The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln

by Abraham Lincoln

  Just before McClellan had made his drive against a phantom army, a naval battle took place that terrified all the seaports of the North. The Confederates had raised one of the vessels sunk at the Norfolk Navy Yard, and had converted her hulk into an armor-sheathed boat with an underwater ram. This strange craft, which had once been the Merrimac but which was now named the Virginia, slowly steamed out into Hampton Roads on March 8, and methodically proceeded to annihilate the wooden ships of the Northern fleet while their cannonballs bounced harmlessly off her armor. Stanton trembled for the safety of Washington; a delegation of New York businessmen rushed to the capital begging for some kind of protection for their city.

  The next day the whole affair was over. An even stranger-looking and much smaller craft, John Ericsson’s ironclad Monitor, which had just recently been built as an experiment by the North, moved across Hampton Roads with her deck almost awash and only a round gun turret visible. This “cheese-box on a raft,” as she was popularly described, just as methodically proceeded to put the Virginia (née Merrimac) out of business. The North breathed easier, but the naval experts of the world went into hurried consultations. The wooden warship had become obsolete; and every navy had to be rebuilt.

  THE FIRST CAMPAIGN AGAINST RICHMOND

  As soon as this marine interlude was over, attention again became concentrated on McClellan’s long-awaited move toward Richmond. On March 13, the now somewhat tarnished general completed his plan of attack. Instead of moving directly south through Manassas as the President had expected, McClellan determined to make a flank attack by land and water, moving up the Peninsula between the York and the James Rivers. This oblique movement left Washington exposed to the possibility of a direct attack from the Confederate forces lying north of Richmond. In order to forestall this, an adequate army had to be left to defend the capital. Lincoln protested against this whole plan of campaign, but he permitted his objections to be overruled, since he was admittedly inexperienced in military matters.

  Early in April, McClellan was near Yorktown with more than a hundred thousand men. The old Revolutionary battleground again heard the tread of marching men; some of the ancient trenches there were dug out and reconditioned—Lincoln’s army was beginning its first great campaign where Washington’s army had won its final victory. Unfortunately for sentiment, the portent turned out to be meaningless. McClellan spent a month elaborating a siege against Yorktown which was held by a force only one-tenth the size of his own. During the time he was toying with this pretty demonstration of military-school tactics, the Union armies in the West went on to win the fiercely contested battle of Shiloh and to capture the city of New Orleans which was the key to the Mississippi River.

  While these military moves against the Confederacy were under way, the President and Congress had been engaged in organizing the first tentative moves toward solving the basic problem of slavery. A bill was passed prohibiting slavery in the territories; another abolished slavery in the District of Columbia with compensation for loss of property. The drift of public opinion was making it evident that the War would necessarily have to make an end to the issue that had torn the country in two. Lincoln, averse as usual to any violent change in the nation’s structure, drew up a plan whereby the slaves would be gradually freed and their owners compensated for their property. He submitted this to Congress on March 6, 1862. To emphasize the practicality of his proposal, he pointed out that the expenses incurred in eighty-seven days of war would purchase all the slaves in four border states and the District of Columbia.

  Lincoln’s scheme for achieving emancipation as painlessly as possible might have been successful if his army had marched resolutely toward Richmond to reinforce his proposal by putting down armed resistance. But McClellan, after putting his siege batteries in place before Yorktown, again found that the elusive Johnston, who had escaped him at Manassas, did not wait to be attacked. He withdrew up the Peninsula, leaving McClellan to follow. The Federal fleet sailed up the James to a point eight miles from the city. McClellan slowly advanced with his army during the month of May. He had been expecting additional troops for the intended assault on Richmond, but a clever feint by “Stonewall” Jackson made Lincoln and Stanton believe that Washington was in danger, and the supporting troops were withheld to protect the capital. Much disgruntled, McClellan finally arrived at Fair Oaks, only a few miles from Richmond. On May 31 he was attacked there by Johnston. The Confederate commander was wounded in the ensuing battle and was replaced the next day by Robert E. Lee, who had not yet distinguished himself in the field. He rapidly did so.

  McClellan permitted nearly a month to pass while his army lay near the city. Lee took advantage of this respite to strengthen his forces. Then, on June 25, he threw his army of defense into an offensive attack against McClellan’s forces. The famous seven days before Richmond began; they ended in McClellan’s army being forced to retreat, fighting desperately all the way to the James River.

  McClellan fortified his position at Harrison’s Landing, where the Federal fleet came to his support. Lee retired to Richmond to rest his army after having driven the invader back. McClellan waited for more men and fresh supplies to renew his attack against Richmond. He refused to admit that the Peninsular campaign was over, but actually it was, and it had been a costly failure for the North.

