CHAPTER VIII

THE OPENING OF THE WAR AND LINCOLN'S ADMINISTRATION

1. _Preliminary Stages_.

On the morning after the bombardment of Fort Sumter there appeared a

Proclamation by the President calling upon the Militia of the several

States to furnish 75,000 men for the service of the United States in

the suppression of an "unlawful combination." Their service, however,

would expire by law thirty days after the next meeting of Congress,

and, in compliance with a further requirement of law upon this subject,

the President also summoned Congress to meet in extraordinary session

upon July 4. The Army already in the service of the United States

consisted of but 16,000 officers and men, and, though the men of this

force, being less affected by State ties than their officers, remained,

as did the men of the Navy, true almost without exception to their

allegiance, all but 3,000 of them were unavailable and scattered in

small frontier forts in the West. A few days later, when it became

plain that the struggle might long outlast the three months of the

Militia, the President called for Volunteers to enlist for three years'

service, and perhaps (for the statements are conflicting) some 300,000

troops of one kind and another had been raised by June.

The affair of Fort Sumter and the President's Proclamation at once

aroused and concentrated the whole public opinion of the free States in

the North and, in an opposite sense, of the States which had already

seceded. The border slave States had now to declare for the one side

or for the other. Virginia as a whole joined the Southern Confederacy

forthwith, but several Counties in the mountainous region of the west

of that State were strongly for the Union. These eventually succeeded

with the support of Northern troops in separating from Virginia and

forming the new State of West Virginia. Tennessee also joined the

South, though in Eastern Tennessee the bulk of the people held out for

the Union without such good fortune as their neighbours in West

Virginia. Arkansas beyond the Mississippi followed the same example,

though there were some doubt and division in all parts of that State.

In Delaware, where the slaves were very few, the Governor did not

formally comply with the President's Proclamation, but the people as a

whole responded to it. The attitude of Maryland, which almost

surrounds Washington, kept the Government at the capital in suspense

and alarm for a while, for both the city of Baltimore and the existing

State legislature were inclined to the South. In Kentucky and Missouri

the State authorities were also for the South, and it was only after a

struggle, and in Missouri much actual fighting, that the Unionist

majority of the people in each State had its way. The secession of

Virginia had consequences even more important than the loss to the

Union of a powerful State. General Robert E. Lee, a Virginian, then in

Washington, was esteemed by General Scott to be the ablest officer in

the service. Lincoln and his Secretary of War desired to confer on him

the command of the Army. Lee's decision was made with much reluctance

and, it seems, hesitation. He was not only opposed to the policy of

secession, but denied the right of a State to secede; yet he believed

that his absolute allegiance was due to Virginia. He resigned his

commission in the United States Army, went to Richmond, and, in

accordance with what Wolseley describes as the prevailing principle

that had influenced most of the soldiers he met in the South, placed

his sword at the disposal of his own State. The same loyalty to

Virginia governed another great soldier, Thomas J. Jackson, whose

historic nickname, "Stonewall," fails to convey the dashing celerity of

his movements. While they both lived these two men were to be linked

together in the closest comradeship and mutual trust. They sprang from

different social conditions and were of contrasting types. The epithet

Cavalier has been fitly enough applied to Lee, and Jackson, after

conversion from the wild courses of his youth, was an austere Puritan.

To quote again from a soldier's memoirs, Wolseley calls Lee "one of the

few men who ever seriously impressed and awed me with their natural,

their inherent, greatness"; he speaks of his "majesty," and of the

"beauty," of his character, and of the "sweetness of his smile and the

impressive dignity of the old-fashioned style of his address"; "his

greatness," he says, "made me humble." "There was nothing," he tells

us, "of these refined characteristics in Stonewall Jackson," a man with

"huge hands and feet." But he possessed "an assured self-confidence,

the outcome of his sure trust in God. How simple, how humble-minded a

man. As his impressive eyes met yours unflinchingly, you knew that his

was an honest heart." To this he adds touches less to be expected

concerning a Puritan warrior, whose Puritanism was in fact inclined to

ferocity--how Jackson's "remarkable eyes lit up for the moment with a

look of real enthusiasm as he recalled the architectural beauty of the

seven lancet windows in York Minster," how "intense" was the

"benignity" of his expression, and how in him it seemed that "great

strength of character and obstinate determination were united with

extreme gentleness of disposition and with absolute tenderness towards

all about him." Men such as these brought to the Southern cause

something besides their military capacity; but as to the greatness of

that capacity, applied in a war in which the scope was so great for

individual leaders of genius, there is no question. A civilian reader,

looking in the history of war chiefly for the evidences of personal

quality, can at least discern in these two famous soldiers the moral

daring which in doubtful circumstances never flinches from the

responsibility of a well-considered risk, and, in both their cases as

in those of some other great commanders, can recognise in this rare and

precious attribute the outcome of their personal piety. We shall

henceforth have to do with the Southern Confederacy and its armies, not

in their inner history but with sole regard to the task which they

imposed upon Lincoln and the North. But at this parting of the ways a

tribute is due to the two men, pre-eminent among many devoted people,

who, in their soldier-like and unreflecting loyalty to their cause,

gave to it a lustre in which, so far as they can be judged, neither its

statesmen nor its spiritual guides had a share.

There were Virginian officers who did not thus go with their State. Of

these were Scott himself, and G. H. Thomas; and Farragut, the great

sailor, was from Tennessee.

Throughout the free States of the North there took place a national

uprising of which none who remember it have spoken without feeling anew

its spontaneous ardour. Men flung off with delight the hesitancy of

the preceding months, and recruiting went on with speed and enthusiasm.

Party divisions for the moment disappeared. Old Buchanan made public

his adhesion to the Government. Douglas called upon Lincoln to ask how

best he could serve the public cause, and, at his request, went down to

Illinois to guide opinion and advance recruiting there; so employed,

the President's great rival, shortly after, fell ill and died, leaving

the leadership of the Democrats to be filled thereafter by more

scrupulous but less patriotic men. There was exultant confidence in

the power of the nation to put down rebellion, and those who realised

the peril in which for many days the capital and the administration

were placed were only the more indignantly determined. Perhaps the

most trustworthy record of popular emotions is to be found in popular

humorists. Shortly after these days Artemus Ward, the author who

almost vied with Shakespeare in Lincoln's affections, relates how the

confiscation of his show in the South led him to have an interview with

Jefferson Davis. "Even now," said Davis, in this pleasant fiction, "we

have many frens in the North." "J. Davis," is the reply, "there's your

grate mistaik. Many of us was your sincere frends, and thought certin

parties amung us was fussin' about you and meddlin' with your consarns

intirely too much. But, J. Davis, the minit you fire a gun at the

piece of dry goods called the Star-Spangled Banner, the North gits up

and rises en massy, in defence of that banner. Not agin you as

individooals--not agin the South even--but to save the flag. We should

indeed be weak in the knees, unsound in the heart, milk-white in the

liver, and soft in the hed, if we stood quietly by and saw this glorus

Govyment smashed to pieces, either by a furrin or a intestine foe. The

gentle-harted mother hates to take her naughty child across her knee,

but she knows it is her dooty to do it. So we shall hate to whip the

naughty South, but we must do it if you don't make back tracks at onct,

and we shall wallup you out of your boots!" In the days which

followed, when this prompt chastisement could not be effected and it

seemed indeed as if the South would do most of the whipping, the

discordant elements which mingled in this unanimity soon showed

themselves. The minority that opposed the war was for a time silent

and insignificant, but among the supporters of the war there were those

who loved the Union and the Constitution and who, partly for this very

reason, had hitherto cultivated the sympathies of the South.

These--adherents mainly of the Democratic party--would desire that

civil war should be waged with the least possible breach of the

Constitution, and be concluded with the least possible social change;

many of them would wish to fight not to a finish but to a compromise.

On the other hand, there were those who loved liberty and hated alike

the slave system of the South and the arrogance which it had

engendered. These--the people distinguished within the Republican

party as Radicals--would pay little heed to constitutional restraints

in repelling an attack on the Constitution, and they would wish from

the first to make avowed war upon that which caused the war--slavery.

In the border States there was of course more active sympathy with the

South, and in conflict with this the Radicalism of some of these States

became more stalwart and intractable. To such causes of dissension was

added as time went on sheer fatigue of the war, and strangely enough

this influence was as powerful with a few Radicals as it was with the

ingrained Democratic partisans. They despaired of the result when

success at last was imminent, and became sick of bloodshed when it

passed what they presumably regarded as a reasonable amount.

