Wearying of McClellan’s delays and excuses for not fighting, Lincoln
removed him and put Burnside in command of the Army of the Potomac.
When Burnside fought at Fredericksburg the President appeared at the
War Department telegraph office in carpet slippers and dressing gown,
and waited all day without food for the shocking news of defeat that
did not come until four o’clock the next morning--ten thousand dead and
wounded.
The President calmly endured the general abuse that followed this
disaster. Then he removed Burnside and put General Hooker in his place,
writing to him these characteristic words:
“I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying
that both the army and the government needed a dictator. Of course
it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the
command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators.
What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the
dictatorship.”
Lincoln went to Hooker’s army and reviewed it. As the hundred thousand
men marched by they watched him eagerly as he sat on his horse, tall,
angular and in black frock coat, among the glittering generals. Seymour
Dodd has described the scene:
“None of us to our dying day can forget that countenance! From its
presence we marched directly onward toward our camp, and as soon as
route step was ordered and the men were free to talk, they spoke thus
to each other: ‘Did you ever see such a look on any man’s face?’ ‘He is
bearing the burdens of the nation.’ ‘It is an awful load; it is killing
him.’ ‘Yes, that is so; he is not long for this world!’
“Concentrated in that one great, strong, yet tender face, the agony of
the life or death struggle of the hour was revealed as we had never
seen it before. With new understanding we knew why we were soldiers.”
A month later came the dispatch announcing the slaughter and defeat of
Chancellorsville. Noah Brooks read it to Lincoln:
“The appearance of the President, as I read aloud these fateful words
was piteous. Never, as long as I knew him, did he seem to be so broken
up, so dispirited, and so ghostlike. Clasping his hands behind his
back, he walked up and down the room saying, ‘My God! My God! What will
the country say? What will the country say?’”
Not that Lincoln feared criticism or even denunciation. He does not
know the greatest and noblest American who thinks that. No, it was the
torturing, intolerable thought that it might be his dreadful fate to
be the last President of the United States, the haunting idea which,
a generation later, was written by the loyal, iron-souled Grant on his
deathbed: “Anything that could have prolonged the war a year beyond the
time that it did finally close would probably have exhausted the North
to such an extent that they might then have abandoned the contest and
agreed to a separation.”
The shedding of blood grieved Lincoln. Even when Grant won Vicksburg,
and Lee’s gallant army was defeated in the three days’ battle at
Gettysburg, his joy was overcast by the thought of the dead and dying
on both sides. All through the bloodiest days of the war he went to the
hospitals in Washington. His heart was with the common soldiers. And he
was tender to the Confederate wounded. He never could forget that they
were his countrymen. Nor could he withstand an appeal to pardon a young
soldier sentenced to death. Again and again he left his bed, after a
day and evening of exhausting toil, to save the life of some distant
wretched youth condemned to die at daybreak.
Is there anything in the whole range of English literature more
solemnly beautiful and heart-moving than the note he wrote to the widow
Bixby, of Boston?
“DEAR MADAM: I have been shown in the files of the War Department
a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are
the mother of five sons who have died gloriously in the field of
battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine
which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so
overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the
consolation that may be found in the thanks of the republic they
died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the
anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished
memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be
yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours very sincerely and respectfully,