Fox’s wildly optimistic prognostications helped overcome presidential doubts. More than once Lincoln told the assistant secretary of the navy: “I should be very anxious about this job if you did not feel so sure of your people being successful.”118 If Du Pont had more candidly shared his misgivings about the assault with the administration, the president may have reconsidered its viability. As it was, Lincoln feared that Du Pont lacked the aggressive spirit of an old salt like David Farragut, whose fleet had captured New Orleans a year earlier. To Welles, Lincoln pessimistically observed that Du Pont “is everlastingly asking for more … ironclads. He will do nothing with any. He has intelligence and system, and will maintain a good blockade” but “he will never take Sumter or get to Charleston.”119 Welles agreed, judging that the admiral “shrinks from responsibility, dreads the conflict he has sought, yet is unwilling that any other should undertake it, is afraid the reputation of Du Pont will suffer. This jeopardizes the whole—makes a botched thing of it.”120
Lincoln instructed Du Pont to attack Charleston or, if he doubted his ability to succeed there, send his ironclads to assist in the Vicksburg campaign. Before the telegram reached Du Pont, however, he had assaulted Charleston on April 7 with eight monitors and a huge armored frigate, the New Ironsides. After a furious encounter of little more than half an hour, they withdrew. One monitor, the Keokuk, was sunk. As Lincoln awaited news of the assault, he was skeptical. “What will you wager that half our iron-clads are at the bottom of Charleston Harbor?” he asked Noah Brooks. “The people will expect big things when they hear of this; but it is too late—too late!” he exclaimed.121
On April 12, when he learned of the Union repulse, Lincoln told journalists at the Navy Department that the news displeased him, then left the building looking demoralized and unstrung. He had not supposed that the ironclads would quit “after a fight of forty minutes,” but assumed they would continue the campaign for days or weeks.122 Summing up his disappointment, Lincoln observed that “the six months’ preparation for Charleston was a very long grace for the thin plate of soup served in the two hours of fighting.”123 He said “his only consolation was extracted from the thought that it proved that the Northern harbors were capable of being more quickly made defensible against foreign attack than had been supposed.”124 On April 16, Nicolay expressed what his boss was probably thinking: the young secretary was puzzled by Du Pont’s decision to withdraw so abruptly, “for after all the damage done us was very slight (the Keokuk being a comparatively weak vessel, not built on the Monitor plan.) To counterbalance the sinking of our ship and the trifling derangement of some of the Monitors, we had tested their comparative invulnerability and had found and secured possession of a safe and important anchorage inside Charleston Bar, from which we could greatly lessen the line of blockade, and more important than all it substantially commanded a part at least of Morris Island enabling us to gain a lodgment there by landing troops, and beginning a series of siege operations that might of themselves render Fort Sumpter untenable. This advantage was partially thrown away by the subsequent withdrawal of the whole iron-clad fleet, leaving the enemy undisturbed in the work of erecting new batteries, which they began, even before we left, to protect that only weak point in their defences.”125
Lincoln conferred with Halleck about continuing the Charleston campaign, asking “why it was not possible to land a strong infantry force upon Morris Island, under cover of the gunboats, to co-operate with the navy in the attack upon the works at Cummings Point.” Then “Sumter could be reduced, and, by gradual approaches, we could get within range of the city.” The general-in-chief pooh-poohed the idea, insisting that troops “could do nothing after they got there.” Even though Fox seconded Lincoln’s proposal, Halleck continued to demur. According to Noah Brooks, “though he treated the suggestions of Lincoln with respect,” Halleck “evidently entertained a profound contempt for his generalship.”126 (On another occasion, when “absolutely insulted” by Halleck, Lincoln allegedly “resolved to [re]move” him for such an “act of personal indignity.” But he curbed his temper and retained the general’s services, for he saw no suitable replacement.)127
Lincoln ordered Du Pont to hold his position inside the Charleston bar and prevent the erection of more Confederate batteries at the harbor’s entrance; both the admiral and General Hunter were to renew the attack, which, in the president’s words, should “be a real one, (though not a desperate one).”128 By the time Lincoln’s telegram reached Du Pont, the ironclads had already withdrawn.
