Rise to Greatness

by David Von Drehle

  Pressing his point, Lincoln demanded: “Don’t you see? We are engaged in one of the greatest wars the world has ever seen.”

  Getting this off his chest may have done the president some good, because when Livermore returned on other business the next morning, he was not quite so grim. He still looked “haggard” and “ravage[d],” she noted, but when he heard that his words the previous evening had left his guests feeling “hopeless,” he protested earnestly: “Oh, no! Our affairs are by no means hopeless, for we have the right on our side.” Hope was exactly what the Union did have, the president insisted—a hope that “the cause of freedom” would prove to be “the cause of God,” for “then we may be sure it must ultimately triumph. But between that time and now,” he warned, “there is an amount of agony and suffering and trial for the people that they … are not prepared for.”

  * * *

  Tuesday, November 4, was the last of the autumn election days, and the result did nothing to brighten Lincoln’s mood. New Jersey ousted its Republican governor. In Wisconsin, which had seemed so promising to Iowa’s Senator Grimes a few weeks earlier, Democrats picked up ground. Lincoln’s friend Orville Browning lost his campaign for the Senate, and even the president’s home district elected a Democrat to fill the congressional seat he once occupied. Many in his party blamed Lincoln for the defeats, citing his failure to replace slow-moving Democratic generals with hard-fighting Republicans. One congressman from Pittsburgh, J. K. Moorhead, told the president that some Pennsylvania Republicans “would be glad to hear some morning that you had been found hanging from the post of a lamp at the door of the White House.” Lincoln glumly answered that “such an event would not surprise me.”

  By now, however, Lincoln was so accustomed to the depths of gloom that he seemed almost to draw strength from dark hours. He had long since learned that the most effective antidote to a bleak mood is action; by applying this lesson again and again he developed what one writer called an “ability to see clearly and persist sanely in conditions that could have rattled even the strongest minds.” Battered by discouraging election results and relentless critics, he responded in ways that were becoming familiar Lincoln signatures.

  When attacked by the German-American political leader Carl Schurz, for instance, Lincoln produced a response that could serve as an official statement, much as he had done in answering Horace Greeley’s pungent criticisms in August. Schurz, a fellow Republican, framed his party’s indictment bluntly in a pair of letters to the president. “Let us indulge in no delusions as to the true causes of our defeat in the elections,” he wrote. “The principal management of the war [has] been in the hands of your opponents.… It is best that you should see the fact in its true light and appreciate its significance: the result of the elections was a most serious and severe reproof administered to the Administration. Do not refuse to listen to the voice of the people.”

  Lincoln opened his published response with a flourish of wordplay: “I ought to be blamed, if I could do better. You think I could do better; therefore you blame me already. I think I could not do better; therefore I blame you for blaming me.” In a more serious tone, he moved on to reject the idea that the Union’s woes could be reduced to simple causes and pinned on particular scapegoats. “I fear we shall at last find out that the difficulty is in our case, rather than in particular generals.” This lawyerly phrase—“in our case”—meant that the difficulty was inherent in the facts of the Union’s predicament. Progress wasn’t slow just because of the listless generals; it was slow because the North faced a gritty and indomitable enemy, because the Union had to build a strong fighting force practically from nothing, and because the army’s front lines were spread across the enormous expanse of Southern territory. Then, in a deft gesture to the surging Democrats, Lincoln praised some of the opposition party’s fallen war heroes, emphasizing that no Republican gave more for the Union cause than they. What mattered, Lincoln declared, was victory, not party. “I need success more than sympathy,” he wrote, and “I have not seen … greater evidence of getting success from my sympathizers.”

  Lincoln also responded privately to the election results. Among the first messages he sent after all the polls closed was a terse summons to Congressman Moses Odell, a prowar Democrat from Brooklyn. “You are re-elected. I wish to see you at once. Will you come?” Odell was the token Democrat among the Republicans who constituted the Congressional Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War. His support had always been valuable to Lincoln, lending a bipartisan veneer to an often partisan project. That support was now more important than ever, because New York was the scene of the most dramatic of all Democratic victories. Fernando Wood had been elected to Congress and, more ominously for Lincoln, Horatio Seymour was the new governor. The president could never hope to win these men over, but with the help of friendly Democrats like Odell he might soften the impact of their opposition.

