Part 50 (1/2)

In making his case, Riddle recalled, Lincoln ”was plain, sincere, and most impressive.” Riddle and Spalding were ”perfectly satisfied” and a.s.sured Lincoln that Chase would be, too. Once again, Lincoln had sutured a potentially dangerous wound within his administration and his party.

IT WAS A WARM DAY on June 7, 1864, when Republicans gathered in Baltimore to choose their candidates for president and vice president. Noah Brooks was moved by the sight of the people's representatives gathering ”in the midst of a civil war and in the actual din of battle” to perform the most precious function of democracy. The Democrats would also meet that summer, though they delayed their convention until the end of August to give themselves a better chance to react to the latest events on the battlefield.

As the delegates from twenty-five states flocked to the Republican Convention, which was relabeled the National Union Convention, Lincoln's renomination was a.s.sured. So certain was the outcome that David Davis, who had been instrumental in guiding Lincoln to the nomination four years earlier, chose not to attend. He had originally planned to go, he told Lincoln, ”but since the New York & Ohio Conventions, the necessity for doing so is foreclosed-I have kept count of all the States that have instructed, & you must be nominated by acclamation-if there had been a speck of opposition, I wd have gone to Baltimore-But the opposition is so utterly beaten, that the fight is not even interesting, and the services of no one is necessary.” In Judge Davis's stead, Lincoln sent John Nicolay as his personal emissary to the convention.

Even Horace Greeley, while holding out for an alternative, acknowledged that the president had earned an honored place in the hearts of his fellow Americans. ”The People think of him by night & by day & pray for him & their hearts are where they have made so heavy investments.” Long before the convention opened its doors, the official nominating committee said, ”popular instinct had plainly indicated [Lincoln] as its candidate,” and the work of the convention was simply to register ”the popular will.” While politicians in Was.h.i.+ngton may have entertained other prospects, Brooks observed, ”the country at large really thought of no name but Lincoln's.”

There were, of course, some pockets of resistance. At the end of May, several hundred malcontents had gathered in Cleveland's Chapin Hall to nominate John Fremont for president on a third-party ticket. Fremont had never forgiven Lincoln for relieving him of command in 1861. Though he had eventually been offered another commission, he had refused upon learning that he would report to another general. His supporters were a mix of radicals, abolitionists, disappointed office seekers, and Copperheads. They hoped to split the Republican Party with a platform calling for a const.i.tutional amendment ending slavery. They demanded that Congress, rather than the president, take the lead on Reconstruction, and pressed for the ”confiscation of the lands of the rebels, and their distribution among the soldiers.”

Lincoln had been in the telegraph office when reports of the Fremont convention came over the wires. Hearing that the attendance was a mere four hundred of the expected thousands, he was reminded of a pa.s.sage in the Bible. Opening his Bible to I Samuel 22:2, he read aloud: ”And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men.”

The night before the Baltimore convention, Lincoln talked with Noah Brooks. When Brooks observed that his ”renomination was an absolute certainty,” Lincoln ”cheerfully conceded that point without any false modesty.” Understanding that there were several candidates for vice president, including the inc.u.mbent Hannibal Hamlin, New York's Daniel d.i.c.kinson, and Tennessee's military governor, Andrew Johnson, Lincoln declined to express his preference. He did say, however, that ”he hoped that the convention would declare in favor of the const.i.tutional amendment abolis.h.i.+ng slavery,” and he asked Brooks to report back to him all ”the odd bits of gossip” that a good reporter would pick up.

As expected, the convention was initially confronted with two contesting delegations from Missouri: an anti-Blair radical delegation pledged to vote for Grant as a means of expressing displeasure with Lincoln, and a pro-Blair conservative delegation pledged to Lincoln. With the president's approval, the radical delegation was seated. Lincoln understood the importance, as one delegate put it, of integrating ”all the elements of the Republican party-including the impracticables, the Pharisees, the better-than-thou declaimers, the long-haired men and the short-haired women.” Moreover, the radicals had tacitly agreed that they would switch their votes to Lincoln after the first ballot, making the president's nomination unanimous.

Nothing better indicated the nation's transformation since the Chicago convention four years earlier than the tumultuous applause that greeted the third resolution of the platform: ”Resolved, That as Slavery was the cause, and now const.i.tutes the strength, of this Rebellion...[we] demand its utter and complete extirpation from the soil of the Republic.” While upholding the president's proclamation, which ”aimed a death-blow at this gigantic evil,” the resolution continued: ”we are in favor, furthermore,” of a const.i.tutional amendment to ”forever prohibit the existence of slavery” in the United States.

