THE PANIC
The morning after Betty returned to Carver Hospital from the front, a
mother was pouring out her heart in a burst of patriotic joy over a
wounded boy.
She thought of the lonely figure in the White House treading the wine
press of a Nation's sorrow alone and asked the mother to go with her to
the President, meet him and repeat what she had said. She consented at
once.
For the first time Betty failed to gain admission promptly. Mr.
Stoddard, his third Secretary, was at the door.
"We must let him eat something, Miss Winter," he whispered. "All night
the muffled sound of his footfall came from his room. I heard it at
nine, at ten, at eleven. At midnight Stanton left his door ajar and his
steady tramp, tramp, tramp, came with heavier sound. The last thing I
heard as I left at three was the muffled beat upstairs. The guard told
me it never stopped for a moment all night."
Betty was surprised to see his face illumined by a cheerful smile as she
entered. She gazed with awe into the deep eyes of the man whose single
word could stop the war and divide the Union. She wondered if he had
fought the Nation's battle alone with God through the night until his
prophetic vision had seen through cloud and darkness the dawn of a new
and more wonderful life.
She spoke softly:
"I've brought you a good mother who lost a son at Fredericksburg. She
has a message for you."
The tall form bent reverently and pressed her hand. A wonderful smile
transfigured his rugged face as he listened:
"God help you in your trials, Mr. President, as he has helped me in
mine----"
"And you lost your son at Fredericksburg?"
"Yes. It was long before I could feel reconciled. But I've been praying
for you day and night since----"
"For me?"
"You must be strong and courageous, and God will bring the Nation
through!"
"You say that to me, standing beside the grave of your son?"
"Yes, and beside the cot of my other boy who is here wounded from
Chancellorsville. I'm proud that God gave me such sons to lay on the
altar of my country. Remember, I am praying for you day and night!"
Both big hands closed over hers and he was silent a moment.
"It's all right then. I'll get new strength when I remember that such
mothers are praying for me."
He pressed Betty's hand at the door:
"Thank you, child. You bring medicine that reaches soul and body!"
The hour of despair had passed and the President returned to his task
patient, watchful, strong.
Daily the shadows deepened over the Nation's life. Blacker and denser
rose the clouds. Four Northern Generals had now gone down before Lee's
apparently invincible genius--McClellan, Pope, Burnside, and Hooker, and
with each fall the corpses of young men were piled higher.
Again the clamor rose for the return of McClellan to command. This cry
was not only heard in the crushed Army of the Potomac, it was backed by
the voice of two million Democrats who had chosen the man on horseback
as their leader.
It was for precisely this reason that McClellan could not be considered
again for command. His party had fallen under the complete control of
its Copperhead leaders who demanded the ending of the war at once and at
any sacrifice of principle or of the Union.
The only way the President could stop desertions and prevent the actual
secession of the great Northern States of the Middle West, now under the
control of these men, was to use his arbitrary power to suspend the
civil law and put them in prison. Through the State and War Departments
he did this sorrowfully, but promptly.
His answer to his critics was the soundest reasoning and it justified
him in the judgment of thinking men.
"I make such arrests," he declared, "because these men are laboring to
prevent the raising of troops and encouraging desertion. Armies cannot
be maintained unless desertion shall be punished by the penalty of
death.
"I will not shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, and refuse to
touch a wily agitator who induces him to commit the crime. To silence
the agitator and save the boy is not only Constitutional, but withal a
great mercy."
Volunteers were no longer to be had and a draft of five hundred thousand
men had been ordered for the summer. The Democratic leaders in solid
array were threatening to resist this draft by every means in their
power, even to riot and revolution.
The masses of the North were profoundly discouraged at the unhappy
results of the war. In thousands of patriotic loyal homes, men and women
had begun to ask themselves whether it were not cruel folly to send
their brave boys to be slaughtered.
The prestige of the Southern army was at its highest point and its
terrible power was nowhere more gravely realized than in the North,
whose thousands of mourning homes attested its valor.
