Judge Usher, Lincoln's Secretary of the Interior, says, "Chief among his
great characteristics were his gentleness and humanity, and yet he did
not hesitate promptly to approve the sentences of Kennedy and Beall.
During the entire war there are but few other evidences to be found of a
willingness on his part that any one should suffer the penalty of death.
His great effort seemed to be to find some excuse, some palliation for
offences charged. He strove at all times to relieve the citizens on both
sides of the inconveniences and hardships resulting from the war. It has
often been reported that Secretary of War Stanton arbitrarily refused to
carry out his orders. In all such cases reported it will be found that
the President had given directions to him to issue permits to persons
who had applied to go through the lines into the insurgent districts.
The President said at one time, referring to Stanton's refusal to
issue the permits and the severe remarks made by the persons who were
disobliged,--
"'I cannot always know whether a permit ought to be granted, and I want
to oblige everybody when I can, and Stanton and I have an understanding
that if I send an order to him that cannot be consistently granted, he
is to refuse it, which he sometimes does; and that led to a remark which
I made the other day to a man who complained of Stanton, that I hadn't
much influence with this administration, but expected to have more with
the next.'"
Mr. George W. Julian, a Representative in Congress, said, "I called on
the President respecting the appointments I had recommended under the
conscription law, and took occasion to refer to the failure of General
Frémont to get a command. He said he did not know where to place him,
and that it reminded him of the old man who advised his son to take a
wife, to which the young man responded, 'Whose wife shall I take?'
"At another time," said Mr. Julian, "a committee of Western men, headed
by Mr. Lovejoy, procured from the President an important order looking
to the exchange of Eastern and Western soldiers, with a view to more
effective work. Repairing to the office of the Secretary, Mr. Lovejoy
explained the scheme, as he had done before the President, but was met
by a flat refusal.
"'But we have the President's order, sir,' said Lovejoy.
"'Did Lincoln give you an order of that kind?' said Stanton.
"'He did, sir.'
"'Then he is a d--d fool,' said the irate Secretary.
"'Do you mean to say the President is a d--d fool?' asked Lovejoy in
amazement.
"'Yes, sir, if he gave you such an order as that.'
"The bewildered Congressman from Illinois betook himself at once to the
President and related the result of his conference.
"'Did Stanton say I was a d--d fool?' asked Lincoln, at the close of the
recital.
"'He did, sir, and repeated it.'
"After a moment's pause, and looking up, the President said,--
"'If Stanton said I was a d--d fool, then I must be one, for he is
nearly always right, and generally says what he means. I will step over
and see him.'"
Mr. Stanton was entirely without a sense of humor, and was the only
member of the Cabinet who could not tolerate and could never understand
Lincoln's stories and the reasons for his frequent resort to comic
anecdotes and books of humor to relieve his mind from anxiety and the
terrible strain that was always upon him. He never told a story himself,
and would not waste his time listening to stories from others. With
his unsympathetic disposition and nerveless constitution he could not
understand the need of relaxation, and his serious mind regarded with
disapproval and even contempt the simple remedies which the President
applied as relief to his anxieties and care. Charles A. Dana, who was
Mr. Stanton's assistant in the War Department, referring to this fact in
his reminiscences, says,--
"The political struggle (November, 1864) had been most intense, and the
interest taken in it, both in the White House and in the War Department,
had been almost painful. I went over to the War Department about
half-past eight in the evening and found the President and Mr. Stanton
together in the Secretary's office. General Eckert, who then had charge
of the telegraph department of the War Office, was coming in continually
with telegrams containing election returns. Mr. Stanton would read them
and the President would look at them and comment upon them. Presently
there came a lull in the returns, and Mr. Lincoln called me up to a
place by his side.
"'Dana,' said he, 'have you ever read any of the writings of Petroleum
V. Nasby?'
"'No, sir,' I said. 'I have only looked at some of them, and they seemed
to me quite funny.'
"'Well,' said he, 'let me read you a specimen,' and, pulling out a thin
yellow-covered pamphlet from his breast-pocket, he began to read aloud.
Mr. Stanton viewed this proceeding with great impatience, as I could
see, but Mr. Lincoln paid no attention to that. He would read a page or
a story, pause to con a new election telegram, and then open the book
again and go ahead with a new passage. Finally Mr. Chase came in and
presently Mr. Whitelaw Reid, and then the reading was interrupted. Mr.
Stanton went to the door and beckoned me into the next room. I shall
never forget the fire of his indignation at what seemed to him to be
mere nonsense. The idea that when the safety of the republic was thus
at issue, when the control of an empire was to be determined by a few
figures brought in by the telegraph, the leader, the man most deeply
concerned, not merely for himself but for his country, could turn aside
to read such balderdash and to laugh at such frivolous jests, was to his
mind something most repugnant and damnable. He could not understand,
apparently, that it was by the relief which these jests afforded to the
strain of mind under which Lincoln had so long been living and to the
natural gloom of a melancholy and desponding temperament--this was Mr.
