Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  Though notoriously soft-hearted in issuing pardons, Lincoln had little sympathy for draft resistance. When the wives of two poor Irishmen who had been jailed for that crime asked the president to pardon them, he replied in the accent they had used: “If yers hushbands had not been resisting the draft, they would not now be in prison; so they can stay in prison.”40

  Claybanks vs. Charcoals: Imbroglio in Missouri

  Exasperating as problems associated with the draft might be, Lincoln found it even more vexatious to deal with political and military turmoil in the bitterly divided state of Missouri, where his generals clashed repeatedly with local authorities. In the autumn of 1861, he met with the provisional governor, Hamilton R. Gamble, who requested funding for the state militia. The president, eager to free up federal troops in Missouri for service elsewhere, readily agreed, with the understanding that the general in charge of the Department of the West would ex officio become the major general commanding the new Missouri State Militia. Implemented in November, the Gamble plan seemed like a sensible arrangement, for many Missourians were unwilling to join the Union army but would happily serve in the state militia in order to suppress local rebels and repel both invading Confederates and marauding Kansas irregulars, called Jayhawkers. Halleck, burdened with administrative responsibilities for a vast department, assigned his assistant, John M. Schofield, to command the militia.

  A West Pointer who had taught physics at Washington University in St. Louis, the gentlemanly, sociable, 30-year-old Schofield would prove a controversial figure in Missouri. He had won respect for recruiting troops after the outbreak of hostilities, for assisting Nathaniel Lyon’s ill-fated campaign, and for helping to mobilize the old militia. Under Schofield’s able direction, the new Missouri State Militia was quickly organized and performed valuable service. But his lack of enthusiasm for emancipation made him suspect in the eyes of Radicals, as did his reputation for indolence. Others found him too willing to employ extreme measures against guerrillas. To combat the bushwhackers and guerrillas terrorizing the state, he authorized provost marshals to punish them severely.

  In April 1862, when Halleck left St. Louis to take command in the field, he put Schofield in charge of most of Missouri. Schofield sent many U.S. volunteers to augment the armies of Halleck and Samuel R. Curtis, leaving militiamen to control Missouri, where guerrilla bands spread havoc. To combat them, Schofield assessed damages against Rebel sympathizers for killing or wounding Union soldiers or civilians and for damaging property. To supplement the 10,000-man Missouri State Militia, he drafted men into a new outfit, the Enrolled Missouri Militia, which soon had 40,000 members, mostly from the interior. They were to be supplied and transported by the federal government but paid by the state. Strapped for funds, the Provisional Government levied assessments on disloyal citizens. Careless recruiters allowed some disloyalists to join the Enrolled Missouri Militia, which soon led irate St. Louis Unionists to demand the ouster of Schofield and Gamble.

  In September 1862, the ambitious Schofield was not removed but in effect demoted when, to his dismay, General Samuel R. Curtis took charge of the newly created Department of the Missouri, incorporating Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri, and the Indian Territory (the future Oklahoma). A West Point graduate and former congressman from Iowa, Curtis had won a major general’s stars as a reward for his victory at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, six months earlier. The serious, deliberate, 56-year-old Curtis demonstrated little emotion, seldom laughed, and was known among the troops as “Old Grannie.”

  Lincoln was soon embroiled in a controversy between Curtis and Governor Gamble over control of the militia. In late November 1862, the president asked Attorney General Bates (Gamble’s brother-in-law) to help settle the dispute: “Few things perplex me more than this question between Gov. Gamble, and the War Department, as to whether the peculiar force organized by the former in Missouri are ‘State troops,’ or ‘United States troops.’ ” To Lincoln it seemed obvious that it was “either an immaterial, or a mischievous question.” Who cared what title the soldiers were given? If more substantive issues were involved, it would be ruinous for the administration to intervene: “Instead of settling one dispute by deciding the question, I should merely furnish a nest full of eggs for hatching new disputes.” It should be understood, he argued, that the militia was neither entirely a federal nor a state force, but was “of mixed character.” It was safer to ignore the abstract question and deal with practical problems as they arose. The issue now before them was whether the governor had the power to create vacancies, either by removing officers or accepting resignations. Why should there be such bitter contention over such a minor problem, the president wondered. Let Gamble create vacancies and have the War Department ratify them.

