The Civil War: A Narrative: Fredericksburg to Meridian

by Shelby Foote

  Lincoln was told of the “strictly private” circular as soon as it appeared. On February 6, Ward Lamon wrote from New York that a prominent banker there had received in his mail that morning, under the frank of an Ohio congressman, “a most scurrilous and abominable pamphlet about you, your administration, and the succession.” Copies arrived from other friends on the lookout, but got no farther than Nicolay’s desk; Lincoln would not read them. “I have determined to shut my eyes, so far as possible, to everything of that sort,” he explained. “Mr Chase makes a good Secretary, and I shall keep him where he is. If he becomes President, all right. I hope we shall never have a worse man.” He knew, of course, of the Ohioan’s machinations, which were strengthened by the dispensation of some ten thousand jobs in his department, and he said of his activities as an inside critic, “I suppose he will, like the bluebottle fly, lay his eggs in every rotten spot he can find.” But to some who advised that the “perfidious ingrate” be fired he replied: “I am entirely indifferent to his success or failure in these schemes, so long as he does his duty at the head of the Treasury Department.” To others he maintained that “the Presidential grub” had much the same effect on the Secretary as a horsefly had on a balky plow horse; he got more work out of him when he was bit. Or perhaps it was even simpler than that. Perhaps Lincoln enjoyed watching the performance Chase gave. It was, after all, pretty much a repeat performance, and he already knew the outcome, agreeing beforehand with Welles, who predicted in his diary that the Pomeroy Circular would be “more dangerous in its recoil than its projectile.” His adversaries had bided their time; now he was biding his. A Massachusetts congressman, returning from a visit to the White House at the height of this latest Chase-for-President boom, informed a colleague that Lincoln was only waiting for the Treasury chief to put himself a little more clearly in the wrong. “He thinks that Mr C. will sufficiently soon force the question. In the meantime I think he is wise in waiting till the pear is ripe.”

  The pear ripened over the weekend of Washington’s Birthday. On Saturday, February 20, the Constitutional Union printed in full the text of the circular, and when it was picked up on Monday by the National Intelligencer, Chase could no longer pretend to be unaware of what his friends were doing in his behalf. Writing to Lincoln that same day, he declared however that he had “had no knowledge of the existence of this letter before I saw it in the Union.” Some weeks ago, he went on, “several gentlemen” had called on him “in connection with the approaching election of Chief Magistrate,” and though he had not felt that he could forbid them to work as they chose, he had “told them distinctly that I could render them no help, except what might come incidentally from the faithful discharge of public duties, for these must have my whole time”; otherwise, he knew nothing of what had been done by these gentlemen. “I have thought this explanation due to you as well as to myself,” he told Lincoln. “If there is anything in my action or position which in your judgment will prejudice the public interest in my charge, I beg you to say so. I do not wish to administer the Treasury Department one day without your entire confidence. For yourself,” he continued, appending a sort of amiable tailpiece to his tentative resignation, “I cherish sincere respect and esteem; and, permit me to add, affection. Differences of opinion as to administrative action have not changed these sentiments; nor have they been changed by assaults upon me by persons who profess to spread representations of your views and policy. You are not responsible for acts not your own; nor will you hold me responsible except for what I do or say myself. Great numbers now desire your re-election. Should their wishes be fulfilled by the suffrages of the people, I hope to carry with me into private life the sentiments I now cherish, whole and unimpaired.”

  He received next day a one-sentence reply, as inconclusive as it was brief. “Yours of yesterday in relation to the paper issued by Senator Pomeroy was duly received; and I write this note merely to say I will answer a little more fully when I can find the leisure to do so. Yours truly, A. Lincoln.”