Lincoln's prevailing characteristic--that the safety and sanity of his
intelligence were maintained and preserved."
VI
A COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF AND HIS GENERALS
When President Lincoln, confronted by the infirmities and incapacity
of General Scott and the jealousy and rivalry of the younger officers
of the army, was compelled to assume the direction of the conduct of
the war, he was entirely ignorant of military affairs, except for the
experience he had gained in his youth during the Black Hawk War, which,
however, was more of a frontier frolic than a serious campaign. His own
account of it is found in the autobiography he furnished to the press
after his nomination to the Presidency:
"Abraham joined a volunteer company, and to his own surprise was elected
captain of it. He says he has not since had any success in life which
gave him so much satisfaction. He went into the campaign, served nearly
three months, met the ordinary hardships of such an expedition, but was
in no battle."
We know from others that Lincoln was one of the first to enlist, and
that it was something besides ambition which led him to seek the
captaincy of his company. During his first year in Illinois he worked
for a time in a saw-mill run by a man named Kirkpatrick, who promised
to buy him a cant-hook with which to move heavy logs. Lincoln offered
to move the logs with his own common handspike, provided Kirkpatrick
would give him in cash the two dollars which a cant-hook would cost.
Kirkpatrick agreed to do so, but never did, and Lincoln always bore him
a grudge. When the volunteers from Sangamon County assembled on the
green to elect their officers, Lincoln discovered that Kirkpatrick was
the only candidate for captain, and remarked to his friend and neighbor,
Green,--
"Bill, I believe I can make Kirkpatrick pay me that two dollars he owes
me on the cant-hook or I'll run against him for captain."
So he and Green began immediately to "hustle" for votes, and when the
order was given for the men to assemble at the side of their favorite
candidate for captain, three-fourths of them came to Lincoln, and he led
them over the prairies and through the wilderness to the rendezvous. He
had no knowledge of military tactics and did not even know the order
to give. He used to describe his blunders with great amusement, and
one that he enjoyed particularly was a device to get his men through
a gate-way into an enclosure. They were marching across a field four
abreast, and Lincoln could not remember the proper command for changing
them into single file, "or getting the company through the gate
endwise," as he described it. "So, as we came near the gate, I shouted,
'The company is dismissed for two minutes, when it will fall in again on
the other side of the gate.'"
This ingenuity did not save him from disgrace on other occasions, and
once he was severely punished by being deprived of his sword on account
of a violation of discipline. But these punishments did not seem to
diminish the respect in which he was held by his company. They were
proud of his wit, his strength, and his learning, and throughout their
lives they remained devotedly attached to him because of his personal
qualities. One day an Indian fugitive took refuge in the camp, and the
soldier frontiersmen, with more or less experience of the treachery and
cruelty of the savage, saw no reason why they should not put him out
of the way at once, especially as they had come out to kill Indians;
but Lincoln's humanity and sense of justice revolted at the murder of a
helpless savage, and, at the risk of his life, he defied the entire camp
and saved the Indian.
At the end of their term of service his company was mustered out, and
most of the volunteers, seeing no prospect of glory or profit, started
towards home; but Captain Lincoln re-enlisted the same day as a private,
and often spoke of the satisfaction he felt when relieved of the
responsibility of command. He served through the campaign. He was the
strongest man in the army and the best wrestler, with the exception of a
man named Thompson, who once threw him on the turf.
Black Hawk was captured through the treachery of his allies. Lincoln's
battalion was mustered out at Whitewater, Wisconsin, by Lieutenant
Robert Anderson, who, twenty-nine years later, was to stand with him
as the most interesting figure upon the national stage. A story that
Lincoln was mustered into the service by Jefferson Davis has been widely
published. It was a natural mistake, however, because Davis, then a
lieutenant in the army, was stationed at a fort near Rock Island, but
during the summer of the Black Hawk War he was on leave of absence
and did not join his regiment until long after the Sangamon County
volunteers had returned to their homes. However, Lincoln was to see and
meet several interesting characters, including Colonel Zachary Taylor,
whom he afterwards supported for President, General Winfield Scott,
another Whig candidate for the Presidency and the commander of the
army at the beginning of his administration, Lieutenant Albert Sidney
Johnston, afterwards a Confederate general, and others of fame.
Lincoln never permitted any one to call him "captain," and when in
Congress in 1848 he made a political speech in which he ridiculed
the efforts of the friends of General Cass to obtain some political
advantage from that eminent gentleman's services in a similar capacity.
