Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief
Page 33
35. Lincoln to Grant, Sept. 12, 1864, Basler, Collected Works, 7:548; Grant to Lincoln, Sept. 13, 1864, Lincoln Papers; Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant, 2 vols. (New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1885–86), 2:583.
36. James W. Forsyth to John D. Stevenson, Sept. 19, 1864, O.R. 43, ii:124.
37. Lincoln to Sheridan, Sept. 20, 1864, Basler, Collected Works, 8:13.
38. Grant to Halleck, July 14, 1864, O.R. 40, iii:223; Sheridan to Grant, Oct. 7, 1864, O.R. 43, i:30–31.
39. Lincoln to Sheridan, Oct. 22, 1864, Basler, Collected Works, 8:73–74.
40. McPherson, Political History of the United States, 420.
41. Ovid L. Futch, History of Andersonville Prison (Gainesville, Fla.: University of Florida Press, 1968), 43; William Marvel, Andersonville: The Last Depot (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 147–49.
42. H. Brewster to Edwin M. Stanton, Sept. 8, 1864, Samuel White to Lincoln, Sept. 12, 1864, O.R., series 2, vol. 7, pp. 787, 816.
43. Basler, Collected Works, 7:500.
44. Benjamin Butler to Robert Ould, Aug. 27, 1864, O.R., series 2, vol. 7, p. 691. This letter was published in the New York Times, Sept. 6, 1864, and also printed as a leaflet by the government for general circulation.
45. Lee to Grant, Oct. 1, 1864, Grant to Lee, Oct. 2, Lee to Grant, Oct. 3, Grant to Lee, Oct. 3, O.R., series 2, vol. 7, pp. 906–7, 909, 914.
46. William C. Davis, Lincoln’s Men: How President Lincoln Became Father to an Army and a Nation (New York: The Free Press, 1999); Thomas P. Lowry, Don’t Shoot That Boy: Abraham Lincoln and Military Justice (Mason City, Iowa: Savas Publishing, 1999).
47. Delos Lake to his mother, July 12, Nov. 1, 1864, Lake Papers, Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.; Henry Kauffman to Katherine Kreitzer, Oct. 15, 1864, in David McCordick, ed., The Civil War Letters (1861–1865) of Private Henry Kauffman (Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 1991), 89.
48. Henry Crydenwise to his parents, Oct. 25, 1864, Crydenwise Papers, Woodruff Library, Emory University; Connecticut soldier quoted in Bruce Catton, A Stillness at Appomattox (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1957), 303.
49. John Berry to Samuel L. M. Barlow, Aug. 24, 1864, Barlow Papers, Huntington Library.
50. Basler, Collected Works, 8:149, 151.
51. Dunbar Rowland, ed., Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers, and Speeches, 10 vols. (Jackson, Miss.: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1923), 6:386.
52. These quotations are from Sherman’s letters and telegrams to Grant (with citations also to Grant’s replies), in O.R. 39, iii:3, 63–64, 161, 202, 576, 594–95, 660.
53. Stanton to Grant, Oct. 12, 13, 1864, Grant to Sherman, Nov. 2, 1864, ibid., iii:222, 239, 595.
54. Stanton to Grant, Dec. 2, 1864, ibid., 45, ii:15–16.
55. Grant to Thomas, Dec. 2, 6, 8, Thomas to Grant, Dec. 2, 6, Stanton to Grant, Dec. 7, 1864, ibid., 45, ii:17–18, 70, 97.
56. Grant to Stanton, Dec. 7, 1864, ibid., 97.
57. Grant to Halleck, Dec. 8, 9, 1864, Halleck to Grant, Dec. 8, 9, Thomas to Halleck, Dec. 9, 11, 12, 14, Halleck to Thomas, Dec. 14, Grant to Thomas, Dec. 9, 11, ibid., 45, ii:96, 115–16, 143, 168, 180; David Homer Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office (New York: The Century Co., 1907), 312–18.
58. Lincoln to Thomas, Dec. 16, 1864, Basler, Collected Works, 8:169.
59. John Sherman to Alexander McClure, Jan. 29, 1892, in McClure, Lincoln and Men of War Times (Philadelphia: Times Publishing Co., 1892), 238n.; Sherman to Lincoln, Dec. 22 (dated Dec. 25 from Fort Monroe), Lincoln Papers.
