Part 18 (1/2)

Arriving while Lincoln was up the country seeing Scott, he made at once an excellent impression on Stanton and the members of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, who saw in him the ant.i.thesis of McClellan. For one thing, there was nothing of caution about him; he was a talker, and his favorite words were ”I” and ”forward.” (If he had been placed in charge of the West in the early spring, he said, nothing could have stopped his march on New Orleans; by now he would have split the South in two and gone to work on the crippled halves.) For another, he was sound on the slavery question, a.s.suring the committee that he and it saw eye to eye on the matter. Wade and the others were delighted, not only with his opinions, civil as well as military, but also with his appearance, which they found as rea.s.suring as his beliefs. He had shaved his cheeks and his upper lip, retaining a spade-shaped chin beard that bobbed and wagged decisively as he spoke, lending weight and point to his utterances and increasing the overall impression of forcefulness and vigor. Lincoln, when he returned from the visit with Scott, was pleased to see the confidence Pope had managed to invite within so brief a span, and gave him at once his orders and his a.s.signment to the command of an army expressly created for his use.

The Army of Virginia, it was called. Its strength was 56,000 men and its mission was to move in general down the line of the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, just east of the Blue Ridge Mountains, so as to close in on the Confederate capital from the west and north, while McClellan's Army of the Potomac applied pressure from the east; thus Richmond would be crushed in a giant nutcracker, with Pope as the upper jaw. His army was created by consolidating the commands of McDowell, Banks, and Fremont. All three of these generals outranked him-an unusual arrangement, to say the least-but only one of them took official umbrage. This was Fremont: which solved another problem. His protest resignation was accepted, and Lincoln replaced him with Franz Sigel, whose appointment, though it involved a thousand-mile transfer, was considered especially felicitous since so many of the troops involved were of German extraction.

Pope's instructions, issued June 26 as part of the order creating his army, required him to operate so as to protect Was.h.i.+ngton from ”danger or insult” and to ”render the most effective aid to relieve General McClellan and capture Richmond.” It was a large order, but Pope only laid down one condition: McClellan must be given peremptory orders to attack the minute he heard that Pope was engaged. This was necessary, Pope said, because of the known timidity and irresolution of his partner in the squeeze play.

For the present, however-as he learned all too soon-the stipulation was unnecessary. On the day the Army of Virginia came officially into being, McClellan no longer had any choice in the matter; the Seven Days had opened, and the Army of the Potomac found itself engaged in a tremendous struggle for survival, trying first to fend off Lee's a.s.sault down the north bank of the Chickahominy and then to reach the gunboat sanctuary of the James. When news of the attack reached Was.h.i.+ngton, Pope showed that there were elements of caution in his make-up after all. He advised Lincoln not to let McClellan fall back southward, since this would unhinge the jaws of the nutcracker, but to order him to retire in the direction of the York. That way, Pope said, he could eventually go to his a.s.sistance-and vice versa, in case the Army of Virginia ran into similar trouble moving south. But there was nothing Lincoln could do about it, even if he had wanted to; the wires were cut and the Army of the Potomac was already in motion for the James. Pope began to see the handwriting on the wall. It warned him plainly that there was an excellent chance that he would be entirely on his own as he moved down the road that led to Richmond.

Discouraging as this prospect was to the newly arrived commander, a look into the backgrounds of the three groups he was expected to weld into an effective striking force proved equally discouraging, if not more so. Two of the three (Banks' and Sigel's) had traditions of defeat, and the third (McDowell's) had slogged all over northern Virginia, seemingly without profit to anyone, least of all to itself. Unquestionably, even in their own eyes-”Milroy's weary boys” were a case in point-this was the second team, restricted to an occasional scrimmage which served primarily to emphasize its lack of style, while the first team got the cheers and glory on the Peninsula. For all his bl.u.s.ter, Pope saw one thing clearly. However second-rate his material might be in some respects, he had here the makings of a first-cla.s.s disaster, unless he could somehow restore or establish confidence in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of his downhearted charges. Accordingly, as a first step before he took the field, he issued an address ”To the Officers and Soldiers of the Army of Virginia,” giving them, along with much else in the way of advice, a chance to see what manner of man was about to lead them against the rebel force that had just finished mauling the first team and flinging it back from the goal-post gates of Richmond.

