A. Lincoln

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A. Lincoln Page 53

by Ronald C. White, Jr.


  McClellan’s Urbana plan had its merits. He believed he could seize the advantage by fighting on the ground of his choosing while using the Union superiority in naval forces. McClellan concluded with a plea and a resolve. “I will stake my life, my reputation on the result—more than that, I will stake upon it the success of our cause.”

  The plan did not persuade Lincoln. Even if McClellan began his advance in February, the president worried there would be long delays before marching on the Confederate forces. Lincoln also expressed concern that McClellan’s plan would leave Washington vulnerable to attack from what he now believed were very capable Southern military leaders.

  Lincoln asked five tough questions of McClellan, including, “Does not your plan involve a greatly larger expenditure of time, and money than mine?” Lincoln also posed, “In case of disaster, would not a safe retreat be more difficult by your plan than by mine?” Although addressed to McClellan, Lincoln’s questions were as much to himself, as he worked in his typical logical way to discern the way forward. He told McClellan, “If you will give me satisfactory answers to the following questions, I shall gladly yield my plan to yours.”

  Lincoln, as commander in chief, in the back-and-forth relationship with his top general, found himself honing the foundations of his evolving military strategy. First, he believed the Confederate armies, not Richmond or any other fixed place, should be his most important military target. Second, he increasingly recognized the risk of overstretched supply lines. And third, he wanted to avoid leaving Washington vulnerable to attack.

  In the end, Lincoln signed off on McClellan’s plans despite his deep reservations. His respect for professional officers still outweighed Lincoln’s growing knowledge about military strategy.

  WITH MCCLELLAN’S ARMY of the Potomac still confined to its winter bases in February, Lincoln received some good news from Kentucky. On January 19, 1862, Don Carlos Buell, responding to the president’s urgent call for action, dispatched General George H. Thomas, a Virginian loyal to the Union, on a risky mission in eastern Kentucky. Thomas, a large, imposing man who expected steeled discipline from his troops, led four thousand men over treacherous, trackless mountains in winter sleet to achieve a victory at Mill Springs, Kentucky.

  This Currier and Ives print depicts the bombardment and capture of Fort Henry and the heroic work of federal gunboats under command of Commodore Andrew H. Foote.

  Lincoln, with his eye turned toward the West, with which he was familiar, began monitoring the movements of General Ulysses S. Grant. On February 4, 1862, Grant attacked Fort Henry, a Confederate earthen fort eighty miles up the Tennessee River from the Union headquarters at Paducah, Kentucky, believing that the fort was the weak point in the Confederacy’s line. It was exactly the strategy Lincoln had commended to Browning three weeks earlier. Grant approached Fort Henry from two sides. Supported by Commodore Andrew H. Foote’s four ironclad and three wooden gunboats, Grant won a decisive victory on February 6, 1862, dealing the Confederates their first significant defeat of the war.

  Some of the Confederates defending Fort Henry retreated to Fort Donelson on the Cumberland River, which became Grant’s next objective. General Don Carlos Buell warned that Grant was about to take on a much larger force and should retire after his initial victory. In addition, Buell could send no reinforcements. No matter. Grant, unlike so many other commanders that Lincoln had come to know, never hollered for reinforcements. Instead, he marched his men twelve miles overland and prepared to attack. On February 14, 1862, Foote’s gunboats arrived on the Cumberland and began lobbing “iron valentines” at Fort Donelson. Within a short time, however, the Confederate heavy artillery punished Foote’s boats, gaining the upper hand. When word came by telegram to the War Department that Foote’s boats were absorbing a vicious battering, many were quick to say, “I told you so.” Stanton confessed his worry.

  Lincoln and the military leaders in Washington knew little about Grant. Refusing to be beaten, Grant pushed on in bitter weather, finally taking Fort Donelson on February 17, 1862, with this famous remark: “No terms except complete and unconditional surrender can be accepted.” The Confederates accepted. Grant marched away with thirteen thousand prisoners, giving the Union a second strategic victory in the western theater in less than two weeks.

