Stanton
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Stanton spared little attention for this concern. His primary worry was to secure enough soldiers from the North to increase the number of defeated rebels to the point where the Confederacy would collapse.
Successive manpower crises in 1862 had shown Stanton that the existing recruiting and internal security systems were inadequate, cumbersome, and inefficient. To be sure, the corps of civilian provost marshals which Stanton had created in September 1862 had been an improvement over the total lack of a system with which the government had struggled along before then. At Seward’s suggestion, Stanton had appointed Simeon Draper, an able, hard-working merchant of New York City, as the civilian Provost Marshal General in the War Department. But Draper lacked authority from Congress and status in the Army, and he was unable to bring army commanders or state officials to heel in anti-subversion and recruiting matters.
At the very least, the 1862 experiment had proved to be a vexatious patronage chore for Lincoln; state governors nominated and dominated the special provost marshals. Largely free of centralized discipline, these provosts often played local politics and pursued personal ends in enrollment and security operations. Because the provost system was uncentralized and proved to be uncontrollable, it was fraught with danger to civil liberties and democratic government. Much of the criticisms leveled at Lincoln and Stanton for arbitrary arrests and interferences with civil processes, must be directed to the untamable civilian provost corps.14 It had been the best Stanton could manage at the time. But it was not what he wanted, and he pushed Lincoln and his friends in Congress as hard as possible toward a security system which would be more efficient and humane because more centralized and controllable, and toward acceptance of the necessity for a federal draft. Volunteering had failed to keep the Union regiments at full strength, and state governors could not be relied on to comply promptly with requisitions for troops.
By the so-called enrollment act of March 3, 1863, Congress provided for a national draft to be administered by a military officer, a Provost Marshal General of the Army in charge of a separate bureau of the War Department, and Lincoln at Grant’s advice named Colonel James B. Fry to that office. Fry divided the entire country into enrollment districts, corresponding roughly to congressional districts, and appointed military provost marshals in each. The long arm of the War Department moved close to every fireside; military provost marshals were now in control of conscription and internal security, and Stanton was their chief.15
Hooker, indeed, complained to Stanton that he had been arrested by a diligent provost marshal for traveling without a pass. The War Department’s solicitor gave an opinion of the vast sweep of a provost’s powers, which Lincoln and Stanton approved, that defined even “Standing mute” on the part of a civilian being questioned as an offense punishable by military arrest and trial, if obstruction of the draft was involved.
These were incredibly harsh regulations when judged by prewar civilian standards. Lincoln’s approval of these stern measures indicates how far two years of civil war had twisted American traditions from their accustomed paths. He and Stanton realized, however, that the men already in uniform were looking on the draft as a test of the government’s commitment to sustain them. For example, Rosecrans’s ordnance chief, Horace Porter, wrote home from his Tennessee bivouac: “We are all anxiously waiting for the conscription to fill up our old regiments, which are dwindling rapidly. I hope it will clear the street corners of those idlers who ought to be here putting their shoulders to the wheel!” A few days before the new draft law was to go into operation, Porter was worried that “nothing can be done before it takes place. Who will enforce it? We are shooting deserters, hanging spies, & commencing to make war in good earnest here.”
Short of losing the support of the soldiers, Lincoln and Stanton had no alternative but to make war in good earnest on the home front. But before Fry could even complete the organization of his personnel, the new draft system met its severest test.
Stanton had unsuccessfully opposed one feature of the enrollment act, not repealed for a year to come, which permitted a man to obtain exemption from the draft by paying $300 commutation or furnishing a substitute. Workingmen grumbled that this was a year’s wages and that it was the rich man’s money against the poor man’s blood.16 The commutation issue combined with other factors and erupted into a terrible orgy of violence.
The first drawing of names under the new act occurred in the New England states, and except for sporadic opposition in Boston, no trouble was experienced. On July 11, drafting began in New York City. At about noon, two days later, Stanton received word that a serious riot had broken out, an office of the provost marshal burned, and the adjoining block set on fire.
