Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  The New York Round Table, while conceding that Lincoln was not “a great man” and that he lacked “the sagacity of a statesman,” said he was nevertheless “so steadfast, so honest” that “the people feel somehow that he is an eminently safe man to be charged with the conduct of affairs, at a time when perhaps a really more brilliant and wiser statesman would be thrown off his balance.” The editors believed that “few Presidents have had more earnest friends than Mr. Lincoln has had and will have in time to come.”366

  Lincoln was profoundly moved when responding to the convention committee’s formal notification of his candidacy. In his remarks, he laid special emphasis on the constitutional amendment abolishing slavery: “I approve the declaration in favor of so amending the Constitution as to prohibit slavery throughout the nation. When the people in revolt, with a hundred days of explicit notice, that they could, within those days, resume their allegiance, without the overthrow of their institution, and that they could not so resume it afterwards, elected to stand out, such [an] amendment of the Constitution as [is] now proposed, became a fitting, and necessary conclusion to the final success of the Union cause. Such alone can meet and cover all cavils. Now, the unconditional Union men, North and South, perceive its importance, and embrace it. In the joint names of Liberty and Union, let us labor to give it legal form, and practical effect.”367

  When informed of the Radical-dominated National Union League’s endorsement, Lincoln told a deputation from that body: “I am very grateful for the renewed confidence which has been accorded to me, both by the convention and by the National League. I am not insensible at all to the personal compliment there is in this; yet I do not allow myself to believe that any but a small portion of it is to be appropriated as a personal compliment. The convention and the nation, I am assured, are alike animated by a higher view of the interests of the country for the present and the great future, and that part I am entitled to appropriate as a compliment is only that part which I may lay hold of as being the opinion of the convention and of the League, that I am not entirely unworthy to be intrusted with the place I have occupied for the last three years. I have not permitted myself, gentlemen, to conclude that I am the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that ‘it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.’ ”368

  The following month, Lincoln received a formal notification of his nomination, which contained a passage written by George William Curtis, designed so as to offer the president a chance to address the Democrats’ complaint about arbitrary arrests: “No right … is so precious and sacred to the American heart as that of personal liberty. Its violation is regarded with just, instant & universal jealousy. Yet in this hour of peril every faithful citizen concedes that, for the sake of national existence and the common welfare, individual liberty may, as the Constitution provides in case of rebellion, be sometimes summarily constrained.”369 But Lincoln did not avail himself of the opportunity.

  The president was delighted by his renomination, for he had predicted to A. K. McClure that “his name would go into history darkly shadowed by a fraternal war that he would be held responsible for inaugurating if he were unable to continue in office to conquer the Rebellion and restore the Union.”370

  Democrats sneered at the Republican nominees as “two ignorant, boorish, third-rate, backwoods lawyers.” The New York World exclaimed: “God save the Republic!”371 Former Democrat Ben Butler was equally contemptuous, exclaiming to his wife sarcastically: “Hurrah for Lincoln and Johnson! That’s the ticket! This country has more vitality than any other on earth if it can stand this sort of administration for another four years.”372

  It was not clear that the country would in fact have the same administration for another quadrennium, since enthusiasm for Lincoln might prove ephemeral. In late May, Theodore Tilton noted that there “is an insane popular sympathy for him [Lincoln] everywhere—very shallow, it is true—but salty & flavorsome, even though shallow, like Dr. Livingston’s lake.”373 The shallow lake of the president’s popularity might evaporate in the fierce heat of summer if Grant did not promptly defeat Lee.

  33

  “Hold On with a Bulldog Grip and Chew

  and Choke as Much as Possible”

  The Grand Offensive

  (May–August 1864)

  That Americans would hold a presidential election during a titanic civil war amazed German-born Francis Lieber, professor of history and political science at Columbia University. “If we come triumphantly out of this war, with a presidential election in the midst of it,” he wrote in August 1864, “I shall call it the greatest miracle in all the historic course of events. It is a war for nationality at a period when the people were not yet fully nationalized.”1 Democrats predicted that the administration would cancel the election in a brazen attempt to retain power, but Lincoln would not hear of it. “We can not have free government without elections,” he believed; “and if the rebellion could force us to forego, or postpone a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered and ruined us.”2

  As dismayed Confederates saw their chances of winning on the battlefield fade, they pinned their hopes on Northern war weariness; if Lincoln could be defeated at the polls, they believed their bid for independence just might succeed. Union military triumphs alone could prevent that, Lincoln realized, and so in the winter and spring of 1864, he and Grant devised a grand strategy to achieve final victory before the fall elections. The fate of the nation, and the cause of democracy in the world, hung in the balance.

