A. Lincoln

by Ronald C. White, Jr.

  Lincoln did not know Missouri well, but the way he dealt with the state’s complex problems revealed his political dexterity. When a conflict arose at the end of 1862 over who would appoint and organize Union troops in Missouri, the governor or the War Department, Lincoln told Attorney General Edward Bates, himself from Missouri, “I therefore think it is safer when a practical question arises, to decide that question directly, and not indirectly, by deciding a general abstraction supposed to include it.” This directive lifted up the central core of Lincoln’s political philosophy. He embraced a pragmatic approach to politics and had become wary of politicians whose ideology, be it conservative or liberal, blinded them to the practical considerations inherent in local conditions.

  In September 1862, General John M. Schofield was replaced by General Samuel R. Curtis as commander of the Department of Missouri. Curtis had achieved fame by leading outnumbered Union forces to victory at Pea Ridge, Arkansas, on the Arkansas-Missouri border on March 7–8, 1862. Curtis soon sided with Missouri’s antislavery forces, which led to a clash with Governor Gamble. In December, Curtis arrested the Reverend Samuel B. McPheeters, minister of the Pine Street Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, charging him with sympathy for the enemy and ordering him to stop preaching in his church and leave the state. Lincoln, following a detailed investigation, wrote Curtis informing him that he was suspending his order. He told Curtis that after speaking with McPheeters, “I tell you frankly, I believe he does sympathize with the rebels,” but a larger point was at issue. “The U.S. government must not… undertake to run the churches.” Lincoln then stated a policy that he adhered to all during the war: “Let the churches, as such take care of themselves.”

  By May 1863, having had enough of Curtis’s continuing to side with the radicals, Lincoln decided to reappoint John Schofield, who he believed would be more evenhanded. He told Schofield that the people of Missouri had entered into “a pestilent factional quarrel among themselves.” He knew he was handing him “a difficult role,” so he offered him advice: “If both factions, or neither, shall abuse you, you will probably be about right.”

  Lincoln’s appointment of Schofield brought a testy letter from a group of “Union people” asking Lincoln to “suspend that appointment until you hear from us.” The president replied that day. “It is very painful to me that you in Missouri cannot, or will not, settle your factional quarrel among yourselves. I have been tormented with it beyond endurance for months, by both sides.” What upset Lincoln the most: “Neither side pays the least respect to my appeals to your reasons.”

  In the summer and fall of 1863, both sides stepped up their attacks on Lincoln. Although a number of issues were in play, including patronage, the central problem was emancipation. The radicals, called “Charcoals,” favored immediate emancipation. The conservatives, known as “Snowflakes,” resisted interference with the institution of slavery. The “Claybanks,” so called because their position was purportedly colorless, occupied the middle ground, calling for gradual emancipation.

  Lincoln tried to distinguish for the combatants the difference between ends and means. He favored emancipation, but in a state long wedded to slavery, he believed that immediate emancipation would produce too much of a backlash. He would have backed a plan for gradual emancipation, but the Snowflakes proposed a plan stating that slavery not end until 1870, and that peonage, a system where blacks would continue to labor in servitude until their debts were paid, could go on from eleven years to life. Lincoln told John Hay that he disliked this proposal because it ended up “postponing the benefits of freedom to the slave instead of giving him an immediate vested interest therein.”

  When the Missourians could not get their way, they traveled to Washington to protest. Governor Gamble called on Lincoln at the White House wishing to enlist Lincoln’s support against the radicals’ plan for immediate emancipation. When he did not receive that support, he wrote angrily to Attorney General Bates, “I express to you my profound conviction that the President is a mere intriguing, pettifogging, piddling politician.”

  In late September 1863, Lincoln welcomed a delegation of radicals fresh from an emancipation convention in Jefferson City. Charles D. Drake, their firebrand leader, had been a Whig, a Know-Nothing, and a Democrat; he was now a radical Republican. Lincoln knew that the resolutions passed at their convention included removing both Gamble and Schofield. Lincoln kept them cooling their heels for three days in Washington before meeting them on September 30. Confident that they could pressure the president to remove Schofield and accede to their demands, the group was surprised when he did not. Instead, he told Drake that he had had enough of their tough tactics. Restraining his anger, he told them he would write them his decisions.

  On October 5, 1863, he wrote that he would retain Schofield and would instruct him to place Missouri again under martial law. With time to collect his thoughts, Lincoln laid out for them what happens when “all being for the Union. … each will prefer a different way of sustaining the Union.” A pattern developed: “At once sincerity is questioned, and motives are assailed. Actual war coming, blood grows hot, and blood is spilled. Thought is forced from old channels into confusion. Deception breeds and thrives. Confidence dies, and universal suspicion reigns.” No psychologist could have described it better.

  Both sides, true to Lincoln’s analysis, could not hear. Both Gamble and Drake went home angry. Lincoln, in the fall of 1863, decided, despite his best efforts, he could not solve the problems of Missouri. In late October, he told Missourian Bates, he “had no friends in Missouri.”

