Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  William O. Stoddard ascribed such intemperate presidential outbursts to stress and overwork. “To such an extent was his absorbed devotion to business carried that the perpetual strain upon his nervous system, with the utter want of all exercise, began to tell seriously upon his health and spirits .… Even his temper suffered, and a petulance entirely foreign to his natural disposition was beginning to show itself as a symptom of an overtasked brain.”216 Noah Brooks also observed that as the war progressed, Lincoln’s “hearty, blithesome, genial, and wiry” spirit changed: “The old, clear laugh never came back; the even temper was sometimes disturbed; and his natural charity for all was often turned into an unwonted suspicion of the motives of men.” Mary Lincoln also acknowledged that when “worn down,” her husband “spoke crab-bedly to men, harshly so.”217

  During the Christmas season of 1864, Lincoln was beseeched to pardon a condemned soldier whose mother wanted to plead in her son’s behalf. He exclaimed angrily: “There is no use of her coming here crying about me. I can’t do anything for her.” The chaplain escorting her then explained that he wished to represent the interests of the accused lad and some other young men. “Well,” the president asked, “suppose they were old men, with families to support, would that make it any better?” Eventually he relented.218

  Much as he enjoyed storytelling, Lincoln disliked being asked to tell stories as if he were a professional entertainer. On one occasion, a visitor to Washington accosted him just as he mounted a horse: “I thought I would call and see you before leaving the city and hear you tell a story.” The president asked where he lived. “Western New York,” came the answer. “Well, that’s a good enough country without stories,” replied Lincoln and rode off.219

  Though Lincoln lost patience more frequently as time passed, it was remarkable that (as Stoddard put it) “he generally succeeds in keeping down the storm which is continually stirred up within him by the treacheries, cowardices, villainies and stupidities, which, almost daily and hourly, he is compelled to see and understand and wrestle with and overcome.”220

  The Soldier Vote

  Lincoln had blamed the 1862 political reverses on the inability of many soldiers to vote. In order to prevent a recurrence of that electoral setback, nineteen states had passed laws allowing troops to cast ballots in the field or by proxy; Indiana, Illinois, Delaware, Oregon, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, however, had not done so. At Lincoln’s suggestion, William E. Chandler of New Hampshire wrote a campaign pamphlet chronicling the Democrats’ strong opposition to such legislation. Indiana Republican leaders warned that their state would go Democratic in the October gubernatorial election unless the draft were delayed and 15,000 soldiers were furloughed so that they could return home to vote. So in mid-September, Lincoln appealed to General Sherman: “The State election of Indiana occurs on the 11th. of October, and the loss of it to the friends of the Government would go far towards losing the whole Union cause. The bad effect upon the November election, and especially the giving the State Government to those who will oppose the war in every possible way, are too much to risk, if it can possibly be avoided. The draft proceeds, notwithstanding its strong tendency to lose us the State. Indiana is the only important State, voting in October, whose soldiers cannot vote in the field. Any thing you can safely do to let her soldiers, or any part of them, go home and vote at the State election, will be greatly in point. They need not remain for the Presidential election, but may return to you at once. This is, in no sense, an order, but is merely intended to impress you with the importance, to the army itself, of your doing all you safely can, yourself being the judge of what you can safely do.”221 Sherman, who did not much admire the president, furloughed only sick and wounded troops, numbering around 9,000. (The general complained that Lincoln allowed himself to be “pulled hither & thither by every shade of policy—trimming his sails to every puff of wind.”)222

  One soldier who obtained leave was especially important to the Republican campaign: General John A. Logan. A brave commander especially admired by Lincoln, Logan stumped throughout Illinois on behalf of the Republican ticket. A former Democratic congressman from southern Illinois, he had become a devoted Republican and highly capable general. When the president asked him to leave his command temporarily to take to the hustings, Logan complied and did yeoman service.

  Another political general who was granted a leave, Carl Schurz, had significant influence among German voters. In early 1864, Schurz asked Lincoln for a furlough in order to take the stump. The president at first discouraged him: “Allow me to suggest that if you wish to remain in the military service, it is very dangerous for you to get temporarily out of it; because, with a Major General once out, it is next to impossible for even the President to get him in again. With my appreciation of your ability, and correct principle, of course I would be very glad to have your service for the country in the approaching political canvass; but I fear we can not properly have it, without separating you from the military.”223 But as political prospects became ever more bleak in August, Lincoln invited Schurz to Washington, where he approved the general’s plan to give several campaign speeches.

