The Democratic opposition which made some headway in the first half of

1863 comprised a more extreme opposition prevailing in the West and led

by Clement Vallandigham, a Congressman from Ohio, and a milder opposition

led by Horatio Seymour, who from the end of 1862 to the end of 1864, when

he failed of re-election, was Governor of New York State. The extreme

section were often called "Copperheads," after a venomous snake of that

name. Strictly, perhaps, this political term should be limited to the

few who went so far as to desire the victory of the South; more loosely

it was applied to a far larger number who went no further than to say

that the war should be stopped. This demand, it must be observed, was

based upon the change of policy shown in the Proclamation of

Emancipation. "The war for the Union," said Vallandigham in Congress in

January, 1863, "is in your hands a most bloody and costly failure. War

for the Union was abandoned; war for the negro openly begun. With what

success? Let the dead at Fredericksburg answer.--Ought this war to

continue? I answer no--not a day, not an hour. What then? Shall we

separate? Again I answer, no, no, no.--Stop fighting. Make an

armistice. Accept at once friendly foreign mediation." And further:

"The secret but real purpose of the war was to abolish slavery in the

States, and with it the change of our present democratical form of

government into an imperial despotism." This was in no sense treason; it

was merely humbug. The alleged design to establish despotism, chiefly

revealed at that moment by the liberation of slaves, had of course no

existence. Equally false, as will be seen later, was the whole

suggestion that any peace could have been had with the South except on

the terms of separation. Vallandigham, a demagogue of real vigour, had

perhaps so much honesty as is compatible with self-deception; at any

rate, upon his subsequent visit to the South his intercourse with

Southern leaders was conducted on the footing that the Union should be

restored. But his character inspired no respect. Burnside, now

commanding the troops in Ohio, held that violent denunciation of the

Government in a tone that tended to demoralise the troops was treason,

since it certainly was not patriotism, and when in May, 1863,

Vallandigham made a very violent and offensive speech in Ohio he had him

arrested in his house at night, and sent him before a court-martial which

imprisoned him. Loud protest was raised by every Democrat. This worry

came upon Lincoln just after Chancellorsville. He regretted Burnside's

action--later on he had to reverse the rash suppression of a newspaper by

which Burnside provoked violent indignation--but on this occasion he

would only say in public that he "regretted the necessity" of such

action. Evidently he thought it his duty to support a well-intentioned

general against a dangerous agitator. The course which after some

consideration he took was of the nature of a practical joke, perhaps

justified by its success. Vallandigham was indeed released; he was taken

to the front and handed over to the Confederates as if he had been an

exchanged prisoner of war. In reply to demands from the Democratic

organisation in Ohio that Vallandigham might be allowed to return home,

Lincoln offered to consent if their leaders would sign a pledge to

support the war and promote the efficiency of the army. This they called

an evasion. Vallandigham made his way to Canada and conducted intrigues

from thence. In his absence he was put up for the governorship of Ohio

in November, but defeated by a huge majority, doubtless the larger

because of Gettysburg and Vicksburg. The next year he suddenly returned

home, braving the chance of arrest, and, probably to his disappointment,

Lincoln let him be. In reply to protests against Vallandigham's arrest

which had been sent by meetings in Ohio and New York, Lincoln had written

clear defences of his action, from which the foregoing account of his

views on martial law has been taken. In one of them was a sentence which

probably went further with the people of the North than any other: "Must

I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a

hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?" There may or may not

be some fallacy lurking here, but it must not be supposed that this

sentence came from a pleader's ingenuity. It was the expression of a man

really agonised by his weekly task of confirming sentences on deserters

from the army.

Governor Seymour was a more presentable antagonist than Vallandigham. He

did not propose to stop the war. On the contrary, his case was that the

war could only be effectively carried on by a law-abiding Government,

which would unite the people by maintaining the Constitution, not, as the

Radicals argued, by the flagitious policy of freeing the slaves. It

should be added that he was really concerned at the corruption which was

becoming rife, for which war contracts gave some scope, and which, with a

critic's obliviousness to the limitations of a human force, he thought

the most heavily-burdened Administration of its time could easily have

put down. With a little imagination it is easy to understand the

difficult position of the orthodox Democrats, who two years before had

voted against restricting the extension of slavery, and were now asked

for the sake of the Union to support a Government which was actually

abolishing slavery by martial law. Also the attitude of the thoroughly

self-righteous partisan is perfectly usual. Many of Governor Seymour's

utterances were fair enough, and much of his conduct was patriotic

enough. His main proceedings can be briefly summarised. His election as

Governor in the end of 1862 was regarded as an important event, the

appearance of a new leader holding an office of the greatest influence.

Lincoln, assuming, as he had a right to do, the full willingness of

Seymour to co-operate in prosecuting the war, did the simplest and best

thing. He wrote and invited Seymour after his inauguration in March,

1863, to a personal conference with himself as to the ways in which, with

their divergent views, they could best co-operate. The Governor waited

three weeks before he acknowledged this letter. He then wrote and

promised a full reply later. He never sent this reply. He protested

energetically and firmly against the arrest of Vallandigham. In July,

1863, the Conscription Act began to be put in force in New York city;

then occurred the only serious trouble that ever did occur under the Act;

and it was very serious. A mob of foreign immigrants, mainly Irish, put

a forcible stop to the proceeding of the draft. It set fire to the

houses of prominent Republicans, and prevented the fire brigade from

saving them. It gave chase to all negroes that it met, beating some to

death, stringing up others to trees and lamp-posts and burning them as

they hung. It burned down an orphanage for coloured children after the

police had with difficulty saved its helpless inmates. Four days of

rioting prevailed throughout the city before the arrival of fresh troops

restored order. After an interval of prudent length the draft was

successfully carried out. Governor Seymour arrived in the city during

the riots. He harangued this defiled mob in gentle terms, promising

them, if they would be good, to help them in securing redress of the

grievance to which he attributed their conduct. Thenceforward to the end

of his term of office he persecuted Lincoln with complaints as to the

unfairness of the quota imposed on certain districts under the

Conscription Act. It is true that he also protested on presumably

sincere constitutional grounds against the Act itself, begging Lincoln to

suspend its enforcement till its validity had been determined by the

Courts. As to this Lincoln most properly agreed to facilitate, if he

could, an appeal to the Supreme Court, but declined, on the ground of

urgent military necessity, to delay the drafts in the meantime.

Seymour's obstructive conduct, however, was not confined to the

intelligible ground of objection to the Act itself; it showed itself in

the perpetual assertion that the quotas were unfair. No complaint as to

this had been raised before the riots. It seems that a quite unintended

error may in fact at first have been made. Lincoln, however, immediately

reduced the quotas in question to the full extent which the alleged error

would have required. Fresh complaints from Seymour followed, and so on

to the end. Ultimately Seymour was invited to come to Washington and

have out the whole matter of his complaints in conference with Stanton.

Like a prudent man, he again refused to face personal conference. It

seems that Governor Seymour, who was a great person in his day, was very

decidedly, in the common acceptance of the term, a gentleman. This has

been counted unto him for righteousness. It should rather be treated as

an aggravation of his very unmeritable conduct.

Thus, since the Proclamation of Emancipation the North had again become

possessed of what is sometimes considered a necessity of good government,

an organised Opposition ready and anxious to take the place of the

existing Administration. It can well be understood that honourable men

entered into this combination, but it is difficult to conceive on what

common principle they could hold together which would not have been

disastrous in its working. The more extreme leaders, who were likely to

prove the driving force among them, were not unfitly satirised in a novel

of the time called the "Man Without a Country." Their chance of success

in fact depended upon the ill-fortune of their country in the war and on

the irritation against the Government, which could be aroused by that

cause alone and not by such abuses as they fairly criticised. In the

latter part of 1863 the war was going well. A great meeting of "Union

men" was summoned in August in Illinois. Lincoln was tempted to go and

speak to them, but he contented himself with a letter. Phrases in it

might suggest the stump orator, more than in fact his actual stump

speeches usually did. In it, however, he made plain in the simplest

language the total fallacy of such talk of peace as had lately become

common; the Confederacy meant the Confederate army and the men who

controlled it; as a fact no suggestion of peace or compromise came from

them; if it ever came, the people should know it. In equally simple

terms he sought to justify, even to supporters of the Union who did not

share his "wish that all men could be free," his policy in regard to

emancipation. In any case, freedom had for the sake of the Union been

promised to negroes who were now fighting or working for the North, "and

the promise being made must be kept." As that most critical year of the

war drew to a close there was a prevailing recognition that the rough but

straight path along which the President groped his way was the right

path, and upon the whole he enjoyed a degree of general favour which was

not often his portion.

3. _The War in 1864_.

It is the general military opinion that before the war entered on its

final stage Jefferson Davis should have concentrated all his forces for a

larger invasion of the North than was ever in fact undertaken. In the

Gettysburg campaign he might have strengthened Lee's army by 20,000 men

if he could have withdrawn them from the forts at Charleston.