It was the task of the Administration not only to conduct the war, but

to preserve the unity of the North in spite of differences and its

resolution in spite of disappointments. Lincoln was in more than one

way well fitted for this task. Old experience in Illinois and Kentucky

enabled him to understand very different points of view in regard to

the cause of the South. The new question that was now to arise about

slavery was but a particular form of the larger question of principle

to which he had long thought out an answer as firm and as definite as

it was moderate and in a sense subtle. He had, moreover, a quality of

heart which, as it seemed to those near him, the protraction of the

conflict, with its necessary strain upon him, only strengthened. In

him a tenacity, which scarcely could falter in the cause which he

judged to be right, was not merely pure from bitterness towards his

antagonists, it was actually bound up with a deep-seated kindliness

towards them. Whatever rank may be assigned to his services and to his

deserts, it is first and foremost in these directions, though not in

these directions alone, that the reader of his story must look for

them. Upon attentive study he will probably appear as the embodiment,

in a degree and manner which are alike rare, of the more constant and

the higher judgment of his people. It is plainer still that he

embodied the resolute purpose which underlay the fluctuations upon the

surface of their political life. The English military historians, Wood

and Edmonds, in their retrospect over the course of the war, well sum

up its dramatic aspect when they say: "Against the great military

genius of certain of the Southern leaders fate opposed the unbroken

resolution and passionate devotion to the Union, which he worshipped,

of the great Northern President. As long as he lived, and ruled the

people of the North, there could be no turning back."

There are plenty of indications in the literature of the time that

Lincoln's determination soon began to be widely felt and to be

appreciated by common people. Literally, crowds of people from all

parts of the North saw him, exchanged a sentence or two, and carried

home their impressions; and those who were near him record the constant

fortitude of his bearing, noting as marked exceptions the unrestrained

words of impatience and half-humorous despondency which did on rare

occasions escape him. In a negative way, too, even the political world

bore its testimony to this; his administration was charged with almost

every other form of weakness, but there was never a suspicion that he

would give in. Nor again, in the severest criticisms upon him by

knowledgeable men that have been unearthed and collected, does the

suggestion of petty personal aims or of anything but unselfish devotion

ever find a place. The belief that he could be trusted spread itself

among plain people, and, given this belief, plain people liked him the

better because he was plain. But if at the distance at which we

contemplate him, and at which from the moment of his death all America

contemplated him, certain grand traits emerge, it is not for a moment

to be supposed that in his life he stood out in front of the people as

a great leader, or indeed as a leader at all, in the manner, say, of

Chatham or even of Palmerston. Lincoln came to Washington doubtless

with some deep thoughts which other men had not thought, doubtless also

with some important knowledge, for instance of the border States, which

many statesmen lacked, but he came there a man inexperienced in

affairs. It was a part of his strength that he knew this very well,

that he meant to learn, thought he could learn, did not mean to be

hurried where he had not the knowledge to decide, entirely appreciated

superior knowledge in others, and was entirely unawed by it. But

Senators and Representatives in Congress and journalists of high

standing, as a rule, perceived the inexperience and not the strength.

The deliberation with which he acted, patiently watching events, saying

little, listening to all sides, conversing with a naïveté which was

genuine but not quite artless, seemingly obdurate to the pressure of

wise counsels on one side and on the other--all this struck many

anxious observers as sheer incompetence, and when there was just and

natural cause for their anxiety, there was no established presumption

of his wisdom to set against it. And this effect was enhanced by what

may be called his plainness, his awkwardness, and actual eccentricity

in many minor matters. To many intelligent people who met him they

were a grievous stumbling-block, and though some most cultivated men

were not at all struck by them, and were pleased instead by his

"seeming sincere, and honest, and steady," or the like, it is clear

that no one in Washington was greatly impressed by him at first

meeting. His oddities were real and incorrigible. Young John Hay,

whom Nicolay, his private secretary, introduced as his assistant, a

humorist like Lincoln himself, but with leanings to literary elegance

and a keen eye for social distinctions, loved him all along and came to

worship him, but irreverent amusement is to be traced in his recently

published letters, and the glimpses which he gives us of "the Ancient"

or "the Tycoon" when quite at home and quite at his ease fully justify

him. Lincoln had great dignity and tact for use when he wanted them,

but he did not always see the use of them. Senator Sherman was

presented to the new President. "So you're John Sherman?" said

Lincoln. "Let's see if you're as tall as I am. We'll measure." The

grave politician, who was made to stand back to back with him before

the company till this interesting question was settled, dimly perceived

that the intention was friendly, but felt that there was a lack of

ceremony. Lincoln's height was one of his subjects of harmless vanity;

many tall men had to measure themselves against him in this manner, and

probably felt like John Sherman. On all sorts of occasions and to all

sorts of people he would "tell a little story," which was often enough,

in Lord Lyons' phrase, an "extreme" story. This was the way in which

he had grown accustomed to be friendly in company; it served a purpose

when intrusive questions had to be evaded, or reproofs or refusals to

be given without offence. As his laborious and sorrowful task came to

weigh heavier upon him, his capacity for play of this sort became a

great resource to him. As his fame became established people

recognised him as a humorist; the inevitable "little story" became to

many an endearing form of eccentricity; but we may be sure it was not

so always or to everybody.

"Those," says Carl Schurz, a political exile from Prussia, who did good

service, military and political, to the Northern cause--"those who

visited the White House--and the White House appeared to be open to

whosoever wished to enter--saw there a man of unconventional manners,

who, without the slightest effort to put on dignity, treated all men

alike, much like old neighbours; whose speech had not seldom a rustic

flavour about it; who always seemed to have time for a homely talk and

never to be in a hurry to press business; and who occasionally spoke

about important affairs of State with the same nonchalance--I might

almost say irreverence--with which he might have discussed an every-day

law case in his office at Springfield, Illinois."

Thus Lincoln was very far from inspiring general confidence in anything

beyond his good intentions. He is remembered as a personality with a

"something" about him--the vague phrase is John Bright's--which widely

endeared him, but his was by no means that "magnetic" personality which

we might be led to believe was indispensable in America. Indeed, it is

remarkable that to some really good judges he remained always

unimpressive. Charles Francis Adams, who during the Civil War served

his country as well as Minister in London as his grandfather had done

after the War of Independence, lamented to the end that Seward, his

immediate chief, had to serve under an inferior man; and a more

sympathetic man, Lord Lyons, our representative at Washington, refers

to Lincoln with nothing more than an amused kindliness. No detail of

his policy has escaped fierce criticism, and the man himself while he

lived was the subject of so much depreciation and condescending

approval, that we are forced to ask who discovered his greatness till

his death inclined them to idealise him. The answer is that precisely

those Americans of trained intellect whose title to this description is

clearest outside America were the first who began to see beneath his

strange exterior. Lowell, watching the course of public events with

ceaseless scrutiny; Walt Whitman, sauntering in Washington in the

intervals of the labour among the wounded by which he broke down his

robust strength, and seeing things as they passed with the sure

observation of a poet; Motley, the historian of the Dutch Republic,

studying affairs in the thick of them at the outset of the war, and not

less closely by correspondence when he went as Minister to Vienna--such

men when they praised Lincoln after his death expressed a judgment

which they began to form from the first; a judgment which started with

the recognition of his honesty, traced the evidence of his wisdom as it

appeared, gradually and not by repentant impulse learned his greatness.

And it is a judgment large enough to explain the lower estimate of

Lincoln which certainly had wide currency. Not to multiply witnesses,

Motley in June, 1861, having seen him for the second time, writes: "I

went and had an hour's talk with Mr. Lincoln. I am very glad of it,

for, had I not done so, I should have left Washington with a very

inaccurate impression of the President. I am now satisfied that he is

a man of very considerable native sagacity; and that he has an

ingenuous, unsophisticated, frank, and noble character. I believe him

to be as true as steel, and as courageous as true. At the same time

there is doubtless an ignorance about State matters, and particularly

about foreign affairs, which he does not attempt to conceal, but which

we must of necessity regret in a man placed in such a position at such

a crisis. Nevertheless his very modesty in this respect disarms

criticism. We parted very affectionately, and perhaps I shall never

set eyes on him again, but I feel that, so far as perfect integrity and

directness of purpose go, the country will be safe in his hands."

Three years had passed, and the political world of America was in that

storm of general dissatisfaction in which not a member of Congress

would be known as "a Lincoln man," when Motley writes again from Vienna

to his mother, "I venerate Abraham Lincoln exactly because he is the

true, honest type of American democracy. There is nothing of the

shabby-genteel, the would-be-but-couldn't-be fine gentleman; he is the

great American Demos, honest, shrewd, homely, wise, humorous, cheerful,

brave, blundering occasionally, but through blunders struggling onwards

towards what he believes the right." In a later letter he observes,

"His mental abilities were large, and they became the more robust as

the more weight was imposed upon them."

This last sentence, especially if in Lincoln's mental abilities the

qualities of his character be included, probably indicates the chief

point for remark in any estimate of his presidency. It is true that he

was judged at first as a stranger among strangers. Walt Whitman has

described vividly a scene, with "a dash of comedy, almost farce, such

as Shakespeare puts in his blackest tragedies," outside the hotel in

New York where Lincoln stayed on his journey to Washington; "his look

and gait, his perfect composure and coolness," to cut it short, the

usually noted marks of his eccentricity, "as he stood looking with

curiosity on that immense sea of faces, and the sea of faces returned

the look with similar curiosity, not a single one" among the crowd "his

personal friend." He was not much otherwise situated when he came to

Washington. It is true also that in the early days he was learning his

business. "Why, Mr. President," said some one towards the end of his

life, "you have changed your mind." "Yes, I have," said he, "and I

don't think much of a man who isn't wiser to-day than he was

yesterday." But it seems to be above all true that the exercise of

power and the endurance of responsibility gave him new strength. This,

of course, cannot be demonstrated, but Americans then living, who

recall Abraham Lincoln, remark most frequently how the man grew to his

task. And this perhaps is the main impression which the slight record

here presented will convey, the impression of a man quite unlike the

many statesmen whom power and the vexations attendant upon it have in

some piteous way spoiled and marred, a man who started by being tough

and shrewd and canny and became very strong and very wise, started with

an inclination to honesty, courage, and kindness, and became, under a

tremendous strain, honest, brave, and kind to an almost tremendous

degree.