  LINCOLN HAD ONE EYE TRAINED on the military battlefield and another on the election battlefield in the fall of 1863. Although the spring elections in Massachusetts and Connecticut had gone well, he knew the fall elections offered an opportunity for Democrats to vote against his policies. Governors were to be elected in Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Kentucky, and California. Lincoln understood that Democrats, having scored gains in the 1862 midterm elections, wished to demonstrate that voting in 1863 could set the tone for the national elections of 1864.

  The political practice of the day prevented Lincoln from campaigning. He did encourage his close friends, both in Washington and in the states, to campaign vigorously. The president worked closely with Secretary of War Stanton to arrange furloughs for soldiers so they could return home and vote, and, in some instances, vote in the field. Confined to Washington, Lincoln monitored the elections closely from the War Department telegraph office.

  In Ohio, John Brough, a tough-talking Republican, was running under a Union ticket against the outspoken Clement Vallandigham, the Democratic peace candidate exiled in Canada. In Pennsylvania, Governor Andrew G. Curtin faced a tough challenger in Democratic Pennsylvania chief justice George W. Woodward, who was holding hearings on the constitutionality of Lincoln’s controversial March Conscription Act.

  Ohio and Pennsylvania voted on Tuesday, October 13, 1863. During the day, Lincoln told Welles he felt “nervous” about the contests. In the evening, an anxious Lincoln telegraphed Columbus. “Where is John Brough?” Learning that Brough was in the telegraph office, Lincoln asked, “Brough, what is your majority now?” He replied, “Over 30,000.” Lincoln requested Brough to remain in the telegraph office in Columbus during the night as would he in Washington. The majority rose to over 50,000 at midnight, and by five o’clock the next morning, over 100,000. Vallandigham had been decisively defeated. Chase, who had used his considerable influence campaigning in his home state, wired Lincoln: “The victory is complete, beyond all hopes.” Lincoln, ecstatic, wired back, “Glory to God in the highest. Ohio has saved the Nation.”

  On election night, Lincoln also heard welcome news from the Keystone State. Even though Curtin won by just twenty thousand votes, an exuberant supporter wrote to Lincoln, “Pennsylvania stands by you, keeping step with Maine and California to the music of the Union.” The next day, Welles met the president, “who is in
good spirits and greatly relieved from the depression of yesterday.” Lincoln told the secretary of the navy “he had more anxiety in regard to the election results of yesterday than he had in 1860 when he was chosen.”

  James F. Moorhead, a congressman from Pennsylvania, wrote Lincoln to suggest the larger meaning of the election victories. “Let me congratulate you on the glorious result in Ohio & Penna, who now declare for A Lincoln in 1864.”

  THREE DAYS AFTER THE VICTORIES in the crucial fall elections, Lincoln acted to win the victory on the military battlefield. On October 16, 1863, he directed Halleck to inform Grant, “You will receive herewith the orders of the President of the United States placing you in command of the Departments of the Ohio, Cumberland, and Tennessee.” Lincoln decided to combine these three separate commands under his best general. He further gave Grant the option of changing the organization of these departments “as you deem most practicable.” Grant was told he had the option to keep William Rosecrans or put George Thomas in his place. Thomas became commander of the Army of the Cumberland. Immediately upon receiving his new command, Thomas wrote Grant from Chattanooga, “I will hold the town till we starve.”

  Lincoln, receiving mail from eastern Tennessee, replied to two concerned citizens of Knoxville, “You do not estimate the holding of East Tennessee more highly than I do.”

  LINCOLN SURPRISED HIS CABINET when he accepted an invitation to travel to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to be the secondary speaker at the dedication of the nation’s first national military cemetery. They had watched as Lincoln turned down all invitations to speak outside Washington. When the president had left Washington, he did so only to visit the Army of the Potomac at the front.

  In late September, Massachusetts senator Charles Sumner reminded Lincoln of the letter from John Murray Forbes, a Boston industrialist who had written on September 8, 1863, to commend the president for his letter to the Springfield rally. Forbes wrote, “My suggestion then is that you should seize an early opportunity and any subsequent chance to teach your great audience.” After a series of successful public letters, Lincoln became more open to opportunities to speak outside Washington.

  Within days after the battle of Gettysburg, plans were set in motion that would lead to a national soldiers’ cemetery. In previous wars, American soldiers were buried where they fell in battle. This remained the pattern into the first two years of the Civil War. Graves were marked in makeshift ways that too often were not permanent. Everything began to change on the battlefields in 1862, and reached a new dimension at Gettysburg in the fall of 1863.

  David Wills, a successful Gettysburg attorney, directed plans for the national cemetery. Wills and his committee made the decision that a national cemetery required a national dedication. The planners set October 23, 1863, for the dedication, a fall day that would still ensure good weather. Exactly one month before, on September 23, Edward Everett, the most celebrated speaker in the United States, was invited to offer the central address. Everett replied immediately that a month would not be sufficient time for the research and preparation of a totally new address. He responded that he would not be ready to deliver such an important address until November 19. Thus, Everett set the date for the dedication ceremonies.

  Wills also invited some of the leading literary artists of the day to participate. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Greenleaf Whittier, and William Cullen Bryant were requested to prepare a poem or ode for the occasion. Each declined.

