Part 7 (1/2)

x.x.xIV. ”FATHER ABRAHAM”

The key-notes of Lincoln's course with the Executive Committee, his refusal to do anything that appeared to him to be futile, his firmness not to cast about and experiment after a policy, his basing of all his plans on the vision in his own mind of their sure fruitage-these continued to be his key-notes throughout the campaign. They ruled his action in a difficult matter with which he was quickly forced to deal.

Montgomery Blair, the Postmaster General, was widely and bitterly disliked. Originally a radical Republican, he had quarreled with that wing of the party. In 1863 the Union League of Philadelphia, which elected all the rest of the Cabinet honorary members of its organization, omitted Blair. A reference to the Cabinet in the Union platform of 1864 was supposed to be a hint that the Postmaster General would serve his country, if he resigned. During the dark days of the summer of 1864, the President's mail was filled with supplications for the dismissal of Blair.(1) He was described as an incubus that might cause the defeat of the Administration.

If the President's secretaries were not prejudiced witnesses, Blair had worn out his welcome in the Cabinet. He had grown suspicious. He tried to make Lincoln believe that Seward was plotting with the Copperheads. Nevertheless, Lincoln turned a deaf ear to the clamor against him. Merely personal considerations were not compelling. If it was true, as for a while he believed it was, that his election was already lost, he did not propose to throw Blair over as a mere experiment. True to his principles he would not become a juggler with futility.

The turn of the tide in his favor put the matter in a new light. All the enemies of Blair renewed their attack on a slightly different line. One of those powerful New Englanders who had come to Lincoln's aid at such an opportune moment led off. On the second day following the news of Atlanta, Henry Wilson wrote to him, ”Blair, every one hates. Tens of thousands of men will be lost to you, or will give you a reluctant vote because of the Blairs.”(2) If this was really true, the selfless man would not hesitate to' require of Blair the same sort of sacrifice he would, in other conditions, require of himself. Lincoln debated this in his own mind nearly three weeks.

Meanwhile, various other politicians joined the hue and cry. An old friend of Lincoln's, Ebenezer Peck, came east from Illinois to work upon him against Blair.(3) Chandler, who like Wade was eager to get out of the wrong s.h.i.+p, appeared at Was.h.i.+ngton as a friend of the Administration and an enemy of Blair.(4) But still Lincoln did not respond. After all, was it certain that one of these votes would change if Blair did not resign? Would anything be accomplished, should Lincoln require his resignation, except the humiliation of a friend, the gratification of a pack of malcontents? And then some one thought of a mode for giving definite political value to Blair's removal. Who did it? The anonymous author of the only biography of Chandler claims this doubtful honor for the great Jacobin. Lincoln's secretaries, including Colonel Stoddard who had charge of his correspondence, are ignorant on the subject.(5) It may well have been Chandler who negotiated a bargain with Fremont, if the story is to be trusted, which concerned Blair. A long-standing, relentless quarrel separated these two. That Fremont as a candidate was n.o.body had long been apparent; and yet it was worth while to get rid of him. Chandler, or another, extracted a promise from Fremont that if Blair were removed, he would resign. On the strength of this promise, a last appeal was made to Lincoln. Such is the legend. The known fact is that on September twenty-second Fremont withdrew his candidacy. The next day Lincoln sent this note to Blair: ”You have generously said to me more than once that whenever your resignation could be a relief to me, it was at my disposal. The time has come. You very well know that this proceeds from no dissatisfaction of mine, with you personally or officially. Your uniform kindness has been unsurpa.s.sed by that of any friend.”(6) No incident displays more clearly the hold which Lincoln had acquired on the confidence and the affection of his immediate a.s.sociates. Blair at once tendered his resignation: ”I can not take leave of you,” said he, ”without renewing the expression of my grat.i.tude for the uniform kindness which has marked your course with regard to myself.”(7) That he was not perfunctory, that his great chief had acquired over him an ascendency which was superior to any strain, was demonstrated a few days later in New York. On the twenty-seventh, Cooper Inst.i.tute was filled with an enthusiastic Lincoln meeting. Blair was a speaker. He was received with loud cheers and took occasion to touch upon his relations with the President. ”I retired,” said he, ”on the recommendation of my own father. My father has pa.s.sed that period of life when its honors or its rewards, or its glories have any charm for him. He looks backward only, and forward only, to the grandeur of this nation and the happiness of this great people who have grown up under the prosperous condition of the Union; and he would not permit a son of his to stand in the way of the glorious and patriotic President who leads us on to success and to the final triumph that is in store for us.”(8) It was characteristic of this ultimate Lincoln that he offered no explanations, even in terminating the career of a minister; that he gave no confidences. Gently inexorable, he imposed his will in apparent unconsciousness that it might be questioned. Along with his overmastering kindness, he had something of the objectivity of a natural force. It was the mood attained by a few extraordinary men who have reached a point where, without becoming egoists, they no longer distinguish between themselves and circ.u.mstance; the mood of those creative artists who have lost themselves, in the strange way which the dreamers have, who have also found themselves.

