Part 30 (1/2)

Thus, a threatening message that might have embroiled the Union in two wars at the same time became instead the basis for a hard-line policy that effectively interrupted British momentum toward recognizing the Confederacy. Furthermore, France, whose ministers had promised to act in concert with Britain, followed suit. This was a critical victory for the Union, preventing for the time being the recognition that would have conferred legitimacy on the Confederacy in the eyes of the world, weakened Northern morale, and accorded ”currency to Southern bonds.”

History would later give Secretary of State Seward high marks for his role in preventing Britain and France from intervening in the war. He is considered by some to have been ”the ablest American diplomatist of the century.” But here, as was so often the case, Lincoln's unseen hand had shaped critical policy. Only three months earlier, the frontier lawyer had confessed to Seward that he knew little of foreign affairs. His revisions of the dispatch, however, exhibit the sophisticated prowess of a veteran statesman: he had a.n.a.lyzed a complex situation and sought the least provocative way to neutralize a potential enemy while making crystal-clear his country's position.

Seward was slowly but inevitably coming to appreciate Lincoln's remarkable abilities. ”It is due to the President to say, that his magnanimity is almost superhuman,” he told his wife in mid-May. ”His confidence and sympathy increase every day.” As Lincoln began to trust his own abilities, Seward became more confident in him. In early June, he told Frances: ”Executive skill and vigor are rare qualities. The President is the best of us; but he needs constant and a.s.siduous cooperation.” Though the feisty New Yorker would continue to debate numerous issues with Lincoln in the years ahead, exactly as Lincoln had hoped and needed him to do, Seward would become his most faithful ally in the cabinet. He committed himself ”to his chief,” Nicolay and Hay observed, ”not only without reserve, but with a sincere and devoted personal attachment.”

Seward's mortification at not having received his party's nomination in 1860 never fully abated, but he no longer felt compelled to belittle Lincoln to ease his pain. He settled into his position as secretary of state, and his optimistic and gregarious nature rea.s.serted itself. Once more, his elaborate parties and receptions became the talk of Was.h.i.+ngton. Five days after the dispatch was sent, Seward hosted ”a brilliant a.s.semblage” at his new home. All the rooms were full, with dancing in one, drinks in another, and good conversation all around. Seward was ”in excellent spirits,” moving easily among cabinet members, military officers, diplomats, and senators. Even white-haired Secretary Welles, who, it was mockingly remarked, should have died, ”to all intents and purposes, twenty years ago,” was having such a good time that he seemed ”good for, at least, twenty years more.”

LINCOLN LOOKED TO CHASE for guidance on the complex problem of financing a war at a time when the government was heavily in debt. The economic Panic of 1857, corruption in the Buchanan administration, and the partial dismemberment of the Union had taken a ma.s.sive toll on the government coffers. With Congress not in session to authorize new tariffs and taxes, Chase was forced to rely on government loans to sustain war expenditures. Banks held back at first, demanding higher interest rates than the government could afford to pay, but eventually, Chase cobbled together enough revenue to meet expenses until Congress convened.

Chase later noted proudly that in the early days of the war, Lincoln relied on him to carry out functions that ordinarily belonged to the War Department. According to Chase, he a.s.sumed ”the princ.i.p.al charge” of preventing the key border states of Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee from falling into secessionist hands. He authorized a loyal state senator from Kentucky to muster twenty companies. He drew up the orders that allowed Andrew Johnson, the only senator from a Confederate state who remained loyal to the Union, ”to raise regiments in Tennessee.” He believed himself instrumental in keeping Kentucky and Missouri in the Union, seriously underestimating Lincoln's critical role.

Indeed, Chase would never cease to underestimate Lincoln, nor to resent the fact that he had lost the presidency to a man he considered his inferior. In late April, he presumptuously sent Lincoln a New York Times article highly derogatory of the administration. ”The President and the Cabinet at Was.h.i.+ngton are far behind the people,” the Times argued. ”They are like a person just aroused from sleep, and in a state of dreamy half-consciousness.” This charge, Chase informed Lincoln, ”has too much truth in it.” Lincoln did not reply, well understanding Chase's implacable yearning for the presidency. But for now he needed the Ohioan's enormous talents and total cooperation.

Cameron, meanwhile, found the task of running the War Department unbearable. Unable to manage his vast responsibilities, he turned to both Seward and Chase for help. ”Oh, it was a terrible time,” Cameron remembered years later. ”We were entirely unprepared for such a conflict, and for the moment, at least, absolutely without even the simplest instruments with which to engage in war. We had no guns, and even if we had, they would have been of but little use, for we had no ammunition to put in them-no powder, no saltpetre, no bullets, no anything.” The demands placed on the War Department in the early days of the war were indeed excruciating. Not only were weapons in short supply, but uniforms, blankets, horses, medical supplies, food, and everything necessary to outfit the vast numbers of volunteer soldiers arriving daily in Was.h.i.+ngton were un.o.btainable. It would have taken thousands of personnel to handle the varied functions of the quartermaster's department, the ordnance office, the engineering department, the medical office, and the pay department. Yet, in 1861, the entire War Department consisted of fewer than two hundred people, including clerks, messengers, and watchmen. As Cameron lamented afterward: ”I was certainly not in a place to be envied.”

