[4] This language was too vague to make known to us now what Sumner's demand was; for one of the questions bitterly in dispute soon became: what forces were properly to be regarded as available "for the defense of the city."
[5] McClellan says that he offered to General Hitchcock, "who at that time held staff relations with his excellency, the President, and the secretary of war," to submit a list of troops, to be left for the defense of Washington, with their positions; but Hitchcock replied that McClellan's judgment was sufficient in the matter. McClellan's Report, 683. VOL. II.
[6] By letter to the adjutant-general, wherein he requested the transmission of the information to the secretary of war. Report of Comm. on Conduct of the War, ii. pt. i. 13. The addition in the Report is erroneous, being given as 54,456 instead of 55,456.
[7] See Comte de Paris, Civil War in America, i. 626, 627.
[8] See discussion by Swinton, Army of Potomac, 108 et seq.
[9] Perhaps he was not justified in counting upon it with such apparent assurance as he had done. Webb, The Peninsula, 37-42.
[10] General Webb says that this question is "the leading point of dispute in the campaign and may never be satisfactorily set at rest." But he also says: "To allow the general to remain in command, and then cut off the very arm with which he was about to strike, we hold to have been inexcusable and unmilitary to the last degree." Swinton condemns the withholding McDowell (Army of the Potomac, 104), adding, with fine magnanimity, that it is not necessary to impute any "really unworthy motive" to Mr. Lincoln!
[11] It seems to me that military opinion, so far as I can get at it, inclines to hold that the government, having let McClellan go to the Peninsula with the expectation of McDowell's corps, ought to have sent it to him, and not to have repaired its own oversight at his cost. But this does not fully meet the position that, oversight or no oversight, Peninsula-success or Peninsula-defeat, blame here or blame there, when the President had reason to doubt the safety of the capital, he was resolved, and rightly resolved, to put that safety beyond possibility of question, by any means or at any cost. The truth is that to the end of time one man will think one way, and another man will think another way, concerning this unendable dispute.
[12] General Wool was in command at Fortress Monroe. It had been originally arranged that General McClellan should draw 10,000 men from him. But this was afterward countermanded. The paragraph in the President's letter has reference to this.
[13] A slight obstruction by a battery at Drury's Bluff must have been abandoned instantly upon the approach of a land force.
[14] Whose command had been added to McDowell's.
[15] Colonel Franklin Haven, who was on General McDowell's staff at the time, is my authority for this statement. He well remembers the reason given by Mr. Lincoln, and the extreme annoyance which the general and his officers felt at the delay.
[16] "The expediency of the junction of this [McD.'s] large corps with the principal army was manifest," says General Johnston. Narr. 131.
[17] Jackson used to say: "Mystery, mystery, is the secret of success."
[18] The Comte de Paris is very severe, even to sarcasm, in his comments on the President's orders to Banks (Civil War in America, ii. 35, 36, and see 44); and Swinton, referring to the disposition of the armies, which was well known to have been made by Mr. Lincoln's personal orders, says: "One hardly wishes to inquire by whose crude and fatuous inspiration these things were done." Army of Potomac, 123. Later critics have not repeated such strong language, but have not taken different views of the facts.
[19] Observe the tone of his two dispatches of May 25 to McClellan. McClellan's Report, 100, 101.
[20] The Comte de Paris prefers to call it a "chimerical project." Civil War in America, ii. 45. Swinton speaks of "the skill of the Confederates and the folly of those who controlled the operations of the Union armies." Army of Potomac, 122.
[21] Yet, if Fremont had not blundered, the result might have been different. Comte de Paris, Civil War in America, ii. 47.
[22] The Third, under Heintzelman, and the Fourth, under Keyes.
[23] Even his admirer, Swinton, says that any possible course would have been better than inaction. Army of Potomac, 140, 141.
[24] The Peninsula, 188. Swinton seems to regard it in the same light. Army of Potomac, 147.
[25] Gaines's Mill, contested with superb courage and constancy by the Fifth Corps, under Porter, against very heavy odds.
[26] McClellan's Report, 131, 132. See, also, his own comments on this extraordinary dispatch; Own Story, 452. He anticipated, not without reason, that he would be promptly removed. The Comte de Paris says that the two closing sentences were suppressed by the War Department, when the documents had to be laid before the Committee on the Conduct of the War. Civil War in America, ii. 112. Another dispatch, hardly less disrespectful, was sent on June 25. See McClellan's Report, 121.
[27] For a vivid description of the condition to which heat, marching, fighting, and the unwholesome climate had reduced the men, see statement of Comte de Paris, an eye-witness. Civil War in America, ii. 130.
