There was a faction in the Union Party which we may justly name the Vindictives. The "Manifesto" gave them a rallying cry. At a conference in New York they decided to compel the retirement of Lincoln and the nomination of some other candidate. For this purpose a new convention was to be called at Cincinnati in September. In the ranks of the Vindictives at this time was the impetuous editor of the "New York Tribune", Horace Greeley. His presence there calls for some explanation. Perhaps the most singular figure of the time, he was one of the most irresponsible and yet, through his paper, one of the most influential. He had a trick of phrase which, somehow, made him appear oracular to the plain people, especially in the rural districts—the very people on whom Lincoln relied for a large part of his support. Greeley knew his power, and his mind was not large enough to carry the knowledge well. Furthermore, his was the sort of nature that relates itself to life above all through the sensibilities. Kipling speaks scornfully of people who if their "own front door is shut will swear the world is warm." They are relations in the full blood of Horace Greeley.
In July, when the breach between the President and the Vindictives was just beginning to be evident, Greeley was pursuing an adventure of his own. Among the least sensible minor incidents of the war were a number of fantastic attempts of private persons to negotiate peace. With one exception they had no historic importance. The exception is a negotiation carried on by Greeley, which seems to have been the ultimate cause of his alliance with the Vindictives.
In the middle of July, 1864, gold was selling in New York at 285. There was distress and discontent throughout the country. The horrible slaughter of the Wilderness, still fresh in everybody's mind, had put the whole Union Party into mourning. The impressionable Greeley became frantic for peace peace at any price. At the psychological moment word was conveyed to him that two persons in Canada held authority from the Confederacy to enter into negotiations for peace. Greeley wrote to Lincoln demanding negotiations because "our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country longs for peace, shudders at the prospect of fresh conscriptions, of further wholesale devastations, and of new rivers of human blood."
Lincoln consented to a negotiation but stipulated that Greeley himself should become responsible for its conduct. Though this was not what Greeley wanted for his type always prefers to tell others what to do—he sullenly accepted. He proceeded to Niagara to meet the reputed commissioners of the Confederacy. The details of the futile conference do not concern us. The Confederate agents were not empowered to treat for peace—at least not on any terms that would be considered at Washington. Their real purpose was far subtler. Appreciating the delicate balance in Northern politics, they aimed at making it appear that Lincoln was begging for terms. Lincoln, who foresaw this possible turn of events, had expressly limited Greeley to negotiations for "the integrity of the whole Union and the abandonment of slavery." Greeley chose to believe that these instructions, and not the subtlety of the Confederate agents and his own impulsiveness, were the cause of the false position in which the agents now placed him. They published an account of the episode, thus effecting an exposure which led to sharp attacks upon Greeley by the Northern press. In the bitterness of his mortification Greeley then went from one extreme to the other and joined the Vindictives.
Less than three weeks after the conference at Niagara, the "Wade-Davis Manifesto" appeared. It was communicated to the country through the columns of Greeley's paper on the 5th of August. Greeley, who so short a time before was for peace at any price, went the whole length of reaction by proclaiming that "Mr. Lincoln is already beaten.... We must have another ticket to save us from utter overthrow. If we had such a ticket as could be made by naming Grant, Butler, or Sherman for President and Farragut for Vice, we could make a fight yet."
At about this same time the chairman of the Republican national committee, who was a Lincoln man, wrote to the President that the situation was desperate. Lincoln himself is known to have made a private memorandum containing the words, "It seems extremely probable that this Administration will not be reelected." On the 1st of September, 1864, with three presidential candidates in the field, Northern politics were bewildering, and the country was shrouded in the deepest gloom. The Wilderness campaign, after slaughter unparalleled, had not in the popular mind achieved results. Sherman, in Georgia, though his losses were not as terrible as Grant's, had not yet done anything to lighten the gloom. Not even Farragut's victory in Mobile Bay, in August, far-reaching as it proved to be, reassured the North. A bitter cry for peace went up even from lovers of the Union whose hearts had failed.