  Chase out would be considerably more formidable than Chase in; Lincoln had no intention of accepting a resignation which, by splitting the party, might well lose the Republicans the election, whoever the candidate was. He did wait six full days, however, before he found “the leisure” to compose his promised answer. This may have been done primarily to allow the Ohioan plenty of time to squirm, but it also afforded others a chance to contribute to the squirmer’s discomfort by heating up the griddle. When Chase spoke of “assaults upon me by persons who profess to spread representations of your views,” it was the Blairs he meant: specifically, Montgomery and Frank. Back in the fall, as principal speaker at a Maryland rally, the Postmaster General had referred to the Jacobins as “co-adjutors of Presidential schemers,” making it clear that he had the Treasury head in mind as the chief schemer, and since then he had been castigating his fellow Cabinet member at practically every opportunity. Even so, he was not as harsh in this regard as his brother Frank, the soldier member of the family of whom it was said, “When the Blairs go in for a fight they go in for a funeral.” Soon after his corps went into winter quarters near Chattanooga, Frank Blair came to Washington as a Missouri congressman. This had required the surrender of his commission as a major general, but Lincoln had promised to take care of that. He wanted Blair to stand for Speaker of the House, a post at which so stout a fighter could be of even more use to the Administration than on the field of battle, and he agreed that if this did not work out he would restore the commission and Blair could return to his duties as a corps commander under Sherman. But the plan fell through. By the time the Missourian reached the capital in early January, Indiana’s Schuyler Colfax, strongly anti-Lincoln in persuasion, had been elected Speaker. Nevertheless, since his corps was still lying idle down in Tennessee, Blair took his seat and stayed on in Washington, alert for a chance to strike at the President’s enemies and his own. A chance was not long in coming. On February 5, the day the Pomeroy Circular began to go out across the land, Blair rose in the House to speak in defense of the Administration’s policies on amnesty and reconstruction, opposition to which he declared had been “concocted for purposes of defeating the renomination of Mr Lincoln” in order to open the way for “rival aspirants.” Everyone knew it was Chase he meant, and three weeks later, on February 27—four days into the six allowed for squirming—he made the charge specific, along with several others. Referring to the circular, he said of the candidate favored therein: “It is a matter of surprise that a man having the instincts of a gentleman should remain in the Cabinet after the disclosure of such an intrigue against the one to whom he owes his position. [However] I suppose the President is well content that he should stay; for every hour that he remains sinks him in the contempt of every honorable mind.” Beyond this, Blair asserted that “a more profligate administration of the Treasury Department never existed under any government,” and that investigation would show that “the whole Mississippi Valley is rank and fetid with the frauds and corruptions of its agents … some of [whom] I suppose employ themselves in distributing that ‘strictly private’ circular which came to light the other day.”

  Such charges hurt badly. Damage to Chase’s reputation was damage to his soul, and though he thought of himself as a scrupulous administrator of the nation’s funds, he knew quite well that for political reasons he had made agents of men who could by no means be said to measure up to his own high standards. In any case—perhaps out of pity, for the punishment was heavy—Lincoln ended at least a part of the Secretary’s torment, two days later, by declining his resignation. “On consideration,” he declared, “I find there is really very little to say. My knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy’s letter having been made public came to me only the day you wrote; but I had, in spite of myself, known of its existence several days before. I have not yet read it, and I think I shall not. I was not shocked or surprised by the appearance of the letter, because I had had knowledge of Mr. Pomeroy’s committee, and of secret is
sues which I supposed came from it, and of secret agents who I supposed were sent out by it, for several weeks.” He was saying here that if he could know so much of what was going on behind his back, Chase must have known about it too, despite his fervent denial. However that might be, Lincoln continued, “I have known just as little of these doings as my friends have allowed me to know … and I assure you, as you have assured me, that no assault has been made upon you by my instigation or with my countenance.” Then came the close, the answer he had promised: “Whether you shall remain at the head of the Treasury Department is a question which I will not allow myself to consider from any standpoint other than my judgment of the public service, and, in that view, I do not perceive occasion for a change.”