He said,--
"If General Cass went in advance of me picking whortleberries, I guess
I surpassed him in charges on the wild onions. If he saw any live,
fighting Indians, it was more than I did, but I had a good many bloody
struggles with the mosquitoes; and although I never fainted from loss
of blood, I can truly say I was often very hungry. If ever I should
conclude to doff whatever our Democratic friends may suppose there is
of black-cockade Federalism about me, and thereupon they shall take me
up as their candidate for the Presidency, I protest that they shall not
make fun of me, as they have of General Cass, by attempting to write me
into a military hero."
When compelled to supervise the enlisting and equipment of a great army
and plan campaigns that were to determine the destiny and the happiness
and prosperity of the people, he was entirely without preparation or
technical knowledge of the science of war, and could only rely upon his
common sense and apply to military affairs the experience he had gained
in politics. His talent developed rapidly, however, until he became
recognized as the ablest strategist of the war, not excepting Grant or
Sherman. His correspondence with his generals, his memoranda concerning
the movements of troops, his instructions to the Secretary of War, the
plans he suggested, and the comments and criticisms he made upon those
of others indicate the possession of a military genius which in actual
service would have given him a high reputation. In times of crisis his
generals found him calm and resourceful; in great emergencies he was
prompt, cool, and clear-sighted; and under the shock of defeat he was
brave, strong, and hopeful.
Soon after his inauguration he began to realize the magnitude of
the struggle and the responsibilities which rested upon him. He was
convinced that the government was in the right, but determined that
there should be no mistake on this point; therefore he gave the South
every liberty and indulgence that could possibly be granted. He
determined that the "overt act" should be committed by the South, that
there should be no excuse to accuse the government of "invasion" or an
attempt at "subjugation," and for that reason he delayed the attempt
to reinforce and provision Fort Sumter. When the public understood the
moral issues involved he gave the order, because he knew that he would
be supported by a united North. In his inaugural address he said, "In
your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the
momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You
can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors." And that
solemn pledge he endeavored to fulfil even at the risk of Northern
criticism and the loss of the military posts at Charleston and other
points in the South.
It was a disheartening and almost impossible situation for the new
administration. President Lincoln and General Scott were left almost
entirely dependent upon strangers and men of no experience who had
been appointed for political reasons rather than for capacity or
knowledge. Nearly all the trained officers of the army resigned as
fast as their native States seceded; officers of Northern birth and
sympathies had been sent to distant posts so that they could not
interfere with the treasonable designs of Secretary Floyd during the
Buchanan administration. Confusion, corruption, and complications were
unavoidable, and caused the President unutterable anxiety and distress.
Ignorance and zeal often provoked more trouble than could be corrected,
and jealousy, rivalry, and partisanship made matters worse.
The political problems alone would have been as great a load as mortal
man might have been expected to carry, but his perplexities were
increased, his time occupied, and his patience sorely tested by such
an undignified and unpatriotic clamor for offices as has never been
exceeded in the history of our government. The Democratic party had
been in power for many years. Every position in the gift of President
Buchanan had been filled with a Democrat, many of them Southern
sympathizers, and now hordes of hungry Republicans besieged the White
House demanding appointments. The situation was described by the
President in a single ejaculation. A Senator who noticed an expression
of anxiety and dejection upon his face, inquired,--
"Has anything gone wrong, Mr. President? Have you heard bad news from
Fort Sumter?"
"No," answered the President, solemnly. "It's the post-office at
Jonesville, Missouri."
The area of the country was vast; the seat of war stretched from the
Atlantic to the Missouri River, with a strip of States undecided
in their purpose which must be carefully handled to prevent them
from joining the Confederacy. With inexperienced and incompetent
commanders, a divided Cabinet, public clamor dinning in his ears, and
his mind harassed by other cares and perplexities, it was difficult to
develop a military policy and plan a campaign for the suppression of
the rebellion. Even if the situation had been divested of political
significance, it would have taxed the genius of a Napoleon. The coast
line to be protected was more than three thousand six hundred miles
long, the frontier line was nearly eight thousand miles, and the
field of operation covered an area larger than the whole of Europe.
Furthermore, it was a political war, and everything must be planned
with a view to political consequences. It was not a struggle between
rival powers, nor for conquest, but for the preservation of the Union,
and from the beginning President Lincoln appreciated that the common
interests and the general welfare required that the integrity of the
country be preserved with as little loss and as little punishment as
possible to either side. Whatever damage was done must be repaired at
the end by a reunited country; whatever was destroyed was a common loss.
The war was a family affair, in which the sufferings and sorrows and
material losses must be equally shared. With all these considerations
in his mind, he undertook to guide the government in such a way as to
prevent the dissolution of the Union and at the same time accomplish
the overthrow of the slave power and the removal of that curse from the
American people.
General Scott, like General Sherman, had accurately measured the
requirements of the situation. Their experience and military instincts
taught them that it was to be a long and a tedious struggle, and they
urged deliberation and preparation as absolutely necessary to success.
