A. Lincoln

by Ronald C. White, Jr.

  Lincoln did not just praise the courage of blacks; he did so in contrast to the reticence of whites.

  Because Conkling read Lincoln’s words, it would seem we cannot know how Lincoln would have spoken these words to a real audience. But we can, through Stoddard’s recollections of Lincoln reading the letter aloud in his office.

  Stoddard described the metamorphosis in Lincoln when he was roused from writer to speaker. “He is more an orator than a writer, and he is quickly warmed up to the place where his voice rises and his long right arm goes out, and he speaks to you somewhat as if you were a hundred thousand people of an audience, and as if he believes that fifty thousand of you do not at all agree with him. He will convince the half of you, if he can, before he has done with it.”

  Stoddard “noted the singular emphasis which he put upon the words: ‘And there will be some black men who can remember with silent tongue, and clenched teeth, and steady eye, and well poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on to this great consummation.’ ”

  He was a witness to the weight that Lincoln gave to these words—even if he was speaking to an audience of one.

  The mass meeting in Springfield was a huge success. Conkling wrote to Lincoln on September 4, 1863, “The Letter was received by the Convention with the greatest enthusiasm.”

  In the following days a wide circle of people commended the letter. Greeley, one year later, appreciated that Lincoln had used a rally to defend the Emancipation Proclamation. “ ‘God Bless Abraham Lincoln!’ The Promise must be kept!”

  Abolitionists offered enthusiastic praise not accorded earlier Lincoln speeches. Senator Charles Sumner wrote from Boston, “Thanks for your true and noble letter. It is an historical document.” Sumner’s Massachusetts colleague, Senator Henry Wilson, wrote, “God Almighty bless you for your noble, patriotic, and Christian letter.” Wilson understood the public letter’s importance in the crosscurrents of conversation. “It will be on the lips, and in the hearts of hundreds of thousands this day.” John Murray Forbes, a railroad magnate and abolitionist, who had helped to organize African-American troops in Massachusetts, wrote to Lincoln on September 8, 1863. “Your letter to the Springfield Convention … will live in history side by side with your [Emancipation] proclamation.” Forbes believed Lincoln’s letter to Conkling spoke to a wide audience. “It meets the fears of the timid and the doubts of the reformer.”

  On September 10, 1863, George Opdyke, the mayor of New York, stopped at the White House. Opdyke was a wealthy merchant who had joined the Republican Party in large measure because of its antislavery posture. Only three weeks before, on the evening of August 18, a group of twenty-five radical Republicans had met at Opdyke’s home to explore the possibility of convening a convention to nominate a candidate for president in 1864 other than Lincoln. Opdyke now came to thank the president “for his recent admirable letter to the Springfield Convention.”

  IN SEPTEMBER 1863, Lincoln understood more than ever that his task was to convince more than half of a wearying Northern public that this terrible war was worth fighting. His words at Springfield on September 3 were his pledge that he intended to follow through on the full meaning of the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation. Surprised by the public response to his words, as summer turned into fall, Lincoln was more alert than ever for other occasions where he could convey his vision and influence public opinion about the meaning and purpose of the war.

  This photograph by Alexander Gardner was taken on November 8, 1863, ten days before Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg to deliver his address.

  CHAPTER 24

  A New Birth of Freedom September 1863–March 1864

  NOW WE ARE ENGAGED IN A GREAT CIVIL WAR TESTING WHETHER THAT NATION, OR ANY NATION SO CONCEIVED, AND SO DEDICATED, CAN LONG ENDURE.

  ABRAHAM LINCOLN

  Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863

  HE SIGNS LOOK BETTER. SO ABRAHAM LINCOLN HAD DECLARED IN his letter to the Springfield meeting on September 3, 1863, but not everyone agreed. Whether the president’s confident outlook was justified would become a matter of vigorous debate in the fall of 1863. Politicians, generals, and preachers all became instant pundits, forecasting the future. How one saw “the signs” depended on where one stood.