As it seems probable that Mr. Lincoln did not conclusively determine against the plan of McClellan for renewing the advance upon Richmond by way of Petersburg, until after General Halleck had thus decided, so it is certain that afterward he allowed to Halleck a control almost wholly free from interference on his own part. Did he, perchance, feel that a lesson had been taught him, and did he think that those critics had not been wholly wrong who had said that he had intermeddled ignorantly and hurtfully in military matters? Be this as it might, it was in accordance with the national character to turn the back sharply upon failure and disappointment, and to make a wholly fresh start; and it was in accordance with Lincoln's character to fall in with the popular feeling. Yet if a fresh start was intrinsically advisable, or if it was made necessary by circumstances, it was made in unfortunate company. One does not think without chagrin that Grant, Sherman, Sheridan lurked undiscovered among the officers at the West, while Halleck and Pope were pulled forth to the light and set in the high places. Halleck was hopelessly incompetent, and Pope was fit only for subordinate command; and by any valuation which could reasonably be put upon McClellan, it was absurd to turn him out in order to bring either of these men in. But it was the experimental period. No man's qualities could be known except by testing them; and these two men came before Lincoln with records sufficiently good to entitle them to trial. The successes at the West had naturally produced good opinions of the officers who had achieved them, and among these officers John Pope had been as conspicuous as any other. For this reason he was now, towards the close of June, 1862, selected to command the "Army of Virginia," formed by uniting the corps of Fremont, McDowell, and Banks.[28] Fremont resigned, in a pet at having an officer who was his junior in the service placed over his head; but he was no loss, since his impetuous temperament did not fit him for the duties of a corps commander. He was succeeded by General Sigel. The fusing of these independent commands, whose separate existence had been a wasteful and jeopardizing error, was an excellent measure.
General Pope remained in Washington a few weeks, in constant consultation with the administration. How he impressed Lincoln one would gladly know, but cannot. He had unlimited self-confidence, and he gave it to be understood at once that he was a fighting man; but it showed an astounding lack of tact upon his part that, in notifying the troops of this, his distinguishing characteristic, he also intimated that it would behoove them to turn over a new leaf now that he had come all the way from the West in order to teach Eastern men how to win victories! The manifesto which he issued has become famous by its folly; it was arrogant, bombastic, little short of insulting to the soldiers of his command, and laid down principles contrary to the established rules of war. Yet it had good qualities, too; for it was designed to be stimulating; it certainly meant fighting; and fortunately, though Pope was not a great general, he was by no means devoid of military knowledge and instincts, and he would not really have committed quite such blunders as he marked out for himself in his rhetorical enthusiasm. On the whole, however, the manifesto did harm; neither officers nor soldiers were inclined to receive kindly a man who came presumably on trial with the purpose of replacing McClellan, whom they loved with deep loyalty; therefore they ridiculed part of his address and took offense at the rest of it. Mr. Lincoln could hardly have been encouraged; but he gave no sign.
On July 29 Pope left Washington and joined his army, near Culpepper. He had not quite 45,000 men, and was watched by Jackson, who lay near Gordonsville with a scant half of that number. On August 9 Banks was pushed forward to Cedar Mountain, where he encountered Jackson and attacked him. In "a hard-fought battle, fierce, obstinate, sanguinary," the Federals were worsted; and such consolation as the people got from the gallantry of the troops was more than offset by the fact, which became obvious so soon as the whole story was known, that our generals ought to have avoided the engagement and were outgeneraled both in the bringing it on and in the conducting it.
Greatly as Jackson was outnumbered by Pope, he could hope for no reinforcements from Lee so long as McClellan, at Harrison's Landing, threatened Richmond. But when gratifying indications showed the purpose to withdraw the Northern army from the Peninsula the Southern general ventured, August 13, to dispatch General Longstreet northward with a strong force. Soon afterward he himself followed and took command. Then for two or three days ensued a sharp matching of wits betwixt the two generals. By one of those audacious plans which Lee could dare to make when he had such a lieutenant as Jackson to carry it out, Jackson was sent upon a rapid march by the northward, around the army of Pope, to cut its communications. He did it brilliantly; but in doing it he necessarily offered to Pope such an opportunity for fighting the Southern forces in detail as is rarely given by a good general to an adversary whom he fears. Pope would fain have availed himself of the chance, and in the effort to do so he hurried his troops hither and thither, mingled wise moves with foolish ones, confused his subordinates, fatigued his men, and finally accomplished nothing. Jackson retired safely from his dangerous position, rejoined the rest of the Southern army, and then the united force had as its immediate purpose to fight Pope before he could receive reinforcements from McClellan's army, now rapidly coming forward by way of Washington. E converso, Pope's course should have been to retire a day's march across Bull Run and await the additional troops who could at once join him there. Unfortunately, however, he still felt the sting of the ridicule which his ill-starred manifesto had called forth, and was further irritated by the unsatisfactory record of the past few days, and therefore was in no temper to fall back. So he did not, but stayed and fought what is known as the second battle of Bull Run. In the conflict his worn-out men showed such constancy that the slaughter on both sides was great. Again, however, the bravery of the rank and file was the only feature which the country could contemplate without indignation. The army was beaten; and retired during the evening of August 30 to a safe position at Centreville, whither it should have been taken without loss two days earlier.[29] Thus was fulfilled, with only a trifling inaccuracy in point of time, the prediction made by McClellan on August 10, that "Pope will be badly thrashed within ten days."[30]
In all this manoeuvring and fighting the commanding general had shown some capacity, but very much less than was indispensable in a commander who had to meet the generals of the South. Forthwith, also, there broke out a series of demoralizing quarrels among the principal officers as to what orders had been given and received, and whether or not they had been understood or misunderstood, obeyed or disobeyed. Also the enemies of General McClellan tried to lay upon him the whole responsibility for the disaster, on the ground that he had been dilatory, first, in moving his army from Harrison's Landing, and afterward, in sending his troops forward to join Pope; whereas, they said, if he had acted promptly, the Northern army would have been too strong to have been defeated, regardless of any incompetence in the handling of it. Concerning the former charge, it may be said that dispatches had flown to and fro between Halleck and McClellan like bullets between implacable duelists; Halleck ordered the army to be transported, and McClellan retorted that he was given no transports; it is a dispute which cannot be discussed here. Concerning the other charge, it was also true that the same two generals had been for some days exchanging telegrams, but had been entirely unable to understand each other. Whose fault it was cannot easily be determined. The English language was giving our generals almost as much trouble as were the Southerners at this time; so that in a few short weeks material for endless discussion was furnished by the orders, telegrams, and replies which were bandied between Pope and Porter, McClellan and Halleck. A large part of the history of the period consists of the critical analysis and construing of these documents. What did each in fact mean? What did the writer intend it to mean? What did the recipient understand it to 'mean? Did the writer make his meaning sufficiently clear? Was the recipient justified in his interpretation? Historians have discussed these problems as theologians have discussed puzzling texts of the New Testament, with not less acerbity and with no more conclusive results. Unquestionably the capacity to write two or three dozen consecutive words so as to constitute a plain, straightforward sentence would have been for the moment a valuable adjunct to military learning.
