Sherman began his march from Savannah through the Carolinas on February 1. He led most of his sixty thousand troops straight to Columbia while detaching a force to take Charleston. As his troops neared Columbia on February 17, the Confederates burned or blew up anything of military value; the fires spread and destroyed most of South Carolina’s capital. Fortunately, the rebels spared the beautiful city of Charleston when they fled on February 18. The United States won a vital symbolic victory the following day when American troops marched unopposed into the Confederacy’s epicenter of secessionism and slavocracy. By mid-March Sherman’s army was advancing through the center of North Carolina. The only significant battle came at Bentonville, where the Union army repelled an attack by Gen. Joe Johnston’s troops on March 18 and routed them in a counterattack three days later. Then Sherman’s soldiers resumed their steamroller advance, steadily backing the twenty thousand remnants of Johnston’s army toward Virginia, where Lee’s thinning gray lines manned the entrenchments ringing Petersburg and Richmond.
Lincoln used his reelection as an excuse to shake up his circle of advisors. He replaced Edward Bates with James Speed, the brother of his old friend Joshua, as attorney general; John Usher with Senator James Harlan of Iowa, as Interior Department secretary; Montgomery Blair with William Dennison as postmaster general; and William Fessenden with Hugh McCulloch as treasury secretary. His two secretaries were exhausted from their labors. Lincoln rewarded John Nicolay and John Hay by sending them to Paris as the consul and secretary, respectively, of America’s legation. Noah Brooks, a brilliant correspondent for the Sacramento Union, agreed to take their place. The only familiar faces were those of William Seward, Edwin Stanton, and Gideon Welles as the respective state, war, and navy secretaries.
Although it could not be foreseen at the time, Lincoln’s most notable change was to replace Hannibal Hamlin with Andrew Johnson. Like many vice presidential picks, Johnson seemed to make solid political sense at the time. He had an impressive resume, having served in the House of Representatives from 1843 to 1853, as Tennessee’s governor from 1853 to 1857, and as a U.S. senator from 1857 to March 1862. He was from mountainous east Tennessee, where slaves were few and Unionist sentiments were strong. He was the only southern senator who remained loyal after his state seceded. He supported abolition and the recruitment of black regiments. Although he owned five slaves, he voluntarily freed them in August 1863. In return for all this, Lincoln rewarded him by naming him Tennessee’s military governor in March 1862. As a southerner and Democrat loyal to the United States, Johnson appeared to be symbolically a perfect national unity running mate for Lincoln in 1864.
At times private American citizens have conducted their own, unauthorized, diplomacy in hopes of resolving deadlocked international conflicts. These efforts have generally provoked far more resentment than gratitude from the White House. The freelancers tend to thicken rather than cut through thorny diplomatic problems. This happened in January 1865, when Francis Blair, a prominent Maryland Republican, journeyed to Richmond to meet with his old friend Jefferson Davis. He proposed that the two sides resolve their differences by uniting to drive the French from Mexico. Although Davis was cool to this idea, he sent Blair back to Washington with a letter promising to appoint a commission “to secure peace to the two countries.” Lincoln returned Blair to Richmond with the message that he hoped to secure the southern “people to the people of our one common country.”5 He did so assuming that would end the initiative.
Instead, Davis named three envoys, Confederate vice president Alexander Stephens, Assistant Secretary of War John Campbell, and Virginia senator Robert Hunter, and informed Grant of his intention to send them across the lines at Petersburg. Grant talked the envoys into deleting any reference to separate countries in their instructions. He then hosted them at his headquarters.
Lincoln and Seward embarked on the presidential steamboat River Queen for the voyage from Washington to Hampton Roads. The rebel envoys were ushered aboard the River Queen on February 3. The meeting started out genially enough, as Lincoln was delighted to see Stephens, an old friend and respected colleague from his congressional stint from 1847 to 1849. During the subsequent talks, Lincoln insisted that peace was possible only after the Confederacy unconditionally surrendered, the nation was reunited, and slavery was abolished. Until then the American government and people would relentlessly war against the rebels. Yet he made a huge concession when he suggested leaving slavery’s abolition in the hands of the courts and state governments rather than Congress. He hinted that if the rebel states rejoined the nation they could vote against the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery. But the rebel envoys spurned this stunning idea and instead insisted on independence. They parted without an agreement.
Upon returning to Washington, Lincoln drew up a proposal whereby Congress would appropriate $400 million to buy the freedom of slaves from their masters. Half the money would be paid on April 1 if the rebels accepted peace, with the rest paid on July 1 if the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified. But the cabinet rejected his proposal when they reviewed it on February 5. The war would be won on the battlefield rather than at the negotiation table.
