Part 36 (1/2)

Even the revised telegram conveyed the accusation that would be leveled by McClellan and his supporters for years to come: victory would have been achieved but for the government's failure to reinforce an overpowered McClellan. Even after the defeat at Gaines' Mill, however, McClellan's troops remained a strong and resilient force. In the days that followed, they fought hard and well, inflicting more than five thousand casualties at Malvern Hill while suffering only half that number. In truth, McClellan was psychologically defeated. ”He was simply out-generaled,” Christopher Wolcott concluded. Instead of counterattacking, he continued to retreat from Richmond until his exhausted troops reached a safe position eight miles down the James at Harrison's Landing. Equally depleted, Lee's troops returned to Richmond, and the Peninsula Campaign came to an end. The Confederates had successfully secured their capital and gained an important strategic victory. It would take nearly three more years and hundreds of thousands more deaths for the Union forces to come as close to Richmond as they had been in May and June 1862.

CHAPTER 17

”WE ARE IN THE DEPTHS”

THE DEFEAT ON THE Peninsula devastated Northern morale. ”We are in the depths just now,” George Templeton Strong admitted on July 14, 1862, ”permeated by disgust, saturated with gloomy thinking.” In Was.h.i.+ngton, columnist Cara Ka.s.son observed the frustration written on every face, manifesting an anxiety greater than the aftermath of Bull Run, ”for the present repulse is more momentous.” Count Gurowski agreed, calling the Fourth of July holiday ”the gloomiest since the birth of this republic. Never was the country so low.” Even the normally stoical John Nicolay confided to his fiancee, Therena, that ”the past has been a very blue week.... I don't think I have ever heard more croaking since the war began.”

For the irrepressibly optimistic Seward, who had fervently hoped the capture of Richmond might signal an end to the war, the turn of events was shattering. ”It is a startling sight to see the mind of a great people, saddened, angered, soured, all at once,” he confided to f.a.n.n.y, who was in Auburn with her mother for the summer. ”If I should let a shade of this popular despondency fall upon a dispatch, or even rest upon my own countenance,” he realized, ”there would be black despair throughout the whole country.” He begged her for letters detailing daily life at home-the flowers in bloom and the hatching of eggs-anything but war and defeat. ”They bring no alarm, no remonstrances, no complaints, and no reproaches,” he explained. ”They are the only letters which come to me, free from excitement.... Write to me then cheerfully, as you are wont to do, of boys and girls and dogs and horses, and birds that sing, and stars that s.h.i.+ne and never weep, and be blessed for all your days, for thus helping to sustain a spirit.”

Chase was equally shaken and despondent. ”Since the rebellion broke out I have never been so sad,” he told a friend. ”We ought [to have] won a victory and taken Richmond.” Furthermore, Kate, who had gone to Ohio to visit her grandmother, was not in Was.h.i.+ngton to console him. ”The house seemed very dull after you were gone,” he told her in one of many long letters cataloguing the events of that summer. He described his sojourn to see General McDowell, who had been knocked unconscious by a bad fall from his horse; told her of an unusual cabinet meeting, a pleasant dinner party at Seward's with the Stantons and the Welles, a meeting with Jay Cooke, and a visit from Bishop McIlvaine. He queried her about her summer clothes, her lace veil, and a diamond she had ordered. In addition to commonplace matters, he provided her with confidential military intelligence about the Peninsula Campaign, delineating the flow of the Chickahominy and the position of the various divisions so she could visualize the course of the battle.

Kate was thrilled by her father's lengthy epistles, which she interpreted as ”a mark of love and confidence.” Her appreciation, he replied, was ”more than ample reward for the time & trouble of writing.” She must trust that she would always have his love and that he would continue to ”confide greatly in [her] on many points.” He was pleased, as well, with the quality of her letters, which finally seemed to meet his exacting standards. ”All your letters have come and all have been good-some very good.”

