Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  Davis’s anger resulted in part from Lincoln’s unwillingness to help him wrest control of the Maryland Republican Party from the Blairs. In late January 1864, the congressman asked that Donn Piatt or John S. Berry be appointed as military commander of the Middle Department. The president bluntly declined, saying he viewed the Maryland contretemps as “a personal quarrel & would do nothing to aid one set to vent their spite on another.” Davis immediately left in a huff, thinking no response was called for. When Lincoln had a friend tell Davis that he wished to be on good terms with him, the congressman called the president “thoroughly Blairized” and insisted that Lincoln had insulted him.81 Recounting this sad tale, Lincoln recalled that during the 1862 election campaign in Maryland, he had helped Davis win by persuading a Republican opponent not to run as an independent. A Buffalo newspaper speculated that “if Mr. Lincoln had granted Winter Davis what he modestly asked a year ago—the control of all the military and civil appointments for Maryland,” the congressman would not have opposed the administration.82

  But more than personal pique fueled the clash between the president and Congress. The central difference was rooted in conflicting interpretations of the Constitution’s “guarantee clause,” which stated that “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government” but did not specify which branch of the government was empowered to enforce the guarantee. Along with his allies, Davis, an old Whig who strove to limit the power of the executive branch, argued that sixteen years earlier the Supreme Court in Luther vs. Borden had determined that Congress had the authority to do so; the Taney court ruled that “it rests with Congress to decide what government is the established one in a State. For as the United States guarantee to each State a republican government, Congress must necessarily decide what government is established in a State before it can determine whether it is republican or not.”

  Davis had not always championed black freedom. He opposed the Emancipation Proclamation because only “ignorant fanatics prate about decrees of emancipation” and because it set a dangerous precedent whereby “Lincoln would be my master & could take my home & imprison me at pleasure.”83 He thought “loyal states were obligated to observe the slavery clauses of the Constitution” and feared “extreme people who run ahead of events into dream land or utopia.” He hoped “people would remember other interests besides the Negro.”84 A former Know-Nothing, Davis hated Democrats more than he hated slavery.

  The more extreme Radicals wanted to reconstruct the South on the basis of Charles Sumner’s “state suicide” theory, which would allow Congress to treat the Rebel states as though they had reverted to the status of territories. But most Republicans rejected that approach in favor of relying on the Constitution’s guarantee clause.

  On July 8, Lincoln released his veto message, which was superfluous, since the Constitution does not require the president to justify a pocket veto. Lincoln explained that he was “unprepared, by a formal approval of this Bill, to be inflexibly committed to any single plan of restoration.” Nor was he ready “to declare, that the free-state constitutions and governments, already adopted and installed in Arkansas and Louisiana, shall be set aside and held for nought, thereby repelling and discouraging the loyal citizens who have set up the same, as to further effort.” Though he doubted that there was “constitutional competency in Congress to abolish slavery in States,” he was “at the same time sincerely hoping and expecting that a constitutional amendment, abolishing slavery throughout the nation, may be adopted.” Notwithstanding these objections, Lincoln in a conciliatory vein added that he was “fully satisfied with the system for restoration contained in the Bill, as one very proper plan for the loyal people of any State choosing to adopt it” and was “prepared to give the Executive aid and assistance to any such people, so soon as the military resistance to the United States shall have been suppressed in any such State, and the people thereof shall have sufficiently returned to their obedience to the Constitution and the laws of the United States,—in which cases, military Governors will be appointed, with directions to proceed according to the Bill.”85

  The veto ignited an epic struggle between Congress and the president. Thaddeus Stevens cynically scoffed: “What an infamous proclamation! The Pres[iden]t is determined to have the electoral votes of the seceded states—at least of Tenn[essee] Ark[ansas]—Lou[isiana] & Flor[ida]—Perhaps also of S. Car[olina]—The idea of pocketing a bill and then issuing a proclamation as to how far he will conform to it, is matched only by signing a bill and then sending in a veto—How little of the rights of war and the law of nations our Prest. knows! But what are we to do? Condemn privately and applaud publicly!”86

