Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  The proposal to pick a fight was not a spur-of-the-moment impulse of Seward’s; as early as December, he had told a meeting of New Englanders that if the country were invaded by France, England, or Austria, “all the hills of South Carolina would pour forth their population for the rescue of New York.” The following month he made a similar statement to the German diplomat Rudolph Schleiden: “If the Lord would only give the United States an excuse for a war with England, France, or Spain, that would be the best means of reestablishing internal peace.”96 On another occasion he told Schleiden that “nothing would give so much pleasure as to see a European Power interfere in favour of South Carolina,” for then he “should ‘pitch into’ the European Power, and South Carolina and the seceding States would soon join him in doing so.”97 At a dinner party on March 20, he had engaged in some saber-rattling at ministers from Great Britain, France, and Russia, demanding that they supply copies of instructions to their consuls in Southern ports. Lord Lyons, the British envoy, reported that Seward “went off into a defiance of Foreign Nations, in a style of braggadocio which was formerly not uncommon with him, but which I had not heard before from him since he had been in office. Finding he was getting more and more violent and noisy, and saying things which it would be more convenient for me not to have heard, I took a natural opportunity of turning, as host, to speak to some of the ladies in the room.”98 In January, Lyons reported that the New Yorker viewed British-American relations as “good material to make political capital of” and speculated that the incoming administration would be tempted “to endeavour to divert the public excitement to a foreign quarrel.”99 In later months, Seward’s diplomacy was so bellicose that European leaders came to regard him as a dangerous arriviste. The Russian minister thought Seward so haughty and vain “that he would not listen to any advice,” and Lyons said the secretary “has such unbounded confidence in his own sagacity and dexterity that nothing which can be said to him makes much impression.”100 According to Charles Sumner, Lyons and his French counterpart, Henri Mercier, “had both been so repelled by Seward’s lofty tone with them, that they went to him as little as possible.”101

  In an attempt to calm Seward down, Lincoln responded gently but firmly to the secretary’s bizarre April 1 memorandum, writing out a reply which he may have delivered orally. He assured Seward that the administration did indeed have a domestic policy, which he had spelled out in the inaugural: “to hold, occupy and possess the forts, and all other property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties on imports.” Seward had approved that policy, and the two leaders were still in agreement except with regard to Fort Sumter. Lincoln denied that the relief of Pickens would be viewed as a pro-Union gesture while the relief of Sumter would be seen as a pro-abolitionist act; they both were attempts to uphold the government’s integrity. The proposal to declare war on European powers he dismissed, saying that the “news received yesterday in regard to St. Domingo certainly brings in a new item within range of our foreign policy; but up to that time we have been preparing circulars and instructions to ministers and the like, all in perfect harmony, without a suggestion that we had no foreign policy.” The president regarded Spain’s actions in Santo Domingo as trivial. Seward’s bid to assume responsibility for making and implementing policy Lincoln handled tactfully: “if this must be done, I must do it. When a general line of policy is adopted, I apprehend there is no danger of its being changed without good reason, or continuing to be a subject of unnecessary debate; still upon points arising in its progress, I wish, and I suppose I am entitled to have, the advice of all the Cabinet.”102

  Many would have reacted to Seward’s haughty memo indignantly rather than magnanimously. Later in April, the president again demonstrated his forbearance toward Seward when informed by David Dudley Field that the secretary and his friends had not only opposed his nomination but also his election “until they found that he could be elected without them.” Lincoln “replied that he knew that, but had forgiven them.”103

  Seward had originally planned to have his memorandum and Lincoln’s response published in the New York Times. When the president rejected his proposal, the secretary of state inspired attacks on Lincoln in friendly journals. On April 3, the Times ran a blistering editorial, “Wanted—A Policy,” containing the arguments in Seward’s April 1 memo. Weed’s Albany Evening Journal carried a similar piece.

