emancipation policy he had driven a wedge between the factions of the
Republicans, so now he would drive a wedge into the organization of
the Democrats. It had two parts which had little to hold them together
except their rooted partisan habit.(5) One branch, soon to receive the
label "Copperhead," accepted the secession principle and sympathized
with the Confederacy. The other, while rejecting secession and
supporting the war, denounced the emancipation policy as usurped
authority, and felt personal hostility to Lincoln. It was the latter
faction that Lincoln still hoped to win over. Its most important member
was Horatio Seymour, who in the autumn of 1862 was elected governor of
New York. Lincoln decided to operate on him by one of those astounding
moves which to the selfless man seemed natural enough, by which the
ordinary politician was always hopelessly mystified. He called in
Thurlow Weed and authorized him to make this proposal: if Seymour would
bring his following into a composite Union party with no platform
but the vigorous prosecution of the war, Lincoln would pledge all his
influence to securing for Seymour the presidential nomination in 1864.
Weed delivered his message. Seymour was noncommittal and Lincoln had to
wait for his answer until the new Governor should show his hand by
his official acts. Meanwhile a new crisis had developed in the army.
Burnside's character appears to have been shattered by his defeat.
Previous to Fredericksburg, he had seemed to be a generous, high-minded
man. From Fredericksburg onward, he became more and more an impossible.
A reflection of McClellan in his earlier stage, he was somehow
transformed eventually into a reflection of vindictivism. His later
character began to appear in his first conference with the Committee
subsequent to his disaster. They visited him on the field and "his
conversation disarmed all criticism." This was because he struck their
own note to perfection. "Our soldiers," he said, "were not sufficiently
fired by resentment, and he exhorted me (Julian) if I could, to breathe
into our people at home the same spirit toward our enemies which
inspired them toward us."(6) What a transformation in McClellan's
disciple!
But the country was not won over so easily as the Committee. There was
loud and general disapproval and of course, the habitual question, "Who
next?" The publication by the Committee of its insinuation that once
more the stubborn President was the real culprit did not stem the tide.
Burnside himself made his case steadily worse. His judgment, such as
it was, had collapsed. He seemed to be stubbornly bent on a virtual
repetition of his previous folly. Lincoln felt it necessary to command
him to make no forward move without consulting the President.(7)
Burnside's subordinates freely criticized their commander. General
Hooker was the most outspoken. It was known that a movement was
afoot--an intrigue, if you will-to disgrace Burnside and elevate Hooker.
Chafing under criticism and restraint, Burnside completely lost his
sense of propriety. On the twenty-fourth of January, 1863, when Henry
W. Raymond, the powerful editor of the New York Times, was on a visit to
the camp, Burnside took him into his tent and read him an order removing
Hooker because of his unfitness "to hold a command in a cause where so
much moderation, forbearance, and unselfish patriotism were required."
Raymond, aghast, inquired what he would do if Hooker resisted, if he
raised his troops in mutiny? "He said he would Swing him before sundown
if he attempted such a thing."
Raymond, though more than half in sympathy with Burnside, felt that the
situation was startling. He hurried off to Washington. "I immediately,"
he writes, "called upon Secretary Chase and told him the whole story.
He was greatly surprised to hear such reports of Hooker, and said he
had looked upon him as the man best fitted to command the army of the
Potomac. But no man capable of so much and such unprincipled ambition
was fit for so great a trust, and he gave up all thought of him
henceforth. He wished me to go with him to his house and accompany him
and his daughter to the President's levee. I did so and found a great
crowd surrounding President Lincoln. I managed, however, to tell him
in brief terms that I had been with the army and that many things were
occurring there which he ought to know. I told him of the obstacles
thrown in Burnside's way by his subordinates and especially General
Hooker's habitual conversation. He put his hand on my shoulder and said
in my ear as if desirous of not being overheard, 'That is all true;
Hooker talks badly; but the trouble is, he is stronger with the country
today than any other man.' I ventured to ask how long he would retain
that strength if his real conduct and character should be understood.
'The country,' said he, 'would not believe it; they would say it was all
a lie.'"(8)
Whether Chase did what he said he would do and ceased to be Hooker's
advocate, may be questioned. Tradition preserves a deal between the
Secretary and the General--the Secretary to urge his advancement, the
General, if he reached his goal, to content himself with military honors
and to assist the Secretary in succeeding to the Presidency. Hooker
was a public favorite. The dashing, handsome figure of "Fighting Joe"
captivated the popular imagination. The terrible Committee were his
friends. Military men thought him full of promise. On the whole,
Lincoln, who saw the wisdom of following up his clash over the Cabinet
by a concession to the Jacobins, was willing to take his chances with
Hooker.
His intimate advisers were not of the same mind. They knew that there
was much talk on the theme of a possible dictator-not the constitutional
dictator of Lincoln and Stevens, but the old-fashioned dictator of
historical melodrama. Hooker was reported to have encouraged such talk.