  Davis chose to condemn publicly, calling Lincoln’s message “a gross usurpation of legislative power” that “must be rebuked by supporters of the administration.” On August 5 he, along with the co-author of his defunct bill, Senator Wade, issued a scathing manifesto denouncing the president. Echoing Stevens, they ascribed Lincoln’s opposition to political expediency: he wanted to win reelection with the help of electoral votes from Southern states like Arkansas and Louisiana, whose representatives Congress refused to seat. “That judgment of Congress which the President defies was the exercise of an authority exclusively vested in Congress by the constitution to determine what is the established government in a State, and in its own nature and by the highest judicial authority binding on all other departments of the Government.” Heatedly Wade and Davis declared that a “more studied outrage on the legislative authority of the people has never been perpetrated. Congress passed a bill; the President refused to approve it, and then by proclamation puts as much of it in force as he sees fit, and proposes to execute those parts by officers unknown to the laws of the United States, and not subject to the confirmation of the Senate.” Lincoln “has greatly presumed on the forbearance which the supporters of his Administration have so long practiced, in view of the arduous conflict in which we are engaged, and the reckless ferocity of our political opponents. But he must understand that our support is of a cause and not of a man; that the authority of Congress is paramount and must be respected; that the whole body of the Union men of Congress will not submit to be impeached by him of rash and unconstitutional legislation; and if he wishes our support, he must confine himself to his Executive duties—to obey and execute, not make the laws—to suppress by arms armed rebellion, and leave political reorganization to Congress. If the supporters of the Government fail to insist on this, they become responsible for the usurpations which they fail to rebuke, and are justly liable to the indignation of the people whose rights and security, committed to their keeping, they sacrifice.” Darkly, they hinted at impeachment: “Let them consider the remedy for these usurpations, and, having found it, fearlessly execute it.”87 The New York World thought the charge “amounts to an impeachment, and may be followed by one.”88 The New York Herald did not go that far, but it did predict that Lincoln would not win reelection.

  The president said that from what he had heard about the manifesto, “he had no desire” to read it and “could himself take no part in such a controversy as they seemed to wish to provoke.”89 It was “not worth fretting about,” he believed. He was reminded “of an old acquaintance, who, having a son of a scientific turn, bought him a microscope. The boy went around, experimenting with his glass upon everything that came in his way. One day, at the dinner-table, his father took up a piece of cheese. ‘Don’t eat that, father,’ said the boy; ‘it is full of wrigglers.’ ‘My son,’ replied the old gentleman, taking, at the same time, a huge bite, ‘let ’em wriggle; I can stand it if they can.’ ”90 (Mary Lincoln testified that whenever her husband was told what critics said of him, he said: “Do good to those who hate you and turn their ill will to friendship.”)91

  But Lincoln did allow Seward to read him the manifesto. After hearing it through, he wondered aloud “whether these men intend openly to oppose my election,—the document looks that
way.”92 After a White House interview, the Quaker abolitionist B. Rush Plumly reported that Lincoln’s “blood is up on the Wade & Winter Davis protest.”93 Hurt as well as angry, the president told Noah Brooks: “To be wounded in the house of one’s friends is perhaps the most grievous affliction that can befall a man. I have tried my best to meet the wishes of this man [Davis], and to do my whole duty by the country.” When Brooks speculated that Davis might be crazy, Lincoln observed: “I have heard that there was insanity in his family; perhaps we might allow the plea in this case.”94

