A. Lincoln

by Ronald C. White, Jr.

  This cartoon depicts General George McClellan as the one peace figure who can keep President Abraham Lincoln and President Jefferson Davis apart.

  The change in the fortunes of battle energized the Lincoln reelection campaign. Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman captured the public’s imagination, and both were known to admire Lincoln. But something more began to emerge across the North. Despite the politicians’ wariness about Lincoln, the people were not suspicious but enthusiastic. Lincoln had communicated his love for the Union in his public letters and at Gettysburg. They believed in him. The commander in chief, better known to his troops as Father Abraham, found an admiration and affection among the troops that seemed ready to translate into votes on the first Tuesday in November.

  JUST AS THE FALL political campaign began, after a lapse of more than a year, Lincoln resumed his correspondence with Mrs. Eliza Gurney, the Quaker leader who had called on him in his office in the fall of 1862. Gurney wrote the president in August 1863, but there is no record of his reply. Lincoln received scores of delegations of religious leaders, but for a reason never explained, he felt free to share his deepest thoughts with this Quaker woman. On September 4, 1864, writing right after Lincoln learned of the capture of Atlanta, he seemed more confident of the purposes of God than he had been two years earlier in his first letter to Gurney. “The purposes of the Almighty are perfect,” he now wrote. The president believed these purposes “must prevail, though we erring mortals may fail to accurately perceive them in advance.” He expressed to Mrs. Gurney both his hopes and his resignation. “We hoped for a happy termination of this terrible war long before this; but God knows best, and has ruled otherwise.”

  With the terrible violence unleashed by Grant and Sherman during this period, Lincoln strove to understand how good could come from a terrible war. “Meanwhile we must work earnestly in the best light He gives us, trusting that so working still conduces to the great ends He ordains. Surely He intends some great good to follow this mighty convulsion, which no mortal could make, and no mortal could stay.”

  ELECTION DAY, November 8, 1864, dawned dark and rainy in Washington. McClellan had been counting on the soldiers’ votes, but Republicans, in control of all the state legislatures except New Jersey, Indiana, and Illinois, determined to provide absentee ballots in hopes the soldiers would vote for the commander in chief.

  At seven in the evening, Lincoln walked to the telegraph office with John Hay and Noah Brooks to follow the returns. Initial returns from Philadelphia brightened everyone’s spirits. Lincoln had the results taken to Mary, who, he acknowledged, “is more anxious than I.” The telegraph chatter continued to signal good news. At a midnight supper, Lincoln, in a jubilant mood, passed out oysters to everyone.

  The final election results revealed that Lincoln had won an overwhelming victory. He received 2,203,831 votes to McClellan’s 1,797,019. He won the electoral vote even more decisively, 221 to 21, winning every state except New Jersey, Delaware, and Kentucky. Lincoln won, but even Republicans admitted that, for many, the vote was against McClellan as much as for Lincoln. The president did feel a sense of relief and pride, however, in the soldiers’ vote: 116,887 for him and only 37,748 for General McClellan.

  Lincoln would approach his second inauguration vindicated personally and expecting final victory on the field of battle.

  Alexander Gardner took this photograph on February 5, 1865, one month before Lincoln’s second inaugural address. The photograph shows the tremendous aging that had taken place in just four years.

  CHAPTER 26

  With Malice Toward None, with Charity for All

  December 1864–April 1865

  A KING’S CURE FOR ALL THE EVILS.

  ABRAHAM LINCOLN

  Describing the Thirteenth Amendment, February 1, 1865

  BRAHAM LINCOLN WENT TO BED AFTER MIDNIGHT ON ELECTION night, November 8, 1864. His old friend Ward Hill Lamon, who had always worried about the president’s safety more than anyone, gathered some blankets and lay down in front of the president’s bedroom door armed with a brace of pistols and a Bowie knife. Knowing Lincoln would have discounted any danger, Lamon left before the president awoke in the morning.

