Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  Some military men stepped forward to fill the vacuum created by the War Department’s ineptitude. The elderly General John E. Wool seized the initiative without waiting for department approval. His meritorious efforts in procuring arms and ammunition came to a halt when Cameron, allegedly at the behest of corrupt contractors, ordered him to resume his routine duties. Also efficient was Montgomery C. Meigs, a West Pointer who became quartermaster general in mid-June over the objections of Cameron. Francis P. Blair, Sr., described Meigs as a soldier with “energy, industry, knowledge of the wants of an army” as well as “zeal in the course [that] our army is about to vindicate” and “probity, punctuality & strong common sense in dealing with men.”158 In urging his appointment, Lincoln told General Scott: “I have come to know Col. Meigs quite well for a short acquaintance, and, so far as I am capable of judging I do not know one who combines the qualities of masculine intellect, learning and experience of the right sort, and physical power of labor and endurance so well as he.”159 Scott agreed, praising Meigs for his “high genius, science, vigor & administrative capacities.”160

  Cameron was clearly not up to his job. A political wheeler-dealer, he reveled in distributing patronage and awarding contracts to allies; he devoted more attention to those congenial chores than readying the nation to fight. Meigs found him “weak and infirm of purpose.”161 In August, the ethnologist George Gibbs assembled an astounding number of charges against the war secretary: he found that Cameron failed to obtain vital information about troop strength and distribution; ignored credible warnings about treasonous officers; provided inadequate support for the troops who poured into Washington in the early weeks of the war; recruited and mustered in three-years men lackadaisically; unreasonably delayed supplying transportation, animals, weapons, medicine, and artillery to the troops; awarded contracts to inept family members and political cronies; ordered inadequate inspection of food and clothing; issued and then countermanded orders carelessly; and generally mismanaged his department. In short, Gibbs concluded, Cameron had “shown neither foresight nor energy. He has had no comprehensive plan, if he has any plan at all. He has not devoted himself to military duties, but to contracts which belonged properly to the regular departments. Neither in capacity nor in character is he fitted for his place.”162 By late summer, public opinion had soured on Cameron more because of his unsuitable appointments than his questionable contracts.

  Lincoln also made some blunders as the mobilization effort got under way. He was partly distracted by ongoing patronage squabbles, with Seward and Cameron leading the way as they lobbied on behalf of friends. On April 13, when the slate of Philadelphia appointments was announced, the president told a Pennsylvania congressman he was greatly relieved to get that chore out of the way and “hoped now to be able to devote his attention exclusively to the condition of the country.”163 But contentious New Yorkers gave him little rest. A month after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, Lincoln felt “as though several thousand pounds weight” had been removed by the appointment of a slate for the Empire State.164

  No sooner had civilian patronage been distributed than a great clamor arose for military positions. Especially coveted were paymasterships, with the rank of major, good pay, and little danger of being killed. Once again Illinoisans descended in shoals. In early 1862, Lincoln told Orville H. Browning that their state “has already had more than her share,” that “complaints are made about it,” and “that he cannot appoint any more Pay Masters there.” Browning advised one importunate constituent: “I do not know of any thing in the way of an office to dispose of and there are certainly fifty applicants for every one at the disposal of the Government. There are a good many applicants here from Illinois, who have been pressing their claims all winter, without success. I know of no more unpromising business at present than the pursuit of office.”165

  As he distributed military patronage, Lincoln exasperated the governors by allowing ambitious politicos to raise regiments independently and by accepting them into service while Cameron was turning away units recruited in accordance with state regulations. A case in point was Daniel Sickles, the wealthy New York ex-congressman who had achieved notoriety just before the war by murdering his wife’s lover (the son of Francis Scott Key) and then escaping punishment on a plea of temporary insanity. After Sickles claimed that he had raised enough men to constitute a brigade, New York Governor Edwin D. Morgan refused to give such a controversial man a brigadier general’s commission. (Thurlow Weed warned Lincoln that Sickles was close to high-ranking men of suspect loyalty.) When Sickles asked the president if he would tolerate those hindering his efforts, Lincoln replied: “I like that idea of United States Volunteers” rather than state militia. “But you see where it leads to. What will the governors say if I raise regiments without their having a hand in it?” Cameron endorsed Sickles’s plan, and Lincoln went along, saying to the acquitted killer on May 16: “whatever are the obstacles thrown in your way, come to me, and I will remove them promptly. Should you stand in need of my assistance to hasten the organization of your brigade come to me again, and I will give or do whatever is required. I want your men, General, and you are the man to lead them. Go to the Secretary of War and get your instructions immediately.”166 At Lincoln’s insistence, Sickles received his commission.