Europe at last seemed ready to spring on the throat of America. Distinct
reports were in circulation in the Old World that the Emperor of France,
Napoleon III, intended to interfere in our affairs. On the 9th of
January, the French Government denied this. The Emperor himself,
however, sent to the President an offer of mediation so blunt and
surprising it could not be doubted that it was a veiled hint of his
purpose to intervene. Beyond a doubt he expected the Union to be
dismembered and he proposed to form an alliance between the Latin Empire
which he was founding in Mexico and the triumphant Confederate States.
Great Britain was behind this Napoleonic adventure. Outwitted by the
President in the affair of the _Trent_, the British Government was eager
for the chance to strike the Republic.
To cap the climax of disasters Lee was preparing to invade the North
with his victorious army. The announcement struck terror to the Northern
cities and produced a condition among them little short of panic.
The move would be the height of audacity and yet Lee had good reasons
for believing its success possible and probable. His grey veterans were
still ragged and poorly shod. With Southern ports blockaded and no
manufacturing this was inevitable, but they had proven in two years'
test of fire Lee's proud boast:
"There never were such men in an army before. They will go anywhere and
do anything if properly led."
This opinion was confirmed to the President by Charles Francis Adams, a
veteran of his own Army of the Potomac, whom he summoned to the White
House for a conference.
"I do not believe," said Adams gravely, "that any more formidable or
better organized and animated force was ever set in motion than that
which Lee is now leading toward the North. It is essentially an army of
fighters--men who individually, or in the mass, can be depended on for
any feat of arms in the power of mere mortals to accomplish. They will
blanch at no danger. Lee knows this from experience and they have full
confidence in him."
He could not hope to enter Pennsylvania with more than sixty-five
thousand men, but his plan was reasonable. With such an army he had
hurled McClellan's hundred and ten thousand soldiers back from the gates
of Richmond and scattered them to the winds. With a less number he had
all but annihilated Pope's men and flung them back into Washington a
disorganized rabble. With thirty-seven thousand grey soldiers he had
repelled in a welter of blood McClellan's eighty-six thousand at
Antietam and retired at his leisure. With seventy thousand men he had
crushed Burnside's host of one hundred and thirteen thousand at
Fredericksburg. With sixty thousand he had just struck Hooker's grand
army of a hundred and thirty thousand men and four hundred and
thirty-eight guns, rolled it up as a scroll and thrown it across the
Rappahannock in blinding, bewildering defeat.
From every prisoner taken at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville he knew
the Northern army was discouraged and heartsick. That he could march his
ragged men, the flower of Southern manhood, into Pennsylvania and clothe
and feed them on her boundless resources he couldn't doubt. Virginia was
swept bare, and the demoralization of Hooker's army with the profound
depression of the North left his way open.
To say that Lee's invasion, as it rapidly developed under such
conditions, struck terror to the Capital of the Republic is to mildly
express it. The movement of his army from Culpepper in June indicated
clearly that his objective point was Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. If the
Capital of the State fell, nothing could withstand the onward triumphant
rush of his army into Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington.
To meet the extraordinary danger the President called for one hundred
thousand militia for six months' emergency service from the five States
clustering around Pennsylvania. And yet as the two armies drew near to
each other, General George Meade, the new Union Commander who had
succeeded Hooker, had but one hundred and five thousand against Lee's
sixty-two thousand. So terrible had been the depression following
Chancellorsville, so rapid the desertions, so numerous the leaves of
absence, that the combined forces of the Army of the Potomac with the
State troops under the new call reached only this pitiful total.
Lee's swift column penetrated almost to the gates of Harrisburg before
Meade's advance division of twenty-five thousand men had caught up with
his rear at Gettysburg on July 1st.
Seeing that a battle was inevitable, Lee drew in his advance lines and
made ready for the clash. The Northern army was going into this fight
with the smallest number of men relatively which he had ever met--though
outnumbering him nearly two to one. The difference was that here the
North was defending her own soil.