”Let us understand each other,” he told them. ”I have come to you from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies; from an army whose business it has been to seek the adversary and to beat him when he was found; whose policy has been attack and not defense.... I presume that I have been called here to pursue the same system and to lead you against the enemy. It is my purpose to do so, and that speedily.” He supposed they longed for distinction in the jar and shock of battle, and he was prepared to show them how to win it. In any event, he said, ”I desire you to dismiss from your minds certain phrases, which I am sorry to find so much in vogue amongst you. I hear constantly of 'taking strong positions and holding them,' of 'lines of retreat,' and of 'bases of supplies.' Let us discard such ideas. The strongest position a soldier should desire to occupy is one from which he can most easily advance against the enemy. Let us study the probable lines of retreat of our opponents, and leave our own to take care of themselves. Let us look before us, and not behind. Success and glory are in the advance, disaster and shame lurk in the rear.”

The words had a Stantonian ring, which Pope explained long afterwards by identifying the Secretary himself as their author. At any rate, whoever wrote them, the effect was something other than the one that had been intended: particularly among the men the undersigned general addressed. They found the comparison odious, and they resented the boasting tone in which it was made. ”Five Cent Pope,” they dubbed their new commander, while old-time regulars recalled a parody that had made the army rounds some years ago, when he issued oversanguine reports of success in boring for artesian water on the bone-dry plains of Texas: Pope told a flattering tale Which proved to be bravado About the streams which spout like ale On the Llano Estacado.

McClellan's supporters of course resented him, too: Fitz-John Porter for example, who declared that Pope had ”written himself down [as] what the military world has long known, an a.s.s.... If the theory he proclaims is practiced you may look for disaster.”

Beyond the lines, where the address enjoyed wide circulation, the Confederate reaction combined contempt and amus.e.m.e.nt. Reports that this new spread-eagle opponent was heading his dispatches ”Headquarters in the Saddle” prompted a revival of the old army jibe that he had his headquarters where his hindquarters ought to be.

By the time Pope's flamboyant address was issued in mid-July, Lincoln had been down to the Peninsula and back. Between the two boat-rides, going and coming, he not only made a personal inspection of the Army of the Potomac and questioned its chief and subordinate generals, but he also made up his mind about a matter he had been pondering ever since his visit to Winfield Scott three weeks ago-a command decision, involving this and all the other armies of the Union.

Within two days of his July 1 plea for 50,000 men, with which to ”retrieve our fortunes” after the blood-letting of the Seven Days, McClellan doubled the ante; 100,000 would now be needed, he declared. Lincoln replied on the 4th that any such figure ”within a month, or even six weeks, is impossible.... Under these circ.u.mstances the defensive for the present must be your only care. Save the army-first, where you are, if you can; secondly, by removal, if you must.” He added, perhaps ironically: ”p.s. If at any time you feel able to take the offensive, you are not restrained from doing so.” Once more he was losing patience fast. Sending troops to McClellan, he said, was like trying to shovel fleas across a barnlot; so few seemed to get there. Also, there were alarming rumors as to the condition of the men the general already had. Lincoln decided to see for himself. Boarding a steamer on the night of July 7, he reached Harrison's Landing late the following afternoon and rode out at once with the army commander for a sundown inspection of the camps.

Apparently to his surprise he found the men in good condition and high spirits-though the latter could be accounted for, at least in part, as a reaction to seeing the President on horseback. For one thing, an observer wrote home, there was the imminent danger that his long legs ”would become entangled with those of the horse...and both come down together.” Occupied as he was in the attempt to control his mount, which seemed equally nervous, he had trouble tipping his tall hat in response to cheers that were redoubled when the difficulty was seen. ”That arm with which he drew the rein, in its angles and position resembled the hind leg of a gra.s.shopper-the hand before, the elbow away back over the horse's tail.... But the boys liked him,” the soldier-observer added. ”In fact his popularity with the army is and has been universal. Most of our rulers and leaders fall into odium, but all have faith in Lincoln. 'When he finds out,' they say, 'it will be stopped.'...G.o.d bless the man and give answer to the prayers for guidance I am sure he offers.”