60. Lincoln to Sherman, Dec. 26, 1864, Basler, Collected Works, 8:181–82.
61. Sherman’s campaign report, Jan. 1, 1865, O.R. 44, p. 13.
62. Lincoln to Cuthbert Bullitt, July 28, 1862, Lincoln to August Belmont, July 31, 1862, Basler, Collected Works, 5:346, 350; the remark about Sherman taking off the bear’s hide is quoted by several authors, most notably Shelby Foote, The Civil War: A Narrative. Red River to Appomattox (New York: Random House, 1974), 864. I have not been able to trace it back to the original source.
63. Lincoln to Grant, Dec. 28, 1864, Basler, Collected Works, 8:187; Grant to Lincoln, Dec. 28, 1864, O.R. 42, iii:1087; Grant to Stanton, Jan. 4, 1865, Halleck to Grant, Jan. 7, 1865, O.R. 46, ii:29, 60.
64. Alexander H. Stephens, A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: National Publishing Co., 1868–70), 2:619.
65. Sarah Woolfolk Wiggins, ed., The Journals of Josiah Gorgas, 1857–1878 (Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1995), 147–49, entries of Jan. 6 and 18, 1865.
66. Davis to Blair, Jan. 12, 1865, Lincoln to Blair, Jan. 18, 1865, Basler, Collected Works, 8:275–76. Emphasis added.
67. William C. Cooper, Jr., Jefferson Davis, American (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2000), 510–11.
68. Basler, Collected Works, 8:277–81.
69. Grant to Stanton, Feb. 2, 1865, ibid., 282.
70. “Memorandum of the Conversation at the Conference in Hampton Roads,” in John A. Campbell, Reminiscences and Documents Relating to the Civil War During the Year 1865 (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1877), 11–17; Seward to Charles Francis Adams, Feb. 7, 1865, O.R. 46, ii:471–73; Stephens, Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, 1:598–619. The best study of the Hampton Roads Conference is William C. Harris, “The Hampton Roads Peace Conference: A Final Test of Lincoln’s Presidential Leadership,” Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association 21 (2000), 31–61.
71. Basler, Collected Works, 8:279.
72. Stephens, Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, 2:613.
73. In his account Stephens maintained that Lincoln had urged him to persuade the Georgia legislature to take the state out of the war and to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment prospectively, to take effect in five years. Stephens either misunderstood or deliberately distorted Lincoln’s words. The president was too good a lawyer to suggest any such absurdity as a “prospective” ratification of a constitutional amendment. Lincoln had just played a leading part in getting Congress to pass the Thirteenth Amendment, and he was using his influence to get every Republican state legislature as well as those of Maryland, Missouri, and Tennessee to ratify it. Stephens, Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States, 2:611–12. See also Harris, “Hampton Roads Peace Conference,” 51.
74. Richmond Examiner, Feb. 6, 1865; Rowland, Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist, 6:465–67.
75. Basler, Collected Works, 8:330–31.
76. Ibid., 332–33.
77. David Dixon Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1885), 294.
78. Ibid., 295; T. Morris Chester’s dispatches to the Philadelphia Press, in that newspaper, April 11 and 12, 1865.
79. Lincoln to Weitzel, April 6, 1865, Basler, Collected Works, 8:389.
80. For documentation of this matter, see ibid., 386–89, 405–8.
81. Ibid., 399–405.
82. “Impeachment of the President,” 40th Cong., 1st sess., 1867, H. Rep. 7, 674, quoted in William Hanchett, The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1983). A similar version is quoted in Michael W. Kauffman, American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies (New York: Random House, 2004), 210.
EPILOGUE
1. Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 9 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953–55), 5:421; Michael Burlingame and John R. Turner Ettlinger, eds., Inside Lincoln’s White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997), 217–18, entry of July 4, 1864.
