Abraham Lincoln: A Life, Volume 2

by Michael Burlingame

  Despite the prospect of being murdered in cold blood or enslaved if captured, blacks joined the army in large numbers. Many, however, were angry because they were paid less than white troops and because they could serve only as enlisted men, not officers. “We have an imbecile administration, and the most imbecile management that is possible to conceive of,” wrote the black novelist William Wells Brown.318 A prominent recruiter, Massachusetts businessman and abolitionist George Luther Stearns, suggested to Frederick Douglass that he lobby the administration to do more to protect black prisoners of war. Taking that advice, on August 10, 1863, the black orator called on Stanton and then, accompanied by Kansas Senator Samuel C. Pomeroy, visited the White House. Douglass reported that he was “received cordially” by Lincoln, who rose and extended his hand. “I have never seen a more transparent countenance,” Douglass wrote two days later. “There was not the slightest shadow of embarrassment.” When he began to explain who he was, Lincoln put him at ease, saying: “I know you; I have read about you, and Mr. Seward has told me about you.” Douglass said that he felt “quite at home in his presence.”

  Hoping to get the president to talk in general terms about his policies regarding blacks, including the pay differential and the refusal to allow blacks to become officers, Douglass thanked Lincoln for the order of retaliation. This tactic worked. As Douglass reported, Lincoln “instantly … proceeded with … an earnestness and fluency of which I had not suspected him, to vindicate his policy respecting the whole slavery question and especially that in reference to employing colored troops.” Responding to criticism of his administration, the president said: “I have been charged with vacillation even by so good a man as Jno. Sherman of Ohio, but I think the charge cannot be sustained. No man can say that having once taken the position I have contradicted it or retreated from it.” Douglass interpreted this comment as “an assurance that whoever else might abandon his antislavery policy President Lincoln would stand firm.” In justifying his hesitancy to endorse the recruitment of black troops and to issue the order of retaliation, Lincoln (according to Douglass) “said that the country needed talking up to that point. He hesitated in regard to it when he felt that the country was not ready for it. He knew that the colored man throughout this country was a despised man, a hated man, and he knew that if he at first came out with such a proclamation, all the hatred which is poured on the head of the negro race would be visited on his Administration. He said that there was preparatory work needed, and that that preparatory work had been done.” He described that “preparatory work” accomplished by black troops: “Remember this, Mr. Douglass; remember that Milliken’s Bend, Port Hudson, and Fort Wagner are recent events; and that these were necessary to prepare the way for this very proclamation of mine.” If he had issued it earlier, he said, “such was the state of public popular prejudice that an outcry would have been raised against the measure. It would be said ‘Ah! We thought it would come to this. White men are to be killed for negroes.’ ” Douglass found this argument “reasonable.” In a letter describing this conversation, he wrote: “My whole interview with the President was gratifying and did much to assure me that slavery would not survive the War and that the country would survive both slavery and the War.”319 In December, Douglass told a Philadelphia audience that while in the White House, “I felt big.”320

  Lincoln’s order of retaliation was never implemented, even though Confederates did kill some black prisoners in cold blood, most notoriously at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, in April 1864. After accounts of that massacre inspired public outrage, Lincoln told an audience in Baltimore that no retaliation would be made while the matter was being investigated, but that if the reports turned out to be true, “the retribution shall … surely come. It will be [a] matter of grave consideration in what exact course to apply the retribution; but … it must come.” But it did not come. After the Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War reported that the allegations were true, the cabinet discussed possible responses. Opinion was divided, with Seward, Chase, Stanton, and Usher supporting an eye-for-an-eye policy and Blair, Bates, and Welles opposed. As Lincoln put it, the “difficulty is not in stating the principle, but in practically applying it.” Blood, he said, “can not restore blood, and government should not act for revenge.”321 When Frederick Douglass called for the execution of Confederate prisoners, Lincoln replied that retaliation “was a terrible remedy, and one which it was very difficult to apply; one which, if once begun, there was no telling where it would end; that if he could get hold of the Confederate soldiers who had been guilty of treating colored soldiers as felons he could easily retaliate, but the thought of hanging men for a crime perpetrated by others was revolting to his feelings. He thought that the rebels themselves would stop such barbarous warfare, and less evil would be done if retaliation were not resorted to; that he had already received information that colored soldiers were being treated as prisoners of war.”322

  After mulling over the matter, Lincoln on May 17, 1864, ordered Stanton to notify Confederate authorities that if they did not abandon their policy, the Union would set aside a number of Rebel prisoners and “take such action as may then appear expedient and just.”323 That threat proved idle, however, for Grant’s spring offensive distracted attention from the subject of retaliation.