  Unlike many of his fellow Radicals, Schurz admired Lincoln extravagantly. In October, he penned a ringing defense of the president. “The main thing,” Schurz told a European friend who had criticized Lincoln, “is that the policy of the government moves in the right direction—that is to say, the slaveholder will be overthrown and slavery abolished. Whether it moves in that direction prudently or imprudently, slowly or rapidly, is a matter of indifference as against the question of whether a policy should be adopted which would move in another, an opposite and destructive, direction.” To be sure, he conceded, Lincoln “does not understand artifices of speech and attitude,” nor was he highly educated. His manners “harmonize little with the European conception of the dignity of a ruler.” For all that, he was “a man of profound feeling, just and firm principles, and incorruptible integrity.” He possessed “sound common sense” to “a marvelous degree.” Schurz confessed that he had “often criticized him severely,” and later “found that he [Lincoln] was right.” Such as they were, the president’s weaknesses were those “of a good man.” His personality had “a quite peculiar significance” in the Civil War, for he personified the people, and “that is the secret of his popularity.” His administration “is the most representative that has ever existed in world history.” Presciently, Schurz speculated that within fifty years or less, “Lincoln’s name will stand written upon the honor roll of the American Republic next to that of Washington, and there it will remain for all time. The children of those who now disparage him will bless him.”224

  During their conversation, Lincoln primed Schurz for his campaign swing, emphasizing heavily that “the Executive could do many things by virtue of the war power, which Congress could not do in the way of ordinary legislation.” As Schurz left, the president told him: “Well, things might look better, and they might look worse. Go in, and let us all do the best we can.”225 Schurz pitched in, repeating Lincoln’s arguments before several audiences; his efforts helped keep the German vote in the Republican column.

  Serving that same political end was Berlin-born Francis Lieber, the aggressive chief of the Loyal Publication Society in New York. He wrote ten of the society’s ninety pamphlets, including the highly influential Lincoln oder McClellan? Aufruf an die Deutschen in Amerika, which was distributed extensively in both German and English. The 500,000 copies of the society’s pamphlets circulated widely among the troops. Keenly aware of the importance of those voters, Lincoln told a crowd at a White House rally that “no classes of people seem so nearly unanamous as the soldiers in the field and the seamen afloat” in the war “to save the country and it’s liberties.” Let their devotion to the cause inspire others, he counseled. “Do they not have the hardest of it? Who should quail while they do not? God bless the soldiers and seamen, with all their brave commanders.”226 When California’s Supr
eme Court struck down the state’s law permitting soldiers to vote, Lincoln said “he was sorry to see the Courts there had thrown out the soldier’s right to vote” and called that action “a bad augury for the success of the loyal cause on Nov. 8th.”227

  Victory at the Polls

  The first electoral test took place in Kentucky, where a judicial race on August 1 was regarded as a portent of things to come. Four weeks earlier, Lincoln had somewhat redundantly issued an order suspending the writ of habeas corpus in the Bluegrass State. The document, written by Seward, stipulated that martial law “will not … interfere with the holding of lawful elections.” Nonetheless, General Stephen G. Bur-bridge ordered the name of the incumbent stricken from the ballot three days before the election. To avoid arrest, the judge fled Kentucky. The Democrats hastily found a replacement, who won, foreshadowing McClellan’s decisive victory there in November.

  For Republicans in other states, the signs were more propitious. In September, they handily won gubernatorial contests in Maine and Vermont. Writing from Portland, former Governor Israel Washburn informed his brother that Lincoln “is wonderfully popular in the North, & is nowhere stronger than in Maine. Nothing but some great blunder can prevent his re-election.”228 Based on these New England results, Nicolay accurately predicted that “Lincoln will receive a very large majority of the Electoral votes.”229 Along with the fall of Atlanta and the Democrats’ decision to adopt a peace platform, these elections helped persuade Radical malcontents to rally around Lincoln lest continued opposition discredit their cause.