Lincoln later explained that with ”so large a number of disloyal persons” infiltrating every department, the government could not rely on official agents to manage contracts for manufacturing the weapons and supplies necessary to maintain a fighting force. With the cabinet's unanimous consent, he directed Chase to dispense millions of dollars to a small number of trusted private individuals to negotiate and sign contracts that would mobilize the military. Acting ”without compensation,” the majority of these men did their utmost under the circ.u.mstances. A few, including Alexander c.u.mmings, one of Cameron's lieutenants, would bring shame to the War Department.

AS SPRING GAVE WAY to the stifling heat of a Was.h.i.+ngton summer, Lincoln began work on the message he would deliver to Congress when the House and Senate a.s.sembled in special session on July 4. Needing time to think, he placed an ”embargo” on all office seekers, ”so strict” that they were not even allowed entry into the White House. As he labored in his newfound quiet, congressmen and senators gathered at Willard's and Brown's hotels, exchanging greetings and trading stories. They all antic.i.p.ated, one reporter stated, that they would ”soon ascertain the exact intentions of the Administration, through the medium of the President's message.”

Lincoln worked long hours on the text, s.h.i.+fting words, condensing, deleting sentences. Even Senator Orville Browning, his old friend from Illinois who had come to see him, was told he was busy, but Lincoln overheard Browning talking and sent for him. It was after 9 p.m. on July 3, and he had just that moment finished writing. ”He said he wished to read it to me, and did so,” Browning recorded in his diary. ”It is an able state paper and will fully meet the expectations of the Country.”

Lincoln did not personally deliver his address on Capitol Hill. President Thomas Jefferson had denounced presidential appearances before Congress, considering them a monarchical remnant of the English system where kings personally opened parliamentary sessions. Since Jefferson, presidents had submitted their written messages to be read by a clerk. Yet, if the practice lacked theatricality, Lincoln's arguments against secession and for the necessity of executive action in the midst of rebellion left an indelible impression. He traced the history of the struggle and called on Congress to ”give the legal means for making this contest a short, and a decisive one.”

He asked for ”at least four hundred thousand men, and four hundred millions of dollars...a less sum per head, than was the debt of our revolution.” A ”right result, at this time, will be worth more to the world, than ten times the men, and ten times the money,” he a.s.sured Congress. For ”this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man, the question, whether a const.i.tutional republic, or a democracy-a government of the people, by the same people-can, or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity, against its own domestic foes....

”This is essentially a People's contest,” the president a.s.serted. ”On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men-to lift artificial weights from all shoulders-to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all-to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life.” As evidence of the capacity of free inst.i.tutions to better the ”condition” of the people, ”beyond any example in the world,” he cited the regiments of the Union Army, in which ”there is scarcely one, from which could not be selected, a President, a Cabinet, a Congress, and perhaps a Court, abundantly competent to administer the government itself.”

Northern newspapers generally praised the message, though some failed to appreciate the rigor of Lincoln's appeal and the clear grace of his language. ”In spite of obvious faults in style,” the New York Times correspondent conceded, ”I venture to say it will add to the popularity of the Rail-splitter. It is evidently the production of an honest, clear-headed and straightforward man; and its direct and forcible logic and quaint style of ill.u.s.tration will cause it to be read with peculiar pleasure by the ma.s.ses of the people.” More important, the Congress responded with alacrity. Its members authorized more money and an even larger mobilization of troops than the president had requested. In addition, they provided retroactive authority for nearly all of Lincoln's executive actions taken before they convened, remaining silent only on his suspension of habeas corpus. With the Southern Democrats gone, the Republicans had a substantial majority. And, for the moment, Northern Democrats also acceded, their dislike of Republicans overshadowed by patriotic fervor.

Not everyone was pleased. Abolitionists and radical Republicans found the message disheartening. ”No mention is, at all, made of slavery,” Frederick Dougla.s.s lamented. ”Any one reading that doc.u.ment, with no previous knowledge of the United States, would never dream from anything there written that we have a slaveholding war waged upon the Government...while all here know that that is the vital and animating motive of the rebellion.”

