east by the Alleghanies, north by the British dominions, west by the
Rocky Mountains, and south by the line along which the culture of
corn and cotton meets, and which includes part of Virginia, part
of Tennessee, all of Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin,
Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Territories of
Dakota, Nebraska, and part of Colorado, already has above ten millions
of people, and will have fifty millions within fifty years, if not
prevented by any political folly or mistake. It contains more than
one-third of the Country owned by the United States--certainly more than
one million square miles. Once half as populous as Massachusetts already
is, it would have more than seventy-five millions of people. A glance at
the map shows that, territorially speaking, it is the great body of
the republic. The other parts are but marginal borders to it, the
magnificent region sloping west from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific
being the deepest and also the richest in undeveloped resources. In the
production of provisions, grains, grasses, and all which proceed from
them, this great interior region is naturally one of the most important
in the world. Ascertain from the statistics the small proportion of the
region which has, as yet, been brought into cultivation, and also the
large and rapidly increasing amount of its products and we shall be
overwhelmed with the magnitude of the prospect presented; and yet,
this region has no seacoast, touches no ocean anywhere. As part of one
nation, its people now find, and may forever find, their way to Europe
by New York, to South America and Africa by New Orleans, and to Asia
by San Francisco. But separate our common country into two nations as
designed by the present rebellion, and every man of this great interior
region is thereby cut off from some one or more of these outlets-not,
perhaps, by a physical barrier, but by embarrassing and onerous trade
regulations.
"And this is true wherever a dividing or boundary line may be fixed.
Place it between the now free and slave country, or place it south of
Kentucky or north of Ohio, and still the truth remains that none south
of it can trade to any port or place north of it, and none north of it
can trade to any port or place south of it, except upon terms dictated
by a government foreign to them. These outlets east, west, and south,
are indispensable to the well-being of the people inhabiting and to
inhabit, this vast interior region. Which of the three may be the best
is no proper question. All are better than either; and all of right
belong to that people and to their Successors forever. True to
themselves, they will not ask where a line of separation shall be, but
will vow rather that there shall be no such line. Nor are the marginal
regions less interested in these communications to and through them to
the great outside world. They, too, and each of them, must have access
to this Egypt of the West without paying toll at the crossing of any
national boundary.
"Our national strife springs not from our permanent part, not from the
land we inhabit, not from our national homestead. There is no possible
severing of this but would multiply, and not mitigate, evils among
us. In all its adaptations and aptitudes it demands union and abhors
separation. In fact, it would ere long, force reunion, however much of
blood and treasure the separation might have cost."(30)
A third time he made a great literary stroke, gave utterance, in yet
another form, to his faith that the national idea was the one constant
issue for which he had asked his countrymen, and would continue to ask
them, to die. It was at Gettysburg, November 19, 1863, in consecration
of a military burying-ground, that he delivered, perhaps, his greatest
utterance:
"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate--we can not consecrate--we
can not hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who
struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or
detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here,
but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living,
rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be
here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these
honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they
gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve
that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation under God,
shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people,
for the people, by the people, shall not perish from the earth."(31)
XXVIII. APPARENT ASCENDENCY
Toward the end of 1863, Lowell prepared an essay on "The President's
Policy." It might almost be regarded as a manifesto of the
Intellectuals. That there was now a prospect of winning the war
"was mainly due to the good sense, the good humor, the sagacity, the
large-mindedness, and the unselfish honesty of the unknown man whom
a blind fortune, as it seemed, had lifted from the crowd to the most
dangerous and difficult eminence of modern times." When the essay
appeared in print, Lincoln was greatly pleased. He wrote to the editors
of the North American Review, "I am not the most impartial judge; yet
with due allowance for this, I venture to hope that the article entitled
'The President's Policy' will be of value to the country. I fear I
am not quite worthy of all which is therein so kindly said of me
personally."(1)
This very able defense of his previous course appeared as he was
announcing to the country his final course. He was now satisfied that
winning the war was but a question of time. What would come after
war was now in his mind the overshadowing matter. He knew that
the vindictive temper had lost nothing of its violence. Chandler's
savagery--his belief that the Southerners had forfeited the right to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness--was still the Vindictive
creed. 'Vae victi'! When war ended, they meant to set their feet on the
neck of the vanquished foe. Furthermore, Lincoln was not deceived as
to why they were lying low at this particular minute. Ears had been
flattened to the ground and they were heeding what the ground had said.