  Far more significant elections took place on October 11, when voters trooped to the polls in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Republicans swept to victory in the Buckeye State, claiming seventeen of the nineteen congressional seats and carrying the state ticket by over 50,000. Among the Democratic casualties was S. S. Cox, one of the most prominent Democrats in the House. Lincoln’s refusal to postpone the draft made Republicans in Indiana fearful that they would lose the state. Yet Governor Oliver P. Morton received 20,000 more votes than his Democratic challenger, and the Republicans took eight of the eleven congressional seats while gaining control of the legislature. The contest in Pennsylvania was fierce and the outcome close. A month before the election, John W. Forney warned Lincoln that Republicans might lose the Keystone State, and Simon Cameron, who headed the Union Party there, predicted that the “campaign will be short and must be urged with vigor now, on our side, if we hope to succeed. The enemy are full of money—we have none—and they will act with all the zeal usual to the opposing party who have hopes of success.”230 In late September, Congressman William D. Kelley of Philadelphia cautioned Lincoln that “our state is not safe. It is very doubtful. The campaign is not being conducted by the state committee with reference to your election, but to so organising legislative and committee and other influence as to constrain you to accept Simon Cameron as Secty of War—or if that fail to restore him to the Senate.” The committee ignored “every man, and every influence that is not devoted to Cameron.” The Chief “is everywhere courting the impression that he alone of Pennsylvania[’]s sons is potential with you, and that he is certain of going into the Cabinet. This impression must be removed, or you will in certain districts fail to win with the congressional ticket, and may lose the state.”231

  As it turned out, the Republican/Union candidates in Pennsylvania squeaked by with a 15,000-vote margin. Their majority in the home vote was an exiguous 391. “Is not the result of the ‘home-vote’ in this state sickening to a man who loves his country and desires to respect his countrymen?” asked the disgruntled head of the Pennsylvania Union League, who resolved to work night and day till the November election.232 Opposition to the draft there hurt Republicans so badly that Secretary of War Stanton was considered “a heavy load for Mr Lincoln to carry.”233

  As Lincoln sat at the War Department with Stanton and Charles A. Dana awaiting the October election returns, he read aloud from one of his favorite humorists, David Ross Locke, creator of the comic character Petroleum V. Nasby. (“For the genius to write these things I would gladly give up my office,” Lincoln said of Locke’s humorous pieces.)234 The secretary of war had little patience for such humor, but the president paid him no mind, continuing to read with an occasional pause to glance at telegrams. When the humorless Chase arrived, Lincoln stopped reading. The equally humorless Stanton pulled Dana into an adjoining room and exploded in indignation: “God damn it to hell. Was there ever such nonsense? Was there ever such inability to appreciate what is going on in an awful crisis? Here is the fate of this whole republic at stake, and here is the man around whom it all centers, on whom it all depends, turning aside from this monumental issue to read the God damned trash of a silly mountebank!”235

  The soldier vote seemed to be going heavily Republican save for the patients at the Carver Hospital in Washington, which Lincoln and Stanton both rode by daily. (The president was still residing at the Soldiers’ Home at the time.) “That[’]s hard on us Stanton,” said the president; “they know us better than the others.” Lincoln’s own bodyguard, the 150th Pennsylvania, voted 63–11 in favor of the Republican ticket. As the evening wore on, Lincoln grew concerned, saying “he was anxious about Pennsylvania because of her enormous weight and influence which, cast definitely into the scale, wd. have closed the campaign & left the people free to look again with their whole hearts to the cause of the country.”236

  On October 13, Lincoln appeared more tired and downcast than usual as he sat in the War Department telegraph office jotting down an estimate of the likely November results. He said he was not entirely sure that he would be reelected, for he anticipated losing New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Illinois, and thus managing to defeat McClellan in the electoral college by an extremely narrow margin (117–114). Nine days earlier Democratic candidates for assessors and judges in Delaware had won 1,300 more votes than their Union/Republican opponents.