Meanwhile, the brilliant strategist in Georgia was pressing his drive for political as well as for military effect. To rouse those Unionists who had lost heart was part of his purpose when he hurled his columns against Atlanta, from which Hood was driven in one of the most disastrous of Confederate defeats. On the 3rd of September Lincoln issued a proclamation appointing a day of thanksgiving for these great victories of Sherman and Farragut.
On that day, it would seem, the tide turned in Northern politics. Some historians are content with Atlanta as the explanation of all that followed; but there are three separate events of importance that now occurred as incidents in the complicated situation. In the first place, three weeks later the radical opposition had collapsed; the plan for a new convention was abandoned; the Vindictive leaders came out in support of Lincoln. Almost simultaneously occurred the remaining two surprising events. Fremont withdrew from his candidacy in order to do his "part toward preventing the election of the Democratic candidate." And Lincoln asked for the resignation of a member of his Cabinet, Postmaster-General Montgomery Blair, who was the especial enemy of the Vindictives.
The official biographers of Lincoln* keep these three events separate. They hold that Blair's removal was wholly Lincoln's idea, and that from chivalrous reasons he would not abandon his friend as long as he seemed to be losing the game. The historian Rhodes writes confidently of a bargain with Fremont, holding that Blair was removed to terminate a quarrel with Fremont which dated back even to his own removal in 1861. A possible third theory turns upon Chase, whose hostility to Blair was quite equal to that of the illbalanced Fremont. It had been stimulated the previous winter by a fierce arraignment of Chase made by Blair's brother in Congress, in which Chase was bluntly accused of fraud and of making money, or allowing his friends to make money, through illicit trade in cotton. And Chase was a man of might among the Vindictives. The intrigue, however, never comes to the foreground in history, but lurks in the background thick with shadows. Once or twice among those shadows we seem to catch a glimpse of the figure of Thurlow Weed, the master-politician of the time. Taking one thing with another, we may risk the guess that somehow the two radical groups which were both relentless against Blair were led to pool their issues, and that Blair's removal was the price Lincoln paid not to one faction of radicals but to the whole unmerciful crowd.
Whatever complex of purposes lay back of the triple coincidence, the latter part of September saw a general reunion of the factions within the Union Party, followed by a swift recovery of strength. When the election came, Lincoln received an electoral vote of 212 against 21, and a popular vote of 2,330,552 against 1,835,985.
The inevitable question arises as to what was the real cause of this success. It is safe to say that the political campaign contained some adroit strategy; that Sherman was without doubt an enormous factor; that the Democrats made numerous blunders; and that the secret societies had an effect other than they intended. However, the real clue seems to be found in one sentence from a letter written by Lowell to Motley when the outlook for his party was darkest: "The mercantile classes are longing for peace, but I believe that the people are more firm than ever." Of the great, silent mass of the people, the true temper seems to be struck off in a popular poem of the time, written in response to one of the calls for more troops, a poem with refrains built on the model of this couplet:
"We're coming from the hillside, we're coming from the shore, We're coming, Father Abraham, six hundred thousand more."
The victory of the Union Party in November enabled Lincoln to enjoy for a brief period of his career as President what may be thought of as a lull in the storm. He knew now that he had at last built up a firm and powerful support. With this assured, his policy, both domestic and foreign—the key to which was still the blockade—might be considered victorious at all points. There remains to be noticed, however, one event of the year 1864 which was of vital importance in maintaining the blockade.
It is a principle of international law that a belligerent must itself attend to the great task of suppressing contraband trade with its enemy. Lincoln was careful to observe this principle. Though British merchants were frankly speculating in contraband trade, he made no demand upon the British Government to relieve him of the difficulty of stopping it. England also took the legitimate position under international law and warned her merchants that, while it was none of the Government's business to prevent such trade, they practised it at their own risk, subject to well-understood penalties agreed upon among nations. The merchants nevertheless continued to take the risk, while both they and the authorities of the Confederacy thought they saw a way of minimizing the danger. Instead of shipping supplies direct to the Confederate ports they shipped them to Matamoros, in Mexico, or to the West Indies. As these ports were in neutral territory, the merchants thought their goods would be safe against capture until they left the Mexican or West Indian port on their brief concluding passage to the territory of the Confederacy. Nassau, then a petty West India town, was the chief depot of such trade and soon became a great commercial center. To it came vast quantities of European goods which were then transferred to swift, small vessels, or "blockade-runners," which took a gambler's chance and often succeeded in eluding the Federal patrol ships and in rushing their cargoes safe into a Confederate port.
