These sentiments, despite their occasional grandiloquence, were wholly truthful so far as Stanton’s official actions were concerned. That he was McClellan’s “sincere friend” at the time he entered Lincoln’s cabinet is debatable, however, and he had scarcely fostered “every confidence” in McClellan when he criticized him to persons outside the government. Stanton was discreet, rather than untruthful, in not admitting his efforts to have the general removed from command. But it was the Secretary’s right, even his duty, to acquaint Lincoln and other officials who were responsible for the success of the war effort with his true estimate of McClellan, and to work for his removal once convinced that he was incompetent.
It has been charged that Stanton acted from political considerations in opposing McClellan and that he was the mouthpiece and ally of the radicals. The evidence fails to support such a charge. Though he shared many of the radicals’ political opinions, he needed no prompting from them in trying to get rid of McClellan. It had been evident to Stanton from the time he entered the War Department that the North could win only by taking the offensive; the task demanded generals with the will to fight relentless, offensive war. And McClellan, who fought only when a battle was forced upon him, was simply not the man for the job.
No dearth of war materials handicapped McClellan, and whenever troops were withheld from him the decision was Lincoln’s, not Stanton’s. When Stanton stopped recruiting, it was through bad judgment, not treachery. Until Halleck came to Washington, Stanton counseled Lincoln on troop placements and strategy, but Lincoln often disagreed with him, and Lincoln called the shots. In whatever degree interference from Washington, rather than McClellan’s own lethargy and incompetence, brought about the general’s undoing, Lincoln, not Stanton, was at fault. On the personal side, McClellan had ample reason to complain of Stanton’s conduct, but officially Stanton did his full duty.
Stanton was human enough to take pleasure in McClellan’s fall from power, and he gloated over it to ordnance officer Balch. That soldier’s wife, later repeating an account of this conversation, reflected Stanton’s feelings in these terms: “How wonderfully McClellan has disappeared from public view! The Herald it is true and papers of that ilk cry him up, and will not allow good in any one else. But his day has passed, as that of Frémont and various others.”17 But, Stanton worried, would Burnside, Lincoln and Halleck’s choice to succeed McClellan in command of the dispirited Army of the Potomac, be an improvement?
And would matters shape up better in the West as well? There, shortly before the ax fell on McClellan, Buell, in Kentucky, was also dropped. Like McClellan, his close friend, to whom he owed his appointment, Buell was a good organizer. But years of peacetime service in the adjutant general’s office had smothered the fire in his heart and bound him around with system. Gruff and unapproachable, a rigid disciplinarian, he rarely praised his officers or men, and they detested him. No general in the Union Army showed a tenderer regard for slaveowners.
When Braxton Bragg invaded Kentucky about the time Lee penetrated Maryland, Stanton persuaded Lincoln to replace Buell, recommending General George H. Thomas, a Virginian and, like Stanton, a Democrat. But Halleck induced Lincoln to give Buell another chance. Buell caught up with Bragg at Perryville, where a bloody fight took place. Both sides claimed a victory. But when Bragg withdrew into eastern Tennessee, Buell, instead of following him, decided to return to Nashville and begin new preparations for an advance on Chattanooga. Halleck warned him that Lincoln would tolerate no further delay. When Buell ignored this admonition, Lincoln decided again to remove him, a move Stanton had advocated for two months.
Stanton had no voice in the selection of William S. Rosecrans as Buell’s successor; the choice was Halleck’s, seconded by Chase. The fact that the new general, an Ohioan and a West Pointer, who had served with both McClellan and Grant since rejoining the Army, was an influential Roman Catholic layman and that his brother had recently been chosen Catholic bishop of the Cincinnati diocese, was not lost upon the political-minded Chase. Donn Piatt, who happened to be in the War Department when Rosecrans’s appointment was announced, declared that Stanton, turning to him abruptly, snarled: “Well, you have your choice of idiots; now look out for frightful disasters.” But like all of his recollections, this one too needs to be taken with a qualification that Piatt was prone to misstate facts and to distort personalities. In any case, Stanton did not oppose the Rosecrans appointment; he had met Rosecrans earlier that year, and the two men enjoyed a pleasant and lengthy interview, smoking and chatting intimately over a wide range of subjects. “You may consider this the beginning of good luck,” Stanton had said, according to Rosecrans’s account.18 Whether these new appointments would bring “good luck” or not was now up to the generals, not to Stanton.