By nightfall much of the upper East Side was in the hands of the ruffians, who, having overpowered the police, looted jewelry stores and liquor shops. Small mobs were reported “chasing isolated negroes as hounds would chase a fox,” venting their blind rage upon the black men, whom they held responsible for the war. Confederate agents were suspected of organizing the uprising. Mayor Opdyke and prominent citizens telegraphed to Washington for troops.
Agreeing that the New York resistance to the draft had become a test of the national government’s determination to enforce the conscription policy—indeed, of its intention to carry on the war with its uttermost energies—Stanton wired that “the Government will be able to stand the test, even if there should be a riot and mob in every ward of every city. The retreat of Lee’s army, now in rout and utterly broken, will leave an ample force at the disposal of the Government.” Of course, Lee was not “utterly broken.” But Stanton was gathering the “ample force.”
On the third day of the riot the crowds virtually controlled the city until, that night, the first detachment of regulars arrived. Stanton ordered Dix to take command in New York. He sent a telegram to Thurlow Weed, which was designed for publication, as an indirect appeal to the mob. Port Hudson, the last rebel stronghold on the Mississippi River, had just surrendered; a Confederate force at Helena, Arkansas, had been defeated. Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Helena, and Port Hudson—four Union victories in eight days! “Has New York no sympathy for these achievements won by the valor of her own sons?” asked Stanton. “Shall their glory be dimmed by the bloody riots of a street mob?”
By the fourth day, police, militia, and about eight hundred troops drawn from the forts in the harbor, the Navy Yard, and West Point brought the mob under control. But the riots, though suppressed, weakened the government’s prestige. Rumors spread that the second draft call for New York, scheduled for August 19, would not be issued, that Lincoln was readying to withdraw the Emancipation Proclamation and to disband Negro units in the Army, and that Seymour was preparing a secession movement to take his state out of the Union. Already angry at the opposition to the draft, Stanton was infuriated by these accounts; Dana could assure an inquiring friend: “Of course the stories are false that the administration have entertained the idea of recalling & repudiating the [emancipation] proclamation.… No such thing will be done … & as a safeguard against such a calamity, hereafter, the work of subsisting and arming the Southern Negroes is being prosecuted with all possible energy.”
And, Dana insisted, the second draft call would commence as planned. “There are troops enough there [in New York City] to render the Copperheads harmless. Besides, as the pinch comes Governor Seymour lacks courage for the revolution his friends have planned.”
Stanton had every intention of enforcing the draft law as soon as order was restored in the city, although Seymour asked for a postponement and entered into a long correspondence with Lincoln. Now anxious to show the country that the national authorities were prepared to overawe all opposition, Stanton told Welles that he wished Lincoln would stop the letter writing.
On August 19, on schedule, the draft wheels began to spin again. No further disturbance took place, for Stanton had seen to it that the city was strongly guarded and that Dix had full authority to meet resi
stance if it came.17
Governor Seymour justified his docile attitude toward the rioters and his opposition to the draft on the ground that the conscription act was unconstitutional. Lincoln said he could not wait for the Supreme Court to decide that point; he needed soldiers at once. And Stanton wrote to Brady, his colleague in the Sickles trial: “If the national Executive must negotiate with state executives in relation to the execution of an Act of Congress, then the problem which the rebellion desired to solve is already determined.… The governor of New York stands to-day on the platform of Slidell, Davis, and Benjamin; and if he is to be the judge whether the Conscription Act is constitutional and may be enforced or resisted as he or other state authorities may decide, then the rebellion is consummated and the national government abolished.”