Resounding applause also greeted the resolution thanking soldiers and sailors, ”who have periled their lives in defense of their country”; but the crowd's greatest demonstration was reserved for the resolution endorsing Lincoln's leaders.h.i.+p. ”The enthusiasm was terrific,” Brooks noted, ”the convention breaking out into yells and cheers unbounded as soon as the beloved name of Lincoln was spoken.” The only discordant note was the pa.s.sage of a radical plank aimed at conservative Montgomery Blair, calling for ”a purge of any cabinet member” who failed to support the platform in full. ”Harmony was restored” when the roll call nominating Lincoln was completed, at which point, the National Republican noted, ”the audience rose en ma.s.se, and such an enthusiastic demonstration was scarcely ever paralleled. Men waved their hands and hats, and ladies, in the galleries, their kerchiefs,” while the band played ”The Star-Spangled Banner.”

The next order of business was the nomination of a vice president. Though Thurlow Weed was not a delegate, his towering presence played a central role in the selection of Andrew Johnson. Always alive to the interests of his oldest friend, Seward, Weed at once understood that if New York's Daniel d.i.c.kinson received the vice presidential nod, Seward might not retain his position as secretary of state. An unwritten rule dictated that two significant posts could not be allotted to a single state. Weed had initially supported Hamlin but soon saw that the growing sentiment for a War Democrat would result in the nomination of either d.i.c.kinson or Johnson. He placed the Weed-Seward machine behind the victorious Johnson.

The results of the convention were routed through the telegraph office at the War Department. It was ”Stanton's theory,” his secretary explained, that ”everything concerned his own Department,” and he had centralized into his office ”the whole telegraphic system of the United States.” Lincoln was present in the late afternoon when a clerk handed him a dispatch reporting Johnson's nomination. Having not yet heard his own nomination confirmed, Lincoln was startled. ”What! do they nominate a Vice-President before they do a President?” Is that not putting ”the cart before the horse”? The embarra.s.sed operator explained that the dispatch about the president's nomination had come in several hours earlier, while Lincoln was at lunch, and had been sent directly to the White House. ”It is all right,” replied Lincoln. ”I shall probably find it on my return.”

The following day, a committee appointed by the delegates arrived at the White House to officially notify Lincoln of his nomination. In response to their laudatory statement, Lincoln said he did not a.s.sume that the convention had found him to be ”the best man in the country; but I am reminded, in this connection, of a story of an old Dutch farmer, who remarked to a companion once that 'it was not best to swap horses when crossing streams.'” Later that night, when the Ohio delegation came to serenade him at the White House, he humbly directed their attention to the soldiers in the field. ”What we want, still more than Baltimore conventions or presidential elections, is success under Gen. Grant,” he said. ”I propose that you help me to close up what I am now saying with three rousing cheers for Gen. Grant and the officers and soldiers under his command.”

A visitor to the White House at this time told Lincoln that ”nothing could defeat him but Grant's capture of Richmond, to be followed by [the general's] nomination at Chicago”-where the Democratic Convention was scheduled to take place later that summer. ”Well,” said Lincoln, ”I feel very much like the man who said he didn't want to die particularly, but if he had got to die, that was precisely the disease he would like to die of.”

CHAPTER 24

”ATLANTA IS OURS”

UNION HOPES FOR imminent victory faded as the spring of 1864 gave way to summer. ”Our troops have suffered much and accomplished but little,” Gideon Welles recorded in his diary on June 20. ”The immense slaughter of our brave men chills and sickens us all.” Unable to dislodge Lee's troops, who displayed what the White House secretary William Stoddard called an awe-inspiring ”steady courage,” Grant settled in for a siege at Petersburg. Meanwhile, Sherman was encountering tough resistance as he moved slowly through Georgia.

Daily reports of the brutal battles in Virginia and Georgia provoked a particular dread in the Sewards, the Blairs, the Bates, and the Welleses, all of whom had loved ones at the front. For the Sewards, whose youngest son, William, nearly lost his life at Cold Harbor, there were many sleepless nights. ”I cannot yet bring myself to the contemplation of your death or of your suffering as others have done,” Frances Seward told Will, though she considered that he was ”fighting for a holy cause” in a ”righteous” conflict, unlike the Mexican War, which she had vigorously opposed when her older son, Augustus, had been in the army.