  With crucial elections in key states coming up in October, Republicans closed ranks—at least on the surface—to express their public support for the president. They feared Democratic election gains of 1862 could be expanded in the state elections of 1863. Meanwhile, Lincoln found himself damned with faint praise by leaders in Washington. The president was an honest and good person, so went the conversations in the congressional corridors of power, but he remained too soft and too slow. In the barrooms beyond the cloakrooms, radical Republicans freely voiced their denunciations of the president—he was not up to the job.

  Out in the country, by contrast, people increasingly recognized in Lincoln a gentle leader, free from the egomania associated with most political leaders; in short, he was a man they could trust. Lincoln’s public letters of 1863 generated an upswing of goodwill. He received a boost in the fall when The Letters of President Lincoln on Questions of National Policy enjoyed a brisk sale at eight cents a copy. The twenty-two-page pamphlet brought together letters to General George McClellan, Horace Greeley, New York mayor Fernando Wood, the Albany Committee, Governor Horatio Seymour, and the Springfield meeting. Ordinary people, when reading the pamphlet, began to recognize both Lincoln’s political genius in dealing with nettlesome questions and his artistry with words.

  Henry Ward Beecher spoke for many religious leaders in his estimate of Lincoln. Writing in the Independent, an influential weekly founded in 1848 with evangelical and antislavery roots, Beecher declared, “Rising to the dignity of the time, the President during his third year has shown a comprehensive policy and a wisdom in its execution which promise to broaden his sun at its setting.”

  George Curtis, author of the celebrated “Lounger” column in Harper’s Weekly, provided the most astute analysis in the fall of 1863. “The conservative Republicans think him too much in the hands of the radicals; while the radical Republicans think him too slow, yielding, and half-hearted.” Curtis had come to believe Lincoln knew better than anyone how to play the political game. “Both factions had to accept [Lincoln’s] leadership—for the moment.”

  “FOR THE MOMENT.” Time indeed weighed heavily on Lincoln’s mind. He said so in a private letter to Governor Andrew Johnson of Tennessee. “It is something on the question of time, to remember that it cannot be known who is next to occupy the position I now hold, nor what he will do.” He knew party radicals were dissatisfied with him, and that some in his party were casting about for an alternative candidate for 1864. He believed that Democrats thought their chances for victory in 1864 improved the longer the war went on. Aware it had been more than thirty years since a president had been elected to a second term, Lincoln pondered how to improve the Republicans’ odds.

  Should he assume the mantle of the partisan party leader? He had become a party leader in Illinois by learning how to apply grease to the wheels of party machinery, be they Whig or Republican wheels. In Washington, he had assumed a more independent stance in terms of party organization.

  Or should he increase his efforts to reach out beyond his Republican base? From his first political campaign in Illinois to his appointment of his presidential rivals to his cabinet, Lincoln possessed the rare political instinct to move beyond partisanship and bring people of differing viewpoints together.

  Lincoln made his decision. He would appeal for a larger loyalty. He had been pleased when the call went out to the Springfield meeting of September 3, 1863, to “Unconditional Union men of the State of Illinois, without regard to former party associations.” He now envisioned a new National Union Party to run in the remaining state elections of 1863 and in the national election of 1864. He urged Republicans to run under this banner in the hopes of attracting the votes of Democrats.

 
LINCOLN QUICKLY LEARNED that battlefield results influenced election results. The battle for the West now shifted from Vicksburg to Chattanooga. Lincoln understood that while Vicksburg had been the key to controlling the Mississippi, whoever controlled Chattanooga, located at thejuncture of Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia, held the keys to the back doors of Virginia to the east and Georgia to the south. Situated in a valley between the Appalachian and the Cumberland mountain ranges, Chattanooga was a hub for rail lines radiating to the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Atlantic Ocean. It was second only to Richmond as the prize for federal forces in the fall of 1863. If the Union forces could oust the Confederate forces from the region around Chattanooga, the door could swing wide open to Georgia and ultimately to the Atlantic Ocean. If the Confederate forces could hold this corner of eastern Tennessee, they could keep the door open to supply Virginia from the west.

  Lincoln knew that the people of this mountainous region, although living in a seceded state, remained fiercely loyal to the Union. They did not own slaves. Cut off geographically from both middle Tennessee to the west and Georgia to the south, they were an isolated mountain island in the midst of the Confederacy.

