Lincoln did his best to persuade the War Department to equip the army with breechloaders, which he enjoyed testing himself. Inventors often submitted prototypes of their wares to him, and he inspected many of them carefully, especially rifles. Early one morning in 1861, he and William O. Stoddard took target practice on the grassy mall behind the White House, the president using a new Spencer single-shot breechloader and his assistant a converted Springfield rifle (known as a Marsh gun after its inventor) that also loaded at the breech. As they banged away at a large pile of scrap lumber, in violation of the standing order to fire no weapons in the District, the leader of a small army squad rushed toward them shouting “Stop that firing!” When the president stood up, the troopers, recognizing their commander-in-chief, abruptly wheeled about and scurried off. “Well, they might have stayed to see the shooting,” Lincoln remarked. The two men frequently tested new rifles in this fashion. (Lincoln was, Stoddard recalled, “a very good shot.” At a demonstration by a sharpshooter unit, the president surprised the spectators with his marksmanship.) Lincoln was convinced that the single-shot breechloader was “the army rifle of the future.”57 When others tested the Marsh gun, they became as enthusiastic as Lincoln and recommended its adoption. Ripley, however, rejected that advice. In mid-October 1861, the president overruled him, insisting that he order 25,000 of them. Two months later, Lincoln also demanded that 10,000 Spencer rifles be purchased, despite Ripley’s objections. The Spencer rifle was superior to the Marsh, for it was a repeater, carrying a clip of seven rounds, and was capable of firing fourteen shots per minute without overheating. While trying one out, Lincoln whittled a piece of wood into a gun sight, which improved the weapon’s accuracy. That innovation was not adopted, however.
Lincoln also favored breechloading artillery, which Ripley opposed. In the fall of 1861, the president ordered the purchase of a few so-called Ellsworth guns, designed by Eli Thayer for Elmer Ellsworth’s zouaves. In addition, Lincoln prevailed on the War Department to buy thirty small muzzle-loading three-pounders, but Ripley managed to thwart the president’s plan to order two other breechloading fieldpieces.
Pushing on a String: Goading McClellan into Action
Lincoln agreed with Stanton’s insistence that “while men are striving nobly in the West, the champagne & oysters on the Potomac must be stopped.”58 The new secretary of war said that if Little Mac did not move soon, he (Stanton) “should move him.”59 The president had waited patiently—and in vain—for McClellan’s plan of operations, and, like the electorate, he was growing restless. “It is wonderful how public opinion is changing against McClellan,” an Ohioan reported in late February.60 A periodical editor quipped that he had no time to peruse the many monthly magazines he had received and was tempted to send them to Little Mac, “whose forte seemed to be reviewing.”61
To smoke the general out, Lincoln employed an unusual expedient: on January 27, he issued “President’s General War Order No. 1,” commanding all land and naval forces to begin moving against the enemy on February 22. (Privately, Stanton explained that “the Government was on the verge of bankruptcy, and at the rate of expenditure, the armies must move or the Government perish.”)62 As Hay observed, this order marked a turning point: Lincoln “wrote it without any consultation and read it to the Cabinet, not for their sanction but for their information. From that time he influenced actively the operations of the Campaign. He stopped going to McClellan’s and sent for the general to come to him. Everything grew busy and animated after this order.”63 When the order was publicly released in March, the Cincinnati Gazette called it “the stroke that cut the cords which kept our great armies tied up in a state of inactivity.”64 On January 31, Lincoln followed up with “President’s Special War Order No. 1,” directing the Army of the Potomac to attack Confederate supply lines at Manassas, a strategy he had proposed to McClellan several weeks earlier. The New York Tribune optimistically predicted that Lincoln as de facto commander-in-chief of the army, along with the “prodigiously energetic” Stanton, “will now lift this war out of mud and delay, and carry it to victory.”65
Goaded into action by these presidential war orders, McClellan hastened to the Executive Mansion to register objections and ask permission to submit an alternative plan. Lincoln may well have exclaimed to himself, “At last!” The general wrote a twenty-two-page document proposing an attack on Richmond from the lower Chesapeake. He would move the Army of the Potomac by water to the hamlet of Urbanna on the Rappahannock River, then drive toward the Confederate capital, 40 miles to the west, before Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston’s force at Manassas could shift to protect it. McClellan argued that it was “by no means certain” that victory could be achieved following the Manassas plan, but that an attack via Urbanna would provide “the most brilliant results” (as “certain by all the chances of war”), partly because the roads in the lower Chesapeake region “are passable at all seasons of the year.” (To his dismay, he was to find that such was not the case at all. How he reached such an erroneous conclusion is hard to understand.)66
The president offered to defer to the general if Little Mac could satisfactorily answer five questions: “1st. Does not your plan involve a greatly larger expenditure of time, and money than mine? 2nd. Wherein is a victory more certain by your plan than mine? 3rd. Wherein is a victory more valuable by your plan than mine? 4th. In fact, would it not be less valuable, in this, that it would break no great line of the enemie’s communications, while mine would? 5th. In case of disaster, would not a safe retreat be more difficult by your plan than by mine?”67 Inexplicably, McClellan did not deign to respond.