  A month later, after consulting with Halleck and Stanton, the president transformed that suggestion into an official ruling, in effect designating Missouri militiamen as federal troops. When the governor protested, Stanton agreed that Gamble’s earlier decisions regarding removals and resignations would stand, but that in the future the War Department would control such matters. To Lincoln’s annoyance, Gamble appealed to him to overrule the war secretary.

  Further irritating Gamble was the Second Confiscation Act, which Curtis enforced vigorously. In effect, the general instituted martial law, jailing or exiling suspected disloyalists without due process. In mid-December 1862, attempting to placate Gamble, Lincoln asked Curtis: “Could the civil authority be introduced into Missouri in lieu of the military to any extent, with advantage and safety?” The general promptly replied: “The peace of this State rests on military power. To relinquish this power would be dangerous.”41

  Later that month, the president intervened when Curtis approved an order banishing the Reverend Dr. Samuel B. McPheeters, minister of the Pine Street Presbyterian Church in St. Louis. Although the pastor had taken a loyalty oath, his devotion to the Union appeared to some parishioners insufficiently fervent. He had offended many by baptizing an infant named after Confederate General Sterling Price. McPheeters’s case quickly became a cause célèbre. He hastened to Washington and appealed to Lincoln, who, on December 27, suspended the banishment decree. When Curtis protested, Lincoln explained that he saw no hard evidence of McPheeters’s disloyalty but would rescind his order if the general insisted. He added, however, that the federal government “must not, as by this order, undertake to run the churches. When an individual, in a church or out of it, becomes dangerous to the public interest, he must be checked; but let the churches, as such take care of themselves.”42 Curtis failed to carry out this order, and the president once again had to intervene. As Lincoln explained to the mayor of St. Louis: “I have never interfered, nor thought of interfering as to who shall or shall not preach in any church; nor have I knowingly, or believingly, tolerated any one else to so interfere by my authority. If any one is so interfering, by color of my authority, I would like to have it specifically made known to me. If, after all, what is now sought, is to have me put Dr. M[cPheeters] back, over the heads of a majority of his own congregation, that too, will be declined. I will not have control of any church on any side.”43

  The assessment system of taxing disloyalists, designed to fund the Enrolled Missouri Militia, exacerbated tensions between Curtis and Gamble. Understandably, the governor thought the implementation of the policy was arbitrary, that loyalty could not be easily measured, nor could a sum for assessment be reasonably determined. Gamble asked Lincoln to halt the entire process. On December 10, the president complied, ordering Curtis to suspend assessments in St. Louis. Three weeks later, Gamble urged that a similar order be issued covering the entire state.

  Irked by these incessant appeals, Lincoln on January 5, 1863, asked Curtis to cooperate with Governor Gamble and thus to spare him the necessity of intervening in Missouri’s endless disputes. “I am having a good deal of trouble with Missouri matters,” the exasperated president said. In response to the hard-liners’ charges that Gamble’s Unionism was
suspect, Lincoln assured Curtis that “Gov. Gamble is an honest and true man, not less so than yourself.” The president also thought that the general and the governor “could confer together on this, and other Missouri questions with great advantage to the public; that each knows something which the other does not, and that, acting together, you could about double your stock of pertinent information. May I not hope that you and he will attempt this? I could at once safely do, (or you could safely do without me) whatever you and he agree upon. There is absolutely no reason why you should not agree.”44

  By this time, however, Curtis and Gamble had become so estranged that cooperation was impossible. Throughout the winter of 1863, relations between the two men worsened as Curtis seemed to cast his lot with the antislavery Radicals (known as Charcoals), who denounced the Provisional Government as hopelessly in the control of Conservatives (known as Claybanks). Their rivalry grew increasingly bitter after the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, which exempted Missouri. Both factions wanted the state government to abolish slavery, but the Claybanks, led by the conservative, Virginia-born Gamble, supported a gradual approach, while the Charcoals, with the bitter, opportunistic firebrand Charles D. Drake at their head, favored immediate emancipation.