1 Morse, Welles Diary, I, 70; McClellan, Own Story, 478, 487–9.
2 Blair, Jr., to Andrew, July 7, 1862, Andrew Papers, MHS; J. M. Bloch, The Rise of the New York World during the Civil War Decade (Ph.D. thesis, Harvard University, 1941), 121–30; Balch to wife, July 13, 1862, Balch Papers, UCB.
3 Wolcott to Barlow, ca. July 1862, undated file, Barlow Papers, HL; July 13, 1862, ms “Extracts from Letters to Wife,” McClellan Papers, LC; Detroit Post, Chandler, 228–9; Congressional Globe, 37th Cong., 2d sess., 3148–50, 3386–92.
4 Bancroft to son, July 28, 1862, Bancroft-Bliss Papers, LC; Smith to Stanton, July 29, 1862, Stanton MSS; Stanton to Smith, July 30, 1862, copy owned by Gideon Townsend Stanton.
5 Works, V, 358–9; Williams, Lincoln Finds a General, I, 216.
6 Croffutt, op. cit., 443; CCW, I, 650; Lincoln, Works, V, 312–3; Wolcott MS, 186. Years later, McClellan asserted that Stanton at this time warned him that Halleck was a “scoundrel” and “bare faced villain,” and when Halleck arrived, the new supreme commander came to McClellan to warn him, in much the same terms, against Stanton; see McClellan, Own Story, 137. The whole story seems improbable, is totally unsupported by other data, and is contradicted by Halleck’s testimony in Wilson, “General Halleck—A Memoir,” loc. cit., 557. Welles’s contention that Stanton plotted Pope’s and Halleck’s ascents, solely to diminish McClellan, is a misreading of the events; Beale, Welles Diary, I, 108–9.
7 Halleck to wife, July 13, Aug. 9, 1862, in Collector, XXI, 40, 52; to McClellan, March 8, 1862, McClellan Papers, LC; Ben Perley Poore, The Life and Public Service of Ambrose E. Burnside (Providence, 1882), 154; Ward to Seward, July 23, 1862, Seward Papers, UR; O.R., XI, pt. 3, 325.
8 Williams, Lincoln Finds a General, V, 271–82; Stephen E. Ambrose, “Lincoln and Halleck: A Study in Personal Relations,” ISHS Journal, LII, 208–24; Halleck to wife, August 9, 13, 1862, in Collector, XXI, 52; July 30, 1862, ms “Extracts from Letters to Wife,” McClellan Papers, LC; Chase, Diary, 112–13; O.R., XI, pt. 3, 337–8; Balch to wife, July 16, 1862, UCB.
9 On Stanton’s authorship, see James Ford Rhodes, History of the United States (New York, 1907), IV, 101, and Jacob D. Cox, Military Reminiscences (New York, 1900), II, 221–3. Washington Star, June 13, 1862, on guerrillas; Aug. 10, 1862, ms “Extracts from Letters to Wife,” McClellan Papers, LC.
10 Gorham, Stanton, II, 29–41; Chase, Diary, 116–20; Morse, Welles Diary, I, 93–108; Hay, Diaries and Letters, 45–6; McClellan, Own Story, 520; O.R., XII, pt. 3, 706, 766, 793–4, 807; ser. 3, II, 496; A. E. H. Johnson in New York Evening Post, July 13, 1891. Flower, Stanton, 177, incorrectly states that Lincoln not only saw the remonstrance but in Stanton’s office wrote an answer to it, which they kept secret.
11 Townsend, Anecdotes, 68–70; O.R., XII, pt. 3, 807; Stanton to Chandler, Sept. 18, 1862, Chandler Papers, LC; Hay, Diaries and Letters, 46; Morse, Welles Diary, I, 109, 112–13; Sept. 2, 1862, ms “Extracts from Letters to Wife,” McClellan Papers, LC.
12 O.R., XIX, pt. 2, 204, 217, 247; Halleck, Sept. 5, 1862, Collector, XXI, 53; S. Bettersworth to Barlow, Sept. 23, 1862, Barlow Papers, HL.
13 Morse, Welles Diary, I, 142; McClellan, Own Story, 536, 614; McCle
llan to Halleck, Sept. 19, 1862, R. T. Lincoln Papers, LC; Williams, Lincoln Finds a General, II, 458–60.