  In 1863, Lincoln approved the execution of a Virginia physician, David M. Wright, who had shot a Union army officer commanding black troops. Incensed by the very idea of former slaves in uniform marching down the sidewalks of Norfolk, the doctor whipped out a pistol and murdered Lieutenant Anson L. Sanborn. When a military commission condemned Wright to death, Lincoln carefully reviewed the trial record, spoke with the defendant’s attorney, read the numerous petitions testifying to the doctor’s respectability, ordered a special examination to be made of the condemned man’s mental condition (he had pleaded temporary insanity), and then, after satisfying himself that the accused had received a fair trial and that he was never insane, approved the death sentence. Despite intense pressure to pardon Wright, Lincoln stood by his decision, and the doctor was hanged.

  When news reached Washington that the Confederates were using thousands of captured black troops to help fortify Mobile instead of exchanging them, it enraged and disgusted Lincoln. In return, the Union army employed Rebel prisoners for similar purposes.

  Meanwhile, black soldiers protested against the lack of equal pay. In 1863, Lincoln told Frederick Douglass that, given the strong Negrophobia prevailing in the earlier stages of the war, “the fact that they [black troops] were not to receive the same pay as white soldiers seemed a necessary concession to smooth the way to their employment at all as soldiers.” But, the president added hopefully, “ultimately they would receive the same.”324 His prediction was more or less accurate. In late 1863, a bill equalizing the pay of white and black troops was introduced into Congress, where it encountered stiff opposition. A leading Democratic newspaper protested that to “claim that the indolent, servile negro is the equal in courage, enterprise and fire to the foremost race in all the world, is a libel upon the name of an American citizen. … It is unjust in every way to the white soldier to put him on a level with the black.”325 Finally, in June 1864, Congress mandated equal pay but made it retroactive only to the first of that year for those blacks who had been freed during the war; for those who had been free as of April 19, 1861, no such limit was applied.

  The victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Port Hudson represented a major turning point in the war. Edward Bates called the successful campaign in Mississippi “the crowning act of the war,” and predicted that it “will go farther towards the suppression of the rebellion than twenty victories in the open field. It breaks the heart of the rebellion.”326 He accurately observed that “the rebellion west of the great river, will hardly need to be conquered in the field—it must die out, of mere inanition.”327 Indeed, three of the eleven Confederate states—Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana—were cut off. In addition, o
ne of the most gaping holes in the blockade was plugged. (Goods imported into Mexico often crossed into Texas and then on to Confederate armies further east.)

  No longer could the Confederacy aspire to win independence on the battlefield. Its principal hope was that the North would grow so weary of the war that it would insist on a compromise peace.

  31

  “The Signs Look Better”

  Victory at the Polls and in the Field

  (July–November 1863)

  Lincoln’s popularity soared after the victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Port Hudson. His old friend from Illinois, Jesse W. Fell, reflected the changed public mood when he told Lyman Trumbull that during the early stages of the war, “I did not like some things that were done, and many things that were not done, by the present Administration.” Along with most “earnest, loyal men, I too was a grumbler, because, as we thought, the Gov’t. moved too slow.” But looking back, Fell acknowledged that “we are not now disposed to be sensorious to the ‘powers that be,’ even among ourselves.” To the contrary, “it is now pretty generally conceded, that, all things considered, Mr. Lincoln’s Administration has done well.” The president had been tried, and it was clear “that he is both honest and patriotic; that if he don’t go forward as fast as some of us like, he never goes backwards.”1 To a friend in Europe, George D. Morgan, brother of New York Senator Edwin D. Morgan, explained that the president “is very popular and good men of all sides seem to regard him as the man for the place, for they see what one cannot see abroad, how difficult the position he has to fill, to keep the border States quiet, to keep peace with the different generals, and give any satisfaction to the radicals.”2 One of those Radicals, Franklin B. Sanborn (who had helped fund John Brown), declared that Lincoln “is really all that we desire.”3

