. Banks replaced McClellan in charge of the capital’s fortifications.

  Morale soared when the army realized that McClellan had resumed command. “Our troops know of none other they can trust,” explained Major Alexander Webb.135 “It makes my heart bleed,” Little Mac wrote his wife on September 5, “to see the poor shattered remnants of my noble Army of the Potomac, poor fellows! and to see how they love me even now. I hear them calling out to me as I ride among them—‘George—don’t leave us again!!’ ‘They shan’t take you away from us again’ etc. etc.”136 That same day, Lincoln observed that “McClellan is working like a beaver. He seems to be aroused to doing something, by the sort of snubbing he got last week.” Though “he can[’]t fight himself,” the president observed, “he excells in making others ready to fight.”137

  Restoring the troops’ morale seemed vitally important to Lincoln, who told Welles that he “was shocked to find that of 140,000 whom we were paying for in Pope’s army only 60,000 could be found. McClellan brought away 93,000 from the Peninsula, but could not to-day count on over 45,000.” The president believed “that some of our men permitted themselves to be captured in order that they might leave on parole, get discharged, and go home.” Plaintively, he asked: “Where there is such rottenness, is there not reason to fear for the country?”138 Chase shared Lincoln’s concern, reluctantly acknowledging that if McClellan were not restored to command, the Northern cause at that delicate moment might be placed in severe jeopardy.

  As he led the army into Maryland, McClellan wrote his wife that the “feeling of the Govt towards me … is kind & trusting. I hope with God’s blessing, to justify the great confidence they now repose in me, & will bury the past in oblivion.”139 Lincoln predicted, predicting that if the general did not win a victory, both of them “would be in a bad row of stumps.”140 But the president was not sanguine. In early August, he ruefully told a group who criticized Little Mac: “McClellan must be a good military man. Everybody says he is. These military men all say so themselves, and it isn’t possible that they can all be so completely deceived as some of you insist. He is well versed in military matters, and has had opportunities of experience and observation. Still there must be something wrong somewhere, and I’ll tell you what it is, he never embraces his opportunities—that’s where the trouble is—he always puts off the hour for embracing his opportunities.”141 More succinctly, the president explained to Welles: “I can never feel confident that he will do anything effectual.”142 The navy secretary also feared that McClellan would “persist in delays and inaction” and “do nothing affirmative.” To be successful, Welles thought, the general “must rid himself of what President Lincoln calls the ‘slows.’ ”143

  McClellan’s leisurely progress in Maryland confirmed such suspicions. On September 12, Lincoln told his cabinet that the general “can’t go ahead—he can’t strike a blow. He got to Rockville, for instance, last Sunday night [September 8], and in four days he advanced to Middlebrook, ten miles in pursuit of an invading enemy. This was rapid movement for him.”144 Lincoln seriously considered meeting with McClellan, but both Banks and Halleck warned him it would be too risky to leave Washington while Lee’s troops were nearby.

  Characteristically overestimating the enemy numbers by a wide margin, McClellan appealed for reinforcements. (The Army of the Potomac contained 75,000 effective troops to Lee’s 38,000.) Lincoln ordered Fitz John Porter’s corps to join Little Mac and telegraphed him on September 11, “I am for sending you all that can be spared, & I hope others can follow Porter very soon.”145 When Lee seemed to be retreating, Lincoln urged McClellan: “Please do not let him get off without being hurt.”146

  Pennsylvanians grew extremely anxious as Lee headed their way. When Governor Andrew G. Curtin appealed for 80,000 troops, Lincoln patiently explained his inability to comply: “We have not to exceed eighty thousand disciplined troops, properly so called, this side of the mountains, and most of them, with many of the new regiments, are now close in the rear of the enemy supposed to be invading Pennsylvania. Start half of them to Harrisburg, and the enemy will turn upon and beat the remaining half, and then reach Harrisburg before the part going there, and beat it too when it comes. The best possible security for Pennsylvania is putting the strongest force possible into the enemies rear.”147 To another skittish resident of the Keystone State, fearful that the Confederates would seize Philadelphia, the president offered reassurances: “Philadelphia is more than a hundred and fifty miles from Hagerstown, and could not be reached by the rebel Army in ten days, if no hinderance was interposed.”148

