Certainly, Lincoln was not oblivious to the infighting of his colleagues. He remained firmly convinced, however, that so long as each continued to do his own job well, no changes need be made. Moreover, he had no desire for contentious cabinet discussions on tactical matters, preferring to rely on the trusted counsel of Seward and Stanton. Still, he understood the resentment this provoked in neglected members of his administration; and through many small acts of generosity, he managed to keep the respect and affection of his disgruntled colleagues.
Recognizing Blair’s desire for more personal influence, Lincoln kept his door open to both Monty and his father. Monty Blair, despite his frustrations, was ultimately loyal and had accomplished marvels as postmaster general, utterly transforming a primitive postal system without letter carriers, mailboxes on streets, or free delivery. Modernizing the postal service was particularly important for the soldiers, who relied on letters, newspapers, and magazines from home to sustain morale. To this end, Blair created a special system of army post offices, complete with army postmasters and stamp agents. His innovations provided the means for soldiers to send mail without postage so long as the recipient paid three cents on delivery of each letter. Even when foul weather and muddy roads made the delivery of mails to the army camps nearly impossible, inordinate efforts allowed the mail to get through.
Lincoln was also careful to reserve time for private conversation with Welles. He would often catch up with his “Neptune” on the pathway leading from the White House to the War and Navy Departments or call him aside as they awaited news in the telegraph office. In his written correspondence, the president was equally thoughtful. When he felt compelled to issue Welles an order regarding the instructions of naval officers at neutral ports, he assured Welles that “it is not intended to be insinuated that you have been remiss in the performance of the arduous and responsible duties of your Department, which I take pleasure in affirming has, in your hands, been conducted with admirable success.”
So, in the end, the feuding cabinet members, with the exception of Chase, remained loyal to their president, who met rivalry and irritability with kindness and defused their tensions with humor. A particularly bitter argument arose between Chase and Monty Blair when Blair claimed that the Fugitive Slave Law still applied in loyal states and should be employed to return a runaway to his owner; Chase demanded instead that the slave be placed into military service. Lincoln mediated the dispute, assuring them both that this very issue had long bedeviled him. “It reminded him,” Welles recorded in his diary, “of a man in Illinois who was in debt and terribly annoyed by a pressing creditor, until finally the debtor assumed to be crazy whenever the creditor broached the subject. I, said the President, have on more than one occasion, in this room when beset by extremists on this question, been compelled to appear to be very mad.”
During another tense session, Lincoln cited the work of the humorist Orpheus Kerr, which he especially relished, even though it often lampooned him and the members of the cabinet. “Now the hits that are given to you, Mr. Welles or to Chase I can enjoy, but I dare say they may have disgusted you while I was laughing at them. So vice versa as regards myself.”
WHILE WORKING TO SUSTAIN the spirits of his cabinet, Lincoln also tried to soothe the incessant bickering and occasional resentment among his generals. Learning that William Rosecrans, headquartered in Nashville, had taken umbrage at a note he had sent, Lincoln replied at once. “In no case have I intended to censure you, or to question your ability,” he wrote. “I frequently make mistakes myself, in the many things I am compelled to do hastily.” He had merely intended to express concern over Rosecrans’s action regarding a particular colonel. And when Lincoln felt compelled to remove General Samuel Curtis from command in Missouri, he assured him that his removal was necessary only “to somehow break up the state of things in Missouri,” where Governor Gamble headed one quarreling faction and Curtis another. “I did not mean to cast any censure upon you, nor to indorse any of the charges made against you by others. With me the presumption is still in your favor that you are honest, capable, faithful, and patriotic.”
Despite Lincoln’s diplomacy, the quarrels in Missouri continued, eliciting a note from Governor Gamble complaining that the language in one of Lincoln’s published letters had been “grossly offensive” to him. When Hay presented the note to Lincoln, he was told “to put it away.” Lincoln explained to Gamble that as he was “trying to preserve [his] own temper, by avoiding irritants, so far as practicable,” he had decided not to read what his secretary had described as a “cross” letter. Having made his point, Lincoln assured the wounded Gamble: “I was totally unconscious of any malice, or disrespect towards you, or of using any expression which should offend you.”