  The Radical manifesto backfired, in part because Congress was out of session. Maine Representative James G. Blaine said it “was so powerful an arraignment of the President that of necessity it rallied his friends to his support with that intense form of energy which springs from the instinct of self-preservation.”95 After the New York World lauded the manifesto, the New York Times denounced it as “by far the most effective Copperhead campaign document thus far issued.”96 In Senator Wade’s home district, Republicans railed against the “improper, ill-timed, ill-tempered, and ill-advised” screed.97 Noah Brooks called it “a matter of regret that a man of so much oratorical ability and legal sharpness as Henry Winter Davis should be so much of a political charlatan as he is; but he is, like the Blairs, insatiate in his hates, mischievous in his schemes and hollow hearted and cold blooded. It is not supposed he honestly differs in opinion with any member of the present Cabinet, except Blair, but he has seized upon every occasion to quarrel with nearly every one of them, and he stands to-day in an attitude of such intense hostility to Lincoln that he is ready to jeopardize the success of the Union party in the campaign about opening, simply that he may gratify his personal malice toward the President. Revengeful, sore-headed and proud, Davis, like others of his sort here [in Washington], appears to forget that the defeat of Lincoln … would necessarily be the triumph of a Copperhead minority.”98

  Secretary of the Interior Usher thought Wade, Davis, and other Radicals were most ungrateful. “Lincoln has,” he noted, “to the neglect of his true friends tried to propitiate and oblige this class of men and they never will be satisfied. Of all the acts of his administration they had the least cause & reason to assail him.”99 Another Hoosier, John D. Defrees, gently chided Wade, pointing out that Conservatives accepted the Emancipation Proclamation reluctantly while Radicals applauded it. “Is it not a little strange,” Defrees asked the Ohio senator, “that most of the opposition to Mr. Lincoln, among Union men, is to be found among the very men who were loudest in their commendations of the proclamation of freedom, as they called it?”100

  Conservatives applauded Lincoln’s veto. “No doubt the President was right in the controversy with Wade & Davis,” fumed Orville H. Browning. “The bill was an outrage, and its approval would have disgraced him.”101 Some Conservatives urged that all office holders appointed at Wade’s request be fired, but Lincoln ignored their counsel.

  Not all Radicals disparaged Lincoln. Minnesota Congressman Ignatius Donnelly praised him, though he did not share his views on Reconstruction. The president, Donnelly told his House colleagues, “is a great man. Great not after the old models of the world, but with a homely and original greatness. He will stand out to future ages in the history of these crowded and confused times with wonderful distinctness. He has carried a vast and discordant population safely and peacefully through the greatest of political revolutions with such consummate sagacity and skill that while he led he appeared to follow; while he innovated beyond all precedent he has been denounced as tardy; while he struck the shackles from the limbs of three million slaves has been hailed as a conservative! If to adapt, persistently and continuously, just and righteous principles to all the perplexed windings and changes of human events, and to secure in the end the complete triumph of those principles, be statesmanship, then Abraham Lincoln is the first of statesmen.”102 Gerrit Smith protested against the Wade–Davis manifesto, arguing that “the country cannot now afford to have the hold of Mr. Lincoln on the popular confidence weakened.”103 E. A. Stansbury maintained that “nobody has done such an infamous thing since the war began” and predicted that the manifesto would help “bring in the virtual supremacy of the very traitors we are fighting at such cost.”104 He urged Lincoln to respond, for the “incessant attacks of traitors, aided by such infamous assaults as this, are having an effect which it is of the first importance to counteract.”105

  Disappointed by the response to the manifesto, Davis complained two weeks after it appeared: “Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times is the only decided paper now! All the rest are trimming—none heartily for Lincoln—all afraid to speak—all tied by local elections which complicate the Presidential elections. None attack our protest but the [New York] Times—none venture to controvert or approve it.”106

  Attempts to Dump Lincoln

  The manifesto was designed in part to trigger a dump-Lincoln movement before the Democratic convention met in late August. In July, Davis proposed that abolitionists press both Frémont and Lincoln to withdraw: “If the people shall en masse desert Lincoln & demand a new candidate & Fremont be induced to stand aside, then I see some hope for the country & the cause. Fremont has no more capacity or character than Lincoln. He may defeat Lincoln, but he cannot be himself elected; & the difference between the two is not worth the struggle.”107