  At that same time, Morgan was indignant at Cameron’s reluctance to accept many regiments already mustered in. When the governor complained about the War Department’s confusion, Lincoln replied: “The enthusiastic uprising of the people in our cause, is our great reliance; and we can not safely give it any check, even though it overflows, and runs in channels not laid down in any chart.”167 The president settled the matter by appointing Morgan a major general of volunteers and placing him in command of the Department of New York. In November, when Colonel William H. Allen of the First New York Volunteers, who had been dismissed for insubordination, asked Lincoln to reinstate him, the president replied: “I cannot afford to enter into a controversy with the Governor of a State that I rely upon more than any other to assist in putting down this terrible rebellion, and you must say as much to General Wool, and tell him that I say he must fix it up with Governor Morgan.”168

  In matters military, Lincoln said he relied on General Scott, but the poor health and advanced years of that septuagenarian hero hardly fitted him to meet the challenge posed by a conflict far vaster than anything he had known during either the War of 1812 or the Mexican War. So Lincoln gradually began to depend more on his own judgment. In August 1861, to facilitate the enlistment of volunteers, he issued an order eliminating much red tape. Commenting on this step, a journalist remarked that the president “is daily growing up to the altitude of his position, and with every hour learns more and more to comprehend his duties and his responsibilities.”169 That summer the president acknowledged that his administration had “stumbled along” but thought that on the whole it had done so “in the right direction.”170

  Annual Message: Defining War Aims, Explaining Actions

  As July 4 approached, Lincoln put the finishing touches on his message to Congress, one of his most significant and eloquent state papers. For weeks he had been considering carefully what he wanted to say. On May 7, John Hay noted that his boss “is engaged in constant thought upon his Message: It will be an exhaustive review of the questions of the hour & of the future.”171 And so it was. Later that month, the president said that he was so frequently interrupted by visitors that “he shall be fortunate if he gets time to finish the message before the 4th of July.”172 From mid-June until Congress assembled, he devoted virtually all his waking hours to the message and received no callers other than cabinet members or other high-ranking officials. He revised his first draft extensively, incorporating many suggestions offered by Seward. When, however, the public printer suggested that “sugar-coated” was too undignified a term for use in such a formal address, Lincoln replied: “No, let it stand; it is a word the people use; they will know what it me
ans.”173 As he considered how much money and how many men to request, he consulted members of Congress and corresponded with governors. Before submitting the message, he went over it in detail with the cabinet and read it to Charles Sumner.

  While solicitous of congressional opinion, Lincoln did not adhere to the Whig notion that the executive branch must defer to the legislature and merely carry out its wishes. Though he occasionally paid lip service to that doctrine, his actions belied his words. He was an assertive, if tactful, president, unafraid to use the powers of his office to achieve victory in the war and unwilling to be cowed by governors, generals, cabinet members, newspaper editors, congressmen, senators, or anyone else.

  On Independence Day, Lincoln reviewed a military parade and introduced various cabinet members and generals to a huge crowd gathered before the White House. When asked to speak himself, he modestly declined, saying: “I appear at your call, not to make a speech. I have made a great many dry and dull ones. Now I must fall back and say that the dignity of my position does not permit me to expose myself any more. I can now take shelter and listen to others.”174 (A slightly different version of these remarks had him say: “I have made a great many poor speeches, and now feel relieved that my dignity does not permit me to be a public speaker.”)175 Such unassuming modesty pleased the public. A Missourian who observed the president receive callers detected in him “no airs of assumed or hereditary dignity, nor stiffness, nor carrying the importance of the Presidential office into every day acts. His reception of men is cordial and unaffected, and his manner devoid of any personal claim for respect from the office he holds.” Even his appearance on the streets of Washington endeared Lincoln to the public. The “half jaunty air … of his hat, as he rides in his barouche, beside Mrs. Lincoln, of an evening, is consoling to the spectator, who instinctively feels that even if he can write State papers with original and trenchant ability, yet a man of easy manners and kind good nature is Mr. President.”176

  On July 5, Lincoln’s message was read to Congress, as was the custom for such documents. (The same was true of his annual December messages, forerunners of what later became known as state of the union addresses.) His principal goal was to define the stakes of the war, a subject he had discussed with his personal secretaries. On May 7, when John Hay told him that many correspondents wished him to abolish slavery, he replied: “For my own part, I consider the central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity that is upon us, of proving that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose. If we fail it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.” Alluding to slavery, he added: “There may be one consideration used in stay of such final judgment, but that is not for us to use in advance. That is, that there exists in our case, an instance of a vast and far reaching disturbing element, which the history of no other free nation will probably ever present. That however is not for us to say at present. Taking the government as we found it we will see if the majority can preserve it.”177 That same day, Lincoln addressed a letter to the regent captains of the tiny principality of San Marino, Italy, in which he said that the war “involves the question whether a Representative republic, extended and aggrandized so much as to be safe against foreign enemies can save itself from the dangers of domestic faction.”178 To Nicolay, the president offered a similar analysis.