As for the Thirteenth Amendment that abolished slavery, it was slowly lumbering along the path to ratification. Liberals had introduced the amendment in June 1864. Although the Senate vote surpassed the two-thirds approval requirement, the House killed it when sixty-six Democrats voted against it, while all ninety-three Republicans and two liberal Democrats voted for it. In his December 1864 address, Lincoln urged Congress to pass the Thirteenth Amendment. The House approved slavery’s abolition on January 31, 1865, with 119 for and 56 against, just two more votes than the required two-thirds majority; 102 Republicans and 17 Democrats voted for the amendment, while 8 Democrats abstained. With enormous satisfaction and relief, the president signed the Thirteenth Amendment the same day. This was just the first crucial step. Three of four states had to approve that amendment before it became part of the law of the land. Sadly, Lincoln would not live to see that happen.
The inaugural day procedure was for the vice president to take the oath and make a speech before a select group of dignitaries within the Capitol, followed by the president’s oath and speech outside before the fifty thousand spectators that had gathered. Andrew Johnson made a very poor first impression that proved to be a harbinger of the trials to come. He was still shaky from surviving a bout with typhoid fever and sought to drown with whiskey his nervousness at making his speech. The result was a rambling, barely coherent discourse on democracy and his own humble origins. As Johnson babbled on, Lincoln was observed to have “closed his eyes and seemed to retire into himself as though beset by melancholy reflection.” After Johnson finally finished, Lincoln whispered to the parade marshal not to “let Johnson speak outside.”6
Lincoln’s second inaugural address was the shortest and among the most eloquent in American history: “Fondly we do hope—fervently we do pray—that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled up by the bondman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’” He then sought to comfort those families that had paid the highest sacrifice in the struggle: “I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavements and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice on the altar of freedom.” He ended with beautifully haunting lines: “With malice toward none; with charity toward all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds . . . to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting speech among ourselves and with all nations.
”7
Among the barrage of unrelenting criticisms that Abraham and Mary Lincoln endured was the charge that their oldest son, Robert, was a “shirker.” Rather than serve in the army he was safely ensconced at Harvard University and, after graduating in 1864, was just as safe in the White House as he prepared to return to Harvard to study law. Mary was adamant that she not lose a third son and refused Robert’s plea that he enlist. With the war’s end near, Lincoln sought a safe but honorable post for Robert at the front. He asked Grant as a friend whether he could give his son a nominal rank and duty in his headquarters. Grant was happy to comply. He commissioned Robert a captain and assigned him to his staff.
Lincoln himself joined the army for a jubilant ten days that began on March 28, in a war council with Grant and Sherman aboard the River Queen at City Point. They discussed how best to end the war and then begin to win the peace. Lincoln explained his desire to “get the deluded men of the rebel armies disarmed and back to their home.” Once there “they won’t take up arms again. . . . I want submission and no more bloodshed. . . . I want no one punished; treat them liberally all around. We want those people to return to their allegiance to the Union and submit to the laws.”8
Although Grant’s army outgunned Lee’s by 120,000 to 55,000 troops, the trenches magnified the rebel army’s strength manyfold. The only sure way to crush the enemy was to sidestep and cut off the last two rail links that fed them supplies. On March 29 Grant sent Sheridan with his cavalry and an infantry corps due west toward Five Forks. When Lee learned that Sheridan’s men had taken that strategic junction, he had no choice but to abandon Petersburg and Richmond and march his army westward as swiftly as possible in hopes of eventually veering south and joining Johnston. President Davis ordered Richmond burned, then fled with his high-ranking officials and family. On April 2 Grant sent more of his army westward while he ordered the rest to charge the rebel lines at Petersburg. The Union assault swept away the handful of soldiers that Lee had left behind.
Lincoln and Grant triumphantly toured Petersburg the next day. The president was even more exhilarated when, on April 4, accompanied by a small escort and surrounded by a growing crowd of worshipful African Americans, he strolled through Richmond. “Thank God that I lived to see this,” he suddenly exclaimed. “It seems to me that I have been dreaming a horrid dream for four years, and now the nightmare is gone.”9
On parallel roads the enemy armies raced each other westward, with Grant ordering probes and attacks northward. The key battle came at Saylor’s Creek on April 6, when Union troops cut off and captured a quarter of the rebel army. The race ended on April 7, when Sheridan’s corps got ahead and blocked the rebel retreat at Appomattox Court House. Grant sent a letter to Lee calling on him to surrender. Lee replied the next day by asking for terms. They agreed to meet the following day.
The war’s two greatest generals shook hands at Wilber McLean’s house in Appomattox on the afternoon of April 9. The contrast between the men was striking. Lee was immaculately dressed in his gray uniform and stood ramrod stiff his full six-foot height. Grant, typically, was rumpled and mud-spattered; with his tendency to slouch, he appeared even shorter than his five foot, seven inches. Only one aide accompanied Lee to share the ignominy of surrender. Grant brought his entire staff and Sheridan, although he entered the McLean parlor with only a secretary.