14 Stanton to Greeley, Oct. 4, 1862, Lincoln Papers, IU; Halleck to wife, Oct. 7, 1862, in Collector, XXI, 53; O.R., XIX, pt. 1, 8; pt. 2, 72; McClellan, Own Story, 613–14; Gorham, Stanton, II, 66; Flower, Stanton, 194–5; Morse, Welles Diary, I, 160–1; Andrews, op. cit., 315.
15 T. A. Scott to H. J. Jewett, Feb. 19, 1880, and to McClellan, same date, McClellan Papers, LC; Kamm, op. cit., 148–9; O.R., XIX, pt. 1, 7–9; pt. 2, 416, 492–3.
16 Halleck in Collector, XXI, 53; Lincoln, Works, V, 486; Oct. 31, 1862, ms “Extracts from Letters to Wife,” McClellan Papers, LC; T. J. Barnett to Barlow, Sept. 19, and Marcy to same, Sept. 21, 1862, Barlow Papers, HL.
17 Harriet Balch to her mother, May 4, 1863, George T. Balch Papers, UCB; to Dyer, in Gorham, Stanton, I, 426–32; Ropes memo, Feb. 1870, of conversation with Stanton, Sept. 1869, Woodman Papers, MHS, repeats the Dyer letter theme.
18 Piatt, op. cit., 81; Rosecrans to wife, April 11, 1862, Rosecrans Papers, UCLA; O.R., XVI, pt. 2, 623, 652; XXIII, pt. 2, 552.
CHAPTER XI
DISCOURAGED BUT NOT DESPAIRING
THROUGHOUT the summer of 1862, Stanton’s enemies had swooped in to press for his dismissal. They exploited the McClellan issue, the allegations of Stanton’s inefficiency in providing adequate medical care and weapons for the armies, and, increasing in significance, the question of the fate of the Negro. Stanton’s future depended entirely upon Lincoln’s confidence in him. Stanton felt that the nation’s future hinged on his ability to swing Lincoln toward a proper decision on the Negro question.
Lincoln’s outstanding characteristic as President was his capacity for growth: adapting himself, other men, and a multitude of measures to altered circumstances. He never lost sight of his primary goal, a restored Union. In that clear vision he saw that there were alternate approaches to the question of the Negro’s destiny. But he, like Stanton, sensed that there was no way to final success that must not first be hewed out by the Union’s soldiers.
When Stanton joined the cabinet, Seward, Bates, Welles, Smith, and Blair were convinced that the Negro question must be avoided so far as possible in order to keep the support of Southern Unionists and Northern conservatives. Chase alone represented the radical wing of the Republican party, which insisted that it was senseless to combat a rebellion while upholding the evil that had caused it.
As a war Democrat, Stanton had made himself acceptable to Republican moderates and radicals alike. During his first few months in the war office members of both groups as well as his erstwhile Democratic friends thought that his views on the Negro problem were in accord with their own. What becomes more and more manifest, however, is that Stanton’s rapport with the Buchanan-Breckinridge Democratic faction had been a marriage of convenience. Thus his natural inclination was to support Chase inside the cabinet and to cooperate with the Wade-Chandler-Stevens cabal in Congress, an inclination that took on the utility of expediency when the current of Northern opinion began to veer unmistakably their way, and because the co-operation of these congressmen was absolutely necessary if the Army was to get needed appropriations and recruitment legislation.
He certainly regarded the President as overly cautious on the Negro question. But Cameron’s fate reminded him that it was expedient to conform, at least outwardly, to Lincoln’s wishes. It was a situation to tempt this single-minded man, responsible for the primary instrument for the winning of the war—the Army—to see to this goal with every means at hand.
It was in the success and welfare of the Army that Lincoln and Stanton found their first identity of interest, and it became a lasting tie between the two men, although not the only one. Lincoln appreciated the fact that Stanton was also able to grow and yet bend his convictions to his chief’s decisions. And, in different ways, both men were deeply mystical. Although Stanton gave an impression of stern practicality, he had after all grown up in an atmosphere of antislavery convictions and rapturous spiritualism. His early religious experiences and his reactions to family tragedies, the fact that it was in a church that he had met Mary Lamson and that another house of worship offered him his first view of Ellen Hutchison, should not be forgotten.
Now Stanton was pouring his acquired skills as an organizer into the growing Union armies. But, deliberately hidden from almost everyone, he was also pouring out his heart. Though he had once detested militarism, the Army to him came to achieve the same kind of mystical symbolism as the Union itself. News of the brutal murder of his friend General Robert McCook, the brother of his former law partner, who was seized by rebel guerrillas while he lay ill in an army ambulance and slain in cold blood, touched Stanton’s deepest feelings. If Negro slavery impeded the forward march of Union troops, then he had no question in his mind or heart which must give way.