Obviously, it was a great disadvantage to the United States to allow contraband supplies to be accumulated, without interference, close to the blockaded coast, and the Lincoln Government determined to remove this disadvantage. With this end in view it evoked the principle of the continuous voyage, which indeed was not new, but which was destined to become fixed in international law by the Supreme Court of the United States. American cruisers were instructed to stop British ships sailing between the British ports of Liverpool and Nassau; they were to use the recognized international rights of visit and search; and if there was evidence that the cargo was not destined for actual consumption at Nassau, they were to bring the ship into an American port to be dealt with by an American prize court. When such arrests began, the owners clamored to the British Government, and both dealers in contraband and professional blockade-runners worked themselves into a fury because American cruisers watched British ports and searched British ships on the high seas. With regard to this matter, the British Government and the Government at Washington had their last important correspondence during the war. The United States stood firm for the idea that when goods were ultimately intended for the Confederacy, no matter how roundabout the journey, they could be considered as making a single continuous voyage and were liable to capture from the day they left Liverpool. Early in 1865, the Supreme Court of the United States fully developed the principle of continuous voyage in four celebrated cases that are now among the landmarks of international law.*
This was the last step in making the blockade effective. Thereafter, it slowly strangled the South. The Federal armies enormously overmatched the Southern, and from November, 1864, their continuance in the field was made sure. Grim work still lay before Lincoln, but the day of anxiety was past. In this moment of comparative ease, the aged Chief Justice Taney died, and Lincoln appointed to that high position his ungenerous rival, Chase.
Even now Lincoln had not established himself as a leader superior to party, but he had the satisfaction, early in 1865, of seeing the ranks of the opposition begin to break. Naturally, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery throughout the United States, appeared to Lincoln as in a way the consummation of his labors. When the House voted on the resolution to send this amendment to the States, several Democrats joined the government forces. Two nights afterward, speaking to a serenading party at the White House, Lincoln made a brief speech, part of which is thus reported by his secretaries: "He thought this measure was a very fitting if not an indispensable adjunct to the winding up of the great difficulty. He wished the reunion of all the States perfected, and so effected as to remove all causes of disturbance in the future; and to attain this end, it was necessary that the original disturbing cause should, if possible, be rooted out."
An event which in its full detail belongs to Confederate rather than to Union history took place soon after this. At Hampton Roads, Lincoln and Seward met Confederate commissioners who had asked for a parley—with regard to peace. Nothing came of the meeting, but the conference gave rise to a legend, false in fact and yet true in spirit, according to which Lincoln wrote on a sheet of paper the word "Union," pushed it across to Alexander H. Stephens and said, "Write under that anything you please."
This fiction expresses Lincoln's attitude toward the sinking Confederacy. On his return from Hampton Roads he submitted to his Cabinet a draft of a message which he proposed to send to Congress. He recommended the appropriation of $400,000,000 to be distributed among the slave states on condition that war cease before April 1, 1865. Not a member of the Cabinet approved. His secretary, Mr. Nicolay, writes: "The President, in evident surprise and sorrow at the want of statesmanlike liberality shown by his executive council, folded and laid away the draft of his message...." With a deep sigh he added, "But you are all opposed to me, and I will not send the message."
His second inauguration passed without striking incidents. Chase, as Chief Justice, administered the oath. The second inaugural address contained words which are now famous: "With malice towards none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations."