The North then started upon the struggle with an eagerness and

unanimity from which the revulsion was to try all hearts, and the

President's most of all; and not a man in the North guessed what the

strain of that struggle was to be. At first indeed there was alarm in

Washington for the immediate safety of the city. Confederate flags

could be seen floating from the hotels in Alexandria across the river;

Washington itself was full of rumours of plots and intended

assassinations, and full of actual Southern spies; everything was

disorganised; and Lincoln himself, walking round one night, found the

arsenal with open doors, absolutely unguarded.

By April 20, first the Navy Yard at Gosport, in Virginia, had to be

abandoned, then the Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, and on the day of this

latter event Lee went over to the South. One regiment from

Massachusetts, where the State authorities had prepared for war before

the fall of Sumter, was already in Washington; but it had had to fight

its way through a furious mob in Baltimore, with some loss of life on

both sides. A deputation from many churches in that city came to the

President, begging him to desist from his bloodthirsty preparations,

but found him "constitutionally genial and jovial," and "wholly

inaccessible to Christian appeals." It mattered more that a majority

of the Maryland Legislature was for the South, and that the Governor

temporised and requested that no more troops should pass through

Baltimore. The Mayor of Baltimore and the railway authorities burned

railway bridges and tore up railway lines, and the telegraph wires were

cut. Thus for about five days the direct route to Washington from the

North was barred. It seemed as if the boast of some Southern orator

that the Confederate flag would float over the capital by May 1 might

be fulfilled. Beauregard could have transported his now drilled troops

by rail from South Carolina and would have found Washington isolated

and hardly garrisoned. As a matter of fact, no such daring move was

contemplated in the South, and the citizens of Richmond, Virginia, were

themselves under a similar alarm; but the South had a real opportunity.

The fall of Washington at that moment would have had political

consequences which no one realised better than Lincoln. It might well

have led the Unionists in the border States to despair, and there is

evidence that even then he so fully realised the task which lay before

the North as to feel that the loss of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri

would have made it impossible. He was at heart intensely anxious, and

quaintly and injudiciously relieved his feelings by the remark to the

"6th Massachusetts" that he felt as if all other help were a dream, and

they were "the only real thing." Yet those who were with him testify

to his composure and to the vigour with which he concerted with his

Cabinet the various measures of naval, military, financial, postal, and

police preparation which the occasion required, but which need not here

be detailed. Many of the measures of course lay outside the powers

which Congress had conferred on the public departments, but the

President had no hesitation in "availing himself," as he put it, "of

the broader powers conferred by the Constitution in cases of

insurrection," and looking for the sanction of Congress afterwards,

rather than "let the Government at once fall into ruin." The

difficulties of government were greatly aggravated by the uncertainty

as to which of its servants, civil, naval, or military, were loyal, and

the need of rapidly filling the many posts left vacant by unexpected

desertion. Meanwhile troops from New England, and also from New York,

which had utterly disappointed some natural expectations in the South

by the enthusiasm of its rally to the Union, quickly arrived near

Baltimore. They repaired for themselves the interrupted railway tracks

round the city, and by April 25 enough soldiers were in Washington to

put an end to any present alarm. In case of need, the law of "habeas

corpus" was suspended in Maryland. The President had no wish that

unnecessary recourse should be had to martial law. Naturally, however,

one of his generals summarily arrested a Southern recruiting agent in

Baltimore. The ordinary law would probably have sufficed, and Lincoln

is believed to have regretted this action, but it was obvious that he

must support it when done. Hence arose an occasion for the old Chief

Justice Taney to make a protest on behalf of legality, to which the

President, who had armed force on his side, could not give way, and

thus early began a controversy to which we must recur. It was gravely

urged upon Lincoln that he should forcibly prevent the Legislature of

Maryland from holding a formal sitting; he refused on the sensible

ground that the legislators could assemble in some way and had better

not assemble with a real grievance in constitutional law. Then a

strange alteration came over Baltimore. Within three weeks all active

demonstration in favour of the South had subsided; the disaffected

Legislature resolved upon neutrality; the Governor, loyal at heart--if

the brief epithet loyal may pass, as not begging any profound legal

question--carried on affairs in the interest of the Union; postal

communication and the passage of troops were free from interruption by

the middle of May; and the pressing alarm about Maryland was over.

These incidents of the first days of war have been recounted in some

detail, because they may illustrate the gravity of the issue in the

border States, in others of which the struggle, though further removed

from observation, lasted longer; and because, too, it is well to

realise the stress of agitation under which the Government had to make

far-reaching preparation for a larger struggle, while Lincoln, whose

will was decisive in all these measures, carried on all the while that

seemingly unimportant routine of a President's life which is in the

quietest times exacting.

The alarm in Washington was only transitory, and it was generally

supposed in the North that insurrection would be easily put down. Some

even specified the number of days necessary, agreeably fixing upon a

smaller number than the ninety days for which the militia were called

out. Secretary Seward has been credited with language of this kind,

and even General Scott, whose political judgment was feeble, though his

military judgment was sound, seems at first to have rejected proposals,

for example, for drilling irregular cavalry, made in the expectation of

a war of some length. There is evidence that neither Lincoln nor

Cameron, the Secretary of War, indulged in these pleasant fancies.

Irresistible public opinion, in the East especially, demanded to see

prompt activity. The North had arisen in its might; it was for the

Administration to put forth that might, capture Richmond, to which the

Confederate Government had moved, and therewith make an end of

rebellion. The truth was that the North had to make its army before it

could wisely advance into the assured territory of the South; the

situation of the Southern Government in this respect was precisely the

same. The North had enough to do meantime in making sure of the States

which were still debatable ground. Such forces as were available must

of necessity be used for this purpose, but for any larger operations of

war military considerations, especially on the side which had the

larger resources at its back, were in favour of waiting and perfecting

the instrument which was to be used. But in the course of July the

pressure of public opinion and of Congress, which had then assembled,

overcame, not without some reason, the more cautious military view, and

on the 21st of that month the North received its first great lesson in

adversity at the battle of Bull Run.

Before recounting this disaster we may proceed with the story of the

struggle in the border States. At an early date the rising armies of

the North had been organised into three commands, called the Department

of the Potomac, on the front between Washington and Richmond, the

Department of the Ohio, on the upper watershed of the river of that

name, and the Department of the West. Of necessity the generals

commanding in these two more Western Departments exercised a larger

discretion than the general at Washington. The Department of the Ohio

was under General McClellan, before the war a captain of Engineers, who

had retired from active service and had been engaged as a railway

manager, in which capacity he has already been noticed, but who had

earned a good name in the Mexican War, had been keen enough in his

profession to visit the Crimea, and was esteemed by General Scott. The

people of West Virginia, who, as has been said, were trying to organise

themselves as a new State, adhering to the Union, were invaded by

forces despatched by the Governor of their old State. They lay mainly

west of the mountains, and help could reach them up tributary valleys

of the Ohio. They appealed to McClellan, and the successes quickly won

by forces despatched by him, and afterwards under his direct command,

secured West Virginia, and incidentally the reputation of McClellan.

In Kentucky, further west, the Governor endeavoured to hold the field

for the South with a body known as the State Guard, while Unionist

leaders among the people were raising volunteer regiments for the

North. Nothing, however, was determined by fighting between these

forces. The State Legislature at first took up an attitude of

neutrality, but a new Legislature, elected in June, was overwhelmingly

for the Union. Ultimately the Confederate armies invaded Kentucky, and

the Legislature thereupon invited the Union armies into the State to

expel them, and placed 40,000 Kentucky volunteers at the disposal of

the President. Thenceforward, though Kentucky, stretching as it does

for four hundred miles between the Mississippi and the Alleghanies,

remained for long a battle-ground, the allegiance of its people to the

Union was unshaken. But the uncertainty about their attitude continued

till the autumn of 1861, and while it lasted was an important element

in Lincoln's calculations. (It must be remembered that slavery existed

in Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri.) In Missouri the strife of

factions was fierce. Already in January there had been reports of a

conspiracy to seize the arsenal at St. Louis for the South when the

time came, and General Scott had placed in command Captain Nathaniel

Lyon, on whose loyalty he relied the more because he was an opponent of

slavery. The Governor was in favour of the South--as was also the

Legislature, and the Governor could count on some part of the State

Militia; so Lincoln, when he called for volunteers, commissioned Lyon

to raise them in Missouri. In this task a Union State Committee in St.