All this greatly alarmed one of Lincoln's most devoted henchmen--Lamon,
Marshal of the District of Columbia, who regarded himself as personally
responsible for Lincoln's safety. "In conversation with Mr. Lincoln,"
says Lamon, "one night about the time General Burnside was relieved, I
was urging upon him the necessity of looking well to the fact that there
was a scheme on foot to depose him, and to appoint a military dictator
in his stead. He laughed and said, 'I think, for a man of accredited
courage, you are the most panicky person I ever knew; you can see more
dangers to me than all the other friends I have. You are all the time
exercised about somebody taking my life; murdering me; and now you
have discovered a new danger; now you think the people of this great
government are likely to turn me out of office. I do not fear this from
the people any more than I fear assassination from an individual. Now to
show my appreciation of what my French friends would call a coup d'etat,
let me read you a letter I have written to General Hooker whom I have
just appointed to the command of the army of the Potomac."(9)
Few letters of Lincoln's are better known, few reveal more exactly the
tone of his final period, than the remarkable communication he addressed
to Hooker two days after that whispered talk with Raymond at the White
House levee:
"General, I have placed you at the head of the army of the Potomac. Of
course I have done this upon what appear to me to be sufficient reasons,
and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in
regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a
brave and skilful soldier, which of course I like. I also believe you do
not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have
confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not an indispensable
quality. You are ambitious, which within reasonable bounds, does good
rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside's command
of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition and thwarted him as
much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country and to
a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard in such a
way as to believe it, of your recently Saying that both the army and
the government needed a dictator. Of course it was not for this, but in
spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals
who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask you is military
success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The government will support
you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than
it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit
which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their
commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you.
I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor
Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army
while such a Spirit prevails in it; and now beware of rashness. Beware
of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give
us victories."(10)
The appointment of Hooker had the effect of quieting the Committee for
the time. Lincoln turned again to his political scheme, but not until
he had made another military appointment from which at the moment no
one could have guessed that trouble would ever come. He gave to
Burnside what might be called the sinecure position of Commander of the
Department of the Ohio with headquarters at Cincinnati.(11)
During the early part of 1863 Lincoln's political scheme received a
serious blow. Seymour ranked himself as an irreconcilable enemy of the
Administration. The anti-Lincoln Republicans struck at the President in
roundabout ways. Heralding a new attack, the best man on the Committee,
Julian, ironically urged his associates in Congress to "rescue" the
President from his false friends--those mere Unionists who were luring
him away from the party that had elected him, enticing him into a vague
new party that should include "Democrats." It was said that there were
only two Lincoln men in the House.(12) Greeley was coquetting
with Rosecrans, trying to induce him to come forward as Republican
presidential "timber." The Committee in April published an elaborate
report which portrayed the army of the Potomac as an army of heroes
tragically afflicted in the past by the incompetence of their
commanders. The Democrats continued their abuse of the dictator.
It was a moment of strained pause, everybody waiting upon circumstance.
And in Washington, every eye was turned Southward. How soon would they
glimpse the first messenger from that glorious victory which "Fighting
Joe" had promised them. "The enemy is in my power," said he, "and God
Almighty can not deprive me of them."(13)
Something of the difference between Hooker and Lincoln, between all the
Vindictives and Lincoln, may be felt by turning from these ribald words
to that Fast Day Proclamation which this strange statesman issued to his
people, that anxious spring,--that moment of trance as it were--when all
things seemed to tremble toward the last judgment:
"And whereas, it is the duty of nations as well as of men to own their
dependence upon the overruling power of God; to confess their sins and
transgressions in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine
repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime
truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that
those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord:
"And insomuch as we know that by His divine law nations, like
individuals, are subjected to punishments and chastisements in this
world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war which
now desolates the land may be but a punishment inflicted upon us for our
presumptuous sins, to the needful end of our national reformation as a
whole people. We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties
of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and
prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other
nation has ever grown; but we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the
gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched
and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness
of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior
wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we
have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and
preserving grace, too proud to pray to God that made us:
"It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to
confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.
"All this being done in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in
the hope authorized by the divine teachings, that the united cry of the
nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings no less than
the pardon of our national sins and the restoration of our now divided
and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and
peace."(14)
Alas, for such men as Hooker! What seemed to him in his vainglory beyond
the reach of Omnipotence, was accomplished by Lee and Jackson and
a Confederate army at Chancellorsville. Profound gloom fell upon
Washington. Welles heard the terrible news from Sumner who came into his
room "and raising both hands exclaimed, 'Lost, lost, all is lost!'"(15)
The aftermath of Manassas was repeated. In the case of Pope, no effort
had been spared to save the friend of the Committee, to find some one
else on whom to load his incompetence. The course was now repeated.