Charleston, however, was threatened during 1863 by the sea and land

forces of the North, in an expedition which was probably itself unwise,

as Lincoln himself seems to have suspected, but which helped to divert a

Confederate army. In the beginning of 1864 Davis still kept this force

at Charleston; he persisted also in keeping a hold on his own State,

Mississippi, with a further small army; while Longstreet still remained

in the south-east corner of Tennessee, where a useful employment of his

force was contemplated but none was made. The chief Southern armies with

which we have to deal are that of Lee, lying south of the Rapidan, and

that of Bragg, now superseded by Joseph Johnston, at Dalton, south of

Chattanooga. The Confederacy, it is thought, was now in a position in

which it might take long to reduce it, but the only military chance for

it was concentration on one great counter-stroke. This seems to have

been the opinion of Lee and Longstreet. Jefferson Davis clung, even late

in the year 1864, to the belief that disaster must somehow overtake any

invading Northern army which pushed far. Possibly he reckoned also that

the North would weary of the repeated checks in the process of conquest.

Indeed, as will be seen later, the North came near to doing so, while a

serious invasion of the North, unless overwhelmingly successful, might

really have revived its spirit. In any case Jefferson Davis, unlike

Lincoln, had no desire to be guided by his best officers. He was for

ever quarrelling with Joseph Johnston and often with Beauregard; the less

capable Bragg, though removed from the West, was now installed as his

chief adviser in Richmond; and the genius of Lee was not encouraged to

apply itself to the larger strategy of the war.

At the beginning of 1864 an advance from Chattanooga southward into the

heart of the Confederate country was in contemplation. Grant and

Farragut wished that it should be supported by a joint military and naval

attack upon Mobile, in Alabama, on the Gulf of Mexico. Other

considerations on the part of the Government prevented this. In 1863

Marshal Bazaine had invaded Mexico to set up Louis Napoleon's ill-fated

client the Archduke Maximilian as Emperor. As the so-called "Monroe

Doctrine" (really attributable to the teaching of Hamilton and the action

of John Quincy Adams, who was Secretary of State under President Monroe)

declared, such an extension of European influence, more especially

dynastic influence, on the American continent was highly unacceptable to

the United States. Many in the North were much excited, so much so that

during 1864 a preposterous resolution, which meant, if anything, war with

France, was passed on the motion of one Henry Winter Davis. It was of

course the business of Lincoln and of Seward, now moulded to his views,

to avoid this disaster, and yet, with such dignity as the situation

allowed, keep the French Government aware of the enmity which they might

one day incur. They did this. But they apprehended that the French,

with a footing for the moment in Mexico, had designs on Texas; and thus,

though the Southern forces in Texas were cut off from the rest of the

Confederacy and there was no haste for subduing them, it was thought

expedient, with an eye on France, to assert the interest of the Union in

Texas. General Banks, in Louisiana, was sent to Texas with the forces

which would otherwise have been sent to Mobile. His various endeavours

ended in May, 1864, with the serious defeat of an expedition up the Red

River. This defeat gave great annoyance to the North and made an end of

Banks' reputation. It might conceivably have had a calamitous sequel in

the capture by the South of Admiral Porter's river flotilla, which

accompanied Banks, and the consequent undoing of the conquest of the

Mississippi. As it was it wasted much force.

Before Grant could safely launch his forces southward from Chattanooga

against Johnston, it was necessary to deal in some way with the

Confederate force still at large in Mississippi. Grant determined to do

this by the destruction of the railway system by which alone it could

move eastward. For this purpose he left Thomas to hold Chattanooga,

while Sherman was sent to Meridian, the chief railway centre in the

Southern part of Mississippi. In February Sherman arrived there, and,

though a subsidiary force, sent from Memphis on a similar but less

important errand somewhat further north, met with a severe repulse, he

was able unmolested to do such damage to the lines around Meridian as to

secure Grant's purpose.

There was yet a further preliminary to the great final struggle. On

March 1, 1864, pursuant to an Act of Congress which was necessary for

this object, Lincoln conferred upon Grant the rank of Lieutenant-General,

never held by any one else since Washington, for it was only brevet rank

that was conferred on Scott. Therewith Grant took the command, under the

President, of all the Northern armies. Grant came to Washington to

receive his new honour. He had taken leave of Sherman in an interchange

of letters which it is good to read; but he had intended to return to the

West. Sherman, who might have desired the command in the West for

himself, had unselfishly pressed him to return. He feared that the

dreaded politicians would in some way hurt Grant, and that he would be

thwarted by them, become disgusted, and retire; they did hurt him, but

not then, nor in the way that Sherman had expected. Grant, however,

could trust Sherman to carry out the work he wanted done in the West, and

he now saw that, as Lincoln might have told him and possibly did, the

work he wanted done in the East must be done by him. He went West again

for a few days only, to settle his plans with Sherman. Sherman with his

army of 100,000 was to follow Johnston's army of about 60,000, wherever

it went, till he destroyed it. Grant with his 120,000 was to keep up an

equally unfaltering fight with Lee's army, also of 60,000. There was, of

course, nothing original about this conception except the idea, fully

present to both men's minds, of the risk and sacrifice with which it was

worth while to carry it out. Lincoln and Grant had never met till this

month. Grant at the first encounter was evidently somewhat on his guard.

He was prepared to like Lincoln, but he was afraid of mistaken dictation

from him, and determined to discourage it. Also Stanton had advised him

that Lincoln, out of mere good nature, would talk unwisely of any plans

discussed with him. This was probably quite unjust. Stanton, in order

to keep politicians and officers in their places, was accustomed to bite

off the noses of all comers. Lincoln, on the contrary, would talk to all

sorts of people with a readiness which was sometimes astonishing, but

there was a good deal of method in this--he learnt something from these

people all the time--and he certainly had a very great power of keeping

his own counsel when he chose. In any case, when Grant at the end of

April left Washington for the front, he parted with Lincoln on terms of

mutual trust which never afterwards varied. Lincoln in fact, satisfied

as to his general purpose, had been happy to leave him to make his plans

for himself. He wrote to Grant: "Not expecting to see you again before

the spring campaign begins, I wish to express in this way my entire

satisfaction with what you have done up to this time so far as I

understand it. The particulars of your plan I neither know nor seek to

know. You are vigilant and self-reliant, and, pleased with this, I wish

not to obtrude any constraints or restraints upon you. While I am very

anxious that any great disaster or capture of our men in great numbers

shall be avoided, I know these points are less likely to escape your

attention than they would be mine. If there is anything wanting which is

within my power to give, do not fail to let me know it. And now, with a

brave army and a just cause, may God sustain you." Grant replied: "From

my first entrance into the volunteer service of the country to the

present day I have never had cause of complaint--have never expressed or

implied a complaint against the Administration, or the Secretary of War,

for throwing any embarrassment in the way of my vigorously prosecuting

what appeared to me my duty. Indeed, since the promotion which placed me

in command of all the armies, and in view of the great responsibility and

importance of success, I have been astonished at the readiness with which

everything asked for has been yielded, without even an explanation being

asked. Should my success be less than I desire or expect, the least I

can say is, the fault is not with you." At this point the real

responsibility of Lincoln in regard to military events became

comparatively small, and to the end of the war those events may be traced

with even less detail than has hitherto been necessary.

Upon joining the Army of the Potomac Grant retained Meade, with whom he

was pleased, in a somewhat anomalous position under him as commander of

that army. "Wherever Lee goes," he told him, "there you will go too."

His object of attack was, in agreement with the opinion which Lincoln had

from an early date formed, Lee's army. If Lee could be compelled, or

should choose, to shut himself up in Richmond, as did happen, then

Richmond would become an object of attack, but not otherwise. Grant,

however, hoped that he might force Lee to give him battle in the open.

In the open or behind entrenchments, he meant to fight him, reckoning

that if he lost double the number that Lee did, his own loss could easily

be made up, but Lee's would be irreparable. His hope was to a large

extent disappointed. He had to do with a greater general than himself,

who, with his men, knew every inch of a tangled country. In the

engagements which now followed, Grant's men were constantly being hurled

against chosen positions, entrenched and with the new device of wire

entanglements in front of them. "I mean," he wrote, "to fight it out on

this line if it takes all summer." It took summer, autumn, winter, and

the early spring. Once across the Rapidan he was in the tract of scrubby

jungle called the Wilderness. He had hoped to escape out of this

unopposed and at the same time to turn Lee's right by a rapid march to

his own left. But he found Lee in his way. On May 5 and 6 there was

stubborn and indecisive fighting, with a loss to Grant of 17,660 and to

Lee of perhaps over 10,000--from Grant's point of view something gained.

Then followed a further movement to the left to out-flank Lee. Again Lee

was to be found in the way in a chosen position of his own near

Spottsylvania Court House. Here on the five days from May 8 to May 12

the heavy fighting was continued, with a total loss to Grant of over

18,000 and probably a proportionate loss to Lee. Another move by Grant

to the left now caused Lee to fall back to a position beyond the North

Anna River, on which an attack was made but speedily given up. Further

movements in the same general direction, but without any such serious

fighting--Grant still endeavouring to turn Lee's right, Lee still moving

so as to cover Richmond--brought Grant by the end of the month to Cold

Harbour, some ten miles east by north of Richmond, close upon the scene

of McClellan's misadventures. Meanwhile Grant had caused an expedition

under General Butler to go by sea up the James, and to land a little

south of Richmond, which, with the connected fortress of Petersburg,

twenty-two miles to the south of it, had only a weak garrison left.