Louis greatly helped him, and the large German population in that city

was especially ready to enlist for the Union. Many of the German

immigrants of those days had come to America partly for the sake of its

free institutions. A State Convention was summoned by the Governor to

pass an Ordinance of Secession, but its electors were minded otherwise,

and the Convention voted against secession. In several encounters

Lyon, who was an intrepid soldier, defeated the forces of the Governor;

in June he took possession of the State capital, driving the Governor

and Legislature away; the State Convention then again assembled and set

up a Unionist Government for the State. This new State Government was

not everywhere acknowledged; conspiracies in the Southern interest

continued to exist in Missouri; and the State was repeatedly molested

by invasions, of no great military consequence, from Arkansas. Indeed,

in the autumn there was a serious recrudescence of trouble, in which

Lyon lost his life. But substantially Missouri was secured for the

Union. Naturally enough, a great many of the citizens of Missouri who

had combined to save their State to the Union became among the

strongest of the "Radicals" who will later engage our attention. Many,

however, of the leading men who had done most in this cause, including

the friends of Blair, Lincoln's Postmaster-General, adhered no less

emphatically to the "Conservative" section of the Republicans.

2. _Bull Run_.

Thus, in the autumn of 1861, North and South had become solidified into

something like two countries. In the month of July, which now concerns

us, this process was well on its way, but it is to be marked that the

whole long tract of Kentucky still formed a neutral zone, which the

Northern Government did not wish to harass, and which perhaps the South

would have done well to let alone, while further west in Missouri the

forces of the North were not even as fully organised as in the East.

So the only possible direction in which any great blow could be struck

was the direction of Richmond, now the capital, and it might seem,

therefore, the heart, of the Confederacy. The Confederate Congress was

to meet there on July 20. The _New York Tribune_, which was edited by

Mr. Horace Greeley, a vigorous writer whose omniscience was unabated by

the variation of his own opinion, was the one journal of far-reaching

influence in the North; and it only gave exaggerated point to a general

feeling when it declared that the Confederate Congress must not meet.

The Senators and Congressmen now in Washington were not quite so

exacting, but they had come there unanimous in their readiness to vote

taxes and support the war in every way, and they wanted to see

something done; and they wanted it all the more because the three

months' service of the militia was running out. General Scott, still

the chief military adviser of Government, was quite distinct in his

preference for waiting and for perfecting the discipline and

organisation of the volunteers, who had not yet even been formed into

brigades. On the militia he set no value at all. For long he refused

to countenance any but minor movements preparatory to a later advance.

It is not quite certain, however, that Congress and public opinion were

wrong in clamouring for action. The Southern troops were not much, if

at all, more ready for use than the Northerners; and Jefferson Davis

and his military adviser, Lee, desired time for their defensive

preparations. It was perhaps too much to expect that the country after

its great uprising should be content to give supplies and men without

end while nothing apparently happened; and the spirit of the troops

themselves might suffer more from inaction than from defeat. A further

thought, while it made defeat seem more dangerous, made battle more

tempting. There was fear that European Powers might recognise the

Southern Confederacy and enter into relations with it. Whether they

did so depended on whether they were confirmed in their growing

suspicion that the North could not conquer the South. Balancing the

military advice which was given them as to the risk against this

political importunity, Lincoln and his Cabinet chose the risk, and

Scott at length withdrew his opposition. Lincoln was possibly more

sensitive to pressure than he afterwards became, more prone to treat

himself as a person under the orders of the people, but there is no

reason to doubt that he acted on his own sober judgment as well as that

of his Cabinet. Whatever degree of confidence he reposed in Scott,

Scott was not very insistent; the risk was not overwhelming; the battle

was very nearly won, would have been won if the orders of Scott had

been carried out. No very great harm in fact followed the defeat of

Bull Run; and the danger of inaction was real. He was probably then,

as he certainly was afterwards, profoundly afraid that the excessive

military caution which he often encountered would destroy the cause of

the North by disheartening the people who supported the war. That is

no doubt a kind of fear to which many statesmen are too prone, but

Lincoln's sense of real popular feeling throughout the wide extent of

the North is agreed to have been uncommonly sure. Definite judgment on

such a question is impossible, but probably Lincoln and his Cabinet

were wise.

However, they did not win their battle. The Southern army under

Beauregard lay near the Bull Run river, some twenty miles from

Washington, covering the railway junction of Manassas on the line to

Richmond. The main Northern army, under General McDowell, a capable

officer, lay south of the Potomac, where fortifications to guard

Washington had already been erected on Virginian soil. In the

Shenandoah Valley was another Southern force, under Joseph Johnston,

watched by the Northern general Patterson at Harper's Ferry, which had

been recovered by Scott's operations. Each of these Northern generals

was in superior force to his opponent. McDowell was to attack the

Confederate position at Manassas, while Patterson, whose numbers were

nearly double Johnston's, was to keep him so seriously occupied that he

could not join Beauregard. With whatever excuse of misunderstanding or

the like, Patterson made hardly an attempt to carry out his part of

Scott's orders, and Johnston, with the bulk of his force, succeeded in

joining Beauregard the day before McDowell's attack, and without his

gaining knowledge of this movement. The battle of Bull Run or Manassas

(or rather the earlier and more famous of two battles so named) was an

engagement of untrained troops in which up to a certain point the high

individual quality of those troops supplied the place of discipline.

McDowell handled with good judgment a very unhandy instrument. It was

only since his advance had been contemplated that his army had been

organised in brigades. The enemy, occupying high wooded banks on the

south side of the Bull Run, a stream about as broad as the Thames at

Oxford but fordable, was successfully pushed back to a high ridge

beyond; but the stubborn attacks over difficult ground upon this

further position failed from lack of co-ordination, and, when it

already seemed doubtful whether the tired soldiers of the North could

renew them with any hope, they were themselves attacked on their right

flank. It seems that from that moment their success upon that day was

really hopeless, but some declare that the Northern soldiers with one

accord became possessed of a belief that this flank attack by a

comparatively small body was that of the whole force of Johnston,

freshly arrived upon the scene. In any case they spontaneously retired

in disorder; they were not effectively pursued, but McDowell was unable

to rally them at Centreville, a mile or so behind the Bull Run. Among

the camp followers the panic became extreme, and they pressed into

Washington in wild alarm, accompanied by citizens and Congressmen who

had come out to see a victory, and who left one or two of their number

behind as prisoners of war. The result was a surprise to the Southern

army. Johnston, who now took over the command, declared that it was as

much disorganised by victory as the Northern army by defeat. With the

full approval of his superiors in Richmond, he devoted himself to

entrenching his position at Manassas. But in Washington, where rumours

of victory had been arriving all through the day of battle, there

prevailed for some time an impression that the city was exposed to

immediate capture, and this impression was shared by McClellan, to whom

universal opinion now turned as the appointed saviour, and who was

forthwith summoned to Washington to take command of the army of the

Potomac.

Within the circle of the Administration there was, of course, deep

mortification. Old General Scott passionately declared himself to have

been the greatest coward in America in having ever given way to the

President's desire for action. Lincoln, who was often to prove his

readiness to take blame on his own shoulders, evidently thought that

the responsibility in this case was shared by Scott, and demanded to

know whether Scott accused him of having overborne his judgment. The

old general warmly, if a little ambiguously, replied that he had served

under many Presidents, but never known a kinder master. Plainly he

felt that his better judgment had somehow been overpowered, and yet

that there was nothing in their relations for which in his heart he

could blame the President; and this trivial dialogue is worth

remembering during the dreary and controversial tale of Lincoln's

relations with Scott's successor. Lincoln, however bitterly

disappointed, showed no signs of discomposure or hesitancy. The

business of making the army of the Potomac quietly began over again.

To the four days after Bull Run belongs one of the few records of the

visits to the troops which Lincoln constantly paid when they were not

too far from Washington, cheering them with little talks which served a

good purpose without being notable. He was reviewing the brigade

commanded at Bull Run by William Sherman, later, but not yet, one of

the great figures in the war. He was open to all complaints, and a

colonel of militia came to him with a grievance; he claimed that his

term of service had already expired, that he had intended to go home,

but that Sherman unlawfully threatened to shoot him if he did so.

Lincoln had a good look at Sherman, and then advised the colonel to

keep out of Sherman's way, as he looked like a man of his word. This

was said in the hearing of many men, and Sherman records his lively

gratitude for a simple jest which helped him greatly in keeping his

brigade in existence.

Not one of the much more serious defeats suffered later in the war

produced by itself so lively a sense of discomfiture in the North as

this; thus none will equally claim our attention. But, except for the

first false alarms in Washington, there was no disposition to mistake

its military significance. The "second uprising of the North," which

followed upon this bracing shock, left as vivid a memory as the little

disaster of Bull Run. But there was of necessity a long pause while

McClellan remodelled the army in the East, and the situation in the

West was becoming ripe for important movements. The eagerness of the

Northern people to make some progress, again asserted itself before

long, but to their surprise, and perhaps to that of a reader to-day,

the last five months of 1861 passed without notable military events.