Now Lincoln faced a dilemma: he must order McClellan to carry out the Manassas plan, or find a new general to do so, or acquiesce in the Urbanna strategy. But who should take Little Mac’s place? There was no obvious alternative, as Lincoln told an indignant Benjamin Wade when the Ohio senator urged him to substitute anybody for McClellan: “Wade, ‘anybody’ will do for you, but not for me. I must have somebody.”68 Wade’s colleague Henry Wilson was so disgusted with McClellan that he would have preferred to see even the aged John E. Wool in command. In late February and early March, Lincoln repeatedly said “that if the army of the Potomac could not otherwise be made to move, he would take command of it in person.”69 If Lincoln retained McClellan in command, would he order him to attack the Manassas supply lines? The president confided to Charles Sumner that the general’s scheme was “very much against his judg[men]t, but that he did not feel disposed to take the responsibility of overruling him.”70 Chase shared the view that an attack on Confederate supply lines was preferable to the Urbanna scheme. But on February 13, McClellan assured him that he would be in Richmond by the end of that month.
So the president reluctantly consented to the Young Napoleon’s plan, but only with the understanding that enough troops would be left behind to defend Washington in case the Confederates attacked it while the Army of the Potomac was 80 miles away. If the city were captured, the blow to the North’s prestige might prove fatal, possibly leading to European recognition of the Confederacy and defeat in the war. McClellan promised to leave a sufficient force to protect the capital. The number was to be determined by all twelve division commanders, who jointly recommended a force of 40,000 to 50,000. That seemed reasonable, since McClellan had assured them that the enemy at Manassas and Centreville numbered over 100,000. Unfortunately, Lincoln and McClellan did not agree on a specific number, nor did they identify which troops would have that assignment.
In mid-February, Lincoln prodded McClellan indirectly by having Stanton congratulate General Frederick W. Lander for showing “how much may be done in the worst weather and worst roads by a spirited officer at the head of a small force of brave men, unwilling to waste life in camp when the enemies of their country are within reach.”71 This was widely interpreted as a rebuke to Little Mac.
Meanwhile, pressure on McClellan to break the Confederate hold on the upper and lower Potoma
c grew ever stronger. The blockade of that river below Washington cut the capital off from all seafaring traffic save warships; Rebel control of the river above the city obstructed a main rail line between the Atlantic seaboard and the Ohio Valley (the Baltimore and Ohio). An exasperated Lincoln impatiently asked Welles if the enemy batteries along the river could not be destroyed. The navy secretary said it could be easily done by 10,000 troops, but McClellan would never agree to it. Little Mac wishfully assumed that the lower Potomac would be opened when his Urbanna offensive got underway.