It was not surprising that on the eve of such a battle in the light of
the frightful experiences of the past two years that Washington should
be in a condition of panic. A single defeat now with Lee's victorious
army north of the Capital meant its fall, the inevitable dismemberment
of the Union, and the bankruptcy and ruin of the remaining Northern
States.
Brave men in Congress who had fought heroically with their mouths
inveighing with bitter invective against the weak and vacillating policy
of the President in temporizing with the South were busy packing their
goods and chattels to fly at a moment's notice.
The President realized, as no other man could, the deep tragedy of the
crisis. He sat by his window for hours, his face a grey mask, his
sorrowful eyes turned within, the deep-cut lines furrowed into his
cheeks as though burned with red hot irons.
He was struggling desperately now to forestall the possible panic which
would follow defeat.
He had sent once more for McClellan and in painful silence, all others
excluded from the Executive Chamber, awaited his coming.
"You are doubtless aware, General," the President began, "that a defeat
at Gettysburg might involve the fall of the Capital and the
dismemberment of the Union?"
"I am, sir."
"First, I wish to speak to you with perfect frankness about some ugly
matters which have come to my ears--may I?"
The compelling blue eyes flashed and the General spoke with an accent of
impatience:
"Certainly."
"A number of Secret Societies have overspread the North and Northwest,
whose purpose is to end the war at once and on any terms. I have the
best of reasons for believing that the men back of these Orders are now
in touch with the Davis Government in Richmond. I am informed that a
coterie of these conspirators, a sort of governing board, have gotten
control or may get control of the organization of your Party. I have
heard the ugly rumor that they are counting on you----"
"Stop!" McClellan shouted.
The General sprang to his feet, the President rose and the two men
confronted each other in a moment of tense silence.
The compact figure of McClellan was trembling with rage--the tall man's
sombre eyes holding his with steady purpose.
"No man can couple the word treason with my name, sir!" the General
hissed.
"Have I done so?"
"You are insinuating it--and I demand a retraction!"
The President smiled genially:
"Then I apologize for my carelessness of expression. I have never
believed you a traitor to the Union."
"Thank you!"
"I don't believe it now, General. That's why I've sent for you."
"Then I suggest that you employ more caution in the use of words if this
conversation is to continue."
"Again I apologize, General, with admiration for your manner of meeting
the ugly subject. I'm glad you feel that way--and now if you will be
seated we can talk business."
McClellan resumed his seat with a frown and the President went on:
"I have sent for you to ask an amazing thing----"
"Hence the secrecy with which I am summoned?"
"Exactly. I'm going to ask you to take my place and save the Union."
McClellan's handsome face went white:
"What do you mean?"
"Exactly what I've said."
"And your conditions?" the General asked, with a quiver in his voice.
"They are very simple: Preside to-morrow night at a great Democratic
Union Mass Meeting in New York and boldly put yourself at the head of
the Union Democracy----"
"And you?"
"I will withdraw from the race."
"What race?"
"For the next term of the Presidency."
"Oh----"
"My convention is but ten months off. Yours can meet a day earlier. I
will withdraw in your favor and force my Party to endorse you. Your
election will be a certainty."
The General lifted his hand with a curious smile:
"You're in earnest?"
"I was never more so. It is needless for me to say that I came into this
office with high ambitions to serve my country. My dream of glory has
gone--I have left only agony and tears----" He paused and drew a deep
breath.
"I did want the chance," he went on wistfully, "to stay here another
term to see the sun shine again, to heal my country's wounds, and show
all my people, North, South, East, and West, that I love them! But I
can't risk this new battle, if you will agree to take my place and save
the Union. Will you preside over such a meeting?"
"No," was the sharp, clear answer.
"I am sorry--why?"
"Perhaps I am already certain of that election without your assistance?"
"Oh--I see."
"Besides, what right have you to ask anything of me?"