  Chase was both relieved and pained: relieved to learn that he would remain at his post, which the long wait had taught him to value anew by persuading him that he was about to lose it, and pained because, as he plaintively observed, “there was no response in [the President’s] letter to the sentiments of respect and esteem which mine contained.” All this was rather beside the original point, however. Welles’s prediction as to the “recoil” of the Pomeroy maneuver had already been borne out, its principal effect having been to rally Lincoln’s friends to his support. And of these, as events had shown, there were many. By the time of his belated reply to Chase on Leap Year Day, no less than fourteen states, either by formal action of their legislatures or by delegates in convention, had gone on record in favor of a second term for the man in office. Among them were New Hampshire, where the Secretary had been born, Rhode Island, where his new son-in-law was supposedly in political control, and finally—unkindest cut—Ohio. In fact, Chase was advised by men from his home state to disentangle himself from the embarrassment into which his ambition had led him, and this he did in a letter to a Buckeye supporter, requesting that “no further consideration be given my name.” He also made it clear, however, that he was only asking this from a sense of duty to the cause, which must not be endangered, even though he was still convinced that “as President I could take care of the Treasury better with the help of a Secretary than I can as Secretary without the help of a President. But our Ohio folks don’t want me enough.” There was the rub; there was what had given him his quietus. “I no longer have any political side,” he presently was saying, “save that of my country, and there are multitudes who like me care little for men but everything for measures.”

  The upshot of this pose of “honorable disinterestedness,” as one of the newspapers reprinting the letter called it, was a general impression that he was merely awaiting a more favorable chance to get back in the running. A member of the Pomeroy group referred to the withdrawal as “a word of declination diplomatically spoken to rouse [our] flagging spirits,” and David Davis likened its author to Mr Micawber waiting for something to “turn up.” Chase had dreamed too long and too grandly for those who knew him to believe that he had stopped, even though it had been demonstrated conclusively, twice over, that his dreams would not come true. “Mr Chase will subside as a presidential candidate after the nomination is made, not before,” the chairman of the Republican National Committee remarked, while the New York Herald ventured a comparison out of nature: “The Salmon is a queer fish, very wary, often appearing to avoid the bait just before gulping it down.”

  • • •

  Whether Chase continued to dream and scheme made little difference now, though; Lincoln—with the Ohioan’s unintentional assistance—had the nomination cinched. The election, however, was quite another matter. Despite the encouragement Republicans could draw from their successes at the polls in the past season, the outcome of the contest in November would depend even more on military than on political events of the next eight months, through spring and summer and into fall. For one thing, the fighting would be expensive both in money and blood, and the voters, as the ones who would do the paying and the bleeding, were unlikely to be satisfied with anything less than continuous victory at such prices. The past year had been highly satisfactory in this regard; Vicksburg and Missionary Ridge, even Gettysburg and Helena, were accomplishments clearly worth their cost. But the new year had started no better than the old year had ended. Sherman’s destruction of Meridian could scarcely be said to offset Meade’s unhappy stalemate at Mine Run or Seymour’s abrupt defeat at Olustee, let alone Kilpatrick’s frustration outside Richmond or the drubbing Sooy Smith had suffered at Okolona or the unprofitable demonstration Thomas had attempted against Dalton. A good part of the trouble seemed to proceed from mismanagement at the top, and the critics were likely to hold the top man responsible: especially in light of the fact that he had had a direct hand in a good proportion of these failures, all of which had been undertaken with his permission and some of which had been launched against the judgment of those below him on the military ladder. Now a reckoning time was coming, when the voters would have their say.

