Others, including Edward Bates and Montgomery Meigs, approved of Scott’s caution. Meigs served informally as a military advisor to Seward, and when the secretary of state asked how the war should be conducted, he recommended “a policy defensive in the main, offensive only so far as to occupy the important positions in the border states.” He warned against a premature thrust into the South, with inadequately trained and supplied troops, led by inexperienced officers. Meigs also thought that it might be necessary to foment a slave uprising.252
Scott incurred ridicule for his prudent advice, which may have been influenced by reverses in June. General Benjamin F. Butler dispatched seven regiments from Fortress Monroe to attack Confederate forces half as numerous at Big Bethel, Virginia. On June 10, the outnumbered Rebels drove back the Federals, killing fifty-three and losing only one. A week later at Vienna, Confederates ambushed a train, capturing it and the Ohio troops aboard. Count Adam Gurowski, a Polish refugee who worked in the State Department, sneered that the elderly, infirm Scott was “too inflated by conceit to give the glory of the active command to any other man” and that someone should create “a wheelbarrow in which Scott could take the field in person.”253 Others suggested that Old Fuss and Feathers was under the influence of a daughter who allegedly supported the secessionists. Many army officers doubted that Scott’s policy was energetic enough and thought he wasted time in excessive preparation.
Agreeing with those officers, Lincoln rejected Scott’s cautious advice, for he was growing impatient. Calculating that the 50,000 Union forces in northern Virginia should be able to defeat the 30,000 Confederates there, the president decided to authorize an offensive. Since many Union soldiers were ninety-day militiamen whose enlistments would soon expire, he understandably wished to have them fight before they were discharged. He may also have believed that to postpone an attack would dispirit the North and perhaps even lead to European recognition of the Confederacy. He was therefore enthusiastic about a plan drawn up at Scott’s request by General Irvin McDowell, an abrasive, hypercritical, 42-year-old gourmand and West Pointer in charge of the Department of Northeastern Virginia. The general, whom Montgomery Meigs called a “good, brave, commonplace fat man,” proposed an attack on Beauregard’s forces concentrating near Manassas, an important rail junction some 30 miles southwest of Washington. When it was objected that the men needed more training, Lincoln replied that the enemy suffered from the same problem: “You are green, it is true; but they are green, also; you are all green alike.”254 Though that was an accurate statement, it was misleading, for Union forces would have to maneuver in the presence of an entrenched enemy, a much greater challenge than the one the Confederates would face.
On June 25, Lincoln convened a council of war with Scott, Meigs, and the cabinet at which the president voiced a strong desire to trap Confederate forces under Thomas J. Jackson at Harper’s Ferry, but Scott thought it unfeasible. Four days later at a second council of war, McDowell’s fundamentally sound plan was discussed at length, with Meigs countering Scott’s vigorous objections. As Meigs recorded in his diary, “I said that I did not think we would ever end this war without beating the rebels; that they had come near us. We were … stronger than they, better prepared, our troops better contented, better clothed, better fed, better paid, better armed. That we had the most violent of the rebels near us; it was better to whip them here than to go far into an unhealthy country to fight them, and to fight far from our supplies, to spend our money among enemies instead of our friends. To make the fight in Virginia was cheaper and better as the case now stood. Let them come here to be beaten, and leave the Union men in time to be a majority at home.”255 It was agreed to endorse McDowell’s plan, which appeared likely to succeed if Confederate forces under Joseph E. Johnston at Winchester did not join Beauregard. To prevent the two Rebel commands from uniting, Scott ordered Patterson to hold Johnston in check. On July 3, when Lincoln received a dispatch from Patterson reporting that his men had crossed the Potomac and caused the enemy to fall back, the president read it to callers who noted that he was “affable but evidently much preoccupied.”256
After many delays, McDowell began lurching toward Manassas on July 16, over a week later than the date agreed upon at the council of war. In the oppressive midsummer heat, the raw troops poked along, taking four days to reach their destination, marching poorly. As they proceeded, Lincoln understandably grew anxious. A caller on July 19 was struck by his “wearied and worried appearance.” During their conversation, the president’s “eye-lids dropped repeatedly and he seemed like a person who had been watching with a sick friend and deprived of his wonted sleep.”257
Beauregard, learning of McDowell’s advance, appealed for help to Johnston, who easily slipped away from the cautious Patterson and hastened to reinforce his threatened colleague. Upon receiving word of this development, Lincoln asked Scott if it might be wise to postpone McDowell’s attack until Patterson could join him; the general-in-chief thought that would not be necessary.