The President was too popular for them to risk attacking him without an
obvious issue. Their former issue had been securely appropriated by
the Democrats. Where could they find another? With consummate boldness
Lincoln presented them an issue. It was reconstruction. When Congress
met, he communicated the text of a "Proclamation of Amnesty and
Reconstruction."(2) This great document on which all his concluding
policy was based, offered "a full pardon" with "restoration of all
rights of property, except as to slaves, or in property cases, where
rights of third persons shall have intervened" upon subscribing to
an oath of allegiance which required only a full acceptance of the
authority of the United States. This amnesty was to be extended to all
persons except a few groups, such as officers above the rank of colonel
and former officials of the United States. The Proclamation also
provided that whenever, in any Seceded State, the new oath should be
taken by ten per cent. of all those who were qualified to vote under the
laws of 1860, these ten per cent. should be empowered to set up a new
State government.
From the Vindictive point of view, here was a startling announcement.
Lincoln had declared for a degree of magnanimity that was as a red rag
to a bull. He had also carried to its ultimate his assumption of war
powers. No request was made for congressional cooperation. The message
which the Proclamation accompanied was informative only.
By this time, the Vindictive Coalition of 1861 was gradually coming
together again. Or, more truly, perhaps, various of its elements were
fusing into a sort of descendant of the old coalition. The leaders
of the new Vindictive group were much the same as the leaders of the
earlier group. There was one conspicuous addition. During the next six
months, Henry Winter Davis held for a time the questionable distinction
of being Lincoln's most inveterate enemy. He was a member of the House.
In the House many young and headstrong politicians rallied about him.
The Democrats at times craftily followed his lead. Despite the older and
more astute Vindictives of the Senate, Chandler, Wade and the rest who
knew that their time had not come, Davis, with his ardent followers,
took up the President's challenge. Davis brought in a bill designed to
complete the reorganization of the old Vindictive Coalition. It appealed
to the enemies of presidential prerogative, to all those who wanted
the road to reconstruction made as hard as possible, and to the
Abolitionists. This bill, in so many words, transferred the whole matter
of reconstruction from the President to Congress; it required a majority
(instead of one-tenth) of all the male citizens of a Seceded State as the
basis of a new government; it exacted of this majority a pledge never
to pay any State debt contracted during the Confederacy, and also the
perpetual prohibition of slavery in their State constitution.
Davis got his bill through the House, but his allies in the Senate laid
it aside. They understood the country too well not to see that they
must wait for something to happen. If the President made any mistake,
if anything went wrong with the army--they remembered the spring of 1862,
McClellan's failure, and how Chandler followed it up. And at this moment
no man was chafing more angrily because of what the ground was saying,
no man was watching the President more keenly, than Chandler. History
is said to repeat itself, and all things are supposed to come to him who
waits. While Davis's bill was before the House, Lincoln accepted battle
with the Vindictives in a way that was entirely unostentatious, but that
burned his bridges. He pressed forward the organization of a new State
government in Louisiana under Federal auspices. He wrote to Michael
Hahn, the newly chosen governor of this somewhat fictitious State: "I
congratulate you on having fixed your name in history as the first Free
State governor of Louisiana."(3)
Meanwhile, the hotheads of the House again followed Davis's lead and
flung defiance in Lincoln's face. Napoleon, who had all along coquetted
alarmingly with the Confederates, had also pushed ahead with his
insolent conquest of Mexico. Lincoln and Seward, determined to have
but one war on their hands at a time, had skilfully evaded committing
themselves. The United States had neither protested against the action
of Napoleon, nor in any way admitted its propriety. Other men besides
the Vindictives were biding their time. But here the hotheads thought
they saw an opportunity. Davis brought in a resolution which amounted to
a censure of the Administration for not demanding the retirement of
the French from Mexico. This was one of those times when the
Democrats played politics and followed Davis. The motion was carried
unanimously.(4) It was so much of a sensation that the 'American
Minister at Paris, calling on the Imperial Minister of Foreign Affairs,
was met by the curt question, "Do you bring peace or war?"
But it was not in the power of the House to draw Lincoln's fire until
he chose to be drawn. He ignored its action. The Imperial Government was
informed that the acts of the House of Representatives were not the
acts of the President, and that in relation to France, if the President
should change his policy, the imperial Government would be duly in
formed.(5)
It was Lincoln's fate to see his policy once again at the mercy of his
Commanding General. That was his situation in the spring of 1862 when
everything hung on McClellan who failed him; again in the autumn of
the year when McClellan so narrowly saved him. The spring of 1864
paralleled, in this respect, that other spring two years earlier. To be
sure, Lincoln's position was now much stronger; he had a great personal
following on which he relied. But just how strong it was he did not
know. He was taking a great risk forcing a policy high-handed in
defiance of Congress, where all his bitterest enemies were entrenched,
glowering. If his General failed him now--
The man on whom this huge responsibility rested was Grant. Lincoln had
summoned him from the West and placed him at the head of all the
armies of the Republic. As to Halleck who had long since proved himself
perfectly useless, he was allowed to lapse into obscurity.
