Lincoln's Boys: John Hay, John Nicolay, and the War for Lincoln's Image

by Joshua Zeitz

  Without fanfare, the administration was about to confirm what many Americans already perceived: that the war was no longer about restoring the “Union as it was, and the Constitution as it is,” as many Democrats insisted. Instead, it had evolved into a struggle to elevate the principles of the American Revolution above the embarrassing series of compromises of human liberty that lay so deeply embedded in the Constitution. In the opening line of his address, “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, upon this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” Lincoln would date the founding of America to 1776, not 1787. To the modern ear, this phraseology is unremarkable, but for its time it was freighted with great meaning. For two decades, antislavery radicals had publicly venerated the Declaration of Independence and scorned the Constitution, with its two-thirds compromise and recognition of the international slave trade, as a sordid, morally tainted document. Frederick Douglass called on Americans to unleash the “great doctrines” of their founding article from the “narrow bounds of races or nations,” while his fellow abolitionists rechristened Pennsylvania’s “Old State House Bell” the “Liberty Bell,” claimed it as their symbol, and turned a once-obscure historical relic into a national icon. Borrowing from this legacy, Lincoln would soon recast the meaning of the Civil War, and that evening Seward had sent up the first test balloon.

  Hay and Nicolay were focused elsewhere. They were tasked with handling the president’s politics, and in that service they were drunk. Late evening found them mingling among a “large and clamorous” crowd of reporters and onlookers as Forney stumbled his way through an emotional philippic. Hay noted that the much-inebriated speaker delighted the equally impaired crowd with “the eulogy of the President, that great, wonderful mysterious inexplicable man . . . And very much of this.” Sometime between late evening and early morning, Forney retired to his bedroom to pass out, and the secretaries went to sleep.

  The next morning at roughly nine o’clock, Nicolay managed to present himself at Lincoln’s room, where the two men spent an hour creating a clean copy of the final draft. This was probably the first time that Nicolay read the speech; Hay, who took longer to stir from the night’s revelries, had not yet seen a draft—a point that he apparently pressed to no avail with reporters, who did not believe him and bothered him relentlessly for an advance copy. At ten o’clock, Nicolay and Lincoln left the Wills house to join the procession to the cemetery. “In the morning I got a beast and rode out with the President’s suite to the Cemetery in the procession,” Hay noted in his diary. “The procession formed itself in an orphanly sort of way & moved out with very little help from anybody & after a little delay Mr. Everett took his place on the stand—And Mr. Stockton made a prayer which thought it was an oration—and Mr. Everett spoke as he always does perfectly—and the President in a firm free way, with more grace than is his wont said his half dozen lines of consecration and the music wailed and we went home through crowded and cheering streets. And all the particulars are in the daily papers.”

  That was that. Neither Nicolay nor Hay made any further mention of the Gettysburg Address at the time. Initial reviews were mixed. Democratic newspapers faulted the president for mixing partisanship with the solemnity of the moment and for identifying 1776—not 1787—as the birth of the American nation. The New York World, a Democratic organ, thought it “questionable” to date the nation’s founding to the “stages of conception and parturition.” An Ohio Democrat denounced the address as a “mawkish harangue about this ‘was for freedom’ of the negro.” The Chicago Times, no friend of the administration’s, complained that “Lincoln did most foully traduce the motives of the men who were slain at Gettysburg.” They had not died to give the nation a “new birth of freedom.” Rather, “they gave their lives to maintain the old government, and the old constitution and Union.” Predictably, Republicans praised the speech. One paper called it “the right thing, in the right place, and a perfect thing in every respect.” The Chicago Tribune averred that it would “live among the annals of man,” and two years later Ralph Waldo Emerson predicted that it would “not easily be surpassed by words on any recorded occasion,” a prophecy that later proved true enough.

  But Emerson’s assessment was still mere prophecy. In its immediate aftermath, the Gettysburg Address was received neither as a great failure (as historical myth would later hold) nor as a landmark document (as we tend to assume today). It was an important political oration, carefully calculated and successfully delivered. Only in later years would Hay and Nicolay come to regard the Gettysburg Address as an “immortal” document, as they undertook the work of securing Lincoln’s place in history.

