chiefly from the Abolitionists. Somehow, in the previous spring, they
had got it into their heads that at heart he was one of them, that he
waited only for a victory to declare the war a crusade of abolition.(8)
When the crisis passed and a Democrat was put at the head of the army,
while Fremont was left in the relative obscurity of St. Louis, Abolition
bitterness became voluble. The Crittenden Resolution was scoffed at as
an "ill-timed revival of the policy of conciliation." Threats against
the Administration revived, taking the old form of demands for a wholly
new Cabinet The keener-sighted Abolitionists had been alarmed by the
first message, by what seemed to them its ominous silence as to slavery.
Late in July, Emerson said in conversation, "If the Union is incapable
of securing universal freedom, its disruption were as the breaking up of
a frog-pond."(9) An outcry was raised because Federal generals did not
declare free all the slaves who in any way came into their hands.
The Abolitionists found no solace in the First Confiscation Act which
provided that an owner should lose his claim to a slave, had the slave
been used to assist the Confederate government. They were enraged by an
order, early in August, informing generals that it was the President's
desire "that all existing rights in all the States be fully respected
and maintained; in cases of fugitives from the loyal Slave States, the
enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law by the ordinary forms of judicial
proceedings must be respected by the military authorities; in
the disloyal States the Confiscation Act of Congress must be your
guide."(10) Especially, the Abolitionists were angered because of
Lincoln's care for the forms of law in those Slave States that had not
seceded. They vented their bitterness in a famous sneer--"The President
would like to have God on his side, but he must have Kentucky."
A new temper was forming throughout the land. It was not merely the old
Abolitionism. It was a blend of all those elements of violent feeling
which war inevitably releases; it was the concentration of all these
elements on the issue of Abolition as upon a terrible weapon; it was the
resurrection of that primitive blood-lust which lies dormant in every
peaceful nation like a sleeping beast. This dreadful power rose out
of its sleep and confronted, menacing, the statesman who of all our
statesmen was most keenly aware of its evil, most determined to put it
under or to perish in the attempt With its appearance, the deepest of
all the issues involved, according to Lincoln's way of thinking, was
brought to a head. Was the Republic to issue from the war a worthy or
an unworthy nation? That was pretty definitely a question of whether
Abraham Lincoln or, say, Zachary Chandler, was to control its policy.
A vain, weak man precipitated the inevitable struggle between these two.
Fremont had been flattered to the skies. He conceived himself a genius.
He was persuaded that the party of the new temper, the men who may
fairly be called the Vindictives, were lords of the ascendent. He
mistook their volubility for the voice of the nation. He determined to
defy Lincoln. He issued a proclamation freeing the slaves of all who
had "taken an active part" with the enemies of the United States in the
field. He set up a "bureau of abolition."
Lincoln first heard of Fremont's proclamation through the newspapers.
His instant action was taken in his own extraordinarily gentle way. "I
think there is great danger," he wrote, "that the closing paragraph (of
Fremont's proclamation) in relation to the confiscation of property and
the liberating of slaves of traitorous owners, will alarm our Southern
Union friends and turn them against us; perhaps ruin our rather fair
prospect for Kentucky. Allow me, therefore, to ask that you will, as
of your own motion, modify that paragraph so as to conform" to the
Confiscation Act. He added, "This letter is written in the Spirit of
caution, not of censure."(11)
Fremont was not the man to understand instruction of this sort. He would
make no compromise with the President. If Lincoln wished to go over
his head and rescind his order let him do so-and take the consequences.
Lincoln quietly did so. His battle with the Vindictives was on. For
a moment it seemed as if he had destroyed his cause. So loud was the
outcry of the voluble people, that any one might have been excused
momentarily for thinking that all the North had risen against him. Great
meetings of protest were held. Eminent men--even such fine natures as
Bryant--condemned his course. In the wake of the incident, when it was
impossible to say how significant the outcry really was, Chandler,
who was staunch for Fremont, began his active interference with the
management of the army. McClellan had insisted on plenty of time
in which to drill the new three-year recruits who were pouring into
Washington. He did not propose to repeat the experience of General
McDowell. On the other hand, Chandler was bent on forcing him into
action. He, Wade and Trumbull combined, attempting to bring things to
pass in a way to suit themselves and their faction. To these men and
their followers, clever young Hay gave the apt name of "The Jacobin
Club."