The news of the defeat brought dismay, but not quite a panic, to the authorities in Washington. In fact, there was no immediate danger for the capital. The army from the Peninsula was by this time distributed at various points in the immediate neighborhood; and a force could be promptly brought together which would so outnumber the Confederate army as to be invincible. Yet the situation demanded immediate and vigorous action. Some hand must seize the helm at once, and Pope's hand would not do; so much at least was entirely certain. He had been given his own way, without interference on the part of President or secretary, and he had been beaten; he was discredited before the country and the army; nothing useful could now be done with him. Halleck was utterly demoralized, and was actually reduced to telegraphing to McClellan: "I beg of you to assist me, in this crisis, with your ability and experience." It was the moment for a master to take control, and the President met the occasion. There was only one thing to be done, and circumstances were such that not only must that thing be done by him, but also it must be done by him in direct opposition to the strenuous insistence of all his official and most of his self-constituted advisers. It was necessary to reinstate McClellan.
It was a little humiliating to be driven to this step. McClellan had lately been kept at Alexandria with no duty save daily to disintegrate his own army by sending off to Washington and to the camp of his own probable successor division after division of the troops whom he had so long commanded. Greatly mortified, he had begged at least to be "permitted to go to the scene of battle." But he was ignored, as if he were no longer of any consequence whatsoever. In plain truth it was made perfectly obvious to him and to all the world that if General Pope could win a victory the administration had done with General McClellan. Mr. Lincoln described the process as a "snubbing." Naturally those who were known to be the chief promoters of this "snubbing," and to have been highly gratified by it, now looked ruefully on the evident necessity of suddenly cutting it short, and requesting the snubbed individual to assume the role of their rescuer. McClellan's more prominent enemies could not and would not agree to this. Three members of the cabinet even went so far as formally to put in writing their protest against restoring him to the command of any army at all; while Stanton actually tried to frighten the President by a petty threat of personal consequences. But this was foolish. The crisis was of the kind which induced Mr. Lincoln to exercise power, decisively. On this occasion his impersonal, unimpassioned temperament left his judgment free to work with evenness and clearness amid the whirl of momentous events and the clash of angry tongues. No one could say that he had been a partisan either for or against McClellan, and his wise reticence in the past gave him in the present the privilege of untrammeled action. So he settled the matter at once by ordering that McClellan should have command within the defenses of Washington.
By this act the President gave extreme offense to the numerous and strenuous band with whom hatred of the Democratic general had become a sort of religion; and upon this occasion even Messrs. Nicolay and Hay seem more inclined to apologize for their idol than to defend him. In point of fact, nothing can be more misplaced than either apology or defense, except criticism. Mr. Lincoln could have done no wiser thing. He was simply setting in charge of the immediate business the man who could do that especial business best. It was not a question of a battle or a campaign, neither of which was for the moment imminent; but it was a question of reorganizing masses of disorganized troops and getting them into shape for battles and campaigns in the future. Only the intensity of hatred could make any man blind to McClellan's capacity for such work; and what he might be for other work was a matter of no consequence just now. Lincoln simply applied to the instant need the most effective help, without looking far afield to study remote consequences. Two remarks, said to have been made by him at this time, indicate his accurate appreciation of the occasion and the man: "There is no one in the army who can man these fortifications and lick these troops of ours into shape half so well as he can." "We must use the tools we have; if he cannot fight himself, he excels in making others ready to fight."