Here then we may turn to the progress of other affairs, departmental

affairs, foreign affairs, and domestic policy, which, it must not be

forgotten, had pressed heavily upon the Administration from the moment

that war began.

3. _Lincoln's Administration Generally_.

Long before the Eastern public was very keenly aware of Lincoln the

members of his Cabinet had come to think of the Administration as his

Administration, some, like Seward, of whom it could have been little

expected, with a loyal, and for America most fortunate, acceptance of

real subordination, and one at least, Chase, with indignant surprise

that his own really great abilities were not dominant. One Minister

early told his friends that there was but one vote in the Cabinet, the

President's. This must not be taken in the sense that Lincoln's

personal guidance was present in every department. He had his own

department, concerned with the maintenance of Northern unity and with

that great underlying problem of internal policy which will before long

appear again, and the business of the War Department was so immediately

vital as to require his ceaseless attention; but in other matters the

degree and manner of his control of course varied. Again, it is far

from being the case that the Cabinet had little influence on his

action. He not only consulted it much, but deferred to it much. His

wisdom seems to have shown itself in nothing more strongly than in

recognising when he wanted advice and when he did not, when he needed

support and when he could stand alone. Sometimes he yielded to his

Ministers because he valued their judgment, sometimes also because he

gauged by them the public support without which his action must fail.

Sometimes, when he was sure of the necessity, he took grave steps

without advice from them or any one. More often he tried to arrive

with them at a real community of decision. It is often impossible to

guess what acts of an Administration are rightly credited to its chief.

The hidden merit or demerit of many statesmen has constantly lain in

the power, or the lack of it, of guiding their colleagues and being

guided in turn. If we tried to be exact in saying Lincoln, or

Lincoln's Cabinet, or the North did this or that, it would be necessary

to thresh out many bushels of tittle-tattle. The broad impression,

however, remains that in the many things in which Lincoln did not

directly rule he ruled through a group of capable men of whom he made

the best use, and whom no other chief could have induced to serve so

long in concord. As we proceed some authentic examples of his precise

relations with them will appear, in which, unimportant as they seem,

one test of his quality as a statesman and of his character should be

sought.

The naval operations of the war afford many tales of daring on both

sides which cannot here be noticed. They afford incidents of strange

interest now, such as the exploit of the first submarine. (It belonged

to the South; its submersion invariably resulted in the death of the

whole crew; and, with full knowledge of this, a devoted crew went down

and destroyed a valuable Northern iron-clad.) The ravages on commerce

of the _Alabama_ and some other Southern cruisers became only too

famous in England, from whose ship-building yards they had escaped.

The North failed too in some out of the fairly numerous combined naval

and military expeditions, which were undertaken with a view to making

the blockade more complete and less arduous by the occupation of

Southern ports, and perhaps to more serious incursions into the South.

Among those of them which will require no special notice, most

succeeded. Thus by the spring of 1863 Florida was substantially in

Northern hands, and by 1865 the South had but two ports left,

Charleston and Wilmington; but the venture most attractive to Northern

sentiment, an attack upon Charleston itself, proved a mere waste of

military force. Moreover, till a strong military adviser was at last

found in Grant there was some dissipation of military force in such

expeditions. Nevertheless, the naval success of the North was so

continuous and overwhelming that its history in detail need not be

recounted in these pages. Almost from the first the ever-tightening

grip of the blockade upon the Southern coasts made its power felt, and

early in 1862 the inland waterways of the South were beginning to fall

under the command of the Northern flotillas. Such a success needed, of

course, the adoption of a decided policy from the outset; it needed

great administrative ability to improvise a navy where hardly any

existed, and where the conditions of its employment were in many

respects novel; and it needed resourceful watching to meet the

surprises of fresh naval invention by which the South, poor as were its

possibilities for ship-building, might have rendered impotent, as once

or twice it seemed likely to do, the Northern blockade. Gideon Welles,

the responsible Cabinet Minister, was constant and would appear to have

been capable at his task, but the inspiring mind of the Naval

Department was found in Gustavus V. Fox, a retired naval officer, who

at the beginning of Lincoln's administration was appointed Assistant

Secretary of the Navy. The policy of blockade was begun by Lincoln's

Proclamation on April 19, 1861. It was a hardy measure, certain to be

a cause of friction with foreign Powers. The United States Government

had contended in 1812 that a blockade which is to confer any rights

against neutral commerce must be an effective blockade, and has not

lately been inclined to take lax views upon such questions; but when it

declared its blockade of the South it possessed only three steamships

of war with which to make it effective. But the policy was stoutly

maintained. The Naval Department at the very first set about buying

merchant ships in Northern ports and adapting them to warlike use, and

building ships of its own, in the design of which it shortly obtained

the help of a Commission of Congress on the subject of ironclads. The

Naval Department had at least the fullest support and encouragement

from Lincoln in the whole of its policy. Everything goes to show that

he followed naval affairs carefully, but that, as he found them

conducted on sound lines by men that he trusted, his intervention in

them was of a modest kind. Welles continued throughout the member of

his Cabinet with whom he had the least friction, and was probably one

of those Ministers, common in England, who earn the confidence of their

own departments without in any way impressing the imagination of the

public; and a letter by Lincoln to Fox immediately after the affair of

Fort Sumter shows the hearty esteem and confidence with which from the

first he regarded Fox. Of the few slight records of his judgment in

these matters one is significant. The unfortunate expedition against

Charleston in the spring of 1863 was undertaken with high hopes by the

Naval Department; but Lincoln, we happen to know, never believed it

could succeed. He has, rightly or wrongly, been blamed for dealings

with his military officers in which he may be said to have spurred them

hard; he cannot reasonably be blamed for giving the rein to his expert

subordinates, because his own judgment, which differed from theirs,

turned out right. This is one of very many instances which suggest

that at the time when his confidence in himself was full grown his

disposition, if any, to interfere was well under control. It is also

one of the indications that his attention was alert in many matters in

which his hand was not seen.

He was no financier, and that important part of the history of the war,

Northern finance, concerns us little. The real economic strength of

the North was immense, for immigration and development were going on so

fast, that, for all the strain of the war, production and exports

increased. But the superficial disturbance caused by borrowing and the

issue of paper money was great, and, though the North never bore the

pinching that was endured in the South, it is an honourable thing that,

for all the rise in the cost of living and for all the trouble that

occurred in business when the premium on gold often fluctuated between

40 and 60 and on one occasion rose to 185, neither the solid working

class of the country generally nor the solid business class of New York

were deeply affected by the grumbling at the duration of the war. The

American verdict upon the financial policy of Chase, a man of intellect

but new to such affairs, is one of high praise. Lincoln left him free

in that policy. He had watched the acts and utterances of his chief

contemporaries closely and early acquired a firm belief in Chase's

ability. How much praise is due to the President, who for this reason

kept Chase in his Cabinet, a later part of this story may show.

One function of Government was that of the President alone. An English

statesman is alleged to have said upon becoming Prime Minister, "I had

important and interesting business in my old office, but now my chief

duty will be to create undeserving Peers." Lincoln, in the anxious

days that followed his first inauguration, once looked especially

harassed; a Senator said to him: "What is the matter, Mr. President?

Is there bad news from Fort Sumter?" "Oh, no," he answered, "it's the

Post Office at Baldinsville." The patronage of the President was

enormous, including the most trifling offices under Government, such as

village postmasterships. In the appointment to local offices, he was

expected to consult the local Senators and Representatives of his own

party, and of course to choose men who had worked for the party. In

the vast majority of cases decent competence for the office in the

people so recommended might be presumed. The established practice

further required that a Republican President on coming in should

replace with good Republicans most of the nominees of the late

Democratic administration, which had done the like in its day.

Lincoln's experience after a while led him to prophesy that the

prevalence of office-seeking would be the ruin of American politics,

but it certainly never occurred to him to try and break down then the

accepted rule, of which no party yet complained. It would have been

unmeasured folly, even if he had thought of it, to have taken during

such a crisis a new departure which would have vexed the Republicans

far more than it would have pleased the Democrats. And at that time it

was really of great consequence that public officials should be men of

known loyalty to the Union, for obviously a postmaster of doubtful

loyalty might do mischief. Lincoln, then, except in dealing with posts

of special consequence, for which men with really special

qualifications were to be found, frankly and without a question took as

the great principle of his patronage the fairest possible distribution

of favours among different classes and individuals among the supporters

of the Government, whom it was his primary duty to keep together. His

attitude in the whole business was perfectly understood and respected

by scrupulous men who watched politics critically. It was the cause in

one way of great worry to him, for, except when his indignation was

kindled, he was abnormally reluctant to say "no,"--he once shuddered to

think what would have happened to him if he had been a woman, but was

consoled by the thought that his ugliness would have been a shield; and

his private secretaries accuse him of carrying out his principle with

needless and even ridiculous care. In appointments to which the party

principle did not apply, but in which an ordinary man would have felt

party prejudice, Lincoln's old opponents were often startled by his

freedom from it. If jobbery be the right name for his persistent

endeavour to keep the partisans of the Union pleased and united, his

jobbery proved to have one shining attribute of virtue; later on, when,

apart from the Democratic opposition which revived, there arose in the

Republican party sections hostile to himself, the claims of personal

adherence to him and the wavering prospects of his own reelection seem,

from recorded instances, to have affected his choice remarkably little.