They began their campaign by their second visit to the army. Wade was
their chief spokesman. He urged McClellan to advance at once; to risk
an unsuccessful battle rather than continue to stand still; the country
wanted something done; a defeat could easily be repaired by the swarming
recruits.(12)
This callous attitude got no response from the Commanding General. The
three Senators turned upon Lincoln. "This evening," writes Hay in
his diary on October twenty-sixth, "the Jacobin Club represented by
Trumbull, Chandler and Wade, came out to worry the Administration into
a battle. The agitation of the summer is to be renewed. The President
defended McClellan's deliberateness. The next night we went over
to Seward's and found Chandler and Wade there." They repeated their
reckless talk; a battle must be fought; defeat would be no worse than
delay; "and a great deal more trash."
But Lincoln was not to be moved. He and Hay called upon McClellan. The
President deprecated this new manifestation of popular impatience, but
said it was a reality and should be taken into account. "At the same
time, General," said he, "you must not fight until you are ready."(13)
At this moment of extreme tension occurred the famous incident of
the seizure of the Confederate envoys, Mason and Slidell, who were
passengers on the British merchant ship, the Trent. These men had run
the blockade which had now drawn its strangling line along the whole
coast of the Confederacy; they had boarded the Trent at Havana, and
under the law of nations were safe from capture. But Captain Wilkes of
the United States Navy, more zealous than discreet, overhauled the Trent
and took off the two Confederates. Every thoughtless Northerner went
wild with joy. At last the government had done something. Even the
Secretary of the Navy so far forgot himself as to telegraph to Wilkes
"Congratulate you on the great public service you have rendered in the
capture of the rebel emissaries."(14) Chandler promptly applauded the
seizure and when it was suggested that perhaps the envoys should
be released he at once arrayed himself in opposition.(15) With the
truculent Jacobins ready to close battle should the government do its
duty, with the country still echoing to cheers for Fremont and hisses
for the President, with nothing to his credit in the way of military
success, Lincoln faced a crisis. He was carried through the crisis by
two strong men. Sumner, head and front of Abolitionism but also a
great lawyer, came at once to his assistance. And what could a thinking
Abolitionist say after that! Seward skilfully saved the face of the
government by his management of the negotiation. The envoys were
released and sent to England.
It was the only thing to do, but Chandler and all his sort had opposed
it. The Abolition fury against the government was at fever heat. Wendell
Phillips in a speech at New York denounced the Administration as having
no definite purpose in the war, and was interrupted by frantic cheers
for Fremont. McClellan, patiently drilling his army, was, in the eyes
of the Jacobins, doing nothing. Congress had assembled. There was every
sign that troubled waters lay just ahead.
XIX. THE JACOBINS BECOME INQUISITORS
The temper animating Hay's "Jacobins" formed a new and really formidable
danger which menaced Lincoln at the close of 1861. But had he been
anything of an opportunist, it would have offered him an unrivaled
opportunity. For a leader who sought personal power, this raging
savagery, with its triple alliance of an organized political machine, a
devoted fanaticism, and the war fury, was a chance in ten thousand. It
led to his door the steed of militarism, shod and bridled, champing
upon the bit, and invited him to leap into the saddle. Ten words of
acquiescence in the program of the Jacobins, and the dreaded role of the
man on horseback was his to command.
The fallacy that politics are primarily intellectual decisions upon
stated issues, the going forth of the popular mind to decide between
programs presented to it by circumstances, receives a brilliant
refutation in the course of the powerful minority that was concentrating
around the three great "Jacobins." The subjective side of politics, also
the temperamental side, here found expression. Statecraft is an art;
creative statesmen are like other artists. Just as the painter or the
poet, seizing upon old subjects, uses them as outlets for his particular
temper, his particular emotion, and as the temper, the emotion are what
counts in his work, so with statesmen, with Lincoln on the one hand,
with Chandler at the opposite extreme.