Butler was a man with remarkable powers of self-advertisement; he had now

a very good chance of taking Petersburg, but his expedition failed

totally. From June 1 to June 3 Grant was occupied on the most disastrous

enterprise of his career, a hopeless attack upon a strong entrenched

position, which, with the lesser encounters that took place within the

next few days, cost the North 14,000 men, against a loss to the South

which has been put as low as 1,700. It was the one battle which Grant

regretted having fought. He gave up the hope of a fight with Lee on

advantageous conditions outside Richmond. On June 12 he suddenly moved

his army across the James to the neighbourhood of City Point, east of

Petersburg. Lee must now stand siege in Richmond and Petersburg. Had he

now marched north against Washington, Grant would have been after him and

would have secured for his vastly larger force the battle in the open

which he had so far vainly sought. Yet another disappointment followed.

On July 30 an attempt was made to carry Petersburg by assault immediately

after the explosion of an enormous mine. It failed with heavy loss,

through the fault of the amiable but injudicious Burnside, who now passed

into civil life, and of the officers under him. The siege was to be a

long affair. In reality, for all the disappointment, and in spite of

Grant's confessed mistake at Cold Harbour, his grim plan was progressing.

The force which the South could ill spare was being worn down, and Grant

was in a position in which, though he might have got there at less cost,

and though the end would not be yet, the end was sure. His army was for

the time a good deal shaken, and the estimation in which the West Point

officers held him sank low. His own determination was quite unshaken,

and, though Lincoln hinted somewhat mildly that these enormous losses

ought not to recur, his confidence in Grant was unabated, too.

People in Washington who had watched all this with alternations of

feeling that ended in dejection had had another trial to their nerves

early in July. The Northern General Sigel, who commanded in the lower

part of the Shenandoah Valley, protecting the Baltimore and Ohio Railway,

had marched southward in June in pursuance of a subsidiary part of

Grant's scheme, but in a careless and rather purposeless manner. General

Early, detached by Lee to deal with him, defeated him; outmanoeuvred and

defeated General Hunter, who was sent to supersede him; overwhelmed with

superior force General Lew Wallace, who stood in his way further on; and

upon July 11 appeared before Washington itself. The threat to Washington

had been meant as no more than a threat, but the garrison was largely

made up of recruits; reinforcements to it sent back by Grant arrived only

on the same day as Early, and if that enterprising general had not wasted

some previous days there might have been a chance that he could get into

Washington, though not that he could hold it. As it was he attacked one

of the Washington forts. Lincoln was present, exhibiting, till the

officers there insisted on his retiring, the indifference to personal

danger which he showed on other occasions too. The attack was soon given

up, and in a few days Early had escaped back across the Potomac, leaving

in Grant's mind a determination that the Shenandoah Valley should cease

to be so useful to the South.

Sherman set out from Chattanooga on the day when Grant crossed the

Rapidan. Joseph Johnston barred his way in one entrenched position after

another. Sherman, with greater caution than Grant, or perhaps with

greater facilities of ground, manoeuvred him out of each position in

turn, pushing him slowly back along the line of the railway towards

Atlanta, the great manufacturing centre of Georgia, one hundred and

twenty miles south by east from Chattanooga. Only once, towards the end

of June at Kenesaw Mountain, some twenty miles north of Atlanta, did he

attack Johnston's entrenchments, causing himself some unnecessary loss

and failing in his direct attack on them, but probably thinking it

necessary to show that he would attack whenever needed. Johnston has

left a name as a master of defensive warfare, and doubtless delayed and

hampered Sherman as much as he could. Jefferson Davis angrily and

unwisely sent General Hood to supersede him. This less prudent officer

gave battle several times, bringing up the Confederate loss before

Atlanta fell to 34,000 against 30,000 on the other side, and being, by

great skill on Sherman's part, compelled to evacuate Atlanta on September

2.

By this time there had occurred the last and most brilliant exploit of

old Admiral Farragut, who on August 5 in a naval engagement of

extraordinarily varied incident, had possessed himself of the harbour of

Mobile, with its forts, though the town remained as a stronghold in

Confederate hands and prevented a junction with Sherman which would have

quite cut the Confederacy in two.

Nearer Washington, too, a memorable campaign was in process. For three

weeks after Early's unwelcome visit, military mismanagement prevailed

near Washington. Early was able to turn on his pursuers, and a further

raid, this time into Pennsylvania, took place. Grant was too far off to

exercise control except through a sufficiently able subordinate, which

Hunter was not. Halleck, as in a former crisis, did not help matters.

Lincoln, though at this time he issued a large new call for recruits, was

unwilling any longer to give military orders. Just now his political

anxieties had reached their height. His judgment was never firmer, but

friends thought his strength was breaking under the strain. On this and

on all grounds he was certainly wise to decline direct interference in

military affairs. On August 1 Grant ordered General Philip H. Sheridan

to the Shenandoah on temporary duty, expressing a wish that he should be

put "in command of all the troops in the field, with instructions to put

himself south of the enemy or follow him to the death." Lincoln

telegraphed to Grant, quoting this despatch and adding, "This I think is

exactly right; but please look over the despatches you may have received

from here even since you made that order and see if there is any idea in

the head of any one here of putting our army south of the enemy or

following him to the death in any direction. I repeat to you it will

neither be done nor attempted unless you watch it every day and hour and

force it." Grant now came to Hunter's army and gently placed Sheridan in

that general's place. The operations of that autumn, which established

Sheridan's fame and culminated in his final defeat of Early at Cedar

Creek on October 19, made him master of all the lower part of the valley.

Before he retired into winter quarters he had so laid waste the resources

of that unfortunate district that Richmond could no longer draw supplies

from it, nor could it again support a Southern army in a sally against

the North.

In the month of November Sherman began a new and extraordinary movement,

of which the conception was all his own, sanctioned with reluctance by

Grant, and viewed with anxiety by Lincoln, though he maintained his

absolute resolve not to interfere. He had fortified himself in Atlanta,

removing its civil inhabitants, in an entirely humane fashion, to places

of safety, and he had secured a little rest for his army. But he lay far

south in the heart of what he called "Jeff Davis' Empire," and Hood could

continually harass him by attacks on his communications. Hood, now

supervised by Beauregard, was gathering reinforcements, and Sherman

learnt that he contemplated a diversion by invading Tennessee. Sherman

determined to divide his forces, to send Thomas far back into Tennessee

with sufficient men, as he calculated, to defend it, and himself with the

rest of his army to set out for the eastern sea-coast, wasting no men on

the maintenance of his communications, but living on the country and

"making the people of Georgia feel the weight of the war." He set out

for the East on November 15. Hood, at Beauregard's orders, shortly

marched off for the North, where the cautious Thomas awaited events

within the fortifications of Nashville. At Franklin, in the heart of

Tennessee, about twenty miles south of Nashville, Hood's army suffered

badly in an attack upon General Schofield, whom Thomas had left to check

his advance while further reinforcements came to Nashville. Schofield

fell back slowly on Thomas, Hood rashly pressing after him with a small

but veteran army now numbering 44,000. Grant and the Washington

authorities viewed with much concern an invasion which Thomas had

suffered to proceed so far. Grant had not shared Sherman's faith in

Thomas. He now repeatedly urged him to act, but Thomas had his own views

and obstinately bided his time. Days followed when frozen sleet made an

advance impossible. Grant had already sent Logan to supersede Thomas,

and, growing still more anxious, had started to come west himself, when

the news reached him of a battle on December 15 and 16 in which Thomas

had fallen on Hood, completely routing him, taking on these days and in

the pursuit that followed no less than 13,000 prisoners.

There was a song, "As we go marching through Georgia," which was

afterwards famous, and which Sherman could not endure. What his men most

often sang, while they actually were marching through Georgia, was

another, and of its kind a great song:--

"John Brown's body lies amouldering in the grave,

But his soul goes marching on.

Glory, glory, Hallelujah."

Their progress was of the nature of a frolic, though in one way a very

stern frolic. They had little trouble from the small and scattered

Confederate forces that lay near their route. They industriously and

ingeniously destroyed the railway track of the South, heating the rails

and twisting them into knots; and the rich country of Georgia, which had

become the chief granary of the Confederates, was devastated as they

passed, for a space fifty or sixty miles broad, by the destruction of all

the produce they could not consume. This was done under control by

organised forage parties. Reasonable measures were taken to prevent

private pillage of houses. No doubt it happened. Sherman's able cavalry

commander earned a bad name, and "Uncle Billy," as they called him to his

face, clearly had a soft corner in his heart for the light-hearted and

light-fingered gentlemen called "bummers" (a "bummer," says the Oxford

Dictionary, "is one who quits the ranks and goes on an independent

foraging expedition on his own account"). They were, incidentally,

Sherman found, good scouts. But the serious crimes committed were very

few, judged by the standard of the ordinary civil population. The

authentic complaints recorded relate to such matters as the smashing of a

grand piano or the disappearance of some fine old Madeira. Thus the

suffering caused to individuals was probably not extreme, and a long

continuance of the war was rendered almost impossible. A little before

Christmas Day, 1864, Sherman had captured, with slight opposition, the

city of Savannah, on the Atlantic, with many guns and other spoils, and

was soon ready to turn northwards on the last lap of his triumphant

course. Lincoln's letter of thanks characteristically confessed his

earlier unexpressed and unfulfilled fears.

Grant was proceeding all the time with his pressure on the single large

fortress which Richmond and Petersburg together constituted. Its circuit

was far too great for complete investment. His efforts were for a time

directed to seizing the three railway lines which converged from the

south on Petersburg and to that extent cutting off the supplies of the

enemy. But he failed to get hold of the most important of these

railways. He settled down to the slow process of entrenching his own

lines securely and extending the entrenchment further and further round

the south side of Petersburg. Lee was thus being forced to extend the

position held by his own small army further and further. In time the

lines would crack and the end come.

