Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  Lincoln rejected advice to withdraw the Proclamation, insisting that it was “a fixed thing” and “that he intended to adhere to it.”43 To a Pennsylvania congressman he remarked: “Suppose I had given a deed of my place in Springfield, having received equivalent therefor, could I recall that deed and retake it into my own possession? Just as impossible would it be for me to revoke this deed of emancipation.”44 In the summer of 1863, when urged to accept the return of North Carolina to the Union with slavery, Lincoln replied laconically: “My proclamation setting free the slaves of the rebel states was issued nearly a year ago.”45

  Adding to Lincoln’s dismay, in February the French government, eager to placate manufacturers and laborers suffering from a cotton shortage, formally offered to help mediate the American conflict. Upon receiving this news, the president appeared worn out and downcast. Angrily, he declared that he “would be d[amne]d if he wouldn’t get 1,000,000 men if France dares to interfere.”46 Less vehemently, Seward declined the French offer.

  Most distressing to Lincoln was the Peace Democrats’ increasingly harsh criticism of the war effort. According to Charles Sumner, the president feared “the ‘fire in the rear’—meaning the Democracy, especially at the Northwest—more than our military chances.”47 When told that his situation resembled that of the French statesman, Cardinal Richelieu, Lincoln (who had seen Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s play Richelieu) replied: “Far from it, Richelieu never had a fire in his front and rear at the same time, as I have. Besides, he had a united constituency; I never have had. If ambition in Congress and jealousy in the army could be allayed, and all united in one common purpose, this infernal rebellion would soon be terminated.”48

  Lincoln found army jealousy particularly vexing. On January 23, David Davis, who was badgering him to give their mutual friend W. W. Orme a general’s stars, wrote that the “pressure upon Lincoln for officers & promotions is as great as ever. He sometimes gets very impatient. If ever a man sh[oul]d be sympathized with it is Lincoln.”49 The president complained “that the changes and promotions in the Army of the Potomac cost him more anxiety than the campaigns.”50

  Such problems also plagued the western theater, where German-born General Franz Sigel huffily resigned in December 1861 when Samuel R. Curtis superseded him in Missouri. Determined to placate Sigel and his many vociferous backers who held mass protest meetings and deluged the White House with petitions, Lincoln sent Gustave Koerner to St. Louis to straighten things out. “The Germans are true and patriotic,” the president wrote Halleck, “and so far as they have got cross in Missouri it is upon mistake and misunderstanding.”51 In March, though both Halleck and General John M. Schofield took a dim view of Sigel’s competence (his mistakes had contributed to the Union defeat at Wilson’s Creek in August 1861), Lincoln promoted the German brigadier to major general. He did so at the urging of many congressmen and senators. Earlier that month, Sigel had helped Curtis win the battle of Pea Ridge, Arkansas, which ended the formal military threat to Missouri. (Despite this achievement, Curtis entertained no high opinion of Sigel. “I cannot understand him and do not wish to have the honor of commanding him,” he told Halleck.)52 In September 1862, the hypersensitive German protested that a junior officer had been promoted over him. Lincoln directed the complaint to Halleck, whom Sigel accused of lying.

  A month later Sigel dispatched an aide to the White House to denounce once more the administration’s mistreatment of him and his men. Lincoln urged that Sigel “do the best he could with the command he had” and “not to keep up this constant complaining,” which made it appear that the general was “only anxious about himself.” The president emphasized that he “was tired of this constant hacking,” which “gave him more trouble than anything else.” He added that “he had given equal or greater cause of complaint to other officers,” but “they had not complained.”53 Soon thereafter, when yet another caller tried to plead Sigel’s case, Lincoln exclaimed: “Don’t talk to me any longer about that man!”54 In January 1863, the president rebuked Sigel but soon apologized, saying: “If I do get up a little temper I have no sufficient time to keep it up.”55 Lincoln feared “that Sigel would never forget that he and his Germans are step-sons.”56 The president tolerated Sigel’s behavior because the general was popular with his countrymen, who formed an important voting bloc.