The Jacobins stood first of all for the sudden reaction of bold fierce
natures from a long political repression. They had fought their way to
leadership as captains of an opposition. They were artists who had been
denied an opportunity of expression. By a sudden turn of fortune, it had
seemed to come within their grasp. Temperamentally they were fighters.
Battle for them was an end in itself. The thought of Conquest sang to
them like the morning stars. Had they been literary men, their favorite
poetry would have been the sacking of Troy town. Furthermore, they were
intensely provincial. Undoubted as was their courage, they had also the
valor of ignorance. They had the provincial's disdain for the other
side of the horizon, his unbounded confidence in his ability to whip all
creation. Chandler, scornfully brushing aside a possible foreign war,
typified their mood.
And in quiet veto of all their hopes rose against them the apparently
easy-going, the smiling, story-telling, unrevengeful, new man at
the White House. It is not to be wondered that they spent the summer
laboring to build up a party against him, that they turned eagerly to
the new session of Congress, hoping to consolidate a faction opposed to
Lincoln.
His second message (1), though without a word of obvious defiance, set
him squarely against them on all their vital contentions. The winter of
1861-1862 is the strangest period of Lincoln's career. Although the two
phases of him, the outer and the inner, were, in point of fact, moving
rapidly toward their point of fusion, apparently they were further away
than ever before. Outwardly, his most conspicuous vacillations were in
this winter and in the following spring. Never before or after did he
allow himself to be overshadowed so darkly by his advisers in all the
concerns of action. In amazing contrast, in all the concerns of thought,
he was never more entirely himself. The second message, prepared when
the country rang with what seemed to be a general frenzy against him,
did not give ground one inch. This was all the more notable because his
Secretary of War had tried to force his hand. Cameron had the reputation
of being about the most astute politician in America. Few people
attributed to him the embarrassment of principles. And Cameron, in the
late autumn, after closely observing the drift of things, determined
that Fremont had hit it off correctly, that the crafty thing to do was
to come out for Abolition as a war policy. In a word, he decided to go
over to the Jacobins. He put into his annual report a recommendation of
Chandler's plan for organizing an army of freed slaves and sending it
against the Confederacy. Advanced copies of this report had been sent
to the press before Lincoln knew of it. He peremptorily ordered their
recall, and the exclusion of this suggestion from the text of the
report.(2)
On the heels of this refusal to concede to Chandler one of his cherished
schemes, the second message was sent to Congress. The watchful and
exasperated Jacobins found abundant offense in its omissions. On the
whole great subject of possible emancipation it was blankly silent. The
nearest it came to this subject was one suggestion which applied only
to those captured slaves who had been forfeited by the disloyal owners
through being employed to assist the Confederate government Lincoln
advised that after receiving their freedom they be sent out of the
country and colonized "at some place, or places, in a climate congenial
to them." Beyond this there was nothing bearing on the slavery question
except the admonition--so unsatisfactory to Chandler and all
his sort--that while "the Union must be preserved, and hence all
indispensable means must be employed," Congress should "not be in haste
to determine that radical and extreme measures, which may reach the
loyal as well as the disloyal, are indispensable."
Lincoln was entirely clear in his own mind that there was but one way
to head off the passion of destruction that was rioting in the Jacobin
temper. "In considering the policy to be adopted in suppressing the
insurrection, I have been anxious and careful that the inevitable
conflict for this purpose shall not degenerate into a violent and
remorseless revolutionary struggle. I have, therefore, in every case,
thought it proper to keep the integrity of the Union prominent as the
primary object of the contest on our part, leaving all questions which
are not of vital military importance to the more deliberate action of
the Legislature." He persisted in regarding the war as an insurrection
of the "disloyal portion of the American people," not as an external
struggle between the North and the South.