If guidance was what he was seeking he could find it right there alongside him, astride Dan Webster. Less than three weeks ago McClellan had requested permission to present his views on the state of military affairs throughout the country; Lincoln had replied that he would be glad to have them-preferably in a letter, he said-if their presentation would not divert too much of the general's time and attention from his immediate duties. So tonight, when they returned to headquarters, McClellan handed the President a letter ”covering the whole ground of our national trouble” and setting forth the conditions under which he believed the struggle could be won.

The rebellion, he said, had now ”a.s.sumed the character of a war,” and ”as such...it should be conducted upon the highest principles known to Christian civilization. It should not be a war looking to the subjugation of the people of any State in any event. It should not be at all a war upon population, but against armed forces and political organizations. Neither confiscation of property, political executions of persons, territorial organization of States, or forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a moment.” This last was a point he emphasized, since ”a declaration of radical views” in this direction would ”rapidly disintegrate our present armies.” More strictly within the military province, he advised concentration as the guiding rule. ”The national force should not be dispersed in expeditions, posts of occupation, and numerous armies, but should be mainly collected into ma.s.ses, and brought to bear upon the armies of the Confederate States. Those armies thoroughly defeated, the political structure which they support would soon cease to exist,” and the southern people, unembittered by depredations, would turn against the willful men who had misled them out of the Union and sue at once for peace and reentry. So he saw it. However, no matter what ”system of policy” was adopted, he strongly urged the appointment of a general-in-chief, ”one who possesses your confidence, understands your views, and who is competent to execute your orders.” He did not ask that post for himself, he said; but he made it clear that he would not decline the reappointment, since he was ”willing to serve you in such position as you may a.s.sign me,” including this one. In closing he added a final explanation and disclaimer: ”I may be on the brink of eternity, and as I hope forgiveness from my Maker I have written this letter with sincerity toward you and from love for my country.”

Lincoln took it and read it through, with McClellan standing by. ”All right,” he said, and put it in his pocket. That was all. Apparently he had not come down here in search of guidance.

What he had come for, it developed, was a look at the present condition of the army and some specific answers to a specific question which he put the following day to the five corps commanders: ”If it were desired to get the army away from here, could it be safely effected?” Keyes and Franklin replied that it could and should be done. The other three thought otherwise. ”It would be ruinous to the country,” Heintzelman said; ”We give up the cause if we do it,” Sumner said; ”Move the army and ruin the country,” Porter said. Once the questioning was over, Lincoln and the generals took a gla.s.s of wine together and the President got ready to go back to Was.h.i.+ngton.

McClellan was upset: particularly by the evidence that the Administration might order him to evacuate the Peninsula. After seeing Lincoln off next morning, he wrote his wife that he feared the President had some ”paltry trick” up his sleeve; his manner, he said, ”seemed that of a man about to do something of which he was ashamed.” For a week the general brooded and delivered himself of judgments. Lincoln was ”an old stick, and of pretty poor timber at that,” while Stanton was ”the most unmitigated scoundrel I ever knew, heard, or read of.” He believed he saw which way the wind was blowing: ”Their game seems to be to withhold reinforcements, and then to relieve me for not advancing, well knowing that I have not the means to do so.” Accordingly, in mid-July he wrote to his friend William H. Aspinwall, asking the New York transportation tyc.o.o.n to be on the lookout for a job for him.

Lincoln meanwhile had made up his mind to act on the command decision which he had been considering for weeks. All through the previous autumn, old General Scott had held out in Was.h.i.+ngton for as long as he could, putting up with McClellan's snubs and digs for the sake of Halleck, who was on his way from California. It was Scott's hope that Old Brains would be there to take his place when he retired as general-in-chief. But the way was long and the digs were sharp; the old man gave up before Halleck got there, and McClellan got the job. Since then, the contrast in accomplishments East and West seemed to reinforce Scott's original opinion, which he repeated when the President came to West Point on the eve of the Seven Days, Lincoln saw merit in the recommendation, but he thought he would have a talk with Halleck before he acted on it. Back in Was.h.i.+ngton in time for the outbreak of the Seven Days, he wired the western commander: ”Please tell me, could you make me a flying visit for a consultation without endangering the service in your department?”