4. _Foreign Policy and England_.

The question, what was his influence upon foreign policy, is more

difficult than the general praise bestowed upon it might lead us to

expect; because, though he is known to have exercised a constant

supervision over Seward, that influence was concealed from the

diplomatic world.

For at least the first eighteen months of the war, apart from lesser

points of quarrel, a real danger of foreign intervention hung over the

North. The danger was increased by the ambitions of Napoleon III. in

regard to Mexico, and by the loss and suffering caused to England,

above all, not merely from the interruption of trade but from the

suspension of cotton supplies by the blockade. From the first there

was the fear that foreign powers would recognise the Southern

Confederacy as an independent country; that they were then likely to

offer mediation which it would at the best have been embarrassing for

the President to reject; that they might ultimately, when their

mediation had been rejected, be tempted to active intervention. It is

curious that the one European Government which was recognised all along

as friendly to the Republic was that of the Czar, Alexander II. of

Russia, who in this same year, 1861, was accomplishing the project,

bequeathed to him by his father, of emancipating the serfs. Mercier,

the French Minister in Washington, advised his Government to recognise

the South Confederacy as early as March, 1861. The Emperor of the

French, though not the French people, inclined throughout to this

policy; but he would not act apart from England, and the English

Government, though Americans did not know it, had determined, and for

the present was quite resolute, against any hasty action. Nevertheless

an almost accidental cause very soon brought England and the North

within sight of a war from which neither people was in appearance

averse.

Neither the foreign policy of Lincoln's Government nor, indeed, the

relations of England and America from his day to our own can be

understood without some study of the attitude of the two countries to

each other during the war. If we could put aside any previous judgment

on the cause as between North and South, there are still some marked

features in the attitude of England during the war which every

Englishman must now regret. It should emphatically be added that there

were some upon which every Englishman should look back with

satisfaction. Many of the expressions of English opinion at that time

betray a powerlessness to comprehend another country and a

self-sufficiency in judging it, which, it may humbly be claimed, were

not always and are not now so characteristic of Englishmen as they were

in that period of our history, in many ways so noble, which we

associate with the rival influences of Palmerston and of Cobden. It is

not at all surprising that ordinary English gentlemen started with a

leaning towards the South; they liked Southerners and there was much in

the manners of the North, and in the experiences of Englishmen trading

with or investing in the North, which did not impress them favourably.

Many Northerners discovered something snobbish and unsound in this

preference, but they were not quite right. With this leaning,

Englishmen readily accepted the plea of the South that it was

threatened with intolerable interference; indeed to this day it is

hardly credible to Englishmen that the grievance against which the

South arose in such passionate revolt was so unsubstantial as it really

was. On the other hand, the case of the North was not apprehended.

How it came to pass, in the intricate and usually uninteresting play of

American politics, that a business community, which had seemed pretty

tolerant of slavery, was now at war on some point which was said to be

and said not to be slavery, was a little hard to understand. Those of

us who remember our parents' talk of the American Civil War did not

hear from them the true and fairly simple explanation of the war, that

the North fought because it refused to connive further in the extension

of slavery, and would not--could not decently--accept the disruption of

a great country as the alternative. It is strictly true that the

chivalrous South rose in blind passion for a cause at the bottom of

which lay the narrowest of pecuniary interests, while the over-sharp

Yankees, guided by a sort of comic backwoodsman, fought, whether wisely

or not, for a cause as untainted as ever animated a nation in arms.

But it seems a paradox even now, and there is no reproach in the fact,

that our fathers, who had not followed the vacillating course of

Northern politics hitherto, did not generally take it in. We shall see

in a later chapter how Northern statesmanship added to their

perplexity. But it is impossible not to be ashamed of some of the

forms in which English feeling showed itself and was well known in the

North to show itself. Not only the articles of some English

newspapers, but the private letters of Americans who then found

themselves in the politest circles in London, are unpleasant to read

now. It is painful, too, that a leader of political thought like

Cobden should even for a little while--and it was only a little

while--have been swayed in such a matter by a sympathy relatively so

petty as agreement with the Southern doctrine of Free Trade. We might

now call it worthier of Prussia than of England that a great Englishman

like Lord Salisbury (then Lord Robert Cecil) should have expressed

friendship for the South as a good customer of ours, and antagonism for

the North as a rival in our business. When such men as these said such

things they were, of course, not brutally indifferent to right, they

were merely blind to the fact that a very great and plain issue of

right and wrong was really involved in the war. Gladstone, to take

another instance, was not blind to that, but with irritating

misapprehension he protested against the madness of plunging into war

to propagate the cause of emancipation. Then came in his love of small

states, and from his mouth, while he was a Cabinet Minister, came the

impulsive pronouncement, bitterly regretted by him and bitterly

resented in the North: "Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South

have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have

made--what is more than either--they have made a nation." Many other

Englishmen simply sympathised with the weaker side; many too, it should

be confessed, with the apparently weaker side which they were really

persuaded would win. ("Win the battles," said Lord Robert Cecil to a

Northern lady, "and we Tories shall come round at once.") These things

are recalled because their natural effect in America has to be

understood. What is really lamentable is not that in this distant and

debatable affair the sympathy of so many inclined to the South, but

that, when at least there was a Northern side, there seemed at first to

be hardly any capable of understanding or being stirred by it. Apart

from politicians there were only two Englishmen of the first rank,

Tennyson and Darwin, who, whether or not they understood the matter in

detail, are known to have cared from their hearts for the Northern

cause. It is pleasant to associate with these greater names that of

the author of "Tom Brown." The names of those hostile to the North or

apparently quite uninterested are numerous and surprising. Even

Dickens, who had hated slavery, and who in "Martin Chuzzlewit" had

appealed however bitterly to the higher national spirit which he

thought latent in America, now, when that spirit had at last and in

deed asserted itself, gave way in his letters to nothing but hatred of

the whole country. And a disposition like this--explicable but

odious--did no doubt exist in the England of those days.

There is, however, quite another aspect of this question besides that

which has so painfully impressed many American memories. When the

largest manufacturing industry of England was brought near to famine by

the blockade, the voice of the stricken working population was loudly

and persistently uttered on the side of the North. There has been no

other demonstration so splendid of the spirit which remains widely

diffused among individual English working men and which at one time

animated labour as a concentrated political force. John Bright, who

completely grasped the situation in America, took a stand, in which J.

S. Mill, W. E. Forster, and the Duke of Argyll share his credit, but

which did peculiar and great honour to him as a Quaker who hated war.

But there is something more that must be said. The conduct of the

English Government, supported by the responsible leaders of the

Opposition, was at that time, no less than now, the surest indication

of the more deep-seated feelings of the real bulk of Englishmen on any

great question affecting our international relations; and the attitude

of the Government, in which Lord Palmerston was Prime Minister and Lord

John Russell Foreign Secretary, and with which in this matter

Conservative leaders like Disraeli and Sir Stafford Northcote entirely

concurred, was at the very least free from grave reproach. Lord John

Russell, and, there can be little doubt, his colleagues generally,

regarded slavery as an "accursed institution," but they felt no anger

with the people of the South for it, because, as he said, "we gave them

that curse and ours were the hands from which they received that fatal

gift"; in Lord John at least the one overmastering sentiment upon the

outbreak of the war was that of sheer pain that "a great Republic,

which has enjoyed institutions under which the people have been free

and happy, is placed in jeopardy." Their insight into American affairs

did not go deep; but the more seriously we rate "the strong antipathy

to the North, the strong sympathy with the South, and the passionate

wish to have cotton," of which a Minister, Lord Granville, wrote at the

time, the greater is the credit due both to the Government as a whole

and to Disraeli for having been conspicuously unmoved by these

considerations; and "the general approval from Parliament, the press,

and the public," which, as Lord Granville added, their policy received,

is creditable too. It is perfectly true, as will be seen later, that

at one dark moment in the fortunes of the North, the Government very

cautiously considered the possibility of intervention, but Disraeli, to

whom a less patriotic course would have offered a party advantage,

recalled to them their own better judgment; and it is impossible to

read their correspondence on this question without perceiving that in

this they were actuated by no hostility to the North, but by a sincere

belief that the cause of the North was hopeless and that intervention,

with a view to stopping bloodshed, might prove the course of honest

friendship to all America. Englishmen of a later time have become

deeply interested in America, and may wish that their fathers had

better understood the great issue of the Civil War, but it is matter

for pride, which in honesty should be here asserted, that with many

selfish interests in this contest, of which they were most keenly

aware, Englishmen, in their capacity as a nation, acted with complete

integrity.

But for our immediate purpose the object of thus reviewing a subject on

which American historians have lavished much research is to explain the

effect produced in America by demonstrations of strong antipathy and

sympathy in England. The effect in some ways has been long lasting.