Finally, the culmination of the message was a long elaborate argument
upon the significance of the war to the working classes. His aim was
to show that the whole trend of the Confederate movement was toward a
conclusion which would "place capital on an equal footing with, if not
above, labor, in the structure of government." Thus, as so often before,
he insisted on his own view of the significance in American politics of
all issues involving slavery--their bearing on the condition of the free
laborer. In a very striking passage, often overlooked, he ranked himself
once more, as first of all, a statesman of "the people," in the limited
class sense of the term. "Labor is prior to and independent of capital.
Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor
had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves
much the higher consideration." But so far is he from any revolutionary
purpose, that he adds immediately, "Capital has its rights which are as
worthy of protection as any other rights." His crowning vision is not
communism. His ideal world is one of universal opportunity, with labor
freed of every hindrance, with all its deserving members acquiring more
and more of the benefits of property.
Such a message had no consolation for Chandler, Wade, or, as he then
was, for Trumbull. They looked about for a way to retaliate. And now two
things became plain. That "agitation of the summer" to which Hay refers,
had borne fruit, but not enough fruit. Many members of Congress who had
been swept along by the President's policy in July had been won over in
the reaction against him and were ripe for manipulation; but it was not
yet certain that they held the balance of power in Congress. To lock
horns with the Administration, in December, would have been so rash a
move that even such bold men as Chandler and Wade avoided it. Instead,
they devised an astute plan of campaign. Trumbull was Chairman of the
Senate Judiciary Committee, and in that important position would
bide his time to bring pressure to bear on the President through
his influence upon legislation. Wade and Chandler would go in for
propaganda. But they would do so in disguise. What more natural than
that Congress should take an active interest in the army, should wish
to do all in its power to "assist" the President in rendering the
army-efficient. For that purpose it was proposed to establish a joint
committee of the two Houses having no function but to look into military
needs and report to Congress. The proposal was at once accepted and its
crafty backers secured a committee dominated entirely by themselves.
Chandler was a member; Wade became Chairman.(3) This Committee on the
Conduct of the War became at once an inquisition. Though armed with no
weapon but publicity, its close connection with congressional intrigue,
its hostility to the President, the dramatic effect of any revelations
it chose to make or any charges it chose to bring, clothed it indirectly
with immense power. Its inner purpose may be stated in the words of
one of its members, "A more vigorous prosecution of the war and less
tenderness toward slavery."(4) Its mode of procedure was in constant
interrogation of generals, in frequent advice to the President, and on
occasion in threatening to rouse Congress against him.(5) A session of
the Committee was likely to be followed by a call on the President of
either Chandler or Wade.
The Committee began immediately summoning generals before it to explain
what the army was doing. And every general was made to understand
that what the Committee wanted, what Congress wanted, what the country
wanted, was an advance--"something doing" as soon as possible.
And now appeared another characteristic of the mood of these
furious men. They had become suspicious, honestly suspicious. This
suspiciousness grew with their power and was rendered frantic by
being crossed. Whoever disagreed with them was instantly an object of
distrust; any plan that contradicted their views was at once an evidence
of treason.
The earliest display of this eagerness to see traitors in every bush
concerned a skirmish that took place at Ball's Bluff in Virginia. It
was badly managed and the Federal loss, proportionately, was large. The
officer held responsible was General Stone. Unfortunately for him,
he was particularly obnoxious to the Abolitionists; he had returned
fugitive slaves; and when objection was made by such powerful
Abolitionists as Governor Andrew of Massachusetts, Stone gave reign to a
sharp tongue. In the early days of the session, Roscoe Conkling told
the story of Ball's Bluff for the benefit of Congress in a brilliant,
harrowing speech. In a flash the rumor spread that the dead at
Ball's Bluff were killed by design, that Stone was a traitor,
that--perhaps!--who could say?--there were bigger traitors higher up.