  Lincoln acknowledged his reliance on Seward’s judgment about international affairs, though not in this instance. Soon after arriving in Washington, he had told Seward that “there is one part of my work that I shall have to leave largely to you. I shall have to depend upon you for taking care of these matters of foreign affairs, of which I know so little, and with which I reckon you are familiar.”104 When a caller offered advice on dealing with Great Britain, the president replied that “it does not so much signify what I think, you must persuade Seward to think as you do.”105 In June, Lincoln told Carl Schurz “that he deplored having given so little attention to foreign affairs and being so dependent upon other people’s judgment, and that he felt the necessity of ‘studying up’ on the subject as much [as] his opportunities permitted him.”106 To the minister representing Bremen, Lincoln confessed: “I don’t know anything about diplomacy. I will be very apt to make blunders.”107

  Ironically, in April it was Lincoln who had to keep the bellicose Seward from making a diplomatic blunder. It would not be the only time he would do so.

  Lincoln’s Offer to Swap Fort Sumter for Virginia

  While the Sumter expedition was being mounted in early April, Seward continued trying to control events. There was still time, for the point of no return had not yet been reached. Neither the governor of South Carolina nor Major Anderson had been notified, and Fox’s ships had not yet departed for Charleston. Perhaps something at the last minute might prevent the outbreak of war. To that end, Seward urged the president to summon the leader of Virginia’s Unionists, George W. Summers, who was spearheading the fight against secession at the Richmond convention. On April 1, the secretary telegraphed Summers stating that Lincoln “desires your attendance at Washington as soon as convenient.” Summers, sensing a plot to lure him away from the Old Dominion’s capital on the eve of a crucial vote, was skeptical.108 On April 3, a messenger arrived from Washington with instructions from Lincoln to tell Summers: “I want to see him at once, for there is no time to be lost; what is to be done must be done quickly. … If Mr. Summers cannot come himself, let him send some friend of his, some Union man in the convention in whom he has confidence and who can confer freely with me.”109 A caucus of Unionist leaders in Richmond decided that John B. Baldwin, one of the state’s most devoted Union men, should meet with Lincoln in place of Summers. Baldwin left immediately for Washington.

  Lincoln had established indirect contact with Baldwin through a mutual friend, Herring Chrisman, a Virginia-born attorney living in Abingdon, Illinois. In February, after Baldwin had been elected to the Virginia convention as one of its youngest delegates, he wrote to Chrisman “stating that the danger was great, and refusing to be responsible for the result in convention at all without an implicit declaration from Mr. Lincoln of a policy on which he could safely intrench giving him a cart blanche, without so much as a hint of what it should be.” Chrisman showed this missive to Lincoln, who, after reading it, said: “Tell them I will execute the fugitive slave law better than it has ever been. I can do that. Tell them I will protect slavery in the States where it exists. I can do that. Tell them they shall have all the offices south of Mason & Dixon’s line if they will take them. I will send nobody down there as long as they will execute the offices themselves.”110

  On April 4, as the Virginia convention was voting 89–45 against secession, Baldwin reported to Seward, who escorted him to the White House. There a much-disputed conversation took place, described in two contradictory accounts, one by Baldwin and the other by a friend of his, John Minor Botts, who spoke with Lincoln the foll
owing day. In 1866, Botts said the president had informed him that he had told Baldwin he would withdraw the Sumter garrison if Virginia would disband its convention. Botts recalled Lincoln saying: “I have always been an Old-line Henry-Clay Whig, and if you Southern people will let me alone, I will administer this government as nearly upon the principles that he would have administered it as it is possible for one man to follow in the path of another.” Rhetorically he asked: “What do I want with war? I am no war man; I want peace more than any man in this country, and will make greater sacrifices to preserve it than any other man in the nation.”111 Earlier he had told a visitor from the Deep South, “There will be no blood shed during my Administration if I can prevent it.”112 But Baldwin testified that Lincoln showed little enthusiasm for compromise and made no offer to evacuate Sumter.