  For the same reason, Lincoln decided to promote another German, Alexander Schimmelfennig. When Stanton objected that more worthy Germans should be advanced before Schimmelfennig, Lincoln replied: “Never mind about that, his name will make up for any difference there may be, and I’ll take the risk of his coming out all right.” Laughingly, he repeated the general’s unmistakably Teutonic surname, emphasizing each syllable, especially the final one: “Schem-mel-fin-nig must be appointed.”57

  Other squabbles among generals exasperated Lincoln. David Hunter and John G. Foster quarreled about which of them would control a part of Foster’s corps that happened to be situated in Hunter’s department. John M. Schofield threatened to resign his command in Missouri because Samuel R. Curtis would not authorize him to undertake offensive action. Curtis, in turn, objected to orders transferring some of his troops to the Vicksburg front. To Lincoln’s relief, Grant conducted the Vicksburg campaign without grumbling. The president said he liked Grant (whom he described as “a copious worker, and fighter, but a very meagre writer, or telegrapher”) because he “doesn’t worry and bother me. He isn’t shrieking for reinforcements all the time. He takes what troops we can safely give him … and does the best he can with what he has got.”58 Grant’s best turned out to be quite good indeed.

  Amidst his many troubles, Lincoln managed to retain a sense of humor. At a reception in January, an army paymaster said to him: “Being here, Mr. Lincoln, I thought I’d call and pay my respects.” In reply, the president quipped: “From the complaints of the soldiers, I guess that’s about all any of you do pay.”59

  Magnanimity: Dealing with the Minnesota Sioux Uprising

  Discontent was especially strong in the West, where Lincoln’s handling of an uprising by Minnesota Sioux in the summer and fall of 1862 enraged the citizenry. The Indians, angry at white encroachment on their territory, at the failure of the government to deliver promised supplies and money, and at the notorious corruption of Indian agents and traders, launched savage attacks on white men, women, and children along the frontier. They killed hundreds and drove over 30,000 from their homes. It was the bloodiest massacre of American civilians on U.S. soil prior to September 11, 2001. Settlers demanded protection, and Governor Alexander Ramsey appealed to Lincoln for troops.

  General John Pope, who was dispatched to restore order, issued a stern declaration: “It is my purpose utterly to exterminate the Sioux if I have the power to do so. … They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromises can be made.”60 When the administration warned him to make no unreasonable demands for troops and supplies, Pope responded: “You have no idea of the wide, universal, and uncontrollable panic everywhere in this country. Over 500 people have been murdered in Minnesota alone and 300 women and children are now in captivity. The most horrible massacres have been committed; children nailed alive to trees and houses, women violated and then disemboweled—everything that horrible ingenuity could devise.”61

  Lincoln ordered thousands of paroled prisoners of war to the scene. “Arm them and send them away just as fast as the Railroads will carry them,” he instructed Stanton.62 When the Confederates refused to continue paroling POWs unless the Union agreed not to deploy them as Indian fighters, Lincoln threatened to “send the prisoners back with a distinct notice that we will recognize no paroles given our prisoners by the rebels, as extending beyond a prohibition against fighting them.”63 But eventually the administration decided that assigning parolees to combat Indians violated the prisoner exchange cartel, and so the plan was scrapped.

  Under the leadership of Minnesota Congressman Henry H.
Sibley, militiamen and regular troops put down the Sioux rebellion by early October. As he conducted war crimes trials that led to a death sentence for 303 Sioux men, Sibley was urged by Pope not to “allow any false sympathy for the Indians to prevent you from acting with the utmost rigor.” Sibley told his wife that “the press is very much concerned, lest I should prove too tender-hearted.”64

  Lincoln was under intense pressure to expel all Indians from Minnesota. Governor Alexander Ramsey told him that his constituents had come “to regard this perfidious and cruel race with a degree of distrust and apprehension which will not tolerate their presence of their neighborhood in any number or in any condition.”65

