It was not until October that Frémont finally marched with thirty-eight thousand troops against Price. Outgunned two to one, Price evacuated Springfield and withdrew into northwestern Arkansas. Frémont halted his advance at Springfield, which he entered on October 26. Although he had secured most of Missouri for the Union, he failed to catch up to, let alone defeat, the enemy. But it was continual reports of Frémont’s abuses of power that prompted Lincoln to relieve him of command on November 2 and reassign him to head the Department of the Ohio, with its headquarters at Wheeling, West Virginia, where presumably he would do less harm. Lincoln called on Gen. Henry Halleck to head the Department of the West.
While the Civil War engulfed Missouri, Kentucky evaded violence for the time being. Governor Beriah Magoffin was a slaveholder and rejected Lincoln’s call for volunteers. The state senate voted on May 24 that Kentucky would be neutral. Yet slowly the political tide shifted toward loyalty to the United States. Unionists prevailed in three elections from May to August, for delegates to a border state convention, for representatives to Congress, and for the state legislature. Unionists dominated the state assembly, with majorities of seventy-six to twenty-four in the House and twenty-seven to eleven in the Senate.
An imprudent rebel act inadvertently shoved Kentucky from neutrality into loyalty to the United States and helped advance the career of America’s most successful general during the war. Gen. Leonidas Polk led his army into Kentucky on September 3, 1861, and fortified Columbus on bluffs above the Mississippi River just twenty miles south of its juncture with the Ohio River. A majority in Kentucky’s state assembly reacted by condemning this invasion and declaring their support for the United States.
During the war’s first few months a counter-secession movement blossomed within one of the rebel states. Virginia extended westward across the Appalachian Mountains to nestle against Kentucky and Ohio. Few masters and slaves lived in the mountainous region, and their presence was resented by nearly everyone else. The regional contrast was startling, with 472,494 slaves in eastern Virginia and 18,571 in the west.45
The Virginia assembly’s overwhelming vote on April 17 for secession enraged most Appalachians. A grassroots movement to stay in the United States spread across the region. John Carlisle, western Virginia’s leading unionist, conferred with Lincoln, who encouraged his efforts. Unionist political leaders gathered for a convention at Wheeling on June 11. Nine days later the delegates declared themselves the state’s lawful government, with themselves as the assembly. They promptly elected two senators to send to Washington and Francis Pierpont to serve as their governor. A referendum on West Virginia’s secession from Virginia and formation of a new state passed by 18,408 to 781 votes in October. A convention was held in February 1862 to draft a constitution and submit it to Congress for approval. West Virginia was eventually admitted into the United States on July 24, 1863. All along Lincoln encouraged each step.
The potential for a similar secession from a secession existed in eastern Tennessee. There only 27,539 blacks, mostly slaves, existed amid 297,596 whites. As in western Virginia, the Appalachian folks despised slavery and resented being poor and politically unrepresented compared to the rest of the state. In a referendum, most Tennesseans approved secession from the United States, while two of three voters in the eastern region voted against it. Senator Andrew Johnson and three representatives stayed loyal to the United States and retained their seats in Congress. After Union troops overran Tennessee in early 1862, Lincoln named Johnson the state’s governor. This kept Tennessee united rather than split into two separate states.46
McClellan was a master of organization. By October his Army of the Potomac numbered 120,000 well-equipped and trained troops compared to Beauregard’s 45,000 at Manassas. Yet McClellan refused to march, claiming that the rebel army actually numbered 150,000. He contrived those figures with Allan Pinkerton, whom he picked as his intelligence chief. Pinkerton was famed for heading a Chicago detective agency but was a disastrous neophyte at espionage. McClellan and Pinkerton persistently exaggerated rebel troop numbers by two or even three times.
McClellan’s most notable act during this time was to defy and insult the president and secretary of state. Having vital issues to discuss, Lincoln and Seward visited McClellan’s house the evening of November 13. The general passed them in the parlor without a glance or word and went upstairs. The two continued to wait, assuming that McClellan would soon return to speak with them. After another half hour, they sent word that they were still downstairs. McClellan had his butler reply that he had gone to bed and was not to be disturbed. Seward was incensed but Lincoln tried to calm him by arguing that “it was better at this time not to be making points of etiquette and personal dignity.” While this was the last time that Lincoln paid a visit to McClellan’s home, he remained cheerfully indifferent to such slights, insisting that “I will hold McClellan’s horse if he will just bring us successes.”47
For now Lincoln kept McClellan but disposed of another worsening liability. Those who had warned him that taking Simon Cameron into his cabinet would result in a scandal could say “I told you so” in early 1862. Under Cameron, the War Department swiftly acquired a reputation for waste, fraud, and incompetence. Yet after learning of this malfeasance, the president hesitated for weeks to fire Cameron, fearing that he might inflict more damage outside than inside the administration. What clinched Lincoln’s decision was being told by powerful New York banker James Hamilton that the Treasury Department could swiftly raise $100 million from private investors if someone of impeccable character and administrative skills headed the War Department. Lincoln gave Cameron notice on January 11, 1862, but covered the blow by nominating him to be minister to Russia.