He quickly learned that wherever federal troops appeared in the loyal slaveholding states and in the enclaves of territory which Union arms had already wrested from Dixie, they acted as a disturbing and disintegrating force upon the institution of slavery. Northern soldiers, most of whom had no love for Negroes, equated slave ownership with disloyalty, coming thus simply to the heart of the matter. It was no accident that Stanton ordered the tracks of the vital Pennsylvania Railroad to be closely guarded in slaveholding Maryland, whereas the line in free-soil Pennsylvania was unprotected.
Stanton’s estrangement from McClellan pushed him further along toward support of a strong policy concerning the Negro. McClellan had consistently asserted that the war must not alter existing race relations, that the Army must remain outside the controversy. But Stanton soon saw that it could not hold aloof.
Slaves brought the armies information and sought refuge in Union camps. The troops befriended and protected them whether their orders allowed it or not. Not that the soldiers for the most part were moved by humanitarian motives of racial equality. It was enough for the Union soldier that Negroes were valuable rebel property and that the South, deprived of their services, could not hope to win the war. The North, conversely, might win in less time and with less human cost if black laborers and black soldiers could add their strength to the effort. This attitude on the part of many Union soldiers received forceful expression in the matter of fugitive slaves.
During the early months of the war it was Lincoln’s policy to have no policy with respect to runaway slaves who made their way into Union lines. This was a problem falling within the category of camp police regulations as defined by prewar practices, and each commander did as he chose about it.
Few followed McClellan’s course of scrupulous regard for Southern property, human or otherwise. Sympathy for the Negro communicated itself from soldiers to their families, as well as through the reverse path, and thence to state officials and to members of Congress. General W. A. Gorman, for example, wrote Senator Wilson that “if rebels or anybody else get a slave returned to their master during this rebellion, they will have to find some other instrument to perform the work than myself.… Every fugitive slave that has come to my Brigade, has been fed & cared for, as we understand the order of the War Department.” George Bancroft advised his son, an officer with McClellan, that “opinion is fast spreading that the negroes must be available in the service. If they come to you, use them, & reward them with freedom.” And Lincoln’s old friend Leonard Swett heard from an Illinois soldier that “the tendency of public opinion in the army is very radical.… You cannot be too ultra for the soldiers.”1
Stanton, aware of these developments, approved Butler’s policy in New Orleans of declaring the fugitives to be contraband—property liable to confiscation under the laws of war—and using them as laborers. But this halfway position outraged Northern conservatives and failed to satisfy the radicals, while it put the loyal slaveholders of the vital border states into an awkward position. These considerations inspired Stanton and his cabinet colleagues, as Welles recalled, to put “no more … on paper than was ne
cessary” concerning Butler’s policy, and to use oral rather than written messages to other Union commanders when suggesting that they emulate it.
This clumsy compromise barely sufficed as policy in occupied rebel areas and was advisory, not mandatory, everywhere. But no approved course of action existed at all regarding runaway Negroes claimed by border-state owners willing to prove their loyalty by swearing to an oath of allegiance. Prewar federal law required—and the wartime predilections of some army officers, such as McClellan, Halleck, and Buell, inspired—the return of escaped slaves to their masters. The Union’s armies could become slave-catching agencies if particular commanders wished them to. Popular concern over this subject reflected the realization that the real issue of the war was the Negro question.2 Stanton, who like Lincoln could grow, came to understand that the question of the Army’s role in relation to slavery could not be long avoided. McClellan rejected this view. Part of his conflict with Stanton rested on this base. And the interaction of the North’s soldiers with the South’s slaves brought the President and the War Secretary into substantial accord.
As the Army and Stanton moved closer to the radical position on the Negro, he tried to take Lincoln with him, even to the point of acting guilefully to put the President in a position where circumstances might force a consent to emancipation and the use of Negro troops. Something had to be done.
In July 1861, the House of Representatives had passed a resolution stating that no soldier need capture or return fugitive slaves. Then a Confiscation Act of August 8 authorized the seizure and condemnation in the federal courts of property put to rebel use, and declared forfeited all claims to the labor of slaves used in aid of the rebellion. But as interpreted by such cautious officers as Attorney General Bates, these enactments by no means voided the fugitive slave law. The executive branch of the government was clearly bringing up the rear on the Negro issue, with the Army as its only outthrust salient.
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