On the night of September 23, the excitable Stanton asked John Hay to summon the president from the Soldiers’ Home to attend a council of war. The young secretary wakened his boss, who expressed concern, for this was the first time that Stanton had sent for him. At the War Department, Lincoln joined Halleck, Stanton, Seward, Chase, Peter H. Watson, Daniel C. McCallum, and James A. Hardie; together they considered ways to reinforce Rosecrans. When Stanton estimated that 30,000 troops could be moved in five days from the Army of the Potomac to Chattanooga, Lincoln skeptically remarked: “I will bet that if the order is given tonight, the troops could not be got to Washington in five days.”126 Despite his reservations, which were shared by Halleck, it was agreed that the Eleventh and Twelfth Corps should be detached from the Army of the Potomac and rushed to Rosecrans posthaste, with Hooker in charge. Though Fighting Joe would have a much smaller command than usual, and despite his reservations about the proposed strategy, he agreed to take on the new assignment. The grateful president remarked: “Whenever trouble arises I can always rely upon Hooker’s magnanimity.”127 Stanton thereupon organized the most successful and dramatic use of railroads in the war, dispatching 23,000 men southwestward. They completed the 1,192-mile journey in record time.
Those reinforcements kept the Confederates from crushing Rosecrans’s army, but Bragg might be able to starve it out. Could Rosecrans deal with that threat? The tone of his dispatches convinced the president that he no longer had confidence in his ability to hold the city. Those telegrams made the general seem (in Lincoln’s colorful image) “confused and stunned like a duck hit on the head.”128 Further shaking Lincoln’s faith in Rosecrans were dispatches from Assistant Secretary of War Charles A. Dana, who was traveling with the Army of the Cumberland. Dana thought the “dazed and mazy” general “was greatly lacking in firmness and steadiness of will” and should be replaced.129
In mid-October, Lincoln said: “Rosecrans has seemed to lose spirit and nerve since the battle of Chickamauga.” So the president put all three western armies under the command of Grant, who was told he could retain Rosecrans in charge of the Army of the Cumberland or remove him as he saw fit. Stating that Old Rosy “never would obey orders,” Grant replaced him with George H. Thomas, who had heroically kept the defeat at Chickamauga from becoming a total rout. Lincoln had praised Thomas lavishly: “It is doubtful whether his heroism and skill … has ever been surpassed in the world.”130
Months later, the president explained to journalist James R. Gilmore why he had authorized Rosecrans’s removal: “The army had lost confidence in him. We could not have held Chattanooga three days longer if he had not been removed. His own dispatches after the battle confirmed that. I think Stanton had got a pique against him, but Chickamauga showed that Rosecrans was not equal to the occasion. I think Rosecrans a true man, and a very able man, and when the War Department merged the departments, I fully expected Rosecrans would remain in command. But you wouldn’t have me put him in active service against Grant’s express request, while Grant is commander-in-chief? I try to do my best. I have tried to do justice by Rosecrans. I did the most I could.”131 Similarly, Lincoln told James A. Garfield in December that he had “never lost confidence” in Rosecrans’s patriotism or courage and wanted it understood that he was still a friend of the general.132 Taking charge of the beefed-up Army of the Cumberland, Grant swiftly opened a supply line to Chattanooga, then methodically planned a counteroffensive against Bragg.
While Grant prepared to reverse the tide in Tennessee, N. P. Banks bungled an attempt to secure a beachhead in Texas. After the surrender of Port Hudson, that general wanted to move against Mobile, an important railroad center and one of the few deep-water ports still in Confederate hands. But Lincoln wished to establish a Union presence in the Lone Star State in order to send a message to Louis Napoleon, whose troops in June 1863 occupied Mexico City. Soon thereafter, the French emperor installed the Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian of Austria to head a puppet government in Mexico. The Union fear was that the French might try to restore Texas to Mexico. In September, responding to Halleck’s orders, Banks dispatched troops to Sabine Pass, where they were routed by a small contingent of Rebels. Weeks later, at the battle of Bayou Bourbeau Confederates thwarted another Union advance toward Texas through western Louisiana. In November, Banks did manage to capture Brownsville, but that minor accomplishment hardly offset his earlier failures.