  Lincoln elaborated on this theme in his message to Congress. “Our popular government,” he wrote, “has often been called an experiment. Two points in it, our people have already settled—the successful establishing and the successful administering of it. One still remains—it’s successful maintenance against a formidable attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them to demonstrate to the world, that those who can fairly carry an election, can also suppress a rebellion; that ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal, back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be a great lesson of peace; teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by a war; teaching all, the folly of being the beginners of a war.”

  Later in the message Lincoln foreshadowed the celebrated speech he would give at Gettysburg more than two years later: “And this issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man, the question, whether a Constitutional republic, or a democracy—a government of the people, by the same people—can, or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes. It presents the question, whether discontented individuals, too few in numbers to control administration, according to organic law, in any case, can always, upon the pretences made in this case, or on any other pretences, or arbitrarily, without any pretence, break up their government, and thus practically put an end to free government upon the earth. It forces us to ask: ‘Is there, in all republics, this inherent, and fatal weakness?’ ‘Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?’ ”

  In the most eloquent passage of the address, Lincoln called the war “essentially a People’s contest.” For Unionists, “it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men—to lift artificial weights from all shoulders; to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all; to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life. Yielding to partial and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the government for whose existence we contend.” These words had a special resonance coming from a man who had made his way up from frontier poverty and ignorance. The president’s democratic faith in the people shone through his description of the army. There were, he said, “many single Regiments whose members, one and another, possess full practical knowledge of all the arts, sciences, professions, and whatever else, whether useful or elegant, is known in the world; and there is scarcely one, from which there could not be selected, a President, a Cabinet, a Congress, and perhaps a Court, abundantly competent to administer the government itself.”

  Lincoln recounted the events leading to war, explaining why he had decided to relieve Fort Sumter. Some have regarded his version of events skeptically, but in fact he gave an accurate report of his thoughts and actions during the administration’s first six weeks. In one regard, the message was an extension of Lincoln’s inaugural, for it refuted at great length the secessionists’ “ingenious sophism” that “any State of the Union may, consistently with the national Constitution, and therefore lawfully, and peacefully, withdraw from the Union, without the consent of the Union, or of any other State. The little disguise that the supposed right is to be exercised only for just cause, themselves to be the sole judge of its justice, is too thin to merit any notice. With rebellion thus sugar-coated, they have been drugging the public mind of their section for more than thirty years; and, until at length, they have brought many good men to a willingness to take up arms against the government the day after some assemblage of men have enacted the farcical pretence of taking their State out of the Union, who could have been brought to no such thing the day before.”

  A dangerous precedent would be set if the public were to accept secession in 1861: “by allowing the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do, if others choose to go, or to extort terms upon which they will promise to remain.” He pointed out that the Confederates recently adopted a constitution that failed to include the right of secession. “The principle itself,” he wryly observed, “is one of disintegration, and upon which no government can possibly endure.” Logically, he showed how the doctrine of secession could be used to justify expelling a state from the union against its will, clearly a flagrant violation of states rights: “If
all the States, save one, should assert the power to drive that one out of the Union, it is presumed the whole class of seceder politicians would at once deny the power, and denounce the act as the greatest outrage upon State rights. But suppose that precisely the same act, instead of being called ‘driving the one out,’ should be called ‘the seceding of the others from that one,’ it would be exactly what the seceders claim to do; unless, indeed, they make the point, that the one, because it is a minority, may rightfully do what the others, because they are a majority, may not rightfully do.”

  Lincoln denied that a majority of voters in any Confederate state, except perhaps South Carolina, truly favored secession. He caustically alluded to the conduct of the authorities in Virginia: “The course taken in Virginia was the most remarkable—perhaps the most important. A convention, elected by the people of that State, to consider this very question of disrupting the Federal Union, was in session at the capital of Virginia when Fort Sumter fell. To this body the people had chosen a large majority of professed Union men. Almost immediately after the fall of Sumter, many members of that majority went over to the original disunion minority, and, with them, adopted an ordinance for withdrawing the State from the Union. Whether this change was wrought by their great approval of the assault upon Sumter, or their great resentment at the government’s resistance to that assault, is not definitely known. Although they submitted the ordinance, for ratification, to a vote of the people, to be taken on a day then somewhat more than a month distant, the convention, and the Legislature, (which was also in session at the same time and place) with leading men of the State, not members of either, immediately commenced acting, as if the State were already out of the Union. They pushed military preparations vigorously forward all over the state.”