  Other Radicals favored that course. Chase said that his fears about Lincoln “arise from the manifestations I see of a purpose to compromise, if possible, by sacrificing all that has been done for freedom in the rebel states—to purchase peace for themselves—the whites—by the reenslavement of the blacks.”108 Charles Sumner thought the president should step down to make way for “any one of 100 names,” among them “half the Senate.”109 On August 6, disenchanted Republicans in Hamilton, Ohio, criticized Lincoln’s “indecision of character,” “disposition to temporize,” and “the large preponderance of that peculiar element known as the milk of human kindness, in his disposition.” The Buckeyes debated a call for a new nominating convention to meet at Buffalo on September 22 and a recommendation that both Frémont and Lincoln withdraw.110 The New York Evening Post endorsed the proposal but added that a new convention might prove unnecessary if the Democrats nominated a pro-war candidate on a platform demanding only the restoration of the Union.

  On September 2, Greeley, Parke Godwin, and Theodore Tilton wrote jointly to several governors asking if Lincoln should be replaced. Richard Yates of Illinois replied emphatically: “The substitution of another man at this late day would be disastrous in the highest degree. It is too late to change now.” The governors of Ohio, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Delaware shared Yates’s view, as did Senator Jacob Collamer of Vermont and Joseph Medill of the Chicago Tribune.111 Other governors concurred, but with great reluctance. John A. Andrew of Massachusetts hoped Lincoln would lead but thought that he could not do so because “he is essentially lacking in the quality of leadership, which is a gift of God and not a device of man.” The country, Andrew argued, would be better off “under the more magnetic influence of a positive man, of clear purpose and more prophetic nature.” Still, he assured Greeley and his colleagues that the Bay State “will vote for the Union cause at all events and will support Mr Lincoln so long as he remains its candidate.” In neighboring New Hampshire, the governor predicted that even though the president “has disappointed the expectations of the people and has no hold on their affections,” he would carry the state in November. Lincoln, he added, “has not run the machine according to God’s time-table as I try to run my rail-roads.” William Buckingham of Connecticut said he could “name a score of gentlemen whose qualifications and personal fitness for the Presidency would be more in accordance with my judgment than Mr Lincoln[’]s,” but none of them could win half the votes that the president would receive. Thomas Carney of Kansas reported that “the shock to Mr Lincoln[’]s popularity, even in Kansas, within the last six month
s, has been severe.” In the trans-Mississippi West, “every thing has been sadly and most corruptly managed.” Carney said he would be happy to see another candidate fielded in place of Lincoln if there were a chance the newcomer would win, but that seemed unlikely. In Iowa, William M. Stone doubted that Lincoln, “running solely on his own merits or personal popularity,” could triumph, but since the people appreciated “the mighty issues at stake and the disastrous consequences which would inevitably result from his defeat,” he would prevail. Only Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania thought that Lincoln would lose. He speculated that if “an unobjectionable candidate divested of the antagonisms which surround President Lincoln was present the State would be entirely safe.”112

  “Lincoln’s best friends,” Henry Winter Davis predicted optimistically, “are impressed with his loss of strength and will be induced easily to urge him to get out of the way.”113 One of those was Richard Smith, editor of the Cincinnati Gazette, who on August 27 wrote that the “people regard Mr. Lincoln’s candidacy as a misfortune. His apparent strength when nominated was fictitious, and now the fiction has disappeared, and instead of confidence there is distrust.”114 That same day, former Congressman Lewis D. Campbell of Ohio urged the governor of Massachusetts to lead a dump-Lincoln movement: “Our Union people are against Mr. Lincoln and cannot unite on Fremont. If we must be driven to the vote, … the Copperheads will carry the State. We do not believe that if Mr Lincoln could be elected the country could survive four years more of his stupid and imbecile management.” To Campbell, it appeared that the administration was dominated by pressure from “fanatical men such as Beecher, Sumner et al.”115 A Republican paper in Albany warned that the only way for the party to win in November was “to have President Lincoln decline the nomination, his successor to be either Generals Hancock, Grant, Sherman, or Butler.”116