  Especially alarmed by the narrowness of the Republican victory in Pennsylvania, Lincoln asked Alexander K. McClure to help strengthen the state central committee. That was necessary, for McClure, who barely won his bid for a legislative seat in October, warned that the committee was “a miserable affair” and that McClellan might well carry his home state in November. At Washington, Pennsylvanians who in October had taken a furlough to vote at home accused Cameron of badly mismanaging the campaign. The Chief apparently worked to promote his own interests rather than those of the national party. When Lincoln asked Cameron to cooperate with Mc-Clure, with whom he had long been feuding, the Chief readily agreed, for he was mortified by the poor showing in his state, compared with Ohio and Indiana. Despite the resulting improvement in Republican operations, Lincoln continued to fear the result in Pennsylvania. According to McClure, he “knew that his election was in no sense doubtful, but he knew that if he lost New York and with it Pennsylvania on the home vote, the moral effect of his triumph would be broken and his power to prosecute the war and make peace would be greatly impaired.” At McClure’s suggestion, the president arranged to have 10,000 Keystone State troops furloughed in order to vote at home.237

  Shortly after the October elections, James W. Singleton urged Lincoln to announce that Confederate states could be restored without abandoning slavery. The president replied through their mutual friend Ebenezer Peck that while he respected the integrity of Singleton’s motives, he could not take his advice. According to Peck, the president said that the “favorable results of the recent elections, might subject him to the imputation of being willing now, to disregard the desires of the radical men, who have so reluctantly come in to his support, and thus subject him to the imputation of catering to new elements [i.e., Conservatives] in disregard of their opinion.”238

  The Republican victories in October foreshadowed the party’s triumph the following month. On election day, November 8, Lincoln said of the vituperative campaign: “It is a little singular that I who am
not a vindictive man, should always have been before the people for election in canvasses marked for their bitterness.” When a positive report arrived from Maryland that morning, Lincoln expressed surprise. A month earlier, the Free State had gone Republican by a narrow margin. Now the higher turnout might indicate that Democrats were voting in larger numbers. “I shall be glad if that holds,” the president remarked somewhat skeptically.239

  That afternoon, Lincoln, looking demoralized, found it understandably difficult to concentrate on routine business. Tad relieved the tension somewhat when he raced into his father’s room to announce that the soldiers guarding the White House were off to vote. Lincoln noticed that the boy’s pet turkey, which he had rescued from the chopping block a year earlier, was accompanying the troops to the polls. (They had made a mascot of the bird.) When the president asked if the turkey was also going to vote, Tad shot back: “Oh, no; he isn’t of age yet!” The proud father regarded that response as far superior to many of the humorous “Lincoln stories” in circulation.240

  Noah Brooks, who spent the afternoon and evening with the president, reported that Lincoln “took no pains to conceal his anxious interest in the result of the election.” The president confessed: “I am just enough of a politician to know that there was not much doubt about the result of the Baltimore Convention, but about this thing I am far from being certain; I wish I were certain.” Around 6:30, word arrived from Indianapolis announcing a predictable Republican landslide.

  After dinner, the president and John Hay splashed over to the War Department through the rainy, dark, gloomy night. Passing by a soaked sentry encased in his own vapor, they entered the building through a side door and climbed to the telegraph room, where the president was handed a dispatch from John W. Forney predicting a 10,000-vote majority in Philadelphia. Lincoln remarked laconically: “Forney is a little excitable.” Around nine o’clock, a telegram from Baltimore announced a solid 10,000-vote Republican victory. Lincoln merely smiled and remarked “that was a fair beginning.”241 From Massachusetts came news that Congressman Alexander H. Rice was leading by 4,000 votes. Incredulous, Lincoln said: “Rice has one of the closest districts in the country, and those figures are more likely to be 40 or perhaps 400.” When subsequent reports confirmed the original estimate, he took heart: “If the doubtful districts come in in this shape, what may we expect from the certain ones?” (A few days later, he told Rice: “Well, your district proved to be a good deal like a jug after all, with the handle all on one side.”)242 Assistant Secretary of the Navy Gustavus Fox took special pleasure in Rice’s victory, for the congressman was a friend of the navy. When Fox expressed joy that two of his department’s congressional enemies had been defeated, Lincoln told him: “You have more of that feeling of personal resentment than I. Perhaps I may have too little of it, but I never thought it paid. A man has not time to spend half his life in quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me, I never remember the past against him.”243