On September 1 Halleck verbally instructed McClellan to take command of the defenses of Washington, defining this to mean strictly "the works and their garrisons." McClellan says that later on the same day he had an interview with the President, in which the President said that he had "always been a friend" of the general, and asked as a favor that the general would request his personal friends among the principal officers of the army to give to General Pope a more sincere and hearty support than they were supposed to be actually rendering.[31] On the morning of September 2, McClellan says, "The President informed me that Colonel Keelton had returned from the front; that our affairs were in a bad condition; that the army was in full retreat upon the defenses of Washington, the roads filled with stragglers, etc. He instructed me to take steps at once to stop and collect the stragglers; place the works in a proper state of defense, and go out to meet and take command of the army, when it approached the vicinity of the works, then to place the troops in the best position, —committing everything to my hands." By this evidence, Mr. Lincoln intrusted the fate of the country and with it his own reputation absolutely to the keeping of McClellan.
McClellan was in his element in fusing into unity the disjointed fragments of armies which lay about in Virginia like scattered ruins. His bitterest tractors have never denied him the gift of organization, and admit that he did excellent service just now for a few days. But circumstances soon extended his field of action, and gave detraction fresh opportunities. General Lee, in a bold and enterprising mood, perhaps attributable to the encouraging inefficiency of his Northern opponents, moved up the banks of the Potomac and threatened an irruption into Maryland and even Pennsylvania. It was absolutely necessary to watch and, at the right moment, to fight him. For this purpose McClellan was ordered to move along the north bank of the river, but under strict injunctions at first to go slowly and cautiously and not to uncover Washington. For General Halleck had not fully recovered his nerve, and was still much disquieted, especially concerning the capital. Thus the armies drew slowly near each other, McClellan creeping forward, as he had been bidden, while Lee, with his usual energy, seemed able to do with a thousand men more than any Northern general could do with thrice as many, and ran with exasperating impunity those audacious risks which, where they cannot be attributed to ignorance on the part of a commander, indicate contempt for his opponent. This feeling, if he had it, must have received agreeable corroboration from the clumsy way in which the Federals just at this time lost Harper's Ferry, with General Miles's garrison. The Southern troops, who had been detailed against it, rapidly rejoined General Lee's army; and again the people saw that the South had outmarched and outgeneraled the North.
With all his troops together, Lee was now ready to fight at the convenience or the pleasure of McClellan, who seemed chivalrously to have deferred his attack until his opponent should be prepared for it! The armies were in presence of each other near where the Antietam empties into the Potomac, and here, September 17, the bloody conflict took place.
The battle of Antietam has usually been called a Northern victory. Both the right and the left wings of the Northern army succeeded in seizing advanced positions and in holding them at the end of the fight; and Lee retreated to the southward, though it is true that before doing so he lingered a day and gave to his enemy a chance, which was not used, to renew the battle. His position was obviously untenable in the face of an outnumbering host. But though upon the strength of these facts a victory could be claimed with logical propriety, yet the President and the country were, and had a right to be, indignant at the very unsatisfactory proportion of the result to the means. Shortly before the battle McClellan's troops, upon the return to them of the commander whom they idolized, had given him a soul-stirring reception, proving the spirit and confidence with which they would fight under his orders; and they went into the fight in the best possible temper and condition. On the day of the battle the Northern troops outnumbered the Southerners by nearly two to one; in fact, the Southern generals, in their reports, insisted that they had been simply overwhelmed by enormous odds against which it was a marvel of gallantry for their men to stand at all. The plain truth was that in the first place, by backwardness in bringing on the battle, McClellan had left Lee to effect a concentration of forces which ought never to have been permitted. Next, the battle itself had not been especially well handled, though perhaps this was due rather to the lack of his personal attention during its progress than to errors in his plan. Finally, his failure, with so large an army, of which a part at least was entirely fresh, to pursue and perhaps even to destroy the reduced and worn-out Confederate force seemed inexplicable and was inexcusable.
The South could never be conquered in this way. It had happened, on September 12, that President Lincoln heard news apparently indicating the withdrawal of Lee across the Potomac. He had at once sent it forward to McClellan, adding: "Do not let him get off without being hurt." Three days later, he telegraphed: "Destroy the rebel army if possible." But McClellan had been too self-restrained in his obedience. He had, indeed, hurt Lee, but he had been very careful not to hurt him too much; and as for destroying the rebel army, he seemed unwilling to enter so lightly on so stupendous an enterprise. The administration and the country expected, and perfectly fairly expected, to see a hot pursuit of General Lee. They were disappointed; they saw no such thing, but only saw McClellan holding his army as quiescent as if there was nothing more to be done, and declaring that it was in no condition to move!
It was intolerably provoking, unintelligible, and ridiculous that a ragged, ill-shod, overworked, under-fed, and beaten body of Southerners should be able to retreat faster than a great, fresh, well-fed, well-equipped, and victorious body of Northerners could follow. Jackson said that the Northern armies were, kept in too good condition; and declared that he could whip any army which marched with herds of cattle behind it. But the North preferred, and justly, to attribute the inefficiency of their troops to the unfortunate temperament of the commander. Mr. Lincoln looked at the unsatisfactory spectacle and held his hand as long as he could, dreading perhaps again to seem too forward in assuming control of military affairs. Patience, however, could not endure forever, nor common sense be always subservient to technical science. Accordingly, on October 6, he ordered McClellan to cross the Potomac, and either to "give battle to the enemy, or to drive him south." McClellan paid no attention to the order. Four days later the Confederate general, Stuart, with 2000 cavalry and a battery, crossed into Maryland and made a tour around the Northern army, with the same insolent success which had attended his like enterprise on the Peninsula. On October 13 the President wrote to McClellan a letter, so admirable both in temper and in the soundness of its suggestions that it should be given entire:—
"MY DEAR SIR,—You remember my speaking to you of what I called your over-cautiousness. Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you cannot do what the enemy is constantly doing? Should you not claim to be at least his equal in prowess, and act upon the claim?