Even in the new fascination of the probable turn of the tide, Lincoln did not waver in his fixed purpose to give all his best energies, and the country's best energies, to the war. In October, there was a new panic over the draft. Cameron implored him to suspend it in Pennsylvania until after the presidential election. An Ohio committee went to Was.h.i.+ngton with the same request. Why should not the arguments that had prevailed with him, or were supposed to have prevailed with him, for the removal of a minister, prevail also in the way of a brief flagging of military preparation? But Lincoln would not look upon the two cases in the same spirit. ”What is the Presidency worth to me,” he asked the Ohio committee, ”if I have no country ?”(9) From the active campaign he held himself aloof. He made no political speeches. He wrote no political letters. The army received his constant detailed attention. In his letters to Grant, he besought him to be unwavering in a relentless persistency.

As Hay records, he was aging rapidly. The immense strain of his labor was beginning to tell both in his features and his expression. He was moving in a shadow. But his old habit of merriment had not left him; though it was now, more often, a surface merriment. On the night of the October elections, Lincoln sat in the telegraph room of the War Office while the reports were coming in. ”The President in a lull of despatches, took from his pocket the Naseby Papers and read several chapters of the Saint and Martyr, Petroleum V. They were immensely amusing. Stanton and Dana enjoyed them scarcely less than the President, who read on, con amore, until nine o'clock.”(10) The presidential election was held on the eighth of November. That night, Lincoln with his Secretary was again in the War Office. The early returns showed that the whole North was turning to him in enormous majorities. He showed no exultation. When the a.s.sistant Secretary of the Navy spoke sharply of the complete effacement politically of Henry Winter Davis against whom he had a grudge, Lincoln said, ”You have more of that feeling of personal resentment than I. Perhaps I have too little of it; but I never thought it paid. A man has no time to spend half his life in quarrels. If any man ceases to attack me I never remember the past against him.”(11) ”Towards midnight,” says Hay in his diary, ”we had supper. The President went awkwardly and hospitably to work shovelling out the fried oysters. He was most agreeable and genial all the evening... . Captain Thomas came up with a band about half-past two and made some music. The President answered from a window with rather unusual dignity and effect, and we came home.”(12) ”I am thankful to G.o.d,” Lincoln said, in response to the serenade, ”for this approval of the people; but while grateful for this mark of their confidence in me, if I know my heart, my grat.i.tude is free from any taint of personal triumph. I do not impugn the motives of any one opposed to me. It is no pleasure to me to triumph over any one, but I give thanks to the Almighty for this evidence of the people's resolution to stand by free government and the rights of humanity.”(13) During the next few days a torrent of congratulations came pouring in. What most impressed the secretaries was his complete freedom from elation. ”He seemed to deprecate his own triumph and sympathize rather with the beaten than the victorious party.” His formal recognition of the event was a prepared reply to a serenade on the night of November tenth. A great crowd filled the s.p.a.ce in front of the north portico of the White House. Lincoln appeared at a window. A secretary stood at his side holding a lighted candle while he read from a ma.n.u.script. The brief address is justly ranked among his ablest occasional utterances. As to the mode of the deliverance, he said to Hay, ”Not very graceful, but I am growing old enough not to care much for the manner of doing things.”(14)

x.x.xV. THE MASTER OF THE MOMENT

In Lincoln's life there are two great achievements.

