and of an able Congressional group, redoubled as the first half of
1862 passed with almost no news from Virginia but that of disasters.
On July 8 the _Post_ asked three sharp questions. Why had enlistments
been stopped three or four months earlier--for Stanton, believing
success at hand, had foolishly halted the recruiting on April 3? Why
had the militia of the loyal States never, since the war began, been
reorganized, drilled, and armed? And why had no great arsenals of
munitions been collected? “We have been sluggish in our preparations
and timid in our execution,” the paper admonished Washington. “Let us
change all this.” Such complaints were natural and useful in the dark
hour when McClellan’s army recoiled after bloody fighting from its
first advance on Richmond. Bryant also did well to press his attacks
upon corruption in government contracts, and political favoritism in
military appointments. When this month Congress authorized the use
of negroes in camp service and trench digging, he reasonably found
fault with the Administration for its slowness in acting upon the
authorization.
But Bryant’s “radicalism” was not commendable when he complained of
the delay in emancipating the slaves; of the prominence of Northern
Democrats, not hostile to slavery, in the army and at Washington;
and of the consideration given border State sentiment. Had Lincoln
acted rashly in the early months of the war, he would have forced
Kentucky and Missouri into the arms of the South, and he thought
(Sept. 22, 1861) that “to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose
the whole game.” Had he made haste to emancipate the slaves, he would
irretrievably have offended powerful elements in the North and the
Border States which were willing to fight for the Union, but not to
fight against slavery. Military historians have generally condemned
Lincoln’s interference with McClellan’s plans in the early spring
of 1862, an interference into which he was forced by such pressure
as Bryant was exerting. The _Evening Post_ was unjust to Lincoln
when it explained (July 7, 1862) why the people suspected him of
indecision. “He has trusted too much to his subordinates; he has not
been sufficiently peremptory with them, either with his generals or his
Secretaries; and his whole Administration has been marked by a certain
tone of languor and want of earnestness which has not corresponded with
the wishes of the people.” It was unjust when it spoke again (July 23)
of Lincoln’s “slumbers,” and of the “drowsy influence of border State
opiates.”
In condemning the military incapacity of the Union generals in the
East the newspaper was upon firmer ground. McClellan became commander
of the Army of the Potomac immediately after Bull Run, and was made
commander-in-chief of all the armies on Nov. 1, 1861. As the new year
arrived without any movement, Bryant began grumbling over the idea
held by many officers “that the wisest way of conducting the war is to
weary out the South with delays.” He argued that if the North did not
show more energy, France or England might eventually interfere. “If we
understand the case,” he wrote caustically on Feb. 6, “Gen. McClellan
has infinite claims upon our gratitude for the discipline which he
has given to the army, but that discipline is still too imperfect to
warrant any movement.” He pointed out that the enemy was relying upon
this inefficiency, and was so confident of the situation in Virginia
that Beauregard had just been dispatched to reinforce the Confederate
army in the West. A few days later Bryant received a letter which Gen.
Wadsworth wrote him from camp, denouncing McClellan roundly:
I repeat the conclusion intimated in my last letter. The
commander-in-chief is almost inconceivably incompetent, or he has
his own plans--widely different from those entertained by the
people of the North--of putting down this Rebellion. I have just
read the gloomy reports from Europe, threatening intervention, etc.
In my despair, I write in the faint hope of arousing our Press to
speak out what is in the hearts of ninety-nine one hundredths of
the army, and nine-tenths of the country--the commander-in-chief is
incompetent or disloyal. I have come slowly to this conclusion. No
man greeted his appointment more cordially than I did. There is not
the shadow of any personal feeling in my conviction. I have nothing
personal to complain of. I must again caution you, that all this is
strictly confidential.