As for the upper Potomac, McClellan took action to keep Confederates from disrupting the Baltimore and Ohio. In late February, he ordered troops under General Nathaniel P. Banks to move toward Winchester, Virginia. To facilitate that offensive, a light pontoon bridge was thrown across the Potomac at Harper’s Ferry; it was to be supplemented by a permanent bridge of heavy timbers resting upon canal boats anchored in the river. On February 27, when those vessels tried to enter a lift lock in order to move from the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal to the river, they proved 6 inches too wide. The entire operation had to be called off, prompting the usually humorless Chase to quip that the Winchester expedition had died of lockjaw. Horace White of the Chicago Tribune, who aptly described the fiasco as “Ball’s Bluff all over again, minus the slaughter,” reported that Lincoln was in “a h[el]l of a rage” and “swore like a Phillistine” upon learning of it.72 He banged his fist on a table and exclaimed: “Why in hell didn’t he measure first!” This was the only time Nicolay heard his boss swear, and the secretary’s assistant, William O. Stoddard, said he “never knew Mr. Lincoln so really angry, so out of all patience.” The president, Stoddard recalled, “was alone in his room when an officer of General McClellan’s staff was announced by the door-keeper and admitted.” Lincoln “turned in his chair to hear, and was informed, in respectful set terms, that the advance movement could not be made.
“ ‘Why?’ he curtly demanded.
“ ‘The pontoon trains are not ready—’
“ ‘Why in hell and damnation ain’t they ready?’
“The officer could think of no satisfactory reply, but turned very hastily and left the room. Mr. Lincoln also turned to the table and resumed the work before him, but wrote at about double his ordinary speed.”73
When Stanton confirmed the bad news, the president asked: “What does this mean?”
“It means that it is a d[amne]d fizzle. It means that he [McClellan] doesn’t intend to do anything,” replied the secretary of war.
“Why could he not have known whether his arrangements were practicable?” Lincoln queried in exasperation.
The president then summoned McClellan’s chief of staff (and father-in-law), Randolph B. Marcy, and spoke sharply to him: “ ‘Why in the [damn]nation, Gen. Marcy,’ said he excitedly, ‘couldn’t the Gen. have known whether a boat would go through that lock, before he spent a million of dollars getting them there? I am no engineer: but it seems to me that if I wished to know whether a boat would go through a hole, or a lock, common sense would teach me to go and measure it. I am almost despairing at these results. Everything seems to fail. The general impression is daily gaining ground that the Gen. does not intend to do anything. By a failure like this we lose all the prestige we gained by the capture of Ft. Donelson. I am grievously disappointed—grievously disappointed and almost in despair.’ ” When Marcy attempted to defend his son-in-law, Lincoln abruptly dismissed him.74
On March 1, Lincoln told Charles Sumner that he would speak plainly to the general. Six days later, while conversing with Mrs. Virginia Fox, he said apropos of a recent visit to McClellan: “There has been an immense quantity of money spent on our army here on the Potomac & there is nothing done—the country & the Congress & every one is anxious & excited about it.” Mrs. Fox said she had read accounts of it in the papers and assumed that the administration and the generals knew more about what was needed than did the editors. Lincoln replied: “We won’t mention names, & I’ll tell you how things are. [Let me] state a proposition to you. Suppose a man whose profession it is to understand military matters is asked how long it will take him & what he requires to accomplish certain things, & when he has had all he asked & the time comes, he does nothing.”75
The public was beginning to regard the Army of the Potomac, whose delays and blunders contrasted sharply with the success of Grant’s army in the West, “as a gigantic joke.”76 When some credited McClellan with devising the grand strategy that led to Grant’s victory at Fort Donelson, a skeptic mocked the Young Napoleon, sarcastically observing that the “high and dry” canal boats formed “a stupendous and sublime exhibition of his never-can-be-sufficiently-bragged-about strategy! Such is the splendid result of all this fanfaronade that stupid dunderheads have been attempting to cram into the ears of the people about a General who fights all his battles a thousand miles away from fire! Lord, Lord, how this world is given to folly! How old Jack [Falstaff] would laugh at that ‘strategy,’ which won Donelson by telegraph, when there wasn’t a wire within a hundred miles of Donelson, and yet couldn’t get a canal boat right under its own nose (old ‘strategy’s’ nose I mean) into the river, after six months’ preparation!”77 Another wag quipped that “McClellan is waiting for the Chinese population of California to increase to such a vast number that they will be able to cross the Rocky Mountains and bring up his right wing, by which time the Russian Possessions and Greenland will have a redundant population, which can be drafted down to the support of the grand left wing of the Union army.” Then and only then “the war will commence in earnest!”78 Chase was warned that the army’s delay caused such dissatisfaction that the government would soon find it impossible to borrow money at anything lower than extortionate interest rates.
