One … claimed … 104,300: Sears, George B. McClellan, p. 207.
quite a different count: Rafuse, McClellan’s War, p. 221.
“fight those people for years”: quoted in Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 1, p. 469.
Porter put this delusion: quoted in Sears, George B. McClellan, p. 203.
McClellan’s flatterers: cf. Samuel Barlow to McClellan, June 17, 1862.
“I regret my great inferiority”: McClellan to Stanton, June 25, 1862.
A week of brutal fighting: Sears, George B. McClellan, p. 217.
“It was not war”: quoted in Rafuse, McClellan’s War, p. 229.
watched the final charge: Eye of the Storm, July 1, 1862.
“Had I (20,000)”: McClellan to Stanton, June 28, 1862; also Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, pp. 108–9.
“They will never forgive”: quoted in Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 1, p. 493.
“Some enterprising newsgatherer”: Nicolay to Therena Bates, June 29, 1862.
“The evident panic”: Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln: A History, Vol. 5, p. 443.
“Save your Army”: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 289–91.
“On the whole”: ibid., pp. 292–93.
the proper strategy: ibid., p. 284n.
recruiting offices: ibid., pp. 291–92.
“a general panic”: ibid.
“Your good mother”: ibid., p. 288.
“maintain this contest”: ibid., pp. 291–92.
issued a call for 300,000: ibid., pp. 295–97.
“We still have strength enough”: ibid., p. 298.
“He would look out of the window”: Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, pp. 138–41.
8: JULY
“he is not missed”: Eye of the Storm, July 1, 1862.
signalmen waved flags: ibid., July 4, 1862.
“Attacked by … superior forces”: Sears, George B. McClellan, pp. 224–25.
“a masterpiece of strategy”: CW, Vol. 5, p. 308.
“inconsolable as I could be”: RW, pp. 136–37.
Judged calmly and soberly: Ethan Rafuse makes a strong case for Harrison’s Landing as an ideal base for fresh operations in McClellan’s War, for example on p. 231.
three officers from the peninsula: French diary, July 7, 1862.
“so little real faith”: Nicolay to Therena Bates, July 6 and 13, 1862.
pessimistic dispatch: McClellan to Lorenzo Thomas, July 1, 1862; McClellan to Lincoln, July 4, 1862.
“how long we have … been expecting”: French diary, July 4, 1862.
“Blondin walked across a tightrope”: “Conversation with Hon. T. Lyle Dickey (of Chicago Ill) Washington Oct 20, 1876” in An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln, p. 49; see also http://www.tourniagara.com/history/daredevils/jean-francois-gravelet/.
“put Richmond off”: RW, pp. 198–99.
pretzel of diplomatic contortions: CW, Vol. 5, p. 308.
John McClernand: Browning diary, July 16, 1862.
“even a thousand fresh men”: McClellan to John Dix, July 1, 1862; McClellan to Lincoln, July 2, 1862.
A scant nine months: McClellan, Report of Major-General George B. McClellan upon the Organization of the Army of the Potomac, and Its Campaigns in Virginia and Maryland, July 26, 1861, to November 7, 1862, p. 4.
“impossible to re-inforce”: CW, Vol. 5, p. 298.
“Allow me to reason”: ibid., p. 301.
Two messages … an hour apart: McClellan to Lincoln, July 4, 1862 [noon]; McClellan to Lincoln, July 4, 1862, 1 P.M.
thirty-six hours later: McClellan to Mary Ellen McClellan, July 6, 1862.
Pressing his case: Browning diary, July 14, 1862; Sears, George B. McClellan, p. 226.
“borrow and send Bob”: CW, Vol. 5, p. 309.
Upriver at Harrison’s Landing: Rafuse, McClellan’s War, p. 233; McClellan to Mary Ellen McClellan, July 8, 1862.
Lincoln wanted to know: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 309–12.
“present state of Military affairs”: McClellan to Lincoln, June 20, 1862.
“the character of a War”: McClellan to Lincoln, July 7, 1862.
“A declaration of radical views”: ibid.
Lincoln’s own constitutional duty: The Constitution of the United States of America, Article II, Section 2.
“the Pres[ident]’s manner”: McClellan to Mary Ellen McClellan, July 9 and 10, 1862.
“came home in better spirits”: Nicolay to Therena Bates, July 13, 1862.
information Lincoln drew: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 309–12.
“big levy of new troops”: ibid., pp. 302–3.