  Lamon had been warning the president of danger from the moment he accompanied Lincoln on his midnight train ride through Baltimore to Washington after an assassination plot was uncovered in February 1861. His fears increased when Lincoln started riding back and forth from the White House to the Soldiers’ Home in the summer of 1862. At that time, Lamon urged upon him “the necessity of a military escort,” but the president waved off the suggestion and persisted in riding alone. One evening at about eleven, a rifle shot rang out as Lincoln rode from the White House to the Soldiers’ Home. Lincoln’s horse, Old Abe, took off “at a break-neck speed.” The next morning Lincoln, minus his eight-dollar plug hat, told Lamon this story but to his surprise, “in a spirit of levity,” Lincoln protested that it must have been an accident, but admitted, “I tell you there is no time on record equal to that made by the two Old Abes on that occasion.”

  The threats to Lincoln multiplied after his reelection when foes, both in the South and North, recognized that the president would be in office for another four years. In December 1864, Lamon put his concerns in writing. “I regret that you do not appreciate what I have repeatedly said to you in regard to proper police arrangements connected with your household and your own personal safety.” He added, “You know, or ought to know, that your life is sought after, and will be taken unless you and your friends are cautious; for you have many enemies within our lines.” His plea to the president: “ You are in danger. ”

  TWO NIGHTS LATER, Lincoln greeted serenaders from a second-floor window at the White House. In prepared remarks he spoke to them not about a Republican triumph, but about the fact “that a people’s government can sustain a national election, in the midst of a great civil war.” Lincoln said the election affirmed that “he who is most devoted to the Union, and most opposed to treason, can receive most of the people’s votes.” With the debate over the future of Reconstruction after the war on the lips of politicians, Lincoln signaled his attitude. “For my own part I have striven to avoid placing any obstacle in the way. So long as I have been here I have not willingly planted a thorn in any man’s bosom.” Many in Lincoln’s own party did not appreciate the president’s offering of reconciliation.

  In the weeks that followed, Lincoln looked toward a second term that would last until March 1869. He busied himself thinking about his staff, cabinet, and an important judicial appointment. In his first term Lincoln had enjoyed the full support of his two loyal secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, but he knew they were exhausted. The president intended to reward their service by appointing them to diplomatic positions in France.

  He already knew who would take their place. In the last two years of his first term, no one had become closer to Lincoln than Noah Brooks, the politically perceptive correspondent for the Sacramento Daily Union. Brooks had become a trusted friend as well as a liaison with the press. Born in Castine, Maine, Brooks moved to Dixon, Illinois, in 1856, where he first became acquainted with Lincoln during John C. Frémont’s Republican presidential campaign. Brooks moved to California in 1859, but when his wife died in childbirth in 1862, he accepted an assignment to report for the Sacramento Daily Union from Washington. He enjoyed unusual access to the president. When so many around Lincoln constantly pestered him for preferment, Brooks asked nothing for himself.

  Lincoln needed to make new cabinet appointments. Attorney General Edward Bates, at seventy-one, had decided to step down. Lincoln asked James Speed, the older brother of Joshua Speed, to accept this important post. Unlike his younger brother, James Speed was an early and strong opponent of slavery. “I am a thorough Constitutional Abolitionist,” he had declared in the fall campaign of 1864.

  Lincoln appointed Ohioan William Dennison, who had chaired the National Union Party convention in Baltimore in June 1864,
to replace Montgomery Blair, who had resigned. Lincoln would also replace the largely ineffectual interior secretary, John P. Usher, with Senator James Harlan of Iowa, a strong supporter of Lincoln. Treasury Secretary William Fessenden told Lincoln he wanted to return to the Senate, so the president selected the competent if colorless Hugh McCullough, comptroller of the currency, for treasury.