One he brought to pa.s.s in time for him to behold his own victory. The other he saw only with the eyes of faith. The first was the drawing together of all the elements of nationalism in the American people and consolidating them into a driving force. The second was laying the foundation of a political temper that made impossible a permanent victory for the Vindictives. It was the sad fate of this nation, because Lincoln's hand was struck from the tiller at the very instant of the crisis, to suffer the temporary success of that faction he strove so hard to destroy. The transitoriness of their evil triumph, the eventual rally of the nation against them, was the final victory of the spirit of Lincoln.

The immediate victory he appreciated more fully and measured more exactly, than did any one else. He put it into words in the fifth message. While others were crowing with exaltation over a party triumph, he looked deeper to the psychological triumph. Scarcely another saw that the most significant detail of the hour was in the Democratic att.i.tude. Even the bitterest enemies of nationalism, even those who were believed by all others to desire the breaking of the Union, had not thought it safe to say so. They had veiled their intent in specious words. McClellan in accepting the Democratic nomination had repudiated the idea of disunion. Whether the Democratic politicians had agreed with him or not, they had not dared to contradict him. This was what Lincoln put the emphasis on in his message: ”The purpose of the people within the loyal States to maintain the Union was never more firm nor more nearly unanimous than now... . No candidate for any office, high or low, has ventured to seek votes on the avowal that he was for giving up the Union. There have been much impugning of motive and much heated controversy as to the proper means and best mode of advancing the Union cause; but on the distinct issue of Union or No Union the politicians have shown their instinctive knowledge that there is no diversity among the people. In affording the people the fair opportunity of showing one to another and to the world, this firmness and unanimity of purpose, the election has been of vast value to the national cause.”(1) This temper of the final Lincoln, his supreme detachment, the kind impersonality of his intellectual approach, has no better ill.u.s.tration in his state papers. He further revealed it in a more intimate way. The day he sent the message to Congress, he also submitted to the Senate a nomination to the great office of Chief Justice. When Taney died in the previous September, there was an eager stir among the friends of Chase. They had hopes but they felt embarra.s.sed. Could they ask this great honor, the highest it is in the power of the American President to be-stow, for a man who had been so lacking in candor as Chase had been? Chase's course during the summer had made things worse. He had played the time-server. No one was more severe upon Lincoln in July; in August, he hesitated, would not quite commit himself to the conspiracy but would not discourage it; almost gave it his blessing; in September, but not until it was quite plain that the conspiracy was failing, he came out for Lincoln. However, his friends in the Senate overcame their embarra.s.sment-how else could it be with Senators?-and pressed his case. And when Senator Wilson, alarmed at the President's silence, tried to apologize for Chase's harsh remarks about the President, Lincoln cut him short. ”Oh, as to that, I care nothing,” said he. The embarra.s.sment of the Chase propaganda amused him. When Chase himself took a hand and wrote him a letter, Lincoln said to his secretary, ”What is it about?” ”Simply a kind and friendly letter,” replied the secretary. Lincoln smiled. ”File it with the other recommendations,” said he.(2) He regarded Chase as a great lawyer, Taney's logical successor. All the slights the Secretary had put upon the President, the intrigues to supplant him, the malicious sayings, were as if they had never occurred. When Congress a.s.sembled, it was Chase's name that he sent to the Senate. It was Chase who, as Chief Justice, administered the oath at Lincoln's second inauguration.