  Congress, too, would have to face the voters: enough of it, at any rate, for defeat to cost the party now in power its comfortable majority, the loss of which would involve the surrender of committee chairmanships, the say-so in how and by whom the conflict would be pressed, easy access to much the largest pork barrel the nation had ever known, and finally the seizure and distribution of such spoils as would remain, two or three years from now, when the South was brought to its knees and placed at the disposal of the winners of the election this November. With so much at stake, it was no wonder the congressmen were jumpy at the prospect. Moreover, their nervousness was intensified by a presidential order, dated February 1, providing for the draft, on March 10, of “five hundred thousand men to serve for three years or during the war.” This call for “500,000 more”—made necessary by the heavy losses in battle this past year, as well as by the pending expiration of the enlistments of those volunteers who had come forward, two and three years ago, with all the fervor Sumter and McClellan had aroused—was graphic evidence of what the campaigns about to open were expected to cost in blood and money, and as such it presented the electorate with a yardstick by which to measure the height and depth of victories and defeats. The former, then, had better be substantial if they were to count for much at the polls, and by the same token the latter had better be minor, especially if they were anything like the recent setbacks, which were so obviously the result of miscalculations at the top and for which the voters could take their revenge by the way they marked their ballots. With this danger in mind, the lawmakers had returned to considering the previously rejected bill providing for a revival of the grade of lieutenant general, which in turn would provide for a man at the top who, by a combination of professional training and proven ability in the field, could operate within a shrinking margin for error that was already too narrow for the amateur who had been in unrestricted control these past three years.

  Although Congress had no power to name the officer to whom the promotion would go in the event the bill went through, it was understood that Grant was the only candidate for the honor. Besides, Lincoln would do the naming, and by now the Illinois general was as much his favorite as anyone’s. Far from being resentful of what another in his place—Jefferson Davis, for example—would have considered an encroachment by the legislative branch, he welcomed the relief the bill proposed to afford him from a portion of his duties as Commander in Chief. Above all, he was prepared to welcome Grant, who had applied at Donelson, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga the victory formula Lincoln had been seeking all these years. Others had sought it, too, of course, and like him they now believed they had found it in the western commander. So many of them had done so by now, in fact, that they had provoked the only doubts he had about the general’s fitness for the post. Like his friend McClernand, Lincoln was thoroughly aware that this war would produce a military hero who eventually would take up residence in the White House, and Grant’s appeal in this respect had already reached the stage at which he was being wooed by prominent members of both political parties. They knew a w
inner when they saw one, and so did Lincoln; and that was the trouble. Involved as he was at the time in disposing of Chase, he was not anxious to promote the interests of a more formidable rival, which was precisely what he would be doing if he brought Grant to Washington as general-in-chief.

  Nor was that the only drawback. There might be another even more disqualifying. “When the Presidential grub once gets in a man, it hides well,” Lincoln had said of himself, and he thought this might apply as well to Grant, whose generalship would scarcely be improved by the distractive gnawing of the grub. However, when he inquired in that direction about such political aspirations, he was told the general had said in January that he not only was not a candidate for any office, but that as a soldier he believed he had no right to discuss politics at all. Pressed further, he relented so far as to add that, once the war was over, he might indeed run for mayor of Galena—so that, if elected, he could have the sidewalk put in order between his house and the railroad station. Lincoln could appreciate the humor in this (though not the unconscious irony which others would perceive a few years later, when this view of the primary use of political office would be defined as “Grantism”) but he was not entirely satisfied. For one thing, that had been several weeks ago, before the would-be kingmakers had begun to fawn on Grant in earnest. Adulation might have turned his head. So Lincoln called in a friend of Grant’s and asked him point-blank if the general wanted to be President. The man not only denied this; he produced a letter in which Grant said flatly that he had no political interests whatever. No doubt the statement was similar to one he made about this time in a letter to another friend, in which he declared: “My only desire will be, as it has been, to whip out rebellion in the shortest way possible, and to retain as high a position in the army afterwards as the Administration then in power may think me suitable for.” Clearly, if this had been honestly said, it had not been said by a man who nurtured political ambitions. Lincoln’s doubts were allayed. If Congress opened the way by passing the bill, he would see that the promotion went to the general for whom it was obviously intended.