  When Stanton read the “unconditional surrender” dispatch, the secretary of war led three cheers for General Grant. A clerk in Stanton’s office recalled that the cheers “shook the old walls, broke the spider’s webs, and set the rats scampering.” All around Washington, church bells rang and cannons fired.

  Grant became an instant hero. Throughout his native Midwest, people started to call him “Unconditional Surrender” Grant. Newspaper stories of Grant at Fort Donelson, chomping on a cigar, prompted grateful citizens to send him hundreds of boxes of cigars. Grant, who began the war smoking his meerschaum pipe, switched full-time to ci gars.

  Grateful for these victories, Lincoln promptly promoted Grant to major general, second in command only to Halleck in the entire American West.

  DURING THE WINTER OF 1862, as Abraham Lincoln worried over his military leadership, his sons Willie and Tad played a game of counting sunny days while stuck inside the White House. Willie had recently received a pony, and despite Washington’s cold, wet, and mushy weather, insisted on riding his new horse. Either from exposure or from one of the frequent infections caused by unsanitary Washington conditions, Willie became sick with what was called “bilious fever,” a catchall term that could cover a multitude of illnesses. By the end of January, Willie’s condition improved and worsened with frustrating irregularity. His mother frequently stayed up with him all night.

  Willie Lincoln, the third Lincoln son, was a happy, studious, religious boy who enthralled both children and adults.

  On February 5, 1862, while Grant was engaged in the battle at Fort Henry, the Lincolns hosted an evening reception at the White House that would turn into a nightmare. Continuing to face unfavorable comparisons to Buchanan’s stylish niece Harriet Lane, the original First Lady, Mary had planned this party as a model of fine elegance. Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper congratulated her for initiating “a social innovation.” Heretofore, social events at the White House had either been “state dinners” for the few or a “reception” for the uncontrolled many. Mary Lincoln’s event was for a select five hundred guests. The Lincolns’ oldest son, Robert, was home from Harvard and stood proudly beside his parents receiving guests in the East Room. Throughout the evening, the marine band “discoursed sweet music,” including the new “Mary Lincoln Polka.” Mary wore a new dress, jewels, and a headdress of black and white crape myrtle.

  Sadly, Abraham and Mary could not enjoy the evening. During the day, Willie’s condition had suddenly worsened. Tad also became ill. First mother, then father left the party, ascending the central staircase to care for Willie, who was burning up with fever.

  The party’s crowning moment occurred at 11:30 p.m. when servants unveiled beautiful tables of food and pastries prepared by Milliards, an upscale New York caterer. Models of a Union warship and Fort Pickens were depicted in confectioners’ art. Dinner lasted until 3 a.m. Leslie’s Illustrated pronounced the party “a complete success,” but guests never knew the anxiety upstairs.

  A week later, on Abraham Lincoln’s fifty-third birthday, newspapers reported that Willie was recovering and out of danger. But his condition quickly became worse again. Willie asked to see his close friend, Horatio Nelson “Bud” Taft, Jr., who had “been to see him or to enquire about him almost every day,” and could always cheer him up.

  Mary now stayed beside him day and night.

  On Thursday, February 20, 1862, at 5 p.m., Willie Lincoln died. Mary crumpled in a seizure of sobbing. Lizzie Keckley, her African-American seamstress, whose compassion for Mary had become a healing balm in these difficult months, gently led her away.

  Only three days after celebrating Grant’s second victory in the West, Lincoln wa
s overcome by grief. He spoke softly. “My poor boy. He was too good for this earth … but then we loved him so.” He walked down the hall to his secretary’s office, and “choking with emotion,” said, “Well, Nicolay, my boy is gone—actually gone!” Lincoln, “bursting into tears, turned, and went into his own office.”

  Attorney General Bates wrote in his diary that evening, “A fine boy of 11 years, too much idolized by his parents.” The dark cloud of mourning that descended on the White House in February 1862 would never really lift for Mary Lincoln.

  The service for Willie Lincoln was held in the East Room on February 24, 1862, at 2 p.m. Phineas Gurley, minister of the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, conducted the service. Gurley brought a message of consolation and hope. He began by identifying with the grief of the parents over the death of a young child. He then spoke words of comfort. “It is well for us, and very comforting on such an occasion as this, to get a clear and scriptural view of the providence of God.”

