On Friday evening, July 25, 1862, Orville Browning visited Lincoln at the Soldiers’ Home. The Illinois senator confided to his diary that Lincoln told him that McClellan would never fight. It was as “if by magic he could reinforce McClellan with 100,000 men to day he would be in an ecstasy over it, thank him for it, and tell him that he would go to Richmond tomorrow, but that when tomorrow came he would telegraph that he had certain information that the enemy had 400,000 men, and he could not advance without reinforcements.”
Tired of McClellan’s foot dragging, Lincoln decided to replace him with Ambrose E. Burnside, an Indiana native and a graduate of West Point in the class of 1847, as commander of the Army of the Potomac. On February 7 and 8, 1862, Lincoln had been heartened by Burnside’s leadership of an amphibious landing through the Hatteras inlet to attack Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. Supported by gunboats, and fighting the fury of nature as much as the outnumbered Confederate defenders, Burnside secured a vital outpost in the Union’s effort to tighten the blockade of the Atlantic Coast.
Everyone who met Burnside liked him at once. Six feet tall and handsome, with a sturdy build and his face partially enclosed by bushy muttonchop whiskers, he was a skilled horseman with long buckskin gloves and a pistol that swung loosely from a holster on his hip. Sometime between July 22 and 27, 1862, Lincoln asked Burnside to relieve McClellan and assume command of the Army of the Potomac. Burnside, surprised, told the president he was not eager to command a large army. He turned down the president’s offer to replace his good friend McClellan who, he said, only needed more time to prove his leadership. Lincoln would not forget Burnside’s self-effacing manner.
Lincoln asked Ambrose E. Burnside to become the new commander of the Army of the Potomac in July 1862.
In Henry Halleck, Lincoln believed he had finally found someone who could relieve him of the burden of his responsibility for the supervision of the army. McClellan and Pope, who did not hide their dislike of each other, would now both report to Halleck. Lincoln quickly came to depend on “Old Brains” for technical military advice. A month later, McClellan was surely surprised when Lincoln answered a query by replying, “I wish not to control. That I now leave to Gen. Halleck.” With many tough decisions to be made, Lincoln would sometimes feign ignorance of military strategy and let Halleck be the public face of the Union forces. In responding to the multitude of questions coming his way, he began to offer a standard reply, “You must call on General Halleck, who commands.”
LONG BEFORE THE ADVENT of televised presidential press conferences, Lincoln mastered a new means of communication developing in the nineteenth century. As he struggled to find his footing in the second year of his presidency, this mastery would become a key to his emerging political leadership.
In his first debate with Stephen Douglas in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1858, Lincoln offered his insight into the role of public opinion in a democratic society. “Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently he who moulds sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions.”
But Lincoln offered this comment in an Illinois he knew well. How would he be able to keep his finger on the pulse of public opinion while he lived in Washington, often confined to the White House and consumed by his duties as commander in chief? In 1862, he worked hard to listen to the public and to find more ways to communicate his vision for the Union. He found the answer in newsprint.
Newspapers conveyed the immediacy of daily events to Americans as never before. At the time of Lincoln’s birth, there were approximately 250 American newspapers. By the beginning of the Civil War, there were more than 2,500 newspapers, both daily and weekly. In New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and other larger cities, newspapers published multiple editions each day in order to keep up with people’s appetite for news. Many more people read newspapers than paid subscribers. At countless general stores and post offices, neighbors gathered to listen to someone read from “Uncle Horace’s Weekly Try-bune,” or the like.
Lincoln was a newspaper junkie. Francis B. Carpenter, an artist in residence in the White House in 1864, reported that he regularly saw in the secretary’s quarters the New York Tribune, Herald, Evening Post, World, Times, and Independent; the Boston Advertiser, Journal, and Transcript; the Philadelphia Press and North American; the Baltimore American and Sun; the Cincinnati Gazette and Commercial; the St. Louis Republican and Democrat; the Albany Evening Journal; and the Chicago Tribune and Journal.
Instead of letters to the editor, editors wrote letters to Lincoln. They offered their counsel on every political issue, but especially the war. More than three hundred letters from newspaper editors were received at the White House during Lincoln’s presidency. Editors not only wrote to Lincoln, they also traveled to Washington to speak to him in person.
And Lincoln also wrote letters. After his special message to Congress on March 6, 1862, in which he again advocated compensation to Southern states if they would put an end to slavery, he sent a letter to Henry Raymond to object that the New York Times got it wrong about how much the compensation would cost. He told the editor he was “grateful to the New-York Journals, and not less to the Times than to the others, for their kind notices of the late special Message to Congress.” Lincoln was not just playing up to Raymond, for he had cut out and saved editorials from six New York newspapers—the New York Times, Tribune, Evening Bulletin, Herald, World, and Evening Post, all written on March 7, all supporting compensated emancipation.