On the morning of Sunday, July 21, McDowell’s troops splashed across Bull Run and so successfully drove the Confederate left that victory seemed imminent. At noon, John G. Nicolay reported from the White House that “everybody is in great suspense. General Scott talked confidently this morning of success, and very calmly and quietly went to church.”258 Every fifteen minutes or so, Lincoln received dispatches from a telegrapher near the battlefield—young Andrew Carnegie—describing what he was able to hear. Uneasy because those bulletins implied that Union forces were retreating, the president shortly after lunch called on Scott, who was napping. (The 300-pound veteran suffered from gout and dropsy, among other ailments, and would doze off at inopportune times.) Lincoln wakened him and offered a pessimistic interpretation of the dispatches, which Scott insisted were poor indicators of the battle’s progress, for shifting winds, echoes, and the like so affected sounds that no conclusion could be drawn from them. The general-in-chief assured Lincoln that McDowell would prevail. Back at the War Department, the president joined Seward, who puffed confidently on a cigar, and Cameron, who forcefully expressed optimism. Lincoln, according to a telegraph operator, was “deeply impressed with the responsibilities of the occasion” and, exuding “quiet dignity,” made only a few measured observations. He grew more hopeful when midafternoon dispatches suggested that the Confederates were falling back. Scott believed this report and predicted that Union forces would soon take Manassas. Somewhat reassured, the president left for his customary afternoon ride, visiting the navy yard, where he told its commander, John A. Dahlgren, that “that the armies were hotly engaged and the other side [was] getting the worst of it.”259
At six o’clock, an excited, frightened-looking Seward rushed into the Executive Mansion and asked Nicolay in a hoarse voice: “Where is the President?”
“Gone to ride.”
“Have you any late news?”
Nicolay read a fresh dispatch by Lieutenant G. H. Mendell, forwarded by the journalist Simon P. Hanscom: “General McDowell wishes all the troops that can be sent from Washington to come here without delay. He has ordered the reserve now here under Colonel Miles to advance to the bridge over Bull Run, on the Warrenton road, having driven the enemy before him.”260
“Tell no one,” enjoined Seward. “That is not so. The battle is lost. The telegraph says that McDowell is in full retreat, and calls on General Scott to save the Capitol. Find the President and tell him to come immediately to Gen. Scott[’]s.”261 (In fact, late that afternoon, the last of the Confederate reinforcements arrived from Winchester and helped turn the tide. In pell-mell fashion, McDowell’s men retreated ignominiously to Washington, causing one wag to write that the troops evidently thought “these are the times that try men soles.”)262
Thirty minutes later Lincoln returned, absorbed the bad news with no outward sign of alarm, and promptly strode next door to the War Department. There he read a dispatch from a captain reporting “General McDowell’s army i
n full retreat through Centreville. The day is lost. Save Washington and the remnants of this army. All available troops ought to be thrown forward in one body. General McDowell is doing all he can to cover the retreat. Colonel Miles is forming for that purpose. He was in reserve at Centreville. The routed troops will not reform.”263 Lincoln and his cabinet gathered in Scott’s office to follow the latest developments. The captain’s dismal report was soon confirmed by a telegram from McDowell stating that his men, “having thrown away their haversacks in the battle and left them behind,” were “without food” and “have eaten nothing since breakfast. We are without artillery ammunition. The larger part of the men are a confused mob, entirely demoralized. It was the opinion of all the commanders that no stand could be made this side of the Potomac. We will, however, make the attempt at Fairfax Court-House.”264 Scott was so dumbfounded by conflicting reports of success and failure that he scarcely credited the latter. Immediately, all available troops were sent to McDowell’s aid.
