Perhaps, too, word of the battle of Shiloh in Tennessee would stir McClellan to action. On April 6 and 7, the combined forces of Grant and Buell fought an exceptionally bloody battle against Confederates under the gifted Albert Sidney Johnston, who was killed in the fighting. Johnston had at first seemed victorious, catching Grant off guard, but on the second day, Buell’s reinforcements allowed the Federals to drive the enemy from the field. Their victory paved the way for the capture of Memphis in June.
In reply to McClellan’s pleas, Lincoln wired on April 6: “You now have over one hundred thousand troops, with you. … I think you better break the enemies’ line from York-town to Warwick River, at once. They will probably use time, as advantageously as you can.”169 Three days later, disturbed by McClellan’s lack of self-confidence, and losing patience with the army’s sluggish progress, Lincoln again bluntly implored him to move: “Your despatches complaining that you are not properly sustained, while they do not offend me, do pain me very much.” After the Army of the Potomac sailed, “I ascertained that less than twenty thousand unorganized men, without a single field battery, were all you designed to be left for the defence of Washington, and Manassas Junction. … This presented, (or would present, when McDowell and Sumner should be gone) a great temptation to the enemy to turn back from the Rappahanock, and sack Washington. My explicit order that Washington should, by the judgment of all the commanders of Army corps, be left entirely secure, had been neglected. It was precisely this that drove me to detain McDowell. … And now allow me to ask ‘Do you really think I should permit the line from Richmond, via Mannassas Junction, to this city to be entirely open, except what resistance could be presented by less than twenty thousand unorganized troops?’ This is a question which the country will not allow me to evade. There is a curious mystery about the number of the troops now with you. When I telegraphed you on the 6th. saying you had over a hundred thousand with you, I had just obtained from the Secretary of War, a statement, taken as he said, from your own returns, making 108,000 then with you, and en route to you. You now say you will have but 85,000, when all en route to you shall have reached you. How can the discrepancy of 23,000 be accounted for? As to Gen. Wool’s command [at Fort Monroe], I understand it is doing for you precisely what a like number of your own would have to do, if that command was away. I suppose the whole force which has gone forward for you, is with you by this time; and if so, I think it is the precise time for you to strike a blow. By delay the enemy will relatively gain upon you—that is, he will gain faster, by fortifications and re-inforcements, than you can by re-inforcements alone. And, once more let me tell you, it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this. You will do me the justice to remember I always insisted, that going down the Bay in search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Mannassas, was only shifting, and not surmounting, a difficulty—that we would find the same enemy, and the same, or equal, intrenchments, at either place. The country will not fail to note—is now noting—that the present hesitation to move upon an intrenched enemy, is but the story of Manassas repeated. I beg to assure you that I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can. But you must act.”170 On May 1, the president similarly responded to McClellan’s request for more artillery: “Your call for Parrott guns from Washington alarms me—chiefly because it argues indefinite procrastination. Is anything to be done?”171
Lincoln was understandably puzzled by McClellan’s audit of his troops. The general counted only the enlisted men present for duty, whereas the president counted all those being fed and equipped by the War Department, which, in addition to the ones on McClellan’s list, included officers, men on sick call, prisoners in the guardhouse, and noncombatants. Disingenuously, Little Mac used the latter method of calculation when estimating the size of the enemy forces. In exasperation, the commander-in-chief declared that getting troops to McClellan was like trying to gather fleas in a barn: “the more you shovel them up in the corner the more they get away from you.”172 But he wanted to give McClellan no cause for complaint, so over the objections of Stanton and Generals Ethan Allen Hitchcock, Montgomery C. Meigs, James W. Ripley, and Lorenzo Thomas, Lincoln shipped McClellan two brigades of engineers plus William B. Franklin’s division from McDowell’s corps, even though the president acknowledged “that the force was not needed by General McClellan.”173 (According to Henry Winter Davis, Stanton “refused to sign the order for Franklin’s division to go to McClellan & talked about resigning,” whereupon Lincoln “signed the order & told him he could resign or not as he saw fit.”)174 To help replace those units, Lincoln ordered N. P. Banks to send James Shields’s division to McDowell. The reassignment of Shields proved to be a blunder, but Lincoln at the time believed that no enemy forces were nearby in the Shenandoah Valley; he also mistakenly thought that Banks had 35,000 troops (including Shields) and could spare a division. As the president explained to Judge Edwards Pierrepont, “McClellan worried me so for more troops that I sent McDowell to him and then weakened Banks to strengthen McDowell. McClellan is all the time writing for more troops.”175