The thin-skinned admiral, unwilling to renew the assault, took offense at what he considered the president’s implied censure and asked to be relieved. As Lincoln considered this request, he received a stout defense of Du Pont from John Hay, who was on a visit to South Carolina. In early May, Congressman Henry Winter Davis met with the president, who had kind words for Du Pont. As Davis reported to the admiral, Lincoln said that “that no one stood higher than you with him and the department; that you were the idol of the navy and the favorite of Mr. Welles and enjoyed their full confidence; neither had ever felt the slightest abatement of it; they knew you had done all that in your opinion was possible, and they had never dropped a word of censure or discontent respecting you.”129
Lincoln’s attempt to placate the touchy admiral failed; Du Pont would not be consoled. Eager to salvage his reputation, Du Pont recklessly lashed out at critics, thus helping to scuttle his career. A letter he wrote to the Navy Department on April 16 seemed to Lincoln to disparage his administration. In June, Welles accepted the admiral’s request to be relieved. Months later, when Du Pont denounced the navy secretary, Welles in reply enumerated the admiral’s many offenses. Privately he called Du Pont “an intriguer, selfish[,] aspiring and disappointed.”130
Relief: Visiting Hooker’s Army
While the drama at Charleston was playing itself out, Hooker planned a spring offensive for the Army of the Potomac. “There is a good deal expected of him [Hooker] & hoped from him,” David Davis observed. “He is the last chance.”131 In early April, Lincoln accompanied his wife and several others, including Noah Brooks, on a visit to the general to learn more about his plans. Seward had intended to join them, but Mrs. Lincoln objected, and so he remained in Washington.
As was his wont on such excursions, Lincoln inspected the troops. While at a grand infantry review near Falmouth, he returned the salute of officers by merely touching his hat but removed that item as he passed by enlisted men. A soldier observed that the president “looked care-worn and anxious, and we thought there must be a ‘heap of trouble on the old man’s mind.’ ”132 To others he seemed “very thin and pale, so much so that many people remarked that there was a fair chance of Hamlin being our President soon.”133 One soldier who was especially moved by Lincoln’s appearance wrote that he “looks poorly … thin and in bad health … he is to all outward appearances much careworn, and anxiety is fast wearing him out, poor man; I could but pity as I looked at him, and remembered the weight of responsibility resting upon his burdened mind; what an ordeal he has passed through, and what is yet before him! All I can say is, Poor Abe!”134 Lincoln cut a comical figure as he inspected the Fifth Corps, sitting astride a pony so small that his toes almost scraped the ground. Because he did not strap down his pantlegs, they rode up exposing long underwear. His black suit was entirely mud-spattered. But, as a trooper from Indiana remarked, the “fact that Mr. Lincoln is a very awkward horseman did not lessen the Soldiers admiration for him as a man and as president.”135
Lincoln asked a corps commander as they watched a grand review, “what do you suppose will become of all these men when the war is over?” The general was heartened that a leader spoke about the end of the war.136 As he rode in an army ambulance to another review, Lincoln asked the driver, who was profanely urging on the mules: “Excuse me, my friend, are you an Episcopalian?” The startled teamster replied that he was a Methodist. “Well, I thought you must be an Episcopalian, because
you swear just like Governor Seward, who is a churchwarden,” the president drolly remarked. The driver used no more profanity for the rest of the way.137
At hospitals Lincoln shook hands with the wounded men. Noah Brooks reported that as he “moved softly from between the beds, his face shining with sympathy and his voice often low with emotion,” many patients “shed a tear of sad pleasure as they returned the kind salutation of the President and gazed after him with a new glow upon their faces.” To Brooks it was no wonder that “a thundering cheer burst from the long lines of men” as Lincoln rode past them on his way back to headquarters.138
Pardoner-in-Chief: Dealing with Condemned Soldiers