Wadsworth reiterated this opinion all spring, while Bryant heard from
Gen. John Pope and Gen. Hitchcock in the same vein. It was not until
May 5 that McClellan fought his first battle, though he had held
command since the preceding July. The _Evening Post_ was full of hope
in the Peninsular campaign that followed, warning McClellan not to
overestimate the enemy’s forces, and that “hitherto our great fault has
been that we have not followed up our successes.” Its dejection was
proportionately great when in the first days of July the campaign ended
in failure, and McClellan withdrew his army from the position he had
reached immediately in front of Richmond. The disgust of the radicals
with McClellan was now complete, and the _Post_ was as eloquent as the
_Tribune_ or _Times_ in attacking him. On July 3 it mournfully remarked
that “while the cause cannot perhaps be defeated even by incompetence,”
it could be gravely imperilled. “We have suffered long enough from
inaction and overcaution. Henceforth we must have action.... If it be
asked who is the best man, we can only say that it is Mr. Lincoln’s
business to know, but bitter experience has taught us that Gen.
McClellan is not.” Lincoln was admonished that he must open his eyes
without a moment’s delay to the exigency, dismiss every slothful or
imbecile leader, infuse energy and unity into his Cabinet, and recruit
new armies. It was now that the _Post_ began asking for conscription,
while it gave a ringing endorsement to Lincoln’s call for “three
hundred thousand more.”
The _Herald_, incapable of blaming a Democrat like McClellan, in July
attacked Stanton for the army’s failure, but the _Evening Post_ showed
that McClellan himself had said that he had more than enough troops to
take Richmond. The Chicago _Tribune_ later accused it of injustice to
Lincoln in saying that McClellan should have been dismissed earlier,
since Lincoln could not do so without offending loyal Democrats. That,
rejoined the _Post_, is precisely the ground for our objection to
McClellan; he was retained for political, not military, reasons.
These July days were the days in which Lincoln grew thin and haggard,
Seward was sent upon a circuit of the North to arouse public men in
support of the new enlistment programme, and Lowell wrote, “I don’t see
how we are to be saved but by a miracle.” Who should succeed McClellan?
Chase and Welles believed that the best general in view for the eastern
command was John Pope, whose victory at Island No. 10 had given him
national fame; and Bryant and Godwin, who had had some personal contact
with Pope, agreed. He was called east and given the Army of Virginia.
The chief command, however, went to Halleck, whom the _Evening Post_
distrusted as much as Welles did, and had already (July 23) described
as slower and less enterprising than McClellan.
To Halleck the _Evening Post_ said that his motto must be that of the
Athenian orator, action--action--action. The country wanted a Marshal
Vorwarts; should its historians have none to record but General
Trenches, General Strategy, or General Let-Escape? A few days later
(Aug. 19) it published an editorial headed “Onward! Onward!” “The
one essential element in our military movements now is celerity,” it
urged. “Promptness in filling up the ranks already thinned by the war,
promptness in organizing and sending forward new regiments, promptness
in moving on the enemy.” Bryant had written Lincoln protesting
against the sluggishness of military operations, and under pressure
from other radicals, early in August the editor visited Washington
to remonstrate. Mayor Opdyke, President Charles King of Columbia,
and many other influential New Yorkers went at about the same time
for the same purpose. Bryant tells us that he had a long talk with
Lincoln, “in which I expressed myself plainly and without reserve,
though courteously. He bore it well, and I must say that I left him
with a perfect conviction of the excellence of his intentions and the
singleness of his purposes, though with sorrow for his indecision.” A
movement immediately began in New York to organize the radicals under a
local committee.
In their editorials on military policy Bryant, Parke Godwin, and
Charles Nordhoff were guided by officers who wrote from the field or
whom they met in the city; and their comments were remarkably sound.
At this moment, for example, the _Evening Post_ sensibly ridiculed
the talk of a rebel army 200,000 strong. It repeatedly expressed a
conviction that never, neither at Manassas, Yorktown, of Richmond,
had the enemy been superior. “There is excellent reason to believe
that the rebels never had more than 40,000 men at Manassas; it is a
notorious fact that when McClellan arrived on the Peninsula, there were
not 10,000 men at Yorktown. At Fair Oaks Sumner’s corps and Casey’s
division repulsed the whole rebel army.... A close examination of the
battles before Richmond proves that the rebels never fought more than
15,000 to 25,000 men there on any one day.” McClellan, it thought, had
been frightened by idle fears. But when Pope failed more ignominiously
than McClellan, and was soundly drubbed at the second battle of Bull
Run (Aug. 30, 1862), the _Evening Post_ did not confine itself to
military topics. It fell again into its unjustifiable censure of
Lincoln. The President was honest, devoted, and determined--
and yet the effect of his management has been such that, with all
his personal popularity, in spite of the general confidence in his
good intentions, and in spite of the ability and energy of several
of his advisers, a large part of the nation is utterly discouraged
and despondent. Many intelligent and even wise persons, indeed, do
not scruple to express their suspicions that treachery lurks in the
highest quarters, and that either in the army or in the Cabinet
purposes are entertained which are equivalent to treason.