  • • •

  The Gettysburg Address came at a key moment for Lincoln. As would prove the case throughout the war, the president’s political fortunes, and those of his party, moved in almost perfect concert with the Union army’s battlefield success. Buoyed by victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, the Republicans performed strongly in key off-year gubernatorial and legislative elections, most notably in several large battleground states. Lincoln and his allies also found help in an unlikely quarter: the opposition Democratic Party undermined much of its own credibility by seeming too close in alignment with the rebels. In Ohio, Democrats nominated the former congressman Clement Vallandigham for governor; an outspoken Copperhead of dubious loyalty to his country, he was forced to campaign from Canada, having been banished by government decree from the United States. In Indiana, the Democratic-controlled legislature had refused to appropriate funds for the military effort, compelling the Republican governor to assume extralegal executive powers to secure funding outside the ordinary channels. These public offenses, as well as the antiwar stridency of the Democratic press, struck many Northern voters as borderline seditious and produced a groundswell of support for the Republican Party that fall, particularly in Ohio and Pennsylvania, two powerhouses in the Electoral College. In early October, Hay traveled to Columbus to debrief John Brough, the Republican gubernatorial candidate. “He says they will carry Ohio by at least 25,000 votes, independent of the soldiers who will indefinitely increase it,” Hay reported to the president. “Brough is much more anxious about [Pennsylvania governor Andrew] Curtin than himself.

  Brough thinks that as yet in the Keystone State

  The prospect is rather uncertain—

  The fifth act is near, and we only can wait

  Impatient, the rise of the Curtain.

  A hazy joke, with which I close.”

  Lincoln was by no means a passive observer in these struggles. Behind the scenes, he actively raised money for state Republican parties, furloughed thousands of Ohio soldiers so that they could return home to vote, and, in the final days of the canvass, issued a robust campaign speech that was read on his behalf before a massive rally in Illinois and disseminated nationally through the Republican press. These efforts paid handsome dividends. Standing alongside Curtin, who was handily reelected, and Brough, who trounced Vallandigham at the polls, Lincoln used his appearance at Gettysburg to solidify his position in advance of the 1864 nomination fight.

  Lincoln faced certain obstacles in his effort to earn renomination, chief among them the unrelenting ambition of his Treasury secretary, Salmon P. Chase. It was the worst-kept secret in Washington that Chase was conspiring to depose Lincoln at the next year’s Republican convention. As early as the summer of 1863, Hay noted with bemusement the observations of an Ohio Republican who thought Chase “a good man, but his theology is unsound. He thinks there is a fourth Person in the Trinity, S.P.C.” Lincoln understood that Chase’s head was “full of Presidential maggots” but struck the secretaries as more amused than concerned by his “mad hunt for the Presidency.” Yet Chase was a formidable opponent. His “head is turned by his eagerness in pursuit of the presidency,” a rival cabinet member privately observed. “For a long time he has been filling all the offices in his own vast
patronage, with extreme partisans, and contrives to fill many vacancies, properly belonging to other departments.” When Hay warned the president about Chase’s political use of federal patronage, Lincoln “laughed on & said he was sorry the thing had begun, for though the matter did not annoy him his friends insisted that it ought to . . . He prefers letting Chase have his own way in these sneaking tricks than getting into a snarl with him by refusing him what he asks.”

  Above all, the president understood that his success would hinge on the progress of the war effort. Eager to expedite matters, in late 1863 Lincoln announced his Ten Percent Plan, which offered amnesty to all Southerners who would pledge allegiance to the United States and invited any Confederate state that could muster up enough such loyal men, equal to 10 percent of those who had voted in 1860, to form a new state constitution without slavery. The Ten Percent Plan was more about prosecuting the war than reconstructing the South. Its intent was to establish rival state governments in the South, undermine the Confederacy’s hold on its own people and territory, and encourage desertion in the rebel army. As an added bonus, reconstructed Southern governments might be able to send delegates to the 1864 Republican convention and participate in the presidential election. By definition, most of those re-swearing allegiance to the United States would support the president and the Republican ticket.