  Lincoln had been discouraged when General William Rosecrans had stopped at Murfreesboro in middle Tennessee after his victory at Stones River in January 1863. Rosecrans, with a reputation for bold action, inexplicably seemed to give way to caution. Finally, on June 23, after nearly six months of preparation and unrelenting pressure from Lincoln and Secretary of War Stanton, Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland pushed the Confederate forces under General Braxton Bragg one hundred miles over the Cumberland mountains and across the Tennessee River to the edge of Chattanooga, with a loss of only 560 casualties. Then Rosecrans stopped again.

  On July 7, 1863, Stanton, elated by the news of the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, wired Rosecrans, “You and your noble army now have the chance to put the finishing blow to the rebellion. Will you neglect the chance?”

  Rosecrans, more than a little annoyed that his army’s accomplishments had not been fully acknowledged, wired back, “You do not appear to observe the fact that this noble army has driven the rebels from Middle Tennessee. … I beg in behalf of this army that the War Department may not overlook so great an event because it is not written in showers of blood.” Old Rosy’s final comment was a not-so-subtle reference to his belief that Grant had sacrificed far too many men to achieve victory at Vicksburg.

  At Lincoln’s urging, Henry Halleck wired Rosecrans on July 24, 1863. “There is great disappointment felt here at the slowness of your advance.” Later that day, Halleck wrote again, “The patience of the authorities here has been completely exhausted.”

  Rosecrans, bypassing Halleck, wrote the principal authority on August 1, 1863. In a long letter to Lincoln he listed nine reasons for his delay. He told Lincoln he had been held up by a torn-up Louisville and Nashville railroad, by a lack of “adequate cavalry,” by rains that had rendered the “turnpikes next to impossible,” that he needed to draw supplies 260 miles “exposed to hostile cavalry raids,” and on and on. Rosecrans concluded, “You will not be surprised if in face of these difficulties it takes time to organize the means of success.”

  Lincoln, having the same sinking feeling about Rosecrans that he had in the past about too many previous commanders, began his reply with his customary affirmation, expressing his “kind feeling for and confidence in you.” Lincoln hoped to calm the agitated Rosecrans, to get him to stop worrying and start fighting. The president concluded, “Do not misunderstand. … I am not watching you with an evil eye.”

  Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland finally moved on Chattanooga on August 16, 1863. The Confederate Army of Tennessee, under General Braxton Bragg, abandoned the city on September 9. General Ambrose Burnside, in command of the small Army of the Ohio, had captured Knoxville, Tennessee, in a parallel advance a week earlier. Lincoln had hoped to liberate eastern Tennessee in the fall of 1861, but it seemed finally accomplished in the fall of 1863. Or was it? Rosecrans, heading south into Georgia in three columns, believed he had defeated Bragg, but the Confederate general had only engineered a strategic retreat, waiting to fight another day at a time and place of his choosing.

  General William Rosecrans, “Old Rosy,” commanded the Army of the Cumberland as it approached Chattanooga, the back door to Virginia and Georgia.

  On September 19 and 20, 1863, Bragg hurled his troops at Rosecrans at Chickamauga Creek southeast of Chattanooga. A misguided move by Rosecrans on the second day allowed fifteen thousand Confederate troops to punch through on his right. General James Longstreet, Rose-crans’s roommate from the class of 1842 at West Point, arrived on September 20 with two divisions from the Army of Northern Virginia and helped sweep one-third of the Union forces from the field. Rosecrans and part of his army retreated back to Chattanooga, but General George H. Thomas stayed on the field, rallied his men on Snodgrass Hill, and blocked the further movement of the Confederate forces. For his heroism, Thomas earned the nickname “the Rock of Chickamauga.”

  On September 20, 1863, Charles Dana, assistant secretary of war, but in truth Stanton’s spy, wired his boss, “Chickamauga is as fatal a name in our history as Bull Run. … [O]ur soldiers turned and fled. It was a wholesale panic.”

  Lincoln stayed at the telegraph office late into the evening, wiring Burnside at 2 a.m., September 21,1863, “Go to Rosecrans with your force, without a moments delay.” Learning that Burnside had sent troops in the opposite direction to Jonesboro, in pursuit of small guerrilla forces, Lincoln returned to the telegraph office. “DamnJonesboro!” he exclaimed.