Johnson’s answer: ibid., p. 303n.
a depressing telegram: ibid., p. 313.
Lincoln cajoled the … governors: ibid., p. 304.
“If I am right”: ibid., p. 322.
the general grudgingly replied: McClellan to Lincoln, July 15, 1862.
When Charles Sumner suggested: Sumner to John Bright, Aug. 5, 1862.
worst possible result: Seward to Adams, July 5, 1862.
to talk the border states: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 317–19.
“The pressure … is increasing”: ibid.
closed with a flourish: ibid.
the offer was refused: ibid., p. 319n.
Lincoln tried to answer: ibid., p. 324.
“it would be unjust”: Gideon Welles, “The History of Emancipation,” The Galaxy 14, no. 6 (1872), pp. 842–43, available online at http://www.archive.org/stream/historyofemancip00well#page/n1/mode/2up.
Lincoln stunned his colleagues: Welles diary, July 13, 1862.
“He saw no escape”: Welles, “The History of Emancipation,” p. 843.
stripping … their war-making resources: ibid.
“He dwelt earnestly”: ibid.
Seward seemed “startled”: Welles, Lincoln and Seward. Remarks upon the Memorial Address of Chas. Francis Adams, on the Late William H. Seward, with Incidents and Comments Illustrative of the Measure and Policy of the Administration of Abraham Lincoln. And Views as to the Relative Positions of the Late President and Secretary of State, p. 210.
“ought to be vetoed”: Browning diary, July 14, 1862.
“He looked weary”: ibid., July 15, 1862.
William Lindsay … boasted: Crook, Diplomacy During the American Civil War, pp. 82–84.
“de facto independence”: Anonymous, The History of The Times: The Tradition Established, 1841–1884, p. 380.
a “possible emergency”: Adams to Seward, July 17, 1862.
“The Thirty Years’ War”: Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861–1865, pp. 216–17.
“a war of the world”: Seward to Adams, July 28, 1862.
Napoleon … was thinking: Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, pp. 310–13; Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 6, pp. 76–79.
“back-kitchen way”: quoted in Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, p. 115.
Lincoln’s complaint: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 328–31.
“act to destroy slavery”: Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 6, p. 101.
As a precaution: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 328–31.
“greatest friend of the … Railroad”: Bain, Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad, p. 218.
“thorough and universal education”: RW, p. 244.
“what I have always regretted”: ibid., p. 160.
“Our session has been busy”: Sumner to John Bright, Aug. 5, 1862.
“I am heartily glad”: Nicolay to Therena Bates, July 13 and 18, 1862.
“condemned European firelocks”: Stoddard, Lincoln’s Third Secretary, pp. 137–40.
top-secret chemical experiments: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 354 and 385.
nightmares of generations … unborn: Henig and Niderost, Civil War Firsts: The Legacies of America’s Bloodiest Conflict, pp. 76–83.
Gilbert & Bennett: A brief history of the firm that claims to have invented a mass-produced woven wire window screen can be found online at http://historyofredding.net/HGgilbertbennett.htm.
“The gas lights”: Nicolay to Therena Bates, July 20, 1862.
“The drives and walks”: Mary Lincoln to Mrs. Charles Eames, July 26, 1862.
Bob … wanted to join the army: Randall, Lincoln’s Sons, p. 145.
critics weren’t shy: ibid., p. 144.
“We have lost one son”: ibid., p. 145.
“a passion of tears”: Randall, Mary Lincoln, pp. 264–65.
“I scarcely ever had ten minutes”: ibid., p. 144.
His first visitor was … Gurowski: Chase diary, July 21, 1862.
“loved to talk”: Van Deusen, William Henry Seward, pp. 258–59.
“struck me as a novelty”: Chase diary, June 21, 1862.
Chase had serious doubts: ibid.
responded with violence: Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, pp. 124–25.
trouble selling bonds: Chase diary, July 22, 1862.
first known reading of the Emancipation Proclamation: ibid.
“all the slaves, without exception”: Guelzo, Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, p. 121.
Lincoln did not respond: Welles, “The History of Emancipation,” p. 844.
“more quietly accomplished”: Chase diary, July 22, 1862.
“death knell” of slavery: Carpenter, The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln, pp. 72–73.
“last shriek”: Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 6, pp. 127–30.
“wisdom … struck me”: Carpenter, The Inner Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 22.
“[Lincoln] would relieve me”: McClellan to Mary Ellen McClellan, July 27, 1862.
“I know nothing”: McClellan to Samuel Barlow, July 30, 1862.