Although it seemed at times that Seymour and other Democratic governors were determined to obstruct the government at every step, even those governors who were most loyal to the administration bickered endlessly over the accuracy of state quotas, credits for men already in service, bounties, and the alleged harshness and corruption of provost marshals. In the face of these protests, the government used the draft chiefly as a means of coercing the governors into filling their quotas with volunteers. Lincoln sometimes intervened when crisis threatened, but for the most part it was Stanton who had to deal with the complexities of the draft and try to placate the governors. Sometimes he was tactful; sometimes his temper flared. It was a duty scarcely calculated to increase his popularity.18
A lull in the pressure of events during the last days of August gave Stanton a chance for a much needed break in his grinding routine. After combining an inspection tour of West Point with a brief stop at a New Jersey seaside resort, he joined Ellen and the children at a mountain retreat near Bedford, Pennsylvania, in expectation that Lincoln would meet them there as planned, but the President could not leave Washington.
Stanton’s oldest son had just graduated from Kenyon with high honors. The family toasted the youth’s achievements. Young Edwin told how he had joined a military company formed in late 1862 to resist rebel invasions of Ohio. When the group arrived in Cincinnati, crowds came to see the son of the famous War Secretary. Almost every man of the Kenyon unit claimed to be Stanton’s son, and the impression spread that this was indeed a large family. Kenyon had offered the boy a post as a tutor but he wanted to be his father’s private secretary. Stanton refused to permit this, not wanting to taint his record for impartiality with any suggestion of nepotism, but later Eckert secretly appointed the boy to a Department clerkship and Stanton, faced with the accomplished fact, took him on as his confidential clerk.
During this pleasant, brief interlude, Stanton kept in touch with Lincoln and the Department by telegraph and through Eckert enjoyed continuous access to developments.19 He returned to the capital on September 7, refreshed in mind and body, and ever more impressed with the reports that had come in regarding Grant’s fighting ability, modesty, and common sense.
Now that the Mississippi was clear, Grant, who disliked being idle, proposed to take his army to Mobile and from there thrust northward into the vitals of the Confederacy. Stanton and Lincoln favored Grant’s idea, but Halleck vetoed it, thereby making one of the major errors of the war.
As commander in chief of the Union armies, Halleck had fallen far below Lincoln’s expectations, but Stanton, now again closest to Lincoln, although recognizing Halleck’s deficiencies, maintained good relations with him on the whole, often using him as a buffer in his dealings with other generals. But Halleck was a desk man rather than a field soldier, and he waged war according to rules. And because the rules said that an invading army should spread out and occupy as much enemy territory as possible, he now dispersed Grant’s army instead of allowing him to carry out the design against Mobile. As a result, the Confederacy, groggy from the pounding it had taken during the early summer, was allowed time to recuperate.
Grant had risen steadily in Stanton’s estimation ever since the fall of Fort Donelson, and he was primarily responsible for the general’s rapid rise in rank and prominence. Stanton felt that Grant deserved a more significant role, and proposed that he should be given command of the Army of the Potomac. Halleck doubted whether Grant would want the job, and Dana, after sounding out Grant, persuaded Stanton not to press it. Grant had told Dana that, although he would always obey orders, he knew the men and the topography of his present command, and further did not want to become the target of the jealousy of eastern officers by being imported in over them. Mobile was still his target.20
Stanton thereupon sent Dana to Rosecrans’s headquarters. That general had begun his long-delayed advance. By skillful maneuvering he forced Bragg to abandon Chattanooga. At the same time a small Union force under Burnside took Knoxville, one hundred miles to the north. At last the Union armies had a foothold in eastern Tennessee. By the time Dana arrived at Chattanooga, Rosecrans was preparing to continue his advance, heedless of the fact that Bragg, whose army had not been defeated but merely outmaneuvered, was preparing a heavy counterattack. Now that caution was demanded, Rosecrans moved recklessly.
On September 19, Dana reported to Stanton that a brisk battle had begun a few miles south of Chattanooga along Chickamauga Creek. Stanton felt a quiver of apprehension when he read: “Longstreet is here.” It meant that Bragg had been reinforced from the Army of Northern Virginia.