  Taken together, these appointments signaled the prospect of a quite different leadership style for Lincoln’s second term. In his first term he had selected recognized leaders for his cabinet, both Republican and Democratic, arguing that he needed the most capable people around him. What Lincoln didn’t say, but implied, was an acknowledgment of his own lack of experience. Lincoln’s selections for the second term, on the other hand, represented capable people, but none of them rose to the same level of prominence as party leaders as Seward, Chase, Bates, and Cameron. He gladly continued with William Seward as secretary of state, a recognized but controversial leader who had become his closest political friend. The appointments of Speed and Dennison strengthened the radical side of the Republican Party in his cabinet. All of the new appointees, unlike some of his first-term appointments, had demonstrated their personal loyalty to the president.

  LINCOLN’S MOST IMPORTANT APPOINTMENT would be a new chief justice of the United States to succeed Roger Taney, who had died on October 12, 1864. There was no shortage of candidates who stepped forward in self-promotion or were lobbied for by friends. Attorney General Edward Bates wrote Lincoln the day after Taney’s death requesting to be appointed “as the crowning, retiring honor of my life.” Former Illinois senator Orville Browning encouraged Lincoln to appoint Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Francis Blair, Sr., wrote Lincoln imploring him to appoint his son, Montgomery, until recently postmaster general, which would “remove the cloud which his ostracism from your Cabinet” brought about by his forced resignation. Charles Sumner recommended Salmon P. Chase, whose candidacy, in a typically clumsy manner, was supported by an overkill of letters to the president. Sumner, who had Lincoln’s ear, went so far as to ask Chase to write him a letter that he would then show the president. Chase must have swallowed hard when he penned Sumner before the November election, “Happily it is now certain that the next Administration will be in the hands of Mr. Lincoln from whom the world will expect great things.”

  Lincoln decided to take his time with this appointment. To the frustration of the many candidates and their supporters, he had not made any decision before the election. Lincoln had already appointed four associate justices—Noah Swayne, Samuel F. Miller, David Davis, and Stephen J. Field—more than any president since Andrew Jackson.

  Lincoln, the lawyer in the White House, believed that the validity of the Emancipation Proclamation and other Civil War acts could easily come under the review of the Supreme Court. Weighing this distinctive circumstance, Lincoln believed he should go with a person whose views were known. He told Congressman George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts, “We cannot ask a man what he will do, and if we should, and he should answer us, we should despise him for it. Therefore we must take a man whose opinions are known.”

  Lincoln chose Salmon P. Chase. The president understood better than anyone that Chase was hugely ambitious, had tried to unseat him for the 1864 Republican nomination, and criticized him behind his back from the beginning of his presidency. But Lincoln also knew Chase’s opinions. He knew that he would stand by the Emancipation Proclamation and a hoped-for amendment to outlaw slavery forever. It would be the last time Lincoln would turn to one of his rivals to carry out his policies.

  When the new Congress convened on December 5, 1864, Lincoln’s choice of Chase proved generally popular. Everyone recognized that the court would far outlast Lincoln in deciding the issues sure to emerge from the Civil War. Chase’s huge political ambition, which seemingly could be satisfied only by winning the presidency, would now be put aside forever by appointment to the top judicial post in the country. Lincoln’s generosity of spirit, combined with his shrewd political thinking, shone in this strategic choice.

  —

  LINCOLN HAD COME TO ADMIRE William Tecumseh Sherman for his pluck and courage, but he was also worried. After his capture of Atlanta, Sherman sought permission for a bold plan to leave his supply lines behind, march 285 miles to the sea, and then turn north to join Grant by attacking Robert E. Lee from the rear. Lincoln and Grant both worried that General John Bell Hood, who had replaced Confederate general Joseph Johnston, would disengage from Sherman and march north and west to reinvade Tennessee. Sherman met these objections by offering to send General George Thomas, “the Rock of Chickamauga,” with sixty thousand men to block Hood. Sherman argued that marching through Georgia would impose not simply a military defeat but a psychological blow on Southern morale. He won the argument and received permission for the march.

  On November 15, 1864, Sherman departed a smoldering Atlanta to march east to the Atlantic Ocean. Just as Lincoln and Grant had feared, Hood immediately struck out for Tennessee, hoping to draw some of Sherman’s army out of Georgia.