  Gurley was a preacher who anticipated questions in his sermons. In this funeral oration, he addressed the delicate balance between free will and determinism. He told the grieving Abraham and Mary seated before him that sometimes providence appeared as “a mysterious dealing.” Gurley’s final counsel was to “acknowledge His hand, and hear His voice, and inquire after His will.”

  Gurley offered Lincoln pastoral care at one of the darkest moments in his life. In less than a year, Lincoln had experienced the death of the charming young Elmer Ellsworth, his close Illinois friend Edward Baker, and now his son.

  When the pallbearers carried the casket from the White House, they were followed by a group of children, members of Willie’s Sunday school class. Departing the White House, Lincoln rode in a carriage drawn by two black horses, accompanied by his oldest son, Robert, and his Illinois friends Senators Browning and Trumbull, in a procession to the Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown.

  Life for Tad was now profoundly different without his older brother Willie, who had been his constant companion. He also lost their close friends Bud and Holly Taft. At the time of the funeral, Mary Lincoln wrote to Mary Taft, “Please keep the boys home the day of the funeral; it makes me feel worse to see them.” Because the Taft boys reminded her of Willie, they were never again invited to the White House, leaving Tad even more alone.

  Mary simply could not deal with the death of a second son. Eddie Lincoln had died at three and a half in 1850. Although extreme public mourning was a custom of the day, the death of Willie left Mary inconsolable. She never again entered the room where he died. She sought to remove from the White House everything and everyone that could remind her of Willie. Her husband felt the loss of his son deeply, too, but as president he knew he had to resume his leadership of a deeply wounded nation. As Lincoln increasingly found himself comfortable with cabinet members William Seward, Edwin Stanton, Gideon Welles, and a few other trusted colleagues, he was less available for the often-painful task of helping Mary cope with her grief.

  In the wake of Willie’s death, Lincoln forged a new relationship with Tad. He became the boy’s chief companion. Tad and Willie had often slept together, but now Tad wanted to sleep with his father. The young Tad would be present at official meetings, sometimes sitting in Lincoln’s lap or even perching on his shoulder, to the consternation of some of the president’s guests. The hardworking president kept late hours at his desk, and often near midnight, when he had finished his last correspondence or signed his last order, Lincoln would pick up his small son from under the desk or in front of the fireplace and carry him off to bed.

  Abraham Lincoln forged a new, special relationship with Tad, the fourth Lincoln son.

  ON MANY EVENINGS, Lincoln would amble across the street to Secretary of State Seward’s redbrick three-story mansion on Lafayette Square just north and east of the White House. Living with Seward in Washington was his son, Frederick, and daughter-in-law Anna, who frequently served as hostess because Seward’s wife, Frances, preferred to stay in their home in Auburn, New York.

  After working with him for almost a year, Lincoln had grown to appreciate the company of the intellectual and witty Seward, a conversationalist with a thousand stories. To the other members of Lincoln’s cabinet, and many in Washington, Lincoln and Seward were an odd couple. As the two men lounged in Seward’s library, the secretary of state would take pleasure in his Havana cigars, while Lincoln did not smoke; Seward enjoyed vintage wines and brandy, while Lincoln did not drink; Seward was known for his colorful language, whereas Lincoln almost never swore. One day, Lincoln and Seward were on their way to review troops near Arlington. Traveling in an ambulance drawn by four mules over rutted roads, the driver, losing control of his team, began to swear. As the roads became even rougher, the swearing increased. At last Lincoln spoke up. “Driver, my friend, are you an Episcopalian?”

  “No, Mr. President, I ain’t much of anything; but if I go to church at all, I go to the Methodist Church.”

  “Oh, excuse me,” Lincoln replied, “I thought you must be an Episcopalian for you swear just like Secretary Seward, and he’s a churchwarden.”