Radicals tended to blame Seward for Lincoln's reluctance to emphasize the role of slavery. ”We have an honest President,” Wendell Phillips, the abolitionist editor, proclaimed before a celebratory crowd on the Fourth of July, ”but, distrusting the strength of the popular feeling behind him, he listens overmuch to Seward.” Men like Phillips, Thaddeus Stevens, and Charles Sumner could never forgive Seward for apparently lowering the antislavery banner he had once carried so triumphantly. Seward was accustomed to criticism, however, and while he had the president beside him, he remained secure in his position.

Meanwhile, the events of the war itself began to reshape the old order in ways few realized. At Fort Monroe, at the tip of the peninsula in Virginia, a bold decision by General Benjamin Butler proved a harbinger of things to come. One night, three fugitive slaves arrived at the fort after escaping from the Confederate battery that their master had ordered them to help build. When an agent of their owner demanded their return, Butler refused. The rebels were using slaves in the field to support their troops, Butler argued. The slaves were therefore contraband of war, and the federal government was no longer obliged to surrender them to their masters.

Coming from Butler, a conservative Democrat from Ma.s.sachusetts who had run for governor on the Breckinridge ticket in 1860, the decision delighted Republican stalwarts who had previously objected to Butler's high position. Butler himself would soon be equally delighted by Lincoln's magnanimity in making him a brigadier general. ”I will accept the commission,” Butler gratefully told Lincoln, but ”there is one thing I must say to you, as we don't know each other: That as a Democrat I opposed your election, and did all I could for your opponent; but I shall do no political act, and loyally support your administration as long as I hold your commission; and when I find any act that I cannot support I shall bring the commission back at once, and return it to you.”

Lincoln replied, ”That is frank, that is fair. But I want to add one thing: When you see me doing anything that for the good of the country ought not to be done, come and tell me so, and why you think so, and then perhaps you won't have any chance to resign your commission.” Had Butler known Lincoln, he would have been less astonished. The president commissioned officers with the same eye toward coalition building that he displayed in constructing his cabinet.

Butler's order was approved by both Lincoln and Cameron, and eventually, the Congress pa.s.sed a confiscation law ending the rights of masters over fugitive slaves utilized to support the Confederate troops. Even conservative Monty Blair applauded Butler. ”You were right when you declared secession n.i.g.g.e.rs contraband of war,” he told his fellow Democrat. ”The Secessionists have used them to do all their fortifying.”

Blair's approval of Butler's measure as an act of war did not mean that he advocated emanc.i.p.ation. On the contrary, he advised Butler to ”improve the code by restricting its operations to working people, leaving the Secessionists to take care of the non working cla.s.ses.” The Union should provide safe harbor only to the ”pick of the lot,” the strong-bodied slaves who were helping the rebels in the field. Women and children and other ”unproductive laborers” should be left for their Southern masters to house and feed.

Lincoln, as usual, was slowly formulating his own position on the slavery question. He told Blair that Butler's action raised ”a very important subject...one requiring some thought in view of the numbers of negroes we were likely to have on hand in virtue of this new doctrine.” Indeed, in the weeks that followed, hundreds of courageous slaves worked their way into Union lines. The situation worried Lincoln; at this juncture, he still favored compensated emanc.i.p.ation and voluntary colonization, allowing blacks who wished to do so to return to their original homeland in Africa. Most important, he knew that any hint of total, direct emanc.i.p.ation would alienate the border states, whose continued loyalty was essential for victory, and would shatter the Republicans' fragile alliance with Northern Democrats.

By shying from emanc.i.p.ation in these early months of the war, Lincoln aligned himself with the majority of the Northern people, the Republican Congress, and the whole of his cabinet. Two weeks into its session, the House pa.s.sed a resolution declaring that the purpose of the war was ”to preserve the Union,” not to eliminate slavery. Even Chase, the most fervent antislavery man in the cabinet, agreed that at this time the ”sword” of total abolition should be left ”in the sheath.” If the conflict were drawn out, however, he told the historian John Motley, if ”we find it much more difficult and expensive in blood and treasure to put it down than we antic.i.p.ated,” then the sword would be drawn. ”We do not wish this, we deplore it, because of the vast confiscation of property, and of the servile insurrections, too horrible to contemplate, which would follow. We wish the Const.i.tution and Union as it is, with slavery, as a munic.i.p.al inst.i.tution, existing till such time as each State in its wisdom thinks fit to mitigate or abolish it...but if the issue be distinctly presented-death to the American Republic or death to slavery, slavery must die.”

BY MID-JULY, the outcry in the North for some form of significant action against the rebels reached fever pitch. ”Forward to Richmond!” blared the headline in the New York Tribune. Senator Trumbull introduced a resolution calling for ”the immediate movement of the troops, and the occupation of Richmond before the 20th July,” the date set for the Confederate Congress to convene. General Scott hesitated, believing the army still unprepared for a major offensive, but Lincoln feared that without action, the morale of both the troops and the general public would diminish. European leaders would interpret Northern inaction as a faltering resolve in the Union.