All this has grown out of the weakness and vacillation of the
Administration, which itself has grown out of Mr. Lincoln’s own
want of decision and purpose. We pretend to no state secrets, but
we have been told, upon what we deem good authority, that no such
thing as a continued, unitary, deliberate Administration exists;
that the President’s brave willingness to take all responsibility
has quite neutralized the idea of a conjoint responsibility; and
that orders of the highest importance are issued and movements
commanded, which Cabinet officers learn of as other people do, or,
what is worse, which the Cabinet officers disapprove and protest
against. Each Cabinet officer, again, controls his own department
pretty much as he pleases, without consultation with the President
or with his coadjutors. (Sept. 15, 1862.)
At this juncture the _Times_ and _World_ were vehemently demanding a
drastic change of Cabinet officers; and in Washington Congressional
sentiment was shaping itself toward the crisis of December, when a
Senatorial caucus demanded the resignation of the conservative Seward.
The _Herald_, panic-stricken, was telling McClellan that he was “master
of the situation”--that is, he might be dictator; and calling upon him
“to insist upon the modification and reconstruction of the Cabinet.”
It was not unnatural for Bryant to give way to his old fear that the
Administration would “fight battles to produce a compromise instead of
a victory.”
As befitted such a warlike journal, the _Evening Post_ had its own
strategic plan, which it first outlined Oct. 5, 1861, and thenceforth
expounded every few weeks until the closing campaigns. Briefly, it
held that there was no important object in the capture of Richmond;
that the indispensable aim was to destroy the Confederate armies,
not to take cities. The Southern capital could be easily removed to
Knoxville, Petersburg, or Montgomery. Except in so far as was involved
in opening the Mississippi and applying the blockade, it opposed the
“anaconda plan” of Scott and McClellan, the plan of attacking with a
half dozen armies from a half dozen sides. The rebels, it pointed out,
had the advantage of inside lines and could rapidly shift their forces
to defeat one Federal onslaught after another. The true strategy was
for the Union itself to seize the inside lines. This could be done by
concentrating its heaviest forces in those great Appalachian valleys
which ran south through Virginia and Tennessee into the heart of the
Confederacy. The population was in large part friendly; the Ohio River
offered a base of supplies; the flanks could be secured by guarding
the passes or gaps; and as the Union armies moved southward in the
Tennessee and Shenandoah Valleys, they could force the evacuation
of the border States. From the valleys they could fall at will upon
Virginia, upon North Carolina, upon Georgia, upon Mississippi, and
could rend the Confederacy in twain.
But the good and bad sides of the _Evening Post’s_ radicalism were best
exhibited in its eagerness for emancipation. It was a noble object for
which to contend, yet no one doubts that Lincoln was right in his long
hesitation, and in declaring to Greeley so late as the summer of 1862
that his paramount object was to save the Union, and not either to save
or destroy slavery.
Even in the month of Bull Run the _Evening Post_, while rebuking a
New England minister who asked for a national declaration in favor of
emancipation, believed that the conflict, “though not a war directly
aimed at the release of the slave, must indirectly work out the result
in many ways.” When Fremont issued his hasty proclamation of September,
1861, liberating all slaves in Missouri, which Lincoln sensibly
revoked, the _Post_ called it “the most popular act of the war,” and
was much offended by the President. By October it was dropping the
uncertainty of tone in which it had spoken of the subject. Early that
month it said that if it became necessary to extinguish slavery in
order to put down the rebellion, it must be given no mercy; a few
days later it demanded the release of all captured slaves and their
enlistment as cooks, trench-diggers, and other auxiliaries; while on
Sept. 25 it virtually called for emancipation. The paper believed that
it “would change the whole aspect of the war, bring to our side a host
of new allies, call off the attention of the rebels from their present
plan, and hasten the period of their subjugation.” Bryant wrote just
before Thanksgiving upon the probable great result of the war; and
“that the extinction of slavery will form a part of it,” he declared,
“we have not the shadow of a doubt.”