Lincoln’s patience had its limits, however. When Major General Robert H. Milroy railed about “the blind unreasoning hatred” of Halleck that he claimed had supposedly led to his suspension from command, Lincoln was unyielding. “I have scarcely seen anything from you at any time, that did not contain imputations against your superiors,” Lincoln replied. “You have constantly urged the idea that you were persecuted because you did not come from West-Point, and you repeat it in these letters. This, my dear general, is I fear, the rock on which you have split.”
Likewise, when Rosecrans grumbled that his request for a predated commission to secure a higher rank had been denied, Lincoln was unsympathetic: “Truth to speak, I do not appreciate this matter of rank on paper, as you officers do. The world will not forget that you fought the battle of ‘Stone River’ and it will never care a fig whether you rank Gen. Grant on paper, or he so, ranks you.”
As he was forced to deal with quarreling generals on almost every front, it is little wonder that Lincoln developed such respect and admiration for Ulysses S. Grant. Steadily and uncomplainingly, Grant had advanced toward Vicksburg, the Confederate stronghold whose capture would give the Union control of the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy. By the middle of May, after five successive victories, Grant had come within striking distance of Vicksburg. After two direct assaults against John Pemberton’s forces failed on May 19 and May 22, he settled into a siege designed to starve the Confederates out.
“Whether Gen. Grant shall or shall not consummate the capture of Vicksburg,” Lincoln wrote a friend on May 26, “his campaign from the beginning of this month up to the twenty second day of it, is one of the most brilliant in the world.” During the troubling weeks with Hooker’s army in the East, news from Grant’s army in the West had sustained Lincoln. In March, Stanton had sent Charles Dana, the newspaperman who would later become assistant secretary of war, to observe General Grant and report on his movements. Dana had developed a powerful respect for Grant that was evident in his long, detailed dispatches. Lincoln’s own estimation of his general steadily increased as reports revealed a terse man of character and action. Requesting that General Banks join forces with him in the final drive to open the Mississippi, Grant assured Banks that he “would gladly serve under him as his superior in rank or simply cooperate with him for the benefit of the common cause if he should prefer that course.”
Despite his growing regard for Grant, there were instances that required Lincoln to intervene with his most successful general. In a misguided effort to stop peddlers from illegally profiteering in cotton in areas penetrated by Union armies, Grant had issued an order expelling “the Jews, as a class,” from his department. The discriminatory order, which contained no provision for individual hearings or trials, forced all Jewish people to depart within twenty-four hours, leaving horses, carriages, and other valuables behind.
When a delegation of Jewish leaders approached Lincoln, it was clear that he was not fully informed about the matter. He responded to their plight with a biblical allusion: “And so the children of Israel were driven from the happy land of Canaan?” The delegation leader answered: “Yes, and that is why we have come unto Father Abraham’s bosom, asking protection.” Lincoln re
plied quickly: “And this protection they shall have at once.” He took his pen and wrote a note to Halleck, ordering immediate cancellation of the order. Halleck reluctantly complied after assuring Grant that “the President has no objection to your expelling traitors and Jew peddlers, which, I suppose, was the object of your order; but, as it in terms proscribed an entire religious class, some of whom are fighting in our ranks, the President deemed it necessary to revoke it.”
Lincoln was also confronted by continuing rumors of Grant’s relapse into excessive drinking. Tales of drunkenness were not confined to Grant. Elizabeth Blair heard that during the Battle of Chancellorsville, Hooker “was drunk all the time,” while Bates was told that “General H.[alleck] was a confirmed opium-eater,” a habit that contributed to his “watery eyes” and “bloated” appearance. In Grant’s case, the gossip reached Lincoln by way of the puritanical Chase, who had received a letter from Murat Halstead. The respected journalist warned Chase that Grant was “most of the time more than half drunk, and much of the time idiotically drunk.”