  In Georgia, the slim, red-bearded Sherman understood the venture before him as not simply the clash of two armies but of two societies. Sherman led a march in which his troops, deployed fifty miles wide, tore up railroad tracks and burned both businesses and homes that lay in their path. His words to his men, veterans of Shiloh, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga: “Forage liberally on the country.” Sherman offered his own definition of war: “War is cruelty and you cannot refine it,” he declared to the mayor of Atlanta.

  For the next month, in November and December 1864, with no telegraphic communication from Sherman, reports of his whereabouts, mostly from hostile Confederate newspaper accounts, were fragmentary. Nevertheless, the Northern public became caught up in the drama of Sherman’s march. In New York, George Templeton Strong wrote on November 28, 1864, “He has passed by Macon, has harried Milledgeville, and is threatening Savannah. Rebel editors judiciously keep back most of their information about his movements.” On December 8, Strong reflected the mood in the North when he confided to his diary, “Much concern about Sherman. His failure would be a fearful calamity.”

  No one was more worried about Sherman than Lincoln. Finally, after more than five weeks of waiting, he received a telegram from Sherman that had been carried by ship to the Virginia peninsula for transmit-tal to Washington. “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah with 150 heavy guns & plenty of ammunition & also about 25,000 bales of cotton.” The ten thousand Confederate defenders of Savannah had evacuated the city before Sherman could launch an attack.

  Lincoln answered Sherman immediately. Reminiscent of the spirit of his congratulatory letter to Grant after the victory at Vicksburg, he wrote, “When you were about leaving Atlanta … I was anxious, if not fearful; but feeling that you were the better judge.” Lincoln added, “Now, the undertaking being a success, the honor is all yours; for I believe none of us went farther than to acquiesce.” Lincoln, in this Christmas season of 1864, used words from the prophet Isaiah to tell Sherman that his march “brings those who sat in darkness, to see a great light.”

  THROUGHOUT THE WAR, one of the burdens that Lincoln took upon himself was writing to families who had lost a loved one in battle. In November, Lincoln learned through the War Department that Mrs. Lydia Bixby, a Boston widow, had lost five sons in the war. On November 16, 1864, Lincoln wrote her a heartfelt letter in which he told her, “I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming.” Lincoln concluded with a prayer: “that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.”

  An equal or greater burden for the president was reviewing capital sentences of soldiers after court-martial trials. He set aside time each Friday for what he
called “butcher’s day.” He thoroughly disliked this task but knew it had to be done. Lincoln looked for reasons to pardon soldiers accused of falling asleep on sentry duty, going home without leave, fleeing from the battlefront, and desertion. Lincoln was known to be especially amenable to mothers and wives who came to the White House to plead for sons and husbands. He knew in issuing so many pardons he was going against the opinion of commanding officers who worried that the president’s penchant for leniency could work against their obligation to establish order and discipline. On the same day Lincoln wrote to Mrs. Bixby, he wrote a letter typical of hundreds he penned during the Civil War. “Upon rejoining his regiment as soon as practicable & faithfully serving out his term, this man is pardoned for any overstaying of time or deserting heretofore committed.”

  The care that Lincoln devoted to this task was especially reflected in a letter to James Madison Cutts, who was sentenced to dismissal from the army after a series of problems, including peering through a hotel transom at a woman undressing, violence and abuse toward soldiers under his command, and quarreling with other officers. Lincoln knew Cutts was the brother of Adele Cutts Douglas, the widow of Senator Stephen A. Douglas, and now wrote him a fatherly letter. “You have too much of life before you, and have shown too much promise as an officer, for your future to be lightly surrendered.” After quoting Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “Beware of entrance to a quarrel,” Lincoln offered his own advice: “Quarrel not at all.” Why? “No man resolved to make the most of himself, can spare time for personal contention. Still less can he afford to take all the consequences, including the vitiating of his temper, and the loss of self-control.” Lincoln sent him back to serve in the Army of the Potomac. Cutts went on to distinguish himself in the battles at the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Petersburg, winning the only triple Medal of Honor in the history of the U.S. military.