That gigantic system of fleets and armies, the creation of which was due to Lincoln, was closing tight around the dying Confederacy. Five weeks after the inauguration Lee surrendered, and the war was virtually at an end. What was to come after was inevitably the overshadowing topic of the hour. Many anecdotes represent Lincoln, in these last few days of his life, as possessed by a high though melancholy mood of extreme mercy. Therefore, much has been inferred from the following words, in his last public address, made on the night of the 11th of April: "In the present situation, as the phrase goes, it may be my duty to make some new announcement to the people of the South. I am considering and shall not fail to act when action shall be proper."
What was to be done for the South, what treatment should be accorded the Southern leaders, engrossed the President and his Cabinet at the meeting on the 14th of April, which was destined to be their last. Secretary Welles has preserved the spirit of the meeting in a striking anecdote. Lincoln said that no one need expect he would "take any part in hanging or killing those men, even the worst of them. Frighten them out of the country, open the gates, let down the bars, scare them off;" said he, throwing up his hands as if scaring sheep. "Enough lives have been sacrificed; we must extinguish our resentments if we expect harmony and union."
While Lincoln was thus arming himself with a valiant mercy, a band of conspirators at an obscure boardinghouse in Washington were planning his assassination. Their leader was John Wilkes Booth, an actor, brother of the much abler Edwin Booth. There seems little doubt that he was insane. Around him gathered a small group of visionary extremists in whom much brooding upon Southern wrongs had produced an unbalanced condition. Only a morbid interest can attach today to the strange cunning with which Booth laid his plans, thinking of himself all the while as a reincarnation of the Roman Brutus.
On the night of the 14th of April, the President attended a performance of "Our American Cousin". While the play was in progress, Booth stole into the President's box, came close behind him, and shot him through the head. Lincoln never spoke again and, shortly after seven next morning, ceased breathing.
At the same time, a futile attempt was made upon the life of Seward. Booth temporarily escaped. Later he was overtaken and shot. His accomplices were hanged.
The passage of sixty years has proved fully necessary to the placing of Lincoln in historic perspective. No President, in his own time, with the possible exception of Washington, was so bitterly hated and so fiercely reviled. On the other hand, none has been the object of such intemperate hero-worship. However, the greatest of the land were, in the main, quick to see him in perspective and to recognize his historic significance. It is recorded of Davis that in after days he paid a beautiful tribute to Lincoln and said, "Next to the destruction of the Confederacy, the death of Abraham Lincoln was the darkest day the South has known."
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
There are two general histories, of conspicuous ability, that deal with this period:
J. F. Rhodes, "History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850", 7 vols. (1893-1906), and J. B. McMaster, "History of the People of the United States", 7 vols. (1883-1912). McMaster has the more "modern" point of view and is excellent but dry, without any sense of narrative. Rhodes has a somewhat older point of view. For example, he makes only a casual reference, in a quotation, to the munitions problem of 1861, though analyzing with great force and candor such constitutional issues as the arrests under the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus. The other strong points in his work are its sense of narrative, its freedom from hero-worship, its independence of conventional views of Northern leaders. As to the South, it suffers from a certain Narrowness of vision due to the comparative scantiness of the material used. The same may be said of McMaster.
For Lincoln, there is no adequate brief biography. Perhaps the best is the most recent, "Abraham Lincoln", by Lord Charnwood ("Makers of the Nineteenth Century", 1917). It has a kind of cool detachment that hardly any biographer had shown previously, and yet this coolness is joined with extreme admiration. Short biographies worth considering are John T. Morse, Jr., "Abraham Lincoln" ("American Statesmen" Series, 2 vols., 1893), and Ida M. Tarbell, "Life of Abraham Lincoln", 2 vols. (1900). The official biography is in ten volumes, "Abraham Lincoln, a History", by his secretaries, John G. Nicolay and John Hay (1890). It is a priceless document and as such is little likely to be forgotten. But its events are so numerous that they swamp the figure of Lincoln and yet are not numerous enough to constitute a definitive history of the times. It is wholly eulogistic. The same authors edited "The Writings of Abraham Lincoln" (Biographical Edition, 2 vols., 1894), which has since been expanded (1905) and now fills twelve volumes. It is the definitive presentation of Lincoln's mind. A book much sought after by his enemies is William Henry Herndon and Jesse William Weik, "The History and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln", 8 vols. (1889; unexpurgated edition). It contains about all we know of his early life and paints a picture of sordid ugliness. Its reliability has been disputed. No study of Lincoln is complete unless one has marched through the "Diary" of Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy, 3 vols. (1911), which is our most important document showing Lincoln in his Cabinet. Important sidelights on his character and development are shown in Ward Hill Lamon, "Recollections of Lincoln" (1911); David Homer Bates, "Lincoln in the Telegraph Office" (1907); and Frederick Trevor Hill, "Lincoln as a Lawyer" (1906). A bibliography of Lincoln is in the twelfth volume of the latest edition of the "Writings".