Grant has preserved in his Memoirs his first confidential talk with
Lincoln: "He told me he did not want to know what I proposed to do. But
he submitted a plan of campaign of his own that he wanted me to hear and
then do as I pleased about. He brought out a map of Virginia on which
he had evidently marked every position occupied by the Federal and
Confederate armies up to that time. He pointed out on the map two
streams which empty into the Potomac, and suggested that an army might
be moved on boats and landed between the mouths of those streams. We
would then have the Potomac to bring our supplies, and the tributaries
would protect our flanks while we moved out. I listened respectfully,
but did not suggest that the same streams would protect Lee's flanks
while he was shutting us up."(6)
Grant set out for the front in Virginia. Lincoln's parting words were
this note: "Not expecting to see you again before the spring campaign
opens, I wish to express in this way my entire satisfaction with
what you have done up to this time, so far as I understand it. The
particulars of your plans I neither know nor seek to know. You are
vigilant and self-reliant; and, pleased with this, I wish not to obtrude
any constraints or restraints upon you. While I am very anxious that any
great disaster or capture of our men in great numbers shall be avoided,
I know these points are less likely to escape your attention than they
would be mine. If there is anything wanting which is within my power
to give, do not fail to let me know it. And now, with a brave army and a
just cause, may God sustain you."(7)
XXIX. CATASTROPHE
If the politicians needed a definite warning, in addition to what the
ground was saying, it was given by an incident that centered upon Chase.
A few bold men whose sense of the crowd was not so acute as it might
have been, attempted to work up a Chase boom. At the instance of Senator
Pomeroy, a secret paper known to-day as the Pomeroy Circular, was
started on its travels. The Circular aimed to make Chase the Vindictive
candidate. Like all the other anti-Lincoln moves of the early part
of 1864, it was premature. The shrewd old Senators who were silently
marshaling the Vindictive forces, let it alone.
Chase's ambition was fully understood at the White House. During the
previous year, his irritable self-consciousness had led to quarrels
with the President, generally over patronage, and more than once he had
offered his resignation. On one occasion, Lincoln went to his house and
begged him to reconsider. Alone among the Cabinet, Chase had failed
to take the measure of Lincoln and still considered him a second-rate
person, much his inferior. He rated very high the services to his
country of the Secretary of the Treasury whom he considered the logical
successor to the Presidency.
Lincoln refused to see what Chase was after. "I have determined," he
told Hay, "to shut my eyes as far as possible to everything of the sort.
Mr. Chase makes a good secretary and I shall keep him where he is."(1)
In lighter vein, he said that Chase's presidential ambition was like a
"chin fly" pestering a horse; it led to his putting all the energy he
had into his work.(2)
When a copy of the Circular found its way to the White House, Lincoln
refused to read it.(3) Soon afterward it fell into the hands of an
unsympathetic or indiscreet editor and was printed. There was a hubbub.
Chase offered to resign. Lincoln wrote to him in reply:
"My knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy's letter having been made public came to
me only the day you wrote but I had, in Spite of myself, known of its
existence several days before. I have not yet read it, and I think
I shall not. I was not shocked or surprised by the appearance of the
letter because I had had knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy's committee, and of
secret issues which I supposed came from it, and of secret agents who
I supposed were sent out by it, for several weeks. I have known just as
little of these things as my friends have allowed me to know. They bring
the documents to me, but I do not read them; they tell me what they
think fit to tell me, but I do not inquire for more. I fully concur
with you that neither of us can be justly held responsible for what our
respective friends may do without our instigation or countenance; and I
assure you, as you have assured me, that no assault has been made upon
you by my instigation or with my countenance. Whether you shall remain
at the head of the Treasury Department is a question which I will not
allow myself to consider from any standpoint other than my judgment of
the public service, and in that view, I do not perceive occasion for
a change."(4) But this was not the end of the incident. The country
promptly repudiated Chase. His own state led the way. A caucus of
Union members of the Ohio Legislature resolved that the people and
the soldiers of Ohio demanded the reelection of Lincoln. In a host of
similar resolutions, Legislative caucuses, political conventions, dubs,
societies, prominent individuals not in the political machine, all
ringingly declared for Lincoln, the one proper candidate of the "Union
party"-as the movement was labeled in a last and relatively successful
attempt to break party lines.
As the date of the "Union Convention" approached, Lincoln put aside
an opportunity to gratify the Vindictives. Following the Emancipation
Proclamation, the recruiting offices had been opened to negroes.