Lincoln remained at the War Department until after 2 A.M. Upon returning to the White House, he stayed up throughout the moonlit night, listening to reports from noncombatant eyewitnesses. There were many of them, for Washingtonians, including members of Congress, had flocked to Manassas to observe the fight. Fresh from the battlefield, E. B. Washburne found the president huddled with his cabinet and Scott. The congressman wrote that he had never seen “a more sober set of men.”265 Montgomery Meigs called at 3 A.M. and described at length what he had observed. When Lincoln’s old friend and fellow member of the Long Nine in the Illinois Legislature, Robert L. Wilson, asked what sort of news the president had from the front, he replied “in a sharp, shrill voice, ‘damned bad.’ ” (This was the only time Wilson ever heard Lincoln use profanity.)266
The next morning, as a drizzling rain heightened the atmosphere of gloom pervading the capital, footsore, discouraged soldiers straggled into town “like lost sheep without a shepherd.”267 Luckily for the Union cause, the Confederates did not press their advantage and besiege Washington, which they could well have done.
Many were quick to blame the debacle on Lincoln, for it was widely believed that in response to popular pressure he had ordered Scott to attack against his better judgment. Although Lincoln did acknowledge that if Scott had been allowed to conduct the campaign as he wished, the defeat “would not have happened,” he nevertheless took umbrage at the general’s suggestion that he had been coerced to take the offensive prematurely.268
“Sir,” the general exclaimed to the president on that rainy, melancholy day, “I am the greatest coward in America. I will prove it. I have fought this battle, sir, against my judgment; I think the President of the United States ought to remove me to-day for doing it; as God is my judge, after my superiors had determined to fight it, I did all in my power to make the Army efficient. I deserve removal because I did not stand up, when my army was not in a condition for fighting, and resist it to the last.”
Lincoln responded: “Your conversation seems to imply that I forced you to fight this battle.”
Scott denied any such implication, saying: “I have never served a President who has been kinder to me than you have been.”269
In fact, Scott had been pressured to attack not only by Lincoln but also by cabinet members and by congressmen and senators who threatened to censure him.
In the wake of such a humiliating defeat, many condemned “the inexplicable folly of the Administration.” To all and sundry, Maryland ex-Congressman Henry Winter Davis expatiated on the “unfitness for their high task” of the president and his cabinet.270 An editor of the New York World decried “the lack of all that splendid boldness which [Andrew] Jackson would have shown” and expressed doubt that the war could be waged successfully because of the “waning confidence of the people in the energy of Lincoln or the honesty of his cabinet or their ability to master the crisis & organize victory.”271 The “whole responsibility, in the end, falls upon the President,” editorialized the New York Herald, and the Chicago Evening Journal hoped that Lincoln “appreciates the grave fact that he alone is most responsible of all.”272 Edwin M. Stanton ascribed the “catastrophe” to the “imbecility of this Administration.” He charged that “irretrievable misfortune and national disgrace never to be forgotten are to be added to the ruin of all peaceful pursuits and national bankruptcy, as the result of Lincoln’s ‘running the machine’ for five months.”273 Even Lincoln’s good friend Leonard Swett complained that the government did not “seem to [be] conducted with ability, and I am afraid new disasters await us.”274
The cabinet came in for severe criticism. Lyman Trumbull declared that it had no “affirmative, positive action & business talent.” Moreover, Trumbull told a colleague, the president, “though a most excellent & honest man, lacks these qualities.”275 “Everything seems to be in confusion,” the senator thought, “& when this is so in the cabinet & at headquarters we must expect it also on the field of battle.”276 In the cabinet, Frederick Law Olmsted detected “the greatest conceivable dearth of administrative talent” and grumbled that though Lincoln was “an amiable, honest, good fellow,” nevertheless he “has no element of dignity; no tact, not a spark of genius.”277 Israel D. Andrews of Maine denounced all the cabinet members for having no “administrative ability” and for failing to comprehend “the immensity of the crisis.” He also reported that a leading Westerner had told Lincoln: “Unless you soon change this Cabinet the people will change you and it.”278