"As I understand, you telegraphed General Halleck that you cannot subsist your army at Winchester, unless the railroad from Harper's Ferry to that point be put in working order. But the enemy does now subsist his army at Winchester at a distance nearly twice as great from railroad transportation as you would have to do without the railroad last named. He now wagons from Culpepper Court House, which is just about twice as far as you would have to do from Harper's Ferry. He is certainly not more than half as well provided with wagons as you are. I certainly should be pleased for you to have the advantage of the railroad from Harper's Ferry to Winchester; but it wastes all the remainder of autumn to give it to you, and, in fact, ignores the question of time, which cannot and must not be ignored.
"Again, one of the standard maxims of war, as you know, is 'to operate upon the enemy's communications as much as possible without exposing your own.' You seem to act as if this applies against you, but cannot apply in your favor. Change positions with the enemy, and think you not he would break your communication with Richmond within the next twenty-four hours? You dread his going into Pennsylvania. But if he does so in full force, he gives up his communication to you absolutely, and you have nothing to do but to follow and ruin him; if he does so with less than full force, fall upon and beat what is left behind, all the easier.
"Exclusive of the water line, you are now nearer Richmond than the enemy is, by the route that you can, and he must take. Why can you not reach there before him, unless you admit that he is more than your equal on a march? His route is the arc of a circle, while yours is the chord. The roads are as good on yours as on his.
"You know I desired, but did not order you, to cross the Potomac below, instead of above, the Shenandoah and Blue Ridge. The idea was that this would at once menace the enemy's communications, which I would seize, if he would permit. If he should move northward, I would follow him closely, holding his communications. If he should prevent our seizing his communications, and move towards Richmond, I would press closely to him, fight him if a favorable opportunity should present, and at least try to beat him to Richmond on the inside track. I say, try; if we never try, we shall never succeed. If he makes a stand at Winchester, moving neither north nor south, I would fight him there, on the idea that if we cannot beat him when he bears the wastage of coming to us, we never can when we bear the wastage of going to him. This proposition is a simple truth, and is too important to be lost sight of for a moment. In coming to us, he tenders us an advantage which we should not waive. We should not so operate as to merely drive him away. As we must beat him somewhere, or fail finally, we can do it, if at all, easier near to us than far away. If we cannot beat the enemy where he now is, we never can, he again being within the intrenchments of Richmond.
"Recurring to the idea of going to Richmond on the inside track, the facility for supplying from the side away from the enemy is remarkable, as it were by the different spokes of a wheel extending from the hub towards the rim; and this, whether you moved directly by the chord or on the inside arc, hugging the Blue Ridge more closely. The chord line, as you see, carries you by Aldie, Haymarket, and Fredericksburg, and you see how turnpikes, railroads, and finally the Potomac, by Acquia Creek, meet you at all points from Washington. The same, only the lines lengthened a little, if you press closer to the Blue Ridge part of the way. The Gaps through the Blue Ridge, I understand to be about the following distances from Harper's Ferry, to wit: Vestala, five miles; Gregory's, thirteen; Snicker's, eighteen; Ashby's, twenty-eight; Manassas, thirty-eight; Chester, forty-five; and Thornton's, fifty-three. I should think it preferable to take the route nearest the enemy, disabling him to make an important move without your knowledge, and compelling him to keep his forces together for dread of you. The Gaps would enable you to attack if you should wish. For a great part of the way you would be practically between the enemy and both Washington and Richmond, enabling us to spare you the greatest number of troops from here. When, at length, running for Richmond ahead of him enables him to move this way, if he does so, turn and attack him in rear. But I think he should be engaged long before such point is reached. It is all easy if our troops march as well as the enemy, and it is unmanly to say they cannot do it. This letter is in no sense an order."
A general who failed to respond to such a spur as this was not the man for offensive warfare; and McClellan did not respond. Movement was as odious to him now as it ever had been, and by talking about shoes and overcoats, and by other dilatory pleas, he extended his delay until the close of the month. It was actually the second day of November before his army crossed the Potomac. Another winter of inaction seemed about to begin. It was simply unendurable. Though it was true that he had reorganized the army with splendid energy and skill, and had shown to the Northern soldiers in Virginia the strange and cheerful spectacle of the backs of General Lee's soldiers, yet it became a settled fact that he must give place to some new man. He and Pope were to be succeeded by a third experiment. Therefore, on November 5, 1862, the President ordered General McClellan to turn over the command of the army to General Burnside; and on November 7 this was done.