During the first half of 1862 a considerable part of the _Post’s_
criticism of Lincoln sprang from its impatience over his reluctance
to free the slaves. This was the attitude of Sumner, of Thaddeus
Stevens, of Carl Schurz, of Greeley in the _Tribune_ and nearly all
the _Tribune’s_ great constituency; most of Bryant’s friends took it,
and many, as Lydia Maria Child, wrote requesting editorial pleas for
emancipation. It is an interesting coincidence, that on the very day,
July 22, 1862, that Lincoln read his emancipation proclamation to
the Cabinet, and upon Seward’s suggestion put it aside, the _Evening
Post’s_ leading editorial was an impassioned plea for such a document.
Lincoln was only waiting for a victory, that his proclamation might
seem to be supported by a military success. Possibly Bryant learned
this from his friend Chase. At any rate, although the _Evening Post_
was bitterly grieved by McClellan’s failure to win a decisive victory
at Antietam in September, and wrote angrily that such drawn battles
were “not war but murder; butchery which fills all right-minded men
with horror,” it knew that emancipation might follow Lee’s retreat from
Maryland soil. Just after the battle Bryant wrote an editorial (Sept.
17) called, “While the Iron is Hot.” There are crucial junctures, he
said, when great blows must be struck at great evils. Such a juncture
had arrived; “a proclamation of freedom by martial law would be
hailed, we believe, by an almost universal shout of joy in all the
loyal States, as the death knell of the rebellion.” Just a week later
the _Evening Post_ was rejoicing over the President’s announcement of
his forthcoming proclamation:
It puts us right before Europe; it brings us back to our
traditions; it animates our soldiers with the same spirit which
led our forefathers to victory under Washington; they are fighting
today, as the Revolutionary patriots fought, in the interests of
the human race, for human rights....
There was a lesson for all radicals in the resentment which, at even
that late date, many Northern newspapers showed over the President’s
act. The _Journal of Commerce_ had “only anticipations of evil from
it,” and believed that an immense majority of Northerners would view
it with profound regret. The _Herald_ predicted that it would ruin the
white laborers of the West by bringing the negroes north to compete
with them. The _World_ held that it was nugatory--the South would have
to be whipped before it could be given any effect. The _Courrier des
Etats Unis_ had deplored many errors since the republic “began rolling
down the slope which promises to land it in the abyss,” but it thought
this blunder the most wanton and complete. What would such papers
and the great body of citizens they represented have said six months
earlier?
Another and highly praiseworthy evidence of the “radicalism” of the
_Evening Post_ was its eagerness for a far-reaching system of taxation,
and for having the financial conduct of the war kept as strictly as
possible upon a sound-money basis. Having been active in obtaining
Chase’s appointment to the Treasury, Bryant felt a special solicitude
for that department. During the latter half of 1861 he repeatedly urged
Congress to tax to the limit. He believed that the government should
be able to pay for the war by heavy taxes, supplemented by the sale of
long-term bonds, and only as a final resource should issue Treasury
notes payable on demand. It was a disappointment to the paper that
Chase took no early steps for the development of an appropriate tax
system. A remarkable editorial of Feb. 1, 1862, pictured the wealth of
the nation: the universal possession of property, the high per capita
prosperity, the bursting granaries, the rich output of precious metals.
It recalled the fact that three times the national debt contracted
in great wars had been wiped out, while in the thirties the treasury
overflowed until men racked their brains with plans for spending the
superfluity. Never was a nation more cheerfully inclined to accept high
taxes; “the general feeling is one of impatience that Congress is so
slow in performing this necessary duty.”