The South caught at every mark of sympathy with avidity, was led by its

politicians to expect help, received none, and became resentful. It is

surprising to be told, but may be true, that the embers of this

resentment became dangerous to England in the autumn of 1914. In the

North the memory of an antipathy which was almost instantly perceived

has burnt deep--as many memoirs, for instance those recently published

by Senator Lodge, show--into the minds of precisely those Americans to

whom Englishmen have ever since been the readiest to accord their

esteem. There were many men in the North with a ready-made dislike of

England, but there were many also whose sensitiveness to English

opinion, if in some ways difficult for us to appreciate, was intense.

Republicans such as James Russell Lowell had writhed under the

reproaches cast by Englishmen upon the acquiescence of all America in

slavery; they felt that the North had suddenly cut off this reproach

and staked everything on the refusal to give way to slavery any

further; they looked now for expressions of sympathy from many quarters

in England; but in the English newspapers which they read and the

reports of Americans in England they found evidence of nothing but

dislike. There soon came evidence, as it seemed to the whole North, of

actually hostile action on the part of the British Government. It

issued a Proclamation enjoining neutrality upon British subjects. This

was a matter of course on the outbreak of what was nothing less than

war; but Northerners thought that at least some courteous explanation

should first have been made to their Government, and there were other

matters which they misinterpreted as signs of an agreement of England

with France to go further and open diplomatic relations with the

Confederate Government. Thus alike in the most prejudiced and in the

most enlightened quarters in the North there arose an irritation which

an Englishman must see to have been natural but can hardly think to

have been warranted by the real facts.

Here came in the one clearly known and most certainly happy

intervention of Lincoln's in foreign affairs. Early in May Seward

brought to him the draft of a vehement despatch, telling the British

Government peremptorily what the United States would not stand, and

framed in a manner which must have frustrated any attempt by Adams in

London to establish good relations with Lord John Russell. That draft

now exists with the alterations made in Lincoln's own hand. With a few

touches, some of them very minute, made with the skill of a master of

language and of a life-long peacemaker, he changed the draft into a

firm but entirely courteous despatch. In particular, instead of

requiring Adams, as Seward would have done, to read the whole despatch

to Russell and leave him with a copy of it, he left it to the man on

the spot to convey its sense in what manner he judged best. Probably,

as has been claimed for him, his few penstrokes made peaceful relations

easy when Seward's despatch would have made them almost impossible;

certainly a study of this document will prove both his strange,

untutored diplomatic skill and the general soundness of his view of

foreign affairs.

Now, however, followed a graver crisis in which his action requires

some discussion. Messrs. Mason and Slidell were sent by the

Confederate Government as their emissaries to England and France. They

got to Havana and there took ship again on the British steamer _Trent_.

A watchful Northern sea captain overhauled the _Trent_, took Mason and

Slidell off her, and let her go. If he had taken the course, far more

inconvenient to the _Trent_, of bringing her into a Northern harbour,

where a Northern Prize Court might have adjudged these gentlemen to be

bearers of enemy despatches, he would have been within the law. As it

was he violated well-established usage, and no one has questioned the

right and even the duty of the British Government to demand the release

of the prisoners. This they did in a note of which the expression was

made milder by the wish of the Queen (conveyed in almost the last

letter of the Prince Consort), but which required compliance within a

fortnight. Meanwhile Secretary Welles had approved the sea captain's

action. The North was jubilant at the capture, the more so because

Mason and Slidell were Southern statesmen of the lower type and held to

be specially obnoxious; and the House of Representatives, to make

matters worse, voted its approval of what had been done. Lincoln, on

the very day when the news of the capture came, had seen and said

privately that on the principles which America had itself upheld in the

past the prisoners would have to be given up with an apology. But

there is evidence that he now wavered, and that, bent as he was on

maintaining a united North, he was still too distrustful of his own

better judgment as against that of the public. At this very time he

was already on other points in painful conflict with many friends. In

any case he submitted to Seward a draft despatch making the ill-judged

proposal of arbitration. He gave way to Seward, but at the Cabinet

meeting on Christmas Eve, at which Seward submitted a despatch yielding

to the British demand, it is reported that Lincoln, as well as Chase

and others, was at first reluctant to agree, and that it was Bates and

Seward that persuaded the Cabinet to a just and necessary surrender.

This was the last time that there was serious friction in the actual

intercourse of the two Governments. The lapse of Great Britain in

allowing the famous _Alabama_ to sail was due to delay and misadventure

("week-ends" or the like) in the proceedings of subordinate officials,

and was never defended, and the numerous minor controversies that

arose, as well as the standing disagreement as to the law of blockade

never reached the point of danger. For all this great credit was due

to Lord Lyons and to C. F. Adams, and to Seward also, when he had a

little sobered down, but it might seem as if the credit commonly given

to Lincoln by Americans rested on little but the single happy

performance with the earlier despatch which has been mentioned. Adams

and Lyons were not aware of his beneficent influence--the papers of the

latter contain little reference to him beyond a kindly record of a

trivial conversation, at the end of which, as the Ambassador was going

for a holiday to England, the President said, "Tell the English people

I mean them no harm." Yet it is evident that Lincoln's supporters in

America, the writer of the Biglow Papers, for instance, ascribed to him

a wise, restraining power in the _Trent_ dispute. What is more,

Lincoln later claimed this for himself. Two or three years later, in

one of the confidences with which he often startled men who were but

slight acquaintances, but who generally turned out worthy of

confidence, he exclaimed with emphatic self-satisfaction, "Seward knows

that I am his master," and recalled with satisfaction how he had forced

Seward to yield to England in the _Trent_ affair. It would have been

entirely unlike him to claim praise when it was wholly undue to him; we

find him, for example, writing to Fox, of the Navy Department, about "a

blunder which was probably in part mine, and certainly was not yours";

so that a puzzling question arises here. It is quite possible that

Lincoln, who did not press his proposal of arbitration, really

manoeuvred Seward and the Cabinet into full acceptance of the British

demands by making them see the consequences of any other action. It is

also, however, likely enough that, being, as he was, interested in

arbitration generally, he was too inexperienced to see the

inappropriateness of the proposal in this case. If so, we may none the

less credit him with having forced Seward to work for peace and

friendly relations with Great Britain, and made that minister the

agent, more skilful than himself, of a peaceful resolution which in its

origin was his own.

5. _The Great Questions of Domestic Policy_.

The larger questions of civil policy which arose out of the fact of the

war, and which weighed heavily on Lincoln before the end of 1861, can

be related with less intricate detail if the fundamental point of

difficulty is made clear.

Upon July 4 Congress met. In an able Message which was a skilful but

simple appeal not only to Congress, but to the "plain people," the

President set forth the nature of the struggle as he conceived it,

putting perhaps in its most powerful form the contention that the Union

was indissoluble, and declaring that the "experiment" of "our popular

government" would have failed once for all if it did not prove that

"when ballots have fairly and constitutionally decided, there can be no

successful appeal back to bullets." He recounted the steps which he

had taken since the bombardment of Fort Sumter, some of which might be

held to exceed his constitutional authority as indeed they did, saying

he would have been false to his trust if for fear of such illegality he

had let the whole Constitution perish, and asking that, if necessary,

Congress should ratify them. He appealed to Congress now to do its

part, and especially he appealed for such prompt and adequate provision

of money and men as would enable the war to be speedily brought to a

close. Congress, with but a few dissentient voices, chiefly from the

border States, approved all that he had done, and voted the supplies

that he had asked. Then, by a resolution of both Houses, it defined

the object of the war; the war was not for any purpose of conquest or

subjugation, or of "overthrowing or interfering with the rights or

established institutions" of the Southern States; it was solely "to

preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the

several States unimpaired."

In this resolution may be found the clue to the supreme political

problem with which, side by side with the conduct of the war, Lincoln

was called upon to grapple unceasingly for the rest of his life. That

problem lay in the inevitable change, as the war dragged on, of the

political object involved in it. The North as yet was not making war

upon the institutions of Southern States, in other words upon slavery,

and it would have been wrong to do so. It was simply asserting the

supremacy of law by putting down what every man in the North regarded

as rebellion. That rebellion, it seemed likely, would completely

subside after a decisive defeat or two of the Southern forces. The law

and the Union would then have been restored as before. A great victory

would in fact have been won over slavery, for the policy of restricting

its further spread would have prevailed, but the constitutional right

of each Southern State to retain slavery within its borders was not to

be denied by those who were fighting, as they claimed, for the

Constitution.

Such at first was the position taken up by an unanimous Congress. It

was obviously in accord with those political principles of Lincoln

which have been examined in a former chapter. More than that, it was

the position which, as he thought, his official duty as President

imposed on him. It is exceedingly difficult for any Englishman to

follow his course as the political situation developed. He was neither

a dictator, nor an English Prime Minister. He was first and foremost

an elected officer with powers and duties prescribed by a fixed

Constitution which he had sworn to obey. His oath was continually

present to his mind.

He was there to uphold the Union and the laws, with just so much

infraction of the letter of the law, and no more, as might be obviously

necessary if the Union and the whole fabric of law were not to perish.