  Faced with a potential mass execution of over three hundred prisoners, Lincoln hesitated. A pro-administration Washington paper announced that he had “resolved that such an outrage, as the indiscriminate hanging of these Indians most certainly would be, shall not take place.”66 On November 10, he instructed Pope to “forward, as soon as possible, the full and complete record of these convictions” and to prepare “a careful statement.”67 In response, the general warned that white Minnesotans “are exasperated to the last degree & if the guilty are not all executed I think it nearly impossible to prevent the indiscriminate massacre of all the Indians [—] old men, women, & children.” The soldiers, too, would be likely to resort to vigilante justice if the executions were not carried out, Pope added.68 Governor Ramsey joined the chorus demanding that the convicted Indians be hanged. “I hope,” he wrote the president, “the execution of every Sioux Indian condemned by the military court will at once be ordered. It would be wrong upon principle and policy to refuse this. Private revenge would on all this border take the place of official judgment on these Indians.”69 Fiercely the Minnesota abolitionist-feminist Jane Grey Swisshelm condemned the Indians as “crocodiles,” asserted that they had “just as much right to life as a hyena,” and urged the government to “[e]xterminate the wild beasts and make peace with the devil and all his host sooner than with these red-jawed tigers whose fangs are dripping with the blood of innocents.”70 On December 4, the Minnesota congressional delegation vigorously protested to Lincoln against clemency for the condemned prisoners. Especially emphatic was Senator Morton Wilkinson, who introduced a resolution demanding that the president inform the senate about the Indian war and the proposed execution of condemned prisoners. In a gruesome speech, Wilkinson recounted stories of atrocities perpetrated by the Sioux. The senate passed his resolution. Like Pope, Minnesota Congressman Cyrus Aldrich counseled Lincoln that if all the Indians found guilty were not executed, his constituents would “dispose of them in their own way.”71

  Newspapers also predicted that lynching would result if the convicted murderers were not executed. One Minnesota journal warned against any leniency in dealing with the Sioux: “If the Government wants wholesale hanging by the acre; if it wants the Western plains turned into a wide Golgotha of dead Indians; if it wants them hunted down like wild beasts from the face of the continent, it had better refuse to perform the act of justice which the people of this State demand.”72 Civic and religious leaders joined the outcry. One missionary to the Sioux urged Lincoln “to execute the great majority of those who have been condemned” lest “the innocent as well as the guilty” be killed by vengeful settlers.73

  While considering what to do, Lincoln received letters from Minnesotans insisting that no mercy be shown to the “lurking savages.” A physician in St. Paul painted him a lurid picture: “Mr. President, if a being in the shape of a human, but with that shape horribly disfigured with paint & feathers [in order] to make its presence more terrible, should enter your home in the dead hours of night, & approach your pillow with a glittering tomahawk in one hand, & a scalping knife in the other, his eyes gleaming with a thirst for blood, you would spring from your bed in terror, and flee for your life; … there you would see the torch applied to the house your hands had built; … your wife, or your daughter, though she might not yet have seen twelve sweet summers … ravished before your eyes; & carried into a captivity worse than death.” If he had seen such horrors, would the president not demand revenge?74

  The New York Tribune reported that the threat made by Aldrich and his exasperated Minnesota colleagues “is not received with favor, and will not influence the Executive action.”75 The situation resembled the one Lincoln had faced thirty years earlier during the Black Hawk War, when fellow militiamen wished to kill an Indian bearing a safe-conduct pass; then he had courageously stopped them. As the president and two Interior Department lawyers, Francis Ruggles and George Whiting, scrutinized the record of the trials, they discovered that some had lasted only fifteen minutes, that hearsay evidence had been admitted, that due process had been ignored, and that counsel had not been provided the defendants. Ruggles and Whiting recommended that many of the condemned men be pardoned.