Thereupon the Confederate government threatened to treat black soldiers
as brigands, and to refuse to their white officers the protection of
the laws of war. A cry went up in the North for reprisal. It was not
the first time the cry had been raised. In 1862 Lincoln's spokesman in
Congress, Browning, had withstood a proposal for the trial of General
Buckner by the civil authorities of Kentucky. Browning opposed such a
course on the ground that it would lead to a policy of retaliation, and
make of the war a gratification of revenge.(5) The Confederate
threat gave a new turn to the discussion. Frederick Douglas, the most
influential negro of the time, obtained an audience with Lincoln and
begged for reprisals. Lincoln would not consent. So effective was his
argument that even the ardent negro, convinced that his race was about
to suffer persecution, was satisfied.
"I shall never forget," Douglas wrote, "the benignant expression of
his face, the tearful look of his eye, the quiver in his voice, when he
deprecated a resort to retaliatory measures. 'Once begun,' said he, 'I
do not know where such a measure would stop.' He said he could not take
men out and kill them in cold blood for what was done by others. If he
could get hold of the persons who were guilty of killing the colored
prisoners in cold blood, the case would be different, but he could not
kill the innocent for the guilty."(6)
In April, 1864, the North was swept by a wild rumor of deliberate
massacre of prisoners at Fort Pillow. Here was an opportunity for
Lincoln to ingratiate himself with the Vindictives. The President was
to make a speech at a fair held in Baltimore, for the benefit of the
Sanitary Commission. The audience was keen to hear him denounce the
reputed massacre, and eager to applaud a promise of reprisal. Instead,
he deprecated hasty judgment; insisting that the rumor had not been
verified; that nothing should be done on the strength of mere report.
"It is a mistake to suppose the government is indifferent in this
matter, or is not doing the best it can in regard to it. We do not
to-day know that a colored soldier or white officer commanding colored
soldiers has been massacred by the Rebels when made a prisoner. We fear
it--believe it, I may say-but we do not know it To take the life of one
of their prisoners on the assumption that they murder ours, when it is
short of certainty that they do murder ours, might be too serious, too
cruel a mistake."(7)
What a tame, spiritless position in the eyes of the Vindictives! A
different opportunity to lay hold of public opinion he made the most of.
And yet, here also, he spoke in that carefully guarded way, making sure
he was not understood to say more than he meant, which most politicians
would have pronounced over-scrupulous. A deputation of working men from
New York were received at the White House. "The honorary membership
in your association," said he, "as generously tendered, is gratefully
accepted. . . . You comprehend, as your address shows, that the existing
rebellion means more, and tends to more, than the perpetuation of
African slavery-that it is, in fact, a war upon the rights of all
working people."
After reviewing his own argument on this subject in the second message,
he concluded:
"The views then expressed now remain unchanged, nor have I much to add.
None are so deeply interested to resist the present rebellion as the
working people. Let them beware of prejudices, working division and
hostility among themselves. The most notable feature of a disturbance
in your city last summer was the hanging of some working people by
other working people. It should never be so. The strongest bond of
human sympathy outside of the family relation, should be one uniting all
working people, of all nations, and tongues, and kindreds. Nor should
this lead to a war upon property, or the owners of property. Property
is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; is a positive good in the
world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and
hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who
is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently
and build one for himself, thus by example assuming that his own shall
be safe from violence when built."(8)
Lincoln was never more anxious than in this fateful spring when so many
issues were hanging in the balance. Nevertheless, in all his relations
with the world, his firm serenity was not broken. Though subject to
depression so deep that his associates could not penetrate it, he kept
it sternly to himself.(9) He showed the world a lighter, more graceful
aspect than ever before. 'A precious record of his later mood is the
account of him set down by Frank B. Carpenter, the portrait painter, a
man of note in his day, who was an inmate of the White House during the
first half of 1864. Carpenter was painting a picture of the "Signing of
the Emancipation Proclamation." He saw Lincoln informally at all sorts
of odd times, under all sorts of conditions. "All familiar with him,"
says Carpenter, "will remember the weary air which became habitual
during his last years. This was more of the mind than of the body, and
no rest and recreation which he allowed himself could relieve it. As
he sometimes expressed it, 'no remedy seemed ever to reach the tired
spot."(10)
A great shadow was darkening over him. He was more than ever convinced
that he had not long to live. None the less, his poise became more
conspicuous, his command over himself and others more distinguished,
as the months raced past. In truth he had worked through a slow but
profound transformation. The Lincoln of 1864 was so far removed from the
Lincoln of Pigeon Creek-but logically, naturally removed, through the
absorption of the outer man by the inner--that inevitably one thinks of
Shakespeare's change "into something rich and strange."
Along with the weakness, the contradictions of his earlier self, there
had also fallen away from him the mere grossness that had belonged to
him as a peasant. Carpenter is unconditional that in six months of close
intimacy, seeing him in company with all sorts of people, he never heard
from Lincoln an offensive story. He quotes Seward and Lincoln's family
physician to the same effect.(11)
The painter, like many others, was impressed by the tragic cast of his
expression, despite the surface mirth.