It need hardly be said that despair was invading the remnant of the

Confederacy; supplies began to run short in Richmond, recruiting had

ceased, desertion was increasing. Before the story of its long

resistance closes it is better to face the gravest charge against the

South. That charge relates to the misery inflicted upon many thousands

of Northern prisoners in certain prisons or detention camps of the South.

The alleged horrors were real and were great. The details should not be

commemorated, but it is right to observe that the pitiable condition in

which the stricken survivors of this captivity returned, and the tale

they had to tell, caused the bitterness which might be noted afterwards

in some Northerners. The guilt lay mainly with a few subordinate but

uncontrolled officials. In some degree it must have been shared by

Jefferson Davis and his Administration, though a large allowance should

be made for men so sorely driven. But it affords no ground whatever, as

more fortunate prisoners taken by the Confederates have sometimes

testified, for any general imputation of cruelty against the Southern

officers, soldiers, or people. There is nothing in the record of the war

which dishonours the South, nothing to restrain the tribute to its

heroism which is due from a foreign writer, and which is irrepressible in

the case of a writer who rejoices that the Confederacy failed.

4. _The Second Election of Lincoln: 1864_.

Having the general for whom he had long sought, Lincoln could now be in

military matters little more than the most intelligent onlooker; he could

maintain the attitude, congenial to him where he dealt with skilled men,

that when he differed from them they probably knew better than he. This

was well, for in 1864 his political anxieties became greater than they

had been since war declared itself at Fort Sumter. Whole States which

had belonged to the Confederacy were now securely held by the Union

armies, and the difficult problem of their government was approaching its

final settlement. It seemed that the war should soon end; so the

question of peace was pressed urgently. Moreover, the election of a

President was due in the autumn, and, strange as it is, the issue was to

be whether, with victory in their grasp, the victors should themselves

surrender.

It was not given to Lincoln after all to play a great part in the

reconstruction of the South; that was reserved for much rougher and much

weaker hands. But the lines on which he had moved from the first are of

interest. West Virginia, with its solid Unionist population, was simply

allowed to form itself into an ordinary new State. But matters were not

so simple where the Northern occupation was insecure, or where a tiny

fraction of a State was held, or where a large part of the people leaned

to the Confederacy. Military governors were of course appointed; in

Tennessee this position was given to a strong Unionist, Andrew Johnson,

who was already Senator for that State. In Louisiana and elsewhere

Lincoln encouraged the citizens who would unreservedly accept the Union

to organise State Governments for themselves. Where they did so there

was friction between them and the Northern military governor who was

still indispensable. There was also to the end triangular trouble

between the factions in Missouri and the general commanding there. To

these little difficulties, which were of course unceasing, Lincoln

applied the firmness and tact which were no longer surprising in him,

with a pleasing mixture of good temper and healthy irritation. But

further difficulties lay in the attitude of Congress, which was concerned

in the matter because each House could admit or reject the Senators or

Representatives claiming to sit for a Southern State. There were

questions about slavery in such States. Lincoln, as we have seen, had

desired, if he could, to bring about the abolition of slavery through

gradual and through local action, and he had wished to see the franchise

given only to the few educated negroes. Nothing came of this, but it

kept up the suspicion of Radicals in Congress that he was not sound on

slavery; and, apart from slavery, the whole question of the terms on

which people lately in arms against the country could be admitted as

participators in the government of the country was one on which statesmen

in Congress had their own very important point of view. Lincoln's main

wish was that, with the greatest speed and the least heat spent on

avoidable controversy, State government of spontaneous local growth

should spring up in the reconquered South. "In all available ways," he

had written to one of his military governors, "give the people a chance

to express their wishes at these elections. Follow forms of law as far

as convenient, but at all events get the expression of the largest number

of people possible." Above all he was afraid lest in the Southern

elections to Congress that very thing should happen which after his death

did happen. "To send a parcel of Northern men here as representatives,

elected, as would be understood (and perhaps really so), at the point of

the bayonet, would be disgraceful and outrageous." For a time he and

Congress worked together well enough, but sharp disagreement arose in

1864. He had propounded a particular plan for the reconstruction of

Southern States. Senator Wade, the formidable Chairman of the Joint

Committee on the War, and Henry Winter Davis, a keen, acrid, and fluent

man who was powerful with the House, carried a Bill under which a State

could only be reconstructed on their own plan, which differed from

Lincoln's. The Bill came to Lincoln for signature in the last hours of

the session, and, amidst frightened protests from friendly legislators

then in his room, he let it lie there unsigned, till it expired with the

session, and went on with his work. This was in July, 1864; his

re-election was at stake. The Democrats were gaining ground; he might be

giving extreme offence to the strongest Republican. "If they choose," he

said, "to make a point of this I do not doubt that they can do harm"

(indeed, those powerful men Wade and Davis now declared against his

re-election with ability and extraordinary bitterness); but he continued:

"At all events I must keep some consciousness of being somewhere near

right. I must keep some standard or principle fixed within myself." The

Bill would have repressed loyal efforts already made to establish State

Governments in the South. It contained also a provision imposing the

abolition of slavery on every such reconstructed State. This was an

attempt to remedy any flaw in the constitutional effect of the

Proclamation of Emancipation. But it was certainly in itself flagrantly

unconstitutional; and the only conclusive way of abolishing slavery was

the Constitutional Amendment, for which Lincoln was now anxious. This

was not a pedantic point, for there might have been great trouble if the

courts had later found a constitutional flaw in some negro's title to

freedom. But the correctness of Lincoln's view hardly matters. In lots

of little things, like a tired man who was careless by nature, Lincoln

may perhaps have yielded to influence or acted for his political

convenience in ways which may justly be censured, but it would be merely

immoral to care whether he did so or did not, since at the crisis of his

fate he could risk all for one scruple. In an earlier stage of his

controversies with the parties he had written: "From time to time I have

done and said what appeared to me proper to do and say. The public knows

it all. It obliges nobody to follow me, and I trust it obliges me to

follow nobody. The Radicals and Conservatives each agree with me in some

things and disagree in others. I could wish both to agree with me in all

things; for then they would agree with each other, and be too strong for

any foe from any quarter. They, however, choose to do otherwise, and I

do not question their right. I, too, shall do what seems to be my duty.

I hold whoever commands in Missouri or elsewhere responsible to me and

not to either Radicals or Conservatives. It is my duty to hear all; but

at last I must, within my sphere, judge what to do and what to forbear."

In this same month of July, after the Confederate General Early's

appearance before Washington had given Lincoln a pause from political

cares, another trouble reached a point at which it is known to have tried

his patience more than any other trouble of his Presidency. Peace after

war is not always a matter of substituting the diplomatist for the

soldier. When two sides were fighting, one for Union and the other for

Independence, one or the other had to surrender the whole point at issue.

In this case there might appear to have been a third possibility. The

Southern States might have been invited to return to the Union on terms

which admitted their right to secede again if they felt aggrieved. The

invitation would in fact have been refused. But, if it had been made and

accepted, this would have been a worse surrender for the North than any

mere acknowledgment that the South could not be reconquered; for national

unity from that day to this would have existed on the sufferance of a

factious or a foreign majority in any single State. Lincoln had faced

this. He was there to restore the Union on a firm foundation. He meant

to insist to the point of pedantry that, by not so much as a word or line

from the President or any one seeming to act for him, should the lawful

right of secession even appear to be acknowledged. Some men would have

been glad to hang Jefferson Davis as a traitor, yet would have been ready

to negotiate with him as with a foreign king. Lincoln, who would not

have hurt one hair of his head, and would have talked things over with

Mr. Davis quite pleasantly, would have died rather than treat with him on

the footing that he was head of an independent Confederacy. The blood

shed might have been shed for nothing if he had done so. But to many

men, in the long agony of the war and its disappointments, the plain

position became much obscured. The idea in various forms that by some

sort of negotiation the issue could be evaded began to assert itself

again and again. The delusion was freely propagated that the South was

ready to give in if only Lincoln would encourage its approaches. It was

sheer delusion. Jefferson Davis said frankly to the last that the

Confederacy would have "independence or extermination," and though

Stephens and many others spoke of peace to the electors in their own

States, Jefferson Davis had his army with him, and the only result which

agitation against him ever produced was that two months before the

irreparable collapse the chief command under him was given to his most

faithful servant Lee. But it was useless for Lincoln to expose the

delusion in the plainest terms; it survived exposure and became a danger

to Northern unity.

Lincoln therefore took a strange course, which generally succeeded. When

honest men came to him and said that the South could be induced to yield,

he proposed to them that they should go to Jefferson Davis and see for

themselves. The Chairman of the Republican organisation ultimately

approached Lincoln on this matter at the request of a strong committee;

but he was a sensible man whom Lincoln at once converted by drafting the

precise message that would have to be sent to the Confederate President.

On two earlier occasions such labourers for peace were allowed to go

across the lines and talk with Davis; it could be trusted to their honour

to pretend to no authority; they had interesting talks with the great

enemy, and made religious appeals to him or entertained him with wild

proposals for a joint war on France over Mexico. They returned,

converted also. But in July Horace Greeley, the great editor, who was

too opinionated to be quite honest, was somehow convinced that Southern

agents at Niagara, who had really come to hold intercourse with the

disloyal group among the Democrats, were "two ambassadors" from the

Confederacy seeking an audience of Lincoln. He wrote to Lincoln, begging

him to receive them. Lincoln caused Greeley to go to Niagara and see the

supposed ambassadors himself. He gave him written authority to bring to

him any person with proper credentials, provided, as he made plain in

terms that perhaps were blunt, that the basis of any negotiation should

include the recognition of the Union and the abolition of slavery. The

persons whom Greeley saw had no authority to treat about anything.