2. Ex parte Milligan, 4 Wallace 2.
INDEX
Alexandria
Anaconda Plan
Anderson, Robert
Antietam, Battle of
Arkansas
army, Union:
regular army
size by April 1862
&n
bsp; See also black soldiers; officers
Army of the Cumberland
Army of the Gulf
Army of the James
Army of the Ohio
Army of the Potomac:
in second half of 1861
going into winter quarters
in Lincoln’s strategic plan of December
McClellan given command of
McClellan made general-in-chief as well as commander of
in first half of 1862
Battle of Seven Pines
enthusiasm before Richmond
in Lincoln’s Special Order No. 1
in McClellan’s Urbana plan
Peninsula campaign
practice march to abandoned Confederate works
reorganization into corps
in second half of 1862
Battle of Antietam
Battle of Fredericksburg
crossing Potomac after Antietam
on Emancipation Proclamation
Halleck’s order to combine with Pope’s army
hard-war policy supported in
Lincoln’s offer of command to Burnside in July
Lincoln’s popularity in
Lincoln’s reinforcement after Seven Days
Lincoln’s review after Seven Days
reor ganization after Second Bull Run
Second Battle of Bull Run
supplies as impediment to
in first half of 1863
Battle of Chancellorsville
Hooker appointed commander of
Lincoln’s visit in April
Meade appointed commander of
morale after Fredericksburg
Mud March
in second half of 1863
Battle of Gettysburg
confronting Lee in Virginia after Gettysburg
Lincoln considering giving Grant command of
reinforcements sent to Rosecrans from
in first half of 1864
in Grant’s coordinated strategy
in Grant’s original strategy
Meade left in command by Grant
Overland campaign
Lincoln’s wrong appointments to
support for McClellan in
Army of the Tennessee
Army of Virginia
Atlanta
Baltimore
Banks, Nathaniel P.:
Battle of Cedar Mountain
on Corps d’Afrique
in Grant’s coordinated strategy for 1864
Grant’s desire to remove from command
as Grant’s superior in Mississippi Valley
Lincoln and Halleck wanting him to unite with Grant
Lincoln’s praise of
in McClellan’s Harpers Ferry operation
Mobile campaign urged by
as political general
in Pope’s Army of Virginia
Red River campaign of
replacing Butler in Louisiana
in Shenandoah Valley campaign
Texas campaign of
Bates, Edward
Beauregard, Pierre G. T.
black soldiers
emancipation cause aided by
Lincoln on use of
massacres of
in Petersburg mine explosion and assault,
and prisoner exchanges
and promise of freedom
Blair, Francis Preston, Sr.
Blair, Frank, Jr.
Blair, Montgomery:
Emancipation Proclamation opposed by
evacuation of Fort Sumter opposed by
and Fox’s proposal to reinforce Fort Sumter
and Frémont
and opposition to secession in Missouri
on Scott’s envelopment strategy
blockade of Southern ports
blockade running
Booth, John Wilkes
border states:
and black soldiers
and Emancipation Proclamation
and Frémont’s emancipation policy
hard-war policy opposed in
Lincoln’s desire to abolish slavery in
Lincoln’s efforts to prevent secession of
threatening secession if Lincoln uses coercion
See also Kentucky; Maryland; Missouri
Bragg, Braxton:
Battle of Chickamauga
Battle of Stones River
Chattanooga evacuated by
Chattanooga fortified against Buell
driven from Chattanooga by Grant
Kentucky campaign of 1862
reinforced by Longstreet
Rosecrans ordered to go after
Rosecrans’s campaigns of 1863 against
Browning, Orville:
on Frémont’s emancipation policy
Lincoln’s confidences to
on Lincoln’s sadness in July 1862
Buell, Don Carlos:
in advance on Corinth
attempt to liberate East Tennessee in 1862
Battle of Perryville
Battle of Shiloh
and Bragg’s invasion of Kentucky
on East Tennessee invasion of 1861
failure to meet expectations
Halleck’s comparison of Rosecrans to
hard-war policy opposed by
as lacking popularity with his soldiers
Lincoln’s complaint about delays to
and Lincoln’s concept of concentration in time
Lincoln’s General Order No. 1 for forcing into action
Lincoln’s removing from command
Lincoln’s urging to follow up Perryville
maneuver and siege strategy of
uniting with Grant at Pittsburgh Landing
Bull Run, First Battle of
Bull Run, Second Battle of
Burnside, Ambrose E.:
administrative failures of
army command declined by
Battle of Fredericksburg
failure to meet expectations
generals’ scheming against
at Halleck-McClellan discussions of July 1862
Knoxville taken by
Lincoln’s postponement of decision on