Again, the Jacobins raised the cry, "We are betrayed!" Again, the stir
to injure the President. Very strange are the ironies of history! At
this critical moment, Lincoln's amiable mistake in sending Burnside to
Cincinnati demanded expiation. Along with the definite news of Hooker's
overthrow, came the news that Burnside had seized the Copperhead leader,
Vallandigham, and had cast him into prison; that a hubbub had ensued;
that, as the saying goes, the woods were burning in Ohio.
Vallandigham's offense was a public speech of which no accurate report
survives. However, the fragments recorded by "plain clothes" men
in Burnside's employ, when set in the perspective of Vallandigham's
thinking as displayed in Congress, make its tenor plain enough. It was
an out-and-out Copperhead harangue. If he was to be treated as
hundreds of others had been, the case against him was plain. But the
Administration's policy toward agitators had gradually changed. There
was not the same fear of them that had existed two years before. Now the
tendency of the Administration was to ignore them.
The Cabinet regretted what Burnside had done. Nevertheless, the
Ministers felt that it would not do to repudiate him. Lincoln took
that view. He wrote to Burnside deploring his action and sustaining his
authority.(16) And then, as a sort of grim practical joke, he commuted
Vallandigham's sentence from imprisonment to banishment. The agitator
was sent across the lines into the Confederacy.
Burnside had effectually played the marplot. Very little chance now of
an understanding between Lincoln and either wing of the Democrats. The
opportunity to make capital out of the war powers was quite too good to
be lost! Vallandigham was nominated for governor by the Ohio Democrats.
In all parts of the country Democratic committees resolved in furious
protest against the dictator. And yet, on the whole, perhaps, the
incident played into Lincoln's hands. At least, it silenced the
Jacobins. With the Democrats ringing the changes on the former doctrine
of the supple politicians, how certain that their only course for the
moment was to lie low. A time came, to be sure, when they thought it
safe to resume their own creed; but that was not yet.
The hubbub over Vallandigham called forth two letters addressed to
protesting committees, that have their place among Lincoln's most
important statements of political science. His argument is based on the
proposition which Browning developed a year before. The core of it is:
"You ask in substance whether I really claim that I may override all
guaranteed rights of individuals on the plea of conserving the public
safety, whenever I may choose to say the public safety requires it.
This question, divested of the phraseology calculated to represent me
as struggling for an arbitrary personal prerogative, is either simply a
question who shall decide, or an affirmation that no one shall decide,
what the public safety does require in cases of rebellion or invasion.
"The Constitution contemplates the question as likely to occur for
decision, but it does not expressly declare who is to decide it. By
necessary implication, when rebellion or invasion comes, the decision
is to be made from time to time; and I think the man whom, for the time,
the people have, under the Constitution, made the Commander-in-chief
of their army and navy, is the man who holds the power and bears the
responsibility of making it. If he uses the power justly, the same
people will probably justify him; if he abuses it, he is in their hands
to be dealt with by all the modes they have reserved to themselves in
the Constitution."(17)
Browning's argument over again-the President can be brought to book by
a plebiscite, while Congress can not. But Lincoln did not rest, as
Browning did, on mere argument. The old-time jury lawyer revived. He was
doing more than arguing a theorem of political science. He was on trial
before the people, the great mass, which he understood so well. He must
reach their imaginations and touch their hearts.
"Mr. Vallandigham avows his hostility to the war on the part of the
Union, and his arrest was made because he was laboring with some effect,
to prevent the raising of troops, to encourage desertions from the
army, and to leave the rebellion without an adequate military force to
sup-press it. He was not arrested because he was damaging the political
prospects of the Administration or the personal interests of the
Commanding General, but because he was damaging the army, upon the
existence and vigor of which the life of the nation depends. He was
warring upon the military, and this gave the military constitutional
jurisdiction to lay hands upon him.
"I understand the meeting whose resolutions I am considering, to be in
favor of suppressing the rebellion by military force-by armies. Long
experience has shown that armies can not be maintained unless desertion
shall be punished by the severe penalty of death. The case requires, and
the Law and the Constitution sanction this punishment. Must I shoot a
simple-minded soldier boy who deserts while I must not touch a hair of a
wily agitator who induces him to desert?"(18)
Again, the ironical situation of the previous December; the wrathful
Jacobins, the most dangerous because the most sincere enemies of the
presidential dictatorship, silent, trapped, biding their time. But the
situation had for them a distinct consolation. A hundred to one it had
killed the hope of a Lincoln-Democratic alliance.
However, the President would not give up the Democrats without one last
attempt to get round the Little Men. Again, he could think of no mode
of negotiation except the one he had vainly attempted with Seymour.