“I have done my best”: McClellan to Hill Carter, July 11, 1862.
“psalm singing yankees”: McClellan to Mary Ellen McClellan, July 22, 1862.
“I call it flat Treason”: quoted in Sears, George B. McClellan, p. 241.
“rather large military family”: McClellan to Mary Ellen McClellan, July 29 and 31, 1862.
Mary Ellen … encouraged him: Sears, George B. McClellan, p. 236.
“slap in the face”: McClellan to Samuel Barlow, July 23, 1862; Sears, George B. McClellan, p. 240.
“If by magic”: Browning diary, July 25, 1862.
To mitigate the danger: CW, Vol. 5, p. 308.
in no way his fault: McClellan to Mary Ellen McClellan, July 31, 1862.
“I have come to you from the West”: Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, Vol. 2, p. 530n.
“paltry young man”: McClellan to Mary Ellen McClellan, July 22, 1862.
“The temper of the North”: Dahlgren diary, June 21, 1862.
arming black troops: Chase diary, July 25, 1862.
“I shall not surrender”: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 342–43.
“This class of men”: ibid., pp. 344–46.
“enemies must understand”: ibid., pp. 350–51.
9: AUGUST
always close the door: Stoddard, Lincoln’s Third Secretary, pp. 100–101.
rise from washed-up congressman: See, for example, Beveridge, Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 2, 1809–1858, pp. 362–442; Carwardine, Lincoln; Fehrenbacher, Prelude to Greatness; Harris, Lincoln’s Rise to the Presidency; Holzer, Lincoln at Cooper Union: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President.
“shrewdest of long, hawk-nosed”: Stoddard, Lincoln’s Third Secretary, pp. 100–101.
“Lincoln used to tell us”: quoted in An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln, p. 61.
“intelligent political strategy”: Carwardine, Lincoln, pp. 272–74.
“I half wondered why”: Stoddard, Lincoln’s Third Secretary, pp. 101–2.
“The problem was”: Anonymous, Chronicle of the Union League of Philadelphia: 1862–1902, p. 35.
“A number of army contractors”: Stoddard, Lincoln’s Third Secretary, pp. 101–2.
painstakingly distributing these fruits: Chase diary, August 1862. The extensive work by Lincoln and Chase devoted to choosing new officeholders under the 1862 internal revenue bill is a recurring theme of Chase’s diary during this period.
one typically bombastic pronouncement: “The Liberty of the Citizen,” in Speeches of Daniel W. Voorhees, of Indiana, Embracing His Most Prominent Forensic, Political, Occasional and Literary Addresses, p. 94.
“Yet it seems unreasonable”: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 355–56.
Philadelphia … City Bounty Fund: Gallman, Mastering Wartime: A Social History of Philadelphia During the Civil War, p. 18.
Fifty-three men … in the Flint Hills: Thomas Ewing, Jr. to Ellen Ewing, Aug. 17, 1862, Ewing Family Papers, Box 67, Library of Congress Manuscript Division.
“men of the first character”: Thomas Ewing, Jr., to Thomas Ewing, Sr., Aug. 23, 1862, Ewing Family Papers, Box 14, No. 5111, Library of Congress Manuscript Division.
eighteen thousand per week: Dahlgren diary, Aug. 17, 1862; Welles diary, Aug. 22, 1862.
Lincoln pleaded for more troops: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 368 (to Andrew G. Curtin) and 393 (to Richard Yates).
French, surveyed the throng: French diary, Aug. 6, 1862.
“Hadn’t I better say a few words”: Chase diary, Aug. 6, 1862.
“Fellow citizens!”: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 358–59.
“greatly disappointed”: New-York Daily Tribune, Aug. 7, 1862, p. 4.
Chase, however, was impressed: Chase diary, Aug. 6, 1862.
waiting for supplies: Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 1, pp. 564–65.
Instead of a strike force: Hattaway and Jones, How the North Won, pp. 214–18.
“The remainder of the magnificent army”: Grant, Memoirs and Selected Letters, pp. 263–65.
the life of a bureaucrat: Grant to Elihu Washburne, July 22, 1862.
Grant’s soldiers were furious: Grant, Memoirs and Selected Letters, p. 267.
if Chase … believed: Grant to Chase, July 31, 1862.
“England [wants] … cotton”: quoted in Browning diary, July 25, 1862.
Spiraling prices: McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom, pp. 437–42.