Elizabeth Blair had become ”so nervous” with her husband in the navy and her brother Frank moving toward Atlanta with Sherman that she ”quake[d] all night with terror.” Even her normally cheerful father was perpetually ”grave & anxious,” certain that if Frank were taken prisoner, the Confederates ”would be as eager to kill him physically-as the Radicals are politically.” Bates feared for his twenty-one-year-old son, Coalter, who was with General Meade and the Army of the Potomac, and Welles was pained ”beyond what I can describe” when his eighteen-year-old son, Thomas, departed ”with boyish pride and enthusiasm” to join General Grant. ”It was uncertain whether we should ever meet again,” he recorded in his diary, ”and if we do he may be mutilated, and a ruined man.” His anxiety left Welles ”sad, and unfit for any labor.” The painful apprehension within the administration mirrored the fears experienced in hundreds of thousands of homes throughout the country.

Lincoln knew the ravages of this most b.l.o.o.d.y war had touched every town and household of America. The time had come to revive the oppressed spirits of the people. In mid-June, he found the perfect forum for a public speech when he journeyed to the Great Central Fair in Philadelphia, designed to benefit the Sanitary Commission. Thousands of citizens had come from the surrounding area to enjoy the collections of art, statuary, and flowers, the zoological garden, restaurants, raffles, and games that covered a two-mile concourse and were said to offer ”miracles as many as Faust saw in his journey through the world of magic.”

At seven o'clock on the morning of June 16, Lincoln, Mary, and Tad left for Philadelphia by train. Word of their journey had spread. At every depot along the way, cheering crowds gathered for a glimpse of the first family. Arriving before noon, they were escorted in an open carriage up Broad Street to Chestnut Street and the Continental Hotel. The streets were ”lined with citizens” and the windows ”crowded with ladies waving their handkerchiefs.” The unbounded ardor and spontaneous applause was such, one reporter noted, ”as has not been heard for many a day in Philadelphia.” Lincoln declined to speak at the hotel or at the fairgrounds that afternoon, preferring to wait until the dinner that evening. Perhaps he knew that his remarks, which he had carefully drafted, would be recorded more accurately in that setting.

”War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible,” he began. ”It has destroyed property, and ruined homes; it has produced a national debt and taxation unprecedented.... It has carried mourning to almost every home, until it can almost be said that the 'heavens are hung in black.'” Nonetheless, he reminded his listeners, ”We accepted this war for an object, a worthy object, and the war will end when that object is attained. Under G.o.d, I hope it never will until that time.” The force of his words and the unshakable determination they embodied instantly uplifted and emboldened his audience.

A few days later, in order to stem his own ”intense anxiety” about the stalemate in Virginia, Lincoln decided to visit Grant at his headquarters at City Point. Welles strongly disapproved of the decision. ”He can do no good,” he predicted. ”It can hardly be otherwise than to do harm, even if no accident befalls him. Better for him and the country that he should remain at his post here.” The navy secretary failed to understand the importance of these trips to Lincoln, who needed the contact with the troops to lift his own spirits so that he, in turn, could better buoy the spirits of those around him.

Accompanied by Tad and a.s.sistant Navy Secretary Gustavus Fox, Lincoln left the Was.h.i.+ngton Navy Yard aboard the river steamer Baltimore in the early evening of June 20. The journey to City Point, which was about 180 miles farther south by water than Aquia Creek, took more than sixteen hours. Horace Porter, Grant's aide-de-camp, recalled that when the steamer arrived at the wharf, Lincoln ”came down from the upper deck...and reaching out his long, angular arm, he wrung General Grant's hand vigorously, and held it in his for some time,” as he expressed great appreciation for all that Grant had been through since they last met in Was.h.i.+ngton. Introduced to the members of Grant's staff, the president ”had for each one a cordial greeting and a pleasant word. There was a kindliness in his tone and a hearty manner of expression which went far to captivate all who met him.”

Over a ”plain and substantial” lunch, typical of ”the hero of Vicksburg,” noted the Herald correspondent, Lincoln conversed entertainingly and delivered ”three capital jokes” that provoked hilarity. When the meal was finished, Grant suggested a ride to the front ten miles away. Porter noted that Lincoln made an odd appearance on his horse as his ”trousers gradually worked up above his ankles, and gave him the appearance of a country farmer riding into town wearing his Sunday clothes.” The sight ”bordered upon the grotesque,” but the troops he pa.s.sed along the way ”were so lost in admiration of the man that the humorous aspect did not seem to strike them...cheers broke forth from all the commands, and enthusiastic shouts and even words of familiar greeting met him on all sides.”