In fact, Lincoln and Stanton had already heard similar complaints. After dispatching investigators to look into General Grant’s behavior, however, they had concluded that his drinking did not affect his unmatched ability to plan, execute, and win battles. A memorable story circulated that when a delegation brought further rumors of Grant’s drinking to the president, Lincoln declared that if he could find the brand of whiskey Grant used, he would promptly distribute it to the rest of his generals!
WHILE THE SIEGE OF VICKSBURG tightened in the West, a deceptive quiet settled on the Rappahannock. After visiting Hooker’s headquarters in mid-May, Senators Wade and Chandler told Lincoln that the pickets on both sides of the river had resumed “their old pastime of bandying wit and repartee…‘I say Yank,’ shouted over one of the Rebels, ‘where is fightin’ Joe Hooker, now?’ ‘Oh, he’s gone to Stonewall Jackson’s funeral,’ shouted ‘Yank’ in reply.”
During this interlude on the Eastern front, Seward accompanied Frances and Fanny back to Auburn, where they were planning to spend the summer. For a few precious days, he entertained old friends, caught up on his reading, and tended his garden. The sole trying event was the decision to fell a favorite old poplar tree that had grown unsound. Frances could not bear to be present as it was cut, certain that she “should feel every stroke of the axe.” Once it was over, however, she could relax in the beautiful garden she had sorely missed during her prolonged stay in Washington. On June 1, when Seward boarded the train to return to the capital, Fanny wrote that their home seemed “very lonely” without him.
No sooner had Seward departed Auburn than Frances and Fanny began hearing troubling rumors that Lee intended to invade Washington, Maryland, or Pennsylvania. “We have again been anxious about Washington,” Fanny told her father. “Although I don’t consider myself a protection, Washington seems safer to me when I am there.” Reassuring his daughter, Seward noted that during his stay in Auburn, he, too, had remained “in constant uneasiness” over all manner of rumors that proved groundless upon his return to the capital. “Certainly the last thing that any one here thinks of, now-a-days, is an invasion of Washington.”
On Monday, June 8, Mary and Tad left the capital for a two-week vacation in Philadelphia, where they took a suite at the Continental Hotel. After they had gone, Welles spoke with Lincoln about a “delicate” matter concerning Mary. In the aftermath of Willie’s death the previous year, she had canceled the weekly Marine Band summer concerts on the White House lawn. Welles warned that if the public were deprived of the entertainment for yet another season, the “grumbling and discontent” of the previous summer would only increase. Lincoln hesitated at first. Willie had loved the weekly concerts with their picniclike festivities, but “Mrs. L. would not consent, certainly not until after the 4th of July.” When Welles persisted, Lincoln finally agreed to let him do whatever he “thought best.” That night, most likely unsettled by the conversation about Willie, Lincoln had a nightmare about Tad’s recently acquired revolver. “Think you better put ‘Tad’s’ pistol away,” he wired Mary the next morning. “I had an ugly dream about him.”
In the days that followed, reports that Lee’s army was heading north through the Shenandoah Valley to invade Maryland and Pennsylvania multiplied. On June 15, Seward sent a telegram to his son Will, suggesting he had better cut short his leave to return to his regiment in Washington. “Oh! what a disappointment!” Fanny lamented. Will had just arrived in Auburn for a twenty-day sojourn with both his own family and Jenny’s. Many plans would be canceled, including “a double family pic-nic to the Lake.” Writing to Frances that same day, Seward sought to set her mind at ease. Though it now seemed certain that Lee had crossed the Rappahannock, she must “not infer that there is any increase of danger for any of us in this change.” On the contrary, “the near approach of battles toward us brings disadvantages to the enemy, and adds to our strength.”
In similar fashion, Lincoln reassured Mary when a headline in a Northern paper blared: “Invasion! Rebel Forces in Maryland and Pennsylvania.” “It is a matter of choice with yourself whether you come home,” he told her. “I do not think the raid into Pennsylvania amounts to anything at all.” When each day brought reports of further Confederate advances, however, Mary decided to rejoin her husband in Washington.
