Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  In 1864, Lincoln pardoned two dozen of the 264 Sioux who, after being spared the death penalty, had been incarcerated. That same year he intervened to spare the life of Pocatello, chief of a Shoshoni band in Utah.

  Fighting Joe: Replacing Burnside with Hooker

  On the momentous first day of 1863, Lincoln had more on his mind than the Emancipation Proclamation: he must decide what to do about the demoralized Army of the Potomac. Exacerbating his anxiety for that army was fear that Union forces in the West might also suffer defeat. He had good reason to be apprehensive, for on December 29, General William T. Sherman led a disastrous assault at Chickasaw Bluffs, a few miles north of the Confederate bastion of Vicksburg on the Mississippi River, and two days later, Confederates recaptured the port of Galveston, Texas, which they held for the rest of the war.

  News of those two setbacks arrived on January 12, which D. W. Bartlett called “the bluest day I have ever seen in Washington.” He explained that it was not merely the defeats in Mississippi and Texas that caused “the almost universal feeling of discouragement.” Intensifying the gloom was “the fact that we have had such a series of reverses, that the northern democracy everywhere seems to be rising against the government, certainly against the administration.” Moreover, “the impression is now rapidly gaining ground that the leaders of the democracy and of the rebellion have some kind of an understanding with each other.”86

  The one bright spot in the West occurred at Stone’s River, Tennessee, where on December 31, Confederates under Braxton Bragg attacked the Army of the Cumberland, led by General William S. (“Old Rosy”) Rosecrans. The battle raged for three days, during which the White House was, as Nicolay put it, “in a state of feverish anxiety.”87 If Rosecrans had been defeated, the effect on Northern morale would have been catastrophic. But at Stone’s River, the Union was not defeated. Although the outcome was hardly a resounding victory, by January 2 Bragg had at least been driven from the field. (Later, when the president referred to the battle as a triumph, Grant said that Stone’s River was not exactly a victory. “A few such fights would have ruined us,” he remarked.)88 Nonetheless, it was with vast relief that Lincoln congratulated Old Rosy: “God bless you, and all with you!” Months later he wrote Rosecrans: “you gave us a hard earned victory which, had there been a defeat instead, the nation could scarcely have lived over.” Rosecrans’s success had checked “a dangerous sentiment which was spreading in the North.”89 A year after the battle, the president, still cognizant of the importance of that battle, told James A. Garfield that the nation was “deeply indebted” to Rosecrans “for its salvation from almost fatal disaster,” for if “that battle had been lost it is difficult to see where our fortunes would have landed.” It was “one of the most if not the most important props of support the country” had in the war so far.90

  In the East, Burnside, prodded by Halleck, intended to move against the enemy on December 31. Two days earlier, however, a pair of his subordinate generals, John Newton and John Cochrane, hastened to the White House to protest against that plan. In response, Lincoln wired Burnside: “I have good reason for saying you must not make a general movement of the army without letting me know.”91 When Burnside demanded an explanation, Lincoln told him of Newton and Cochrane’s visit, without mentioning their names. In addition to those generals, Joseph Hooker and William B. Franklin opposed Burnside’s plans. When Old Burn spelled out those plans to him, Lincoln remained noncommittal, merely saying he would discuss the matter with Stanton and Halleck.

  The frustrated president took time from his busy schedule on New Year’s Day to pen a blunt letter to the general-in-chief: “Gen. Burnside wishes to cross the Rappahannock with his army, but his Grand Division commanders all oppose the movement. If in such a difficulty as this you do not help, you fail me precisely in the point for which I sought your assistance. You know what Gen. Burnside’s plan is; and it is my wish that you go with him to the ground, examine it as far as practicable, confer with the officers, getting their judgment, and ascertaining their temper, in a word, gather all the elements for forming a judgment of your own; and then tell Gen. Burnside that you do approve, or that you do not approve his plan. Your military skill is useless to me, if you will not do this.” At long last the president was chastising Old Brains for refusing to do his job. Taking understandable umbrage, the general promptly submitted his resignation, which was rejected. To salve Halleck’s hurt feelings, Lincoln retracted the letter, endorsing it: “Withdrawn, because considered harsh by Gen. Halleck.”92 It was indeed harsh, but it was fully justified. Halleck did finally urge Burnside to cross the Rappahannock and engage the enemy, emphasizing that “our first object was, not ‘Richmond,’ but the defeat or scattering of his army.”93

  Like Halleck, Burnside felt slighted and offered to resign because his division commanders had lost confidence in him. After reading the general’s letter of resignation, Lincoln handed it back to him without comment. Burnside decided to launch yet another campaign and notified the administration; he also sent an undated letter of resignation to be used by the president whenever he saw fit. Lincoln urged him to be “cautious, and do not understand that the government, or country, is driving you. I do not yet see how I could profit by changing the command of the A[rmy of the] P[otomac] & if I did, I should not wish to do it by accepting the resignation of your commission.”94

  As discontent welled up within the ranks, Burnside prepared to send them across the Rappahannock once again. When he ordered them to do so on January 20, they promptly bogged down in a fierce rainstorm that persisted for three days. As the mud grew deeper, the advance—known as the “Mud March”—halted, and the army fell back to its camps. Hooker, ever the malcontent, openly criticized his commander. Burnside, fed up with such insubordination, lashed out, dismissing four generals (including Hooker, Newton, and Cochrane) and relieving five others.

