The Man Who Saved the Union

by H. W. Brands

  But at Indianapolis he asserted that the South wouldn’t get away with seizing the property of the nation. Southerners were warning against coercion by the federal government or an invasion of the South by federal troops; Lincoln responded with a question that connoted a threat: “If the United States should merely hold and retake its own forts, collect duties or withhold the mails, where they were habitually violated, would any or all of these things be invasion or coercion?”

  The last leg of Lincoln’s journey revealed that the secession dispute could get dangerously personal. The railroad company that carried Lincoln east hired a detective named Allan Pinkerton to prevent any trouble; Pinkerton asserted that proslavery thugs in Baltimore were planning to waylay the president-elect. Lincoln took the assertion seriously enough to revise his itinerary. He slipped through Baltimore in the dead of night, cloaked as an invalid. He reached Washington safe but slightly embarrassed, and his embarrassment grew when Southern and other critics called him a coward.

  On March 4 he spoke for the first time as president. The capital was crowded and edgy; Grant’s old commander, Winfield Scott, positioned federal troops conspicuously about the city. Republican “Wide Awakes”—paramilitary volunteers marked by distinctive gaudy uniforms—watched suspicious-looking persons warily. Police pounced on anyone who appeared even mildly disposed toward disruption.

  Lincoln emerged from the Capitol onto the east portico. Parts of the audience began to applaud, but his grim demeanor put them off. All strained to hear as he began to speak. He professed anew his peaceful intentions toward the South: “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.” He wished he could report comparable tolerance in the South, but sadly the opposite obtained. “A disruption of the Federal Union, heretofore only menaced, is now formidably attempted.” But it would not succeed. “The Union of these States is perpetual.” The arguments for secession were specious on their face. “No government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination.” Secession was constitutionally impossible. “No State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union.… The Union is unbroken.” And it would remain unbroken. “To the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all of the States.”

  The secessionists had pushed the country to the brink of armed conflict, and though Lincoln didn’t welcome conflict, neither would he back down from it. “In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war,” he said. “The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it.’ ”

  Lincoln let his listeners absorb his resolve before he closed on a conciliatory note. “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

  15

  LIKE LINCOLN, GRANT AT FIRST FAILED TO APPRECIATE THE SERIOUSNESS of the secession crisis. So did most of those he spoke to in Galena and on his business travels around the region. “It was generally believed that there would be a flurry; that some of the extreme Southern States would go so far as to pass ordinances of secession,” he recalled. “But the common impression was that this step was so plainly suicidal for the South that the movement would not spread over much of the territory and would not last long.”

  Grant had paid little attention to political theory, but he, with the rest of America, received a crash course in constitutionalism that winter. And he developed a fairly sophisticated view of what America’s founding framework allowed and required. “Doubtless the founders of our government, the majority of them at least, regarded the confederation of the colonies as an experiment,” he later asserted. “Each colony considered itself a separate government; that the confederation was for mutual protection against a foreign foe, and the prevention of strife and war among themselves. If there had been a desire on the part of any single State to withdraw from the compact at any time while the number of States was limited to the original thirteen, I do not suppose there would have been any to contest the right, no matter how much the determination might have been regretted.” But things grew more complicated after the Constitution of 1787 supplanted the Articles of Confederation and as the number of states increased. “If the right of any one State to withdraw continued to exist at all after the ratification of the Constitution, it certainly ceased to exist on the formation of new States, at least so far as the new States themselves were concerned. It was never possessed at all by Florida or the States west of the Mississippi, all of which were purchased by the treasury of the entire nation.” Texas was purchased, in addition, by American blood in the war with Mexico. “It would have been ingratitude and injustice of the most flagrant sort for this State to withdraw from the Union after all that had been spent and done to introduce her.”

  Secessionists wrapped themselves in the Constitution, claiming that it was a revocable compact among states. Defenders of the Union cited the Constitution in asserting federal supremacy. Grant considered the arguments of both sides incomplete—and irrelevant. “The fact is, the Constitution did not apply to any such contingency as the one existing from 1861 to 1865,” he said. “Its framers never dreamed of such a contingency occurring.” Grant acknowledged that if they had foreseen the sectional crisis, they might well have sided with the South. “The probabilities are they would have sanctioned the right of a State or States to withdraw rather than that there should be war between brothers.” But the framers’ opinions didn’t matter. “It is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen contingencies.… The fathers would have been the first to declare that their prerogatives were not irrevocable.”