  Despite the Union’s July victories, the Confederacy was not on the verge of collapse. White House secretary William O. Stoddard accurately predicted that “[t]his tiger is wounded undo death, but it will die hard, and fight to the last.” If “we slacken our efforts because of our successes, there is great danger that the hard-won fruit of them will be torn from us.”4 Lincoln fully realized the truth of this prophecy and worked hard to keep his generals from slackening their efforts. Simultaneously, he girded for the looming political struggle in the fall, when crucial elections in Pennsylvania and Ohio would measure the public mood.

  As the president did so, another White House secretary, John Hay, analyzed Lincoln’s leadership qualities. In the summer of 1863, Hay told his coadjutor, John G. Nicolay, that their boss “is in fine whack. I have rarely seen him more serene & busy. He is managing this war, the draft, foreign relations, and planning a reconstruction of the Union, all at once. … I am growing more and more firmly convinced that the good of the country absolutely demands that he should be kept where he is till this thing is over. There is no man in the country, so wise, so gentle and so firm. I believe the hand of God placed him where he is.” Hay scoffed at rumors that Radicals dominated administration policy: “You may talk as you please of the Abolition Cabal directing affairs from Washington: some well meaning newspapers advise the President to keep his fingers out of the military pie: and all that sort of thing. The truth is, if he did, the pie would be a sorry mess. The old man sits here and wields like a backwoods Jupiter the bolts of war and the machinery of government with a hand equally steady & equally firm.”5

  Others also detected the hand of God at work. In 1864 Joseph T. Mills, a Wisconsin judge who had expected to find the president a mere joker, reached a conclusion like Hay’s. After a White House interview, Mills recorded in his diary that Lincoln appeared to be “a man of deep convictions,” the “great guiding intellect of the age,” whose “Atlantian shoulders were fit to bear the weight of [the] mightiest monarchies.” This visitor was so impressed by Lincoln’s “transparent honesty, his republican simplicity, his gushing sympathy for those who offered their lives for their country, his utter forgetfulness of self in his concern for his country,” that he concluded Lincoln “was Heaven[’]s instrument to conduct his people thro[ugh] this red sea of blood to a Canaan of peace & freedom.”6 Amos Tuck of New Hampshire also believed Lincoln “was sent from God to lead this nation out of Egypt, figuratively speaking.”7 In 1864, a Philadelphia abolitionist predicted that Lincoln’s “historic heights will dwarf all others in our annals.”8 During Lincoln’s lifetime, many others joined Hay, Tuck, and Mills in recognizing the president’s greatness.

  Fire in the Rear: Resistance to the Draft

  In addition to blacks’ complaints about their unequal treatment in the military, Lincoln had to deal with whites’ protests against the administration of the draft. In March 1863, Congress passed an Enrolling Act, which made most of the 3,115,000 Northern men between the ages of 20 and 45 eligible for conscription. The provisions for commutation (allowing a man to buy his way out for $300, roughly an average worker’s annual income) and substitution (allowing a man to hire a substitute to serve in his stead) aroused special ire, provoking widespread protests about “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” Resistance to the draft became violent. By war’s end, thirty-eight enrolling officers were killed, sixty wounded, and a dozen suffered damage to their property. In addition, antidraft riots broke out in several cities, including New York. There, between July 13 and 15, 1863, while most local militiamen were busy in Pennsylvania assisting the Army of the Potomac, a mob ran amok, venting its wrath primarily on blacks. With shouts of “kill the naygers,” the rioters, mostly Irish, lynched people and burned the Colored Orphan Asylum. Francis Lieber reported that “negro children were killed in the street, like rats with clubs.”9 Other targets included the draft office, the New York Tribune building, police headquarters, homes of government officials and wealthy residents, tenements and boarding houses occupied by blacks, upscale stores like Brooks Brothers, and hotels denying liquor to the rioters. Observing the anarchy from a rooftop, Herman Melville wrote that “the town is taken by its rats.”10 Order was finally restored when some of General Meade’s troops helped New York militia and police suppress the roving hordes. Over 100 people were killed and 300 wounded. Lincoln reportedly said “that sooner than abandon the draft at the dictation of the mob, he will transfer Meade’s entire army to the city of New York.”11