Greeley in his irritation now urged Lincoln to convey to Jefferson Davis

through these mysterious men his readiness to receive them if they were

accredited. In other words, the North was to begin suing for peace--a

thing clearly unwise, which Lincoln refused. Greeley now involved

Lincoln in a tangled controversy to which he gave such a turn that,

unless Lincoln would publish the most passionately pacific of Greeley's

letters, to the great discouragement of the public with whom Greeley

counted, he must himself keep silent on what had passed. He elected to

keep silent while Greeley in his paper criticised him as the person

responsible for the continuance of senseless bloodshed. This was

publicly harmful; and, as for its private bearing, the reputation of

obstinate blood-thirstiness was certain to be painful to Lincoln.

The history of Lincoln's Cabinet has a bearing upon what is to follow.

He ruled his Ministers with undisputed authority, talked with them

collectively upon the easiest terms, spoke to them as a headmaster to his

school when they caballed against one another, kept them in some sort of

unison in a manner which astonished all who knew them. Cameron had had

to retire early; so did the little-known Caleb Smith, who was succeeded

in his unimportant office as Secretary of the Interior by a Mr. Usher,

who seems to have been well chosen. Bates, the Attorney-General,

retired, weary of his work, towards the end of 1864, and Lincoln had the

keen pleasure of appointing James Speed, the brother of that unforgotten

and greatly honoured friend whom he honoured the more for his

contentedness with private station. James Speed himself was in Lincoln's

opinion "an honest man and a gentleman, and one of those well-poised men,

not too common here, who are not spoiled by a big office."

Blair might be regarded as a delightful, or equally as an intolerable

man. He attacked all manner of people causelessly and violently, and

earned implacable dislike from the Radicals In his party. Then he

frankly asked Lincoln to dismiss him whenever it was convenient. There

came a time when Lincoln's re-election was in great peril, and he might,

it was urged, have made it sure by dismissing Blair. It is significant

that Lincoln then refused to promote his own cause by seeming to

sacrifice Blair, but later on, when his own election was fairly certain,

but a greater degree of unity in the Republican party was to be gained,

did ask Blair to go; (Blair's quarrels, it should be added, had become

more and more outrageous). So he went and immediately flung himself with

enthusiasm into the advocacy of Lincoln's cause. All the men who left

Lincoln remained his friends, except one who will shortly concern us. Of

Lincoln's more important ministers Welles did his work for the Navy

industriously but unnoted. Stanton, on the other hand, and Lincoln's

relations with Stanton are the subjects of many pages of literature.

These two curious and seemingly incompatible men hit upon extraordinary

methods of working together. It can be seen that Lincoln's chief care in

dealing with his subordinates was to give support and to give free play

to any man whose heart was in his work. In countless small matters he

would let Stanton disobey him and flout him openly. ("Did Stanton tell

you I was a damned fool? Then I expect I must be one, for he is almost

always right and generally says what he means.") But every now and then,

when he cared much about his own wish, he would step in and crush Stanton

flat. Crowds of applicants to Lincoln with requests of a kind that must

be granted sparingly were passed on to Stanton, pleased with the

President, or mystified by his sadly observing that he had not much

influence with this Administration but hoped to have more with the next.

Stanton always refused them. He enjoyed doing it. Yet it seems a low

trick to have thus indulged his taste for unpopularity, till one

discovers that, when Stanton might have been blamed seriously and

unfairly, Lincoln was very careful to shoulder the blame himself. The

gist of their mutual dealings was that the hated Stanton received a

thinly disguised, but quite unfailing support, and that hated or

applauded, ill or well, wrong in this detail and right in that, he abode

in his department and drove, and drove, and drove, and worshipped

Lincoln. To Seward, who played first and last a notable part in history,

and who all this time conducted foreign affairs under Lincoln without any

mishap in the end, one tribute is due. When he had not a master it is

said that his abilities were made useless by his egotism; yet it can be

seen that, with his especial cause to be jealous of Lincoln, he could not

even conceive how men let private jealousy divide them in the performance

of duty.

It was otherwise with the ablest man in the Cabinet. Salmon P. Chase

must really have been a good man in the days before he fell in love with

his own goodness. Lincoln and the country had confidence in his

management of the Treasury, and Lincoln thought more highly of his

general ability than of that of any other man about him. He, for his

part, distrusted and despised Lincoln. Those who read Lincoln's

important letters and speeches see in him at once a great gentleman;

there were but few among the really well-educated men of America who made

much of his lacking some of the minor points of gentility to which most

of them were born; but of these few Chase betrayed himself as one. At

the beginning of 1864 Chase was putting it about that he had himself no

wish to be President, but--; that of course he was loyal to Mr. Lincoln,

but--; and so forth. He had, as indeed he deserved, admirers who wished

he should be President, and early in the year some of them expressed this

wish in a manifesto. Chase wrote to Lincoln that this was not his own

doing; Lincoln replied that he himself knew as little of these things "as

my friends will allow me to know." To those who spoke to him of Chase's

intrigues he only said that Chase would in some ways make a very good

President, and he hoped they would never have a worse President than he.

The movement in favour of Chase collapsed very soon, and it evidently had

no effect on Lincoln. Chase, however, was beginning to foster grievances

of his own against Lincoln. These related always to appointments in the

service of the Treasury. He professed a horror of party influences in

appointments, and imputed corrupt motives to Lincoln in such matters. He

shared the sound ideas of the later civil service reformers, though he

was far too easily managed by a low class of flatterers to have been of

the least use in carrying them out. Lincoln would certainly not at that

crisis have permitted strife over civil service reform, but some of his

admirers have probably gone too far in claiming him as a sturdy supporter

of the old school who would despise the reforming idea. Letters of his

much earlier betray his doubts as to the old system, and he was exactly

the man who in quieter times could have improved matters with the least

possible fuss. However that may be, all the tiresome circumstances of

Chase's differences with him are well known, and in these instances

Lincoln was clearly in the right, and Chase quarrelled only because he

could not force upon him appointments that would have created fury. Once

Chase was overruled and wrote his resignation. Lincoln went to him with

the resignation in his hand, treated him with simple affection for a man

whom he still liked, and made him take it back. Later on Chase got his

own way on the whole, but was angry and sent another resignation. Some

one heard of it and came to Lincoln to say that the loss of Chase would

cause a financial panic. Lincoln's answer was to this effect: "Chase

thinks he has become indispensable to the country; that his intimate

friends know it, and he cannot comprehend why the country does not

understand it. He also thinks he ought to be President; has no doubt

whatever about that. It is inconceivable to him why people do not rise

as one man and say so. He is a great statesman, and at the bottom a

patriot. Ordinarily he discharges the duties of a public office with

greater ability than any man I know. Mind, I say 'ordinarily,' but he

has become irritable, uncomfortable, so that he is never perfectly happy

unless he is thoroughly miserable and able to make everybody else just as

uncomfortable as he is himself. He is either determined to annoy me, or

that I shall pat him on the shoulder and coax him to stay. I don't think

I ought to do it. I will not do it. I will take him at his word." So

he did. This was at the end of June, 1864, when Lincoln's apprehensions

about his own re-election were keen, and the resignation of Chase, along

with the retention of Blair, seemed likely to provoke anger which was

very dangerous to himself. An excellent successor to the indispensable

man was soon found. Chase found more satisfaction than ever in insidious

opposition to Lincoln. Lincoln's opportunity of requiting him was not

yet.

The question of the Presidency loomed large from the beginning of the

year to the election in November. At first, while the affairs of war

seemed to be in good train, the chief question was who should be the

Republican candidate. It was obviously not a time when a President of

even moderate ability and character, with all the threads in his hands,

could wisely have been replaced except for overwhelming reasons. But

since 1832, when Jackson had been re-elected, the practice of giving a

President a second term had lapsed. It has been seen that there was

friction, not wholly unnatural, between Lincoln and many of his party.

The inner circles of politicians were considering what candidate could

carry the country. They were doing so with great anxiety, for

disaffection was growing serious in the North and the Democrats would

make a good fight. They honestly doubted whether Lincoln was the best

candidate, and attributed their own excited mood of criticism to the

public at large. They forgot the leaning of ordinary men towards one who

is already serving them honestly. Of the other possible candidates,

including Chase, Frémont had the most energetic backers. Enough has been

said already of his delusive attractiveness. General Butler had also

some support. He was an impostor of a coarser but more useful stamp. A

successful advocate in Massachusetts, he had commanded the militia of the

State when they first appeared on the scene at Baltimore in 1861, and he

had been in evidence ever since without sufficient opportunity till May,

1864, of proving that real military incapacity of which some of Lincoln's

friends suspected him. He had a kind of resourceful impudence, coupled

with executive vigour and a good deal of wit, which had made him useful

in the less martial duties of his command. Generals in a war of this

character were often so placed that they had little fighting to do and

much civil government, and Butler, who had first treated slaves as

"contraband" and had dealt with his difficulties about negroes with more

heart and more sense than many generals, had to some extent earned his

reputation among the Republicans. Thus of those volunteer generals who

never became good soldiers he is said to have been the only one that

escaped the constant process of weeding out. To the end he kept

confidently claiming higher rank in the Army, and when he had signally

failed under Grant at Petersburg he succeeded somehow in imposing himself

upon that, at first indignant, general. Nothing actually came of the

danger that the public might find a hero in this man, who was neither

scrupulous nor able, but he had so captivated experienced politicians

that some continued even after Lincoln's re-election to think Butler the

man whom the people would have preferred. Last but not least many were

anxious to nominate Grant. It was an innocent thought, but Grant's

merits were themselves the conclusive reason why he should not be taken

from the work he had already in hand.