Long since, Lincoln had seen that there had ceased to any half-way house in the matter of emanc.i.p.ation. His thoughts were chiefly upon the future. And as mere strategy, he saw that slavery had to be got out of the way. It was no longer a question, who liked this, who did not. To him, the ultimate issue was the restoration of harmony among the States. Those States which had been defeated in the dread arbitrament of battle, would in any event encounter difficulties, even deadly perils, in the narrow way which must come after defeat and which might or might not lead to rehabilitation.

Remembering the Vindictive temper, remembering the force and courage of the Vindictive leaders, it was imperative to clear the field of the slavery issue before the reconstruction issue was fairly launched. It was highly desirable to commit to the support of the governments the whole range of influences that were in earnest about emanc.i.p.ation. Furthermore, the South itself was drifting in the same direction. In his interview with Gilmore and Jaquess, Davis had said: ”You have already emanc.i.p.ated nearly two millions of our slaves; and if you will take care of them, you may emanc.i.p.ate the rest. I had a few when the war began. I was of some use to them; they never were of any to me.”(3) The Southern President had ”felt” his const.i.tuency on the subject of enrolling slaves as soldiers with a promise of emanc.i.p.ation as the reward of military service.

The fifth message urged Congress to submit to the States an amendment to the Const.i.tution abolis.h.i.+ng slavery. Such action had been considered in the previous session, but nothing had been done. At Lincoln's suggestion, it had been recommended in the platform of the Union party. Now, with the President's powerful influence behind it, with his prestige at full circle, the amendment was rapidly pushed forward. Before January ended, it had been approved by both Houses. Lincoln had used all his personal influence to strengthen its chances in Congress where, until the last minute, the vote was still in doubt.(4) While the amendment was taking its way through Congress, a shrewd old politician who thought he knew the world better than most men, that Montgomery Blair, Senior, who was father of the Postmaster General, had been trying on his own responsibility to open negotiations between Was.h.i.+ngton and Richmond. His visionary ideas, which were wholly without the results he intended, have no place here. And yet this fanciful episode had a significance of its own. Had it not occurred, the Confederate government probably would not have appointed commissioners charged with the hopeless task of approaching the Federal government for the purpose of negotiating peace between ”the two countries.”

Now that Lincoln was entirely in the ascendent at home, and since the Confederate arms had recently suffered terrible reverses, he was no longer afraid that negotiation might appear to be the symptom of weakness. He went so far as to consent to meet the Commissioners himself. On a steamer in Hampton Roads, Lincoln and Seward had a long conference with three members of the Confederate government, particularly the Vice-President, Alexander H. Stephens.

It has become a tradition that Lincoln wrote at the top of a sheet of paper the one word ”Union”; that he pushed it across the table and said, ”Stephens, write under that anything you want” There appears to be no foundation for the tale in this form. The amendment had committed the North too definitely to emanc.i.p.ation. Lincoln could not have proposed Union without requiring emanc.i.p.ation, also. And yet, with this limitation, the spirit of the tradition is historic. There can be no doubt that he presented to the commissioners about the terms which the year before he had drawn up as a memorandum for Gilmore and Jaquess: Union, the acceptance of emanc.i.p.ation, but also instantaneous restoration of political autonomy to the Southern States, and all the influence of the Administration in behalf of liberal compensation for the loss of slave property. But the commissioners had no authority to consider terms that did not recognize the existence of ”two countries.” However, this Hampton Roads Conference gave Lincoln a new hope. He divined, if he did not perceive, that the Confederates were on the verge of despair. If he had been a Vindictive, this would have borne fruit in ferocious telegrams to his generals to strike and spare not. What Lincoln did was to lay before the Cabinet this proposal:-that they advise Congress to offer the Confederate government the sum of four hundred million dollars, provided the war end and the States in secession acknowledge the authority of the Federal government previous to April 1, 1865. But the Cabinet, complete as was his domination in some respects, were not ripe for such a move as this. ”'You are all against me,' said Lincoln sadly and in evident surprise at the want of statesmanlike liberality on the part of the executive council,” to quote his Secretary, ”folded and laid away the draft of his message.”(5) Nicolay believes that the idea continued vividly in his mind and that it may be linked with his last public utterance-”it may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I am considering and shall not fail to act when satisfied that action is proper.”