  By 1860 the Union had become, to all intents and purposes, indivisible, Grant said. “Secession was illogical as well as impracticable; it was revolution.” He allowed the legitimacy of revolution under certain circumstances. “When people are oppressed by their government, it is a natural right they enjoy to relieve themselves of the oppression, if they are strong enough, either by withdrawal from it or by overthrowing it and substituting a government more acceptable.” Grant didn’t consider the South oppressed in 1860, but even if it had been, it still had to fight its revolution. “Any people or part of a people who resort to this remedy stake their lives, their property, and every claim for protection given by citizenship, on the issue. Victory, or the conditions imposed by the conqueror, must be the result.”

  The test of strength began, predictably, in South Carolina. Fort Sumter had long guarded the port of Charleston against enemy attack, but little guarded Fort Sumter from Charleston. Major Robert Anderson commanded the federal garrison there; on the day of Lincoln’s inauguration Anderson informed Winfield Scott that the fort’s provisions would last no more than six weeks. By the end of that time, if the fort was not resupplied, he must surrender the place.

  Scott forwarded Anderson’s message to Lincoln, who asked Scott’s expert advice on the feasibility of resupply. Scott said it would require 25,000 soldiers and a fleet of warships and transports. Since the army lacked the men and the navy the ships, Congress would have to make a special appropriation. Outfitting the expedition would take six to eight months. In other words, Anderson was on his own.

  Lincoln had no reason to doubt Scott’s judgment, although some others close to the
president thought the general unduly pessimistic. Montgomery Blair, a West Pointer who had left the army for the law and became Lincoln’s postmaster general, suggested that a night landing might keep Anderson’s garrison viable.

  William Seward advocated another approach. Seward had received the State Department as his consolation prize for losing the Republican nomination to Lincoln, but he hadn’t yet reconciled himself to being merely first adviser. In early April he wrote an extraordinary memorandum suggesting a special role for himself. “We are at the end of a month’s administration and yet without a policy either domestic or foreign,” Seward chided Lincoln. “Further delay to adopt and prosecute our policies for both domestic and foreign affairs would not only bring scandal on the Administration, but danger upon the country.” Seward thought the president had foolishly allowed the secessionists to frame the debate, and he urged a new course. “We must change the question before the Public from one upon Slavery, or about Slavery, for a question upon Union or Disunion. In other words, from what would be regarded as a Party question to one of Patriotism or Union.” Seward recommended evacuating Fort Sumter, which he considered indefensible, but reinforcing Fort Pickens in Florida and other positions in the South still in Union hands. This would ease the immediate crisis. It would also allow the administration to do something quite audacious: to foment war with Spain, France and perhaps Britain. A pretext could be found, as one had been found by James Polk against Mexico. The result would be similar: an outpouring of patriotism by the American people, North and South, against a foreign foe. Seward saved the best part of his recommendation—best for him, at any rate—for the last. “Whatever policy we adopt, there must be an energetic prosecution of it. For this purpose it must be somebody’s business to pursue and direct it incessantly. Either the President must do it himself, and be all the while active in it, or devolve it on some member of his Cabinet.… It is not in my especial province, but I neither seek to evade nor assume responsibility.”

  Seward’s proposal tested Lincoln’s patience. The president bridled at the assertion that he lacked a policy; he dismissed as madly cynical Seward’s suggestion of a deliberate foreign war; he rejected as self-­serving and unconstitutional the secretary of state’s recommendation of what sounded like a co-presidency. Lincoln drafted a reply summarizing these reactions—and then, in the interest of cabinet comity, refrained from sending it. But he quietly let Seward know that the country had only one president, who didn’t need any further such counsel.

  Other cabinet members were more circumspect. Most favored bowing to the inevitable and surrendering Fort Sumter. Yet Salmon Chase, the Treasury secretary, joined Montgomery Blair in urging an effort to resupply the fort.

  Lincoln had great difficulty deciding. He was no military or naval expert, and he recognized his ignorance. He had a much firmer grasp of politics, but he couldn’t tell how the politics of the situation would play out. More than a few Northerners were wishing the South good riddance, and they definitely didn’t want to start a war over an indefensible fort in South Carolina. But others were tired of what they considered Southern arrogance and thought the slaveholders needed to be taught a lesson.

  No less crucial than the reaction of the North was the reaction of the South—in particular of those Southern states that had not seceded. Virginia wavered; a convention had gathered to discuss secession but hadn’t reached a conclusion. Lincoln attempted to shape the outcome; he met secretly with a pro-Union Virginia delegate and apparently offered to swap Fort Sumter for a promise of Virginia’s loyalty. “A State for a fort is no bad business,” he was later reported to have said. But the Virginians preferred to see how events developed, and the offer came to nothing.

  The administration continued to drift. Though Lincoln prepared a relief expedition, his lack of administrative experience revealed itself in confusion and delay, and the ships were slow leaving New York. The supplies at Sumter dwindled, all but compelling Anderson to capitulate.