While Lincoln’s confidence in McClellan was badly undermined, popular confidence in the president remained strong. According to Maine Governor Israel Washburn: “our people are faithful, confiding, patriotic—they do believe in the President—they trust, honor & love him.”176 After traveling through the Midwest, Hiram Barney reported that the “hearts of the people there are with the President—they speak of him as a gift of God for the times.”177 Henry W. Bellows wrote after visiting Washington that “Uncle Abe is very popular—a shrewd, firm, clear & strong man.”178 The president, Charles A. Dana declared, “is the most popular man & the most confided in, since Washington. Since the death of his boy led Mrs Abe into retirement, there has been nothing to diminish the public trust and attachment.”179 To some commentators, Lincoln’s leadership appeared indispensable. William O. Stoddard asked readers of the New York Examiner: “Did you ever try to realize the idea of losing our good Chief Magistrate? Perhaps not, but suppose you try, and then look around you in imagination for the man whom you could trust, and whom the people would trust, to take the reins from his dead hand. The fact is, that at present the country has entire confidence in no one else.”180
McClellan did not love, honor, and trust Lincoln; in fact, he deeply resented presidential prodding. After the war, Alexander K. McClure asserted that if the general had “understood and treated Lincoln as his friend, as I know Lincoln was, he could have mastered all his combined enemies.”181 Little Mac said he felt like telling his commander-in-chief that if he wished the Confederate line broken, “he had better come & do it himself.”182
The Commander-in-Chief Takes Norfolk and Tries to Bag Stonewall Jackson
Lincoln did indeed feel impelled to visit the army and actually helped direct the capture of Norfolk and the consequent destruction of the Merrimack. On May 3, just as McClellan was finally ready to begin shelling Yorktown, the 56,000-man Confederate army there under Joseph E. Johnston pulled back toward Richmond. Little Mac, who was surprised by that retreat, had made no plans to pursue. On May 5, when some elements of the Army of the Potomac engaged Johnston’s rear guard at Williamsburg, they took serious losses (2,230 killed, wounded, or missing); for most of the fight, McClellan was absent from the field.
That same day, eager to infuse some energy into McClellan, to persuade the army and navy to cooperate more effectively, and to launch an offensive against Norfolk, Lincoln sailed for the front, accompanied by Stanton, who had suggested the trip Chase, General Egbert Viele, and several others. McClellan said he was too busy to see the president, thus unwisely forgoing an opportunity to repair his frayed relations with Lincoln.
Upon arriving in Hampton Roads, Lincoln visited the Vanderbilt, a huge, powerful ship that Cornelius Vanderbilt had tried to donate to the
government in 1861. His offer had been turned down, but after the Merrimack made her destructive debut, Lincoln personally reversed the earlier decision; since the vessel was equipped with a ram, he believed that it could single-handedly sink the Merrimack.
But in case the Vanderbilt could not destroy the Confederate ironclad, Lincoln thought of another way to do so. At Fort Monroe, he consulted with the general in charge of that facility, John E. Wool, and with the chief naval commander in the area, Flag Officer Louis M. Goldsborough. After a bit of sightseeing, he asked General Wool: “Why don’t you take Norfolk?” and speculated that “it may be easier taken than the Merrimac; and, once [Norfolk is] in our possession, the Merrimac, too, is captured, not, perhaps, actually, but virtually she is ours.”
“Pooh,” replied the general, “you don’t understand military necessity.”183
Lincoln, who was convinced that General William B. Franklin could have seized Norfolk when the Army of the Potomac first reached the Peninsula if he had not stayed on shipboard, decided to take charge himself of an effort to capture the city. Upon learning that it was nearly deserted, he resolved to spur the military to take it. He ordered Goldsborough, who was known for “masterly inactivity,” to attack Rebel forts commanding the James; they were promptly knocked out of commission.