Disenchantment with McClellan was affecting Lincoln’s popularity. Democratic Congressman John Hickman of Pennsylvania told his colleagues that “the country has felt a great lack of confidence” in both the general, and the President.79 Lincoln seemed ready to fire Little Mac. On March 3, when another Pennsylvania congressman complained that he and other Representatives felt “humiliated at the long siege of the Capital, and the blockade of the Potomac,” Lincoln replied that “if Gen. Washington, or Napoleon, or Gen Jackson were in command on the Potomac they would be obliged to move or resign the position.” Emphatically, he added that “the army will move, either under General McClellan or some other man and that very soon.”80 Just as a resolution calling on the president to remove McClellan was about to be introduced by Pennsylvania Representative John Covode, word arrived from North Carolina that Burnside had captured New Berne. Since McClellan received some credit for planning that operation, Covode held his fire.
Private Tragedy: The Death of Willie Lincoln
Lincoln’s despair over the canal boat fiasco was doubtless intensified by the crushing blow he had sustained a week earlier when his beloved 11-year-old son Willie died. The president described him as “a very gentle & amiable boy.”81 A Springfield friend, the black barber William Florville, wrote Lincoln that he deemed Willie “a Smart boy for his age, So Considerate, So Manly: his Knowledge and good Sence, far exceeding most boys more advanced in years.”82 Others called him a lad “of unusual intelligence” and a “favorite with all who visited the White House.” He was exceptionally self-possessed, frank, “studious and intellectual,” as well as “sprightly, sweet tempered and mild mannered.”83 Horatio Nelson Taft, father of Willie’s best friends in Washington, thought him “an amiable good hearted boy,” a “ceaseless talker, ambitious to know everything, always asking questions, always busy,” one who “had more judgment and foresight than any boy of his age that I have ever known.”84 Taft’s daughter Julia praised Willie as “the most lovable boy” of her acquaintance, “bright, sensible, sweet-tempered and gentle mannered.”85 His manners were indeed gracious, as one eminent visitor to the White House discovered when he introduced some of his friends to the lad, who was playing in the driveway. In respon
se, Willie said, pointing to the ground: “Gentlemen, I am very happy to see you. Pray be seated.”86 His tutor in Washington, Alexander Williamson, reported that the youngster “had only to con over once or twice a page of his speller and definer, and the impression became so fixed that he went through without hesitation or blundering, and his other studies in proportion.”87 Willie aspired to be a teacher or clergyman.
In early February, the boy contracted a fever which laid him low and caused his mind to wander so badly that he became delirious. It is not certain exactly what the illness was; it may have been typhoid, smallpox, or tuberculosis. Some suspected that the White House basement promoted disease. The cellar was, according to Stoddard, “perennially overrun with rats, mildew and foul smells” and probably caused “the well-known mortality in the upper part of the building.”88
At the same time, Willie’s younger brother Tad grew sick. For days the president was so attentive to the boys, spending night after night at their bedsides, that he hardly tended to business. On February 18, Edward Bates noted that Lincoln was “nearly worn out, with grief and watching.”89 White House receptions were canceled.
As time passed, Willie became so weak that he resembled a shadow, and on February 20 the disease finally killed him. When he died, his father chokingly announced to the principal White House secretary: “Well, Nicolay, my boy is gone—he is actually gone!” and burst into tears.90 That day a journalist reported that “it would move the heart of his bitterest political enemy … to witness the marked change which grief has wrought upon him.”91 The next morning he appeared “completely prostrated with grief” when speaking with Elihu B. Washburne, who wrote his wife that Lincoln “is one of the most tender-hearted of men and devotedly attached to his children.”92 The president was so grief-stricken that close friends worried about the effect Willie’s death would have on him. For the next two days he remained sunk in grief and took little interest in public affairs.
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