  Lincoln may have deliberately misled Botts in describing his offer to Baldwin, but that seems out of character. Perhaps the president had intended to make the offer to Baldwin but did not do so for some reason. Or Baldwin may have viewed Lincoln’s offer as unimportant because it contained no assurance that his administration would not take action against the Lower South. Then again, Baldwin may have told less than the full truth in his postwar accounts of Lincoln’s remarks. As a devoted Southern patriot who served in both the Confederate army and Congress, he could well have desired to make the president look belligerent instead of conciliatory and thus indirectly blame him for the outbreak of war. Or Baldwin may have believed that it was impossible to have the Virginia convention adjourn sine die at that point. It is impossible to say. The only thing resembling a contemporary report of Baldwin’s account of his interview with Lincoln was written by the chairman of the convention’s committee on federal relations, Robert Young Conrad. On April 6 he told his wife: “We hear directly from several gentlemen who have within one day or two called on Mr. Lincoln that he really does not know his own mind, is wavering in fact or (what is more likely) is unwilling to admit his weakness, for fear of being deserted by his party.”113

  Much evidence supports the conclusion that Lincoln did offer to remove the Sumter garrison if the Virginia convention would adjourn sine die. He said that he had twice proposed to abandon Sumter if Virginia would remain in the Union. In October 1861, while reminiscing about the secession crisis, the president mentioned the February meeting with William C. Rives during which he declared his willingness to swap Sumter for the Old Dominion. Then, said Lincoln, “he renewed the proposition to Summers but without any result.” (In April, of course, he spoke not to Summers but to Baldwin, who was sent in Summers’ place.) According to John Hay’s diary account of this conversation, the “President was most anxious to prevent bloodshed.”114 On January 9, 1863, George Plumer Smith of Philadelphia wrote to Hay saying:

  A few days after the Convention at Richmond passed the ordinance of secession [on April 17], I accompanied a delegation from Western Virginia to Washington, to procure Arms for their defence at home.

  The President received us with much interest and kindness.

  During the interview, on my mentioning to him the fact that one of the Committee, Mr. [Campbell] Tarr, of Wellsburg—had been a member of the convention, Mr Lincoln spoke very freely of the attempts he had made to hold Virginia firm for the Union—and then, greatly to Mr Tarr’s surprise mentioned, that amongst other influences, he had sent for Mr Baldwin, of Augusta Co. a member of the Convention, and had him in the White House with him alone—and told him, if they would pass resolutions of adherence to the Union, then adjourn and go home—he, the President, would take the responsibility, at the earliest proper time—to withdraw the troops from Fort Sumpter—and do all within the line of his duty to ward off collision.

  He then imposed strict silence upon us in regard to what he then had told us.

  Will you please now ask him whether what I state is correct, and whether he now cares about its becoming known.115

  Hay replied: “I received your favor of yesterday this morning and at once laid the matter before the President. He directs me to state in reply that your statement is substantially correct, but that, for the present, he prefers that you would still withhold it from the public.”116

  Later, Smith gave a fuller version of this interview, which took place on May 1. Lincoln, according to Smith, said: “As soon as I began to get the hang of things here, I felt that, if I could hold on to old Virginia and through her, the Border States, we might yet escape … civil war—and, therefore, without consulting anyone but Mr Seward, had him write to Judge Summers to come here on important business, of which he, Mr Seward, would inform him on his arrival—but it must be kept a secret from the public. Knowing something of Judge Summers’ timid character, we had requested that, if he could not come—he, or other Union men in the convention would choose a thorough Union man in his place, and they chose John B. Baldwin.” Seward “met Baldwin at the Boat, took him to his own house—and later in the evening brought him over here.” The two men spoke at length, with Lincoln urging his guest to do everything possible to save the Union. But, said the president, “I found him ‘very fishy’ on the matter.” So Lincoln then proposed to remove the troops from Sumter if the Virginia convention adjourned sine die.117