However, Kate's letters that summer concealed her unhappiness over the troubled course of her romance with William Sprague. The young couple had been close to an engagement before Sprague received some nasty letters retelling and likely embellis.h.i.+ng the story of Kate's dalliance with the young married man in Columbus who had become obsessed with her when she was sixteen. Though Sprague was guilty of far greater indiscretions himself, having fathered a child during his twenties, it seems he was so taken aback by the rumors of Kate's behavior that he broke off the relations.h.i.+p. ”Then came the blank,” he later recalled. ”Wherever there is day there must be night. In some countries the day is almost constant, but the night cometh. So with us it came.”

Kate, unaccustomed to defeat and ignorant of Sprague's reasons for ending the courts.h.i.+p, was plunged into dejection. Sensing that something was wrong, Chase told Kate that if anything disappointed him, it was her failure to disclose her deepest personal concerns, to confide in him as he confided in her. ”My confidence will be entire when you entirely give me yours and when I...am made by your acts & words to feel that nothing is held back from me which a father should know of the thoughts, sentiments & acts of a daughter. Cannot this entire confidence be given me? You will, I am sure be happier and so will I.”

Hoping to raise her spirits, Chase arranged for Kate and Nettie to visit the McDowells' country home, b.u.t.termilk Farm, in upstate New York. The quiet routine of country life did not suit Kate, who craved distraction from her sorrows. Mrs. McDowell, observing that Kate's ”health and spirit” were suffering, kindly agreed to let her accompany friends to Saratoga in search of a more active social life. ”Trust nothing I have said will alarm you,” she a.s.sured Chase upon Kate's departure; but he, of course, could not help fretting over his beloved daughter.

Even more than Chase or Seward, Edwin Stanton was afflicted with troubles in the summer of '62. ”The first necessity of every community after a disaster, is a scapegoat,” the New York Times noted. ”It is an immense relief to find some one upon whom can be fastened all the sins of a whole people, and who can then be sent into the wilderness, to be heard of no more.” In the secretary of war, disgruntled Northerners found their scapegoat. ”Journals of all sorts,” the Times reported, ”demand his instant removal.”

The drumbeat began with McClellan, who told anyone who would listen that Stanton was to blame for the Peninsula defeat. ”So you want to know how I feel about Stanton, & what I think of him now?” he wrote Mary Ellen in July. ”I think that he is the most unmitigated scoundrel I ever knew, heard or read of; I think that...had he lived in the time of the Saviour, Judas Iscariot would have remained a respected member of the fraternity of the Apostles & that the magnificent treachery & rascality of E. M. Stanton would have caused Judas to have raised his arms in holy horror & unaffected wonder.” A week later, McClellan wrote that he had ”the proof that the Secy reads all my private telegrams.” In fact, he took pleasure in the thought that ”if he has read my private letters to you also his ears must have tingled somewhat.” Nor did his suspicions stop him from reiterating his loathing for the former friend whom he now considered ”the most depraved hypocrite & villain.”

Democrats, unwilling to fault McClellan, were the loudest in their denunciations of Stanton. Spearheaded by the Blairs, conservatives charged that Stanton had abandoned both his Democratic heritage and his old friends.h.i.+p with McClellan. Two navy officers, speaking with Samuel Phillips Lee, Elizabeth Blair's husband, claimed ”there had been treachery at the bottom of our Richmond reverse,” spurred by ”Stanton's political opposition to McClellan.” Democrat John Astor could not refrain from cursing at the mere mention of Stanton's name. ”He for one believes,” Strong reported, ”that Stanton willfully withheld reinforcements from McClellan lest he should make himself too important, politically, by a signal victory.” Sanitary Commission member Frederick Law Olmsted expressed similar emotions. ”If we could help to hang Stanton by resigning and posting him as a liar, hypocrite and knave,” he wrote, ”I think we should render the country a far greater service that we can in any other way.”