Ohio Saves the Union: Success at the Fall Elections
During the summer and fall of 1863, Lincoln worried about political as well as military developments. Eight gubernatorial elections were to be held that would prove a crucial turning point in the war, especially those in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Would the electorate repudiate the administration as it had done the previous year? Would Clement L. Vallandigham be elected governor of Ohio? Would Democrat George W. Woodward oust Pennsylvania’s Governor Andrew G. Curtin? The New York Tribune noted that people in both the North and South as well as in England “feel that the fate of the Union rests upon the results of the election in Ohio.”133 The Tribune’s editor feared that Democrats would triumph by claiming that their victory would produce “instant Peace and Reunion,” while a Republican triumph would mean “interminable War.”134 In September, T. J. Barnett predicted that all “the instant questions will be settled by the coming elections. If they go for the Democracy, then Mr Lincoln will not wind up the war—a new feeling & spirit will inspire the South, to try the Fabian policy, until they can have a chance at the new order of things.”
In June 1863, after Vallandigham had been exiled, Lincoln told Barnett that the administration had nothing to fear from the Peace Party, which had just held a massive rally at Manhattan’s Cooper Union. Barnett reported that the president “looks upon it as an amalgam of the elements of discontent in New York, & of folks apprehensive of the personal effect of the Conscription act.” Opposition to the draft, Lincoln speculated, “will give the Democrats far more trouble than it will anybody else.” Grant’s splendid campaign in Mississippi would dampen antiwar sentiment. The president was “in great spirits about Vicksburg, & looks to that as the beginning of the end of organized Opposition to the war.” Lincoln pooh-poohed criticism of his supposedly dictatorial ways, calling himself “more of a ‘Chief Clerk’ than a ‘Despot.’ ” In sum, said Barnett, “he smokes the pipe of Peace with his Conscience & will keep on ‘pegging away at the Rebels,’ wholly satisfied that … his head will not be brought to the block.” Opponents of the war might fuss and fume, but they were unlikely to commit political suicide. With frontier earthiness, Lincoln told Barnett that “ ‘Mrs Grundy [i.e., excessively conventional people] will talk’—but that, after all, she has more sense than to scald her own a[s]s in her own pot.”135
Lincoln and his youngest son, Tad, examine a photograph album (not a bible, as is sometimes alleged). This image, taken by Anthony Berger on February 9, 1864, was reproduced by the thousands and became a great popular favorite. Library of Congress.
“Long Abraham Lincoln a Little Longer” appeared in Harper’s Weekly, November 26, 1864, on the heels of Lincoln’s landslide reelection victory. Cartoonists, both favorable and hostile, typically emphasized Lincoln’s great height (6 feet, 4 inches). Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, Illinois.
In this photo, taken by Alexander Gardner on February 5, 1865, Lincoln seems to radiate an inner peace, for he knew that the war would soon end. Library of Congress.
Lincoln delivering his second inaugural address, March 4, 1865. Some close students of this image assert, a bit dubiously, that they can detect John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators in the crowd. Booth did attend the event and, according to Commissioner of Public Buildings Benjamin Brown French, was rebuffed when he attempted to get at the president. Alexander Gardner photograph, Library of Congress.
“If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on,” Lincoln said when someone suggested suspending constr
uction of the dome during the war. These photographs depict the building at the time of Lincoln’s first inauguration (left, taken by Montgomery Meigs) and second inauguration (right, taken by Alexander Gardner). Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, Illinois.
Thomas Nast, the eminent artist and political cartoonist, drew this image of Lincoln entering Richmond, April 5, 1865, based on an eyewitness account provided to him by the journalist Charles Carlton Coffin. A reversed image appeared in Harper’s Weekly. In 1868, Nast painted a large version of this scene, which hangs in the Union League Club in New York. Lincoln supposedly referred to Nast as “our best recruiting sergeant. His emblematic cartoons have never failed to arouse enthusiasm and patriotism.” John Hay Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island.