With those threats removed, the next question was where to land Wool’s troops. On May 9, Lincoln, along with Wool, Stanton, and Chase, scouted the south bank of the James. It was his idea, and he directed the reconnaissance. When their ship, the revenue cutter Miami, came under enemy fire, Lincoln was told that he should seek safety in another part of the vessel. He replied: “Although I have no feeling of danger myself, perhaps for the benefit of our country, it would be well to step aside.”184 At first, no place seemed ideally suited for a landing. Lincoln nonetheless thought of a plan: “Those old canal boats that I saw near the wharf at the fort do not draw more than a foot of water when they are entirely empty. These may easily be placed in such a position at high water that the ebb tide will leave them—or, rather, the one nearest the shore—entirely dry, while at the outer one, which may be securely anchored, there will be a depth of seven or eight feet—plenty for the numerous fleet of light draughts that we have at our disposal.” Bearing this in mind, a spot was selected at Willoughby’s Point, about 8 miles from Norfolk. Union sailors dubbed it “Lincoln’s Choice.” The president was rowed to shore and inspected the terrain. Upon his return to Fort Monroe, the troops who were assigned to seize the town cheered him enthusiastically.185 It was determined to launch an assault immediately.
During the night of May 9–10, four regiments were dispatched, but a squabble between two generals about rank hampered their progress. Meanwhile, Lincoln asked Joseph R. Carr why his troops were not participating in the advance. When the colonel explained that General Wool had ordered them to Camp Hamilton, Lincoln vehemently flung down his hat and gave vent to his keen disappointment and disapproval. “Send me some one who can write,” he barked. To Wool’s aide, he dictated an order that Carr’s troops should be dispatched to Norfolk and that the Union forces already underway should press forward swiftly.186 A Union captain observed the president “rushing about, hollering to someone on the wharf—dressed in a black suit with a very seedy crape on his hat, and hanging over the railing, he looked like some hoosier just starting for home from California, with store clothes and a biled shirt on.”187
The order was carried out, and Norfolk soon surrendered, though the delays that precipitated Lincoln’s hat-throwing allowed the Confederates to destroy shipping and burn the navy yard at Portsmouth. Late at night, Wool returned to announce the good news of the city’s capture. Lincoln, sitting on his bed, was amused when the excitable Stanton, clad in a nightshirt, rushed into the stateroom and impulsively hugged Wool, lifting him up in delight. “Look out, Mars!” the president jocularly exclaimed. “If you don’t, the General will throw you!” Tongue in cheek, the president suggested that the artist Emanuel Leutze, who was then painting large historical canvases for the Capitol, be commissioned to execute one depicting Stanton’s embrace of Wool. Later, the general quipped that he had “not yet recovered from the hug which Stanton gave him, nor will he ever recover from the shock given him by seeing so great a man as Stanton, so exalted a man as the president, in his night-shirt.”188
Fearing that the Merrimack might be captured, the Rebels set it afire and watched it explode spectacularly. On behalf of Lincoln, Stanton formally thanked and congratulated Wool, who was promoted to major general. The president, said the war secretary, ranked the destruction of the Merrimack and the occupation of Norfolk “among the most important successes of the present war.”189
The James River was now accessible to the Union navy, which could theoretically sail up to the docks of Richmond. But when Stanton ordered Goldsborough to do so, that timid captain hesitated, unsuccessfully appealing to the president to rescind the order. Meanwhile, the Merrimack’s crew had reinforced Fort Darling on Drewry’s Bluff, 90 feet above the river and 7 miles from the Confederate capital. On May 15, when the Union navy finally moved up the James, Rebel artillery on those imposing heights successfully drove it back. If Goldsborough had promptly executed the order that Lincoln seconded, he might not have been repulsed. The president was deeply disappointed. Another naval disappointment was the failure to capture the blockade-runner Nashville, which repeatedly eluded the Union fleet off Wilmington, North Carolina. It had recently delivered 60,000 arms to the Rebels. In May, upon learning that it had made its fourth successful run in two months, Lincoln indignantly threatened to call the naval officer in charge of the blockade to account.