  On July 8, Lincoln visited his defeated army. No one knew what his thoughts were during the river journey to and from Harrison’s Landing, but this bitter voyage marks the turning point in his Presidential career. So far he had been dominated by events, molding his policies only after expediency demanded that they be changed. Now all hesitancy and doubt vanished; he became strong and daring. It was strength born of desperation, but it was strength. The man had been in hell for months. He had never looked so worn and haggard as he did at this time. The memory of his son’s death was still with him; he had seen Congress and the country go against him; he had been unable to find a competent general to lead his Eastern armies—and he faced the realization that the yearlong preparations against Richmond had come to nothing.

  McClellan’s petulance over the lack of support which he insisted had caused his repulse probably did not help matters in his dealings with the President. Lincoln returned to Washington maturing his plans for action on the way. He moved with unwonted swiftness as soon as he reached the city. He had already made an indirect appeal through the Governors of the states for 300,000 more men and he had summoned General Pope from the West to take charge of the campaign in Virginia. He also called Halleck to come East to be the General in Chief of all the Northern armies. Most important of all, he prepared to meet the issue of slavery squarely for the first time in his career.

  The demand for the suppression of the institution that had brought on the War had been rising insistently in the North. Frémont had given the original impetus to this demand with his unauthorized act of military emancipation. On May 9, one of Lincoln’s most trusted generals, his own personal friend, David Hunter, had issued a similar proclamation. No charge of political ambition could be made against Hunter; he was an honest and forthright man, and the President knew it. Reluctantly he had countermanded his friend’s order, but the very words he had used in doing so indicated that he was beginning to weaken in his opposition to such measures.

  On his return to Washington Lincoln called a meeting of the Senators and Representatives of the border states. He had addressed them once before when the Peninsular campaign was just beginning, pleading with them then to accept his plan of compensated emancipation. They had refused it. He gave them this one last chance to accept. They refused again. His mind was made up. The first evidence of his intention came the next day, July 13. In company with Welles and Seward he attended a funeral, the funeral of Stanton’s infant son. The occasion, which must have reminded him forcefully of the burial of his own son only five months before, may have had something to do with his breaking his customary silence on matters of future policy. He spoke aloud his tho
ughts on the subject of military emancipation. Welles reported the occasion in his diary:

  He [Lincoln] dwelt earnestly on the gravity, importance and delicacy of the movement, said he had given it much thought and had come to the conclusion that it was a military necessity absolutely essential for the salvation of the Union, that we must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued.…

  During the next week Lincoln grappled with the problem he had so long been avoiding. Until this time he would have been content to let slavery exist within its own well-established boundaries, hoping that natural evolutionary processes would some day bring it to an end. Now he realized that in order to win the War he had to eradicate the basic cause of the conflict. His chief difficulty was that he still did not want to alienate the people in the border states who were loyal to the Union. He had to find a device that would permit him to free the slaves of the enemies of the Union and at the same time allow its friends to retain their property. He was a politician and he could not afford to antagonize his allies, no matter what their internal policies might be.

  On July 22, he entered a Cabinet meeting with his plan completely worked out. He was ready to present it to his advisers, but he was not asking for their approval; he told them frankly that the question was already settled in his own mind and that he would take full responsibility for it. He then read the draft of his proclamation. It declared that on the first of January, 1863, “all persons held as slaves within any state or states wherein the constitutional authority of the United States shall not then have been practically recognized … shall then, thenceforward and forever be free.”

  This carefully phrased wording covered the device needed to hold the border slave states in the Union. The emancipation provision was directed only at the Confederate states—the states that were in rebellion against the Union. Men in those states were to lose their slaves; men in states that had remained loyal were to be permitted to keep their slave property. The proclamation of emancipation was not a philanthropic gesture to benefit the enslaved Negroes—it was a wartime measure intended to weaken the insurgent states.

  Lincoln’s obviously determined manner overcame any possible opposition on the part of his Cabinet. Seward, however, astutely pointed out that if the proclamation were made public at this moment of disaster when the Richmond campaign had just failed, it would sound like a despairing cry from a bewildered administration. Why not wait for a victory before releasing it?

  This suggestion seemed sensible. Lincoln decided to withhold his proclamation until the Northern armies made a sufficient show of success to provide a favorable psychological reception for it. During the time he had to wait for a victory, the abolitionists, not knowing what was in his mind, kept up pressure for emancipation. On August 19, Greeley published his famous letter entitled “The Prayer of Twenty Millions” in which he appealed to the President to make an end of slavery. Lincoln replied to him three days later: “My paramount object is to save the Union, and not either to save or to destroy slavery,” he said. “If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.” This was his declaration of official policy for the moment. He tempered it in closing by saying: “I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men could everywhere be free.”