Through the early months of the year the active politicians earnestly

collogued among themselves about possible candidates, and it seems there

was little sign among them of that general confidence in Lincoln which a

little while before had been recognised as prevailing in the country. In

May the small and light-headed section of the so-called Radicals who

favoured Frémont organised for themselves a "national meeting" of some

few people at which they nominated him for the Presidency. They had no

chance of success, but they might have helped the Democrats by carrying

off some Republican votes. Besides, there are of course men who, having

started as extremists in one direction and failed, will go over to the

opposite extreme rather than moderate their aims. Months later, when a

Republican victory of some sort became certain, unanimity among

Republicans was secured; for some passions were appeased by the

resignation of Blair, and Frémont was prevailed upon to withdraw. But in

the meantime the Republican party had sent its delegates to a Convention

at Baltimore early in June. This Convention met in a comparatively

fortunate hour. In spite of the open disaffection of small sections, the

Northern people had been in good spirits about the war when Grant set out

to overcome Lee. At first he was felt to be progressing pretty well,

and, though the reverse at Cold Harbour had happened a few days before,

the size of that mishap was not yet appreciated. Ordinary citizens,

called upon now and then to decide a broad and grave issue, often judge

with greater calm than is possible to any but the best of the politicians

and the journalists. Indeed, some serious politicians had been anxious

to postpone the Convention, justly fearing that these ignorant delegates

were not yet imbued with that contempt for Lincoln which they had worked

up among themselves. At the Baltimore Convention the delegates of one

State wanted Grant, but the nomination of Lincoln was immediate and

almost unanimous. This same Convention declared for a Constitutional

Amendment to abolish slavery. Lincoln would say nothing as to the choice

of a candidate for the Vice-Presidency. He was right, but the result was

most unhappy in the end. The Convention chose Andrew Johnson. Johnson,

whom Lincoln could hardly endure, began life as a journeyman tailor. He

had raised himself like Lincoln, and had performed a great part in

rallying the Unionists of Tennessee. But--not to dwell upon the fact

that he was drunk when he was sworn in as Vice-President--his political

creed was that of bitter class-hatred, and his character degenerated into

a weak and brutal obstinacy. This man was to succeed Lincoln. Lincoln,

in his letter to accept the nomination, wrote modestly, refusing to take

the decision of the Convention as a tribute to his peculiar fitness for

his post, but was "reminded in this connection of a story of an old Dutch

farmer, who remarked to a companion that it was not best to swap horses

when crossing a stream."

It remained possible that the dissatisfied Republicans would revolt later

and put another champion in the field. But now attention turned to the

Democrats. Their Convention was to meet at Chicago at the end of August,

and in the interval the North entered upon the period of deepest mental

depression that came to it during the war. It is startling to learn now

that in the course of that year, when the Confederacy lay like a nut in

the nutcrackers, when the crushing of its resistance might indeed require

a little stronger pressure than was expected, and the first splitting in

its hard substance might not come on the side on which it was looked for,

but when no wise man could have a doubt as to the end, the victorious

people were inclined to think that the moment had come for giving in.

"In this purpose to save the country and its liberties," said Lincoln,

"no class of people seem so nearly unanimous as the soldiers in the field

and the sailors afloat. Do they not have the hardest of it? Who should

quail while they do not?" Yet there is conclusive authority for saying

that there was now more quailing in the North than there had ever been

before. When the war had gone on long, checks to the course of victory

shook the nerves of people at home more than crushing defeats had shaken

them in the first two years of the struggle, and men who would have

wrapped the word "surrender" in periphrasis went about with surrender in

their hearts. Thus the two months that went before the great rally of

the Democrats at Chicago were months of good omen for a party which,

however little the many honourable men in its ranks were willing to face

the fact, must base its only hope upon the weakening of the national

will. For public attention was turned away from other fields of war and

fixed upon the Army of the Potomac. Sherman drove back Johnston, and

routed Hood; Farragut at Mobile enriched the annals of the sea; but what

told upon the imagination of the North was that Grant's earlier progress

was followed by the definite failure of his original enterprise against

Lee's army, by Northern defeats on the Shenandoah and an actual dash by

the South against Washington, by the further failure of Grant's first

assault upon Petersburg, and by hideous losses and some demoralisation in

his army. The candidate that the Democrats would put forward and the

general principle of their political strategy were well known many weeks

before their Convention met; and the Republicans already despaired of

defeating them. In the Chicago Convention there were men, apparently

less reputable in character than their frank attitude suggests, who were

outspoken against the war; their leader was Vallandigham. There were men

who spoke boldly for the war, but more boldly against emancipation and

the faults of the Government; their leader was Seymour, talking with the

accent of dignity and of patriotism. Seymour, for the war, presided over

the Convention; Vallandigham, against the war, was the master spirit in

its debates. It was hard for such men, with any saving of conscience, to

combine. The mode of combination which they discovered is memorable in

the history of faction. First they adopted a platform which meant peace;

then they adopted a candidate intended to symbolise successful war. They

resolved "that this Convention does explicitly declare, as the sense of

the American people, that after four years of failure to restore the

Union by the experiment of war . . . justice, humanity, liberty, and the

public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of

hostilities, with a view to an ultimate convention of the States or other

peaceable means, to the end that at the earliest practicable moment peace

may be restored on the basis of the Federal Union of the States." The

fallacy which named the Union as the end while demanding as a means the

immediate cessation of hostilities needs no demonstration. The

resolution was thus translated: "Resolved that the war is a failure"; and

the translation had that trenchant accuracy which is often found in

American popular epigram. The candidate chosen was McClellan; McClellan

in set terms repudiated the resolution that the war was a failure, and

then accepted the candidature. He meant no harm to the cause of the

Union, but he meant no definite and clearly conceived good. Electors

might now vote Democratic because the party was peaceful or because the

candidate was a warrior. The turn of fortune was about to arrest this

combination in the really formidable progress of its crawling approach to

power. Perhaps it was not only, as contemporary observers thought,

events in the field that began within a few days to make havoc with the

schemes of McClellan and his managers. Perhaps if the patience of the

North had been tried a little longer the sense of the people would still

have recoiled from the policy of the Democrats, which had now been

defined in hard outline. As a matter of fact it was only in the months

while the Chicago Convention was still impending and for a few days or

weeks after it had actually taken place that the panic of the Republicans

lasted. But during that time the alarm among them was very great,

whether it was wholly due to the discouragement of the people about the

war or originated among the leaders and was communicated to their flock.

Sagacious party men reported from their own neighbourhoods that there was

no chance of winning the election. In one quarter or another there was

talk of setting aside Lincoln and compelling Grant to be a candidate.

About August 12 Lincoln was told by Thurlow Weed, the greatest of party

managers, that his election was hopeless. Ten days later he received the

same assurance from the central Republican Committee through their

chairman, Raymond, together with the advice that he should make overtures

for peace.

Supposing that in the following November McClellan should have been

elected, and that in the following March he should have come into office

with the war unfinished, it seems now hardly credible that he would have

returned to slavery, or at least disbanded without protection the 150,000

negroes who were now serving the North. Lincoln, however, seriously

believed that this was the course to which McClellan's principles and

those of his party committed him, and that (policy and honour apart) this

would have been for military reasons fatal. McClellan had repudiated the

Peace Resolution, but his followers and his character were to be reckoned

with rather than his words, and indeed his honest principles committed

him deeply to some attempt to reverse Lincoln's policy as to slavery, and

he clearly must have been driven into negotiations with the South. The

confusion which must inevitably be created by attempts to satisfy the

South, when it was in no humour of moderation, and by the fury which

yielding would have provoked in half the people of the North, was well

and tersely described by Grant in a letter to a friend, which that friend

published in support of Lincoln. At a fair at Philadelphia for the help

of the wounded Lincoln said: "We accepted this war; we did not begin it.

We accepted it for an object, and when that object is accomplished the

war will end, and I hope to God that it will never end until that object

is accomplished." Whatever the real mind of McClellan and of the average

Democrat may have been, it was not this; and the posterity of Mr.

Facing-both-ways may succeed in an election, but never in war or the

making of lasting peace.

Lincoln looked forward with happiness, after he was actually re-elected,

to the quieter pursuits of private life which might await him in four

years' time. He looked forward not less happily to a period of peace

administration first, and there can be no doubt that he would have prized

as much as any man the highest honour that his countrymen could bestow, a

second election to the Presidency. But, even in a smaller man who had

passed through such an experience as he had and was not warped by power,

these personal wishes might well have been merged in concern for the

cause in hand. There is everything to indicate that they were completely

so in his case. A President cannot wisely do much directly to promote

his own re-election, but he appears to have done singularly little. At

the beginning of 1864, when the end of the war seemed near, and the

election of a Republican probable, he may well have thought that he would

be the Republican candidate, but he had faced the possible choice of

Chase very placidly, and of Grant he said, "If he takes Richmond let him

have the Presidency." It was another matter when the war again seemed

likely to drag on and a Democratic President might come in before the end

of it. An editor who visited the over-burdened President in August told

him that he needed some weeks of rest and seclusion. But he said, "I

cannot fly from my thoughts. I do not think it is personal vanity or

ambition, though I am not free from those infirmities, but I cannot but

feel that the weal or woe of the nation will be decided in November.