  “Well, Rosecrans has been whipped, as I feared.” Lincoln walked into John Hay’s bedroom in the White House early on the morning of September 21, even before his young secretary was up. Sitting down on Hay’s bed, Lincoln continued, “I have feared it for several days. I believe I feel trouble in the air before it comes.”

  At 11 a.m., Lincoln wrote Burnside again, “If you are to do any good to Rosecrans it will not do to waste time with Jonesboro.” Four days later, in exasperation, Lincoln wrote saying that the receipt of Burn-side’s most recent telegram “makes me doubt whether I am awake or dreaming.” Lincoln recounted Burnside’s protestations over the many days that he was preparing to move, but never seemed to do so. At one point, Lincoln called Burnside’s actions “incomprehensible.” Lincoln signed the letter, blotted the ink, endorsed the envelope, struggled to get control of his anger, and decided not to send it.

  On the evening of September 23, 1863, shortly after Lincoln had gone to bed at the Soldiers’ Home, he was awakened by his secretary John Hay, who had ridden out in “splendid moonlight” to invite the president back to a hastily called midnight meeting convened by Stan-ton. A “considerably disturbed” Lincoln dressed and returned with Hay, where he found Halleck, Seward, and Chase had joined Stanton. They discussed the options for sending reinforcements to support Rosecrans. Stanton asked Halleck how long it would take for troops from the Army of the Potomac to reach Chattanooga. The general supposed sixty days, perhaps forty. Stanton responded that if traders could ship twenty thousand bales of cotton by railroad to Chattanooga in twenty days, let the Union send twenty thousand soldiers.

  Lincoln was skeptical of the whole operation, pointing out that “you can’t get one corps into Washington in the time you fix for reaching Nashville.” He then proceeded to humorously illustrate this “impossibility,” but Stanton interjected that “the danger was too imminent & the occasion too serious for jokes.” The conversation continued until almost morning with the president and Halleck, originally opposed, finally offering their support for the plan.

  Lincoln was wrong. The troops began moving to the railheads in twelve hours and boarded the trains on the morning of September 25, 1863. In a stunning example of the transportation revolution, Stanton elicited cooperation from railroad men so that five trains, each with thirty cars, left Washington. In
the end, five sets of five trains traveled on a route of 1,233 miles. Lincoln had his doubts, but twenty-three thousand men, more than twenty thousand horses, plus artillery and equipment, rolled toward Chattanooga. They traveled on nine independently operated railroads with different gauge tracks over the Appalachians and across the Ohio River, where bridges had to be improvised twice, arriving eleven days later at a railhead near Chattanooga.

  All of these reinforcements, including General William Sherman’s four divisions from Vicksburg, seemed neither to mollify nor strengthen Rosecrans. His army, back in Chattanooga, found itself besieged, with guns aimed at them from Missionary Ridge on the north and Lookout Mountain on the south. Lincoln wrote to Rosecrans in early October to stress the stakes. “If we can hold Chattanooga, and East Tennessee, I think the rebellion must dwindle and die.”

  Even the president’s encouragement did not work. Charles Dana reported to Lincoln that Old Rosy “was for the present completely broken down.” The president, upon receiving this report, told John Hay that Rosecrans was “confused and stunned like a duck hit on the head” ever since the disaster at Chickamauga.

  Lincoln now knew he needed to replace Rosecrans. But timing was everything. Lincoln decided to delay doing anything until after the Ohio elections, knowing that Rosecrans and his chief of staff, James Garfield, were both natives of Ohio and enjoyed immense popularity in their home state.

  THE ISSUES LINCOLN FACED in the border state of Missouri did not go away, but became even more contentious in the summer and fall of 1863. Lincoln believed he had a friend in Missouri in Hamilton R. Gamble, a conservative former Whig who had been elected as the provisional governor in 1861 and who remained in office. Throughout the Civil War, however, the state was locked in internal warfare and political factionalism exacerbated by continual changes in civilian and military leadership. In 1863, the president became caught between radicals and conservatives battling over emancipation, each attacking him for not taking their side.