The lesser statesmen of the time, both Northern and Southern, still, as a rule, await proper treatment by detached biographers. Two Northerners have had such treatment, in Allen Johnson's "Stephen A. Douglas" (1908), and Frederic Bancroft's "Life of William H. Seward", 2 vols. (1900). Good, but without the requisite detachment, is Moorfield Storey's "Charles Sumner", ("American Statesmen Series", 1900). With similar excellences but with the same defect, though still the best in its field, is Albert Bushnell Hart's "Salmon P. Chase" ("American Statesmen Series", 1899). Among the Southern statesmen involved in the events of this volume, only the President of the Confederacy has received adequate reconsideration in recent years, in William E. Dodd's "Jefferson Davis" (1907). The latest life of "Robert Toombs", by Ulrich B. Phillips (1914), is not definitive, but the best extant. The great need for adequate lives of Stephens and Yancey is not at all met by the obsolete works—R. M. Johnston and W. M. Browne, "Life of Alexander H. Stephens" (1878), and J. W. Du Bose, "The Life and Times of William Lowndes Yancey" (1892). There is a brief biography of Stephens by Louis Pendleton, in the "American Crisis Biographies". Most of the remaining biographies of the period, whether Northern or Southern, are either too superficial or too partisan to be recommended for general use. Almost alone in their way are the delightful "Confederate Portraits", by Gamaliel Bradford (1914), and the same author's "Union Portraits" (1916).
Upon conditions in the North during the war there is a vast amount of material; but little is accessible to the general reader. A book of great value is Emerson Fite's Social and Industrial Conditions in the North during the Civil War (1910). Out of unnumbered books of reminiscence, one stands forth for the sincerity of its disinterested, if sharp, observation—W. H. Russell's "My Diary North and South" (1868). Two newspapers are invaluable: The "New York Tribune" for a version of events as seen by the war party, "The New York Herald" for the opposite point of view; the Chicago papers are also important, chiefly the "Times" and "Tribune"; the "Republican "of Springfield, Mass., had begun its distinguished career, while the "Journal" and "Advertiser" of Boston revealed Eastern New England. For the Southern point of view, no papers are more important than the Richmond "Examiner", the Charleston "Mercury", and the New Orleans "Picayune". Financial and economic problems are well summed up in D. R. Dewey's "Financial History of the United States" (3d edition, 1907), and in E. P. Oberholzer's "Jay Cooks", 2 vols. (1907). Foreign affairs are summarized adequately in C. F. Adams's "Charles Francis Adams" ("American Statesmen Series", 1900), John Bigelow's "France and the Confederate Navy" (1888), A. P. Martin's "Maximilian in Mexico" (1914), and John Bassett Moore's "Digest of International Law", 8 vols. (1906).
The documents of the period ranging from newspapers to presidential messages are not likely to be considered by the general reader, but if given a fair chance will prove fascinating. Besides the biographical edition of Lincoln's Writings, should be named, first of all, "The Congressional Globe" for debates in Congress; the "Statutes at Large"; the "Executive Documents", published by the Government and containing a great number of reports; and the enormous collection issued by the War Department under the title "Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies", 128 vols. (1880-1901), especially the groups of volumes known as second and third series.