Many others demanded a cabinet shake-up. At a series of Republican meetings in New York, bitter recriminations were voiced against the secretaries of state, war, and the navy as well as the attorney general. “Mr. Lincoln must be compelled to call about him men of middle age, enjoying the business confidence, the moral approval, [and] the patriotic reliance of the nation” and “throw overboard all mere politicians, office-seeker-&-holders, aspirants to his own chair,” wrote the Rev. Dr. Henry W. Bellows, chairman of the U.S. Sanitary Commission.279 More harshly, an upstate New York attorney called Cameron “a rascal,” Welles an “imbecile,” and Seward a blunderer, and concluded that “Lincoln, it is a general impression with us, is a failure.”280 A former congressman from Pennsylvania urged that Winfield Scott be put in Cameron’s place and Edward Everett in Seward’s. Echoing the views of many, Assistant Secretary of the Interior John Palmer Usher predicted that if Welles and Cameron were not swiftly replaced, the entire administration “will go together to perdition.”281 Chase also was criticized for having championed McDowell and for allegedly threatening before the battle to quit if more regiments were received. Greeley did not demand a cabinet change only because he feared it would be futile. “No President,” he wrote, “could afford to have it said that a newspaper had forced him to give battle, and then turned out his Cabinet because he lost that battle.”282
But Greeley’s New York Tribune did not hesitate to attribute the “shipwreck of our grand and heroic army” to the administration, which owed an apology “to the humiliated and astounded country.”283 Greeley, who acknowledged that he “was all but insane” after the battle, privately urged Lincoln to surrender to the Confederacy.284 “You are not considered a great man, and I am a hopelessly broken one,” the mercurial editor observed patronizingly in a letter to the president. If the Confederacy “cannot be beaten—if our recent disaster’s fatal—do not fear to sacrifice yourself to your country. If the Rebels are not to be beaten—if that is your judgment in view of all the light you can get—then every drop of blood henceforth shed in this quarrel will be wantonly, wickedly shed, and the guilt will rest heavily on the soul of every promoter of the crime.”285 (John Hay aptly called this missive a “most insane specimen of pusillanimity.”)286
When a New Yorker asked Lincoln about all this clamor, he replied: “Tell your friends to make war on the enemy, and not on each other.”287 He advised a delegation urging the removal of Cameron and Welles that “while swimming the river it was no time to swap ho
rses.”288 Similarly, he informed a group of Philadelphia leaders that he “doubted, and the public probably doubted, his ability to meet the public expectations in carrying on the Government; but they need have no doubt of his intention.” His only complaint was against the press’s “spirit of fault-finding” as sometimes “manifested against the Government.” Instead of being impatient, “it was rather the duty of each in his own sphere well to do his duty, and have a reasonable confidence that every other department was doing theirs as well. We would thus be able to turn our guns upon a common enemy, instead of firing into each other.”289 From a committee urging the removal of Cameron, Lincoln requested specific examples of his misconduct. When none was forthcoming, he concluded that “they each had a good-sized axe to grind.”290
Defenders of the administration protested that such attacks would undermine public confidence and prove “suicidal.”291 Some critics tempered their strictures. George William Curtis, who thought the “administration has been inadequate,” acknowledged that the North had “undertaken to make war without in the least knowing how. … We have made a false start, and we have discovered it. It only remains to start afresh.”292
Lincoln agreed with that sentiment. To be sure, the defeat profoundly affected him; with intense emotion he told John D. Defrees, “if Hell is [not] any worse than this, it has no terror for me.”293 But he did not wallow in self-pity or pessimistic gloom. The morning after the battle, he impatiently remarked: “There is nothing in this except the lives lost and the lives which must be lost to make it good.” Commenting on this statement, John Hay wrote that there “was probably no one who regretted bloodshed and disaster more than he, and no one who estimated the consequences of defeat more lightly. He was often for a moment impatient at [the] loss of time, and yet he was not always sure that this was not a part of the necessary scheme.”294 Lincoln assured House Speaker Galusha Grow: “My boys are green at the fighting business, but wait till they get licked enough to raise their dander! Then the cry will be, ‘On to Richmond’ and ‘no Stone-walls will stop them!’ ”295 In early August, he told a despondent friend: “We were all too confident—too sure of an easy victory. We now understand the difficulties in the way, and shall surmount them.”296 To Richard W. Thompson, who had served with him in Congress, the president explained how the battle had come about. Thompson was struck by “the hopefulness of his nature and his confidence in the final result, which he expressed with the fixed determination to omit nothing and not to slacken his exertions in the work of saving the nation’s life.”297
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