"Only the right of one who sinks all thought of himself in what he
believes to be the greater good."
"You who, with victory in my grasp before Richmond, snatched it away!
You, who nailed me to the cross on the bloody field of Antietam with
your accursed Proclamation of Emancipation and removed me from my
command before I could win my campaign!"
The big hand rose in kindly protest:
"Can't you believe me, General, when I tell you, with God as my witness,
that I have never allowed a personal motive or feeling to enter into a
single appointment or removal I have made? What I've done has always
been exactly what I believed was for the best interests of the country.
Can't you believe this?"
"No."
"In spite of the fact that I risked the dissolution of my Cabinet and
the united opposition of my party when I restored you to command?"
"No--you had to do it."
"Grant then," the persuasive voice went on, "that I have treated you
unfairly, that I had personal feelings. Surely you should in this hour
of my reckoning, this hour of my Golgotha, when I climb the hill alone
and ask the man I have wronged to take my place--surely you should be
content with my humiliation? I shall not hesitate to proclaim it from
the housetop when I ask for your election. If I have wronged you, my
anguish could not be more pitifully complete! Will you do as I ask, and
assure the safety of our country?"
"I'll do my best to save my country," was the slow, firm answer, "but in
my own way."
The General rose, bowed stiffly and left the President standing in
sorrowful silence, his deep eyes staring into space and seeing nothing.
On the morning of July 1st the two armies were rapidly approaching each
other, marching in parallel lines stretched over a vast distance--the
extreme wings more than forty miles apart.
Buford, commanding the advance guard of the Union army, struck Hill's
division of the Confederates before the town of Gettysburg and the first
gun of the great battle echoed over the green hills and valleys of
Pennsylvania.
The President caught the flash of the shock from the telegraph wires
with a sense of sickening dread. The rear guard of his army was yet
forty miles away. What might happen before they were in line God alone
could tell. He could not know, of course, that but twenty-two thousand
Confederates had reached the field and stood confronting twenty-four
thousand under John F. Reynolds, one of the ablest and bravest generals
of the Union army.
Through every hour of this awful day he sat in the telegraph office of
the War Department and read with bated breath the news.
The brief reports were not reassuring. The battle was raging with
unparalleled fury. At ten o'clock General Reynolds fell dead from his
horse in front of his men, and when the news was flashed to Meade he
sent Hancock forward riding at full speed to take command.
The President read the message announcing Reynolds' death with quivering
lip. He put his big hand blindly over his heart as if about to faint.
At three o'clock the smoke which had enveloped the battle line was
lifted by a breeze as Hancock dashed on the field. He had not arrived a
moment too soon. His superb bearing on his magnificent horse, his
shouts of confidence, his promise of heavy reinforcements, stayed the
tide of retreat and brought order out of chaos.
The day had been won again by Lee's apparently invincible men. They had
driven the Union army from their line a mile in front of Gettysburg back
through the town and beyond it, captured the town, taken five thousand
men in blue prisoners with two generals, besides inflicting a loss of
three thousand killed and wounded, including among the dead the gallant
and popular commander, John F. Reynolds.
When this message reached the President late at night he had eaten
nothing since breakfast. He rose from his seat in the telegraph office
and walked from the building alone in silence. His step was slow,
trance-like, and uncertain as if he were only half awake or had risen
walking in his sleep.
He went to his bedroom, locked the door and fell on his knees in prayer.
Hour after hour he wrestled alone with God in the darkness, while his
tired army rushed through the night to plant themselves on the Heights
beyond Gettysburg, before Lee's men could be concentrated to forestall
them.
Over and over again, through sombre eyes that streamed with tears, the
passionate cry was wrung from his heart:
"Lord God of our fathers, have mercy on us! I have tried to make this
war yours--our cause yours--if I have sinned and come short, forgive! We
cannot endure another Fredericksburg or Chancellorsville. Into thy
hands, O Lord, I give our men and our country this night--save them!"