The New York Times promised not to engage in the ”very fierce crusade” against Stanton, but begged the president, ”if we are to have a new Secretary of War, to give us a Soldier-one who knows what war is and how it is to be carried on.... If Mr. Stanton is to be removed, the country will be rea.s.sured, and the public interest greatly promoted, by making Gen. McClellan his successor. Even those who cavil at his leaders.h.i.+p in the field, do not question his mastery of the art of war.” As the weeks went by, and the pressure to replace him mounted, Stanton must have wondered how long Lincoln would continue to support him.

Beyond the distracting personal attacks, Stanton was tormented by the long lines of ambulances that rolled into the city each morning carrying the injured and the dead from the peninsula. All his life, Stanton had been unnerved in the presence of death. Now he was surrounded by it at every turn. Sometimes he took it upon himself to deliver the news to stricken families. Mary Ellet Cabell, whose father, Colonel Charles Ellet, was fatally wounded in Memphis, long recalled the moment when Stanton appeared at her family's home in Georgetown to tell of Ellet's heroism during the battle. ”I have heard that this powerful War Minister was harsh and unfeeling; but I can never forget the tenderness of his manner” as he delivered the news with ”tears to his eyes.”

Stanton's own family was touched by death as well. In early July, his youngest son, James, entered the final stage of the smallpox precipitated by an inoculation six months earlier. The Stantons had planned to spend the Fourth of July holiday on a cruise with General Meigs and his family, but their child's illness occupied Ellen Stanton night and day. On July 5, a messenger called on Stanton in the War Department to report that ”the baby was dying.” He immediately began the three-mile drive to the country house where his family was staying for the summer. The child clung to life for several days, finally succ.u.mbing on July 10. For Stanton, who loved his children pa.s.sionately, the death was devastating, particularly bitter in light of the overwhelming pressures at work that had kept him from his family for many weeks. Under the weight of public censure and private tragedy, his own health began to suffer.

WHILE HIS CABINET REELED in the aftermath of the Peninsula defeat, Lincoln was faced with the grim knowledge that the ultimate authority had been his alone. Nonetheless, as Whitman had observed following the debacle at Bull Run, Lincoln refused to surrender to the gloom of defeat: ”He unflinchingly stemm'd it, and resolv'd to lift himself and the Union out of it.” While the battle was still ongoing, Lincoln had found time to write a letter to a young cadet at West Point, the son of Mary's cousin Ann Todd Campbell. The boy was miserable at the academy and his mother was worried. ”Allow me to a.s.sure you it is a perfect certainty that you will, very soon, feel better-quite happy-if you only stick to the resolution you have taken to procure a military education. I am older than you, have felt badly myself, and know, what I tell you is true. Adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.” The boy stayed at West Point, graduating in 1866.

Now, in the wake of the Peninsula battle, confronted with public discontent, diminis.h.i.+ng loan subscriptions and renewed threats that Britain would recognize the Confederacy, Lincoln demonstrated that his own purpose remained fixed. He decided to call for a major expansion of the army. Two months earlier, Stanton, a.s.suming that victory would soon be achieved, had made the colossal mistake of shutting down recruiting offices. To call for more troops now on the heels of defeat, Lincoln realized, might well create ”a general panic.” But the troops were essential. Seward devised an excellent solution. He journeyed to New York, where a conference of Union governors was taking place. After consulting privately with the governors and securing their agreement, he drafted a circular that they would endorse asking the president to call for three hundred thousand additional troops. The president would be responding to a patriotic appeal rather than initiating a call on his own.

While Seward worked out the details from his suite at the Astor House, he was kept abreast of the military situation by telegrams from Lincoln. Fearing that their recruiting efforts might prove insufficient, Seward telegraphed Stanton for permission to promise each new recruit an advance of twenty-five dollars. The money ”is of vital importance,” he wrote. ”We fail without it.” Stanton hesitated at first. ”The existing law does not authorize an advance,” he replied. But finally, trusting Seward's judgment, he decided to make the allocation on his own responsibility.