Lincoln and Stanton hovered near the telegraph all through the next day; at 8 p.m. the telegraph began spelling out excited words from Dana: “My report today is of deplorable importance. Chicamauga [sic] is as fatal a name in our history as Bull Run.” Forty minutes later a wire from Rosecrans stated: “We have met a serious disaster, extent not yet ascertained.” Messages coming in throughout the night showed that what at first had seemed to be a wholesale panic of the Union army had been a partial rout. Dana reported that Rosecrans had shown little generalship at all, and had been caught up in the tangle of fleeing troops and swept back into Chattanooga. General George Thomas had made a desperate stand that saved the army from utter disaster, and Generals Thomas L. Crittenden and Alexander M. McCook, the latter a brother of Stanton’s former Steubenville law partner, were being blamed for the defeat.
Stanton, like Lincoln, felt that possession of Chattanooga was vital to the Union cause. The Secretary summoned Meade to Washington to confer with him and with Halleck on ways to save the situation. Neither general had much to offer. Stanton, however, was again thinking of crushing rebel strength in the Mississippi Valley by concentrating overwhelming strength there.
Then reports from Tennessee became contradictory and confused. Dana warned Stanton that Rosecrans might abandon Chattanooga, a report that disturbed the Secretary mightily; but the next day—the twenty-third—Dana informed him that Rosecrans would stay there and fight. Dana thought he could last only fifteen or twenty days, and less than that if Bragg received more reinforcements. Rosecrans needed 20,000 to 25,000 men to secure his position. This message reached Stanton at nine forty-five that night.21
Stanton asked Hay to bring Lincoln to the War Department. Something must be done at once or Chattanooga would be lost; and Stanton had a plan. He summoned Halleck, Chase, and Seward to his office. To John W. Garrett, of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, S. M. Felton, president of the Philadelphia, Wilmington & Baltimore, and former Assistant War Secretary Scott, of the Pennsylvania, Stanton sent identical telegrams: “Please come to Washington as quickly as you can.” He wired General J. T. Boyle at Louisville for immediate information concerning the condition and capacity of the rolling stock and the gauge of the railroad from Louisville to Nashville and from there to Chattanooga. By that time Halleck, Lincoln, Chase, and Seward had arrived at the War Department for the war’s only cabinet meeting there. It was just past midnight. Watson, terribly ill, Hardie, and Colonel McCallum, director of military transportation, also attended the conference.
Opening the meeting, Stanton said: “I propose then to send 30,0
00 men from the Army of the Potomac. There is no reason to expect General Meade will attack Lee, although greatly superior in force; and his great numbers where they are, are useless. In five days 30,000 could be put with Rosecrans.”
Halleck was dubious whether even western reinforcements could get to Rosecrans in time, and Lincoln, dolefully shaking his head, offered to bet that if the order were given at once, 30,000 troops from the Army of the Potomac could not even be put into Washington within five days. A long argument ensued. Lincoln and Halleck felt reluctant to weaken Meade, whereas Chase, Seward, and McCallum supported Stanton’s proposal. It was finally agreed that two corps of the Army of the Potomac should be put under the command of Hooker and sent to Rosecrans at once. At 2:30 a.m. Halleck telegraphed Meade to have those corps ready to entrain for Washington within twenty-four hours, unless he contemplated an immediate forward movement himself. Stanton wired a promise to Dana that 15,000 infantry under Hooker would be in Nashville within five or six days. Without sleep that night, Stanton started them moving.22 By noon the next day Felton, Scott, and Garrett were at the War Department poring over railroad maps spread across desks in Stanton’s office, calculating distances and running speeds, ascertaining the locations of cars and locomotives, laying out a route for the fastest mass movement of troops in history.
The troops would entrain at Culpeper, then switch at Washington onto the tracks of the B & O, which would take them through to Benwood, on the Ohio River. There the soldiers would detrain and be ferried to Bellaire, Ohio. Connecting railroads would transport them to Indianapolis by way of Columbus. From Indianapolis they would proceed by still another railroad to Jeffersonville, Indiana, where they would again detrain and cross the Ohio River for the second time to Louisville. From there the L & N would carry them to Nashville. The last leg of the rail journey would be via the Nashville & Chattanooga to Bridgeport, Alabama, twenty-six miles across the mountains from Chattanooga.