  Abraham Lincoln was the last speaker invited. Wills wrote to the president on November 2, 1863, just seventeen days before the event. “I am authorized by the Governors of the different states to invite you to be present, and participate in these ceremonies, which will doubtless be very imposing and solemnly impressive.” Wills’s invitation included a brief word about the nature of the remarks the president should give. “It is the desire that, after the Oration, You as Chief Executive of the Nation formally set apart these grounds to their Sacred use by a few appropriate remarks.”

  On Wednesday, November 18, 1863, Lincoln arrived at the little depot on Carlisle Street in Gettysburg at sundown. Stepping from the train, he observed hundreds of coffins lined up on the station platform. He was met by Wills, Everett, and Ward Hill Lamon, who had been appointed marshal in chief for the dedication.

  The president was driven to the Wills residence, the most splendid home on the town square, or “the Diamond,” as the locals called it. Lincoln was shown up the steep front stairs to his bedroom on the second floor, where he intended to spend some time finalizing his speech. Lincoln appreciated the hospitality he received that evening, but his heart was back in Washington. Young Tad had fallen seriously ill, and he knew that Mary, never forgetting the death of Willie, would be as deeply fearful as he was.

  On November 19, 1863, Ward Hill Lamon, acting as marshal, struggled to assemble the dignitaries outside the Wills home on the Diamond. Lincoln appeared at the appointed hour of 10 a.m. dressed in a black suit with a frock coat. He wore his usual tall silk hat, to which he had added a wide mourning band in memory of Willie. Lincoln was assigned a bay horse so small that the president’s long legs nearly touched the ground.

  Lincoln rode in a parade along Baltimore Street in Gettysburg on the morning of November 19, 1863.

  American flags could be seen everywhere along the route up Baltimore Street. Buildings were pockmarked with bullet holes, evidence of the battle less than five months before. Children were selling cookies and lemonade, as well as souvenir bullets, and even cannonballs.

  At least fifteen thousand people had come from many parts of the country to be present at the dedication. The proceedings began with an invocation and hymn. Edward Everett then stepped forward to deliver his oration. Lincoln respected Everett, protégé of Daniel Webster, because the New England orator had delivered a lecture on George Washington nearly 150 times across the nation, donating close to $100,000 to the restoration of Washington’s home at Mount Vernon.

  Lincoln followed Everett’s address attentively. The president stirred when Everett, losing his footing, spoke of “General Lee;” Lincoln, turning to Seward, whispered a correction—“General Meade.” Everett, after speaking for two hours and eight minutes, finally concluded.

  Lamon introduced Lincoln. The crowd had become restless after such a long oration. A photographer who had pitched his equipment directly in front of the platform busily adjusted his camera as he prepared to take a photograph of the president speaking. Lincoln rose, adjusted his spectacles, and took out of the left breast pocket of his coat his dedicatory remarks. Beyond the sprawling crowd, Lincoln could see row upon row of soldiers’ graves. He shifted his speaking text to his left hand, and began: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

  New England politician Edward Everett was invited to be the featured speaker at Gettysburg.

  Lincoln, in this enlarged photograph taken before his address, is in the center, hatless, with part of his face covered by the hat of a soldier.

  In the four and a half months since Lincoln’s response to the victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, his earlier words at the White House, “eighty odd years,” became “Four score and seven years ago” at Gettysburg. This was not a simple way to say “eighty-seven.” Lincoln asked his audience to calculate backward to discover that the nation began with the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Lincoln’s opening words found their root in Psalm 90: “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; And if by reason of strength they be fourscore years.” Lincoln never named the Bible, or quoted directly from it in his remarks, but the whole of his speech would be suffused with biblical content and cadence.

  Lincoln built the architecture of the Gettysburg Address upon a structure of past, present, and future time. He started in the past by placing the dedication of the battlefield in the larger context of Amer
ican history. His opening words highlighted historical continuity. He began with a biblical allusion that accented permanence, and yet at the same time noted the nation’s continuity had already surpassed the biblical time frame for life and death. In speaking of “our fathers” Lincoln invoked a common heritage of the founding fathers, and at the same time identified himself with his audience.

  Lincoln’s first sentence took flight with the Declaration of Independence’s American truth that “all men are created equal.” Lincoln had sounded this note in his recent letter to the Springfield meeting. When Lincoln reaffirmed this truth at Gettysburg, he was asserting the war to be about both liberty and union.

  “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived, and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives, that that nation might live.” After his long introductory sentence, Lincoln traveled rapidly forward from the Revolution to the Civil War. With quick brushstrokes, he recapitulated the meaning of the war. As a speaker, he was usually spare with his adjectives, but on this occasion he modified both Civil War and battlefield with “great.” Unlike Everett, he spent none of his words on the details of the battle. His purpose was to transfigure the dedication with a larger meaning of the purpose of the “nation,” a word he would use five times in his address. The Civil War was a “testing” of the founding ideals of the nation to see whether they can “endure.”

  “It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.” His words “but, in a larger sense” were his clue to the audience that he was about to expand the parameters of his intentions for this day. With this transition, he began his appeal from the past battle to the present dedication.