  Lincoln enjoyed Seward because they could talk openly about many subjects besides the war. With portraits of George Washington, Andrew Jackson, and Daniel Webster arrayed on the walls of Seward’s residence, their conversations turned regularly to the merits of American leaders. Lincoln had idolized Washington as a youth and still revered the nation’s first president. He had joined in the Whig excoriation of Jackson as a young man, but with the hindsight of age, and the different chair in which he now sat, Lincoln had come to appreciate Old Hickory. In a conversation about Jackson, the two men discussed how to manage the delicate balance of presidential power. Lincoln had long admired Webster for his eloquent enunciation of American political ideals; he often used Webster’s speeches as models for his own. In the course of another conversation, Seward argued that the reputations of neither Clay nor Webster would live “a tithe as long” as that of John Quincy Adams. Lincoln disagreed. He stated that he thought Webster “would be read forever.”

  Mary became resentful of the time her husband spent with Seward. She still held a grudge against him for the Republican nomination fight in 1860. Even after Seward joined her husband’s administration, Mary derided him as that “hypocrite,” and a “dirty abolition sneak.” After almost a year in the White House, Mary saw her role as confidant and counselor being eclipsed by Seward at the very time she needed her husband more than ever.

  LINCOLN’S IMPATIENCE WITH General McClellan increased as February turned into March. The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War had been complaining about McClellan’s lack of response to the Confederate control of the Potomac both above and below Washington. At last McClellan decided to break this grip by sending a Union detachment to the upper Potomac to reopen the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad link to the West. In order to cross the Potomac to rebuild a strategic bridge at Harpers Ferry, McClellan had arranged to bring canal boats up the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which paralleled the Potomac River. These boats would serve as platforms for the timbers to build the bridge. Just as they were about to travel from the canal into the river, sailors discovered the boats were six inches too wide to pass through the lock.

  When McClellan, who had a reputation as an excellent planner, sent this bad news to Stanton, the secretary of war hurried over to tell Lincoln at the White House. After locking the door, Stanton read to Lincoln two dispatches from McClellan. Exasperated, Lincoln inquired, “What does this mean?” Stanton replied, “It means it is a damned fizzle. It means he does not intend to do anything.”

  Lincoln, “dejected,” sent for Randolph Marcy, McClellan’s chief of staff and father-in-law. As Lincoln paced the floor of his office, he may well have thought back to his days on the Eighth Judicial Circuit when he delighted in examining new farm machinery. Always a stickler for quality, Lincoln would lie down under a new machine to “sight” it, to see if it was straight or warped. W
ith Nicolay present, he now asked Marcy, “Why in the——nation, Gen. Marcy, couldn’t the Gen. have known whether a boat would go through that lock before spending a million dollars getting them there? I am no engineer, but it seems to me that if I wished to know whether a boat would go through a hole or a lock, common sense would teach me to go and measure it.” Lincoln concluded his remarks by summing up his feelings about more than canal boats. “Everything seems to fail. The general impression is daily gaining ground that the General does not intend to do anything. By a failure like this we lose all the prestige we gained by the capture of Fort Donelson. I am grievously disappointed—almost in despair.”

  Lincoln met with members of the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War on the evening of March 3, 1862. Senators Benjamin Wade of Ohio and Zachariah Chandler of Michigan informed Lincoln that reports were circulating that McClellan was secretly in sympathy, if not in league, with the Confederates. This was not news to the president, who held one of these letters accusing McClellan of treason in his vest pocket. McClellan had made no secret of his dislike for abolitionists and radical Republicans who wished to destroy slavery. The meeting quickly degenerated into a heated exchange between the committee and the president about removing McClellan. Lincoln asked Senator Wade if McClellan were to be removed, who would replace him? “Well, anybody!” Wade cried out. “Wade,” Lincoln replied, “anybody will do for you, but I must have somebody.”

  The committee actually had two candidates in mind. They were divided in their opinion between Irvin McDowell and John C. Fré-mont. Lincoln believed that both of these generals had lost standing with the public by their respective failures at Bull Run and in Missouri. He did agree, however, when the committee recommended that the army modify its command structure to encompass four corps, each with three divisions. Although the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War was made up of a bunch of military amateurs, Lincoln knew that the professional army in early 1862, far larger than any previous army in America, had become too large to be commanded by one person. The meeting ended inconclusively. Lincoln was not about to be told what to do by a congressional committee, but, in truth, he, too, was also thinking about changing generals.

 

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