As early as Jan. 15 the _Evening Post_ had uttered its first warning
against a reliance upon paper money. Naturally, the passage of the
greenback legislation of Feb. 25, 1862, for the issue of $150,000,000
in legal-tender notes, dismayed it. It believed the law grossly
unconstitutional, and was certain that it would be disastrous in
effect. Secretary Chase wrote to Bryant, on Feb. 4, arguing for the
bill, but in vain. “Your feelings of repugnance to the legal-tender
clause can hardly be greater than my own,” said Chase; “but I am
convinced that, as a temporary measure, it is indispensably necessary.”
He thought that a minority of the people would not sustain the notes
unless they were made a tender for debt, and that this minority could
control the majority to all practical intents. But the _Evening Post_,
like all the other New York journals save two, opposed the bill to the
last. Bryant did not believe that the measure could be temporary, as
Chase put it. In an editorial called “A Deluge at Hand,” he compared
the law to the first breach made in one of the Holland dikes:
In all the examples which the world has seen, the evil of an
irredeemable paper currency runs its course as certainly as the
smallpox or any other disease. The first effects are of such a
nature that the remedy is never applied; there is no disposition
to apply it. The inflation of the currency pleases a large class
of persons by a rise of prices and an extraordinary activity in
business. People buy to sell at higher prices; property passes
rapidly from hand to hand; fortunes are made; the community is
delirious with speculation. At such a time suppose Mr. Chase to
step in and say: “My friends, this fun has been going on long
enough; you must be tired by this time of speculation. Let us
repeal the legal-tender clause in the Treasury-note bill and return
to specie payments.” What sort of reception would this proposal
meet?
His prophecy was fulfilled. Successive issues of legal-tender notes
followed, until the total reached $450,000,000; prices soared, and the
cost of the war was immensely enhanced; and at one time $39 in gold
would buy $100 in currency. The _Evening Post_, it may be added, was
the first newspaper to suggest the issue of interest-bearing banknotes
as an expedient for the gradual contraction of the currency, a measure
Congress adopted in March, 1863.
Meanwhile, the Northern armies failed to make progress. When in
December, 1862, the criminally incompetent Burnside attacked Lee’s
entrenched army at Fredericksburg, and was flung back with the loss of
nearly 13,000 men, an outburst of anger came from the whole New York
press. “The Late Massacre” was the heading the _Evening Post_ gave its
editorial of Dec. 18, in which, three days after Burnside fell back, it
could not understand why he was not already removed. “How long is such
intolerable and wicked blundering to continue? What does the President
wait for? We hear that a great, a horrible crime has been committed; we
do not hear that those guilty of it are under arrest; we do not hear
even that they are to be removed from the places of trust which they
have shown themselves so incapable to fill.” The Democratic press,
led by the _Herald_, demanded the reinstatement of McClellan, while
the radical press wanted an entirely new general. Once more, like the
_Tribune_, _Herald_, and _World_, the _Evening Post_ blamed Lincoln for
his generals’ mistakes. “The President has required too little from his
agents; his good nature has led him to be less strict toward them than
he ought to be, while at the same time his confidence in himself and
his advisers has led him, unfortunately, to deny himself that general
counsel of the nation by which he might have benefited had he kept up
confidential relations between himself and the people.” Yet it had
praised the choice of Burnside, calling him an energetic, calm, and
judicious leader, who had the prestige of success in his favor.
As the spring campaign of 1863 opened, the _Post_ reflected the
renewed hopefulness of the North. It was not pleased by the selection
of Hooker to be the new commander, but it was encouraged by his rapid
reorganization of the army and restoration of fighting discipline. The
new advance had the old result--disaster. On May 7, lamenting Hooker’s
ignominious defeat at Chancellorsville, the _Evening Post_ condemned
his strategy as incomprehensible. It was quite right in its general
verdict, and in a number of specific criticisms, as when it said that
the disposition of the forces under Sedgwick had been insane. But we
can hardly say as much of its censure of Hooker and the Administration
for an alleged failure to use the needed reserves. There were 60,000
men among the Washington defenses, it declared, who might have been
replaced by militia and thrown into the battle. As a matter of fact,
Hooker had failed to employ 35,000 fresh troops right at hand; his army
was large enough, and much too large for his capacity to handle it.
It fell back across the Rappahannock, and the stage was set for Lee’s
descent upon Pennsylvania.