  During this bloody rampage, the worst riot in American history, Horatio Seymour, the newly elected governor of New York, hastened to the city and seemed to egg the rioters on by addressing them as “my friends” and saying “I assure you I am your friend. You have been my friends.” He announced that he had come “to show you a test of my friendship.”12 Seymour did not order them to disperse but gently suggested that they cease and desist. His speech seemed to please the mob. The indiscreet allusion to “friends” was widely criticized and would dog the governor for the rest of his life.

  In the preceding months, Seymour, a narrowly partisan Democrat, had done his best to obstruct the enrollment process by delay, neglect, and denunciation. He told an ally that the Lincoln administration “is governed by a spirit of malice in all things small and great” and was acting “in a spirit of hostility” to New York.13 That charge was patently untrue; the president, along with the head of the draft bureau, Provost Marshal James B. Fry, and the military commander in New York, General John A. Dix, consistently showed restraint, tact, and patience in dealing with the recalcitrant governor.

  Shortly after Seymour took office on New Year’s Day 1863, Lincoln tried to reach out to him, believing that “as the Governor of the Empire State, and the Representative Man of the Democratic Party,” he “had the power to render great public service, and that if he exerted that power against the Rebellion and for his Country, he would be our next President.”14 In early January, Seymour’s brother called at the White House to assure Lincoln of the governor’s support. The president replied that if he could visit Albany, he would tell Seymour that “his desire was to maintain this Government;” that “he ha
d the same stake in the country” as Seymour did; that he had two children and assumed Seymour had at least as many; that “there could be no next Presidency if the country was broken up;” and that “he was a party man and did not believe in any man who was not;” that “a party man was generally selfish, yet he had appointed most of the officers of the army from among Democrats because most of the West Point men were Democrats, and he believed a man educated in military affairs was better fitted for military office than an uneducated man, and because anti-slavery men, being generally much akin to peace, had never interested themselves in military matters and in getting up companies, as Democrats had;” and that “when the army was unsuccessful, everyone was dissatisfied and criticised the administration.” “If a cartman’s horse ran away,” the president continued, “all the men and women in the streets thought they could do better than the driver, and so it was with the management of the army.” “The complaints of his own party gave the Democrats the weapons of their success.” “In this contest,” Lincoln said, “he saw but three courses to take: one was to fight until the leaders were overthrown; one was to give up the contest altogether; and the other was to negotiate and compromise with the leaders of the rebellion,” which “he thought impossible so long as [Jefferson] Davis had the power.” The Confederate leaders’ “lives were in the rebellion; they, therefore, would never consent to anything but separation and acknowledgment.” If Seymour disagreed with this analysis, Lincoln “would be very glad to know of any fact … to the contrary.”15

  When nothing came of this overture by March, Lincoln wrote Seymour a friendly letter inviting cooperation. Weeks later the governor responded coolly that he was too busy to answer at length but would do so when time allowed. But he did not. Meanwhile, Seymour repeatedly denounced the draft as unconstitutional, arguing that no man could legally be forced “to take part in the ungodly conflict which is distracting the land.” On Independence Day, he delivered an address in Brooklyn proclaiming that Democrats “look upon this Administration as hostile to their rights and liberties; they look upon their opponents as men who would do them wrong in regard to their most sacred franchises.”16 He maintained that the “bloody,” “treasonable,” and “revolutionary” argument of “public necessity” which the Lincoln administration cited could as well be employed “by a mob as well as by a government.”17 In July, two days before drafting was to begin at New York, Seymour dispatched an aide to Washington with a request that the process be suspended, but the message did not get through. On July 16, Lincoln rejected appeals to declare martial law and to place Ben Butler in charge of New York, remarking “that for the present the authorities of New-York seemed competent to the work of suppressing the riot, and that until it got the better of them, the General Government would not deem it necessary to interfere.”18