There is no proposal offered by any wing of the Democratic party but that

must result in the permanent destruction of the Union." He would have

been well content to make place for Grant if Grant had finished his work.

But that work was delayed, and then Lincoln became greatly troubled by

the movement to force Grant, the general whom he had at last found, into

politics with his work undone; for all would have been lost if McClellan

had come in with the war still progressing badly. Lincoln had been

invited in June to a gathering in honour of Grant, got up with the thinly

disguised object of putting the general forward as his rival. He wrote,

with true diplomacy: "It is impossible for me to attend. I approve

nevertheless of whatever may tend to strengthen and sustain General Grant

and the noble armies now under his command. He and his brave soldiers

are now in the midst of their great trial, and I trust that at your

meeting you will so shape your good words that they may turn to men and

guns, moving to his and their support." In August he told his mind

plainly to Grant's friend Eaton. He never dreamed for a moment that

Grant would willingly go off into politics with the military situation

still insecure, and he believed that no possible pressure could force

Grant to do so; but on this latter question he wished to make himself

sure; with a view to future military measures he really needed to be sure

of it. Eaton saw Grant, and in the course of conversation very tactfully

brought to Grant's notice the designs of his would-be friends. "We had,"

writes Eaton, "been talking very quietly, but Grant's reply came in an

instant and with a violence for which I was not prepared. He brought his

clenched fists down hard on the strap arms of his camp chair, 'They can't

do it. They can't compel me to do it.' Emphatic gesture was not a

strong point with Grant. 'Have you said this to the President?' I asked.

'No,' said Grant. 'I have not thought it worth while to assure the

President of my opinion. I consider it as important for the cause that

he should be elected as that the army should be successful in the

field.'" "I told you," said Lincoln afterwards, "they could not get him

to run till he had closed out the rebellion." Since the great danger was

now only that McClellan would become President in March, there was but

one thing to do--to try and finish the war before then. Raymond's advice

in favour of negotiations with the South now came, and Lincoln's mode of

replying to this has been noticed. Rumours were afloat that if McClellan

won in November there would be an attempt to bring him irregularly into

power at once. Lincoln let it be known that he should stay at his post

at all costs till the last lawful day. On August 23, in that curious way

in which deep emotion showed itself with him, he wrote a resolution upon

a paper, which he folded and asked his ministers to endorse with their

signatures without reading it. They all wrote their names on the back of

it, ready, if that were possible, to commit themselves blindly to support

of him in whatever he had resolved; a great tribute to him and to

themselves. He sealed it up and put it away.

How far in this dark time the confidence of the people had departed from

Lincoln no one can tell. It might be too sanguine a view of the world to

suppose that they would have been proof against what may be called a

conspiracy to run him down. There were certainly quarters in which the

perception of his worth came soon and remained. Not all those who are

poor or roughly brought up were among those plain men whose approval

Lincoln desired and often expected; but at least the plain man does exist

and the plain people did read Lincoln's words. The soldiers of the

armies in the East by this time knew Lincoln well, and there were by now,

as we shall see, in every part of the North, honest parents who had gone

to Washington, and entered the White House very sad, and came out very

happy, and taken their report of him home. No less could there be found,

among those to whom America had given the greatest advantages that birth

and upbringing can offer, families in which, when Lincoln died, a

daughter could write to her father as Lady Harcourt (then Miss Lily

Motley) wrote: "I echo your 'thank God' that we always appreciated him

before he was taken from us." But if we look at the political world, we

find indeed noble exceptions such as that of Charles Sumner among those

who had been honestly perplexed by Lincoln's attitude on slavery; we have

to allow for the feelings of some good State Governor who had come to him

with a tiresome but serious proposition and been adroitly parried with an

untactful and coarse apologue; yet it remains to be said that a thick

veil, woven of self-conceit and half-education, blinded most politicians

to any rare quality in Lincoln, and blinded them to what was due in

decency to any man discharging his task. The evidence collected by Mr.

Rhodes as to the tone prevailing in 1864 at Washington and among those in

touch with Washington suggests that strictly political society was on the

average as poor in brain and heart as the court of the most decadent

European monarchy. It presents a stern picture of the isolation, on one

side at least, in which Lincoln had to live and work.

A little before this crowning period of Lincoln's career Walt Whitman

described him as a man in the streets of Washington could see him, if he

chose. He has been speaking of the cavalry escort which the President's

advisers insisted should go clanking about with him. "The party," he

continues, "makes no great show in uniform or horses. Mr. Lincoln on the

saddle generally rides a good-sized, easy-going grey horse, is dressed in

plain black, somewhat rusty and dusty, and looks about as ordinary in

attire, etc., as the commonest man. The entirely unornamental _cortège_

arouses no sensation; only some curious stranger stops and gazes. I see

very plainly Abraham Lincoln's dark brown face, with the deep-cut lines,

the eyes always to me with a deep latent sadness in the expression. We

have got so that we exchange bows, and very cordial ones. Sometimes the

President goes and comes in an open barouche" (not, the poet intimates, a

very smart turn-out). "Sometimes one of his sons, a boy of ten or

twelve, accompanies him, riding at his right on a pony. They passed me

once very close, and I saw the President in the face fully as they were

moving slowly, and his look, though abstracted, happened to be directed

steadily in my eye. He bowed and smiled, but far beneath his smile I

noticed well the expression I have alluded to. None of the artists or

pictures has caught the deep though subtle and indirect expression of

this man's face. There is something else there. One of the great

portrait painters of two or three centuries ago is needed."

The little boy on the pony was Thomas, called "Tad," a constant companion

of his father's little leisure, now dead. An elder boy, Robert, has

lived to be welcomed as Ambassador in this country, and was at this time

a student at Harvard. Willie, a clever and lovably mischievous child,

"the chartered libertine of the White House" for a little while, had died

at the age of twelve in the early days of 1862, when his father was

getting so impatient to stir McClellan into action. These and a son who

had long before died in infancy were the only children of Mr. and Mrs.

Lincoln. Little has been made public concerning them, but enough to

convey the impression of a wise and tender father, trusted by his

children and delighting in them. John Nicolay, his loyal and capable

secretary, and the delightful John Hay must be reckoned on the cheerful

side--for there was one--of Lincoln's daily life. The life of the home

at the White House, and sometimes in summer at the "Soldiers' Home" near

Washington, was simple, and in his own case (not in that of his guests)

regardless of the time, sufficiency, or quality of meals. He cannot have

given people much trouble, but he gave some to the guard who watched him,

themselves keenly watched by Stanton; for he loved, if he could, to walk

alone from his midnight conferences at the War Department to the White

House or the Soldiers' Home. The barest history of the events with which

he dealt is proof enough of long and hard and anxious working days, which

continued with hardly a break through four years. In that history many a

complication has here been barely glanced at or clean left out; in this

year, for example, the difficulty about France and Mexico and the failure

of the very estimable Banks in Texas have been but briefly noted. And

there must be remembered, in addition, the duty of a President to be

accessible to all people, a duty which Lincoln especially strove to

fulfil.

Apart from formal receptions, the stream of callers on him must have

given Lincoln many compensations for its huge monotony. Very odd, and

sometimes attractive, samples of human nature would come under his keen

eye. Now and then a visitor came neither with a troublesome request, nor

for form's sake or for curiosity, but in simple honesty to pay a tribute

of loyalty or speak a word of good cheer which Lincoln received with

unfeigned gratitude. Farmers and back-country folk, of the type he could

best talk with, came and had more time than he ought to have spared

bestowed on them. At long intervals there came a friend of very

different days. Some ingenious men, for instance, fitted out Dennis

Hanks in a new suit of clothes and sent him as their ambassador to plead

for certain political offenders. It is much to be feared that they were

more successful than they deserved, though Stanton intervened and Dennis,

when he had seen him, favoured his old companion, the President, with

advice to dismiss that minister. But the immense variety of puzzling

requests to be dealt with in such interviews must have made heavy demands

upon a conscientious and a kind man, especially if his conscience and his

kindness were, in small matters, sometimes at variance. Lincoln sent a

multitude away with that feeling, so grateful to poor people, that at

least they had received such hearing as it was possible to give them; and

in dealing with the applications which imposed the greatest strain on

himself he made an ineffaceable impression upon the memory of his

countrymen.

The American soldier did not take naturally to discipline. Death

sentences, chiefly for desertion or for sleeping or other negligence on

the part of sentries, were continually being passed by courts-martial.