Lincoln replaced him with Edwin Stanton.48 In doing so he once again revealed his seemingly endless gift for embracing his foes and converting them into allies. Stanton was not just a devote Democrat but had snubbed and denigrated Lincoln during their first encounter in 1855, when both served on a team of lawyers defending Cyprus McCormick in a patent for his reaper. Stanton childishly referred to Lincoln as a “damned long armed ape” and refused to speak to him, let alone work with him. Lincoln brushed off the snub as he sat “in rapt attention” at Stanton’s brilliant performance, having never before “seen anything so finished and elaborated and so thoroughly prepared.”49
Lincoln did not take Stanton’s meanness all that personally then or after he tapped him as his secretary of war. Stanton had a well-deserved reputation for being arrogant and condescending, and Lincoln recognized that he was only one of countless targets. With time Stanton understood the brilliance beneath Lincoln’s folksy manners, and they became friends as well as colleagues. Lincoln’s most important reason for choosing Stanton was his renowned administrative skills and fierce desire to crush the rebellion. Stanton increasingly vented his venom against McClellan, a fellow Democrat, complaining that “we have had no war; we have not even been playing at war” and that “as soon as I can get the rat holes stopped, we shall move. This army has got to fight or run way. . . . While men are striving nobly in the West, the champagne and oysters on the Potomac must be stopped.”50
McClellan’s leisurely and luxurious approach to war deeply frustrated Lincoln. For months the president prodded the general with gentle humor and suggestions rather than orders. At one point he remarked that if the general did not intend to lead the army on a campaign, he “would like to borrow it, provided he could see how it could be made to do something.”51 Lincoln drafted a plan for half of the Army of the Potomac to feint toward the rebel army at Centerville while launching wide-turning movements that rolled up the enemy’s flanks. It was an excellent plan, the first of many that the president submitted to his generals. McClellan contemptuously ignored the plan after receiving it on December 1. Lincoln then asked McClellan to draw up and present his own plan. McClellan ignored this request as well.
In early 1862 even Lincoln’s legendary patience reache
d its limits. The turning point was a cabinet meeting on January 13, when McClellan was invited to explain his campaign plan. He enraged his audience by arrogantly pronouncing that “no General fit to command an army will ever submit his plans to the judgment of such an assembly. . . . There are many people here entirely incompetent to pass judgment. . . . No plan made known to so many persons can be kept secret an hour.”52 McClellan then compounded this gross insult the next day by describing his plan to a reporter for the New York Herald, which published the story and thus tipped off the enemy.
Lincoln issued on January 27 the President’s General Order Number 1, which required all land and naval forces on February 22, George Washington’s birthday, to “threaten all [enemy] positions at the same time with superior force, and if they weakened one to strengthen another seize and hold the one weakened.”53 The frustration that led Lincoln to issue this order is understandable, given the inertia of the field commanders on all fronts along with the growing political and public impatience for offensives that crushed the rebellion once and for all. The trouble was that no grand strategy that coordinated the forces toward the enemy’s systematic destruction accompanied the order. Nor did it recognize the challenges posed by launching campaigns in winter, when roads were turned into quagmires and pastures offered only withered plants for horses and draft animals to forage.
As Lincoln anxiously awaited the date for the launch of the forces, he and his family suffered a terrible loss on February 20, when typhoid fever killed their eleven-year-old son, Willie. Now the Lincolns had lost two of their four boys, having buried Eddie in Springfield a dozen years earlier. This latest loss devastated both parents. Lincoln was so griefstricken that he twice asked that his boy’s body be exhumed so that he could gaze again upon his face. Mary went into deep mourning, sometimes barricaded in her bedroom for days at a time. She began consulting spiritualists to contact her dead children and others and insisted that her husband sit with her during the séances. For some reason neither parent could lavish as much love and attention on their two surviving children, who likely felt hurt by the neglect. Lincoln became ever closer to his two secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, to the point where he treated them like surrogate sons.
As if the pressures on Lincoln were not crushing enough, Mary heaped more upon him. She quickly exceeded the $20,000 appropriated for refurbishing the White House and ran up huge debts. Lincoln was enraged when he learned what she had done. How could anyone justify these expenditures for “that damned old house,” he erupted, when “the poor freezing soldiers could not have blankets.” He promised to pay the debts. Congress quietly voted to cover the rest of the costs. Lincoln reluctantly agreed to accept this payment. Mary had become the most hated first lady in the nation’s history, and not just because of her snobbery and irresponsible extravagance. Some condemned her as an outright traitor, given that one of her brothers, three half brothers, and three brothers-in-law fought for the rebel cause.54
The United States and the Confederacy fought a diplomatic as well as military war. The rebel government sought international recognition, trade, aid, and ideally, allies. The American government was determined to deny the rebels all that.55
The most vital diplomatic tug-of-war between Washington and Richmond was over British hearts, minds, and wallets.56 Britain was not only the world’s greatest economic and military power, but many of its textile factories converted southern cotton into cloth. So Whitehall, the complex of London buildings housing the government, had a compelling economic interest in siding with the rebels. Atop that was a strategic interest. It was increasingly evident that America posed a long-term threat to surpass Britain economically and that greater wealth could underwrite greater military power. During both the Revolutionary War and War of 1812, the Americans had tried and failed to conquer Canada. They might well succeed in some future war. So it was definitely in Britain’s economic and military interests to assist America in tearing itself apart. Countering this were Britain’s moral interests. For more than half a century, Whitehall had led an international campaign against slavery and showed the way by first outlawing the international slave trade in 1808, then slavery itself within its empire in 1833. Aiding the Confederate slavocracy would violate a vital principle of British morality and policy.