  Many thought it was Burnside who should be relieved. “I have no doubt that the President is as well convinced as I am that this Army will do nothing as it is,” William P. Fessenden told his son, “but he has not force of character requisite for its improvement.”95 But in fact, Lincoln did have “the requisite force of character” to make the necessary change. On January 24, Burnside demanded that the president support his astounding order, though Lincoln had not been consulted about the dismissal of the four generals. When Old Burn and the president met again the next day, Lincoln announced that Hooker was to be the new commander of the Army of the Potomac. Burnside offered to resign his commission, but the president refused; instead he granted the general a one-month furlough and transferred him to the Department of the Ohio, where presumably he could do little harm.

  Hooker had treated Burnside shabbily and was known as a hard drinker, chronic intriguer, indiscreet talker, compulsive womanizer, and reckless gambler. One officer described Hooker’s headquarters as “a combination of barroom and brothel.”96 Nevertheless, Fighting Joe was an obvious choice to take charge of the Army of the Potomac. When the editor of the New York Times complained about his attempts to undermine Burnside, Lincoln replied: “That is all true. Hooker does talk badly, but the trouble is, he is stronger with the country today than any other man.”97 The other grand division commanders were unsuitable: William B. Franklin had been disgraced by his lackluster conduct at Fredericksburg, and the 66-year-old Edwin V. Sumner was too infirm. (Because the president knew that both of those generals resented Hooker and would probably not cooperate fully with him, he relieved them of their commands.) Moreover, Lincoln informed a friend of Franklin that the general’s “loyalty is suspected.”98 Chase liked Hooker for his willingness to condemn McClellan and his purported sympathy with the Radicals. Lincoln made his decision without consulting Halleck or Stanton, both of whom favored George Gordon Meade, even though Hooker outranked him. While in California before the war, Halleck and Hooker had clashed, leading to strained relations. To accommodate Hooker, Lincoln accepted his request that he be allowed to
report directly to the president without going through the general-in-chief.

  Hooker had earned a reputation for “dash courage & skill.”99 He was, as Noah Brooks portrayed him, exceptionally handsome, “tall, shapely, well dressed, though not natty in appearance; his fair red and white complexion glowing with health, his bright blue eyes sparkling with intelligence and animation, and his auburn hair tossed back upon his well shaped head. His nose was aquiline, and the expression of his somewhat small mouth was one of much sweetness, though rather irresolute.” Hooker, in Brooks’s view, was “a gay cavalier, alert and confident, overflowing with animal spirits, and cheery as a boy.”100 A division commander thought that anyone “would feel like cheering when he rode by at the head of his staff.”101

  In naming Hooker, Lincoln read aloud to that general one of his most eloquent letters, a document illustrative of his deep paternal streak. Like a wise, benevolent father, he praised Hooker while gently chastising him for insubordination toward superior officers: “I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient reasons. And yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which, I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and a skilful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not an indispensable quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm. But I think that during Gen. Burnside’s command of the Army, you have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country, and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard, in such way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the Army and the Government needed a Dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes, can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The government will support you to the utmost of it’s ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the Army, of criticising their Commander, and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can, to put it down. Neither you, nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army, while such a spirit prevails in it.” In closing, Lincoln urged Hooker to “beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy, and sleepless vigilance, go forward, and give us victories.”102

  Hooker thought it was “just such a letter as a father might write to a son. It is a beautiful letter, and, although I think he was harder on me than I deserved, I will say that I love the man who wrote it.”103 (As Nicolay remarked, “it would be difficult to find a severer piece of friendly criticism.”)104 Boastfully Hooker told some fellow officers: “After I have been to Richmond I shall have the letter published in the newspapers. It will be amusing.”105 Anson G. Henry, to whom Hooker showed the missive, thought it “ought to be printed in letters of gold,” for it “breathes a spirit of Patriotic devotion to the Country and a spirit of frankness & candor worthy of Mr Lincoln’s character, and is peculiarly his own.”106