Often misidentified as the final picture of Lincoln before his death, this Alexander Gardner portrait dates from February 5, 1865, a month before the last photograph of the president. In the developing process, the negative broke. Gardner simply placed the two pieces back together, made one print, and disposed of the negative. Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, Illinois.
Lincoln’s two life masks provide a remarkable study in contrasts. The first, which the sculptor Leonard Volk created in 1860, so impressed Lincoln that when he first saw it he declared: “There is the animal himself.” According to the sculptor Avard T. Fairbanks, “Virtually every sculptor and artist uses the Volk mask for Lincoln.... it is the most reliable document of the Lincoln face, and far more valuable than photographs, for it is the actual form.” Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, Illinis.
Clark Mills made this life mask in January 1865. Commenting on the difference between this one and Volk’s five years earlier, Lincoln’s secretary John Hay wrote: “Under this frightful ordeal his demeanor and disposition changed, so gradually that it would be impossible to say when the change began; but he was in mind, body, and nerves a very different man at the second inauguration from the one who had taken the oath in 1861. He continued always the same kindly, genial, and cordial spirit he had been at first; but the boisterous laughter became less frequent year by year; the eye grew veiled by constant meditation on momentous subjects; the air of reserve and detachment from his surroundings increased. He aged with great rapidity.” Library of Congress.
On the day Lincoln died, this touching cartoon appeared, quoting the president’s April 2 telegram from the front to Secretary of War Stanton. Grant had just broken through the Confederate lines at Petersburg and forced Lee to evacuate Richmond. Harper’s Weekly, April 15, 1865. Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, Illinois.
Memorabilia celebrating the martyred president and the victorious side in the Civil War included this hand-colored lithograph that Anton Hoenstein produced and John Smith of Philadelphia published in 1865. Entitled “Abraham Lincoln’s Last Reception,” it fancifully brought together the president and Mrs. Lincoln, Vice President and Mrs. Andrew Johnson, cabinet members, and various high-ranking military officers—all gathered in timeless triumph. Library of Congress.
Lincoln’s optimism was partly rooted in Republican successes that spring, when the party swept to victory in gubernatorial elections in New England and in municipal contests throughout the Midwest. As the summer progressed, military triumphs at Vicksburg, Gettysburg, and Port Hudson cheered the public. Even Rosecrans’s defeat at Chickamauga did not persuade many voters that the war was a failure. Nor could the daring raid of Confederate partisan John Hunt Morgan, who in July led 2,500 men across the Ohio River and rampaged through Indiana and Ohio, stealing horses and spreading panic, before being driven off with huge losses. The raid backfired politically. “If there was before any doubt about the Ohio election,” wrote Lyman Trumbull in early August, “Morgan’s raid has settled it. No campaign before ever damaged a political friend so much as Morgan’s has damaged Vallandigham’s.”136 Lee’s unsuccessful invasion of Pennsylvania had a similar effect.
Helping improve Republican prospects were newly formed Union Leagues and Union Clubs dedicated to promoting loyalty irrespective of party. In Eastern cities, socially prestigious Union League Clubs emerged to complement the more down-to-earth branches in the Midwest. Members wrote and distributed patriotic literature; encouraged men to enlist; bolstered Union morale; and intimidated blatant Copperheads. Though not officially connected with the Republican Party, the League did yeoman service in building support for the administration. Lincoln’s secretary, William O. Stoddard, an active member of the League, called it “the most perfect party skeleton ever put together for utter efficiency of political machine work.”137
In part, the Union Leagues were intended to combat the activities of organizations like the Knights of the Golden Circle, a secret society formed in the 1850s to help spread slavery into the Caribbean basin. During the war, chapters were formed in the lower Midwest to promote the “Northwest Confederacy” project, an attempt to merge the South and West into a new nation and exclude New England. “The Northwest must be prepared to take her destiny in her own hands,” the Chicago Times declared a day before the Emancipation Proclamation was formally promulgated. Confederate secret service agents encouraged the Knights and other elements trying to undermine the war effort.138
Some Republicans exaggerated the threat posed by the Knights in order to discredit all Democrats, many of whom were loyal to the Union while opposed to the Republican economic program. During the war, Congress established a national banking system, granted public land to railroads, enacted an income tax, passed homestead legislation, jacked up tariff rates, and took other Hamiltonian steps, the likes of which Democrats had been denouncing since Thomas Jefferson’s day. Lincoln deferred to the legislature, spending little time or political capital on such economic legislation. (A conspicuous exception was the National Banking Act, which he championed vigorously.) But the activities of many Knights and their ilk were far more sinister than simple Jeffersonian dissent against modernization.