“Give your paper mill”: Nicolay, quoted in An Oral History of Abraham Lincoln, p. 90.
Seward rattled … the swords: Seward to Adams, Aug. 13, 1862.
“construction of iron-clad ships”: ibid.
“impossible to overestimate”: Adams to Seward, July 31, 1862.
McClellan did not start: Sears, George B. McClellan, pp. 242–48.
“I am to have a sweat”: Dahlgren diary, Aug. 19, 1862.
“so uneasy”: quoted in Hattaway and Jones, How the North Won, pp. 223–24.
A heat wave: Welles diary, Aug. 8 and 10, 1862.
a bit of relief: Dahlgren diary, Aug. 7, 1862.
A second American Revolution: McPherson, Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, pp. 3–22.
“sensitive and even irritable”: Nicolay and Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 6, pp. 147–58.
a letter published on August 20 … Greeley: New-York Daily Tribune, Aug. 20, 1862.
“I would save the Union”: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 388–89.
“the turkey buzzards”: quoted in Kate Masur, “The African American Delegation to Abraham Lincoln: A Reappraisal,” Civil War History 45, no. 2 (June 2010), pp. 117–44.
Frederick Douglass … argued: ibid.
head servant, William Slade: ibid.
a formidable group: ibid.
“Why should they leave”: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 370–75.
“better for us both”: ibid.
“behind the Sumner lighthouse”: quoted in Brodie, Thaddeus Stevens, Scourge of the South, p. 161.
“Many of us have sold”: Masur, “The African American Delegation,” p. 121.
“Mrs. L … is not well”: CW, Vol. 5, p. 386.
“Oh Little Aleck”: quoted in Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 223.
Colchester’s séance: ibid., pp. 220–22; Pinsker, Lincoln’s Sanctuary, pp. 30–32; Randall, Mary Lincoln, pp. 261–65.
“a very slight veil”: quoted in Baker, Mary Todd Lincoln, p. 220
.
A headline in New York: New-York Tribune, Aug. 19, 1862.
Lincoln went … to the telegraph room: Bates, Lincoln in the Telegraph Office, p. 118.
“Do you hear any thing?”: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 395–96.
four hungry young Sioux: Cox, Lincoln and the Sioux Uprising of 1862, pp. 15–20.
“All the white soldiers”: ibid., pp. 20–26.
Thorns of grievance and honor: ibid., pp. 50–52, 67–69.
“panic” … “a wild panic”: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 396–67n.
“Necessity knows no law”: ibid., pp. 396–67.
“Pope will be thrashed”: McClellan to Mary Ellen McClellan, Aug. 10, 1862.
“I believe I have triumphed!!”: ibid., Aug. 21, 1862.
Little Mac … couldn’t comply: McClellan to Halleck, Aug. 27, 1862, 1:15 P.M.
“no time for details”: Halleck to McClellan, Aug. 27, 1862, 4 P.M.
with … Halleck until three A.M.: McClellan to Mary Ellen McClellan, Aug. 28, 1862.
Better to concentrate: McClellan to Halleck, multiple telegrams, Aug. 28, 1862.
“Not a moment must be lost”: Halleck to McClellan, Aug. 28, 1862, 3:30 P.M.
“no further delay”: ibid., 7:40 P.M.
explained to a flabbergasted Halleck: McClellan to Halleck, Aug. 29, 1862, 8 P.M.
Fitz John Porter: United States War Department, The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series 1, Vol. 12, Supplement.
“What news” … “What news?”: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 398–402.
“one of two courses”: McClellan to Lincoln, Aug. 29, 1862, 2:45 P.M.
Lincoln was “very outspoken”: Hay diary, Sept. 1, 1862.
Stanton was so furious: Chase diary, Aug. 29, 1862.
“Argument was useless”: Welles diary, Sept. 1, 1862.
the petition … was intemperate: ibid., Aug. 31, 1862.
“No, not now”: ibid.
“nothing but foul play”: Hay diary, Sept. 1, 1862.
hopes for a victory rose: CW, Vol. 5, pp. 400–401.
Stanton, still angry: Welles diary, Aug. 31, 1862.
lowered his voice conspiratorially: ibid.
“well and hilarious”: Hay diary, Sept. 1, 1862.
“we are whipped again”: ibid.
“Malice … Vandalism”: Welles diary, Aug. 31, 1862.
rescue the family silver: McClellan to Mary Ellen McClellan, Aug. 31, 1862.
“middle of last year”: RW, p. 256.
Rise to Greatness Page 52