In some cases or at some period these used to come before the President

on a stated day of the week, of which Lincoln would often speak with

horror. He was continually being appealed to in relation to such

sentences by the father or mother of the culprit, or some friend. At one

time, it may be, he was too ready with pardon; "You do not know," he

said, "how hard it is to let a human being die, when you feel that a

stroke of your pen will save him." Butler used to write to him that he

was destroying the discipline of the army. A letter of his to Meade

shows clearly that, later at least, he did not wish to exercise a merely

cheap and inconsiderate mercy. The import of the numberless pardon

stories really is that he would spare himself no trouble to enquire, and

to intervene wherever he could rightly give scope to his longing for

clemency. A Congressman might force his way into his bedroom in the

middle of the night, rouse him from his sleep to bring to his notice

extenuating facts that had been overlooked, and receive the decision,

"Well, I don't see that it will do him any good to be shot." It is

related that William Scott, a lad from a farm in Vermont, after a

tremendous march in the Peninsula campaign, volunteered to do double

guard duty to spare a sick comrade, slept at his post, was caught, and

was under sentence of death, when the President came to the army and

heard of him. The President visited him, chatted about his home, looked

at his mother's photograph, and so forth. Then he laid his hands on the

boy's shoulders and said with a trembling voice, "My boy, you are not

going to be shot. I believe you when you tell me that you could not keep

awake. I am going to trust you and send you back to the regiment. But I

have been put to a great deal of trouble on your account. . . . Now what

I want to know is, how are you going to pay my bill?" Scott told

afterwards how difficult it was to think, when his fixed expectation of

death was suddenly changed; but how he managed to master himself, thank

Mr. Lincoln and reckon up how, with his pay and what his parents could

raise by mortgage on their farm and some help from his comrades, he might

pay the bill if it were not more than five or six hundred dollars. "But

it is a great deal more than that," said the President. "My bill is a

very large one. Your friends cannot pay it, nor your bounty, nor the

farm, nor all your comrades. There is only one man in the world who can

pay it, and his name is William Scott. If from this day William Scott

does his duty, so that, when he comes to die, he can look me in the face

as he does now and say, 'I have kept my promise and I have done my duty

as a soldier,' then my debt will be paid. Will you make the promise and

try to keep it?" And William Scott did promise; and, not very long

after, he was desperately wounded, and he died, but not before he could

send a message to the President that he had tried to be a good soldier,

and would have paid his debt in full if he had lived, and that he died

thinking of Lincoln's kind face and thanking him for the chance he gave

him to fall like a soldier in battle. If the story is not true--and

there is no reason whatever to doubt it--still it is a remarkable man of

whom people spin yarns of that kind.

When Lincoln's strength became visibly tried friends often sought to

persuade him to spare himself the needless, and to him very often

harrowing, labour of incessant interviews. They never succeeded.

Lincoln told them he could not forget what he himself would feel in the

place of the many poor souls who came to him desiring so little and with

so little to get. But he owned to the severity of the strain. He was

not too sensitive to the ridicule and reproach that surrounded him.

"Give yourself no uneasiness," he had once said to some one who had

sympathised with him over some such annoyance, "I have endured a great

deal of ridicule without much malice, and have received a great deal of

kindness not quite free from ridicule. I am used to it." But the gentle

nature that such words express, and that made itself deeply felt by those

that were nearest him, cannot but have suffered from want of

appreciation. With all this added to the larger cares, which before the

closing phases of the war opened had become so intense, Lincoln must have

been taxed near to the limit of what men have endured without loss of

judgment, or loss of courage or loss of ordinary human feeling. There is

no sign that any of these things happened to him; the study of his record

rather shows a steady ripening of mind and character to the end. It has

been seen how throughout his previous life the melancholy of his

temperament impressed those who had the opportunity of observing it. A

colleague of his at the Illinois bar has told how on circuit he sometimes

came down in the morning and found Lincoln sitting alone over the embers

of the fire, where he had sat all night in sad meditation, after an

evening of jest apparently none the less hilarious for his total

abstinence. There was no scope for this brooding now, and in a sense the

time of his severest trial cannot have been the saddest time of Lincoln's

life. It must have been a cause not of added depression but of added

strength that he had long been accustomed to face the sternest aspect of

the world. He had within his own mind two resources, often, perhaps

normally, associated together, but seldom so fully combined as with him.

In his most intimate circle he would draw upon his stores of poetry,

particularly of tragedy; often, for instance, he would recite such

speeches as Richard II.'s:

"For God's sake let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings.

. . . . . All murdered."

Slighter acquaintances saw, day by day, another element in his thoughts,

the companion to this; for the hardly interrupted play of humour in which

he found relief continued to help him to the end. Whatever there was in

it either of mannerism or of coarseness, no one can grudge it him; it is

an oddity which endears. The humour of real life fades in reproduction,

but Lincoln's, there is no doubt was a vein of genuine comedy, deep,

rich, and unsoured, of a larger human quality than marks the brilliant

works of literary American humorists. It was, like the comedy of

Shakespeare, plainly if unaccountably akin with the graver and grander

strain of thought and feeling that inspired the greatest of his speeches.

Physically his splendid health does not seem to have been impaired beyond

recovery. But it was manifestly near to breaking; and the "deep-cut

lines" were cut still deeper, and the long legs were always cold.

The cloud over the North passed very suddenly. The North indeed paid the

penalty of a nation which is spared the full strain of a war at the

first, and begins to discover its seriousness when the hope of easy

victory has been many times dashed down. It has been necessary to dwell

upon the despondency which at one time prevailed; but it would be hard to

rate too highly the military difficulty of the conquest undertaken by the

North, or the trial involved to human nature by perseverance in such a

task. If the depression during the summer was excessive, as it clearly

was, at least the recovery which followed was fully adequate to the

occasion which produced it. On September 2 Sherman telegraphed, "Atlanta

is ours and fairly won." The strategic importance of earlier successes

may have been greater, but the most ignorant man who looked at a map

could see what it signified that the North could occupy an important city

in the heart of Georgia. Then they recalled Farragut's victory of a

month before. Then there followed, close to Washington, putting an end

to a continual menace, stirring and picturesquely brilliant beyond other

incidents of the war, Sheridan's repeated victories in the Shenandoah

Valley. The war which had been "voted a failure" was evidently not a

failure. At the same time men of high character conducted a vigorous

campaign of speeches for Lincoln. General Schurz, the German

revolutionary Liberal, who lived to tell Bismarck at his table that he

still preferred democracy to his amused host's method of government,

sacrificed his command in the Army--for Lincoln told him it could not be

restored--to speak for Lincoln. Even Chase was carried away, and after

months of insidious detraction, went for Lincoln on the stump. In the

elections in November Lincoln was elected by an enormous popular

majority, giving him 212 out of the 233 votes in the electoral college,

where in form the election is made. Three Northern States only, one of

them his native State, had gone against him. He made some little

speeches to parties which came to "serenade" him; some were not very

formal speeches, for, as he said, he was now too old to "care much about

the mode of doing things." But one was this: "It has long been a grave

question whether any Government not too strong for the liberties of its

people can be strong enough to maintain its existence in great

emergencies. On this point the present rebellion brought our Government

to a severe test, and a Presidential election occurring in regular course

during the rebellion added not a little to the strain. But we cannot

have a free Government without elections; and if the rebellion could

force us to forego or postpone a national election it might fairly claim

to have already conquered and ruined us. But the election along with its

incidental and undesirable strife has done good too. It has demonstrated

that a people's Government can sustain a national election in the midst

of a great civil war. Until now it has not been known to the world that

this was a possibility. But the rebellion continues, and now that the

election is over may not all have a common interest to reunite in a

common effort to save our common country? For my own part I have striven

and shall strive to avoid placing any obstacle in the way. So long as I

have been here I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man's bosom.

While I am duly sensible to the high compliment of a re-election, and

duly grateful as I trust to Almighty God for having directed my

countrymen to a right conclusion, as I think, for their good, it adds

nothing to my satisfaction that any man may be disappointed by the

result. May I ask those who have not differed from me to join with me in

this same spirit towards those who have? And now let me close by asking

three hearty cheers for our brave soldiers and seamen, and their gallant

and skilful commanders."

In the Cabinet he brought out the paper that he had sealed up in the dark

days of August; he reminded his ministers of how they had endorsed it

unread, and he read it them. Its contents ran thus: "This morning, as

for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this

Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so

co-operate with the President-elect as to save the Union between the

election and the inauguration, as he will have secured his election on

such ground that he cannot possibly save it afterwards." Lincoln

explained what he had intended to do if McClellan had won. He would have

gone to him and said, "General, this election shows that you are

stronger, have more influence with the people of this country than I";

and he would have invited him to co-operate in saving the Union now, by

using that great influence to secure from the people the willing

enlistment of enough recruits. "And the general," said Seward, "would

have said, 'Yes, yes'; and again the next day, when you spoke to him

about it, 'Yes, yes'; and so on indefinitely, and he would have done

nothing."

"Seldom in history," wrote Emerson in a letter after the election, "was

so much staked upon a popular vote. I suppose never in history."

And to those Americans of all classes and in all districts of the North,

who had set their hearts and were giving all they had to give to preserve

the life of the nation, the political crisis of 1864 would seem to have

been the most anxious moment of the war. It is impossible--it must be

repeated--to guess how great the danger really was that their popular

government might in the result betray the true and underlying will of the

people; for in any country (and in America perhaps more than most) the

average of politicians, whose voices are most loudly heard, can only in a

rough and approximate fashion be representative. But there is in any

case no cause for surprise that the North should at one time have

trembled. Historic imagination is easily, though not one whit too

deeply, moved by the heroic stand of the South. It is only after the

effort to understand the light in which the task of the North has

presented itself to capable soldiers, that a civilian can perceive what

sustained resolution was required if, though far the stronger, it was to

make its strength tell. Notwithstanding the somewhat painful impression

which the political chronicle of this time at some points gives, it is

the fact that the wisest Englishmen who were in those days in America and

had means of observing what passed have retained a lasting sense of the

constancy, under trial, of the North.