  Fellow members of the western Virginia delegation confirmed Smith and Tarr’s recollections. In addition, Lincoln told several others, including Francis Pierpont, about his offer to Baldwin. According to Pierpont, Baldwin asked that both Forts Sumter and Pickens be abandoned. As the president had done with William C. Rives, he recounted Aesop’s fable about the lion and the maiden. “It is enough to give up my teeth,” Lincoln insisted, “but the claws I must reserve for my own use.”118 It is possible but unlikely that Lincoln deliberately misled these men or that he misremembered what had happened. In late April, Kentucky Senator Garrett Davis called on the president, who quite plainly told him that when Baldwin “came here from the Virginia convention he had made the proposition to Mr. Baldwin and his colleagues distinctly that if the Virginia convention would adjourn without doing anything he would withdraw the troops from Fort Sumter.” Davis also told John B. Baldwin that Lincoln had informed him that Baldwin had received such an offer. Baldwin commented that “the high character of Mr. Davis satisfies me that what he says must be true & I am therefore brought to the conclusion that Mr. Lincoln has made such a statement.”119

  The day after Lincoln met with Baldwin, it was reported that the president told callers “he exhibited to the South, in his course, a peaceful disposition in every way.” But there “was no disposition in the South evinced to do other than take advantage of his forbearance.”120 He believed that his administration’s “good intentions have been misinterpreted, and the country, in the eyes of the world, is fast acquiring a reputation that it does not deserve.”121

  Three years later Gustavus Fox recalled that Lincoln had sent for a Unionist member of the Virginia convention “and assured him that if that convention would adjourn, instead of staying in session menacing the Gov’t. that he would immediately direct Major Anderson to evacuate Fort Sumter.” When that offer proved unavailing, the president on April 4 “sent for me and told me that the expedition [to relieve Sumter] might go forward.”122 That same day, Lincoln notified Anderson that a relief expedition was under way, but he did not inform Governor Pickens of this step, for that would represent the point of no return, and the president still wished to keep his options open as he awaited word from Florida. Two days later, he learned to his consternation that Scott’s order of March 12—to have the troops aboard the Brooklyn transferred to Fort Pickens—had been refused by Navy Captain Henry A. Adams, in command of the Union squadron off Pensacola. Adams, who had three sons serving in the Confederate military, told Secretary Welles that he was unwilling to obey orders from an army officer—especially orders that would violate the truce which had been in effect since January—and requested further instructions.123 (This was peculiar, for the Confederates had already broken the truce in early Mar
ch by augmenting their forces at Pensacola.) Welles, in consultation with Lincoln, immediately dispatched Navy Lieutenant John L. Worden to Pensacola with orders directing Adams to carry out Scott’s March 12 directive. Worden delivered the message on April 12, and the troops accordingly occupied Fort Pickens. There was insufficient time for the administration to learn this good news and call off Fox’s mission. (On April 17, Porter’s ships arrived at Pensacola and significantly reinforced Pickens, which remained in Union hands throughout the war.)

  Lincoln must have felt exasperated beyond endurance. A month earlier, Major Anderson’s message about his dwindling supplies had ruined Lincoln’s original plan for dealing with secession. Now Captain Adams’s refusal to obey orders wrecked his strategy for solving the Sumter dilemma. The president had hoped to follow the policy described in a New York Tribune editorial: “let them [the secessionists of the Deep South] severely alone—allow them to wear out the military ardor of their adherents in fruitless drillings and marches, and to exhaust the patience of their fellow-citizens by the amount and frequency of their pecuniary exactions—and the fabric of their power will melt away like fog in the beams of a morning sun. Only give them enough rope, and they will speedily fulfill their destiny—the People, even of South Carolina, rejecting their sway as intolerable, and returning to the mild and paternal guardianship of the Union.”124 Lincoln’s faith in Southern Unionism remained strong. Ten weeks later he would tell Congress that it “may well be questioned whether there is, to-day, a majority of the legally qualified voters of any State, except perhaps South Carolina, in favor of disunion. There is much reason to believe that the Union men are the majority in many, if not in every other one, of the so-called seceded States. The contrary has not been demonstrated in any one of them. It is ventured to affirm this, even of Virginia and Tennessee.”125