  In late December, with Nicolay away on a visit to Philadelphia, Hay spent “a lonesome sort of Christmas. I breakfasted, dined, and supped alone. Went to the Theatre & saw Macbeth alone. Came home and slept alone.” Three days later, Lincoln spoke with his secretary “about the matter of reconstruction in Florida. He wants me to take one of his Oath books down to Pt. Lookout and get the matter going there and after that he will appoint me a Commissioner to go to Florida and engineer the business there.” In practical terms, Hay’s challenge was to convince approximately thirteen hundred residents of occupied Florida (10 percent of those who had voted in the 1860 presidential election) to swear allegiance to the United States. For Lincoln, the mission was critical: reconstructing Southern states would allow him to sow discord in the Confederacy and rack up an important political win ahead of the presidential election. For Hay, it was an opportunity to step into a larger role. Recognizing the stakes at hand, key Republicans wondered aloud why the president would tap his twenty-five-year-old secretary to perform so sensitive a mission. Hay was “young, almost beardless,” complained one Republican editor, and unprepared for the “official responsibilities and the tumult of action in time of pressure.” The Washington correspondent for a midwestern newspaper wrote him off as “that fellow five feet tall, that walks like lightning down the street” in his “turtle-backed hat, just the shape of his cranium, with well oiled locks, and handsome kid gloves,” speaking “in the choice and expressive language which prevails at ‘Chebang,’ as he pleasantly terms the White House. Inquire affectionately after the health of the President of the mightiest nation on earth, and John will inform you that the ‘old Tycoon is in high feather.’”

  Perhaps recognizing that a young man in a turtle-backed hat would not be taken seriously, on January 13 the president commissioned Hay a major in the army and sent him with a presidential letter of introduction to the commander of the Department of the South. Still detailed to the White House, Hay would remain a soldier for the duration of the war, serving in effect as a presidential military aide. “Great good luck and God’s blessing go with you John,” Lincoln said affectionately.

  Following roughly the same coastal route that he had traveled the year before, Hay contended once again with bouts of seasickness along the way. He noted with interest the “embarkation of the 54th boys”—the celebrated colored soldiers of the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth who had fought valiantly and suffered enormous losses at Charleston in 1863. “Variety of complexions,” he observed, “redheads—filing into their places on deck—singing whistling smoking and dancing—eating candy & chewing tobacco. Jolly little cuss round rosy and halfwhite, singing

  Oh John Brown dey hung him

  Were gwine to jine de Union Army

  Oh John Brown dey hung him,

  We’re gwine Dixie’s land.”

  Arriving in South Carolina, Hay reported to General Quincy Gillmore, commander of the Department of the South, who “held the President’s letter in a helpless sort of way, like a bachelor with a baby: he didn’t know what he was to do with it or me: had a vague idea that he was to split his army up into squads and watch the polls while I carried on the election . . . But was comforted when I told him I wanted no soldaten—only orders.” Gillmore found himself in an unusual position; he outranked Hay by several grades, but the young major was also a senior presidential aide. The general gladly drafted official orders and sent Hay on his way. After awaiting arrival of his army uniform and personal effects, which traveled on a separate ship, Hay set sail for Florida, where, according to plan, he began the work of securing the allegiance of vanquished Confederates. After several days at work, he was optimistic. “The people are ignorant and apathetic,” he informed Lincoln. “They seem to know nothing and care nothing about the matter. They have a vague objection to being shot and having their houses burned, but don’t know why it is done. They will be very glad to see a government strong enough to protect them against these everyday incidents of the last two years. I have the best assurances that we will get the tenth required.”