It was now obvious to every one outside the Confederacy that the war would end speedily in a Northern victory. To Lincoln, therefore, the duty of the moment, overshadowing all else, was the preparation for what should come after. Reconstruction. More than ever it was of first importance to decide whether the President or Congress should deal with this great matter. And now occurred an event which bore witness at once to the beginning of Lincoln's final struggle with the Vindictives and to that personal ascendency which was steadily widening. One of those three original Jacobins agreed to become his spokesman in the Senate. As the third person of the Jacobin brotherhood, Lyman Trumbull had always been out of place. He had gone wrong not from perversity of the soul but from a mental failing, from the lack of inherent light, from intellectual conventionality. But he was a good man. One might apply to him Mrs. Browning's line: ”Just a good man made a great man.” And in his case, as in so many others, sheer goodness had not been sufficient in the midst of a revolution to save his soul. To quote one of the greatest of the observers of human life: ”More brains, O Lord, more brains.” Though Trumbull had the making of an Intellectual, politics had very nearly ruined him. For all his good intentions it took him a long time to see what Hawthorne saw at first sight-that Lincoln was both a powerful character and an original mind. Still, because Trumbull was really a good man, he found a way to recover his soul. What his insight was not equal to perceiving in 1861, experience slowly made plain to him in the course of the next three years. Before 1865 he had broken with the Vindictives; he had come over to Lincoln. Trumbull still held the powerful office of Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He now undertook to be the President's captain in a battle on the floor of the Senate for the recognition of Louisiana.

The new government in Louisiana had been in actual operation for nearly a year. Though Congress had denounced it; though the Manifesto had held it up to scorn as a monarchial outrage; Lincoln had quietly, steadily, protected and supported it. It was discharging the function of a regular State government. A governor had been elected and inaugurated-that Governor Hahn whom Lincoln had congratulated as Louisiana's first Free State Governor. He could say this because the new electorate which his mandate had created had a.s.sembled a const.i.tutional convention and had abolished slavery. And it had also carried out the President's views with regard to the political status of freedmen. Lincoln was not a believer in general negro suffrage. He was as far as ever from the theorizing of the Abolitionists. The most he would approve was the bestowal of suffrage on a few Superior negroes, leaving the rest to be gradually educated into citizens.h.i.+p. The Louisiana Convention had authorized the State Legislature to make, when it felt prepared to do so, such a limited extension of suffrage.(6) In setting up this new government, Lincoln had created a political vessel in which practically all the old electorate of Louisiana could find their places the moment they gave up the war and accepted the two requisites, union and emanc.i.p.ation. That electorate could proceed at once to rebuild the social-political order of the State without any interval of ”expiation.” All the power of the Administration would be with them in their labors. That this was the wise as well as the generous way to proceed, the best minds of the North had come to see. Witness the conversion of Trumbull. But there were four groups of fanatics who were dangerous: extreme Abolitionists who clamored for negro equality; men like Wade and Chandler, still mad with the l.u.s.t of conquest, raging at the President who had stood so resolutely between them and their desire; the machine politicians who could never understand the President's methods, who regarded him as an officious amateur; and the Little Men who would have tried to make political capital of the blowing of the last trump. All these, each for a separate motive, attacked the President because of Louisiana.

The new government had chosen Senators. Here was a specific issue over which the Administration and its multiform opposition might engage in a trial of strength. The Senate had it in its power to refuse to seat the Louisiana Senators. Could the Vindictive leaders induce it to go to that length? The question took its natural course of reference to the Judiciary Committee. On the eighteenth of February, Trumbull opened what was destined to be a terrible chapter in American history, the struggle between light and darkness over reconstruction. Trumbull had ranged behind Lincoln the majority of his committee. With its authority he moved a joint resolution recognizing the new government of Louisiana.