In the first months of the war, Lincoln had appreciated Horace Gree-ley’s central role among the newspaper generals. “Having him firmly behind me will be as helpful to me as an army of one hundred thousand men.” But the New York Tribune editor’s support for Lincoln began to vacillate in 1862 as he became more and more distressed by Lincoln’s silence about slavery. Greeley decided to speak straight to the president through the most public communication he knew—his newspaper.
On August 19, 1862, Greeley wrote a letter to Lincoln that he published the following day in the Tribune under the heading “The Prayer of Twenty Millions.” Greeley complained that the president was “strangely and disastrously remiss” in not proclaiming emancipation now.
On the face of this wide earth, Mr. President, there is not one disinterested, determined, intelligent, champion of the Union cause who does not feel that all attempts to put down the Rebellion, and at the same time uphold its inciting cause, are preposterous and futile—that the Rebellion, if crushed out to-morrow, would be renewed within a year if slavery were left in full vigor. … I close as I began, with the statement that what an immense majority of the loyal millions of your countrymen require of you is a frank, declared unqualified, ungrudging execution of the laws of the land.
Appearing toward the end of a long summer of Union dissatisfaction, Greeley’s letter created a commotion. Newspapers across the North reprinted his protest.
Lincoln notified the Washington National Intelligencer that he intended to write a response to Greeley, asking the paper to send one of its editors, James C. Welling, to the White House to assist him. Welling reviewed Lincoln’s reply word by word. He proposed one sentence be “erased,” in the third paragraph: “Broken eggs can never be mended, and the longer the breaking proceeds the more will be broken.” The young literary editor recalled that Lincoln acquiesced “with some reluctance.” Welling doesn’t expand upon Lincoln’s answer but did offer his own reason for removing it. This sentence “seemed somewhat exceptional, on rhetorical grounds, in a paper of such dignity.”
Horace Greeley, reforming editor of the New York Tribune, wrote a letter to Lincoln entitled “The Prayer of Twenty Millions,” challenging the president to move faster on emancipation.
Welling’s response sounded like printer John D. Defrees’s response to “sugar-coated” in Lincoln’s annual message to Congress in 1861. The editor and the printer wished to correct Lincoln about proper spe
ech. They were telling the president of the United States that his humble American expressions did not fit the rhetorical etiquette of the occasion.
Lincoln’s response to Greeley was published in the National Intelligencer on August 22, 1862. The president’s “public letter,” addressed to an individual but understood to be meant for a larger public consumption, was also quickly republished in numerous newspapers. The meaning of the letter has been debated from the moment Lincoln penned it. Although he must have been disconcerted by Greeley’s imperious tone, he started his letter with a generosity of spirit.
I have just read yours of the 19th, addressed to myself. … If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptible in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.
That beginning, which is often omitted in reprinting Lincoln’s reply, sets the tone for all that follows.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored, the nearer the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; I shall adopt new views so fast as they appear to be true views.
At the center of the letter Lincoln offers a thesis sentence that spells out his meaning: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery.” He then expanded on what he would save and what he would not save. The verb “save” pulsates twelve times through this central paragraph of the letter.
Lincoln wished to speak to three groups. First, most people in the South wanted to save slavery, and Lincoln knew that many Northern Democrats were also opposed to emancipation. In response to this position, Lincoln offered a resonant: “I do not agree with them.”
The second group were political abolitionists, represented by Charles Sumner in Congress and Horace Greeley in the press. Greeley presented himself as representing twenty million, which to Lincoln’s mind was clearly an overstatement.
Lincoln had become especially sensitive to a third group. Unnamed in his letter, he was thinking of the common soldier. He understood that the majority of soldiers had enlisted to save the Union, not to free the slaves. Even those soldiers who believed that blacks might be able to work at jobs behind the lines did not believe they were capable of fighting on the front lines. An astute Lincoln used his public letter to speak to all these groups at once.
He concluded with a disclaimer: “I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty, and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.” Understanding this final paragraph is imperative to appreciating the full meaning of Lincoln’s reply to Greeley. His final sentiment enunciated the continuing creative tension felt between the obligation of his office to abide by the Constitution and his personal wishes.
What did Lincoln accomplish with his public letter? An impatient Greeley was calling out a patient Lincoln. Lincoln’s reply did not really answer Greeley’s appeal, but that was not his purpose. The president made his own appeal—to save the Union. He had shrewdly outflanked the leading New York general of opinion, and on his own territory, the newspaper.
The reply to Greeley is misconstrued if interpreted as a simple declaration of support for the Union. As Lincoln crafted his reply, he held in his coat pocket his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln had become adroit at keeping his own counsel and moving forward on his own schedule.
A FEW DAYS AFTER Lincoln’s reply to Greeley, Union and Confederate forces fought a second furious battle around Manassas Junction. Thirteen months earlier, the Union army had suffered a devastating defeat at Bull Run. In the summer of 1862, the newly designated Union Army of Virginia, under General John Pope, vowed things would be different.