Britain’s economic and strategic interests initially prevailed. On May 13, 1861, Queen Victoria recognized the Confederacy and declared her empire’s neutrality. As if that were not provocative enough, she did so the day before Charles Francis Adams, America’s minister to Britain, presented his credentials to Foreign Secretary John Russell. Yet Washington had unwittingly instigated this policy. According to international law, when Lincoln declared a blockade of the Confederacy on April 19, he essentially recognized a legitimate government. Russell explained that Whitehall simply followed Washington’s lead.
Secretary of State Seward wanted to get tough with the British. He showed Lincoln a letter that he would send Whitehall that condemned its recognition of the Confederacy and meetings with rebel leaders and warned that Washington would sever its diplomatic ties if the British persisted. Once again Seward seemed happy to play a game of diplomatic brinksmanship no matter what the results. War with Britain would have been disastrous to American interests. Lincoln softened the rhetoric so that the letter expressed sorrow rather than anger at British policy.57
Exacerbating the deteriorating relationship with Whitehall was a joint act of aggression by Britain, France, and Spain that violated a nearly four-decade-old principle of American foreign policy. In 1823 President James Monroe had issued what became known as the Monroe Doctrine, warning the European powers not to intervene militarily in the Western Hemisphere. Early in 1861 those three countries did just that when they landed troops at Veracruz. They did so to pressure Mexico’s government to resume payments on the debt it owed them.
Relations between the United States and Britain reached a nadir during the Trent Affair.58 In October 1861 Confederate president Davis dispatched John Slidell and James Mason as envoys to Britain with the mission to gain aid and an alliance. The blockade had already tightened to the point where it was deemed safer to take a roundabout route to London. The envoys sailed first to Havana and there awaited a Britain-bound ship. They finally found passage on the mail packet Trent. But before they sailed, spies passed word of their mission and whereabouts to Capt. Charles Wilkes, who commanded the uss San Jacinto patrolling the Florida Strait. The San Jacinto intercepted the Trent on November 8. Wilkes sent aboard marines to arrest Slidell and Mason. The Trent then sailed on its way while Wilkes pointed his vessel north to Boston, where the envoys were jailed at Fort Warren.
Upon learning of the capture, the British and Confederate governments protested what they claimed was a violation of international law. Lincoln and all his cabinet dismissed the charge except Blair, who argued that it had merit. Word arrived from London that Britain was preparing its forces for possible war with the United States. This was confirmed when Lord Richard Lyons, Britain’s minister in Washington, handed Seward a formal note from his government, dated December 19, that demanded an apology and the captives’ release.
Lincoln convened his cabinet on Christmas Day and insisted that fighting two wars at once would be disastrous. Even then the secretaries split over whether to reject or accept the British demand. The deadlock persisted the following day. Lincoln then debated the issue privately with Seward, with each taking the other’s position. Lincoln noted that “I could not make an argument that would satisfy my own mind. That proved to me your ground was the right one.”59
They jointly composed a diplomatic note for Seward to send Whitehall. Captain Wilkes had acted on his own initiative yet would have been in full accord with international law had he taken the Trent to a prize court. He erred legally in arresting the envoys without due process. For this reason, the envoys would be released.
Lincoln’s face-saving gesture had a sobering effect in London. War talk faded.
Foreign Minister Russell tried to pursue better relations with the United States, via both American minister Charles Adams in London and British minister James Lyons in Washington. A major bilateral conflict disappeared in April 1862, when the British along with the Spanish withdrew their troops from Veracruz after Mexico resumed its debt payments to them. Then, on July 11, 1862, American and British diplomats signed a treaty that committed both countries to suppress the international slave trade.
These acts resolved the worst potential foreign threat to American security. Yet Lincoln somehow found time in early 1862 to commit an important symbolic act of diplomacy and principle that went virtually unnoticed amid the bewildering maze of war, domestic politics, and vital relations with Britain and France. The United States fully recognized the sovereign nations of Haiti and Liberia and exchanged ministers with these countries populated and governed by black people.
McClellan neither acknowledged nor acted on Lincoln’s order for all Union forces to attack the closest rebel forces on February 22. He would not get around to launching his offensive until nearly two months after the deadline. However, other generals did obey the commander in chief. Gen. George Thomas attacked first, routed the enemy at Logan’s Crossroads near Mills Springs, Kentucky, on January 19, and secured that state’s eastern region. An even more decisive campaign was unleashed at Kentucky’s western end.
The Age of Lincoln and the Art of American Power, 1848-1876 Page 15