Further enhancing the Republicans’ chances for victory in 1863 was the blundering leadership of the Democratic Party. As T. J. Barnett told a prominent New York Democrat, “the partizans are carping & yelling about dead issues, or the secondary one of Constitutional law.” In Washington, leading opponents of the administration were, in Barnett’s opinion, “selfish & unworthy!” They should stop criticizing Lincoln personally, stop harping on the race issue, and stop acting in such a partisan manner. “The hatchet must be buried with Mr Lincoln, on the War question,” Barnett counseled. The “Democracy must stand like Ate with her hound-furies, under the flag and by the side of its constituted authorities.” As it was, the Democrats did not seem like “a grand loyal Union party.” Barnett was right. The Democrats sorely missed the leadership of Stephen A. Douglas, whose unalloyed Unionism contrasted sharply with the negativism of so many other party spokesmen. Plaintively, Barnett expressed the hope that the Democrats would “discard such oracles as Fernando Wood, James Brooks, & [Charles] Ingersoll, and [James W.] Wall, and Vallandigham, and [Daniel] Voorhees.”139
Even more embarrassing were Democratic legislatures in Indiana and Illinois, which brazenly refused to appropriate money or men for the war effort. The Republican governors (Oliver P. Morton and Richard Yates, respectively) used extraconstitutional means to thwart the obstructionists: Yates prorogued the Prairie State’s General Assembly, while Morton raised money from the federal government and private citizens.
Some Democrats hated Lincoln and his fellow leaders passionately. Shortly after Gettysburg, the celebrated inventor of the telegraph, Samuel F. B. Morse, called the president a man “without brains, so illiterate as not to be able to see the absurdities of his own logic, so weak and vacillating as to be swayed this way and that by the vulgar cant and fanaticism of such mad zealots as Wilson, Wade, Sumner, Chandler, [and] Wendell Phillips.”140
In August, a Kentucky Unionist won election as governor with the
help of substantial military intervention. Lincoln rejoiced that “the election in Kentucky has gone very strongly right. Old Mr. Wickliffe got ugly, and is terribly beaten.” (Representative Charles A. Wickliffe received only 17,344 votes to his opponent’s 67,586.) The president also rejoiced at the victory of other Unionist candidates for Congress, especially Green Clay Smith, who defeated incumbent John Menzies. Lincoln noted that Menzies “behaved very badly in the last session of Congress.”141
To bolster Republican prospects in other states, the administration furloughed thousands of soldiers and granted leave to government employees from Pennsylvania and Ohio, allowing them to return home to vote. While that policy significantly helped Republican chances, Lincoln’s most important contribution to the campaign was a letter he wrote in response to an invitation to visit Springfield, where Democrats had held a huge rally in June. To trump that event, Republicans organized an even bigger rally in August and wanted Lincoln to address it. He was tempted to go but felt he could not leave Washington when military events in Tennessee were unfolding. So he wrote a public letter, one of his very best, to be read at the Springfield conclave.
The invitation had come from his old friend, James C. Conkling, who, like many Illinoisans, worried about the strength of antiwar Democrats capitalizing on opposition to emancipation and the use of black soldiers. Even some Republicans were growing disenchanted with the administration. Jackson Grimshaw complained that “it looks blue. … Cotton & family speculations, concessions to army rascals—arrests one day & releases the next—Kentucky policy and all that have shit us to hell.”142
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