This action, taken just at this time, called forth a much more severe criticism than would have attended it if the removal had been made simultaneously with the withdrawal from the Peninsula. By what motive was Mr. Lincoln influenced? Not very often is the most eager search rewarded by the sure discovery of his opinions about persons. From what we know that he did, we try to infer why he did it, and we gropingly endeavor to apportion the several measures of influence between those motives which we choose to put by our conjecture into his mind; and after our toilful scrutiny is over we remain painfully conscious of the greatness of the chance that we have scarcely even approached the truth. Neither diary nor letters guide us; naught save reports of occasional pithy, pointed, pregnant remarks, evidence the most dubious, liable to be colored by the medium of the predilections of the hearer, and to be reshaped and misshaped by time, and by attrition in passing through many mouths. The President was often in a chatting mood, and then seemed not remote from his companion. Yet while this was the visible manifestation on the surface, he was the most reticent of men as to grave questions, and no confidant often heard his inmost thoughts. Especially it would be difficult to name an instance in which he told one man what he thought of another; a trifling criticism concerning some single trait was the utmost that he ever allowed to escape him; a full and careful estimate, never.
Such reflections come with peculiar force at this period in his career. What would not one give for his estimate of McClellan! It would be worth the whole great collection of characters sketched by innumerable friends and enemies for that much-discussed general. While others think that they know accurately the measure of McClellan's real value and usefulness, Lincoln really knew these things; but he never told his knowledge. We only see that he sustained McClellan for a long while in the face of vehement aspersions; yet that he never fully subjected his own convictions to the educational lectures of the general, and that he seemed at last willing to see him laid aside; then immediately in a crisis restored him to authority in spite of all opposition; and shortly afterward, as if utterly weary of him, definitively displaced him. Still, all these facts do not show what Lincoln thought of McClellan. Many motives besides his opinion of the man may have influenced him. The pressure of political opinion and of public feeling was very great, and might have turned him far aside from the course he would have pursued if it could have been neglected. Also other considerations have been suggested as likely to have weighed with him,—that McClellan could do with the army what no other man could do, because of the intense devotion of both officers and men to him; and that an indignity offered to McClellan might swell the dissatisfaction of the Northern Democracy to a point at which it would seriously embarrass the administration. These things may have counteracted, or may have corroborated, Mr. Lincoln's views concerning the man himself. He was an extraordinary judge of men in their relationship to affairs; moreover, of all the men of note of that time he alone was wholly dispassionate and non-partisan. Opinions tinctured with prejudices are countless; it is disappointing that the one opinion that was free from prejudice is unknown.[32]
[28] The consolidation, and the assignment of Pope to the command, bore date June 26, 1862.
[29] This campaign of General Pope has been the topic of very bitter controversy and crimination. In my brief account I have eschewed the view of Messrs. Nicolay and Hay, who seem to me if I may say it, to have written with the single-minded purpose of throwing everybody's blunders into the scale against McClellan, and I have adopted the view of Mr. John C. Ropes in his volume on The Army under Pope, in the Campaigns of the Civil War Series. In his writing it is impossible to detect personal prejudice, for or against any one; and his account is so clear and convincing that it must be accepted, whether one likes his conclusions or not.
[30] Own Story, 466.
[31] Pope retained for a few days command of the army in camp outside the defenses
[32] McClure says: "I saw Lincoln many times during the campaign of 1864, when McClellan was his competitor for the presidency. I never heard him speak of McClellan in any other than terms of the highest personal respect and kindness." Lincoln and Men of War-Times, 207.
The chapter which has been written on "Emancipation and Politics" shows that while loyalty to the Union operated as a bond to hold together the people of the North, slavery entered as a wedge to force them asunder. It was not long before the wedge proved a more powerful force than the bond, for the wedge was driven home by human nature; and it was inevitable that the men of conservative temperament and the men of progressive temperament should erelong be easily restored to their instinctive antagonism. Of those who had been stigmatized as "Northern men with Southern principles," many soon found their Southern proclivities reviving. These men, christened "Copperheads," became more odious to loyal Northerners than were the avowed Secessionists. In return for their venomous nickname and the contempt and hatred with which they were treated, they themselves grew steadily more rancorous, more extreme in their feelings. They denounced and opposed every measure of the government, harangued vehemently against the war and against all that was done to prosecute it, reviled with scurrilous and passionate abuse every prominent Republican, filled the air with disheartening forecasts of defeat, ruin, and woe, and triumphed whenever the miserable prophecies seemed in the way of fulfillment. General Grant truly described them as auxiliaries to the Confederate army, and said that the North would have been much better off with a hundred thousand of these men in the Southern ranks, and the rest of their kind at home thoroughly subdued, as the Unionists were at the South, than was the case as the struggle was actually conducted. In time the administration found itself forced, though reluctantly, to arrest and imprison many of the ringleaders in this Northern disaffection. Yet all the while the Copperheads resolutely maintained their affiliations with the Democratic party, and though they brought upon it much discredit which it did not deserve, yet they could not easily be ejected from it. Differences of opinion shaded into each other so gradually that to establish a line of division was difficult.