  Each faction sought to drag Lincoln into the quarrel. In January 1863, as the newly elected Missouri Legislature was choosing a senator, the Radical candidate, B. Gratz Brown, a hot-tempered former editor of the St. Louis Missouri Democrat, asked the president: “Does the Administration desire my defeat[?] if not why are its appointees here working for that end?”45 Lincoln patiently explained that his administration “takes no part between it’s friends in Mo, of whom, I at least, consider you one; and I have never before had an intimation that appointees there, were interfering, or were inclined to interfere.”46 The legislature deadlocked, leaving in office the incumbent senators, who had been appointed months earlier to replace their pro-Confederate predecessors.

  During the 1862 campaign, Brown, known as “the Prince of the Radicals,” had accused Lincoln of acting dictatorially. When St. Louis Germans denounced the president in similar terms, Lincoln told their emissary that “it may be a misfortune for the nation that he was elected president. But, having been elected by the people, he meant to be president, and to perform his duty according to his best understanding, if he had to die for it. No general will be removed, nor will any change in the cabinet be made, to suit the views or wishes of any particular party, faction, or set of men.” Responding to the Germans’ sharp criticism of Halleck, Lincoln denied that the general was guilty of the charges against him, based as they were on the “misapprehension or ignorance of those who prefer them.”47

  Opponents of Curtis, among them Attorney General Bates and influential members of the Missouri congressional delegation, beseeched Lincoln to remove the general. Bates thought such a move “was the only course that could save Mo. from Social war and utter anarchy.”48 In deciding to replace Curtis, the president rejected charges that he had behaved unethically but explained that the “system of provost marshals established by him throughout the state gave rise to violent complaint.”49 In addition, Lincoln wanted to provide U. S. Grant as many troops as possible for his Vicksburg campaign. When the president asked Curtis to release some of his regiments for service under Grant, the reply came back that no troops could be spared from Missouri. Although there were enough Missouri militiamen to deal with local challenges, Governor Gamble would not cooperate with Curtis. The president considered appointing Frémont or McDowell to take Curtis’s place, but rather than either of those discredited men, he selected Edwin V. Sumner. That appointment, made in early March, apparently solved the problem, but en route to St. Louis, Sumner died.

  Weeks later Lincoln chose Schofield in Sumner’s stead, explaining to that general that he made the change not because Curtis had done anything wrong, but “because of a conviction in my mind that the Union men of Missouri, constituting, when united, a vast majority of the whole people, have entered into a pestilent factional quarrel among themselves, Gen. Curtis, perhaps not of choice, being the head of one faction, and Gov. Gamble that of the other.” After laboring in vain for months to settle the quarrel, Lincoln felt obliged “to break it up some how.” Since he could not fire Gamble, he removed Curtis, over the objections of a Missouri congressman who protested with some justice that “Gov. Gamble is noted for his unrelenting spirit towards every one who disagrees with or opposes him.”50 The president warned Schofield to avoid siding with either the Claybanks or the Charcoals: “Let your military measures be strong enough to repel the invader and keep the peace, and not so strong as to unnecessarily harrass and persecute the people. It is a difficult role, and so much greater will be the honor if you perform it well. If both factions, or neither, shall abuse you, you will probably be about right. Beware of being assailed by one, and praised by the other.”51 That was easier said than done, for the factions had become bitterly estranged amid the bloody guerrilla warfare that ravaged the state.