  As was the case on his earlier Southern journey, Hay was charmed and haunted by his unfamiliar surroundings, particularly by the bioluminescent bays that dotted the Florida coastline in the era before commercial shipping killed off the microorganisms that created this unusual lighting effect. “I came down the St. John’s River last night,” he told Nicolay. “There was no moon and the stars glistened in the warm wintry air with a steady softness. The harbor as I entered it lay in a charmed quiet. I saw for the first time in its glory the wonder of the southern seas—the phosphorescent light of the waves. As I rowed across every stroke of the oars splashed melted silver. This is absolutely true. I floated in a vast reservoir of molten metal, white and luminous.”

  Setting up shop at a general store, Hay distributed leaflets and waited as “a few men straggled in and swore. One hesitating cuss who evidently feared he was going to be tricked into the army swore, but dallied so on the signing that I shut the book & told him to make up his mind before calling again.” Moving down toward Jacksonville, he addressed a motley band of prisoners of war. Decked out in his blue army uniform, he rose to inform them “of the Executive act [the Ten Percent Plan] & extend to you its benefits . . . If you sign you will be released & allowed to return to your homes if they are not &c. If not you will be sent north as prisoners of war, for exchange . . . It is a matter for yr. own choice. There is to be neither force or persuasion used in the matter.” When Hay finished his lecture, several of the men posed questions. Then they approached, “a dirty swarm of grey coats & filed into the room, escorted by a negro guard. Fate had done its worst for the poor devils. Even a nigger guard didnt seem to excite a feeling of resentment.” This late in the war, Hay had met many black soldiers and was impressed by their valor and ability. He no longer traded as freely in racial epithets as in earlier years. It is unclear whether he was imagining the internal monologue of the vanquished Confederate prisoners or still derogated African Americans in his private conversations and writings.

  Hay was repulsed, but not surprised, by the abject poverty and ignorance of his wards. “Some wrote [in] good hands,” he observed, “but most bad. Nearly half made their mark.” As a solid antislavery man, he expected exactly this paucity of intellectual achievement among Southern whites. Neither did he harbor any illusions about their motives. “The fact that more than 50 per cent of the prisoners of war were eager to desert & get out of the service shows how the spirit of the common people is broken,” he noted. They might not have had a change of heart about secession and slavery. But they were “tired of the war. Peace on any terms was wha
t they wanted. They have no care for the political questions involved. Most of them had not read the oath & when I insisted on their learning what it was they would say listlessly, ‘Yes I guess I’ll take it.’”

  Despite his early enthusiasm, Hay soon concluded that his mission would likely fail. Only thirteen thousand Floridians had cast ballots in 1860, setting the bar low under the terms of the Ten Percent Plan. But with tens of thousands of white men serving in uniform, and large portions of the state still under rebel control and beyond his reach, he concluded that there were not enough voters in the occupied portion of Florida to achieve his target number. He could not enroll black men, nor women. “I find nearly everybody willing to take the oath of allegiance,” he privately concluded, “but I find scarcely anyone left in the country. Whole counties seem almost thoroughly depopulated.” When Gillmore’s forces suffered defeat at the Battle of Olustee in late February, Hay’s mission effectively came to an end. In a veiled swipe at Hay, one Union officer wrote the entire project off as “a gigantic humbug. Besides the Floridians who were already with the Union forces at St. Augustine, Fernandina, Key West, etc., we have scarcely met a man who would be allowed to vote in Connecticut,—that is with sufficient intelligence and education. Not enough white men have we picked up to make one good country school district in the north.”

  Others agreed. The New York Herald suggested that the president had ordered Gillmore to tie up precious resources in Florida, a state of low strategic priority, “simply . . . for the purpose of securing the election of three Lincoln delegates to the National Nominating Convention, and that of John Hay to Congress.” Hay took the criticism personally, flatly denying any ambition to run for office in reconstructed Florida. He pointed out that plans for a military offensive predated his own mission. Several weeks later, after his return to Washington, he was ready to laugh the matter off. “The original lie in the Herald was dirty enough,” he conceded, “& the subsequent commentaries were more than usually nasty. But the Tycoon never minded it in the least and as for me, at my age, the more abuse I get in the newspapers, the better for me. I shall run for Constable some day on the strength of my gory exploits in Florida.”