Pope told everyone who would listen that his headquarters would be in his saddle. His tough talk about leading an offensive war had a positive effect on the many politicians who were tired of McClellan’s delays.
Pope’s initial letter to the officers and soldiers of the Army of Virginia had the opposite effect. McClellan remained popular with many of the soldiers, but Pope minced no words. “I have come from the West, where we have always seen the backs of our enemies.” He told his men “to dismiss from your minds certain phrases, which I am sorry to find so much in vogue amongst you. I hear constantly of ‘taking strong positions and holding them,’ of ‘lines of retreat,’ and of ‘bases of supplies.’ Let us discard such ideas.” No one could mistake Pope’s words as anything but criticism of McClellan. The new commander’s men began calling him “boastful Pope” behind his back.
In the last week of August, Stonewall Jackson, commanding the leading edge of Robert E. Lee’s army, marched his “foot cavalry” fifty-six miles in two days on a wide swing around Pope’s right flank to attack the Union supplies at Manassas. Jackson could hardly believe what his men found in one hundred freight cars and countless warehouses. His hungry men feasted on the Union’s lobster salad and Rhine wine. Men strutted about in new shoes, wore women’s hats with elaborate ribbons, and carried off pickled oysters, molds of cheese, and candy. Jackson ordered all the whiskey poured on the ground (an order not completely obeyed). What the soldiers could not eat or carry with them they burned. Lincoln watched from the south lawn of the White House as black smoke rose in the sky above northern Virginia. Then Jackson’s troops disappeared.
The next day, August 28, 1862, Jackson’s troops drew Pope’s army into battle at Brawner Farm near Bull Run. On the following morning, Pope carried out disjointed attacks against Jackson along an uncompleted railroad grade. Although neither side gained an advantage, Pope reported he had Jackson on the run. He failed to recognize that reinforcements led by General James Longstreet’s troops had broken through Thoroughfare Gap and were fast arriving to support Jackson. A wary George Templeton Strong in New York wrote in his diary, “I am not prepared to crow quite yet. Pope is an imaginative chieftain and ranks with Cooper as a writer of fiction. Good news from Bull Run is suspicious.”
Lincoln, standing beside his new general in chief Henry Halleck, listened to updates helplessly in the telegraph office. McClellan, now at Alexandria, was responsible for reinforcing Pope. Halleck, unsure of himself, called again and again for McClellan to begin sending reinforcements. Over and over, McClellan responded that for one reason or another, the officers in his command could not move. “We are not yet in a condition to move.” “It would be a sacrifice to send them now.” “I still think that a premature movement in small force will accomplish nothing but the destruction of the troops.”
At 2:45 in the afternoon, McClellan telegraphed Lincoln. “I am clear that one of two courses should be adopted—1st To concentrate all our available forces to open communication with Pope—2nd To leave Pope to get out of this scrape & at once use all our means to make the Capital perfectly safe.” Lincoln was astonished by McClellan’s response. He was also disapp
ointed in Halleck, who, standing beside him as if in shock, seemed unable to exercise command over McClellan.
On August 30, 1862, Pope, believing that Lee’s repositioning of forces was actually the beginning of a retreat, attacked, failing to wait until he had fully massed his own forces. Pope’s divisions, especially his all-Western “Iron Brigade” from Wisconsin and Indiana, fought bravely. But Longstreet, with twenty-eight thousand men, counterattacked and Pope’s troops began to fall back.
That same morning, Lincoln and John Hay had ridden in together from the Soldiers’ Home. As they talked about all that had happened in the previous several days, Lincoln “was very outspoken in regard to McClellan’s present conduct.” He said “it really seemed to him that McC wanted Pope defeated.”
At eight o’clock on August 30, 1862, Lincoln came into Hay’s room in the White House to say, “Well John we are whipped again.” Indeed, Pope’s Union troops gave ground in a retreat to Centreville. In the days that followed, beaten Union units fell all the way back to their defenses on the outskirts of Washington. In five days of fighting, the Union forces of 65,000 men suffered 13,830 casualties while Lee and Jackson’s 55,000 troops lost 8,350.
AT 7:30 ON TUESDAY MORNING, September 2, 1862, Lincoln and Henry Halleck walked to McClellan’s house on H Street. Lincoln knocked on the door, unannounced, and found the general at breakfast. Lincoln told McClellan “that the troubles now impending could be overcome better” by him “than anyone else.” Lincoln had decided to keep McClellan. In touch with the sentiment of the soldiers, Lincoln understood that whatever the newspaper generals or the senators might think, Little Mac remained immensely popular with the rank-and-file soldiers. The soldiers believed they had never been outgeneraled, certainly not outfought, but had been defeated by superior numbers. McClellan told his wife that when Pope’s troops fell back to Washington “everything is to come under my command again.” McClellan said he was being given “a terrible & thankless task—yet I will do my best with God’s blessing to perform it.”
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