  A few weeks later (September 13), a committee of religious denominations waited on the President to supplement Greeley’s plea. In view of the date on which this incident took place and the events that were to happen hardly more than a week later, it is curious to see Lincoln still steadfastly defending the policy that he was ready to abandon as soon as any kind of victory would permit him to do so. It is almost as though he were trying to present the other side of the argument. He gives all the practical reasons for not issuing a proclamation of emancipation. He admits candidly that no words of his would have any effect in the South. But his final words give the clue to what was passing in his own mind:

  Do not misunderstand me because I have mentioned these objections. They indicate the difficulties that have thus far prevented my action.… I have not decided against a proclamation of liberty to the slaves, but hold the matter under advisement; and I can assure you that the subject is on my mind, by day and night, more than any other. Whatever shall appear to be God’s will, I will do.

  The military maneuvers that were so intimately tied up with emancipation were progressing rapidly. A victory was in the offing, although events leading up to it hardly seemed propitious. Pope had made a miserable fizzle of his command of the Army of Virginia. On August 29–30, he had been attacked by the Confederates on the old battlefield of Manassas and had seen his forces routed there almost as badly as the green troops of McDowell had been in the first major encounter of the War. Lee had driven on around him, heading north toward Maryland. McClellan, who had returned from the Peninsula with his troops, was hastily put in charge of the counter-offensive against Lee. The two armies met in Maryland on September 17, just beyond Harper’s Ferry, facing each other across an obscure country creek named Antietam that became famous that day. The battle that was fought on its banks was the bloodiest single day of the War, but it ended in Lee’s being driven southward into Virginia.

  THE PROCLAMATION OF EMANCIPATION

  Antietam was no great and decisive victory, but it would have to do. On September 22, 1862, the President read the final wording of his Proclamation of Emancipation to the Cabinet; two days later it was released to the press. The immediate reaction in the North was rather disappointing. After waiting a few days to determine public opinion, Lincoln wrote to the Vice President, Hannibal Hamlin, on September 28, saying that “while commendation in newspapers and by distinguished individuals is all that a vain man could wish, stocks have declined, and troops come forward more slowly than ever.… The North responds to the proclamation sufficiently in breath; but breath alone kills no rebels.”

  Lack of great enthusiasm over this first movement toward freeing the slaves was not the only burden Lincoln had to bear at this time. He was having trouble with McClellan again. McClellan had forced Lee to withdraw across the Potomac, but he did nothing about going in pursuit of him. On October 1, Lincoln visited his procrastinating commander. He reviewed the troops in and around Harper’s Ferry and then went to McClellan’s headquarters at Antietam.20 Evidently the President considered the troops to be in better condition and better supplied than McClellan did. The Western army had just won the battle of Corinth; the Eastern army was completely inactive while its commander complained to Washington about his cavalry mounts and his lack of supplies. On October 13, Lincoln wrote to McClellan criticizing him for his over-cautiousness. McClellan replied, saying that his horses were in no condition to move. Then Lincoln’s patience gave way. He telegraphed sharply: “Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigues anything?”

  This was the beginning of the end. On October 26, McClellan reluctantly started out after Lee, but he was not quick enough to prevent him from crossing the Blue Ridge Mountains and reaching Central Virginia. Lincoln had already made up his mind that if McClellan permitted this to happen he would remove him from his command. On November 5, the fatal order went out, and McClellan’s troubled career as the head of the Union army was finished forever.

  Burnside was placed in charge of McClellan’s army. Under his command it moved down slowly into Virginia to Fredericksburg, where it fought a hopeless battle in the middle of December, charging against Confederates solidly entrenched on the heights beyond that city until the loss of life was so great that the whole North was appalled. The end of 1862 was a period of the deepest gloom and depression throughout the Northern states. The year that had begun so favorably was petering out in defeat, and the Government was in a quandary as to what to do about its military failures. Lincoln was the object of bitter attack, and
he must have felt his position keenly. The November elections had gone against the administration; Congress was bitterly critical; a Cabinet crisis threatened as Seward and Chase offered to resign because of the disputes over the responsibility for what had happened at Fredericksburg. The public debt had risen enormously; currency inflation had begun, and, worst of all, the troops had not been paid for five months. The Proclamation of Emancipation, which had been issued after a Northern victory, took effect on January 1, 1863, in the lowest ebb of Northern defeat.

  When Lincoln addressed his message to Congress on December 1, 1862, he asked that the war measure of emancipation be implemented by the adoption of an amendment to the Constitution embodying his plan for compensation. Two years passed before this was finally accomplished, on January 31, 1865,21 and then no provision for compensation was made. When the next amendment (the Fourteenth) was ratified in 1868, it specifically forbade compensation of any kind.

  As a military measure, the Proclamation of Emancipation was easily justified, although there was some doubt about its constitutionality. It accomplished several purposes: It acted as a thorn in the side of the Confederacy; it helped win liberal opinion in Europe to the Northern side; and it increased the strength of the Northern armies by adding Negro soldiers to their ranks. Several colored regiments were formed immediately; by the end of the War, 186,000 Negroes had enrolled on the Union side.