  Planning and Launching the Spring Offensive

  After the war, Grant wrote that Lincoln had given him carte blanche, but in fact the president rejected parts of the general’s initial proposal, including a suggestion to attack Richmond’s supply lines with an army landed in North Carolina. But both men agreed on the central principle that Union forces should attack on all fronts simultaneously. Meade would strike southward against Lee’s army, Franz Sigel would drive up the Shenandoah Valley and then swing eastward toward Richmond, Butler would approach the Confederate capital from the opposite direction by moving up the Peninsula, Sherman would capture Atlanta, and Banks would push toward Mobile after taking Shreveport. Grant was in overall charge of operations, but instead of remaining in Washington, he accompanied the Army of the Potomac, whose tactical moves Meade controlled while he dictated its strategy.

  It was the sort of coordinated plan that Lincoln had been urging on his generals since early 1862. On the eve of the spring offensive, Lincoln told John Hay that Grant’s proposal “powerfully reminded” him of his “old suggestion so constantly made and as constantly neglected, to Buell & Halleck et al to move at once upon the enemy’s whole line so as to bring into action to our advantage our great superiority in numbers. Otherwise by interior lines & control of the interior railroad system the enemy can shift their men rapidly from one point to another as they may be required. In the concerted movement[,] however, great superiority of numbers must tell: As the enemy however successful where he concentrates must necessarily weaken other portions of his line and lose important position. This idea of his own, the Prest. recognized with especial pleasure when Grant said it was his intention to make all the line useful—those not fighting could help the fighting.”

  “Those not skinning can hold a leg,” Lincoln remarked.3

  In addition to approving most of Grant’s plan, Lincoln helped him reform the administration of the army. Congress had provided that staff departments like commissary, ordnance, quartermaster, and the adjutant general would report directly to the secretary of war, not the general-in-chief. When Grant asked that these departments be placed under him in the chain of command, the president explained that while he could not unilaterally alter the law, “there is no one but myself that can interfere with your orders, and you can rest assured that I will not.”4 The president did intervene when Grant clashed with Stanton o
ver force reductions in the Washington area. The general wanted to transfer as many support troops as possible to the front lines, but the war secretary overruled his order to send artillerymen from the defenses of the capital to the Virginia front.

  “I think I rank you in this matter, Mr. Secretary,” Grant said.

  “We shall have to see Mr. Lincoln about that,” came the reply.

  At the White House, the president ruled in favor of Grant: “You and I, Mr. Stanton, have been trying to boss this job, and we have not succeeded very well with it. We have sent across the mountains for Mr. Grant, as Mrs. Grant calls him, to relieve us, and I think we had better leave him alone to do as he pleases.”5

  Lincoln did not, however, accede to Grant’s request to merge some of the twenty independent military departments, to eliminate extraneous commands, and to retire scores of generals. In an election year, such steps might have been politically ruinous. But he did agree to remove Nathaniel P. Banks from command of the Department of the Gulf and replace him with E. R. S. Canby. The failure of Banks’s Red River campaign in April sorely disappointed the president, who, upon receiving word of that debacle, “said he had rather cousined up to Banks, but for some time past had begun to think” he was mistaken in doing so. To express his disappointment, he quoted verses from “The Fire-Worshippers” by Thomas Moore:

  Oh, ever thus, from childhood’s hour,

  I’ve seen my fondest hopes decay;

  I never loved a tree or flower

  But ’t was the first to fade away.

  I never nurs’d a dear gazelle,

  To glad me with its soft black eye,

  But when it came to know me well

  And love me, it was sure to die.6

  Political considerations also affected the choice of Grant’s principal subordinates in the East. While Meade, a professional soldier, would remain in command of the Army of the Potomac, the two men most responsible for aiding him against Lee were political generals with limited military talent, Butler and Sigel. The former had been a prominent Democrat, and Lincoln considered it essential to retain the support of War Democrats; the latter was exceptionally popular with the Germans, an important voting bloc that had shown signs of grave disaffection.