Halleck did not want to come, and said so. Even if he did, he added, ”I could advise but one thing: to place all the [eastern] forces...under one head, and hold that head responsible.”

Refusal was always provocative for Lincoln; in the course of the war, several men were to learn that the surest way to get something from him was to pretend they did not want it. He almost made up his mind, then and there. Down on the Peninsula, however, the matter was more or less cinched by McClellan himself. His Harrison's Landing letter, an exegesis of the conservative position, was the strongest possible proof that its author was not the kind of man to fight the kind of war Lincoln was rapidly coming to believe the country was going to have to fight if it was going to win. Returning to Was.h.i.+ngton on the night of July 10, he had Stanton send a wire to Corinth next morning, which left the recipient no choice in the matter: ”Ordered ”Ordered, that Maj. Gen. Henry W W. Halleck be a.s.signed to command the whole land forces of the United States as General-in-Chief, and that he repair to this capital as soon as he can with safety to the positions and operations within the department under his charge.”

There were delays; Halleck did not arrive for nearly two weeks, being occupied with the incidentals of transferring his command. The delay was hard on Lincoln; ”I am very anxious-almost impatient-to have you here,” he wired. Down on the Peninsula, McClellan was spared for nine days the shock of hearing that his old post had gone to a rival. Then he read of it in a newspaper. ”In all these things,” he wrote his wife, ”the President and those around him have acted so as to make the matter as offensive as possible. He has not shown the slightest gentlemanly or friendly feeling, and I cannot regard him as in any respect my friend. I am confident that he would relieve me tomorrow if he dared to do so. His cowardice alone prevents it. I can never regard him with other feelings than those of contempt.”

This was going to be a harder war from here on out, and Lincoln knew it. He knew it because he was going to make it so. In fact, he was going to make it just as hard as he had to, and he said as much quite frankly to anyone who asked him. Most particularly, despite conflicting advice from McClellan and men like him, it was going to be harder on civilians. Of the four actions which the general had said ”should [not] be contemplated for a moment”-1) confiscation of property, 2) political execution of persons, 3) territorial organization of states, and 4) forcible abolition of slavery-the first and second had already been carried out with governmental sanction, the third was in the legislative works, and the fourth was under urgent consideration.

The second of these was the most obviously harsh, and for that reason should be the most obviously effective in securing obedience to occupation rule. So Benjamin Butler reasoned, at any rate, when he reached New Orleans and found that the national ensign, prematurely raised over the Mint, had been ripped from its staff by the mob. ”They have insulted our flag-torn it down with indignity,” he notified the War Department. ”This outrage will be punished in such manner as in my judgment will caution both the perpetrators and abettors of the act, so that they shall fear the stripes if they do not reverence the stars in our banner.” As good as his word, Butler found a man still wearing a tatter of the outraged bunting in his b.u.t.tonhole, brought him before a drumhead court, and carried out the resultant sentence by hanging him in public from a window of the building where the crime had been committed.

It worked about as well as he had expected. The sight of one man dangling by his neck from the eaves of the Mint sobered the others considerably. Fear, not reverence, was what Butler had wanted, and he got it-at least from the men. The women were another matter. In them he saw no signs of fear, and certainly none of reverence. In fact, they missed no chance to show their contempt for the blue-clad invaders. Pa.s.sing them on the street, they drew their skirts aside to escape contamination, or else they walked straight ahead, taking their half of the sidewalk out of the middle, and forced oncoming Yankees to step off into the mud. The climax came when one of them, taking careful aim from an upstairs window, emptied a slopjar onto the head of Farragut himself. Butler retaliated with a general order, directing ”that hereafter when any female shall, by word, gesture or movement, insult or show contempt for any officer or soldier of the United States, she shall be regarded and held liable to be treated as a woman of the town plying her avocation.”