  Persuaded by their arguments, Lincoln authorized the execution of only 37 of the 303 condemned men (35 were found guilty of murder and 2 were convicted of rape). In response to Senator Wilkinson’s resolution, Lincoln explained his reasoning: “Anxious to not act with so much clemency as to encourage another outbreak on one hand, nor with so much severity as to be real cruelty on the other, I caused a careful examination of the records of the trials to be made, in view of first ordering the execution of such as had been proved guilty of violating females.” He further sought to discriminate between those involved in massacres and those involved only in battles.76

  As execution day for those Indians drew near, Lincoln instructed Nicolay, who had been in Minnesota on a troubleshooting mission during the uprising, to warn Sibley not to hang Chas-kay-don, whose name was similar to one of the condemned men. At the last minute, the president pardoned Round Wind, who had helped some whites to escape. On December 26, the convicted rapists and killers died on the gallows while a peaceful crowd of more than 5,000 looked on. In 1864, Alexander Ramsey told Lincoln that if he had executed all 303 Indians, he would have won more backing for his reelection bid. “I could not afford to hang men for votes,” came the reply.77

  Minnesotans denounced the president’s decision. In February, the abolitionist-feminist Jane Grey Swisshelm told a Washington audience that if “justice is not done,” whites in Minnesota “will go to shooting Indians whenever these government pets get out from under Uncle Sam’s wing. Our people will hunt them, shoot them, set traps for them, put out poisoned bait for them—kill them by every means we would use to exterminate panthers.”78 When she urged Secretary of the Interior John Palmer Usher to recommend to the president that Indian prisoners be executed in retaliation for Sioux depredations in 1863, Usher replied: “Why it is impossible to get him to arrest and imprison one of the secesh women who are here—the wives of officers in the rebel army, and hold them as hostages for the Union women imprisoned in the South. We have tried again, and again, and cannot get him to do it.—The President will hang nobody!”79

  To placate Minnesota voters, Lincoln declared that the government would help compensate victims of depredations and would support the removal of Indians from their state. Eventually, Congress appropriated money for compensation and provided that the Sioux and the Winnebagos be sent elsewhere.

  In sparing the lives of 264 Sioux, Lincoln had been influenced by Episcopal Bishop Henry B. Whipple and a religious delegation from Pennsylvania, which recommended clemency. Whipple wrote that although the leaders of the uprising had to be punished, nevertheless “we cannot afford by an act of wanton cruelty to purchase a long Indian war—nor by injustice on other matters purchase the anger of God.”80 Endorsing Whipple’s unpopular view was Commissioner of Indian Affairs William P. Dole, who insisted that executing all the condemned men would “be contrary to the spirit of the age, and our character as a great magnanimous and Christian people.”81

  Whipple also lobbied the president to reform the corrupt Indian agency system. In the spring of 1862, the bishop had recommended more humane treatment of the Minnes
ota Sioux. Lincoln promptly asked the secretary of the interior to investigate, which he did and suggested numerous reforms. The president told a friend that Whipple “came here the other day and talked with me about the rascality of this Indian business until I felt it down to my boots.” In reply to Whipple’s appeal, Lincoln characteristically recounted a story: “Bishop, a man thought that monkeys could pick cotton better than negroes could because they were quicker and their fingers smaller. He turned a lot of them into his cotton field, but he found that it took two overseers to watch one monkey. It needs more than one honest man to watch one Indian agent.” He pledged that “[i]f we get through this war, and if I live, this Indian system shall be reformed.”82 Similarly, in the winter of 1863–1864, he told Joseph La Barge, a steamboat captain who protested against corrupt government Indian agents, “wait until I get this Rebellion off my hands, and I will take up this question and see that justice is done the Indian.”83 To Father John Beason, a noted Indian clergyman, he said “that as soon as the war was settled his attention should be given to the Indians and it should not cease until justice to their and my satisfaction was secured.”84 In his 1862 annual message to Congress, Lincoln urged that it change the system. “With all my heart I thank you for your reccommendation to have our whole Indian system reformed,” Whipple wrote the president. “It is a stupendous piece of wickedness and as we fear God ought to be changed.” Though Lincoln did not live to see his recommendation implemented, he gave a significant boost to the movement that eventually overthrew the corrupt system.85