Stone was summoned before the Inquisition.(6)
While Stone was on the rack, metaphorically, while the Committee was
showing him every brutality in its power, refusing to acquaint him with
the evidence against him, intimating that they were able to convict him
of treason, between the fifth and the eleventh of January a crisis arose
in the War Office. Cameron had failed to ingratiate himself with the
rising powers. Old political enemies in Congress were implacable.
Scandals in his Department gave rise to sweeping charges of peculation.
There is scarcely another moment when Lincoln's power was so precarious.
In one respect, in their impatience, the Committee reflected faithfully
the country at large. And by the irony of fate McClellan at this crucial
hour, had fallen ill. After waiting for his recovery during several
weeks, Lincoln ventured with much hesitation to call a conference of
generals.(7) They were sitting during the Stone investigation, producing
no result except a distraction in councils, devising plans that were
thrown over the moment the Commanding General arose from his bed. A
vote in Congress a few days previous had amounted to a censure of the
Administration. It was taken upon the Crittenden Resolution which had
been introduced a second time. Of those who had voted for it in July,
so many now abandoned the Administration that this resolution, the clear
embodiment of Lincoln's policy, was laid on the table, seventy-one
to sixty-five.(8) Lincoln's hope for an all-parties government was
receiving little encouragement The Democrats were breaking into
factions, while the control of their party organization was falling into
the hands of a group of inferior politicians who were content to "play
politics" in the most unscrupulous fashion. Both the Secretary of War
and the Secretary of State had authorized arbitrary arrests. Men in New
York and New England had been thrown into prison. The privilege of the
writ of habeas corpus had been denied them on the mere belief of the
government that they were conspiring with its enemies. Because of these
arrests, sharp criticism was being aimed at the Administration both
within and without Congress.
For all these reasons, the government at Washington appeared to be
tottering. Desperate remedies seemed imperative. Lincoln decided to make
every concession he could make without letting go his central purpose.
First, he threw over Cameron; he compelled him to resign though he saved
his face by appointing him minister to Russia. But who was to take his
place? At this critical moment, the choice of a new Secretary of War
was a political problem of exacting difficulty. Just why Lincoln chose
a sullen, dictatorial lawyer whose experience in no way prepared him for
the office, has never been disclosed. Two facts appear to explain it.
Edwin M. Stanton was temperamentally just the man to become a good
brother to Chandler and Wade. Both of them urged him upon Lincoln
as successor to Cameron.(9) Furthermore, Stanton hitherto had been a
Democrat. His services in Buchanan's Cabinet as Attorney-General had
made him a national figure. Who else linked the Democrats and the
Jacobins?
However, for almost any one but Lincoln, there was an objection that it
would have been hard to overcome. No one has ever charged Stanton with
politeness. A gloomy excitable man, of uncertain health, temperamentally
an over-worker, chronically apprehensive, utterly without the saving
grace of humor, he was capable of insufferable rudeness--one reason,
perhaps, why Chandler liked him. He and Lincoln had met but once. As
associate council in a case at Cincinnati, three years before, Lincoln
had been treated so contemptuously by Stanton that he had returned home
in pained humiliation. Since his inauguration, Stanton had been one of
his most vituperative critics. Was this insolent scold to be invited
into the Cabinet? Had not Lincoln at this juncture been in the full tide
of selflessness, surely some compromise would have been made with the
Committee, a secretary found less offensive personally to the President.
Lincoln disregarded the personal consideration. The candidate of
Chandler and Wade became secretary. It was the beginning of an intimate
alliance between the Committee and the War Office. Lincoln had laid up
for himself much trouble that he did not foresee.
The day the new Secretary took office, he received from the Committee a
report upon General Stone:(10) Subsequently, in the Senate, Wade denied
that the Committee had advised the arrest of Stone.(11) Doubtless the
statement was technically correct. Nevertheless, there can be no doubt
that the inquisitors were wholly in sympathy with the Secretary when,
shortly afterward, Stone was seized upon Stanton's order, conveyed to a
fortress and imprisoned without trial.