  On April 30, as Grant was about to launch his offensive, Lincoln wrote him: “Not expecting to see you again before the Spring campaign opens, I wish to express, in this way, my entire satisfaction with what you have done up to this time, so far as I understand it. The particulars of your plans I neither know, or seek to know. You are vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you. While I am very anxious that any great disaster, or the capture of our men in great numbers, shall be avoided, I know these points are less likely to escape your attention than they would be mine. If there is anything wanting which is within my power to give, do not fail to let me know it. And now with a brave Army, and a just cause, may God sustain you.”7

  Graciously the general replied: “The confidence you express for the future, and satisfaction with the past, in my Military administration is acknowledged with pride. It will be my earnest endeavor that you, and the country, shall not be disappointed. From my first entrance into the volunteer service of the country, to the present day, I have never had cause of complaint, have never expressed or implied a complaint, against the Administration, or the Sec. of War, for throwing any embarassment in the way of my vigorously prossecuting what appeared to me my duty. Indeed since the promotion which placed me in command of all the Armies, and in view of the great responsibility, and importance of success, I have been astonished at the readiness with which every thin[g] asked for has been yielded without even an explaination being asked. Should my success be less than I desire, and expect, the least I can say is, the fault is not with you.”8

  Among Grant’s legions was Burnside’s corps, which contained some black regiments. While marching past the White House, those black soldiers waved their caps and heartily cheered “Hurrah for Massa Linkum!” and “Three cheers for the President!” He bowed to them from the balcony with tears in his eyes and exclaimed in a low voice: “It’ll do! it’ll do!”9

  Awaiting news of the offensive, Lincoln seemed to former Congressman Albert G. Riddle of Ohio “like a man worn and harassed with petty faultfinding and criticism, until he had turned at bay, like an old stag pursued and hunted by a cowardly rabble of men and dogs.”10 He did turn on one critic, William Cullen Bryant, whose New York Evening Post had sharply criticized the administration for several things, including its coddling of officials guilty of unethical conduct. When Isaac Henderson, co-owner of the Post with Bryant, was dismissed from his lucrative post at the New York customhouse for taking bribes, Bryant begged the president to restore him. In reply, Lincoln expressed his irritation with the Post: “may I ask whether the Evening Post has not assailed me for supposed too lenient dealing with persons charged of fraud & crime? and that in cases of which the Post could know but little of the facts? I shall certainly deal as leniently with Mr. Henderson as I have felt it my duty to deal with others, notwithstanding any newspaper assaults.”11

  On May 5, the North held its collective breath as Grant attacked Lee near Chancellorsville. The armies slugged it out in the dense, tangled wilderness, inflicting heavy casualties on each other. “These are fearfully critical, anxious days,” George Templeton Strong remarked, speaking for millions of his fellow citizens. “The destinies of the continent for centuries depend in great measure on what is now being done.”12 The first to bring Lincoln word of the bloody doings was a young New York Tribune reporter, Henry Wing, who briefed the president and cabinet on the morning of May 7. After he had finished describing the various movements, and the cabinet was leaving, Wing repeated to the president a message Grant had asked him to convey: “whatever happens, there is to be no turning back.” Overjoyed at this declaration of steely resolve, the president kissed the youthful reporter on the forehead.13

  On May 9, when Lincoln received a telegram from Grant saying “I intend to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer,” he told John Hay: “How near we have been to this thing before and failed. I believe if any other General had been at the Head of that army it would have now been on this side of the Rapidan. It is the dogged pertinacity of Grant that wins.”14 That evening he addressed serenaders at the White House: “I am very much obliged to you for the compliment of this call, though I apprehend it is owing more to the good news received to-day from the army than to a desire to see me. I am, indeed, very grateful to the brave men who have been struggling with the enemy in the field, to their noble commanders who have directed them, and especially to our Maker. Our commanders are following up their victories resolutely and successfully. I think, without knowing the particulars of the plans of Gen. Grant, that what has been accomplished is of more importance than at first appears. I believe I know, (and am especially grateful to know) that Gen. Grant has not been jostled in his purposes; that he has made all his points, and to-day he is on his line as he purposed before he moved his armies. I will volunteer to say that I am very glad at what has happened; but there is a great deal still to be done.”15

  But Grant did not win a victory at the battle of the Wilderness, which was in effect a standoff, though the Army of Northern Virginia withdrew from the field. Unlike previous Union commanders, who retreated toward Washington after being bloodied by Lee, Grant swung around the Confederate right flank and drove toward Richmond.

  When it became clear that the Army of the Potomac had taken immense losses, the anguished president exclaimed to Schuyler Colfax: “Why do we suffer reverses after reverses! Could we have avoided this terrible, bloody war! Was it not forced upon us! Is it ever to end!”16 As he observed wounded soldiers in a long procession of ambulances, he pointed to them saying sadly: “Look yonder at those poor fellows. I cannot bear it. This suffering, this loss of life is dreadful.” When a friend tried to console him with the assurance th
at the North would eventually triumph, he replied: “Yes, victory will come, but it comes slowly.”17