Impinging upon Copperheadism stood the much more numerous body of those who persistently asserted their patriotism, but with equal persistence criticised severely all the measures of the government. These men belonged to that well-known class which is happily described as being "for the law, but ag'in the enforcement of it." They were for the Union, but against saving it. They kept up a disapproving headshaking over pretty much everything that the President did. With much grandiloquent argument, in the stately, old-school style, they bemoaned the breaches which they charged him with making in the Constitution. They also hotly assumed the role of champions of General McClellan, and bewailed the imbecility of an administration which thwarted and deposed him. Protesting the purest and highest patriotism, they were more evasive than the outspoken Copperheads, and as their disaffection was less conspicuous and offensive, so also it was more insidious and almost equally hurtful. They constituted the true and proper body of Democracy.
In a fellowship, which really ought not to have existed, with these obstructionists, was the powerful and respectable body of war Democrats. These men maintained a stubborn loyalty to the old party, but prided themselves upon being as hearty and thorough-going war-men as any among the Republicans. A large proportion of the most distinguished generals, of the best regimental officers, of the most faithful soldiers in the field, were of this political faith. The only criticism that Republicans could reasonably pass upon them was, that they did not, in a political way, strengthen the hands of the government, that they would not uphold its authority by swelling its majorities, nor aid its prestige by giving it their good words.
Over against this Democracy, with its two very discordant wings, was arrayed the Republican party, which also was disturbed by the ill-will of those who should have been its allies; for while the moderate Abolitionists generally sustained the President, though only imperfectly satisfied with him, the extreme Abolitionists refused to be so reasonable. They were a very provoking body of pure moralists. They worried the President, condemned his policy, divided the counsels of the government, and introduced injurious personal enmities and partisanship with reckless disregard of probable consequences. To a considerable extent they had the same practical effect as if they had been avowed opponents of the Republican President. They wished immediately to place the war upon the footing of a crusade for the abolition of slavery. Among them were old-time Abolitionists, with whom this purpose was a religion, men who had hoped to see Seward the Republican President, and who said that Lincoln's friends in the nominating convention had represented a "superficial and only half-hearted Republicanism." Beside these men, though actuated by very different and much less honorable motives, stood many recruits, some even from the Democracy, who were so vindictive against the South that they desired to inflict abolition as a punishment.
All these critics and dissatisfied persons soon began to speak with severity, and sometimes with contempt, against the President. He had said that the war was for the Union; but they scornfully retorted that this was to reduce it to "a mere sectional strife for ascendency;" that "a Union, with slavery spared and reinstated, would not be worth the cost of saving it." It was true that to save the Union, without also removing the cause of disunion, might not be worth a very great price; yet both Union and abolition were in serious danger of being thrown away forever by these impetuous men who desired to pluck the fruit before it was ripe, or rather declared it to be ripe because they so wanted to pluck it.
It is not, here and now, a question of the merits and the usefulness of these men; undoubtedly their uncompromising ardor could not have been dispensed with in the great anti-slavery struggle; it was what the steam is to the engine, and if the motive power had been absent no one can say how long the United States might have lain dormant as a slave-country. But the question is of their present attitude and of its influence and effect in the immediate affairs of the government. Their demand was for an instant and sweeping proclamation of emancipation; and they were angry and denunciatory against the President because he would not give it to them. Of course, by their ceaseless assaults they hampered him and weakened his hands very seriously. It was as an exercise of the President's war-power that they demanded the proclamation; and the difficulty in the way of it was that Mr. Lincoln felt, and the great majority of Northern men were positive in the opinion, that such a proclamation at this time would not be an honest and genuine exercise of the war-power, that it would be only falsely and colorably so called, and that in real truth it would be a deliberate and arbitrary change of the war from a contest for Union to a contest for abolition. Mr. Lincoln could not make it a war measure merely by calling it so; it was no mere matter of political christening, but distinctly a very grave and substantial question of fact. It may be suspected that very many even of the Abolitionists themselves, had they spoken the innermost conviction of their minds, would have admitted that the character of the measure as a wise military transaction, pure and simple, was very dubious. It was certain that every one else in all the country which still was or ever had been the United States would regard it as an informal and misnamed but real change of base for the whole war. No preamble, no Whereas, in Mr. Lincoln's proclamation, reciting as a fact and a motive that which he would have known, and ninety-nine out of every hundred loyal men would have believed, not to be the true fact and motive, could make the rest of his proclamation lawful, or his act that of an honest ruler. Accordingly no pressure could drive him to the step; he preferred to endure, and long did endure, the abuse of the extreme Abolitionists, and all the mischief which their hostility could inflict upon his administration. Yet, in truth, there was not in the North an Abolitionist who thought worse of the institution of slavery than did the man who had repeatedly declared it to be "a moral, a social, and a political evil." Referring to these times, and the behavior of the Abolitionists, he afterward wrote:[33]—
"I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I cannot remember when I did not so think and feel, and yet I have never understood that the presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand, however, that my oath to preserve the Constitution to the best of my ability imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government,—that nation, of which that Constitution was the organic law. Was it possible to lose the nation and yet preserve the Constitution? By general law, life and limb must be protected, yet often a limb must be amputated to save a life; but a life is never wisely given to save a limb. I felt that measures, otherwise unconstitutional, might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution through the preservation of the nation. Right or wrong, I assumed this ground, and now avow it. I could not feel that, to the best of my ability, I had even tried to preserve the Constitution, if, to save slavery or any minor matter, I should permit the wreck of government, country, and Constitution all together. When, early in the war, General Fremont attempted military emancipation, I forbade it, because I did not then think it an indispensable necessity. When, a little later, General Cameron, then secretary of war, suggested the arming of the blacks, I objected because I did not yet think it an indispensable necessity. When, still later, General Hunter attempted military emancipation, I again forbade it, because I did not yet think the indispensable necessity had come."