That summer, Seward traveled throughout the North to help build up the Union Army. He set a precedent within his own department by entreating all those between eighteen and forty-five to volunteer, pledging that their positions would be waiting for them when they returned. A large percentage answered Seward's call. In Auburn, the Sewards' twenty-year-old-son, William Junior, was appointed secretary of the war committee responsible for raising a regiment in upstate New York. A half century later, William remembered ”the Ma.s.s Meetings held in all the princ.i.p.al towns,” the fervent appeals for volunteers, the quickened response once the government announced that unfilled quotas would by met by a draft. New recruits ”filled the hotels and many private houses, occupied the upper floors of the business blocks, leaned against the fences, sat upon the curb stone,” he recalled. They came on foot and in horse-drawn wagons. ”The spectacle was so novel and inspiring that our citizens gave them a perfect ovation as they pa.s.sed, canons were fired-bells rung and flags displayed from almost every house on the line of march.”

Young William Seward had no intention of recruiting others without volunteering himself. His decision to enlist aroused trepidation in the Seward household, for William's new wife, Jenny, was expecting their first child in September. Jenny a.s.sured her husband that she would ”be able to pa.s.s through her troubles,” but she worried that his departure might jeopardize his mother's fragile health. In fact, although Frances had been heartbroken years before when Gus, now an army paymaster in Was.h.i.+ngton, had joined the Mexican War, her pa.s.sionate feelings against slavery now outweighed her maternal anxiety. ”As it is obvious all men are needed I made no objection,” Frances told Fred.

While the call was out for fresh reserves, Lincoln decided to make a personal visit to bolster the morale of the weary troops who had fought the hard battles on the Peninsula. Accompanied by a.s.sistant Secretary of War Peter Watson and Congressman Frank Blair, he left Was.h.i.+ngton aboard the Ariel early on the morning of July 8, 1862, beginning the twelve-hour journey to McClellan's new headquarters at Harrison's Landing on the James River. ”The day had been intensely hot,” an army correspondent noted, the temperature climbing to over 100 degrees. Even soldiers who lay in the shade of the trees found small respite from the ”almost overpowering” heat. By 6 p.m., however, when General McClellan and his staff met the president at Harrison's Landing, the setting sun had yielded to a pleasant, moonlit evening.

News of the president's arrival spread quickly through the camp. Soldiers in the vicinity let out great cheers whenever they glimpsed him ”sitting and smiling serenely on the after deck of the vessel.” Lincoln's calm visage, however, masked his deep anxiety about McClellan and the progress of the war.

Equally troubled, the defeated McClellan had spent the hours before Lincoln's arrival drafting what he termed a ”strong frank letter” delineating changes necessary to win the war. ”If he acts upon it the country will be saved,” he told his wife. McClellan handed the letter to Lincoln, who read it as the two sat together on the deck. Known to history as the ”Harrison's Landing” letter, the doc.u.ment imperiously outlined for the president what the policy and aims of the war should be. ”The time has come when the government must determine upon a civil and military policy,” McClellan brazenly began, warning that without a clear-cut policy defining the nature of the war, ”our cause will be lost.” Somewhat resembling in att.i.tude Seward's April 1 memo of fifteen months earlier, the presumptuous memo was even more astonis.h.i.+ng in tone, as it came from a military officer.

”It should not be at all a war upon population,” McClellan proclaimed, and all efforts must be made to protect ”private property and unarmed persons.” In effect, slave property must be respected, for if a radical approach to slavery were adopted, the ”present armies” would ”rapidly disintegrate.” To carry out this conservative policy, the president would need ”a Commander-in-Chief of the Army-one who possesses your confidence.” While he did not specifically request that position for himself, McClellan made it clear that he was more than willing to retake the central command.