  Lincoln lost hope of holding the fort yet wished to make the secessionists strike first. On April 12, shortly after the relief ships arrived off Charleston but before they could attempt a landing, the Confederate battery opposite the fort commenced a bombardment. Anderson and his garrison stood the shelling for a day and a half, then surrendered.

  Lincoln told the country what the fateful events in South Carolina meant. The attack on Fort Sumter constituted rebellion, he said, which must be opposed by force. The president called on the states to raise militia troops to the number of 75,000. “I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union and the perpetuity of popular government.”

  Grant had been drifting, too, albeit less anxiously than Lincoln. Secession was the president’s problem, not Grant’s. He read the papers but out of curiosity rather than involvement. He spent his days in the leather trade and his evenings with Julia and the children. He let the world turn itself.

  The onset of war abruptly terminated his disengagement. The news of the attack on Sumter electrified Galena. A large meeting was held at the courthouse; speakers vied to best one another in their devotion to the Union. Elihu Washburne, Galena’s congressman, offered several resolutions affirming the community’s faith in the Constitution and the Union, concluding with: “We solemnly resolve that, having lived under the Stars and Stripes, by the blessing of God we propose to die under them!” John Rawlins, an attorney who represented the Grant family’s leather business, reviewed at length the transgressions of the South and the patience of the North. For three-quarters of an hour he spoke, to increasing cheers and applause from the gathered citizenry, which erupted still further at his call to arms: “I have been a Democrat all my life, but this is no longer a question of politics. It is simply country or no country. I have favored every honorable compromise; but the day for compromise is passed. Only one course is left for us. We will stand by the flag of our country, and appeal to the God of battles!”

  Grant attended the meeting and shared the mounting excitement. The event brought back memories of the most fulfilling period of his life thus far, when he had fought under the American flag. He knew he had never been good at anything but war, and now that another war had begun, he wouldn’t miss it for the world. And this war, unlike the Mexican War, was one he could believe in. The Union was a cause to stir the heart of any patriot.

  Two days later another meeting took place. The captain of the local militia summoned the meeting to order and nominated Grant to chair the session. “The sole reason, possibly, was that I had been in the army and had seen service,” Grant suggested later by way of explanation. “With much embarrassment and some prompting, I made out to announce the object of the meeting”—to enlist a company of volunteers in response to Lincoln’s militia call. The company was quickly raised, and Grant was offered the captaincy. To the disappointment and perhaps surprise of the group, he declined. He felt the same urgency they all did, but he remembered enough of his Mexican War experience—in particular the difference between volunteer units and the regular army—to wish to rejoin the latter. He cushioned his refusal by promising to help enlist and train the volunteers.

  He shortly thereafter wrote his father-in-law. “In these exciting times we are very anxious to hear from you,” he told Frederick Dent. Grant knew that Dent hated Lincoln and the Republicans, but he thought the old man might still love the Union. “Now is the time, particularly in the border slave states, for men to prove their love of country. I know it is hard for men to apparently work with the Republican party, but now all party distinctions should be lost sight of and every true patriot be for maintaining the integrity of the glorious old Stars & Stripes, the Constitution and the Union.” Grant blamed the secessionists for the present crisis. “No impartial man can conceal from himself the fact that in all these troubles the South have been the aggressors and the Administration has stood purely on the defensive.” The streng
th of the North grew more evident each day. “The North is responding to the President’s call in such manner that the rebels may truly quake. I tell you there is no mistaking the feelings of the people. The Government can call into the field not only 75,000 troops but ten or twenty times 75,000 if it should be necessary.”

  The latest reports had brought news that Virginia had joined the seceders. Grant wasn’t worried, being confident of the North’s overwhelming strength. “But for the influence she will have on the other border slave states this is not much to be regretted,” he told Dent. Virginia shared with the other seceding states the folly of hastening the doom of slavery, the institution they claimed to cherish. “The North do not want, nor will they want, to interfere with the institution, but they will refuse for all time to give it protection unless the South shall return soon to their allegiance.… Then, too, this disturbance will give such an impetus to the production of their staple, cotton, in other parts of the world that they can never recover the control of the market again for that commodity. This will reduce the value of negroes so much that they will never be worth fighting over again.”

  Grant wrote to his own father describing the course he intended to follow. “We are now in the midst of trying times when everyone must be for or against his country, and show his colors too, by his every act,” he said. “Having been educated for such an emergency, at the expense of the Government, I feel that it has upon me superior claims, such claims as no ordinary motives of self-interest can surmount. I do not wish to act hastily or unadvisedly in the matter, and as there are more than enough to respond to the first call of the President, I have not yet offered myself.” But he was doing his part nonetheless. “I have promised and am giving all the assistance I can in organizing the company whose services have been accepted from this place. I have promised further to go with them to the state capital and, if I can, be of service to the Governor in organizing his state troops to do so.”