None could deny that the North could abolish slavery in the South only by beating the South in the pending war. Therefore, by his duty as President of the Union and by his wishes as an anti-slavery man, Mr. Lincoln was equally held to win this fight. Differing in opinion from the Abolitionists, he believed that to turn it, at an early stage, into a war for abolition rather than to leave it a war for the Union would be to destroy all hope of winning. The step would alienate great numbers at the North. The "American Society for promoting National Unity" had lately declared that emancipation "would be rebellion against Providence and destruction to the colored race in our land;" and it was certain that this feeling was still widely prevalent in the loyal States. In July, 1862, General McClellan said, warningly, that a declaration of radical views on the slavery question would rapidly disintegrate and destroy the Union armies. Finally, it seemed hardly doubtful that fatal defections would take place in the Border States, even if they should not formally go over to the Confederacy. No man saw the value of those Border States as Mr. Lincoln did. To save or to lose them was probably to save or lose the war; to lose them and the war was to establish a powerful slave empire. Where did abolition come in among these events? It was not there!
Simon Cameron.
Simon Cameron.
Painfully, therefore, untiringly, with all the skill and tact in his power, Mr. Lincoln struggled to hold those invaluable, crucial States. His "border-state policy" soon came to be discussed as the most interesting topic of which men could talk wherever they came together. Savage were the maledictions which emancipationists uttered against it, and the intensity of their feeling is indicated by the fact that, though that policy was carried out, and though the nation, in due time, gathered the ripe and perfect fruit of it both in the integrity of the country and the abolition of slavery, yet even at the present day many old opponents of President Lincoln, survivors of the Thirty-seventh Congress, remain unshaken in the faith that his famous policy was "a cruel and fatal mistake."
By the summer of 1862 the opinions and the action of Mr. Lincoln in all these matters had brought him into poor standing in the estimation of many Republicans. The great majority of the politicians of the party and sundry newspaper editors, that is to say, those persons who chiefly make the noise and the show before the world, were busily engaged in condemning his policy. The headquarters of this disaffection were in Washington. It had one convert even within the cabinet, where the secretary of the treasury was thoroughly infected with the notion that the President was fatally inefficient, laggard, and unequal to the occasion. The feeling was also especially rife in congressional circles. Mr. Julian, than whom there can be no better witness, says: "No one at a distance could have formed any adequate conception of the hostility of Republican members toward Mr. Lincoln at the final adjournment [the middle of July], while it was the belief of many that our last session of Congress had been held in Washington. Mr. Wade said the country was going to hell, and that the scenes witnessed in the French Revolution were nothing in comparison with what we should see here." If most of the people at the North had not had heads more cool and sensible than was the one which rested upon the shoulders of the ardent "Ben" Wade, the alarming prediction of that lively spokesman might have been fulfilled. Fortunately, however, as Mr. Julian admits, "the feeling in Congress was far more intense than [it was] throughout the country." The experienced denizens of the large Northern cities read in a critical temper the tirades of journalist critics, who assumed to know everything. The population of the small towns and the village neighborhoods, though a little bewildered by the echoes of denunciation which reached them from the national capital, yet by instinct, or by a divine guidance, held fast to their faith in their President. Thus the rank and file of the Republican party refused to follow the field officers in a revolt against the general. No better fortune ever befell this very fortunate nation. If the anti-slavery extremists had been able to reinforce their own pressure by the ponderous impact of the popular will, and so had pushed the President from his "border-state policy" and from his general scheme of advancing only very cautiously along the anti-slavery line, it is hardly conceivable either that the Union would have been saved or that slavery would have been destroyed.
On August 19, 1862, the good, impulsive, impractical Horace Greeley published in his newspaper, the New York "Tribune," an address to the President, to which he gave an awe-inspiring title, "The Prayer of 20,000,000 of People." It was an extremely foolish paper, and its title, like other parts of it, was false. Only those persons who were agitators for immediate emancipation could say amen to this mad prayer, and they were far from being even a large percentage of "20,000,000 of people." Yet these men, being active missionaries and loud preachers in behalf of a measure in which they had perfect faith, made a show and exerted an influence disproportioned to their numbers. Therefore their prayer,[34] though laden with blunders of fact and reasoning, fairly expressed malcontent Republicanism. Moreover, multitudes who could not quite join in the prayer would read it and would be moved by it. The influence of the "Tribune" was enormous. Colonel McClure truly says that by means of it Mr. Greeley "reached the very heart of the Republican party in every State in the Union;" and perhaps he does not greatly exaggerate when he adds that through this same line of connection the great Republican editor "was in closer touch with the active loyal sentiment of the people than [was] even the President himself." For these reasons it seemed to Mr. Lincoln worth while to make a response to an assault which, if left unanswered, must seriously embarrass the administration. He therefore wrote:—