Lincoln was also exasperated with McClellan, who had said he was not discouraged by the navy’s failure to reach Richmond. Sarcastically, the president remarked to Fox: “I would not be discouraged if they [the Union flotillas] were all destroyed. No.”190 Yet Lincoln objected to indirect criticism of Little Mac during a dinner at Wool’s headquarters. “I will not hear anything said against Genl McClellan,” he insisted; “it hurts my feelings.”191
On May 11, as Lincoln and his entourage sailed back to Washington, he believed that the Union cause was making as much progress as could reasonably be expected. He took pride in his own handiwork, explaining: “I knew that Saturday night that the next morning the Merrimac would either be in the James river or at the bottom. Mr. Stanton, Commodore Goldsborough and myself had a long conversation on the subject. I knew that, Norfolk in our possession, the Merrimac would have no place to retire to, and therefore I took the step which resulted in the capture of that place. The result proved my figuring correct.”192
Others shared Lincoln’s estimate of his role. The New York Herald reported that it was “generally admitted that the President and Secretary Stanton have infused new vigor into both the naval and military operations here.”193 Among those voicing that opinion were an officer on the Monitor who remarked that it “is extremely fortunate that the President came down as he did—he seems to have infused new life into everything, even the superannuated old fogies,” and Captain Wilson Barstow, who thought that the “attack on Norfolk is entirely due to Abe, who insisted upon its being done at once.”194 The sailors aboard the president’s flagship, the Baltimore, ascribed the success of the Norfolk campaign to Lincoln’s ability to energize it. They also declared that the president was “a trump,” and they marveled at the way he seemed so comfortable aboard ship.195 En route back to Washington, Chase wrote his daughter: “So has ended a brilliant week’s campaign of the President; for I think it quite certain that, if he had not come down, Norfolk would still have been in possession of the enemy, and the ‘Merrimac’ as grim and defiant and as much a terror as ever.”196
Lincoln’s trip to the front revitalized him. He was encouraged not only by the success of the Norfolk campaign but also by several other recent Union triumphs, including the capture of New Orleans in late April. Word of that victory he received gleefully. The prev
ious month, he humorously read a caller a telegram announcing the defeat of Confederate forces at Pea Ridge, Arkansas: “Here’s the dispatch. Now, as the showman says, ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, this remarkable specimen is the celebrated wild he-goat of the mountings, and he makes the following noise, to wit.’ ”197 He also rejoiced at the surrender of Fort Pulaski outside Savannah, Georgia, and at John Pope’s capture of both Island No. 10 in the Mississippi and the town of New Madrid, Missouri.
The good news improved Lincoln’s appearance as well as his spirits. In late April, it was reported that he “is looking better than he did the day of his inauguration. He has gained steadily in health, strength, and even in weight.”198 Helping to improve his morale were laudatory press notices like an editorial in the Iowa State Register which said the recent victories in the field “are due in a great measure to the prescience and sagacity of President Lincoln.”199
Lincoln’s optimism about future prospects was widely shared. Lyman Trumbull predicted that “the rebels will abandon Richmond without any serious battle, when they discover that we are advancing on them with our whole Army of the Potomac.” Similarly, the senator expected Confederates in the West would retreat before oncoming Union forces.200 Sanguine though Lincoln was, he exclaimed to an optimist who predicted that the war would soon be over, “No; we have a big job yet on hand to finish the war!”201
While at Fort Monroe, Lincoln wrote McClellan about the reorganization of the army. The general had created two new corps for his favorites, Fitz John Porter and William B. Franklin, and had removed division commander Charles S. Hamilton. The dismissal of Hamilton seemed to the president most unjust, but he could not restore him without deposing McClellan. Ominously Lincoln advised Little Mac that by relieving Hamilton he had “lost the confidence of at least one of your best friends in the Senate.” He told McClellan that in Washington, the reorganization “is looked upon as merely an effort to pamper one or two pets, and to persecute and degrade their supposed rivals. I have had no word from [Generals] Sumner, Heintzelman, or Keyes. The commanders of these Corps are of course the three highest officers with you, but I am constantly told that you … consult and communicate with nobody but General Fitz John Porter, and perhaps General Franklin. I do not say these complaints are true or just; but at all events it is proper you should know of their existence. Do the Commanders of Corps disobey your orders in any thing?” Lincoln asked rhetorically: “are you strong enough, even with my help—to set your foot upon the necks of Sumner, Heintzelman, and Keyes all at once? This is a practical and very serious question for you. The success of your army and the cause of the country are the same; and of course I only desire the good of the cause.”202
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