  Navy Failure: The Repulse at Charleston

  The appointment of Hooker boded well, but as he prepared for a spring offensive, the lack of military success discouraged Congress, the public, and the administration. In February, Nicolay complained to his fiancée that the Army of the Potomac “is for the present stuck in the mud, as it has been during nearly its whole existence. We hope however that it may yet do something, by accident at least, if not by design. I think we all doubt its ability to help in the great struggle more because the sort of fatality which has hitherto attended it, than by any just estimate of its strength and discipline.”107 A month later he told her apropos of the capture of one of General William S. Rosecrans’s brigades: “Of course carelessness or inefficiency must have been the cause. It is very hard not entirely to lose one’s patience at this succession of adverse accidents which seems to have no end.”108 Along the Mississippi River, Union forces appeared stymied. “Grant’s attempt to take Vicksburg looks to me very much like a total failure,” Nicolay lamented in April. “At Port Hudson we are held at bay.”109

  Partially offsetting the dearth of success on the battlefield, New Hampshire and Connecticut voters provided political victories in March and April, respectively. To help raise funds for those campaigns, Lincoln summoned Thurlow Weed, who persuaded several New York merchants to contribute generously. The Connecticut election was especially noteworthy, for the Democrats had nominated a virulent Peace Democrat, Thomas H. Seymour, who lost to the incumbent William A. Buckingham by 2,000 votes.

  Despite that encouraging development, the bleak military situation continued to torment Lincoln. At a Union mass meeting on March 31, he appeared pallid and emaciated. After receiving bad news from the front one night, he could not sleep. The next morning, Schuyler Colfax “found him looking more than usually pale and careworn.” In reply to the congressman’s query about his spirits, he exclaimed: “How willingly would I exchange places to-day, with the soldier who sleeps on the ground in the Army of the Potomac!”110 One March day, Lincoln gave vent to his frustration with underperforming commanders. When told that Confederate guerrillas had captured General Edward H. Stoughton, he sarcastically remarked: “Oh, that doesn’t trouble me. I can make a better Brigadier, any time, in five minutes; but it did worry me to have all those horses taken. Why, sir, those horses cost us a hundred and twenty-five dollars a head!”111

  Lincoln was particularly exasperated by Admiral Samuel F. Du Pont’s campaign against Charleston, which was the brainchild of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus V. Fox. Convinced that the ironclad monitors were invulnerable, Fox argued that a few of them could run past the forts guarding the entrance to Charleston harbor and compel the city to surrender. Ever since the failure of his plan to relieve Fort Sumter, Fox longed to redeem himself. He also wanted to erase memories of the navy’s poor showing at Galveston in January. When he proposed to send an ironclad fleet against the storm center of secessionism, Lincoln responded enthusiastically. He was eager to have a success to offset the disaster at Fredericksburg and the failures at Vicksburg and Galveston; he did not want to wait until the May offensive in Virginia for something to bolster Northern morale. In September, Fox told Du Pont: “We must have Charleston. … The Pres’t is most anxious and you know the people are,” and five months later, he explained that “[f]inances, politics, foreign relations, all seem to ask for Charleston before Congress adjourns [on March 4], so as to shape legislation.”112 Du Pont raised legitimate objections, which Fox blithely ignored.

  Lincoln was led to believe that the Charleston assault would take place that winter. At a meeting in mid-February, he was astounded to learn from General John G. Foster that the Charleston campaign would be a joint army–navy effort. The president had assumed it would be an all-navy affair. He was also dismayed by a request for further plating of the ironclads. Suspecting that the admiral had lost faith in his chances of success, Lincoln insisted that Fox visit South Carolina to confer with Du Pont. Fox begged off, arguing that he did not wish to injure the admiral’s hypersensitive pride, but he did implore Du Pont not to let the army’s plans disrupt the navy’s. (The admiral had recommended that the army and navy carry out the assignment jointly; troops could capture some of the forts, reducing the gauntlet that the ships must run. When Fox and Welles vetoed that idea, Du Pont understandably wanted additional monitors.) Fox also informed the admiral that Lincoln and Welles “are very much struck with this programme” and that the joint army–navy plan, involving a siege, “meets with disfavor.”113 A siege! Shades of Yorktown and McClellan’s dithering on the Peninsula! Lincoln would not stand for it, nor would the public. On March 20, the president instr
ucted Du Pont’s aide to inform the admiral: “I fear neither you nor your officers appreciate the supreme importance to us of Time; the more you prepare, the more the enemy will be prepared.”114 A week later, he complained that “Du Pont was asking for one ironclad after another, as fast as they were built.”115

  Du Pont rightly thought that monitors were ill-suited for attacking forts, no matter how effective they proved in naval battles. The admiral regarded the administration with contempt: “our rulers … only think of a blow being struck to help them politically,” he told his wife on the eve of battle. “They know no more what the bravest hearts here think and feel about the matter than, when alongside a comfortable fire, they remember a man outside in a snowdrift. The ignorance about Charleston is appalling on their part, for it is the only way to account for the impatience which seems to manifest itself.”116 Lincoln, he wrote, “is evidently a most mediocre man and unfortunately interferes a great deal with matters he should leave to his subordinates and agents.”117