But, when General Sherman's opinion was made public, he was called a
lunatic, and General Scott's practical plan of military operations
was defeated by public ridicule. General Sherman demanded two hundred
thousand men before attempting a campaign in the Mississippi Valley.
General Scott called for only one hundred thousand men, but said they
would be required for three years, and advised that they be distributed
among ten or fifteen healthy camps for four months until they could be
organized, drilled, and acclimated; then, after the navy had blockaded
the harbors of the Southern coast, he proposed to move his army down
both banks of the Mississippi River, establishing strong posts at
frequent intervals to protect that stream until New Orleans was captured
and occupied; he then proposed to move his army gradually eastward from
the Mississippi and southward from the Potomac, slowly closing in upon
the Confederacy until its military power was paralyzed. Notwithstanding
the sorrows and anxieties of the North, the people howled with derision
at this thorough, practical plan of the old veteran. The comic papers
took it up and published cartoons representing a monster serpent with
General Scott's head, coiled around the cotton States, and they called
it "Scott's Anaconda." In the same breath they demanded a battle. "On to
Richmond," they cried, and President Lincoln yielded to the clamor. The
battle of Bull Run was fought, with its disastrous consequences. The
lesson was valuable, as it taught the President that public opinion was
not a safe guide to follow in military operations.
It must be remembered that in the midst of the most appalling situation
in American history Lincoln stood practically alone because of a divided
Cabinet and the age and infirmities of General Scott, then seventy-five
years old, quite feeble in body and irritable of temper. The President
had great respect for him and confidence in his patriotism and military
judgment. He had supported Scott for President in 1852, had been in
correspondence with him before the inauguration, and had encouraged him
in his futile efforts to check the treasonable transactions of Secretary
Floyd and other conspirators; but he soon discovered that the venerable
warrior was in no condition to perform labor or assume responsibility.
Yet he was reluctant to do anything to wound his pride or reflect upon
his present ability. This increased the embarrassment and difficulties
of the situation. General Scott recognized and appreciated Lincoln's
consideration, but refused to resign or retire until finally driven from
his post by McClellan.
At the White House, shortly after the battle of Bull Run, the old
veteran, after listening to criticisms directed at the President for
permitting the Union army to suffer defeat, broke out in his wrath,--
"Sir, I am the greatest coward in America. I will prove it. I fought
this battle, sir, against my judgment; I think the President of the
United States ought to remove me to-day for doing it. As God is my
judge, after my superiors had determined to fight it, I did all in my
power to make the army efficient. I deserve removal because I did not
stand up when my army was not in a condition for fighting and resist to
the last."
"Your conversation seems to imply that I forced you to fight this
battle," suggested the President.
"I have never served a President who has been kinder to me than you
have been," replied the general, avoiding the question.
The battle of Bull Run was fought to gratify the politicians. It was
the only time the President yielded to public clamor, and he always
regretted it. It was a political movement. When he assembled a council
of war five days previous, the commanders declared that they had force
enough to overcome the enemy; but General Scott was positive that such
a victory could not be decisive, and advised a postponement of active
hostilities for a few months until the army could be placed in a better
condition. The Cabinet and the military committees of Congress feared
that public sentiment in the North would not consent to the delay, and
that the Confederate leaders would make such good use of it that the
results of an offensive movement would be more doubtful then than now,
hence an order for the advance was given. The President did not rebuke
General Scott for his indignant outbreak, because he felt that his words
were true.
The President suffered great anxiety during that eventful Sunday, but
exhibited his usual self-control, and attended church with Mrs. Lincoln.
After his noon dinner he walked over to the head-quarters of the army,
where he found General Scott taking a nap, and woke him up to ask his
opinion. The old gentleman was not only hopeful but confident, for one
of his aides had arrived with a report that General McDowell was driving
everything before him. The President's mind was relieved and about four
o'clock he went out to drive. At six o'clock Secretary Seward staggered
over the threshold of the White House and nervously asked for the
President. When told that he was driving, he whispered to the private
secretary,--
"Tell no one, but the battle is lost; McDowell is in full retreat, and
calls on General Scott to save the capital."
When the President drove up to the portico a few minutes later he
listened in silence to the message, but his head hung low as he crossed
the White House grounds to head-quarters. There the disaster was
confirmed, and he conferred long and anxiously with General Scott and
Secretary Cameron as to the next duty. Towards midnight he returned to
the White House and heard the accounts of members of Congress and others
who had gone out to witness the battle. His long frame lay listlessly
upon a couch, but his mind was active, his calmness and resolution had
not been disturbed, and before he slept that night he had planned the
reorganization of the army, and from that time undertook the direction
of military as well as civil and diplomatic affairs; consulting freely
with Senators and Representatives and officers of the army as he did
with his constitutional advisers, but relying upon his own judgment more
and more.