  As for Seymour, this would be his second term as governor of New York—the first had been ten years earlier—and most of those who enjoyed more than one term as governor of the Empire State cherished thoughts of the presidency. Once Lincoln began taking Seymour’s measure, he found a man he could understand, a man of ambitions not unlike his own. Through back channels, he assured the governor’s brother that he understood Seymour’s next step would be a presidential bid. After all, Lincoln wrote, he himself “was a party man and did not believe in any man who was not.” But the new governor should understand that “there could be no next presidency if the country was broken up.”

  Lincoln sent Thurlow Weed to pay a call in Albany as well, with instructions to remind the governor that the next president would surely be a man who helped to win the war, not one who tipped the balance in favor of the South. “Governor Seymour has greater power just now for good than any other man in the country,” the president told Weed. If Seymour would remain loyal—a critic, but loyal—Lincoln would not resist his rise to the White House once his own term was over. The president read Seymour correctly: the New Yorker sought and won the Democratic nomination six years later, in 1868. And whether or not Lincoln’s messages swayed Seymour’s thinking, the president got the results he wanted. Under Governor Seymour, New York would send more than 150,000 men to the Union army (exceeding its assigned quota) while pouring many millions in tax dollars and war bonds into the Federal Treasury.

  In these instances and others, the president reacted to the election returns—but he did not overreact. That made him unusual: most Republicans after the elections of 1862 believed the setback for their party was “a great historical event,” as Schurz put it. “The heavens were red as with blood, and our hearts were full of resentment and revenge,” one prominent Philadelphia Republican recalled. Charles Sumner pronounced the New York results “worse for our country than the bloodiest disaster on any field of battle.”

  In reality, though, the results were far from disastrous. Democrats gained thirty-one seats in the House of Representatives, but that was to be expected: the minority party almost always wins seats in a midterm election, and a shift of this magnitude was not uncommon in that era. In the Senate, Republicans actually gained seats. Despite the Democratic victories, then, Lincoln’s Republican Party retained a solid congressional majority, the only time in twenty years that an incumbent president had achieved this. At the state level, the same pattern prevailed. Democrats gained ground but did not win control. Despite the opposition’s success in mid-Atlantic and midwestern states, Republicans emerged from the polls with majorities in fifteen of the eighteen loyal legislatures (not counting the slaveholding border states). Only two of the eighteen states elected a Democratic governor.

  Lincoln had survived a severe political test. He had weathered the carnage of battlefields from Shiloh to Antietam, the humiliating withdrawal from the peninsula, the treacherous defeat at Second Bull Run, the Confederate invasion of the border states, and the announcement of his emancipation plans—not to mention the imposition of unpreceden
ted taxes, the beginnings of a military draft, and the suspension of habeas corpus. His still young party did something unusual even in peacetime: it retained the power to govern. In turn, the president renewed his power to lead.

  Which is why, immediately after an election that supposedly left him dangerously weak, Lincoln finally felt strong enough to fire George McClellan.

  * * *

  Lincoln’s view of the Union’s military leadership had soured considerably during the fall. Henry Halleck was increasingly disregarded; the president’s lack of faith in the abilities of his general in chief was especially apparent during a cabinet meeting on November 4, at which McClellan’s future was discussed. When Edward Bates suggested putting Halleck in command of the Army of the Potomac, Lincoln scoffed. “Halleck would be an indifferent general in the field,” he said. “He shrank from responsibility in his present position;… he is a moral coward, worth but little except as a critic.”