Lincoln’s merciful treatment of troops condemned to death by courts-martial increased his popularity with the army. On September 4, 1861, Private William Scott, an unsophisticated Vermont country boy who had fallen asleep on sentry duty, was sentenced to die before a firing squad in five days. When Lincoln received appeals for clemency from the officers of Scott’s regiment as well as from leading Washington clergymen, he assured them that he would consider the matter carefully. The death sentence was widely criticized in the city. According to a journalist, “the general expression was that to shoot the soldier would be a terrible mistake. Mutineers have been let off with a term at Tortugas as laborers. Rebels captured, fighting against the Government, are released on parole, but a zealous soldier, for sleeping at his post, must receive the extreme penalty. It was felt that to carry it into execution would at once stop all recruiting.”139 The day before the scheduled execution, McClellan, who had approved the sentence, issued an order announcing that “the President of the United States has expressed a wish that as this is the first condemnation to death in this army for this crime, mercy may be extended to the criminal. This fact, viewed in connection with the inexperience of the condemned as a soldier, his previous good conduct and general good character, and the urgent entreaties made in his behalf, have determined the Major General commanding to grant the pardon so earnestly prayed for.”140 The press lauded this decision as “a high tribute to the great goodness of our excellent President.”141
Seven months later Scott was killed in action. In his last moments, the lad enjoined a comrade to tell Lincoln “that I thank him for his generous regard for me, when a poor soldier under the sentence of death. Tell him that I died for my country with six bullets shot into me, by my enemies and his enemies and my country’s enemies. And oh, tell him, that I hope that God will guide and direct him and take care of him in all the scenes through which he may be called to pass. Yes, God bless President Lincoln for he will one day give him victory over all our enemies.”142
Lincoln’s willingness to reprieve death sentences for sleeping sentinels, deserters, and others became legendary, and for good reason. When Massachusetts Congressman Henry L. Dawes urged him to spare the life of a 19-year-old constituent guilty of desertion, the president replied “that the War Department insisted that the severest punishment for desertion was absolutely necessary to save the army from demoralization.” He added: “But when I think of these mere lads, who had never before left their homes, enlisting in the enthusiasm of the moment for a war of which they had no conception and then in the camp or on the battle field a thousand miles from home, longing for its rest and safety, I have so much sympathy for him that I cannot condemn him to die for forgetting the obligations of the soldier in the longing for home life. There is death and woe enough in this war without such a sacrifice.”143
One day in 1863, after spending six hours with Lincoln reviewing court-martial proceedings, John Hay confided to his diary: “I was amused at the eagerness with which the President caught at any fact which would justify him in saving the life of a condemned soldier. … Cases of cowardice he was specially averse to punishing with death. He said it would frighten the poor devils too terribly, to shoot them. On the case of a soldier who had once deserted & reenlisted he endorsed, ‘Let him fight instead of shooting him.’ One fellow who had deserted & escaped after conviction into Mexico, he sentenced, saying ‘We will condemn him as they used to sell hogs in Indiana, as they run.’ ”144 Lincoln called such sessions “butcher days.”145 Late one day at the military telegraph office, he said: “To-morrow night I shall have a terrible headache.” When asked why, he sadly replied: “To-morrow is hangman’s day and I shall have to act upon death sentences.”146 Joseph Holt, judge advocate general of the army, recalled that when considering courts-martial cases, Lincoln “shrank with evident pain from even the idea of shedding human blood. … In every case he always leaned to the side of mercy. His constant desire was to save life.”147
Lincoln also extended clemency to over 300 prisoners convicted by civil courts. He especially favored those who had served in the military, who had spouses or sons in the service, or who indicated a desire to join the army. Among the most common beneficiaries of presidential mercy were the young, those who had women as intercessors pleading their cases, those who appeared penitent, and those who displayed “good conduct.”148
Army officers often complained that presidential pardons and reprieves undermined discipline. When chided for lacking the sternness of an Andrew Jackson, Lincoln replied: “I am just as God made me, and cannot change.”149 A political ally observed him one day grant a pardon in response to a mother’s plea on behalf of her son. After she left, the president remarked: “Perhaps I have done wrong, but at all events I have made that poor woman happy.”150 Lincoln’s mercy also paid political dividends, for members of Congress felt grateful to the president whenever he reprieved a constituent, an act that predisposed the beneficiary, his family, and his friends to vote Republican.