The mere duration of the war altered of necessity the policy of the

North and of the President. Their task had presented itself as in

theory the "suppression of an unlawful combination" within their

country; it became in manifest fact the reabsorption of a country now

hostile, with which reunion was possible only if slavery, the

fundamental cause of difference, was uprooted.

As the hope of a speedy victory and an easy settlement vanished, wide

differences of opinion appeared again in the North, and the lines on

which this cleavage proceeded very soon showed themselves. There were

those who gladly welcomed the idea of a crusade against slavery, and

among them was an unreasonable section of so-called Radicals. These

resented that delay in a policy of wholesale liberation which was

enforced by legal and constitutional scruples, and by such practical

considerations as the situation in the slave States which adhered to

the North. There was, on the other hand, a Democratic party Opposition

which before long began to revive. It combined many shades of opinion.

There were supporters or actual agents of the South, few at first and

very quiet, but ultimately developing a treasonable activity. There

were those who constituted themselves the guardians of legality and

jealously criticised all the measures of emergency which became more or

less necessary. Of the bulk of the Democrats it would probably be fair

to say that their conscious intention throughout was to be true to the

Union, but that throughout they were beset by a respect for Southern

rights which would have gone far to paralyse the arm of the Government.

Lastly, there were Republicans, by no means in sympathy with the

Democratic view, who became suspect to their Radical fellows and were

vaguely classed together as Conservatives. This term may be taken to

cover men simply of moderate and cautious, or in some cases, of

variable disposition, but it included, too, some men who, while

rigorous against the South, were half-hearted in their detestation of

slavery.

So far as Lincoln's private opinions were concerned, it would have been

impossible to rank him in any of these sections. He had as strong a

sympathy with the Southern people as any Democrat, but he was for the

restoration of the Union absolutely and without compromise. He was the

most cautious of men, but his caution veiled a detestation of slavery

of which he once said that he could not remember the time when he had

not felt it. It was his business, so far as might be, to retain the

support of all sections in the North to the Union. In the course, full

of painful deliberation, which we shall see him pursuing, he tried to

be guided by a two-fold principle which he constantly avowed. The

Union was to be restored with as few departures from the ways of the

Constitution as was possible; but such departures became his duty

whenever he was thoroughly convinced that they were needful for the

restoration of the Union.

Before the war was four months old, the inevitable subject of dispute

between Northern parties had begun to trouble Lincoln. As soon as a

Northern force set foot on Southern soil slaves were apt to escape to

it, and the question arose, what should the Northern general do with

them, for he was not there to make war on the private property of

Southern citizens. General Butler--a newspaper character of some fame

or notoriety throughout the war--commanded at Fort Monroe, a point on

the coast of Virginia which was always held by the North. He learnt

that the slaves who fled to him had been employed on making

entrenchments for the Southern troops, so he adopted a view, which took

the fancy of the North, that they were "contraband of war," and should

be kept from their owners. The circumstances in which slaves could

thus escape varied so much that great discretion must be left to the

general on the spot, and the practice of generals varied. Lincoln was

well content to leave the matter so. Congress, however, passed an Act

by which private property could be confiscated, if used in aid of the

"insurrection" but not otherwise, and slaves were similarly dealt with.

This moderate provision as to slaves met with a certain amount of

opposition; it raised an alarming question in slave States like

Missouri that had not seceded. Lincoln himself seems to have been

averse to any legislation on the subject. He had deliberately

concentrated his mind, or, as his critics would have said, narrowed it

down to the sole question of maintaining the Union, and was resolved to

treat all other questions as subordinate to this.

Shortly after, there reappeared upon the political scene a leader with

what might seem a more sympathetic outlook. This was Frémont,

Lincoln's predecessor as the Republican candidate for the Presidency.

Frémont was one of those men who make brilliant and romantic figures in

their earlier career, and later appear to have lost all solid

qualities. It must be recalled that, though scarcely a professional

soldier (for he had held a commission, but served only in the Ordnance

Survey) he had conducted a great exploring expedition, had seen

fighting as a free-lance in California, and, it is claimed, had with

his handful of men done much to win that great State from Mexico. Add

to this that he, a Southerner by birth, was known among the leaders who

had made California a free State, and it is plain how appropriate it

must have seemed when he was set to command the Western Department,

which for the moment meant Missouri. Here by want of competence, and,

which was more surprising, lethargy he had made a present of some

successes to a Southern invading force, and had sacrificed the

promising life of General Lyon. Lincoln, loath to remove him, had made

a good effort at helping him out by tactfully persuading a more

experienced general to serve as a subordinate on his staff. At the end

of August Frémont suddenly issued a proclamation establishing martial

law throughout Missouri. This contained other dangerous provisions,

but above all it liberated the slaves and confiscated the whole

property of all persons proved (before Court Martial) to have taken

active part with the enemy in the field. It is obvious that such a

measure was liable to shocking abuse, that it was certain to infuriate

many friends of the Union, and that it was in conflict with the law

which Congress had just passed on the subject. To Lincoln's mind it

presented the alarming prospect that it might turn the scale against

the Union cause in the still pending deliberations in Kentucky.

Lincoln's overpowering solicitude on such a point is among the proofs

that his understanding of the military situation, however elementary,

was sound. He wished, characteristically, that Frémont himself should

withdraw his Proclamation. He invited him to withdraw it in private

letters from which one sentence may be taken: "You speak of it as being

the only means of saving the Government. On the contrary, it is itself

the surrender of the Government. Can it be pretended that it is any

longer the Government of the United States--any government of

constitution and laws--wherein a general or a president may make

permanent rules of property by proclamation?" Frémont preferred to

make Lincoln publicly overrule him, which he did; and the inevitable

consequence followed. When some months later, the utter military

disorganisation, which Frémont let arise while he busied himself with

politics, and the scandalous waste, out of which his flatterers

enriched themselves, compelled the President to remove him from his

command, Frémont became, for a time at least, to patriotic crowds and

to many intelligent, upright and earnest men from St. Louis to Boston,

the chivalrous and pure-hearted soldier of freedom, and Lincoln, the

soulless politician, dead to the cause of liberty, who, to gratify a

few wire-pulling friends, had struck this hero down on the eve of

victory to his army--an army which, by the way, he had reduced almost

to nonentity.

This salient instance explains well enough the nature of one half of

the trial which Lincoln throughout the war had to undergo. Pursuing

the restoration of the Union with a thoroughness which must estrange

from him the Democrats of the North, he was fated from the first to

estrange also Radicals who were generally as devoted to the Union as

himself and with whose over-mastering hatred of slavery he really

sympathised. In the following chapter we are more concerned with the

other half of his trial, the war itself. Of his minor political

difficulties few instances need be given--only it must be remembered

that they were many and involved, besides delicate questions of

principle, the careful sifting of much confident hearsay; and, though

the critics of public men are wont to forget it, that there are only

twenty-four hours in the day.

But the year 1861 was to close with a further vexation that must be

related. Secretary Cameron proved incapable on the business side of

war administration. Waste and alleged corruption called down upon him

a searching investigation by a committee of the House of

Representatives. He had not added to his own considerable riches, but

his political henchmen had grown fat. The displeasure with the whole

Administration was the greater because the war was not progressing

favourably, or at all. There were complaints of the Naval Department

also, but politicians testified their belief in the honesty of Welles

without saying a word for Cameron. There is every reason to think he

was not personally dishonourable. Lincoln believed in his complete

integrity, and so also did sterner critics, Chase, an apostle of

economy and uprightness, and Senator Sumner. But he had to go. He

opened the door for his removal by a circular to generals on the

subject of slaves, which was comparable to Frémont's Proclamation and

of which Lincoln had to forbid the issue. He accepted the appointment

of Minister to Russia, and when, before long, he returned, he justified

himself and Lincoln's judgment by his disinterested friendship and

support. He was removed from the War Office at the end of December and

a remarkable incident followed. While Lincoln's heart was still set on

his law practice, the prospect of appearing as something more than a

backwoods attorney smiled for a single moment on him. He was briefed

to appear in an important case outside Illinois with an eminent lawyer

from the East, Edwin M. Stanton; but he was not allowed to open his

mouth, for Stanton snuffed him out with supreme contempt, and he

returned home crestfallen. Stanton before the war was a strong

Democrat, but hated slavery. In the last days of Buchanan's Presidency

he was made Attorney-General and helped much to restore the lost credit

of that Administration. He was now in Washington, criticising the slow

conduct of the war with that explosive fury and scorn which led him to

commit frequent injustice (at the very end of the war he publicly and

monstrously accused Sherman of being bribed into terms of peace by

Southern gold), which concealed from most eyes his real kindness and a

lurking tenderness of heart, but which made him a vigorous

administrator intolerant of dishonesty and inefficiency. He was more

contemptuous of Lincoln than ever, he would constantly be denouncing

his imbecility, and it is incredible that kind friends were wanting to

convey his opinion to Lincoln. Lincoln made him Secretary of War.

Since the summer, to the impatient bewilderment of the Northern people,

of Congress, now again in session, and of the President himself, their

armies in the field were accomplishing just nothing at all, and, as

this agitating year, 1861, closed, a deep gloom settled on the North,

to be broken after a while by the glare of recurrent disaster.