  On September 15, Lincoln rejoiced to hear that the Army of the Potomac had the previous day beaten the enemy at South Mountain, though he could not know that McClellan’s dispatch announcing the victory exaggerated its significance. The Rebels, Little Mac telegraphed Halleck, were retreating “in a perfect panic,” and “Lee last night stated publicly that he must admit they had been shockingly whipped.”149 (How he knew about Lee’s remarks was unexplained.) Lincoln sent congratulations: “God bless you, and all with you. Destroy the rebel army, if possible.”150 He told a friend, “I now consider it safe to say that Gen. McClellan has gained a great victory over the great rebel army in Maryland. … He is now pursuing the flying foe.”151

  In fact, however, the Confederates were not flying but were instead consolidating their scattered forces after capturing the 11,500-man Union garrison at Harper’s Ferry on September 15. (Lincoln deplored this calamity, saying that McClellan “could and ought to have prevented the loss of Harper’s Ferry, but was six days marching 40 miles, and it was surrendered.”)152 Little Mac, having fortuitously obtained a copy of Lee’s orders two days earlier (this document became famous as the Lost Order), knew that the Confederate commander had divided his army. McClellan could have scored a smashing victory if he had acted swiftly to take advantage of that news, but his habitual slowness permitted the enemy to regroup. Having won what he assumed was a major victory at South Mountain, the general ignored the president’s injunction to destroy the Army of Northern Virginia. Instead, he was content to let it recross the Potomac, which he mistakenly thought it was doing. He was startled to learn that the Rebels were in reality forming a line of battle near Antietam Creek. During the three-and-a-half days following the discovery of the Lost Order, Lee’s army had been in grave danger; now its components were reunited and ready to fight the Army of the Potomac. McClellan had forfeited what he properly deemed the “opportunity of a lifetime.”153

  On September 17, the bloodiest single day’s battle of the war was fought at Antietam Creek, where the Army of the Potomac suffered 12,000 casualties and the Army of Northern Virginia 14,000. The result was in effect a draw, with neither side clearly victorio
us, though Lee abandoned the field. Lincoln believed that the Confederate army could be annihilated before it crossed the Potomac if only McClellan would act promptly. At Antietam, Little Mac had committed only two-thirds of his men to battle; the remainder, reinforced by 12,000 freshly arrived troops, could have attacked effectively on September 18. But that day the passive Union commander allowed Lee to slip back into Virginia unharmed, much to the chagrin of the president, who moaned once again: “he never embraces his opportunities.”154 A week after the battle, Lincoln remarked “that nothing could have been better fought than the battle of Antietam; but that he did not know why McClellan did not follow up his advantage.”155

  Others were equally puzzled. In Missouri, a Union colonel lamented that the “Campaign on the Potomac is another failure on our part, and I can[’]t understand the motive inducing Lincoln to hold onto McClellan. He don’t move. If we had displayed half the Energy on the Potomac that the Rebels have we could now see the end of this war.” Morale among western troops, he noted, was sinking because “so little good results from what has been done.”156 Gustavus Fox thought the loss of the Harper’s Ferry garrison more than offset the advantage gained at Antietam, since Lee was allowed to escape with his army intact. Shortly after the battle, Fox told Lincoln that his anxious wife insisted that he write her daily assurances that Washington was safe. The president “said that put him in mind of the fellow in the Democratic convention in Illinois. The question was upon dispensing with the roll call as the convention was large and much time would be consumed. This fellow said he was not certain as he was present and he would like to have the roll called to make sure of it.”157