  But it was McClellan who attracted the greatest measure of Lincoln’s attention. The general’s halfhearted advance in the direction of Richmond stopped almost as soon as it started. Stonewall Jackson had little trouble racing to Culpeper, Virginia, ahead of McClellan and blocking what had been a wide-open road. “The President’s patience is at last completely exhausted with McClellan’s inaction and never-ending excuses,” wrote Nicolay. Lincoln had been “exceedingly reluctant” to relieve the general, the secretary continued, because “in many respects he thinks McClellan a very superior and efficient officer.”

  Yet the decision to act instantly after the election suggests that the president had been waiting for the moment when he could strike without adding steam to Democratic boilers. One additional factor also influenced his timing: by showing patience with the general and greatly reinforcing his army all through October, Lincoln hoped to demonstrate to the rank-and-file of McClellan’s army that their president was not the backstabber of disgruntled camp lore. He wanted success for them, and the failure to outflank Lee belonged to no one but the Young Napoleon.

  Lincoln was gradually winning the army’s confidence, but the removal of McClellan remained a delicate undertaking. The threat of a mutiny was in some respects more real than ever, because the election results were so widely viewed as a repudiation of the president’s leadership and a demand for change at the top. So Lincoln tiptoed. Though he had no qualms about issuing orders under his own signature, he began by arranging for the official order removing McClellan to come from the pen of Halleck, a Democrat. Halleck wasn’t good for much, but in this instance his signature provided useful cover.

  Equally cautious was Lincoln’s choice of a replacement. Ambrose Burnside, the magnificently bewhiskered victor at Roanoke, was well known and liked by McClellan and his clique. “Old Burn,” as McClellan called him, had been a year behind Little Mac at West Point; later, they worked together at the Illinois Central Railroad. In 1861, Burnside had done a splendid job of directing the training of the first green troops assigned to the Army of the Potomac, and since then he had marched and fought bravely, honorably, and sometimes successfully. Burnside never claimed to be a better general than he was; his well-founded humility had already led him to rebuff two invitations from Lincoln to take over McClellan’s command.

  As word began to spread on November 4 that McClellan would be replaced, the general’s few remaining supporters in the administration tried to save him. Montgomery Blair rode out to his family’s country estate to enlist his father’s help, and late that night the patriarch rushed to the presidential cottage nearby. Francis Blair, Sr., was a confidant of presidents going back to Andrew Jackson, and he made as strong a case for McClellan as anyone could. The Blairs interpreted the president’s decision to fire McClellan as a fatal display of weakness in the face of the abolitionist “ultras.” The old man warned Lincoln that he must stand up to the ultras or they would lead him, the party, and the country to ruin. But Lincoln’s mind was made up. He had “tried long enough to bore with an auger too dull to take hold,” he told the senior Blair. Rising from his seat, Lincoln “stretched his long arms almost to the ceiling,” Blair recounted to his son Montgomery, and explained that he could not back down. “I said I would remove him if he let Lee’s army get away from him, and I must do it. He has got the ‘slows,’ Mr. Blair.”

  Lincoln could not leave the army without a leader even for an hour, and he needed to be sure that Burnside would accept the promotion before he informed McClellan of the change. No ordinary courier could be entrusted with these responsibilities, so Edwin Stanton assigned Brigadier General Catharinus Buckingham of the War Department staff to carry the orders. He was to go first to Burnside and secure his consent. Only if the general agreed to serve was Buckingham to continue on to McClellan’s tent. If Burnside declined, the distinguished messenger was to return to Washington and wait for further instructions.

  Buckingham set out from Washington aboard a special train on November 7, as snow fell through darkened skies. At Burnside’s tent, some fifty miles west of Washington, he pressed the reluctant general to accept the assignment out of duty—and to prevent it from going to the brash and scheming Joseph Hooker. Successful, Buckingham moved five miles north to Rectortown with McClellan’s replacement in tow. Buckingham and Burnside arrived at the general’s headquarters around eleven P.M. and were gone again by eleven thirty, at which point McClellan dashed off an account of the meeting to his wife.