  When Lincoln’s private letter to Schofield appeared in the St. Louis Missouri Democrat, that general asked the editor how it had been obtained. Receiving no answer, Schofield jailed him, much to Lincoln’s dismay. “I regret to learn of the arrest of the Democrat editor,” he wrote Schofield in mid-July. “I fear this loses you the middle position I desired you to occupy. … I care very little for the publication of any letter I have written. Please spare me the trouble this is likely to bring.”52 To Missouri Congressman Henry T. Blow, who denounced Schofield’s action, Lincoln suggested that the significance of that episode had been exaggerated: “The publication of a letter without the leave of the writer or the receiver I think cannot be justified, but in this case I do not think it of sufficient consequence to justify an arrest; and again, the arrest being, through a parole, merely nominal, does not deserve the importance sought to be attached to it. Cannot this small matter be dropped on both sides without further difficulty?”53

  When the hypersensitive Gamble read the president’s letter to Schofield in the Democrat, the governor waxed wroth and sent Lincoln a heated protest in which, as John Hay put it, he “alternately whined and growled through many pages.”54 Gamble called the suggestion that he led a faction “grossly offensive” and a “most wanton and unmerited insult.” It was, he scolded the president, “unbecoming your position,” for it would be as “improper for the President of the United States to assail officially the Governor of a State, as it would be for a Governor of a State to assail officially the President of the United States.” Indignantly and self-righteously, he defended his record, adding: “I have not approved the administration of affairs in Missouri under the rule of General Curtis. I have not approved of the system of robbery and arson and murder that has extensively prevailed. While you were treating with humanity and exchanging as prisoners of war those who were elsewhere taken actually fighting against the government, I have not approved of the cold blooded murder of persons in this State at their own homes and in their own fields upon mere suspicion of sympathy with the rebellion. I have not approved of covering the State with Provost Marshals to plunder the people, and keep up a constant irritation and prevent the restoration of peace.”55

  Lincoln replied to the governor’s gross overreaction to his letter with characteristic tact: “My Private Secretary has just brought me a letter saying it is a very ‘cross’ one from you, about mine to Gen. Schofield, recently published in the Democrat. As I am trying to preserve my own temper, by avoiding irritants, so far as practicable, I have declined to read the cross letter. I think fit to say, however, that when I wrote the letter to Gen. Schofield, I was totally unconscious of any malice, or disrespect towards you, or of using any expression which should offend you, if seen by you.”)56

  (This reaction typified the mature Lincoln’s patient way of dealing with hostile invective. When Illinois Congressman William Kellogg protested that he was being unfairly treated, Lincoln endorsed one of his mi
ssives: “I understand my friend Kellogg is ill-natured—therefore I do not read his letters.”57 To friends who tried to inform him of personal attacks, he merely said: “I guess we won’t talk about that now.”)58

  Humiliated by his removal, Curtis wrote that the president’s friends in the West “consider the change one of the worst acts of his administration.”59 To mollify the general, Lincoln sent him a conciliatory letter: “I have scarcely supposed it possible that you would entirely understand my feelings and motives in making the late change of commander for the Department of the Missouri. I inclose you a copy of a letter which I recently addressed to Gen. Schofield, & which will explain the matter in part. It became almost a matter of personal self-defence to somehow break up the state of things in Missouri. I did not mean to cast any censure upon you, nor to indorse any of the charges made against you by others. With me the presumption is still in your favor that you are honest, capable, faithful, and patriotic.”60 When this letter also found its way into print, Gamble was further infuriated. The following month, Lincoln invited the governor to Washington. There the president offended his guest by allowing Ohio Governor William Dennison to join their meeting, which went so poorly that Gamble expressed to Edward Bates his “profound conviction” that the president was “a mere intriguing, pettifogging, piddling politician.”61

  Schofield’s appointment dismayed Radicals not only in Missouri but throughout the North. In August, Joseph Medill complained that of “all the acts of omission and commission charged against the President during the last six months none has given the loyal masses of the Northwest more pain than the appointment of Gen Schofield over the great and important Department of the West. No Republican, no antislavery man, no friend of the President approves the appointment.”62 Medill urged Lincoln to name Ben Butler to replace Schofield.