“The country, now, is in a blaze of excitement,” Benjamin French recorded on June 18. “Some of the Rebel troops have crossed into the upper part of Pennsylvania, & the North is wide awake.” While Welles worried that “something of a panic pervades the city,” Lincoln remained quietly confident that the Union troops, fighting on home ground, would achieve the signal victory so long denied. Capitalizing on the intense patriotism inspired by the invasion, he called out a hundred thousand troops from the militias in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, and the new state of West Virginia.
“I should think this constant toil and moil would kill him,” French marveled, yet the resilient president seemed “in excellent spirits.” Inspired by Lincoln’s steadfast nature, French added, “the more I see of him the more I am convinced of his superlative goodness, truth, kindness & Patriotism.”
In the tense atmosphere of Washington, the committee charged with planning the Fourth of July celebrations considered suspending their preparations. “Don’t you stop!” Mary Lincoln ordered White House secretary William Stoddard, promising to personally help make the anniversary celebrations a success. Reflecting her husband’s unruffled confidence, she assured Stoddard of her husband’s certainty that “the crisis has come and that all the chances are on our side. This move of Lee’s is all he could ask for.”
Lincoln’s primary concern was that Hooker would again be “outgeneraled” by Lee. His worry escalated in the last weeks of June when he “observed in Hooker the same failings that were witnessed in McClellan after the Battle of Antietam. A want of alacrity to obey, and a greedy call for more troops which could not, and ought not to be taken from other points.” When Hooker delivered a prickly telegram asking to be relieved of command, Lincoln and Stanton replaced him with General George Meade, who had participated in the Peninsula Campaign, Second Bull Run, and Chancellorsville. The surprising move distressed Chase. He had long championed Hooker and had recently returned from spending the day with him in the field. When Lincoln informed his cabinet that the change was already accomplished, Welles noted that “Chase was disturbed more than he cared should appear.” The following day, Chase wrote to Kate, who was in New York. “You must have been greatly astonished for the relieving of General Hooker; but your astonishment cannot have exceeded mine.”
THREE DAYS LATER, in Pennsylvania, the three-day Battle of Gettysburg began. “The turning point of the whole war seems to be crowding itself into the present,” wrote John Nicolay. “It seems almost impossible to wait for the result. Hours become days and days become months in such a suspense.” If Lee achieved victory at Gettysburg, he could move on to Philadelphia, Bal
timore, and Washington. His aura of invincibility might, it was feared, eventually lead the British and French to recognize the independence of the Confederacy and bring the war to an end.
Telegraph service from the front was “poor and desultory,” according to operator David Bates. Lincoln remained a constant fixture in the telegraph office, resting fitfully on the couch. At intervals, Stanton, Seward, Welles, and Senators Sumner and Chandler drifted in and out. Senator Chandler would “never forget the painful anxiety of those few days when the fate of the nation seemed to hang in the balance; nor the restless solicitude of Mr. Lincoln, as he paced up and down the room, reading dispatches, soliloquizing, and often stopping to trace the map which hung on the wall.” Sketched on the map were the generals and places that would later be engraved in history: James Longstreet and George Pickett, Winfield Hancock and Joshua Chamberlain, Little Round Top and Cemetery Ridge.
After inconclusive fighting on the first day, a dispatch from Meade on Thursday night, July 2, reported that “after one of the severest contests of the war,” the rebels had been “repulsed at all points.” Still, given recent reversals and the protracted uncertainty in the present, everyone held their breath. As of 9 p.m. the following night, the New York Times reported, “no reliable advices have been received here from the Pennsylvania battlefield. It is generally felt that this is the crisis of the war. Intense anxiety prevails.” At midnight, a messenger handed Welles a telegram from a Connecticut editor named Byington, who had left the battlefield a few hours earlier and reported that “everything looked hopeful.” Welles assured Lincoln that Byington was “reliable,” but the hours of uncertainty continued until shortly after dawn, July 4, when a telegram from Meade reported that the battle had been successfully concluded. The rebels were withdrawing after severe losses. Casualties were later calculated at 28,000, nearly a third of Lee’s army.
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