Grant tried to ease Lee’s tormented feelings by reminiscing about their shared Mexican War experiences. Indeed, he grew so animated that Lee had to remind him just why they had gathered. Grant apologized. They sat down beside a small, round table and Grant scribbled out a surrender document. The terms were generous. The rebels were paroled and could simply go home. Those who owned horses could keep them. Officers could retain their swords and sidearms. Lee expressed his gratitude. Each signed the document.
Afterward, Grant introduced Sheridan and his staff to Lee. When he got to Ely Parker, a Seneca Indian, Lee remarked, “I am glad to see one real American here.” To this Parker offered the appropriate and hopeful reply, “We are all Americans here.”10
The generals strolled outside together. Lee mentioned that his twenty-five thousand remaining men were starving. Grant immediately ordered three days of rations sent to the Confederate camp. Then each mounted, saluted, wheeled, and rode back to his headquarters.
Abraham Lincoln made the last speech of his life on April 11. Having won universal abolition with a series of small steps, he sought to do the same for black civil rights. In doing so, he tried to straddle the gap between liberals and conservatives and gradually, gently, reasonably pull the latter toward the former. Racial equality was an end so distant that it was beyond the political horizon. Yet as for the right to vote, he “would myself prefer that it were now conferred on the very intelligent and on those who serve our cause as soldiers.”11
This was the first time that Lincoln publicly declared his support for black suffrage. Had he lived out the full four years of his second term, he would have undoubtedly returned to the notion of racial equality, each time suggesting a few more steps that he believed would pull conservatives toward liberals, who ideally wanted immediate and genuine equality.
The notion of equal rights between blacks and whites doubtless angered many people in the crowd, none more than John Wilkes Booth. For months Booth had plotted with a small group over ways to either kidnap or kill the president. He now made up his mind which method to take.12
Lincoln met with his cabinet and General Grant on April 14. Stanton noted that he had never seen Lincoln “grander, graver, more thoroughly up to the occasion.” Seward recalled that everyone present “expressed kindly feelings toward the vanquished” and had a “hearty desire to restore peace . . . with as little harm as possible to the feelings or the property of the inhabitants.” The key question was just how to reform and reunite the rebel states. “We can’t undertake to run state governments in all these southern states,” Lincoln concluded. “Their people must do that—although I reckon that at first some of them may do it badly.”13
The president assigned each department an appropriate role in overseeing each state’s rehabilitation, with war providing security, treasury collecting and disbursing revenues, justice upholding the laws, interior disposing of public lands, and the postmaster general reestablishing the post offices and mail routes.
Lincoln ended the meeting cheerfully by predicting that they would soon receive good news. His expectation came from a recurring dream that had most recently visited him the previous night and always preceded a great victory. In the dream he was in “some singular indescribable vessel . . . moving with great rapidity towards an indefinite shore.”14 That night the president and his wife attended the play Our American Cousin at Ford’s Theater.
3
Reconstruction, 1865–1876
13
Revolution
The right of revolution is never a legal right. . . . At most it is but a moral right, when exercised for a morally justifiable cause. When exercised without such a cause, revolution is no right, but simply a wicked exercise of physical power.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
The whole fabric of southern society must be changed. . . . Without this, this Government can never be as it has been, a true republic.
THADDEUS STEVENS
This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men.
ANDREW JOHNSON
Do you inquire why, holding these views . . . I accept so imperfect a proposition? I answer, because I live among men and not among angels.
THADDEUS STEVENS
After Appomattox, American armies swiftly mopped up the last rebel forces. With twenty thousand men, Gen. Joe Johnston surrendered the largest surviving Confederate army to Gen. William Sherman at Durham, North Carolina, on April 26. The war effectively ended on May 10, when Union cavalry captured Jefferson Davis and his entourage at Irwinsville, Georgia, even though the Confederate government neve
r signed an official surrender document with the United States.
Although ultimately the sheer weight of Union arms crushed the outgunned rebels, the American victory was as much a triumph of economic as military power. Economically the Civil War invigorated the North and devastated the South. During the 1860s the North’s economy swelled by 50 percent and the South’s shriveled by 60 percent. In all, the North’s share of the U.S. economy soared from 70 percent to 88 percent, while the South’s shrank from 30 percent to 12 percent. Per capita income among southerners dropped from two-thirds to two-fifths that of northerners. Every southern state was bankrupt. In all, the war destroyed about two-thirds of the South’s wealth.1
Finally, there was ideological triumph of Americanism itself. Gen. Ulysses Grant, along with countless other northerners, saw a southern victory beyond its military and economic devastation: “There was no time during the rebellion when I did not think . . . that the South was more to be benefited by its defeat than the North. The latter had the people, the institutions, and the territory to make a great and prosperous nation. The former was burdened with an institution abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class. . . . The war was expensive to the South as well as to the North, both in blood and treasure, but it was worth the cost.”2
The Age of Lincoln and the Art of American Power, 1848-1876 Page 26