And then began a battle royal. Trumbull's old a.s.sociates were promptly joined by Sumner. These three rallied against the resolution all the malignancy, all the time-serving, all the stupidity, which the Senate possessed. Bitter language was exchanged by men who had formerly been as thick as thieves.

”You and I,” thundered Wade, ”did not differ formerly on this subject We considered it a mockery, a miserable mockery, to recognize this Louisiana organization as a State in the Union.” He sneered fiercely, ”Whence comes this new-born zeal of the Senator from Illinois? ... Sir, it is the most miraculous conversion that has taken place since Saint Paul's time.”(7) Wade did not spare the President. Metaphorically speaking, he shook a fist in his face, the fist of a merciless old giant ”When the foundation of this government is sought to be swept away by executive usurpation, it will not do to turn around to me and say this comes from a President I helped to elect... . If the President of the United States operating through his major generals can initiate a State government, and can bring it here and force us, compel us, to receive on this floor these mere mockeries, these men of straw who represent n.o.body, your Republic is at an end ... talk not to me of your ten per cent. principle. A more absurd, monarchial and anti-American principle was never announced on G.o.d's earth.”(8) Amidst a rain of furious personalities, Lincoln's spokesman kept his poise. It was sorely tried by two things: by Sumner's frank use of every device of parliamentary obstruction with a view to wearing out the patience of the Senate, and by the cynical alliance, in order to balk Lincoln, of the Vindictives with the Democrats. What they would not risk in 1862 when their principles had to wait upon party needs, they now considered safe strategy. And if ever the Little Men deserved their label it was when they played into the hands of the terrible Vindictives, thus becoming responsible for the rejection of Lincoln's plan of reconstruction. Trumbull upbraided Sumner for ”a.s.sociating himself with those whom he so often denounced, for the purpose of calling the yeas and nays and making dilatory motions” to postpone action until the press of other business should compel the Senate to set the resolution aside. Sumner's answer was that he would employ against the measure every instrument he could find ”in the a.r.s.enal of parliamentary warfare.”

With the aid of the Democrats, the Vindictives carried the day. The resolution was ”dispensed with.”(9) As events turned out it was a catastrophe. But this was not apparent at the time. Though Lincoln had been beaten for the moment, the opposition was made up of so many and such irreconcilable elements that as long as he could hold together his own following, there was no reason to suppose he would not in the long run prevail. He was never in a firmer, more self-contained mood than on the last night of the session.(10) Again, as on that memorable fourth of July, eight months before, he was in his room at the Capitol signing the last-minute bills. Stanton was with him. On receiving a telegram from Grant, the Secretary handed it to the President Grant reported that Lee had proposed a conference for the purpose of ”a satisfactory adjustment of the present unhappy difficulties by means of a military convention.” Without asking for the Secretary's opinion, Lincoln wrote out a reply which he directed him to sign and despatch immediately. ”The President directs me to say that he wishes you to have no conference with General Lee, unless it be for the capitulation of General Lee's army, or on some minor or purely military matter. He instructs me to say that you are not to decide, discuss, or confer upon any political questions, such questions the President holds in his own hands and will submit them to no military conferences or conventions. Meanwhile, you are to press to the utmost your military advantages.”(11) In the second inaugural (12) delivered the next day, there is not the faintest shadow of anxiety. It breathes a lofty confidence as if his soul was gazing meditatively downward upon life, and upon his own work, from a secure height. The world has shown a sound instinct in fixing upon one expression, ”with malice toward none, with charity for all,” as the key-note of the final Lincoln. These words form the opening line of that paragraph of unsurpa.s.sable prose in which the second inaugural culminates: ”With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right as G.o.d gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.”

x.x.xVI. PREPARING A DIFFERENT WAR