At home and abroad, the reaction was uproarious. Beauregard made Butler's order the subject of one of his own: ”Men of the South! shall our mothers, our wives, our daughters and our sisters be thus outraged by the ruffianly soldiers of the North, to whom is given the right to treat, at their pleasure, the ladies of the South as common harlots? Arouse, friends, and drive back from our soil those infamous invaders of our homes and disturbers of our family ties!” Overseas, Lord Palmerston remarked: ”Any Englishman must blush to think that such an act has been committed by one belonging to the Anglo-Saxon race.” In Richmond, before the year was out, Davis branded Butler a felon, an outlaw, an enemy of mankind, and ordered that in the event of his capture ”the officer in command of the capturing force do cause him to be immediately executed by hanging.”

Southerners and their blushful friends abroad were not the only ones offended by the c.o.c.k-eyed general's zeal. Pro-Union men of the region he controlled found that they too came under his strictures, particularly in economic matters such as the seizure of cotton and the freezing of foreign funds, and they were equally vociferous in protest. But Lincoln had little use or sympathy for them. If these riders on the s.h.i.+p of state thought they were ”to touch neither a sail nor a pump, but to be merely pa.s.sengers-deadheads at that-to be carried snug and dry throughout the storm, and safely landed right side up,” they were mistaken. He gave them a midsummer warning that the voyage was about to get rougher.

”The true remedy,” he said, switching metaphors, ”does not lie in rounding the rough angles of the war, but in removing the necessity for war.” This they could accomplish, he replied to one protestant, by bringing Louisiana back into the Union. Otherwise, ”it is for them to consider whether it is probable I will surrender the government to save them from losing all. If they decline what I suggest, you scarcely need to ask what I will do. What would you do in my position? Would you drop the war where it is? Or would you prosecute it in future with elder-stalk squirts charged with rosewater? Would you deal lighter blows rather than heavier ones? Would you give up the contest, leaving any available means unapplied?” The questions were rhetorical, and he closed by answering them: ”I am in no boastful mood. I shall do no more than I can, and I shall do all I can, to save the government, which is my sworn duty as well as my personal inclination. I shall do nothing in malice. What I deal with is too vast for malicious dealing.”

Already he had sent an official observer, a Maryland senator, down to New Orleans to look into the situation. But when the senator reported that there was indeed much harshness and irregularity (Butler's brother was getting rich on confiscated cotton, and the general himself had been given the nickname ”Spoons,” implying considerable deftness in the execution of his duties) as well as much disturbance of the master-slave relations.h.i.+p by the enlistment of Negroes in labor battalions, Lincoln was even more forthright in his statement of conditions and intentions: ”The people of Louisiana-all intelligent people everywhere-know full well that I never had a wish to touch the foundations of their society or any right of theirs. With perfect knowledge of this they forced a necessity upon me to send armies among them, and it is their own fault, not mine, that they are annoyed.” Here again the remedy was reentry into the Union. ”And might it not be well for them to consider whether they have not already had time enough to do this? If they can conceive of anything worse...within my power, would they not better be looking out for it?.... I am a patient man, always willing to forgive on the Christian terms of repentance. Still, I must save this Government if possible. What I cannot do, of course, I will not do; but it may as well be understood, once for all, that I shall not surrender this game leaving any available card unplayed.”

The unplayed card was emanc.i.p.ation. Mindful, so far, of his inaugural statement: ”I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the inst.i.tution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so,” Lincoln had resisted all efforts to persuade him to repudiate his words. He resisted mainly on practical grounds, considering the probable reaction in the border states; ”We should lose more than we should gain,” he told one Jacobin delegation. Not only had he refused to issue such a proclamation as they were urging on him, he had revoked three separate p.r.o.nouncements or proclamations issued by subordinates: one by Fremont, one by Cameron, and recently a third by Hunter in South Carolina. In the instance of the latter revocation, however, he had shown which way his mind was turning in mid-May: ”Whether it be competent for me, as Commander in Chief of the army and navy, to declare the slaves of any state or states free, and whether, at any time, in any case, it shall have become a necessity indispensable to the maintenance of the government to exercise such supposed power, are questions which, under my responsibility, I reserve to myself.”