Though Lincoln’s mercy was legendary, it had limits. Joseph Holt reported that there “was only one class of crimes I always found him prompt to punish—a crime which occurs more or less frequently about all armies—namely, outrages upon women. He never hesitated to approve the sentence in these cases.”151 The president also showed little compassion for thieves, murderers, and Confederate recruiters plying their trade in the North. Hay noted that the president “was only merciless in cases where meanness or cruelty were shown.”152 Over the course of the war, he approved 267 death sentences.
In rejecting pleas for mercy, Lincoln sometimes displayed anger. When a man and a woman came seeking a pardon for a convicted spy, he listened to their story with ever-dwindling patience. He finally interrupted, exclaiming sternly: “There is not a word of this true! and you know it as well as I do. He was a spy, he has been a spy, he ought to have been hanged as a spy. From the fuss you folks are making about him, who are none too loyal, I am convinced he was more valuable to the cause of the enemy than we have yet suspected. You are the third set of persons that has been to me to get him pardoned. Now I’ll tell you what—if any of you come bothering me any more about his being set at liberty, that will decide his fate. I will have him hanged, as he deserves to be. You ought to bless your stars that he got off with a whole neck; and if you don’t want so see him hanged as high as Haman, don’t you come to me again about him.”153 When asked by a Presbyterian minister to pardon a deserter, Lincoln snapped: “Not a word more. … I can do nothing in the matter. I will not interfere. You should not come here trying to undermine the morale of my armies. Those increasing desertions must be stopped. If you had stopped to think, you would not have come on this foolish errand. So go back to Pittsburgh and try to be a more loyal citizen.” Eventually, however, he relented and pardoned the soldier.154
Lincoln’s willingness to issue pardons sometimes led to clashes with Stanton. A notable example of such friction occurred when Henry L. Dawes appealed on behalf of a jailed quartermaster who was dying of consumption, according to a statement signed by two physicians.
“Do you believe that statement?” Lincoln asked.
“Certainly,” replied the Massachusetts congressman.
“Then say so here,” the president instructed, pointing to the back of the do
cument alleging that the prisoner was terminally ill. Lincoln then endorsed it: “Let this man be discharged.”
“Neither you nor I can afford to let that man die in prison,” said the president, who agreed to deliver the document to Stanton.
The next day, however, Lincoln rebuffed a similar plea by a Representative from Michigan, explaining that he had issued a pardon at Dawes’s request and just taken it to Stanton. The gruff war secretary refused to comply, arguing that the prisoner was “the biggest rascal in the army” and that his appeal was obviously bogus. “I begin to think I haven’t much influence with this Administration,” the president quipped.
When informed of this exchange, Dawes hastened to the White House and urged that a messenger be sent to the prison to investigate Stanton’s charge. Lincoln agreed, saying that if Dawes was willing to take the risk, so would he, for “he had rather two well men should escape through deception, than to live in doubt whether he had not let one man die of consumption in a cell, rather than believe his story.” The prisoner was released and lived many years thereafter, confirming Stanton’s suspicion.155
First Lady: Visiting the Front and Hospitals
At Falmouth, Mrs. Lincoln visited hospitals and unostentatiously distributed small gifts. In Washington, too, she often made “Good Samaritan” calls on the wounded. On one occasion, Lincoln gave her $1,000 out of his own pocket to buy Christmas turkeys for the hospitalized troops and helped her distribute them. She won praise for “the generous devotion with which she has tenderly cared for the sick and wounded soldiers.” Pro-Confederate elements in the capital might sneer at her as the “hospital matron,” but Unionists applauded “her errands of mercy to those brave men who are cheered by her visits and benefited by her liberal donations.”156
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