  “Another interruption—this time more important,” he wrote. “It was in the shape of dear good old Burnside accompanied by Genl Buckingham … they brought with them the order relieving me from the command of the Army of the Potomac, & assigning Burnside.… No cause is given.”

  He continued: “Poor Burn feels dreadfully, almost crazy—I am sorry for him, & he never showed himself a better man or truer friend than now. Of course I was much surprised—but as I read the order in the presence of Genl Buckingham, I am sure that not a muscle quivered nor was the slightest expression of feeling visible on my face, which they watched closely. They shall not have that triumph.

  “They have made a dreadful mistake,” McClellan concluded. “Alas for my poor country.” And then, characteristically, the general absolved himself of any responsibility. “If we have failed, it was not our fault.”

  The public learned of the great change the next day, and if that huge, lumbering Union army was ever inclined to turn on Washington and depose Lincoln, this was the time. There was grumbling in the ranks, and some rifles flung to the ground in protest, but the long-feared military coup never materialized. Some credit for this must go to McClellan, who behaved impeccably. Whatever questions lingered about the general’s patriotism were more than answered by his dignified departure from command.

  On November 10, George McClellan mounted Dan Webster and rode through the ranks one last time. “Gray-haired men came to me with tears streaming down their cheeks. I never before had to exercise so much self-control,” the general wrote. After he passed the last of these straight-backed columns—raw volunteers he had shaped into soldiers—McClellan boarded a railcar as an honor guard fired a final salute. Then the guardsmen crowded around the car and unhooked it from the train. They would not let him go.

  At last, the general stepped onto the rear platform and gestured for quiet. “Stand by General Burnside as you have stood by me,” he called out in a ringing tone, “and all will be well.” At that, the soldiers reconnected the car, the train chuffed slowly away, and with it went, in the words of one soldier, “the romance of war.” Robert E. Lee was also sorry to see him go, telling James Longstreet, “we always understood each other so well. I fear they may continue to make these changes until they find someone I don’t understand.”

  * * *

  Midway across the continent, after his frustrating summer on garrison duty and his successful battles with Price and Van Dorn, Ulysses Grant was finally moving again. He wired Washington to let Halleck know that he intended to gather the troops the general
in chief had scattered back in June and try to do something aggressive with them. He got no reply, which he correctly took to mean that he should go ahead.

  On November 2, Grant set out from Jackson, Tennessee, heading almost due south down the Tennessee and Ohio Railroad line. He was leading 42,000 men and intended to clear the Rebels as he went: away from the railroad crossing at Grand Junction, Tennessee; out of the supply depot in Holly Springs, Mississippi; away from the crossroads town of Oxford; off the Yalobusha River at Grenada. Patching up the railroad along the way, Grant figured he would eventually reach the Mississippi state capital, Jackson, where he could seize control of the road that led to Vicksburg. Cut off, the Confederates would have no choice but to evacuate their last Mississippi River stronghold and, as Lincoln would later put it, “the Father of Waters” would “again [go] unvexed to the sea.”

  That was the idea, and Grant’s campaign began smartly as he pushed the Rebels out of Grand Junction on November 8. But a cloud quickly formed over the general’s advancing army, seeded by Lincoln himself. The president had spent a good deal of time in October with an unhappy general from Grant’s command, the Illinois politician John McClernand. McClernand was not just any politician; since the death of his ally Stephen A. Douglas in June 1861, the longtime congressman was arguably the most prominent Democrat in Lincoln’s home state. From the opening days of the war, therefore, he was a special case for the president. After Fort Sumter, Lincoln immediately gave the untrained McClernand a generalship and put him in charge of a brigade of soldiers posted to Cairo, in McClernand’s own congressional district. Since Grant was the Union commander at Cairo, Lincoln’s special case became Grant’s special problem. It fell to him to figure out how to get along with a self-aggrandizing second in command whose military experience was limited to sixty days in the state militia, but whose political sway dominated the immediate neighborhood and stretched all the way to the White House.