As earnest of his own good faith, he would once more renounce his own
prospect of a second term. But since Seymour had failed him, who was
there that could serve his purpose? The popularity of McClellan among
those Democrats who were not Copperheads had grown with his misfortunes.
There had been a wide demand for his restoration after Fredericksburg,
and again after Chancellorsville. Lincoln justified his reputation for
political insight by concluding that McClellan, among the Democrats, was
the coming man. Again Weed was called in. Again he became an ambassador
of renunciation. Apparently he carried a message to the effect that
if McClellan would join forces with the Administration, Lincoln would
support him for president a year later. But McClellan was too inveterate
a partisan. Perhaps he thought that the future was his anyway.(19)
And so Lincoln's persistent attempt to win over the Democrats came to
an end. The final sealing of their antagonism was effected at a great
Democratic rally in New York on the Fourth of July. The day previous,
a manifesto had been circulated through the city beginning, "Freemen,
awake! In everything, and in most stupendous proportion, is this
Administration abominable!"(20) Seymour reaffirmed his position of
out-and-out partisan hostility to the Administration. Vallandigham's
colleague, Pendleton of Ohio, formulated the Democratic doctrine: that
the Constitution was being violated by the President's assumption of
war powers. His cry was, "The Constitution as it is and the Union as
it was." He thundered that "Congress can not, and no one else shall,
interfere with free speech." The question was not whether we were to
have peace or war, but whether or not we were to have free government;
"if it be necessary to violate the Constitution in order to carry on the
war, the war ought instantly to be stopped."(21)
Lincoln's political program had ended apparently in a wreck. But Fortune
had not entirely deserted him. Hooker in a fit of irritation had offered
his resignation. Lincoln had accepted it. Under a new commander, the
army of the Potomac had moved against Lee. The orators at the Fourth of
July meeting had read in the papers that same day Lincoln's announcement
of the victory at Gettysburg.(22) Almost coincident with that
announcement was the surrender of Vicksburg. Difficult as was the
political problem ahead of him, the problem of finding some other
plan for unifying his support without participating in a Vindictive
Coalition, Lincoln's mood was cheerful. On the seventh of July he was
serenaded. Serenades for the President were a feature of war-time in
Washington, and Lincoln utilized the occasions to talk informally to
the country. His remarks on the seventh were not distinctive, except
for their tone, quietly, joyfully confident. His serene mood displayed
itself a week later in a note to Grant which is oddly characteristic.
Who else would have had the impulse to make this quaint little
confession? But what, for a general who could read between the lines,
could have been more delightful?(23)
"My dear General: I do not remember that you and I ever met personally.
I write this now as a grateful acknowledgment for the almost inestimable
service you have done the country. I wish to say a word further. When
you first reached the vicinity of Vicksburg, I thought you should do
what you finally did-march the troops across the neck, run the batteries
with the transports, and thus go below; and I never had any faith
except a general hope that you knew better than I, that the Yazoo Pass
expedition and the like could succeed. When you got below and took Port
Gibson, Grand Gulf and the vicinity, I thought you should go down the
river and join General Banks, and when you turned Northward, east of the
Big Black, I feared it was a mistake. I now wish to make the personal
acknowledgment that you were right and I was wrong.
"Very truly,
"A. LINCOLN."
XXVII. THE TRIBUNE OF THE PEOPLE
Between March and December, 1863, Congress was not in session. Its
members were busy "taking the sense of the country" as they would have
said: "putting their ears to the ground," as other people would say.
A startling tale the ground told them. It was nothing less than that
Lincoln was the popular hero; that the people believed in him; that the
politicians would do well to shape their ways accordingly. When they
reassembled, they were in a sullen, disappointed frame of mind. They
would have liked to ignore the ground's mandate; but being politicians,
they dared not.
What an ironical turn of events! Lincoln's well-laid plan for a
coalition of Moderates and Democrats had come to nothing. Logically,
he ought now to be at the mercy of the Republican leaders. But instead,
those leaders were beginning to be afraid of him, were perceiving that
he had power whereof they had not dreamed. Like Saul the son of Kish,
who had set out to find his father's asses, he had found instead a
kingdom. How had he done it?
On a grand scale, it was the same sort of victory that had made him
a power, so long before, on the little stage at Springfield. It was
personal politics. His character had saved him. A multitude who saw
nothing in the fine drawn constitutional issue of the war powers,
who sensed the war in the most simple and elementary way, had formed,
somehow, a compelling and stimulating idea of the President. They were
satisfied that "Old Abe," or "Father Abraham," was the man for them.
When, after one of his numerous calls for fresh troops, their hearts
went out to him, a new song sprang to life, a ringing, vigorous, and yet
a touching song with the refrain, "We're coming, Father Abraham, three
hundred thousand more."
But how has he done it, asked the bewildered politicians, one of
another. How had he created this personal confidence? They, Wade,
Chandler, Stevens, Davis, could not do it; why could he?