This was putting a new face on the matter. What a President had no right or inclination to do in peacetime, Lincoln was saying, might become an indispensable necessity for a wartime Commander in Chief. Besides, he had done some ciphering back in March, and had come up with a simple dollars-and-cents solution to the problem. Figuring the cost of the war at two million dollars a day, and the cost of slaves at four hundred dollars a head, he had found the value of Delaware's 1798 slaves to be less than the cost of half a day of fighting. Extending his computations on this basis, he found that the total value of the 432,622 slaves in the District of Columbia and the four border states-Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri-amounted to less than the cost of three months of warfare. Accordingly, he laid these figures before Congress in support of a resolution proposing compensated emanc.i.p.ation. In early April it was adopted, despite the objections of abolitionists who considered it highly immoral to traffic thus in souls; but nothing practical came of it, because the slave-state legislatures would not avail themselves of the offer. Lincoln was saddened by this failure, and on revoking Hunter's proclamation the following month addressed a special plea to the people of the border region: ”I do not argue-I beseech you to make arguments for yourselves. You cannot, if you would, be blind to the signs of the times. I beg of you a calm and enlarged consideration of them, ranging, if it may be, far above personal and partisan politics. This proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the Pharisee. The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it? So much good has not been done, by one effort, in all past time, as in the providence of G.o.d it is now your high privilege to do. May the vast future not have to lament that you have neglected it.”

The signs of the times were indeed plain to read; they had in fact the glistening clarity of wet paint, most of them having been posted about the legislative landscape during the current session of Congress. In March, subscribing to the opinion that the Dred Scott decision did not const.i.tute law, the members fulfilled a Republican campaign promise by pa.s.sing an act prohibiting slavery in all present or future national territories. The following month, the ”peculiar inst.i.tution” was abolished in the District of Columbia, with compensation for the owners and provisions for colonization of the freedmen, which Lincoln considered the best practical solution to the problem. ”There has never been in my mind any question upon the subject,” he declared as he signed the bill, ”except the one of expediency, arising in view of all the circ.u.mstances.” In May, the United States and Britain agreed by treaty to cooperate in suppressing the slave trade: a diplomatic move that gave much pleasure to the Jacobins, whom Lincoln had been at pains to please whenever he could. For their sake he had proposed that the country give formal recognition to the Negro republics of Haiti and Liberia, which Congress gladly did, and back in February-despite the known leniency of his nature in such matters-he sustained the sentence of execution brought against Nathaniel Gordon of Portland, Maine, the first and only slave trader ever hanged in accordance with Federal law.

Gratifying as all this was, including the hanging, the Jacobins were by no means satisfied. They wanted more, much more, and they never stopped letting Lincoln know it. ”The pressure in this direction is still upon me and increasing,” he said on July 12 when he called twenty border-state congressmen into his office for a final appeal before next week's adjournment sent them scattering for their homes. He spoke of the continuing attempts by the seceded states to persuade their sister slave communities farther north to join them in revolt-attempts which, incidentally, if successful would deprive these representatives of their jobs. The pull was strong, Lincoln admitted, and he wanted these men to help him weaken it. ”You and I know what the lever of their power is. Break that lever before their faces and they can shake you no more forever.” Besides, he said, slavery was failing fast already. ”If the war continues long...the inst.i.tution in your states will be extinguished by mere friction and abrasion.... How much better for you and for your people to take the step which at once shortens the war and secures substantial compensation for that which is sure to be wholly lost in any other event.”

They heard him out, and then they shook their heads. The adopted resolution not only seemed to them a violation of State Rights, but they also questioned the const.i.tutional power of Congress to appropriate funds for such a purpose. What was more, they doubted the sincerity of their fellow congressmen; the offer, one of the callers said, ”was but the enunciation of a sentiment which could not or was not likely to be reduced to an actual tangible proposition.” If Congress really meant it, let the money be put in the President's hands, and then they would consider acceptance. Then too-though this objection went unspoken-the plan entailed payment in government bonds, and though slave property was admittedly precarious and declining fast in value, the national credit was declining even faster. In short, they wanted no part of the offer as things now stood. Respectfully they bowed and took their leave, and Lincoln was left saddened and alone.